Monday, July 10, 2017

NARCISSISM AS VIEWED BY A CHILD

I divided my mother's siblings into two groups, the angelic souls who were generous to a fault, and those who I called "shrivelled souls".  I later learned that the "shrivelled souls" suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Things that I learned early about the "shrivelled souls" is that sometimes they would recall a slight that had occurred more than a decade before and would work themselves into a frenzy over it as if it had occurred the day before.  They never forgot the slight.  Another of the things was the futility of holding a meaningful discussion as to the merits of an argument.  Any disagreement with a given point was viewed as a personal attack and responded to with an ad hominem attack.

"Shrivelled souls" lacked generosity and had a need for a proscribed environment where they did not have to confront new things; they would withdraw from the unfamiliar. 

3 comments:

  1. Every family has its own tensions ... even under the "best" of circumstances. Biblical references ... and human nature. Can you imagine the HELL this particular family must be?

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/11/opinion/donald-trump-jr.html?hpw=undefined&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

    http://www.complex.com/life/2016/11/donald-trump-jr-college-classmate-claims-trump-knocked-son-ground-in-front-friends-once

    The term "dysfunctional" is now commonly used in describing family interactions ... but the degree is never defined. All manner of dysfunction equal? To be sure, in the Trump family, all manner of narcissism have been professional judged as exhibiting extreme expression. I don't know how dysfunctional we as country are, but we have surely elected the ultimate ... one-eyed man in the world of the blind.

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  2. You are right about every family having its own baggage, and many families have their private hell. The only context in which I discuss my family id because of the present resident of th White House. Before the election, in 2015, I posted this:

    BLEAK HAVE BEEN THE REIGNS
    Having had the misfortune of living in proximity of family members, with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), in my early years, I have never associated egotism, alone, as a determinant of the disorder. Accordingly, I think that a diagnosis, based on this trait, alone, would be unfair to Donald Trump, even if he seems to have an abnormal amount of same. However, there are two other traits that I do associate with Narcissists,the first of which is the fact that Narcissists rarely argue the issues during a discussion; they are prone to offering ad hominem arguments; Trump rarely offers arguments against someone's positions, choosing, instead, to offer insults, diatribe and invective against the person.

    The second trait that I had learned to associate with people with NPD, was their inability to forget even the smallest slight, they perceived as having been done to them, even after the passage of time. Even after "burying the hatchet" with Roger Ailes, of Fox News, after his run in with Megyn Kelley, Trump could not resist offering a gratuitous insult to her, thinking about what had transpired several days earlier.

    I do enjoy Trump hoisting Republicans on their own petard of demonization, innuendo and character assassination, but I would never want to see a Narcissist in the White House, for bleak indeed have been the reigns of Narcissists,

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  3. Agree. Nothing to add. Enough damage wrought.

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