Narcissism The Psychopathological Default - Narcissism Symptoms

Written by Sam Vaknin

1. The Schizoid Solution - These patients are mental zombies, trapped forever in the no-man's land between stunted growth and the narcissistic default. They are not narcissists because they lack a False Self - nor are they fully developed adults, because their True Self is immature and dysfunctional. They prefer to avoid contact with others (they lack empathy, as does the narcissist) in order not to upset their delicate tightrope act. Withdrawing from the world is an adaptive solution because it does not expose the patient's inadequate personality structures (especially his self) to onerous - and failure bound - tests. The Schizotypal Personality Disorder is a mixture of the narcissistic and the schizoid solutions. The Avoidant Personality Disorder is a close kin.
2. The Aggressive Destructive Solution - These people suffer from hypochondriasis, depression, suicidal ideation, dysphoria, anhedonia, compulsions and obsessions and other expressions of internalised and transformed aggression directed at a self which is perceived to be inadequate, guilty, disappointing and worthy of nothing but elimination. Many of the narcissistic elements are present in an exaggerated form. Lack of empathy becomes reckless disregard for others, irritability, deceitfulness and criminal violence. Undulating self-esteem is transformed into impulsiveness and failure to plan ahead. The Antisocial Personality Disorder is a prime example of this solution, whose essence is: the total control of a False Self, without the mitigating presence of a shred of True Self.

Perhaps this common feature - the replacement of the original structures of the personality by new, invented, mostly false ones - is what causes one to see narcissists everywhere. This common denominator is most accentuated in the Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

The interaction, really, the battle, between the struggling original remnants of the personality and the malignant and omnivorous new structures - can be discerned in all forms of psychic abnormality. The question is: if many phenomena have one thing in common - should they be considered one and the same, or, at least, caused by the same?

I say that the answer in the case of personality disorders should be in the affirmative. I think that all the known personality disorders are forms of malignant self-love. In each personality disorder, different attributes are differently emphasised, different weights attach to different behaviour patterns. But these, in my view, are all matters of quantity, not of quality. The myriad deformations of the reactive patterns collectively known as "personality" all belong to the same family.

next: The Narcissist's Inappropriate Affect