In other words, it's a pathology of personality, analogous to pathological states of other biological systems. Trying to grasp it as if it was a simple trait (height, introversion/extraversion, BMI) is unlikely to be successful, because narcissism is a pattern of intra- and interpersonal dynamics. It's something that has to be reconstructed from multiple observations.
Can you expand on this or provide some more reading for me? I believe my mother has NPD and have, on occasion, sworn she was on the spectrum as well.
A lot of the epistemological problems for people who are pathologically narcissistic come from understanding the difference between how they see things and how other people see things.
Part of the pathology is that they have a filter set up to protect a fragile image of themselves, and so they often don't understand why other people are acting in some way, specifically when other people's actions are only explicable in ways that contradict the fragile image.
They aren't able to take in information that would allow them to modify their behavior because even mild criticism will harm their understanding of themselves, and since that filter is strong they have a hard time knowing the difference between useful criticisms and all the other reasons people say mean or hurtful things to them.
This disconnection appears similarly to other pathologies where people have issues identifying other peoples' motivations.
For instance, most people have a healthy skepticism of other people's negative reactions: even though other people might think I'm a jerk for, say, constantly name dropping some person some behavior, I will probably keep doing it for a bit.
But at some point, I will (hopefully) notice the trend in negative reactions and either rework the name dropping habit so that other people find it interesting/relevant or understand that it's something that I should change about myself. But if I have such a strong filter against criticism of my identity that literally anything could harm that identity, I might not pick up on social cues that would tell me I need to alter my behavior.
I don't know a lot about asperger syndrome, so this is totally my lay-person's interpretation, but basically they seem similar because they both involve dysfunctions with how people parse other peoples' behavior.
All people have some narcissistic tendencies, and in a sense I feel like my culture (I'm in Texas) amplifies and rewards those tendencies.
There is a difference between displaying a tendency and having your entire life torn apart because of a person's pathological need to defend an image of themself. I have a lot of sympathy for both Echo and Narcissus, because that's a hard story to live in.
I, too, just learned that I'm a narcissist.
I had to squint quite a bit at the diagnostic list there, and sort of wedge my own psychological dispositions creatively into the qualifications list there but then yeah -- snap (and crap!) -- I'm a narcissist.
Oh, but if I use just a little more nuanced application of thought, then suddenly I'm not a narcissist. Or at least in a safer position on the linear spectrum that is assumed in this kind of "scientific" categorization.
Which is really quite absurd as you have pointed out.
But only when it comes to, say, J2EE?
Like I'm the 100th smartest person at J2EE in the world, and everyone else besides the approximately 100 above me are J2EE-inferior.
Am I a Narcissist? A J2EE-Narcissist?
Here's an example, my city has a water-related emergency and so the water system is temporarily broken. Local coffee shops have closed because it's too difficult to access suitable water. Meanwhile I am drinking coffee right now, and feeling quite smug that as a rank amateur I can do what Those Who Had One Job cannot. I frequently have this experience where I feel like I can do things better than other people. This is a giant red flag for narcissism.
If you dig into it though, I can make coffee because I have a weeks worth of supplies on hand because I had a rough childhood and certain things stay with you. I have two ISPs in case one goes down (and actually chose where I live for that reason), I have at least four modes of transit to get most places, I just chronically overplan for everything in life all the time. So when something goes wrong I will have two or three solutions ready to go while a normal person is trying to stop panicking.
That is a symptom of something, namely my generalized anxiety of having to rely on other people. But whereas a narcissist will berate a new cashier for not knowing how the POS system works, I surreptitiously memorized the right buttons from the last time I was here, help them get through the transaction as quickly as possible and say that I used to work here so they don't feel too bad.
"I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth."
"I understand social media. I understand the power of Twitter. I understand the power of Facebook maybe better than almost anybody"
"Nobody knows more about debt. I'm like the king. I love debt."
"I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world. Nobody knows more about taxes.
"Nobody knows banking better than I do"
"I understand money better than anybody."
"I think nobody knows the system better than I do."
"I know more about contributions than anybody."
"Nobody knows politicians better than Donald Trump."
"Nobody knows more about trade than me."
"Nobody knows jobs like I do! Don’t let them sell you out!"
"Nobody in the history of this country has ever known so much about infrastructure as Donald Trump."
"There's nobody bigger or better at the military than I am."
"I know more about ISIS than the generals do. Believe me."
"There is nobody who understands the horror of nuclear more than me."
"Because nobody knows the system better than me. I know the H1B. I know the H2B. Nobody knows it better than me."
"I’m very highly educated. I know words; I have the best words."
"No one has more respect for women than me."
"I have the best temperament or certainly one of the best temperaments of anybody that’s ever run for the office of president. Ever."
"Nobody reads the Bible more than me."
"I’m the most successful person ever to run for the presidency, by far. Nobody’s ever been more successful than me."
Tired yet? Because I could go on all day with these. That's what it's like to be an actual narcissist. If that's not like you, you're probably not a narcissist.
Look at it this way, even politicians who pander are able to exhibit some semblance of humility and self awareness. You'll be able to find exactly 0 instances from Trump admitting he's wrong about anything. In fact, he once said (to Jimmy Fallon) that he has never had to apologize because he's never done anything wrong.
The list explicitly part of a larger list of possible symptoms. The fact that you, I assume not a psychologist, were able to change your "diagnosis" by fudging the numbers a bit, doesn't really prove anything.
As I understand it, lists like these are tools. Not the formal definition of a mental illness. They are used to help guide mental health professionals in their diagnosis. They are meant to be used by people trained in the field.
Follow up I don't think mental health diagnoses are as black and white as you make it out to be. People can have moderate or severe forms of many illnesses.
Narcissism is not something you truly understand until you meet someone who really is one at the far end of the spectrum. Until you spend weeks, months or even years trying to work out why they have had their empathy glands removed you just don't fully understand the 'narcissism' concept. We see narcissists like The Donald and think that is it, actually you need to be on the sharp end of it, in a relationship directly or once removed through family or work to fully understand how insidious it is.
Only when you have learned the importance of 'no contact' do you understand narcissism fully.
All of us have a few traits that the narcissist has however, it is the cluster of characteristics that matters. With the HN readership I expect a fair few people here have genuinely found themselves on teambuilding exercises etc. where they really are the 'brightest person in the room' and have had to step up to 'leadership' because otherwise nothing would get done. That could be a tickbox on your internal 'I must be a narcissist' list. It doesn't make you one though. A lot of boxes have to be ticked.
Furthermore, the true narcissist does not have the brain cells to identify what the condition is. They can even hear of the story of Narcissus and think it is an 'incredibly sweet story', one worth sharing with others. How little they know...
Interestingly teambuilding exercises can lead to moments of 'imposter syndrome'. For instance you might never do sports yet fluke it with 'beginners luck' to beat everyone else. This happened with my sister who can't drive. When she went go-karting with her petrol-head workmates she somehow won. On that day she felt quite the 'imposter' in collecting the prize, not believing it. She was 'quite full of herself', ego brimming, and with a few 'narcissist checkboxes' ticked that day. So there is a correlation.
The "vulnerable narcissist" (as presented) is incredibly concerned with what other people think (at least on a shallow level), but often views themselves very negatively. They have a negative bias to self image and a lack of assertiveness but are nonetheless very focused on how they are perceived and themselves in general.
The "vulnerable" variety resonates with me quite a bit more. I could never agree with a statement like "I am a superior person", but I can agree with a statement like "I often feel as if I need compliments from others in order to be sure of myself." At various times in my life I have been very engaged in fishing for likes, compliments, whatever kind of approval I can get.
That has changed a lot for me recently, because I finally transitioned (I'm a transgender woman). Accepting that freed me from a lot of inauthenticity. I don't need the Internet to constantly validate my femininity any more, I don't feel terribly ashamed for wanting femininity in my life, etc. I still do think about gender, but rather to my surprise I spend way less time asking myself if I'm performing femininity correctly than I did performing masculinity - getting closer to that authentic place the article talks about.
I have been on the "sharp end" of the class sort courtesy of my mom. Like Trump, she lives in a bubble where reality itself distorts. One of the most obvious examples is whenever my gender comes up she always claims others in the family feel exactly the same way as she does, even when this is laughably and obviously incorrect. In fact she extends this to the rest of the world, claiming that e.g., I'm the laughing stock of all of my friends and they only act nice around me to be politically correct(even though, obviously, I'm in contact with them more than she is).
I could list countless other examples; for instance she claimed that the reason my brother and his wife decided not to have a child was because she wanted to fly to Paris and buy a purse. She simply warps reality to a space that is consistent with how she feels, even when that is absurd.
You shouldn't dismiss the resulting behavioral patterns that I have, though - for instance, constantly fishing for validation that refutes what she says. It tends to me being inauthentic and approval seeking. It also means that I do not put myself in vulnerable positions whenever possible. This means things like not interviewing for jobs and missing other opportunities because the risk of failure might validate all that negative talk. It means doing mediocre work intentionally so I can brush it off as "I didn't really try".
And most of all, like classic narcissism, it means failing to form deeper relationships or care about others on a level beyond figuring out what it takes to get them to like my selfie. At its most extreme, you get that intense reality distortion, but in a negative way - e.g., I actually believe her when she says things like all my friends are laughing at me as a man in a dress.
It's not accepting that how others view me isn't necessarily how I view myself, and instead believing in a world where everyone thinks the same things I do - or at least, they would, if they saw the "real me", which I have to hide. Hence, the link to impostor syndrome.
I am also interested in how our make up is determined by the mix of testosterone/estrogen that we get before we get born. As I understand it the mix can be set one way or the other at different stages of development therefore affecting the final outcome. You can get the mixture over-rided by the mum's mix of the two to end up far from binary male or binary female. If the anatomy is built on one mix and the brain developed on a different mix then anything could happen, including being left handed or being a 'gay man trapped inside a woman's body', or just straight gay. So much of our identity is complicated that it can be hard to see it as some changes in the mix. For instance, one of my school friends was the 'only gay in the village' but he was also the last child of eight siblings and I wasn't going to tell him that his sexuality and decade long coming out process was just because his mum's womb was just knackered and incapable of keeping the mix consistent. However, I wish that society was more accepting of this 'mix theory'.
Anyway, my original comment was really a reaction to comments of people self-diagnosing themselves as narcissist.
My main thought on narcissism is that we need to have some simple tests that we make our elected politicians take so we can weed out those that have no 'empathy glands'. Forget politics of the left and the right, just weed out those that are not wired for the job.
Specifically, having a narcissistic mother and being trans led to me being that other kind, that always feels phony and is always trying to come up with some version of self that's packaged for the approval of others.
Good luck getting any kind of change on the political front
I think these kind of categories that come from psychology are useful and also dangerous. Our innate tendency towards heuristics makes it difficult to talk about this stuff, especially with words like "narcissist" that have strongly negative connotations. The brain is a complicated mess. Maybe the most complicated mess in the universe. We try to impose some order on it without understanding it. It's true that "everyone in this room loves me" and "everyone in this room hates me" could be manifestations of a similar neurological configuration, and we could put the label "narcissist" on it. But the label is somewhat arbitrary and the behavioral results are often very different.