The Mind Behind Hussein : Psychology: Experts dissect behavior to find out what makes the Iraqi president and other world leaders tick. But the techniques vary in booming field of ‘leadership analysis.’

Is he Saddam the Sadist? The Butcher of Baghdad? The Madman of the Middle East? Or is Iraq’s president merely misunderstood?

When Hussein invaded Kuwait on Aug. 2, he fell in line behind a rogues’ gallery of relatively obscure foreign leaders who abruptly became household names: Khomeini, Kadafi, Noriega. . . . And once again, experts scrambled to construct a portrait of the latest villain for the American policy-makers who must anticipate his next move or, perhaps, negotiate with him.

While this sort of armchair character analysis probably went on as Napoleon prepared to meet Wellington, in recent years it has evolved into a science, or an art, or at least a source of steady income for a growing group of people.

At the Central Intelligence Agency the process is called “leadership analysis.” Others refer to the specialty as “psychobiography” or “assessing personality at a distance.”

What it boils down to is trying to piece together a portrait of a leader either unwilling or too busy with other matters--plotting invasions, for example--to sit down for detailed interviews and a battery of psychological tests.

“We’re at a moment in history, as the situation in Iraq makes clear, when the political personality of a leader is of central importance. . . . Every politician worth his salt wants to know what makes his allies and adversaries tick,” said psychiatrist Jerrold M. Post, a professor at George Washington University and the founder and former director of the U.S. Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior, which assesses foreign leaders for the President and other officials.

John F. Kennedy reportedly used psychobiographies to guide his response to Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban missile crisis; Jimmy Carter immersed himself in material on Israeli leader Menachem Begin and Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat before negotiating the Camp David accords.

The field has since grown more sophisticated, but there is still debate over the best way to profile a world leader. “One central issue is, which (psychological) theory do you use?” said William M. Runyon, a professor and research psychologist at UC Berkeley’s Institute of Personality Assessment and Research and the author of the 1982 book “Life Histories and Psychobiography.”

Traditionally, analysts had employed standard psychoanalytical techniques. Now there is a move afoot, Runyon said, to use behavioral, cognitive, humanistic and other relevant psychological methods.

A more basic concern, however, is what sort of background material should go into the portrait. The hottest niche in the field is probably “content analysis.”

“It’s a little more systematic than psychobiography,” says Margaret Hermann, professor of political science and a research scientist at Ohio State University’s Mershon Center. Hermann and others who use the technique attempt to predict the actions of leaders by studying their speeches or interviews.

Hermann looks for speech patterns that reflect “a set of personality characteristics that research has shown are relevant to political behavior.” For instance, a leader might pound a table with his shoe, bellow, and present an image of intractability. But his actual words may reveal a willingness to compromise.

“For this particular variable, we’d be interested in his use of words that suggest tentativeness, versus the words that suggest absolutes: forever , always . We’d look at the ratio of these words. It can surprise you.”

It is important in content analysis to study speech patterns over the course of a person’s life or political career, Hermann said. This can reveal whether a leader is a staunch nationalist, whether he believes in his ability to control events, whether he thinks in complex terms or sees the world in absolutes.

While she has not analyzed Hussein, she has profiled other Middle Eastern leaders, including Iran’s president, Hashemi Rafsanjani.

“One of the interesting things about Iranian leaders, and many Muslims, is that they tend to view the world in very subtle gradients. To us what they say looks like black and white, but when you analyze what they’re saying, it’s extraordinarily subtle.”

While Hermann and others find precision in limiting their assessments to speech patterns, some experts believe a more holistic analysis is necessary.

“It’s very important to neither overestimate nor underestimate the role of leader personality,” said psychiatrist Post.

Political analysts, for example, tend to view the political process itself as much more important than personality in determining how a leader will make decisions, Post said. “They see leaders as almost computers, summing vectors of inputs and coming up with outputs and so forth--personality does not count a great deal. That clearly misses a great deal of variance between individuals.

“On the other hand, the psychiatrist, psychologist, or behavioral analyst who is insufficiently trained in political science and international relations is apt to attribute too much significance to personality and to insufficiently appreciate the constraints and complexity of historical, political, and cultural influence weighing on the leader.”

It’s also important, Post said, that analysts establish a leader’s behavior over time. “There’s a great tendency, especially in a crisis, to pay attention only to the here and now, to pore with intensity over this speech and that speech. But other things being equal, the way an individual responds to stress over time will be the way he will continue to respond.”

In trying to predict the actions of Saddam Hussein, for instance, it is important to consider relatively recent events, such as the story--which Post said he has now heard from three sources--that Hussein once had a staff member hacked into small pieces and delivered in a body bag to the man’s wife, for daring to offer a contrary opinion at a staff meeting.

It is also illuminating, however, to know that at age 10 Hussein “left his home in the middle of night and came under the influence of an uncle, a fiery Iraqi nationalist” who “filled the boy’s head with stories of the heroic deeds of his grandfathers” and the courageous exploits of nationalist leaders, Post said.

Post, who recently profiled Hussein, is concerned about the portraits that paint the Iraqi leader as a madman. “I feel quite strongly about the danger of some of the pejorative diagnoses being tossed around about him,” he said. If policy-makers believe that Hussein is a lunatic, he said, they may not respond appropriately to his actions.

“To consign his behavior to madness is to say he is crazy and unpredictable and then just stop thinking about it,” he said. “One of the major questions currently preoccupying decision-makers is the question of whether he will go down in flames in the last flaming bunker,” Post said.

Those who portray him as a lunatic think he will. But after considering Hussein’s political record in context with his psychological profile, Post doubts such apocalyptic projections.

Hussein is consistently opportunistic “in getting rid of people and countries when they stand in the way of his messianic dreams,” Post said. “But at the same time, when he has miscalculated, he has been able to reverse course and back off--despite a major expenditure of resources--only to come back at a later time more powerful than ever. That’s an enormously important pattern to identify for our decision-makers.”

Which leads Post to conclude: “I’m reasonably persuaded that Saddam does not want conflict at this point.”

But how much trust should policy-makers put in such assurances?

Betty Glad, a professor of Government and International Affairs at the University of South Carolina and co-chair of the psycho-politics group of the International Political Science Assn., is an expert in constructing psychological profiles of world leaders, particularly U.S. Presidents. She worries that many practitioners mislead themselves into believing that their field can be modeled on modern physics, with its clear laws and absolute patterns.

“When you’re looking at a complex whole, there will be ambiguity,” she said. “There are things that occur that cannot be predicted. . . . You can’t always tell what new things will occur in the universe by looking at old things.”

Who would have guessed, for instance, that a Soviet leader would suddenly decide to help end the Cold War? And who can truly predict how Saddam Hussein will react to the sudden--and clearly unexpected--pressures confronting him now?

If there is anything that can be predicted about Hussein, Post and others suggest, it is that he is spending at least some time these days pondering psychological profiles of President George Bush.