When Numbers Get Serious

Chapter 9 tells of Cain's fascination with 45.

Since Herman Cain’s campaign for the Republican presidential nomination flamed out last month, copies of his autobiography are probably headed for remainder tables in Dollar Stores all over the country. Where else would you expect to find a book called  This Is Herman Cain! My Journey to the White House, given the journey's abrupt and ignominious end? Even at only a buck, the book isn't worth reading – that is, until you get to Chapter 9.  “‘Forty-Five’ – A Very Special Number” details Cain’s fascinating foray into numerology. As far as I know, no presidential candidate has ever revealed his peculiar superstitions so frankly and unabashedly.

Cain attaches special significance to 45, and he finds it everywhere. He had planned to become the 45th president of the United States in 2013, 45 years after graduating from college and 45 years after marrying his wife Gloria.  A Reader’s Digest article that significantly influenced his thinking was published in 1945. He gave memorable 645-word speeches. Another important speech was interrupted by applause 45 times. And so on.

“I’m not a devout numerologist, but my mathematical training does cause me recognize when numbers appear more than coincidentally,” he concludes on page 123.  (Cain majored in math at Morehouse College.) More than coincidence? Really?

Sigmund Freud didn't believe much in coincidences, either, especially when it came to numbers.“‘Chance numbers’ that come to mind always reveal a reason when subjected to analysis,” he wrote in The Psychopathology of Everyday Life.  For instance, when a critic pointed out a small mistake in an article published by one of Freud's colleagues, the man dismissed the criticism by saying that readers could probably find "2,467 mistakes" if they looked hard enough. Freud wondered, why did his colleague say 2,467? After persistent questioning -- and some pretty convoluted mathematical calculations -- Freud concluded that  2,467 was related to the man's birthday and his older brother's, which revealed an unconscious and still unresolved sibling rivalry.

Not that Freud took much stock in numerology. The superstitious person "projects the motive to the outside, while I look for it myself," he wrote. "He explains the accident by an event which I trace to a thought." In Cain’s case, the good doctor wouldn’t need to look far to find the thought behind his obsession with 45. Cain himself zeroes in on the year of his birth (1945) as the source.

But what would Freud say about other apparently “chance numbers that come to mind” for Cain?  For instance, when confronted with stories from four women who claimed to have been sexually harassed by Cain and a fifth who alleged a 13-year affair with him, the candidate told CNN,  “You go through life and you believe that you have some people that are friends. And when someone that appears to be a friend turns around and concocts this story, you've got to question, the hundreds of thousands of people that I have met in my life? A hundred thousand people could possibly come out. It's probably an infinite number of people who could come forward with a story.”

A hundred thousand ? An infinite number? Applying Dr. Freud’s technique, let’s start with the magic number 45. 4 + 5 = 9. Nine, minus one gigantic ego, equals eight. If you knock 8 flat on its back you get   ∞ , the symbol for infinity. Hmmmm. Maybe that's it.

Seriously, though, another of Freud's observations offers a more likely explanation. Although Freud claimed that he wasn't superstitious, he did believe in omens. As he explains, ancient Romans would give up on a project before starting it if they tripped on the threshold on the way out the door. This behavior made perfect sense to Freud. The Romans' initial misstep was the physical manifestation of doubt; doubt sapped confidence and planted the seed of failure. By quitting before beginning under those circumstances, the Romans were "superior even to us unbelievers" and understood psychology better than even they knew. Or, at least, better than Herman Cain seems to have, when he decided to run for President.