3 ms·

I'm confused about where you see a diagnosis as being relevant to the discussion.

golemotron 5y ago
"The narcissists I see online don't write about their relationships with their children and close friends; they hardly write about their own partners, except as props in the narcissist's ongoing drama." The writer seems very confident of their assessment of various people online.
- TameAntelope 5y ago
  So? Swap "narcissists" with "people who exhibit some specific shared traits between one another that are also often described as part of the diagnostic criteria of a narcissist" and you get the same effect. It's a shortcut, not a diagnosis. Layperson English tends to be that way, and getting caught up on the different definitions between medicine and "common" speak is likely a waste of time.
  - golemotron 5y ago
    Considering that some degree of narcissism is part of everyone's psyche, using it as a label and associating it with extreme cases makes it close to an epithet. I have no doubt that many of the people one might see as extreme or "obvious" narcissists might have the same opinion of those who use that language. It's nearly comical at that point.
    - DarylZero 5y ago
      Narcissism is something that normal adults grow out of, although they can still act childishly _at times_. But for some people, the growth never happens at all.
dwringer 5y ago
Informal diagnoses can be useful as hypotheses to present to qualified practitioners, and may even help in cases like those at the linked site to give the affected parties peace of mind and a feeling of insight, but I believe there is something unscientific about labeling people with medical disorders without the qualifications to do so. IMO such diagnoses should always at least be taken with a grain of salt. How relevant that is to this particular discussion is certainly open to interpretation.
PaulHoule 5y ago
"Narcissism" is generally thrown around as an insult and it has a confused history in the psychology literature going back to Freud using it in two different ways that were both confused and undeveloped. "Narcissism" essentially means "self-love" and it is something that is part of everyone's psyche. Having something wrong with your narcissism is like having something wrong with your heart and there are many things that can go wrong with your heart such as heart disease, heart failure, bad valves, arrhythmia, heart attack, etc. In the middle of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka Langley Soryu makes a passionate defense of self-love ("you are all you've got!") There is "narcissistic personality disorder" as well as the (widespread) narcissistic disturbance that Kohut talks about which itself is more or less complicated by borderline and other disturbances at more archaic levels. It is all front of mind for me right now because I was talking to my therapist and volunteered that I was concerned about an incident of "Dark Triad" behavior on my part and she said at one point I was "talking like a Narcissist" (I agreed) yet when I took a https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ I found I was midrange on Machiavellianism, below average on "narcissism" and close to the bottom of the range on psychopathy. (Hmmm... I felt remorse about what I did so I guess I'm not psychopathic.) I read this book cover-to-cover the next week https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171657.Humanizing_the_Narcissistic_Style https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171657.Humanizing_the_N... and marked it up with a highlighter and drew my version of Kohut's horizontal and vertical split on my whiteboard. I oscillate between grandiosity and worthlessness sometimes and definitely can point to merger, twinship, and mirror transferences. (It was twinship transferences on two people that got out of hand...) I'd point to at least some of this phenomenology being widespread and almost normal... I think almost anytime somebody blows up for what seems like no good reason there is a grandiosity -> worthlessness transition going on.

"The narcissists I see online don't write about their relationships with their children and close friends; they hardly write about their own partners, except as props in the narcissist's ongoing drama." The writer seems very confident of their assessment of various people online.

TameAntelope 5y ago
So? Swap "narcissists" with "people who exhibit some specific shared traits between one another that are also often described as part of the diagnostic criteria of a narcissist" and you get the same effect. It's a shortcut, not a diagnosis. Layperson English tends to be that way, and getting caught up on the different definitions between medicine and "common" speak is likely a waste of time.
- golemotron 5y ago
  Considering that some degree of narcissism is part of everyone's psyche, using it as a label and associating it with extreme cases makes it close to an epithet. I have no doubt that many of the people one might see as extreme or "obvious" narcissists might have the same opinion of those who use that language. It's nearly comical at that point.
  - DarylZero 5y ago
    Narcissism is something that normal adults grow out of, although they can still act childishly _at times_. But for some people, the growth never happens at all.

dwringer 5y ago

Informal diagnoses can be useful as hypotheses to present to qualified practitioners, and may even help in cases like those at the linked site to give the affected parties peace of mind and a feeling of insight, but I believe there is something unscientific about labeling people with medical disorders without the qualifications to do so. IMO such diagnoses should always at least be taken with a grain of salt. How relevant that is to this particular discussion is certainly open to interpretation.

PaulHoule 5y ago

"Narcissism" is generally thrown around as an insult and it has a confused history in the psychology literature going back to Freud using it in two different ways that were both confused and undeveloped. "Narcissism" essentially means "self-love" and it is something that is part of everyone's psyche. Having something wrong with your narcissism is like having something wrong with your heart and there are many things that can go wrong with your heart such as heart disease, heart failure, bad valves, arrhythmia, heart attack, etc. In the middle of Neon Genesis Evangelion, Asuka Langley Soryu makes a passionate defense of self-love ("you are all you've got!") There is "narcissistic personality disorder" as well as the (widespread) narcissistic disturbance that Kohut talks about which itself is more or less complicated by borderline and other disturbances at more archaic levels. It is all front of mind for me right now because I was talking to my therapist and volunteered that I was concerned about an incident of "Dark Triad" behavior on my part and she said at one point I was "talking like a Narcissist" (I agreed) yet when I took a https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ https://openpsychometrics.org/tests/SD3/ I found I was midrange on Machiavellianism, below average on "narcissism" and close to the bottom of the range on psychopathy. (Hmmm... I felt remorse about what I did so I guess I'm not psychopathic.) I read this book cover-to-cover the next week https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171657.Humanizing_the_Narcissistic_Style https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1171657.Humanizing_the_N... and marked it up with a highlighter and drew my version of Kohut's horizontal and vertical split on my whiteboard. I oscillate between grandiosity and worthlessness sometimes and definitely can point to merger, twinship, and mirror transferences. (It was twinship transferences on two people that got out of hand...) I'd point to at least some of this phenomenology being widespread and almost normal... I think almost anytime somebody blows up for what seems like no good reason there is a grandiosity -> worthlessness transition going on.