The Stigma Attached to Narcissistic Personality Disorder

 

My bright fifteen-year-old asks “Is it right that there is a stigma around narcissistic personality disorder”?

I don’t know what she has been reading or listening to on the Internet. In these times, the world is an open book. 

Short answer: yes.

“Narcissism” is the modern term, distorted by the history of psychiatry, which began by seeing everything based on sex. 

What is narcissism really? Morbid self-love. 

What is the old term for excessive self-love? Pride. 

What was Lucifer’s original sin? Pride. He thought he could be God.

What was Eve’s or Adam’s original sin? Pride. They thought they could “become as gods.” 

Pride, narcissism, is the first and greatest deadly sin, from which all other vices emerge. If there is no stigma attached to narcissism, there is no stigma attached to sin.

What is the old term to refer to someone in the grip of a vice? “Vicious.” That is the appropriate stigma.

But, narcissists will complain, they are “mentally ill.” They can’t really control it. 

A perfect alibi, from their point of view. Gets them off the moral hook.

And there is some truth to it. Once you give in to vice, it is hard to turn back. That is why these sins are called “deadly.” They lead to spiritual death. You have made a pact with the Devil, as Eve did, and surrendered your will to his. 

The vice most people have the easiest time understanding is alcoholism. The confirmed alcoholic seems unable to control himself. “First the man takes a drink; then the drink takes a drink; then the drink takes the man.” And people like to speak of alcoholism as a “disease” as a result. But ultimately, the alcoholic is responsible. If he cannot now control himself, this is based on a conscious moral choice he made in the past. For comparison, if I murder someone, my guilt does not simply go away with the passage of time. Especially if I keep murdering.

This is why there is no redemption for the Devil. He has made this irrevocable moral choice, to set himself up as God. This is why he is condemned to hell. This is why anyone who is condemned to hell is condemned to hell: because, once you surrender yourself to a vice, once you sin against the Holy Spirit by setting yourself up as your god, you cannot escape. You have sold your soul to the Devil.

That is how Adam and Eve committed the original sin, which passed down through the generations: that is how hard it is to escape a settled vice. It requires a dramatic divine intervention to escape.

But, in sum, there should be no stigma more permanent and complete than the stigma around narcissistic personality disorder.