Narcissism : Who Are You?
January 15th, 2006 -- Posted in people | 3 Comments »nar·cis·sism 
n.
- 1. Excessive love or admiration of oneself.
2. A psychological condition characterized by self-preoccupation, lack of empathy, and unconscious deficits in self-esteem.
3. Erotic pleasure derived from contemplation or admiration of one’s own body or self, especially as a fixation on or a regression to an infantile stage of development.
4. The attribute of the human psyche charactized by admiration of oneself but within normal limits.
Source: Dictionary.com
This is a new word I just learnt last night after a long conversation with a dear friend. Though this word had never existed in my dictionary, the meanings of the word have. In fact, the meanings of the word were demonstrated by a real life experience… a real specimen of exactly what the word implies… self-preoccupation.
Sad but true, I had to learn this word and to realize that it has to exist. I had to relate to it the hard way.
Never in the chapters of my mental autobiography have I thought how I could limit my source of satisfaction to just love and admire myself… excessively. Yes, I do emphasize the word ‘excessively’. Everyone do love themselves to understand how they can love someone and show that they do. However, when one does it over the normal ways, it becomes an obsessive adoration towards oneself and in turn overrides any true devotion towards others.
Let me put it this way: when we dress up/doll up to present ourselves appropriately, we become pleasantly visible to others. This is not yet sufficient to define narcissism. We still care that we are presented pleasantly to people we care and love. People around you see more of you than you see yourself most of the time. Sometimes such presentation of self can also tell others more of who you are and what kind of personality you have and if they will be comfortable being with you. Such presentation of self and body languages tell the world where you stand among the persons next to you.
However, when one overdoes this, when the reason behind the vanity turns into satisfaction out of reaction from those who perceive you, the table is turned. It is not the people around you that you care, but it’s you and only you whom you actually wishes to please.
That was just a visual example of narcissism. Just one of the many ways how one can be excessively obsessed with oneself. Other ways include simple body language, words and even thoughts towards others. Not necessarily negative opinions about others, but subconscious intention to elevate one’s own image above others by unscrupulous means. Such behaviors involve a wide range of habits such as pretence, deceit and even down right shrewd slandering. All these just to perceive oneself being better than anyone, even those they can casually call ‘friends’.
That reminds me of those evil cheer-leaders oftenly portrayed in high school themed movies, when a self-conceited prom queen spreads rumors fuelled with Oscar-award quality acting skills just to destroy the reputations of her contending potential queens. In reality, some of these acting skills can consequentially kill happiness, or even destroy lives.
Shivers
The word itself scares me. Narcissism. Sounds like Nazism. Different words, but they send the same chill down my spine.
