King Hussein’s Personality Analysis

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Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Brief Biography
King Hussein’s Personality
The Role of King Hussein’s Personality
Conclusion
Works cited

Abstract

The personality analysis of the prominent rulers generally helps the psychologists to define the key factors of leadership, and special features of the rulers. Sometimes, these people just appear to be charismatic and without any special features.

King Hussein is one of the most successful rulers of the Middle East, and is known for his great contribution to the solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. His personal features are worth particular regarding, as being not Jordanian by origin, and having no natural resources in his country, he managed to keep the crown for 43 years, up to his death, and coped to decrease the mortality and poverty rates, and increase the wellbeing and education rate among citizens.

Introduction

Hussein bin Talal, King of Jordan was the leader of Jordan from the time his father, King Talal, resigned in 1952, until his death. Hussein led his state through the unstable Cold War and four decades of Arab-Israeli rivalry, victoriously poising the forces of Arab nationalism and the attraction of Western-style progress against the harsh actuality of Jordan’s geographic position.

Hussein’s family maintains a line of ancestry from the Islamic prophet Muhammad. “We are the family of the prophet and we are the oldest tribe in the Arab world,” the king once proclaimed of his Hashemite descent. (Foster, 1999)

Throughout Hussein’s time in power, there have been some steady factors: Hussein’s individuality as a conventionally inclined, inherited Hashemite monarch; a regular leavening of this fundamentally discriminatory posture with episodic populist pleas, particularly towards the large Palestinian inhabitants of Jordan; Jordan’s weak financial base and its communal, geographic and military instability; a attendant requirement for foreign patronage; and Hussein’s personality, which over the years has altered remarkably little. Thus, it is no surprise to Jerrold M. Post, the founder of the Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior at the C.I.A., that King Hussein grew up to be one of the world’s most influential leaders and in the Middle East for the whole twentieth century.

Brief Biography

On September 6, 1951, King Abdullah’s eldest son, King Talal supposed the throne. When he was decided to be psychologically debilitated, Talal was rapidly repleaded by his eldest son, Hussein, who was announced as a King of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on August 11, 1952. A Regency Council was employed until King Hussein’s official attainment to the throne on May 2, 1953, when he presumed his legitimate authorities after attaining the age of eighteen, in accordance with the Islamic time counting.

On the human extent, lots of simple people and researchers speak for King Hussein’s attainments. While in 1950, water, hygiene and electrical energy were achievable to only 10% of Jordanians, today 99% of the inhabitants may enjoy these conveniences. In 1960 only 33% of Jordanians were educated, in 1996, this amount 85.5% increased. In 1961, the typical Jordanian got a daily nutrition of 2198 calories, and by 1992, this percentage had 37.5% increased, and now this amount is 3022 calories. UNICEF statistics reveal that between 1981 and 1991, Jordan got the world’s biggest yearly tempo of turn down in newborn mortality -from 70 deaths per 1000 births in 1981 to 37 per 1000 in 1991, a fall of over 47%. King Hussein has constantly presumed that Jordan’s people are its largest benefit, and he goes on to persuade all -entailing the less providential, the immobilized and the strayed – to get more for themselves and their state. (Harris, 1999)

King Hussein also resisted throughout his 45 year time in power to endorse peace in the Middle East. After the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, he was active in drafting UN Security Council Resolution 242 which claims Israel to leave the Arab territories it occupied in the 1967 war in substitute for peace. This declaration appeared to be the standard for all succeeding peace concessions. In 1991, King Hussein acted an essential role in discussing the Madrid Peace Conference, and offering an “umbrella” for Palestinians to consult their future as part of a joint Jordanian-Palestinian designation. The 1994 Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel is a key step toward attaining a just, complete and permanent peace in the Middle East. (Joffe, 2005)

While acting in order to achieve the Arab-Israeli peace, King Hussein has also acted to solve arguments among Arab countries. During the 1990-91 Gulf Crisis he applied forceful attempts to quietly impact an Iraqi leaving and reinstate the independence of Kuwait.

King Hussein has persisted in his chase of authentic Arab understanding, anywhere a divergence may occur among fellow citizens or within a state, such as his arbitration in the Yemeni civil war. Additionally, and in almost each speech or debate, Hussein called for worldwide humanitarian assistance to alleviate the inhabitants and children of Iraq from their everyday affliction.

King Hussein’s dedication to democracy, national freedoms and human rights has assisted to overlay the way in making Jordan a model state for the state. The kingdom is worldwide distinguished as having the most consummate human rights record in the Middle East, while current reforms have permitted Jordan to recommence its irretrievable drive to democratization. In 1990, King Hussein employed a royal commission delegating the entire range of Jordanian political considerations to draft a state charter. Today the National Charter, along with the Jordanian Constitution, is applied as a principle for democratic institutionalization and political pluralism in the state. In 1989, 1993 and 1997, Jordan arranged parliamentary votes which were recognized all over the world as among the freest and fairest ever arranged in the Middle East. (Pelletreau, 1994)

King Hussein got married to Queen Noor on June 15, 1978. They have four children: Hamzah, Hashem, Iman and Raiyah. Hussein also had eight children – Alia, Abdullah, Faisal, Zein, Aisha, Haya, Ali and Abeer – from three preceding marriages

HRH Prince Muhammad, the Personal Representative of His Majesty, has two sons: Talal and Ghazi. HRH Crown Prince El Hassan has four children: Rahma, Sumayya, Badiya, Rashid and three grandchildren. HRH Princess Basma has four children: Farah, Ghazi, Sa’ad, and Zein.

Hussein was a talented aviator, motorcyclist and race-car driver. He was fond of water sports, skiing, tennis, ham radio, and Internet surfing. King Hussein read lengthily on political matters, history, international legislation, military discipline and aviation.

Hussein’s later years were overwhelmed by health troubles. He had surgical procedure for a cancerous kidney in 1992, and had six months of chemotherapy for non-Hodgkins lymphoma at the Mayo Clinic in 1998. In October 1998, Hussein left his hospital to assist arbitrate the Wye River peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, engaging tributes from all sides for his skillful mediation.

At the end of January 1999, Hussein got back to Amman in between cancer therapies in the United States to proclaim that his oldest son, Abdullah, would succeed him as a king. (Lynch, 1999)

King Hussein’s Personality

The king’s family was not wealthy when he was a child even they had to sell the bicycle he got as a present from his cousin in Iraq. This fact represents him as a person who is rather a decisive person, which definitely helped him during his reign. According to the personality theory, such persons, who did not grow up in the luxury surroundings obtain strong character. King Hussein was short and he had a kind of complex being shorter than other organizers and even shorter than some of his wives. Jamal Abduelnsaer called him a dwarf. The personality theory claims that short people often become too ambitious, and gain significant success. History knows lots of examples of such cases. The most well-known are Julius Cesar and Napoleon. The child in this state is depicted by Freud as “rebellious, aggressive, destructive, self-involved and inexorably pleasure-seeking” – completely within the clutch of the pleasure standard.

As the researchers state in such circumstances, it has become clearer and clearer that the practice of psychoanalysis entailed, on the part of the psychoanalyst, a repeated avoidance of the painful realities of childhood – at the patient’s expenditure. Psychoanalytic theory makes this probable by offering the researcher with some correct conceptual alibi. This generally states, that the guarantee of the true stories of mistreatment and the ignorance of childhood – of both patient and researcher – stay concealed. With the aim to protect the reality about the deeds of parents, patients may be averted from getting to know how they came to the self-destructive behavioral outlines – why they are fanatics, for example; why they originate accidents or permit themselves to experience unnecessary surgery.

King Hussein liked fast cars and lots of other risky interests he was a survivor and revealed high capability to flexibility. He coped to keep his reign for 43 years in a state with no reserves and to state he does not belong to originally. He was not Jordanian by roots like more than the half of the citizens.

It is claimed, that King Hussein was larger than Jordan. Jordan is a physically ill-favored extension of oil-free sand, which is regarded to have been produced by Winston Churchill in the rear of a taxicab. In the Middle East scarcity normally goes along with browbeaten unimportance. The late, much respected, King Hussein broke that principle. (Shryockm, 2000)

Jordan’s scarcity denoted that it was challenged not to fall out with lots of its neighbors. Hussein’s largest talent was for deception: for persuading people who hated one another relentlessly and essentially that he agreed completely with them both. Generally, as he did it so well, they never observed the unfeasibility of that accord. Duplicity or multiplicity is not generally connected with honesty, but in Hussein, strangely, they were.

He, also, could be cruel. When he was very young, he exiled his first wife, rejecting to let her see her daughter for years (he married, in sequence, four times and was dedicated to his other wives and children). When he became very old, he was brutal to his brother Crown Prince Hassan, an intelligent and admirable man (Shlaim calls him an “unsung hero”), but with any his brother’s magic, who had served him faithfully for 34 years and had forever presumed he would inherit the crown after him. Almost at his deathbed, Hussein changed his thought without notice, assigning his eldest son Abdullah as a follower. The brutality was compounded by the despicable letter he sent Hassan, blaming him quite incorrectly of lots of ill endeavors.

The attempt to decrease institutions to the fundamental imaginary is epistemologically defective, as this stand efforts to understand the social dynamics by the means of psychoanalytical theory, i.e. an fundamentally closed theoretical structure, something that is regarded to be mismatched with the blueprint of independence. In fact, as Castoriadis himself put it: “democratic system is the project of breaking the conclusion at the collective extent. Philosophy, making self-reflective prejudice, is the project of breaking the conclusion at the level of thought both are expressions, and key personifications, of the project of sovereignty.” However, the Castoriadian accession of an essentially psychoanalytic explanation of the socialization procedure implies also an acceptance of the Freudian psyche theory, which, even after its alteration still is a closed theoretical system. Thus, mentioning the development of King Hussein’s personality, it is necessary to state, that his childhood is outlined in the originating of solid and decisive character. This conclusion is additionally verified by the fact that, in accordance to many researchers on the field, some developments in neuroscience make psychoanalytic hypotheses outdated and immaterial. But the example of King Hussein is one of the brightest in explaining the circumstances of the childhood, and further development of the personality.

As the Humanistic theory goes, the cruelty and brutality are appropriate for people being accountable for their decisions, and having big authority in their hands. These people just need to show the cruelty in order to wind down and to show the others, that the person is decisive. The issues underlying the Humanistic Approach, and its differences from other approaches, are discussed more fully in the text, but the sources below provide useful supplementary information. One point worth noting: if one wants to completely clutch the nature of the Humanistic Approach, one can not operate it in conceptual terms. Instead, one needs to consider if and how the thoughts are linked to one’s own experience – for that is how the notion of activities is obtained.

Hussein let bribery increase among his advisers and members of the government, and enjoyed living in luxury himself. His eagerness for life was emphasized in fast cars and planes. He was a brave pilot. During Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy in the 1970s, the king flew out in his helicopter to greet his American delegations. And if one feels such capability, it is necessary to show for the others. (Sieff, 2004)

So what is the decision: was King Hussein an Arab peace hero, commendable of his recommendation for the Nobel Prize, or a Jordanian separatist who let down the Palestinian grounds? Shlaim in this estimable account reveals how, in a meaning, both can be right. Hussein struggled long and in vain for a wider peace; that he failed was due more to Israeli deviousness and American indifference than to any shortcoming on his part.

The misjudgment that led to the loss of the West Bank to Israel was unforgivable, but he gave up trying to get the territory back only when the West Bankers made it clear that he should no longer speak in their name. He believed irrepressibly in peace, he behaved civilly most of the time and he enjoyed himself. Not a bad epitaph for a dictator.

Regarding the issues of the trait theory, the following features of the leader, attributive to King Hussein, should be mentioned:

adjustable to circumstances
watchful to communal surroundings
motivated and aim-directed
confident
supportive
influential
reliable
principal (wish to impact the others)
vigorous (high activity extent)
relentless
Self-sure
Enduring for stress
Willing to presume liability

All these features are originally attributive to leader, and King Hussein had been always regarded as a person, possessing these. There have been many lots of researchers of leadership attributes and they concur only in the universal virtuous features required to be an organizer. For an extensive time, inherited traits were secondary and regarded as learned and situational components were regarded to be far more practical as reasons for people occupying leadership jobs and ranks. Illogically, the study into twins who were parted from their birth along with new disciplines such as Behavioral Genetics has revealed that far more is acceded to than was beforehand presumed. Thus, it is not surprising, that being a son of an influential governor, King Hussein himself became talented state leader, and almost an idol for his people.

The Role of King Hussein’s Personality

It is argued, that in distinction with lots of western nations, where the political party plays a primary role in determining a nation’s policies, in lots of Middle Eastern states, the personality of the leader is of overwhelming significance. There are several reasons for the dominating role played by one individual, comprising the absence in the Middle East of a popular consensus on the nature of political processes, the close relations between the ruler and the means of coercion, and the absence of a historical tradition of popular participation in political life. Historically, traditional Arab community has always reserved a place for a single dominating figure in social, political and religious affairs. Nevertheless, the position of leader in Muslim community is often the result of inheritance or descent from the Prophet, the influential leader must also prove that he obtains the necessary qualities. The leader is required to demonstrate his personal competence if he is going to get the traditional oath of allegiance.

Equally significant is the notion that in such society’s personal leadership plays a legitimizing role. King Hussein explains that to him, ruling was not just a crown or a mace, but an honorable service. He regarded his role as not just titular, but one of responsible decision-making. Also, according to his words, the ruler is required to adhere to the ethics of Islam and patriarchal consultative procedures of the collective (tribal) decision-making. To some degree, the Hashemites of Jordan meet this ideal type. They are direct descendants of the Prophet Muhammad, they profess adherence to the ethics of Islam, and they allow for patriarchal consultative procedures of tribal decision-making through the institution of the Royal Hashemite Diwan. However, while the Hashemites are accepted as the legitimate rulers within Jordan, these factors have failed to provide them with legitimacy in the region as a whole. This can be attributed to the following factors: neither King Hussein, nor King Abdullah attempted to establish an Islamic state whose laws are grounded on those of Islam; lots of sections of community no longer regard blood descent from the Prophet as an authentic criterion of leadership; and lots of researchers regard tribal patterns of decision-making as obsolete, archaic and irrelevant to the requirements of a nowadays nation-state. (Hirst, 1999)

Like the monarchs of Europe, Hussein put next to images of custom and modernity in crafty means. Yet as he ruled Jordan and did not simply supervise it over, Hussein’s capability to fashion numerous Hashemite identities, or “royal personae,” was a vital characteristic of his complicated set of instruments of power. To his issues, he was a man of lots of semblances: liberal democratizer, monarch, successor of the Prophet, secularist, sheikh of all tribal sheikhs, and a refuge for the Palestinian people. Hussein’s expressions were created in association with voters (and political tendencies) he searched to have the impact or control. Lots of these powers exceed the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom (for example, the Islamic tendency, and tolerant repayment movements, the Palestinians as a national society, and the “peace process” in Israel and other U.S.-backed regulations in the Middle East). Others are originated in the tense relations between Jordan’s mainstream Palestinian inhabitants, its native tribes, and other cultural, regional, and religious concerns. Hussein’s s constituencies, and his individual recognitions with them, were often in rivalry. He acted vigorously in these challenges, sometimes as the arbitrator, sometimes a friend or adversary. In doing so, Hussein created public replicas of how these groups should symbolize and comport themselves in connection to each other. (Goldberg, 2000)

The fact is that there has been a lot of speculation about how other states in the area (and particularly Syria and Iraq) might try to take advantage of the young King’s inexperience. Certainly they will try. The court will be flooded with smiling men bearing gifts and lightly veiled threats. But at the moment no one party is sufficiently strong to be able to apply sufficient pressure, whether by incentive or threat, to knock Jordan significantly off the course (if any) which it is on. If Abdullah can keep domestically afloat, he can keep internationally afloat. (Freedman, 1991)

And that is all that he will be trying to do. He knows well that to try to make his mark early would be fatal. He respected his father too much to presume that he could move as effortlessly through the shark-infested waters of Middle Eastern diplomacy as his father did, let alone tie the shark’s tails together without them noticing, which for 46 years had been his father’s party trick.

He will try to do little or nothing. If Jordan stays as it is, he knows that Jordan and the wider world will see that, by and large, as acceptable. He will see another virtue in conservatism too. The Middle East is ruled at the moment by a lot of very old and ill leaders. In the Arab world, personalities are crucial in a way that they are not in the West. In many Arab states, succession is very uncertain. If Abdullah committed himself now to an untried stance, he might be making his and his dynasty’s downfall inevitable in ten years, when the Middle East will be very different. The main factor in the changing Middle East will not be American money, or the stance of Israeli governments towards the Peace Process, or the economics of oil, but mere mortality.

Any attempt to explore the plurality of Hussein’s political identity, at least as ordinary Jordanians perceive it, must make sense of the fact that the Jordanian body politic consists of numerous conflicting constituencies: Palestinians, tribal Jordanians, Circassians, Chechens, Christians, Islamists, and progressive and conservative factions within each of these groups. A common recognition of Hussein as leader was all that unified this political field. Jordan’s political subcultures are not united by a shared sense of Jordanian identity; indeed, each of them represents an identity that existed (or is thought to have existed) before the Emirate of Transjordan was created by the British in 1921.

They do not agree on what Jordanian identity consists of, how it should be defined, and to what extent it can be connected to points of attachment outside Jordan. These various political constituencies developed equally conflicting models of the king as a political actor. No one, it seems, knew exactly where Hussein stood in relation to these models. Each constituency had personal avenues of access to the king, yet each assumed the king was equally available to hers. As I began to familiarize myself with Jordanian political sensibilities, I was surprised by the intensity with which tribal Jordanians argued that Hussein supported Palestinians at their expense. My surprise was based on the fact that Palestinians argued, with equal conviction, that the king blatantly favored the tribes. For the most part, the plurality of Hussein’s political identity was understood negatively, as a policy of “divide and rule” (farriq tasud) which benefited the king and the opponents of one’s own group. (Priess, 1998)

In reality, Hussein crafted weak relations to each of his electorates. He was “protector of the Palestinian people,” the huge preponderance of whom he permitted to become Jordanian citizens and who now dominate in the kingdom’s business, expert, media, and tutorial spheres. Hussein’s military, social safety and intelligence machinery were ruled by members of the aboriginal clans. Particular places were adjusted aside in parliament for Christian, Chechen, Circassian, and Bedouin minorities. As a successor of the Prophet and keeper of Jerusalem’s holy positions, Hussein could speak the language of Islam confidently – and, formerly, he expanded to the Muslim Brotherhood permissible shields not achievable to other biased clusters – even as he maintained the secularizing programs of Jordan’s modernist elite. The king required all these essentials, and he did what he could to defend them in their seconds of disadvantage and frustrate them in their seconds of power.

These facts may be explained by the Humanistic theory by Abraham Maslow. The concentration of the humanistic standpoint is on the self, which interprets into “YOU”, and “your” awareness of “your” skills. This view states that the person is free to select his/her own behavior, rather than responding to surrounding stimuli and reinforces. Issues contracting with self-respect, self-completion, and requirements are supreme. The key focus is to assist individual enhancement. King Hussein had separate incentives in the actions, and the strong motivation being articulated in the huge love to the people created the presentation of all the essential deeds in policy in order to get the rank of one of the most influential governors of the Middle East in the 20th century.

Conclusion

In conclusion it would be necessary to give the quotation by King Hussein, which to some extent depicts his life credo in relation to the settling of the conflict:

We belong to the camp of peace. We believe in peace. We believe that the one God wishes us to live in peace and wishes peace upon us, for these are His teachings to all the followers of the three great monotheistic religions, the Children of Abraham.

In spite of being cruel and brutal to his relatives, King Hussein did everything possible for the sake of his people. Staying a Muslim he respected Judaism, and did not want Israel and Palestine to live in war. The Nobel Prize of Peace he was recommended for was fully deserved by him.

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