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Helping Battered Women
Michael K. Gilbertson, Ph.D., B.C.E.T.S.


Introduction

Violence is an increasing problem in our society. Police and social
scientists have long been concerned with the level of violence in
our streets. Juvenile specialists have noted the link between
violence at home and the increased likelihood of adolescent crime.
Of the adults that the courts have remanded to me for treatment, the
majority have come from emotionally or physically abusive homes.
Even witnessing violence can leave emotional scars as deep as being
the recipient of violence.

In this social context, battered women deserve a special focus. The
battered women themselves are of course the primary victims. But the
secondary victims are their children. Boys who witness their mothers
being battered are more likely to commit acts of violence
themselves. Girls who observe domestic violence are more likely to
tolerate abusive partners as adults, thus subjecting another
generation to the same sad dynamics.

So, how do we intervene? The answer is related to questions that
colleagues and I have often asked ourselves and each other: Why do
battered women tolerate the abuse for so long before seeking help?
And why, even after receiving help, do they so often return to their
abusive partners?

In her ethnographic study, Patricia Gagne (1992) writes of Leah and
her abusive husband Andy. After years of violence at Andy's hands,
Leah left. A shelter worker helped her relocate. But after several
months she returned to Andy. "You know, with everything in my heart
and soul I did not want to come back, and why I did I really don't
know" (p. 409). This paper proposes some answers to Leah's question.
As the problem is multifaceted, likewise, the answers are complex.
These women are not helped sufficiently, in part because focus at
the ecological levels of the state and the community reduces focus
on the individual. The reasons for this inadequate response involve
the theoretical constructs of status, sexism, and (failure to
consider) how systems interact. Systems' interaction explains how
victim behavior and social perceptions interact to keep even helpful
emphasis off the victims. Systems' interaction also specifically
acknowledges mutually interactive aspects of attachment theory and
the biochemistry of trauma--received or witnessed.

Understanding the Problem

Bell and Jenkins (1993) reveal the staggering amount of violence in
contemporary American inner cities. Equally disturbing to these
authors was the amount of life-threatening violence that Black
youths witnessed. They were growing up amid victimization of
alarming proportions. Not surprisingly, they found that the effects
of witnessing violence were cumulative and that perpetration of
violence by the youth was related to the violence witnessed.

Increasingly, researchers are recognizing that an environment of
chronic violence and its perceived dangers causes many children to
adapt in dysfunctional ways. The maladaptive patterns are usefully
understood within the framework of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
(PTSD), (Garbarino, 1992), a point to which I will return later. As
I noted earlier, girls who witness battering grow up, in
disproportionate numbers, tend to be abused themselves (Waites,
1993). Another way of viewing this is that people who have been
directly or indirectly victimized are likely to be victimized again
(McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996).

So, clearly, one point of intervention to break this cycle of
violence would involve interrupting domestic violence against women.
In the field of cultural anthropology, researchers like Jacquelyn
Campbell (1992) have found that, across cultures, wife battering is
linked to male dominance and cultural norms that tolerate domestic
violence. Because of findings like Campbell's, a solid argument
exists that, at the institutional/state level, part of the problem
is that legislatures are composed primarily of men--men who are
presumably influenced by a culture that encourages them to view
women as objects of possession (Gagne, 1992).

Status theory and Marx's theories of power may dovetail here.
Longres (1995) cites an experiment by Wendy Harrod where subjects
deferred to others who they thought were being paid more. The
experiment is used in support of social exchange theory. It could
just as well support status theory: more social power flows to those
with the most status, a component of which is material possessions.
In any case, more power and status accrue to those who possess than
to those who are objects of possession, and Marx was undoubtedly
correct to presume that those in powerful, high-status positions are
unlikely to readily alter their positions (Longres, 1995). But
despite a possible reluctance to alter a status quo from which they
benefitted, lawmakers have begun to respond to issues of domestic
violence. Still, even as laws increasingly begin to reflect our
national concern about domestic violence, the rates of battering
still climb (Waites, 1993), and women continue to return to abusers--
further swelling the domestic abuse numbers.

Could more be done at the ecological level of the community?
Campbell (1992) for one feels that the neighborhood level should be
the focus of our efforts. In small communities progress was
initially slowed by the patriarchal thinking that Van Soest & Bryant
(1995) found typical in the United States. Workers at women's crisis
shelters have told me that patriarchal factors resulted in de facto
sexism when it came time to seek funding for buildings or staff.
Despite these formidable difficulties, crisis centers with
predominantly female staff and board members exist in most
communities with which I am familiar. Still, the rates of spousal
abuse show no signs of leveling, and having a safe refuge hasn't
prevented many women from returning to be revictimized.

I do not mean to suggest that because neither laws at the state
level nor interventions at the community level have halted the rise
in wife battering that we should withdraw our attention from either
level. Public awareness campaigns addressing domestic violence could
benefit from better funding at both levels. And certainly society-
wide attention to poverty could only be beneficial since low
socioeconomic status correlates with domestic abuse (Whipple &
Webster-Stratton, 1989 cited in Webster-Stratton, 1990).

Nevertheless, if we are going to shed light on the vexing problem of
why so many battered women put up with abuse and then return to
their victimizers when they do have a way out, we must examine the
individual. For many Social Workers the discouraging fact remains
that despite better laws and shelter programs, most of the women
they help will return to the same abuse. We do these women a
disservice if we ignore the problem at the intrapsychic level.

So why isn't intrapsychic information about victims of violence more
widely assimilated and dispersed? It is not because we lack a
systematic body of research that would help us understand victims of
trauma. Information about the biochemistry of PTSD, and attachment
theory give us a useful series of lenses with which to view
revictimization. That the information is not better known to
clinicians may be because of the same theoretical constructs I
already examined: status theory and theories of sexism.

Social Work, a predominantly female field, has in its recent history
taken a dim view of intrapsychic emphasis, linking it with
patriarchal Freudian thought and blaming it (among other things) for
the perceived failure of the profession to heed the larger social
issue of impoverishment during the Great Depression (Simon, 1994).
One could argue that assuming an intrapsychic emphasis would not
enhance one's professional status as a Social Worker.

Perhaps more central to issues of status and sexism is a legitimate
concern among women that any focus that smacks of blaming the victim
is inherently unjust. John Longres (1995) elaborates the position of
William Ryan (who coined the term "blaming the victim") this
way: "Social service workers also blame the victim when they
acknowledge the societal causes of problems but intervene only at
the level of the individual" (p. 8). If the victims are
overwhelmingly female, as in spousal battering, blaming them for
their troubles also becomes the crassest sexism.

Is there a way out of this dilemma? Perhaps, but first we must
recognize it as a false dilemma. Looking for points of intervention
is not the same as blaming the victim. If we feel victims are at
fault, we have no need to intervene; we can justify ignoring their
plight. But if we wish to help battered women, one possibility is to
find ways to enable them to change patterns of behavior. That would
be genuine self-empowerment. And it does not mean we have to cease
addressing issues at the state or community level. However, we can
only help individuals empower themselves if we understand the
biochemistry and attachment dynamics of trauma.

Understanding the Problem at the Level of the Individual

Trauma researchers have frequently noted the link between trauma and
retraumatization (Browne & Finkelhor, 1986). For our purposes this
phenomenon is the statistical tendency to be a victim of repetitive
trauma after suffering childhood abuse. Briere & Runtz (1988) found
women who had been abused as minors were more likely to have been in
abusive adult relationships. Diane Russell (1986) noted in her study
that women who had a history of incest were twice as likely to
report physical violence in their marital relationships as women who
had no such childhood history.

So what may be happening here? Well, colloquially we speak of people
who seem to crave danger as "adrenaline junkies." We would be closer
to the mark if we dropped the implied moral judgment and looked
elsewhere than adrenaline. It is true that a frightening situation
produces epinephrine (adrenaline), but it also triggers the release
of endogenous opioids (endorphins and enkephalins) whose purpose is
to produce analgesia. The ability to inhibit pain in a traumatic
situation is an obvious advantage.

There is, however, a downside. Our own opioids are as addictive as
exogenous opioids. In an article exploring self-injury in adults,
Thompson and his colleagues (1994) noted that release of endogenous
opioids had the same reinforcing potential as heroin or morphine.
They speculated that individuals may continue harmful behaviors to
avoid the discomfort of withdrawal. This fact has led van der Kolk
(1989) to describe the resulting "addiction to trauma" as a
mechanism for understanding the apparently compulsive behavior of
self-abuse that characterizes many trauma victims. The more flagrant
forms of self-abuse like cutting on oneself or headbanging may first
suggest themselves as addictive behavior, but allowing someone else
to do the damage may share the same link to opioids release.

Nor does the effect need to be maintained from childhood until
marriage by continual abuse to retain its potency. When people with
PTSD were exposed to a stimulus that resembled a trauma occurring
two decades earlier, they developed an opioids-mediated analgesia
that was equivalent to 8 mg of morphine (Pitman, van der Kolk, Orr,
& Greenberg, 1990).

Several women from physically abusive relationships whom I have
treated have told me of sensing the familiar buildup of domestic
tension, then provoking a fight "just to get it over with." This
response is an occasional part of the well known cycle of domestic
violence. What is not expected is the answer I often get when I ask
about their emotional state as the fighting begins. Several women
have thought about it, then spoken of a sense of calm that obviously
puzzled them. Given the numbing effects of endogenous opioids, their
emotional response to violence may be understandable. Since they do
not understand it, their appraisal of their behavior usually invokes
shame.

And shame is the bridge to understanding how negative self-appraisal
and attachment theory interact with the biochemistry of trauma to
further perpetuate the cycle of revictimization. When battered wives
were children, those who suffered abuse at the hands of caregivers
were at risk to endure understandable threats to their attachment
bonds. Disruption to attachment bonds with caregivers due to neglect
or abuse produces distorted identity schema resulting in "bad me"
appraisals. Not understanding the biochemistry of why they tolerate
abuse or feel paradoxically calm when being battered leads abused
women to feel shame, which reinforces the negative self-appraisal
first put in place by disrupted attachment bonds. So an examination
of attachment is in order.

We are biologically programmed to establish a secure bond with our
caregivers. This drive is most pronounced under the threat of danger-
-even if the danger is from our caregivers. Beverly James (1994)
uses the phase "trauma bonding" to describe how children are forced
by trauma to cling in a nondiscriminating fashion to abusive
caregivers no matter what the cost.

The cost is usually to self-esteem. Since children must preserve the
attachment bond or the illusion of a pseudoattachment, they do so by
what in object relations theory is called "splitting," to convince
themselves that their parents are good and the bond is secure.
Since "bad parent-good parent" splitting creates too much cognitive
dissonance without the aid of traumatic dissociation and amnestic
barriers, a more common split is "good parent-bad me." This tendency
makes more sense when considering the egocentrism of young children
whereby they attribute things happening to them as due to their own
actions (Piaget, 1962). Years later many people first traumatized as
children feel responsibility for their own abuse and perceive
themselves to be unlovable or despicable (van der Kolk, 1996). These
dynamics are often encouraged by abusers who generally refuse
responsibility for their actions and are only too willing to blame
their victims for imagined transgressions.

Once locked into a "bad me" split, children must selectively pursue
evidence of their unworthiness. The resulting guilt can only be
expiated by punishment. Many of my abused clients have said that
they feel a vague sense that they will be punished and that they
feel as if they "deserve" such punishment. If this tack seems a
little too psychodynamic (dare I say Freudian?), then at least it
should be clear how a low sense of self-worth, coupled with
overresponsibility, could lead a woman to make excuses for her
battering husband.

At this point a reader familiar with the Stockholm Syndrome might
wonder if that phenomenon is relevant to the discussion. It might
be. Several years ago in Stockholm a bank robber held a woman as
hostage for several days in the bank's vault. When rescued, the
woman denied that her captor was responsible for her pain. She was
in fact quite indignant at the force the police had used to capture
her assailant. She seemed to be infatuated with the gunman.

The key here might be the infantilization of the hostage who was
dependent upon her captor for food, water, and toilet privileges.
Frank Ochberg (1995) thinks this traumatic age regression (my term,
not Dr. Ochberg's) accounts for the almost primal gratitude for
life's necessities that many hostages feel if they're shown even a
little kindness. He specifically links the Stockholm Syndrome with
the bond many battered women feel for their abusers.

Lest the above seem too simplistic a portrait of some battered
women, a portrait that paints them as largely incompetent, I would
add that I have witnessed the above dynamics in very professionally
accomplished women. Bessel van der Kolk (1996) finds the same
occurrence: "High levels of competence and interpersonal sensitivity
often exist side by side with self-hatred . . ." (p. 196).

How widely spread could the above dynamics be? Though
overgeneralization should be avoided, aspects of attachment dynamics
may account for more revictimization than a skeptic might think.
Reviewing previous research, van der Kolk & Fisler (1994) found that
a majority of children who experienced abuse or neglect developed
disorganized attachment patterns.

Implications for Practice and Policy

Now that a base for understanding revictimization has been
suggested, let me begin this section by observing how victim
behavior patterns, mediated by trauma addiction and trauma bonding,
could interact with systems at the state and community levels to
reinforce victim stereotypes. Looking at the repetitive nature of
victim behavior without understanding it can lead to reductive
labeling. Specifically I have in mind the terms female masochism and
Borderline Personality Disorder (assigned overwhelmingly to women).
The former term presumes that pain gives psychological gratification
without understanding the biochemical basis for the behavior. The
latter term presumes an innate character flaw without considering
the traumatic etiology. It is significant that Herman and van der
Kolk (1987) found that Borderline Personality Disorder was
associated with a history of abuse.

Pejorative labeling in our culture can only make it harder for
professionals who wish to help battered women to obtain the legal
protection and the immediate aid they need. But as I have argued,
avoiding labeling by refusing to examine individual behavior keeps
Social Workers from intervening effectively at the level we often
encounter domestic violence: face to face.

What the above suggests is that in our professional practice we must
educate ourselves about the dynamics and biochemistry of PTSD. I
have found few things as immediately gratifying to women as when
they truly grasp that their behavior is understandable and, by
implication, treatable; they are not unworthy, shameful humans. Of
course this places the burden on clinicians to master the
therapeutic treatments used for trauma-based disorders and a burden
on non-clinical Social Workers to know when and to whom to refer.

At the policy level we must be prepared to argue for the treatment
intervention time needed to help clients rework complex attachment
patterns and deal with actual withdrawal from their own opioids. In
an era of managed care it will be a formidable undertaking to argue
for more, not less, financial aid at the state and local levels.

Recommendations for Further Research

At this time medications commonly used to help with withdrawal
symptoms from exogenous opioids are pretty much limited to Selective
Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) like fluoxetine to help with
the attendant depression and benzodiazepines to calm the patient. In
any case, using carefully monitored SSRIs and benzodiazepines for
battered women in shelters would be a useful pilot study if
carefully designed.

Another promising area could be (are you ready for this?) -
acupuncture. Avants and his colleagues (1995) have shown some forms
of acupuncture to be beneficial for treating opioids addiction. A
pilot study with battered women could be economically designed.

References

Avants, S. K., Margolin, A., Chang, P., Kosten, T. R., & Birch, S.
(1995). Acupuncture for the treatment of Cocaine Addiction:
Investigation of a needle puncture control. Journal of Substance
Abuse Treatment, 12(3), 195-205.

Bell, C. C., & Jenkins, E. J. (1993). Community violence and
children on Chicago's Southside. Psychiatry,56(1), 46-54.

Briere, J., & Runtz, M. (1988). Post sexual abuse trauma. In G. E.
Wyatt & G. Powell (Eds.), Lasting effects of child sexual abuse (pp.
85-99). Newbury Park, CA: Sage.

Browne, A., & Finkelhor, D. (1986). Initial and long-term effects: A
review of the research. In D. Finkelhor (Ed.), A sourcebook on child
sexual abuse (pp. 143-179). Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.

Campbell, J. C. (1992). Prevention of wife battering: Insights from
cultural analysis. Response, 14(3)(issue 80), 18-24.

Gagne, P. L. (1992). Appalachian women: Violence and social control.
Social Casework: A Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 20(4), 387-
415.

Garbarino, J. (1992). Coping with the consequences of community
violence. Protecting Children, 9(1), 3-5, 18.

Herman, J., & van der Kolk, B. (1987). Traumatic antecedents of
borderline personality disorder. In B. A. van der Kolk (Ed.),
Psychological trauma (pp. 111-126). Washington, DC: American
Psychiatric Press.

James, B. (1994). Handbook for treatment of attachment-trauma
problems in children. New York: Lexington Books.

Longres, J. F. (1995). Human behavior in the social environment (2nd
ed.). Itasca, IL:

F. E. Peacock Publishers.

McFarlane, A. C., & van der Kolk, B. A. (1996). Trauma and its
challenge to society. In B. A. van der Kolk, A. C. McFarlane, & L.
Weisaeth (Eds.), Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming
experience on mind, body, and society (pp. 24-46). New York:
Guilford Press.

Ochberg, F. M. (1995). Understanding the victims of spousal abuse,
[Online]. Available: http://www.sourcemaine.com/gift/spousal.html
[1997, October 3].

Piaget, J. (1962). Play, dreams, and imitation in childhood. New
York: Norton.

Pitman, R. K., van der Kolk, B. A., Orr, S. P., & Greenberg, M. S.
(1990). Naloxone reversible stress induced analgesia in post
traumatic stress disorder. Archives of General Psychiatry, 47, 541-
547.

Russell, D. (1986). The secret trauma. New York: Basic Books.

Simon, B. L. (1994). The empowerment tradition in American social
work. New York: Columbia University Press.

Thompson, T., Hackerberg, T., Cerulti, D., Baker, D., & Axtell, S.
(1994). Opioids antagonist effects on self-injury in adults with
mental retardation: Response form and location as determinants of
medication effects. American Journal on Mental Retardation,49, 85-
102.

van der Kolk, B. A. (1989). The compulsion to repeat the trauma: Re-
enactment, revictimization, and masochism. Psychiatric Clinics of
North America,12, 389-411.

van der Kolk, B. A. (1996). The complexity of adaptation to trauma:
Self-regulation, stimulus discrimination, and characterological
development. In B. A. van der Kolk, A. C., McFarlane, & L. Weisaeth
(Eds.), Traumatic stress: The effects of overwhelming experience on
mind, body, and society (pp. 182-213). New York: Guilford Press.

van der Kolk, B. A., & Fisler, R. E. (1994). Childhood abuse and
neglect and loss of self-regulation. Bulletin of the Menninger
Clinic, 58(2).

Van Soest, D., & Bryant, S. (1995). Violence reconceptualized for
social work: The urban dilemma. Social Work, 40(4), 549-557.

Waites, E. A. (1993). Trauma and survival: Post-traumatic and
dissociative disorders in women. New York: Norton.

Webster-Stratton, C. (1990). Stress: A potential disrupter of parent
perception and family interactions. Journal of Clinical Child
Psychology, 19(4), 302-312.



©1998 by The American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, Inc.

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===============================================================
Suicide - The Murder of Oneself
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

Those who believe in the finality of death (i.e., that there is no
after-life) - they are the ones who advocate suicide and regard it
as a matter of personal choice. On the other hand, those who firmly
believe in some form of existence after corporeal death - they
condemn suicide and judge it to be a major sin. Yet, rationally, the
situation should have been reversed: it should have been easier for
someone who believed in continuity after death to terminate this
phase of existence on the way to the next. Those who faced void,
finality, non-existence, vanishing - should have been greatly
deterred by it and should have refrained even from entertaining the
idea. Either the latter do not really believe what they profess to
believe - or something is wrong with rationality. One would tend to
suspect the former.

Suicide is very different from self sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom,
engaging in life risking activities, refusal to prolong one's life
through medical treatment, euthanasia, overdosing and self inflicted
death that is the result of coercion. What is common to all these is
the operational mode: a death caused by one's own actions. In all
these behaviours, a foreknowledge of the risk of death is present
coupled with its acceptance. But all else is so different that they
cannot be regarded as belonging to the same class. Suicide is
chiefly intended to terminate a life - the other acts are aimed at
perpetuating, strengthening and defending values.

Those who commit suicide do so because they firmly believe in the
finiteness of life and in the finality of death. They prefer
termination to continuation. Yet, all the others, the observers of
this phenomenon, are horrified by this preference. They abhor it.
This has to do with out understanding of the meaning of life.

Ultimately, life has only meanings that we attribute and ascribe to
it. Such a meaning can be external (God's plan) or internal (meaning
generated through arbitrary selection of a frame of reference). But,
in any case, it must be actively selected, adopted and espoused. The
difference is that, in the case of external meanings, we have no way
to judge their validity and quality (is God's plan for us a good one
or not?). We just "take them on" because they are big, all
encompassing and of a good "source". A hyper-goal generated by a
superstructural plan tends to lend meaning to our transient goals
and structures by endowing them with the gift of eternity. Something
eternal is always judged more meaningful than something temporal. If
a thing of less or no value acquires value by becoming part of a
thing eternal - than the meaning and value reside with the quality
of being eternal - not with the thing thus endowed. It is not a
question of success. Plans temporal are as successfully implemented
as designs eternal. Actually, there is no meaning to the question:
is this eternal plan / process / design successful because success
is a temporal thing, linked to endeavours that have clear beginnings
and ends.

This, therefore, is the first requirement: our life can become
meaningful only by integrating into a thing, a process, a being
eternal. In other words, continuity (the temporal image of eternity,
to paraphrase a great philosopher) is of the essence. Terminating
our life at will renders them meaningless. A natural termination of
our life is naturally preordained. A natural death is part and
parcel of the very eternal process, thing or being which lends
meaning to life. To die naturally is to become part of an eternity,
a cycle, which goes on forever of life, death and renewal. This
cyclic view of life and the creation is inevitable within any
thought system, which incorporates a notion of eternity. Because
everything is possible given an eternal amount of time - so are
resurrection and reincarnation, the afterlife, hell and other
beliefs adhered to by the eternal lot.

Sidgwick raised the second requirement and with certain
modifications by other philosophers, it reads: to begin to
appreciate values and meanings, a consciousness (intelligence) must
exist. True, the value or meaning must reside in or pertain to a
thing outside the consciousness / intelligence. But, even then, only
conscious, intelligent people will be able to appreciate it.

We can fuse the two views: the meaning of life is the consequence of
their being part of some eternal goal, plan, process, thing, or
being. Whether this holds true or does not - a consciousness is
called for in order to appreciate life's meaning. Life is
meaningless in the absence of consciousness or intelligence. Suicide
flies in the face of both requirements: it is a clear and present
demonstration of the transience of life (the negation of the NATURAL
eternal cycles or processes). It also eliminates the consciousness
and intelligence that could have judged life to have been meaningful
had it survived. Actually, this very consciousness / intelligence
decides, in the case of suicide, that life has no meaning
whatsoever. To a very large extent, the meaning of life is perceived
to be a collective matter of conformity. Suicide is a statement,
writ in blood, that the community is wrong, that life is meaningless
and final (otherwise, the suicide would not have been committed).

This is where life ends and social judgement commences. Society
cannot admit that it is against freedom of expression (suicide is,
after all, a statement). It never could. It always preferred to cast
the suicides in the role of criminals (and, therefore, bereft of any
or many civil rights). According to still prevailing views, the
suicide violates unwritten contracts with himself, with others
(society) and, many might add, with God (or with Nature with a
capital N). Thomas Aquinas said that suicide was not only unnatural
(organisms strive to survive, not to self annihilate) - but it also
adversely affects the community and violates God's property rights.
The latter argument is interesting: God is supposed to own the soul
and it is a gift (in Jewish writings, a deposit) to the individual.
A suicide, therefore, has to do with the abuse or misuse of God's
possessions, temporarily lodged in a corporeal mansion. This implies
that suicide affects the eternal, immutable soul. Aquinas refrains
from elaborating exactly how a distinctly physical and material act
alters the structure and / or the properties of something as
ethereal as the soul. Hundreds of years later, Blackstone, the
codifier of British Law, concurred. The state, according to this
juridical mind, has a right to prevent and to punish for suicide and
for attempted suicide. Suicide is self-murder, he wrote, and,
therefore, a grave felony. In certain countries, this still is the
case. In Israel, for instance, a soldier is considered to be "army
property" and any attempted suicide is severely punished as
being "attempt at corrupting army possessions". Indeed, this is
paternalism at its worst, the kind that objectifies its subjects.
People are treated as possessions in this malignant mutation of
benevolence. Such paternalism acts against adults expressing fully
informed consent. It is an explicit threat to autonomy, freedom and
privacy. Rational, fully competent adults should be spared this form
of state intervention. It served as a magnificent tool for the
suppression of dissidence in places like Soviet Russia and Nazi
Germany. Mostly, it tends to breed "victimless crimes". Gamblers,
homosexuals, communists, suicides - the list is long. All have
been "protected from themselves" by Big Brothers in disguise.
Wherever humans possess a right - there is a correlative obligation
not to act in a way that will prevent the exercise of such right,
whether actively (preventing it), or passively (reporting it). In
many cases, not only is suicide consented to by a competent adult
(in full possession of his faculties) - it also increases utility
both for the individual involved and for society. The only exception
is, of course, where minors or incompetent adults (the mentally
retarded, the mentally insane, etc.) are involved. Then a
paternalistic obligation seems to exist. I use the cautious
term "seems" because life is such a basic and deep set phenomenon
that even the incompetents can fully gauge its significance and
make "informed" decisions, in my view. In any case, no one is better
able to evaluate the quality of life (and the ensuing justifications
of a suicide) of a mentally incompetent person - than that person
himself.

The paternalists claim that no competent adult will ever decide to
commit suicide. No one in "his right mind" will elect this option.
This contention is, of course, obliterated both by history and by
psychology. But a derivative argument seems to be more forceful.
Some people whose suicides were prevented felt very happy that they
were. They felt elated to have the gift of life back. Isn't this
sufficient a reason to intervene? Absolutely, not. All of us are
engaged in making irreversible decisions. For some of these
decisions, we are likely to pay very dearly. Is this a reason to
stop us from making them? Should the state be allowed to prevent a
couple from marrying because of genetic incompatibility? Should an
overpopulated country institute forced abortions? Should smoking be
banned for the higher risk groups? The answers seem to be clear and
negative. There is a double moral standard when it comes to suicide.
People are permitted to destroy their lives only in certain
prescribed ways.

And if the very notion of suicide is immoral, even criminal - why
stop at individuals? Why not apply the same prohibition to political
organizations (such as the Yugoslav Federation or the USSR or East
Germany or Czechoslovakia, to mention four recent examples)? To
groups of people? To institutions, corporations, funds, not for
profit organizations, international organizations and so on? This
fast deteriorates to the land of absurdities, long inhabited by the
opponents of suicide.


==============================================================
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) 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.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

This letter constitutes a permission to reprint or mirror any and
all of the materials mentioned or linked to herein subject
to appropriate credit and linkback. Every article published MUST
include the  author bio, including the link to the author's Web site
(at the bottom of this message).

===============================================================
Morality as a Mental State
By Sam Vaknin
Author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

Introduction

Moral values, rules, principles, and judgements are often thought of
as beliefs or as true beliefs. Those who hold them to be true
beliefs also annex to them a warrant or a justification (from
the "real world"). Yet, it is far more reasonable to conceive of
morality (ethics) as a state of mind, a mental state. It entails
belief, but not necessarily true belief, or justification. As a
mental state, morality cannot admit the "world" (right and wrong,
evidence, goals, or results) into its logical formal definition. The
world is never part of the definition of a mental state.

Another way of looking at it, though, is that morality cannot be
defined in terms of goals and results - because these goals and
results ARE morality itself. Such a definition would be tautological.

There is no guarantee that we know when we are in a certain mental
state. Morality is no exception.

An analysis based on the schemata and arguments proposed by Timothy
Williamson follows.

Moral Mental State - A Synopsis

Morality is the mental state that comprises a series of attitudes to
propositions. There are four classes of moral propositions: "It is
wrong to...", "It is right to...", (You should) do this...", "(You
should) not do this...". The most common moral state of mind is: one
adheres to p. Adhering to p has a non-trivial analysis in the more
basic terms of (a component of) believing and (a component of)
knowing, to be conceptually and metaphysically analysed later. Its
conceptual status is questionable because we need to decompose it to
obtain the necessary and sufficient conditions for its possession
(Peacocke, 1992). It may be a complex (secondary) concept.

See here for a more detailed analysis.

Adhering to proposition p is not merely believing that p and knowing
that p but also that something should be so, if and only if p (moral
law).

Morality is not a factive attitude. One believes p to be true - but
knows p to be contingently true (dependent on epoch, place, and
culture). Since knowing is a factive attitude, the truth it relates
to is the contingently true nature of moral propositions.

Morality relates objects to moral propositions and it is a mental
state (for every p, having a moral mental relation to p is a mental
state).

Adhering to p entails believing p (involves the mental state of
belief). In other words, one cannot adhere without believing. Being
in a moral mental state is both necessary and sufficient for
adhering to p. Since no "truth" is involved - there is no non-mental
component of adhering to p.

Adhering to p is a conjunction with each of the conjuncts (believing
p and knowing p) a necessary condition - and the conjunction is
necessary and sufficient for adhering to p.

One doesn't always know if one adheres to p. Many moral rules are
generated "on the fly", as a reaction to circumstances and moral
dilemmas. It is possible to adhere to p falsely (and behave
differently when faced with the harsh test of reality). A sceptic
would say that for any moral proposition p - one is in the position
to know that one doesn't believe p. Admittedly, it is possible for a
moral agent to adhere to p without being in the position to know
that one adheres to p, as we illustrated above. One can also fail to
adhere to p without knowing that one fails to adhere to p. As
Williamson says "transparency (to be in the position to know one's
mental state) is false". Naturally, one knows one's mental state
better than one knows other people's. There is an observational
asymmetry involved. We have non-observational (privileged) access to
our mental state and observational access to other people's mental
states. Thus, we can say that we know our morality non-
observationally (directly) - while we are only able to observe other
people's morality.

One believes moral propositions and knows moral propositions.
Whether the belief itself is rational or not, is debatable. But the
moral mental state strongly imitates rational belief (which relies
on reasoning). In other words, the moral mental state masquerades as
a factive attitude, though it is not. The confusion arises from the
normative nature of knowing and being rational. Normative elements
exist in belief attributions, too, but, for some reason, are
considered "outside the realm of belief". Belief, for instance,
entails the grasping of mental content, its rational processing and
manipulation, defeasible reaction to new information.

We will not go here into the distinction offered by Williamson
between "believing truly" (not a mental state, according to him)
and "believing". Suffice it to say that adhering to p is a mental
state, metaphysically speaking - and that "adheres to p" is a
(complex or secondary) mental concept. The structure of adheres to p
is such that the non-mental concepts are the content clause of the
attitude ascription and, thus do not render the concept thus
expressed non-mental: adheres to (right and wrong, evidence, goals,
or results).

Williamson's Mental State Operator calculus is applied.

Origin is essential when we strive to fully understand the relations
between adhering that p and other moral concepts (right, wrong,
justified, etc.). To be in the moral state requires the adoption of
specific paths, causes, and behaviour modes. Moral justification and
moral judgement are such paths.

Knowing, Believing and Their Conjunction

We said above that:

"Adhering to p is a conjunction with each of the conjuncts
(believing p and knowing p) a necessary condition - and the
conjunction is necessary and sufficient for adhering to p."

Williamson suggests that one believes p if and only if one has an
attitude to proposition p indiscriminable from knowing p. Another
idea is that to believe p is to treat p as if one knew p. Thus,
knowing is central to believing though by no means does it account
for the entire spectrum of belief (example: someone who chooses to
believe in God even though he doesn't know if God exists). Knowledge
does determine what is and is not appropriate to believe, though
("standard of appropriateness"). Evidence helps justify belief.

But knowing as a mental state is possible without having a concept
of knowing. One can treat propositions in the same way one treats
propositions that one knows - even if one lacks concept of knowing.
It is possible (and practical) to rely on a proposition as a premise
if one has a factive propositional attitude to it. In other words,
to treat the proposition as though it is known and then to believe
in it.

As Williamson says, "believing is a kind of a botched knowing".
Knowledge is the aim of belief, its goal.


==============================================================
AUTHOR BIO (must be included with the article)

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) 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.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

http://jonjayray.tripod.com/subclin.html


The Journal of Social Psychology, 1982, 117, 135-142.

SOME APPARENT ADVANTAGES OF SUBCLINICAL PSYCHOPATHY*

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited is now available from
AMAZON CANADA- click on this link:

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/8023833847/new/

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited is now available from
AMAZON.COM - click on this link:

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glance/Y03Y0926269Y5731601

From Barnes and Noble (sixth edition)

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University of New South Wales, Australia

J. J. RAY AND J. A. B. RAY


SUMMARY

Classical descriptions of the psychopathic personality include a
number of highly desirable characteristics in addition to the
obviously undesirable ones. Following Eysenck, it is hypothesized
that this personality type is not a type at all but merely an
extreme of normal personality traits. Subclinical manifestations of
psychopathy are therefore studied. The MMPI "PD" scale was
administered together with other scales to a random postal sample of
the Australian State of New South Wales. The resulting sample of 128
people showed a representative demographic structure. High "PD"
scores were found to be associated with honesty (low lie scale
scores), permissiveness, good perceived relationships with others,
denial of being tough and rejection of punitiveness. They were also
correlated with Machiavellianism and lesser education. It was
concluded that as long as psychopaths can keep out of trouble, they
may have many advantages over others.


A. INTRODUCTION

"Likeable," "Charming," "Intelligent," "Alert," "Impressive," "Confid
ence-inspiring," and "A great success with the ladies": These are
the sorts of descriptions repeatedly used by Cleckley (2) in his
justly famous case-studies of psychopaths. They are also, of
course, "irresponsible," "self-destructive," and the like. These
descriptions highlight the great frustrations and puzzles that
surround the study of psychopathy. Psychopaths seem to have in
abundance the very traits most desired by normal persons. When so
many so-called normal individuals attend assertiveness training, the
untroubled self-confidence of the psychopath seems almost like an
impossible dream. When many young persons are feeling the need for
social skills training, the magnetic attraction of the psychopath
for members of the opposite sex must seem almost supernatural.

Cleckley's seminal hypothesis concerning the psychopath is that he
suffers from a very real mental illness indeed: affective deficit.
He feels emotions of only the shallowest kinds. He does bizarre and
self-destructive things because consequences that would fill the
ordinary man with shame, self-loathing, and embarrassment move the
psychopath only to a trivial degree. What to others would be a
disaster is to him merely a fleeting inconvenience. Cleckley also
gives grounds for the view that psychopathy is quite common in the
community at large. He has collected some cases of psychopaths who
generally function normally in the community as businessmen,
doctors, and even psychiatrists.

Perhaps the most notable of the theories connecting psychopathy with
normal behavior is that of Eysenck (e.g., 3), who regards the
primary psychopath as being very largely someone who is a high
scorer on his "P" scale, though all psychopaths are also said to be
neurotic and extroverted. The main point here, however, regardless
of the particular scales, is that Eysenck sees criminal psychopathy
as an extreme of a "normal" personality dimension (or dimensions).
Widom (9) also characterizes criminal psychopaths as unsuccessful
psychopaths. The implication, of course, is that many psychopaths
may exist in society who cope better than do those who come to the
attention of the judicial and welfare systems. Harrington (6) goes
so far as to say that the psychopath is in fact the man of the
future. He is the new man being produced by the evolutionary
pressures of modern life. Smith (8), however, sets out a number of
criticisms of this view generally focusing on the real disabilities
that the clinical psychopath also suffers.

The study of "ambulatory" psychopaths has, however, hardly begun.
Very little is known about subcriminal psychopathy. Eysenck's work
appears primarily to be concerned with psychoticism, with
psychopathy being included as merely an (arguable) subcategory.
Given the lengths to which Cleckley goes in stressing the vast
differences between psychotics and psychopaths, Eysenck's approach
seems at least unnecessarily confusing. Nonetheless, the concern and
the approach in the present study are thoroughly Eysenckian: It is
desired to study psychopathy not as an artificial clinical category
but as a general personality trait in the community at large. With
that approach, the guiding question will be whether subclinical
psychopaths might not have the advantages of the institutionalized
psychopath without the otherwise-observed very severe disadvantages.

B. METHOD

The major barrier to the study of psychopathy as a normal
personality trait has been doubt about how it might be measured. The
most widely used index of the psychopathic personality is the
MMPI "PD" scale. Like all the MMPI scales, however, this scale was
created solely by reference to the responses of a clinical group.
Its claim therefore is to measure clinical psychopathy. Subclinical
psychopathy might be quite different.

In her pioneering study of "normal" psychopaths, however, Widom (9)
found the PD scale useful. Some exploration of what it might measure
among a general population sample is therefore of some potential
interest. It seems logical that if the scale measures psychopathy at
all, normal psychopaths should show at least some elevation of
scores on it. It is therefore the PD scale which forms the basis of
the present work.

The scale was included in a questionnaire together with four
exploratory scales, two of which were designed to measure
psychopathic self-perceptions (toughness and ability to relate to
others) and two to measure psychopathic attitudes (permissiveness
towards children and punitiveness towards criminals). Also included
because of its apparent conceptual relevance to psychopathy was the
Christie and Gels (1) Likert-form "Machiavellianism" scale. Finally,
a short social-desirability scale (4) was added to check on any
artifact from this source. Given the almost destructive honesty of
the psychopath when he is not explicitly trying to manipulate
people, the prospects for a study free of this artifact seemed,
however, unusually good.

The attributes chosen for measurement represent only a small
selection of those that could have been included. Although any
selection is of necessity highly arbitrary, the chosen attributes
are thought to be ones that are implied in much discussion of
clinical psychopathy. It was desired to see whether the correlates
of psychopathy among normals would differ.

A question that might arise concerns the validity of the first four
of the six additional scales mentioned above. Why were four
exploratory scales used in addition to the two well-established
personality scales? The two scales of self-perception were used
because it was thought that how things seemed from the person's own
point of view was the most relevant area of enquiry. Whether or not
one actually relates well to others may be a matter of some dispute
and considerable value judgment, but if the person himself is happy
with his own relationships, that surely is of itself of some
importance. By concentrating on how things seemed from the person's
own point of view, then, it was hoped to avoid disputes about what
constituted good interpersonal adjustment. From Cleckley's case
studies, it would seem that clinical psychopaths do see themselves
as getting on well with others and as being tough, with both
perceptions having some element of truth.

Can any scale of self-perceptions be validated? It is here contended
that validation in most senses is irrelevant. A valid scale of self-
perceptions would of course be an ordinary personality scale and
such validation may have interest in its own right, although many
self-perceptions will inevitably have little correspondence to any
objectively measured reality. For validation purposes, then, a scale
of self-perceptions has to be treated like an attitude scale. Since
a personality scale is generally one which asks about a person's
characteristic behavior, its validity can be checked by comparing
the responses on it with behavior observed in some other way. This
is not true with attitude scales. Attitudes cannot directly be
observed. The person himself is the only authority on what his
attitudes are. Nor can we test his attitude report (as courts of law
try to do) by comparing his attitudes with his behavior. The
attitude-behavior discrepancy is well-known among social scientists
(7). The only validity check we can usually carry out on an attitude
scale is to observe whether or not the responses are internally
consistent. To this end, all scales in the present study were item
analyzed before use and assessed in terms of Cronbach's "alpha" (an
internal reliability statistic which corresponds in fact to the mean
of all possible split halves). If internal consistency is low, alpha
will be depressed. "Alpha" is preferable to a direct measure of
homogeneity (such as mean inter-item correlation) because it has the
additional feature of making some allowance for test length (number
of items in the scale). When alpha is adequate, the ultimate
interest in use of an attitude scale is the particular items which
are grouped together in it. The items of the present scales are
therefore available gratis from the authors.

The PD scale followed by the other scales was put into a single
questionnaire and mailed to a sample of Australians chosen at random
from the electoral rolls of the State of New South Wales. Because
electoral enrolment (voter registration) is compulsory in Australia,
the sampling frame was unusually comprehensive. The major omission
would be recent immigrants. It should be noted, however, that the
Australian franchise is so expansive that even many non-citizens are
allowed to vote and appear on the rolls (i.e., if they are citizens
of some other British Commonwealth country).

Before inclusion in the questionnaire, all PD items were examined
for suitability in a postal administration. Only two out of 50
(dealing with sex practices) had to be revised.

C. RESULTS

Of the 500 questionnaires despatched, 128 were returned. The
distribution of demographic characteristics observed in the
resultant sample was indistinguishable from that observed in
contemporaneous random doorstep samples carried out in the Sydney
(the New South Wales State capital) metropolitan area. Thus although
the final sample was certainly not random, it was at least
representative in terms of age, occupation, and education.

On the assumption that psychopathy might be sex-related, the
questionnaire had been sent to males only. Thirty-five of those
returned, however, had been answered by females. Analysis showed,
however, that PD score was fortunately not sex-related (r = -.140).
All subsequent analyses are therefore based on the combined group.

Under item-analysis, 18 PD scale items were found not to correlate
significantly with the scale total. This left a 32-item scale with a
reliability of .85. Because of its clinical origin, the number of PD
items that had to be deleted was not unexpected. It might be noted,
however, that shortening a scale from 50 to 32 items could seriously
alter its validity properties. That this is highly unlikely in the
present case can be seen from the correlation between the two forms
of the scale. At .937 the correlation is high enough to warrant the
claim that whatever the 50-item scale measures, the 32-item scale
measures also. Reliabilities for the remaining (much shorter) scales
were as follows: Toughness .63, Social Desirability .58,
Relationships .'76, Permissiveness .60, Punitiveness .78, and
Machiavellianism .70.

Psychopathic tendencies in the normal population then were found to
be associated with a perception of one's self as not tough (r = -
.20) and as relating well to others (r = .22). Such tendencies were
also associated with attitudes of permissiveness towards children (r
= -.24) and rejection of punitiveness towards criminals (r = -.22).
Psychopathy also was related to Machiavellianism (r = .48) and
poorer education (r = -.21). Best of all, however, psychopaths were
exceptionally truthful about themselves. The correlation between PD
score and Social Desirability was -.32. All correlations mentioned
are significant at the .05 level. The correlations with the 50-item
scale closely paralleled those (derived from the 32-item PD scale)
given above.

Finally, it seemed appropriate to attempt to give consideration to
the view that psychopathy is not a continuous variable but rather an
isolated clinical category with no "normal" counterparts. One way of
taking at least a preliminary look at this proposition is to test
whether or not the observed relationships would survive a division
of all PD scores into "highs" versus "lows." Since dividing a
continuous variable into two categories normally throws away a great
deal of information, the significance of relationships can only
survive such a procedure relatively unscathed if most of the
discrimination is in any case grouped in a category rather than in a
continuous way: e.g., if most of the discrimination derived from the
characteristics of a small atypical group of high scorers.

To this end, the top third of the sample in terms of their PD scores
has been divided from the bottom two-thirds and compared for
differences in their mean scores on other variables. Only the
relationships with perceived toughness and Machiavellianism survive,
with ts of 2.03 and 4.23. Clearly, much of the discrimination
available from continuous scoring of the PD scale is lost. Since,
then, the PD scale gives substantial discrimination throughout its
range, the view that this scale works only to discriminate very high
scorers is counterindicated. Category-type treatment of the data was
then inappropriate.

D. DISCUSSION

Generally, the correlations reveal the subclinical psychopath as a
person rather remarkably like many people's ideal self-conception.
Who would not like to be honest, to be happy with one's
relationships, to feel sensitive rather than tough, to be permissive
and impunitive? Only the correlations with education and
Machiavellianism provide a jarring note. Perhaps, however, even the
amorality of the Machiavellian fits in rather well with a defensible
rejection of absolute moral standards.

Is not in fact the psychopath too good to be true? Could what we are
seeing in the above correlations be just another example of
psychopathic dissimulation? While this explanation cannot be
absolutely ruled out, the evidence of the social-desirability
correlation is against it. The questionnaire method in general is
rather limited by its reliance on the honesty of the respondent; yet
in the case of the psychopath it is precisely this limitation which
is largely absent. Exceptional honesty in self-description on the
part of the psychopath was both expected on the basis of previous
observations and obtained on the present occasion. Perhaps, then,
the validity of the Marlowe-Crowne social-desirability items should
be questioned in their present application. Could it not be that
psychopaths are acquainted with the tricks of the psychologist?
Perhaps they can see through lie scales and fake an honest response
on them. Again, the evidence is against this explanation. Far from
being an exceptionally sophisticated group, psychopaths have been
shown to be on the whole a, rather poorly educated group.

Is it, then, the PD scale which is at fault? Does it really measure
psychopathy? Since even clinical cases of psychopathy can often not
be uncontroversially diagnosed, this is an unanswerable question.
Only a much greater level of agreement about what constitutes
psychopathy than that which prevails at the moment could enable a
definitive answer. Given the in-built criterion-groups validity that
arises from the scale's method of construction and the homogeneity
of the items observed on the present occasion, we can, however, say
that the scale measures something consistently and that what that is
must have at least something to do with what is clinically described
as psychopathy.

Overall, then, the most parsimonious explanation of the present
results may be that we have here again an example of an inverted U
function. Both extremely high and extremely low levels of
psychopathy may be maladaptive, with intermediate levels being most
adaptive. The basis for saying that high levels of psychopathy are
maladaptive is, of course, the trouble into which clinical
psychopaths often get themselves. The basis for saying that low
levels of psychopathy may also be maladaptive stems from the common
observation of the role of anxiety in psychopathy: Psychopaths do
not seem to show any anxiety (5, 6). The debilitating function of
high levels of anxiety hardly needs to be stressed. In a normal, non
institutionalized population, therefore, their relative immunity
from anxiety may give psychopaths an advantage. While anxiety as
such was not studied in the present paper, this well-documented
relationship between psychopathy and anxiety may at least serve as a
hypothesis to explain the relatively favorable picture of the
psychopath that emerged from the present study.

REFERENCES

1. CHRISTIE, R., & GEIS, F. L. Studies in Machiavellianism. New
York: Academic, 1970.

2. CLECKLEY, H. The Mask of Sanity (5th ed.) St. Louis, Mo.: C.V.
Mosby, 1976.

3. EYSENCK, H. J., & EYSENCK, S. B. G. Psychopathy, personality and
genetics. Chap. 12 in R. D. Hare & D. Schalling (Eds.), Psychopathic
Behavior: Approaches to Research. Chichester, England: Wiley, 1978.

4. GREENWALD, H. J., & SATOW, Y. A short social desirability scale.
Psychol. Rep., 1970, 27, 131-135.

5. HARE, R. D. Psychopathy: Theory and Research. New York: Wiley,
1970.

6. HARRINGTON, A. Psychopaths. St. Albans, England: Panther Books,
1974.

7. RAY, J.J. (1976) Do authoritarians hold authoritarian attitudes?
Human Relations, 29, 307-325.

8. SMITH, R. J. The Psychopath in Society. New York: Academic, 1978.

9. WIDOM, C. S. A methodology for studying non-institutionalized
psychopaths. Chap. 5 in R. D. Hare & D. Schalling (Eds.),
Psychopathic Behaviour: Approaches to Research. Chichester, England:
Wiley, 1978.

School of Sociology, University of New South Wales P.O. Box 1,
Kensington, New South Wales, 2033, Australia

* Received in the Editorial Office, Provincetown, Massachusetts, on
July 31, 1981. Copyright, 1982, by The Journal Press.



APPENDIX -- STATEMENTS PRESENTED

Scale of perceived toughness

1. I can stand pain more easily than other people generally seem to
be able to do.

2. People usually walk all over me. (R)

3. I generally give in rather than fight. (R)

4. I usually get what I want in life.

5. I tend to be a bit of a coward. (R)

6. There are few obstacles I can't get around if I really want
something.

7. Even as a child I was a pretty tough customer.

8. I would never be able to withstand torture. (R)


Scale of perceived social ease

1. I don't get on with other people very well.

2. I make friends easily (R)

3. I feel that my relationships with other people are generally
rather shallow.

4. I find it hard to get really close to anybody.

5. I generally feel comfortable with other people (R)

6. I like people (R)

7. People are an open book to me. (R)

8. My friendships don't generally last very long.


Scale of attitude to children (Permissiveness versus discipline)

1. Spare the rod and spoil the child.

2. Children should be seen and not heard.

3. Physical punishment of children should be outlawed. (R)

4. Children need plenty of discipline.

5. Children respond well to a firm hand.

6. Children should be left to do pretty much as they please. (R)

7. Sometimes physical punishment is the only thing children seem to
understand.


Scale of attitude towards criminals (Punitiveness)

1. Punishment does not deter crime. (R)

2. Prison sentences today are not long enough.

3. The life sentence far serious crime should mean life.

4. More criminals should be made to do hard labour when they are in
prisons.

5. Prisons should be more like hospitals or schools than they are
today. (R)

6. What criminals need is guidance rather than punishment. (R)

7. Prisons should be more humane than they are today. (R)

8. Flogging should have no place in a modern prison system. (R)

9. Hanging should be brought back as a penalty for serious crime.

10. Violent crime should be harshly punished.

11. All prisons should be pulled down. (R)

12. A lynching party may be the best way to deal with rapists.


Note: Agreement with an item marked "°R" is scored the same as
disagreement with an item not marked "R".

NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and AsPD (Antisocial
Personality
Disorder)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq15.html

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Narcissism on Crime TV

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Crime and Terrorism

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/serialkillers.html (PopMatters.com)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/12.html (The Idler)

Corporate Narcissism

http://www.suite101.com/bulletin.cfm/6514/10621 (New York Times)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/corporatenarcissism.html (United
Press
International - Part I, Part II)

http://www.nypress.com/16/7/news&columns/feature.cfm (New York Press)

Listen to "Psychopaths in Suits" on Australia's ABC Radio

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Or read the transcript here:

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Abusive Relationships

http://www.suite101.com/topic_page.cfm/6514/2051

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Mirror, Mirror ... (Toronto Sun)

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Pathological narcissism may be the undiscovered, and most under-
reported, epidemic of our age.

Some (like Christopher Lasch) say that our whole civilization is
infected with narcissism.

Many (maybe even the majority of) criminals and abusers are
narcissists, or have narcissistic traits.

So what is "Narcissistic Abuse"?

All of these, and more, are part of it:
· Emotional abuse,
· Mental cruelty,
· Systematic abusive manipulation,
· Pathological control,
· Pathological deceit,

Narcissistic Abuse can, and does, occur in any setting. It can
affect one person, or an entire community.

· In a relationship,
· In a family,
· In the workplace,
· In School or College
· In any other community,

Wherever it occurs, Narcissistic Abuse always causes lasting
damage , often serious damage, sometimes very permanent damage.

Narcissistic Abuse is difficult to prove at all, let alone sanction
or control.

For the victims recovery can take far to long. There are too few
resources and too little is understood.


SO WHAT CAN WE DO TOGETHER TO CHANGE THAT?

(I can be contacted  directly for any assistance I can give, with the
following, at mailto:palma@...)

1. Ask your local library to buy books about narcissism and
narcissistic abuse.

2. Ask your local bookstores to buy books about narcissism and
narcissistic abuse.

3. Contact journalists, columnists, talk show hosts, and other
people in the media and tell them about narcissism and narcissistic
abuse.

4. Establish an online or offline reading group, perhaps in
collaboration with your local library or bookstore.

5. Tell your psychologist, therapist, psychiatrist, or social worker
about narcissism and narcissistic abuse.

6. Open your OWN NARCISSISM WEB SITE! Mirror (replicate) my web site
content FREE of charge - and let me help you, step by step, to create
your web site! (contact me: mailto:palma@...)


HOW CAN I HELP YOU FURTHER?

I can provide:
· Annotated lists of recommended reading
· Resources, links, reading group guides, and tutorials
· Copies of my book and other materials
· Background material and references
· I am available for interviews and know of others who are
· Any other assistance that may be needed

Help fight Narcissistic Abuse!

Sam

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
E-mail : palma@... OR (as backup) vaknin@...
http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/
(Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/npd
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/verbal_emotional_abuse
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/spousal_domestic_abuse
(Relationships with Abusive Narcissists)
http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com/
(The Politics and Economies of Countries in Transition)
http://busiweb.cjb.net
(Internet Matters and Business on the Web)
http://philosophos.tripod.com/
(Philosophical Musings)
http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html
(Buy "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Narcissistic personality disorder
Narcissistic personality disorder is a condition characterized by an
inflated
... Narcissistic personality disorder usually begins by early adulthood and
is ...
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000934.htm

American Psychotherapy Association
Assessment, diagnosis, treatment, narcissistic personality disorder.
Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD) is essentially characterized as a long-term, ...
http://www.americanpsychotherapy.com/online_magazine_article_3004.php

Narcissistic Personality Disorder: a factsheet from the Mental ...
Factsheet on Narcissistic Personality Disorder: information from the Mental
Health
Foundation.
http://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/page.cfm?pagecode=PMNZNA

NPD Central
NPD Central is a resource for Mental Health Professionals, Victims and
Sufferers
of Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
http://www.npd-central.org/

Introduction: Narcissistic Personality Disorder - WrongDiagnosis.com
Introduction to Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a medical condition
including
symptoms, diagnosis, misdiagnosis, treatment, prevention, and prognosis.
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/n/narcissistic_personality_disorder/intro.htm

NEW! Analyze This - Short Fiction about Narcissists

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w

NEW! Narcissistic Abusers in Relationships - updated daily!

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Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?
Click on these links!

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Please FORWARD this message to interested parties and relevant
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==================================================
Wednesday, March 9 2005, Letter Twelve to Sam Vaknin from Stephen
McDonnell

The foolish pursuit of beauty
Dear Sam

In letter no 3 , I wrote of Miss X who might well fill the
definition of frienemy. Frienemy was coined by the characters of the
TV show Sex in the City, about women in Manhattan and their ups and
downs with friends and lovers. Over the years I have seen the
ravages such frienemies wreak on people. They are hypocrites, and
liars, but for a good cause ­ they insist they have your best
interest at heart.

As an aside, I think I make a good foil for your thoughts. I ran
across a piece of wisdom - literally a piece of paper I found in the
street as I walked my dog - by Eugene Ionesco that goes, "It is not
the answer that enlightens, but the question." So let me change the
subject from evil to beauty.

Over the years it struck me that certain people are obsessed
with 'beauty'. They want to be beautiful, and they want to live in a
beautiful world, where there is no 'ugliness'. I confess to being
vain, but my tastes are not always the best. I remember a Hound's-
tooth pattern pair of pants I loved, that on hindsight were
horrible. But then everyone's tastes vary. Miss X, whom I mentioned,
used to tell me what was in and out. She had a very good sense of
coolness. Something that is a la mode, is not always beautiful, and
maybe that is where we should start a discussion. I believe NPDs
have a fine sense of what is attractive, both physically and
intellectually. They know that a web site that is high in the
rankings usually gets more attention than the small one that may
have more information but is not 'recognized'. They know that breast
implants or a full head of hair will attract the opposite sex. They
know that humans are attracted to beauty.

When does vanity become narcissism?

The legend of the most beautiful boy, Narcissus, is a lesson taught
to those who foolishly believe in beauty as an end all and a be all.
The beautiful Narcissus attracted the admiration and love of both
men and women. When a wood nymph fell in love with him, he ignored
her and she pined away. The god of vengeance, Nemesis, resurrected
her as Echo who could only repeat what she saw and heard. Sounds
like many who run after beauty. Nemesis punished Narcissus for his
hubris by having him look into a pool of water and falling in love
with that image.

If we look around us in magazines, newspapers, and films and on
television we are bombarded by images of beautiful people, people
who want to be looked at and admired simply because of their outer
surface. Some of them even make pornographic videos of themselves so
that even more people will want to look at them. None of them have
done anything to improve humankind's sort, they simply exist to be
admired and even worshiped like our friend the Narcissist.

Christopher Lasch has pointed out that we live in a Narcissistic
age, where image is more important than substance. Beauty is a
wonderful concept, but what is beautiful varies from culture to
culture. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder ­
because real beauty does not need another to exist, and one man's
meat may be another man's poison. Tastes vary. Canons of beauty vary
from year to year. Like fashion, what is in this year will be out
next year. Yet we continue to look for beauty, both in humans and in
nature.

I believe that when one sees beauty, it is like a bowl movement,
something that is natural and pleasurable, and that sometimes
stinks. Beauty provokes an emotion. For a narcissist, this emotion
is more important than anything. Because he or she sees how beauty
can capture people. In studies of monkeys, they were given the
choice between food and looking at pictures of high status monkeys
in their troupe ­ they often preferred looking at the pictures.
Beauty and status are linked in some way in our simian minds. It can
be assumed that looking better would benefit them in the long run,
as they would receive more attention and food.

There is a sexual attraction to beauty as well. Most young men and
women pass through a blossoming stage when they are beautiful,
attractive and naοve and the center of attention. They also go crazy
for an image, a rock idol or one of their professors. The need for a
beautiful image takes over their reasoning ­ the sexual drive and the
wish for power are intertwined. Most of us pass out of that stage,
if we are lucky, but the narcissist loves the attention, so wants to
continue to seek this state of bliss. They want to be the center of
attention and they act like beauty queens, strutting and posing.
Those youths who do not blossom take refuge in intellectual pursuits
or in crime; both of these avenues can also attract attention. Good
looks and grooming in the Ape world helps in the art of mating; it
shows that you are both healthy and have good genetic material.

The pursuit of absolute beauty is a human endeavor (despite some
examples of animal artists) that has no real reason to exist. Some
people devote their whole lives to beauty, either creating it or
criticing those who create. Are artists like the Bowerbird, building
a structure that attracts attention and mates? Is this the purpose
of beauty? Is it vainglorious?

Sam:

Tempted as I am to discuss the philosophy of aesthetics, I want to
refocus the discussion on pathological narcissism. I described my
perceptions, as a diagnosed narcissist, of beauty - and especially
of the bodily variety - in these pieces:

Narcissist, the Machine (The Narcissist's Self-Image)

Physique Dysmorphique (Narcissism and Body Dysmorphic Disorders)

Studying my Death (Narcissism and Mortality)

I think that a simple rule of thumb will do:

To admire beauty is not narcissistic. To admire one's own beauty is.
This is why I suggested the typology of somatic vs. cerebral
narcissists.

Narcissists are either cerebral or somatic. In other words, they
either generate their Narcissistic Supply by applying their bodies
or by applying their minds.

The somatic narcissist flaunts his sexual conquests, parades his
possessions, exhibits his muscles, brags about his physical
aesthetics or sexual prowess or exploits, is often a health freak
and a hypochondriac. The cerebral narcissist is a know-it-all,
haughty and intelligent "computer". He uses his awesome intellect,
or knowledge (real or pretended) to secure adoration, adulation and
admiration. To him, his body and its maintenance are a burden and a
distraction.

Both types are auto-erotic (psychosexually in love with themselves,
with their bodies and with their brain). Both types prefer
masturbation to adult, mature, interactive, multi-dimensional and
emotion-laden sex.

The cerebral narcissist is often celibate (even when he has a
girlfriend or a spouse). He prefers pornography and sexual auto-
stimulation to the real thing. The cerebral narcissist is sometimes
a latent (hidden, not yet outed) homosexual.

The somatic narcissist uses other people's bodies to masturbate. Sex
with him - pyrotechnics and acrobatics aside - is likely to be an
impersonal and emotionally alienating and draining experience. The
partner is often treated as an object, an extension of the somatic
narcissist, a toy, a warm and pulsating vibrator.

It is a mistake to assume type-constancy. In other words, all
narcissists are BOTH cerebral and somatic. In each narcissist, one
of the types is dominant. So, the narcissist is either
OVERWHELMINGLY cerebral - or DOMINANTLY somatic. But the other type,
the recessive (manifested less frequently) type, is there. It is
lurking, waiting to erupt.

The narcissist swings between his dominant type and his recessive
type. The latter is expressed mainly as a result of a major
narcissistic injury or life crisis.

Sex for the narcissist is an instrument designed to increase the
number of Sources of Narcissistic Supply. If it happens to be the
most efficient weapon in the narcissist's arsenal – he makes
profligate use of it. In other words: if the narcissist cannot
obtain adoration, admiration, approval, applause, or any other kind
of attention by other means (e.g., intellectually) – he resorts to
sex.

He then become a satyr (or a nymphomaniac): indiscriminately engages
in sex with multiple partners. His sex partners are considered by
him to be objects - sources of Narcissistic Supply. It is through
the processes of successful seduction and sexual conquest that the
narcissist derives his badly needed narcissistic "fix".

The narcissist is likely to perfect his techniques of courting and
regard his sexual exploits as a form of art. He usually exposes this
side of him – in great detail – to others, to an audience, expecting
to win their approval and admiration. Because the Narcissistic
Supply in his case is in the very act of conquest and (what he
perceives to be) subordination – the narcissist is forced to hop
from one partner to another.

Some narcissists prefer "complicated" situations. If men – they
prefer virgins, married women, frigid or lesbian women, etc. The
more "difficult" the target – the more rewarding the narcissistic
outcome. Such a narcissist may be married, but he does not regard
his extra-marital affairs as either immoral or a breach of any
explicit or implicit contract between him and his spouse.

He keeps explaining to anyone who cares to listen that his other
sexual partners are nothing to him, meaningless, that he is merely
taking advantage of them and that they do not constitute a threat
and should not be taken seriously by his spouse. In his mind a clear
separation exists between the honest "woman of his life" (really, a
saint) and the whores that he is having sex with.

With the exception of the meaningful women in his life, he tends to
view all females in a bad light. His behaviour, thus, achieves a
dual purpose: securing Narcissistic Supply, on the one hand – and re-
enacting old, unresolved conflicts and traumas (abandonment by
Primary Objects and the Oedipal conflict, for instance).

When inevitably abandoned by his spouse – the narcissist is
veritably shocked and hurt. This is the sort of crisis, which might
drive him to psychotherapy. Still, deep inside, he feels compelled
to continue to pursue precisely the same path. His abandonment is
cathartic, purifying. Following a period of deep depression and
suicidal ideation – the narcissist is likely to feel cleansed,
invigorated, unshackled, ready for the next round of hunting.

But there is another type of narcissist. He also has bouts of sexual
hyperactivity in which he trades sexual partners and tends to regard
them as objects. However, with him, this is a secondary behaviour.
It appears mainly after major narcissistic traumas and crises.

A painful divorce, a devastating personal financial upheaval – and
this type of narcissist adopts the view that the "old"
(intellectual) solutions do not work anymore. He frantically gropes
and searches for new ways to attract attention, to restore his False
Ego (=his grandiosity) and to secure a subsistence level of
Narcissistic Supply.

Sex is handy and is a great source of the right kind of supply: it
is immediate, sexual partners are interchangeable, the solution is
comprehensive (it encompasses all the aspects of the narcissist's
being), natural, highly charged, adventurous, and pleasurable. Thus,
following a life crisis, the cerebral narcissist is likely to be
deeply involved in sexual activities – very frequently and almost to
the exclusion of all other matters.

However, as the memories of the crisis fade, as the narcissistic
wounds heal, as the Narcissistic Cycle re-commences and the balance
is restored – this second type of narcissist reveals his true
colours. He abruptly loses interest in sex and in all his sexual
partners. The frequency of his sexual activities deteriorates from a
few times a day – to a few times a year. He reverts to intellectual
pursuits, sports, politics, voluntary activities – anything but sex.

This kind of narcissist is afraid of encounters with the opposite
sex and is even more afraid of emotional involvement or commitment
that he fancies himself prone to develop following a sexual
encounter. In general, such a narcissist withdraws not only
sexually – but also emotionally. If married – he loses all overt
interest in his spouse, sexual or otherwise. He confines himself to
his world and makes sure that he is sufficiently busy to preclude
any interaction with his nearest (and supposedly dearest).

He becomes completely immersed in "big projects", lifelong plans, a
vision, or a cause – all very rewarding narcissistically and all
very demanding and time consuming. In such circumstances, sex
inevitably becomes an obligation, a necessity, or a maintenance
chore reluctantly undertaken to preserve his sources of supply (his
family or household).

The cerebral narcissist does not enjoy sex and by far prefers
masturbation or "objective", emotionless sex, like going to
prostitutes. Actually, he uses his mate or spouse as an "alibi", a
shield against the attentions of other women, an insurance policy
which preserves his virile image while making it socially and
morally commendable for him to avoid any intimate or sexual contact
with others.

Ostentatiously ignoring women other than his wife (a form of
aggression) he feels righteous in saying: "I am a faithful husband".
At the same time, he feels hostility towards his spouse for
ostensibly preventing him from freely expressing his sexuality, for
isolating him from carnal pleasures.

The narcissist's thwarted logic goes something like this: "I am
married/attached to this woman. Therefore, I am not allowed to be in
any form of contact with other women which might be interpreted as
more than casual or businesslike. This is why I refrain from having
anything to do with women – because I am being faithful, as opposed
to most other immoral men.

However, I do not like this situation. I envy my free peers. They
can have as much sex and romance as they want to – while I am
confined to this marriage, chained by my wife, my freedom curbed. I
am angry at her and I will punish her by abstaining from having sex
with her."

Thus frustrated, the narcissist minimises all manner of intercourse
with his close circle (spouse, children, parents, siblings, very
intimate friends): sexual, verbal, or emotional. He limits himself
to the rawest exchanges of information and isolates himself
socially.

His reclusion insures against a future hurt and avoids the intimacy
that he so dreads. But, again, this way he also secures abandonment
and the replay of old, unresolved, conflicts. Finally, he really is
left alone by everyone, with no Secondary Sources of Supply.

In his quest to find new sources, he again embarks on ego-mending
bouts of sex, followed by the selection of a spouse or a mate (a
Secondary Narcissistic Supply Source). Then the cycle re-commence: a
sharp drop in sexual activity, emotional absence and cruel
detachment leading to abandonment.

The second type of narcissist is mostly sexually loyal to his
spouse. He alternates between what appears to be hyper-sexuality and
asexuality (really, forcefully repressed sexuality). In the second
phase, he feels no sexual urges, bar the most basic. He is,
therefore, not compelled to "cheat" upon his mate, betray her, or
violate the marital vows. He is much more interested in preventing a
worrisome dwindling of the kind of Narcissistic Supply that really
matters. Sex, he says to himself, contentedly, is for those who can
do no better.

Somatic narcissists tend to verbal exhibitionism. They tend to brag
in graphic details about their conquests and exploits. In extreme
cases, they might introduce "live witnesses" and revert to total,
classical exhibitionism. This sits well with their tendency
to "objectify" their sexual partners, to engage in emotionally-
neutral sex (group sex, for instance) and to indulge in autoerotic
sex.

The exhibitionist sees himself reflected in the eyes of the
beholders. This constitutes the main sexual stimulus, this is what
turns him on. This outside "look" is also what defines the
narcissist. There is bound to be a connection. One (the
exhibitionist) may be the culmination, the "pure case" of the other
(the narcissist).

(continued below)

==================================================

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======================================================

Stephen:

Are narcissists homosexual by nature?

The Irish philosopher John O'Donahue author of the best seller Anam
Cara has written another book entitled Beauty, and in it he posits
that beauty is the cure to everything. Ah, if only this was true ­
those who would agree with him believe in perfection. They do not
want a fly in their soup. Years ago I met a young French man of
noble birth who was also homosexual. As we walked the boulevards of
Paris, full of interesting people, he told me that he found them all
ugly. For him only someone who looked like him, and shared his
sexual desires, was beautiful. No wonder Freud connected the love of
oneself embodied in narcissism to homosexuality!

The drive of a narcissist seems to be toward finding someone just
like them; they are seeking the image that they created, the clone
of themselves, their alter ego, and the virtual image in the mirror.
Most narcissists see their outside image as the having the same sex
as themselves. This other, has stepped out of their body and wonders
around doing and saying things. Within the hollow darkness of their
souls sits another entity that is a shriveled person that never
developed beyond childhood. I suspect that thing looks like one of
the children suffering from early aging. No wonder they look for
beauty, because they hate themselves. I am conjecturing here, and
only Sam can tell me if I am wrong.

Where does the pursuit of beauty take the NPD? When Hitler visited
Rome, Mussolini - the inventor of fascism ­ had false house fronts
put up, hiding the ugliness that he despised. (Vladimir Putin did
the same thing during the St Petersburg anniversary celebrations.)
Italians are particularly attuned to how things look; is this one of
the wellsprings of fascism? Hypocrisy taken to its fullest
expression? Hitler and his gang hated the looks of Jews, Gypsies and
homosexuals. They were vermin that mired the Nazi idea of a
beautiful perfect society. Maybe this is why I cringe when I hear
someone talking about beauty in a certain way; I wonder if they want
perfection rather than reality. An I suspect that their dreams will
become our nightmares!

Reading a book by a famous landscape artist, I ran across a funny
story. He liked to wander the countryside looking for 'picturesque'
scenes to draw and paint. He found a barn full of junk and very
dilapidated, and he asked the farmer if he could do a painting of
it. When he returned a week later he found that the farmer had
cleaned out everything and painted it bright red, destroying the
beauty the painter found appealing. One man's meat is another man's
masterpiece.

In conclusion, I think that beauty can be found everywhere. Those
who try to capture it and exclude everything else are blind to real
beauty. Narcissists want to impose their concepts and ideas of
beauty on others. Most of the foolish chasers of beauty are
dangerous because they believe their opinions are sacrosanct. They
are not really lovers of beauty, but of their own tastes in beauty,
and that is a dangerous thing. Like Martha Stewart, a oparagons of
taste, they dictate beauty and so crush anything that they find
ugly. Remember the story of Cinderella!

Sam:

I am a heterosexual and thus deprived of an intimate acquaintance
with certain psychological processes, which allegedly are unique to
homosexuals. I find it hard to believe that there are such
processes, to begin with. Research failed to find any substantive
difference between the psychological make-up of a narcissist who
happens to have homosexual preferences – and a heterosexual
narcissist.

They both are predators, devouring Narcissistic Supply Sources as
they go. Narcissists look for new victims, the way tigers look for
prey – they are hungry. Hungry for adoration, admiration,
acceptance, approval, and any other kind of attention. Old sources
die easy – once taken for granted, the narcissistic element of
conquest vanishes.

Conquest is important because it proves the superiority of the
narcissist. The very act of subduing, subjugating, or acquiring the
power to influence someone provides the narcissist with Narcissistic
Supply. The newly conquered idolise the narcissist and serve as a
trophies.

The act of conquering and subordinating is epitomized by the sexual
encounter - an objective and atavistic interaction. Making love to
someone means that the consenting partner finds the narcissist (or
one or more of his traits, such as his intelligence, his physique,
even his money) irresistible.

The distinction between passive and active sexual partners is
mechanical, false, superfluous and superficial. Penetration does not
make one of the parties "the stronger one". To cause someone to have
sex with you is a powerful stimulus – and always provokes a
sensation of omnipotence. Whether one is physically passive or
active – one is always psychosexually active.

Anyone who has unsafe sex is gambling with his life – though the
odds are much smaller than public hysteria would have us believe.
Reality does not matter, though – it is the perception of reality
that matters. Getting this close to (perceived) danger is the
equivalent of engaging in self-destruction (suicide). Narcissists
are, at times, suicidal and are always self-destructive.

There is, however, one element, which might be unique to
homosexuals: the fact that their self-definition hinges on their
sexual identity. I know of no heterosexual who would use his sexual
preferences to define himself almost fully. Homosexuality has been
inflated to the level of a sub-culture, a separate psychology, or a
myth. This is typical of persecuted minorities. However, it does
have an influence on the individual. Preoccupation with body and sex
makes most homosexual narcissists SOMATIC narcissists.

Moreover, the homosexual makes love to a person of the SAME sex – in
a way, to his REFLECTION. In this respect, homosexual relations are
highly narcissistic and autoerotic affairs.

The somatic narcissist directs his libido at his body (as opposed to
the cerebral narcissist, who concentrates upon his intellect). He
cultivates it, nourishes and nurtures it, is often an hypochondriac,
dedicates an inordinate amount of time to its needs (real and
imaginary). It is through his body that this type of narcissist
tracks down and captures his Supply Sources.

The supply that the somatic narcissist so badly requires is derived
from his form, his shape, his build, his profile, his beauty, his
physical attractiveness, his health, his age. He downplays
Narcissistic Supply directed at other traits. He uses sex to
reaffirm his prowess, his attractiveness, or his youth. Love, to
him, is synonymous with sex and he focuses his learning skills on
the sexual act, the foreplay and the coital aftermath.

Seduction becomes addictive because it leads to a quick succession
of Supply Sources. Naturally, boredom (a form of transmuted
aggression) sets in once the going gets routine. Routine is counter-
narcissistic by definition because it threatens the narcissist's
sense of uniqueness.

An interesting side issue relates to transsexuals.

Philosophically, there is little difference between a narcissist who
seeks to avoid his True Self (and positively to become his False
Self) – and a transsexual who seeks to discard his true gender. But
this similarity, though superficially appealing, is questionable.

People sometimes seek sex reassignment because of advantages and
opportunities which, they believe, are enjoyed by the other sex.
This rather unrealistic (fantastic) view of the other is faintly
narcissistic. It includes elements of idealised over-valuation, of
self-preoccupation, and of objectification of one's self. It
demonstrates a deficient ability to empathise and some grandiose
sense of entitlement ("I deserve to be taken care of") and
omnipotence ("I can be whatever I want to be – despite nature/God").

This feeling of entitlement is especially manifest in some gender
dysphoric individuals who aggressively pursue hormonal or surgical
treatment. They feel that it is their inalienable right to receive
it on demand and without any strictures or restrictions. For
instance, they oftentimes refuse to undergo psychological evaluation
or treatment as a condition for the hormonal or surgical treatment.

It is interesting to note that both narcissism and gender dysphoria
are early childhood phenomena. This could be explained by
problematic Primary Objects, dysfunctional families, or a common
genetic or biochemical problem. It is too early to say which. As
yet, there isn't even an agreed typology of gender identity
disorders – let alone an in-depth comprehension of their sources.

A radical view, proffered by Ray Blanchard, seems to indicate that
pathological narcissism is more likely to be found among non-core,
ego-dystonic, autogynephilic transsexulas and among heterosexual
transvestites. It is less manifest in core, ego-syntonic, homosexual
transsexuals.

Autogynephilic transsexuals are subject to an intense urge to become
the opposite sex and, thus, to be rendered the sexual object of
their own desire. In other words, they are so sexually attracted to
themselves that they wish to become both lovers in the romantic
equation - the male and the female. It is the fulfilment of the
ultimate narcissistic fantasy with the False Self as a fetish
("narcissistic fetish").

Autogynephilic transsexuals start off as heterosexuals and end up as
either bisexual or homosexual. By shifting his/her attentions to
men, the male autogynephilic transsexual "proves" to himself that he
has finally become a "true" and desirable woman.

To your other observations:

Fromm "diagnosed" both Hitler and Stalin as narcissists. As Saul
Friedlander noted, both Fascism and Nazism were aesthetic movements
(one of them founded by an "artist").

But this was old hat! Hitler and Nazism are often wrongly portrayed
as an apocalyptic and seismic break with European history. Yet the
truth is that they were the culmination and reification of European
history in the 19th century. Europe's annals of colonialism have
prepared it for the range of phenomena associated with the Nazi
regime - from industrial murder to racial theories, from slave
labour to the forcible annexation of territory.

Germany was a colonial power no different to murderous Belgium or
Britain. What set it apart is that it directed its colonial
attentions at the heartland of Europe - rather than at Africa or
Asia. Both World Wars were colonial wars fought on European soil.
Moreover, Nazi Germany innovated by applying prevailing racial
theories (usually reserved to non-whites) to the white race itself.
It started with the Jews - a non-controversial proposition - but
then expanded them to include "east European" whites, such as the
Poles and the Russians.

Germany was not alone in its malignant nationalism. The far right in
France was as pernicious. Nazism - and Fascism - were world
ideologies, adopted enthusiastically in places as diverse as Iraq,
Egypt, Norway, Latin America, and Britain. At the end of the 1930's,
liberal capitalism, communism, and fascism (and its mutations) were
locked in mortal battle of ideologies. Hitler's mistake was to
delusionally believe in the affinity between capitalism and Nazism -
an affinity enhanced, to his mind, by Germany's corporatism and by
the existence of a common enemy: global communism.

Colonialism always had discernible religious overtones and often
collaborated with missionary religion. "The White Man's burden" of
civilizing the "savages" was widely perceived as ordained by God.
The church was the extension of the colonial power's army and
trading companies.

It is no wonder that Hitler's lebensraum colonial movement - Nazism -
  possessed all the hallmarks of an institutional religion:
priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, mythology.
Hitler was this religion's ascetic saint. He monastically denied
himself earthly pleasures (or so he claimed) in order to be able to
dedicate himself fully to his calling. Hitler was a monstrously
inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that
(Aryan) humanity should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his
humanity, Hitler became a distorted version of
Nietzsche's "superman".

But being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-
moral. In this restricted sense, Hitler was a post-modernist and a
moral relativist. He projected to the masses an androgynous figure
and enhanced it by fostering the adoration of nudity and all
things "natural". But what Nazism referred to as "nature" was not
natural at all.

It was an aesthetic of decadence and evil (though it was not
perceived this way by the Nazis), carefully orchestrated, and
artificial. Nazism was about reproduced copies, not about originals.
It was about the manipulation of symbols - not about veritable
atavism.

In short: Nazism was about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the
spectacle (and be subsumed by it), Nazism demanded the suspension of
judgment, depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis was
tantamount, in Nazi dramaturgy, to self-annulment. Nazism was
nihilistic not only operationally, or ideologically. Its very
language and narratives were nihilistic. Nazism was conspicuous
nihilism - and Hitler served as a role model, annihilating Hitler
the Man, only to re-appear as Hitler the stychia.

What was the role of the Jews in all this?

Nazism posed as a rebellion against the "old ways" - against the
hegemonic culture, the upper classes, the established religions, the
superpowers, the European order. The Nazis borrowed the Leninist
vocabulary and assimilated it effectively. Hitler and the Nazis were
an adolescent movement, a reaction to narcissistic injuries
inflicted upon a narcissistic (and rather psychopathic) toddler
nation-state. Hitler himself was a malignant narcissist, as Fromm
correctly noted.

The Jews constituted a perfect, easily identifiable, embodiment of
all that was "wrong" with Europe. They were an old nation, they were
eerily disembodied (without a territory), they were cosmopolitan,
they were part of the establishment, they were "decadent", they were
hated on religious and socio-economic grounds (see
Goldhagen's "Hitler's Willing Executioners"), they were different,
they were narcissistic (felt and acted as morally superior), they
were everywhere, they were defenseless, they were credulous, they
were adaptable (and thus could be co-opted to collaborate in their
own destruction). They were the perfect hated father figure and
parricide was in fashion.

This is precisely the source of the fascination with Hitler. He was
an inverted human. His unconscious was his conscious. He acted out
our most repressed drives, fantasies, and wishes. He provides us
with a glimpse of the horrors that lie beneath the veneer, the
barbarians at our personal gates, and what it was like before we
invented civilization. Hitler forced us all through a time warp and
many did not emerge. He was not the devil. He was one of us. He was
what Arendt aptly called the banality of evil. Just an ordinary,
mentally disturbed, failure, a member of a mentally disturbed and
failing nation, who lived through disturbed and failing times. He
was the perfect mirror, a channel, a voice, and the very depth of
our souls.

Nazism - and, by extension, fascism (though the two are by no means
identical) - amounted to permanent revolutionary civil wars. Fascist
movements were founded, inter alia, on negations and on the
militarization of politics. Their raison d'etre and vigor were
derived from their rabid opposition to liberalism, communism,
conservatism, rationalism, and individualism and from exclusionary
racism. It was a symbiotic relationship - self-definition and
continued survival by opposition.

Yet, all fascist movements suffered from fatal - though largely
preconcerted - ideological tensions. In their drive to become broad,
pluralistic, churches (a hallmark of totalitarian movements) - these
secular religions often offered contradictory doctrinal fare.

I. Renewal vs. Destruction

The first axis of tension was between renewal and destruction.
Fascist parties invariably presented themselves as concerned with
the pursuit and realization of a utopian program based on the
emergence of a "new man" (in Germany it was a mutation of
Nietzsche's Superman). "New", "young", "vital", and "ideal" were
pivotal keywords. Destruction was both inevitable (i.e., the removal
of the old and corrupt) and desirable (i.e., cathartic, purifying,
unifying, and ennobling).

Yet fascism was also nihilistic. It was bipolar: either utopia or
death. Hitler instructed Speer to demolish Germany when his dream of
a thousand-years Reich crumbled. This mental splitting mechanism
(all bad or all good, black or white) is typical of all utopian
movements. Similarly, Stalin (not a fascist) embarked on orgies of
death and devastation every time he faced an obstacle.

This ever-present tension between construction, renewal, vitalism,
and the adoration of nature - and destruction, annihilation, murder,
and chaos - was detrimental to the longevity and cohesion of fascist
fronts.

II. Individualism vs. Collectivism

A second, more all-pervasive, tension was between self-assertion and
what Griffin and Payne call "self transcendence". Fascism was a cult
of the Promethean will, of the super-man, above morality, and the
shackles of the pernicious materialism, egalitarianism, and
rationalism. It was demanded of the New Man to be willful,
assertive, determined, self-motivating, a law unto himself. The New
Man, in other words, was supposed to be contemptuously a-social
(though not anti-social).

But here, precisely, arose the contradiction. It was society which
demanded from the New Man certain traits and the selfless
fulfillment of certain obligations and observance of certain duties.
The New Man was supposed to transcend egotism and sacrifice himself
for the greater, collective, good. In Germany, it was Hitler who
embodied this intolerable inconsistency. On the one hand, he was
considered to be the reification of the will of the nation and its
destiny. On the other hand, he was described as self-denying, self-
less, inhumanly altruistic, and a temporal saint martyred on the
altar of the German nation.

This doctrinal tension manifested itself also in the economic
ideology of fascist movements.

Fascism was often corporatist or syndicalist (and always
collectivist). At times, it sounded suspiciously like Leninism-
Stalinism. Payne has this to say:

"What fascist movements had in common was the aim of a new
functional relationship for the functional and economic systems,
eliminating the autonomy (or, in some proposals, the existence) of
large-scale capitalism and modern industry, altering the nature of
social status, and creating a new communal or reciprocal productive
relationship through new priorities, ideals, and extensive
governmental control and regulation. The goal of accelerated
economic modernization was often espoused ..."

(Stanley G. Payne - A History of Fascism 1914-1945 - University of
Wisconsin Press, 1995 - p. 10)

Still, private property was carefully preserved and property rights
meticulously enforced. Ownership of assets was considered to be a
mode of individualistic expression (and, thus, "self-assertion") not
to be tampered with.

This second type of tension transformed many of the fascist
organizations into chaotic, mismanaged, corrupt, and a-moral groups,
lacking in direction and in self-discipline. They swung ferociously
between the pole of malignant individualism and that of lethal
collectivism.

III. Utopianism vs. Struggle

Fascism was constantly in the making, eternally half-baked, subject
to violent permutations, mutations, and transformations. Fascist
movements were "processual" and, thus, in permanent revolution
(rather, since fascism was based on the negation of other social
forces, in permanent civil war). It was a  utopian movement in
search of a utopia. Many of the elements of a utopia were there -
but hopelessly mangled and mingled and without any coherent
blueprint.

In the absence of a rational vision and an orderly plan of action -
fascist movements resorted to irrationality, the supernatural, the
magical, and to their brand of a secular religion. They emphasized
the way -rather than the destination, the struggle - rather than the
attainment, the battle - rather than the victory, the effort -
rather than the outcome, or, in short - the Promethean and the
Thanatean rather than the Vestal, the kitschy rather than the truly
aesthetic.

IV. Organic vs. Decadent

Fascism emphasized rigid social structures - supposedly the
ineluctable reflections of biological strictures. As opposed to
politics and culture - where fascism was revolutionary and utopian -
socially, fascism was reactionary, regressive, and defensive. It was
pro-family. One's obligations, functions, and rights were the
results of one's "place in society". But fascism was also male
chauvinistic, adolescent, latently homosexual ("the cult of
virility", the worship of the military), somewhat pornographic (the
adoration of the naked body, of "nature", and of the young), and
misogynistic. In its horror of its own repressed
androgynous "perversions" (i.e., the very decadence it claimed to be
eradicating), it employed numerous defense mechanisms (e.g.,
reaction formation and projective identification). It was gender
dysphoric and personality disordered.

V. Elitism vs. Populism

All fascist movements were founded on the equivalent of the Nazi
Fuhrerprinzip. The leader - infallible, indestructible, invincible,
omnipotent, omniscient, sacrificial - was a creative genius who
embodied as well as interpreted the nation's quiddity and fate. His
privileged and unerring access to the soul of the fascist movement,
to history's grand designs, and to the moral and aesthetic
principles underlying it all - made him indispensable and worthy of
blind and automatic obedience.

This strongly conflicted with the unmitigated, all-inclusive, all-
pervasive, and missionary populism of fascism. Fascism was not
egalitarian (see section above). It believed in a fuzzily role-based
and class-based system. It was misogynistic, against the old, often
against the "other" (ethnic or racial minorities). But, with these
exceptions, it embraced one and all and was rather meritocratic.
Admittedly, mobility within the fascist parties was either the
result of actual achievements and merit or the outcome of nepotism
and cronyism - still, fascism was far more egalitarian than most
other political movements.

This populist strand did not sit well with the overweening existence
of a Duce or a Fuhrer. Tensions erupted now and then  but, overall,
the Fuhrerprinzip held well.

Fascism's undoing cannot be attributed to either of these inherent
contradictions, though they made it brittle and clunky. To
understand the downfall of this meteoric latecomer - we must look
elsewhere, to the 17th and 18th century.

Looking forward to our next dialog!

=======================================================
AUTHOR BIO:

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com ) 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.

Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government
of Macedonia.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

============================================================


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=============================================================

Links of Interest

About the DSM IV

http://members.tripod.com/~psych_girl/dsm.html

Consumer's Guide to Online Mental Health Care

http://www.m-a-h.net/hip/index.html

Case Management Resource Guide - Online

http://www.cmrg.com/

How I Became a Narcissist

http://samvak.tripod.com/narcissist/
==============================================================

Refer journalists and editors to my media kit:

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Other books about abusive relationships and how to cope with abusers

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==============================

Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

Click on these links to purchase the PRINT BOOK and SIX E-BOOKS:

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IV. "The World of the Narcissist" (January 2005)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_ESSAY

V. "Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List" (May 2004)

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_EXCERPTS

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Malignant Self Love, Toxic Relationships - and MORE!!!

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Free excerpts from the book are available here:

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The Narcissism Book of Quotes is available for free download here:

http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/6514/files/NPDQuotes.rtf

Have a safe and warm week!

Sam

HealthyPlace Narcissistic Personality Disorder Community

http://www.healthyplace.com/communities/personality_disorders/narcissism/index.h\
tml

Narcissistic PD and abuse by narcissists - FAQs, essays, links, and book
excerpts.

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Transcript of the CHAT about narcissists in the workplace HERE:

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Radio Show regarding Relationships with Abusive Narcissists

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NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
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Description: Are you Walking on Eggshells with Jekyll and Hyde? Let us help you reclaim your life from the devastating effects of the narcissist in your life. Get help and support here: http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER (27 members)

Active older topics National Sex Offender Public Registry 1 new of 1 - Jul 28 Analyze This - Short Fiction about Narcissists 1 new of 1 - Jul 27 PoetrySz - Demystifying Menatl Illness 1 new of 1 - Jul 20 Why Does the Narcissist Refuse to Grow up? - NEW ARTICLE 1 new of 1 - Jul 18 The Narcissist as Eternal Child+Pathologi­cal Narcissism, Psychosis, and Delusions 1 new of 1 - Jul 17 Problem gamblers' personality similar to that of substance abusers 1 new of 1 - Jul 14 NEW RESOURCES Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), Narcissism, and Abusive Relationships 1 new of 1 - Jul 14 The Violence Against Women Act - A Powerful Solution or Vigilantism 1 new of 1 - Jul 12 Narcissistic Personality Disorder Directory 1 new of 1 - Jul 11 Borderline personality characteristics aid bipolar depression diagnosis 1 new of 1 - Jul 7

Of Criminals And CEOs
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 22, 7:26 am
[link]
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World Conference on the Prevention of Family Violence
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 21, 11:41 am
[link] Why is Alberta Children's Services hosting a conference on the prevention of family violence? Historically, family violence has been seen primarily as a problem affecting adults in intimate relationships and the elderly. While shelters and a justice response are critical components of a family violence strategy, they
read more Β»       1 new of 1 message - 1 author

Peter Warren on Wife-Beaters
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 19, 10:29 am
[link]
read more Β»       1 new of 1 message - 1 author

NEW! Narcissistic Abusers in Relationships
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 18, 9:48 am
NEW! Narcissistic Abusers in Relationships - updated daily! [link]
read more Β»       1 new of 1 message - 1 author

New short fiction about narcissists on Analyze This!
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 13, 6:10 am
[link] [link] Analyze This - Short Fiction about Narcissists Members of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder support forum discuss NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) in short fiction by Dr. Sam Vaknin.
read more Β»       1 new of 1 message - 1 author

PTYPES and personality disorders
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 13, 5:18 am
[link] Enjoy! Sam
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The Narcissism Book of Quotes
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 13, 5:17 am
Forward this message and the book itself to interested parties! A collaborative effort of the members of the Suite101 Narcissistic Personality Disorder Topic (community) - "The Narcissism Book of Quotes" contains hundreds of quotes, carefully selected from more than 12,000 entries in 1300 discussion threads.
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Site Index Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 12, 12:03 pm
[link]
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"Tainted Love (Love with a Narcissist)" iMix
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 10, 10:28 am
The "Tainted Love (Love with a Narcissist)" iMix has been published in the iTunes Music store at: [link] Tainted Love (Love with a Narcissist) Playlist Notes: Were you ever captivated by the intoxicating charm and
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Narcissism Lectures
Sam Vaknin Narcissus Publications - Aug 7, 9:37 am
Courtesy of Femfree, owner of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and the Psychopath MSN Forums: [link] [link] [link] The Almost Untreatable Narcissistic Patient mms://67.109.171.163/videos4/a­unp.wmv
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Β©2005 Google

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9023604/site/newsweek/

Of Criminals And CEOs

The difference between bold, creative visionaries and deluded
psychopaths is not as big as it used to be.

By Tara Pepper
Newsweek International

Aug. 29, 2005 issue - For a while, Brian Blackwell seemed to have it
made. His girlfriend believed the cosseted only child from Liverpool
was a professional tennis player, with a $125,000 Nike contract
funding his jet-set lifestyle. He hired her as his private secretary
and wrote her a check for $90,000. He bought her a $16,000 car, then
purchased $22,500 worth of flights for them to New York, Miami,
Barbados and San Francisco. When they returned, he spent the summer
at her house. One day the police knocked on her door. Blackwell's
whole life, it turns out, was a lie. He had stolen $16,000 from a
trust fund his parents had set up for his education and maxed out
his father's credit card. The $90,000 check bounced (he had sixteen
cents in his account). The Nike contract never existed. And in June,
Blackwell was sentenced to life in prison for killing his parents
with a claw hammer and kitchen knife.

Story continues below ↓
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Psychiatrists from both defense and prosecution agreed that
Blackwell posed a severe case of narcissistic personality disorder,
or NPD, and he was convicted of manslaughter on grounds of
diminished responsibility. Yet Blackwell, before spiraling into his
delusional fantasies, was a straight-A student, well regarded by
teachers and about to attend university to become, as his parents
boasted, "not just a doctor—a surgeon." In fact, while his case is
extreme, researchers are finding that milder forms of NPD may
afflict some of society's most successful members. A recent study by
Belinda Board and Katarina Fritzon of the University of Surrey in
Britain found that successful business managers were as likely to
show the traits associated with NPD—grandiosity, lack of empathy and
exploitativeness—as samples of criminals and psychiatric
patients. "A narcissist, who breaks new ground, can be the optimal,
innovative business personality," says Michael Maccoby, author
of "The Productive Narcissist."

Narcissists often make exceptional managers, galvanizing employees
and making far-reaching changes. A narcissistic executive is the
creative, superficially charming colleague who may be arrogant and
manipulative but also charismatic and hard-charging, qualities that
are increasingly valued in politics and business. They can be
contrasted with obsessive managers, like Wal-Mart founder Sam
Walton, who kept a low profile and a modest lifestyle, or Gillette's
Colman Mockler, known for his calmness, courteousness and down-to-
earth manner. In a six-year study of high achievers working on
special projects in 20 large firms, management experts Bill Fischer
and Andy Boyton found that firms are often eager to hire such
brilliant thinkers, but fail to put their skills to good use. In the
best of cases, though, managers like Southwest Airlines cofounder
Herb Kelleher "smash the old economic rules and create an entirely
new game with their own rules," says Maccoby. "They use their
corporations as vehicles for their own vision."

That kind of success has much to do with the talent such leaders are
able to attract. Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs are so
charismatic and visionary that employees overlook the more difficult
aspects of their narcissism; many of the best people are drawn to
their firms to be part of something that is ambitious and
meaningful. As Jack Welch wrote in his autobiography, he wanted
to "change GE from one of the great companies to absolutely the
greatest company in world business." The most effective narcissistic
CEOs are also self-aware enough to surround themselves with people
whose complementary personalities act as a check on their own.
(Kelleher, for instance, had Southwest president Colleen Barrett,
whose systematic attention to detail was the perfect foil for his
idea-driven approach.)

The question of how to manage such super egos has recently become a
hot-button issue in the boardroom. Narcissistic bosses may make bold
leaders, but they can also let aggression and selfishness fester in
the workplace, to the point where cruelty and deception are
condoned. For each Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, there's a Bernie Ebbers
or a Dennis Kozlowski—and the line between visionary leader and
loose cannon can be thin indeed. Many high achievers pursue wealth
and status to compensate for a deeper sense of despair and
worthlessness, and these unassimilated feelings get projected onto
employees, who bear the brunt of a narcissistic manager's
abrasiveness, lack of empathy, even random acts of cruelty. "We
certainly see some extreme characters, and by the time they're
referred here there is a problem," says Board, who runs a team of
psychologists, Peoplewise, that advises businesses on organizational
psychology. Many narcissistic managers don't welcome criticism, and
even soliciting advice or opinions can seem like a weakness.
Bullying and other self-centered behavior can leave legions of
employees "battered and bruised," says Board.

As Blackwell's case showed, a narcissist can segue into criminality
almost imperceptibly, particularly in a culture that values self-
promotion. Board recalls one manager at a big public company, Phil,
who was referred to her after he had been discovered systematically
lying about the profitability of his team. "Phil never believed he
could be caught," she says. "And the company couldn't believe
anything bad about him, until the evidence was overwhelming." After
five months of cognitive behavior therapy, Phil began to face up to
what he had done, and learned ways of developing empathy with his
colleagues.

As firms come to appreciate the creativity and vision of
narcissistic managers, they're learning more about how to spot signs
that things are going awry. Narcissistic managers can transform a
business. But the shadow of Brian Blackwell—or Enron, where
narcissism was institutionalized—is a reminder that sometimes more
sober heads need to prevail.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Save for later reference! Forward to interested parties and relevant
discussion and mailing groups!

Narcissistic abuse in the workplace and narcissism of authority
figures

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/faq81.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal79.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/faq11.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/15.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal70.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal52.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal48.html

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/corporatenarcissism.html

http://healthyplace.com/Communities/personality_disorders/site/Transc
ripts/narcissism_workplace.htm

http://www.suite101.com/bulletin.cfm/6514/10621

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/pp114.html

http://www.tipsofallsorts.com/bully.html

http://open-site.org/Society/Issues/Violence_and_Abuse/Workplace/

http://www.nypress.com/16/7/news&columns/feature.cfm

http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/npd.htm

http://www.freepint.com/issues/240703.htm

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/journal45.html

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/bbing/stories/s1158704.htm

http://www.freepint.com/issues/260505.htm