Narcissistic Personality Disorder to be eliminated from new DSM?

[JustKathy]

I am afraid that without a name for these people, that in the collective conscious, the model/pattern/concept will cease to exist... yet the momsters & popsters & abuse will continue their destruction, unacknowledged by society. Starting with the psychological community.

That's my fear as well. Though, I'd be willing to bet that the term NPD continues to live on long after it has been removed from the DSM. It was there for 30 years, and many victims were given this diagnosis by psych professionals. There have been countless books written on the subject. Is all of that suddenly going to go away? Even though it will no longer be in the DSM, and we WILL lose a certain amount of validation, I just can't see the term vanishing.

[JustKathy]

And I'm convinced that people with NPD only forego violence as a means of self preservation and would not have the slightest qualms about regularly knocking heads together if they thought they could get away with it

I absolutely agree with this. My NM has never displayed any violent tendencies, however, she is obsessed with crime shows and real-life stories of serial killers. She volunteers at the local police station, and started bragging one day that she had been there long enough to gain access to the morgue, and that they would let her view autopsies. Some of this falls under delusions of grandeur, having the badge, telling people she has authority, that she's "just like a CSI." But I've always found her preoccupation with crime, specifically murder, to be be quite troublesome. I'm quite sure that she has the fantasies, but lacks the ability, opportunity, what have you, to ever act on it.

[mudpuppy]

It's almost as if, in their quest to preserve their inner delusion of perfection...

Yeah, but I don't think they have any inner delusions of perfection.
I think they perceive themselves as irretrievably flawed and inferior to everyone else. So inferior that if anyone knew how truly scared and screwed up they are they think they'd die.
I think they attempt to create a delusion of perfection in how OTHERS see them, or at least a method by whch they can control how others react to them. IOW if they bully everyone within their orbit into acting as though they're the cat's PJs their delicate little psyches are sufficiently protected enough so that they can survive.
I think their internal perceptions are so flawed that they percieve themselves to be more defective than they really are, mistaking universal human frailities as their uniquely terrifying cross to bear. And the one overriding flaw that they can't or won't deal with, their lack of empathy is the one that allows them to turn what would ordinarily be just some unpleasant traits into the puppet show from hell they try to create around themselves, in order to insulate themselves, at any cost to others, from what they think reality will do to them.

mud

[Guest]

I wish there was a simple *like* button on this board.

Mud, am I over-reading or are you quite annoyed in the last sentence above? It reads to me like a rallying closing statement. I like it.

Unless they're exceptionally 'clever' (like Sam), I doubt they even know that they have a lack of empathy....how would they realise it? Isn't that idea a paradox in itself?

I think they're fear-based. Not normal fear; I guess it's shame fear. Sad nutters.

[lighter]

I agree with your last post, Mud.

When my Nsociopath could have said a few apologetic words to redeem himself, he instead chose bullying.

He fairly swelled in his ability to bully, and terrorize...... giddy with it at times, bored at others.

When bullying failed..... he moved to people in our orbit, calling it..... "Broadening his campaign."

I believe he felt unworthy of love...... utterly.

He wanted to conquer it, take it, leverage it and hold it hostage, so it couldn't go anywhere.

Lighter

[mudpuppy]

Mud, am I over-reading or are you quite annoyed in the last sentence above?

Probably didn't realize it when I wrote but I guess I was, a bit. Doesn't matter how clinical you try to sound, what has been done to you is always lurking in the back of your mind.

When bullying failed..... he moved to people in our orbit, calling it..... "Broadening his campaign."

Heh. Heard things just like that myself. To these idiots, to paraphrase Clausewitz, life is the continuation of war by other means.

mud

[lighter]

To these idiots, to paraphrase Clausewitz, life is the continuation of war by other means.

mud

That's true, isn't it?

It must really suck to be them.

Lighter

[Guest]

True Mud,
that's probably *one* of the reasons I write much less than I used to. Plus it bores me to think about writing more than a few lines. And if I think about it now, for a moment, if I were to write more, it would be in outrage at what has been done to others, not just me. I got off lightly. My justified anger is very cold about the whole stinking mess that I saw spread. And that is enough writing about that. As for the rest, it doesn't matter any more.

Lighter: exactly.

[mudpuppy]

Plus it bores me to think about writing more than a few lines.

That's a much underdiscussed aspect of these clowns. Despite all the drama surrounding them and their outrageous antics, or perhaps because of them, they are universally the most tedious, boring people on the planet.
Presumably that's because they are utterly uninterested in anything actually important in life.

mud

[Hopalong]

PR--This really rang true to me:

So they create the conflicts, wield anger or control like a club, trespass boundaries... all to externalize emotion so that they can then laugh at it, put it down, or put it under a microscope & study it... because it's completely foreign to them. They don't care that this is mean; it's how they continue existing. Like a form of self-preservation. They have to act on something outside themselves to "be" - to exist - to feel "real".

Mud, it's always struck me too--how deeply bored I feel around most narcissists.
There's a lively tune at first, while I learn their presentation and sometimes suffer
the consequences of my appetite for drama ("you're THAT amazing? Tell me more!"),
but after a while, I realize there's a LOT of repetition going on and feel like it's time
to "move along, nothing to learn here..." 'Course, took me 'til age 60 to learn that.

When I'm seized with a long flare of my own Nspots blocking my better-brain--I am sure I get boring too.

Hops

[lostkitten]

Nothing can take away from me the knowledge I’ve gained over the past few years. I personally described my NM as one suffering from “Malignant Narcissism” as she has become very paranoid and antisocial as the years have gone by; she is even now showing a lot of schizophrenia symptoms. One of my brothers was a Paranoid Schizophrenic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malignant_narcissism

It is true the media has over used the word narcissist as to describe many people of varying degrees of self-absorption.  There is even a musical band called “Malignant Narcissism”.

Some new term IS NEEDED to separate what the general population has come to THINK of as narcissistic, and what we KNOW as narcissistic.   

But none of this can take away the validation that I have already received, and the knowing that other people understand some of what I have been through. As for the rest of the people I come across “out there’, they can just know that my mother was seriously mentally ill, abusive and not capable of love.

I simply have to believe that they will come up with some new term to describe what we all know exists. And this new term will describe these ‘far end of the spectrum’ monsters.

[sKePTiKal]

I think their internal perceptions are so flawed that they percieve themselves to be more defective than they really are, mistaking universal human frailities as their uniquely terrifying cross to bear.

And the one overriding flaw that they can't or won't deal with, their lack of empathy is the one that allows them to turn what would ordinarily be just some unpleasant traits into the puppet show from hell they try to create around themselves, in order to insulate themselves, at any cost to others, from what they think reality will do to them.

Mud, the first sentence could be applied to some of us, also (like myself). But instead of demonstrating lack of empathy toward others... I turned that laser-gun of self-perception distortion on myself... and perhaps had some help in doing so, you know? (projection)

Do you think perhaps, that the puppetry becomes a self-validation in NPD? In that - by exercising "power" (or the illusion of it) over others, some of that fear of being revealed as "less than human" is calmed? That the "payoff" for the constant campaign of control, meanness, etc is simply a way to reassure themselves that what they're afraid of - is manageable? That this is how they've coped with a need for a feeling of "safety"?

That still leaves open the question of whether or not, Ns or NPDs are capable of changing. As much research as we've collectively done here, I don't recall much in the way of stories of successful treatment. Perhaps - and I'm going way out on a limb here making a lot of assumptions - perhaps the suggestion to remove NPD from the DSM is a way to acknowledge the fact that these people are not treatable?

My Dad - the classic N - could fire all his employees on a whim (and did). But he also went out of his way to help others, too. He was capable of apologizing and admitting he was wrong. He was able to change himself and his behavior over time (until his stroke). My mom on the other hand - is exactly the same as she was when I was growing up... is quite content in that... and it's the rest of the world that's stupid, wrong, and rediculous - not her. And she's quite incapable of self-awareness - of understanding how what she says and does affects others.

The one thing I would add to the consistent traits list, along with lack of empathy is that lack of self-awareness, too. Specifically, the lack of self awareness of how they are really seen by and awareness of impact they have on others... followed by the lack of empathy. I've seen this in both N-ex-husbands; my mom; my old Nboss.

[Dr. Richard Grossman]

Hi everybody,

I appreciated all of your comments.  Here is my view:

To put it simply, there are over 100,000 posts here supporting the continued inclusion of Narcissistic Personality Disorder in the DSM.  Whatever the primary purpose of the DSM is, an extremely important secondary purpose is to confirm the existence of a mental disorder everyone here knows is real.  The people here have not simply dealt with people having “narcissistic traits”.  They have had to deal with people whose every interaction was dominated by narcissism—and whose personalities are well described in the current DSM.  Of course not everybody with personality disorders neatly fit the current schema.  But there are certainly enough people that fit the current diagnostic description to a tee—and many do not fit anything else.  Narcissism is part of our culture and our species, and like with all personality disorders, there will always be people who are on the edge, or near diagnosable.  But this doesn’t matter to me: Narcissistic Personality Disorder in its truest form is a different beast—you sense it, feel it, and know it when you see it.  For a clinician, the diagnosis is not difficult.  And the damage done by people with NPD to those closest to them is often deep and long lasting.  Removing the diagnosis from the new DSM would not only be a theoretical mistake, it would leave those who have suffered as a result of their relationship to people with this very real disorder a far more complicated and difficult path to understanding and healing.

Richard

[mudpuppy]

Do you think perhaps, that the puppetry becomes a self-validation in NPD? In that - by exercising "power" (or the illusion of it) over others, some of that fear of being revealed as "less than human" is calmed? That the "payoff" for the constant campaign of control, meanness, etc is simply a way to reassure themselves that what they're afraid of - is manageable? That this is how they've coped with a need for a feeling of "safety"?

From what I've seen virtually all Ns construct a cult like coccoon around themselves. Usually family members as they are the most easily psychologically manipulated but also any acquaintances who are malleable and weak enough to be drawn in. I think the entire point of it is, as you say, to validate themselves as worthy of respect and leadership and to insulate themselves from the real world which they perceive as utterly invalidating to their carefully constructed facade of competence that they try to project.

mud

[sKePTiKal]

Whatever the primary purpose of the DSM is, an extremely important secondary purpose is to confirm the existence of a mental disorder everyone here knows is real. 

Hear, Hear and Hallelujah and Amen...

The DSM doesn't have to fit in a specified number of pages, does it? What's the rush to throw out established diagnoses and call one thing another (grief being classifed as depression - in an earlier change)? I don't think human evolution is leaving the DSM "behind".