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20 - Empathy Deficits in the Development and Maintenance of Narcissistic Personality Disorder

from Part V - Perspectives on Borderline and Narcissistic Personality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2025

By
Thomas Schramme
Edited by
Konrad Banicki  and
Peter Zachar
Konrad Banicki
Affiliation:
Jagiellonian University, Krakow
Peter Zachar
Affiliation:
Auburn University, Montgomery
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Summary

I scrutinize the common idea that Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) involves empathy deficits. I argue that empathy is foremost an epistemic mechanism, leading to different forms and levels of interpersonal understanding. Interactive difficulties can result in profound interpersonal misunderstanding, which leaves some people in persistent doubt about other people’s perspectives and about their own social standing. Such status blindness, as I will call it, can explain some specific symptoms of NPD. I introduce relevant conceptual distinctions, devise a complex map of empathy that describes four types and four features, and apply the map to NPD. Finally, I specifically discuss empathy deficits in being the target of the empathy of others.

Keywords

narcissismnarcissistic personality disorderempathyempathic concernfellow-feelinginterpersonal understandingDSM-5grandiosityself-esteemstatus blindness

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Type
Chapter
Information
Conceptualizing Personality Disorder
Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychological Science, and Psychiatry
 , pp. 352 - 372
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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