Very glad to see your post.

I don't have NPD but a therapist told me I was "narcissistically wounded and fragmented" 8 years ago and did diagnose me with PDNOS.

Long before then I had come across the topic of shame and narcissism in some books I read, trying to find out for myself what might be "wrong" with me.

In the world, I'm probably more codependent and covert narcissistic than overt -- but there is an overt narcissist inside, which I feared and hated and was ashamed of -- and also tried very hard, after seeing stuff in the books, to get in touch with.

For me, it's like I could be "all about you" -- conscientious, "good", and codependent but false -- or "all about me".

I think I'm doing better at developing a perspective that includes both "you" and me, but it's something I figured out myself that I needed -- and how to do it, keeping differing perspectives in mind at one time, is not anything that I could tell anybody else how to do. It may be different for each person.

I can understand your interest in your friend, as he may exhibit something that you know is like you, but other people don't get. A way to learn to understand it, as you have done. (I've done it hanging out in this forum. )

There's the current social judgment against narcissists, and narcissism generally, and then there's the abstract clinical psychology concept, which I think has some merit -- but the theory is far from being really "scientific". Most of what I see in internet research is the therapists socially dissing the people with NPD and related conditions, whom they don't know how to "help" even when they show up on their doorsteps. There's notmuch real thought and research about what is going on with us people and what is needed to "change". (Perhaps you can believe me that with my overt, conscientious, "good" adaptation I had plenty of motivation, and many years of mostly worthless, ineffective, and sometimes harmful therapy.) Maybe it's going on in the more technical journals that I don't have access to, but I kind of doubt it.

I'd be interested in hearing some more about your experience, of your friend and yourself, if you want to write about it. Thanks for posting.