Thank you for the courage of a response and not blocking a critique since it at least shows that there is a chance to address a general audience that can be used for something besides entertainment.

If all you are writing is “entertainment for the general reader” and think Medium is just a place for entertainment, then that is fine, call what you are writing fiction or a ‘romance novel’, then people like me will not be bothered.

But if you are offering advice to the ‘general reader’ and these are real people seeking to be informed, and not just entertained, then there is an ethical question that goes beyond the aesthetics.

So let me begin with some non-entertaining, but ethical and real responses to your response to my critique of your article.

1. Christina responds, “This is Medium, not the Journal of Health Psychology. With that in mind, it is entirely bizarre to attempt to argue that this article should be viewed as a guide to ‘decoding’ or ‘diagnosing’ (or any other similar term) your nearest and dearest.” I did not begin the ‘decoding’ and ‘diagnosing’, Christina does when she begins her article by writing in the first paragraph: “Humans are naturally interested in the darker idiosyncrasies of human nature, such as sociopathy and psychopathy. In fact, understanding these disordered traits and tendencies isn’t just some sick fascination, but can be a useful tool for having healthier relationships”. Christina, it is you who begin your article by pathologizing human relations in using psychiatric terminology — psychopathy, sociopathy, disordered traits, – as a “useful tool” (magic decoder ring?) to support your speculations. In fact, in the very next paragraph, you even give the public a link to an outdated psychiatry site, Royal College of Psychiatrists, for information on “narcissistic personality disorder”. What is bizarre, but happens all the time, is writers like Christina try to use little understood psychiatric terms to pathologize everyday relations, then generalize this terminology onto the public. But what is really bizarre is Christina doesn’t hear this in her own writing or thinks this pathologization is just “entertainment”.
2. Christina responds, “this point also doesn’t add any weight to your argument that egoism is a better term to use instead of narcissism.” Well, I did leave in my response 5. a link where someone who wants to get serious can discover why it is important to use egoism/egotism instead of narcissism. Quoting myself: 5. narcissism, if it were ever to be explained adequately, is a cure for egoism and its paranoiac tendencies.
3. Christina responds: “You argue the [psychiatric] link is out of date and that another definition of narcissism should be expressed instead, then offer a piece of literature dated at the same year as the link I’ve included.” You are half-right, the article from the current psychiatric literature I referenced is from psychiatrists who are just beginning, since 2014, to realize their classification of narcissistic personality disorder is not working. But the psychiatric site you reference, Royal College of Psychiatrists, does not add a disclaimer that its description of narcissistic personality disorder is not confirmed by any clinical trials and may be invalid. But beyond this, if you follow my link above, you will find my article, Why Narcissism Is Not That, explains why any psychiatric description of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ has been outdated for the last 100 years. It is also addressed to a general reader on Medium, but am embarrassed to admit it is not very entertaining, just informative.
4. Christina responds: “You create an allegory between this particular personality disorder and homosexuality, which is, at best, ill-willed. You’re attempting to compare two extremely different things and assume they should be treated in the same way, or that narcissism will in time come to be accepted in the same way. Possible, but not really the scope of this piece to speculate on.” Well, with this response I can tell Christina is not current with the history of the psychiatric terms she is using. This is not my allegory and far from being speculations, homosexuality and narcissistic personality disorder go hand and glove in the psychiatric nosology. Until recently, psychiatrists explained homosexuality as a narcissistic personality disorder! Said otherwise, psychiatrists used to explain homosexuality as being caused by a narcissistic personality disorder. But in 1973, the psychiatrists’ DSM (Diagnostic Statistics Manual) de-pathologized homosexuality as no longer being a narcissistic disorder. In 2014, they also tried to de-pathologize narcissistic personality disorder but failed. In the end, trying to decode all the traits of someone with narcissistic personality ‘disorder’ is just as ridiculous as trying to determine the personality traits of someone who has a homosexual ‘disorder’. For a long time, in psychiatry, they were different aspects of the same thing — auto-eroticism — which I will not go into in such a short response. But the ridiculousness of it all can be confirmed by anyone who takes the time to study the history of psychiatry. By the way, Freud de-pathologized both homosexuality and narcissism 100 years ago. You may want to ask why not only the general public but the psychiatrists themselves are just catching up to speed.

To conclude, none of the points I am making are scholarly or beyond the level of a general reader. On the contrary, this is a history and knowledge that anyone should have who is not sleepwalking. I have written about these problems on Medium elsewhere if such questions should ever become more than entertainment:

Narcissism is Not Bad … or Good

Who’s Afraid Of Narcissism?

Sincerely,

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