subject: Hear How Narcissistic Behavior Has to do with the Art of Conversation [print this page] Hear How Narcissistic Behavior Has to do with the Art of Conversation
Most humans are narcissistic.
I'm not using that word in the clinical diagnosistic way, nor in the conventional sense of egoistic or conceited. What I mean is that most persons are almost exclusively focused upon themselves, their peculiar interests and their own emotional needs for attention. A certain amount of preoccupation with oneself is typical and healthy; it becomes a problem when you're not truly interested in other folks or ideas and exclusively want to talk about yourself.
Here's a fairly common experience for me: I'm at a party or gathering, speaking to a man or woman I've just met, or an acquaintance I haven't spoken to in a long while. I'm asking questions, inquiring about the person's history or catching up since we last met. Fifteen, twenty minutes run by ... we're still focused on the other person. I get the feeling that I could be anyone; I'm just a receptacle, a mirror or an audience. I afford needed attention to the other individual; he or she has no interest in getting to know the otherindividual who's listening.
As a therapist (by temperament as well as profession), I'm a first-rate listener and accomplished at drawing people out. As a student of human nature, I'm authentically curious and, for the most part, fascinated by the diversity of human beings I meet. Sometimes I feel isolated, though. I used to be surprised and disappointed that the person I'd just met didn't want to get to know me. Now I look for a lot less. Lack of genuine interest in others -- that's what I mean when I say I find most humans to be narcissistic.
Even with intimate friends, conversation tends to mean waiting your turn to initiate your own narrative, waiting for the opening or the conversational trigger that will make the passage over to you seem more or less natural. With some very narcissistic people, the transition seems forced -- they'll use any reason to change the subject. It can even seem funny if you look at it from the right point of view, although painful when you recognize the reasons for that kind of behavior.
For these individuals, their families were so inadequate and the accustomed parental attention so wanting that there's an ravenous need to have other folks listen and make them feel important. In this way, narcissistic needs go along with many other psychological problems.
In my practice, I naturally expect my clients to be intent upon their own needs. Of course they are! After all, they're paying me to listen and my individual emotional needs have no place in our relationship. In my own therapy I found it very satisfying to be able to go on about myself as much as I wanted without feeling obligated to ask questions back. My clients are ordinarily needy and narcissistic and so was I.
What I yearn for, and find scarce, is the type of conversation where we're not talking about me or you but about an idea or current event, maybe a first-rate book one of us has read. I enjoy the back-and-forth of discussion, one person contributing to or disputing what someone else has just said. I long to feel I've learned something, or that in the conversational ebb and flow, we've both arrived at a new understanding.
I'm an everyday narcissistic, too -- now and again, I want to tell my stories -- but for the most part, I know all my own stories and they don't interest me. I want to hear your stories, too -- but after we've caught up, let's exchange views on something larger than either one of us.
