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The Leader Second Edition Charles B. Strozier · Daniel Offer · Oliger Abdyli Editors The Leader Psychological Essays Second Edition 123 Editors Charles B. Strozier Daniel Offer John Jay College Northwestern University Center on Terrorism Northbrook, IL 60062, USA Brooklyn, NY 10019, USA [email protected] [email protected] Oliger Abdyli John Jay College Center on Terrorism New York, NY 10019, USA [email protected] ISBN 978-1-4419-8385-5 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-8387-9 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-8387-9 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011928059 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 1985, 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Charles B. Strozier: To my mother, Margaret Wright, who didn’t quite make 100. Daniel Offer: To Marjorie: Thanks for the fabulous journey. Love, Dan Oliger Abdyli: To my family, to Iva my wife, and Chuck my mentor. Preface The study of leadership has long occupied a central place in popular imagination. People want to understand the figures they admire (or despise), how and why they 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 in many fields, especially history and political science, but also in psychology and psychoanalysis and increasingly as well as in more distant parts of the campus such as business schools. Interest in leadership, however, antedates the modern academy, as it can be truly said to have originated in the Bible, and with Plato and the Greek philosophers. This widespread and interdisciplinary concern has resulted in all kinds of overlapping studies that are sometimes descriptive and phenomenological and at other times more analytical and comparative. Our contribution to this burgeoning field is to examine the psychology of leadership from a psychoanalytic point of view. The book spends a good deal of time noting the evolution of the ideas about leadership from the Greeks through Sigmund 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 Mohandas Gandhi, are exquisite in their intelligence, insight, and beauty of expression, although we may raise concerns about his theories. In fact, for the most part, we are more impressed with the limitations of most of the work done on the psychology of leadership in the twentieth century than with its enduring quality. The problem, we suggest, is conceptual. In the early years of the century, writers stumbled about under the weight of Freudian drive theory on their shoulders. Ideas about sexuality and early conflicts had some relevance in the clinic but were especially cumbersome in dealing with leaders in the historical or political realms. There never seemed to be sufficient evidence to prove what observers were trying to argue. As psychological theory evolved, supple thinkers such Erikson, Robert Jay Lifton, and others found more creative approaches to understanding leaders in a variety of fields. Things began to open up intellectually. However, no one in psychoanalysis made more of a contribution to the ideas that are relevant for understanding leadership than Heinz Kohut (1913–1981). Most of the important contemporary workers in the vineyard of psychoanalysis are children of Kohut. He refashioned the theory in ways that unlinked it from dependence on vii viii Preface stale ideas that have little relevance in the real world that leaders inhabit. He showed the depth of our subtle interdependencies with others in ways that can be described with actual leaders. He suggested ways of thinking about group behavior and the relation between leaders and followers. And, perhaps most of all, Kohut jettisoned 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. If that is the argument of the book, we try also to be ecumenical in our approach. There is nothing to be gained by narrow-mindedness, and no single thinker can possibly be said to solve all the conceptual complexities of the psychology of leadership. The discussion of the literature highlights much valuable early work that merits revisiting. Some of the studies, then, in the second part of the book—Thomas A. Kohut, for example—assume a Kohutian perspective, while others reflect the writer’s own concerns, as with Dan McAdams’s discussion of “narrative theory” in his analysis of George W. Bush. All, however, are attentive to larger issues of theory and meaning for future writers on the psychology of leadership. New York, USA Charles B. Strozier Acknowledgments This book has come to fruition in two incarnations and over many years. Charles B. Strozier and Daniel Offer began thinking about it seriously in 1979 after Arnold Goldberg came to them with the suggestion that they consider a conference on the implications of the work of Heinz Kohut regarding leadership. The conference that resulted at Michael Reese Hospital in June 1979 was a remarkable event, and it included participants as diverse as Heinz Kohut, Peter Gay, Bruce Mazlish, 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 the book, The Leader: Psychohistorical Essays, was published in 1985 by Plenum Press. Over the years, new scholarly developments in the field and, of course, the appearance of a whole new slate of important political leaders caused Strozier and Offer to feel it would pay to revisit the earlier volume and even to reconceptualize it. They were particularly pleased that the reconsideration of the themes in the earlier volume coincided with a major conference on “The Psychology of Leadership,” sponsored by the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, on December 5, 2009. The second conference provided several of the papers in the completely revised second section of the volume. Strozier and Offer were also pleased to have Oliger Abdyli join them as a coeditor at this stage of the work. Everything in the first section was brought up-to-date and much content was added as a result of further research and reflection. A number of research assistants have assisted in the work over the years, includ- ing Michael Creany, Patricia Michaelson, and Linnea Larson. We are grateful to the many psychiatric residents and fellows of the Michael Reese Hospital for participat- ing in seminars on this topic and sharing with us their ideas about leadership. We are particularly grateful to our friend, Herman Sinaiko, for his stimulating suggestions at an early period in our own work. 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. New York, USA Charles B. Strozier Seattle, Washington, USA Daniel Offer New York, USA Oliger Abdyli Contents Part I The Past 1 Leaders in Ancient Times: Joseph, Plato, and Alcibiades ....... 3 Charles B. Strozier, Daniel Offer, and Oliger Abdyli 2 Freud and His Followers ........................ 13 Charles B. Strozier and Daniel Offer 3 From Erik H. Erikson to Heinz Kohut: Expanding Theories of Leadership ............................... 31 Charles B. Strozier and Oliger Abdyli Part II Studies 4 Lincoln and the Crisis of the 1850s: Thoughts on the Group Self .. 57 Charles B. Strozier 5 Mirror Image of the Nation: An Investigation of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Leadership of the Germans ............... 77 Thomas A. Kohut 6 Osama Bin Laden: The Man and the Myth .............. 119 Bruce B. Lawrence 7 Redemptive Narratives in the Life and the Presidency of George W. Bush ............................ 135 Dan P. McAdams 8 Paranoid Leadership .......................... 153 David M. Terman Subject Index ................................. 171 xi Contributors Oliger Abdyli John Jay College, Center on Terrorism, New York, NY 10019, USA, [email protected] Thomas A. Kohut Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Professor of History, Williams College, Williamstown, MA, USA, [email protected] Bruce B. Lawrence Duke University, Durham NC, USA, [email protected] Dan P. McAdams Department of Psychology, Northwestern University, 2120 Campus Drive, Evanston, IL 60208, USA, [email protected] Daniel Offer Northwestern University, Northbrook, IL 60062, USA, [email protected] Charles B. Strozier John Jay College, Center on Terrorism, New York, NY 10019, USA, [email protected] David M. Terman Training and Supervising Analyst, former Director, Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis, [email protected] xiii About the Editors Charles B. Strozier has a Harvard B.A., and an M.A. and a PhD from the University of Chicago.

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