Diagnosis was less critical then, 30-odd years back, but the people I treated probably had paranoid schizophrenia, bipolarity and what is now called delusional disorder, formerly paranoia. My favorite was an annoyed and critical woman who said that CIA agents had damaged her car ignition and then followed her everywhere on the bus, so that she could not travel to see me -- and why should she, since I was probably part of the conspiracy? When the Blizzard of 1978 swept through New England, I was held over at the Connecticut Mental Health Center -- actually, I had managed briefly to get away and had used cross-country skis to return on the empty New Haven streets. At her appointment time, there, all alone, was my beleaguered patient, sitting on the molded Eames chair in the darkened hallway, waiting for her opportunity to give voice to her suspicions.

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Forget that the metaphor is infelicitous. (I suspect the idea is that emotions are like blood; but then to block them the cautery should be applied to their source, perhaps the limbic system.) Set aside that the chapter is about an appearance on "Today" in January of 1998, when, according to Sheehy, Hillary still disbelieved the Monica allegations and so could express affect freely, namely anger at Bill's enemies. Ignore that much of the rest of the book draws on psychoanalytic concepts (splitting, dissociation, denial) that presume unacceptable feelings are unconscious and so do not need willful stanching.

The insuperable problem in that first sentence, as in the rest of the book, concerns the sort of knowledge required for one person to be sure that on a given morning -- or characteristically, on many mornings -- another person has shut off disturbing emotions. Sheehy promises the reader a close, personal, highly particular understanding of the first lady's emotional life, and then (thankfully, one might add) she cannot deliver.

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