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HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL February 13, 1902-December 1S, 197S BY GABRIEL A. ALMOND HA R O ~ D D . ~ A S S W E ~ ~ ranks among the half dozen cre- ative innovators in the social sciences in the twentieth century. Few wouIct question that he was the most original and productive political scientist of his time. While still in his twenties and early thirties, he planned and carrie(1 out a re- search program demonstrating the importance of personal- ity, social structure, ant! culture in the explanation of political phenomena. In the course of that work he employecI an array of methodologies that includect clinical and other kinds of interviewing, content analysis, pare-experimental tech- niques, and statistical measurement. It is noteworthy that two decacles were to elapse before this kinct of research program and methodology became the common property of a disci- pline that until then had been dominatecl by historical, legal, and philosophical methods. Lasswell was born in 1902 in DonnelIson, Illinois (popu- lation cat 3001. His father was a Presbyterian clergyman, his mother, a teacher; an oIcler brother diecl in childhood. His early family life was spent in small towns in Illinois anct In- cliana as his father moved from one pulpit to another, and it stressed intellectual and religious values. Although the re- gional milieu of his chilclhoo(1 anct adolescence might suggest that Lasswell was raised in an intellectual backwater, in.fact 249
250 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS it was an unusually rich environment. He was especially in- fluencec! in aclolescence by a physician uncle who was familiar with the works of Freucl; by an English teacher in the Deca- tur, Illinois, high school he attendect who introduced him to Karl Marx and Havelock Ellis; and by a brilliant young teacher of high school civics, William Cornell Casey, who later became a professor of sociology at Barnard College in Co- lumbia University. He excelled in high school, edited the school newspaper, gave the valectictory address at graclua- tion, and was awarclect a scholarship to the University of Chi- cago after winning a competitive examination in modern his- tory and English. When Lasswell entered the University of Chicago in . 19 ~ ~at age sixteen the university was in the third decade of its remarkable growth. At a time when sociology as a cur- r~culum diet not yet exist at most universities, Chicago had a major department that was staffed by such giftec} theorists and researchers as W. I. Thomas, Albion W. Small, and Rob- ert Park. Its philosophy department was dominated by real- ists ant] empiricists such as James Tufts and George Herbert Mead. Its economics department, in which l~asswell majored, included Jacob Viner, John M. Clark, Harry Alvin Millis, and Chester Wright. Its political science department was soon to begin its dramatic rise, but in Lasswell's undergracluate years the department was in transition with Henry Pratt {udson soon to retire, and Charles Edward Merriam in the wings. Lasswell was a member of a graduate cohort that incluclecl Robert Redfield, Louis Wirth, and Herbert Blumer. His graduate years in the Department of Political Science at Chicago coincided with the publication of Merriam's man- if esto, The Present State of the Study of Politics, in ~ 92 ~ and with Merriam's and Gosnell's survey study of nonvoting in Chicago (19241. In The Present State, Merriam proposed that two steps be taken to make the study of politics more scientific: (~) the
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 251 exploration of the psychological and sociological bases of po- litical behavior, and (2) the introduction of quantification in the analysis of political phenomena. The nonvoting study was a demonstration of the uses of social-psychological hypoth- eses and quantitative methods in the explanation of political phenomena. It was a survey of the "political motives" of some 6,000 nonvoters in the Chicago mayoral election of 1923; individuals to be surveyed were selectee! by a "quota control" sampling procedure that was intenclec! to match the census demographic distributions. In the immediate aftermath of this stucly and during Lasswell's graduate student (lays, Har- oIct Foote Gosnel1 (then a first-term assistant professor of po- litical science) conducted! the first experimental study in po- litical science and what may very well have been the first experimental study in the social sciences outside of psychol- ogy. This was a survey of the effects on voting of a nonpar- tisan mad! canvass in Chicago that was intended to get out the vote in the national and local elections of 1924 and 1925. The experimental technique Gosnell devisect was quite rig- orous: there were carefully matched experimental and con- troi groups, clifferent stimuli were employed, anct the results were analyzed with the most sophisticated statistical tech- niques then available. Reflecting the programmatic and com- parative vision of these researches, follow-up studies of vot- ing turnout were made by Gosnel1 in Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, and Switzerland. While Harolc! Gosnel1 was chosen by Merriam to develop the statistical component of his early 1920s vision, it was Har- old Lasswel1 who was encourages! to develop the clinical, psy- chological, anct sociological components. As a young gradu- ate student, Lasswel1 published an article in 1923 entitled "Chicago's Old First Ward," and in collaboration with Mer- ~ National Municipal Review, 1 2: 1 27-3 1.
252 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS riam he publisher! another in 1924 on public opinion ancT public utility regulation.2 Merriam threw out two challenges to the brilliant and am- bitious young political scientist. The first came out of Mer- riam's wartime experience as chief American propagandist in Rome; the seconc! arose from Merriam's interest in the char- acteristics of political leaders anct the uses of the stucly of the abnormal anct the psychopathological in explaining normal and typical behavior. Merriam's first interest the impor- tance of morale, propaganda, and civic training in the expla- nation of political behavior led to Lasswell's 1927 cloctoral dissertation, Propaganda Technique in the World War, and ulti- mately to his invention of systematic content analysis anc! its uses in WorIc! War Il. Merriam's seconct interestthe psy- chological and personality aspects of leaclership and the uses of the abnormal in the explanation of the normallect to a series of articles by Lasswell on political psychology and per- sonality in politics, culminating in his Psychopathology anal Pol- itics. Lasswell's doctoral dissertation on propaganda in the 1914-1918 war was a systematic effort to place World War propaganda experience in the context of a theory of politics. Although there was something of antiwar muckraking in its tone, it also tract the marks of rigorous scholarship: careful operational clefinitions, specification of the techniques of propaganda, and the conditions that limit or facilitate their effectiveness. Lasswell tract done fielct research in Europe for this stucly, interviewing scholars and governmental officials regarding aspects of the propaganda experience a-cl the Great War. He also anticipated his later invention of content analysis in a simple quantitative study "Prussian School- 2 "Current Public Opinion and the Public Service Commissions," in: Public Utility Regulation, ed. M. L. Cooke (New York: Ronald Press, 1924).
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 253 books and International Amity" which was carrier] out in connection with his dissertation. (In the study Lasswell counted ant! evaluated the significance of the references to national superiority, military glory, foreign inferiority, mili- tary heroes, and the like in textbooks approved by the Prus- sian Ministry of Education after the establishment of the Weimar Republic.~3 Lasswell was appointed assistant professor of political sci- ence at Chicago in 1926 and soon embarked on researches in political psychology. Papers that he published from 1925 to 1929 showed him to be engaged in a search of the litera- ture concerned with political psychology and political per- sonality. One paper published in the American fournal of Psychiatry in 1929 recommended that psychiatrists keep ade- quate personality records ant! make them available to bona fide researchers; another published in the American Political Science Review the same year argued the case for the use of cIata on mentally ill persons with some involvement in politics as one approach to the analysis of the relationship between personality ant! politics. This literature search and his con- cern with the improvement of psychiatric recor~keeping were incidental to the preparation and publication of Lass- well's extraordinary book, Psychopathology and Politics, which appeared in 1930 when he was twenty-eight. I,asswell's work in preparing the book was extensive. He had been grantee! a postdoctoral fellowship by the Social Sci- ence Research Council for 1927-1928 and spent most of that year in Berlin undergoing psychoanalysis at the hands of Theoclor Reik, a student of FreucI. There is a report that he made a presentation at a Freud seminar urging that psychi- atric records be kept in order to facilitate research. He also 3"Prussian Schoolbooks and International Amity," Journal of Social Forces, 3(1925):718-22.
254 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS discussed these ideas with leading psychiatrists in Vienna and Berlin. In late 1928 and 1929 he consulted with the psychi- atric directors of the most important mental institutions on the eastern seaboard, tapping their memories of cases of pol- itician patients. With their permission he examined psychi- atric records at St. Elizabeth's in Washington, D.C.; Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital near Baltimore; Pennsylvania State Hospital in Philadelphia; Bloomingdale Hospital of White Plains, New York; and Boston Psychopathic Hospital. He also gave depth psychiatric interviews to a number of "normal" volunteers. Psychopathology and Politics was the first relatively system- atic, empirical study of the psychological aspects of political behavior, and it coincided with the very beginnings of the culture and personality movement in anthropology and psy- chiatry. l~asswell was already in communication with anthro- pologist Edward Sapir, then a colleague at the University of Chicago, as well as with the New York psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan. The three of them began to plan an ambitious program of culture and personality research in the middle and late 1920s. Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa ap- peared two years before Psychopathology and Politics, and Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture appeared four years later. The first publication of the authoritarian personality research of the Frankfurt School- Studien uber Autoritat und Familie ap- peared in 1936, and the Authoritarian Personality of Adorno, Frenkel-Brunswick, Daniel Levinson, and Nevitt Sanford only appeared in 1950. Chapters 6 through 9 of Psychopathology and Politics report Lasswell's case materials. These are not and are not repre- sented as being findings or scientific explanations of political behavior. They are presented as clinically supported hypoth- eses regarding the personality-etiologicall bases of recruit- ment to different kinds of political roles and attitudes. Thus
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 255 Lasswell draws on clinical material anct his own depth inter- views to suggest why some inclivicluals become agitators anct others become administrators. Similarly he illuminates the relationship between personality variables and ideological propensities such as ultrapatriotism, internationalism, paci- fism, socialism, and anarchism. The rest of the book clears with methoclological anct theo- retical issues. Among the methoclological issues he treats are the uses of life histories in political science; the uses of the study of the deviant or the abnormal for the unclerstanding of the normal; the dimensions used in typologies of politi- cians, the prolonged, "depth," or psychoanalytic interview as a mocle of research in the psychological bases of social be- havior; ant! the technique of free association as a methoc! of getting data on politically relevant feelings and attitudes. He also presents a general theory of political behavior derived from a review of the various propositions of the psychoana- {ytic movement. This proposition, presented in the form of an equation, recluces political behavior in the sense of choice of political roles and ideologies to (displacements of private, essentially "Oedipal" ant! "libidinal" motives as ra- tionalizec! in terms of political ideas ant! issues. It is a matter of some contention among Lasswell students as to whether this equation was literally intenclec! or was a rhetorical exag- geration to draw attention to the importance of psychological motivation in the explanation of political phenomena. Sup- porting the reductionist position is the fact that the Freudian movement at this time took a similarly reductionist stanct in the explanation of social, political, and aesthetic phenomena. Supporting the rhetorical interpretation is the fact that in this as in later work, Lasswell interprets unconscious oeclipal and libiclinal tendencies as powerful constraints on rational, object-oriented behavior, constraints that can be mitigates! by psychotherapy. This was to be a theme of Lasswell's entire
256 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS intellectual career; that professional political science had the obligation of discovering or inventing a "politics of preven- tion" of war and other evils; that there was a "commonwealth of human dignity" to which it ought to aspire; and that both of these required substantial psychotherapeutic inputs. This dualism and ambivalence of reductionism and thera- peutic optimism in some sense characterized the three prin- ciple influences on Lasswell's thought; the Presbyterianism of his family and childhood background, which deals with the question of how good may be wrested from an intractable evil; the Marxist-sociological background, which deals with the necessarily revolutionary confrontation of the traditional and reactionary with progressive forces; and the Freudian- psychoanalytic background, which deals with the confronta- tion of neurosis with psychotherapy. Lasswell's later contri- butions to political psychology took the constraint rather than the reductionist perspective. It is of interest that in an "Af- terthoughts" he wrote for the 1960 edition of Psychopathology and Politics, he makes no reference to his equation; instead he tells us that at the time of writing the book he already shared in a revisionist ego-psychology trend, a movement in psychoanalysis that affirmed the importance of rational and . ~ cognitive processes. In addition to the empirical and methodological parts, Psychopathology and Politics included a theoretical or meta- methodological part. Chapters 12 and 13 "The Personality System and Its Substantive Reactions" and "The State as a Manifold of Events" presented Lasswell's framework of po- litically relevant variables and a strategy of political expla- nation, which moves from intrapsychic processes anc! their etiology, to interpersonal and social processes, to domestic and international political processes, and back again. Person- ality, economy, society, and politics are considered and dealt with as interacting systems.
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 257 What Lasswell presented as a theoretical framework and set of hypotheses in Psychopathology and Politics became his research program cluring the clecacle of the 1930s. Consider the intellectual balls he was juggling during these years. For the psychiatrists whom he had been urging to keep records of their interviews in the interest of scientific re- search, he set up a mocle! laboratory in his own offices in the Social Science Research Building at the University of Chi- cago. AdvisecI and encouraged by psychiatrists Harry Stack Sullivan of Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital and William A. White of St. Elizabeth's, he devised a procedure under which skin conductivity, pulse rate, respiration, and body movements of experimental subjects were measured as the spoken word was recorded. Three articles describing this procedure and reporting preliminary results appeared in psychoanalytic journals in 1935, 1936, and 1937. Unfortu- nately these research records were clestroyec! in 1938 in an accident that befell the vans moving Lasswell's effects to Washington on his departure from Chicago. This project, if not the first, was certainly one of the earliest efforts to link physiological, autonomic, ant] behavioral variables with com- munications and personality processes. If this laboratory research was an effort to implement the methoclological message of Psychopathology and Politics, then World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1934) was an elaboration of the theoretical perspectives spelled out in the final chap- ters of Psychopathology and Politics. Lasswell callecl his approach to political explanation nonfigurative analysis. In nonfigurative analysis the political process is definect as conflict over the definition ant! distribution of the dominant social values- income, deference, and safety by and among elites. In his first paragraph he proposes the formula long associated with his name: "Politics is the study of who gets what, when, and how." Political science research hence requires the analysis of
258 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS the social origins, skills, personal traits, attitudes, values, anc! assets of florid elites, ant! their changes over time. Proper understancting of political processes calls for a combination of equilibrium and developmental analysis and the adoption of contemplative and manipulative attitudes towarc! political change. Equilibrium analysis emphasizes the systemic, the re- current, the stable interaction of economic, social, political, and personality variables; developmental analysis stresses the clynamic, the dialectical and transformative aspects of social change. The contemplative attitude contributes to the dis- covery of "regularities," "laws," principles of social behavior. The manipulative attitude subjects these regularities to the test of imagination, tracing the consequences of changes in conditions and policies, extrapolating trends, ant] the like. What Lasswell had in minct by the manipulative attitude is not fully clear in these passages. From the beginning he had a commitment to a moral and consequential political science, but his earlier work focused on politics and power. In his early schematization of political values as income, deference, and safety, he describes them rather casually as illustrative and representative values not a complete set of political goals. He did not begin to clear explicitly with the political value and public policy realm until his association with Myres McDougal and the Yale School of Law in the late 1930s. The bulk of World Politics and Personal Insecurity illustrates his method ant] approach. In chapters 2 through 6, conflicts among ant! within nations are related to human aggressive propensities, as well as the structural conditions of interna- tional relations, anc! domestic societies. The consequences of economic and class structure, cultural diffusion, and the me- dia of communication, are the topics of chapters 7, 8, and 9. In chapter 10, politics, culture, and personality are relatecl in an interesting discussion of trends in American society: he treats the possibilities of the emergence of right-wing ex-
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 259 tremism and fascism and the approach of political psychiatry in a politics of prevention. A final chapter deals in socio- logical and psychoanalytic terms with the prospects of peace and social justice. A briefer book, Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How, was published in 1936; it presenter! much of what was argued in World Politics but in a more succinct and more schematic form. If Lasswell has written a textbook, then this is it. It clefined politics as the struggle among elite groups over such repre- sentative values as income, deference, and safety. The actors in these conflictual processes are groups organized around skill, class, personality, ant! attitude characteristics; they em- ploy in different ways and with different effects the political instrumentalities of symbol manipulation, material rewards and sanctions, violence, and institutional practices. These three books, which were written over a six-year pe- riod, constitute Lasswell's most important contributions to political theory. In this same productive clecade of the 1930s, Lasswell was involved in two other major enterprises. He con- solidatec! his earlier interest in propaganda research by col- laborating with R. D. Casey and B. 1~. Smith in the prepara- tion of an annotated bibliography of some 4,500 items. It was publisheclin 1935asa book Propagan(laundPromotionatAc- tivities: An Annotated Bibliography with an introduction on the theory of propaganda by Lasswell. Eater editions contin- uec} to guide and cocTify the field! of communications ancT public opinion research. In an effort to implement the re- search program laicl out in World Politics, Lasswell anct a num- ber of his graduate students carried out a field stucly of prop- agancia and political agitators and organizers among the unemployed in the city of Chicago during the depression anct New Deal years. A book coauthored with Dorothy Blumen- stock Jones reported these findings in lL939. The first phase in Lasswell's career came to an end in
260 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1938. He left the University of Chicago to join forces with psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan ant] Yale anthropologist Ed- warc! Sapir, under the auspices of the William Alanson White Psychiatric Founciation. There was both "push" and "pull" behind! these plans to leave. Under the presidency of Robert Maynard Hutchins, the hospitality of the University of Chi- cago to the empirical social sciences hacI notably cooled. Mer- riam's department came under criticism on grounds of "number crunching" and "psychologizing," as well as internal recruitment. Hutchins's conception of political science was humanistic, deductive, even Aquinian. Although Lasswell had tenure as ctid Gosnell both men left the University: Lasswell in 1938 for Washington, D.C., and the William Alan- son White Psychiatric Foundation; Gosnell a few years later, also to the capital but for government service. Merriam him- self was approaching retirement and was unable to defend his younger men. The "pull" of the eastern seaboard on Lasswell tract an earlier origin. During the mid-1920s when he was preparing for his study of psychopathology and politics, Lasswell en- countered the maverick psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan cluring his visits at eastern psychiatric hospitals. He also made the acquaintance of Dr. William Alanson White, the director of St. Elizabeth's, who was strongly interested in research and in collaboration with the social sciences. (Lasswell, because of his association with Merriam, was in a position to facilitate access for Dr. White to the early organizational meetings of the Social Science Research Council, then being held in Hanover, New Hampshire.) During these same years, Sulli- van tract come to know the cultural anthropologist EdwarcI Sapir, then a colleague of Lasswell's at the University of Chi- cago. The three men, although of different ages Sapir was born in 1884, Sullivan in IS92, and Lasswell in 1902 were attracted to one another out of the strongest interest in cul-
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 261 ture-personality themes. They dreamed of a research insti- tute that would combine the study of culture, society, and personality and contribute to a better and happier world. The research institute never came to fruition, but these en- counters surely influenced Lasswell's program at the Univer- sity of Chicago, Sapir's Institute of Human Relations at Yale, ant! Sullivan's William Alanson White Psychiatric Foundation in Washington, D.C. In 1938, however, it appeared that these plans for a social science-cum-psychiatry institute in either New York or Wash- ington with Sapir, Sullivan, anc! Lasswell as the full-time core research faculty were about to mature. In April 1938 the trustees of the William Alanson White Foundation decided to seek funds to support a full-time permanent research staff in psychiatry and the social sciences. AncI the three men were ready to move: Lasswell was pessimistic about prospects at Chicago, Sapir was acutely uncomfortable at Yale, ant! Sulli- van looked forward to creative research collaboration under the most favorable of auspices. It was in this mood of high hopes that in the spring of 1938 Harold Lasswell packed and shipped his files and be- longings in two moving vans which were fated to collide ant! burn on a lonely Indiana highway. But this was only the beginning of misadventure and tragedy. The funcI-raising plans were unsuccessful, and relations between Sullivan and Lasswell cleterioratecI. Sapir cTiecT in early 1939. Lasswell thus began the second phase of his career at age thirty-six, in Washington, D.C., with uncertain prospects. He improvised for a while, giving eclucational radio broadcasts on "Human Nature in Action" over NBC ant! consulting to founciations. Beginning in the academic year 1938-39 he taught seminars as a visiting lecturer in association with Myres McDougal at the Yale School of Law; he was appointed professor of law there in 1946. As the international crisis
262 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS cleepened, he became involves! in research programs at the Library of Congress and the Department of Justice. The Li- brary of Congress at Lasswell's recommendation established a war communications research project, ctrawing on his ex- perience with WorIcl War ~ propaganda. And the Depart- ment of Justice set up a special war policies unit to help administer the Foreign Agents Registration Act anct the Se- dition Act. Both of these tasks involves! content analysis of the meclia of communication: on the world scale, as the pro- pagan~la war heated up in 1939 and 1940, and on the do- mestic organizational scale, as Nazis and fascists infiItratect foreign language groups and media in the United States. Lasswell gave expert testimony in a number of trials under this legislation; he was also instrumental in the effort to have quantitative content analysis acimittect as evidence in the fed- eral courts. During the war years he played an active role as a consul- tant to the Office of Facts and Figures and its successor or- ganization, the Office of War Information; the Office of Stra- tegic Services; the Foreign Broadcast Monitoring Service of the Federal Communications Commission; and the Army's Psychological Warfare Branch. For the social sciences these various research divisions of the government departments constitutes! advanced training centers for young social scien- tists. Leading scholars such as Lasswell, Lazarsfeld, Samuel Stouffer, ant! Car! HovIand trained groups of specialists in survey research, experimental small group research, propa- gancla and content analysis, and the like. The methodological and substantive payoffs of Lasswell's wartime research are reported in The Language of Politics; Studies in Quantitative Semantics (1949), which was jointly ed- ite(1 with one of Lasswell's most brilliant stuclents, Nathan Leites. This volume places mass communications content in the context of domestic and international politics, offers so-
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 263 lutions for the principal methodological problems of quan- titative content analysis, and reports on a number of success- ful uses of content analysis, both as a jucticial too} and as a technique of intelligence gathering. It hac! been Lasswell's ambition cluring Worict War IT to set up what he termed a "world attention survey": a continual quantitative analysis of the content of the principle print and broadcast media of the major nations friend, neutral, and enemy. It was a project of immense proportions anct was set aside in the war years in favor of a much more modest pro- gram of propaganda analysis located in the Office of War Information and the Federal Communications Commission. But in the aftermath of the war and working with wartime collaborators particularly sociologist Daniel Lerner anct po- litical scientist Ithie} Pool Lasswell pursued these research themes. Based now as a professor in the Yale School of Law, in collaboration with Lerner, Pool, and others at the Hoover Institute ant} Library at Stanford, he undertook a series of comparative stuclies of elites anct political symbols. Several volumes reporting the findings of these researches appeared in the ~ 950s. But one of the most important products of these Stanford years was The Policy Sciences, a state-of-the-art anal- ysis of social science methodology as of the early 1950s that Lasswell coeclited with Daniel Lerner, with coauthors Ernest R. Hilgarcl, and others. The third phase of Lasswell's career began in 1946 when he joiner] the Yale Law School faculty as a professor of law. He had been teaching part-time at Yale in association with Myres McDougal since 1938, and was a visiting research as- sociate in the Institute of International Studies during the war years. His permanent location in New Haven in 1946 made possible a fruitful collaboration between Lasswell and McDougal in teaching, research, and contributions to legal ant! political theory, a collaboration that continued for the
264 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS next several clecacles. In a major monographic contribution to the Yale Law fournait of March 1943, Lasswell and Mc- Dougal recommended the funciamental reform of law school curricula. The monograph argued that lawyers were the principal policymakers in modern democratic societies and that traditional law school curricula failed to provide training for the variety of policymaking roles lawyers were called upon to perform. In this seminal article, Lasswell ancT Mc- Dougal sought to remedy these shortcomings. They formu- lated a curricular philosophy based on the assumption that law had to be unclerstoo<1 as a process of authoritative deci- sion by which the members of a community clarify and secure their common interests. They then elaborated a sequence of seminars and courses that would effectively implement this philosophy. Prominent in this and later collaborations with McDougal anct other law school colleagues were two theoret- ical innovations components of an "institutional and value map" that are properly associated with Lasswell's Yale ca- reer. The first innovation was a functional scheme for the analysis of clecision-making. This became in its final form a seven-phase process beginning with intelligence, in the sense of knowleclge, and proceeding to promotion, prescription, invocation, application, termination, and evaluation. The sec- oncl innovation was a classification of goals or base values that incluclecl power, wealth, respect, well-being, affection, skill, rectitucle, and enlightenment. These two theoretical schemes enabled the legal scholar to locate his research in the policy process and to specify its substantive value aspects. The theo- retical categories servect to place in context the various legal and other studies that Lasswell carrier] on in the next (lec- ades. One of Lasswell's most influential contributions in legal studies was Power and Personality ~ ~ 948) in which he presented a series of case histories of judges to demonstrate the con-
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 265 nection between personality characteristics and patterns of legal clecision-making. Other Lasswell contributions to legal research and analysis are contained in such volumes as Studies in World Public Order (with Myres McDougal, ~9601; In Defense of Public Order: The Emerging Field of Sanction Law (with Rich- ard Arens, 19611; Law and Public Order in Space (with Myres McDougal anct {van A. VIasic, ~9631; and Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity (with McDougal and Lung-chu Chen, 19801. A final volume, entitled Jurisprudence for a Free Society: Studies in Law, Science, and Policy and coauthored with McDougal, is still to appear. Lasswell became Forct Professor of Law and Social Science Emeritus at Yale in 1970. The last seven years of his life were spent in New Haven, where he continued his research inter- ests, and in New York City, where he was affiliated with the Policy Sciences Center that he had helped to found in the 1940s. Quantitatively Lasswell's productivity was enormous. He wrote, coauthorecl, edited, and coeclited some sixty books. He also contributed more than 300 articles to a wide range of journals: political science, sociological, psychiatric and psy- chological, legal, journalism, and public opinion. His publi- cations also inclucle several hundred reviews and comments. Among the important works that have not yet been men- tioned are Power and Society (with Abraham Kaplan, 19501; Democratic Character (19511; The Decision Process: Seven Cate- gories of Functional Analysis ~ ~ 9564; The Future of Political Science ~ ~ 9634; The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital (with Rob- ert Rubenstein, 19661; Peasants, Power, and Applied Social Change: Vicos as a Mode! (with Henry F. Dobyns and Paul L. Doughty, 1 97 1 1; and The Signature of Power: Buildings, Com- munication and Policy (with Merritt B. Fox, 19794. These titles suggest the enormous range of Lasswell's in-
266 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS terests, which he maintained throughout his life. Power and Society, which was written in collaboration with the philoso- pher Abraham Kaplan, was a propositional inventory and conceptual handbook for political science. Among its note- worthy contents was the elaborated version of Lasswell's cIas- sification of base values (see above). Lasswell's monograph, Democratic Character, was an important adclenclum to a 1951 reprint of his Psychopathology and Politics and Politics: Who Gets What, When, and How, neither of which dealt with the psycho- logical aspects of democracy. This monograph sought first to define the value orientations that wouIc! be supportive of democratic institutions and then to spell out "democratic" personality characteristics and the social and family condi- tions that were likely to produce them. His monograph on the decision process (1956) spelled out more clearly his theo- retical framework for the phases of policymaking ancT imple- mentation cliscussed above. In The Future of Political Science ~ ~ 963), evocative of earlier visions of a world in which social science research has reached high influence, he ciraws on two social science research pro- jects in which he was engaged in the 1960s. The first of these was an anthropological study of a hacienda in Peru. In this effort Lasswell colIaboratecl with AlIan Holmberg of Cornell and later producecl a book (with Dobyns and Doughty) en- titled Peasants, Power, and Applied Social Change: Vicos as a Mode! (19714. The experiment involvect giving increasing initiative in decision-making to the peasants in the hacienda and at- tempting to measure the consequences of these and other experimental inputs of modernization and democratization. The second, clone collaboratively with Robert Rubenstein, was a study of an experiment at the Yale Psychiatric institute involving the participation of patients with staff anc! psychi- atrists in decision-making on the ward. The research was con- cernec! with the effects of this participation on the effective-
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 267 ness of the ward and on the therapeutic goals of the institute. (A book documenting the study appeared in 1966 under the title, The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hospital.) The Future of Political Science proposes that the political science profes- sion develop the capacity to administer comprehensive sur- veys of world political change in order to advise effectively in the avoidance of war and other social evils. Such a survey wouIct be informed by Lasswell's decision-process ant! goal- value conceptualizations. He also describes the kinc! of professional education that would be required to administer this kind of research program anct cultivate the creativity es- sential for elective intervention. Finally, in a book publisher! after his cleath, The Signature of Power: Buildings, Communication and Policy ~~ 979), Lasswell explores the relations between the architecture of public builclings, their public functions, and the surrounding polit- ical culture. Using photographs of public buiTclings and mon- uments from all over the worIcT to illustrate his points, he demonstrates that the functions of builctings civil or mili- tary, judicial, legislative, and bureaucratic influence their structures. These structures in turn are influenced by na- t~onal cultures, which produce their own structural varia- t~ons. Lasswell receiver! many honors in the course of his career. He served as president of the American Political Science As- sociation in 1956 and of the American Society of Interna- tional Law from 1966 to 1968. He received honorary degrees from the University of Chicago, Columbia University, the University of Illinois, ancT the Jewish Theological Seminary. He was actively associated as officer, boarct member, or con- sultant to the Committee for Economic Development, the Commission on the Freedom of the Press, the Rand Corpo- ration, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ant! many other organizations. He was a fellow of
268 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was in- clucted into the National Academy of Sciences in 1974. HaroIc! Lasswell suffered a massive stroke on December 24, 1977, from which he never recovered. He cried of pneu- monia in his apartment in New York City on December I8, 1978. ~ WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE the help I have received from a num- ber of sources: from Dwaine Marvick's "Introduction" to his an- thology, Harold Lasswell on Political Sociology (1977~; from the vari- ous contributions to Harold Lasswell's festschrift, Politics, Personality, and Social Science in the Twentieth Century (ea. Arnold Ro- gow, 1969~; the memorial volume, Harold Dwight Lasswell 1902 1978, which was published by the Yale Law School under the edi- torship of Myres McDougal; and Helen Swick Perry's Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Harry Stack Sullivan (1982), which contains in- formation on the early collaboration of Lasswell with Sapir and Sullivan; and from personal communications and accounts pro- vided by William T. R. Fox, Bruce L. Smith, Andrew R. Willard, Rodney Muth, and Myres McDougall
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 1925 269 Two forgotten studies in political psychology. Am. Political Sci. Rev., 19:707-17. 1927 Propaganda Technique in the World War. (Ph.D. dissertation.) New York: A. A. Knopf; London: Kegan Paul. Types of political personalities. Proc. Am. Sociological Soc., 22: 159-69. 1929 Personality studies. In: Chicago: An Experiment in Social Science Re- search, ed. T. V. Smith and L. D. White, pp. 177-93. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Problem of adequate personality records: A proposal. Am. }. Psy chiatry, 7: 1057-66. The study of the ill as a method of research into political person- alities. Am. Political Sci. Rev., 23:996 - 1001. 1930 Psychopathology and Politics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Personality system and its substitutive reactions. i. Abnorm. Psy- chol., 24:433 - 40. Psychoanalytic interviews as a method of research on personalities. Childs Emotions, February: 136-57. The scientific study of human biography. Sci. Mon., 30:79-80. Self-analysis and judicial thinking. Int. I. Ethics, 40:354-62. 1931 The measurement of public opinion. Am. Political Sci. Rev., 25:311-26. 1932 Triple-appeal principle: A contribution of psychoanalysis to polit- ical and social science. Am. J. Sociology, 37:523-38.
270 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1935 With R. D. Casey and B. L. Smith. Propaganda and Promotional Ac- tivities: An Annotated Bibliography. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. World Politics and Personal Insecurity. New York: McGraw-Hill. Verbal references and physiological changes during the psycho- analytic interview: A preliminary communication. Psychoanal. Rev., 22:10-24. 1936 Politics: Who Gets What, When, How. New York: Whittlesey House, McGraw-Hill. Certain prognostic changes during trial (psychoanalytic) inter- views. Psychoanal. Rev., 23:241 - 47. 1937 A method of interlapping observation in the study of personality in culture. I. Abnorm. Psychol., 32: 240-43. 1938 What psychiatrists and political scientists can learn from one an- other. Psychiatry, 1:33-39. 1939 With Dorothy Blumenstock {ones. World Revolutionary Propaganda: A Chicago Study. New York: A. A. Knopf. 1941 The garrison state. Am. J. Sociology, 46:455-68. 1943 With Myres McDougall Legal education and public policy: Profes- sional training in the public interest. Yale Law i., 52:533-61. 1945 World Politics Faces Economics. New York: McGraw-Hill. Interrelations of world organization and society. Yale Law I., 55:889-909.
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 1948 271 The Analysis of Political Behaviour: An Empirical Approach. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, Ltd. Power and Personality. New York: W. W. Norton. 1949 With Nathan Leites, eds. Language of Politics: Studies in Quantitative Semantics. New York: George Stewart. 1950 With Abraham Kaplan. Power and Socie0. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. National Security and Individual Freedom. New York: McGraw-Hill. 1951 With Daniel Lerner, eds. The Policy Sciences: Recent Developments in Scope and Method. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. Democratic character. In: The Political Writings of Harold D. Lasswell, pp. 465-525. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press. 1952 With Daniel Lerner and C. Easton Rothwell. The Comparative Study of Elites. Hoover Institute Studies. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. With Daniel Lerner and Ithiel de Sola Pool. The Comparative Study of Symbols. Hoover Institute Studies. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 1956 The Decision Process: Seven Categories of Functional Analysis. College Park: University of Maryland Press. The political science of science: An inquiry into the possible rec- onciliation of mastery and freedom. Am. Political Sci. Rev., 50:961-79. 1959 Political constitution and character. Psychoanal. Rev., 46:3-18. The qualitative and quantitative in political and legal analysis. Dae-
272 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS dalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 88:633- 45. With Myres McDougall The identification and appraisal of diverse systems of public order. Am. i. Int. Law, 53: 1-29. 1960 With Myres McDougall Studies in World Public Order. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. With L. Z. Freedman. The common frontiers of psychiatry and law. Am. J. Psychiatry, 1 17:490-98. 1961 With Richard Arens. In Defense of Public Order: The Emerging Field of Sanction Law. New York: Columbia University Press. With L. Z. Freedman. Cooperation for research in psychiatry and law. Am. J. Psychiatry, 1 17 :692 - 94. 1963 The Future of Political Science. New York: Atherton Press. With Myres McDougal and Ivan A. Vlasic. Law and Public Order in Space. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. With Arnold A. Rogow. Power, Corruption, and Rectitude. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1964 With Bruce M. Russett, Hayward R. Alker, Jr., and Karl W. Deutsch. World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators. New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press. 1965 With Daniel Lerner, eds. World Revolutionary Elites: Studies in Coer- cive Ideological Movements. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 1966 With Robert Rubenstein. The Sharing of Power in a Psychiatric Hos- pital. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.
HAROLD DWIGHT LASSWELL 273 1967 With Myres McDougal and lames C. Miller. The Interpretation of Agreements and World Public Order: Principles of Content and Pro- cedure. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. 1968 With Myres McDougal and W. Michael Reisman. Theories about international law: Prologue to a nonfigurative jurisprudence. Virginia]. Int. Law, 8:188-299. 1969 With Satish Arora. Political Communication: The Public Language of Political Elites in India and the United States. New York: Holt, Rine- hart & Winston. With Allan Holmberg. Toward a general theory of directed value accumulation and institutional development. In: Political and Administrative Development, ed. Ralph Braibanti, pp. 354-99. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press. 1971 With Henry F. Dobyns and Paul L. Doughty. Peasants, Power, and Applied Social Change: Vicos as a Model. Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications. 1975 With Warren F. Ilchman, John D. Montgomery, and Myron Weiner. Policy Sciences and Population. Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Company. 1979 With Merritt B. Fox. The Signature of Power: Buildings, Communica- tion and Policy. New Brunswick, Ad.: Transaction Books.
274 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS 1980 With Myres McDougal and Lung-chu Chen. Human Rights and World Public Order: The Basic Policies of an International Law of Human Dignity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press. With Daniel Lerner and Hans Speier, eds. Propaganda and Com- munication in World History. 3 vols. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii.
