What Is Jay Gatsby Narcissistic Personality

Character Name: Jay Gatsby (James Gatz)

I: Patient Profile

The summer of 1922 was a summer of good times, incredible parties, and a heat wave like no other. One particular day, as the hot afternoon sun burned through the glass window of my office like a magnifying glass roasting an ant, one most memorable host of said parties entered my office. He had a face no one knew and a name no one could forget. His name was Jay Gatsby. He walked with a particular swagger that distinguished him from the rest. I had only heard stories about him until this point but he introduced himself as a war veteran and most notably “an Oxford man” (49). Perhaps his most distinguishing quality was his smile. “He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly.

As mentioned before, his parties were very well known but nobody saw or talked to him at these parties. Although he claimed he was just waiting for Daisy and that “Gatsby bought that house so that Daisy would be just across the bay” (78), however his true motives were that he felt that he was too good to socialize with the people and liked the elusive reputation this attitude gave him. To add to that, another common side effect of narcissistic personality disorder is having fantasies of ideal love which perfectly sums up his relationship with Daisy Buchanan. The last major symptom of narcissistic personality disorder that is present in Jay Gatsby is his exploitation of others, namely Nick Carraway. Although he may have befriended Nick Carraway genuinely, there is a high likelihood that he did it to get close to Daisy, which is exploiting Nick Carraway. Jay Gatsby suffers from bipolar disorder. The tell-tale sign for this one was seeing how much differently he acted when he was hanging out nicely with his friends versus when he took work calls with Meyer Wolfsheim and angrily talked into the phone. Even when his work was brought up in front of his friends, he reacted harshly as evidenced by this quote from Nick Carraway “Then I turned back to Gatsby- and was startled at his expression. He looked...as if he had ‘killed a man’”(134). The differences

First, to help with his narcissistic personality disorder, he needs to make a list of all of the things he isn’t good at and share it with his friends. I think this humbling experience may take away his attitude of being superior. He also needs to have a sit down with Daisy Buchanan and have her tell him face to face that things between them are never going to work out no matter how hard he tries. This should help him snap out of this ideal love fantasy that he seems to have got himself into. The last thing Mr. Gatsby needs to do for his narcissistic personality disorder is apologize to Nick Carraway. Nick Carraway was a genuine friend to Jay Gatsby and he exploited him for his own personal gain so he needs to apologize and beg Mr. Carraway to forgive him and continue to be his friend. As mentioned earlier Mr. Gatsby also suffers from bipolar disorder. In order to fix this, Jay Gatsby has to do is start to mix hanging out his work associates with his friends instead of keeping them intentionally separated. By doing this, he will realize that he doesn’t have to be two different people depending on who he’s with. This realization will prevent situations like the episodes on the phone as were previously described or his explosiveness when his career is mentioned. Jay Gatsby is a curable man, the first thing he needs to know is that he needs