Understanding Narcissism

[Edwardo Piet]

I'm really interested in NPD and I'd love to know more about it. Narcs confuse me.

Descriptions from scientific literature:

"It is assumed that underlying all the surface grandiosity, narcissists secretly harbor fears of inferiority and worthlessness (e.g., Akhtar & Thomson, 1982)." (Source)

"Narcissists appear to have a heightened chronic activation level for self-esteem implicating events - such that they readily perceive and try to take advantage of opportunities for self-enhancement, and they also have an amplified need to fend off potential self-threats." (Source)

"Narcissistic personality disorder is characterised by an overly inflated sense of entitlement and grandiosity. Generally, there is preoccupation with the need for praise rather than overwhelming suspiciousness of others’ intent, although paranoid features redolent of paranoid personality disorder may emerge under stress." (Source)

"Also, narcissists are more likely than nonnarcissists to display the self-serving bias (SSB; appropriating credit for success, deflecting blame for failure) when attributional options include blaming another person for failure or usurping credit from this person for success." (Source)

"In a study by Buss and Chiodo (1991), individuals who described narcissistic acquaintances reported that the narcissists act in ways to impress others, such as bragging about accomplishments, showing off money and possessions, as well as insulting others’ intelligence and putting them down." (Source)

"When an ego-threatening event occurs, they engage in cognitive reorganization of information in line with their self-schema to restore self-esteem (e.g., reframing failure as someone else's or the tasks' fault, or selectively retrieving favorable 'facts')." (Source)

"In addition, many theorists view narcissists' grandiose self-views as concealing an unacknowledged base of self-doubt and self-recrimination (Brown & Bosson, 2001; Kernberg, 1970; Kohut, 1971). In other words, narcissists are viewed as simultaneously holding positive conscious self-views while harboring significant self-doubts at less conscious levels, consistent with our conceptualization of defensive individuals as possessing high explicit but low implicit SE [self-esteem]." (Source)

"For the narcissist, social interactions are the settings for the enactment of social manipulations and self-presentations designed to engineer positive feedback or blunt negative feedback about the self." (Source)

I dunno if I am being massively harsh on myself or not but... I feel like besides the parts I have bolded (I don't socialize to get positive and negative feedback, I socalize to enjoy it and to make other people feel good, which makes me feel good and I certainly never insult others or put them down to make myself feel better: that makes me feel worse not bette) I can see this all in myself a lot.

ETA: Oh I also definitely don't deflect blame. I tend to both praise and blame myself a lot.