The nymph Echo spied Narcissus, who had been lost in a wood, and she became immediately infatuated, following him, waiting for him to speak so her feelings might be heard. Echo came close enough so that she was revealed, and attempted to embrace him. Horrified, he stepped back and told her to “keep her chains”. Heartbroken, Echo wasted away, losing her body and only her voice remained.
Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, heard the pleas of a young man, Ameinias, who had fallen for Narcissus but was ignored and cursed him. Nemesis listened, and proclaimed that Narcissus would never be able to be loved by the one he fell in love with.
After spurning Echo and Ameinias, Narcissus became thirsty and found a pool of water. Leaning down to drink, Narcissus sees his reflection. Not realizing it was his own reflection, Narcissus fell deeply in love with it. Thus Nemesis’ curse came true, for unable to leave the allure of this image, Narcissus eventually realized that his love could not be reciprocated. He melted away from the fire of passion burning inside him, eventually turning into a gold and white flower.
(From: Wikipedia (adapted))
1. A grandiose sense of self-importance, and exaggerating achievements and talents
2. Dreams of unlimited power, success, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. Requires excessive admiration
4. Believes he is special and unique, and can only be understood by, or should associate with other special or high-status people or institutions
5. Lacks empathy for the feelings and needs of others
6. Unreasonably expects special, favourable treatment or compliance with his wishes
7. Exploits and takes advantage of others to achieve personal ends
8. Envies others or believes they’re envious of him
9. Has “an attitude” of arrogance or acts that way
(source; in fact from the DSM-5 mental disorders manual).
You may think that each person has narcissist traits to some degree, but the difference between a normal person and a narcissist is that the latter has these traits to an extreme degree and that it is hard to talk with him about it. Moreover, it’s always you, who must give in, if you meet a person with a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). I found this accurate description of the difference between a normal person and a narcissist: “If you tell a ‘normal’ person they can’t come in, they may ask why but they will accept the boundary that’s been set. If you tell someone with NPD they can’t come in, they will try to break the door down. If you bolt the door, they will try the windows. If you board up and bolt the windows, they will try to make a hole in the roof. If that's an impossible route, they will burn the house down but they WILL get in because obsessively defeating the boundary you set becomes their objective, not the reason they wanted to come in.” (source)
Narcissism resembles hubris, as discussed in my last blog. Some see them as different positions on a personality scale. And it is so that Owen and Davidson listed narcissism among the symptoms of the hubris syndrome (see my last blog). Nevertheless, they are not the same. While hubris is a trait a person has acquired by his experiences, narcissism (NPD) is a disorder, so a kind of illness. Hubris is temporary, while narcissism is a personality characteristic and therefore difficult to change, if it is. It makes that the hubris syndrome appears in later life, while narcissism appears in late childhood or adolescence and it continues into adulthood. The hubris syndrome is an outcome of the environment acquired by persons in positions of power, and if it can be seen as an illness, it is “an illness of position as much as of the person.” (Owen) This doesn’t mean, of course, that hubristic persons cannot have a narcissistic disorder as well.
Can we do without persons with narcissistic traits? A study by Zoltán Fazekas and Peter K. Hatemi shows that “those scoring higher in narcissism … participate more in politics, including contacting politicians, signing petitions, joining demonstrations, donating money, and voting in midterm elections.” “The general picture is that individuals who believe in themselves, and believe that they are better than others, engage in the political process more,” so the researchers. “At the same time, those individuals who are more self-sufficient are also less likely to take part in the political process. This means that policies and electoral outcomes could increasingly be guided by those who both want more, but give less.” In an interview, Peter Hatemi says: “It is hard not to notice how much more of ‘me’ is part of our world – projecting one’s status at the cost of others, whether using social media such as Facebook or Instagram or Twitter. … It was hard for my colleague Zoltan Fazekas and I [sic] to ignore the rampant narcissism in our elected leaders, and the outcomes of their decisions. And it seemed likely that higher public narcissism has some role in the growing instability of our democracy. … A healthy democracy depends on a representative public that participates, but perhaps those who are participating are part of the problem? Some of the public has become more mobilized, but this mobilization is not evenly distributed. Arguably, people who participate more are more hardline and ideologically driven than any time in history, and it looks like narcissism has some role as well.” In a Me Era we can expect me-politicians, and that’s what we are seeing now.
I wanted to write about the difference between hubristic and narcissistic behaviour, but in the present political practice it makes little difference whether we are victims of the former or the latter.