The term “narcissism” has grown quite a bit in popularity in recent years. In the social media world, “narcissism” is used to describe everything from being mildly self-absorbed, to pointing out showy behaviors that public figures / celebrities amplify, to the clinical definition of narcissism (when psychologists / subject matter experts weigh in on the discussion).
It doesn’t necessarily take a clinician to link the definition of narcissism with people who are clearly the epitome of it. However, it is also important to understand how Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is diagnosed. That is, if a person perpetually exhibits an extremely high sense of self worth, is hyper-focused on power and greatness, uses people and circumstances for personal gain, and is generally devoid of empathy, then a clinician may conclude that the person has NPD.
Meanwhile, there are some varying definitions of narcissism — and there are a whole host of theories for NPD. Freud, of course, is a name that comes up often when discussing psychoanalytic theories. Freud, as well as Otto Rank, spent the first part of the 20th century explaining narcissism as a protective mechanism against insecurities and low self-esteem.
Decades later, Heinz Kohut and Otto Kernberg, who have been credited for helping shape the more modern understanding of NPD, expanded upon and reshaped earlier theories by linking childhood development to NPD. Although Kohut and Kernberg both claimed that narcissism has roots in childhood, they somewhat differed on the cause: Kohut believed that narcissism spawns from parents who have difficulty empathizing with their children. Kernberg, on the other hand, linked apathetical, aggressive parents to kids acting out aggressively and becoming severely entitled. Today, studies are still further expanding on the links between childhood development, aggression, and victim mentalities.
And here’s a fun fact to end this post: The word “narcissism” comes from Greek mythology: Narcissus, a character who continually brushed off a nymph romantically pursuing him (yes, if he were on Tinder today, he would be the master of “swiping left”), ends up in hot water with the gods, and then lives out the rest of his life frequently staring at his reflection in a pool of water: He basically falls in love with himself — though part of his punishment involved not knowing that the image was his reflection in the first place — yet never receives the love back for obvious reasons. So, the lesson here, kids, is if you keep swiping left, it’s gonna come back to haunt ya! Ok, maybe not — but now you have a little more history about the word origin.
Cambridge Core. (2018). Current understanding of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-advances/article/current-understanding-of-narcissism-and-narcissistic-personality-disorder/4AA8B04FB352F8E00AA7988B63EBE973/core-reader
Cervone, D., & Pervin, L. A. (2013). Personality: Theory and research (12th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.