Since we cannot evaluate historical figures for narcissisti…

Since we cannot evaluate historical figures for narcissistic personality disorder, I distinguish between narcissism and NPD. Narcissism is a sliding scale with NPD at the extreme end, and we can say that a historical figure is likely to be narcissistic without evaluating him by a licensed therapist. Narcissism is important to understand from the standpoint of defense. Narcissists are abusive and ordinary people are very vulnerable to them because of a relatively poor understanding of love which makes it easy for narcissists to simulate it in order to get close to victims. Like psychopaths, narcissists are motivated by lower passions, but a narcissist desires admiration and approbation whereas psychopaths are much more interested in material things. A narcissist may be a criminal who ends up in prison, but if so he is more associated with white color crime than violent crime. He may also be someone who knows how to hurt people without flaunting the law. He may, indeed, be someone who knows how to take control of the legal system itself and subvert it to his own ends, or invent a cult and entice many people to join of their own free will. Thus, the fact that narcissists are more social than psychopaths makes them potentially more dangerous because they are more likely to succeed in achieving important positions where they can do a lot of damage. The paradox of narcissism is the degree to which their destruction of the people around them corresponds to their own self-destruction. Narcissist behavior is irrational. They destroy things that are very good for them. This is part of the reason people get lured into positions of vulnerability with them. You offer them a square deal and they stab you in the back--even if they get nothing good out of doing so.