According to Greek legend, a young man was so fascinated, awestruck, and enraptured by his own image reflected on the surface of a pool that he sat lovingly gazing at water’s edge for so long that he succumbed to his own vanity and eventually transformed into a flower that carries his name, “Narcissus.”
The American Psychiatric Association, in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual II (DSM) from 1968 lists “Narcissism” as an emotional problem and “Narcissistic Personality Disorder” (NPD) with a number of characteristics. These include:
- An obvious self-focus in interpersonal exchanges
- Problems in sustaining satisfying relationships
- A lack of psychological awareness
- Difficulty with empathy
- Problems distinguishing the self from others (having bad interpersonal boundaries)
- Hypersensitivity to any insults or imagined insults
- Vulnerability to shame rather than guilt
- Haughty body language
- Flattery towards people who admire and affirm them
- Detesting those who do not admire them
- Using other people without considering the costs of doing so
- Pretending to be more important than they actually are
- Bragging and exaggerating their achievements
- Claiming to be an “expert” at many things
- Inability to view the world from the perspective of other people
- Denial of remorse and gratitude
In summary, this condition results in the over-inflation of one’s self-importance.
One does not have to have earned a Ph.D. in psychology to identify Donald Trump as someone suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder since he clearly manifests many if not all of its symptoms. While he definitely has not transformed into a beautiful fragrant flower as did the character in the Greek legend, we, nonetheless have to ask, some critical questions, which include:
How did Trump as someone who may suffer from a serious emotional character disorder garner so much support from the electorate to have vanquished 16 other candidates to win the mantle of the Republican Party for the presidency of the United States?
Does Trump’s meteoric ascendancy reflect a sort of collective Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the larger U.S. body politic?
Narcissistic Personality Disorder falls within the overall category of “sociopathology,” in which a person’s antisocial behavior demonstrates a lack of a sense of moral concern or responsibility or a deficit of social conscience. The American Psychiatric Association’s DSM classifies this condition as “Antisocial Personality Disorder” (APD), which it defines as…
“[A] pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood.”
On a macro level, from Colonial times and continuing after the Revolutionary War into nationhood and beyond, whose rights were considered important and included in the founding documents of the United States, as opposed to which groups of people were disregarded or not even considered?
How many years and in what ways have these violations been corrected? Or more importantly, have these violations been corrected at all?
On the Republican side of the equation in the current election season, did any of the leading primary candidates or the person (Trump) who went on to win, specifically identify and target any group or groups to disregard and violate their rights? And if so, did this candidate or candidates gain traction in terms of the vote count by employing this tactic?
While in ancient Greece and Rome, a demagogue originally referred to a leader or orator who advocated for and championed the common people, the term has since come to represent a politician who, rather than employing rational arguments, appeals instead to peoples’ fears and prejudices for their own political ends.
While Trump operates clearly as a demagogue, during any era, narcissistic and other types of sociopaths use demagoguery to achieve political ends. Would this appeal resonate as it has if at least a significant segment of the country had not suffered from a sort of collective narcissistic nationalistic disorder itself?
Trump has appealed to a nationalist strain in the United States, an “America first,” “we are the best and last great hope for the world,” “a shining city on a hill,” “a beacon of freedom, liberty, and hope to the entire world,” because we are an “exceptional nation.”
Nationalism emphasizes excessive and aggressive chauvinism, an attitude of infallibility and dominance. This notion of “American exceptionalism” (also read “American superiority”), this mantra drilled into us as soon as we exit the womb, does it not reflect a narcissistic psyche on a national scale?
The U.S. has its strengths and weaknesses as do all other countries. This collective attitude of “exceptionalism,” though, separates our country and our residents from people of other nations by giving us the image of the “arrogant Americans,” which often engenders ridicule and scorn around the world.
At this point in time, with Donald Trump’s severe and obvious character disorder, we need to implore his family, his Party officials, and we the people of the U.S. to undertake an intervention to convince him to suspend his disaster-of-a-campaign. We as a nation must stop serving as his enablers.
The current election season gives us as individuals and as a nation the opportunity to stop and reflect about the original sin on which this country was founded: racism. And it allows, especially for white people, to look at how we have come to embody a sort of collective narcissism.
—
Photo: Getty Images