Vilfredo Pareto's Sociology : a Framework for Political Psychology

Vilfredo Pareto’s Sociology
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both arguments, we may say that the formation and maintenance of conservative 
personality hinges upon not just the introjection of the strong superego but also the 
presence of adolescent and adult environments which later reward and reinforce the 
superego by allowing it to perform its guiding roles successfully.
To run with this theory, it is interesting to hypothesise that modal socialisation 
environments vary over the course of generations so as to either favour or inhibit the 
creation and lifelong continuity of the superego. Section 3.6 has already provided 
some of the necessary groundwork by suggesting that high levels of social and 
epistemological complexity may combine with rapid flux within socialisation 
environments to inhibit superego development and reduce prospects for identities 
which are tightly integrated under the governance of the superego. If we credit 
this broad framework theory with at least some plausibility, then we begin to see 
that Pareto’s vision of slow historical alternation between periods of ‘faith’ (under 
conditions of relative poverty, austerity, cultural insularity, and relative permanence 
within socialisation environments) and periods of ‘scepticism’ (when societies 
grow rich, complex and culturally heterogeneous, giving rise to variability within 
socialisation environments) really could have some basis in reality.
So far, therefore, it appears that we might plausibly regard the ‘faith’ of those who 
possess Pareto’s class II residues as involving high levels of superego strength. This 
soon becomes an even more attractive proposition when it is realised that a simple 
explanation has arisen within psychoanalytic theory to account for that inclination 
towards religious, superstitious and irrational thinking which Pareto linked to these 
residues (and which above mentioned research correlating religious and superstitious 
thinking with conservatism and authoritarianism clearly affirms). According to 
Wilhelm Reich, individuals who possess strong superegos are particularly likely 
to experience anxiety when repressed emotions and desires threaten to enter 
consciousness. In order to avoid this anxiety, they may become reliant upon the 
coping strategy of ‘ruminative thinking’ which diverts the mind towards concerns 
which are ‘safe’. In practice, this will often involve the diversion of attention from 
what is ‘rationally important’ about an issue to its more ‘superficial aspects’ (Reich 
1969, 194). In her more recent discussions of this coping strategy, Elizabeth Young-
Bruehl has suggested that it will commonly involve recourse to specific, compulsive 
thought habits or ‘idée fixes’. More significantly, though, it may also involve 
inclinations to organise thoughts within ‘superstitious, mystical or pseudomystical 
ideational systems’. Hence, she continues, high superego strength individuals may 
place stakes in all sorts of traditional practices and ideological systems because these 
serve as ‘protections and talismans’ against repressed contents of their own psyches 
(Young-Bruehl 1998, 211). 
Further arguments from psychoanalytic theory will now be used to make better 
sense of the ‘scepticism’ of Pareto’s foxes. This will be regarded as consisting 
of more than simply the absence of the lion’s ‘faith’ (i.e. the absence of a strong 
superego). Rather, we must now consider the theory which views Pareto’s moderate 
liberal politicians as inclining towards ‘negativistic’ personality. The basic features 
of negativism may be explained in terms of their childhood origins as follows. 
As Millon et al. (1996) point out, psychoanalytic theorists regard negativists 
as displaying conflicts which originate during the oral phase which runs from birth 

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Pareto’s Psychology
87
until the anal phase. Particularly significant are feelings of ‘distrust’ and ‘narcissistic 
rage’ which arise if the child’s needs go unmet – relatively speaking that is – by 
parents or caretakers. During the later months of the oral phase when infants reach 
‘object constancy’, and when parents or caretakers can finally be regarded as separate 
individuals with their own agendas, children who have experienced these feelings 
now have an object for them which is other than self. Feelings of doubt, suspicion 
and fear of neglect may now carry forward in confusing and unsettled counterpoint to 
more positive feelings towards parental authority. It is this conflict between feelings 
which the term ‘negativistic ambivalence’ refers to. Given the strong component of 
doubt and suspicion involved, it begins to become clear why negativists should, as 
Millon et al. (1996, 551–552) point out, display more than any other personality type 
a cognitive style which is sceptical.
It is a short step to then add that if strong negativistic ambivalence emerges 
during the oral phase, then this will later hinder both the acceptance of parental 
authority during the anal phase, and the uptake of the parental imago during the 
phallic phase. Moreover, prospects for the acceptance of parental authority and 
the introjection of the superego might often be reduced further because parents or 
caretakers responsible for instilling oral conflicts may typically provide weaker 
superego training throughout subsequent developmental stages. In fact, Millon 
et al. (1996, 641) point out that negativists are inclined to internalise the various 
‘inconsistencies and vacillations’ which they find in parental authority. Crucially 
then, negativists avoid those decisive experiences which are responsible for the 
early emergence of that trait cluster which will crystallise during adolescence as 
the ‘conservative’ – i.e. compulsive – personality. They emerge from the anal and 
phallic phases able to give relatively free expression to their inner conflicts – i.e. able 
to act them out – to an extent that conservatives, who have been forced to submerge 
their conflicts, cannot. 
What remains to be provided now is a fuller indication of how negativistic 
ambivalence can manifest itself throughout adulthood. It seems that if during infancy a 
mental template linking parental or care-taking authority to negativistic ambivalence 
should arise, then this might conceivably continue to operate throughout adult life, 
only now finding new objects in political, civil, religious and other institutional
forms of authority. We can gauge this from the common observation that negativists 
typically display a:
... tendency to see any form of power as inconsiderate and neglectful, together with a 
belief that authorities or caregivers are incompetent, unfair and cruel (Benjamin 1993, 
276, cited in Millon et al. 1996, 546). 
Millon  et al. (1996, 542) agree that ‘a tendency to resist authority’ should count 
as one of the most prominent negativistic traits. Psychometric evidence confirming 
that mental templates really do tend to govern our attitudes towards institutional 
authority throughout adulthood is readily available. Rigby’s (1982) ‘general attitudes 
towards institutional authority’ (GAIA) scale demonstrates that attitudes towards 
social enforcement institutions such as police, army, law, and educational facilities 
consistently show strong, positive correlations. It is interesting to note Heaven 

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