Can We REMOTE DIAGNOSE People?

[Sam Vaknin author of "Malignant Self-love"]

There is a difference between DIAGNOSIS and EVALUATION or PROFILING.

 

Only a qualified mental health diagnostician can determine whether someone suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) and this, following lengthy tests and personal interviews.

 

But when there is no access to an individual, mental health diagnosticians often EVALUATE or PROFILE that individual remotely, based on publicly available material.

 

The FBI routinely profiles mentally-ill criminals (such as serial killers). Psychologists frequently evaluate the mental health of politicians in peer-reviewed papers.

 

Erich Fromm, the towering psychoanalyst, remote-evaluated both Stalin and Hitler, suggesting that both those butchers were narcissists.

 

Secret services have entire departments dedicated to the remote evaluation of the mental fitness of foreign leaders.

 

Here is a recent example: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/iraq/saddam_post.htm 

 

And here is an early example: http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/h/hitler-adolf/oss-papers/text/profile-index.html