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

defence law in

British Columbia, Canada. Ms. Ratzlaff was a professional ‘cellist

before entering law school. Ms. Ratzlaff has two sons.

 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION # 53

 

The Selfish Gene

 

The Genetic Underpinnings of Narcissism

 

Question: Is pathological narcissism the outcome of inherited traits -

or the sad result of abusive and traumatizing upbringing? Or, maybe it

is the confluence of both? It is a common occurrence, after all, that,

in the same family, with the same set of parents and an identical

emotional environment - some siblings grow to be malignant narcissists,

while others are perfectly “normal”. Surely, this indicates a

predisposition of some people to developing narcissism, a part of one’s

genetic heritage.

 

Answer: This vigorous debate may be the offshoot of obfuscating

semantics.

 

When we are born, we are not much more than the sum of our genes and

their manifestations. Our brain - a physical object - is the residence

of mental health and its disorders. Mental illness cannot be explained

without resorting to the body and, especially, to the brain. And our

brain cannot be contemplated without considering our genes. Thus, any

explanation of our mental life that leaves out our hereditary makeup

and our neurophysiology is lacking. Such lacking theories are nothing

but literary narratives. Psychoanalysis, for instance, is often accused

of being divorced from corporeal reality.

 

Our genetic baggage makes us resemble a personal computer. We are an

all-purpose, universal, machine. Subject to the right programming

(conditioning, socialisation, education, upbringing) - we can turn out

to be anything and everything.

 

A computer can imitate any other kind of discrete machine, given the

right software. It can play music, screen movies, calculate, print,

paint. Compare this to a television set - it is constructed and

expected to do one, and only one, thing. It has a single purpose and a

unitary function. We, humans, are more like computers than like

television sets.

 

True, single genes rarely account for any behaviour or trait. An array

of coordinated genes is required to explain even the minutest human

phenomenon. “Discoveries” of a “gambling gene” here and an “aggression

gene” there are derided by the more serious and less publicity-prone

scholars. Yet, it would seem that even complex behaviours such as risk

taking, reckless driving, and compulsive shopping have genetic

underpinnings.

 

What about the Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

 

It would seem reasonable to assume - though, at this stage, there is

not a shred of proof - that the narcissist is born with a propensity to

develop narcissistic defences. These are triggered by abuse or trauma

during the formative years in infancy or during early adolescence [see

FAQ 48]. By “abuse” I am referring to a spectrum of behaviours which

objectifies the child and treats it as an extension of the caregiver

(parent) or an instrument. Dotting and smothering are as much abuse as

beating and starving. And abuse can be dished out by peers as well as

by adult role models.

 

Still, I would have to attribute the development of NPD mostly to

nurture. The Narcissistic Personality Disorder is an extremely complex

battery of phenomena: behaviour patterns, cognitions, emotions,

conditioning, and so on. NPD is a PERSONALITY disordered and even the

most ardent proponents of the school of genetics do not attribute the

development of the whole personality to genes.

 

From “The Interrupted Self” [http://samvak.tripod.com/sacks.html]:

 

“‘Organic’ and ‘mental’ disorders (a dubious distinction at best) have

many characteristics in common (confabulation, antisocial behaviour,

emotional absence or flatness, indifference, psychotic episodes and so

on).”

 

From “On Disease” [http://samvak.tripod.com/disease.html]:

 

“Moreover, the distinction between the psychic and the physical is

hotly disputed, philosophically. The psychophysical problem is as

intractable today as it ever was (if not more so). It is beyond doubt

that the physical affects the mental and the other way around. This is

what disciplines like psychiatry are all about. The ability to control

‘autonomous’ bodily functions (such as heartbeat) and mental reactions

to pathogens of the brain are proof of the artificialness of this

distinction.

 

It is a result of the reductionist view of nature as divisible and

summable. The sum of the parts, alas, is not always the whole and there

is no such thing as an infinite set of the rules of nature, only an

asymptotic approximation of it. The distinction between the patient and

the outside world is superfluous and wrong. The patient AND his

environment are ONE and the same. Disease is a perturbation in the

operation and management of the complex ecosystem known as

patient-world. Humans absorb their environment and feed it in equal

measures. This on-going interaction IS the patient. We cannot exist

without the intake of water, air, visual stimuli and food. Our

environment is defined by our actions and output, physical and mental.

 

Thus, one must question the classical differentiation between

‘internal’ and ‘external’. Some illnesses are considered ‘endogenic’

(=generated from the inside). Natural, ‘internal’, causes - a heart

defect, a biochemical imbalance, a genetic mutation, a metabolic

process gone awry - cause disease. Aging and deformities also belong in

this category.

 

In contrast, problems of nurturance and environment - early childhood

abuse, for instance, or malnutrition - are ‘external’ and so are the

‘classical’ pathogens (germs and viruses) and accidents.

 

But this, again, is a counter-productive approach. Exogenic and

Endogenic pathogenesis is inseparable. Mental states increase or

decrease the susceptibility to externally induced disease. Talk therapy

or abuse (external events) alter the biochemical balance of the brain.

 

The inside constantly interacts with the outside and is so intertwined

with it that all distinctions between them are artificial and

misleading. The best example is, of course, medication: it is an

external agent, it influences internal processes and it has a very

strong mental correlate (=its efficacy is influenced by mental factors

as in the placebo effect).

 

The very nature of dysfunction and sickness is highly culture-dependent.

 

Societal parameters dictate right and wrong in health (especially

mental health). It is all a matter of statistics. Certain diseases are

accepted in certain parts of the world as a fact of life or even a sign

of distinction (e.g., the paranoid schizophrenic as chosen by the

gods). If there is no disease there is no disease. That the physical

or mental state of a person CAN be different - does not imply that it

MUST be different or even that it is desirable that it should be

different. In an over-populated world, sterility might be the desirable

thing - or even the occasional epidemic. There is no such thing as

ABSOLUTE dysfunction. The body and the mind ALWAYS function. They adapt

themselves to their environment and if the latter changes - they change.

 

Personality disorders are the best possible responses to abuse. Cancer

may be the best possible response to carcinogens. Aging and death are

definitely the best possible response to over-population. Perhaps the

point of view of the single patient is incommensurate with the point of

view of his species - but this should not serve to obscure the issues

and derail rational debate.

 

As a result, it is logical to introduce the notion of ‘positive

aberration’. Certain hyper-or hypo-functioning can yield positive

results and prove to be adaptive. The difference between positive and

negative aberrations can never be ‘objective’. Nature is

morally-neutral and embodies no ‘values’ or ‘preferences’. It simply

exists. WE, humans, introduce our value systems, prejudices and

priorities into our activities, science included. It is better to be

healthy, we say, because we feel better when we are healthy.

Circularity aside - this is the only criterion that we can reasonably

employ. If the patient feels good - it is not a disease, even if we all

think it is. If the patient feels bad, ego-dystonic, unable to function

- it is a disease, even when we all think it isn’t. Needless to say

that I am referring to that mythical creature, the fully informed

patient. If someone is sick and knows no better (has never been

healthy) - then his decision should be respected only after he is given

the chance to experience health.

 

All the attempts to introduce ‘objective’ yardsticks of health are

plagued and philosophically contaminated by the insertion of values,

preferences and priorities into the formula - or by subjecting the

formula to them altogether. One such attempt is to define health as ‘an

increase in order or efficiency of processes’ as contrasted with

illness which is ‘a decrease in order (=increase of entropy) and in the

efficiency of processes’. While being factually disputable, this dyad

also suffers from a series of implicit value-judgements. For instance,

why should we prefer life over death? Order to entropy? Efficiency to

inefficiency?”

 

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION # 63

 

The Weapon of Language

 

Question: My wife was diagnosed as a narcissist. She twists everything

and turns it against me. She distorts everything I ever said, ignores

the context, and even invent her own endings. It is impossible to have

a meaningful conversation with her because she won’t commit to anything

she says.

 

Answer: In the narcissist’s surrealistic world, even language is

pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defence, a verbal

fortification, a medium without a message, replacing words with

duplicitous and ambiguous vocables.

 

Narcissists (and, often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don’t

talk, or communicate. They fend off. They hide and evade and avoid and

disguise. In their planet of capricious and arbitrary unpredictability,

of shifting semiotic and semantic dunes - they perfect the ability to

say nothing in lengthy, Castro-like speeches.

 

The ensuing convoluted sentences are arabesques of meaninglessness,

acrobatics of evasion, lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The

narcissist prefers to wait and see and see what waiting brings. It is

the postponement of the inevitable that leads to the inevitability of

postponement as a strategy of survival.

 

It is often impossible to really understand a narcissist. The evasive

syntax fast deteriorates into ever more labyrinthine structures. The

grammar tortured to produce the verbal Doppler shifts essential to

disguise the source of the information, its distance from reality, the

speed of its degeneration into rigid “official” versions.

 

Buried under the lush flora and fauna of idioms without an end, the

language erupts, like some exotic rash, an autoimmune reaction to its

infection and contamination. Like vile weeds it spread throughout,

strangling with absent minded persistence the ability to understand, to

feel, to agree, to disagree and to debate, to present arguments, to

compare notes, to learn and to teach.

 

Narcissists, therefore, never talk to others - rather, they talk at

others, or lecture them. They exchange subtexts, camouflage-wrapped by

elaborate, florid, texts. They read between the lines, spawning a

multitude of private languages, prejudices, superstitions, conspiracy

theories, rumours, phobias and hysterias. Theirs is a solipsistic world

- where communication is permitted only with oneself and the aim of

language is to throw others off the scent or to obtain Narcissistic

Supply.

 

This has profound implications. Communication through unequivocal,

unambiguous, information-rich symbol systems is such an integral and

crucial part of our world - that its absence is not postulated even in

the remotest galaxies which grace the skies of science fiction. In this

sense, narcissists are nothing short of aliens. It is not that they

employ a different language, a code to be deciphered by a new Freud. It

is also not the outcome of upbringing or socio-cultural background.

 

It is the fact that language is put by narcissists to a different use -

not to communicate but to obscure, not to share but to abstain, not to

learn but to defend and resist, not to teach but to preserve ever less

tenable monopolies, to disagree without incurring wrath, to criticize

without commitment, to agree without appearing to do so. Thus, an

“agreement” with a narcissist is a vague expression of