I've had trouble recognizing and understanding narcissists, too. I'm sixty-five, and I can't recall anyone I knew in the first fifty years of my life who I rea

I've had trouble recognizing and understanding narcissists, too. I'm sixty-five, and I can't recall anyone I knew in the first fifty years of my life who I realize now was a narcissist. In contrast, I recognize retrospectively many old friends and acquaintances who, I now know, must have been on the autism spectrum. But in the last fifteen years, I have had to deal with four people who were narcissists, two through work and two in private life. Each case was very difficult. Those four were from very different backgrounds--four different countries of origin, three different first languages, one had grown up poor, another was from a rich family. If narcissism is becoming more prevalent, my limited sample offers no clue about possible social causes.