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Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#41

Post by mxiia »

rrggrr wrote: post #23
jacobmoe wrote: post #7

TIL I'm a narcissist. Not how I expected this morning to go. I think these kind of categories that come from psychology are useful and also dangerous. Our innate tendency towards heuristics makes it difficult to talk about this stuff, especially with words like "narcissist" that have strongly negative connotations. The brain is a complicated mess. Maybe the most complicated mess in the universe. We try to impose some…

The diagnosis is not arbitrary and the lack of self-awareness those suffering from NPD experience places them at a disadvantage at self-diagnosis. DSM standards have moved a lot over the years, but NPD has remained largely the same. Ask a child, love-interest or spouse of someone with NPD about the manifestations of the condition on their lives and you'll get a remarkably consistent story. There are two grey areas: F…

> First, NPD in women can be confused with Asperger syndrome.

Can you expand on this or provide some more reading for me? I believe my mother has NPD and have, on occasion, sworn she was on the spectrum as well.

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#42

Post by [deleted] »

wellpast wrote: post #27
bcOpus wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By no means is this a universal truism, but in general if you think you have a Cluster B personality disorder, you probably don’t. If you think you’re the smartest, best person in the world and other people are inferior and should know it... then you might.

What if I think I'm approximately the 100th smartest person in the world? But only when it comes to, say, J2EE? Like I'm the 100th smartest person at J2EE in the world, and everyone else besides the approximately 100 above me are J2EE-inferior. Am I a Narcissist? A J2EE-Narcissist?

[deleted]

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#44

Post by muterad_murilax »

jf- wrote: post #18

Non-narcissist here, apparently. I do find the premise somewhat troubling. If you’re supremely confident and never doubt yourself, even in situations where you should, you could be described as a narcissist. And if you’re lacking in self-confidence, and constantly think you’ll be found out, you’re also a narcissist. And there’s probably narcissists who experience a moderate level of self-doubt in between. It’s more l…

Isn't that the difference between (true) narcissists and people who suffer from a narcissistic personality disorder (NPD)?

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#45

Post by 50 »

Yikes. I’m thinking about how labels and identifications like these might harm us. As naive as it may sound, I think when you identify with something, you are constrained within that indentification, not aware you are really not that and therefore limited. I know we live in a society but yikes.

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#46

Post by nobody271 »

jf- wrote: post #18

Non-narcissist here, apparently. I do find the premise somewhat troubling. If you’re supremely confident and never doubt yourself, even in situations where you should, you could be described as a narcissist. And if you’re lacking in self-confidence, and constantly think you’ll be found out, you’re also a narcissist. And there’s probably narcissists who experience a moderate level of self-doubt in between. It’s more l…

This is why I find the idea of promoting "mental health awareness" to be disturbing. It's far too tempting to say you know why someone acts some way, or that the way they are acting is a disorder, based on one or two observations.

I do the same thing though. I really wish I understood myself half as well as I think I understand other people.

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#47

Post by barberousse »

50 wrote: post #45

Yikes. I’m thinking about how labels and identifications like these might harm us. As naive as it may sound, I think when you identify with something, you are constrained within that indentification, not aware you are really not that and therefore limited. I know we live in a society but yikes.

Thing is, its "names", for lack of a better term, all the way down

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#48

Post by theoh »

rrggrr wrote: post #23
jacobmoe wrote: post #7

TIL I'm a narcissist. Not how I expected this morning to go. I think these kind of categories that come from psychology are useful and also dangerous. Our innate tendency towards heuristics makes it difficult to talk about this stuff, especially with words like "narcissist" that have strongly negative connotations. The brain is a complicated mess. Maybe the most complicated mess in the universe. We try to impose some…

The diagnosis is not arbitrary and the lack of self-awareness those suffering from NPD experience places them at a disadvantage at self-diagnosis. DSM standards have moved a lot over the years, but NPD has remained largely the same. Ask a child, love-interest or spouse of someone with NPD about the manifestations of the condition on their lives and you'll get a remarkably consistent story. There are two grey areas: F…

Absolutely this. It's not a trait that should be measured on a spectrum; it's more like a consistent mode of interacting with the world, a pathological mechanism/system of functioning. It takes a clinician (or victim) some time to see enough examples and gain the experience that's needed to recognize whether any given individual is relating to the world in a narcissistic way.

In other words, it's a pathology of personality, analogous to pathological states of other biological systems. Trying to grasp it as if it was a simple trait (height, introversion/extraversion, BMI) is unlikely to be successful, because narcissism is a pattern of intra- and interpersonal dynamics. It's something that has to be reconstructed from multiple observations.

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#49

Post by barberousse »

thr0awaz wrote: post #31
rhacker wrote: post #11

This is my point of view: Everyone is a narcissist maximally. It's not a spectrum, just a maximum state that is always on, always self preserving, but personality differs quite a bit. Personality causes others to perceive others as being more or less narcissistic. In other words we started using the word narcissistic to start describing personality types.

no... there really are people out there that really think they're better than you, on an existential level, and that the only reason you're better at any one thing than them is because they haven't gotten around to doing it better than you yet. The short test for narcissism is: "Are you a narcissist?" Actual, pathological, narcissists answer 'yes' so often that it's almost useful as a diagnostic tool. Most people hav…

>Actual, pathological, narcissists answer 'yes' so often that it's almost useful as a diagnostic too

Citation?

Re: Are Narcissists More Likely to Experience Impostor Syndrome?

#50

Post by btkramer9 »

50 wrote: post #45

Yikes. I’m thinking about how labels and identifications like these might harm us. As naive as it may sound, I think when you identify with something, you are constrained within that indentification, not aware you are really not that and therefore limited. I know we live in a society but yikes.

reminds me of this: http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
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