By his word he could kill them, have them tortured,
have them rescued again, have them rewarded. Life and death depended on
his whim."
The psychoanalyst Erich Fromm used these words to describe the "refined
sadism" of Josef Stalin, who took delight in playing with the minds of his
victims before he ordered the destruction of their bodies.
But the revelations of recent weeks suggest that they might as easily
be applied to another former dictator, Saddam Hussein.
The objects unearthed at Iraqi prisons, palaces and safe houses speak
of brutality and indulgence. A gold machine gun. A cable used to deliver
electric shocks to ears and genitals. Fantasy paintings of snakes,
monsters and unclad women. A red wire cage with a cement channel in the
floor for human excrement.
The stories behind the objects tell of paranoia and caprice — arbitrary
imprisonment and equally arbitrary release, opulently furnished rooms
never inhabited. And behind it all is a man who acted out his fantasies of
omnipotence using a nation as his theater and its citizens as his
props.
Psychoanalyzing political leaders is a dicey business, and
psychiatrists are quick to caution that without extensive research or
personal contact with Mr. Hussein, nothing can be said with certainty
about his psychological makeup. But what is already known about Mr.
Hussein is suggestive, the psychiatrists say.
Like Stalin and Hitler, Mr. Hussein has sometimes been referred to as a
madman, in part because people are reluctant to accept such ruthlessness
and cruelty as the product of anything but insanity.
But bad does not equal mad. Most historical analysts have rejected the
notion that mental illness could explain the actions of either Stalin or
Hitler. Experts familiar with Mr. Hussein's upbringing and years in power
said that there was no evidence that he suffered from psychosis or any
severe mental illness. The very fact that he was able to stay in charge
for so long and exert such complete control argues against insanity, the
experts said.
Two researchers, Jerrold M. Post and Amatzia
Baram, concluded in a
psychological profile of Mr. Hussein that he was more accurately described
as a malignant narcissist, a label that has also been applied to Stalin
and Hitler. Dr. Post, a psychiatrist at George Washington University, and
Dr. Baram, an expert on Iraq at the University of Haifa in Israel, wrote
the profile for the United States Air Force Counterproliferation
Center.
Dr. Post was also the founding director of the Central Intelligence
Agency's political profiling program.
Malignant narcissism, as defined by psychiatrists, is a severe form of
narcissistic personality disorder. Like classic narcissists, malignant
narcissists are grandiose,
self-centered, oversensitive to criticism and
unable to feel empathy for others. They cover over deep insecurities with
an inflated self-image.
But malignant narcissists also tend to paranoia and aggression, and
share some features of the antisocial personality, including the absence
of moral or ethical judgment, said Dr. Otto
Kernberg, a psychiatry
professor at Cornell University and an expert on personality disorders.
Far from being psychotic, malignant narcissists are adept at charming
and manipulating those around them. Political leaders with this
personality, Dr. Kernberg said, are able to take control "because their
inordinate narcissism is expressed in grandiosity, a confidence in
themselves and the assurance that they know what the world needs."
At the same time, he said, "They express their aggression in cruel and
sadistic behavior against their enemies: whoever does not submit to them
or love them."
Dr. Kernberg added that while he had studied Hitler and Stalin, and
would categorize them as malignant narcissists, he knew little about Mr.
Hussein and could not comment directly about him.
Dr. Post, however, said that the concept of malignant narcissism fit
Mr. Hussein quite nicely.
"The overarching theme is the centrality of the self — that he is
Iraq," Dr. Post said. This self-glorification, he said, was combined with
"a deep-seated need to reassure himself through public adulation of how
magnificent he is."
Dr. Post added that the bunker built beneath one of Mr. Hussein's
palaces was a perfect metaphor for his personality. "Here, under this
grandiose palace with its inlaid woods and fine marbles, is this
underground bunker with reinforced concrete and steel," Dr. Post said.
"That's his psychology: a grandiose facade and under it a siege state,
ready to be betrayed, to be attacked, to strike back."
In their profile of Mr. Hussein, compiled from news accounts and
interviews, Dr. Post and Dr. Baram attributed much of the Iraqi leader's
psychopathology to his early childhood.
They described how Mr. Hussein's mother suffered the death of both her
husband and an elder son while she was pregnant with him. She tried to
commit suicide and to abort her son, but was prevented in each case by
members of a Jewish family who became her benefactors. When Saddam Hussein
was born, the researchers wrote, his mother refused to look at him or take
him in her arms.
Saddam went to live with a maternal uncle, Khairallah
Tulfah, who
imbued him with dreams of becoming a great Arab leader, like Saladin and
Gamal Abdel Nasser. At 3, he returned to live with his mother for several
years, but was psychologically and physically abused by her new husband,
according to the profile.
"One course in the face of such traumatizing experiences is to sink
into despair, passivity and hopelessness," Dr. Post and Dr. Baram wrote.
"But another is to etch a psychological template of compensatory
grandiosity, as if to vow, `Never again, never again shall I submit to
superior force.' This was the developmental path Saddam followed."
Other psychiatrists, however, cautioned that it was difficult to draw
conclusions about psychological development from sketchy information about
a leader's childhood, particularly when another culture was involved.
"Certainly, childhood experiences are very important," Dr. Kernberg said,
"but very often that's what we know least about, and what is most easily
distorted by fancy speculation."
What is not speculative is the adult that Mr. Hussein became, a man
obsessed with molding the world into a reflection of his own power.
Malignant narcissism is not the exclusive province of dictators.
In another country, at another time, with a different set of dice, some
psychiatrists say, Mr. Hussein might instead have become a corporate
executive, a lawyer, a cult leader or a
politician. His ambition, paranoia
and violence might then have been modulated by legal codes and tempered by
the checks and balances of a free society.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. "The best way to understand
this," said Dr. Kerry J.
Sulkowicz, a psychoanalyst in private practice in
Manhattan, "is that occasionally in history there is a confluence of
events, in which the severe psychopathology of a leader is allowed to
flourish."
