#turning off reblogs because I'm not actually a psychiatrist and this may be a bad take

[good-to-drive]

So I was just chatting with someone about Paul and whether he could be on the narcissistic spectrum, and it made me want to organize my thoughts in one place.

The first thing I want to get out of the way is that being on the narcissistic spectrum doesn't mean you're a bad person. I know a lot of people disagree with that, so let's just rip the band-aid off: narcissism is a type of disordered thinking people develop as a response to childhood trauma, it is not associated with any one set of actions, it does not affect your moral compass, and treating it like a synonym for "asshole" is honestly pretty fucked up.

"But my [relative/ex partner/ex friend/etc] was a narcissist and they WERE an asshole!!"

That sucks!! I'm sorry you went through that. My best friend is on the narcissistic spectrum and they're the best person I've ever met. And if you met them you'd insist they're not a narcissist because they're not an asshole, but they're diagnosed and everything.

Saying people with narcissism are selfish, arrogant, self centered, etc is like saying people with an anxious attachment style are abusive. There's a positive correlation there (at least compared to secure and avoidant attachment styles) but they are by no means synonymous.

Narcissism is most strongly characterized by extreme feelings of self doubt and self recrimination that the sufferer tries to combat through external validation. Not by being an asshole.

Paul lost his only stable parent at a young age and was left to be the sensible one for a younger sibling and a father who was most likely a gambling addict. That level of destabilization likely prevented him from developing a strong sense of self or self worth.

Often when people with narcissism look inward they only see "emptiness," because they were prevented from developing self knowledge as a child. You HAVE a personality and a moral compass, but you don't know that you have it. Sort of like how if you'd never touched your face before you might have trouble finding your nose with your eyes closed.

This might explain why Paul tends to come across more self conscious than self aware -- which is to say, his knowledge of himself seems to only extend to the degree that he is insecure about certain aspects of himself. It might also explain why Paul had a tendency to adopt the characteristics of whoever he felt safest with, like adopting many of Linda's interests and traits once they were married.

This lack of internal self-knowledge also leads to a dependency on external validation. It's common for people on the npd spectrum to feel that what makes you a good person is to be perceived as a good person. When that perception is threatened the immense sense of emptiness and insufficiency comes roaring back and the individual tends to spiral and feel very vulnerable and hated.

To my eye, Paul was often very vulnerable to criticism, especially public criticism. He thrived under the public eye because the constant positive attention gave a strong sense of himself through others' eyes. Which is to say, he could see his himself reflected in the public eye and he generally liked what he saw, and that gave him an identity and internal consistency he might never have had before. When that image was threatened he didn't have the same level of internal self worth to fall back on that the rest of us have, so it was extraordinarily painful.

I'd also say the intensity of his relationship with John may have indicated some narcissistic tendencies. John probably had bpd (I think most of us in the fandom are on the same page about that) and had a tendency to intensely idealize his chosen person, which for someone like Paul who lacks an internal sense of self worth and identity would be extremely comforting. Being "chosen" by John would provide him with a very powerful feeling of worthiness that he might not have felt before, or at least not very often, and that might partially explain the sheer intensity of their relationship.

(I'm not saying they didn't also genuinely love each other, just that our history and past traumas inform how we relate to people in the present and John's coping mechanism of intense idealization may have dovetailed nicely with Paul's coping mechanism of external validation.)

Anyways, one thing I want to make really clear is that I'm not a psychiatrist and have never taken a psychology class in my entire life, this is exclusively based on personal research. And I mostly read about violence, addiction, and systems theory so I'm no kind of expert on narcissism. These are just some parallels I've noticed when I've run up on narcissism in other texts. Only a psychiatrist could diagnose Paul.

(That being said, Dr Honda from Psychology in Seattle IS a psychiatrist and professor and he makes a strong case for Paul being a narcissist. He discusses it briefly in his video on John's psychology, which is also totally worth watching just for its own sake because it's extremely interesting).

Edited to add:

I just wanna walk back a little on the idea that John likely had BPD, because I've been reading about BPD vs CPTSD and there's a lot I never knew. But also I get the feeling this is the kind of discussion only a clinician could have an informed opinion about, and as a layman I just want to be clear that I'm not trying to endorse BPD as a diagnosis OR deny it, I'm truly not educated or experienced enough to weigh in on whether BPD is a problematic diagnosis.