ABSTRACT
Environmental determinism in this 1940s- 1950s political-personality theorizing derived from Marxist historical materialism in attributing a society's political consciousness to its social and political institutions, shaped in turn by its modes and relationships of production, and these by physical realities. Political science, despite its name, has always depended largely on humanistic approaches, using "thick" descriptive analyses to demonstrate how some theory or combination of factors can account in depth for a concrete case. The micro humanistic branch has come to be known as "psychobiography" or "psychohistory," and its macro branch has been labeled "national character" study. The preferred interdisciplinary border-crossing then shifted to a third frontier, political cognition, again with its distinguishing subject matter, method, and theory. The politics and psychology relationship has been lively and long-lasting as interdisciplinary affairs go, its longevity fostered by frequent shifting of its popular topics, methods, and theories.
