You seem to hold a rather naïve view of life. Which is probably why it seems everything always comes down to powerplays for you. Thoughts? — Tom Storm

A sigh.

Having worked closely with people who live 'dysfunctional' and distressed lives - who suicide and overdose and slash themselves with broken glass and tend to be dead by 40 - I see little evidence of strategizing and play acting.

Duh. Not everyone who gets branded as a narcissist is one.

Not everyone who gets branded as a narcissist is one. — baker

Of course not. Not everyone branded a genius is one, etc...

So. I maintain that a certain American businessman/politician who sometimes gets branded as a narcissist, is not a narcissist, but that he only plays one.

Maybe. How would we know? It certainly wouldn't be a surprise, or out of character, if he was one. It seems to boil down to whether we think T's a not very bright, deeply flawed man or a dynamic master manipulator. For me it doesn't much matter either way.

We can be rational, but so often are not. Why is that? Why narcissism? Why neuroticism? Free floating aggression? Etc.???

Our primate ancestors bequeathed to us both the physically bound emotions (the limbic system) and the capacity to think--about the physical, the abstract, the past, the future... The emotions are not reasonable, but they motivate reasoning. Abstract intellect is cool and dry, but it can cause pleasure when we realize we have solved the problem.

Of the two, the emotions usually have the upper hand. No thought is as powerful as a murderous rage (once ignited) or the prospect of sexual ecstasy (once erected). As the saying goes, a stiff dick has no morals and takes unreasonable risks. Hey, I've been there!

Later, rational reflection can parse the murderous rage, the ecstatic tryst; if rationality is good enough it will try very hard to make sure that those situations resulting in, for instance, murderous rage, are avoided.

Our primate ancestors bequeathed to us both the physically bound emotions (the limbic system) and the capacity to think--about the physical, the abstract, the past, the future... The emotions are not reasonable, but they motivate reasoning. Of the two, the emotions usually have the upper hand. — Bitter Crank

“… we humans have long believed that rationality makes us special in the animal kingdom. This origin myth reflects one of the most cherished narratives in Western thought, that the human mind is a battlefield where cognition and emotion struggle for control of behavior. Even the adjective we use to describe our-selves as insensitive or stupid in the heat of the moment — “thoughtless” — connotes a lack of cognitive control, of failing to channel our inner Mr. Spock. This origin myth is so strongly held that scientists even created a model of the brain based on it. The model begins with ancient subcortical circuits for basic survival, which we allegedly inherited from reptiles. Sitting atop those circuits is an alleged emotion system, known as the “limbic system, ” that we supposedly inherited from early mammals. And wrapped around the so-called limbic system, like icing on an already-baked cake, is our allegedly rational and uniquely human cortex. This illusory arrangement of layers, which is sometimes called the “triune brain, ” remains one of the most successful misconceptions in human biology. Carl Sagan popularized it in The Dragons of Eden, his bestselling (some would say largely fictional) account of how human intelligence evolved. Daniel Goleman employed it in his best-seller Emotional Intelligence. Nevertheless, humans don't have an animal brain gift-wrapped in cognition, as any expert in brain evolution knows. “Mapping emotion onto just the middle part of the brain, and reason and logic onto the cortex, is just plain silly, ” says neuroscientist Barbara L. Finlay, editor of the journal Behavior and Brain Sciences. “All brain divisions are present in all vertebrates. ” So how do brains evolve? They reorganize as they expand, like companies do, to keep themselves efficient and nimble.”

“ Antonio Damasio, in his bestseller Descartes’ Error, observes that a mind requires passion (what we would call affect) for wisdom. He documents that people with damage to their interoceptive network, particularly in one key body-budgeting region, have impaired decision-making. Robbed of the ca­pacity to generate interoceptive predictions, Damasio’s patients were rud­derless. Our new knowledge of brain anatomy now compels us to go one step further. Affect is not just necessary for wisdom; it’s also irrevocably wo­ven into the fabric of every decision.”

(Lisa Barrett, How Emotions are Made)

Good quotes.

“All brain divisions are present in all vertebrates. ” — Joshs

"Affect is not just necessary for wisdom; it’s also irrevocably wo­ven into the fabric of every decision.” — Joshs

Absolutely. When we talk about our brains we divide it up as if it were a computer with very discrete parts--memory chips, logic unit, emotional fire box, etc. That's one of the many problems of brain as computer. Emotion may cloud thinking, but without emotion, we probably wouldn't think a whole lot. People burn the midnight oil because they WANT to succeed (at whatever it is they are doing).

A seemingly irrelevant anecdote: a Lyft driver told me about a Thai restaurant where he had a cooked salmon head. He apparently liked it--cooked, seasoned, meaty. This included the salmon brain which he described as about the size of a large grape. I do not have a salmon brain handy to look at, but it seems reasonable that a fish with a complex life cycle might well need a good sized brain to succeed.

We can be rational, but so often are not. — Bitter Crank

Says who? The Holy Inquisition?

Why narcissism? Why neuroticism? Free floating aggression? Etc.???

Because people need labels and the justifications that come with them. You can't just burn someone at the stakes; instead, you need to make it look justified, such as by saying, "She's a witch!"

Since the Holy Inquisition isn't particularly en vogue anymore, but people still have a need to scapegoat, to be intolerant, to lash out, to absolve themselves of the responsibility for how they treat others, they've invented labels that enable them to go on in those old ways.

The primary function of psychiatric labels is that they absolve the "normal" folks from any responsibility for how they treat those on whom they pin those labels. People apparently need freedom like that.

“… we humans have long believed that rationality makes us special in the animal kingdom. This origin myth reflects one of the most cherished narratives in Western thought, that the human mind is a battlefield where cognition and emotion struggle for control of behavior.
/.../ — Joshs

Indeed, this dichotomy is not universal. In some Eastern cultures, they don't distinguish between "head" and "heart" like Westerners do.

Personally, this dichotomy always struck me as strange, I never understood how people can draw a line between what they call "head" and "heart".

The primary function of psychiatric labels is that they absolve the "normal" folks from any responsibility for how they treat those on whom they pin those labels. People apparently need freedom like that. — baker

A lot of the people who have these labels pinned upon them are suffering and are the first to say they are. There are many problems with diagnosis and agendas of people making decisions in these matters is something clinical practice always has to deal with.

But to say the whole enterprise has nothing to do with trying to help people is more self indulgent than whatever you were imagining was going on amongst those doing the work.