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gun to ur head. you WILL tell me about npd + aspd kayanosys right now. also npd kazui unless thats too much to put in one postttttttttttttt >>>:( 🔫

Oh my fucking GOD I'VE BEEN DYING TO TALK ABOUT THIS. OKAY. I have so much work to do but once I started thinking about them I can't stop, so here we GO.

Future Yep note: This is looking long. EXTREMELY long. So I'm gonna post the Kazui NPD one separately soon.

First and foremost:

09 and NPD + ASPD.

P.S. I am not a mental health professional. Most of this is me projecting and my own background knowledge from my personal research. Everyone experiences their mental disorders differently, this is just my perspective and what I know.

To preface, let me make clear what my understanding of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) and antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) are. The general consensus is both are disorders typically caused by trauma; in essence, they are specific manifestations of C-PTSD. (And this goes for personality disorders in general, IIRC.) And trauma is something that our boy Mikoto Kayano is full of given he has DID. It wouldn't be completely unsurprising for him to develop multiple disorders as a result of this trauma, which, maladaptive as they are, were meant to protect him. So, let me start with NPD first.

NPD is a personality disorder characterized by grandiosity, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of empathy, as written in the DSM, and what you'll see most people describe it as. But in my opinion, this is a very shallow description of the disorder. I find Dr. Mark Ettensohn's definition of pathological narcissism sheds more light on what the disorder actually entails:

difficulty maintaining a positive, realistic self-image accompanied by deficits in effective coping when threats to self-image are encountered

The core of NPD is that you are unable to sustain a healthy and positive perception of yourself on your own. Instead, you base your self-image on how others perceive you and treat you. This, of course, easily proves problematic, and makes an awful combo with the black-and-white thinking also prevalent in NPD. If you are being treated well, being praised and applauded, and are liked by those around you, then you are good and superior. On the other hand, if you aren't being treated well, if you're being ignored or insulted, and aren't liked by those around you, then you are bad and inferior. Everything, everything, becomes about how others are seeing you, who you are in relation to everyone else. This is where the grandiosity and necessity for admiration comes from. This is where the comparison and internal hierarchy comes from. You need admiration and praise to maintain this positive self-image, to maintain that you are a good person with value, even if it comes in an extreme. Any attack on it is a personal attack, and if you are unable to defend yourself and maintain the perception of being special and unique, then there is only the alternative: to believe you are worthless and nothing. And this is a horrible feeling.

So, how do we see this in Mikoto?

These are just a few examples, but Mikoto has shown his need to get along with everyone and be liked by everyone. Like just going off of how much of a deal he makes out of birthdays, the one day where it's all about you and your existence, he clearly likes being showered in all of this attention. (Fuuta himself even rather directly points this out.) Mikoto has even demonstrated specific tactics to get closer to people and make himself come off as more familiar to them, to the point where it might even be a bit too much, as seen when he tries to be friendly with Es and Kotoko. This sort of people-pleasing could be seen as his way of getting the attention that he desires, to be well-liked by all of the other prisoners, and being highly sensitive to any negative feedback. This is the way to get along. This is the way to be liked. Look at how friendly and nice I am to you all. Praise me.

He's so self-conscious about it that he even projects this onto Fuuta, claiming that his behavior is merely attention-seeking and looking down on him as a result.

You're so immature. No one's going to like you like this. You need to learn to be friendly and polite and smile, like me. Stop getting on your high horse when I'm the older and wiser one here. Stop trying to act like you're the special one when you're not.

And yet, with all this being buddy-buddy and whatever, it's not entirely genuine, is it?

Courtesy of Yuno, blunt as ever.

Another part of NPD is feeling like you're putting up a persona all the time to be liked by others. Because the "true" you would be too unpalatable for others to actually like. Because if you have any faults or weaknesses, they can't be revealed. Because you need to be liked. You need to be admired. You need to be praised. You need to be reminded that you are valuable, that people actually think of you, that you are actually worth something.

Otherwise you can't rest.

But wait. What about the rest of the system? Do they display NPD traits too? They do share the same brain, so surely, they would all have these disorders?

Since I'm not as familiar with the trikoto theory and what a supposed third alter, Midokoto, would be like, I will only be able to speak on the one confirmed other alter: John. And my answer to the earlier questions for him is: abso-fucking-lutely. But since we're bringing up John now, I will also have to bring up the other disorder I headcanon them with, ASPD.

ASPD is a disorder mainly characterized by antisocial behavior. This is to be distinguished from asocial behaviors, which mean a lack of socialness, to not participate in it. Instead, antisocial behaviors are "against society"; they are antagonistic and go directly against the social norms and expectations. Most people may think of criminal conduct when thinking of antisocial behavior, but this can also be seen as general aggression, argumentativeness, hostility. There are other features that are significant in ASPD, like lack of empathy, lack of remorse, and impulsiveness, but antisocial behavior is its defining trait. Rather than NPD, which centers on one's self-image and hierarchy, ASPD is about power and control. Everything is about you vs them, or you vs the world. In that way, everything is a struggle for dominance and power, and if you don't want to be crushed, you must assert yourself. As such, losing control is terrifying, if not dangerous; to lose control is to become vulnerable and open up the potential to get hurt. So you must establish your dominance. You must retaliate. Even if that requires violence.

You can see where I'm going with this now, don't you?

From what we've seen of John, he's not afraid to resort to violence, and in fact this seems to be his default response. If it weren't for those restraints in Neoplasm, he would've just gone ahead and went back to beating up Es, without having to explain himself or justify himself. He understands the power that Es holds over him as a prison guard, but rather than submitting to it, he defies it, even feeling insulted by the idea of them thinking they possess power over him. Yet you can also see there's a grandiose element here, which could be in part to the pathological grandiose self seen in ASPD, as well as the system's aforementioned NPD. Not only does he not take too kindly to Es's power as a prison guard, but he also despises Es's cockiness, as it is a display of superiority over them—something he can't allow.

And this could be extended to their crime too. When considering what John says, it seems rather strange how they claim to have been so stressed, and then just... Decided to straight up kill someone (or possibly multiple people) because of that. And most people would (understandably) go, "huh? What the fuck? That's so random!" But let's take into account some other things John mentions here as well:

This, personally, was what sealed the deal for me. These two moments exactly.

What is revealed here is the profound powerlessness that Mikoto felt in his life. Not just his circumstances, but the way he himself was as well. He felt so beholden to the expectations of others, ever so sensitive to what other people thought that he constantly has to mask; smiling when he doesn't feel like it, being polite when he really doesn't care or might even hate the other person, acting prosocial when it takes all the energy out of him just to keep the facade up, all so people won't found out who he really is. He doesn't want to acknowledge this bitterness, this anger, this hatred swelling up inside of him, and it would be wrong, immature and stupid, to let his emotions show. Not when his survival was at stake. Not when he worked so goddamn hard to get where he is now. So he buries it all, dissociating it all away, until... John forms to take on all that he rejects.

There was no way that Mikoto could keep all of his emotions at bay. How he, deep down, desired to be the type of person who could give all those people he felt wronged him or just ticked him off, hell. Because violence established superiority. Violence established dominance. Violence established control and independence over something in his life, while it felt everything else was slipping out from under him.

My life... It wasn't supposed to be this way...

So it was perfect that another alter arose to do exactly that, so he doesn't have to feel personally responsible. Letting someone else take the wheels for a moment, while he stays blissfully unaware. Because I didn't do it—that guy did it. I'm a good and upstanding citizen—he's a monster. And he's not me.

And it seems like at first, John is bitter about this. He doesn't understand why he's being blamed when all he did was try to help Mikoto. He was just trying to protect him, dammit. He took the reins when Mikoto was unwilling to. Where is his admiration for his actions? His praise?

Yet during all this, John must've realized that they fucked up big time when they finally took that mask off and just let themselves go wild. That, in that moment of impulsiveness and rage, they had done something that was going to land them in major trouble, to say the least. Which is why he quickly villainizes his own self to take the blame away from Mikoto even more.

For this once, he feels guilt and remorse. And it's for failing to protect "himself." Or, well, his other self. And here, you see something interesting pop up; a deep-seated (fear of and) belief of already being "broken," of being a "monster."

Perhaps it could be considered narcissistic that Mikoto and John expects some sort of special treatment for their circumstances too. At first, it was Mikoto not being able to remember anything. Then, it's Mikoto not being the one who actually committed the murder, but John, so you should still forgive Mikoto. I mean, he tried so hard, didn't he? All he wanted to do was to just fucking live. So how could you ever vote him guilty?

Yeah, alright, that's a lot, Yep. We got a bit far with this point. But what about how the disorders formed? You said that they form from trauma, but never specified how that would be the case for Mikoto and his system.

Well... When it comes to how exactly these disorders form, there's still quite a bit of debate and disagreement. But in Mikoto's case, I think I can identify exactly what was wrong. And both relate to his mother.

Remember his parents' divorce? His mother's phone call in the middle of Double?

It seems like he'd get along with his mother much more than his absent father. He even calls her to check up on her, and laments not having the time to visit her because of work.

Then why is that what kicks off his murder?

To summarize, there's a lot more going on here than Mikoto is letting on. From this moment alone, it's possible he actually doesn't have as good of a relationship than one might think with his mother. Especially with how he talks about his parents' divorce, and how he talks about his sister more like a father than a brother would, in addition to how much he actually boasts about his job and how he worked so hard for his position, it's hard to imagine it was just his work that was actually causing these problems for him.

No. It's possible that work is his escape. That is purposefully distancing himself from a mother who worries too much, who puts too much on her son, who calls him too much, who is just in his life way too damn much. Yet at the same time, it doesn't seem like she actually care about him, or took care of him or his sister much. While she likely had to work a lot and be away to support her children as a single parent, he would be stuck at home with her sister, as the sole person who is able to look after her. Somehow being neglected and being smothered at the same time.

Lack of control. Overbearing and overly expectant parent. Emotional neglect. These are the things that not only most likely led to the development of his DID, but also his NPD and ASPD. I am the only one who can look after myself. I need to do everything on my own. I can't rely on anyone else, because they're too incapable of doing so.

...

Whew! That was a lot. There probably is more that I could've expanded on, and probably some things I missed, since I banged this out haphazardly the moment I saw this ask. Hope that all makes sense though.

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