Lorenzo (Thinking Out Aloud) has a great post up about narcissism.

At its core, narcissism is very simple. It operates on the principle:

My convenience comes first.

This may look like simple selfishness and, of course, it is profoundly selfish. But the key feature of narcissism is that the principle goes all the way down. That is, it goes right down to what they tell themselves about what happens. The principle is:

My convenience comes first, including how I construe events, how I construe other people, how I construe myself.

As is true generally of people with personality disorders, for narcissists feelings make facts. So, what is convenient for them to believe about something is what they believe.

…

If one tries to call them on any of this, you find you can never really reach them. They live in a self-policing fortress of self-serving convenience. Everything gets re-construed to fit their convenience. And because the first person they lie to is themselves, they can be utterly sincere in what they spout.

Yep, I can think of people I’ve had to interact with who were like this. I’m particularly remembering a couple of Air Force customers I had about 10+ years ago.

And the phrase “they live in a self-policing fortress” brought to mind my stupid castles vs. tents analogy. It is certainly the case that narcisistic people “live in castles” and are incapable of regularly and objectively engaging in critical thinking.