Insanity, I explained, was an ambiguous conception, used quite arbitrarily by the average man, on the basis of criteria very much open to question.Thomas Mann, Doktor Faustus.
I'm not putting all that much faith in what 'the average man' thinks and I'm not saying that the Prime Minister is insane.
But it dawned on me recently in the same way that a poem might. There are a few personality disorders hiding in plain sight in the same way that Jimmy Savile wasn't noticed for all that time or the psychiatrist in Fawlty Towers said he was on holiday, but there was enough material in Basil for a whole conference.
It s not just the narcissism. It isn't only the compulsive lying. It isn't even that he might not have emotionally matured beyond the age of about 8. It is those but it is also psychosis, for which the most readily available internet dictionary definition has,
a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
I thought it meant that you simply didn't care about anything but that's still him, isn't it.
