I want to thank Walt Cakebread for his contribution. I'll begin mine with Marguerite Oswald. Of all the people on the list it was Marguerite who had the major influence on Oswald and that should not come as a surprise. After all she was his mom. Considering how differently Lee turned out to be to his brothers Robert and John Pic there had to be special circumstances in Lee's and Marguerite relationship. Robert and John Pic said the reason Lee joined the Marines was to get away from Marguerite...'to get from out and under....the yoke of oppression from my mother'. I believe that's an accurate observation and a reflection of what motivated both John Pic and Robert Oswald to get out from under Marguerite's control by joining the Coast Guard and the Marines.
Marguerite appears to have been the type of person who needed to depend on others for financial and emotional support but was not willing, or was incapable, of having a healthy and loving relationship with any of her sons and with her third husband, Edwin Ekdahl. This bad relationship with Mr. Ekdahl proved to be very unfortunate as Mr. Ekdahl and Lee got along very well. A stable family life would surely have given Lee a much more positive outlook on life. But with the breakup came much uncertainty and instability for the family. It appears that Marguerite just couldn't handle being a mother and a provider and this didn't help her and the relationship with Lee. It became so bad that at one point, while living in NYC, Lee began exhibiting aggressive behavior towards his aunt and Marguerite herself and Lee became a frequent truant from school, but this didn't seem to bother Marguerite.
It was while Lee was undergoing psychiatric observation at Youth House that he was seen by a Dr. Hartog who diagnosed Lee with suffering from "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive - aggressive tendencies'. Lee has to be seen as an emotionally quite disturbed youngster who suffers under the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self involved and conflicted mother." Dr. Hartog went on to recommend that Marguerite get psychotherapeutic help herself. A Youth House social worker who interviewed both Lee and Marguerite concluded that Lee 'just felt that his mother never gave a damn for him' He always felt a burden that she simply had to tolerate' and that Lee admitted to feelings of omnipotence with very aggressive tendencies. To further elaborate on Marguerite's negative influence on Oswald;
"The reports of the New York authorities indicate that Lee's mother gave him very little affection and did not serve as any substitute for a father. Furthermore she did not appear to understand her own relationship to lee's psychological problems. After her interview with Mrs. Oswald, Mrs. Siegel (Evelyn Strickland, see VOL XXI, Siegel Ex 1) described her as a 'smartly dressed, gray haired woman, very self-possessed and alert and superficially affable,' but essentially a 'defensive, rigid, self-involved person who had real difficulty in accepting and relating to people' and who had 'little understanding' of Lee's behavior and of the 'protective shell he has drawn around himself'. After reading this it would be understandable to feel a little bit sorry for the little rat. Oswald had a tough childhood and his personal makeup just could not handle the emotional trauma mostly caused by Marguerite's own emotional shortcomings. Soon after Lee was placed on probation by NY authorities Marguerite and Lee left for New Orleans. When Lee turned 16 he attempted to join the Marines with the help of Marguerite by falsely claiming he was 17. Although the attempt failed to get by the notice of the Marine recruiter days after Lee turned 17 he joined the Marines.
After Lee left for the Marines I believe Marguerite was no longer much of an influence on Lee for he had managed to cut whatever emotional chords that still bound them. After Lee defected to the USSR he wrote to Robert a very cold and brutal letter in which Lee saw both his brother and mother as just a couple of workers. Lee had now to cut all the chords that bound him to his past.
