Functionally, narcissists -- the clinical variety -- are those who reject reality and instead believe they are still in the womb, where they perceived they were omnipotent. That is why they often refer to life as a "movie" or such. Their denial of reality makes them believe life isn't real and they really are waiting for the other shoe to drop, a.k.a. they really get born. The one greatest fear of a narcissist isn't themselves, but death as death represents their entire life was real -- the myths in their head are not true -- and so, on their deathbed, they have to confront the reality of an entire life not lived. I have seen it firsthand -- it is the most terrifying/saddest thing you will ever see.
Shotgun Styles final point about women not having an identity, that is true but isn't necessarily indicative of narcissism. All narcissists have a lack of true self-identity and the modern woman does live in a narcissistic society, but the lack of identity stems from not being allowed to progress as a child into adulthood, i.e. try on identities and eventually decide what sticks for her. Plenty of people who are not narcissists fit this profile.
Modern media/schools/terrible parenting thwarts this, generally, but what narcissism expresses itself as is presentations of confidence instead of substantive confidence. People get confidence and self-esteem from following internal values and behaving in accordance with those in their everyday life. Of course, with personality disorders, a confident person would also have to work through and come to terms with their highly deficient childhood.
Contrary to some on the board, parenting always has and always will the primary determinant of a child's psychological growth. The devaluation of the family -- replaced by "experts" in the media/government/medical-industrial complex -- has caused a wave of insecure parents who seek first to learn from "experts" when thousands of years of human evolution has equipped every set of parents -- holding for parent's own psychological issues -- with the tools necessarily to groom a child into psychologically healthy adulthood.
Narcissism may be many things, but clinical levels of narcissists are always around 1-2% of any given human population. Wider American society does ape narcissistic qualities, but a clinical narcissist is *always* born in infancy as a reaction to the terrifying reality of their abject mistreatment at the hands of parents -- whom they come to regard purely as authority figures.
TL;DR: A narcissist is one who had no one to love, so he fell in love with himself.
Shotgun Styles final point about women not having an identity, that is true but isn't necessarily indicative of narcissism. All narcissists have a lack of true self-identity and the modern woman does live in a narcissistic society, but the lack of identity stems from not being allowed to progress as a child into adulthood, i.e. try on identities and eventually decide what sticks for her. Plenty of people who are not narcissists fit this profile.
Modern media/schools/terrible parenting thwarts this, generally, but what narcissism expresses itself as is presentations of confidence instead of substantive confidence. People get confidence and self-esteem from following internal values and behaving in accordance with those in their everyday life. Of course, with personality disorders, a confident person would also have to work through and come to terms with their highly deficient childhood.
Contrary to some on the board, parenting always has and always will the primary determinant of a child's psychological growth. The devaluation of the family -- replaced by "experts" in the media/government/medical-industrial complex -- has caused a wave of insecure parents who seek first to learn from "experts" when thousands of years of human evolution has equipped every set of parents -- holding for parent's own psychological issues -- with the tools necessarily to groom a child into psychologically healthy adulthood.
Narcissism may be many things, but clinical levels of narcissists are always around 1-2% of any given human population. Wider American society does ape narcissistic qualities, but a clinical narcissist is *always* born in infancy as a reaction to the terrifying reality of their abject mistreatment at the hands of parents -- whom they come to regard purely as authority figures.
TL;DR: A narcissist is one who had no one to love, so he fell in love with himself.