Booth's Mental health

[Wild Bill]

It is so wonderful to find that John Wilkes Booth was some kind of a nut. It is even more refreshing to see that his has been psychoanalyzed by pseudo-professional mind readers. The problem is that Americans seem to prefer that all of their presidential assassins be insane--it allows us to avoid difficult questions about real motive for pop psychology. I refer you all to the article by James W. Clarke, "Conspiracies, Myths, and the Will to Believe: The importance of Content," In Gabor S. Boritt and Norman O. Furness, Historian's Lincoln: Pseudohistory, Psychohistory, and History (Urbana: U Ills. Press, 1988), 365-73.