The topics of Lucy Knight’s excellent article on Narcissistic Personality Disorder have a redeeming quality in common: insight (“You’re Constantly Being Told You’re Evil”: Inside the Lives of Diagnosed Narcissists, October 15). They understand their problem and how it affects others, and they have the humanity and ability to address it.
One of the principles of psychiatry is that we all possess personality traits, including narcissism, on a scale where these traits turn into disorders when they negatively affect us or those around us. Dangerous is at the extreme, where insight is little or no, and properties become strange and chaotic.
I had a similar experience with a once-loved relative who spent seven years trying in court to deprive his siblings of their father’s inheritance, insisting that he was the only one who deserved it. He has no insight and disdains formal diagnosis.
His behavior represents all the requirements of a malignant BPD: selfishness and grandiosity, lack of empathy, lying and manipulative behavior (associated with great magic), paranoia, aggression, holding grudges, magical thinking, bullying, loyalty to like-minded individuals (usually authoritarians) and so on. In the end, his campaign failed, but the financial and emotional cost was irreparable.
Does this ring a bell? This relative is American and fiercely loyal to Donald Trump.
Name and address provided
While narcissistic personality disorder may be one of the most stigmatized mental disorders, we must certainly question the value of telling someone that they have a personality disorder? Given that stigma against personality disorder is higher among mental health professionals than in the general public, there is questionable value in applying a label that would cause those who are supposed to care to treat people worse.
Ker Harding
Occupational therapy consultant