Who is Barack Obama?

November 7, 2014 11:38 AM

How might President Obama's leadership style be rooted in his psychology? Psychoanalysts Nasir Ghaemi, Samuel Barondes, and Justin Frank venture opinions, and writer Robert Merry applies a framework from political psychology. (psychoanalyst Drew Westen, previously)
posted by shivohum (17 comments total)

When people analyze the psyches of those they have never met or spoken to, you can bet there is a political agenda, and it is not supportive.

I would prefer to see an analysis of members of the anti-American GOP, the party of NO, to understand why they were born without a shred of empathy.
posted by Repack Rider at 11:52 AM on November 7, 2014 [18 favorites]

When people analyze the psyches of those they have never met or spoken to, you can bet there is a political agenda, and it is not supportive.

It should also result in the loss of their professional accreditation but then I am anal retentively fixated on rules and their enforcement in a world that is filled with anal expulsives who act like bored monkeys at a zoo.
posted by srboisvert at 12:02 PM on November 7, 2014 [16 favorites]

Mr. President, you are in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on his back in the hot sun...
posted by Nevin at 12:04 PM on November 7, 2014 [12 favorites]

writer Robert Merry applies a framework from political psychology.

This would've been funnier (and possibly as insightful) if he had just substituted PARKLIFE! after choice Obama quotes.
posted by octobersurprise at 12:10 PM on November 7, 2014

Why bother explaining the distribution of political power in America, when some pseudo-intellectuals can bloviate about the inner recesses of Obama's mind?

It's nice that the focus on personalities can generate a decent amount of turnout on election day every four years, but it would be nicer if people actually understood how politics worked.
posted by leopard at 12:24 PM on November 7, 2014 [6 favorites]

Honestly it's shit like this that gives psychology/psychologists a bad reputation with people. The idea of being shallowly judged by a stranger is something that has literally prevented people I know from seeing a counsellor when it would have really helped them. This is the middlebrow version of glossy mags getting plastic surgeons to guess what work stars have had done.
posted by smoke at 1:22 PM on November 7, 2014 [8 favorites]

Additionally, are all these people psychoanalysts? That's a very specific type of psychologist (IMHO, mercifully outside the US), increasingly rare.
posted by smoke at 1:25 PM on November 7, 2014

Like Freud with Leonardo, or Langer with Hitler.

See:

Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psychohistory by Stannard.
Mind of Adolf Hitler. The Secret Wartime Report written by Walter C. Langer
posted by mfoight at 1:27 PM on November 7, 2014

It's nice that the focus on personalities can generate a decent amount of turnout on election day every four years, but it would be nicer if people actually understood how politics worked.

Ah, but that wouldn't serve the right people. Better to turn elections in pop-archetype narratives. Both parties like it because it makes voters easier to mobilize or disgust without scaring off the big-money donors.

The media likes it because it gives them ready-made stories in the age of the ratings-driven, budget-conscious infotainment model of journalism.

A certain segment of the people like it because it relives them of the burden of trying to reflect critically on politics and turns the rough and unpleasant effort of informed participation into something less demanding and more entertaining, akin to reading a tabloid or watching sports and cheering or hissing on cue.

And hell, plenty of "intellectuals" like it this way because of all the opportunities for self-righteous bloviation and the guilty pleasure of disavowing the pleasure of watching soaps with real stakes.

(Can you tell I'm bitter about the midterms?)
posted by kewb at 1:30 PM on November 7, 2014

You forgot Dr. Keith Ablow, who's set up shop doing this on an ongoing basis for Fox New. But maybe he's too big of a racist to share in polite company?
posted by benito.strauss at 1:58 PM on November 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Next, how about if we figure out personalities based on how we rank colours?

Oh. That only works for white European male undergrads.
posted by clvrmnky at 5:15 PM on November 7, 2014

Is it strange that all these stories are from 2011? What's the real agenda here?
posted by anguspodgorny at 5:26 PM on November 7, 2014 [2 favorites]

Mr. President, you are in the desert, you see a tortoise lying on his back in the hot sun...

Previously.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:54 PM on November 7, 2014

Who is Barack Obama?

Isn't that what Google is for? At any rate, the others in the "B" section of Google's auto-fill for the question "Who is" are Bill Gates, Britney Spears, and Bruno Mars.

He's no John Galt, though, that's for sure.
posted by Doktor Zed at 6:02 AM on November 8, 2014 [1 favorite]

Yes, I can see it now. 'Mr. President, what does this ink blot mean to you?' Absolute rubbish. Isn't this the psychological equivalent of playing chess by letter. You never know if they're cheating or not. Or maybe it's Monday morning quarterbacking. Or maybe I'm mixing my metaphors.
posted by McMillan's Other Wife at 7:11 AM on November 8, 2014

Let me just say President Obama is not anyone's boy. He is the President of the United States, the most powerful man on Earth. That he doesn't play the game by the rules of white male hierarchy surprises only the white male hierarchy. They have spent entire careers, being someone's boy, and they resent the fact our president is his own man, as much as he can be. The collective realization and rage of this racist pseudo-hierarchy plays out on hate radio, and is harmful to the process of serving the American people. This brilliant professor of constitutional law won't play it any way but smart. I am glad he is on my side.
posted by Oyéah at 9:28 AM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]

my favorite mismatch was Barber’s insertion of Ronald Reagan into the Passive-Positive category, meaning his famous optimism was merely superficial, that he reacted to events rather than initiating them, that he was easily manipulated.

No, Reagan clearly was an Active-Positive who transformed the economic debate in America, injected profoundly new thinking into the body politic, and set about not just to counter the Soviet threat but to upend the Soviet Union itself. And he did this with hardly any evidence that he absorbed in any unhealthy way the barrage of harsh criticism thrown at him.

Reagan was pretty clearly just a front-man. A good actor, yes, at least by the standards of politicians. Someone who knew how to deliver a speech with force and feeling and modulation. But basically just an actor. Like most modern conservative politicians, he was personally unremarkable. He was groomed and guided by the movement. Conservatives are essentially socialist in practice: they work as a hive entity, with occasional vicious struggles for control, followed by submission to the new queen(s). One group develops the theory, then another group goes out and finds a plausible candidate. But because humans instinctively want to think of leaders as great thinkers, people talk as if Reagan (or Thatcher, or Bush) made any meaningful contribution to the history of political thought.

Whether or not he absorbed the "barrage of harsh criticism" thrown at him is hard to say: by the end of his life, he almost certainly had Alzheimer's. Anyone who misinterprets a disintegrating mind for sunny optimism is a pretty terrible psychologist.
posted by lucien_reeve at 10:43 AM on November 8, 2014 [2 favorites]