John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE ON ALTERNET
'What happens when a narcissist is being threatened with the loss of power and control? The answer is something psychologists call “narcissistic injury.”'
Sorry, but the kind of stuff in this article is as poor as anything Trump’s crowd throws out at us.
What’s special about Trump’s being a narcissist? That characteristic almost comes with the territory of national American politics. Good God, Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? Newt Gingrich? John McCain? Narcissists all, by any meaningful definition of the word.
I’m almost inclined to think that in pounding-fist, noisy imperial America, narcissists are the only people who can even hope to maneuver in Washington.
Although, we can move a notch up the spectrum of disorders to sociopaths, of which I have little doubt we’ve had more than a few. The ability to smile and project charm while killing, and on a large scale, surely is a recognizable trait in Washington. It absolutely characterizes Obama and Clinton.
My own view of quoting psychologists on almost anything is that it is a game. There are almost as many views and theories as there are practitioners. Psychology is not a science, it is a social science, and not a particularly rigorous one.
So, what is the purpose of calling someone like Trump a name such as “narcissist” and getting a psychologist to give an opinion about what happens when such people lose power? This is just a game, a game of words.
I dislike Trump intensely and certainly do not defend him, but I do like to defend truth, and the truth is that this kind of analysis is “a crock.”
