Narcissism as The Next ASD

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Interesting.
The wiki entry for Oxytocin says that it increases schadenfreude, so it could create monsters in some instances.

I am German, I know the meaning of Schadenfreude and that would be no good at all.
To be honest I did not reaserch enough on effects of oxytocin other than what I have read here on this forums.
It was a quick thought that came up into my mind.

But I do think that a lack or inbalance of oxytocin can play a role as oxytocin is a hormone to bind to people, and in developmental traumas (to which I tend to refer also as developmental disorders after reading a lot of literature about it) the process of developing "adequate" levels of oxytocin is severely affected.
Under which circumstances then can oxytocin can develop from healthy binding to being outright nasty?

Edit: mistakes in English writing

Last edited by Eloa on 17 May 2015, 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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)?

I wish I knew more about it.
I studied it for a while because of its supposed effects on autistics, and the thing about schadenfreude.
For whatever reason I haven't been able to experience schadenfreude, though I was able to observe it happening all around me as a child.

I can relate to that experience of observing Schadenfreude around me in childhood.
And I also wish I knew more about it.

I grew up in Minnesota, where we seem to have an especially nasty German subculture, so I agree that it's not fun to deal with. The Austrian side of my family was pretty nice, though

I think that schadenfreude is clearly chemically fueled in the brain, but with a part of the hive-mind algorithms working out of sight in the subconscious. Those people are clearly intuitively driven to the behaviors to hurt others and they clearly get some sort of chemical "feel good" from the acts. It's very disturbing.
I'm positive the hive-mind plays a big role in how it is carried out in humans, but I don't think the effect is limited to humans, and a large part of the mechanism may be hard-wired in a more primitive portion of the brain.

Basically, subconscious thoughts have the power to trigger feelings/emotions which in turn trigger certain chemical releases in the brain, which in turn trigger certain feelings/emotions, and so on. It's a feedback system, but I think the most interesting part is how "thoughts" play a part in triggering it.

I have had trouble with (lack of) the ability to manipulate feelings with my conscious thought. In another thread I stated how other people would tell me to think about cold or being cold when I'm hot and sweaty, but it would never make me feel any cooler at all. Apparently it works for some people.

So, I speculate that there is a bit of logic operating in the subconscious that is convinced that if you make someone else feel bad, that it must then make you feel better.
If so then it would be like the cornerstone mechanism that drives humans, and some other animals, into hierarchal structures where individuals are always trying to maintain or advance their position by displacing other individuals.
That bit of logic would be somehow tied to the deeper mechanism of the brain's chemical reward pathways.

Is this reasonable or way off base?

Also, why wouldn't the mechanism work in myself and some other individuals? Perhaps some disconnect/dissociation with that part of the subconscious?

I remember profound disappointment as a child when I tried to reap the reward of schadenfreude by mimicking some of the behaviors I had observed and actually making other people feel bad. I tried hard for a while to make it work, but never could, and eventually felt I had been tricked, and also offended that I tried this at the expense of others. I realized how bad it felt to be on the receiving end of the abuse because I had been the target for so long.

It seems strange that the ability to experience schadenfreude is considered "normal" and that I have the disorder.
Looking back on my childhood, I am glad my efforts never worked. It would have been so easy for an abused individual to turn into a monster, especially fueled by chemical rewards like a drug addict.

Aggression and sex are both controlled by testosterone. Sex feels good, aggression feels good, dominance feels good.
Anyone who is enjoying physically harming or being more powerful than someone else (as displayed by being able to harm the person), is getting an enjoyment that is linked to more than just 'hurting someone else'.

This is different from a 'fit in' sort of thing, where you will get groups of people putting down an individual, or seemingly have a group of people putting down an individual. Not everyone in the group will have to be getting any sort of power trip from doing so, but they do not stop whoever in the group from hurting someone else because in their mind it's 'better them than me'. Higher social status protects yourself.



This is not a thought process, rather, I would not define thoughts as ever being unconscious or subconscious. Thoughts can interfere with an unconscious process though.



Hierarchical structures, if only based on enjoyment of others' suffering, would never reach the point of a strong structure. There would be constant violence and changing of who was in power, and you'd not really get any sort of tiers of hierarchy. It would be chaos, not organized. Throw in knowledge of self-preservation by following the group and I -still- don't think we're anywhere close to finding all the factors involved in how a hierarchy works. (Of course, we're still also missing the basic reasoning for why following the group is self-preservation in the first place, which there is of course an answer to, and which is really the answer I think you're looking for, but which I do not want to get into right now at least.)

Huge thing that's missing from this is 100% non-violent desire to have people admire, respect, etc. When people listen to you, pay attention to you, praise you, one actually gains power when this happens. The power itself is incidental to other factors that gives it. Even violent power is obtained by fear. While power can be self-sustaining, it grows from other things and needs to touch base with those same other things like fear or admiration in order to maintain it.

Hierarchies create self-sustenance because of what they do, rather like how life exists because it manages to procreate.

To help with the sustenance of hierarchies, beyond things like 'they're smart and know what they're doing' and 'they'll hurt me if I don't follow them', is the idea of being in a group. Of following what other people are doing. Pretend you have a group of friends of 3 people including yourself. 2 of your friends really really like a specific person and start including them in your group of friends. Do you become friends with this new person? What happens if you don't, do you stop hanging out with your other friends because they are now spending most of their time set aside for being with friends, also including this other person? Or do you continue being their friend and hanging out with this other person too? You know that if you refuse to hang out with those friends while they're also hanging out with that other person, that you will dramatically drop the amount of time you have to be with them, possibly completely. You know there's a reasonable chance that once you let your friends know you don't like this new person and will refuse to hang out with them when that person's around, that they could stop hanging out with that person and choose to be with you instead, or perhaps the other way around too. When someone chooses in this example to hang out with their friends and this new person, your initial 2 friends have power over you.





Because you don't have it quite right :-p
In all seriousness I do not think that being able to think 'I am cold' and then not be so hot, is connected at all to hierarchical structure. Thoughts are not unconscious, and I do not think that thoughts controlling of body temperature is as closely related to thoughts controlling emotions as you think they are. Thoughts control emotions by making you perceive the situation differently, not by simply repeating and thinking to yourself 'this is making me happy' to try and make you happy. Like someone who is deluded who then becomes anxiety-ridden because they think people are out to get them, the emotion of anxiety exists because their perception of the experience is such that people are out to get them. Change the perception, change the emotion.



You weren't putting someone else down with the other purpose of gaining social acceptance by people who would usually put that person down, or rather, if that had been your goal, you weren't emotionally receiving the benefits of social acceptance for whatever reason.

I recall an incident in my worst year of grade school. I was a loser in my class, but there was one other person who had it worse than me. At one point this guy had gotten cake smeared on him. Somehow, because I guess I hadn't been paying attention to the question posed me or whatever, word got around that I had done this thing. I got a genuine high-five by the person who I despised most and who picked on me most, for this act that I hadn't done. I could have easily raised my own social status by lowering someone else's, significantly; lost the scorn and teasing from someone else who, by me listening to them and taking them at all seriously, I was granting them power over me.



I don't think schadenfreude is nearly as pervasive as you think it is, and where it does exist it is not usually the drive behind social structures.

Upon further consideration about the topic of comparing narcissism to autism, I am actually a lot more on board with this idea. But there are a lot of things to tweak apart before it makes sense to me, and requires a definition of autism that is not necessarily true.

Firstly, if narcissism is related to autism, it would be more akin to relating social anxiety to autism. The issues surrounding autism lead, especially in HFA, to having social anxiety, but social anxiety can exist without autism, and autism does not always lead to social anxiety.

Narcissism is best defined, IMO, by actions wherein the person is constantly seeking social approval to the point that it is the only thing that holds their identity together. It is their only way of feeling good, and protect it accordingly. This by itself is obviously not autism. Social anxiety is also, however, not autism.

The definition of autism that makes the relationship to narcissism possible is one where autism is not a strong internal focus, but rather a lack of integration of inputs. In classic autism wherein someone's autism is visible by their behavior, the person IS wholly involved in their internal world. The external world does not exist, because they are not integrating external experiences into whatever their mind is thinking.

IF autism is parsed down to lack of proper integration though, one form of it could be a lack of integrating one's internal experience with external. The result would be a lack of proper identity, lack of self-knowledge about basic things like what you like vs dislike, what you value, what is important, etc. This results in the state of being necessary for a full-blown narcissist to grow from, where the person is constantly seeking external affirmation of who they are.

Also, once again, narcissist is NOT, repeat NOT someone who is experiencing schadenfreude all the time; they are chasing the only thing that they know to be positive, social confirmation.


Lots of people on the spectrum explicitly lack proper internal integration and knowledge too, there's threads abounding in that, but to strictly have only integration impairments in those areas would leave one's ability to socialize and communicate wholly intact.

It may look that way on the surface, but it goes deeper...you have to look at why a person wants social approval. A narcissist doesn't want social approval for its own sake...actually, a true narcissist would find that concept degrading. They want other people to seek their approval, and they want to see themselves as being far beyond having any the same need for approval.

And that's the key - narcissists need to believe they are beyond normal human need, frailty, vulnerability, or weakness. This is why they are so concerned with their self-image and needing to see themselves as special and superior to others. The false self image is intended to create an illusion of invulnerability and protect the real self within from emotional harm.

The false self-image takes the brunt of any negative attention...so if they happen to get disapproval instead of approval, they aren't necessarily bothered by that. They may instead be excited by the attention they are getting. What the narcissist would actually find threatening to their identity and their self-image, is anything that shatters the illusion that they are superior and invulnerable.

So it depends on what kind of criticism or disapproval they are getting and how it feeds into their self-image. Some kinds of disapproval would actually feed the illusion that they are powerful and superior to others, and they would enjoy that.

Schadenfreude also feeds the illusion of superiority. People with NPD are indeed quite prone to experiencing schadenfreude because it fits perfectly with their mindset (seeing themselves as different from those who experience misfortune, wanting to believe it can never happen to them because they are superior, etc.) It's the opposite of empathy, which gets defined a lot of different ways, but fundamentally it is the ability to identify with another person. People with NPD can't identify with other people - they just want to see their false image mirrored in other people.

The main factor in developing NPD is having a parent with NPD. The narcissist treats their children as extensions of themselves and wants to see their own self-image mirrored in the children. The child gets the message that it is not okay to be who they are, or to have their own needs, and has to find a coping mechanism. There are several different routes this can go, but in the long run it's likely to result in a personality disturbance - either a specific personality disorder, an unspecified personality disorder, codependency or people-pleaser syndrome.

In any case, the children are expected to serve the needs of the narcissist and gain their approval, so the child will probably develop some intense people-pleasing and approval-seeking strategies at an early age (unless the child is blind to the social and emotional cues given by the narcissist to prompt this behavior - as some autistic children may be - which can result in a very different scenario.) But the children who become narcissists have also learned how to BE the one who is pleased, and they have too strong a sense of entitlement to go on serving the needs of others.

A narcissist (especially a covert narcissist) may act like a people-pleaser, rescuer, or martyr, but underneath it is driven by a need to feel powerful and superior to others. They can also use it as a strategy to get what they want.

A person who genuinely wants approval and seeks positive attention for its own sake more likely has people-pleaser syndrome.

Confusing 'everyday egotism' with malignant narcissism is like confusing a slight sniffle/cold with double pneumonia. The confusion seems to be very common.

Possibly because we live in a culture that encourages a me-first individualism; not surprisingly everyday egotism is partly a product of that socialisation. NPD is far more flagrant, actively harmful to others and toxic, and can be very lethal (as in the case of the German pilot who deliberately crashed the plane in France, as an extreme example of their deadliness).

I don't think I was describing an egotistic person.

Your descriptions are quite thorough, very helpful, and a bit disturbing too. I can see too many parallels between the appearance of the narcissist method and us. It's so hard to determine the real differences, for instance the lack of interest in social status, and the attitude that we're superior to the entire system of social status, which actually has some truth to it. However, I would describe it as an indifferent and separate rather than superior. The term superior infers an embedded position in the system that we don't feel like we're a part of, or want to be. So, if we don't want to compete in the system, does that automatically mean that we feel we're too good for it?
It's just not as clear cut as I'd like it to be.

I know if I were given an option to have great power and be at the top of the system, or to completely leave the system, then I would choose the latter for sure. Does that mean I'm a narcissist?

It's a strange situation. If someone refuses to take a position that is inferior by default, does that mean they automatically think themselves as superior? or is there not a third option? Is wanting a third option a narcissistic stand-point? A lot of the narcissistic descriptions seem like a catch-all.

And what if technically by definition, we do have many apparently narcissistic characteristics?
I would also agree that we often get bound into relationships with narcissists.
Could that be because we have such weak identities and they apparently have very strong ones?

Could that be because we have such weak identities and they apparently have very strong ones?[/quote]

More a case, I think, is that we may have weak boundaries rather than weak identities; this is expressed in the tendency to not recognise boundary invasions from others as readily as NTs tend to do. Some people on the spectrum have responded to past bullying, invalidation etc by becoming desperate to please (poor personal boundaries allied to that) and narcissists target those people a lot, with some horrific consequences sometimes.

This might be a bit of a stretch of what I'm about to say, but could it be that some very determined Aspies (like myself) may give off the illusion of narcissism by making intense and repeated effort to blend in (despite the negative feedback and unpleasant consequences that they have to get through)? People around them might think, OK, this a***ole is acting all forced-charming like, and is ignoring my needs that I just want them to f**k off and leave me alone, but it's all about THEM...they have to impress others as if they have an inferiority complex on the inside. This effect my intensify if the Aspie feels that they have a deficit from past years of neglect to catch up on (like me, when I was in my 20s and I thought about the teen years when I was basically invisible to everyone). Contrast that with an Aspie who's very withdrawn, resigned, etc, has no desire to increase effort and techniques to "fit in", they would likely not be misconstrued as a narcissist - more as a quiet weird loner.

Well...having an attitude of superiority is essentially a narcissistic trait, but it doesn't necessarily make the person "a narcissist" in the sense of having a personality disorder. It's also not automatically bad to have some narcissistic traits, it can be healthy and even necessary to some extent.

People with NPD for the most part DO want to participate in the system of social status and have a high status within it. They don't want to opt out of it, because that would mean losing the frame of reference that allows them to view themselves as superior to others.