As freedom of speech, the press, and assembly disappears and the tyrant’s destructive “reforms” take hold, an ethos of the New Man, an ideal of a human being compatible with the disordered ideology, is forced upon the populace.
This New Man is a dehumanized caricature of a human person, usually exemplifying the tyrant’s distorted views and thus meeting his pathological needs, mainly for dominance and adulation. He—we will use the male pronoun, but there is of course a compatible version of the New Woman to go with the New Man—is wholly devoted to the Cause and the Leader (which, in tyrannies, are often one and the same, an ultimate expression of the tyrant’s narcissism) and acts in prescribed ways meant to demonstrate this devotion in his life. Hero worship and utmost loyalty become parts of the New Man’s prescribed behavior, reinforced by new laws and norms, but also by individuals who eagerly cooperate with the authoritarian rules by spying on and denouncing their fellow citizens’ ideologically improper behavior.
Our human propensity to submit to inhumane rules established by pathological authority cannot be overestimated. We have plenty of historical and contemporary evidence for it, as well as experimental data (Milgram 1974). An approving nod from an authority figure, no matter how insignificant or even real, can easily absolve us of responsibility in our minds and override any scruples imposed by our conscience, proving its perplexing malleability.
The ease with which many so-called normal people shut down their conscience makes them not very different from functional psychopaths. This disturbing fact of human life is something the tyrant counts on when he establishes his reign. He knows that he can expect loyalty from his followers and successfully demand it from the majority of society. And those unwilling to follow his dictates and/or actively opposing them will be eliminated.
The New Man’s thoughts must of course change, too, to better aid his transformation. Thus, the criteria of mental normalcy and pathology also are redefined, and psychology and psychiatry, like other branches of social science, are coopted to serve the regime. What’s considered normal, both in the sense of statistical norm and mental health, is in fact pathological, and mental health, defined as the capacity for multilevel and multidimensional development, is pathologized.
The ease with which the tyrannical ideology spreads is always greater than we want to imagine. Our narcissistic blindness makes it impossible for us to believe that it could happen here and that we, too, could be as susceptible to it as any other human beings in history.
Tyranny feeds on the irrationality of narcissistic myths and magical thinking, even though its ideology may be disguised as hyperrationalism, as was the case with communism. In this, it very much resembles the narcissistically psychopathic character of the tyrant himself: solipsistic, withdrawn from reality, and full of grandiose and paranoid beliefs impervious to the corrective influences of objective facts.
These pathological factors ensure that eventually the tyrant’s reign collapses. The inherent and violent irrationality, bereft of internal brakes that stem from a conscience, and unchecked by external forces, is the main reason tyrants and their regimes are doomed to fail (Glad 2002). Their growing malignancy (corruption, aggression, and oppression) provokes opposition, which eventually brings the tyranny down, but not until its pillaging and violent reign create much human suffering. The reset of a society’s mores that follows the tragic aftermath of a tyrannical rule usually leads to a greater appreciation for the importance of universal human values (equality, justice, truth, and compassion), but if care is not taken to implement these values in consistent practice, our narcissistic tendencies creep in and lead to social disorder, making us susceptible to tyranny again. Given our growing potential for self-destruction, the stakes go up with every tyrannical turn.
Conclusion
Narcissism is as much a character problem as it is an error in our thinking. Seeing oneself as “above” is the general attitude of a narcissist toward the world, and the error of the tyrant and his followers. This error appears to grip many so-called civilized human societies, and is especially pronounced in those where inequality grows despite any official sloganeering to the contrary. Our narcissism is what gives rise to inequality, and inequality fuels our narcissism. The resultant suffering and despair, along with a desire for revenge, are among the necessary conditions for the emergence of tyranny.
As Burkle (2015) observes, we are seeing a resurgence of tyrannical leaders around the globe, even in nations that supposedly have learned the lessons of tyrannies past in the most painful ways. It is a sign of our pressing need to reckon with our collective shadow.
If we as a species are to flourish and prosper, we need to understand that our urgent and necessary task is to transcend and dismantle our narcissism, both individual and collective.
Elizabeth Mika, M.A., L.C.P.C., of Gifted Resources in Northern Illinois (in the Chicago area), received her degree in clinical psychology from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland. She specializes in assessment and counseling of gifted children and adults. Her professional interests include creativity and mental health, learning differences and learning styles, multiple exceptionalities, and emotional and moral development.
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Burkle, Frederick M., and Dan Hanfling. 2016. “When Being Smart Is Not Enough: Narcissism in U.S. Polity.” March 2. http://hir.harvard.edu/article/?a=12701.
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THE LONELINESS OF FATEFUL DECISIONS
Social Contexts and Psychological Vulnerability
EDWIN B. FISHER, PH.D.
At nine o’clock, Tuesday morning, October 16, 1962, the special assistant for national security entered the living quarters of the White House with startling news: “Mr. President, there is now hard photographic evidence that the Russians have offensive missiles in Cuba” (Neustadt and Allison 1971). During the next thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis,1 the world faced a horrible threat. Fewer than one in five U.S. citizens alive today is old enough to remember well the experience of those events, but the sense of possible doom was profound. Sitting in Mr. Capasso’s eleventh-grade History class, I thought that we all might not be there in a day or two. Spy satellite photos showed that the Soviet Union was within weeks or perhaps days of finishing the installation of missiles in Cuba capable of reaching major U.S. East Coast cities. As this is being written, many are calling the possibility of North Korea possessing operational nuclear-armed rockets capable of reaching U.S. West Coast cities within several years the greatest threat we face. Imagine if we were in the same position as in 1962: “Our military experts advised that these missiles could be in operation within a week” (Kennedy 1971).2
In reacting to the threat, President Kennedy brought together the “best and the brightest,” to borrow David Halberstam’s term for the Kennedy Cabinet and advisers (Halberstam 1972). They included the secretaries of state and defense, the UN ambassador, other senior policy advisers, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the president’s highly trusted brother Robert, the attorney general. They debated daily over the period, considering varied alternatives. There was only one problem with this “best” and “brightest” advice. They disagreed. Indeed, they disagreed sharply. President Kennedy was left to make the decision. As President George W. Bush put it, President Kennedy was “the decider.”
That the most powerful person in the world can be isolated and lonely in making fateful decisions dramatizes the importance of classic questions. How does the individual shape her/his world, and how does that world shape the individual? Research makes clear, for example, the fundamental value of social connections, that their absence is as lethal as smoking cigarettes (Holt-Lunstad, Smith, and Layton 2010; House, Landis, and Umberson 1988). So, too, the varied group of individuals who advised President Kennedy clearly influenced his perspectives and choices. On the other hand, President Kennedy shaped the variety of perspectives of that group of advisers.
This chapter examines two major themes. First, it examines the interplay among social contexts and individual characteristics as they were apparent in and around President Kennedy in 1962. The strategies, personal characteristics, and social settings that surrounded the president during those thirteen days pose important questions for our current evaluation of President Trump. The second theme is an emphasis on the patterns of behavior that result from that interplay of person and context. Emerging through that interplay, it is those behavior patterns themselves, not speculations about either their interpersonal or personal sources, that provide us confidence in a leader’s ability to make fateful, lonely decisions.
The 1962 Crisis
Many of the Joint Chiefs of Staff felt that air strikes and an invasion were clearly necessary. In arguments that sound very current in 2017, they argued that the incursion of Soviet missiles into our hemisphere could not be allowed to stand, that a line needed to be drawn, and that clear and decisive action was required. Others argued that there was little reason to respond aggressively. Secretary of Defense McNamara articulated one of the strongest arguments for a modest response, pointing out that nuclear warheads would kill just as many people whether they came from Cuba or somewhere else. Others encouraged diplomacy and working with the Soviets. Complicating this strategy was the fact that the Soviet foreign minister had clearly lied to President Kennedy in denying the existence of the missiles after the president already had the satellite photos showing their installation.
In the end, President Kennedy chose a firm response, but one that did not include a direct attack in Cuba. He established a naval quarantine that would not allow any ships carrying munitions to enter waters around Cuba. Soviet ships were on their way and not turning back. What would happen if they challenged the quarantine? In written exchanges, two messages were received from the Soviets. One clearly reflected the hard-liners in the Kremlin. A second, apparently written by Premier Khrushchev himself, was far more conciliatory. In an important model of wise negotiation, President Kennedy ignored the belligerent message and responded to the conciliatory one. At almost the literal eleventh hour, 10:25 a.m. on Wednesday, October 24, a message came from the field: “Mr. President, we have a preliminary report which seems to indicate that some of the Russian ships have stopped dead in the water … or have turned back toward the Soviet Union.” The world breathed.
President Kennedy’s Strategies
Especially striking in his brother Robert’s recounting of those thirteen days (Kennedy 1971), President Kennedy was determined to consider the position of the antagonists, Premier Khrushchev and the other Soviet leaders. Recognizing strong militarist forces in Moscow, Kennedy realized that “We don’t want to push him to a precipitous action … I don’t want to put him in a corner from which he cannot escape.” From their previous communications, he recognized that Khrushchev also did not want war and agreed that a nuclear war would doom the planet. In a letter reflecting a remarkably personal dimension of their relationship, Khrushchev wrote to Kennedy during the height of the tensions:
I have participated in two wars and know that war ends when it has rolled through cities and villages, everywhere sowing death and destruction … Armaments bring only disasters … they are an enforced loss of human energy, and what is more are for the destruction of man himself. If people do not show wisdom, then in the final analysis they will come to a clash, like blind moles, and then reciprocal extermination will begin …
… Mr. President, we and you ought not to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more the two of us pull, the tighter the knot will be tied. And a moment may come when that knot will be tied so tight that even he who tied it will not have the strength to untie it … Consequently, if there is no intention to tighten that knot, and thereby to doom the world to the catastrophe of thermonuclear war, then let us not only relax the forces pulling on the ends of the rope, let us take measures to untie that knot. We are ready for this.
President Kennedy’s understanding of the other person’s point of view extended to his own advisers as well as international adversaries. In his memoir, Robert Kennedy noted that after the Russians agreed on Sunday, October 28, to withdraw their missiles from Cuba, “it was suggested by one high military adviser that we attack Monday in any case. Another felt that we had in some way been betrayed.” He goes on: “President Kennedy was disturbed by this inability to look beyond the limited military field. When we talked about this later, he said we had to remember that they were trained to fight and to wage war—that was their life.”
President Kennedy also cultivated allies. He recognized that a stand-off with the Soviet Union without allies would put the United States in a very weak position. He worked with the Organization of American States to gain endorsement of the U.S. position and was successful in its turning out to be unanimous. He cultivated European allies and gained a strong endorsement—“It is exactly what I would have done”—from President Charles de Gaulle, the assertively nationalist leader of France and its greatest World War II hero.
In cultivating his allies, President Kennedy was highly aware of the imp
ortance of his and the United States’ credibility. He was careful throughout the crisis to communicate honestly, with neither hyperbole nor minimization, about the facts on the ground and the U.S. response.
Finally, President Kennedy was a cagy negotiator. In the course of negotiations, Premier Khrushchev raised a counterdemand that the United States remove its own Jupiter rockets from Turkey. This was especially frustrating because President Kennedy had previously recognized their obsolescence and very modest strategic value and so, sometime before the Cuban Missile Crisis, had directed that they be removed. Now he was clearly willing to meet this demand of the Soviets, but not publicly and not at the same time as the removal of the rockets from Cuba. So, he promised their removal in the months ahead and, fortunately for us all, had cultivated enough good faith with Premier Khrushchev that this unsecured promise was accepted.
Illustrative of his broad reading, President Kennedy had found much of this negotiating stance in a book he had reviewed in 1960, Deterrent or Defense, by the British military analyst Basil Liddell Hart: “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent and always assist him to save his face. Put yourself in his shoes—so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil—nothing is so self-blinding.” Kennedy’s habits of mind, organization, administration, and leadership have been accorded substantial responsibility for the avoidance of catastrophe in 1962.
Taking advantage perhaps of a time of more common bipartisanship, Kennedy sought counsel from a wide group, including Republicans such as John McCloy, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Dean Acheson, secretary of state under President Truman and a highly opinionated authority in foreign affairs. His own secretary of defense, Robert McNamara, had been a Republican and a CEO of the Ford Motor Company. Even though he was secretary of the treasury, President Kennedy included Douglas Dillon, for whose wisdom he had great respect. Dillon had also been President Eisenhower’s undersecretary of state. In addition to the highly respected “old hands” of McCloy, Acheson, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, he included much younger individuals as well. McGeorge Bundy, a former Republican, had already been dean of the Harvard faculty when, at forty-one, he became special assistant for national security in 1961. Clearly, Robert Kennedy was a close, most trusted and apparently constant confidant, but beyond his brother, President Kennedy cultivated a broad and varied group of advisers, not an inner circle of three or four. President Kennedy was thoughtful not only in assembling these divergent views but also in cultivating them, such as by having his advisers meet without him so that his presence would not tilt opinions in his direction or stifle free exchange.
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