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It has been estimated that upward of 10% of the American public have significant narcissistic personality features. Most major psychoanalytic theorists see a continuity between normal narcissism and pathological narcissism. The extremity of the narcissistic personality disorder illuminates normal narcissism. In the DSM IV, 1994, the overall description of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a “pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy, beginning in early adulthood, and present in a variety of contexts.” Including five (or more) of the following, the person with the NPD: 1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements). 2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. 3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions). 4. Requires excessive admiration. 5. Has a sense of entitlement (i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations). —American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 669
Dangerous Charisma
Jerrold Post, Stephanie Doucette
These caribou have a motor on them. They spend most of the day slowly grazing. But when they walk, it’s a 12-mile-an-hour trot they can sustain for days. No Arctic predator will ever catch them in a sprint—caribou top out at 50 mph. And caribou biologists who track GPS data say the animals are constantly moving. They’ve reported collaring a caribou in one spot, the next day flying 50 miles to another spot, and finding the same caribou. Even grizzlies can only kill a healthy caribou by ambush. Wolves work in a pack, converging on them from all angles. Both predators are unsuccessful more times than not. We have the same odds of catching this herd and that handsome bull as a sumo wrestler does winning the high jump at the next Olympic Games.
The Comfort Crisis
Michael Easter
The next morning we wired ourselves up. Claude wore the computer and the radio transmitter and would use his big toes to operate switches hidden in his shoes. I wore the radio receiver with the new steel wires going up my neck to the speaker in my right ear canal. As I stood ready to leave for the casino, Claude cocked his head and with an elfish smile asked, “What makes you tick?” Claude was jokingly referring to the strange sounds (actually these were musical tones) he would be sending from the computer he was wearing to my ear canal, once we went into action at the roulette table. As I look back now from the future, seeing myself wired up with our equipment, I stop that moment in time and I think about a deeper meaning to the question of what makes me tick. I was at a point then in life when I could choose between two very different futures. I could roam the world as a professional gambler winning millions per year. Switching between blackjack and roulette, I could spend some of the winnings as perfect camouflage by also betting on other games offering a small casino edge, like craps or baccarat. My other choice was to continue my academic life. The path I would take was determined by my character, namely, What makes me tick? As the Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “Character is destiny.” I unfreeze time and watch us head for the roulette tables.
A Man for All Markets
Edward O. Thorp
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