No empathy at all?

Does Susan have no empathy or does she just have low empathy?

Furthermore, there seems to be a perception out there that all narcissists have cognitive empathy but have little to no emotional/affective empathy”.

Me about a year ago

I continue to visit a (real) psychologist mainly to get help to try to protect Emma throughout. At one point I asserted to him that Susan couldn’t possibly have any empathy because narcissists don’t have empathy. He looked up from his notes puzzled. I think he would have rolled his eyes if he didn’t have to keep it professional. He has a habit of delivering perfectly timed very pointed short sentences that tend to stop me in my tracks and make me really think. This was no exception. He noted that a complete lack of empathy was generally extremely rare.
He’s a psychologist, he’s a professor, he has a long list of letters after his name, he has been treating patients for years; but clearly, I was correct and he was wrong. I was committed to the idea that Susan had no empathy and that all narcissists had no empathy. I mean after all, he never met her so how would he know right?… hmmm… right?
But of course, he had reset me back to almost square one. I was back to being utterly confused. Was he correct and the YouTubers wrong? Or was it the other way round?

Me present day

I’m now deeply skeptical of sweeping generalizations and stereotyping like that. I have found that buying into them caused me an enormous amount of confusion. I would see inconsistencies in Susan’s behavior, sometimes she would seem to be matching the stereotype and other times she wouldn’t. I’d be left wondering if she was even a narcissist at all or was my understanding of all this stuff simply wrong.

Generally speaking

I had been brainwashed by the YouTubers into believing something that didn’t align with what I was observing. I was brainwashed into believing something that was possibly never correct to begin with.

Types of empathy

Full and complete respect to the researchers here, they understand the technicalities of cognitive versus emotional/affective empathy. My understanding is limited. I’m not qualified to say one way or the other what is present or absent in Susan (or myself for that matter).

Best guess

My guess is this:

• Empathy is not consistent in anybody anyway to begin with, stresses and other external factors have a massive effect on it.
• There are millions of people on the planet and millions of assholes out there. The DSM expects a lack-of-empathy but it isn’t mandatory for a diagnosis of NPD. Therefore, I expect that empathy is quite simply higher in some people and lower in others and it’s as simple as that.
• Susan certainly appears to be lacking in empathy almost all of the time but is it completely absent altogether? I doubt it.

One of the final things that Susan takes from me is this: I would love nothing more than to think of her as the half living skeletal remains of some lesser evolved evil bitch from hell’s hell but she denies me this too. I don’t even get the satisfaction of venting that about her. She is human and therefore she can be understood by examining human behavior not by typecasting her into a soulless evil demon bitch from hell. It’s actually not helpful at all (unfortunately).