A researcher conducts a study that reveals just how much narcissists focus on themselves.
Read: The definitive fMRI test for narcissism, on PsychologyToday.com.
Link supplied by a Lovefraud reader.
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How to recognize and recover from everyday sociopaths - narcissists
behind blue eyes – it irritates me when you make general statements about the gay community and don’t site studies that one could even look at to judge the veracity of the research.
Have you ever considered that these generalizations may be attributed to the ‘facts’ that relate to the part of the gay gene pool you hang out in?
Interesting. But, getting these uniquely gifted individuals to submit to testing like this? Good luck with that.
After surviving a 15 year marriage to a narcissist, I don’t need a scientific confirmation – I know when when I see it and all I’ll need is a taxi!
Adhd is a catch all and its really hard to rule out all the things that are misdiagnised as adhad. There are plenty of them.
Here’s hoping medicine and science will continue to explore these things and maybe, one day, figure it all out.
We are so early in our understanding of so many things in understanding the human brain. It really is amazing.
Fascinating. And every new piece of information provokes new questions.
silvermoon,
you said, “After surviving a 15 year marriage to a narcissist, I don’t need a scientific confirmation ”“ I know when when I see it and all I’ll need is a taxi!”
bwahahahaha! thanks for the laugh of the day!
It is very interesting that the word narcissism comes from the greek myth about a man who was obsessed with his reflection in a pool. The myth, is describing a personality disorder which we now understand as narcissism but I wouldn’t call it circular logic because the word is just a word but the definition is what matters. We define it scientifically by certain attitudes and behaviors. The greeks went a little further. They used a story that incorporated “red flags” which may not be obvious at first.
The reflection alone, is filled with meaning. Reflections are shallow, they are tricks between the eye and the brain. They are 180 degrees the opposite of reality. They are the left hand of the right or vice versa. The word reflection has a connotation of being absorbed in thought, so reflection of yourself means absorbed with thoughts about yourself.
One thing about narcissists that I’m sure we can all agree on is that they ARE pathologically absorbed with thoughts about themselves. So absorbed that they just can’t make room for any thoughts about anyone else.
Even my spath, whose ability to read people and manipulate their emotions is phenomenal, showed this self-absorption in that only his needs mattered. And he is incredibly needy. Everything he does or says is about getting people to care about his needs.
very very interesting conversation. probably not a long term one, as in our society the “hard”scientific data will win out in a short sighted cycle , with convenient pill therapy in lieu of deep and wide enough research- don’t you think?
and due to current findings in pregnancy hormone levels and subsequent developmental issues, don’t we need to put a spotlight on the emotional situation of the pregnant woman? since there is a definite correlation between emotions and hormonal levels- a vastly misunderstood 2-way street there, i think.
as to the genetic research- as the fifty+plus yr old daughter of a long line of farmers, much more attention should be paid to nurture, including nutritional standards. after all, high school chemistry taught me that the composition of an electrolyte solution was a primary factor in the quality of the electrical current carried, and i think we will soon all begin seeing brain chemistry as a direct function of that, and also the “genotype” – rather than being a fixed set of inherited directives, operates much more like a train-track type of progression directly related to the quality of the nutrients available for the switching mechanisms now known to be primary functions of genes….
in other words, the environment is a direct factor in producing ppaths and spaths…also adhd….with predisposition.
& if you step back and look at the cultural influences, at least in the u.s., we have become a culture that promotes sociopathic behaviors…
to the degree that during the late eighties and nineties, that became almost the standard for promotion in corporate environments, and sadly has had a huge ripple effect, consequently, on our entire culture.
just my observation/opinion… : )
Panther, first and definitively the most important, you did not offend me. I guess I was just asking for clarification. It seems that I did not make myself clear either. Sorry.
I have done a very quick study, both in asking a friend who is gay “how many left handed gays he knew?” and also a quick bit of surfing and, I am sorry to say that I have found no conclusive proof of anything. My friend, who I asked blindly, i.e. I didn’t tell him why I was asking, did not know a single left handed gay person. On the net, I found articles talking about left handed people being one of a twin in the womb but, again, I found studies showing that the incidence of this, i.e. one twin absorbing the other is actually far more prevalent than most people assume. Therefore, left handedness, in this context is a statistical chance. Being that a much larger than thought of percentage of pregnancies begin with two possible babies and end with only one, the other either being absorbed by the placenta, the other baby or indeed, the Mother herself, one would expect a percentage of these surviving babies to be left handed.
BTW Ox Drover, the % of left handedness in society is given as around 10%, though some reports say this is increasing.
The fact that some comments here involve the gay community in regards to psychopathy is sounding warning bells in my head. I have not seen or heard of anything linking gayness to any mental illness, apart from some of the more fundamentalist or hate inspired tautologies going around.
Being that as it may, I understand that this is primarily a personal blog and people are, quite rightly, giving their own opinions based on their own experiences.
My comment was that it would be nice to see actual statistics for this but I cannot seem to find any.
Though, I have obviously not exhausted my search.
Nemo, BBE is a gay male and he is simply giving his opinion on the mental health of the gay community, he is not “gay bashing” any more than I am by saying “there are a lot of white, hetrosexual psychopaths” LOL
being gay does not preclude one being homophobic. internalized homophobia is alive and well in the gay community. it is quite possible to bash our own kind.
Ox Drover and one/joy_step_at_a_time,
I understand that and fair enough but saying that one group of people behave, in your experience, in a certain way is a lot different to linking that behavior to mental illness, which is what seems to be happening here. In my opinion…
Hormonal secretions, chiefly testosterone, in the womb are linked to lots of this, but, and here is the salient part, nobody has any definitive proof.
Again I totally accept that what we have here is a discussion and it is from personal experience.
The thing is though, on the one hand you have studies suggesting that, one of these testosterone surges , if not sufficient, alters the babies “mind type” and pre-disposes them to be homosexual, in the case of males.
Well and good, it kind of makes sense, all fetuses are female at the start and it is the testosterone surges that initiate male characteristics and also sexuality.
However, testosterone surges promote more growth in the left side of the brain. Therefore, most males have a slightly higher developed right brain than left. In women it tends to be equal. More right side brain bias generally equates to less empathy. Hence woman are seen as predominantly empathetic and males as not really empathetic. As the left side of the body is controlled by the right brain, higher prenatal testosterone levels creates a highly developed right brain, thus a left handed male.
So, by extension, a left handed male would, one assumes, have had a larger than average dose of testosterone in the womb, which might be an argument for more psychopaths being left handed (if one assumes that testosterone has a large part to play in psychopathy), but not more gays being left handed…
Anyway, I realise I am getting caught up in the details here, so I am not going to belabor the point, which, to be perfectly honest about, I am beginning to lose track of… 😛
Having said all that, here I am, a heterosexual, left handed male who has, so it has been said, great empathy, so what do I know…
Ooops, correction to my above post, I, of course meant :
“testosterone surges promote more growth in the RIGHT side of the brain”, sorry.
Nemo, as a heterosexual I am going to back out of this conversation because I think it has the potential to become problematic. BBE has a right in my opinion to express his opinion on this matter and I think his experiences as a gay male are much more insightful than mine could possibly be. Peace.