Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential writers of the eighteenth century, and one of the most controversial. His writings are full of the paradoxes of his personality--his quest for natural truth and his own self-deceptions, his democratic and his despotic tendencies, his imperiousness and his submissiveness, his love of society and his love of solitude. In this study William H. Blanchard, a practicing psychologist, examines the interplay between Rousseau's complex personality and his political writings. Blanchard presents the biographical facts of Rousseau's life and, with the...