That's what I want to explore here--the social role of malignant narcissism in America today, particularly in two regards: (1) The current economic crisis (in this diary), (2) American exceptionalism and the war on terror (in part 2)
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This is Part 2, as promised. Only I've decided to break into a few different pieces. Here, I want to start off with a remarkable NYT Op-Ed column I've stumbled across from 2005. It's called "The Tipping Point", it's by British psychologist Belinda Board, who conducted a survey discovering widespread signs of personality disorders in the British business class, and it's about John Bolton--President Bush's then nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, who was up for Senate confirmation.
Her piece begins:
John Bolton, President Bush's nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations, has been described as dogmatic, abusive to his subordinates and a bully. Yet Mr. Bush has said that John Bolton is the right man at the right time. Can these seemingly contradictory statements both be accurate? Yes. The reality is that sometimes the characteristics that make someone successful in business or government can render them unpleasant personally. What's more astonishing is that those characteristics when exaggerated are the same ones often found in criminals.
What's more astonishing to me is how directly Board approaches the point of identifying Bolton--as well as large numbers of "high-ranking business executives" -as marked by personality disorders common among criminals, and then normalizes this rather shocking and appalling state of affairs. Board's attitude seems remarkable consonant with Obama's casual dismissal of massive and open war crimes as no big deal. It represents a desire for the complete normalization of the abnormal, the abusive, the bizarre, and the criminal, just so long as it "works."
There has been anecdotal and case-study evidence suggesting that successful business executives share personality characteristics with psychopaths. The question is, are the characteristics that make up personality disorders fundamentally different from the characteristics of extreme personalities we see in everyday life, or do they differ only in degree?
In 2001, I compared the personality traits of 39 high-ranking business executives in Britain with psychiatric patients and criminals with a history of mental health problems. The business managers completed a standard clinical personality-disorder diagnostic questionnaire and then were interviewed. The information on personality disorders among criminals and psychiatric patients had been gathered by local clinics.
Our sample was small, but the results were definitive. If personality and its pathology are distinct from each other, we should have found different levels of personality disorders in these diverse populations. We didn't. The character disorders of the business managers blended together with those of the criminals and mental patients.
In fact, the business population was as likely as the prison and psychiatric populations to demonstrate the traits associated with narcissistic personality disorder: grandiosity, lack of empathy, exploitativeness and independence. They were also as likely to have traits associated with compulsive personality disorder: stubbornness, dictatorial tendencies, perfectionism and an excessive devotion to work.
While you or I might regard these findings as deeply troubling, we are obviously maladjusted, as Board seems to take them all in stride. After all, she goes on to note, there are significant differences as well:
The executives were significantly more likely to demonstrate characteristics associated with histrionic personality disorder, like superficial charm, insincerity, egocentricity and manipulativeness.
They were also significantly less likely to demonstrate physical aggression, irresponsibility with work and finances, lack of remorse and impulsiveness.
What does this tell us? It tells us that if reports of Mr. Bolton's behavior are accurate then both his supporters and critics could be right. It also tells us that characteristics of personality disorders can be found throughout society and are not just concentrated in psychiatric or prison hospitals. Each characteristic by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing.
There's another sort of conclusion one might draw: that the "high-ranking business executives" are more like criminals than they are like normal folk. But Board's reported data doesn't support this conclusion or her own. It remains to be investigated, so far as I'm aware. But I would be greatly surprised if Board's conclusion turned out to be true, rather than mine. After all, my conclusion is quite consonant with a good deal of common sense observation, occasionally raised to the level of poetry, as in:
There's room at the top they keep telling you still
But first you must least how to smile as you kill
If you want to be like the folks on the hill
--John Lennon, "Working Class Hero"
Board, I take it, is more of a Wings fan. Here's here peak of insight:
Take a basic characteristic like influence and it's an asset in business. Add to that a smattering of egocentricity, a soupçon of grandiosity, a smidgen of manipulativeness and lack of empathy, and you have someone who can climb the corporate ladder and stay on the right side of the law, but still be a horror to work with. Add a bit more of those characteristics plus lack of remorse and physical aggression, and you have someone who ends up behind bars.
Of course, what this entirely overlooks is the question of how such behavior affects the whole of society. What is it like to have the entire world run by such hateful people? And what would it be like to be free of them? How do they serve to normalize conflict and strife, as opposed to finding ways to satisfy everyone? And what does that mean for the whole world, when the most power nation(s) on earth are dominated by this sort of mindset at the very top?
And the question now, now that Bush is gone, what does it mean when even those who replace them, and "repudiate" their policies can't really bring themselves to judge their behavior fairly in a court of law?
Is that not just another example of narcissistic belief in our own exceptionalism?
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