Slate says that Emily Yoffe is the author of What the Dog Did: Tales From a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. Her essay in Slate is What is narcissistic personality disorder, and why does everyone seem to have it?
Not a bad essay for (and presumably by) a non-professional. Fact is, the whole subject is so complex that I haven't even tried to write about it: there would be so many "but"s and "if"s and "except"s in it that it would be dull reading. One quote from Yoffe's piece:
This is the cultural moment of the narcissist. In a New Yorker cartoon, Roz Chast suggests a line of narcissist greeting cards ("Wow! Your Birthday's Really Close to Mine!"). John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.) New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley wrote of journalists who Twitter, "it's beginning to look more like yet another gateway drug to full-blown media narcissism." And what other malady could explain the simultaneous phenomena of Blago and the Octomom?
These days, "narcissist" gets tossed around as an all-purpose insult, a description of self-aggrandizing, obnoxious behavior.
The link for the essay is above.
First, the question arises whether President Barack Obama is a narcissist. Frankly, just about every politician has some narcissism. It comes with being a politician. But there are some that look upon Obama as the epitome of narcissism, and...
Tracked: Mar 31, 23:29
Readers know that I am always skeptical about labelling and diagnosing people with whom I have not sat and talked for quite a while. Every time a mass murderer goes on a rampage, though, we shrinks come out of the woodwork to opine. Our friend Shrinkwrap
Tracked: Apr 07, 08:28