I have never met, interviewed, or examined Kamala Harris, but I have observed her verbal and non-verbal behavior.  Her pattern of histrionic, often giddy, excessive cackling laughter and politically disjointed word salad at podiums is telling.

In my opinion, Harris’s personality pattern is similar to that of Barack Obama’s “as if” narcissistic variety, despite her obvious sex-gender differences from Obama.  We now observe that Kamala Harris remaking herself in a similar fashion to Obama’s elegantly crafted political-identity book, Dreams from My Father.  Obama’s and Harris’s chameleon process of political identity formation is impressive!

Famous psychoanalyst Helene Deutsch described what she called the ”as if” personality type, a unique form of the narcissistic personality pattern.  I will paraphrase and summarize Deutsch in reference to Kamala Harris.  Harris leaves many people with an impression of inauthenticity, even though on the surface she seems to enjoy “normal” relations with others.  She appears perfectly well adjusted and even capable of a certain warmth, but with her staff she betrays a lack of emotional depth and even a foul-mouthed devaluing, dominating, and grandiose sense of superiority has been described in the media.

The apparently normal relationship with the world corresponds to a child’s imitativeness and is the expression of identification with the environment, a mimicry that results in an ostensibly good adaptation to the world of reality but merely on the surface.  Her political creations are, on further observation, rehearsed for effect.

Another characteristic of Harris’s “as if” personality is that aggressive tendencies are almost completely covered by a surface of pleasantry, smiling, and uncontrollable mirth.  Harris’s verbal aggression leads to reaction formation in an air of goodness on the surface.  She can quietly be ruthless in gaining political ascendancy, as occurred when President Biden withdrew as a candidate.  That is how she seems to govern, for what she thinks is the people’s own good.  And her political ends seems to justify her political means.  As president, she would be a dominant, inflexible, attention- and affection-craving queen bee in her American hive.

Harris’s perpetual search for her political self is a constant self-creation, resulting in her endless perception of herself as a self-appointed omnipotent parent and transformative messiah.  Kamala Harris’s “as-if”-ness of personality leads to a chameleon-like quality that allows her at a surface level to swiftly relate to many people in an amiable, apparently empathic manner.  This attribute is helpful at campaign events, but in the ongoing relationships with any hard-nosed journalist, Republican opponent, or bureaucrats, Harris will quickly grow bored, haughty, or insulting.  She talks about bipartisan collaboration but has little patience for those who dispute her views.  Harris, like most fragile narcissists, is trapped in the confines of her own wonderfulness.  She plays well only with others who adore her and agree with her.

References 

Deutsch, Helene (1934), Über einen Typus der Pseudoaffektivität (“Als ob”).  Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 20.

Deutsch (1942), Some forms of emotional disturbance and their relationship to schizophrenia. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 11.

Image: Mobilus In Mobili via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).