Guess Who!

Guess who this is a description of:

...described as a “man spiralling downwards”. He had no job but many debts... Seeking “power and influence”...

Pretending to be an important cleric... Sordid crimes... was rejected as too “weird”. “His constant goal in life appears to have been achieving significance.”

Diagnosed with a number of mental health problems, he was a relentless attention seeker with delusions of grandeur and a con man, who elevated his personal grievances with the heavenly glow [of a religious campaign]... ^*

I'll reveal who it is later...

Maybe there will be some more clues in this description of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD):

Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pervasive grandiosity, an extreme desire for attention, a sense of entitlement, a willingness to exploit or mistreat others, an excessive need for admiration and a lack of empathy. Yet narcissists can be fragile too and prone to outbursts of humiliated rage. Their grandiose self-beliefs are built on foundations as solid as quicksand, hence the need for constant admiration and attention, shoring up their unstable sense of self.

As the co-author of a recent study, Brad Bushman, explains, narcissism is the claim that you are superior to other people. From this core belief, bad things flow. “I’ve been studying aggression for about 30 years,” says Bushman, “and I’ve seen that the most harmful belief that a person can have is that they’re superior to others.” Narcissists “fantasise about personal successes and believe they deserve special treatment. When they feel humiliated, they often lash out aggressively or even violently.”

The narcissist defends against feelings of catastrophic failure by resorting to a fantasy of specialness, an illusion of mastery and control... In pathological narcissism there is a complete lack of empathy towards those that rage destroys... ^*

Worked out who it is yet?

Regular readers and former followers of mine on Twitter might have jumped to the wrong conclusion. Understandable though that might have been it was actually a description of Man Haron Monis, the self-styled Islamic Jihadist, mass murderer and nutter with NPD who held a number of people hostage in a Sydney cafe. Spooky, isn't it.

Maybe we're fortunate that some who are self-evidently suffering from NPD have so far confined themselves to attacking people through their keyboards from the safety of their bedroom.

^*Source: Narcissism and terrorism: how the personality disorder leads to deadly violence | Guardian

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