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Leaders And Their Followers In A Dangerous World
Jerrold M. Post
The Psychology Of Political Behavior (Psychoanalysis And Social Theory)
Cornell University Press
March 2004
On Sale: March 11, 2004
336 pages
ISBN: 0801441692
EAN: 9780801441691
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
"Policy specialists and academic scholars have long agreed
that for U.S. leaders to deal effectively with other actors
in the international arena, they need images of their
adversaries. Leaders must try to see events, and, indeed,
their own behavior, from the perspective of opponents. . . .
Faulty images are a source of misperceptions and
miscalculations that have often led to major errors in
policy, avoidable catastrophes, and missed opportunities.
History supplies all too many examples."—from the Foreword
What impels leaders to lead and followers to follow? How did
Osama bin Laden, the son of a multibillionaire construction
magnate in Saudi Arabia, become the world’s number-one
terrorist? What are the psychological foundations of man’s
inhumanity to man, ethnic cleansing, and genocide? Jerrold
M. Post contends that such questions can be answered only
through an understanding of the psychological foundations of
leader personality and political behavior. Post was founding
director of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and
Political Behavior for the CIA. He developed the political
personality profiles of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for
President Jimmy Carter’s use at the Camp David talks and
initiated the U.S. government’s research program on the
psychology of political terrorism. He was awarded the
Intelligence Medal of Merit in 1979 for his leadership of
the center. In this book, he draws on psychological and
personality theories, as well as interviews with individual
terrorists and those who have interacted with particular
leaders, to discuss a range of issues: the effects of
illness and age on a leader’s political behavior; narcissism
and the relationship between followers and a charismatic
leader; the impact of crisis-induced stress on policymakers;
the mind of the terrorist, with a consideration of "killing
in the name of God"; and the need for enemies and the rise
of ethnic conflict and terrorism in the post–Cold War
environment. The leaders he discusses include Fidel Castro,
Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, and Slobodan
Milosevic.
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