JAN HOFFMAN ESSAY

Hillary Rodham Clinton is a narcissist, and her husband, too. Madonna seemingly takes nightly baths in her own reflected glow. Who in the public eye in the last six minutes hasn’t been pop-diagnosed as a narcissist- Naomi Campbell, anyone?
As stunningly disparate as they are, all of these folks and many others, including Saddam Hussein and the actor Russell Crowe, have been labeled as narcissists. It has become the go-to diagnosis by columnists, bloggers and television psychologists. A term that has deep roots in psychoanalytic literature appears to have become a popular descriptor so bloated as to have been rendered meaningless.
“It sounds more impressive to say that someone is narcissistic rather than a jerk, said Dr. Susan Jaffe, a Manhattan psychoanalyst.
Are any of these characters actually narcissists- Only their therapists know for sure.
We love to label the offensive behavior of others to separate them from us; it’s their problem, not ours.
But though “narcissist” has a derogatory stamp, the very people we label narcissistic often are those who attract as well as repel us.
“The study of narcissism is a growth industry in academia, said Daniel Ames, a social and personality psychologist at Columbia Business School . “It helps us to understand and explain behavior, whether it’s in the bedroom or the boardroom .”
In the clinical diagnostic manual, the many criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include a “pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy.
Havelock Ellis, the late-19th-century British sexologist, has been credited with coining the term “narcissist, after the myth of Narcissus, the Greek youth fatally enamored of his own reflection.
Narcissists, Freud later wrote, were nearly untreatable. Unspeakably lonely and shackled by grandiose fantasies, they were incapable of forming relationships, not even with a psychoanalyst.
Today, therapists say, patients who receive a diagnosis of the disorder remain among the most challenging to help because they often believe their problem is that others never sufficiently recognize how special they are. In childhood they had been deprived of essential emotional sustenance; as adults, their arrogance, sense of entitlement and exhibitionistic tendencies spring from the deepest humiliation.
In a culture crazed, so to speak, by celebrity that gets its thrills from the coarsest exhibitionists, “narcissistic has become a term to describe the preening of the famous.
“We’ve developed a different kind of narcissism, said Dr. Marion Solomon, a Los Angeles psychologist and author of “Narcissism and Intimacy. “You’re successful, famous and treated as the center of the world. ‘Oh, Tom Cruise, how can I take care of your needs?’ So you start to believe you’re the center of the world because that is how the world treats you.
And, some psychoanalysts say, our fascination with celebrities as well as our need to diminish them is its own kind of narcissistic narrative, including grandiose heights and abject humiliation.
Dr. Prudence Gourguechon, a Chicago analyst and president of the American Psychoanalytic Association, also sees a narcissistic narrative in reality shows like “American Idol. “The healthy part of narcissism says, ‘I am a whole and wonderful person with something great inside of me,’ she said. “‘I can sing,’ or ‘I’m beautiful.’
But the allure and tension in the shows are created, she added, as the audience hungers for the takedown. “Are you good enough- Or are you going to be humiliated- Then someone comes along and says, ‘Get out!’ That’s a narcissistic drama.
Many people are condescending and self-involved, but they may not necessarily be narcissistic. Determining that someone is a narcissist, Professor Ames of Columbia said, “is not something you can gauge from television.