By Hal Brown, MSW
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Not that you need a reminder, malignant narcissism is a combination of narcissism, antisocial behavior (sociopathy), aggression, sadism and grandiosity.
The social psychologist Erich Fromm first coined the term "malignant narcissism" in 1964, describing it as a "severe mental sickness" representing "the quintessence of evil". He characterized the condition as "the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity"
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It consistently finds its way into the news because of Donald Trump’s behavior. It is now in general usage among many people speaking or writing about Donald Trump. For example, it jumped out at me in Nickolas Kristoff’s column in today's NY Times:
The Rev. John Huffman, who once was President Richard Nixon’s pastor, said he has voted Republican all his life but has now joined a group called Pro-Life Evangelicals for Biden. He said he prays for Trump but sees him as “an immoral, amoral sociopathic liar who functions from a core of insecure malignant narcissism.”
If you do a news search on DuckDuckGo for Trump malignant narcissism (here) this is what comes up:
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The top story on this search is Trump is a malignant narcissist — leadership guru coming from, of all websites, RT, formerly Russia Today. It is a state controlled International media network funded by the Russian tax budget. Wikipedia tells us that “RT has been described as a propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. RT has also been accused of spreading disinformation by news reporters, including some former RT reporters.”
The interview is with Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, a Dutch management scholar and psychoanalyst, Professor of leadership development and organizational change at INSEAD, and consultant. His work focuses on leadership and the dynamics of individual and organizational change. Specifically, Kets de Vries explores the interface between management theory, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, executive coaching and evolutionary psychology. Wikipedia
Here are a couple of relevant excerpts:
SS: A lot of people that I've spoken to said, you know, when things like pandemics happen, when there's so much uncertainty, and no one has the answers, you can be the most experienced leader and you can be very smart and you can be very talented, but unless you have emotional intelligence, and that encompasses a lot of other traits within itself, for instance, empathy, and adaptivity there's no way you can lead a nation out of a crisis like a pandemic. Would you agree with this? Would you agree that something like emotional intelligence is a must-have for a good leader during the times of crisis like this?
MKV: The first thing you have to know what are your strengths and weaknesses, you can’t do it all. Leadership is really a team sport. And unfortunately, Trump, to give that example, because I like the example since I'm also now a psychoanalyst in my other life, I have two hats, I’m a management professor and psychoanalyst. He is the example that’s called a malignant narcissist. And a malignant narcissist is basically — I've written quite a bit about him, actually, because I couldn't believe that people would pick a sick-o, which he really is, — so his major thing seems he is so insecure, that it's all about him. It’s always about him, something about him. And the second thing, he is very vindictive. So, anybody who is not with him is against him, and he will do anything to crush the person, he has to win, which is, of course, going to be interesting because of this election, because he cannot lose in his mind. So, he has to find all different ways to find excuses not to lose.
I mean when you look at the Trump person he is basically a child who’ll never grow up. He’s so insecure, he needs all the time reinforcement.
Do a DuckDuckGo search for videos with the term Trump malignant narcissism and this is what you see:
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Last year an RT producer called me to see if she could fly from San Francisco to Portland to interview me about Trump. I declined as did several of my associates in the Duty to Warn group.
They frequently publish stories about Trump. For example