Psychopathology and Politics by Harold D Lasswell

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PSYCHOPATHOLOGY AND POLITICS By HAROLD D. LASSWELL Assistant Professor of
Political Science, The University of Chicago; and author of _Propaganda
Technique in the World War, etc._ _“From him who has eyes to see and ears
to hear no mortal can hide his secret; he whose lips are silent chatters
with his fingertips and betrays himself through all his pores.”_ --An Old
Physician THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO · ILLINOIS COPYRIGHT 1930
BY THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED OCTOBER 1930
_Second Impression May 1931_ COMPOSED AND PRINTED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF
CHICAGO PRESS CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, U.S.A. PREFACE An understanding of
political life can be sought by examining collective processes
distributively or intensively. In my _Propaganda Technique in the World
War_ (New York and London, 1927), I undertook to analyze the factors which
modified collective attitudes by examining the symbols to which many
millions of people had been exposed, without paying heed to the order in
which these symbols entered into the experience of any particular person.
In this preliminary treatise on _Psychopathology and Politics_, I am
likewise concerned with the factors which impinge upon collective
attitudes, but the method of procedure is radically different. It is no
longer a question of inspecting the symbols to which innumerable
individuals have been exposed; the present starting-point is the lengthy
scrutiny of the histories of specific individuals. The procedures and
findings of psychopathology are relied upon for the purpose in hand, since
they are the most elaborate and stimulating contributions to the study of
the person which have yet been made. Candor enjoins me once more to express
my indebtedness to my former teacher and present chief, Charles E. Merriam,
of the University of Chicago, who some time ago sensed the importance of
psychopathology for political science, and who has been willing to
encourage my own forays in the field, without, of course, feeling bound to
indorse my results either in principle or in detail. Through him it became
possible to have facilities for special work with Professor Mayo, of
Harvard University, whose perception of the bearing of psychopathology upon
the understanding of social life is bearing fruit in novel and important
experiments in business. The tenure of a Social Science Research Council
Fellowship (1928-29) made it possible to continue my studies abroad.
Circumstances have thus been such as to bring me in contact, sometimes
fleeting and sometimes prolonged, with men who represent divers standpoints
in psychopathology. Many of these have kindly placed their minds and their
facilities at my disposal, and I hereby return thanks for the generosity
and patience with which they treated an inquiring, if somewhat innocent,
investigator. No one who knows the lay of the land in modern psychology,
deeply pitted by the trenches and shell-holes of battling schools, will
imagine that all the men whom I am to name see eye to eye with one another,
or that they will look with equanimity upon the results of my explorations.
To name them is, I hope, not unduly to incriminate them. Among those from
whom assistance has been received are to be included: Dr. William Healy,
Judge Baker Foundation, Boston; Dr. William A. White, superintendent of St.
Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C.; Dr. Ross Chapman, superintendent of
Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, Towson, Maryland; Dr. Earl D. Bond,
superintendent of the Pennsylvania State Hospital, Philadelphia; Dr.
Mortimer Raynor, superintendent of Bloomingdale Hospital, White Plains, New
York; Dr. C. MacFie Campbell, superintendent of the Boston Psychopathic
Hospital, Boston; Dr. Harry Stack Sullivan, formerly of Sheppard and Enoch
Pratt Hospital; Dr. N. D. C. Lewis, St. Elizabeth’s Hospital; Dr. Samuel W.
Hamilton, Bloomingdale Hospital; Dr. Gregory Zilboorg, Bloomingdale
Hospital; Dr. F. L. Wells, Boston Psychopathic Hospital; Dr. Edouard
Hitschmann, Vienna; Dr. Paul Federn, Vienna; Dr. Alfred Adler, Vienna; Dr.
Wilhelm Stekel, Vienna; Dr. S. Ferenczi, Budapest; Dr. Theodor Reik,
Berlin; Dr. Franz Alexander, Berlin (now of the University of Chicago). My
colleagues, Dr. Stewart B. Sniffen and Professor Leonard D. White, made
valuable suggestions during the process of editing the manuscript, several
of which I adopted. Permission to quote freely from my previous
publications was received from the editors of the _American Political
Science Review, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology, International Journal of Ethics_, and from the
University of Chicago Press and the Chicago Association for Child Study and
Parent Education. I wish especially to express my gratitude to those who
cannot be singled out by name, but whose co-operation in submitting
themselves to prolonged scrutiny was of the greatest possible help. It
ought to be pointed out that the cases actually cited are only a fraction
of those which I have examined, or which I have in my possession. Only
enough cases have been abstracted to serve the purposes of exposition, to
supply a background for the theoretical material. The obscurities which
result from an unlimited multiplication of “little Willie stories” have
been sought to be avoided by curtailing their number and their extent. The
first part of the book proceeds in rather dogmatic fashion, and this no
doubt tends to obscure the highly unsatisfactory nature of the materials
and methods of contemporary psychopathology. The later chapters are given
over to the critical and constructive discussion of these matters, and
should fully indicate the highly provisional, though potentially
significant, character of the whole. H. D. L. TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER
PAGE I. Life-Histories and Political Science 1 II. The Psychopathological
Approach 15 III. A New Technique of Thinking 28 IV. The Criteria of
Political Types 38 V. Theories of Personality Development 65 VI. Political
Agitators 78 VII. Political Agitators--_Continued_ 106 VIII. Political
Administrators 127 IX. Political Convictions 153 X. The Politics of
Prevention 173 XI. The Prolonged Interview and Its Objectification 204 XII.
The Personality System and Its Substitutive Reactions 221 XIII. The State
as a Manifold of Events 240 APPENDIX A. Select Bibliography 268 B. Question
List on Political Practices 276 Index 283 CHAPTER I LIFE-HISTORIES AND
POLITICAL SCIENCE Political biography as a field of political science has
long been relied upon to furnish a vivid corrective to the overemphasis
laid upon the study of institutional “mechanisms,” “structures,” and
“systems.” The legal and customary position of the House of Commons, the
House of Lords, the monarch and the electorate, as expounded in the
commentaries of Gneist and Dicey, suddenly take on new meaning when viewed
through the lens of Morley’s Gladstone, Strachey’s Victoria, or Lee’s
Edward VII. The German imperial system of Laband is more fleshly and less
transcendental when one has studied the lives of Bismarck or William II. An
institutional account of the constitutional development of the United
States without a life of Marshall and a life of Lincoln would be but the
dregs of a rich and ebullient history. Political science without biography
is a form of taxidermy. When the tumultuous life of society is flayed into
precedents and tanned into principles, the resulting abstractions suffer a
strange fate. They are grouped and regrouped until the resulting mosaic may
constitute a logical and aesthetic whole which has long ceased to bear any
valid relation to the original reality. Concepts are constantly in danger
of losing their reference to definite events. Notions like liberty and
authority require a new birth of meaning after they have followed the
tempting path of abstraction but a little way. If conceptions are to serve
and not to master the mind, their terms of reference must intermittently
undergo the most rigorous scrutiny. The use of “institutional” categories
in describing political life is indispensable, but the publicists who
employ them have little to say about the “personal” influences which modify
the expected behavior of “legislatures,” “executives,” and “judiciaries.”
It is no news that “leadership” is an important variable in predicting the
course of events, but the standard treatises on politics have next to
nothing to offer about the traits of various kinds of agitators and
organizers, and nothing to say about the kinds of experiences out of which
these differences arise. This limitation holds for the books about the
theory of the state and of politics which are written by Englishmen like
Sidgwick and Laski, Americans like Garner and W. W. Willoughby, and
Europeans like Jellinek, Schmidt, Kjellén, and Kelsen. No doubt these men
possess or have possessed a living sense of political realities. Of
Sidgwick it is related that he was wonderfully adept in entertaining his
circle for hours with incisive comments and amusing anecdotes about public
men. But of this “humanity” of politics there is little to be found in what
he wrote. Political biography has been relied upon chiefly to convey a
sense of the unpredictable in human affairs, and to adorn an after-dinner
tale. At its best, political biography has contributed to an understanding
of the factors which differentiate one human personality from another. But
it is no secret that the literary biography or autobiography omits or
distorts much of the intimate history of the individual, and that many of
the facts which modern investigators have found to be important are
numbered among the missing. Where is it possible to secure a supply of
life-histories in which the usual conventionalities are ignored, and which
are taken by specialists in the sociological, psychological, and somatic
influences which play upon the individual? There exist in modern society
sizeable collections of such material which have hitherto been accorded
slight attention by students of social science. I refer to the case
histories of those individuals who have been ill, and especially those who
have been cared for in hospitals and sanitariums.[1] The richest body of
psychological and sociological facts is found in the files of the
institutions for the care of the mentally disordered, although the material
available in general hospitals is of value. The case history of a patient
in a good mental hospital is a document to which many have contributed.
There is a report of the physical condition of the patient as it is
revealed in the routine examination on his admission to the institution.
This may be supplemented by transcripts of previous and subsequent
examinations. There is also to be found the rating attained by the subject
on several general-intelligence and special-aptitude tests. There is a
report of the preliminary interview and the diagnosis by the psychiatrist.
This is amplified by a summary of the proceedings at staff conferences to
which the patient is presented, and which is attended by the whole body of
physicians and psychiatric social workers attached to the hospital. The
usual routine is for the physician and social worker in charge to present a
summary of the case, to introduce the patient for observation, and to
engage in general colloquy upon the diagnosis and therapy after the patient
has been escorted out of the room. The patient may be brought before
several staff conferences for the purpose of discussing whether he is in a
condition permitting of release, parole, or transfer. During his stay in
the institution the nurses, as well as the physicians who make rounds, add
their descriptive comments upon his behavior. The social service department
gets in touch with relatives and acquaintances and prepares a biography of
the subject. Occasionally the patient will volunteer an autobiography,
which is filed with the general record. Correspondence with individuals who
have interested themselves in the case will often disclose valuable
details. The exhibits frequently include letters written by the patient
before, during, and after his illness, together with published works,
drawings, paintings, and plastic productions. In some instances the record
of a single patient who has been admitted, released, or transferred becomes
very voluminous. It is due to the growing emphasis upon the importance of
understanding the personality as a functioning whole that modern medical
men are willing and anxious to assemble data about the behavior of the
individual in his family, business, and recreational relations. Such facts
are often useful to the physician in making his diagnosis and in deciding
how to handle the patient. The modern emphasis upon the rôle of reverie in
developing one’s traits and interests has led to the inclusion of data
about night dreams, daydreams, ambitions, grievances, enthusiasms, and
loyalties of the subject. Not infrequently the productions of the patient
are recorded in his own words by a stenographer who is present during
certain interviews with physicians. All these psychological and
sociological data increase the significance of the case record for the
individual who studies it for the purpose of understanding the total
developmental history of the person. Sometimes the case histories concern
people who are without mental disorder, but who have, for one reason or
another, been committed for observation. The German government was not the
only one in the late war which sometimes resorted to the expedient of
avoiding the appearance of internal dissension by referring pacifists to a
mental hospital. The records of the kind obtained under these circumstances
are often of men and women without pathology, and serve to control the
conclusions which rest on the study of pathological cases. Quite often the
specifically pathological features in the record of a sick person are very
meager. Thus, one prominent politician, the mayor of a large city, was
brought to a mental hospital suffering from an alcoholic psychosis,[2]
delirium tremens. He was only “insane” (to use a nonscientific term) when
he was passing through this acute alcoholic episode, and was soon released.
But the record of what he said and did during the delirium casts a brighter
light on the deeper motivations of his political career than many pages of
conventional biography. The hallucinations and delusions which he
experienced were not entirely stereotyped for the disease. Since he was no
longer able to maintain his repressions, his inner fantasy life came out in
the clear, and his personality structure stood revealed. Another politician
showed nothing abnormal except a propensity for collecting women’s shoe
heels, which he found sexually stimulating. He came to the medical
psychologist to be freed from his fetishist perversion, and in so doing he
made possible the preparation of a document which intimately revealed the
origin of certain political interests. From the point of view of the
political scientist the most valuable parts of his history happened to be
quite far removed from the narrowly circumscribed pathological symptoms.
The value of some records is enhanced by the fact that, besides the
pathological productions of the patient, they contain much information
which is volunteered by the person when he is himself again. Some forms of
mental disorder show recurrent intervals of disturbance and normality, and
during the “clear” interludes the patient is quite competent to furnish
autobiographical data. Often the “remissions” in the individual’s condition
extend over several years, although they may be momentary. Another form of
mental disease is characterized by the fact that the sufferer’s
difficulties center about a single system of ideas which, if left untouched
by the interviewer, permits him to be dealt with as an ordinary individual.
It should be evident from the foregoing that, contrary to popular
impression, the histories to be found in institutions for the care of the
sick are by no means exclusively confined to pathological subjects or to
the merely pathological aspects of the person. Some of the life-histories
which are summarized in this monograph come from mental hospitals. Others
have been collected from volunteers who were outside mental institutions
and who were aware of no serious mental pathology. They have been
undertaken on the understanding that our knowledge of human nature in
politics would be advanced if “normal” individuals were studied with the
same care which is often bestowed on the abnormal. So the book includes
persons who are “sick” and persons who are “well.” In the main the material
is printed for the first time. There are no retrospective interpretations
of historical personages. The chief unity of the study lies in the fact
that it is restricted to politically interesting people who have been
studied while alive by specialists under conditions of unusual intimacy.
The purpose of this venture is not to prove that politicians are “insane.”
Indeed, the specifically pathological is of secondary importance to the
central problem of exhibiting the developmental profile of different types
of public characters. Our job is not to catalogue the symptoms at the
expense of the main patterns of the personality. We have not finished when
we know that a modern Rousseau suffered from paranoia; that a modern
Napoleon has partly atrophied genitalia; that modern Alexanders, Caesars,
and Blüchers are alcoholic; that a modern Calvin is plagued by eczema,
migraine, and kidney stones; that a modern Bismarck is hysterical; that a
modern Lincoln shows depressive pathology; that a modern Robespierre
displays a eunuchoid habitus; or that a modern Marat suffers from
arthritis, diabetes, and eczema. “Psychopathography” is legitimate and
useful, but pathography is not our aim.[3] Nor is it the purpose of this
book to make a hit-and-miss collection of isolated anecdotes about the
relation between early experiences and specific political traits and
interests. Not that this sort of thing is not a liberalizing experience.
Our conventional schemes of “political motivation” seem curiously aloof
from the manifold reality of human life when we discover the private basis
of public acts. John B, to choose a random instance, is a busy, aggressive,
and successful salesman who spends a great deal of time and money on the
care of the blind. He takes time away from his business to serve on the
board of governors of institutions for the blind, and he handles many
financial campaigns on their behalf. Measures looking toward the
improvement of public or private care for these unfortunates are certain of
his support before legislative committees, on the platform, and in personal
conference. The study of his early memories finally revealed the incident
in which his ardent interest in the blind was rooted. When he was between
three and four years of age, his little sister pulled an eye out of his
favorite cat, and he was terribly distressed. His concern for the safety of
his pets was the original drive toward protective work for the blind which
matured into his adult activity. It would be possible to fill many pages
with reports of “critical experiences” of this kind, and their importance
is far greater than is usually supposed. If diagnostic labels and isolated
anecdotes do not satisfy us, what do we want? The answer can be succinctly
stated thus: We want to discover what developmental experiences are
significant for the political traits and interests of the mature. This
means that we want to see what lies behind agitators, administrators,
theorists, and other types who play on the public stage. Can we conceive
the development of the human personality as a functioning whole, and
discern the turning-points in the growth of various patterns of political
life? Can we uncover the typical subjective histories of typical public
characters? Can we place this subjective history in relation to the
physical and cultural factors which were developmentally significant? Even
this ambitious project does not exhaust the scope of this study. We want to
see whether the intensive investigation of life-histories will in any way
deepen our understanding of the whole social and political order. The
life-story of a Hottentot or an American reveals the concrete reality of
images and moods as they are experienced seriatim by those whose life is
caught up in the web of violently contrasting cultures. The trained student
of society discerns a wealth of culture patterns whose full meaning in
human experience can only be revealed by securing the subjective history of
those who are exposed to them. In some cultures the child is slapped,
switched, and beaten; in some cultures the child is rarely the target of
corporal punishment. Does this mean that the children in the first culture
will harbor revenge and welcome violence in social life? In some cultures,
parental control is negligible from the fourth to the fourteenth year, and
in other cultures supervision is strict and continuous. What difference
does this make in the developing view of the world in successive
generations? Those who are within the same culture are exposed to many
minor variations in social practice, and we may hope to ascertain the
consequences of these differences for the minds of those who undergo them.
This book is in harmony with a trend which has been growing in strength in
the social sciences. Social science has been moving toward the intensive
study of the individual’s account of himself. This is a movement which is
poorly conveyed by the phrase, “an interest in human biography,” because
the term “biography” is full of irrelevant literary and historical
connotations. The person’s own story is not a chronology of everything he
thought and did, nor is it an impressionistic interpretation of what he
experienced. The life-history is a natural history, and a natural history
is concerned with facts which are _developmentally_ significant. The
natural history of the earth is not a rehearsal of every event included
within the series, but a selective account of major changes within the
series. Dated events matter, but they matter not because they have dates
but because they mark phases. When biography is treated as natural history,
the purpose is to pick and choose the principal epochs of development and
to identify their distinctive patterns. The study of life-histories as
natural histories is a very recent phenomenon. The social sciences have
barely begun to exploit this approach. It is of very great significance
that Comte, after spending a lifetime in the preparation of his great
system, finally saw that the capstone was missing, and at the time of his
death was frantically trying to improvise it. His projected treatise was to
deal with personality development and differentiation (_La morale_). It was
never finished. There is something symbolic of the history of the social
sciences in this story of Comte’s long preoccupation with institutions, his
belated recognition of the possibilities of personality study, his hurried
effort to make good the omission, and the fragmentary nature of the results
achieved. Social science is in the belated-hurried-fragmentary phase of
growth.[4] Comte’s fragment was never expanded by French sociologists. The
comparative morphology of culture became all-absorbing, and this was
concerned with the pantomime of what men did, and sporadically with what
men thought. Comte executed his earlier volumes only too well. When the
mental processes of primitives came to be studied by Durkheim and the
Durkheimians, these “primitive mentalities” were examined for the sake of
revealing highly abstract “forms” of thought, and not to reveal the
individual sequence of human experience under different social conditions.
The efforts which have been made to fill the gap have rested upon no
massing of empirical data and have been fortified by no critical reflection
on the methodological problem of improving the reliability of the data. The
most promising sign of the times in France is the synthetic approach to
social psychology which is sponsored by Blondel at Strassbourg. In Germany
the social scientists were so occupied with the _Streit um Marx_ and the
triumphs of the comparative historical school that a comparative morphology
of subjective histories, if one may indulge the phrase, did not arise. The
prodigious influence of Kant in the direction of multiplying
epistemological subtleties stereotyped a penchant for high abstraction in
the consideration of psychological phenomena. The great successes of the
physical sciences seemed to rest upon the ruthless division and re-division
of phenomena until they became amenable to manipulation and control. The
combination of Kantian acuteness with scientific atomism was capable of
producing the extremes of physiological psychology and the obscurantist
revulsion against submitting the sacred mystery of personality to the
coarse indignity of exact investigation. Curiously enough, the modern era
of personality study was introduced as a protest against the laboratory
emphasis, and meant a capitulation to the spirit of scientific irreverance.
Personalities could be compared and typologized. The pioneer was Dilthey,
the philosophic historian; but neither he nor those who followed him
collected and published actual accounts of intimate subjective experiences.
Sociological overemphasis on the group was only partially compensated in
Simmel’s theoretical exposition of individuality, but there was no happy
synthesis of category and fact in his work. The field ethnologists
neglected to assemble autobiographical accounts, and only the fine
sensibilities of Vierkandt made possible the utilization of fragments for
the sake of comparing the inner life of primitive man with that of modern
man, a task which was performed with rather more subtlety than by the
French. The early social psychological impetus of Lazarus and Steindhal
produced vast collections of folk-lore materials, but the task of threading
folk lore and folk ways onto the developmental history of representative
persons remained undone. The great innovator in the subjective field was
Freud. His book on dreams is one of the most unique autobiographies in
history, and his publications set the pace for those who wanted to record
the actual outpourings of the unrestrained human mind. Here at last was a
truly scientific spirit who recorded everything of which the human mind was
capable, and looked at it critically in the hope of finding the laws of
mental life. He broke through the irrelevant barriers of conventionality
and brought dark continents of data into the light of inquiry. He proposed
theories which were supposed to be tested by the data, and devised a
special procedure for securing data. The scientific habilitation of the
anonymous, intimate life-history document as a source for the study of
culture was especially the work of William I. Thomas. He and Florian
Znaniecki undertook and completed their remarkable study of _The Polish
Peasant in Europe and America_. One volume was devoted to a long
autobiography which included the most intimate facts in the life of a
Polish immigrant to the United States. The work of Thomas left an abiding
stamp on American sociology through the department at the University of
Chicago. Franz Boas, dean of American ethnologists, has been keenly
interested in the primitive’s story of himself, and has collected and urged
the collection of many such documents. Paul Radin published the life-story
of a Winnebago chief in 1916. The importance of “the boy’s own story” was
early recognized by William Healy in his study of delinquents, and has been
extended in every direction. So, in stressing the value of the study of the
concrete sequence of individual experience for political science, we are
expressing a trend of interest which is already well founded in social
science. Our quest for full and intimate histories has led to the
exploitation of a relatively new source of material, the case-history
records of hospitals. It has led to the application of psychopathological
methods to the study of normal volunteers as a control on the inferences
drawn from the institutional cases. It has led to a detailed study of the
prolonged interview technique as a method of personality study (especially
psychoanalysis), and to the formulation of improved methods of
investigation. It has led to the statement of a functional theory of the
state, a theory which springs directly from the intensive scrutiny of
actual life-histories, and the realization of what political forms can mean
when seen against the rich background of personal experience. These studies
are admittedly incomplete. The documents relied upon suffer from various
shortcomings which have been specified in detail at an appropriate place.
The number of documents on hand is limited. Caution would counsel deferred
publication of even these materials. But the many objections to publication
have been outweighed by certain positive advantages. The publication of
such a collection of materials will serve to familiarize the professional
students of government with the kinds of fact and interpretation which are
now current among the specialists in important fields of study.
Familiarization is especially necessary in dealing with personality
histories because some of the material is unconventional and invariably
produces initial emotional difficulties among unsophisticated readers. But
science cannot be science and limit itself to the conventional. Some of the
facts are not pretty, and they are not the topics of polite conversation.
But the medical scientists who dabble with the excretions of the human body
for the sake of diagnosing disease and understanding health are not bound
by the limitations of banality and gentility in their work. And if
political science is to become more of a reality and less of a pseudonym,
there must be discipline in dealing objectively with every kind of fact
which is conceivably important for the understanding of human traits and
interests. Familiarization, then, is one function of this set of studies.
Another purpose is to set up tentative hypotheses about personality growth
on the basis of available materials. The mere statement of these hypotheses
about the growth of agitators and administrators will sharpen
investigation. Perhaps those who have direct access to better histories
will be impelled to use them in checking and revising the working
conceptions herein set out. The general scheme of presentation begins with
some chapters which sketch the psychopathological standpoint in its
historical setting and which review the current criteria of political
types. Then comes selected life-history material. The concluding chapters
discuss the bearing of personality studies on general political theory and
criticize existing methods of study. CHAPTER II THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL
APPROACH One of the standing obstacles in the path of personality research
is the difficulty of describing the personality as a whole at any given
cross-section of its development. In despair at the myriad difficulties of
the task, academic psychology has long evaded the issue and concentrated
its attention upon the minute exploration of detached aspects of the
individual. The manuals of physiological psychology are full of painstaking
accounts of how atomized aspects of the individual’s environment (the
“stimuli”) modify the reactions of selected parts of the individual. What
these manuals characteristically omit is a workable set of conceptions for
the classification of the phenomena which are the objects of investigation
in personality research. It is impossible to found a science of geology
without inventing terms to distinguish plateaus, plains, mountains, and
continental blocs, even though all these phenomena possess the common
attributes of “matter.” What matters for the geologist is how the
differences and not the likenesses come to pass. Much of the academic
psychology, in its quest for precision and prestige, has quit studying the
problem with which it is ostensibly engaged, and has substituted a minor
field of physiology therefor. In so doing, it has lost any criterion for
testing the relevance of the results of particular researches for the
understanding of personality because it has no master concepts of
personality. The psychopathologist has never been able to evade the
necessity of summing up the personality as a whole because he has been
compelled to make important decisions about the future of the personality
as a whole. The psychiatrist must continually decide whether John B and
Mary C will, if released from careful supervision, commit suicide or
murder, or whether they will be dependable members of the community. Thus
the clinician has found it imperative to search for signs which have high
predictive value in relation to the major social adjustments of the
individual. The psychopathologist has had the great advantage of seeing
many trends of the personality which are normally subordinated to other
trends when they have escaped from control and achieved Gargantuan
proportions. The clinical caricature throws into imposing relief the
constituent tendencies which make up the functioning person, and draws
attention to their presence and their processes. “Normality” involves a
complicated integration of many tendencies, a flexible capacity to snap
from one mood, preoccupation, and overt activity to another as the changing
demands of reality require. The pathological mind, if one may indulge in a
lame analogy, is like an automobile with its control lever stuck in one
gear: the normal mind can shift. One has a queer feeling as one passes
around the wards of a hospital for the custody of the more seriously
disordered patients that if one could assemble the scattered parts of the
mind that one could create at least a single supermind. There in one corner
is a melancholic who is stuck in the mood of despondency; in another corner
is a manic who is expansive and elated; elsewhere is a man whose
self-esteem has achieved cosmic dimensions; in the back wards is a
deteriorated mind in perpetual repose. Every conceivable nuance of
preoccupation and mood with which we are normally familiar seems to be
dissatisfied with its minor rôle in a healthy integration, and intent upon
autocratic mastery of the mind. The clinical caricature draws attention as
sharply as possible to the components of the healthy mind. So every theory
of pathological manifestations must presently become expanded or
assimilated into a comprehensive account of human psychology. The gross
clinical material reveals the intimate interrelationships between soma and
psyche. The patient who suffers from obsessive ideas may find relief from
obsession by showing hysterical symptoms; and hysterical symptoms may clear
up, only to make way for obsessive symptoms. “Pure pictures” are almost
pure theories. The patient who is suffering from a definite organic lesion
may complicate his troubles by “worry,” and “worry” may be one of the
factors in bringing about a physical disease picture. There is evidence
that psychological factors are among those significantly operating in such
diseases as common colds, asthma, catarrh, hay fever, hyperthyroidism,
gall-bladder trouble, gastro-intestinal ulcers, irregular menstruation, and
sexual impotence. Fresh vitality has come into modern psychology from the
clinic. The psychopathological approach has gradually vindicated itself as
more and more of its conceptions find a permanent place in the vocabulary
of psychology and social science. Modern psychopathology is itself a recent
development, and undoubtedly the most revolutionary figure is Sigmund
Freud. The spectacular and influential nature of Freud’s work is sufficient
justification for devoting some space to a brief account of his standpoint
and his innovation in method. As we shall have occasion to illustrate, his
method is of more general application to practical problems of political
research and political practice than is usually understood. When Freud was
a student in the University of Vienna, the triumphal progress of
microscopic methods of studying cellular structure was sweeping all before
it. Congeries of mental symptoms in the living were frequently found to be
correlated with the discovery of certain definite cerebrospinal lesions on
autopsy. The future seemed to rest wholly in the hands of those who used
the dissecting knife and the lens. Before Freud graduated from the
University, he became demonstrator to Brücke, the eminent physiologist; and
he labored in the laboratory of Meynart, the distinguished psychiatrist of
his day. Freud’s first publication was a result of laborious laboratory
work. While materialism reigned, psychological phenomena were degraded to
the status of trivial epiphenomena. But at this very time a revival of
psychogeneticism arose in French psychiatry under the impetus of Charcot.
Charcot had achieved eminence in pathological anatomy before he turned in
middle life to the study of mental maladies. By 1883 he had demonstrated
the possibility of producing hysterical symptoms by means of ideas (verbal
stimuli). Time and again he hypnotized individuals and produced muscular
contractures, hypersensitivity, and hyposensitivity, together with allied
symptoms of hysteria. Breaking away from the laboratories of Vienna, Freud
journeyed to the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris to work with Charcot, where
he stayed from the autumn of 1886 to the spring of 1887. Here he was thrown
in touch with the current of ideas which was giving concrete content to the
notion of the “out of conscious” and its dynamic consequences for human
behavior. Pierre Janet was busily accumulating the observations which were
published to the world in 1889 under the title, _L’automatisme
psychologique_. Early chapters appeared in the _Revue philosophique_ as
early as 1886. Freud had just missed a spectacular rise to fame when he
failed to recognize the anaesthetic possibilities of cocaine in surgery. He
published a review of the literature on cocoa; and a young Vienna
colleague, Koller, struck by some of the data which Freud had assembled,
announced the discovery in 1884 which immortalized his name in medical
history. Freud pondered for many years on why the idea should have eluded
him, and perhaps his desertion of the laboratory was due to his sense of
partial failure. In Paris he acquired a point of view which was bound to
bring him into conflict with the materialistic pundits of Vienna. Hypnotism
was itself looked upon as an artifice of charlatans. Wagner-Jauregg
reflected the ruling tradition when, only a few years ago, he said, “The
trouble with hypnotism is that you never know who is pulling the other
fellow’s leg.” Freud was met by derisive laughter when he announced at the
Medical Society of Vienna that male hysterics were to be found in Paris.
For hysteria, as one of the pedants reminded him, was philologically
derived from “hysteron,” meaning uterus, and therefore couldn’t possibly
occur in males. This was an echo of the days when hysteria was supposed to
be due to a migratory uterus and women were turned upside down to bring it
back in place. In 1881 and 1882 Breuer had treated a girl suffering from
hysteria, and his interest was renewed in the case in conversation with
Freud. Breuer remembered that when he treated the patient under hypnosis,
she recalled the first episode in which a symptom had appeared, related it
with every evidence of excitement, and discovered on waking that the
symptom had disappeared. Breuer and Freud began to study hysteria from this
point of view and published their results. Charcot had demonstrated that
ideas could cause hysteria; Breuer had found that the discovery of
pathogenic ideas could cure hysteria. In 1889 Freud returned to France,
this time to the other center of hypnotic research, Nancy, where Liébeault
and Bernheim were doing remarkable things. Freud here saw something the
full significance of which did not at once dawn upon him. A subject was
hypnotized and given a “post-hypnotic suggestion” to raise an umbrella at a
certain signal after coming out of hypnosis. The subject was then awakened
from hypnosis, and presently, when the stipulated signal was given,
obediently raised the umbrella, although still inside the room. When asked
why he raised the umbrella, _he said that he wanted to see whether it was
his or not_. Thus did he rationalize (a concept later developed) the
gratification of an impulse _which he did not himself at first recognize_.
When challenged to explain himself, he merely produced a plausible
interpretation of his own conduct. The immense significance of this train
of events is great enough. It at once raises the searching question: To
what extent are we in ignorance of our own motives and accustomed to
improvise merely plausible explanations of and to ourselves? But an even
more notable phenomenon occurred. _If the subject was asked again and again
to try to remember why he raised the umbrella, he sooner or later recalled
(to his own surprise) that he had been commanded to do it._ The full import
of this observation did not instantly dawn on Freud. But he continued to
have difficulties with the patients whom he sought to hypnotize. They
sometimes held out against his suggestions, even though they had accepted
them many times before, and seriously impeded the progress of the search
for the traumatic episode. He gradually abandoned hypnosis, leaving the
patient in a waking state in a relaxed position with instructions to report
every incident connected with the early appearance of the symptom under
investigation. Vestiges of the hypnotic technique remained as late as 1895,
when he would still lay his hand on the patient’s forehead as a stimulus to
recollection. This method also encountered crippling difficulties. A
patient would sometimes lie for hours without saying a word, totally unable
to recover a relevant reminiscence. To meet this obstacle, Freud presently
hit upon the simple expedient upon which he thenceforth relied. He
instructed the patient to say anything and everything that popped in his
head, regardless of its propriety, logic, or triviality. Freud found that
all ramblings of his patient could furnish him with clues to the underlying
and unavowed impulses of the sufferer. He became able to guess the nature
of the buried episode in which the impulse had received its present type of
manifestation. Thus the patient might begin by saying that she had seen a
red-headed man in the street and that she always despised red-headed
men--except of course her dear brother. Day after day apparently random
allusions would build out the picture of her great interest in anything
reminiscent of her brother’s looks and acts, all of which would be bitterly
condemned. But if she were asked directly, she would maintain that her
brother was a fine, upstanding man, and a credit to the family. The
analyst, after listening to the eddies of talk, and noting the patterns
along which they seemed to whirl, would presently locate a hidden rock
beneath the innocent surface of the stream--in this case, an unacknowledged
load of hatred against her brother. Bit by bit, stories of real or fancied
childhood tyranny would come floating along the stream. Then suddenly, amid
tears and violent gestures, might come the story of a long-forgotten
incident which involved an intimate aggression on the part of the brother.
The patient, manifestly relieved, might speedily recover from her
hysterical disabilities and return to the active responsibilities of life.
Freud’s theory of what he saw began modestly enough, leaned heavily upon
Charcot, Bernheim, and Breuer, and was mostly founded upon observations
made upon patients who were handled by hypnosis and not by the new
procedure which later was called psychoanalysis. He published a
contribution to the theory of the psychoneuroses in which he laid down the
proposition that a distinction could be drawn between one group, the
anxiety neuroses, which depended on mental conflict, and the actual
neuroses, which were not due to mental conflict but to masturbation and
coitus interruptus. In the first case, mental energy was converted into
bodily symptoms, and in the latter case bodily energy was supposed to be
converted into bodily symptoms. In Freud’s early articles there is little
to forecast the course which he was to follow as his brilliant imagination
viewed the behavior of the individual from the new vantage ground which he
had discovered.[5] Whether his particular theories survive or fall, the
standpoint which he achieved by ruthlessly applying his method is of the
greatest value. His method, which grew from the necessities of an
exasperated physician, led him _systematically to treat every manifestation
of the individual as part of a related whole_. Freud’s mental set had been
furnished by the data of hypnosis, which seemed to show that patients
suffer from reminiscences. When he dropped hypnosis and tried to force
recollections, his mental set had not altered, for he was still in search
of the original, the traumatic episode. When he asked his patients to say
anything that came into their heads, he was still hunting the elusive
memory of a definite early experience. But quite without realizing it, his
original mental set had widened, and with momentous consequences for his
own subsequent development. If one were given to exaggerations, one could
say that the world of psychological investigation had suddenly begun to
turn on a new axis. What was the nature of this new mental set? Intently
watching his patients, not for word for word accounts of what had happened,
and looking upon everything else as “irrelevant,” Freud learned to look for
meanings and not for reports. Every dream, every phrase, every hesitation,
every gesture, every intonation, every outburst began to take on
significance as possible allusions to the “traumatic” episode. Allusions to
hated objects, reminiscent of a brother, failure to mention a hated sister
until days had passed, although other members of the family had been passed
in review--every deviation from comprehensiveness--was eagerly scrutinized
for the clue it might afford. The technique of therapy consisted in using
clues to facilitate the patient’s search for relief. The problem was to
discover the nature of the patient’s conflict and to volunteer
interpretations for the sake of helping the patient to dare to bring into
full consciousness the unavowed impulse which had once frightened his
socially adjusted self into frantic repression. This involved the
interpretation of the symptom as a compromise product of the patient’s
ideal of conduct; and the out-of-conscious impulse, which, though denied
access to the full consciousness of the sufferer, possessed enough strength
to procure partial gratification. The symptom was thus a symptom of
conflict between the socially adapted portion of the self and the unadapted
impulses of the personality, and the symptom was a compromise between
partial gratification of the illicit and partial punishment by the
conscience. The particular form of the “conflict” depended upon the
traumatic experience and the antecedent history of the individual. Far more
important than these therapeutic elaborations is the shift in standpoint
which made them possible. Since Freud was on the search for the literal by
way of the symbolic, he raised hitherto neglected manifestations of human
behavior to the dignity of significant symbols, wrote them out, and
introduced them into the literature of human behavior. There could be no
sharper illustration of the prepotency of “mental set” for the seeing of
“facts” than the difference between the clinical reports of Freud and
Janet. Freud, convinced that the eluctable energies of the organism could
betray themselves in every image and in every gesture, painstakingly
recorded the dreams and day-fantasies of his patients. Janet, who continued
to assume that dreams were nonsensical confusions attributable to the
diminished tension of the sleeping organism, seldom made any allusion to
dreams. His pellucid description of grimaces, gestures, sentiments, and
theories of his patients led back to relatively recent moments when the
patient failed of adjustment. This failure of the patient to mobilize his
energies in smooth adaptation to the exigencies of social reality was then
imputed to a defective biopsychical mechanism, to a lowered “psychological
tension,” due to a miscellany of possible causes, among which was mentioned
“the exhaustive effects of emotional excitement.” Therapy consisted in
restoring the capacity of the individual to mobilize and deploy his
energies at the highest “levels” of adjustment. This was to be achieved by
a variety of means--by hypnotic suggestion, rest in a simplified
environment, and the usual repertory of the psychotherapist. But the golden
flash of psychological insight eluded Janet. At bottom he had little
respect for the concrete reality of the mental life of his patients.
Although he talked the language of psychogeneticism, it had a poor and not
a rich connotation in his mind. I think this is due to his too exclusive
reliance upon hypnotism, for the mental set of the hypnotist is derogatory
to most of the concrete productions of the patient. The patient, one feels
with a shrug, will presently come to the important experience; why take the
superimposed material too seriously? Then, too, the patient may be put in
order by direct command. Janet relates with some pride how people in the
waiting-room of his office would marvel when a woman, bent nearly double,
would be admitted into his sanctum, presently to emerge, erect and
cured--until the effect wore off. Freud learned a new respect for the
concrete reality of mental life in his concentrated effort to divine the
hidden conflict without resorting to hypnosis. His weakness as a hypnotist
was in a sense the beginning of wisdom. A patient who is deeply hypnotized
is but infrahuman. Barring commands which do violence to the moral code of
the individual, the subject will passively execute the commands of the
hypnotist. The patient descends from a complicated “nearly normal” person
to a waxy caricature of a human being. The unhypnotized patient of Freud is
in relatively full possession of all the resources of the ordinary waking
self, and must be dealt with as a complex human being. The widest gateway
to psychoanalytic development became the study of dreams. And here again we
are dealing with something which came, not from laborious reflection upon
underlying concepts, but from the urgencies of the clinical situation. Just
as we found that Freud had taken up a new post of observation in practice
before he discovered its implications in theory, we find that in such a
detail as the investigation of dreams, his theoretical preoccupations
contributed less than his everyday necessities. Freud’s patients
continually thrust their dreams upon him; and he, now in pursuit of clues
to what lay behind, presently took them seriously, and found in them many
helpful indications of unspoken things. He would assist the free-fantasies
of the patient by asking what came into his mind about any detail of the
dream, and he attentively followed the long chains of superficially
meaningless associations. It began to appear that Freud had stumbled upon,
and then brilliantly elaborated the possibilities inherent in, a new way of
using the mind. He trained his patients in a technique of free-fantasy
which they could subsequently use for themselves as a supplement to the
logical technique which society ostensibly tries to foster. It at once
appeared that he had discovered a method of thinking which was applicable
far beyond the confines of the clinic and which could be added to the
repertory of the mind. The interpretation of dreams was the bridge which
brought Freud from the confines of the clinic to the analysis of the whole
psychology of individual development. The dreams of patients and the dreams
of non-pathological persons showed such homogeneity of symbolism that the
gap between the “normal” and the “sick” seemed to close. Popular lore
already furnished a clue to dreams as wish-fulfilments, whether found in
the “well” or “ill,” but popular lore also treated them as reminiscences,
prophecies, and omens, or as confusions, depending on the transitory
context of the moment. Freud had a double orientation in dealing with the
individual. He regarded him as motivated in the present by impulses which
eluded his own consciousness. He regarded these motivations as having
achieved their present form in concrete historical events in the life of
the individual. The nature of the present could be made clear to the
conscious mind if the organizing episode could be recalled. This recall
could be greatly facilitated by paying special attention to the
“irrational” or non-adjustive aspects of the person’s present conduct. The
“irrational” would seem rational enough if the unacknowledged motives were
made manifest, and if the historical as well as the contemporary allusions
were sought after. Sooner or later the unrecognized motives would disclose
themselves in consciousness, if the individual waited attentively; but the
process could be greatly helped by using a different style of thinking than
the logical. No one has more dramatically and repeatedly shown the
limitations (as well as the advantages) of logical procedures of thought
than Freud. No one has made a more important contribution to the technique
of supplementing logical thought by other methods of thought than Freud.
This is the aspect of Freud’s work which has immediate and constant
relevance to political as to every other sort of thinking, and to which it
is important to devote more extended consideration. CHAPTER III A NEW
TECHNIQUE OF THINKING[6] The prevailing theory is that men who make
important decisions in politics can be trained to use their minds wisely by
disciplinary training in the practices of logical thought. Legal training
is supposed to mold the mind to ways of dealing with the world which
subordinate whim to principle. Formal instruction in the social sciences is
intended to equip the mind for the detached consideration of social
consequences, and everyone agrees that this implies a large measure of
self-awareness for the sake of reducing the play of prejudice. The nature
of logical thought has been carefully examined by an array of able writers.
Their conclusions may be provisionally reported by saying that logic is a
guided form of mental operation. It is not something marked off from
impulse, but a progressive elaboration and differentiation of impulse. It
proceeds by the affirmation of a starting-point, which is in fact a vague
indication of the goal to be reached, and develops by the criticism of the
material which appears in consciousness according to its relevance to the
end in view. If the judge begins by wanting to settle a controversy
consistently with precedents, he has indicated in advance the shadowy
outline of the desired termination of his efforts. If an administrator
wants to reduce complaints against his handling of the postal service, he
starts with a different mental set from the judge, but, like the mental set
of the latter, his first act is to bring into view the state of affairs
which he hopes to find when he quits thinking. He is accustomed to guide
the operations of his mind by this preliminary characterization of the
terminus sought. No thinker can haul into the center of attention the
material which indicates how the terminal situation is to be attained. The
thinker must wait attentively for whatever appears. If he wants to deal
with such a simple practical matter as getting to the railway station, and
his mind continues to fill with images of the one he left behind him, his
accustomed means of asserting control is to reiterate the practical end and
to hope that he can “keep his mind on” taxicabs or autobusses. Alternating
with periods of reiteration and expectancy and illumination are episodes of
“No” and “Yes,” which evidence the existence of guided thought. It would be
misleading to stop with this formal description of the characteristics of
logical thinking. Logical thinking is not a hocus-pocus to be applied here
and there and everywhere. The previewing of events presupposes familiarity
with the sorts of events to which the previewing relates. It usually
involves analysis of the contingent future in the light of analogies with
the past, which is simply a means of refining general familiarity through
systematic methods of inspecting reality. General knowledge of lending and
borrowing must be supplemented, for many purposes, by detailed examination
of the quantitative dimensions of various routines. The precise nature of
the relationship between changes in the rediscount rate and the price of
call money requires analysis far beyond impressionistic familiarity. There
need be no illusion that the specification of the terminal situation
provides an immovable constant for thought. We can imply, as we have
implied, that logical thinking begins by sketching a figure on the canvass
and leaves the details to be filled in during the course of the thinking.
But the starting-point is often subject to many shifts, and the initial
sketch is more or less subject to remaking. The judge who starts in pursuit
of consistency-with-precedent characteristically must add
conformity-to-principles-of-policy. A plurality of ends is always involved,
and usually appears. Everybody knows that the pluralism of ends goes far
beyond “official” ends. A sophisticated and discerning judge may discover
an embarrassing conflict in the controlling precedents, and cast about for
other social purposes than conformity-to-precedent to guide him. He may
scrutinize the principal economic, cultural, and political changes in the
society in which he operates, and discern the appearance of a new set of
rising dominant values, and decide to diminish the cost of social change by
seeking to facilitate their introduction. If this hypothetical judge
believes that he should not consciously enact his private prejudices into
law, and if the social values are so confused that uncertainty rules, the
judge is well advised to flip a coin (in chambers) and govern his decision
accordingly. If the judge finds himself favorably disposed toward any
alternative to begin with, he will take himself as an object of
investigation to determine the extent and origin of his prejudice. His
logic thus involves the use of self-scrutiny for the exposure of private
values which load the dice for or against a particular point of view.
Besides the values which are “public,” there are complicating values which
are the residue of one’s “private” history. All these points are stressed
in greater or less degree in the current writing on the use of the mind.
The avowed purpose of our professional schools is to increase the amount of
logical reflection in the world, and the set complaint is that people
somehow or another manage to think very clumsily. In spite of our best
efforts to disseminate logicality, people are always “letting their
prejudices run away with them,” even when they have a baggage of good
intentions. The stock alibi for the failure of the schools to improve the
character of thinking among those who hold positions of power is that the
human mind offers a perverse opacity to the rays of reason. Somehow or
other our training doesn’t take; but this is attributed not to the
deficiencies of logic but to the resistances to it. All this is reminiscent
of the reply of the Christian to the taunt that Christianity has failed. He
says that Christianity isn’t to blame, but the lack of it. The logicians
say that the cure of bad logic is more and better logic. If the human mind
refuses to be educated, that’s just too bad. Our thesis is that our faith
in logic is misplaced. Exclusive emphasis upon logic (even where logic is
adroitly used) incapacitates rather than fits the mind to function as a fit
instrument of reality adjustment. The supposition that emotional
aberrations are to be conquered by heroic doses of logical thinking is a
mistake. The absence of effective logic is a symptom of a disease which
logic cannot itself cure. We have been misled by supposing that the mind
can rely upon a single technique of operation when this isolated technique
has serious limitations. A totally different technique of thinking is
needed to get on with the task of ridding the mind of the distorting
results of unseen compulsions. Since our schools have found no place for
the cultivation of this additional technique of thinking, our judges and
administrators and policy-makers are turned loose on the world armed with
faith in logic and incapable of making their minds safe for logic. Logical
thinking is but one of the special methods of using the mind, and cannot
itself achieve an adequate inspection of reality because it is unable to
achieve self-knowledge without the aid of other forms of thinking. The
technique of free-fantasy offers many points of contrast with logical
thinking. It is unguided rather than guided association. From a given
starting-point, no effort is bent toward the exclusion of the trivial, the
trite, the embarrassing, the filthy, the nonsensical. The mind is permitted
to run hither and yon. It is hospitable to everything which germinates in
the mind, and is subject only to the effort to steer clear of the molds of
logical thinking. There is no specific definition of an objective, and no
intermittent intervention in the flow of material to register its
pertinence or impertinence to this rather specific objective. Free-fantasy
is not to be confused with free word associations which begin with simple
stimulus words and end when the first few words which pop into the mind are
put down. Free-fantasy is not a momentary relaxation of selective
criticism, but prolonged emancipation from logical fetters. Free-fantasy
differs from the ordinary daydream, the night dream, and the visions which
arise in sleeping or waking by the circumstance that it is embarked upon
with the vague, generalized purpose of rendering available new subject
matter for logical thought. The frequent interventions which characterize
logical procedures are suspended, the better to serve the ultimate purposes
of reality adjustment. Daydreaming which is not used for this general
purpose does not represent a technique for using the mind. The ultimate
paradox of logical thinking is that it is self-destroying when it is too
sedulously cultivated. It asserts its own prerogatives by clamping down
certain restrictive frames of reference upon the activity of the mind, and
presently ends in impoverishing the activity which it purports to guide
into creative channels. It becomes intolerant of the immediate, unanalyzed,
primitive abundance of the mind, and by so doing destroys its own source.
More seriously, too, for the mind which is engaged with social life,
logical procedures exclude from the mind the most important data about the
self. Directed thinking, whether about the self or something else as an
object, is impatient of the seemingly trivial, and this impatience with the
seemingly trivial is the rationally acceptable guise in which the impulse
to avoid rigorous self-scrutiny gets itself accepted. The mind which is
freely fantasying produces distasteful evidence of the facts about the self
which the socialized self wants to avoid. This is why free-fantasy is not
learned by rote, but achieved through trying experiences, usually under
prolonged supervision. There are wide individual differences in acquiring
the technique of free-fantasy. Logical controls are often so gradually
released that progress is almost imperceptible for several weeks of daily
contact with a psychoanalytic interviewer. Frequently, of course, the
logical controls fall away quite rapidly, and the exposure of the
underlying preoccupations proceeds apace. Freud developed the technique,
and drills his subjects, largely in relation to their dreams, but this is
in no sense its exclusive application. The purpose of the psychoanalytic
interview is not served if the patient is merely relieved of a few annoying
symptoms; its purpose is to equip him with a means of handling his mind
which will enable him to go it alone. In developing the free-fantasy
procedure, Freud added a powerful tool to the repertory of those who would
use their mind with some hope of disentangling themselves from the
compulsive domination of many vestigial remains of their “private”
histories. It is quite possible to train people to use the free-fantasy
method with considerable success and to outfit them with a device which
they can use in the ordinary problems of professional and private life.[7]
The instances which I shall presently adduce are from the fantasies which
were produced by a judge in the course of a series of interviews which he
undertook after his curiosity about the method had been aroused by the
therapeutic treatment of a member of his family. Any specific allusions are
disguised. One day the judge commented at the beginning of the interview
that a certain attorney irritated him in some unexplained way. He found
himself acutely conscious of his own prejudice against the man, and in
trying to deal fairly with him often leaned over backward and showed him an
embarrassing favoritism in sustaining his objections. There was always a
struggle to hold the balance even. This seemed to indicate the conspicuous
operation of some unrecognized set of motives in relation to this
particular individual. The judge, who was already partly skilled in the use
of free-fantasy, began to report whatever came into his mind at the mention
of the attorney, without regard to logic or scruple. “Cigar smoke ... black
cigar ... vile and pungent and stuffy ... corridor ... courtroom ...,” and
so on and on. The word “corridor” reappeared several times in the course of
his associations, and the interviewer initiated a new chain by using the
word as a stimulus. After some time, there came up a vivid memory of an
incident in the corridor of the law school where the judge had studied. A
fellow-student, who was a man with a great reputation as a promising mind,
dropped cigar ashes by accident on the judge’s overcoat. The judge
remembered his angry impulse to “sock” the offender, an impulse which he
instantly subdued, and that he accepted the apology, which seemed to end
the incident. Associations were continued to find why the brilliant rival
had so incensed the judge, and the trail led back to certain incidents and
reveries in early adolescence, but this material is not relevant here. The
connection of his hostility toward his former rival with the attorney
before him was due to one of the attorney’s mannerisms, which recalled the
way the student had flecked ashes off the end of his cigar. When this tie
was exposed, the compulsive animosity and the overcompensatory reactions
disappeared from the attitude of the judge in relation to the attorney.
Another illustrative detail may be taken almost at random from the record.
On one occasion the judge began to enumerate the three principal
alternatives which lay before him in deciding a pending case. He remembered
two of them but hesitated several seconds before the third came into his
mind. This led him to remember that he had often casually noticed that this
third possibility seemed to elude him, although on reflection he felt that
it deserved as much attention as the other two. He began spontaneously to
relax and report everything that crossed his mind, and produced a long
string of catch phrases from law and politics like “freedom of contract,”
“life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness,” “freedom of speech and
assembly.” He presently noted that a picture was forming of one of his old
law-school classrooms. He felt that someone was just about to speak to him,
and had to resist the temptation to turn around. Then there came across his
mind a long series of incidents in which one of his law professors was the
principal figure. This teacher was reputed to possess a mastermind and a
caustic tongue; and the judge, though he had always wanted to make a great
impression on him, had met with no particular success. The professor had a
habit of using his most ironic tone of voice when he spoke of “this freedom
of contract.” Now it happened that the attorney who was arguing for
alternative No. 3 before the court pronounced the word “freedom” with
unction. This aroused in the judge’s mind the ironic tone of the old
professor’s voice, and this in turn brought back the rather humiliating
failure he had been in his efforts to impress the professor. He now
exhibited a tendency to repress everything connected with the episode,
including the attorney’s argument. The world about us is much richer in
meanings than we consciously see. These meanings are continually cutting
across our ostensible criteria of judgment, and compulsively distorting the
operations of the mind whose quest for an objective view of reality is
consciously quite sincere. Good intentions are not enough to widen the
sphere of self-mastery. There must be a special technique for the sake of
exposing the hidden meanings which operate to bind and cripple the
processes of logical thought. With practice one may wield the tool of
free-fantasy with such ruthless honesty that relevant material comes very
quickly to the focus of attention which we call “waking consciousness.” It
would be possible to fill many volumes with illustrations of the hitherto
unseen meanings which have been discovered by men and women who have
learned to use the free-fantasy technique. They have often been able to
find how and why their emotions tended to be aroused favorably or
unfavorably toward individuals of their own or the opposite sex who
exhibited certain traits, and to understand why they tended to choose
certain secretaries, to sponsor certain protégés, and to be impressed by
certain witnesses and attorneys. They have been able to inspect the
phraseology of law, politics, and culture, and to extricate themselves from
many of the logically irrelevant private meanings which they read into it.
Freud developed the technique of free-fantasy well over a quarter of a
century ago, but it is still beyond the pale of the schools. Our
professional and graduate schools make no effort to readjust their methods
to fit the minds of future men of authority for self-knowledge. The
sententious admonitions to “know thyself” are no adequate substitute for
special discipline in the ways of self-understanding. We have tried to cure
the failures of logical training by homeopathic doses of sermonizing,
rather than by the discipline of supplementary techniques of using the
mind. The mind is a fit instrument of reality testing when both blades are
sharpened--those of logic and free-fantasy. Until this fundamental
proposition is adequately comprehended, the professional training of our
judges, administrators, and theorists will continue to furnish discipline
in self-deception rather than self-analysis. CHAPTER IV THE CRITERIA OF
POLITICAL TYPES The free-fantasy method of exploring the mind is of very
general application to the problems of life. In particular we are
interested in examining the results of its use for the purpose of laying
bare the natural history of personality growth and differentiation. All
sorts of politicians are met with in society, and our special task is to
relate the selection of these adult rôles to certain critical experiences
in individual development. But before we can proceed farther, we need to
examine the nature of the criteria which are currently used in identifying
various political types. The popular speech of every state and neighborhood
swarms with names for varieties of political behavior and types of
politicians. The study of political differences may very well begin by
sifting the common vocabulary. Some of the popular images are derived from
experience with government officials. Within the last hundred years the
policeman has appeared over Western Europe, and a history of the popular
conception of his rôle could be written around terms like “bobby,” “cop,”
and “_Schupo_.” Whatever differences in dress, manner, social position, and
common humanity are supposed to exist between a “civil servant,” a
“_Beamter_,” and a “_fonctionnaire_,” there are common lineaments in the
composite stereotype. A thick chapter in human experience could be entitled
“The Bureaucrat,” wherein would be recorded the innuendo of popular comment
on a necessary evil. The “legislator” is identifiable through all the
detailed contrasts between the “congressman,” the “M.P.,” and the “M.d.R.”
The popular tongue is rich in expressions which fill out the official cast
of characters in the political drama by peopling the public stage with
figures whose traits are essentially irrelevant to their office. There are
men of ideas--“anarchist,” “socialist,” “liberal,” “communist,”
“conservative.” There are men of ideas and of action--“reformer,”
“revolutionary,” “martyr.” The history of American, British, French,
German, medieval, Graeco-Roman, and every civilization could be written for
the sake of showing how the carriers of public power figured in the eyes of
the various groups within and without the culture. This profusion of types
in the popular firmament of politics is supplemented by the types which
have been isolated by serious students of culture, who have sought to
impose order upon the life of the past. Among the political forms which
have been described by the historians, the “benevolent despot” of the
eighteenth century, the “demagogue” of Athenian democracy, the “prince” of
the Italian Renaissance, and the “despot” of the oriental empires spring at
once to mind. The masterly sketch of the evolution of the public official
with which Max Weber[8] has enriched social science is, it is to be hoped,
the forerunner of many elaborate studies. The traits and arts of political
leaders have been most systematically handled by Aristotle, Machiavelli,
Robert Michels, Christensen, and Charles E. Merriam.[9] These typologies,
whether popular or scientific, possess several features in common. They may
converge to what is practically the same picture. When W. B. Munro
described the “reformer,” he filled out the popular image which arose in
the American mind at a certain phase of American political evolution.[10]
Practically every scientific conception is a refinement and generalization
of some term in general circulation, though with local connotations. The
scientific and the popular typologies may include the same kinds of fact as
their starting-points. The fact of supposed political conviction gave rise
to the “liberal,” but it is a far cry from the rather shadowy lines of the
popular image to the finely wrought lineaments of Ruggiero.[11] The means
employed in encompassing political objectives christen the “lobbyist,”
“propagandist,” and “agitator.” The idea that private motives are not
merged in public motives is carried in “renegade,” “sorehead,” and
“tyrant.” The idea that private motives have been firmly fused into public
purposes is one connotation of the “martyr.” The fact of informal
ascendancy is celebrated in the “boss.” In the “bureaucrat” it is implied
that the office has molded the man, and that the office tends to attract
those especially likely to develop such qualities. The Western European
idea of a judge almost necessarily refers to a functionary who carries
certain paraphernalia and proceeds with ceremony. The leanness of the
“fanatical agitator” figured in the popular mind long before Kretschmer
gave it his scientific blessing.[12] Both popular and scientific
conceptions range from the particular to the general. The British “election
agent” is closely bound to a recent, special social setting. The “leader”
keeps a stable nucleus of meaning for the description of a social rôle
among widely separated peoples in widely separated periods. Popular and
scientific conceptions are at one in that they may present developmental
and not merely descriptive implications. The notion of a lean and bitter
agitator is not entirely a static, cross-sectional description of a
fortuitous juxtaposition of traits, but a hypothesis that bodily
irritations operate dynamically to foster the selection of forms of
activity which enable the individual to give rather free vent to his
animosities. Both popular and scientific types may be taken as objects of
study to determine the factors in their formation. The popular idea of a
“reformer” in America bears a certain photographic resemblance to actual
personalities who figured as public advocates of restrictive laws. It is
possible to study the process by which the stereotype of the lean and
spinsterly kill-joy arose, and to see why it persisted. Every body politic
has its gallery of political mummers, and political history needs to be
rewritten to explain the unique and the typical qualities of these
popularly conceived rôles. Stuart A. Rice has developed a technique for the
identification of contemporary stereotypes of this kind.[13] Rice took
photographs of a senator, a bolshevik, and a bootlegger, and after
obliterating the names asked various test groups to tell what designation
best fitted each picture. By examining the erroneous identifications, it
became possible to detect the mental pattern popularly associated with the
class name. An interesting contribution to social science would be the
detailed examination of the factors affecting the rise and fall of those
political typologies which have been seriously proposed by scholars. The
exaggerated picture of the omnipotent leader drawn by Carlyle no doubt had
something to do with Carlyle’s sexual impotence and his compensatory
idealization of the potent; but the popularity which this exaggeration
enjoyed among certain classes of English society was due to the dislocation
of older economic institutions and the rise of threatening collective
ideologies. The new business enterpriser felt the intoxicating vanity of
the self-made man, and the decayed landlords felt the necessity of
individualistic protests against the age of cities and machines. Suppose we
examine in more detail the intellectual structure of scientific political
types. This requires special attention to the two terms involved, the
“political” and the “types.” Two ways of defining the “political” are
current in social science. I will speak of them as the “institutional” and
the “functional” methods of definition. Within any community there are many
patterns of activity whose form and whose magnitude may be singled out for
study. There is the production and distribution of material goods and
services; the main patterns by which these operations proceed can be called
the economic institutions of the community. There is the settlement of
disputes, and the defense and extension of interests which are believed to
be collective; these are the political or governmental institutions of the
community. In the same way religious, charitable, and a host of other
institutions may be discerned. These institutionally derived categories
fall short of clarity and comprehensiveness. Some social processes occur
within the framework of every institutional process. Thus the settlement of
disputes is a prominent characteristic of government as we know it; but it
is not, and never has been, and cannot by the nature of things be, a
monopoly of government when government is defined as an institutional
division of social labor. No institution ever quite monopolizes the
function which it most distinctively exercises. But this need not lead to
confusion. When the settlement of disputes is a prominent function of one
group in society, and there is no other group which participates in the
same function in the same degree, there is no hesitation in deciding to
call the first group the “governors” and to call the patterns according to
which they are selected and operate the “political or governmental”
institutions of the community. If there is a rival adjuster of differences,
the distinction is by no means clear, as when the “church,” “business,” and
the “state” are rivals. Perhaps the governors can be identified by finding
who it is who handles the coercion employed in defending or extending
communal enterprises, though this criterion may from time to time fail to
differentiate. But, on the whole, these doubts are marginal doubts.
Ordinarily it is possible to find a division of labor and a set of
sentiments which can be called the “government of the state.” The marginal
instances call attention to the fact to which allusion has been made, the
fact that no “institutional” process quite monopolizes the function which
it most distinctively exercises. It is therefore advisable to describe
communal processes by two sets of terms, one of which refers to
“institutions” and the other to “functions” which are found within the
various institutional frameworks. Much of the literature of social science
consists in terminological quibbles about the “proper” words to use in this
institutional or functional sense, often without appreciating the essential
nature of the matter at issue. It is, of course, of the highest importance
to understand the difference, and of minor importance to agree upon the
words with which to describe the distinction. From what has been said, it
is clear that a word like “political” may be given an “institutional” or a
“functional” meaning in a particular context, and that--and this is the
most important consequence--any contribution to the understanding of the
“institutional” process is a contribution to the understanding of the wider
“functional” process, and the reverse. In this resides the unity of the
social sciences. The apparent disunity arises from the differences in
starting-point of particular inquiries. One begins with a series of
phenomena which are selected from a single institutional process, and
another begins with a series of phenomena which are selected from several
institutional processes according to some functional conception. This unity
of destination and disunity of starting-point is abundantly manifested in
the scientific study of human behavior. The specialist on some phase of the
political process, institutionally conceived, who is asked to classify the
types of political behavior, devises his categories on the basis of the
institutional processes which he knew best. It would be possible, were it
worth the effort, to pass in review the typologies which have been
propounded from time to time by specialists in executive organization,
public administration, judicial administration, legislation, political
parties, propaganda and conspirative organizations, political revolution,
nationalism, imperialism, interstate methods of adjustment (war, diplomacy,
conference, adjudication, mediation, arbitration), and all the other topics
in political science. At first glance, the functional method of defining
political types would seem to lead to even greater congeries of categories
than the institutional method. From the functional standpoint politics is
found wherever, to use the older terminology, “wills” are in conflict. This
implies that intensely political manifestations in society are not confined
to government officials and parties, but to banking houses, manufacturing
enterprises, distributing services, ecclesiastical organizations, fraternal
associations, and professional societies. It is probable that the most
aggressive, power-lusting individuals in modern society find their way into
business, and stay out of the legislature, the courts, the civil service,
and the diplomatic service. If this be true, the student of political
personalities will find the most interesting objects of study in J. P.
Morgan and Company, in the United States Steel Corporation, and among the
clerical or educational or medical politicians. It follows from what has
been said that the study of politicians who are chosen from a single
institutional process makes a contribution to the general study of
politicians in every institutional process, and that the conscious
abstraction of categories until they are comprehensive opens a wider range
of exact comparison. This may eventuate in an actual simplification of some
fundamental conceptions. Of course, institutional processes differ in the
scope which they give to certain human drives. Today the church offers less
opportunity for the use of physical violence than it did in the sixteenth
century, and very much less opportunity than the police force, the private
detective agency, or the political gang. The advantages of
comprehensiveness and possible simplification have been sacrificed by the
political scientists of the schools because they have conceived their task
in too narrow a spirit. They have been slow in studying the manifestations
of human nature in politics because they have been saturated with sectarian
pride in legal and philosophical distinctions; or they have checked their
theories with their coats, and plunged into technical work. A body of
theory which interacts fruitfully with philosophy, law, and technology is
still very poorly developed. The formal sociological systems have been
sacked for “premises” but neglected for hypotheses. (Witness the
exploitation of the concept of “solidarity” in recent juridical theory.)
The task of the hour is the development of a realistic analysis of the
political in relation to the social process, and this depends upon the
invention of abstract conceptions and upon the prosecution of empirical
research. It is precisely this missing body of theory and practice which
Graham Wallas undertook to supply in England and which Charles E. Merriam
has been foremost in encouraging in the United States. It is the deficiency
which led Catlin to propose to substitute what I would call the
“functional” for the “institutional” definition of the field of political
science.[14] This necessarily implies a new respect for the possibilities
of using the ingenious suggestions to be found in the sociological
systematists, a new curiosity about diverse ways of approaching events, and
a new sympathy for parallels to institutional phenomena. Various
obscurities can be removed if we generalize our terms from the narrowly
institutional to the broadly functional plane. Terms like “statesman” and
“despot” were minted of the metal of political experience in communities
where the high road to power was governmental. It is true that in Athens it
was difficult to draw very sharp lines between governmental and other forms
of communal activity, on account of the intimate interlacing of all
institutional processes. Nevertheless, terms like “statesman” and “despot”
came to refer to forms of political activity in a narrowly institutional
sense, and such is their connotation today. But this connotation requires
generalization and revision. The road to power in our civilization is by no
means an exclusively governmental highway, for technical implements have
scattered authority and created an industrial feudality. The directors of
large corporations have to make decisions which are far more important for
the daily happiness of mankind than most of the decisions of governments.
Since government is so largely the agent of corporations, the government is
hardly master in its own house. The concept of the statesman has long
carried the implication that anyone who exercises social power outside the
government is in hot pursuit of an exclusively private advantage. Is this
any longer tenable? Is there not such a thing as the “institutionalization
of business” which arises when a given enterprise plans to operate
indefinitely and is thus forced to calculate its interests over long
periods of time? One of the major elements in this calculation is the
necessity of taking precautions against a withdrawal of favor on the part
of the community at large. This is the core of the political way of
thinking, and assimilates the policy of aggregations of private power to
that of the state which is guided by statesmen. It is timely, therefore, to
disentangle the concept of statesmanship from its historical association
with a single institution. Some of the many senses in which the
“politician” is used may be disposed of by drawing a clean distinction
between the “business man” and the “politician.” The business man may be
defined as one who pursues a private advantage with little regard for
conceptions of public right. The politician, in the here-selected “best”
sense of the word, uses persuasion on behalf of his conception of public
right. The politician pursues a genuine integration of interests in the
community; the business man is satisfied with a compromise among competing
private interests. The importance to political theory of the distinction
between integration and compromise has quite properly been stressed by Mary
L. Follett.[15] An integration of interests is the solution of a conflict
in such a way that neither “party” recognizes that so much has been won and
so much has been lost in the outcome. It represents a reinterpretation of
the situation in a sense which renders the old line of battle, the older
definition of interest, irrelevant. It is illustrated when a wage
controversy is disposed of by the decision to try to divide the advantages
of economies in production which may be brought about through new
co-operative procedures. The essence of the contrast between integration
and compromise is that between a synthesis and a trade. The politician is a
discoverer of inclusive advantages, and the business man is a higgler for
special advantages. Whether, as Adam Smith said, an invisible hand shapes a
social synthesis from the general pursuit of private profit, we do not have
to decide upon here. The contrast is between the conscious objectives of
the individuals concerned. It should be observed that politicians are not
limited to government and that business men are not limited to private
ventures. The “boss” is one form of the business man in government; the
director of a large private concern may be a politician in the sense used
here.[16] Having drawn a necessary distinction between the institutional
and the functional meaning of the “political,” we are in a position to
discuss the “type” concept. A “type” is a relation, and we may classify
types according to the relations chosen. Political types may be set up on a
three-fold basis: by specifying a nuclear relation, a co-relation, and a
developmental relation. What is meant by the choice of a nuclear relation
may be illustrated by the concept of the _Machtmensch_ as elaborated by
Eduard Spranger in his _Lebensformen_. Spranger, the distinguished
educational psychologist of the University of Berlin, has developed a
morphology of personality on an original basis. Dilthey, it will be
recalled, ushered in the modern era of typological inquiry in his famous
address before the Berlin Academy of Science.[17] Dilthey selected forms of
distinguished cultural activity and posited trait-constellations to fit. By
the process of abstracting from many concrete fields of achievement, he
finally built up his description of the sensual, heroic, and contemplative
types. Most eminent political figures naturally fall in the second
category. Spranger’s approach has much in common with that of Dilthey. He
proceeds on the hypothesis that all possible valuational dispositions are
shared by all men. By inspecting human culture, Spranger comes to the
conclusion that six distinctive cultural fields have materialized six
valuational dispositions in man. Thus the cultural activities having to do
with wealth production correspond to the economic value tendency. Science
corresponds to the theoretical, art to the aesthetic, religion to the
religious, the state to the power tendency, and society to the love
tendency. Spranger goes on to deduce the attributes of each personality in
which one value tendency predominates, and traces out the implications for
each field of activity of the predominance of this tendency. Thus the
political man is the one whose principal value is the pursuit of power. The
essence of power is understood to be the capacity, and usually the will, to
impose one’s own values as permanent or transitory motives upon others. The
political man in science tends to substitute rhetoric for truth and to use
ideas as forces (in the sense of Fouillée). In economics the political man
tends to reach his ends by diplomacy and negotiation, by intimidation or
violence, or by other political means. In art the political motive leads to
efforts to impress by flamboyant decorative display. In social life the
political motive, with its forcible urge toward self-aggrandizement, must
usually disguise itself in fostering the interests of some collectivity.
The god of the political man in religion is a god of might who requires
mighty men to serve him. In developing his image of the _homo politicus_,
Spranger is fully aware that his “pure” type seldom exists. The bold, frank
aggrandizement of self is rarely tolerated in society, for “the greatest
power manifests itself as collective power,” and the man who cherishes
power must achieve some measure of socialization or he is outlawed.
Although in principle no warm-hearted lover of his fellow-men, he must keep
his contempt to himself or feign expansive sentiments of group loyalty.
Indeed, self-deception is perhaps the rule, for the political personality
with a strong artistic component possesses a florid imagination which
dramatizes his personal history and subordinates all reality to ambitious
plans. It seems to me that Spranger does not sufficiently stress this
aspect of the political man, this large capacity for playing the impostor
upon himself and others. The gist of Spranger’s generalization of the
political man is schematically expressible in terms of
desire-method-success. The political man desires to control the motives of
others; his method may vary from violence to wheedling; his success in
securing recognition in some community must be tangible. These are the
nuclear relations which are essential to the type definition. Naturally
there are a number of necessary annotations to be made on this formula.
Sometimes the man with a thirst for power is unable to indulge and quench
his thirst, for his physical and social equipment may be too meager. And
how are we to appraise results? _Wer regiert denn?_ Power over others is
partially exercised by every living being; but in any hierarchy of the
powerful, some are on the lowest tier, if current social criteria be
applied. The bedridden, complaining wreck may be of no significance except
as a burden upon the care of a single nurse. Accepting the current values
of society, such an individual would be on the very bottom of the heap. And
yet, as Alfred Adler has so often insisted as to make the point peculiarly
his own, the hysteric may use his symptoms to win a high degree of
submission from his immediate environment, and this may be all that he
cares about. And some of those who give up the visible struggle for social
influence may retire to distil their bile into poisoned darts against the
pursuit of external pomp, and secure reputation and eminence by embodying
the results in sparkling rhetoric. The man who runs his village may become
more acutely aware that he does not run the county; and when he runs the
county, that he does not run the province; and so on up the ladder. His
appurtenances of power may be deferred to by those about him, yet his own
soul may smart with the shackles of a larger slavery. Thus, Spranger is
right in saying that, when one succeeds in penetrating the psychology of
the search for power, it becomes comprehensible that he whose nature is
bound up in the pursuit of authority is most keenly sensible to the limits
of his own freedom, and consequently suffers so keenly from nothing else in
life than his own subordination. Sensing this, the Stoics long ago
contended that the essence of liberty is the self-sufficiency which makes
no demands on others. Ascendancy involves dependence, a reciprocal
relationship which has been exhaustively described by Simmel.[18] But there
are some who combine easy success with indifference. These are no doubt
recruited from among those who have natural suggestive power to certain
groups--they possess the _charisma_ of Max Weber.[19] Allowing for these
annotations, the nucleus of Spranger’s thinking may be repeated. The _homo
politicus_ is characterized by the following relationship between desire,
method, and success: desire to control the motives of others; methods
varying from violence to wheedling; and success in securing communal
recognition. Spranger’s subtle comments in elaborating this simple, central
conception are among the most valuable in the literature of society.
Starting from bold simplifications, he succeeds in formulating pictures
which give richer meaning to the details of political life in all the
institutional processes of culture. Of course the literature of political
science is full of types which are described as Spranger has described the
political man. Michels and Merriam have listed the qualities which they
find in political leaders as a class. Conway has propounded his familiar
trichotomy: crowd-compellers, crowd-exponents, and crowd-representatives.
The possibility of defining types according to the reactionary,
conservative, liberal, or radical nature of the opinions championed has
often been discussed.[20] The scheme which will be employed in presenting
case materials stresses the capacity of political personalities to play
rôles which are either specialized or composite. Hobbes was a theorist and
an agitating pamphleteer; he is scarcely thinkable as an agitating orator
and organizer like Garrison. The “pure-type” agitator is represented by the
Old Testament prophets. Bodin combined a memorable contribution to
political theory with the arduous duties of a successful administrator.
Masaryk won his spurs in philosophy, sociology, cultural history,
agitation, and organization. Numberless are those who have shown excellent
organizing ability but who have been innocent of theoretical interests or
of agitating power. Some political assassins and tyrants have enjoyed the
use of violence as a _ding an sich_. The central point in deciding where to
place a political figure is to discover the form of activity which means
the most to him, and to modify the classification according to his success
in combining this with other rôles. Marx wanted to impress himself upon
mankind, certainly; and he craved the skill of a Lassalle, who could step
on the platform and dominate the turbulent emotions of the crowd. But more:
Marx wanted unreserved admiration for the products of his mind. He toiled
through years of isolation and poverty to make his assertions impregnable.
It was more important to attain theoretical completeness than to modify his
technique of social intercourse. Lassalle was the composite leader who
could woo an audience, organize activities all over Germany, write
excellent books, and win a place for himself in many circles of life. Marx
was the limited specialist who had to exact submission to the assertions of
his mind, come what may. Table I brings out the distinction between
specialized and composite types. TABLE I Political Rôles Administrator
Agitator Theorist _Specialized types_: Hoover * Old Testament prophets *
Marx * _Composite types_: Cobden * * Bodin * * Lenin * * * Other
combinations may be indicated. By adding a fourth column for those who
resort to violence, the schematic possibilities are enlarged. Most
theorists have been agitators in some measure, and it is often a matter of
taste whether emphasis is to be placed on one or the other feature of their
activity. Characteristically, the theorists have sought to appeal to the
sentiments of their contemporaries by pamphleteering or by the direction of
their speculative interests to immediate ends. Hobbes and Rousseau were
shut off from oratory and organization, but no small part of their writing
was intended to add fuel to the flames around them. Such men as Tom Paine
are able to strike off excellent formulations of political theory in the
heat of the fray. So far we have been discussing types which are
distinguished according to some nuclear relation among a few variables. The
characteristic mode of elaborating such a type is to imagine a host of
situations in which the type may be found, and to describe the resulting
picture. This is the elaboration of the preliminary sketch on the basis of
sophisticated experience with social life. For these impressionist methods
it is possible to substitute a more formal procedure. Having chosen a
central primary relation, is it possible to find, by reference to specific
instances, the relative frequency with which other traits are associated
with the nuclear ones. The starting-point may be either institutional or
functional, of course: those who are “judges,” “legislators,” or “bosses”
may be investigated, or those who are “statesmen,” “conciliators,” or
“administrators.” We have already had occasion to stress the point that
institutional definitions and functional definitions do not precisely
coincide, although either is a valid point of departure for research. The
result of the formal procedure outlined is to define “co-relational”
(correlational) types. A recent monograph by Fritz Giese may be used to
illustrate the possibilities.[21] This is a statistical treatment of the
data available in the German _Who’s Who_ of 1914. After Giese had
eliminated those who were included on account of their hereditary position
only, he had over ten thousand names left. He then distinguished
thirty-three varieties of activity, which were grouped into the five major
categories of art, social science, physical science, technology, and
practical life. He also classified his subjects into those who were honored
because of high-grade but essentially routine professional accomplishment,
those who enriched their field of activity by some creative contribution,
and those whose creativeness was unrestricted to their occupational field.
The three types were the skilful, the productive, and the freely creative.
Since the individual is not confined to one field of activity, the
following scheme of connections was built up to show the relation between
the person and the form of activity: (_a_) income source (the person
regards a particular field as a “bread and butter” occupation); (_b_)
successive activity field (the individual has deserted one field for
another); (_c_) field of simultaneous double-production; (_d_) recreational
activity. The relation of a person to a field of activity may show a
splitting of his personality or a compensatory function. When a politician
consciously decides to play golf or to collect pictures to relieve his mind
from exclusive political preoccupations, he is realizing a compensatory
value in this chosen field. When he finds himself impelled to try to live a
double life of scientific investigation and political propaganda, he is
exhibiting major, and contrasting, tendencies in his personality
(splitting). Sometimes the tie between fields of activity which the same
individual exploits is factual similarity, as when a politician becomes a
literary man to the extent of writing the political history of a period.
Sometimes the connection is a functional relationship, in that the same
biopsychic dispositions are to be assumed to operate. Thus, business
promotion and politics are intimately allied; sculpture and politics are
not. Giese’s detailed analysis showed that those engaged in politics reveal
the most heterogeneous affiliations and backgrounds. He raised the question
whether it was proper to think of a distinctive functional gift which would
characterize all those in political positions. When compared with art,
especially architecture, and engineering, the heterogeneity of the
political population is very evident. Indeed, the manifold connections of
politically active persons with other fields suggest that political life
depends upon very widely dispersed capacities of human nature, as does
teaching, history writing, and journalism. But there is one important
exception which is clearly brought out by the figures. This was a group of
politicians who rose from humble circumstances and devoted themselves
assiduously to organization and agitation. They offer a sharp contrast to
those for whom political life was a sport, hobby, or honorary distinction.
For the organizing and agitating group we may postulate a functional
disposition of some kind. The results show how the institutional approach
to a problem may eventuate in the isolation of one group which very
probably coincides closely with a functional group in other institutional
activities. Some of the agitating and organizing people weren’t yet in
politics at the time the 1914 census was made, and some of them were so
busy with private organizations that they never made the formal transition
to politics in the institutional sense. Another conclusion which bears on
the same point is Giese’s discovery that those who were freely creative in
politics had much more in common with those who were freely creative in
other fields than they had with those who were merely productive in their
own. Giese’s method of classifying his freely creative group is too
ambiguous to justify one in considering his conclusion of more than
suggestive value, but it is possible that he has isolated a functionally
homogeneous group which cuts across all institutional lines. Some of the
studies of political personalities have carried the quantitative method far
enough to substitute scales for rank orders at various points. Various
reaction tests have been used in the hope of discovering constant
differences among those who play different political rôles. Henry T. Moore
undertook to decide whether there is such a thing as a temperamental
predisposition toward conservatism or radicalism. He defined radicalism as
“an attitude favorable to sweeping changes in social institutions,
especially changes along lines opposed to class interest,” and classified
the opinion expressions of students according to the degree of radicalism
or conservatism indicated. He then applied a series of reaction tests to
the students and reached the following conclusion: Our evidence so far as
it goes points to some innate basis of difference. This basis does not seem
to be the level of general intelligence or of emotional stability, nor in
any general superiority or inferiority in learning or attention, but in
such specific factors as greater speed of reaction, ease of breaking
habits, readiness to make snap judgments, and independence in the face of
majority influence. The last of these differences is the one most clearly
indicated.... If one man is by nature more keyed up for speed and
flexibility, and the other is more designed for regularity of function, we
can hardly expect that government of the hyperkinetic by the phlegmatic and
for the phlegmatic can fail to develop periods of stress and strain.[22]
Floyd Allport classified students into typical and atypical members of the
community, discovering whether they took up prevalent or minority positions
on various political questions. He then applied a battery of tests to the
students and found that certain traits of the atypical (whether the
opinions were “radical” or “conservative”) proved to be homogeneous. Thus,
not only do the “extremes” meet, but also those who hold minority positions
along a hypothetical continuum of opinion distribution.[23] W. H. Cowley,
at the instigation of Charles E. Merriam and L. L. Thurstone, undertook to
compare leaders in chosen situations. He used twenty-eight tests of such
traits as aggressiveness, self-confidence, intelligence, emotional
stability, and speed of reaction. While his tests were differentiating
within the same group between leaders and followers, he reports that they
did not distinguish between leaders as a class and followers as a class. He
thus felt justified in denying that leadership is a universal trait of
particular persons, and criticized efforts to itemize “traits of
leadership.”[24] Further applications of the blanket-test technique are
under way.[25] Gilbert J. Rich opened out a new field of investigation when
he studied certain complex physiological and biochemical variables among
leaders and followers. He measured the hydrogen-ion concentration of the
saliva, the acidity of the urine, alkali reserve of the blood, and
creatinine excretion of the urine. The least excitable subjects showed the
most acid saliva and the most acid urine. The rating of the subjects was
open to criticism, and was obviously much less refined than the biochemical
techniques employed.[26] The types which we have just been considering show
more than a cross-sectional picture of the adult personality. They have
made the transition from itemizing the instantaneous pictures to the
selection of features of the immediate picture which show how the type has
come to be. They are thus more than co-relational types; they have made
some progress toward developmental types. When Giese found the group of
political personalities of humble origin and persistent organizing and
agitating activity, he postulated a common dynamic of development, a
homogeneous functional disposition toward this sort of thing. Moore wanted
to extricate the formative influence of temperamental reactive sets, and
the other investigators have likewise sought to ascertain developmental
factors in the production of the adult picture of traits and interests.
Almost every nuclear and co-relational type carries developmental
implications. The terms which are used to characterize motives have
dynamic, genetic, formative coronas of meaning which, vaguely though they
may be sketched, are emphatically present. When Michels says that a
“Catonian strength of conviction” is one mark of the political leader, it
is implied that if one pushed his inquiry into the adolescence, childhood,
and even infancy of the individual that this ruling characteristic would be
visible. Of course, Michels does not himself develop these implications; it
is doubtful if he has tried to find the early analogues of the trait which
he called “Cantonian strength of conviction” on the adult level. But the
dynamic penumbra of the term can lead empirical investigators to scrutinize
the behavior of children from a new point of view. Many of the terms which
are used to describe adult traits are no doubt unpredictable from the less
differentiated traits of infancy, childhood, and youth. But the growth of
full-blown developmental types requires the sifting and refinement of terms
until they are adequate to the description of sequences of growth.
Developmental types will describe a set of terminal, adult reactions, and
relate them to those critical experiences in the antecedent life of the
individual which dispose him to set up such a mode of dealing with the
world. Developmental types will not only include the subjective account of
the history of the personality but will embrace the objective factors which
were co-operating to produce the patterns described. The notion of a
developmental type may be illustrated by examining the place which is
assigned to the political man in the chief modern characterological
systems. Hans Apfelbach has used five dimensions for the description of
characters. Each one is described as a gamut between two polar opposites,
and a sixth pair of polar opposites is introduced into the system. The
scheme is indicated in Table II. This gives a formal range of sixty-four
types of character formation without allowing for subtle variations in
quantity. The first combination which Apfelbach specifies is, symbolically,
ABCDEF. This is a very masculine, sadistic, hyperemotional, moral,
intellectually keen, and upright character. Among men this is the type of
the organizers, politicians, the great preachers, generals, dictators, and
the like. Among women, this is the type of the organizer of every
description, especially the political or patriotic enthusiast, like Joan of
Arc. It should be observed that the terms “masculine” and “feminine” are
not used in a mutually exclusive sense. Carrying on the tradition of
Weininger and Fliess, these terms are employed to designate traits which
may be present in different proportions in the same person.[27] TABLE II
Dimension Polar Elements Sexuality Masculine A Feminine a Psychomotility
Psychosadistic B Psychomasochistic b Emotionality Hyperemotional C
Hypo-emotional c Morality Moral D Immoral d Intellectuality Superior E
(specialized) Inferior e Accessory elements Altruistic F Egotistic f The
political man appears in Jung’s system at various intersections of his
underlying scheme. The essential cleavage in Jung’s classification is
between those whose psychic energy (libido) flows outward toward objects
(extraversion) and those whose libido flows inward (introversion). The
former enter into full affective relations with the world around; the
latter are mainly focused on their private interpretations of experience.
In addition to these fundamental dynamic relationships, Jung sub-classifies
with reference to our fundamental psychological functions: thinking,
feeling, sensation, intuition. These functions may operate against one
another consciously or unconsciously. So, when thinking predominates in
consciousness, feeling is repressed; and the reverse. Intuition is
understood to be a kind of instinctive comprehension, a function peculiarly
dependent upon the unconscious. According to the predominance of one or
another of these basic functions, Jung constructs four special types of
extraversion and introversion. Certain conspicuous political types belong
to Jung’s category of extraverted thinkers. These individuals try to bring
their whole life-activity into relation with intellectual conclusions,
which in the last resort are always oriented by objective data, whether
objective facts or generally valid ideas. By his formula are good and evil
measured: all is wrong that contradicts it, and all is right that
corresponds to it; all is accidental that is neutral toward it. Just as the
extraverted thinking type subordinates himself to his formula, he seeks to
subordinate all others to it, as a manifestation of a universal
inspiration. His moral code forbids him to tolerate exceptions, and he
would bend all to suit the scheme. “One really should” or “one must” figure
largely in his program. If the formula is wide enough, Jung remarks that
the extraverted thinker may figure as a reformer, a ventilator of public
wrongs, and a propagandist. But the more rigid his formula, the more likely
he is to grow into a grumbler, a crafty reasoner, and a self-righteous
critic. Many politicians answer to the general description which Jung gives
of the extraverted, intuitive type. The intuitive is unattracted by the
established values; he is drawn to the possible rather than to the actual.
He seizes hold of new objects and ways of doing things with eager
intensity, only to abandon them cold-bloodedly, when their implications
become obvious. The irresistible magnet of the rising sun fires his
imagination and guides his activity. For the risen sun and the setting sun
there is no enthusiasm, no special hostility, only indifference. Here is
the facile promoter, who senses the dawning future and speeds from project
to project, bored with routine and detail after projects have been accepted
and the blueprints finished.[28] The types of Apfelbach and Jung are based
upon a small number of reactive mechanisms which are supposed to influence
in different degree the growth of the personality. These “mechanism” types
may contain many useful leads, but the methodological problem in isolating
these hypothetical mechanisms is unsettled. A “stable” reaction in
adulthood may be far from stable when viewed at successive growth periods.
These “mechanism” types seem to encourage endless classificatory ventures
at the expense of detailed reporting of life-histories. For reasons which
have been set forth, subjective histories are of the greatest importance to
social science; and any excessive interest in “mechanism” which minimizes
the importance of elaborate individual records is to be deplored. Jung and
Apfelbach say very little about the principal epochs of individual
development, and distract attention from the career as a whole, as this
career is structuralized in successive phases. Before outlining our
developmental conception of the _homo politicus_, we return to the work of
Freud, for his method has enabled him to keep close to the subjective
sequence and to use classificatory terms in relation to the successive
phases of impulse organization in the developing personality. CHAPTER V
THEORIES OF PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT It will be remembered that Freud’s
search for signs of the traumatic situation led him to uncover the
contemporaneous functioning of all sorts of unconscious motivations in both
the diseased and the healthy personality. The quest led him farther. Freud
felt impelled to set up a schematic representation of the typical genetic
development of the human personality. This grew out of the comparative
study of very thoroughly analyzed cases and was rooted in empirical
observation. Freud has always kept close to his data; and no matter how far
his imagination soared, actual clinical experience was the starting-place
and the landing-field for the flight. The energy of a developed personality
can be treated as dispersed in three directions: in the affirmative
expression of socialized impulses, in unsocialized impulses, and in the
maintenance of resistance charges against unsocialized impulses. The
original forms of energy expression which are available to the infant are
in many ways incompatible with the demands of human intercourse. The infant
must surrender many primitive forms of gratification, if he is to be loved,
and to avoid discomfort and pain. He must build up a self which represents
the demands of society. The surrounding adults coerce and wheedle him into
taking their commands for his own laws. The conscience is the introjected
environment which imposes limitations upon the antisocial impulses. As the
infant and child grows, he avoids conflicts with the environment by
removing the locus of the conflict within himself, and plays nurse, mother,
and father to himself. He learns to control his own excretions and to
chasten his own murderous rages. He achieves individuality of emphasis by
accepting the socialization of his major impulses. But this incorporation
of the requirements of the social order into the personality does not
proceed smoothly, nor does it abolish the primitive psychological
structures which have been developed and apparently discarded at each step
of the way toward adulthood. Much of the energy of the personality is spent
in blocking the entry of the unadjusted impulses of the self into
consciousness and into overt expression. Careful scrutiny of individual
behavior over a twenty-four-hour period strikingly shows the extent to
which the personality is controlled by very elementary psychological
structures. Moments of fatigue, moments of deprivation, moments of
irresponsible reverie, all betray the presence of tendencies which are
unassimilated to the world of adult reality. Freud began to build up his
conception of personality development by the gradual universalization of
phenomena which he encountered in actual clinical work, and which he first
described in relatively modest and restricted terms. He began his original
psychological contributions by stressing the rôle of sexuality in the
etiology of certain neuroses. He found that all sorts of pathological
conditions and developmental abnormalities were apparently due to some
shortcoming in sexual integration. This emphasis upon sexual adjustment as
a necessary prerequisite of healthy adulthood met with so much opposition
that Freud’s energies were taken up with defending and elaborating his
position. Now the sexual function is essentially a species function and
stresses the biological uniformities of man at the expense of
individuality. A topic like “personality development” requires a
comprehensive theory of individuality, and this Freud did not develop until
the split with Adler, who insisted upon the rôle of a drive toward
individualization and who denied that the much neglected “ego instincts” of
Freud were enough to support a comprehensive theory. The story of Freud’s
neurosis-sexuality-personality theories begins with his earliest
independent psychological contributions. Many clinicians before Freud had
been abundantly impressed by the frequency with which sexual troubles
seemed to beget “nervous” troubles. In his hypnotic work, Freud was
especially struck by the frequency with which specifically sexual episodes
were involved in the pathogenic experiences. Freud now proceeded to
generalize about the sexual element in neurosis, and announced that
neurosis was a function of deviated sexual life. Freud armed in defense of
his generalization with two new weapons. The first was his experience in
letting his patients talk it out and in treating most of their productions
as symbolic of something else. He acquired facility in interpreting what
other people took literally as being a disguised representation of
something else. So, when Freud was confronted with cases which were not
manifestly sexual, he felt able to treat the non-sexual elements as
symbolic representations of sexuality and to justify himself by claiming
that his more intensive research procedure supplied him with the sustaining
facts. Needless to say, those who had not themselves experienced the shift
in standpoint which Freud had achieved were alienated by his seeming
arbitrariness. Freud’s second reliance was on an inclusive theory of
sexuality. Undaunted by the ridicule heaped upon his sexual theory of the
neurosis, he carried the war into enemy territory by extending the whole
concept of sexuality backward from puberty through the life of the growing
child to infancy. At first glance this might appear to be a cheap,
dialectical trick to confound his critics by telling them that “sex” meant
all the things they had called by other names. Freud’s _Three Contributions
to Sexual Theory_ was saved from being a rhetorical quibble by the
virtuosity of his imagination and by the apparent definiteness of the
connections which he traced between the various features of childhood
development and the patterns of healthy and perverse adult sexuality.
Careful analysis of biologically efficacious intercourse shows that it is a
complex integration of many acts. It involves a partner of the opposite
sex. Its essential feature is an increasing tension until the point of
explosive release, followed by perfect relaxation. The male must be
sadistic enough to run the risk of hurting the female by injecting the
penis in the vagina. The participants must be willing to indulge in all
sorts of preliminary play for the sake of heightening the critical tension,
involving tongue, lips, nipples, and all the erogenous zones of the body.
Comparing the details of this completed pattern of the unambiguously sexual
act with the earlier activities of the infant and child, Freud drew a host
of analogies. Children indulge in play in sexual postures, exhibit their
sexual parts to one another, and take pleasure in sexual peeping; but Freud
carried his analysis of the sexuality of children much farther. Child
specialists had often remarked that the nursing male child frequently
exhibits the phenomenon of an erect penis and a desire to suckle for some
time after hunger contractions cease. The general pattern of the sequence
hunger-nursing-peaceful relaxation follows the characteristic curve of the
sexual act. Freud suggested that inspection of the nursing pattern reveals
that the pleasure derived by the child goes far beyond immediate biological
necessities. This excess gratification Freud treats as a primitive
outcropping of the sexual instinct, which need not be supposed to appear
suddenly with the maturation of the glandular apparatus, but may be thought
of as growing like the usual biological process by integrating partial
components into one complex synthesis. Sexual differentiation arises
gradually, for at first distinctions of sex are not recognized by the
child. The human animal is bisexual, a concept which Freud took over with
some reservations from Wilhelm Fliess. Distinctions are achieved within the
world of family experience. The child is attracted sexually toward the
parent of the opposite sex but is too weak to compete for the loved object.
Thus the father, who is too mighty to be killed and put out of the way, is
copied by the son, who seeks to absorb his power into his own personality.
The repression of the father-hostility, mother-love sentiments produces the
Oedipus complex. The child achieves a socialized self by playing the rôle
of the father in relation to his own impulses. The “latency period” arises
from four to six, according to Freud, when the early sexual struggle
against the father is given up. The fear of the father (the “castration
complex”) leads to the passing of the Oedipus phase of growth. Now Freud
specified a variety of difficulties which arise whenever there is failure
to achieve successful integration of the partial components of the sexual
instinct. He connected homosexuality, psychological frigidity and
impotence, exhibitionism, sadism, masochism, voyeurism, and a variety of
other abnormalities with definite failures in integration. Sometimes the
individual becomes obsessed by ideas which have a disguised sexual meaning,
and sometimes he indulges in physical symptoms which possess a similar
unconscious significance. The first is an obsessional neurosis, and the
second is hysteria. The stress which Freud laid upon the sexuality of the
child, and upon socialization by intimidation, broke with revolutionary
violence in a culture which swaddled its infants in sentimentality. The
child of the poets was like this: Not in entire forgetfulness, And not in
utter nakedness, But trailing clouds of glory we do come From God, who is
our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! --William Wordsworth The
child of the Freudians was like this: The child, at one time or another in
its life, is, in a sense, auto-erotic, narcissistic, exhibitionistic,
inclined to play the rôle of “Jack the Peeper,” incestuous, patricidal, or
matricidal, homosexual, fetichistic, masochistic and sadistic [G. V.
Hamilton, _An Introduction to Objective Psychopathology_, p. 301]. As early
as 1898 Freud had begun to elaborate the idea that sexuality begins at
birth. But as late as 1900, when the _Interpretation of Dreams_ appeared,
he wrote in a footnote that “childhood knows nothing, as yet, of sexual
desire.” With the elaboration of his sexual theory, Freud became less
preoccupied in defending himself against his psychiatric colleagues than in
perfecting defenses against his friends. Freud began to build up a circle
in 1903. Of the original group, Alfred Adler and Wilhelm Stekel were the
two who were destined to achieve the most subsequent attention. By 1906
Ferenczi of Budapest and the Zürich contingent--the eminent Bleuler and his
assistants--became cordial and interested. In 1908 a conference was held at
Salzburg, and in 1909 G. Stanley Hall invited Freud to lecture at Clark
University. In 1910 an international society was organized at Nuremberg,
and the institutionalization of the psychoanalytic trend was well launched.
The first cleavage came about when Freud and Adler finally broke in 1911.
In and out of season Adler stressed the “masculine protest,” the drive of
the human being to master every situation in which he finds himself. The
individual specializes in overcoming his short stature, his enuresis, his
ugliness, and his other defects; his principal drive is to differentiate
himself rather than to perform his species function. Adler represented
several other currents of dissent from Freud. Freud had felt compelled to
stress the antisocial drives of human nature, and Adler held a less
Hobbesian view. The “social-feeling” component of human nature was accorded
a place in the Adlerian system; and when the “socially useful” norms of
individual adjustment were violated by the individual, “inferiority
feelings” ensued. Therapy consisted in bringing this interpretation home to
the maladapted person, leading him to relinquish his socially useless means
of mastery and to allow his “social feelings” to express themselves more
freely. Adler’s therapy showed that he represented a pedagogical-ethical
reaction against Freud’s denial of the training function of the scientific
analyst. Freud said repeatedly that the business of the analyst is to
expose the patient to himself, and to leave it to the patient to work out
his particular modes of adaptation to reality. Adler wants to give the
patient a general scheme of thinking and to let him have some practice in
indulging the “social feelings” of his nature. Adler likewise represented a
protest against the complexities of Freud’s style of thought. The
distinction can be drawn best, perhaps, by saying that Freud proceeded from
symptoms to meanings, and from meanings to other meanings, and from other
meanings to conditions. The analysis consists in uncovering lifelong chains
of meaning attached to particular objects. Janet never achieved this
process, and Adler short-circuited it. Adler begins with the symptom and
proceeds as directly as possible to the condition. His books abound in
succinct characterizations of cases, and “symbolic” material is at a
minimum. Employing his orienting principle, he directs attention to a
sympathetic reconstruction of the social relationships of the patient and
selects those problems which the individual has tried to master by
antisocial or personally crippling devices. The “common-sense” simplicity
of Adler’s observations commends his doctrines in circles which are
repelled by the alien terminology and the elaborate interpretative
machinery of Freud. Under the perpetual hammering of Adler, Freud undertook
to expand upon his sketchy theory of the ego. At first Freud was inclined
to say that Adler had nothing to add because he had himself spoken of the
ego instincts as well as the sexual instincts. Such a solution was hardly
satisfying, and the self did not find a suitable resting-place in Freud’s
theoretical system until the rôle of narcissism (love of the self) was
taken up and set forth at length. This “saved” the sexual theory, and it
made the analysis of ego processes a problem of major interest to
psychoanalysis. Stress was laid upon the fact that when the individual’s
libido flows outward toward objects, and when obstacles or deprivations are
imposed upon this outward reaching, the libido turns back upon the self.
This excessive libidinization of the self rendered subsequent adjustment to
reality very difficult, and many personality deformations and formations
are traceable to this developmental warp. The break between Freud and Jung
in 1913 had less immediate importance for personality theory than the
previous schism. Like Adler, Jung undertook to subordinate the rôle of
sexuality; but Jung accomplished his purpose, less by postulating
concurrent ego-instincts than by invoking an inclusive energy concept which
would embrace sexuality, ego-drives, and many other accessory
manifestations. Jung, paralleling Adler again, came to the rescue of human
nature, postulating a moral trend in the unconscious. And Jung, like Adler,
frankly advises and trains his patients. Jung’s two distinctive lines of
innovation were concerned with dream interpretations and ethnological
applications. Jung expanded dream interpretations for the sake of laying
bare the “racial unconscious.” Using saga material and dream material, Jung
undertook to deflate the claims of sexuality and to demonstrate the limited
applicability of the Oedipus idea. Freud was assailed at a vital spot and
rallied to defend himself in _Totem and Taboo_. He scored a point over
Jung, who had relied on saga material, by drawing heavily on the
ethnological summaries of Frazer in the _Golden Bough_ to justify the
universality of the Oedipus complex. This was Freud’s first contribution to
systematic social theory, and will come up for consideration in that
connection. From the standpoint of personality theory, perhaps the most
valuable passages are those which describe the infant’s overvaluation of
thought--the “omnipotence of thought,” as it was phrased by a patient. Some
years later Jung, now on his own for some time, devised his classification
of personality types and vastly increased popular and technical interest in
the subject. This in turn has stimulated the group around Freud to develop
a formal psychoanalytic characterology. In this task they were assisted by
some early communications of Freud, wherein he took note of some of the
character types met with in his practice. This literature will be referred
to in connection with the case histories which are to be discussed
immediately. The other schisms between Freud and his pupils (involving
Stekel and Rank) have been less significant for personality theory thus
far, although Rank’s sociological interests may germinate now that he is
away from the immediate presence of the master. Freud, who had obstinately
clung to the phraseology of sex, rejecting every proposal for an
overmastering set of terms which would carry less restricted connotations,
executed a brilliant maneuver in 1926 and proposed to regard human activity
as manifestations of two principles, the life and the death instincts. Life
consists in accumulation and the release of tension; and, generalizing this
phenomenon, we have the life and death drives.[29] Suppose we put aside
further exposition of the analytical personality theories, and in the light
of these conceptions set up a general formula which describes the
developmental history of the political man. The most general formula would
employ three terms. The first component, _p_, stands for the private
motives of the individual as they are nurtured and organized in relation to
the family constellation and the early self. We shall have occasion to see
that primitive psychological structures continue to function within the
personality long after the epochs of infancy and childhood have been
chronologically left behind. The prominence of hate in politics suggests
that we may find that the most important private motive is a repressed and
powerful hatred of authority, a hatred which has come to partial expression
and repression in relation to the father, at least in patrilineal society,
where the male combines the function of biological progenitor and
sociological father. The second term, _d_, in such a formula describes the
displacement of private motives from family objects to public objects. The
repressed father-hatred may be turned against kings or capitalists, which
are social objects playing a rôle before and within the community.
Harmonious relations with the father of the family may actually depend upon
the successful deflection of hatred from private to public objects. The
third symbol, _r_, signifies the rationalization of the displacement in
terms of public interests. The merciless exploitation of the toolless
proletariat by the capitalists may be the rational justification of the
attitude taken up by the individual toward capitalism. The most general
formula which expresses the developmental facts about the fully developed
political man reads thus: _p_ } _d_ } _r_ = _P_, where _p_ equals private
motives; _d_ equals displacement onto a public object; _r_ equals
rationalization in terms of public interest; _P_ equals the political man;
and } equals transformed into. The _p_ is shared by the political man with
every human being. Differentiation rises first in the displacement of
affects on to public objects, and in the molding of the life in such a way
as to give an opportunity for the expression of these affects. The
non-political man may feel himself aggrieved against a brother and against
every fellow-worker with whom he comes in contact. His mind may be taken up
with personal fantasies of love or hate for specific people, and his
ideological world (his attitudes toward the state, the church, the destiny
of man) may be very poorly elaborated. He is a fly in the meshes of his
immediate environment, and his struggles are fought in terms of the world
of face-to-face reality. When such a man displaces his affects upon a
person who happens to be a public object, this does not make him a
political man. Impulsively killing a king who happens to insult one’s
sister does not make a politician of the regicide; there must be a
secondary elaboration of the displacement in terms of general interest. It
is the rationalization which finally transmutes the operation from the
plane of private to the plane of public acts. Indeed, the private motives
may be entirely lost from the consciousness of the political man, and he
may succeed in achieving a high degree of objective validation for his
point of view. In the “ideal” case this has gone so far that the private
motives which led to the original commitment are of feeble current
importance. Upon what does the displacement and the rationalization depend?
No doubt the general answer is that the selection of certain public objects
depends upon the “historical” accident of the patterns offered by the
personal environment of the individual at critical phases of growth. It is
safe to predict that more politicians rise from families with political
traditions than without them. But this very broad conclusion requires no
technique of intensive investigation of individual instances to support it.
If the psychopathological approach to the individual is worth the trouble,
it must disclose a variety of relatively novel circumstances which dispose
individuals to adopt, reject, or modify the patterns of act and phrase
which are offered in the environment. Provisionally, we may assume that the
puberty phase of biological growth, which coincides with increasing social
demands, may be the period in which the attitudes toward the invisible
environment most rapidly crystallize. The details may be more hopefully
dealt with if somewhat homogeneous groups of politicians are investigated
for the purpose of bringing out significant differences in their
developmental history. The agitators are the first to whom special
attention will be paid. CHAPTER VI POLITICAL AGITATORS The essential mark
of the agitator is the high value which he places on the emotional response
of the public. Whether he attacks or defends social institutions is a
secondary matter. The agitator has come by his name honestly, for he is
enough agitated about public policy to communicate his excitement to those
about him. He idealizes the magnitude of the desirable social changes which
are capable of being produced by a specific line of social action. From the
standpoint of the administrative mind, we may say that an agitator is one
who exaggerates the difference between one rather desirable social policy
and another, much as the lover, according to Shaw, is one who grossly
exaggerates the difference between one woman and another. Whether agitators
behave like physicians or surgeons, as Munro would have it, they are united
in expecting much good to come from single acts of innovation. The agitator
easily infers that he who disagrees with him is in communion with the
devil, and that opponents show bad faith or timidity. Agitators are
notoriously contentious and undisciplined; many reforming ships are manned
by mutineers. The agitator is willing to subordinate personal
considerations to the superior claims of principle. Children may suffer
while father and mother battle for the “cause.” But the righteous will not
cleave to their families when the field is ripe for the harvest. Ever on
the alert for pernicious intrusions of private interest into public
affairs, the agitator sees “unworthy” motives where others see the just
claims of friendship. Believing in direct, emotional responses from the
public, the agitator trusts in mass appeals and general principles. Many of
his kind live to shout and write. Their consciences trouble them unless
they have periodic orgies of moral fervor. Relying upon the magic of
rhetoric, they conjure away obstacles with the ritualistic repetition of
principles. They become frustrated and confused in the tangled mass of
technical detail upon which successful administration depends. Agitators of
the “pure” type, when landed in responsible posts, long to desert the
official swivel for the roving freedom of the platform and the press. They
glorify men of outspoken zeal, men who harry the dragons and stir the
public conscience by exhortation, reiteration, and vituperation. The first
life-history to be excerpted here is that of Mr. A. This is no
“institutional” case. Mr. A is aware of no mental pathology, and has never
consulted a neurologist, psychiatrist, or “nerve doctor.” He is one of
those who at first reluctantly, then whole-heartedly, allowed himself to be
studied with the same thoroughness, intimacy, and detachment with which an
obviously unstable person would be scrutinized. Mr. A at once saw the
advantage for the progress of science of an accumulation of life-histories
taken from men who regard themselves as perfectly normal, since so much of
our case material is from the ill. A’s claim to a place among the agitators
is not open to question. He was compelled to resign his position when the
United States went into the World War on account of the tenacity with which
he argued the pacifist position. He had previously run for Congress on the
socialist ticket. Suspected of unorthodoxy in the theological school, he
steadily became more radical in his views, and was expelled from one
denomination. Previously he had been the secretary and principal spokesman
for a civic reform organization which had vigorously attacked corruption in
municipal affairs. He gradually became convinced that “white collar
reforms” were futile as long as the capitalistic system prevailed in this
country, and presently threw his energy into the propaganda of labor
organization and socialism. A leading characteristic as moralist,
socialist, and pacifist has been his truculence in public on behalf of his
cause. Mr. A speaks rapidly, with great fervor and earnestness, and his
discourse is studded with abusive epithets, sarcastic jibes, and cutting
insinuations. He confesses that he has taken an unmistakable pleasure in
“rubbing the fur the wrong way.” He enjoyed nothing better than accepting
invitations to lecture on social and economic subjects before conservative
audiences, and scandalizing them by declaring that “organized business and
organized crime are hard to distinguish from one another,” “corruption and
capitalism are one and inseparable,” and “capitalism depends on markets,
markets ultimately depend on force, and force means war.” Thus war was the
logical result of the capitalistic system. Mr. A prides himself on his
ability to cut holes in the logical fabric spun by conspicuous men. He has
engaged prominent preachers of the gospel in correspondence, arguing that
something in their writings leads logically to the conclusion that any war,
not excepting the last one, is wrong, and that they should confess this
openly, declaring their sorrow for having been infected with un-Christian
war-hysteria. He believes that right reason is the hope of mankind, and the
name of science is exalted in his mind. He was glad to lay his own
life-story on the altar of science, and in the name of science to endure
the embarrassment of recalling private facts which most of us try to
forget. Mr. A’s later convictions have been held with enough intensity to
redefine many of his earlier opinions. Thus his pacifism brought him into
sharp opposition to the government, which resented his expression of the
truth as he understood it. Mr. A warmly champions the cause of the
individual against official interference in matters of taste and
conscience, and has modified his early enthusiasm for prohibition. Although
censorious, accusatory, didactic, and defiant in public address, he is
cordial and winning in those face-to-face situations where he is unaware of
hostility. His eyes twinkle with good humor, and he is gentle, responsive,
and anxious to impress. His speech and gestures are quick, and his manner
is alert and often tense. A’s physique inclines toward the asthenic end of
a hypothetical pyknic-asthenic scale, such as Wertheimer and Hesketh have
constructed from Kretschmer’s observations on physical types.[30] He is
noticeably lean, but strikes the impressionistic observer as being toward
neither the tall nor the short end of the scale. The legs are somewhat
longer than the length of the body warrants, and the bony structures of
shoulder, hip, knee, and ankle are prominent. The thin face is rather
delicately molded, and is given added dignity and distinction by a neat Van
Dyke beard. The chest is flat, and the upper ribs fall inward. His erect
carriage seems to be a compensation against a predilection toward a
scholarly stoop. In middle and later middle life he has been bothered by
gastro-intestinal disorders. The second son of an impecunious village
parson, he grew up in straitened circumstances with a brother somewhat his
senior. The mother died when A’s youngest sister was born, and the children
were cared for by the father and a succession of elderly housekeepers who
left faint memories behind them. A and his brother went to an old-fashioned
ungraded school, entering at the same time in spite of their disparity in
years, so the younger one would not be left alone in the house. From a very
early age A had a certain sense of hostility toward his brother, and a
feeling of his own superiority. For a reason that is not clear, the school
children teased his brother as the preacher’s son, but left him alone. A
was more agile than his brother, and climbed trees and wriggled into tight
places with ease. He prided himself in doing things which his brother
hesitated to try, and seems to have awed him somewhat, for he remembers
having heard his brother tell another schoolboy to let A alone, “because
when he gets mad, he can lick me.” The older boy was held responsible by
the father for pranks which were really joint enterprises. On one
representative occasion, the father left the house to make a call, ordering
the boys to stay indoors. They decided to go out, and their father, who
discovered footprints in the snow outside the door, gave the older boy a
sound whipping, but let A off scot-free. The younger son was unquestionably
the favorite, and his father would frequently chide the older boy for being
a dullard, and point with pride to the ease with which A could get his
lessons. Indeed, A got on famously at school. One of his teachers, who
chanced to be a college man, told his father that A was brilliant and
promising. A also remembers a glow of elation when a relative wrote to say
that arrangements must be made for him to have a college education, since
he had shown that he could be a worthy successor to his uncle. This uncle
was a famous professor, who had written well-known philosophical books, and
remained a great hero in the eyes of the family. The father slept in the
same bed with his two sons until they were well along in the teens. For as
long as he can remember, A found the touch of his father very pleasant,
though the touch of his brother was repugnant. A’s strong hostility against
his brother, based on their rivalry for the affections of the father,
received a certain justification in the critical episode which occurred as
his older brother, who matured early, approached puberty and began to have
emissions. The preacher was horrified, for he took this as a sign of
masturbation, and masturbation was sinful and dangerous.[31] When he
thought that A was sound asleep, he would gravely lecture the older boy on
the evil consequences of self-abuse. Sometimes the son would wake up in the
morning and discover that an emission had taken place during the night. In
a hushed and contrite whisper he would say to his father, “I’ve gone and
done it again!” at which the parent would exclaim reproachfully, “Oh!” The
boy was presently taken to a physician who seems to have modified the
excitement of the father and in some measure to have reassured the son that
his manhood was not irreparably lost. Dark rumors about self-abuse were
whispered through the village from time to time. The neighborhood idiot was
supposed to have brought idiocy upon himself by self-abuse, and a bachelor
in the village who went insane was supposed to have suffered from the same
vice. A listened to the rumors and to the nocturnal dialogues between his
father and elder brother, and gathered that ominous things were connected
with handling one’s self. He felt ashamed of his brother, who brought so
much suffering on his father, and silently determined never to be a
disappointment to his father. The tag end of a biblical passage about
bringing the gray hairs of his father to the grave in shame ran through his
mind, and he resolved never to repeat his brother’s weaknesses. A’s older
brother surprised everybody about this time by suddenly changing from a
phlegmatic lad into a fervent religious enthusiast. He became converted
under dramatic circumstances and joined the church, thus propitiating the
unknown powers which might visit horrible punishment upon him for his
private iniquities. In this he was running true to the adolescent pattern.
Adolescence is notoriously the time when the temptations of the “flesh”
multiply and when many youths, oppressed by their “animal” impulses, seek
to escape from the burden of guilt by adopting the ceremonial patterns
provided in the religious observances of society. Adolescence is so often a
period of high ideals, which are typically reaction formations to “low
desires,” that adolescence is the happy hunting ground for proselyters of
every breed. When A’s own emissions began, he was terribly upset by worry
and self-accusation. About fifteen he got an emission after a boy had
fooled with his genitalia, thinking he was asleep. He was taut with sinful
pleasure while the seduction was taking place, which added to his guilty
feelings. This was the time when he, too, exhibited a fervent interest in
the church. He quickly “overcame” masturbation, but until late in life
there was always a “fight” to overcome his “wayward” impulses and his
erotic imaginings. In his dreams he often saw roosters and hens performing
sexual acts in the barnyard of his old home, and the reappearance of the
old scenes is indicative of his early sexual curiosity. Many more of his
dreams used common sexual language. Sometimes he was making his way across
a valley of snakes, or he was naked and walking toward a goal he could
never quite make out. The nude female figure was usually repressed, though
it occasionally came through. He was taken off the farm, on which his
father eked out a supplement to his meager salary, by an aunt, who insisted
that the boy must have better school facilities. This aunt had always taken
a great interest in this promising motherless nephew, and tried to fill his
life with the affection which would have been his had his mother lived. As
a small boy he had often come on short visits to his aunt. He had slept in
the same bed with her, and his lively curiosity about the female figure was
partly satisfied by glimpses of his aunt at the morning bath. The aunt had
a family with all of whose members he was on good terms, and he was
supremely happy to live in town with them. Out on the farm he had been
undernourished, but here he was filled out and flourished. He took an
active part in the church and in the social activities of the neighborhood.
The early intellectual promise which A had displayed was no mere flash in
the pan. He was one of the brilliant students in high school, and passed
his college-entrance examinations with such distinction that he entered
college with a mild intellectual halo. He resolved to make good
scholastically, and this he did, finishing the four years at a first-rate
institution at the top of his class. As time passed, he began to dissent
from many of the dogmas of his immediate social environment. During
high-school days he had been assigned to act the devil’s advocate and
defend the free-trade side in a tariff debate. The more he read and thought
about it, the more convinced he was that the free-trade position was sound.
His relatives without exception were high-tariff Republicans, and his
arguments were countered with sentimental rather than rational appeals. A’s
conversion to free trade led him to come out for the Democratic candidate
for the presidency. He remembers that the first time he announced this
heresy one of his aunts violently pushed her chair away from the table,
exclaiming in vexed, incredulous, and reproachful tones, “And to think that
my own sister’s son could say such a thing!” His college course in biology
converted him to evolution, and he argued this out at great length with one
of his uncles, who was a traditionally minded preacher. A began to develop
a feeling that intellectual brilliance meant dissenting from the
convictions of middle-class people like his own relatives. So far his
nonconformity was strictly confined to a few theories. He was a member of
the prayer-meeting group in college, and his fraternity consisted mainly of
embryo doctors of theology who scrupulously upheld a rigorous code of
personal abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, strong language, and women. One
of the young men who had the temerity to enter the house with a lighted
cigarette had it gently but firmly removed from his lips. It was in college
that A took part in his first law-enforcement drive. The state prohibition
law was poorly observed, as A had good reason to know, since he had a
collection route which took him to “drug stores” and other equivocal
establishments about town. “Tea” was openly ordered at the bar and drunk on
the premises. A conceived the idea of leaving posters in these places to
advertise the law-enforcement meetings, thus creating something of a stir.
Just before graduating from college A had a talk with a favorite professor.
The professor asked him what he proposed to do, and was much interested
when A said that he wanted to become a minister. The professor said that
during his own active years in the pulpit, before he began to teach, he had
learned at least one thing. Every man who was intellectually honest and
independent would sooner or later discover that he questioned his own
dogmas, and a period of bitter anguish would ensue. If a man were
intellectually honest, he would never flinch from the truth, even for the
sake of wife and family. But when the period of doubt arose he advised A
not to abandon his work too abruptly. He had himself lived through six
months of torture during which he had been on the verge of dropping
everything and going into business. But finally he had arrived at a faith
which he could defend, and stuck to it. “I would rather be drawn and
quartered than preach anything I do not believe,” he declared emphatically.
This conversation made a deep impression upon A, leading him to anticipate
doubts as a mark of intellectual keenness and honesty. Thus far in his life
he had never questioned the tenets of the strict and simple theology of his
immediate surroundings. Indeed, he had never met anybody who questioned it.
Only a single episode had slightly jarred his complacency and left a tiny
scar behind. At one time his Sunday-school teacher had been a young
professor of theology who was much more liberal than his contemporaries. A
boy in the class had dared to ask something about the authority of the
Bible, and the teacher, without the least trace of embarrassment, had
replied that authority should not rest on blind faith but upon clear
reason. “If the Bible told you to kill your father and your mother, you
would not do it. You would not be bound to do it. The justification of the
Bible is that its teachings prove to be sound in the experience of all
reasonable men.” In the divinity school the first course which A attended
was on the authority of the Bible. It was taught by a smug and full person
of some eminence. A was accustomed to distinguish himself by bold opinions,
and he undertook to challenge several of the propositions which were
supposed to be accepted and repeated by rote. His main point was that
authority rested on reason, not on faith. For his pains he got the
reputation of being a smart and troublesome upstart of doubtful orthodoxy.
His former Sunday-school teacher was a member of the faculty, and A wrote a
thesis on the authority of the Bible, in which he elaborated the line of
argument which had so much impressed him. Only the constant intercession of
this professor kept A from being disciplined, or even expelled, at various
times. The young man was disposed to take rigid theology none too seriously
on account of his increasing disrespect for his father. A and his brother
both felt duty bound to return home every summer to help with the farm
work. Their father was happy enough to have them rejoin him, but matters
never ran smoothly. The father was quick to reassert his parental authority
and to criticize freely. Most of the unpleasantness was as usual at the
expense of the older son, but some of it was deflected against A. Both sons
were uncomfortably aware of the uncouthness of their father in comparison
with city preachers. He laughed too boisterously at his own stale
witticisms. His ever present dignity was a little ludicrous when he wore an
alpaca coat into the fields on the hottest midsummer day. The social life
at the divinity school was wholly satisfying. The students were warmly
welcomed by the maidens of the local churches, and several became engaged.
A proposed to two girls during his career there, and was turned down as
often. He very quickly recovered his good spirits after a night or so of
melancholy. The first girl was a relative whom he had known for many years,
and the second was a close friend of the family. The double defeat was
something of a bruise to his dignity and fed his determination to make a
dent on the world. A’s first congregation was in one of the poorer quarters
of a little city. A had no doubt of his towering intellectual superiority
over his parishioners, and he found it exasperating when an uneducated
housewife presumed to gossip about the dubious orthodoxy of his beliefs. At
the end of three years he resigned in disgust at the peppering of criticism
directed against his ideas. Looking back at the incident, he feels that he
was too hasty. It was at this first charge that A began to make good copy
for the press, and to win a reputation as a sensationalist. He organized a
Law and Order League to harry criminals and the police. His pulpit rang
with stinging philippics against law-breakers and cowardly public
officials. All this gave him a zestful sense of making a stir in the world
of real affairs, so that he turned down an offer to join the faculty of a
famous university where his old Sunday-school teacher was now located. A’s
new pastorate was among working people in a large city. He at once began to
hound the officials for non-enforcement of the law. He led raiding parties
to visit the biggest gambling hells and put it up to the police to shut
them. Renewed criticisms began to appear of his opinions, and the governing
body of his denomination asked him to recant or resign. He refused to
budge, and he was soon expelled. He was immediately called to lecture
before an ethical society, where his comments on current religious and
social problems won a wide hearing. Although attracting much attention, the
society was exceedingly poor and A spent a little legacy which he had
received upon it, indifferent to his own future. During these exciting
troubles he became a socialist and joined the socialist party. He had
sympathized with the hard lot of the poor since he could remember, and had
cast his vote for Bryan as a symbol of protest against the indifference of
the privileged classes to the privileges of anyone but themselves. His
favorite college professor had lost his job during the anarchist hysteria,
when he came out against the “judicial murder” of the Haymarket suspects. A
was profoundly moved by the spectacle of a man who backed his precepts of
independence with sacrifice for their sake. The argument which finally won
him for socialism was that political democracy is impossible until economic
democracy is realized, and that socialism is simply democracy in industry.
The principles of democratic brotherhood, once put to practice in the world
of work, would soon govern public relationships of every kind. His new
convictions opened to A a new field of agitation and publicity. Ignoring or
overcoming the coolness of certain “horny-handed” elements, he rushed into
the little band of socialists, and was presently the congressional
candidate. In this campaign he conducted a whirlwind tour of the district
and enjoyed himself immensely. A finally married a capable, motherly
school-teacher whom he had known for several years, but whom he had been
prevented from marrying until the death of her parents, who heartily
disapproved of him. During his bachelor years in the ministry he had
certain knowledge that various women were far from averse to becoming the
preacher’s wife or mistress. One married woman became the foremost worker
in the church and passionately assured him, “I am at your service day or
night.” Another woman, whom he barely recognized, came to the pastor’s
study, declaring that they must be married at once and “end this awful
agony for both of us.” He had not been aware that any agony had begun, and
was in no mood to begin it. He recognized that a wife would be a
protection, but most of the women who threw themselves in his way were so
homely that abstinence remained a pleasure as well as a principle. For many
years there had lurked in his mind the fear that he might not be potent,
and he was humiliated to find that he was at first unable to consummate the
sexual act. Since he first attempted sexual intercourse when nearly fifty,
and had practically never masturbated, his troubles were not atypical, and
they fortunately proved to be transitory. He regretted having failed to
consult a physician before marriage, and was not at ease until the first of
his children came. Shortly after marrying, A came to the end of his
financial resources, and found it necessary to relinquish his lecturing for
other work until a suitable congregation should requisition his services.
When a call finally came, the war broke out in Europe, and A denounced it
with his customary ardor. He had read a book which popularized Prince
Kropotkin’s thesis that mutual aid and not struggle is the key to the
evolutionary process. War was irrational because it contravened the
principle of mutual aid, and it was un-Christian because it set the hand of
man against his brethren. As the hour of America’s participation drew
nearer, A saw that his outspoken position would cause trouble. But he was
accustomed to take a radical view and stick to it, and the idea of
compromising his independence for the sake of family obligations was
intolerable. His characteristic optimism also misled him into
overestimating the amount of pacifism which his congregation would put up
with, and soon he was forced to resign. A was left financially high and
dry, and rather hoped that his wife would be willing to starve with him, if
need be, as a gesture of sanity in a war-mad world. He was left financially
dependent upon his family, and upon such support as was forthcoming from
wealthy radical sympathizers. Since his own professional opportunities were
curtailed, and he never applied for other types of work, he was left
dependent upon others. He was somewhat embarrassed by this, but was never
depressed by it, or by the social ostracism which was entailed by his
unpopular stand. As he once expressed it, “melancholy is alien to a
fighting nature.” Looking back over A’s career, certain private motives
appear which were well organized in his early family life, and continued to
operate with considerable strength during his adult years. A had a strongly
repressed hatred for his brother. He was consciously aware of his own
coldness toward the brother, but succeeded in barring from consciousness
any recognition of the emotional charge on this attitude. The older boy was
his rival for the affection of his father, and A’s quickness and boldness
were cultivated in an effort to outstrip his brother. He showed many of the
traits of the over active younger child, as Adler has frequently described
them. A felt rather ashamed of his brother, who went through school and
college with no special distinction, and whose modest subsequent career was
prosaically respectable. A struggled to keep hostile thoughts about his
brother out of his mind, and sought to keep his attention away from the
brother by corresponding or visiting with him infrequently. Although A
never frankly faced his own animosity toward this brother, he was plagued
by a sense of guilt for his unfraternal attitude. This conflict was
partially resolved by a reactive formation and by displacement. The
reactive formation was the reverse of the anti-brother drive, but it was
only supportable by displacing his affection upon remote social objects. He
generalized his own prohibition against brother-hatred to all society, and
identified himself with the workers and with humanity at large, serving a
poverty-stricken congregation, spending his own money on the work of the
church, adopting the socialist dream of a brotherly state, and demanding
the abolition of fratricidal war. His love for the downtrodden and for
humanity (this reactive displacement of his own brother-hostility) was
buttressed by the usual rationalizations. The democratic ideal in politics,
the ideal of effective equality in political power, had his support, and he
adopted socialism when it was presented to him as industrial democracy
(brotherhood), the indispensable antecedent of genuine political democracy
(brotherhood). His early prohibition appeals were cast in the form of an
appeal to the brotherhood sentiments. He argued that every man was his
brother’s keeper, and therefore bound to refrain from an example which
might lead his weaker brother to dash his foot against a stone. War meant
the destruction of mutual (brotherly) aid among those who were brethren in
Christ. A’s brother-hatred, so manifest in his younger days, and so potent
in arousing guilt feelings, created this disposition to choose generalized
brother-substitutes to love, and to elaborate brotherly ideologies to
defend his position. Then by keeping his distance from the physical
brother, he could maintain a comfortable adjustment. Another significant
private motive, whose organization dates from early family days, but whose
influence was prominent in adult behavior, was A’s struggle to maintain his
sexual repressions. He erected his very elaborate personal prohibitions
into generalized prohibitions for all society, and just as he laid down the
law against brother-hatred, he condemned deviations from the rigid
puritanical code by which he lived. Individuals who possess superego
structures of such rigor often try to protect themselves from the strain of
sexual excitement by keeping away from “temptation,” or by removing
“temptation” from their environment. Thus Mr. A avoided exposing himself to
“lewd speech” and “immoral suggestion.” Consciences of such severity can
often be traced back in deeply analyzed cases to unusually strong
repressions at the time when infantile masturbatory activities are being
curbed. And it often happens that the rôle of the intimidator is taken not
only by the male but by the female imago. In another highly moralistic
person, who was thoroughly psychoanalyzed, this came out distinctly. Thus
for several days the subject dreamed of standing before a butcher shop
where he had been sent by his mother, and where he saw his father
sharpening long knives. Or he saw his mother, dressed as Brünnhilde,
carrying a sword, while he cowered on a marble stairway. After many dreams
of this kind, the original situations finally burst into view. They
involved what were interpreted as direct threats to cut off a hand if the
child didn’t cease handling himself. That A was never able to abolish his
sexuality is sufficiently evident in his night dreams and daydreams. In
spite of his efforts to “fight” these manifestations of his “antisocial
impulses,” they continued to appear. Among the direct and important
consequences which they produced was a sense of sin, not only a sense of
sexual sin, but a growing conviction of hypocrisy. His “battle” against
“evil” impulses was only partially successful, and this produced a profound
feeling of insecurity. This self-punishing strain of insecurity might be
alleviated, he found, by publicly reaffirming the creed of repression, and
by distracting attention to other matters. A’s rapid movements, dogmatic
assertions, and diversified activities were means of escape from this
gnawing sense of incapacity to cope with his own desires and to master
himself. Uncertain of his power to control himself, he was very busy about
controlling others, and engaged in endless committee sessions, personal
conferences, and public meetings for the purpose. He always managed to
submerge himself in a buzzing life of ceaseless activity; he could never
stand privacy and solitude, since it drove him to a sense of futility; and
he couldn’t undertake prolonged and laborious study, since his feeling of
insecurity demanded daily evidence of his importance in the world. A’s
sexual drives continued to manifest themselves, and to challenge his
resistances. He was continually alarmed by the lurking fear that he might
be impotent. Although he proposed marriage to two girls when he was a
theology student, it is significant that he chose girls from his immediate
entourage, and effected an almost instantaneous recovery from his
disappointments. This warrants the inference that he was considerably
relieved to postpone the test of his potency, and this inference is
strengthened by the long years during which he cheerfully acquiesced in the
postponement of his marriage to the woman who finally became his wife. He
lived with people who valued sexual potency, particularly in its
conventional and biological demonstration in marriage and children, and his
unmarried state was the object of good-natured comment. His pastoral duties
required him to “make calls” on the sisters of the church, and in spite of
the cheer which he was sometimes able to bring to the bedridden, there was
the faint whisper of a doubt that this was really a man’s job. And though
preaching was a socially respectable occupation, there was something of the
ridiculous in the fact that one who had experienced very little of life
should pass for a privileged censor of all mankind. He had long practice in
the art of the impostor. From the plight of his older brother, A learned
that he would lose the affection of his father if he was discovered to have
indulged in certain practices like masturbation. He resolved never to do
anything to cause his father to withdraw his affection, and when he was not
entirely successful in living up to this ideal, he pretended to virtues
which he did not possess. Never once was he found out, and his life was the
life of a “model” boy and man. This reputation he owed in part to his
abstinences, but likewise to his concealments. He learned to cultivate the
mask of rectitude, and succeeded in carrying off the rôle so successfully
that he was never found out during adolescence or adulthood. Cut off by his
impotence fears from loving others fully and completely, A loved himself
the more. He had unbounded confidence in the brilliance of his mind, and
this intellectual arrogance was nourished by the easy ascendance which he
won over the poorly educated people among whom he worked. He was careful to
keep in environments where his mind would not be put to the test of keen
competition. A didn’t compete with the clergymen who had the largest posts
in his denomination, he struck out for himself in no hazardous business or
professional enterprise, he took up and finished no piece of investigation;
instead he cut a big figure among the workers, among whom he was the
best-educated and the best-known leader. His chances of being elected to
Congress when he was nominated were never good, and he had everything to
gain and nothing to lose by making a campaign. After the days of his
scholarly ascendance in high school and college, A fell out of competition
in academic pursuits. He valued his capacity to produce words. Ferenczi
remarked in conversation with me that the revolutionary agitators who had
come to his attention had been noticeably deficient in the intensity of
their emotional attachment to objects. They were notably indifferent to the
accumulation of property, and they were lacking in possessive jealousy in
their sexual life. This deficiency in warmth of affective experience was
sensed by the revolutionaries themselves, who felt that they were in some
way estranged from others. Their orgiastic indulgence in language is to be
interpreted as an effort to heighten the affective intensity of their own
lives. Either because the emotional life is physiologically defective or
because the libido is too narcissistically fixated, this general
description holds true of some obsessive and many psychotic persons. It was
no doubt a factor in the history of A. Before following out the full
implications of this struggle of A’s to repress his sexuality, we will take
up another topic of major and not unrelated importance. I refer to A’s
ambivalence toward his father. A was not conscious of the full force of his
hatred and his love for his father, but his personality history is full of
evidence of the formative influence of these bipolar attitudes. In the
course of his competition with his older brother, A accepted abstinence
from genital indulgence as the price of holding paternal preference. Now
psychoanalytic findings are unanimous in showing that genital indulgence is
not given up without a continuous struggle, and that recurring waves of
sexuality break against the barrier of the introjected prohibition, and
reanimate hostile impulses against the sanctioning authority. It is of the
utmost importance for A’s development that he fought to bar from
consciousness any hostile thought directed against his father, and that he
succeeded in repressing his father-hatred very deeply. He was able to
identify himself with the father, and to copy many of the paternal
standards and attributes. The strength of these identifications is
indicated by the tenacity with which A held to certain paternal patterns.
Although his much-touted uncle had been a famous writer and professor, A
remained a preacher, even when tempted by a flattering offer to leave his
first humble parish for the faculty of a great university. He cherished the
paternal prejudice against money-making and money-makers. His boyhood home
was where some wealthy people spent their summers, and A’s father would
speak contemptuously of “the fashionables” who loitered ostentatiously past
the house. This was an additional determiner of A’s subsequent devotion to
the welfare of the poor, which manifested itself in financial sacrifice and
socialist agitation. A was very susceptible to old men, and idealized not
only his early teachers, but a venerable pacifist who approved of his
wartime conduct. The negative side of A’s attitude toward authority came
out in the choice of the abstract (remote) objects upon which to vent his
hatred. The hostility which was denied conscious recognition and direct
indulgence against the actual father was displaced against substitute
symbols, such as the dogma which required the acceptance of the Scriptures
by faith, of the capitalistic system, and of the militarists. When A was
introduced to a stranger, he was genial, talkative, and anxious to impress.
When he was aware of opposition in his environment, he overreacted at once,
hurling a vast repertory of jibes and flouts and sneers at the offender.
This gives a clue to an important element in his makeup which will come out
very distinctly in subsequent cases, namely, a strong latent homosexual
trend. When the individual is not able to achieve full heterosexual
adjustment, the sexual libido tends to work itself out in more primitive
ways, and one of the phases of emotional development is the homosexual
epoch. Earlier, however, than the adolescent homosexual period is the phase
connected with the suppression of auto-erotic activities. The child
characteristically uses its nutritional object (nurse-mother) for the sake
of stimulating his own erogenous zones as much as possible. This
“incestuous” drive is curbed, and the child is denied the pleasure of
promiscuously fingering others, and of manually stimulating his own
genitalia. Though the nurse or mother, who is the target of the desires of
the child, also administers the prohibitions, the sanction which lurks most
prominently in the background is the strength of the father. Reduced to its
ultimate expression, this sanction is the threat of depriving the child of
his much-valued organs unless he observes the “hands off” prohibition. The
“normal” development is for the hostile protest at authoritarian
interference to subside, and for the child to copy the idealized father.
The repression of hostilities and the identification with the father do not
take place instantly. Identification is not achieved without a phase in
which the child plays a femininely passive rôle toward the father, and this
is the passively homosexual reaction which may for one reason or another be
unusually strong. A’s fantasies of his father’s beautiful skin are common
screen fantasies for more primitive drives. A’s tendency to overreact to
the stranger who is merely polite, and to interpret the stranger’s interest
as a “personal” one, is characteristic of the one in whom this passive
“winning” rôle is of some importance. He tries to create an overpersonal
relationship in those somewhat formal situations where ordinary
conversational requirements are such as to force conventional compliments.
The overreactive hostility toward those who merely differ from him is
partially motivated by the desire to punish those who have rejected the
affection which he all too quickly volunteers. This wound to his narcissism
demands that wounds shall be inflicted on the offending objects. Now it is
commonly observed that repressed drives are likely to secure partial
gratification in the very activities which are in part a protection against
them. Sneers and jibes would at first seem to free him from those who
arouse and reject him, but this is not the whole result. A exceeded the
bounds of convention and became recklessly provocative. His wild assaults
and defiances tended to provoke the social environment into attacking him,
and thus to gratify two powerful unconscious drives. He wanted to be forced
into a passive, feminine, victimized rôle, and to inflict upon himself the
punishment which he deserved for excessive hatred of others. Thus A felt
quite happy, escaping moods of depression, as long as he was indulging his
hostility against conspicuous conventional authorities in society, and as
long as he was suffering from society’s retaliatory measures. His romantic
idea of starving to death as a gesture of sanity in a war-mad world is
indicative of his pleasure in the “martyr rôle.” He could not endure
“inharmonious” people, and built up a “soft” and overindulgent group around
him. He had a small group of admirers who turned to him for advice and who
looked up to his superior wisdom and moral courage. Nothing pained him more
than the slightest jar in personal relations. This disparity between his
demands for gentleness in the primary group, and his genius for creating a
disturbance in a secondary group, suggests the tension produced within his
personality by the struggle with the feminine component. He was careful to
keep away from close-working subordination to a powerful personality. He
stayed in environments where his authority was unchallenged. In the church
he was both a financial pillar and the pastor, and among the socialists he
was sustained by the halo of moral and cultural prestige. It is noteworthy
that though A was venomous when publicly opposed, he was capable of a
wooing and persuasive strain which he could effectively use in his
proselyting work. His humor was of the mock-modesty variety, and relieved
the moral earnestness of his discourses. A showed much tenacity and skill
in following people whom he once loved and respected, and in attempting to
convert them to a community of views with him. He displayed a strong
impulse to enter into and to cultivate personal interchanges by
correspondence. That A found the task of asserting himself in the world
rather arduous is suggested by the desire for dependence upon women. He
entered into a whole series of “platonic” friendships (“platonic” in the
popular and not in the correct use of the word) with women, and he accepted
economic support from his wife for several years. He was very “sensitive,”
and required a great deal of coddling in the home. There are indications of
the way in which his very early experiences influenced his trait formation.
The infant takes pleasure in activities centering about the mouth, and this
at first involves pleasurable sucking and later on, as the teeth begin to
push through, this involves pleasurable biting. In our culture this leads
to a withdrawal of the nipple, precipitating one of the major crises of
growth. Weaning is the first substantial loss which is inflicted upon the
individual after birth, and the way in which it is met establishes reaction
patterns which may serve as important prototypes for subsequent behavior.
About the time that the weaning deprivation occurs, the child is exposed to
another set of conditions which demand sacrifice. He is supposed to control
the elimination of his feces by giving up a part of his body at regular
intervals. The growing child is also supposed to sacrifice another source
of irresponsible pleasure by blocking his impulses to handle his genitalia.
When the taboo on handling the genital organs for erotic purposes is set up
with particular stringency by the methods adopted to curb early
masturbation, some of the energy of the personality regresses to reanimate
previous auto-erotic dispositions. This involves strengthening of the anal
and oral components of the personality. On the basis of the oral and anal
origin of various traits, Karl Abraham has worked out a psychoanalytic
theory of character formation.[32] The material which is available on A is
too scanty to reveal the psychological mechanisms of infancy and early
childhood. If a cross-section of his later character traits be tentatively
interpreted in the light of Abraham’s scheme, it may be said to show a
predominance of traits from the oral phase of development. A striking
characteristic of A has always been his optimism. He has never become
despondent and passed through serious “blue spells,” whether he lost his
job, reached the end of his financial resources, lost a bride, or suffered
social ostracism from all but a small though admiring circle.
Disappointments and some illness have brought him comparatively little
worry. Abraham traces this trait to the earliest level of character
organization, saying that it indicates a child who, thanks to the abundance
of nursing care, is accustomed to find the world responding copiously and
quickly to his demands. A always felt an inner assurance that he would be
cared for, and that all would come out for the best in the end “to those
who serve the Lord, and are called according to his purpose.” He accepted a
position of economic dependence upon his wife, and upon the charity of
radical ladies, without conflict. His nurse was still there to provide for
him. A never showed any interest in accumulating money, and generously
shared all that he possessed. His small legacy was eaten up by the society
over which he presided, and he was always on the poverty line. He not only
gave bountifully of such money as he possessed, but copiously of his ideas.
Automatically he took the lead in conversation, genially pouring forth
streams of ideas. The savagery of his attack on those who disagreed with
him, though an oral trait in part, stems, according to Abraham, not from
the sucking phase of early development, but from the next succeeding or
oral-sadistic phase. Those individuals who have difficulty in accepting
their heterosexuality are cut off from normal sex life, and seek to
emphasize the acts preparatory to, and not consummatory of, copulation. An
interest in sexual peeping was in some measure gratified by A’s experiences
in listening to the personal difficulties of those who came to him for
counsel. The high value which he placed on appearing before the public,
while perhaps adequately accounted for on the basis of his
father-identification, probably had the additional advantage of gratifying
his exhibitionistic drive. Since drink is in legend and life a frequent
precursor of copulation, the reformer exaggerates its importance, and tries
to stop it. Alcohol was early associated with sexual excesses in the mind
of A, and his hostility to it was something more than a simple reflection
of his milieu.[33] A’s intensity of manner betrayed the magnitude of the
neurotic conflicts within his own personality. This intensity is not alone
due to the insecurity arising from the failure to exterminate his own
conscious awareness of sex, nor to his sense of sin for erotic impulses,
nor to his fears of impotence, nor to the reaction organized when he was
competing with his brother for the attention of the father. His sexual
inhibitions removed from him one of the most dependable means of disposing
of the tensions which arise from the miscellaneous frustrations met with in
the course of daily life.[34] We have traced A’s demand for widespread
emotional response to his difficulties of personal adjustment, especially
in the field of early sexual development. We have followed through the
displacement of the drives, which were originally organized with reference
to the family circle, on to remote social objects, resulting in the
espousal of ideals of social change. We have seen that A’s particular
technique for arousing emotional response was denunciatory oratory, and
that such a technique expressed important underlying drives of his
personality. Since A happened to be a socialist, it is natural to compare
him with the socialist thinkers studied by Werner Sombart in _Der
proletarische Sozialismus_. There is no doubt that A is numbered among the
“artificial” rather than the “natural” men, since his relation to reality
is less direct than with the “natural” type. But it cannot be said that
social criticism was as deeply motivated in his life as among the men
mentioned by Sombart. He expressed himself not only in radical agitation
but in conservative, moralistic agitation. His career was not wrecked at
any particular point in his history, and he possessed no mania for
destruction, although showing much resentment against his family, and
indulging in an active fantasy life. He was fundamentally an agitator, and
secondarily a social radical. CHAPTER VII POLITICAL AGITATORS--_Continued_
B is an agitator who uses his pen instead of his tongue. He has achieved
eminence in newspaper work, beginning as a news editor and editorial
writer. At twenty, when he held his first newspaper job, B led a fight
against the red-light district of the city, exposing the pimps, panderers,
and prostitutes in sensational style. He has always responded quickly to
the appeal of the underdog and revealed injustices wherever he found them,
and he won great popularity among minority racial and national groups whose
claims he championed before the American public. It is noteworthy that B
has never been converted to “isms” and responds to the call of specific
abuses. No one who knows B has ever questioned his sincerity, for the news
value of his campaigns is often much less than the personal risks incurred.
B has a high reputation for absolute truthfulness and reliability, often
carrying his scruples to what his fellow-newspapermen think are unwarranted
extremes. On one occasion, he threw up an excellent job on a very
well-known newspaper on a point of honor. The paper had divulged the source
of a story which he had received in confidence, and which he communicated
to the editor in confidence. Later he was made the editor of an important
newspaper. For five months he produced brilliant results, when a
misunderstanding arose with the proprietor over another point of honor. In
a despondent moment he resigned, but the proprietor refused to let him
leave, offering a substantial raise. He let himself be persuaded to go
back, but refused to accept the raise. Before long, new points of honor
arose, and he broke away for good. His passion for justice made him a
favorite with his staff; and his quiet good sense and studiousness made him
a name among older men and intellectuals. Some of his reforming campaigns
were very thinly veiled displacements of his own private motives. At the
age of fourteen he was seduced by a colored woman, and he reacted to this
experience with fright and disgust. He left a school which he attended
after a series of boyish escapades which culminated in an argument over
missing laundry. The laundryman was a negro. It was on his first newspaper
job that he led the fight to clean up a red-light district, featuring the
fact that both colored and white prostitutes were available. B was one of
the numerous family of a Civil War veteran on the Confederate side. His
father carried himself like a soldier and expected his children to act like
soldiers under all circumstances. He was spare, thin, and active, and his
temper was short. He was boss in the house, ordering his wife about a great
deal, and demanding implicit obedience from the children. The mother of B
was eleven years younger than her husband. She had ten children in quick
succession, and she spoiled them, and was much beloved. She did all the
cooking, washing, and ironing for the household, and slaved to allow the
children to obtain an education. Everybody but her husband thought she
worked too hard. She was herself eager for learning, but had no opportunity
to continue her studies after marriage. Although poor, she was proud, and
never asked alms or assistance of any kind. Though “obstinate as a mule,”
she was timid and shrinking in ordinary relations. Her routine was only
broken by occasional headaches. The father was a very suspicious man, and B
bore the brunt of it. B was the sixth child and from an early age had
trouble with his next older brother, who was three years his senior. On one
memorable occasion the elder brother attacked him with a knife. B was able
to take the knife away from him without being hurt. The affair was reported
to the father by an aunt who was living in the house, and who always sided
with the older boy. She said that B had been the aggressor, and in spite of
his indignant assertions of innocence, B was soundly whipped. Such episodes
aroused in him a deep protest against injustice, and an abiding hostility
against his father. Years afterward the truth came out, and the father
apologized, but animosities had grown too formidable to be ceremoniously
brushed aside. B cherished a long list of grievances against his father.
Once his father asked him to print some letters; he presently found that
this was for the purpose of comparing them with an inscription on the
lavatory wall. Genital activities had their usual connotation of
sinfulness. His father went so far with his prudery that B, who was once
discovered naked in his own room, where he was slowly dressing, was
severely reprimanded. Shortly after being seduced by the negro woman, his
sense of guilt, combined with his ever present resentment against his
father’s unjust treatment, led him to run away from home. After staying
away from home and working his way through school for about a year and a
half, he returned home and went to work in the neighborhood, attracted
chiefly by the prospect of being back with his mother. It is noteworthy
that in his career B was constantly finding pretexts to escape from a
situation in which he was popular and successful. Salary increases,
promotions, and social recognition came to him, but he managed to extricate
himself from every such situation, often on a “point of honor.” An
excellent journalist, he always had a new door open. Thus he passed from
one editorial desk to another, and even to a private news-service venture
which turned out well in spite of the heavy handicaps on such an
undertaking. How can such behavior be accounted for? Let us suppose that
friendly treatment on the part of superiors tends to activate a strong
homosexual drive which has been repressed, but which continues to threaten
to find expression. This unconscious drive urges him to intimacy with
persons in the environment, whereupon his conscience, reacting blindly
against the outlaw impulse, seeks to provoke a flight from the environment,
and thus to escape from the exciting objects of desire. The outcome is a
compromise formation in which the illicit hope of being attacked and
violated by the environment is gratified by imagining that the environment
has compromised his “honor.” The conscience is gratified by the retreat
from temptation. No sooner is B in a new environment than the tension
begins to accumulate all over again. By throwing himself with zeal into a
new and strange position, where the environment is impersonal, success
comes, and with success and habituation to the milieu, there come
familiarity and friendship. This produces the familiar strain by
reactivating the unconscious homosexuality, and the defending conscience
finds another retreat imperative. What specific justification is there for
the hypothesis just proposed? B finally came into a situation from which he
could scarcely escape by the usual tactics. He scored one of the great
successes of his career by being invited to accompany a government
commission which investigated conditions abroad, and covered the assignment
in brilliant style. He was shown all manner of courtesy. Working under high
pressure, he plunged into another assignment, and once more had the
journalistic world at his feet. But the strain of success was too much.
This time he sought release, not by flight to a new job, which was
difficult, but by developing a delusional system. In short, B went into a
psychotic phase, and substituted for the world of reality a fantasy world
of such sinister dimensions that he was justified in trying to escape from
it. Unable to concentrate on his work, he moved restlessly from one town to
another, and launched forth on long automobile tours with his wife. The
actual content of his delusional productions gives a clue to his mental
conflict. He had ideas of reference, imagining that people on the street
were looking at him mysteriously. He claimed that he was a party to the
Teapot Dome scandal and that there was a dictaphone in the house. On the
way to be examined at a sanitarium he claimed that he was being trailed by
policemen. Upon admission he claimed that the orderlies were policemen,
that he was being electrocuted, that his bed was wired to record all his
movements, and that filthy songs were sung to him (with homosexual
content). Discharged from the sanitarium, he was taken to a family reunion.
He claimed to be treated as a negro, and declined to eat with family or
sleep in the house. B claimed that a forest fire was caused by him and that
books in the library were re-written on his account. On a motor trip he
claimed that insulting remarks were made to him at every gas station. He
turned against his wife (he had been sexually inactive in marriage), and
finally called her a snake who ought to be killed, and proceeded to try it.
During the course of his psychosis it emerged that he recalls a sexual
seduction by his older brother, and that he had been bothered by this fancy
all his life. There was material to show that his father was likewise
implicated in his homosexual fantasies, and that he had “eroticized” the
injustices of his father and the physical attacks of his brother.[35] The
history of B belongs to a borderline group between agitators and
administrators. His administrative ability is manifest in the managing
editorships which he held, and in the special service which he organized
and for a time conducted. His rôle as an agitator (in writing) began when
he was twenty, and continued for more than another score of years. When
this record is taken in juxtaposition to that of A, it shows how
differences in displacement affect the growth of the personality. B was
never able to displace his hatred and affections to remote, impersonal
objects with the degree of success which characterized A. The campaigns of
B against injustice were more concrete, more limited, and more personal
than the agitations of A. It will be remembered that B’s first crusade was
against black-and-tan houses of prostitution, and this was in the nature of
a revenge and a penance for his early experience with the colored woman. B
was raised in a relatively inarticulate environment. His father made no
public appearances, no member of the family achieved more than a
rudimentary education, and no conversation was possible beyond the visible
environment. Since B went to work at sixteen, he saw the world more from a
concrete point of view while A was peering at the universe through the
theoretical lenses of the schools. His history shows prolonged
preoccupation with his own specific grievances against the original
objects--against the father, brother, and aunt. This was a factor which
disposed him to greater susceptibility to persons in the immediate
environment than A. Although driven to become a rather seclusive child who
read books more often than he played, no one took a special interest in his
intellectual prospects. His maternal grandfather was said to have been a
brilliant teacher, but not much was made of this model when B was a
boy.[36] Unlike A, B lacked the trick of dramatizing himself before a
crowd. Inspection of his early history in the home shows that he lacked the
practice in imposture which may be a prerequisite of this ability. B was
never able to carry off a pose to impress his family with his own virtue
and promise. Indeed, he had very early evidence of his own shortcomings,
and his father not only accused him of sins he did commit, but padded the
record with many that he had not contemplated. B was never able to get away
with much. The foregoing excerpts from the history of B illustrate how
closely the behavior of the victim of a functional disorder may connect
with the fundamental drives of the personality. Functional mental disorders
are efforts at adjustment that fail, and the materials employed are those
which the personality has available on the basis of its developmental
history. In the paranoid case just discussed, “grandiosity”--delusions of
grandeur--was not as prominent as it often is. Grandiose delusions seem to
be linked with very strong impotence fears. This connection may be shown in
gross clinical caricature in the case of C. This man belongs to the
well-known group of verbose cranks who often surround themselves with
admiring circles of disciples, and do nobody much harm. C went so far as to
run for president of the United States on a minority ticket. C came into
medical hands quite by accident. He belongs to a very common type which
preserves the personality sufficiently intact from deterioration to pass
for well, though eccentric. C got into a dispute with a colored expressman
over the charge for moving his goods to a new apartment, and the expressman
called the police, who presently turned C over to a hospital. C imagined
that the negro was plotting to ruin him by stealing his most valuable books
and manuscripts. He announced that he was going to be the next president of
the United States of America, since the reign of the present incumbent was
to be short, and damned short at that. On the next inauguration day he will
take charge by divine power, and after that his red-headed wife will be
given full authority. He said that during the last presidential campaign he
had a conference with the governor of New York concerning the leadership of
American parties. At that time the governor told him that he was a
wonderful man and a logical party leader. He declared that though as a rule
he does not believe in prophets, one absolutely reliable prophet had
testified that he would be president. This man had a vision in which a
wedge was drawn between the Democrat and Republican parties, and an unknown
man arose who was to rule the world. This man would have six letters in his
name. He is “Six and Six,” and this exactly fits C. C’s real name is
“Arabulah the Divine Guest.” Using this name, he wrote a nine-thousand-word
treatise on politics and world-peace which he said was thought to be
supernaturally brilliant. He was sure that he got into the hospital through
a damnable trick of his enemies. “It is prophesied that I am to be the next
president. To defeat this, they put me here. I’m just a martyr, but I’ll
come out on top in the end.” He would be president in fulfilment of
prophecy. C more than hinted at the scientific secrets at his command. He
had recently consulted Dr. A of the government about his process for the
manufacture of diamonds. More pressure was all that was needed. He declared
that he is a wonderful amateur chemist, and that he has a process for
manufacturing coal that he learned confidentially from a shoemaker. When a
young man he was appointed a clerk in one of the government departments,
but was thrown out of a job when the Democrats were elected in the late
eighties. He then became what he called a promoter of inventions and an
inventor. A clue to the source of his delusional system is furnished by his
sexual history and fantasies. At the age of fifty-nine he married a widow
with two children. He describes his wife as of surpassing beauty, and as
for himself, he declared that he possessed three testicles, and that he is
a perfect specimen of a man, a most beautiful Apollo from the neck down,
and asked to pose as a model. He refused, however, to be photographed, or
to disclose anything further about his sexual history. Impotence fear as
the root of the luxurious tree of grandiose delusions is sometimes directly
demonstrated by the obvious nature of the invention on which the individual
is engaged. The mysterious perpetual motion machine turns out to be a crude
version of the sexual organs.[37] Shortly after C left the hospital, he was
busy on the stump, haranguing large audiences as a presidential candidate
on a protest ticket. C would not be taken seriously by many people of much
culture and discernment, but there are paranoid types who are plausible
enough in their accusations to win the support of discriminating men. Many
of them are “litigious paranoids,” and, as implied by the term, they are
characterized by the legal and agitational means which they exploit for the
redress of grievances. They succeed in rationalizing their motives so
adroitly that they are very dangerous troublemakers. Even when
psychiatrists diagnose them as psychotic, they are able to put up a front
so successfully that they are often released from custody by judge or jury.
Were the data available it would be interesting to calculate how much this
active and by no means uncommon element in society costs in terms of
litigation fees and damaged reputations. One of the smoothest customers of
this description is D. After leaving high school because of his ambition to
earn money, he presently became a traveling salesman for an electrical
company. He was very successful and soon accumulated enough to start
himself in business, aided somewhat by the money of the woman whom he
married. From the beginning he was involved in numerous lawsuits with big
corporations. He was finally sent to the penitentiary for having assumed
the name of another company which was already operating. Since the address
of the new company, as well as the name, was so similar to that of the
older concern, he received mail and checks intended for the corporation.
His own story is that he was persecuted by a certain big corporation, which
tried consistently to ruin his business, even poisoning the mind of his
wife against him (who soon divorced D). Whenever a suit was being tried
against him, he claims always to have found a representative of the big
corporation in town. These ideas of persecution extended through the trial,
which he asserts was unfairly conducted, and to the penitentiary, where he
claimed that officials were in league with the corporation to keep him
imprisoned. His conduct was such that he was finally transferred from the
prison to a mental hospital, where his attitude was that of contemptuous
superiority. He collected evidence against the hospital, listening to all
who complained of any sort of cruelty and incompetence, and constantly
occupied himself with schemes to release prisoners and expose his
persecutors. D has an impressive, deliberate manner. There are no marks of
the maniac about him to fit into the popular idea of a “crazy man.” In
conversation with strangers he puts his own case, and the case of others,
with seeming moderation, emphasizing the obvious difficulties in the way of
collecting conclusive evidence, and showing scrupulousness about affidavits
and other documentary material. He has succeeded in establishing
connections with prominent people in many walks of life, and is devoting
himself to the cause of the underdog, with special reference to those
unfortunates who are thrown into insane asylums and kept there by enemies
who league themselves with doctors and superintendents. He is associated
with groups of people who band together in little agitational organizations
with such unexceptionable names as Vigilantes of the Constitution,
Foundation for Legal and Human Rights, American Equity Association. Their
indictment of modern jurisprudence is pithily formulated in the slogan,
“One Law for the Rich--Another Law for the Poor.” The object of one of
these associations is: To secure to all persons the rights, privileges, and
immunities which are theirs under the Constitution and laws of the United
States, and to which they are justly entitled as members of the human
family.... Those aided are: worthy cases unable to hire legal counsel;
victims of corrupt practices; friendless and unfortunates restrained in
Institutions, who require assistance; ex-service men who have not been able
to have legitimate claims considered, etc., etc. One of the cases which is
often referred to in the papers published by this group is that of William
J. O’Brien. The headline of one article reads as follows: “Poor Private Wm.
J. O’Brien, Sane Veteran of the Apache Indian Campaign, Railroaded to the
Madhouse. Denied Justice--Denied His Day in Court--No Trial--No Lunacy
Proceedings--Illegally Held 34 Years....” In the body of the article this
statement occurs: “Mr. O’Brien indulged in some disorderly conduct in the
office of the War Department. He was immediately arrested, charged with
assault which he did not commit, and brought into the Supreme Court.” I
examined the record of the O’Brien case and found that “some disorderly
conduct” consisted in visiting the War Department, shooting two clerks, and
trying to shoot some more before his gun jammed. The inference should not,
of course, be hastily drawn that all the claims made by agitators, even of
the psychotic stamp, are pure fabrications. That is to be determined in the
individual instance. Thus the slogan about “One Law for the Rich--Another
Law for the Poor” has very reputable support in the findings of such
surveys of criminal justice as the one at Cleveland, in which Dean Pound of
Harvard had a responsible share. But in the case of the litigious paranoids
the underlying private motivation is so imperious that wholesale
distortions of truth are inevitable. Sometimes reckless accusations bring
cruel results, as when another psychotic, E, claimed that a certain Captain
K was shot in the back while circling over a flying field. This fabrication
got to the family of the soldier, who had been informed that the Captain
had been killed in an aeroplane accident, and caused much unnecessary
suffering. The history of F affords some contrasts to what has gone before.
F took up agitation in middle life. It will be remembered that A directed
much of his agitational zeal against culture objects which were sanctioned
by his family and the “substantial” elements in the nation. F was the
reverse of a nonconformist. He was no pacifist, but a soldier-patriot. The
enemies of his country were his enemies, and he denounced them up and down
the land. The authority of revealed religion was not a debatable question;
the enemies of Christianity were his enemies and he went on the platform to
expose them. Several of his patriotic and religious lectures became famous
among the smaller communities of the land. He told the story of a renegade
who impersonated Christ for the purpose of collecting funds to start an
insurrection against the American government in one of our dependencies. He
gave a thrilling account of how he sought out and apprehended this monster.
A Y.M.C.A. worker, in a testimonial letter, declared, “Every man sat
spellbound as the speaker bared the facts in the most sacrilegious
undertaking of modern times to thwart the plans of the American
government.” F was a moving spirit in the opposition to the Covenant of the
League of Nations because the name of God was not mentioned in it. His
argument on the point is said to have impressed President Harding. One of
F’s public pronouncements on the subject read as follows: There might be no
trespass in an “Association of Nations for Conference” coming together if
they did nothing but _confer_, and did no acting or legislating whatever,
_if_ they beforehand and by common consent did the following before the
whole world: 1st, Acknowledge Almighty God before the world, with a promise
to serve _Him!_ 2nd, Acknowledge allegiance to God’s Peace Plan--the
Kingdom of the Prince of Peace--for world peace, which the Bible provides
for! 3rd, Ignore all man-made plans for peace, such as World Federations,
Hague Tribunals, World Leagues, World Courts and all forms of _Human_
world-governments, which the Bible provides against! 4th, Refrain
absolutely from everything that has the slightest tinge of world-alliance,
world-control, or world-domination influence or world concert of civil
action, the human instrumentalities that Holy Writ severely prohibits. 5th,
Especially for the United States. Refrain absolutely from everything that
contravenes our U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence!
(And every nation should alike protect their Constitution!) When thru
centuries of trial the world failed to keep _the Covenant_ written at Sinai
by the Hand of Almighty God Himself and _He_ promised that _He_ would give
the world “A New Covenant” for peace, which _He_ did, then how can the
world, except anything whatsoever from _The League of Nation’s Covenant_
written at Paris by the mortal hands of just mere men like Wilson, Lloyd
George, Clemenceau & Co.? After serving in the army as a young man, F
joined the secret service, and spent several years in pursuit of the
enemies of law and order. His record was excellent, and when the World War
came he was put in charge of secret military police. He became overzealous
in the performance of his duties, spending an altogether disproportionate
amount of time investigating two Mennonite ministers who were alleged to
have letters in their possession written in German criticizing the Liberty
Loan. He claimed to have found ground glass in the bread served to men in
camp. When the laboratory did not confirm his findings, he said that he
mixed ground glass with flour and submitted a sample to the laboratory,
which reported no ground glass, thus confirming his suspicions that the
laboratory staff was composed of aliens--a German, an Austrian, and a Turk.
He began to make direct accusations that some of the camp officers were in
league with the enemy. One of them he accused of using a German private in
his office for translation work, and intrusting him with a key to the iron
safe where the United States secret codes were kept. Presently F was
referred to a psychiatrist for examination, to whom he complained that he
was the victim of a persecution by a little clique of officers. He managed
to publish an interview in the press asserting that ground glass in the
food had made fifty men ill at a certain training camp, and this led to
much unnecessary anxiety among the folks at home. F’s anxiety to “do his
bit” in the suspicion-ladened atmosphere which surrounded America’s entry
into the war led his suspicious nature to overdo the matter. When some of
his efforts were blocked by fellow officers, he began to develop
persecutory ideas. But he was soon able to dispense with them by
reinforcing his identification with the interests of the nation and God,
and displacing his suspicions upon more generalized foes. When his
secret-service work was blocked, he was able to make a transition to
agitation, where he balanced the lost gratification of cherishing secret
knowledge with the pleasure of exhibiting it in public. The record does not
contain enough early childhood material to justify one in venturing to
select the determiner of his capacity to make such an adjustment. The
history simply furnishes a striking example of how a flight into agitation
may perform the function of keeping the personality in some sort of
passable relation to reality, when it has met a serious setback. It gives
another instance to the sum of those which show the difficulties which may
be created in society by those whose personality is influenced by strong
paranoidal trends. The histories so far abstracted have had to do with male
agitators of various kinds. Miss G, when thirty-five years of age, came to
the physician complaining that she was constantly bothered by blushing,
stage fright, uncertainty, palpitations of the heart, and weeping spells.
She is known to be forceful, ambitious, and aggressive. Her contentiousness
is notorious. She is active in the support of all kinds of measures,
particularly for the emancipation of women from the domination of men. She
rose to her present distinction from a very humble position as a
handworker, and she champions the radical cause. An early reminiscence was
recovered during analysis which had been completely buried before. Sometime
between the ages of five and three she had been asked by a nurse to touch
her nurse’s genitals, and threatened with dire things if she told. When she
was in bed with her mother, she had to fight against a powerful compulsion
to touch her mother’s genitalia. This early assumption of the male rôle was
strengthened by her father-identification. In the analysis she reported
that she and her father possessed many common traits, such as stubbornness.
As sometimes happens with children showing traits of the opposite sex,
their brothers or sisters reveal cross-traits. Thus her younger brother
cooked and sewed. Her father took her side in family altercations with the
mother (the father was an artist). The mother was religious, and on the
death of her mother the patient was religious for six months from a sense
of possible guilt for having precipitated her death. Everybody said that
she ought to have been a boy since she showed so much physical dash and
hardihood. Between six and ten she often stole money from her parents, and
was caught reading other people’s letters. As a child she suffered
seriously from vague worries. At the age of seventeen she was unable to
read her own compositions before the class. She talked rather badly in
groups and before strangers, but was very effective in face-to-face
conversations. In public she spoke best when attacked. She had a constant
fear of being subordinated to a man, and was constantly on the alert to
assert herself. She had a horror of marriage, which she thought of as gross
subordination to the crude physical desires of men. One budding love affair
broke up when the man went insane and died. For a long time she longed to
have a child, but only one child. She wished that there were some other
means of impregnation than by using a man, but finally decided to bend to
the inevitable. Several years before analysis she looked around to select a
man to be the father of her child. It was a year after she became
acquainted with the man before she could bring herself to coitus, and she
felt befouled. After the birth of the child she became utterly indifferent
to the man, and broke off their relationship. She was, of course, sexually
frigid. What is the meaning of this demand for a child, and for but a
single child? It was essentially a subconscious demand for the penis to
finish her assumption of the male rôle. The psychoanalytical study of the
growth of the female personality stresses the importance which this motive
assumes.[38] Gregory Zilboorg has analyzed certain post-pregnancy psychoses
from this point of view, and in so doing has thoroughly surveyed the
theoretical field.[39] Castration dreams appeared in the guise of losing
muffs and keys. Homosexual dreams took the usual shape of a nude homosexual
figure. Horrified by dreams of sexual intercourse with her father, she
began the analytical process. Her narcissism expressed itself in both
simple and disguised form. She dreamed of being the mayor and of
humiliating men in all manner of ways. She dreamed of influencing the whole
world (telepathic dreams). Incidentally, she credits dreams with some
prophetic significance. Once she dreamed of a clay field over which she was
passing which changed to plowed land, signifying work, and, sure enough,
she found a job the next day. Another time she was crossing a brook and saw
an ugly body in the stream, and developed laryngitis the next day. The
narcissistic component was strong. She felt the universal rule of the
analytical situation to say everything that crosses the mind to be a
personal command from the doctor. She bitterly resented this subordination
to a man, and finally broke off the analysis. She showed a record of having
been quite rebellious against those in authority over her--shop foremen and
party leaders. Miss G had an enormous masculine complex. She chose
masculine goals, and ruled out the female rôle as far as she could. Her
narcissism brought her from obscurity to distinction, though at the cost of
several neurotic difficulties in which her repressed drives found crippling
expression. She swings between vanity and inferiority feelings. She blushes
when praised, she blushes in public because of the dependence of her sex on
men, and she is timid in the presence of academic people. She always feels
ill at ease with strangers, and lives in isolation from society. In theory
and in practice Miss G is for free love, and for the complete equality of
the sexes. She sought out politics as a career as a means of expressing the
male rôle of dominance, a drive which was powerfully organized in her early
childhood experiences.[40] What has been said about the agitator may be
brought together at this point in a provisional summary. Our general theory
of the political man stressed three terms, the private motives, their
displacement on to public objects, and their rationalization in terms of
public interests. The agitator values mass-responses. Broadly speaking,
this requires an extension of the theory to make it possible to divide
politicians among themselves according to the means which they value in
expressing the drives of their personalities. Now what is there about the
agitator’s developmental history which predisposes him to work out his
affects toward social objects by seeking to arouse the public directly?
Why, to state it another way, is he the slave of the sentiments of the
community at large? Why is he not able to work quietly without regard to
the shifts of mood which distinguish the fickle masses? Why is he not able
to cultivate interests in the manipulation of objective materials, in the
achievement of aesthetic patterns, or in the technical development of
abstractions? Why is he not principally concerned with the emotional
responses of a single person, or a few persons in his intimate circle? Why
is he not willing to wait for belated recognition by the many or by the
specialized and competent few? Agitators as a class are strongly
narcissistic types. Narcissism is encouraged by obstacles in the early love
relationships, or by overindulgence and admiration in the family circle.
Libido which is blocked in moving outward toward objects settles back upon
the self. Sexual objects like the self are preferred, and a strong
homosexual component is thus characteristic. Among the agitators this
yearning for emotional response of the homosexual kind is displaced upon
generalized objects, and high value is placed on arousing emotional
responses from the community at large. The tremendous urge for expression
in written or spoken language is a roundabout method of gratifying these
underlying emotional drives. Agitators show many traits which are
characteristic of primitive narcissism in the exaggerated value which they
put on the efficacy of formulas and gestures in producing results in the
world of objective reality. The family history shows much repression of the
direct manifestation of hatred. There is often a record of a “model boy”
during the early years, or of a shy and sensitive child who swallowed his
resentments. Repressed sadism is partly vented upon objects remote from the
immediately given environment, and favors the cultivation of general social
interests. The youth has usually learned to control by suppression and by
repression the full amplitude of his affects, and this is a discipline in
deceit. The narcissistic reactions prevent the developing individual from
entering into full and warm emotional relationships during his puberty
period, and sexual adjustments show varying degrees of frigidity or
impotence, and other forms of maladjustment.[41] Speaking in terms of early
growth phases, the agitators as a group show marked predominance of oral
traits. Distinctions within the agitating class itself may be drawn along
several lines. The oratorical agitator, in contradistinction to the
publicist, seems to show a long history of successful impostorship in
dealing with his environment. Mr. A, it will be recalled, was able to pass
for a model, and became skilled in the arts of putting up a virtuous front.
Agitators differ appreciably in the specificity or the generality of the
social objects upon which they succeed in displacing their affects. Those
who have been consciously attached to their parents, and who have been
successful impostors, are disposed to choose remote and general objects.
Those who have been conscious of suppressing serious grievances against the
early intimate circle, and who have been unable to carry off the impostor’s
rôle, are inclined to pick more immediate and personal substitutes. The
rational structure tends toward theoretical completeness in the former
case. Displacement choices depend on the models available when the early
identifications are made. When the homosexual attitude is particularly
important, the assaultive, provocative relation to the environment is
likely to display itself; when the impotence fear is active, grandiose
reaction patterns appear more prominently. CHAPTER VIII POLITICAL
ADMINISTRATORS Some administrators are full of ideas and others are seldom
attracted by novelty. Some do their best work under a rather indulgent
chief; others fall to pieces unless there is strong pressure from above.
There are administrators who derive their influence over subordinates from
the authority of their positions rather than from the authority of their
personalities. There are some who may be depended upon for the
conscientious performance of detailed tasks, while others neglect details
and think in terms of general policy. Viewed developmentally, it appears
that one group of administrators is remarkably akin to the agitators,
differing only in the fact that they are bound to particular individuals
more closely, and thus displace their affects upon less generalized
objects. This gives a certain independence to the administrator from the
compulsion to “get a rise out of” large numbers of the population. It ties
him more securely, however, to the members of his own environment, whose
relations he seeks to co-ordinate. The administrator is a co-ordinator of
effort in continuing activity. The group which is allied to the agitators
includes those who show imagination and promoting drive. The history of H
belongs in this class, and has the incidental interest of showing how H
behaved in war time. While it is accurate to say that H is diplomatic and
seemingly open and frank in dealing with his superiors, it should be added
that in situations which involve the fate of his own projects, he is
noticeably overtense, and likely to evaluate himself much higher than
others. He becomes slightly accusatory if his demands are rejected. The
elderly executive with whom H did his best work sometimes complained that a
conference with H was as fatiguing as a whole day’s work. The older man
felt that H might be entirely broken up if his projects were rudely
rejected, and he also believed the young man to be too valuable to damage.
H recognizes that he has often found himself shirking when his superiors
let him alone, and wonders why this attitude, which is contrary to his own
interests, should take hold of him. H displays a tendency to behave
arrogantly toward subordinates, and when he was in the army it was obvious
that he could maintain discipline only through the formal authority vested
in him. H is an only child. His father was a big, overpowering person, who
was a strict disciplinarian. The parents were very prudish in sexual
matters, and one of his embarrassing memories is the confusion and vexation
of his mother when he asked her about babies. Left to his own resources,
and stimulated by a variety of incidents to explore sexual problems on his
own initiative, the boy became involved in a set of episodes and reveries
which he tried to keep from the family, and thus met every family situation
with some anxiety lest his sins should find him out. H grew into a
hyperactive and seemingly light-hearted youngster, who obeyed his parents
implicitly and met strangers with ingratiating charm. H was constantly
occupied with the task of adopting a manner toward authority which would
conceal his secret preoccupations. About the age of four, H surprised his
parents in a sexual embrace, and vividly recalled his own mixture of
burning curiosity and embarrassment. Some of his early dream fragments
indicate that he repressed a powerful hostility toward his father, who he
thought was hurting his mother, and likewise repressed hatred of his
mother, who he felt was disloyal to him. His experiences continued through
a long chain of incidents. There was mutual exposure of sexual parts
between him and a playmate of his own age. A deeply repressed episode was a
seduction in which he played the principal part. He was meanwhile
completely successful in playing the rôle of model boy. When H was ten
years of age, however, there transpired an incident which for a time
branded him in the neighborhood as a nasty little renegade, and which had
many subsequent repercussions. He touched the exposed sexual parts of a
neighbor girl, who was somewhat his junior. The sister and brother of the
girl were interested spectators. The children told the cooks, and the news
finally got around to the mother of the girl. She took it calmly enough,
but thought she ought to tell the boy’s mother. H’s mother passed the story
to his father, which was the worst thing that could happen, from H’s point
of view. His father administered a sharp dressing-down, and forbade him to
play outside the yard for a fortnight. H’s father was very angry, and
lectured him about his sins every night for a while. Presently the father
went over to see the neighbor, and seems to have taken the line that the
girl was as much to blame as his son if not more so. This tactless behavior
completely alienated the neighbor. Now this neighbor happened to edit an
important newspaper, and ever afterward this newspaper lost no opportunity
to assail the efficiency of the department in the city government headed by
H’s father. These attacks continued over many years, and H’s father
occasionally threw it up to him that he had been responsible for the
original quarrel. As it was, the boy was ostracized in the neighborhood for
a year or more, and was not invited to go to parties, although he could
play with the children. But H was self-conscious, and sought companionship
farther away. The brother of the girl thought that he ought to turn against
H, and there were some fights. At fourteen H began to go to high school. He
kept away from the swimming pool during the first year or two because he
was much embarrassed by the lack of hair around his genitals. This supposed
retardation, about which he worried a great deal, lasted but a short time,
when a new set of worries came up. He now believed that his penis was
abnormally large, and that his testicles were too low-hanging and perhaps
deformed. In college he was nicknamed “Cocky,” on account of his
jauntiness, but he secretly suspected that this was an allusion to his
penis. A chum taught him how to masturbate, and he continued to do so for
about six months, when his emissions became so frequent that his mother
told his father. For once, H’s father handled the situation with good
sense, and after a kindly interview in which the father explained that it
was not a good idea to indulge excessively, H quit. But even this matter
was not terminated, for the disturbing reverie remained that perhaps his
excessive masturbation had permanently impaired his manhood. H had a lively
curiosity about his mother’s body of which he was intensely ashamed. He
recalls loitering in his mother’s room while she made ready to change her
clothes, hoping that she would forget to send him out. He found himself
speculating about the shape of her body, and was several times on the verge
of spying through the keyhole. But his impulse was inhibited when he
remembered the story told by his father in which a “peeper” was spoken of
with the greatest contempt. H dreamed of sexual intercourse with his mother
on several occasions, nearly always during periods of unusual strain. These
dreams were deeply buried and came out into the clear with great
difficulty. His sexual curiosity extended to animals, and he stimulated the
sexual parts of his dog. This further associated sex with the bestial and
unclean, and convinced him of his own guilt for so much as wondering about
it. H’s first sexual intercourse cost him much worry. It occurred during
his second year in high school. He had been sent with the family automobile
to drive home a guest, and noticed a girl of about his own age who was gay
and flirtatious. On the way home he picked up the girl with two boys whom
he knew slightly. All of them had sexual intercourse with the girl. He was
terribly worried that he might reach home too late. His strict father had
laid down the rule that if he got home at any hour of the night, he was to
wake up the family and give an account of himself. In his haste he
neglected to inspect the car and his father found some hairpins in the
tonneau. H denied that he knew anything about them. The incident, however,
was not closed. He saw an item in the newspaper about several men who were
arrested for rape, and wondered whether he had committed a horrible crime
himself with his companions. Before long the girl became pregnant and was
brought before the juvenile court. She named another gang of boys, and this
gang accused H and his two companions of being to blame. He was horrified
at the prospect of going into court and dragging his family to disgrace. H
was afraid that his partners in wrongdoing would confess, but he denied
everything to his father, and his father’s political influence kept him
from being haled into court. But for at least a year the black cloud of
possible exposure hung on the horizon of his mind. All during his
high-school days he had occasional sex intercourse, but every episode was
marred by some disagreeable features. While there were such experiences
with girls of low social standing, he had many friendships with girls of
good social position whom he idealized as above sexuality. He attended a
private school which was patronized almost exclusively by children from
very wealthy families, and H, who was handsome, well dressed, quick, and
agreeable, found his friends among them. He was often in their homes and
admired the signs of wealth and culture. He became sensitive of the
cultural limitations of his own parents, and was afraid to entertain his
school friends at home, but fortunately from his point of view his father
was willing to furnish enough money to make it possible to hold up his end
of the social bargain at exclusive clubs and restaurants. In college H
continued to draw a sharp line between those who could be petted, but who
were too rich and refined to be approached for intercourse, and those who
could be petted, and who were poor enough to be asked for intercourse. He
continued to associate with a smart and wealthy set, and finally
concentrated his attention on the daughter of a rich business man whom he
wanted to marry. His left-handed affairs continued at irregular intervals,
and he felt remorseful when he had the perversions performed on him. Enough
has been reported to convey an impression of H’s inner state. His
unsatisfied sexual curiosity had been whetted by his prudish parents. His
father defended his own ascendancy in the home by ordering the boy about a
great deal, and H responded to authority by a system of reactions which
became characteristic of him. He was tactful, deferential, and acquiescent,
qualified by inner resentment and rare gestures of defiance. The father was
not a friend but a barrier to be circumvented, and the father’s hegemony
was protected by the sense of guilty inferiority which he had created in
his son. Family differences, such as arose when the father objected to
housekeeping details, or when the boy wanted more freedom to use the car,
always showed the same balance of forces--mother and son versus the father.
The mother did not defend herself by robust contradiction but by weak
complaints. There were only two instances in which the boy flared up enough
to resist his father openly. If H had been more successful in winning
applause outside the family, it is quite possible that his position would
have been made much easier inside it. His social charm brought him into the
most influential circles, and this gratified his parents, but his father
was a man of action who felt that while wealthy friends were an asset, his
son ought to show more positive achievements. Though he never nagged H, the
father’s sternness, suspiciousness and absence of praise made a deep
impression on the boy, and gave him a sense of insecurity and inadequacy.
Although H scored no great successes, he went along without academic
catastrophe until college. He was suspended at the end of his Freshman year
for poor work, but came back after six months, during which he pretended to
his father that he was still in school. The suspension was partly due to
the advice given to the dean by his fraternity brothers, who had found him
very hard to manage, and wanted to “bring him to his senses.” H was having
a fling, since he was away from home for the first time, and away from the
intimidating father. Presently he steadied down enough to get along.
Reminiscences of his guilty sexual experiments, deeply charged with
guilt-feeling, were continually bobbing up to interfere with his progress.
Once he was assigned to debate in high-school public-speaking class. His
opponent proved to be the brother of the girl with whom he had the
notorious incident several years before. The brother was a prominent school
leader who had no doubt forgotten the affair, but it continued to weigh on
H. He always had felt uncomfortable in the other boy’s presence, and on
this occasion, being poorly prepared, the situation became so unbearable
that he fainted. He began to study agriculture at college, but soon found
that he had made a mistake. His family owned a ranch which he often visited
during vacations, and very much enjoyed. Farming was an avocation of his
father, and H had the idea that ranching was a genteel occupation without
much work, and with much ordering of other people about. He vaguely thought
of himself as a country gentleman of cultivated leisure. The war saved H
from agriculture. He took up aviation, without losing “credits,” partly
because the snobbish mother of his favorite girl was bowled over by the
uniform, and partly because he thought it would be better to go into the
war, if he had to go, as an officer than as a private. His father’s
influence secured a deferred classification for him in the draft, and H,
though feeling quite small about it, said to himself that it was better for
people to die who were without his own advantages and achievements. His
career as an officer in the camp brought out the traits to which reference
has previously been made. His engaging deference toward his superiors won
them all, but he had trouble with the men. His own insecurity led to an
arrogant pose on his part that offended every man in the company. He also
discovered that the moment discipline was relaxed he became very careless
in performing his own duties. The same constellation of traits reappeared
in his administrative career, modified by the fact that he learned to
assume a less provocative attitude toward his subordinates. He made a very
good record, and proposed a number of changes that were adopted for the
improvement of the service. Looking back over H’s history, the striking
thing is his prolonged worry about his adjustment to specific persons. H
was never able to make the hurdle into abstract interests. Even his
administrative ideas were closely tied to the immediate context of the
service. H’s life was very much dominated by his relationship to definite
people, and this meant a prolonged carry-over of early attitudes to these
individuals. Unlike B, who could rightly feel that his father and brother
and aunt were treating him unjustly, H was all too aware that he “deserved”
more than he got. His success as an impostor was rudely interrupted in some
early episodes. Another “marginal” history shows what happens to some men
with agitating aspirations who are not able to disentangle themselves from
a place inside an organization and to give themselves up wholly to
agitational work. Mr. I is a type occasionally met with inside
administrative staffs who makes a serious problem for himself and others.
He radiates plans that he neglects to execute, and he is supercilious and
defiant toward superiors. He lacks the drive, however, to move over into
agitational work entirely by identifying himself with a sufficiently
dramatic cause. Sometimes this is due, as in I’s own case, to powerful
early identifications with particular projects, and with administrative
work as such. When such a person can be pried loose from certain of these
early fixations, he often proves capable of fulfilling the expectations
which he is able to arouse. The father of I was a man whose extraordinary
talents won him great distinction, but who never quite managed to come
through as brilliantly as people had a right to expect from one so richly
endowed. I’s father could talk five or six languages and read many more. He
was educated in England, France, and Italy, and after serving as a
professor of modern languages, his interest in educational problems led him
to become the head of a famous preparatory school, and later of a public
school. He spent most of his time reading, and during the last decade of
his life drank heavily, but without impairing the quality of his work.
Someone who knew him pronounced the man “a self-centered intellectual who
died without a friend.” The mother of I was an adopted daughter of a member
of the British aristocracy, and was brought up in distinguished social and
intellectual circles. The mother was exceptionally active in all sorts of
humanitarian enterprises but lavished much time and love on the boy, who
was “dreadfully spoiled,” and accepted everybody’s judgment that he was a
budding genius. True to anticipations, the boy shot through school like a
meteor, ranking first in his subjects, and taking every available honor
with ease. In college he branched out into social and political life on a
large scale, and joined about twenty organizations, managing to have
himself put on every important committee. Like his father, the son took up
public-school work. Becoming interested in psychology, he did some graduate
work, and quickly published a book that received very favorable comment
among those best qualified to judge it. The idea of educational reform
fired his imagination, and he lectured far and wide, engaging in agitations
to secure legislation which would authorize a number of experimental
schools. The part of his history which is especially interesting to the
student of administration is this: He was continually at outs with his
superiors and colleagues. His first teaching position began with a feud,
and lasted but a little while. He was invited to resign his next post. He
was asked to resign the next position. He was asked to resign the next
position. These entries appear monotonously through his record. Everybody
conceded the brilliance and fertility of his mind, and did homage to the
originality of his plans. He began work but failed to carry it far, seeming
to think that work planned was work done. His methods were always
aggressive. Seized of an administrative idea, he went to his superiors.
When they criticized the scheme, or rejected his suggestion, he often took
the bit in his teeth and tried to run the ship in his own way. More than
once financial irregularities have been discovered in connection with his
work. He has given out checks when no funds were available, and run unduly
large expense accounts. Whenever he has been in financial jams, he has
turned to other people for aid as a matter of course, seeming to feel that
he has a claim on the world for support. He has always been childishly
dependent on his wife for praise. He resented his wife’s motherhood, but
has been overindulgent with the two children, who, his wife says, have no
respect for him. He likes to be the center of attention, and is a clever
showman, and a great deal of a bluffer. He is usually not high tempered but
affectionate. He is inclined to be accusatory toward his wife--“a
vixen”--but his wife appears to be a keen person, who was enough impressed
by his precocious brilliance to marry and to pamper him, but who in later
years has delivered herself of pointed comments on his character. It seems
that he has gone through several periods of alternating exhilaration and
despondency. The exhilarations came when he had a position and when life
became a little monotonous or a little hard. At least one of these swings
was sufficiently pronounced to lead to a period of retirement in a
sanitarium. During this time he was asked what kind of work he liked best,
and replied, “Reforming the world--my first choice; second, exploiting the
world.” The strength of his narcissism is self-evident, and the feminine
marks in his character are numerous. He expects to be nurtured and
supported by the world as a matter of right. He demands constant
“mothering” from his wife, and coddles the children. His father-hatred,
which was thoroughly repressed in the family, comes out in his difficulty
with father-surrogates, and in his determination to change the educational
system at points where the father took it for granted or overtly defended
it. The selection of the pedagogical rôle is itself indicative of the
strength of his father-identification. What seems to have happened in his
development is a fixation of interests in a relatively narrow sphere in
which the affects are so powerful and at the same time so contradictory
that difficulties are assured. He finds it impossible to shake off his
managerial aspirations sufficiently to devote all his time to the
propagation of ideas. Although his affects are displaced upon abstract
problems, they are not displaced upon objects sufficiently removed from his
father, and the displacement does not succeed in making it possible for him
to achieve an impersonal attitude toward his superiors and colleagues in
educational administration. The exaggerated praise heaped upon him as a boy
had much to do with the narcissism. His incapacity to follow through is no
doubt related to his early conflicts over genital activity. The chief point
of significant contrast with A is that the narcissistic component
interfered more seriously with H’s development, since it led him to insist
upon playing an administrative rôle. A’s environment was less prostrate
before him, and he was able to avoid assuming administrative obligations
where he would be cramped and subordinated. The history of J, which has
been reported by Alexander,[42] shows what lies behind a powerful
administrator’s thirst for responsibility, and reveals how changes in the
working relations inside an organization may disorganize the individual. J
was a driving executive whose superiors deferred to his judgment and
accepted his plans. His abounding energy sought an outlet through the
assumption of heavier and heavier responsibilities inside the organization.
Finally, a change in the chief executive brought J under the immediate
control of a man who handled him with cool assurance, holding him firmly
but considerately to his own formal sphere of action. Confronted for the
first time in his life by a more powerful personality who knew how to
regulate him, J took the wife of another man for his mistress, and in spite
of the remonstrances of those who knew him, he held tenaciously to both the
mistress and the wife. An analysis showed that J was characterized from
early childhood by a notable split in his personality. Side by side with
his aggressive, masculine drive there existed a strongly repressed, though
powerful, feminine tendency. His personality is to be rendered intelligible
only as a compromise formation between those two incompatible motives. The
repression of the passive component produced a regressive fixation upon the
wife, who was compelled to play a markedly maternal rôle, and to humor his
every whim. He resented it if his every wish was not defined and fulfilled
before he had to go to the trouble of putting it into words. J has delicate
aesthetic sensibilities, and is a cultivated amateur in the arts. In
sharpest imaginable contrast to his behavior at home was his insatiable
thirst for authority and responsibility in his professional life. One of
his dreams acutely symbolized him as a giant automobile of untold
horse-power, whose body was a light French coach of the rococo period. As
Alexander comments, J’s life-problem was to indulge his passive demands
without doing violence to his masculine ideal. But this was not
accomplished without strain. He could earn periods of indulgence in
aesthetics by exaggerated aggressiveness in his work, but as his feminine
tendencies were gratified, his masculine ideal was endangered, and he would
be driven back to high-pressure management. The psychological significance
of his work was symbolized in the following dream: He was penetrating a
thick sheet of cardboard with a needle, and continually asking for new
sheets to bore through. He succeeded in going through several thicknesses.
The cardboard represented his occupational problems, and the needle his
penis. His professional activity was largely a sublimation of his
aggressive, active sexuality. The equilibrium between his aggressiveness in
work and his passivity in marital life was upset by the new chief
executive, who skilfully hemmed in his activity. Alexander remarks that it
is impossible for a man who has struggled all his life against very strong
unconscious homosexuality to serve under a strong man. The dominating
personality arouses the latent attitude, and the subordinate must resort to
special means of maintaining his repression. In the case of B, which we
have previously considered, the means of restoring some sort of equilibrium
was escape (by resigning), but when that became very difficult, he fled
into a world of fantasy (a psychosis). J met the crisis by breaking through
the sublimation of his heterosexuality, and taking a mistress as an outlet
for his thwarted drives. Further than that, he vindicated his masculinity
in a very dramatic way. He not only took a mistress, but he took the wife
of another. From now on, he was dependent on both women to preserve the
equilibrium of his personality. Previously the equilibrium had been
maintained between wife and work; now it depended on wife, mistress, and
work, for the aggressive, masculine component required the mistress to make
up for the limitations imposed upon his working sphere. Alexander reports
that in the course of a long analysis this remarkable split in the
personality was traced back to early childhood. “At the age of four he was
already the same person.” At the age of four he continued to drink milk out
of a bottle, stubbornly resisting every effort to break him of the
practice. But--and it was with an emphatic “but” that J produced the
reminiscence--at the same time the boy was especially adventurous and
independent, riding all by himself out on the highway. Here was the same
antithesis that later expressed itself in his peculiar relation to wife and
work. The child won the right to indulge his infantile, oral tendencies in
one particular by exaggerated boldness in other respects. This solution was
the prototype for his later life. The rôle of the bottle was later taken by
his wife, whom he often treated like an inanimate object whose only
function was to minister to his needs, while his work, and later his
mistress, were the successors to the bicycle, by means of which he was able
to prove his independence and his masculinity to himself and the world. The
castration fear, which was aroused by the means adopted to break up his
infantile masturbation, favored the oral fixation, and came into conflict
with his strong masculine genital drive, laying the basis for this notable
character split. * * * * * The records so far discussed have had to do with
inventive or driving administrators. A type often met with in the public
service is the conscientious, overscrupulous official, whose touchiness,
fondness for detail, delight in routine, and passion for accuracy at once
preserve the integrity of the service and alienate the affections of
anybody who has to do business with the government. K was such a man. For
some years he was in the forestry service, where part of his duties was to
mark the trees that might be cut by private lumbermen. The lumbermen
naturally argued that the straight, sound trees should be cut and the
damaged ones left for seed. K took a variety of other factors into account,
and spent days measuring and estimating position, growth rates, and shade
area, exasperating the lumbermen with his everlasting and often superfluous
scrupulousness. He keenly felt his responsibilities as a public servant,
and disliked the very appearance of succumbing to private pressure. At one
time K resigned the service in disgust because of “uncivil” treatment by a
superior, but his “touchiness” was much more deeply rooted in his nature
than he had any idea. The record of K is not only the story of a pedantic
official but of an ardent patriot. One of the highest forms of patriotism
is supposed to be volunteering for posts of conspicuous danger in war. K
pulled all the wires within reach to get a place on the front line, and
only the point-blank refusal of his superiors to allow him to squander his
technical ability prevented him from achieving his desire. From a close
examination of his intimate history we learn how one variety of
superpatriot comes to be. K was the youngest of four children. His next
brother was eight years his senior, his sister was five years older than
this brother, and his oldest brother was eighteen years ahead of him. He
never remembered a time when his mother and father, who were divorced when
he was eight, were on good terms with each other. They seldom spoke, except
to quarrel. This family background was reflected in the mental life of the
growing child. K was notoriously nervous and timid. From a very early day
he began to be preoccupied with why he was different from everybody else in
the world. His sense of isolation and strangeness led him to believe that
perhaps he was the only real person in the world and that everybody else
was an illusion. He would sometimes come up wonderingly to touch his
mother, and then himself, to see if she, too, were real. He speculated on
how he could get away from the human shadows around him, and became
convinced that he could fly. Several times he laboriously climbed up on the
seat of a kitchen chair, spread his arms like a bird, and leaped into
space. Every time he crashed to the floor, his frightened mother rescued
him, but he always felt surprised and rather aggrieved that he should fall,
and secretly believed that he could fly after all. This type of reaction
characteristically appears where emotional conflicts in the home create an
acute problem of emotional orientation for the child. As a small boy he was
sent by his mother to follow his father when he left the house, and to
report where he went. K developed a strong sense of guilt for this, and
after the divorce was afraid that his father would return and take revenge
on him in some unknown and horrible way. His father did occasionally
reappear, and once invited the boy to spend the night with him, but K was
too frightened to accept. The family often lived in the country, and the
self-consciousness of K in the presence of strangers was heightened by
frequent removals into new and often isolated places. One of the towns near
which he lived when about nine was on a frontier. Gun-play was frequent,
and K remembers having seen the corpses of men who had been shot down in
street brawls. There were ominous-looking fellows around town, and the boy
gave them a wide berth. The death of his mother when he was twelve robbed K
of his main emotional support in a dangerous world. She died after two
years of suffering from an infected limb. She would also spit into bits of
papers and burn them in the stove. K wondered why she did this, and later
developed a reverie the importance of which will soon appear. The older
members of the family were left with K on their hands, and they decided to
club together and put all thought of marrying out of their heads until he
was able to stand alone. The boy did not then realize the sacrifices they
made for him, but he later discovered that his older brother put off
marrying the girl of his choice until she broke off the engagement and
married someone else. It was not until about the time that he graduated
from high school and the home was broken up that he became aware of what he
owed them, and ever after he was plagued by the thought of his
unworthiness, and his incapacity to repay his brothers and sister for their
care. Up to that time he had experienced no particular sense of gratitude,
and although his older brother once or twice referred to his dependent
position, his private feelings were mainly of resentment against the
restrictions imposed upon him. And these restrictions were not
inconsiderable. The family ran a greenhouse, and the drudgery involved in
such an occupation was incessant. There were slips to transplant, beds to
weed, and loads to pull and carry. There were long hours of boredom over
routine occupations. K was expected to dash home from school at the
earliest possible moment, and to lend a hand with the endless chores about
the place. Occasionally he succeeded in evading his duties. He stopped to
play on the way home from deliveries, and he stayed at school on some
pretext or other to join the drill squad. But he was always haunted by fear
and guilt. His older brother was a strict disciplinarian, and beat him
several times. His sister occasionally let him have some spending money,
but as a rule he was tightly cramped financially. When his gang organized
into a drill squad, and chose their uniforms, he was humiliated when the
necessary dollars were not forthcoming from home. K was worried by what
appeared to be a lack of physical stamina and endurance. This idea (which
had no basis in fact) in part grew out of his efforts to do what his
brothers did. They occasionally broad-jumped or pulled weights, and of
course K made a poor showing beside them. But for the unconscious hostility
against them, such unequal results would not have disturbed him. His morbid
worries about his strength led him to submit to a great deal of bullying by
town toughs. His adolescent years were marred by perpetual anxieties about
his social adequacy. He had been the victim of an explosion which left his
face marked with powder stains, and this repugnant tattooing, which
disappeared very gradually, embarrassed him for years. K’s older brothers
and sister sometimes took him with them to parties because there was nobody
to leave him with, and an annoying sense of being in the way added to his
growing sense of social inadequacy. During high-school days he fell in love
with the daughter of the most influential man in the locality, but as her
social standards became more exacting, his lack of money, leisure, and
prestige made it impossible for him to travel with her set. One of the most
humiliating episodes in his life was the one which broke up their
relations. K had arranged to meet her at a dancing class. Another girl
called up to see if he would take her, but he said he wasn’t going. His
oldest brother had listened in on the telephone extension, and was
astonished to see K appear all dressed up and on the way out. He launched
forth on a tirade, declaring that K gallivanted around throwing money away
and shirking his job, though he was absolutely dependent on others for his
daily bread. K was cut to the quick, and went back to his room churning
with too many emotions to call up and offer explanations to the girl. K had
taken it for granted ever since he was a small boy that he would go to
college. He traced back his determination to an incident when he was
driving across the plains one magnificent starry night. He sat in the
bottom of the rig, rapt in contemplation of the sparkling sky, while his
mother chatted with her neighbor. Suddenly he asked how he could find out
about the stars, and she replied that people could study all about them in
college. He then and there resolved to go to college, and never had a
moment’s doubt about it, although the members of his immediate family went
no farther than the common school. In spite of his inferiority feelings, K
was not cut off from some measure of recognition in high school. His
dependable and sympathetic qualities impressed themselves upon those who
came into close daily contact with him, and he was made an officer of his
high-school class. He was respectful toward his teachers and good in his
studies. College was an entirely different affair. His personal worries
multiplied during the transition period. Lacking funds, he sought a
scholarship. The only one tenable from his district to the state university
was in ceramic engineering, and after looking up “ceramic” in the
dictionary, he applied and was selected for admission. The work proved to
have no particular interest for him, and his social life was even less
satisfying. He was met at the college town by the members of a church group
who lived together in a dormitory (some friend had written them), and he,
though never devout, stopped with them during the first term. This marked
him as a non-fraternity man. He waited tables in a fraternity house, and as
bad luck would have it, a former teacher wrote highly recommending him to
the consideration of this particular fraternity. When a committee broke the
news to him, he was utterly confused and made such a lamentable impression
that it was not possible to extend him the bid. One of his odd jobs was
beating carpets at a sorority house, and this turned out to be the sorority
that had pledged the girl with whom he had been (and still felt) in love.
For relaxation K was forced into the domain of the kitchen maids. A servant
girl struck up a friendship with him, and he had sexual relations with her.
He had tried intercourse once during high-school days, and had a premature
emission, a practice which often bothered him later, providing a permanent
source of humiliation. Transferring to another college, he began his work
in forestry, in which he had acquired some interest during hikes with a
friendly high-school teacher. Handicapped by lack of money and worried by a
mounting sense of social inadequacy, his life was no more successful than
before. In high-school days he envied a talkative lad who astonished the
company by glibly recounting anecdotes about Napoleon. One of his relatives
whom he had known as a boy left an ideal of social charm which never was
attained. K’s inner uncertainties finally reached a point which led him to
resolve that he ought to discover once for all whether forestry would prove
to be a proper vocation. He left college and joined the government service.
This was to be the great test of his ability to master himself. So keen was
his preoccupation with self-mastery that he resented every effort to
influence him, and acted with unnecessary strictness in dealing with
private lumbermen. He was often deprived of human relationships during his
days in the field, and gradually his mind became more and more enmeshed in
morbid reflections about himself. His mind simply refused to concentrate on
the technical volumes which he had brought with him to improve the
solitude. Reveries which had been slowly germinating on the periphery of
his attention now began to foliate. K had always wondered why his mother
burned those little bits of paper. It dawned on him one day that she might
really have died of tuberculosis, and that he must therefore be predisposed
toward that disease. Early in his high-school days, he had begun
deep-breathing exercises, though he had never freely admitted to himself or
anybody else what lay behind it. He always gave the usual account of his
mother’s death to insurance examiners, smothering his doubts in
affirmation. This was his state of mind when America entered the war. He
found himself saying that since he was going to die anyhow from a loathsome
disease, he might as well die at once and get it over with. Enlisting
without delay, he sought to reach an exposed position as rapidly as he
could. But the government had different ideas, and assigned him to a branch
of the service where his technical skill would prove useful. In his
disappointment, all the old feelings of inadequacy returned. Interviewed by
an officer he floundered and stumbled, neglecting to report essential facts
about his training and experience. The accidental intervention of an
acquaintance straightened out the matter, and secured the authority to
which his record entitled him. At first he was very much embarrassed in the
company of lumberjacks, but his behavior never showed his confusion. His
actual record was, as usual, excellent, and his conscientious efficiency
won the indorsement of everybody who knew him. K married a rather
dominating school-teacher whom he had known for some time. When things went
badly, as they often did, he was partially impotent, and also showed the
phenomenon which has been christened “Sunday neurosis.” Every Sunday
afternoon when he was at home he would find himself assailed by deep
depression, and would weep quietly to himself.[43] In spite of these
neurotic troubles, K was able to make an important place for himself inside
a bureaucracy, when he came back from the army. From one point of view, K’s
character may be summed up by saying that his overscrupulous performance of
duty was an elaborate effort to demonstrate his potency, and that his
longing for danger came at a time when he was willing to surrender the
struggle. K’s morbid moods and persistent feelings of inadequacy are
self-imposed penalties for his hostilities against the environment. He
possessed very powerful aggressive drives which were partly expressed in
the adoption of a self-ideal which was far more ambitious than anything
deemed feasible by the family. His narcissism was such that he was
prevented from viewing himself as an object, and from modifying his demands
upon the world for recognition, and upon himself for production, until
these demands bore a closer relationship to his own skills and
opportunities. The basis for his obsessive scrupulousness was laid during
early childhood, when he was torn between father and mother-loyalties, and
acted out within his own nature the clashes that occurred between them. His
strong mother-identification is shown by his belief that he suffered from
her diseases, and would die from tuberculosis as she had died. He preferred
death to a reduction in his demands upon himself and the world. Such a
reaction has in it the primitive demand of the child to treat the world as
controllable at will by the omnipotent fantasy. His genital difficulties
testify to the intensity of the castration conflict, and show the
passive-oral regression. K deeply resented having to adjust to the world at
all. His capacity for hard work was achieved against high resistance, and
in part had the value of a penance. Thus when workless days came around, he
was always ill at ease, and sometimes showed the spells of weeping on
Sunday afternoons. To work was to prove his potency, and to supply a ritual
substitute for and defense against his antisocial impulses. He was unable
to emancipate himself very far from the reactions of the people in his
immediate environment. * * * * * As a class the administrators differ from
the agitators by the displacement of their affects upon less remote and
abstract objects. In the case of one important group this failure to
achieve abstract objects is due to excessive preoccupation with specific
individuals in the family circle, and to the correlative difficulty of
defining the rôle of the self. Putting agitator A at one end of the scale,
we may place administrator K or H near the other. Agitator B was less able
to displace than A, as shown by the more personal character of the reforms
which interested him. K or H were so concerned about definite people, and
about their own failures in relation to many of them, that emancipation was
unattainable. As a hypothetical construction from these “marginal” cases,
we may suggest that another group of administrators is recruited from among
those who have passed smoothly through their developmental crises. They
have not overrepressed powerful hostilities, but either sublimated these
drives, or expressed them boldly in the intimate circle. They display an
impersonal interest in the task of organization itself, and assert
themselves with firmness, though not with overemphasis, in professional and
in intimate life. Their lack of interest in abstractions is due to the fact
that they have never needed them as a means of dealing with their emotional
problems. They can take or leave general ideas without using them to arouse
widespread affective responses from the public. Tied neither to
abstractions nor to particular people, they are able to deal with both in a
context of human relations, impersonally conceived. Their affects flow
freely; they are not affectless, but affectively adjusted. Very original
and overdriving administrators seem to show a fundamental pattern which
coincides with that of the agitators; the differences in specific
development are principally due to the cultural patterns available for
identification at critical phases of growth. CHAPTER IX POLITICAL
CONVICTIONS Political prejudices, preferences, and creeds are often
formulated in highly rational form, but they are grown in highly irrational
ways. When they are seen against the developmental history of the person,
they take on meanings which are quite different from the phrases in which
they are put. To begin, almost at random, with L. He believes that the
United States ought to join the League of Nations and that our government
ought to lead the world toward conciliation and peace. He is a Republican
in party preference, and possesses well-rationalized judgments on a number
of public questions. It is for none of these reasons that his history is of
special value to the political scientist. What his intimate history does
disclose is an exact parallelism between his political opinions and those
of his father and mother, and, besides that, a conscious anxiety on his
part to conform to the parental pattern of belief and occupation. He has a
strange premonition that if he goes his own way something terrible will
happen. Thus L is not only a simple conformer, but a compulsive conformer.
He is the youngest of four children. The next older member was a brother
who was killed when L was eight and the brother was seventeen. Since L was
so much younger than the other children, he was at first petted and
spoiled. He slept around with all the members of the family, but mostly
with his mother. A cousin of his own age with whom he visited provided the
immediate point of departure for much exaggerated sexual fantasy. The
cousin initiated him into various sexual practices when L was seven. He
began very early to masturbate, and the habit stayed with him as a problem
until he was through college. A certain masochistic element appeared when
he got erections at an early age upon being spanked by a girl playmate. He
was sexually stimulated when attending to the natural wants of small
children. L developed his guilty fantasies about his sinful impulses until
he began to fear that grave retribution would be visited upon him or his
family on account of his secret crimes. It was at this time that his
brother, who was his favorite in the family next to the mother, was killed
while out on a boyish escapade. L was profoundly stirred by this. His
forebodings of disaster seemed to have direct confirmation, and he soon
developed whole congeries of compulsive rituals. When L went to the
bathtub, he felt that something terrible would happen to his family, and
especially to his mother, unless he plunged his head under water and held
it there just as long as he had the breath. He became afraid of taking a
bath because of this compulsive drive to duck his head under the water.
Often in the bathroom he had the same feeling that disaster could be
prevented only if he succeeded in drinking all the water that gushed out of
a faucet. At night he would be seized by the sudden conviction that he must
bury his face in the pillow and keep it there just as long as he possibly
could without suffocating. Once he swallowed a pin after long inner debate
over the efficacy of this measure. Several times he hung over the edge of
the roof on top of the house until he barely had strength enough to swing
back to safety on top of the porch. He felt that he could permit no one to
pass him on the street. Later he thought he must outstare people, and
calculated that if he kept staring until seven out of ten people dropped
their eyes, that all would be well. His mother was the central figure in
L’s anxieties. He evolved quite independently a theory which had been
anticipated many centuries before by some primitive people and
philosophers. He believed that his mother had a spirit which left her body
the moment any member of the family left her alone, and that this spirit
was forced to undergo all sorts of trials and tests. The spirit would
always come back to his mother’s body before any member of the family spoke
to her. In some magical fashion his own acts relieved the burden which was
laid upon his mother’s spirit. Even in adulthood, he found an occasional
fantasy which was reminiscent of the preoccupations of those years. Not
long ago he was floating on the water in a swimming pool and found himself
thinking that his mother could never hold her head under water as long as
he could hold his foot under water. With all his timidity, removal to a
strange environment was a severe trial. Just before high-school days his
family moved to a new community, and he never quite overcame his sense of
strangeness. He had always been a coward, shrinking from physical combat.
One of his first memories is of sitting on a curb with an older brother,
who suddenly proposed that he should fight the little brother of another
boy. L began to fight, but was overcome by fear and ran away. Later he was
the center of a small clique of children in his block, all of whom were
very much his junior. One of his group bragged about L’s physical prowess
to the leader of another group, but when the challenge was issued L backed
down. He was worried by his own timidity, but seemed unable to do anything
about it. He made a handful of friends in the new environment, but was on
intimate terms with no one. With one boy he was able to talk somewhat
freely about sexual fantasies, and L once proposed a sexual experiment to a
neighbor girl. When he was repulsed, his guilt was enormously increased.
About this time L began to think seriously of entering the ministry, so
that he might always think “pure” thoughts and do “pure” things. When he
went to college he at first roomed with boys from his high school, but they
talked so openly about sex that he felt the atmosphere was deplorable and
demoralizing. Before the month expired, he sought a new room and went into
a solitary retreat. During the first year of his college life he was
acutely religious and besought church services regularly. He sought
guidance from the sermons upon personal and political questions. Having
developed the idea that he must live up to the family ideal at any price, L
felt that he could never depart from the opinions and customs of his
parents. In politics he was a stout Republican, and later, when in a
religious mood, he heard his preacher espouse the League. He felt that he
ought to support the League, but was plunged into a serious conflict,
because he thought his parents were against it. Greatly to his relief he
discovered that his father and mother had also been won over to the League
by a preacher, and that his lapse from orthodox Republicanism would not
bring dishonor on the family. His father-hatred fantasies were very
oppressive. They took the form of believing that if only his father were
dead, his mother would have a much easier time of it. L’s father was
suffering from a steadily advancing paralysis. At nine he dreamed that his
father was in the bathtub and that around him were fat, red snakes that
were bound to devour him. L who was standing by in the dream, awoke in a
fright. He often dreamed that his father was away and that his mother was
happy with him. L still shows many signs of his early neurosis in some of
his ceremonial acts, and in the timid conservatism of his character. The
private meaning of his political convictions is clear enough, for they are
self-imposed obligations to lift his load of guilt for the murderous and
incestuous fantasies which he long struggled to repress. The opinions of
the family were sanctioned as a kind of religion. It is interesting to see
how at first he invented a large array of ceremonial practices to
substitute for his own illicit impulses, and later worked off his guilt
feelings through the religious patterns which were provided by society, and
which were revalidated on the basis of his private meanings. The acceptance
of the political convictions of the family was on a par with the acceptance
of theological dogma. Among the nonconformists to the family pattern we may
choose M, whose history was taken by Stekel. M was a prominent socialist
who agitated for an economic brotherhood of man, and whose most important
private motive in this particular was a bitter hatred of his own brother.
Most of this hatred was displaced from his brother on to capitalistic
autocracy, and overreacted against by a social ideal of fraternal equality.
His hatred of his own brother was not entirely disposed of by this
displacement, and it was necessary to keep at a distance from him, and from
many of his traits. Thus M despised music because his brother liked it,
followed a style of dress at the opposite pole from his brother, and nearly
walked out on the physician when he discovered that the physician had
treated his own brother. M spent the years agitating at home and abroad,
spending a year and a half in prison. Thus he succeeded in gratifying his
masochistic desire to be punished for his hatred by provoking society to
avenge itself on him. The motivation in this personality is notably similar
to that which has been more elaborately sketched in the history of A.
Another nonconformist appears in the history of an anarchist who was once a
patient of Stekel. N carried his social doctrine beyond the sharing of
property, insisting that wives should be in common. He took the initiative
by urging his wife to cohabit with the male members of his anarchistic
society, while he demanded access to the wives of others. His own wife
finally fell in love with another man, and asked N for a divorce. But
before arrangements could be made, she became pregnant by her new partner,
who was poor, and asked N to acknowledge the new child as his own, since
this child would fall heir to some money from its supposed grandfather, the
father of N. He consented to this, as he had to the divorce, but his
self-esteem was hurt by his wife’s desertion. He had always felt elated
when his wife came back to him after each of her erotic adventures, and now
he was all broken up. Stekel believes that N’s espousal of communal
principles in theory and practice was powerfully motivated by an irrational
desire to humiliate his father by playing a generous rôle with his sexual
partner, and substituting the morality of generosity for his father’s
possessive monopoly of the mother. When his wife-mother deserted him, N’s
brilliant career was ruined, and he resorted to opium, and finally secured
a revenge on his father by blocking his ambitions for a successful son. A
father-hatred (due to unrequited love) of remarkable intensity was the
basis of another career which Stekel examined. O was the young leader of an
anarchist band whose anarchism went beyond precept to dramatic practice. O
had his companions conduct some holdups to get money to start an anarchist
paper. O was an illegitimate child who was brought up and spoiled by an
overindulgent mother. When he realized that he had a father who was still
living, but whose identity was never divulged, his anger boiled up against
his mother upon whose affections he no longer had monopolistic claim, and
against his unknown father, who refused him love and distinction. For he
had no doubt that his father was a rich and important personage. O
displaced much of his animosity on to remote, abstract symbols of
authority, like kings and capitalists, and devoted himself to destroying
them. Much of his affection was likewise displaced upon abstract ideals of
a fatherless fraternal society, living together without coercion. His
sadistic impulses were by no means entirely sublimated upon remote goals
and harmonious means, for he led his companions on common robberies. O
threw a thick mantle of rationalization over his murderous impulses and his
criminal acts, seeking to justify coercion in the name of a coercionless
ideal which could only be laboriously achieved in the world. It is the
history of such cases, in which the emotions are peculiarly intense, which
leads one to conclude that political assassins have hated their fathers
with unusual bitterness. E. J. Kempf remarks in his psychopathology, after
reviewing the historical evidence in the cases of Guiteau, the assassin of
President Garfield, and of Booth, the assassin of President Lincoln, as
follows: The writer does not hold that every case of severe affective
repression in youth, due to the father’s hatred or a father equivalent’s,
will lead finally to a parricidal or treasonable compulsion. It is only
held that such affective repressions produce a revolutionary character
which, if given an appropriate repressive setting during maturity, will
then converge upon the parricidal act. Without the rather specific type of
affective repression in his youth, he would be invulnerable to parricidal
suggestions later on.[44] Illegitimate children, especially when the
identity of their father is undisclosed, carry with them the perpetual
query, “Who is my father?” Indeed, the fantasy of belonging to other
parents than those physically in the family is sufficiently widespread as a
disguised hostile reverie against the actual parents to enable everyone to
appreciate in some measure the mental state of the illegitimate child. “My
father may be rich and powerful.” “My father may be an aristocrat of
distinguished lineage, and he is denying me all my just privileges.” Such
fantasies are taken up and spun out in the reveries of the victim. There is
a presumption that those who suffer from this kind of social inferiority
are especially numerous among those who commit acts of political violence,
as Lombroso held. P accepted violence, but of a different kind. P is a
patriot who proved his patriotism by volunteering in the late war during
the course of which he was distinguished for bravery in action. His deepest
longing is for war to come again. He is in favor of an aggressive foreign
policy since it increases the chances of war, and war he would welcome
again as he welcomed it before. P has a younger brother and an older
sister. His mother died when he was six and his relations have been
strained with his stepmother, who entered the family shortly afterward. His
father was a very successful professional man. P began to fall behind in
his schoolwork when he was about seven years old. This brought him into
disrepute at home, for his previous promise led everyone to expect much
from him, and the change seemed to prove that he was “lazy.” The family has
nagged him ever after, hoping to stimulate him to work harder. Just why he
failed to continue to cope successfully with the demands of school becomes
fairly clear when his reminiscences of the period are recovered. He had
loved his second-grade teacher and had been her special favorite, and both
his marks and his enthusiasm were high. The third-grade teacher impressed
him as stern and cruel, and he soon began to despise the sight of her. The
boy’s work began to crumble, for his mind was full of hostile fancies about
his new teacher, and of yearning fancies for the teacher whom he had just
lost. His emotional life was further disturbed about this time by the loss
of his nurse. P’s stepmother discharged her as soon as she came. Now the
nurse was the lad’s main love, for his own mother had been ill for some
years before her death. The nurse’s presence gave the child that stable
reassurance which is so necessary if the mind of the child is to be kept
free from morbid fears. In P’s case, there were strong reasons why this
reassurance was necessary. An insane man lived across the street and
terrified the passers-by by screaming at everyone who passed. Shortly after
his mother’s death P went under ether for a minor operation and was
terrified that he would die. The fear of suffocation reappeared in dreams
and nightmares, and he was very timid about learning to swim. The
stepmother was a disturbing element as a strange and unknown quantity in
the environment, and a competitor for the affection of the father. When she
discharged the nurse, P thought of her as a malignant influence. His
troubles at school were exaggerated by his home changes, and his mind
became preoccupied with fantasies directed against his stepmother, or some
substitute. P’s father was ambitious for the boy. P remembers him as quick
to reprove and slow to praise. He dreamed of his father’s death, and of
seeing his father in an accident. But his manifest attitude was one of
respectful affection. No matter what happened in the home, he excused his
father by reflecting that the stepmother was to blame. However, on the
deeper level, it appeared that he held his father accountable for the death
of his mother and the disappearance of his nurse. At school P was popular
because of his good physique and his docile nature. But his studies came
hard. Having failed on college-entrance tests, P bolted and joined the
army. The war came along just in time to give him a dignified retreat from
an unbearable personal situation. He hoped that his father would think
about him with pride. He was bitterly self-accusatory because of his
failure to “make good,” and felt a strong unconscious need of punishment.
Under these conditions he entered army life with enthusiasm, and made a
fine record for personal courage. Once the war was over, his troubles began
again. He succeeded in entering college, but college felt like a nursery.
He felt that his army experience sophisticated him above schoolboy tasks
and chatter. All his old worries returned, complicated by his longing for a
new war. He had a long series of difficulties in his occupational life.
Seen against this background, his militarism is perfectly intelligible. War
gave him a chance to destroy, wildly and extensively, and also a chance to
work off his guilt feelings by exposing himself to death. His repressed
hatreds were partly turned against himself. An interesting feature of his
ideology is that his longing for personal participation in war is combined
with indignation against the exploitation of backward peoples by the
imperialist powers. He identifies with the “underdog.” Q, a contrast to P,
is a pacifist and a socialist. His intimate history shows that relatively
simple association of ideas upon which this depends. From an early age Q
showed a morbid fear of blood. Later on, when he heard that western
capitalism meant war and bloodshed, he experienced a profound emotional
revulsion against “capitalism,” “imperialism,” and their associated
concepts, and called himself a “socialist,” “pacifist,” and
“internationalist.” The blood-phobia itself was a powerful factor in
developing his character. By slow degrees, he was able to push the screened
memories back until he recovered a simple incident which was heavily
ladened with affect, and whose recollection disposed of the blood-phobia,
even though it was not completely analyzed. Q’s father was accustomed to
shave in the kitchen on Saturday afternoon, and Q as a small child took a
great interest in the proceedings. Occasionally the father cut a pimple on
his face with the big razor he was using, and flinched as the blood spurted
out. He immediately swabbed the cut, and presumably forgot it. But Q did
not forget so quickly. He found himself much engaged in speculating about
it, drawing the inference that all the reddish projections on the body are
full of blood, that, indeed, the body is a reservoir of blood; and that the
reddish formations are in danger of being punctured, so the blood will
spurt out and run off. Q had previously seen his father naked in the
bathtub, and he thought that his father had rubbed soap over his nipples
with the palm of his hand and not with the fingers, from which he concluded
that the nipples must be especially tender, and whenever he washed himself,
Q carefully avoided his own nipples and massaged them most delicately with
the palm of his hand. His brother had the habit of biting his finger nails
until the blood came, and the family reproached him for it, prophesying
that all sorts of infections might set in. Q began to expect that something
disastrous would happen, and he was not altogether averse to having it
happen because of his jealousy of the brother. But it came with a great
shock when his brother did actually develop an infection, thus confirming
his own suspicions about the necessity for stopping outflows of blood.
About this time Q was playing with his older sister, and in the course of a
scuffle his hand slid down his sister’s body and over her breast. Q
distinctly felt a nipple catch for a moment beneath his fingers, and he was
instantly terrified for fear that his sister would bleed to death. The
breasts, he thought, must be partly filled reservoirs of blood, since they
were soft and yielding. During his fourth year Q’s grandmother died, and he
was horrified to think of what would happen to one he loved. He had seen a
photograph of a reclining nude with a beatific smile and the caption
“Death” beneath. From this he surmised that people were undressed when they
died, and lowered naked into the ground. But he had seen worms in the
ground, and the worms would attack the body. Since the nipples were
prominent and therefore easy to reach, the nipples would be eaten through
first. He shuddered to think of the worms gnawing away at his grandmother’s
nipples, and sometimes woke up in a fright, having dreamed that the worms
were biting off his own nipples. Once Q came running into his aunt’s house
and discovered a small infant cousin nursing at the breast. His aunt
hastily readjusted her dress. Because of the care with which the breasts
were guarded from exposure by his mother, sister, and aunt, he leaped to
the conclusion that they had something to do with the secret relations of
men and women. He had all sorts of trouble trying to figure out how these
relations were conducted, but when he was about eight he originated a
theory that temporarily solved the problem. Q figured that a man and woman
must lie on the bed with their faces close together. The male would then
squeeze the breasts, alternately pressing and releasing them, as if they
were balloons. Then they turned over and rubbed their anuses together. Not
long after, he completed his theory of procreation by imagining that
children must be born through a hole in the stomach from which the blood
gushed copiously. The cutting must be very painful and bloody. Haunted by
the fearful prospect of a world which might at any time knock a hole in his
body and deprive him of blood, Q was a bundle of excessive timidities. He
was afraid of his grandmother’s cat, he ran to his mother if he saw a dog,
and he was afraid that a horse would bite off his hand if he fed it. He
hated to watch a ball game for fear a foul tip would hit him, and he
avoided bugs, worms, and lizards like the plague. Q never put up a fight
outside the house, and cried when the other boys of the neighborhood
bullied him. Sometimes he was taunted as a Jew but he never fought back,
much to the disgust of his father. His forebodings spread to thunder,
lightning, fire, redness, and numerous articles of food. In marked contrast
to his cringing demeanor abroad was his attitude toward the older brother,
ten years his senior. Time after time he would pick a quarrel and pummel
the older youth, until the brother tired of the situation and gave him a
sharp blow. Thereupon he went to someone for comfort. Q’s father felt that
the older boy might be a little rough, but that the little fellow had
something coming to him. The mother was uniformly comforting, although she
reproved both boys for not behaving as brothers should. The boys were
profoundly hostile to each other, although usually cordial. The older
brother made himself conspicuous for his tenderness during a serious
illness of Q, running errands with alacrity, and watching constantly by the
bedside. When it became clear that Q would live, the older boy’s devotion
stopped abruptly, indicating the unconscious basis of the exaggerated
reaction. He was overreacting against a death wish against his brother as
an intruder between him and the mother. Q envied the achievements of his
older brother, and often compared himself unfavorably with him. The older
boy not only stood at the head of his classes, but earned his way by
playing the violin. Although Q stayed at the head of his classes, he was by
no means as self-supporting as his brother. The brother-hatred appeared in
such dreams as: _Dream 1._--My brother is getting married. He is in a dress
suit. A long line of young men in dress suits are coming up to congratulate
him. As the first one reaches out his hand, he falls backward and all the
others fall over one another like tenpins. _Dream 2._--My brother and I are
walking down the street near home. I hear a scream. An Italian is chasing a
woman with a baby who seeks refuge in a store. The Italian knocks her down.
Then my brother goes into the store and tries to deal with the Italian, but
is knocked down. I enter and knock down the Italian. The brother-jealousy
is of secondary significance in Q’s history. The crux of the blood-phobia
was a critical experience whose traumatic effects were due to the strength
of the affects which were mobilized and repressed. Q slept with his father,
and the blood-letting incident aroused his slumbering desire for the death
of his father and his own active fear of suffering mutilation (castration).
Blood derived its significance because it involved a reinstatement of the
most acute phase of the conflict. To escape from it, Q fainted unless he
succeeded in getting out of the sight of blood at once. It is noteworthy
that Q did not at once faint when the razor cut the pimple; it was not
until the elaboration of the fantasy had continued, and the affects had
become greatly concentrated, that the blood came to signalize an instant
and overwhelming emergency from which a kind of suicide (fainting) was the
only escape. The following terse dream expresses something of the
underlying situation: _Dream 3._--I am looking down a city street which is
covered with snow and lighted by street lights. The President of the United
States is walking along the street and suddenly slips and falls. My
attention is then called to a place farther down the street where two
tumblers are leaping over a rope stretched across the street. They are
leaping backward and forward with a curious mechanical motion. The rhythmic
leaping is a pictorial symbol for the pulsations of genital excitement. The
President is an authority substitute for the father. When the father is out
of the way, genital activity will become safe. Since the father prescribes
sexual abstinence (abstinence from handling the genitals), this expresses a
desire to give greater freedom to the repressed impulses of the subject’s
character. The repressed positive identification with the brother shows
itself in opposing two tumblers instead of one to the father. _Dream 4._--A
goose or ducklike creature is being chased back and forth across the road
by two dogs. The creature has a red bill and head, a blue back and wing
feathers, and a white breast. The white, fuzzy dogs chase the animal back
and forth but do not reach it because of their overanxiety. After two
round-trips the animal, which moved with a curiously mechanical motion,
runs toward a man who has come to the door and jumps between his legs. The
man is middle-aged and his hair is white. He is in white pajamas. He says,
“My leg is the leg of weakness; my health is hell....” I am in a winter
coat standing outside the house of a friend of my sister’s in whom I
remember having had a mild interest, but which led to nothing since she was
older than I, and not very attractive. I had just delivered a valentine.
The scene is illuminated by a street light, and is especially clear because
snow is on the ground. The man in the picture is unknown. The odd creature
with the red bill and head symbolizes the penis. The two dogs (brothers)
try to capture it, but the father protects it. However, the hope of
achieving masculinity is not wholly dashed because the old man is growing
weaker. For some time the productions of Q showed that sexuality was
powerfully linked with death, and that the death was to be his own rather
than that of his father, or simultaneously with the death of his father. As
the castration anxiety lifted, the blood fear abated, and dreams,
word-associations, posture, and other significant reactions altered toward
greater ease and assertiveness. We have seen that well-rationalized
theories and preferences are not alien fungi on the personality, but an
important expression of the essential trends of the personality. Thus
theories are at least as indicative of the individual who espouses them as
of the ostensible subjects of speculation. Pessimism, for example, is
common in old age, when the sexual powers decline and the individual
projects upon the world the sinfulness which he feels for wanting to
indulge beyond his powers, and defy his inadequacy. The mechanism of this
sort of thing stands out most clearly in extreme cases, such as R. R
believed that the world was going from bad to worse and that wars and
rumors of wars were devastating the earth. He spent so many hours over a
plan to secure the peace of the world forevermore that he developed a
confusion state. He would go out in a park, find a secluded spot and weep
over the troubles of the world as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. One day in
passing a market he saw some chickens in a coop without any water. The
cruelty of this was more than he could bear, so he went home and went to
bed. His ideas were that he had been chosen to work out the salvation of
the world, and that he had been endowed with unusual, indeed supernatural,
understanding of men’s motives, and special power to heal insanity. R
elaborated a private form of religion. He said that he was worshiping the
sun as God, as a symbol of Christ and truth (actually, of masculine
virility). When it became necessary for him to commune with his spirit, he
was in the habit of facing the sun and repeating a litany of his invention,
which ran: To the sun, the heart of the world! It warmeth the earth with
its loveliness. Glory to God! It riseth in the east, lighting the dark
corners of ignorance and wickedness. Glory to God! It chaseth the darkness
before it like the host of Syria before the children of Israel. Glory to
God! It chaseth the darkness before it like the host of Syria before the
children of Israel. Glory to God! etc., etc. He began to chant, and then
assumed an exalted, heroic pose, with his arms and head thrown back.
Presently he felt that a big storm was coming that would ruin the world.
The world is like a giant serpent, a serpent asleep. R’s story is not
sufficiently detailed to show much about the development of those reaction
patterns which disposed him to meet old age in such a way. He was the only
child of a poverty-stricken family who played by himself and got on well
with his books. Some local lawyers took an interest in him and helped him
through school. He read law and was admitted to the bar. After making a
precarious living for a number of years, he was elected to various local
offices, and then to Congress. He was reputed to be an impractical dreamer,
and enjoyed making rather fanciful speeches. His legislative career as
recorded in the _Congressional Record_ was undistinguished, containing the
usual quota of pension bills and “extensions of remarks” during tariff
debates. He was opposed to the annexation of the Philippines, and hostile
to imperialism; in this he went along with his party, and likewise indulged
a personal conviction. He practiced law desultorily, after having been
defeated for the legislature, and devoted himself to study and writing. His
one published volume is a vague disquisition on human affairs, which
accurately reflects the indeterminate, rhetorical, and meliorative quality
of his thinking. He married a woman of his own age when he was a young man.
There were no children. When the paranoid rather than the manic-depressive
strain runs through the character, nebulous and all-embracing pessimism
about the world is sharpened to specific accusations. Everyone who is
prominent in public life is a potential object of such attacks. One might
hazard the conjecture that the importance of an individual in the
community’s estimation may be measured by the number of “crank” letters to
him and about him. One such crank, S, wrote a trunkful of letters accusing
public men of graft, of being dominated by “Big Biz,” and offering
suggestions to government officials. He complained of being persecuted and
victimized by prominent people, especially by Harry F. Sinclair, the oil
man. This was attributed by him to the fact that he had written a letter to
the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court calling His Honor’s attention to the
Teapot Dome scandal which was being ventilated in the press, and naming Mr.
Sinclair as the responsible party. Since then Mr. Sinclair had prevented
him from getting a job, and paid his own sister to throw him out on the
street. During his divorce proceedings he wrote to the American Bar
Association to protest against the “shyster lawyers” who were representing
his wife, and claims that Mr. Taft and Mr. Root answered him in the papers
the following day. When Mr. John W. Davis was a presidential candidate he
wrote to him, describing the various attacks to which he, S, had been
subjected. Mr. Davis neglected to reply and did nothing about it, so S
prevented his election, and feels that Mr. Coolidge owes him something for
being elected. “I wrote to Hearst and I believe that turned the trick.” In
this letter he divulged the fact that Mr. Davis was connected with Wall
Street, and this hint was enough to arouse Mr. Hearst. In reply to the
routine question, “What is going on in the world?” he answered, “More
deviltry than there ever was before.” Unfortunately the history is too
meager to explain S’s development, except by analogy with others who have
displayed the same behavior. Certainly his life-story would, if accessible,
reveal the effects of a disorganizing family environment. We do know that
his father was drunk much of the time, and that the children had an unhappy
lot. At five S went to live with his grandparents who wanted to take him
away from his drunken father. At about fifteen he came back for a while.
Shortly afterward he saved his sister from being strangled to death by
their father, who in a drunken tantrum had her by the neck against the
wall. S became a good mechanic, but disintegrated in later life. Another
“crank” devised an ingenious theory to explain President Wilson’s conduct.
T says that he discovered that Mr. Wilson was not a citizen of the United
States. He first made this revelation on his draft questionnaire, and when
this became generally known, Mr. Wilson went to France to escape the anger
of the enraged citizenry of the United States; later Mr. Wilson fell ill of
a guilty conscience at new revelations that he made. Mr. Wilson was part of
the Masonic conspiracy which had been hatched against him when he was very
young. T’s stepfather, who was a Shriner, probably furnishes the material
for this delusion. As for T himself, he believed that he descended directly
from Mary, Queen of Scots, and that he had foreknowledge of the approaching
end of the world. The members of the millennium are “a creed and not a
denomination,” and only twenty million people will be saved, over whom T
will rule. * * * * * From the excerpts included, it appears that the
significance of political opinions is not to be grasped apart from the
private motives which they symbolize. The degree of insight into objective
relationships is one thing; the extent to which “private meanings” are
accreted to the “public” or “manifest” meanings is another. When we see the
private meaning of public acts, the problem of interpreting the full
significance of political behavior presses itself upon our attention. Are
there any implications for the general theory of the political process
which follow from the intensive scrutiny of individual subjective (and
objective) histories? This is the question to which we next turn. CHAPTER X
THE POLITICS OF PREVENTION Political movements derive their vitality from
the displacement of private affects upon public objects. The intensive
scrutiny of the individual by psychopathological methods discloses the
prime importance of hitherto-neglected motives in the determination of
political traits and beliefs. The adult who is studied at any given
cross-section of his career is the product of a long and gradual
development in the course of which many of his motivations fail to modify
according to the demands of unfolding reality. The adult is left with an
impulse life which is but partially integrated to adulthood. Primitive
psychological structures continue in more or less disguised form to control
his thought and effort. The state is a symbol of authority, and as such is
the legatee of attitudes which have been organized in the life of the
individual within the intimate interpersonal sphere of the home and
friendship group. At one phase of childhood development the wisdom and
might of the physical symbol of authority, typically the father, is
enormously exaggerated by the child. Eder traces the significance of this
for the state in the following words: What occurs as we come more in touch
with the external world, when the principle of reality develops, is the
finding of surrogates for this ideal father. We discover that the parent is
not all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, but we still need to find persons or
abstractions upon which we can distribute these and similar attributes. By
a process of fission these feelings are displaced on to and may be
distributed among a number of surrogates. The surrogates may be persons,
animals, things or abstract ideas; the headmaster, the dog, the rabbit, the
Empire, the Aryan race, or any particular “ism.” He comments that it is
upon this self-ideal that is formed the possibility of leadership, of
leaders, and of the supreme leader, who is the one capable of doing all
that the child once thought the physical father could do. The unconscious
motivation is reflected in the sober formula of Blackstone, “The sovereign
is not only incapable of doing wrong, but even of thinking wrong: he can
never mean to do an improper thing; in him is no folly or weakness.”[45]
There is very deep meaning in the phrase of Paley’s that “a family contains
the rudiments of an empire.” The family experience organizes very powerful
drives in successive levels of integration, and these primitive attitudes
are often called into play as the unobserved partners of rational
reactions. To choose another extract from Eder: The behaviour of the
elected or representative politician betrays many characteristics derived
from the family. For example, during the time I filled a political job in
Palestine I noticed in myself (and in my colleagues) the satisfaction it
gave me to have secret information, knowledge which must on no account be
imparted to others. Of course good reasons were always to be found: the
people would misuse the information or it would depress them unduly and so
on--pretty exactly the parent’s attitude about imparting information,
especially of a sexual nature, to the children.... At the back of secret
diplomacy, and indeed the whole relationship of the official to the
non-official, there rests this father-child affect. This also serves to
explain the passion aroused in former days by any proposed extension of the
franchise. In the sphere of political dogma, unconscious conflicts play the
same rôle which Theodor Reik discussed when he drew a parallel between
religious dogma and obsessive ideas.[46] Dogma is a defensive reaction
against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but of doubt of which he is
unaware. The unconscious hatred of authority discloses itself in the
endless capacity of the theorist to imagine new reasons for disbelief, and
in his capacity to labor over trivialities, and to reduce his whole
intellectual scheme to a logical absurdity. Sometimes this appears in a
cryptic formula to which some sort of mysterious potency is ascribed, but
which is hopelessly contradictory in so far as it possesses any manifest
meaning. The celebrated doctrine of the unity of the trinity is an instance
of such culminating nonsense. Words lose their rational reference points
and become packed with unconscious symbolism of the ambivalent variety. The
description of sovereignty found in Blackstone refers to nothing palpable,
and functions principally as an incantation. Much solemn juridical
speculation, since so much of it is elaborated by obsessive thinkers, ends
thus. Deep doubts about the self are displaced on to doubts about the world
outside, and these doubts are sought to be allayed by ostentatious
preoccupation with truth. Defiance of authority is defiance of the
introjected conscience, and involves a measure of self-punishment. We have
seen how a powerful need for self-punishment is the stuff out of which
martyrs and sensational failures are made; but of more general importance
is the rôle of the sense of guilt in supporting the _status quo_. Deviation
from accepted patterns becomes equivalent to sin, and the conscience visits
discomforts upon those who dare to innovate. Radical ideas become
“sacrilegious” and “disloyal” in the view of the primitive conscience, for
they tend to represent more than a limited defiance of authority. They put
the whole structure of the personality under strain. The childish
conscience is easily intimidated into preserving order on slight
provocation; it knows little of the capacity to consider the piecemeal
reconstruction of values. “Radicalism” is felt as a challenge to the whole
system of resistances which are binding down the illicit impulses of the
personality, rather than as an opportunity for detached consideration of
the relation of the self to the rest of reality. There is little boldness
in political thinking which is not accompanied by an overdose of defiance,
for even those who succeed in breaking through the intimidations of their
infantile consciences must often succumb in some measure and “pay out.”
Much of the struggle, the fearful _Sturm und Drang_ of the emancipated
thinker, is his unconscious tribute to the exactions of the tribunal which
he erected within himself at an early age, and which continues to treat
innovation as _ipso facto_ dangerous. The non-obsessive thinker is one who
can coolly contemplate revisions in the relations of man to reality
unperturbed by his antiquated conscience. Often readjustments of human
affairs which are proposed are driven to absurdity because the original
mind is compelled to transform his mere departure from the conventional
into a defiance of conventionality. When one perceives the operation of
this powerful self-punishment drive, and the secondary efforts to free
one’s self from feelings of guilt for defying the authorized order, it is
possible to remain understandingly tolerant of the eccentricities of
creative minds. To put the point a bit sharply, it is safe to say that the
adult mind is only partly adult; the conscience may be four years old. The
conscience, the introjected nursemaid, reacts undiscriminatingly to change,
and construes it as rebellion. The organization of motives which occurs in
adolescence possesses direct significance for the interpretation of
political interests. The physical and mental storm of puberty and
adolescence often culminates in the displacement of loves upon all humanity
or a selected part of it, and in acts of devotion to the whole. It is here
that the fundamental processes of loyalty are most clearly evident as they
relate to public life. S. Bernfeld has written extensively on the
psychology of the German youth movement. He comments on the very different
lengths of puberty, and distinguishes between the physical and the
psychological processes. When the psychological processes outlive the
physical ones, certain characteristic reaction types arise. Dr. Bernfeld
believes that the discrepant type prevails most characteristically in the
youth movement, and he enumerates its characteristics. The interests of
this group are turned toward “ideal” objects like politics, humanity, and
art. The relation to these objects is productive, since the youth tries to
produce a new form of politics or art. There is always a great deal of
self-confidence present, or many symptoms of a repression that has failed.
This is expressed in the high opinion of one’s self and the low opinion one
holds of his companions. An outstanding individual, the friend or master,
is loved and revered. Often this love for a friend is extended to the whole
group. The sexual components of the personality do not concentrate on
finding objects, but in creating a new narcissistic situation. Bernfeld
distinguishes this secondary narcissism from infantile narcissism on the
ground that it is accompanied by deep depression reminiscent of
melancholia. The reason lies in the formation of an ideal self that
attracts a great part of the libido and enters into contrast with the real
ego, a process which is particularly characteristic of the complex or
discrepant type which he found in the youth movement.[47] Political life
seems to sublimate many homosexual trends. Politicians characteristically
work together in little cliques and clubs, and many of them show marked
difficulties in reaching a stable heterosexual adjustment. In military
life, when men are thrown together under intimate conditions, the
sublimations often break down and the homosexual drives find direct
expression. A German general has gone so far as to declare that one reason
why Germany lost the war was that the command was shot through with
jealousies growing out of homosexual rivalry. Dr. K. G. Heimsoth has
prepared a manuscript describing the rôle of homosexuality in the volunteer
forces which continued to operate against the Poles and the communists
after the war. In the case of certain leaders, at least, the reputation for
overt homosexuality was no handicap; indeed, the reverse seemed to be true.
Franz Alexander has suggested that one reason why homosexuality is viewed
with contempt in modern life is the vague sense that complex cultural
achievement depends on an inhibited sexuality, and that direct
gratification tends to dissolve society into self-satisfied pairs and
cliques. The observations of Heimsoth throw some doubt on the wisdom of
this “vague sense.”[48] The prominence of alcoholism and promiscuity among
like-sex groups has often been observed, and both indulgences appear to be
closely connected with homosexual impulses.[49] Political crises are
complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive impulses.
War is the classical situation in which the elementary psychological
structures are no longer held in subordination to complex reactions. The
acts of cruelty and lust which are inseparably connected with war have
disclosed vividly to all who care to see the narrow margin which separates
the social from the asocial nature of man. The excesses of heroism and
abnegation are alike primitive in their manifestations, and show that all
the primitive psychological structures are not antisocial, but asocial, and
may often function on behalf of human solidarity.[50] Why does society
become demoralized in the process of revolution? Why should a change in the
political procedures of the community unleash such excesses in behavior?
Reflection might lead one to suppose that since important decisions are in
process of being made, calm deliberation would characterize society.
Evidently a reactivating process is at work here; there is a regressive
tendency to reawaken primitive sadism and lust. The conspicuous
disproportionality between the problem and the behavior necessitates an
explanation in such terms. Federn published a sketch of the psychology of
revolution in his pamphlet _Die vaterlose Gesellschaft_ in 1919. When the
ruler falls, the unconscious triumphantly interprets this as a release from
all constraint, and the individuals in the community who possess the least
solidified personality structures are compulsively driven to acts of theft
and violence. An interview which Federn gave to Edgar Ansel Mowrer in 1927
on the occasion of the Vienna riots reviews in somewhat popular form some
of his conceptions. Vienna, Austria, July 20.--“Distrust of father was the
chief cause of the Vienna riot,” said Paul Federn, onetime president of the
Psychoanalytical Society. From a psychoanalytical standpoint all authority
is the father, and this formerly for Austria was incorporated in the
imposing figure of Emperor Franz Josef. But during the war the father
deceived and maltreated his children, and only the material preoccupations
of life and the joyous outburst when at the close of the war the old
authority broke asunder prevented Austria from having a revolution then.
The state again built up the old ruling caste and began to hope for
restoration, and therefore an abyss opened between Vienna, which under
socialist leadership is trying to replace the traditional father principle
by a new brotherhood, and the Austrian federal state, which had returned to
a modified father idea. Trust in father is the child’s deepest instinct.
Vienna first respected the Austrian republic, but gradually this belief was
undermined by the continual misery, by newspapers preaching fanaticism and
by legal decisions which virtually destroyed the people’s belief in the new
father’s justice. Accordingly there occurred a spontaneous manifestation
which unconsciously drove the disillusioned and furious children to destroy
precisely those things on which the paternal authority seems to
rest--namely, records and legal documents. Why the peaceful Viennese should
suddenly be transformed temporarily into mad beasts is also clear to the
psychoanalysts. Had the police offered no resistance the crowd would soon
have dispersed and no harm would have been done. But once the police fired
blood flowed and the mob reacted savagely, responding to the ancient fear
of castration by the father which is present in all of us unconsciously in
the face of the punishing authority. Therefore, fear grew along with the
violence, each increase leading to new violence and greater fear, as
appeasement can only follow a complete outbreak and as the inhabitants were
widely scattered in their houses it took three days before the last hatred
could fully get out. One further point can only be explained by
psychoanalysis. The social democratic leaders are at heart revolutionary,
but they did not wish this demonstration. They realized that revolution in
little Austria today would be suicidal, and, therefore, at a given moment
called out the republican guard with orders to interfere and prevent
violence. The guard arrived much too late. Why did not the leaders send out
the guard at 6 a.m. when they knew the demonstration was beginning? They
say they “forgot.” This is _a flagrant_ example of unconscious
forgetfulness. The socialists forgot to take the only step which could have
prevented something which they consciously disapproved, but unconsciously
desired. The Vienna riots were in the deepest sense a family row.[51] Eder
speculates about the unconscious factors in the well-known tendency of
certain political alternatives to succeed one another in crude pendulum
fashion. I think it was Mr. Zangwill who once said that it is a principle
of the British Constitution that the King can do no wrong and his ministers
no right. That is to say, the ambivalency originally experienced toward the
father is now split; the sentiment of disloyalty, etc., is displaced on to
the King’s ministers, or on to some of them, or on to the opposition....
Modern society has discovered the principle of election, and the vote to
give expression to the hostile feelings toward their rulers.
Psychoanalytically an election may be regarded as the sublimation of
regicide (primary parricide) with the object of placing oneself on the
throne; the vote is like a repeating decimal; the father is killed but
never dies. The ministers are our substitutes for ourselves. Hence the
political maxim of the swing of the pendulum. Alexander and Staub have
undertaken to explain the unconscious basis of the crisis which is produced
in the community when criminals are permitted to go with no punishment or
with light punishment. The study of personality genesis shows that the
sublimation of primitive impulses is possible on the basis of a kind of
primitive “social contract.” The individual foregoes direct indulgences
(which have the disadvantage of bringing him into conflict with authority),
and substitutes more complex patterns of behavior on the tacit
understanding that love and safety will thereby be insured. When another
individual breaks over and gratifies his illicit impulses directly on a
primitive level, the equilibrium of every personality is threatened. The
conscious self perceives that it is possible to “get by,” and this
threatens the whole structure of sublimation. The superego tries to
maintain order by directing energy against the ego, perhaps subjecting it
to “pricks of conscience,” for so much as entertaining the possibility of
illicit gratification, and seeks to turn the ego toward activities which
reduce temptation. This may involve the reconstruction of the environment
by seeking to eliminate the “non-ideal” elements in it, and may be
exemplified in the panicky demand for the annihilation of the outsider (who
is a criminal) for the sake of keeping the chains on the insider (who is a
criminal). Every criminal is a threat to the whole social order since he
reinstates with more or less success an acute conflict within the lives of
all members of society. The success of the superego depends upon imposing
certain ways of interpreting reality upon the self. When reality grossly
refuses to conform to the “ideal,” the energies of the self are divided,
and an acute crisis supervenes. The superego undertakes to reinforce its
side of the contradictory ego trends by punishing the ego, and by forcing
the projection of this situation upon the outer world. Certain aspects of
the outer world become “bad” because they are connected in private
experience with the pangs inflicted by the taskmaster within, the
conscience. A strong conscience may enforce this “distortion” of reality
upon the self to such a degree that the self acts on quite fantastic
assumptions about reality. These are most acutely manifested in such
phenomena as confusion states, hallucinations, and delusions, all of which
are forms of deformed reality. When reality becomes “ominous,” violent
efforts to change may appear futile, and safety is sought in physical
flight, or in physical passivity and autistic preoccupation. Since our
conceptions of reality are based upon little “first-hand” experience of the
world about us, the superego usually has a rather easy time of it.
Political movements, then, derive their vitality from the displacement of
private affects upon public objects, and political crises are complicated
by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive motives. Just how does
it happen that the private and primitive drives find their way to political
symbols? What are the circumstances which favor the selection of political
targets of displacement? Political life is carried on with symbols of the
whole. Politics has to do with collective processes and public acts, and so
intricate are these processes that with the best of intentions, it is
extremely difficult to establish an unambiguous relationship between the
symbols of the whole and the processes which they are presumed to
designate. To the common run of mankind the reference points of political
symbols are remote from daily experience, though they are rendered familiar
through constant reiteration. This ambiguity of reference, combined with
universality of use, renders the words which signify parties, classes,
nations, institutions, policies, and modes of political participation
readily available for the displacement of private affects. The manifest,
rational differences of opinion become complicated by the play of private
motives until the symbol is nothing but a focus for the cumulation of
irrelevancies. Since the dialectic of politics is conducted in terms of the
whole, the private motives are readily rationalized in terms of collective
advantage. Politics, moreover, is the sphere of conflict, and brings out
all the vanity and venom, the narcissism and aggression, of the contending
parties. It is becoming something of a commonplace that politics is the
arena of the irrational. But a more accurate description would be that
politics is the process by which the irrational bases of society are
brought out into the open. So long as the moral order functions with
spontaneous smoothness, there is no questioning the justification of
prevailing values. But when the moral order has been devalued and called
into question, a sincere and general effort may be made to find a
reflectively defensible solution of the resulting conflict. Politics seems
to be irrational because it is the only phase of collective life in which
society tries to be rational. Its very existence shows that the moral
order, with all its irrational and non-rational sanctions, is no longer
accepted without a challenge. A political difference is the outcome of a
moral crisis, and it terminates in a new moral consensus. Politics is the
transition between one unchallenged consensus and the next. It begins in
conflict and eventuates in a solution. But the solution is not the
“rationally best” solution, but the emotionally satisfactory one. The
rational and dialectical phases of politics are subsidiary to the process
of redefining an emotional consensus. Although the dynamic of politics is
to be sought in the tension level of the individuals in society, it is to
be taken for granted that all individual tensions are not removed by
political symbolization and exertion. When Y hits a foreman in the jaw whom
he imagines has insulted him, Y is relieving his tensions. But if the act
is construed by him as a personal affair with the foreman, the act is not
political. Political acts are joint acts; they depend upon emotional bonds.
Now people who act together get emotionally bound together. This process of
becoming emotionally bound is dependent on no conscious process. Freud said
that he was made clearly aware of the emotional factor in human relations
by observing that those who work together extend their contact to dining
and relaxing together. Those with whom we work are endowed with rich
meanings on the basis of our past experience with human beings. Since all
of our motives are going concerns within the personality, our libido is
more or less concentrated upon those with whom we come in touch. This
reinforces the perception of similarities, and supplies the dynamic for the
identification process. Even the negative identification is a tribute to
the extent to which the affective resources of the personality become
mobilized in human contact. People who are emotionally bound together are
not yet involved in a political movement. Politics begins when they achieve
a symbolic definition of themselves in relation to demands upon the world.
The pre-political phase of the labor movement as sketched by Nexo in his
_Pelle the Conqueror_ is an able characterization of what the facts may be.
The workers had plenty of grievances against their employers, but
individuals took it out in sporadic acts of violence, and in frequent
debauchery. It was not until a new “set” of mind was achieved with the
appearance of socialist symbols, and their adoption, that the tension found
an outlet in political form. When J hits a foreman on the jaw because the
foreman swore at him, J is not acting for the working classes; but after J
becomes a socialist, his acts are symbolically significant of the expanded
personality which he possesses. Acts cease to be merely private acts; they
have become related to remote social objects. The conception of the self
has new points of reference, and points of reference which interlock with
those of others. It is of the utmost importance to political science to
examine in detail, not only the factors which contribute to the raising and
lowering of the tension level, but the processes of symbolization. In
regard to the former aspect of the problem, data will have to be taken from
specialists of many kinds, but in regard to the latter problem, the student
can come into ready contact with the raw material. The stock in trade of
realistic politics is the analysis of the history of “pressure groups,”
ranging from such associations as the Fabian Society through political
parties to conspirative organizations. What are the conditions under which
the idea is itself invented, and what are the conditions of its
propagation? That is to say: What are the laws of symbolization in
political activity? I wish to call attention to certain possibilities.
Several social movements will be found which represent a desire on the part
of an intimate circle to perpetuate their relationship at the expense of
society. It is worth remembering that Loyola and the other young men who
founded the Jesuits were in long friendly relationship before they hit upon
their famous project. Not only that: they were anxious to remain in some
sort of personal relation through life, and they invented many expedients
before they hit on the final one. What we had here was a friendly group
which desired to preserve their personal connections before they knew how
they could actually do it. It is less true to say that institutions are the
lengthened shadow of a great man than that they are the residue of a
friendly few. Other social movements will be found to have adopted their
project from a lone thinker with whom they have no direct connection. The
process here is that one member of the group, with whom the others are
identified, is impressed by the scheme, and interprets and defends it to
the others. He gets a hearing because of his emotional claim on the others,
and he may whip the doubters and waverers into line by wheedling or by
threatening to withdraw affection. The formation of a radiating nucleus for
an idea is especially common among adolescents, and among those who
function best in single-sex groups. Thrasher has described gangs which had
a mission in his book on _The Gang_, and the literature of youth study is
full of instances of two’s, three’s and quartettes which have sworn undying
fealty to one another, and to a project of social reform. When the idea is
embraced later in life it not infrequently appears among those who have
shown pronounced evidence of emotional maladjustment. Much social and
political life is a symptom of the delayed adolescence of its propagators,
which is, of course, no necessary criticism of its content. The psychology
of personal, oratorical, and printed persuasion by means of which support
is won for particular symbols has yet to be written. William I. Thomas long
ago commented on the quasi-sexual approach of the revivalist to the
audience. Some orators are of an intimate, sympathetic, pleading type, and
resemble the attempts made by some males to overcome the shyness of the
female. Other orators fit into the feared yet revered father-pattern;
others are clowns who amuse by releasing much repressed material; others
address the socially adjusted and disciplined level of the personality.
Thus the relationship between the speaker and the audience has its powerful
emotional aspects, which are not yet adequately explored. There are some
who excel in face-to-face relations, but who make a poor showing out on the
platform. The processes of symbolization can be studied with particular
ease when widespread and disturbing changes occur in the life-situation of
many members of society. Famine, pestilence, unemployment, high living
costs, and a catalogue of other disturbances may simultaneously produce
adjustment problems for many people. One of the first results is to release
affects from their previous objects, and to create a state of
susceptibility to proposals. All sorts of symbols are ready, or readily
invented, to refix the mobile affects. “Take it to the Lord in prayer,”
“Vote socialist,” “Down with the Jews,” “Restore pep with pepsin,” “Try
your luck on the horses”--all sorts of alternatives become available. The
prescriptions are tied up with diagnoses, and the diagnoses in turn imply
prescriptions. “A sinful world,” “Wall Street,” “a collapse in the foreign
market”--all sorts of diagnoses float about, steadily defining and
redefining the situation for the individuals affected. Political symbols
must compete with symbols from every sphere of life, and an interesting
inquiry could be made into the relative polarizing power of political and
other forms of social symbolism. Certainly the modern world expects to fire
the health commissioner rather than burn a witch when the plague breaks
out. The competition among symbols to serve as foci of concentration for
the aroused emotions of the community leads to the survival of a small
number of master-symbols. The mobilization of the community for action
demands economy in the terms in which objectives are put. The agitation for
the control of the liquor traffic passed through many phases in America
until finally legal prohibition became the chief dividing-line. To prohibit
or not to prohibit grew into the overmastering dichotomy of public thought.
Symbolization thus necessitates dichotomization. The program of social
action must be couched in “yes” and “no” form if decision is to be
possible. The problem of he who would manipulate the concentration of
affect about a particular symbol is to reinforce its competitive power by
leading as many elements as possible in society to read their private
meanings into it. This reinforcement and facilitation of the symbol
involves the use of men of prestige in its advocacy, the assimilation of
special economic and other group aims, and the invention of appeals to
unconscious drives. Propaganda on behalf of a symbol can become a powerful
factor in social development because of the flexibility in the displacement
of emotion from one set of symbols to another. There is always a rather
considerable reservoir of unrest and discontent in society, and there is
nothing absolutely fixed and predestined about the particular symbol which
will have attracting power. The analysis of motives which are unconscious
for most people, though widespread, gives the propagandist a clue to
certain nearly universal forms of appeal. The moving pictures which have
been produced by the communist government in Russia are often remarkable
examples of the use of symbols which not only have their conscious
affective dimension, but which mobilize deep unconscious impulses. In one
film, for instance, it is the mother who suffers under tsarism and fans the
flames of revolt. Analysis has disclosed the general, and presumably
universal, meaning of the attachment to the land. The boy-child’s wish for
union with the mother, for all-embracing care and protection, undergoes
some measure of sublimation in social life. Eder remarks that it finds
expression in attachment to the earth, the land, the mother-country, home.
The _Heimweh_ of the Swiss, the pious Jew’s desire for burial in Palestine,
and a host of similar manifestations are instances of this emotional tie
whose significance for state loyalty is large. At first sight it might
appear questionable that political science can ever profit from the
disclosure of motives which are supposed to operate in the unconscious of
every human being. If these motives are equally operative, how can they
throw any light on differences in political behavior? And are we not able
to point to conditions of a more localized and definite nature which
suitably explain why the Republican party loses out when the farmer loses
his crops? Or why there is revolution in 1918 and not in 1925? The mere
fact that motives are more or less universal does not mean that they are
always activated with the same intensity. They may block one another, until
some exciting condition disturbs the adjustment and releases stores of
energy. Indeed, the exploration of unconscious motivation lays the basis
for the understanding of the well-known disproportionality between
responses and immediate stimuli, a disproportionality which has been the
subject of much puzzled and satiric comment. Farmers do vote against the
Republicans when the crops fail through adverse weather conditions,
although reflection would tend to minimize the possibility that the party
in power exercises much authority over the weather. Oversights in personal
relations which seem very slight do actually give rise to huge affective
reactions. The clue to the magnitude of this notorious disproportionality
is to be found in the nature of the deeper (earlier) psychological
structures of the individual. By the intensive analysis of representative
people, it is possible to obtain clues to the nature of these “unseen
forces,” and to devise ways and means of dealing with them for the
accomplishment of social purposes. Modern democratic society is accustomed
to the settlement of differences in discussion and in voting. This is a
special form of politics, for differences may also be settled with a
minimum of discussion and a maximum of coercion. In its modern
manifestation, democracy and representative government have enthroned
“government by discussion,” that is, “government by public opinion.”
President Lowell some time ago pointed out that public opinion could only
be said to exist where constitutional principles were agreed upon.
Differences must be treated as defined within an area of agreement.
Democratic and representative institutions presuppose the existence of the
public which is made up of all those who follow affairs and expect to
determine policy in discussion and by measures short of coercion. The
public has a common focus of attention, a consensus on constitutional
principles, and a zone of tolerance for conflicting demands respecting
social policy. When debate is admissible, some standards of right are
tacitly admitted to be uncertain. The zone of the debatable is not fixed
and immutable, but flexible and shifting. Questions rise and debate
proceeds; and presently the resulting solution is no longer discussible. It
has become sanctified by all the sentiments which buttress the moral order,
and any challenge is met by the unanimous and spontaneous action of the
community in its defense. In the presence of a challenge, the public may be
dissolved into a crowd, by which is meant a group whose members are
emotionally aroused and intolerant of dissent. What light does the study of
the genesis of personality throw on the factors which determine which
symbols are debatable? What is the mechanism of the process by which the
moral patterns are broken up, discussed, and eventually reincorporated in
more or less modified form into the moral consensus of the community? The
growth of emotional bonds among individuals of diverse cultural and
personal traits is the most powerful solvent of the moral order. A valuable
treatise could be constructed on the theme, “Friendship versus Morality.”
It is well-known that governments are continually handicapped in the
impersonal application of a rule by the play of personal loyalties. Robert
E. Park has stressed the importance of curiosity in the field of
interracial relations. In no small measure this is very primitive curiosity
about the sexual structure and behavior of odd-looking folks. When personal
ties are built up, exceptions are made in favor of the friend; what,
indeed, is the constitution among friends? The mechanism is clear by which
issues once settled are presently non-debatable. Growing individuals
incorporate the end result into their own personalities through the process
of identification and introjection. Once a part of the superego of the
rising generation, the moral consensus is complete. Where no dissent is
tolerated and dialectic is impossible, we are dealing with a superego
phenomenon. Certain symbols are sacrosanct, and aspersions upon them
produce the crowd mind and not the public.[52] Even this brief sketch of
political symbolization has shown ample grounds for concluding that
political demands probably bear but a limited relevance to social needs.
The political symbol becomes ladened with the residue of successive
positive and negative identifications, and with the emotional charge of
displaced private motives. This accumulation of irrelevancy usually
signifies that tension exists in the lives of many people, and it may
possess a diagnostic value to the objective investigator. The individual
who is sorely divided against himself may seek peace by unifying himself
against an outsider. This is the well-known “peacefulness of being at war.”
But the permanent removal of the tensions of the personality may depend
upon the reconstruction of the individual’s view of the world, and not upon
belligerent crusades to change the world. The democratic state depends upon
the technique of discussion to relieve the strains of adjustment to a
changing world. If the analysis of the individual discloses the probable
irrelevance of what the person demands to what he needs (i.e., to that
which will produce a permanent relief of strain), serious doubt is cast
upon the efficacy of the technique of discussion as a means of handling
social problems. The premise of democracy is that each man is the best
judge of his own interest, and that all whose interests are affected should
be consulted in the determination of policy. Thus the procedure of a
democratic society is to clear the way to the presentation of various
demands by interested parties, leaving the coast clear for bargain and
compromise, or for creative invention and integration. The findings of
personality research show that the individual is a poor judge of his own
interest. The individual who chooses a political policy as a symbol of his
wants is usually trying to relieve his own disorders by irrelevant
palliatives. An examination of the total state of the person will
frequently show that his theory of his own interests is far removed from
the course of procedure which will give him a happy and well-adjusted life.
Human behavior toward remote social objects, familiarity with which is
beyond the personal experience of but a few, is especially likely to be a
symptomatic rather than a healthy and reflective adjustment. In a sense
politics proceeds by the creation of fictitious values. The person who is
solicited to testify to his own interest is stimulated by the problem put
to him to commit himself. The terms in which he couches his own interest
vary according to a multitude of factors, but whatever the conditioning
influences may be, the resulting theory of his interest becomes invested
with his own narcissism. The political symbol is presumably an instrumental
makeshift toward the advancement of the other values of the personality;
but it very quickly ceases to be an instrumental value, and becomes a
terminal value, no longer the servant but the coequal, or indeed the
master. Thus the human animal distinguishes himself by his infinite
capacity for making ends of his means. It should not be hastily assumed
that because a particular set of controversies passes out of the public
mind that the implied problems were solved in any fundamental sense. Quite
often the solution is a magical solution which changes nothing in the
conditions affecting the tension level of the community, and which merely
permits the community to distract its attention to another set of equally
irrelevant symbols. The number of statutes which pass the legislature, or
the number of decrees which are handed down by the executive, but which
change nothing in the permanent practices of society, is a rough index of
the rôle of magic in politics. In some measure, of course, discontent is
relieved in the very process of agitating, discussing, and legislating
about social changes which in the end are not substantially affected.
Political symbolization has its catharsis function, and consumes the
energies which are released by the maladaptations of individuals to one
another. But discussion often leads to modifications in social practice
which complicate social problems. About all that can be said for various
punitive measures resorted to by the community is that they have presently
broken down and ceased to continue the damage which they began to inflict
on society. Generalizing broadly, political methods have historically been
of three kinds: the method of violence, of exhortation, and of discussion.
All these methods have the common characteristic that they are to be
applied in the settlement of conflicting demands, and not in the obviation
of conflict. In so far as they rest upon a philosophy, they identify the
problem of politics with the problem of coping with differences which are
sharply drawn. The identification of the field of politics with the field
of battle, whether the theater be the frontier or the forum, has produced
an unfortunate warp in the minds of those who manage affairs, or those who
simply think about the management of affairs. The contribution of politics
has been thought to be in the elaboration of the methods by which conflicts
are resolved. This has produced a vast diversion of energy toward the study
of the formal etiquette of government. In some vague way, the problem of
politics is the advancement of the good life, but this is at once assumed
to depend upon the modification of the mechanisms of government. Democratic
theorists in particular have hastily assumed that social harmony depends
upon discussion, and that discussion depends upon the formal consultation
of all those affected by social policies. The time has come to abandon the
assumption that the problem of politics is the problem of promoting
discussion among all the interests concerned in a given problem. Discussion
frequently complicates social difficulties, for the discussion by far-flung
interests arouses a psychology of conflict which produces obstructive,
fictitious, and irrelevant values. The problem of politics is less to solve
conflicts than to prevent them; less to serve as a safety valve for social
protest than to apply social energy to the abolition of recurrent sources
of strain in society. This redefinition of the problem of politics may be
called the idea of preventive politics. The politics of prevention draws
attention squarely to the central problem of reducing the level of strain
and maladaptation in society. In some measure it will proceed by
encouraging discussion among all those who are affected by social policy,
but this will be no iron-clad rule. In some measure it will proceed by
improving the machinery of settling disputes, but this will be subordinated
to a comprehensive program, and no longer treated as an especially
desirable mode of handling the situation. The recognition that people are
poor judges of their own interest is often supposed to lead to the
conclusion that a dictator is essential. But no student of individual
psychology can fail to share the conviction of Kempf that “Society is _not_
safe.... when it is forced to follow the dictations of one individual, of
one autonomic apparatus, no matter how splendidly and altruistically it may
be conditioned.” Our thinking has too long been misled by the threadbare
terminology of democracy versus dictatorship, of democracy versus
aristocracy. Our problem is to be ruled by the truth about the conditions
of harmonious human relations, and the discovery of the truth is an object
of specialized research; it is no monopoly of people as people, or of the
ruler as ruler. As our devices of accurate ascertainment are invented and
spread, they are explained and applied by many individuals inside the
social order. Knowledge of this kind is a slow and laborious accumulation.
The politics of prevention does not depend upon a series of changes in the
organization of government. It depends upon a reorientation in the minds of
those who think about society around the central problems: What are the
principal factors which modify the tension level of the community? What is
the specific relevance of a proposed line of action to the temporary and
permanent modification of the tension level? The politics of prevention
will insist upon a rigorous audit of the human consequences of prevailing
political practices. How does politics affect politicians? One way to
consider the human value of social action is to see what that form of
social action does to the actors. When a judge has been on the bench thirty
years, what manner of man has he become? When an agitator has been
agitating for thirty years, what has happened to him? How do different
kinds of political administrators compare with doctors, musicians, and
scientists? Such a set of inquiries would presuppose that we were able to
ascertain the traits with which the various individuals began to practice
their rôle in society. Were we able to show what certain lines of human
endeavor did to the same reactive type, we would lay the foundation for a
profound change in society’s esteem for various occupations. Any audit of
the human significance of politics would have to press far beyond the
narrow circle of professional politicians. Crises like wars, revolutions,
and elections enter the lives of people in far-reaching ways. The effect of
crises on mental attitude is an important and uncertain field. Thus it is
reported that during the rebellion of 1745-46 in Scotland there was little
hysteria (in the technical pathological sense). The same was true of the
French Revolution and of the Irish Rebellion. Rush reported in his book _On
the Influence of the American Revolution on the Human Body_ that many
hysterical women were “restored to perfect health by the events of the
time.” Havelock Ellis, who cites these instances, comments that “in such
cases the emotional tension is given an opportunity for explosion in new
and impersonal channels, and the chain of morbid personal emotions is
broken.”[53] The physical consequences of political symbolism may be made
the topic of investigation from this point of view: When the affect can not
acquire what it needs, uncomfortable tensions or anxiety (fear) are felt,
and the use of the symbol or fetish, relieving this anxiety, has a marked
physiological value in that it prevents the adrenal, thyroid, circulatory,
hepatic and pulmonic compensatory strivings from becoming excessive.[54]
Political programs will continually demand reconsideration in the light of
the factors which current research discloses as bearing upon the tension
level. Franz Alexander recently drew attention to the strains produced in
modern civilization by the growing sphere of purposive action. He summed up
the facts in the process of civilized development in the following way:
“Human expressions of instinct are subject to a continual tendency to
rationalization, that is, they develop more and more from playful,
uncoordinated, purely pleasure efforts into purposive actions.” The
“discomfort of civilization” of which Freud recently wrote in the
_Unbehagen der Kultur_ is characteristic of the rationalized cultures with
which we are acquainted. Life is poor in libidinal gratifications of the
primitive kind which the peasant, who is in close touch with elementary
things, is in a position to enjoy.[55] Modern life furnishes irrational
outlets in the moving picture and in sensational crime news. But it may be
that other means of relieving the strain of modern living can be invented
which will have fewer drawbacks. Preventive politics will search for the
definite assessment, then, of cultural patterns in terms of their human
consequences. Some of these human results will be deplored as
“pathological,” while others will be welcomed as “healthy.” One
complicating factor is that valuable contributions to culture are often
made by men who are in other respects pathological. Many pathological
persons are constrained by their personal difficulties to displace more or
less successfully upon remote problems, and to achieve valuable
contributions to knowledge and social policy.[56] Of course the notion of
the pathological is itself full of ambiguities. The individual who is
subject to epileptic seizures may be considered in one culture not a
subnormal and diseased person, but a supernormal person. Indeed, it may be
said that society depends upon a certain amount of pathology, in the sense
that society does not encourage the free criticism of social life, but
establishes taboos upon reflective thinking about its own presuppositions.
If the individual is pathological to the extent that he is unable to
contemplate any fact with equanimity, and to elaborate impulse through the
processes of thought, it is obvious that society does much to nurture
disease. This leads to the apparent paradox that successful social
adjustment consists in contracting the current diseases. If “health” merely
means a statistical report upon the “average,” the scrutiny of the
individual ceases to carry much meaning for the modification of social
patterns. But if “health” means something more than “average,” the
intensive study of individuals gives us a vantage ground for the
revaluation of the human consequences of cultural patterns, and the
criticism of these patterns.[57] If the politics of prevention spreads in
society, a different type of education will become necessary for those who
administer society or think about it. This education will start from the
proposition that it takes longer to train a good social scientist than it
takes to train a good physical scientist.[58] The social administrator and
social scientist must be brought into direct contact with his material in
its most varied manifestations. He must mix with rich and poor, with savage
and civilized, with sick and well, with old and young. His contacts must be
primary and not exclusively secondary. He must have an opportunity for
prolonged self-scrutiny by the best-developed methods of personality study,
and he must laboriously achieve a capacity to deal objectively with himself
and with all others in human society. This complicated experience is
necessary since our scale of values is less the outcome of our dialectical
than of our other experiences in life. Values change more by the
unconscious redefinition of meaning than by rational analysis. Every
contact and every procedure which discloses new facts has its repercussions
upon the matrix of partially verbalized experience, which is the seeding
ground of conscious ideas. One peculiarity of the problem of the social
scientist is that he must establish personal contact with his material. The
physical scientist who works in a laboratory spends more time adjusting his
machinery than in making his observations, and the social scientist who
works in the field must spend more time establishing contacts than in
noting and reporting observations. What the instrumentation technique is to
the physicist, the cultivation of favorable human points of vantage is for
most social scientists. This means that the student of society, as well as
the manager of social relations, must acquire the technique of social
intercourse in unusual degree, unless he is to suffer from serious
handicaps, and his training must be directed with this in mind. The
experience of the administrator-investigator must include some definite
familiarity with all the elements which bear importantly upon the traits
and interests of the individual. This means that he must have the most
relevant material brought to his attention from the fields of psychology,
psychopathology, physiology, medicine, and social science. Since our
institutions of higher learning are poorly organized at the present time to
handle this program, thorough curricular reconstructions will be
indispensable.[59] * * * * * What has been said in this chapter may be
passed in brief review. Political movements derive their vitality from the
displacement of private affects upon public objects. Political crises are
complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive motives
which were organized in the early experience of the individuals concerned.
Political symbols are particularly adapted to serve as targets for
displaced affect because of their ambiguity of reference, in relation to
individual experience, and because of their general circulation. Although
the dynamic of politics is the tension level of individuals, all tension
does not produce political acts. Nor do all emotional bonds lead to
political action. Political acts depend upon the symbolization of the
discontent of the individual in terms of a more inclusive self which
champions a set of demands for social action. Political demands are of
limited relevance to the changes which will produce permanent reductions in
the tension level of society. The political methods of coercion,
exhortation, and discussion assume that the rôle of politics is to solve
conflicts when they have happened. The ideal of a politics of prevention is
to obviate conflict by the definite reduction of the tension level of
society by effective methods, of which discussion will be but one. The
preventive point of view insists upon a continuing audit of the human
consequences of social acts, and especially of political acts. The
achievement of the ideal of preventive politics depends less upon changes
in social organization than upon improving the methods and the education of
social administrators and social scientists. The preventive politics of the
future will be intimately allied to general medicine, psychopathology,
physiological psychology, and related disciplines. Its practitioners will
gradually win respect in society among puzzled people who feel their
responsibilities and who respect objective findings. A comprehensive
functional conception of political life will state problems of
investigation, and keep receptive the minds of those who reflect at length
upon the state. CHAPTER XI[60] THE PROLONGED INTERVIEW AND ITS
OBJECTIFICATION The empirical material assembled in this book has appeared
in the course of prolonged interviews with individuals under unusually
intimate conditions. This method of the prolonged interview has now had a
history of some thirty years in the form devised by Freud, but so far there
are very few efforts to objectify the events which transpire there. Otto
Rank has written a series of studies of the “interview situation” which is
the most important effort so far made to characterize the distinctive
features of the method. But the empirical material which is so far reported
does not rest upon the verbatim recording of what happens, except in a few
specimen instances of highly pathological cases, and attempts are only now
being made to record some of the principal physiological changes in the
subject. It will be remembered that Freud learned to predict the future
course of reminiscence by watching word slips, random movements, and many
other acts which were formerly dismissed as chance occurrences. He also
found that he could abbreviate the laborious efforts of the patient to
recall the traumatic (the original) episode by proposing various
interpretations. It is at this point that the cautious physician and
psychologist have picked serious quarrels with psychoanalytical findings.
They allege that the patient produces the kind of material which the
analyst suggests is to be brought forth, and that the whole process is one
of putting a rabbit in the hat which you triumphantly extricate later on.
They have seized upon the schisms in the analytical fold, and declare that
you eventually dream about anima figures if you are analyzed by Jung, that
you relive birth traumas if you are analyzed by Rank, and that you welter
in a galaxy of anal, oral, and urethral symbols if you are deeply analyzed
by Freud. You talk about inferiority feeling if you work with Adler, and
about castrative anxiety if you work with Freud. One might suppose that
after thirty years of labor there would be in existence a body of documents
which could be consulted by a group of competent specialists who were
trying to reconcile their differences and doubts about what actually goes
on in the analytical interview.[61] At the present time the interview
situation is poorly reflected in the notes taken by the analyst at the
expiration of each period (if and when he takes them). Nobody knows what
processes distort the reporting practices of different listeners, and
nobody knows the value of the published scraps. Since one of the avowed
purposes of therapeutic analyses is to bring the person to stand on his own
feet and to stop leaning on others, or upon symptom indulgences, personal
relations are usually broken off at the end of the interview. This
obviously impedes the possibility of following up the subsequent history of
the personality, and of ascertaining the stability of the supposed
therapeutic results. The case-history documents available in good
institutions have the advantage of representing the combined product of
several people who are in touch with the subject, and who may be supposed
to operate as a check upon one another. But these documents are usually
short, and betray the psychopathological slant of the ones chiefly
responsible. And these documents are typically incomplete in reporting the
whole personality of the subject on account of the clinician’s interest in
the more circumscribed disease phenomena displayed. When John Brown reports
an episode in which he was told that his nose would be cut off if he didn’t
quit handling himself, how do we know what importance to assign to the
alleged reminiscence? Are we to accept this as a historical statement? Are
we to construe it as a fabrication which, however, shows what he wanted to
have happen, or supposed would happen, if he disobeyed orders? Are we to
interpret it as a sign of his fear of the interviewer, couched in the
language of the past, because this mode of exercising the imagination has
been trained into him? Are we to interpret this as a sign of his hatred of
the interviewer, on the theory that a self-punishing fantasy is a defense
of the conscience against a murderous impulse of the unadjusted portion of
the self? Are we to accept it as an effort to win the approval of the
interviewer by reporting the kinds of things which he has learned to
suppose the interviewer wants to hear, a supposition which is based upon a
private study of psychoanalytical literature? Are we to accept it as an
“original trauma” and to expect an immediate or eventual decrease in the
neurotic anxiety which the individual shows? Are we to look upon it as a
screen reminiscence for a genuinely traumatic episode in which the threat
was made, not against his nose, but against his penis? Or is it a screen
for a prohibited impulse which was once activated, and which seized upon a
past episode and gave it the significance of a threat? These are a few of
the specific questions which can be raised about the proffered material,
and the scientific problem is to devise more convincing demonstrations of
the available theories, or more conclusive refutations, than we now have.
What are some of the criteria of a “traumatic episode”? If the reminiscence
is accompanied by much affect (excitement), there is a presumption of its
authenticity. And how is affect measured? We depend at the present time
upon the observer’s judgment of the variations in the voice, and shifts in
posture, or the twitches and jerks of the body. This can be augmented under
experimental conditions by taking a continuous record of variations in
blood pressure, respiration, galvanic reflex, etc.--all of which offer some
indication of excitement.[62] We are thus able to improve our assessment of
the possible significance of the reports, speculations, and general
fantasies of the subject. It may be that in due course we shall be able to
differentiate on a physical basis between “suppressions” and “repressions,”
and that we shall be able to follow through the transformations from
beginning to end of the interviewing process. Our judgment of the
“traumatic episode” is also influenced by the subject’s certainty. If the
subject reports that he believes what he remembers, this has some value in
raising a presumption. This is especially true if the subject has fought
against the idea, but it has spontaneously continued to appear and plague
his associations. But a reported sense of certainty is flimsy stuff, unless
this certainty survives for some time. We know that individuals try to
escape from anxiety feelings by a flight into explanations, and that they
are ready to volunteer or to accept all kinds of interpretations of their
behavior rather than to continue to endure anxiety. This is the basis for
the credulity of the neurotic, and explains why everything from mysterious
“glandular unbalances” to “astral perturbations” are accepted from time to
time as completely adequate explanations of personal troubles. So the
subject’s reported certainty must survive even disparaging suggestions and
prolonged self-scrutiny, and become emancipated from affect, if it is to be
taken very literally. Another criterion is the consistency of the reported
episode with all the other relevant facts. There must be something wrong
about the report that K was brutally punished by his father at a time which
was some years after the parent’s death.[63] The obstacles which lie in the
path of a research program which calls for objective records of as much as
possible of what transpires in the interview situation are not to be
minimized. The bulk of a verbatim report of an hour’s conversation per day
over several months is almost overwhelming. But historians are accustomed
to plow through whole libraries of pages about Napoleon or Bismarck, and
from the standpoint of a comprehensive theory of personality development
any personality is almost as good as any other, although high elaboration
and distinguished achievement are advantages. There are some points in
favor of applying this technique of personality study to people who are
normal, at least in the sense that they are suspected of normality by
themselves and others. There is a moral to be learned from some of Freud’s
early mistakes when he assigned critical significance to certain childhood
experiences which later investigation showed were very common. The clinical
caricature is invaluable for the high relief in which certain tendencies of
the normal are revealed. Indeed, “normality” is more difficult to
understand than disease, from one point of view, since it involves a
complicated integration of many tendencies, a flexible capacity to snap
from one mood, preoccupation, and overt activity to another, as the
changing demands of reality require. Normality is complexity and
integration, and it ought to be approached as directly as possible as a
control on the pathological. The main advantage which the normal subject
hopes to glean from the analytical interview is a judgment of the
importance of this, in comparison with other, psychological methods.
Records being as they are today, only one who has been through the mill can
talk with much assurance about what happens, and if he has a critical mind,
he isn’t too sure then. The analytical interview is a discipline in
self-scrutiny. The subject learns to exploit a new method of using the
mind, which he tries to cultivate and to correlate with the logical methods
to which he is partly accustomed in ordinary adult life. The new technique
of using the mind is the free-fantasy technique, whose chief function is to
produce new material for logical consideration. The interview necessitates
the reactivation of the individual’s struggle with his antisocial impulses.
This happens be the subject sick or well, for every individual possesses
more or less active and powerful antisocial drives. Every personality
displays some pathology in the form of remainders of the Oedipus phase of
growth. The socially adjusted portion of the personality takes up the
battle again against the unsublimated drives, and a considerable amount of
neurotic anxiety is generated in the process. The problem is to encourage
the subject to face these unadjusted remnants frankly, to bring them to the
full focus of waking consciousness, and to discharge their bound energy.
This comes to pass in the roundabout way of recapturing the original
episodes in which the neurotic solution was invented. The work of
reminiscence is the preliminary to liberation and understanding. The
interview substitutes the talking-out for the acting-out of personality
drives. One learns to recover the critical points in one’s past history by
watching the present for clues to the full meaning of the present
situation, and this includes the inspection of reminiscences. A
reminiscence is always relevant to a present situation, and serves the
double rôle of annotating the present and reporting the past. The interview
experience is long and arduous, and the subject learns very slowly to deal
with himself as an object in a world of objects, and to free his judgment
more and more from the distorting effects of primitive psychological
structures. The analytical situation is so arranged as to facilitate this
process of self-inspection. The provocations to act out rather than think
out are reduced by simplifying the sensory present. The subject lies in a
relaxed position, and is better able to observe those stiffenings of the
body, those variations in respiration, those oscillations of visceral
tension, those impulses to scratch and finger which escape ordinary
attention, but which are indicative of the meanings put in the current
situation. The sensory environment remains substantially constant, and the
interviewer handles the situation on a rather fixed routine. The subject is
temporarily encysted from the demands of professional and conventional
tasks, but the interviewer is present to prevent the individual from
dissipating his energy in musings which are quickly forgotten. The
interviewer is a prod to associate freely, and a spur to the critical
consideration of the material supplied by the freely moving fancy. The
necessity for verbalization brings the acts of fantasy into clearer focus
than usual, which is a necessary preliminary to moments of sustained
logical reflection. Since the interviewer permits the subject to disregard
the usual amenities of society, and to let his fantasies fly for the sake
of finding where they land, regressive responses are permitted to appear.
That is, the individual is not required to adjust to a conventional world
of adult reality, but is permitted to reactivate earlier forms of dealing
with the world. In the world of adult reality, the multiple tendencies of
the individual are canalized into conventionally acceptable forms, and the
most maladapted drives may display themselves in unobtrusive variations on
the pattern. When conventional reality is no longer present, and the
individual is encouraged to watch his partly forming responses, rather than
to co-ordinate, condense, ignore, or suppress them, these tendencies spread
forth diffusely in imagination and reminiscence. When this process
continues far enough, the individual achieves a high degree of insight into
the genetic development of his current preoccupations and traits. Since the
analytical process is a period of strain for the subject, it may be
wondered why it is bearable. Fortunately for the investigator, there are
many advantages to the participant which sustain and fortify his conscious
purpose to persevere until understanding has been substantially deepened.
The analyst treats every manifestation of the personality, no matter how
trivial, with respectful interest. This is exaggerated unconsciously by the
subject, who greatly overestimates the personal affection which the
interviewer has for him. Some of the energy of the personality is always
free to begin new object attachments, and this energy is concentrated upon
the interviewer. The subject is permitted to talk at length about himself,
and when the interviewer listens attentively and patiently, the subject
identifies himself with the listener on the basis of a common attitude of
interest in a beloved object. The interviewer’s ascendancy in technical
knowledge (his authority) resembles the authority of the adults who were
once supposed to possess unlimited knowledge. The day-by-day solicitude
tends to reinstate the emotions of the early family situation in which the
child could play irresponsibly, under the watchful, responsible care of the
adult. The subject relaxes the effort to keep bawdy, disloyal, mean, and
revengeful thoughts from welling into this mind. The frank expression of
these thoughts in ordinary social life would bring down punishment upon his
head, or mark him out as a victim of mental disorder. The subject is
enabled to welter in unsocial or antisocial ravings and imaginings, and the
process of developing these symptoms in the presence of another person
becomes an absorbing part of his daily, weekly, and monthly existence. The
subject intensifies his warm emotional interest in the one who exempts him
from society’s code of reticence. This is a mark of the analyst’s
tremendous power, and also of the analyst’s special interest in the
subject. The free-fantasy procedure even exempts the individual from
abiding by the ordinary forms of logic and grammar. He is also able to
enjoy the pleasure of impressing someone else with the brilliance of his
language. From time to time, new insight comes into old habits and worries,
and the zest of intellectual comprehension is added to the other pleasures.
At first sight the teaching or research interview might seem to sacrifice
the most powerful motive upon which the interviewing procedure has relied,
namely, that of securing relief from disturbing symptoms. The individual
who is suffering from some crude pathological disturbance, like a
functional gastro-intestinal disorder, psychological impotence, obsessive
ideas and compulsions, comes to the interviewer as a weak person seeking
aid of a stronger. If he has been shuttled from one internist to another
perhaps receiving derisive looks and contemptuous preachments, the
objective interest with which the psychotherapist treats his symptoms
produces a keen conscious and unconscious gratification. Even the symptoms
are beloved parts of the self, and like the ugly ducklings, they are
sometimes treated with special affection (Ferenczi). The hope of being
relieved of the annoying symptoms, which is consciously present in many
pathological cases, is supported on the unconscious level by an old
infantile attitude which expects the interviewer to work miracles. Even
some of the antisocial impulses of the personality may welcome the
therapeutic situation. These antisocial tendencies are themselves not
entirely gratified in the symptoms, for the nature of a symptom is a
compromise between these antisocial tendencies and the socialized impulses
of the self. Nunberg has pointed out that the unsocialized portions of the
personality may support the misguided hope that the outcome of therapy will
be the boundless and unlimited gratification of their demands. There is
also evidence of the existence of a compulsion to confess (Reik) to
antisocial tendencies, which are rejected by the socialized self, and thus
to gratify an unconscious need of punishment. Now the sense of being sick
and the desire to get well are not entirely absent from any normal person.
No one is entirely free from remnants of his adjustive problems, and no one
is entirely satisfied with himself. At the beginning of the interview, this
motive may appear in consciousness as nothing more substantial than the
innocuous belief that any increase in self-knowledge will enable one to
deal even more satisfactorily with personal problems as they arise. Among
the other motives which play into the analytical situation, and enable the
subject to go through with it, may be mentioned a few very primitive ones.
Life has meant the blocking of many impulses by authorities whose power
cannot be successfully defied on the spot. Hatreds can only express
themselves under these conditions with some prospects of success when they
seek to overcome the superior by trying to take his power into one’s own
personality by copying him. That is to say, the individual seeks to
identify himself with the one who possesses superior knowledge in the
analytical situation, and by becoming like him, to secure independence, and
thus to annihilate him as an intimidating and obstructive external object.
There may be a desire to secure a weapon by means of which other people may
be eviscerated, and deprived of their power to outstrip the individual. On
the conscious level, these motives are partly visible in excessive
aspirations for self-mastery and control. This taking-in and biting-off of
the analyst’s power is also rooted in some of the earliest reaction
patterns which the infant displays toward objects. The sheer pleasure of
talking, and giving and withholding information is also present. As the
subject withdraws attention from the original symptoms or motives,
concentrates on the game of dilating upon the past, and indulges in
prohibited delights, the analytical situation becomes an orgy of illicit
pleasure. Emotions are released from old channels and find new objects of
crystallization, especially in the person of the analyst. The interviewer
who permits this “transference” is now in a position to aid the subject in
coming to grips with the underlying unsocialized impulses of the
personality. The behavior of the subject has by this time given a host of
clues to the history of his emotional growth. The analyst continues to
stimulate the individual to scrutinize his associations, to state honestly
the wayward wishes flit across his mind, or which lurk half-seen in the
marginal recesses of attention. Back and forth, bit by bit, there is
reconstructed the subjective history of a life. To put it metaphorically,
old sores run anew, smoldering embers of jealousy and lust flame once more,
and ancient wounds yawn again. Reminiscence reguilds the faded tapestries
of the past, and restores to the full glare of consciousness the cobwebs of
the mind which house the spiders of malevolence and lechery. Primitive
meanings, once appropriate to a situation, and later projected
unintentionally into the adult world, are recovered and criticized in the
light of their appropriateness to society. Regressive reliving, which is
powerfully supported by narcissism and the repetitive compulsion, is
observed and overcome. It should not be supposed that the secrets of the
mind are exposed for the asking. The method of repression is a primitive
means by which the feeble, nascent self seeks protection from impulses
which, if tolerated, if not shut out with unreflecting violence, would
overrun it (Alexander). When the self becomes strong and stable, primitive
impulses can be permitted to develop farther in consciousness without
imminent danger that they will pass over into action by controlling the
motor apparatus. Now the critical, reflecting, deciding self must not be
crippled by an unduly strong conscience. The structure which we know as the
conscience is begun in early childhood, and is formed by the incorporation
into the self of the orders and commands which are administered by
authority. When the self is weak, as during these formative years, the
conscience relies on crude methods to protect its hard-won ascendancy over
the antisocial drives in the personality. It visits penalties of anxiety
upon the self whenever there are any signs of leniency toward these
impulses. The conscience keeps its summary, sadistic quality long after,
and neurotics are properly said to suffer from an excess of conscience.
Blind denial of the existence of fundamental trends in the personality must
be supplanted, and the _obiter dicta_ of the conscience subjected to the
criticism of the more mature and experienced self. An obstacle to this
procedure is furnished by those energies of the personality which are
specialized in resisting the antisocial impulses which have been repressed
and denied direct and undisguised access to consciousness. Any lowering of
resistance subjects the individual to acute anxiety, as the conflict
between the socialized and the unsocialized drives is reinstated. All sorts
of subterfuges are hit upon to obviate the necessity for enduring this
anxiety and bringing the hidden into consciousness, where it can lose its
charge. The overcoming of this resistance to taking up the battle again is
a major process in the prolonged analysis. The recapitulation of the drives
which the individual has experienced throughout his life is the process
which lends unique value to the psychoanalytic interview record. The
literature of psychoanalysis is full of sample fantasies which are assigned
to places in the hypothetical sequence of personality growth. Over twenty
years ago Freud wrote some preliminary remarks on character types,
especially stressing the rôle of certain excretory pleasures in the
development of some psychological structures. The sucking, biting and anal
retention interests of the infant and young child have been the subject of
theoretical treatment by several analysts, among whom Abraham is the most
important. Ferenczi has sketched a comprehensive theory of the rise of
genital interests on the part of the child, and this has been amplified in
various directions by Reich. The differences between male and female
development have been sketched by Sachs, Deutsch, and Horney. It is not
within the necessary limits of this discussion to go farther into the
nature of the hypotheses which have been proposed by these various
investigators. We will be able to formulate them more precisely when we
have succeeded in objectifying what happens in the course of the interview,
and this is to be achieved along the lines previously sketched. Some day we
can state hypotheses more definitely which can be taken and tested by
non-analytical methods. Some of these conceptions can be confirmed or
eliminated by the direct observation of children of all age groups. It is
quite possible, however, paradoxical though it may sound, that the best way
to study some phases of infancy and childhood will be to study the adult.
There is some reason to believe that the superior expressive power of the
adult, whether in words or in drawing, may render explicit many states
which are beyond the scope of one who merely looks at movements. If we find
that the subjective reconstructions during the adult analysis check closely
with the results secured by modified analytical and behavioristic
procedures applied directly to older children, we will have more confidence
in the material which purports to relate to very early experience. We may
also test out as far as possible the “historicity” of the reminiscences
produced at different phases of the analysis. It should be said in passing
that the analysis of children requires important revisions in the externals
of the technique, as Anna Freud has shown. I want to stop at this point to
comment upon the significance of the fact there should be such a thing as
the psychoanalytic method of dealing with the genesis of personality. How
does it happen that at the end of the nineteenth century there appeared in
Western European civilization this remarkably intricate procedure? Why do
we regard it as worth while to spend months or even years in constant
introspection? Viewed in the large, I suppose this is the most spectacular
sign of the value crisis in our civilization. Here is an effort to
stimulate the individual to the reconstruction of values, not on the basis
of imposed authority, but through prolonged scrutiny of the self as a
process. The processes of the human personality are subjected to the same
patient, arduous, and minute inspection which has proved so successful when
applied to the objects of the physical world by the naturalist, astronomer,
and microscopic specialist. The end result of a long and successful
analysis is an individual who is able to interpret his relation to the
world in terms of a few master-symbols. These symbols take on meaning
because they have been acquired in the course of a long apprenticeship
under the exacting eye of another. These symbols define for the individual
in comprehensive terms his relation to unfolding reality. They permit in
favorable instances added smoothness of adjustment, and offer a means of
relief from disproportionate feelings of futility, despondency,
persecution, and omniscience. The appearance of a system of communicable
master-symbols for the definition of one’s relation to the universe is
anything but a novel phenomenon in the culture history of mankind. At one
time a leading question was, “What is God’s will for me?” The belief was
that this could be made manifest after the reading of Holy Writ, reverent
supplication, and sudden revelation. Our Western civilization has sapped at
the pillars of this structure of thinking. We are committed to the
persistent querying of the world of change, and the problem is always
“_How_ does it change?” How do the routines of the seeable, smellable,
touchable, audible, tasteable universe actually work? In what
characteristic order do the subjective events of the mind follow one
another? In what order do subjective and objective events occur? And no
matter how many intermediate links in the sequence have been named there
always remain new intermediate and new all-embracing frames of reference to
be identified and placed in orderly relationship. Values are sought to be
defined, not on the authority of another, but in the act of scrutinizing
processes. We place enormous value upon the quest for sequences, and
discover our new values in the act of broadening or deepening our
understanding of change. If you tell a sophisticated carrier of Western
culture that God reveals his wisdom after the reading of a printed passage,
he will be less impressed by what is put in than by what is left out of the
account. What relation is there between what is read and what is decided?
Can you set up controlled repetitions for the sake of testing the
predictive value of these generalizations? Are there other words which can
be read but which will result in the same decisions when the reader has the
same pecuniary stake in acting a certain way? And so on and on. It is worth
noticing that the symbols supplied by analysis are not “ought” words but
“process” words. You are not told to die for your country; you are told to
face all the values which you can find in the situation. This does not,
however, eliminate the “arbitrary” character of decisions actually reached.
The decision comes with all the shock of revelation, of inevitability, of
unexpectedness; the individual may only control decisions by rehearsing the
pertinent values until he finds himself in the clutches of a judgment. This
willingness to accept uncertainty, to scrutinize intermediate terms and
pertinent values, is an outcome of the analytical discipline. Such a
procedure grew up in a civilization whose values have been in confusion
since the medieval cosmology broke down. President Masaryk, serious thinker
and scholarly writer, began his sociological work with a study of suicide,
which he found to be a rough index of the value strains in culture. When
emotional bonds are forged with exponents of life-patterns of different
design, the mental stage is set for both creative originality and
destructive disintegration. The individual must assume the load of working
out his own scheme of values, and many are disorganized in the attempt. The
validation of the prolonged interview as a contributor to our dependable
knowledge about life depends upon objectifying its processes; the
achievement of its implications for the reconstruction of the hierarchy of
individual values is an impressionistic and often turbulent experience.[64]
CHAPTER XII[65] THE PERSONALITY SYSTEM AND ITS SUBSTITUTIVE REACTIONS So
far in this book human behavior has been interpreted in terms of various
“tendencies” which such behavior is supposed to manifest. Suppose we call
into question this type of psychological explanation. What, after all, is a
“tendency”? It postulates a relationship between events, one of which is
taken as the terminal situation, and others of which are treated as
relative approximations to the type situation. Terms like “wishes,”
“desires,” “instincts,” “impulses,” “drives,” and “motives” are all
employed in this sense. For purposes of analysis, tendency interpretations
may be divided into five main classes, depending on the nature of the
relationship which is postulated between the approximate and the terminal
situation. First, personality events may be interpreted as approximations
toward, or realizations of, goals (terminals) which are communicated by the
subject. We may believe a man who tells us that he is running for a train
when we see him dashing along the street toward the railway station.
Second, personality events may be interpreted as degrees of approximation
to subsequent events which are actually observed. Mr. C’s solicitude for
the health and welfare of the needy ones of the district may be construed
in the light of his subsequent campaign for Congress. Third, personality
events may be treated as degrees of resumption of terminal situations of a
type which have already been observed. Lying in bed after waking up in the
morning, whenever there are difficulties to cope with, may be interpreted
as a reactivation of an earlier psychological impulse to lie still and be
waited on. Fourth, personality events may be construed as approximations to
“normal” terminal events which are observed for the biological or cultural
category of the individual. Thus heterosexuality may be postulated as a
tendency of a human being, although he consummates no heterosexual
adjustments. Fifth, personality events may be interpreted in terms of end
situations which are “extreme” for the members of the species or the
culture. Thus the acts of man may be viewed as degrees of approximation to
murder, suicide, and incest. Each sense in which the tendency conception is
used is valid and useful for certain purposes, and is exposed to
characteristic liabilities to error. Thus if we accept the man’s statement
that he is running to catch a train, we may be wrong; he may be running to
the woods beyond to escape the constable. The reactive type of statement is
an alternative (I should prefer to say a supplement) to tendency
generalizations. When we make a reactive statement, we specify quite
definitely the antecedent-consequent relation to which reference is made.
The specific stimulus-response description of the events which elicit the
knee jerk, or call out an avoidance reaction to yellow cloth, illustrates
what is meant here. Of course the stimulus-response style of thinking is
not nearly as exhaustive, and the tendency style of thinking is not nearly
as ambiguous in actual application, as might appear at first glance. The
stimulus-response statement of how to elicit the knee jerk which is usually
given may be predictively valid in eight cases out of ten; but there are
“exceptions” which show how wide is the context of factors which it would
be necessary to include in the picture, were it nearly complete. And when
the stimulus-response mode of thinking is extended from such relatively
stable and touchable situations to those which involve complex central
(subjective) events in the sequence, it becomes in reality a disguised form
of tendency interpretation. The chief possible virtue of tendency
conceptions is in introducing some sort of order in complex phenomena. If
the observer tries to enumerate all the body movements, all the electronic
gyrations, all the nuances of social adjustment which are thinkable in a
given constellation of personality events, he is likely to become lost in
aimless classification, and to prove barren in the invention of procedures
which are calculated to elicit particular aspects of the whole which may be
of high predictive value. The human mind is able to operate with a very
small number of categories with which to introduce order into events,
particularly when these are, for the most part, still defined
qualitatively. Clarity of thought demands economy in the orienting frames
of thought. How a tendency simplification may lead to fruitful research for
predictively valuable particulars is shown in the case of Freud, in
contrast to Janet. Janet made remarkably clear classifications of the
psychopathological facts as he saw them, and although his terms and
categories were abundant, his work was comparatively sterile of novel
procedures for the modification of human personalities. Even his
classificatory pursuits were hampered by his little-criticized assumptions.
His notion that dreams were passing confusions which were traceable to
diminished psychological tension in sleep deprived dream material of all
significance as classifiable data, and he almost completely ignored it.
Freud, who tended to operate with a few bold tendency simplifications,
brought into the range of observation whole categories of data which have
high predictive value. When tendency simplifications are used until vast
numbers of instances accumulate of their supposed operation,
“subtendencies” (such as the variations of the manifestations of the
Oedipus constellation) multiply apace until the problems of rendering one
tendency consistent with the expressions of another one carry scientific
speculations into the logical molds of legalism and dogmatic theology. If
the subtendencies are not modified, and long lists of special tendencies
are added, terminological difficulties likewise arise in applying the
unwieldy list. The long inventories of supposed instincts are less at fault
because they imply an unwarranted assurance about the innate propensities
of man than because they are “too numerous to mention,” and introduce
confusion rather than orienting principles in the field of study. Although
the prediction of one set of tangible reactions from another is the aim of
scientific formulation, this by no means implies, then, that the reactive
style of thinking is the one best calculated to guide the attention of the
thinker to the selection of the most fruitful hypotheses (“if”
predictions). Indeed, especially valuable results have been secured in the
personality field by the pattern of thinking which views a cross-section of
facts as an expression of a few tendencies. But a reactive style of
thinking which operates with a few simplifications might prove useful in
the study of human personality at the present time, since both the
psychoanalytical and the “itemistic” psychologies have a plethora of
particulars with which they are familiar, but suffer from certain crippling
viewpoints inherent in their early starting-points. Psychoanalysis is well
accustomed to the use of a few orienting terms, but since these are stated
in “tendency” form, there is much lack of emphasis upon rendering the
objective marks of their manifestation precise. The inventory psychologies
though accustomed to precision are accustomed to overlooking the woods for
the trees. Can the personality be viewed as a system, and can we think of
it in a few terms which can be gradually objectified, and which indicate
the principal varieties of personality manifestation? If the personality is
a true system, interferences which are introduced at various points ought
often to produce substitutive reactions at many remote parts of the
personality. Personalities may be compared from one cross-section to
another, and from one personality to another, by exposing them to similar
interferences, and by examining the substitutive reaction sequences which
emerge. For the purpose of summing up the personality at any given period,
we may consider it to be a constellation of the following action patterns:
object orientations, adjustive thinking, autistic reveries, somatic
reactions. The object orientations of the individual are describable as
various degrees of assertiveness, provocativeness, or submissiveness toward
sexual and non-specifically sexual objects in the environment. In extreme
instances the individual may be abusive, insulting, domineering toward
superiors, colleagues, clients, and subordinates in his profession, and
toward his wife or mistress in intimate life; or he may be cowed in his
work and timid in his sexuality; or he may show extreme variations between
his professional and private levels of behavior. These are the
differentiating reactions upon which it is hoped to throw some light by the
examination of the personality system in its principal manifestations.
Adjustive thinking has to do with the relationship of the individual to
reality. It issues in socially relevant acts, which on the creative level
mean contributions to science, art, administration, and philosophy.
Autistic thinking is highly egocentric, but adjustive thinking when it
dwells upon the relationship of the self to its surroundings is able to
treat the self as an object among objects. Autistic reveries are
non-adjustive to reality. They may be divided into several classes of which
morbid-suicidal, pessimistic, megalomanic, denunciatory, and persecutory
reveries are particularly common. In exaggerated form they become the most
conspicuous feature of the personality, and various clinical names are used
to distinguish them. Common, and representative, themes are suggested by
these quotations: “I’m a hopeless sinner”; “The world’s going to the dogs”;
“I’m the slickest guy in the world”; “The President is the Judas of
mankind”; “The President is using death-rays on me.” Autistic thinking
flourishes in greater or less abundance in every personality whose history
is taken for any length of time. The somatic reactions at any given
cross-section of the personality are striped muscle movements and tensions;
heart and circulatory reactions; gastro-intestinal responses; skin
adjustments; organic sexual behavior; respiratory, pupillary, and
urogenital adaptations; inner glandular action on the biochemical balance
of the blood; heat production (fever and certain metabolic alterations not
included before); electrical conductivity; and immunological responses.
Under the same environing conditions individuals show wide variations in
physical behavior, and when these manifestations show certain gross
deviations from norms, though no organic lesion can be shown to be present,
the presumption is that the energy of some mental process has been
converted into somatic form. This notion of hysteria (and what may be
called hysteroid reactions) was classically formulated by Freud. Every
individual who is closely scrutinized shows, from time to time, tendencies
to urinate excessively (though no adequate physical explanation is
apparent), to refrain from passing feces, or to suffer pains in the back or
neck. The comparisons which may be made among personalities on the basis of
the nature of the substitutive reactions which arise when they are
subjected to similar conditions may be illustrated on the gross level by
citing some “experiments” which society has tried. Mr. A is a member of the
city council in one of our large cities. On two occasions, when he was
defeated for re-election, he developed autistic reveries to such an extent
that he was confined in a sanitarium under the care of a psychiatrist. Thus
Mr. A met a deprivation in the sphere of his orientation to social objects
(political activity) by developing exaggerated autistic reveries
(depressive preoccupations). The case of A may be thrown up against that of
Mr. B. When Mr. B lost out in his campaign for re-election to the
legislature, he began to worry about his health, and although the
physicians could find no adequate physical basis for his trouble, he
developed a host of gastro-intestinal disturbances which incapacitated him
from regular professional life. His substitutive reaction was somatic.
Another man, a Mr. C, was defeated and spent most of his time writing a
subsequently well-recognized book on political theory. His substitutive
reaction was in the sphere of consecutive, theoretical, adjustive thinking.
It will be remembered that one of our driving administrators, J, had his
administrative duties curtailed and immediately took the wife of another
for his mistress showing that his object orientation in the world of
affairs was a substitute for his object orientation in the sexual field.
From this point of view, we are able to examine the relative function which
political activities and preoccupations play in the personality integration
of the individual. For one it is an alternative to mental disorder, for
another it is an alternative to physical disease, for another an
alternative to aggressive sexuality. Now it is of interest and importance
to observe that the study of the life-histories of these men showed that
their mode of meeting the world had become organized rather early. The man
who developed somatic symptoms had shown a physical upset after losing a
contest for the presidency of his class in college, and also in adolescent
and preadolescent deprivation situations. Alexander traced the basis for
the personality splitting in J to very early childhood. I want now to
indicate how the prolonged interview throws much light on personality
development, and lends itself to consideration from the point of view
outlined here. If the analyst is “insulted” by the subject in the course of
a day’s interview, the subject may the next day report somatic trouble, or
morbid reveries, or unusual kindliness toward an annoying person, or a
burst of creative work. The interviewer, taking such facts in juxtaposition
to others, may be able to predict the kind of substitutive reactions which
this person is likely to show in a whole range of social situations, and to
predict retrospectively the form of reaction which was manifested at
different levels of development. The trained psychoanalyst watches the
subject like a hawk for clues of this kind; the possibility of removing his
“hunches” from the realm of art into the area of dependable knowledge
depends upon the objectification of his observations, and upon the
development of specifically experimental methods. A method by which some
certainty is to be introduced in personality records is by testing the
coincidence of observations taken through time by observers who occupy
specified positions in relation to the subject. Very important applications
of this procedure have been made to child study by several child
psychologists, more particularly by Florence Goodenough and Dorothy Thomas.
A set of categories were set up to describe various acts, such as
“smiling,” “physical contact with other child,” and “physical contact with
object.” The definiteness of each term was then tested by having two
independent observers make the same number of observations at fixed
intervals during a prescribed period. The results showed which categories
were ambiguous, and which categories were sufficiently clear to justify
their inclusion in behavior studies. It was discovered, for example, that
“smiling” behavior showed much less definiteness than “physical contact
with another child.” This procedure makes it possible to measure the error
of a measuring procedure and is strictly comparable to the calibrating
process common to the physical sciences in determining the relative
reliability of measurements made by a particular instrument. The social
scientist is compelled to rely on the use of his eyes, and the problem is
to standardize the use so that objective results can be secured.[66] Such
methods of devising and testing categories for the observation of behavior
need urgently to be developed for the study of courtroom, legislative,
committee, mass meeting, and other types of behavior in situations of
immediate political interest. It is possible to record the differential
reactions of participants, and to distinguish that which is inherent in the
rôle performed (chairman), and that which is the individualized penumbra of
the act (individual gesture). These objective categories and recording
practices can be extended to the study of behavior wherever dominating and
submissive behavior is found. The gap between the studies of children and
the study of personalities in complicated adult political situations can be
filled in with the idea of finding reliable criteria of the stability of
political reactions. Some early studies have been made which suggest that
types of dominating behavior are isolable at very early ages. Charlotte
Bühler detected children who dominated through pressure of activity,
despotic behavior, and “leadership” behavior. Her monograph reproduces
photographic illustrations of what she means by the terms employed.[67] An
outgrowth of her work is the experimental study by Marjorie Walker at the
Minneapolis Institute of Child Welfare (under direction of Anderson and
Goodenough). An observational study by Mildred Parten at the same place
showed that in uncontrolled play activities the dominating or submissive
rôles might be strikingly monopolized by individual children.[68] By
methods which are less objective but much better than simple impressionism,
there have been a number of “political types” observed in later
development. Karl Reininger kept a careful record of the behavior of his
pre-puberty schoolboys, and brought out very clearly the functional
distinction between the “leader” and the “specialist.” The specialist might
temporarily guide the group in some activity for which he was particularly
competent, but the leader kept him within limits and reassumed the
direction as soon as the special activity was over. Reininger has many
shrewd observations to offer about the bearing of what he saw on the whole
range of social psychological theory, and his monograph is a beautiful
example of how a circumscribed empirical study can be given meaning and
distinction against a broad theoretical background.[69] Hildegard Hetzer
watched the spontaneous groupings of children in play groups, and shrewdly
distinguished organizers, specialists, and social leaders from one
another.[70] At a still later level is the study which Viktor
Winkler-Hermaden made of the psychology of youth-movement leaders. These
leaders are recruited from youths who are not much ahead of their groups in
age, and in a well-balanced and penetrating chapter he contrasted the
“ruler,” “teacher,” and “apostle.”[71] Special studies of dominating and
submissive types in various situations ought to be made with some reference
to the reaction-type classifications for the age period which are made by
competent students. Since puberty-adolescence is of so much importance, the
categories which are proposed in the literature ought to be examined by the
special investigator. H. Hoffman gives a modified list of the puberty types
described by Spranger and Croner in one section of his general book on
character formation.[72] Suggestions on various distortions of development
which lie behind certain forms of dominating and submissive behavior are to
be found in August Aichhorn’s lectures on _Verwahrloste Jugend_.[73] This
is the most valuable book to a student of youth which has yet been
explicitly devoted to the subject by an analyst. Aichhorn reports in his
eighth lecture the results of an extremely important experiment which he
made with the most aggressive and uncontrollable boys under his supervision
(he has served for many years as the head of a home for homeless boys). The
whole group was put together, and the staff members were instructed never
to interfere with them, short of stopping permanent injury. These
“hard-boiled” youths broke up the furniture, mauled one another, and wore
out several attendants before they gradually tamed down. After having
learned that they could not taunt the environment into punishing them, and
into justifying their own suspicions of it, they went through a process of
character re-education. The behavior of the group is reported in graphical
form, and representative instances of what occurred are recited in the text
of the lecture. Several specific genetic hypotheses are set up to explain
particular kinds of behavior on the part of the boys with whom Aichhorn has
had intimate touch.[74] Will we be able to predict from objective studies
made of preadolescent boys who dominate their play groups that one set of
them will stand a high chance of dominating play and work groups in
adolescence? Can we thus isolate rather stable developmental sequences for
various trait constellations which are of direct importance to the student
of politics? Can we achieve a composite picture for a given culture by
studying overlapping age groups for a two-year period? Certainly the way is
becoming clearer to an effective relationship between political science and
the disciplines associated with the study of the growing individual. One of
the difficulties which lie in the path of successful collaboration with
psychiatrists and child psychologists is that the political scientists have
not themselves made it entirely clear just what the adult differentials are
whose genetic history they would like to understand. What are the questions
about the specifically political life of the individual which the political
scientist would like to have included in any master-inventory of possible
facts about the intensively studied individual? The following
classification of political attitudes is intended to have suggestive value
rather than formal completeness. The first section of this classification
refers to the political preferences and expectations or forebodings of the
individual investigated. Some individuals cherish a fraternal and some a
paternal ideal. The anarchist, socialist, and democrat talk the language of
equality among a family of brothers; the monarchists preserve a father.[75]
A series of other ideological distinctions are perhaps sufficiently clear
from the terms used. CLASSIFICATION OF POLITICAL ATTITUDES SECTION A.
POLITICAL VIEWS I. Preferences Paternal ideal Fraternal ideal Strong
central authority Weak central authority Revolutionary ideal
Counter-revolutionary or reactionary ideal Cataclysmic change Evolutionary
change Indulgent toward coercion, secrecy, ruthlessness Insistent upon
persuasion, openness, scrupulousness Emancipatory, defensive, expansive
ideal for group World-unity ideal II. Expectations and forebodings Small
political change can have great results Small political change can have
some results of value Little of value can be accomplished by politics
Revolutionary changes imminent, eventual, contingent It is probably in
relation to political practices, as distinguished from political views,
that the intensive study of the individual has the most to offer. I have
included a list of questions in Appendix B which are intended to suggest
the sort of thing which is directly pertinent to the interest of the
political scientist in this regard. How has the individual acted as a
subordinate when confronted by superiors of various kinds (in the army, in
school, in fraternity organizations, in business, in party clubs, in
propaganda organizations, in administrative hierarchies, and the like)? How
has the individual acted as a superior when confronted by subordinates of
various kinds? Besides considering the behavior of the person as
subordinate or superior, we may inquire into his attitude toward
individuals who have not been members of his various organizations, but who
have been possible helpers or obstacles. Thus he may have approached
strangers for money, or sought to win diplomatic support from another
organization against a common menace. His tactics may be classified
according to the means employed and the measure of success attained.
Special attention may likewise be devoted to the behavior of the
individual, not toward particular persons, but toward publics, which are
necessarily anonymous. Summarizing: SECTION B. POLITICAL PRACTICES I. As
subordinate Confronted by superiors who are A. Strong, brutal B. Masterful
but rather objective C. Weak Reaction (conscious) 1. Does not assume a
friendly mask (exterior) even though he sees it would be an advantage
(seeks to escape, becomes stubborn, surly, assaultive, joins
anti-authoritation acts engaged in by associates, continues to contemplate
revenge long after) 2. Does not see or press up own individual advantage
because of attachment or intimidation (deference without conscious
hostility, pronounced affection, intimidated sacrifice of associates to
curry favor, overgratitude) 3. Combines friendly mask with conscious acts
of hostility (plays up qualities admired by chief, whether imitative of
chief or expressive of the chief’s repressions) 4. Irrational elements in
adaptation at a minimum II. As authority Confronted by subordinates who are
A. Strong, hostile, dangerous rivals B. Strong and objective C. Weak
Reaction 1. Does not refrain from taking up a hostile front even when it is
recognized to be inappropriate 2. Takes apparently friendly line while
pursuing hostile purposes 3. Does not take strong-enough measures to secure
efficiency or respect (too indulgent of mirrors of self or of those who
work out frustrations) 4. Objective (inflicts narcissistic wound when
advantageous, reassures when useful, develops abilities of subordinates,
thwarts when dangerous) III. In dealing with possible helper or obstructor
who is outside organization (most effective tactics chosen and range of
tactics) Appeals to logical standards Appeals to sentiment Non-violent and
violent coercion Inducement (tangible advantage) IV. In dealing with public
Types of tactics chosen, success Forms of expression, thought, and interest
may be singled out for special consideration. What is intended here is
sufficiently apparent from the captions: SECTION C. FORMS OF EXPRESSION,
THOUGHT, INTEREST I. Forms of expression (Includes all symbolizing forms:
political editorials, novels, poems, paintings, cartoons, plastic media,
plays, acting) Most effective style Analytical and dialectical Persecutory
(sarcastic, denunciatory) Enthusiastic Humorous Commanding Range of style
wide or limited II. Mode of thought Quick or slow to suggest policies or
tactics Almost totally uninventive Systematically collects data prior to
judgment Impressionistic improvisation Welcomes suggestion and criticism
before decision Impatient of suggestion and criticism before decision
Anxious to justify decision to those about or to world Indifferent about
justifying decision Stubbornly holds to decision Oscillates in decision
Much influenced by facts and arguments (or little) Much influenced by
appeals to sentiments (or little) Much influenced by personal inducements
(or little) Much influenced by coercion (or little) (note that influence
may be negative as to direction) Genuine pursuit of general interest in
exercise of discretion, or not Elated by victory or depressed Genuine or
narrow in sharing credit Deeply depressed by defeat or satisfied in defeat
Interested in programs and values Interested in processes and methods
Long-run or short-run objectives Aims at immediate or eventual political
action Presses through to a decision capable of being tested Conclusions or
decisions vague Ideal of responsible personal participation Consistency
between opinion and practices Self-consciousness of own techniques Conforms
or not to family pattern (exaggerated, adoption of opposite, ...) III.
Political interest Formulated early and persists through life Formulated
early, lies dormant, reawakened Aroused early, disillusioned Aroused late
By this time it is perhaps superfluous to comment that every fact is
defined from the point of view of an observer, and that the problem is to
specify as definitely as possible the angle of observation of the recorder.
Trait lists are meaningless unless they can be filled in by a
fact-collecting process which surveys the various situations with respect
to which it is of possible relevance. It is very obvious to the
psychopathologist that the man who is “aggressive” at work may be “timid”
in sexuality. All too frequently personalities are supposed to be
“aggressive” when a certain number of raters have agreed on it, without
stopping to consider whether the raters have a chance to become acquainted
with the behavior of the individual in many situations. The multiplication
of ratings by persons who are in a poor position to judge the subject (even
by “intimate” friends who do not, however, act as sexual partners) adds
nothing but a spurious specificity to the data. The interviewer who listens
to the intimate life of the individual through many weeks and months is in
a very strategic position to become acquainted with details of individual
reactions which even intimates have not seen. A “rating” must be taken with
special reference to the history of the relations of the rater and the
rated. It may be that we shall presently find that the ratings of analysts
in dealing with certain types of people who can be easily identified do not
substantially deviate from those of “intimates” or even rather casual
acquaintances of certain kinds. Such knowledge will enable research to
proceed with more certain pace toward the time when we shall know what to
look for and how to elicit what we want with the maximum of economy. The
specialist who interviews a man for an hour may be able, during the course
of what appears to be an ordinary social relation, to find the tell-tale
signs which detailed research has shown to be invariably, or almost
invariably, connected with particular impulse systems and developmental
histories. As Bjerre so well put it: As soon as our intercourse with a
certain person is no longer governed by common interests, but by a desire
to acquire a knowledge of his inmost being, we immediately abandon the
formal content of his utterance and begin unconsciously to seek for
whatever indication of his inner life appears in his speech independently
of, or even in spite of, his conscious will.[76] What is achieved is a
correlation of the results of “casual” contact and “intensive” study, a
correlation which is the common target of a converging attack upon the
understanding of the human personality. Some day we shall know how to
validate the saying of the old physician which is on the title-page of this
book: “From him who has eyes to see and ears to hear no mortal can hide his
secret; he whose lips are silent chatters with his fingertips and betrays
himself through all his pores.” CHAPTER XIII THE STATE AS A MANIFOLD OF
EVENTS Implications have continually been drawn in the foregoing pages
about the bearing of the intensive study of individual personalities upon
the meaning of the political process as a whole. Since the
psychopathological approach to the individual is the most elaborate
procedure yet devised for the study of human personality, it would appear
to raise in the most acute form the thorny problem of the relation between
research on the individual and research upon society. We are therefore
justified in devoting more extended attention to the theoretical problem
involved than we have yet taken occasion to do. It may be asserted at the
outset that our thinking is vitiated unless we dispose of the fictitious
cleavage which is sometimes supposed to separate the study of the
“individual” from the study of “society.” There is no cleavage; there is
but a gradual gradation of reference points. Some events have their locus
in but a single individual, and are unsuitable for comparative
investigation. Some events are widely distributed among individuals, like
breathing, but have no special importance for interpersonal relations. Our
starting-point as social scientists is the statement of a distinctive event
which is widely spread among human beings who occupy a particular
time-space manifold. Subjective events occupy definite positions in the
flow of events, and the problem of explanation is the problem of locating
stable relations. Since subjective events are not open to direct
observation, but are inferred from movements, the observer, O, must infer
the existence of subjective terms in the sequence by imagining what he
would experience under all the similar circumstances which he can survey
and compare to his own experience. Reduced to its simplest terms, the
observer’s procedure is that of isolating a subjective event which he
wishes to investigate, and of searching for the “externals” which will make
the conditions of its occurrence clearly communicable to others. These
externals are sometimes fairly clear, and can readily be stated in precise,
“touchable” form. The sensation of “roughness” can be predicted to follow
the application of certain objects to specified parts of the skin. A
transition from a rough to a smooth object may also produce “flinching,”
which can be somewhat definitely described, and which accompanies and
(perhaps) initiates some of the subjective events. When any observer
undertakes to talk about the state, he may choose specific subjective
experiences, such as a sense of loyalty to a community, and say that all
who have this experience (and/or certain others) under specified conditions
make up the state. Such specified conditions may include the act of
testifying to it when asked by an intimate friend, or when warned that the
community is in danger. The concept of the state may be amplified by
searching for the external circumstances which precipitate the appearance
of the subjective events which are characteristic of stateness. Such a
method of defining the state absolves us from “superindividual” constructs.
The locus of the subjective events is still individual. The group is not a
superindividual phenomenon but a many-individual phenomenon. The time-space
abstraction of the “group” is just as “real” or “unreal” as the time-space
abstraction called the “individual.” They are both equally real or unreal,
and they stand and fall together. The state has duration. It is a
time-space frame of reference for individual events. Particular individuals
may pass on, but if the overwhelming majority of those who occupy a certain
geographical area continue to experience the subjective events of the type
chosen as critical for the state, the state endures. The state is thus
independent of any one individual, but it ceases to exist when enough
individuals change their minds or die without procreating. I have not yet
defined the particular events which are to be treated as the marks of the
state. In the sea of subjective events we must choose certain typical ones.
Now definitions of this kind can be developed most advantageously when we
proceed, not by a method of rigorous exclusion, but of relative emphasis.
Suppose we tentatively begin by saying that the distinguishing experience
is that of communal unity, when it is manifested by the use of coercion
against outside and inside disturbers of the communal order. Imagine an
observer is overlooking a primitive village. He sees a band of young men
whose behavior he interprets thus: They are wearing painted stripes,
brandishing spears, and having left the village, they engage in fighting a
band of young men from a neighboring village. Is this evidence of the
existence of the state? The facts are insufficient to justify a decision.
Closer observation may show that these young men all live in one quarter of
the village and that other young men are idling about. When the “warriors”
come back, they are only cheered by those who live in one section. Those
who live there may prove to be members of one family, some of whose young
men have avenged a private wrong in which the village as a whole has no
part. The system of claims and expectations which is the essence of the
communal order is not at stake. The communal order must be involved if the
state is involved. Robert H. Lowie[77] has shown that the term “state” may
properly be used to designate even the most primitive communities, and that
the common distinction between a prestate and a state period of cultural
development is a distortion of the facts. The simplest peoples known, the
Yurok of northwestern California, the Angami of Assam, and the Ifugao of
northern Luzon, all have a sense of belonging to a social unit larger than
a kin group, and act in overt defense of this order. The theft of property
of one kin group, when committed by a fellow-villager, is mulcted by a
traditional fine, but the theft, when committed by a marauding outsider, is
punished by death. In the case of adultery, warring families inside the
village are merely engaged in adjusting the size of the penalty; it is
universally assumed that some penalty is due. The marginal cases
notoriously play havoc with definitions. The statement made before that the
distinguishing mark of the state is the experience of communal unity, when
it is manifested by the use of coercion against outside and inside
disturbers of a communal order, is too narrow to cover a small but
extremely interesting series of facts. There may be no use of coercion
against outsiders, for the war pattern may be entirely absent from the
community, although violence against insiders who threaten the communal
system of claims and expectations appears to be universal. The view so far
proposed rests upon a frank acceptance of social “parallelism.”[78] Hans
Kelsen has subjected the theories of parallelism of psychological states
(common emotion and the like) to a sharp, and in many ways devastating,
criticism. He says that “common emotion, common volition and common idea
can never mean anything more than a description of the coincidence in
consciousness of a number of individuals.” But if one really wished to
consider the state as consisting of a community of consciousness such as
this, and as a matter of fact, such a realistic, empirical psychological
meaning is often attributed to what is called the collective will or the
collective interest of the state, then, in order to avoid inadmissible
fictions, one would have only to be consistent enough really to consider
the state as formed only by the contents of those whose consciousness had
shown the necessary agreement. One would be bound to realize that community
of will, feeling or thought, as a psychological group manifestation,
fluctuates tremendously at different times and places. In the ocean of
psychic happenings, such communities may rise like waves in the sea and
after a brief space be lost again in an ever-changing ebb and flow.[79] In
this keen dialectic Kelsen has been led astray by a failure to recognize
the time dimension of the events referred to by such a concept as the
state. Subjective facts are located in time in relation to one another when
viewed from the standpoint of any observer. The concept of the state
involves similar events in relation to one another within a duration. The
concept of the state includes this idea of a temporal frame, and can best
be grasped as a relational system (a manifold) in which a certain frequency
of subjective events is maintained. Thus the state is not abolished when
some individuals sleep or occupy themselves with the banalities of
existence, unless the state is defined with reference to a duration of a
few seconds or hours or days. But there is no reason whatever for choosing
such a transitory frame of reference. It is just as valid to use a year as
a minute, or a decade as a year, for the time dimension. Thus the state can
be treated in what Kelsen speaks of as an “empirical psychological” sense.
It is a durable empirical fact just so long as a certain frequency of
subjective events occurs. If Kelsen agrees that contents of consciousness
are “empirical,” he is bound to see them in a world of duration, and he has
no authority to prescribe that the state must refer to subjective events as
a “knife-edge instant.” The state, then, is a time-space manifold of
similar subjective events. Kelsen is incorrect in alleging that the
acceptance of the parallelism of psychological phenomena as a fundamental
fact destroys the state as a permanent institution. Mere parallelism of
psychological events does not give us the state, for a distinguishing type
of subjective event must be selected if we are to characterize the state,
the family, and other social groups. Kelsen is entirely correct in
criticizing those theories of the state which invoke parallelism but
neglect to specify the particular “contents of consciousness,” “since not
every and any group manifestations formed upon the parallelism of psychic
processes is able to constitute that community.” That subjective event
which is the unique mark of the state is the recognition that one belongs
to a community with a system of paramount claims and expectations. This
recognition of belonging does not necessarily imply an indorsement of this
state of things. The essence of the state is this recognition, and the
individual may indorse or deplore the fact without abolishing it. One need
not be sentimentally bound to the order; it is enough if the order is
noted. This unique experience is never found unassociated with other
subjective events. The recognition is usually amplified by pride in
belonging to the state, and by a determination to enforce the order upon
one’s self and others. One’s recognition of the order is usually
accompanied by an idealization of one’s participation in it, by an
idealization of the order itself, and by a condemnation of deviations from
it. All this is frequently expressed as the “sense of justice” which is the
foundation of certain theories of law and the state. The subjective event
which marks the state is usually manifested in various “externals.” Thus
the use of coercion is well-nigh universal. The externals may be broadened
to include behavior which may be treated as a substitute for coercion.
Ordering and obeying relationships which function in a coercive crisis may
continue when peace comes. There may be an apparent “elaboration backward”
of processes antecedent to coercion in foreign and domestic affairs, and
this may obviate a resort to the _ultima ratio_. The regulation of the use
of coercion, and the maintenance of a certain degree of mobilization during
non-crisis periods, devolves upon “leaders,” who may preside over
initiations, goods distribution, and general ceremonials. The process by
which “heads” are selected may involve electoral colleges, elections, and
agitations. It is worth observing that in the description of political
processes terms are employed which often carry no “subjective” connotations
on their face. But in fact every term unavoidably carries subjective
implications, and if these be ignored, there is danger that social theory
will hypostatize “patterns” or “traditions” as extra-subjective entities,
endowed with distinctive energies and amenable to special laws. Often the
subjective “burr” on the pattern is so dim that the subjective need
scarcely ever be made explicit. Many generalizations can be made by
disregarding the subjective element and focusing attention upon the
transformations through which the associated patterns pass. Linguistics has
achieved notable success by this method. Phonetic arrangements are named as
objects of investigation and the fact discovered that those sounds which
occur in certain relationships presently alter in regular ways. It is
theoretically possible to make a rough scale of descriptive conceptions
according to the relative fulness or thinness of the subjective element in
the pattern. To express this symbolically, the complexity of the _S_ to the
_E_ (subjective to external) varies between nearly 100 and nearly 0. The
contemporary prominence of what is called “social psychology” is due to the
effort to draw attention to the consideration of patterns in which the _S_
factor is large. The failure to stress the subjective dimensions of the
events referred to as “processes,” “patterns,” or “customs” is not only due
to the circumstance that the _S_ is often negligible, but that the
objective element may often appear with other subjective elements. John B
may rise when the national anthem is played, but he may do so
“automatically” with his mind mostly preoccupied with the sore on his heel.
The particular _S_ which is meant when the full pattern of patriotic
ceremonialism is discussed may thus be supplanted by another _S_ with the
same _E_. Thus the act becomes an entirely different phenomenon, and may
erroneously be classed with patriotic ceremonialism in the full sense. This
point has far-reaching consequences for political science. The accurate
comparison of behavior patterns depends upon comparison of the whole
pattern. It must not be automatically inferred that _S_ exists where _E_ is
found. The nature of the subjective factor can be inferred from extending
the observation in several directions. It may be lengthened (John B may
complain of a sore heel after the anthem). It may be more intensively
scrutinized within the same period (John B may be seen to shift his weight
from one foot to another, and to frown when one heel touches the floor).
Descriptive political conceptions are undergoing a continuous redefinition
in the life of society, and unless the student of political processes is on
the alert to test his descriptive conceptions in the light of changing
reality, he will operate with falsifications and not with simplifications.
“Voting,” to choose an instance, is a concept of the greatest complexity.
It does not alone consist in the dropping of ballots into urns or boxes or
hats, or in the punching of buttons on a machine. These external elements,
the _E_’s, in the concept of voting are not the heart of the matter. What
count especially are the subjective terms in the constellation of which
these externals are a part, and a highly variable part at that. How
seriously do people take the responsibility of collecting information about
the personalities and issues with which they are confronted and judging
these matters in the light of a conception of the public interest? Voting
is an entirely different matter when individuals are coerced into casting
ballots a certain way and when they are free, leisured, and interested. To
call the casting of ballots under all circumstances “voting” is to deprive
the term of most of its significance. It is highly probable that the
phenomenon which is loosely called voting in Chicago is today quite
different from what is was fifty years ago; it is radically true that the
phenomenon called voting in London is something different from voting in
Cook County.[80] How are we to decide what meaning to assign to particular
aspects of the political process as we observe them at different times and
places? The ocean of subjective happenings which are related to external
movements of a kind often associated with politics is ever changing, and it
cannot be described by inventory methods. Not inventory but sampling is
essential if empirical definiteness is to be attached to a term. Speaking
very generally, two modes of procedure are possible. The first is to begin
with the externalities which are a rather fixed feature of a pattern of
social behavior with which the investigator is familiar, and to proceed to
find out how the subjective features of this pattern change. One may study
“balloting” or “modes of punishment” and the like from this point of view.
Throughout Western European culture there prevails such relative
homogeneity of pattern that research may proceed directly from this
starting-point. The field ethnologist, who deals with cultures of a
drastically different kind, must often use another avenue of approach. A
set of external movements like “balloting” may not be sufficiently
widespread to permit comparison. The ethnologist must proceed by stating to
himself the subjective fact whose presence he would like to detect (such as
a desire to participate earnestly in deciding communal problems), and
participate as fully in the daily life of the people as he can, in the hope
that presently he will divine such a subjective viewpoint and its
characteristic modes of expression. It is true that there are some
movements of man whose significance is practically universal, but these are
too few to enable the utter alien to dispense with a long period of
participation in the day-to-day life of the people. What happens is that
the observer presently begins to recognize the subjective fact behind the
movements of the body, but this primitive judgment of his is a diffused
judgment, based upon a mass of subtle particulars which he may long be
unable to isolate in his own thinking and to point out to others; indeed,
this process is never complete, or we should have a complete understanding
of human life. Obviously both points of departure for research have their
advantages. The American student of social patterns in Western Europe has
thousands of subtle meanings established in common with Frenchmen, Germans,
or British. This is an enormous time-saving asset. If anyone undertakes to
use the ethnologist’s approach to a familiar culture, the results are
likely to strike the participant in that culture as perfectly obvious and
hardly worth the effort.[81] The whole aim of the scientific student of
society is to make the obvious unescapable, if one wishes to put the truth
paradoxically. The task is to bring into the center of rational attention
the movements which are critically significant in determining our judgment
of subjective events, and to discover the essential antecedents of those
patterns of subjectivity and of movement. For all the people who are
startled to find that they have spoken prose all their lives, there are
many to emulate the rustic who “know’d it all the time” when scientific
facts are stated about human nature. That which is known implicitly and
based upon diffused, unverbalized experience must be made explicit if new
ways of dealing with the world are to be invented. The work of
investigation may eventuate in statements of the subjective constellations
which find expression in particular cultural forms, or in the description
of the subjective constellations which are connected with forms which are
universal for all men. The frame of reference of the social scientist is
the culture; the frame of reference of the human psychologist is the
species. What is known as the “quantitative method” provides a valuable
discipline for the student of culture because it directs his attention
toward the discovery of events which are often enough repeated to raise a
strong presumption that a particular sequence does actually exist. These
events must be so defined that similar events can be identified by other
workers. This necessitates an operational definition of the concept, which
is to say, terms must be used to specify the position of the observer in
relation to the configuration which it is proposed to describe.[82] The
impatience among students of culture with the slow-footed quantitative
approach is partly due to the diffuse, implicit nature of the experiences
upon which is based the judgment about a subjective event outside one’s
self, and the resulting bias of the student of culture against exaggerating
the significance of items in the pattern. The statement that “his
life-experience has been hued with melancholy” is a generalization which
presupposes a knowledge of a prodigious number of facts. Or the statement
that “the prestige of public office is greater in Germany than in any
country” depends upon possible observations as numerous as the sands of the
sea. Any proposition in Bryce’s _Modern Democracies_ or in Masaryk’s
analysis of Russian civilization refers to tremendous ranges of data. Of
course, the experience of any observer is puny beside the Gargantuan
proportions of the facts, and able inquirers always proceed upon a sampling
basis. They get in touch with men of every income group, every religious,
every racial, and every provincial group; they study the manifestations of
the culture in painting, literature, mathematics, legislation,
administration, and physical science. The procedure of a Bryce was
quantitative in the sense that many observations were accumulated before
inferences were fixed, but it was not quantitative in the special
mathematical sense of the word. The student of culture is often alienated
by the quantitative approach, because the quantitative method necessitates
the simplification of the number of facts taken into account; the
impressionistic-quantitative approach of the student of culture gets an
undivided reaction to the whole and makes simplification afterward, perhaps
revising and indeed oscillating at frequent intervals. There is more in
common between the student of culture, and especially of alien culture, and
the student of the individual by prolonged-interview methods than might
appear at first sight. The ethnologist confronting the manifestations of an
alien culture and the psychopathologist confronting the alien
manifestations of the unconscious secure unique training in their research
for meanings in details which escape the attention of the naïve man. Both
form their idea of the subjective events from a multitude of signs, which
may be spread over months of intimacy, and both are somewhat inclined to
disparage the search for simple external facts which can be relied upon to
indicate a specific subjective content. The psychopathologist possesses the
most elaborate known means of exploring the manifold subjective events
which may be associated with external movements. Besides the conscious
subjective experience there is a rich unconscious life which he is
especially proficient in exposing. Thus our movements are not alone the
outcome of simple conscious processes; they are said to be “overdetermined”
by a variety of factors. This concept of overdetermination is not unknown
to popular common sense. We know that John B is proud of being an American,
and that he wants to fight for his country; we comment slyly that John B’s
best girl likes the uniform, and this is one reason why he volunteers. And
more than that. We know that action is not always the outcome of
experiences that point in the same direction. We may know that John B. is
anxious to stay on the job a month longer and to get a promotion, and that
going into the army at a given moment means sacrifice. Thus his mind is
partly divided against itself. What psychopathological methods do is to
disclose yet wider vistas, and to expose the operation of factors which
cannot be readily seen. Thus a deep longing for death may be a contributing
factor to heroism. The psychopathological approach is embarrassing less in
the specific content of its revelations than in the wealth of meaning which
it discovers behind what is at first glance but a simple pattern. The rôle,
of a particular subjective experience and of a movement cannot be fully
appraised apart from the total context at which it functions, and this
method discloses a wider context than common sense is aware of. Now the
multiplicity of human motives has always been a source of embarrassment to
people who wanted to manage men or merely to understand them. The clumsy
machinery of judicial administration has been worked out along certain
lines in the hope of introducing some degree of uniformity into
adjudication by limiting the consideration of the motives which operate in
a particular case. The judge is thus supposed to limit himself to the
determination of the existence of a particular state of facts, and to act
in a particular way if these facts can be established according to a
prescribed procedure. The movement toward the standardization of the
discretion of public officers expresses itself in this general pattern of
thought: An act is prohibited by the state. Certain prescribed “externals”
shall establish the fact of the act having been committed. The actor shall
be dealt with in certain specified ways. This crusade against the
subjective element in the mind of the public officer is in some measure
determined by the desire of the judge or civil servant to avoid
responsibility.[83] The psychopathological approach precipitates something
very like a panic among those who have tried to box the manifestations of
human life into conventional common-sense categories. A dozen motives seem
to bloom where but one was found to bud before. Let us see what this does
for political theory. The prolonged study of individuals enables us to
discern the details of the process by which the political pattern, as we
meet it in adult life, comes to be achieved by individuals. When X runs for
office or passes judgment, his behavior is overdetermined by motives,
conscious and unconscious, which were organized in successive patterns
during infancy, childhood and youth. The recognition of belonging to a
communal order never functions in isolation, and the comparison of
life-histories shows that this is implanted in the child on the basis of
meanings which he has elaborated in his struggle, first against inhibitory
factors in the environment, and presently, when he has introjected the
demands of the environment, against his own antisocial impulses. The early
restrictions which the environment imposes upon a child are important in
that they are met by reactions on his part which predispose him to meet
subsequent limitations in certain ways. These early restrictions are
imposed upon the child by inflicting pain or by distracting attention to
pleasurable stimuli. Inhibition is thus established in the organism by
_force majeur_ on the part of the environment, since the infant is simply
overpowered or outgeneraled by the environment. Thus far in his development
the growing individual has not become socialized in the sense that he has
become self-regulating in relation to objects in the environment. The
infant learns “sphincter morality” (in the phrase of Ferenczi), but this
involves no emotional relationship to objects. His pleasures remain on his
own body (autoplastic), and the environment is an instrument for removing
bodily tensions in the simplest manner. Gradually the child begins to look
for gratification by lively erogenous activities upon the body of another.
This outward push of activity is again limited and frequently blocked by
_force majeur_. In the place of sexual relations to objects there now
appears a new form of relation, and the child socializes himself by
incorporating the practices of those about him. It will be remembered that
emotional bonds are established in two ways: by object choice (for sexual
acts) and by identification. Identification, Freud writes, is the original
form of emotional tie with an object. It can become a substitute for a
libidinal object tie, and it may arise with every new perception of a
common quality shared with some other person who is not an object of the
sexual instinct. This latter is partial identification. The qualities of
the object are copied (introjected). The energy for the identification is
said to be supplied by aim-inhibited sexual instincts. The name of the
state, the ceremonial acts of deference toward ceremonial symbols--all this
and much more is characteristically a feature of the child’s growth.
Characteristic, that is to say, frequent, but not invariable. Children are
always brought in relation to a system of interferences and indulgences
(ways of raising children), and they always perceive an order of some kind.
But in some cases when a nation lives subjected to a state, the recognition
of the state relation may be accompanied by resentment. The state pattern
itself prevails when many people take it as more than a mere state of
affairs, and the idea is reinforced by “irrelevant meanings.” Some
individuals impose motivations upon others through the state pattern. These
individuals, whether despots or enthusiasts, may be termed “radicles,” the
active ones who serve as radiating centers for the preservation and
amplification of the state pattern. Freud treats the state as an emotional
unity.[84] The members of the state identify themselves with an abstract
object (the idea of the state) and are bound emotionally by the partial
identification which arises in perceiving an analogous relationship to the
object. Kelsen has objected to this conception of the state as a real
subjective unity by arguing that identification is a process between
individuals, and that each member of a state cannot be thought of as having
entered into personal relationships with every other member. Even if his
narrow construction of identification were well founded, the state could
still be treated as a real subjective unity on the basis of interlocking
identifications. A has identified with B and B with C, and one of the
features of B which the child A would typically take over (introject) would
be the name and other symbols of the state. Indeed, it is the interlocking
character of identifications which reasonably insures the incorporation of
the state symbol into the child’s conception of himself. There is such a
process as negative identification, the rejection of patterns which are
connected with hated persons. The child is usually exposed to many adults
and contemporaries, and if they all associate themselves with the state,
the child is almost certain to reject only those patterns which pertain
exclusively to the hated individuals. This is the fundamental reason for
the staying power of patterns once accepted in a group. It has been
customary in the psychoanalytical literature on social and political
processes to describe the state as a universal father-substitute. We are at
length in a position to discuss the problems raised by such a
generalization. The distinctive contribution of the psychopathological
approach is the plurality of individual meanings which it discloses. It is
an anticlimax to discover that the appearance of diversity is, after all,
spurious, and that those who insist upon the strenuous simplification of
human motives are justified. The point which I wish to insist upon is that
the data revealed by the psychopathological procedure are far more
significant for political and social science than this single-track
generalization would lead one to suppose. The special value of the
psychopathological approach is that it represents a supermicroscopic method
of utilizing individual instances for the study of culture patterns. If we
begin with a political pattern and view it against the private histories of
actual people, we find that this pattern takes on variable meaning from one
individual to another, but that broad groupings of associated meanings are
possible of ascertainment. Any subjective event which is frequently
associated with a political pattern is important. Valid generalizations
depend upon multiplying cases which are selected from different groups in
the culture, and which are studied by methods capable of disclosing
subjective contexts. This is the point where quantitative procedures can be
made profitable to the student of culture, whose attention is riveted on
patterns whose subjective element is important. But are these studies
likely to lead to anything valuable if subjective events are so variable
that any subjective event may be associated with any other subjective
event? Why not terminate the investigation at the outset by saying that the
general law of probabilities can be relied upon to predict the frequency
with which any two of a number of specified subjective events may be
expected to occur together? Is not our empirical inquiry likely to
terminate in an inventory of subjective states and their frequently
accompanying movements, thus foredooming any effort to discover
more-frequent-than-chance simultaneities, antecedents, and successions? If
you look long enough, won’t you find every subjective event associated with
every other one? A great many facts tend to substantiate this point of
view. It is true that many imposing psychological schools of thought have
arisen, run swiftly for a time in narrow channels, and then stagnated in a
shallow pool of “faculties” or “instincts,” mere inventories of patterns
which are abstracted from all concrete events and which are therefore
capable of being combined in any event in nearly infinite combinations. The
search for specific connections slacks down, and the psychological mill
pond is only stirred when somebody throws a stone in the pool in the form
of a new theory of specific causation, which troubles the waters until it
is found that the specific event is found to occur with only chance
frequency. In this sense the only contributors to psychology are those who
are sufficiently naïve, or sufficiently unscrupulous, to exaggerate the
rôle of a specific type of experience. So we have psychologies based on
“fear” or “love” or “imitation,” or we have a long string of separate
terms, “sub-fears,” which multiply as the range of concrete observation
widens, and the failure of the selected factor to explain everything is
made manifest, or disguised. Thus a history of psychology could be written
by taking “completed” systems, analyzing the functional equivalence of the
categories applied, and reducing every new system to a collection of
synonyms for the terms of preceding systems. This hypothetical history of
psychological theories would show how an inquirer, much impressed by
certain experiences, would seize upon certain terms to describe them, and
how, confronted by more and more empirical realities, he would modify the
distinctive meaning of his explanatory conceptions out of existence. A
history of psychoanalytic terminology, such as Rank has sketched in his
treatment of genetic psychology, might be raw material for such a
comparison. Would nothing remain but dictionaries of synonyms, all rather
dubious contributions to the grist of linguistic research? It might be that
our projected history would show that each psychological system left a
permanent legacy behind it in the form of a significant “mechanism” which
had not previously been stressed. Now the whole world of “causation” is
implicated in any event, and the whole number of significant mechanisms
which may be discerned in the “mind at a moment” is infinite. So our
hypothetical volume might conclude by accepting the assumption that some
events can be brought about by more than chance frequency, subject to the
reservation that experimental confirmation is never reliable as to the
future. The critical configurations may never “reappear.” We commonly say
that the probability of an event’s future repetition is greater if it has
been oft repeated in the past. But there is no means of demonstrating that
the future contains analogous configurations to the elapsed. The
probability of the future repetition of an event is “no probability.” If
events appear to be predictable, this is so because our knowledge of
contingencies is limited, and our sequences of similar configurations may
still be treated as special instances of “no sequence.” The stable is a
special case of the unstable, to put the ultimate paradox. The discovery of
aggregates of mechanisms whose rearrangement in short periods would enrich
the apparatus of social control is the dream (the mirage?) of psychology.
Whether these objections will be well founded depends on the outcome of the
test, and are incapable of dialectical resolution. It may be pointed out
that the search for generalized mechanisms rests on no firmer logical
foundations than the search for subjective sequences, since mechanisms are
likewise aspects of the world of events, and as such are subject to the
same “no probability” laws of recurrence. It should be repeated that the
aim of life-history investigation is not to arrive at such thin
generalizations as the statement that the state is a universal father-imago
(symbol). What matters to the student of culture is not the subjective
similarities of the species, but the subjective differences among members
of the same and similar cultures. The life-history configuration is
precisely the one which has special meaning for the study of culture, and
has its own valid place as an object of investigation in the world of
events. * * * * * We may at this point briefly retrace the steps which have
been taken in this monograph. The psychopathological approach has been
examined in its historical setting, and the distinctive value of the
free-fantasy method of using the mind has been illustrated. Its importance,
likewise, for the understanding of political types has been shown with
special reference to the agitators and the administrators. The general
formula for the developmental history of the political man employs three
terms: _p_ } _d_ } _r_ = _P_ _p_ equals private motives, _d_ equals
displacement on to public objects, _r_ equals rationalization in terms of
public interest. _P_ signifies the political man, and } means “transformed
into.” The political man shares the _p_, the private motives which are
organized in the early life of the individual, with every man, and the _d_,
the displacement on to public objects, with some men. The distinctive mark
of the _homo politicus_ is the rationalization of the displacement in terms
of public interests. Political types may be distinguished according to the
specialized or the composite character of the functions which they perform
and which they are desirous of performing. There are political agitators,
administrators, theorists, and various combinations thereof. There are
significant differences in the developmental history of each political
type. The hallmark of the agitator is the high value which he places on the
response of the public. As a class the agitators are strongly narcissistic
types. Narcissism is encouraged by obstacles encountered in the early love
relationships, or by overindulgence and admiration in the family circle.
Libido is blocked in moving outward toward objects and settles back upon
the self. Sexual objects which are like the self are preferred, and a
strong homoerotic component is thus characteristic. Among the agitators
yearning for emotional response of the homoerotic kind is displaced upon
generalized objects, and high value is put on arousing emotional responses
from the community at large. The oratorical agitator, in contradistinction
to the publicist, seems to show a long history of successful impostorship
in dealing with his environment. Agitators differ appreciably in the
specificity or in the generality of the social objects upon which they
succeed in displacing their affects. Those who have been consciously
attached to their parents and who have been successful impostors (“model
children”) are disposed to choose remote and general objects. Those who
have been conscious of suppressing serious grievances against the intimate
circle, and who have been unable to carry off the impostor’s rôle
successfully, are inclined to pick more immediate and personal substitutes.
The rational structure tends toward theoretical completeness in the former
case. The object choices for displaced affects depend on the models which
are offered when the early identifications are being made. When the
homoerotic attitude is the important one, the assaultive, provocative
relation to the environment is likely to display itself; when the impotence
fear is active, grandiose reactions figure more prominently. As a group the
administrators are distinguished by the value which they place upon the
co-ordination of effort in continuing activity. They differ from the
agitators in that their affects are displaced on less remote and abstract
objects. In the case of one important group this failure to achieve
abstract objects is due to excessive preoccupation with specific
individuals in the family circle, and to the correlative difficulty of
defining the rôle of the self. Very original and overdriving administrators
show a fundamental pattern which coincides with that of the agitators. The
differences in specific development are principally due to the culture
patterns available for identification at critical phases of growth. Another
group of administrators is recruited from among those who have passed
smoothly through their developmental crises. They have not overrepressed
powerful hostilities, but either sublimated these drives, or expressed them
boldly in the intimate circle. They display an impersonal interest in the
task of organization itself, and assert themselves with firmness, though
not with overemphasis, in professional and intimate life. Their lack of
interest in abstractions is due to the fact that they have never needed
them as a means of dealing with their emotional problems. They can take or
leave general ideas without using them to arouse widespread affective
responses from the public. Tied neither to abstractions nor to particular
people, they are able to deal with both in a context of human relations,
impersonally conceived. Their affects flow freely; they are not affectless,
but affectively adjusted. The psychopathological method was also employed
to discover the significance of political convictions, for it is evident
that beliefs are expressive of a rational and logical “manifest” content,
and that they symbolize a host of private motives. In this connection there
was passed in review the history of a compulsive conformist to the pattern
of the family, and the histories of several nonconformists. The private
meaning of militarism and pacifism, and of the pessimism and censoriousness
of old age, were explored. Attention was then turned from the case-history
fragments to the problem of drawing out the implications of intensive
personality study for the theory of the collective political process.
Political movements derive their vitality from the displacement of private
affects upon public objects. The affects which are organized in the family
are redistributed upon various social objects, such as the state. Political
crises are complicated by the concurrent reactivation of specific primitive
impulses. One might suppose that when important decisions are in process of
being made society would deliberate very calmly; but the disproportionality
between the behavior of man during wars, revolutions, and elections, and
the requirements of rational thinking is notorious. Evidently a
reactivating process is at work here; there is a regressive tendency to
reawaken primitive sadism and lust. Political symbols are particularly
adapted to serve as targets for displaced effect because of their ambiguity
of reference, in relation to individual experience, and because of their
general circulation. Although the dynamic of politics is the tension of
individuals, all tension does not produce political acts. Nor do all
emotional bonds lead to political action. Political acts depend upon the
symbolization of the discontent of the individual in terms of a more
inclusive self which champions a set of demands for social action.
Political demands are of only a limited relevance to the changes which will
produce permanent reductions in the tension level of society. The political
methods of coercion, exhortation, and discussion assume that the rôle of
politics is to solve conflicts when they have happened. The ideal of a
politics of prevention is to obviate conflict by the definite reduction of
the tension level of society by effective methods, of which discussion will
be but one. The preventive point of view insists upon a continuing audit of
the human consequences of social acts, and especially of political acts.
The achievement of the ideal of preventive politics depends less upon
changes in social organization than upon improving the methods and the
education of the social administrators and the social scientists. The
empirical material utilized in the book was brought together in the course
of prolonged interviews with individuals under unusually intimate
conditions. At the present time there are no satisfactory records of what
actually happens under these interview conditions, and it is important for
the future of personality study to improve the methodology of these
procedures. The objectification of what transpires in the interview can be
secured by arranging for a verbatim transcript of what goes on, and by
recording the physical changes which occur. Effective personality research
depends upon viewing the personality reactions as a system, and upon
perfecting the procedures by which the substitutive reactions of this
system may be exposed. Broadly speaking, the personality may be treated as
a system of object orientations, adjustive thought, autistic reveries, and
somatic reactions. The problem is to introduce interferences into the
system, and to reveal the substitutive reactions for comparison and further
analysis. Every “fact” about personality events is to be defined from the
standpoint of a specified observer, and a major problem for the future is
to check the “facts” of the observer in the prolonged interview against the
“facts” of observers in other situations. Personality research can be made
more valuable for political science when the adult reactions are clearly
seen which chiefly interest the political scientist (see Appendix B). What,
in general terms, is the relationship between research upon the individual
and upon society? There is no cleavage; there is but a gradation of
reference points. Events which are of collective interest always have an
individual locus, and these events may be studied in their relation to the
sequence of events “within the individual” or in relation to the events
“among individuals.” The distinctive event which serves as the orienting
frame for political research is the recognition of belonging to a community
with a system of paramount claims and expectations. This event, when
distributed with sufficient frequency among the individuals who occupy a
given territory during a specified time period, define the state, which is
thus a manifold of events. Research which studies the order of events
“within the individual” or “among individuals” is equally relevant to the
understanding of the state; the difference is a difference of
starting-point and not of final result. When the state is seen as a
manifold of events the conditions of whose occurrence are to be understood,
the theoretical foundation is laid for both the intensive and the
distributive inquiries upon which the politics of prevention can be built.
In particular will it be possible to profit as the years pass, and as
psychopathology widens the range of its investigations, and increases the
dependability of its methods. APPENDIX A SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY The literature
of psychoanalysis from its inception to 1926 is conveniently available in
John Rickman’s _Index Psychoanalyticus, 1893-1926_. The _Gesammelte
Schriften_ of Sigmund Freud have been published by the Internationaler
Psychoanalytischer Verlag, Vienna, in eleven volumes. This publishing house
puts out most of the literature of the circle around Freud. Of Freud’s
books the beginner may be referred to his _General Introduction to
Psychoanalysis, The Interpretation of Dreams_, and _Three Contributions to
Sexual Theory_. An English edition of Freud’s collected papers is in
process of publication. The most important technical journal is the
_Internationale Zeitschrift für arztliche Psychoanalyse_. There is an
English journal, _The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis_, and an
American one, _The Psychoanalytic Review_. (A French periodical has
recently appeared.) Among the “orthodox” psychoanalytical treatises the
following are of particular importance: Ferenczi, S. _Bausteine zur
Psychoanalyse_. Leipzig, 1926. ----. _Versuch einer Genitaltheorie_.
Leipzig, 1924. Ferenczi, S., and Hollos, S. _Psychoanalysis and the Psychic
Disorder of General Paresis_, “Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph
Series,” No. 42. New York and Washington, 1925. The psychological
manifestations of a physical disease are predicted on the basis of the
psychoanalytical theory of personality development. Of great methodological
importance. Abraham, K. _Klinische Beitrage zur Psychoanalyse aus den
Jahren 1907-20_. Leipzig, etc., 1921. ----. _Psychoanalytische Studien zur
Charakterbildung_. Leipzig, etc., 1925. The most influential approach to
the problem of character formation. Amplified in many directions by Jones,
Glover, etc. Alexander, S. _Psychoanalyse der Gesamtpersönlichkeit_.
Leipzig, etc., 1927. A notably lucid presentation of the general theory.
Recently translated as _The Psychoanalysis of the Total Personality_ and
published in the “Nervous and Mental Disease Monograph Series.” Hartmann,
H. _Die Grundlagen der Psychoanalyse._ Leipzig, 1927. A very important book
which views analytical concepts in relation to the data of experimental
psychology. Deutsch, Felix. “Experimentelle Studien zur Psychoanalyse,”
_Internationale Zeitschrift_, IX (1923), 484-96. Reports the demonstration
of the mechanism of repression by the use of post-hypnotic suggestion.
Kempf, E. _Psychopathology_. St. Louis, 1921. Stresses the function of the
autonomic functions, and undertakes to amplify psychoanalytical theory in
this direction. Among those who have broken off from Freud, after having
been associated with him, are Stekel, Jung, and Adler. Stekel has published
ten volumes of case histories which are valuable for the beginner who needs
to acquire a sense of what sort of thing the human mind is capable. The
other two are of more theoretical importance. Jung’s _Psychological Types_
is of the most immediate interest to social scientists, although his
speculations about the “racial unconscious” are suggestive. Alfred Adler’s
standpoint is set out in his _Individual Psychology_. His circle in Vienna
publishes a journal. An excellent manual is _The Structure and Meaning of
Psychoanalysis_ (New York, 1930), by William Healy, Augusta F. Bronner, and
Anna Mae Bowers. The psychoanalytical movement can be placed in the general
perspective of medical psychology by referring to such a manual as William
A. White’s _Outlines of Psychiatry_ or Bernard Hart’s _Psychopathology_.
There are excellent books in German on medical psychology by Kronfeld,
Birnbaum, Schilder, Kretschmer, and many others. The general movements in
the field can be followed in the _American Journal of Psychiatry_ or the
_Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_, the latter of which is edited by
William A. White and Smith Ely Jelliffe, who also supervise the well-known
series of books, usually translations, called the “Nervous and Mental
Disease Monograph Series.” Pierre Janet’s _Psychological Healing_ reviews
the general history of psychopathology. Among the innumerable articles and
books which undertake to appraise the clinical and normal implications of
psychoanalysis, the symposium edited by Hans Prinzhorn may be chosen,
_Krisis der Psychoanalyse_ (Leipzig, 1928), Band I (the projected second
volume will not appear). Otto Rank, who has likewise broken with Freud, is
publishing a series of books on the psychoanalytical interview which
promises to serve as a bridge between the general theory and the objective
studies of the interview situation which are in progress in America. On the
special problem of personality and character types, the volume by A. A.
Roback, _The Psychology of Character_, may be instanced as a very
comprehensive guide to the literature. His _A Bibliography on Personality_
is also available. An acute analysis of typologies was offered by O. Selz
before the German experimental psychologists in 1923. See the following:
Selz, O. “Über die Personlichkeitstypen und die Methoden ihrer Bestimmung,”
_Bericht über den VIII. Kongress für experimentelle Psychologie_. Jena,
1924. Klüver, H. “An Analysis of Recent Work on the Problem of
Psychological Types,” _Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases_, LXII, No. 6
(December, 1925). The current output is reviewed from time to time in
relation to tests by Mark A. May, Gordon W. Allport, and certain other
psychologists who are especially interested in the field. The
_Psychological Index_ can be consulted for the purpose of keeping abreast
of the large quantity of published material. The most influential recent
book is Kretschmer’s _Physique and Character_. The somatic factors in
personality are stated with charm and brevity by E. Miller, _Types of Mind
and Body_. Useful summary and critical volumes are by William I. Thomas and
Dorothy S. Thomas, _The Child in America_ (New York, 1928), chapters
viii-xiii inclusive, and by R. G. Gordon, _Personality_ (New York, 1926).
The psychoanalytical literature which has undertaken to deal with politics
or politicians explicitly may be appended here: Pfister, Oskar.
“Analytische Untersuchungen über die Psychologie des Hasses und der
Versöhnung,” _Jahrbuch der Psychoanalyse_, II (1910), 134-78. ----. “Die
Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für die Staats- und Gesellschaftslehre”
(Vortrag an VI. Int. Psa. Kong., Hague, September 8-11, 1920), abstract in
_Internationale Zeitschrift_, VI, 400. ----. “Die menschlichen
Einigungsbestrebungen im Lichte der Psychoanalyse,” _Imago_, XII (1926),
126-35. The _Imago_ is the psychoanalytical journal which is devoted to
applications of psychoanalytical theory to the interpretation of culture.
Sachs, Hanns. “Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für Probleme der Soziologie”
(Vortrag), abstract in _Centralblatt für Psychoanalyse_, II (1911), 464-69.
----. “Ein Traum Bismarcks,” _Internationale Zeitschrift_, I (1913), 80-83.
Sachs, Hanns, and Rank, Otto. _Die Bedeutung der Psychoanalyse für die
Geisteswissenschaften._ Wiesbaden, 1913. This was published in the
“Grenzfragen des Nerven und Seelenlebens,” No. 93, a series which contains
many volumes of great interest to social scientists. Kretschmer now is the
responsible editor. The book also appears as No. 23 in the “Nervous and
Mental Disease Monograph Series.” Rank, Otto. “Der ‘Familienroman’ in der
Psychologie des Attentäters,” _Der Künstler_ (virte vermehrte Auflage;
Leipzig, etc., 1925), pp. 142-48. This fragment first appeared in 1911.
Storfer, A. J. “Zur Sonderstellung des Vatermordes.” Leipzig, etc., 1911.
Parricide and regicide are punished with unusual severity in different
legal systems. Abraham, Karl. “Amenhotep IV (Echnaton),” _Imago_, I (1912),
334-60. One of the earliest applications of analytical concepts to a
historical personage. Freud, Sigmund. _Totem und Taboo_. Leipzig, etc.,
1913. Outlines his hypothesis of the origin of culture in an original
parricide by a band of revolting brothers, who resented the monopoly of the
females by the old man of the tribe, and who undertook to repress memories
of the crime. See the discussion by Malinowski of this hypothesis in _Sex
and Repression in Savage Society_ (New York, 1927). ----. “Zeitgemässes
über Krieg und Tod,” _Imago_, IV (1915-16), 1-21. ----. _Massenpsychologie
und Ich-Analyse_. Leipzig, etc., 1921. An application of Freud’s theories
to the psychology of crowds and social institutions. See William McDougall,
“Professor Freud’s Group Psychology and His Theory of Suggestion,” chapter
xvii of _Problems of Personality_ (ed. Campbell and others; New York,
1925). ----. _Unbehagen der Kultur_. Leipzig, etc., 1929. Jekels, Ludwig.
“Der Wendepunkt im Leben Napoleons I,” _Imago_, III (1914), 313-81. Kaplan,
Leo. “Der tragische Held und der Verbrecher,” _ibid._, IV (1915), 96-124.
Jones, Ernest. “War and Sublimation.” Read before the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, Section of Physiology, September 10, 1915;
published in _Reports_ of the Association, LXXXV, 699 ff. ----. (ed.). _The
Social Aspects of Psychoanalysis_. London, 1923. Tausk, Viktor. “Zur
Psychologie des Deserteurs,” _Zeitschrift_, IV (1916-17), 193-204, 228-40.
Blüher, Hans. _Die Rolle der Erotik in der männlichen Gesellschaft_. 2
vols. Jena, 1917. Bernfeld, Siegfried. “Die Psychoanalyse in der
Jugendbewegung,” _Imago_, V (1919), 283-89. ----. “Über eine typische Form
der männlichen Pubertät,” _ibid._, IX (1923), 169-188. Federn, Paul. _Die
Vaterlose Gesellschaft_. Leipzig, etc., 1919. Clark, L. Pierce. “A
Psychologic Study of Abraham Lincoln,” _ibid._, VIII (1921), 1-21. ----. “A
Psycho-historical Study of the Epileptic Personality in the Genius,”
_ibid._, IX (1922), 367-401. ----. “The Narcism of Alexander the Great,”
_Ibid._, X (1923), 156-69. ----. _Napoleon: Self-Destroyed_. New York,
1929. Kolnai, Aurel. _Psychoanalyse und Soziologie_. Leipzig, etc., 1920.
Lazell, Edward W. “Psychology of War and Schizophrenia,” _Psychoanalytic
Review_, VII (1920), 224-45. Rinaldo, Joel. _The Psychoanalysis of the
Reformer_. New York, 1921. White, William A. _Thoughts of a Psychiatrist on
the War and After_. New York, 1919. Low, Barbara. “Civic Ideals: Some
Psycho-analytical Considerations,” _Sociological Review_, 1922. Boven,
William. “Alexander der Grosse,” _Imago_, VIII (1922), 418-39. Berger, G.
“Zur Theorie der menschlichen Feindseligkeit,” _ibid._, IX (1923), 344-67.
Lorenz, Emil. _Der politische mythus, Beitrage zur mythologie der Kultur_.
Leipzig, etc., 1923. Illustrates the state-father relationship from the
lore and literature of many cultures. Reik, Theodor. _Geständniszwang und
Strafbedürfnis: Probleme der Psychoanalyse und der Kriminologie_. Leipzig,
etc., 1925. Outlines in masterly fashion the implications of the need for
punishment and the compulsion to confess for criminology. Reik has also
published extensively on religion from the psychoanalytical standpoint.
Kohn, Erwin, _Lasalle der Führer_. Leipzig, etc., 1926. Alexander, Franz,
and Staub, Hugo. _Der Verbrecher und seine Richter_. Vienna, 1929. A sketch
of criminology from the psychoanalytical standpoint, drawing heavily on
Alexander’s conception of the neurotic character, as distinguished from the
neurotics who show hysteric or compulsive symptoms. Friedjung, Josef K.
“Zur Psychologie des kleinen Politikers,” _Imago_, XIV (1928), 498-501.
Among those who have undertaken from allied fields to apply psychoanalytic
viewpoints may be mentioned William F. Ogburn, who read a paper before the
economists in 1918; Thomas D. Eliot, sociologist; Harry Elmer Barnes,
historical sociologist; E. D. Martin, social psychologist; Preserved Smith,
historian; R. V. Harlow, historian; W. H. R. Rivers, ethnologist; and
Theodore Schroeder, lawyer. See especially: Barnes, Harry Elmer. _The New
History and the Social Studies_, chap. iii. New York, 1925. Discusses the
bibliography in English. Swoboda, Hermann. “Zur Psychologie des
Parlamentarismus,” _Oesterreichische Rundschau_, Band XIV, Heft 1, January
1, 1908. ----. “Die Kunst des Regierens,” _ibid._, Band XVII, December 15,
1908. ----. “Der Volksvertreter,” _ibid._, Band XXXII, Heft 3, August 1,
1912. These articles of Swoboda are the first well-considered applications
of psychoanalysis to politics by a non-specialist. The first article treats
the rôle of parliamentarism as “catharsis,” and specifically refers to the
work of Breuer and Freud. Aside from specifically psychoanalytical efforts
to interpret individuals and collective trends, there have been many
efforts on the part of other psychiatrists and physicians, or their
followers, to offer such interpretations. The whole literature of
“pathography” is abstracted and discussed here: Lange-Eichbaum, Wilhelm.
_Genie-Irrsinn, und Ruhm._ Leipzig, 1928. Students of politics will be most
interested in the references and abstracts concerning Rousseau, Alexander
the Great, Amenhotep IV, Bismarck, Blücher, emperors and princes, Frederick
the Great, Lincoln, Loyola, Ludwig II of Bavaria, Napoleon, and
Robespierre. Möbius put “pathography” on a scientific basis. The following
is one of the best of the “pathographies,” since it stresses the diseased
aspects of the personality in the perspective of the total development of
the subject’s career: Heidenhain, Adolf, _J.-J. Rousseau, Persönlichkeit,
Philosophie and Psychose_, “Grenzfragen des Nerven-und Seelenlebens,” Heft
117. Munich, 1924. The study of the effect of individual pathology on
culture, and of culture upon individual pathology, is envisaged as a
program in the following: Birnbaum, Karl. _Grundzüge der
Kulturpsychopathologie_, “Grenzfragen des Nerven- und Seelenlebens,” Heft
116. Munich, 1924. The reckless extension of individual pathological terms
to the state of society as a whole has caused much confusion, but a case
can be made out for a valid use of the concept of the pathological. Thus:
Schneersohn, F. “Zur Grundlegung einer Völker- und Massenpsychopathologie
(Soziopsychopathologie),” _Ethos_, I (1925-26), 81-120. This includes an
exhaustive bibliography of the efforts of psychiatrists to extend their
conceptions to society, and a detailed consideration of the methodological
issues involved. Special attention should be called to the forthcoming
volume by Harry Stack Sullivan on _Personal Psychopathology_ in which a
systematic treatment of the whole field of psychiatry and sociology is
presented. Dr. Sullivan has vastly stimulated a _rapprochement_ between
physician and social scientist in the United States. See the _Proceedings_
of the two colloquiums on personality investigation, held under the
auspices of the American Psychiatric Association, first published in the
_American Journal of Psychiatry_ for May, 1929, and May, 1930, and
separately obtainable. APPENDIX B QUESTION LIST ON POLITICAL PRACTICES This
question list refers directly to the organized political life of the
subject. Questions which are designed to elicit preferences are not
included. For general personality questions and trait lists, the usual
sources may be consulted for suggestions.[85] The question list here must,
of course, be modified if used orally or with naïve subjects. An effort is
always to be made to elicit specific incidents which arise in the mind.
“Reminiscences” and not theories about the self are desired. 1. List the
various associations and organizations of which you have been a member and
in which you enjoyed rights which were approximately equal to those
exercised by everyone else. Specify in each case whether you were almost
inactive, moderately active, quite active. State when you became a member
and how your subsequent activity fluctuated. Give dates when possible.
Remember that you have been a member of various democratically organized
political units. Mention also the prep-school class organizations, school
and college organizations, alumni associations, profession organizations,
civic associations, parties, and elective public offices. Organizations
which were autocratically organized (that is, which exercised authority
over those who had no formal right to choose the officials) should not be
included. Do not omit associations of war veterans, Daughters or Sons of
the Revolution, pacifists, anarchists, reform agitators, constitutional
defense leagues, etc. 2. List the various organizations with which you have
been associated either as one in autocratic authority or as one subject to
autocratic authority. This should include schools which you have attended,
appointive offices in the government, most business connections,
trusteeships, etc. 3. List your various free-lance activities which have
involved scarcely any organization but which have been a source of income.
Partnerships which have involved practically no staff, private
secretaryships, and such are meant to be listed here. The following
questions are intended to bring out the salient facts in connection with
your relationship to each democratically organized and autocratically
organized association or institution with which you were affiliated. Answer
for each organization which you have listed in so far as applicable. 4.
Just how did you become a member of this organization? What steps did you
take? Who helped you? Why were you taken in? If you organized this body,
why did you do it? When did you first entertain the idea? How did your
plans develop? What assistance did you get and by what means? What was your
reputation inside the organization when you first came in? Were you, for
instance, ignored or regarded as promising or accepted and given
responsibility immediately? 5. What friends or enemies did you have inside
the organization when you first came into it? 6. To what offices or
positions of authority in the organization were you elected or appointed?
7. In each case explain how it came about. When did you first entertain the
idea that selection was possible? How much did you hesitate and ponder
before deciding to try for the position or before accepting it if it was
thrust upon you? What alternatives did you consider? With whom did you talk
over the matter? What was urged on you? What were the disadvantages which
deterred you or the advantages which lured you? Just what did you do to get
the office or position? Who were your chief aids? Who were your chief
competitors? What were the points in your favor and in favor of the others?
How did the various cliques, groups, and other components of the
organization line up? Sketch your strategy and practices in dealing with
each one before selection. Did any issues of policy figure and how? 8. What
were the cases in which you ran or were considered at one stage or another
for selection? Answer the questions as before for each instance. 9. What
appointive power or influence did you exercise in office? Whom did you
consult in making or influencing these appointments? To what extent did you
consider competence? The rewarding of friends? The division or elimination
of your opponents? 10. What objectives, if any, had you thought out when
you assumed responsibility? 11. What were the chief issues on which you
took a position? How did your influence make itself felt in each instance
(in public speaking, interviewing, appointive pressure, etc.)? How did each
major issue happen to emerge? How did you arrive at your position? Whom did
you consult? What considerations were balanced on both sides of the
question? To what extent did you make issues by interjecting specific
proposals into the situation? How did you happen to do this? What were the
elements in the organization which were lined up on either side of the
question? What concessions did you make in order to achieve your ends? Do
you regard your concessions as too cheaply bought as you look back upon
them? What results did you secure which satisfy you? 12. During your tenure
were there personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and hatreds between you
and anybody? How did they come about? What did you do and what was the
relation of what you did to what happened? 13. Were there personal
misunderstandings, quarrels, and antipathies among others inside the
organization which you were asked to settle or which you tried to settle?
What did you do and what relation did it bear to what finally happened? 14.
Were there personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and antipathies between
members of your own organization and people in other organizations which
you were asked to settle or which you tried to settle? What did you do and
what relation did it bear to what finally happened? 15. Did your
organization have any ill feelings as a body for other organizations or
groups when you came into office? What did you do to inflame or reduce it?
What effect? Why? 16. Did your organization have any friendly feelings as a
body for other organizations or groups? What did you do to cement or to
disrupt these relations? Why? With what effect on the course of events? 17.
Did your organization develop any friendly or unfriendly relations with
organizations or groups to which they had been previously indifferent
during your term in office? What did you do that had anything to do with
this result? Why? 18. Did your organization use physical, legal, or other
forms of pressure upon any other organization or group during your term?
What was your rôle in suggesting, supporting, directing, or obstructing the
adoption of these tactics? Why? What resulted? 19. Did your organization
use physical, legal, economic, or other forms of pressure upon any of its
own members during your term? What was your rôle in suggesting, supporting,
directing, or obstructing the adoption of these tactics? Why? With what
effect? 20. By whom were you praised during and after your term of office
for your record? How were you praised or recognized and honored and for
what? Effect on you? 21. By whom were you adversely criticized during and
after your term in office for your record? How were you censured and for
what? Effect on you? 22. Were you re-elected or reappointed, promoted or
demoted, after serving your term or before? Why? 23. How did you get along
with your immediate superiors, collaborators, and assistants? To what
extent did you manipulate them? What different tactics did you employ with
each? What success? 24. What were your formal and ceremonial duties in the
organization as an officer? Did you enjoy them? 25. How did you enjoy your
other official activities? 26. As a non-official, or non-position-holding
member of the organization, what did you enjoy about it? The ceremonies?
The routine operations? The uncertain features? 27. As a member of the rank
and file, what policies and activities did you initiate, support, or
oppose? Why? How much did you do and to what effect? How did the elements
of the organization line up? Were you usually in the minority or the
majority? What elements were usually with you? 28. How did your reputation
change during your years in the organizations? 29. What particular friends
and enemies did you acquire? 30. As a member of the rank and file, did you
have personal misunderstandings, quarrels, and hatreds between you and
other members? Why? What did you do? Results? 31. Did you arbitrate any
grievances or try to smooth them out? Success? Why? 32. What was your
attitude toward other organizations or groups with which your organization
either competed or had some relations? As a member of the rank and file,
what did you do to change or intensify prevailing attitudes? Influence? 33.
Did your organization use physical or other means of pressure against
outside organizations and other members of your organization? As a member
of the rank and file, what did you do and with what effect? Did you think
your organization was the best of its kind? 34. Have you severed your
connection or become inactive? Why? 35. If you are still active, what are
your plans and hopes? 36. How did this particular organization touch the
administrative, legislative, and judicial branches of the government? The
political parties? How? What methods were used to bring pressure to bear?
What was your part in them? 37. As you look back on your life in the
organization do you think of practices which you indulged in or tolerated
which you regard as perhaps questionable? Instances? Did you so regard them
at the time? What would have happened if you had not indulged in them?
Should an organization be run on a different basis now? 38. What effect did
life in the organization have upon your activity in the politics of the
community at large? Did you have impulses to express yourself publicly or
privately upon matters which you felt it expedient to follow? Or were you
driven to such expression and activity? 39. If you were to judge entirely
in terms of your experience as a member of this organization, what would be
your judgment of the honesty and efficiency of the public service and the
party machine? 40. What political prejudices or philosophies were current
among various elements inside the organization? 41. Think of various
members of this organization who were rather typical. How did you act
toward them when you met them? What topics of conversation, of anecdote,
etc., did you indulge in? What activities in common were there? 42. Did you
think that you were imposed upon by any members as you look back upon it
now? Did you estimate some of them too highly? Who? Why? 43. Did you
underestimate some? Who? Why? 44. Were you estimated too high or too low?
By whom? Why? 45. What things apart from common dishonesty would have
caused you to lose standing in the organization? What opinions and
activities would have compromised you? 46. Did you risk loss of standing at
any time by word or deed? Were you tempted to? Why did you refrain? 47.
When you tried to add others to the organization, whom did you seek? What
type of people, in general, were you interested in? 48. Did the
organization live up to your ideal? Why? 49. Who were the most powerful
ones in the organization at different periods? What were your relations
with them? What did you do consciously to win them? Success? What did you
do to antagonize them? How did they take it? What, in short, was the
attitude of the leaders toward you? 50. Did you ever have a sense of
frustration arising from your failure to participate in discussions of
policy, either because you hesitated to express yourself or because you
expressed yourself badly? 51. What is your matured judgment of the utility
of this organization in society? 52. How did your organization connections
help or hurt you socially or any other way? 53. How did your outside
connections help or hurt you in the organization? 54. What, generally
speaking, were your advantages and disadvantages with reference to securing
and holding a prominent position in the organization? 55. In general, what
place did this organization play in your life? 56. With respect to each one
of your so-called free-lance or very personal activities, answer such
questions as these: How did you happen to take it up? Upon what factors
would your success and failure depend? What did you do to manage the
persons upon whom success or failure depended? With what result? What
reaction did your experience have upon your outlook upon political life
generally? INDEX Abraham, Karl, 103, 150 n. Adjustive thinking, 226 Adler,
Alfred, 71 ff. Administrators: definition and histories of, 127 ff.;
general theory of, 151 ff. Adolescence and politics, 187 Agitators:
definition and histories of, 78 ff.; general theory of, 124 ff. Aichhorn,
August, 230 Alexander, Franz, 139, 178, 182, 199, 220 n., 254 Allport,
Floyd, 58 Anderson, John, 232 Apfelbach, Hans, 61, 62, 64 Aristotle, 39
Attitudes, 234 ff. Autistic reveries, 226 Bernfeld, S., 177 Bernheim, 20
Biography, political, uses and limitations of, 3 Birnbaum, K., 200 n.
Bjerre, 239 Blackstone, 175 Bleuler, 71 Blondel, 11 Blüher, Hans, 178 n.
Boas, 13 Bodin, 54 Boss, 48 Breuer, 19 Bridgman, P. W., 251 n. Brücke, 18
Bryce, 252 Bühler, Charlotte, 230 Burrow, Trigant, 201 n. Carlyle, 42 Case
histories, 3 ff., 78 ff. Catharsis, 195 Catlin, G. E. G., 46 Charcot, 18
Chave, 59 n. Chicago, University of, 13, 201 n., 207 n. Christensen, 39, 53
n. Composite types, 53 Comte, 10 Consensus, 192 Convictions, political, 153
ff. Conway, 52, 53 n. Co-relational types, 55 Cowley, W. H., 59 Crises,
political, 179 ff. Croner, Else, 232 n. Crowd, 193 n. Debate, zone of, 192
De Grange, 10 n. Democracy, 194 ff. Despot, 46 Deutsch, Helene, 123 n.
Developmental types, 60 Dicey, 1 Dictator, 197 Dilthey, 11, 49 Discussion,
194 ff. Dream, 26 Durkheim, 10 Eder, 173, 181, 190 Education, 201 Ellis,
Havelock, 83 n., 199 Emotional bonds, 185, 192 Energy of developed
personality, 65 Events, subjective and external, 240 ff. Exhortation, 196
Fabian Society, 186 Familiarization, a purpose of the study, 14 Federn,
Paul, 180, 234 Ferenczi, S., 71, 97, 103 n., 105 n., 150 n., 213, 220 n.,
255 Fliess, 62, 69 Follett, Mary L., 48 Forms of expression, thought and
interest, 235 ff. Formula for development of political man, 75 Frazer, 73
Free-fantasy, 32 Freud, 12, 17 ff., 64, 65 ff., 103, 104 n., 111 n., 179
n., 199, 204 ff., 223, 256 ff. Friendship and politics, 192 Functional
meaning of politics, 42 Garner, J. W., 2 Giese, Fritz, 55, 56, 57, 60
Glover, E., 103 n. Gneist, 1 Goodenough, Florence, 229 Gosnell, H. F., 53
n., 249 n. Gould, 7 n. Hall, G. Stanley, 71 Hamilton, G. V., 70 Hartman,
Dale, 59 n. Healy, William, 13 Heimsoth, K. G., 178 Hetzer, Hildegard, 231
Hobbes, 54 Hoffmann, 232 _Homo politicus_, 50 Hoover, 54 Hypnosis, 20
Identification, 256 Institutional meaning of politics, 42 Interview as a
method, 204 ff. Intimacy and politics, 187 Ireland, 7 n. Irrationality and
politics, 184, 193 ff. Janet, Pierre, 18, 104 n., 223 Jellinek, 2 Jones,
E., 103 n., 179 n. Jung, 62 ff., 73 ff., 205 Keilholz, A., 179 n. Kelsen,
Hans, 2, 243 ff., 257 ff. Kempf, E. J., 115 n., 159 n., 197 Kjellén, 2
Koller, 19 Kretschmer, 40, 81 Kropotkin, 92 Laband, 1 Lange-Eichbaum, W., 7
n., 200 n. Laski, H. J., 2 Lassalle, 53 Lasswell, H. D., 3 n., 28 n., 39
n., 202 n., 204 n., 205 n., 221 n. Lazarus, 12 Lee, Sir Edward, 1 Lenin, 54
Liébeault, 20 Logical thought, limitations of, 28 ff. Lombroso, 7 n.
Lowell, A. L., 53 n., 191 Lowie, R. H., 243 Lynd, R. S. and Helen, 250 n.
Machiavelli, 39 Marx, Karl, 53 Masaryk, 53, 220 Masturbation, cultural
history of, 83 n. Meaning of political patterns, 248 Mechanism types, 63
Merriam, Charles E., 39, 46, 52, 53 n., 59, 249 n. Meynart, 18 Michels,
Robert, 39, 52, 53 n., 60 Möbius, 7 n. Moore, Henry T., 58 Morgan, J. P., &
Co., 45 Morley, John, 1 Movements, vitality of political, 173 ff. Mowrer,
E. A., 180 Munro, W. B., 40, 53 n. Nancy, 20 Nexo, 186 Nuclear types, 49
Nunberg, 220 n. Object orientation, 225 Old Testament prophets, 54 Paine,
Tom, 54 Paley, 174 Park, Robert E., 192, 193 n. Parten, Mildred, 230
Pathological, 200 Personality, 221 Persuasion, personal, oratorical and
written, 188 Political methods, 196 Political movements, 173 ff. Political
patterns, 248 ff. Political practices, 235 Political symbolization, 183 ff.
Political tension level, 185 Political types, 38 ff. Politician, 47
Politics: and conflict, 196; effect of, on politicians, 198; institutional
and functional meaning of, 42 Prevention, politics of, 173 ff. Propaganda
and unconscious motives, 189 Psychoanalysis, 15 Psychopathology, 15 Public,
193 n. Quantitative approach, 251 Radiating nucleus, 187 Radin, Paul, 13
Rado, S., 179 n. Rank, O., 74, 205, 220 n. Reactive interpretation, 222
Reich, Wilhelm, 105 n. Reik, Theodor, 175, 213 Reininger, Karl, 231
Revolution, 179 Rice, S. A., 41 Rich, Gilbert J., 59 Rinaldo, Joel, 104 n.
Rohmer, 53 n. Rôles, specialized and composite, 54 Rousseau, 54 Ruggiero,
40 Ruml, B., 201 n. Rush, 199 Sadger, Wilhelm, 103 n. Schmidt, 2 Sexuality,
rôle of, 66 ff. Shaw, Bernard, 78 Sidgwick, 2 Simmel, Georg, 11, 52 Smith,
Adam, 48 Social scientist, 201 Somatic reactions, 226 Specialized types, 53
Spranger, Eduard, 49 ff., 232 n. Statesman, 46 Staub, 182, 254 Steindhal,
12 Stekel, Wilhelm, 71, 74, 157 Strachey, Lytton, 1 Sullivan, Harry Stack,
126 n., 207 n., 233 n. Sward Keith, 59 n. Symbolization in politics, 185
ff. Symbols, political, as targets of displacement, 183 Tendency
interpretations, 221 Tension level, 185 Thomas, Dorothy S., 229, 230 n.
Thomas, W. I., 12, 188, 230 n. Thurstone, L. L., 59 Tissot, 83 n. Types:
co-relational, 55; developmental, 60; institutional and functional, 42;
nuclear, 49; specialized and composite, 53 Typologies, popular and
scientific, 39 Values, changes of, 201 Vienna, University of, 18 Vierkandt,
12 Views, political, 234 ff. Violence a political method, 196 Voltaire, 83
n. Wagner-Jauregg, 19 Walker, Marjorie, 230 Wallas, Graham, 46 Weber, Max,
39, 52 Weininger, 62 Wertheimer and Hesketh, 81 White, William A., 179 n.
Willoughby, W. W., 2 Winkler, Viktor, 231 Wittals, Fritz, 22 Wordsworth,
W., 70 Zilboorg, Gregory, 123 Znaniecki, F., 12 FOOTNOTES [1] See Harold D.
Lasswell, “The Study of the Ill as a Method of Research on Political
Personalities,” _American Political Science Review_, November, 1929. [2]
“Psychosis” means the more serious mental disturbances; “neurosis” means
the less serious ones. [3] The best summary of this literature is Wilhelm
Lange-Eichbaum, _Genie-Irrsinn und Ruhm_. See also the works of Ireland,
Lombroso, Möbius, and Gould. [4] See De Grange’s excellent treatment of
this matter in his paper on the methodology of Comte in the case book to be
published by the Social Science Research Council. [5] What has been said
above is current in the biography of Freud by Fritz Wittals, and in Freud’s
autobiographical sketches. [6] Modified from “Self-Analysis and Judicial
Thinking,” _International Journal of Ethics_, April, 1930. [7] The training
should, of course, be conducted by a specialist alert to his
responsibilities. [8] “Politik als Beruf,” in _Gesammelte Schriften_. [9] I
summarized some of this literature in “Types of Political Personalities,”
_Proceedings of the American Sociological Society, 1927_. Reprinted in
_Personality and the Group_ (edited by Burgess). [10] _Personality in
Politics._ [11] _The History of European Liberalism._ [12] _Physique and
Character_, chap. xiii. [13] _Quantitative Methods in Politics_, chap. v.
[14] _The Science and Method of Politics._ [15] _The New State._ [16] It is
not profitable to pursue these distinctions farther. I should prefer to
distinguish the statesman from the politician by treating the latter as a
function of a democratically organized community and as one who is limited
to persuasion in the advancement of his conceptions of public right. The
statesman may use force, and is not necessarily a function of
democratically organized society. [17] His viewpoint is best expressed in
“Die Typen der Weltanschauung,” in _Weltanschauung-Philosophie und Religion
in Darstellungen_ (edited by M. Frischeisen-Kohler). [18] _Soziologie_,
chap. iii. [19] _Grundriss der Sozialökonomik_, III, 1. [20] See Robert
Michels, _Political Parties_; C. E. Merriam, _American Party System_, and
_Introduction_ to H. F. Gosnell’s _Boss Platt and His New York Machine_;
Martin Conway, _Instincts of the Herd in Peace and War_; Lowell, _Public
Opinion in War and Peace_; Rohmer, _Die Vier Parteien_; A. Christensen,
_Politics and Crowd Morality_; W. B. Munro, _Personality in Politics_. [21]
_Die öffentliche Persönlichkeit._ Beihefte zur _Zeitschrift für angewandte
Psychologie_, Vol. XLIV. [22] “Innate Factors in Radicalism and
Conservatism,” _Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology_, XX (1925-26),
234-44. [23] Allport really used a rank-order method of handling opinion
expressions which he unjustifiably treated as marking definite positions
along a base line. Thurstone has greatly improved the technique of opinion
measurement. See Thurstone and Chave, _The Measurement of Attitude_
(Chicago, 1929). For Allport’s original paper (with D. A. Hartman), see
“Measurement and Motivation of Atypical Opinion in a Certain Group,”
_American Political Science Review_, XIX (1925), 735-60. [24] “Three
Distinctions in the Study of Leaders,” _Journal of Abnormal and Social
Psychology_, Vol. XXIII (July-September, 1928). [25] By Keith Sward, Social
Science Research Council Fellow, and others. I discuss the problem of
evaluating test results later on. [26] “A Biochemical Approach to the Study
of Personality,” _Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology_, Vol. XXIII
(July-September, 1928). [27] Hans Apfelbach, _Der Aufbau des Charakters_.
Cf. Otto Weininger, _Geschlecht und Charakter_; Fliess, _Ablauf des
Lebens_. [28] C. G. Jung, _Psychological Types_, chap. x. [29] _Beyond the
Pleasure Principle._ [30] “The Significance of Physical Constitution in
Mental Disease,” _Medicine_, V (1926), 375-451. [31] The popular
superstition about the dangers of masturbation seems to have become
widespread in Western Europe in the eighteenth century. Havelock Ellis
dates it from the appearance of a sensational book by an anonymous English
doctor which was called _Onania: or the Heinous Sin of Self-Pollution and
All Its Frightful Consequences in Both Sexes, Considered, with Spiritual
and Physical Advice, etc._ This is said to have passed through eighty
editions and to have been translated into German. Tissot, a physician of
Lausanne, contributed his _Traité_ on the same subject in Latin in 1760.
This appeared in French four years later, and subsequently in nearly all
European languages. His watchword was that masturbation was a crime, “an
act of suicide.” Voltaire popularized his viewpoint in the _Dictionnaire
philosophique_, and the tradition became firmly set. See Havelock Ellis,
_Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, I, 248-49. The cultural relativity of
this attitude toward masturbation is brought out in ethnological reports.
[32] _Psychoanalytische Studien zur Charakterbildung_ (International
Psychoanalytische Bibliothek, 1925), Nr. XVI. Freud’s first contribution to
the subject was published in 1908. His brief article, “Charakter and
Analerotik,” is reprinted in the fifth volume of the _Gesammelte
Schriften_. Others who have written in the same field are Sadger, Ferenczi,
Jones, and E. Glover. [33] Joel Rinaldo paraphrases Freud in his
_Psychoanalysis of the “Reformer”_ and without supporting cases argues that
the reformer is always a meddling hysteric. This is not to be taken for
granted, for he may more often prove to be an obsessive type, when he shows
mental pathology. For the best picture of the two clinical types, see
Janet, _Les névroses_. [34] See Ferenczi, _Versuch einer Genitaltheorie_
(Internationale Psychoanalytische Bibliothek, 1924), Band XV, esp. Sec. V.
Also Wilhelm Reich, _Die Funktion des Orgasmus_. [35] See Freud’s
discussion of paranoia in his “Psychoanalytische Bemerkungen über einen
autobiographisch beschriebenen Fall von Paranoia,” _Gesammelte Schriften_,
Band VIII. [36] This grandfather committed suicide at an unreported age,
and his youngest son is said to be “very nervous.” B’s oldest sister had a
nervous breakdown in high school. The third sister is “neurotic.” B is
described as having been a frail infant, and a shy child. Bed-wetting
continued until he was twelve or fourteen, and he occasionally had attacks
of indigestion. Physical examination failed to disclose any significant
physical factor in his difficulties. [37] Examples are given in Kempf’s
_Psychopathology_, and in other textbooks on the subject. [38] See Helene
Deutsch, _Psychoanalyse der weiblichen Sexualfunction_. [39] See “The
Dynamics of Schizophrenic Reactions Related to Pregnancy and Childbirth,”
_American Journal of Psychiatry_, VIII (1929), 733-66. [40] The physician
in charge of this case comments that there may be a homosexual _anlage_ on
the physical level, but that this is not certain. [41] Harry Stack Sullivan
has stressed the critical importance for personality growth of the
adolescent phase in which the individual is impelled to enter into intimate
emotional relations with one or two other persons of his own age. Those who
partially fail in this show various warps in their subsequent development.
[42] “Der neurotische Charakter,” _Internationale Zeitschrift für
Psychoanalyse_, XIV (1928), 26-44. [43] Abraham and Ferenczi have reported
cases of this kind. [44] _Op. cit._, p. 448. [45] See the chapter on
“Psycho-analysis in Relation to Politics” in _Social Aspects of
Psycho-Analysis_ (London, 1924). [46] “Dogma und Zwangsidee,” _Imago_, XIII
(1927), 247-382. [47] Succinctly described in “Über eine typische Form der
männlichen pubertät,” _Imago_, IX (1923), 169 ff. On the homoerotic
elements see Hans Blüher, _Die deutsche Wandervogelbewegung als erotisches
Phänomen_, and his more elaborate volume cited in the Bibliography. [48] I
was kindly permitted to see this manuscript which is not yet published.
[49] See Sandor Rado, “Die psychischen Wirkungen der Rauschgifte,”
_Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse_, XII (1926), 540-56; A.
Keilholz, “Analyseversuch bei Delirium Tremens,” _ibid._, pp. 478-92; and
Stekel’s volumes. [50] For a sketch of the unconscious processes involved
in warfare see S. Freud, “Zeitgemässes über Krieg und Tod,” _Imago_, IV
(1915-16), 1-21; Ernest Jones, _Essays in Psycho-Analysis_; William A.
White, _Thoughts of a Psychiatrist on the War and After_. [51] _Chicago
Daily News_, July 20, 1927. [52] The distinction between the crowd and the
public is best developed in the writings of Robert E. Park. Freud undertook
to explain the crowd on the theory that an emotional bond was forged by
identification of the individual with a leader, and by a process of partial
identification through the perception of this similar relationship to the
leader. He set out from the observation that when people are interacting
upon one another they behave differently than when they are alone. The loss
of individuality represents a relinquishment of narcissistic gratification
which can only come when libido is directed outward toward objects. Freud’s
theory applies strictly to a special case of crowd behavior only. Crowd
states may also arise when interlocking partial identifications occur on
the perception of a common threat. Crowd behavior often arises before
anybody assumes a “leading” rôle, and rival leaders are “selected” by the
crowd. [53] _Studies in the Psychology of Sex_, I, 231. [54] Kempf,
_Psychopathology_, p. 704. [55] Franz Alexander, “Mental Hygiene and
Criminology,” _First International Congress on Mental Hygiene_. [56] For an
appreciation of the rôle of the pathological person in society see Wilhelm
Lange-Eichbaum, _Genie-Irrsinn, und Ruhm_, and Karl Birnbaum, _Grundzüge
der Kulturpsychopathologie_. [57] Something like this is no doubt the
thought in Trigant Burrow’s very obscure book on _The Social Basis of
Consciousness_. [58] This point was forcibly made by Beardsley Ruml in his
speech at the dedication of the Social Science Research Building at the
University of Chicago. See _The New Social Science_, edited by Leonard D.
White, pp. 99-111. [59] I have suggested that those who write human
biography should be included among those who require this comprehensive
training. See “The Scientific Study of Human Biography,” _Scientific
Monthly_, January, 1930. [60] Modified and expanded from “The
Psychoanalytic Interview as a Method of Research on Personalities,” in _The
Child’s Emotions_, pp. 136-59. [61] See Harold D. Lasswell, “The Problem of
Adequate Personality Records: A Proposal,” _American Journal of
Psychiatry_, May 1929. Also Appendix B of _The Proceedings of the First
Colloquium on Personality Investigation_. [62] We are now engaged upon
studies of this kind at the Personality Laboratory in the Social Science
Research Building at the University of Chicago. Harry Stack Sullivan is
conducting a series of researches on expression changes, with particular
reference to schizophrenia, which are of the greatest importance. [63] The
topic of reliable criteria will be dealt with in detail in the reports upon
experiments in progress. [64] The best technical discussions of the nature
of the analytical situation are in the writings of Freud, Rank, Ferenczi,
Nunberg, and Alexander. [65] Expanded from an article with the same title
which appeared in the _Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology_, January,
1930. [66] Dorothy Swaine Thomas and Associates, _Some New Techniques for
Studying Social Behavior_. [67] “Die ersten sozialen Verhaltungsweisen des
Kindes,” _Quellen und Studien zur Jugendkunde_, Heft 5. [68] Referred to by
John E. Anderson, “The Genesis of Social Reactions in the Young Child,”
_The Unconscious: A Symposium_. These researches are abstracted in William
I. Thomas and Dorothy S. Thomas, _The Child in America_. [69] _Über soziale
Verhaltungsweisen in der Vorpubertät_, “Wiener Arbeiten zur pädogogischen
Psychologie” (herausgegeben von Charlotte Bühler and Viktor Fadrus), Heft
2. [70] _Das volkstümliche Kinderspiel_, Heft 6, in the same series as the
above. [71] “Psychologie des Jugendführers,” _Quellen und Studien zur
Jugendkunde_ (herausgegeben von Dr. Charlotte Bühler). [72] _Das Problem
des Charakteraufbaus_, pp. 68-80. See E. Spranger, _Psychologie des
Jugendalters_, and Else Croner, “Die Psyche der weiblichen Jugend,”
_Schriften zur Frauenbildung_, Heft 6. [73] _Internationale
Psychoanalytische Bibliotek_, Band XIX. [74] See especially p. 278. Harry
Stack Sullivan is tracing out the developmental history of various forms of
personality in his forthcoming volume on _Personal Psychopathology_. [75]
Paul Federn commented in his pamphlet that a democratic state must depend
upon a democratic family life. [76] See his excellent methodological
chapter in _The Psychology of Murder_. [77] _The Origin of the State._ [78]
Not to be confused with mind-body parallelism, which is not accepted. [79]
Cf. Kelsen, _Der Soziologische und der juristische Staatsbegriff_; “Der
Begriff des Staates und die Sozialpsychologie,” _Imago_, VIII (1922),
97-141; “The Conception of the State and Social Psychology,” _International
Journal of Psycho-Analysis_, V (1924), 1-38. [80] Perhaps the most
important part of the Merriam and Gosnell study of _Non-Voting_ is the
symposium of conversational scraps which suggest what balloting actually
means to various classes and sections of a modern metropolitan community.
[81] Such criticism has been directed against the pioneer venture of the
Lynds, _Middletown_. [82] An able discussion of the operational concept is
in P. W. Bridgman, _The Logic of Modern Physics_. [83] Alexander and Staub
have commented on this in _Der Verbrecher und seine Richter_. But it is
principally due to the suspicion of the public officer. [84] See his sketch
of social psychology in _Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse_. [85] More
specifically, Kretschmer’s _Psychobiogramm_, published in H. Hoffmann, _Das
Problem des Charakteraufbaus_, as an appendix; Heyman’s trait list
(republished in _Gesammelte Kelinere Schriften_, Dritter Teil); the
psychograms of W. Stern (in _Die differentielle Psychologie in ihren
methodischen Grundlagen_), of Baade, Lipman, and Stern (_Zeitschrift für
angewandte Psychologie_, Band III), of P. Margis (Breslau dissertation,
1911, _Das Problem und die Methoden der Psychographie mit einer
Individualanalyse von E. T. A. Hoffmann_), of L. Lewin (_Friedrich Hebbel:
Beitrag zu einem Psychogramm_ [Berlin, 1913]), of E. Stern
(“Patho-psychographische Untersuchungen,” _Archiv für Psychiatrie und
Nervenkrankheiten_, Band LXI), of F. Kehrer and S. Fischer (“Modell einer
klinisch-experimentellen Pathographie,” _Zeitschrift für die gesamte
Neurologie und Psychiatrie_, Band LXXXV); the outlines of Dr. Paul Federn
(_Schema der Libidoaufnahme_, MSS in my possession), of F. D. Wells (MSS in
my possession), of G. V. Hamilton, of Adolf Meyer (mimeographed MSS in my
possession), of Amsden and Hoch, of Floyd Allport, and the lists of
Woodworth, Laird, House, Freyd and Thurstone.