Preface

If one were to strip from the ranks of political figures all those with significant narcissistic personality traits, those ranks would be perilously impoverished. It seems that scarcely a day goes by that we are not greeted by a headline trumpeting that Senator X or Governor Y, noted for strongly espousing family values, has been caught in a sordid affair. Typically, a televised news conference, with the wife loyally by his side in a show of support, follows. This seems to be a bipartisan affair. And although the punditocracy regularly bemoans the blatant hypocrisy of such miscreants, I would suggest that another factor is at work: namely, that this behavior reveals significant narcissism in the character of the newly revealed sinner, that he somehow considers himself above the law and not subject to the usual moral, ethical, and legal constraints governing behavior.

But this apparent epidemic of narcissism is not confined to politicians. The rise of the “me generation” has been the subject of frequent commentary. There is growing concern that, intensified by the social media use of the “Facebook generation,” an exaggerated concern with self and narcissism is increasingly widespread in society: College students’ scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory rose twice as fast in the five years from 2002 to 2007 as in the decades between 1982 and 2006.