A surfeit of self-love is almost a prerequisite for success now, and the proliferation of egomaniac sites, from Twitter and MySpace to Facebook and YouTube, make the peer pressure to be grandiose and irrationally self-confident almost irresistible.
When Brendan Nelson so deliciously diagnosed his leader, Malcolm Turnbull, last week as being afflicted with the disorder, he spoke not just as a trained medical doctor but as a former Opposition leader with an axe to grind; or, as one internet wag described it, "post-traumatic embitterment syndrome".
After all, Turnbull never gave Nelson a chance. He abused him to his face and undermined him behind his back, as Nelson tells it. He used poor opinion poll ratings to depose Nelson, and then polled lower himself.
Turnbull has "narcissistic personality disorder," Nelson told Peter Hartcher last week. "He says the most appalling things and can't understand why people get upset. He has no empathy.''
Nelson also told me Turnbull was a narcissist, as demonstrated by the yes-men surrounding him. "Whatever judgments he makes, he appears not to make good judgments about people. He can't read people. It's part of his narcissism … There's a risk he'll blow up one day."
According to the psychiatrists' bible, The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the disorder is characterised by: a grandiose sense of self-importance; preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love; a belief the person is ''special'' and unique and should only associate with other special people or institutions; a need for excessive admiration; a sense of entitlement; exploitative personal relationships; a lack of empathy; envy; and arrogant, haughty behaviour.
When things end badly for narcissists, they tend to do so spectacularly.
Nelson has good reason to be critical of Turnbull. But his diagnosis could equally apply to most people aged under 30, to politicians, entertainers, lawyers, business people and, no doubt, to a good number of byline-chasing journalists.
Everyone's a potential narcissist these days, as 15 minutes of fame has become a 24/7 proposition. For instance, the average Australian woman is said to spend at least 3 ½ hours looking at herself in the mirror each week, according to a survey last month by the Bureau of Statistics.
The 26-year-old mistress of the recently resigned NSW Health Minister, John Della Bosca, appears to have diagnosed her "spunky" former lover with similar symptoms, telling The Daily Telegraph: ''I now realise … he liked me being in love with him because it was all about ego … It is incredulous [sic] that he thought the way he treated people would not have consequences.''
That's narcissists for you. They never see the karma train coming.
What's more, narcissism is on the increase, becoming a pervasive condition of society, according to two American psychologists, Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, who published a book this year, The Narcissism Epidemic.They include a long-term study of 37,000 American college students, in which the incidence of narcissistic personality traits increased on a scale rivalling obesity, accelerating in the past decade.
In 1982, 15 per cent of students scored highly for narcissistic personality traits. By 2006 the percentage had climbed to 25. Twenge claims only 12 per cent of students in the 1950s agreed with the statement ''I am an important person''; by the late 1980s that percentage had climbed to 80. The reason for the explosion in narcissism in recent years, according to the Melbourne adolescent psychologist Michael Carr-Gregg, is not just the self-esteem movement but poor parenting.
"Parents are becoming increasingly self absorbed [believing] 'the single most important thing in the world is for me to work like a dog to get the house, the car and the holiday house' and don't … realise all their kids want is to be loved and to have one-on-one time with their parents.'' He says an "epidemic of poor parenting" is to blame for a drastic rise in psychological problems in young people. "Generation Y is being ravaged by depression, anxiety disorders and stress disorders."
For narcissistic personality disorder to take root, a person has to be born with a genetic "template" for over-sensitivity and over-reactivity. "Then something has to happen."
Carr-Gregg says parental abandonment, coupled with invalidation of the child's corresponding emotional pain, triggers the disorder. "If you grew up in an environment with time-poor parents, you are brought up in a Lord of the Flies [type of] emotional silo by other disaffected young people. It's the psychologically blind leading the blind.
"I see … kids who are overindulged from a very early age … and become incapable of delayed gratification. When I meet these kids in later life they tend to exaggerate their achievements and talents, tend to believe they are special and unique and interesting. They require excessive amounts of admiration and if they don't get it, they'll wipe you off the face of the planet."
Carr-Gregg - who coincidentally was three years behind Turnbull at Sydney Grammar - won't comment publicly on the Nelson diagnosis.
But, along with the psychometrician Simon Kinsella, he is working on a series of psychological profiles of famous Australians for an upcoming book, to identify personality structure and psychopathology in different professions, from politicians and journalists to creative artists and sports people.
"I would give anything to do Malcolm Turnbull," he says. It's one way for Turnbull to prove Nelson wrong.