{"id":3387,"date":"2025-01-22T15:47:06","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/?p=3387"},"modified":"2025-01-22T15:47:06","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T14:47:06","slug":"review-the-mind-of-stalin-a-psychoanalytic-study-by-daniel-rancour-laferriere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/review-the-mind-of-stalin-a-psychoanalytic-study-by-daniel-rancour-laferriere\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: The Mind of Stalin: A Psychoanalytic Study, by Daniel Rancour-Laferriere"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>This is a surprisingly interesting book.  In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator&#8217;s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis.  And many of his conclusions are quite interesting.  Some of it is quirky: Stalin&#8217;s seeming obsession with boots (he wore no other footware) and kicking, keeping in mind that his father, who beat him regularly, was a cobbler.  Some of it is a bit outdated (I hope): linking Stalin&#8217;s obvious paranoia with the possibility that he was a homosexual.  (The author seems to be saying that all paranoids are gay, but it&#8217;s not clear if all gays are paranoid.).  And some of it relates to what I am working on these days, finding a psychological basis for the possibility that Stalin as a young man may have worked as a secret agent of the tsarist police, the Okhrana.  Recommended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is a surprisingly interesting book. In just 143 pages (including extensive footnotes), the author examines many aspects of the Soviet dictator&#8217;s life through the prism of Freudian psychoanalysis. And many of his conclusions are&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3388,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ericlee.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}