To avoid being sternly
censured or
even prosecuted for
trying to practice psychology without credentials I
shall limit testimony to my own experience as therapist/patient. The
diagnosis: acute
non-hip funk, i. e. terror of being discovered at any moment by
credible authorities of being an incompetent fraud
hopelessly
unfit to measure up to the performance standards expected of me by
others and myself. It’s the kind of funk where I’m apt to slap
myself in the face real hard, I mean REAL
HARD!!!, welt-raising
hard,
again and again in the hope I’m only dreaming and can slap myself
awake. Of
course, being in the throes of expectant imminent discovery of my
incompetence,
a state in which I’ve come to believe at my deepest innerness that
my self-doubt extends to my competence to slap myself hard enough to
awaken from the nightmare funk, I don’t bother to eye the palm of
my slapping hand. I sigh a desperate rasping torrent of
anxiety-wreaking oxygen-depleted breath and roll the eyes of my inner
patient up to those of my inner therapist.
You’re
in trouble, Bunky, the therapist thinks, and prescribes David
McCullough’s incisive look at 1776,
the
most critical year in our country’s history to date. Don’t call
me “Bunky”, the one inner self says, silently, to the other, and
agrees to look at the book I picked up for half a buck at the public
library’s fall used-book sale and put off reading for fear it was
full of obscure names, dates and geography, etc.--in a word, dull.
Long
story short, 1776
is
full of obscure names, dates and geography, etc. What it’s not is
dull. And it cured my funked-up self of its funk and made it want to
crow like a rooster.
In
all but one instance 1776
focuses
on men.
The
exception is a brief
mention
of Molly Corbin, who went into the disastrous battle for Fort
Washington at her husband’s side. When he was killed she stepped up
to the cannon he’d been loading and firing, and continued “manning”
the gun until she was wounded so severely she nearly lost an arm.
After the Americans surrendered, the British allowed her to return
home to Pennsylvania.
The
Fort Washington fiasco was one of a series of ignominious defeats
suffered by the Continental Army, with much of the blame rightfully
placed on the commander in chief. Disease, lack of supplies including
clothing and gunpowder, lack of training, desertions in droves, and
failure to re-up when annual enlistments expired continually dragged
down morale. Bad battlefield decisions came near providing the
camel’s back-breaking straw, especially when sheer fortune, such as
weather or unexpected decisions by the British, played against the
Colonials as well. Confidence in Gen. Washington eroded steadily
until, following the surrender of Fort Washington Nov. 16, his most
trusted assistant, Joseph Reed, in utter desperation, sent a
confidential letter to Charles Lee, Washington’s chief rival for
command of the Army, expressing concern that his boss was faltering:
Oh!
General, an indecisive mind is one of the greatest misfortunes that
can befall an army. How often have I lamented it this campaign. All
circumstances considered, we are in a very awful and alarming
situation—one that requires the utmost wisdom and firmness of mind.
As soon as the season will admit, I think yourself and some others
should go to Congress and form the plan of the new army.
Washington’s
reaction when he inadvertently read Lee’s response to Reed gives
some insight into the character of the man we one day would honor
with his face on the dollar bill. Knowing now he’d lost the
confidence of Lee, his second-in-command, and Reed, his most trusted
aide, he resealed the letter and sent it off to Reed with a note acknowledging he’d read it by mistake, but saying
nothing more. Lee’s note to Reed had concurred with the latter’s
view “that fatal indecision of mind...in war is a much greater
disqualification than stupidity or even want of personal courage.
Accident may put a decisive blunder in the right, but eternal defeat
and miscarriage must attend the men of the best parts if cursed with
indecision.” Washington later told Reed he was hurt not because he
disagreed with the accusations but because Reed had gone behind his
back. McCullough says Washington possibly agreed the battlefield
blunders were his fault.
Washington
had at least one staunch supporter in Congress, Delegate William
Hooper of North Carolina, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence. “Oh, how I feel for Washington, that best of men,”
he wrote. “The difficulties which he has now to encounter are
beyond the power of language to describe, but to be unfortunate is to
be wrong and there are men...who are villains enough to brand him.
There are some long faces here.”
Washington
refused to show outwardly how discouraged he felt. In a letter to his
cousin, who managed his home at Mount Vernon, he wrote that was
“wearied to death” with troubles, mentioning among them how few
troops he had left in the Army. “In confidence I tell you that I
never was in such an unhappy, divided state since I was born.” All
the while “within a stone’s throw” of the enemy.
 |
| David McCullough doing it the old-fashioned way |
Right
here is where we get a glimpse of the trait in Washington’s
personality that might have been most critical in keeping the Army
going, albeit at its lowest strength of only a couple thousand men.
It was the trait we call today “compartmentalization”
(at least I think that’s what it’s called). It’s the ability to
keep various issues and priorities separate from each other so that a
person can focus on one at a time without distraction from any of the
others, so that worries can be kept in their own compartment and not
interfere
with or
override everything else in the mind. Here’s
the glimpse of Washington’s compartmentalization--in the same
letter to his cousin, an instant shift from the woe-is-me lament, he
discusses his concern about fireplaces at Mount Vernon:
“That
in the parlor must, I should think, stand as it does; not so much on
account of the wainscotting, which I think must be altered (on
account of the door leading into the new building), as on account of
the chimney piece and the manner of its fronting into the room...”
Are we getting the drift here? This is The Father or His Country
bringing about the birth of the United States of America. We know
this story has a happy ending for many of us. Was Washington
afflicted with what we know today as Attention Deficit Disorder, and
if so had he learned to manage it to his—and ultimately
our—advantage? Is there something of value here for all of us
modern ADDers?
I
am feeling verklempt at the moment. You may wish to discuss the idea
amongst yourselves.
[for
more Friday's Forgotten Books check the links on Patti
Abbott's unforgettable blog]
