Aging and Political Leadership

This is a collection of essays focusing primarily on the psychological processes involved in aging and their effects on political leaders. The approach is a biographical one, drawing on the theories of Daniel Levinson, Heinz Kohut, Melanie Klein and others, although some of the authors are primarily political analysts. Included are studies of Menachem Begin, Oswald Mosley, Mao, Stalin, the Peruvian populist Haya de la Torre, the nineteenth-century Australian politician Henry Parkes, and two on Ronald Reagan. In the conclusion, editor Angus McIntyre makes some generalizations based on these and other examples and points to directions for further work in this fascinating field. Political scientists; psychologists.