| Summary: | Drawing on a cognitive-psychodynamic perspective, traditional categories in image studies are expanded to offer an improved account of Cyrus Vance's worldview during his tenure as secretary of state. It is explained that the cognitive psychodynamic perspective evaluates key personality and motivational forces that provide the basis for the perceiver's dependence on category-based processes, stemming largely from emotionally connected experience, and data-driven processing. It is argued that Vance's worldview can be understood in terms of three overlapping image categories that emerge as major themes from public data: the complex-interdependent, the optimistic-détente, and the empathic. Finally, Vance's personal development, shaped by sources such as the political trauma of the Vietnam War, is examined to ascertain the way key cognitive and personality dynamics affect his worldview.
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