JBean (and everyone), I'm not an expert. I'm a nursing student, and have worked with the National Alliance of Mental Health on occasion, and know just enough to have kept me safe and sane while doing rotation in a psychiatric facility, and I am considering going into psych ER once I graduate (in May), but that doesn't make me any sort of expert - far from it. And I have a background in LE (long ago). Just thought I'd make mention of that...
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You brought up an interesting point for me to struggle with. I need to isolate what I consider antisocial vs maglinant narcissism. I might tend to confuse them more than I realized. I've seen narcissist that never break in interrogation and never admit to a lie, or so I thought. Do both not feel emotions, guilt, remorse?
You probably aren't as confused as you think - MN is a hard, hard catagory, and has cross-characteristics with others. The biggest difference between narcissism and antisocial behavior is that narcissism is a "cover" for a fragile self esteem, easily damaged by criticisms and/or perceived slights, whereas antisocial simply doesn't care if what they do is not acceptable; it's what they do, and so they do it.
The reason narcissism can be broken in interrogation is because if the interrogator can stroke the ego, the tongue gets loosened. "Wow, I never would have thought to do it that way. You're quite brilliant. Tell me how you did it? How did you ever come up with such a brilliant/smart/crafty plan?" et cetera. Gacy is a good example of MN, in his toying with authorities, and during his confession he expressed his superiority towards LE by making them 'guess' and telling them they were right/wrong. Power plays, control, and ego were very evident in Gacy's interrogations...and a good (although not necessarily "classic") demonstration of MN during interrogations and how to break the person.
Antisocial interrogation often fails, because there is no chink in the armour...you can't say "wow, you're great," because they literally don't care what you think about their 'greatness'...they do what they do because that's what they do. Bundy was a great example of antisocial behavior, as he was "charming and manipulative" and able to create a sense of wellbeing with his original captors (in CO), and able to escape - twice - because of lenient treatment (because he had won over his captors and they didn't think he'd do such a thing...). During interrogation after his his arrest for killing Kimberly Leach, he gave a false name, and held that until they came to him and said "you are not who you said you are. You're Ted Bundy" (or however they said it). They weren't able to get him to confess, and they were not able to successfully interrogate him. He "confessed" before his death sentence was carried out, but it was not a full confession, but rather an attempt to save his own hide, buy time, and try to escape the death sentence being carried out. There was no remorse, no acceptance of guilt, and, finally, no full confession to his crimes (which is why a number of folks are still investigating him; and the number of killings he did is still unclear).
In these examples, Gacy was classic MN - he toyed with LE, and, when caught and interrogated properly, he confessed. Bundy manipulated LE, never confessed, and, when he did confess, it was not a complete confession...still holding back information to save his own skin.
All that being said, there are a lot of characteristics between the two which overlap; ego, confidence, power, and so on. The difference lays in the personal motivation for that - narcissism is about a fragile ego (protection from others' opinions); antisocial is about no consideration for others (uncaring about others' opinions).
Hope that helps...it's a convoluted topic, personality disorders, and can be really, really interesting when one gets down into it. It can also be really, really scary.
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