No, "interpersonally exploitative" is not a part of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM 5. It used to be in the DSM 4 but got struck out in the DSM 5 because it was inaccurate.
The DSM 5's diagnostic criteria from NPD, using screenshots of my own copy of the DSM 5 is as follows:
A1 (both A1a and A1b) addresses self esteem dysregulation and the reliance on external sources to infer one's sense of self esteem, self worth and identity.
A2a Empathy — there's a strict definition of empathy in psychology, here it mainly refers to affective empathy (mirroring other's emotions) but also to a degree cognitive empathy (being able to tell the emotions of others or why they may be feeling emotion); a lack of empathy is a morally neutral trait and common amongst several mental illnesses such as autism where it's much less villified in that context. A lack of empathy has no baring on kindness or compassion. Most people, when colloquially referring to empathy, actually mean compassion. Empathy is not the state of caring about others, it is the ability to feel other's emotions as one's own (affective) and the ability to recognize what other people may be feeling (cognitive).
Once again, a lack of empathy is a symptom of many mental illnesses, including autism and depression. So no, depression here isn't a false equivalency on that basis.
A2b Intimacy is the only criteria that can be interpreted as being manipulative or "interpersonally exploitative". What that means however is that narcissists form relationships in order to maintain their self esteem, because the internal base state of self worth is zero. While that means many relationships are shallow, that does not mean they are interpersonally harmful — Humans are social creatures who need contact, support and validation, narcissists act on that without forming a deeper connection. This, again, is not synonymous with an interpersonally harmful relationship, interpersonally harmful actions are not rewarded and narcissists need to actually be able to sustain a relationship in order to be able to affirm their own sense of self worth and identity. What this means is that narcissists struggle with forming relationships that go beyond the initial stage (you know, like an acquaintanceship), when the time comes to progress a relationship and form a deeper, more solid and more intimate connection, that's where they struggle, and are usually unable to maintain these relationships and form these connections (that every human needs to lead a fulfilling life, as we are again, social creatures).
B1a Grandiosity referrers to cognitive dissonance, that's why it specifies feelings and 'beliefs'. Narcissists intellectually know that they aren't better / superior to everybody else and are well-aware of the fact, despite this intellectual awareness they feel superior to others. It's cognitive dissonance. This is what plays into perfectionism and the standards a narcissist holds themselves to discussed in A1b.
(While not the same, there's something of a similar effect in a lot of people with ADHD. "I should be better than this" "I should be able to handle this / do this" it's the juxtaposition of the perceived limitless potential and executive dysfunction, paired with RSD it gives an extremely similar effect to NPD grandiosity.)
B1b Attention seeking just means... talking about yourself a lot, 'fishing' for compliments, going out of your way to do certain things that you know will bring you positive attention — which while can be constructed as manipulative, doesn't exactly hurt anybody. It's mostly annoying, but relatively harmless (to other people. It does mean a narcissist might put themselves in harmful situations when low on supply in order to receive positive affirmation).
Moreover, yes, "narcissistic abuse" does imply narcissists are inherently abusive and incurable. That's what it was coined to say. A not so quick crash course about the term "narcissistic abuse" incoming. "Narcissistic abuse" was coined by Sam Vaknin who's written several books on the topic, his most popular being "Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited" and remains one of the foremost people reviewed on the topic. Sam Vaknin is not a certified mental health professional in any capacity and lies about being a "professor of psychology" to increase his book sales and further his career. None of his work is psychologically supported, some of the things he's written directly contradict the DSM. He's also the one that started the "Obama is a narcissist" craze (A paper he's written on it, another article and a YouTube video uploaded by him in which he again talks about Obama being a narcissist).
Vaknin believes that narcissists are a shell of themselves. He asserts that narcissists are people who have lost their true selves and replaced it with a 'false self' and as such cannot be healed because they do not truly 'exist' and are only reflections.
(His website alone shows you how sketchy he is...)
Despite claiming that narcissists cannot be healed, Sam Vaknin developed "cold therapy" as a theraputic modality in which NPD can be treated, to quote, "Cold therapy consists of the re-traumatization of the narcissistic client in a hostile, non-holding environment which resembles the ambience of the original trauma." As well as, "Cold therapy makes use of proprietary techniques such as erasure (suppressing the client's speech and free expression and gaining clinical information and insights from his reactions to being so stifled)."
(The suggested therapy modality is... extremely bad for the reasons outlined above, and is also just... abuse. Cold Therapy is abuse.)
He also believes that all narcissists are abusive. As he very explicitly and with detail wrote in his book, "Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revised". (Link to a pdf of the book to download. Sam Vaknin quotes from his books on Goodreads if reading the book is too much).
An article in The Sunday Times, "The Monster in the Mirror", 2007, explicitly says the following, "Shmuel “Sam” Vaknin, 46, has been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice." With all his assertions about NPD, isn't that interesting? In that same article, quotations by Sam Vaknin are included in which he says about his relationship to his second wife “"For Lidija, our relationship is a constant war of attrition," Vaknin says. "I think she is very tired. She says sometimes she is being erased. But she stays, so I must respond to some of her emotional needs. A narcissist infiltrates his partners like acid," he explains. "If she fails to erect strong defences, the narcissist takes over, forcing the eviction of the person’s original self."” I don't know how more openly you can admit to abusing your second wife.
A screenshot from Wikipedia (taken 26/1/2023) — these "difficulties" in the relationship mentioned, is not-so-subtle code for he was abusing his fiancè. As you can tell from his own assertions on NPD and his description of his own behavior as a narcissist (see: his website on NPD and his YouTube channel in which he gets into both of these things.)
Sam Vaknin is a domestic abuser and coined "narcissistic abuse" specifically to avoid responsibility for his abusive actions by claiming that it's inherent to his disorder (and therefore not his fault) — when any validity is lent to "narcissistic abuse" as either as a term or concept, it's prepetuating this man's bullshit. Not only in his attempt to avoid accountability for his own actions, but in his exploitation of vulnerable victims for profit and all his pseudoscientific bullshit.
Said bullshit like the synopsis of his book claiming that, "It is my contention that Narcissism is the mental epidemic of the twentieth century, a plague to be fought by all means."
Or his belief that a disproportionate amount of pathological narcissists hold positions of influence in politics, medicine and finance. If this sounds too close to antisemitic conspiracy theories, congratulations! You found the link. Despite being Jewish himself Sam Vaknin affirms several antisemitic stereotypes in a work where he aims to address antisemitism, quite literally saying "This age-old narcissistic defence - the Jewish superiority complex - was only exacerbated by the Holocaust." It is... interesting to say the least that he connects Hitler and Aryan Supremacy to Narcissism and also connects the Jewish people, their victims, to Narcissism in that same article.
He's also misogynistic, a rape apologist, queerphobic (and much more tbh) which he somehow also manges to link to NPD but this tumblr post gets into that pretty well and links his own work as sources. So I'm not going to get into it myself.
