Does Fame make you Vain?

For almost everyone, vanity starts at birth. It's a natural part of being treated as the center of your world by other family members. Most experts on infantile behavior acknowledge this. But after a few years, as the outside world becomes an increasing part of a child's experience, an unpleasant reality kicks in.

Not everyone loves you like Mom.

From this point forward, children naturally develop varying degrees of vanity and self adulation depending on their personalities and social environment. Nothing remarkable here, just the full range of normal human behavior.

For the famous person however, their social environment is somewhat special. Because they're deferred to so much, their natural human level of self love, whatever that level is, becomes enormously enhanced. It starts happening after their photo appears repeatedly in the media, after their exploits and accomplishments are written up, after groupies crave their bodies, or after they've made more money than they know what to do with.

As their fame increases, many celebrities seem to lose the ability to relate to the rest of humanity and the everyday activities of ordinary people. Some develop grandiose fantasies and bizarre phobias. They easily become accustomed to having people ogle them and accept their words as gospel. Perhaps it’s not so surprising when they throw phones at workers, insult people doing their public service jobs and generally experience difficulty in establishing and maintaining personal relationships.

So is it completely their fault when celebrities go off the wall or is it partially our fault for worshiping them as we do? Was their behavior always this outrageous or is the instantly intrusive Internet just showing us more, and more often?

Once upon a time there was a gloriously handsome Greek youth called Narcissus. Not a god, but a myth. Because he spurned the love of an equally glorious Nymph called Echo, he was condemned to gaze at his reflection in a stagnant pool forever. Since then people who grow up with grotesque vanity are said to suffer from narcissism.

At Cornell Medical School, a professor of psychiatry called Robert B. Millman studied the condition of Narcissism named after the Greek youth. He believes that celebrities are victims of an what he terms the Acquired and Situational narcissistic condition. As he explains it, celebrity narcissism is acquired because unlike mainstream narcissists, they become full of themselves in adulthood. (Unless they're child stars, I suppose). It's situational because the condition is observed in a social situation and impacted through societal recognition.

Here's what the professor said in an NPR interview in 2002. When a celebrity walks into a room everyone looks at him. He's a prince. They're drawn to the power he has. So he gets used to everyone looking at him and he stops looking back at them.
When they get to that stage, said Millman, they're not normal. And why would they feel normal when every person in the world who deals with one treats them as if they're not.

So, if in course of your life you come across someone with this disorder, treat them with courtesy and respect. Just hold off on the blatant admiration. After all, no one can compete with what celebrities see of themselves in a stagnant pool, but there’s no need to add more water.

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