What are the signs of narcissistic personality disorder?
A person with narcissistic personality disorder is an individual who will display an over-inflated sense of themselves, and their accomplishments, and they will be completely floored when other people don't see them in that same light. They have a constant need for admiration. Now, I mentioned when we were talking about histrionic personality disorder that they need constant attention. However, unlike the person with histrionic personality disorder, the person with narcissistic personality disorder has to have entirely positive attention. Histrionics have attention at any cost; they don't care if it's good or bad. People with narcissistic personality disorder, on the other hand, need constant admiration; it all needs to be positive, all the time. They will feel that they are incredibly special and they can only interact with other people who are equally special. People with narcissistic personality disorder will only get into social settings if they feel like they will gain from them. Now, unlike the antisocial, who will only enter into social interactions if they're going to get something now, for positive primary gain; money, drugs, or whatever, for the narcissist the gain can be a little bit more abstract, let's put it that way. It could be power. It could be tickets to a private concert; prestige. It could be money, too, but I'm just saying that people with narcissistic personality disorder are a little bit more abstract, in terms of their interaction with others and what they hope to gain from it. Now, while people with narcissistic personality disorder are off and running around tooting their own horn, I think one of the reasons that they have so much social dysfunction, and why other people tend to dislike them intensely, is not so much because they're constantly bragging about themselves (although in fact it is irritating), but because I think implied in all of that bragging about themselves is a very thinly veiled devaluation of whatever it is you're doing. So, it's not only, 'I'm so great,' but there is an implied 'and you're not' which tends to upset people, and make you not very popular. The other thing is that like the borderlines, people with narcissistic personality disorder would also devalue people, but the dynamic is a little different. Envy is an incredible part of any narcissist's experience. So, if you possess something materially or psychologically that a person with narcissistic personality disorder doesn't have, they will become envious. Now, you're not going to hear them say, "Oh, I'm so jealous of you." What you'll actually see, the manifestation of that envy, will be a devaluation, "Oh well, that's because she's a brown-noser; that's why she got that promotion." So, anytime they feel that envy coming up, they will immediately have to devalue it.
