DONALD TRUMP AND THE DUCK TEST FOR NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER OR: A ZANY NEW AGE RECIPE FOR DUCK SOUP
But first, an appetizer: MRI brain scans of individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorde...
DONALD TRUMP AND THE DUCK TEST FOR NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER OR: A ZANY NEW AGE RECIPE FOR DUCK SOUP
But first, an appetizer: MRI brain scans of individuals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) indicate they have less brain tissue in areas associated with emotional empathy causing them to feel less empathy and compassion for other people.
That being said, I will state my reasoning early on, "If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, then it probably is a duck."
Given the amount of quacking going on in Washington DC and across the country regarding the question, "Does Donald Trump have NPD?", I ask you to consider the likelihood of an affirmative diagnosis. This foreshadows an even greater attack upon the already widening economic inequality in our country.
A ZANY SIX PART RECIPE FOR A NEW AGE DUCK SOUP:
PART 1: The Main Ingredients To A New Age Duck Soup.
PART 2: Throw In A Bone Of Dissent To Pick On. It Mollifies The Bitter Taste
PART 3: What Is The Secret To That Delectable Narcissistic Flavor?
PART 4: Savor Its Grandiose Nutty Flavor
PART 5: A Recipe For Disaster Allows The Narcissists Rise To The Top
PART 6: The Author Of This Recipe Invites Your Culinary Review
PART 1: The Main Ingredients To A New Age Duck Soup.
Here are but a few of the many articles illuminating this tasty debate.
Does Trump Have Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
From: The Blog 08/11/2016 by Nigel Barber , Biopsychologist; blogger, Psychology Today’s ‘The Human Beast’
Whether narcissism is a real disorder - as opposed to a dimension of personality on which we all vary - is controversial. Does Donald Trump conform to the clinical pattern?
Professional psychiatrists, and psychotherapists, are loath to go on record saying that Trump has a psychiatric disorder on the premise that one cannot do a diagnosis without an office visit and most narcissists are quite unlikely to recognize that they have a problem and to schedule an appointment.
Fortunately, the DSM is written so clearly, and so simply, that anyone can make a diagnosis. Here are the symptoms. Make up your own mind.
Does Trump have Narcissistic Personality Disorder? You Decide
According to DSM-5, individuals with NPD have most (at least five) or all of the symptoms listed below (generally without commensurate qualities or accomplishments).
1 Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment by others.
2 Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.
3 Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions.
4 Needing constant admiration from others.
5 Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others.
6 Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain.
7 Unwilling to empathize with others’ feelings, wishes, or needs.
8 Intensely jealous of others and the belief that others are equally jealous of them.
9 Pompous and arrogant demeanor.
Among other criteria, the symptoms must be severe enough to impair the individual’s ability to develop meaningful relationships with others and reduce an individuals ability to function at work. As far as the first of these is concerned, Trump evidently has no close personal friends.
Work function is also an issue. The ghost author of Art of the Deal, Tony Schwartz, found it impossible to interview Trump who quickly became bored. He gleaned most of the necessary information by being a fly on the wall in Trump’s office
.
Some of the DSM criteria are less relevant to Trump given his birth to money and life as a plutocrat that guarantee contact with high-status persons and being fawned over as a VIP. For those that are clearly relevant, he checks out on all symptoms, it seems. According to DSM criteria, Donald Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder.
Can a Narcissist Function as a US President?
It is, perhaps, no surprise that widely held impressions about Trump’s narcissism are corroborated by the DSM criteria. The key question to ask is whether, having come so far despite his psychiatric disorder, Trump, or any other narcissistic personality can communicate well enough to be an effective leader of the free world.
There have been many narcissistic heads of state before but the clearest examples, such as Fidel Castro, Saddam Hussein, and Hugo Chavez, have been dictators.
Narcissists are difficult to deal with, whether as friends, or as politicians. They do not feel the need to build consensus, which is why most are screened out by democratic systems of government.
For those of you who enjoy a more robust and full flavored serving I invite you to consider the following:
Less Than Artful Choices: Narcissistic Personality Disorder According to Donald Trump
by Maria Konnikova
From: ThinkBig over a year ago
Donald Trump was born in 1946. 34 years later, in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the American Psychiatric Association’s hefty volume of mental disorder classifications, the term “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (NPD) first appeared as a diagnosable disease – Trump would doubtless say it was created in his honor (characteristic #1 of NPD: An exaggerated sense of self-importance). After all, the newly-minted personality disorder made its debut only nine years after he took the helm of his father’s company… and renamed it from Elizabeth Trump & Son to The Trump Organization.
The most recent DSM, DSM-IV, is currently under extensive revision, with DSM-V scheduled for publication sometime in 2013, and both its listed diseases and their definitions are undergoing extensive scrutiny and contentious debate. On the chopping block are five of the ten or so so-called personality disorders, including NPD. Among the reasons for the cut are the frequent overlap between disorders, the general lack of stability of symptoms, and the range of those symptoms in reality, as compared to the either/or approach of the manual (either you have a disorder or you don’t). So, before NPD becomes a thing of the past, at least in its current form, I thought we’d take a moment to reflect on some less than artful choices – or the things that make Trump look like he just stepped out of the fourth edition, symptom by symptom.
A caveat: I am obviously exaggerating, both Trump and narcissism. But debate on personality disorders, classifications, diagnoses, and treatments is well worthwhile, and a colorful spokesperson never hurts.
So, without further ado, Trump’s quotable illustration of the hallmarks of NPD, defined according to DSM-IV as, “A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.” The disorder is indicated by at least five of the following:
1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
A sense of one’s own importance, a grandiose feeling that one is alone responsible for any achievement is a hallmark of the narcissist. Grandiosity is one of the central tenets of a narcissistic personality. Narcissists tend to take credit for everything, as if no one else contributed to the end product. Witness Trump’s declaration that, “When people see the beautiful marble in Trump Tower, they usually have no idea what I went through personally to achieve the end result. No one cares about the blood, sweat, and tears that art or beauty require.” What do you know: not only is Trump a developer and an artistic visionary, but he seems to be a stellar architect and construction worker as well.
And history will agree (naturally). “Anyone who thinks my story is anywhere near over is sadly mistaken,” says Trump. Sadly, indeed.
2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or ideal love
How many presidential runs does it take for the process to be defined as a preoccupation rather than an occupation?
I’d leave it at that, except for the existence of this little gem: “My fingers are long and beautiful, as, it has been well documented, are various other parts of my body.” Not only all-powerful, but all-beautiful, too. The man has it all.
3. Believes he is “special” and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
To narcissists, the “little people” or anyone beneath them (which is mostly everyone) don’t matter. Trump’s lambasting of Rosie O’Donnell is a good case in point: “Rosie O’Donnell called me a snake oil salesman. And, you know, coming from Rosie, that’s pretty low because when you look at her and when you see the mind, the mind is weak. I don’t see it. I don’t get it. I never understood – how does she even get on television?”
Clearly, Rosie lacks the power to understand the dazzling intellect that is Donald Trump. Trump needs someone of equal status to appreciate his immensity. But it can’t be Larry King, because as he told King, “Do you mind if I sit back a little? Because your breath is very bad. It really is. Has this been told to you before?”
4. Requires excessive admiration
No matter the sincerity, as long as the praise comes frequently and at a high enough volume. Says Trump, “All of the women on The Apprentice flirted with me – consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” Clearly. Admired, wherever he may go, even when he’s talking about himself in the third person, as in, “Love him or hate him, Trump is a man who is certain about what he wants and sets out to get it, no holds barred. Women find his power almost as much of a turn-on as his money.”
As he puts it, “Nobody but a total masochist wants to be criticized.”
5. Has a sense of entitlement
The world owes the narcissist everything; he, in turn, owes it nothing.
I think Trump’s attitude can be summed up with this approach to marriage: “I wish I’d had a great marriage. See, my father was always very proud of me, but the one thing he got right was that he had a great marriage. He was married for 64 years. One of my ex-wives once said to me, ‘You have to work at a marriage.’ And I said, ‘That’s the most ridiculous thing.’”
6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends
I don’t have a quote for this one, but perhaps we can talk to one of his ex-wives.
7. Lacks empathy
Narcissists don’t sympathize with the feelings of others. Who are these “others,” anyway? No one matters except for me.
I won’t recreate the Rosie rampage in full, but sentiments like, “I’ll sue her because it would be fun. I’d like to take some money out of her fat XXX pockets,” capture the spirit.
8. Is often envious of others or believes others to be envious of him
Here, it seems like Trump is dominated by the second sentiment, the expectation that everyone is envious of his success. Everyone wants to be Trump. As he puts it, “The old rich may look down their noses at me, but I think they kiss my XXX.”
9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes
Again, other people don’t matter. They can be treated like nothing, because who are we kidding – nothing is the closest description of what they are.
Clients don’t matter. As Trump puts it, “When I build something for somebody, I always add $50 million or $60 million onto the price. My guys come in, they say it's going to cost $75 million. I say it's going to cost $125 million, and I build it for $100 million. Basically, I did a lousy job. But they think I did a great job.” Take them for the suckers they are; that’s the ticket.
The media doesn’t matter. According to Trump, “You know, it really doesn’t matter what (the media) write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of XXX.” The piece of XXX doesn’t matter, either; any will do.
Other businesses don’t matter. As Trump says, “If you want to buy something, it’s obviously in your best interest to convince the seller that what he’s got isn’t worth very much.”
But it’s ok. Trump doesn’t have to be nice. After all, it’s not like he wants to run for office or anything: “I'm not running for office. I don't have to be politically correct. I don't have to be a nice person. Like I watch some of these weak-kneed politicians, it's disgusting. I don't have to be that way.”
Too bad. We need a good candidate. Because according to Trump, “One of the key problems today is that politics is such a disgrace. Good people don’t go into government.”
PART 2: Throw In A Bone Of Dissent To Pick On. It Mollifies The Bitter Taste
From: Medical Examiner
Health and medicine explained.
Oct. 12 2016 7:20 PM
By Sally Satel, Dr. Sally Satel is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
It’s OK to Speculate About Trump’s Mental Health
But even if he were officially diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, that shouldn’t disqualify him from the presidency.
Before Donald J. Trump came on the electoral scene, not a lot of people had heard of the Goldwater Rule. By now many surely have. The eponymous rule was established by the American Psychiatric Association, my own guild organization. It stipulated that no psychiatrist should make a diagnosis of a person he or she has not examined face-to-face and who has not given consent to discuss his mental health publicly.
While do-it-yourself diagnosing of a certain presidential candidate has become a cottage industry in this election—the consensus about Donald Trump is that he might have a severe case of Narcissistic Personality Disorder—psychiatrists have been understandably reluctant to weigh in, even as people have clamored to say that they deserve to know everything possible about a potential president’s mental fitness.
How did the rule come to be? In the lead up to the 1964 election, Fact magazine surveyed over 12,000 psychiatrists about the personality traits of Sen. Barry Goldwater, the Republican nominee. Only a modest percentage of the psychiatrists responded but of those that did, almost half felt the candidate was psychologically unfit to be president.
They savaged Goldwater, judging him “warped,” “narcissistic,” “impulsive” and a “paranoid schizophrenic” who harbored unconscious hatred of his Jewish father and was scarred by his rigid toilet training. One respondent saw him as “a frightened person who sees himself as weak and threatened by strong virile power around him—and that his call for aggressiveness and the need for individual strength and prerogatives is an attempt to defend himself against and to deny his feelings of weakness and danger.” Even his supporters came in for unfavorable psychoanalysis.
In the aftermath, two things happened. First, Goldwater, who lost the presidency in a landslide, sued Fact for libel and was awarded $75,000 in punitive damages. He deserved to win the suit. The psychiatrists’ intra-psychic assessments were deeply intrusive, disrespectful, and basically meaningless. Warmed-over Freudianism is no way to foretell one’s actions in office. Second, the APA issued the Goldwater Rule, which meant to prohibit such distant assessment.
The American Psychiatric Association still stands by the Goldwater Rule and no psychiatrist can go wrong by following it. Of course, many can easily skirt around it—it’s thanks to the rule that modern-day assessments of celebrities’ mental health are couched with the “I have not personally examined this person, but … ”
It goes without saying that any clinical encounter with a nonpsychotic or imminently dangerous person is strictly confidential unless the subject gives permission to reveal the findings to anyone else. But I think there are conditions under which psychiatrists should have more latitude in making determinations from a distance.
To me, the reason why it can be responsible to profile a patient without examining him or her (in other words, to circumvent the Goldwater Rule), has to do with the way diagnoses are made today compared to the way they were made then. I’m referring to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fifth Edition, which many consider the gold standard for evaluating mental disorders.
The diagnostic entities contained in the current DSM are based on signs (what clinicians observe) and symptoms (what patients report). But in Goldwater’s time, Freudian theory dominated American psychiatry and pathology: Even severe depression and schizophrenia were tied to psychoanalytic formulations. Symptoms such as mood or hallucinations or obsessions were almost irrelevant—instead, diagnosis relied almost entirely on what internal conflicts or stalled developmental stages a patient had experienced in his or her lifetime. This required a deep understanding of the patient’s life. None of the psychiatrists quoted by Fact had access to that full picture of information. Thus, not only were their opinions ill-informed, they were based on certain theories of mental health that are now considered highly questionable by many in the field.
But the assessment of mental disorders changed to a more objective system of taxonomy in 1980 with the publication of the DSM-III. A number of diagnoses are now made largely on a person’s observable behavior or what can reasonably be inferred from it.
So it is now possible to make a psychological assessment from afar. The question remains of whether it is appropriate. One of the biggest concerns about armchair diagnosing is that it’s a drive-by affair: Quick pronouncements are made based on a single transgression or a glimpse of erratic behavior. But even when a clinician conducts a formal interview it may not pick up a lot. In an hourlong interview, a savvy politician could easily present as better adjusted than he or she actually is—in some cases, such impression management might go undetected, even by experienced examiners.
In a long interview, a savvy politician could easily present as better adjusted than he or she actually is. What’s more, as we have seen, some politicians, like Trump in particular, can run circles around most interviewers, and it’s doubtful that even trained psychiatrists could get much more information from them in a direct examination. Thus, a formal clinical interview with him might not shed much light.
In contrast, a political campaign for president offers an abundance of unfiltered observable behavior. Indeed, voters have been inundated—they have watched the candidates on a near daily basis for many months. And for these two candidates in particular, the volumes of documentation go back decades: we have books, articles, and interviews with people who have known them. In this case, the public actually has more “data” than many psychiatric evaluators have to go on when they see certain patients in certain settings.
Research supports the importance of extensive exposure to a subject’s behavior. According to psychologist Scott Lilienfeld, a personality researcher and professor at Emory University, research has demonstrated that informal, unstructured interviews of the kinds typically conducted in direct examinations of psychiatric patients are often not especially reliable–that is, consistent across different mental health professionals. “What’s more,” Lilienfeld says, “informant reports from those who know the person well are often more predictive of people’s behavior than are self-reports, which are much of what one obtains from a direct interview.”* More broadly, he says, assessments of personality are most likely to be valid when multiple sources of information are integrated.
There is still one huge technical catch to diagnosing at arms’ length. The DSM requires that a diagnosis must include the presence of "significant impairments in self (identity or self-direction) and interpersonal (empathy or intimacy) functioning." The first part of that diagnosis is hard, if not impossible, to make without a private interview, especially in someone who has succeeded at a high level based in part on these traits. So, while I believe it is occasionally appropriate to speculate, any assessment should be considered just that—an assessment, not a diagnosis.
This brings us to Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which is most often invoked by his detractors to describe Donald Trump.
Here are the nine diagnostic criteria for NPD in DSM-V. (These criteria go far beyond what we usually mean when we casually refer to someone as a narcissist.) Five are needed to be eligible for the diagnosis:
A grandiose logic of self-importance
A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love
A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
A desire for unwarranted admiration
A sense of entitlement
Interpersonally oppressive behavior
No form of empathy
Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes
Sure, it seems obvious that Trump could qualify—perhaps he is even a severe case. But keep in mind that some would easily attribute these traits to Hillary Clinton, too. And herein lies the real virtue of the Goldwater Rule: Allowing psychiatrists to diagnose or assess at a distance would open a floodgate of efforts, many of which will be inaccurate, slanted, or politically motivated. The Goldwater Rule attempts to keep these gates closed. The DSM cannot become a political instrument.
Of course, people don’t like this answer. As voters, we feel entitled to absolute transparency about our candidates, even about their health.
But we shouldn’t. So what if a candidate appears to meet criteria for NPD? It is no secret that many of the DSM criteria listed above are manifest in Trump. But even a clinically authentic diagnosis (which has not been made, or at least surfaced publicly) would not mean, prima facie, that he should not run for president, or that he would necessarily be a bad one if elected. Surely, there have been people with NPD who have held positions of power and achieved good and great things. There are also plenty of people who don’t have the disorder who have held positions of power and failed.
We are too caught up in diagnosis. Even if Trump were to be officially diagnosed with this disorder, it would do little to sway voters from either supporting or reviling him.
After all, the enduring traits that many find so problematic in Mr. Trump–and that his supporters fail to see, dismiss, or downplay because other aspects of his candidacy appeal so strongly to them—are not ones that necessarily indicate a formal mental condition. I’m referring, of course, to various dispositions, such as a lack of interest in learning about the governing process or world affairs, a tendency to ignore advisers, impulsive and crude modes of retaliation, a reflexive instinct to scapegoat others, and so on. One does not need to be a specialist of the mind to understand why many would not want to vote for such a person, or why others might fear being governed by such a man.
So, I am a minority view within my profession because I do not believe it is necessarily an ethical lapse for a psychiatrist to venture an assessment of a public figure—especially because the “evidence” in this election has been so widely accessible and formal assessment is often made on the basis of that very evidence.
But in this case, I don’t think a diagnosis would actually provide any new insight into the choice we have to make about who we should elect president. It does not matter whether Trump might have NPD.
That’s because diagnoses do not allow us to predict future actions with great certainty. Past behavior and enduring character traits, on the other hand, do—and we have seen more than enough to understand what Trump’s (and Clinton’s) are.
PART 3: What Is The Secret To That Delectable Narcissistic Flavor?
From: Seeing Narcissism in the Brain
By Dr. Syras Derksen
Winnipeg Psychologist 9/9/2013
Reference:
Schulze, L., Dziobek, I., Vater, A., Heekeren, H. R., Bajbouj, M., Renneberg, B., Heuser, I., & Roepke, S. (2013). Gray matter abnormalities in patients with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 47, 1363-1369. (
http://www.journalofpsychiatricresearch ... X/abstract)
We can now see narcissism in the brain. Brain scans of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) showed they have less brain matter in areas associated with emotional empathy. This is the first time anyone has seen the evidence of narcissism in brain structures.
The inability to feel empathy is one of the hallmarks of NPD. Researchers have found that people with this disorder can take the perspective of another person in a purely intellectual way. However, when it comes to actually feeling what another person is going through, narcissists have difficulty.
A group of German researchers recently studied the source of this lack of emotional empathy in people with NPD. In their research, they collected MRI brain scans of 17 people with NPD along with 17 people from the community for comparison. The researchers first looked at brain volume overall and found that the people with NPD were similar to the healthy individuals. That is, both groups’ brains’ were similar overall.
The researchers then examined the areas of the brain that are now considered areas associated with empathy (i.e., bilateral anterior insula, anterior and median parts of the cingulate cortex, and the supplementary motor area). They found that the patients with NPD had less brain matter in areas that overlapped with the areas associated with empathy (i.e., left anterior insula, rostral and median cingulate cortex as well as dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex).
Put simply, the empathic areas of the brain were less developed in people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Narcissistic Personality Disorder affects about 1% of the general population and it has been shown to impair interpersonal functioning. This groundbreaking research will likely help legitimize the disorder and, ironically, help people to empathize with people who are suffering with this illness.
PART 4: Savor Its Grandiose Nutty Flavor
From: Welcome to Sott.net
Fri, 18 Nov 2016
The World for People who Think
Science & Technology
Our narcissistic politicians - should MRI brain scans be required of all candidates?
Hank Pellissier
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Sat, 24 Oct 2015 23:46 UTC
We want our government officials to be brain-healthy, right? With sanity, integrity, and high moral values?
Sadly, the inverse seems true. Psychologists claim many of our politicians have Narcissist Personality Disorder.
What is a narcissist? What's the precise definition of this personality malfunction that afflicts 1 - 3% of the population? With huge percentiles on Wall Street and in Washington DC?
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) defines narcissism with the characteristics below. I have added a few that Leon F. Seltzer Ph.D. has additionally noted.
Grandiose Sense of Self Importance
Fantasies of Unlimited Success
Believes He or She is Special
Needs Admiration and Flattery
Sense of Entitlement
Interpersonally Exploitative
Lack of Empathy
Contempt for Others
Envious of Others
Believes Others are Envious of Him or Her
Arrogant, Haughty
Highly Reactive to Criticism
Low Self-Esteem
Self-Righteous and Defensive
Reacts to Contract Viewpoints with Rage
Perhaps you're wondering if you, yourself, are a narcissist? There are numerous websites where you can test yourself, like this one HERE with 40 questions.
The population in general scores around 14. Celebrities average about 18. If you score over 20, you're a narcissist.
A quick glance at psychological assertions online reveals many politicians as suspected narcissists, in both major parties.
Bill Clinton is viewed by Jeffrey Kluger, author of The Narcissist Next Door, as a "self-destructive narcissist."
Ronald Reagan is defined (by Kluger) as "the most highly functioning narcissist who's ever been in our political system."
The USA's "most narcissistic president" - according to Kluger - was Chester A. Arthur, in the 1880s. This vain man owned 80 pairs of pants, and redecorated the White House with Tiffany decor.
Kruger also names FDR and LBJ as top-tier narcissists.
A Top Ten list can be viewed HERE. The same list also presents the 10 least narcissistic Presidents.
Kluger believes Calvin Coolidge was the least narcissistic of all American presidents. "Silent Cal" didn't seek attention for its own sake, and he claimed his goal was to merely "walk humbly and discharge my obligations."
This IEET essay will not comment on present-day candidates for the USA Presidency. It is against non-profit policy to engage in any political discussion that appears to be either an endorsement or non-endorsement of political candidates.
You might be wondering: "is narcissism a valuable, or necessary quality in a successful politician?
My strong opinion is that they are not. I believe narcissists are unfit representatives in a democracy, for the following reasons:
1) A narcissist's deep desire for personal attention is a distraction from serving the public, and ruins his or her ability to work collaboratively and semi-anonymously in a team.
2) The narcissist's inherent elitism, their contempt for others, results in an absence of empathy for the public they are supposed to be representing.
3) A narcissist's defensiveness, self-righteousness, and inability to accept criticism can lead them to curtail freedom of speech and freedom of the press to silence their opposition. Their "reaction to contrary viewpoints with anger" can lead to dictatorial demands that those who disagree with them should be silenced.
Hot-headed partisan politics in Washington DC - with Democrats and Republicans stalemating each other, and constant "witch hunts" aiming to destroy opposing party members - suggest that Congress is a dysfunctional playground for narcissists.
The USA's relentless instigation of international wars and conflicts also hints at narcissism, via the bullying self-righteousness of the executive branch. Wall Street's reckless behavior, crippling the economy and requesting a bailout, indicates the "Too Big To Fail" self-entitlement of narcissism.
Minor political players are also guilty of narcissism. An abundance of hopeless candidates are presenting crowding the US Presidential race. They don't stand a chance but narcissistically, like moths, they're attracted to the limelight of attention heaped on anyone with a POTUS ambition.
How can we prevent narcissists from governing us? How can we stop them from even being considered as candidates?
I have two suggestions:
1) Publish Brain Scan of All Candidates
MRI scans are increasingly able to identify narcissism. Studies since 2013 indicate that brain regions associated with narcissism can be measured.
For example, "NPD patients had smaller GM [gray matter] volume in the left anterior insula" and "smaller GM volume in fronto-paralimbic brain regions comprising the rostral and median cingulate cortex as well as dorsolateral and medial parts of the prefrontal cortex." Thinness of brain tissue in these regions indicates a weakened ability in "processing and generating compassion", i.e., a lack of empathy, an absence of caring for others.
If this is combined with excessive activity in brain regions related to self-absorbed thinking - narcissism is flourishing.
Politician's financial records are already scrutinized, plus reports of their medical health. Their monetary and physiological data is deemed crucial enough for the public to examine.
Mental health transparency is, IMO, even more imperative to publicly view. We want trustworthy public servants to represent us, not callous, paranoid, power-hungry narcissists.
Do you regard MRI scans as an "invasion of privacy"? Please consider the risks involved. The horror of Adolf Hitler would have been prevented, for example, if 1930's technology included MRI scanning that revealed, via transparency politics, his messy brain to the public. Psycho-Historical analysis have categorized the Nazi terror as schizophrenic, paranoid, anti-social, narcissistic, and sadistic.
2) Reform Politics So It Doesn't Attract Narcissists
USA politicians today are celebrities, especially the POTUS with grandiose titles like Commander-in-Chief of the World's Largest Army. Fatuous attention lavished on politicians, especially candidates for President, attracts narcissists like wet manure draws flies.
USA political discussion is superficial, of course. Attention is given disproportionately to a candidate's personality and appearance, instead of their ideological positions and vision. Media is largely to blame for this.
The real problem isn't the media, though. What the USA needs is a huge shift towards people-powered politics, like the referendums of Switzerland noted in a recent IEET article. Direct democracy, promoted in this interview of IEET Advisory Board member Nicole Sallak Anderson, would empower the electorate and weaken the influence of individual politicians.
In an ideal future, politicians would only be efficient transmitters of the people's desire; they would be out-of-the-limelight paper-snuffing clerks, assisting the enactment of referendums. Attention would NOT be bestowed upon them, and their ranks would be liberated from the dangerous, embarrassing, and pathetic behavior of narcissists.
PART 5: A Recipe For Disaster Allows The Narcissists To Rise To The Top
Are the Wealthy More Narcissistic?
March 31, 2015 by Alan Cowen
Psychologist Paul Piff studies the link between wealth and social behavior, and shows how economic inequality shapes—and is shaped by—the mind.
In a study published in the January 2014 issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologist Paul K. Piff, who earned his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley and now is an Assistant Professor of Psychology & Social Behavior at UC Irvine, demonstrates that upper class individuals tend to be more narcissistic and feel more entitled than their lower class peers. The study is significant in establishing a direct link between social class and deep-seated aspects of personality, and suggests that the study of the mind has an underappreciated role to play in examinations of the growing disparity between the rich and poor.
Piff’s findings build on years of research that he and his colleagues conducted on the effects of wealth on social behavior. This work has shown, for example, that people of high social class are more likely to behave unethically and less likely to donate to charities. “The more money you have, the higher in status you are, the less threatening the world is to you,” Piff explains. “You can pay rent or own a home, you can be late to work without losing your month’s income, and your neighborhood’s safer.”
Having all of these things means that you can rely far less on other people, which ultimately leads to a reduced feeling that you owe anyone anything. At least, that was the theory. “A missing piece was [direct evidence of] how wealth shaped a person’s sense of deservingness and their basic personality,” he explains.
Piff investigated this link between wealth and self-regard through a series of five experiments testing more than 500 undergraduates and 300 other adults on a variety of measures of socioeconomic class, entitlement, and narcissism. The participants filled out multiple well-established self-reporting measures for each of these three attributes. They also reported their family income and their parents’ levels of educational attainment, answered questions about their perceived financial security and what they could afford growing up, ranked how they see themselves relative to other people, how much they value their appearance, and more. Piff even measured how much time participants spent looking at themselves in the mirror when given the option, a behavioral signal of narcissism.
In almost all respects, social class was linked to both narcissism and entitlement.
The finding that people of high socioeconomic standing are more narcissistic and entitled has profound political implications. It may explain why the wealthy are more economically conservative, favoring lower marginal tax rates and reduced public spending. Do the wealthy favor such policies merely because they appear to be to their economic advantage?
Class differences in narcissism are not fixed but rather sensitive to changes in social values
In fact, Piff says his ongoing research suggests that the economic conservatism of the upper class is actually moderated by how much their perceived wealth causes an increase in their sense of deservingness. The effect is such that “poor people that are made to feel wealthy [relative to others] become more fiscally conservative” in accordance with increases in entitlement. Similarly, wealthy people who are made to feel poor experience less entitlement and less fiscal conservatism.
Perhaps this explains why the past 30 years have seen a dramatic increase both in inequality and in narcissism among college students, who tend to come from wealthier families.
These psychological factors may have the dangerous effect of compounding the growth of economic inequality. The rate at which economic inequality accelerates over time depends deeply on the very institutions and policies over which the upper class has a disproportionate level of control. Thus, if increasing economic inequality gives rise to an upper class with an even greater sense of entitlement, leading them, as Piff’s research would suggest, to support policies that favor the growth of economic inequality, this may exacerbate a vicious cycle of stratification.
