Thanks for the links.

I must say, this strikes me as really foreign as I've always strived to put myself in other people's shoes and understand what they're going through. To be honest, I find my own point of view rather boring, (as I know it too well), besides, becoming preoccupied with it robs me of the opportunity to learn something beyond my own limited view.

For me life is all about growing, helping others and becoming more than we are now. To do that I need to approach life as a learning experience while trying to maintain an open mind and remaining aware that all knowledge is progressive.

Having said that, my heart feels for those who are unable to reach out for something beyond themselves. I hope your Mom was happy. Thanks again for sharing her experiences and helping to enlighten others. :sunny:

You have to think of it in these terms: people tend to treat other people the way they believe they deserve to be treated. And when I say "believe," I don't mean in ways that are always obvious, and in the case of a narcissist it usually isn't obvious... quite the opposite. I mean what they really believe deep down, sometimes on a purely unconscious level.

It's kind of the flipside of the Golden Rule. It's easy to say "treat other people like you want to be treated," but if you've been conditioned from infancy to believe you don't matter, your feelings don't count, and that you are only useful (and in fact only really "exist") when you are filling the role that someone else assigned to you, feeling what they allow you to feel, wanting what they allow you want - believing all those things, how would you expect to be treated, really?

If you've been taught that you are not "allowed" to have hurt feelings because it's not in the script you were given, you're not going to allow other people the same consideration either. The whole concept of another person having sincere and autonomous feelings, thoughts, desires, and motivations that do not coincide with what his/her plans are for that person is completely alien to a confirmed narcissist, at least in my experience. As far as they're concerned, there's nothing there for them to empathize with... altho they can put on a pretty good show of it, if doing so suits their purposes.

I agree completely with what you said about treating others the way you think you should be treated. As far as 'conditioning' goes, this seems to be akin to a stereotypical case of a badly damaged psyche complete with shredded self esteem.

This amounts to a tremendous mountain for anyone to climb as so many core beliefs have to be challenged, re-evaluated and overcome. That being said, helping restore that which was so badly damaged seems both incredibly noble and immensely worthwhile.

Here's where I have a question though, how do you think this aspect of NPD relates to other cases where individuals exercise excessive power and/or domination over others? Is there a connection? And if so would you characterize it as a form of abuse? :hmmm:

My layperson's opinion would be that there are a variety of possible motivations for that kind of behavior, a narcissistic disorder being only one of them.

In my experience being on the receiving end of what a malignant narcissist dishes out does qualify as emotional and psychological abuse, if only because attempting (or succeeding at) using another human for one's own purposes with no regard for or acknowledgment of the fact that they exist as an autonomous individual with a *right* to self-determination and their own thoughts and feelings IS abusive. It is abuse to treat another human being as an object that exists only to meet the needs of someone else. Particularly when it is done to a child or other dependent individual who cannot simply walk away from the situation.

If you were to hit someone upside the head, even if you didn't understand why that was unacceptable, and they said "Ow you're hurting me, stop that" and yet you continued to do it, over and over again, just because it was what you decided or felt compelled to do for some reason that only made sense to you, would that qualify as abuse? Surely it would.

That is what you get from the so-called malignant narcissist, only with regard to your emotional and psychological well-being (and in some cases, your physical well-being as well).

FK, as someone with probably some slight narcissistic traits of the compensatory type (or maybe not so slight - I do like to listen to Chris Isaak and Nick Cave :oops:), I'm curious about what you think about the reason for your mother's NPD? Do you have an opinion about why she was like that?

And in her bringing you up, was there one major thing you wished she could have tried to do differently, if she had been a bit more aware of her personality and problems?

(I think my questions might be somewhat personal, so no problems, if you don't want to comment on them. - Curiosity killed the cat, but I wish I do have one or two of my nine lives still left :).)

Well I wrote a huge reply to this but when I hit Submit I had been logged out and the whole thing got lost. :stare:

Which may be a good thing anyway as we have really gone way offtopic for an SH3 thread, lol.

So - I'll be happy to try and answer your questions again later, if you would be so kind as to PM them to me. :DL

Lol, I think this is a bit off topic. Maybe the gods of internet tried to tell us that when your message got lost. On the other hand, what I've read about Prien and some of the other sub commanders I wouldn't count NPD out of the picture... :hmmm:.

Well one thing I said in my lost response was that many people may behave in a "narcissistic" fashion in certain situations or during particular phases of their lives. And let's face it, we all have moments where we'd like to believe that the world really does revolve around us and our own needs. :DL

But that's quite a different thing from pathological narcissism, or "malignant narcissist" behavior as one web site called it. That's a longterm and pervasive disorder that one does not just outgrow or give up like a bad habit, and it usually effects everything in a person's life and any relationship that is more than casual.

And IMO if you were *that* kind of narcissist, you wouldn't even be thinking about your own behavior and how it related to this discussion. You wouldn't even consider the possibility that it might apply to you at all, because it would never occur to you to think that you have a problem that might need looking at.

I will say that children who are subjected to narcissistic behavior from parents or primary caregivers early on are probably at a higher risk of exhibiting that kind of behavior themselves later in life (which holds true in many kinds of dysfunctional family situations). It is something I am very much aware of, and very much on the lookout for in my own life. But I was fortunate to have one parent who did value me for my own sake, and not just as someone who only existed to validate their own meticulously constructed substitute for true identity and self-esteem. It meant there was always a "me" deep down in there somewhere that knew I was something more than that... even if I had to keep it out of sight much of the time in order to keep it safe.

I'll PM you on this, FK - the ads by Google that I see on the upper part of the page are already beginning to show stuff like "Child behavior chart" and "Personality" right beside "MMORG games" and "Online playing":)