i stopped calling anyone a ‘narcissist’ with pejorative connotations a long time ago, due to a moment of insight that suddenly seized me, at which point i shouted ‘eureka’; the measure of the excessiveness of someone’s pride, or vanity, or grandiosity, is not something that can be assessed by another person. if such an attempt is made, all that will be revealed is the criticizer’s vulnerability to the threat of his own shortcomings by comparison. the very notion of narcissism, whether clinal (as in the DSM) or out of some philosophical narrative, springs directly from resentment and in some cases ressentiment. and here’s why.
that someone appears excessive in the above things, isn’t an indication of how he truly feels about himself. it may be that to you he appears obnoxious, arrogant, what have you, but what if that person, while maybe feeling superior to you, still isn’t satisfied with himself? ‘ah’, you say. i think i see where this is going.
joe is an awesome athlete, and quite proud of his talents. so much so that he would not hesitate to say ‘i’m better than you’… but what we don’t know about joe is that he, himself, thinks he could be better, could improve, and that by comparison to still others (but not you), he thinks he’s woefully inferior.
now which is any evidence of the true measure of joe’s vanity and/or pride here? how we feel when we resent the fact that he thinks he’s better than us, or how joe feels when he examines himself and realizes his disatisfaction with himself and desire to improve?
see what just happened there? to call someone’s pride and vanity excessive can only mean ‘we are offended by his confidence’. it cannot mean we’ve identified some unjustified and over exaggerated sense of importance or value in joe’s mind. joe really becomes quite modest when he is critical of himself. it’s only compared to you that he is better… something you resent. and he shall not be aware of his superiority, for that would be narcissistic and unfair!
the doctrine of narcissism, along with being so many obscure and ambiguous narratives in clinical psychology, is nothing more than a blanket-statement to categorize anyone who tries to distance himself from the herd. the same goes for that pseudo-diagnosis ‘sociopath’. sociopathology is the resentment doctrine of narcissism taken to the fifth power. it’s rests fundamentally on the grey area between organic disease and ‘mental disorder’. because psychologists can’t argue on a scientific level that an alleged organic condition of sociopathology is a trait that can’t promote the ‘fitness level’ in strictly biological terms, they resort to moralizing… and call it a ‘mental disorder’.
be weary of anyone who calls you a narcissist, and remind them that despite your superiority to them, there is always more room for improvement in yourself. instead, look for those who are fellow narcissists… exceptional people with extraordinary talents, and are certain enough of themselves to not even notice the arrogance of others. not because they don’t notice, but because they can’t notice, on account of them not being able to feel threatened or resentful of someone else.
few things are more adorable then two modest narcissists working together to improve themselves even more.
…
it would really come down to this; if you can say you’ve found someone who genuinely feels that they have no room for improvement, then you can say you’ve found a narcissist. good luck with that. see even the most clearly undeserving of the vanity they have - [insert any Crap artist, for instance] - still are not completely satisfied with themselves and whether secretly or not, are not as great as they really want to be.
and if there is nothing worth the merit of one’s pride, which we find excessive, what exactly is the problem? we’ve merely found a fake narcissist, and this is even worse! it is an insult to the true narcissist!