October 16th, 2025
I haven’t posted anything for a while. I usually manage to post something twice a month, but sometimes life happens. Today’s post refers to a book I’ve been reading recently by Durvasula Ramani, PhD: Don’t you know who I am? It’s an exploration of narcissism; unhealthy entitlement, antagonism and incivility, which she believes are pervasive in our modern cultures and societies for a variety of sociopolitical and cultural reasons that she discusses in the book. The book is very accessible, a background in psychology is not necessary, and actually, it could serve as an overall introduction on these themes. Ramani discusses narcissism and toxicity from many angles, and situates the phenomenon within historical contexts, with an emphasis on the West, particularly America, where she lives. I oscillated between writing a short summary of the book and a longer piece. As you can see, I’ve opted for the longer version, and yet I will only briefly touch upon the basic themes presented and discussed in this 400 page book.
Ramani interestingly begins her book by providing examples of entitled tantrums, drama and toxic behaviours up in the air during plane flights, which have also inspired the title of the book. Any kind of work we produce is always situated and Ramani’s aware of that, and although the issues she explores and analyses are universal and the behaviours she discusses have probably become more prevalent everywhere, she also includes in the conversation her own larger context. She poses the question of whether Americans might be more narcissistic and antagonistic. It seems that there is some research from the USA that suggests that Americans themselves certainly think so, and respondents from around the world have rated Americans as more narcissistic and antagonistic. This, she writes, may be due to the valuation of individualism, uncritical adherence to capitalism and the cultural ethos regarding the pioneer spirit, work ethic, intense adoration of celebrity and penchant for competition. She makes reference to Christopher Lasch, writer, historian and academic, who, she notes, in 1979 wrote “one of the most prescient books on the veering towards more pathological levelsof narcissism.”
The book does not focus on what is termed NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), which is a diagnostic label from the DSM, but rather it embraces a large spectrum of toxic or difficult personality traits and relational patterns, dynamics and behaviours. Ramani clarifies that one of the struggles in her work is finding the right word or term that captures the triangle of narcissism, entitlement, and toxicity, which despite their broad overlap are also independent. She provides definitions for toxic and what we might mean by describing someone as toxic, and is also discerning about the fact that different people may have different experiences of a toxic person. She states that toxic behavior tends to be associated with traits congruent with narcissistic, antagonistic, sociopathic, psychopathic, dysregulated and passive-aggressive personality styles, and that individuals with these traits are overtly or covertly invalidating, deceptive and manipulative, and can in the long run cause great damage. Narcissists, she writes, “change the value of psychological currencies. Compassion, empathy, reciprocity, mutuality, gratitude, and loyalty are the main currencies of healthy and close human relationships…”
She asserts that we should all be concerned with the proliferation of human toxicity, incivility and narcissism in political and corporate leaders and celebrities because this is a bellwether for the rest of society. People do what they see. We’re all, including our children, witnessing or experiencing it, and entitlement, narcissism, incivility, and toxic and abusive human behavior and interactions are becoming the new normal, and it seems that “….the most toxic amongst us appear to be controlling the narrative and shaping our reality.” She writes: “The system is rewarding narcissism and human toxicity in all of its forms right now. It’s hard to sell compassion and empathy in a world that rewards narcissism, psychopathy, incivility, and materialism,” and elsewhere she notes, “We devalue kindness, especially in men, and we characterize compassion and vulnerability as weakness. Having empathy in the current epoch becomes a setup to be manipulated or exploited.”
The book is divided in three parts. In Part I Ramani concentrates on uncovering narcissism and discussing: the five sets of patterns underlying narcissism, some of the various flavors of narcissists, why social media, which is a key means of communication, of learning about the world, and a tool for constructing identity, is the accelerant for the modern toxic and narcissistic world, the three Cs of narcissism, the ways in which our economy, consumerism, and ideas about success all impact the rise of narcissism, and also provides an overview of the different theories on the origins of narcissism.
She describes narcissism as: an interpersonally toxic pattern, characterized by entitlement, grandiosity, lack of empathy, validation seeking, superficiality, interpersonal antagonism, insecurity, contempt, arrogance, poor emotional regulation, out of proportion rage, and it’s a person’s predominant and consistent way of relating with the world. She refers to the disagreement between psychologists, researchers and others, the difficulties in measuring it, the different presentations and combinations of these clusters of traits, and the various models of personality. Work using the Five Factor Model of Personality (McCrae & John, 1992) characterizes narcissists as being high in extraversion and low in agreeableness. This model also describes narcissism as reflecting higher-than-average levels of angry hostility, assertiveness, activity, and excitement seeking, and lower-than-average levels of self-consciousness, warmth, trust, straightforwardness, altruism, compliance, modesty, and tender-mindedness (e.g. empathy) (Campbell and Miller, 2013, cited in Ramani, 2019). It seems that there is a constant need for external validation (‘narcissitic supply’) to offset insecurity and a tendency to become rageful under conditions of frustration, disappointment or stress. This inability to regulate emotions, tolerate distress or experience empathy usually means that in the face of stress or pressure people with more antagonistic personalities will often resort to rage, projection or acting out.
Also, Ramani writes that at the core of it, difficult people and narcissists are insecure; however, they are not only insecure themselves, they flourish under conditions of insecurity and chaos, prey on insecurity, and ultimately create more insecurity in the world. She writes: “…they actually suck out whatever security or sense of self another person has, leaving their victim completely insecure and the narcissist on the search for more validation.” Also, for all of their lack of empathy, they are able to study people and suss out their vulnerabilities and blind spots. She uses the term data-gathering approach. Once they identify someone whom they may want to draw in, they pay very close attention to him or her. They learn that person’s strengths, traumas and vulnerabilities to control, exploit and use against them.
Questions are posed around diagnosing and the medicalization of bad and harmful for others behaviour. Allen Frances notes that a diagnosis for NPD, for instance, doesn’t hold unless the person is experiencing significant emotional, personal, social, or occupational distress. Ramani adds that this list of traits generally reads like a corporate playbook for success, and that the patterns that might facilitate success and fame in a highly competitive world don’t work well in relationships. Toxic, high-conflict and difficult people literally make us psychologically and physically sick through their behaviours.She also refers to the toxicity paradox. She writes: ‘For the amount of time, effort, and money people spend on healthy diets, getting enough sleep, special vitamins, exercising, healthcare, detoxes, and the avoidance of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco—all in the name of promoting health—something is being missed. All of these behaviors are integral to good health; that is true. However, when you take a longer lens and reflect on the amount of money spent on organic food to avoid the toxins of pesticides, or air filters to avoid toxins in the air, or purified water to avoid the toxins in water, or specialized household cleaners to avoid environmental toxins, or lower-emission or electric cars to avoid toxic exhaust emissions, or high-end cosmetics made from carefully sourced ingredients to avoid toxins on the skin, then why do most people keep toxic people in their lives?”
As mentioned so far, the core pillars of narcissism are: lack of empathy, entitlement, grandiosity, validation seeking, and dysregulation. But I found the brief analysis of the five clusters of narcissim a helpful and useful way to understand the many different combinations of toxic patterns found in people. Also, because many of these features are part of everyone’s make up and lie on a continuum, Ramani distinguishes between normal and pathological levels of these qualities, with some exceptions like gaslighting, for instance, which is never acceptable.
Narcissistic traits are broken into five basic areas:
a) The interpersonal features of toxic people and narcissists are often the most challenging and harmful. There are eight typical patterns within a narcissist’s interpersonal features: lack of empathy, manipulation, projection, lying, poor boundaries, jealousy, gaslighting, and controlling. “Narcissists have underdeveloped psychological endoskeletons,” writes Ramani, and “lack of empathy, makes narcissists problematic partners, parents, friends, coworkers…” For narcisssits, she notes, life is a zero sum game and they play it well. While discussing gaslighting she also refers to the phenomenon of gaslighting by proxy, which occurs when other people make excuses for the narcissist or validate their lies. Concerning control she concludes that a toxic person is more likely to view or engage with people as chessboard pawns than to engage with them as human beings with agency and their own will and desires.
b) The behavioral aspects of toxic and / or narcissistic people are the actions and attitudes we can observe. There are four visible behavioural patterns: superficiality, covetousness/envy, being cheap (in spirit as well), and carelessness. She describes carelessness as being ‘psychologically stunted, impulsive, emotionally restricted, and incapable of stepping out of themselves,…,’and adds that it can also imply a devaluation and lack of respect of the other person.
c) Dysregulation: Toxic and narcissistic people cannot control their emotions or tolerate any level of distress, and, in part, that is due to the fact that they regulate their self-esteem from the outside in. Patterns that fall within a narcissist’s dysregulation are: fragility/insecurity, anger/rage, constant validation seeking, inability to be alone, and shame. Ramani interestingly observes that it’s the dynamic of anger and rage that often results in strangers’ tantrums and rageful behaviours (in a restaurant, means of transportation, park, street or other public place) impacting us. She notes that these incidents take a toll on the observers, even though they are not part of the interaction. As for validation seeking, because it’s a way to regulate self esteem, narcissists will ask for it endlessly, but will rarely offer any, and when they do offer validation, it is often in the name of manipulation or to get something they want.
d) Antagonistic features: Ramani writes, that toxic and consistent antagonism feels deeply unsettling and threatening, and negatively affects anyone in the toxic person’s path, whether they are a colleaugue, stranger, partner or family member. There are eight common patterns within a narcissist’s antagonistic repertoire: grandiosity, entitlement, passive aggression, schadenfreude, arrogance, exploitation, failure to take responsibility, and vindictiveness. Schadenfreude is a German word that is defined as “malicious joy,” or as “a feeling of pleasure or satisfaction when something bad happens to someone else.” These people are good at spotting blind spots and gathering information about people’s past and traumas, and then taking advantage of vulnerabilities. Toxic people, writes Ramani, also generally avoid any ownership of bad behavior, and are revisionists and rationalizers. They consistently don’t take responsibility and tend to perceive their behavior as payback or a vindictive quid pro quo. They deflect, lie and enjoy making examples of other people.
e) Cognitive features: There are five main patterns within a narcissist’s cognitive features: paranoid, hypersensitive, lack of insight, skewed sense of justice, and hypocritical. Ramani writes that many narcissists are prone to isms—racism, sexism, nationalism, classism, and that, “just as we are seeing more painful, prejudicial and divisive conversations in the realm of the isms, and even the spewing of what feel like conspiracy theories, we are also observing what appears to be a societal uptick in narcissistic patterns.” She refers to what has been labeled as “healthy cultural paranoia,” which suggests that people that have experienced trauma or violence, people being harassed or living in unsafe neighbourhoods may harbor a loss of trust and suspiciousness, or an extreme caution. Lack of insight reflects very low self-reflection and lack of self-awareness, and it also likely reflects a cognitive error driven by lack of empathy. It is, writes Ramani, “as though the person cannot connect the moral, ethical, and personal dots to recognize that a behavior was “bad” and may have hurt someone, to know that genuine apologies and self-reflection should naturally follow, and to learn from the episode.”
In Part II she looks at the toxic, entitled, and difficult people in our life like partners, family members, in-laws, bosses, coworkers and friends. She notes that interestingly, most people who have one narcissist or toxic person in their lives actually have multiple narcissists or toxic people in their lives. There are many contributing factors to this, one being that ‘it is a riff on a phenomenon called “habituation.” She writes: “In the simplest example of habituation, if we get accustomed to something in our environment—a reward, or even something more noxious, such as noise—over time, we basically adjust to it, and it doesn’t capture our attention, nor do we question it.” Ramani notes that because narcissism is becoming more common it can actually be more difficult to avoid interaction and relationships with more toxic people. She explains that multiple roads get people to their narcissistic and toxic relationships and situations, but work on “co-narcissism” suggests that people who are raised with narcissistic or antagonistic parents become wired to be “pleasers,” to take on a role of providing validation to the people around them often to the point of exhaustion. They are also more likely to become prey for people high on antagonistic traits, and more skilled at being “the delivery people of narcissistic supply.” She also describes what each of these relationships can do to us and how to handle them individually, while, at the same time, understanding the larger context in which they are happening.
In Part III Ramani discusses how to survive in a more narcissistically oriented world and, how to recognise toxic people, how to avoid them when this is possible, how to manage toxic relationships, how to enforce boundaries and break some of the patterns that may be attracting these less agreeable and empathic people, how to retain one’s sanity, preserve one’s sense of humanity, protect oneself and even grow and thrive. She’s critical of the idea of co-dependency, and writes that “It’s a risky paradigm. Co-dependency is a term that originated in the clinical literature on addiction.” Finally, she highlights the need to teach people about these patterns, so they do not enter these relationships in the first place, and the need for self-preservation, because, as she says, these toxic relationships can be “a death by a thousand cuts, prolonged and subtle, until it becomes your normal, and perhaps ultimately your demise,” self-preservation may be our best tool to fight narcissism. She reflects on why it can be so difficult to walk away from these relationships, and also presents some major types of narcissists, even though there are many subtypes depending on which features mentioned above are more pronounced, and also, Ramani writes: “…. when we reflect on the thirty traits that comprise the various facets of narcissistic or difficult / toxic people, it can help to consider the trait that is the most noticeable.” Finally, she concludes that probably, and hopefully, a narcissistic or toxic person won’t have all of these features.
The five major types of narcissists that most people have heard of are: the grandiose; the malignant; covert / vulnerable; the communal and the benign narcissist.
The Grandiose Narcissist tends to be more arrogant, entitled, grandiose, superficial, vain and charming. Ramani suggests that these people tend to be charming and successful, often appear to be “pillars of the community,”and do well as public figures or leaders. Covert or Vulnerable Narcissism, writes Ramani, presents as less grandiose and is a more “stealth” form of narcissism characterized by lack of empathy, projection, entitlement, hypersensitivity, arrogance, passive-aggression, skewed sense of justice, vindictiveness and insecurity. As for Benign Narcissists, Ramani writes that “There is a superficial immaturity to benign narcissists,” and “they may simply be jerks or attention-seeking fools.” Malignant Narcissists [a term coined by Erich Fromm and described as “the root of the most vicious destructiveness and inhumanity”], she writes. are dangerous, and while they may not engage in overt violence, their abuse of power, gaslighting, lack of empathy, slippery ethics and their perception of people as disposable can wreak havoc in others’ lives, and many people in relationships with these people will report experiences that resemble those observed in people with post-traumatic or complex post-trumatic symptomatology, including anxiety, rumination, reliving the experiences, social withdrawal or isolation, nightmares, and hypervigilance. Finally, she refers to the toxic toll on physical health, and even, a potential decrease of one’s longevity.
Communal narcissists are an interesting “category.” They may be generous in their time and energy when taking part in political activism, charitable events, volunteering and supporting different causes, but they are motivated by an intense need for external validation and can “become mini tyrants when doing so.” Ramani comments, “Communal narcissists may seem like they care very much about people facing challenges around the world……, but in their own life, they can have all of the usual narcissistic relationship patterns, including detachment, lack of empathy, entitlement, and anger,” and they can be quite dictatorial. Anyone ever involved in political campaigns, college political groups or events supporting worthy causes has probably witnessed or experienced this juxtaposition in people, who seem to care for just causes, on the one hand, and can be toxic, controlling and manipulative in personal interactions. And of course, we need to be careful because there are many caring people with healthy motivations that do good and work for positive change in the world, and as Ramani writes, there are “many well-intentioned people who really do put others first and who give the best of themselves and endless uncompensated hours to charitable endeavors.” Finally, she distinguishes between narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths, who usually lack capacity for any kind of remorse, and one could say are on the extreme end of a continuum of traits and behaviours.
Entitled People: Unhealthy entitlement falls under the anatgonisitc trait. Ramani claims that the challenge of entitlement is that no one is born this way, in contrast to other traits, like introversion, extraversion and agreeableness that are in part temperamental and, as such, inborn. People mostly learn to feel and behave in entitled ways. She ponders on causes and reasons, one being “an overcorrection in reaction to the more authoritarian, emotionally distant, and even militaristic child-rearing approach of prior generations, with a subsequent focus on chronic self-esteem enhancement.” Also, she notes that the increasing gap between rich and poor in the US and around the world further fosters these assumptions of entitlement, and that wealth can result in what is referred to as “acquired narcissism” or “acquired entitlement,” and a kind of “entitled hypnosis,” in which wealthy and privileged people may become out of touch with reality and what living in the world entails for most people. She writes: “We are increasingly becoming a culture that is cruelly dismissive of those who have “less” and reveres those who have “more” (regardless of how they acquired it). We are in the era of the genetics of luck….” She also explores entitlement from a psychological perspective, and claims that it’s not good for people. For instance, entitled individuals may be less resilient and are more likely to rely on drugs and alcohol to cope with life stressors. She also clarifies that not all people of wealth or privilege are toxic, but highlights the need to consider the problematic distributions of wealth around the world, and I would add the need to create states and structures that increase the chances for a decent life for everyone.
Focusing on the much broader picture Ramani sheds some light on how and why narcissism is a growing trend in our society, fueled by media and social media (a playground for internet trolls that tend to be a mix of covert and malignant narcissism), capitalism and the free market, how we measure success, dissemination of materialistic messages and insecurity, obsession with fame and attention, the shift in values and priorities across contexts and stuructures, like education for instance, where there’s been a shift away from teaching critical thinking, ethics, and empathy. She poses that in our current world having narcissistic traits makes a person more likely to be successful and that being empathic can be economically inefficient. Timothy Judge, and his colleagues (cited in Ramani), have carried out research data that support the idea that that agreeable people tend to earn less money, and this finding is even more pronounced for men.
Ramani explores the contribution of masculine ideology in the current state of affairs, as well. She comments that “most of our history books appear to be stories of masculine ideology gone awry.” She writes that many men never got the opportunity when they were young to learn how to be with or how to regulate their emotions in non toxic ways, and this, she says, has resulted in their emotions coming out in harmful ways both for them and those around them (substance abuse, violence, lack of empathy, poor communication, social withdrawal, and rage). She further explains that narcissism is at its core a deficit in emotional regulation, and that brooding rage and unresolved emotions are often what underlie covert narcissistic patterns. However, she clarifies that while most men and boys are vulnerable to the expectations of traditional ideology, thankfully, many men do not manifest “toxic” masculinity. Even so, the way we socialize boys and men increases the probability of narcissistic and entitled patterns in our society.
Also, she discusses New Age Narcissism, The Secret, crystals and tarot cards, expensive retreats, asking the universe to deliver what you want, putting intentions into the universe and chanting the myriad injustices, problems and antagonisms of our current world away. She writes: “Sadness or other difficult emotions become forbidden in these settings, all magically solved by joy and one’s inner light. The fact is that negative mood states sometimes need to be played out. In challenging times, it is okay to question, to feel irritable, and to have a normal reaction to an abnormal situation,” and the irony is that often, “the people promoting these New Age manifestos are business people and are selling only half of a message.” She cautions about the danger of getting sucked into spaces inhabited by grandiose, exploitative and controlling individuals (“enlightened” gurus and yoginis, etc.).
The origins of narcissism and toxic personalities
Part of the book is dedicated to the various theories and the many interacting factors that might lead to one becoming narcissistic, antagonistic and toxic. Broadly toxic and narcissistic people grow out of an interaction between an inborn temperament and their micro and macro environment. I will only very briefly mention the many explanatory theories and potential origins of toxic antagonistic personalities and behaviours. I should mention that it’s wise to bear in mind that there are always many contributing factors, and every person displaying these features will be the result of different combinations of causes and circumstances, and different features will be more pronounced in different people. Categories and theoretical models help us study and understand phenomena, but people are diverse and complex. Ramani claims that “Narcissism evolves from numerous pathways: how a person is parented; the way local communities and community-based entities such as schools interact with a child (sports, other activities, spiritual communities, neighborhoods); the values society imparts to all of us. All of these pathways intersect with an individual’s temperament. Not everyone who is raised in an invalidating environment will develop the same way. And, at some level, all of us are vulnerable to the societal pressures of narcissism.”
In the book there’s an overview of the different approaches and explanatory models concerning these personality types. Ramani refers to Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological model, who basically viewed a nested series of systems that children reside in and examined children’s development through their interaction with their environments and culture. It has also been postulated that there may also be a “biological vulnerability,” which may relate to temperament, emotional regulation, or reactivity. We also know that children learn to regulate themselves, to delay gratification or endure frustration, for instance, and over time, Ramani writes, they may even check in to see whether someone else needs their help. However, this process may be thwarted, to one degree or another, by a variety of factors. Adult individuals high on narcissism often resemble young children. She notes that narcissism “is actually one of those things that you ideally develop out of, not into.” Heinz Kohut focused on the process of mirroring (mentined in the previous post) which requires a parent to be present and appropriately validating. Mirroring entails parents’ offering “emotional mirroring, appropriate approval, and feedback in a consistent and realistic manner.” Parents’ love or good intentions may not always be sufficient. They need support and knowledge / information, and in the absence of these and lack of awareness, there is a always the risk of not adequately addressing a child’s needs or overcompensating.
Additionally, inconsistent mirroring can prvent a child from developing a realistic sense of self and worldview, and Kohut argues, that emotional regulation is also thwarted. Narcissist people project their emotions onto other people, because they are unable to tolerate emotions within themselves, and are prone to disappropriate rage and sudden angry outbursts (much like young children throwing a tantrum). She refers to Otto Kernberg who believes that when children have unempathic, cold or distant parents remain emotionally malnourished, which Ramani writes, results in their psychological “insides” never fully developing; therefore, they are forced to develop their outer world. She also reflects on cultural factors that may discourage parental warmth or emotional expression, and cultures that rely on deeply authoritarian models of parenting. Freud and others believe that the origin of narcissism is likely some form of unresolved conflict from childhood that is playing out in adulthood. She quotes Freud who stated that “Whoever loves becomes humble.Those who love, have so to speak, pawned a part of their narcissism.”
Ramani views the process through the lens of various theories. Attachment theory focuses on our earliest relationships with our parents or other early primary caregivers and on the availability and responsivity of the caregiver, as well as, the closeness and connectedness of the contact with the caregiver. Through the lens of humanistic theory it could be argued that narcissistic adults did not receive unconditional love, but had conditions of worth placed on them as children. Instead of simply feeling loved, they felt that love came attached with conditions (they received love if they got good grades, behaved well, were good at sports, or kept quiet). She also presents ideas on the origins of narcissism that have been developed since Freud, Kernberg and Kohut published their work. For instance, Alexander Lowen has postulated that narcissism relates back to shame and humiliation during childhood because the parents were controlling or emotionally cold and distant or chronically critical and invalidating and shaming or they issued disproportionate punishments. This kind of upvringing could result in a child learning that power is the means of managing close relationships and that expression of feelings is a weakness.
Richard Ryan and Tim Kasser address extrinsic and intrinsic value systems as well as materialism, the drive to consume, possess, and show off external objects and achievements, as a central characteristic of narcissism. From a Behaviorist perspective behaviours that are rewarded are repeated and reinforced. Ramani writes: “Narcissism may be a reflection of how children’s behaviors are shaped into adulthood by parents, extended family, teachers, communities, and society at large,” and thus, all of us are vulnerable to this way of acquiring narcissistic behaviours and attitudes. Also, parents and adults model behaviours. Albert Bandura postulated a model called social learning theory, which suggests that children do what they see, especially when the model is a parent, a sibling, a peer, a teacher. He also constructed the idea of “vicarious conditioning,” which suggests that a person will watch a role model person engage in a behavior and then observe the consequences from the environment. So, it is easy for children to learn behaviours such as entitlement, and so on. The book is written in a conversational style and it contains humor. Ramani wonders about “what happens to a generation of children who observed adults buried in devices?”
As for the biology of behavior, Robert Sapolsky makes the observation that the social context around us impacts how our central nervous system works, because it comes down to how we interpret events. Ramani also reflects on the role of society and motivation. She refers to a few motivational theories from the many within the field of psychology, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, being the most well known perhaps. David McClelland, she writes, believed that a) we learn motivations, and b) there are three motivators we are all driven by: the need for affiliation (belongingness, choosing the needs of the group over individual needs, and avoidance of uncertainty); the need for achievement; and the need for power (a drive for control over others, enjoyment in winning and competition, the pursuit of status and recognition). These needs, she explains, are shaped by our families, cultures, and communities, and by our treatment by these institutions and groups. We’re all driven by these motivating forces to varying degrees, with one of them serving as a dominant motivator. For highly antagonistic individuals, narcissists, sociopaths, psychopaths, and high-conflict, or toxic, individuals, that dominant motivator is the need for power.
Both overindulgence and underindulgence can also be contributing factors. Theodore Millon characterized narcissism as “a disregard for the ‘sovereignty’ of others and believed this derives from the entitlement and the extremes of either overindulgence or neglect or both,” in other words both spoiling and neglecting kids can bring about similar behaviours and attitudes. On the other hand, Ramani reminds us that we should also consider the importance of disposition, temperament, personality, and constitution. We all come into the world with a temperament, which is believed to have a genetic component, which then interacts with the environment, and how each child is supported in managing frustration. She comments that while past generations of parents did get it wrong in many ways, they were far better at letting their children experience disappointment and get through it, and that now we are as parents and a culture, becoming worse and worse at this. She wonders whether we are stuck in a generation of parental over-correction, as mentioned above, in reaction to the more authoritarian, emotionally distant, and even militaristic child-rearing approach of prior generations, over-compensating and trying to engineer optimal outcomes for our children, worrying about the antagonistic world they are entering, and thus, shifting “the focus from building a good, kind, empathic kid to building more of a warrior.”
The author includes dynamics and roles within families in her discussion of origins. In brief, she begins by clarifying that no one gets it just right, since parents’ sadness, worries, circumstances, disappointments, psychological issues, traumas, and distraction, all become part of their children’s developmental story. Old familial patterns are often replayed in numerous ways. Parents with narcissistic, entitled, toxic features can have a long lasting impact on their children’s lives because “Parenting and narcissism do not mix. The key requirements of parenting—consistency, empathy, compromise, sacrifice, self-awareness, discipline, and equanimity…” One common dynamic in families with more narcissistic or antagonistic dynamics is that of a child or family member being parentified or scapegoated or if it’s a daughter being foced into a kind of Cinderella role. This, Ramani writes, “is an extraordinarily painful dynamic for a child, who may feel as though the entire family system is conspiring to bully him or her, and highlights fears of ostracism and isolation. It is not unusual, within a narcissistic family system, in addition to the scapegoated child, for there to also be the “golden child,” a role that is not always a simple one.”
Families and small groups are always embedded within larger systems and they feed on each other, and the child or member of a family singled out as a scapegoat will often experience a systemic driven psychological mobbing or a kind of public punishment and chronic coercive control, with detrimental consequences in all areas of their life. Ramani notes that there can be real fear that, within groups of friends, educational and work settings the scapegoating dynamic may replicate. Rebecca C. Mandeville, who has coined the term FSA (Family Scapegoating Abuse) and has conducted research on this, focuses on topics like family mobbing driven by systemic forces, and systemic workplace mobbing. I might write more on family systems, roles and dynamics in future posts. Meanwhile, there are two great illustrated children’s books, Scapegoat, written by Eva Keyes and illustrated by Aleksandra Szmidt, and Escape Goat, written by Ann Patchett and illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser, which can help young children understand these undermining and blaming dynamics at home or at school. You can find both stories on YouTube.
The greater targeting of children through advertising; thus, setting children up with a belief system that organizes around consuming and regulating their sense of self through acquisition of objects outside themselves, is also explored in the book. Children are becoming more acquisitive and materialistic, and more extrinsically oriented, at exactly the phase of development when they would be best served by developing their inner worlds and regulatory mechanisms.
There is a lot to be said on the potential reasons for developing a highly antagonistic personality in the book; however, what is important to remember is that similar experiences may impact people and children differently depending on a multitude of converging factors. Ramani sums this process up as, “… the alchemy of our early environments—parental relationships, attachments, rewards, punishments, motivation, and how we are loved—sets the complex architecture for the psychological underpinnings of narcissism. And all of this occurs against the framework of our society, culture, and communities.”
Conclusion
Throughout the book the writer explores how to raise and create people of depth who are empathic and driven by mutuality in their relationships within this new world quest for fame and fortune, and the need for a balanced, responsible approach to social media. She writes: “Parents, educators, and academic and occupational curricula all need to focus on building digital literacy and social skills.” She discusses how to cultivate genuine interpersonal relationships, and writes that we are rarely told to take a really careful look at whether a person is kind or warm. She says, “People who are more inward in their focus, or who are more circumspect and wise, often do not build up their external and charismatic muscles; it’s rare to find both characteristics in the same person. That said, if a person leads with charm and charisma and plenty of confidence, sit up straight and pay cautious attention. Make sure that there is empathy, that entitlement is not at play, that the person is genuine, that there is respect ….”