Narcissism, in and of itself, should not have been turned into a bad word, according to my psychiatrist. Small children are necessarily narcissistic because they depend on others for their survival, and rightly so when they are infants and very small. The whole process of socialization is raising them to maturity, stage by stage, and bringing them from their initial narcissistic state to one of independence and inter-dependence with others in their lives without losing their innate sense of self.
Like several of the posters, I think narcissism is a term far too readily bandied about these days, without real understanding of what it means.
For an adult to be narcissistic is, in today's language, usually a character deficit if not a full blown destructive Personality Disorder. There are many more apt and useful ways to describe the willingness to think about others' needs and the desire to live a life of interdependence than to call that "narcissistic".
One thing about co-dependents that I've noticed, myself included, is that we are all too ready to accept a negative description of ourselves. That's why we connected to people who mistreat and/or abuse us.
I think its more a question of our boundaries and our self-identification.
If you describe the "trait" of narcissism as "being self-serving and/or selfish", that may only be accurate depending upon the context.
If we set boundaries for our alcoholics/abusers, we could be seen as putting our needs above theirs, and we are, and it is warranted. That is not narcissism; it is self-protection. We need to have boundaries and even more, we need to have a strong positive sense of self to succeed in this world.
Our positive sense of self is our compass; we can tell if we are in healthy or unhealthy territory depending on how truly we understand who we are. If we don't start from a healthy sense of self, we let others intrude into our space and our identity and cause ourselves all manner of disruption on to destruction.
It is a fine line distinction, and one I think would be better served by dropping the whole mis-used idea of narcissism and finding a better more constructive way to talk about these issues.
I'm a big believer in leaving the labels and the superficial take on what something is behind us in the dust.
I'm not sure yet that the co-dependency recovery world has come up with the most appropriate language yet to describe what we face and how we need to recover from it. It's kind of one size fits all, and I think the confusion over narcissism being co-dependent or not, and all of that, is stuck in this undifferentiated language.
The Eskimos have an unbelievable number of words for snow because it is one of the most basic and persistent factors in their lives. We need that differentiation in thought and language to get us more clarify about what co-dependence is, and how true maturity and interdependence differ. If you can't articulate it, your concept is fuzzy, and it is hard to be clear about how to move forward.
ShootingStar1