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

to their

personal history, or to some of their behaviour patterns. Yet others

feel content with who they are and with what they are doing.

 

But one group of people seems distinct in its mental constitution -

narcissists.

 

According to the legend of Narcissus, this Greek boy fell in love with

his own reflection in a pond. Presumably, this amply sums up the nature

of his namesakes: narcissists. The mythological Narcissus was rejected

by the nymph Echo and was punished by Nemesis, Consigned to pine away

as he fell in love with his own reflection. How apt. Narcissists are

punished by echoes and reflections of their problematic personalities

up to this very day.

 

They are said to be in love with themselves.

 

But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with HIMSELF. He is in

love with his REFLECTION.

 

There is a major difference between True Self and reflected-self.

 

Loving your True Self is a healthy, adaptive and functional quality.

 

Loving a reflection has two major drawbacks. One is the dependence on

the very existence and availability of a reflection to produce the

emotion of self-love.

 

The other is the absence of a “compass”, an “objective and realistic

yardstick”, by which to judge the authenticity of the reflection and to

measure its isomorphic attributes. In other words, it is impossible to

tell whether the reflection is true to reality - and, if so, to what

extent.

 

The popular misconception is that narcissists love themselves. In

reality, they direct their love to second hand impressions of

themselves in the eyes of beholders. He who loves only impressions is

not acquainted with the emotion of loving humans and is, therefore,

incapable of loving them, or himself.

 

But the narcissist does possess the in-bred desire to love and to be

loved. If he cannot love himself - he has to love his reflection. But

to love his reflection - it must be loveable. Thus, driven by the

insatiable urge to love (which we all possess), the narcissist is

grossly preoccupied with projecting a loveable image of himself unto

others. This image has to be compatible with his self-image (the way he

“sees” himself).

 

It is maintained through the investment of a reasonable proportion of

the resources and energy of the narcissist. An image, which would take

most of the narcissist’s time and energy to preserve, would be highly

ineffective because it would render him vulnerable to external threats.

 

But the most important characteristic of such an image is its

lovability.

 

To a narcissist, love is interchangeable with other emotions, such as

awe, respect, admiration, or even mere attention. An image, which

provokes these reactions in others - is both “loveable and loved”, as

far as the narcissist is concerned. It satisfies his basic requirement:

that it should give him something to love which would feel like

self-love.

 

The more successful this image (or series of successive images) - the

more the narcissist becomes divorced from his True Self and married to

the image.

 

I am not saying that the narcissist does not have this central nucleus

of a “self”. All I am saying is that he prefers his image - with which

he identifies himself unreservedly - to his self. A hierarchy is

formed. The self becomes serf to the Image.

 

This is exactly the opposite of the common notions concerning

narcissists. The narcissist is not selfish - his self is paralysed.

 

He is not tuned exclusively to his needs. On the contrary: he ignores

them because many of them conflict with his omnipotent and omniscient

image. He does not put himself first - he puts his self last. He caters

to the needs and wishes of everyone around him - because he craves

their love and admiration. It is through their reactions that he

acquires a sense of distinct self. In many ways he annuls himself -

only to re-invent himself through the look of others. He is the person

most insensitive to his true needs.

 

The narcissist consumes his mental energy incessantly in this process.

He drains himself. This is why he has no energy left to dedicate to

others. This fact as well as his inability to love human beings in

their many dimensions and facets - transform him into a mental recluse.

His soul is fortified and in the solace of this fortification he guards

its territory jealously and fiercely. He protects what he perceives to

constitute his independence.

 

Why should people indulge the narcissist? And what is the

“evolutionary”, survival value of preferring one kind of love (directed

at a symbol, an image) to another (directed at one’s self)?

 

These questions torment the narcissist. His convoluted mind comes up

with the most elaborate contraptions in lieu of answers.

 

Why should people indulge the narcissist, divert time and energy, give

him attention, love and adulation? The narcissist’s answer is simple:

because he is entitled to it. The narcissist has an inflated sense of

entitlement. He feels that he deserves whatever he succeeds to extract

from others and much more. Actually, he feels betrayed, discriminated

against and underprivileged because he always believes that he is not

getting enough, that he should get more than he does. There is a

discrepancy between his infinite certainty that his is a special status

worthy of eternally recurrent praise and adoration, replete with

special benefits and prerogatives - and the actual state of his

affairs. This is the prima causa of the psychodynamics of the

narcissist’s mind. To the narcissist, this status of uniqueness is

bestowed upon him not by virtue of his achievements, but merely because

he exists. His mere existence is sufficiently unique to warrant the

kind of treatment that he expects to get from the world. Herein lies a

paradox, which haunts the narcissist: he derives his sense of

uniqueness from the very fact that he exists and he derives his sense

of existence from his belief that he is unique.

 

Clinical data show that there is rarely any realistic basis for this

notion of greatness and uniqueness.

 

Narcissists do hold high positions and, at times, are achievers with

proven track records. Some of them are respected members of their

communities, some of them even leaders. Mostly, they are dynamic and

successful. Still, one thing separates them from persons of similar

circumstance: the pomp.

 

They are ridiculously pompous and inflated personalities, bordering on

the farcical and provoking resentment.

 

The narcissist is forced to use other people in order to feel that he

exists. It is trough their eyes and through their behaviour that he

obtains proof of his uniqueness and grandeur. He is a habitual

“people-junkie”. With time, he comes to regard those around him as mere

instruments for his satisfaction, as two-dimensional cartoon figures

with negligible lines in the script of his magnificent life. He becomes

unscrupulous and suppresses all the discomfort that he might have felt

in the past concerning his conduct. He seems never to be bothered by

the constant use he makes of his milieu. He seems not to mind the

consequences of his acts: the damage and the pain that he inflicts on

others and even the social condemnation and sanctions that he often has

to endure.

 

When a person persists in a dysfunctional, maladaptive or plain useless

behaviour despite grave repercussions to himself and to his

surroundings - we say that his acts are compulsive.

 

It would, indeed, be safe to say that the narcissist is compulsive in

his behaviour. This linkage between narcissism and obsessive-compulsive

disorders sheds light on the mechanisms of the narcissistic psyche.

 

The narcissist does not suffer from a faulty sense of causation. He is

able to accurately predict the outcomes of his actions and he knows

that he might be forced to pay a dear price for his deeds. But he

doesn’t care.

 

A personality whose very existence is a derivative of its reflection in

other people’s minds - is perilously dependent on these people’s

perceptions. They are the source of its Narcissistic Supply (NS). Every

shred of criticism and disapproval is interpreted as a withholding of

this supply and as a direct threat to the very mental existence of the

narcissist. The narcissist lives in a world of all or nothing, of a

constant “to be or not be”. Every discussion that he holds, every

glance of every passer-by reaffirms his existence or casts doubt upon

it. This is why the reactions of the narcissist seem so

disproportionate: he reacts to what he perceives to be threats to the

very cohesion of his self.

 

Thus, a minor disagreement is transformed in his harried mind into an

ominous sign that he is going to remain devoid of his sources of

self-definition.

 

This is such a crucial matter, that the narcissist cannot take chances.

He would rather be mistaken - then null and void. He would rather

discern disapproval and unjustified criticism where there is none -

then face the consequences of being caught off-guard.

 

The narcissist has to condition his human environment to refrain from

expressing criticism and disapproval of him or of his actions and

decisions. He has to teach people around him that these will provoke

him into frightful fits of temper and rage attacks and turn him into a

constantly cantankerous and irascible person. The disproportion of his

reactions constitutes a punishment for their lack of consideration and

their ignorance of his true psychological state. In a curious reversal

of roles - the narcissist blames others for his behaviour, accuses them

of provoking him and believes firmly that “they” should be penalised

accordingly. There is no way to dissuade the narcissist once he has

embarked on one of his temper tantrums. Apologies - unless accompanied

by verbal or other humiliation - are not enough. The fuel of his rage

is spent mainly on vitriolic verbal send-offs directed at the (often

imaginary) perpetrator of the (oft imaginary) offence.

 

A coherent picture emerges:

 

The narcissist - wittingly or not - utilises people to buttress his

self-image and self-worth. As long and in as much as they are

instrumental in achieving these goals - he holds them in high regard,

they are valuable to him. He sees them only through this lens. This is

a result of his inability to love humans: he lacks empathy, he thinks

utility, and he reduces others to mere instruments. If they cease to

“function”, if - no matter how inadvertently - they cause him to doubt

this illusory, half-baked, self-esteem - they become the subject of a

reign of terror. The narcissist then proceeds to hurt these

“insubordinate wretches”. He belittles and humiliates them. He displays

aggression and violence in myriad forms. His behaviour metamorphesises,

kaleidoscopically, from overvaluation of the useful other - to a

severe devaluation of same.

 

The narcissist abhors, almost physiologically, people judged by him to

be “useless”.

 

These rapid alterations between absolute overvaluation to complete

devaluation of others make the maintenance of long-term interpersonal

relationships all but impossible.

 

The more pathological form of narcissism - the Narcissistic Personality

Disorder (NPD) - was defined in the successive versions of the American

DSM and the European ICD. It is useful to scrutinise these geological

layers of clinical observations and their interpretation. In 1977 the

DSM-III criteria included [the following texts are adaptations of the

original ones]:

 

_ An inflated valuation of oneself (exaggeration of talents and

achievements, demonstration of presumptuous self-confidence);

 

_ Interpersonal exploitation (uses others to satisfy his needs

and desires, expects preferential treatment without undertaking mutual

commitments);

 

_ Possesses expansive imagination (externalises immature and

non-regimented fantasies, “prevaricates to redeem self-illusions”);

 

_ Displays supercilious imperturbability (except when the

narcissistic confidence is shaken), nonchalant, unimpressed and

cold-blooded;

 

_ Defective social conscience (rebels against the conventions of

common social