[ButterWashed]

"Unfortunately, there is no cure for narcissism"

I can't imagine this will ever change. How do you encourage someone who seeks the admiration of others at all costs to simply stop? Without a shred of evidence, I'm sure the increased use of social media is at least partially to blame.

[apostacy]

I am really confused about this. It does not make sense to me.

Do you mean that it is difficult to cure? Because that is not the same thing as incurable.

If people can be socialized into it, why can't they be socialized out of it?

15% of the population is incurably emotionally broken? And most of them were made, not born, because they spent too much time on Instagram, and now they are part of the 15% of the population that is cursed to a life of narcissism, no matter how much effort is put into curing them?

Isn't it possible that you can just mature and become less solipsistic? Aren't these behaviors situational? What if you were put in an environment where someone got negative feedback for narcissistic behavior?

There must be something I am missing, because those claims do not seem realistic.

[zozbot234]

Of course it's possible to mature, but only if people want to. People who actively want to become less self-centered are not narcissists, by definition.

[apostacy]

So it is possible to cure narcissism, if only the narcissist wants to be cured?

That is a very far cry from being described as 'incurable', which I have seen used a lot.

Again, I am not saying that narcissism doesn't exist, but the language that is being used to describe it is unhelpful.

A lot of people go through phases in their teens or 20s that could be described as narcissistic, and then they develop out of it.

[Melatonic]

On the other hand labelling these people in some completely "other" group probably is not helpful either - what about those who are on the border? What about those who might display what appears to be very narcissistic qualities but only in very specific niches?

[robonerd]

> On the other hand labelling these people in some completely "other" group probably is not helpful either

I'm inclined to agree. Recognizing and accounting for harmful traits in others is important, but some of the rhetoric in this discussion borders dangerously close to dehumanization.