Dr Malkin - The Narcissist Test - How to spot outsized egos ... and the surprising things we can learn from them

Copyright Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication Introduction The Myth of Narcissus PART I: WHAT IS NARCISSISM? 1 Rethinking Narcissism: Old Assumptions, New Ideas 2 Confusion and Controversy: How Narcissism Became a Dirty Word and We Found an Epidemic 3 From 0 to 10: Understanding the Spectrum 4 The Narcissism Test: How Narcissistic Are You? PART II: ORIGINS: HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM 5 Root Causes: The Making of Echoists and Narcissists 6 Echoism and Narcissism: From Bad to Worse PART III: RECOGNIZING AND COPING WITH UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM 7 Warning Signs: Staying Alert for Narcissists 8 Change and Recovery: Dealing with Lovers, Family, and Friends 9 Coping and Thriving: Dealing with Colleagues and Bosses PART IV: PROMOTING HEALTHY NARCISSISM 10 Advice for Parents: Raising a Confident, Caring Child 11 SoWe: The Healthy Use of Social Media 12 A Passionate Life: The Ultimate Gift of Healthy Narcissism Resources References List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

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First published in the US by HarperWave, an imprint of

HarperCollins Publishers 2015 First published in the UK by Thorsons 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Dr Craig Malkin 2015

Designed by Jo Anne Metsch

Illustration on page 1: Echo and Narcissus, by John William Waterhouse, 1903

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Source ISBN: 9780007583805

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780007583799

Version: 2015-06-24

For Julie Malkin

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication For Julie Malkin

Introduction

The Myth of Narcissus

PART I: WHAT IS NARCISSISM?

1 Rethinking Narcissism: Old Assumptions, New Ideas

2 Confusion and Controversy: How Narcissism Became a Dirty Word and We Found an Epidemic

3 From 0 to 10: Understanding the Spectrum

4 The Narcissism Test: How Narcissistic Are You?

PART II: ORIGINS: HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM

5 Root Causes: The Making of Echoists and Narcissists

6 Echoism and Narcissism: From Bad to Worse

PART III: RECOGNIZING AND COPING WITH UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM

7 Warning Signs: Staying Alert for Narcissists

8 Change and Recovery: Dealing with Lovers, Family, and Friends

9 Coping and Thriving: Dealing with Colleagues and Bosses

PART IV: PROMOTING HEALTHY NARCISSISM

10 Advice for Parents: Raising a Confident, Caring Child

11 SoWe: The Healthy Use of Social Media

12 A Passionate Life: The Ultimate Gift of Healthy Narcissism

Resources

References

List of Searchable Terms

Acknowledgments

About the Author

About the Publisher

Introduction Contents Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication For Julie Malkin Introduction The Myth of Narcissus PART I: WHAT IS NARCISSISM? 1 Rethinking Narcissism: Old Assumptions, New Ideas 2 Confusion and Controversy: How Narcissism Became a Dirty Word and We Found an Epidemic 3 From 0 to 10: Understanding the Spectrum 4 The Narcissism Test: How Narcissistic Are You? PART II: ORIGINS: HEALTHY AND UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM 5 Root Causes: The Making of Echoists and Narcissists 6 Echoism and Narcissism: From Bad to Worse PART III: RECOGNIZING AND COPING WITH UNHEALTHY NARCISSISM 7 Warning Signs: Staying Alert for Narcissists 8 Change and Recovery: Dealing with Lovers, Family, and Friends 9 Coping and Thriving: Dealing with Colleagues and Bosses PART IV: PROMOTING HEALTHY NARCISSISM 10 Advice for Parents: Raising a Confident, Caring Child 11 SoWe: The Healthy Use of Social Media 12 A Passionate Life: The Ultimate Gift of Healthy Narcissism Resources References List of Searchable Terms Acknowledgments About the Author About the Publisher

My mother was the most wonderful and infuriating person I’ve ever known: she was a narcissist.

I wasn’t aware of it for the longest time, not until I was in college and immersed in an introductory psychology text. There, printed in bright bold letters just below a picture of the Greek youth Narcissus staring at his reflection in a pool of water, was the word narcissism. When I read the accompanying description, I remember feeling relieved and horrified all at once. The term perfectly captured the paradox of my mother.

She was the incandescent figure of my childhood, irrepressibly outgoing, infectiously funny, and wonderfully caring. The world seemed to revolve around her. A striking nearly six-foot-tall blonde, with a thick English accent from her upbringing in Great Britain, she seemed to make connections everywhere she went—the grocery store, the coffee shop, the hair salon. She was devoted to friends, buoying them through illness and hardships, and dedicated to improving her community, whether the project was cleaning up a playground or organizing a bake sale. And as wife to my father and mother to me and my brother, she was always there, generous with her love and counsel.

But her glow gradually dimmed as I, and she, grew older. She seemed to become more self-involved. She bragged about her accomplishments as a young ballet dancer, sometimes making the point by demonstrating—awkwardly—a split or plié. She name-dropped, boasting of brushes with celebrities (though I could never tell if the encounters were real or imagined). She grew obsessed with her looks, frantically charting wrinkles and chasing spots around her body and starving herself to stay thin. She interrupted people when they spoke, even when they were in the midst of sharing their pain and anxiety. Once, when I tried to tell her of my anguish over a romantic breakup, she dreamily muttered, “I never had any trouble finding dates.” I was stunned by the non sequitur.

What had happened to my mother? College gave me the word narcissism. But I really didn’t understand what it meant. I had so many questions. Had she always been a narcissist and I hadn’t recognized it? Was she suddenly pushed to it by circumstance, namely getting older? Could I do anything to get back the loving, unselfish woman I remembered from my childhood?

I devoted myself to finding answers. In the library, I pored over books and articles from Freud onward. As a psychologist in training, I interned with one of the foremost experts on narcissism. I took a postdoctoral fellowship focused on helping personality-disordered clients, hoping to better understand narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), the most extreme form of narcissism. But even though I learned a great deal during those years, my understanding still felt incomplete. Then one day, I saw something that changed my thinking about narcissism—in my mother, in my clients, and in myself—forever.

My father had recently died and my wife, Jennifer, and I had undertaken the painful process of moving my mother from a large house far away into a small apartment close to us. The cramped space she found herself in now pushed her over the edge. “Lovely place you’ve found for me,” she grumbled sarcastically.