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THE EAST PSYCHOANALYZED - New York Times (645 words) |
 | Pye, a professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, resuscitates a psycho-cultural version of Oriental despotism, a paradigm that has afflicted Western perceptions of Asia since Aristotle. |
| Pye follows Hegel, Mill, Marx and even Max Weber in constructing an Asia that is as flawed as it is different. |
| Pye submits them to simple-minded psychological theories: how parents treat their children, how Mao Zedong's mother abandoned him, how the narcissism of Indian leaders flows from parental overindulgence, become the primal cause of ideas and social action. |
| Harvard University Press: Asian Power and Politics: The Cultural Dimensions of Authority by Lucian W. Pye (337 words) |
| As culture decides the course of political development, Pye shows how Asian societies, confronted with the task of setting up modern nation-states, respond by fashioning paternalistic forms of power that satisfy their deep psychological craving for security. |
| This new paternalism may appear essentially authoritarian to Western eyes, but Pye maintains that it is a valid response to the people's needs and will ensure community solidarity and strong group loyalties. |
| Lucian Pye is Ford Professor of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the author of Mao Tse-Tung: The Man in the Leader. |
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