Official and Confidential_ The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover - Anthony Summers [240]
Studies now suggest that, being especially vulnerable, people with such a background tend to block their feelings and cut themselves off from meaningful relationships. They come to think of life in terms of the Good, represented by themselves, and the Bad, represented by everyone and everything that seems to run counter to their way of thinking. Such people often gravitate to groups or organizations, groups that reflect their own limited view of the world. They surround themselves with acolytes who reinforce the notion that they are always right about everything. Such factors are typical of the state psychologists call paranoia.
Edgar fit the profile. Annie’s expectations account for his compulsion to perform not just well but perfectly. Edgar’s early obsession with record-keeping, his excessive misery when the school Cadet Corps troop failed to carry off a prize, his insistence on tidiness and his neurotic concern about germs are characteristic of his personality type.
Early on, at an age when a healthy youngster will have an open, inquiring mind, Edgar had rigid, backward-looking attitudes. Even then there was the rapid-fire speech for which the grown man would become famous, talking rather than listening, defense by way of constant attack, the snuffing out of potential argument by never letting the other side have its say. At the FBI, Edgar achieved the paranoid’s ideal. He not only joined a highly disciplined group, he joined one he could mold and totally control for the rest of his life.
‘There is no doubt,’ concluded psychiatrist Dr Harold Lief, Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, ‘that Hoover had a personality disorder, a narcissistic disorder with mixed obsessive features. I picked up some paranoid elements, undue suspiciousness and some sadism. A combination of narcissism and paranoia produces what is known as an Authoritarian Personality. Hoover would have made a perfect high-level Nazi.’
While Dr Lief reached this conclusion spontaneously, on the basis of the information in this book, he was later struck by parallels in the personality of Nazi Germany’s secret police chief Heinrich Himmler. Like Edgar, Lief noted, Himmler had a weak father and was heavily dependent on his mother. He too kept precise records and diaries from an abnormally early age. He was at the top of his class at school, but too frail for sports. He involved himself in his college fraternity and had fixed right-wing ideas from an early age. Though a zealous officer cadet, he tried to avoid military service. He was a chatterbox who dominated all conversations, excessively strict with subordinates and outwardly submissive to superiors. He denounced others at every opportunity. He cut himself off emotionally, distanced himself from women and took an unhealthy interest in the ‘immoral’ behavior of others.
The psychologist Erich Fromm concluded that Himmler was a classic, sadistic Authoritarian. ‘There are thousands of Himmlers living among us,’ he wrote. ‘One must not underestimate the number of people whom they damage and make thoroughly unhappy. The potential Himmler looks like anyone else, except to those who have learned to read character and who do not have to wait until circumstances permit the “monster” to show his colors.’
It is the social system in which a person lives, however, that determines the outcome of his Authoritarianism. Happily, Edgar and his crippled psyche existed in a society very different from that of Nazi Germany. While he persecuted innumerable people, there were limits to how far he could go. Medically, nevertheless, he was constantly at risk. ‘Had Hoover been unsuccessful or had the world he created for himself collapsed,’ said Dr Lief, ‘it would have been shattering for him. He would certainly have required treatment. As it was, he was able to use his personality successfully. He attained huge power and managed to stay in the system for many, many years. He was, you might say, a successful