Narcissism

Posted By Sharvari on 28/05/2009

The word ‘narcissism’ in common usage is associated with people who indulge in too much of self praise. A narcissistic man is a person whose conversation starts with his display of vanity and ends with his self-centered ‘one-way listener not interested’ communication. The word has its origination in a Greek myth of Narcissus. According to the myth a young Greek called Narcissus rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo, for which he was punished to be doomed to fall in love with his own reflection. Unable to consummate his love he pined away and turned into flower which was named after him. The dictionary meaning of narcissism is as follows:

Nar-cis-sism

-a noun

(1) Inordinate fascination with oneself; excessive self-love; vanity.

(2) Psychoanalysis: erotic gratification derived from admiration of one's own physical or mental attributes, being a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development.

As the definition suggests it is a normal condition at the infantile level of personality development i.e. the primary narcissism according to Sigmund Freud. According to Freud, a child is born with his own sense of himself or ego so to say. Ego develops through infancy and childhood and the excessive of it can be controlled by proper interventions by parents, teachers, elders, peers, etc. Due to which a person can develop an ideal ego and act normal. It is secondary narcissism that causes personality disorders or more specifically called as Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It is caused when a person withdraws himself with objects outside himself. More on Freud’s theory, here.

Coming back to people being narcissistic. A minute amount of self-praise is necessary to convince oneself of one’s self worth. However the excess of it could be termed as narcissism. Being self-worthy, self-confident is one thing and being narcissistic is the other. A narcissistic person lacks empathy, tries to assert superiority depending upon his/her value system, over-reacts to criticism by becoming angry or humiliated, might also humiliate others in the process of exaggerating his/her importance, seeks attention and positive reinforcement from others, displays arrogant, haughty and proud behaviour, uses denial mechanism to downplay his/her own inadequacies, uses rational mechanism to justify self-centered behaviour, etc. A person possessing all or most of these signs is clinically ill. 

There is a thin line between self worth and narcissism. You may not know when you will become too self-worthy to be termed as narcissistic. You should sit and analyze your own behaviour and also the behaviour of the people around you. You should ignore a person completely if he fails to see anything outside himself and tries to convert you to his/her opinion. You may end up degrading yourself in his/her company.

P.S: R, I know u wanted to co-author this blog with me for a particular reason. But I could not wait for your net connection to be fixed. So I wrote it on my own. Feel free to make any corrections, you would want to make. ;-)

P.P.S: All personality traits mentioned in the blog are of Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and unintentional. :-)