Hi! As you know I love Gravity and I think your psychological insights are particularly spot on, so I was thinking: do you have an opinion on Bill's tendency to over-eat (especially when he was a young man?) Because some times these issues are psychologically motivated and food is used as a way to comfort oneself or assumes a different value than for nutrition alone and I was curious about your opinion :)
Ah - an interesting question. My (kinda sorta informed) opinion is that there was a substantial comfort factor involved in the overeating, certainly because of Bill’s emotional makeup and the the buckets of trauma he experienced growing up. There’s also, I think, a cultural aspect. Since he grew up in the American South, a very food-orientated setting broadly speaking (and maybe more so in the 1950s), where being well-fed could be considered roughly equivalent to being well-loved or well-cared for, it may have been a case of substituting one for the other. I may not be making the MOST sense right now, since I just got back from work, hahaha, but yes. Sitting here in my armchair, practicing psychology on Bill Clinton as I am wont to do, it seems like a reasonable assertion that he over-ate, to the point of bingeing perhaps, and had a predilection for “comfort foods” in particular as a means of self-soothing. Thanks for asking - I love getting questions to ponder and discuss!