Democrat Shrink Takes Unflattering Look Into Depths of Bush

"I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure me out," George Bush once said. "I'm just not into psychobabble."

The president will not need a shrink, then, to tell him he is unlikely to enjoy Bush on the Couch, a new book by a Washington psychiatrist and Democrat, who tries to explain his subject's quirks and policies by examining his personal history, and comes up with some unflattering conclusions.

Justin Frank, a clinical professor of psychiatry at George Washington University, argues that the president's inclination to see the world in black-and-white, good-versus-evil terms, and his tendency to repeat favourite words and phrases under pressure, are not simply politics as usual, but classic symptoms of untreated alcoholism.

Mr Bush was a heavy drinker from his youth but stopped at 40, becoming a born-again Christian. But Professor Frank, who has never met the president, argues he never treated the underlying cause of his alcohol dependence.

"He reminded me of my more disturbed patients," the psychiatrist said. "Being on the wagon is not the same thing as having alcoholism treated. That means taking responsibility, and making amends to the people you've damaged.

"Bush switched from alcoholism to religion. It takes responsibility out of his hands. Being born again is a way of denying the past," Prof Frank said.

The White House has not commented on Bush on the Couch. "We don't do book reviews," said the White House spokesman, Scott McLellan.

But the book has come under fire for mixing politics with analysis. A review in Salon.com, a liberal online magazine, described it as "far too partisan a work to make any claim to being a judicious examinationof Bush the man", although the book offered "some genuinely enlightening hypotheses".

A spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association (APA) pointed to its code, which states it is "unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless they have conducted an examination and been granted proper authorisation".

However, Prof Frank, not an APA member, argued it was not necessary to meet his subject to make a judgment.

His book suggests the president's childhood trauma, the death of his little sister from leukaemia when he was seven, and his parents' decision to suppress their grief and not hold a funeral, left the young George burdened with guilt and unprepared to face the consequences of his actions.

And there was the competitive relationship with his father, which the author believes is a driving force behind an administration which has sought in many fields to distance itself from the first Bush presidency.

Prof Frank's prescription is for Mr Bush to join an Alcoholics Anonymous programme - and for him to be relieved of his high-pressure job.