More of Barry's fanatical obsession with Narcissistic Personality Disorder...
The obvious, for the record: Barry isn't qualified to diagnose anyone with NPD. Not even a professional would do so without having met and examined the person--and certainly would not attempt to do so merely on the basis of their posts on an Internet forum. Not only that, but Barry repeatedly claimed that he never read the posts of the two people he demonizes here. Moreover, with regard to Robin, he gets his basic facts wrong. So his remarks here have zero credibility. Think about the arrival on FFL of someone who is as classic an example of NPD as has ever existed. Some people saw the endless "But enough talking about me...let's talk about me" drivel as what it was and lost interest, and some looked at the same drivel and somehow projected greatness onto it. Barry's description is so far from accurate that it's really disturbing. It's hallucinatory. Robin talked with other people about themselves, in depth, far, far more than Barry has ever done. And goodness knows Barry has been no slouch talking about himself. Robin tended to talk about himself primarily in response to others' interest (friendly or otherwise). Barry needs no such encouragement. To this day, the most dismaying thing about my entire experience at FFL has been the fact that many people here were completely *unable* to recognize two classic psychopaths -- Ravi and Robin -- when they encountered them. Instead they admired them, became their groupies, and in one case actually created a small cult following around them. That is worrisome, especially in a group of people who claim to be "sophisticated spiritual seekers" who've been "on the path" for 20-30 years. To have spent that much time theoretically studying the psychology of enlightenment without being able to tell it from the psychology of psychopathology is shocking. Nobody created any kind of "cult following" around Robin, nor around Ravi either. That's just insane. Being popular, even admired, is not the same as having a cult following. And to my knowledge no one here has ever claimed to be a "sophisticated spiritual seeker." Nor as far as I can tell has anyone been "studying the psychology of enlightenment," theoretically or otherwise. It's not clear what that might even mean (and even less clear what "the psychology of psychopathology" could mean). Plus which, of course, only someone who had been around Robin 30-some years ago could have a legitimate opinion about him in his supposedly enlightened state. We didn't see it here. For some reason Barry persists in thinking that Robin claimed to still be enlightened, when of course he'd done just the opposite. And Robin HIMSELF told us that he had been essentially crazy back then. To my knowledge, nobody took issue with him on that point. Bottom line, Barry is babbling incoherently. Something about Robin, and to a lesser extent about Ravi, seriously traumatized him and aggravated his own already significant psychopathology. He's always been completely unable to write rationally (let alone truthfully) about either Robin or Ravi, even now that both of them are long gone from FFL and pose no threat of competition. Barry always claims that he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him. But it's hard to see his repeated hysterical meltdowns about Robin and Ravi as anything but paranoid jealousy. Many here liked Robin and Ravi--and that seems to be what has dismayed Barry the most.
