Just Jackie by Edward Klein (web based ebook reader txt) 📗

on his parking lights. The wind had dispelled the rain and fog, but the temperature was near freezing, making the surface of the roads treacherous. The Secret Service had just lost a president, murdered before the eyes of the world, and Hill did not want to be responsible for another national tragedy.

When Hill reached Cotuit, he followed Main Street out past the town to a spit of land on the water. The Erikson house, which stood at the end of a long, pebble driveway, was a modern brown wooden structure in the shape of a hexagon. The famed psychoanalyst was waiting for them on the steps of a screened-in porch.

Erikson looked like a well-groomed, Nordic version of Albert Einstein. He had a high forehead, and his fluffy white hair blew every which way in the wind. His large, sparkling-blue eyes and permanent little smile gave him an approachable air. He came forward to welcome his guests.

The Kennedy children had been trained by their mother to watch their manners, and even in their time of grief, they did not need to be reminded to shake the doctor’s hand.

Erikson patted John’s head and said, “I remember the picture of this little boy dressed in his formal coat, and saluting his father’s coffin.”

He led them into the house, where he introduced Jackie to his attractive wife Joan, who was also a psychotherapist. Mrs. Erikson seemed less than thrilled to meet Jackie Kennedy.

“My mother was taken completely by surprise by Jackie’s visit,” according to Erikson’s daughter, Sue Bloland, who followed in the family tradition and became a psychotherapist herself. “My mother was an elegant woman in her own right, and she was the type who would be envious of anybody with Jackie’s image. Knowing her, I suspect that she interpreted the fact that my father hadn’t told her ahead of time about Jackie as a sign that he considered Jackie more important than his own wife.”

While the two women were trying to decide what they thought of each other, Erikson put the children at ease by offering them soft drinks, as well as some toys to play with.

Erikson’s personal experiences made him an especially appropriate therapist for Jackie’s children. When Erik was three—exactly John’s age—his Danish mother married a German-Jewish pediatrician named Theodor Homburger, and little Erik Homburger was raised believing that he was Jewish, and that his stepfather was his birth father. “This loving deceit,” as the psychoanalyst later put it, was a prime reason for his interest in identity problems, and it gave him a deep empathy for children who had lost their fathers.

He had other identity confusions as well. Was he Danish or German? Jewish or Gentile? His anti-Semitic German classmates considered him Jewish, and rejected him. His peers at synagogue called him “the goy” because of his Nordic features, and did not accept him, either. Finally, setting out for Boston in 1933 to escape the Nazis, he created a new identity, and gave himself the name Erikson, becoming Erik the son of Erik—his own creation.

Through his practice and teaching, Erikson had met many famous people, but none as famous as Jackie. She was an interesting study for him—a shy, vulnerable woman with the determination of a drill sergeant. He had written about the particular struggles women had in establishing their identities. He said that married women who hoped to find their identities through their husbands, without first establishing a firm sense of self, often ended up woefully unhappy.

“What seems to be the problem with your children?” he asked Jackie, knowing full well that her answer would reveal a great deal about herself.

“A CHAIR HANGING IN SPACE”

“More than anything else,” Jackie told Erikson, “I want life to go on as normally as possible for my children. They were born in the same week, three years apart this month, and after the assassination I held birthday parties for them in the White House. But since then, things seem to have unraveled.”

For Jackie, it had become a major effort to get through each day. She was taking large doses of the tranquilizer Amytal, which left her speech slurred and her mind disoriented. Erikson could see, without being told, that Jackie was existing in a shell of grief. She evidently felt guilty that she was neglecting her children at the very moment they needed her the most.

Jackie told Erikson that the assassination had transformed Caroline from a bright and lively little girl into a dour and lethargic child. Jackie was concerned about Caroline because of her daughter’s deep attachment to her dead father. Even under normal circumstances, Caroline was not nearly as outgoing as John, but now she walked around with her hands clenched in angry little fists. She refused to play with other children, and at dinnertime she toyed with the food on the plate. She did not say much, or show any emotion, and she seemed to be pulling away from her mother.

Jackie had read many of Erikson’s books, including Childhood and Society, and was familiar with his theories. He believed that there were eight stages of human development, and that each of them involved an “identity crisis.” It was necessary for a child to resolve each crisis successfully in order to go on to the next stage, and become a whole person.

At age six, Caroline was entering stage four, which Erikson characterized as reflecting the conflict between “industry” and “inferiority.” The little girl was beginning to figure out the rules of the larger society beyond the walls of her home. But how did a six-year-old integrate personal lessons of right and wrong with the moral outrage she must have felt about her father’s assassination? Was this the beginning of a conflict between a public and a private self that would bedevil Caroline for the rest of her life?

Jackie identified with the sudden change in her daughter’s personality. The same thing had happened to her when she was a child. Jackie had grown up in a home