Holy shit, it really is!

Huh. I never put the cycles together; I just lumped all his behavior into the "douchebag" category.

I'm not sure if his cycles constitute mental illness or just cyclical assholitude. I would hate to be his case worker.

He's a textbook sociopath. When periods of self-awareness hit, he is suddenly introspective and feels sorry for himself and thinks other people should feel sorry for him, but just like the rest of the time, other people can go fuck themselves.

i think that's narcissism... iirc, sociopaths don't experience even self-centered "remorse" as we neurotypicals understand it, whereas the narcissist experiences cyclical contrition as performance, as well as remedy for past wrongs committed.

narcissism mimics sociopathy very very closely, though.

Gonna agree with Bus here, not that I'm a mental health worker or anything. The only time I've ever seen Nick, aspiring actor, act convincingly is that video he pretended to be sorry and despondent and then turned it off in a second and told everyone that the life story he'd invented was an absolute lie. It was, in its way, sort of terrifying.