Applying psychoanalysis to political theory raises important methodological questions regarding the extent to which psychoanalysis can illuminate features of political texts. The works of three psychoanalytically informed political theorists are used to highlight several key analytic issues such as mediating the level of analysis between collective beliefs and individual consciousness; the applicability of psychoanalytic concepts drawn from clinical settings to textual analyses, and the role of causality in self-avowedly non-scientific, interpretive approaches. In reference to the epistemological debate between hermeneutical and natural science approaches to the extraclinical application of psychoanalysis to the analysis of political texts, I argue that a unitary methodological criterion underlies both approaches because the process of disciplined inquiry is identical.