Why Narcissist APPEARS So STUPID (Borderlines and Psychopaths, too, sometimes!)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-06-02

There is disagreement as to whether people diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder have an IQ which is higher than the average (Carver, 1977), or lower (Swirsky-Sacchetti, 1993). The same debate rages over NPD and psychopathy.

But this may be the wrong question. IQ tests measure types of intelligence that have little to do with life skills and perspicacity (wisdom).

The cluster B personality disordered are pseudo-stupid (covert) and stupid (overt, grandiose): their grandiosity (a severe cognitive distortion) impairs their reality testing and self-efficacy and it alienates people, narrowing their opportunities and subjecting them to adversity.

They often lack impulse control, are defiant and contumacious, or decompensate under stress. These drawbacks guarantee frustration or worse.

They are dissociative, so are bad at learning from past experiences.

They are entitled and manic, so never plan thoroughly or execute with attention to detail.

They are immature: the mental equivalents of children. This renders them naive and gullible. They leverage the appearance of infantile haplessness to signal: please don’t hurt me!

Most of them suffer from identity disturbance and so unable to maintain continuity and coherence. They depend on others for external regulation of a sense of self-worth (NPD) or of emotions and moods (BPD). This dependency involves alloplastic defenses and a paralyzing external locus of control.

These dark personalities may be Machiavellian but they are so embedded in fantasy, paranoid, and firewalled by defenses that they are not very good at deceiving people or manipulating them in the long run. This is why they resort to entraining and coercion.

Finally, cluster B personalities are post-traumatic and compensatory. Broken and false. They also tend to abuse substances or develop addictions.

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