Narcissism in the Boardroom
19 Aug 2005
The perpetrators of the recent spate of financial frauds in the USA acted with
callous disregard for both their employees and shareholders - not to mention
other stakeholders. Psychologists have often remote-diagnosed them as
"malignant, pathological narcissists".
Narcissists are driven by the need to uphold and maintain a false self - a
concocted, grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of the
narcissistic personality disorder. The false self is projected to the world in
order to garner "narcissistic supply" - adulation, admiration, or even
notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is usually deemed by narcissists to
be preferable to obscurity.
The false self is suffused with fantasies of perfection, grandeur, brilliance,
infallibility, immunity, significance, omnipotence, omnipresence, and
omniscience. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable
personal destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, the
construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific theories, the composition or
authoring or painting of the greatest work of art, the founding of a new school
of thought, the attainment of fabulous wealth, the reshaping of a nation or a
conglomerate, and so on. The narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself.
He is forever preoccupied with fantasies of uniqueness, record breaking, or
breathtaking achievements. His verbosity reflects this propensity.
Reality is, naturally, quite different and this gives rise to a
"grandiosity gap". The demands of the false self are never satisfied
by the narcissist's accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or
knowledge. The narcissist's grandiosity and sense of entitlement are equally
incommensurate with his achievements.
To bridge the grandiosity gap, the malignant (pathological) narcissist resorts
to shortcuts. These very often lead to fraud.
The narcissist cares only about appearances. What matters to him are the facade
of wealth and its attendant social status and narcissistic supply. Witness the
travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention only
exacerbates the narcissist's addiction and makes it incumbent on him to go to
ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted supply from this source.
The narcissist lacks empathy - the ability to put himself in other people's
shoes. He does not recognize boundaries - personal, corporate, or legal.
Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions, objects
unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his pursuit of narcissistic
gratification.
This makes the narcissist perniciously exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues,
and discards even his nearest and dearest in the most chilling manner. The
narcissist is utility- driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need to reduce his
anxiety
and regulate his labile sense of self-worth by securing a constant supply of his
drug - attention. American executives acted without compunction when they raided
their employees' pension funds - as did Robert Maxwell a generation earlier in
Britain.
The narcissist is convinced of his superiority - cerebral or physical. To his
mind, he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a horde of narrow-minded and envious
Lilliputians. The dotcom "new economy" was infested with
"visionaries" with a contemptuous attitude towards the mundane:
profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful journalists, and
cautious analysts.
Yet, deep inside, the narcissist is painfully aware of his addiction to others -
their attention, admiration, applause, and affirmation. He despises himself for
being thus dependent. He hates people the same way a drug addict hates his
pusher. He wishes to "put them in their place", humiliate them,
demonstrate to them how inadequate and imperfect they are in comparison to his
regal self and how little he craves or needs them.
The narcissist regards himself as one would an expensive present, a gift to his
company, to his family, to his neighbours, to his colleagues, to his country.
This firm conviction of his inflated importance makes him feel entitled to
special treatment, special favors, special outcomes, concessions, subservience,
immediate gratification, obsequiousness, and lenience. It also makes him feel
immune to mortal laws and somehow divinely protected and insulated from the
inevitable consequences of his deeds and misdeeds.
The self-destructive narcissist plays the role of the "bad guy" (or
"bad girl"). But even this is within the traditional social roles
cartoonishly exaggerated by the narcissist to attract attention. Men are likely
to emphasise intellect, power, aggression, money, or social status. Narcissistic
women are likely to emphasise body, looks, charm, sexuality, feminine
"traits", homemaking, children and childrearing.
Punishing the wayward narcissist is a veritable catch-22.
A jail term is useless as a deterrent if it only serves to focus attention on
the narcissist. Being infamous is second best to being famous - and far
preferable to being ignored. The only way to effectively punish a narcissist is
to withhold narcissistic supply from him and thus to prevent him from becoming a
notorious celebrity.
Given a sufficient amount of media exposure, book contracts, talk shows,
lectures, and public attention - the narcissist may even consider the whole
grisly affair to be emotionally rewarding. To the narcissist, freedom, wealth,
social status, family, vocation - are all means to an end. And the end is
attention. If he can secure attention by being the big bad wolf - the narcissist
unhesitatingly transforms himself into one. Lord Archer, for instance, seems to
be positively basking in the media circus provoked by his prison diaries.
The narcissist does not victimise, plunder, terrorise and abuse others in a
cold, calculating manner. He does so offhandedly, as a manifestation of his
genuine character. To be truly "guilty" one needs to intend, to
deliberate, to contemplate one's choices and then to choose one's acts. The
narcissist does none of these.
Thus, punishment breeds in him surprise, hurt and seething anger. The narcissist
is stunned by society's insistence that he should be held accountable for his
deeds and penalized accordingly. He feels wronged, baffled, injured, the victim
of bias, discrimination and injustice. He rebels and rages.
Depending upon the pervasiveness of his magical thinking, the narcissist may
feel besieged by overwhelming powers, forces cosmic and intrinsically ominous.
He may develop compulsive rites to fend off this "bad", unwarranted,
persecutory influences.
The narcissist, very much the infantile outcome of stunted personal development,
engages in magical thinking. He feels omnipotent, that there is nothing he
couldn't do or achieve if only he sets his mind to it. He feels omniscient - he
rarely admits to ignorance and regards his intuitions and intellect as founts of
objective data.
Thus, narcissists are haughtily convinced that introspection is a more important
and more efficient (not to mention easier to accomplish) method of obtaining
knowledge than the systematic study of outside sources of information in
accordance with strict and tedious curricula. Narcissists are
"inspired" and they despise hamstrung technocrats.
To some extent, they feel omnipresent because they are either famous or about to
become famous or because their product is selling or is being manufactured
globally. Deeply immersed in their delusions of grandeur, they firmly believe
that their acts have - or will have - a great influence not only on their firm,
but on their country, or even on Mankind. Having mastered the manipulation of
their human environment - they are convinced that they will always "get
away with it". They develop hubris and a false sense of immunity.
Narcissistic immunity is the (erroneous) feeling, harboured by the narcissist,
that he is impervious to the consequences of his actions, that he will never be
effected by the results of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs, deeds and
misdeeds, acts, inaction, or membership of certain groups, that he is above
reproach and punishment, that, magically, he is protected and will miraculously
be saved at the last moment. Hence the audacity, simplicity, and transparency of
some of the fraud and corporate looting in the 1990's. Narcissists rarely bother
to cover their traces, so great is their disdain and conviction that they are
above mortal laws and wherewithal.
What are the sources of this unrealistic appraisal of situations and events?
The false self is a childish response to abuse and trauma. Abuse is not limited
to sexual molestation or beatings. Smothering, doting, pampering,
over-indulgence, treating the child as an extension of the parent, not
respecting the child's boundaries, and burdening the child with excessive
expectations are also forms of abuse.
The child reacts by constructing false self that is possessed of everything it
needs in order to prevail: unlimited and instantaneously available Harry
Potter-like powers and wisdom. The false self, this Superman, is indifferent to
abuse and punishment. This way, the child's true self is shielded from the
toddler's harsh reality.
This artificial, maladaptive separation between a vulnerable (but not
punishable) true self and a punishable (but invulnerable) false self is an
effective mechanism. It isolates the child from the unjust, capricious,
emotionally dangerous world that he occupies. But, at the same time, it fosters
in him a false sense of "nothing can happen to me, because I am not here, I
am not available to be punished, hence I am immune to punishment".
The comfort of false immunity is also yielded by the narcissist's sense of
entitlement. In his grandiose delusions, the narcissist is sui generis, a gift
to humanity, a precious, fragile, object. Moreover, the narcissist is convinced
both that this uniqueness is immediately discernible - and that it gives him
special rights. The narcissist feels that he is protected by some cosmological
law pertaining to "endangered species".
He is convinced that his future contribution to others - his firm, his country,
humanity - should and does exempt him from the mundane: daily chores, boring
jobs, recurrent tasks, personal exertion, orderly investment of resources and
efforts, laws and regulations, social conventions, and so on.
The narcissist is entitled to a "special treatment": high living
standards, constant and immediate catering to his needs, the eradication of any
friction with the humdrum and the routine, an all-engulfing absolution of his
sins, fast track privileges (to higher education, or in his encounters with
bureaucracies, for instance). Punishment, trusts the narcissist, is for ordinary
people, where no great loss to humanity is involved.
Narcissists are possessed of inordinate abilities to charm, to convince, to
seduce, and to persuade. Many of them are gifted orators and intellectually
endowed. Many of them work in in politics, the media, fashion, show business,
the arts, medicine, or business, and serve as religious leaders.
By virtue of their standing in the community, their charisma, or their ability
to find the willing scapegoats, they do get exempted many times. Having
recurrently "got away with it" - they develop a theory of personal
immunity, founded upon some kind of societal and even cosmic "order"
in which certain people are above punishment.
But there is a fourth, simpler, explanation. The narcissist lacks
self-awareness. Divorced from his true self, unable to empathise (to understand
what it is like to be someone else), unwilling to constrain his actions to cater
to the feelings and needs of others - the narcissist is in a constant dreamlike
state.
To the narcissist, his life is unreal, like watching an autonomously unfolding
movie. The narcissist is a mere spectator, mildly interested, greatly
entertained at times. He does not "own" his actions. He, therefore,
cannot understand why he should be punished and when he is, he feels grossly
wronged.
So convinced is the narcissist that he is destined to great things - that he
refuses to accept setbacks, failures and punishments. He regards them as
temporary, as the outcomes of someone else's errors, as part of the future
mythology of his rise to power/brilliance/wealth/ideal love, etc. Being punished
is a diversion of his precious energy and resources from the all-important task
of fulfilling his mission in life.
The narcissist is pathologically envious of people and believes that they are
equally envious of him. He is paranoid, on guard, ready to fend off an imminent
attack. A punishment to the narcissist is a major surprise and a nuisance but it
also validates his suspicion that he is being persecuted. It proves to him that
strong forces are arrayed against him.
He tells himself that people, envious of his achievements and humiliated by
them, are out to get him. He constitutes a threat to the accepted order. When
required to pay for his misdeeds, the narcissist is always disdainful and bitter
and feels misunderstood by his inferiors.
Cooked books, corporate fraud, bending the (GAAP or other) rules, sweeping
problems under the carpet, over-promising, making grandiose claims (the
"vision thing") - are hallmarks of a narcissist in action. When social
cues and norms encourage such behaviour rather than inhibit it - in other words,
when such behaviour elicits abundant narcissistic supply - the pattern is
reinforced and become entrenched and rigid. Even when circumstances change, the
narcissist finds it difficult to adapt, shed his routines, and replace them with
new ones. He is trapped in his past success. He becomes a swindler.
But pathological narcissism is not an isolated phenomenon. It is embedded in our
contemporary culture. The West's is a narcissistic civilization. It upholds
narcissistic values and penalizes alternative value-systems. From an early age,
children are taught to avoid self-criticism, to deceive themselves regarding
their capacities and attainments, to feel entitled, and to exploit others.
As Lilian Katz observed in her important paper, "Distinctions between
Self-Esteem and Narcissism: Implications for Practice", published by the
Educational Resources Information Center, the line between enhancing self-esteem
and fostering narcissism is often blurred by educators and parents.
Both Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism" and Theodore
Millon in his books about personality disorders, singled out American society as
narcissistic. Litigiousness may be the flip side of an inane sense of
entitlement. Consumerism is built on this common and communal lie of "I can
do anything I want and possess everything I desire if I only apply myself to
it" and on the pathological envy it fosters.
Not surprisingly, narcissistic disorders are more common among men than among
women. This may be because narcissism conforms to masculine social mores and to
the prevailing ethos of capitalism. Ambition, achievements, hierarchy,
ruthlessness, drive - are both social values and narcissistic male traits.
Social thinkers like the aforementioned Lasch speculated that modern American
culture - a self-centred one - increases the rate of incidence of the
narcissistic personality disorder.
Otto Kernberg, a notable scholar of personality disorders, confirmed Lasch's
intuition: "Society can make serious psychological abnormalities, which
already exist in some percentage of the population, seem to be at least
superficially appropriate."
In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life", Theodore Millon
and Roger Davis state, as a matter of fact, that pathological narcissism was
once the preserve of "the royal and the wealthy" and that it
"seems to have gained prominence only in the late twentieth century".
Narcissism, according to them, may be associated with "higher levels of
Maslow's hierarchy of needs ... Individuals in less advantaged nations .. are
too busy trying (to survive) ... to be arrogant and grandiose".
They - like Lasch before them - attribute pathological narcissism to "a
society that stresses individualism and self-gratification at the expense of
community, namely the United States." They assert that the disorder is more
prevalent among certain professions with "star power" or respect.
"In an individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the
world'. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the
collective."
Millon quotes Warren and Caponi's "The Role of Culture in the Development
of Narcissistic Personality Disorders in America, Japan and Denmark":
"Individualistic narcissistic structures of self-regard (in individualistic
societies) ... are rather self-contained and independent ... (In collectivist
cultures) narcissistic configurations of the we-self ... denote self-esteem
derived from strong identification with the reputation and honor of the family,
groups, and others in hierarchical relationships."
Still, there are malignant narcissists among subsistence farmers in Africa,
nomads in the Sinai desert, day laborers in east Europe, and intellectuals and
socialites in Manhattan. Malignant narcissism is all-pervasive and independent
of culture and society. It is true, though, that the way pathological narcissism
manifests and is experienced is dependent on the particulars of societies and
cultures.
In some cultures, it is encouraged, in others suppressed. In some societies it
is channeled against minorities - in others it is tainted with paranoia. In
collectivist societies, it may be projected onto the collective, in
individualistic societies, it is an individual's trait.
Yet, can families, organizations, ethnic groups, churches, and even whole
nations be safely described as "narcissistic" or "pathologically
self-absorbed"? Can we talk about a "corporate culture of
narcissism"?
Human collectives - states, firms, households, institutions, political parties,
cliques, bands - acquire a life and a character all their own. The longer the
association or affiliation of the members, the more cohesive and conformist the
inner dynamics of the group, the more persecutory or numerous its enemies,
competitors, or adversaries, the more intensive the physical and emotional
experiences of the individuals it is comprised of, the stronger the bonds of
locale, language, and history - the more rigorous might an assertion of a common
pathology be.
Such an all-pervasive and extensive pathology manifests itself in the behavior
of each and every member. It is a defining - though often implicit or underlying
- mental structure. It has explanatory and predictive powers. It is recurrent
and invariable - a pattern of conduct melding distorted cognition and stunted
emotions. And it is often vehemently denied.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Guntrip, Harry. Personality Structure and Human Interaction. New York,
International Universities Press, 1961
Horovitz M. J. Stress Response Syndromes: PTSD, Grief and Adjustment Disorders.
3rd Ed. New York, NY University Press, 1998
Jacobson, Edith. The Self and the Object World. New York, International
Universities Press, 1964
Millon, Theodore. Personality Disorders in Modern Life. New York, John Wiley and
Sons, 2000
Vaknin, Sam. Malignant Self-Love - Narcissism Revisited. Skopje and Prague,
Narcissus Publications, 1999, 2001, 2003
AUTHOR BIO:
Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After
the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global
Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a
United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor
of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and
Suite101.
Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com
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