> For this study, the authors did not measure “agentic narcissism” (for example, “I am more special than others and deserve special privileges”), but rather “communal narcissism,” which describes people who think of themselves as more nurturing and empathic than others. Example statements that characterize this trait include “I have a very positive influence on others” and “I am generally the most understanding person.”
It's unfortunate how far I had to scroll down to see they are using a different definition of narcissism than one typically expects. I was either expecting either Narcissus "pop-culture" narcissism or the actual personality disorder.
It's unclear that this expression of narcissism is in fact different than the more commonly understood kind, and the effects are largely the same. Seeing yourself as being better than those around you is almost never a net-positive.
You may want to read more about them: neither of them were the entirely wholesome people we were led to believe. Gandhi was so drunk on his conception of non-violent resistance that he urged the german jewish people to go willingly to the death camps. Mother Teresa was involved in numerous controversies.
> "But if the Jewish mind could be prepared for voluntary suffering, even the massacre I have imagined could be turned into a day of thanksgiving and joy that Jehovah had wrought deliverance of the race even at the hands of the tyrant. For to the godfearing, death has no terror. It is a joyful sleep to be followed by a waking that would be all the more refreshing for the long sleep."
> The same paper claims that doctors found a shortage of care, food, and painkillers, although Teresa had raised millions of dollars. Slate also found that Teresa brought in tons of money, but her missionaries looked as bad when she founded them as they did after her death. (During her own illness, Teresa fled to California clinics, Slate reports.) The conditions in her missions were so dire, in fact, that they were once compared to photographs of "Nazi Germany's Bergen-Belsen concentration camp."
Answering a high yes to "I have a very positive influence on others” and “I am generally the most understanding person.” are absolutely narcissist traits, even according to the "standard" definition. Those questions are about self-perception, not about actual assessment of their communal effects.
Try The Last Psychiatrist[1][2], particularly the claim that Narcissus didn't fall in love with himself, he fell in love with his reflection - the image of himself, i.e. his self-image. That is, narcissism is not "thinking you are superior" as casually described on the internet, but "obsessively thinking about how others see you, and your every action is about making yourself appear the way you want to be seen", particularly to the extent of not caring about other people and their lives and feelings beyond making sure they reflect the desired image back.
Now in light of that definition, consider Mother Theresa's scandals/criticism[3], such as Christopher Hitchens saying[3] "[Mother Teresa] was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction." [...] Hitchens said that "her intention was not to help people", and that she lied to donors about how their contributions were used. "It was by talking to her that I discovered, and she assured me, that she wasn't working to alleviate poverty", he said, "She was working to expand the number of Catholics. She said, 'I'm not a social worker. I don't do it for this reason. I do it for Christ. I do it for the church.'""
And you can see a definition of narciccism where she was more interested in her image as a Christian, than in the suffering of other humans. See this claim: "According to a paper by Canadian academics Serge Larivée, Geneviève Chénard and Carole Sénéchal, Teresa's clinics received millions of dollars in donations but lacked medical care, systematic diagnosis, necessary nutrition and sufficient analgesics for those in pain;[118] in the opinion of the three academics, "Mother Teresa believed the sick must suffer like Christ on the cross".[119] It was said that the additional money might have transformed the health of the city's poor by creating advanced palliative care facilities.[120][121]"
That is, she was more interested in the image of Catholicism, holiness, piousness, suffering adequately to uphold the image of Christ(liness), rather than putting that aside and treating people with the best available medicine, at the expense of peity, etc.
(You might not agree with these claims, but you can at least see "a definition of narcissism that could label Mother Theresa as narcissistic").
It's unfortunate how far I had to scroll down to see they are using a different definition of narcissism than one typically expects. I was either expecting either Narcissus "pop-culture" narcissism or the actual personality disorder.