Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 10

1. The Exposure of the Narcissist
2. Could Negative Input be Narcissistic Supply?
3. Narcissists, Disagreements and Criticism
4. Unresolved Conflicts
5. The Narcissist Wants to be Liked?
6. Old Sources of Narcissistic Supply (NS)
7. Hurting Others
8. Narcissists and Intimacy
9. Personality Disorders are Culture-Dependent?
10. Fortress Narcissism
11. Inverted Narcissists

1. The Exposure of the Narcissist

The exposure of the False Self for what it is - False - is a major narcissistic injury. The narcissist is likely to react with severe self-deprecation and self-flagellation even to the point of suicidal ideation. This - on the inside. On the outside, he is likely to react aggressively. This is his way of channeling life-threatening aggression.

Rather than endure its assault and its frightening outcomes - he redirects the aggression, transforms it and hurls it at others.

What form his aggression assumes is nigh impossible to predict without knowing the narcissist in question intimately. It could be anything from cynical humour, through cruel honesty, verbal abuse, passive aggressive behaviours (frustrating others), and to actual physical violence. I would consider it unwise to leave a child alone with him in such a condition.

2. Could Negative Input be Narcissistic Supply?

Yes, it could. I make clear that NS includes attention, fame, notoriety, adulation, fear, applause, approval - a mixed bag. If the narcissist gets attention - positive or negative - it constitutes NS. If he succeeds to manipulate people or influence them - positively or negatively - it qualifies as NS.

The ability to influence other people, to induce feelings in them, to manipulate them emotionally, to make them do something or refrain from doing it is what counts.

The receipt of NS releases libido (=increases the sexual drive).

3. Narcissists, Disagreements and Criticism

The narcissist perceives every disagreement - let alone criticism - as nothing short of a THREAT. He reacts defensively. He becomes indignant, aggressive and cold. He detaches emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic) injury. He devalues the person who made the disparaging remark. By holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant - he minimizes the impact on himself of the disagreement or criticism. Like a trapped animal, the narcissist is forever on the lookout: was this remark meant to demean him? was this sentence a deliberate attack? Gradually, his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference until he loses touch with reality as we know it and retreats to his own world of fantasized grandiosity.

The cerebral narcissist is competitive and intolerant of criticism or disagreement. To him, subjugation and subordination establish his undisputed intellectual superiority or professional authority over others. Lowen has an excellent exposition of this "hidden or tacit competition" in his books. The cerebral narcissist aspires to perfection. Thus, even the slightest and most inconsequential challenge to his authority is inflated by him to cosmic proportion. Hence, the disproprtion of his reactions.

4. Unresolved Conflicts

The narcissist is forever entrapped in the unresolved conflicts of his childhood (including the famous Oedipus Complex). This compels him to seek resolution by re-enacting these conflicts with significant others in his life. But he is likely to return to the Primary Objects in his life (=his parents, other caregivers in the absence of parents, peers) to do either of two:

1. "Re-charge" the conflict "battery", or

2. When unable to do (a) - enact the old conflict with another person

The narcissist relates to his human environment through his unresolved conflicts. It is the energy of the tension thus created that sustains him.

He is a person driven by the imminent danger of eruption, by the unsettling prospect of losing his precarious balance. It is a tightrope act. The narcissist must remain alert and on-edge. Only if the conflict is fresh in his mind can he attain such levels of mental arousal.

Periodically interacting with the objects of his conflicts, sustains the inner turmoil, keeps the narcissist on his toes, endows him with the feeling that he is alive.