“People with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are characterized by the personality traits of persistent grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration and recognition, and a personal disdain and lack of empathy for other people.[12][13] As such, the person with NPD usually displays arrogance and a distorted sense of personal superiority, and seeks to establish abusive power and control over others.[14] Self-confidence (a strong sense of self) is a personality trait different from the traits of NPD; thus, people with NPD typically value themselves over others, to the extent of openly disregarding the wishes and feelings of anyone else, and expect to be treated as superior, regardless of their actual status or achievements.[12][15] Socially, the person with NPD usually exhibits a fragile ego (self-concept), intolerance of criticism, and a tendency to belittle other people, in order to validate their own feelings of superiority.[15]
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013) indicates that a person with NPD possesses at least five of the following nine criteria, typically without possessing the commensurate personal qualities or accomplishments for which they demand respect and status:
- A grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g. exaggerating achievements and talents, expecting to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
- Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
- Believing that they are “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
- Requiring excessive admiration
- A sense of entitlement (unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations)
- Being interpersonally exploitative (taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends)
- Lacking empathy: unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others
- Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them
- Showing arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes[12][15]” wiki below
Comment: The families at Dover AFB remarked that Joe Biden seemed pre-occupied with concerns that had nothing to do with them or the respect due their fallen warrior children. There is the famous watch checking. He evidently did it four times. There is his inability to refrain from talking about his dead National Guard lawyer son and his insinuation that Beau’s death from brain cancer five years after his early return from Iraq was somehow akin to the sacrifice by enemy action at close range of these dead.
I suggest to you all that Joe has NPD to a highly developed degree and simply does not see people outside his family (to include his dogs) as having objective reality. Those beings have the good luck for his neurosis to see them as projections of himself. For him we are all props in the ongoing drama of his greatness, a drama that was foreordained by his consultant God.
Because of our lack of reality we simply have no rights, no right to respect for our feelings, no right to the truth, no right to our traditional forms of government.
In his universe of one, his genius gives him free license to ignore the opinions of the; IC, the JCS, falling polls and all the world who are not adoring settings for his grand drama. The women and girls whom he has molested and who in one case may have raped are mere bit players in the pornography of his wet dreams (nocturnal emissions).
In other words pilgrim turcopoles, you ain’t really real for him. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissistic_personality_disorder
The Beau thing at Dover AFB was telling. Anyone with even an ounce of empathy would know grieving relatives expect & deserve your undivided focus on their loss. He is simply not capable of understanding that. As such, being a self-obsessed empty vessel devoid of common humanity, Biden is the ideal vehicle for the creatures who now control the USG to project their contempt for Americans.
I suspect that to some degree Biden just can’t help referring to his dead son and one feels for him, but he was there at Dover as the President. His task was to comfort others, not feel his own pain. Mentioning that you also lost a son is one thing, going on about his desk jockey service to parents whose son just got blown apart is quite another. Beau died relatively young but he lived a full life, raised a family, and received plenty of recognition for his accomplishments. (I’m sure if Dad has his way he’ll receive more.) Biden has Beau’s children to cherish and decades of happy memories. Jared Schmitz’s life was just beginning. Biden has no idea how his parents feel.
Stephanie
You have missed the essential point which is that Biden’s mental condition completely deprives him of empathy.
Narcissistic behavior is one of the most serious problems of modern society. Even if a troublesome person cannot be diagnosed with NPD, that person may use narcissistic tactics to an unethical degree. Notably, many psychopaths behave narcissistically even if they are not diagnosable with NPD.
Lasch noted that Western societies are systemically plagued by narcissism. The problems of narcissism are not always centered on individuals; an entire cultural group can exhibit collective narcissism.
https://humanumreview.com/articles/we-are-a-nation-of-narcissists
https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/1416783-the-culture-of-narcissism-american-life-in-an-age-of-diminishing-expect
Dutton has noted that many of those who achieve high social status are psychopaths.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/wisdom-from-psychopaths/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13539039-the-wisdom-of-psychopaths
Finally, the problems caused by NPD do not stop when the narcissist has been stopped. Narcissistic abuse teaches the victims to adopt narcissistic worldviews as normal. Former victims of narcissistic abuse are at high risk of repeating highly dysfunctional behaviors and perpetuating destructive beliefs. (Some victims of narcissistic abuse develop into full-blown narcissists themselves.)
Yes Col. Lang,
Probably NPD. To him we are just “talking dogs” – not real persons. Two checks;
– does he still seek the acclamation of “real people”? -Kings, Queens, Presidents?
– How does he behave towards the lowest among subordinates -waiters, doormen, flight attendants, camera men? If he is vile to them it’s definitely some form of psychopathic behaviour, it’s a dead giveaway.
I once had a TV camera man explain what it was like working with two different Prime Ministers; one behaved like a total rude a$#hole during an interview- always. Definitely NPD he reduced flight attendants to tears by his tantrums.
The other: “are you ready boys?”, “happy with the lighting and my position?”, “OK, thanks for that boys have you got what you want?”, “let’s do the group photo”.
walrus
IMO he sees all who are not members of his own household as like the creatures in your dreams.
Could have sworn that list identified Obama, not Biden. He is too stupid to be an effective narcissist. Obama was a scary narcissistic.
This is one thing that perplexes me about Biden. He is certainly not the only narcissist who has become a successful politician. But to be successful, a politician who has no natural empathy learns how and when to pretend to show empathy. And doubtless other human emotions outside his natural range.
Without this, what explains Biden’s long, successful political career? In a small state, who votes for him? No serious challengers? Does Delaware have a tight political machine? It has always seemed that Biden understood to whom he should say “yes” and bow. Not exactly leadership material. Is that all it takes?
Deap, be aware that narcissists, including Obama, can be highly intelligent and hard working.
There was once a school of thought in HR that narcissism was not necessarily a bad trait in a CEO if a major corporate restructure of a business was required because they could fire thousands of people and destroy their careers and families without hesitating or losing sleep. This was seen as a plus by investors.
It was only later that the HR crowd identified the long term damage such creatures inflicted on a corporation, primarily because “the talent” in a corporation will leave if subjected to narcissistic behaviour. Narcissists in management systematically remove good performers because they are seen as a personal threat and replace them with sycophants- who are also narcissists. Thus the behavior replicates like Covid through the company.
I have bitter personal experience in both business and private life of having to engage with a narcissist and I’ve posted about this subject before.
the danger in international relations of having a major military power run by narcissists is the tendency to under rate opponents to the point of believing a war can be started and won against a peer or near peer (not led by narcissists) who possesses conventional weaponry for which you the narcissist have no analogs and no defenses against.
a nation run by such self absorbed people is potentially on a suicide mission.
Probably a lot of politicians have narcissistic tendencies to some degree. I would take this blog a lot more seriously if any authors had noticed and commented on Trump’s narcissistic conduct/statements.
SRW
Feel free to go elsewhere and stay there. I have said repeatedly that Trump is a vulgarian boor who is typical of New York City businessmen and I have known many. I do not think his narcissism is so extensive pathologically as to be disabling as is the case with Biden. BTW I do not want to see him obtain the GOP nomination again although I agree with most of his policy positions. That might cause people like you to win because of all the idiots who think “mean tweats” matter.
srw
IMHO Trump’s major personality trait is not so much narcissism but egotism. Although Trump obviously enjoys the adulation of his many adoring supporters, he also relished in (and in fact deliberately provoked) visceral hatred in the ‘liberal’ sections of polite society and the political establishment. This is not a man who needs recognition and widespread admiration.
Trump can also definitely empathize with the common man/woman and there are many reports of folk being impressed when he took time out to talk to them. A pure narcissist would not do that, or if they did, the interlocutor would likely detect the obvious falseness. One of the major reasons for Trump’s popularity is he is very obviously not false. Another reason is his evident lack of entitlement. He got where he was by winning against all the odds. But recognition was not the driving motivation, it transcended that. Biden is happy to enjoy the office of President, Trump enjoyed the executive powers that it brought. Trump’s ego is not fragile, it is utterly unassailable, his personality disorder is of a whole different magnitude to Biden’s.
The seminal moment for judging Trump’s personality for me was the signing of the 75th anniversary D-Day Proclamation in 2019. 15 world leaders’ signatures neatly at the bottom of the document, where they are supposed to be and Trump’s all alone at the top. How can you not love an ego that can do that?
For an allegedly pathological personality, Trump was amazing insightful about the scope and nature of the issues America needed to confront. He has been proven right on virtually every issue he took up
Agree with the prior observation: normal people do not run for office.
We have to accept the egotists or worse. Until you have done it, one cannot stand in judgement of what extraordinary demands are made on anyone running for public office. Even for local school board members.
Trump, again with exceptionally keen insight, disclosed to his son the moment he announced his 2016 candidacy: “now we will know who are real friends are.”
Apparently Trump missed the other cardinal rule of politics: never trust anyone. Which is why the whole political game is so toxic, and not a place for mere mortals. Trump’s attempt to counter-punch with “mean tweets” was ultimately not personally successful. Even when directly on target.
The days of Everyman Mr Smith going to Washington are long gone, if they even existed in the first place outside of a Hollywood sound stage. Hammer and tong, divisions, egos and duplicity have been in force ever since Thomas Jefferson took on John Adams at the birth of our Republic.
Ronald Reagan was partially correct. Fascism will come from liberalism.
https://twitter.com/ninenewsnancy/status/1435027952908054528?s=21
What he missed was what Mussolini got. Fascism is when Big Government & Big Business are joined at the hip.
That’s what we have had for decades.
The contradiction I cannot reconcile is why liberal Big Government tries to destroy Big Business, as echos of the Occupy Wall Street movement continue to reverberate in the leftist public dialogue.
Banks. Wall Street and Corporations are deemed bad, yet Big Government’s massive sovereign wealth fund pensions rely on Big Business to support and fund their own retirement account investments.
Big Government should be the biggest supporters of BigBusiness for their own selfish purposes; if not for the good of the nation. How can leftists tear down capitalism, when their own retirement security fully depends upon it?
Deap, “Liberal big government” does not “try to destroy big business” they only want to gain control over it and milk it. They envy it and emulate it.
Go to any leftist governed country and you will see that they don’t have anything like free markets. Instead they have giant publicly owned corporations that behave exactly like capitalist free market robber barons right down to the limousines, corporate jets and glassy skyscrapers.
Please reread Orwell’s “animal farm” – this is its plot.
When Biden mentioned Beau did his tone suggest one upmanship or ‘as someone who also lost his son I can relate’, I’d have to hear how he said this to form an opinion.
—————-
More to the point, narcissism afflicts our foreign policy establishment and this poisons what all of our Presidents hear.
“Requiring excessive admiration”
– You better acknowledge our Exceptionalism, don’t care that you live here and we are 6,000 miles away
“Lacking empathy: unwilling”
– FPE does not believe ability to defend against the U.S. is legitimate for an adversary, doesn’t even think in those terms, those weapons must be for aggression.
“Often being envious of others or believing that others are envious of them”
– FPE fumes at every success by Russia, China, Iran, … those countries are trying to humiliate us as if they never act to improve their own state. NS2, an infrastructure, is a plot to destroy NATO. Since Russia / China envy our democracy, they are trying to destroy it.
I’m not going to go through the other bullet points because that would be tedious and they overlap a bit. Disclaimer, not saying those other countries are 100% good and we bad, just saying that our FPE has tunnel vision that his highly narcissistic.