Question about that possibility of NPD with empathy

In DSM-5-TR, having five out of nine symptoms is enough for a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. If you show five symptoms excluding empathy, it still suggests the disorder. Am I correct?

Ore688 wrote:In DSM-5-TR, having five out of nine symptoms is enough for a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. If you show five symptoms excluding empathy, it still suggests the disorder. Am I correct?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how the symptoms are diagnosed. All of the personality disorder traits are normal human traits as well. When they are talking personality disorders they are inflexible, predictable, and pathological as in they cause a great deal of problems before they would be considered diagnosable.

Generally speaking narcissists will lack empathy, everyone is capable of some kind of empathy but the higher you climb the narcissistic traits the less and less empathy you will probably see and NPD is by definition at the extreme end of the scale. So very little empathy, very little concern or care for the well being of others. For instance a close coworker someone a narcissist knows well dies they may say something inappropriate because they don’t really get it that other people will be hurt but inside they are thinking about how they can move into their spot and benefit from it personally, they wouldn’t be beside themselves with grief

Grayskull wrote:

Ore688 wrote:In DSM-5-TR, having five out of nine symptoms is enough for a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. If you show five symptoms excluding empathy, it still suggests the disorder. Am I correct?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how the symptoms are diagnosed. All of the personality disorder traits are normal human traits as well. When they are talking personality disorders they are inflexible, predictable, and pathological as in they cause a great deal of problems before they would be considered diagnosable.

Generally speaking narcissists will lack empathy, everyone is capable of some kind of empathy but the higher you climb the narcissistic traits the less and less empathy you will probably see and NPD is by definition at the extreme end of the scale. So very little empathy, very little concern or care for the well being of others. For instance a close coworker someone a narcissist knows well dies they may say something inappropriate because they don’t really get it that other people will be hurt but inside they are thinking about how they can move into their spot and benefit from it personally, they wouldn’t be beside themselves with grief

The old DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder is confusing, because in the old diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you only need 5 out of 9 diagnostic criteria to be diagnosed with Personality Disorder, and my thought you can still have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and still have empathy as long you have at least 5 symptoms that meet tht diagnostic criteria.

The new diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder makes more sense and is more complex than just simply 5 out of 9 symptoms for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Ore688 wrote:

Grayskull wrote:

Ore688 wrote:In DSM-5-TR, having five out of nine symptoms is enough for a narcissistic personality disorder diagnosis. If you show five symptoms excluding empathy, it still suggests the disorder. Am I correct?

There is a lot of misunderstanding about how the symptoms are diagnosed. All of the personality disorder traits are normal human traits as well. When they are talking personality disorders they are inflexible, predictable, and pathological as in they cause a great deal of problems before they would be considered diagnosable.

Generally speaking narcissists will lack empathy, everyone is capable of some kind of empathy but the higher you climb the narcissistic traits the less and less empathy you will probably see and NPD is by definition at the extreme end of the scale. So very little empathy, very little concern or care for the well being of others. For instance a close coworker someone a narcissist knows well dies they may say something inappropriate because they don’t really get it that other people will be hurt but inside they are thinking about how they can move into their spot and benefit from it personally, they wouldn’t be beside themselves with grief

The old DSM-5 diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder is confusing, because in the old diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you only need 5 out of 9 diagnostic criteria to be diagnosed with Personality Disorder, and my thought you can still have Narcissistic Personality Disorder and still have empathy as long you have at least 5 symptoms that meet tht diagnostic criteria.

The new diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder makes more sense and is more complex than just simply 5 out of 9 symptoms for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Yeah it’s different now but like I say the 5 symptoms that they required before would have to be causing all sorts of pretty sig dysfunction before they would be considered clinical symptoms. From my experience they don’t really diagnose like that anyway they pretty much look for core issues. There are things that are present in all personality disorders they look for first, things like black and white thinking, thinking in extremes and being unable to see or comprehend nuances or gray area. Not having “whole object relations”. Which is just the ability to understand that just because you’re mad at someone doesn’t mean they are evil they can still be good and even care about you while still arguing with you.

People with a PD have a very difficult time understanding this. Once you establish that a personality disorder is even present they look for what drives the behaviors as they can look the same. If it’s centered around a fear of abandonment they might look at something like BPD or if it’s centered around needing to be the center of attention and adored by your friends while being completely unable to accept criticism then perhaps it’s NPD but usually they just give a diag of PD nos meaning not otherwise specified

That actually makes sense.