Never mind the quality, feel the crowd

Narcissistic personality disorder
#1

I think, for me, a big “tell” for people who have a dysfunctional level of Narcissism is that popularity seems to be their number one priority. They seem to consider it far more important than anything and will abandon honesty, justice or truth, and set aside even the people who matter most to them in pursuit of popularity

They honestly do not seem to care WHO they bare popular with, or who spends time with them as long as a LOT of people do. They would sincerely rather be surrounded by obnoxious and abusive people (even people who abuse them), than risk being ignored or alone.

…and then they go on to assume that everybody feels the same way…

They will often “abandon” or “snub” people to “punish” them in the sincere belief that those people will be devastated, when in reality the same people are just glad to see the back of them.

GD

#2

Well hi Blitxen.

I can identify with what you are saying. Part of that seems to be a need in some for others to tell them who they are, which is certainly extremely dangerous when involved with a narcissistic personality, as well as many others.

And I think some of it goes back to what you initially were pointing out about cults. A leader (or a few) set the thought processes and any that refuse to see it that way, are perceived as threats and antagonistic forces that must be suppressed. It is not the person, it is not the content really, it is that they challenge those mental processes going on which creates internal conflicts that are uncomfortable to resolve. I guess that too is like being involved with a narcissist - see it my way or the highway. Mental rigidity?

#3

Hi Susiejo,

Isn’t this at the heart of the “mirror” analogy in the term “Narcissistic”:

a need in some for others to tell them who they are

Just thinking out loud, rather than “pronouncing”, but, might that not be the point at which Narcissism ceases to be healthy?

When someone starts to pay more attention to who others tell them they are than to WHO they are?

It seems as though once they get to that stage they are quite open to going one further and accepting the world as others tell them to see it, rather than striving to see it as it really is?

So that, in many ways, if a person is pathologically Narcissistic, they may well actually be more vulnerable, in some ways, as well as less altruistic?

You know how notoriously easy it is supposed to be, in “folk knowledge” to con a conman?

In my life I have know a lot of people that I would identify as “victims” (and HOW…the stories I could tell you would tear your heart out by the roots…I wonder how, or even WHY some of them survived), and yet would DEFINITELY also identify as pathologially Narcissistic (to the point of being capable of serious abuse)…

They all seem to have this unerring ability to ONLY trust the people who are preying on them…partly because predators own the market on plausibility, because they can tailor their BS to make it convincing, while honest people are stuck with the truth…but it is such a rigid and extreme pattern that there must be more to it than that.

Have they chosen to “switch off” their perception of reality in favor of the apparent approval of others?

GD

#4

Ahh Blitxen, So easy to con a con man!!

This is so true. This is what I am dealing with in my husband’s ex-girlfriend who manipulated my manipulative “narcissist” (according to everyone else who saw it) and now is playing that she was his innocent “victim” trying to manipulate me.

And it is explained by the neuroscientists under frontal lobe syndromes YES!!

Those frontal lobes perform the functions necessary to be moral with others, AND those functions to discriminate as to who is trustworthy and who is not.

Being conned - studies on loss of discriminating abilities explained at bottom of article:

Study Pinpoints Region In Frontal Lobes As “Essence” Of What Makes Us Human
http://www.neuroskills.com/tbi/pr-frontal.shtml

And if you feel little to nothing when making moral choices (as in guilt, moral conflicts, fear of possible consequences), it is much easier to con someone.

Unfeeling moral choices traced to damaged frontal lobes
http://harvardscience.harvard.edu/node/4305

#5

Of course what people do, and WHY they do it are two different things.

You make a persuasive argument for NPD sometimes originating in frontal lobe malfunction. Inever had any trouble seeing psychopathy (which is a totally different condition, far more “autistic” in many ways, though NOT to be confused with any other form of autism!) as neourological and congenital.

I just cannot see that as being the ONLY causes of NPD.

A lot of abused children are raised in circumstances where they are conditioned to regaqrd reality (including their own) as something “other people” get to dictate…

It isn’t much of a reach to become actually DEPENDENT on that…and I have to say that I have never, in my entire life, met an adult survivor of childhood abuse who was not, in at least some way, fairly seriously disturbed and dysfunctional…

…and in that I WOULD include myself…though I think that because I have AS, the effects may have been a little different…

Naturally, I am not saying that people cannot HEAL after abuse…but WHATEVER they do they will never be the same person that they would have been without the abuse.

Abuse scars for life, and sometimes I think NPD is one of those scars…

GD

#6

This is a shot. Mind thoughts being gathered together and we will see if they make sense.

Even if you were talking NPD as being the effects of emotional abuse during development, than it is still going to be the effects on frontal lobes which perform those functions.

Neuroscientists do like the field of cognitive psychology – learning, which involves establishing physical codes in the brain. (Need to read more on this)

Now, we have emotions which are physical – neurotransmitters. Those are chemicals – created from what we eat and in a metabolic process in the nervous system, primarily in the brain but also throughout the body. Now, you have to eat sufficient nutrients (primarily amino acids) in order for those neurotransmitters to be produced by the body. (Dietary deficiencies can mean they cannot be produced) Other organs have to function properly - liver for example, produces enzymes so the body can metabolize nutrients. Liver disease can inhibit that process (alcohol does also). These can create vitamin deficiencies and dementia (frontal lobe dysfunction – treatable) Other things are involved in metabolism including hormones and so the endocrine system has to functioning properly. Also in metabolism are the genetic instructions and a defective gene can alter the process. Exercise affects metabolic processes. So any problem in these areas can affect the emotions. So health really has to be cleared first.

Now to emotions and early development. Fear for example has always been considered innate. It is what is generated to tell us there is possible threat to our life and to either fight or flight. But there is a cognitive aspect in that mothers (even in other animals), teach their children what to be frightened of. A baby for example does not have innate fear of a car running over it, it has the emotion but that has to be associated to the car and that involves learning. And once learned, it is an automatic physical response. Now the mother can teach irrational fears – take racism ingrained from early stage such that whenever the person encounters someone of that particular race, they have a fear reaction. A cognitive scientist can take that person and change that irrational fear response in therapy, or they can teach new associations to emotions. But they cannot make an emotion happen if the body cannot.

If a person does not feel that innate emotion, they can learn and know that a car is a threat to their life, or a psychologist could change their thinking about one, but they still will not feel that emotion. And a therapist cannot do anything to make them feel it. This takes us back to the physical.

Now in abusive situations, there is learning occurring. There is also stress. Stress alters body functions, can wear out adrenal glands so they do not function etc… Child is going to be in state of most likely feeling chronic stress as well as chronic fear. And certainly would follow that that could affect the learning/development process occurring in the brain. But when the stress is removed, health restored, I bet you that can be corrected with cognitive therapy.

Now studies have shown that abused kids tend to have a set of problems when they grow up. They are more likely to be overly empathetic, overly permissive. Worse about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, not the opposite.

Take guilt or shame, and morals. Again, the morals are taught and associated to those emotional feelings. If the feeling is there, the morals can be changed in relation to the emotional reactions. But if the feelings are not there, the person knows right or wrong but nothing makes them feel bad if they do an immoral act. (They call these moral compulsions - maybe controls are better word)

I was thinking about mobsters and God fathers raising a son to take over his rule. Are these guys psychopathic? Probably some are but not all. Most actually do have morals, they just are not the morals that society deems appropriate and acceptable. As in it is okay to kill your brother if he is a fink, but not okay to fink on your brother. You have bad parents who do not nurture and “rear” their kids teaching morals etc (call them spoiled brats). But if they feel the emotion, they can later in life learn the morals or their morals can be changed. If they do not feel guilt or shame, therapist cannot make that happen. That is your psychopath at the extreme.

With NPD, you are talking a cluster of behavioral problems. That set of problems have all been tied to frontal lobe dysfunction. They know they can create an NPD or a psychopath on the operating table. They did it with lobotomies.

#7

Susiejo, there is NO WAY I would go along with the idea that NPD or Psychopathy can be created by lobotomy:

But let us not assume we know, I am going to start another thread based on what I dug up, because it is fascinating (distracting) reading, but I have yet to find a source linking lobotomy to psychopathy, let alone NPD here it is:
http://www.careplace.com/forum/topic/6799

There is a wealth of evidence to suggest that stress and abuse can cause permanent physical and biological changes. Any delay there was me digging through my own notes for an article on that topic that had profoundly affected me years ago but I can’t find it…however, I think I got it from this resource page, and as it looks as though “it’s all good” what the hey? Have the whole resource :o) :

http://vachss.com/help_text/ca_emotional.html

Now you have me in a corner where I have to say something shocking:

Now studies have shown that abused kids tend to have a set of problems when they grow up. They are more likely to be overly empathetic, overly permissive. Worse about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, not the opposite.

I have gone back over my life, over, and over, again. I have known many, many people who were abused in childhood, far more than not…just the way life gets channelled among like…and I have honestly never known one of them to for that profile or even close, though I have known many who would claim to (the pitfalls of research base on “self report” rolling eyes).

The pattern seems to be that they tend to be passive aggressive, self absorbed, overly controlling and you can throw a violent temper and “moody tendencies” into the mix too. Their parenting skills seem to lack consistency vacillate between smothering and neglect as a general rule. They can often be pretty false and utilitarian too.

(I am not claiming to be some “great exception” myself. I know that, in many ways, I AM different because of the AS. Honestly and honor are perseverations in me for one thing, and it doesn’t come naturally to me to kid myself about anything for another. Then you have the fact that because of the AS and my Schizoid tendencies, I don’t really “DO” intimate relationships at all, so it really doesn’t matter how I would, or would not, behave within them, in the event anyone could guess.)

I am not claiming they are “bad people”, or even remotely psychopathic. Most of the dysfunction relates to defense mechanisms (that were once essential) that they cannot find a way to fold up and pack away.

Nor am I claiming that they cannot heal, some of them do. Needless to say, on the whole they tend to be those “difficult people” nobody can take much of made even more difficult by the fact that when you deal with them it is always SO obvious that there is good (or at any rate different) person just under the surface who can’t find their way out.

I never get that sense of “someone quite different inside” with a psychopath, there is no “mixed message” there.

NPD is a different case again…

A psychopath is, as we say here “something wanting” - there are pieces of normal humanity missing from a psychopath, no more, no less.

A survivor of abuse is “something scarred” - still damaged by old wounds.

But NPD is not just a lack, or a scar…it’s a whole set of additional characteristics that logically must be largely adaptive and compensatory for something…whether it is emotional scar tissue or neurological difference.

I know why I don’t have NPD…

Because I am too literal in my Aspie thinking to care what other people say to, or about me (or anything else) unless it is true, and lying, or self deception is way too stressful to be any significant part of my life.

(All very nice, but more Aspergic than Karmic. Which is a point where you can REALLY seperate the Narcissism from the sinning - apsrt frrom the fact that, apparently, “sinning” is usually a lot more fun!)

Why do some people develop the additional characteristics of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and others do not?

GD