The Leader: Psychological Essays PDF
Preview The Leader: Psychological Essays
The Leader Second Edition · · Charles B. Strozier Daniel Offer Oliger Abdyli Editors The Leader Psychological Essays Second Edition 123 Editors CharlesB.Strozier DanielOffer JohnJayCollege NorthwesternUniversity CenteronTerrorism Northbrook,IL60062,USA Brooklyn,NY10019,USA [email protected] [email protected] OligerAbdyli JohnJayCollege CenteronTerrorism NewYork,NY10019,USA [email protected] ISBN978-1-4419-8385-5 e-ISBN978-1-4419-8387-9 DOI10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9 SpringerNewYorkDordrechtHeidelbergLondon LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2011928059 ©SpringerScience+BusinessMedia,LLC1985,2011 Allrightsreserved.Thisworkmaynotbetranslatedorcopiedinwholeorinpartwithoutthewritten permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY10013,USA),exceptforbriefexcerptsinconnectionwithreviewsorscholarlyanalysis.Usein connectionwithanyformofinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware, orbysimilarordissimilarmethodologynowknownorhereafterdevelopedisforbidden. Theuseinthispublicationoftradenames,trademarks,servicemarks,andsimilarterms,eveniftheyare notidentifiedassuch,isnottobetakenasanexpressionofopinionastowhetherornottheyaresubject toproprietaryrights. Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) CharlesB.Strozier:Tomymother,Margaret Wright,whodidn’tquitemake100. DanielOffer:ToMarjorie:Thanksforthe fabulous journey.Love,Dan OligerAbdyli:Tomyfamily,toIvamywife, andChuckmymentor. Preface The study of leadership has long occupied a central place in popular imagination. Peoplewanttounderstandthefigurestheyadmire(ordespise),howandwhythey come to power, and what is the nature of the ideals leaders carry forward for the group. In the university, the study of leadership occupies the attention of scholars inmanyfields,especiallyhistoryandpoliticalscience,butalsoinpsychologyand psychoanalysisandincreasinglyaswellasinmoredistantpartsofthecampussuch asbusinessschools.Interestinleadership,however,antedatesthemodernacademy, asitcanbetrulysaidtohaveoriginatedintheBible,andwithPlatoandtheGreek philosophers.Thiswidespreadandinterdisciplinaryconcernhasresultedinallkinds ofoverlappingstudiesthataresometimesdescriptiveandphenomenologicalandat othertimesmoreanalyticalandcomparative. Our contribution to this burgeoning field is to examine the psychology of lead- ership from a psychoanalytic point of view. The book spends a good deal of time notingtheevolutionoftheideasaboutleadershipfromtheGreeksthroughSigmund Freud and his followers to the extensive literature on the subject in the last half century. There is much to be gained by carefully studying this literature. Some studies, for example, such as Erik Erikson’s biographies of Martin Luther and MohandasGandhi,areexquisiteintheirintelligence,insight,andbeautyofexpres- sion,althoughwemayraiseconcernsabouthistheories.Infact,forthemostpart,we aremoreimpressedwiththelimitationsofmostoftheworkdoneonthepsychology ofleadershipinthetwentiethcenturythanwithitsenduringquality. Theproblem,wesuggest,isconceptual.Intheearlyyearsofthecentury,writers stumbledaboutundertheweightofFreudiandrivetheoryontheirshoulders.Ideas aboutsexualityandearlyconflictshadsomerelevanceintheclinicbutwereespe- ciallycumbersomeindealingwithleadersinthehistoricalorpoliticalrealms.There neverseemedtobesufficientevidencetoprovewhatobserversweretryingtoargue. Aspsychologicaltheoryevolved,supplethinkerssuchErikson,RobertJayLifton, andothersfoundmorecreativeapproachestounderstandingleadersinavarietyof fields.Thingsbegantoopenupintellectually. However,nooneinpsychoanalysismademoreofacontributiontotheideasthat are relevant for understanding leadership than Heinz Kohut (1913–1981). Most of theimportantcontemporaryworkersinthevineyardofpsychoanalysisarechildren of Kohut. He refashioned the theory in ways that unlinked it from dependence on vii viii Preface staleideasthathavelittlerelevanceintherealworldthatleadersinhabit.Heshowed thedepthofoursubtleinterdependencieswithothersinwaysthatcanbedescribed with actual leaders. He suggested ways of thinking about group behavior and the relationbetweenleadersandfollowers.And,perhapsmostofall,Kohutjettisoned drive theory, saving psychoanalysis from itself, and making it available for a pro- found understanding of the psychology of leadership without compromising the needs of scholarship for evidence that is available for others to locate, study, and replicate. Ifthatistheargumentofthebook,wetryalsotobeecumenicalinourapproach. There is nothing to be gained by narrow-mindedness, and no single thinker can possiblybesaidtosolvealltheconceptualcomplexitiesofthepsychologyoflead- ership. The discussion of the literature highlights much valuable early work that meritsrevisiting.Someofthestudies,then,inthesecondpartofthebook—Thomas A. Kohut, for example—assume a Kohutian perspective, while others reflect the writer’sownconcerns,aswithDanMcAdams’sdiscussionof“narrativetheory”in hisanalysisofGeorgeW.Bush.All,however,areattentivetolargerissuesoftheory andmeaningforfuturewritersonthepsychologyofleadership. NewYork,USA CharlesB.Strozier Acknowledgments This book has come to fruition in two incarnations and over many years. Charles B.StrozierandDanielOfferbeganthinkingaboutitseriouslyin1979afterArnold Goldbergcametothemwiththesuggestionthattheyconsideraconferenceonthe implicationsoftheworkofHeinzKohutregardingleadership.Theconferencethat resulted at Michael Reese Hospital in June 1979 was a remarkable event, and it includedparticipantsasdiverseasHeinzKohut,PeterGay,BruceMazlish,Robert Jay Lifton, Fred Weinstein, Michael Franz Basch, and others. Strozier and Offer worked with the papers from that conference, elicited other contributions, and, over four years, researched the topic of leadership on their own. A first edition of thebook,TheLeader:PsychohistoricalEssays,waspublishedin1985byPlenum Press. Over the years, new scholarly developments in the field and, of course, the appearanceofawholenewslateofimportantpoliticalleaderscausedStrozierand Offertofeelitwouldpaytorevisittheearliervolumeandeventoreconceptualize it.Theywereparticularlypleasedthatthereconsiderationofthethemesintheear- liervolumecoincidedwithamajorconferenceon“ThePsychologyofLeadership,” sponsoredbytheChicagoInstituteforPsychoanalysis,onDecember5,2009.The secondconferenceprovidedseveralofthepapersinthecompletelyrevisedsecond section ofthevolume. Strozier andOffer werealsopleased tohave OligerAbdyli jointhemasacoeditoratthisstageofthework.Everythinginthefirstsectionwas broughtup-to-dateandmuchcontentwasaddedasaresultoffurtherresearchand reflection. Anumberofresearchassistantshaveassistedintheworkovertheyears,includ- ingMichaelCreany,PatriciaMichaelson,andLinneaLarson.Wearegratefultothe manypsychiatricresidentsandfellowsoftheMichaelReeseHospitalforparticipat- inginseminarsonthistopicandsharingwithustheirideasaboutleadership.Weare particularlygratefultoourfriend,HermanSinaiko,forhisstimulatingsuggestions atanearlyperiodinourownwork. ix x Acknowledgments We are indebted to the Illinois Humanities Council for its partial support of the project, which has also been supported by the Adolescent Research Fund: In Memory of Judith Offer, of the Department of Psychiatry of Michael Reese Hospital. NewYork,USA CharlesB.Strozier Seattle,Washington,USA DanielOffer NewYork,USA OligerAbdyli Contents PartI ThePast 1 LeadersinAncientTimes:Joseph,Plato,andAlcibiades. . . . . . . 3 CharlesB.Strozier,DanielOffer,andOligerAbdyli 2 FreudandHisFollowers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 CharlesB.StrozierandDanielOffer 3 FromErikH.EriksontoHeinzKohut:ExpandingTheories ofLeadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 CharlesB.StrozierandOligerAbdyli PartII Studies 4 LincolnandtheCrisisofthe1850s:ThoughtsontheGroupSelf . . 57 CharlesB.Strozier 5 MirrorImageoftheNation:AnInvestigationofKaiser WilhelmII’sLeadershipoftheGermans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 ThomasA.Kohut 6 OsamaBinLaden:TheManandtheMyth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 BruceB.Lawrence 7 Redemptive Narratives in the Life and the Presidency ofGeorgeW.Bush . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 DanP.McAdams 8 ParanoidLeadership . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 DavidM.Terman SubjectIndex . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171 xi Contributors OligerAbdyli JohnJayCollege,CenteronTerrorism,NewYork,NY10019, USA,[email protected] ThomasA.Kohut SueandEdgarWachenheimIIIProfessorofHistory,Williams College,Williamstown,MA,USA,[email protected] BruceB.Lawrence DukeUniversity,DurhamNC,USA,[email protected] DanP.McAdams DepartmentofPsychology,NorthwesternUniversity,2120 CampusDrive,Evanston,IL60208,USA,[email protected] DanielOffer NorthwesternUniversity,Northbrook,IL60062,USA, [email protected] CharlesB.Strozier JohnJayCollege,CenteronTerrorism,NewYork, NY10019,USA,[email protected] DavidM.Terman TrainingandSupervisingAnalyst,formerDirector,Chicago InstituteforPsychoanalysis,[email protected] xiii
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