Narcissism as The Next ASD

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I have noticed some similarities between autism and narcissism. I do know one person on the spectrum and I have wondered if she had some narcissism in her.

The article presents a list of symptoms for ASD that seems unfamiliar to me, and I was surprised by this, because this has become a particular interest of mine.

I wondered if this might be a reshuffling of the international standard, and that was why it seemed so different to the DSM IV and DSM 5 definitions of autism spectrum disorder....

But then I realized the article refers to ICM-10 instead of ICD-10... what is this? It seems to be a huge, unchecked error by the author. I wonder if the rest of the article was written and researched with the same sloppy attention to detail?

Looking at the ICD-10 F84.0 Autistic Disorder description, I do not find the narcissism-like characteristics mentioned in the article. Nor are they found under ICD-10's F84.5, Aspergers Disorder.

The description of Aspergers looks familiar to that described in the DSMs:
"A childhood disorder predominately affecting boys and similar to autism (autistic disorder). It is characterized by severe, sustained, clinically significant impairment of social interaction, and restricted repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior. In contrast to autism, there are no clinically significant delays in language or cognitive development."

This does NOT sound like narcissism.

The listed quoted here:

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Seems substantially not to be associated with autism. Poor empathy, perhaps, though this is an area of active research and debate. Poor ability to reciprocate emotions--yes, this would fall under the "deficits in social and emotional communication" that are central to ASDs.

But the rest? Hostile dependency on safe relations? Poor ability to develop remorse or learn from mistakes?
This are, as far as I can tell, fabrications.




Many people of all kinds have "a little bit of narcissism" in them, but this is a long, long way from having NPD, or concluding that pathological narcissism is part of the autistic spectrum or an aspect of the neurotypical brain.

True that we all have a little bit of "narcissism" in us but some take it a step further and take it too far. I have realized my aunt is a narcissist. I don't know if she has NPD but some people are narcissistic and don't have that disorder. That is what my mom told me. She said her sister is that but she isn't NPD. But my aunt takes it far too but not enough for it to be a disorder.

Autistics being confused with narcissists. Same old Same old

Getting a medical degree or a PhD doesn't automatically make a person prejudice free, and this article is a good example of that and nothing else really.

Do you think your father could be on the spectrum, and a narcissist? (don't feel obligated to answer if you don't want to).

I think my mother is autistic. At the very least, she has a lot of autistic traits, including sensory issues.

Until recently I thought she couldn't possibly be a narcissist. She seemed like the opposite of a narcissist. But then I found out she is much more deceptive and manipulative than I originally figured her to be. When I read about covert narcissism, it finally made sense. That describes her to a tee.

I almost wish I could believe that she's not a narcissist, but instead just "comes across" as a narcissist (as you put it)...but she actually doesn't even come across as a narcissist to begin with, because it's covert.

Now that I've learned about covert narcissism, and NPD in general, I'm thinking that even overt narcissism is perhaps not as overt as people might assume it to be. A person with NPD may not readily come across as such...they are more likely to carefully cultivate an image of being everything they are not...warm, caring, sympathetic, etc. (but if they choose to, they can turn all those qualities off, just like flipping a switch). That's the underlying conflict within the personality, that they project a false idealized self outward and then need other people to constant validate that self.

In some cases, when people "come across" as being narcissists, it probably has more to do with other people having misconceptions about what narcissism looks like when it is on the level of being a personality disorder.

Not to stir the pot, but there was a thread not too long ago, forget who started it, and the person was quite upset that an article they read made it sound like all autistics are uninterested in socializing. The person then pointed out that they were only interested in socializing when it was about a topic they liked and not when they were otherwise engaged. But to me, that person just described what it is like to be uninterested in socializing.

I think a lot of people don't fully understand what narcissism is and think it is only arrogance, but yes, I could definitely see some people on the spectrum, if in public and not talking to anyone and not obviously stimming or talking to themselves, etc, could come off as aloof and therefore arrogant and therefore narcissistic. Well there are obviously arrogant people on the spectrum also, but saying that a non-arrogant person could come off that way.

I don't believe he is a narcissist, on the level of being a personality disorder.


I agree.

Great, that's all we need, some idiot who has no idea what autism is bringing up this article in conversation and claiming that all autistics must be narcissists. There is really very little resemblance between the two conditions: narcissists are uninterested in whether or not they hurt people; we feel badly when we make mistakes that hurt others; narcissists are generally incapable of empathising, but are good at faking it; we have the capacity for empathy, and can be very good at it, we just have a hard time showing it in ways others can understand. Narcissists go out of their way to find and interact with people whom they know will fulfil their need for admiration and attention; we tend to be uninterested in the opinions of others, and largely avoid people. Narcissists use people for their own self-gain; we do not. I could go on, but the point is, autism and narcissism are not correlated, and this article bothered me a great deal.

It's like comparing autism to psychopathy and declaring it to be one and the same disorder, just because both have social problems dealing with ppl. It's NOT like that. Psychiatry and Neuropsychiatry is highly complex with a lot of overlapping symptoms, who still can have entirely different reasons. This also explains why so many get miss-dx.

Of course there are autistic ppl out there who have narcissistic tendencies (I know one who is clearly Aspergers and also clearly narcissistic), but also autistics can develop PDs and because of higher stress might be even more prone to it. But still autism is NOT a PD.

I get and agree with your point, but you aren't properly describing what narcissism is either, IMO.

Narcissists use people for self-gain in the same fundamental way that anyone uses someone else for self-gain; that is, they get something that they desire out of interacting with them. That 'nice' people get a good warm feeling from doing something nice to someone, and a narcissist gets self-affirmation that other people think they are a nice person, is still 'doing A gets me B and I want B'.
You are describing someone who seems to have no morals. But morals are just as much logic-based and not emotion-based in the first place.
Just because someone lacks emotional empathy does not mean that they are happy being that way. In fact, I could see that if a narcissist were told that are emotionally cold, they would get extremely disturbed by that because they desire, above all else, other people's approval.
A lack of something does not translate into a desire for what that lack represents. A lack of empathy does not mean a total embracing of the lack of empathy.
Without an over-inflated sense of self, a narcissist is stripped down to a husk of a person...there is a reason that they develop an over-inflated sense of self.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissist ... y_disorder

"Envies others and believes others envy him/her"
Well there's the classic 'everyone else is like me' idea, even in a narcissist who also thinks they are better than other people.
Using this idea, if a narcissist who does not value themselves beyond what other people think of them, who does not understand that others carry an internal sense of self that they do not have, they could in fact be treating other people EXACTLY as they would like to be treated. But because the narcissist is so different, how they treat someone else could easily end up hurting them and appear to the wounded party as manipulation, but only because the narcissist does not -actually- fully understand that other people have this internal measure of themselves. They probably have an internal self somewhere, but it is devalued so much it is ignored.

The a**hole narcissist who purposefully does harmful things is a very specific subset of narcissist to the point that I'm not sure they'd be properly called a narcissist.

If you who is autistic does not see that your actions are hurtful to people, but then hurt someone, you have the capacity to know what hurt feels like so you feel bad, provided you even see that you hurt someone. But you still did that action.
If someone who is narcissistic does not see that their actions are hurtful to someone else because they would not be hurt by that action in turn, there's nothing purposeful or abusive inherently in there. They hurt someone but they have even less of an idea that you do how that person is hurt. They still did that action.

I just get the feeling that people are far more upset by just the inaccuracy of the comparison here, that there is an idea that narcissists are actually worse people, that you would never want to be one, that you should avoid them at all costs, etc.

A malignant narcissist, or psychopathic narcissist...I think they can still be classified as a narcissist but in addition they have strong anti-social tendencies.

The blog B19 linked to, Lucky Otter's Heaven wrote about how certain conditions can make someone come off as a narcissist. I sometimes feel like one and she has admitted she has some in her too and how she almost became one once.

First of all this is not entirely correct. It's a bit of both because even if a moral system is constructed by logical means, the original premise is still usually the Golden Rule which in part relies on emotional empathy. So a logic-based morality is still, at it's core emotion-based.



I don't think that you are utilising the correct definitions of cognitive and emotional empathy. What you are describing is a lack of understanding which is actually the definition of cognitive empathy, not emotional empathy. However, from all the descriptions of NPD I've seen, narcissists usually have very strong cognitive empathy (which they would probably have to in order to have the ability manipulate people as well as they can, the manipulative ones at least). Therefore by the definition of cognitive empathy, they know damn well that they are hurting someone when they hurt them, however the lack emotional empathy (by definition again) implies that they simply don't care.

I strongly bet that we do.
There is just too much overlap of outward behaviors, and also the fact that we are surrounded by observers who are under the heavy influence of outside pressure to be narcissistic themselves.
It's hard for me to see how this could not be true in many cases.

Yes and I have seen this very thing happen.

I don't know if they really want approval for its own sake - maybe deep down they do, and especially the covert ones do. But most narcissists basically just want attention - good or bad - if they can't get approval, they will readily accept disapproval.




I don't think they are treating people how they would "like" to be treated...that would be pretty rare actually, because they would find it degrading to give what they expect to receive. But I agree, they may not genuinely understand how other people feel.

At the core they do not have a strong sense of self...it's probably most closely akin to borderline PD for that reason (and it's also common for those to be comorbid). Both narcissists and borderline are very dependent on others for their sense of self. And for both it probably starts with getting messages early in life that it's not okay to be their true self, to an extent that they lose touch with it.

A narcissist is accustomed to playing a role, similar to an actor who has to maintain a professional distance from their real self and emotions. The goal is to give a good performance for the sake of getting narcissistic supply. I believe they may assume that other people have a similar internal distancing because they don't know any different. They may also assume that other people just do whatever they do for the sake of getting something. They might think that other people only show "hurt" for the sake of their performance, and they might even react competitively to avoid being upstaged by it. They don't truly understand that other people are just being their real selves, having a real experience and feeling real emotions. They might have an intellectual concept of it, but they don't really know what it feels like.




There might be some of that going on. So what if there is? Makes sense to me. Would I want to be a narcissist? No of course not. I do think they should be avoided in most cases...not necessarily shunned as lesser human beings, but definitely handled with a lot of caution.

Narcissists can really fly under the radar and fool people...by many accounts it is common for them to actually fool psychiatrists and other professionals into thinking they are the "normal" one and that someone else has the problem. And they may indeed really believe that, but meanwhile they try to prove it by doing really insidious psychological damage to other people - to the extent that the stress can induce a nervous breakdown, create physical problems like heart murmurs, and even drive people to suicide. They are naturals at gaslighting...but not necessarily the calculated, deliberate gaslighting that a psychopath would employ. It's more like an instinctive drive to destabilize other people around them.

They are also prone to sudden, violent rage if they feel threatened (if narcissistic supply is cut off, if they are about to lose resources, or especially if they are criticized and/or made to look bad in front of other people). They may physically harm a person, or they may strike back in a more extensive, calculated way (along the lines of a smear campaign or financial ruin), but one way or another they DO strike back and they aim to do damage. In their mindset, they may not see it as harm, or revenge, it may be something more akin to "justice." But it is a very warped perception of justice that most people would recognize as cruelty (borderlines also can have a very similar mindset about justice).

The point is not to say they are worse people...they are very psychologically damaged (and likely also neurologically damaged) and some of them suffer a lot for being the way they are. You (I mean you, me, anyone, not you specifically) can have a lot of understanding and compassion for that. But if you do, and you don't understand who/what you are dealing with, they may use every ounce of that kindness against you. Just like you said - it's normal to assume everyone else is like me - and as much as a narcissist assumes that everyone else is like them, the rest of us do it too. We can all project our own qualities on to other people, and assume that people will respond positively to the same kind of care and consideration we want for ourselves, while not understanding that the person may be using such a different map inside their mind that they will just turn it against us.

So do they purposefully try to harm people?...not necessarily. A narcissist is kind of like a child in an adult body...but not the innocent child they might want you to think they are. This is a child who desperately wants attention, and will do just about anything to get it, or to get whatever else they want, and may throw a violent tantrum if they don't get it. They don't have the inner capacity to relate emotionally as a mature adult, but they DO have the capacity to do the physical, emotional, financial or legal damage of an adult. It's like handing a small child the keys to drive a car...they don't necessarily intend to crash the car or hurt anyone, but all the same they aren't capable of driving it. And they will very likely run someone down with it.

They can actually have rather stable relationships with other narcissists, or possibly with borderlines as well because they have a very similar internal map of reality. Relationships between narcissists and autists are also rather common, but it usually turns out badly for the autist, because the narcissist has a very different map that the autist is not privy to.

Anyhow I think there are many good reasons for autistic people to feel outrage or disgust at the comparison...not least because it is inaccurate, but more so because allistic people are already so prone to misunderstanding and misinterpreting autistic behavior in general.

But what's most disturbing to me about seeing autistic behavior compared with NPD, is that autistic people can be very vulnerable to narcissistic abuse and may have very little defense against it due to autistic impairments.

To me it's as absurd as comparing the small narcissistic child recklessly driving a car, to a person trying to cross the street in a wheelchair, and saying they have a lot in common because they both have a set of wheels. It would be far more important to understand how they are operating differently and how they may collide.