NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER (NPD)

There really is such a thing as NPD, at least according to psychiatry, which seems to be able to find a name for every variety of antisocial behavior. Ned's readers will recall his recent post on Barzun's "From Dawn To Decadence" in which Ned pointed out that the fundamental keys to the development of western "culture" since 1500 were Individualism, Primitivism, Self Consciousness and Emancipation. NPD is to Ned (assuming it exists at all of course) an inevitable result of the excessive fostering of individualism and self-consciousness. It has many poster children, but first, let Ned enumerate some of the hypothesized causes of NPD:
overindulgence and overvaluation of children by parents,
valuation of children by parents as a means to augment their own self-esteem,
Excessive admiration of children, not balanced by feedback,
excessive praise for good behavior.
Can we not see that an entire generation or even two, of American children are "victims" of this disorder?
Ned experienced it throughout his career on the part of self-centered mediocre students, who refused to accept that they were even capable of substandard work. Further, he recalls students time and again equating time spent on a project with expected grade. Sadly the two are not necessarily related.
Ned further recalls, since you ask, two students in one of his classes sitting in the front row, merrily talking away while Ned was trying to explain an involved topic to his class. When Ned stopped class, called the two students outside and ejected them from class, they were thunderstruck, apparently having had no idea how their behavior could be in the least disruptive or offensive. God knows what professors do today when faced with narcissistic students carrying out their disruptive behaviour now that many new electronic gadgets have been added to cell phones.
We see it in religious zealots, ostentatiously praying in public places like Starbucks, and loudly discussing the views of their own particular cult as though to "convert" the heathen that are presumably hanging on their every enlightened word.
And finally, the uber-annoying carriers-on of cell phone conversations, containing the most intimate or personal details, who apparently are either blissfully unaware that there are even other people present, or who assume that others' lives are so devoid of meaning that they seek meaning and significance by living vicariously through the mindless, banal conversations, or actually, half conversations, of others.
Indeed, Ned reckons at least half of Americans under 50 are carriers of NPD.
Maybe more.