Welcome to Emotional Wellness Daily, a project of SIMHA, the Sephardic Initiative for Mental Health Awareness.
I recently asked a psychotherapist, “If Haman would come to your office to speak to you, what would your diagnosis be?” Without blinking, he said Haman was the ultimate narcissist.
Sure enough, after I entered Haman and Narcissism on Sefaria.org, I found a Torah source for this, in an article entitled, “Did Haman have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder?”
Of course, you really need a diagnosis from a professional, but there are nine defining traits, and if a person has five out of the nine, it’s an indicative of a narcissist.
Number one is that the person has a grandiose sense of self-importance. That means he recognized himself to be superior to others without actually completing the achievements. Number two, he's preoccupied with fantasies of success, power, brilliance, and beauty.
Number three, he believes that he's special and can only be understood by or associated with other special people or institutions.
Number four, he requires excessive admiration.
Number five, he has a sense of entitlement and unreasonable expectations of favorable treatment.
Number six, he's exploitive and takes advantage of others to achieve his goal.
Number seven, he lacks empathy and is unwilling to identify with the needs of others.
Number eight he is often envious of others and believes that others are envious of them.
And lastly, he shows arrogant haughty behaviors and attitudes.
So, we have Haman, who has everything in the world, and wants the whole world to bow to him, but it's all worthless if one man, Mordechai, doesn't bow down to him. That is because, as we said, one of the definitions of the narcissist is that he relies on others to regulate his self-esteem and give him a sense of value.
Now I want to set aside the discussion about whether Haman was a narcissist and focus on the trait of: relies on others to regulate self-esteem and give them a sense of value.
That's a problem.
Haman, according to our Torah sources, represents Amalek. Haman came from Amalek, and Amalek’s trait is Ga’avah/ arrogance. The word עמלק Amalek has the numerical value of 240, as does the word רם Ram, which means to be arrogant. This tells us that the ultimate evil is arrogance.
Who is the arrogant person? The person who is always bragging, always looking to the outside, and is not able to tap into his own inner value and self-esteem.
What does this have to do with Amalek, the ultimate atheist who also doesn't believe in God?
Let’s view this, as I love to do, through the lens of spirituality and mental health: If I believe in Hashem and I believe I'm created B’Tzelem Elokim/in the image of God, I believe there's no one else that existed from the beginning of time until the end of time that's the same as me, as is apparent in my fingerprints and my eyes.
I was created for a mission. I have value, I have worth. And my value and worth is not decided by the outside, by people's recognition or thoughts of me. My value and worth is decided by me living my life and making the right decisions. Haman doesn't understand that, and anybody who has an improper hashkafa ultimately won’t either.
I'm not here to decide if the narcissist has freedom of choice, or not, whether it was determined or not, or whether it’s bad middot or not.
I'm talking to regular people and using this as an analogy. Ultimately, we have to work on our humility, which really is based on self-esteem. An anav/ humble person recognizes his qualities, and knows he gets them from God. That's why Moshe, who was the greatest of men, was the most humble of men.
It’s not a contradiction. You have qualities, you have self-esteem. But you know you didn't make it, it was a gift from God, that comes with responsibility. That's the pure beautiful Anav.
Rav Yisrael Salanter said, “I have the mind of a thousand men, but I have the responsibility of a thousand men.” That's self-esteem. Whatever you have, it's what God gave you to fulfill a mission, and that gives you self-worth. Haman is the antithesis of that. Since his value only comes from his sense of how others view him, he's never happy. All of that comes because he has no internal self value, because he doesn't believe that he was created or has a mission.
Have a wonderful day.