Overall, it appears that psychopathic individuals do ignore fear-related information, but only in the service of focusing on a specific goal. For example, such an inflexible focus on personal goals may underlie the selfcentered, callous traits associated with psychopathy and may leave psychopathic individuals oblivious to the potentially devastating consequences of their behavior. While one relationship between fear and psychopathology is related to deficient fear processing, another relationship between fear and psychopathology

Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical is related to over-reactivity to fear. Specifically, research on other forms of externalizing psychopathology, like borderline personality disorder, report increased FPS during instructed fear conditioning72 and increased amygdala activity while viewing emotional slides.73 Similarly, studies of trait externalizing demonstrated significant increases in FPS, amygdala, and emotion-related prefrontal Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical cortex activity during fear conditioning.74 Thus, these individuals appear unable to regulate their find more reaction to fear, essentially Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical becoming

consumed by its presence, ultimately resulting in a cascade of emotion-driven disinhibited behavior. Although this neuroscientific overview applies to near neighbor psychopathologies, several findings introduce possible links to fear processing in pathological narcissism and NPD. Similar to people with psychopathy, focused attention on goals, such as ambitions, competition, and aspirations, and even on risk-taking efforts, may, for some people with pathological narcissism and NPD, enable ignorance of fear and serve as a fear modulator. The narcissistic individual’s awareness is then directed away from potential triggers of feelings of Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical fear and towards more securing or rewarding self-enhancing experiences. On the other hand, given the psychoanalytic observations of profound fear in NPD, and the recognition of

the thin-skinned75 and vulnerable narcissistic personality types,9 the question is whether some people with pathological narcissism and NPD indeed are hypersensitive or over-reactive to fear, or can have impaired capability to tolerate Inhibitors,research,lifescience,medical and/or process feelings of fear. It is also possible that when people with pathological narcissism or NPD have to face fear without the possibilities of engaging in avoiding, goal-directed, or self-enhancing strategies, the experience too becomes overwhelming and consuming, forcing drastic decisions with seemingly immediate short-term gains. Further research is needed to parse these possibilities. One avenue for understanding the role of fear in narcissism is to examine its impact on functionality, in processes such as decision-making. Decision-making Psychoanalytic studies have primarily attended to the intrapsychic aspects of decision making. Identified as a secondary ego process linked between motivation and action, the unconscious courses involved in decision-making have nevertheless been a prime focus of interest.