It's existence makes no sense to me.

Narcissitm is a reaction to having a fragile, insecure ego full of shame, the organism reacts by building a grandiose false ego that then tries to bury the fragile true one as deep as possible.

But why precisely does such a bizarre process take place? Why invent such a messy, flawed psychological solution when simply dialing up the activity in the Prefrontal Cortex (to dampen the overactive amygdala) would be enough? The individual in question would end up being much more resilient and at the same time dramatically less toxic to other people in their environment.

50 minutes ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

It's existence makes no sense to me.

Narcissitm is a reaction to having a fragile, insecure ego full of shame, the organism reacts by building a grandiose false ego that then tries to bury the fragile true one as deep as possible.

But why precisely does such a bizarre process take place? Why invent such a messy, flawed psychological solution when simply dialing up the activity in the Prefrontal Cortex (to dampen the overactive amygdala) would be enough? The individual in question would end up being much more resilient and at the same time dramatically less toxic to other people in their environment.

"Invent"? There are all manner of disorders in all kinds of organisms. Surely there is no need to invoke any idea of design here?

14 minutes ago, exchemist said:

"Invent"? There are all manner of disorders in all kinds of organisms. Surely there is no need to invoke any idea of design here?

Change your tone. I simply used the first word that came to my mind, I have no will to spend half an hour on perfecting the OP so it sounds properly. I have other, more pleasant things to do.

1 minute ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

Change your tone. I simply used the first word that came to my mind, I have no will to spend half an hour on perfecting the OP so it sounds properly. I have other, more pleasant things to do.

OK, but what then did you mean?

1 minute ago, exchemist said:

OK, but what then did you mean?

This specific way of reacting to feelings of humiliation clearly exists in the population, it wasn't swept out by either natural or sexual selection in favor of more healthy coping mechanisms. The second one is particularly odd since a relationship with a narcissist is literally a nightmare.

Edited August 21Aug 21 by Otto Kretschmer

1 hour ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

This specific way of reacting to feelings of humiliation clearly exists in the population, it wasn't swept out by either natural or sexual selection in favor of more healthy coping mechanisms. The second one is particularly odd since a relationship with a narcissist is literally a nightmare.

Ah so your thought was that maybe natural selection should have eliminated narcissism. Is that it? Well I can see a few difficulties with that hypothesis.

First, do we know that a tendency to narcissism is a hereditary trait? If not, e.g. if it arises chiefly through factors in upbringing, then natural selection would not operate on it.

Second, supposing for the sake of argument it is an inherited trait, is there any reason to suppose that narcissists have, over the course of human evolutionary history, had a lower rate of reproductive success than non-narcissists? After all, they are perhaps more likely to be sexual predators, which would have increased their success.

Third, the lack of empathy that seems to be a feature of narcissists may have given them an advantage, socially, in ruthless in pursuit of their objectives. So they may have tended to rise to positions of social power, enabling them to mate with more females.

P.S. Bear in mind that evolutionary process typically take a long time to change the characteristics of a whole population, so one would have to look back to prehistoric times when considering the mechanisms at work.

P.P.S. It is hard not to think of Trump, when considering this subject😁

2 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

This specific way of reacting to feelings of humiliation clearly exists in the population, it wasn't swept out by either natural or sexual selection in favor of more healthy coping mechanisms

This assumes it’s a genetic and heritable trait. And even if it is, it could involve a recessive gene that confers some advantage if you only have one copy.

4 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

It's existence makes no sense to me.

Someone had stab at this, they called it the 'selfish gene'; I'm not saying they're right, all the time, but sometimes I find it quite useful... 😉

20 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Someone had stab at this, they called it the 'selfish gene'; I'm not saying they're right, all the time, but sometimes I find it quite useful... 😉

That’s not what Dawkins meant by the selfish gene

1 minute ago, swansont said:

That’s not what Dawkins meant by the selfish gene

I know.

I've spent a lot of this Year studying Narcissism.

I have been a Narcissists Supply Three times. They (The Narcs) were at different stages of awareness of their condition.

They have very limited Empathy, due to not being in many social situations, due to their other shortcomings.

Example; A NiceGuy Narcissist pretends to be Nice because they feel like that's what's preventing them from having Friends, when in actuality, the reason they don't actually have friends is because there's not enough similar Mean spirited people around them.

The Variant of Narc they are is the Mask they wear to overcome their own shortcoming.

In all honesty I would call it Maskism.

Then on top of that, you got to look into how all Narcissists are 'Psychologically gay'

Edited August 21Aug 21 by HawkII

6 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

But why precisely does such a bizarre process take place? Why invent such a messy, flawed psychological solution when simply dialing up the activity in the Prefrontal Cortex (to dampen the overactive amygdala) would be enough?

Humans are living beings not androids designed by a crack team of engineers who carefully debugged them. Natural selection (assuming that's even in play here) sometimes results in messy flawed solutions in the brain, especially the brain of hominins who ran a gauntlet of environmental pressures and tripled their brain size in a couple million years. And then had to deal with extremely rapid change and elaboration of social structures in only a few millennia. NPD could be something ad hoc, an improvised coping strategy like many others humans have which are not mediated by genetic factors but plain old childhood distress and lack of nurture.

1 hour ago, HawkII said:

I have been a Narcissists Supply Three times.

We might have a Google translator glitch here. Can you explain what that means?

1 hour ago, HawkII said:

Then on top of that, you got to look into how all Narcissists are 'Psychologically gay'

Before we look into that, can you tell us what that means and offer some supporting research for it. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

Edited August 21Aug 21 by TheVat
Many fixes

5 hours ago, Otto Kretschmer said:

The second one is particularly odd since a relationship with a narcissist is literally a nightmare.

..tell us more about your partner, whom you have already mentioned so much..

Edited August 21Aug 21 by Sensei

4 hours ago, exchemist said:

Third, the lack of empathy that seems to be a feature of narcissists may have given them an advantage, socially, in ruthless in pursuit of their objectives. So they may have tended to rise to positions of social power, enabling them to mate with more females.

As they still have...

13 minutes ago, Eise said:

As they still have...

Narcissus has empathy by the kilo whenever he or she wants it..

And he/she doses it out to the clients when he/she needs to.

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

Third, the lack of empathy that seems to be a feature of narcissists may have given them an advantage, socially, in ruthless in pursuit of their objectives. So they may have tended to rise to positions of social power, enabling them to mate with more females.

..on first reading, this offensive and sexist remark escaped my attention..

Edited August 21Aug 21 by Sensei

45 minutes ago, Sensei said:

Narcissus has empathy by the kilo whenever he or she wants it..

And he/she doses it out to the clients when he/she needs to.

..on first reading, this offensive and sexist remark escaped my attention..

No it didn’t. But you hastily deleted your first offensive response (thank you, I appreciate that), though not before I had read it, and now, later, you have come up this instead.😁

You make a good point. More men seem to have NPD than women* but there are women with it too. I suppose I didn’t consider them in the context of an evolutionary mechanism, as being child-bearing their scope for spreading their genes around is a lot less than for promiscuous men. And being less physically strong, their capacity for forcing themselves on someone sexually is less.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_narcissism

12 minutes ago, exchemist said:

No it didn’t. But you hastily deleted your first offensive response (thank you, I appreciate that), though not before I had read it, and now, later, you have come up this instead.😁

..you should be happy, like Putin, that Moscow wasn't bombed.. :) yet (for real)

and draw conclusions from it, which I doubt you will. After all, people don't learn from other people's mistakes, as we can see..

15 minutes ago, exchemist said:

You make a good point. More men seem to have NPD than women* but there are women with it too. I suppose I didn’t consider them in the context of an evolutionary mechanism, as being child-bearing their scope for spreading their genes around is a lot less than for promiscuous men. And being less physically strong, their capacity for forcing themselves on someone sexually is less.

..your theory is clearly flawed because you claim that narcissism is linked to reproduction and physical strength..

A woman can have several children, and in extreme cases even ten, but a man can have thousands of children every year..

If someone is physically attractive, they don't have to force anyone to do anything, either by using force or deception.

Where did this idea of linking narcissism with sexuality come from?

4 minutes ago, Sensei said:

..you should be happy, like Putin, that Moscow wasn't bombed.. :) yet (for real)

and draw conclusions from it, which I doubt you will. After all, people don't learn from other people's mistakes, as we can see..

..your theory is clearly flawed because you claim that narcissism is linked to reproduction and physical strength..

A woman can have several children, and in extreme cases even ten, but a man can have thousands of children every year..

If someone is physically attractive, they don't have to force anyone to do anything, either by using force or deception.

Where did this idea of linking narcissism with sexuality come from?

The OP, which proposed a role for natural selection in determining the prevalence of narcissism. Natural selection is founded on relative reproductive success.

1 minute ago, exchemist said:

The OP, which proposed a role for natural selection in determining the prevalence of narcissism. Natural selection is founded on relative reproductive success.

...but he talks in some kind of psychological gibberish...

...I like talking to intelligent people who write sensibly... if someone starts talking about psychology, then bye bye... ;)

Can narcissism lead to greater reproductive success? Probably yes..

and it won't be the result of narcissism at all...

Such things are difficult or very difficult to investigate scientifically, which requires repeatability of results from hundreds or thousands of samples.

Edited August 21Aug 21 by Sensei

38 minutes ago, Sensei said:

...but he talks in some kind of psychological gibberish...

...I like talking to intelligent people who write sensibly... if someone starts talking about psychology, then bye bye... ;)

Can narcissism lead to greater reproductive success? Probably yes..

and it won't be the result of narcissism at all...

Such things are difficult or very difficult to investigate scientifically, which requires repeatability of results from hundreds or thousands of samples.

This whole thread is about a psychological condition.

So bye bye, eh? 😁

3 hours ago, TheVat said:

We might have a Google translator glitch here. Can you explain what that means?

Before we look into that, can you tell us what that means and offer some supporting research for it. I really have no idea what you're talking about.

With all due respect, you are not the OP. This was intended for the OP who presumably would be interested enough to Google these terms.

Edited August 21Aug 21 by HawkII

23 minutes ago, HawkII said:

With all due respect, you are not the OP. This was intended for the OP who presumably would be interested enough to Google these terms.

With all due respect, asking for this sort of clarification is completely reasonable. It’s a discussion forum, not a personal chat.

21 minutes ago, HawkII said:

With all due respect, you are not the OP. This was intended for the OP who presumably would be interested enough to Google these terms.

You seem unfamiliar with forum rules here. Topics are not two-way conversations and any member may participate and request clarifications and supporting citations for any claims made. If you can be courteous and tell us what a "Narcissists Supply Three" and "psychologically gay" refer to, you will help advance the discussion for everyone. Clarity and definition of terminology is of vital importance to all chats here.

X-post w/Swanson

Edited August 21Aug 21 by TheVat

2 hours ago, TheVat said:

You seem unfamiliar with forum rules here. Topics are not two-way conversations and any member may participate and request clarifications and supporting citations for any claims made. If you can be courteous and tell us what a "Narcissists Supply Three" and "psychologically gay" refer to, you will help advance the discussion for everyone. Clarity and definition of terminology is of vital importance to all chats here.

X-post w/Swanson

I thought you were coming off as rude.

Right;

In psychoanalytic theory, narcissistic supply is attention or admiration that is pathologically or excessively needed from codependents.

Proof All Narcissistic Men Are Psychologically Gay

1 hour ago, HawkII said:

I thought you were coming off as rude.

Right;

Proof All Narcissistic Men Are Psychologically Gay

Moderator Note

A youtube video is not a reasonable substitute for a link to some credible medical/psychology source (e.g the AMA or APA in the US) or a textbook or journal.

Searching on that phrase gives pretty much only that one person’s youtube videos. That’s not credible, in terms of establishing it as part of the mainstream, and speculations can only be discussed in that forum.

I thought you were coming off as rude.

You’re going to need to recalibrate. Challenging claims and asking for supporting links is not considered rude in science discussions