Narcissism: Furious Debate (Interview, The Independent, UK)

I've been approached by Charlotte Crips, a journalist in independent media, which is the mother company of the Independent Daily in the United Kingdom, and she wanted to discuss a few issues in narcissism. I found the interview intellectually stimulating and interesting and I would like to share it with you. The first question she asked me is narcissism something unavoidable if you have it or can it be prevented in some way if you know that you have a family history of it? My response pathological narcissism is not like peanut allergy. [laughter] It [snorts] cannot be avoided. It cannot be prevented. It is a severe post-traumatic developmental or pervasive personality disorder and it can be traced back to early childhood and to the narcissist's formative years. We have no record or study that substantiate the existence of a family history of pathological narcissism. What can cause narcissism? Ask Charlotte. Is there a trigger that can switch if you have a genetic predisposition to it and can stay latent in other people? Well, I said narcissism is a cluster of traits and like like all psychological traits, it is by definition hereditary. Health healthy narcissism is an integral part of personal growth and maturation. Healthy narcissism is at the core of self-esteem, a stable sense of self-worth, and even social functioning, also known as object relations. Environmental factors may mutate healthy narcissism into the pathological or even the malignant kind. It is very likely that certain people have a genetic predisposition to develop pathological narcissism when they are exposed to a dysfunctional environment, subjected to a specific life history and certain adverse childhood experiences. However, at this stage, we have no body of rigorous serious studies in any field to support this claim of a genetic predisposition. The studies that do exist are deeply flawed in both methodology and interpretation. They suffer from numerous shortcomings. For example, tiny non-representative or self- selecting samples. The authors of such studies typically confuse subclinical narcissism, dark personalities, with a disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, or with having a narcissistic style. These authors conflate the traits of narcissism with the mutations of these traits, the pathology. And most of the subjects studied suffer from co-orbidities, co-occurrences of multiple mental health issues and dysfunctional behaviors such as substance use. The samples in these studies are never unadulterated, never pure. they are contaminated with the symptoms of other unrelated mental health issues. Most of the studies about 80% of them cannot be replicated and this is known as the replication crisis. There's also no agreed upon definition of narcissistic personality disorder. So there is no way to measure and compare it as a clinical entity unlike pinatology for example. An over reliance on self-reporting is very common in all these studies. But the problem is that narcissists are known to be less than truthful for various psychological reasons. And so the self-reporting of narcissists is suspect. And there's the use of wrong psychological diagnostic tests, NPI, instead of PNI, for example. Confusing or ignoring important variants of pathological narcissism such as covert, vulnerable, shy or fragile narcissism, and the list goes on. There is a lot of hubris in the field and a desperate attempt by psychologists to pose as a practitioners of some kind of exact science. But what they don't realize is that the use of statistics does not a science make. On the other hand, we have a record of 130 years, thousands upon thousands of rigorous studies which highly correlate childhood abuse and trauma with later life pathological narcissism. There is childhood abuse or trauma in the personal histories of literally all people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Now abuse and trauma in this context mean that refer to any disruption to the formation of an individuated, separated, integrated and constellated self. And so an overprotective or smothering parent is therefore being as abusive as an incestuous or bullying one. So would a narcissist always be one? asks Shalot. Pathological narcissism is a longitudinal, lifelong, extensive and inervocable set of traits and functioning. Answer I. Certain behaviors can be modified, others can be learned, but the core clinical features are immutable. Pathological narcissism starts off as a positive adaptation and then it rigidifies and becomes a lifespan determinant. a mal adaptation. So how can parents help kids not become a narcissist if say there is a family history of it or is there nothing we can do? My answer is again there's no such thing as family history of narcissism. But more generally, to prevent the emergence of rigid narcissistic defenses in a child, the parent needs to allow the child to separate and individuate, to experiment and explore, to suffer loss and pain, to make mistakes and learn from them, to balance parental love, acceptance, and discipline, and to never conditioned love on performance or accomplishments. provide the child with a behavioral model to emulate in a process known as modeling to instill in the child values and to teach the child social scripts and skills. Charlotte says, "What science could signal that a child could be developing narcissistic traits? It could be a red flag that help is needed." My answer is that we never diagnose pathological narcissism prior to age 18 to 25 depending on which scholar you consult. In certain stages of childhood and adolescence, self-centered entitled narcissism and even grandiosity are healthy. They're conducive to personal development. They're welcome. They should be encouraged. However, if the child is sadistic, cruel, exploitative, externalizes aggression, is socially dysfunctional, consumatious, rejects authority, defiant, reckless and lacks empathy, we may be dealing with a budding psychopath and this is known as a conduct disorder in children. Another problem of course is rejection by peers or role models. Such rejection could lead to pronounced compensatory narcissistic defenses in the shamed and humiliated child. Treatment interventions in these early phases of life are inordinately effective. Concerned parents should not hesitate to seek professional help. Are children of narcissists more likely to become one? And why? asks Charlotte. My response, children of mothers who are covert narcissists are more likely to develop pathological narcissism later in life. All other subtypes of pathological narcissism in parents have not been correlated with pathological narcissism in their offspring later on in life. It seems that the stealth and penicious nature of the narcissism in the covert mother contribute to the emergence of NPD in the child as a defense. Such a mother covert narcissist typically emits mixed signals is passive aggressive and manipulative. She tends to instrumentalize the child and parentify it. She veers between idealizing the child and devaluing it. splitting. Her love is performative and conditioned on the child's catering to her insecurities, resentment, and psychological needs. In this case, in this constellation, the child's only survival strategy would be to cease to exist as a helpless scapegoat and reemerge as [clears throat] an antithesis to of itself. immerse oneself in fantasy, become grandiose and godlike. Anecdotal observations and some studies which are not rigorous or conclusive seem to indicate that there is a genetic predisposition to the development of pathological narcissism. In other words, if children, even nonidentical twins, are exposed to the same abusive, traumatizing, adverse or dysfunctional environment, only 1.7% of them will end up developing narcissistic personality disorder. And this in itself is a strong indication of some kind of determinant of genetic propensity. Regrettably, unlike in the case of psychopathy or borderline personality disorder, we have been unable to isolate a gene or an array of genes highly correlated with NPD. And here Charlotte asked me to review a recent study and express an opinion. The study is narcissism runs in families due to genetics and extended twin family analysis. The authors are back instinsky and instinsky and candler was published in social psychological and personality science and you can find a link in the literature uh in the description. So here is my opinion of the study. This study is dramatically flawed. A prime example of what's wrong with this kind of proliferating so-called scholarship. To start with, the authors use NPI and NNS. These are two psychological tests, and they use these tests to diagnose narcissists, people with NPD. There's a problem with that. Neither NPI nor NS should be used to diagnose narcissistic personality disorder. NPI is used to gauge narcissism, trait domains, and personality features, but not NPD. Whereas NNS is used to spot dark triad personalities, subclinical narcissism, not NPD. Moreover, the study uses only three items from the NNS and this alone should disqualify it. Pathological narcissism cannot be adequately captured or described, let alone diagnosed using only three items. They also use different measures for participants at different ages, thus ending up comparing apples and oranges. Consequently, the authors egregiously confuse traits which are indeed hereditary with the pathology itself. The statistical analysis of confounding factors and cross influences are all heavily dependent on the assumptions of the model used by the authors. It's a bit of a to tology. Some of the samples are small. Example, only 239 spouses and partners. So the statistical inference is not as robust as the authors claim. The authors conclude that there is causation where none could be inferred from the data. They seem to conflate nondirectional correlation with directional causation. They lump all environmental influences into a single largely meaningless metric bucket or black box. They don't offer any fine grained analysis of the impact the environment upbringing sibling rivalry parental intradiotic relationships peer pressure and rejection and numerous other environmental factors may have on the later life emergence of NPD. The authors also confuse variance variation in the expression of narcissism within the population with genetic causation. These are absolutely not the same. Of course, it is a rookie mistake. Shared environmental variance, the measure used in the study. These are environmental factors that render siblings similar. It absolutely does not mean that parenting, abuse, trauma or socioeconomic circumstances are irrelevant. Environmental experiences can be individual specific rather than shared by siblings. Enough to mention scapegoats and golden children. Yes. While the study makes sweeping and grandiose claims about the development of narcissism in childhood and adolescence, it actually makes use of a single static snapshot in the lives of the participants known as wave three. In other words, the study is not longitudinal and cannot make any valid claim about the dynamic process of the evolution of narcissism in individuals. The study relies exclusively on rating and self-reporting. These are notoriously unreliable ways to gather data. As I've mentioned, the non-shared environmental component is partly a residual category in the study. It includes environmental influences that differ between family members, but it can also contain influences arising from measurement problems or other model limitations of the model. The paper absolutely fails to establish that genes cause narcissism, that parenting doesn't matter, that narcissism is genetically predetermined. Charlotte then asked, "Would you mind just giving me a quote to explain what type of narcissist are there? What are the worst kinds? the dark triad whatever dark personalities I explain dark triad and dark tetrd are not narcissist. One of the elements in dark personalities is subclinical narcissism. Narcissistic personality style that does not amount to clinical pathological narcissism. Someone with narcissistic behaviors that cannot be diagnosed with NPD may still be diagnosed with a dark personality. he does not meet the diagnostic threshold for NPD. There are two recognized types of narcissism. Overt, also known as grandios, and covert, also known as vulnerable. All narcissists cycle between overt and covert phases. But every narcissist has a lifelong dominant side, overt or covert. The overt narcissist is grandiose, exploitative, prone to fantasy, and lacks sympathy. The covert narcissist is grandiose, frustrated, resentful, passive aggressive and a perpetual victim. Many covert narcissists are pro-ocial or communal. They hide behind a facade of empathy, compassion, and they are ostentatious dogooders, wounded healers, rescuers, saviors, gurus, and fixers. Ottoberg proposed a third kind of narcissist known as malignant narcissist. a combination of clinical narcissism, clinical psychopathy, and clinical sadism. This would be by far the worst and most dangerous type of narcissist. Why are people obsessed with narcissism these days? Asks Charlotte. Well, I say narcissism is not only a clinical diagnosis. It is an organizing principle. It helps people make sense of reality and of their lives. It accounts, narcissism accounts for numerous types of behaviors and misbehaviors in all spheres of life and in many professions, politics, show business. Nowadays, most people regard themselves as victims and most people are prone to conspiracy theories. So, blaming narcissists for everything that has gone wrong in your life and in the world at large is very soothing. And then finally, Charlotte asks, is it people are equally scared of being a narcissist? So they look up checklists. Are they worried that they might know someone who is a narcissist? I answer, most people do not consider their own narcissism. They'd rather cast themselves as victims of narcissist. Competitive victimhood and tiv, tendency for interpersonal victimhood, are common nowadays. Hence the growing interest in narcissistic abuse. Thank you for having me and for the fascinating questions.