I’ve looked at several films of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad speaking. The one below is the one I’ll focus on here. In all the films, he uses repetitive gestures; holding up and pointing with his index finger… unremarkable in itself, but he then
…employs poking motions with that finger, gestures while holding his finger laterally sometimes, upright others, other times approaching the curved open and closed finger gesticulations of flamenco and eastern dance… a set of gestures that are oddly graceful in contrast to his asynchronous stabbing finger gestures.
Mr. Ahmadinejad also uses extreme arm extensions with throw away hand gestures, as though being rid of something; pushing gestures; touching his face, his ear. We might all do these gestures as we speak passionately about something.
But what stands out is that he displays body unrest, such as being unable to judge, in his ‘ ecstasy of speaking,’ where his own body begins and ends, typical of people who are ‘carried away’ by their own words…
(See film clip I’m referring to: Ahmadinejad in Amir Kabir University part 6/8
‘Table incident is at about 2:32 minutes into the clip.)
http://it.youtube.com/watch?v=MoHcIwY1IQc
Watch him pull his chair up closer to the table and accidentally disrupt the microphones, but not pause to straighten nor to steady them. He is there in his chair, but somehow not present in body. What he has to say is far more important than balance, safety or composure.
There seems in his body, an energy hardly contained at that point. The recklessness and non-calculation of spatial planes makes it seem as though he might accidentally also tip his chair over with some definitive need to get close to the microphones.
It could be he suddenly moved his chair closer to the table to be more comfortable, or because he, like some others, doesn’t understand the nature of microphones; that they are able to pick up the speaker’s voice from a distance. Perhaps someone said they couldn’t hear him and he moved his chair closer to the mikes.
But it isn’t that he moved the chair, it’s the kind of move and the energy in it; the abruptness of it and the lack of care about where his chest is and where the edge of the table is, all forgotten in order to get ‘closer.’
That lack of awareness about potential injury to body in order to ‘seize forward,’ might be the anomaly that reveals the real subtext of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s appearances anywhere…. at fundament, he appears, aside from his position as President of a nation, to be carrying a profound anxiety to be heard. I should add that this kind of desire to be heard is not a desire to be found adequate, but a desire to hold life and death over others…to be the utter, final and infallible collater and controller of all beings, all matters.
Psychologically, it is an odd form, like a gnat taking on the rhetoric of a behemoth, hoping all behemoths in the area are mentally incapable of telling the difference between the two.
We all want to be heard, but we don’t often alternate between aggression and ‘injured animal persona’ in order to hold an audience. There’s the difference. Though Mr. Ahmadinejad appears to attempt to mask his subtexts, they still bleed through the studied “What, me worry?†of his softer persona; his “I come in peace,†tones in between his near strident tones; and “You are the ones who are violent toward me,†victim tones and word clusters.
Sometimes variations in upper body gesticulations such as his can be understood as the speaker’s body trying to display several ideas at once, the jarring, throwing and poking gestures far out-communicating his more genteel and refined ones.
With all the finger jabbing and pointing variations, someone like Ahmadinejad could be projecting all these covert and stentorian intents at once… such as:
“I am #1, I am, I am…
and I warn you to heed me…
and you will listen to me…
and I am telling you so that you will awaken…
and I am teaching you…
I Am. Teaching. You…
Listen to me!
Listen to me!â€
In analytical psychology as in psychopathology, there is the concept of ‘the incomplete personality.’ If we could draw a picture of a fairly full and organized psyche, it would be a circle made up of a pretty solid line with a few waverings here and there.
But ‘incomplete personality disorder’ describes a psyche that is more like an empty bag, waiting to be filled by others. The person so afflicted often aggressively and anxiously demands to be attended to, that is, filled by others. Many forms of aggression are merely covers for high anxiety.
If we were to draw a picture of ‘the incomplete personality,’ it would not be a circle with an unbroken solid line… it would be a circle made of a dotted line, with wide spaces between the dots… thus, much falls out; is uncontained, the person often pounces and blurts instead of weighing and speaking…
Also, too much flotsam and jetsam that is ‘not qualified by the rational mind’ enters the broken-line psyche…and those renegade and spare part ideas are not weighed in the present, the short and long terms. Think of ‘incomplete personality disorder’ as having a mind like a sieve; things can pour through in either direction. There are no cohesive boundaries. And as they say in the butcher’s trade, there is no fair weight scale. One day the scale weighs all matters to heavily; the next day, too lightly.
Thus Mr. Ahmadinejad could say, and believe his own internal off-kilter scale, that there are no homosexuals in his home country, (weighing perceived ‘purity’ too heavily) and that there is ‘no significant need for the United States,’ in world matters, (weighing too lightly one of the world powers,) and believe that also.
And yet, the person with the dotted line personality structure is ravenous for recognition and being ‘filled.’ They have to be filled, for like a bucket with a hole in its side, no matter how much you pour and pour, most runs right out. They are hungry. Hungry for being heard and seen, for being acknowledged that they in fact do, exist. But, it can never be enough. Hole in the bucket of the psyche means a psychological tyrant can never have peace… for what is peace, but in somewise to feel at least ‘full enough.’
‘The dotted’ line personality’ often tries to imitate other truly heroic figures he or she has heard or read about… to use similar tone, imitate the heroic in gesture and speech pattern, sometimes in dress and mannerisms as well…that’s the outer goal. The only problem is that such pretenders to the genuine throne try constantly to use heroics and hysterics in order to stridently ‘correct the world’ instead of ‘caring for the world.’
And their idea of trying to teach in order to ‘correct the world,’ is to harangue others and allow inflammatory words and ideas to fall through their dotted lines onto the public world. Self-awareness is usually quite low. And thus, so is innate satiation.
Episode after episode, the person with ‘a dotted-line psyche’ acts out in ongoing fits and starts of aggression towards others, alternating with feeling ‘hurt’ or puzzled when others react in anger or exclusion to their careless words and ways. Thus, after dropping the latest bombshell, such a compromised person takes the victim’s position most every time, asking plaintively, “What did I say or do to deserve such ill treatment from you?â€
And still a person with this configuration tries to convince, exhort, tell, teach, harangue, force his “pounce and blurt ideology†on others. And still this person is anxious to be heard. Even when they have been heard. And heard, and heard and heard.
I am reminded of something my father, who was from the old country, used to say: “It’s the failed teachers who become dictators.â€