“The Cassandra of Watergate”
When Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon attorney general John Mitchell, began to claim that the White House was engaged in illegal activities, she was rumored to be mentally ill.
But events proved her right. Nixon later told David Frost, “If it hadn’t been for Martha Mitchell, there’d have been no Watergate.”
Psychologists remember this as the “Martha Mitchell effect” — when a client insists that he’s being chased by the mob, or that the police have been spying on him, he’s not necessarily delusional. In the words of psychotherapist Joseph Berke, “even paranoids have enemies.”
