From:
http://samvak.tripod.com/index.html If I had to distil my quotidian existence in two pithy sentences, I
would say: I love to be hated and I hate to be loved.
Hate is the complement of fear and I like being feared. It imbues me
with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. I am veritably
inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces.
They know that I am capable of anything. Godlike, I am ruthless and
devoid of scruples, capricious and unfathomable, emotion-less and
asexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omni-present, a plague, a
devastation, an inescapable verdict. I nurture my ill-repute, stoking
it and fanning the flames of gossip. It is an enduring asset.
Hate and fear are sure generators of attention. It is all about
narcissistic supply, of course - the drug which we, the narcissists
consume and which consumes us in return. So, attack sadistically
authority figures, institutions, my hosts and I make sure they know
about my eruptions.
I purvey only the truth and nothing but the truth - but I tell it
bluntly told in an orgy of evocative baroque English.
The blind rage that this induces in the targets of my vitriolic
diatribes provokes in me a surge of satisfaction and inner
tranquillity not obtainable by any other means. I like to think about
their pain, of course - but that is the lesser part of the equation.
It is my horrid future and inescapable punishment that carries the
irresistible appeal. Like some strain of alien virus, it infects my
better judgement and I succumb.
In general, my weapon is the truth and human propensity to avoid it.
In tactless breaching of every etiquette, I chastise and berate and
snub and offer vitriolic opprobrium. A self-proclaimed Jeremiah, I
hector and harangue from my many self-made pulpits. I understand the
prophets. I understand Torquemada.
I bask in the incomparable pleasure of being RIGHT. I derive my
grandiose superiority from the contrast between my righteousness and
the humanness of others.
But it is not that simple. It never is with narcissists. Fostering
public revolt and the inevitable ensuing social sanctions fulfils two
other psychodynamic goals.
The first one I alluded to. It is the burning desire - nay, NEED - to
be punished.
In the grotesque mind of the narcissist, his punishment is equally
his vindication.
By being permanently on trial, the narcissist claims high moral
ground and the position of the martyr: misunderstood, discriminated
against, unjustly roughed, outcast by his very towering genius or
other outstanding qualities. To conform to the cultural stereotype of
the "tormented artist" - the narcissist provokes his own suffering.
He is thus validated.
His grandiose fantasies acquire a modicum of substance. "If I were
not so special - they wouldn't have persecuted me so".
The persecution of the narcissist IS his uniqueness. He must be
different, for better or for worse. The streak of paranoia embedded
in him, makes the outcome inevitable. He is in constant conflict with
lesser beings: his spouse, his shrink, his boss, his colleagues.
Forced to stoop to their intellectual level, the narcissist feels
like Gulliver: a giant strapped by Lilliputians. His life is a
constant struggle against the self-contented mediocrity of his
surroundings. This is his fate which he accepts, though never
stoically. It is a calling, a mission and a recurrence in his stormy
life.
Deeper still, the narcissist has an image of himself as a worthless,
bad and dysfunctional extension of others. In constant need of
narcissistic supply, he feels humiliated. The contrast between his
cosmic fantasies and the reality of his dependence, neediness and,
often, failure (the "Grandiosity Gap") is an emotionally harrowing
experience. It is a constant background noise of devilish, demeaning
laughter. The voices say: "you are a fraud", "you are a zero", "you
deserve nothing", "if only they knew how worthless you are".
The narcissist attempts to silence these tormenting voices not by
fighting them but by agreeing with them. Unconsciously - sometimes
consciously - he says to them: "I do agree with you. I am bad and
worthless and deserving of the most severe punishment for my rotten
character, bad habits, addiction and the constant fraud that is my
life. I will go out and seek my doom. Now that I have complied - will
you leave me be? Will you leave me alone"?
Of course, they never do.
==================================
Sometimes I find myself bemused (though rarely amused) by my own
grandiosity. Not by my fantasies - they are common to many "normal
people".
It is healthy to daydream and fantasize. It is the antechamber of
life and its circumstances. It is a process of preparing for
eventualities,embellished and decorated. No, I am talking about
feeling grandiose.
This feeling has four components.
OMNIPOTENCE
I believe that I will live forever. "Believe" in this context is a
weak word. I know. It is a cellular certainty, almost biological, it
flows with my blood and permeates every niche of my being. I can do
anything I choose to do and excel in it. What I do, what I excel at,
what I achieve depends only on my volition. There is no other
determinant. Hence my rage when confronted with disagreement or
opposition - not only because of the audacity of my, evidently
inferior, adversary. But because it threatens my world view, it
endangers my feeling of omnipotence. I am fatuously daring,
adventurous, experimentative and curious precisely due to this hidden
assumption of "can-do". I am genuinely surprised and devastated when
I fail, when the Universe does not arrange itself, magically, to
accommodate my unlimited powers, when it (and people in it) does not
comply with my whims and wishes. I often deny such discrepancies,
delete them from my memory. As a result, my life is remembered as a
patchy quilt of unrelated events.
OMNISCIENCE
Until very recently I pretended to know everything - I mean
EVERYTHING, in every field of human knowledge and endeavour. I lied
and invented to avoid proof of my ignorance. I pretended to know and
resorted to numerous subterfuges to support my God-like omniscience
(reference books hidden in my clothes, frequent visits to the
restroom, cryptic notation or sudden illness, if all else failed).
Where my knowledge failed me - I feigned authority, faked
superiority, quoted from non-existent sources, embedded threads of
truth in a canvass of falsehoods. I transformed myself into an artist
of intellectual prestidigitation. As I advanced in age, this
invidious quality has receded, or, rather, metamorphosed. I now claim
more confined expertise. I am not ashamed to admit my ignorance and
need to learn outside the fields of my self-proclaimed expertise. But
this "improvement" is merely optical. Within my "territory", I am
still as fiercely defensive and possessive as I have ever been. And I
am still an avowed autodidact, unwilling to subject my knowledge and
insights to peer scrutiny, or, for this matter, to any scrutiny. I
keep re-inventing myself, adding new fields of knowledge as I go:
finance, economics, psychology, philosophy, physics, politics... This
crawling intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to
my old image as the erudite "Renaissance Man".
OMNIPRESENCE
Even I - the master of self-deception - cannot pretend that I am
everywhere at once in the PHYSICAL sense. Instead, I feel that I am
the centre and the axis of my Universe, that all things and
happenstances revolve around me and that disintegration would ensue
if I were to disappear or to lose interest in someone or in
something. I am convinced, for instance, that I am the main, if not
the only, topic of discussion in my absence. I am often surprised and
offended to learn that I was not even mentioned. When invited to a
meeting with many participants, I assume the position of the sage,
the guru, or the teacher / guide whose words survive his physical
presence. My books, articles and web sites are extensions of my
presence and, in this restricted sense, I do seem to exist
everywhere. In other words, I "stamp" my environment. I "leave my
mark" upon it. I "stigmatise" it.
NARCISSIST THE OMNIVORE (PERFECTIONISM and COMPLETENESS)
There is another "omni" component in grandiosity. The narcissist is
an omnivore. It devours and digests experiences and people, sights
and smells, bodies and words, books and films, sounds and
achievements, his work and his leisure, his pleasure and his
possessions. The Narcissist is incapable of ENJOYING anything because
he is in constant pursuit of the twin attainments of perfection and
completeness. Classic narcissists interact with the world as
predators would with their prey. They want to do it all, own it all,
be everywhere, experience everything. They cannot delay
gratification. They do not accept "no" for an answer. And they settle
for nothing less than the ideal, the sublime, the perfect, the all-
inclusive, the all-encompassing, the engulfing, the all-pervasive,
the most beautiful, the cleverest, the richest. The narcissist is
shattered by discovering that a collection he possesses is
incomplete, that his colleague's wife is more glamorous, that his son
is better than he in math, that his neighbour has a new, impressive
car, that his roommate got promoted, that the "love of his life"
signed a recording contract. It is not plain old jealousy, not even
pathological envy (though it is definitely a part of the
psychological make-up of the narcissist). It is the discovery that
the narcissist is NOT perfect, or ideal, or complete - that does him
in.
====================================
Narcissistic Personaity Disorder
The more pathological form of narcissism the Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD) was defined in the successive versions
of the American DSM and the European ICD. It is useful to scrutinise
these geological layers of clinical observations and their
interpretation. In 1977 the DSM-III criteria included (the following
texts are adaptations of the original ones):
An inflated valuation of oneself (exaggeration of talents and
achievements, demonstration of presumptuous self-confidence);
Interpersonal exploitation (uses others to satisfy his needs and
desires, expects preferential treatment without undertaking mutual
commitments);
Possesses expansive imagination (externalises immature and non-
regimented fantasies, "prevaricates to redeem self-illusions");
Displays supercilious imperturbability (except when the narcissistic
confidence is shaken), nonchalant, unimpressed and cold-blooded;
Defective social conscience (rebels against the conventions of common
social existence, does not value personal integrity and the rights of
other people).
Compare the 1977 version with the one adopted 10 years later (in the
DSM-III-R) and expanded upon in 1994 (in the DSM-IV):
An all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or in behaviour),
a need for admiration and a marked lack of empathy which starts at
early adulthood and is present in a variety of contexts.
At least 5 of the following should be present for a person to be
diagnosed as suffering from NPD:
Possesses a grandiose sense of self-importance (for example:
exaggerates his achievements and his talents, expects his superiority
to be recognised without having the commensurate skills or
achievements);
Pre-occupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance
and beauty or of ideal love;
Believes that he is unique and special and that only high status and
special people (or institutions) could understand him (or that it is
only with such people and institutions that it is worth his while to
be associated with);
Demands excessive and exceptional admiration;
Feels that he is deserving of exceptionally good treatment, automatic
obeisance of his (usually unrealistic) expectations;
Exploitative in his interpersonal relationships, uses others to
achieve his goals;
Lacks empathy: is disinterested in other people's needs and emotions
and does not identify with them;
Envies others or believes that others envy him;
Displays arrogance and haughtiness.
There emerges a portrait of a monster, a ruthless and exploitative
person. But this is only the phenomenological side. Inside, the
narcissist suffers from a chronic lack of confidence and is
fundamentally dissatisfied.
On the outside, his is a vicissitudinal nature. This is far from
reflecting the barren landscape of misery and fears that constitutes
his soul. His tumultuous behaviour covers up for a submissive,
depressed interior.
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