To better understand the threat that Trump’s mental pathology poses, Random Lengths turned to Ian Hughes, a physicist, trained psychoanalyst and author of the 2018 book, Disordered Minds: How Dangerous Personalities Are Destroying Democracy, which describes how leaders with dangerous personality disorders — incapable of feeling the full range of normal human emotions — have repeatedly managed to build power bases largely comprised of similarly disordered supporters: Adolf Hitler’s Germany, Joseph Stalin’s Russia, Mao Zedong’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
This article appears on Random Lengths News. Continue reading here
Glad you are giving more exposure to this theory of pathocracy. I read the book by Andrzej Lobaczewski (PONEROLOGY) that introduced the idea, but his writing needs interpretation for an American audience. The man has suffered very much but comes on a bit anti-Semitic in places and that is a bloody shame because the basic idea is very important.
I am trying to merge this idea of pathocracy with another concept, collective post-traumatic disorder (CPTSD) because after a whole group of people together suffer a trauma such as war, plague, famine, natural disaster, etc. they are often more open to blaming and persecuting scapegoats, and to the psychologically disturbed demagogues and leaders who use these tendencies to gain power.
Thus they create more traumatized groups. And so goes history.