Annette M's Library tagged narcissism →  View Popular

Simpson was a legend in America. He had overcome an impoverished and sickly childhood to become one of America's sporting heroes. His prowess on the field was legendary. Then he began a successful career in Hollywood, often playing a loveable good guy.

n civil cases the burden of proof is less stringent and Simpson was held liable for the deaths and hit for $33m. That bankrupted him for life.

But the narcissist is ego-syntonic: he is proud and happy of who he is. The anxious patient is distressed and is looking for help and a way out of his or her predicament. Hence the differential diagnosis.

-- Because of the influence of third-party payers (insurance companies), there has been a strong trend towards short-term therapy that concentrates on ameliorating acute troubles, such as depression, rather than delving into underlying chronic problems. Narcissists are very reluctant to open up and trust, so it's possible that their NPD is not even recognized by therapists in short-term treatment. Purely anecdotal evidence from correspondents and from observations of people I know indicates that selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors, such as Prozac, aggravate narcissists' grandiosity and lack of social inhibition. It has also been suggested that self-help literature about bolstering self-esteem and getting what you want out of life or that encourages the feeling of victimization has aggravating effects on NPD thinking and behavior.

-- Most clinical writers seem unaware that narcissists' self-reports are unreliable. This is troubling, considering that lying is the most common complaint about narcissists and that, in many instances, defects of empathy lead narcissists to wildly inaccurate misinterpretations of other people's speech and actions, so that they may believe that they are liked and respected despite a history of callous and exploitative personal interactions.

If NPD is caused by infantile damage and consequent developmental short-circuits, it probably represents an irremediable condition. On the other hand, if narcissism is a behavior pattern that's learned, then there is some hope, however tenuous, that it's a behavior pattern that can be unlearned

> and argued that love and sex are a reunion of the self with its lost half. Freud considered her article on anal eroticism from 1916 one of the best things she wrote. Andreas-Salomé associated anal sexuality with genitality and argued that "it is characteristic for animals that anal and genital orientations go together completely," and continued that "it is no accident that the genital apparatus remains so closely connected to the anus (and in woman is merely rented from it)."

In Rome she met Paul Rée, a gambler and moral philosopher, who became her companion. They lived in a menage a trois for five years. It is possible that Andreas-Salomé remained a virgin until the mid-1890s.

Christopher Lasch, Heinz Kohut, Alice Miller, and many other recent authors have criticized contemporary culture for a ubiquitous narcissistic disturbance -- an overconcern with the projection of attractive, invulnerable, and ‘superior’ images or masks -- which increasingly forces us into what Lasch characterizes as a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all.’

‘transcendent value experience’

Maccoby clearly explains the difference between narcissistic personality disorder and nonpathological narcissism by drawing our attention to the standard DSM and textbook definitions of the disorder. The formerare often gratuitously mean-spirited, are clearly dismissive of others' personalities or products, are constantly on the lookout for whatever will confirm their superiority, and are empowered when others withdraw in dismay. In contrast, Freud described true narcissism as a personality configuration in which the only new ideas that such an individual can accept are those that have appeared de novoin his or her mind.