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Avoid clinical labels, stick to general constructs
There were some messages recently defining people as "narcissists".
In this thread for example I never used a label for the manipulator (thread for alumni only).
But it turned out into a discussion of "narcissism".
I generally prefer to avoid clinical labels (exceptions always apply, including on TPM's titles & videos where the labels serve for CTR reasons).
And I'd generally recommend people do the same.
Reasons why:
- You don't really know what's the right label. Who is to say for example if the manipulator in the example was a narcissist, a dark narcissist, or "only" a sub-clinical dark narcissist or sub-clinical sociopath who happens to be very competitive and high power. I have no idea. And neither do I want to have. The label does nothing for me
- Only in a clinical context can one give official labels, which means...
- It makes you lose credibility to assign labels
- It makes you look like a "armchair pop psychologist" (some people even commented that on some of TPM's video, and I agree with them and even respected the commenter for saying that)
- You associate with the masses of clueless who use labels casually, and often the wrong way (and yes, you as a TPM reader probably know better than most, but you still associate with the masses when you're too quick at assigning labels)
And the most important two:
- It doesn't really matter what label one belongs to because what matters is the result to you. And you judge that based on actions and consequences, not labels
- It doesn't add any value to you to put a label on anyone. There is zero value to you to add labels onto others. It may even make you less effective (John wrote a good post on that on Bel's journal).
It's helpful to learn about different personalities, but once you learn the personality type you got your learning. No need to start diagnosing the people around you.
That's why TPM most often use the following, higher-order categories:
- Taker / giver, for anyone who makes you worse off (or better off)
So simple, yet so effective in my opinion.
Are they empowering me or disempowering me?
And on a deeper level, all you need to know is: is this person taking or adding to my life?Â
It doesn't matter whether they're narcissists (vulnerable or dark), sociopaths, psychopaths, deranged, extroverts, ENTJ or whatever.
And then TPM also uses:
- Assholes, for men who tend to disempower others, especially because of value-taking dominance and nasty power moves. They also tend to compete too much and collaborate too little
- Son of a bitch, the more extreme version of an asshole, someone who's rotten to the core and completely untrustworthy
- Bitches, for women
Hi Lucio,
thank you for this post.
It's very helpful. And I see you're totally right of course.
I suppose that the reason why I tended to continue to use these terms is - apart from the fact that my "awareness" started by reading on the subject - that I needed something to reinforce in my mind that these people will (most likely) never change.
There's also a term I have read in Bill Eddy's books that is
- high-conflict person: based on the fact that these people tend to see enemies everywhere and strike preemptively.
Boom. Very true. It's an important reminder, thank you Lucio.
This also goes back to the "Goldwater rule" that you know.
As an example of what you say, in French speaking cultures, there is the term "narcissistic pervert" which has no correspondance in the clinical nomenclature and therefore which I don't use.
The distinction between higher-order labels and inaccurate labels (due to lack of information in this case) is helpful as well. I'll use them from now on.
On a humorous note, reading "Son of a bitch" reminded me of Rick and Morty:
One more reason I thought of:
- Sometimes you need to become/behave more like "those labels"
Some of the main articles/lessons here and in PU are about learning how to acquire/when to use some of those traits and behaviors that come more natural to those labels.
