The Narcissistic Spectrum

本站添加: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]So, one of the questions I get more than any other is something like, "Is there a spectrum of narcissism?"

[00:00:06]And this is an important question. I I often get uh emails, correspondences with folks who have experienced leadership in in a in a style they'll describe as narcissistic. And they'll write to me and they'll say, "My pastor is a narcissist or my CEO is a narcissist or my professor is a narcissist." And uh this is where the nuance of spectrum really matters because what we describe as confidence or selfishness or arrogance uh may not necessarily be narcissism and a spectrum may better help us find the language to describe what's really going on. Uh now it's important to say that psychologists talk about a kind of healthy narcissism particularly for kids. And think about it this way. Uh when our kids are young, we want them to have a sense of positive self-regard. We want them to grow in confidence. Uh we we want them to have a sense that they matter in the world, have a sense of purpose. Uh we we have a sense that they they want to be seen and known. Mommy, mommy, mommy, look at me.

[00:01:11]The problem I often say is this. When we're saying the same things at 40 or 50 years old, that's a problem. Like if it's congregation, look at me.

[00:01:20]Organization, look at me. Internet, look at me. that might be a problem. And so, are we dealing with narcissism or not?

[00:01:28]Uh, what's important to say is that narcissism is not a binary like either you have it or you don't have it. It's more important to frame it as a spectrum. And when I think about a spectrum, I'm helped by something called the Milan Clinical Multiaxial Inventory, which is a tool and assessment that I've been using for 20 years or more now.

[00:01:48]I've done hundreds probably thousands now of assessments uh assessments of church planters and ministry candidates and uh folks for a variety of different organizations and it puts each and every one of us on a spectrum of a number of different personalities and one of those personalities happens to be narcissism.

[00:02:09]Now I think one of the things that is important to say when we come to testing like this in terms of how it evaluates us is not so much uh does this person have narcissistic personality because a person may show up as confident, self- assured, charismatic some of the things that we typically see as narcissistic.

[00:02:29]The better question is how rigid, defended, and uh relationally costly has their behavior, their behavior patterns become for them. That's really what a test like the Milan is looking at is the the level of defensiveness. And this is what I look for honestly when I do these kinds of assessments. Now, how does it see the spectrum? Uh it sees the spectrum in terms of uh style, type, and disorder. And when we're talking about these three, it's important to say that narcissistic style may look like what you typically call narcissism, but it's not elevated to the level of disorder.

[00:03:09]This is a person who might need strong affirmation. This may be a person that fears failure or doesn't like feeling inadequate. This may be a person who presents as highly uh competent. This may be a person who tends to avoid vulnerability. This may be a person that tends to manage image. Uh this may be a person that struggles with criticism.

[00:03:31]And yet, here's the difference. And the difference gets back to that sense of defensiveness.

[00:03:37]Can they still self-reflect at some level? Do they feel remorse when you name the impact of their behavior? Um, can they still sustain mutual relationships uh so that they're known uh by others um in a way that uh that that is vulnerable? And uh are they still growing and is that growing integrative which is to say are they metabolizing the feedback that they get in a way that leads to greater maturity.

[00:04:06]Um the reality is is that there may be shame and insecurity there. There may be a fragile sense of self-worth. Uh there may be early attachment wounds and trauma that they're dealing with. Uh they may have grown up in a home where they needed to be masked up or highly performative. Um but this is not a behavior that has come to dominate their way of being in a world and they're not highly defended. And that's that's the important point. I will get calls and correspondences from organizations and churches who point to a particular kind of pastor or person on their staff or in their congregation uh or leading their organization who they see as needing admiration or performative or avoiding weakness. But this does not necessarily mean that this person is diagnosibly narcissistic personality disorder.

[00:04:57]What's the difference then? Well, when we're talking about narcissistic personality disorder, we're we're elevating now from style to type, where the behavior is becoming more and more rigid, where they're becoming more and more defended to an elevation of disorder, where the defensive system now is pervasive, where the person is inflexible, and where the behavior is potentially relationally destructive. Um this is a person who cannot tolerate vulnerability, who can not metabolize shame, who does not engage in relationships with any degree of mutuality, um who resists accountability, who resists his own limitations or her own limitations. Uh who's resistant to criticism and um who uh who really lacks the capacity for empathy or if if there is empathy, it's really a performative empathy. It's not really coming from a place of true compassion.

[00:05:56]When we talk about narcissistic personality disorder, and I've talked about this in this book that I wrote called When Narcissism Comes to Church, and on many different podcasts, we're talking about things like grandiosity, uh, entitlement, exploitation, um, a lack of empathy, a chronic need for admiration, um, image management, externalization of blame, and really an incapacity to repair relational ruptures. not least because it's not so much about the other person, it's because the narcissist is so defended.

[00:06:31]Uh so it's really important here to to note that when we're talking about narcissism, we've got to see it along this spectrum. The the folks who are most elevated are most defended. And so if a person is showing up in a way that you view as somewhat selfish or arrogant or um uh overpowering in a relationship doesn't necessarily mean that they uh can be diagnosed with NPD. Uh it all depends on their capacity to self-reflect. And so this is where we need to be nuanced. We need to be pastoral. One of the reasons I wrote the book that I wrote a number of years ago called When Narcissism Comes to Church is because uh I saw how frequently the word narcissist was being uh used uh and weaponized to some degree that people were diagnosing from a distance without uh a real process. the kind of processes that psychologists and therapists who engage this stuff uh uh interact with all the time and and people were turning the language of narcissist into a shorthand for the person who hurt me. I think it's really important that we uh we we work with this with some degree of nuance and we don't immediately apply labels. We can talk about impact. We can talk about how we're hurt. Um, we can talk about our experience of another person, but it's less helpful to label others until there's been some real testing and evaluation. And oftentimes when I do this work, I do the testing, but then I do an extensive interview and I bring in observations of others. Uh saying all that though, I want to make sure that I also say that um real narcissistic pathology can cause harm and uh when it is combined with power and a lack of accountability um both in secular environments and in spiritual environments and and really profoundly in spiritual environments, there can be profound harm done by a person who is narcissistic. And so um the question is the best question is not who who's the narcissist or what's the personality. Um the better questions that we might ask uh ask or what are the defenses? Um does the person have the the capacity to self-reflect? What are they protecting? Um what happens in relationships when image matters more than truth or reality? If we stick with those kinds of questions, we'll be better able to assess who is narcissistic and who is not narcissistic.