Prologue: Leadership, Psychoanalysis, and Society

In a time like the present of rapid change in cultures and economies, a time of extreme threats and promising opportunities, leadership will determine the future of countries, organizations, the environment, and our lives. To increase our ability to find and follow good leadership, it is essential to understand the leader-follower relationship and the personality of would-be leaders.

Eleven students of leadership present their views in these articles. They view leadership through different lenses. What they have in common is the view that, as Michael Maccoby puts it, leadership is a relationship in a context. Although the personality of leaders determines their behavior, they only become leaders if they have followers. And people follow someone for different reasons. These reasons depend on the needs and values of followers as well as the qualities of leaders. Cultural values and historical challenges also shape leader-follower relationships.

The complexity of leadership relationships and personalities requires analysis by different academic disciplines, and we have included essays that view leadership from psychoanalytic, social psychological, sociological, evolutionary, developmental, anthropological, and historical points of view. Some of the essays include personal observations and experience of leadership.

The material in these essays can be grouped in two main themes. One is the leader-follower relationship and how it is formed in different contexts. The other focuses on the personalities of leaders and how their motivation and philosophies are expressed in their leadership behavior.

The leader-follower relationship

Leadership is a relationship in a context.

Mauricio Cortina describes egalitarian and antiauthoritarian leader-follower relations in pre-history reporting that leadership among illiterate prehistorical nomadic hunter-gatherers was unobtrusive and antiauthoritarian as it is with contemporary nomadic foragers around the world. Social hierarchies and authoritarian leadership emerged starting with large agricultural societies. In a psychological-anthropological study of a Mexican village, Fromm and Maccoby found that peasants only accept leadership when they are threatened or for promising projects, attitudes toward leadership common in peasant societies similar to Cortina’s description of the nomadic forager societies studied by anthropologists during the last 100 years.

Why do people follow a leader? There are different reasons. Sigmund Freud viewed that the masses follow leaders either because they are coerced or because they share the illusion that the leader loves them, and they make him their ego ideal. Erich Fromm added that they identify with the leader and with each other.

The description of Black leadership in the U.S. by Robert Cosby and Janice Edwards illustrates how a people who have been oppressed and threatened for many years have followed leaders who have protected them and provided hope for a better future.

Jon Stokes writes that leadership relationships can result in either the development or regressive behavior of followers. He proposes that charismatic leaders cause regression as followers substitute the ego ideal of the leader for their own while inspiring leaders provide an example of a progressive ego ideal to which followers can aspire more progressively.

This description of the charismatic leader-follower relationship fits the relationship between Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers as well as that of Donald Trump and his base that believes his lies and delusions and accepts his ethics in place of their own. The image of the inspiring leader fits less toxic relationships such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and their followers.

In another context Charles Heckscher describes a change from bureaucratic to more collaborative relationships as standardized work roles are replaced by teams, especially with knowledge workers. He argues that the ability to lead wide-ranging public conversations is increasingly important in a highly polarized context. Bob Duckles reports that even factory jobs are made more productive when managers take account of workers’ feelings and thinking. Heckscher reports a case where a leader engages knowledge workers in developing values to adapt a company to a changing business environment. Maccoby cites Gallup surveys indicating that only a minority of employees in the U.S. and other highly industrialized societies are engaged by their work. He lists the kinds of behavior and actions by leaders that results in motivated employees. These leadership actions are effective in different national cultures, but the type of leadership-follower relationship varies. For example, Maccoby observed that in China, the cultural revolution abolished the traditional Confucian, paternalistic relationships, but with the ethnic Chinese of Taiwan and Singapore, this relationship still exists.

The personality of leaders

Freud’s view of a patriarchal leader is a narcissist, someone strong and independent with no need for reinforcement from others, who loves no one but himself or others only so far as they serve his needs. Jeffrey Pfeffer reports studies that show that many narcissists reach the top of organizations. He agrees with Maccoby’s differentiation of productive narcissists who have a progressive philosophy from unproductive and malignant narcissists, but he is concerned that there are few of these, and leadership training is not preparing non-narcissists to gain top leadership positions.

Freud contrasted normal narcissists from erotic and obsessive personality types. Fromm added the marketing orientation as a fourth type. Both Freud and Fromm observed that people are a mixture of types. Maccoby has proposed leadership versions of these types and has shown that different types fit different leadership roles. Tim Scudder, building on Elias Porter’s interpretation of Fromm’s types, has employed psychometrics to develop an instrument that is used to enlighten both leaders and followers about their motivation, strengths, overuse of strengths, and management of conflict. Scudder has also statistically validated Freud’s types.

Most theories of personality focus on motives (as in Freud’s types) and temperament (as in the Big Five). Maccoby suggests that these factors are incomplete. People with the same psychoanalytic type behave differently according to their personal philosophies, their purpose and values.

Rafael Ramirez adds another important element to leadership personality: the aesthetics of leaders, how they organize the perceptions of those they seek to lead. He describes how populist leaders like Donald Trump capture the minds of followers with images and slogans.

Freud and Fromm wrote only about male leaders. Maccoby reports studies on differences between men and women leaders and suggests that women as national leaders have been more effective than men in dealing with the coronavirus epidemic. Cosby and Edwards report an increase in effective Black women leaders.

How do people become leaders? How does the personality of leaders develop? As an example, Paul Elovitz, a psychohistorian, describes how he became a leader in his field and a student of the personality of American presidents. He traces the development of Donald Trump and Joe Biden from their childhoods to the presidency, describing the formation of both their motivations and personal philosophies.

These analyses provide a basis for understanding variations in leader-follower relationships and the impact of the personalities of leaders. To build on this understanding we can improve our ability to develop leaders from diverse backgrounds who inspire followers and collaborate with them to further the common good.

Michael Maccoby, Ph.D. Mauricio Cortina, M.D.

Issue Editors

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michael Maccoby

Michael Maccoby, Ph.D., is President of The Maccoby Group, PC.

Mauricio Cortina

Mauricio Cortina, M.D., is affiliated with the Washington School of Psychiatry.