Here’s part of the Wikipedia Early Life entry for Vladamir Putin:
Putin was born on 7 October 1952 in Leningrad, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union (now Saint Petersburg, Russia), the youngest of three children of Vladimir Spiridonovich Putin (1911–1999) and Maria Ivanovna Putina (née Shelomova; 1911–1998). His grandfather, Spiridon Putin, was a personal cook to Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin. Putin’s birth was preceded by the deaths of two brothers, Viktor and Albert, born in the mid-1930s. Albert died in infancy and Viktor died of diphtheria during the Siege of Leningrad by Nazi Germany‘s forces in World War II.
Putin’s mother was a factory worker and his father was a conscript in the Soviet Navy, serving in the submarine fleet in the early 1930s. Early in World War II, his father served in the destruction battalion of the NKVD. Later, he was transferred to the regular army and was severely wounded in 1942. Putin’s maternal grandmother was killed by the German occupiers of Tver region in 1941, and his maternal uncles disappeared on the Eastern Front during World War II.
Putin’s mother was 41 when he was born. She had lost two sons before her last son, Vladamir, was born in 1952. Do you think she might have spoiled her last surviving son?
Here’s part of the Wikipedia Early Years entry on Adolph Hitler:
Adolf Hitler was born on 20 April 1889 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-Hungary (in present-day Austria), close to the border with the German Empire.[15][16] He was the fourth of six children born to Alois Hitler and his third wife, Klara Pölzl. Three of Hitler’s siblings – Gustav, Ida, and Otto – died in infancy.
Hitler’s mother was 25 when he was born. She had lost three children–two sons and a daughter–before her last son, Adolph, was born in 1889. Do you think she might have spoiled her last surviving son?
Sigmund Freud taught the world that if you wanted to understand an adult (or adults wanted to understand themselves), understand the child. Freud was also one of the first to define narcissism. As Freud wrote about narcissism in 1917, every child in their oral stage is narcissistic. According to Freud, the ego starts to develop in infancy during the oral stage of psychosexual development. During this time, the child is highly egocentric and believes that he is the center of the world probably because of the fact that almost all of their needs and desires are being fulfilled by their mother.
But as they grow up, things change. A child starts to realize that things cannot always go the way they want and that not everything is for or about them. Therefore, his self-centeredness starts to decline. Or it doesn’t, and a full-fledged narcissist is let loose on the world.
Psych Central indicates that narcissism ranges from an “excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance to selfishness, involving a sense of entitlement, a lack of empathy, and a need for admiration.”
Psychologists seem to be ambivalent about the root cause of narcissism, but it’s probably safe to write that there is general agreement that it’s about 50-50 nature (genetics) versus nurture (environment). In other words, there might be a genetic tendency in some people that is triggered by environmental factors, according to Wikipedia, such as:
In Gabbard’s Treatments of Psychiatric Disorders (2014), the following factors are identified as promoting the development of narcissistic personality disorder:
* An oversensitive temperament (individual differences of behavior) at birth
* Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic criticism
* Excessive praise for good behaviors, or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood
* Overindulgence and overvaluation by family or peers
* Being praised by adults for perceived exceptional physical appearance or abilities
* Trauma caused by psychological abuse, physical abuse or sexual abuse in childhood
* Unpredictable or unreliable parental caregiving
* Learning the behaviors of psychological manipulation from parents or peers[.
If we consider “Excessive admiration that is never balanced with realistic criticism,” “Excessive praise for good behaviors, or excessive criticism for bad behaviors in childhood,” and “Excessive praise for good behaviors,” we might call that spoiling.
Looking at the above definition and list, with certainty we can add Donald Trump to the list, as did the 25 psychiatrists who identified Trump, along with Putin, Hitler, Stalin, and Kin Jong-Un as malicious narcissists in the book The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump.
But why is it that we recognize these pathological, malicious, narcissistic monsters too late–after they are in power? The U.S. military does psychiatric screening that is integrated into an induction physical examination in order to identify only “gross mental health deficits.” In other words, military inductees take a personality test that can usually identify psychopaths, which makes sense. Test people before you give them a gun.
Why don’t we give politicians personality tests before they run? When people file to run for a Federal office, why not make them take a personality test? Skeptics will say that personality tests are too easily gameable by smart people and that such tests might identify a disturbed psychopath but not a narcissist. My reply would be, who says all politicians are smart, and they are all narcissists.
In fact, we’re all narcissists to some degree. In The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump in a chapter titled “Pathological Narcissism and Politics: A Lethal Mix,” Dr. Craig Malkin writes that narcissism falls on a scale of 1-10 and that moderate narcissism (4-6) on the scale is healthy self-esteem. However, pathological narcissism occurs at 9 or 10 on the scale, which is dangerous: Putin, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Jong-Un, and Trump.
If the U.S. Military won’t give a gun to psychopaths, why do we give unevaluated politicians nuclear weapons?
So, who’s gonna stop World War III? Psychiatrists.
