You're Not Crazy - It's Your Mother (24 page)

• Narcissists Exposed - 75 Things Narcissists Don't Want You to Know
   
  

• The Emotionally Absent Mother: A Guide to Self-Healing and Getting the Love You Missed
   
  

• Will I Ever Be Good Enough?: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
   
  

• Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents
   
  

• The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self, Revised Edition
  

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THE DSM IV DEFINITION OF NPD

The DSM stands for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and is published by the American Psychiatric Association. We are currently on Edition IV. They are currently working on Edition V, and at the time of writing it looks as if they are going to change how they identify NPD. So by the time you are reading this, all could have changed. Having said that, what will change will be how the professionals identify NPD. NPD itself won’t change, and my working definition on below will still hold.

For now, though, here are the official criteria of NPD. There are 9, and any individual only needs 5 to have a diagnosis of NPD.

The individual:
 

• Has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
  

• Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love,
  

• Believes that he or she is "special" and unique,
  

• Requires excessive admiration,
  

• Has a sense of entitlement,
  

• Is interpersonally exploitative,
  

• Lacks empathy,
  

• Is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her,
  

• Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes. 
  

There are three personality disorders which are ‘cousins’ to NPD (officially, these three, and NPD, are known as the Cluster B personality disorders). It is possible that your mother could have some of these as well as there is often overlap. These descriptions are only a summary, for more information check out
www.lightshouse.org
.
These three ‘cousins’ are:

• Borderline Personality Disorder
  

• Histrionic Personality Disorder
  

• Anti-Social Personality Disorder
  

People with BPD fear abandonment and will make frantic efforts to avoid this, or even the risk of it. Neediness is their hallmark. They tend to have a pattern of chaotic and unstable personal relationships. They either idealise people or totally devalue them. And indeed, someone they originally idealised can, through one misstep (real or imagined) become totally devalued and even dropped entirely. They have an unstable sense of self, and can be reckless and impulsive. They can have recurring suicide attempts, or threats of suicide.

People with Histrionic Personality Disorder crave attention as much as, or even more than, Narcissists. They can be highly dramatic and are always in some crisis or another. They can talk incessantly. They can also be very highly sexually promiscuous, especially inappropriately so.

More commonly known as sociopathy, AsPD is characterised by a complete lack of conscience, lack of empathy, and a total willingness to lie. They are sneaky and manipulative and will not hesitate to con others or break the law if they feel they can get away with it.