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Sebectvo tých druhých: Esej o strachu z narcizmu
V knihe Sebectvo tých druhých esejistka Kristin Dombek prináša príbeh o tom, ako sa zo zriedkavej klinickej diagnózy stal veľký kultúrny fenomén, úložný priestor pre náš strach a úzkosti z lásky, priateľstva a vzťahov. Autorka sa odosobňuje od hystérie a kreslí jasnú hranicu medzi patológiou a obyčajným sebectvom. A v neposlednom rade píše o sebe v úprimnej snahe nájsť cestu von zo začarovaného kruhu strachu a obvinení, ktorá by viedla k uvoľnenejšiemu a uspokojivejšiemu životu.
„Dokonale vypointované, inteligentné, desivo vtipné.“ ― Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times
Žijú medzi nami, ale nie sú ako my. Manipulujú, klamú, podvádzajú a kradnú. Sú neodolateľne šarmantní a všestranní, vyžaruje z nich niečo, čo je pre nás ostatných absolútne nedosiahnuteľné. Ale narcistickí ľudia sú prázdni. Nikto presne nevie, čím sú naplnení všetci ostatní – možno nejakou dušou alebo osobnosťou, no nech už je to čokoľvek, odborníci sa zhodujú, že narcistickým povahám to chýba.
Takto nejako sa prezentuje všeobecné chápanie narcizmu či narcistickej poruchy osobnosti. A ak máme veriť článkom v New York Times, narcizmus sa šíri ako epidémia. Populárni psychológovia vo svojich bestselleroch vybavili bežných ľudí schopnosťou spoznať upírsky potenciál tejto rastúcej skupiny a bojovať s ňou, zatiaľ čo na internete sa šíria stovky hororových príbehov o narcistických rodičoch, bývalých frajeroch či šéfkach.
Kristin Dombek je esejistka. Píše pre denníky a časopisy New York Times, Harper’s, London Review of Books, n+1 a Paris Review.
„V knihe Sebectvo tých druhých je množstvo informácií, ktoré však kompenzuje ľahkosť štýlu. Jej autorka sa v siedmich kapitolách venuje veľkej a nejednoznačnej téme, ktorá je navyše populárna, ošemetná a zábavná – téme narcizmu a jeho podobám v literatúre (Ovídius, Freud), v reality šou a na internetových stránkach poskytujúcich rýchlu úľavu od sebectva rodinných príslušníkov...“ ― Gemma Sieff, New York Times Book Review
„Je nadmerná sebaláska epidémiou 21. storočia? V tejto tvrdej a prekvapivo vtipnej knižke rozoberá náš kolektívny egoizmus úžasná esejistka Kristin Dombek.“ ― O, The Oprah Magazine
„Aké je byť nažive v dnešných časoch? Na túto otázku odpovedá pravdepodobne najinteligentnejšia a najhĺbavejšia z esejistiek našich čias. Jej texty sú vždy erudované, osobné a zároveň univerzálne.“ ― Elif Batuman
„Túto knihu som prečítala za jeden deň. Podmanila si ma, zakryla mi dokonca aj výhľad na vlastný odraz v okne vlaku v metre. A som za to vďačná, pretože som sa nemohla dočkať, ako ju dám prečítať iným. Kristin Dombek skúma ľudskú dušu po svojom – jemne a s láskavou zvedavosťou.“ ― Leslie Jamison
„Sebectvo tých druhých je najzvláštnejšia a najúžasnejšia kniha, ktorú som si tento rok prečítal. V mútnych vodách sa orientuje s prenikavou jasnosťou. Čitateľstvu odhaľuje tajomstvá lásky, nenávisti, internetu, psychológie, sebectva. Majstrovské dielo, inteligentné a vtipné!“ ― Mark Greif
„Dokonale vypointované, inteligentné, desivo vtipné.“ ― Jennifer Schuessler, New York Times
Žijú medzi nami, ale nie sú ako my. Manipulujú, klamú, podvádzajú a kradnú. Sú neodolateľne šarmantní a všestranní, vyžaruje z nich niečo, čo je pre nás ostatných absolútne nedosiahnuteľné. Ale narcistickí ľudia sú prázdni. Nikto presne nevie, čím sú naplnení všetci ostatní – možno nejakou dušou alebo osobnosťou, no nech už je to čokoľvek, odborníci sa zhodujú, že narcistickým povahám to chýba.
Takto nejako sa prezentuje všeobecné chápanie narcizmu či narcistickej poruchy osobnosti. A ak máme veriť článkom v New York Times, narcizmus sa šíri ako epidémia. Populárni psychológovia vo svojich bestselleroch vybavili bežných ľudí schopnosťou spoznať upírsky potenciál tejto rastúcej skupiny a bojovať s ňou, zatiaľ čo na internete sa šíria stovky hororových príbehov o narcistických rodičoch, bývalých frajeroch či šéfkach.
Kristin Dombek je esejistka. Píše pre denníky a časopisy New York Times, Harper’s, London Review of Books, n+1 a Paris Review.
„V knihe Sebectvo tých druhých je množstvo informácií, ktoré však kompenzuje ľahkosť štýlu. Jej autorka sa v siedmich kapitolách venuje veľkej a nejednoznačnej téme, ktorá je navyše populárna, ošemetná a zábavná – téme narcizmu a jeho podobám v literatúre (Ovídius, Freud), v reality šou a na internetových stránkach poskytujúcich rýchlu úľavu od sebectva rodinných príslušníkov...“ ― Gemma Sieff, New York Times Book Review
„Je nadmerná sebaláska epidémiou 21. storočia? V tejto tvrdej a prekvapivo vtipnej knižke rozoberá náš kolektívny egoizmus úžasná esejistka Kristin Dombek.“ ― O, The Oprah Magazine
„Aké je byť nažive v dnešných časoch? Na túto otázku odpovedá pravdepodobne najinteligentnejšia a najhĺbavejšia z esejistiek našich čias. Jej texty sú vždy erudované, osobné a zároveň univerzálne.“ ― Elif Batuman
„Túto knihu som prečítala za jeden deň. Podmanila si ma, zakryla mi dokonca aj výhľad na vlastný odraz v okne vlaku v metre. A som za to vďačná, pretože som sa nemohla dočkať, ako ju dám prečítať iným. Kristin Dombek skúma ľudskú dušu po svojom – jemne a s láskavou zvedavosťou.“ ― Leslie Jamison
„Sebectvo tých druhých je najzvláštnejšia a najúžasnejšia kniha, ktorú som si tento rok prečítal. V mútnych vodách sa orientuje s prenikavou jasnosťou. Čitateľstvu odhaľuje tajomstvá lásky, nenávisti, internetu, psychológie, sebectva. Majstrovské dielo, inteligentné a vtipné!“ ― Mark Greif
174 pages, Hardcover
First published June 14, 2016
122 people are currently reading
3479 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 219 reviews
October 1, 2018
Honestly, I barely understood what the author was trying to say.
In my opinion, the essay was too dense and poorly written.
Some reviews seem better written than the book.
I hope I’m not being selfish by giving only 1 star.
In my opinion, the essay was too dense and poorly written.
Some reviews seem better written than the book.
I hope I’m not being selfish by giving only 1 star.
January 18, 2018
Dombek's 138-page essay is a concentrated look not at narcissism, but at those who fear narcissism. Turns out they're the same thing. The fear of narcissism is, in a way, its own form of narcissism.
To deconstruct the narcissism apocalypse we live in today, Dombek traces the term's convoluted history from its mythological roots in the story of Narcissus and Echo, to its first entry in the DSM, to the Instagram-fueled world of today where the term "narcissist" is throw at anyone who posts one too many selfies (which is one selfie).
In short, the term started as a term used by male psychologists to diagnose homosexuals and females who wanted their own identities. Narcissism was an affliction of the feminine, and a diagnosis used by men to silence feminine voices. With the rise of the self-help industry, primarily marketed toward feminine readers, the term shifted to one more-often-than-not used to diagnose cold, soulless bad boyfriends.
The textbook definition of a disorder is "behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture." If America is a culture of narcissists, is not being narcissistic mean you have a disorder? Our consumer capitalist culture would have you think so. Dombek suggests that consumer culture increases narcissism, especially in areas with high income disparity.
Dombek writes about the allure of the narcissist, how there is a certain romance in the apocalypse. It reminds me of an OKCupid question, which is something like, "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" Narcissists are alluring because those who fear them are also attracted to them. Those who fear them are also narcissists. On the surface, it seems like two magnetic poles. One has a personality, the other wants one, one feeds off the other. But the deeper you think about it, the more it seems as though like attracts like. Both are desperate for identity, just going about it a different way.
Viewed in the coldest of ways, narcissists can be viewed as "soul vampires" or hollow shells attempting to have a personality. Dombek asks, "If he is empty inside, this narcissist, who or what is it, inside of him, that is imitating having a self?" It makes me think of Krang from the Ninja Turtles -- a squishy pink blob inside a human-shaped, but inhuman, robotic exoskeleton.
I'd had these thoughts before myself about feeling "raped on a soul level," but Dombek turns the cold, calculating gaze of the anti-narcissist (me) in on himself. Anyone who views someone else as a "soul vampire" sees himself as someone with a soul worthy of being devoured. Isn't that narcissistic? And viewing someone who comes across as cold as literally human is cold and devoid of empathy.
All behavior is learned, and in an increasingly narcissistic culture, the maladaptive behaviors of narcissism will only get worse. The solution is empathy. Understanding that we are all much more similar than we'd like to be. The people we hate, we often hate them because they display traits we dislike in ourselves. If we learn to love ourselves, we can love others more easily. "Self-love is not narcissism, but its cure."
This isn't a self-help book, but it deepened my worldview. I felt great mental and emotional pain while reading it, as if parts of myself that I had been sawing at, yet still hung on by tough bundles of gristle and nerve, were being ripped away. But, as I said, all behavior is learned. Bad behaviors become grafted onto us. Limbs, organs, and tissues that look like our own, but aren't. They're parasites of the trickiest kinds, organisms that make us feel like we can't live without them. But we can, if only we can extract them from our flesh and our spirit.
To deconstruct the narcissism apocalypse we live in today, Dombek traces the term's convoluted history from its mythological roots in the story of Narcissus and Echo, to its first entry in the DSM, to the Instagram-fueled world of today where the term "narcissist" is throw at anyone who posts one too many selfies (which is one selfie).
In short, the term started as a term used by male psychologists to diagnose homosexuals and females who wanted their own identities. Narcissism was an affliction of the feminine, and a diagnosis used by men to silence feminine voices. With the rise of the self-help industry, primarily marketed toward feminine readers, the term shifted to one more-often-than-not used to diagnose cold, soulless bad boyfriends.
The textbook definition of a disorder is "behavior that deviates markedly from the expectations of the individual's culture." If America is a culture of narcissists, is not being narcissistic mean you have a disorder? Our consumer capitalist culture would have you think so. Dombek suggests that consumer culture increases narcissism, especially in areas with high income disparity.
Dombek writes about the allure of the narcissist, how there is a certain romance in the apocalypse. It reminds me of an OKCupid question, which is something like, "In a certain light, wouldn't nuclear war be exciting?" Narcissists are alluring because those who fear them are also attracted to them. Those who fear them are also narcissists. On the surface, it seems like two magnetic poles. One has a personality, the other wants one, one feeds off the other. But the deeper you think about it, the more it seems as though like attracts like. Both are desperate for identity, just going about it a different way.
Viewed in the coldest of ways, narcissists can be viewed as "soul vampires" or hollow shells attempting to have a personality. Dombek asks, "If he is empty inside, this narcissist, who or what is it, inside of him, that is imitating having a self?" It makes me think of Krang from the Ninja Turtles -- a squishy pink blob inside a human-shaped, but inhuman, robotic exoskeleton.
I'd had these thoughts before myself about feeling "raped on a soul level," but Dombek turns the cold, calculating gaze of the anti-narcissist (me) in on himself. Anyone who views someone else as a "soul vampire" sees himself as someone with a soul worthy of being devoured. Isn't that narcissistic? And viewing someone who comes across as cold as literally human is cold and devoid of empathy.
All behavior is learned, and in an increasingly narcissistic culture, the maladaptive behaviors of narcissism will only get worse. The solution is empathy. Understanding that we are all much more similar than we'd like to be. The people we hate, we often hate them because they display traits we dislike in ourselves. If we learn to love ourselves, we can love others more easily. "Self-love is not narcissism, but its cure."
This isn't a self-help book, but it deepened my worldview. I felt great mental and emotional pain while reading it, as if parts of myself that I had been sawing at, yet still hung on by tough bundles of gristle and nerve, were being ripped away. But, as I said, all behavior is learned. Bad behaviors become grafted onto us. Limbs, organs, and tissues that look like our own, but aren't. They're parasites of the trickiest kinds, organisms that make us feel like we can't live without them. But we can, if only we can extract them from our flesh and our spirit.
May 17, 2016
a mostly fascinating look at the clinical and cultural history of narcissism, kristin dombek's the selfishness of others: an essay on the fear of narcissism isn't the sort of trite garbage that aims to convince you a narcissist may be sleeping in your bed with you, living next door, or sharing the microwave at your office. instead, dombek offers a thoughtful take on a much misunderstood psychological diagnosis, tracing it from the greek myth for which it's named to the current age of maligned millennials. perhaps a tad too academic for a general audience, dombek's book is, nonetheless, a measured, reflective work that encourages considerable post-reading examination. the selfishness of others, to this reader at least, was most effectual when expounding upon empathy.
but the moment you begin to find that the other lacks empathy—when you find him inhuman—is a moment when you can't feel empathy, either.
May 8, 2019
This book is written by someone who wants to understand the narcissistic phenomenon and does a lot of reading and research about it. However, the result is a mishmash of way too many different constructs and there is little distinction between opinions of bloggers and actual scientists.
Another problem is that the current manifestation of narcissism on Internet social networks is much more complicated than the author grasps. The speed of Internet responses and the tendency to misinterpret responses creates emotional distance, interferes with normal emotional processing, and reinforces narcissistic tendencies. This evolved form of narcissism probably cannot be measured against the more traditional forms.
The author clearly has good intentions and I give her credit for trying, but this subject requires much more depth and complexity in approaching the factors involved.
If you're interested in the FEAR of narcissism I recommend an article called "Listening to Echoism" by Craig Malkin, Ph.D. at PsychologyToday.com June 2019. "Echoism" is a strange term but it refers to the original myth in which Echo was the one involved with Narcissus. In Malkin's description, echoists are terrified that their own emotional needs are a burden to others so they are OK with narcissists taking all the emotional space...
Another problem is that the current manifestation of narcissism on Internet social networks is much more complicated than the author grasps. The speed of Internet responses and the tendency to misinterpret responses creates emotional distance, interferes with normal emotional processing, and reinforces narcissistic tendencies. This evolved form of narcissism probably cannot be measured against the more traditional forms.
The author clearly has good intentions and I give her credit for trying, but this subject requires much more depth and complexity in approaching the factors involved.
If you're interested in the FEAR of narcissism I recommend an article called "Listening to Echoism" by Craig Malkin, Ph.D. at PsychologyToday.com June 2019. "Echoism" is a strange term but it refers to the original myth in which Echo was the one involved with Narcissus. In Malkin's description, echoists are terrified that their own emotional needs are a burden to others so they are OK with narcissists taking all the emotional space...
June 24, 2017
Unclear and poorly written, despite the noble intent to debunk the mass foolishness, charlatanism, and outright fraud of popular social psychology.
September 28, 2016
Are you a narcissist? Of course you are. We all are. It’s so obvious. That’s our modern condition. We’re self-obsessed millennials who live online and care about only our empty selves. Boy, what a bunch of assholes we are.
Really, we’re just idiots, unthinking morons who glom onto buzzwords and echo what we’re told, read and see. There’s hardly an original thought among the lot of us, none that hasn’t already been manufactured and broadcast. We use these superficial distinctions as shorthand, but for what?
Kristin Dombek writes to get to the bottom of our narcissistic obsession with narcissism in her book THE SELFISHNESS OF OTHERS: AN ESSAY ON THE FEAR OF NARCISSISM. Don’t fool yourself, there is a panic about narcissism. It’s an epidemic, sweeping the nation like hula hoops and other fads before it.
Dombek isn’t caught by the contagion of narcissism, but studies it, puts samples under her microscope, like MTV’s reality-TV shows, the modern re-trend of pick-up guides for bad boyfriends and even inhuman mass murderers. Along the way she finds discrepancies over the meaning of narcissism. Even psychologists can’t agree what it is, or if it’s even bad for you.
What makes this such a fascinating and enlightening read is that Dombek doesn’t accept the received knowledge and even applies such novel and unused approaches as critical thinking to separate the dogma and is left with a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of a Greek myth that has become mythic and may counterintuitively be a key to a more empathetic life.
Really, we’re just idiots, unthinking morons who glom onto buzzwords and echo what we’re told, read and see. There’s hardly an original thought among the lot of us, none that hasn’t already been manufactured and broadcast. We use these superficial distinctions as shorthand, but for what?
Kristin Dombek writes to get to the bottom of our narcissistic obsession with narcissism in her book THE SELFISHNESS OF OTHERS: AN ESSAY ON THE FEAR OF NARCISSISM. Don’t fool yourself, there is a panic about narcissism. It’s an epidemic, sweeping the nation like hula hoops and other fads before it.
Dombek isn’t caught by the contagion of narcissism, but studies it, puts samples under her microscope, like MTV’s reality-TV shows, the modern re-trend of pick-up guides for bad boyfriends and even inhuman mass murderers. Along the way she finds discrepancies over the meaning of narcissism. Even psychologists can’t agree what it is, or if it’s even bad for you.
What makes this such a fascinating and enlightening read is that Dombek doesn’t accept the received knowledge and even applies such novel and unused approaches as critical thinking to separate the dogma and is left with a thoughtful and nuanced exploration of a Greek myth that has become mythic and may counterintuitively be a key to a more empathetic life.
March 16, 2025
I lost the forest for the trees reading this book. Everything you ever wanted to know about narcissism, in excruciating detail - with occasional tangential discussions about other subjects - but somehow, I lost the point of what she was saying ... if there ever was a point. And, was repetitious like a Chinese Water Torture. And, it didn't tell me anything I didn't already know.
September 8, 2016
“The Selfishness of Others: An Essay on the Fear of Narcissism” authored by educator notable journalist Kristen Dombek: expertly researched, thoroughly explores the widespread concern and rise (0%-5% increase) of the epidemic of the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) which was first introduced in the DSM in 1980, and recently updated in the DSM-5 (2013).
According to Freud, artists and writers were listed with criminals recognized by their immaturity, vanity, and inability to grow-up and accept a disenchanted world, infusing their own selves instead. These are fake/evil people who use others to fill their “contagious emptiness”. Individuals involved with narcissists become “targets”-- often “love bombed, mirrored, dosed, or given the silent treatment.” They may be IDD-- (Idealized, Devalued, Discarded). Psychologists and bloggers have identified public figures and politicians with NPD: a “Sexual Narcissist” has affairs with people outside a marriage or committed relationship, a “Spiritual Narcissist” is lacking a true connection, a “Corporate Narcissist” seeks only profits for the company. There are many more, just about anyone can pathologically selfish or have an undiagnosed condition.
With people being labeled as victims or villains’ the question about “the rest of us” remains. We compare and view ourselves as “the good one” as we attempt to understand others. We may miss important facts/truths as our knowledge may be limited/superficial. An entire “narcisphere” websites, forums, books, articles exist that offer assistance and guidance. There is support offered within a community of like-minded individuals, including phone apps that reinforce messages and affirmations. For additional fees, phone therapy is available. With online connections and research comes a satisfaction from a psych post or studies that validate and affirm problems, and the possibility of recovery. Bad ex boyfriends/girlfriends, spouses, bosses, parents all have a place in this therapeutically defined web.
The baby boomers are quick to note the selfishness and narcissism present in the millennials, yet millennials are known to be the most tolerant and least racist, sexist, and homophobic generation in history! The bad boyfriend Tucker Max who made millions writing about his outrageous narcissistic exploits: “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” (2009) is now a loving husband and father. We need to read about others, like their posted selfie’s on social media, it doesn’t matter how narcissistic or self-absorbed they can be, or if we haven’t ever met them, we all are in need of connection to others.
According to Freud, artists and writers were listed with criminals recognized by their immaturity, vanity, and inability to grow-up and accept a disenchanted world, infusing their own selves instead. These are fake/evil people who use others to fill their “contagious emptiness”. Individuals involved with narcissists become “targets”-- often “love bombed, mirrored, dosed, or given the silent treatment.” They may be IDD-- (Idealized, Devalued, Discarded). Psychologists and bloggers have identified public figures and politicians with NPD: a “Sexual Narcissist” has affairs with people outside a marriage or committed relationship, a “Spiritual Narcissist” is lacking a true connection, a “Corporate Narcissist” seeks only profits for the company. There are many more, just about anyone can pathologically selfish or have an undiagnosed condition.
With people being labeled as victims or villains’ the question about “the rest of us” remains. We compare and view ourselves as “the good one” as we attempt to understand others. We may miss important facts/truths as our knowledge may be limited/superficial. An entire “narcisphere” websites, forums, books, articles exist that offer assistance and guidance. There is support offered within a community of like-minded individuals, including phone apps that reinforce messages and affirmations. For additional fees, phone therapy is available. With online connections and research comes a satisfaction from a psych post or studies that validate and affirm problems, and the possibility of recovery. Bad ex boyfriends/girlfriends, spouses, bosses, parents all have a place in this therapeutically defined web.
The baby boomers are quick to note the selfishness and narcissism present in the millennials, yet millennials are known to be the most tolerant and least racist, sexist, and homophobic generation in history! The bad boyfriend Tucker Max who made millions writing about his outrageous narcissistic exploits: “I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell” (2009) is now a loving husband and father. We need to read about others, like their posted selfie’s on social media, it doesn’t matter how narcissistic or self-absorbed they can be, or if we haven’t ever met them, we all are in need of connection to others.
February 10, 2017
I have to say I struggled a bit with this book but perhaps that just emphasises the complexity of this disorder. Some very interesting concepts are discussed here, one being are narcissists really people with low self esteem or in fact the exact opposite, excessive self esteem? Dombek also discusses what she terms the "fear of narcissism." I must admit I did lose track of the argument sometimes and wasn't sure if she was saying narcissism doesn't really exist and it's just a way we make ourselves feel better when certain relationships don't work out and people are just selfish and lack empathy. Perhaps too some of what she was alluding to was tongue in cheek.
October 5, 2016
It caught me in the end; Dombek hit a note of poetic eloquence toward the finish that almost made me forget that what I'd just read was so difficult to interpret because of its abundant punctuation. It was an interesting read with many things to consider and think about, but the sentences go on forever and lose their context. I often thought, "who the **** edited this?" The best part was The Artist chapter. Everything prior was, unfortunately, quite messy.
January 26, 2018
For such a short book, I found this a slog. I was ready to engage with the subject matter, but could not find a way to connect to the writing at all. The author's writing style veered between honest opinion and sarcastic straw-manning, and it was legitimately difficult to tell which side of the line she was on from paragraph to paragraph.
Combine that with the fact that I couldn't identify with any of the cultural reference points she used (examples include a subsection of the "blogosphere" dedicated to survivors of relationships with a narcissist, a star of the reality tv show My Super Sweet 16, professional asshole Tucker Max, etc), and the constant academic name-dropping, and I was left feeling completely disconnected from the book in my hands.
There were one or two interesting observations or ideas to take away from the book, but overall I can't say I recommend it.
Combine that with the fact that I couldn't identify with any of the cultural reference points she used (examples include a subsection of the "blogosphere" dedicated to survivors of relationships with a narcissist, a star of the reality tv show My Super Sweet 16, professional asshole Tucker Max, etc), and the constant academic name-dropping, and I was left feeling completely disconnected from the book in my hands.
There were one or two interesting observations or ideas to take away from the book, but overall I can't say I recommend it.
May 28, 2017
Boring and cliché like some inane blog post by a psychology major. But I seem to dislike essayists, as I've learned they're called, especially the Klosterman guy. Anyways it wasn't for me.
January 2, 2017
Parts of this short book were pretty dense, like where she discusses the history of psychology, and I only skimmed them ... she also has a kind of oblique style even when she writes from a more "human interest" standpoint about bad boyfriends and teenagers unjustly accused of narcissistic behavior. In other words, she makes her points indirectly, which sometimes makes it hard to follow the nuances of her argument. Her main point seems to be that the fear of narcissism easily gets out of hand and sometimes winds up making people engage in the very behavior might be labeled narcissism from someone else's perspective.
Basically, the book revolves around how there is a tendency in popular culture to label anyone who rejects us (bad boyfriends) or whom we want to villainize (kids today, why don't they get off our lawns!) as narcissists. It's easier to deal with romantic rejection by pathologizing the behavior of the person who rejects us and painting them as a sick narcissist, than to see them as complex human beings who have their reasons. Ironically, by demonizing the rejecting romantic partner as a narcissist rather than just acknowledging the validity of their feelings, the rejected person is the one who actually displays a lack of empathy - supposedly a narcissistic trait.
The dating advice given to the "victims" of supposedly narcissistic bad boyfriends is that they should hold out for someone who makes them the absolute center of their universe, and they should be on their guard against and immediately drop anyone who fails to make them feel special, worshipped and unique ... in other words, ironically, they should have narcissistic expectations of their romantic partners. Additionally, the self-help and pop psychology industries as a whole encourage people to sit around diagnosing and condemning the psychological ills of others, rather than, again, seeing our commonalities with others, having genuine sympathy for their struggles and mistakes, and putting ourselves in their shoes.
The idea of narcissism is further discredited as the author points out how it started in modern psychology with Freud as an accusation that was leveled against homosexuals and attractive women - since Freud felt threatened by his homoerotic impulses, and of course also by self-sufficient women who were uninterested in undergoing psychoanalysis. Apart from the accusation of narcissism now being thrown at bad boyfriends a lot, apparently some famous reformed pickup artists dudebros have turned it around and blamed their bad-boyfriend-hood on having narcissistic mothers. So, basically, it tends to get tossed out at whoever activates one's insecurities and makes one feel threatened.
Even though a dense book to get through, this book provides a nice cautionary counterpoint for me, since I've been doing some reading the past year or so in the self-help and pop psychology genres. I've definitely noticed how easy it is to slide onto the slippery slope of applying the concepts to judging others rather than trying to make myself a better (wiser) person. And also, concepts from psychology have to be taken with a grain of salt, since they aren't always well-grounded even when they have a long intellectual pedigree - they can be somewhat arbitrary and artificial, and you always have to do your own thinking about how well they really match the reality of your own and other people's experiences ...
Basically, the book revolves around how there is a tendency in popular culture to label anyone who rejects us (bad boyfriends) or whom we want to villainize (kids today, why don't they get off our lawns!) as narcissists. It's easier to deal with romantic rejection by pathologizing the behavior of the person who rejects us and painting them as a sick narcissist, than to see them as complex human beings who have their reasons. Ironically, by demonizing the rejecting romantic partner as a narcissist rather than just acknowledging the validity of their feelings, the rejected person is the one who actually displays a lack of empathy - supposedly a narcissistic trait.
The dating advice given to the "victims" of supposedly narcissistic bad boyfriends is that they should hold out for someone who makes them the absolute center of their universe, and they should be on their guard against and immediately drop anyone who fails to make them feel special, worshipped and unique ... in other words, ironically, they should have narcissistic expectations of their romantic partners. Additionally, the self-help and pop psychology industries as a whole encourage people to sit around diagnosing and condemning the psychological ills of others, rather than, again, seeing our commonalities with others, having genuine sympathy for their struggles and mistakes, and putting ourselves in their shoes.
The idea of narcissism is further discredited as the author points out how it started in modern psychology with Freud as an accusation that was leveled against homosexuals and attractive women - since Freud felt threatened by his homoerotic impulses, and of course also by self-sufficient women who were uninterested in undergoing psychoanalysis. Apart from the accusation of narcissism now being thrown at bad boyfriends a lot, apparently some famous reformed pickup artists dudebros have turned it around and blamed their bad-boyfriend-hood on having narcissistic mothers. So, basically, it tends to get tossed out at whoever activates one's insecurities and makes one feel threatened.
Even though a dense book to get through, this book provides a nice cautionary counterpoint for me, since I've been doing some reading the past year or so in the self-help and pop psychology genres. I've definitely noticed how easy it is to slide onto the slippery slope of applying the concepts to judging others rather than trying to make myself a better (wiser) person. And also, concepts from psychology have to be taken with a grain of salt, since they aren't always well-grounded even when they have a long intellectual pedigree - they can be somewhat arbitrary and artificial, and you always have to do your own thinking about how well they really match the reality of your own and other people's experiences ...
September 11, 2021
Tu, na Goodreads je "recenzia" na túto knihu od Marcela Uhrína: 'No, chvíľami zmätočné, miestami zaujímavé.' - musela som ňou začať, pretože táto jediná veta geniálne vystihuje túto knihu.
Začnem tým zmätočným. Autorka prechádza z hovorového jazyka do odborného až akademického. Spomína teórie o narcizme od množstva psychológov, ktorí sa tejto téme venovali, pričom si často navzájom odporovali, väčšinou skrz nové poznatky, ale aj cez vlastné pochopenie tejto poruchy osobnosti. A tým, že tie názory a teórie boli tak veľmi rozporuplné a protichodné, ako niekto, kto nemá narcizmus hlbšie naštudovaný, som v tom mala chaos. Bolo to spomínané v krátkom rozsahu, veľmi skákala z jedného psychológa k druhému a ja som sa v tom stratila.
A k tomu spomína príbehy z vlastného života, pri ktorých mi zväčša ušlo, ako sú relevantné k téme.
A teraz to zaujímavé - možno nemám narcizmus do hĺbky naštudovaný, ale nejakú základnú definíciu tejto poruchy osobnosti som mala. Autorka sa ale skrz teórie iných psychológov zamýšľa nad narcizmom ako epidémiou. Epidémiou, ktorá sa vďaka sociálnym sieťam stala akousi súčasťou dnešnej kultúry. Tiež si posvietila na rôzne typy narcizmu.
Vo všebecnosti však táto kniha zanechala v mojej hlave chaos. Priveľa informácii v malom rozsahu, pričom skákala z jedného na druhé bez toho, aby sa tomu povenovala do hĺbky. Boli časti, kde mi nebolo jasné, čo tým vlastne chce povedať a čo si mám z toho odniesť. A do toho som nechápavo pozerala na odporúčania na tieto eseje, ktoré sú priamo v knihe, pričom hneď tri z nich knihu označili za vtipnú. Osobne som nenašla jediný moment, kde by sa ten humor v nejakej forme prejavil, ale koniec-koncov, táto kniha nebude asi toho prvou voľbou, keď bude mať chuť na niečo vtipné.
Začnem tým zmätočným. Autorka prechádza z hovorového jazyka do odborného až akademického. Spomína teórie o narcizme od množstva psychológov, ktorí sa tejto téme venovali, pričom si často navzájom odporovali, väčšinou skrz nové poznatky, ale aj cez vlastné pochopenie tejto poruchy osobnosti. A tým, že tie názory a teórie boli tak veľmi rozporuplné a protichodné, ako niekto, kto nemá narcizmus hlbšie naštudovaný, som v tom mala chaos. Bolo to spomínané v krátkom rozsahu, veľmi skákala z jedného psychológa k druhému a ja som sa v tom stratila.
A k tomu spomína príbehy z vlastného života, pri ktorých mi zväčša ušlo, ako sú relevantné k téme.
A teraz to zaujímavé - možno nemám narcizmus do hĺbky naštudovaný, ale nejakú základnú definíciu tejto poruchy osobnosti som mala. Autorka sa ale skrz teórie iných psychológov zamýšľa nad narcizmom ako epidémiou. Epidémiou, ktorá sa vďaka sociálnym sieťam stala akousi súčasťou dnešnej kultúry. Tiež si posvietila na rôzne typy narcizmu.
Vo všebecnosti však táto kniha zanechala v mojej hlave chaos. Priveľa informácii v malom rozsahu, pričom skákala z jedného na druhé bez toho, aby sa tomu povenovala do hĺbky. Boli časti, kde mi nebolo jasné, čo tým vlastne chce povedať a čo si mám z toho odniesť. A do toho som nechápavo pozerala na odporúčania na tieto eseje, ktoré sú priamo v knihe, pričom hneď tri z nich knihu označili za vtipnú. Osobne som nenašla jediný moment, kde by sa ten humor v nejakej forme prejavil, ale koniec-koncov, táto kniha nebude asi toho prvou voľbou, keď bude mať chuť na niečo vtipné.
February 18, 2020
"Any book you write is its own asylum, but a book about narcissism is like the padded cell inside the asylum."
If we are in fact not living in an increasingly selfish and narcissistic world, it certainly feels that way. Books, blogs, tweets and everything else are cluttered with stories of the latest asshole who did some self serving thing that caused some form of distress to someone. The author of “The Selfishness of Others” asks however, haven’t there always been assholes? Is the world we live in now that much more obsessed with itself?
The research seems to support her. Despite a glut of studies that purport to show that such and such percentage rise in narcissistic behavior has been going on for years, it would seem that most of these studies glean their data from one study in particular of psychology students at one particular university.
“When psychology is conducted by surveying college students, by ‘convenience sample’ the data are gathered most often from the college students in psychology classrooms. This is not just college freshmen, but college freshmen enrolled in psychology classes, it is not only the cohort from which Twenge and Campbell’s thirty-year study was mainly drawn, but (according to one meta-study) the one upon which 67 percent of psychology studies are based, which makes one wonder how much of the understanding of the self, of mental health, of ‘normal’and ‘abnormal’ psychology that we gather from announcements of new studies in our Twitter feeds, would actually be more accurately framed as an understanding of what young psychology students think about themselves.”
“What she and her collaborators found was, indeed, that NPI scores had risen between 1979 and 2006. It’s an increase that is widely reported as 30 percent….When Twenge and her collaborators compared narcissism scores to self-esteem scores, they discovered that both rose together. This raised the problem of what they were finding. Was it really narcissism, given that narcissism had long been considered a cover for low self-esteem?”
“It’s easy to miss that when psychologists claim that “By 2006, two-thirds of college students scored above the [NPI] scale’s original sample average, a 30 percent increase in only two decades. What they mean is not that pathological narcissism has increased by 30 percent, but that a slight majority of students in 2006 answered, on average, one or two more questions in the narcissistic direction than did those in 1986, when the sample average was first determined, and that this is not an increase considered significant by other researchers.”
“One cause may be the heavy pressure on academic psychologists to publish positive results. A 2010 meta-study of papers in psychology found that 80 percent achieve positive results; the odds of a psychology paper confirming its hypothesis are 50 percent higher than a paper in the hard sciences.”
As the author points out, most of these studies while showing perhaps a problem with narcissism among psychology students at one University, don’t necessarily indicate a rise among the population at large.
The author cites another study where a study cites a significant rise in the use of the pronoun “I” in novels.
“Twenge and Campbell began counting words. The words used in cultural products like novels and songs, they argued, are ‘free of the biases that plague self-report measures.’ Writing ‘I’clearly corresponds to self-centeredness, and writing ‘we’ corresponds to other-centeredness. They found what they were looking for ‘since 1960, there’s been a 10 percent decrease in the use of ‘us’ and ‘we’ in American novels and nonfiction, and a 42 percent increase in ‘I’ and ‘me’. They also found that the use of you and your has quadrupled, but rather than seeing this as evidence of other-focus, or a symptom of an increase in the publication of psychological self-help books, they took this ‘increased tendency to directly address the reader and include him or her in the dialogue’ to be ‘another indicator of individualism.’
…Not to mention the possibility that, on the other hand, the 42 percent increase in the use of ‘I’ might be a symptom of an increase in people taking responsibility for things. This word counting would be, in a word, fucked.”
I have no idea what to do with this information.
The author doesn’t really seem to know what to do with it either:
“This writer is hunched over her computer in a dark, high-walled room, alone, forehead creased at the study on her screen, thinking of self-centered sentences like ‘I’m sorry and ‘I love you’ and ‘Let me help’ and ‘I wonder’. ”
She posits several theories however.
The first being that emerging studies in “mirror cells” (human beings seemingly unconscious and inherent need to mirror the actions of others) seem to indicate that if we dismiss someone as a narcissist, we are in effect calling ourself one as well. Rather, because we are linked together by these cells, the need to label someone’s behavior as narcissistic is a reflection of our fears about our own behavior.
She also seems to posit that the term narcissist (a relatively new diagnosis only acknowledged by the psychological profession for about 40 years), is one that is too vague and inaccurately describes behavior we lack the linguistic or emotional intelligence or patience to fully understand.
Isn’t it easier after all when your girlfriend cheats on you or humiliates you to just call her a narcissist? Doesn’t that self righteousness feel and taste so sweet? Certainly sweeter than acknowledging what you may have done wrong that brought her to those choices:
“Narcissism has always been, for psychology, a story about bad romance and desire gone awry, an account of how, when someone turns away, it means they’re turning toward themselves, selfishly, and of what that means about what’s wrong with the way you love, too.”
While this book is certainly thought provoking, it does also at times tend to be a bit muddled. The author’s thesis is often unclear and she meanders off into flights of flowery prose (I could do without the whole Narcissus and Echo passage that does little to push the book forward) that must have looked very impressive to her when she typed it. As short as this book is, it probably could’ve used some better editing.
That being said, the topic is interesting and the author’s willingness to express an opinion contrary to the prevailing wisdom about the times we live in is refreshing and and at times quite enjoyable.
August 21, 2016
non-specific praise: all books should be ~160 pages long, give or take a notes section and some prefatory throat-clearing. it is the ideal length. you can read it in a few sittings, feel like oh look at me i read a book, they cost less, everybody wins.
i've noticed that i tend to get very judgy very fast when i clock what i deem to be narcissistic or self-obsessed behavior in other people, and i started to get curious about that particular thing, when this book popped in a review somewhere or other. it turns out i am not in anyway unique or special for this judginess and that this insecurity can be unpacked a bit. dombek basically dynamites a few competing big dumb ideas (namely that everyone is self-obsessed now, and that we know what we think we know about self-obsession) with some nice literary essays. this sags into places toward "take" writing -- reactions to other reactions to things -- but rescues itself nicely. probably could have been even shorter, but i enjoyed it and will keep an eye out for dombek's byline in the future. now the school started and i will never read anything just for edification ever again.
i've noticed that i tend to get very judgy very fast when i clock what i deem to be narcissistic or self-obsessed behavior in other people, and i started to get curious about that particular thing, when this book popped in a review somewhere or other. it turns out i am not in anyway unique or special for this judginess and that this insecurity can be unpacked a bit. dombek basically dynamites a few competing big dumb ideas (namely that everyone is self-obsessed now, and that we know what we think we know about self-obsession) with some nice literary essays. this sags into places toward "take" writing -- reactions to other reactions to things -- but rescues itself nicely. probably could have been even shorter, but i enjoyed it and will keep an eye out for dombek's byline in the future. now the school started and i will never read anything just for edification ever again.
December 6, 2016
I found this book, essay, whatever you want to call it, very hard to digest. It felt like a hodgepodge of great insight, psychoanalytic regurgitation, and 'wait what the fuck are you talking about?'. Some parts really got my brain spinning in all the best ways. Others made my eyes glaze over. But at the end I still don't understand the point she was trying to make. Oh well.
December 31, 2019
DNF. Pointless and rambling.
May 5, 2023
first two chapters i could not get my footing or understand if she was setting up the online culture of people being obsessed with identifying narcissists in a certain way to show the absurdity of their behavior (this is exactly what she did do, but it took a while and i was concerned for a minute there she was not presenting this critically, she was)
lots of good stuff in here about what empathy is and isn’t, how we deny others of their humanity by projecting so much onto them, and the way the internet has broken our brains !!! also freud gossip which was very fun. great points about how it’s easier for a spurned friend or lover to pathologize who hurt them instead of actually reflecting on their own behavior 🌝 i liked it
lots of good stuff in here about what empathy is and isn’t, how we deny others of their humanity by projecting so much onto them, and the way the internet has broken our brains !!! also freud gossip which was very fun. great points about how it’s easier for a spurned friend or lover to pathologize who hurt them instead of actually reflecting on their own behavior 🌝 i liked it
June 9, 2017
For people who easily throw around the accusation of narcissism (at current or former romantic partners, family members, or an entire group or generation, e.g., the millennials), have a firm belief in being authentic and unselfish while regarding others with suspicion of being manipulative and self-serving, and are quick to judge others based on a superficial interaction.
September 6, 2019
Dombek examines the phenomenon from a multiplicity of angles, personal, mythological, psychological, sociological, and neuroscientific. She wisely refrains from drawing conclusions, mostly just "teaching the controversy"as we now say, though she does a really good job of skewering the more ludicrous claims and theories. Parts of the essay, especially are quite interesting (especially when she slips into the first person), but too many others were rendered painfully dull and confusing by the sort of opaque, over-complex, jargon-laden prose that passes for erudite among practitioners of "critical theory."
September 23, 2018
Fantastic book. I bought it at the Black Bird Book Shop, a carefully curated independent bookstore in the Sunset neighborhood of SF. I thought it was too carefully curated, but how can I say that when I found this book which is absolutely one of my recent favorites.
The author's premise is that we bandy about the the word "narcissistic" as a pejorative term without reflecting on our own narcissism and the nature of human consciousness and human relations. Her exploration of the topic is erudite; she explores psychoanalytic and philosophical concepts of narcissism, as well as neurophysiological correlates, and she explains the myth of Narcissus and Echo.
Along the way, she raises questions about the conventional wisdom that millennials are more narcissistic. (Isn't the younger generation always dangerously self-centered?) In fact, a close analysis of the "statistics" that purport to show this only confirms that current college age women are more self-confident than the college women of the late 1970's. I also enjoyed her chapter on our difficulty empathizing with mass murderers and other horrific criminals; I know I need to see these people as a different evil breed, and this has been a personal challenge for me in my work.
This book is dense and challenging but very readable and also short. The topic is of great interest to me and I appreciate an author who examines common assumptions and thinks for herself.
The author's premise is that we bandy about the the word "narcissistic" as a pejorative term without reflecting on our own narcissism and the nature of human consciousness and human relations. Her exploration of the topic is erudite; she explores psychoanalytic and philosophical concepts of narcissism, as well as neurophysiological correlates, and she explains the myth of Narcissus and Echo.
Along the way, she raises questions about the conventional wisdom that millennials are more narcissistic. (Isn't the younger generation always dangerously self-centered?) In fact, a close analysis of the "statistics" that purport to show this only confirms that current college age women are more self-confident than the college women of the late 1970's. I also enjoyed her chapter on our difficulty empathizing with mass murderers and other horrific criminals; I know I need to see these people as a different evil breed, and this has been a personal challenge for me in my work.
This book is dense and challenging but very readable and also short. The topic is of great interest to me and I appreciate an author who examines common assumptions and thinks for herself.
November 4, 2019
Super convoluted.
There were a few good points in here — predominately segments related to the stifling of empathy in relationships where narcissism plays a role but it’s buried under so many high level thoughts that the gems are hard to get to.
Maybe I’m not cerebral enough for this shit but the interspersing of the author’s relations to narcissism and the exploration of narcissism in pop culture such as MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen made it hard to follow the authors train of thought. Especially when she devolved into breaking down how the people in the aforementioned show were made to look more narcissistic than they are in real life by the producers. Like, why bring up something only then to debunk it in a way that doesn’t help me to understand anything deeper?
It was like — okay, so the public loves to watch selfish shit to validate their own inner selfishness that they can’t bring to life or that they make come to life in small doses.. so what?
This book was very, very confusing.
There were a few good points in here — predominately segments related to the stifling of empathy in relationships where narcissism plays a role but it’s buried under so many high level thoughts that the gems are hard to get to.
Maybe I’m not cerebral enough for this shit but the interspersing of the author’s relations to narcissism and the exploration of narcissism in pop culture such as MTV’s My Super Sweet Sixteen made it hard to follow the authors train of thought. Especially when she devolved into breaking down how the people in the aforementioned show were made to look more narcissistic than they are in real life by the producers. Like, why bring up something only then to debunk it in a way that doesn’t help me to understand anything deeper?
It was like — okay, so the public loves to watch selfish shit to validate their own inner selfishness that they can’t bring to life or that they make come to life in small doses.. so what?
This book was very, very confusing.
March 3, 2021
Great. But if you think you might not be ready for it, you might not be ready for it.
March 6, 2017
There are a lot of questions that I never think to ask, but should. Like Jack Reacher's question, "...when people say they slept like a baby. Do they mean they slept well? Or do they mean they woke up every ten minutes, screaming?” Or like Kristin Dombek's question, "what's up with the narcissism epidemic?" Dombek deftly writes her answer in The Selfishness of Others. I'm still waiting for Jack Reacher to tell me his. This is a firm recommendation.
September 10, 2018
Really poorly structured and unclear :(. I was EXCITED to read this but it was much more literal than I expected like I somehow wanted it to be about how we all fear coming off as selfish ourselves and how that manifests in the internet age but it was actually like clinically what is narcissism and then some really confusing examples whose purpose I am still trying to understand. It did make me laugh out loud sometimes. But I don't recommend.
May 18, 2020
This book was sitting on our shelf for a long time until I picked it up one evening. It barely took an hour to read, but it was definitely a waste of time. It was really poorly written, chaotic, full of empty assumptions and never ending rhetorical questions without an answer. It was painful to read it and I didnt learn anything new.
May 8, 2019
While this essay was an interesting exploration of the history of and current fascination of narcissism, particularly the difficulty in defining/diagnosing it, it was frustratingly meandering and ultimately failed to make a cogent argument.
July 22, 2021
I learned so much about narcissism and the vague and squishiness of mental illness. The ending kind of went off the rails a little bit, but otherwise an interesting look into the philosophical, social, and modern perspectives on narcissistic personality disorder.
June 15, 2017
‘Any book you write is its own asylum, but a book about narcissism is like the padded cell inside the asylum.’
It’s a strange thing, sometimes, living so much of my inner life online. There is a funny feeling I get when I start describing something I’ve read or heard about on the internet with another person, in whatever context, when I suddenly realise they have no idea what I’m talking about; and not only that but it would take so long for me to explain the layers of context to what I’m talking about that the whole thing suddenly seems pointless. It would be like trying to explain the rules of a particular TV gameshow to someone who had never seen a moving picture. It’s not to say that they couldn’t understand, but there’s no way in which it could be remotely satisfying. Part of what creates meaning is the time spent immersed in media, quite separate from the details of what that media is — of not just having seen this thing second-hand but having sat with it for hours, months, days of one’s life.
I felt on both sides of this divide while reading Kristin Dombek’s long essay on narcissism, The Selfishness of Others. Narcissism is something people talk about on the internet, though in the case of this particular condition it’s hard to tell whether the current discourse began or evolved there. I was aware, for example, of the trends in modern think-piece journalism that diagnose the millennial generation as especially sensitive and self-absorbed. Here is the first paragraph of a rather facile book review I stumbled upon in last weekend’s Observer:
‘Infatuated with his own reflection in a pool, Narcissus pined away and died of self-love. Freud diagnosed this folly as a perversion, a neurotic choice of sterile solitude, but the warning was futile. The iPhone has mechanised narcissism and a gadget meant to facilitate communication with others has caused its most addicted users to behave like long-lost Kardashian cousins, cheesily grinning as they document their unexceptional doings.’
This isn’t just something for critics to sniff about in the book pages of the sunday papers. Dombek reminds her reader that the media enjoys portraying the worst of these tendencies in shows that go back at least as far as My Super Sweet Sixteen. We are supposed to kick back, agree, and sneer. What kind of an idiot would venture to document their unexceptional doings? The same kind of idiot that would shut down an arterial road of a major city just to celebrate their sixteenth birthday party, I suppose.
But we are still only in the shallows of narcissism. At the other end of the scale are terrorists and mass murderers, like Anders Breivik, who (we’re told) demonstrate narcissistic traits. Somewhere in the middle are serious, capable professionals who otherwise lead normal lives. Narcissism is prized by some among men’s rights communities, who spend their energies defending a way of life which demeans, belittles and objectifies women; and in turn, there are extensive online communities dedicated to diagnosing psychopathic or narcissistic traits in men — bad boyfriends, bad bosses and, one assumes, bad presidents.
Reading Dombek’s essay sometimes feels like being invited to someone’s home where you discover a whole room occupied by one of those massive spider diagrams from police procedurals. They stand before you now, smiling, gesturing. Everything, we’re told, is related; and though it’s sometimes hard to trace the lines of those relations, it’s fascinating enough just being along for the ride. At times the author herself stops to wonder whether ‘narcissism’ will suffice as a descriptor for the sheer range of human failings on show:
‘Are all these diagnoses of emptiness measuring variations in the same kind of emptiness? How can the person who sucks the conversational air out of a room and the one who lights it up, the one who can’t keep a job and the one who leads an organization, the one who is overly positive about herself and the one who is overly humble, the one who takes all and the one who gives all, have the same disorder?’
And yet it is a disorder which has been mapped extensively. The middle part of this essay is a deep dive into the state of psychological and psychoanalytic theory of the concept of narcissism. A trend emerges: abstract theories based on long term analysis of individuals in the context of private therapy are supplanted by large-scale psychological testing via surveys and personality tests. Both methods have their limitations, and the author remains suspicious on the ways in which the findings of these studies eventually drip down to popular culture and are subsequently misinterpreted. And she is very sharp on pointing out methodological flaws; she also has little time for the notorious Milgram experiments which purported to show man’s vulnerability to sadism under authority:
‘…his show was painstakingly controlled to replicate the kind of power dynamic that would lead citizens to support genocide—yet the experiment’s own power structure and stagecraft forcibly limited its results.’
‘Stagecraft’ is a bit of a dirty word in this book. Later we meet Allison, a woman who was once a girl featured on My Super Sweet Sixteen. It turns out that she has grown into a wonderful person who was probably nothing like as awful as how the show made her out to be. Her father planned the party way in advance of MTV showed up, and their producers inflated it into something outrageous. These days, Allison doesn’t quite fit into the categories we might expect; she’s a lifestyle blogger, but she also runs a foundation for impoverished kids in Atlanta:
‘Allison, with her “almost sociopathic narcissism,” is pressed into the service of an argument, like Lasch’s, that proceeds anecdote by pop culture anecdote—a story told not in the manner of the slow, detailed, meandering, essayistic work of Freud and the psychoanalysts, but at great speed, in a state of emergency. At this speed, the new narcissism myth emerges: it’s not that Allison seems normal but does evil things. It’s that because she looks evil, she must be evil; her sin is being exactly as she seems on television.’
It’s almost like life is more complicated than MTV made it out to be. I’m being flippant, but the book is very good in this regard; it gets much better once it finds its way out of the thicket of psycho-theory, where I suspect it never really wanted to be in the first place. When so much of the most popular online writing is centred around targeting and shaming people, it’s genuinely refreshing to find something founded on empathy. That said, Allison makes for a useful example because she seems like a genuinely kind person; it’s hard to imagine a similar encounter with some of the more difficult poster children of narcissism. In a way I’m glad this was written before the election of Donald Trump; I suspect his presence as the world’s single most prominent potential narcissist might have thrown the whole thing into uncomfortable relief.
The book ends by settling on a personal style, a confident first-person perspective, that feels like a kind of rebuke to other, more correct forms of non-fiction prose. You could call it an apologia for the current state of personal writing, which so often is dismissed in the same terms used to denigrate people for narcissism. But that would suggest it engages with those arguments — and it doesn’t. This is not an essay especially interested in winning a war of rhetoric with journalists and historians and psychologists and philosophers.
Instead it seems to back away, turning in upon itself and settling instead into a kind of prose-poetry. Only art can bring us closer together as a species, we’re told; and here, I guess, is the kind of art the essay really wants to be. That’s fine with me. I almost wonder if it was really necessary to go through all the dry psychological analysis to get to this point — but then again, perhaps you can’t ever really transcend the requirements of form unless you understand them first.
‘The feeling of my selfishness is absence: the absence from my life of the trash I leave behind, which becomes the structures into which others must live, the broken hearts, the warmer air, the slower fish, the rising ocean: whatever I do not feel, that to others becomes the shape of their world. My personal future smells like the past and looks like condos. It comes to me in the form of the explosion that began the universe, in the form of buildings on their way to ruin, the trash of the past, the refugees from the present’s wars and poverties, the coming floods, the slow fish. But it is empty, so far, of feeling. It need not be full of selfishness, yet. There is time, still, to move backward into the future of others, gazing at the disasters we are leaving behind and trying to mend. My selfishness will be invisible until spring, when the world warms, the snow melts, and someone else turns the corner to find this littered street.’
It’s a strange thing, sometimes, living so much of my inner life online. There is a funny feeling I get when I start describing something I’ve read or heard about on the internet with another person, in whatever context, when I suddenly realise they have no idea what I’m talking about; and not only that but it would take so long for me to explain the layers of context to what I’m talking about that the whole thing suddenly seems pointless. It would be like trying to explain the rules of a particular TV gameshow to someone who had never seen a moving picture. It’s not to say that they couldn’t understand, but there’s no way in which it could be remotely satisfying. Part of what creates meaning is the time spent immersed in media, quite separate from the details of what that media is — of not just having seen this thing second-hand but having sat with it for hours, months, days of one’s life.
I felt on both sides of this divide while reading Kristin Dombek’s long essay on narcissism, The Selfishness of Others. Narcissism is something people talk about on the internet, though in the case of this particular condition it’s hard to tell whether the current discourse began or evolved there. I was aware, for example, of the trends in modern think-piece journalism that diagnose the millennial generation as especially sensitive and self-absorbed. Here is the first paragraph of a rather facile book review I stumbled upon in last weekend’s Observer:
‘Infatuated with his own reflection in a pool, Narcissus pined away and died of self-love. Freud diagnosed this folly as a perversion, a neurotic choice of sterile solitude, but the warning was futile. The iPhone has mechanised narcissism and a gadget meant to facilitate communication with others has caused its most addicted users to behave like long-lost Kardashian cousins, cheesily grinning as they document their unexceptional doings.’
This isn’t just something for critics to sniff about in the book pages of the sunday papers. Dombek reminds her reader that the media enjoys portraying the worst of these tendencies in shows that go back at least as far as My Super Sweet Sixteen. We are supposed to kick back, agree, and sneer. What kind of an idiot would venture to document their unexceptional doings? The same kind of idiot that would shut down an arterial road of a major city just to celebrate their sixteenth birthday party, I suppose.
But we are still only in the shallows of narcissism. At the other end of the scale are terrorists and mass murderers, like Anders Breivik, who (we’re told) demonstrate narcissistic traits. Somewhere in the middle are serious, capable professionals who otherwise lead normal lives. Narcissism is prized by some among men’s rights communities, who spend their energies defending a way of life which demeans, belittles and objectifies women; and in turn, there are extensive online communities dedicated to diagnosing psychopathic or narcissistic traits in men — bad boyfriends, bad bosses and, one assumes, bad presidents.
Reading Dombek’s essay sometimes feels like being invited to someone’s home where you discover a whole room occupied by one of those massive spider diagrams from police procedurals. They stand before you now, smiling, gesturing. Everything, we’re told, is related; and though it’s sometimes hard to trace the lines of those relations, it’s fascinating enough just being along for the ride. At times the author herself stops to wonder whether ‘narcissism’ will suffice as a descriptor for the sheer range of human failings on show:
‘Are all these diagnoses of emptiness measuring variations in the same kind of emptiness? How can the person who sucks the conversational air out of a room and the one who lights it up, the one who can’t keep a job and the one who leads an organization, the one who is overly positive about herself and the one who is overly humble, the one who takes all and the one who gives all, have the same disorder?’
And yet it is a disorder which has been mapped extensively. The middle part of this essay is a deep dive into the state of psychological and psychoanalytic theory of the concept of narcissism. A trend emerges: abstract theories based on long term analysis of individuals in the context of private therapy are supplanted by large-scale psychological testing via surveys and personality tests. Both methods have their limitations, and the author remains suspicious on the ways in which the findings of these studies eventually drip down to popular culture and are subsequently misinterpreted. And she is very sharp on pointing out methodological flaws; she also has little time for the notorious Milgram experiments which purported to show man’s vulnerability to sadism under authority:
‘…his show was painstakingly controlled to replicate the kind of power dynamic that would lead citizens to support genocide—yet the experiment’s own power structure and stagecraft forcibly limited its results.’
‘Stagecraft’ is a bit of a dirty word in this book. Later we meet Allison, a woman who was once a girl featured on My Super Sweet Sixteen. It turns out that she has grown into a wonderful person who was probably nothing like as awful as how the show made her out to be. Her father planned the party way in advance of MTV showed up, and their producers inflated it into something outrageous. These days, Allison doesn’t quite fit into the categories we might expect; she’s a lifestyle blogger, but she also runs a foundation for impoverished kids in Atlanta:
‘Allison, with her “almost sociopathic narcissism,” is pressed into the service of an argument, like Lasch’s, that proceeds anecdote by pop culture anecdote—a story told not in the manner of the slow, detailed, meandering, essayistic work of Freud and the psychoanalysts, but at great speed, in a state of emergency. At this speed, the new narcissism myth emerges: it’s not that Allison seems normal but does evil things. It’s that because she looks evil, she must be evil; her sin is being exactly as she seems on television.’
It’s almost like life is more complicated than MTV made it out to be. I’m being flippant, but the book is very good in this regard; it gets much better once it finds its way out of the thicket of psycho-theory, where I suspect it never really wanted to be in the first place. When so much of the most popular online writing is centred around targeting and shaming people, it’s genuinely refreshing to find something founded on empathy. That said, Allison makes for a useful example because she seems like a genuinely kind person; it’s hard to imagine a similar encounter with some of the more difficult poster children of narcissism. In a way I’m glad this was written before the election of Donald Trump; I suspect his presence as the world’s single most prominent potential narcissist might have thrown the whole thing into uncomfortable relief.
The book ends by settling on a personal style, a confident first-person perspective, that feels like a kind of rebuke to other, more correct forms of non-fiction prose. You could call it an apologia for the current state of personal writing, which so often is dismissed in the same terms used to denigrate people for narcissism. But that would suggest it engages with those arguments — and it doesn’t. This is not an essay especially interested in winning a war of rhetoric with journalists and historians and psychologists and philosophers.
Instead it seems to back away, turning in upon itself and settling instead into a kind of prose-poetry. Only art can bring us closer together as a species, we’re told; and here, I guess, is the kind of art the essay really wants to be. That’s fine with me. I almost wonder if it was really necessary to go through all the dry psychological analysis to get to this point — but then again, perhaps you can’t ever really transcend the requirements of form unless you understand them first.
‘The feeling of my selfishness is absence: the absence from my life of the trash I leave behind, which becomes the structures into which others must live, the broken hearts, the warmer air, the slower fish, the rising ocean: whatever I do not feel, that to others becomes the shape of their world. My personal future smells like the past and looks like condos. It comes to me in the form of the explosion that began the universe, in the form of buildings on their way to ruin, the trash of the past, the refugees from the present’s wars and poverties, the coming floods, the slow fish. But it is empty, so far, of feeling. It need not be full of selfishness, yet. There is time, still, to move backward into the future of others, gazing at the disasters we are leaving behind and trying to mend. My selfishness will be invisible until spring, when the world warms, the snow melts, and someone else turns the corner to find this littered street.’
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