First of all, nice post.

Did you just call the "Democrat" side of Captain Kirk the "good" one?

And do you think the right-wingers' quickness to label others anti-capitalism and anti-American is a sign of being "balanced"?

I mean, I can't tell how many times I have been called anti-capitalist on your blog, and yet nothing could be further from the truth. I love capitalism, believe in it 100%, and could talk about it all day long. I really don't deserve to be questioned about that if I disagree with someone about Social Security or taxes.
Mitzell | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 3:00 pm | #

Mitzell, for too long the Idealized side of the Self has been given a free pass to call the Grandiose Self "bad". It isn't. BOTH are GOOD, in that they are essential for psychological health. That's why I have them in quotes in the passage! And I don't think most Democrats are "Bad" they just behave badly and without much insight into their own motivations and flaws.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 3:41 pm | #

I should add--and I hope I've made clear--that BOTH can be very, very BAD when they do not work together for the interest of the individual and society.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 3:43 pm | #

I agree with you. I just think that the denouncement of others by the right-wingers is going waaay too far. They've gone beyond attacking anyone perceived as "liberal"--they will now viciously attack other Republicans who don't agree with their appointments or bills.

Bush talked about running this country like a business, but ANY good businessperson will tell you that surrounding yourself with "yes men" is dooming yourself to failure. Beyond that, the societal implications of labeling half the country as traitors is frightening. I am a reasonable person, myself, but someday some disturbed liberal is going to get sick and tired of being told he supports radical Islam, and he's (ironically) going to blow something up.

Again, I did enjoy your post and agree with the vast majority of it, but I needed to point out that in my opinion American government and society is not nearly as "balanced" as it should be.
Mitzell | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 4:06 pm | #

What a wonderful series of posts. Thank you.

Eric Hoffer's book "True Believer" from the '50s dealt with the pathology of those involved in political causes like Nazism and communism. As I recall, the simple version of that book was that people with very low self esteem and a low sense of their own power got their sense of esteem and power by becoming part of an idealized cause that was going to massively change the world and make it become an ideal world, after some nice fun violence in which the suppressed rage of the true believers got to be acted out.

Trying to keep political thought in the realm of the human, with both its strengths and weaknesses, and out of the realm of the ideal, with its inevitable hearless destruction and tyranny, is a hard thing to do. Seeing the pursuit of the idealized "other" as a form of working out narcissistic rage is very helpful (unless I didn't quite absorb yet what you were saying.)

I suppose what I am thinking is that this helps explain why the radical left is so impervious to rational argument against their fervid beliefs. Their beliefs are not based on reason and the real world, but rather based in their unprocessed and unrelasesed rage of other-based narcissism.

How on earth does one deal with these systems of belief based on a supra-idealism that is impervioius to reality and sitting on a mental disorder, which seems to be afflicting millions, perhaps billions, in theh world?

The only hope I have is that people's desire to be compassionate can be spoken to by pointing out how the ideologies of supposed "compassion" - e.g. communism and socialism - are actually uncompassionate because the net result is to hurt people by denying them their individuality.

There is much in your posts that I haven't yet grocked. Thank you for stimulating thinking.
jfmoreschi | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 7:42 pm | #

Mitzell:

Liberal/reality based/progessive leftists constantly deny current reality and want to progess to the 1930's. They never met a dictator they did not love and admire and respect and protect, no matter how many millions have been murdered at the dictator's whim. They object to offering the governed masses any choice except the one they have selected. They ridicule the beliefs of the rubes in Jesusland and deify Hollywood and violence-obsessed rappers and judges. Killing the helpless unable to communicate is elemental theology, as is saving the lives of convicted murderers. They object strenuously to any challenge to their ideas and respond by attacking their critics' person. They worship flag burners. Prolific use of the F word and every form of pornography is protected speech, but any mention of God in any context violates the Constitution.

Make the case that these are behaviors that benefit both the individual and society. No fair cherry-picking.
Sasquatch | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 9:24 pm | #

Dude, if you're comparing me to those people, then I'm going to compare you to Eric Rudolph. "Radical" to either extreme is bad. But I admittedly have bigger problems with the Republicans right now, because they're in power.

I don't know how many of my comments you've seen, Sasquatch, but I assure you I don't like dictators, deify rappers, burn flags or turn my back on challenges. And yet I have been called anti-capitalist, and worse yet anti-American, MANY TIMES on here. That is a problem. If you are judging ME, a very open-minded, socially conservative Democrat based on people who burn American flags, then that is a problem indeed.
Mitzell | Email | Homepage | 04.17.05 - 11:19 pm | #

- wasn't Ayn Rand quite narcissistic

- why do you view libertarianism as nonideal

thanks
questions | Email | Homepage | 04.18.05 - 7:03 am | #

Ayn Rand's personal life leaved much to be desired, as she left a trail of bitterness and broken lives in her wake. I only met her once, and she certainly was in touch with her grandiose self; but she was incredibly impressive in her thinking, and I have always been somewhat in awe of how she took on the entire establishment.

I don't believe I made any specific comment about libertarianism--of course, what I think depends on what you mean--libertarian as the ideal of Liberty; versus libertarian the political party. Libertarian --meaning the application of Liberty, I equate with optimal freedom. However, the concept has been taken over by many anarchist and even socialist agendas (e.g., Noam Chomskey's so-called "Libertarian Socialism"-UGH.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 04.18.05 - 11:06 am | #

Here's an interesting take on Libertarianism that I think is interesting and raises some of the issues in my last comment: Why Conservatives Can't Be Libertarian". I have considered myself a libertarian for many years, but in the last decade I have become unhappy with some of the issues they have focused on.
Dr. Sanity | Email | Homepage | 04.18.05 - 7:02 pm | #

Mitzell:

My earlier post was a statement of generally observed behaviors. It offered you an opportunity to defend any or all of them as benefitting both the individual and society. It never referred to you in any way except the salutation, and did not associate you with the behaviors in any way.

Generalizations are generally correct at the highest group level and quite inappropriate and inaccurate at the individual level. Nothing in that post associated you with any of the observed behaviors.

Go back and read your first posts on this thread. They were attacks on right-wingers.

You clearly object to generalized observations on the observed behavior of some on the left, and want to take them personally in the absence of any personalization.

Attacking whole classes is an observed behavior. If you find it offensive when not aimed at you, why do you think it will be persuasive when you aim it at others? Or is it simply venting?

Seems that Dr. Sanity was talking about the impact of Narcissim and Society, or how identifiable psychological factors can affect observed behavior. What factors lead to behavior that benefits both the individual and society.
Sasquatch | Email | Homepage | 04.19.05 - 12:54 am | #

As Wretchard at The Belmont Club pointed out in a recent post, a review of the 20th century, for example, shows that all the "people's revolutions" supported by the Left and purportedly for the purpose of "freeing" large populations of people; resulted instead in enslaving them and increasing authoritarian rule.

Compare this to the track record of right-wing sponsored violence, the CIA sponsoring and then dumping the Viet Minh (who later became the Viet Cong), and their repeat of history with Osama Bin Laden.

The idea that a pure capitalist state is somehow less coercive is an interesting one. As an Australian, I see people complaining about the government's 'coercive threats' to withdraw or further limit unemployment payments.

Examine the Project for a New American Century, and you'll see that the right-wing has members willing to exalt an ideal and to use force to achieve their goals.

If you want to use a psychological theory to promote a particular political ideal, I suggest you establish the links between the theory and the politics more clearly. In particular, by categorizing 'social democracy' without any discussion whatsoever, you invite criticism.
Nick | Email | Homepage | 04.23.05 - 4:42 am | #

No one says that the Right is not also capable of promoting a particular political ideal. Both sides do. She has put fascism in there. She has noted that capitalists (e.g., CEO's who abuse the company for personal profit) have cheated and defrauded. But for sheer numbers of dead, you must look to the Left (or "do-gooder") side of the political spectrum. In that, C.S. Lewis was right on target.
anonymous | Email | Homepage | 04.23.05 - 8:58 am | #

Fascinating stuff, even more fascinating blog.

I don't know what religion you belong to (if any), but your "Enemy Within" peroration sounds VERY much like the concept of "Yetzer tov" (lit. "good impulse") and "Yetzer hara" (lit. "evil impulse", peculiarly akin to the Freudian concept of libido) in rabbinical literature. There is a fascinating discussion in the Midrash Rabba about why G-d created man with both impulses: it is concluded that both are necessary, because "were it not for the yetzer hara, no man would build a house, marry a wife, beget children, or conduct business affairs" (Midrash: Genesis Rabba 9:7).
Former Belgian | Email | Homepage | 04.25.05 - 12:19 pm | #

It's a bit redundant, since a lot of this is covered in the article in the listing of characteristics of the fragmented self. Still, I thought it might be useful to try to transform the original list of narcissistic characteristics, into a similar list for narcissistic idealism:


Narcissism

1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance
2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Believes he is "special" and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
4. Requires excessive admiration
5. Has a sense of entitlement
6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends
7. Lacks empathy
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him
9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitude

Narcissistic Idealism

1. An exaggerated sense of the importance and transformative power of their idealized group or movement, both in their own lives to this point, and in the power of that group or movement to alter all the circumstances of human life in the future.
2. Belief in an (eventual) ideal of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love through their idealized group or movement.
3. Believes only those from his idealized group can understood him truly, and that he should associate primarily with other such believers, save for the purpose of converting others and bringing them into the group.
4. Is only comfortable with admiration for his idealized group or movement, not detailed criticism or analysis of it, however dispassionate, or an examination of it's actual practical consequences.
5. Has a sense of the entitlement or ultimate inevitable victory of his idealized group or movement - likely everywhere and for everyone, but perhaps for an elite group.
6. Likely believes that the importance of the idealized group or movement excuses acts or omissions of acts that would be less excusable outside this group. (Such as acting without careful considering consequences or outside ordinary rules or ethical concerns.)
7. Lacks empathy for other ways of thinking, or even a belief in the right of others to think differently or explore other ideas or groups.
8. Strongly believes other points of view should not exist or will one day not exist or be prominent, that ultimately their is only room for their idealized group or movement. Emotionally uncomfortable with the successful coexistence of more than one distinct such philosophy, movement, or group over time.
9. Can be arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous toward non-believers or toward other points of view, in his behaviors or attitude - without necessarily realizing that this is how he comes across.

Dr. Sanity or others can no doubt improve this. Without having the advantage of her professional reading, I've long thought that narcissists aren't just somatic or classical - the root is a confusion of being thought good and being good. If your parents or strongest influences respected money, likely you will too, as a narcissist. If they respected an appearance of holiness, then you're likely to go that route. Etc. Etc.

I don't think that contradicts Dr. Sanity, this seems complemetary to me, perhaps naively.
Russell Johnston | Email | Homepage | 06.10.05 - 2:14 am | #

good stuff. but of course the classic text on all this is Christoper Lasch's "The Culture of Narcisism." This is a great read (and re-read) for all interested in the the topic and effects that large scale narcisism of both the right-wing and the left-wing variety has had upon our political and social world.
anon | Email | Homepage | 06.15.05 - 12:50 am | #

I only wish that we could bring these concepts into the main stream media. We have politcal, economic and legal analysts opining daily on every news item. If only Dr. Sanity had such a forum and could give insight into these motivators she might innoculate (some of) society from their negative effects.

How many failed marriages, buisness relationships, lives could be prevented if people knew about NPD and it's signs and consequences?
Anontoo | Email | Homepage | 07.31.05 - 1:22 pm | #

Since the real point of these posts of yours is the establishment of the Psychopathology of Left Politics, my response here needs to start with some truth in packaging.

My own politics are liberal. They center around the notion of the "public interest". It is my view that the public interest should, in most cases, be placed ahead of private interests, and it should restrain private interests in matters where the general public is largely impacted by the results.

The public interest is the basis of what we call political commonweal. And I derive virtually all of my politics logically from the Preamble of the United States Constitution, which defines the public interest more compactly, precisely, and elegantly than anything else I know:

"to form a more perfect Union, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity."

Whether this makes me part of "the Left" or not I will leave to your personal judgment.

I am also Bipolar. My mental health condition is under pharmaceutical control, and, since I never became delusional [or at least sufficiently delusional to attract attention] during my highs or suicidal during my lows, I managed to avoid the unhealable trauma of confinement.

I work, part-time, on a toll-free mental health client information and complaint line, so I have a well rounded experience with real psychopathology, and this from the from the viewpoint of the client and his family, rather than the caregiver who has never truly experienced a fire in the brain, no matter what degrees they may have accumulated or how many patients they may have seen.

What does this mean? It can be phrased simply:

I am in Recovery. But even though Recovery is real, you do not come out of Mental Illness by the same door you went in. No one who has not been through both those doors has any real understanding of what that means.

Whether or not that makes my personal Liberal politics psychopathological, I'll leave to your professional judgment.

I am, however, highly skeptical of your political judgment. And when I read things such as this, I think I have a right to be:

“Any political or economic system that expects to succeed in the real world will have to accommodate that tension, and find a way to optimally negotiate the needs of BOTH sides of the Self--that is, they will have to take into account human nature.”

We already went through the fan dance of “human nature” in Part I. I really don’t have any more to say about it here than I did there. You essentially accept it as a matter of faith, and I can presume it and see where it leads.

You also have a place you want to go with the fan dance: the justification of “democratic capitalism”, which you like better than the other alternatives, and the basis of your justification is “success”.

Now I have no clear idea from this essay how you measure economic or political “success”. But, insofar as I can see, the only realistic measure of “success” of an economic or political system [other than “it makes me feel good thinking about it”] is how long it lasts in time. By that standard, Imperial China was the most successful governmental system the world has ever seen, lasting, under one imperial family or another, for several thousand years. Our American flavor of Democratic Capitalism hasn’t quite made 230 yet. And ours is by far the oldest flavor of it on the planet.

"In some ways, the rise of human civilization from the cave to the present day has resulted because of attempts through the Rule of Law and social controls to set limits on the unrestrained Grandiose Self."

It is a commonplace to think that for tens of thousands of years we were simply Ugh and Glug until we suddenly wised up in a delirious March of Civilization from Herding, to Settled Agriculture, to the Roman Empire, to the Italian Renaissance, to Industrialization and Capitalism, and, finally, to the Windows operating system. It is also a commonplace to think that the remnants of tribal cultures--which were likely the general human social organization in our pre-Agricultural past, as well as for much of our March of Civilization past—still consist merely of Ugh and Glug.

It simply isn’t true.

Nearly everything of value in human experience and most of what we actually call “civilization” is already there in any Clovis point or petroglyph—the toys have gotten more complicated, nothing more, and some things from back then, like the atlatl, have never been bettered on their own terms. You find this out very quickly and painfully if you don’t handle a well-made obsidian blade as carefully as you would handle a well-made steel one. The millionth prime number is no more “prime” than the first.

Tribal cultures lasted for tens of thousands of years for one very simple reason. They worked. The jury is still out on whether the March of Civilization will work that well for that long. It is a very thin skin on a thick and solid human history—perhaps 6000 years at best. Capitalism, by the way, is even thinner—the first real traces of it, joint stock ventures and deposit banking—go back a mere 500 years, at best.

And some of the indicators of its durablity are not all that positive. If you hang out in pioneer graveyards in Ohio, many of which are still virgin prairie, you learn quickly that a mere 220 years has washed about six inches of the topsoil down to the Mississippi Delta. We also see our soldiers kicking up dust every day on the land that was once known as the “Fertile Crescent”.

Then we can turn to this:

“A perusal of any list of economic systems will demonstrate that ALMOST ALL OF THEM are relatively extreme expressions of the Idealized Parent Image/Omnipotent Object. Almost all emphasize the group, the community, the collective, the nation, the state, or god at the expense of the individual. Examples are numerous. Socialism and Communism; fascism and religious fundamentalism.”

Fifty percent of your “list of economic systems” are not economic systems in the least.

Socialism is. Communism is. Fascism is not. Religious Fundamentalism is not. By Fundamentalism I presume you mean some greater or lesser degree of persecution and “heresy hunting” and not mere purity of religious belief.

The actual list of “economic systems” in chronological order as they have developed in Europe and the European Diaspora is as follows: Private, specie driven, merchantilism; specie poor and largely barter Feudalism; nation-state manipulated, inflation driven, merchantilism; capitalism; socialism; and communism.

The rise of European fascism took place in a largely unrestrained capitalist economic environment, and one suffering massive economic dislocations, which we have since learned to control, if not eradicate.

Religious fundamentalism, in one form of another, has been with us all the way back to the initial Christian challenge of the Pagan world, through the rise of Islam, and has continued off and on through all of the economic systems I have listed above.

I don’t think my friends on the Right are psychopathologial in the least. But they often could do with a dose of accurate historical information.

So now let’s move on to politics:

“There are two general types of political systems--Freedom-based (Libertarian) and Totalitarian-based (Authoritarian)--and everything in-between.”

I presume what you really mean here is that there is a gradient of political systems from the absolutely Libertarian to the absolutely Authoritarian, though your language does not really say this. With only two mutually exclusive types of systems you can’t have an “in-between”.

You also appear to believe that everything but Democratic Capitalism is more or less authoritarian, the “more or less” being the real gradient.

I leave aside the matter of “Anarcho-Capitalism”, by which I presume you mean a capitalist economy with no government attached. My small historical reading has never encountered any such thing. The nearest approach to it that I can see would be piracy on the high seas, and even pirates died at the end of a rope when the government could catch them.

Besides accurate historical information, it helps when discussing these things to work on developing clarity of intellectual conception.

So now we reach your central conclusion:

“When combined with Democracy and individual freedom, Capitalism will provide the greatest measure of happiness and well-being (by encouraging a Cohesive Self) for the greatest number of people. It allows for optimal expression of the Grandiose Self and limits (but does not suppress) it by the Rule of Law. And Democracy limits the power of the state also by the Rule of Law and by specific protection of minorities from the majority.”

I’m sure you are familiar with the title of Ayn Rand’s book, Capitalism, the Unknown Ideal. I am inevitably reminded of it here by your use of the future tense [“capitalism will…”].

It is useful here to use the future tense. Why? Because when someone asks the very reasonable question, “Why will Democratic Capitalism do this?” the obvious short answer is, “Because of Human Nature.” All the other conceptions, the Grandiose Self, and so on, merely elaborate and articulate a presumed “human nature”.

Now if your conclusion and my question were put in the past tense, “Why has Democratic Capitalism done this?” it would be extremely inconvenient for your argument, because you would have to confront the historical facts of how both Capitalism and Democracy have actually operated in the world over the past few centuries.

In other words, instead of merely having faith in “human nature” one would have to confront the actual facts of human culture.

Those facts very clearly indicate that both Democracy and Capitalism, like all real human endeavors, have
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 11.02.05 - 11:08 am | #

had mixed historical results: some good, some bad. Perhaps this is why Capitalism is the “unknown ideal”. An unknown ideal cannot be held responsible for either buttering parsnips or breaking bones.

My own Liberal politics would analyze these actual historical results of Democracy and Capitalism more precisely as: generally good effects with some bad, but manageable, side effects. It would also assert that the real issues of Democracy and Capitalism are how to manage the side effects and encourage the good effects.

I would also remark that the constant red flag waving of “The Left” indulged in by my conservative friends [as in “The Psychopathology of Left Politics”] has as it’s end the avoidance of actually confronting the concrete expression and argument for the Liberal view with Conservative intellect and refuting in on its own terms.

As we have seen in my three replies to the three parts of your essay, I, at least, have no trouble with confronting the concrete expression of your views and doing my best to refute them. It’s been a pleasure, and I thank you sincerely for allowing me to use your bandwidth to do so.
Joseph Marshall | Email | Homepage | 11.02.05 - 11:14 am | #

I have also been struggling with a psychological frame for current affairs and found your discussion interesting. My only issue is that when one uses a psychoanalytic frame to explain current affairs, it doesn't explain the dynamics of defenses and other unconscious dynamics. You mentioned, for example, displacement in a recent comment picked up by Powerline. My observation is both the far right and left are conscious of their "displacement" tactics.

I like to think about current affairs more from a systems frame rather than psychoanalytic. For example, Bowen's "emotional cutoff" in family systems and Bonner's integration and isolation dynamics explain it better. I am also intrigued by the addiction model, specifically where a person uses denial by rationalizing interpersonal behavior as a way to avoid taking responsibility for something.

Perhaps, however, emotional cutoff, isolation, and rationalization are only behaviors in a system characterized by Narcissistic Idealism/Awe.

This, regardless of the frame, brings us to an even more difficult point: what is the approach to treatment?

Thanks. Good article

Ken F.
Ken Finlayson | Email | Homepage | 11.14.05 - 3:31 pm | #

Thanks, this entire series helped to explain in words what I, a mere layperson, have observed. Now I have (some of) the reasons behind so much bizarre behavior I have seen in politics and in personal interactions.
ZoomerZ | Email | Homepage | 12.02.05 - 2:10 am | #

Evil is based, quite simply, on self-deception, not self-acceptance. A malignant narcissist so hates himself that he creates a false self (perfect, omnipotent, godlike, etc.) to present to the world, feeding on its admiration, and hides his true self (weak, mortal, human, etc.) of which he feels ashamed. He becomes an actor, not an authentic, empathic person -- which is why the narcissist can be so vindictive to an unappreciative audience. As Voltaire said, "The Perfect is enemy of the Good."
Echo Lake | Email | Homepage | 01.16.06 - 4:34 pm | #

Too few analysts and psychological practitioners actually integrate their knowledge with world events. I suspect you are a natural at seeing the world through an increasingly focused lens.

Your application of self psychology to political and economic structures is quite novel and insightful. I am working on a project for our regional psychoanalytic society which examines political and global processes from this same framwork. If I may be permitted, I want to first pose a question, and then a comment: Where did you get your training? And now the comment--the Grandiose Self is no respecter of political affiliation nor economic spectrum. Relatedly,the GS can neither understand nor tolerate the democratic aspect of democratic capitalism...it schemes and scams on both sides of the isle, does it not?
DrBob | Email | Homepage | 07.01.06 - 7:34 pm | #