When Pharaohs Fall

Ahmed El-Orabi on Egypt's Arab Spring and the Psychology of Leadership Loss

On a February evening in 2011, as millions of Egyptians watched their president of three decades step down, the streets erupted in celebration. Then they fell quiet. In that stillness, another story was born: one not of politics, but of psychology—of confusion, loss, and the collective anxiety that follows when long-standing authority suddenly vanishes.

For INSEAD Executive Master in Change researcher Ahmed El-Orabi, who participated in the Arab Spring protests, Egypt’s revolution offers more than a historical turning point. It reveals what happens when leadership itself collapses—when the figure that once contained a society’s fears and hopes abruptly disappears. His study of that psychological unravelling exposes dynamics that reach far beyond Egypt, offering powerful insights into how organizations and institutions everywhere respond when the structures that hold them steady begin to fall away.

The Hidden Function of Leadership

In the years that followed Mubarak's fall, El-Orabi started to discern something others had missed: leadership provides more than strategic direction or organizational control. It serves a subtler—and often overlooked—function: acting as a psychological container for collective anxiety.

Think of leadership as a vessel built to hold uncertainty. At its best, it absorbs the tensions, fears, and contradictions that would otherwise overwhelm a group. But when that vessel cracks or disappears, the contents spill out in unpredictable ways. The anxiety once contained by authority becomes free-floating, seeking new targets and defenses.

It is this very dynamic that El-Orabi’s research into post-revolutionary Egypt—conducted through in-depth interviews with ten Egyptians of varying ages and perspectives—reveals with striking clarity.

As his work elucidates, when President Hosni Mubarak resigned in 2011 after 30 years in power, Egypt didn’t simply experience a political transition. It underwent what the research identifies as a “disruption of containing structures” that unleashed cascading psychological responses still reverberating today. This was described vividly in the words of his interview participants:

“I felt an overwhelming fear of the unknown,” one 38-year-old participant recalled, “or more precisely, I wasn’t ready for a change in something I had experienced since childhood.” Another described feeling “a deep fear of instability,” while a third spoke of “profound sadness and mourning for my beloved Egypt.”

These weren’t merely political opinions. They were visceral psychological responses to the sudden absence of a structure that, however imperfect or even oppressive, had provided a form of psychological containment for an entire society.

The Anxiety Cascade

When leadership vanishes, anxiety doesn’t simply increase—it transforms. El-Orabi’s research identifies what might be called an “anxiety cascade,” where the absence of containment triggers increasingly primitive psychological responses.

First comes free-floating anxiety: a generalized unease without clear object or solution. “How long will it take for life to return to normal, regardless of how events unfold?” one participant remembered thinking. “I longed for stability to return in the blink of an eye.”

This anxiety manifests across multiple dimensions simultaneously. Economic concerns intensify—not just rational worries about markets or employment, but deeper fears about survival and security. One younger participant described how “my emotions were deeply shaped by my father, who was profoundly distressed by how things had turned out—the economic stagnation and the sudden halt of all our business ventures.”

But the most profound dimension is existential: Who are we now? What do we stand for? As one 44-year-old Egyptian put it:

“I am in a state of profound sadness and mourning for my beloved Egypt. I truly hope that the bleak reality Egypt is experiencing will change, but I don’t know how that can be achieved.”

Crucially, this anxiety doesn’t respect geographical boundaries. Egyptians living abroad—physically removed from day-to-day upheaval—reported intense distress. One participant working in Germany described being “solely focused on my professional future” there, yet unable to return to Egypt “until I have achieved all my dreams.” The leadership vacuum created psychological displacement even across continents.

The Defense Mechanisms Emerge

Organizations—whether corporations, institutions, or entire societies—don’t passively absorb anxiety. They develop defense mechanisms to protect against overwhelming psychological pain. El-Orabi’s research identified five primary defenses that emerged in response to Egypt’s leadership vacuum, each with striking parallels to organizational behavior elsewhere.

1—Avoidance and Psychological Exile

The most visible defense was withdrawal—both physical and emotional. Younger, educated Egyptians emigrated in significant numbers. “I’m 29 years old, and I’ve had to leave Egypt, forced out by the harsh reality we live in,” one participant explained. “Do you really think I would have walked away from my homeland if the revolution had brought us the justice and dignity we longed for?”

But psychological exile extended beyond literal departure. Others described emotional numbing: “I don’t feel anything—perhaps I’m just indifferent,” said a 36-year-old engineer. This indifference served a protective function, reducing anxiety by dampening responsiveness to threatening realities.

In corporate contexts, we see similar patterns after sudden leadership departures: talented employees leave for competitors; those who remain become emotionally detached, going through motions without genuine engagement. The avoidance protects against disappointment but simultaneously prevents the processing necessary for renewal.

2—Splitting: The World Divided

Perhaps the most psychologically primitive defense is splitting—dividing reality into absolute categories of all-good and all-bad. Unable to hold complexity, groups regress to stark either-or thinking.

The Egyptian experience revealed this dramatically. Those who initially celebrated Mubarak’s removal later idealized his era: “The days of Hosni Mubarak were truly irreplaceable!” one participant declared. Another, who had supported the revolution, later reflected: “I now think our judgment of Hosni Mubarak was unfair to a great extent.”

This wasn’t simple nostalgia. It represented an inability to integrate contradictory truths—that the previous regime had been both oppressive and stable, that change was both necessary and disruptive. Without leadership to help process this complexity, minds regressed to simpler, more comfortable binaries.

Organizations undergoing leadership transitions often exhibit similar patterns. The departed leader becomes either villain or martyr. The successor is either savior or imposter. Nuanced assessment becomes psychologically impossible because it would require holding painful contradictions without a containing structure to process them.

3—Idealization: The Perfect Past and Perfect Future

Closely related to splitting is idealization—the creation of flawless mental objects that provide psychological refuge from messy reality. In Egypt, this took two forms: idealization of the pharaonic past and fantasies of perfect future leadership.

Participants consistently referenced Egypt’s ancient civilization—”the cradle of civilization and the source of culture, arts, and architecture,” as one put it. Several drew pyramids when asked to visually represent Egyptian identity, rendered as geometrically perfect forms without wear or damage. This defensive idealization transformed historical monuments into psychological resources that maintained self-esteem when contemporary achievements seemed lacking.

Future leadership received similar treatment. Participants described ideal leaders who would be simultaneously strong yet compassionate, decisive yet consultative, authoritative yet collaborative—a combination of contradictory qualities no actual human could embody.

The corporate parallel is striking. In the absence of stable leadership, organizations often idealize either their past (”we need to return to our roots”) or their future (”we need a visionary who will transform everything”), rather than engaging with present realities.

4—Rationalization—Making Sense of Disappointment

When reality becomes too painful, groups develop sophisticated intellectual explanations that provide distance from emotional truth. Egyptian participants offered elaborate rationalizations for their nation’s difficulties: the people weren’t ready for democracy; fourteen years of instability inevitably produces economic problems; external forces conspired against change. One participant sought to explain Egypt’s struggles in this manner:

“Democracy is fundamentally about freedom, and freedom comes with immense responsibility. Since the people are not yet prepared to exercise freedoms that require a high level of self-discipline—something our society lacks—it has become challenging to practice democracy effectively.”

These rationalizations weren’t necessarily false. They provided logical frameworks that made disappointment comprehensible. But they also served a defensive function: protecting against the more threatening acknowledgment that the leadership vacuum had triggered forces beyond anyone’s control or understanding.

Organizations do this constantly. When leadership transitions fail, we attribute outcomes to “cultural fit” issues, “market conditions,” or “timing”—explanations that provide intellectual comfort while avoiding deeper psychological truths about collective anxiety and defense mechanisms.

5—Projection: Externalizing Internal Conflict

The fifth major defense mechanism involves projecting internal conflicts onto external entities. In Egypt, state-controlled media became a primary recipient of such projections. Participants consistently identified media as manipulative, distorting, deceptive—qualities that might equally describe the psychological processes within themselves.

“The media machine played a fundamental role in distorting the true image of leadership,” one participant insisted. Another described media’s “sinister” role in “frightening and intimidating people by broadcasting images, videos, and narratives...none of which had any basis in truth.”

While media certainly shaped perceptions, the intensity of these attributions suggests projection: the external media became a container for awareness of internal psychological manipulation and self-deception that individuals found too threatening to acknowledge directly.

The Double Bind of Leadership Expectations

Perhaps the most fascinating finding from El-Orabi’s research concerns what he identifies as “the double bind of Egyptian leadership”—a set of mutually contradictory expectations that makes any actual leadership inevitably disappointing.

Egyptians expressed desires for leadership that was simultaneously:

• Strong yet gentle

• Decisive yet consultative

• Like a protective father yet promoting independence

• Embodied in a charismatic individual yet embedded in systematic structures

• Firm in maintaining order yet flexible in allowing freedom

As one participant explained, capturing the essential contradiction:”My vision of leadership is one of decisiveness, strength, and clear vision—but above all, it is about being human.”

The visual representations participants created revealed this bind even more clearly. Some drew triangular hierarchies representing top-down authority alongside circular diagrams representing collaborative leadership—competing models that couldn’t be reconciled verbally but could somehow coexist visually in the same drawing.

This isn’t unique to Egypt. Organizations everywhere demand leaders who are simultaneously visionary and pragmatic, inspiring and realistic, transformational and stable. We want leaders who take bold risks without making mistakes, who are confident without being arrogant, who are strong without being inflexible. These contradictory expectations guarantee disappointment because no actual human can fulfill them.

The leadership vacuum intensifies this bind. In the absence of real leadership serving a containing function, fantasies of perfect leadership proliferate, unchecked by reality. The ideal leader becomes increasingly heroic, increasingly impossible—which paradoxically makes it easier to accept inadequate leadership, since no alternative could meet the inflated expectations.

The Identity Crisis

The research reveals another crucial dynamic: leadership vacuum doesn’t just create anxiety about the future—it fractures identity in the present. When asked about Egyptian identity, participants expressed what El-Orabi terms a “quaternary structure” involving four elements in perpetual tension:

Historical Greatness: Pride in pharaonic civilization and ancient achievements—”a civilization whose mysteries modern science has yet to fully unravel.”

Religious and Moral Values: Ethical foundations rooted in faith—”religion and humanity’s relationship with the Supreme Creator—a relationship that is fundamentally based on morality and self-discipline.”

Modern Aspirations: Desire for contemporary recognition—”The world should respect us, listen to us, and recognize our role in shaping the outcomes of the modern world.”

Resilience and Endurance: Capacity to persist through hardship—”the unbreakable spirit that rises through every hardship—it is a resilience that is etched into our very being.”

Without integrative leadership, these elements remain fragmented, activated defensively rather than synthesized coherently. Historical greatness gets emphasized when present achievement seems lacking. Religious values get invoked when moral decay is perceived. Modern aspirations emerge when comparing unfavorably with developed nations. Resilience gets referenced when acknowledging hardship.

Organizations face similar identity fragmentations during leadership vacuums. Different elements of organizational culture—innovation versus stability, customer focus versus operational excellence, growth versus profitability—pull in competing directions without leadership to create synthesis. Teams defend their particular piece of identity while the coherent organizational self disintegrates.

The Transgenerational Dimension

One of El-Orabi’s most psychologically sophisticated findings concerns how responses to leadership vacuum get transmitted across generations, creating patterns that repeat despite changed circumstances.

Multiple participants described how their attitudes toward the revolution were shaped by parental responses.

“Back then, my emotions were deeply shaped by my father, who was profoundly distressed by how things had turned out,” one younger participant explained. Another noted how “my perspective was shaped by the general atmosphere at home—they were against the revolution.”

But the transgenerational pattern extended further. Participants described how their parents’ relationships with earlier leaders followed consistent patterns: initial support, then disillusionment, then retrospective idealization. Gamal Abdel Nasser was embraced, then rejected after military defeat, then partially rehabilitated. Anwar Sadat was disdained, then admired after military victory, then criticized for peace agreements. Hosni Mubarak was accepted, then overthrown, then nostalgically recalled.

“The messages and narratives passed down to us by our parents are confusing—even contradictory,” one participant reflected. “One moment, we were taught to admire Gamal Abdel Nasser with patriotic fervor; the next, we heard nostalgic laments over the monarchy of King Farouk.”

This creates what psychoanalysts call a “repetition compulsion”—unconsciously recreating familiar patterns despite painful consequences. Societies, like individuals, repeat unprocessed traumas across generations. Without psychological working-through, each new leadership transition triggers the same cycle: idealization, disappointment, splitting, and defensive withdrawal.

Organizations exhibit similar patterns. Companies that experienced traumatic leadership failures often unconsciously recreate similar dynamics decades later with different actors. The scripts persist beneath conscious awareness, transmitted through organizational culture and informal mentorship even as formal structures change.

Implications for Organizations

What does Egypt’s experience teach us about leadership vacuum in organizational contexts?

First, recognize the containing function of leadership. We often focus on leadership’s strategic, operational, or inspirational roles while overlooking its psychological function: providing a container that processes collective anxiety. When evaluating leadership or planning succession, this containing capacity deserves explicit consideration.

Second, anticipate defense mechanisms during transitions. Leadership changes will trigger psychological defenses—avoidance, splitting, idealization, rationalization, projection. Rather than being surprised or judgmental, organizations can recognize these as predictable responses to anxiety and create structures to work with rather than against them.

Third, provide transitional containment. The most dangerous period is the interim between leadership departures and arrivals. Organizations need explicit mechanisms—whether interim leaders, advisory councils, or structured processes—that provide containing functions during transitions. Without these, primitive defenses proliferate.

Fourth, address transgenerational patterns. Organizations carry unconscious memories of past leadership traumas. Before major transitions, it’s worth explicitly examining historical patterns: How have previous leadership changes unfolded? What unprocessed disappointments linger? What scripts might unconsciously repeat?

Fifth, resist the double bind. Leadership expectations often become impossible during vacuums. Organizations can consciously identify contradictory demands and choose which to prioritize rather than expecting any leader to fulfill all competing desires simultaneously.

Sixth, support identity integration. Leadership transitions threaten organizational identity. Rather than allowing fragmentation into competing camps or nostalgic versus progressive factions, create processes that help integrate diverse elements into coherent wholes.

Finally, enable collective mourning. Transitions involve loss—of familiar arrangements, expectations, relationships. Without space for genuine mourning, unprocessed grief converts into depression or manic denial. Organizations that create ritual space for acknowledging loss navigate transitions more successfully than those that suppress grief in favor of forced optimism.

The Path Forward

El-Orabi’s research doesn’t merely diagnose problems—it suggests pathways toward healing and integration. The key insight is that transformation requires psychological work, not just structural reform.

For Egypt, this means creating spaces for collective processing of revolutionary trauma, developing leadership models that balance containment with participation, activating resilience as a bridge between historical pride and contemporary challenges, and supporting media literacy that helps citizens recognize defensive patterns in collective narratives.

For organizations, similar principles apply. Leadership development must address emotional intelligence and anxiety containment, not just strategic thinking. Organizational culture work must include processing historical traumas, not just defining aspirational values. Change management must account for psychological defenses, not just rational resistance.

The research identifies resilience as particularly crucial—not merely individual fortitude but collective capacity to maintain coherence amid disruption. In Egypt, participants described resilience as “etched into our very being”—an enduring resource that persists even when other structures fail. Organizations likewise possess resilience that leadership transitions can either activate or undermine, depending on how consciously these dynamics are addressed.

Conclusion: The Universal in the Particular

Egypt’s post-revolutionary experience might seem distant from corporate boardrooms or institutional leadership transitions in stable democracies. Yet the psychological dynamics El-Orabi identified operate universally wherever leadership provides—and then withdraws—its containing function.

Whether it’s a CEO’s sudden departure, a beloved founder’s retirement, a department head’s resignation, or a political leader’s fall, the same cascade unfolds: anxiety emerges, defenses activate, identity fragments, and transgenerational patterns reassert themselves. The scale differs, but the mechanisms remain remarkably consistent.

The crucial insight is that leadership’s psychological function—providing containment for collective anxiety—is not optional or supplementary. It’s fundamental. When that function disappears, groups don’t simply experience logistical challenges or strategic uncertainty. They undergo psychological regression that can persist for years or even generations without conscious intervention.

But recognition opens possibility. Organizations that understand these dynamics can prepare for them, work with them, and ultimately transform anxiety-driven defenses into opportunities for genuine development. The anchor lifting need not mean drifting helplessly. It can mean learning, finally, to navigate by our own capacities.

As one of El-Orabi’s participants poignantly observed about Egypt:

“The unbreakable spirit that rises through every hardship—it is a resilience that is etched into our very being, and a perseverance that has been passed down through generations.”

That resilience exists in every organization, every institution, every group that confronts leadership vacuum. The question is whether we’ll activate it consciously or remain trapped in defensive patterns we cannot name.

The answer begins with understanding what really happens—psychologically, collectively, unconsciously—when leadership vanishes. Only then can we build the containing structures, integrative processes, and reflective capacities that transform leadership transitions from traumatic ruptures into opportunities for authentic development.

The research discussed is based on Ahmed El-Orabi’s thesis “Egypt On Mind: The Role of Leadership Absence & Identity Fragmentation in Collective Social Anxiety and Defences” completed in 2025 as part of INSEAD’s Executive Master in Change.

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Historical Context

Egyptian revolution of 2011 - January 25, 2011: Important events on January 25th in history. CalendarZ. (2025, April 3). https://www.calendarz.com/on-this-day/january/25/timeline-of-the-egyptian-revolution-of-2011

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