Chapter I: 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