NARCISSISTIC

PERSONALITY
DISORDER
”Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak,
pawned a part of their narcissism."-Sigmund Freud

Hejane El-Turkey
1/30/2019
 NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER
January 30, 2019

TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE ORIGIN OF NARCISSISM [P. #]

1.1. THE GREEK AND NARCISSISM [P. #]

SO WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN? [P. #]

THE HISTORY OF NARCISSISM [P. #]

1.1. OTTO RANK [P. #]

1.2. SIGMUND FREUD [P. #]

1.2.A. PRIMARY NARCISSISM [P. #]

I. PERSON PRAISE

II. PROCESS PRAISE

1.2.B. SECONDARY NARCISSISM [P. #]

1.3. KAREN HORNEY [P. #]

THE TEN NEUROTIC NEEDS [P. #]

I. MOVING TOWARD PEOPLE (COMPILANCE)

II. MOVING AGAINST PEOPLE (AGGRESSION)

III. MOVING AWAY FROM PEOPLE (WITHDRAWAL)

1.4. HEINZ KOHUT [P. #]

[SUBHEADING TITLE] [P. #]

[SUBHEADING TITLE] [p. #]

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Narcissistic Personality Disorder

”Whoever loves becomes humble. Those who love have, so to speak, pawned a part of their
narcissism."-Sigmund Freud

The origin of narcissism

1.1.The Greek and narcissism
In Greek mythology narcissism was portrayed by the myth of Narcissus, the
son of the river god Cephissus and the nymph Liriope. He was well known
for his exceptional beauty. According to Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book III,
when Narcissus was a child had been prophesized by Teiresias, the blind
prophet of Thebes; that he would have a long life, as long as he never
knows himself.

Narcissus was proud, that he rejected everyone who loved him, causing
some to commit suicide to prove their tireless devotion to his striking
beauty. One of those he rejected was the nymph Echo, one day she
followed him in the woods as he went hunting. She wanted desperately to
talk to him but she couldn’t dare, overhearing her footsteps, he shouted,
"Who's there?" to which she responded, "Who’s there?" When at last she
revealed herself, she rushed out to embrace Narcissus, but he pushed her
away. Echo spent the rest of her life pining* (suffer a mental and physical decline,
especially because of a broken heart.) for Narcissus, and slowly withered away until

there was nothing left of her but her voice.

With his actions, Narcissus drew upon him the vengeance of the gods,
Nemesis the goddess of revenge, noticed this behavior after learning the
story and decided to punish, He was doomed to fall in love with his own
reflection in a pool of water; some time passed after he ran into Echo,
Narcissus went to drink from a pool of water after hunting, he leaned upon
the water and saw himself and instantly fell deeply in love with his own
reflection, as if it was somebody else.

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But each time he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to disappear. Narcissus
grew ever thirstier, but would not leave or disturb the pool of water
for fear of losing sight of his reflection.

Unable to leave the allure of his image, he died of thirst, and there on that
very spot, appeared the narcissus flower, with its bright face and bowed
neck.
*The word narcissus has come to be used for the daffodil, but there is no clarity on whether the flower
is named for the myth, or the myth for the flower, or if there is any true connection at all.*

 So what does all of this mean?

The Greeks created the figure of Narcissus and therefore they were the
first to diagnose narcissism.

Narcissus is the origin of the term narcissism, a fixation with oneself and
one's physical appearance or public perception.

The myth is a warning against vanity* (The excessive belief in one's own abilities or
attractiveness to others.) and self-love. It also shows that sometime we get

caught up in ourselves, in our ego and self-importance, that we lose sight

of the bigger picture and, as a result, pass over the beauty and bounty that
is life. Paradoxically, being too wrapped in ourselves, we actually restrict
our range of perception and action and, overall, our potential as human
beings. And so, in some sense, we kill ourselves, like so many ambitious
people. Treating other people badly is a sure sign that we are still trapped
in our self.

Teiresias had prophesied that Narcissus would have a long life, as long as
he never knows himself, because to truly know one self is also to know
that there is nothing to know. Our self, our ego, is nothing but an illusion,
nothing more substantial than the ever receding reflection that Narcissus
could not lay his hand on.

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Echo had no self and no being outside of Narcissus. Echo had not enough
ego and Narcissus far too much. The key is to find the right and dynamic
equilibrium, to be secure in one self and yet to dissociate from the life that
we happen to have been born into and, of course, the two go hand in
hand.

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The history of narcissism

After the Greek portrayed narcissism in the myth of Narcissus, some
English poets, writers and philosophers like Shakespeare and Francis bacon
used the same term which is, self-love, it is the nature of extreme self-
lovers. Byron at the start of the nineteenth century used the same term as
well, describing that, "Self-love forever creeps out, like a snake, to sting
anything which happens...to stumble on it." By mid-century,
however, egotism was perhaps an equally common expression for self-
absorption.

1.1. Otto Rank

The twentieth century has largely defined the concept in psychological
terms, in 1911, Otto Rank, a prominent psychiatrist; spoke of narcissism as
being related to vanity and self-admiration.

1.2. Sigmund Freud

A few years later, Sigmund Freud thought that narcissism might not be
always abnormal. He differentiated between primary narcissism with self-
love which is linked to self-preservation and secondary narcissism there
become limited ability to love others and the problematic development of
megalomania* (obsession with the exercise of power, delusion about one's own power or
importance typically as a symptom of manic.)

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1.2.a. Primary narcissism

The primary narcissism is the earliest type of narcissism. It is a defense
mechanism that is used to protect the child from psychic damage during
the formation of individual self. According to Freud, people are born
without the sense of ego. The ego develops during early childhood, usually
in form of parental controls and expectations. Intrudes upon primary
narcissism, teaching the individual about the nature and standards of his
social environment from which he can form the ideal ego, an image of the
perfect self towards which the ego should desire. As it evolves, the ego
distanced itself from primary narcissism, formed an ego-ideal.

So the parental techniques do have a huge effect on forming the child's

personality, and whether the child will develop a mental disorder like
narcissism or not. One of the most fatal mistakes that the parents make
while raising their children is using person-praise to encourage them,
instead of using process-praise, and the difference is:

I- Person-praise
Person-praise is focusing on evaluating the child's traits like his
intelligence. It evaluates the child as a whole, like telling him that he is
good or smart or outstanding, so that sounds like, “You’re so smart that
you did really well on your math test,” or “You’re so nice everyone likes
you.” And that makes the child think that he was born with that level of
skill. Some studies have shown that person-praise reduces motivation, and
focuses students on their performance and encourages them to compare
themselves with others. And that will trick the child grow up thinking that
his value and worth are connected to his performance, forming an ideal-
self that he must always be. That also makes the child very hard to accept
criticism or to admit making mistakes.

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II- Process-praise
On the other hand, process-praise focuses on the child's effort and their
behavior and actual work or output. And that sounds like, “Wow, you did
better on your math test this week…must have been getting your
notebook organized or working the problems you missed in homework.” In
this case the kid will think that he did something which lead to his success,
something that isn’t fixed, but the result of an effort which he can control.
And that what makes the child open to accept criticism and know that his
mistakes don’t define him.

1.2.b. Secondary narcissism

Secondary narcissism appears in older children and adults; they seek
personal gratification over the achievement of social goals and
compatibility to social values. Everyone has a degree of narcissism in them;
it becomes pathological when the narcissist lacks normal empathy and
uses others ruthlessly to their own ends. Some narcissists are cerebral
narcissists; they obtain their self-admiration from their intellectual abilities
and achievements. And others are somatic narcissists; they focus on the
body and seeking beauty.

1.3. Karen Horney

On the other hand we have Karen Horney a psychoanalyst who saw
narcissism quite differently from Freud, she saw narcissistic personality as
the result of a certain kind of early environment acting on a certain kind of
temperament. For her, narcissistic needs and tendencies are not inherent
in human nature.

She looked at neurosis differently than the other psychoanalysts of the

time. Her expansive interest in the subject, led to assemble a detailed
theory of neurosis* (a relatively mild mental illness that is not caused by organic disease,
involving symptoms of stress (depression, anxiety, obsessive behavior, hypochondria) but not a
radical loss of touch with reality.), with data from her patients.
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Karen believed neurosis to be a continuous process occurring occasionally

but repetitively in one's lifetime. And her opinion was different from her
contemporaries who believed that neurosis was, like more severe mental
conditions, such as, grief, divorce or negative experiences during childhood
and adolescence.

From her experiences as a psychiatrist, Horney stated ten patterns of

neurotic needs. These ten needs are based upon things which she
thought all humans require to succeed in life. A neurotic person could
theoretically show all of these needs, though in practice much fewer than
the ten here need to be present for a person to be considered a neurotic.

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The ten neurotic needs

These 10 neurotic needs can be classed into three broad categories:

 Needs that move you towards others.

These neurotic needs cause individuals to seek acceptance from others

and are often described needy as they seek out approval and love.

 Needs that move you away from others.

These neurotic needs create hostility and antisocial behavior. These

individuals are often described as cold and indifferent.

 Needs that move you against others.

These neurotic needs result in hostility and a need to control other

people. They are often described as difficult, domineering, and unkind.

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I- Moving Toward People (Compliance)

1. The need for affection and approval; pleasing others and being liked by
them.

 Aimless need to please others, to be liked and approved.

 Automatic living up to expectations of others.
 Center of gravity in others and not in self, with their wishes and
opinions the only thing that counts.
 Fear of self-assertion
 Fear of aggression on the part of others or of aggressive feelings
within themselves.

2. The need for a partner; one whom they can love and who will solve all
problems.

 Center of gravity entirely in the "partner," who has to fulfill all

expectations of life and take responsibility for good and evil.
 Overvaluation of "love" because "love" is supposed to solve all
problems.
 Fear of desertion.
 Fear of being alone.

3. The need for power; the ability to bend wills and achieve control over
others while most persons seek strength, the neurotic may be desperate
for it.

 Domination over others craved for its own sake.

 Devotion to cause, duty, responsibility, though playing some part,
not the driving force.
 Essential disrespect for others, their individuality, their dignity,
their feelings, the only concern being their inferiority.
 Great differences as to degree of destructive elements involved.
 Aimless adoration of strength and contempt for weakness.
 Fear of uncontrollable situations.
 Fear of helplessness.

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3a.The neurotic needs to control self and others through reason and
foresight:

 Belief in the absolute power of intelligence and reason.

 Denial of the power of emotional forces and contempt for them.
 Extreme value placed on foresight and prediction.
 Feelings of superiority over others who foresight.
 Contempt for everything within self that lags behind the image of
intellectual superiority.
 Fear of recognizing objective limitations of the power of reason.
 Fear of "stupidity" and bad judgment.

3b.The neurotic need to believe in the absolute power of will:

 Feelings of courage gained from the belief in the magic power of

will (like possession of a wishing ring).
 Tendency to renounce or restrict wishes and to withdraw interest
because of a fear of "failure".
 Fear of recognizing any limitation of absolute will.

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II- Moving Against People (Aggression)

4. The need to exploit others; to get the better of them. To

become manipulative and encouraging the belief that people are there
simply to be used.

 Others evaluated primarily according to whether or not they can be

exploited or made use of.
 Various center of exploitation, bargaining amounts to a passion,
ideas or feelings.
 Pride in exploitative skill.
 Fear of being exploited and being "stupid."

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5. The need for social recognition; prestige and limelight.

 All things, inanimate objects, money, persons, one's own qualities,

activities, and feelings, evaluated only according to their prestige
value.
 Self-evaluation entirely dependent on nature of public acceptance.
 Differences as to use of traditional or rebellious ways of
encouraging envy or admiration.
 Fear of losing caste "humiliation", whether through external
circumstances or through factors from within.

6. The need for personal admiration; for both inner and outer qualities,
to be valued.

 Inflated image of self, narcissism.

 Need to be admired not for what one possesses or presents in the
public eye but for the imagined self.
 Self-evaluation dependent on living up to this image and on
admiration of it by others.
 Fear of losing admiration "humiliation".

7. The need for personal achievement; though virtually all persons wish to
make achievements, as with No. 3, the neurotic may be desperate for
achievement.

 Need to surpass others not through what one presents or is but

through one's activities.
 Self-evaluation dependent on being the very best lover, sportsman,
writer, worker. Particularly in one's own mind, recognition by
others being vital too, however, and its absence resented.
 Admixture of destructive tendencies toward the defeat of others
never lacking but varying in intensity.
 Relentless driving of self to greater achievements, though with
pervasive anxiety.
 Dread of failure "humiliation".

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8. The need for self-sufficiency and independence; while most desire

some autonomy* (self-government), the neurotic may simply wish to discard
other individuals entirely.

 Necessity never to need anybody, or to surrender to any influence,

or to be tied down to anything, any closeness involving the danger
of enslavement.
 Distance and separateness the only source of security.
 Fear of needing others, of ties, of closeness, of love.

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III- Moving Away from People (Withdrawal)

9. The need for perfection; while many are driven to perfect their lives in
the form of well-being, the neurotic may display a fear of being slightly
flawed.

 Constant driving for perfection.

 Rumination and self-recriminations regarding possible flaws.
 Feelings of superiority over others because of being perfect.
 Fear of finding flaws within self or of making mistakes.
 Fear of criticism or reproaches.

10. Lastly, the need to restrict life practices to within narrow borders; to
live as inconspicuous a life as possible.

 Necessity to be easygoing and satisfied with little, and to restrict

ambitions and wishes for material things.
 Necessity to remain unremarkable and to take second place.
 Urge to save rather than to spend.
 Fear of making any demands.
 Fear of having expansive wishes.

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1.4. Heinz Kohut

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