Regulation of Self-Esteem in Some Political Activists

Harold Lasswell was the first sutdent of politics to apply psychoanalytic theory and methods to his subject. He also pioneered in focusing attention on the relation between participation in politics and the maintenance of an integrated self-concept. In Lasswell's books, Psychopathology and Politics (1930) and Power and Personality (1948), he asked why political activists participate in public life.

The answer he offered, based on pioneering adaptations of the psychoanalytic clinical interview, was in the form of a hypothesis that has been the center of much attention ever since. Lasswell proposed that the political activist is essentially a power seeker, who pursues political involvement to overcome low self-esteem (Lasswell, 1948).

With Lasswell as a benchmark, a complex literature has grown up around the subject. But investigation has been hampered by a loose definition of what a political activist is and by lack of agreement about how best to study the relation between political involvement and self-esteem.

“Activists” as different as American presidents and casual, intermittent campaign workers have been seen as subjects appropriate for study. And the methods employed in these researches have varied just as much as their subjects—from short, survey-type formats utilizing fixed-choice items to rather extended interviews. Two examples may suffice to delineate the range of methods and findings. One investigator (Sniderman, 1975) used data drawn from large groups of people peripherally involved in politics who responded to short survey interviews including items on self-image. This scholar claims that the people he studied have a more positive sense of self-esteem than nonparticipants in public life. Sniderman argues that political life demands a considerable measure of self-confidence and assertiveness and repeated contact with others including strangers from unfamiliar backgrounds. By contrast, Barber (1965), using more open-ended interviews