437 wow. A SIL lightbulb moment

[evile]

 

• Apr. 2, 2002

   

  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.