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Although the problem of power in mental life and human interaction has an important place in many psychosocial models, it has remained the stepchild of psychoanalysis. The phenomenology and explanatory value of power is too important to remain tangential and ambiguous within psychoanalysis. To find a significant place for the concept of power in psychoanalytic theory has been difficult since power implies a holistic and interactional viewpoint. These viewpoints cannot be easily reconciled with either a drive conflict or a deficit model.
We envision this issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry as a pioneering effort, a beginning examination of the dimensions of power in psychoanalytic thought. We invited five contributors to address the problem of power. The result is a heterogeneous group of papers varying from studies of powerful historical figures to a reformulation of metapsychology.
In “Male Sexuality and Power,” Ethel Person proposes a new perspective on male power and sexuality. She takes issue with the view that aggression, phallic sadism, and castration anxiety are fundamental to male sexual fantasies and conflicts. She argues that a decisive role in male power also centers on narcissistic issues such as the fear of powerlessness in the control of the penis and the fear of loss of the love object.
Peter Loewenberg, in “Nixon, Hitler, and Power,” applies an ego psychology approach to the careers of two powerful politicians to suggest the variety and richness of psychoanalytic formulations that are now available to the psychohistorian.
“The Relationship of Psychosexual Development to the Successful Excercise of Power in a Woman Ruler: A Study of Catherine dé Medici,” by Abby Adams-Silvan and Mark Silvan, uses a biographical study of Catherine dé Medici to demonstrate how women who