My post of 15 October suggested that Donald Trump might not be totally bananas. David Owen agrees with me. But his article published on Sunday* made uncomfortable reading nonetheless.
Owen noted that, when Trump was elected, there were many amateur diagnoses of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). This stopped abruptly when Allen Francis, the professor of psychiatry who first defined NPD wrote to the New York Times making clear Trump did not have the condition. "He may be a world-class narcissist, but this doesn't make him mentally ill." There is a marked difference between NPD, classified as a psychiatric illness and narcissism, a personality trait.
All good, but Owen went on to say:
"Narcissists train themselves from an early age to block out other voices, other opinions, so one of the few voices they trust is their own."
Hmm. One of my mantras during my business career was "trust your own judgement", though to be fair this started in earnest when I was given very poor counsel, counter to my own opinion, by my boss's boss while in my early 30s. But there was more:
"They are accustomed to listening to themselves talk (oh, SO guilty!) debating different sides of the same issue... (I like testing arguments this way all the time. It really irritates people sometimes when I take the counter view to what they have said, just to test where it might go).... finally reaching a decision about what to do and the best way to do it." (Oh, yes as well! After all, if I'm going to trust my own judgement, who else can I have the debate with?)
Apparently narcissism is common in many heads of government, military commanders and business leaders. It is not, as some think, indistinguishable from hubris. Hubris is characterised by overconfidence (wow, there's one I at least don't feel guilty of!) overambition (well, I was ambitious but I knew many who were much more so), arrogance (no comment, Fifth amendment!) and excessive pride (I don't think that's me, there would be so little to justify it!). While, according to an emeritus professor of psychiatry at King's College, London narcissism is expressed with "blatantly attention-seeking, grandiose sense of self-importance, a persistant and burdensome search for admiration and lack of empathy". Well. I have sometimes found myself seeking praise - never got much as a kid, you know, but never felt I needed it then - and one of those gobbledegook psychometric tests at work indicated a lack of empathy (though I might have been trying to frig the outcome towards strong leadership and other tests didn't come out that way - but then I made sure they didn't.....) And if I'm not attention-seeking, why do I write this blog, for frig's sake?
So, I've been found out - a narcissist, then. But surely not as big a one as the Donald.....??? And at least it doesn't count as "mentally ill". Phew.
But I'm sure everyone can see some of these characteristics in themselves. Er, you do, don't you?
*Trump floats above us all on a double bubble of narcissism and hubris. Sunday Times 28 October 2018. Owen's book, Hubris: The Road To Donald Trump, is published by Methuen on 1 November
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