Narcissism as The Next ASD

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Dianthus wrote:
"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."

Sadly, this is true. I wish I could educate everyone on the spectrum how true and not to engage. Malignant Narcissists can be very deadly, and are highly skilled manipulators of the vulnerable. I have seen this close up and it is no small matter. They are predators, consciously so, and autistic people are prey for them.

The confusions spread by this thread are dangerous for ASD people. Malignant narcissists are not just mixed up people; they are very dangerous people, who actively mean harm to others and know how to suck targets in with charm and apparent concern.

I was pretty narcissistic as a kid. This has reminded me that I retain some of the qualities.

I think that's a different thing, Cavernio.. kids are naturally narcissistic, they don't have the life experience or perspective to see things from other viewpoints or walk a mile in another person's shoes to anything but a very limited extent. That's a function of immaturity, and children are by nature immature, at the start of that huge learning curve.

I think this is yet another conflation caused by people being too stupid to realize one word has multiple defintions: "empathy"

Autistic people often have more trouble than normal with "empathy," as in the ability to guess what emotion another person is feeling.

NPD and especially sociopathy lack "empathy," as in the ability to feel remorse or the disinclination to hurt people.

Those two ideas happen to share the same word, but they are two totally different things.

Right on: two totally different things. As different as chalk from cheese. Well said.

I tend more and more to see personality disorders, which have their roots in the very early childhood development (developing contact does happen in the very first month of life, and many personality disorders are caused by a lack of or severe disturbance of this development of contact) as developmental disorders as the unconscious coping mechanisms get hard-wired into the brain. (I read a lot about developmental trauma, literature by Laurence Heller).
Im my opinion having no sense of self or splitting (which is the case in narcissistic PD or borderline PD or schizoid PD) is a developmental issue rather than a learned one.

Another thought: in what ways could the administration of oxytocin influence narcissistic PD?
Has anyone ever read studies about it?
I do not find studies about it.

My initial thought was that if oxytocin would enhance binding to other people but also enhence binding to oneself, developing a sense of self-love, which is missing in severe personality disorders. (eg. narcissistic self-love is no genuine self-love based on a genuine self-sense).
But if it develops Schadenfreude it means rather binding to the "counter-identifications" of a self ("counter-identifications" opposed to "healthy" self-identifications)?