The traditional definition of narcissism is excessive self-love. The term comes from the ancient myth of Narcissus, a beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection. The word was adopted by psychology to describe psychological conditions of out of proportion self-involvement, including narcissistic personality disorder. We take the definition psychologists use and add an important factor that media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out: Narcissus did not know it was own reflection he had fallen in love with. The person he saw in the pond and tried to kiss and embrace was an illusion, but the young man thought it was a real person, someone else.
This is an important factor in understanding narcissocracy as a social phenomenon. This kind of narcissism confuses the subjective with the objective. And that is the source of the tsunami of falsehood, half-truth, truthiness, bullshit and stupidity that pervades modern America.
