Presidential Character Psychology

Presidential Character
One of the subjects in political psychology is Presidential character. Author James D. Barber in his book The Presidential Character (1972) uses psychobiography to explain the personalities, style, and “character” of the modern presidents while attempting to avoid the Freudian psychoanalytical focus on the concepts of ego and superego (Cottam p25). The typology used by Barber to distinguish presidential character is one of the most well-known and widely used in political psychology. Presidential character was later given an additional perspective in the article written by Michael Lyons titled “Presidential Character Revisited”. The article written by Lyons concluded with an all-embracing Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
World view consists of the leader’s politically relevant beliefs regarding social causality, human nature, and central moral conflicts of the time. Character is seen as the way a president “orients” himself toward life and his own merits. Barber uses a pschobiographical approach to trace the sociological development within presidents using the three components of personality from their early lives through their first independent political successes. The first political success is pattern setting. It gives the leader a model of successful action and positive feedback (Barber p5).
Barbers typology discuses presidential character or the basic stance a man takes toward his presidential experience as reflected on two basic dimensions (1) the energy and effort he puts into the job active or passive (2) the personal satisfaction he derives from his presidential duties positive or negative (Cottam p27). When Barbers typology is applied it leads to generalized predictions of behavior and style in
Lyons relied on David Maraniss 's First in His Class (1995) greatly when it came to determining Clintons MBTI. His MBTI predictions were extroversion, intuitiveness, feeling, and perceiving. In sum, Clinton appears to be an ENFP type, and decisively so on all four scales. The MBTI literature offers several predictions about the ENFP personality. Some of the information from the predictions the most central prediction which is, ENFP types seek close attachments to other people, and they are very adept at establishing such attachments. ENFP types tend to be disorganized and indecisive. The disorganized and undisciplined character of the Clinton White House, during the first year at least has already become legendary. (Lyons