A Psychological Autopsy of Bobby Fischer

  

    I recently ran across an article about Fischer by somebody named Joseph G. Ponterotto on the Pacific Standard site dated December 14, 2010. A couple of comments strongly disagreed with the conclusions, but I will let the readers decide how they feel.

      “Chess player Bobby Fischer’s tortured life illustrates why promising young talents deserve better support programs…But others from that world — including a number of grandmasters who’d spent time with him — thought Fischer not just eccentric, but deeply troubled. At a tournament in Bulgaria four years later, U.S. grandmaster Robert Byrne suggested that Fischer see a psychiatrist, to which Fischer replied that “a psychiatrist ought to pay [me] for the privilege of working on [my] brain.” According to journalist Dylan Loeb McClain, Hungarian-born grandmaster Pal Benko commented, “I am not a psychiatrist, but it was obvious he was not normal. … I told him, ‘You are paranoid,’ and he said that ‘paranoids can be right.’” Read complete article HERE.