2025/06/25 by Thomas Schramme · 1 voice
Neuroscience · Psychology · #Autism Spectrum Disorder Research #Personality Disorders and Psychopathology #Personality Traits and Psychology
paper · doi:10.1017/9781009445955.021
openalex publication_date 2025/06/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/13
I scrutinize the common idea that Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) involves empathy deficits. I argue that empathy is foremost an epistemic mechanism, leading to different forms and levels of interpersonal understanding. Interactive difficulties can result in profound interpersonal misunderstanding, which leaves some people in persistent doubt about other people’s perspectives and about their own social standing. Such status blindness, as I will call it, can explain some specific symptoms of NPD. I introduce relevant conceptual distinctions, devise a complex map of empathy that describes four types and four features, and apply the map to NPD. Finally, I specifically discuss empathy deficits in being the target of the empathy of others.