Restrained Narcissist - Excerpts Part 24 - Narcissism and Grandiosity

Written by Sam Vaknin

This is not Internet addiction. This is knowledge addiction. When I am off-line I read books, magazines, reprints, pre-prints, maps, labels. I am addicted to information, to reading, to writing - and I simply adore it. I am sorry I have to meet low-information-content-vehicles (=humans) from time to time or go to pee (as I must do now). It is a waste of valuable time. Time, time, data, data ... I am inebriated. It is the greatest time since my childhood and adolescence, since my army service and since prison - periods in which (with no computer in sight) I digested inhuman quantities of information, read, wrote and generally speaking enjoyed my dip in an ocean of knowledge.

To feel alive I must disappear and merge with information. Input, output. It is death but life at the same time. I am alive when I review the amount of data digested, the number of articles written. It has always been that way. This is the only stable feature of my life - the unrelenting, non-stoppable, obsessive, compulsive, hedonistic to the extreme, pursuit of the intellect and its fruits.

Humans are tiresome, exhausting, with low information content, unpredictable. In short: very boring.

11. False Self

The False Self (FS) does not have to be unconscious (mine is conscious, for instance). But it is a mask and, in this sense, a variant of the Jungian persona. FS is much more than a splitting defence mechanism. It incorporates splitting but it is much much more than that.

12. Worth and Grandiosity

One must not confuse WORTH with GRANDIOSITY.

The former exists (my IQ, my ability to convert abuse to learning, etc.)

The latter is a cancerous mutation of self worth.

That my True self is worthy of praise - I am sure.

That praise and adulation are not the same thing - I'm equally certain.

That my True Self is possessed of commendable qualities - is true.

That these qualities should not be confused with omnipotence and omniscience - is equally true.

Narcissism starts as a defence against abuse and ends up being a defence against the world (=the mundane). It is a drug. Few succeed to trade the magical world of drugs for the routine of daily life, no matter how hard they try.

To me, subjectively, the True/False schism appears real enough. I know that the False Self is a construct because I FEEL it this way: a transplanted, implanted, foreign entity, invoked by me, false (=not me) and alien.

What is this ME?

I don't have a clue. I just know that the True Self exists because I experience stirrings and counter-reactions when the False Self is active. At times I am ego-dystonic (something in me feels bad and it is distinct, it is NOT the False Self).

The False Self is a caricatured Jungian Persona. But it is so all-pervasive that the True Self at times appears to be a malfunction of the False self, a quirk, an idiosyncrasy.

The False Self is both a defence against the past and a break with it. It is a re-birth, the dawn of a new man (or, more rarely, woman) - omnipotent, omniscient, magical. This is why it is so difficult to divorce it. Who would willingly trade the magical for the quotidian?

next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 25