Psychoanalytic Assessments of Character and PerformanceThis can happen because the analyst either admires or dislikes, or has
some other set of feelings about, his or her subject. Beyond such
basic biases, and less appreciated, is the role that the analyst's own
psychology, for good or ill, can play in distorting the analysis, just: as
a psychoanalyst's own unresolved conflicts can distort the treatment
of his or her patients.
The analyst, especially one who makes use of and is trained in psy-
choanalytic psychology, has a particular obligation to be clear in
these matters. That is why I revealed that I had voted for Bill Clin-
ton and my basis for doing so in the course of my biographic analy-
sis of him (1996a, 318). No analyst can avoid personal reactions to
the materials with which he or she constructs an analysis, but one can
try to be as explicit as possible about one's own potential biases. In
that explicitness lies at least a partial solution to unintended or,
worse, systematic bias.
In the end, the analyst's work must stand on its merits, not the
feelings it evokes in political partisans. Ultimately what matters is
not the analyst's stance toward his or her subject, examined or not.
Rather, what matters is the following: Does the analytic framework
of analysis put forward appear to cover the most important aspects of
what needs to be explained psychologically? Is the evidence for
putting forward those categories of analysis persuasive? And, finally,
are the implications drawn regarding these characteristics found in
the real world of the president's actual behavior?
Theory Validation and the Prediction of Presidential Behavior:
Gold Standard or Pyrite?
In the physical sciences, prediction is the "gold standard" of theory
validation, and for good reason. However, for the social sciences, pre-
diction may be more useful as an ideal than as a model. Why?
Because no physical science must navigate the complexities of indi-
vidual choice and perception.
Theory validation has been an even more perplexing and difficult
problem for scholars with interests in life histories (Runyan 1984,
121-91). Among these problems are (i) a tendency to over empha-
size psychology at the expense of external circumstances—after all,
insofar as the leader must always be analyzed in context, the contex-
tual variables will always be there to influence the leader's decision