A Quote by Jeffrey Kluger

Narcissism falls along the axis of what psychologists call personality disorders, one of a group that includes antisocial, dependent, histrionic, avoidant and borderline personalities. But by most measures, narcissism is one of the worst, if only because the narcissists themselves are so clueless.

Jeffrey Kluger

Quote Topics

Along Antisocial Axis Because Borderline Call Clueless Dependent Falls Group Histrionic Measures Most Narcissism Only Personalities Personality Personality Disorder Personality Disorders Psychologists Themselves Worst

Quote Author

Jeffrey Kluger
American - Writer
Born: 1954

Narcissism is actually a clever guise adopted to mask its exact opposite, which is a deep well of self-loathing, a well of low self-esteem, rather than high self-esteem. This helps explain why narcissists are so sensitive to criticism, why narcissists tend to break into outrage if they're criticized, because their self-esteem is actually much more brittle than it seems, and once they're challenged, that mask falls apart.

Jeffrey Kluger

Children will, in my dream, be taught that laziness and narcissism are at the very root of human evil, and why this is so. . . . They will come to know that the natural tendency of the individual in a group is to forfeit his or her ethical judgment to the leader, and that this tendency should be resisted. And they will finally see it as each individual's responsibility to continually examine himself or herself for laziness and narcissism and then to purify themselves accordingly.

M. Scott Peck

Narcissism as a virtue is very futuristic. Narcissism as a quality is where I think things are heading.

Nicolas Winding Refn

There's a thin line between narcissism, even if it's a healthy narcissism, and entertainment.

Richard Lewis

Politicians generally act as if there is no cost to reconnecting with voters by building new New Deals. But the whole exercise of writing law out of New Deal nostalgia is a form of national narcissism. Call it New Deal narcissism.

Amity Shlaes

The main condition for the achievement of love is the overcoming of one's narcissism. The narcissistic orientation is one in which one experiences as real only that which exists within oneself, while the phenomena in the outside world have no reality in themselves, but are experienced only from the viewpoint of their being useful or dangerous to one. The opposite pole to narcissism is objectivity; it is the faculty to see other people and things as they are, objectively, and to be able to separate this objective picture from a picture which is formed by one's desires and fears.

Erich Fromm

I no longer see Descartes' statement as arbitrary. It is representative of our culture's narcissism. This narcissism leads to a disturbing disrespect for direct experience and a negation of the body.

Derrick Jensen

I think that artists don't make art - the art makes itself through us. I'm not the doer. I'm just along for the ride. Acting really reminds me of that because I don't write the words; I don't make the decisions. That's the director. Narcissism is a tragic condition. It must be so miserable to live trapped in a reflection that only includes the smallest version of our identities. Our true identities should have no bounds and no limits.

Ezra Miller

No one can separate themselves from one's social group and remain healthy, because the very structure of personality is dependent on the community.

Rollo May

Narcissism and Christianity have little in common, yet the Romantic paradigm of artistic creativity, particularly in light of subsequent Freudian ideas, has tended to foster its share of narcissism. It was the tragic fate of Narcissus that he was so preoccupied with self that he could not appreciate God, nature, or the other.

John Walford

I can never tell what I'm doing when I'm in the middle of publication because I have no confidence. I have terrible self-esteem, along with boundless narcissism.

Anne Lamott

The biographies of the great men see their excesses as signs of their greatness. But Jean Rhys, in her biography, is read as borderline; Anaïs Nin is borderline; Djuna is borderline; etc. etc. Borderline personality disorder being an overwhelmingly gendered diagnosis. I write in Heroines: “The charges of borderline personality disorder are the same charges against girls writing literature, I realize - too emotional, too impulsive, no boundaries."

Kate Zambreno

The silent killer of all great men and women of achievement - particularly men, I don't know why, maybe it's the testosterone - I think it's narcissism. Even more than hubris. And for women, too. Narcissism is the killer.

James Woods

Narcissism, like the other personality disorders, is a condition that's known as ego-syntonic. In other words, the paranoid person really does believe that people are after him, and the narcissist really does believe that he or she is better than or more entitled than other people, and truly doesn't see why that's not the case.

Jeffrey Kluger

There's like a little bit of a narcissism - I think there's more than a little bit of narcissism about it, but it's just that you can become so anxious and self-obsessive about whether this thing that I'm writing is good; is this joke that I'm making good?