Psychoanalytic Assessments of Character and PerformanceThe problem can be illustrated with a question: How does one
gauge the degree of ambition in Japan? In that culture, the direct
expression of self-interest, and the desire to stand out at the expense of
others, is taboo. How, then, would one assess the relationship between
ambition and political performance there? What does political leader-
ship mean in such a cultural context? These and related questions will
have to be addressed and resolved before the framework can be usefully
applied outside of the context for which it was developed.
Theory and Evidence: Some General Considerations and ConcernsThe interplay between theory and evidence in applying psychoana-
lytic theory to biography is complex. Psychoanalytic theory, espe-
cially as it has developed since Freud first formulated it, is a power-
ful tool for understanding the interior psychology and public
behavior of those in political life. The psychoanalytically framed
analysis of political leaders and leadership has benefited from the
extraordinary accomplishments of some of its early pioneers, such as
Harold Lasswell, Alexander and Juliette George, Erik Erikson, and
others. But, in the hands of some of its more enthusiastic though less
thoughtful practitioners, psychoanalytically oriented psychobiogra-
phy is prone to errors of reductionism in its various forms.
Reductionism is the error of attributing too much to too little. It
is a form of theoretical grandiosity and is reflected in several patterns
of analysis:
a tendency to give too much causal weight to a person's psy-
chology and too little to role and circumstances;
a tendency to reduce a person's psychology to one or a few
conflicted elements with little weight given to the skills
and areas of psychology that have brought the person to
high political office;
a tendency to think that an analyst can intuit the unconscious
motivation of others' behavior; and
a tendency to explain large-scale social or historical events by
terms describing individual psychology.
The common defect in all these errors is the failure to treat an indi-
vidual's psychology as part of a composite explanation in which the
causal weight to be assigned to any particular element is a matter to
be determined.