Did Eliot Ness Suffer From Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
In both real life and in the book Chasing Eliot Ness
, these qualities are attributed to Ness. According to his biography, Eliot Ness suffered from all of the above. It caused him to suffer greatly in his personal relationships as well as his work. Although he is hailed as the guy who got Capone, in real life he never held a job, or a relationship for a long period of time.
As a child, he received an inordinate amount of attention and praise from his mother but little attention from his father. Much younger than his brothers and sisters and born to middle aged parents, he may have felt unwanted. By all accounts, Ness was withdrawn as a child and lived in somewhat of a fantasy world. As an adult man, he got excessive attention from female admirers and sought it out throughout the rest of his life, moving from woman to woman and showing little empathy towards his wives, all three of whom felt abandoned by him at times and two of which ended up leaving him.
Ness could not stand criticism and went out of his way to avoid it. Always accommodating to the press, who he went out of his way to please, he did get terse with them when they questioned him as to why he could not find the Cleveland Torso Murderer. Instead, he sought to focus on his achievements - yes, there was a serial killer on the loose, but traffic fatalities were down.
His conduct in a 1942 incident that cost him his job as Safety Director in Cleveland is typical of someone who has NPD. In the wee hours of the morning and after a night of drinking with his second wife, he hit another motorist, injuring him. He did get out of the car to make sure the man was alive but then the story changes. Ness claimed that he told the man to follow him to the hospital. The man who was hit was found later by another motorist and taken to the hospital. He did not know the name of the man who hit him as he did not give him his name, but recognized Ness's vanity plates on his Cadillac. Ness never went to the hospital with his wife, who was supposedly injured, and when the police contacted him regarding the incident, he suggested that they play it down. The hit and run caused him his job, although he was not prosecuted for the crime.
His excessive need for admiration cost him two marriages and plenty of friends. His grandiose self importance emerged when he returned to Cleveland and ran for mayor in 1947. With a third wife, a scandalous past in the city that included womanizing and drinking as well as the traffic incident, he was defeated in a two to one margin. Eliot Ness never understood how he could lose in such a way and spitefully remarked to the winning candidate "who wants an honest politician anyway" at his victory party, shocking all in attendance.
He showed no empathy for those in the shanty town that he ordered burned to the ground in an effort to catch the Mad Butcher of Cleveland. He used the police department to order the residents out, not allowing them to take their few belongings and then ordered the shacks burned to the ground to the shock of the reporters who stood and watched.
After losing his job as Safety Director in Cleveland, he systematically used friends for job favors. He lost touch with his old friends when they were no longer of any use but took advantage of many perks beforehand. He went from one business failure to the next. He contacted his old friends when he needed money or a job.
Major depressive disorder goes hand in hand with NPD. It is evident that Eliot Ness also suffered from depression, particularly towards the end of his life. He used alcohol, like many of those who suffer from depression, to try to erase the pain. He was unable to admit his past mistakes even to the man who wrote his autobiography, The Untouchables, leaving out his first two wives from his book and his life.
In the book
Chasing Eliot Ness, the writer gives a glimpse of what someone can expect if they get involved with someone who suffers from this disorder. Like many of those who form relationships with someone like Eliot Ness, they tend to be blindly infatuated until they start to get a real taste of what it is like to actually live with someone who suffers from NPD. The book, billed as a romantic thriller, casts Ness in a more romantic light, but as the antagonist who nearly ruins the life of his fictional sweetheart.
Did Eliot Ness Suffer From Narcissistic Personality Disorder?
By: Marla Brightson
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