Selfish

DURING HER REIGN, Kim Kardashian has proved herself to be a person of towering if brittle self-regard. The brittleness is revealed in the floods of tears that attend even minor affronts to her sense of self: if a family member gently teases her; if she feels in any way misunderstood; if she realizes she may give birth to her third fiancé's child before her second divorce is final. But the true nature of her self-regard - river deep and mountain high - is revealed in just about all of her other actions, and particularly in her recently published collection of self-portraits, "Selfish." As a physical object, the book is surprisingly elegant: a compact white bible, a thing beckoning to be held. The suggested interpretation of its cover photo - exquisite little head perched atop exquisite massive breasts - is implied by the resonant word that sits beneath it: Rizzoli. This is the post-Calabasas Kim, the Kanye West Kim, the Kim who must be deferred to by the world's greatest photographers and designers. But it's still our Kim, taking picture after picture of herself in full makeup or full monte, sticking out her tongue or her naked bottom, the mysteries of her arresting beauty undercut, as ever, by her own inane commentary: "I had one drink and was wasted LOL. Rachel and I met up with friends at a random bar in New York." Kardashian wants us to know that she is leading a beautiful life, that it is peopled by beautiful friends, all of whom reflect or enhance her own beauty, but the question for you and me is: Are we in any kind of danger here? Is Kardashian a threat to us? Or should we look to her, instead, as exemplar, as someone with much to teach us about mastering our own selfish lives? Opposing positions on these questions are taken by two new books: "The Narcissist You Know: Defending Yourself Against Extreme Narcissists in an All-About-Me Age," by Joseph Burgo, and "Rethinking Narcissism: The Bad - and Surprising Good - About Feeling Special," by Craig Malkin. Just when we had girded ourselves against the sociopath next door, Burgo alerts us to the narcissist across the street. What a neighborhood! Burgo, a psychotherapist, instructs us that 5 percent of the population consists of "extreme narcissists," people who "fall short of the diagnostic threshold for Narcissistic Personality Disorder" but who can still make our lives hell with their whims and rants. We are informed of eight types of the species - the Bullying Narcissist, the Know-It-All Narcissist, the Self-Righteous Narcissist - and invited to apply our newfound knowledge not only to our rotten neighbors but also to our national celebrities. We might consider Kardashian's tantrums as responses to "narcissistic injuries" - to the fact that deep shame lies underneath all grandiosity, and if that shame is activated (by losing a diamond in the Aegean or by being confronted by her chubby brother's bitter envy), nothing can contain it. Malkin, a therapist and psychology instructor at Harvard Medical School, takes a more inspirational attitude toward the subject. "Narcissism isn't all bad," he writes. "In fact, some narcissism is good - even vital - for us to lead happy, fulfilled and productive lives." He writes that "creativity, leadership and high self-esteem" are associated with the feeling that one is better than average. If we began to understand narcissism as yet another spectrum disorder, we might be able to assess our own egos, and maybe even pump them up a bit. "At the heart of narcissism lies an ancient conundrum," Malkin writes. "How much should we love ourselves, and how much should we love others?" For Kim Kardashian, this is settled science. Loving herself - extravagantly and in the manner of a grand romance, with fits of anger and remorse and ecstatic forgiveness - is the way to go. Who else could describe a collection of self-portraits as "a candid tribute to my fans"? Although her reach is vast, her beginnings are in reality television, a form so shallow it's mesmerizing, and that she is talentless - the one unifying assessment of her legion of detractors - is a baseless claim. Like Martha Stewart, she represents affordability and aspiration. Yes, her Sears line of clothing folded; true, her perfume is bewilderingly described as "a tantalizing Oriental gourmand," but she's not about Martha Stewart-style perfection. She got started with a sex tape, she has the heartbreak of psoriasis, she's holding nothing back. This is not granny-panty feminism; it's shopgirl feminism. What she's selling isn't the dream of a Sarah Lawrence degree, a bold venture into a sustainability-related career and eventual - messy, human, rewarding - co-parenting. She's selling the idea that any young woman scanning bar codes at Kmart can vault out of that condition not by night school and thrift but by texting enough naked selfies and staging enough tear-filled mini-dramas that she gets discovered and ends up with her own McMansion and a diamond as big as the Ritz. Could Kim Kardashian have created and capitalized upon this improbable vision if she had worked at achieving Craig Malkin's sweet spot of "just enough" narcissism? Would she be the woman she is today if she had taken Joseph Burgo's advice and severed ties to her narcissistic mother? There's nothing cynical about Kardashian's enterprise. What fuels everything - every product and episode and personal appearance - is the honestly held and unshakable conviction that she is special and better and more interesting than anyone else around her. That a trio of spray-tanned shoppers managed to transform themselves into the Mitford sisters of the San Fernando Valley is entirely because of Kim Kardashian - the only Kardashian most of us can reliably recognize - and her fathomless ego. In fact, the advice about narcissism in these two new books will be of more practical use to the army of trolls who live to mock her than it might be to Kardashian herself. The hundreds of people who rushed to Amazon to trash "Selfish" - often at great and considered length, usually without having seen a copy - might take these words from Burgo to heart: "Managing an Extreme Narcissist depends largely on mastering your own reactions to their behavior, your own defensive responses to their assaults on your self-esteem." It's easy to feel better than Kim Kardashian, and it's just as easy to sustain your own narcissistic injury by contemplating how much she has accomplished, and how little she cares about what you think of her. CAITLIN FLANAGAN is a contributing editor at The Atlantic.