The Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900. That theory became part of Freud's entire opus, with the result that by the time he published Civilization and Its Discontents in 1931, his structural hypothesis of the ego, id, superego, and libido as components of personality had become benchmark and standard of analysis with application to a range of issues. In the 1931 book, the application was to human society, where leaders and followers can be found, along with competing priorities. In Freud's formulation, "man's activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize . . . the one or the other of these aims" (Freud, 1961, p. 25). Social interaction prevents isolation but fosters human conflict because human beings' egos position them as autonomous. In other words, society is a psychological construction. The same is true of other organizations, and that makes for tension as an artifact of the construction. Such is the context for further study of leadership as a phenomenon.
Leaders with strong charisma can overcome tension between the desire for independence and the desire for organized association with others, and charismatic leadership, whether for good or ill, is an obvious element of political, social, and economic history (Howell & Avolio, 1992; Conger & Kanungo, 1987). An element of psychology is also evident in the history of strong leadership. Howell and Avolio (1992) cite diverse figures such as Hitler, Mussolini, FDR, Jesus Christ, Gandhi, Malcolm X, Lee Iacocca, whose force of personality could "inspire extraordinary performance in followers as well as build their trust, faith, and belief in their leader" (Howell & Avolio, 1992, p. 43).
Kets de Vries's analysis of leadership in organizations derives from psychological theory, or what he calls the "psychodynamics of organizations" (Kets de Vries, 1993, p. xiv). Drawing on Freud's view that much human behavior has its source in the unconscious (hence irrational...