Chapter Two: Uniqueness And Intimacy, Part 3

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisit
by Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.

(Page 7 of 8)

Having fulfilled their function (by listening to the narcissist, by asking his advice in an ego-inflating manner) – other people would do best to vanish until needed next time. The narcissist would feel drained if asked to reciprocate. Even the most basic human interaction for him is a display of his grandiosity – so every such interaction requires time and energy consuming careful preparations.

The narcissist limits his social encounters to situations, which would yield net energy contributions (Narcissistic Supply).

Meeting another human being calls for the expenditure of energy. Narcissists are willing to oblige – providing they extract energy-boosting adulation, sufficient to offset the energy that they expend to merely interact. This constraint of a "perpetuum mobile" in human relations cannot be maintained for long. The narcissist's milieu (really, entourage) feel drained and bored and his social circle dwindles. When this happens, the narcissist springs to life and – using the vast resources of his undeniable personal charm – he recreates a social circle, knowing full well that it – in due time – will take the same course as its predecessors and dissolve in disgust.

The narcissist is either actively frightened by the thought of children – or absolutely fascinated by it.

A child, after all, is the ultimate Source of Narcissistic Supply. It is unconditionally adoring, worshipping and submissive. But it is also a demanding thing and it tends to divert attention from the narcissist. A child takes too much of everything that the adults around him have to offer: time, energy, emotions, resources, attention. The narcissistic can easily be converted to the view that a child is a menace, a nuisance, utterly unnecessary.

This makes for a very shaky foundation of marital life. The narcissist does not need or seek companionship or friendship. He does not mix sex and emotions. He finds it hard to make love to someone that he loves. He ultimately abhors his children and tries to limit and confine them to the role of Narcissistic Supply Sources. He is a bad friend, lover and father. He is likely to divorce many times (if he ever gets married) and to end up in a series of monogamous relationships.

All this is a direct result of the aggression first vested and then nested in him. To better understand the narcissist's intimate relationships, we must first analyse this facet of narcissism: aggression.

Emotions are instincts. They form part of human behaviour. Interactions with other humans provide a framework, an organisational structure into which emotions fit nicely. Emotions are organised by object relations to the libido (the positive pole) or to aggression (which is negative and associated with hurt).

Anger is the basic emotion underlying aggression. As it fluctuates, it is transformed. Janus-like, it has two faces: hatred and envy. The libido has sexual excitation as its basic emotion. It is an ancient tactile remembrance of the mother's skin and the wholesome feeling and smell of her breasts that provoke this excitement. So important are these early experiences, that an early age pathology of object relations – a traumatic experience, physical or psychological abuse, abandonment – move aggression to a dominant position over the libido. Whenever aggression rules over libidinal drives, we have a psychopathology.

The emotional twins – libido and aggression – are inseparable. They characterise all references of the self to an object. A world of emotionally-invested object relations is formed with each such reference.

The dynamic unconscious is made of basic mental experiences, which are really dyadic relations between self-representations and object representations in either of two contexts: elation or rage.

A subconscious fantasy of merging or unification of the self and the object prevails in symbiotic relationships – both in euphoric moods and in aggressive and wrathful ones.

Rage has a function, evolutionary and adaptive. It is intended to alert the individual to a source of pain and irritation and to motivate him to eliminate it. It is the legitimate son of frustration and pain. It is also instrumental in the removal of barriers to (real or imaginary) satisfaction of needs. As most of the sources of our bad feelings are human – aggression (transformed to rage) is directed at (human) "bad" objects – those around us who are perceived to be deliberately frustrating our wishes to satisfy our needs. At the furthest end of this range we find the will to make such a frustrating object suffer. But this last desire is a different ball game: it combines aggression and pleasure, therefore it is sadistic.

Rage can be easily converted to hatred. There is a wish to control the bad object in order to avoid persecution or to avoid fear. This control is achieved by the development of obsessive control mechanisms, which psychopathologically regulate the repression of aggression in such an individual.

Aggression can assume many forms, depending on the sublimatory venues of the aggressive reaction. Biting humour, excessive candour, the search for autonomy and personal enhancement, a compulsive effort to secure the absence of any kind of outside intervention – are all sublimations of aggression.

Hatred is nothing but a derivative of rage which is intended to facilitate the destruction of the bad object, to make it suffer and to control it. Yet, the process of transformation alters the characteristics of rage in the manifestations of hatred. The former is acute, passing and disruptive – the latter is chronic, stable and connected to character. Hatred seems justified on the grounds of revenge against the frustrating object. The wish to avenge is very typical of hatred. Paranoid fears of retaliation accompany hatred. Hatred thus has paranoid, sadistic and vengeful characteristics.

Another transformation of aggression is envy. This is a greedy wish to incorporate the object, even to destroy it. Yet, this very object which the envious mind seeks to eliminate by incorporation or by destruction is also an object of love, THE object of love without which life itself will not have existed.

A narcissist's mind is pervaded by conscious and unconscious transformations of enormous amounts of aggression into envy. The more severe cases of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (NPD) display partial control of their drives, anxiety intolerance and rigid sublimatory channels. With these individuals, the magnitude of the hatred is so great, that they deny both the emotion and any awareness of it. Alternatively, aggression is converted to action or to acting out. This denial affects normal cognitive functioning as well. Such an individual would, intermittently, have bouts of arrogance, curiosity and pseudo-stupidity, all transformations of aggression taken to the extreme. It is difficult to tell envy from hatred in these cases.

The narcissist is constantly envious of people. He begrudges others their success, or brilliance, or happiness, or good fortune. He is driven to excesses of paranoia and guilt and fear that subside only after he "acts out" or punishes himself. It is a vicious cycle in which he is entrapped.

The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines envy as: "A feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck."

And an earlier version [The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary] adds: "Mortification and ill-will occasioned by the contemplation of another's superior advantages."

Pathological envy – the second deadly sin – is a compounded emotion. It is brought on by the realisation of some lack, deficiency, or inadequacy in oneself. It is the result of unfavourably comparing oneself to others: to their success, their reputation, their possessions, their luck, their qualities. It is misery and humiliation and impotent rage and a tortuous, slippery path to nowhere. The effort to break the padded walls of this self-visited purgatory often leads to attacks on the perceived source of frustration.

There is a spectrum of reactions to this pernicious and cognitively distorting emotion:

SUBSUMING THE OBJECT OF ENVY THROUGH IMITATION

Some narcissists seek to imitate or even emulate their (ever changing) role models. It is as if by imitating the object of his envy, the narcissist BECOMES that object. So, narcissists are likely to adopt their boss' typical gestures, the vocabulary of a successful politician, the views of an esteemed tycoon, even the countenance and actions of the (fictitious) hero of a movie or a novel.

In his pursuit of peace of mind, in his frantic effort to alleviate the burden of consuming jealousy, the narcissist often deteriorates to conspicuous and ostentatious consumption, impulsive and reckless behaviours and substance abuse.

Elsewhere I wrote: "In extreme cases, to get rich quick through schemes of crime and corruption, to out-wit the system, to prevail is thought by these people to be the epitome of cleverness (providing one does not get caught), the sport of living, a winked-at vice, a spice."

About the Author

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. His Web site " is an Open Directory Cool Site and a Psych-UK recommended Site. Sam is not a mental health professional though he is certified in