– It’s been long known that the psychological description of political leaders has an important impact on the political processes of the country. According to you what psychological peculiarities do the nine presidential candidates have?
– The human history has brought up only three versions of becoming a leader – fight and violence, inheritance of leadership and elections. It’s quite clear that the version of inheritance is excluded in the republican rule. In democratic regimes violence and fight are also mainly excluded. However there are certain exceptions. Therefore the only best option for us is the conduct of elections. As of the psychological state of the nominated candidates despite the fact that there are various classifications for leaders in contemporary psychology and political science we will choose the simplest method to describe the psychological state of the candidates. Artur Baghdasaryan: He has a high self-esteem, has a high opinion of his ego and mandatory offer of that ego to his close environment. He has a huge distraction between his political image and actual psychological image. By demonstrating himself as a psychologically strong person he meanwhile has a weak neural system. He often cannot hide his emotions and easily loses control of himself. By doing this he creates an image of incontinence. The society prefers to accept more confident and trustful leaders, who are able to make cold-minded and serious decisions. Levon Ter-Petrosyan: This psychological type is more characteristic to the influence of the former government, person, who has reveled all the favors of his past power, a person, who has lost his public sympathy. After the events of 1996 only evident contempt is left to this person. The best evidence of that is the last famous case. That’s is when he had kept the chapters of the Karabagh case in his house and didn’t bother to give it to the interested bodies by putting the latter in an inconvenient state. Levon Ter-Petrosyan also has certain dislike and narcissism to the masses, who have dared to go against him. He is a quite ego-centralized person. That is his psychological description. As Artur Baghdasaryan Levon Ter-Petrosyan as well with his psychological type is considered a player. It means they like and are good at “blowing dust”, look sensational. However, such politicians very quickly change their standpoints and are not able to fully work, don’t figure out the solutions of issues. Their only goal is to reach power. And even when they reach power they quickly lose it. They are not able to withstand the competition, the best example of which is the resignation of Artur Baghdasaryan in 2006 and Ter-Petrosyan’s resignation from presidency in 1998. It’s not an accident that in the US the candidate, who loses once is not able to ever come back to power again. In psychology it is called a “loser’s syndrome.” As I mentioned Baghdasaryan and Ter-Petrosyan have certain common psychological elements. And it’s not an accident that Ter-Petrosyan used to be Baghdasaryan’s ideal.
– Well. What will you say about Serzh Sargsyan?
– In my opinion Serzh Sargsyan has the most interesting psychological characteristic among all the candidates. During the past 15 years, by maintaining his main psychological features, such as strong will, strategic comprehension of issues, strong and successful crisis manager, he meanwhile tries to demonstrate himself as an open leader to the society. The evidence of that is his recent communication with different strata of the society and his gradually shifting proximate contact with the society. Sargsyan also has a high self-esteem, however unlike the above-mentioned candidates it is not considered as high ego and forms his leading position in a more modest way. Sargsyan may be considered as an open-minded leader, who is consistent and doesn’t avoid serious tasks and is meanwhile flexible. His activities are directed for the future of the country. Power usually stays pretty long in the hands of such persons.
By Varduhi Grigoryan
to be continued