Narcissists and the Entitlement of Routine - Narcissists and Routine

Written by Sam Vaknin

• Lack of empathy, or the existence of functional empathy, or empathy by proxy
• Demand for adoration and adulation
• A feeling that he deserves everything ("entitlement")
• Exploitation of objects
• Objectification/symbolization (abstraction) and
• Fictionalisation of objects
• Manipulative behaviours
  (Using personal charm, ability to psychologically penetrate the object, ruthlessness, and knowledge and information regarding the object obtained, largely, by interacting with the object)
• Intellectualisation through generalization, differentiation and categorization of objects.
• Feelings of omnipotence and omniscience.
• Perfectionism and performance anxiety (repressed).

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• These mechanisms lead to emotional substitution (adulation and adoration instead of love),
• to the distancing and repulsion of objects,
• to dis-intimization (not possible to interact with the "real" Narcissist).

The results:

• Narcissistic vulnerability to narcissistic injury
• (More bearable than emotional vulnerability and can be more easily recovered from)
• "Becoming a child" and infantilism
  (The narcissist's inner dialogue: No one will hurt me, I am a child and I am loved without any reservations, judgement, or interests)
• Such expectations for unconditional love and acceptance do not exist among adults and they constitute a barrier to mature, adult relationships.
  Intensive denial of reality
  (perceived by others as innocence, naiveté, or pseudo-stupidity).
• Constant lack of confidence concerning matters not under full control leads to hostility towards objects and towards emotions.
• Compulsive behaviours intended to neutralize a high level of anxiety and compulsive seeking of love substitutes (money, prestige, power)...

Instincts and Drives

• Sexual abstinence, low frequency of sexual activity lead to less emotional involvement.
• Frustration of emotional objects through sex avoidance encourages abandonment by the object.
• Sexual dis-intimization by preferring autoerotic, anonymous sex with immature or incompatible objects
  (who do not represent an emotional threat or demands).
• Sporadic sex with long intervals and drastic alterations of sexual behaviour patterns.
• Dissociation of pleasure centres:
• Pleasure avoidance (unless "for and on behalf" of the object).
• Refraining from child rearing or family formation.
• Using the object as an "alibi" - extreme marital and monogamous faithfulness, to the point of ignoring all other objects leads to object inertia.
• This mechanism defends the Narcissist from the need to make contact with other objects.
• Sexual frigidity with significant other and sexual abstinence with others.

Object Relations

• Manipulative attitudes, which in conjunction with feelings of omnipotence and omniscience, create a mystique of immunity.
• Partial reality test.
• Social friction leads to social sanctions (up to imprisonment).
• Refraining from intimacy.
• Absence of emotional investment.
• Reclusive life, avoiding neighbours, family (both nuclear and extended), spouse and friends.
• The narcissist is often a schizoid (see FAQ67)
• Active misogyny with sadistic and anti-social elements.