Narcissistic Personality Disorder (a novella, sorry)

[it]

glatt - by jewography laws I am guessing you are probably related to quite a few people around here, one way or another.

If you ever have a trip planned that includes staying in the north of Israel long enough (You could just make it condensed daily sessions - that's what I did), I can look up her contact information.

Originally Posted by lumberjim

They do have tests that will tell you if you're NPD. I took one. Jinx had me pretty convinced that I was AFU.... and maybe I am... but I don't have NPD. I hit a couple points on that list in the OP, but not enough to be diagnosed as damaged. And I'm actually a pretty nice person. I DO have empathy. Sometimes I don't have much Sympathy... but that's because people are assholes.

You mean online tests?

From those I've seen they don't test for narcissism the personality disorder, they test for narcissism the fictionalized trope.

The problem is that those are not the same thing. People with NPD can be narcissistic - it is a possible indication because it's a great strategy for gaining narcissistic supply - but they are just as likely to be covert narcissists, or even be neither but still have narcissistic injury, be incapable of seen themselves and act on narcissistic rage when something in life indirectly suggests the narcissistic injury could be true. On the other hand, you can also just be an arrogant asshole without having any of those.

[glatt]

Originally Posted by traceur

glatt - by jewography laws I am guessing you are probably related to quite a few people around here, one way or another.

If you ever have a trip planned that includes staying in the north of Israel long enough (You could just make it condensed daily sessions - that's what I did), I can look up her contact information.

Thanks! I don't foresee any trips to Israel soon. Not that I'm opposed to the idea, it's just not anything that I've ever seriously considered.

My handle, by the way, comes from an old nickname that's a play on my real name. It wasn't until years after I got this nickname that I learned that it's also a Jewish thing. I'm not Jewish.

[it]

Originally Posted by glatt

My handle, by the way, comes from an old nickname that's a play on my real name. It wasn't until years after I got this nickname that I learned that it's also a Jewish thing. I'm not Jewish.

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by traceur

You mean online tests?

From those I've seen they don't test for narcissism the personality disorder, they test for narcissism the fictionalized trope.

The problem is that those are not the same thing. People with NPD can be narcissistic - it is a possible indication because it's a great strategy for gaining narcissistic supply - but they are just as likely to be covert narcissists, or even be neither but still have narcissistic injury, be incapable of seen themselves and act on narcissistic rage when something in life indirectly suggests the narcissistic injury could be true. On the other hand, you can also just be an arrogant asshole without having any of those.

No, I don't mean online tests. I mean I took the MMPI 2.

I took an online IQ test once though, and I have an IQ of 142. That's pretty good right? And if I was a car, I would be a Ford Mustang. And I should live in Denver.

As for being an arrogant asshole.... Well.... Aren't these non clinical terms for NPD?

[it]

Originally Posted by lumberjim

As for being an arrogant asshole.... Well.... Aren't these non clinical terms for NPD?

Not really - the diagnosis expanded and drifted apart over time

In current psychology NPD is a very specific condition about what is causing various problems that can include arrogant assholeness among them. Imagine a Venn diagram with NPD and the other with traits from the narccisstic character archetype (or arrogant asshole for short) , neither circles engulf each other.


There are plenty of people in the NPD circle who aren't outwardly arrogant assholes, but still suffer from narcissistic injury and still go out of their way to protect their sense of identity from unfortunate implications that in the back of their minds reinforces that injury, just by using different - often more covert - strategies.
There are people within the cross section, Undertoad's boss sounds like he might be a good example of that. But this is a very specific strategy of building narcissistic supply - putting people down and trying to force people to fear or revere you - as a defense mechanism to protect the injury.
Then the are people who behave that way, but aren't using it for the same end, which is easy enough to tell - They can generally take criticism, they can be emphatic and caring beyond the question of whether they are liked by others, including viewing themselves negatively from the perspective of others when empathy includes that, capable of forming strong emotional bonds, etc.

Basically narcissism got demoted to one possible symptom of NPD, not the defining trait.