Kerry-Depression vz. Ambivalence

I met John Kerry once in the mid-nineties and thought he was extremely unhappy. He was distant not in a particularly aloof way but more as if he were permanently distracted by some melancholy reverie. Even on the stump the energy he gains seems trivial. Is he permanently enervated?

“Depression can be a -- very painful -- holiday from anxiety” From LINK
(Incomprehensible psychobabble for the most part but I think the quote is right on) I was seeking psychiatric references for a link between ambivalence and depression-which would seem to bracket this candidate's two obvious character traits. I would love comments on this relationship.

It is the specter of Western Imperialism that causes more fear among Africans and Asians than communism, and thus it is self-defeating." And, when he was tapped to deliver a graduation speech in 1966, he used the occasion to condemn U.S. involvement in Vietnam, intoning, "What was an excess of isolationism has become an excess of interventionism." John Kerry while still at Yale

It has always puzzled me why an antiwar, anti “us imperialist”. European schooled son of a Foreign Service officer agreed to serve in Vietnam? For those of you too young to remember-no one of his class and schooling had to serve. There was graduate school and teaching and the Peace Corps and later Vista and easy to obtain medical deferments. Was it an early sign of wanting to have it both ways? Was Kerry perhaps serving more than one master from an early age. Perhaps his father had more influence in a weird self generated Manchurian candidate sense.It would explain some of John’s stiffness, his lack of warmth and his inability to articulate a coherent version of his overarching political philosophy. His discomfort among ordinary folk, unlike the real JFK, his mournful countenance, disingenuous anger and passive aggressive persona could all be a result of taking on an unforgiving master at a very young age. The association between spying and homosexuality is well know. The ability to lead a double life re: sexual orientation is good practice for a double agent. Perhaps Kerry’s grandfather was the Jew in the closet for Kerry pere. If the had to hide his background regarding his jewishness to succeed in the notorious WASP bastion that was the Foreign Service ,could dad have been a more deeply ambivalent person than we know. Maybe Dad was John’s internal controller seeking revenge against the foreign establishment that had spurned his advice. In any case Kerry’s political waffling is not mere expedience or laziness but appears to be based on some very central character traits. Review of Richard Kerry HERE

Could the source of his remarkable ambivalence be simpler.Is it the conflict between: his father’s European, dour, cerebral cosmopolitan fin de siecle European death knell pessimism versus his mothers perhaps more optimistic American physical outdoor open cheerfulness. I don’t know but do not want this psychodrama played out on the world’s most important stage.

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Comments

[tony kiniry]

"Even highly accomplished and famous people experience depression from time to time. Television journalist Mike wallace, President Abraham Lincoln, British Prime Winston Churchill, and award-winning author William Styron are just a few well-know people who have battled depression" The Depression Helpbook. add Beethoven,Dickens,Eugene O'Neill, Virginia Wolf and Patty Duke....(lotta drunks in this group!)

[mike]

The post was not to denigrate the heroic efforts of those who have overcome depression or of the tragedy of those who are not able to be helped. It was rather an attempt to impute the depressive air of the man to perhaps some unresolved major conflict that he must be brutally honest about to begin to transcend. I am not his physician and cannot give a formal diagnosis but still do not feel comfortable with the man in the worlds most important job.