Character Psych Profiles - Umbridge = Insecure!

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 127511


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Jim Ferer" <jferer at y...> wrote:
> 
> -Kemper: 
>" I have a new question. Umbridge. She wears a lot of rings.
> For me,  this is almost always a sign of a Borderline or a 
> Histrionic.

> Julie: 
> "Umbridge is an odd bird. ... Could she be Dysthymic?
> It is a chronic depressive condition, with hers being expressed as
> irritable, unhappy, and generally nasty? I don't know."

> Jim:
> 
> Umbridge seems to be at the extreme end of a path Percy seems well
> started on.  She's an apparatchik.  Having no moral compass of here
> own, she's turned over her conscience and sense of right and wrong
> to someone else, ...edited...
> 
> It's a kind of reflected sociopathy, an amorality come by 
> second-hand.
> 
> Jim Ferer

bboyminn:

Well, I certainly can commnent with the same depth of psychological
insight and knowledge that others are displaying; the best I can do is
give you my opinion.

I think Umbridge is desperately and pathologically INSECURE.

She is insecure about her looks, so she compensates with her sickly
sweet voice, her girly-girly clothes, and her affect of a sweet
pleasant demeanor. And rightly she should since her true personality
is mean and exceedingly umpleasant.

The sweet girly-girly look and demeanor are a mask she wears to cover
the things in herself that she fear others will not like. And again,
she is right, when most people see beyond the mask, they don't like her. 

Another part of her deep insecurity is her fear that she is a mediocre
witch with mediocre magical powers, and again, she is right. So, like
many, she compensates for her deep sense of personal and magical
powerlessness by seeking power. It's s form of self-validation. 

She wields her desire for validating power like sword, and has no
hesitation in cutting down anyone who gets in her way. Her many false
faces and her quest for validating power have been very effective. She
has managed to cozy up to the top man in the wizard world, and that
association with Fudge validates her sense of personal power.
Although, like many who seek power for power's sake, the more she has,
the more she fears she doesn't, which starts a never ending cascade of
demanding more validations of her power.

Sending the Dementors after Harry is a perfect example. More than
Harry's statements, Harry mere existance threatened Umbridge's
self-illusion and carefully worn mask of power, more than that, by
threatening Fudge, Harry threatened the very source of power that
validated Umbridge. If the Ministry lost Fudge, or Fudge's power and
influence diminish, then Umbridge loses her total sense of Self. So,
by even threatening Fudge in the smallest way, Harry inadvertently
threatened Umbridge in the greatest and most desperate and dangerous
way possible.

This same thread of self-validation power, can be seen in Umbridge's
reign at Hogwarts. Everything she does is about establishing and
preserving her identity and power. If she allows those factors of her
Self to faulter, then she is force to face a desperate truth that she
will avoid at any cost, and that truth is that she is a weak, fat,
ugly, stupid, ineffective, powerless pathetic excuse for a witch and
human being. And trust me, she would kill you before she would allow
you to make her face that truth.

She lives to preserve an illusion that hides a truth she is
psychotically unwilling and unable to face.

Don't know what the term for that is, but that's how I see her. She is
hyper-super-extremely over-compensating for the weaknesses she fears
in herself.

You heard it here first.

Steve/bboyminn