Self-love or Self-LOVE?
There’s one thing we all know, but yet we don’t actually know about—Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). We can sense it in our everyday lives and in the people around us, but let’s admit it, we don’t exactly know what it becomes when it spirals out of hand. The word narcissist originates from the Greek Myth of a man named Narcissus, who falls in love with himself, when he sees his own reflection in the water. This is primarily what narcissism and NPD are all about—unconditional self-love.
You may now think that you know a sufferer of NPD, because they seem self-centred and selfish. But the term NPD cannot be thrown around into colloquial language alongside its mistakenly similar counterparts such as ‘douchebag’ or ‘jerk’. This is because it is an actual psychological personality disorder. Not every person who seems love themselves excessively have NPD, for there are 9 character traits NPD sufferers usually have, and they are used as a base for diagnosis.
The 9 Characteristics of NPD
- Arrogance and Domineering
- Grandiosity
- Preoccupation with success and power
- Lack of empathy
- Belief of being unique
- Sense of entitlement
- Requires excessive admiration
- Exploitative
- Envious of others
With this information aside, we must also take into account how people with NPD and their behaviours affect our modern society.
A study on pronoun usage shows a dramatic increase of the use of pronouns: I, me and mine, in the 5 million books housed by google and the top 10 Billboard songs. While this takes place, the usage of first person plurals: our, us, we, are declining.
With these fascinating findings comes different implications which are a result of the numerous ways you can interpret this. For example, this information could mean that…
| There is now a higher risk of NPD because narcissistic characteristics are becoming more popular. Because of the promotion of narcissism from media, it is slowly becoming a social norm. This will result in a society that will function on greed, selfishness and arrogance. |
OR |
Society is more open minded to the idea of self-love, and that being ashamed of yourself does not do you good. Due to the promotion of self-love from the media, people become unashamed and even proud of who they are, and can express themselves more freely. |
So that leaves us to wonder…how many people with NPD are among us? And how will their behaviours affect our society and your world?
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