Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T15:51:54.682Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Biochemistry and Power-Seeking

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 May 2016

Richard E. Vatz  and
Lee S. Weinberg
Richard E. Vatz
Affiliation:
Department of Communications, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204-7097, Graduate School of Public and, International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
Lee S. Weinberg
Affiliation:
Department of Communications, Towson State University, Towson, Maryland 21204-7097, Graduate School of Public and, International Affairs, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260
Get access

Abstract

Efforts to link mental illness to biochemical events in the brain have recently been receiving greater attention by mental health professionals. Research linking political behaviors to chemical-neurological statuses could potentially revolutionize political science. In earlier writings, Douglas Madsen argued that power-seeking has been discovered to have a biological marker, and that this discovery portends “a major new direction in the behavioral study of power.” Madsen's research is seriously flawed by conceptual imprecision, inadequate operationalization, faulty premises and inferences, and misrepresentations of the earlier work of power theorists and Type A theorists who provide the central underpinnings on which his research is based. Until corrected, these flaws make meaningful testing of “power-seeking” and biochemical correlates impossible.

Type
Further Commentaries
Information
Politics and the Life Sciences , Volume 10 , Issue 1 , August 1991 , pp. 69 - 75
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Politics and the Life Sciences 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

American Psychiatric Association. (1987). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd ed. - revised). Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association.Google Scholar
Andreasen, N. C.(1985). The Broken Brain: The Biological Revolution in Psychiatry. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Bloom, F. E., Lazerson, A.and Hofstadter, L.(1984). Brain, Mind and Behavior. New York: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Franklin, J.(1984). “The Mind Fixers: Chemistry Opens New Vistas for Psychiatry.” The Baltimore Evening Sun. July 23, pp. 1, 8.Google Scholar
Friedman, M., and Rosenman, R. H.(1974). Type A Behavior and Your Heart. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Friedman, M., Roseman, R. H., and Ulmer, D.(1984). Treating Type A Behavior: And Your Heart. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Glass, D.C.(1977). Behavior Patterns, Stress, and Coronary Disease. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Lasswell, H. D.(1948). Power and Personality. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Madsen, D.(1985). “A Biochemical Property Relating to Power-seeking in Humans.” The American Political Science Review 79: 448–457.Google Scholar
Madsen, D.(1986). “Power Seekers are Different: Further Biochemical Evidence.” The American Political Science Review 80: 261–269.Google Scholar
Szasz, T. S.(1987). Insanity: The Idea and its Consequences. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar
Vatz, R. E.and Weinberg, L. S.(1986). “The Grandiose Claims of the ‘New Psychiatry’.” Newsday, October 3, p. 86.Google Scholar
Vatz, R. E.and Weinberg, L. S.(1988). “Correspondence.” The New England Journal of Medicine 319: 179.Google Scholar
Vatz, R. E.and Weinberg, L. S.(1990). “The Conceptual Bind in Defining the Volitional Component of Alcoholism: Consequences for Public Policy and Scientific Research.” Journal of Mind and Behavior 11: 531–544.Google Scholar