Today's Saturday • 9 mins read
— By Dr. Sandip Roy.
Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) is a proposed form of narcissism that develops in adulthood as a result of acquiring sudden wealth, fame, or power rather than from early childhood experiences.
The term was given by Dr. Robert B. Millman, Professor of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College, in an interview describing a consistent pattern he observed in his celebrity patients. People who had not shown significant narcissistic pathology earlier in life began presenting full narcissistic personality features after achieving fame or wealth (Sherrill, S., 2001).
One thing: Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) has not been formally published. It came from Millman talking to journalist Stephen Sherrill for a New York Times “Year in Ideas” feature in December 2001, and it has circulated through clinical commentary and science writing ever since.
Still, it is a clinical observation from a credentialed psychiatrist based on real patients, not an unfounded internet theory. That distinction matters and is worth keeping in mind as you read the rest of this.
The term gives a name to something most people have noticed but struggled to articulate: the person who was decent, grounded, and reasonably self-aware before they got famous, and then became someone else entirely.
In a simple sentence, as the common saying goes, “Success went to his head.” In another way, you could call it “nouveau riche narcissism” or “celebrity narcissism.”
What Is Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN)?
Conventional narcissism and NPD develop from an interplay of genetic factors and early life experiences, most often in childhood or adolescence.
Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) reverses that chronology. Unlike conventional narcissism, ASN develops after childhood.
Millman’s framework suggests that ASN is a product of a celebrity-obsessed society: fans, assistants, and popular media all playing into the idea that the person really is vastly more important than his/her peers. This drives the person to develop a narcissistic attitude that may have been only a tendency before, or was latent, helping it become a full-blown personality disorder.
The triggers are specific: unprecedented wealth, fame, clout, or any environment where a person’s needs are constantly anticipated and fulfilled, and their sense of importance continuously reinforced by those around them.
One caveat that needs repeating: ASN has never been empirically studied, is not recognized in DSM-5-TR or ICD-11, and is not a formal diagnosis.
Still, it is a noteworthy clinical observation. It rightly proposes a framework for understanding how certain environments appear to activate, amplify, and entrench narcissistic traits that may have previously been subclinical or latent.
How ASN Develops: The Environment Does the Work
The mechanism Millman describes is social rather than developmental. The celebrity or powerful person does not undergo a sudden personality transformation. The environment around them changes first.
They get so used to having people look at them that they stop looking at other people. They develop a very strong belief in their own importance, and this is reinforced by the way they are treated by the people around them.
Assistants pre-empt requests. Publicists, lawyers, and loyal subordinates cut away dissent. Criticism is softened or withheld entirely.
The feedback loop that keeps most people tethered to a realistic self-assessment simply stops working. Over time, the person adapts to a “social reality” in which they are, functionally, the center of everything.
As Millman correctly notes, the celebrity’s life is abnormal. The adulation is often justified and plentiful, the feedback biased and filtered, the criticism muted and belated, social control either lacking or excessive and vitriolic.
Such a life, void of criticism and full of validations, is not good for mental health, even in the most level-headed person.
Symptoms of Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN)
The person with ASN may have unstable relationships, substance use, and erratic behavior. Most behavioral features of ASN closely mirror those of NPD proper:
- Narcissistic Grandiosity. An inflated sense of importance that was absent or mild before fame arrived. Decisions that once involved consultation now feel self-evident. The person starts operating as if their judgment is simply better than others’.
- Entitlement. Entitlement is the belief that one deserves special treatment or recognition despite doing little or nothing to merit it. It also comes with the expectation that rules that apply to others do not apply to them. We all know and see from lived experience that rules often do not apply to people of high wealth or celebrity status. For them, the legal system is slower, social norms are overlooked, and handlers smooth over the friction.
- Eroded empathy. People with ASN often have less empathy for people outside their inner circle. The lack of social norms and controls and people not telling them how life really is makes them think they are invincible to common sufferings. But they may show “performative empathy” for their fans and others.
- Rage at negative feedback. Feedback that once landed neutrally now registers as a personal attack. Public figures with ASN often respond to criticism and negative opinions with disproportionate retaliation or public meltdowns.
- Substance use. Millman himself was Director of Drug and Alcohol Abuse Treatment at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He observed that ASN frequently co-occurs with substance use disorders, an observation that aligns with the broader literature on narcissism and addiction as parallel responses to an insufficiently regulated self.
The Predisposition Question: Was The Narcissist Always In There?
This is where Millman’s framework gets more clinically precise, and more honest. Dr. Millman observed that those who develop Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) are typically driven by a preexisting, elevated level of narcissism that pushed them to pursue wealth and status in the first place (Sherrill, 2001).
Fame does not create narcissism from nothing. It amplifies what was already present.
Celebrities with ASN already had a narcissistic personality and had acquired it long before it “erupted.” Being famous, powerful, or rich only “legitimized” and conferred immunity from social sanction on the unbridled manifestation of a pre-existing disorder.
Put differently: people with a narcissistic predisposition often gravitate toward the professions and settings that lead to fame, wealth, or power in the first place. Once they arrive there, the environment removes the social checks that had been keeping the trait contained.
The fame did not manufacture the narcissism. It legitimized and removed the consequences for expressing it openly.
This is significant. It means ASN may be less a case of fame transforming a healthy person into a narcissist, and more a case of fame removing the social constraints that were suppressing narcissism that was always there.
So the narcissist was always in there. The traits existed. Fame, power, and wealth removed the checks on them.
Research supports this. A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General found that assigning people a position of power over others increased the exploitative and entitled component of narcissism, but only among participants with high baseline testosterone (Mead et al., 2018). People with lower testosterone showed no such increase under the same conditions.
Power alone did not create narcissistic entitlement equally in everyone. It amplified a tendency that was already present more strongly in some people than others.
So, ASN brings out the hidden narcissist in a person. That said, to be fair, it may not be a pure failure of the person’s character. First the environment became enabling, then they adapted their narcissistic traits to it. They might have been their “sweet” selves had the environment not become enabling for them.
ASN Beyond Celebrity: Power in Ordinary Life
Millman’s framework was built around celebrity, but the underlying mechanism applies more broadly. The same dynamic can operate in any context where a person’s authority is unchecked and their environment provides constant deference.
A CEO whose board never pushes back. A surgeon whose team defers reflexively in the operating room. A politician insulated from constituent contact by layers of staff. An academic whose students are structurally unable to challenge them. The specific industry is less important than the structural features: unearned deference, absent feedback, and the constant experience of being the most important person in the room.
There is evidence that the more people possess power, the more they focus on their egocentric desires and the less able they are to see others’ perspectives. This is not a celebrity problem. It is a power problem.
Can Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) Be Reversed?
Here, ASN differs meaningfully from primary NPD; ASN may be reversed.
Because the condition develops as an amplification of traits by an enabling environment, rather than the deep developmental structuring of early-onset personality disorder, removing the enabling environment may reduce the severity of the traits.
Three things distinguish Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) from classic NPD on this point:
- it typically begins in adulthood rather than childhood,
- the triggering cause is identifiable, and
- the underlying structure is closer to amplification than deep developmental patterning.
As a result, treatment has a realistic chance of reducing the severity of the traits of ASN.
The catch is that the reversibility depends on recognizing the problem, which requires exactly the kind of honest feedback that the environment of fame and power systematically removes. The person who most needs the reality check is least likely to be in a social environment that provides one.
Therapy can help, particularly if the person enters treatment for co-occurring issues, like depression, substance use, or relationship failure, which are the circumstances most likely to bring someone with ASN into clinical contact (Ronningstam, 2011).
References:
- Mead, N. L., Baumeister, R. F., Stuppy, A., & Vohs, K. D. (2018). Power increases the socially toxic component of narcissism among individuals with high baseline testosterone. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 147(4), 591–596.
- Ronningstam, E. (2011). Narcissistic personality disorder: A clinical perspective. Journal of Psychiatric Practice, 17(2), 89–99.
- Sherrill, S. (2001, December 9). The year in ideas: A to Z; Acquired situational narcissism. The New York Times, Section 6, p. 50.
Final Words
Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) is a useful concept precisely because it shifts some of the analytical weight from the individual to the environment.
Most psychological frameworks for narcissism focus on what happened in childhood. Millman asked a different question: what happens to a person when the world around them stops providing the social friction that keeps narcissism in check?
The answer is not flattering for the culture that produces these settings. A fame-obsessed, adulation-rewarding media ecosystem manufactures the conditions that let the latent narcissist come out and flourish unchecked.
The trouble is, in modern celebrity culture, that person is usually the last one left in the room.
The Roman generals had it right, even if the method was theatrical. Someone needs to be willing to say: “remember you are only a person” (Memento Mori In Stoicism).
√ Also Read: The Grandiose Narcissist: How To Spot And Handle Them?
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