| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Scholars of politics, not just international relations, have eschewed the discipline of psychoanalysis. The renewed attacks on Freud and his fractious followers over the last generation apparently discouraged political scientists from exploring the usefulness of psychoanalytic methods. This essay asks whether, and under what circumstances, psychoanalysis can be a useful interpretive approach. What is the significance in human behavior of the unconscious, that is, of motives and forces of which we are commonly unaware? The argument is that in most, if not all, cases, psychoanalytically attuned approaches yield important insights about the wielding of power.
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