ABSTRACT
Although Freud did not use the term charisma, his theorizing has been critical in psychoanalytic and social scientific understandings of it. Psychoanalysts working in Freud’s wake expanded upon his conceptualization of the ties between leaders and followers. This chapter examines the work of the Chicago revisionist analyst Heinz Kohut, a theorist of narcissism who wrote extensively of the charismatic’s appeal, and the Harvard Business School professor and psychoanalyst Abraham Zaleznik, who promoted the charismatic leader as an alternative to the mid-century American ideal of the consensus leader. Freud’s model is still foundational in a range of fields – neuroscience among them.
