The Psychological Assessment of Political Leadersments with which he or she works. The second is to develop a plau-
sible case for their actual importance to what leaders do. The third is
to then establish how an element operates within the more general
frames of that person's psychology. And last, the analyst must make
some attempt to locate that element and its dynamic relationships in
the person's developmental history. In others words, a dynamic the-
oretical explanation of an element of a candidate's or president's
behavior and an accounting of its origins are separate enterprises.
One has not provided a dynamic explanation of an adult characteris-
tic by giving an accounting of its origins.
Consider the characterological element of ambition. Analysts have
not completed their task when they are able to bring forward enough
evidence to support the existence of high (or low) ambition in a can-
didate or president. Many questions that are important for address-
ing the role this element plays in presidential performance remain.
How is ambition connected with the individual's sense of accom-
plishment? Is it uniform across circumstances? If not, what accounts
for differences? With what other psychological and behavioral ele-
ments does it appear to be associated?
High levels of ambition, for example, can spring from a number of
psychological sources, including the wish to achieve, the wish to bol-
ster one's sense of worth in the face of doubts expressed by others, the
wish to please a demanding parent, and so on. Examining the con-
temporaneous dynamics of such an element (what other elements it
is associated with, when and why) can help us in distinguishing its
origins as well as clarifying its theoretical dynamics.
Analyst and Subject
Psychological analysis involves inferences about behavior. This being
true, explicitness about the process of inference construction is criti-
cal. Inferences begin with a pattern of facts. The concept of pattern is
critical in evaluating these facts. The questions regarding facts are,
How many are there and how consistent are they? Identifying pat-
terns is, therefore, a complex process in which there are many poten-
tial pitfalls.
At least since Freud's analysis of Woodrow Wilson it has been
clear that the analyst's own political preferences and views can play
an important and distorting role in assessing leader psychology.^5