Deborah Hill Cone: Self-love stuck in an endless honeymoon

Opinion

You heard it here first: narcissism is the new black. I predict narcissism is going to be our next obsession.

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) was invented in 1980 when shrinks included it in their Bible, the DSM-III, and it is poorly understood, diagnosed, reported or studied.

But once you learn a bit about it you start seeing it everywhere - especially in the business community. Although I must confess the same thing happened to me with autism - I started to think half the people I knew were on the spectrum.

Still do, although maybe I just know a lot of anoraks. Yes I know, I read too many self-help books - and that's how I got interested in narcissism. (Is there a self-help book about curing one's self-help book addiction?)

The roll call of narcissists is pretty long. Practically all politicians and lots of CEOs. Pretty much anyone who owns a Bentley. They are not all psychopaths like Clayton Weatherston, but they are wonky nonetheless.

Most narcissists don't recognise that they are narcissists. One of the few who does is Sam Vaknin, a PhD and financial consultant from Israel, but it took some pretty extreme conditions for him to be forced to face his personality. (And since there is no cure, that was pretty depressing.)

Vaknin wrote a book about narcissism in jail as he tried to understand why his nine-year marriage had dissolved, his finances were in a shocking condition, his family estranged, his reputation ruined. He blamed everyone else, but slowly realised it was his fault.

So what is narcissism? Contrary to the myth of the Greek boy who fell in love with his own reflection, the narcissist does not love himself in any true sense of the word.

Narcissism is a pattern of traits and behaviours 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. Most narcissists are men.

They feed off other people, getting what Vaknin calls "narcissistic supply" - this could involve sex, attention or glory - and it is like a drug. The DSM says narcissism is "a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy".

The narcissist is described as turning inward for gratification rather than depending on others and as being excessively preoccupied with issues of personal adequacy, power, and prestige.

There is no cure for it. Therapy doesn't really help.

Psychologists say factors behind narcissism are an oversensitive temperament, overindulgence by parents, unreliable parenting and childhood abuse.

"Narcissists feed off other people who hurl back at him an image that he projects to them. This is their sole function in his world: to reflect, to admire, to applaud, to detest - in a word to assure him he exists."

But I'm not just saying this to give you a lesson in cod psychology. I can't help wondering if the disorder of narcissism has almost become normalised in our individualistic, status-obsessed society - and don't get me started on overindulged kids.

There is something wrong when the diagnosis of narcissism almost sounds like something most BCom students aspire to. Here's a wacky idea: let's put away the mirrors and start looking at other people instead of ourselves.

deborah@coneandco.com