Leadership, Disorders, and Problems of the Powerful: The Abnormal Psychological Developments to Which Managers Are Especially Susceptible

Abstract

To many people, the very leadership and thirst for power exhibited by managers are in themselves a type of mental disorder. It is easy to pathologize politicians and managers and brand them as abnormal. This explanatory model applies in the extreme when passing judgment on great dictators. Hitler, Stalin, or Mao easily come across as crazed psychopaths whose abnormal mental systems caused the many inhumane acts for which we hold them responsible today. In this chapter we examine the question of whether there really is a psychopathology of power. Can extreme leadership behavior be described using psychopathological explanatory models? We will show that this is not necessarily the case in a medical or therapeutic sense, but rather that Hitler and Stalin were “normally disturbed” people (and not “abnormal lunatics”).