In Jail - Excerpts Part 29 - Narcissist and Abuse

Written by Sam Vaknin

It was all meaningless, it still is. A series of automatic gestures performed by another man, not me. I bought, I sold, I gave away, I heard her planning he romance over the phone, I poured a glass of deep red wine, I read the paper, glossing uncomprehending over the lines, the words, the syllables. A dreamy quality. Psychologists would say I acted out but I can't remember acting out - or in. I can't remember being at all. Definitely no emotions, perhaps the odd rage. It was so very unreal I never grieved. I let go as we politely give our place in a queue to an old lady and smile and say: "Here you are, Madam".

2. Human Supply

I know what is the value of narcissistic supply. I can measure it. I can weigh it. I can compare it and trade it and convert it. I have done it all my life more or less successfully.

Being human is a new experience.

The first time it happened, it was terrifying. It felt like disintegrating, like being annulled. Do you remember the Dali paintings (a swirl of molecules)? It felt the same.

This was when I was in prison and wrote my short stories.

Then it got better. I thought I had regained my narcissistic composure. My defences seemed to function again. I was protected.

Then I began doing these things. The book, the list, corresponding with thousands of people in need and helping them here and there.

Deep inside I know that narcissistic supply is a very inadequate - nay, poor - explanation.

But I don't know how to weigh this new factor. In what units to measure it. How to quantify it and trade it against the narcissistic supply lost in its acquisition. In economics it is called the "opportunity cost". You give up so much butter to manufacture so many guns. Only I gave up the guns. And now I am demilitarized and I am not sure that there is no enemy.

Coming back to the particular event:

I gave up a senior position with wide foreign media exposure. This is narcissistic supply. I have been there before. Giving it up was a price I paid.

To do WHAT?

To sit at home and correspond 16 hours a day with people. To help, to soothe, to cajole and chastise and preach. And this also sounds like narcissistic supply.

And it is.

But the transaction is skewed. I gave up a huge amount of very familiar narcissistic supply - for a small, amorphous amount of a new type of supply.

Bad business?

I am envious of what I could have been. I am enraged when I apply old, decrepit principles to new situations. And I say to myself: "Look what you missed. Look how you destroyed your life once more by ruining this new opportunity for yourself."

And then I say: "But look what you gained in return".

And I am appeased and content and full of energy again.

3. The Time of the Narcissist

I want to talk about Time and about Making It from an unusual angle: self defeating behaviours.

The first time I had sex was 25. It was so alien to me that I thought that sex was love and so I fell in love with my next sexual partner virtually overnight. I used to live in a monkish room with white walls, no paintings or decorations, army bed and one shelf with a few books. I was surrounded by my offices in a two story villa. The bedroom was at the end of a corridor and all around (and downstairs) were offices. I did not have a TV set. I was very rich and very famous at the time and a perfect cinderella story and I knew everything about life and nothing about myself. So, there I was, listening to a twig broaching the windowpane and rapidly and deliberately falling in love with the dormant body by my side. Much later I learned that she was repelled by my body. I was fat and flabby, not at all what one would expect judging by my in-clothes external appearance. So, I fell in love and we moved to London, to Marble Arch, where all the rich Saudi Sheikhs lived and rented a mansion with five floors and a butler. We never had sex and she spent most of her days sleeping or staring gloomily at defrocked trees or crying or on shopping sprees. Once we bought records at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street for 4000 USD. It was announced on the radio. And then she left and me, among the ruins of my fantasy, unshaven, unkempt, sobbing uncontrollably.