In the background of much leadership theory is the seminal influence of Freud. His theory of personality, first articulated in full in The Interpretation of Dreams, in 1900. That theory became part of Freud's entire opus, with the result that by the time he published Civilization and Its Discontents in 1931, his structural hypothesis of the ego, id, superego, and libido as components of personality had become benchmark and standard of analysis with application to a range of issues. In the 1931 book, the application was to human society, where leaders and followers can be found, along with competing priorities. In Freud's formulation, "man's activity develops in two directions, according as it seeks to realize . . . the one or the other of these aims" (Freud, 1961, p. 25). Social interaction prevents isolation but fosters human conflict because human beings' egos position them as autonomous. In other words, society is a psychological construction. The same is true of other organizations, and that makes for tension as an artifact of the construction. Such is the context for further study of leadership as a phenomenon.

Historically, police departments are run like military organizations, with hierarchically defined roles and ranks dominating the bureaucratic structure. Whatever negative views one may have of organizational structures like these, one must also acknowledge that, in a life-or-death situation, the ability to respond to and execute orders based on the authority of and trust in the superior is essential. The need for the public trust to be respected is another aspect of this, and that is why police as a group are subject to so many criminally/legally enforceable regulations regarding treatment of suspects, members of the public, and so on. Having said that, one seems hard put to endorsing another style of leadership as having potential to transform the organization of a police department. Yet that does seem to be a possibility, at least in theory, not because the command-and-control structure should be abandoned in the field and in the context of law enforcement's role in the criminal justice system; it should not be abandoned. However, that entire environment belongs to a concept of leadership that has to do with crisis control, public safety, and survival. Within the organizational environment, as it were behind the scenes of the police department that most of the public is likely to encounter, hierarchical management styles can be counterproductive to morale. Where the stakes do not touch public-safety issues and legal requirements, therefore, some attention to the human factor as exemplified in democratic-style leadership seems in order.

Kets de Vries, M. F. R. (1993). Leaders, fools, and impostors: Essays on the psychology of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

After World War II, influential management philosophy shifted toward ideas of democratic-style leadership with the work of W. Edwards Deming, whose famous Fourteen Points of management included calls for