Posted by I learned long ago a new blog or web name isn’t the answer. Perhaps I should ask Keith Raniere as he is the expert at URLs. “Literary narcissist” is one I can think of. “Evergreen in Decline” is another.
The great writer Paul Thereaux once wrote “If you write a page a day you eventually have a novel.” You may do the math and calculate the devotion needed; if I write more parts I will have a book on narcissism.
The latter begs the question, decline from what?
Another, the current name, is Part 5.
I never claimed to be a psychologist, or prophet, or self-help author. Nor did I claim to invent fake news or internet scams. But man, real information and learning, including helping others, is harder to come by than I had thought.
“Confirmation bias” does not mean anything except to those who are confirmed biased.
Part 5 is “You are a narcissist!” is an absurd allegation. Most of us are. Almost all of us who are leaders, on a faster track, and are ambitious have narcissistic tendencies.
We could discuss potentially-acceptable examples. Steve Jobs. Elon Musk. They are egotists and narcissists to the max. Some people they encountered or worked with (i.e., for) admired them; most hate them.
Nonetheless, they are not criminals.
Sometimes people say “eclectic.” Personally, I do not like the term, but it is narcissistic.
The point here in Part 5 is narcissism is normal if not a tick along-side normal. Most people are narcissists to some degree. Achieving people are likely narcissists and extremely driven people are very likely narcissists.
Personally, I call myself confident, even boisterous, but not unsympathetic an not un-empathetic.
The concept is difficult to understand.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-lunbeck/5-things-you-didnt-know-a_2_b_5107392.html
https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-positive-personality-traits-of-being-a-narcissist
I wanted to like this book because of the author’s obvious scholarship. But as a practicing clinical psychologist, I find its fundamental premise completely flawed. Implicit in the book is the premise that the social critics, when they use the term narcissism, are describing the same entity as a clinician who practices psychotherapy/psychoanalysis. This is wrong, and the author would know this if she were a clinician, but she is not. The work of the social critics, which assumes a major place in the book, describes a change in values in our culture over the past couple of generations–a shift toward hedonism, consumerism and just plain selfishness. These are indisputable observations and worth writing about. However, to a clinician, narcissism is a description of a person who has a codified mental illness in the psychiatric diagnostic manual, one who stands apart from others in the culture, not because of values or lifestyle, but because of a profound disorder in interpersonal functioning that is disabling in both work and love. Lunbeck’s combining these very disparate conceptualizations of narcissism in a single volume is not only unsatisfying, but confusing. If you are a practicing therapist, this book is not for you.
That is a review on the amazon link above. I have not read the book but I agree with that. That is what I mean by “literary narcissist.” It is literature and conjecture, not criminal and not clinical.