I was reading more in-depth on the subject of Narcissism, particularly to better understand and sympathize with my painfully narcissistic parents. I found this after googling "religious narcissism". This is taken strictly from the NT with the perspective that Jesus was a clear and dangerous narcissist. The points the author makes are stunningly similar to J Smith's patterns.

http://samvak.tripod.com/journal45.html

Not saying this guy is some ultimate authority, just an interesting perspective.

The NT accounts are so late, and so obviously propaganda, they cannot (IMHO) be relied on to provide any insight into Jesus' character or personality.

Winnowing out all the obvious embellishments and late theological insertions, the most one can say (again, IMHO) is that anyone who rebels against the common religion and tries to introduce new ideas - like Jesus, or JS, or Mohammed - is naturally going to be somewhat narcissistic, almost by definition.

You beat me to it. So much of the stuff mentioned in the article is likely legend and really doesn't say much about the real Jesus.

what a vivid imagination you have.

Showing your ignorance once again are you?

If we are talking about propaganda, couldn't the Jesus of the NT be like Rosie the Riveter of American WWII propaganda?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/16/2011 11:43PM by MJ.

my point, anyway. It wasn't meant to be scientific, obviously, since neither the author or myself are psychoanalysts. There are "earmarks" of narcissism and outright diagnoses. For example, a TBM friend of mine presents narcissistic traits, but he doesn't qualify for a NPD diagnosis. He actually has ADD which is responsible for those traits.

It helps me to sympathize, rather than resent these often impossible people if there is some kind of psychoanalytical context in mind. Otherwise I assume they think similarly to me and simply choose to be difficult. For me, it's well worth the unqualified analysis and doesn't hurt anyone, since I prefer to feel sympathetic rather than resentful.

It was interesting, but I don't see it as proving anything.

Well, if you ae going to take the Bible literally, then you believe Jesus was the Son of God and therefore he was not narcissistic since he was who he said he was. If you aren't going to take it literally, then we don't know if Jesus said and did those things and if he did, we don't know the context so making a diagnosis of him based on legend is silly.Besidess it has been 2000 years and pschoanalyzing people we don't know, especially if they lived in the distant past is not exactly scientific So either way, I didn't see a lot of point to the article. Just saying.

Shaving the whole head off isn't necessary. :-)

It is possible to believe what the Bible says about the person Jesus, except all the supernatural and inconsistencies.

One may also for instance accept that Peter was responsible for the deaths of a married couple that not paid him all their money, but reject the idea that it was 'God' that did it...

Fantastical, all powerful beings that WE CONJURED UP. To be human is to be narcissistic? Could Atheism lead us to more solutions and fewer Gods?


(When did they put so many s's in narcissistic?)