I think the consensus developing among therapists and researchers of psychology is that
Predators want to perpetuate the myth that they can be treated and rehabilitated.
Not sure where you got that. The Reichsmark was worthless and falling, modern industry was illegal, Allied powers were demanding faster repayment of debts, and export was strongly discouraged with heavy tariffs in surrounding countries.
My experience has been that there really isn’t much consensus at all. The terminology isn’t even consistent and words like psychopath and sociopath are used in wildly different manners by different people. They’re concepts that, as with many terms in psychology, became popularized and lost all meaning as new members of the field grew up with a layperson’s impression of the words’ meanings. I work with people who might fit those labels and I’d be hard-pressed to find any ten colleagues who wouldn’t argue for hours over which words mean which things.
Narcissistic personality disorder is, like any of the personality disorders, difficult to treat because it requires changing the fundamental way a person views their social world. The goal isn’t a “cure” per se, but insightful management. The fragile type of narcissistic person (those who truly loathe themselves and use their arrogance as a cover) respond reasonably well to supportive therapy with a connected and patient therapist in my experience. The defensive type (those who believe their own perceptions of superiority and will reject evidence that contradicts it)…well, I’ve never had much luck. But again, if any of my colleagues were to read this they’d tell you I’m full of shit and they know best. Few are as deluded and self-righteous as those of us who make careers out of categorizing other peoples’ pathology.
The Nazi economy was parasitic by nature. It sustained itself by theft. First by stealing from the members of its society deemed “undesirable” then robbing their conquered countries blind. Sending resources of “the greater reich” to Germany.
There was no “economic miracle” . The German economy never went on a war footing. The entire notion of Blitzkreig was built on faulty assumptions.
Nah, this “argument” precedes Star Trek TOS by 20+ years.
German hyperinflation ended in 1923, although there were lasting aftershocks. Hitler didn’t become chancellor until ten years later.
I’m trying to remember where I saw a detailed treatment on it, but there are hints even in Wikipedia, where the Nazis continued the economic programs already in place, including the Autobaun, took credit for them, and massively increased deficit spending, keeping it going by nationalization (looting) and hiding the debt by renaming it.
(Whle searching, I noticed a lot of hits at the top from the neo-Confederate Mises Institute. Hm.)
An overview video that’ll I’ll leave here to find in 2022 when I’m trying remember what the good example debunking Hitler’s economic miracle is, again.
But it looks cooler with Nimoy and Shatner in Nazi uniforms.
The trains didn’t actually run on time.
Fascists are actually pretty terrible at running governments. It’s part of why both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy did not have a long shelf life.
I appreciate your professional voice in this matter. I’ve only started learning about these things a few years ago having suffered through abuse under someone whose narcissistic temperament was not obvious as a public figure.
I appreciated being counseled in “radical acceptance” that the abuser / predator in our midst was not going to change, and I should not believe that further abuse was going to be preventable with organizational changes, setting boundaries, giving them a second chance, or believing that “deep down inside, they mean well.”
I’ve not been a person who easily gave up on people so this was a great shift and a struggle to leave them for our sakes.
What would an Adolf Hitler (maybe even before he was training to be an artist, assuming he was the fragile, vulnerable type when he was younger) trained in “insightful management” of his ASPD or NPD look like?
I know better the Mussolini rise of power. At the start of Fascism Mussolini was realli a secondary actor, Italo Balbo, Michele Bianchi, Emilio De Bono and Cesare Maria De Vecchi were the initial leaders of the movement, not to mention Gabriele D’Annunzio or Filippo Tommaso Marinetti that could have easily become leaders of the movement.
What caused the fascism to rise was the economic and social problems of Italy after WWI and the Red Scare that made the fat cats to find any solution to get rid of the commies.
Maybe there was Balbo in command instead of Mussolini the only difference was in the building of a lot of airstrips and airplane factories, who knows?
Narcissists and other folks with personality disorders are often very good at compartmentalizing their social worlds to hide their predations. I’m glad you got out. Nobody should have to be a prop in someone else’s pathology and it is never the responsibility of the victims to fix the abuser. If an abuser can be fixed, it starts with that abuser being isolated from potential targets until they are motivated to change and that motivation will rarely develop in an environment where there are more targets for the abuser to project their failings onto.
As for this game, my big issue is it’s all speculative fiction. Nobody alive today interacted with the infant or toddler or child Adolf. It’s irresponsible to guess what might have helped him on a different path because it makes that complex pathology into something that can be “solved” with the right combination of button presses, and it turns his victims into a number. A side-effect and condition of victory. I’ll side-eye any professional who takes part in this kind of thing.
ETA: it just struck me that the best analogy for a current mental health professional postulating about how to treat Hitler and history’s other personifications of evil is a comparison to the time Mark Wahlberg gave an interview and said that, were he on one of the 9/11 flights, he’d have saved the day. It was a combination of arrogant self-righteousness, dismissal of the people who didn’t act in the way he believes he would have and they should have, and a complete blindness to how he was benefitting from hindsight. The whole thing was a chance to turn a tragedy into a boost for his ego. Any mental health worker who tries to claim they could’ve prevented the Holocaust if they just had a whack at little Adolf is Marky Mark, howling into the wind about how much of an action hero they would’ve been.
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