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This chapter considers the importation of megalomaniacal majesty into the Roman Republic. Over time, kingly conceit became more conspicuous in Rome, and particularly at times of communal festivity. In contrast to the manner in which the behaviour of kings such as Philadelphus or Epiphanes is remembered, there is rather more information in Roman sources about the sentiments of the urban audience, as is seen in reports about the employment of animals in order to advertise personal greatness.

This chapter goes into the psychology of apocalyptic believers, the megalomanic (and often paranoid) belief that they are at the center of a cosmic drama, and explores why, despite so many spectacular failures in announcing the coming kingdom of heaven, the belief has not abated even in the modern, “rational,” and secular world. It then offers a set of definitions for terms the book will use repeatedly: apocalyptic, millennial, eschatological. It lays out two sets of variables that allow one to map the phenomena: for millennialism, demotic (egalitarian) versus imperial (hierarchical), progressive versus restorative; for apocalyptic, cataclysmic (violent destruction) versus transformative (change of will), active (human participation) versus passive (divine action).

This chapter treats the career of Hong Xiuquan, a brilliant peasant boy who failed four tries to pass the imperial exams, and almost died of shame at the failure, during which time he received a series of visions that led him to claim to be “God's Chinese Son,” the younger cousin of Jesus. Beginning as a profoundly demotic movement, and going through several phases of missionizing and iconoclasm, by 1850, his followers formed an army that conquered the entire south of China, including the ancient imperial capital of Nanjing. But rather than continue on to the Qing capital at Beijing, Hong became increasingly isolated in imperial splendor creating a uniquely bipolar millennialism that was at once radically egalitarian and hierarchical. By the time his kingdom fell in 1864, over 20–35 million Chinese had died, making their self-designation of Taiping—the “Great Peace” one of the most ironic terms in the history of millennialism.

On December 1840, Paris celebrated the arrival of Napoleon’s remains with a grandiose ceremony known as the “return of the ashes.” In the following weeks, the director of the Bicêtre asylum institutionalized fourteen new “emperors.” Why did madmen so often identified with Napoleon? And why Napoleon rather than the Sun King? Based on the Napoleonic legend, this chapter focuses on “delusions of grandeur” or what doctors called at that time “ambitious monomania.” It analyzes it as the scourge of the century and puts it within the framework of Romanticism and its cult of the hero. Rather than his personality, it is Napoleon’s symbolic figure that best explains the process of megalomaniac identification: a soldier turned emperor, a self made man instead of an entitled heir, Napoleon didn’t inherit his legitimacy but won it through political genius and force of arms.

This introductory chapter takes on Brian De Palma's signature split-screen as the basis of discussion, with the intention of focusing on De Palma as a man divided. The split-screen is used here as a figure for the stark divisions within De Palma and his works. Four of these divisions are followed as thematic threads running throughout the book—as the key contrasts which underpin this analysis. These main themes or key contrasts are: Independence / Hollywood, originality / imitation, feminism / misogyny, and humility / megalomania. Furthermore, the chapter contends that while De Palma's movies are usually viewed as being devoid of biographical resonance, his movies are in fact profoundly connected to his life, but often in a metaphorical way, much as dreams act as strange reworkings of moments from our waking life.

This chapter examines The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), the most high-profile disaster in De Palma's career. The film recounts the fall of Wall Street bond broker Sherman McCoy (Tom Hanks). Pulling in millions, ensconced in a posh Park Avenue apartment, Sherman thinks he is “impervious, untouchable, insulated by wealth and power—a Master of the Universe.” But after one wrong turn into a Bronx ghetto results in his Mercedes accidentally backing over a black youth, Sherman finds himself the object of an onslaught by reporters, politicians, and the police. From here the chapter explores the connections between Sherman and De Palma himself, noting in particular the biographical strains echoed in the film and, more strikingly, both their statuses as men of great power, dealing with vast quantities of money and overseeing an army of workers below them.

This chapter explores from a psychological perspective the links between paranoia and the apocalyptic and how and why that relates to violence. Rooted in a therapeutic practice that involved close contact with paranoids, this study offers observations on the experiences of people in the grip of such compelling beliefs. Apocalyptic intensity creates a self-enforcing cycle, throwing the paranoid into a projective feedback loop. These paranoids experience a sense of fragmentation that closely resembles what some argue is the experience of modernity for many. The paranoid is a victim—part of their megalomania of paranoia is believing that the entire world has nothing better to do with its time than scheme against them. Victimization thus justifies violence.