Re-thinking personality disorders

From a reader:

I read your blog post from 2012 titled "Why I hate narcissists" and I think you should try to think of them a little differently(if you don't already, considering the post is from 2012.) I've been best friends with a narcissist since elementary school. He is obsessed with being liked, looking cool, etc. He'll lie to make himself look good, do anything for attention etc. He has all the hallmark traits of a classic narcissist.

My point is, I have always kept him around as a sort of sidekick. He is not very smart, again a trait of a narcissist, so he doesn't notice when I am manipulating him. He loves attention, no matter if it's good or bad, so he was a great fall-guy anytime we got in trouble. He'd gladly take all the blame just for the attention, allowing me to get away scot-free. He would also improve my image and allow me to indirectly manipulate my impression on others through him. He would lie about me in order to make himself look better. After all, if his friends are great then that makes him look great too. Of course that meant that I could put all the blame on him if any of the lies were discovered, thus avoiding all risk while still getting all the reward. 

All in all I'd just like to say that narcissists might be the most useful tools in a sociopaths arsenal. so you might want to reconsider your opinions on them.

I have actually already have reconsidered my opinions on them. "Hated" was always an overstatement as it applied to narcissists, I'm sure. But also I think I don't think of people as fitting such neat boxes as "narcissist" anymore. Or at least I try not to if I can help it.  I still think that labels are a useful abstraction that help people understand themselves and others. But particularly for personality disorders, the lines separating us are not bright as people make it out to seem. These diagnoses say things like you need "three or more" of a long list of characteristics, but a lot of people have in their mind that a "true" diagnosis actually looks like. Like the classic BPD is a female cutter who is emotionally unstable with outbursts and oversexualized or whatever else. Where do they get this picture from? Stereotypes probably owe their genesis to truth, but the stereotype is by its nature an oversimplification. Still, people assume that if you don't fit the stereotype you must not be X. And I sort of feel like personality disorder diagnoses (at least as they are commonly conceptualized and used) are essentially as valuable and truthful as a stereotype. And that's where the label making starts getting a little absurd. Lately I am more of the opinion that personality disorders all share certain things in common -- problems with identity and sense of self, e.g. Then there are maybe 50 or so traits that they could also have depending on how the lack of sense of self played out in their development -- variations in how they understand and deal with their emotions, variations in their conception of their self, variations in how they deal with others, are they generally passive or aggressive, are they generally driven or lazy, introverted or extroverted, delusional or self-aware? And is it possible to have a driven introverted self-aware sociopath? Or do they all come out extroverted lazy and delusional? What if, like a rubics cube, we change just one of those traits. When does a sociopath who has all of the classic traits suddenly cease to be a sociopath? Taking away one trait? Two? And which ones are essential and which ones could you expect to see some variety within the population