Lasswell, Harold Dwight (1902–1978)

Abstract

Harold Dwight Lasswell (1902–1978), American sociologist, political philosopher, social psychologist, and psychoanalyst, was born on Friday the 13th, in Donnellson, Illinois. He was the son of a humble Presbyterian minister and a schoolteacher. From the very beginning, Lasswell was engaged in the social matters of his times. During his school years he was an editor of the school newspaper and a pupil actively involved in school life. When he was 16, he received a scholarship to attend the prestigious University of Chicago. He graduated from there in 1922, and, in 1926, he received his Ph.D. Lasswell then attended the London School of Economics and also studied in Geneva, Paris, and Berlin, where he first had the opportunity to study psychoanalysis for sociopolitical purposes. For the next eight years he taught at the University of Chicago as a professor of social sciences. He was also a professor at Milikan University and at Columbia University, but soon after that, in 1938, Lasswell left Chicago to teach at Yale University. In 1946 he became a professor of law and political sciences there and, in 1952, became a full professor of political sciences at Yale. During WWII Lasswell was a director of War Communication Research at the Library of Congress in Washington. He also taught at the John Jay College of the City of New York and was a consultant for various departments of the federal government. During 1955–1956, he was the president of the American Association of Political Sciences. In 1963 Lasswell retired from Yale University.