Creative and Destructive Leaders of Large Groups

Review of Vamik Volkan, Blind Trust: Large Groups and Their Leaders in Times of Crisis and Terror. Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing, 2004. Hardcover ISBN 0-9728875-2-0, $29.95, Paperback ISBN 0-9728875-3-9; 368 pages, $19.95.

Once more, Vamik Volkan has given us an exceptionally stimulating analysis; this time he has written specifically about large groups, how they function, and how their leaders “use” them for good or ill. Particularly refreshing about Volkan’s work is the breath of his insights. He applies psychology, history, political science, and his own experiences with international negotiations in addition to his many interviews.

Especially convincing are Volkan’s comparisons between leaders who repair their societies for societal benefit as opposed to those who undermine and even destroy their people for their own personal benefit. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Julius Kambarage Nyerere, and Nelson Mandela are men whom Volkan sees as positive influences for their societies. Not surprisingly, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Slobodan Milosevic, and Enver Hoxha of Albania are his examples of destructive leaders. Between these extremes, Richard Nixon stands as an example in the balance. The discussion on how each of the repairers integrated traumatic childhood and adulthood experiences into a positive construction of his personality and how destroyers attained the opposite result is totally absorbing. The repairers, who are often teachers, turned truly horrid events of their lives, as Mandela did with his extensive prison stays, to insights

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that uplifted both their societies and themselves. By contrast, the destroyers were unable to integrate their traumatic experiences or the disliked parts of their personalities to this degree, externalizing them instead as abuse and hatred of those whom they learned to despise.

Interesting, too, is how each of these men dealt with enemies. Mandela pinpointed the abusive system of apartheid, and Ataturk, the illiteracy and ignorance of the population as a whole and the traditional leadership. By contrast, Hitler saw the enemies as persons, that is, Jews, Gypsies, and other undesirables, and Milosevic saw them in the Muslim descendants of the men who defeated Prince Lazar in the Battle of Kosovo in 1389.

These discussions about healing or poisoning leaders, largely based on insights regarding narcissism, are matched by equally insightful analyses of Islamic fundamentalism. Very helpful here is Volkan’s ability to separate deeply held religious faith, like that of a befriended Russian Orthodox priest in Estonia who tolerates other believers, from fundamentalists of various sorts, including Muslims, Christians, and Jews who react negatively toward “outsiders.” The elaborations on Islam, from the earliest days of the Prophet Muhammad, through the Ottoman Empire’s defeat in front of Vienna on September 11 (actually 12), 1683, to bin Laden are “a must read” for understanding today’s confrontations in the Middle East. Although Volkan warns us to hold off judgment as to evaluations of President George W. Bush’s approach to “terrorism,” many who have studied ethnic/religious violence, warfare, and recent military occupations are ready to argue that the U.S. was ill advised in its recent approach to the Islamic world in Iraq.

Volkan’s approach is similar to the school of psychohistorians that emphasizes the experiences of childhood and group fantasies as determiners of the course of history. Somewhat in contrast, Volkan very carefully analyzes the childhoods of numerous individuals and the experiences of very specific groups. In doing so, he describes the influences of traumas on personality development and leaders’ positive and negative manipulations of children, young people, and adults, including the constructive and destructive energies to which they are able to harness such experiences. I suspect that this talented psychiatrist and founder of the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) might have used to his advantage the insights of this group of psychohistorians.

No doubt, Hitler and his minions endeavored to create a Volksgemeinschaft (Community of the Volk) in ways that Volkan describes. The National Socialist regime tried to make families serve its needs and to pull children away from their families for the greater good of Germany, a point well illustrated in the film Europa, Europa. However, the author overlooks the great variety of Germans and Germanies that existed in the 12 years of National Socialist rule. For example, while he is correct that the number of youths who attended Youth Film Hour increased into the millions by 1943, most of us also attended church on Sundays and were offered Religionsunterricht (catechism) in Volksschule (elementary school) by a priest or a minister. In reality, only one of my friends and acquaintances who grew up in various parts of Germany in the 1930s and 1940s felt that her family’s authority was undermined. Especially in cities, children were glad to get out into “mother nature” and equally glad to be back home for a decent meal.

I am troubled by the consistent misspelling of German words. For example, in the sentence “Mutter, erzahl von Adolf Hitler! … Ein Buch zum … Narcherzahlen und Selbstlesen fur kleinere und grossere Kinder” (pp. 75-76) [Mother, tell us of Adolf Hilter!…A book to … retell and read oneself for smaller and larger children], the use of narcherzahlen instead of nacherzählen is problematic as this could easily be mistaken for nachherzahlen, that is, to pay later.

Misspellings sometimes warn us of problems with large group analyses. But none of the above critiques imply more than that in a vast survey—with many different fields, geographic areas, and persons involved—an author will not be in control of every detail. They also do not imply other flaws. Blind Trust is a brilliant book that should be read by everyone who is at all concerned with leadership and large groups, and how leaders’ childhoods and adulthoods create the positive and destructive ways with which they lead their own and other societies.

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