Post-war leadership scholarship pathologized strong leaders and stripped agency from followers.

Evidence

Having witnessed its destructive potential, in the post-war period, attraction to strong leaders was viewed with horror. Thus what Weber had viewed as a cure for social ills came to be seen as an extreme form of dysfunctionality. Now a plethora of clinical studies diagnosed such leaders as suffering variously from psychoticism (Bion, 1961), paranoid delusions (Halperin, 1983), narcissistic personality (Kohut, 1985) and, more particularly, borderline personality disorder (Lindholm, 1990; Waite, 1977). More generally, the focus on the autonomy of leaders was gradually replaced by an emphasis on the contextual constraints upon them. However, the problem with such approaches was that they did not restore balance by according agency to the people as well as to their leaders but rather by removing it from both. According to this view, leaders were now prisoners either of their pathological desires or of the situation, but the masses were still dupes. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 19

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reading purpose on how leaders embody shared identity — this shows the scholarly prehistory that social identity approaches to leadership were reacting against. — connects to: U.S. military leadership displayed intellectual insensitivity after World War II. — Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, 772; Leaders lack direct power; followership grants them agency. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 103; Leadership success depends on granting followers effective agency. — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 123 (+4 more)
• ADDENDUM: Continues a theme in ‘On Sacrifice’ about how mass horror at destructive power (Nazism) rewrote how authority figures get theorized afterwards.

Broader Connections

• Charisma is conferred on leaders by followers rather than held as a trait #corroborates (0.90) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 33
• Leaders lack direct power; followership grants them agency. #corroborates (0.88) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 103
• Charismatic-leader narratives erased the grassroots machinery of the Black freedom struggle #corroborates (0.86)
• Leadership success depends on granting followers effective agency. #corroborates (0.82) — Stephen Reicher, S. Alexander Haslam, and Nick Hopkins, Social identity and the dynamics of…, 123
• Collective disasters stem from leaders neglecting others’ sacrifices, not from followers’ disobedience #corroborates (0.80)
• Strong leadership signals the weakness of the underlying social movement #corroborates (0.74) — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 272
• U.S. military leadership displayed intellectual insensitivity after World War II. #expands (0.72) — Neil Sheehan, A Bright Shining Lie, 772