US vs. US
Elizabeth Lunbeck on narcissism from To the Best of Our Knowledge (9/19/14):
"There's a lot of fascination with the charisma, independence, even more darkly the lack of empathy among successful narcissists that I think offers to reopen the conversation.
I think what we can do is stop making it a kind of US vs. THEM argument, but think about it as US vs. US — that we the people are drawn to people who exhibit a lot of narcissism in many cases.
If narcissists were not attractive, it wouldn't be a problem. It would be very easy to say, No. Go away. I'm not going to fall under your sway. The problem is that narcissists can be extremely skilled at drawing us into their project — into their ambit. And then we get used in ways that we're not fully aware, that feel very destabilizing and then cast aside.
So I think, sort of coming to terms with and in a way almost de-pathologizing narcissism and coming to terms with its ubiquity and its necessity will, I think, allow us to better deal with its malignant expressions."
See also:
"A Little Narcissism is Good for You," by Alice Robb, New Republic, Feb. 25, 2014.
"Dangerous Idea: Narcissism is Good," by Elizabeth Lunbeck, To the Best of Our Knowledge, Feb. 6, 2015.
Lunbeck, E. (2014). The Americanization of narcissism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (author, library, Salon excerpt, The Baffler review)