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Harold D. Lasswell is the most prolific of social science writers. His bibliography at present occupies thirty-six pages of print. During some forty years he has generated an optimistic view of the applicability of scientific method to policy making at every level of government. He was the first to state that the basic needs of political man cannot be described in terms of material needs alone, but must include such things as the desire for knowledge, power, respect, and deference. He was the first practitioner of content analysis, the attempt to objectify and quantify for purposes of prediction the details of material appearing in mass media. Content analysis connects with the broader topic of the manipulation of symbols in mass media, and hence with the subject of propaganda and other forms of myth making in politics. Content analysis continued longitudinally yields a 'developmental construct'—a concept at the core of Lasswell's system.
Lasswell has aimed at no less than scientific democracy on a world-wide, or even on a cosmic scale. His major works began with his Ph.D. thesis of 1927, titled Propaganda Techniques in the World War. In 1930 his well-known Psychopathology and Politics appeared and, five years later, World Politics and Personal Insecurity.