Identifying Group Processes in Psychoanalytic Terms Is Not a Good Idea

My concern is not the labeling of American foreign policy using terms commonly associated with psychoanalytic theory, but with the broad interpretation of policy in terms originally derived from studies of the individual. Doing so is not only a bad idea, but it can lead to some erroneous assumptions about future policy decisions. In therapeutic sessions, the therapist assumes that in his or her search for the underlying personality structure, the operating psychological dynamics uncovered are reasonably stable. This assumption permits the therapist to assume a direct causal chain regarding a variety of situations, assuming relationships between seemingly diverse sets of behaviors. The search for causality within the individual is a systematic process.

It is not realistic to label foreign policy as the possible outcome of a group of individuals with similar underlying psychological systems for several reasons. The first is that our foreign policy is not usually solely the result of any single individual’s efforts, however high he or she is in the administration. There is Congress to consider, along with future electoral consequences. The latter caught up with George Bush in his second term. The creation of policy is a group process in the United States, although it must be recognized that within the political process, certain people (like the president, the vice president, the speaker of the house, or the majority leader of the Senate) exert very significant influences. This is simply a fact of life in any group process.

However, in some countries, one can legitimately link a direct relationship between the political process and one individual. Thus, in the recent turmoil in some Arab states, public anger could be focused on a single person. In Libya, for example, no one can doubt that state policy is completely under the control of Muammar Gaddafi. At Stalingrad, the destruction of Germany’s Sixth Army was a result of Hitler’s failure to yield on his policy of designating the encircled army as a fortress. One might fault his decision using narcissism as an argument, but that might overlook the fact that

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Hitler’s stubborn decision to hold the line at Moscow during the 1941 winter offensive of the Red Army may have saved the day for the Wehrmacht (Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War: 1941-1945, 1971, p. 227).

The second problem is that writers using psychoanalytic labels cannot avoid creating the explanatory psychological constructs derived from consequences. It is only fair I should note that I have used a similar psychohistorical approach to military events (Robert Pois and Philip Langer, Command Failure in War: Psychology and Leadership, 2004). I must also hasten to add, however, that we used a variety of psychological models. This avoided the somewhat cynical comment of my colleague, who said that my analysis of Napoleon’s military successes and failures as somehow reflecting toilet-training problems was stretching causality beyond the breaking point.

This psychohistorical approach of diagnosing from outcomes, without additionally derived information, is fraught with danger. In further defense of my work with the late Robert Pois, the analyses were tied to tightly defined sets of consequences. Along with multiple models, we did not use the same map to go everywhere in the world.

Using the Iraq conflict as an example, the decision to go to war might have been the convergence of Bush’s unresolved Oedipal problems (“I will finish what Daddy failed to do”) with Dick Cheney (“oil, and think of the money Haliburton can make”) and Donald Rumsfeld (“shock and awe”). The fact that their goals shifted—from WMDs (weapons of mass destruction), to getting rid of Saddam Hussein, to creating a democracy—suggests to me, at least, that the assumption of an Oedpial problem, for example, begins to diminish as a universal explanatory construct. Putting it another way, when I begin a lecture, I cannot assume that all those students behind their laptops are taking notes; surfing the Internet is not uncommon.

Returning to the general issue of foreign policy, which consists of rather diverse actions across diverse situations, any broad psychoanalytic labels must be accompanied by the belief that these decisions reflect those aforementioned stable underlying psycho-

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logical processes of the individuals involved. The associative linkages derived from diverse policy actions are likely to be highly colored and tightly maintained. In turn, projection can easily contribute to supposed linkages between policy and the individuals assigned to cause. Furthermore, subsequent attempts to maintain the integrity of the cognitive structure may override analytic objectivity in order to preserve the integrity of the beliefs embedded. Conflicting evidence may be ignored or assimilated, according to the developmental psychology of Jean Piaget (1896-1980). In short, it is hard to defend a process, an endeavor that any trained clinician would avoid.

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