Book Review: Western Europe: Kurt Schumacher
| Date | 01 March 1967 |
| Published date | 01 March 1967 |
| DOI | 10.1177/002070206702200143 |
| Author | Gerald Freund |
| Subject Matter | Book Review |
132
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
Communist
domination"
One
might
quibble
and ask
how,
but
Strauss
avoids
the
point.
Hardly
new-
certainly
not fresh;
and
barely
credible.
Interesting
for
documenting
Strauss'
position,
but
little
else.
Unsversity
of
Toronto
JEAN
EDwARD
SMITH
KURT
ScrHUmACHER.
A
Study
in
Personality
and Political Behavior.
By
Lewis
J.
Edinger.
1965.
(Stanford: Stanford
University
Press.
viii,
390pp.
$8.95)
The
mission
of
this
book
is to
explain
rather
than
to
defend
or
attack
the
behaviour of
Kurt
Schumacher,
the
well-known
German
Social
Democratic
leader. The
author,
a
Professor
of
Political
Science
at
Washington University says
at
the
outset
that
the
reader
interested
in
a
detailed
account
of
Schumacher's life
will
not
find
it in
his
book,
for
this
is
a
pioneer
study
of
political
leadership
bringing
to
bear
"the
findings
and methods
of
the
behavioral
approach"
which
the author
confidently
believes
can
achieve
"a
more
sophisticated
and
objective
understanding
of
individual
political
leadership
than
is
present
in
much
of
the
popular
literature.
In
his
conclusion,
Edinger
attributes
Schumacher's
behaviour
and
attitudes
to
"character
traits
clinically
identified
with
those
of
an
obsessive-compulsive
personality striving
to
adjust
to
the
objective
environment
in
a
socially acceptable
manner"
(page
275).
Edinger
explains
not
only
Schumacher's
rough
and
to
many intolerable
personal
characteristics
but
also
the
positions
he
took
in
domestic
and
foreign
policy
matters
in
terms
of
the
psychology of
his
personality
He
is
said
to
have
entered
into
an
indissoluble
union
with
politics
because
it
was indispensable
for
his
psychological
well-being.
In
explaining
Schumacher's behaviour, emphasis
is
put
on
his
reaction
against
the
maternal-feminine
influences
of
his
early
youth and
the
sharp
person-
ality
crisis
set
on
by
his
loss
of
an arm
in
the
First
World
War.
This
reviewer
stands
in
awed
adnmration of
Professor
Edinger's
exhaustive
research
into
Schumacher's life
and
career
and
his
valiant
effort
to
penetrate
the mysteries
of
clinical
psychology.
Unfortunately
this
also
leads
Edinger
to
the
adoption
of
much
jargon
which
makes
this
book
less
readable
and
prevents
rather
than
assists
the
reader
fully
to
comprehend
the
basic
argument.
Even
more questionable
than
the
jargon
is
whether
the
framework
of
analysis may
not have
led
the
author
to
some
unwarranted
conclu-
sions.
For
while
the
account
of
Schumacher's life
is
complete
and
in
most
ways
satisfactory Professor
Edinger's
methodology
and
his
insis-
tence
that
his
is
a
"case
study"
rather
than
a biography
in
the
conven-
tional
sense
lead
the reader
to wonder to
what extent
Schumacher's
actions
as
a
party
leader
and
prominent
political
personality
especially
in
the
postwar
period,
have
been
psychologized.
Almost
all
his
actions
are
attributed
to
personality
conflicts;
virtually
nothing
is
left
to
be
attributed
to
intellectual
conviction.
This
problem
is
sharpened
by
the
author's
admission
that
in
studies
of
this
sort-by
which
he
means
studies
adopting a
frame
of
reference
drawn
from the
observations
of
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