walkitout | _The Narcissist Next Door_, Jeffrey Kluger (Reply)

Another library pick. I wound up skimming. I was not particularly impressed. Kluger is simultaneously talking about many different ways of thinking about narcissism (from having higher self esteem than he thinks you should have to taking more selfies than he thinks you should to something more recognizable as NPD in the DSM), which makes it sort of hard to pin down why his approach is so irritating. Narcissism as a character trait in the extremely loose and changeable way he treats it doesn't strike me as anything negative at all -- many, many, many therapies and activists have been arguing that we must love ourselves before we can meaningfully love anyone else, after all. And women as a group aren't helped by continuing to downplay their capacities and achievements.

Also, he apparently wrote the Apollo 13 book a while back, and he really wanted to make sure the reader knows all about that, which made me think things like, who is the narcissist here and projection.

I'll keep looking for a better book about NPD. This isn't what I was hoping for, which I would loosely characterize as _The Buddha and the Borderline_, but for NPD. I want something written by a person who identifies as having (had) the problem, who has an activist bent, and who is right up to date on the clinical approaches to treatment, possible outcomes, etc. I know, I know. So demanding!