Part of the Casswiki article series Psychology
This is a common personality disorder. According to the DSM IV, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association, Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) can be diagnosed if at least 5 of the following symptoms are present:
- 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)
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.
- 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
Translation: Narcissists cultivate solipsistic or “autistic” fantasies, which is to say that they live in their own little worlds (and react with affront when reality dares to intrude).
- 3. Believes he is “special” and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)
Translation: Narcissists think that everyone who is not special and superior is worthless. By definition, normal, ordinary, and average aren’t special and superior, and so, to narcissists, they are worthless.
- 4. Requires excessive admiration
Translation: Excessive in two ways: they want praise, compliments, deference, and expressions of envy all the time, and they want to be told that everything they do is better than what others can do. Sincerity is not an issue here; all that matter are frequency and volume.
- 5. Has a sense of entitlement
Translation: They expect automatic compliance with their wishes or especially favorable treatment, such as thinking that they should always be able to go first and that other people should stop whatever they’re doing to do what the narcissists want, and may react with hurt or rage when these expectations are frustrated.
- 6. Selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his own ends
Translation: Narcissists use other people to get what they want without caring about the cost to the other people.
- 7. Lacks empathy
This may have two forms: 1) a narcissist may simply not have a representation for certain emotions and may simply be incapable of correctly interpreting emotional signals of others, or 2) may make correct interpretations but considers the emotions of others to be inconsequential and irrelevant to self, worth knowing only as a means for manipulation. The latter is typical of the psychopath.
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8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him
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9. Shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behaviors or attitudes
Some theories associate narcissism with emotional deprivation in infancy. Others see this as a deliberate and chosen behavior. Yet others see this is a congenital condition. Probably narcissism-like behaviors can arise due to any combination of the three causes. A narcissist, as with other personality disorders, does not modify or relinquish the behavior even when it is clear that it does not produce success or gain. A narcissist is more attached to fiction about self than to evidence of the real world.
A narcissist’s self-image and working models can be very puzzling and would appear to be based on a contradiction. On one hand, the narcissist must by all means and at any cost uphold an idea of specialness. This idea is held at any cost as a defense against a world that is seen as fundamentally hostile. So on one hand the narcissist is the master of the universe, on the other hand the same universe rejects the narcissist. The narcissist can attain great heights of intellectual sleight of hand and self deception in attempting to make sense and justify this fundamental contradiction. This is often unconscious and often the narcissist sees no problem with the self, it is rather the world at large that is at fault.
There is extensive psychological literature on narcissism and other personality disorders. The reader is encouraged to search the Internet for more. Also there are web sites discussing the practical problems of dealing with a narcissist or psychopath. The Cassiopaea web site itself contains many resources for this.
Instead of further summarizing information which is better presented elsewhere, we can look at narcissism from the esoteric angle as an example of many of the other terms discussed in this glossary.
Lying to self - The act of holding and maintaining beliefs that do not match reality sort of cleaves the brain into dissociated parts. This directly corresponds to building ‘buffers’ and separating already separate ‘little ‘I’s’ farther from each other. The price of this tendency to extreme subjectivity would seem to be simply not caring about what others think or feel or even further not even having the cognitive means of perceiving this. In one case the ‘disconnected wire’ is at the stage of value judgement, in the other case at the stage of sensing. Still, we have a compartmentalization of the system. This, when gone far enough, simply impedes functioning and becomes a clear disorder.
We notice that up to a certain point, contradictory self-image or cognitive dissonance in general is an impediment or drain of energy. Past a certain point, narcissists and specially psychopaths do not seem to lose energy to this. Their inner world has been so separated that there no longer is any friction. Their conscience, if there ever was such, is so cut off that it no longer bothers them and there is no self-doubt, nervousness or impediment to concentration. Also, completely self-contradictory behavior does not seem to trouble them in the least, as it would people in general. There likely are congenital and acquired versions of all these effects.
The psychological definition states that emotions do not have the same value for the narcissist as they have for others. This is a good example of people holding different dictionaries. People incorrectly project their own mode of thinking and feeling on the narcissist. Whether due to fundamental incapacity or to privation, the feeling that one assumes to be present simple is not present in the narcissist. The assumption that narcissists or psychopaths work, think or feel the same way as others is simply false.
In a more metaphysical sense, if we think of psychology as a canvas on which archetypes or thought centers residing outside of time and space are projected, we could say that the narcissist is the garden variety reflection of non-being and service to self.
Psychopaths are known to have a distinctive brain electrical signature. Also anatomic traits such as hippocampic volume tend to correlate with incidence of psychopathy or comparable disorders. It is reasonable to think that the little ‘I’s of the 4th Way have neurological correlates. The psychopathy-style disorders are characterized by lack of integrated self image, in other words absence of ‘real I.’ This is most likely reflected in the distribution of synaptic connections. It is reasonable to think that the practices of self-remembering, divided attention, ‘thinking with a hammer’, etc. all of which seek to go against the grain of habit build new connections and strengthen unused ones. Thus it could be that these practices at a very physical level rewire the brain. More research is needed to say anything definite on this, though.