If there’s any psychological diagnosis that has captivated our national imagination over the last five years or so, it’s narcissism — an alleged epidemic that’s supposed to be turning America’s youth into loud-mouthed, hyperentitled, participation-trophy-demanding monsters. But some are starting to question whether it’s really the scourge it’s cracked up to be.
Most recently, a study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggested that some narcissism can be cured. Specifically, as Olga Khazan at The Atlantic reports, people who showed high levels of narcissistic traits on a 41-item quiz but had not been formally diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, could be trained to care more about other people. These informal narcissists became more empathetic toward a (fictional) survivor of domestic abuse when researchers simply asked them to take her perspective. The study’s lead author believes her results could be used to develop therapies for narcissism — as Ms. Khazan writes, “this type of compassion training might be the best weapon we have against the self-absorbed.”
Another blow to the idea that narcissism will destroy us all: The news that millennials may actually be predisposed against narcissism. As Melissa Dahl at The Science of Us points out, this age group is constantly accused of being self-absorbed (in fact, one could argue that the rise in coverage of narcissism has paralleled a general fixation on millennials). But the authors of a recent study, she writes, “argue that people who enter the workforce during economic downturns — as millennials most certainly have — are actually much less likely to be narcissistic later in life, when compared to people who started their careers during more prosperous times.” Emily Bianchi, a professor of organization and management at Emory University and the study’s first author, told MinnPost that the relatively flush ’80s and ’90s might have helped touch off a rise in narcissism, but “the Great Recession may knock this upward trajectory off course.”
In a New Yorker book review last month (subscribers only), Joan Acocella took a longer view. She noted that fears about American narcissism have been around for some time — a book called “The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations” was a best seller in 1978. And as an actual psychiatric diagnosis, it may be based on shaky foundations: “Nobody knows how many people suffer from the disorder,” she wrote, or even whether it’s a disorder at all, “as opposed to just a loud, self-important personality that has been recognized for millennia.”
Ms. Acocella surveyed two recent books on narcissism — Elizabeth Lunbeck’s “The Americanization of Narcissism” and Simon Blackburn’s “The Uses and Abuses of Self-Love.” She saw the former as somewhat pro-narcissist; Ms. Lunbeck seemed to be arguing, she wrote, “that charismatic leaders, people exhibiting ‘good narcissism,’ should have their deserved sway.” She seemed to prefer Mr. Blackburn’s “middle position on narcissism”:
“Be nice to your narcissism, he says, but not too nice. Think of others. Do justice to the coffee-collection box. Don’t act weird at your father’s funeral. I’m going to do what he says.”
It’s too soon to say whether the nascent backlash against narcissism panic will cause an epidemic of bad behavior (if it does, perhaps Mr. Blackburn’s book can serve as a corrective). But increasingly, the notion that Americans (especially young ones) are beset with an incurable case of self-regard is looking less supportable. Narcissism itself may soon have a little less to feel good about.