When you hear the word “narcissist”, what do you think of? Although the term ‘narcissist’ is often heard in the ‘affair recovery’ world, it is one of those terms that gets used without people knowing what it means.
The word is tossed about with little regard for what it means of whether you understand it.
When I hear the word ‘narcissist’, I’m reminded of the popular pictograph featuring the character from the movie “Princess Bride” with the captions “You keep using that word, I don’t think it means what you think it means“.
Narcissism is one of those words used without thinking through what it means. It’s become part of pop culture. In the early literature, the term narcissist was used by Havelock Ellis in describing ‘a sexual perversion’.
This perversion was characterized as focusing on ‘self love’. The narcissist was only interested in loving themselves and found others they could use as sexual objects in loving themselves.
The understanding of narcissism later expanded to where the ‘experts’ realized there was more than one type of narcissism. They distinguished primary narcissism from secondary narcissism.
With primary narcissism, their love of self takes precedence over anything and everything else. When the narcissist finds lovers, it’s because the lovers reminded them of themselves or were like them in many ways.
In making love, they make love to their doppelganger.
Secondary narcissism refers to them internalizing the objects. They took aspects of themselves, put it into their internal world and then fell in love with others that reminded them of the parts they internalized.
Their existence was all about their internal world (or life in their head).
Eventually the concept of narcissism evolved to the point where the term was used in describing those who puts excessive energy into themselves or focus on themselves.
So the term went from one describing sexual perverts to one used interchangeably with ‘selfishness’.
Although the selfish definition is now popular, ‘real’ narcissism has some bizarre, twisted elements. There was a reason it was put into the sexual pervert category.
Knowing which form of narcissism people are talking about is important to clarify. Before you proudly proclaim your own ‘narcissism’ or talk about the incompatible ‘healthy narcissism’ or call your spouse a narcissist, clarify what you are talking about.
When you see a counselor, make sure you know what they are referring to. When you hear the word ‘Narcissist’, clarify what they mean in using that term.
They may actually be referring to someone’s perversion while you think that it is a matter of extreme inconsideration.Make sure you are understanding what they’re intending.
There’s a wide gulf between inconsideration and perversion in terms of what they mean and how to approach someone with those tendencies.
Best Regards,
Jeff
