What follows is a comment left beneath a CNN interview with Bill Browder.

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Putin’s “Malignant Narcissism” with its “messianic delusions of grandeur” has his coconut set to defend his projection of heroic courage, a cover for early deep humiliation. He neither defends nor represents the interests of a modern Russia but rather the medieval psychosis he shares with similar criminal former KGB and sordid mafia. That’s it. Challenge the thesis, but I believe he won’t stop until stopped. Cancer, internal rivalry, uncooperative FSB and other security might suffice, but for now–for the west and for the world–“containment” will have to do. Putin has got a world in his head that no longer exists in either any shared nor viable fashion. He has only plundered Russia and led her into the void.

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Malignant Narcissism: Links & Terms of Art for Exploration

This blog features earlier related musings on a page with a title a little bit ahead of its times–Anthropolitical Psychology, so named at the time for its alphabetical first place on the preceding drop-down menu list. 🙂 My fave for a while (if I do say so myself): Paranoid Delusional Narcissistic Reflection of Motivation. Perhaps more to the point as regards Vladimir Putin, who has thrown Russia into a medieval war with modern weapons with the support of a host of lies, may be the process through which he became a monster: “Malignant Narcissistic Process Distilled”.

On the Psychology of Dictatorship and related matters (like destructiveness, fascism, sadism, more ordinary Narcissistic Personality Disorder) there is no end to either invention, observation, and reflection. I had embarked on this personal course in political science and psychology with comparatively light reading by the late Jerrold M. Post—Leaders and Their Followers in a Dangerous World: The Psychology of Political Behavior (Psychoanalysis and Social Theory), Jerrold M. Post and Alexander George, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York: 2004. My purchase had been made in 2012. Back then, “reading” for me still meant opening a book.

We’re not going to be stuck with “authoritarian” knuckleheads in office in the United States of American or anywhere else in the Atlantic Alliance or, for that matter, in the world, but the transition from the world of medieval belief, fear, and greed requires of both constituencies and governments a modern update related to comprehending retrograde politicians and political missions. In modern parlance, the holy (and secular) grail of characteristics desired may be “high-integrity, responsible, and responsive” governance with improving “Qualities of Living“–village x city x region–the worthy cause of power.

At the moment, the EU/NATO fold has within it disappointing reversions–examples: Recep Tayyip Erdogan; Viktor Orban; Donald John Trump–to feudal-medieval society in which the power of the leader becomes conflated with the existence of the state while related associates, family, and personally favored figures own and rule the businesses and industries hosted across the land–and the general population be damned. For such “leaders”, continuance in power and “unlimited narcissistic supply” are all that matter.

Related for Exploration: Narcissistic Mortification; Covering/Splitting; Gaslighting; Psychological Manipulation; Narcissistic Supply.

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