ABSTRACT
According to Keynes, who proved as good a psychologist as Freud, 'it was harder to de-bamboozle this old Presbyterian than it had been to bamboozle him; for the former involved his belief in and respect for himself'. In addition, Freud, as Gore Vidal has observed, held a grudge against Wilson for breaking up his country, Austria-Hungary, and thereby going back on a formal promise contained in the Fourteen Points. Wilson had been aware as early as 1917 of most of the punitive peace conditions that the Allies intended to impose on the Central Empires. He had repressed them, however, to preserve the pacifist illusion which enabled him to proclaim his Fourteen Points in 1918 and arrive in Versailles in 1919 considering them the sole basis for negotiations: self-deception, which replaces self-criticism, was necessary in order to keep his fantasized firmness, and therefore his own false premises, inflexibly firm.
