Political Psychology

Harold Lasswell and others tried very hard to establish a field to be known as Political Psychology but failed. What is left of their efforts is found at many universities, where, occasionally, a brave professor, either in the department of psychology or political science, offers a course entitled political psychology. He might find a few interested students or he might not.

Every now and then some one writes a book under the rubric of political psychology.

What is political psychology? Since there is no legitimate academic discipline called political psychology, it would, therefore, seem that the political psychology is whatever the writer says that it is? I once did a literature search on the subject and found that each writer provided his own idiosyncratic definition of the subject.

I tend to accept Harold Lasswel’s approach to political psychology. Lasswell was influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis and tended to approach political psychology from the individual’s standpoint. He studied the psychology of individual politicians and appreciated how their presumed psychopathologies affected their political behaviors. Thus, from his perspective, political psychology is the study of the individual psychopathologies of political actors and how those psychopathologies affected their political behaviors.

However, it is possible to approach political psychology from a sociological perspective and show how pathological individuals are products of their pathological societies; that is, show that the political system itself is the sick entity and that it produces sick politicians.

Nevertheless, I tend to concentrate on individual psychopathology and will, therefore, not focus on the general political system’s pathology, although that too is germane in political discourse.

Human beings live in political communities. It is frivolous wishing that they did not live in political communities; the fact is that they do. Anarchy may fascinate youth but adult reality is that wherever human beings are found they have political systems. Human beings operate and live in political systems.

Individual human beings bring their personal psychopathologies into the political systems that they are operating under.

The political system has its own independent qualities that affect the individual. Thus, all things being equal, what exists is a dynamic relationship whereby the political system affects the individual and the individual affects the political system.

Democratic political systems, such as the USA and Britain, tend to screen out persons with serious psychopathologies. Many of the checks and balances of a democratic society make sure that those who make it to the top of the political system pretty much tend to be normal persons. Moreover, these days’ folks seldom rise to the top of organizations without having taken some psychological tests that might call attention to serious psychopathologies in them.

I simply cannot see a schizophrenic or manic making it to the top of the political system in the USA or Britain. What is possible is for folks with personality disorders to make it to the top of the political system. Joseph McCarthy of the “Red scare” is an example of a man who escaped the radar of the system and made it to Congress with a serious mental disorder. Richard Nixon made it to the presidency with mild paranoid personality traits.