Spitzer Psychology 101

As the scandal broke, I asked several psychiatrists to explain New York Governor Eliot Spitzer’s calamitous judgment in allegedly haggling over, hiring, then transporting a high-priced hooker across state lines for sex last Valentine’s Day eve, and none offered any new insight—because, of course, it’s an ancient story.

Kenneth Robbins, a forensic psychiatrist and editorial advisor at Health.com, wasn’t all that surprised by the mess. Spitzer, he noted, was a moralist who had prosecuted prostitution ringleaders as attorney general of New York and publicly railed against the sex trade.

That kind of grandstanding suggests a case study of “reaction formation,” a Freudian term in which a person adopts a public stance that hides his own unacceptable impulses. Think U.S. Senator Larry Craig’s opposition to gay marriage, or feminist Simone de Beauvoir’s subservience in her relationships with men.

Spitzer, says Dr. Robbins, fit the mold: “When you scratch the surface of these kind of spitfire moralists, often you find someone who is profoundly conflicted over their own behavior.”

What’s more amazing is the fiscal waste! Here’s a guy who spent a big chunk of his career cutting mutual fund fees, making banks pay back customers they ripped off—and then paying a whopping $4,300 for two hours of sex.

Better that the former crusader had done for the sex trade what he did to Wall Street. He could have used his power to legalize prostitution, jail the pimps, tax the johns, secure health care for the workers—and really blow the lid off the sex trade.