Comorbidities and Differences Between a Narcissist and a Psychopath

Photo by Rohan Makhecha on Unsplash

Narcissism has become equated with abuse in the last few years. Many people think of abuse or of a criminal and they immediately jump to the idea that the person must be a narcissist.

Strangely, psychopathy and ASPD tend to slide under the radar without the same damning commentary coming from people in general. A person doesn't typically see psychopathy scapegoated the way that narcissism is which — logically, there really is no sense in this. I disagree with stigmas. I believe them to be damaging and unproductive. If there had to be one though, I would argue that given the statistics that do exist, Society has the stigma is backwards and it should be ASPD that is scapegoated.

Background

Narcissists and Psychopaths are both from the cluster B disorders which are characterized by a lack of empathy and lack of control when emotionally dysregulated. This is what gives those that are cluster-B afflicted such a bad name.

Their behavior has to do with them not being capable of feeling empathy towards you, which when they become dysregulated — their affliction allows them to do you serious harm to their family without feeling badly about it in any way. Psychopathy and narcissism are both known to be destructive constructs and both have a reputation for being scary.

Both Narcissists and Psychopaths have brain abnormalities which contribute towards causing their behavior. Both narcissists and psychopaths have impaired activity in the areas responsible for regulating emotions, and feeling empathy towards others.

Psychopathy is also noted for being impulsive due to the lack of frontal lobe activity, narcissists can also be affected but not all. Some of them have restraint with a relatively functioning executive decision making capacity.

The frontal lobe is responsible for people's executive functions or another way to look at it is it is responsible for intelligent thinking and behavior . In that frontal lobe area there are segments of the brain that regulate emotions and allow us to feel empathy.

Psychopaths however, have a lack of receptors in their brain which will not allow for oxytocin to bind with the receptors to be absorbed by the brain. They also have a reduction in side of their amygdala which tends to make them fearless.

The lack of oxytocin receptors is the crux of the issue for psychopaths because it’s that chemical which floods our bodies and makes us fall in love with our partners. This means that love is physically not possible for a psychopath and regular emotions are so watered down that they barely register them. To psychopaths, regular people are emotional nutcases because we are so affected by our emotions every day. To them, we are irrational and annoying.

So, to summarize so far; both narcissists and psychopaths have abnormalities with their brain which impairs their empathy, emotional regulation, and increases their impulsiveness. For the psychopath, they also have an inability to love and a drastically diminished fear response.

Psychopaths can be thought of as being impulsive, aggressive (more likely to engage in physical violence than any other disorder), deceitful, lack remorse ,and have a propensity towards criminal versatility.

Conversely, narcissists may engage in illegal activities but their actions are esteem driven which is dictated by their need for admiration in conjunction with a sense of entitlement which is a very different motivating factor than the violent and deceitful behaviors that psychopaths tend to have a greater affiliation towards.

Narcissists may manipulate and exploit others, but they are more worried about their reputation than anything. This fear of being seen for what they are often keeps them in check with regards to breaking the law. Psychopathy on the other hand is a pervasive pattern of disregard and violating the rights of others and they feel no guilt or shame for their actions.

The ironic thing about scapegoating narcissists and allowing psychopathy to float under the radar so to speak is that the discriminatory viewpoint is not backed by statistical evidence. Psychopathy is a manifestation which falls under the greater umbrella term of Antisocial Personality Disorder. It is estimated that 1 to 4% of the world's population would fit the criteria for ASPD. GPT4 estimates that the population range goes from 40–70% of prisoners convicted of felonies would qualify as having ASPD.

Psychopath’s themselves are estimated to be 15–25% of the male offenders in prison.

In forensic populations it is estimated that between 1% and 17% of the individuals serving time for a felony would have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but those numbers are extremely hard to get due to the propensity of narcissists to resist the idea that there is something wrong with them. They simply avoid any assessments because they believe the world should be run and lived the way they live their life, so to them — it's everyone else that is the problem.

To conclude:

In the end, there are a lot of people that chalk up their ex to being a narcissist because they were sent to jail, and because they were mistreated and abused by them, I surmise that there are many cases where the person is being mislabeled by an ex who has equated abuse with the word narcissism not truly understanding the nature of the disorder or of the other disorders which often present the same due to comorbidity.