Jan peter tripp biography of abraham lincoln author

Was Abraham Lincoln a homosexual? Instead readers will discover quickly that its thesis is supported by nothing more than a hodgepodge assembly of misinterpretations, innocuous anecdotes, dubious conclusions and outright fictions. Rather than a properly conducted historical inquiry, what emerges is an exercise in advocacy so ludicrous that one might conclude it was intended as a brilliant satire of psychology and modern academia.

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Sadly, C. The topic is familiar ground to the clinical psychologist and one-time research assistant to Alfred Kinsey. Tripp has devoted much of his career to arguing the case for homosexuality as a normal and pervasive tendency. In a manuscript completed just before his death in , he applied his particular understanding of male sexuality to the vast body of data available on Lincoln.

The operations of psychoanalysis presuppose direct contact between examiner and patient. When the subject is viewed instead only through extant writings— their own and those of third parties—the results are problematic at best. It is a flaw intrinsic to all psychological biographies. His answer to this blatantly loaded question?