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.