There are those in the psychology industry who believe that more than 60% of the narcissistic personality disordered individuals get their bents from genetics, leaving only 40% from home environment and other influences.
Those who display the characteristics of Narcissistic Personality disorder, lack empathy and remorse--and someone else is always to blame for whatever negative behavior they exhibit. These are natural human responses to life, self at the forefront of everything and the extraordinary ability to justify whatever we want.
I do believe that part of a child's response to life is based on environment and attitudes of the parents, but from my own experience I see too, that often children display their disorder at very early ages, too young to have been influenced by their environment. By too young I am referring to younger than one year old.
I have seen manipulative behavior in very young children before they had time to learn it from anyone. Every human being is born with the original sin of self involvement that began in the garden of Eden. Teaching a child either by example or by training, to pay more attention to himself than others, or to pay attention to others to elevate self, comes so naturally that it is as easily embraced as breathing or eating. When we feed this natural bent toward sin through excessive praise or lack of proper discipline, we grow the monster that is inside.
Sadly those parents who attempted to raise their children in the Lord were faced with outside influences that tainted their view of life to such a degree that they were less swayed by their parents and families than they were by the culture.
While parents were working to teach them manners, kindness, selflessness and empathy for others, the culture was busy feeding their natural selfish inclinations, with mantras like "you must learn to love yourself", reinforcing the animal in them that wanted to be without restraint.
It has been very hard on parents with narcissistic adult children because the narcissist blames the parent for many things that often never happened or were insignificant events, used as excuses to condemn the parent. You see, for the narcissist nothing is his own fault, he is responsible for nothing so the parent is the convenient scapegoat for all his woes.
The narcissist does not have the ability to take an objective look at himself to see what his part in the conflicts are, he must always divert attention away from himself to remain prominent in his own eyes.
It is interesting that the narcissistic adult child sees the parent as intolerably imperfect, not worthy of his honor and respect. This attitude would be amusing if it were not so tragic. In order for the narcissistic child to hold a parent in such contempt, he must believe he is perfect himself, otherwise he would be a hypocrite for expecting perfection out of a parent when he is not himself the picture of perfection.
Selfishness never makes much sense, we want others to be unselfish with us, show us empathy and kindness, but do not think we need to exhibit the same character qualities ourselves.
Hypocrisy is the monster that hides behind the door. Everyone has one, but only those who have Christ can overpower the monster with the love of Christ.
We see a rising tide of narcissism in our culture, more intensely than we have ever seen before. Selfish people made an effort to quench their baser character qualities in an age when it was not acceptable, it managed to keep the monster smaller and in check. Now that the monster has been fed daily meals of "do it your way", "love yourself before loving anyone else", "do good deeds to make yourself feel good", along with other equally disgusting mantras that diminish the human experience, we have created the most selfish culture this world has ever seen. So selfish that we treat parents with dishonor against the Word of God, while even going so far as to murder our babies for the sake of our own convenience.
Many years ago I used to wonder how it was possible that 2 Timothy 3 could ever happen, when I saw so much good going on in the world. I see now how it happened, many believers were deceived by these psychological demonic concepts, the same ploy that was used in the garden, the devil used, convincing Eve that "you can be like God." Or in modern terms; "you can be your own God, create your own idea of right and wrong."
Judges 17:6 "In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes."
We have an anarchiel culture now, everyone chooses what is their own version of right and wrong and there is no One Supreme being who governs their foundation.
SADLY, this is also the condition of the organized apostate church. It is vitally important that we seek God through His Word and prayer to teach us His ways. No one can continue in this world untainted if they neglect first salvation through Jesus Christ and then obedience to His Word.
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