# Mentally healthy dopers: Who has to deal with narcissists? What are they really like? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 1, 2010, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559 "2010-12-01T17:09:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [December 2, 2010, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559/21 "2010-12-02T20:13:03Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > I don’t think it’s being eliminated so much as being combined with antisocial and psychopathic traits in the new Antisocial/Psychopathic personality disorder, since there’s a great deal of overlap. (More after lunch) More on this: the DSM V isn’t so much doing away with existing disorders as it is attempting to collapse existing disorders into more descriptive typology, partially to avoid unneccesary comorbidity, meaning that someone who meets criteria for one PD very frequently meets the criteria for one or more others (For example, a psychopath is going to be antisocial and narcissistic pretty much by defifntion). Under the new system, an individual will be rated as to which of the criteria he meets and how closely he meets the type across all five categories. of the From the APA website: > [@](#): > > Considerable research has shown excessive co-occurrence among personality disorders diagnosed using the categorical system of the DSM (Oldham et al., 1992; Zimmerman et al., 2005). In fact, most patients diagnosed with personality disorders meet criteria for more than one. In addition, all of the personality disorder categories have arbitrary diagnostic thresholds, i.e., the number of criteria necessary for a diagnosis. PD diagnoses have been shown in longitudinal follow-along studies to be significantly less stable over time than their definition in DSM-IV implies (e.g., Grilo et al., 2004). The reduction in the number of types is expected to reduce co-morbid PD diagnoses, the use of a dimensional rating of types recognizes that personality psychopathology occurs on continua, and the replacement of behavioral PD criteria with traits is anticipated to result in greater diagnostic stability. [Rationale for Proposing Five Specific Personality Disorder Types](http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevisions/Pages/RationaleforProposingFiveSpecificPersonalityDisorderTypes.aspx) ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559/22 "2010-12-03T03:51:43Z")
Sorry, in the past I was told that it was psychological. I’ll let myself out now. :o ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559/23 "2010-12-03T04:42:13Z")
Well I can tell you what narcissistic personalities are about. Nobody knows more about this subject than I do. I’ll try to educate you so you can be of some use in this world, but only because it amuses me to watch you struggle with these concepts, not because you have any chance of grasping what this means. These kind of people are just jealous of really outstanding people like myself. It probably drives them crazy to see the way people heap admiration upon me for all of my remarkable accomplishments. They tend to screw things up, not surprising for the average naked ape, and then instead of admitting to their failure, the try shift blame onto others. I don’t mind if they try to blame me, everyone knows I’m just too good to make those mistakes. But if they keep it up I’ll just make up something about them, and they’ll have no defense, because everyone will believe me. There’s nothing wrong with a little corrective action to keep things running smoothly. ---
**Author:** ![tdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/94ad74/32.png) [@tdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tdn)\ **Post date:** [December 3, 2010, 1:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559/24 "2010-12-03T13:52:01Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > Well I can tell you what narcissistic personalities are about. Nobody knows more about this subject than I do. I’ll try to educate you so you can be of some use in this world, but only because it amuses me to watch you struggle with these concepts, not because you have any chance of grasping what this means. > > These kind of people are just jealous of really outstanding people like myself. It probably drives them crazy to see the way people heap admiration upon me for all of my remarkable accomplishments. They tend to screw things up, not surprising for the average naked ape, and then instead of admitting to their failure, the try shift blame onto others. I don’t mind if they try to blame me, everyone knows I’m just too good to make those mistakes. But if they keep it up I’ll just make up something about them, and they’ll have no defense, because everyone will believe me. There’s nothing wrong with a little corrective action to keep things running smoothly. And this affects me how? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mentally-healthy-dopers-who-has-to-deal-with-narcissists-what-are-they-really-like/562559.md?page=1)