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Forming Impressions
Central and Peripheral Traits
Primacy and Recency Effects
Implicit Personality
Theories (Including personal constructs, the halo effect, and the
effect of names)
Stereotyping
Social Categorisation
Pros/Cons Of Stereotyping
Narcissistic Personality
Disorder
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Narcissistic Personality Disorder
11-28-05
By: Jonathon Davidson
Origins in Greek Myth
There once was a fifteen year-old prince named Narcissus of Thespiae,
in Boeotia, who was renowned for his beauty and pride. He rejected the
love of fellow youths and girls. A water nymph named Echo sought his affection
but to no avail, for he never noticed her. One day, he approached the
edge of Echo’s residual lake, and she called out to him, thinking
he had noticed her. She was disappointed to find that he merely gazed
at his own reflection. The water nymph pined away, waiting for Narcissus’
attention, until nothing was left of her but her sad, pleading voice,
hence our own echoes in empty places. In turn, Narcissus suffered a similar
fate, for he was so entranced by his reflection that he pined away admiring
it, until there was nothing left of him but a flower, the narcissus.
The original narcissist shares many traits with his modern, spiritual
descendants. Most importantly, the narcissist loves his reflection, rather
than himself. Additionally, the narcissist has an apparent lack of empathy
for others. The narcissist’s blind and absolute devotion to his
image results in an unhealthy separation from reality.
Today’s usage of “narcissist” has another connation.
Generally, it refers to a conceitedness or haughtiness indicating superiority
or uniqueness which isn’t real. The Narcissus of the myth hints
at these qualities with his rejections of lovers. Often this will manifest
into delusions of grandiosity, which is actually the first diagnostic
criteria of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as described by the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM).
DSM-IV-TR
The latest version of the DSM, DSM-IV-TR, was published in 2000 and requires
five of the following nine traits to be present to qualify for possession
of NPD:
- Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements
and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate
achievements)
- Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance,
beauty, or ideal love
- Believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can
only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status
people (or institutions)
- Requires excessive admiration
- Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially
favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations
- Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to
achieve his or her own ends
- Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings
and needs of others
- Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of
him or her
- Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes
Although all people have a degree of narcissism within them, the actual
disorder is believed to affect about one percent of the general population.
Females typically spend more time making themselves nice and presentable
to others, so it is ironic that males make up 50-75 % of that single percent.
Because of this, the subject of narcissism is ambiguously referred to
with male pronouns (he, his, him, etc.).
Psychodynamic Developments
Through Sigmund Freud’s work and subsequent psychodynamic theories,
there are two accepted ideas of how one develops narcissistic tendencies.
The first revolves around the time at which one learns to love itself.
This narcissism was, Freud believed, a natural phase of development. However,
the narcissism became a disorder when the phase fails to continue to develop
into object-love (love outside the self, often initiated by love of parents).
He theorized that this was because the narcissist unconsciously decided
to give up trying to love something outside of itself because it was too
frustrating and unrewarding an effort. The narcissist “learned”
that the only thing he could trust completely that would be forever and
readily available was himself.
The second path leading to narcissism was a lack of dependable attention
from the to-be narcissist’s meaningful others. For instance, a child
used as a vessel to complete the goals of the parent would force the child
to adopt a role the parents failed to fulfill in their own lives. The
child became disassociated from any reality of choice and was taught to
adopt parental objectives as his own, dehumanizing the child and transforming
him into an instrument, played by his parents.
Going down this path, the child develops a fragile self-image, because
he is not capable of being who he perceives himself to want to be. He
gradually realizes that he is no more than a tool of his parents to achieve
their ends, and his ego suffers and deforms. Rather than a healthy love
of his parents, the child gains dependence on the parents for guidance
out of fear at the emptiness of the outside world. Later, the child allows
others beyond the parents to provide him with objective goals.
Narcissistic Drives
Narcissists do not discern between different emotions (love from awe from
respect from fear) when attracting attention of others, but collect any
and all. A primary, defining feature for the disorder is that they do
not (as is commonly conceived) love themselves, but instead assimilate
all emotional energies in attention into their own reflections. In psychological
terms, that means that rather than loving themselves, they “love”
the self-image they project to others. It is healthy and functional to
love one’s self, but there are problems with loving a reflection:
(first) there must be a reflective surface and (second) there must be
a validation offered by the reflection. Narcissists use other people to
view their projected images and take validation from the amounts of attention
they attract from those people.
Narcissists perform as actors to gain sympathy or any other form of attention
they desire through their acts. Many narcissists can appear marvelously
self-less. This is because the facet of themselves they display to others
is a “self-less” act of suffering, attempting to draw sympathy
or pity. That is just one example of how a narcissist might choose to
act and for what purpose. The general strategy of acting in a certain
way to gain attention, however, applies to all narcissists.
“Narcissistic supply” is the term used for the attention narcissists
garner through their antics, functioning as a reward for the antics. Indirectly,
this is the reason that the more likable (or feared in a tyrannical approach)
the projected image of a person is, the harder it is for the narcissist
to accept his true self. By following his act, the narcissist feeds an
insatiable appetite for attention, and creates a greater and steadier
addiction. This results in a near complete divorce from one’s true
image. The true self becomes subjected to the image (how he is interpreted
by others to be).
Narcissists do not have strong values. When it serves the need of more
narcissistic supply, the narcissist will instinctively abandon previous
beliefs and change political and moral colors as a chameleon. A narcissist
might agree with one person on a topic on any given day, but the next
will change his opinion to mimic another, if it will create attention
mockingly resembling mutual respect and agreement. The only thing that
matters to the narcissist is that he has doubled his supply.
According to psychological research and theory, the narcissist drains
himself of mental energy while going through this process. He indiscriminately
uses people as objects to achieve his own ends, which results in an unconscious
apathy towards others. Occasionally, he goes so far as to believe himself
superior to others because he is capable of using them. This superiority
creates a complex where the narcissist deserves any and all attention
he is capable of garnering because he is unique or special. The narcissist
also uses an inversed logic that the only reason he receives so much attention
is because he is unique. With no discernable origin point, this loop of
thought continues to go in circles inside the narcissist’s mind;
instead of answers to the dilemma of the narcissist, his mind produces
contraptions and mazes to impress upon others when threatened.
Grand Stories… if a little tall
Today, grandiosity, or the appearance of magnificence and/or pompousness,
is often defined as the “diagnostic hallmark” of pathological
narcissism. Frequently, the subject of NPD will over-exaggerate his own
achievements, although a few narcissists may actually have proven accomplishments.
However, clinical data supports that, the majority of the time, there
is no realistic basis for these notions of grandeur. Simply, a narcissist’s
self-report is unreliable, because consciously or not, truth is warped
by a narcissist’s personality.
An excerpt from an article on NPD and grandiosity can be helpful in discerning
the difference, courtesy of http://www.halcyon.com/jmahmun/npd/dsm-iv.html:
“In popular usage, the terms narcissism, narcissist, and narcissistic
denote absurd vanity and are applied to people whose ambitions and aspirations
are much grander than their evident talents. Sometimes these terms are
applied to people who are simply full of themselves -- even when their
real achievements are spectacular. Outstanding performers are not always
modest, but they aren't grandiose if their self-assessments are realistic;
e.g., Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, was notorious for boasting "I
am the greatest!" and also pointing out that he was the prettiest,
but he was the greatest and the prettiest for a number of years, so his
self-assessments weren't grandiose. Some narcissists are flamboyantly
boastful and self-aggrandizing, but many are inconspicuous in public,
saving their conceit and autocratic opinions for their nearest and dearest.
Common conspicuous grandiose behaviors include expecting special treatment
or admiration on the basis of claiming (a) to know important, powerful
or famous people or (b) to be extraordinarily intelligent or talented.
As a real-life example, I used to have a neighbor who told his wife that
he was the youngest person since Sir Isaac Newton to take a doctorate
at Oxford. The neighbor gave no evidence of a world-class education, so
I looked up Newton and found out that Newton had completed his baccalaureate
at the age of twenty-two (like most people) and spent his entire academic
career at Cambridge. The grandiose claims of narcissists are superficially
plausible fabrications, readily punctured by a little critical consideration.
The test is performance: do they deliver the goods? (There's also the
special situation of a genius who's also strongly narcissistic, as perhaps
Frank Lloyd Wright. Just remind yourself that the odds are that you'll
meet at least 1000 narcissists for every genius you come across.)”
A common method used by the narcissists to overstate their self-importance
is to talking about their exploits as if they were/are the only ones taking
part in the activity. Narcissists actively down-play others’ positive
involvement and blame anything negative upon them, as seen by this excerpt
from the same source:
“But this everyday grandiosity is an aspect of narcissism that
you may never catch on to unless you visit the narcissist's home or workplace
and see for yourself that others are involved and are pulling their share
of the load and, more often than not, are also pulling the narcissist's
share as well. An example is the older woman who told me with a sigh that
she knew she hadn't been a perfect mother but she just never had any help
at all -- and she said this despite knowing that I knew that she had worn
out and discarded two devoted husbands and had lived in her parents' pocket
(and pocketbook) as long as they lived, quickly blowing her substantial
inheritance on flaky business schemes.”
Treatment of NPD
A person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder spends a great deal of
time and energy on creating a sustainable delusion of their own self-importance
and the effectiveness of their projected image. The effectiveness of a
projected image decreases exponentially when the narcissist perceives
any sort of attack of self-doubt occurs. Anyone prompting the doubts of
the narcissist receives rapid and savage abuse, as the narcissist tries
to displace his self-doubt and discourage others from doing anything to
give him doubts.
In a work environment, say the narcissist can not complete what he needs
to get done. The narcissist will look for someone to blame, and punish
that person for making him doubt himself.
To treat a person with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, psychotherapy
is employed. Narcissistic Personality Disorder treatment is slow and painful,
because the patient needs to participate in the process. Often, money
runs out for treatment before the NPD-induced person can be helped. Insurance
and health companies often resort to “quick-fixes,” which
do not deal with underlying issues of the patient’s narcissism.
The first step to true treatment of NPD in patients requires the patient’s
agreement that he needs help. For this to happen, the narcissist must
break the frame that warps his views of himself in relation to the world.
While he believes that he is better than those trying to help him, he
can receive no help. The health care subordinates will usually fare worse
than their superiors when helping narcissists, as the narcissist will
disregard all of their help because he feels “they can’t understand
me.” This resistance goes back to the idea that they are making
the narcissist doubt himself. If the patient feels superior to his therapist,
nothing the therapist says will help the patient and the waiting time
is extended.
After the patient recognizes that he is imperfect and/or vulnerable (sometimes
simply by becoming physically sick), the patient feels as if “my
world is falling apart.” In a way, it is. The patient is forced
to reconstruct a new sense of self. Health care professionals do their
best to help patients along with this by giving proper respect to the
patient to prevent an inferiority complex from forming while refusing
the patient many options to over-exaggerate his self-importance and create
new narcissistic tendencies.
Group therapies are used to teach the narcissistic patient empathy, starting
with the pain and shock experienced by others. This helps abate the feeling
that others are tools for self-satisfaction. It also provides a support
structure as the patient expresses and resolves internal conflicts during
the psychotherapy.
Everyday Narcissism
To live in society requires others’ approval and validation, but
the line should be drawn when it is no longer possible to function without
input from others. If one does not cultivate a soul, the soul shrivels
and dies, almost as if it had never existed. Rather than creating their
own emotional energies, narcissists feed from others. It is ironic that
narcissists, who claim to be unique and special, find others necessary.
Although they are “unique,” they are bonded to others because
they would have nothing else. They ignorantly become slave to their addictions
to attention.
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