Delusion, deception or just pretend?

Lies, narcissism and politics

Warning: this post contains references to trauma and neglect

Leonarde Keeler demonstrates the polygraph lie detector (1935)

This weekend, I was at a London psychology conference about the phenomenon of epistemic trust (and distrust). At the end, one of the greatest living authorities on personality disorders spoke candidly about recent changes in the west. Prof Peter Fonagy shared his conclusions about what is essential for a healthy society to be maintained. In his top three was a value placed on the need and ability of citizens to “call out duplicity” and dishonesty.

Donald Trump has been described as both dishonest and delusional. For some, signs of delusion began to emerge after the 2020 election. But others are concerned that the idea of his being delusional might remove accountability for his words and actions. Here, I’m going to have a look not at Trump as such, but about the territory of (un)reality and dishonesty in narcissism. There are some different ways of describing the strange relationship that narcissism can have with reality and truth – some old and some new.

Because the iconically famous might demonstrate the performance face of narcissism in the extreme, I have been studying their lives. I want to see what they can tell us about how narcissism develops and works. What these icons had in common with political leaders is a drive to find power, fame and admiration. In my ‘Age of personality’ article I concluded that the performance face of narcissism has largely become our criteria for success generally.

During the presidency of Richard Nixon, a man approached White House security and asked to speak to the president about the problems of drug addiction in the US. This man had an urgent passion to help. Because the president (and presumably the security guard) knew this man’s face, he was allowed an impromptu meeting. They discussed the problem of drug addiction and a photo of the two men was taken. Nixon was asked for one thing: an honorary ID badge for the Bureaux of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. The man’s name was Elvis Presley. At the time of the meeting, Elvis was using a lot of drugs. It would have been clear to Nixon and his security, that he was under the influence.

But what was Elvis doing here? Was he consciously being deceitful? Was he deluded? Or something else?

The delusion

Delusions are associated with psychotic illnesses, such as schizophrenia. Narcissism in its severe form is a personality disorder which is technically not a mental illness. In psychotic illness, there is an onset typically between the ages of 20 and 35. There was a time before you were ill, when you functioned quite differently. With personality disorder, this is not really the case. There is no rule that says you cannot have both a psychotic illness and also a personality disorder, but these are technically different things.

Before I trained as a psychologist, I worked for a time in a medium secure psychiatric unit. In this unit were patients with severe forms of psychosis, including delusions and also severe cases of personality disorder. Eventually they realised this wasn’t a great combination. Separate wards were created for these two groups, partly in response to some elaborately coordinated escapes. But it was a privilege to talk to people with these different kinds of problems in extreme forms, side by side. I noticed one thing about severe psychosis and severe personality disorder: the more time you spend with someone who is expressing a psychotic delusion, the less convinced you become of their sense of reality. The more time you spend with someone with personality disorder, the more convinced you can become of their version of reality. This version of events, that might turn out to be untrue, was somehow infectious.

A second observation about delusions is this: with many people who have delusions, you have to probe them to hear about it in detail. Delusions would retain their function in a desert island situation. They need no audience. And they change very little. But those with personality disorder hold their version of reality often in order to share it - to have an impact on someone. Narcissism (which in severe form is a personality disorder) as a strategy works interpersonally. The content of the ideas will typically change more easily in narcissism, depending on what impact is needed at the time.

In the life of Elvis, most dishonesty was in the service of maintaining multiple relationships with women without experiencing judgment or rejection. Elvis’s message for President Nixon was inspired, it seems, by his father judging him harshly for letting down those around him – mainly due to his addictions. It had to be communicated to the president, who could powerfully validate a new version of reality. It was a bizarre episode. But due to the power of Elvis’s persona (and the valued photo opportunity), Nixon was prepared to play along. Elvis was a hero again, like Captain Marvel Junior who had so influenced him as a child. It couldn’t wait for a planned visit. Elvis had it seems been made to feel ashamed.¹

Untreated psychotic illness at some point will usually cause a breakdown of everyday functioning. Whilst narcissism can (increasingly) promote a person to leadership, untreated psychotic illness rarely does so. Untreated psychosis often has a global effect on intellectual functioning. If the person is in a professional role, those around the person will become concerned, unless they are conspiring with some agenda to keep an ill person in role. But it only takes one person to blow the whistle.

The conscious lie

Of course, in narcissism, there is room for conscious lies. There are reasons why narcissism lends itself to dishonesty. Firstly, there is a lack of empathy of concern for the impact of deception on the other person or people. Secondly, there is a disconnection from shame. This works on a continuum. If you can tolerate a little shame, you might use small lies. If you have to utterly exclude the possibility of shame, larger lies might be necessary, or the size of the lies might snowball in order to increasingly ‘cover your tracks’. And thirdly, there is a supreme priority which can be held above any demands for honesty: the maintaining of a persona characterised by power, admiration or emotional distance. Gaslighting is a form of dishonesty associated with narcissism.

Research shows that narcissistic people lie more than average² One problem, though, is that if you lie all the time consciously, there might come a tipping point where it undermines your own belief in your persona. Consciousness might become a problem. And if we are talking about an adult, this strategy might already be deep-seated in a ‘split-off’ unconscious part of the self.

President Nixon with Elvis Presley at their impromptu meeting (1970).

Pretend mode

What the arguments about Donald Trump highlight, is that there is a kind of detachment from reality that does not fit well with either a concept of being delusional, or a concept of conscious lying. But in the theory of narcissism and personality disorders, there is a new candidate to explain this. Prof Peter Fonagy, with Prof Anthony Bateman named a mode of mental operating in a specialist psychological treatment model. When a group of American clinicians adapted this to treat pathological narcissism, they concluded that this newly named mode of functioning was a priority to identify and intervene with. This mode of mental functioning so central to narcissism is called pretend mode³.

Pretend mode is not really delusional. And it is not conscious pretence. But it reflects a disconnection from reality in a particular way. Primarily, in narcissism, there is a turning away from the authentic self – particularly the parts of self that have vulnerable feelings. But there can also be a turning away from authentic reality outside of the self:

“Pretend mode is also marked by a disconnection from external reality…They discuss their accomplishments and positive qualities, but the image they portray of themselves does not correspond to their actual lives, or the sort of person they seem, to us [their therapist] to be. Similarly, they can ignore or minimise the facts about themselves or others that contradict with their valued self-concepts, leading to…depictions of reality that reflect how they want things to be, rather than how things are from a more objective vantage point.”³

So here is a disconnection from reality that we can come across in the therapy room. But it sounds, by itself, a little subtle - more like distortion than outright fabrication. This may be because those few who come for therapy are rarely the most severe.

The imposter

In narcissism, most fundamental and elaborate lie, is the persona. All subsequent lies may function to support this persona. There is a priority need to maintain roles of idealisation, power, superiority and emotional distance. In turn these roles serve to maintain experiential distance from vulnerable feelings which have come to be experienced as unsafe. These vulnerable feelings are described by narcissism psychologists as the authentic self. The amount of discrepancy between this authentic self and the constructed mask or persona, (if we could measure it) is a measure of the degree of narcissism.⁴ Psychiatrist Alexander Lowen describes in narcissism a kind of imposter:

“For an imposter, however, the lie comes easily because the reality has long since been denied in an emotional sense…The imposter must be someone else, someone special and superior…his acting is convincing because he has become convinced. He identifies with his image [persona], and this becomes his only reality; he no longer senses that he is distorting or denying the truth…The actor becomes so identified with his role or pose that it has become real for him.”⁴

This is starting to sound more similar to delusion. But this lie is a kind of act. And the actor has started believing that he is his character. The fundamental lie then, in severe narcissism, is about who the person is. They are a kind of fraud. The lies that might get detected or suspected by others are aimed at maintaining this fraud. Reality cannot be allowed to expose it.

To explain the emergence of this denial of reality in narcissism, psychanalysis often points to the child’s relationship to the primary care giver. For all of us, this care was once idealised, and we did not know that the hand or breast that fed us was not just a part of ourselves. It seemed to respond to our needs perfectly. At some point though, the infant has to mourn a loss of ideal care and accept their own vulnerability in an imperfectly caring world. This is a developmental achievement. But for some, vulnerability was always overwhelming, in the face of emotional neglect. When friends and neighbours looked back and described the early relationship between Elvis and his mother, there are descriptions of a “strange reversal of roles between parent and child.”⁵ According to theory, the child faced with this situation opts instead to turn away from their own vulnerability - to deny it first in themselves. And later in others. Once we establish the skill of denial, it can become generalised as a strategy for living. And this is the essence of narcissism.

If our criterion for electing leaders and cultural influencers is extreme narcissism, there is a risk of a snowball effect. Once elected to a role that fits the persona, this role and increased idealisation, facilitates further deception. When Elvis arrived unannounced at the White House as a kind of imposter, he was already idealised. And the interview for this new role in drug enforcement led to an official ID badge being awarded (you can see it in my rescuer face of narcissism article). He didnt really use this badge, but we can see here how one persona can lead to a narcissistic person being approved for more powerful additional identities or roles. And this can happen regardless of just how inappropriate the new role is.

The most established living authority on narcissism, Prof Otto Kernberg, warns that,

“Aspects of reality that do not conform to the illusions of the grandiose self are distorted or rejected, leading at times to the disregarding of rules, social norms, and the consequences of such.”⁶

Lies, damned lies and politics

In narcissism, a number of things work together to promote dishonesty and a distorted version of reality. In severe narcissism there is a kind of self-deception. But there is also a consensus in psychiatry and psychology: this is a characterological problem. The narcissistic adult is accountable for their words and actions. Dishonesty in narcissism is something like my changing gear in a manual transmission car. Most of the time, I have stopped noticing that I am doing it. But if I needed to, I could decide to stop.

These mental strategies can be dismantled. And one of the signs of the dismantling, is honesty. Beatles front man, John Lennon said towards the end of his short life, “I was a hitter. I couldn't express myself and I hit. I fought men and I hit women. That is why I am always on about peace.”⁷

I am not suggesting that if we want to call out lies in a US president, we should target pathology. This approach risks two things: firstly, pathology is a matter of debate until the person consents to a formal assessment. Secondly, pathology can prime people to do both good and evil. Most if not all US presidents are narcissistic. Lying, duplicity and deception on the other hand, are antisocial behaviours that cause pain or harm or powerlessness to others. They are observable. The greatest lie – the meta lie, is that fact checking, the law and findings of the courts are dismissible. The second greatest lie is that lying is a valid political tactic and not a universal, timeless human flag that someone is a danger.

We should take lying seriously, as a behaviour. And we need a healthy judicial system, when the qualities we are selecting in our leaders come with a high risk of divorce – from reality.

A photo posted by Donal Trump on ‘X’, asking for feedback about his similarity to Elvis.

Disclaimer: All views expressed are my own unless otherwise stated, and do not necessarily reflect the views of any institution I have been employed by. The content here is for information and should not be interpreted as advice.

Notes

1. Guralnick, P. (1994) Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley. Abacus.

2. Gozna, L. F., Vrij, A., & Bull, R. (2001). The impact of individual differences on perceptions of lying in everyday life and in a high-stake situation. Personality and Individual Differences, 31(7), 1203–1216.

3. Drozek, R.P., Unruh, B.T. & Bateman, A. W. (2023. Mentalization-Based treatment for Pathological Narcissism: A Handbook. Oxford.

4. Lowen, A. (1997). Narcissism. Denial of the True Self. Touchstone.

5. Dundy, E. (1985). Elvis and Gladys. Futura.

6. Diamond, D., Yeomans, F.E., Stern, B.L. & Kernberg, O.F (2022). Treating Pathological Narcissism with Transference-Focussed Psychotherapy. Guildford.

7. Edgar (2018). John Lennon’s Dark Side: Violence and Adultery. Blog post dated December 17^th 2018. downloaded from: https://www.edgar.ae/articles/john-lennon-dark-side