Narcissistic Personality Disorder (a novella, sorry)

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Originally Posted by lumberjim

As for being an arrogant asshole.... Well.... Aren't these non clinical terms for NPD?

Not really - the diagnosis expanded and drifted apart over time

In current psychology NPD is a very specific condition about what is causing various problems that can include arrogant assholeness among them. Imagine a Venn diagram with NPD and the other with traits from the narccisstic character archetype (or arrogant asshole for short) , neither circles engulf each other.


There are plenty of people in the NPD circle who aren't outwardly arrogant assholes, but still suffer from narcissistic injury and still go out of their way to protect their sense of identity from unfortunate implications that in the back of their minds reinforces that injury, just by using different - often more covert - strategies.
There are people within the cross section, Undertoad's boss sounds like he might be a good example of that. But this is a very specific strategy of building narcissistic supply - putting people down and trying to force people to fear or revere you - as a defense mechanism to protect the injury.
Then the are people who behave that way, but aren't using it for the same end, which is easy enough to tell - They can generally take criticism, they can be emphatic and caring beyond the question of whether they are liked by others, including viewing themselves negatively from the perspective of others when empathy includes that, capable of forming strong emotional bonds, etc.

Basically narcissism got demoted to one possible symptom of NPD, not the defining trait.