Professor Emeritus Jerrold M. Post.
Jerrold M. Post, a George Washington University professor emeritus of psychiatry, political psychology and international affairs who worked as a groundbreaking psychological profiler for the CIA before coming to the university, died Nov. 22. He was 86.
His cause of death was complications from COVID-19, according to an obituary in The Washington Post.
Dr. Post devoted his entire career to the field of political psychology. He came to the George Washington University after a 21-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency where he founded and directed the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, an interdisciplinary behavioral science unit that provided assessments of foreign leadership and decision-making for the president and other senior officials to prepare for summit meetings and other high-level negotiations and for use in crisis situations.
At GW, Dr. Post was the founding director of the Political Psychology Program and had appointments to both the Elliott School of International Affairs and the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
In his work for the U.S. government, Dr. Post played a key role in developing the "Camp David profiles" of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat for President Jimmy Carter prior to the face-to-face negotiations that led to the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel. He also initiated the U.S. government program in understanding the psychology of terrorism.
In recognition of his leadership of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the CIA, Dr. Post was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit in 1979. He received the Studies in Intelligence Award in 1980 and the Nevitt Sanford Award for Distinguished Professional Contributions to Political Psychology in 2002.
A founding member of the International Society of Political Psychology, Dr. Post was elected vice president in 1994 and served on the editorial board of Political Psychology since 1987.
A profile of Dr. Post’s career and news of his death in The Washington Post noted that he continued to lecture at GW, had founded Political Psychological Associates, “a research and consulting firm that specialized in industrial espionage, counterterrorism and leadership assessment.” He also continued work as a consultant for the CIA, wrote 14 books and continued to see patients out of his home.