Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

THE TORTURED SELF
THE INNER WORLD OF THE NARCISSIST

Chapter 4

page 1

We dealt until now only with appearances. The narcissist's behaviour is indicative of a severe pathology which lies at the heart of his psyche and which deforms almost all his mental processes. A permanent dysfunction ensues and it permeates and pervades all the strata of his mind and all his interactions with others and with himself.

What makes a narcissist tick? What is his hidden psychodynamic landscape like?

It is a landscape guarded zealously by defence mechanisms as old as the narcissist. More than to others, entrance to this territory is barred to the narcissist himself. Yet, to heal, however marginally, he needs this access most.

Narcissists are bred by other narcissists. To treat others as objects – one must first be treated as such.

To become a narcissist, one must feel that he is nothing but an instrument used to satisfy the needs of a meaningful (maybe the most meaningful) figure in his life. One must feel that the only source of reliable, unconditional, total love – is he. One must, thus, lose faith in the existence or in the availability of other sources of emotional edification. This is a sorry state to which the narcissist is driven by long years of denial, a volatile, or arbitrary human environment and emotional self-reliance. The narcissist – not daring to face the imperfection of the frustrating figure, not able to direct his aggression at it – resorts to destroying himself. He catches two birds with one stone of self-directed aggression: he vindicates the meaningful figure and its judgement of him and he gets rid of very threatening feelings. Narcissistic parents tend to perniciously mould their offspring in the formative years 0-6 (mainly 0-4). An adolescent, while still applying the finishing touches to his or to her personality – is out of harm's way. The 10 year old are more susceptible – but not in the subtle irreversible manner which is the precondition for the formation of a narcissistic personality.

It often happens that children are exposed to one narcissistic parent (following a divorce, for instance). The antidote to this narcissistic influence is just to be yourselves. DO NOT directly confront or counteract the narcissistic parent. This will transform him or her into a martyr or a role model (especially to rebellious teenagers). Simply show them that there is another way. They will make the right choice. All people do – except narcissists.

Narcissists are born to narcissistic, depressive, obsessive-compulsive, alcoholic, drug addicted, hypochondriac, passive-aggressive and, in general, mentally disturbed parents. Alternatively, they may have been born into disturbed situations: divorce, war, famine, chronic illness, or economic depression. Delinquent parents are not the exclusive vehicle of deprivation. War, disease, or famine, or (no comparison), a particularly nasty divorce case can do the job as efficiently. It is not the quantity of deprivation but its quality, not how much but how. The most important questions are if the child is accepted as he is, unconditionally, and if his treatment is consistent and predictable and just. Arbitrariness of behaviour and of judgement, contradicting directives, emotional absence – are the elements of which a menacing, whimsically unexpected, dangerously cruel world is made of.

In such a world, emotions are negatively rewarded. For emotions to develop, both their object and their subject have to undergo a long-term interaction. Such an interaction calls for stability, predictability and a lot of constant background goodwill. When these prerequisites are absent, the child prefers to escape into a world of his own making, to minimise the hurt. Such a world can be constructed only with the employment of an "analytical ratio" coupled with the repression of emotions.

It is not that this invented, highly elaborate, world is devoid of emotions. Quite the contrary: it is infused with them, they colour every act, however automatic and basic. But they are tagged differently. The narcissist does not lose his ability to feel – he loses his ability to realise that he is feeling and to recognise his feelings as such. In other words: he is out of touch with his emotions. At best, the narcissist experiences a "binary" state: (generally) good – as opposed to (generally) bad, or relative calm as contrasted with unease. This is the quasi-emotional shallowness in which the narcissist is enmeshed. He objectifies himself as well. He invests a momentous amount of psychic energy in this conversion process and – to avoid a destructive dissonance – he feels proud of his achievements. He brags about his "razor-like, totally unbiased, absolutely objective" judgement, which is expressly unaffected by emotions. He might nickname himself "the brain", or even allude to the sovereignty of this "wondrous instrument" that occupies his skull. It is as though his analytic skills acquired a life of their own and shield him from the vicissitudinal character of his emotions.

Evidently, he who is not in touch with his emotions – finds it impossible to communicate them.

A narcissist prefers to deny the existence of his emotions or of the very existence or prevalence or incidence of emotions in others – rather than communicate them. He finds the task of emoting so daunting, that he denies outright that he is feeling, or what he is feeling, or even that he is capable of feeling at all.

When forced to communicate – usually by some kind of threat to his image, or to the imaginary world in which he mentally resides, or by a threat to be abandoned by one of his more rewarding human objects – he uses an alienating and alienated language. He makes profligate use of this lingo during therapy sessions, where direct contact is made with emotion-laden layers of his psyche. The narcissist does everything to avoid a direct expression of what he feels in plain language. He generalises, compares, analyses, justifies, uses objective or objective-looking data, theorises, intellectualises, rationalises, hypothesises – all except express his emotions. Even when genuinely attempting to do so – the narcissist, who is normally verbally adept – sounds mechanic, hollow, speechless, or as though he is referring to someone else. This "scientist-observer stance", is favoured by narcissists. In an attempt to help the inquirer (the therapist, for instance) they assume a detached, "scientific" poise and talk about themselves in the third person.

Some of them even go to the extent of studying psychological jargon to sound more convincing (though a few actually go to the trouble of studying psychology). Another ploy is to pretend to be a "tourist" in one's own internal landscape: politely and mildly interested in the geography and history of the place, sometimes amazed, at times amused – but always in an uninvolved manner, very much as a movie-goer would react to a stunt filled movie.

All this makes it close to impossible to penetrate the impenetrable: the narcissist's inner world.

He himself has limited access. We, humans, must rely on communication to know each other and to empathise through comparison. With communication absent or lacking, we cannot truly feel the "humanness" of the narcissist.

The narcissist is, thus, often described by others as "robotic", "machine", "inhuman", "emotionless" and so on. People are deterred by his emotional absence. They are wary of him and keep their guard up at all times. Certain narcissists are good at simulating emotional communication and can easily mislead people around them. Yet, their true colours are exposed when they lose interest in someone because he no longer serves a narcissistic (or other) purpose. Then they no longer invest energy in what, to others, comes naturally: emotional communication. This is the essence of the narcissist's exploitativeness. To a certain degree, we all exploit each other. But, the narcissist abuses people. He misleads them into believing that they mean something to him, that they are special and dear to him, and that he cares about them. When they discover that it was all a charade, they are likely to respond much more forcefully than usual.

The narcissist's problem is exacerbated by being constantly abandoned. It is a vicious cycle: the narcissist alienates people and they leave him. This, in turn, convinces him that he was always right in thinking that people are selfish and will always prefer their self-interest to his welfare.

His off putting behaviour is, thus, enhanced, leading to yet more serious emotional ruptures with his nearest and dearest.

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