Part One
If, after spending time with a person, you feel as though you’ve lost a quart of plasma, avoid that person in the future. – William S. Burroughs
Sometimes the Lord sends you...a lively, cheerful, talkative person. He talks and he talks and he talks. His mouth doesn’t shut up for a moment. And all he talks about is himself. – Sholem Aleichem
A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company. – Oscar Wilde
Your son may live to a ripe old age, providing that he never comes to know himself. – Tiresias to Liriope, in Ovid’s Echo and Narcissus
As for me, I’m judgmental and a curmudgeon, and I’m not a trained psychologist. That said, I freely admit to enjoying typologies, systems that classify everyone. I’m a judgmental type. Typologies can be useful up to a point, and they can be fun (There are three kinds of people in the world: those who can count, and those who can’t). So, here’s another one. I divide people into three main groups in terms of how we communicate with each other. These are ridiculously broad generalizations (that’s another thing I do), so I invite you to enjoy the ride and see if or what part of you fits into these categories, or who they remind you of.
At a party, we encounter people we haven’t known before. We are thrilled to meet a person with an opinion – any opinion – if they indicate interest in a conversation (”to live with, keep company with”, literally “turn about with”). We share our experiences, our realities and our opinions. It’s called democracy. Perhaps 15% of us (or all of us, 15% of the time) actually do this.
Someone is telling you in a loud voice they once wrote a poem. – Naomi Shihab Nye
Of the rest of us, 80% (or all of us, 80% of the time) are what I call boring narcissists. They ask how you’re doing, but it becomes clear from their response – long, tedious and utterly self-referential – that they are only interested in talking about themselves. As the old joke goes, they finally ask:
Enough talk about me. Let’s talk about you. What do you think about me?
Of course I’m referring here to the most extreme examples. As Michael Meade says, “Anything worth saying is worth exaggerating”. But I contend that the general case remains true for most people. “You just got back from Europe? Really! Joan and I went to Europe five years ago, blah, blah…” “You just finished an incredible novel? Really? Let me tell you about…blah, blah.” These people are the most common form of boring narcissist, the “self-referentialators”, who, perhaps thinking that they’re sharing a common interest or experience, are, in fact, hijacking your attention and refusing to give it back. This has been called “conversational narcissism”.
They inhabit the world of selfies and reality shows; they create most non-ad Facebook posts, in which they let you know how happy they are and how beautiful their children are. Or are they performing happiness? Some of them are deeply committed to spiritual practices. However, as Shakespeare says, one wonders if they “doth protest too much”. Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa taught that “ego is able to convert anything to its own use, even spirituality”, and Robert Bly wrote, “Longing for perfection in ourselves is...perfectly compatible with indifference toward others”.
It’s the same set of dynamics with belief systems, and the basis of all proselytizing: Let’s talk about my religion. We all do it; it’s human nature.
Or it’s what passes for human nature in what Joseph Campbell called our “demythologized world,” a world of the neurotic, the depressed, the alienated and the uninitiated. A world that we all entered with archetypal expectations of being seen, welcomed and held, but were not. Or worse: a world that has so traumatized us that we constantly repeat (or act out) that trauma.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders lists narcissism as one of the personality disorders, each of which “deviates markedly from cultural norms”. Psychologist Gary Rosenthal, however, critiques the manual for not recognizing when narcissism has grown to be normative in a culture. It may well be true, as he and writers such as Bly have argued, that narcissism is much more common than just a few generations ago. But it is rooted in centuries of uniquely American myth.
In 1979, Christopher Lasch wrote that what we used to call “egotism” stems from a very weak sense of self, that Americans had become people who required constant validation. I would argue, however, that the American character was formed from the earliest stages in religious intolerance, racial paranoia, capitalist exploitation of the natural world and unchecked violence, and that it came to emphasize a form of radical individualism (as opposed to individuality) that is unique in world history.
American culture has been so steeped in the glorification of the individual (we have a Bill of Rights but no Bill of Responsibilities) that we take for granted the populations of tax-dodgers, government-haters, libertarians, internet thieves, narcissists, sociopaths and outright psychopaths that make up a world in which people who empathize with the poor are considered suckers. Elon Musk tells his millions of followers:
The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.
We have inherited an immensely long process of abstraction, alienation and splitting of the western psyche. These people embody, wrote James Hillman, “that peculiar process upon which our civilization rests: dissociation”. I address this subject here: Why Are Americans so Freaking Crazy?
The Puritan culture of early America had, by the 1950s, transitioned into the culture of consumerism (as I argued in Chapter Eleven of my book Madness at the Gates of the City: The Myth of American Innocence). While some still evangelize about religion, most of us are proselytizing about ourselves. Let’s talk about me. As Suzy Hansen writes,
Every American has been immersed since birth in the reassurance that he or she is the most superior citizen on earth...Lasch, invoking Hobbes, argued that America’s increasingly consumerist society “in its decadence has carried the logic of individualism to the extreme of war of all against all, the pursuit of happiness to the dead end of a narcissistic preoccupation with the self.”
American myth, however, is infinitely complex. In a profound, historic mystery, by the late 19th-century, the nation of individualists had become an individual among nations. It convinced itself that, as with its Biblical models, it had a unique, exceptional destiny to spread freedom and opportunity everywhere (even when not invited). The fact that the image of the land of the free rests on a mountain of racism, violence and human misery leads to mass cognitive dissonance that regularly expresses itself in collective narcissism. Historian Jackson Lears argues that “the power that undergirded [Americans’] dreams of personal and national regeneration” was “their dependence on empire for their prosperity, for their racial, social, and even moral identity as a people.” Agnieszka Golec de Zavala writes:
...collective narcissists demand privileged treatment, not equal rights. And the need for continuous external validation of the group’s inflated image...differentiates collective narcissists from those who simply hold positive feelings about their group.
As for groups trained to believe in their inherent sovereignty, “the essence of this over-estimation of one’s own position and the hate for all who differ from it is narcissism,” wrote Erich Fromm:
He is nothing, but if he can identify with his nation, or can transfer his personal narcissism to the nation, then he is everything. A group whipped into narcissistic fervor is eager to have a leader with whom it can identify...The leader is then admired by the group which projects its narcissism onto him.
And when history punctures their grandiose illusions, the result is likely to be an explosion of narcissistic rage. Within the national collective, of course, are dominant groups. Isabelle Wilkerson writes:
Society builds a trapdoor of self-reference that, without any effort on the part of people in the dominant caste, unwittingly forces on them a narcissistic isolation from those assigned to lower categories. It replicates the structure of narcissistic family systems, the interplay of competing supporting roles...Those accustomed to being the measure of all that is human can come to depend on the reassurance that while they may have troubles in their lives, at least they are not at the bottom. As long as the designated bottom dwellers remain in their designated place, their own identities and futures seem secure.
The right kind of leader can inspire a symbiotic connection that supplants logic. The susceptible group, Fromm taught, sees itself in the narcissistic leader, becomes one with the leader, sees his fortunes and his fate as their own.
From the early Puritans to late-18th-century social Darwinists to current proponents of the “prosperity gospel”, the American psyche has had little concern for the poor, or in mythic terms, “losers”, whose condition is proof of their distance from God. In 2026 the Republican “war on empathy” is popular among Christians, writes Julia Wong:
The idea that empathy is actually bad has also been gaining traction among white evangelical Christians in the US, some of whom have begun to recast the pangs of empathy that might complicate their support for Donald Trump and his agenda as a “sin” or “toxin”.
Why else would this nation condemn over a quarter of its children to poverty simply because their parents can’t find decent work?
A subset of the boring narcissists are those sensitive, often deeply spiritual people who hope to heal from some loss or trauma and want everyone in the AA meeting, church group or therapy meeting to hear their story – repeatedly. We listen with sympathy the first few times; later, we wonder why our attention has strayed; still later, we shamefully think, “Get a life!” We lose patience with them because they seem to prefer repeating their story rather than healing it. We wonder if they are more comfortable as victims than as survivors, who would rather wallow in their stories and refuse to reframe them.
There is a grain of authenticity in this response. But it also provides a justification for political reactionaries who blame victims of racism, misogyny or capitalism and instruct them to “Get over it!” even as they memorialize their own Civil War trauma.
This is America. If you’re not a winner, it’s your own fault. – Jerry Falwell
Perhaps the mirror-opposite of the boring narcissists are the introverted types who listen not because they’re interested but only because they’re too shy to butt in and command attention with their own stories. Or perhaps more commonly they simply tune out. I can go there very easily: after a minute of someone’s self-referentialated narrative, I begin to silently recite baseball statistics.
Didn’t these people ever learn social graces? Why, no, since much interpersonal communication has long devolved into a mere subset of the imperative to produce, succeed, accumulate, dominate and finally die as a winner, and so much of what passes as political activism is performative. This is a world in which we older folks have had to accept that when we ask someone for a “yes-or-no” response in an email or text, no response at all apparently means “no.”
So: 95% accounted for. That leaves the last category – “entertaining” narcissists. Many of these people are con men (and women) in the American religio-capitalist mold, but they are often talented actors, musicians and comedians. Or they are common folks with the “gift of gab” – natural storytellers and raconteurs who traditionally hold forth in barrooms, church halls, AA meetings, group therapy sessions, barbecues, golf foursomes and the smoke-filled rooms of the powerful.
But at least they’re enjoyable to be around. We gravitate to them at the party: That reminds me of a story – or – This is how it really happened – even though they never ask our opinion. Perhaps it’s safer that way. For the few hours of after-dinner socializing, they really are fun. But next morning we feel hungry, as if the food (or the conversation) lacked any nutrition. We re-tell the best anecdotes, even as we wonder why we didn’t stay home.
Part Two
In egalitarian America, each citizen is habitually engaged in the contemplation of a very puny object, namely, himself. – Alexis de Tocqueville
I live close to my greedy soul. When I read a book published 2000 years ago, I check to see if my name is in it. – Robert Bly
You’re so vain. I bet you think this song is about you. – Carly Simon
This leads us of course to Trumpus, who represents the worst aspects of a third category, the public narcissist. His early popularity in 2015 arose not from his differences with the rest of the Republican clown caravan, but from the fact that he said what they all had been saying for years, only more openly. He was no outlier, and, eleven years later, it should be clear that he never was.
But he is certainly a narcissist and a sociopath (or at least he plays one on TV), and this explains why so many old, angry white men love him. American myth offers only one alternative to the hero besides the villain, and that is the victim. Trump learned early on to alternately embody both extremes – bully and victimized white guy – and invite millions of scared women and alienated men to identify with him.
Michael Maccoby suggests that his appeal has much to do with his personality (or, if you prefer, his “brand”): “No one pushes Trump around, and no insult goes unanswered.” Amanda Marcotte writes:
Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter? Where the rest of us see belligerent, screaming bullies, conservatives see their own fantasies of who they want to be, people who are rich and snooty and who enjoy pissing off the liberals as sport.
Few will acknowledge that Trumpus arose out of and embodies a mythology, a political culture and a diminished imagination that for 400 years has murdered and enslaved millions, raped the natural world, justified our worst impulses and elevated the solitary, dissociated ego to near-divine status. Trump = us; hence “Trumpus”. So, rather than seeing him as expressing who we all are, countless psychologists have identified him as – gasp! – a narcissist:
https://www.quora.com/Does-Donald-Trump-have-narcissistic-personality-disorder
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/06/the-mind-of-donald-trump/480771/
Some argue that he is so sick that he is “not mentally fit to be president,” forgetting, apparently, what psychopaths most of our previous leaders have been. As Noam Chomsky has said, without hyperbole:
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged.
Part Three
You know, they love me in the Netherlands. – Trumpus, after being told of the Dutch role in the global slave trade.
L’Etat c’est moi – French King Louis XIV
Malignant narcissists don’t typically seek out therapy, partly because they’re wired to assume they’re perfect and partly because our current systems reward the tendencies of malignant narcissism. We are ruled by untreated malignant narcissists who were elevated by this system. -- Caitlin Johnstone
Public narcissists have been described as charming, vane, angry, intimidating, bullying, hedonistic, attention-seeking, vengeful, pitiless, arrogant, exploitive, inflated, manipulative, entitled, grandiose, dishonest, remorseless, prejudiced, mean-spirited, unscrupulous and overconfident. But we mythologists should be more concerned with the broader question of why Americans love “rugged individualists” who are so sensitive to perceived insults. Yet the media normalizes them, because they embody and enact our deepest values.
They are con men and we know it: they tell us what we want to hear, they take advantage of “suckers” and they sell themselves to us with patently false images and managed impressions. They believe they are “special” – or at least they want you to believe that, and perhaps you do, because the Con Man is an American archetype.
Trumpus mastered an art that came to fruition only in our lifetimes – the gradual but nearly total convergence of politics, news and entertainment – gleefully admitting that much of what he says and tweets is merely to entertain.
Is he any different from our other leaders? Alan Deutschman defines many corporate CEOs as psychopaths, who “…have a profound lack of empathy…use other people callously...for their own ends… pathological liars, master con artists, and heartless manipulators.” Easily bored, they crave constant stimulation, so they seek thrills from real-life “games” they can win – and take pleasure from their power over other people.
Again, celebrity narcissists embody the essence of who we are as Americans when, ironically, the broader culture offers little support for the individual to express who they might become. “We may now be the possessors of the world’s flimsiest identity structure,” wrote Paul Shepard in Nature and Madness, “…where history, masquerading as myth, authorizes men…to alter the world to match their regressive moods of omnipotence and insecurity.”
Shepard made that observation some thirty years ago. It was nothing new. Around the same time, Bly wrote:
Our interior judge has changed its demands from requiring us to be good to requiring us to be famous...consumer capitalism’s dependence on stimulating greed and desirousness has changed something fundamental inside the human being, a result that Freud never anticipated.
The “ugly American” had long been making fine distinctions between the elect and the damned, crushing the weak with astonishing cruelty. Over a hundred years ago, D.H. Lawrence wrote, “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Nearly two hundred years ago, Herman Melville described Indian hatred in America as a “metaphysic”, while Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that the prototypical American was
“...withdrawn into himself...almost unaware of the fate of the rest. Mankind, for him, consists in his children and his personal friends. As for the rest of his fellow citizens...he does not notice them. He touches them but feels nothing. He exists in and for himself.
If our leaders have long been embodying the worst of our American character, perhaps our liberal disgust with Trumpus has more to do with his style (his brand) than with his policies. About branding: do you remember George W. Bush’s clumsy malapropisms and tortured English? One member of his inner circle in Texas revealed that at home, among those he trusted, Bush had perfect diction and no Texas accent at all. In public, he performed his character.
We’d like to think that we prefer leaders – such as Barack Obama – to act as (to embody the brand of) the rational, clear-headed, calm, spiritual (but not fundamentalist, preferably Episcopalian) upper-middle class civic functionaries and good father figures, even if they are actually wrecking the environment, mongering war, condemning children to poverty and robbing us blind.
But Trumpus turned all that over, and in the process may have done us all a favor by revealing its festering essence.
So let’s be honest: aren’t we all little Trumpuses most of the time? He may well be the shadow of conventional liberalism. It’s so easy to hate him, isn’t it? But isn’t that so because we’d rather not admit who we have become? And what kind of rare social circumstances offer us the opportunity to enter the “I – Thou” mode that we were all originally born with, and that modern consumer culture has nearly completely destroyed?
We are a nation of profoundly wounded people, by violence, by race, by gender, by poverty, by the loss of real myth and ritual. Part of the deep grief that lies beneath the surface of our collective narcissism, as Francis Weller has written, is about unfulfilled expectations. Our indigenous souls retain a bone-memory of a time when those inevitable wounds were connected to the gifts that also entered the world with us. We are born expecting to be welcomed by a community that will identify both those wounds and those gifts. This expectation of safe containers (physical and social) in which we are blessed by true elders is hard-wired into our souls; it’s part of what makes us human. And not finding such a world is part of the profound grief that we all carry. Perhaps that’s why we blab so much (or passively listen to celebrities blabbing). Perhaps, despite all the verbal diarrhea, someone will hear what we need to say, even if we can’t identify it ourselves.
Part of our grief stems from the fact that there are few real elders anymore, that the great majority of old people have been condemned to or chosen to sequester themselves among other old people, far from their own grandchildren.
Here we are: the ten percent who actually listen to each other; the horde of boring narcissists; and the minority of entertaining narcissists, con men and public narcissists.