Who was the narcissist on the Collins submarine computerization effort ? (There MUST have been one or more)?

Who was the narcissist in your workplace?


Question:





Is narcissism ';contagious';? Can one ';catch'; narcissism by living with a narcissist?





Answer:





The psychiatric profession uses the word: ';epidemiology'; when it describes the prevalence of psychopathologies. There is some merit in examining the incidence of personality disorders in the general population. Mental health is the visible outcome of an intricate interplay between nature and nurture, genetics and culture, the brain and one's upbringing and socialization.





Yet are personality disorders communicable diseases?





The answer is more complex than a simple ';yes'; or ';no';. Personality disorders are not contagious in the restricted, rigorous, medical sense. They are not communicated by pathogens from one individual to another. They lack many of the basic features of physical-biological epidemics. Still, they are communicated.





First, there is the direct, interpersonal, influence.





A casual encounter with a narcissist is likely to leave a bad aftertaste, bewilderment, hurt, or anger. But these transient reactions have no lasting effect and they fade with time. Not so with more prolonged interactions: marriage, partnership, cohabitation, working or studying together and the like.





Narcissism brushes off. Our reactions to the narcissist, the initial ridicule, the occasional rage, or the frustration 鈥?tend to accumulate and form the sediment of deformity. Gradually, the narcissist distorts the personalities of those he is in constant touch with, casts them in his defective mould, limits them, redirects them, and inhibits them. When sufficiently cloned, the narcissist uses the people he affected as narcissistic proxies, narcissistic vehicles of vicarious narcissism.





The narcissist provokes in us emotions, which are predominantly negative and unpleasant. The initial reaction, as we said, is likely to be ridicule. The narcissist, pompous, incredibly self-centred, falsely grandiose, spoiled and odd (even his manner of speech is likely to be constrained and archaic), often elicits smirks in lieu of admiration.





But the entertainment value is fast over. The narcissist's behaviour becomes tiresome, irksome and cumbersome. Ridicule is supplanted by ire and, then, by overt anger. The narcissist's inadequacies are so glaring and his denial and other defence mechanisms so primitive that we constantly feel like screaming at him, reproaching him, or even striking at him literally as well as figuratively.





Ashamed at these reactions, we begin to also feel guilty. We find ourselves attached to a mental pendulum, swinging between repulsion and guilt, rage and pity, lack of empathy and remorse. Slowly we acquire the very characteristics of the narcissist that we so deplore. We become as tactless as he is, as devoid of empathy and of consideration, as ignorant of the emotional makeup of other people, and as one track minded. Exposed in the sick halo of the narcissist, we have been ';infected';.





The narcissist invades our personality. He makes us react the way he would have liked to, had he dared, or had he known how (a mechanism known as ';projective identification';). We are exhausted by his eccentricity, by his extravagance, by his grandiosity, by his constant entitlement.





The narcissist incessantly, adamantly, even aggressively makes demands upon his human environment. He is addicted to his Narcissistic Supply: admiration, adoration, approval, attention. He forces others to lie to him and over-rate his achievements, his talents, and his merits. Living in a narcissistic fantasyland, he compels his closest, nearest and dearest to join him there.





The resulting exhaustion, desperation and weakening of the will are fully taken advantage of by the narcissist. He penetrates these reduced defences and, like a Trojan horse, spews forth his lethal charge. Gradually, those in proximity to him, find themselves imitating and emulating his personality traits. The narcissist also does not refrain from intimidating them into compliance with his commands.





The narcissist coerces people around him by making subtle uses of processes such as reinforcement and conditioning. Seeking to avoid the unpleasant consequences of not succumbing to his wishes, people would rather put up with his demands and be subjected to his whims. Not to confront his terrifying rages, they ';cut corners';, pretend, participate in his charade, lie, and become subsumed in his grandiose fantasies.





Rather than be aggressively nagged, they reduce themselves and minimise their personalities. By doing all this 鈥?they delude themselves that they have escaped the worst consequences.





But the worst is yet to come. The narcissist is confined, constrained, restrained and inhibited by the unique structures of his personality and of his disorder. There are many behaviours which he cannot engage in, many reactions and actions ';prohibited';, many desires stifled, many fears insurmountable.





The narciWho was the narcissist on the Collins submarine computerization effort ? (There MUST have been one or more)?
A true narcissist would stay put and meddle in Todd Mansell's projects.Who was the narcissist on the Collins submarine computerization effort ? (There MUST have been one or more)?
There would need to be systems running 24/7.





These incidentally would start to flag problems.





Narcissists normally cause problems.





The narcissist would need to dismantle or disable these types of diagnostic systems.





So if quality is very low, and the system bears no relation to what was originally ordered, there MIGHT be a narcissist responsible.





But I read about Todd Mansell and ';Virtual Submarine';. Looks good. I think all narcissist-caused problems would be going away, hopefully with said narcissist(s).