William Jefferson Clinton's Psychologythe school's golden boy. Gifted in his studies, an accomplished par-
ticipant in extra-curricular activities ranging from music to student
politics, and surrounded by a large circle of admiring friends, Bill
Clinton experienced an adolescence that was in most outward
respects a developmental success.
But outward appearances obscured a tempestuous family life that
was to leave lasting wounds. The marriage between Bill's mother
and stepfather continued to deteriorate into a series of drunken
fights. Roger Clinton was verbally and sometimes physically abu-
sive. In 1962 Virginia Kelley filed for divorce. Mrs. Kelley by that
time was thirty-nine, Bill was sixteen, and his brother was six. The
divorce, like the marriage, was messy. Mrs. Kelley requested a court
order to keep Roger from the family home (Oakley 1994, 29). Then,
three months after their divorce, the Clintons reconciled and were
remarried on August 6, 1962. The marriage lasted until Roger died
in 1967 of a cancer that had been diagnosed shortly before his remar-
riage.
Approximately six months after Roger died, Mrs. Kelley received
a call from George J. "Jeff" Dwire, her former hairdresser, and they
began to see each other. In 1961, Dwire had been indicted on
twenty-five counts of stock fraud and had served nine months in
prison (Kelley 1994a, 22). In 1969, they were married. Five years
later, in 1974, Dwire died. In January 1982, Virginia Kelley mar-
ried a retired food broker, Richard W. Kelley, and remained married
to him until her death in January 1994.
Developmental experiences help to account for and explain the char-
acter elements that are so evident in the adult Bill Clinton: his ambi-
tion, his ideals and sense of himself, and the nature of his relation-
ships with others.^1 Since character and psychological development
begin in the family, this requires us to focus in large part on his
mother, Virginia.
It is clear that Virginia Kelley was a critically important emo-
tional center of Bill Clinton's life both as a child and as an adult.
That emotional centrality persisted past childhood well into adult-
hood, indeed, until her death. When the news about Gennifer Flow-
ers broke and Clinton's presidential campaign went into free fall as
he campaigned in New Hampshire in 1992, "Mr. Clinton excused