Reviews -- Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith



	Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon

John Whitmer Historical Journal, William D. Morain, M.D.
When Sigmund Freud and former Ambassador William Bullitt penned their unflattering psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, even the casual reader could surmise that the smoke rising from its pages was not emanating from "just a cigar." It was instead billowing from a lethal bit of ordinance designed to blacken the face of the deceased President they so despised.

Fortunately, such a criticism cannot be leveled at Robert D. Anderson, MD, for his remarkable volume, Inside the Mind of Joseph Smith: Psychobiography and the Book of Mormon. Anderson, a senior psychiatrist, has adopted the purely naturalistic approach of the psychoanalytic school in producing a consistent and persuasive case that Smith suffered from narcissistic personality disorder. Drawing from the comprehensive record of the New Mormon History, Anderson presents a nuance and sensitive view of Smith and his family in a prose style that both professional and non-professional can readily follow. One senses throughout that the clarity of analysis and directness of style reflects the gentle artistry of a skillful therapist.

Rather than attempting a birth-to-death chronology, Anderson has chosen to limit his inquiry to a review of Smith's formative years and The Book of Mormon itself. It is Anderson's thesis that the Book of Mormon is a literal autobiography, rapidly dictated in the "spontaneous free association" characteristic of a patient on the psychoanalyst's couch. But while others have merely recognized in Smith's book a few isolated themes that appear to parallel those in the author's real-life milieu, Anderson's unique contribution has been to demonstrate how the plot-line reflects the chronology of Smith's own life story four times over. In particular, Anderson identifies the various named characters in the Book of Mormon as alter egos of Smith, specific family members, doctors, ministers, judges, and miscellaneous adversaries. Though the circumstances of the various vignettes in the narrative parallel those of his own life, Smith has replaced the humiliating realities he has in fact endured with triumphal fantasies instead, beginning with the overthrow of the sword-wielding Laban (surgeon Nathan Smith). And with only three named women characters appearing in The Book of Mormon, Anderson easily makes the case that Sariah is Lucy, Abish is Emma, and Isabel is Eliza Winters (an early extramarital consort of Smith's).

Anderson identifies Smith's principal ego-defense as "splitting," a puerile technique characteristic of small children and of their narcissistic adult counterparts. Rather than appreciating the complexity of others' personalities, such individuals regard others as all good or all bad, as reflected in the pervasive bipolarity of virtually every feature of the Book of Mormon.

Anderson sees Smith's personality structure arising out of his dysfunctional family unit. His mother appears to have suffered episodic depression, and his weak, alcoholic father's obsession with magic kept him from productive support of his family. The added deprivation of rootless poverty in the important early childhood years made young Smith woefully vulnerable to the psychological devastation of his horrible surgical experience at age seven. This event, says Anderson, propelled Smith backward in his development to the permanent immaturity of a four-year-old, viewing himself and others through the egocentric eyes of a child.

One perceptive contribution of Anderson is his demonstration of how the sense of being "special," so characteristic of narcissists, was reflected back to Smith by his family. Beginning with the young boy's tall tales of Indians and continuing with his claims of clairvoyance with his "seer" stone, the family and a few acquaintances grew to support Smith's own sense of uniqueness. Anderson construes this rapidly expanding group of enthusiasts to be in fact "ennablers," permitting the youth's delusion to grow and thrive, especially after the introduction of the "facilitator" Oliver Cowdery. The final elaboration of the interactive process, "projective identification," was realized when his followers came to accept the emotional status Smith assigned to themselves, thus locking them into a kind of uncritical, fused function with himself.

My own reading of Anderson's book encountered only a few minor points of disagreement with a parallel effort of mine that was published a year ago. I have no quarrel with his principal diagnosis as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM-IV). One cannot study the life of Joseph Smith without observing the primacy of narcissism in all its grandiosity. But Anderson dismisses primary post-traumatic stress behavior and its accompanying dissociation as active components because of (1) the absence of known "flashbacks" and (2) the fact that dissociative states are not sufficiently organized to have permitted Smith to produce something as coherent as the Book of Mormon. The recent work of Terr and others has drawn a clear distinction between the sporadic "flashback" behavior seen in the adult post-traumatic patient and the more obsessive, omnipresent repetitions of the post-traumatic child. Though I am persuaded by Anderson's interpretation of the autobiographical literality of the Book of Mormon, I yet see much of Smith's "game-playing" in money-digging rituals and temple rites as clear paradigms of Terr's post-traumatic behavior arising from the childhood surgery.

I was further struck by the fact that Anderson does not see in young Smith's mind any appreciable fusion of Father Smith and the surgeon Nathan Smith until the final ten pages of the book. With only a fleeting reference to the parallelism of father and surgeon in the Laban story, Anderson seems to have downplayed Father Smith's "complicitous" role in restraining young Joseph during the assault on his leg. The fact that it is clearly an Oedipal episode of bodily harm with the father assisting and the mother "abandoning" the premises seems to me a necessary central feature of the event in the boy's mind.

I suspect this difference in interpretation stems from Anderson's face-value acceptance of Lucy Mack Smith's description of the surgery, something I do not share. He acknowledges that she has in fact distorted reality in other parts of her long biographical narrative and that her positive descriptions of the Smith family are particularly suspect—but not at the operation. Although Anderson sees the prototypical dysfunctional family roles dramatized in the narrative (young Joseph playing parent to his weak, tearful father and protecting his mother in a "reversal of generations"), I have never seen such an interaction in hundreds of such encounters in emergency rooms, even with the need for something as minor as a couple of sutures in a chin. Somehow, it's always, "MOMMY, MOMMY!!"

I surmise that Anderson and I also disagree over which family death was the more devastating to Smith's psychological functioning—that of brother Alvin or deformed first-born son Alvin. Although the appearance of his deformed newborn was surely a personal humiliation for all the grandeur Smith had ascribed to the child in front of his wife's family, Smith's incomplete bereavement for brother Alvin appears to have propelled a prodigious output of metaphor. The shadows of his brother's death that appear in the Book of Ether, in baptism for the dead, in the anniversary visits to the treasure guardian, in the very naming of his son, and possibly in content of the First and Second Vision suggest to me the pre-eminence of this event over all others of his adult years.

And finally, I was puzzled by Anderson's consistent treatment of Smith's "visit" by an angel in the Second Vision as an external rather than internal construction. Instead, Anderson repeatedly makes reference to the angel's instructions as one of several factors in Smith's environment to which he must respond. At no time does he seem to acknowledge the angel as a psychological construct, nor does he attempt to further characterize it as a paranormal experience, a hallucination, a dream, a fabrication, or a representation of father, brother Alvin, or anything else but "an angel". The reader is left to wonder if angels do indeed exist within a purely naturalistic schema.

But I left this splendid book not begging for more of the Second Vision so much as for the Second Volume. For Anderson has given us only half of what his insight promises. Yes, only a psychoanalyst could invest ten years of his life wading through the Middle-English trees of the Book of Mormon to find the Plain-English forest lurking there. And he has taken the lessons learned in that forest back to Smith's life to reconstruct much that the scanty historical record cannot provide. What Anderson alone can now do is to finish the story—all the way to Carthage. We are waiting.

Journal of the West, Gary Topping
In the revised edition of her pioneering Joseph Smith biography, No Man Knows My History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1970), Fawn M. Brodie suggested that Smith's personality matches psychoanalyst Phyllis Greenacre's "imposter" profile, but cautioned that a "comprehensive clinical portrait" would require a qualified psychologist with a "much more intimate knowledge of the man than is presently possible" (p. xi). Now Robert D. Anderson, M.D., "a Semi-retired psychiatrist," has come forward with just such a portrait, based upon almost three decades of historical and psychoanalytical research since Brodie first applied Greenacre to Smith.

Anderson's argument is that Greenacre's "imposter" is a species of narcissism, and he offers both a fascinating reading of the Book of Mormon and new research into Smith's life and times to show that Smith fits a narcissistic profile. The result is about as close to Brodie's "comprehensive clinical portrait" as historical sources and psychological research are likely to get.

Latter Day Saint History
Who and what a person becomes is often influenced directly by events in childhood and adolescence. Such is the belief of the author of this tremendous text. Robert D. Anderson is a semi-retired psychiatrist who has applied his training in applied psychoanalysis to the life of Joseph Smith Jr., the prophet and revelator who brought forth the restoration movement in the early 1800s.

Dr. Anderson examines the life and personality of Joseph Smith, Jr, and then focuses on its application to the development and writing of The Book of Mormon text.

This book suggests that Joseph Smith did indeed inject his own personality, conflicts, and solutions into the composition of The Book of Mormon. The author even refers to The Book of Mormon as Joseph Smith's autobiography. Evidence suggests that repeated psychological patterns in Smith's childhood and youth before 1829 were related into Book of Mormon stories. Dr. Anderson also used the biography written by Joseph's mother to help get a complete psychoanalytic profile of him.

Dr. Anderson's method of presenting The Book of Mormon as the autobiography of Joseph Smith is his attempt to listen for metaphors, allegories, and fantasies in the very life incidents of Brother Joseph. It is interesting to see that an internally consistent chronological pattern and a repetitive psychological style emerges after numerous reiterations in the Book of Mormon reflect actual events in Joseph's life. Of significance in this text is the analysis of how Joseph Smith transforms his life's stories into Book of Mormon accounts. It is here that Dr. Anderson, as a psychiatrist, is better able to understand him and his motives.

As the life story of Joseph Smith is adapted into Book of Mormon Text, the research will suggest that his life not only turns to fantasy, but to a "tall tale" or a "legend." This is due to the fact that in the writing of The Book of Mormon the characters are ever larger than life.

Dr. Anderson asks that the reader of this text approach it with an open mind, to see the evidence and parallels between the life of Joseph and the actual text of The Scripture itself. It is also pointed out that the acceptance of The Book of Mormon as being divinely inspired is not being negated here, but this type of thinking and belief is inherent within every major religion and each system of belief. Interestingly the author notes that the faith claims of any Book of Mormon believer cannot supercede the spiritual experiences of any other religious system, especially when they all contradict one another. Evidence is also presented indicating that the lack of scientific and/or historical evidence for The Book of Mormon events encourages any honest researcher to begin to look in other directions to validate, or invalidate, a strictly spiritual acceptance of this volume of canonized scripture.

Using his research and training in personality typing, Dr. Anderson determines that his study will focus on viewing Joseph Smith through the lens of narcissism. Citing actual documentation from The American Psychiatric Association in its taxonomy of mental pathology, as presented in 1980, much light is shed on the personality type of Joseph Smith Jr. Several characteristics that this research includes do indeed "Type" Joseph to this personality style. Among these I noted: A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy and behavior), an ongoing need for admiration, a lack of empathy showing up in early adulthood, and a thought that he/she is a very significant person. The evidence certainly fits the life of this founding prophet.

The research and personality traits of The American Psychiatric Association connected with narcissism were formalized and presented in 1980. Dr. Anderson became aware of them is his practice and noticed their presence in the life of Joseph Smith, and he wondered about the events in the scripture which he once held to be without flaw or question.

Dr. Anderson notes that these personality traits don't necessarily turm into criminal activity but there is a high likelihood that a person with these traits would probably end up in some type of negative encounter with civil authorities. On the more dangerous level, Dr. Anderson notes that this same person could also exhibit elements of anti-social behavior, have moral lapses, make fraudulent claims, and purposely deceive others, thus imposing a falsely created image on society and would seek to use it to bring about personal, financial, and social advantages.

Relating the life events of Joseph Smith to the actual document of The Book of Mormon Scripture is a particularly fascinating part of this text. Dr. Anderson relates that the allegorical format makes its appearance at least four times. The analysis of a significant portion of the scripture includes Nephi 1 through Alma 51. Dr. Anderson reflects that these chapters relate in an expanded fantasy format the events of 1824-1828. He goes on to point out that Alma 53, Helaman 16 reflect the point where Joseph Smith begins his life story again. In the single Book of Mormon, Dr. Anderson notes that these events correspond to situations in the life of Joseph at age ten and a half.

Of particular significance is the analysis of The Book of Alma. Dr. Anderson relates that this book portrays events in Joseph's life including: Alvin's death in 1823 (to the slaying of Gideon by Nahor); Joseph's confinement and trial in South Bainbridge in March 1826 (to Alma and Amulek in Ammonihah); the rejection of Joseph by his wife's family in 1827 (to Ammon's contest against the sheep thieves, his conversion of Lamoni's household, and Abish's support); the stillborn tragedy in June 1828 (to the massacre of the innocent pacificist Anti Nephi Lehies, Ammon's hypomanic response, the survivors' grief, Alma's sermon of the swelling seed and God's redeeming son); Joseph's expulsion from Emma's church by her cousins, June 1828 (to the hypocritical Zoramites); and Joseph's humiliation (to Alma's instructions to his three sons).

The sample list above is portrayed throughout this very intriguing text. Dr. Anderson notes throughout the research that the grandiose fantasies written in The Book of Mormon reflect the very nature of the narcissistic personality in portraying events which compensate for the very inadequacies in their lives. These personalities polarize their world into issues of good vs. bad, black vs. white, us vs. them. This pattern is seen throughout the entire Book of Mormon text.

Interestingly, this research indicates that as The Book of Mormon text develops, the battles increase in their magnitude and bloodshed. It can be noted from the last part of Alma through the final battle of the book that Joseph Smith can be seen to be expanding his own sense of fury, at least toward all of his opposers and non-believers in his unique role as a religious leader.

Comprehensive notes connected with each chapter, provide source material for further investigation and research.

This text presents an in-depth analysis of the very events in the life of the founding prophet, which he cleverly and carefully crafted into a Book of Scripture that has an effect on millions of believers in many churches connected with The Restoration Gospel. The impact of The Book of Mormon on the eternal welfare of many warrants a careful study of this text.