how a rare clinical diagnosis became a repository for our deepest fears
October 10, 2016 9:03 AM   Subscribe

"If the uncannily accurate descriptions of your personal villain imply that he or she is outside the empire of normal mental health, flickering eerily at the edge of pathology, why do these descriptions also (in moments you quietly bury deep inside you) remind you, sometimes, of an entirely different person—that is, you? And why does the nightmare with which the internet is obsessed, of encountering people who look and sound real but are fake, remind you so much of the feeling of reading the internet itself?" Emptiness.

"Emptiness" is an excerpt from Kristin Dombek's new-ish book, The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism.

Another excerpt from The Selfishness of Others was published earlier this year as "The New New Narcissism."
This writer is hunched over her computer in a dark, high-walled room, alone, forehead creased at the study on her screen, thinking of sentences like "I'm sorry" and "I love you" and "Let me help." She is thinking of a study that found that "communal narcissists" attempt to satisfy narcissistic needs by being obviously generous, politically engaged, and emphasizing their care for others. She is worrying that if attempts to perform empathy, compassion, and sociality can all be symptoms of a pathological need to maintain one's sense of self, and if it's true that you might use "we" because you're vainly attached to presenting an image of collectivity — not to mention the possibility that, on the other hand, the 42 percent increase in the use of "I" might be a symptom of an increase in people taking more responsibility for their actions — this word counting is useless. What's left are stories, and a myth that just feels true.
☛ Vincent Scarpa, Electric Literature: Talking Selfies, Psychology and God with the Author of 'The Selfishness of Others'
☛ Bradley Spinelli, Bedford and Bowery: How to Write a Book About Narcissists Without Becoming One
☛ Laura Creste, Ploughshares: Interview with Kristin Dombek
It's applied to memoirists, people who write from the "I," so that challenged me. But like "terrorist," or "delusional," it's a word that's used in ways that seem quite relative—the narcissist is always an ex, or a person or group you disagree with, or the whole younger generation, if you're older. I'd used it in these ways myself. I got interested in looking at the fear that more and more people are evil and fake, lacking empathy. To me, that fear seemed like a clue about what keeps us from trusting others, on a personal level but also on a more global level.
posted by amnesia and magnets (13 comments total) 26 users marked this as a favorite
 
I'm wary of persuasive argument that relies on the second person for its assertions and examples, especially when posed as having basis in descriptive study. The author is careful with an equitable use of gendered pronouns, but the topic has seen enough popular attention to generalize toxic narcissism as more a male problem and often examined by terms of control issues.

Which is a hedge from which I'll back away fast with any refuting, clinical cites...

But I think the author is abstracting too much and too often and used the third-person pronoun to corral an "other" for abstractions girded by philosophical quotes in a strained and cerebral effort to give advice-- run from abusive, toxic relationships. And as good of advice as that is (no matter what rationale one has) the article as a whole sacrifices an informational potential for a didactic artifice.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 10:14 AM on October 10, 2016


I actually disagree with LCK, in part because this argument is an excerpt from a much larger piece by definition--so I'm assuming that this particular passage simply wasn't a great hook for evaluating the author's argument by the same standards I would use for a full piece. (If you want to read another excerpt that more fully summarizes the author's argument, check out the second excerpt which is less of a hook and more of a detailed argument.)

I'm still marshalling my own thoughts, mind you. But so far, I'm enjoying this particular argument, because it resonates so well with the broader issues that bother me about the way personality disorders and abusers are discussed on the internet. The enduring problem about abuse is that you don't have to be a monster to abuse someone, and every abusive person hides under their essential humanity to deny the abuse they do. Using personality disorders to consign abusive people to monster status seems.... unhelpful to me.
posted by sciatrix at 11:30 AM on October 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


Thanks sciatrix. I'll read nearly anything Harper's puts out and would have glossed Dombek's work without your encouragement.
posted by lazycomputerkids at 11:55 AM on October 10, 2016


Just a remind that today is World Mental Health Day.

I hope that everyone is getting the support and help that they need. Remember, you're not alone, there is help, and you shouldn't feel stigmatized. Be safe and healthy.
posted by Fizz at 12:56 PM on October 10, 2016 [5 favorites]


I read this and some of the supporting links fast, but note, I think, that the author is questioning narcissism as a construct in the monograph that this comes from. This excerpt perhaps builds the thing that she's going to question. Maybe? But, man, did it resonate with experiences I've had. Which I think is part of her point.
posted by zeek321 at 1:12 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


I stumbled with this right from the beginning:
THE NARCISSIST IS, according to the internet, empty. Normal, healthy people are full of self, a kind of substance like a soul or personhood that, if you have it, emanates warmly from inside of you toward the outside of you. No one knows what it is, but everyone agrees that narcissists do not have it. ...Narcissists are imitators par excellence. And they do not copy the small, boring parts of selves. They take what they think are the biggest, most impressive parts of other selves, and devise a hologram of self that seems superpowered. Let’s call it “selfiness,” this simulacrum of a superpowered self.
This doesn't jive with my layman's understanding of "narcissism," nor does it seem to meet clinical definitions as translated for laymen that I found while googling.

Is the author trying to say that what gets called "narcissism" by the Internet is not really narcissism?
posted by sparklemotion at 1:47 PM on October 10, 2016 [2 favorites]


The portrait of the empty, evil, pretending not-self sounds more like a smart amoral sociopath with no empathy gland than a traditional self-centered narcissist. And the power dynamic - you are their best friend, their most special confidante, until you are not, and then you are dirt - reminds me very strongly of what I've always called the "cult leader personality" and seen in a number of ex-friends, teachers and parents of SOs. It is so by-the-numbers that, once you really get it, you can spot these people from miles away and more or less easily navigate their attempts to control you. The key is ignoring the praise they inevitably shower on you in order to get their hooks in.

Those people are everywhere.
posted by grumpybear69 at 3:11 PM on October 10, 2016 [9 favorites]


I read this and some of the supporting links fast, but note, I think, that the author is questioning narcissism as a construct in the monograph that this comes from. This excerpt perhaps builds the thing that she's going to question.

Yeah.. I have trouble reading this any other way. It seems like she's describing a murky and self-serving 'diagnosis' popularized on the Internet, in a ramp up to perhaps talk about how this conception of 'narcissism' may say more about those using it, or about contemporary society. It seems the use of the second-person is intended to hammer home how seductive the concept is, how it reinforces your belief that the person you've had a problem with is clinically disturbed, even inhuman.

I could hardly imagine that this excerpt comes from a piece that is endorsing the Internet-diagnosis... I mean the title of the book is "The Selfishness of Others: An Essay On The Fear Of Narcissism".
posted by abrightersummerday at 4:44 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


The usage of second person is toying with the facile metric that measures narcissism by comparing the count of i/me vs you/we in texts.
posted by idiopath at 6:02 PM on October 10, 2016 [1 favorite]


This article is just a weirdly phrased argument against some other article none of us has seen.

As far as I understand Narcissism it's "A belief that one is inherently superior to all others, that the concerns of all others are inherently secondary." I've never heard anyone define it as emptiness or lack of "self".

I've met true narcissists, and I've definitely seen the word overused, but it's usually misused as a synonym for "vanity". "He's such a narcissist, he loves to spend hours looking at pictures of himself." or "I would post more about myself on Facebook, but I don't want to seem like a narcissist." I've never heard the weird emptiness thing.
posted by mmoncur at 7:57 PM on October 10, 2016


A bit of a pedantic derail but narcissism as vanity is not a misuse. It's a normal, non-clinical English meaning of the word. If science wants to borrow English words to use as terms of art, that's fine, but they don't then get to decide the common usage is now wrong because of that.
posted by mark k at 8:35 PM on October 10, 2016 [10 favorites]


I think this writer has it backwards. It's narcissists, not normal people, that are commonly described in terms like "He's so full of himself".
posted by baf at 9:53 AM on October 11, 2016


Interesting piece, but Dombek seems to have either misunderstood the context of Kant's categorical imperative.

"Kant’s elegant formulation no longer works; it assumes that because reason is our guide, others will, for the most part, act in the ways they wish everyone else to act."

Kant wasn't proposing the categorical imperative as a tool for success or a practical choice. It wasn't some game theoretical algorithm for people to get along.

It was his best description of how to act morally as an individual. It does not matter if you are surrounded by evil or saints, the morality doesn't change. I'm fairly sure Kant would have laughed at the idea that one could expect most people to act this way (I'm not positive on that one, it's been a while).
posted by Infracanophile at 3:30 PM on October 11, 2016


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