The psychology of it

When I started learning about the psychology of NPD, I started trying to use my limited knowledge of the various psychological defense mechanisms and psychological feedback systems associated with NPD to explain why things like “leveling”, “blame-shifting”, “projecting”, etc. were happening. For example, if narcissism is a defense mechanism, it’s easy to see how blame-shifting could be a significant component of that. Blame arriving to a vulnerable inner-self would be damaging, so the “shift-blame” missile is launched taking out the offender mid-air before it hits. There is obviously something in that, but this is highly complex stuff. My theories didn’t get very far without running into massive problems and flaws. I am not a psychologist. And even if I were, we’re dealing with individuals here, not robots arriving off a production line all pre-configured with the same programming. Human behaviors are not easily explained. However when we monitor the behaviors, label the behaviors, put the behaviors into a bucket, then we can decide what to label the bucket. In my case, I’ve collected the behaviors, labeled them, popped them into a bucket and labelled the bucket “NARCISSISM”.

The why of it all

Now that I’m looking at individual items (in a bucket) rather than one big splat of crazy, it’s far easier to reason about them individually. The why is less of an obsession for me. The individual items are far easier to explain now that they’re less of a mystery.

The moral of the story, know the vocabulary and the “why” will come.