Leaders

Leadership is a central issue in most aspects of human society, perhaps most obviously so in areas such as organisational life and politics. Yet it is one aspect of a wider and perhaps even deeper topic, that of authority. In the over-simplified versions of psychoanalysis sometimes found in general psychology textbooks, the term ‘superego’ can mean much the same as ‘conscience’. It is usually painted in severe terms, as a punitive enforcer causing much painful guilt. However, developments in psychoanalytic thinking since Freud about the superego and about groups enable us to expand his model such that the peoples can see leader-follower or leader-public relationships in terms of a wide range of possibilities. However, the difficulty for national leaders is that national publics are emotionally diverse, and finding an appropriate response for all the feelings that may be present in the public at the time is an impossible task.