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Psycho-Cultural Hypotheses About Political Acts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Nathan Leites
Nathan Leites
Affiliation:
Yale
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Extract

During recent years there has been a noticeable rise in the production of, and interest in, a relatively new kind of analysis of political behavior. Anthropologists had become increasingly concerned with describing and explaining the entire way of life of the non-literate societies they were studying. Some of them came to believe that cultural anthropology should return to home, i.e., that the methods of observation and recording, and also the theories which they had developed on so-called primitive material should be applied to our own society and other large and complex groups. At the same time, psychologists and psychiatrists had become increasingly interested in describing and explaining the entire way of life, subjective and behavioral, of the individuals they were studying. They tended to be particularly interested, on the one hand, in the broad varieties of human nature (“character types” and “defense mechanisms”) and, on the other, in the unique structure of each case. But some of them came to be interested in ascertaining the psychological regularities, if any, in large groups. The confluence of these two developments in the human sciences led to the emergence of what we may call psycho-cultural analyses of social events.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , October 1948 , pp. 102 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1948

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References

1 [EDITOR'S NOTE. Even todays the great body of literature on national character traits is largely impressionistic. What distinguishes the analyses with which Mr. Leites is concerned from the works of say W. Dibelius or P. Cohen-Portheim on English national character is the statement of “psychological regularities in large groups” on the basis of observations systematically made and recorded by trained social scientists. Behavioral regularities in the membership of national groups are obviously of prime significance for the study of world politics.—W. T. R. F.]

2 Hartmann, Heinz and Kris, Ernest, “The Genetic Approach in Psychoanalysis,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, New York, 1945, I, 11.Google Scholar

3 This is obviously an incomplete hypothesis. Clearly it is not always true (see below), and clearly it is sometimes true. (Hence, stated without qualifications, it is false.) The question is: Under what particular conditions are adults apt to continue (in a way) certain early patterns? This is the type of question which is now beginning to become central (cf. footnote 22 below). The same considerations are applicable to the further types of psycho-cultural hypotheses to be mentioned below.

4 Clyde, and Kluckhohn, Florence R., “American Culture: Generalized Orientations and Class Patterns,” Conference of Philosophy, Science and Religion, New York 1946, pp. 106–28.Google Scholar

5 This point was also conveyed by Mead, Margaret, And Keep Your Powder Dry, New York, 1943.Google Scholar

6 Rumanian Culture and Behavior, New York, 1943, p. 54. Distributed by the Institute for Intercultural Studies.

7 Cf. Kecskemeti, Paul and Leites, Nathan, “Some Psychological Hypotheses on Nazi Germany,” Journal of Social Psychology, XXVI (1947), 143.Google Scholar

8 Propositions about national differences are of course subject to the suspicion of being derivatives from “stereotypes” which in their turn may be connected with “nationalist” reactions.

9 I am not referring to affirmations about a single cause. Cf. points (4) and (5) below.

10 Gorer, Geoffrey, “Themes in Japanese Culture,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York 1943, V, 106–24.Google Scholar

11 Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture, Boston, 1946.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 292.

13 Frequently, similar cultural results are produced by various combinations of various factors.

14 Most disagreements about “degrees of importance” of various factors are at present undecidable in this research area, as the term “degree of importance” itself usually does not receive a sufficiently precise definition.

15 This point has been formulated with particular clarity and force by Lass-well, Harold D., The Analysis of Political Behavior: An Empirical Approach, London, 1948, pp. 195–xs234.Google Scholar

16 Cf. Lasswell, Harold D., Psychopathology and Politics, Chicago, 1930.Google Scholar

17 Psycho-cultural analysis in the late 1930's and 1940's has largely taken child training patterns as given, and focussed on the investigation of their consequences. It is to be expected that the 1950's will drop this limitation, and attempt to develop a richer set of propositions about culture change (including zero change).

18 This is not a logically circular, but factual “feedback” system. Cf. Bateson, Gregory, “Morale and National Character,” in Watson, Goodwin, ed., Civilian Morale, Boston, 1942, pp. 71–91.Google Scholar

19 Benedict, Ruth, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, p. 260.Google Scholar This leads to the further question: What factors have determined the choice of such a fragile house structure? Presumably they were not all “environmental.” Little systematic speculation (and less research) has as yet been done on questions of this kind, as implied in footnote 17, above.

20 Bateson, loc. cit.

21 Margaret Mead, op. cit., and in “The Application of Anthropological Techniques to Cross-National Communication.” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, IX (1947), No. 4, pp. 133–52.

22 Mead, Margaret, “The Application of Anthropological Techniques to Cross-National Communication,” pp. 136–38.Google Scholar In the American case, there is adult continuation of certain childhood behavior patterns; in the British, an assumption of the adult role which one had first perceived (but not adopted) in childhood. What are the conditions making for invariance in the one case, and change in the other? (That is, what are the conditions making for the choice of different “psychological mechanisms”?) Psycho-dynamics and psycho-cultural analysis have during the last fifteen years enriched our inventory of “solutions” which human beings find in given situations. The 1950's will presumably more systematically attempt to enrich knowledge about the conditions fostering or hampering the adoption of any given solution.

28 Cf. Kluckhohn, Clyde and Kelly, William H., “The Concept of Culture,” in Linton, Ralph, ed., The Science of Man in the World Crisis, New York, 1946, pp. 87–88.Google Scholar

24 When a probably inexpedient term like “national character” is used by the researchers here discussed, it carries no connotations of national biological peculiarities. Thus Geoffrey Gorer, loc. cit. states: “… I have assumed … that the genetic peculiarities of the Japanese do not involve any … psychological differences from other groups of human beings.”

25 Cf. Clyde Kluckhohn and William H. Kelly, loc. cit.

26 It is highly likely that such differences “cog into each other,” e.g., that each “promotes” the other. That is, it is unlikely that they are “mutually irrelevant.” Cf. Bateson, loc. cit.

27 Benedict, Ruth, “The Study of Cultural Patterns in European Nations,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, VIII (1946), No. 8, pp. 274–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

28 Ibid., pp. 277–78. Presumably the position of a culture on this variable has politically relevant consequences, e.g., as to reactions to politically induced property loss. A some what fuller explanation of the political impact of, e.g., the agrarian changes in Rumania after the first war may be thus obtained.

29 A complete and systematic typology would presumably be isomorphic with one of relationships established in dynamic psychology.

30 The American People: A Study in National Character, New York, 1948, pp. 133–34.

31 Cf. Parsons, Talcott, “Certain Primary Sources and Patterns of Aggression in the Social Structure of the Western World,” Psychiatry, X (1947), No. 2, 167–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 Gorer, Geoffrey, Burmese Personality, New York, 1945.Google Scholar Distributed by the Institute for Intercultural Studies.

33 Ibid., quoting Sir James G. Scott, p. 42.

34 Gorer, Geoffrey, The American People, p. 133.Google Scholar

35 I am now adding some specific hypotheses about the interrelations between Burmese childhood and adulthoood to Mr. Gorer's points.

36 “Hitler's Imagery and German Youth,” Psychiatry, V (1942), No. 4, 475–93.

87 “The Historical and Cultural Roots of Anti-Semitism,” in Psychoanalysis and the Social Sciences, Geza Roheim, ed., New York, 1947, pp. 313–56.

38 Hartmann and Kris, loc. cit.

39 “Themes in Japanese Culture,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, 1943, V, 106–24.

40 The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, loc. cit.

41 Cf. Bateson's, loc. cit., formulation: “We shall not describe varieties of character … in terms of … [their] position on a continuum between extreme dominance and extreme submissiveness, but we shall instead try to use … some such continua as ‘degree of interest in … dominance-submission.’”