Images can be deceptive!

Tiger Woods gave his press conference this morning, and it was everything I thought it would be.

From the perspective of an Accredited Criminal Profiler, and someone who has an understanding of these things, I must preface the perception that I'm about to give, by saying that Mr. Woods was cast into the public arena at the age of FOUR! He never had the opportunity to become his authentic self. He was taught to be a “public persona,” before he was allowed, or able, to become a normal human being.



The foundation of Mr. Woods' life was a recipe for disaster. Without the opportunities of failure that should have occurred during his childhood, Mr. Woods has now been forced to come to grips with the concept that he isn't held to a different set of rules than those of every other human resident of this planet. Mr. Woods now recognizes, as he said in his statement, that he has come to understand that he is not special, and must atone for his actions.



Try to imagine being a child and being coached and taught from the age of FOUR how to speak, how to project an image of professionalism, how to put inflection into your words describing your own actions, . . . essentially how to play to the cameras. Mr. Woods learned, early on, how to be less than his authentic self – how to project certain emotions that weren't necessarily real. Mr. Woods learned well. He became a “public persona.” He never came close to offering himself as simply himself to anyone, including is wife, his friends, his family, and his sponsors. He became a salesman. Selling only himself. He WAS a “public persona.”



This is nothing unique to the man named Eldred “Tiger” Woods. Other examples can be found throughout the entire celebrity spectrum. Let's try to limit our perspective to that of people who came into the realm of “public persona,” early in life. Robert “Bobby” Blake is the first one that comes to mind. You remember Robert Blake. Blake was born Michael James Vincenzo Gubitosi. Wide-eyed little Bobby Blake began his acting career as an Our Gang kid and eventually matured into one of Hollywood's finest actors. He came from early childhood into the realm of unrealistic Hollywood expectations. He went through a wildly successful career as an actor, while suffering many failures in his personal life, including several divorces and sour relationships; and he ended up as a complete sociopathic narcissist, charged and convicted of killing his wife and mother of Rose, his child. Bonnie Bakley died a horrible death at the hands of this former child star, who still has no concept of his authentic self.



Another child who was thrust into a similar situation was Little Gary Coleman. Gary Coleman starred in the ongoing and very successful television series “Different Strokes.” Coleman now works from time to time as a Professional Security Guard, but has more unemployment than employment. His personal life is a series of personal failures, from his relationships to his arrests, he's not much different than his two fellow child stars from the same source, Todd Bridges and Dana Plato, who both had running issues of drug abuse, (Plato died of a drug overdose in 1999), several arrests, and many failed relationships. None of these children were allowed to know their authentic selves. Can you see the common threads here?



Tiger Woods' issues stem from his abilities in the sport of golf, as his father so deftly taught him. If he had been allowed to know his authentic self, there may have been a couple of embarrassing moments during his childhood, but he would have suffered only a little embarrassment during his adolescence, instead of thinking that his private life would be covered up by all his adoring fans and those in the media who watched his every move.



Imagine if you will, the young Mr. Woods somewhere in his early teenage years, with his whole life suddenly infused with tremendous amounts of money and personal influence, coupled with what he perceived as ridiculous amounts of undeserved adulation, all during a time when his anatomy was undergoing the biological event of puberty, with the natural occurrence of male hormones, and his complete misunderstanding about who he really was. Over time, he was able to convince himself that he needed certain relief from having to live up to those unrealistic expectations required of that “public persona.” He found a certain type of connection in his private life could be made with certain individuals whom he found that he could be something less than was expected of him by those in his public life. One can certainly draw a number of conclusions about similarities between those who have gone public about Mr. Woods not-so-public behaviors, and his efforts to hide them. Those people, it turned out, led to the destruction of his “public persona,” and the opportunities that lie before him, beginning with today's media event. He seems recalcitrant, and yet somewhat defiant in his presentation. I hope he has a better understanding of what led him to this place. My prayer for Mr. Woods would be that the therapeutic counseling goes very well, and his new handlers will keep him in some kind of private setting that will allow him to educate himself on the reasons for his traditional behaviors.



Mr. Woods grossly mishandled the immediate aftermath of the public discovery of his philandering ways, as the media played both sides of the issue to their every advantage. With his news conference this morning, it is apparent that he finally has made contact with someone who understands and can manage his public image in a manner that is more realistic. The jury is still out on whether Mr. Woods has begun to make the necessary transition in his personal life to gain the understanding of his authentic self. If he is undergoing a true therapeutic counseling, the effort will be entirely toward educating Mr. Woods on all the things he missed as a child, and how he must deal with the realities of the world, where those celebrity things, (aka “public persona”), take a back seat to the personal realities of being his authentic self.