Indicators . . .

1. Lack of conscience, morality, and ethics.
2. Rigid morality and sense of entitlement.
3. Grandiosity and overvaluation of self while devaluing others.
4. Evidence of paranoia – hatred of lesbians, gays, Latinos, anyone not perfect like him.
5. Sees social slights, indifference, human imperfections, diversity and catalogs them and nourishes those wounds he has collected so that he can justify his actions.

The following is from  Joe Navarro, a 25 year veteran of the FBI and the author of What Every Body is Saying, as well as Dangerous Personalities which delves further into wound collection.

See: “Wound Collector” at Spycatcher - Psychology Today

In essence these are individuals who go out of their way to collect social slights, historical grievances, injustices, unfair or disparate treatment, or wrongs—whether real or imagined (Dangerous Personalities 2014 Rodale Publishing).

They don’t forgive or forget and they don’t move on. They wallow in the actual or often perceived transgressions of others and they allow sentiments of animosity and vengeance to percolate and froth at the surface by their constant and attentive nurturing of those perceived wounds. As you can imagine, in an imperfect world where there are real injustices, where people make mistakes, and stupid things are said and done, the wound collector never has to go far to feel victimized. 

What is the definition of a wound collector or wound collecting?

Wound collecting is the conscious and systematic collection and preservation of transgressions, violations, social wrongs, grievances, injustice, unfair treatment, or slights of self and others, for the purpose of  nourishing, fortifying, or justifying a malignant ideology, furthering hatred, satisfying a pathology, or for exacting revenge. 

What kind of people meet this criteria? 

Anyone who, because of a personality disorder or character traits (e.g., insecurities, paranoia, fear, xenophobia, or due to emotional instability), inflexibly seeks to collect wounds and slights for a purpose that usually has negative social consequences or is self serving. This can be anyone from a spouse, to a terrorist, to a mass killer.

Or … a 20 something in his mother’s basement playing video games or even a President of the United States.

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~OGD~