Read on a blog somewhere but you can find this easily if you do a search for Samuel Vaknin.
Narcissism (dictionary meaning for those who don’t know the word): From Greek mythology, a youth doomed to fall in love with his own image until he pined away and died, his corpse being changed in to a flower which bears his name (Narcissus). In psycho-analysis, an abnormal love, preoccupation and admiration for oneself.
Samuel Vaknin, Ph.D. Dr. Vaknin has written extensively about Narcissism.
Dr. Vaknin states ” I must confess I was impressed by Sen.Barack Obama from the first time I saw him. At first I was excited to see a black candidate. He looked youthful, spoke well, appeared to be confident – a wholesome presidential package. I was put off soon, not just because of his shallowness but also because there was an air of haughtiness in his demeanor that was unsettling. His posture and his body language were louder than his empty words.
Obama’s speeches are unlike any political speech we have heard in American history. Never a politician in this land had such quasi “religious” impact on so many people. The fact that Obama is a total incognito with zero accomplishment, makes this inexplicable infatuation alarming.
Obama is not an ordinary man. He is not a genius. In fact he is quite ignorant on most important subjects. Barack Obama is a narcissist.
Dr. Sam Vaknin, the author of the Malignant Self Love believes “Barack Obama appears to be a narcissist.”
Vaknin is a world authority on narcissism. He understands narcissism and describes the inner mind of a narcissist like no other person. When he talks about narcissism everyone listens.
Vaknin says that Obama’s language, posture and demeanor, and the testimonies of his closest, dearest and nearest suggest that the Senator is either a narcissist or he may have narcissistic personality disorder (NPD).
Narcissists project a grandiose but false image of themselves. Jim Jones, the charismatic leader of People’s Temple, the man who led over 900 of his followers to cheerfully commit mass suicide and even murder their own children was also a narcissist. David Koresh, Charles Manson, Joseph Koni, Shoko Asahara, Stalin, Saddam, Mao,Kim Jong Ill and Adolph Hitler are a few examples of narcissists of our time. All these men had a tremendous influence over their fanciers. They created a personality cult around themselves and with their blazing speeches elevated their admirers, filled their hearts with enthusiasm and instilled in their minds a new zest for life. They gave them hope! They promised them the moon, but alas, invariably they brought them to their doom.
When you are a victim of a cult of personality, you don’t know it until it is too late. One determining factor in the development of NPD is childhood abuse. “Obama’s early life was decidedly chaotic and replete with traumatic and mentally bruising dislocations,” says Vaknin. “Mixed-race marriages were even less common then. His parents went through a divorce when he was an infant (two years old). Obama saw his father only once again, before he died in a car accident. Then his mother re-married and Obama had to relocate to Indonesia, a foreign land with a radically foreign culture, to be raised by a step-father. At the age of ten, he was whisked off to live with his maternal (white) grandparents. He saw his mother only intermittently in the following few years and then she vanished from his life in 1979. She died of cancer in 1995”.
One must never underestimate the manipulative genius of pathological narcissists. They project such an imposing personality that it overwhelms those around them. Charmed by the charisma of the narcissist, people become like clay in his hands. They cheerfully do his bidding and delight to be at his service. The narcissist shapes the world around himself and reduces others in his own inverted image. He creates a cult of personality. His admirers become his co-dependents.
Narcissists have no interest in things that do not help them to reach their personal objective. They are focused on one thing alone and that is power. All other issues are meaningless to them and they do not want to waste their precious time on trivialities. Anything that does not help them is beneath them and do not deserve their attention..
If an issue raised in the Senate does not help Obama in one way or another, he has no interest in it. The “present” vote is a safe vote. No one can criticize him if things go wrong. Those issues are unworthy by their very nature because they are not about him.
Obama’s election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The University of Chicago Law School provided him a lot longer than expected time and at the end it evolved into, guess what? His own autobiography! Instead of writing a scholarly paper focusing on race relations, for
which he had been paid, Obama could not resist writing about his most sublime self. He entitled the book Dreams from My Father. Not surprisingly, Adolph Hitler also wrote his own autobiography when he was still nobody. So did Stalin. For a narcissist no subject is as important as his own self. Why would he waste his precious time and genius writing about
insignificant things when he can write about such an august being as himself?
I imagine that anyone who thinks they are capable of being president has to have some narcissistic characteristics, from Washington to W. Bush and Obama.
Note, as Vaknin himself admits, he is “not a mental health professional”, and “only a qualified mental health diagnostician can determine whether someone suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and this, following lengthy tests and personal interviews”.
This is just more “sour grapes” from someone who doesn’t like the way the election turned out. You could emphasize certain characteristics in anyone and show how they align with some terrible syndrome, especially if evaluated at a distance by someone who is “not a mental health professional”.
Not to say that Obama doesn’t have his faults. I don’t agree with everything he does or says. But I think the right’s continually painting everything in a negative light goes beyond what the left did to W. Bush, though I can’t imagine they are any more dismayed than we were.
Comment by Daryl — Monday May 4, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
“But I think the right’s continually painting everything in a negative light goes beyond what the left did to W. Bush”
Daryl: You HAVE to be kidding right? I mean you can’t be that out of touch that you really think that is true! Did you ever listen to what the left said about Bush? Did you ever read what Garafalo, Sheen, Soros, The Daily Kos, The Huffington Post, Moveon.org and even Pelosi and Schumer said about Bush? Don’t you remember him being called stupid and criminal and all kinds of other derogatory things?
You are so far off base with that statement that I’m a little worried about you. 😉
Comment by Don — Monday May 4, 2009 @ 10:15 pm
Yeah, maybe, but the difference is that they were right! 😉
Comment by Daryl — Tuesday May 5, 2009 @ 9:21 am
And I have some land in Florida I would love to sell you. 😉
Comment by Don — Tuesday May 5, 2009 @ 9:47 am