I’d like to see clearer in the issue of narcissism in the broader, not strictly in the clinical definition sense. It often argued that it is a typical problem in the current age. Lot of young people believe their parents are. But outside the typical stereotypes of narcissism, such as having flashy looks, in the broader sense, even something like being shy can be interpreted as a form of narcissism, as extreme self-consciousness, extreme self-awareness, thinking everybody is looking at you, in a disapproving way.
Can anyone recommend an article or ten to sort it out a bit? First of all I would like to see some borders drawn, beyond the clinical definition, what levels of self-consciousness or self-importance (even if it is in a negative, shy, low self-esteem way) are considered unhealthy, how to spot the narc and how to figure out you are one or not: again, focusing more on the less obvious, shy-type, insecure type narcissism, not the so obvious having 1000 Facebook photos in the most fashionable clothes possible type.
Another thing I would be interested in is social media. Are Facebook or Reddit engines for gaining narcissistic supply? Am I right when my narc detectors are buzzing when I see people brag about a good deed as trival as helping a dog clean himself, coming accross as a very insecure “look at me I am a GOOD GUY please validate me!” message?
Can someone recommend articles to sort it out (or has interesting in-depth opinions) ?
I’ve seen that picture, but I didn’t take it as bragging. IMO the poster just thought it was funny how the dog looked, and he just mentioned the cleaning because he thought if he didn’t, he’d get hundreds of replies telling him he should’ve helped the dog instead of laughing at it.
Self consciousness =/= narcissism IMO. A person might be self conscious for many reasons.
I don’t think you can really get at the underlying reality of what you’re trying to explore if you use words like “narcissism”. I’d take a step back and look at Cluster B personality disorders as a whole to get a better idea of the clinical dimension of “narcissism” in a broader context, and to dissociate the popular meaning from the clinical one. There’s general deficits in emotional processing, the ability to take the perspective of others, and various vmPFCish thingies of that nature, and sometimes those present in a certain stereotyped fashion labeled “narcissistic”. I’d characterize it as more a deficit in self awareness and other awareness, with the rationalizations filling in the blanks left by that deficit sometimes but not always creating an inflated self perception.
how to spot the narc and how to figure out you are one or not: again, focusing more on the less obvious, shy-type, insecure type narcissism,
Rejection sensitivity, abnormally harsh self evaluations and feelings of inferiority can also fall into Cluster C, especially “avoidant”, and depressive states. I think the difference is that with Cluster B, there is at least some level at which a person is trying to defend a positive image of themselves even if they have deep-seated insecurities. There might be periods triggered by negative external events causing them to express some extremely negative feelings about themselves (which they later recover from and can be talked out of) but for the most part they like themselves. In contrast, an anxious, avoidant or depressed person just consistently insists that the low self evaluation is correct and it’s much harder to talk them out of it.
I think the briefest way to say it is that Cluster b is associated with basically normal emotional states, but those emotional states do not react normally to environmental cues, and the specific abnormality is what further characterizes them.
In the stereotypical and stigmatized case of narcissism, a person fails to accurately self monitor their own behavior and model how others see them and response to that by constant negotiating status, and if this is paired with a small degree of antisocial personality disorder they might also give more relative importance to themselves due to empathy gaps. The reality is probably more complex, with some people really caring about others but still lacking the ability to model how others view them, and so on.
(Bewarned, these are pretty arm-chairish thoughts. Then again, the DSM is pretty arm-chairish too.)
Another thing I would be interested in is social media
I don’t know if it is the official definition, but after reading the links I guess it is about thinking “me, me, me” all the time.
And the trick is that it does not have to be “look how great I am”—because some people believe that it is okay to spend 24 hours a day thinking and talking about themselves (and how other things are related to them) as long as they avoid talking about their own greatness. The authors of the linked texts believe that “greatness” is a red herring. For example, the narcissist can also talk a lot about how they feel bad—but when a narcissist does it, the focus is always on their emotion of feeling bad, not on what makes them feel bad.
It is difficult to define exactly. For example, two people can say “I feel so sad about children in Africa starving!”, while one of them means “please look at those children, and perhaps try to find out something that would reduce their suffering” the other means “look at me and admire me for how altrustic and noble I am”. If you are not careful and don’t know where to look, you might miss the difference, because technically both of them are talking about starving children in Africa. -- Actually, I suspect that people who didn’t have previous bad experience will usually miss the difference, because they will automatically assume that the only reason why anyone would mention starving children is because they care about the starving children. While the narcissist is only thinking about how expressing care about the starving children could make the narcissist more awesome.
Am I right when my narc detectors are buzzing when I see people brag about a good deed as trival as helping a dog clean himself
Depends on context. If someone did it for the first time, they could be happy for having the experience, and want to share the happiness. -- I am proud of myself for being able to change my baby’s diapers quickly. Before I had the opportunity to practice, I didn’t know whether it will be easy or difficult, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it is trivial. That’s good for me and good for the baby. And I am not writing this to show how great parent I am, because I expect that most parents have this skill, and it’s nothing special. I just mentioned it because it seemed relevant to the topic. In a parallel Everett branch where you didn’t post the example of cleaning the dog, I probably never mentioned it online.
But yes, it is a weak evidence; and if someone’s Facebook wall is full of such content, if it seems like an advertisement for the goodness of their personality, that is too much focus on themselves. (I still give them credit for choosing this way of highlighting their awesomeness instead of other possible ways of highlighting their awesomeness, such as posting selfies. I just wouldn’t expect them to do more good than is necessary to keep the Facebook “likes” flowing.)
Can someone recommend articles to sort it out (or has interesting in-depth opinions) ?
Sorry, no articles. Only the rule of thumb—is everything the person does and talks about somehow connected to themselves, even when the focus would be more appropriate on other people or even other things? It is about the emphasis, the difference between “look how interesting are prime numbers” and “look how interesting am I for working with prime numbers”, or between “let’s help these oppressed people” and “look at me how great I am for helping these oppressed people”. (Or between this and this.)
EDIT: In the reddit forum you linked, they mentioned People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, and I recommend the book; I am just sure whether it matches the psychiatric definition of narcissism, or something else. (I do not have enough data about these kinds of people, so I don’t know how exactly this part of the thingspace is clustered.)
I’d like to see clearer in the issue of narcissism in the broader, not strictly in the clinical definition sense.
[...] in the broader sense, even something like being shy can be interpreted as a form of narcissism
Of course if you look at a term in a broader sense you can look broadly enough that everything qualifies.
What purpose do you want to achieve by having a broad notion of narcissism?
Mainly whether it is more widespread now, a generational illness or not, does social media seem to increase or enable it, and do I or my loved ones “suffer” from it and to what extent.
Maybe focus on the social media aspect, perhaps it is the best approachable. Suppose social media is drifting towards validating posts like “When I was done laughing and taking pictures, I helped him clean his beard.” What class of behaviors are this an instance of? Of course an LW favorite would be “status seeking” but I think is, at best the other kind of status because nobody gets actually useful, usable social status through this. It just feels that way—and is this felt-status as opposed to real status something that maps to narcissistic supply?
It’s a fair starting point to assume people are always wrong when they talk about generational pathology. It’s the sort of thing that’s possible, insofar as the social environment matters, but nostalgia goggles and technical changes totally dwarf it in terms of plausibly explaining any particular generation gap.
If you wan to know whether narcissism is now more widespread, why not use clinical definitions of narcissism.
Do people on average score higher or lower on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory than they did in the past?
That’s a specific measurable question. There no point in having a broader notion.
What class of behaviors are this an instance of?
Playing reference class tennis is not useful as an end in itself.
If your goal is to judge people as being bad because they are narcissistic but wouldn’t be labeled that way by well researched academic scales by more clear about your goal.
I think that the point is just to be able to talk about the thing that people mean when they talk about somebody being narcissistic, which generally is not the clinical diagnosis.
It usually means that the person doesn’t like the person they call narcissistic. If Alice calls Bob narcissistic that might tell you more about Alice then it tell you about Bob.
On the off chance that you haven’t heard about it, I would recommend Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcisicism as background reading if you enjoy TLP. Lasch treats narcissism as a more general cultural phenomena instead of a strict clinical diagnosis. It is over 30 years old now, it probably doesn’t directly apply to modern topics like social media.
I’d like to see clearer in the issue of narcissism in the broader, not strictly in the clinical definition sense. It often argued that it is a typical problem in the current age. Lot of young people believe their parents are. But outside the typical stereotypes of narcissism, such as having flashy looks, in the broader sense, even something like being shy can be interpreted as a form of narcissism, as extreme self-consciousness, extreme self-awareness, thinking everybody is looking at you, in a disapproving way.
Can anyone recommend an article or ten to sort it out a bit? First of all I would like to see some borders drawn, beyond the clinical definition, what levels of self-consciousness or self-importance (even if it is in a negative, shy, low self-esteem way) are considered unhealthy, how to spot the narc and how to figure out you are one or not: again, focusing more on the less obvious, shy-type, insecure type narcissism, not the so obvious having 1000 Facebook photos in the most fashionable clothes possible type.
Another thing I would be interested in is social media. Are Facebook or Reddit engines for gaining narcissistic supply? Am I right when my narc detectors are buzzing when I see people brag about a good deed as trival as helping a dog clean himself, coming accross as a very insecure “look at me I am a GOOD GUY please validate me!” message?
Can someone recommend articles to sort it out (or has interesting in-depth opinions) ?
I’ve seen that picture, but I didn’t take it as bragging. IMO the poster just thought it was funny how the dog looked, and he just mentioned the cleaning because he thought if he didn’t, he’d get hundreds of replies telling him he should’ve helped the dog instead of laughing at it.
Self consciousness =/= narcissism IMO. A person might be self conscious for many reasons.
I don’t think you can really get at the underlying reality of what you’re trying to explore if you use words like “narcissism”. I’d take a step back and look at Cluster B personality disorders as a whole to get a better idea of the clinical dimension of “narcissism” in a broader context, and to dissociate the popular meaning from the clinical one. There’s general deficits in emotional processing, the ability to take the perspective of others, and various vmPFCish thingies of that nature, and sometimes those present in a certain stereotyped fashion labeled “narcissistic”. I’d characterize it as more a deficit in self awareness and other awareness, with the rationalizations filling in the blanks left by that deficit sometimes but not always creating an inflated self perception.
Rejection sensitivity, abnormally harsh self evaluations and feelings of inferiority can also fall into Cluster C, especially “avoidant”, and depressive states. I think the difference is that with Cluster B, there is at least some level at which a person is trying to defend a positive image of themselves even if they have deep-seated insecurities. There might be periods triggered by negative external events causing them to express some extremely negative feelings about themselves (which they later recover from and can be talked out of) but for the most part they like themselves. In contrast, an anxious, avoidant or depressed person just consistently insists that the low self evaluation is correct and it’s much harder to talk them out of it.
I think the briefest way to say it is that Cluster b is associated with basically normal emotional states, but those emotional states do not react normally to environmental cues, and the specific abnormality is what further characterizes them.
In the stereotypical and stigmatized case of narcissism, a person fails to accurately self monitor their own behavior and model how others see them and response to that by constant negotiating status, and if this is paired with a small degree of antisocial personality disorder they might also give more relative importance to themselves due to empathy gaps. The reality is probably more complex, with some people really caring about others but still lacking the ability to model how others view them, and so on.
(Bewarned, these are pretty arm-chairish thoughts. Then again, the DSM is pretty arm-chairish too.)
Relevant to your interests.
I suppose I just went ahead and discussed in the clinical sense even though you particularly didn’t want that.
I don’t know if it is the official definition, but after reading the links I guess it is about thinking “me, me, me” all the time.
And the trick is that it does not have to be “look how great I am”—because some people believe that it is okay to spend 24 hours a day thinking and talking about themselves (and how other things are related to them) as long as they avoid talking about their own greatness. The authors of the linked texts believe that “greatness” is a red herring. For example, the narcissist can also talk a lot about how they feel bad—but when a narcissist does it, the focus is always on their emotion of feeling bad, not on what makes them feel bad.
It is difficult to define exactly. For example, two people can say “I feel so sad about children in Africa starving!”, while one of them means “please look at those children, and perhaps try to find out something that would reduce their suffering” the other means “look at me and admire me for how altrustic and noble I am”. If you are not careful and don’t know where to look, you might miss the difference, because technically both of them are talking about starving children in Africa. -- Actually, I suspect that people who didn’t have previous bad experience will usually miss the difference, because they will automatically assume that the only reason why anyone would mention starving children is because they care about the starving children. While the narcissist is only thinking about how expressing care about the starving children could make the narcissist more awesome.
Depends on context. If someone did it for the first time, they could be happy for having the experience, and want to share the happiness. -- I am proud of myself for being able to change my baby’s diapers quickly. Before I had the opportunity to practice, I didn’t know whether it will be easy or difficult, so it was a pleasant surprise to find out that it is trivial. That’s good for me and good for the baby. And I am not writing this to show how great parent I am, because I expect that most parents have this skill, and it’s nothing special. I just mentioned it because it seemed relevant to the topic. In a parallel Everett branch where you didn’t post the example of cleaning the dog, I probably never mentioned it online.
But yes, it is a weak evidence; and if someone’s Facebook wall is full of such content, if it seems like an advertisement for the goodness of their personality, that is too much focus on themselves. (I still give them credit for choosing this way of highlighting their awesomeness instead of other possible ways of highlighting their awesomeness, such as posting selfies. I just wouldn’t expect them to do more good than is necessary to keep the Facebook “likes” flowing.)
Sorry, no articles. Only the rule of thumb—is everything the person does and talks about somehow connected to themselves, even when the focus would be more appropriate on other people or even other things? It is about the emphasis, the difference between “look how interesting are prime numbers” and “look how interesting am I for working with prime numbers”, or between “let’s help these oppressed people” and “look at me how great I am for helping these oppressed people”. (Or between this and this.)
EDIT: In the reddit forum you linked, they mentioned People of the Lie by M. Scott Peck, and I recommend the book; I am just sure whether it matches the psychiatric definition of narcissism, or something else. (I do not have enough data about these kinds of people, so I don’t know how exactly this part of the thingspace is clustered.)
Of course if you look at a term in a broader sense you can look broadly enough that everything qualifies.
What purpose do you want to achieve by having a broad notion of narcissism?
Mainly whether it is more widespread now, a generational illness or not, does social media seem to increase or enable it, and do I or my loved ones “suffer” from it and to what extent.
Maybe focus on the social media aspect, perhaps it is the best approachable. Suppose social media is drifting towards validating posts like “When I was done laughing and taking pictures, I helped him clean his beard.” What class of behaviors are this an instance of? Of course an LW favorite would be “status seeking” but I think is, at best the other kind of status because nobody gets actually useful, usable social status through this. It just feels that way—and is this felt-status as opposed to real status something that maps to narcissistic supply?
It’s a fair starting point to assume people are always wrong when they talk about generational pathology. It’s the sort of thing that’s possible, insofar as the social environment matters, but nostalgia goggles and technical changes totally dwarf it in terms of plausibly explaining any particular generation gap.
If you wan to know whether narcissism is now more widespread, why not use clinical definitions of narcissism. Do people on average score higher or lower on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory than they did in the past?
That’s a specific measurable question. There no point in having a broader notion.
Playing reference class tennis is not useful as an end in itself.
If your goal is to judge people as being bad because they are narcissistic but wouldn’t be labeled that way by well researched academic scales by more clear about your goal.
I think that the point is just to be able to talk about the thing that people mean when they talk about somebody being narcissistic, which generally is not the clinical diagnosis.
It usually means that the person doesn’t like the person they call narcissistic. If Alice calls Bob narcissistic that might tell you more about Alice then it tell you about Bob.
On the off chance that you haven’t heard about it, I would recommend Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcisicism as background reading if you enjoy TLP. Lasch treats narcissism as a more general cultural phenomena instead of a strict clinical diagnosis. It is over 30 years old now, it probably doesn’t directly apply to modern topics like social media.