Attention pop-psychologists!

If, like myself, you've heard the latest of Bush's latest protestations of unwavering support for the likes of Don Rumsfeld and wondered, what's wrong with the man, Lance Mannion has a suggestion:

What I used to think of as monstrous vanity and arrogance I now suspect is actually delusion. Wolfe writes that for Bush believing a thing to be true is as good as its being true. Reality for him is what's inside his head. Wolfe attributes this to a combination of Bush's own character flaws and the tendency of the sycophants and machiavellians around him to keep him isolated. He's trapped inside a bubble of his own and his aides' making and he is too vain and too stubborn, and too weak, to see it or want to break out of it.

But I can't help thinking that he was born trapped inside that bubble. There is a clinical term for people who live inside their own heads, who can't interact completely and normally with other people, who seem to have no empathy with others and no sense that what they think is going on might not be what in fact is going on, who get angry and act out when the reality intrudes and they are forced to choose between the world inside their heads and the world outside.

That word begins with an A.

And I'm not thinking of alcoholic, although Bush's behavior is in many ways that of one still, even though he has supposedly sobered up. The dry drunk syndrome is an established fact.

You'll have to read the entire (two) oustanding posts for the answer, something I highly recommend.

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.