What is the Difference between Healthy Narcissism and the Pathological Kind?
In my book “Malignant Self Love – Narcissism Revisited”, I define pathological narcissism as:
“(A) life-long pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one’s self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one’s gratification, dominance and ambition.”
Luckily for us, we are all narcissists to some degree. But healthy narcissism is adaptive, flexible, empathic, causes elation and joy (happiness), and help us to function. Pathological narcissism is maladaptive, rigid, persisting, and causes significant distress, and functional impairment.
Prevalence and Age and Gender Features
According to the DSM IV-TR, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is diagnosed in between 2% and 16% of the population in clinical settings (between 0.5-1% of the general population). The DSM-IV-TR proceeds to tell us that most narcissists (50-75% of all patients) are men.
We must carefully distinguish between the narcissistic traits of adolescents – narcissism is an...
To view and download this full PLR article, you must be logged in. Registration is completely free. Once you create your account, you will be able to browse, search & downlod from our PLR articles database of over "1,57,897+" on 1,000's of niches and 200+ categories without paying a penny. Click here to signup...
