What disorders or illnesses do you think some of the worst dictators suffered from?

[likelysuspect]

Just watching a programme about Mussolini. I havent really looked into this person much before. Ive read a lot and seen a lot of programmes about Hitler for example but not this one, or many of the others to be honest

But they describe him as quite violent from a young age but shy and instransigent. Later being excluded for stabbing a pupil. Being sent to boarding school and then felt isolated. Apparently he struggled to learn to speak.

People like him and Hitler and others clearly didnt have what would be today described as SEN or learning needs as such but what was wrong with them exactly?

What on earth is the point of this thread?

Psychopath surely?

actually i watched a series on (I think )Netflix about Dictators and some of them had suffered brain injuries at some point.
From memory Duvalier (Haiti) was quite reasonable before he had a stroke and there were a couple of others who had been through similar
No excuse at all of course but quite interesting

Well on the surface yes, in hindsight of course

But I thought that most psychopaths are opportunists as such whereas people like him and Hilter (and others) were great planners, big schemes. I suppose theres grandiosity but then I struggle with what grandiosity implies, it implies someone who isnt important who thinks they are!! Whereas of course these people were hugely powerful

Ive got to the big in the programme where he virtually invented huge infrastructure programmes in Italy, tourism etc

He speaks and his gestures are quite weird, but very much like Hitler. If we saw a politician talking like that these days we would think they were utterly unhinged.

The title of the programme is Italy's Evil or something like that but I think thats too simplistic. He must have had something wrong with him surely?

Oh that is really interesting because there was a clip of him just now and I though his facial expressions, the way he moved his mouth reminded me of people who suffer dyskinesia.

And like Hitler there is a hyper focus, absolute outright obsession with being done out of power/land/control from WWI (he was obsessed that Italy had made scarifices in the war but didnt get any land or colonies from it)

I think quite a few had brain injuries. I’m sure I read somewhere that hitler could have sustained one from an illness when he was a child and that his behaviour started to change after the illness.

This is in really poor taste

I think they are all the same. They all did poorly in school. They all had no concept of right and wrong. They all thought they were invincible.
I have only met this personally once. A man at work who had honestly no concept of right and wrong. To him right was things he could get away with and wrong was anything you did.
It's psychopath.
Never met any ladies like that but sure they exist.

Arm chair diagnosing at its finest.
Even psychiatrists/psychologists are not allowed to diagnose someone without actually seeing them in person.

We could start trying to diagnose all sorts of people from history with all sorts of illnesses if we wanted to. But it’s a little pointless. Mussolini, Hitler, Putin etc did not get where they were/are purely on their own. They have to have many, many followers behind them. Do you think they’re all ill too?

Yes interestingly in this programme there are references to the poor school experience, the sort of separationist and isolated child and this obsession with 'others' and difference and superiority.

I didnt realise that he actually hated Hilter apparently they're saying about him. I thought they were chummy chummy.

A lot of his body movements are quite odd too

And yet, many of the policies and actions improved life for Italians immensely. Which then you have to question the concept of psychopathy. There must be more to it than that?

Why? I think it’s quite interesting.

@likelysuspect apparently hitler was a massive meth head in his later years. Totally crazy from drugs and delusions of grandeur.

So I’m going to say not SEN but drugs.

There could be something in the brain injury idea. Some people do have personality changes after an injury like this. Henry VIII had a brain injury and was apparently different after it.

Oh actually I think Ive read about drug use yes.

Its so interesting how much of such a similar pattern their behaviour shows of all these type of men, their policies, presenttaion and approaches. Theres clips being played of Mussolini which look exactly like modern day Putin

Thats a really good point as well

Im qualified and trained to make recommendations about attachment styles and behaviours (not clinical diagnosis of attachment disorders) and of course its natural for me to look for attachment impacts, which could apply as well.

Apparently his father used to beat him quite badly, but I dnt know how uncommon that would have been at the end of the 1800s.

Came on to say also about Henry Vii

also sadly Michael Hutchence from INXS not a dictator obviously but another example of a brain injury having a devastating effect 😔

Hitler behaved predatorily towards his own niece as well all the grave horrendous awful behaviour towards entire swathes of people he never met. He had extremely high levels of all dark tetrad traits.

I don't think if Hitler, Mussolini etc were here today that this would be their first concern.

The possible medical diagnoses of Henry VIII - another suspected to have a brain injury - is a subject of historical speculation. Do you count that as armchair diagnosis, or was it long enough ago that you're not offended by it?

I'm not a fan of writing dictators off as evil. Not because they didn't do evil things, but because it allows us to put people into neat categories of "evil" without considering the wider situation (ones not too dissimilar to what we are experiencing now).

Stalin ,chairman mao etc

Some scholars believe that King Henry VIII may have had syphilis, which can cause megalomania in its later stages. It would also account for his difficulty in producing offspring with his many wives.

Psychiatrists and psychologists do exactly this when they write psychobiographies of historical figures.

I thought there was another disorder he was suspected of having which affected whether he could have children and thats why Mary also had problems having children, she inherited the gene from him. I need to look it up.

And like Hitler there is a hyper focus, absolute outright obsession with being done out of power/land/control from WWI (he was obsessed that Italy had made scarifices in the war but didnt get any land or colonies from it)

The hyperfocus was always present before he was radicalised by his service in WWI and the situation in post-war Germany. It didn't show itself until he enlisted, but that's perfectly normal in most people with hyperfocus because they'll show little to no interest in anything, bum around etc, until they happen to discover what it is that actually obsesses them.

By contemporaneous accounts he was a completely dedicated soldier, often the first to volunteer for extremely dangerous duty that his peers did their best to avoid, and he was also said to be very vocal in criticising colleagues he felt were cowardly, insufficiently dedicated, or didn't quite possess the same zeal he did.

What is at the root of the hyperfocus is a different matter, because it's present in many people with a slew of entirely differing modern day diagnoses, but IMO I'm comfortable with asserting that AH clearly showed signs of Cluster B, but I don't think you can completely rule out the possibility of some type of Neurodivergence as well.

I once read or heard that ‘malignant narcissism’ is a very rare personality type, but that it probably applied to e.g. Stalin and Pol Pot. Probably Hitler too. Nowadays I’d think it would apply to Putin, possibly Trump, but I’d think he might come under ‘megalomaniac narcissist’, or ‘narcissistic megalomaniac’. One or the other.

There’s a rumour about a much more modern dictator having that which would make a lot of sense.