PRISONERS OF LEADERSHIP 133And I awoke dripping with sweat as if someone had dipped me in the
river. (Koser, 1900 , p. 45)The story of Frederick the Great provides unusually rich material
about the inner world of one particular leader. It shows us how spe-
cifi c anchor events, and a signifi cant dream, can affect a leader ’ s sub-
sequent behavior. We also see clearly in this the developmental and
motivational role of fear, anxiety, rivalry, guilt and envy, as well as
the importance of objects of identifi cation and how these affect a
leader ’ s later adult behavior.
Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, had this dream on January
19, 1760 when he was 48 years old. In a condensed form, this dream
signals the confl icts that were critical in molding Frederick ’ s person-
ality and that contributed greatly to his later way of behaving and
acting.
Dreams have a tendency to telescope events in time (Freud, 1900,
1933 ), and this is what seems to have happened here. Although it is
the quality of sustained relationships that eventually determine an
individual ’ s personality make - up, important scenes in a person ’ s inner
theater can often be discerned from the way in which they handle
specifi c key events. It is very likely that the dream described above
referred to memories of a signifi cant event that had occurred in
Frederick ’ s life 30 years earlier when, as a young prince, he seems
to have experienced some kind of inner metamorphosis.
This key event in Frederick ’ s life came after his attempt to escape
from his father ’ s tyranny and fl ee Prussia. This act was the culmina-
tion of a rebellious attitude toward his father who, albeit well -
meaning, had been oppressive in his attempts to mold his son in his
own image. The regimentation to which the young Frederick had
been subjected had been intense. The responsibilities of his tutors
were laid out in the minutest detail, with the threat of capital punish-
ment as a deterrent to any deviation from them. Nothing was left to
chance; the slightest breach of the rules had to be reported. Freder-
ick ’ s father wanted, at all costs, to make a soldier out of his son and,
moreover, to make him love soldiering. He considered Frederick ’ s
interests in the fi ne arts, which had been generated by his mother and
an older sister, to be effeminate, and forbade him to pursue them.
Frederick ’ s subtle sabotage of his father ’ s stifl ing demands were met
by violent attacks of rage about his mental and physical abuse, to
paranoid fears of being assassinated, and to states of deep depression.
In his father ’ s eyes, Frederick ’ s attempt to fl ee the country was
part of a malicious plot. Political intrigues by senior offi cials and the