Letter to Sister -- 1992 -- The Soviet Ambassador

I sent the following letter to my sister some time during the year 1992.  I later elaborated the following ideas in a letter dated November 23, 1992 that I submitted to my then treating psychiatrist at the George Washington University Medical Center, Suzanne M. Pitts, M.D.  The letter suggests something about my reality testing: my need to find evidence confirming or supporting my theories about the world.  The following letter is about William Bullitt, appointed by FDR as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union.  Bullitt collaborated with Freud on a psychobiography of President Woodrow Wilson, and was instrumental in securing Freud's safe passage from Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938.

Dear Stell,

Even I thought that letter I faxed about Freud and Bullitt was idiotic, so I went to the library and looked up a biography of Bullitt. Instead of refuting my ideas, the Bullitt biography bolstered the contentions in my letter that Freud might have identified Bullitt with Moses.

According to Anna Freud, Bullitt was “tremendously personable and charming, [but also] frightfully arrogant.” Such a description matches the characteristics that one would expect to find in a phallic narcissistic character See Reich, W. Character Analysis. According to Dr. Shengold (Malcolm, J. In The Freud Archives), Freud had a special need and weakness for such persons, and Shengold cites Freud’s relationship with Fleiss as an example. Indeed, the Bullitt biography notes that Bullitt was only one of three people that Freud is known to have allowed to address him by his first name. It is plausible that Freud might place Bullitt in the category “prophet, redeemer, savior.” Bullitt’s own phallic narcissistic character is consistent with a possible “rescue fantasy,” predisposing Bullitt not unlike Moses to attempt to rescue persons in a precarious position (note Bullitt’s enlisting in the French army during WWII after being rejected as too old by the U.S. military--possibly evidencing a determined need to rescue). On a political level, Bullitt’s views are expressly termed “prophetic:” his condemnation of the Versailles treaty, his warning to FDR regarding Stalin.

Check this out: the theme of “dual citizenship” as an identity element

Moses - as Hebrew and Egyptian prince

Bullitt - dual U.S. and French citizenship

RSS - “Prince” of the Democratic party serving in high profile diplomatic position in a Republican administration

(Or is this just evidence of the fact that you can find connections wherever you want to find them?)

GF