Psychoanalysis

The Desire For Fame and Narcissism

By  | 

Why is it that so many famous people are narcissists? Do they become that way because of all the admiration, all the fawning? Is it due to constantly being the center of attention? This sounds like a plausible explanation, but psychologically speaking it’s much more likely that these people were narcissists before getting famous and in fact it was their narcissism that propelled them to become famous.

To understand our contention it’s necessary to clear up a common misconception about narcissism. Most people believe that narcissists love themselves too much, but in actuality they love themselves too little. It’s the hole where self-love should be that causes narcissistic behavior – the preening, the constant need for attention and approval, the self-centeredness – it’s a global strategy to try to fill up that hole.

The desire for fame is at bottom the need for validation, to prove self-worth by becoming worthy in the eyes of others. Obviously all of us want to be liked, to be appreciated, to be accepted, to be validated, but what separates ‘healthy’ people from narcissists is that healthy people don’t feel that same inner compulsion to go out and seek validation because they already have it from themselves.

We can replace the word ‘fame’ with ‘popularity’ and see that the same psychological strategy discussed here occurs at every level of Western society, of course meaning that narcissism occurs at every level of Western Society. Like we said, at its most fundamental the narcissistic attitude is a compensation for secret feelings of low self-worth. In the context of popularity, we’re not saying that all or even most people who are popular in their social groups are narcissists, but that many who desperately desire to remain popular or desperately want to become popular are. Narcissists desperately need validation, so even though it seems like they are centered exclusively on themselves they are actually completely dependent on others, since if the praise, the admiration, the validation stopped, they would feel lost and despondent about their situations, forced to confront that terrifying hole where the self-love is supposed to be.

Related posts:

  1. People Who Really Want To Change The World Many who consciously believe they want to change the world are unconsciously narcissists who are really only interested in having their narcissism, their delusions of grandeur, confirmed and glorified. So the first and most important difference between people who really want to change the world and narcissists who believe they want to change the world […]...
  2. Narcissists Love Themselves Too Little Most people view narcissists as confident, preening, self-centered jerks who like being the center of attention. While there is a certain level of spite directed towards them, there’s also usually some jealousy, maybe even the secret wish to trade places, since the narcissistic attitude seems to be the result of desirable traits and abilities. If […]...
  3. Self-Love You can’t love others until you love yourself. As Erich Fromm was fond of saying, there is no concept of humanity of which you are not a part, and any doctrine that insists on the need to love others while excluding the need to love yourself proves itself to be fundamentally flawed and contradictory. You […]...
  4. The Desire To Do Something Big The desire to do something big, something that will be recognized in the world as a great achievement, is a psychological trap for many. Of course it’s healthy to want to increase our human powers, to be successful people, and there’s nothing wrong with working hard to attain our goals. Self-actualization is a good thing, […]...
  5. Fame And Self-Love We have written about the desire for fame as a symptom of narcissism, and this is certainly true for many people, but there is another reason why many wish to become famous that’s much less nefarious, a reason that’s actually quite tragic and evokes empathy rather than spite. This reason is the unconscious, secret hope […]...
  6. Desire For Recognition It’s a paradox that our individualistic culture, by dint of its emphasis on self-reliance, self-determination, and self-actualization, paints the desire for recognition from our fellows as neurotic while the existential isolation that is the outcome of this individualistic culture makes the desire for recognition a pressing concern, more pressing than it would be in a […]...
  7. Narcissism Most people have heard of narcissism but they have an incomplete understanding of its psychological significance, and more importantly do not believe the term applies to them. In this discussion we will look at the origins of narcissism in the Ancient Greek myth and then put it in a psychological context. We will also use […]...
  8. Communism And Narcissism Everyone is a communist. The only real question is how far out their primary narcissism allows them to draw the lines of communal inclusion. Within those lines communism flourishes, outside of those lines their consciously held ideologies flourish. We could say that primary narcissism at its most pronounced sees members of the immediate nuclear family […]...
  9. Group Narcissism We usually think of narcissism as being specific to the individual so what do we mean by group narcissism? To understand the phenomenon we first have to understand that the individual narcissist usually does have some traits or talents that allow him to showcase his narcissism without a lot of push back from the outside […]...
  10. Narcissism And Possessive Pronouns If you want to know if someone is narcissistic you don’t need a battery of tests or a complicated psychological profile, you just need to sit back, observe them conversing over the course of a few encounters, and listen for the frequency of possessive pronouns. If you hear words like ‘my’ and ‘mine’ all the […]...
  11. Narcissism Of Business People It can be hard to understand how many of the business people who represent large corporations could value profits over human lives and the sustainability of our planet, how they could continue to rob, cheat, lie, and price gouge in the face of the clear suffering of those who desperately need access to the products […]...
  12. Everyday Examples Of Narcissism We are going to list some everyday examples of narcissism to show how it’s a trait we all share to one degree or another. Narcissism is the norm not the exception, it’s the default way of seeing the world, something that must be actively worked through if a more mature, objective outlook is to be […]...
  13. Narcissism Versus Love Narcissism makes a suspicious distinction between Self and Other. Anything considered the same as Self must be good while anything considered different from Self must be bad. The lines of narcissism can of course be drawn closer or further out in different individuals, and in this sense narcissism runs on a continuum, but the important […]...
  14. Self-Love As A Rationalization For Narcissism Narcissists all over the world jump on board the self-love band wagon. For example, they post their superficial pics with quips like “You’ve got to love yourself.”  They’ve found the perfect rationalization for their narcissistic world outlook with the idea of self-love. They try to convince themselves and everyone else that all they’re doing is […]...
  15. Suicide And Narcissism People who are contemplating suicide have tunnel vision, they’re in an incredibly subjective place. They’re focused on their own suffering to the exclusion of pretty much everything else, and they see only one possible escape route from their bad situation. Our individualistic society exacerbates the problem, we put the individual at the center of everything, […]...
  16. Primary Narcissism A baby developing in a healthy family environment has no reason to suspect she is not the center of the universe. All of her needs are taken care of, usually at the moment they arise. When she is hungry she is fed. When she makes a mess it is cleaned up. When she wants attention […]...
  17. Narcissism And Existential Isolation One of the most common hindrances to healthy human relationships can be boiled down to narcissism. It’s the unspoken expectation that the people close to you should be moved by your same interests and passions, have your same values and beliefs, see the world from your same vantage point. It’s natural to want to share […]...
  18. Narcissism Versus Depression Narcissism and depression as syndromes both keep people from accessing their authentic Selves because the syndromes include self-appraisals that are out of touch with reality, though these self-appraisals lie at polar ends from each other. With narcissism the self-appraisal is inflated. Narcissists fashion an idealized self-image that is almost godlike, omnipotent, where traits and abilities […]...
  19. Narcissism And Projecting The Present Into The Future Part of our human syndrome of narcissism is to project the current set of circumstances into an indefinite future. We fool ourselves into believing that our lives will forever remain the same as they are right now. This is a real problem for mental health on both sides of the coin actually, for when life’s […]...
  20. Mind Reading And The Narcissism Of Abusers One of the hallmarks of abuse is that the abuser expects the people around him to know exactly what he’s thinking and gets upset when they don’t. He’ll often react in an abusive fashion, especially towards those close to him like familial relations, probably because it’s safer to do so than in the social environment […]...
Related Items