I the People—the Most Perfect Union: The Psychodynamics of Constitutional Law

The Founders unknowingly but deliberately established in the Constitution a government inform and function analogous to the psychodynamic structures of the human mind as described by Freud. The executive, legislative and judicial branches correspond in poignantly meaningful ways, in definition and operation, to the ego, id and superego in the mind of a single individual. The nature of the system of checks and balances and the interactions and conflicts between the branches directly parallel the dynamic interplay of the agencies of the mind. This correspondence is an inescapable consequence of the Founders' desire to build a growing and self-correcting governing system that would be able to master challenges while developing and progressing in a manner necessarily consistent, in principle, with the essential political tenets of its establishment. This observation has direct legal and political implications relevant to some of the most important dilemmas in American Constitutional Law.