What can leaders learn from psychoanalysis?” was the question posed by Abraham Zaleznik in the San Francisco meeting's Program for Spouses. Zaleznik, Emeritus Professor of the Harvard Business School, was skeptical on two counts. Intellectual understanding of human psychology alone does not often influence behavior. Nor, on those unique occasions when it does have impact, is there any assurance that the leader will use such insight in an ethical exercise of power.
Zaleznik agreed with Harold Laswell that leaders are at great peril of displacing their unconscious conflicts onto public issues. In this displacement the powerholder “unknowingly infuses so-called objective issues with subjective meaning.”
Neuroses and unconscious conflict notwithstanding, Zaleznik argued, leaders make decisions based on conscious assessments of political realities. Dwight D. Eisenhower, for example, when campaigning for the presidency, chose not to repudiate Senator Joseph McCarthy's scurrilous attacks on General George C. Marshall, his friend, colleague, and former commanding officer. Was this an instance of unconscious pathological passivity? Zaleznik concluded from Eisenhower's behavior that “the logic of the situation here is the need to get elected, subordinating moral imperatives such as loyalty, fair play, honesty, and the preservation of high standards of human conduct in public affairs.” He could, in Zaleznik's opinion, have taken the opportunity “to display the dominance of principle over expediency, and in doing so, seek autonomy in relation to his constituents even while he serves their better interests and values.”
Citing Lord Acton, Zaleznik supported the assertion that “power does tend to corrupt and, if achieved, absolute power will corrupt absolutely.” Zaleznik also observed that a strong unconscious drive for power “is not by itself negative” or the source of the corruption of power.
Powerholders know that power not used is power wasted. Zaleznik illuminated this well-known adage with an example from Lyndon Johnson's presidency. Johnson was driven by his need for power. Coupled by compassion and his identification with the underdog, this drive for power enabled him to bring into law the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. A few years later, torn by the country's increasing opposition to the Vietnam War and tormented by Robert Kennedy's increasing popularity, Johnson was immobilized and could not exercise his power. Soon that power ebbed, as did his capacity to influence change.
Carol Singer Peltz, former mayor of Sausalito and long in the political arena, endorsed this view. “Politics is really an endurance contest. The winner is the one who fights the smartest and lasts the longest.”
Politicians vastly overrate their power and ability to implement change, according to Peltz. They are easily seduced by groups and individuals working to advance special interests. “At some point politicians become aware that there are people who love them more than they have any reason to. And there are people who hate them vehemently, beyond any rational bounds. The latter can be quite appalling, but the former can be more perilous.” If a politician succumbs to his wish to be loved and admired, he risks “a mortal hazard to a political career.” Confusing adulation with reality is the first step down the slippery slope of self-delusion. “If, going a step further, the politician misunderstands the adulation as unqualified love, exempting him or her from moral standards, it's only a matter of time before the realities of public life intervene.” Peltz named this phenomenon “the seduction of the illusion of power.”
Peltz was sanguine about what psychoanalysis can teach politicians. The public has become more aware of the idea of an unconscious mind and the ubiquity of conflict. “It is common practice to employ sound psychological theory and techniques in such daily governmental functions as risk management, conflict resolution, personnel evaluation, and a wide range of negotiations between differing parties.”
Neil J. Smelser, Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley, echoed “the centrality of the truth of the fact of displacing private conflicts onto public issues.” He added that “followers often reciprocate, making sometimes for a dialogue of the unconscious.”
In discussing Eisenhower's failure to speak out against McCarthy, Smelser argued that such a stand may be an example neither of pathological passivity nor of political expediency. He spoke of his experience as advisor to the UC chancellor. During the student rebellion of the sixties, activist students flooded the campus with inflammatory pamphlets. Almost always, Smelser counseled the chancellor to make no response. And on almost every occasion, he was right. “This illustration warns us about jumping too quickly from the facts of history to the motives of the leader, and suggests that we have to be very careful about reading backward from events to motive.” Smelser cautioned that “it is difficult to argue from specific episodes to specific motives.” Even more, “it is difficult to argue from a collective pathology to individual psychopathology.”
Concluding, he cautioned against overestimating the power of psychoanalytic insight in affecting the behavior of leaders. “I would invite you only to consider the politics of psychoanalytic institutes, in which all the actors have presumably been analyzed but who suffer some of the meanest acting out conspiracies, rigid politics, destructiveness, and all the rest.”