The perpetrators of the recent spate of financial frauds in
the USA acted with callous disregard for both their
employees and shareholders - not to mention other
stakeholders. Psychologists have often remote-diagnosed
them as "malignant, pathological narcissists".
Narcissists are driven by the need to uphold and maintain
a false self - a concocted, grandiose, and demanding
psychological construct typical of the narcissistic
personality disorder. The false self is projected to the
world in order to garner "narcissistic supply" - adulation,
admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of
attention is usually deemed by narcissists to be preferable
to obscurity.
The false self is suffused with fantasies of perfection,
grandeur, brilliance, infallibility, immunity, significance,
omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. To be a
narcissist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable personal
destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, the
construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific theories,
the composition or authoring or painting of the greatest
work of art, the founding of a new school of thought, the
attainment of fabulous wealth, the reshaping of a nation or
a conglomerate, and so on. The narcissist never sets
realistic goals to himself. He is forever preoccupied with
fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or breathtaking
achievements. His verbosity reflects this propensity.
Reality is, naturally, quite different and this gives rise to a
"grandiosity gap". The demands of the false self are never
satisfied by the narcissist's accomplishments, standing,
wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or knowledge. The
narcissist's grandiosity and sense of entitlement are
equally incommensurate with his achievements.
To bridge the grandiosity gap, the malignant
(pathological) narcissist resorts to shortcuts. These very
often lead to fraud.
The narcissist cares only about appearances. What matters
to him are the facade of wealth and its attendant social
status and narcissistic supply. Witness the travestied
extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention
only exacerbates the narcissist's addiction and makes it
incumbent on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure
uninterrupted supply from this source.
The narcissist lacks empathy - the ability to put himself in
other people's shoes. He does not recognize boundaries -
personal, corporate, or legal. Everything and everyone are
to him mere instruments, extensions, objects
unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his
pursuit of narcissistic gratification.
This makes the narcissist perniciously exploitative. He
uses, abuses, devalues, and discards even his nearest and
dearest in the most chilling manner. The narcissist is
utility- driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need to
reduce his anxiety and regulate his labile sense of self-
worth by securing a constant supply of his drug -
attention. American executives acted without
compunction when they raided their employees' pension
funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in
Britain.
The narcissist is convinced of his superiority - cerebral or
physical. To his mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a
horde of narrow-minded and envious Lilliputians. The
dotcom "new economy" was infested with "visionaries"
with a contemptuous attitude towards the mundane:
profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful
journalists, and cautious analysts.
Yet, deep inside, the narcissist is painfully aware of his
addiction to others - their attention, admiration, applause,
and affirmation. He despises himself for being thus
dependent. He hates people the same way a drug addict
hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their place",
humiliate them, demonstrate to them how inadequate and
imperfect they are in comparison to his regal self and how
little he craves or needs them.
The narcissist regards himself as one would an expensive
present, a gift to his company, to his family, to his
neighbours, to his colleagues, to his country. This firm
conviction of his inflated importance makes him feel
entitled to special treatment, special favors, special
outcomes, concessions, subservience, immediate
gratification, obsequiousness, and lenience. It also makes
him feel immune to mortal laws and somehow divinely
protected and insulated from the inevitable consequences
of his deeds and misdeeds.
The self-destructive narcissist plays the role of the "bad
guy" (or "bad girl"). But even this is within the traditional
social roles cartoonishly exaggerated by the narcissist to
attract attention. Men are likely to emphasise intellect,
power, aggression, money, or social status. Narcissistic
women are likely to emphasise body, looks, charm,
sexuality, feminine "traits", homemaking, children and
childrearing.
Punishing the wayward narcissist is a veritable catch-22.
A jail term is useless as a deterrent if it only serves to
focus attention on the narcissist. Being infamous is second
best to being famous - and far preferable to being ignored.
The only way to effectively punish a narcissist is to
withhold narcissistic supply from him and thus to prevent
him from becoming a notorious celebrity.
Given a sufficient amount of media exposure, book
contracts, talk shows, lectures, and public attention - the
narcissist may even consider the whole grisly affair to be
emotionally rewarding. To the narcissist, freedom, wealth,
social status, family, vocation - are all means to an end.
And the end is attention. If he can secure attention by
being the big bad wolf - the narcissist unhesitatingly
transforms himself into one. Lord Archer, for instance,
seems to be positively basking in the media circus
provoked by his prison diaries.
The narcissist does not victimise, plunder, terrorise and
abuse others in a cold, calculating manner. He does so
offhandedly, as a manifestation of his genuine character.
To be truly "guilty" one needs to intend, to deliberate, to
contemplate one's choices and then to choose one's acts.
The narcissist does none of these.
Thus, punishment breeds in him surprise, hurt and
seething anger. The narcissist is stunned by society's
insistence that he should be held accountable for his deeds
and penalized accordingly. He feels wronged, baffled,
injured, the victim of bias, discrimination and injustice.
He rebels and rages.
Depending upon the pervasiveness of his magical
thinking, the narcissist may feel besieged by
overwhelming powers, forces cosmic and intrinsically
ominous. He may develop compulsive rites to fend off
this "bad", unwarranted, persecutory influences.
The narcissist, very much the infantile outcome of stunted
personal development, engages in magical thinking. He
feels omnipotent, that there is nothing he couldn't do or
achieve if only he sets his mind to it. He feels omniscient -
he rarely admits to ignorance and regards his intuitions
and intellect as founts of objective data.
Thus, narcissists are haughtily convinced that
introspection is a more important and more efficient (not
to mention easier to accomplish) method of obtaining
knowledge than the systematic study of outside sources of
information in accordance with strict and tedious
curricula. Narcissists are "inspired" and they despise
hamstrung technocrats.
To some extent, they feel omnipresent because they are
either famous or about to become famous or because their
product is selling or is being manufactured globally.
Deeply immersed in their delusions of grandeur, they
firmly believe that their acts have - or will have - a great
influence not only on their firm, but on their country, or
even on Mankind. Having mastered the manipulation of
their human environment - they are convinced that they
will always "get away with it". They develop hubris and a
false sense of immunity.
Narcissistic immunity is the (erroneous) feeling,
harboured by the narcissist, that he is impervious to the
consequences of his actions, that he will never be effected
by the results of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs,
deeds and misdeeds, acts, inaction, or membership of
certain groups, that he is above reproach and punishment,
that, magically, he is protected and will miraculously be
saved at the last moment. Hence the audacity, simplicity,
and transparency of some of the fraud and corporate
looting in the 1990's. Narcissists rarely bother to cover
their traces, so great is their disdain and conviction that
they are above mortal laws and wherewithal.
What are the sources of this unrealistic appraisal of
situations and events?
The false self is a childish response to abuse and trauma.
Abuse is not limited to sexual molestation or beatings.
Smothering, doting, pampering, over-indulgence, treating
the child as an extension of the parent, not respecting the
child's boundaries, and burdening the child with excessive
expectations are also forms of abuse.
The child reacts by constructing false self that is
possessed of everything it needs in order to prevail:
unlimited and instantaneously available Harry Potter-like
powers and wisdom. The false self, this Superman, is
indifferent to abuse and punishment. This way, the child's
true self is shielded from the toddler's harsh reality.
This artificial, maladaptive separation between a
vulnerable (but not punishable) true self and a punishable
(but invulnerable) false self is an effective mechanism. It
isolates the child from the unjust, capricious, emotionally
dangerous world that he occupies. But, at the same time, it
fosters in him a false sense of "nothing can happen to me,
because I am not here, I am not available to be punished,
hence I am immune to punishment".
The comfort of false immunity is also yielded by the
narcissist's sense of entitlement. In his grandiose
delusions, the narcissist is sui generis, a gift to humanity,
a precious, fragile, object. Moreover, the narcissist is
convinced both that this uniqueness is immediately
discernible - and that it gives him special rights. The
narcissist feels that he is protected by some cosmological
law pertaining to "endangered species".
He is convinced that his future contribution to others - his
firm, his country, humanity - should and does exempt him
from the mundane: daily chores, boring jobs, recurrent
tasks, personal exertion, orderly investment of resources
and efforts, laws and regulations, social conventions, and
so on.
The narcissist is entitled to a "special treatment": high
living standards, constant and immediate catering to his
needs, the eradication of any friction with the humdrum
and the routine, an all-engulfing absolution of his sins,
fast track privileges (to higher education, or in his
encounters with bureaucracies, for instance). Punishment,
trusts the narcissist, is for ordinary people, where no great
loss to humanity is involved.
Narcissists are possessed of inordinate abilities to charm,
to convince, to seduce, and to persuade. Many of them are
gifted orators and intellectually endowed. Many of them
work in in politics, the media, fashion, show business, the
arts, medicine, or business, and serve as religious leaders.
By virtue of their standing in the community, their
charisma, or their ability to find the willing scapegoats,
they do get exempted many times. Having recurrently
"got away with it" - they develop a theory of personal
immunity, founded upon some kind of societal and even
cosmic "order" in which certain people are above
punishment.
But there is a fourth, simpler, explanation. The narcissist
lacks self-awareness. Divorced from his true self, unable
to empathise (to understand what it is like to be someone
else), unwilling to constrain his actions to cater to the
feelings and needs of others - the narcissist is in a constant
dreamlike state.
To the narcissist, his life is unreal, like watching an
autonomously unfolding movie. The narcissist is a mere
spectator, mildly interested, greatly entertained at times.
He does not "own" his actions. He, therefore, cannot
understand why he should be punished and when he is, he
feels grossly wronged.
So convinced is the narcissist that he is destined to great
things - that he refuses to accept setbacks, failures and
punishments. He regards them as temporary, as the
outcomes of someone else's errors, as part of the future
mythology of his rise to power/brilliance/wealth/ideal
love, etc. Being punished is a diversion of his precious
energy and resources from the all-important task of
fulfilling his mission in life.
The narcissist is pathologically envious of people and
believes that they are equally envious of him. He is
paranoid, on guard, ready to fend off an imminent attack.
A punishment to the narcissist is a major surprise and a
nuisance but it also validates his suspicion that he is being
persecuted. It proves to him that strong forces are arrayed
against him.
He tells himself that people, envious of his achievements
and humiliated by them, are out to get him. He constitutes
a threat to the accepted order. When required to pay for
his misdeeds, the narcissist is always disdainful and bitter
and feels misunderstood by his inferiors.
Cooked books, corporate fraud, bending the (GAAP or
other) rules, sweeping problems under the carpet, over-
promising, making grandiose claims (the "vision thing") -
are hallmarks of a narcissist in action. When social cues
and norms encourage such behaviour rather than inhibit it
- in other words, when such behaviour elicits abundant
narcissistic supply - the pattern is reinforced and become
entrenched and rigid. Even when circumstances change,
the narcissist finds it difficult to adapt, shed his routines,
and replace them with new ones. He is trapped in his past
success. He becomes a swindler.
But pathological narcissism is not an isolated
phenomenon. It is embedded in our contemporary culture.
The West's is a narcissistic civilization. It upholds
narcissistic values and penalizes alternative value-
systems. From an early age, children are taught to avoid
self-criticism, to deceive themselves regarding their
capacities and attainments, to feel entitled, and to exploit
others.
As Lilian Katz observed in her important paper,
"Distinctions between Self-Esteem and Narcissism:
Implications for Practice", published by the Educational
Resources Information Center, the line between enhancing
self-esteem and fostering narcissism is often blurred by
educators and parents.
Both Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism"
and Theodore Millon in his books about personality
disorders, singled out American society as narcissistic.
Litigiousness may be the flip side of an inane sense of
entitlement. Consumerism is built on this common and
communal lie of "I can do anything I want and possess
everything I desire if I only apply myself to it" and on the
pathological envy it fosters.
Not surprisingly, narcissistic disorders are more common
among men than among women. This may be because
narcissism conforms to masculine social mores and to the
prevailing ethos of capitalism. Ambition, achievements,
hierarchy, ruthlessness, drive - are both social values and
narcissistic male traits. Social thinkers like the
aforementioned Lasch speculated that modern American
culture - a self-centred one - increases the rate of
incidence of the narcissistic personality disorder.
Otto Kernberg, a notable scholar of personality disorders,
confirmed Lasch's intuition: "Society can make serious
psychological abnormalities, which already exist in some
percentage of the population, seem to be at least
superficially appropriate".
In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life",
Theodore Millon and Roger Davis state, as a matter of
fact, that pathological narcissism was once the preserve of
"the royal and the wealthy" and that it "seems to have
gained prominence only in the late twentieth century".
Narcissism, according to them, may be associated with
"higher levels of Maslow's hierarchy of needs ...
Individuals in less advantaged nations .. are too busy
trying (to survive) ... to be arrogant and grandiose".
They - like Lasch before them - attribute pathological
narcissism to "a society that stresses individualism and
self-gratification at the expense of community, namely the
United States." They assert that the disorder is more
prevalent among certain professions with "star power" or
respect. "In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is
'God's gift to the world'. In a collectivist society, the
narcissist is 'God's gift to the collective".
Millon quotes Warren and Caponi's "The Role of Culture
in the Development of Narcissistic Personality Disorders
in America, Japan and Denmark":
"Individualistic narcissistic structures of self-regard (in
individualistic societies) ... are rather self-contained and
independent ... (In collectivist cultures) narcissistic
configurations of the we-self ... denote self-esteem
derived from strong identification with the reputation and
honor of the family, groups, and others in hierarchical
relationships".
Still, there are malignant narcissists among subsistence
farmers in Africa, nomads in the Sinai desert, day laborers
in east Europe, and intellectuals and socialites in
Manhattan. Malignant narcissism is all-pervasive and
independent of culture and society. It is true, though, that
the way pathological narcissism manifests and is
experienced is dependent on the particulars of societies
and cultures.
In some cultures, it is encouraged, in others suppressed. In
some societies it is channeled against minorities - in
others it is tainted with paranoia. In collectivist societies,
it may be projected onto the collective, in individualistic
societies, it is an individual's trait.
Yet, can families, organizations, ethnic groups, churches,
and even whole nations be safely described as
"narcissistic" or "pathologically self-absorbed"? Can we
talk about a "corporate culture of narcissism"?
Human collectives - states, firms, households, institutions,
political parties, cliques, bands - acquire a life and a
character all their own. The longer the association or
affiliation of the members, the more cohesive and
conformist the inner dynamics of the group, the more
persecutory or numerous its enemies, competitors, or
adversaries, the more intensive the physical and emotional
experiences of the individuals it is comprised of, the
stronger the bonds of locale, language, and history - the
more rigorous might an assertion of a common pathology
be.
Such an all-pervasive and extensive pathology manifests
itself in the behavior of each and every member. It is a
defining - though often implicit or underlying - mental
structure. It has explanatory and predictive powers. It is
recurrent and invariable - a pattern of conduct melding
distorted cognition and stunted emotions. And it is often
vehemently denied.