One of my good friends in Santa Fe was a psychiatrist who had, over the course of his career, treated many individuals suffering from Naricissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). When I met him, he had already given up on psychiatric treatment, having been convinced over the course of 20+ years that the condition was untreatable. But knowing of my interest in the subject (caused by having studied with at least two NPD spiritual teachers), he was willing to talk with me about his experiences back when he *was* treating NPD, and some of the conclusions he had drawn from those experiences. One of these conclusions seems relevant to recent events on FFL, so I'll rap about it a little.
The symptom he spoke of as the "#1 tip-off" that he was dealing with someone with NPD was what he called "blame displacement." To explain a bit, NPD sufferers live in an illusory/delusory world inside their own heads; they rarely, if ever, interact with reality as it is seen by other people. Subjectivity "rules" for the NPD individual, and they tend to sincerely believe that "how they see the world" *equates* to "how the world is." So it is often a SHOCK to them when someone calls them on their own antisocial or unethical behavior. According to my friend the shrink, their *first* impulse at that point is to DENY it. They cannot accept that the view of them being proposed by this other person could be correct, because it contradicts their own internal, subjective view of themselves. Their *second* impulse is to attempt to SHIFT THE BLAME for these contradictory views of themselves. They call the person criticizing them or their behavior "liars," and furthermore (and this is the tip-off) claim that the critic *does not even believe what they are saying*, and that they are *consciously* lying about them in an attempt to "get" them. Now think back to recent discussions about what Robin did when Vaj pointed out that Robin had struck his students. First he DENIED it vociferously, lying through his teeth the whole time. But second, he attempted to SHIFT THE BLAME, and portray Vaj as the Bad Guy In This Scenario, claiming that *he* was lying, and claiming furthermore than Vaj even "knew" that he was lying. Classic NPD behavior. Next, think about Judy Stein, and her well-established patterns on this forum. When faced with a critic -- someone who calls her on her behavior in a way that contradicts her internal view of who she is and what she's doing -- her first impulse is to DENY the behavior. But her second is *almost always* to attempt to SHIFT THE BLAME and claim that the critic is not only lying, but *consciously* lying, and doesn't "really" believe the thing he or she is saying about her. Again, classic NPD behavior. We really DO believe the things we say about you, Judy. Your inability to comprehend or accept this is based on your own disability -- Narcissistic Peronsality Disorder -- not on some "superior" insight or intuition or "seeing." You cannot accept that we *really* see you this way because it so strongly contradicts your view of yourself. This is called Narcissism. *Six and a half years* after you made your "Mel Gibson, Christian bigot" post, you *still* cannot bring yourself to say, "OK, I did it. I commented on a film I'd never seen." You *still* have to equivocate, and pretend not only that it never happened, but that Barry is "lying" about it happening. It happened. The proof is here (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126122 <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/message/126122> ), and it's incontrovertible. How do you explain your inability to admit it *except* as an indicator of Narcissistic Personality Disorder? We'll wait...
