Ian McEwan describes Vladimir Putin as “a deranged and unpredictable adversary” (We are haunted by ghosts – and Vladimir Putin’s sickly dreams, 5 March), and Jonathan Freedland says the invasion of Ukraine is “the whim of one, possibly crazed, man” (This bloody invasion is turning the march of history into a sprint – and it’s not going Putin’s way, 4 March). Elsewhere, the former foreign secretary David Owen has said that Putin’s aggressive behaviour may be a consequence of taking anabolic steroids, a neuropsychologist that it may be the result of “hubris syndrome” affecting his frontal lobes, and another expert that the problem may be that he is suffering the cognitive effects of long Covid.
Such pathologising of political actions as symptoms of mental disorder is really just a variant of psychiatric name-calling – a form of playground insult that we could do without. It demeans those with genuine mental health problems and infantilises public discussion about serious matters. Do we really think that the Ukraine invasion is the result of an aggressive impulse by somebody who has taken leave of his senses? Or that one man can run not just a complex military adventure, but a whole country without the collusion of others in it for the power, money, sex or whatever motivates them?
Malignant despots and buffoon politicians like Boris Johnson are symptoms of the system that allows them to stay where they are, their endurance reflecting not just something about their callous self-interest but also the values of those on whose support they depend. All of which is kept out of the spotlight by pseudo-diagnostic labelling, a version of the great man theory of history that downplays the systemic and societal, and privileges the role of the individual.
Prof Allan House
Leeds
