It's All About Me: But Is Narcissism A Disorder?

It seems you need only flip through a few channels of reality television to feel there's a lot of narcissism in our culture these days.

As the Jersey Shore's "Snooki" recently told Barbara Walters, "I think I'm fascinating."

But the extent to which Snooki and her cast mates can be diagnosed as clinically narcissistic is debatable.

The American Psychiatric Association recently announced it's considering lifting narcissistic personality disorder — along with four other personality disorders — from its highly influential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

So what might the change mean for our "Culture of Me"?

A Little More About Me

For starters, in most cases there's a difference between a clinical narcissist and one you see on TV, psychologist Keith Campbell tells NPR's Audie Cornish.

"The thing that makes it clinical is when you go to the extreme where it's pervasive, where it affects all aspects of your life," says Campbell, who heads the psychology department at the University of Georgia and co-authored a book, The Narcissism Epidemic.

If you're a clinical narcissist, he says, there's real pathology associated with it.

"You can't help yourself but try to get attention or seek admiration," Campbell says. "It interferes with your life. ... [I]t distorts your decision-making. It destroys your relationships."

Under the current DSM, a person with those traits would be diagnosed with a "narcissistic personality disorder."

But the diagnosis may be dropped for the manual's 2013 edition, Campbell says, essentially because it's a manifestation of normal personality.

So, he says, the same patient would be told he or she has "a combination of traits that maybe lie on a continuum or a spectrum. You have high levels of traits that are associated with narcissism."

A New Normal?

But the way narcissism is treated — in the majority of cases, with therapy — wouldn't change much.

"There's no treatment for extreme narcissism that's somehow different than moderate narcissism," Campbell says.

And while things won't change much for those on the couch, he says, the way we talk about narcissism in culture might.

"When this happened I went and looked at Twitter just to see what people were saying about it," Campbell says.  "The most common response was, 'It must be so normal now, it's no longer a disorder.'"

And the second-most?

"'Gee, I guess I'm OK, then'," Campbell says. "People see there's narcissism everywhere, and they're just shocked … that they're considering getting rid of it. It's such a perfect term for so much of what we see in society."

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Emanuel to Testify in Chicago Residency Hearing

CHICAGO -- Rahm Emanuel has talked with President Barack Obama and other powerful leaders about some of the most serious questions of the day.

Now, in his bid to be Chicago mayor, he will have to sit in a room in the bowels of a government building and answer questions from lawyers and city residents who don't want him to run.

The stakes couldn't be higher for Emanuel, who quit one of the most powerful jobs in the nation as Obama's chief of staff, for the chance to replace powerful Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

The former Chicago congressman gets to defend himself Tuesday when he is expected to take the stand at what could be a raucous hearing about whether he remained a Chicago resident while he worked in Washington and is eligible to run for mayor.

He faces hours of questioning from lawyers and some of the more than two dozen people without lawyers who challenged his mayoral bid, including one man on Monday who claimed the hearing officer in the case should be arrested for not subpoenaing certain witnesses.

Paul Green, a political scientist at Roosevelt University, said the hearing on Emanuel's residency has the potential for "a lot of lunacy."

"It very easily could become a kangaroo court," Green said.

Emanuel is fighting to stay on the Feb. 22 ballot in a crowded race to replace Daley, who isn't seeking a seventh term.

Opponents argue Emanuel isn't eligible to be mayor because he lived in Washington for nearly two years before coming back to Chicago to run for mayor in October.

He's expected to be the first person to testify when the hearing officer for the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners begins listening to evidence, and those who object to his name being on the ballot will get to question him personally.

They also will get to question the couple who began renting Emanuel's Chicago home when he moved to Washington.

It was obvious during a set-up hearing Monday that not everybody is well-versed on the finer points of the law -- starting with one objector who couldn't understand why he wouldn't be allowed to subpoena journalists who have covered the issue to testify about what they know.

Emanuel and his lawyers claim he didn't forfeit his residency when he left Chicago. Among other things, the lawyers contend the Emanuel family continued to keep important personal items at their home, including his wife's wedding dress, the clothes his children wore home from the hospital after they were born and their school report cards. They have stressed he always intended to return.

"I own a home here in the city of Chicago," Emanuel told reporters during a campaign stop. "My car is licensed here in the city of Chicago. I pay property taxes here in the city of Chicago. I vote in the city of Chicago."

But attorney Burt Odelson said Emanuel did take some steps to give up his residency. For example, Odelson said Emanuel initially declared himself on tax forms to be a part-time resident of Chicago, and only changed that wording when people filed objections to his mayoral bid.

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