Narcissist's Interview - Excerpts Part 17 - Source of Narcissistic Supply

Written by Sam Vaknin

Q: You wrote: "Fortunately, I am also a published author of short fiction (in Hebrew)..." Can you speak a little about the subject matter and themes of your short stories?

A: The specific short stories that were published (and won the 1997 Ministry of Education's prize - talk about poetic injustice...) - were written in Jail. I was in the throes of psychological gangrene induced by a severe narcissistic injury. I have been teleported unsuccessfully, disintegrating in mid space into a million sizzling molecules, that was the feeling. I tried to recompose myself but there was nothing there except a life threatening vacuum. So, I regressed. I went back to my childhood and recreated my life, year in and year out, pain by pain, an inventory of humiliation and maltreatment, abuse and self-abuse, self loathing and self destruction. My mother, my wife, my life - a series of ambering ruins, not a pleasant landscape to behold. I wrote these stories as I do everything else: systematically, cold bloodedly, in a the calculating manner of an automaton. I shut the pain away and weighed words the way a physicist measures resonance and amplitude. Only once did it get out of control. I had a flashback of a violent scene between my parents (which I had repressed remarkably). I was frightened as a little kid would. At other times I cried silently. It was cathartic, no doubt - as efficient as any therapy and by far cheaper.

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Q: I've seen "Malignant Self Love" described in some contexts as a self-help book. Often in this genre, we see authors who have triumphed over some personal adversity and wish to help others do the same. But your approach is quite different. You write that your discovery of your own NPD "was a painful process which led nowhere. I am no different--and no healthier--today than I was when I wrote this book. My disorder is here to stay, the prognosis poor and alarming." Do you see it, then, as more a work of self-literacy than self-healing?

A: I never described "Malignant Self Love" as a helpful work. It is not. It is a dark, hopeless tome. Narcissists have no horizons, they are doomed by their own history, by their successful adaptation to abnormal circumstances and by the uncompromising nature of their defence mechanisms. My book is a scientific observation of the beast coupled with an effort to salvage its victims. Narcissists are absent minded sadists and they victimize everyone around them. Those in contact with them need guidance and help. "Malignant Self Love" is a phenomenology of the predator, on the one hand and a vindication and validation of its prey, on the other.

Q: The subject of the 11 months you spent imprisoned in Israel is, I'm sure, fodder for an entire interview, but can you briefly discuss the circumstances?

A: I was imprisoned in 1995 for stock manipulation and grand fraud. The real story is more complex, as usual. I did criminally manipulate the price of stocks. But there are a few caveats: I took over a government owned bank. Together with a few partners I came to own c. 80% of it. When I began to attend the shareholders meetings, I discovered to my horror that c. 200 million USD of the loans on its books were dud. The money was siphoned off to cronies of the then socialist ruling party. I took the government to court and won the first two rounds. I was on the verge of dislodging the government from the bank completely and exposing massive fraud and corruption. But I was running short on money. The ruling party sent two "new partners" to me. They bought some of the shares from me. Then they began to pressurize and threaten me. I felt that I had to manipulate the price of the stock to get rid of them (at the right, high, price they sold out to another broker). THERE WAS NO DAMAGE TO THE PUBLIC because I owned all the free-floating stocks (together with my "new partners"). Suddenly, these two turned up as state witnesses and testified against me. They were rewarded with positions in the government and in state industry. Together with 2 others I was sentenced to 3 years in prison. The others were pardoned. I served 11 months of my sentence and was released on good behaviour. Using complicated legal techniques I attacked the President of the Supreme Court and forced him into civil proceedings in his own court. He didn't like it. This is why I served the sentence and the others didn't. He sentenced me AFTER I sued him! So much for judicial impartiality. The case is very well known in Israel. Many lawyers and law professors couldn't face the injustice. Following my prison term I was appointed research assistant in the Faculty of Law in Tel Aviv University (as a prisoner!). This is one of the two chapters in my life of which I am most proud. Upon my release, I left Israel never to return and proceeded to Macedonia. When I arrived there more than two years ago it was a corrupt country, ruled by unreformed communists. I organized lectures, seminars and media events in which I protested against the conduct of the government. I swept the youth and became a real danger to the regime. Following life threats and the arrest of one of my collaborators I fled Macedonia. There is a happy ending, though: the ruling party was ousted in the October elections. One of the ministers is my former student. The Prime Minister has invited me to serve as his personal consultant. I made the mistake of accepting his offer - and, here I am, back in Macedonia. Until the next conflict ... :o)))

Q: You've written that as a prisoner, you began to study your fellow inmates and came to see yourself in them. At the time, did that recognition take you by surprise?

A: Not really, I have a long history of associating with criminals and personal brinkmanship. All my adulthood I have been a vicarious delinquent, observing with awe and admiration and humour the circles I moved in. What did astonish me was the close resemblance of narcissism and addictive behaviours (drugs, gambling, etc.). It was then that it dawned on me that narcissism was an addiction (to narcissistic supply).

Q: Do you remember any specific prisoners with whom you found something in common?

A: I befriended all the murderers without exception. There is something profound and occult in breaking this frontier taboo - I have the same feeling about incest. I am attracted to these people not because I have anything in common with them - but because I strive to understand them. It is through human wreckage that I hope to reconstruct "being human". Devoid of empathy, I need sharp, unmitigated, grotesque and horrific experiences to jolt me into a vague recognition of the denominator common to myself and to all "others". This, by the way, is an important strand in psychology: it is through the study of aberrations, deviations, perversions and pathologies that it strives to fathom "normal" human nature.