Charles Bremmer on Sarkozy’s psyche and people’s obsession with it:
Since France loves psychoanalysis, the shrinks have had a field day. In books, seminars and television appearances they have described Sarko as neurotic, bipolar, Oedipal, even psychopathic. One psychiatrist, Hervé Hubert, has been running a popular seminar at Paris VII University with the title “Sarkozy the symptom: a reading of the unconscious”. His diagnosis is widely shared down at the pub. The vertically challenged President seeks the love of the public because his father abandoned him as a child; the swift replacement of Cécilia by Carla is a symptom of self-indulgence and insecurity, and so on.
Some of Sarko's old colleagues have joined the fray. François Léotard, a former Defence Minister, has published a book in which he detects in the President narcissism, aggression and childish behaviour that stem from insecurity. In another approach Jacques Alain Miller, a psychiatrist, told the President this week that his only hope for reforming himself was to undergo analysis. Sarko's problem is his inability to distinguish his ego from his id, Miller concluded.
But there is another way of looking at “Psycho Sarko”. The neurosis may not be on the President's side, but with the French and their mania with him. For months Super-Sarko has dominated conversation. The psychiatrists say their patients bring him up as soon as they hit the couch, so they have coined a new term - “acute Sarkozis”. This means being obsessed by the phenomenon of the President - le personnage mythologique - rather than the real man. From there it is only a small step to seeing that France may not know its President as well as it thinks.
I have to admit that the psychoanalyzation of politics scares me in spite of its entertainment value because it focuses on the fluff and deconstructs substance by making meaning or by reducing it to the psyche. This, in my opinion, deemphasizes political actions for all that matters is what politicians feel, who they are and what they have been thus making their personal side and lives critical since the electorate believes that it is more important for them to know who they are voting for rather than to know their policies. Sarkozy’s problem is since he cannot yet show results to the French even though he loves been describes as speedy and Super Sarko, the extraordinary politician who was going to change France rapidly and thoroughly. He has to give them something else to distract them from the fact that he hasn’t yet decided what kind of president he would be. Sarkozy loves to be loved and idolized. He wants to be all things to all people and from the fact that only results are going to determine if indeed he is more than a good showman who knows how to win elections and charm journalists, but not how to govern and to reform a country.
