Narcissism Run Rampant
Lissa Coffey
The dictionary defines a narcissist as “someone who is in love with himself.” Psychology identifies Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) as “a pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one’s self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one’s gratification, dominance and ambition.” Interestingly, more narcissists are men, and Westerners, and about 1% of the world population suffers from NPD. Pathological narcissism was first discussed by Freud, and is currently being written about as an “epidemic.” There are a variety of ways that NPD expresses, but generally, narcissism is present if five or more of the following criteria are met:
-Feelings of grandiosity and self importance (exaggerated achievements and talents to the point of lying).
-Obsession with fantasies of unlimited fame, power, success, love.
-Conviction of being special, unique, and only understood by other special, unique or high-status people.
-Demands either admiration, attention and adulation, or fear and notoriety.
-Feeling of entitlement. Expectations of automatic priority treatment.
-Uses other people to achieve his or her own agenda.
-Devoid of empathy. Cannot, or will not, identify with the feelings of other people.
-Feeling of envy for others, and the belief that he or she is envied as well.
-Arrogant attitude and behavior, and anger and rage when frustrated or confronted.
Narcissistic people live tumultuous lives based on falsehoods and few people can tolerate being around them for long. Relationships with narcissists are very difficult – they start out intensely and are more gratifying in the beginning, because the narcissist can be charming and self-confident, and well-groomed. They can also be complimentary, because narcissists look for people who will reflect favorably on them, either good-looking or successful people whom they think they deserve to associate with. But the relationship can be draining and exhausting toward the end. Because the narcissist is blind to his own faults, this can often lead to much pain and dysfunction.
The Narcissism Epidemic – on amazon