Narcissistic people are usually focused more on themselves than the people around them. (Photo: Peter Bernik/Shutterstock) Great Photo Peter Bernik!
How to Spot a Narcissist
by Starre Vartan
Starre Vartan has been an environmental journalist for over a decade,
and has written for New York magazine, Metropolis, Inhabitat.com,
Audubon magazine (where she was a columnist), Whole Living, Elle.com,
Plenty, and E/The Environmental Magazine. She started her career by
focusing on natural beauty, eco fashion and sustainable living on her
blog, eco-chick.com, on which her book, The Eco Chick Guide to Life: How to
Be Fabulously Green (St. Martin's Press, 2009), is based. Starre was
chosen as one of Glamour magazine's 'Top Green Women' for their 70th
anniversary issue, and has been thrice-quoted by the New York Times for
her ecological expertise. She currently contributes to The Huffington
Post in the Green and Style sections and LuxuryTravel.About.com where
she writes about sustainable travel destinations. Starre regularly
consults for Fortune 500 companies and is working on a home linens
collection (based on her nature photography) that will launch Summer,
2014. Starre has a BS in Geology from Syracuse University and an MFA in
writing from Columbia University. When not on the road visiting her
family in Australia or checking out swimming holes the world over, she
gardens, hikes, reads novels, mountain bikes and snowboards.
Calling someone a narcissist is one of those casual insults/compliments (depending on who you're talking to, right?) that is lobbed around frequently. But like many other mental health issues that get joked about, this one is based on a very real condition — one that hasn't changed its definition much over the past 20 years, and has, during that time, been consistently defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the psychologist's big book of diagnoses.
People with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, as defined by the DSM-V (the most recent edition), need to display the following traits (abbreviated a bit; if you want to see the full definition, click here):
- An exaggerated sense of their own self-importance
- Puts quite a bit of energy and thought into fantasies of success, power or ideal love and romance.
- Believes that they are special and unique (and should only associate with others who are similarly gifted)
- Wants to be constantly admired
- Acts in an extremely entitled way
- Takes advantage of other people
- Unwilling to empathize with other people
- Is very envious of others or thinks they are envious of him/her
- Displays rude or abusive attitudes and behaviors toward other people
Does this sound like anyone you know? While a classic narcissist will display all nine of these behaviors, having just five of them qualifies someone — though only a trained therapist can diagnose someone with the disorder. But seeing that narcissists aren't likely to recognize their own problem, many of them go unofficially diagnosed and untreated.
It's estimated that about 6 percent of the population has this personality disorder, and its more prevalent in men than women. The traits of this disorder get stronger as people age, and are usually in full bloom in a person's 40s and 50s. Kids and teens can't really be diagnosed with this kind of issue since they are growing and changing so fast.
Like most personality problems, there are upsides to narcissism: These people are usually highly motivated and driven to achieve high levels of power. It's more common for CEOs and politicians to be narcissists, for example. And the most ego-driven, rude and and non-empathetic CEOs — the most narcissistic — make the most money, a recent study found. So it can (literally) pay to be a narcissist. They may not have any reason to change — or any desire to either.
And their public perception may be good: "...you've got this person who is quite charming, charismatic, self-confident, visionary, action-oriented, able to make hard decisions (which means the person doesn't have a lot of empathy)," Charles A. O’Reilly III, a management professor at Stanford business school said in a statement attached to the CEO narcissism study.
Meanwhile, the people who are in the same family as a narcissist can be severely affected, especially their children. Working with one isn't a pleasant experience either. Narcissists have impulse-control issues, and frequently verbally abuse those around them, mock people they see as inferior and/or treat them with disdain — actions that never made anyone feel good (or even OK) about themselves, ever.
It's probably a combination of biological predisposition and environment (how someone grows up) that makes a narcissist, psychologists now believe. And the treatment? Plenty of sessions with a psychiatrist trained in dealing with this disorder.
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