Why do narcissistic people have to be so clever with their important ideas? Whether it is the senior colleague or the political leader or the gaslighting partner, we don’t seem to describe someone as narcissistic unless they show a kind of intellectual strength, power or mental acrobatics. Why can’t ‘narcissists’ be dumb, intelligent and everything in between?
Are you familiar with Sam Vaknin's theory of cerebral narcissism?
You might also find Iain McGilchrist's work on the differences between brain hemispheres interesting. McGilchrist claims that the left hemisphere is more narcissistic than the right hemisphere, as well as more abstract, reductionist, bottom-up, and detail-oriented. In a recent conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman, Kaufman points out that IQ tests (and academia in general) favours left hemisphere cognition. Similarly, another researcher named Christopher Badcock argues that IQ tests only really capture mechanistic cognition -- and social conformity to Western ways of thinking (The Imprinted Brain). I wrote an essay explaining how excessive reading (books, screens, text communication) especially in childhood may exacerbate left hemisphere dominance and mental health issues associated with right hemisphere dysfunction. (See: https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-reading-too-much-part)
Another interesting aspect to all of this is that childhood "IQ" tests measure "IQ" by determining the child's "mental age" (based on, as you note, spatial skills, mathematical skills, and mechanistic verbal skills) and divide it by the child's physical age. So a 10 year old who performs similarly to a 14 year old will be said to have an IQ of 140. The problem here is that precocity can get confused for general intelligence, and there's significant evidence in scientific literature that early childhood stress can speed up the rate of development. There's some evidence many "gifted" kids go through puberty slightly earlier than their peers, and I think the poor mental health outcomes associated with childhood "giftedness" also suggest that early childhood stress might be a cause. Stress and dysfunction in early childhood, along with disrupted attachment, is a well known cause of narcissism (and being told you're smarter than almost everyone else as a child will feed narcissism). Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child, For Your Own Good etc) describes intellectualization as a symptom of being raised by narcissistic parents. I'm working on an essay about this topic right now.
Thanks Meghan thats really interesting and should be a post in itself! Defintely adds some meat to the bones of my post. Yes what fascinates me about narcissism is the paradox of “giftedness” and poor mental health and how theyre related. I hadnt heard about McGillchrist. The idea that the big picture as opposed to detail is in the less narcissistic brain areas makes sense to me. By the way, did i also see somewhere an article by an adult child of Alice Miller basically saying how narcissistic she was? Not that that would devalue her ideas as such but it seemed there were quite strong feelings about her. I will check out your essay and look forward to the next.
Re Alice Miller, I'm sure you did! She was a terrible mother, and developed her ideas well after the damage was done to her child (he was around 30 when she published her first book). She discusses her own childhood in her books and explains how childhood mistreatment is subject to the repetition compulsion (i.e. children who were mistreated or neglected are likely to mistreat or neglect their own children unless they address their trauma first). I think Miller could have been a bit more forthcoming about her failures in her books, however. Gabor Mate, decades later, does a better job of this.
This was an interesting take on intelligence and its meanings. I’m not entirely sure how well my comment relates to your thesis but I think it is still worth mentioning. There are philosophers, all influenced by Kant, who view reason (German Vernunft) and intellect (Verstand) as two separate faculties with wholly different functions in the human condition. In light of your essay, it could _perhaps_ be argued that emotional intelligence relates to reason and intellectual intelligence to intellect, that is, at least within the said tradition of thought. Hannah Arendt, influenced by Kant, noted that reason is concerned with the meaning of things, subjective understanding of oneself, the world and others and their relations. ‘Thinking’ is the activity in which reason manifests itself. Intellect, in contrast, is concerned with the truth of things and relates to the capacity to solve problems, make things, objectively assess the world, to strategize, as it were (in order to control something or someone). Intellect’s activity is ‘knowing’ as opposed to reason’s thinking. Hannah Arendt put it in a nutshell as follows: “The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.” Obviously, the modern world makes no such distinction, which can be argued to result in various problems. As for the consequences, it seems fairly clear that our modern world glorifies intellect as a 'means to ends’, or the ability to objectively assess and control the environment in whatever capacity; and perhaps this is opportune to narcissists? In science and technology this tendency is obvious but in politics and celebrity culture it is perhaps more difficult to pin down. I would say that, in general, the principle of intellect over reason (or knowledge, instrumentality and problem solving over understanding, meaning and relation), underlies the entire attention seeking economy where success is not so much a function of meaning and understanding but of ‘solving problems’ and finding the best means to assert oneself. This certainly nothing new in human affairs but perhaps it has become overly important in the age of social media etc.
I'm not inclined to conflate narcissism with great thinkers. There are some narcissists who just so happened to be great thinkers. Striving to great heights does not require narcissism. A key feature of being a narcissist is an inability to take criticism. Yet in order to reach the pinnacle, one must be able to process criticism. Narcissists also take credit for other people's ideas. I worked with a narcissist on a project; she would only add to my ideas; she didn't have ideas of her own -- she CONTROLLED MINE. And when I could no longer play along, she set out to destroy everything. There was nothing intelligent whatsoever about this woman's sabotaging behavior, from the awful "you're making me feel this or that" manipulation to the gaslighting when she didn't get her way. Not a great thinker: A VAMPIRE.
Thanks for these comments. Yes its important to seperate being able to take criticism (like water off a duck’s back) from being able to process it - being able to tolerate some regret or shame and adjust our behaviour. Some prominent leaders of the recent past have appeared almost immune to tge impacts criticism; Trump in the US and Johnson in the UK for example. Some would say that these men are the epitome of success. I would guess they are not great processors of criticism though.
Are you familiar with Sam Vaknin's theory of cerebral narcissism?
You might also find Iain McGilchrist's work on the differences between brain hemispheres interesting. McGilchrist claims that the left hemisphere is more narcissistic than the right hemisphere, as well as more abstract, reductionist, bottom-up, and detail-oriented. In a recent conversation with Scott Barry Kaufman, Kaufman points out that IQ tests (and academia in general) favours left hemisphere cognition. Similarly, another researcher named Christopher Badcock argues that IQ tests only really capture mechanistic cognition -- and social conformity to Western ways of thinking (The Imprinted Brain). I wrote an essay explaining how excessive reading (books, screens, text communication) especially in childhood may exacerbate left hemisphere dominance and mental health issues associated with right hemisphere dysfunction. (See: https://thecassandracomplex.substack.com/p/the-dangers-of-reading-too-much-part)
Another interesting aspect to all of this is that childhood "IQ" tests measure "IQ" by determining the child's "mental age" (based on, as you note, spatial skills, mathematical skills, and mechanistic verbal skills) and divide it by the child's physical age. So a 10 year old who performs similarly to a 14 year old will be said to have an IQ of 140. The problem here is that precocity can get confused for general intelligence, and there's significant evidence in scientific literature that early childhood stress can speed up the rate of development. There's some evidence many "gifted" kids go through puberty slightly earlier than their peers, and I think the poor mental health outcomes associated with childhood "giftedness" also suggest that early childhood stress might be a cause. Stress and dysfunction in early childhood, along with disrupted attachment, is a well known cause of narcissism (and being told you're smarter than almost everyone else as a child will feed narcissism). Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child, For Your Own Good etc) describes intellectualization as a symptom of being raised by narcissistic parents. I'm working on an essay about this topic right now.
Thanks Meghan thats really interesting and should be a post in itself! Defintely adds some meat to the bones of my post. Yes what fascinates me about narcissism is the paradox of “giftedness” and poor mental health and how theyre related. I hadnt heard about McGillchrist. The idea that the big picture as opposed to detail is in the less narcissistic brain areas makes sense to me. By the way, did i also see somewhere an article by an adult child of Alice Miller basically saying how narcissistic she was? Not that that would devalue her ideas as such but it seemed there were quite strong feelings about her. I will check out your essay and look forward to the next.
Re Alice Miller, I'm sure you did! She was a terrible mother, and developed her ideas well after the damage was done to her child (he was around 30 when she published her first book). She discusses her own childhood in her books and explains how childhood mistreatment is subject to the repetition compulsion (i.e. children who were mistreated or neglected are likely to mistreat or neglect their own children unless they address their trauma first). I think Miller could have been a bit more forthcoming about her failures in her books, however. Gabor Mate, decades later, does a better job of this.
I think that narcissists lack emotional intelligence and are usually immature.
This was an interesting take on intelligence and its meanings. I’m not entirely sure how well my comment relates to your thesis but I think it is still worth mentioning. There are philosophers, all influenced by Kant, who view reason (German Vernunft) and intellect (Verstand) as two separate faculties with wholly different functions in the human condition. In light of your essay, it could _perhaps_ be argued that emotional intelligence relates to reason and intellectual intelligence to intellect, that is, at least within the said tradition of thought. Hannah Arendt, influenced by Kant, noted that reason is concerned with the meaning of things, subjective understanding of oneself, the world and others and their relations. ‘Thinking’ is the activity in which reason manifests itself. Intellect, in contrast, is concerned with the truth of things and relates to the capacity to solve problems, make things, objectively assess the world, to strategize, as it were (in order to control something or someone). Intellect’s activity is ‘knowing’ as opposed to reason’s thinking. Hannah Arendt put it in a nutshell as follows: “The need of reason is not inspired by the quest for truth but by the quest for meaning. And truth and meaning are not the same. The basic fallacy, taking precedence over all specific metaphysical fallacies, is to interpret meaning on the model of truth.” Obviously, the modern world makes no such distinction, which can be argued to result in various problems. As for the consequences, it seems fairly clear that our modern world glorifies intellect as a 'means to ends’, or the ability to objectively assess and control the environment in whatever capacity; and perhaps this is opportune to narcissists? In science and technology this tendency is obvious but in politics and celebrity culture it is perhaps more difficult to pin down. I would say that, in general, the principle of intellect over reason (or knowledge, instrumentality and problem solving over understanding, meaning and relation), underlies the entire attention seeking economy where success is not so much a function of meaning and understanding but of ‘solving problems’ and finding the best means to assert oneself. This certainly nothing new in human affairs but perhaps it has become overly important in the age of social media etc.
I'm not inclined to conflate narcissism with great thinkers. There are some narcissists who just so happened to be great thinkers. Striving to great heights does not require narcissism. A key feature of being a narcissist is an inability to take criticism. Yet in order to reach the pinnacle, one must be able to process criticism. Narcissists also take credit for other people's ideas. I worked with a narcissist on a project; she would only add to my ideas; she didn't have ideas of her own -- she CONTROLLED MINE. And when I could no longer play along, she set out to destroy everything. There was nothing intelligent whatsoever about this woman's sabotaging behavior, from the awful "you're making me feel this or that" manipulation to the gaslighting when she didn't get her way. Not a great thinker: A VAMPIRE.
Thanks for these comments. Yes its important to seperate being able to take criticism (like water off a duck’s back) from being able to process it - being able to tolerate some regret or shame and adjust our behaviour. Some prominent leaders of the recent past have appeared almost immune to tge impacts criticism; Trump in the US and Johnson in the UK for example. Some would say that these men are the epitome of success. I would guess they are not great processors of criticism though.