NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY INVENTORY:
What Is Narcissism continued

Continuing the question What is Narcissism, here is the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, courtesy of the DSM:

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), 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 he or she 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, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable 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 others are envious of him or her


9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

Let’s break down each of the nine criteria and see if we can get a clearer picture of What is Narcissism based on real-life experience, rather than from a manual.

What does that mean, exactly?

Perhaps it’s a co-worker who always seems to have stories about how ungrateful her kids are and how unhelpful her husband is; she works all day and goes home to do everything that’s needed there, with no thanks or help.

She doesn’t know how she does it sometimes, but she just does what she has to do (this also goes along with the martyr complex, which is common in a narcissistic personality).

Or it’s a family member whose stories of work or the sports team he’s on make it sound like he carries the company or team on his shoulders alone.

The others may not be incompetent, it’s just that…well, he seems to shine at what he does.

What about the friend who always answers your question “how’re your children?’ with a 20 minute dissertation about how this child is in the genius class at school, and this one is the star hockey player on his team every year; she feels bad for the other children in the classroom or on the sports team because her little darlings are truly gifted geniuses; they can’t help themselves.

Have you ever known someone who felt that it was their sole responsibility to ‘be magic’ for everyone that comes into their life? This person hears of a need and feels they must rush in to be the savior each and every time, whether their services were asked for or not.

Then they turn around and complain each time that ‘everyone expects them to be magic’, and that ‘everyone always takes advantage of them’. And of course, no one is ever grateful ENOUGH for all that this person does.

Try to tell someone like this about a physical illness you’re dealing with, and you’ll never be able to top them.

One young lady, in an email to her mother, was describing her morning sickness and how hard it was to deal with; it seemed to go on all day long and everything made her ill. She was exhausted all the time and had no energy.

The narcissistic parent angrily wrote back that morning sickness was nothing compared to the sicknesses that she’d had periodically over the years, and that this young lady wouldn’t get any sympathy from her.

Superiority complex.

In short, someone with a ‘grandiose sense of self-importance’ sees their contributions, their pains and diseases, their suffering or accomplishments as much, much bigger than they really are, and much, much greater than anyone else’s.

This one is a tough one. Unless your narcissist constantly talks about his or her fantasy life, it’s likely that most of us would think this one doesn’t apply to the person that we know.

But look a little closer, and perhaps you’ll find someone who always has an adoring beau on her arm; the sidekick who always has to interject how wonderful his darling is, who constantly has to talk her up – in her presence or not – and who more or less finds her perfect in every way (this is called ‘narcissistic supply’, by the way).

Once this level of adoration fades – as it inevitably does in healthy, adult relationships – the narcissist will soon find another adoring fan: more narcissistic supply.

Because it IS a game, to her.

It’s not that the feelings of the other person are non-existent, it’s just that they don’t matter.

This type of attitude indicates that the narcissist believes himself to be indispensable.

As he treads on everyone around him at the office, he truly feels he is able to get away with it, because he’s special (see below) and because he holds so much power (true or not – mostly not).

He believes the company would fold without him (see ‘grandiose’), and therefore is allowed to show up late for work, take long lunches and otherwise thumb his nose at rules that he believes YOU should follow.

Again we see the superiority complex.

Of course, if one has a self image of perfection, it would be hard for one to feel truly understood by more ordinary human beings, now wouldn’t it?

Unfortunately, there are just too many ordinary human beings in the life of a narcissist.

‘You wouldn’t understand’ is a statement the superiority complex loves to utter. Of course, this feels slightly insulting when directed at you, but it’s meant to be.

Your narcissist truly does believe that he or she knows what’s best for you, because, of course – they’re special, and they understand things that you don’t.

If you’ve really hit the lottery in the narcissist game, your narcissist is a Christian who frequently believes that he or she hears from God for your life – and everyone else’s.

And by now you’ve learned that if you disagree with what they’ve ‘heard', you’re in grave danger of going to hell.

Because, the logic goes – if you disagree with your narcissist, you disagree with God.

Who could be more special than that?

Interestingly, Narcissism has been called ‘The god complex’; a name that truly fits the person with this particular psychological disability.

This one isn’t too hard.

If you have a narcissist in your life, you know what’s expected of you. If he works out, you need to stand in awe of his body. If not, he’ll go fishing for compliments.

Everyone likes compliments, and it’s a bit disappointing even for the most emotionally healthy of us if we get no acknowledgement of our hard work, but a narcissist is a bottomless pit.

You can praise him over and over, but eventually you’ll hear him say that you ‘never compliment’ him.

If she's given you a gift or done you a favor, you can be sure that your sincere gratitude and appreciation won’t be enough for the narcissist in your life.

Of course, they MAY graciously accept your thanks and move on, but no matter how much of a fuss you make over the smallest of gifts from them, no matter how many times you thank them for their help, be assured there will come a time when you will hear ‘you’re so ungrateful for everything I do for you’.

Again – the one giving the compliments and gratitude is called ‘narcissistic supply’. The narcissist – an emotional vampire – needs a steady supply as much as Dracula needed his blood.

One middle aged man had gone through a particularly hard divorce (is there ever an easy kind?), with some accompanying depression. He’d visited his sister often during this period of his life, receiving comfort and moral support, and periodically staying the night with her and her family.

Eventually, he’d been able to start to move on, and had decided to take a vacation for some important alone time with his son, and a reassessment of his life.

When his narcissistic sister heard of his plans, she immediately assumed she was invited on this trip. When she was politely informed that this was a special trip for him and his son, and no one was invited, she became quite indignant and reminded him of all she’d done for him in the past few months.

Of course, her help had been much appreciated, and he’d communicated that to her many times in various ways, but this wasn’t enough for her. The more he politely but firmly insisted that this was a special trip for him and his child, the more infuriated she became with him, regretting all of the sisterly love and support.

In the end, she did the right narcissistic thing to do: when she saw that he couldn’t be manipulated, she dropped him from her life. He had ceased to be good narcissistic supply.

Of course, after a certain amount of time had passed so that he could feel sufficiently punished, she did decide to allow him back into her life. But that’s for another section of this website.

Or the young lady who was told that she was allowed to go to a party with her friends, but that she was now old enough to make some of her own choices: she could choose to go to the party, or she could choose to go to a church gathering in a dusty basement with a bunch of people her age that she didn’t know. Whatever she chose would be fine.

Feeling free to make the choice, and honored to be given the privilege, she naturally chose to spend the evening with her friends, at a party she’d looked forward to for some time, than in a church basement where she knew no one.

The reaction: the narcissistic mother suffered from depression for many days afterwards, with the always accompanying gloom spreading itself throughout the household, in which all of the members of the family needed to walk softly, whisper quietly if they absolutely needed to speak, and give her concerned and sympathetic looks while she lay in bed and meditated on all of her wasted work on that child.

Because, you understand, by rejecting the choice that the mother (secretly) had wanted the child to make, in effect, to the narcissist, the child was rejecting HER.

Superiority complex. Self focus. Lack of empathy. Three birds with one stone.

Ever felt like you were being used?

That one’s easy to spot, but being exploited isn’t always easy to see until it’s over.

How about the con-man who makes a sale off of you, and only later you realize you’ve been had.

Have you been wined and dined, wooed and swept off your feet, only to find out that shortly after the honeymoon there are times that your spouse can coldly treat you like dirt – until she decides that she needs something from you.

Or the knight in shining armor who comes to your rescue in your darkest hour, lifts you up and is everything you need a husband to be – strong, supportive and loyal – until he’s worked his way into your house and your life.

And when the fairy dust settles you realize he will never go get a job, but allows you to carry the entire financial burden; while you work and stress and pray over the budget, he regularly finds he ‘needs’ this thing or that thing and you need to find a way to get it for him.

And of course – if he does even one little thing to help you, he needs excessive admiration and praise for his efforts. See ‘lack of empathy’. Also see ‘narcissistic supply’.

Notice the word ‘unwilling’.

The word is not ‘unable’.

That’s a pretty important distinction.

‘Unable’ would make your narcissist a psychopath.

A psychopath is able to IDENTIFY (not identify WITH) emotions and feelings in other people quite well, but they are UNABLE to care.

A narcissist is only UNWILLING to care.

A narcissist’s greatest concern is himself; you can’t ask them to ‘put themselves in someone else’s shoes’, because if it doesn’t benefit them – they won’t.

This, of course, is why it’s so easy for them to exploit and manipulate. They don’t care.

But make no mistake: they DO understand the difference between right and wrong. They just choose what’s right – for them.

They love monologues, and it’s always on a subject that interests them; never mind if it doesn’t interest you.

If they walk into the middle of a conversation you’re having, don’t be surprised if they jump in and subtly (or not) change the direction of the discussion.

Do you have someone in your life who often comes to you to unload their burdens, making demands of your time and sympathy and prayer – and you willingly give it because you love them – but every so often when it becomes your turn to need a shoulder to cry on, you regularly begin to have the uncomfortable feeling that they’re tuning out….eyes glazing over….distracted by something you can’t see….and shortly afterwards, they change the subject – usually back to them?

That’s called lack of empathy.

It doesn’t have to be as obvious as the one who doesn’t care that a kitten is crying by the side of the road.

It comes from a superiority complex; their time is a little too important to be spent listening to you go on and on and on and on…….

This is a character disorder.

Goes along with ‘believing they are special’.

Don’t be surprised though, if later you hear back how your narcissist spent an inordinate amount of time comforting, counseling and holding your hand, bravely and loyally standing with you in your time of need, being there for you when no one else was.

Because that’s what friends are for.

Understand: a narcissist will always expect you to recognize and identify THEIR feelings and needs. This is – you guessed it – what one of your jobs is, as the narcissistic supply.

This one really doesn’t need much of an explanation; if you’ve spent enough time around someone with this level of self focus, more than likely you’ve heard that ‘people are jealous of me’ as an explanation as to why they feel they’re constantly ‘mistreated’.

What the narcissist is really saying is ‘I’m jealous of people’. This is called narcissistic projection, which we’ll get into soon.

If you’ve ever been accused of being jealous of someone when you didn’t have a clue that you were, it can be a bit unsettling and you might begin to question whether it’s true. This can cause some doubt and maybe even shame if you begin to believe it.

Examine yourself, and if you do find any jealousy, repent and move on. But more than likely, you’ve just been a victim of narcissistic projection.

Because what’s most likely is that the narcissist is jealous of you. Although the accomplished narcissist is good at hiding it, they are extremely jealous of anyone they perceive to be getting more praise or love or attention, etc., than they are.

Actually, it’s more accurate to say that they are jealous of anyone receiving any of that, period. Whether or not they got the same amount, or more.

They want it all, and if you’re getting some, that means there’s less for them.

One older narcissist complained regularly that her husband got all the love, loyalty, praises and honor from the children, while she got none. This accusation was rather peculiar considering the exact opposite was true.

It was understood by the family that she must, at all times, be showered with praises and gratitude for all she’d done for the family, with no question of her absolute authority and moral rightness at all times (remember why no questions were allowed? That’s right – because she always heard from God).

Narcissists will behave oddly when jealous, making strange (but true to them) accusations or acting childishly. They will readily cut you down so as to diminish any honor or praise you may be receiving, and/or they’ll be quick to point out that it’s because of them and all of their sacrifice that you’re where you are today.

One narcissistic mother, increasingly jealous of the good time her two grown daughters were spending together one Christmas as the family relaxed, finally approached them and asked ‘If they had to laugh, could they go somewhere else and do it?’ According to the narcissistic mother, ‘everyone’ in the house was annoyed by their laughter.

Evidently, she didn’t receive the response she was looking for, as the two daughters graciously moved it outside to the back porch to continue their conversation.

Shortly after that, the mother slipped outside without announcing herself, went into the backyard and began to dramatically turn her head this way and that, looking first to the right and then to the left, not stopping until one of the daughters finally asked what she was doing.

Satisfied that she finally had their attention, she announced that she was ‘checking to make sure that no neighbors were outside, who might be bothered by your laughing’.

Do we need an explanation of this one?

The one who says ‘I wouldn’t stoop so low as…’, or ‘that’s beneath me’….

The co-worker who says ‘I wasn’t hired to answer telephones’, or the mother who criticizes your choice of friends as ‘not quite in your class or caliber’.

One definition of the word ‘haughty’ is ‘exalted’. The narcissist exalts himself above others: sometimes subtly, sometimes not so much.

“Well, I would certainly never wear something like that” - easy to spot the arrogance.

“I guess we just have different tastes” - when said in a way that you understand your ‘taste’ is questionable - is a not-so-easy-to-spot-the-arrogance sort of statement.

Comes from a superiority complex. Which is a long way of saying ‘pride’.

Interestingly, one of the definitions of the word ‘fool’ in Strong's Concordance is ‘arrogant one’.

To recap: What is Narcissism? Narcissism is self focus. Narcissism is lack of empathy. Narcissism is a superiority complex.

It doesn’t hurt to be reminded again: If someone you know seems to exhibit some of these traits on a regular basis, it may be that they’re exhibiting some narcissistic behavior, but in and of itself, this does not make them a narcissist. There are many different levels of these sorts of self focus.

On the other hand, your narcissist may be exhibiting behavior that is far worse than has been described so far.

But does all of the above answer the question What is Narcissism?

Not quite. But it’s a start.

Let’s go a little deeper and hear what M Scott Peck has to say about malignant narcissism: