CHAPTER I_Psychopathology and politics

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

AND POLITICS

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

_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