The Riddle of Barack Obama: A Psychobiography

The Riddle of Barack Obama: A Psychobiography is the first complete psychological biography of President Barack Obama written by a professional clinical psychologist. Covering Obama's life to date, as well as the lives of his parents, grandparents, and other ancestors, this fascinating volume illuminates the personal, professional, political, emotional, intellectual, and creative aspects of Obama's personality, as well as the motives--conscious and unconscious--for his beliefs and actions.

Dr. Avner Falk draws on hundreds of biographies, newspaper and magazine articles, interviews, investigative reports, and more, using psychoanalytic models developed by Sigmund Freud, Donald Winnicott, Peter Blos, Heinz Kohut, and Schiffer to probe Obama's psychological development. Examining every facet of the president's biography, he delves into his earliest feelings of abandonment and helplessness, his inner conflicts, his protective relationship with his mother, his ambivalent identification with his father, and his quest for identity. Perhaps most intriguingly, Dr. Falk explores the psychological origins of Obama's "fierce ambitions" and the ingredients of his charisma.