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