Rarely have Europeans, including this London-based Dutchman, been granted such deep insight into the darkest corners of the English psyche (I am going to leave out the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish). The charitable view is that many English people have a superiority complex that prevents them from being realistic about their country’s place in the world. As the Brexit saga drags on, one wonders if parts of the UK’s political and media establishment, if not the whole country, are not in fact in the grips of collective clinical narcissism.
Diverging slightly from its usage in popular culture, psychotherapists employ the concept of narcissism to describe people with an unstable sense of identity. Feelings of vulnerability, dependency and helplessness can overwhelm them and for this reason narcissists cling to notions of grandiosity. They cannot consider others except as instruments to be manipulated or enemies to be fought. Marked by a mixture of bravado and contempt for those perceived as weaker, narcissists cannot accept criticism and feel no interest in others—let alone empathy.