Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

Excerpts from the Archives
of the
Narcissism List

Part 5 cont.

10. Narcissists Facing their Diagnosis

The narcissist's reaction depends on WHO does the diagnosis. If an unqualified person does it, the narcissist will go into a rage attack, berate the "diagnostician" and devalue him, doubt his qualification, personality, integrity, past and so on. He will become cold and aloof and disconnect from the diagnostician, the former having lost its supply source status by daring to make such a diagnosis. The reaction would be no different to a verbal confrontation unless intimidation is involved. If intimidated, the narcissist will recoil and become submissive, overly sentimental, dependent and idealizing.

11. Narcissists and Happy Marriages

All generalizations are false. I discuss the narcissistic couple in one of my FAQs. This is one example of such a happy marriage (when the narcissist teams up with another narcissist of a different kind). Narcissists can be happily married to submissive, subservient, self-deprecating, echoing, mirroring and indiscriminately supportive spouses. They will also do well with masochists. But I find it difficult to imagine that a healthy, normal person would be happy in such a follies-a-deux ("madness in twosome"). Read about "Inverted Narcissists" here.

Narcissists are rarely influenced by psychotherapy, so I also find it difficult to imagine a benign and sustained influenced of a stable, healthy mate / spouse / partner. One of my FAQs is dedicated to this issue ("The Narcissist's Spouse / Mate / Partner").

BUT

Many a spouse / friend / Mate / Partner like to BELIEVE that - given sufficient time and patience - they will be the ones to release the narcissist from his wrenching bondage. They think that they can "rescue" the narcissist, shield him from his (distorted) self, as it were. The Narcissist makes use of this naivete and exploits it to his benefit. The natural protective mechanisms which are provoked in normal people by love - are cold bloodedly used by the narcissist to extract yet more narcissistic supply from his writhing victim.

12. Male Narcissists and Women

Narcissists abhor and dread getting emotionally intimate and they regard sex as a maintenance chore, something they have to do in order to keep their source of secondary supply content.

Moreover, many narcissists tend to engage in FRUSTRATING behaviours towards women. They will refrain from having sex with them, tease them and then leave them, resist flirtatious and seductive behaviours and so on. Often, they will invoke the existence of a girlfriend/fiancee/spouse (or boyfriend/etc. - male and female are interchangeable in my texts) as the "reason" why they cannot have sex/develop a relationship. But this is not out of loyalty and fidelity in the empathic and loving sense. This is because they wish (and often succeed) to sadistically frustrate the potential partner.

BUT

This pertains ONLY to cerebral narcissists. NOT to somatic narcissists and HPDs who use their BODY, sex and seduction/flirtation to extract narcissistic supply from others.

13. The Internalized Voice of the Narcissist

We all run constant dialogues inside our heads. We argue and try to convince and apologize and soothe ourselves. All you have to do is identify that OTHER voice. Who are you talking to right now: your parents? your boss? or maybe your narcissist ex? Write down in which circumstances you are having dialogues with her, the contents of the dialogues, their dynamics.

Slowly and gradually, you will discover patterns. Patterns of evasion and self justification and outright lies. Try to avoid these patterns, to invert them, to convert them. After all, these are YOUR dialogues now. Win every argument, mock your ex, and ridicule her positions, expose her narcissistic traits and her preposterous grandiosity. Deprived of narcissistic supply, she will vanish in your head as she has done in your life.

14. My Role in the List

My aim is to provide the victims of narcissism with an available figure of transference, with a substitute-narcissist, someone to take it out on. I am happy that you do. BUT this does not mean that I should be mute, deaf and blind. I intend to fight back if I feel that the attacks are uncalled for. By doing so, I hope to restore to you the sense of three-dimensionality of other humans (even narcissists). The narcissists in your lives deprived you of it (or tried to do so).

15. This Paradoxical List...

Narcissists use EVERYTHING at their disposal (logic included) to further their narcissistic causes.

Narcissists are halls of mirrors. No sense applying logic to them. No sense applying empathy, emotions, straight thinking. It's all useless.

This list is the embodiment of the most ancient logical paradox: a liar who reveals himself as such: "I always lie" is an impossible sentence. It is also the premise of this list.

It is through this crude mechanism that I am trying to help you all, victims of narcissism, cope with your past. I allow you to get close to a narcissist - without being harmed. You re-enact your conflicts and resolve them with a real life narcissist - but without the usual risks. I am burning fire - but behind a glass, safely.

16. The Narcissist as Body Snatcher

The narcissist affects his victims by infiltrating their psyche, by penetrating their defenses. Like a virus, it establishes a new strain within his/her victims. It echoes through them, it talks through them, it walks through them. It is like the invasion of the body snatchers. You should be careful to separate your selves from the narcissist inside you, this alien growth, this spiritual cancer that is the result of living with a narcissist. You should be able to tell apart your real you and the YOU assigned to you by the narcissist. To cope with him/her, the narcissist forces you to "walk on eggshells" and develop a false self of your own. It is nothing as elaborate as his False Self - but it is there, in you, as a result of the trauma and abuse inflicted upon you by the narcissist.

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