Delusions of grandeur, craving for attention, few emotions, feelings of empathy or remorse, no, a narcissist is not the guy to be around. Unfortunately there are more and more narcissists.

It’s mainly men, but women are catching on, says Jan Derksen, emeritus professor of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Against RTL News. “It’s because of emancipation: they become less dependent on men. It takes narcissistic traits.” It is a common Western disease, and is less common in Africa or the Middle East, for example. “Maybe because Western culture is more individualistic.”

Research shows that there are more and more narcissistic people, says Derksen. The scientist thinks that this happens because of modern education. “Kids are treated more and more as special. The backseat generation, it’s also called. Parents think the drawings they bring home from daycare are amazing, they’re admired, they (partially) determine what happens in a family — they drive them to school when it’s raining, reinforcing their narcissistic traits instead of weakening them. “

Desperate twenty-five
Narcissism is not good for the environment and it creates selfish people. “In that respect, we have to take a few steps back in education and culture. Because the attention you give to yourself is at the expense of the attention of others.”

But it’s not good for narcissists themselves. “People with narcissistic traits get seriously hurt when they start working, for example, because their supervisor says they didn’t handle something right. We see people now as young as 23 who are called burnout because they had a bad performance interview. . . They’re out there, completely broken, and what do we do? ? I think, for example, for people who have worked very hard in health care for 40 years, you can expect them to get burned out. Not from twenty-five people, hearing that. Not once .”