Issue #27/82, February 1 - 10, 2000  

By Dr. N. I. Kimmelman

[Ed. note: Dr. N. I. Kimmelman is a licensed Russian psychologist we met several months ago on an overnight train to Moscow from St. Petersburg. A friendly enough if somewhat dry and serious-minded academic in his fifties, Naum Ignatovich had recently divorced his wife quite abruptly after twenty-seven years of unacrimonious marriage, and was moving to Moscow to take up a new practice. We kept in contact with the good doctor, and have lately decided to take advantage of his lack of paying patients to hire him to psychoanalyze Russian politics for us. This article, the first installment in what we hope will be a regular feature, concerns the underlying psychopathology of the Vladimir Putin phenomenon.]

These days, as many ponder Vladimir Putin's spectacular rise, we believe that the instrument of psychoanalysis may provide a particularly fruitful insight into the underlying mechanisms of his sudden popularity.

First, we must consider the psychodynamic implications the changes in Russian society over the last decade had for public psyche. Of these changes, the deprivation of the nourishing structure and feeling of security offered by the Soviet regime had the most traumatic effect. It resulted in the Russian public's development of an oral passive or, as observed in leaders and supporters of some political parties, oral aggressive character. This type of character in individuals stems form the trauma of weaning, and weaning was precisely the symbolic essence of the collapse of the Soviet nourishing structure. The needs of oral character are centered around pleasures associated with the mouth, and being fed is the most important of such pleasures.

The combination of oral-passive character of the public with the phallic character of the leadership (to be discussed in greater detail in later issues) has resulted in a peculiar type of neurotic symbiosis. In this, quasi-paternal figures like Yeltsin or Luzhkov respond to the people's cry for oral gratification by feeding them phallic symbols. This pattern has survived since the Soviet time, and is manifest in the extreme social and, at times, political importance of objects like kolbasa, cigarettes, and vodka (especially as drunk iz gorla).

This situation is not healthy, nor is it consciously gratifying for the people. There is an overwhelming want for a new, non-phallic type of leader. And Vladimir Putin may be the answer.

We believe that Putin is a perfect example of a purely anal-retentive character. According to Freudian theory, this type of character results from the conflict occurring at the potty-training phase. A child whose parents are weak and submissive soon finds that he can effectively control them by means of his bowel behavior. This produces the anal-expulsive character (also represented on the Russian political stage, as we will see later). Meanwhile, a dominating father, who demands structure and discipline in everything, including defecation, may at this stage lay ground for an anal-retentive personality, for which the control of holding-in and letting-go is of principal importance.

We know little, if anything, about Mr. Putin's childhood. However, anal-retentive traits are clearly present in his behavior. This certainly includes his fondness for structure and discipline, his reported admiration of the German culture (an anal-retentive society par excellence), and his recent Freudian slip when he promised to zamochit' banditov even when they are v sortire, the loo here apparently having the meaning of sanctum sanctorum for an anal personality. In addition, consider the symbolic importance of retaining Chechnya, a task of vital importance for Putin.

The longing for an anal-retentive leader is deeply rooted in Russian culture, starting from the invitation of varyagi, the Scandinavian warlords, to rule Slavic tribes, to the adoption of the German bureaucratic system in the 17-19th centuries. We believe that Mr. Putin's rule may offer new hope for Russia, or at least break the neurotic oral-phallic dependence of both Soviet and Yeltsin regimes. There are certain dangers inherent, however. First, as is known from clinical experience, when significantly frustrated in his activities, an anal-retentive personality may revert to anal-expulsive behavior, which would result in a rather nauseating dependence pattern in combination with oral-passive character of the public. On the other hand, Putin may be seduced into assuming phallic traits in his rule. This is an even greater danger, since phallic ambitions in an anal retentive individual are an ultimate recipe for dictatorship.