Pretty sure these "bizarre mental problems" are a manifestation of rivalrous narcissism. Dismissing others in order to feel better about your own intelligence i

Pretty sure these "bizarre mental problems" are a manifestation of rivalrous narcissism. Dismissing others in order to feel better about your own intelligence is a symptom of that. It sounds like he would like to be a heavy intellectual hitter but isn't, which is all I meant by relatively stupid. Narcissism involves a kind of fraudulent, artificial self-image. Claiming something is trivial and then not being able to follow through on that is exactly the kind of bluster I'd expect from a narcissist. The slacking off fits the profile, and the "gets mad" is also a narcissistic trait. To return to my original point: this is not about class origins, it sound's like it is about having a chip on one's shoulder about intellectual achievement. There are many other things that can play that role in narcissism, including coming from an underprivileged background. It's really important to develop a proper analysis of these personality problems. The typical engineer has a blind spot in this area—they can see when there's an obvious problem but they don't try to build up a deeper intuition for the dynamics behind it.