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Many analysts look askance at any use of psychoanalysis in political life. This view is predicated on the opinion that one would invariably mix his analytic goals with his personal cognitive and affective predilections. I do not share this view and have combined an analytic observational stance with a long personal interest in the rampant psychopathology that accompanies political life. In addition to conducting a daily practice, I have observed and tried to understand analytically a series of emotionally charged public events, from the McCarthy era of the American social experience, through the Nixon presidency before and after Watergate, the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, trials of compelling national interest, such as the rape trial of William Kennedy Smith, the Tyson rape trial, the bombshell O. J. Simpson murder trial, and now, most recently, the conflict-ridden impeachment hearings against Bill Clinton, the popular president of the United States. Conflict centered as these galvanizing events proved to be, each riveting the attention of an absorbed public, there can be no argument about the place for their psychoanalytic understanding.
The present essay is therefore part of a larger ongoing investigation of the dynamic background behind public opinion (Rangell, in preparation) during emotional crises in national events. In all these studies, the object of observation has been a pyramidal social structure consisting of a leader or leaders at the top, the staff or bureaucracy under him, including elected representatives and the media, and the mass of people at the base of the population pyramid. Each layer