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Contents -- Introduction: Politics All the Way Down -- Rationality and Resistance -- The Chapters -- Perestroika and American Political Science -- The Perestroikan Challenge -- How to Look like a Science -- Conclusion -- Dueling Constructivisms: A Post-Mortem on the Ideas Debate in Mainstream IR -- Rationality and Contexts -- Psychology, Science and 'Silences' -- Reconnoitering the Ideas Debate -- Going Conventional: A Critique -- On Theories of Contexts -- Conclusion -- Why Do States (Bother to) Deceive? Managing Trust at Home and Abroad -- Defining Deceit -- The Utility of Deceit -- Realpolitik, and How it Plays in Peoria -- Appeasement and Unpreparedness Reconsidered -- Credibility and Dissent -- Vietnam and the 'Bounds of Reasonable Dishonesty' -- Iran-Contra -- Post-911 -- Conclusion -- COIN Flips: Counterinsurgency Theory and American IR -- Research Parameters -- Vietnam as 'Ironic Victory' -- Military and Intellectual Pacifiers -- Summers' Discontent, Colby's Complaint -- Reasons Why -- After Tet -- The Home Front -- Conclusion -- Addendum: Counterinsurgency Chic -- Why Freud Matters: Psychoanalysis and IR Revisited -- Psychoanalytic Triggers -- Freud and the Three Images -- Self and Society -- Psychoanalysis and the 'Problem' of the External -- Stimulus and Conditional Response -- Psychiatrists, Theologians and Constructivists -- Psyche, Self-interest and Warfare -- Two, Three, Many Vietnam Syndromes -- 911 and the Mismanagement of Fear -- Conclusion -- Addendum: Eli Zaretsky's Freud -- The Mystique of Genetic Correctness -- Raw Eugenics -- Tainted Breeds, Tainted Deeds -- Degeneration and Its Discontents -- Home of the Free and 'Life Unworthy of Life' -- What New World? -- Loose Ends: Considerations on the Aftermaths of the Celtic Tiger and the Northern 'Troubles' -- Conclusion -- Conclusion: Algren, Academe and Conformity -- Index

This book takes radical aim at the conventional conduct of international relations analysis. It reexamines the role of ideas, the usefulness of psychoanalysis, the rage for and at rational choice, the influence of the public on foreign policy, counterinsurgency evangelism, and development orthodoxies at the national and genetic levels. Drawing a bead on conceptual blind spots prevalent both inside and outside the academy, the book urges scholars to reflect on how inner worlds shape the actions of their subjects--and their own research analyses, as well.

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Scholars of politics, not just international relations, have eschewed the discipline of psychoanalysis. The renewed attacks on Freud and his fractious followers over the last generation apparently discouraged political scientists from exploring the usefulness of psychoanalytic methods. This essay asks whether, and under what circumstances, psychoanalysis can be a useful interpretive approach. What is the significance in human behavior of the unconscious, that is, of motives and forces of which we are commonly unaware? The argument is that in most, if not all, cases, psychoanalytically attuned approaches yield important insights about the wielding of power.

A comment on Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1964 film, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew, highlights the portrayal of Christ as a talented, brooding, passionate instigator of class struggle who sought to spread the revolutionary message of compassion. Attention is also given to his other films, described as "lumpen tragedies shot through with plangent religious imagery." It is suggested that the current Bush Administration mirrors Pasolini's view of unchecked authority as sadistic madness that begins to appear normal to those in charge. Adapted from the source document