Marginal Christianity

A research-backed guide to picking the next president. Dear Fellow Voters, I've been watching all of the presidential candidates with great interest—and deep concern. Concern for us. Concern for the fate of our country. Concern for our world. As an expert on narcissism, I'm not especially worried that narcissists might make it to the White House. According to  research (link is external) , they've  always been (link is external)  there. And that shouldn't scare us anyway, because, just to be clear: Being a narcissist is not a diagnosis (link is external) . It never has been. Narcissists are people higher in narcissistic traits than the average person, and while they may or may not be disordered, they all share one thing in common: They feel special (link is external) . Some feel special enough to lead a nation, in fact. What we should be far more concerned about is not whether politicians are narcissists— most are (link is external) —but how  healthy ...

http://www.esquire.com/features/thousand-words-on-culture/new-narcissism-essay-0113?src=rss We love ourselves. And finally we're honest about it. By Stephen Marche Television is inherently an act of narcissism. It both feeds and fuels what Freud described as the core of the narcissistic personality — "the delusion of being watched." Television's narcissism is currently shifting ground. This month, The Carrie Diaries relaunches the Sex and the City franchise while Girls starts up its second season. The contrast is stark: In the old narcissism, we have dumb, beautiful moneyed people trying to become more beautiful and more moneyed. In the new narcissism, we have smart, unattractive poor people trying to confront their pervasive, intense self-obsession. All of the best shows on television, the most urgent, most relevant pop culture of the moment — Louie , Community , the upcoming season of Arrested Development — reflect us as we are: narcissists in se...

June 28, 2012 By peteenns 47 Comments (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/peterenns/2012/06/guest-post-christian-smith-on-presbyterian-narcissism/) Dr. Christian Smith (William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for the Study of Religion & Society at Notre Dame University; author of The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism Is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture) recently contacted me to ask if I was interested in posting some thoughts he had on “the narcissism of small differences,” which Smith thinks is one of the psychological underpinnings of the perpetual theological conflicts that beset conservative Presbyterianism. I was hesitant at first to post this piece, as I was concerned that, given the topic and my history with this Christian sub-group, my motivations might be misconstrued. I would also have expressed myself somewhat differently on a number of points. I decided to proceed, however, because Smith’s analysis is clearly applicable beyond the ...