Malignant Narcissism and Power

A Psychodynamic Exploration of Madness and Leadership

Charles Zeiders, Peter Devlin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000024807
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychopathology
• Index: Psychology

Using psychodynamic theory and riveting case material, this book dissects the figure of the malignant narcissist leader (MNL). Across the world today, individuals and societies are impacted by unprecedented disruptive influences, from globalization and climate change to economic uncertainty and mass migration. The rise of populists and would-be saviors has promised certainty for anxious populations, but how far are such leaders suffering from the MNL pathology?

Through the psychoanalytic lens of Otto Kernberg, the authors explain the etiology of the charismatic MNL's clinical features: charisma, grandiosity, criminality, sadism, and paranoia. The book outlines the limitations and complexity of diagnosis, contextualizing the MNL within the transcendental and millenarian movements, and discusses the patho-dynamics of high-pressure groups and totalitarian regimes, including types of groups, methods of mind control, categories of constituents, the corporate totalitarian state, and the authoritarian demagogue. The book looks at a wide range of leaders including Donald Trump, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Roger Ailes, Keith Raniere, Jan of Leiden, and Credonia Mwerinde.

Distinguishing the disordered personality of the MNL from other personality disorders, and presenting a new model of overlapping descriptors to categorize high-pressure group types and identifying types of followers as well, this book represents essential reading for psychodynamically minded psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, sociologists, political scientists, and those working in organizational development.

1
AN INTRODUCTION TO THE MALIGNANT NARCISSIST LEADER

A psychological autopsy of Bishop Frederick Ladysmith-Jones

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as “A ‘Psychological Autopsy’ of a Malignant Narcissist in Church Leadership: A ‘Composite” Scenario with Discussion,” published in The Journal of Christian Healing, spring/summer 2016, volume 32, number 1, and is reprinted here with edits and additional discussion.

How does one account for the rise and fall of a would-be messiah? The preponderance of institutional scandals, crimes, cover-ups, and malfeasance in recent years necessitates an exploration of the concept of malignant narcissism. Although not listed in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2015), the construct is helpful for understanding the charismatic leader whose attractiveness is predicated on her apparent embodiment of the answer to the deep concerns of a beleaguered group. She grows in fame and influence, only to disappoint with criminal scandals born of grandiosity and megalomania. Combing diverse documentation for malignant narcissist (MN) behaviors exhibited in the past and the present establishes credible inferences about their psychodynamics. The term malignant narcissism denotes an assessment of mental operations rather than a medical diagnosis. It is a term applied following assessment, often relying on information and belief, a standard legal/forensic phrase that qualifies remarks as believed to be true but without first-hand knowledge (see Chapter 2 for more information on assessment criteria).

In the case of psychobiography or forensic psychology, the phrase information and belief implies a higher degree of equivocality than a diagnosis. This is because the assessor cannot directly examine the subject. Various sources, reports, and persons are scrutinized prior to a determination. Nevertheless, there is an urgency to understand the construct because, if left unrecognized, its dangerousness increases exponentially. We address broad assessment criteria, recommendations to screen for these behaviors, the limitations of diagnosis, and the complexity of treatment for such individuals in Chapters 2 and 3 of this book. Chapter 4 explores the pathodynamics of organizations led by malignant narcissist leaders (MNLs) and recommends treatment options for survivors of high-pressure groups led by MNLs. MNs must be screened and prevented from obtaining leadership or removed from power if they achieve it. Lives are at stake. Perhaps our own.

Religious organizations are particularly vulnerable to destructive leaders. Preying upon the preexistent credulity of the faithful, the MNL claims inspiration and rejects any demands for verification or peer review. He enjoys the flattery afforded to luminaries, and his followers idolize him, revering him as the vessel through whom god reaches their hungry hearts. In such groups, the lack of checks and the plethora of imbalances attract grandiose leaders with unverifiable claims to ultimate truth. Malignant narcissism is especially dangerous when it manifests in a religious leader, because such a leader is trusted with intimate information from their followers, making it easier to manipulate or even blackmail them. New and old religions alike are vulnerable to leaders who aspire to lead the faithful to themselves. They would themselves be god.

When a narcissistic cleric assumes church leadership, the matter is intrinsically problematic. But when the leader’s narcissism is malignant, it is catastrophic. Such a destructive cleric will injure not only her detractors but also her followers and eventually herself. She will be charismatic and grandiose, offer infectious oratory, and gain followers. She will become the adored champion of a disaffected group looking for recognition in a world populated by “enemies.” She will use convincing theological rationalizations to gratuitously and sadistically injure the enemies of her “divine” agenda. Her followers will continue to buy in and love her. Her grandiosity will delude her into thinking that providence has vouchsafed her to be incapable of mistakes. Wildly overconfident, she will engage in criminal overreach and when called to account, demonstrate enraged paranoia. To preserve her legacy and avoid accountability, she will blame former allies, run away, or die by suicide. If she ends her own life, she will depict this last destructive act as a kind of victory. In some cases, the MNL will encourage followers to co-suicide. This is especially true when the destructive leader cultivates apocalyptic paranoia among followers.

Individuals with this pathology may be male or female. But the broad professional consensus is that this affliction is predominately a male one, and the existing literature focuses on analysis of male behaviors and male case histories. There are many possible reasons for this, including the fact that sexism has historically prevented women from reaching equivalent positions of power. As a result, the male pronoun is used throughout the remainder of the book except in Chapters 6 and 7 where equally menacing examples of female MNLs are addressed.

This chapter presents a cursory literature review followed by a profile of a malignantly narcissistic leader (MNL), sketching a composite to form an “as if,” but clinically accurate, psychological autopsy. Thus, the autopsy’s patient is a fiction, but his psychodynamics are not.

Review of the literature

Psychology’s great thinkers have concerned themselves with this characterological disease. After World War II, psychoanalyst Eric Fromm introduced the term “malignant narcissism” in 1964 and described it as a severe mental illness which represented the quintessence of evil (Fromm, 2010, p. 33). Fromm used evil, an import from the theologians, as a referent for socially cancerous authority motivated by hate, likely to culminate in terror, horror, and death. He reserved the malignant narcissist label for grandiose, charismatic leaders whose psychopathology accounted for a broad destructiveness that devours enemies, proponents, and the individuals themselves. Writing in the wake of the world wars, with genocide and total warfare finalizing in nuclear devastation, Fromm saw the negative visionaries behind these repulsive behaviors as lovers of death, or necrophilic personalities. These were the MNs, “the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity” (Fromm, 2010, p. 33).

Others have noted that this cancerous form of narcissism is built around aggression and idealizes the destructive aspects of the self. Herbert Rosenfeld, a German-British analyst and Kleinian, postulated a destructive form of narcissism, whereby the ego merges with an aggressive, idealized self-image and surrounds itself in grandiosity expressed in self-evidently “virtuous” violence (Steiner, 2008). Cornell University psychiatrist Otto Kernberg (1970), celebrated for his theories on borderline personality organization and narcissistic pathology, described the MN as fundamentally narcissistic and criminal. More specifically, Kernberg delineated the most salient features of MN into a quaternity: a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) with predominant grandiosity, antisocial features, ego-syntonic sadism, and paranoia. George Pollock (1978), a professor of psychiatry who taught at Northwestern University, characterized the MN as an actor who evinces diseased grandiosity, amorality, and unregulated behavior with traits of sadism. His definition very much mirrors that of Kernberg – a bit of interrater reliability, to say the least.

A more recent peer-reviewed exploration of this pathology was conducted by Mila Goldner-Vukov and Laurie Jo Moore in 2010. Reiterating the Kernbergian Quaternity (KQ) (a term I use for convenience sake) for the 21st century, they pinpoint the four criteria essential to the KQ form of malignant narcissism: (1) narcissistic personality disorder, (2) antisocial features, (3) ego-syntonic sadism, and (4) paranoid tendencies (Box 1.1).

When these four elements of malignant narcissism constellate in a single leader, the profile that emerges is of a monstrous personality who will devolve into an impaired professional and imperil his organization. Sam Vaknin (2016), an Israeli expert on psychopathic narcissism, wrote:

The malignant narcissist invents and then projects a false, fictitious, self for the world to fear, or to admire. He maintains a tenuous grasp on reality to start with and this is further exacerbated by the trappings of power. The narcissist’s grandiose self-delusions and fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are supported by real life authority and the narcissist’s predilection to surround himself with obsequious sycophants.

The narcissist’s personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard themselves as “victims of persecution.”

The narcissistic leader fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship, catechism, mythology. The leader is this religion’s ascetic saint. He monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.

The narcissistic leader is a monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that his people – or humanity at large – should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity, the narcissistic leader became a distorted version of Nietzsche’s “superman.”

n.p.

BOX 1.1 GOLDER-VUKOV AND MOORE'S FOUR ELEMENTS OF MALIGNANT NARCISSISM

First criterion: narcissistic personality disorder	“The core features of NPD that are recognized in malignant narcissism (MN) are a grandiose sense of self-importance, preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, a sense of power and brilliance, a belief in being special or unique, a strong need for excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, interpersonal exploitativeness, a lack of empathy, and prominent envy” (p. 393).
Second criterion: antisocial features	“[Malignant narcissists] are contemptuous of social conventions and show a . . . tendency to lie, steal and mismanage money. They may commit burglary, assault or murder, and they may even become leaders of sadistic or terrorist groups. They are capable of feeling concern and loyalty for others . . . but primarily for their disciples or blind followers. They realize that others have moral concerns, but they easily rationalize their antisocial behavior” (p. 393).
Third criterion: ego-syntonic sadism	“Individuals with malignant narcissism have a tendency to destroy, symbolically castrate, and dehumanize others. Their rage is fueled by the desire for revenge” (p. 393).
Fourth criterion: paranoid features	“The paranoid tendencies in malignant narcissists reflect their projection of unresolved hatred onto others whom they persecute” (p. 393).

Source: Goldner-Vukov & Moore, 2010.

Psychological autopsy of a malignant narcissist¹

That Bishop Frederick Ladysmith-Jones ended his own life was sad but not surprising. Rumors were that the indictments issued against him by the State Attorney General’s Office were damning. A list of charges leveled against Ladysmith-Jones and his Faith Cathedral included defamation, fraud, illegal detention, harassment by communication, and perjury. At the same time, his estranged (and excommunicated) lover, Margot Van Buren, provided a damning interview to Dan Truth, an important religion journalist. According to Ms. Van Buren, the beleaguered Bishop was a frighteningly insecure child-man who compensated for his inferiority by cultivating a messianic persona, surrounded himself with yes-men and sycophants, and brutally denounced and injured the reputations and fortunes of his detractors. The interview further exposed Ladysmith-Jones for illegally disbursing Faith Cathedral’s money in order to finance his lavish lifestyle and reckless lawsuits. Complicit in his crimes, Van Buren turned state’s witness and cooperated with investigators to expose the once popular churchman’s malfeasance.

Bishop Frederick Ladysmith-Jones, a religious leader who felt entitled to speak for God and to control virtually any agenda that interested him, was finally confronted with a situation he could not control. After firing several legal teams (dubiously financed by Faith Cathedral endowment monies to which he was not personally entitled), Ladysmith-Jones simply had no good options. The law appeared ignorant to his “special” status as the self-proclaimed “Reformed Catholic Prophet to the Sacramental Communions of Christendom,” and his group of formerly blind followers now looked upon Ladysmith-Jones with dismay. The newscasts of his preposterous grandiosity, rhetorical meanness, and cruel treatment of his detractors caused a precipitous falling away of his flock and a ruinous drop in tithing.

Unable to afford more counsel, and on the heels of a grueling, humiliating deposition, Bishop Ladysmith-Jones returned to his rectory, prepared certain documents, drank a half gallon of communion wine, and shot himself in the head. Authorities found his body adorned with his vestments, wearing his Bishop’s cross and ring. His “final epistle” was a rambling document in which he affirmed that God had chosen him for a prophetic ministry to the Sacramental Communions of Christendom. He blamed the failure of his mission on “revisionists in the greater church, atheists in secular society, and Judas Iscariots within Faith Cathedral.”

For a brief but poignant time, Bishop Ladysmith-Jones had been the darling of the Reformed Catholic Movement. He was a charismatic, persuasive speaker who embodied the hopes of Christians from various sacramental denominations. They desired ecclesial unity and the affirmation of a conservative, resolutely orthodox faith to counter a spiritual lassitude perceived to have crept from contemporary culture into the church. He had been the Golden Boy of theologians, seminary deans, and laity. He was the protégé of the venerable Bishop Augustini.

The news of his suicide made me reflective. What were the extenuating factors in Ladysmith-Jones’ learning history that created his sick, attractive character? Why was he successful? Did his ministry have to conclude so ignominiously?

The origins of narcissism: shame, neglect, and trauma

Fred Jones was born into a poor family in Lincoln, Nebraska. His father, Fred Jones, Sr., spoke neither about his own family history nor about his family’s origin. His father did not seem to want a past. He also possessed no outward signs of piety. But he did insist that his wife and son attend a non-denominational church, despite the fact that his wife was Catholic. Fred, Sr., was often too hung over to attend services with his family. A welder by trade, he spent money as soon as he earned it. He gambled it away or bought drinks at dive bars near the rundown home he rented on the poor side of Lincoln where he kept his family. Records indicate police arrested Fred Jones, Sr. on numerous occasions for domestic abuse of his wife and young son. Charges were always filed and always dropped by ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Credit list
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 An introduction to the malignant narcissist leader: a psychological autopsy of Bishop Frederick Ladysmith-Jones
• 2 Assessment of the malignant narcissist leader: clinical features, selected psychodynamic epidemiological items, and interdisciplinary observations
• 3 Sympathy for the devil: application and limitations of the malignant narcissist diagnosis
• 4 The patho-dynamics of totalitaria: how mad leaders form followers and gain ascendance
• 5 A totalitarian sampler: the mad leader in context of the cultic organization
• 6 The perversion of utopia: malignant narcissist leaders and the transcendental
• 7 Zeiders and Devlin dialogue: etiology, sexuality, and a primal horde of horrible insights useful for research
• Index