to think that narcissism is the current MN buzzword.

[OrmIrian]

Never seen it on MN until a few months ago. And now it's everywhere!

The terrible, terrible tragedy and irony of NPD is that it will never be diagnosed in the majority of cases...because of its very nature.

Ns think they are God come to earth.

This is a spectrum. At one end are malignant psychopaths at the other end are selfish tossers and weirdos with no friends.

Different PDs are usually present in varying degrees in the same person. This makes diagnosis difficult also.

The most difficult aspect of this disorder as far as I am concerned is the cognitive difficulties that exist in the N. They just do not understand, or will not understand the norms of life as most people live it.

They tell lies. They control. They take every little secret and hope and dream and throw it back at you as a weapon. They suck the very life out of you and then they start on their children. They idealise-devalue-discard.

ACONS (adult children of Ns) usually have the most horrendous mental health problems. If they have children with Ns (as they have been trained from birth to be supply for the freaks, they generally end up as partners of Ns)they have the nightmare of protecting them from the N.

Scottishmummy...some of us can read..and we can read research papers and even understand them. Indeed some of us are even scientists with personal interests in mental health disorders. And some of us have grown up with families full of PDs, so we know exactly what we are talking about.

I wonder why the victims of this particular disorder are deemed suitable for mockery?

mathanxiety are you just arguing your way through this thread?

re-read what i said before squawking. i said i find it bizarre and yes black humour at posters who rock up with diagnostic terms that are half guess work half diagnosis murder. on no level do i find mental health amusing.it is painful for individual and their family. which is why people whu throw labels about are so wrong.the only reliable dx is done face to face taking family,personal,social hx

Well, I may regret chiming in on this but here you go.

PDs, including NPD are recognised disorders and I don't think anyone is disputing that. You are extremely unlikley to come across them in a forensic psychiatry or criminal justice setting, but this does not mean that they are very rare. One of the defining features of being NPD is that they can be very charming and plausible, but also that they are very good at knowing how far too push it. This is similar to it being unlikley that you can have a successful criminal prosecution in cases of emotional abuse, despite the French's government's lauadable aims.

I think part of the reason 'survivors' of NPD have felt so strongly on this thread (and I am one of them) is that you are made to feel it is all you and that you're the one with the problem. The relief of finding others who have experienced these text book behaviours is enormous. In RL I have only met two people who know what I am talking about. This is the beauty of the Internet - the speed with which we can all post comments on threads is the flipside.

In the same way many people argue that you can't understand what it is like to be a parent until you are one, I would say you can't understand how mad-making it is to be caught up with someone with a personality disorder until you've experienced it.

Can we leave it there please?

"Oh janos! Don't be so defensive. Some of us are dealing with all kinds of things that don't have a clever name. It just seems a new definition for something that presumably people had to deal with for many many years."
Discuss with reference to tone, especially use of the word 'clever'.

"Condition inflation. No-one can be just selfish, they have to be narc; no-one can be a neglectful, awkward parent, they have to be toxic. Just like no-one can have a disagreement with another child in school without it being bullying."
Discuss with reference to tone and use of analogy.

These are some examples of your posts here, Orm. They are dismissive.

You referred to NPD as a buzzword and suggested it was overused, and yes, that is offensive to me. It is just as offensive as a suggestion that PND is a clever term for something that has been around for ages, no-one can feel a bit blue any more after having a baby without it being depression...
........................................

"So OrmIrian...if I started a thread mocking people for being upset that their fathers had just had a major op that would be ok would it?"
Is this the reference you meant? I didn't find any others. This was a post from someone else on this thread, not you, so had to go back a bit to find it. I hope your dad is recovering. I do not condone mockery, and I haven't condoned it on this thread or any others I have posted on.

personalising posts and berating someone is bad form

I'd never heard of npd until about a week ago, and think it would be dangerous to internet diagnose someone, but when I read the description it did sound a lot like my dad, but the description seemed to only apply to mothers....

I like to label my ex a 'fuckwit' but he suffers from a superiority complex and would argue that point due to being sat on the potty the wrong way round when he was 2.....

It was a lighthearted thread that was ill-advised, given the subject matter. Hopefully it has been an eye opener for those who think there should be a special weedy section here on MN.

Giving someone a label frees the victim from so many of the ties that bind her to her abuser. It convinces women that there is nothing they can do to improve things, that no amount of telling the DP how much she has been wounded by things he has said or done will be any use. It's like getting glasses when you've been needing them for ages. It cuts through the crap.

As far as demeaning the diagnosis for others -- what others? Nobody who is suffering through this has any responsibility for the diagnosis of others. That's like saying I shouldn't waste the doctor's time because I just have sciatica whereas someone else's leg might be broken.

If your relationship is a disaster and your DP has all the symptoms of a personality disorder, which are available freely for anyone to look up, and people answer your post, share their experience and insights, and refer you to literature that they believe might help, and it helps, then good has been done.

"Flippancy is offensive if you've wasted years with a , Shivvering. Just as offensive as flippancy about a term like date rape, which is also a relatively new concept."

I have! I am fine. Well not fine but fine about this thread.

Anyway............off you go again!

It seems to me (have not read all thread properly) that there is a lot of amateur psychology on internet fora in general. People love to find reasons for the way people argue - to "define" them. It helps to formulate the arguments you yourself intend to put either in support of them or against them.

aye many some poster's have an icd-10 and an attitude gleaned from diagnosis murder

The interesting thing about psychiatry is that a great number of recognised conditions are diagnosed on the basis of criterion checklists alone. I am involved with the diagnosis of Autism/Asperger's from early years through to late adolescence and interpretations of criteria vary hugely among professionals on even very experienced multidisciplinary teams.

The question here really shouldn't be whether the diagnosis is accurate. I've met many, many children and young people who do not meet full criteria for an autistic spectrum condition but whose understanding of the social world is different enough to be significantly disabling. Frequently, the types of intervention that support individuals who are on the spectrum are also useful for those who do not meet the criteria because, even if you take the view that diagnostic labels are unhelpful boxes that limit our understanding of individual personality difference, there may be underlying practical and functional issues that need to be understood and worked with. I've found, for example, that parents of children and young people with 'murky diagnoses' tend to have similar feelings and responses to their children as those who have clear-cut diagnoses.. just because you didn't get a 'label' from a professional (who, let's face it, only sees you for a limited amount of time in your life - I say this as someone involved in diagnosis!) doesn't mean you don't have a problem and vice versa. IME people find it useful to get a handle on what they're dealing with, and labels certainly help people to research their own coping strategies for dealing with atypical and difficult situations. So what if these people 'don't really' have NPD or if there isn't research? From my own point of view, it's highly likely that ALL that's wrong with my father is that he is an abusive alcoholic from an abusive background.. yet learning abotu NPD made me think about his difficulties in a different way because I've always struggled with the fact that he doesn't respond to rehab and this appeared to offer a plausible solution.

In my own case, I take most diagnoses with a grain of salt. It's ALL about individual difference. A label doesn't really help you unravel how to heal from living with an abusive person any more than it does really help you understand your child with a developmental disorder, because there will always be areas of commonality and difference. ReL NPD, your dad with NPD may be very different to x's husband with NPD who shares traits with y's son with a substance abuse disorder. So? If exploring this label enables people to understand their own circumstances through a particular lens and enables them to find new ways of reflecting on and coping with those circumstances, does it matter? We're not talking about getting people off murder because of NPD here, just looking at life through a particular lens.

Living with a "selfish, abusive twt" or living with NPD? What difference does it make? The end result to your own mental health is likely to be deletrious, whether or not you 'pathologize' the person. Personally, serious selfish abusive twttism on the level described in these posts seems to be pretty pathologic to me, regardless of whether it has a medical sounding label.

Shivvering -- ?

Jaceybee I'm sorry to hear your employers, psychiatric professionals it would seem, do not believe in PDs. As per gettingagrip's post, I have had MRI scans performed on my brain to test for any physical changes/differences between my brain and the brain of a "normal" person.

Getting back to OP, YANBU - everyone on the fecking internet is a psychologist/psychiatrist and has no fecking idea how to diagnose a PD but seem to think that by answering 5 questions which are not fully explained on the internet/DSM-IV, they are fully qualified to do so. As part of my treatment programme I was regularly interviewed with respect to the "checklist" - even as a sufferer of the disorder I needed these points dissected and explained... But feck it, who needs medical school + further study in psychiatry when you can diagnose someone with a 10 part multiple-choice questionnaire from't internet?

*I am totally cured of my PD - sadly, whenever I try and help others with PDs to get good treatment they really don't give a toss - some people seem to like the label.

Some people with certain PDs are convinced they are the only ones who don't need help, Skihorse. Maybe this is why your efforts are not appreciated and they don't give a toss. I don't think it's because they like the label.

There are a lot of books and sites and sources of information on PDs besides the DSM-iv, and many internet fora where people who suffer from PDs and people who live with them/care about them go to share their personal experiences and offer or receive support. The kind of shared personal knowledge and support is hardly ever available, unless you are willing to pay for it, in RL. The quality of information on these sites and fora goes far beyond the ICD-10, btw. The support for family members of sufferers is priceless. And it is free, which makes a huge difference to a great many people, and it is available day or night. And MN posts have those advantages too.

mat I'd agree partially, but I also believe there is a huge amount of perhaps "misinformation" out there which says PDs are incurable, they're not. But yes, you've got to have received an official diagnosis and want to change your life...

math re your post of 22:11, I agree those things could have been as dismissive of NPD if you insist on ignoring the original premise of my OP, which was not, in any way, to imply that NPD does not exist. But to 'dismiss' if you like those who throw around the term on MN as if every other person who if a bit unpleasant suffers from it. Why can you not see that? It seems that most other people have managed to.

However if you wish to continue to feel offended please do so.

Was Orm's OP not about the word narcissism??

and not about NPD,a specific psychiatric disorder?

These are 2 separate things and those with experience of NPD, need to recognise that, and remind themselves that narcissistic as a wors for describeing peoples behaviour and traits has been around for centuries and centuries and you cannot ,in your sledgehammer way, now try to stop everyone using it in a converstaional manner, and hijack it to only refer to NPD.

Eg- sometimes I am rather narcissistic. Last night i sat in front of the mirror practising styling my hair for an hour (I'm not a teenage girl honest) my DH easily flipantly tell me to 'stop that you narcissist' without people who are victimes of abusive relationships getting thier knickers in twist thinking it belittles them somehow.

It's a word not a disorder,if you want to refer to the disoredr you need to specifically refer to that as NPD.

Orm in her OP referred to the overuse of the word and was not refrring to NPD. I think this imporatnt fact has been overlooked.

You cannot hijack this very old and usefully descriptive term, and eclare it use outside a psyciric disordre is now offensive.

I also have lots to say on dx of PD's, there has been a lot of guff talked about psychiatry in general on this thread, but I think MrsBean78 has covered most of what I wanted to say rather eloqunetly.

Alos, there has been much vitriol towards Orm on ths thread, when if you read her posts without your blinkers on you can see she meant no offense, and the unpleasnatness continude even when she told you about her fragile state due her current personal circumatsnace, and even when she told people she was crying after they callously and specifically refferred to her fathers illness in a post.

Deeply unpleasant stuff.

Just wanted to post in support of OrmIrian who's getting an unfair pasting. I understood her to be saying the equivilent to:

Poster:"DH sometimes get diarrhoea - do you think he's got bowel cancer?

MN:"well, it's always a possibility but more likely he's got irritible bowel syndrome".

Orm: "why does everyone always have to have cancer - what's wrong with "just" having irritible bowel?"

Chin up Orm. Glad your dad's doing ok.

chin up orm - some folk just sit around waiting to be offended. tbh all this 'oh you don't understand the years of suffering' guff while attacking a fellow mumsnetter doesn't cut any ice with me.

Thanks baroness. I think that is probably what I meant originally. But with added clarity.

My post wasn't totally light-hearted as it happens. I do find it irritating when a term gets picked up and run with on MN. You find it used in all kinds of contexts. And yes I'd be disingenuous if I said I didn't expect some disagreement

But I honestly did hope that most people would at least recognise the distinction I was making. Not clearly enough it seems.

Was going to add a disclaimer but had to take DD to the loo so here it is now:

Disclaimer apologies to anyone who has, or whose friends or family have, or ever thought they had, or have been investigated for, bowel cancer or cancer of any type who may have been offended by my choice of analagy. No offence was intended in the making of that post.

Thanks for the support folks. I think I probably deserved a bit of a stinging as I kicked a hornet's nest. But it wasn't a wise time to do it.

Orm, I think your title and OP were clear enough.

You referred to narcissism, and did not even mention NPD, admittedly the watre quickly got muddied and there was an assumption by many that any refererral to narcisstic behaviour was referring to the disoredr but that is hardly your fault.