The Psychological Assessment of Political LeadersSome psychoanalytically inclined analysts add to these theoretical
errors others of a more personal nature. Character psychology and its
relationship to leadership performance is complex. Those who
undertake such analyses should be comprehensively trained in the
theory and practice of the disciplines they purport to apply. Reading
Freud alone no more prepares one to undertake a psychoanalytically
informed analysis of a leader at a distance than does being able to
read musical notes prepare one to conduct a symphony.
One further difficulty that needs to be addressed here is the ten-
dency for some practitioners, both trained and untrained, to make
use of unconscious motivation in their analyses. Recently, one well-
known analyst and his collaborator (Lifton and Mitchell 1996)
"explained" the unconscious conflicts that led President Truman to
drop two atomic bombs on Japan. Another (Volkari, Itzkowitz, and
Dodd 1997) thought it possible to make us privy to the unconscious
thoughts that Richard Nixon's mother had about her son early in her
marriage.
By definition, unconscious motivation is not known to the person
motivated by it. Less appreciated is that, even in a psychotherapeu-
tic context, solid information about the unconscious motivation
emerges slowly and tentatively and is often subject to revision in
light of new material. The unconscious underpinnings of behavior
originate, and then develop, through a complex and ongoing process.
The fact that an event happened that is considered important in one
or another version of psychoanalytic theory does not automatically
bestow causal significance upon it.
Consider a presidential candidate with a cold and distant father or
mother. Many have grown up with such experiences, but they do not
necessarily result in uniform outcomes. Along with knowing that
events have happened, it is important to understand what their
meaning was to the person involved, the ongoing context in which
they occurred, as well as any mitigating factors that may be relevant.
In psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the meaning of these early expe-
riences is varied and complex. Meaning emerges with some clarity, if
at all, only after a period of sustained analysis and reflection on the
experiences, often from a number of vantage points. Through this
process, the meaning of these experiences to the patient gradually
becomes clear, as does the role of the experiences in the patient's