Types of Narcissism

First things first, I have learned that the different types are not something to get hung up on. There is crossover. There is change. There is unpredictability.

The DSM

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official bible of such things prescribes a bunch of character traits, nine to be specific, that comprise narcissism. Don’t worry, we’ll go through them in detail later but for now, let’s just apply some common sense to proceedings. If there are a bunch of specific character traits, it stands to reason that the quantities of each will vary dramatically from person to person. Add in the fact that all people are different and unique anyway. Then add in cultural influences, upbringing, genetics, and an infinite number of other factors, common sense dictates that this thing will vary wildly from person to person. I guess given such vast variance it makes since that attempts have been made to break it down into more manageable sub-genres. The DSM however makes no such attempt!

Cooking up some narcissists

Consider grabbing a scoop of these nine items into a mixing bowl while not paying any attention to the amount in each scoop. Now add in environment, social status, culture, religion, genetics in random quantities, mixing it all up and popping it in the oven. Do this a hundred times, in fact do it a thousand times.

When your “bread” pops out of the oven, some will be flat like cookies, some will be raised like bread, some will be grainier, some will be less grainy, some will be gooey, some will be flakey, there will be a spectrum of colors from light to dark. Some will even be burned; some will be undercooked. And there will be everything in-between.

How do you categorize them?

By color? By texture? By size? By appearance?

The answer: whatever way you want to, there are any number of ways you could group them or categorize them?

You go ahead and divide them into three groups called vampires, werewolves, and zombies.

Now looking at your groups, you can see similarities in different groups. For example, the groups you’ve named “vampires” have the flat ones, but they are multicolored and have different textures. The group you’ve named “werewolves” has the midrange ones, the non-flat but less raised ones. But in this group, there are different colors and different textures. Your final group is named “zombies”, these are the bread-like ones but again, they are a mixed bag of different colors and textures.

You decide that this grouping isn’t suitable. You decide to group by texture instead, but you find that you have big ones and small ones in each group, and you start to question the decision to group by texture. Perhaps grouping by size would be better? But yet again while the sizes in each group may be similar, there’s a mixture of colors and all sorts in each group.

This is puzzling. How can you group them?

Eventually, you realize that any kind of grouping simply isn’t going to work. Each one is its own thing.

Then you start to think about why you wanted to group them in the first place. Why did I want to group them at all? Was it even necessary?

Back to the DSM

Well, it turns out that the DSM doesn’t categorize narcissism at all.

I guess the categorizations are from academic research and popular psychology and consequently are synonymous with narcissism as a whole.

Here are some of the popular categories but it’s essential to remember that narcissism is narcissism, the categories all contain the same narcissistic traits to some lesser or greater extent.

Covert narcissism

• AKA vulnerable narcissism
• My wife is one of these, she hides her bad behavior from the outside world.

Grandiose narcissism

• AKA Exhibitionist narcissism
• AKA Overt narcissism

Think Donald Trump. What you see is what you get and what you get is often nuts. If you don’t like it, too bad, you’re fired.

I have a friend who is one of these. He likes who he is and if you don’t like it, that’s your problem. The only problem is that he’s often cruel, angry, needy, takes what he wants when he wants and has little regard for his wife.

He also happens to be one of the funniest guys I have the pleasure of hanging out with. I like him, I enjoy his company. I hate the way he treats his wife. I also hate when he talks about the other long list of people he’s fallen out with. It reminds me of his volatility and that I need to continue to ego-prop him regularly and don’t dare press any minor differing opinions with him for fear of being put on that list. He needs steering when he shows signs of going south, especially when he has a beer in his hand at the time.

Malignant narcissism

• These come with an evil sadistic streak and approach psychopathy.

Cerebral narcissism

• These guys beat you down with their superior intellect. Annoying bastards.

Somatic narcissism

• All about vanity and looks.

Communal narcissism

These are the small-town do-gooders such as much loved football coaches, religious leaders, cake bakers for community events, the life-and-soul-of-the-party people, etc. who get their kicks (sense of purpose and validation and whatnot) externally from the power, praise and recognition they get from being helpers. If that ever gets taken away from them very bad things can happen. It was narcissism that was driving them. Now the narcissism has no supply, it will seek it and things may get bad. Needless to say, only the narcissists are the narcissists, there are obviously genuine good people like these everywhere.

Mix in some real badness

• Now we move closer towards sociopathy and psychopathy. Yep, NPD is just to the left of these bad guys on the badness spectrum.

What’s the difference between sociopathy and psychopathy?
I’ve no idea, sorry. But I do know the official diagnosis for such is Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Critical Point

I got hung up on this stuff.
I ended up arguing with myself about what type my wife is. At times I thought she was firmly in the covert category but then wondered if she was actually in the malignant category. This is farcical to me now, thankfully, because, as per the baking analogy above, the categories are just convenient signposting. I now understand that narcissism is narcissism and peoples personalities are peoples unique personalities. There is endless crossover between all the categories. On Tuesday, all the signs may point to covert, on Thursday following a bad nights sleep for the narcissist, all signs might point to grandiose.

There were even times when I though she must not be a narcissist after all because she didn’t seem to fit nicely into one of the categories. There is very little difference fundamentally between the categories. At the core of it, it’s all the same.

There is crossover. There is unpredictability. There is change. That is certain.