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Subclinical Narcissism, Psychopathy: Spectrum or Different Disorders? (Dark Personalities)

Uploaded 1/22/2025, approx. 6 minute read

Nearly every self-styled expert online, with or without academic degrees, get it wrong.

They tell you that dark personalities, dark triad personality, dark tetrad personality, are narcissists and psychopaths?

Well, breaking news. They are not.

Dark triad personality is a personality that is comprised of three elements. Subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, the tendency to manipulate people in order to secure favorable outcomes.

Similarly, dark tetrad personality is all the above plus sadism.


And so what's the difference between narcissism and subclinical narcissism? Psychopathy and subclinical psychopathy? Isn't it just a play with words? Aren't they the same?

No, they are not. And that's where self-styled experts are misleading you, as usual.

My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of clinical psychology, where I teach future self-styled experts.

Okay, seriously, what's the difference between subclinical and clinical?

Subclinical is defined this way, not detectable, or producing effects that are not detectable by the usual clinical tests.

In other words, if we take a real narcissist and a subclinical narcissist and we subject them to the same process of psychological testing and structured interviews, the subclinical narcissists would not be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

Not the clinical narcissist would be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.

The subclinical narcissists doesn't meet the benchmarks, doesn't make the cut, does not adhere to the standards of narcissistic personality disorder.

Clinical narcissist, on the other hand, does.

Subclinical means having traits and having behaviors that even when put together do not amount to a mental health diagnosis.

There are many other elements that are required for a diagnosis that are missing in the subclinical individual.

So you could have someone, for example, with a narcissistic style.

This kind of person would be abrasive, would have reduced empathy, would be envious and exploitative, would be boastful and grandiose and everything.

That's someone with a narcissistic personality style.

However, this would be a subclinical narcissist because many other things would be missing.

For example, a disrupted self or a self that is not integrated and constellated.

For example, the ability to tell apart from fantasy from reality.

For example, the capacity to distinguish between external and internal objects, all these would be intact in the subclinical narcissists and all these would be missing in the clinical narcissists.

The gap is vast. The gulf, the abyss is huge.

Subclinical narcissists are not attenuated versions of narcissists.

No, they're not.

Someone with narcissistic personality disorder is not an exaggerated subclinical narcissists.

He is not.

Now, subclinical plays a role in a variety of diagnosis, especially in the international classification of diseases, the ICD, where subclinical conditions are considered to be worthy of analysis and diagnosis and possibly even treatment.

So for example, in the ICD we have something called mixed and other personality disorder, F61.

The definition of this is, this category, I'm quoting from the ICD, this category is intended for personality disorders that are often troublesome, but do not demonstrate the specific pattern of symptoms that characterize the disorders described in F-60.

In other words, this kind of mixed personality disorder is subclinical. It does not amount to a real, full-fledged, all-consuming personality disorder.

As a result, says the ICD, they are often more difficult to diagnose than the disorder in F-60.

And the ICD gives examples. Examples include mixed personality disorders with features of several of the disorders in F60, but without the predominant set of symptoms that would allow a more specific diagnosis.

Troublesome personality changes, not classifiable to F-60 or F-62 personality disorders.

Troublesome personality changes that are regarded as secondary to a main diagnosis of a coexisting, affective or anxiety disorder.

And the manual, the ICD, is very careful to distinguish between diagnosable clinical conditions and mixed subclinical, non-diagnosable conditions, something which self-styled experts would do well to dwell upon and simulate and learn.

So the ICD says everything above excludes accentuated personality traits.

Accentuation of personality traits is actually a category in the ICD. It's known as the Z73.1 category.

Type A behavior pattern characterized by unbridled ambition and need for high achievement, impatience, competitiveness, and a sense of urgency.

So this, for example, is a subclinical condition, not a clinical one.

Another example from the ICD, a lack of relaxation and leisure. Stress, not otherwise classified, physical and mental strain. Inadequate social skills. Social role conflict. Limitation of activities due to some mental disability. Other problems related to life management difficulty, problem related to life management difficulty, could resemble or simulate a mental illness or a mental health disorder when actually it's not, it's reactive to the environment.

This is very common for example in victims of narcissistic abuse who suffer from complex trauma and the complex trauma induces narcissistic defenses and sometimes even narcissistic behaviors and psychopathic behaviors. But they are subclinical.

These victims cannot be diagnosed as narcissists and psychopaths. They're not.

It's very, very important to distinguish the subclinical from the clinical.

What is happening online is that millions of people and thousands of self-styled experts go around diagnosing everyone as a psychopath or a narcissist when actually there are many people who have a narcissistic personality style, many people who are subclinical, but extremely few people who are clinical, extremely few people, diagnosable or diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or antisocial personality disorder.

These self-styled experts go around spreading misinformation and ignorant nonsense, such as one of every six people is a narcissist.

And worse. Beware. Not everyone who claims to be an expert on narcissism actually knows what he or she is talking about.

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