What is Narcissism?

Narcissistic Personality Disorder


We all know that person who is self-absorbed and hogs attention all the time. Usually, we roll our eyes and ignore those people, or gently poke fun at them. However, between a little everyday narcissism and egocentrism, and true narcissistic disorder, there is a deadly difference.


Narcissism is a genuine disorder of the Cluster B personality disorders class as defined in the DSM-IV and DSM-5. Generally, it is a disease in which the person has delusions of grandeur, an inflated self-esteem and a hunger for maintaining an illusion of perfectness despite the harm it causes to the ones they love. Narcissists have only one person in mind when it comes to respect and admiration: themselves. Some psychologists have tried defining narcissism in different subtypes. Psychologist Theodore Millon classified narcissism as unprincipaled, amorous, compensatory, and elitist. An unprincipaled narcissist is a cheat, with antisocial tendencies. An amorous narcissist is seductive and histrionic. A compensatory narcissist creates illusions of grandeur in order to avoid his/her own feelings of worthlessness and shame. The elitist narcissist builds a mental empire based on perceived grandeur and feeds off of other people's praise.

Narcissism can be treated with psychotherapy, but those with this disease very rarely seek help. After all, to them, the fault lies with everybody else. The narcissist will be defensive to a fault, no matter who tries to help them out.

There is no discrimination when it comes to narcissism. It can affect anybody. Parents, children, spouses...... It can be a disease from birth, it can be a disease that sprang from poor overindulgent upbringing, or it is a result of a traumatizing childhood. Sometimes, children of narcissistic parents become narcissists themselves, but most often than not, they become the victims of other narcissists over the course of their life. The results of narcissistic relationships are disastrous and all the more deadly because it is an invisible disease. I will touch more on those results in future posts.

Narcissists use roughly the same tactics on their victims across the board. The worse the narcissism, the worse and more cruel are the tactics. I will touch on specific tactics used by significant others and parents in particular in future posts. The one thing to know is this: no matter the form of the narcissism, the ones who suffered through it are victims and deserve a compassionate shoulder to lean on. Narcissists rely on the unseen effects of their actions to deny to the world anything is wrong. Those of us who know what happened, are not believed as a result, because narcissists have created a web of lies, an illusion of perfectness that is hard to shatter to anyone not part of the family. Narcissists love to create dissent, it fuels their ability to lie and pretend they are normal, social people.

I will touch on specific tactics, and the repercussions of narcissism in my next post.