Malignant Self Love, Samuel Vaknin [reading tree txt] 📗

in relationships [Forman];

 

_ Frequently entertains a wishful, exaggerated and unrealistic

concept of himself, which he can’t possibly measure up to [Reich];

 

_ Produces (too quickly) work not up to the level of his

abilities because of an overwhelmingly strong need for the immediate

gratification of success [Reich];

 

_ Is touchy, quick to take offence at the slightest provocation,

continually anticipating attack and danger, reacting with anger and

fantasies of revenge when he feels himself frustrated in his need for

constant admiration [Reich];

 

_ Is self-conscious, due to a dependence on approval from others

[Reich];

 

_ Suffers regularly from repetitive oscillations of self-esteem

[Reich];

 

_ Seeks to undo feelings of inadequacy by forcing everyone’s

attention and admiration upon himself [Reich];

 

_ May react with self-contempt and depression to the lack of

fulfilment of his grandiose expectations [Riso].

 

Sources:

 

Forman, Max. Narcissistic Disorders and the Oedipal Fixations. In

Feldstein, J.J. (Ed.), The Annual of Psychoanalysis. Volume IV. New

York: International Universities [1976] pp. 65-92.

 

Millon, Theodore, and Roger D. Davis. Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV

and Beyond. 2nd Ed. New York: Wiley, [1996] pp. 411-12.

 

Reich, Annie, [1986]. Pathological Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation. In

Morrison, A. P., (Ed.), Essential Papers on Narcissism. pp. 44-60.

Reprint from 1960. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Volume 15, pp.

205-32.

 

Riso, Don Richard. Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for

Self-Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin [1987] pp. 102-3.

 

Speculative Diagnostic Criteria for

 

Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder

 

A pervasive pattern of self-inflation, pseudo-confidence,

exhibitionism, and strivings for prestige, that compensates for

feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, as indicated by the

following:

 

_ Pseudo-confidence compensating for an underlying condition of

insecurity and feelings of helplessness;

 

_ Pretentiousness, self-inflation;

 

_ Exhibitionism in the pursuit of attention, recognition, and

glory;

 

_ Strivings for prestige to enhance self-esteem;

 

_ Deceitfulness and manipulativeness in the service of

maintaining feelings of superiority;

 

_ Idealisation in relationships;

 

_ Fragmentation of the self: feelings of emptiness and deadness;

 

_ A proud, hubristic disposition;

 

_ Hypochondriasis;

 

_ Substance abuse;

 

_ Self-destructiveness.

 

Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder corresponds to Ernest

Jones’ narcissistic “God Complex”, Annie Reich’s “Compensatory

Narcissism”, Heinz Kohut’s “Narcissistic Personality Disorder”, and

Theodore Millon’s “Compensatory Narcissist”.

 

Millon, Theodore, and Roger D. Davis. Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV

and Beyond. 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1996. 411-12.

 

Compare this to the classic type:

 

Narcissistic Personality Type

 

The basic trait of the Narcissistic Personality Type is a pattern of

grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy.

 

The Narcissistic Personality Type:

 

_ Reacts to criticism with feelings of rage, shame, or

humiliation;

 

_ Is interpersonally exploitive: takes advantage of others to

achieve his own ends;

 

_ Has a grandiose sense of self-importance;

 

_ Believes that his problems are unique and can be understood

only by other special people;

 

_ Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power,

brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;

 

_ Has a sense of entitlement: an unreasonable expectation of

especially favourable treatment;

 

_ Requires much attention and admiration of others;

 

_ Lacks empathy: fails to recognise and experience how others

feel;

 

_ Is preoccupied with feelings of envy.

 

This is mainly the DSM-III-R view. Pay attention to the not so subtle

changes in the DSM-IV-TR - SV:

 

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [American

Psychiatric Association. DSM-IV-TR, Washington, 2000] describes

Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a pervasive pattern of grandiosity

(in fantasy or behaviour), need for admiration, and lack of empathy,

beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as

indicated by five (or more) of the following:

 

_ Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates

achievements and talents, expects to be recognised as superior without

commensurate achievements);

 

_ Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power,

brilliance, beauty, or ideal love;

 

_ Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be

understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status

people (or institutions);

 

_ Requires excessive admiration;

 

_ Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of

especially favourable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her

expectations;

 

_ Is interpersonally exploitive, i.e., takes advantage of others

to achieve his or her own ends;

 

_ Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognise or identify with the

feelings and needs of others;

 

_ Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious

of him or her;

 

_ Shows arrogant, haughty behaviours or attitudes.

 

Summarised from: American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: DSM-IV-TR, Washington [2000]

 

The Inverted Narcissist

 

It is clear that there is, indeed, an hitherto neglected type of

narcissist. It is the “self-effacing” or “introverted” narcissist. We

call it the Inverted Narcissist (hereinafter: IN). Others call it

“narcissist-codependent” or “N-magnet”.

 

This is a narcissist who, in many respects, is the mirror image of the

“classical” narcissist. No one is sure why. The psychodynamics of such

a narcissist are not clear, nor are its developmental roots. Perhaps it

is the product of an overweening Primary Object or caregiver. Perhaps

excessive abuse leads to the repression of even the narcissistic and

other defence mechanisms. Perhaps the parents suppress every

manifestation of grandiosity (very common in early childhood) and of

narcissism - so that the narcissistic defence mechanism is “inverted”

and internalised in this unusual form.

 

These narcissists are self-effacing, sensitive, emotionally fragile,

sometimes socially phobic. They derive all their self-esteem and sense

of self-worth from the outside (others), are pathologically envious (a

transformation of aggression), are likely to intermittently engage in

aggressive/violent behaviours, are more emotionally labile than the

classic narcissist, etc.

 

We can, therefore talk about three “basic” types of narcissists:

 

1. The offspring of neglecting parents - They resort to narcissism

as the predominant object relation (with themselves as the exclusive

object).

 

2. The offspring of doting or domineering parents (often

narcissists themselves) - They internalised their parents’ voices in

the form of a sadistic, ideal, immature Superego and spend their lives

trying to be perfect, omnipotent, omniscient and to be judged “a

success” by these parent-images and their later representations

(authority figures).

 

3. The offspring of abusive parents - They internalise the

abusing, demeaning and contemptuous voices and spend their lives in an

effort to elicit “counter-voices” from their human environment and thus

to extract a modicum of self-esteem and sense of self-worth.

 

All three types exhibit recursive, recurrent and Sisyphean failures.

Shielded by their defence mechanisms, they constantly gauge reality

wrongly, their actions and reactions become more and more rigid and

ossified and the damage inflicted by them on themselves and on others

ever greater.

 

The narcissistic parent seems to employ a myriad of primitive defences

in his dealings with his children. Splitting - idealising the child and

devaluing him in cycles, which reflect the internal dynamics of the

parent rather than anything the child does. Projective Identification -

forcing the child into behaviours and traits, which reflect the

parents’ fears regarding himself or herself, his or her self-image and

his or her self-worth. This is a particularly powerful and pernicious

mechanism. If the narcissist parent fears his own deficiencies

(“defects”), vulnerability, perceived weaknesses, susceptibility,

gullibility, or emotions - he is likely to force the child to “feel”

these rejected and (to him) repulsive emotions, to behave in ways

strongly abhorred by the parent, to exhibit character traits the parent

strongly rejects in himself.

 

The child, in a way, becomes the “trash bin” of the parents’

inhibitions, fears, self-loathing, self-contempt, perceived lack of

self-worth, sense of inadequacy, rejected traits, repressed emotions,

failures and emotional reticence. Coupled with the parent’s treatment

of the child as the parent’s extension, it serves to totally inhibit

the psychological growth and emotional maturation of the child. The

child becomes a reflection of the parent - a vessel through which the

parent experiences and realises himself for better (hopes, aspirations,

ambition, life goals) and for worse (weaknesses, “undesirable”

emotions, “negative” traits).

 

A host of other, simpler, defence mechanisms employed by the parent are

likely to obscure the predominant use of projective identification:

projection, displacement, intellectualisation, depersonalisation.

Relationships between such parents and their progeny easily deteriorate

to sexual or other modes of abuse because there are no functioning

boundaries between them.

 

It seems that the child’s reaction to a narcissistic parent can be

either accommodation and assimilation or rejection.

 

Accommodation and Assimilation

 

The child accommodates, idealises and internalises the Primary Object

successfully. This means that the child’s “internal voice” is

narcissistic and that the child tries to comply with its directives and

with its explicit and perceived wishes. The child becomes a masterful

provider of Narcissistic Supply, a perfect match to the parent’s

personality, an ideal source, an accommodating, understanding and

caring caterer to all the needs, whims, mood swings and cycles of the

narcissist, an endurer of devaluation and idealisation with equanimity,

a superb adapter to the narcissist’s world view, in short: the ultimate

extension. This is what we call an “inverted narcissist”.

 

We must not neglect the abusive aspect of such a relationship. The

narcissistic parent always alternates between idealisation of his

progeny and its devaluation. The child is likely to internalise the

devaluing, abusive, demeaning, berating, diminishing, minimising,

upbraiding, chastising voices. The parent (or caregiver) goes on to

survive inside the adult (as part of a sadistic and ideal Superego and

an unrealistic Ego Ideal, to resort to psychoanalytic parlance). These

are the voices that inhibit the development of reactive narcissism, the

child’s defence mechanism.

 

The child turned adult maintains these traits. He keeps looking for

narcissists in order to feel whole, alive and wanted. He wishes to be

treated by a narcissist narcissistically (what others would call abuse

is, to him or her, familiar and constitutes Narcissistic Supply). To

him, the narcissist is a Source of Supply (primary or secondary) and

the narcissistic behaviours constitute Narcissistic Supply. He feels

dissatisfied, empty and unloved if not loved by a narcissist.

 

The roles of Primary Source of Narcissistic Supply (PSNS) and Secondary

Source of Narcissistic Supply (SSNS) are reversed. To the inverted

narcissist, a spouse is a Source of PRIMARY Supply.

 

The other reaction to the narcissistic parent is:

 

Rejection

 

The child may react to the narcissism of the Primary Object with a

peculiar type of rejection. He develops his own narcissistic

personality, replete with grandiosity and lack of empathy - BUT his

personality is antithetical to the personality of the narcissistic

parent. If the parent were a somatic narcissist - he is likely to be a

cerebral one, if his father prided himself being virtuous - he is

sinful, if his mother bragged about her frugality, he is bound to

flaunt his wealth.

 

An Attempted DSM-Style List of Criteria

 

We came up with a DSM-IV-TR “style” inventory for an inverted

narcissist, using the narcissists’ characteristics as a template,

because they are, in many ways two sides of the same coin, or “the

mould and the moulded” hence “mirror narcissist” or “inverted

narcissist”.

 

The narcissist tries to merge with an idealised but badly internalised

object. He does so by “digesting” the meaningful others in his life and

transforming them into extensions of his self. He employs various

techniques to achieve this. To the “digested” this is the crux of the

harrowing experience called “living with a narcissist”.

 

The “inverted narcissist” (IN), on the other hand, does not attempt,

except in fantasy or in dangerous, masochistic sexual practice, to

merge with an idealised external object. This is because he so

successfully internalised the narcissistic Primary Object to the

exclusion of all else. The IN feels ill at ease in a relationship with

a non-narcissist because it