When this
Pulitzer Prize-winning biography first appeared in 1976, it rescued T.
E. Lawrence from the mythologizing that had seemed to be his fate. In it,
Harvard professor of psychiatry Dr. John Mack humanely and objectively
explores the relationship between
“A great book which honors its subject, its form,
and its author.” “Mack's handling of this information is a model of
sensitive psychoanalytical expertise.” “Takes us closer to the core of “A hugely admired, and Pulitzer prize-winning, biography
which concentrates on the relationship between “Unlike many 'psycho-biographies', this was written
by a trained psychologist who had also done his biographer's homework: it
remains the best biography of T.E. Lawrence.”
Looking back over more than two
decades since publication of the first edition of A Prince of Our Disorder,
I find myself asking what now seems most significant about the life of T. E.
Lawrence.
Pulitzer Prize Awarded to John Mack For Biography of '
"Dr.
Mack?" "Yes." "This is
the Harvard News Office calling. May we send a photographer and writer to you
in about half an hour?" "Sure,
but why?" "Don't
you know?" "Don't I
know what?" "You've
just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize." Dr. John E.
Mack, Professor and head of the Harvard Medical School Department of
Psychiatry at the Cambridge Hospital, and Director of Education at the
Cambridge-Somerville Mental Health Center, had worked for 12 years on his
biography, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of T.E.
Lawrence. His research had led him-on a camel-to the fabled Gulf of Aqaba; aboard the British rails to Oxford and its
Bodleian Library; and through the winding, cobbled lanes of Delvin, County Westmeath in Ireland and to Tremadoc in Wales, where Lawrence of Arabia was born. For Dr. Mack,
a practicing psychoanalyst, this was his first biography, although lie is the
author of a classic psychiatric text, Nightmares and Human Conflict,
and is the editor of Borderline States in Psychiatry. The 47-year-old
New York City-born physician, lives in Chestnut Hill
with his wife, Sally, a psychiatric social worker, and their three sons,
Danny, Kenny, and Tony. Amid the
happy hubbub of telephones ringing ("The New York Times is on
hold," "Bob Coles just called to say, 'TRIPLE
CONGRATULATIONS'" "The Associated Press wants to know when you were
born.. .") , Dr. Mack was interviewed by the Gazette. Q. As a
psychoanalyst, what was Lawrence's special appeal to you? How were you
"hooked?" A. I became
hooked by Lawrence because he was extraordinary for a public figure, a
military commander, in the degree to. which he was
involved with exploring his own inner life. Lawrence, himself asked what was
propelling him, what was the meaning of what he was doing, what was his own
purpose in getting involved with the Arab revolt, how did it relate to his
own personal de velopment. He was interested in the
rela-tionship of his adult actions to his youth-ful readings of chivalric romances: how they related to
his concerns with the Crusade, his ideas of heroism, redemp-tion,
renunciation, self-sacrifice. He ex-plored all of this in Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and in his
correspondence. He also had a great gift for psychological insight. Q. How did
you react to his extraordinary self-exploration? A. I felt
that here was something that could overcome the familiar accusation that the
writer is imposing psychological interpretations on a person who is dead and
about whom there is no data. I felt this accusation would no longer be valid
if the information on Lawrence were used critically but thoroughly. Also,
Lawrence was sufficiently our contemporary that I was able to conduct
extensive interviews with people who had known him very well. Q. How did
you get in touch with these people, most of whom were in England or the
Middle East? A. Initially,
I wrote to Lawrence's older brother who had been a medical missionary. I
approached him as one physician to another, who had felt very much affected
by his brother's life and suffering and struggles, and was interested in
talking with him. I also met Lawrence's younger brother, an archaeologist who
was his literary executor, who was extremely helpful to me in gaining access
to embargoed papers at the Bodleian Library and worked with me conscientiously
over the next decade to enable this book to exist. Q. Were
there any problems with Lawrence's brother when it came to your writing about
some of t he more intimate of his personal problems-for example, his apparent
need for being whipped? A. Yes. There
were, some rough moments for him when the flagellation episode—which he had
known about—came up. He became troubled when the details of it were put into
one long chapter. He was troubled about the possible effects that chapter
might have. But he never swayed in his support and I have enormous gratitude
to him and to his wife for their steadfastness. Q. In the
hundreds of interviews you conducted for the book—from Lowell Thomas to Basil
Liddell Hart to Howeitat tribesmen in Jordan—how do
you think your psychoanalytic background affected your handling of the
material? A. I think
that understanding of motivation, of the bringing to bear of the conflicts in
one's life and to one's public actions can be appreciated by such a study. I
feel there is a need to know more about the psychological development,
strengths, vulnerabilities, of leaders, Q. Is
there a single theme in the book that you feel particularly benefited from
your psychoanalytic training? A. Yes. The
whole question of heroism and Lawrence's need to be heroic. Lawrence's mother
and father never married. He was the second of five illegitimate sons who was
raised in a very strict home. His parents were members of an evangelical sect
of the English Church and Lawrence was early impressed by this God-fearing,
Bible-reading environment. But he was
also aware of a degree of conflict between this very strict obedience to God
and the Bible and the fact that his parents were living in sin. Like many
children, he fantasized that his father had once been part of a heroic race
of aristocratic giants, and he was encouraged in such fantasies by a mother
who felt that she, too, had fallen from a state of grace. She sought to
redeem, through her chil-dren, her own fall. One
son did indeed become a medical missionary, another provided Christian
teachings in Q. So you
think that your psychiatric training predisposed you to make these
connections between A. I think
psychiatric training and experience in working with psychological histories
is helpful in terms of the necessity for interweaving the themes that occur
in Lawrence's life: the childhood fantasies about the heroic past from which
he is descended, the desire to redeem a fallen family state, the desire to
liberate a people and thereby recapture the chivalric ideals, in which he had
become steeped from adolescence. Psychiatric training does not help you in
learning history—that you have to do on your own—but it does help you in
interviewing. Q. How
does being a psychiatrist make the kind of interviewing you were able to do
different from the kind of interviewing that, say, a journalist might do? A. That's a
very difficult. question. By being a psychiatrist I
may have been particularly sensitive to his personal relationships. You can
tune in to the quality of the attachment between a particular person and Q. Did you
encounter any suspicion toward you because of your being a psychiatrist? A. Yes, but
the funny part of it is that despite people's suspicion, they nevertheless
would end up pouring out a great deal of information saying, "Well,
since you're a psychiatrist, you'd certainly be interested in this. . .
." Q. What
are some biographies that you've liked? A. Henri Troyat's biography of Tolstoi Justin Kaplan's biography of Mark Twain,
Alexander and Juliet George on Woodrow Wilson. Erik Erikson's
work is, of course, crucial to this whole field, and I owe him a great debt.
Preface, 1998 Family Background and Childhood Youth The War Years, 1914-1918 The Political Years, 1918-1922 The Years in the Ranks, 1922-1935 Further Dimensions |