| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front: Politix |
| Barack Obama - Narcissist or Merely Narcissistic? |
| 2009-02-14 |
| Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 8/13/2008 Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist. Granted, only a qualified mental health diagnostician can determine whether someone suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and this, following lengthy tests and personal interviews. But, in the absence of access to Barack Obama, one has to rely on his overt performance and on testimonies by his closest, nearest and dearest. Narcissistic leaders are nefarious and their effects pernicious. They are subtle, refined, socially-adept, manipulative, possessed of thespian skills, and convincing. Both types equally lack empathy and are ruthless and relentless or driven. Perhaps it is time to require each candidate to high office in the USA to submit to a rigorous physical and mental checkup with the results made public. I. Upbringing and Childhood Obama's early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations. Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then, his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia: a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995. Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial: the perpetrators could be dysfunctional or absent parents, teachers, other adults, or peers. II. Behavior Patterns The narcissist: Feels grandiose and self-important (e.g., exaggerates accomplishments, talents, skills, contacts, and personality traits to the point of lying, demands to be recognised as superior without commensurate achievements); * Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequalled brilliance (the cerebral narcissist), bodily beauty or sexual performance (the somatic narcissist), or ideal, everlasting, all-conquering love or passion; * Firmly convinced that he or she is unique and, being special, can only be understood by, should only be treated by, or associate with, other special or unique, or high-status people (or institutions); * Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation – or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious (Narcissistic Supply); * Feels entitled. Demands automatic and full compliance with his or her unreasonable expectations for special and favourable priority treatment; * Is "interpersonally exploitative", i.e., uses others to achieve his or her own ends; * Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with, acknowledge, or accept the feelings, needs, preferences, priorities, and choices of others; * Constantly envious of others and seeks to hurt or destroy the objects of his or her frustration. Suffers from persecutory (paranoid) delusions as he or she believes that they feel the same about him or her and are likely to act similarly; * Behaves arrogantly and haughtily. Feels superior, omnipotent, omniscient, invincible, immune, "above the law", and omnipresent (magical thinking). Rages when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted by people he or she considers inferior to him or her and unworthy. Lengthy balance at the link. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #4 I say, merely narcissistic. My father has full-blown pathological NPD. He has a master's degree and a couple mil he inherited, works weekends at Lowe's for the employee discount, lives underground in an old missile silo ringed with security cameras 100 miles from civilization, thinks Men In Black use defense satellites to spy on him, eats grade B eggs, wears rags, and buys only used books, and left his daughter, wife, and mother-in-law to rot in the street, while making generous campaign donations to Ron Paul. He insists there is no such thing as objective reality, paranoid delusions of persecution define his world, and he actually believes that the silo will be enshrined as a museum upon his death. The only thing separating him from Timothy McVeigh and Ted Kaczinski is balls. My point: Obama may be a self-aggrandizing opportunist, but real NPDs cannot maintain relationships or function in reality in any meaningful way. |
| Posted by: Flusoter Hapsburg3075 2009-02-14 23:16 |
| #3 Sounds like it applies to almost all of Congress. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2009-02-14 22:06 |
| #2 Indeed dawg. |
| Posted by: .5MT 2009-02-14 17:57 |
| #1 By Sam Vaknin's definition of NPD, virtually 99.9999% of our politicians could be declared to be suffering from NPD. |
| Posted by: WolfDog 2009-02-14 15:19 |