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The Georges' Wilson Reexamined: An Essay on Psychobiography*†

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Robert C. Tucker
Robert C. Tucker*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Abstract

Psychobiography interprets a life-course in terms of a consciously thought-out interpretation of the subject's personality. There are criteria for judging the relative merit of differing lines of interpretation. The Georges' Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, rightly recognized as a psychobiographical classic, proceeds from Harold Lasswell's formula for “political man” as one who seeks power to overcome a low self-estimate. The formula is in some respects questionable. The Georges' generally effective application of it falls short of full success. An alternative interpretation, based on the view that Wilson's life exemplified the neurotic search for glory as described by Karen Horney, is explored. The two different lines of interpretation are compared with respect to what Alexander George has called the “self-defeating pattern” in Wilson's career as a leader.

Type
Review Essays
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 71 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 606 - 618
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1977

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Footnotes

*

Alexander George and Juliette George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York: John Day, 1956) reprinted with a new preface (New York: Dover, 1964).

†

I am indebted to Professors A. E. Campbell, Fred I. Greenstein, and Arthur S. Link, and to Drs. Ellen Siegelman, Joseph Wm. Slap and Edwin A. Weinstein, all of whom read this essay in its original draft and kindly responded with critical comments and suggestions. Responsibility for remaining errors and inadequacies is wholly mind. I also wish to thank Juliette and Alexander George for a letter of response explaining the reasons they adopted the interpretive position that they did.

References

1 Lasswell, Harold D., Psychopathology and Politics, new ed. (New York: Viking Press, 1960), p. 9 Google Scholar. Here and throughout italics are in the original unless otherwise indicated in footnotes.

2 Kendall, Paul Murray, The Art of Biography (New York: Norton, 1965), p. 15 Google Scholar.

3 Cockshut, A. O. J., Truth to Life: The Art of Biography in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 16 Google Scholar.

4 George, Alexander L., “Some Uses of Dynamic Psychology in Political Biography: Case Materials on Woodrow Wilson,” in A Source Book for the Study of Personality and Politics, ed. Greenstein, Fred I. and Lerner, Michael (Chicago: Markham, 1971), p. 80 Google Scholar.

5 In his “Afterthoughts – Thirty Years Later,” appended to the 1960 new edition of Psychopathology and Politics, he himself noted that “… the study of politicians (and of politics in general) by methods largely inspired by psychoanalysis has made but modest progress to date” (p. 290). Since 1960, however, the psychobiographical study of political leaders has shown notable signs of progress, in Erikson, Erik H., Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Non-Violence (New York: Norton, 1969)Google Scholar, and a number of other studies.

6 For example, according to Glad, Betty, “Contributions of Psychobiography,” Handbook of Political Psychology, ed. Knutson, Jeanne N. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1973), p. 298 Google Scholar, “the systematic use of psychobiography for the exploration of the interface between personality, attitudes, and political behavior did not really begin until 1956, with the publication of the Georges' book – Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House – and Smith, Bruner, and Whit's Opinions and Personality.” Greenstein, Fred devotes most of a chapter of his Personality and Politics, 2nd ed. (New York: Norton, 1975) to an analysis of the Georges' study as a model of procedure in psychobiographyGoogle Scholar.

7 Brodie, Bernard, “A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Woodrow Wilson,” in Psychoanalysis and History, ed. Mazlish, Bruce (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), p. 123 Google Scholar. This review appeared originally in World Politics, 9 (1957), 413–422 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Lasswell, , Psychopathology and Politics, pp. 74–75 Google Scholar.

9 Lasswell, Harold D., Power and Personality (New York: Norton, 1948), p. 39 Google Scholar.

10 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 320.

11 George, Alexander L., “Power as a Compensatory Value for Political Leaders,” The Journal of Social Issues, Vol. XXIV, no. 3 (July, 1968), 30 Google Scholar.

12 Greenstein, has reasoned along similar lines in Personality and Politics, pp. 68–69, 92–93 Google Scholar.

13 Lasswell, , Power and Personality, p. 53 Google Scholar. Italics added.

14 Horney, Karen, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Toward Self-Realization (New York: Norton, 1950), pp. 18, 22 Google Scholar. The following exposition of the concept of the neurotic personality is a summary of Horney's analysis in this book.

15 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 6.

16 Ibid., p. 8.

17 Woodrow Wilsonand Colonel House, p. 114.

18 Ibid., p. 151.

19 Link, Arthur S., Woodrow Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947), pp. 206–207 Google Scholar.

20 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 317.

21 George, , “Some Uses of Dynamic Psychology,” p. 92 Google Scholar.

22 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, pp. 43, 12. Italics added.

23 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 9.

24 Ibid., pp. 11–12.

25 Noting the importance placed by the Georges on the pattern of reading retardation in boyhood, Greenstein finds that the Georges' interpretation of Wilson's, idealization of his father involved “reaction-formation” (Personality and Politics, p. 84)Google Scholar. This is fully plausible although the Georges do not use the term itself. In Freudian theory, reaction-formation represents an individual's attempt to defend against a certain repudiated tendency in himself by going to the opposite extreme.

26 Brodie, , “A Psychoanalytic Interpretation of Woodrow Wilson,” p. 115 Google Scholar.

27 George, , “Some Uses of Dynamic Psychology,” p. 83 Google Scholar. From one of the references to this article (p. 97) it appears that the quoted comment on Homey was based on a reading of two of her earlier works: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time (New York: Norton, 1937)Google Scholar and Our Inner Conflicts (New York: Norton, 1945)Google Scholar. The latter work presaged in many ways the fuller and more systematic account of the dynamics of the neurotic personality presented in Neurosis and Human Growth.

28 A notable historical example which I have attempted to document in detail, in terms basically of Horneyan theory, is Stalin. See Tucker, Robert C., Stalin As Revolutionary 1879–1929: A Study in History and Personality (New York: Norton, 1973), chaps. 3–4 and 12–14Google Scholar.

29 This hypothesis has been suggested by Mr. Harry Hirsch of the Princeton Politics Department in a seminar discussion. For Horney's classification of neurotic personality types and analysis of the main types and subtypes, see Neurosis and Human Growth, chaps, 8, 10 and 11.

30 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 21. One's interpretation of this statement would turn on what one took to be the precise meaning that Wilson placed on “love.” It could have carried, for example, the connotation of admiration or adulation, which in turn would be consonant with the “expansive” solution.

31 Ibid., p. 114.

32 Ibid., pp. 8, 9.

33 Ibid., p. 3.

34 Ibid., p. 29.

35 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 28. During his Princeton period Wilson made this statement, which I believe was unwittingly self-revelatory: ” … I am covetous for Princeton of all the glory that there is, and the chief glory of a university is always intellectual glory. The chief glory of a university is the leadership of the nation in the things that attach to the highest ambitions that nations can set themselves, those ideals which lift nations into the atmosphere of things that are permanent and do not fade from generation to generation” (Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House, p. 44).

36 Horney, , Neurosis and Human Growth, p. 86 Google Scholar.

37 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 24.

38 Ibid., p. 119.

39 Ibid., p. 31.

40 Ibid., p. 122.

41 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, pp. 31–32.

42 Ibid., p. 126.

43 Ibid., p. 122. Italics added.

44 Ibid., pp. 58, 116.

45 Ibid., p. 116.

46 Ibid., pp. 117–118.

47 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, pp. 118–119. On these points the Georges are in full agreement with Link. See Link, , Woodrow Wilson: The Road to the White House, p. 45 Google Scholar.

48 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 121. Italics added. See also the authors' statement in the Introduction (p. xx) that: “As President of the United States, his provocative behavior all but invited the catastrophic defeat he suffered when the Senate refused to ratify the Versailles Peace Treaty with the League of Nations in it.”

49 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 189.

50 Ibid., p. 197.

51 Quoted in Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 189. By “those in authority” House, of course, meant the president.

52 Horney, , Neurosis and Human Growth, p. 198 Google Scholar.

53 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 315.

54 I am indebted to Dr. Joseph Slap for elucidating in a personal communication the way in which unconscious fantasies can underlie certain repetitive forms of conduct or lead an individual to recreate situations which activate such forms of conduct.

55 Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House, p. 12.