People in the Family with Personality Disorders

I was talking with my sister last night about a common friend of ours, whom we've both known for years. This guy just loves to be the center of attention, makes cutting jokes to put others down and get center stage, shows great sensitivity to himself but a lack of empathy toward others, etc. My sister, who has been taking psychology cases, said it sounded like he had a personality disorder called Narcissism (excessive admiration for or fascination with one's self). She read the 8 points that described someone with this disorder and wouldn't you know it, this person had every one of them!

Now this is interesting: I've known that person for years and have always shrugged his excessive personality off, thinking "That's Joe for you. That's just the way he is." Yet here all this time it was not just personality but a personality disorder.

And it set me thinking: I mean, Berg had a massive personality disorder. Has anyone ever catalogued what all he had?

Another thing I thought about was the several people in the Family I knew that were really "into" the Family, and were just plain weird. I'm particularly thinking of leaders I knew with obsessive, domineering, way-over-the-top loyalty and out of control sex drives and self-centeredness. Higher leaders always put up the the total craziness of these lower leaders as long as they did their job, kept the sheep humble and had their areas bring in the quotas.

What we thought of as the Family was in many places a distilation of some pretty bizarre individuals with enough personality disorders to fill the Psych Ward of a big city hospital.