Why Freud matters: Psychoanalysis and international relations revisited
| Author | Kurt Jacobsen |
| DOI | 10.1177/0047117813492448 |
| Date | 01 December 2013 |
| Published date | 01 December 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Relations
27(4) 393 –416
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117813492448
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Why Freud matters:
Psychoanalysis and
international relations
revisited
Kurt Jacobsen
University of Chicago
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.
Keywords
Freud, international relations theory, psychology, security dilemma, Vietnam, war on terror
Scholars of politics, not just international relations (IR), long have neglected psycho-
analysis. The attacks on Freud and his followers over the last generation evidently dis-
couraged political scientists from exploring psychoanalytic methods.1 An earlier
generation of scholars – Paul Roazen, Fred Alford, Michael Rogin, Fred Greenstein,
Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph, and others – had taken a deep interest and produced many
works of distinction. That interest is long gone, except for a minor and embattled pres-
ence in the sub-field of political psychology. Even there, little has changed in three
decades since a volume entitled Psychological Models in International Politics appeared,
devoid of a single reference to psychoanalysis.2 Freud, as Paul Roazen lamented long
Corresponding author:
Kurt Jacobsen, PIPES, Judd Hall 124, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Email: jkjacobs@uchicago.edu
492448IRE27410.1177/0047117813492448International RelationsJacobsen
2013
Article
394 International Relations 27(4)
ago, ‘has remained throughout political science something of a spook’.3 Roazen referred
to American political science. Critics of this summation combed political science to cite
at best a few marginal forays (usually British or Commonwealth in origin) into psycho-
analysis, which is of interest only insofar as a particular analyst thereby buttresses his or
her paradigmatic preferences in constructivism or poststructural discourse analysis.4
A major methodological objection to psychoanalysis is that an investigative means
devised for individuals is inadvisable to apply to collective entities. States cannot possess
egos, ids, or superegos – although a case has been made by Zizek, and Erich Fromm long
before him, for the palpable influence of an ‘institutional unconscious’.5 Freud was alert
to the perils of overstepping domains when he pondered whether civilizations could be
neurotic.6 Psychoanalysts, an eminent analyst cautions, are:
uniquely qualified to understand, analyze and assist the patient on the couch, but as soon as they
move away from this personal confrontation (or the modification of a small group) to comment
on matters outside their training and experience, the value of their comments would appear to
depend on their knowledge and wisdom, not on their qualification.7
While some scholars draw upon cognitive frameworks to analyze otherwise over-
looked political phenomena, psychoanalysis remains firmly on the fringes of IR where
Lacanian discourse analysts treat us to such illuminating sentences as, ‘It then endeavors,
via constructing fantasies, to use transitive discourse objects to sustain the desire for the
constructed dichotomies, which hankers for discursive closure’.8 Psychoanalysis, con-
trary to his proponents, neither begins nor ends with Lacan.
Few scholars deny that psychological factors exert a significant effect upon politics.
Hans Morgenthau wrote that international politics was primarily psychological in char-
acter, and that the personal inclinations and oddities of leaders can at crucial times matter
a great deal.9 If anarchy is ‘what we make of it’ (and the rise of Athenian power created
anxiety in Sparta), then it pays to ask who we are in our inner worlds as well as in our
outer guises when we make something out of whatever we behold.10 At what point in an
explanation do psychological factors – from personal quirks to group dynamics to mass
perceptions – become important? From the very beginning of our lives, is the psychoana-
lytic answer. Indeed, psychoanalysis aims to change where the beginning is reckoned to
begin in any explanatory probe.
In the 1930s, radical analyst Wilhelm Reich was really rather moderate when arguing
that psychoanalysis had a role in explaining why actors pursue what to the external
observer are irrational, blinkered, and self-injurious actions.11 Reich’s intent was not
only to explain ‘deviations from rationality’ but to inquire into the adequacy of our notion
of rationality, especially as this seductive and problematic concept is buffeted by chang-
ing contexts and personal interests.12 Misperception is a widely accepted phenomenon in
IR now, as is the imputed sway in decision-making circles of analogical reasoning, such
as the domino theory.13 But important differences exist between Freud’s depth psychol-
ogy and, to use shorthand for a bundle of related practices, ‘cognitive psychology’.14 The
purpose of psychoanalysis is to pry into our unconscious drives and defenses to illumi-
nate their influence over the motives and behavior of the beholder as well as the beheld.15
Cognitive psychology, unlike psychoanalysis, usually exempts practitioners from being
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