Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

BEING SPECIAL

Chapter 1

page 2

A deserting spouse or a business failure, for instance, are of a magnitude that cannot be suppressed. This usually motivates the narcissist to seek treatment. Therapy starts where self-illusions end but it takes a massive disintegration of the very fabric of the narcissist's life and personality structure to bring about this concession of defeat. Even then the narcissist merely seeks to be "fixed" in order to continue as before.

The boundaries (and the very existence) of the narcissist's Ego are defined by and from the outside. In times of crisis, the ensuing inner experience of the narcissist is that of a disintegrating self and a dissolution even when surrounded by people.

This is a life threatening feeling. This existential conflict leads to the active seeking of solutions at any cost. Solutions – even much less than optimal – are sought and improvised fervently. The narcissist finds a spouse, seeks publicity, gets involved with new social circles willing to accommodate his need for Narcissistic Supply (NS).

This sense of urgency causes the suspension of all judgement.

In these circumstances, the narcissist is likely to misjudge the qualities and abilities of a prospective spouse, the quality of his own work, or his status within his social circles. He is liable to make indiscriminate use of all his psychological (defence) mechanisms to justify this hot pursuit, foremost the mechanisms of rationalisation and intellectualisation.

Many narcissists reject treatment even in the most dire circumstances. Feeling omnipotent, they seek the answers themselves and in themselves and then venture to "fix" and "maintain" themselves. They read, gather information, philosophise and contemplate. They do all this single-handedly and when they seek other people's counsel, they degrade them and treat them as sheer "human information sources".

The narcissist dedicates a lot of his time and energy to a debate, which rages inside him and which revolves around two axes: (a) is he unique and (b) if so, to what extent and how can this be substantiated, communicated and documented?

The narcissist's frame of reference is nothing less than posterity and the entirety of the human race. His uniqueness must be immediately and universally recognised. It must (potentially, at least) be knowable by everyone at all times – or it loses its allure.

The narcissist obeys a threshold condition, Aut Nihil, Aut Cesare, all or nothing.

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