Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Subcriminal Psychopathy?

[Laura]

Perhaps in some exotic theory of dynamics all interaction can be depicted as "feeding", but the metaphor, I suggest, doesn't help us cope with how we are so regularly and routinely motivated by narrow fear and short-sighted appetite.

Ummm... excuse me, but did you read the entire thread? Do you have any knowledge of psychopathy? Somehow I get the feeling that you have dropped into this discussion without a clue.

 

[Jacques]

I get the feeling that you have dropped into this discussion without a clue.

Well, after reading the last 3 posts of champ.pa on 3 differents threads about psychopaty,
I would add to the sentence of Laura.... but with an agenda.

Just my feeling.

 

[Zadius Sky]

This brings to mind a post that happened quite a whileback where someone (sorry, I can't remember who - and it may have been more than one person commenting) how like psychopathy Cluster B Personality Disorders were. Cluster B describes the "dramatic-emotional" Personality Disorders which includes: Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic and Anti-Social. I'm not sure about Histrionic's similarities to psychopathy, but definately the other three - Oh boy! They're good candidates.

From my rather limited experience on clinical placements what seemed to occur is:

Borderline Personality Disorder is diagnosed more frequently and these people are usually only seen by Drs or admited for psychiatric services when they have a dual diagnosis ie. depression (because they get depressed when they can't manipulate) or drug and alcohol abuse. Many of them have really 'rough' upbringing (including abuse) where a maladaptive behaviour such as manipulation is adopted in early adult-hood as a means of coping (and getting what they want). From what I've seen this disorder is quite common in the community. The similarity that stands out to be amongst all the other Cluster B diagnoses is that these people have absolutely no insight into how their behaviour effects others. When it comes to 'who's at fault', its always someone elses fault that they are in this position, in their own mind.

I overheard a psychiatrist 'speculating' on how many of the admissions of Greek and Italian matriarchs had the narscissistic personality disorder. These women usually ruled the roost with an iron fist and expected to be put up on a pedistal and given their 'due'. They, like the borderlines are often admited for depression as their expectations and how life (and their family) should be treating them often become mismatched - plus, it is never 'their' fault, always someone elses... No insight!

Another speculation I overheard in a private institution was how a lady who was constantly committing high end larceny had become depressed. I mean, imagine the 'outrage' and the 'embarrasment' at constantly having to deal with the police.... A person in her position no less! The 'speculation' on the part of the psychiatrist was to do with the fact that maybe she had narscissistic personality disorder as well.

With regard to the Antisocial Personality disorder: they have been described by psychiatric nurses as "more bad than mad". Many of them (usually male) end up in prisons. I suppose there may be a balance to this in that most of the other Cluster Bs are female, although many of the Borderlines who abuse alcohol and drugs are male.

I know someone (actually an ex-friend from my private school) who appeared to have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. But, she denied that she have it, even though she have the traits. She tried to control everyone that would fit with her perfect picture of how (her) life should be. Last year, she controlled me, lulled me into doing what she thought would be "out of love" for her. She kept pushing it if I love her, but I resisted saying it. Then, she got mad (this was the time while she had a 3 month old son and engaged). Couple of months later, she abandoned her baby and her fiance for another guy (who did said "I love you" to her), moved in with him, and wanted "fairy tales" out of this. I tried to close off my connection with her, but she kept on "bugging" me. She doesn't seem have a clue how she's affecting other people.

In other aspect, my close friend have a Borderline Personality Disorder (all nine traits) and a Lupus disease. I've known her for 14 years (from my school as well), and she have a habit of turning me into a "bad" guy when I don't meet her needs. When I do meet her needs, she turned me into a idol. She also have a habit of twisting my emotions and my focus. And, she tend to sway me away from my goals as if I'm abandoning her. I've learned alot from her as regards to personal attacks, acting on "now", and life (socially). Right now, I'm helping her not to rely on other people to make her choices (as I've learned in a hard way to not to let her to convince me to do it for her), and she'd need to make her own choices (and not seek others for confirmation). It's tough going.

It's interesting how my life is full of odd roads. I've met alot of people from my school (private school, k-12) whom have disorders. I've met one with a manic-depression disorder, one with a depression disorder, and another with Anti-Social. I don't seem to have a disorder (that I've noticed but not conclusive), but I have a hearing loss (deaf in left, hearing impaired in right) due to meningitis at the age of 11 month. Sometime, I wondered if I caused the meningitis or others (e.g., the STS beings)...just a thought.

Question: Is it the intention of STS beings to create or stir disorders in people in order to be fed by negative energy? (since disorders in people lose control of their behaviors and sending out an enormous amount of negative energy) I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[CarpeDiem]

http://www.wellesley.edu/Psychology/Cheek/sensitive.html

The Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS)

A new measure of hypersensitive narcissism was derived by correlating the items of H. A. Murray's (1938) Narcism Scale with an MMPI-based composite measure of covert narcissism. In three samples of college students (total N = 303), 10 items formed a reliable measure: the Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale (HSNS). The new HSNS and the MMPI-based composite showed similar patterns of correlations with the Big Five Inventory, and both measures correlated near zero with the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, which assesses overt narcissism. Results support the theoretical distinction between covert and overt narcissistic tendencies in the normal range of individual differences and suggest that it would be beneficial for personality researchers to measure both types of narcissism in future studies.

Please answer the following questions by deciding to what extent each item is characteristic of your feelings and behavior. Fill in the blank next to each item by choosing a number from the scale printed below.
1 = very uncharacteristic or untrue, strongly disagree
2 = uncharacteristic
3 = neutral
4 = characteristic
5 = very characteristic or true, strongly agree

1. I can become entirely absorbed in thinking about my personal affairs, my health, my cares or my relations to others.
2. My feelings are easily hurt by ridicule or the slighting remarks of others.
3. When I enter a room I often become self-conscious and feel that the eyes of others are upon me.
4. I dislike sharing the credit of an achievement with others.
5. I feel that I have enough on my hands without worrying about other people's troubles.
6. I feel that I am temperamentally different from most people.
7. I often interpret the remarks of others in a personal way.
8. I easily become wrapped up in my own interests and forget the existence of others.
9. I dislike being with a group unless I know that I am appreciated by at least one of those present.
10. I am secretly "put out" or annoyed when other people come to me with their troubles, asking me for my time and sympathy.

Hendin, H.M., & Cheek, J.M. (1997). Assessing Hypersensitive Narcissism: A Re-examination of Murray's Narcissism Scale. Journal of Research in Personality, 31, 588-599.

 

[Ruth]

Question: Is it the intention of STS beings to create or stir disorders in people in order to be fed by negative energy? (since disorders in people lose control of their behaviors and sending out an enormous amount of negative energy) I'd appreciate it. Thanks.

I'm not sure if this is exactly what an STS being has in mind... (giving off negative energy, or even causing 'negative' situations), but it could be all about energy usage in general - regardless of whether it it positive or negative in nature.

As far as I can see, STS is all about using or exploiting other beings for selfish reasons. They live off others energy whether this be done with dense energy such as physical things like money, or less dense, such as emotional energy. STS is essentially all about being parasitic and taking from others for one's own selfish purposes, rather than giving to others or sharing with no expectation of return.

Maybe we are all STS beings because we fail to see this energy dynamic and how we become involved and even 'suckered in' to various energy stealing dynamics. As non-OPs we should have the capacity to 'see through' a lot of things, but somehow, we fail to do so, seeing only STS as an option.

4D STS, using the ideas of hierachy and parasitism as well as conserving energy for their own purposes, use lower densities (us) very frequently to keep each other in line.

 

[Zadius Sky]

I'm not sure if this is exactly what an STS being has in mind... (giving off negative energy, or even causing 'negative' situations), but it could be all about energy usage in general - regardless of whether it it positive or negative in nature.

As far as I can see, STS is all about using or exploiting other beings for selfish reasons. They live off others energy whether this be done with dense energy such as physical things like money, or less dense, such as emotional energy. STS is essentially all about being parasitic and taking from others for one's own selfish purposes, rather than giving to others or sharing with no expectation of return.

Maybe we are all STS beings because we fail to see this energy dynamic and how we become involved and even 'suckered in' to various energy stealing dynamics. As non-OPs we should have the capacity to 'see through' a lot of things, but somehow, we fail to do so, seeing only STS as an option.

4D STS, using the ideas of hierachy and parasitism as well as conserving energy for their own purposes, use lower densities (us) very frequently to keep each other in line.

Thanks for your thoughts. The reason that I included disorders as caused by STS in which it would bringing out much negativity is that I thought that these disorders would be like "vector." As if they are misdirecting me elsewhere. Since I've been hanging out with a friend with a BPD, I lost sight of my goals and most of my energy were drained by focusing on helping this friend. Once I've realized what was occured, I began to see that I was lost, and now I'm back on "seeking". I finally draw a line.

Maybe we are all STS beings because we fail to see this energy dynamic and how we become involved and even 'suckered in' to various energy stealing dynamics. As non-OPs we should have the capacity to 'see through' a lot of things, but somehow, we fail to do so, seeing only STS as an option.

Our emotions tend to cloud or distort our sights on things. Awareness of these things as they happens at the moment should be achieved. I think it's the matter of time for some of us...

 

[redjade]

Laura wrote:
if the psychopath could really experience real empathy, he wouldn't be a psychopath, I think. But again, there is that problem of "how do they do what they do???"

My Comment:

Last night i was watching this movie w/ bf, it is call The Good Son. A movie that was recommend by my bf to see.

The plot summary: A young boy stays with his aunt and uncle, and befriends his cousin who's the same age. But his cousin begins showing increasing signs of psychopathic behavior.

Macaulay Culkin plays the psychopathic cousin and
Elijah Wood plays the young boy that realizes that something is different about his cousin while interacting with him.

This may answer the question above or just give shocks. My experience watching this movie, it was an eye opener. A scene when Macaulay Culkin goes to Elijah Wood's therapist. He was using the tools he learned from interacting with his family and picking up some new ones from the therapist. The therapist who did not believe in evil. I hope this helps.

 

[Ormond]

When I minored in socio-cultural anthropology, we began with being shown the cave paintings of the Spanish Levant, which are said to be 30,000 years old.

These have similar if not identical features with the ancient pre-Columbian rock petroglyphs of the American Southwest. Definite human figures in action, but the presentation of these figures are clearly not individualized portrayals.

Thus anthropology says that the human beings at that type had a different self-perception than we can know now. Whomever painted these scenes did not know personality arrogance, hubris-- 'self centered-ness'.

 

[purplehaze]

Again, apologizes for coming in late on this interesting thread. Just wanted to share some links of groups out there on the web that seem to be interested in "sanitizing" and/or "humanizing" narcissists:

_http://groups.msn.com/FriendsofNarcissists/

_http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi?healnpd&1

_http://frost.bbboy.net/healnpd

Seeing yourself as a victim of a pathological is a bad thing?
_http://groups.msn.com/FriendsofNarcissists/doyouseeyourselfasavictim.msnw

Not being able to forgive the unforgiveable is bad?
_http://groups.msn.com/FriendsofNarcissists/forgivenessinunhealedrelationships.msnw

Smells of stuff written by pathologicals to blame shift and 'normalize' their behaviors.

Any thoughts??


Admin note: Added "_" to hyperlinks. We want the links to be available for research, but not to add to the google ranking of the sites in question.

 

[piranah]

I think the narcissist sucks dry the victim and then moves on. They usually leave their victim in a destroyed state with symptoms of shock.


Creepy huh

Not alwaysl The main information I get on the web is that a narcissist is usually a relative or a partner,but in my experience they are also in every social place in our lives. I now watch out as the most dangerous are those like a black hole. You never quite see them clearly but you see the evidence of their existence.The behavior of those around them is a barometer of the narcissist at work. And whilst we can make a decision to leave a mate or not contact a relative to a certain extent. The workplace narcissist or the school narcissist is the gift that keeps on giving. They know their victim is trapped by the necessity of having to attend etc. I have given up work on occasion if I feel there is no way to prove the narcissism and it is not going to stop. It is not always running away but a decision to get out of the narcissist's clutches and regain control. Imagine social workers policemen teachers Judges politicians etc with the narcissist agenda. Clever narcissists, able to win friends and influence people. Scary is not the word.

 

[purplehaze]

Think link may be of interest:

_http://www.sedonapsychicreading.com/narcissism-energyvampires.php

 

[piranah]

Thanks purplehaze that website is like my thoughts put to paper exactly. The knowledge that this disorder exists is the only thing that helps people realize they were not mad and move forward. There was a book I once read called the cuckoo. The outline plot was an adopted child gradually kills the other children in the family and the father. Only the mother worked out what was happening and no one believed her. Experts etc were blinded by the simple unbelievable explanation...the child was the murderer. The Omen was kind of the same plot wasn't it?

 

[purplehaze]

Narcissists @ Work: How to Deal with Arrogant, Controlling, Manipulative Bullies

Narcissists at Work: How to Deal with Arrogant, Controlling, Manipulative Bullies

– Thomas Hoffman, Computerworld

June 11, 2008
Five years ago, Jean Ritala was dating a businessman who started to demonstrate Jekyll and Hyde-like behavior. Well-spoken, charismatic and successful, he could also be manipulative and bullying, telling her that it was "his way or the highway."

It wasn't until someone told her she had been "stung by a narcissist" and shared books and Web sites with her on the topic that she fully appreciated what she had encountered. Now, Ritala, the IT support services manager at Mystic Lake Casino Hotel, educates and coaches others on how to deal with narcissists in the workplace.
MORE ON CIO.com
How to Deal With Bully Bosses
The Extreme CIO: Taking the "Life" Out of Work-Life Balance

Narcissism, defined as a personality disorder by the National Institutes of Health, is a pattern of behaviors that show a pervasive need for attention and admiration, as well as a lack of concern or empathy for others.

In the workplace, says Ritala, narcissists tend to be successful and goal-oriented, with no concern for others who get in their way. They feel a need to control co-workers, projects and situations around them, and they can be manipulative, spinning situations and facts to make it appear that others around them are the problem, not them.

According to Ritala, narcissists often display the following traits at work:

* Arrogant and self-centered, they expect special treatment and privileges.
* They can be charismatic, articulate and funny.
* They are likely to disrespect boundaries and the privacy of others.
* They can be patronizing and critical of others but unwilling or unable to accept criticism or disagreement.
* Likely to be anxiety-stricken or paranoid, they may exhibit violent, rage-like reactions when they can't control a situation or their behaviors have been exposed.
* They are apt to set others up for failure or pit co-workers against one another.
* They can be cruel and abusive to some co-workers, often targeting one person at a time until he quits.
* They may need an ongoing "narcissist supply" of people who they can easily manipulate and who will do whatever they suggest—including targeting a co-worker—without question.
* They are often charming and innocent in front of managers.

As you might imagine, narcissists can be highly disruptive to a workplace, creating a traumatic environment with high turnover, Ritala says. Eventually the narcissist is caught in action enough times that he is fired, but this does nothing to change his behavior or protect the organization from other narcissists.

Recognizing the problem, Ritala, former president of the IT Service Management Forum—US, teamed up with management consulting partner Gerald Falkowski to write a booklet for IT managers called Narcissism in the Workplace (Red Swan Publishing USA, Sept. 2007). She spoke recently with Computerworld's Thomas Hoffman about dealing with narcissism in IT organizations.

Does narcissism play out any differently within IT organizations versus other parts of a company?
IT is more competitive than some parts of the business, much like sales is competitive. I think you're seeing it more now in IT because IT has become more focused on relationship-building and nurturing relationships. The types of behavior people turned their cheek to in the past, they're now less willing to.

People are getting educated. Five years ago, fewer people knew about narcissism. Now there are online discussion groups that deal with the topic, such as the MSN newsgroup, and television shows such as Two and a Half Men featuring [the character] Charlie Harper as a narcissist. The dynamics of the workforce have changed, and narcissist personality-type employees or managers are standing out more than ever, creating more problems than their boss and HR can handle.

What happens if managers simply ignore narcissists' disruptive behavior?
Often a narcissist remains in an organization for years, creating more and more workplace stress and turnover, due to their managers thinking their contributions outweigh their behaviors and denying and rationalizing the odd behaviors away. That is, until the next complaint comes their way and they continue to be forced to document the narcissist's behaviors over time. They risk their own jobs by not taking action soon enough with each complaint or series of complaints.

The cost to organizations from narcissism in the workplace is staggering due to illness, stress medications and treatment, lack of teaming and project success, and rising turnover, until the narcissist or corporate bully is shown timely cause and effect from their negative behaviors.

What steps can IT managers take to address these issues?
You have to get educated with a health care professional like a psychologist who specializes in employee counseling services. Get them involved in reviewing the complaints to management and HR, and in helping others to understand these personality types, their behaviors and destructive impact to an organization.

Steps to deal with a narcissist personality type in the workplace include documenting what you observe and get complaints about, and not being afraid to go to HR and say, "This is what I'm seeing and this is what people are bringing to me."

It often starts as a series of complaints to line managers, then to an HR representative. Once there are enough [complaints], they go to HR, and HR will implore a manager to document what they see as well as come and observe firsthand themselves.

How should managers approach narcissistic employees, particularly if an employee is unaware that he possesses these attributes?
Narcissistic employees should be encouraged by HR to see whatever company employee referral service is available to them, such as counseling, and you hope that the person will take advantage of that.

It depends on how enlightened the person is in terms of seeing how their behavior is impacting staff and their own performance. When you get manipulative, bullying and condescending types of comments and behavior, that's what impacts performance and teamwork. That's when you hope the narcissist person will take the encouragement to go seek help.

If they don't, HR has to play back what [the narcissistic individual] did wrong using a calm approach. Establish firm boundaries with timely progressive consequences from the first complaint received. Follow up to see if behaviors appear to be improving or if they are getting worse. People's behavior patterns typically don't change unless they get help.

Up to one-third of a narcissist's victims in the workplace will quit the company or transfer to another department if nothing is done by the department manager or HR to stop the situation. Once a narcissist's behaviors are observed and documented, they can become even more cruel and offensive to others, as they no longer can hide their behaviors and rationalize them away or project their shortcomings onto others.

The key is observing, documenting and taking swift action each and every time so the narcissist knows their cruel behaviors will not be tolerated in the workplace.

http://www.cio.com/

 

[Divide by Zero]

Re: Narcissists @ Work: How to Deal with Arrogant, Controlling, Manipulative Bullies

Thanks for the article. I have a narcissistic or psychopathic manager (high level supervisor) at my job. From what I hear from co-workers, since he came to his position (mind you- he skipped some steps in the progression to his position), things have gone downhill. Luckily, we are protected by a union, but sometimes this is not enough when the union is bogged down by many grievances, which end up needing funds and time to be arbitrated.

The one thing that I noticed about this guy is that he sees himself as superior to us workers. He takes all the overtime he can get and then leaves the scraps for us which is intended to keep us in battle for it. We know his game, and refuse to play it. However, it is hard to deal with him as he is very charming and presents a professional image, which is hard to believe since he knows very little of the profession. The only thing we can do these days, is pit him against the company's safety division, with things that he has ignored in terms of our safety. Honestly, I think the only way he would go is when he retires, which comes up in 5 years.

It is sad to see a company not realize that they are trusting a snake in a suit. Nevermind, he has made managers above him mess up, to enforce his power.

 

[Laura]

The narcissist's guerrilla war against reality

An insightful and entertaining look at narcissists, though I think the guy would benefit mightily from studying psychology, which he declares is not a science. Well, in a certain sense it is not, the same way circumstantial evidence and witness testimony is not a "smoking gun" in a courtroom. But, with circumstantial evidence and witness testimony, one can often prove motive, opportunity, and thus, guilt, AND do good science, especially when dealing with non-material topics. Of course, if you restrict the definition of science to ONLY dealing with material objects, then yeah, he's right, psychology isn't "science."

In any event, if he studied the subject and the collected observations (circumstantial evidence and witness testimony) along with some of the correlated physical evidence, he might know that he is describing several different disorders below, and, with his talents, he might actually be able to make some sense of it.

I enjoyed reading it, found some value in it, and think it is worth sharing considering the fact that we have encountered many of the same types in our public work and on this forum!

On Being Perfect - The narcissist's guerrilla war against reality

Copyright © 2006, P. Lutus
http://www.arachnoid.com/psychology/narcissism.php

Introduction

Over the past few years I've met a lot of people online, people posing questions and opinions about programming, science, and diverse other topics. Before the Internet, in spite of my age, I hadn't met even a tenth of the people I've met online. And, as has been said by many, Internet communications aren't remotely like face-to-face encounters. In online communications people tend to be much more reckless, aggressive and candid, shielded as they believe themselves to be from any immediate consequences of misbehavior, also because they can (at least temporarily) assume any identity they want.

The anonymity and power of Internet communications has two immediate effects:

* A personality disorder that might remain hidden in perpetuity is instead displayed openly, usually with some precautions about anonymity or at least geographical separation from the audience.

* The impression created by Internet communications is that people are more pathological than the impression created by similar face-to-face communications. I say "impression" because the Internet doesn't create the pathology exhibited by the participants, it only reveals what is there already.

* By adopting a make-believe online persona, Internet participants can pretend to be anyone they please, with scant probability of exposure. Famous scientist, military hero, demigod.

* Because of these factors, a certain personality type is attracted to the Internet like moths to a candle.

I decided to research and write this article because over the past five years I have met a lot of people online with traits in common, to the degree that I started recognizing similarities. So I decided to find out what that similarity was — did it have a name?

First, the traits. Someone would write me to discuss ... something: one of my articles, or a topic they believed I might be interested in based on the content of my site, or something out of the blue. Then this would happen:

* I would disagree with some part of the writer's presentation, based on the fact that it lacked plausibility (the New Age factor), or it contradicted well-established facts, or, if the issue was more technical or scientific, the presentation lacked any supporting evidence.

* On receiving my reply, instead of looking for supporting evidence to defend their claims, the writers would quickly abandon the original discussion and launch a personal attack.

* Hoping to rescue the original discussion, I would then either present evidence for my position, or ask for evidence for the writers' position, or both.

* At this point the writers would diverge like holiday fireworks, exploding in a hundred directions — every direction except that of debating the original issue using evidence.

Over time I have entertained a number of ideas about this behavior — people aren't trained to think in school, so they enter adulthood thinking issues are resolved by shouting, a viewpoint imperfectly expressed in this article. Or perhaps the people I've been talking with are all male twenty-somethings, saturated with testosterone and therefore hostages to their emotions, so that there is no chance for reasoned discussion. There's some evidence for the latter view, but it doesn't explain the sheer number of people who simply cannot stand to be told there is any defect in their views.

I have lately realized that psychologists have a name and a description for the behavior I've been witnessing. To those familiar with psychology, it will come as no surprise that it has a description — it seems that clinical psychology's primary goal is to describe everything, while explaining nothing.

The name for the condition is narcissism, and the description is of someone permanently stuck in a six-year-old's view of reality. Not to oversimplify a complex condition, but narcissists (by which I mean the severe, clinical kind, not everyday narcissism) replace both the real person they are, and their real relationship with the world, with fantasies. For a six-year-old this is a normal stage of development, and normal children later figure out that they are not perfect or omnipotent, but that life is interesting and worthwhile anyway.

Narcissists, by contrast, and for reasons no one has sorted out, get stuck in a post-infant, pre-adult stage of development, usually forever. For their entire lives the typical narcissist exhibits some traits that are normal for a six-year-old, like a naïve reliance on the views of authority figures, while secretly resenting the power of those authorities. But adult narcissists show behaviors that are brought on by their having gotten stuck in infantile behavior while simultaneously being pushed into adulthood.

Adults are expected to possess some resilience toward reasoned disagreement, and by so doing derive benefit from the knowledge and experience of other adults. Unfortunately, people discover about adult narcissists that they can't lift themselves above a deadly cycle of fantastic claims and a pathological inability to listen, followed by rage, over and over, forever.

To summarize, narcissists are people who have not grown up, and who will probably never grow up. They only appear to be adults. Adults welcome the chance to learn something new, to correct mistaken beliefs, while narcissists, when confronted by the report of any personal shortcoming, would prefer killing the reporter to accepting the report.

I sort narcissists into two varieties, overt and covert. Overt narcissists proclaim their wildly distorted view of the world and face the consequences, a recipe for one personal disaster after another. Most of us know the names of a few overt narcissists — Charlie Manson (California, 1969), Jim Jones (French Guiana, 1978), David Koresh (Waco, Texas, 1993). These are people who would rather kill everyone in sight (including themselves) than acknowledge any personal shortcoming. Covert narcissists are equally handicapped, but they use a strategy that conceals their pathology in the short term: instead of asserting personal authority, they choose authority figures whose views roughly correspond to their own.

By adopting the protective coloration of the True Believer, covert narcissists fit into everyday society better than the overt variety. By carefully selecting authority figures, the covert narcissist can lead a seemingly normal life, until and unless someone doubts the authority of their authorities, at which point they revert to a classic narcissistic rage, followed by the selection of a new authority. All this posturing is meant to avoid the circumstance that all varieties of narcissist deeply dread — having to acknowledge that they are wrong, and that there is something they haven't yet learned. For a narcissist, that is an occasion for panic and rage, not reflection and study.

Modern society offers all sorts of havens for the covert narcissist: religion, some parts of academia, even clinical psychology. Each of these shelters offers an association with seemingly unimpeachable authority, therefore it meets the narcissist's need to be thought correct without the drudgery of learning anything difficult or engaging in the high-wire act of original thought.

Traits

To expand a bit on the above points, narcissists are typically rather shallow people, forever stuck in a preliminary stage of intellectual evolution. In the normal course of individual development, one goes through a phase of acquiring established facts from what seem to be sources of unimpeachable authority, followed by a much more creative phase in which one may make a personal contribution to the store of human knowledge by assembling known facts and ideas into something new. In a narcissist, the second of these phases of personal development never takes place. Instead, the narcissist gets stuck in phase one, complete reliance on external authority, and may never realize the second, more risky stage, that of of personal creativity, even exists.

As usual in psychology, no one knows why a narcissist's personal development is arrested in just this way. Obviously attaching oneself to an external source of authority offers a shallow kind of absolute certainty, and there are a number of ready sources for such authority — religion, law, and a naïve perception of science as a collection of laws or facts (see below for why this is a wrongheaded perception of science).

Narcissists typically attach themselves to the more dogmatic and less flexible sources of authority, sources unlikely to undergo modification, because the entire point is to be absolutely certain — more certain than life really is — and be beyond the possibility of refutation or criticism. This means narcissists find themselves attracted to such callings as religion, law enforcement, and, ironically, clinical psychology, because these fields contain a very high percentage of inflexible content, and little possibility for challenge or refutation of their principles.

The basic idea is that a narcissist wants to secure himself against the need to say, "Okay, I made a mistake, I was wrong." To a narcissist, this is a fate worse than death, and many narcissists quite literally suffer death to avoid the possibility.

Normal people are willing to be found wrong, over and over again, because this is in the nature of life. Such people expect their personal creative process to eventually bear fruit, and are willing to experiment with reality, walk paths not yet explored, sometimes stumble and fall, in the hope of contributing something new to the store of human knowledge.

At some risk of oversimplification, a normal person is willing to be wrong 100 times in order to create something uniquely new and useful, while a narcissist sacrifices this opportunity, this stage of personal evolution, in order to be secure against the possibility of being found wrong. For a normal person, being wrong is the price we pay for the creative process. For a narcissist, being wrong is too high a price to pay — better to label other people as wrong, from within an impregnable fortress of mediocrity. Unfortunately, in exchange for an infantile kind of security, narcissists sacrifice any chance to positively influence the world.

The entire modern world, all of science, medicine, and technology, represents the harvest of people willing to make mistakes and acknowledge their errors. Narcissists cannot contribute to this process, because it involves risk, and narcissists won't take risks. A narcissist will typically be found standing, arms folded, in the middle of the path to the future, insisting they are right, and they often are right — about something that doesn't matter any more.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new." — Albert Einstein.

Science

By giving evidence the highest standing, and by dismissing all authority out of hand, at first glance science seems to represent the antithesis of the narcissist's game plan. In a pure, abstract sense this is true, and if science were entirely uniform and separate from the world, narcissists would avoid science at all costs. But the reality is more complex.

This may surprise some who have learned the basics of science and the scientific method, but some covert narcissists actually become scientists, publish papers, and win wide recognition. This is deplorable but true, but it is never true for long, because ... well, to put it simply, truth has a persistence that falsehood can't bear.

A case in point is the recently exposed South Korean scientist Dr. Hwang Woo Suk, who had previously been lauded as a pioneer in the new field of stem-cell research. This is a particularly egregious example of scientific fraud, because recent investigations show that nearly all of Dr. Hwang's most important work was faked. And, true to the credo of the narcissist, in the midst of his public humiliation, while apologizing for his fakery, Dr. Hwang brightened up and proceeded to place blame on his coworkers for misleading him (avoidance of personal responsibility is a litmus test for narcissism).

This fraud will be examined for a long time, because Dr. Hwang wasn't toiling in darkness and secrecy, but in a very public forum, and he published a number of claims over a period of years that could have been checked out by other scientists in a more timely way. He was named "Researcher of the Year" by the prestigious journal Scientific American, while Time Magazine proclaimed that "the quality of Hwang's science is unimpeachable." The latter claim is typical of journalists, who never seem to grasp that all scientific theories and evidence are by definition impeachable, and for all time.

What is interesting about this case is the sort of "science" that narcissists do. To a scientist, all that matters is testing theories against reality: does nature support my theory? Consequently, putting forth a theory is only the beginning of a process that ends with either confirming evidence gleaned from direct observation of nature, or the discarding of the theory. By contrast, to a narcissist, evidence is an adversary, therefore once a theory is uttered, the process grinds to a halt and someone uncorks the champagne. To understand why this is true, one must remember that a narcissist is in essence a child, not an adult, and when deciding how to cope, reality testing can't compare to magical thinking.

Notwithstanding this and other examples of scientific fraud, over the long term science really is antithetical to narcissism. The simplest way of saying it is that in the spotlight of reality, a scientist presents evidence, while a narcissist lapses into denial and rage. At their respective best, the scientist might create a vaccine, while the narcissist will likely create an embarrassing spectacle.

New Age Thinking and Postmodernism

The so-called New Age movement, and New Age thinking, at least to the degree that the latter expression isn't an oxymoron, turns out to be an ideal playground for narcissism. New Age believers proclaim their independence from the boring, excessively strict ideas of their forebears, their fixation on evidence, their silly assertion that effects arise from causes for other than magical reasons, and the idea that science is a legitimate way to evaluate reality. Such silly, old-fashioned ideas.

Most New Age believers are too poorly educated to recognize what they are giving up along with intellectual rigor. But many in academia, people who in principle should know better, have adopted a notion that is the cerebral equivalent of the distinctly blue-collar New Age agenda, something called "postmodernism." At some small risk of oversimplification, postmodernism is the idea that there are no shared truths, that all experience is subjective. Therefore (just an example of something a postmodernist might say) science and logic, by proclaiming the legitimacy of shared experience and observation, are just ways to enslave otherwise free spirits.

The intellectual bankruptcy at the heart of postmodernism seems to be lost on most of its advocates (except, of course, for the nihilists, who don't care). Put simply, if the postmodernist thesis is true, then it's pointless to say so, because there is no legitimacy to shared ideas, including the shared idea of postmodernism. Or, as Cedric Watts of the University of Sussex put it, very clearly reveling in the irony: "Postmodernism: the Grande Narrative that denies Grande Narrative."

But to narcissists, in their special, twisted relationship with reality, postmodernism and New Age ideas merely affirm the behaviors they have already adopted (or, in truth, been forced into by circumstances). Another litmus test for narcissism is pathological lying, but by adopting a postmodernist outlook, the narcissist can rationalize lying on the ground that there aren't any real truths anyway. Postmodernism being what it is, the narcissist can't persuade anyone else of this notion, but that is not important, because a narcissist's thought processes are for internal consumption — narcissists don't ordinarily care how other people react to what they think or do until it's too late, just like the six-year-old they really are.

But there is a sad fact at the core of narcissists' personalities, one that explains their preference for lies over truth. It is that the most absurd falsehood they might craft is more attractive overall than any truth about themselves or their circumstances. A narcissist's life is a beauty contest where a dark pond's false reflection struggles against daylight's ugly truth.

Encountering the Perfect

Psychologists are perfectly competent to describe mental conditions, but are unable to explain them. The latter fact stands in the way of anything resembling an overarching theory of mental conditions, which is why clinical psychology is not a science, a topic I address in this article. Meanwhile, psychologists, doing what they do best, estimate that narcissists, by which I mean serious, clinical narcissists, make up 0.5 to 1% of the U.S. general population. That is a staggering number of narcissists, as in three million, if one grants credence to the estimate's high side.

But, sheer numbers aside, the ratio of narcissists to normal people in my online encounters is much higher than 0.5-1% overall. Some of this arises from the moth and candle effect I describe above, where narcissists see the Internet as a safe playground. Another factor is that I post a lot of articles on my site, articles that lead to dialogues, dialogues that preferentially attract narcissists.

All fine, except for the practical difficulty that narcissists don't have dialogues. A dialogue is by definition a communication between equals, either of whom might adjust his thinking when confronted by some new useful fact or avenue for research. Narcissists can't engage in dialogues because, in a free exchange of ideas, they might turn out to be wrong, and that is unthinkable.

The Physics Illiterates

Of all the articles on my site that have attracted their share of narcissists, my piece on Olbers' Paradox entitled "Why is the sky dark at night?" has produced an extraordinary number of encounters with narcissists since its publication in 1997. The problem became so severe that I was moved to ask that people learn physics before posting any comments, a plea that had no effect on the flow of misguided posts.

The article is really rather conservative from a physical and scientific point of view, breaking no new ground and asserting only the most well-established views on its topic. The problem with the article is that it requires a certain amount of abstract reasoning and visualization, to a greater degree than is obvious at first glance. It deals with some cosmological and physical notions outside everyday experience and addresses processes that are in principle infinite in both time and space.

In other words, it is an article bound to attract narcissists who, along with many other characteristic traits, tend to be undereducated because of their fear of being found wrong.

When a normal person reads the article, they either follow the logic or they don't. But a normal person will take the time to learn what they don't know before objecting to the article itself — after all, the problem might lie with the reader, not the article. To a narcissist, by definition unable to accept personal responsibility for anything, this is impossible — the only reason they don't understand the article and agree with every word, is because the article is defective.

Now that the article has been online for almost a decade, in retrospect I wish I had kept all the particularly brainless posts that objected to its content. If I had filtered out only those that made completely false arguments, on matters familiar to freshman physics students, I would have around 250 posts. But I threw them away, not thinking what a research treasure trove they would eventually represent.

For such an article, there is always something to object to on legitimate grounds, and over the years I have responded to legitimate critics by changing the article in a number of ways. Also, my article emphasizes the expansion of the universe, and doesn't bother to address the age of the universe, as the primary factor to explain why the night sky is dark. Both are legitimate factors, but one is essential to the explanation and the other is not. To avoid an overly complex explanation I chose to address the single essential element: expansion.

In a recent, rather pointless e-mail exchange, I was reminded of the first wave of scientific illiterates who objected to the article. In the recent example, the correspondent simply didn't understand enough physics or thermodynamics to make any kind of reasoned objection, but because he was a narcissist, ignorance hindered him not at all.

I replied and addressed his misconceptions by correcting all of them, simply and directly. He believed, and expressed, that most light energy escapes into the "empty far distance of space" and never encounters anything else, so it can't contribute to universal warming. He then went on to say that, when light does strike something, it can't realistically be expected to heat the target up to the point that the target emits radiation of its own. He then said that a body, when heated by another, responds by emitting more radiation than it receives.

This is just a short list, but if you understand physics, you will have gotten the idea. In case you aren't a student of physics, everything the correspondent asserted was flat wrong, contradicting the most basic kinds of physical principles. I replied in detail, explaining that each of his points was wrong, and explaining why, sometimes using equations and in-depth explanations, all for naught.

Because he was a narcissist, instead of accepting my reply as a source of useful information, he went ballistic, dropped any pretense of addressing the original topic, and accused me of being rude, on the ground that I had bluntly corrected him. At this point I realized he was a narcissist and there would be no point in trying to reason with him, so I stopped corresponding. But he had just begun — now in a narcissistic rage, he wrote me dozens of times over the next few days, concluding by saying he was going to create a website dedicated to refuting what I had said about him. He overlooked the fact that I had addressed, not him, but his ideas, but to a narcissist that is a distinction without a difference.

On rereading his posts, I see the alacrity with which he abandoned anything resembling rational thought. The first post was merely untutored, but it didn't really give away that he was a narcissist — the second post confirmed that, and made me wish I hadn't bothered to reply to the first.

Now, as so often happens with narcissists, he's been desperately trying to write me, persuade me of the merit of his unphysical ideas, in terror (or fury) that someone has found him out. I've been responding by blacklisting his e-mail addresses, and he has retaliated by creating new, random e-mail addresses to circumvent my blacklist, a strategy that breaks the law. But I have discovered in recent years that breaking the law is scarcely important enough to appear on narcissists' radar screens, consumed as they are by righteous wrath that someone — anyone — doubts their perception of themselves as infallible gifts to humanity.

For contrast, here is how a recent, normal correspondent summarized our physics conversation:

Thank you for your response to my question. You explained the science in such a simple and straightforward manner that I would guess you're a teacher by inclination if not by profession. I had accepted the Doppler effect as fact, as well as the [constant] speed of light, C. But I just couldn't visually reconcile the two. Your explanation ... brought it all into focus.

I had replied to this correspondent in much the same way that I replied to the narcissist, but because this correspondent preferred listening to arguing, he learned something new.

The Psychology Experts

Don't make the mistake of thinking that psychologists typically enter the field to share their remarkably well-adjusted personalities with the rest of humanity. It is more likely, based both on personal observation and a certain amount of evidence in the field, that being a clinical psychologist is more like being in Alcoholics Anonymous — you can help other alcoholics because you have credibility with them, because you are one yourself.

What I have found in writing about psychology, in particular when saying that clinical psychology isn't a science, is that when psychologists write to argue against my thesis, they are very likely to abandon any pretense of reason. Because their capacity to reason boarded the last bus out of town, which is just now a small dust spot on a very large horizon, they fail to grasp that by arguing emotionally for one viewpoint and refusing to evaluate any contrary evidence, they are only confirming my original point.

Case in point. A psychology professor replied to my article "Is Psychology a Science?" by arguing rather half-heartedly that it is, but in a fashion that undercut his own position. Read the original exchange here (click on "You're totally wrong").

In his response, this psychology professor's position consisted largely of ad hominem and ad verecundiam arguments, arguing against the person rather than the position, and arguing from authority respectively; both fatal logical errors.

But to get back to our topic. This was a covert narcissist, positioned in academia in such a fashion that he is permanently shielded from any challenge to his ideas (e.g. tenured), possessed little grasp of how science works, and showed little awareness of the kinds of arguments that are universally recognized as logical errors.

I pointed this out to him, and in his reply he described science as a "preference," saying several times "If you prefer to use scientific reasoning to argue then use the methods of science," as though science were a optional component in sorting out reality. Apparently a postmodernist as well as a narcissist.

In another, very similar correspondence, a psychology professor responded to the issue of whether psychology is a science by criticizing science. This was very clearly a narcissist, entirely unaware of how he sounded, and one who persisted in writing me long after I had abandoned the correspondence as pointless, and I finally had to blacklist him from my site.

But neither of these examples was a severe narcissist. Debilitating in both cases to be sure, but not incapacitating. On the other hand, having a razor-sharp intellect and a thorough grasp of scientific reasoning are not prerequisites for their positions. In fact, such qualifications might work against them.

Blind Fury

I've noticed something about women — when they take up something that men are known for, often as not they do it better (while getting paid half as much). But the meaning of "better" can depend on circumstances — if the thing men are doing is bad, when women do it, it's better ... meaning it's worse.

As it happens, most narcissists are men, about 75% overall. But women can be narcissists too, and for those who are, consistent with my theory, they put the male version to shame.

Some years ago I had an encounter with a female narcissist, before I even knew the term. And it is only by recently studying this condition that I made an association with that earlier time.

The events in this story sprang as much from my naïveté as anything else. At that time I didn't appreciate how dangerous and reckless narcissists are, or how I could become the victim of my own trusting nature. In the final analysis, just as with the physics illiterate, when this person first wrote me, I should have had the good sense not to reply.

Briefly (and I apologize to my regular readers for yet another reference to this story), a mother contacted me hoping I would mentor her son (many details in this section are fictionalized to protect the identities of the participants). I had lost interest in this activity so I politely declined.

But mom refused to take no for an answer. Against polite demurrers from me, she persisted in her requests for seven months, then brought her son to a place she knew I would be and forced a meeting. Her son was very bright, socially isolated for a reason I couldn't sort out, and I should have run from the room. Instead I accepted her son as a friend.

For the next year I acted as mentor for this boy, changing his perspective on himself and his substantial gifts. He was remarkably bright but very insecure for a reason I didn't understand at first. I encouraged him to see himself as an intelligent person, but this wasn't difficult — he was very talented, starved for any kind of encouragement, and his personal development took off.

I hadn't figured out mom's motivations yet, but I was soon to discover what they were. Her personal grasp of the world had the distinctly narcissistic property that everything was either true or false, and there was always a convenient unimpeachable authority to tell her which was which, e. g. she possessed a very shallow and fragile hold on reality. She had been told that her son was gifted, and it had come to her that she would eventually lose control of him as he passed her up in intellectual development. Mom's uniquely narcissistic solution to this "problem" was to insist that her son was mentally handicapped, something she persisted in saying against overwhelming contrary evidence.

As time passed, as her son came out of his mom-imposed shell, as he realized he had a rightful place among gifted children, the day of reckoning finally came. Increasingly frustrated at her son's accelerating personal development and my role in it, mom finally thought of a way to force an end to the threat I posed to her control — she began to invent imaginary crimes for me to be guilty of. Most of them were too poorly articulated to bother with, but when she claimed that a child sitting on the lap of an adult constituted molestation, then refused to discuss this belief, I knew I had to leave. Because she was a narcissist, possessed of no common sense or personal restraint, I realized she would say such things to anyone, anywhere, therefore my leaving might serve to minimize the harm she could do to her son. I offered a weak and false explanation to her son (that she and I had important philosophical differences).

I stayed in touch with her son by e-mail, hoping I could prevent his relapse into the clinical depression that had preceded my appearance on the scene, but mom realized what I was doing and arranged a civil court hearing in which, as I expected, she abandoned the original issue of e-mails and made a series of vile claims that might have impressed someone with an IQ below 70, but that had no effect on the seasoned judge who heard her recital. I pointed out that mom's claims were a fantasy, the judge agreed, but mom got her way, no more e-mails.

After the hearing, in conversations with a mutual acquaintance I discovered to my shock that this woman had made similar false accusations against someone else. I thought this would have been useful to know when mom was trying so desperately to get me to meet her son, and it would have come in handy during the hearing, but I didn't think it mattered any more, since the judge had ruled against her. As it turned out, I was wrong about that — six months later, mom arranged another civil court hearing and tried to hold me responsible for her son's return to clinical depression, a depression that resulted directly from her decision to exclude me. In her new claim she had the temerity to describe her very bright son as "developmentally delayed," which some of my readers may know is a euphemism for "retarded."

At that point I realized this wasn't going to stop. Unless I shut her down, mom might try to hold me responsible for each of her many dissatisfactions, possibly for years. So in a prepared statement I explained that mom's assessment of her son's mental abilities was at odds with reality, she had tried the vile-accusation tactic on someone else, and the entire sequence of events resulted from her seriously dysfunctional personality. This woman was served with my position in advance and had time to consider any rebuttal she cared to make, but I think she realized what would happen to her if she disputed any of it (I came prepared with detailed evidence), so at the hearing she silently accepted my position without comment, thereby turning my claims into stipulations (matters on which both sides agree).

At that point the judge had a clear picture of this woman, but in case any doubt lingered, mom ended the hearing by asking whether I could be punished even though I had done nothing wrong. Under the circumstances the judge exercised remarkable restraint and, saying "no," gaveled the proceedings to a close. This woman was a textbook narcissist — completely self-absorbed, unable to foresee the consequences of her own actions, predatory, truth-challenged, oblivious to how she looked and sounded to others, and absolutely incapable of accepting personal responsibility for anything.

As to mentoring as a pastime, I had naïvely assumed that, because I can encourage most bright kids to develop their gifts, it was a worthwhile activity. I had not seriously considered the possibility of such a dysfunctional parent, but now that I know they exist, I won't allow parents to arrange such meetings. The parents have too much control, they are often the real problem, and they sometimes don't understand themselves well enough to accept an excellent outcome. In the final analysis, they victimize their own children.

While reviewing this story as part of my narcissism study, I've come to realize that courtrooms are a playground for narcissists. They are typically accomplished liars, they have little regard for the consequences of lying, and (TV courtroom dramas to the contrary) courts don't normally punish liars. It turns out that jurists hear from narcissists of all stripes on a daily basis, and over time become adept at gleaning the wheat from the chaff.

But things don't always turn out this way. I recently read a story from New Mexico, similar in some respects to my story, one that ended differently. A woman named Colleen Nestler appeared before a judge and accused David Letterman (yes, that David Letterman) of sending her secret, coded signals over the airwaves. In a six-page letter she prepared for the court, Nestler demanded that Letterman stay at least three yards away from her and not "think of me, and release me from his mental harassment and hammering."

Pretty funny story, right? Clearly this is a severe narcissist or worse, living in a world of her own creation. But would a court give this woman any credence? Well, guess what, readers — the judge in this case issued a restraining order against Letterman based on Nestler's petition, ordering him to stay away from her and not think of her. Letterman's attorneys traveled to New Mexico and succeeded in quashing the order, while I thought about how my story could have turned out differently.

Conclusion

According to many mental health professionals, the biggest single mistake people make in dealing with narcissists is to underestimate how dangerous they are. A good percentage of prison inmates are narcissists whose impulses got out of control, and the only thing separating a typical clinical narcissist from iron bars is a fortuitous mixture of circumstances. Narcissists live in a perpetual state of barely suppressed rage, are frequently unbelievably reckless, and appear to be oblivious to the risk their behavior poses to themselves and to others.

I don't think anyone can doubt that the above examples of clinical narcissism are involuntary, on the ground that they are so destructive to the narcissist that no one would choose to engage in the behavior. In the Blind Fury accusation story, she very clearly wasn't thinking about the consequences of her actions. If she possessed the insight of a normal person, she would realize she had systematically fed her credibility like firewood into a bonfire of narcissistic rage, and the courts on which she had depended for her public rants will now see her coming.

As to the physics illiterate, so long as he persists in arguing instead of thinking, he simply won't be able to learn the topic, and his unwillingness to reëvaluate his own beliefs will cripple his intellectual development as long as it lasts. Which brings me to another point about narcissists — they tend to have a rather shallow grasp of most topics, because they can't bring themselves to sincerely ask questions, for fear of appearing stupid. This leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the thing most feared becomes a certainty.

This is all trivial to see from an adult perspective, but the point is narcissists don't have an adult perspective. They have the outlook and instincts of a six-year-old child, forever. It is this hard-wired intellectual and emotional limitation that motivates mental health professionals to almost universally offer this advice: the best way to deal with narcissists is to get away from them, as soon as possible, before they destroy you. That is a lesson I am still learning.