Book Review: “The Kennedy Curse” (hint: it’s not Narcissism)
Review: “The Kennedy Curse: Why Tragedy Has Haunted America’s First Family for 150 Years,”by Edward Klein
Edward Klein covered John F. Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential campaign and later served as foreign editor of Newsweek and editor-in-chief of The New York Times Magazine. He has authored countless articles and several books, including two others on Kennedy family members. He’s a good writer and meticulous researcher. However, despite his resume and, sadly, in concert with virtually every other biographer and historian, he reverses cause and effect.
As discussed in by books, How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behavioral Clues to Identify Addiction in its Early Stages, and Alcoholism Myths and Realities: Removing the Stigma of Society’s Most Destructive Disease, alcoholism mimics virtually all the Personality Disorders, particularly Narcissism. A diagnosis of this Disorder requires any five attributes out of a menu of nine, including “a grandiose sense of self-importance,””a belief he is ‘special,'””a sense of entitlement”and an “arrogant and haughty attitude.”These, as well as the other five attributes, are all classic symptoms of alcoholism or severe codependency, especially in children of alcoholics.
According to studies cited in my first book, Drunks, Drugs & Debits: How to Recognize Addicts and Avoid Financial Abuse, 70-80% of recovering addicts with two or three months of sobriety who were diagnosed with a Personality Disorder when drinking are found to have been misdiagnosed. While most Disorders clear up or become far less of a concern after two to three years of sobriety, experience shows that what most consider normal behaviors usually don’t return for five to ten years.
Klein includes vignettes on a potpourri of Kennedy clan members, some alcoholics and several children of alcoholics. The manifestation of narcissism in apparent non-alcoholic members of the family, including Joe Kennedy’s favorite daughter Kathleen, suggests the power of familial alcoholism. Extraordinary tolerance to alcohol makes the disease all but invisible in many, including Joseph P. Kennedy, even while numerous behavioral indications of the disease are evident (I counted two dozen such clues in the 45-page chapter on Joe, from attempts at blackmail to hyperbole and a public display in which he flouted long tradition). The fact that narcissism can be so obvious in non-alcoholics, as well as in those who defy the diagnosis, may account for the fact that alcoholism is overlooked as the most common root of the Disorder. However, the likely underlying cause becomes more apparent when we realize that a confluence of narcissists is found in families in which alcoholism is epidemic.
The Kennedy Curse is billed as a “detective storyâ€. Unfortunately, Edward Klein helps to perpetuate the myth that most character flaws are inherent, when they are instead usually rooted in alcoholism. While including some interesting and telling depictions in the lives of alcoholics and their codependents in what may be America’s most famous family, Klein’s book fails in its most fundamental goal.