Issue #27

Abstract: The article discusses a relatively new topic of political narcissism. The phenomenon, which seems familiar and quite marginal in life, turns out to be one of the fundamental problems of our time – the epidemic of narcissism, the “plague of the 21st century”, the psychological core of postmodernity. In politics, this is a problem not only of leaders who suffered from more or less destructive, if not even malignant pathology, but also of the masses, whose consciousness and unconsciousness are fixed on the grandiosity and omnipotence of the political entity. Narcissism compensates communal complexes, but at the same time blocks the solution of real life problems. What we perceive in acquaintances only as a funny and generally harmless character trait, in psychohistory is fraught with tragedies. The connection of narcissism with attraction to death is not invented by philosophers. And Narcissus’s death from starvation is not an accidental detail of a beautiful myth. The narcissism of an entire country – stupefied people and non-subject structures of consciousness – is accompanied by the collapse of basic life support systems: economy, technology, infrastructure.