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To: spankalib

The following is under Malignant Narcissism @ Wiki:

History

Social psychologist Erich Fromm first coined the term malignant narcissism in 1964, describing it as a “severe mental sickness” representing “the quintessence of evil”. He characterized the condition as “the most severe pathology and the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity”.[3] Edith Weigert (1967) saw malignant narcissism as a “regressive escape from frustration by distortion and denial of reality”; while Herbert Rosenfeld (1971) described it as “a disturbing form of narcissistic personality where grandiosity is built around aggression and the destructive aspects of the self become idealized”.[4]

Developing their ideas further, the psychoanalyst Otto Kernberg pointed out that the antisocial personality was fundamentally narcissistic and without morality.[5] Malignant narcissism includes a sadistic element, creating, in essence, a sadistic psychopath. In this essay, “malignant narcissism” and psychopathy are employed interchangeably. Kernberg first proposed malignant narcissism as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1984.

Kernberg described malignant narcissism as a syndrome characterized by a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), antisocial features, paranoid traits, and egosyntonic aggression. Other symptoms may include an absence of conscience, a psychological need for power, and a sense of importance (grandiosity). Pollock wrote: “The malignant narcissist is presented as pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism”.[6]

The writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck thought that the primary root of most human evil is ‘malignant narcissism’ and further characterized it as ‘militant ignorance’.


9 posted on 08/23/2012 10:04:03 AM PDT by matthew fuller (They'll have to pry my gun, my bible, and my chikin from my cold dead fingers.)
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To: matthew fuller

Scott Peck is an asinine liberal, and so was Fromm.


10 posted on 08/23/2012 10:11:39 AM PDT by kabumpo (Kabumpo)
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