LKH Lashouts

*jaw drops*

Nope, that's not off topic. It makes me wonder!

From:

Please, if I ever become a published author, if I start making shrines to my sue-self, dunk me in cold water a few times, yeah? That wallpaper scares me.

From:

yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com

Damn, that wallpaper is giving me a seizure.

From:

pith

From the vibe I get, I don't tend to think she worries that people are friends with her for the "wrong reasons". She's too busy namedropping and overexaggering casual acquaintences and conversations. She'll go on and on about how she knows someone (Neil Gaiman, for example), and yet the exchange is never even hinted at on Neil's blog.

I'd totally agree with the self-promotion angle, though.

From:

popelizbet.livejournal.com

Eh. I question that study. Narcissistic personality disorder needs to be diagnosed by professionals, not "untrained observers" rating people on how "narcissistic" their Facebooks appear.** So even with Our Dear Authoress, I'm not going to bite on that one - because I'm not a shrink, and more importantly, I'm not her shrink.

**I mean, the point of a Myspace/Facebook is to be about you, so it's a bit self-centered by definition.

From:

This is quite true. I found the study itself to be dubious.

From:

othellia.livejournal.com

I mean, the point of a Myspace/Facebook is to be about you

Really? MYspace? About myself? Surely you jest.

From:

Self-absorbed is different from narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists get off on making other people miserable: unless LKH has secret plans to force us to listen to her reading her books, I don't quite get that vibe from her.

From:

Thanks for this; it confirms another thing I was wondering.

From:

You're welcome. Diagnosing folks from their web pages--especially people who are using their pages to sell stuff--is, er, bad medicine. Hell, I've known my mother intimately for thirty years and despite much bizarre evidence, I'm still not 100% certain she had NPD (for, lo, I am not a shrink of any flavor).

From:

Yeah, I understand. My husband and I are still uncertain about his mom having bipolar and BPD, even though she has pretty much every symptom of each (she does have a lovely martyr complex, though). She won't get an official diagnosis, because she doesn't thing there is anything wrong with her. And I won't diagnose anyone myself, of course!

From:

booster-blue.livejournal.com

Can't we count the fact that she continues to write such tripe as her somewhat enjoying the misery of others?

From:

But she's offering us Great Literature about enormous schlongs! If we don't love it, we're just jealous of her immense talents. *flounce-flounce-flouncity-flounce*

From:

booster-blue.livejournal.com

Oh, well! In that case, I eagerly await the next in her engrossing series about the Joys of Forced Sex with Obligatory Romance!

From:

Narcissists get off on making other people miserable

I disagree. A sadist gets off on making others miserable. A narcissist lacks that kind of empathy. I grew up with one who would make me miserable to inflate his self-worth. Making me miserable wasn't the end it was simply the means.

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/narcissisticpd.htm

These are the DSM-IV diagnostic criteria.

From:

My mother fit the NPD criteria perfectly, but she was an emotional sadist. She'd get this gleeful expression when her constant verbal abuse would finally send her victim into rage or tears. Is it twisted empathy that drives that? It was more like a child tormenting insects--"If I do this, it'll have to do that. Haha, I have The Power." It was her primary hobby, whatever drove it.

I'm sorry you grew up in that sort of environment--it sucks.

From:

Yes, very much and I'm sorry you did, too.

Is it twisted empathy that drives that?

I think at least for my father that he needed to have control over things. If he didn't then it made him angry and he would fly into a rage. Sometimes it was verbal that I was the worst kid ever born and he was stuck with me. On the other hand if I did something to make him proud, well I was just a chip off the old block and so on. In his mind I didn't really exist as a separate person. My therapist explained it this way, "In his mind it equates to his hand suddenly randomly twitching so he does what he has to do to get his hand back under control."

From:

This is horrific and fascinating. I'm getting a lot of insight!

From:

No, definately not. I've known someone with ND, and they act pretty different from Laurmerita. It's hard to explain, but have you ever been so starstruck with someone that they hold the sun and the moon in your eyes? Yeah, people with ND feel that way about themselves. They don't have any faults, they are totally confident about everything they do, they don't understand why others don't worship them, and if you don't bow down to them, they think they are absolutely and totally in the right to make you pay for your erroneous views by making your life miserable. It's freaky to be around because they are not living in any kind of reality that we know of, and they're the gods of that reality.

LKH is pretty self-absorbed, but she's also kind of self-debasing and have some self-esteem issues. I'd say if she had anything, it'd be a mild form of clinical depression.

From:

*nods*
Thank you. This is really helpful. So do you think Laurell is more likely to have very low self-esteem?

In a way, she reminds me of my roommate's ex-girlfriend. This girl was bratty, immature, self-absorbed, insecure, desperate for love, indecisive to a fault, and attempted to sabotage her relationships because of her need for attention. She never saw anything she did as wrong, but she did understand when she made bad decisions.

From:

Yeah, the fact she needs to write a Mary Sue and try to be her, plus the way she seems unhappy about everything in her life no matter how well it's going points more to low self-esteem and depression. Depression does carry with it some narcissistic behaviors being it's a disorder of self-absorption, but true narcissistic personality disorder is waaaay more over the top. They are very weird to be around, it's like talking to someone with the intelligence of an adult but with the emotional comprehension of a toddler.

One of the big traits of real narcissists is they are totally incapable of caring about anybody and are incapable of empathy even to the point of sociopathy. LKH is still shows concern and empathy about the welfare of her husband, her daughter, her dogs (and other animals), her friends, even her characters.

From:

it's like talking to someone with the intelligence of an adult but with the emotional comprehension of a toddler

I'm glad you said this. I just realized that I have met people like that. They didn't actually care about their friends beyond the friends' usefulness to them. It was as if other people were... hmm, props, maybe? I can't think of the best phrase, but it was like they didn't see people as people to love or even like. Even family.

Can you think of any fictional characters who display symptoms of NDP, LKH characters or otherwise?

From:

Exactly. For some reason, NPD patients have only a concept of the "self." There is no "other." Like a toddler which only has concept of "self" but still has yet to develop the concept of other. They know they need Mommy, but Mommy as a person and Mommy's needs are totally out of their sphere of understanding until they are older.

Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray is the classic example. I would also say Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to some extent. And I think Anne Rice's LeStat is also fairly NPD...vampires seem to have become the classic examples of this.

There is also Dr. Anthony Pignataro from Anne Rules "Last Dance, Last Chance." Since she writes real crime drama books, he is an actual living person, but he was diagnosed as classically NPD, and after he killed a patient through sheer negligance and lost his medical license, he was obesessed only with restoring his credibility. He thought by killing his wife by poisoning her with arsenic, he could show any doctor could lose a patient. He didn't really give a damn about his wife's suffering. I highly recommend that book, it's incredibly fascinating.

From:

In college, I took a course on developmental psychology, and one thing that I always remember is the egocentrism of very young children. They know, for example, that they have siblings, but they can't yet project into the siblings' awareness. "Your brother is Jim. Does Jim have a brother?" "No, he doesn't."

I'm currently reading a vampire urban fantasy book called "Nightwalker." The main character and narrator is a female vampire who has lived for 600 years. She sees everyone around her as a means to her end. She seems to care something for her vampire superiors and for her human companions, but really they serve her needs. I'd say that you're right, that most vampires seem to fall under this category.

I've heard vaguely of Dr. Pignataro, or at least a doctor who deliberately killed his wife to show that any patient could die under a doctor's care. It was pretty scary to read about.

Are Narcissists comparable to sociopaths?

From:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/merseyside/4633339.stm

A news story regarding Brain Blackwell. He was diagnosed with NPD after murdering his parents.

Some of the same criteria for diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder (the current term for sociopath) are very similar to those for NPD.

http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/antisocialpd.htm

From:

Wow....

"Blackwell's personality disorder meant he fantasised about unlimited success, power and brilliance."

Is that statement actually true?

From:

It can be. It's one of the criteria for diagnosis.

If you think about a serial killer murdering someone to satisfy their own particular needs. What could be more power than to hold someone's life in your hands and snuff it out? (ok, to create life, but that's much more difficult.)

From:

sfph.livejournal.com

Although, a lot of serial killers hate themselves, and a pretty significant number end up committing suicide.

From: