Many people misuse the words Narcissism and NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder). The Narcissism concept covers a spectrum of presentations, some of them normal, some very concerning. Here we are going to briefly look at the original myth that the name is derived from, look at four position on the Narcissism Spectrum, take a peek into the mind of the Narcissist, and debunk Narcissistic Psychopath.

Narcissus’s Origin Story

Narcissus is a figure from Greek Mythology. He was a a hunger from Thespiae in Boeotia, known in our modern day as Karaburun. He was well regarded as beautiful and would turn heads as he passed. This power over others was certainly noted by Narcissus. Narcissus rejected all suitors who wished to marry him.

One day, Narcissus was hunting and passed a river. Thirsty, he bent to drink from a still part of the stream, noticing his reflection and finally falling in love – with himself. Some versions of the myth have Narcissus die of thirst as he cannot disturb his own image, nor can he be torn away from it, another has him beat his own chest purple to represent his emotional agony, other’s gloss over what happens next.

This overly powerful self interest is at the heart of how Narcissus inspired the naming of a mental disorder where the person appears to have an overly inflated sense of themselves, prioritising their own needs over anyone else’s.

Understanding The Narcissism Spectrum

There are four layers to the Narcissism Spectrum.

• Situational Narcissism
  • Exaggerated self promotion in limited reasonable situations
• Narcissistic Traits
  • Often self promoting, often serving self first, may occasional leave others out or lead to accidental minor harm
  • Also reasonably considerate of others
• Narcissism
  • Has a core of selfishness that leads to minor harm of others
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder
  • Pathologically self interested and very harmful to others

Situational Narcissism

We’ve all had that time when we are trying to do a bit of self promotion, and perhaps you exaggerate your ability to do something. Perhaps you were shameless in the way you presented yourself on a first date, or in a job interview. This self promotion is effectively Situational Narcissism and is considered to not be problematic.

In job interviews, this is expected – that you will exaggerate your ability, but not outright lie about it. If you do tell the pedantic truth about how good you are, or avoid bragging, you will seem inadequate compared to other’s, who did exaggerate. Similarly, if you are sell yourself in courtship, you often do not get a second date.

This situational self serving, self promoting, exaggerated confidence in yourself is perfectly fine.

When you do this, if it is an anomaly to how you would normally relay your ability to others, then this is not an indicator of Narcissism.

The vast majority of humans will have times where self promotion is essential for reasonable progress, and so long as upselling yourself is honest in its exaggeration, this is not a concerning behaviour.

Narcissistic Traits

A person can have a few Narcissistic Traits and not quite fit into either Narcissisms or Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). This person frequently is self interested, but isn’t predominantly so – that is, often selfish, but not harmful.

• This person is self interested above others, but not dangerously so
• They may be thoughtless about others getting less, and not care so much about minor injustice, but will care if someone is harmed
• Believes they have greater worth than many other people
• This person is often arrogant about their abilities
  • Being quietly or dispassionately accurate about your abilities is not arrogance
• This person will often exaggerate their ability and not be able to meet their claims of ability
• Is reluctant to admit they are wrong, but will do so with some coaxing
  • This may be a side effect of often actually being correct, or often not being taken seriously when they do have the correct answer

This is not “Narcissism” that psychologists often refer to a concerning. This person just defaults to selfish and self serving rather than the more communal and conscientious.

Narcissism

People often mix up Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Narcissism is considered a personality trait, which may now seems confusing considering the prior “Narcissistic Traits” category. Unfortunately, the English Language is confusing in how people use it, and more confusing when you look at how specialists use it differently to what you would expect. Someone with Narcissistic Traits will occasionally or semi frequently exhibit a few traits listed above, but that isn’t a core nature trait.

Narcissism has at least a core persona trait of self interest that is frequently damaging to others. The Narcissistic person either cannot change their harmful behaviours, or doesn’t see why they should, so won’t (which is effectively the same thing, but feels different).

The Narcissistic person does not meet the criteria for NPD, and while they are not as harmful as someone who does qualify for NPD, they certainly are not harmless. This person is more callous in their disregard for the incidental harm they do to others than you will find in people who exhibit Narcissistic Traits, but neither does it seem to be their goal to harm or hold power over others.

Another way to put it, Narcissists don’t have a goal to hurt others, they just don’t really care if others get hurt in their self serving behaviours; while NPD often has a goal to hurt others.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

NPD is a diagnosis given to people who meet the specific diagnostic criteria within the DSM 5 TR for NPD. The ICD 11 does not list NPD, but does have a listing for DPD (Dissocial Personality Disorder). The ICD diagnostic criteria for DPD are quite a bit different to NPD.

NPD is an order of magnitude greater / worse than Narcissism. While you may suspect that someone you know is NPD or perhaps that you are, there is a marked distinction between indifference to how others may be affected by self interested versus enjoying the feeling of how others are negatively affected by the self serving actions.

It is important to wonder “what is a Personality Disorder?” A Personality Disorder refers to a deeply ingrained pattern of behaviour of a specific kind that deviates significantly from generally acceptable behaviour. This fits for NPD, but other than noting that someone’s behaviour is not acceptable by the mainstream, it doesn’t inherently mean anything useful. I have some strong opinions about that, that I’ll cover elsewhere. For now, just see NPD as a diagnostic thing that tells us some interesting things about those who meet the criteria and ignore the rest of the PD categories.

NPD Diagnostic Criteria

The diagnostic criteria for NPD in the DSM 5 TR (text revision) are:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. Believes that s/he is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Has a sense of entitlement (e.g., unreasonable expectations of especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations).
6. Is interpersonally exploitative (i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends).
7. Lacks empathy; is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.

It is not possible to have five of these criteria and continue to be a nice person. That doesn’t mean the person won’t do the occasional nice thing, but that thing will be undermined by a self serving agenda.

This leads us to the Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene problem.

The Selfish Gene Problem

Technically speaking, many NPD people seek to gain power and dominate, which often includes creating children, and so their particular NPD selfish gene is passed on. This is not the Selfish Gene that Richard Dawkins wrote about.

Richard Dawkins, an ethologist, published the book “The Selfish Gene” in 1976, which postulated that the closer two people are genetically related to each other, the more it makes sense for them to be cooperative as this promotes their continuation. This was a new take, at the time, on evolution, from a genetic perspective. Unfortunately, this prompted people to see all actions as selfish and for some, effectively killed the notion of altruism.

Altruism was a term created by French philosopher Auguste Comte in the mid 1800s (Lit. “for others”, Latin roots). The idea of altruism is that an altruistic person will do something for others without regard to oneself, or more precisely, the needs of others may outweigh your self interest.

Dawkins’ argument about evolution benefitting the selfish gene has shown a way to reengineer the perception of altruism as being selfish for the promotion of your close relations – redefining altruism as selfish. Richard Dawkins stated “We are survival machines – robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes” (1976).

Both the extreme of altruism and of selfishness are errors. As with most things, balance is the important part. Extreme altruism leads to early death as your own needs go unmet, which ultimately means you can do less good for others and do little good for yourself. Extreme selfishness destroys the society that nurtures you as your actions benefit yourself without regard to the benefit of others, leading to harm and damage to that society (at many scales), leading to the harm to yourself.

In balance, you see to your own needs and to others needs seeking the path of least harm, where you will occasionally and briefly take a hit for the good of others, but seek to address the situation before it leads to great harm or long term harm to yourself.

Abusive people will often seek to redefine the term altruism or common good as a corruption to justify their own self serving nature. Most people are not self serving the majority of the time, although most people will do a minor cheat if they think they can get away with it. These aren’t the same thing. Most people act for the common good most of the time, and trying to define that as self serving plays into the abuser narrative.

Inside the Mind of NPD

Why this is Not Actually Possible

There are two reasons why it is hard to understand the Mind of NPD. Firstly, studying NPD is complicated, and secondly because the motivations of NPD are so alien to most people that it doesn’t really make sense.

Studying NPD is hard. This is due to the nature of NPD. People who fit the criteria often do not seek help, do not seek to be understood and do not participate in experiments and examination. The few who are involved in experiments are either prisoners, making them a subgroup of NPD as most NPD don’t get punished, or a fringe group of NPD who have some interest in being studied (attention seeking or soft NPD who want to help society). There is a good argument that soft NPD isn’t real NPD, since if you want to help society understand NPD, then you aren’t really NPD, as altruism isn’t part of the NPD type, so are more likely just Narcissistic rather than NPD. Of those rare NPDs who do participate in experiments and examination, most directly lie (a common feature of NPD), distort the story (another common feature) or indirectly lie (because they don’t know why they do what they do). Thus, learning directly from NPD volunteers or NPD Prisoners isn’t really possible to inform us about NPD.

Even if we could study NPD people, understanding the mind of NPD is very hard. NPD is such an extreme divergence from most neuro types that it is hard to understand it. This brings us to the philosophical idea of the Theory of Mind, where Thomas Nagel argues that you cannot know what it is like to be bat. You may understand the basics of echolocation, but you don’t know what it is like. Further, even if you learn to echolocate (it can be learned by humans), you only know what it is like to echolocate for yourself, not as a bat. Here is another way to get this problem – what does pear taste like? Try to explain what it tastes like to someone as if they have never tasted a pear. You know what it tastes like to you, but you don’t know what it tastes like to them, and you can’t explain what it taste like to you to them in a way that makes any sense to them. Trying to understand NPD is like trying to understand a bat.

If you are not an NPD person, you can’t know what it is like to be NPD. That means you can’t really know why they do what they do, because you wouldn’t do that.

The Closest we can Get

As hard as it is to truly know and get inside the mind of NPD, we are going to try to give you a bit of an insight. This model that I’ve developed helps explain many NPD and abusive people, but it isn’t perfect and relies on speculation, analogy and some story telling. Keep in mind the wise words of George:

“Essentially, all models are wrong,

but some are useful…”

George Box

The Mind of the NPD is mostly a deeply dissatisfied individual trying to feel good. That dissatisfaction is in themselves, and it cannot be sated. The attempt to feel good is, by definition, incredibly harmful (you can’t tick 5 of the 9 diagnostic criteria and be a good person that doesn’t harm others). An interesting thought about NPD is that they are permanently stuck in the crisis survival mode subtype where they will do whatever they need to in order to survive, and thus the needs of other’s have been reduced to a nuisance rather than a real consideration.

Reactive and Calculator NPD

I differentiate between two cohorts of NPD, the Reactives and the Calculators.

Many NPD people struggle to think, plan and create long term strategies. I refer to these as Reactives. They don’t really have a long term plan – certainly not one that they actually work on or often even recall. They have vague wants, and will occasional spout an inspiration. Other’s often mistake these inspirations or stated ambitions as long term plans, rather than a current whim. These others then carry out that whim (mistaken as a plan), making it a reality as if that were the plan (which it wasn’t). Reactives, without lots of others putting in effort, are terrible at making things happen. Reactives underplay who else is doing the work, so that you may think you are just helping them (the NPD), not realising you are actually just one of many people making their whim a reality, with almost no input from the Reactive. Reactives will then take all of the credit for the thing. After all, it was their plan (now that it is real).

The Reactive is not only bad at planning, they are bad at remembering the past. When challenged on a thing, they will say whatever gets them out of perceived trouble now with no regard to evidence, accuracy, or a stable story. This is why their stories often change each time. They thrive on your uncertainty of what is real and hijack your desire to make everything okay.

The other cohort of NPD are the Calculators. They do have a plan, and they do remember and keep track. They often are competent at many things, but not all that they claim to. They can be very scary.

NPD Abuse Strategies: The D’s and F’s

Reactives are very good at taking advantage of any situation that they fall into. They instinctively know how to minimise the harm to themselves (Apple founder Steve Jobs was said to have a “reality distortion field“) and gain the most from the situation. Their general modus operandi is to Dismiss awkward evidence, Devalue other’s expertise, Deflect the focus from them (to someone else via real or imagined faults), Denigrate opponents, Distract from what actually happened, Disadvantage anyone else who might gain and then Fleece Free goods, Favours, Future benefits and or Funds.

Calculators are also excellent at the above, but they often also come into these situations with a plan. Reactives generally can’t make a plan, even with warning, so they solely rely on the above strategy. Calculators are harder to catch in lies, because they are more consistent, more meticulous, more logical and smart enough to consistently justify their errors as just a mistake.

To undo the Reactive’s distortions, generally you just need to write things down as they happen and compare their new statements for this new incident with what you wrote in the past – while at the same time disabling your Presumption of Good and Principle of Charity by taking the Rose Tinted Glasses off (more on this). The Calculator won’t be caught this easily. Even so, there is a distortion in them that can be spotted.

Hijacking your Good Nature

Even when an NPD person talks about the wrongs they did to someone else when they are bragging about how powerful they are, they won’t see that what they did was wrong. Yet they can tell that it is wrong when those some things happen to them – they have a blind spot where it comes to responsibility.

If a person cannot acknowledge what they did, they cannot change, because they cannot learn.

Learning to be better requires understanding about what you did that was not good, recognising how that affects others, and then finding a better strategy to do better with better outcomes. As the NPD person can’t acknowledge their faulty actions or the consequence it has to others, they cannot learn to change that behaviour. Even so, they suppress those behaviours when they first meet you, so that they can bait you in.

The Notpology

NPDs often implement the notpology

– seeming to apologise, but never saying for what, never acknowledging what they did, and never changing their actions

– they just spend a few weeks trying not to get caught

Sorry is a complex concept, from the root word for “sore”. You are sore, and I am sore-y about that. We often use “sorry” as part of an apology. An apology may include:

• Empathy for your pain
• Validation for your pain
• Recognition of my part in your pain
• Some level of action to recompense you for the pain that I contributed to
• An effort to avoid that mistake in the future

Without an ability to recognise their part in your hurt, nor the ability to feel it mirrored in themselves, the NPD person is left with only stating that they have become aware that you are in pain.

The Notpology

“I’m sorry that you are in pain”, or more often “I see that you are hurt”

Noted absence of responsibility or offer to help

FIGJAM Persona, aka Never Wrong

NPDs hide behind a character, a false persona. I call this the FIGJAM character.

NPD Reactives know they are a monster, and they know that they aren’t very intelligent or capable. While they may have a specific skill or two that they excel in, they don’t want you know that is all that there is of them. To hide their monstrous side and their lack of general ability, they will construct a character – FIGJAM. FIGJAM is an acronym credited to Kevin Bloody Wilson, meaning “F*ck I’m Good, Just Ask Me”.

Take a moment to think of the people whose very persona loudly screams this.

The Calculator also needs to hide their true nature (the monster). Even if they are actually quite capable at many things, they don’t want you to know what they aren’t good at, so they’ll conceal their deficits too. They too will try to convince you that they are the Gods’ Gift to Earth. Their FIGJAM persona is a bit more subtle, but just as much a part of the character.

Part of the FIGJAM persona is to know everything and never be wrong. Even when you show them evidence that what they said was wrong, they’ll either say they never said that, downplay how wrong they were, or claim the evidence is bogus. There are some

Both will modify their FIGJAM to meet the current situation, the Calculator will do so a bit better, the Reactive more crudely. Most people do this to a lesser extent, modifying their behaviours to suit the situation, but most people are trying to be mostly their genuine self. The NPD is just modifying their fake character for maximum survival and personal gain.

It is important to distinguish between the Book from the Cover, or the Actor from the Character. The contents are what is important here, not the cover or the character they are acting. The FIGJAM persona is captivating, charming, competent, and confident … but it is a charade. We can fall in love with the character / cover, but hate the contents.

I frequently hear victims tell me “but I love them“.

No you don’t.

You love the character they pretended to be when they met you.

That person isn’t real, it is a character.

Now you’ve met the actor who plays that character, and you hate them.

You know the actor based on their actions – not the hollow, distorted claims of their character.

(Actions speak louder than words, the actions are the actor, the words are the character)

NPD Misery, gamifying their solution

NPDs are miserable creatures. They only pretend to be happy and wonderful.

They know that they are monsters, inherently unlovable, and generally incompetent. They are lonely, since no one can know them, because to know them is to see the monsters, and upon seeing the monster, they know you have to destroy the monster – it’s the rules. Nothing you can say will convince them that this is not true. Once they know that you know, or suspect that you know, they must destroy you, so you don’t destroy them. That’s the way it has to be (for them).

From the NPD perspective, destroying them can include disrupting their plans, corrupting their followers, or declaring truths to their lies.

This is why the NPD creates the FIGJAM. They hide their true self and give you FIGJAM so that you can think that they are wonderful. This false character is what gave them the name Narcissism, reflecting on the self-absorbed character from the Greek Myth, who thought he was so darn wonderful and perfect. While that does reflect the FIGJAM character, it is the exact opposite of who they truly are.

NPDs seek to make themselves feel better. There are three major strategies they have for this.

1. Love / Awe : The more people they can convince that FIGJAM is true, the better. They do this by counting up how many people claim to love them, or owe them, or will perform service for them, or are in awe of their pretended qualities.
2. Power : This is more about finances, assets, hierarchical position, fame, dominating another and anything else they need for society to say “that person is powerful”.
3. Fear / Anger / Pain : There are two parts to this, both to do with the first two listed.
   • Love testing: The people who profess love and admiration for the NPD need to be tested. How much do they truly love or admire the NPD? What if the NPD does this hurtful thing, will they still profess love for the NPD? Can the NPD make them do this thing that they said they’d never do, proving that the victim loves the NPD more than themselves?
   • Dominating the enemy: The people who are not falling for their FIGJAM must be put in their place, and so long as they can be contained and hurt, the NPD feels powerful.

Often the NPD wants to directly see the outcome of their actions. They get the most satisfaction seeing the fawning, fear or financial windfall. The NPD also gains satisfaction in imagining the reaction to an act when they can’t see the outcome, just not as much as seeing it in real life.

To gamify it a bit, those feelings become Control Points for the NPD. They might get 1 point for “happy with them”, 3 points for “love/awe for them”, 7 points for “angry at them” and 10 points for “scared of them”. The more points they get, the better they feel (power). However, there is another component they seek called “safety”. The more people who are in awe of them, willing to act on their behalf to fix things or make them look good is protective for when those who are angry or scared of them start acting against them – they protect against the village members who are looking for pitch forks and lit torches to hunt the monster. When the NPD has gone too far, they don’t have enough protection in the group and have to move on. Optimally, the NPD wants to have most people mostly happy with them and thus protective, with some elements of harm to them to feel extra good, and this turns bad if they overdo the hurting people, or if someone starts spreading the information that they are NPD.

Testing for Toxic

Most civil people assume the best intentions of others, and that the other people are thinking mostly about things in a similar way to oneself. This works well enough in most cases, as most people are good, and most people have the standard social expectations of civil interactions. This falls down badly when dealing with someone who is using a very different system for deciding their actions, mostly toxic, abusive, self centred individuals which certainly includes the latter half of the narcissistic spectrum.

Take a look at our Testing for Toxic page, where we outline:

• The “No” Test
• Reflecting on Your Limits
• Trapped Test
• Comfort Test
• Traffic Light System

Narcissistic Psychopath isn’t a thing

The definition of Psychopathy has changed a bit over the decades and it has also been somewhat warped by television. Psychopathy has been folded into the DSM as part of AntiSocial Personality Disorder – ASPD.

In a nutshell, a Psychopathic Person is someone who cannot intuitively pick up what someone else is feeling (Affective Empathy). The other person is an empathic blank slate, a void of emotion. Thus Psychopathic Person cannot pick up if the other person is feeling happy, sad, love, awe, joy, disgust, anger or fear etc. Other people are no different to toys, robots, furniture or computer game characters (NPCs – Non Player Characters). The Psychopath can feel their own emotional responses to things, just not that of others. The Psychopath can learn to work out what you are feeling by observation of clear signals and working out the logic of the situation (Cognitive Empathy), but it doesn’t have the same impact as Affective Empathy.

It is important not to mistake someone with “reduced empathy” as Psychopathic. Someone with reduced [affective] empathy can still detect the feelings of others, they just may not do so as quickly, or they may not care as much about someone else’s feelings compared to someone with average levels of affective empathy. Sociopath describes someone who has learned to disregard the feelings of others, often in order to survive and or elevate in the corporate hierarchy. The Sociopath has learned to diminish their own awareness of someone else’s feelings. A Sociopath can go all the way to effectively being Psychopathic, but often doesn’t, and they can learn to come back to moderately full empathy and care.

In contrast, the emotions of others are of core importance to the Narcissist. They need to know that you love them, are in awe of them, and have bought into the FIGJAM persona. They need to know that you are hurt, angry or scared. Be warned – the ability to detect what you are feeling is not the same as caring about the effect it has on you. Narcissists don’t care that you are hurt or happy, they only care how you feel about them, or what you feel in response to what they are doing. Generally, the Narcissist has a keen ability to detect your mood, often pre-empting your choices because of their ability to detect your feelings. The feelings you have toward the NPD informs them about their control over you.

As the Psychopath can’t directly detect your feelings, and not only the Narcissist can, but has to – it is a contradiction in terms to call someone a Narcissistic Psychopath. You can’t both sense how people feel and have no ability to sense what they feel. The Narcissistic Psychopath is just a jumble of psychobabble by media to make two scary things seems combined into something worse.