Russian President Vladimir Putin: paranoia?| Photo: EFE/EPA/MICHAEL KLIMENTYEV
The risks of associating Putin's actions with madness
When I watched Vladimir Putin, with what Russians so graphically call his “tin eyes”, justify his invasion of Ukraine, I thought, like many others, that he seemed a little out of his mind. . “Denazification”, come on! Did he not realize that Ukraine, not known throughout its history for its philo-Semitism, elected a Jewish president, and that by a large majority, thus suggesting a major cultural change in the country?
Then it occurred to me that Putin’s face looked a little puffy, and I wondered if he could be taking corticosteroids. These drugs are known for their numerous side effects, including psychological changes such as paranoia and mood elevation and depression. Then there was the question, of course, of why Putin would be taking them. Cancer, perhaps—a lymphoma? This brought to mind Evelyn Waugh’s somewhat uncharitable remark when Randolph Churchill [filho único de Winston Churchill] underwent cancer surgery: it was characteristic of modern medicine to remove the only part of him that was not malignant.
If Putin were taking steroids, his extreme and seemingly bizarre anxiety about contracting Covid- would be explained. Both the underlying condition of the cancer itself and the drugs would have made him vulnerable to such anxiety, and the man who once liked to present himself as the Russian Dundee Crocodile, walking around shirtless and the like, has undergone a change. of gestalt: the invulnerability has been replaced by the opposite, the invisible danger with every breath.
It is risky, however, to attribute actions we don’t like to madness. This is for two reasons: first, the diagnosis may be wrong—the apparently insane may in fact be sane—and second, madness may have its own rationality. Indeed, strong-willed madmen can often take others with them: they can persuade others that their paranoid view of the world is correct. This is especially true when they have power over people of lesser character than themselves.
People can be crazy and realistic at the same time. Their paranoia has a self-fulfilling quality: if you behave as if people are against you, people will soon start behaving as if they are against you. The origins of the problem are lost in a vicious circle of historical recriminations. But given a paranoid premise, the madman can proceed rationally. If you think your food is poisoned, it’s perfectly sensible to give the cat a taste first.
The power of paranoids over their followers is, however, fragile, as is that of those who rule primarily by fear. Separated for a time from contact with their leader’s worldview, or if the hold of fear is suddenly broken, power crumbles. The madness of the madman suddenly reveals itself; the fearful suddenly realize that it takes two to be ruled by fear. The mad or fear-instilling megalomaniac then attacks — for he knows that, like the late Nicolae Ceaușescu, he is either powerful or dead.In Ionesco’s great play “The King’s Agony”, the ruler of his crumbling kingdom, absurdly named Bérenger, discovers that he is about to die (until then he thought he would never die), and makes a speech in which he demands that after his death all history books should be about him, all statues should represent him, all public institutions should be named after him. It is his revenge on mortality, as perhaps Putin’s threat of nuclear war is.
I should perhaps warn you: I am under the influence of corticosteroids. Maybe this is clouding my judgment.