A considerable number of historians, political scientists and psychologists have begun to rely on psychology to explain political phenomena. They treat individuals as driven by covert, personal emotions, distorting our understanding of political life. Using the examples of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and US President Herbert Hoover Parenti proves what is wrong with that analysis.
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin's opposition to the absolute monarch of Russia, the Tsar, psychohistorians say, came out of Lenin's unresolved issues with parental authority. When Herbert Hoover, after administering food aid for Belgium and Central Europe denied it to the hungry at home during the depression, psychohistorians characterized him as an active-negative president due to his very bad childhood. Parenti writes that in spite of his bad childhood Hoover had become a multi-millionaire and stood firmly with his fellow millionaires. He opposed jobless benefits and public assistance as creeping socialism while giving tax breaks to corporation. Parenti present a very different and intriguing explanation for the actions of Lenin and Hoover.
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