Psychiatrist Reinhard Haller talks about Putin and other narcissists

Professor Haller, the ZDF miniseries “In the End – The Power of Insult” tells how people become disturbed due to narcissistic insults and gradually become living time bombs. The series is based on your scientific work. How realistic is that?

It’s often the little things that, as an outsider, you wouldn’t see as insults, but which cause an awful lot and have fatal consequences for people’s fates. Unfortunately, the phenomenon has been excessively suppressed and taboo. No one likes to admit that they get overly irritated by gimmicks. The power of insult is a whole norm, societal problems up to and including wars are triggered by it. Science has hardly dealt with it, not even in my field. I didn’t even hear the expression when I was in college.

How can it be that there is hardly any research on this?

There is not even a technical term for it, it goes so far that the insult was never included in the general diagnosis catalogues. The medical bibles that record every pain ignore the hurt. I have to add, self-critically, that I myself only dealt with it late. And it was only discovered through a major criminal case.

The well-known criminal case is that of the assassin Franz Fuchs, who used letter bombs to terrorize Austria in the 1990s. Numerous politicians received the explosive mail, and the attack cost the then Mayor of Vienna, Helmut Zilk, his hand.

At the time, it was assumed that the cause of this crime was right-wing radicalism. Everything had pointed to it, but in reality it was the beacon of an offended self-proclaimed genius. He was pathologically vulnerable and drew fatal consequences. Many amok runners are not ideologically driven, but act on the basis of insults. Hildegard von Bingen already said: what offends makes sick. In the 12th century she laid the foundations for psychosomatic medicine, according to which the cause of many physical illnesses is psychological.

Narcissistic leaders are very easy to offend.”

With respect, isn’t it a bit easy to discount assassinations and even wars to that power of offense?

I don’t believe. There are, of course, an incredible number of other aspects, but insults play a conspicuous role in both World War I and World War II, and this is also the case with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Narcissistic leaders are very easily offended. But no question, there are many reasons. Insults are often only the last trigger – a hypothesis that many historians confirm for me. Like all criminals, Hitler was a great psychologist himself, but he himself experienced a striking number of insults. He was unsuccessful as an artist, never had a girlfriend, had no roof over his head for years, so he knew about the power of slights and how to use them. He addresses it in his speeches: Never has a people experienced such great humiliation as the Germans. We hear that from the Russians today too. Please don’t get me wrong, it’s never about apologizing, it’s about explaining.

In your opinion, what offended Vladimir Putin so much?

I’ve long been asked if Putin is a narcissist. It is actually forbidden to make remote diagnoses, but one can interpret certain features. It is striking that for a long time it was considered reliable and calculable, but then things changed. It is typical that at some point he begins to surround himself only with cheering servants and toadlicks, and any criticism then becomes an insult to majesty. I remember when Barack Obama, who I actually think is a smart man, publicly humiliated Putin. He said Russia is now only a regional power and has only limited significance. Something like this often has fatal effects, especially here.

Isn’t Obama to blame for Russia invading a neighboring country?

Of course not, as I said, the insult is often only felt to this extent by the narcissist himself. It’s hard to put yourself in someone’s shoes. You thought you knew Putin, you saw him in the past as a laughing amical man. And it’s hard to imagine that someone like that suddenly doesn’t care that old people have to flee, children die, hundreds of thousands lose their homes. And yet it is typical of narcissists that they switch off empathy, their hurt feelings overshadow everything else, only hatred counts.

Ironically, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pointed out early on that Putin had to be offered a way out in which he could save face.

For once, the Turkish President, whose narcissism is well known, said something clever. In the case of the Böhmermann affair, we saw how easily he could be offended and risked an international crisis over trifles. Mrs. Merkel knew that for sure and moderated it cleverly.

But isn’t it already too late for that, how can one allow a mass murderer to save face?

You’re probably right, but it’s not my job to judge. You just have to know where it leads. As long as you signal the narcissist that they are inferior and defeatable, they will continue to escalate. As difficult as it may be, the only way out is this: we should give Putin the opportunity to save face.

Are our contemporary societies more narcissistic than earlier ones?

Sigmund Freud wrote about narcissistic disorder in 1908. I definitely believe that people have become more narcissistic, but at the same time there is no sense of being hurt.

Let’s take the ZDF series “The Power of Insult” again, for example, would such an explosive network of relationships have been conceivable 100 years ago?

Narcissism in itself doesn’t have to be bad in moderation.”

First of all, it should be noted that not every narcissistic injury is pathological. Narcissism in itself doesn’t have to be bad in moderation, without it we wouldn’t have any self-esteem. As always, it becomes problematic when it gets too much. Theologian Karl Rahner provided a great definition when he said: Narcissism is a furnace that only warms itself.

Do you have a way out?

We need an awareness of hurt. Everyone wants to be cool, as hard as possible, but everyone is very vulnerable inside, everyone has a strong need for love. We are constantly on the hunt for positive feedback. Even the climate movement can be explained in this way.

In fact?

Young people feel offended that society does not think about their and future generations and reacts strongly. Also, the drugs that are popular today like ecstasy and MDMA indicate a strong need to connect with others, to feel love.

You research with criminals, has something changed there too?

Insulting offenses are on the rise. Look at the many murders of women. I have extensively investigated 37 woman killers and had long conversations. When you get out of there, as an appraiser, you have the feeling that you have only spoken to victims. They only talk about what was done to them, it’s about rejection and withdrawal of love. The reactions are dramatic and of course disproportionate, but these men don’t see that.

The criminals you have investigated are very diverse. There is the letter bomber Franz Fuchs, the dazzling woman murderer Jack Unterweger, several Nazi perpetrators. Are there parallels between these perpetrators?

Yes, there are many parallels, similar personality disorders. Addiction is one of the most important factors in crime because it leads to disinhibitions, which encourage evil to express itself. The striking thing is that criminal offenses are increasingly lacking in motivation. That’s what all criminologists say, it comes from the smallest and most insignificant motives to serious and increasingly brutal crimes. I see there the expression of the primal fear of not being recognized and not liked.

How should society react to this phenomenon?

That’s a very difficult question. Our current justice system has long been outdated, in 200 years we will be considered primitive because we still imprison and convict, although almost everyone would actually be better off in therapy. But that’s utopian, I understand that that’s not possible, the bereaved have a need for atonement that is understandable. The sense of justice must be served, people want atonement or even revenge.

In the 19th century there was a code of honor among officers, some of which still exist today in the case of contingent connections. Did these antiquated regulations also have advantages?

Today, freedom of expression is above the concept of honor.”

You’re addressing an important issue, because dealing with concepts of honor has been lost in western society. You don’t have to fight a duel, but as you saw in the case of Green Party politician Renate Künast, there is no punishment if someone has been grossly insulted. Today, freedom of expression is above the concept of honor. You force people to accept something like that, the insult remains. In addition, there are immigrants who come from other cultures with different concepts of honor and who have major problems with this.

Is there a contemporary form of the concept of honor?

I’ve already talked about hurt awareness, which means we’re all trying to understand more about what hurts others. A lot of mischief could be avoided that way. We need what I would call “right-skinned,” being neither thin-skinned nor thick-skinned, but developing a healthy balance. Stephen Hawking said that human survival would not depend on whether we venture into space, but on whether we save our empathy. This is something that robots and AI will never adopt.

How can empathy be trained?

We all experience insults all the time, you, me, your readers, it’s part of being able to put up with it and react calmly. At the same time, we must try to remain sensitive. Our society needs to take the issue more seriously, but social media acts like a fire accelerator. Look in the comment columns, there is always mutual insults, hurt, hated. The compulsion to optimize that we are experiencing is not exactly conducive either. Are my biceps big enough, have I managed the jogging route recommended by my smartphone, is my blood sugar level ideal? And of course that’s almost never the case, we experience dysmorphic fear of failure, depression.

How do we get out of there?

More compassion, more empathy, treating people whose views and life models we do not share with more respect.

How do you deal with it yourself when you are offended?

My goal in life is to be more relaxed, but I haven’t arrived myself. I try to take it seriously when I feel like I’ve been hurt, or perhaps caused hurt myself. It is a tightrope walk that everyone knows and that is difficult to master. But there is hope as long as we try.

“At the end – the power of insult” is available from May 5th in the ZDFmediathek and on May 17th and 24th from 9:45 p.m. on ZDFneo (three episodes each).