When Illness Strikes the Leader by Jerrold M Post

When Illness Strikes the Leader by Jerrold M Post

The illness or disability of a world leader can change the course of history. When Lenin became too infirm to remove Stalin from a position of power, when the shah of Iran's terminal cancer was kept secret from his fellow Iranians and his foreign supporters until Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic revolution had succeeded, the political consequences were monumental. In this book, two experts in political psychology reveal how the infirmities of leaders have affected their own societies and the broader course of world events. Drawing on a wide range of examples, including Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, Woodrow Wilson, Adolf Hitler, Idi Amin, Deng Xiao-peng, Ferdinand Marcos, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Menachem Begin, Dr. Jerrold M. Post and Robert S. Robins explore the impact of physical and mental illness on political leadership. Post and Robins investigate the effects of illness on the leader, his inner circle, his followers, and the political system itself. They discuss such topics as: how the nature of the illness affects decision-making; how mortal illness can make a leader more determined to make his mark on history; how a leader's disability can be hidden from the public in every political system; the effects of prescribed drugs and substance abuse on leadership behaviour; the conflicted role and ethical dilemmas of physicians who care for the powerful; and how the demands and privileges of high office compromise the quality of medical care. In closed societies where there is no clear mechanism of succession, say the authors, the ailing or ageing leader and his close advisers can become locked in a fatal embrace, each dependent upon the other for survival; a captive king and his captive court. In the absence of clear rules for determining when a leader is disabled and should be replaced and how a successor will be chosen, illness in high office can be highly destabilizing.

Post, Jerrold M.: - Dr Jerrold M. Post is Professor of Psychiatry, Political Psychology and International Affairs and director of the Political Psychology Program at George Washington University, Washington DC. Dr Post previously worked with the Central Intelligence Agency, where he was the founding director of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior. He played the lead role in developing the Camp David profiles of Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat for President Jimmy Carter and initiated the US government program for the study of the psychology of terrorism. In recognition of his leadership at the center, Dr Post was awarded the Intelligence Medal of Merit in 1979. He received the Nevitt Sanford Award from the International Society of Political Psychology in 2002 for distinguished professional contributions to political psychology. He has testified before the Senate and the House on his political psychology profile of Saddam Hussein and on the psychology of terrorism, and he has presented to the UN International Atomic Energy Agency on the psychology of weapons-of-mass-destruction terrorism. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences' Committee on Deterrence in the 21st Century.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780300056839
ISBN 10	0300056834
Title	When Illness Strikes the Leader
Author	Jerrold M Post
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Yale University Press
Year published	1993-03-31
Number of pages	243
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.