First takes a very brief look at this complex syndrome in order to create awareness.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.” Nora Ephron

When people are driving themselves crazy, they have neuroses or psychosis. When they drive other people crazy, they have personality disorders.

Albert Bernstein

Sam Vaknin, a self-confessed Narcissist and psychologist, in his book Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited warns that “Narcissism is a slippery subject only with great difficulty can it be captured with words.” Most narcissists (75%) are men.

Narcissism is “A pattern of traits and behaviour which signify infatuation with one’s self to the exclusion of all others and the egoistic and ruthless pursuit of one’s gratification, dominance and ambition. There is a whole range of narcissistic reactions – from the mild, reactive and transient to the permanent personality disorder.

The onset of narcissism is in infancy, childhood and early adolescence. Early childhood abuse and traumas trigger coping strategies and defense mechanisms, including narcissism. One of the coping strategies is to withdraw inwards, to seek gratification from a secure, reliable and permanently-available source: from one’s self. The child, fearful of further rejection and abuse, refrains from further interaction and resorts to grandiose fantasies of being loved and self-sufficient. Repeated hurt may lead to the development of a narcissistic personality.

The source of all the Narcissist’s problems is the foreboding sensation that human relationships invariably end in humiliation, betrayal and abandonment. This belief is embedded in them during their very early childhood by their parents and by their experiences with peers.

But the Narcissist always generalizes. To him, any emotional interaction and any interaction with an emotional component is bound to end this way.

The Narcissist is incapable of love; for his narcissism is the fruit of his refusal to revere others for their own sake, that is, to love others as another self, equal in dignity to himself. His refusal to love barred him from loving himself because he became depleted and less lovable to himself. What he loves is the false self he has created and that he needs to see reflected in the affirmation and comportment of others. Such people are aptly referred to as narcissists after the famous story from Greek mythology.

The inability to say “I love you” is precisely what identifies the Narcissist.

And since he is incapable of truly loving another as another self, all his relationships with others are perverted, twisted, and abusive; for to use a person is to abuse a person, and everyone in his life, without exception, is nothing more than a means of procuring affirmation, adulation, and admiration, or if that isn’t possible, fear. For it isn’t the self that the Narcissist loves, but his reflection. If he cannot be loved, the Narcissist would rather be feared or hated than forgotten.

But the Narcissist does not cater at all to his own needs. Contrary to his reputation, he does not “love” himself in any true sense of this loaded word.

He feeds off other people who hurl back at him an image that he projects to them. This is their sole function in his world: to reflect, to admire, to applaud, to detest – in a word to assure him that he exists. Otherwise, they have no right to tax his time, energy or emotions – so he feels.

The Narcissist is seething with enmity and venom. He is a receptacle of unbridled hatred, animosity, and hostility. When he can, the Narcissist often turns to physical violence. But the non-physical manifestations of his pent-up bile are even more terrifying, more all-pervasive and more lasting. The Narcissist hates you wholeheartedly and thoroughly simply because you are.

The depraved and pathological Narcissist is very ready to forgive the faults of others, not because he is loving and merciful, but rather because he is indifferent. In fact, inordinate leniency is typical of narcissists. They are either vindictive or lenient, but rarely just. Leniency, which is a vice, is hard to distinguish from mercy or clemency, so it enables him to feel virtuous, and it also helps perpetuate the appearance of moral purity. Moreover, leniency provides another opportunity to ensure loyalty.

The Narcissist takes advantage of every opportunity to favour a person who is down and in need – as long as the prospects that he will be of use later on are good. Such favours might include providing employment, personal counselling, boosting one’s confidence, flattery, listening and being sympathetic (at least apparently), etc. Such opportunities supply the Narcissist in a number of ways. Primarily they ensure loyalty for the day that will inevitably arrive, the day when his personal edifice crumbles and he finally falls into the pit he has dug for his enemies for years. Such a loyal following makes it all the more difficult for anyone to depose him. They also have the added advantage of helping him to persuade himself that he is good and that perhaps the gnawing awareness of that damp and dark cellar at the heart of his character was only a passing fancy. Furthermore, they provide a sense of superiority in that others depend upon him in order to be the persons they have become. When someone finally comes to realise that he is a treacherous and exploitative fraud – which is inevitable – who is going to believe such a person when so many have been directly benefited by the accused? Gratitude makes it easier to excuse his “faults” or minor character flaws, and that is about all that the clues will suggest in isolation – and most people have poor memories.

The Narcissist regards others as inferior to himself. Everyone is a simpleton in his eyes. What helps afford him this illusion is that most people are unsuspecting and are unaware of the degree to which they are being taken advantage of, used and abused. This unawareness is not due to a general lack of intelligence in people, but to their tendency to project their own range of normalcy onto others. Hence, their disinclination to suspect somone so profoundly depraved to be in their midst, carrying on an existence that is fundamentally and thoroughly a lie. But the disordered character conveniently regard this trait as evidence of intellectual inferiority and will take a twisted delight in the knowledge that they have fooled so many. He who seeks to deceive will always find someone who will allow himself to be deceived.

When it is a question of evil, it is precisely the element of disguise that people tend to overlook. We are wont to assume that evil, character disorder, profound moral depravity, psychopathy, pathological narcissism etc. are easy to detect and that such people only inspire fear upon a first encounter. But this is only the case with those not intelligent enough to disguise their depravity, like the common criminal. The most dangerous among us are those intelligent enough to appear as paragons of virtue.

According to Alexander Lowen, there are degrees of narcissism. Beginning with the lowest degree, there is the phallic-narcissistic character, or what Samuel Vaknin refers to as the somatic Narcissist, the narcissistic character, the borderline personality, the psychopathic personality, and the paranoid personality. (Narcissism: Denial of the True Self. New York: Touchstone, 1997.)

Have you been the victim of a Narcissist? Would you like to share your story with First? If so e-mail [email protected]

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