Can narcissists be dethroned?

April 23, 2017 7:34 PM

Once a narcissist rises up in a position of power, how are they usually dethroned? Does history show that they all prosper until death and disease overtake them, or is there some typical way in which they tend to get removed from power? For example through a palace coup or through losing a war with a foreign power? Historical examples and evolutionary biology theories would be very welcome. Thanks for your thoughts.
posted by Gosha_Dog to Human Relations (11 answers total)

Like Hitler?
posted by halogen at 9:02 PM on April 23, 2017

Some historical narcissists who held power that I can think of: Nero, probably Caligula, Commodus, Vidkun Quisling, and probably Kim Jong-Il.

Nero committed suicide after being declared a public enemy by the Senate, Caligula was killed in a conspiracy involving the Praetorian Guard (always the Praetorian Guard!) and some senators, Commodus was strangled in his bath, Vidkun Quisling was sentenced to death by Norway, and Kim Jong-Il died of natural causes.
posted by actionpotential at 10:08 PM on April 23, 2017

Some historical narcissists who held power that I can think of

And if these are interesting, look into their contexts, specifically the opportunity for other power structures to exist that could unseat (i.e. kill or banish) them. Only Kim Jong-Il lived until his natural end, due to the power vacuum, or at least those who might unseat him were content with their place (and benefits) in the hierarchy that they didn't want the throne.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:18 PM on April 23, 2017

The key to keeping control of a government is controlling the people. A really easy way to do this is by having the military on your side. And having a cult of personality focused on you is a major perk.

I'm not guaranteeing that all these people were narcissists, but they were famous for fairly (or extremely) rough handed rule, or at least pretty self indulgent over-doing things.

Ceaser- assassinated by his peers

A ton of Roman rulers- often disposed of by palace guard, or their inner circle.

Alexander- possibly poisoned by his inner circle

Napoleon- died in exile after military losses, from cancer (?)

Stalin- ruled Russia for 30 years, most likely died of a stroke.

Tsarists of Russia- murdered in uprising

French monarchy- murdered in uprising

Hitler-killed Hitler.

Saddam- deposed and executed

Many USA presidents- stepped down according to constitutional laws and traditions

Gadaffi- killed in "battle" after basically losing most of his country to a variety of forces including NATO

Castro- ruled for some 40-50 years, died of natural causes, probably.
posted by Jacen at 10:25 PM on April 23, 2017 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I read SPQR recently, and one of the author's recurring ideas is that claims of an emperor's personal unfitness to rule were often a sign of much broader power struggles more than they were the cause of those struggles. (For instance, was Caligula deposed because of his debauchery and insanity, or was he labeled debauched and insane by the people who engineered his deposition? There's a paucity of sources for information about his life, so it's hard to say how much of what we know about him was true at all, or even true after adjusting for the motivated reasoning of the author and the time in which he was writing.)

Obviously I was at Mary Beard's mercy with the sources and her presentation of them, but I was convinced by some form of her idea—i.e. that most people who hold power gain it and then lose it thanks to forces that are only indirectly affected by their personality.

If she's right, I'm not sure the formulation of this question is going to provide a lot of useful, generalizable answers, just because for most world leaders the question of their narcissism is going to be secondary to their life and death in power. I'm not sure it's possible to pull a "usually" out of a category that can be swamped by so many other facts about the people and the position they were put (or put themselves) into. (It's complicated even more than that example by how new the modern conception of narcissism is.)

The analogy I would draw is with professional athletes. Many pro athletes are narcissists, and some are so narcissistic that it launches or prematurely ends their careers. But the majority of them, regardless of their personality, are far more at the mercy of their skills, their good or bad fortune, and the needs of their team at a given moment—so that, evaluated as a group, narcissist athletes are probably indistinguishable from non-narcissist athletes.
posted by Polycarp at 10:30 PM on April 23, 2017 [16 favorites]

I think historical examples are going to be difficult, because in Ye Olden Days, the only way any head of state left office was by their death. So any ambitious office-seeker basically had to either turn assassin, or be prepared to wait.

So lots of narcissists didn't get the top spot (so we don't know as much about them), because they were stopped in time, and lots of emperors and kings got killed regardless of whether they were narcissists or not, because they crossed paths with the wrong people at the wrong time.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 6:22 AM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

Kaiser Wilhelm ended up in exile, still claiming that it wasn't his fault.
posted by JanetLand at 7:11 AM on April 24, 2017

Best answer: Most of the examples given so far seem probably, to my untrained mind, to be sociopaths rather than narcissists. I'd suggest that the fate of most narcissistic leaders is to be pushed aside by a sociopath. The sociopath's focus on winning and manipulation, given equal levels of skill, seems likely to win out.

On the other hand, I can think of examples where a narcissistic leader is kept in power by a sociopath. The narcissist is easy to manipulate by flattery, and the sociopath is a master of flattery. If the sociopath in the dyad is smart enough to recognize that they could only gain power in a way that would destroy the legitimacy of the office they seek - e.g. they're not of royal blood so they wouldn't become the king after an assassination anyway - they might be content to keep the narcissist as a puppet and be the power behind the throne.

A possible example of a narcissistic leader is Charles I of England, about whom it was said that he "wasn't content to be amused by flattery, like a sensible monarch. His fatal mistake was to take it seriously..." He was executed in extraordinary circumstances; most narcissistic kings were left to enjoy the rivers of flattery which naturally flowed their way while others pulled the levers of power.

Nicholas II of Russia was another ruler who was a possible narcissist: "Nicholas, from youth, prided himself on his triumphs in these sports and gladly heard flattery about his prowess". This may have been a foreshadowing of his later pliability in the hands of Rasputin.

Khrushchev was a possible narcissist, and a nice change after the sociopath Stalin. (I know that you shouldn't make firm diagnoses of historical figures, but surely Stalin is a textbook sociopath.) Khrushchev liked big projects that made him look good. He liked dramatic gestures. He was not so good at the sociopathic chess game of Soviet power, and he was pushed out by Brezhnev after a decade or so in power. His desire to impress led to "We will bury you!"; his desired to be liked led, a couple of years later, to the amazing trip to the U.S. in which he was in top form as a narcissistic showman.

I'm not as familiar with Chinese history, but I bet that you'll find some narcissists among the emperors who were manipulated by powerful eunuchs.
posted by clawsoon at 7:34 AM on April 24, 2017 [6 favorites]

Isn't sociopathy a spectrum disorder (and is not defined by the DSM)? Most politicians (such Stalin, but even more benign ones including recent US presidents) would display certain sociopathic traits.
posted by My Dad at 10:00 AM on April 24, 2017

French monarchy- murdered in uprising

If there is a French monarch that can be said to be a narcissist, it is Louis XIV, who died very old of natural causes and had the longest reign of any monarch in Europe. Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were locked by convention to the pattern of court luxury dictated by Louis XIV, even though they were both rather retiring persons (after having children, Marie Antoinette went from the poufs era to an Enlightened natural living with simple muslin dresses -- even if the Hameau de la Reine is seen as a manicured fiction, it did reflect a search for rustic simplicity).
posted by sukeban at 11:51 PM on April 24, 2017 [2 favorites]

If a narcissistic leader survives being removed from power, one thing which is virtually guaranteed is a self-glorifying memoir. Or three.
posted by clawsoon at 6:54 PM on April 25, 2017