Psychopathology and politicsLasswell, Harold D. (Harold Dwight)
Science
Psychopathology and politics
Lasswell, Harold D. (Harold Dwight)
Personality and politics; Political science; Psychoanalysis; Psychology, Pathological
The result of the formal procedure outlined is to define
“co-relational” (correlational) types. A recent monograph by Fritz
Giese may be used to illustrate the possibilities.[21] This is a
statistical treatment of the data available in the German _Who’s Who_
of 1914. After Giese had eliminated those who were included on account
of their hereditary position only, he had over ten thousand names
left. He then distinguished thirty-three varieties of activity, which
were grouped into the five major categories of art, social science,
physical science, technology, and practical life. He also classified
his subjects into those who were honored because of high-grade but
essentially routine professional accomplishment, those who enriched
their field of activity by some creative contribution, and those whose
creativeness was unrestricted to their occupational field. The three
types were the skilful, the productive, and the freely creative.
Since the individual is not confined to one field of activity, the
following scheme of connections was built up to show the relation
between the person and the form of activity: (_a_) income source (the
person regards a particular field as a “bread and butter” occupation);
(_b_) successive activity field (the individual has deserted one field
for another); (_c_) field of simultaneous double-production; (_d_)
recreational activity. The relation of a person to a field of activity
may show a splitting of his personality or a compensatory function.
When a politician consciously decides to play golf or to collect
pictures to relieve his mind from exclusive political preoccupations,
he is realizing a compensatory value in this chosen field. When he
finds himself impelled to try to live a double life of scientific
investigation and political propaganda, he is exhibiting major, and
contrasting, tendencies in his personality (splitting). Sometimes the
tie between fields of activity which the same individual exploits is
factual similarity, as when a politician becomes a literary man to the
extent of writing the political history of a period. Sometimes the
connection is a functional relationship, in that the same biopsychic
dispositions are to be assumed to operate. Thus, business promotion and
politics are intimately allied; sculpture and politics are not.
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