Psychology Today Mag : Obama's Mother boasted very often about his brains, his achievements, how brave and bold he was. More than one friend remembered her saying that she thought he could even be president of the United States. She succeeded in creating a Barack with a seemingly unassailable self-image

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And comparison with Bill Clinton's Blowjob ! :

"Obama's seemingly unshakeable self-confidence and ability to tolerate derision and doubt have certainly been apparent as President. His personal outlook also helps in understanding how in military and security matters, Obama has simultaneously occupied insider and outsider positions, having been a critic of American involvements while augmenting and expanding our military and security efforts".

Psychology Today Magazine - Addiction in Society
Barack Obama: The Bedrock Confidence of Mr. Inside-Mr. Outside
Barack Obama defies self-esteem sociology with his resilience
by Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D.
May 9, 2011


Barack Obama: The Bedrock Confidence of Mr. Inside-Mr. Outside


Some excerpts :

Which brings us to Barack Obama, who (a) was an outsider everywhere he went, (b) integrated himself in a way that reinforced his already seemingly unchallengeable self-esteem.

How did that happen?

We now have a source work for examining this question: Janny Scott's "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother," which tells us a great deal about how Obama was raised by his mother, Stanley Anne Dunham.

In brief, Dunham was a young, single mother (she became pregnant with Barack when she was 17) and a wanderer, who took her son as a child to Indonesia to live with her second husband (whom she was to divorce before long), while she was still in her early twenties. In Indonesia, Barack's blackness stood out even more; Indonesians are extremely sensitive about race, and are especially aware of people of African descent.

But people who knew the family were amazed at how openly Obama, still a kid, went out among Indonesians. They found him to be, and Dunham boasted that he was, fearless. He seemed capable of accepting stares, even insults, without withdrawing, and still to reach out and to integrate himself into social groups.

In interviews, Scott attributes Obama's "coolness" as an adult to an Indonesian tradition he learned there of not taking the bait when people insult you, since this kind of jibing goes on all the time and it is considered bad form to overreact to it. Along with this, Scott says, there may be a "constitutional" non-reactivity in Obama's make-up.

Thus, Scott tends to downplay the touchstone of her book: How Obama's mother provided him with a bedrock psychological security at the same time that she presented him with a remarkable series of challenges. From the Times review:

Most striking, though, is how much confidence and faith she had in her son from very early in his life. "She would boast about his brains, his achievements, how brave and bold he was," Ms. Scott reports. More than one friend remembered her saying that she thought he could even be president of the United States.

But, after bringing Obama to Indonesia as a small child, she sent him home at age ten to live with his grandparents without her. Obama nonetheless declares that his mother gave him "a sense of unconditional love that was big enough that, with all the surface disturbances of our lives, it sustained me, entirely."

Dunham succeeded in creating a person with a seemingly unassailable self-image.

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Obama's seemingly unshakeable self-confidence and ability to tolerate derision and doubt have certainly been apparent as President. His personal outlook also helps in understanding how in military and security matters. Obama has simultaneously occupied insider and outsider positions, having been a critic of American involvements while augmenting and expanding our military and security efforts.

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P.S. A commenter reminds me of how reminiscent such profiles of politicians can be of psychopaths, which I described here:

It seems that successful people have a strong degree of the sociopathy that lands less talented and well-positioned people in prison. How many male readers - who will never achieve political office or become multimillionaires like Bill Clinton - would accept oral sexual favors from a 21-year-old woman at work? You wouldn't? No wonder your career's stalled!

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