Which part of narcissism is becoming invisible? And why?
A witty post referring to narcissism as having only ‘negative energy’
Clearly there are a lot of controlling and abusive people out there. And some of us are unlucky enough to have to deal with one or more of them. As a way of referring to such people, we often turn to the concept of narcissism. As a psychologist starting to write about narcissism though, I quickly became confused. The concept referred to on social media and in self-help books, sounded different to the concept in the arena of psychotherapy and psychology literature and research. Online, one of the most fascinating aspects of narcissism was being talked about less and less. In this post I want to look at this feature of narcissism that is being left out and explore why, with the help of some high-profile examples.
Psychiatry uses check lists of criteria to describe a particular kind of illness or pathology so they can identify it. Checklists force us to commit to those few characteristics that really define something. If social media were a psychiatrist working with a checklist for narcissism, what would that checklist look like? I’m going to have a go at summarising what I read online:
‘Narcissists’ are defined by their abuse of the people they are with and their need to have someone to abuse
‘Narcissists’ are defined by their need to control and coerce those they are with
‘Narcissists’ are defined by their lack of empathy for others whilst they care only about their own feelings
‘Narcissists’ will use dishonesty and manipulation to get what they want, to gain power or to hide their agenda.
How am I doing? Firstly, I am going to say that all of these features can be part of narcissism. When someone is falling victim to abusive or controlling behaviour these are important to recognise (more important than deciding whether the person is a ‘narcissist’ or not). But let’s look now at the criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) – the severe form of narcissism found in the American psychiatric manual - the DSM 5:
“NPD is defined as comprising a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behaviour), a constant need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by the presence of at least 5 of the following 9 criteria:
. A grandiose sense of self-importance
. A preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
. A belief that he or she is special and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people or institutions
. A need for excessive admiration
. A sense of entitlement
. Interpersonally exploitive behaviour
. A lack of empathy
. Envy of others or a belief that others are envious of him or her
. A demonstration of arrogant and haughty behaviours or attitudes
NPD is not associated with any specific defining physical characteristics; however, physical consequences of substance abuse, with which NPD is often associated, may also be apparent on examination. Mental status examination may reveal depressed mood. Patients in the throes of narcissistic grandiosity may display signs of hypomania or mania.”1
So, if we are thinking about the core defining features of narcissism, where has coercive control gone? Where is dishonesty? A lack of empathy is clearly stated as is exploitative behaviour. But only two or three criteria imply a predatory nature. Then there are other core features in the psychiatric criteria that seem to get less attention in mainstream media. Substance abuse gets a mention. Then there is a preoccupation with brilliance, success and beauty. And a need for admiration.
It is not only the more medical psychiatry discipline that holds to a wider set of features for narcissism. Psychotherapy sometimes focuses on the lack of empathy for self as well as others3. But it also emphasises the need for admiration, idealisation and success2. Researchers Wallace and Baumeister conclude that,
“Narcissists may gravitate to working environments where opportunities for high performance will lead to self-glorification”.4
Faces of narcissism
Again, I am not trying to take away from the importance of abusive or manipulative behaviour. I have explored this in the lives of Lennon, Brando, Chaplin and Savile. My point is that we are perhaps left with one particular version or ‘face’ of narcissism. There is the ‘perpetrator face’ and the ‘performance face’ of narcissism. These don’t have to be different types of people. Some will show both faces. After all, if you want to get as far away from shame and vulnerability as possible, you can choose power, abuse, shaming and coercive control, or you can choose performance, charisma and the gaining of admiration. Both can be ways of achieving the same outcome.
As we can see from Marilyn Monroe, even the charisma, idealisation and performance can be taken to extremes. Marilyn famously said “I don’t care about money. I just want to be wonderful”5 and we can hear this now as an ambition she almost over-achieved. In my post about her life, (see Marilyn post) I explored the trauma that her fame (according to narcissism theory) was a flight away from. The problem arose perhaps when she could not stop ‘flying’ when she needed to. The irony of this face of narcissism, is that, in Marilyn and others like her, some of the consequences of her flight enriched popular culture for us to enjoy. She is referenced as an archetype of persona, appeal and glamour.
You will already have noticed the difference between these two faces of narcissism. And perhaps this explains which aspects of narcissism get emphasised in the self-help books and social media. Performance, charisma and gaining admiration are victimless. We don’t need help dealing with the performers. At least not in the same way. There are times when the performers crumble suddenly, whilst we look on in shock – wondering how someone with such a smile could be in reality so hopeless. We struggle to understand or see how it could have been prevented. The charismatic performer themselves becomes a victim. It is not hard to think of names. Marilyn died at the age of 36.
Actor Matthew Perry, after his tragic death under the influence of ketamine, was referred to by the media as a much loved and talented performer. He was also referred to as a troubled ‘drug addict’. According to the psychiatric criteria above, these two things are found together as symptoms of the same mental health problem. Perry found performance and admiration as a way to try to overcome a difficult childhood. He said of fame,
“I yearned for it more than any other person on the face of the planet…I needed it. It was the only thing that would fix me. I was certain of it”.6
In their book The Mirror Effect, Pinsky & Young summarise this performance and admiration face of narcissism as strategy that fits with Matthew Perry’s admission:
“Unable to create the real intimacy they crave, they are driven by a need to be needed by others, and that need is often expressed in the impulse to perform”7
In my post about actor empathy I quoted Rocky actor Sylvester Stallone making the same point about his own journey into fame.
One of the reasons I have been thinking about this, is because in this blog, I am starting with this ‘neglected’ face of narcissism. My criteria for choosing life stories to explore is simply the achieving of sustained, iconic fame. When I speak to some non-psychologist friends about my blog they sometimes appear puzzled. Their reaction is a more tactful version of, “really? You’re looking at Marilyn Monroe to study narcissism? I didn’t think she was like that? She was a victim… And she had a genuine talent! It took me a while to see that they thought I was framing Marilyn as abusive, or otherwise someone who only cheated their way to the top. Some kind of fraud perhaps.
Was Marilyn controlling and abusive towards herself though? On video we can see how her own emotional needs had to take a back seat when she sang happy birthday to President JFK. She had wanted to marry him, but he had by this time ghosted her after their affair. Like too many other performers, she descended towards a death by overdose. Pinsky and Young7 describe how in the media self-destructive behaviour born out of a mental health problem is re-labelled as naughtiness or a by-product of the pressures or opportunities of fame. So again, in the context of fame and performance, the narcissism concept is not applied – even if you are ‘abusing’ yourself. Pinsky, a substance use specialist, is clear though: they were ill before they were famous:
“As I continue to talk with these [celebrities], they usually reveal childhood experiences that were clearly traumatic – the kinds of damaging episodes that are the root of narcissistic disorders” 7
As Johnny Depp once said, drug use has “less to do with recreation and more to do with the fact that we need to escape from our brains.” 7 Is there research evidence that narcissism gets expressed in fame and celebrity? Young and Pinsky’s book was based on their own research. They gave the Narcissism Personality Inventory to 200 celebrities (who featured on Pinsky’s prime time radio show). They gave the same questionnaire also to MBA students. Even though MBA students were more narcissistic than the US average, all types of celebrities scored higher: actors, musicians, comedians and reality TV stars.8
So, Marilyn and Matthew were not known to be abusive, or dismissive of the feelings of others –although they could be perhaps with regards to themselves. Let’s turn to examples where the perpetrator aspects of narcissism are emphasised. Jeffrey Epstein and the UK’s Jimmy Savile were eventually exposed as coercive, abusive and predatory. It took far too long. How did they gain and hold on to their power? Partly through performance, gaining admiration and making friends with high status people. For example, both these men made friends with and had influence over the British Royal family (see Jimmy Savile post). In my post on Jimmy Savile, I argued that being famous was not simply a calculated cover for being a sexual predator – a modus operandi. Fame was also an end in itself. It was just his other strategy for finding distance from vulnerability. The two faces of narcissism, as strategies, worked tragically well together.
Jeffrey Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell before their sex-trafficking convictions and Epstein’s death by apparent suicide in prison.
We have become preoccupied with the perpetrator-victim aspects of narcissism. But here is a risk: that it is the charismatic and admiration-seeking face that we are seduced by – in our partners and in some of our celebrities. It is sometimes hard to notice – perhaps because the seeking of fame and admiration are not just normalised but central to our culture. The screen has become over time such a big part of our lives. At first it presented only cinema, then it was also TV, and then the internet and the newspaper. When we see someone on a screen, we notice the performance. What we often see past, is that their being on screen in itself might tell a story. How did they get themselves there? And why?
Some may call Jeffrey Epstein narcissistic specifically because he coerced and exploited others. But we know this information specifically from our tv screens and our online newspapers. Before we knew about his abuses, he was found on our screens (or in the picture above) because he worked to gain fame, power, glamour and friends of the greatest importance. To be clear, having important friends or being a performer, on their own, do not get close to meeting criteria for NPD. But now that we know so much more about this man, we can see perhaps that Epstein’s being on a screen, and his being friends with Prince Andrew – were features that the psychiatric criteria for narcissism think are important. Can being friends with Prince Andrew really be a symptom of a mental health problem? Look again at the DSM criteria.
The screen has got better since it was a small cathode ray tube firing black and white. We have worked hard to make it invisible. But the screen, unlike a window, is active in selecting who gets to appear on it. The selected have often shown a drive to be there and have beaten off competition. What about reality TV? This often presents us with people who have not worked their way through drama school, right? They are just like you and I. But you and I probably haven’t applied to get onto the reality TV show. Why not? When Young and Pinsky gave a narcissism test to 200 different celebrities, who scored highest? Actors? Comedians? Musicians? It was curiously the reality TV stars8.
Marilyn was a pathological performer and Epstein was a pathological exploiter. We can easily contrast them as victim and perpetrator. But whilst they might have demonstrated different faces of narcissism, faces of narcissism they were. When we look a little further, we find in Marilyn a compulsive dismissing of her own feelings and in Epstein charisma, power and fame. The screen itself says something about the person who is drawn to appear in its light. As a part of narcissism, this is not a bad thing and there is a continuum9. Sometimes we need people with charisma. Sometimes we need people who can put their feelings to one side. Sometimes we need leadership. Sometimes we need to be a good story-teller at bedtime. These may all depend on differing degrees of narcissism. Perhaps because of our need, we have to separate out those identified as perpetrators and those identified as meeting our need. But if the performer is lost in the extremes - with only narcissistic strategies to live by, and only power, charisma and emotional distance to turn to, perhaps we should be more curious about the screen that has become invisible – and about what the consequences might be – for them – or even for us.
In the next post I will return to exploring in detail the life of a single person who achieved iconic fame – another example of a life cut very short.
References
1. American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed.)
2. Diamond, D., Yeomans, F.E., Stern, B.L. & Kernberg, O.F. (2022) Treating Pathological Narcissism with Transference Focussed Therapy. Guildford
3. Lowen, A. (1985). Narcissism: The Denial of the True Self. Touchstone.
4. Wallace, H.M. & Baumeister, R.F. (2002). Narcissism and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 819-834.
5. Taraborrelli, J.R. (2009). The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe. Pan.
6. Perry, M. (2022). Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. Headline.
7. Pinsky, D. & Young, S.M. (2009). The Mirror Effect. Harper.
8. Young, S.M. & Pinsky, D. (2006). Narcissism and Celebrity. Journal of Research in Personality, 40(5), 463-471.
9. Malkin, C. (2015). Rethinking Narcissism. Harper Wave.