One rudely stamp’d: leadership and exceptionality in Freud’s group psychology

Abstract This paper revisits Sigmund Freud’s Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego to examine why individuals are attracted to the leader. What about the leader makes them appealing to their followers? To answer this question, the paper turns to Freud’s reading of Shakespeare’s Richard III in “The ‘Exceptions,’” as Group Psychology ’s untimely supplement. It argues that more than wealth or charisma, what makes the leader appealing is their status as the exception, that is, their ability to make the loss of original narcissism—a universal—appear as a targeted and biased act of the Other, what Richard describes as Nature’s rude stamp.