Dr Helen: Narcissism, Power, Fear of Death, and Liberalism
I often get books on psychology sent to me by publishers, and the other day I received Jeffrey Kottler’s On Being a Therapist. The book is now in its fourth edition, and this latest edition “puts the spotlight on the therapist’s role and responsibility to promote issues of diversity, social justice, human rights, and systemic changes within the community and the world at large.”
Whoa: I thought the therapist’s role was to increase the client’s well-being and treat mental illness.
It used to be that therapists just saw clients and sent them a bill. Now — perhaps because the “sending them a bill” part has gotten more difficult in these days of managed care and public skepticism about the profession — they are transforming themselves into superhuman beings who think they can save the entire world. Therapists may have been narcissistic before, but it takes a special kind of narcissism to see one’s own self as a world-saver.
The author seems like a well-intentioned fellow. He cries at the drop of a hat, whether when thinking about his patients or helping out a kid on the street. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose.
Kottler touches often on the narcissism of therapists in the book and has a section on the topic. He talks about his own struggle with self-worth and measures his own success by looking at all the good he has done, the people he has helped. He discusses how therapists often feel they are frauds. The author talks about his deep need to influence others, and he mentions a treatise on narcissism that describes it as such:
A lack of feeling, the need to project an image, the desire to help others in order to exercise power, and arrogance are all familiar symptoms.
He then states that he has long felt he holds super powers:
After all, it seems at times (to others, if not to myself) that I can read minds, predict the future, and hear, see, feel, and sense things beyond the powers of mere mortal beings.
In the author’s defense, he does struggle with this and acknowledge it can be a problem. I have talked to therapists who feel they are superhuman yet see it as an asset.
Perhaps this a yet another instance of left-liberal politicization of what used to be a useful and untainted field. It seems that Liberals are on a mission to politicize every aspect of life and existence. It resembles an aggressive cancer, spreading and destroying as fast as it can.
Cancer’s a good way to put it. Cancers rarely cause organ failure; rather, terminal cancers kill by starving the patient to death by diverting nutrients from healthy cells to fuel their uncontrolled division.
The left likes to style itself as “progressive.” Your cancer analogy is quite apt, as cancer is a progressive ailment.
Your analysis will be better when you expand your perspective. You approach this as a mental health worker. Just approach it as a person.
I, for example, have super power. I can turn invisible (but only when no one is looking). However I don’t presume that I can straighten bent minds.
I am not, and do not desire to be, a (mental) health care worker. I am a Flamenco Dancer (with an edge).
Still, I empathize with you, billing is always difficult.
The butterfly flapping his wings in the Amazon will also leave some kind of mark in the world, but no one will know his name to put on a memorial. When we accept the fact that we are all little butterflies, life is better.
That is so profound I wish to know who I may attribute that to.
Indeed, even if it’s Amazon.com
Is that the sound of sitars and the smell of ganja I detect? A veritable golden shower of three bong hit whizdumb!
Somebody else said it even better: “man is like a breath, his days are like a passing shadow.” God, from Psalm 144
This is really nothing new. When I was in college studying criminology in the Seventies, part of the course curriculum was Applied and Abnormal Psychology. One of the things I noticed about the instructors (all Ph.Ds) and guest lecturers (none with less than an MS) was their absolute faith in their own superior intellects and morals. Some of them to the point that they were suffering from what I call the “psychiatrist’s delusion”- the belief that their position and prestige proved that they were absolutely “normal” and “sane”, so therefore anyone who disagreed with them, or even held an opinion on any subject that was different from their own, was ipso facto “mentally unbalanced”.
Here’s a gedanken-experiment for you; Picture a psychologist with the usual set of trendy liberal-progressive attitudes of that day on subjects like gun ownership, police power, the U.S. military, etc., facing a classroom or lecture hall full of students intending to be crime lab technicians, forensics experts, etc.- many of whom were already working police officers, and at least half of whom were military veterans. (Often with combat experience in Korea, Vietnam, or sometimes both; we had three students who had served in both wars, two Marines and a Navy Senior Chief.)
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that about half of the guest lecturers came into the hall with chips on their shoulders the size of the National Debt. Several stated up front that the only reason they were there was because they had to be to fulfill their contractual obligations to their universities (OU-Athens, among others). And some of them, at one point or another, told a student, to his or her face, that they regarded them as “sick” for being, or wanting to be, “pigs”.
What I learned from this is to be wary of any profession whose members are permitted to define what constitutes “sanity”- and to define themselves as being the sole possessors of that quality.
clear ether
eon
I always call it “genius disease” because the same problem exists in many disciplines and even more in the arts. It afflicts those who don’t really measure up as well as genuine geniuses. And genius doesn’t necessarily mean high IQ, either; someone with a middling IQ might make a discovery or breakthrough that’s a genius idea, and be a real live genius–and still might be cursed with genius disease.
The best example is Darwin, who stumbled across a real live genius idea (natural selection) but couldn’t stand the fact that the rest of the world didn’t fall into line immediately, so created an alternate world that made his discovery the center of the universe. Lots of others live in his alternate world and think random mutation and accidental explosions are excellent replacements for God, because they’re just as impossible to quantify or observe. The point is not whether evolution occurred or not, or how old the earth is or all the standard arguments, but rather whether science has reached alevel of maturity that allows the creation of a credible universal theory. So far no joy. Those that exist are hopelessly inadequate to those who aren’t Kool-aid drinkers because we simply don’t know enough about the universe.
This kind of thinking occurs in every profession, in every scientific discipline. It is particularly prevalent in politics, where on every conceivable side of every issue there are desperate pleas for everybody (else) to ‘wake up!’ The idea that everybody sees what’s best for everybody else is as old as the world, though it was first written down (so far as I know) by Plato. Socrates was the wisest of all because he at least knew he was ignorant, while everybody else was convinced they had all the answers.
A dash of humility is hard to take for any genius, real or imagined, but that’s the requirement and no wonder it’s rare. It’s so much easier to look around and think one is looking down, especially when one has reached the pinnacle of a particular study held in awe by some few, or even many others. I think Adam Smith is the best remedy. Just try to figure out how much a common workman’s shirt costs, it’s actual percentage of the endeavor required to produce it, and one can begin to realize one’s own ignorance.
Ignorance is not bliss. It’s the universal condition of all human beings. Most importantly each person becomes more ignorant as they learn, because as horizons expand, we learn how much more we don’t know that heretofore we didn’t know existed.
Easier no doubt to enclose oneself in a cocoon, and sneer at yokels. In the end genius disease is nothing more than arrant self-deception, hence the disdain of self-proclaimed geniuses for practical solutions and favor for airy fancies. Getting them out of their diamond hard cocoons is no easy task.
Well said.
“What I learned from this is to be wary of any profession whose members are permitted to define what constitutes “sanity”- and to define themselves as being the sole possessors of that quality.”
Brilliant insight.
“Forcing others to do as they wish fends off their fear of insignificance, which is why it is so urgent that others go along.”
That nails it on the head, thank you: the FEAR of being ordinary. One day, I was pondering what it could possibly be that fueled the never-ending lust for power of narcissists. I believe I caught a glimpse of what it is that drives them. It is the yawning, bottomless black pit of the fear of being ordinary, that exists at their core. That’s what makes them run, run from the very thought that they are not special, talented, or accomplished. They grab more and more power over others to use as “proof” they they are superior. That’s how they bribe their gnawing fear.
Stalin hated the common man with perfect thoroughness. Anyone with practical talent was sent to Siberia, so that he eventually surrounded himself with incompetent yes men. Beside them, he compared very well.
Sort of Obama’s approach.
The same is true in the field of Social Work. Once concerned with helping people to help themselves it’s cramming ‘social justice’ down the throats of students who very often go into the field out of a genuine desire to help others often born of religious convictions. As a political and a conservative, it’s a tough field to be in. Both psychology and social work have adopted social justice and diversity language in their practice guidelines and ethical statements. The DSM-IVTR, currently under revision is being heavily lobbied by various special interests to have pet diagnoses included or removed, all with utter disregard for real scientific evidence on mental illness.
Wow, Helen, excellent insight. Clearly the feeling of omnipotence is common to many on the Left. I’ve had many conversations with family members over the years in which they were quite utterly convinced that the health and well-being of the entire Planet Earth rested on their personal shoulders. Dude, that is a seriously over-developed sense of self-importance right there! I think you’ve done a nice job here of putting your finger on some key element of that particular narcissistic bent that drives so many liberals.
Um, many of us watched Cheers and Frasier, so we know that you all are just as kooky as the rest of us. It’s always in looking back that we see how foolish we were in thinking there were people out there with all the answers.
I believe only the ones who admit that we are self-centered, fear death, are liberal when it comes to our own interests and desires, and that unfettered power over others corrupts.
Are you saying that “liberalism is a mental disorder”?
It’s supremely important that we make room in our thoughts for the possibility that a great many such persons as Dr. Helen describes really want power over others, whether because they believe that it would be for the best or are simply consumed by power-lust. Indeed, it’s difficult to reconcile the Left’s attitude of intellectual and moral superiority, its treatment of its ideological opponents, and its disregard for what we see as “policy failures” in any other way.
You’ve found the core of the problem: an outsized ego that needs to control others. This disorder takes many forms, but is easy to spot when the conversation turns to politics.
Remember the TV ad with Glenn Close that states 1 in 6 people have some sort of mental imbalance that requires treatment? Keep that statistic in mind, especially when it comes to those in Washington and hope that their medications are effective.
Having had a part of my life knee deep in members of the mainstream press I formed a theory that may correlate. Members of the press are uniformly liberal because the very same things that make them liberal make them want to be heard and thus are driven urgently to become part of the press. Therefor, complaining that the press is stocked with liberals is akin to complaining that rocks are hard.
I think that the world view of liberals is attributable less to narcissism and more due to an ego somewhere along the continuum of bruised to mortally injured. I realize that a professional (I’m not) might call this a Chicken/Egg argument.
I enjoyed the article Dr. Helen and the comments were well reasoned and thought provoking. Thanks to all!
Ironically, all of us must be suffering from ODS and must be “re-educated” by therapists who share the very same qualities as our POTUS.
Sounds like a reasonable theory. I’ve wondered if similar motivations account for the tendency (in my experience at least) for people without children to be more liberal.
Certainly seems like therapists could use some, uh, therapy.
My husband and I have no children and could not be more conservative, fiscally at least. So here’s one exception to your rule.
I’ve often wondered why we care so much that it appears that America is in decline. After all, we have no children, therefore no grandchildren, who will suffer under whatever the U.S. becomes. I finally decided that it’s a little like watching a slasher destroy a fine old Rembrandt painting with his knife. I don’t own it (or even have a stake in it) but it would make me sick to see it destroyed.
America has been an incredibly successful experiment. Why would it want to become France? Or just as likely, eventually, Russia?
Very interesting. I know that I am as involved as I am because of my children (in their twenties). Otherwise, I believe I would just sit on my duff and let it all go to heck.
But the way you have phrased your motivation, I can completely understand. Maybe if I didn’t have children, I would be just as involved for the same reason as you.
I’ve noticed the same thing among teachers who have now gone way beyond their role of teaching.
Seems to me that liberal teachers these days are teaching our kids what to think, not how to think (I wish I had come up with that quote).
“therapists often feel they are frauds” ———— because most therapists ARE frauds.
Many go into the “field” because they’re self-absorbed navel gazers who find it easy to justify their existence with cerebral pretzel bending — and because post 1960s academia paved the way for them instead of scientists.
Not that mental illness doesn’t exist. It does. At least until hard sciences intervene to demonstrate differently.
So, yes, society needs psycho therapists. Say 0.001 as much as it has. In Asia the number of therapists is inversely proportional to the number of Thai masseuses.
Don’t strain yourself looking for the reason Liberals mimic 999 out of 1000 therapists — the 999 define Liberalism.
Could it be that many liberals, like narcissistic therapists, are so insistent that others go along with them because they fear being obscure and crave feeling powerful more than they care about whether their solutions actually work?
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That would explain why so many liberals get upset, sometimes to the point of violence, when shown evidence that the programs they support don’t work.
Hasn’t this 70′s style ‘talk-therapy’ been proven to be B.S. many times over now?
I mean really, who still believes that talking to a shrink can make you sane if you’re insane?
I think talk therapy works for people who are basically sane; it is, after all, basically the same as consoling a co-worker or subordinate.
There is an article similar to this one around once a week. Talk about brain washing. It is like people are consumed with thinking about liberals. We are not a homogeneous group of people. We are individuals with different perspectives. Why are you trying so hard to make me into some kind of strange other that is less than you. That is a dangerous path to stroll down. I am an American like all of you. There is no need to demonize me. I do not begrudge you for having a different political philosophy from me, I do not think there is anything wrong with you.
Brian, the difference is that your policies always require us to obey the elites by force. You can believe whatever you want…just don’t ask me to pay the bills for “repairing the world”.
You may not “think there is anything wrong with [conservatives]” but do you ever chastise the liberals who routinely characterize us as racist homophobes? If not, you’re part of the problem.
Dr. Smith try using some of the old fashioned problem solving methods to help people along in your writings, as well as day to day clinical practice.
Things like, “Get up off of your lazy ass and go to work or I’ll throw you out on the street”. Or, “Don’t try that feel sorry, woe is me crap here because it won’t work”. And God forbid to the spoiled rotten outcome based educated 12-13 year old brat, “Tell your father when he gets home hell, I’m going to switch your legs off right now and if he doesn’t like it I’ll switch him too”.
Psychology and psychiatry worked fine when it consisted of take two aspirins and get on with whatever work needed done. Patient diagnosed, patient advised and problem solved.
Can’t say that anymore though can we?
For a sane person or ordinary person, telling them that yes, what they observe in the world is true, yes life is not fair, yes there are most definitely situations in their world that are good cause for anger, and being good or being true or expecting fairness will get you in trouble, is a breath of fresh air. Sometimes those truths are only the thing a troubled person needs to hear from a stranger and enables them to continue on, and cope with the difficulties life seems to so often send our way.
Your not crazy, now you just have to figure a way to cope with the craziness around you, are words a therapist can use at times to save a life. I knew a woman therapist second hand that gave that gift to someone I care about. I will always be grateful to her.
“the desire to help others in order to exercise power” Arrogance?
I have known several Policemen, Firefighters, Politicians, Doctors/Nurses, Soldiers and regular Citizen Volunteers that want to help people. They may have psychological problems, but thank the Lord we have people that want to help others. Now I have to go help feed the homeless, see you all later. Good Luck !
You say you’re going out to feed the homeless? Fine. Feed them, house them, clothe them, whatever you feel moved to do — with your own labor and your own money. The rest of us are tired of being told that every mental defective, drug addict, and derelict on the street is our problem, to be tenderly nurtured at public expense for the remainder of his life. That’s just guaranteed an ever-expanding supply of persons who can’t or won’t look after themselves, as a responsible citizen does, and who’ve alienated their families and friends beyond the point of no return.
“…on the therapist’s role and responsibility to promote issues of diversity, social justice, human rights, and systemic changes within the community and the world at large.”
Therapy has been taking talking points from the NEA…?
All this stuff (also endemic in current DC government circles) strikes me as grandoise blather, signifying nothing. To the extent any individual attempts to present him or herself with such verbiage, the less they are to be trusted.
I have talked to therapists who feel they are superhuman yet see it as an asset.
An attitude of personal specialness characterizes Tom Cruise, when he’s being candid (rare) about his relationship to and his role in Scientology. Pretty creepy stuff.
Could it be that for liberals and certain therapists endowed with self-importance but without religion, influencing others is all they have?
Yes.
Appreciate your candor, Dr. Helen.
It keeps their legacy alive. Notice how many times people bring up “Ted Kennedy’s legacy” of health care. Is this more about keeping Kennedy’s name immortal and his image alive than about real solutions to real-world problems?
It applies to more than just political monuments IMO. Combine an distaste for fertility and reproduction with a firm conviction that nothing exists beyond the borders of this world, and the natural desire for a legacy pops out of weirdest places in liberal minds. I think this drives a lot of the desire to ‘save the planet’ from all sorts of made-up ills.
Helen, good observation. As a Ph.D clin. psych. I have also seen the watering down of the profession. When Liberal dominated universities are populated by liberal faculty, funded by liberal governments then bleeding heart liberal graduates are the result. When this cohort of social workers dominate the profession we will all be hugging, sharing, crying, and most unfortunately blaming everyone else for whatever we feel victimized by . The concept of taking individual responsibility will seem “harsh” and “cruel”. It will be replaced by simple minded chat so both therapist and client can feel better about themselves and the hope that some government entity can and should pick up the tab. In many instances you can get better help by having a random chat with a stranger on the back of a bus, or with your bartender. If you need mental health assistance – shop carefully and critically for a well trained, honest, and “hard hearted bastard” who will tell you what you should be told, and confront you with insights on the path toward personal responsibility in solving your own problems for the rest of your life. Get a referral from someone who has been there. Good luck.
It has been refreshing to start reading this blog; the sense of maturity and responsibility not only are healthy but they would seem to encourage strength and action.
Forty years ago, many of my friends were psych majors. When the three of them were having trouble as roommates (one didn’t do much if any of the cleaning), they decided to go into group therapy. This was, of course, the way that two of them wanted to use an authority figure to tell the third she was sick and that was the reason she didn’t wash the dishes.
Fifteen years later, I had a business that prepared dissertations. We came to dread the psych m.a.’s and ph.d.’s – they all seemed to have taken assertiveness training (or been teaching it) without responsibility. They pushed to the front of the line – even though many others in the line were there for the exact same reason but their degrees were in physics or philosophy or ag. They then would give the kind of pleas for special action that freshmen students do when late with a paper or caught cheating. And when they picked up the work, they would expect us to have miraculously solved all their problems (like whether the original was within the margins required by the thesis clerk, etc.) My sister reminisced lately about that (from the two years when she took over my business so I could have my second child.
My friends weren’t bad people, but they didn’t have a very good grounding. Neither were/did those grad students. It was a combination of lack of confidence and shifts in responsibility. I can’t imagine, however, that beginning with those problems they could have very adequately given advice that would make their patients happy nor lead to the good and mature life.
“Forced charity isn’t.”
I am a therapist. My experience is that 95% of people seeking therapy are paying someone to affirm their own life stories. They are paying for a friendship. The very, very few who transform are those who seek help to look into the mirror of their own mental/emotional labrynth. They have made a profound decision to seek the truth about who they actually are. Therapy ultimately is for the sake of becoming able to live more genuinely, truthfully, creatively and joyfully in a difficult world.
The process has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with becoming “liberal,” “conservative,” or ideological in any way. My therapy training was complete and utter bullshit. One can not learn the process in school. One can only learn it on one’s own — by becoming a practitioner of that very hard-eyed mirror gazing for one’s own life. “Hard-eyed” means becoming able to recognize reality itself — the reality of oneself, the world, humanity, one’s family, one’s lover/spouse/children, one’s own existence, nature, impulses, desires, cruelties and sweetnesses for what they are. Real therapy is a a courageous path of self-confrontation. The rest is fluff.
Tip o’ that hat to you.
Like all professions, an excess of academia prevents actual expertise.
Most professors are academics, so their knowledge lacks a certain depth. This used to be recognized as a “lack of real world experience”. Now it’s the real world experience that is devalued.
After 9-11, I seriously thought that the liberal wing of the DNC had collective symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. It explained all their decisions and collective behaviors pretty accurately. I wonder if there isn’t a new field of group personality disorders.
I realize that I’m painting with a broad brush here but then I have superhuman powers of observation that allow me to see things no one else can.
I think we need to stick these people back into the gym lockers that they obviously spent their high school years residing in.
Just sayin’.
I’ve generally found most psychologists to be useless as teats on a bull, no offense to the author, but most of them can’t even handle their own problems let alone the problems of others. They have one of the highest suicide rates, and many of them go into the field because of their own dysfunctional life or childhood. In effect they are running from thier own problems by burying themselves in the issues of others.
The solution to most people’s problems now days is literally “face it, get over it, and get on with your life”. Bad stuff happened to you as a kid? Well that sucks, but nothing and no one can change the past and continuing or participating in self destructive behavior is only going to make your life worse. Once the person realizes that A) nothing can change the past, B) it really doesn’t matter in the long run unless you allow it to, and C) once you realize A & B and start doing positive things with your life instead of self-destructive things it will get better. People with actual mental disorders like schizophrenia are a different story. Time really does heal all wounds if you let it.
Do shrinks serve as a person to talk to and help the healing process? Yes, the good ones do but they are few and far between. However it solely the individual that does the healing not the therapist, and many people could find the same amount of healing with a trusted confidant that they could talk about things with. Oddly enough before we had shrinks we had the clergy to fill this role, as we’ve secularized is it any wonder we’ve replaced “servants of God” with people who think they are god? At least the Pastor didn’t charge $160+ an hour.
That a lot of liberals adopt politics as a means of moral exhibitionism is, I should think, hardly a surprise.
Meanwhile, can anyone give me a generally acceptable definition of “social justice?”
A definition of “social justice”? Sure, share your candy at the point of a gun.
As for therapists, most of them are bat-sh!t crazy themselves and have no business administering therapy to anyone. I’ve met one who actually had something on the ball and was good at what he did.
Thomas Sowell, in Intellectuals and Society (NY:Basic Books, 2010) had this to say about social justice:
Social justice, and related terms are “assertions of arbitrary authority by third parties to prescribe what others have never agreed to” (88). “[T]hey are asserted as reasons why the majority or political leaders or the courts ought to impose what third parties want imposed” (89). “Sometimes the term ’social justice’ is used to provide the semblance of a basis for [what are] arbitrary assertions [of "rights," "social responsibilities," "contracts," "promises," etc.]. …. But what are these assertions … other than the feelings, visions or groupthink that happen to prevail currently among the intelligentsia? The groupthink of the intelligentsia is still groupthink and their prejudices are still prejudices” (89).
It may not be generally acceptable, but it is accurate.
Alex…To my knowledge, there is no such thing as SOCIAL(IST) JUSTICE.
Americans have ALWAYS been emotional children. Life Is Unfair, but that doesn’t stop messianic, pseudo intellectuals and their Herds from TRYING. To get to Utopia…You just have to keep killin..
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/alexisdeto164080.html
Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom.
Alexis de Tocqueville
Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.
Alexis de Tocqueville
I once told a friend that what I think frequently happens. That’s because I have the imagination of a bulldozer and cannot conceive of anything not utterly inevitable.
That would be an ordinary characteristic except…in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. And if all you can expect is the inevitable, you’re ahead of a lot of folks who expect some airy-fairy nonsense.
So I guess I’m so dumb I’m smart.
But enough about me.
I studied psychology in the mid-Sixties. There was a tension going on between the believers in and practitioners of talk therapy (3-5 years on the shrink’s couch will cure schizophrenia) and the increasing research on organic causes, including successful meds. And that was going on forty-five years ago.
If everything you’ve studied and worked for can be fixed by a visit to Walgreen’s, you have a problem.
There isn’t anything better than being a fixer-upper. If you’ve helped out at an accident, you’ll recall the “helper’s high”. If it’s your job, your life, you’re gonna miss it big time.
How to regain the feeling of superiority and the feeling that the world owes you for your skill and compassion in changing the way people think?
Well, I guess you could be a liberal. Since folks won’t always do what you think they should, you become a statist liberal.
Sometimes it works out otherwise. I’ve talked to a couple of social workers who were off the clock, or “in wine” or behind on their coffee and didn’t think they’d be quoted. They can be pretty clear-eyed. But not on the job.
“The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.” – Mencken
These sound like the kind of people who, at 5 years-old, believed Smokey the Bear when he said, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires!” They never get over the sense of personal responsibility for everything and everyone around them. And being responsible for everything and everyone, they had to evolve superhuman powers otherwise they would quickly discover they hadn’t the strength to make a difference. People who don’t help them, follow their advice, or see the world as they do must by definition be evil or deranged.
Most therapists are hedonists. They view happiness as an absence of pain. Pain is something other people create, and their job is to tell people it isn’t their personal fault.
The homology with politics is perfect. Leftists tell the poor (or other “victim” of your choice) that their condition is someone else’s fault, and that by voting for them they will take care of it. If you are uninsured, it MUST be the fault of the insurance companies, or society for not allowing you to be born rich.
In a Nanny culture, you will have many levels of nannies, nicht wahr? You have the therapist as Nanny, and the State as the uebernanny. Everywhere, we are being told what to do.
I think Dolores Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an excellent model of this. She always smiling. She likes cats. And she really, really likes being in charge.
I have made the argument often that morality could be viewed as a sort of psychological innoculation or prehabiltation for the rigors of life. Bad things will happen, but you have a code that helps guard you from self pity and despondancy. Psychology, as it is practiced in this nation, is simply incompetent.
This post here was my first reaction to your post: http://moderatesunited.blogspot.com/2010/04/techne.html
H. L. Mencken summed it up a long time ago: “The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” I can’t really add anything to that.
You quote Mr Kottler as saying:
This fine fellow would appear to be crazy. Does he tell himself that the other fans at the hockey game believe he can predict the final score? If so, why? However it is heartening to see a delusional man finding gainful employment by talking to people who pay to talk to him. Far better than talking to himself.
Welcome to the new world where institutions are becoming completely divorced from their original purpose. Liberals have turned schools from teaching institutions to social program administration centers. Higher education is more concerned with making a buck than teaching useful skills.
Plus you need to ask if people really need that much help from psychiatrists and psychologists. Both professionals have been symptomatically turning every behavior into a mental illness.
(I recently saw a clip of a well known TV behavioral doctor on The View with a well known patient. He so resembled a cult leader in his speech, behavior and body language that it was freaky.)
I can only comment from my experience but knowing a few people who subsequently became psychologists / psychiatrists and talking to others who knew people who entered the profession that a significant percentage went that way because THEY had psychological problems.
Too many seem to have delusions of grandeur combined with continuing psychological problems.
Maybe the subset of these people that I know of is atypical but I still would be afraid to put myself under the care of this profession.
‘Tis an oft-told tale.
In John Brunner’s dystopian SF novel ‘Stand on Zanzibar’
the Psychiatry Czar wanted all citizens under his care.
But that is SF; In the real world…actually, just the same;
Conservatives may consider Liberals to be mentally ill, but
it is Liberals who want to pass laws which treat Conservatives
as mentally ill.
That was actually in Brunner’s The Jagged Orbit, but otherwise your citation is correct.
Excellent analysis. All this seems to fit in with Carl Rogers, the humanistic psychology movement and the “client-centered” therapy, which I call “self-centered” therapy.
Having worked as a para-professional in mental health in the 1970s and 1980s, I noticed the same narcissistic, power hungry traits you mention. One bright social worker, who did not fit into this group, would jokingly refer to it regularly. She was one of the few social workers I ever liked.
Personally, I’m happy to leave the world with some good offspring and their memories of me.
What I have found is that to a liberal, intention is the final word on whether something is successful or not. If you create something that causes massive problems, hurts the people it was supposed to help and is a burden to everyone else, it is still a success if you had the right intention when you created it.
If on the other hand you are a conservative and create a program that helps people, doesn’t cost a lot and makes the world better, but your primary intention wasn’t to do that, it is a failure. Hence using self interest to help society is wrong, while using government coersion to try to address a social disparity is only just.
Bingo. I don’t believe that therapists and those with progresive mindset always intend to use others to justify their own need for power. I think a number of these individuals want to be of benefit, although some have an overt agenda. A large part of the problem is the ideology underlying psychology/psychiatry. The professions are mired in a secular humanist notion of person and mind and so naturally attract thoses with a similar outlook. It does little to challenge their perspective. Beyond the concern about liberals and therapists using others as selfobjects to shore up their own sense of self, the larger problem is the fact that even though mental health help is needed by many, it also becomes the vehicle for perpetuating that value system. It seems to me that there are an increasing number of centers of the universe and I can’t help but wonder if decades of therapy influencing the culture aren’t responsible for this
For a priceless example of the omnipotent leftist shrink in action, see the following link:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/12/22/101516/45
Bush’s “delusion”: a psychiatrist’s perspective
by paul minot
Bush’s irrational consideration of a “surge” in the wake of the ISG report–which apparently defies all credible counsel–has begun to generate speculation regarding his sanity.
It’s not easy being a god.
Some liberals fit the description described in this article. Many don’t. Helen is applying her remarks primarily to liberal psychologists, especially those for whom changing the world has become their religion and path to immortality because they lack a more substantive belief system.
I’m a conservative, but I know enough liberals to know they don’t all share this intense desire to immortalize themselves by exercising power over other. It is a ridiculous generalization, and the fact that so many on this comment thread took Helen’s comments about power hungry liberal psychologists and gleefully applied them to every liberal on the planet brought down the tone of the whole comment thread.
Supporting higher taxes so that the liberal can spend more on his priorities is not a form of control over others?
Supporting an ever growing list of regulations regarding what others are permitted to do is not a form of control over others?
Supporting an ever growing list of regulations requiring others to do what they don’t want to do, is not a form of control over others?
The core of liberalism is control over others.
Very refreshing piece, Dr. Helen. Much expressed in a short space.
It got me thinking about some larger issues related to liberal politics, namely the elevation of youth, found in celebration of youth culture, fondness for the “noble savage” myth, preference for spontaneity over planning, contempt of tradition in favor of recreating the world, etc.
Maturity in many ways is a matter of overcoming infantile narcissism. Self-centered Utopianism would seem to fit with the world-changing fantasies you describe and the liberal elevation of youth above experience.
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
– C. S. Lewis
In a different vain, and speaking as an agnostic, I have nevertheless witnessed the disturbing tendency of many atheist friends and relatives to elevate various individuals to saint-like transcendant status. The largest and most unsettling example, of course, was the cult-like “slobbering lovefest” that the electorate and American press awarded Obama. That example has unsettled me to my core.
As an agnostic, I at least allow for the possibility that God exists, and tend to believe that it’s impossible for our ordered universe to exist without some kind of transcendent “law-giver”. That forces me to at least sometimes be humble and questioning of myself and my Universe.
Atheists, on the other hand, disavow the possibility that God exist, or can exist. They axiomatically become the center of their Universe. I believe this allows a huge gap or vacuum to exist in their internal psychic landscape; that vacuum can easily then be filled by any and all manner of idols, false God(s), messianic nonsense, and even nightmares such as the utopianist creeds of Communism/collectivism.
As an empiricist, I notice that the impulse to believe in a Godhead transcends all cultures, and is a permanent fixture of human civilization over the entire span of history until our own epoch. I believe this tendency/need to believe in Godhead is part of a million year history of evolution which formed the complex mechanisms of our inner psche and helped humans emerge from the muck and the jungle. It is with tremendous arrogance, therefore, that today’s “intellectual” feels comfortable jettisoning more that a million years of evolution for the untried and theoretical experiments idols and godheads of the modern era. Refusing the possibility of God, along with other post-modern lunacies like rejecting the traditional family unit, accepting and promoting same sex marriage, the rejection of the traditionally defined nation-state with defensible borders, or the notion that “diversity” trumpts all whereas protecting tradition or defending your group are always a bad and “reactionary, all result in the catastrophic damage and downfall we witness in our civilization today.
I have never met a social scientist who could master simple math problems.
I would like to know Dr. Helen’s opinion of the argument made by Tammy Bruce that modern liberalism is essentially a form of malignant narcissism (or rather, that the activists directing various and sundry Leftist groups tend to be malignant narcissists).
I was a psych major at UCLA in the 70s but never did anything with it because too many professors and psych majors seemed to me to be slightly deranged. I found the profession to be suspect. Later, I was in a position to deal with a number of psychologists, and I formed the opinion that they are children, incapable of making or unwilling to make the simplest decisions. Narcissism explains this perfectly.
BTW, the lefty agenda was alive and well in the coursework in the 70s. One of my professors spent the entire quarter teaching us that there was no such thing as insanity or abnormality; only society’s labels and categorizations that were victimizing certain people. I’m sure this is comforting to those of us who have lost family members to violence perpetrated by people victimized by categorization…(I’m one who lost a family member to violence by a former mental patient and registered sex offender.)
There are good therapists, and I believe they can be distinguished by:
1. A clear and open admission of their own humanity and fallibility.
2. The belief (and practice) in their role as a facilitator, not a fixer, and they will bring with them into therapy a useful tool-set. They believe the power is in the patient, and convey this to the patient.
3. The insistence that the patient set specific goals for positive change and work *with* the therapist to meet the goals, and not expect the therapist to take care of them or “fix” them, or continue in therapy waiting for magic to happen.
4. Ensuring the patient understands that they have an innate right to be healthy and happy, their unhappy lives are consequences of their choices, and they have the ability to change if they really want to. Whatever they choose to do in the future, or not do, they remain fundamentally OK – and responsible.
Funny how so many of the above resemble conservative values and would be difficult for a liberal to accept or practice. Take away victimhood as a central assumption and insist on personal responsibility (for therapist and patient, and society at large) and the liberal worldview becomes completely untenable. Perhaps then, is a sense, liberals are insane (or severely dysfunctional), and getting “well” requires becoming a non-liberal.
Dare I suggest that there is another wrinkle to all this liberal special and insightful world view? It’s that there are many problems all so catastrophic that there can be no prioritization. Act now on all of them or the world will come to an end. Any solutions suggested must be so convoluted, so counterintuitive and lame that when they don’t work the only new solution is to try harder because don’t you see we have to solve this. Have to. Have to.
And lastly, my personal favorite by the way, is that when measurable progress is made there is no, “Well, done,” only a screech that there is so much more to be done.
I’ll suggest that the ten most dangerous words in any language in any millennium could be the motto of all liberals. “Yes, I know, but this time it will be different.”
They’re overwhelmed with themselves? Astounding. Everybody is stupid. Me, you who are reading this comment and the author of this article. That’s not an insult. It’s the simple truth. The most one can say is that some are less stupid than others. We, all of us, stumble through life getting it mostly wrong but just enough right to provide for ourselves and our offspring. Everyone of us hurts others. We don’t want to but we do. We’re helpless not to. But to think of oneself as brilliant? A world saver? What gall. What ultimate stupidity.
You know, all this work was once accomplished, at no cost whatsoever, out on the hunt or down by the stream washing clothes. The Roman practice of “Bread and Circuses” looks silly to us, but the alternative we have now, where empty professions and trades create demand for imaginary needs…the list is endless: I put Real Estate agents at the top of the list and maybe Video store clerks at the bottom, with most lawyers, scads of various sales types, people who manufacture trivial luxuries scattered in between…….this whole consumer culture is starting to look even sillier.
Since shrinks are flawed human beings like the rest of us, many of the critiques here ring true, but that is not to say that the supposedly more conservative desire to acquire success, material wealth, and “something to pass on to one’s family” is neurosis free. Can we face the fact that the “what’s mine is mine” and no guvment can take it from me by force” mindset has its own (or maybe the same) set of issues? Some people have this (what seems to me) instinctive, even driven, sense of reactinging” when they perceive that ANYTHING is being taken away from or charged to them or their family, reactions which amaze me (which is only to say that there are different kinds of folks out there.) Whether my tax rate is 25% or 28% in any given year does not occupy my mind much at all, but it seems to drive many folks up the wall and evoke all sorts of bluster. Was it our toilet training which was different, our religious training, or whether or not people would fall down after we threw our left hooks? Someone has already suggested that having been stuffed into a locker in high school is a lefty shrink thing, leaving us to wonder what the politics of the people stuffing them in the lockers has turned out to be. The only thing that bothered me as much as being worried that my kids might get piked on, was worrying that they might be bullies.
It would be fascinating to see if lefties and righties, are, or are not, gratified by the same basic human needs…and then where the significant differences (if any) are. And finally, I’m not at all sure that it is a lefty righty thing. I would speculate that DRIVEN righties and lefties have much more in common than they would with easy-going, loosey goosey folks on their own side of the political spectrum, but that is just a speculation.
The level of taxes has a huge impact on how quickly the economy grows. How quickly the economy grows has a huge impact on how much wealth individuals can accumulate before retirement.
What I find amazing is how quickly the lefties are to tell everyone how just a little more taxation is nothing to worry about. Especially since few lefties pay these taxes.
When I was a medical student in the early 60s, we were told we were a special class. The head of the admissions committee was a PhD psychologist and he had an idea to produce a different kind of doctor. Some of the people he admitted had never taken a biology class. Two were music majors. When that class of 66 graduated in 1966, half went into psychiatry. The rest of us concluded that most of them had their own problems to solve.
I actually met a very impressive psychiatrist when I did a summer clerkship at the VA Hospital in LA. His name was George Harrington. He was pretty well known and I thought, and still think, he was one of the most impressive men in medicine I have ever met. He refused to treat anyone except psychotics. He said everybody else was normal and he wasn’t interested in them. If you know anything about psychiatrists, you know they shun psychotics because they are terribly difficult and have no money.
He thought schizophrenia was probably a deficiency of some unknown vitamin. For sure, he knew that psychoanalysis didn’t have a clue. His father had been one of the first lay analysts in the 20s (He was a minister) and Harrington had sat on Freud’s knee when he was a kid. He taught his students a new way to treat schizophrenics that was later written up by one of his UCLA residents into a book called “Reality Therapy.” That book is still in print and the methods are probably still the best method with psychopaths. At the time, the LA city school system adopted the book for teachers to read to help with troubled kids but that was back when they were concentrating on teaching and there were no unions.
As far as the power urge in psychologists, in the 1980s, the HMOs began to cut severely into psychologist’s incomes. What happened ? The child abuse scandals and the recovered memories scandal. There were psychology meetings conducting seminars on how to find recovered memories.
They (excluding some like our blogger) are an interesting bunch.
I have a PhD in Counseling Psych, but I got out of the therapy biz and into Management Consulting when I realized (towards the end of my academic program) that most of the Professors were loons posing as normal people, with a false sense of self-importance, and with disdain for ordinary people. (OK, not all of them were nutz, but 90% were.)
Likewise, I noticed that 90% of clients were not really seeking change, but were seeking instead affirmation of their victimhood…I always thought that one-session Reality Therapy would be the way to go: “Listen up! Life is unfair. Being an adult is hard work. Not everyone has to agree with you. Show some respect for others. Grow a backbone, quit whining, go to church on the Sabbath to fill your gaping sense of meaninglessness, and get out there and live a life. That’ll be $150.00, thank you.”
Needless to say, this is not a workable business model. So, the therapist works them along, talking about their “issues” session after session, feeling superior to the dumb cluck being taken for a ride. Naturally, anyone sane enough to see the insidious evil in this scam is unqualified to be a shrink.
I used to be a psychiatric aide in a mental hospital. Believe me when I say that no one can talk someone out of being crazy. It does not work.
What??? I thought that’s what we had journalists for!
‘Could it be that for liberals and certain therapists endowed with self-importance but without religion, influencing others is all they have?”
Indeed it could be. For at least two generations we have had a massive torrent of graduates of the Social Science departments of our institutes of higher learning” ,committed to the noble, self-congratulatory purpose of “making this a better world” through promoting “social justice” and “multiculturalism” (read “Socialism”). They see their career path as going direct from college to government, or not-for-profit (Marx forbid!) jobs, or teaching or therapeutic practices where they can immediately start telling others about the need for the dictat of collective government.
The great irony of our present political crisis is that the level of materialism achieved by the success of vigorous capitalism has bred a society, riddled by guilt but unwilling to give up the rewards, yet whole-heartedly dedicated to destroying our American system.
The author seems like a well-intentioned fellow.
That’s doubtful, as self-hate (and a desire to destroy all who remind one of oneself) is at the real core of modern liberalism.
The Mencken quotes (both variations) are keepers.
“The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.”
There are many interesting comments in this thread.
Notice how much of today’s sales pitch from the self-anointed wise and smart class includes that word justice, economic justice, gender justice, even…are you ready ? climate justice
Does this degraded, vapid language pass for noble, high falutin’ stuff these days ? Does pretending to various forms of “justice” lend one an air of assumed nobility?…in the classroom, in centers of political power, on the couch ? (they likely don’t do couches, anymore, my psychiatrist friend from jr. high days was doing sessions over the telephone and the internet. What’s next, twitter in 40 characters ?)
Anyway, this pretension to “justice” seems to me a not-so-subtle extension of the victim mentality, that mentality wildly and fervently promulgated by all our self-designated, self-righteous fixers, from shrinks to Presidents.
analyze that
(or not)
The reality about a significant portion of the psychologist career field is that many are medical doctor wanabees or med school washouts. They had big aspirations to be called “Doctor,” but couldn’t hack it academically to qualify for med school, so they took the next best route they could to gain the respect they crave; thus, their narcissism. It follows then that the average person, who is devoid of these narcissistic leanings, is almost always more qualified to dispense personal advice than virtually any therapist.
The good Dr. Helen’s essay is an excellent exposition of the underpinnings of the sick parade of collectivist pornogaphy that is modern American liberlism. I submit that the desire for power lies at the heart of the worst aspects – and outcomes of liberalism. In my Fourth of July Tea Party speech (http://www.starlancs.com/fourth_of_july_tea_party_speech.htm), I attempt to describe the pedigree of the ideas that have led to so much human misery in recent history. I ascribe the proximate cause of the vast majority of the slaughter, mass murder and atrocity of the last 100 years or so to what Nietzsche called the ‘will to power’.
Friedrich Nietzsche was an atheist. But he saw God not as an invention, but as a casualty. He wrote in 1886: “The greatest event in recent times – that ‘God is Dead,’ that the belief in the Christian God is no longer tenable – is beginning to cast its first shadows upon Europe.” Did it ever. The Christian God, he wrote, would no longer stand in the way of the development of the New Man who he said would be ‘beyond good and evil’.
Nietzsche knew that in Europe, the decline of religion as a guide to conscience and morality would leave a huge vacuum.
Who or what would fill that vacuum?
Nietzsche thought that the most likely candidate would be what he called the ‘Will to Power,’ which offered a better and more persuasive explanation of human behavior than either Marx or Freud.
In place of religious belief, there would be secular ideology.
The very concept of good and evil would be discarded as the product of weak and inferior minds.
But above all, Nietzsche believed that the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.
Let’s say that again: the Will to Power would produce a new kind of messiah, uninhibited by religious sanctions, without moral restraint of any kind, and with an unappeasable appetite for controlling mankind.
And how did that ‘will to power’ express itself in our times? Jean Francois-Revel, writing over a century after Nietzsche, said of the Europeans in particular,
“It was they, after all, who made the twentieth century the darkest in history; it was they who brought about the two unprecedented cataclysms of two World Wars; and it was they who invented and put into place the two most criminal regimes ever inflicted on the human race – the pinnacles of evil and imbecility achieved in a space of less that thirty years.”
We now know that over 220 million – that’s 220 MILLION – people have been killed by their own governments since the beginning of the 20th century. And that figure may be low. Not casualties of war, but a casualty of the same evil that now appears to have gotten the upper hand here today. It’s that unappeasable appetite to control – and ultimately to consume – mankind. The will to power.
We ignore it at our peril.
The only other thing I wish to offer to add to the collectively great comments above is this: liberals and others of their ilk (in this case, therapists) are universally poltroons; wretched cowards. Liberals take the moral high ground as they see it, but when confronted with facts from history, economics, REALITY, they either go on their feeble attempt at an attack: “you are such a neanderthal!” or they just shut up, pout, then put hair removal foam in your hair while you’re sleep.
Coward are dangerous, dangerous people when they’re cornered. And, since we’re not ignoring things any longer, they are becoming even more dangerous and erratic.
Great article, Dr. Helen.
Wow! Maybe I should have become a therapist instead of a lawyer. It sounds like malpractice IS the profession!
Actually, I went to therapy for a number of years for depression and the only thing that worked was when I participated in a double blind study testing fluoxetine and I could tell it was working because of the weekly questionnaires I filled out. But if my therapist had used Kottler’s approach, I’d have been gone like a shot. It would have been apparent that he had as many, if not more, problems than I did. “Therapists” like this don’t cure. All they do is confirm you in your neuroses by telling you they’re a good or normal thing. If that’s so why do they continue to make us miserable and/or angry?
What an excellent, compelling post. Thank you for the candor and forthrightness of your comments. Idealizing narcissists wielding significant government authority are dangerous. As prosperous Liberty requires competency of self and respect for the boundaries between individuals, the ease with which “regressive progressives’ deny, distort and project should be more alarming than annoying. One concern is the way Axelrod, Podesta and fellow travelers have targeted rhetoric and polemic to numb sensitivity to reason and critical thinking no differently than Beria idealized the need for ‘mental healing’ as a device to improve the usefulness of the masses.
Pat Santy, MD, has blogged some remarkable posts on this topic. They are listed on the lower left of her home page.
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2005/02/paranoia-strikes-deep.html
http://drsanity.blogspot.com/2006/05/political-paranoia-of-left-parts-i-and.html
As for 20th Century democide and the history of mortacracies, this has been a significant part of Rudy Rummel’s remarkable body of work on war and governance. How few realize that 6 times more citizens were murdered by their governments than were killed in all wars of the 20th Century. Yet, the regressive progressives continue to tell us government is good and war is bad.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM
The credentials of both Santy and Rummel are worthy, as is their work. I offer the links in the unlikely event you’d never seen their work. Thanks again for your compelling observations. The proclivity of idealizing and malignant narcissists to aggressively seek domination of human institutions seems to be a symptom of the syndromic disorder that collectively drives their ambition and propensity for syndical behavior. They appear to seek to confiscate the liberty of others who, were it not for the disorder, would be seen as peers rather than adversaries and errant fools requiring subjugation.
BRILLIANT essay, Dr. Helen. It resonates — the fruits of the Gramscian march through the institutions.
I totally agree with your thesis, have blogged about it often (with regard not to therapists but to liberals in general). Feeling good about themselves and preening before their chosen peers is all they have. The rest of us are mere props in their power-crazed fantasies.
In the bad old days of the CCCP, if you acted out, or thought, in ways unacceptable to the Party proscribed universe of the proletariat model, then you were either declared an enemy of the state or mentally ill. Soviet era “mental health” apparatchiks would then ensure that, if you couldn’t be re-molded into the perfect Soviet citizen, you would be properly isolated, quarantined, until you died, so as not to ideologically infect others.
When I read that the progressive American therapist believes in “the therapist’s role and responsibility to promote issues of diversity, social justice, human rights, and systemic changes within the community”, I realize that the long march of the left, using the useful idiots among us, has reached another milestone.
The intent of the long march through our institutions and culture, is to finally destroy us and to enslave us to mediocre, fearful, and jealous men. This siege on our way of life was laid by the Soviets, back in the mid-twentieth century, when they still were able to hold out the promise of the worker’s paradise to their own enslaved millions. Even though the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own lies, we have among us their useful idiots still, who see themselves as the heirs and proper rulers of that failed system here in the United States. These are not Americans, in my view. That they are allowed to practice as mental health professionals in this country is unconscionable.
I understand what you are saying completely. At the college I am attending there is a program to go for five years and attain and masters degree but only if I specialize in “Community Psychology” which I understand is a little code-word for whatever-the-heck ACORN is…..evil I suppose would be a nice synonym. If I want to, say, obtain my masters in clinical psychology (my chosen field) I can intern at an institution but only leave with a bachelors degree and a pat on the back and probably that will be where I end up working as mental health care specialist, an institution. Same-old Liberal agenda, “if you aren’t with us, you are against us” can’t I just sit in shades of gray where I actually you know HELP PEOPLE instead of dominating their entire lives.
Anyways, on a side note…..any advice for someone wanting to major in psychology in college, specializing in whatever it is you need to specialize in to be a therapist (clinical I think).
Yes! Study more physiology.
I still need some help in understanding how one can be “humble” and make such broad generalizations about all liberals.
There are good conservatives, bad conservatives, ditto for liberals. Ditto for psychologists, obviously.
Everyone knows this unless they’re in here or at a very partisan LW site. Irony abounds, again.
I LOVE the N-Word…NARCISSIST…LIBERALS BE THY NAME…No, Miss Nicky…There are NO GOOD LIBERALS left… You keel hauled Joe Lieberman, because he had the temerity to say that the USA is worth defending.
Obamessiah is the quintessential Narcissist…
http://www.globalpolitician.com/25109-barack-obama-elections
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.
* 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;
The Obamessiah is in a worn out union suit. Libs want Him on the cover of GQ.
http://4merly-a-person.livejournal.com/181739.html
Leftards Are Idol Worshipers…
Please look at little weenies, DEFENDING THE OBAMESSIAH! It’s pronounced CORE-MAN!
The beautiful and very intelligent Sarah Palin, writes on her hand, and GWB with a 125 IQ (Kerry has a 120,) mispronounces nuclear…It’s time to crucify, then behead, then draw and quarter them…You Boot Licking Lick Spittles!
Helen,
I posted this in another PM blog, but it is pertinent to this one, especially.* I don’t know about you, but I’ve been doing this for the better part of 20 years, and I cannot tell you how many times, I’ve been told how sick I am, emotionally…STUPID, and that I should double up on my meds.
These cretins say stuff online, to me, that would get their head twisted off, if they dared say it to my face. Hysterical little girls, all.
Scott Peck called Narcissists, EVIL. There is a boat load of other personality disorders, that go along with NPD…Hysrionic, is in the top 5, I believe.
*Leftism a Movement, Ideology, Religion, of hysterical little girls(emotionally.) They are terrified of EVERYTHING, except things that cause instant death.
Link to this, beneath my nic.
An intriguing analogue to the feminist hysteric is the homosexual activist. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), within the hysterical context, has also said that “in both sexes overt behavior is often a caricature of femininity.”
(Leftist little girls of both sexes, detest COWBOYS and are deathly afraid of TESTOSTERONE POISONING (T4M)
As with most personality disorders, the diagnostic hallmarks of the histrionic are the evolved childish protections against the knock, knock (or Tick, Tock) of anxiety and maturation. They are the protection against the universal impulse for union and procreation. The monster under the bed has been displaced by anything which smacks of the “masculine”. The anxiety of becoming a responsible parent has been displaced by the eraser of abortion – the power to kill responsibility.
Finally,
If you or I said this, we would be stoned to death, hanged, beheaded and sit in the electric chair for 2 or 3 years, on L.
Anyone who knows anything of history knows that great social changes are impossible without feminine upheaval. Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex, the ugly ones included.
Karl Marx
“Could it be that many liberals, like narcissistic therapists, are so insistent that others go along with them because they fear being obscure and crave feeling powerful more than they care about whether their solutions actually work?”
I thought along this lines, but in relation to education and journalism, i.e. that ‘liberals’ gravitate to the professions that give them sense of power by providing an opportunity to tell others what to feel, think and do.
A tangential note to the social justice discussion above: In the conservative Christian world where I live, what we used to call “benevolence” now bears the name “social justice.” The old terminology implied that helping the needy was doing good, without reference to how they became needy. The new terminology implies that the needy are needy necessarily because someone has cheated them. Those who control the language control the discussion.
http://incogman.wordpress.com/2008/05/22/the-secret-evils-behind-political-correctness/
The language is not being controlled…It’s a New language, altogether…POLITICAL CORRECTNESS cum NEWSPEAK.
Please remove this and the last comment by me…I didn’t realize that the Political Correctness one was about Jew hatred…I wasn’t able to open my other PC Watch, with John Jay Ray…I posted the other one, without thoroughaly.
Thanks, and sorry
Narcissists are adults with the emotions of children.
They are crude, rude, nasty, murderous, suicidal, homicidal, carnal, stupid and feral.
Michael Jackson wasn’t a political person. But, he is the quintessential demonic child Narcissist…Serial Pedophile, little girl persona.
I believe, Amerika is getting ready to put his grotesque puss on a coin and celebrate his birthday.
Can you imagine, if a Republican was AFRAID that Guam was going to capsize?
Misspelling potato, mispronouncing nuclear and writing some notes on your hand, sends a Leftist into never ending hysterical laughter.
Leftists CELEBRATE when people like Jerry Ford, Tony Snow and Jerry Falwell die.
http://4merly-a-person.livejournal.com/180819.html
The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence “correct”. Who said this? “Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything”. It was V.I. Lenin
Basically, Leftists are Anal Retentives, on steroids…You cannot count the beans too many times, and you NEVER are satisfied with the final tally.
Leftists have recently sniffed that the Tea Partiers, are Stalinists…
Well, in my life, I believe I’ve seen one or two documentaries about Uncle Jo. That’s because virtually all Communist Leaders have been sacrosanct as long as I’ve been alive…HITLER, HITLER, HITLER, HITLER, MUSSOLINI!
The original Tea Party was carried out by near Super Human Freemasons, who also shrugged off the chains of English Tyranny.
They must be desperate to equate Jo, to American Patriots.
I think that The Big OH, is closer to Stalin, than anybody in my recent memory.
“Signs Of The Times” Feb.,10…For example, a state agency called the N K V D was watching those applauding that day (for Comrade FDR’s Uncle Jo) to see who might be OPPOSING Josef and his IDEAL SOCIETY (UTOPIA.) The first ones to cease applauding and sit down were identified as INDEPENDENT THINKERS, A DANGER TO THE STATE. Many went to prison, some were executed, all in the name of a PERFECT SOCIETY THAT WOULD ELIMINATE PAIN AND SUFFERING.
I also don’t remember any of the Founding Fathers, worrying that we got enough fiber…exercise…TOO MUCH FAT, et al.
Obummer…You are the Commander in Chief, not the head of the Welfare Office, or Free Clinic…DIG?
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I’m not sure I agree with this article’s comment on therapists and religion. I have seen a few therapists in my life and one of things I’ve noticed is that they are some of the most deeply religious people I have ever met. They have tried to hide it as they aren’t supposed to let those beliefs influence the therapy, but if you know someone long enough it comes out. One therapist I had was a devout Christian and one was an orthodox Jew.
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