How to Best Understand Dictators, Autocrats, and Bullies
Personality disorders may be the best way to understand dictators.
Posted December 16, 2025 | Reviewed by Monica Vilhauer Ph.D.
There are three general classifications of abnormal behavior: (1) Neuroses, which have been traditionally characterized by anxiety and/or depression and other bothersome symptoms. People with neuroses are generally unhappy and distort reality, but not to the extent that they are out of contact with reality; (2) Psychoses, which are characterized by hallucinations (most typically hearing voices or seeing things that are not real) and delusions (false beliefs). People with psychoses profoundly distort reality, although their contact with reality may wax and wane; and (3) Personality disorders , which cause difficulties in relationships, schooling/ education , and keeping a job. Interestingly, people with personality disorders are often egosyntonic for their behavior — that is, they most often are not bothered by or are aware of their negative effect upon others. This abnormal behavior category has the diagnostic label disorder because it so often causes other problems for the people who interact with the person with a personality disorder.
It is this third category of psychopathology that I believe best explains the behaviors of dictators, autocrats, and bullies. Interestingly, this category of abnormal behavior is one of the oldest, and it can be traced to a short work by Greek philosopher Theophrastus, who wrote a book, Characters, in about 350 BCE, where he described about 30 people that he observed in Athenian society who mostly annoyed others. Many of his characters heralded modern personality disorders. Interestingly, his label characters has persisted as personality disorders and are sometimes referred to as character disorders.
My Grandmother: My grandmother (a.k.a., Mama) was mean as a snake (which might be unfair to snakes). When she visited her two adult daughters (one was my mother) and her only son in Miami, she caused many tears and great unhappiness. Her five grandchildren (me among them) were not spared either from her anger and vexations.
Long after I obtained my PhD in psychology (in 1974), I became interested in the personality disorders, and I created an inventory, based on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM ) , creating self-report and significant-other report items for each criterion for 14 different personality disorders (across three DSM version s ). I called it the Coolidge Axis II Inventory (CATI) because personality disorders were once diagnosed in the DSM separately (on Axis II).
Ten years after my grandmother’s passing, I had my mother and her two sisters (all in their 70s) complete the significant other form of the CATI about how their mother was most of her adult life. I then formed a consensus profile. They largely agreed with each other: They identified their mother as having sadistic , self-defeating, borderline, narcissistic , and paranoid personality disorder traits (in that order; see Coolidge, 1999).
Adolf Hitler: A master’s student came to work with me and, by way of an introduction, she said she had made a list of 100 books she wanted to read. I asked to hear her list, and her third book was Mein Kampf . Harking back to my article, My Grandmother’s Personality: A Posthumous Evaluation , we wrote to 19 professors of Hitlerian studies. Five agreed to take the CATI about Hitler before he became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and Führer in 1934). We formed a consensus profile of his personality disorders and published it as, Understanding Madmen: A DSM-IV Assessment of Adolf Hitler (Coolidge et al., 2007). Remarkably, his highest levels of personality disorder symptoms were paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, and sadistic (in that order).
Saddam Hussein: Through a third-party Iraqi citizen (with a PhD in Political Science), I was able to contact 11 Iraqi adults who lived under Hussein’s rule for a range of 13 to 31 years (median 24 years). They completed the CATI, and I formed a consensus profile: They viewed him as having sadistic, paranoid, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorder traits (Coolidge et al. 2007a). Remarkably, Hussein’s personality disorder profile across all 14 personality disorders was highly similar to Hitler’s ( r = .79 [rank order]).
Kim Jong-il: I contacted a South Korean psychiatrist who had devoted his research to evaluating and understanding the North Korean Kim family, including Kim il Sung and his son Kim Jong il. He completed the CATI about Kim Jong il, who was then the dictator of North Korea. Kim Jong il’s profile revealed that he appeared to have sadistic, paranoid, narcissistic, and schizoid personality disorder traits (in that order). Again, there was a remarkable similarity between Kim Jong-il and Hitler ( r = .76) and between Kim Jong-il and Hussein r = .76 (Coolidge et al., 2007b).
Bullies: One of my master’s students wanted to study bullying behavior. Through middle school administrators, school counselors, and teachers, we found as a group that bullies had traits of conduct disorder (which sometimes heralds the adult antisocial personality disorder), passive–aggressive, histrionic, paranoid, and dependent personality disorders. In addition, the parents identified their children as having the traits of oppositional defiant disorder, attention -deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and depression (compared to matched controls; Coolidge et al., 2004).
Conclusions: It is my opinion that dictators, autocrats, and bullying behavior may be best understood from the perspective of classic personality disorders. Especially, I believe that those with great political sway and unbridled power are not best understood in layperson’s terms, such as crazy, mad, psychotic , fanatical, deranged, or demented. I have come to see that a “Big Six" constellation of behaviors describes their behavior amply: sadistic (cruel), paranoid (hypersensitivity to perceived threats), antisocial (disregarding the rights and feelings of others), narcissistic (self-centered, self-aggrandizing, power-seeking), schizoid (loners with poor emotional attachments to others) and schizotypy (weird thoughts, unusual beliefs, socially awkward).
Coolidge, F. L., Davis, F. L., & Segal, D. L. (2007a). Understanding madmen: A DSM-IV assessment of Adolf Hitler. Individual Differences Research , 5 , 30-43.
Coolidge, F. L., & Segal, D. L. (2007b). Is Saddam Hussein like Adolf Hitler? A personality disorder investigation. Military Psychology , 19 , 1-11.
Coolidge, F. L., DenBoer, J. W., & Segal, D. L. (2004). Personality and neuropsychological correlates of bullying behavior: An empirical investigation. Personality and Individual Differences, 36 , 1559-1569.
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Frederick L. Coolidge, Ph.D. , is Professor of Psychology at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.