Pathologically Genuine, Post III: Autism and Narcissism
The last thing I ever felt was that the world was in orbit around me. I felt more like Pluto after it lost its status as a planet.
I have narcissistic tendencies. I hate that. I hate it more than I hated a two week power outage following Hurricane Ike during a sweltering Houston summer. Having no electric power, or any other power during that time, did bring out self-centeredness in me. I wanted my power back before any of the other eight million people in Houston.
It turns out that there is quite a bit written about the link between narcissism and autism. People with autism spectrum disorder, without intellectual disabilities, can often be perceived or present to clinicians as narcissistic, despite not having any sense of grandiosity1. There is also a distinction between narcissism and autism. Narcissistic individuals may disregard other people to protect their self-image. An autistic person who demonstrates similar behavior is not seeking that. Their behavior often results from challenges in communication and they don’t understand how their actions affect another person2. In other words, I am as clueless about understanding how other people react to me as a bat would be in a world with no echoes.
I tend to think I am a genuinely good, nonjudgmental, and caring person. I am innately a rule follower with an intense sense of fairness. And I am autistic empath that really cares deeply for people, especially students. So, it was hard for me to accept that I can appear narcissistic.
I learned that I could seem narcissistic from a friend who was willing to have a candid and gentle conversation with me. My wife had been directly or indirectly telling me this for years, but marriage has a capability of causing spouses to speak different languages to each other without a Google translator. This type of miscommunication is not limited to me or to spouses. The entire consulting industry has thrived partly because organizations are so incapable of listening to, and really hearing, their own employees.
And it is difficult to accept that I am narcissistic given there was so much emotional pain and self-doubt, particularly, in my teens and twenties. I did not fit in and did not know how to fit in. The last thing I ever felt was that the world was in orbit around me. I felt more like Pluto after it lost its status as a planet.
I can see narcissistic traits, though. For example, I really worry about fading into irrelevance now that I am semi-retired. One reason I worry about that is because I know that when I was a hard charging assistant professor at Syracuse University, I didn’t attach much relevance to some senior faculty members who had limited research programs and less energy than me. I am that senior faculty member now even though I still have a ton of energy.
I also know that I tend to go on and on about something I am interested in without ever thinking about engaging the other parties in the conversation. I always feel like I am having a wonderful time (so I assume everybody else must feel that way). Yet, I have learned that other people in those conversations would prefer that I shut-up and show more interest in them. Sometimes I can sense that I am not connecting, but my instinct when that happens is to double down on what is a proverbial losing hand and keep talking. One would think, given that I really am an empath, that I would want conversations that were two-, three- or multiple- way. I think I do. But I don’t always act that way. This may be one reason I look down at life’s gaming table and see very few of the most valuable chips- close friendships.
Another reason that it is so hard for me to accept that I am a narcissist, is that the most difficult challenges of my administrative career were dealing with people who clearly were affected by narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). Dealing with them made the rest of academe seem so incredibly easy. I tried to respond in a compassionate way to every accusation, every assassination of my character, every threat of lawsuits or vailed threats of personal attacks, and every response that tried to shed doubt on things that were demonstrably shown by evidence. I had to live in a world with alternative facts well before that term became popular. I didn’t deal with this all that well. Anxiety and insomnia found a crack in my armor and took over my brain.
I often feel that I don’t understand the world. I had empathy for Alice when she entered the world on other side of the Looking Glass. Dealing with the two faculty members with NPD put me into a universe that made Alice’s Wonderland seem blasé.
So, now you know that I am autistic and that I hate loud noises, food with the texture of pudding, and wearing shirts with buttons or any tight clothing. I am obsessed with tickling my face and have dogs who love me anyway. You also know that I live in my own umwelt which can appear coated with the paint of self-centered narcissism. And, you know that I wish I had the power of a turtle where I could retreat into myself to rest in “a small dome of safe, starless heaven”3. There is more to tell in the following chapters about other traits and their role in the journey of my academic career.
References
1Broglia G, Nisticò V, Di Paolo B, Faggioli R, Bertani A, Gambini O, Demartini B. 2024. Traits of narcissistic vulnerability in adults with autism spectrum disorders without intellectual disabilities. Autism Res 17(1):138-147. doi: 10.1002/aur.3065. Epub 2023 Nov 20.PMID: 37983956
2Andreasen, H. (reviewer) 2022. Narcissism and Autism. Songbird. https://www.songbirdcare.com/articles/narcissism-and-autism
3Emerson, Claudia. 2005. Late Wife: Poems (Southern Messenger Poets), Louisiana State University Press.
Really good, Jim. Thank you.