Understanding Bobby Fischer – Part 1 : The Early Years.

The problem is all that his mother was - inteligent, an activist, well educated and more is what Bobbby resented - he might have thought if her attention was centered more on home and children then his life would have been better and if she hadn't persued her political activism maybe she would have been a more doting mother. But his resentment of her sure helped form who he became and fueled his belief that women shouldn't be following intellectual persuits.

There is also some annecdotal evidence of mental instability with Fischers Mother, if that is true how would that effect a young boy in Bobbys unique situation?

@chessmicky: That looks like a fantastic book. Thanks for the recommendation.

OP is right. There are too many misconception about him.

I would say he was mentally strong although there are a lot of torture he suffered.

I like/love him because of his chess, not abt some political things.

In 1972 WCC he refused to play Spassky in 2nd game. Yet he came back to become a champion. That shows he is nowhere mentally weak.

When  the Japan government held him in custody, I don't know how many people see how he suffered. He has no one to turn to. And his country wanted to arrest him. Maybe people have never experience how it feels like hell. And that was hell.

But as I say he was mentally strong, he came back on another duel with Spassky and won.

His life was not flashy. Yet he lived thru it. RIP Bobby Fischer. You can have peace forever.

I have to agree, mental strength was not a issue, it was more mental developement. I too prefer to focus on Bobbys Chess, but the reason for this thread is to try & get some perspective & understanding of the man outside the Chess hall. As the years pass ppl only get highlights of Fischers life & some of it is not very nice, so I would like to get it all in perspective so we can appreciate his true Chess Genious.

How many players could blunder the 1st game in a Championship, forfeit the 2nd game & then make a comeback so powerful that on Game 6 he got a standing ovation & it is rated high among the top 10 games ever played

but you have to consider, when he was 18 (1961), most of the u.s of a was sexist and homophobic. Men worked, women took care of the household. And as far as acceptance of alternative lifestyle choices, that was decades down the road.

Sapiendust wrote: It shows that at 18, he was already anti-semitic, homophobic, and sexist, and was extremely naive psychologically in not realizing the obvious effects his words would have. Fischer also reveals in this interview an obsession with class and status and the trappings of success that probably is a result of the scars resulting from growing up terribly poor.

I disagree.  Fischer was always true to himself.  How is that tragic?  Is it tragic because he didnt do what others thought he should?  Current society is like being in a straitjacket.  There are true laws and implied societal cultural standards, most of which are nonsense.  Fischer didnt respect limitation imposed arbitrarily, nor should he have.  Fischer was correct, not paranoid in his view of modern society.  People are like animals out to hurt other people, either willingly, or unconsciously.  Chess is the ultimate tool to figure out a way to avoid as much nonsense as possible.  

This is an area we should look at, America in the 1950's was a very conservative society (So was Australia) How did societys values & conservatism effect Bobbys developement. His Mother was probably considered a bit of a radical for those times with her Political activism & being a single parent, so we need to condider that too.

Flaming Matilda

Regina was more than a bit of a radical. She was way out there on the political spectrum. The FBI had a file on her for years.

Of course, the FBI had files on a lot of people back then...

Yeah, they did, but I'd imagine the ones they tracked for many, many years were the ones they thought were more than just "a bit of a radical". I could be wrong, but I'd expect the people who just went to a couple of college rallies would fall off their radar pretty quickly.

It's true she often did seem to be off fomenting one thing or another...

I agree. I wasn't in any way suggesting that the FBI was justified in their endless surveillance of her or correct in their likely estimation that she was a high risk person, only that she was the type of person that the lunatic J. Edgar Hoover and his underlings would have been frothing at the mouth over. Regina Fischer probably seemed even more dangerous than Helen Keller!!

Ok, this is proving to be quite fruitful. We have a boy growing up in poverty with a Mother with somewhat radical behaviour for the times & possibly some degree of mental instability & no Father figure to identify with & set male boundaries. If he has any predisposition to mental instability this would seem like a perfect breeding environment for it

Although many regard Fischer as a hero, he didn't think so. He just wanted to live his life and chess.

He had personality but not mental problem. We don't know to what degree he had mental instability. I think it was not serious.

Feminism was a new thing at that time and I think he was with the mainstream against it. Madonna and Lady Gaga were not there.

It's just because Boby said something and the media blew it up. And maybe he was not aware that he was already a public figure who must open his mouth carefully.  Using today spectacles, he seems very wrong. But the setting was different at that time.

@bean_fisher

You make some good & valid points, what we are trying to achieve here is getting it all into perspective. I get so tired of hearing that he was a genious that did nothing but play Chess & then he went nuts. Thats just way too simplistic. But we seem to be making some progress here I hope by the time its done that everyone who has read this thread will have a better understanding of the man.

In regards Bobbys mental state I will refer to an expert -

Providing a detailed differential diagnosis of Bobby Fischer would require a much longer treatment of the topic than is possible here. I do provide such an expanded consideration in a book-length project in progress. For present purposes, suffice it to say that I believe Bobby did not meet all the necessary criteria to reach diagnoses of schizophrenia or Asperger's Disorder. The evidence is stronger for paranoid personality disorder, which the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) says "may be first apparent in childhood and adolescence with solitariness, poor peer relationships, social anxiety, underachievement in school, hypersensitivity, peculiar thoughts and language, and idiosyncratic fantasies. These children may appear to be 'odd' or 'eccentric' and attract teasing."

In addition to paranoid behavior, in adulthood, Fischer clearly manifested the kind of non-bizzare delusions characteristic of the persecutory type of delusional disorder, which the DSM describes this way: "[T]he central theme of the delusion involves the person's belief that he or she is being conspired against, cheated, spied on, followed, poisoned or drugged, maliciously maligned, harassed, or obstructed in the pursuit of long-term goals. Small slights may be exaggerated and become the focus of a delusional system. The focus of the delusion is often on some injustice that must be remedied by legal action ('querulous paranoia'), and the affected person may engage in repeated attempts to obtain satisfaction by appeal to the courts and other government agencies. Individuals with persecutory delusions are often resentful and angry and may resort to violence against those they believe are hurting them."

This DSM language appears to describe Bobby's later life with a high degree of accuracy. Bobby did experience delusions that the Jews were out to destroy him, he was often involved in filing lawsuits (none of which he won), and he did turn violent on at least three occasions.

So my hypothesis about the course of Bobby Fischer's mental illness can be summarized in this way: Bobby's family history — particularly his mother's possible mental illness — modestly predisposed him to paranoid personality disorder. Bobby had no father figure and perhaps did not even know who his real father was until later in life; he was raised by a single mother experiencing financial hardships and daily stress from FBI surveillance. These circumstances added to Bobby's level of psychosocial stress and increased his vulnerability to mental illness. The stress and vulnerability were further magnified by his celebrity status and the unremitting media pressure that accompanied it.

As Bobby moved out of regular tournament play in the 1970s, he isolated himself, and his paranoia intensified. In some ways, the structure, demands and focus of chess tournaments may have confined or contained his paranoid thoughts and behaviors. In 1973, in what now seems almost a prophetic statement, Reuben Fine wrote, "Chess seems to have been the best therapy in the world for him."

Joseph G. Ponterotto, PhD

I myself can see the paranoid tendancies in the interview when he was 18. In the 1950's it was acceptable for women to be teachers in fact in the US men were a rarity in the school system until you got to higher education yet Bobby found women as teachers unnacceptable - not because he was a sexist - but because of his resentment of his mothers intelligence and education subsequently his belief that those were the reasons she wasn't what he wanted.