What is the Difference Between Narcissistic and Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorders? - YouTube
This video describes the difference between narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD).
In the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM), Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) is a Cluster C personality disorder, which is the anxious, fearful cluster. The DSM symptom criteria include: preoccupation with details, order, schedules, and lists, perfectionism, excessive devotion to productivity, over-conscientiousness, difficulty in discarding objects that are worthless or are at the end of their useful life, reluctance to delegate tasks, a miserly spending style, and rigidity. OCPD is one of the more prevalent personality disorders. It tends to affect males to females at a rate of about two to one.
Narcissistic Personality Disorder is characterized by a grandiose sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with unlimited success, feeling too special to be understood by regular people, needing excessive admiration, a sense of entitlement, being interpersonally exploitative, having a lack of empathy, being envious and others and believe others are envious of them, and being arrogant. Oftentimes an individual with Narcissistic Personality Disorder wants to be recognized as superior, believes they are so complex and amazing that they can only be understood by special people, has low self-esteem, devalues the contributions of others, and is condescending. Criticism is not well received by most people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
The reason these two disorders are confused with one another has a lot to do with perception. Some of the same characteristics are in both personality disorders, but for different reasons. Also, the expression of the characteristic is a little bit different between the two disorders.
The first reason has to do with the perception of being supercilious. With narcissistic personality disorder, this is when somebody is trying to appear superior, however, with OCPD this is really just a byproduct of the behavior. Individuals with OCPD have a real commitment to perfectionism and sometimes this is interpreted as being supercilious. The next reason is lack of empathy with both disorders. There is a lack of empathy with both disorders, but for different reasons. With NPD we believe that an individual with this disorder usually does have the ability to empathize, but they don't use that ability. With OCPD, the same thing is true, but the way we usually think about OCPD is that somebody has the ability to empathize but they are not very good at it. Oftentimes with OCPD, we see that individuals with this disorder have difficulty expressing themselves with body language and sometimes this can be interpreted as not having empathy. Another reason these two disorders are confused is because we see a lack of generosity in both of these disorders. With NPD that lack of generosity is with other people. Usually somebody with narcissistic personality disorder will indulge themselves, but not so with other people. With OCPD, it's more of a global effect. Somebody with OCPD would not spend money on others, but also they would not spend money on themselves. Another reason we see for the confusion is the condescending attitude that we sometimes see with NPD and OCPD. This condescending attitude can have the same feel with both of these disorders, but with NPD it's usually more globalized. With OCPD, the behavior is specific to certain situations, such as with certain types of personalities. In most cases an individual with OCPD will have more of a condescending attitude with people that they determine as immature, irresponsible, or impulsive. The next reason for the confusion with these two disorders is the commitment to perfectionism. With NPD, we see this expressed as an individual who really believes they have achieved perfection. People with OCPD are often quite self-critical. They do not believe they have achieved perfectionism. The last reason for the confusion between these two disorders is the level of productivity we see in the work environment. The reason for the work productivity or the perception of being productive at work is different for both of these disorders. With NPD, we usually think of it as an abundance of confidence, however, with OCPD, it's more of the dedication to perfectionism, liking orderliness, being meticulous, being detail oriented, and liking organization.
