The Bismarck Tribune Newspaper, September 16, 1932, Page 8

Ve St Cz mm cee 4S ona Poy. meeas sh So yeeros TT | H UTADA BENATAR TTT TTT TVANATIACLEU MUL JUUALH LEAL Co Isaiah, from Sargent’s famous frieze at the Beston Public Library. . . prophets, says Prof. Lasswell, were good examples of the agitator type. By MARJORIE VAN DE Why do men make speeches, take up “causes” and run for office? Science finds some interesting WATER HAT makes the politician what he is? From the president him- self down to the soap-box orator on the street corner, ardent wet and zealous dry, anarchist and bureaucrat, sen- ator and ward boss—what was the obscure turning point which brought them to their present paths? Tt occurred to Prof. Harold D, :Lasswell, who teaches political science at the University of Chicago, that the answer might be found in a thorough study of the previous lives of these men—a study as searching as that made by the psychiatrist. If the physician, by delving into the cbscur- ities of the youth of his patient, can find out what brought him to the insane hospital, why shouldn't a similar search into the history of the normal man reveal what brought him into Con- gress or the White House? Accordingly Prof. Lasswell undertook to make such studies following the methods ot Freud. In this he had the assistance of many prominent psychiatrists who approved his meth- ods, although some conventional psychologists may disagree with them. A few such detailed histories were ready- made at hand, because some politicians had at one time or another been patients in mental hos- pitals. In other cases, the politicians volun- teered to make their private histories available because they realized that knowledge of human nature in politics would be advanced if normal persons were studied with the same care as that bestowed on the abnormal. C was not Prof. Lasswell’s purpose to prove that politicians are insane or to catalog the symptoms of such prominent men. “We have not finished when we know that modern Alexanders, Caesars, and Bluchers are alcoholic; that a modern Bismarck 1s hysterical ; that a modern Lincoln shows depressive pa- thology; or that a modern Marat suffers trom arthritis, diabetes, and eczema,” Prof. Lass- well says in his report which has been published by the University of Chicago in a book entitled “Psychopathology and Politics.” Rather his purpose was to examine the whole of the private lives of these individuals and dis- cover what experiences were significant in de- He and the other Old Testament Lenin of Red Russta - +. @ combination of the agitator, the- orist and administra- tor types of politictan, facts after an exhaustive study °°," of the private lives of politicians veloping the traits and interests of the politician —what were the psychological turning points of his life. Politicians, he found, may be divided on the basis of personality into three main types—the administrator, the agitator, and the theorist. President Hoover, he cites as an example of the first type, the administrator pure and simple. The Old Testament prophets were good exam- ples of the agitator. And the theorist is best typified in Karl Marx. There are, of course, many composites of two or more of these types. Lenin, the hero of Soviet Russia, for example, is described by Prof. Lasswell as a combination of all three types, administrator, agitator, and thecrist. pew his study of these three types and the various composites, Prof. Lasswell even has worked out a very definite formula to ex- press the personality of the politician. Here it is: p ) d ) 4+ equals p where p, he says, represents private motives; d represents displacement onto a public object; r represents rationalization in terms ot public interest; p represents the political man; and ) represents “transformed into.” Suppose we translate all this into more un- derstandable language by fitting the formula to a special case. Johnny Jones as a small boy owned and was very fond of a pet dog. The dog died as a result of the cruelty of some neighborhood ur- chins. Johnny developed a profound love tor dogs and also perhaps a parallel hatred for gangs. This love and this hate comprised his “private motives.” As he grows up, if he were to be an ordinary citizen, he might start a farm to raise dogs. But Johnny is to be a politician of the agi- tator type. So instead of surrounding himself with real live dogs, his interest is displaced onto dogs in general. He founds a society for the prevention of cruelty to dogs. He interests himself in legislation forbidding the keeping of dogs in the city or forbidding the dissection of dogs for scientific purposes, and so on. Te next step is to rationalize his attitude in terms of public interest. He builds up arguments showing that dogs are essential to the public welfare. He writes pamphlets describ- ing the good that dogs do in protecting human life, in leading the blind, in ‘returning affection for kindness. The big difference between Johnny and his non-political brother is then that the object’ of Johnny’s emotional interest has been entirely changed. It is no longer the bark and nuzzling nose and the pathetic wag of a stubby tail that appeal to him; it is the idea of dog in the ab- stract that he is crusading for. Among the agitators studied by Prot. Lass- well, one trait seemed to be so very common as to be characteristic. This is what psychclogists term narcissism, an excellently descriptive word derived from the name of the Greek youth Narcissus, who gazed into a placid pool one day and fell in love with the beautiful image of himself he saw there reflected. Agitators, Prof. Lasswell tells us, have their affections equally centered on themselves. And this is often because as children they were “spoiled” by their parents or made the center of an admiring family group. Fhe agitator, he says, may also have been hindered by some obstacle from developing a normal love affair. ‘The ordinary person's de- sire to impress and be loved by & definite indi- In the circle, President Hoover, an ex- ample of the administrator type ._. . and, at the right, the late Eugene Debs, who showed how the agitator can expend emotional zeal on his cause. vidual becomes in the agitator a more generalized desire to impress and arouse the crowd. The amazing depths of emotional zeal which the agitator often is able to expend on the abstraction of his cause is well shown by the following quotation from the writings of Eugene Debs. In connection with his early work with labor organizations, he said: eT WAS filled with enthusiasm and my blood leaped in my veins. Day and night I worked for the brotherhood. To see its watchfires glow and observe the in- crease of its sturdy members were the sunshine and shower of my life. To attend the ‘meet- ing’ was my supreme joy, and for 10 years I was not once absent when the faithful assem- bled.” You might think that the political theorist, the developer of political creeds, like Marx, would not be of interest from the point of view of Prof, Lasswell’s study. But he has found that the history of the individual counts here. “Political prejudices, preferences, and creeds are often formulated in highly rational form, but they are grown in highly irrational ways,” he says. “When they are seen against the develop- mental history of the person, they take on meanings which are quite different from the phrases in which they are put.” (Copyright, 1932, by EveryWeek Magazine and Science Service—Printed in U, 8. A.) HAUSA immu ti AHURA ULCER LL - POVUTETT TESTI ONY Ig 8 ERO RTE ERECT SST STE OY IS TA SME UUTHNTENL1 NTA T ST ATU INUIT TMU AM