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Freud, a 'mad' president and a century of European diplomacy
"Le President est-il devenu fou?" (Has the president gone mad?) by Patrick Weil takes a fresh look at US president Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), who helped forge the Treaty of Versailles after World War I and tried to establish lasting peace through the creation of the League of Nations.
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A man adjusts his had while touring the salvaged bust of US President Woodrow Wilson(front) and other busts of former US Presidents at the mulching business where they now reside August 25, 2019, in Williamsburg, Virginia. Howard Hankins rescued the giant busts of former US Presidents from the closed Presidents Park in Colonial Williamsburg when he was commissioned to destroy them. (AFP/Brendan Smialowski)
F
inding a lost manuscript by Sigmund Freud has caused a French historian to revisit a key moment in European diplomacy 100 years ago that reverberates today as war returns to the continent.
"Le President est-il devenu fou?" (Has the president gone mad?) by Patrick Weil takes a fresh look at US president Woodrow Wilson (1913-21), who helped forge the Treaty of Versailles after World War I and tried to establish lasting peace through the creation of the League of Nations.
Wilson, of course, failed: the treaty's harsh conditions on Germany created resentment that helped fuel the rise of the Nazis.
Nor could he convince his colleagues in Washington to approve the treaty -- it was never ratified by the US, dooming the League of Nations at birth.
Back in the 1930s, Freud, the godfather of psychoanalysis, blamed Wilson's failure on messianic hubris, rooted in his repressed homosexuality and obsession with his father.
His text was not published until the 1960s, long after his death, and was rubbished by US reviewers, with The New Republic calling it either "a mischievous and preposterous joke... or else an awful and unrelenting slander upon a remarkably gifted American president".
But Weil says there may be something to Freud's critique.
