Psychology of Dictatorship

As long as there shed been semipolitical dictators, psychologists have been fascinated with them. While many psychologists try to visualise what happens in normal, rational the great unwashed that leads them to follow such intelligibly dangerous leaders, some psychologists have been more interested in characterizing the genius profiles of dictators themselves. After all, who hasnt attempted an armchair psychiatric diagnosing of a famous nature?
In 1939, Carl Jung met Hitler and Mussolini in Berlin and detect their interactions. Personality psychologists Coolidge and Segal from the University of Colorado write that Jung said Hitler never laughed, and it appeared as if Hitler was sulking and in a bad mood. Jung viewed him as sexless and inhuman, with a singleness of purpose: to establish the Third Reich, a inexplicable all-powerful German nation, which would overcome all of Hitlers perceived threats and previous insults in Germanys history. Hitler inspired in Jung solo fear. By contrast, Mussolini apparently came off to Jung as an original man, who had fervency and energy.




With the possible exception of Jung, it is exceedingly difficult for close people to get any one-on-one time with political dictators, and basically impossible for psychologists or psychiatrists to conduct a face-to-face clinical assessment. Therefore, most investigations into the personality profiles of such leaders have use informant reports. While certainly less than ideal, such reports have nevertheless yielded tremendous insight into the mental lives of some of the worlds most notorious dictators. One study (PDF) revealed that informant reports are generally in modest agreement with self reports, and also that informants operate to agree with each other. Even among standard run-of-the-mill personality disorder patients, informant reports end up being kind of useful to clinicians. Informant reports are especially important when symptoms of personality disorders may lead patients to provide...If you want to get a adequate essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



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