Simon Crompton - All About Me - Loving a narcissist

She told me of one letter from a man whose 40-year-old wife had become increasingly obsessive about her appearance and weight, constantly going to the gym. He discovered she was having a relationship with another man at the gym because of the texts she had been sending him, and when he confronted her with this she became violent and abusive with him in front of the children. She became increasingly critical of him, and then asked for a separation. ‘I don’t know whether that’s narcissism or not, but it is common and extremely cruel,’ Bel told me.

Well, yes, it is narcissism, and it does manifest itself in very cruel ways in relationships. But as we’ll see in the rest of this book, the concept of narcissism also throws light on all sorts of other aspects of our lives: it makes sense of our ideas of romantic heroes, of obsessively driven high-achievers, of compulsive liars and doomed and deluded dreamers. It makes sense of our glamour-led, celebrity-obsessed culture. It makes sense of our society’s obsession with high-achievement and winning at all costs. It even makes sense of our Truman Show- style love affair with reality television, and all those X Factor contenders who believe against all the evidence that they really will be the next Christina Aguilera or Justin Timberlake.

Think of those high-profile politicians whose relationship with the truth has been, shall we say, tenuous. Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, Jeffrey Archer … all have been caught lying in a big way. Their behaviour can be explained in the context of the narcissistic traits that made them big achievers in the first place. With their vision and drive for success came a tendency to the fantastical that is classic narcissism, and makes lying less of a sin and more of an inner compulsion.

Narcissistic personalities are, and always have been, intrinsic to human attraction, achievement and tragedy. But today, in the navel-gazing, celebrity-exposing noughties, they are more apparent than ever before. If there ever were one, this is the Age of the Narcissist.

In the therapy-obsessed United States, narcissism is a household word. It is used to explain sundry acts of cruelty, selfishness and grandiosity among the population. The internet message-boards of Dr Phil, America’s top agony uncle, are full of people suddenly realising that their problems are the result of having narcissistic parents.

Why have the Americans latched onto this term in such a big way? It probably all started with a hugely popular book written by sociologist Christopher Lasch in 1979 called The Culture of Narcissism. It was an indictment of the increasingly self-centred short-termism of American society, as sense of family and society declined. It drove the word ‘narcissism’ firmly into popular American usage. Not long after came the classification of a new personality disorder by the American Psychiatric Association – it was called Narcissistic Personality Disorder. After that came a personal mission by self-confessed narcissist and author Sam Vaknin to raise the profile of the condition, through a book and continued high profile on the internet.

Since then, the diagnosis and treatment of the disorder has spawned a string of books, been the subject of hundreds of chat shows, and given rise to dozens of support groups and online chat forums where victims of narcissists share their stories of suffering at the hands of manipulative men and women.

The focus over the Atlantic is very much on narcissism as a dangerous disorder – a psychiatric problem. ‘Narcissists lack empathy, are exploitative, envious, haughty and feel entitled, even if such a feeling is commensurate only with their grandiose fantasies,’ writes Sam Vaknin. ‘They dissemble, conspire, destroy and self-destruct. In the long run, there is no enduring benefit to dancing with narcissists – only ephemeral and, often, fallacious “achievements”.’ 1

Not nice people then. Over here, the popular view is a bit different. When most of us hear the word ‘narcissist’, we don’t tend to think of people with a personality disorder. We still tend to think of a narcissistic man as a preening Brad Pitt type, who hones his abs and pecs, occasionally plucks his eyebrows and assesses his own reflection when he looks into your eyes. It’s people like David Beckham who get called narcissists in Britain, because they care about their looks and have a standing and image that they do their damnedest to maintain. 2Because the British are naturally suspicious of anyone who cares too much about what others think of them, the term here is still mainly reserved as a vague form of mild abuse. We are far less aware of the specific meaning of the word in psychoanalytic or psychiatric terms.

But things are beginning to change. In July 2005 the film star Jude Law, dubbed the world’s sexiest man by People magazine, admitted an affair with a family nanny. Reports followed, supposedly from a ‘source close to Ms Miller’ that actress Sienna Miller, his partner, had as a result given Law an ultimatum: he must make her fall in love with him all over again, he must control his temper, he must not stop her from seeing her friends.

The reports gave way to media speculation that Jude Law did, in fact, show all the traits of a narcissist. ‘It’s the musts that give it away,’ wrote Yvonne Roberts in the Independent , ‘as does the graphic picture presented in the press of a controlling, possessive, cheating individual who doesn’t appear to know what he wants until it’s in danger of slipping away.’ 3These, she explained, were some of the traits associated with a condition called narcissistic personality disorder, widely diagnosed in the United States. ‘In the Sixties, the common slogan was “All men are bastards”. Now for those in the know, fairly or unfairly, it’s “All men are narcissistic bastards”.’

Who knows if Jude Law really is a narcissist? But I like the new slogan, because narcissism does (as we’ll see later in the book) indeed help explain why men are bastards.

What is interesting is the way the story exemplifies the new importance of narcissism in our culture, and the way we view relationships. The characters Jude Law plays in his films sometimes exemplify the traits of narcissism – look at Alfie in the film of the same name, for example: remote, self-regarding, womanising and incapable of empathy. These are the kind of anti-heroes that have gained increasing currency as leading men in film and television culture. There’s something about them that draws and keeps our attention. Those same qualities seem to have rubbed off on the actor in real life, drawing a feverish interest from the media and among the public. We watch the every move of the glamorous and famous because we aspire to look like them and be like them. So the appeal of narcissism draws out our own narcissistic tendencies.

Yet beneath it all, if you look at Jude Law and his family, there’s a real story of pain. We don’t know what happened in his household, and it would be unfair to label Law a narcissist on hearsay. But we do know that people with strong narcissistic traits tend not to be happy people, and find family life hard. Having a relationship with a narcissist is a rollercoaster where the lows can drag all sense of self-worth out of the partner.

So what I hope to show in this book is that narcissism is a far deeper and far more useful idea than the British have previously given it credit for. And it’s a far broader, less medicalised idea than the Americans have given it credit for. As a health and relationships writer, I come to the subject with a very broad perspective. You’ll find other books on narcissism (if you search hard enough) that look at it from a psychoanalytical point of view, or from a relationships counselling point of view, or a cultural point of view. What I want to do with this book is take a wider approach, combining the above with the medical, the evolutionary, the psychiatric, the sociological and the historical. This is not a specialist or an academic book on narcissism – it is a book to help us try to understand our relationships with people and the world. Because if this is indeed the Age of Narcissism, we need to understand how the concept is shaping our world and relationships in all its different ways.