🧠The Madman in the White House
đź—“ Monday, 10 November 2025
đź•• 5:30 PM
📍 Alliance Française du Cap – 155 Loop Street, Cape Town
A Dialogue Between Patrick Weil and Mark Solms
Join us for a fascinating evening of history, psychology, and politics as Patrick Weil, French historian and political scientist, engages in discussion with Mark Solms, South African neuropsychologist and renowned Freud scholar.
In 2014, Patrick Weil made a remarkable discovery in the archives of Yale University a forgotten manuscript written by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, a U.S. diplomat, between 1930 and 1932. The text is an extraordinary psychobiography of President Woodrow Wilson, whose mental stability Bullitt questioned following Wilson’s controversial handling of the Treaty of Versailles.
Drawing on Mark Solms’ pioneering work on Freud, Patrick Weil revisits this manuscript to offer a bold reassessment of Wilson’s legacy, exploring his role, alongside South African statesman Jan Smuts in both the creation and the unraveling of world peace after the First World War.
This discussion promises to shed new light on the psychological and political forces that shaped the 20th century and to reveal the deep historical connections between South Africa and the United States
📚 Seize this unique opportunity to discover the hidden intersections of psychoanalysis, diplomacy, and world history through the lens of two distinguished thinkers.
