The title of this post is the subtitle of a book by Post. Specifically, it is the subtitle of a book by Jerrold M. Post, titled Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World. As I was looking through the book this morning I found myself stopping at chapter 9. It’s titled, “Narcissism and the Charismatic Leader-Follower Relationship.”
Post died a few years ago. But he had a long, prolific career as a psychiatrist, academic, and analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency. In all three roles he applied his expertise in psychology to politics, especially as it pertained to people in positions of political leadership, including heads of state.
Given my interest in followers rivals my interest in leaders, I have occasionally gravitated to Post’s work. For he more than most understood that leaders do not operate in vacuum, in isolation. Necessarily they interact with and absolutely depend on their followers.
Leaders and their Followers in a Dangerous World was published in 2004, long before the Time of Trump. Still, what Post wrote, specifically about charismatic leaders and their followers, is as timely as relevant.
For the purposes of this discussion, I will assume that President Donald Trump is a narcissist. He has never been formally or professionally diagnosed as such. But for at least the last decade he has been labeled a narcissist by experts and laypeople alike, both seriously and casually. The parallels between Trump and his followers and what Post has to say about charismatic leaders and their followers are in any case striking.
To be clear: being narcissistic and being charismatic are not one and the same. Not all people who are narcissistic are charismatic, and not all people who are charismatic are narcissistic. Still, according to Post, the “narcissistic personality helps us understand the nature of the charismatic leader-follower relationship.”
Here nine Post points for interested readers to consider:
- Charismatic leaders require a “continuing flow of admiration from their audiences to nourish their famished selves.”
- Central to charismatic leaders’ ability to “elicit admiration is an ability to convey a sense of grandeur, omnipotence, and strength.”
- Charismatic leaders “convey a sense of conviction and certainty to those who are consumed by doubt and uncertainty.”
- Analyses of speeches by charismatic leaders reveal a good versus evil, strength versus weakness, “all or nothing polar absolutism.”
- Such either-or categorization, with charismatic leaders on the side of the angels, “is a regular characteristic of their evocative rhetoric.”
- Post quotes eminent psychiatrist Heinz Kohut who found that certain types of narcissists “display an apparently unshakable self-confidence and voice their opinions with absolute certainty.”
- Followers of charismatic leaders are characterized as “ideal-hungry personalities.” They experience themselves as worthwhile “only so long as they can relate to leaders who they can greatly admire.” Followers like these are “forever” searching for leaders who are “idealized figures.”
- Charismatic leader-follower relationships can yield outcomes that are “destructive,” as in the cases of Adolph Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini. Or they can yield “powerful transforming social movements” as in the cases of Mahatma Gandhi or Mortin Luther King Jr.
- Charismatic leaders must be seen in tandem with their followers. Therefore, the word charisma does not properly apply to the leader; it applies to the leader-follower relationship.
On the assumption that Post made a good case, finally an irony. Long one of the most lacerating charges against Trump is that he is a narcissist. It is, however, precisely this narcissism that could explain his tight grip on the many millions who follow where he leads.
This grip is not, however, necessarily permanent. It just seems that way.