NPD

Narcissistic Personality Disorder – NPD – is a chronic behavioral pattern that involves exaggeration of self-importance, strong desire for admiration, and lack of empathy. Those afflicted with it obsess over the achievement of success and power, and are notoriously exploitative of others. This is of course a very brief description of a very complicated disorder. A bit more information can be found at Wikipedia.

This may not seem to be relevant to many of us, but it does seem to explain some of the more typical behavior that distinguishes haters and collective hate groups. The symptoms associated with NPD are eerily consistent with their standardized craziness that is so very irrational to us, but seems to be quite appropriate to them. These are the main symptoms:

– grandiosity of self-importance.

– indulgence in fantasy that is consistent with delusions of grandeur.

– craving for constant admiration

– sense of entitlement

– shameless exploitation of others

– frequent demeaning, bullying and intimidation of others.

Assigning a name to the disorder certainly does not make the behavior that it causes any more tolerable. In fact, it is saddening to consider it to be a disorder that is doubtlessly more difficult for those afflicted with it than their victims. Nonetheless, it is impossible to deny how accurately this brief list of symptoms describes some of the behavior that we encounter with haters and hate groups.

Furthermore, it is odd to notice that haters often accuse us of exhibiting some of these same behaviors. We are regularly accused of ‘entitlement’ and ‘bullying’, but without any explanation of how we exhibit such behavior. Some might describe this technique as ‘psychological projection’. We are more likely to perceive it as more hypocritical bullying. Sadly, it is easy to not recognize it as mental illness.