AS Hippocrates said, "Experience is fallacious and judgment difficult." This statement led author Arnold A. Hutschneck,M.D. to write the book "THE DRIVE FOR POWER," to demonstrate in his book the competitive drive for immediate or distant goals by a new field that offers new ways of thinking, called "psychopolitics," which is an application of psychodynamic principles to political life, with the emphasis on political leaders. In that book he attempts to show how the people can learn to elect healthier political leaders, mature men and women who will live up to their commitment rather than use power as a vehicle for their own ambitions. It’s nothing new among our politicians. He wrote an analysis in one part of the book of a "A Politician’s Unforgivable sin."
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However, the author generally applies such sin to all humanity. Every single human, he wrote, in whatever socioeconomic position, has within him or her a drive for power, that can help unfold the potentials inherent in a personality. This can lead to fulfillment or failure, depending on the individual’s set of values, which in turn determine the sum and sequences of his near or distant goals. Thus, the individual’s power could contribute to the advance of civilization — or to its destruction, as it’s the direction of the power drive that leads one man to create – and another to kill. If uncontrolled, the drive for power may cause one man to run amok, destroy all that stands in his way, and may cause another to overextend himself until he breaks down from exhaustion.
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If one turns his drive for power negatively against the self, the power drive may paralyze a person’s natural will to live, rendering him powerless, weak, self-condemned to live a parasitic existence. The author wrote that man’s drive for power needs cultivation and balancing if he is to use his enormous source of energy to his best advantage, meaningfully and creatively. Nonetheless, we are to protect ourselves against political leaders who in acting out their inner drive for power plunge a nation or half of the world into risky ventures of bloody "little wars." As written in his book, it suggests that we must have awareness of the politicians’ personality, their character structure, and the way they use their drive.
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One cannot talk of power without including the subject of peace. Power and peace seem to be in contradiction with each other, for we tend to relate power to aggression and aggression to the very opposite of peace – war. But in this book, the author said that men who have worked with intensity, who have been preoccupied with a task of profound interest or creativity, whatever the scope, have experienced the feeling of feeling fully at peace with themselves. In short: Everyone in the political arena or private life is motivated by the same instinctive energy. This energy can lead to destruction and war . . . Or it can be channeled for creativity and peace. There is much more discoursed by the author on the "the drive for power." (Printed in the US, 1974, NY Times Co.)
