New York Times Front Page: President-elect Biden’s nominee for secretary of defense has “a habit of referring to himself in the third person”

Does General Austin’s third person self-reference reflect multiple personality trait (one personality referring to another personality) or only grandiosity? [But see added note below.]

“WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who is on the brink of becoming the first Black man to be secretary of defense, rose to the heights of an American military whose largely white leadership has not reflected the diversity of its rank and file.

     For much of his career, General Austin was accustomed to white men at the top. But a crucial turning point — and a key to his success — came a decade ago, when General Austin and a small group of African-American men populated the military’s most senior ranks.

     As a tall and imposing lieutenant general with a habit of referring to himself in the third person, General Austin was the director of the Joint Staff, one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes positions in the military…” (1, Front Page).

1. Helene  Cooper. “How Biden’s Defense Nominee Overcame Barriers to Diversity.” Title of front page article in New York Times print edition, Dec. 10, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/biden-lloyd-austin-defense-secretary.html

Added note: In the military, third person self-reference (illeism) may indicate the opposite of grandiosity: “Recruits in the military...are also often made to refer to themselves in the third person, such as 'this recruit,' in order to reduce the sense of individuality and enforce the idea of the group being more important than the self. The use of illeism in this context imparts a sense of lack of self, implying a diminished importance of the speaker in relation to the addressee or to a larger whole” (2).

Actually, it is more often Nosism (3) that may indicate grandiosity.

But both illeism and nosism are sometimes seen in multiple personality, when one personality refers to another personality ("he") or personalities speak as a group ("we").

2. Wikipedia. “Illeism.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illeism

3. Wikipedia. "Nosism." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosism