All posts filed under: Narcissistic Personality Disorder

personality disorders

Why are personality disorders difficult to distinguish from healthy personalities?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Everyone has a personality, comprised of strengths and weaknesses Get to know anyone well enough and you will begin to see that s/he struggles dealing with certain aspects of life, work, and relationships.  These weaknesses in someone’s personality can even be so vulnerable that people can have acute episodes of anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders. In other words, no one is perfect, nor does a healthy level of functioning depend on someone moving closer and closer to perfection over time.  This basic truth makes it tricky to differentiate someone with a disordered personality from a flawed, but mostly normal personality organization. In order to determine if weaknesses in a person’s character meet criteria for a personality disorder, one of two things need to be present: 1. You have a great deal of reliable data about a person’s life across time and context, or 2. You need a great deal of experience and expertise recognizing signs and symptoms of personality pathology. Distress and impairment are often context-dependent Narcissists can be extremely high achievers. Obsessive-compulsive Personality …

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antisocial personality disorder

Are psychopaths aware of their condition? Do they care?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Why are we so interested in psychpaths? Cold-blooded psychopaths and criminals are fascinating (and terrifying!) creatures. They fascinate us so much because they seem to express normal animalistic feelings, like rage, without much fear of social consequences, shame, or rejection.So what is the subjective world of the psychopath really like? Admittedly, it seems quite foreign to me, but let me take a stab (figuratively speaking–no one was harmed in the writing of this post) at an explanation. Psychopathy and antisocial Personality disorders are personality pathology Psychopathy and antisocial traits are fundamentally deficiencies in personality (i.e., they are personality disorders). A defining feature of personality disorders are that the “symptoms” are baked into someone’s day-to-day experience, and are therefore invisible–like water to a fish. The psychology jargon for this is that the traits are “egosyntonic”. In treating personality disorders, the first step is to build a discrepancy between the patient’s sense of social reality and a more widely-held feeling of social experience. Personality disorders bloom in families that are both extreme, harsh, and/or abnormal in their …

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npd vs bpd

It’s not easy being green: Is envy in BPD the same shade as envy in NPD?

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

Many have observed that borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder both share a common denominator of envy. Envy, since it’s a feeling of being or having less than someone else, is what points clinicians to the core feelings of emptiness at the heart of both disorders. But since the DSM-5 classifies these cluster B disorders as separate entities, does it naturally follow that envy presents differently in BPD vs NPD? Before addressing this question, I’ll start with several caveats: Envy is a natural emotion that everyone not only experiences, but also expresses in more than one way (Narcissism is also a trait that all possess and can express in numerous ways) BPD and NPD have many different expressions.  If you look at the criteria for BPD and NPD, then calculate all of the different ways someone can meet criteria for the disorder, you’ll find that there can be tremendous diversity in symptom clusters within the same diagnostic category Personality disorders are notorious for bleeding into one another.  Most people who meet criteria for one …

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GameStop Short Squeeze

How Reddit’s Wallstreetbets Used GameStop to Attack Hedge Fund Narcissism

Published by Michael Kinsey, Ph.D.

What’s going on with the GameStop situation? What is the internet good for if not a tightly-knit network of folks doing a deep-dive into an obscure problem?  The fervent group of Redditors known as Wallstreetbets (WSB) are finance mavens who claim they’ve found a way to make themselves rich while taking down a cadre of slick, high-powered, hucksters on wall street. Many of these self-identified “diamond-handed” “apes” have already made millions buying GameStop (GME), a Texas-based company that political pundit Ben Shapiro calls “a swap meet meets blockbuster.” Many of these newly-minted millionaires are willing to lose millions to stay in the game. The talking heads ridicule the bros from Wallstreetbets because they’ve chosen to support a company that lost its competitive edge as online retail and digital media have proliferated.  If the historically brick-and-mortar company was not obsolete before the COVID-19 pandemic, its physical locations must be doomed as the world resigns itself to buying online. And yet, over the last few weeks, major hedge funds like Citadel and Melvin have allegedly lost billions …

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Link between Narcissism and Erectile Dysfunction

Uncovering The Surprising Link Between Erectile Dysfunction And Narcissism… And What It Reveals About Impotence Treatment

Published by Bex April May

Erectile dysfunction and narcissism are two psychological ideas which, when you experience them, can consume many other aspects of your life. But, you might be surprised to learn that these phenomena, though on the surface seemingly totally separate, might actually be related.  Interestingly, understanding this relationship can also be the key to treating both concerns with therapy, too.  Clinical psychologist and author, Michael Kinsey, Ph.D., has noted a definitive link between the two in his patients. “In my clinical practice, I have often seen erectile dysfunction occur alongside hypermasculine displays of narcissism,” he confirms. Although erectile dysfunction tends to be a problem experienced later in life, Dr. Kinsey explains that the seeds for it are planted in the environment men have grown up in. “The foundation for later problems, including getting and maintaining erections, can be built when men have been reared in a macho environment,” Dr. Kinsey says, “Some features of such an environment include where there has been punishment for signs of vulnerability (which is viewed as a weakness), where they have experienced …

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