A Psychoanalytic Understanding of the Life of a Well Known Public Figure - Essay Example

 Introduction Margaret Thatcher became the first women prime minister of England and ruled the country between 1979 and 1990. Thatcher has been regarded as a polished politician who proficiently led the country and successfully encounter wide array of governing challenges and managed to run the economy of the country in positive direction. She has been regarded as one of the most influential and key figure of the late 20th century politics. She also left lasting impacts upon the international affairs management and politics. The people who know her personally believe that she was a distinctive and forceful individual and her leadership style played vital role in determining her successful role as the Prime Minister of England (Stephen, 2009). Her personality is great source of inspiration for the people and the attributes of her personality are also studies and analysed in detailed to find out the role of her personality traits behind her successful tenure as the Prime Minister of England and as a politician. Along with the political analyst and experts the psychologists have also paid attention towards her strong personality and have identified certain aspects of her psychology that have healed attaining her desired gaols in her life (Campbell, 2003). The essay aims to present the psychoanalytic understanding of the life of Margaret Thatcher in the light of some psychological concepts and terms divulged by some psychologists. The essay discusses the aspects of psychology of Margaret Thatcher that contributed towards her inclusion in the list of people that are listed as ENTJ (extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment) personalities. It is unveiled that the psychological traits of Margaret Thatcher comply with the criterion of this specific personality type and her actions and leadership style indicate that she deserves to be listed among the people with this specific psychology based personality typology. ENJT and Margaret Thatcher ENJT is the abbreviation used to refer extraversion, intuition, thinking, judgment that was used in Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI). It refers to one of the personality types developed by prominent psychiatrist Carl G. Jung. His study proposed that the cognitive functions work to shape the personality of an individual with specific attributes and traits. The people with the personality type ENJT have been regarded as the rarest type of personalities. The people of this personality type used to be self-driven, motivating, energetic, confident and competitive. People of this time mostly focus upon the pig picture and exert their efforts in building long term strategies rather focusing upon the short term and less important issues (Briggs and. Myers, 1995). Jung also clarified that the people of this personality type have strong influence upon the others. They manage their work with unusual organizing capabilities and evolve as strong leaders having the skills to direct and motivate people in desired direction (Briggs and. Myers, 1995). There are some specific personality attributes of this type of personality identified by Jung and it is also regarded that Margaret thatcher truly deserves to have an ENJT personality because her attitudes, cognitive response and acts throughout her life and career indicate that she has very strong, motivating and influential personality with dynamic leadership skills. Following discussion provides the psychoanalytical understanding of the personality of Margaret Thatcher according to the key personality attributes identified by Jung in MBTI (Briggs and. Myers, 1995). Extraversion Extraversion refers to the quality by which the individuals feel motivated by their interaction with people. People tend to enjoy wide circle and feel good in moving among the people. The life of Margaret Thatcher is an excellent example of extraversion because she remains very close to people throughout her life. The social life of her family was spent within the community of the local congregation where the people were bonded together with the tradition of self-help, charitable work as well as personal truthfulness (Thatcher, 2002). The father of Thatcher also had great interest in politics and she also developed interest in public activities from her student life (Jenkins, 1987). She became the student conservative association President at Oxford where she got the chance to meet prominent politicians and leaders. From this interaction she got the motivation to develop her leadership style and learnt several useful things for her future life. It shows that Margaret thatcher learnt to become influential leader though her interaction with the people. She enjoyed wide circle of people and like to meet different people to learn new things from them. This is an important and prominent feature of Thatcher personality that makes him comply with the basic characteristic of ENJT (Stephen, 2009). Intuition Jung explains that intuition refers to the sense that makes people more abstract rather concrete. This quality allows people to concentrate upon the big picture and the final outcome of the effort. The political career of Margaret thatcher reflects her preference to look towards the big picture rather focusing upon the current or short term tasks. She worked to reshape almost every aspect of the British politics throughout her political career. She worked for revising the economy and brought certain reforms in the outdated institutions. Thatcher also worked to restructure the foreign policy of the country and struggled to overturn the psychology of decline prevailing in the Britain after the WWII. She put in front the big task of national recovery and directed all her efforts in making the policies and strategies that could work for changing the political and economic pattern of the country in long term and on permanent basis rather brining immediate and short term changes (Jenkins, 1987). Thatcher redirected the foreign and economic policy of Britain and the impacts of her policies are still visible in the British economy and foreign relation management. She took the steps that worked for the long term changes within the economic structure of the country rather bringing immediate reforms. Her action as the president proves that her personality also possesses that attribute of intuition (Thatcher, 2002). Thinking The third quality of UNJT is thinking and it is believed that ENJT people give value to the objective criteria and prefer them over their personal preferences. While making the decisions they give more importance to logic as compared with social consideration. This is one of the major personality features of Margaret Thatcher (Stephen, 2009). The thinking style of Margaret thatcher has been widely appraised and it is also believed that it is also due to her high intellectual level and sharp thinking style that she became able to make her successful presence in the male dominating society. From the start of her political career, she focused upon conserving as she believes that it is the key principle of the society, economics and politics of Great Britain. She identified the main theme for her effort and then worked to attain her long term goal of promoting conservative approach throughout the political and social structure of England. All the reforms she introduced within the economic, social and political system of Great Britain were specifically directed towards the long term goals attainment and reflect her thinking. All of her decisions and efforts were based upon the same idea and thinking that she held in her mind to implement in England. Her acts were led by her thinking rather her personal preferences. Due to the focus upon the logical thinking and giving importance to the objective criteria she implemented the targeted policies and plans to bring reforms in the country (Young, 1993). Judgment The last attribute of ENJT is judgment and this quality allows the people to make their decisions earlier rather making immediate and in spot decisions. They plan all their activities and policies and act according to their plans. They make plans keeping in view the possible outcome and direct all their activities towards the attainment of their plan. The personality of Margaret Thatcher reflects that the success of Margaret Thatcher also became possible due to her planned efforts and activities (Campbell, 2003). She has the capability to judge the potential outcomes of different actions and based upon her judgement she decides and plans all the possible actions before initiating any task. This capability allowed her managing various tasks during her tenure as prime minister in very effective manner and she combated with all the challenges and problems very easily because she has the skill to judge and make the plans accordingly (Jenkins, 1987). She had great inspiration from the way of like that people of Grantham used to life before the WWII and she decided to make changes in the system of England by introducing competitive solutions. She shows her faith in the community through her actions like the deregulation of national government services etc. Such acts help her gaining the faith and confidence of the people and made her a great leader having belief upon herself and on her people as well. She has been regarded as the most effective manager that the nationalized industries ever had in England. Her tenure was driven by her concept and not by short term goals and thinking. Rather she believes upon making long term decisions so that the people and country could experience the improvement in the system in long term (Young, 1993). Conclusion The above discussion presents the Psychoanalytic Understanding of the personality of Margaret thatcher. It is unveiled from the discussion that the personality type ENTJ as described by Jung in his book Psychological Type very well describes the physiological attributes and traits of Margaret thatcher. The four characteristics of this personality type are all found within the psychology of Margaret thatcher. The study of her life, actions and behaviour allows understanding that she has a personality with intuition and extraversion and she always prefers to think and judge before making the decision. Her focus upon the long terms goals and final outcome is also supported by her thinking and judgement and she learnt a lot from people around her and give importance to the interaction with the people. She managed to work and get success in the male dominated society that was not an easy task and she was guided by her strong personality to attain her goals. The psychoanalytic understanding of her personality allows understanding that her success as one of the distinguished England president and prominent political figure became possible due to the presence of these attributes in her personality. The analysis of her personality results in identification of the traits that make a successful and great leader and politician. She is the most influential and powerful women figure of the politics of England and she gained this status through his efforts shaped by her thinking, judgement sense, intuition and extroversion characteristic. Hence it could be said that she truly complies with the ENJT criterion and has been deservedly selected as the example of ENTJ. References Briggs. M.I. and Myers, P.B. (1995). Gifts Differing: Understanding Personality Type. Mountain View, CA: Davies-Black Publishing. pp. 85–88 Campbell, J. (2003). Margaret Thatcher; Volume Two: The Iron Lady. UK: Pimlico Jenkins, P. (1987). Mrs Thatcher's Revolution: Ending of the Socialist Era. London: Jonathan Cape Jenkins, P. (1987). Mrs Thatcher's Revolution: Ending of the Socialist Era. London: Jonathan Cape Margaret Thatcher Foundation (2011). Biography. Retrieved online from http://www.margaretthatcher.org/essential/biography.asp Stephen B. D. (2009). “Cognitive Style and Foreign Policy: Margaret Thatcher's Black-and-White Thinking:” International Political Science Review January 2009 30: 33-48, Thatcher, M. (2002). Statecraft: Strategies for a Changing World. NY: HarperCollins Young, H. (1993). One of Us: Life of Margaret Thatcher. London: Pan Books Read More