Just Listen - Don't Confuse a Narcissist with Asperger's Syndrome

Jason Calacanis: "So are hard driving founders narcissists?"
Dr. Mark Goulston: "If anything they're more like people with features of Asperger's Syndrome."
- from "This Week in Startups" and Twist episode 21

Both narcissists and high functioning people with Asperger like features are goal minded to a fault, and both can view other people more as functions or vehicles to achieve that goal instead of as people with feelings. However a critical difference between the two is that a narcissist doesn't care if they hurt you or your feelings (and the truly malignant ones may even take delight in doing so), whereas someone with Asperger's like features would prefer not to.

My advice to people who live with malignant narcissists is to get out and to those who live with narcissists to demand they get help or else you are going to painfully lonely and making excuses for them to friends, family and you children forever.

However if you live with someone with Asperger like features it's a little more complicated. For instance even though you may feel how they treat you is meant personally, if what they do is not meant personally, it's not right for you to take it personally. That means it is neither fair nor reasonable to treat someone who is just not sensitive (i.e. they are not doing it intentionally) as if they were someone who is insensitive (i.e. they are intentionally not sensitive). Instead of reacting and talking at them, be calm and talk to or with them and focus on their specific observable behavior(s) and the effect it has on you and what it causes you to do in response, which you don't want to do. Furthermore, give them a specific alternative observable behavior to do instead, because in these areas that they are weak, they may not be teachable, but they are often trainable if you speak to them in a respectful way.

If you are the person with Asperger like features you may be dumbfounded since your intention is never to hurt the people you care about, or for that matter to hurt anyone. Rather your intention is just to move projects forward towards the goal you have in mind.

I remember the time an entrepreneur with Asperger like feature brought in his 14 year old daughter at the insistence of his wife, who told him in no uncertain terms, "You need to go see Dr. Goulston, because your daughter can't stand you."

When they came in, she clearly didn't want to be there and pulled into a corner of my L-shaped couch and said in a mechanical way how much he loved his daughter and would never want to upset her. It was clear by her body language that his analytical way of speaking only reinforced her feelings of anger towards him.

Now since I am a bit on the intuitive side, I imagined the following scenario happening at home (none of which she had told me) and said to her: "What's it like when he drives you crazy and you scream at him from your room, 'Get out! Leave me the f--- alone!' And then when he does, you lie down on your bed and 'flip him off' aiming your middle finger at the door you just slammed on him?'"

Apparently my intuition hit a bullseye. She promptly pulled into a fetal position and started sobbing and rocking herself in complete pain. At that point her father looked at her (while she writhed in pain), was bewildered, then looked at me and started to cry. I don't think he knew what crying was, because he touch his tears and looked at them on his fingers as if they were blood. He then looked at me, trying very hard to comprehend and said: "My little girl is in awful pain and I think I somehow caused it. But I love her and that's the last thing I would ever want to do."

That breakthrough was the beginning of not only a different relationship with her daughter, but a different relatedness.

The sad fact of this story is that I don't think the pain that his daughter was feeling and his confusion about how he was causing it is terribly unique.

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Comments

[AS fam]

It is very different to live with AS than it is to have a clinical experience with it.

[Mark Goulston, M.D. - Huffpost Blogger]

You are absolutely right. I meant no disrespect or to be frivolous with the use of AS in a more figurative than literal way. Who in your family has AS that you have to live with? What have you found to be helpful?

[AS fam]

Its my spouse. Part of the problem is that there really are not that many helpful tactics. Consequences, which work with my child, don't work so well with the spouse. AS as a diagnosis is still relatively new. I have to guess that children getting diagnosed now have more options than adults who are just getting diagnosed later in life. The other issue, no disrepect intended, is that we have had difficulty finding professionals who understand AS. Couples therapists want to use the techniques that have been helpful with 2 "normal neurotic" neuro-typical adults. My experience is that it doesn't work with AS. I used to be an optimistic person until beaten down by the weight of this.

[onrecess]

Imagine how screwed up you would have to be to marry a person who has no (or says they do but shows none) feelings and sees you as an object to manipulate for their "goals" (BOTH groups according to the article).
Now imagine believing passing on those genes is a good idea (and not pre-conception child abuse).

[schaferatsprynet]

This is a rather silly exercise in Pin the Label on the Dorky. Neither term, narcissist nor Aspergers is plainly defined here. And even if they were, how are we suppose to then effectively make the differential diagnosis on our friends and neighbors? One problem is that a lot of neurotics with personality disorders give themselves the new fashionable label of Aspergers as an excuse for being louts. Who is to say the label is phony or not? Also the assertion that people with Aspergers do not intentionally hurt the feelings of others is not entirely true. Such people are certainly capable of being emotionally malicious. Telling a narcissist to get help is such a joke; they are the last people who think they need fixing.

[Mark Goulston, M.D. - Huffpost Blogger]

Clearly you have run into your share of both narcissists and asperger types. Neither are easy to deal with. Something I have advised people when dealing with such difficult people is to realize that when actions do not respond to words, you need to resort to counteractions. The key is that the counter action (a.k.a. consequence) not be over or under kill, but appropriate and also that when you say that going forward if they do x, you are going to do y, that you not bluff about it.