The study of reactions to political crises, reported on page 6 of this issue of the Newsletter, is an undertaking of more than ordinary interest. In a year of almost unbelievable national upheaval, in which crises and responses to crises recurred with bewildering rapidity, and in which one national tragedy was the signal for widespread rioting, it does not take a psychoanalyst to observe that society might benefit from a better understanding of the ways in which individuals react to important political events. At the same time, psychoanalysts are often less than satisfied with the usual ways of gathering data in this area. Questionnaires, interviews, surveys and the like, however skillfully done, can at best elicit what is consciously available to the respondents who are made the subjects of a study.
The unique value of the research which Dorn, Rogow and Esman have started under the auspices of the Committee on Social Problems is that it will try to study unconscious reactions. Analysts know, from day-to-day experience, that an individual's perception of and reaction to an emotionally charged public event may be very heavily influenced by intra-psychic processes, to the point where irrational and unconscious forces may become major determinants of behavior — and this may certainly include the way one behaves in deciding how to vote in an election. (The defeat of fluoridation programs in many local referenda, discussed in a recent article in Science, is an interesting case in point.) But the unreported observations of individual analysts do not advance our understanding as to just how analytic data may throw light on important social problems. The Social Problems Committee project aims to study these observations systematically and on a wider scale.
Recognizing the difficulties involved in gathering this order of data from any group of selected subjects, the researchers will try to tap the enormous reservoir of observations made every day of the week in thousands of on-going analyses across the country. It is their hope that a study of these pooled findings may elucidate some of the unconscious psychological elements in political processes. As a pilot study, the project also has the aim of learning something about the methodological problems involved in this type of research.
Psychoanalysts will welcome this examination of a vital social problem in a study utilizing the psychoanalytic research tool in a direct way and involving the collaboration of psychoanalysis and a related discipline. The findings will be awaited with keen interest.
D.K.