Evil, Toxic and Pathological Categories of Leadership ...



Evil, Toxic and Pathological Categories of Leadership: Implications for Political Power

William W. Bostock

Abstract

The study of the psychology of individual leaders is rightly placed at the centre of many disciplines such as government and history. There are many theories of leadership, and the majority of these are concerned with rational policy, strategy and decision. However there is also a need to be concerned with collective emotions such as identification, fear, hysteria, and other manifestations of the unconscious that are used by leaders as raw materials to produce an outcome that may be catastrophic in outcome. When this has occurred, it may be valid to blame leadership, particularly where the leader is a despot. However, there is a philosophical problem when the leadership in question is a result of evil intention or mental disorder, or psychopathology or persistent personality disorder characterized by antisocial behaviour. This dichotomy has been described as the mad/bad problem: is the offender mad and therefore in need of treatment, or bad and therefore in need of punishment? Many writers such as Staub have identified the category of evil leadership, defined in terms of the destruction of human beings, even where the original intention may not have been to cause evil. Another approach is to identify a leader as toxic, producing extreme levels of dysfunctional leadership characterized by organizational contamination. Yet another category is pathological leadership, or leadership that leads to consequences that most people in moments of reasonableness would regard as disastrous. This definition of pathological leadership or leadership which leads to disastrous consequences is given special attention in this discussion, as it has the advantage of leaving separate the question of an evaluation of the motives and the mental condition of the pathological leader, who, on achieving political power, may have catastrophically toxic consequences.

Key Words: Evil, leadership, pathology, politics, toxicity

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1. Introduction

“(Of Byron) 'Mad, bad, and dangerous to know' (Journal, 1812)” - Lady Caroline Lamb

These often-quoted words written nearly 200 years ago also refer to the three categories of political leadership to be considered here: mad, or pathological, bad, or evil, and dangerous to know, or toxic in effect. The possibility that all three categories might coalesce, as they are alleged to have done in the case of the poet Byron, is thus one that demands special examination. This is because the individual cannot opt out of the power of the state, which has been defined as organized domination within a given territory.[i] Because it can be exercised by the state, political power when used is enormously magnified. Political leadership is essentially the same process as any other type of leadership, but is of a special order because of the magnitude of its power to benefit or to harm.

2. Evil Leadership

Evil means wickedness, depravity, harm, pain, misfortune or disaster; the opposite of good. It is not an inherently theological term but theologians are concerned with the problem of evil, or “how could an all-powerful, all-good God, allow evil to exist?” [ii] Not only theologians can ask this question. In the horror of the ghetto at Lodz, as 200,000 people awaited shipment to Auschwitz, a fate that they suspected but attempted to disbelieve, a young man wrote anonymously on July 4, 1944 “God seems to have abandoned us totally and left us entirely to the mercy of the heartless fiends. Almighty God, how can you do this?” [iii]

The concept of evil can be taken to be a non-scientific culturally shared concept of actions leading to the destruction of human beings.[iv] Evil leadership is therefore leadership that causes the harm and ultimately destruction of human beings. Staub does not define evil leadership in terms of evil intention, because the true nature of intentions can be hidden or disguised as an intention to create a “better world”. Evil leadership would require an awareness of the likely consequence of large-scale destruction, to distinguish it from accidental consequence.

A political leader with acceptance as evil (though not initially) is Saloth Sar (1928-1998), also known as Pol Pot, possibly as an abbreviated form of Politique Potentiel, or Brother No. 1, who led Democratic Kampuchea from its inception in 1975 until the regime was ended in 1979. The aim of Pol Pot and his associates was to recreate in Cambodia an agrarian society cleansed of ethnic minorities, social class hierarchy, intellectuals, Westerners, and Western influence including medicine and technology, starting at “Year Zero”. In the course of this experiment in human engineering, between one and three million people perished, through execution in the “killing fields”, starvation and preventable disease.[v] Thus the category of evil leadership is assured a permanent place in historical discourse. But it may not be helpful or even possible to identify leaders as evil, particularly where true intentions are carefully camouflaged. The concept of evil is not readily amenable to being nuanced, leaving it a rather blunt instrument of analysis. In political affairs, use of the term evil carries the danger that it can inaugurate an era of escalated conflict, and unsubtle analysis implied by the simple characterized opposition of good and evil.[vi]

3. Toxic Leadership

The repertoire of the toxic leader covers a broad spectrum from mild, unintended toxicity to absolute evil, and includes corruption, hypocrisy, sabotage, manipulation, criminal and unethical behaviour (even if legal). The result of toxic leadership has been described as one producing extreme levels of organizational contamination.[vii] The essence of toxic leadership is that it is a slow process induced by small, homeopathic-like doses of toxic activities that induce a sense of distrust, fear, uncertainty, unpredictability, foreboding and menace

The merit of the concept of toxic leadership is its sensitivity to small changes, allowing recognition of the very many stages that can be progressed through before a leader has gone from toxic to evil. As a concept, it also has the advantage of leaving to one side the question of intentionality, as it is quite possible for a well-meaning leader to have the effect of toxicity. However, like the category of evil leadership, the characterisation of a particular leader as toxic carries with it a measure of condemnation that might not be helpful to sensitive negotiation towards an amelioration of policy. It is thus a valuable concept but, like evil, one best used retrospectively after a thorough and objective historical evaluation of all of the relevant evidence.

4. Pathological Leadership

Another category is pathological leadership, or leadership that “…leads to consequences that most people in moments of reasonableness would regard as disastrous.”[viii] This category of leadership puts the focus on the mental health of the leader or possible psychopathology which is “…a persistent personality disorder characterized by antisocial behavior.” [ix] This dichotomy has been described as the mad/bad problem: is the offender mad and therefore in need of treatment, or bad and therefore in need of punishment?[x] This is a dichotomy characterised in modern psychiatry as mental illness versus personality disorder.[xi] Here the mental illness could be paranoid schizophrenia and the personality disorder could be Antisocial Personality Disorder, an officially recognised disorder which has been described as “a pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others.” [xii]

Turning to political leaders, it becomes clear that the two criteria of mad and bad even more deeply intermeshed here than in members of the public, on account of the persuasiveness, subtlety, cunning and immense power exerted. In the cases of Hitler and Pol Pot, it is clear that both were suffering from severe mental illness, in the case of Hitler, schizophrenia[xiii], and in the case of Pol Pot, paranoia.[xiv]

5. The Pathological Society

As already noted, leadership needs followship and special circumstances to occur, and pathological leaders tend to come to power in societies that are in a pathological situation of great trauma and subsequent suffering and therefore demanding a leader.

In Freud’s view the group mind demands leadership from which it seeks strength and violence.[xv] Where memberships are in conflict, mental instability results, leading ultimately to breakdown.[xvi]

Jung (1875-1961) believed that the personal unconscious, as proposed by Freud, was underlain by a deeper level of the collective unconscious.[xvii] Though he does not use the specific term collective neurosis, Jung did refer to a state of lunacy among a people. It is therefore reasonable to infer that a community will need a leader, and the leader will work upon the collective unconscious, but in so doing, may drive a community from a minor state of lunacy to a major one. It is thus possible to recognise some psychological preconditions for pathological leadership.

6. The Psychological Preconditions of Leadership Acceptance

When human societies undergo catastrophe they can enter periods of extreme collective mental disorder that can quickly lead to large-scale organised violence. Robins and Post have identified collective paranoia as a characteristic of many if not most of the world’s infamous regimes, though they recognise that paranoia is a characteristic of all human societies to some extent.[xviii] Where there is a history of real persecution, it is very easy to distort in a community its sense of current coherence. It is therefore possible to hypothesise that the impulse to aggressive behaviours, culminating in homicidal and suicidal acts (the two often being related), is a product of a collective mental state disturbed by generalized fear generated and orchestrated by the pathological leader. Sometimes killing is seen as healing, as in suicide, but killing others can also be seen as an act of healing, as in supposedly benevolently motivated euthanasia. In this way, Pol Pot characterized his targeted individuals and groups as “microbes”. Thus there are psychological preconditions which irresistibly attract a community to a leader who may well turn out to be pathological, and the deliverer of disaster and not salvation through supposed healing, something which must at all costs be averted.

7. Conclusion

The three categories of leadership all have a valid but different place in political discourse but their use should be restricted to specific contexts. Evil leadership is a final judgement that should be made historically, toxic leadership emphasises the organisational repercussions of certain types of leadership that may not be evil in intent, while pathological leadership is one characterised by mental disorder such as paranoia. None is a watertight category; just as “mad, bad and dangerous to know” can be mixed in any individual, so it is especially with leaders.

In the real world of unfolding political events, it may not be helpful to label a particular leader as belonging to one category or another. However, it is of critical importance to make an early diagnosis of the symptomatology of pathological leadership, which may intensify from mild toxity to full-blown evil. This process can start with imperceptibly toxic micro-doses of violence in language, administration and human rights. It is important to look beyond rhetoric to an underlying ideological position and to take all stated threats very seriously. A sensitivity of political awareness and judgement is necessary to separate the short-term passing phenomenon from the much deeper long-term danger posed by a pathological leader operating in a society that might find itself in a pathological situation. The objective is to increase immunity to the threat of pathology, toxicity and ultimately evil in political leaders.

Notes

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[i] I McLean & A McMillan, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, p. 512.

[ii] M Tooley, 'The Problem of Evil', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009. (January 7, 2010).

[iii] Anonymous, in Lodz Ghetto, Inside a Community Under Siege, A Adelson & R Lapides (eds), Viking, New York, 1989. p. 427.

[iv] E Staub, The roots of evil, The origins of genocide and other group violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 25.

[v] B Kiernan, The Pol Pot Regime, Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996.

[vi] AL Delbecq,""Evil" manifested in destructive individual behavior: A senior leadership challenge", Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, September 2001, pp. 221-228.

[vii] A Goldman, “High toxicity leadership: Borderline personality disorder and the dysfunctional organization”, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 8, pp. 733 - 746.

[viii] RW Cox, “Leadership in Perspective: A Comment”, International Organization, Vol 28, No. 1, Winter 1996, pp. 141-144.

[ix] JAB Collier, JM Longmore & JH Harvey, Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, Tokyo, 1991, p. 364.

[x]BK Puri, PJ Laking, P.J. & IH Treasaden, Textbook of Psychiatry. Edinburgh, Churchill Livingstone, London, New York, Philadelphia, Sydney, St Louis, Toronto, 1996.

[xi] C Duggan, Review of "Neither Bad Nor Mad, The Competing Discourses of Psychiatry, Law and Politics", by DN Grieg, British Journal of Psychiatry, No. 184, 2004, p. 374.

[xii] American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edn text revision) (DSM-IV TR). American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC, 2000, p. 685.

[xiii] Langer, p.21.

[xiv] Robins & Post, p. 255.

[xv]S Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works. In Standard Edition, XVIII (1920-1922). Hogarth, London, 1955, p. 77.

[xvi] Freud, pp. 118-129.

[xvii] CG Jung, The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. (17 Volumes). Routledge & Kegan Paul., London, 1959, p. 287.

[xviii] RS Robins & JM Post, Political Paranoia, The Psychopolitics of Hatred. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997.

Bibliography

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (4th edn text revision) (DSM-IV TR). American Psychiatric Association, Washington, DC, 2000.

Anonymous, in Lodz Ghetto, Inside a Community Under Siege, A Adelson & R Lapides (eds), Viking, New York, 1989. pp. 419-439.

Collier, JAB., Longmore, JM., & Harvey, JH., Oxford Handbook of Clinical Specialties, Third Edition, Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, Tokyo, 1991.

Cox, RW., 'Leadership in Perspective: A Comment', International Organization, Vol .28, No. 1, Winter 1996, pp. 141-144.

Delbecq, AL., 'Evil" manifested in destructive individual behavior: A senior leadership challenge', Journal of Management Inquiry, Vol. 10, Iss. 3, September 2001, pp. 221-228.

Duggan, C., Review of 'Neither Bad Nor Mad, The Competing Discourses of Psychiatry, Law and Politics"' by DN Grieg, British Journal of Psychiatry, No. 184, 2004, p. 374.

Freud, S., Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Group Psychology and Other Works. In Standard Edition, XVIII (1920-1922). Hogarth, London, 1955.

Goldman, A., 'High toxicity leadership: Borderline personality disorder and the dysfunctional organization', Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol. 21, No. 8, pp. 733 - 746.

Jung, CG., The Collected Works of C. G. Jung. (17 Volumes). Routledge & Kegan Paul., London, 1959.

Kiernan, B., The Pol Pot Regime, Race, Power, and Genocide in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, 1975-79, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1996.

Lipman-Blumen, J., The Allure of Toxic Leaders, Why We Follow Destructive Bosses and Corrupt Politicians--and How We Can Survive Them. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York, 2005.

McLean, I. & McMillan, A., The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003.

Puri, BK., Laking, P.J. & Treasaden, IH., Textbook of Psychiatry. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh, , London, New York, Philadelphia, Sydney, St Louis, Toronto, 1996.

Robins, RS., & Post, JM., Political Paranoia, The Psychopolitics of Hatred. Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1997.

Staub, E., The roots of evil, The origins of genocide and other group violence, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.

Tooley, M., 'The Problem of Evil', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009. (January 7, 2010).

William W. Bostock is Senior Lecturer in Government, University of Tasmania. His special interests include Political Psychology.

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