Nothing New in Jackie Kennedy Interviews

An Op-Ed Piece by Dr. Alma Bond In advance of the release of Caroline Kennedy and Michael Beschloss’s new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy

In advance of the release of Caroline Kennedy and Michael Beschloss’s new book, Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, which contains eight and a half hours of new interviews by Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. of Jacqueline Kennedy, print, television, and internet media have been buzzing about new and surprising revelations. The idea of learning something genuinely different about the twentieth century’s most famous and enigmatic woman has electrified the press, evidently to the point at which they all collectively ignore the fact that virtually everything Jackie says in these interviews has been public knowledge for decades.

The Associated Press is the only news organization that seems to understand this, writing in its article, “New book shows another side to Jackie Kennedy,” that “there are no spectacular revelations in the Schlesinger discussions.” Yet even the AP emphasizes Jackie’s assertion that her husband, President John F. Kennedy, “openly scorned the notion of Vice-President Lyndon B Johnson succeeding him in office,” though the conflict between the Kennedys and the Johnsons was open, notorious, well-known, and already been the subject of many, many books,all of which I read  while researching my own, recently released book on Jackie, Jackie O: On the Couch: Inside the Mind and Life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. Numerous long-available sources convey the very same information supposedly revealed by the Schlesinger interviews. In these interviews, Jackie refers to John F. Kennedy’s emotional reaction to the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, her admiration for Robert F. Kennedy, and her own traditional attitudes toward marriage—all subjects explored in tremendous depth in many books, simply because the information is not new.

Perhaps what is most striking about these interviews—which, according to the Historic Conversations product description, reveals “her candor”—is what Jackie does not say. In eight and a half hours of conversation, Jackie does not discuss her husband’s assassination. She doesn’t discuss anything less than pleasant about the Kennedy family, although in reality, she experienced quite a bit that was less than pleasant. Particularly interesting in Janny Scott’s New York Times article—headlined “Tapes, Candid Talk by Young Kennedy Widow”—is the observation, “She [Jackie] lets slip a reference to a ‘civilized side of Jack’ and ‘sort of a crude side,’ but she clarifies: ‘Not that Jack had the crude side.’”

But he did indeed have the crude side, and it frustrated Jackie, a woman raised to be upper-class and well-mannered. As I myself discuss at length in my own book, the president could be outright vulgar, and a pig at the dinner table.

As the AP article points out, there is nothing in the tapes about Kennedy’s health problems or extramarital affairs, which, though not public knowledge at the time of the interviews, were certainly known to Jackie. And as The New York Times article says, “She suggests the couple never really had a fight.” That’s as untrue as the subsequent assertion that “she got her opinions from her husband,” which even Beschloss, the book’s co-author, admits should be taken “with a warehouse of salt.”

Can we blame Jackie for this? Of course not. A year after her husband’s death, she wouldn’t discuss his infidelities or the horror of the assassination. For the historical record especially, she focused solely on the positive, inasmuch as she was one of the chief architects of her slain husband’s reputation in history. And even beyond that, Jackie, for all her international fame, was an intensely private woman. She was never comfortable in the spotlight, and spent much of her life trying to escape it. Yes, she was opinionated, funny, critical, and clever in all the ways the articles on the interviews suggest—and in all the ways we already knew—but she was absolutely not fully forthcoming.

Historians and fans of the former first lady have spent decades hoping to learn something new about her, but something new is what no interviews with Jackie will ever provide, especially none conducted in 1964, during such a confusing and profoundly sad time in her life, when she was often bedridden and prone to lengthy crying jags.

That’s why I wrote Jackie O: On the Couch: Inside the Mind and Life of Jackie Kennedy Onassis. As both a psychoanalyst and a Jackie scholar for many decades, I wanted to provide a way for the many still fascinated by this woman to learn who she really was—and what she would have said had she been in my office. Jackie O: On the Couch is what candid revelations from Jackie would truly sound like. My book includes what she really thought and felt about the assassination, which many consider one of my book’s best chapters, but also puts into proper perspective her husband’s serial affairs and their marriage, the latter of which was a mere sixth of her fabulous life. But, most importantly, it views her entire life before and after JFK. I’ve written the book in the first person to provide precisely the sort of intimate insights the Schlesinger interviews oddly cannot.

So before we celebrate the supposed revelations and shocking truths of Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy, let us take a step back and realize that Jackie Kennedy herself will never reveal the truth about Jackie Kennedy. That is the only revelation to be found in these interviews. Readers who want to know the real truth, the sort of truth Jackie would never admit in her lifetime, will have to look elsewhere.

Dr. Alma H. Bond, a longtime New York City psychoanalyst, is the author of Jackie O: On the Couch, which was released earlier this summer. She can be reached at almahb@aol.com.

About the Author of Jackie O: On the Couch

Jackie O: On the Couch is the first of Alma Bond’s “On the Couch” series, and is Dr. Bond’s 19th published book. She received her Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University, graduated from the post-doctoral program in psychoanalysis at the Freudian Society, and was a psychoanalyst in private practice for 37 years in New York City. She "retired" to become a full-time writer, but now maintains a small practice in addition to writing. Her last book, Margaret Mahler, a Biography of the Psychoanalyst, received two awards: Best Books Award Finalist, USA Book News, and Foreword Magazine’s Book of the Year Finalist.

Her Maria Callas book, The Autobiography of Maria Callas: A Novel, was first runner-up in the Hemingway Days novel contest.

Her 17 other published books include: Camille Claude: A Novel; Old Age is a Terminal Illness; Who Killed Virginia Woolf?; A Psychobiography; Tales of Psychology: Short Stories to Make You Wise; I Married Dr. Jekyll and Woke Up Mrs. Hyde; Is There Life After Analysis?; On Becoming a Grandparent; America's First Woman Warrior: The Story of Deborah Sampson (with Lucy Freeman); and a children's book, The Tree That Could Fly.

She presently has another book in production, Michelle Obama: A Biography.

Dr. Bond also wrote the play, "Maria," about the life and loves of Maria Callas, which was produced off-off Broadway and is currently touring Florida.

Dr. Bond is a member of the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the Dramatists Guild, and the Authors Guild, as well as a fellow and faculty member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, the International Psychoanalytic Association, and the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Bond is the widow of Rudy Bond, the acclaimed stage, screen, and television actor, and author of I Rode a Streetcar Named Desire. She is the mother of three children, Zane P. Bond, Jonathan H. Bond, and Janet Bond Brill, all of whom are published authors, and she is the proud grandmother of eight, none of whom have published books . . .  yet. But, as a wise friend of Alma’s put it, "In her family, it’s pretty much publish or perish."

Bancroft Press is planning to reissue all of Dr. Bond’s other biographies under the "On the Couch: Biography Written in the First-Person" brand.

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