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PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACHES TO LEADERSHIP 393

29 Psychoanalytic Approaches

to Leadership

Y i a n n i s G a b r i e l

INTRODUCTION

The distinguishing feature of psychoanalytic approaches is the assumption of an unconscious dimension to social and individual life. The unconscious is the mental territory where danger- ous and painful ideas and desires are consigned through repression and other defensive mecha- nisms, and also the source of resistances to spe- cific ideas and emotions which present threats to mental functioning. As the territory from which fantasies spring, the unconscious may also be a source of imagination and creativity, in most spheres, scientific, artistic, economic and political.

Unconscious ideas, desires and emotions may be of a sexual nature but may also be related to ambition, envy, fear (of death, of failure, of rejec- tion, etc.) and so forth. These often reach con- sciousness in highly distorted or abstruse ways, requiring interpretation. One of the commonest manifestations of the unconscious are fantasies – mental representations which express unconscious wishes and desires as if they were already real- ized, yet often in a disguised and indirect manner. Fantasies are equally important in understanding the actions of people in and out of organizations: day-dreaming consumers, ambitious leaders, bul- lied employees, budding entrepreneurs, disaf- fected voters, and so forth, are as liable to be guided and driven by their fantasies as by rational considerations of ends and means. Relations between leaders and their followers frequently stimulate powerful emotional experiences and are liable to unleash formidable fantasies. It is through

its emphasis on emotions and fantasies that psychoanalysis has made its mark in the study of leadership.

We get a glimpse of the overpowering emotions that leaders can generate in the following account from Tolstoy’s War and Peace, when young Nikolai Rostov, who, has imagined countless times the moment when he will might meet his Emperor, finally gets his chance on the morrow of a military defeat:

But as a youth in love trembles and turns faint and

dares not utter what he has spent nights in dream-

ing of, and looks around in terror, seeking aid or a

chance of delay and flight, when the longed-for

moment arrives and he is alone with her, so

Rostov, now that he had attained what he had

longed for beyond everything in the world, did not

know how to approach the Emperor, and a thou-

sand reasons occurred to him why it would be

untimely, improper and impossible to do so.

(Tolstoy, 1869/1982, p. 334)

This chapter presents the core psychoanalytic insights into leadership (see also Kets de Vries, Chapter 28, this volume). Following some early formulations by Freud, we explore the differences between leadership and management and examine leadership as the management of meaning and the management of emotions. We look closely at the relations between leaders and their followers, especially the tendency of the latter to idealize and identify with the former. We then examine why the leadership romance, the powerful bond that links leaders and their followers which in so many

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ways is akin to being in love, goes awry and why leaders lapse into dysfunctional modes such as narcissism and authoritarianism. We conclude by addressing the different ways in which psychoa- nalysis enhances our understanding of leadership and deepens some of the insights generated by other approaches.

FREUD AND BION

Sigmurd Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, took leadership very seriously, both in his theo- retical work and also in his attempts, sometimes successful and frequently unsuccessful, to steer the movement that he founded away from schism, mysticism, quackery and dilettantism. Freud’s leadership ‘style’ inspired great devotion among his followers, at times approaching deification; it also demanded unquestioned obedience, some- thing that led to the alienation and subsequent departure from the fold of psychoanalysis of some of Freud’s most creative and original disciples, including C. G. Jung, Alfred Adler, Otto Rank, Sándor Ferenczi and Karen Horney. Behind all of these painful separations, lay a questioning of Freud’s authority, something that inevitably led to bitter disputes between supporters and apostates. Instead of being viewed as scientific differences to be resolved through rational discourse, disagree- ments in psychoanalysis easily came to be viewed as rebellions against the authority of the father figure of psychoanalysis by his supporters and as questioning of his infallibility by his critics. This is not merely of historical interest. It helps explain the emphasis laid by psychoanalytic approaches to leadership on early life experiences as providing a template on which subsequent relations between leaders and followers unfold. Leaders can easily generate tremendous loyalty and devotion by assuming a parental position in the unconscious life of the followers, feelings that can later turn into resentment and disappointment when leaders fail to live up to the lofty expectations of their followers.

The theme of filial rebellion against an autocratic father is scattered throughout Freud’s writings and is explored directly in Totem and Taboo (Freud, 1913j). Using a hypothesis pro- posed by Darwin, Freud speculated that early human groups (primal hordes), like those of other primates, may have been dominated by a single powerful male, the primal father, who kept all females to himself and generated much fear, hos- tility and envy among other males, including his sons. At some point, this prehistoric band of broth- ers turned against the father and murdered him.

Overwhelmed by guilt and fear that the death of the father will lead to endless killings, they raised a totem animal, symbolic of the father, and agreed on two prohibitions or taboos – not to kill the totem animal outside ceremonial occasions and not to have sexual relations with members of the same totem clan. Using the idea of the ‘totem meal’ developed by biblical scholar W. Robertson Smith, Freud suggested that, in commemoration of their deed, the band of brothers established an annual festival, when the totem animal was ritu- ally slaughtered and eaten, a theme echoed in the Christian ceremony of communion.

The murder of the primal father was not offered as a historical account of actual events, but rather as ‘a hypothesis, like so many others with which archaeologists endeavour to lighten the darkness of prehistoric times – a “Just-So Story” as it was amusingly called by a not unkind English critic’ (Freud, 1921/1985, p. 154). It was a way of accounting for the universal prohibition of incest and for what Freud viewed as the centrality of guilt in religious beliefs and practices. The primal myth also provided a kind of phylogenetic equiva- lent of the Oedipus complex, mirroring its core repressed phantasies – killing the father and taking the mother for wife. As for leadership, it suggested that feelings of followers for their leader are invariably ambivalent – followers may love the leader, craving protection and support, but they also resent and envy the leader.

Freud’s theory of group functioning highlights the importance of leaders. For Freud, leaderless groups are highly transient, ephemeral arrangements or led by an invisible symbolic leader. It is leader- ship that hold groups together, through the position that leaders occupy in the unconscious life of groups. Using the Church and the army as examples, Freud argued that members of each group experi- ence ‘an intense emotional tie’ (Freud, 1921/1985, p. 123) to their leader (Christ, the Commander-in- Chief) and also to each other. The power of uncon- scious dynamics in groups is illustrated with the example of panic on the battlefield: when the leader falls, group members forsake the very relatedness that brought them together, as well as the task of battle, lose their minds, and flee in fear.

Freud also proposed that the shared emotional experience of group members comes from a shared identification with and idealization of the leader. Each group member identifies with the leader; in so doing, each individual identifies with all other group members, who share the same relationship to the leader as themselves. This leads to a defini- tion of ‘group’ which has at its core the shared unconscious experience of group members:

A primary group… is a number of individuals who

have put one and the same object in the place of

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their ego ideal and have consequently identified

themselves with one another in their ego. (Freud,

1921/1985, p. 147)

Groups represent a special type of love bond, one in which the sexual element has been replaced by an emotional attachment: in short one, in which sexual energy (libido) becomes sublimated into social ties. Overt sexual attraction or activ- ity threatens the cohesion of a group, in Freud’s view. Thus, individuals in a group sacrifice the prospect of direct sexual gratification, but also their uniqueness and individuality, in return for the stability of love relationships, belongingness and group power. In their relationships to their leaders, individuals sacrifice their independence for protection, order and authority. The Freudian group is dominated by his conception of an omnipotent leader who embodies the qualities of the feared father of the mythical primal horde, whose will is never questioned and whose power is absolute.

Groups represent not merely a state of intensi- fied emotional ties but psychological regression to a child-like dependence, something that may be tempered by organization and focus on a shared task. This is an idea developed by Wilfred Bion, a British psychoanalyst, who dedicated much effort to understanding group dynamics and whose theo- ries have found extensive applications in organiza- tional consultation. Bion’s (1961) key contribution is to argue that regressive tendencies of groups are the result of excessive anxieties, which cause groups to lose sight of the tasks they seek to accomplish and tips them into what he termed ‘basic assumption’ functioning. By this, he meant that groups start to behave as if they held certain shared assumptions about each other, about the leader and about the task they seek to accomplish. These assumptions are products of fantasy, collec- tive delusions that severely distort their sense of proportion and reality. Bion identified three types of basic assumptions – dependency, fight–flight and pairing – each with a characteristic set of behaviours and emotions.

● In basic assumption dependency mode, group members act as if the leader, who is seen as a person of extraordinary qualities, will save them without them having to lift a finger. In this state, groups eventually become disappointed with their leader, who cannot possibly live up to the members’ exaggerated expectations.

● In basic assumption fight–flight mode, groups act as if there is a great danger that must be confronted, either by attacking it or by running away from it. This imaginary danger can be from inside or outside of the group and typically acts

as a scapegoat that obscures other, potentially serious dangers.

● In basic assumption pairing mode, groups experi- ence strong feelings of hopefulness, imagining that two members of the group will get together to generate an idea or give birth to a messiah who can solve all the group’s problems. The focus of the group turns away from difficult issues of the present to an imagined future in which all such difficulties are overcome.

The importance of Bion’s contribution lay in his view that group regression and dysfunction are consequences of leadership failures, and in par- ticular the failure of leadership to contain anxiety and other potentially toxic emotions. In Bion’s work we find a conception of the leader whose maternal qualities of caring and emotional sensi- tivity stand in juxtaposition to the Freudian con- ception of the leader as a stern father figure. We also have the first clear presentation of the argu- ment that leading involves the management of emotion. Failure to manage anxiety effectively can lead to serious failures. Excessive anxiety leads to panic or fatalism, whereas excessively low anxiety leads to complacency and decay. The containment of anxiety is then seen as an important leadership function by many authors (see, for example, French, 1997; Hirschhorn, 1988; Menzies Lyth, 1988; Obholzer, 1999). The significance of this argument has increased, as mainstream leadership theorizing has come to emphasize the emotional dimensions of leader- ship, culminating in Goleman’s and others’ work on the link between leadership and emotional intelligence (see, for example, George, 2000; Goleman, 2001).

ZALEZNIK AND BURNS

A seminal contribution to an understanding of the emotional qualities of leaders was made by psy- choanalyst and leadership professor Abraham Zaleznik. In his award-winning essay ‘Managers and Leaders: Are They Different?’, Abraham Zaleznik (1977) sought to draw a hard line between managers, preoccupied with rationality, order and control, and leaders, who tolerate disor- der, are concerned with ideas and strive towards goals in more intuitive ways. A key difference is that managers relate to their followers in imper- sonal bureaucratic ways, often avoiding direct contact, whereas leaders relate to them in personal and direct ways. Anticipating the importance of empathy as a dimension of emotional intelligence,

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Zaleznik saw it as the vital quality of leaders that managers lack:

Empathy is not simply a matter of paying attention

to other people. It is also the capacity to take in

emotional signals and make them meaningful in a

relationship. People who describe another person

as ‘deeply affected,’ with ‘intense desire,’ ‘crest-

fallen,’ and as one who can ‘vow to himself’ would

seem to have an inner perceptiveness that they

can use in their relationships with others. (Zaleznik,

1977, p. 51)

Since Zaleznik’s contribution, many mainstream theorists, including Bennis and Nanus (1985), Kotter (1995) and others, have taken up this view – that managers and leaders are in effect dif- ferent, that management and leadership are differ- ent. In comparing the managers and leaders, four broad areas of difference have been noted:

● Managers and leaders have fundamentally differ- ent attitudes towards change and order. Leaders are restless spirits, unwilling to leave well- enough alone, eager to bring about large-scale change and improvement. Managers, on the other hand, are driven by a desire for order and regularity, opting for incremental change and marginal improvements.

● Correspondingly, managers and leaders have fundamentally different attitudes towards waste and efficiency. Managers view efficiency as one of their supreme objectives, reducing waste and always trying to do a thousand things slightly better. Leaders, on the other hand, do not mind disorder and waste, which they often view as a price that must be paid in order to achieve change. Waste can be waste of materials, waste of time and other resources and even the loss of human life.

● Leaders are often driven by a vision of the future which is broad and general. They generally do not enjoy looking at details and making careful plans for all contingencies. They often disregard important details, which can derail the overall project. Managers, by contrast, are keenly aware that details can be important; they seek to eliminate uncertainty by carefully weighing out options and taking care of details.

● Correspondingly, managers are generally smart people, operating logically and valuing rational- ity above all else. They look carefully at informa- tion, costs, benefits and risks before making decisions and view emotion as a disruptive and dangerous force. Leaders, on the other hand, often operate at an emotional level, stirring up emotions in their followers and exciting emotions in themselves. Logic is often eclipsed by intui- tion, hunches and gut feelings. Instead of careful

consideration of all possible alternatives, leaders often commit themselves to an alternative that contains uncertainties and risks, but also hidden possibilities.

Zaleznik (1989) argued that, since World War II, American business had come to rely increasingly on the ‘professional manager’ who puts his/her faith in numbers, elaborate formal structures and the handling of people as resources, what he called ‘the managerial mystique’, at the expense of true leadership. Zaleznik went on to criticize, with numerous examples, this mystique which encouraged business people ‘to dedicate them- selves to process, structures, roles, and indirect forms of communication and to ignore ideas, people, emotions and direct talk’ (Zaleznik, 1989, p. 2). It is in a similar vein, that American political theorist James MacGregor Burns (1978), in his seminal book Leadership, developed a highly sophisticated theory of moral leadership as against mere power-wielding and technique:

By… moral leadership… I mean, first, that leaders

and led have a relationship not only of power but

of mutual needs, aspirations and values; second,

that in responding to leaders, followers have ade-

quate knowledge of alternative leaders and pro-

grams and the capacity to choose among those

alternatives; and, third, that leaders take responsi-

bility for their commitments.…Moral leadership

emerges from, and always returns to, the funda-

mental wants and needs, aspirations, and values of

the followers. (Burns, 1978, p. 4)

Burns insisted that leaders (rather than tyrants) enter into a relation with their followers that pre- cludes sham, manipulation and deception. They treat their followers not as objects or as pawns on a chessboard, but as conscious and moral beings. They are deeply aware of their followers’ aspira- tions and needs, and experience a profound sense of responsibility towards them. Without being an explicitly psychoanalytic writer, Burns is deeply aware of the unconscious dimension of the leader–follower relation. His view of the leader was not unlike that of Freud’s view of the psycho- analyst – his purpose is to make the followers’ unconscious desires conscious, thus turning them into motives for collective action.

The essential strategy of leadership in mobilizing

power is to recognize the arrays of motives and

goals in potential followers, to appeal to those

motives by words and action, and to strengthen

those motives and goals in order to increase the

power of leadership, thereby changing the envi-

ronment within which both followers and leaders

act. Conflict – disagreement over goals within an

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array of followers, fear of outsiders, competition

for scarce resources – immediately invigorates the

mobilization of consensus and dissensus. But the

fundamental process is a more elusive one; it is, in

large part, to make conscious what lies uncon-

scious among followers.…

If the first task of leadership is to bring to con-

sciousness the followers’ sense of their own needs,

values, and purposes, the question [facing leaders]

remains: consciousness of what? Which of these

motives and goals are to be tapped? (Burns, 1978,

pp. 40, 41, emphasis in the original)

In this extract, the leader emerges as someone who engages emotionally and spiritually with his/ her followers to draw to their conscious mind those unconscious desires that may then fuel col- lective, purposeful action. The inspiration pro- vided by the leader, the sense of elation and enthusiasm experienced by the followers, far from being the outcome of some innate leader cha- risma, coincides with the release of emotional energy necessary to keep those desires repressed. A psychoanalytic explication of Burns’ account would liken this release to the one that takes place in a condition of falling in love and discovering that love is reciprocated – an analogy already made by Freud (Freud, 1921/1985) and developed by Kohut (1976) and Lindholm (1988).

LEADERS AS MANAGERS OF EMOTION

The theories of Zaleznik and Burns cast leaders as managers of emotion. Far from implying dis- simulation and manipulation, management of emotion highlights the interactive nature of the leader–follower relation. In relating to their fol- lowers, leaders are liable to form deep emotional bonds. They may evoke powerful emotions, but also work with emotions, their own and those of their followers. This involves different aspects of emotional work:

● Leaders read the emotions of their followers and appreciate their consequences. Leaders commu- nicate with their followers in different ways, but effective ones have their finger on the followers’ emotional pulse, being able to detect frustration, anger, hope, boredom and other emotions.

● They are then able to intensify some emotions, especially by managing meaning in such ways that emotions become magnified. The word ‘insult’ will intensify anger, just as the word ‘challenge’ will intensify commitment.

● Leaders may then be able to channel emotions to particular targets and objectives. Anger is

then not dissipated in different directions and towards different targets, but gets focused on a particular object who becomes ‘the enemy’. Hope is focused on a collective task, which assumes the quality of a ‘mission’, and so forth.

● Leaders may then use the emotion to drive action, motivating and inspiring their followers to do things that may otherwise have appeared futile, excessive, immoral or irrational. It is in this sense that leaders can be said to ‘drive’ their followers.

● While intensifying and channelling some useful emotions, leaders may also contain or neutral- ize some potentially dangerous emotions – in some cases, leaders can be said to act as ‘toxic sponges’, absorbing negative emotions and pre- venting them from affecting their followers.

● Leaders may also offer safety valves for poten- tially dangerous emotions and can provide legiti- mate ways to express such emotions. One such way is through acknowledging them and accept- ing them, for example acknowledging fear or apprehension; another is by offering stories or jokes (including self-disparaging ones) that defuse dangerous emotions.

The means by which leaders manage emotions revolve around the use of words and visible actions. Leaders may influence emotions by using symbolic language, including stories and meta- phors. Christ’s use of the parables is an example of stories having powerful emotional effects. Churchill’s use of metaphors, such as ‘iron cur- tain’ and ‘cold war’ set the emotional tone of post-World War II politics. The use of emotional lan guage with powerful words, such as ‘betrayal’, ‘war’, ‘victory’, ‘rebirth’, ‘downsizing’, ‘challenge’ and so forth, is capable of stimulating strong emo- tions, as is the use of less emotive words like ‘change’, ‘modernization’ and ‘merger’ when used in particular contexts. In general, leaders manage emotions by offering explanations and interpreta- tions that resonate with the experiences of their followers.

The psychoanalytic contribution here lies in acknowledging that this ‘resonance’ is linked to unconscious wishes, desires and fantasies. Thus, a word that at a conscious level may seem innocent or commonplace, when uttered in the right context and at the right time, may unleash great emotional energy. Obama’s signature phrase ‘Yes we can,’ may have been uttered numerous times before by different leaders, but, spoken by a man who had overcome formidable obstacles of racism and poverty to an electorate overwhelmed by the cyni- cism and disillusionment of the Bush era, it acquired a unique resonance.

It is sometimes said that actions speak louder than words. There is little doubt that the leader’s

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actions are scrutinized by the followers in ways that can have a profound influence on emotions. Who did the leader reward and who did she punish? Who did he smile to? Did he smile at all? Where are the organization’s resources going? What important decisions have been taken? Who is the leader meeting? How attentively is she lis- tening? What car is he driving? It will be noted that big and small actions can be invested with strong meanings and evoke strong emotions.

The management of emotions is a dangerous part of the leader’s work. It can easily backfire. Words and actions regularly come back to haunt leaders. Once a genie is out of the bottle, it becomes impossible to put it back in. A word or an action that undermines the follower’s trust in the leader will be difficult to reverse. What is espe- cially damaging in this context is a visible dis- crepancy between what leaders say and what they do. This can easily give rise to cynicism and unleash strong negative emotions towards the leader or the organization as a whole.

FOLLOWERSHIP

Considering the huge amount of scholarship dedicated to leaders and leadership, followers and followership seem to be neglected by scholars and most other commentators (Collinson, 2005, 2006; Bligh, Chapter 31, in this volume). In one way, this is to be expected. Understanding leadership has long been seen as a worthwhile quest. It prom- ises to deliver the key for identifying leaders and leadership qualities and the basis of effective lead- ership training and development programmes. What use is understanding followership? Who would wish to train people to be good followers? This is the rub. Who could hope to be a good leader without understanding his/her followers?

As we have noted already, psychoanalytic approaches emphasize the relation between lead- ers and followers, a relation described by Burns as entailing ‘mutual stimulation and elevation’ (Burns, 1978, p. 4). Psychoanalytic approaches, however, argue that this relation is also liable to trigger off powerful and at times unrealistic fanta- sies among followers. Where do followers’ fanta- sies about their leaders originate? Some of them are rooted in their experiences, good and bad, of previous leaders and in particular to the two important figures of authority that dominate most people’s early lives, their mother and their father. To the eyes of the helpless and immature child, these figures appear immense and god-like, a ‘primal mother’ and a ‘primal father’. The quali- ties and characteristics attributed to these figures

through the child’s fantasies can form the basis of some subsequent fantasies about leaders. Psychoanalyst Heinz Kohut (1971, 1976) has argued that some leaders are experienced by their followers as reincarnations of the primal mother – caring, giving and loving. Other leaders are experienced as embodiments of the primal father – omnipotent, omniscient but also strict and terrify- ing. Kohut referred to the former as charismatic and to the latter as messianic. In the presence of charismatic leaders, followers are liable to feel inspired and elated, whereas in the presence of messianic leaders, they are liable to feel submissive and overawed.

The two types of leaders form very different types of relations with their followers. Charismatic are perceived as uniquely kind, smart and talented (Conger, Chapter 7, in this volume). Everything that they do or say appears to be fascinating, inspired and magnificent. They seem to have an aura around them, a field of energy that all those who enter experience as hugely invigorating. In their presence, their followers feel smarter and more talented, inspired and appreciated. Caring is an especially important quality of these leaders, since they are seen as setting great store by each and every one of their followers. Christ, in his capacity as good shepherd, is the archetype of such an all-caring, all-loving leader.

Messianic leaders are very demanding, critical and confrontational (Tourish, Chapter 16, in this volume). They place little store in maintaining a happy atmosphere and are blind to the sensitivities of their followers. And yet, precisely because they can make each person forget their narrow self-in- terests, they are capable of stirring them into great achievements. Followers of messianic leaders feel meek and sometimes even paralysed in the pres- ence of their leaders. Such leaders inspire fear and awe, making their followers feel worthless and insignificant. Even so, such leaders can generate tremendous commitment, unleashing qualities of dedication, sacrifice and heroism in their follow- ers. Their grip on their followers rests on an unshakeable conviction that, in spite of sacrifices and hardships, they can get them to the promised land and deliver them from their troubles. Leaders may discover that their own actions have limited ability to modify the way their followers imagine them to be by projecting such powerful fantasies onto them. Leadership fantasies surface regularly in the mass media where high-profile leaders in politics, business and sport are easily portrayed as having demonic qualities, good and bad, thereby fuelling powerful public emotions towards such figures. A leader, like British premier Gordon Brown, may initially be cast in the role of a dour but competent leader (‘did a great job as Chancellor of the Exchequer’); this may quickly give way to

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him failing to listen to the electorate and being uncaring, itself replaced by being incompetent and eventually impotent – in short, a lame duck politician, a virtual impostor who was never elected to be Prime Minister.

Kohut’s account has received some support from my own study of follower fantasies through the medium of stories that followers tell about their leaders (Gabriel, 1997). A detailed analysis and interpretation of such stories revealed four recurring themes, each casting the leader in a particular role or its opposite:

1. First, the leader as someone who cares for his/her subordinates, either offering recognition and support or protection. The reverse of this fantasy is the leader who is indifferent to the plight of his/her subordinates and may even be an axeman, willing to sacrifice them in order to achieve his/her ambition.

2. Secondly, the leader as someone who is acces- sible, who can be seen and heard, even if his/ her appearances constitute special occasions. Conversely, the leader as someone who is mysterious and aloof, distant and inscrutable.

3. Thirdly, the leader as someone who is omnipotent, unafraid and capable of anything. Omnipotence sometimes extends to omniscience, especially an ability to read the minds of his/her subordinates and recognize true loyalty from flattery and sycophancy. Conversely, the leader as someone externally driven, afraid and fallible.

4. Fourthly, the leader as someone who has a legitimate claim to power; conversely, the leader as a impostor, someone who usurped power and whose claims are fraudulent.

These themes are also encountered in numerous religious, mythological and other narratives, most especially when a follower has a chance to meet the leader face to face – when, in the Christian tradition, he/she comes face to face with God. They reflect fundamental fantasies which some- times coexist in the same story or the same experience of a leader.

Consistent with Kohut’s distinction between charismatic and messianic leadership, the first two themes, highlighting caring and accessibility, are qualities that once, in early infancy, are associated with the mother figure. She was someone who cared for us and, was available when we wanted her. She loved us fully and with no conditions, since after all we came out of her own body. In our eyes, she was prepared to do anything for us and, above all, she was prepared to love us, no matter what we did. The second two themes are linked with the other important figure of our early child- hood, the father figure. To our childlike-like eyes, he seemed so big and powerful, so knowledgeable

and strong. We depended on him for protection, but we were also more than a little afraid of him, since we were aware of his ability to punish. His love for us, unlike that of our mother, was much more conditional; he was judgmental and per- fectly able to make his dissatisfaction with our behaviour known to us. He was always ready to criticize and discipline. Yet, we accepted his criti- cism, punishment and discipline, because, after all, he was our rightful father. How much harder would similar treatment be at the hands of an uncle or a stepfather. In our father, we recognized rights that we would not find it easy to accord to others.

Subsequent relations with leaders frequently build on early experiences with people of our narrow family circle. A person who was mal- treated by an authoritarian father figure, may later in life seek the protection of such a figure. Conversely, they may envisage a leader to be a punitive and harsh person, even if in reality the leader is not. Although not everyone’s parents act in the same manner, and not everyone grows up in a conventional family with a father and a mother, most people have powerful experiences with fig- ures of authority in early life which they later revive in their contacts with leaders.

Instead of looking at the distinction between charismatic and messianic leaders as determined by the attributes of the leaders themselves, we would therefore be inclined to see it as the product of follower fantasies. A leader may be perceived as messianic by some followers, charismatic by others and as a mixture by yet others. He or she may be seen as an impostor, as caring or as aloof by different followers. In the course of rehearsing fantasies through jokes, stories and myths, a few principal leadership fantasies may emerge, expressed in a shared folklore.

What all these follower fantasies highlight is the key psychoanalytic insight that ‘present rela- tions are structured by and resemble past ones, most notably, those from early childhood with mother and father’ (Oglensky, 1995, p. 1036). Psychoanalytic approaches suggest that it is very difficult to relate to leaders in ways which are unaffected by our early relations with mother and father; these early relations provide a core of primal political experiences which will forever colour our subsequent relations with authority, no matter how much these are couched in terms of legality and rationality. Different individuals will relate to authority in different ways, develop dis- tinct fantasies and spin different stories about their leaders. As Oglensky points out, ‘The role of the subordinate does actually depend upon his or her unique biography of attachment to parents as pro- totypes of authority’ (Oglensky, 1995, p. 1051), each biography unfolding around a specific

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‘authority template’. For some individuals, the legitimate–impostor axis may dominate their political fantasy life; for others, the caring– persecuting axis may predominate. In relating to their leaders, however, followers cannot escape from their past.

DYSFUNCTIONAL LEADERS

Nor can leaders escape from their own past – this is something that often prompts dysfunctional or toxic types of leadership that bring misfortune on leaders and followers alike. Leadership dysfunc- tions have been extensively discussed by both psychoanalytic (Gabriel, 1999; Hirschhorn, 1997; Kets de Vries, 1988; Kets de Vries & Miller, 1984; Levinson, 1968/1981; Maccoby, 1976; Obholzer, 1999; Sievers, 1994) and non-psychoanalytic writers (see, for example, Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2003; Bennis, 1989; Calas & Smircich, 1991; Ciulla, 1998/2004; Grint, 2000, 2005; Heifetz, 1994; Lipman-Blumen, 2005; Pfeffer, 1977). What is unique about psychoanalytic contribu- tions is that, beyond the usual factors that may lead to dysfunctional leadership, like political cor- ruption, failing institutions and so forth, they link such dysfunctions to the psychopathology of lead- ers and, in particular, unconscious forces that may suddenly find disruptive and irrational expressions.

In an influential book, Manfred Kets de Vries and Danny Miller (1984) argued that many organ- izational failures are the result of the chief execu- tives’ psychopathologies. Indeed, they argue, organizations can become neurotic, just as indi- viduals can. What is more, organizational neuro- ses reflect the neuroses of the leader, and these fall into distinct patterns.

Our experience with top executives and their

organizations revealed that parallels could be

drawn between individual pathology – excessive

use of neurotic style – and organizational pathol-

ogy, the latter resulting in poorly functioning

organizations. In dysfunctional, centralized firms,

the rigid neurotic styles of the top executives

were strongly mirrored in the nature of the inap-

propriate strategies, structures, and organiza-

tional cultures of their firms. (Kets de Vries &

Miller, 1984, p. 17)

Kets de Vries and Miller offer some evidence to support their argument. What is interesting is that often the same qualities that bring success to a leader and an organization end up by becoming counterproductive. The point when normality

crosses into neurosis is when optimism becomes recklessness, when resolve becomes pig-headed- ness, when courage becomes bravado, when cau- tion becomes paralysis, or when firmness becomes cruelty. As long as leaders can keep a check on their neurotic tendencies, they may mobilize them in pursuit of organizational visions and goals. But once they lapse into neurotic behaviour, their effect on their organization is negative and dra- matically so. Many earlier victories and accom- plishments are thus compromised and ruined.

AUTHORITARIANISM AND NARCISSISM

Two of the most widely discussed types of leader pathologies are authoritarianism and narcissism. In a curious way, these two pathologies are almost the mirror image of each other. Authoritarianism involves excessive emphasis on brute force and adherence to orders and regulations; it celebrates firmness and steadfastness and abhors fanciful ideas and initiatives. It usually leads to inflexible, fear-ridden organizations that are unable to com- pete in markets or environments where creativity, flexibility, imagination and flair are called for. Narcissism, on the other hand, involves excessive preoccupation with glamour, image and display. It celebrates creativity, beauty, freedom and spon- taneity. It easily loses track of the difference between fantasy and reality and is liable to lead to dramatic and sudden failures, when the organiza- tion discovers to its cost that there was a gulf between its grandiose aspirations and what it actually was able to deliver.

Authoritarianism

Authoritarianism is a well-established set of per- sonality characteristics and the cause of numer- ous personality disorders. It is a type of leadership much in evidence in military dictatorships, mili- tary and police academies, prisons, boarding schools and other institutions that traditionally have been founded on the basis of a cast-iron obedience to authority and a suppression of the individual characteristics and needs. The study of authoritarianism originates in Freud’s discus- sion of the anal obsessive character (Freud, 1905/1977), the character fixated in the anal stage of development, whose main features are stubbornness, orderliness, parsimony and con- trol. Authoritarianism was the subject of the famous Berkeley study (Adorno, Frenkel- Brunswik, Levinson, & Sanford, 1950), following

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World War II, when the question was asked how ‘ordinary’ people could have participated will- ingly in the Nazi atrocities. Adorno and his col- leagues came up with a profile of an authoritarian character, a personality type, that formed the back- bone of the Nazi regime, but was also much in evidence in most countries and cultures. The key quality of this character is that as a follower, he/ she is obedient and quiescent, as a leader, he/she demands unquestioned loyalty and obedience.

Authoritarian people are generally people who have not enjoyed much parental love in their childhood. Many had to fend for themselves and identified with images of powerful individuals, able to command, punish and humiliate others. As a result, they are people who in their adult lives tend to revere power and denigrate love; love is seen as a sign of weakness, a vulnerability. Allied to their exaggerated veneration of power, authoritarian personalities display the following characteristics:

● a mechanical surrender to conventional values – they dismiss unorthodox views and living styles;

● a tendency to divide people into insiders and outsiders – the latter are viewed with suspicion and hostility;

● anti-introspectiveness – they do not like dream- ing and dreamers, poets and psychologists;

● rigid stereotyped thinking – they generalize about classes of people or situations, being unable to see nuance and variation;

● superstition – they believe in superior powers deciding their destiny, especially when things start to go wrong;

● vilification, half-moralistic and half-cynical, of human nature – they view the average human being as devious, lazy, dishonest and disobedient;

● projectivity – they project everything unpleasant about themselves onto others.

It is clear that authoritarian personalities reject and hate what they regard as effeminate, soft, unsuccessful and weak. They identify with what is strong and masculine. This is what draws them to institutions like the military, where these values have for a long time been held in high regard.

Unfortunately, however, authoritarians do not generally make very good military leaders. According to a fascinating study by Norman Dixon, On the Psychology of Military Incompetence (1976), authoritarian leaders are responsible for some of the biggest military disasters. It is rela- tively easy to see why. They do not want to show any sign of weakness. They therefore are unwill- ing to change their mind (make a ‘u-turn’), even when it is very clear that the chosen course of action is disastrous. This accounts, according to Dixon, for some of the most disastrous military

campaigns. It may also explain why Margaret Thatcher’s legendary ‘The lady is not for turning’ caused her downfall over her inability to rethink the disastrous poll tax initiative.

Authoritarians compound their self-destructive stubbornness with various other mistakes – they underestimate, stereotype and dismiss their ene- mies; they feel no compassion about the suffer- ings of their subordinates; they denounce and punish anyone who dares propose an alternative course of action (‘defeatists and naysayers’); and they dismiss cunning, technique and smartness in favour of courage (‘sheer guts’) to see them through to success. In business, authoritarian per- sonalities can be as disastrous as in politics and the military – for nearly the same reasons. This is especially so in times like ours, when flair, flexi- bility, communication, empathy and imagination are vital for success.

Of course, there are some authoritarian leaders who have been successful, at least for a certain period of time. Few will question Hitler’s suc- cesses in regenerating German industry (espe- cially armaments), in restoring morale or, indeed, in conquering France. In particular, authoritarian leaders seem to rise and come into their own in moments of crisis, when there is a call for a ‘strong man’, when individuals appear willing to subordinate their individual interests to the gen- eral one. In business too, authoritarian leaders can be successful – for a time. Henry Ford and Henry Ford II are good cases in point. Both enjoyed tre- mendous business success, until they met their nemesis in opponents whom they underestimated and dismissed. They both fell in love with a single winning idea and were willing to change their approach when times changed. (For a good dis- cussion of Ford, see Grint, 2000; for an account of Henry Ford II as authoritarian, see Iacocca, 1984.)

Narcissistic leaders

Authoritarian leaders are not as common today as they once were. Certainly, they are less likely to be found leading in cutting-edge businesses such as entertainment, media, telecommunications, information, leisure, fashion, design and the arts sectors. They lack the imagination, flair and emo- tional sensitivity (‘emotional intelligence’) neces- sary for success in these sectors. They are too earthbound and too rulebound. They cannot make others feel good; they cannot communicate a dream. This is an environment in which narcis- sistic individuals can prosper.

Narcissism is a term coined by Freud (1914/1984) to describe a person’s self-love; nar- cissism can be a healthy and normal psychological

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THE SAGE HANDBOOK OF LEADERSHIP402

phenomenon that enables most of us to feel worthy and important as human beings, able to attract the respect of others and of ourselves. Narcissism is the love that we feel towards our- selves, or, more accurately, towards an image of ourselves we seek to attain. This is why narcis- sism can drive us towards achievement and suc- cess. A champion athlete, an artist, an entrepreneur or a creative writer can be driven by their narcis- sism to great accomplishments. Few things are as good for our narcissism as the acclaim of an enthusiastic audience.

But excessive narcissism can also cause our downfall. This is the narcissism which focuses not on achievement but on celebrity and image for their own sake. It is the narcissism that says, ‘Admire me for who I am’, rather than, ‘Admire me for my achievements’. Achievement narcis- sism can easily degenerate into image narcissism when individuals, leaders or organizations decide to rest on their laurels, seeking acclaim for their past achievements and disregarding their present failings (Gabriel, 1999).

If authoritarian personalities usually grow up in families with strict discipline and limited love, excessively narcissistic people grow up in families with a lot of love and admiration and limited dis- cipline. They are likely to be only children or particularly pampered children. In their childhood they enjoy the unqualified worship of the only audience that counted, their parents. They grow up believing that they are special, unique and the centre of an adoring universe. They preserve many childlike qualities later in life – spontaneity, imagi- nation, playfulness, moodiness and love of free- dom. They continue to love performing in front of adoring audiences. Acclaim is their opiate; criti- cism throws them into tantrums, self-questioning and despair.

If narcissistic leaders are so uniquely attuned to the needs of today’s organizations, why is narcissism seen as a potential organizational pathology? What are the risks of narcissistic leaders and organizations seeped in narcissism? The short answer is very simple. Narcissism of achievement easily degenerates into narcissism of pure image. Leaders become ever more con- cerned with public relations, celebrations and ceremonies, opulent buildings and grandiose undertakings, losing track of the organizational ‘nuts and bolts’, the machinery necessary to ensure the smooth running of an organization. They become more and more preoccupied with preserving the image at all costs, cutting corners in order to maintain the organization’s profile. Gradually, they lose touch with reality altogether – their vision becomes a reality, whether it has been realized or not (Maccoby, 2000; Schwartz, 1990).

This is the point where an organization suddenly collapses, leaving stakeholders wondering how they had suspected nothing about its rotting state. Organizations can recover from narcissistic lead- ers, but the cost of recovery is usually enormous, in broken lives and broken dreams, recrimination, scapegoating, and subsequent need for discipline and rigor. Such organizations are often rife for a take-over by an authoritarian leader, who prom- ises to restore order, proper procedures, account- ability and discipline to the organization.

Leadership dysfunctions often command atten- tion following great disasters, military, political and economic. It is then tempting to interpret such failures as being the outcome of the leader’s Achilles’ heel – the soft spot in his/her personality (including authoritarianism and narcissism), dis- regarding social and political factors that may have been instrumental in bringing about such an outcome. Psychoanalysis is sometimes accused of reducing complex socio-political phenomena to emotional family dramas, dominated by the flawed personalities of their protagonists. There can be some truth in this charge which, of course applies not to psychoanalysis alone. It is always tempting to attribute success and failure to the outstanding personalities of leaders, something that Meindl and his colleagues (Meindl & Ehrlich, 1987; Meindl, Ehrlich, & Dukerich, 1985) rightly describe as ‘the leadership romance’. Psychoanalysis suggests that the personalities of leaders, including the dormant unconscious herit- age from their past, can be significant factors accounting for successes and failures. As we noted earlier, it is important to recognize that qualities accounting for success in one set of cir- cumstances may become counter-productive when the times change.

CONCLUSIONS

In this chapter we have examined some of the psychoanalytic themes in the study of leaders and leadership relations. We have noted, in line with Freud, that leadership involves a powerful relation between leaders and followers, one based on iden- tification of followers with the leader and his/her idealization. Following Bion’s analysis of group dynamics, we emphasized that leaders fulfil vital emotional functions for their followers, para- mount among which is the containment of anxiety and other toxic emotions. Both Freud and Bion emphasize the tendency of leaders to awaken in their followers fantasies and desires first experi- enced in childhood, in those early relations with parents, which act as templates for our subsequent

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encounters with authority and power. This view was elaborated by Kohut’s theory of messianic and charismatic leaders, based on the primal father and primal mother, respectively.

Following the work of Zaleznik and Burns, we have also seen how leaders can inspire their followers through compelling visions which span the present and the future, by drawing on powerful unconscious wishes and desires. In this way, a leader’s dream can shift existing bounda- ries of what is possible and what is achievable, making conscious what has been unconscious, and thus releasing great amounts of emotional energy in the process. The management of this emotional energy is itself a key function of leadership – taming it, directing it, focusing it and containing it.

Leaders themselves are moved by fantasies of changing the world, having to tame their own delusions of grandeur, omnipotence and infallibil- ity and stopping themselves from lapsing into dysfunctional modes, like narcissism and authori- tarianism. Leaders must have a healthy narcis- sism, relishing the fame and glory which comes with success. This, however, makes them vulner- able to narcissistic disorders, where approval and admiration is all they crave for – in the interest of which, they are capable of distorting reality, disre- garding obstacles and indulging in wishful think- ing. Likewise, leaders must be able to maintain discipline and focus without crushing the creativ- ity and drive of their followers, themselves lapsing into authoritarianism.

In concluding, we may offer a tentative defini- tion of leading as constructed from a psychoana- lytic perspective. ‘Leading is imagining, willing, inspiring and driving’. This is a definition that emphasizes leaders as agents for change engaged in relations with others. In the first instance, lead- ing is imagining. Without imagination, no leader- ship. And imagination means being able to envisage new possibilities, new products, new ideas, new methods, new alliances, new ways of using words and language and even new needs and desires. Leaders then are dreamers, drawing on their unconscious wishes to conjure up what to others may seem unrealistic, impossible or absurd possibilities. But leaders are not just dreamers. Many people have powers of imagination – creative artists and scientists, for example. While dreaming is an essential part of leading, it is not enough. In order to lead, a man or a woman must also have a strong will, a burning desire to see the dream become reality and the vision become fact. Willing means that the dream is not an ‘idle’ fan- tasy but becomes a strong motivator towards action. Imagining and willing together are essen- tial for leadership. But again, they are not enough. An aspiring athlete may have a vision of himself

climbing onto the podium at the Olympic Games to receive a gold medal; he may have the drive to train and practice with dedication to get there. But he is not a leader if he does not engage with others, if his vision does not become a shared vision, if it does not inspire and drive others. A leader will drive others by emotionally engag- ing with them, being able to communicate, elabo- rate and share a vision, inspiring them and winning them over, but also occasionally by cajoling and exhorting them. Engaging with others is a feature of all aspects of leading, including imagining. Leaders do not just sit and dream, waiting for a vision to arrive. Still less do visions arise from vision statements carefully prepared by hired con- sultants. Instead, visions emerge from active engagement with others, understanding of collec- tive aspirations and wishes and flights of imagina- tion that push the bounds of possibility.

It will be noted that the definition offered above is one that runs against the current tendency to emphasize dispersed, diffused leadership. Psychoanalytic approaches acknowledge the rela- tional aspect of leadership, but in the last resort insist on the asymmetrical relation between fol- lowers and leaders, a relation that can never escape from the template of someone being set apart from the others, someone taking charge and responsibility for others, and someone who, ulti- mately, through words and actions, is capable of providing the basis on which the others identify with each other as followers.

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