Discussion with peers about narcissism

Damon LaBarbera writes:
There is a pop phenomenon on the net—preoccupied with the notion of narcissism. Everybody is a narcissist, just like every dis-likable or acting out male years ago was a sociopath or years before that was a latent homosexual and every troublesome woman a borderline. What hath Christopher Lasch wrought... Clients are coming in with a new vocabulary associated with narcissism. It's a snake oil vocabulary that tends to mislead and with the clients I have dealt with, is unhelpful.

DL




Dr. Auerbach writes: 

I always have mixed feelings, go figure, about touting my credentials in the area of narcissism.  My early publications, albeit now a long time ago, were in this area, however, so I suppose I qualify as an expert.  I have no idea whether Meghan Markle even remotely has a narcissistic disturbance, although I wondered this about Stewart Cook, given the vehemence and the lack of empirical grounding of his conclusions about Ms. Markle.  Mind you, I know nothing really about either of these persons so definitely would not want to diagnose either of them, but I would rather suspect that the prevalence of narcissism among actors and politicians is rather higher than in the general population.  Christopher Lasch’s 1979 book was a well-reasoned account of narcissism in American culture, and I believe most of his conclusions to be spot on.  FaceBook, for example, where everyone gets to see about every minute detail of your life, is a perfect example of this, as is the surfeit of  reality TV shows.  Actually, one such show would be a surfeit, but I digress.  Still, with the exception of having to be exposed on a nightly basis to the grandiose, self-aggrandizing, devaluing rants of a political figure who is remarkable deficient in empathy and who shows no capacity for shame, none of these being traits that one would ever connect to narcissism, I tend to avoid applying the diagnosis to public figures because there is, oh, an ethical principle that says we should not do that.  This said, for a very good, scholarly book on how narcissists affect us in daily life, I would recommend Daniel Shaw’s Traumatic Narcissism.  Full disclosure alert here, not that it has anything to do with my narcissism:  I am cited in the book.  However, this citation managed not to ruin a very insightful work on the social dynamics of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.  The stuff that is on the web about these topics can be safely ignored, however.

Dr. Schulz writes:
Out of the forest of plaques and tangles in my Alzheimerish brain came the title "The Good Soldier Schweik", the name of the book I couldn't recall.  As for The Case of Sgt Grishka, I think Arnold Zweig was the author, if not him Stefan Zweig,  Gene

Dr. Schulz also notes

For some insights into the self-importance of Prussian military I liked The Case of Sergeant Grishka  (not sure of the spelling),  Gunter Grass'  "Dog Years", and one other novel about a bumbllng incompetent aide who continually gets his officers into trouble, which was given as an example of a self-survival characteristic of oppressed Czech nationals:  passive aggression. Sorry I can't recall the title.  And of course, the well known Captain from Koepeneck which was made into a movie. My grandfather brought his family over to the US so his sons (one was my father) wouldn't have to serve in the Kaiser's army.  Part of our family lore is a relative who during the first World War declined the Iron Cross second class because the cook's dog was awarded the Iron Cross first class.

During my 2 years as a draftee in the US Army in Frankfurt we had a somewhat different mind-set, as we mockingly "stood nervously at parade rest" waiting for the inspectors to show up when they were still many kilometers away. And our slogan was: "The incompetent ordering the unwilling to do the unnecessary."  


Dr. Auerbach responds:

So narcissism is a very complex thing, although its core is actually self-absorption, not grandiosity, and it has many variants—e.g., the malignant kind that we see on TV newscasts most nights and the “benign” kind found in most more normal politicians (e.g., JFK, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton).  Unlike malignant narcissists, who want to lord their power over you or exploit you, and whose actions often contain a great deal of psychopathy, benign narcissists mainly want to be loved, and some of them therefore have excellent empathy, provided that you of course love them in return.  Also, benign narcissists can still wreak a great deal of havoc in the world through their seductiveness.  If you don’t think so, just ask Monica Lewinsky, who has managed to survive an encounter with such a figure.  Another important distinction, known in the literature since the 1970s and 1980s, but with no changes in the DSM, is the distinction between grandiose narcissists and vulnerable or self-effacing narcissists, the kind whose claim to grandiosity rests on the paradox of their being the most inadequate or worthless persons possible.  I hope that these ideas are clarifying.  

I have no idea whether Meghan Markle is a narcissist of any kind, but I really wonder about Stewart Cook, whoever he might be, for claiming, on the basis of no evidence and apparently minimal clinical credentialing, that a particular public figure, in this case Ms. Markle, is a clinical narcissist.