Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Symptoms

Symptoms

Symptoms of this disorder include:

• Reacting to criticism with anger, shame, or humiliation
• Taking advantage of others to reach their own goals
• Exaggerating their own importance, achievements, and talents
• Imagining unrealistic fantasies of success, beauty, power, intelligence, or romance
• Requiring constant attention and positive reinforcement from others
• Becoming jealous easily
• Lacking empathy and disregarding the feelings of others
• Being obsessed with oneself
• Pursuing mainly selfish goals
• Trouble keeping healthy relationships
• Becoming easily hurt and rejected
• Setting goals that are unrealistic
• Wanting "the best" of everything
• Appearing unemotional

The symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder can be similar to the traits of individuals with strong self-esteem and confidence; differentiation occurs when the underlying psychological structures of these traits are considered pathological. Narcissists have such an elevated sense of self-worth that they value themselves as inherently better than others. Yet, they have a fragile self-esteem and cannot handle criticism, and will often try to compensate for this inner fragility by belittling or disparaging others in an attempt to validate their own self-worth. It is this sadistic tendency that is characteristic of narcissism as opposed to other psychological conditions affecting level of self-worth.

In children, inflated self-views and grandiose feelings, which are characteristics of narcissism, are part of the normal self-development. Children typically cannot understand the difference between their actual and their ideal self, which causes an unrealistic perception of the self. After about age 8, views of the self, both positive and negative, begin to develop based on comparisons of peers, and become more realistic. Two factors that cause self-view to remain unrealistic are dysfunctional interactions with parents that can be either excessive attention or a lack thereof. The child will either compensate for lack of attention or act in terms of unrealistic self-perception.

The Childhood Narcissism Scale (CNS) measurements concluded that narcissistic children seek to impress others and gain admiration but do not have any interest in creating sincere friendships. CNS researchers have measured that childhood narcissism has become more prevalent in Western society; any types of activities that focus on overly praising the individual can raise narcissistic levels. More research is needed to find the reasons that promote or protect against narcissism.