The issue of Vladimir Putin’s mental health has been a recurring theme since the start of the war in Ukraine. “Manipulator”, “crazy”, “calculating”… The adjectives used to describe the mental health of the Russian president are numerous and unflattering, especially since he entered the war against Ukraine last February.
“He’s in a parallel world”
Despite international condemnation, the Kremlin strongman persists in this invasion and transforms the narrative by ensuring that it is Russia that is attacked, not the attacker.
“What we observe is a dynamic, a way of functioning that is often called paranoia,” explains Marc Hayat, a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, on BFMTV. “There is a sense of persecution, a sense of pride, of invulnerability that are characteristic of paranoid functioning.”
“It is in a parallel world, perhaps we could even talk about a delirious construction”, explains the professional.
“The evil aspect is probably the most worrying”
But more than this paranoia, for Marc Hayat, it is “the aspect of perversity that is probably the most worrying” in Vladimir Putin. He speaks of a “total dryness of the heart, of affectivity” as well as of a “pathological enjoyment that he has in the misfortune of others, that desire to destroy, everything that concerns his relationship with the world in violence, in hatred and in the terror it brings to life.”
He is “in intellect and control, he is an intelligent man but he is dissociated from emotions and is not in empathy”, Catherine Zobouyan, psychologist and neuropsychologist, already explained last March on our antenna. “To reach the goal he does not take the other into account.”
For Marc Hayat, the other dangerous part of Vladimir Putin is the “narcissistic bond” he has with the Russian people. He tells them “you are an extraordinary people, you are out of the ordinary, he tells them about their history, about the greatness of the Russian people, about their culture, and in particular, of course, about the war they waged against Nazism.” For the psychiatrist, this “narcissistic fusion” is “dangerous.”
In this sense, he calls on governments to speak more with Russian citizens to “cut off, separate Putin’s relationship with the Russian people”, to “separate a dictator, a leader, from his people”.
Source: BFM TV
