"Comments on "Woodrow Wilson Re-Examined

Woodrow Wilson suffered from a variety of medical and neurological illnesses which had a profound effect on his academic and political careers. Wilson was a dyslexic child: evidence is that this was of neurological rather than psychological origin due to unconscious resentment toward a tyrannical father as has been claimed. Rev. Wilson was a dominating but affectionate parent who expected great things of his son, but much of Wilson's ambitiousness and competitiveness stemmed from his attachment to his devoted mother, a chronically ill, phobic, status conscious woman who looked to her son to restore the fancied glory of his Woodrow ancestors, and redeem his father's failures. From 1896, Wilson had episodes of weakness of his right hand and, in 1906, the onset of permanent blindness in his left eye associated with blood vessel damage and hypertension, a syndrome indicative of carotid artery disease. The disturbances in social and emotional behavior resulting from Wilson's reaction to the stroke of 1906 were a major factor in the controversy that led to his forced resignation from the presidency of Princeton. Wilson had an attack of influenza in Paris with cerebral and cardiac involvement, common features of the 1919 epidemic. The resulting change in personality, accentuated by prior cerebral vascular damage, affected his conduct during a crucial stage in the Peace Conference, and during the subsequent struggle over the Treaty of Versailles

Epistemology · Psychoanalysis · Redux · Engineering · Neurology and Historical Studies · Philosophy · Psychology

• "Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House" and Political Psychobiography

  William Friedman, William I Friedman•Political Psychology•1994

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