Elizabeth Holmes is a Narcissist First
Some authors have emphasized the feminist angle of Elizabeth Holmes’ brief presence in Silicon Valley. I wonder whether the gender aspect of her fall from grace and of Theranos’ fiasco is overplayed. Pretend that Elizabeth Holmes was “Charles” Holmes for a second. My view is that Charlie would have acted almost exactly as she did -provided that he was, like Elizabeth, a narcissist. In fact, narcissism tends to be more prevalent among men, although it doesn’t spare women (particularly in the current age of rampant narcissism).
Elizabeth Holmes fits the bill: She is delusional, self-absorbed, has or had grandiose dreams, tolerates no doubt and no criticism, is manipulative, and she is insensitive to other people’s needs or suffering -as her reaction to the plight, and later death, of Ian Gibbons shows. At 19, she was already delusional enough to think that she didn’t need to have a science or engineering degree in order to found a health sciences research company. That tells us volumes about her state of mind. She was and is delusional, mainly in the-utterly-full of-herself version of magical thinking. That’s one of the main features of narcissism.
The causes of the rise in narcissism, as well as the prevalence of cheating, of uncivil and anti-social behavior, are hard to identify. Some factors include hyper-individualism and thus lack of concern with community life; bad socialization patterns, including bad parenting and worse schooling; an emphasis on image rather than substance, on material wealth rather than on kindness and good citizenship; an emphasis on self-esteem and self-admiration, and so on. Those cultural maladies affect everyone, irrespective of gender, and produce mild to full-blown narcissists in record numbers, also irrespective of gender.
Another Medium author, Kitanya Harrison, argues that Holmes is a narcissist, but that her “whiteness” is significant. I don’ t know if she overplays the “race” angle, but for now she seems very persuasive. Like Harrison, I find it hard to picture a “black” woman getting her foot pass the door of Silicon Valley, let alone swindle investors out of more than 700 million dollars. If race is the decisive factor, however, that would have to be true of a “black” man -at least up to the threshold where “race” matters more than being a man.
Harrison wrote:
“Elizabeth Holmes is a relatively attractive, young, White woman who crashed an almost exclusively White male club. She took great care to blend in with the boys, going so far as to pull a reverse Michael Jackson falsetto with her speaking voice and adopt an affected baritone. Mirroring. It’s one of the most effective tools of ingratiation: essentially making a person attracted to a version of themselves. It’s a favored tactic of narcissists and sociopaths, who form the pool committed grifters are pulled from. A certain kind of overly confident, mediocre, White person can get away with quite a lot if they master this skill. And, yes, Holmes being White is important. The shoddy science would have been torn to shreds if a person of color had turned up with it. Many, many more questions would have been asked. Much higher hurdles would have had to be cleared. No one would have handed $700 million to a Black woman essentially on a wing and a prayer, because they found her vaguely ‘impressive’ and charming. The ‘genius’ would have been tested thoroughly.” (In “Elizabeth Holmes and the Dangers of White Feminism,” published on March 22, 2019).
Yes, American culture is characterized by double standards -on the basis, inter alia, of “race” and of gender. (To be sure, “race” is a very bad idea, as it is divorced from reality. But it still holds sway in the U.S., due to its long history and that of its offspring, racism). Men are given the benefit of the doubt over women. A “white” woman or man is given the benefit of the doubt over a “black” man and over a “black” woman. But I have misgivings about the role of gender in Holmes’ story, besides the likelihood that she used her gender to her advantage, by mirroring what others wanted to see.
Holmes was was not really an “innovator.” She had an idea, but had no way of knowing if it could be pulled off, and she lacked the knowledge to make it happen. It seems to me that she used the “break the glass ceiling” metaphor and her gender as just another tool out of her narcissistic toolkit. Why? Because it was available and suited her self-interest. Narcissists are interchangeable, regardless of their gender. The con man currently in the White House and Holmes are narcissists first and of a certain gender second.
Holmes did use her gender to her advantage. After all, the press and the glossy magazines prematurely lionized her, mostly because she was seen as a pioneer in male-dominated Silicon Valley. In other words, she capitalized on historical gender inequities, not because she is a woman or a feminist, but because she is a manipulator. But narcissists often have feet of clay because, in the end, they cannot deliver. Almost always, they are all hype and little substance. Mostly, the hype lives in their minds.
Holmes’ fear of not being believed is that of the narcissist, not of the woman who is denied credibility in a man’s world. It was not a woman’s dread of the prospect that others won’t believe that she was sexually assaulted. When someone is skeptical of a narcissist and of her grandiose goals -her dreams of glory- the response is narcissistic anger, not dismay or impotence. At the helm of Theranos, Holmes displayed that anger in spades. In any event, if we hesitate to call her a narcissist, we certainly can call her a run-of-the-mill con artist, and the same psychoanalysis applies.
