Is it possible to have AS and be a narcissist?

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starvingartist
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24 Dec 2009, 3:13 pm

AceOfSpades wrote:
It's possible to have AS and be narcissistic, but I don't think it's possible to be a sociopath with AS. Sociopathy and AS are both neurobiological, so that means they both have different nervous systems. AS makes you hypersensitive, and sociopathy makes you understimulated. They're both like complete opposites overall.


i agree with ace, i don't believe (because of what i know of the neurological bases of the two) that it is physically possible to be both an aspie and a sociopath.

but i do think narcisism is possible in an aspie. and i also believe it is often easy for NTs to mistake AS for narcisism.



Aoi
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24 Dec 2009, 5:27 pm

I've asked a psychiatrist friend about this question, and also gotten views from others in the mental health profession about it. Plus I've read some books.

Anyone can have narcissistic traits, but that is qualitatively different from having narcissistic personality disorder. It is, according to my psychiatrist friend, essentially impossible for someone on the autism spectrum to develop a narcissistic personality disorder, given the nature of the two disorders.

The same holds, in his and others' opinion, for antisocial personality disorder, the DSM diagnosis for what is often referred to as a sociopath. An Aspie might have some apparently sociopathic traits, but to have APD and AS is a practical impossibility.

I'm not sure if this view is widely help in the psychiatric or neurological community. Over 40 years of being an Aspie, being evaluated, analyzed, and treated by various mental health professionals, and knowing people with disorders like bipolar I, borderline personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, etc., makes me think that people with AS and ASDs can develop disorders like panic attacks, specific phobias, social phobias, etc., but not personality disorders. My view is of course my own, and nothing more.



alana
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24 Dec 2009, 5:42 pm

my theory is that NPD people lack empathy because of suppressed trauma, they can't get to the place where the empathy would be because they probably have trauma for which they got no empathy. AS people sometimes have trouble expressing empathy but I think we actually have a greater capacity for it than NT people. I like what someone said about the social skills that NPD, Borderline, and Sociopathic people use to manipulate. Personally this has been one of my biggest hangups in life, this almost insane (from outside standards) attachment to 'the truth' that NT people don't deem important, and that the PD people have even less of an attachment to...so if I even had those skills I could not put them into practice, because it would be lying. Quote from my screaming BPD ex-SIL: "you know how people say when they do something wrong, they feel bad? when I do something wrong, I never feel bad." And that is a woman with all her ducks in a row, very smooth chick, appearance and personality-wise, but an utter sociopath. I related to the folks about getting thrown off message boards. I don't think AS are narcissists, I think the truth matters so fiercely to us we are willing to lose friends over it, because it is that important, and we expect people to understand and to hold it that closely as well...which they don't. When I look at myself and the trouble I have had on message boards (which I no longer do, except this one now, because of my argumentativeness) it's because I have this scientific outlook & overview of humanity evolving and the fate of mankind hanging in the balance, etc, etc, etc. I.e. not a light-hearted outlook as far as what my 'personal opinion' (known to me as the be all and end all truth) might be.



Loborojo
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25 Dec 2009, 8:10 pm

How narcissic ar you if you take loads of pictures of yourself? Clothed and naked?


_________________
Your Aspie score: 152 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 48 of 200
You are very likely an Aspie


Maggiedoll
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25 Dec 2009, 8:46 pm

Aoi wrote:
The same holds, in his and others' opinion, for antisocial personality disorder, the DSM diagnosis for what is often referred to as a sociopath. An Aspie might have some apparently sociopathic traits, but to have APD and AS is a practical impossibility.

I'm not sure if this view is widely help in the psychiatric or neurological community. Over 40 years of being an Aspie, being evaluated, analyzed, and treated by various mental health professionals, and knowing people with disorders like bipolar I, borderline personality disorder, anorexia nervosa, etc., makes me think that people with AS and ASDs can develop disorders like panic attacks, specific phobias, social phobias, etc., but not personality disorders. My view is of course my own, and nothing more.

This is a bit of a technicality, but they really need to come up with an actual official version of sociopathy, because the majority of people with Antisocial Personality Disorder are not sociopaths. The main criteria for Antisocial Personality Disorder is simple criminality. Something like 80% of prison inmates meet the criteria for that-- only a tiny percentage of those are considered "sociopaths" but as far as I know, there's not much in the way of official criteria for what makes somebody a sociopath. I think perhaps someone can meet the criteria for the personality disorder without having the neurological differences seen in true sociopaths.

I'm not sure that it's necessarily so much that somebody with an ASD can't have a personality disorder.. ugh, I'm having trouble thinking of the wording here.. It's less likely and harder to identify. There are a lot of traits that run contrary, and others that distinguishing what could be explained by the autism diagnosis and what might be a feature of a personality disorder would be nearly impossible.
But my view is skewed by the fact that for so long I thought I probably had a personality disorder, and that there are so many things I thought was wrong with me that now it's so frustrating that the biggest reason it never occurred to anybody that I could have an ASD is that they all thought that autism meant mental retardation. So, um, off that tangent.. I examined everything from that angle so much first, that now it seems so silly to me. But I don't think that means it's never possible. (uh.. I hope that made sense.)



zer0netgain
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25 Dec 2009, 11:03 pm

I'd be surprised if there was not a correlation.

After all, people with AS really don't tend to understand anyone but themselves, and we spend a lot of time in self-reflection over most everything that happens to us.

Not "narcissistic" in the classical sense, but I'd expect the nature of AS to make us somewhat predisposed to coming across as such.



prism_tail_rainbows
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26 Dec 2009, 1:52 am

yeah, i believe i have some degree of NPD. the consistent self-reflection is an AS attribute, sure, but i'm selfish beyond words. oh, and mirrors, i stare in them constantly. if i don't like what i see, i go ballistic and have fits and try to fix myself up until i can look in the mirror and oggle myself.

there are times at which a switch goes off and i become selfish beyond logical reason--i'll become angry that my family isn't at my beck and call (how dare they hang out in the kitchen when i'm trying to eat my breakfast?); i'll be walking in nasty weather and throw a fit because nobody's pulling over and asking me if i need a ride (they're selfish); i'll get hysterically paranoid that the hot guys at the mall aren't looking at me (i must be horribly ugly).

the world revolves around me, basically. i don't even know how to feel guilty about it.



bdhkhsfgk
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26 Dec 2009, 6:01 am

Loborojo wrote:
How narcissic ar you if you take loads of pictures of yourself? Clothed and naked?


I have over 1500 pics of myself stored on several disks in case I lose them on my PC, so yes, odds are high that I'm a narcissist.