Greek Mythology: Are You A Narcissus?

After watching the podcast that featured a discussion with Jean Twenge, a researcher and author, I learned that our society is in the midst of a full-blown narcissism epidemic. Twenge mentions that famous individuals (Donald Trump, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian) represent narcissism and she found that when looking at baby boomers in the 60’s in comparison to millennials, millennials are more likely to say that they think they are above average. Twenge states that the feature that the discussion always comes back to is that we are a more individualistic culture now, compared to the 50’s. Society is more focused on self and less focused on social rules.

The Greeks believed in eight evil thoughts that affected one’s morality. During the episode of “The Cyclops” in epic The Odyssey, some of these thoughts are displayed through Odysseus as he takes the eye of the cyclops and steals the cyclops’ farm animals. Odysseus displays Hyperephania (narcissism) and Kenodoxia (boasting) through his actions in this episode. Boasting is not bad in moderation, however, too much boastfulness can cause someone to be unmindful of others and become completely full of themselves, which can lead to narcissism. Being narcissistic can cause someone to stop paying attention to the well being of others, and make them oblivious to the world around them.

Is narcissism a growing epidemic in America? This question was featured in an article on the Psychology Today website (Baskin, S.). The article claims that narcissism in America is growing as fast as obesity and is quickly becoming an epidemic. Which begs the question, should we as a society be worried about narcissism? For those of us not familiar with Narcissistic Personality Disorder it is defined by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV as a pervasive disorder characterized by self-centeredness, lack of empathy, and an exaggerated sense of self-importance. As with other personality disorders, it becomes a problem when these traits become a persistent pattern of behavior that negatively impacts different life

What is narcissism? There is no specific definition for it. In psychology, narcissism is a negative and bad character trait. Narcissists have an excessive pride and they obsess with self. In other words, they think they are better than others and only care about themselves. In fact, being confident can also be accused as narcissism. However, narcissism is more than self confidence. Nowadays, Generation Y is being claimed as narcissists and there are so many reason that the critics try to list it out to prove their claim. In my opinion, Generation Y is just adapt to the environment they are living right now. Accusing Millennials as narcissist is not accurate.

“Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.” says the writer C.S lewis. Indeed this is evident in Sophocles’ Oedipus The King. The rather disturbing events that takes place during the play. The pride of Oedipus, the tragic hero of the play, sets off a chain reaction of events that could have been avoided if Oedipus kept his pride in check. However, he can not and his ego inflates to the point his persona can only be described as a mental disorder. Through analyzing Oedipus’ behaviour and his interactions with the other characters in the play, it can be concluded that he suffers from Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a mental disorder in which people have an inflated sense of their own importance and a deep need for admiration. Narcissistic Personality Disorder, also known as narcissism, dates back to ancient Greece. The term Narcissism comes from an old Greek myth of a young hunter named Narcissus. He was from the territory of Thespiae in Boeotia who was renowned for his beauty. He was the son of a river god named Cephissus and a nymph named Liriope. He was exceptionally proud, in that he disdained those who loved him. One day Narcissus was walking in the woods when Echo, an Oread, or mountain nymph, saw him, fell deeply in love, and followed him. Narcissus sensed he was being followed and shouted “Who’s there?”. Echo

Narcissists are observed to be having high self esteem though narcissism is not the same thing as self-esteem, this is seen in the attitude behind the self-esteem. Normal people with high self-esteem are seen

The Greek myth that tells the morale tale of narcissism follows Narcissus, a hunter who was known for his beauty, as he earns the affection of many admirers but is unable to love one more than he loves himself. One of his rejected lovers prayed to Nemesis, the goddess of vengeance, to punish Narcissus for his self-absorbed nature. Narcissus came across his reflection in a pond and fell in love with himself, and was cursed to starve to death as he watched his reflection (Greek mythology). Like the Greek character Narcissus, people who are narcissistic possess an inflated self-image and crave attention and admiration to keep their self-esteem high. The self-esteem of narcissists is constantly under great pressure, making it important for

The biggest influence of personality are childhood experiences and the way in which parents choose to raise their kids. The shift in parenting styles contributes to the growing levels of narcissistic attitudes presented in the youngest generation. Because of the shift in values, the media evolved to highlight vain celebrities instead of focusing on the successes of brilliant, hard-working people. Social media takes away the emotional involvement in relationships and replaces those feelings with shallow gratification that causes people to grow an unhealthy attachment to the social network. Nothing can replace the convenience of social media, but if society changes the way it views online relationships then the focus will shift from having online relationships to improving interpersonal communication. Narcissism is a problem that can be fixed with healthy role-models and a positive, unselfish outlook that starts with how parents treat their children’s successes and

The construct of narcissism finds its origins in ancient Greece and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, with the proud and vain figure of Narcissus, cursed by the goddess, Nemesis, to fall in love with his own reflection. However, conceptualizations of pathological narcissism did not became a part of psychological theory until the late nineteenth century with Freud’s eminent essay: On Narcissism (Ronningstam, 2005). As Freud theorized on narcissism and, ironically, experimented with cocaine, the formal diagnosis of addiction was precipitously incorporated into the medical literature in response to increasing uncontrolled narcotic use and growing public health concern (Markel, 2012). Perhaps predictably, theorizing on the possible association between narcissism and addiction, particularly in the psychoanalytic tradition, has been addressed by theorists since. The term narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) was first introduced by Heinz Kohut in 1968, and saw inclusion in formal diagnostic literature in 1980 as a part of the significant revisions to personality disorders in the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM; American Psychiatric Association, 1980).

Here’s a question, how often do you check your social media profile’s notification? Based on a research conducted, it is revealed that, Facebook users around the world logged into their account approximately 42,000 years of human time each day (Gutierrez, 2013). An article written by The New York Times stated that the current generations are becoming narcissistic and it is believed that social media are among the plausible factors that promotes it (Quenqua, 2013). However, how true can this statement be? Many researches have proven that social media is not the main cause of narcissism. It has been demonstrated via the real role of social media, the co-relation between social pressure and narcissism, the failure to conclude acceptance of

Narcissus first shows his shallowness when he falls in love with the supposed nymph who turns out to be his own reflection. He falls in love with it as it is -as the text states “His surprise and joy at the sight of what he felt sure must be the most beautiful creature on earth, was evidently shared by the nymph of the pool, who gazed back at him. When Narcissus smiled at her, her red lips also parted in a smile. He stretched out his arms towards her, and her arms were stretched to him. Almost trembling in his delight, he slowly stooped to kiss her.” This is shallow as he tries to kiss the first face he sees & thinks is the most beautiful. Another time Narcissus shows his shallowness is when he begs the reflection to love him. The story describes this moment as Narcissus’ longing of unsatisfied love. A final time Narcissus is shallow is when he let the beauty affect him by his mourning for the hopeless love & he actually died from his shallowness. In the final analysis, Naricissus’ shallowness disseminates that the author believes that you shouldn’t judge a person by how they look & you should be careful of

The article I chose for this critique was “Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites” written by Laura E. Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell from the University of Georgia. This article is based on an experiment that was taken place to prove whether others could perceive a narcissistic individual as a narcissist through observing their social media sites. This experiment was a correlational type of study. The experimenters’ goal was to analyze whether there was any correlation or connection between the web page owner being a narcissist and the type of content they had on their profile.

But wait a moment. According to collective data from different institutes, young adults in the U.S. are actually far more straight-laced than they were 20 years ago. General shenanigans such as alcohol and drug use, teen pregnancy, violence, high school drop out rates have deep dived over the past 20 years. Moreover, research on narcissism shows that there is no increase in narcissism in college students over the last few decades. In contrast, “age changes are more evident compared to generational changes in narcissism”. This leads to the conclusion that every generation is Generation Me, as every generation of youth is more narcissistic than their

Narcissism is often perceived as any other disorder, employing too much of something; committing excessive amount of time on the internet. However, narcissism disorder is not merely a problem of unmoderated usage, rather it’s the illusion of perceiving reality in false lens architected by vanity and superficial relationships over social media. In Dr. L.D Rosen publication titled Is Facebook creating iDisorders? The link between clinical symptoms of psychiatric disorders and technology use, attitudes and anxiety, Rosen stated “younger generations… born in the 1990s…show a strong urge to report their activities and believe that their social media audience cares about them, two symptoms central to the diagnostic criteria of narcissistic personality disorder” (Rosen 1244). Rosen statement offers a new insight to the effects of extreme social media behaviors on narcissism. Through her work as a social psychologist, Rosen has discovered surprising new information about social disorder. Instead of seeing technology itself as the problem, Rosen thinks, the problem is located "in the relationship between what takes place on screen and off in someone’s ability to shift frames or genres (Rosen 1243)." Rosen