A Special Article for The Orlando Sentinel

by

E. MICHAEL GUTMAN, M.D.

As a Forensic Psychiatrist practicing 30 years in Orlando and Winter Park, I recognize a psychological dynamic
that I think explains the almost schizophrenic way the public views President Clinton. On one hand, the president
earns high poll performance ratings, but yet on the other hand, an eyebrow is raised about his moral turpitude.

I see in this ambiguous view of the president a parallel to what the German populace did in WWII Nazi Germany.
They showed what is esoterically know as The Doppelganger Phenomenon. Doppelganger is the coexistence of two
persons living in one being. One person is morally scrupulous; the counterpart is a ghostly, destructive and
sometimes evil person.

The Germans looked-the-other-way to the scent of incinerated human flesh wafting over their homes and cities,
that they knew was coming from concentration camp ovens. And on the other hand, on Sundays they would go to
church and sincerely endorse the pastor's sermons that extolled the virtue of following the teachings of Christ to
love and be good to your fellow humankind.

This schizophrenic dualism of enthusiastic support for the president, the leader, bringing the country to one of its
greatest economic booms ever, is rivaled by a worried concern for Bill Clinton, the sexual addict, demeaning the
office by preying on admiring women, who come to him with adoration in their heart, but who walk away feeling
degraded and used. Thus The Doppelganger Phenomenon exists in the collective American public of today.

Other signs of moral decay in America are reflected by several tragic vignettes that have burst forth in the
headlines. They include:

1. The spate of child-caused school shootings;

2. The rash of media-based bogus article scandals;

3. The Tanya Harding bust-the-knee-of-your-competitor incident;

4. A general preying on his underling officer's wives;

5. Young parents committing infanticide and sending the neonate to burial in a garbage bag at the garbage-dump
cemetery;

6. The spate of cheating scandals at universities and military academies; and

7. The sexual boundary violations by doctors who have sex with their patients.

It appears our society's Doppelganger two persons are in a struggle for supremacy over each other. Hopefully,
good will triumph over evil, and moral uprightness will win over criminal depravity, at least it does in the Gary
Cooper, Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwartzenegger movies, and even in real life, most of the time.

The Good versus Bad battle shows itself when you see displaced culpability at work when the parent of the
teacher-assaulting child sues the school principal for "cruel and unusual punishment" for expelling the miscreant
kid. A vivid example of displaced culpability, the championing of the Bad Guy over the Good Guy, is found in the
attacks on the Special Counsel's office and Ken Starr, its chief counsel. Ken Starr may be no darling, but we see
displaced culpability when The Clinton White House attacks the messenger, because they don't like the message.
Investigations are ugly, but they are necessary to keep our Constitution healthy and vigorous.

Perhaps one of the saddest examples of Doppelganger is the moral depravity that has given the press a bad press!
Journalists and TV producers and commentators, who are entrusted to tell us the truth in our press and over our
airwaves -are creating bogus stories just to get to the top, or so they can end up on a nighttime talk show.

In medical school we commit to memory the signs and symptoms of every known illness, for if you don't know about
the illness, you won't know it when you see it. That gets me to why I think Doppelganger and Displaced Culpability
are saboteurs to obedience to law and justice.

My years of experience lead me to conclude there is a common-thread causal link to most of the violence,
wrongdoing and predator behavior we see in the crimes mentioned above.

I feel there is decay and disease in our society's common moral tree trunk, from which we all spring. I see the
Doppelganger's virulent and poisonous virus is in a Battle Royal against the societal immune system and its good
guy garbage sweepers (police, laws and moral principles) that protect the tree trunk from infection (criminality and
depravity.)

This is my diagnosis, - I only wish I had the cure!

E. Michael Gutman, M.D.