ContributorsJERROLD M. POST, M.D., is Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychol-
ogy, and International Affairs and the director of the Political Psy-
chology Program at the George Washington University. Dr. Post
has devoted his entire career to the field of political psychology. He
came to George Washington after a twenty-one-year career with the
U.S. government, where he founded and directed the Center for the
Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, an interdisciplinary
behavioral science unit that provided assessments of foreign leader-
ship and decision making for the president and other senior officials
to prepare for summit meetings and other high-level negotiations
and for use in crisis situations. He played the lead role in developing
the "Camp David profiles" of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for
President Jimmy Carter and initiated the U.S. government program
in understanding the psychology of terrorism. Dr. Post received his
B.A. and M.D. from Yale University. He is the coauthor of a study
of the politics of illness in high office, When Illness Strikes the Leader:
The Dilemma of the Captive King (1993), and of Political Paranoia: The
Psychopolitics of Hatred (i^~j). A nationally recognized expert on the
psychology of political leadership, Dr. Post has testified before Con-
gress on his profiles of Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden and
regularly provides commentary on national and international media.
STANLEY A. RENSHON is professor of political science at the City
University of New York and a certified psychoanalyst. He is the
author of eighty articles and eleven books, including his psychologi-
cal biography of the Clinton presidency, High Hopes, which won both
the 1997 American Political Science Association's Richard E.
Neustadt Award for the best book published on the topic of the pres-
idency and the National Association for the Advancement of Psy-
choanalysis's Gradiva Award for the best published work in the cat-
egory of biography. His most recent book is America's Second Civil
War: Political Leadership in a Divided Society (2002).
MARK SCHAFER is associate professor of political science at Louisiana
State University. His research focuses primarily on political psychol-
ogy and conflict resolution, with particular emphases on political lead-
ership and decision-making dynamics. He has published articles in the
Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Reso-
lution, International Interactions, and several edited volumes.