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 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!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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