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I prefer focus on objective behaviors in day to day life. I mostly encounter what I others seem to label "narcissism" (or some kind of dysfunction) in work life.

It seems there IS a small but significant percentage of people in day to day life that:

- Can't receive constructive feedback without exploding / taking it personally / feeling betrayed

- Simultaneously gives relatively harsh feedback, the type they would very much bristle at

- Does not do normal "relationship repair"/apologize when they make a mistake in a relationship, its 100% on the other person

There's an asymmetry in their relationships that, for whatever reason, the other side can be blinded to or accept. I think most folks are naturally trusting, and assume it must be a problem with THEM, so they work to please the (for lack of a better term) narcissist.

The good news is you can document and measure these things IMO. You just have to know not to assume you're the problem, which is probably is a healthy default with the 95% of non narcissist people out there.

> I think most folks are naturally trusting, and assume it must be a problem with THEM, so they work to please the (for lack of a better term) narcissist.

This is true, but I've seen it said that basically when people encounter an extreme narcissist (or sociopath) the problem is that when we try to understand their behaviours, we project our own relative normality onto them to model what we would do in their shoes, because it's difficult for us to even perceive, let alone comprehend, what it must be like to lack what they lack.

So our generous interpretation of their actions is based on our own more stable self-image. We assume that there must be a typical human reason for them to behave that way, because that's the only way we can model the feelings that might lead to their behaviour.

Now if you turn it around, it is not difficult to understand why e.g. Trump lashes out at everyone. He only knows what it is like to be him, and he projects that and worse onto the world.

That’s widely understood by clinicians and psychologists, so nothing new. In the end it likely causes mental suffering to the people closely involved with narcissists like partners, children … - that’s what all types have in common as the outcome.
This makes me wonder, what if there's actually a narcissism crisis disguised as a mental health crisis?
There are those who think the USA in particular has a narcissism crisis (and some data to back it up).

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/usappblog/2017/06/28/a-rise-in-narci...

I would say that from the outside, it's really very clear that America has become more narcissistic over the last 35-40 years, but I think there's also evidence of a reckoning -- of a younger culture beginning to mix more self-effacement in with their self-expression.

I'd place the UK slightly lower on the scale of worsening narcissism, but I am sure other countries would observe it in us. Gen Z would seem to be getting tired of the whining over here, too.

Prior to the 2016 US election I heard with complete denial that the presidency is a reflection of the sum of our culture.

I was wrong.

I feel like narcissism gained public attention when the media started making armchair diagnosis of a certain orange man.

I set out on a journey about 4 years ago to explore the trauma and abuse in my past, and a large number of resources for sufferers of C-PTSD deal with the fallout from narcissistic abuse. I eventually determined that my abusers are probably not narcissistic by any means, but I suppose it's good to raise awareness.

In the USA, perhaps. Though at the time of preparing the fifth edition of the DSM, there was a discussion about removing the definition of narcissism because its definition covered such a large proportion of the early 21st century US population that it had become meaningless; there is a wide consensus (and, outside the USA, a sort of humour trope) about the average American, and American culture in general, having become demonstrably more narcissistic over time.

Here in the UK, the textbook example of a narcissist in politics was Robin Cook (about whom it was said he could not pass a mirror without checking his appearance). He had a series of affairs and was known to be intensely vain (and self-aware about it), but was not actually a bad human being beyond that weakness.

Trump's narcissism is in a fairly extreme form, but it is by no means what explains his character alone. It is said to be better defined by the coupling of narcissism, sociopathy and sadism (the "dark triad") -- malignant narcissism. There's abundant evidence of the other two; his utter indifference to chants of "Hang Mike Pence" alone should convince anyone. It is the product of the abusive, cruel upbringing he received from his father and his indifferent mother.

FWIW, I think it is also clear that Musk is a malignant narcissist. All the same indicators are there, and the same history with his father. But I hold out a little more hope for him; he is well-documented to be capable of emotional expression about the suffering his father inflicted and you can clearly see him trying to be better, thinking about what he says, reflecting on stuff. He does actually value humanity and you can see him wanting to be a better human. Trump could never do any of that.

A third example: Andrew Tate. Again, he had a psychologically abusive father. He is filled with self-loathing as a result.

I don’t really hold out hope for Musk, personally. I’d like to, as much as I’d like to hope that anyone can change. All of his actions point to someone who is very sad and doesn’t apply the tools he has to actually tackle it, instead he uses what he has to try and be the “cool guy” on the internet and it worked…mostly for white supremacists and other alt righters, and trolls.

An analogy I like is that he’s a guy who did open mic stand up but no one found him funny except maybe one or two people. His solution was to buy the comedy club and be the only performer.

Musk also has a long history of narcissistic behavior going back pretty much for as long as he’s been in the public eye, and I’ve seen indication that he’s reflecting or trying to change.

I may be holding out hope out of a sense of charity, admittedly. It feels right to hope that a man who is shockingly influential (see Ronan Farrow’s latest) won’t just continue to get worse.
I would hope he doesn’t get worse, too, but it’s hard to imagine anything else with how far he’s been going south and for how long.
Regardless of the degree or magnitude of true narcissism among Americans, it's true that we have been growing in individualism for quite a while. And the more individualistic we become, the less room there is for collectivism and concern for the common good, but rather, "what's in it for me?"

I suppose there may be a blurry dividing line between the two concepts, but it's certainly easier to uphold individualism as a virtue, and encourage others to cultivate it, rather than seeing it as a character fault and detrimental to national unity and morale.

I think the issue with the DSM was mostly that the definition -- in terms of language -- now covered routinely accepted behaviour. That is, it wasn't useful to use those terms to describe a disorder.

What ultimately happened, as I recall, is a reworking of the definition to focus more on the core behaviour that Narcissistic Personality Disorder really means, though I guess functionally this might be much the same as saying "things we used to think were evidence of a diseased mind are now commonplace behaviours".

I assure you that outside of the USA we've always admired the individualism and those aspects of the American Dream etc., and I don't think that is what the DSM debate was about. There's always been unfair tropes about Americans abroad but the change we would notice in the last 40 years is the whining/demands to be accommodated, the babying of language, and the growth of infantilism generally. The "Karen" trope is a consequence of cultural narcissism. You guys have changed.

I'm sure the Brits have too (and in a few holiday destinations we are the worst tourists on earth, no question, though that's not narcissism, it's cheap booze) but I don't know if our core character has changed (for better or worse!) and I would say the world misses the cool self-assuredness it used to associate with the USA.

"What's in it for me?" is selfishness, not narcissism.

What made you initially think they might have been narcissists, but later decided they weren't?

In particular, it seems to me that many people that are autistic, might seem like narcissists to others, but it is a very different experience for them.

> What made you initially think they might have been narcissists, but later decided they weren't?

Not what I said.

They mention that man 3 times in the first few paragraphs. Like can't you at least try to appear to be impartial? But no. Let's alienate the readers.
Is anyone seriously alienated by the suggestion that Trump is a narcissist?

You could be the most loyal Trump supporter ever on a political level and still acknowledge it. It is unavoidably obvious.

All I got from that article is that narcissism just means an obsession with yourself.

The person may be grandiose or neurotic. They may love themselves or hate themselves.

So this isn't really a specific condition is it? It's more like a symptom that can appear for many different underlying reasons. Asking "what it is" seems to be the wrong question to me.

This article and many comments are conflating narcissism (a personality trait characterized by self-focus and self-importance), with narcissistic personality disorder (a pathological disorder marked by an inflated sense of self-importance, a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, often leading to significant impairments).
I learned a lot from the "Why I used to lie: get inside my head as a diagnosed narcissist" video by SpiritNarc who is mentioned in the article: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMea2XE8o9E
Some people are just assholes. Pathologizing it with clinical terms doesn't help or change anything.
That’s like saying some people are just fat. Or some people like to kill themselves. Patholizing it with clinical terms doesn’t help or change anything.
I think it's unlikely that discrete categorizations for fatness or suicidal inclinations helps many people. To help somebody who's fat, you need to consider them as an individual, particularly their habits and physical and mental circumstance. Splitting hairs with these clinical discrete categories of continuous phenomena is a waste of time. For instance we can create the discrete category of "obese" and define it as any BMI above 30, and "overweight" as any BMI between 25 and 30. But do these discrete categories really give you any advantage when considering somebody who's at 29.9 or 30.1? Do or should you offer substantially different advice to somebody based on what side of the 30 line they fall? Probably not, one person might fall into either of those discrete categories depending on the day of the week. Fatness, and the underlying reasons for it, are a continuum. The clinical terms create discrete categories which might be useful to scientific research but have limited usefulness when you're considering a single individual.

And with suicidal behavior, do discrete categories really help? I don't have much experience talking people off ledges so maybe you can say better than I, but to me it seems like the line between some chemical imbalance model of depression and shit life syndrome isn't always so clear. I think in most suicidal people it's probably some combination of those two, or other factors as well.

> The clinical terms create discrete categories which might be useful to scientific research but have limited usefulness when you're considering a single individual.

This is the entire point of identifying said categorizations so you can at least have some chance in classifying an individual when they have an issue. It also allows you to identify if treatment for classifications is working on broad scales.

Yea, the world sucks that we exist in an analog continuum and use discrete labeling to save in information space and processing, but there is no solution to that for the time being.

Armchair diagnosing assholes in your life as suffering from discrete psychological conditions is not something society forces you to do. It's something you choose to do, and can choose not to do.

If you don't know somebody well enough to form a complex opinion on what that person's personality is, you certainly don't know enough to diagnose them with any sort of personality disorder. And if you do know somebody that well, then you don't have to employ such "information space and processing" saving measures, because you already have an understanding of that person. You already did that work.

Maybe it's worthwhile to learn about the different kinds of assholes.
It helps you recognize and deal with them. Narcissists are easy to take down a peg if you know how.
Getting into fights with assholes might get you some feeling of satisfaction, but I've rarely seen it work out productively. Usually both people get mad and it escalates into a deeper feud that puts both parties into an even worse place than where they started. And suppose you've misread their personality, due to your personal biases or limited information, then who's really the asshole when you start baiting that person? This is why it's usually better to avoid assholes than to "take them down a peg." Usually. Individual circumstances obviously need to be considered.

In any case, the label you apply to somebody after observing their personality traits doesn't tell you which of their buttons to press, it's the observation of their personality traits which may inform your angles of attack. Somebody is observed to be self-absorbed, and is therefore labelled a narcissist, and the observation of their self-centered personality is what tells you how to push their buttons. You can press those buttons whether or not you use or even know the clinical label, people have been doing it for millenia before these labels were formulated. The labels themselves aren't actually useful here. Discrete kinds of asshole is a dubious proposition in the first place. Assholishness is probably a continuous spectrum of behavior, so if you really want to strike at somebody deep you're better off considering them as a unique individual and tailoring your attack accordingly. Of course, once you've considered them as a unique individual you may find yourself less inclined to attack them...

You're making the case that heuristics aren't useful, and I just don't agree with that given how I employ them effectively.
Also, makes it pleasantly binary, instead of just recognizing that it's a personality trait in everyone that's scaled to different degrees at different times in different situations.
I agree. And furthermore, I think these binary labels for personality traits facilitate dehumanization. Labeling somebody a narcissist, psychopath, etc is often a prelude to applying a totally different ethical standard when dealing with that person; e.g. attacking them in vicious ways they wouldn't normally consider as acceptable, but this time it's okay because that person is a narcissist..

It may sometimes be necessary to do this, but I think it's important to be very careful when doing so, particularly when somebody is judging a situation they're personally involved with. Nobody is a truly impartial judge of others, and when somebody has a personal stake in the dispute the biases are even stronger. Applying a dehumanizing clinical label to people I can't get along with could be an easy (ego-preserving) way to contextualize a dispute, but if I'm personally involved in the dispute then my ability to impartially analyze and categorize that person has been compromised. And if my analysis of that person is incorrect, then I've sabotaged myself by miscategorizing that other person.

Of course Freud is not mentioned -- no wonder, because articles like this are more interested in giving statistical analyses rather than formal or structural understandings, because what's at stake isn't something akin to wisdom but rather control. If you have statistics on your side, you can get away with murder.

That said, we _can_ approach the phenomenon of narcissism structurally. Freud uses an energetic model based on thermodynamics: each of us has some degree of (psychological) energy, and we invest that energy in various ways. One of those ways is in fantasy, as Freud explained in his classic "little entrepreneur" model in _The Interpretation of Dreams_. The little entrepreneur, who has the capital (energy), invests in specific companies (fantasies) hoping to receive a return (satisfaction). This is the basic gist of what's known as Freud's "economic model".

Narcissism is the extent to which the little entrepreneur invests in himself. Immediately we can see that some narcissism isn't bad -- you need to invest in yourself! The problem is only when there's too much, or more specifically, when energy is _not_ invested into the world (or, more specifically, into others) because too much is invested in oneself.

Freud dealt with the seeming "paradox" of grandiosity and depression in his paper "Mourning and Melancholia". The simple overview is that you have a little voice in your head watching over your "self", formed by early authority figures, that says "no" (footnote 1). When you have a lot of energy invested in yourself but it's saying "no", then you feel depressed, because all of your fantasies are rejected. Sometimes you can suspend the voice for a while and say "yes" to everything, which results in a burst of energy suddenly available for use. This is called mania. The manic-depressive is caught in a back-and-forth oscillation of the voice that says "no" and the suspension of that voice.

In a general sense, if you have a lot of energy invested in yourself, you will feel grandiose when you can turn off the "no" and depressed otherwise. If you can figure out how to turn off the "no" forever, then you can feel grandiose all the time. If you can't turn off the "no", then you'll feel depressed, and you might go to therapy hoping that they will give you permission to turn off the "no".

And this isn't a bad thing: the therapist gives you permission to turn off the "no", suddenly the energy is available for use, and maybe you get through to the other side, when you realize that the promises of satisfaction through the self alone feel somehow empty in comparison with investing your energy in the world, in other people. The transformation that must occur is the development of the capacity to _love_. And narcissism is, to an extent, a step along the way (footnote 2).

There is a distinct phenomenon that "science" also seems to categorize as narcissism, where you might feel like you're the master of the rules of society, and that you have the right to control other people, do whatever they want, break the rules, etc. This phenomenon, which some might call "sociopathy" but as a technical term we can call "perversion", doesn't always come with a high level of narcissism, but can, and when it does, you end up with the sorts of villainous characters like Donald Trump etc etc. They wont seek "treatment" because why would they? They're already the masters. The social structure required to help them is really to incentivize them to act such that their personal interests align with the greater good, rather than creating an antagonism, because otherwise the greater good will lose. Another solution is to make spaces where they can act out their desires without harming others. On a personal level, though, it's pretty hard, but thankfully this sort of individual is quite rare, and oftentimes their actions lead to their own downfall.

1: not using the term until the end here, but the voice "above the self [I]" that says "no" is the "superego".

2: working off the Lacanian idea here that analysis proceeds through a stage of "maximal narcissistic projection" (Sem 1), after which the analyst can intervene from the position of the "Ideal-I" and basically allow the analysand to reorient their position wrt fantasy.

The reason Freud isn't mentioned is that he isn't relevant in modern psychology or psychiatry, except in French Canada, France, and Germany. Even if you believe (tm) in psychoanalysis, the modern approach do not follow Freud's teachings [0], not that it's that much better now. (btw I'm not objective on thatmy mother spent 25 years, a divorce, an estranged daughter and a lot of money on psychanalysts. At 23, i told her to see a real psychologist. After 2 session, she sent her to a hospital see a psychiatrist. Bam. Bipolarity, triggered by anti-inflammatory medecine. During 25 years of her life, she was half the time in manic phases, for days, and not a single charlatan detected it.)

[0] https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-94-...

I have no opinions to share here on the practice of psychoanalysis, either in its historical or modern form. But it's undeniable that the discursive roots of modern psychology come from Freud in particular, and that when we analyze a phenomenon ("treatment" notwithstanding) we owe ourselves due diligence to understand it properly. The issue is, as I stated, a refusal at the level of legitimation of knowledge, which is ultimately a juridicial question when considered wrt the deployment of psychology to the masses.

To be clear, psychoanalysis is actually cited in the original essay: "Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg" are both quite well-known, although divisive figures. But Freud himself, who produced the theory with proper scope to interpret the claims, is not.

> But it's undeniable that the discursive roots of modern psychology come from Freud in particular, and that when we analyze a phenomenon ("treatment" notwithstanding) we owe ourselves due diligence to understand it properly.

Sure, and people analyzing the "discursive roots of modern psychology" - historians of science - do talk about Freud. And Wundt, and James, and Watson, all of whom are of comparable significance in the history of the field. But scientists are not historians; they're interested in analyzing the actual thing out there in the world, not the way we talk about it.

Afaik, he is not relevant in Germany, but for some reason Americans tend to take him seriously.
There may not be many of them. But they run our corporate, political, economic, and - to an extent - academic systems.

The social reward system we have today selects for them instead of selecting them out.

There is one bedrock problem under all the others: how to fix this.

This has been a problem for thousands of years. Plato's solution is pretty great: those who rule must bind themselves to laws which stand above them, enforced by the collective.

Hannah Arendt (in "What is Authority?") zeroes in on the term "religio" in particular, as the root of "religion" with the literal meaning of "to bind [oneself]". If one is bound to a higher law, secular or theological, as common knowledge, then to act against the law is to subject oneself to punishment.

Unfortunately, as we know all too well in software, this state of having a group bound to a law that transcends them is a precarious state indeed, requiring continuous maintenance or else it's liable to be taken over by those who manipulate the rules to preach without practicing. A failure of the rules leads to the "primal father" situation described by Freud in _Totem and Taboo_, where those who feel dominated band together to kill the person who bound them, and then produce taboos to prevent the situation from occurring again.

I love people pretending that psychology/psychiatry is a scientific field instead of a wasteland of fraud/studies that don't replicate. Everyone has their own psychological disability like an astrological sign and it is completely "backed up" by "research" ha ha. Go tell us all how your ex is a narcissist and your boss is a psychopath - never heard it before hahaha.
As you go up the ladder of the sciences from physics to chemistry to biology and eventually to economics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, etc., things get harder, not easier. While often described as one of the so-called "hard sciences", physics is one of the easiest sciences. Physicists are able to make all sorts of simplifying assumptions and get away with it. Such is not the case for the so-called "soft sciences", which are by far the harder sciences.

If you have any suggestions of how to make fields like psychology any easier, I'm sure many would like to hear them.

See Herbert Simon and P.W. Anderson for more reading along these lines.

People are complex and researching them is difficult. We should expect to encounter more false starts in psychology and other social sciences than in, say, physics. Our power to know is less, but it's still an important topic to research because it allows us to better our lives and address important questions. We shouldn't blink just because we're bound to make many mistakes along the way.

It's true that people do employ the language of psychology as a cudgel. That's inappropriate. Unfortunately the nature of language is too be appropriate and used in novel ways, is inevitable that some of those will be counterproductive. The only solution I see is to educate people better about these concepts, and failing that to buy more time by abandoning terminology that has picked up insurmountable connotations and taking another step on the linguistic treadmill.

It's also true that a lot of people are profoundly effected by eg a romantic partner or boss who has those issues - not all of those people are wrong. I dated someone I believe has NPD, and it was an abusive and traumatic relationship. I have had family members who definitely had NPD, and they were abusive to their children. I've both been & seen people profoundly hurt by this (the NPD sufferers included).

It's callous to disregard people who have sought a diagnosis or to equate it to an astrological sign. If you haven't struggled with your mental health, or if you have struggled but have found adequate redress outside the clinical sphere, you may count yourself fortunate, but it's inappropriate to denigrate others who have had a different experience.

Personally I'm going to therapy and trying to find an anxiety medication that works for me, along with meditating, exercising, and other forms of intervention, and I have absolutely no shame about it. It was a great decision. I've seen medication and therapy make a night and day difference for people in my life.

I encourage everyone who experiences depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues to investigate professional help. Please don't let these judgemental misconceptions stop you.

> I dated someone I believe has NPD, and it was an abusive and traumatic relationship. I have had family members who definitely had NPD, and they were abusive to their children. I've both been & seen people profoundly hurt by this (the NPD sufferers included).

So you've done the diagnosis yourself, outside of a psychiatric clinic? See this is exactly what I'm talking about. You have observations coming from these completely biased sources, making pretty heavy conclusions about someone's brain, and when you look at the solutions to how to deal with these people it's super severe - like completely cut them out of your life, treat them like a dangerous animal. It should be completely obvious to everyone why this is a bad way of thinking and doing things.

That's why I said "I believe" in that case, to clarify it was a lay opinion. (For what it's worth, professionals I've spoken to think it's a reasonable hypothesis.) I was with this person for years. I tried many, many things to make the relationship work. You don't know how bad things got in that relationship. I hope you never have any idea what it's like to care for someone who deliberately hurts you; who, when confronted about it, tells you that it's because you deserve to be hurt; who tells you they are suffering terribly and want to die, and who begs you to kill them. For all of this to become part of your daily life, to seem normal and anticipated.

Read that a few times, and then tell me again I should have kept that person in my life.

To be frank with you, you're speaking from a place of ignorance. And I think that's fantastic, if you haven't been forced to cut anyone you loved out of your life because they were abusive to you, that's wonderful. I want that for everyone.

But you should be more careful when commenting on these matters.

Psychology is almost a literary field, but great works of literature have a lot of value. It gives the reader a mental model of human behaviour. Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, etc. Psychology is similar, it's a series of examples in the form of prose, and methods of exploring issues with real people in the world. The goal is to understand and shape human thinking and behaviour. Pretty valuable if you ask me.
You’re actually 100% right about this, there’s a massive reproducibility crisis. But I don’t think it’s fair to put it on the same level as astrology haha
This is not a “hot take”. It’s just *wrong*.
I'm sorry but this comment its terrible. This comment section isn't YT or Tiktok.