Update on "Diagnosing Harper" - Stephen Harper's Mental Disorder.

My blog post about diagnosing Harper's mental illness has garnered a little attention the past 24 hours. I found this a little heartening after it's slow start. I took this post quite seriously. To me, it was a very disturbing revelation when I stopped looking at the trees and finally saw the forest and subsequently concluded that our Prime Minister may well be suffering from a significant mental illness.


Some of the reaction to the post was a little confusing. Some found it funny. I attributed this to my writing style. But one co-twitterphile seemed to take my observations to heart and in fact, did me one better. This person came up with a diagnosis which also might fit the "Harper profile":  Narcissistic Megalomania.


At first, this diagnosis didn't seem to fit for me. I had a hard time getting my head around the Narcissistic part. Harper is many things, but I felt he was more paranoid then self-absorbed. But I decided to investigate anyway. As stated earlier, I may be pretty good at recognizing deviant patterns of behaviour, but I'm no psychiatrist. So it had to be conceded that others might have a better read on this than me.


After consulting Wikipedia, this is what I found:


Narcissistic Megalomania is a term that was used to describe the condition that is now known as  Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The Personality disorder part seemed to make sense, but I still wasn't sold. But I read on to discovere that characteristics of this malady include:


"To the extent that people are pathologically narcissistic, they can be controlling, blaming, self-absorbed, intolerant of others’ views, unaware of others' needs and of the effects of their behavior on others, and insistent that others see them as they wish to be seen.

People who are overly narcissistic commonly feel rejected, humiliated and threatened when criticized. To protect themselves from these dangers, they often react with disdain, rage, and/or defiance to any slight criticism, real or imagined. To avoid such situations, some narcissistic people withdraw socially and may feign modesty or humility. In cases where the narcissistic personality-disordered individual feels a lack of admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation, he/she may also manifest wishes to be feared and to be notorious (narcissistic supply)".


"Although individuals with NPD are often ambitious and capable, the inability to tolerate setbacks, disagreements or criticism, along with lack of empathy, make it difficult for such individuals to work cooperatively with others or to maintain long-term professional achievements. 


With narcissistic personality disorder, the individual's self-perceived fantastic grandiosity, often coupled with a hypomanic mood, is typically not commensurate with his or her real accomplishments.

The exploitativeness, sense of entitlement, lack of empathy, disregard for others, and constant need for attention inherent in NPD adversely affect interpersonal relationships".




I think the "kicker" though regarding this diagnosis was the following paragraph on a behaviour that's known as "Splitting":


"People who are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder use splitting (black and white thinking) as a central defense mechanism. They do this to preserve their self-esteem, by seeing the self as purely good and the others as purely bad. The use of splitting also implies the use of other defense mechanisms, namely devaluation, idealization and denial."


To me, this last paragraph accurately describes such things as Harper's stance on Israel, who can do no wrong, and The detainee issue, his assertion being that it's critics were un-Canadian.  In addition, the Prime Minister has gone to great lengths to discredit the U.N. since he lost the seat on the U.N security council. A seat that was ours to lose. This would be the "devaluation" or "denial" piece of the puzzle as described above. 


Again, I am not a mental health professional, but I take this notion of Harper being mentally ill quite seriously. Whether you consider his personality disorder to be Paranoid or Narcissistic makes little difference. (Personally, I still lean toward the Paranoid Personality Disorder, but you be the judge for yourself) It is effecting his judgment and it is taking our country down a dark and foreboding path that we will all come to regret for a very long time. I wish that the main stream media would pick up on this reality and that a psychiatrist or two would come forward and go on the record.


^{As with a ship at sea, when the captain appears to have lost his mental faculties, it is incumbent upon  the first officer to step forward and take control of the ship. It's not mutiny, it's duty. So who will step forward and do their duty I wonder?}