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The perennial, if not eternal, question of what it takes to become a leader, be it political or religious, of a mass of people remains yet to be adequately answered. Karl Marx seems to have underestimated the attractive power of religion when he referred to it as the “opiate of the masses.” Religion, given its ineradicable endurance over the millennia, appears to have demonstrated an attraction, addiction, and need that will not yield to the most rigorous process of detoxification. The need for some form of religion just seems, to borrow a phrase from the 19th-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza, in the “nature of things.” The emotional conflicts that give rise to the imperative need for a religion, be it one based on nationalism and political ideology or on an ultimate, omnipotent, and omniscient power, will persist unto eternity. As long as we require a set of parents to bring us forth to life, then the needs that mandate a religious frame of reference that is worthy of commitment and worship, whether theistic or atheistic, will persist.
Throughout history there have been leaders, mostly male, who have perceived this need and have created ideological systems to gratify it. This ability to assume power over others is a sequel to a mutuality and resonance of this emotional need with the belief system and its charismatic leader. Such leaders obtain what they need and so do their followers. For Freud, Moses adapted the Egyptian heliocentric monotheism to a religion based on an invisible transcendent power. He gathered the allegedly primitive and uncultured Israelites around him, unified them, and created a people with a religion that was a unique monotheism. More than a millennium later Jesus came along. Centuries thereafter there was Mohammed. What was it about these charismatic individuals that