What is a narcissist?
It is trendy these days to label people you don’t like as a narcissist. So let’s have a practical look at what narcissism means.
The official definition of narcissism for the psychiatric profession is documented in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5-TR) published in March 2022 (www.narcopath.info) as:
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a personality disorder with a long-term pattern of abnormal behaviour characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success, or about their appearance. They often take advantage of the people around them. The behaviour typically begins by early adulthood, and occurs across a variety of social situations.
The narcissistic personality disorder is also aptly defined by Britannica (www.britannica.com) as:
Pathological self-absorption, first identified as a mental disorder by the British essayist and physician Havelock Ellis in 1898. Narcissism is characterized by an inflated self-image and addiction to fantasy, by an unusual coolness and composure shaken only when the narcissistic confidence is threatened, and by the tendency to take others for granted or to exploit them.
According to the magazine, Psychology Today (www.psychologytoday.com), moreover, comments on the role of the narcissist are given as:
Narcissists have a prominent place in the popular imagination, and the label “narcissist” is widely deployed to refer to people who appear too full of themselves. The trait is normally distributed in the population, with most people scoring near the middle, and a few at either extreme.
The main characteristics of the disorder, consequently, can be summarised as grandiosity, pomposity, power-fantasy, superiority, self-admiration, self-entitlement, envy, exploitation of others and a singular lack of empathy for others.
We could conclude, hence, that the mass murderer who seeks to rid the planet of supposedly inappropriate people, dictatorial kings and tyrant rulers who get drunk on their own power can all be classified as a narcissist. Perhaps you can yourself name some people from recent or ancient history who fall into this category?
What is the effect of narcissism?
All children naturally need to be self-absorbed and to demand attention in order to survive but, if the individual continues this tendency well into adulthood, then he/she will have been traumatised in some way on his/her journey into maturity.
Trauma will thus have bitten in hard for the narcissist when his/her psychological mindset remained fixated in the unhappy past. It will almost certainly be the case that the narcissist will have been transfixed at a given point in childhood whereby he/she felt truly unloved. The narcissist will have, hence, unconsciously acquired a desperate need for attention together with an assurance of an indisputable proof of the love which evaded him/her in formative years.
Now, in adult life, the narcissist will have little or no conscious awareness of his/her character traits which will wreak havoc on those in his/her orbit. The narcissist will essentially be someone who has little or no awareness of the fact that his/her behaviour is immature, is hallmarked by self-obsession and is typified by a need for absolute control over others.
In clinical practice, however, the practitioner will mostly meet the client who has been subjected to the machinations of the narcissist. The client thus will spend much time in understanding why he/she has become the butt of someone else’s unmanageable psychological disorder. Often the narcissist will have actually been too damaged to be readily retrieved from his/her hapless state with conventional psychotherapy – although the task will be not impossible with the client’s commitment to investigative therapy.
Derivation of the term
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a handsome youth who rejected Eros and thereby incurred the wrath of the ancient gods. The unhappy Narcissus consoled himself by admiring his own reflection in water as a foil to his disappointment in love.
Narcissus was also a government official who exercised great influence over the ancient Roman emperor Claudius I. Narcissus used his secretarial position as a close confidant of the emperor in order to exert undue influence over state affairs and, in the process, to amass enormous wealth even though his power was eventually eroded.
Help is at hand
If you have a feeling of uncertainty about your place in the world or have been the victim of someone with an intolerably inflated sense of self-importance, then please visit the “Find a Practitioner” page on the JMHT website (www.jmhypnotraining.co.uk) in order to resolve your dilemma.
Jacquelyne Morison
Jacquelyne Morison Hypnotherapy Training (www.jmhypnotraining.co.uk)