Interesting observation. In the DSM-II, many enduring conditions now considered mood disorders were considered during this period personality disorders because of their enduring features that reflected specific dispositional traits e.g. dysthymia and cyclothymia. So, this raises an important question about what criteria should be used in drawing boundaries between specific enduring conditions that are associated with personality traits, as well as other associated features of an etiological nature such as a history of trauma. I wonder how NIH's research domain criteria is addressing this type of issues.

NPD can be a reaction to trauma caused by the first care takers inability to compassionately respond to the child but also the opposite is true, too much praise and too much admiration addressed towards the child is thought to cause this kind of disorder. C-PTSD is though not mentioned in this context. Who fights toxic shame? Normally the victim to a NPD is fighting shame based on having been the target of toxic abuse

I would not claim that NPD is equal to C-PTSD but those victims who have been living with a NPD person for years, they all suffer from PTSD. A NPD:s behaviour is so sadistic and unpredictable that you fear so much. This statement is based on theory and praxis with victims. A 7-point NPD does not seek treatment and does not understand that he (80% are men) suffers from this.

I think that part of the answer is looking at the later lives of people who survived severe trauma, such as concentration camp survivors. While features suggestive of BPD occur, I have never encountered research claiming that features suggestive of NPD did.

I agree with Ronan that individuals suffering from complex PTSD may have a co-occurring personality disorder such as BPD, but not often NPD.

The following resources may interest you:

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/professional/ptsd-overview/complex-ptsd.asp

http://centerforanxietydisorders.com/complex-ptsd/

it is an interesting point. To some extent I feel there could be some exciting revelations to research in this question . From my reading and experience I would put forward that from narcissist abuse that the possibility is that you have a stronger inclination to become either, a person with NPD or an individual with CPTSD. With possibilities of some overlap of symptoms. I do not hold that they are the same disorder. Individuals differ in their capacity and emotional reaction, some are more susceptible to mental and biological responses depending upon age, biology, types of abuse and who the abuser is. whilst other individuals will react in a different way according to their cognitive and biological make up. Very important contributing factors.

Not all trauma is the same. And not all trauma manifests in the same way. It's not possible to argue with holocaust survivors. It's just one kind of trauma, very different of the trauma that others survive. Emotional abuse, toxic shame, suppressive education, that's rather the field we're talking about.

In my opinion, all personality disorders are basically manifestation of a more or less acknowledged trauma. There are also many kinds of trauma that are not acknowledged in our society. Starting with forcing toddlers to sleep all by themselves alone in a room, sending children to kindergarten and school, and also their dishes when growing up in a world of social, educational and psychological limitations due to their financially disadvantageous family. (let's not fool ourselves, poverty is traumatizing!)

So instead of trying to categorize artificially we can a week understand personality to be a coping mechanism, nothing else. And then we can look at what it is about. Once you're taking to people and not trying to make statistics, it's honestly pretty obvious. Just get rid of the artificial concepts. They are the false gods this society is praying to.

Christina Maria Neumann – while you state that not all trauma is the same, you then go on to assert, categorically, that all personality disorders are the same. While this is a personal belief of yours, it must be said that it is not backed by any data, and your definition of trauma is so broad and vague that any experience at all may be used in favour of your argument.

The data tell a different story. Heritability of personality disorder is so variable that some of them behave like heritable disorders while borderline personality disorder in particular shows very poor heritability, arguing that it is environmentally-driven. Likewise, treatment research has been quite successful with borderline, while with the "dark triad" – the personality disorders characterised by callousness (not taking into account the effect on others of your decisions and actions) – the results have not been encouraging.

So although we are still far from understanding personality disorders, there are data out there, and they tell a fascinating story.

The basic problem with your position, however, is that – like any belief – you can adduce all sorts of evidence to support it. However, it is not possible to think of any evidence that would falsify it. And falsifiability is one of the criteria that separate scientific theory from other belief systems such as religion, ethics, homeopathy and snobbery.

Okay, so I will just name the sources and hope that you can track them back with help of google as I am still in the middle of my work.

(...) Common DNA sequence variation and mutations account for only 1%–2% of the inheritance of personality traits and mental disorders (Dick et al., 2010) (Gershon et al., 2011) The large unaccounted heritability of personality traits (between 0.3 and 0.8) (G. F. Miller & Todd, 1998) suggests that the highly dynamic epigenome plays a major role in the regulation of mental adaptations in response to a range of external environmental factors via complex cause-and-effect relationships. (Dolinoy et al., 2007) (Gregg et al., 2010) (Petronis, 2010)

Early childhood is not only a period of physical growth; it is also a time of mental development, including relationship-skills. Brain development is more rapid during this critical or sensitive period than at any other, but epigenetic variation also emerges across the lifespan.

Trauma is defined as “severe emotional shock and pain caused by an extremely upsetting experience” (Cambridge Dictionary). There are calculations that state that approximately 66 % - 85% of the worldwide general population have a trauma history. (Benjet et. al, 2015, Carello, Butler 2014) Relationship-traumas were found to be more harmful than incident-traumas (van der Kolk 2015) and are characterized by (repeated) violent interaction-patterns. (Egle 2004)

After the experience of overwhelming distress, humans often are not able to restore their standard mode of functioning even when the danger is past, hereby being locked in a recurring pattern of response tied to the original danger or trauma. (Kozlowska et al., 2015) Some populations are more vulnerable to experiencing ACEs because of the social and economic conditions in which they live, learn, work and play. (About the CDC-Kaiser ACE Study |Violence Prevention|Injury Center|CDC, 2020) Hence, the social circumstances play a crucial role for the perceived subjective safety of the individuals and the ways in which they collectively shape society. (Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), 2020b)

For being successfully integrated and functional in society, the “constructed”, socially adapted “self” dissociates more and more of unacceptable perceptions. (Gruen, 2009) (Gruen, 2018) (Böhnisch, 2019) A competitive, hierarchical society tends to aggravate this negative spiral further (Swartz, 2008), triggering existential fears in the individuals by tying their social value (and here-on depending self-esteem) to their success or failure. (A. Miller, 2002) (Gruen, 1990) (Gruen, 1989) (Liedloff, 2013) In the naturally occurring (inter)dependent relationship between child, family members, and social surroundings it is the amount of punitive behavior on one side, as well as reparative interactions or relationships on the other side, create the framework in which the child develops its personality, abilities and self-awareness.

(...)

While the hippocampus, important for emotional regulation can decrease in volume due to stress. (J. Bremner, 2016), which is related to a range of trauma-related psychiatric disorders (Woon et al., 2010), recent research could demonstrate that changes in the environment, e.g. social enrichment and positive learning can modulate neurogenesis in the hippocampus positively, enable growth of this brain part and slow the normal age-related decline in neurogenes. (J. Bremner, 2016) (J. D. Bremner, 2006) (Zhu et al., 2019)

Scientific findings suggest that there is a naturally occurring brain plasticity in key neural systems that may “program” an organism's biological response to stressful stimuli. (Kozlowska et al., 2015)

A natural assumption would be that individuals who were maltreated and developed psychiatric disorders would show significant changes in their brain whereas individuals who were maltreated but resilient to psychiatric illness would have “normal” brains. Yet, it was found that resilient individuals’ brains were more different from controls than from susceptible individuals. “It’s not that they are unaffected by maltreatment; rather, their brains are very effectively compensating for it,” Teicher says. (Teicher et al., 2016) Alice Miller described the presence or absence of a “knowing witness” during childhood who takes an empathic stance as decisive for the later development towards a resilient or psychopathological direction. (A. Miller, 2015) Similarly, it was found that environmental enrichment following stress exposure could reverse and prevent some of the negative effects of stress on the epigenome. (Yehuda & Lehrner, 2018) Systems promoting right-hemispheric contributions (= “emotional” side) were found to protect against socially disordered behaviour, substance abuse and some aspects of the pathophysiology of chronic disease, and to furthermore provide solacing access to “Higher Power.” (Henry, 1993)

(...)

The hormone which is the most important to social bonding is not only an important modulator of social and emotional processes („Oxytocin in the Socioemotional Brain“, 2015), but it can also heighten competitive and aggressive behavior towards people that are not considered to be part of the group. (Motschnig & Ryback, 2016)

There is evidence that the central OXT system is altered in several mental disorders that are characterized by social disturbances. (Lehrner & Yehuda, 2018) (Heinrichs & Domes, 2008)

Oxytocin was found to enhance performance in tasks associated with working-memory and cognitive control (Eidelman-Rothman et al., 2015) and to activate parts of the brain important to memory-processing. (Gebauer et al., 2016; Van der Kolk, 2015) In one of the studies, after having administered a single dose to healthy individuals which had recently been trauma-exposed, an acutely increased amygdala reactivity to fearful faces was found (amygdala: fear-centre of the brain). Adverse reactions to higher oxytocin-levels might be correlated to the unlocking of traumatic events and reprocessing. Oxytocin is being tested as an anti-anxiety drug, but new research shows it can cause emotional pain, strengthen bad memories and increase fear and anxiety. Oxytocin appears to be the reason stressful social situations reverberate long past the event as it strengthens social memory in the brain. (Guzmán et al., 2013, 2014) The administration of oxytocin was found to hinder trust and cooperation in borderline patients. (Bartz et al., 2011)

In comparison to those diagnosed with a mental disorder, healthy (= normal) adults showed lower oxytocin reactivity. A hyper-reactive oxytocin system is assumed to be linked to a dysfunctional regulative circuit of attachment-related emotions. Interpersonal stressors or threats by attribution of meaning then lead to impaired cognitive empathy. In schizophrenia, the overreactive oxytocinergic system may be involved in maladaptive coping mechanisms. (Montag et al., 2020)

On the other hand, the higher inner reactivity to external communication stimuli was also found to lead to higher perceptive abilities. “(…) We know from experience that schizophrenic patients have a scary ability to sense subconscious tendencies in other people. This leads us to the conception that schizophrenic patients have an ability to subconsciously communicate whereas this ability atrophies in normal development.” (Bateson, 2002)

(...) Ackerman states: “In my opinion, a precise understanding of the unconscious is only possible if one interprets the dynamics of the unconscious in connection with the conscious organization of experience, the integrative overall structures of personality and the prevailing interpersonal realities.” According to his From the point of view, it is the entity of the family and not just the patient that forms the unity of the disease and thus the treatment unit. " (Bateson, 2002)

Conclusion: We can try to deny the fundamentally similar core to trauma-shaped mental adaptations. We can deny that the world we live in and the social environment and the ecological existential threat is not traumatizing in itself. We can try to artificially categorize and stay unwilling to acknowledge the similiarities. Yet, looking at the big picture is much more useful in my opinion. And yes, the willingness to draw certain conclusions and to look at certain patterns that seem interconnected is - in the end - depending on one's personal outlook. But I actually think that claiming the artificial constructs to be more accurate than the ever-repeating pattern underlying social dysfunction in individuals and society itself is in fact a less scientifically-based ---- opinion.

Thank you for asking.