Abstract
Of all the people influenced by Freud, Erik Erikson most creatively bridged psychoanalysis and history. He began as an artist, but in the 1920s was drawn into analysis with Anna Freud and eventually graduated from the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in the portentous year of 1933. On the boat coming to America shortly afterwards, Erikson shared an essay on Hitler with the diplomat and historian George Kennan, who helped him to translate it into English. In America, Erikson soon established his reputation as a child analyst and became acquainted with people like Margaret Mead. In the late 1930s and 1940s, he conducted a series of studies that culminated in his first book, Childhood and Society (1950). After that, his interests have always included both the clinical and the historical.
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Notes
- 1.
Lawrence Friedman, Identity’s Architect: A Biography of Erik H. Erikson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); note also Robert Coles, Erik H. Erikson: The Growth of His Work (Boston: Little, Brown, 1970).
- 2.
Erik H. Erikson, Young Man Luther (1958); Gandhi’s Truth (1968); and Dimensions of a New Identity (New York: Norton, 1974).
- 3.
For William James, see Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: Norton, 1968), 150–155; for George Bernard Shaw, ibid., 142–150; for Albert Einstein, “Psychoanalytic Reflections on Einstein’s Centenary,” in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives, ed. Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkam (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 151–174; for Adolf Hitler, Childhood and Society (New York: Norton, 1963 [1950]), 326–358, and Young Man Luther, 105–110; for Maxim Gorky, Childhood and Society, 359–402; for Jesus, “The Galilean Sayings and the Sense of ‘I,’” Yale Review 70 (1981): 321–362.
- 4.
Erikson, Young Man Luther, 169.
- 5.
Erikson, Identity, 143.
- 6.
Ibid., 144.
- 7.
Ibid., 145.
- 8.
Ibid., 150.
- 9.
Erikson, Young Man Luther, 105–106.
- 10.
Ibid., 107–108.
- 11.
Erikson, Dimensions, 98.
- 12.
Ibid., 87.
- 13.
Ibid., 89.
- 14.
Ibid., 90.
- 15.
Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, 196–197.
- 16.
Ibid., 402–403.
- 17.
Erikson, Young Man Luther, 206.
- 18.
Ibid., 246.
- 19.
Ibid., 250.
- 20.
Ibid., 67.
- 21.
Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, 51.
- 22.
Ibid., 72–73.
- 23.
Ibid., 76–77.
- 24.
Ibid., 125.
- 25.
Bruce Mazlish, In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Study (New York: Basic Books, 1972); Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Bruce Mazlish, Kissinger: The European Mind in American Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
- 26.
Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1975), 8.
- 27.
Bruce Mazlish, The Leader, the Led, and the Psyche: Essays in Psychohistory (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1990).
- 28.
Bruce Mazlish, Revolutionary Ascetics: Evolution of a Political Type (New York: Basic Books, 1976).
- 29.
Ibid.
- 30.
Bruce Mazlish, James and John Stuart Mill: Father and Son in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Basic Books, 1975); Bruce Mazlish and Edwin Diamond, Jimmy Carter: A Character Portrait (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980).
- 31.
Batty Glad, Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House (New York: Norton, 1980); Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (New York: Carnell University Press, 2009).
- 32.
Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advisors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (New York: Carnell University Press, 2009).
- 33.
Jerrold M. Post, “Narcissism and the Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship,” Political Psychology, 7 (1986): 675–688.
- 34.
Post, Leaders and their followers in a dangerous world (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University, 2004).
- 35.
Jerrold M. Post, “The Season’s of a Leader’s Life: The Influence of the Life Cycle on Political Behavior,” Political Psychology 2 (1980): 35–49. Post elaborates on “Early Life Transition, Mid-Life Transition, and Late Life Transitions.” He identifies the first stage as the tumultuous struggles of adolescence, when important transformations shape political identifications in an effort to enhance psychological ego consolidation. Idealistic youth search for political and ideological vehicles to improve the world and better the condition of the downtrodden. When crisis shakes the national tent or failure devastates the hopes of an energetic generation, righteous rage becomes a manifest character disposition of a prospective young leader, shaped in that generation. Post mentions in this regard as relevant the example of Gamal Abdel Nasser, who during adolescence was deeply influenced by the political upheavals of Egypt. The righteous rage of his adolescence and the deep dissatisfaction with the political and social conditions of Egypt during his midlife crisis led Nasser to overthrow King Farouk and establish himself as the historical strong man of the Arab world. Post’s second stage encapsulates turbulent midlife crises, where high levels of personal dissatisfaction lay at the roots of many political leaders to embark on revolutionary feats. During midlife crisis, many leaders find it difficult to reconcile their ambitions with their actual successes. As a result, they embrace revolution, argues the author. Equally important, Post’s third stage highlights the imbalance between ambition and achievement, which has led many older leaders to commit great political blunders. Post exemplifies his argument by presenting the example of Mao’s cultural revolution and the unresponsive, emotional, and senile Soviet leaders of the 1980s. The normal psychological reaction for the ageing include rigidity of thought, impairment of intellectual judgment, emotional overreaction, denial and disability, and a general tendency to exaggerate personality trait (earlier checked and balanced by political considerations). How significant a role did Alzheimer play for Regan during the Iran–Contra Affair? Post stresses the importance of understanding life circles that have serious implications for leader’s decision-making abilities.
- 36.
David Irving, The Secret Diaries of Hitler’s Doctor (New York: Macmillan, 1983).
- 37.
Jerrold M. Post and Robert S. Robins, When Illness Strikes the Leader: The Dilemma of the Captive King (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993). Note also Jerrold M. Post, Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2004), 60–66.
- 38.
Jerrold M. Post, Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2004), 51.
- 39.
Ibid., 71.
- 40.
Stanley A. Renshon, The Psychological Assessment of Performance of Presidential Candidates (New York: New York University Press, 1996); Stanley A. Renshon, “Analyzing the Psychology and Performance of Presidential Candidates at a Distance: Bob Doll and the 1996 Presidential Campaign,” Journal of Leadership Studies 3 (1996): 253–281. Note also Robert H. Swansbrough, “A Kohutian Analysis of President Bush’s Personality and Style in the Persian Gulf Crisis,” Political Psychology 15 (1994): 227–276. Swansbrough has argued that motivation allows leaders to develop leadership styles conducive to their personality. Accordingly, leaders may challenge or respect constraints; they can be motivated primarily by policy goals or relationships building; and, they differ in the selection contextual information—some leaders open contextual information, while others utilize few loyal confidants and rely on their instincts, supported by self-confidence. George Herbert Walker Bush, Swansbrough argues, embodies the motivations of the achiever; he shaped a leadership style that challenged constraints but was built on relationships. Bush’s information approach relied on rational calculations for decision-making and discussions with a smaller group of trusted advisors, particularly during the seminal time of the Persian Gulf crisis.
Blema S. Steinberg, “Indira Gandhi: The Relationship between Personality Profile and Leadership Style,” Political Psychology 26 (2005): 755–789. Steinberg, in her study of Indira Gandhi, seeks to explore the relationship between personality profiles and leadership style. She examines Gandhi’s personality from the wide variety of open sources. On a parallel tangent, Steinberg explores Gandhi’s leadership style during the time she was prime minister. The analysis reveals an excessively dynamic Gandhi, almost dysfunctional, with ambitious, reticent, contentious, and domineering personality traits. Gandhi’s leadership style exhibited the ambitious and domineering traits, but also the reticent, retiring, and aggrieved—seemingly contradictory and incompatible traits in political leadership. Steinberg concludes by arguing that the model possesses predictive validity and attributes the perplexing behavior of Gandhi on her gender. Yet, the pieces of the puzzle clearly do not fit. The statistical models used to date for analysis of political leaders cannot be generalized. Steinberg herself recognizes that “for the most part, psychodynamic personality studies of political leaders have been insightful, but idiosyncratic and, thus, incapable of precise replication.”
- 41.
Stanley A. Renshon, High Hopes: The Clinton Presidency and Politics of Ambition (New York: New York University Press, 1996).
- 42.
Stanley A. Renshon, In His Father’s Shadow: The Transforming of George W. Bush (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004); Stanley A. Renshon, “Presidential Address: George W. Bush’s Cowboy Politics: An Inquiry,” Political Psychology 26 (2005): 585–614 presents essentially the same argument regarding Bush’s character.
- 43.
Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New Jersey, NJ: Aronson, 1994), xxiii–xxv.
- 44.
Vamik D. Volkan, “The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: A developmental Approach,” Political Psychology 6 (1985): 219–247.
- 45.
Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New Jersey, NJ: Aronson, 1994).
- 46.
Vamik D. Volkan, Killing in the Name of Identity: A Study of Bloody Conflict (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing, 2006).
- 47.
Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New Jersey, NJ: Aronson, 1994), xxvi.
- 48.
Jerrold M. Post, Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World (Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 2004), 181–182
- 49.
Vamik D. Volkan, Gabriele Ast, and William Greer, Jr., The Third Reich in the Unconscious: Transgenerational Transmission and Its Consequences (New York: Brunner-Routledge, 2002).
- 50.
Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New Jersey, NJ: Aronson, 1994), xxxii.
- 51.
Vamik D. Volkan, Bloodlines: From Ethnic Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
- 52.
Vamik D. Volkan, “The Need to Have Enemies and Allies: A developmental Approach,” Political Psychology 6 (1985): 219–247.
- 53.
Vamik D. Volkan, The Need to Have Enemies and Allies (New Jersey, NJ: Aronson, 1994).
- 54.
Vamik D. Volkan, Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror (Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing, 2004).
- 55.
Vamik D. Volkan and Itzkowitz. The Immortal Ataturk: A Psychobiography (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984). Vamik D. Volkan, Norman Irkowitz, and Andrew W. Dod, Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), analyze both sides of Nixon’s character, the dark and domineering aspects of Nixon and the peacemaker, to conclude that Nixon like Ataturk was e positive narcissist.
- 56.
Robert Jay Lifton, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of “Brainwashing” in China (New York: Norton, 1971); History and Human Survival (New York: Random House, 1970); Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1991 [1967]); Home From the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims Nor Executioners (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973); and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
- 57.
Charles B. Strozier, Heinz Kohut: The Making of a Psychoanalyst (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001).
- 58.
Heinz Kohut, “Creativeness, Charisma, and Group Psychology: Reflections on the Self Analysis of Freud,” in The Search for the Self: Selected Writings of Heinz Kohut, 1950–1978, ed. Paul Ornstein (New York: International Universities Press, 1978), II, 801–802 and 837–838; Sigmund Freud, Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego (1921), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. and ed. James Strachey, in collaboration with Anna Freud (London: The Hogarth Press, 1955).
- 59.
For a more detailed discussion of Kohut’s use of “self” and its relation to William James, see Strozier Heinz Kohut, 194–198.
- 60.
Heinz Kohut, Self Psychology and the Humanities: Reflections on a New Psychoanalytic Approach, edited with an introduction by Charles B. Strozier (New York: Norton, 1986), 206–207.
- 61.
Kohut, “Creativeness,” Search II: 801–802 and 837–838.
- 62.
Heinz Kohut, “On Leadership,” Self Psychology and the Humanities, 53.
- 63.
Note especially The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess, 1887–1904, ed. Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985).
- 64.
The exception today is the frequent use of phone sessions and now video chat, though such forms of therapeutic interaction best serve to complement direct contact, not supplant it.
- 65.
The standard biography of Freud is that of Peter Gay, Freud: A Life for Our Times (New York: Norton, 1988).
- 66.
Mary Matthews Gedo, Picasso: Art as Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
- 67.
Kohut, “Creativeness, Charisma,” 820–823.
- 68.
Ibid., 825. The paranoid leader, it should be noted, is not the only possible leadership model for groups in states of enfeeblement. See, for example, the essay on Lincoln later in this book.
- 69.
Ibid., 826–827.
- 70.
Kohut, Humanities 56–57.
- 71.
Kohut, Creativeness 830–832.
- 72.
Besides the paper, “Creativeness,” under discussions, note Kohut, “On Leadership,” Humanities 64ff and 204–205; and “On Empathy,” Search 4: 525–535.
- 73.
The fatwas (and much else) are available online and in Osama bin Laden, Messages to the World: The Statements of Osama bin Laden, ed. Bruce Lawrence (New York: Verso, 2005). The best general account of the rise of bin Laden are Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Knopf, 2006), and Steven Coll, The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (New York: Penguin Books, 2008).
- 74.
Kohut, “Forms and Transformations of Narcissism,” Search 1:443–444.
- 75.
Kohut, “Charisma,” Search II: 827–828. The story of the chicken’s neck is from my interview with Kohut in Humanities 248.
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Strozier, C.B., Abdyli, O. (2011). From Erik H. Erikson to Heinz Kohut: Expanding Theories of Leadership. In: Strozier, C., Offer, D., Abdyli, O. (eds) The Leader. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9_3
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