As dictatorships inspire or motivate conflicts worldwide, it may be worth taking a moment to delve into the psychology involved. Getting a handle on “malignant narcissism”, “narcissistic supply”, “narcissistic mortification” and similar other terms may help open some windows and let in some insight into how cycles of despotism and subjugation come about, how they work, and why they are so difficult to diminish.

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In political psychology, one might find the principles simple enough but the machinery complex and difficult to take apart and rebuild.

As much may characterize the experiences of the states now collected under the rubric “Arab Spring” and those continuing to suffer along within systems of corruption, despotism, and patronage.

To readers even loosely in the field, whether in academe or, as I seem to be, in pseudo-academe, a model like, oh let’s just make one up, “dictatorship –> narcissism –> political and social control of others –> sadism” may beg a “so what else you got?” but what informs that apprehension may not be universal: do the subjugated know that those they have entrusted with their destiny are actually using them to abet their own aggrandizement and glorification?

Have those in the path of a Bashar al-Assad (there are many like him today) understand what echo in themselves facilitates his progress while compromising their own in their efforts to defend their people.

In the olden days, one could flee a troubled space, wander around lost for a while, perhaps create a more congenial environment for one’s own, but in a world compressed intellectually by the system on which you are reading this and physically by jets and supertankers and superhighways, where is the someplace else?

Well, there is a someplace else: the language of the mind, i.e., that which informs political concepts, including self-concept and ideas about others plus ideas about the world.

The Internet has brought about the appearance of a new global intelligentsia — with Facebook buddies from Riyadh to Islamabad, I think I can support that suggestion — and if we can take a firm step where the dynamics of dictatorship are concerned, we might allay, diminish, or eliminate much sorrow otherwise guaranteed by our ignorance with regard to a basic political and social psychology concept.

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