Leadership, Psychoanalysis, and Society

Michael Maccoby, Mauricio Cortina, Michael Maccoby, Mauricio Cortina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000575750
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Desarrollo empresarial

Leadership, Psychoanalysis, and Society describes leadership as a relationship between leaders and followers in a particular context and challenges theories of leadership now being taught.

This book includes essays that view leadership from psychoanalytic, social psychological, sociological, evolutionary, developmental anthropological, and historical points of view to fully describe the complexity of leadership relationships and personalities. These essays analyze the different kinds of leadership needed in organizations; the development of Black Leadership that provides hope for people who have been oppressed; the difference between charismatic and inspirational leadership and the kind of training needed to develop leaders from diverse backgrounds who inspire followers and collaborate with them to further the common good.

This book offers a guide to understanding the different types of leadership and will be of interest to business, government, health care, universities, and other organizations.

1 Leadership in Context

Michael Maccoby

DOI: 10.4324/9781003265122-1

Introduction

My understanding of leadership grew first from a study of engineers and managers in companies creating new technology (Maccoby, 1976), then from directing projects to improve the quality of working life (Maccoby, 1981) and subsequently from advising leaders in companies, unions, universities, government agencies in 36 countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and an organization with homes and schools for orphans and at-risk children in nine Latin American and Caribbean countries. In these studies and practice, I have built my view of leadership on the theories and writings of three great psychoanalytic thinkers: Sigmund Freud, Erich Fromm, and Erik H. Erikson.

Sigmund Freud

Freud viewed leaders in the context of a patriarchal society where he believed they were needed to control the passions of lazy and ignorant masses and force them to work. He wrote, “All is well if these leaders are persons who possess superior insight into the necessities of life and who have risen to the heights of mastering their own instinctual wishes” (Freud, 1927, 7).

According to Freud, leaders are most effective when they create the illusion that they love all their followers equally. Members of the group make the leader their ego ideal and consequently identify themselves with one another; “but the leader himself,” wrote Freud, “need love no one else, he may be of a masterful nature, absolutely narcissistic, self-confident and independent” (Freud, 1921, 123–4). I found that this description fits some but not all leadership relationships.

In his brief paper on Libidinal Types (Freud, 1931), Freud described three basic or normal personality types that I found useful for understanding leadership behavior. These are: the erotic whose main interest is loving and being loved, the obsessional who is self-reliant and dominated by a strict conscience, and the narcissistic, who is Freud's natural leader. According to Freud, narcissists have weak superegos and large amounts of aggression. They are independent and not open to intimidation. He wrote that “People belonging to this type impress others as being personalities; they are especially suited to act as support for others, to take on the role of leaders and to give a fresh stimulus to cultural development or to damage the established state of affairs” (Freud, 1931, 218).

Freud also described mixed types and proposed that the narcissistic-obsessional type was the most valuable for society. This type describes some of the most successful entrepreneurs who I have termed productive narcissists (Maccoby, 2000, 2003, 2007a). It also described Freud who combined the visionary leadership of a movement with careful attention to writing his theories and documenting clinical cases. I found a pattern in the histories of male productive narcissists. Typically, they do not identify with a father who is either absent or not admired. Supported by strong supportive mothers, they develop their own ego ideals. The lack of identification with a father explains their weak superegos, but their demanding ego ideals drive their ambition. Their narcissism gives innovative leaders confidence and protects them from inevitable attacks.

Erich Fromm

In Escape from Freedom, Fromm (1941) analyzes Adolph Hitler's authoritarian and sadistic personality as expressed in his ideology and behavior. Fromm proposes that in a time of extreme cultural change and economic depression and inflation, Hitler appealed to many Germans, especially those with an authoritarian-obsessive social character who had been humiliated by defeat in World War I, had lost their savings, and saw him as a savior. This analysis is consistent with Freud's view of the masses identifying with the narcissistic leader and with each other. Although Fromm did not use the term narcissist in this work, he did so twenty-two years later in The Heart of Man (Fromm, 1964) where he described Hitler's personality in terms of malignant narcissism, regressive feelings of omnipotence, and necrophilia, attraction to death and destruction. Fromm writes that Hitler thrived on violence, hate, and racism rationalized as the love of country, duty, and honor.

Consistent with Freud's analysis of the relationship between the leader and the group, Fromm writes that a narcissistic group wants a leader they can identify with. The greater the leader, the greater become the followers. Narcissists are most likely to fulfill this function. The narcissism of the leader who has no doubts attracts the narcissism of followers.

Fromm renamed Freud's personality types in terms of their modes of assimilation and relationships. The erotic became receptive, the obsessive became hoarding, and the narcissistic became exploitative. Fromm described both positive and negative behaviors of each type (Fromm, 1947). He added a fourth type, the marketing orientation, describing someone who lacks an inner identity and is driven to shape behavior to gain acceptance and approval from significant others. I found the marketing type increasingly describes both leaders and followers in the post-industrial service economy. Donald J. Trump expresses the marketing orientation combined with narcissistic grandiosity that serves as a defense against his emptiness and neediness (Maccoby, 2020). This combination results in an extreme need for praise and affirmation of the grandiose insecure persona he has constructed.

In some ways like Hitler, Trump appealed to Americans who distrusted elites and who felt anxious, forgotten, disrespected, and threatened by progressive movements that attacked their traditional culture. Hitler blamed Jews, Communists, and the countries that had defeated Germany for the disastrous economic state of these Germans, and he promised to make Germany great again. Trump blamed immigrants and other countries for stealing American jobs. He promised to make America great again by stopping immigration and bringing back jobs by imposing tariffs on foreign products. He created the illusion that he loved his followers, and many of his followers loved him. Populist leaders like Hitler and Trump amplify and focus the anger and resentment of people who have been left behind by cultural and economic change. They create the kind of narcissistic group Freud and Fromm described.

In contrast to Trump, Joseph Biden has a caring personality. He does not fit Freud's model of a narcissistic leader. He does not have cultish followers. He has supporters and collaborators. He is a problem solver who attempts to create cooperation for the common good. A challenge for him will be dealing with conflict, between political parties and within his own party.¹

When applying the types Freud discovered and Fromm modified to leaders I studied, I named the more productive versions of these types caring, exacting, visionary, and adaptive. I developed a questionnaire based on Freud's and Fromm's types. The results support their view that people express mixtures of these types (Table 1.1).²

Table 1.1 Personality Types

Freud	Fromm	Maccoby
Erotic	Receptive	Caring
Obsessive	Hoarding	Exacting
Narcissistic	Exploitative	Visionary
—	Marketing	Adaptive

Erik H. Erikson

In Gandhi's Truth, Erikson (1969) analyzes the development of Mohandas Gandhi, his identifications with his mother and father, his struggles to become pure by wrestling with his sexual and aggressive instincts, and how he developed his leadership philosophy of satyagraha, truth force. Erikson describes how Gandhi's personality was expressed in his leadership during a labor conflict. Erikson focuses on the obsessive aspects of Gandhi's personality, his moralism, and controlling behavior. Erikson describes Gandhi's relationship to his followers and the historical context from which he emerged as a national leader. He describes Gandhi's narcissistic behavior without using the term. Rather than offering generalizations about the leadership relationship, Erikson, like Fromm, provides a powerful case history of a leader who does not coerce but inspires followers to transform society. Of course, once Hitler inspired enough Germans to gain political power, he coerced the others to follow his disastrous leadership.

My Studies of Leadership

As the examples of Hitler and Gandhi show, leadership is a relationship between leaders and those they lead within a particular context. The context might be a culture in a historical time or an organizational role. Someone can gain followers and be a leader in one context but not in another. For example, Winston Churchill was the indispensable leader for Great Britain during World War II, but he was rejected by the British public both before and after the war. Before the war, he warned the public that Britain should prepare for war against Hitler's Germany, but the public saw him as an alarmist and warmonger. During the war, his courage and indominable spirit inspired Britain during its darkest time, but after the war, the public rejected his Tory imperialist ambition in favor of a more egalitarian socialist vision.

Churchill had the same personality when he was an effective leader and when he was not. His narcissistic self-confidence and image of invulnerability gave hope to the beleaguered wartime public but did not connect to a war-weary post-war public.

In the private sector, visionary entrepreneurs may effectively start a company but once it is up and running, they prove unable to lead it, because they lack the ability to relate to employees. In starting the company, they are able to inspire investors and a small team with their vision, but once a company grows, effective leaders need the ability to collaborate with others, to respect different viewpoints, and manage conflict creatively. A good example is described by Ed Catmull (2014), president of Pixar and Disney Animation. With a few exceptions, narcissistic visionaries have a hard time listening to others. The most effective narcissistic leaders partner with someone who has these skills.

The lesson is that personality traits alone don’t explain effective leadership. Leadership is a relationship between leader and led in a particular context and if the context changes, the relationship may also change.

But different personality types do fit particular contexts. And personality determines, in large part, how leaders practice leadership and their relation to followers.

Types of Leaders

Theories of leadership like Freud's assume one type of leadership, but there are different types of leaders. Different roles are best filled by different personality types. Leadership behavior may also be shaped by national cultures. In 1982, I was engaged by a Swedish think tank funded by the Employers Confederation to study Swedish leaders and recommend the kind of leadership needed for Sweden (Edstrom et al., 1985; Maccoby, 1991). The board of the think tank proposed the study because they were concerned that Sweden, a country that had prospered after World War II because of its neutrality, had become complacent and was falling behind in international competition, losing industries to Asian companies. Swedish leaders were proposin...