Rethinking Narcissism
The Bad---and Surprising Good---About Feeling Special
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Harvard Medical School psychologist and Huffington Post blogger Craig Malkin addresses the "narcissism epidemic," by illuminating the spectrum of narcissism, identifying ways to control the trait, and explaining how too little of it may be a bad thing.
"What is narcissism?" is one of the fastest rising searches on Google, and articles on the topic routinely go viral. Yet, the word "narcissist" seems to mean something different every time it's uttered. People hurl the word as insult at anyone who offends them. It's become so ubiquitous, in fact, that it's lost any clear meaning. The only certainty these days is that it's bad to be a narcissist—really bad—inspiring the same kind of roiling queasiness we feel when we hear the words sexist or racist. That's especially troubling news for millennials, the people born after 1980, who've been branded the "most narcissistic generation ever."
In Rethinking Narcissism readers will learn that there's far more to narcissism than its reductive invective would imply. The truth is that we all fall on a spectrum somewhere between utter selflessness on the one side, and arrogance and grandiosity on the other. A healthy middle exhibits a strong sense of self. On the far end lies sociopathy. Malkin deconstructs healthy from unhealthy narcissism and offers clear, step-by-step guidance on how to promote healthy narcissism in our partners, our children, and ourselves.
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This wide-ranging discussion aims to absolve narcissism of its negative reputation. Psychologist Malkin makes no attempt to rigidly define narcissism, instead expanding the term into one that encompasses many different meanings. Readers are presented with a range of features broad enough to include almost anyone. Malkin delves into the Greek myth of Narcissus, which inspires him to propose a new category of "subtle narcissists" he calls echoists. Supplementing fable with modern anecdote, he also addresses the more familiar subject of modern technology's influence on personality traits. Even if narcissism has come to be known as an affliction, it proves here to offer a range of adaptive benefits, collectively described as "healthy narcissism." An inset quiz allows readers to discover where they fall on narcissism's fluid continuum. Such a spectrum is perhaps too slippery: Malkin's newly liberal definition may make narcissism too flexible a term to be very useful. Yet this is, importantly, a book that will have readers rethinking themselves and, paradoxically, those around them.
