I am a Doctor of Economics, not Psychiatry. But some personal experience gave me an insight into the behaviour of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and I have applied that in the past to interpret the behaviour of Donald Trump.
This insight is that a person with NPD (let’s give him a nickname, say, Scomocchio) simply has to be in the right in his own mind: he cannot cope with the thought that he has made a mistake, or done something wrong. Therefore, when confronted with incontrovertible evidence that he has made an error, he re-designs history so that the error disappears. The fact that an independent record of history exists that shows the error did occur is irrelevant.
This leads to the utterly perplexing spectacle of Scomocchio calling someone “Tokyo Tom”, and then denying that he had done so, when evidence exists of him on camera saying precisely that. Then when this evidence is pointed out, he denies the denial.
Watching this can drive a sane person troppo, so the antidote is to realise what our NPD sufferer—though I prefer to say perpetrator, since an NPD person causes others to suffer rather than themselves—is actually doing. He is not responding to the challenge of justifying an established historical sequence of events. He is inventing a new sequence of events in which he is in the right throughout.
As I watch Scott Morrison in press conferences and interviews, this analysis is the only way I can make sense of what comes out of his mouth. I’m not qualified to say that he has NPD, but I am saying that the only way I can remain sane while watching Morrison pressers and interviews is to apply what I learnt from dealing with someone in my personal life who “walked like an NPD duck, quacked like an NPD duck” (which I recount in the next section).
This also is the only way that I can make sense of some current events—specifically, the viciousness with which some of Morrison’s own colleagues are attempting to undermine him, and perhaps paradoxically, the extent to which his supporters like Alex Hawke are willing to go to support him.
Firstly, NPD people are normally incredibly attractive—not in looks necessarily, but in personality. There is something extremely seductive about the confidence that such a person projects. If you fall under the thrall of such a person, then you can end up doing almost anything for them. Some people can remain like that their entire lives. Hence Hawke.
But others can break away, and when they do, their entire perspective on that person inverts: you flip from perceiving them as a hero to a dangerous charlatan. From supporting their rise to power, you now do everything you can to undermine them, because you realise the threat their inherently deluded nature poses to others. Especially when that person is the country’s leader.
How you do that depends on the political constraints you face. As a now effectively dumped Liberal Party Senator, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells had no constraints, and went for the jugular with her assertion that Morrison was “not fit to be Prime Minister“.
That was brilliant, but to me the most fascinating intervention was the sitting Cabinet member that Michael Towke said sent him a text message of support:
“I’ve got text messages from a cabinet minister telling me ‘I believe you’ and do what you need to do, just be careful,” Towke told Network Ten’s The Project on Wednesday night.
Towke claimed that he has never spoken to this person before: there was no personal relationship on which these messages of support were based. So, why on earth would a sitting Cabinet minister take the risk of exposing themselves to someone who may use that information against them? It’s because he/she want to do what they can to undermine Morrison, but is constrained by being a member of Cabinet: it would be political suicide to come out like Fierravanti-Wells did. So, instead, you encourage those who can take action that you cannot—like Towke. You want the case to build.
I expect that there are quite a few people like this alleged Cabinet member, who though they have to go through the motions of trying to get the Liberal-National Coalition re-elected, will behind the scenes be doing as much as they can to ensure that it does not—or at least that Morrison goes down. But that’s hard to do after the rule change he introduced requiring a 2/3rd vote of the Parliamentary party to remove him.
Instead, I expect defections as existing members secure a position outside Parliament, and leaks galore—perhaps we’ll finally see internal documents on Morrison’s removal from his position as the head of Tourism Australia.
It promises to be an interesting election campaign…
My personal experience
Stop if you’ve heard this one before—I shared this story with my supporters on Patreon after Trump lost the 2020 election.
I had a relationship with a NPD … perpetrator … in the early 2000s (the relationship began on September 12 2001, but that’s another story). There were some very good things about that relationship as well as very bad, but the one thing I can say emphatically in favour of it in hindsight, is that it gave me deep insights into Donald Trump.
The deepest insight that one gets about a Narcissist from knowing one intimately is that they neither lie, nor tell the truth. Instead, everything they say is a reconstruction of what has happened so that they are always in the right. “Truth” and “Lie” are concepts that require an internal frame of reference to an objective external reality. They don’t have that framework: instead, their frame of reference is themselves. Everything must start and end with them as the centre of attention, and with them acting correctly throughout.
So, when reality doesn’t follow that narrative, as it inevitably does not, they reverse engineer reality until it fits that narrative.
I’ll give my favourite illustration of that from my relationship. I won’t use her real name (though anyone who’s known me personally or professionally for 20 or so years knows who I’m talking about): instead, I’ll call her Aida.
We were at a conference celebrating the life’s work of the great, and now sadly departed, non-mainstream economist, Basil Moore, in Cape Town, South Africa. The food and wine at the restaurants in Cape Town, Stellenbosch and surrounds, were beyond excellent, and in overindulging, I developed pimples on my neck.
Aida had, as usual, made enemies of the other female attendees. In talking with two of them one morning, one quipped, in reference to the red welts on my neck,
“Steve, it looks like you slept with a vampire last night” (Aida hailed from Romania, which includes Transylvania—the land of Count Vlad the Impaler, who was the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Count Dracula).
In an attempt to make light of that very clever snipe, I replied
“Ah, but she isn’t a vampire, she’s a vamp”.
Before the other two women had a chance to react, Aida snarled at me
“How dare you call me a slut in front of these women Steve!”
“But Aida, vamp doesn’t mean slut!”, I replied
“Yes it does Steve, it means it in every language. I’m grossly offensed.” (English was not her first language, though she was very fluent in it).
Since this was easily the hundredth time she’d abused me in public, I replied “Well, be offensed then, just leave me alone!” and stormed off.
Round two.
Back at her home after the conference, I remembered her telling one of my sisters that, when she heard English, she first translated into French and then Romanian before replying. Whether that was true or not, it left open the possibility that she had misinterpreted the word “vamp” as something derogatory. So, I asked her
“Aida, when I said vamp, did you hear something like prostitute?”
“Yes, I did Steve!”, she replied, visibly overjoyed that I understood her.
“But that’s not what it means, Aida”.
“But that’s what I learnt that it meant. Look, I’ll show you.”
She went to her bookshelf to retrieve an ancient English dictionary. As I sat next to her so that we could both read the entry, she turned to the relevant page, and there was the definition of Vamp.
It was, and I quote, “sophisticated and irresistible woman“—precisely the meaning I meant to convey.
She went silent. No apology, no discussion.
Round three
By this time, I had already decided to leave her—the only questions were when, and how. So, when we went for dinner that night, I had just one thought on my mind: “before I leave, I’m going to get an apology out of this bitch if it kills me”.
I thought I had the perfect chance with this event. But, as I went to raise the issue, Aida snarled at me from across the table:
“Yes Steve, and the other women we were talking to weren’t attractive enough to be vamps, and I was offensed on their behalf.”
It didn’t matter that this was blatantly untrue. It didn’t matter that I was there, and knew it was untrue. All that mattered was that, in the light of new evidence (her dictionary), she now had a new narrative that put her, once more, in the right throughout.