Why Group Narcissism?

Because I said so. Trust the plan.

             I

            You might ask, especially if like myself you live in a household which believes science is real, why someone would choose to write about narcissism. My initial answer is relatively simple. Despite its coinage for an apparently discredited pseudoscience (psychoanalysis) the word “narcissism” persists and enjoys widespread usage among smart people as a referent to many of the psychological features which originally attended Freud’s concept. The popular relevance of the term can be seen, for example, in the Last Psychiatrist, whose manic prose about narcissism eventually reached the pages of the New York Times, and in its overall prominence across popular media, both social and otherwise. Indeed, the subgroup “Raised by Narcissists” on the prestigious social media website Reddit boasts approximately 700,000 subscribers, and Google returns 4.1 million results for the search “Trump and Narcissism.” A word enjoying such prominence among elites, and pregnant with such meaning, seemed perfect for starting a dialogue between myself and elites.

            But there is another reason which I think is best illustrated by a recent, highly publicized incident.