Charisma.

Charisma is best understood as an intersubjective phenomenon irreducible to individual psychology, though to some extent the phenomena of charisma and narcissism overlap. From its earliest stipulation by St. Paul as a gift of grace to Weber's (1922, 1946, 1968) seminal work on charismatic authority and its inevitable routinization, the concept has evolved into a more nuanced construct that can be useful in formulating leadership/followership dynamics. Via a case vignette, the author illustrates how charismatic organization functions in the clinical situation. Linking Weber's work on enthusiasm to Bion's (1958) stipulation of arrogance and stupidity, he shows how the concept of charismatic organization bridges recent social science research and psychoanalytic understanding and provides a way of relating certain clinical phenomena to events on the larger sociopolitical stage.