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Psychoanalytic theory has not been extensively applied to political studies. Many difficulties have arisen in efforts to study and recognise unconscious processes in politicians and political action — and also in the “internal policy” of the psychoanalytic movement itself. Freud ventured into some speculations in this field. Paul Roazen was a pioneer with his first book Freud: Political and Social Thought (1968; later editions 1986 and 1999), in which he elucidated Freud's contributions to the political and social sciences. In Political Theory and the Psychology of the Unconscious, which is one of three works from his good harvest year of 2000, Roazen aims to show that psychoanalysis is part of the great chain of traditional conversation in political thought, extending to the new millennium.
John Stuart Mill as a critic of Bentham, his father James Mill, and utilitarianism in general, is positioned by Roazen as a major political philosopher who reached awareness of psychological “depths”, of “the internal culture of the individual” (p. 9). Mill saw a community based on emotions rather than primarily on reason and self-interest. As a somewhat resentful, intellectually reared child, he questioned the rationalistic premises of liberal thought. In this criticism of traditional liberalism, he was later followed by Nietzsche and Dostoevsky, and even by Freud who advocated that the child is in the midst and lives on within the adult.
Roazen finds resemblances rather than differences between Nietzsche and Freud. He feels that the dark side of Freud “has been tamed and conventionalized” (p. 35), especially in North America. Freud's suspicions about altruism and humanitarianism, and his tragic and pessimistic tones, are well known, and clearly set out by Roazen. It may be that Freud is still a threat to some social and political scientists who proclaim that psychoanalysis is dead. Psychoanalysis is then supposed to foster egotism and self-indulgence in favour of “sound” social