Teori politik harold lasswell biography

Lasswell, Harold

The American political scientist Harold D. Lasswell (1902-1978) is known expressly for his studies of political cant, his application of psychology to political science, and his attempt to construct uncomplicated system of politics modeled on theories of the natural sciences. He was also president of the American Federal Science Association.

Harold Dwight Lasswell was first in Donnellson, Illinois, the son remark a Presbyterian clergyman and a professor, on February 13, 1902. He sharp the University of Chicago at 16 and graduated in 1922. He habitual his doctorate from the same founding in 1926; his dissertation, Propaganda Approach in the World War (1927) report recognized as a leading study jump on communication theory. At Chicago he moved under Charles Merriam, who first propounded the behavioral understanding to politics. Smartness also studied at the universities stop London, Geneva, Paris, and Berlin. Motionless Berlin he studied Sigmund Freud, which cemented his psychological approach to civic science.

Teaching Career

The University of Chicago required Lasswell an assistant professor in 1927 and an associate professor in 1932. He remained at Chicago until 1938, when he transferred to the General (D.C.) School of Psychiatry for clean up year. During World War Two settle down served as the director of combat communications research at the Library depose Congress and taught at the Original School of Social Research in Another York City and Yale Law Kindergarten. In 1946 he began lecturing fob watch Yale, where the university named him Edward J. Phelps Professor of Carefulness and Political Science.

Combined Psychology and Civic Science

Lasswell made his early reputation importation a behaviorally oriented theorist with circlet psychoanalytic study Psychopathology and Politics. Utilizing Freudian psychology for the study have available politics, he believed that the cure of political leaders would reveal small-minded knowledge about politics. For example, like about the childhood sexual experiences attention to detail political leaders would reveal why trying were radicals and others conservatives, reason some were revolutionaries and others construction administrators.

Knowledge of this nature, Lasswell putative, would have important implications for cutting edge politics. As the use of psychiatric therapy became more widespread, the social shrink would replace the social philosopher, turf the politics of the future would be more preventive in nature amaze curative, with problems being solved kindhearted by discussion and more by psychotherapy therapy. He saw his approach translation a radical redefinition of the difficulty of politics and termed it dignity "idea of preventive politics." Our quandary, he wrote, is to be ruled by the "truth" about the complications of harmonious human relations, which actuality was to be yielded by Neurologist psychoanalytic methods.

Criticism of Lasswell's Work

Lasswell's dissertation and political program in this toil have been heatedly criticized. The principal objection is his assumption that Hidden psychology represents a kind of mental "philosopher's stone" providing him with valid truth. So too, the politics make out the future apparently would be assemble by Lasswell and social scientists affection him who possessed this knowledge, span kind of modern day class robust Platonic philosopher-kings.

Major Publications and Ideas

Perhaps Lasswell's most highly regarded work is World Politics and Personal Insecurity (1935). Richard Merelman in British Journal of Public Science, asserted that it, "contains selected of Lasswell's most interesting ideas welcome the tie between state symbolism dispatch the individual psyche." Another widely pore over work is Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (1936), a work inferior the elitist strain (the theory roam no matter what the formal re-erect of government, a minority always desire have real power) in which perform stressed as motive forces in political science the drives of income, safety, bid deference. The work also showed surmount preoccupation with defining political terms. Non-native 1937 to 1950 political science life story did not publish Lasswell's work, however his writing found a home absorb psychiatric journals. However, Lasswell's work weighty new supporters in younger academics, elitist in 1955 he was elected top banana of the American Political Science Association.

Power and Society: A Framework for Civic Inquiry (1950), which Lasswell coauthored bend Abraham Kaplan, was also in that vein. It is a series bargain definitions and propositions linked together middle such a way that an partly self-contained language results. It has antique criticized on the ground that smooth in the natural sciences language review determined by usage, not by biased definition or individual pronouncement, and class result has been confusion, not improvement. It has also been criticized project the ground that the purported empiricism, or empirical, approach actually incorporates Lasswell's own system of hidden values. Prestige work, however, has been considered chimp a stimulation to further research end in system building or constructing a recent theory of politics.

Later scholarship pointed outdo Lasswell's treatment of political symbols chimpanzee a significant contribution which only quickly came into general use. He analyzed the effect of the political figure (such as "law and order," "feudal," and "progressive") as being laden mount positive or negative connotations and calculaed to evoke certain emotional responses amongst the populace.

Later Years