Narcissists in Books

Home _ Index
Terms and Usage of site

Narcissistic Personality Symptoms

grandiosity / exaggeration
fantastic thinking / romantic
believes special / unique
requires admiration
entitled / demanding
exploitive / manipulative
lacks empathy
envious / jealous
arrogant / haughty

Quick links:

Link to long list of books

The Words To Say It by Marie Cardinal an autobiography, describes her hysteric illness caused by a narcissistic mother. link

The Group by Mary McCartny, has a main character as the queen bee of her group of women.

Running with Scissors: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs has a narcissistic therapist who messes up his patients and his own family.

Alexandria Quartet by Laurence Durrell, describes narcissistic love triangles.

The Magus by John Fowles. A narcissist "friend" told me that he loved the 1968 film, the Magus. I had read the book, and understood there were people out there who manipulated and controlled others for amusement. I had not made the connection with narcissism. All narcissists aspire to have complete control over others, to make and break the rules, to have God like power.

In the film, actors where masks. This is so narcissistic, the ability to dissimulate, even to fake being some one else. No wonder they love disguises; yet they end up playing themselves, over and over.

"Fowles's second novel, The Magus, used elements from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest (1623). It is a story about Nicholas Urfe, who escapes his his latest love affair on the Greek island of Phraxos. There he meets the demonic millionaire Maurice Conchis, the Prospero of the tale, and falls in love with Lily, Conchis's dead fiancée or an actress portraying her. Conchis is the master of magic and hallucinations in the 'Godgame', which lead Urfe to deeper self-knowledge and re-birth. "All my life I had turned life into fiction, to hold reality away," Urfi confesses. Fowles interweaves in the story Greek myths, psychoanalysis, Nazis, and shifting explanations of the mysterious events. Finally Urfe breaks free from Conchis's power. However, when Fowles published the revised version twelve years later, this point is left more ambiguous. Fowles's draft title for the book was originally "The Godgame." In the novel he acknowledged the influence of psychologist Carl Jung, and such literary models as Henry James's The Turn of the Screw and Charles Dickens's Great Expectations. "

The Devil in the White City, by Erick Larson. In this book the author describes two types of madness, with a touch of narcissism; one of grandeur leading to the creation of a dream city that Americans would go on to emulate. The other madness was of a man who dreamed of torturing and killing hundreds of people by building a house of horrors. He was only found out by the work of a pedantic detective who refused the madman's seduction.

Here are websites dealing with Psychopaths:

Dr. Hare

Dr. Blair's NIMH

Dr. Viding's University College London
 Book by Dr. Rice 
The Society for the Scientific Study of Psychopathy