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A virtually paradigmatic psychological response to the risk of nuclear war has begun to emerge: nuclear depth psychology. The goal of nuclear depth psychologists is to reverse the arms race by healing what they take to be a deeply pathological superpower relationship. This approach is criticized as implausible historically, because even the most opportune moment for fundamental change in the relationship between the United States and Soviet Union (immediately following the Cuban missile crisis) failed to produce such a change. It is also argued that this and subsequent failures to fundamentally alter the superpower relationship are due to the persistence of conflicting values and of pervasive ambiguities faced by policymakers charged with managing nuclear risks. It is apparent, therefore, that a policy-relevant psychology of avoiding nuclear war must begin where nuclear policymakers begin: by focusing on (salient psychological aspects of) the prevention and management of nuclear crises.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. .International Society of Political Psychology is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Political Psychology.http://www.jstor.org Political Psychology, Vol. 7, No. 4, 1986 How Might Psychology Contribute to Reducing the Risk of Nuclear War? The only thing which psychology has a right to postulate at the outset is the fact of thinking itself...thought goes on. (William James, 1890) Several recent attempts are surveyed in which psychologists have tried to apply their professional insights to the problem of reducing the risk of nuclear war. These include those directed at deep causes (the U.S.-Soviet relationship), intermediate causes (imperfect rationality of decision-makers) and, briefly, precipitating causes (effects of stress). In each case, little or no influence on the nuclear policy-making process can be discerned; U.S. foreign policymakers charged with managing the risk of nuclear war operate virtually independently of psychology. In order to bring nuclear policy-making and psychological insights together, a phenomenological approach to nuclear crisis 'Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138. Blight management is described, the central task of which is a systematic description of the evolution during crises of beliefs held by decision-makers about risk of nuclear war.

Results are presented from a multiyear project on the Cuban Missile Crisis that involved high-level U.S., Russian, and Cuban former officials, declassified documents, and scholarly specialists. This method, called critical oral history, is described as an applied phenomenological psychology; it's goal has been to reconstruct the psychological reality of decision makers in October 1962. The missile crisis was found to be more dangerous than previously believed, largely due to U.S. and Russian ignorance of, and disregard for, the crisis as viewed from Cuba. Substantive and methodological lessons are drawn from the study.I think that you and I, with our heavy responsibilities for the maintenance of peace, were aware that developments were reaching a point where events could have become unmanageable.

The authors analyze the role of Ralph K. White's concept of "empathy" in the context of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam War, and firebombing in World War II. They focus on the empathy-in hindsight-of former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara, as revealed in the various proceedings of the Critical Oral History Project, as well as Wilson's Ghost and Errol Morris's The Fog of War. Empathy is the great corrective for all forms of war-promoting misperception … . It [means] simply understanding the thoughts and feelings of others … jumping in imagination into another person's skin, imagining how you might feel about what you saw. Ralph K. White, in Fearful Warriors (White, 1984, p. 160-161) That's what I call empathy. We must try to put ourselves inside their skin and look at us through their eyes, just to understand the thoughts that lie behind their decisions and their actions. Robert S. McNamara, in The Fog of War (Morris, 2003a) This is the story of the influence of the work of Ralph K. White, psychologist and former government official, on the beliefs of Robert S. McNamara, former secretary of defense. White has written passionately and persuasively about the importance of deploying empathy in the development and conduct of foreign policy. McNamara has, as a policymaker, experienced the success of political decisions made with the benefit of empathy and borne the responsibility for fail-