Carol, thank you for your insight and opinion. I appreciate your kind intention and to that again, I say thank you.

My experience is similar to yours and different. The latter being the former narc wife and I had a family of three children. The middle child suffers from the consequence of the narc mother as she as well as many of her mother’s narcissistic traits. The oldest and youngest children share none of those traits.

To your theory that large numbers offer the truth while small numbers offer no more then windows into the possibility of the truth I would like to offer a broader context. Your personal experience of two narcs over a large portion of your life seems like small numbers until you look at the number of years and with that perspective the infinite number of individual experiences. The large number of experiences is the key to cycles indicative to the conclusion you possess. Two narcs does not make for certainty for two is small numbers yet, how many atomic bombs need to be dropped to comprehend its reality?

The argument of what is the truth relative to causation of narcissism relative to its source [DNA or environmental] arcs from my experience to conflation of the two. As to the three children and their common truths…same parents, home, rituals, and myths came much different personas. One is a cluster B personality disorder individual [ covert narc or histronic] the two siblings not. Hence, as to small numbers being invalid to forecasting I arc to the less obvious as you did with your personal life experience; the truth is in the large numbers of individual actions over spans of time when compared to environmental constancy.

Eric