What’s up with Theresa May? How did she go from being the epitome of confident, sensible leadership to someone so shambling and self-damaging they inspire their own memes? With 20 years’ experience as an MP, including seven as home secretary and 11 months as Prime Minister, facing a weakened opposition at war with itself under a questionable leader, you’d assume that a quick, victorious election campaign would be a doddle.

Apparently not; May’s attempts to win people over have been going from bad to worse, meaning she often refuses to even engage, and even when she does she never actually says anything of substance. When your main selling point is being strong and stable, this isn’t a good look at all. How did this happen?

There are many possibilities and variables, and they’re probably all valid to an extent, but here’s a psychological perspective to consider.

What do we know about Theresa May? Well, she seems to be something of an authoritarian. Evidence suggests (although it’s a controversial area) that an authoritarian personality is “characterized by belief in absolute obedience or submission to one’s own authority, as well as the administration of that belief through the oppression of one’s subordinates”. May’s record certainly backs this up. Relying on a select pair of trusted advisors and excluding the input of other elected MPs representing tens of thousands of voters doesn’t suggest an “open and engaging” approach.

Treating the public and your own subordinates like errant children in need of a firm hand is a questionable choice even for parenting, let alone politics. Photograph: Alamy

Many people like a sense of control. It prevents feelings of uncertainty, which can be psychologically unsettling due to the effects it has on our brains. But some take it too far, becoming convinced that everything can and should be controlled, and get very irate and aggressive when this belief is challenged are thwarted. Such people are known as “control freaks”, a questionable label for many reasons, not least because it implies they’re rare. They aren’t, as anyone who’s had a micromanaging boss will know.

Control freaks are rarely much fun to be around. Their need for control applies to other people, who are invariably too unpredictable, chaotic and independent to submit to their will. This “loss” of control makes them angry and desperate to regain it, often going to illogical extremes like, I don’t know, appealing to the supreme court for no reason when you’re told you can’t just do what you want. Or refusing to see sense when you’re told you can’t deport someone.

There are knock on effects to this. By surrounding yourself with only those who agree with you, you end up arriving at uninformed, more extreme conclusions, always a bad idea in politics. You have no reason to doubt how right you are.

Much of Theresa May’s political life has allowed her to maintain a sense of control and confidence in her own conclusions. She’s refrained from campaigning on important issues, ignored the views of her colleagues even her own leadership campaign was essentially unopposed. There’s been little to challenge May’s presumably core belief that she can and should control everything. This is presumably why she changed her mind about an election; a controlling person would want to minimise risk, and elections offer plenty of that so of course she’d rule one out. But the polls were so heavily in her favour, as were the media, while the economy only promised bad times ahead, so an election now would have eventually seemed like the less risky option, with enough words in well-placed ears. What could go wrong?

Well, have you heard of Paris Syndrome? It’s a surreal phenomenon whereby Japanese tourists in particular arrive in Paris and seem to undergo some sort of mental collapse, experiencing raised anxiety, delusions, irrational feelings of persecution and hostility, even hallucinations, or vomiting. The main theories as to what’s happening here is that Japanese tourists have an incredibly romanticised belief in what Paris is like thanks to countless media and film portrayals. The reality of it being, you know, mostly a normal city, coupled with the tangible differences in behaviour and manners between Japanese and Parisian culture, induces an intense and debilitating form of culture shock.

Despite the colloquial usage, it’s a very real thing. Being presented with an environment whereby our existing experiences, skills and understanding of how the world works are no longer applicable, the uncertainty and self-doubt this results in can be, and clearly often is, genuinely debilitating.

Paris: beautiful, romantic, bustling hub of continental culture, can cause hallucinations in individuals of Japanese origin. Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters

Has Theresa May been affected in such a way? I wouldn’t rule it out. For someone who’s spent decades ensconced in her own bubble inside the Westminster bubble, travelling the country and dealing with public and media who don’t obey her commands, despite her efforts, resulting in copious negative coverage despite years of painstaking work to prevent this, that’s obviously going to be a massive shock. The obvious response is to just stop it happening, send out substitutes or just say nothing of any importance at all. Such behaviour does not say “strong and stable” leadership though, so it’s not necessarily a helpful strategy in an election.

Contrast this with Jeremy Corbyn. Whatever you think of him, his political life has mostly involved campaigning, going against popular opinion, and putting up with criticism. He’s in his element right now, as the polls indicate.

It’s not even a political issue; if May and Corbyn had pursued similar strategies from opposite ideological sides, you’d likely see similar resulting behaviours at this point.

Also, I want to stress that this is not an attempt to diagnose Theresa May with a mental health problem. I’m on the record as not endorsing that sort of thing, even if it’s regarding political figures I’m 100% opposed to. I don’t think there’s anything clinically wrong in the brain of Theresa May, but given what we know about her and how she works, it would be reasonable to conclude that the practicalities of an election campaign are causing her considerable problems. She’s not unwell or anything, it’s just that, given the choices and methods she’s employed in her life, when dealing with the unpredictable general public, she’s so far out of her depth she’s not even in the water anymore, she’s off to the side, getting increasingly panicked that her reliable doggy paddle is having no effect on the unyielding rocks she finds herself up against.

Maybe she’ll (metaphorically) find herself back in the water in a few days, but this incredibly embarrassing and awkward period isn’t just going to be forgotten. Theresa May’s political world has changed now. Whether it’ll be good for her, or prove to be her undoing, time will tell.

Dean Burnett highlights many other ridiculous things our brains do in his book The Idiot Brain.Available in the UK, US and many other countries