A Comparative Study of Narcissism from the Perspective of Psychology and the Infallible Imams’ (as) Hadiths with an Emphasis on the Hadiths of Amir al-Muminīn Ali (as)

Narcissistic personality disorder includes characteristics and behaviors such as showing off, fantasizing, self-conceit, need to be admired, lack of empathy, self-deception, and lack of self-esteem. The present study tries to present the results of the examination of this disorder in Islamic teachings and its treatment methods, and to determine the degree of convergence of psychological findings with these teachings. In this regard, what is the nature, etiology and diagnostic criteria of this disorder in Islam and psychology, and finally a comparison is made between them. The research is of a descriptive-analytical type, and for this purpose, after determining the characteristics of these people based on psychological research, we searched for equivalent words in the narrations. Narcissism has been mentioned and discussed in the Infallible Imams’ (as) Hadiths with words such as arrogance, boasting, wonder, bigotry and false zeal. These traits cause behaviors such as endless fantasizing, self-praise and self-deception, lack of understanding of reality, uncriticism, lack of growth, lack of social relationships, jealousy and indebtedness, which have a lot of overlap with the self-obsessed personality from a psychological point of view, but despite this, there are differences. It exists between them, and in the hadiths of infallible Imams (as), its features and consequences are more fully and accurately explained. In the end, the main cause of narcissistic disorder, which is ignorance towards Allah the Almighty and oneself, and the treatment method of this disease are presented to show that relying on the Infallible Imams’ (as) Hadiths, we can diagnose and treat this personality disorder.