The messiah complex is a mental state in which a person believes they are a messiah or prophet and will save or redeem people in a religious endeavour. The term can also refer to a state of mind in which an individual believes that they are responsible for saving or assisting others.
It is a pop-psychology term that is not recognized by the DSM as a disorder or a diagnosis.
That is critically important caveat. Although the undersigned has read no lay labeling of President Biden as having a Messiah Complex in the pop understanding, the connection was made in 2020*, its components are well known in the popular conception and it was the instant association I made when I read that "Biden has long seen himself as a historic figure" in the Hur report. This is the section of the report in full that prompted this lay label by the undersigned:
The classified documents and other materials recovered in this case spanned Mr. Biden's career in national public life. During that career, Mr. Biden has long seen himself as a historic figure. Elected to the Senate at age twenty-nine, he considered running for president as early as 1980 and did so in 1988, 2008, and 2020. He believed his record during decades in the Senate made him worthy of the presidency, and he collected papers and artifacts related to significant issues and events in his career. He used these materials to write memoirs published in 2007 and 2017, to document his legacy, and to cite as evidence that he was a man of presidential timber.
In 2009, then-Vice President Biden strongly opposed the military's plans to send more troops to Afghanistan. U.S. policy in Afghanistan was deeply important to Mr. Biden, and he labored to dissuade President Obama...Despite Mr. Biden's advice, President Obama ordered a surge of additional U.S. troops, and Mr. Biden's views endured sharp criticism from others within and outside of the administration. But he always believed history would prove him right. He retained materials documenting his opposition to the troop surge, including a classified handwritten memo he sent President Obama over the 2009 Thanksgiving holiday, and related marked classified documents. FBI agents recovered these materials from Mr. Biden's Delaware garage and home office in December 2022 and January 2023.
Robert Hur has been accused by Biden's allies of smearing Biden over his mental state. Those defenders ought to be careful for in these first two pages Hur carefully avoids the explosive label, only using the components of the complex to explain Biden's motivation for retaining the Afghanistan documents. However that recitation of the roots of Biden's motive is a classic fit with what is considered in pop psychology as a Messiah Complex. A Messiah Complex is not a recognized psychiatric disorder, nor a diagnosis. Hur would not have gone there even if he could, but it all fits.
What are the components that lay people think of when they use the term Messiah Complex?
1) Persecution for beliefs. Check.
2) Tragedy. Biden's first wife and one-year old daughter were killed in a traffic accident after Biden's first election to the Senate but before he was sworn into office. Check.
3) Perseverance. Biden considered not taking the oath of office, but he did, at his surviving family's (Beau and Hunter) hospital bedside. Check.
4) Failure. He ran for president, the most powerful position in the world, three times, failing horribly. Check.
5) Rejection: his position on Afghanistan. Check.
6) Certainty in being correct. Check.
7) Triumph. his election over the antichrist Trump in 2020.
8) Transcendence. Biden’s 2020 theme was a “battle for the soul of America.” Check.
9) Proof. He was a fabulously successful president, proof that he had always been made of "presidential timber". Check.
10) Crucifixion. The current stage, which may reasonably result in his political death and confine him to an historical figure of a brief interregnum of partial Restoration only to fail in his attempt at permanent Restoration of the American “soul”, a footnote in history rather than an historical figure of salvation.
Biden with a Messiah Complex is, to me, the most accurate conceptualization of the constellation of components of the president's mental and psychic makeup.
*
Following Pentecost Sunday, Joe Biden has emerged from his bunker to convert the US to a new political faith.
