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.
Reader Interactions
Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
nemo
Which is basically what I said. Peace to you too.
skylar
Nemo,
What you wrote conflicts with what I have read.
I have read that homosexual males have HIGHER testosterone levels than heterosexuals.
And I’ve read that a boy who has several older brothers is more likely to be gay because as a fetus, he was subjected to more testosterone in the womb, from the previous male fetuses.
I’ve also read that testosterone increases a left brain dominance, not a right brain dominance.
It’s becoming obvious that this aspect of physiology is going to be complex – not a straight forward cause and effect.
I doubt we will ever have much control of anyone’s pre-natal hormone levels. Really, the only thing we have control of, is ourselves and how we treat each other and our children. That’s an immense power in itself, so maybe we should start there.
BBE’s experience is his own and I wouldn’t negate what he says as being homophobic. He’s just reporting what he has observed.
coping
I read the link and didn’t really understand it. Was it only a page (3 paragraphs) with a picture..?
The “technical” stuff about sociopaths and narcissists tend to confuse me. I am still working on a more emotional level.
I have a question. I realize this might be taken wrong by some people however that is not my intention… So let me see how I can best articulate this.
If we were people involved with sociopaths are we narcissists? We couldn’t change them. Why did I think I could? Is that narcissistic? Granted I didn’t know.. However this subject confuses me especially in the healing process. We talk about ourselves, our pain and try to understand.. So much is lost focusing on ourselves. Is that an n trait? Or is this survival? Healing? This subject matter confuses me.. Can we become so self centered we become an n?
In not sure if that made sence..
coping
I’m sorry. That blog made no sence. I’m very tired. I’ll think more about this later.. I had a point/question that was lost.
skylar
coping,
I saw your post where you asked for my email and I did ask Donna to send it to you, but she hasn’t responded. She may be offline for a while.
Narcissism, the word, is used in different contexts to describe different things. I think that the root of narcissism is the inability to see that we are NOT the center of the universe, which is the way babies perceive the world.
Any emotional maturity which allows us to see and feel what another person sees and feels is growth away from narcissism, but it is a journey and we are all at different places on that journey. So when I speak of my own narcissism, I’m talking about the part of the journey that I still have to travel. And when I say that it was my own narcissism that made me think I could/should take responsibility for what was the spath’s responsibiltiy, I mean that I thought I was more powerful than I really am.
Many of these behaviors are learned as children to cope with dysfunctional families. So if we are still working with the same survival strategies that we learned at our N-parent’s knee, then we are working with immature strategies which were appropriate for powerless children, but less so for adults.
That is another way of seeing narcissism.
I can see how this is confusing. I don’t know if I did a good job explaining it. The book “Why is it always about you?” is an excellent book that explains narcissism.
nemo
Hi all,
Obviously I am doing something very wrong here. I have not assumed any ones comments are homophobic.
Skylar, what you have read is different to what I have read, although I would say that, in my opinion, any testosterone differences is in the womb and not an adult, what ever their sexual preference.
I think I will take Ox Drover’s very wise advice and butt out now.
It has been interesting.
Thank you all for the posts.
Ox Drover
Coping,
There is a difference in a HEALTHY narcissism and an UNHEALTHY one.
The term comes from an old myth: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_%28mythology%29
The term narcissistic means “lover of self”—but even the Bible talks about self love as GOOD it says “love your neighbor AS yourself” Well if you didn’t love yourself, you couldn’t love your neighbor very much, now could you.
Sure babies are very narcissistic because that is all they know until they mature and grow…like Skylar said.
We are not DISORDERED if we love ourselves in a healthy and normal way, a mature way. When you are SICK you love yourself enough to get medication, to follow the doctor’s orders, to go to bed and rest so you can get well. That is healthy love for self.
There are also DEGREES of Narcissistic thinking, some people are worse about it than others, that is why it is called NPD Narcissistic personality disorder.
A person who is THOUGHTLESS is sort of “narcissistic” and might eat the last piece of cake, not even thinking that you had had none, but the VERY narcissisticly inclined would maybe not even want the cake but would throw it in the trash JUST SO YOU COULD NOT HAVE ANY. Get the picture
Keep on reading and learning, but don’t ever feel bad taking care of yourself or healing!@ (((hugs))) God bless.
Sarah999
IMHO…There is NO such thing “Healthy Narcissism”.
For example.
1) A new born is less than 2 feet tall. We do not say he is “short”! A new born SUPPOSED to be less than 2 feet tall.
2) A 1 year old child old can’t add or talk . . . We don’t say he is dumb! At 1 year old he is NOT SUPPOSED to add or talk.
3) An infant cries or to get his needs met, we do not say he is selfish and narcissistic . . . He is SUPPOSED to cry to get his needs met.
It irks me when people apply a label of “Healthy Narcissism” to a child who is going through normal development.
Narcissism has NO RELATION to children going through a normal developmental stages. Just as we wouldn’t apply, short or dumb to children going through the normal stages of growth and intellectual development.
They are not short . . . they are children!
They are not dumb . . they are children!
They are not narcissistic . .they are children!
skylar
One day, my spath told me I was arrogant AND that other people had mentioned it to him. I was flummoxed. WTF? I had to actually look up the word because I had no idea what he was trying to say. Of course, now I know that he was projecting.
For me, that’s the definition of narcissism.
Today, I looked up narcissism:
So the definitions are close, in that they both have to do with a distorted sense of oneself as being better, more important, more entitled, more deserving of attention than what is reality. I take it a bit further and would add more capable, including more capable of assuming responsibility and making better decisions, than anyone else.
Whether it’s a good thing or not, is debatable. Yes, it’s a good thing for babies, I do agree. And I think it’s a good thing for teenagers too because they are trying their wings and need the confidence.
In A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives by Cordelia Fine, she says that people who perceive themselves and their abilities most accurately, are clinically depressed.
I thought that the article above was really good, so I googled Julian Keenan and found a video of him talking about narcissism. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXoe9szaL9g
So maybe it’s not narcissism alone that makes spaths so disgusting, but rather the complete retardation of their emotional growth, so that they have all the attitudes of infants, including envy and cowardice.
callmeathena
Sky
Great thought. It’s the combination of them being so convinced of their superiority (and fooling many of us that it’s true) WHILE being emotionally incapable.
My spath’s daughter said, “he just doesn’t understand things the way most people do”. That alone would have been OK, if he didn’t LIE and DECEIVE and then PROJECT SUPERIORITY.
Duped !
Athena