This book analyzes narcissism and politics and systematically explores the psychology of narcissism - the entitlement, the grandiosity and arrogance overlying insecurity, the sensitivity to criticism, and the hunger for acclaim - illustrating different narcissistic personality features through a spectrum of international and national politicians.
Disordered Minds offers a compelling and timely account of the dangers posed by narcissistic leaders, and provides a stark warning that the conditions in which this psychopathy flourishes - extremes of social inequality and a culture of hyper-individualism - are the hallmarks of our present age. 'An excellent account of how malignant narcissism is evident in the lives of the great dictators, and how the conditions in which this psychopathy flourishes have returned to haunt us.' Dr Kieran Keohane, editor of The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization
Bestselling author, therapist, lawyer, and mediator Bill Eddy describes how dangerous, high-conflict personalities have gained power in governments worldwide—and what citizens can do to keep these people out of office. Democracy is under siege. The reason isn't politics but personalities: too many countries have come under the sway of high-conflict people (HCPs) who have become politicians. Most of these high-conflict politicians have traits of narcissistic personality disorder, antisocial (i.e., sociopathic) personality disorder, or both. This is the first and only guide for identifying and thwarting them. HCPs don't avoid conflict, they thrive on it, widening social divisions and exacerbating international tensions. Eddy, the world's leading authority on high-conflict personalities, explains why they're so seductive and describes the telltale traits that define HCPs—he even includes a helpful list of forty typical HCP behaviors. Drawing on historical examples from Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Nixon to Trump, Maduro, and Putin, Eddy shows how HCPs invent enemies and manufacture phony crises so they can portray themselves as the sole heroic figure who can deal with them, despite their inability to actually solve problems. He describes the best ways to expose HCPs as the charlatans they are, reply to their empty and misleading promises, and find genuine leaders to support. Eddy brings his deep psychotherapeutic experience to bear on a previously unidentified phenomena that presents a real threat to the world.
Does the psychoanalytic concept of narcissism contribute to enhancing the disciplinary quality and features of political theory? This book tries to portray the foundations of democracy as both a universal value and a system of values embedded in specific cultural systems of meaning from its psychoanalytic perspective. This cross-disciplinary normative attempt makes possible the constructive dialogue between contemporary Western and Japanese culture by focusing on how the psychological foundations of democracy are treated within a common disciplinary framework in two different sociocultural contexts. In light of the integration of the psychiatrically mythical idea, the book argues that the key subjects of political theory are to identify the sources of totalitarian and fascist orientations in seemingly democratic practice, and to deal with them in psychoanalytically diagnostic and remedial terms.
The classic New York Times bestseller, with a new introduction by E.J. Dionne Jr. When The Culture of Narcissism was first published in 1979, Christopher Lasch was hailed as a “biblical prophet” (Time). Lasch’s identification of narcissism as not only an individual ailment but also a burgeoning social epidemic was groundbreaking. His diagnosis of American culture is even more relevant today, predicting the limitless expansion of the anxious and grasping narcissistic self into every part of American life. The Culture of Narcissism offers an astute and urgent analysis of what we need to know in these troubled times.
In 1979, Christopher Lasch published the epochal The Culture of Narcissism warning of the normalizing of narcissism in our society. Lasch may have understated it. 35 years later, in the Obama era—with its parade of endless, often inexplicable, scandals—we have a full blown epidemic of what has recently been called Moral Narcissism. Forget Narcissus and his reflection, Moral Narcissism—the almost schizophrenic divide between intentions and results now pervading our culture—is the new method for feeling good about yourself. It no longer matters how anything turns out as long as your intentions were good, that you were “moral.” And, just as importantly, the only determinant of those intentions, the only one who defines that morality, is you. I Know Best goes beyond Lasch to lay bare how this moral narcissism is behind all those scandals from Obamacare to the Veteran's Administration to the IRS, Benghazi, Bergdahl, Syria and beyond. Everything the Obama administration did and does was about making them feel good about themselves—the results be damned. And they have as their allies those supreme moral narcissists in the academy, media and Hollywood, ever willing to ratify those good intentions and ignore those same results. But I Know Best is not just about the Left. Moral Narcissism affects the right as well, even when they don’t realize it. It is a true epidemic that must be cured in order to save our democratic republic and our futures.
Chuck DeGroat has been counseling pastors with narcissistic personality disorder and those wounded by narcissistic leaders for over twenty years. Offering compassion and hope for both narcissists themselves and those affected by its destructive power, DeGroat imparts wise counsel for churches looking to heal from its systemic effects.
Using psychodynamic theory and riveting case material, this book dissects the figure of the malignant narcissist leader (MNL). Across the world today, individuals and societies are impacted by unprecedented disruptive influences, from globalization and climate change to economic uncertainty and mass migration. The rise of populists and would-be saviors has promised certainty for anxious populations, but how far are such leaders suffering from the MNL pathology? Through the psychoanalytic lens of Otto Kernberg, the authors explain the etiology of the charismatic MNL’s clinical features: charisma, grandiosity, criminality, sadism, and paranoia. The book outlines the limitations and complexity of diagnosis, contextualizing the MNL within the transcendental and millenarian movements, and discusses the patho-dynamics of high-pressure groups and totalitarian regimes, including types of groups, methods of mind control, categories of constituents, the corporate totalitarian state, and the authoritarian demagogue. The book looks at a wide range of leaders including Donald Trump, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Roger Ailes, Keith Raniere, Jan of Leiden, and Credonia Mwerinde. Distinguishing the disordered personality of the MNL from other personality disorders, and presenting a new model of overlapping descriptors to categorize high-pressure group types and identifying types of followers as well, this book represents essential reading for psychodynamically minded psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, sociologists, political scientists, and those working in organizational development.
In this volume, Traumatic Narcissism: Relational Systems of Subjugation, Daniel Shaw presents a way of understanding the traumatic impact of narcissism as it is engendered developmentally, and as it is enacted relationally. Focusing on the dynamics of narcissism in interpersonal relations, Shaw describes the relational system of what he terms the 'traumatizing narcissist' as a system of subjugation – the objectification of one person in a relationship as the means of enforcing the dominance of the subjectivity of the other. Daniel Shaw illustrates the workings of this relational system of subjugation in a variety of contexts: theorizing traumatic narcissism as an intergenerationally transmitted relational/developmental trauma; and exploring the clinician's experience working with the adult children of traumatizing narcissists. He explores the relationship of cult leaders and their followers, and examines how traumatic narcissism has lingered vestigially in some aspects of the psychoanalytic profession. Bringing together theories of trauma and attachment, intersubjectivity and complementarity, and the rich clinical sensibility of the Relational Psychoanalysis tradition, Shaw demonstrates how narcissism can best be understood not merely as character, but as the result of the specific trauma of subjugation, in which one person is required to become the object for a significant other who demands hegemonic subjectivity. Traumatic Narcissism presents therapeutic clinical opportunities not only for psychoanalysts of different schools, but for all mental health professionals working with a wide variety of modalities. Although primarily intended for the professional psychoanalyst and psychotherapist, this is also a book that therapy patients and lay readers will find highly readable and illuminating.
