evile

Not in my experience or observation, no.

Narcissists lack the ability to self reflect, or be introspective, or even really have a good grip on the idea of ‘cause-and-effect’.

To be sure, narcissist’s lives are often miserable, and they seem to screech from one disaster and drama to the next, but they don’t learn anything from it, they don’t grow as human beings, and they certainly don’t modify their behavior in a way that makes them kinder, gentler, or easier to get along with. They just don’t operate that way. They are incapable. They just can’t. It’s part of their disorder.

I have observed famous wealthy and powerful people who appear to be abusers and narcissists thrive and prosper, living long lives full of praise, power, money, glamour, and glory while people they’ve victimized suffer and ultimately fade away. These people have every outward sign of having everything a person would need to be happy but if they are narcissists, it’s unlikely that they actually feel any satisfaction.

I have also observed narcissists of my personal acquaintance thrive and prosper, spreading lies, making life miserable for other people, even managing to lie and manipulate situations so that other people go to jail while they walk free after doing the same and worse than the person serving the time.

It’s all pretty disgusting and disheartening to watch.

I’ve also seen one particular narcissist make the same mistake again and again, over a span of years, never learning from the mistake, only making it bigger and more expensive every time. They cry and wail and oh poor me and how could this have happened and on and on, but they don’t learn from it.

Similarly, they go back time and again to create and re-create dysfunctional relationships with the same personality types again and again, with the same predictable terrible results. They are simultaneously running in two hamster-wheels of dysfunction, it seems to me: the cycle of abuse[1] , and the idealize-devalue-discard cycle[2] of the narcissist. You know what they say about insanity: doing the same thing again and again and expecting different results[3] . That’s the narcissist.

"I’ll buy THIS truck. It is perfect and wonderful. It will tow everything I need it to tow. I will just keep adding larger and larger things for it to tow. OH NO IT BROKE! I hate this truck. It is stupid. Why did my stupid spouse make me buy this truck? My spouse is stupid. They do not understand trucks. They do not understand my trailer. They are to blame. I will buy a NEW BIGGER TRUCK. This truck is perfect and wonderful!"

"I’ll get THIS person to be my new lover. They are perfect and wonderful. They will meet all my needs. They will love me the way I deserve and need to be loved. They will know what I want before I even have to say it. OH NO! The new shiny lover didn’t read my mind! They didn’t meet all my needs! They didn’t give me everything I wanted before I even had to ask! They are stupid and bad! They are to blame! They deserve all the punishment I give them for refusing to be perfect! I will find a NEW BETTER LOVER! They are perfect and wonderful!"

"I’ll join THIS group of wonderful people! They are amazing and interesting. They recognize how amazing and interesting I am! Surely they will elevate me to a position of leadership, which I’ve always deserved to have. Oh, wait, some people in this group are disagreeing with me! This group is a TERRIBLE bunch of people! They are all drama-queens and backstabbers! I hate this group! I’m going to join a NEW group! These folks GET me! They’re awesome!"

"I’ll get THIS person to be my new best friend. They are perfect and wonderful. They understand me like no one ever has! They love me the way I deserve to be loved…"

you get the idea?

If you stand around waiting to watch the karma-bus hit these folks, you’re going to be waiting and watching for a very long time and ultimately it will not be satisfying because there’s never a lesson learned. Like a cartoon character falling off a cliff or being squashed flat by a rock, they just jump back up and go back to whatever awful thing they were doing. This behavior also applies to sex, drugs, food, and any other compulsive self-destructive behavior. It can send them to the hospital, and they’ll just go home and either go back to the same thing, or find a new thing that’s just as bad or worse.

The narcissist NEVER GETS IT. They never understand that they are the common element in all of the failures and losses of their miserable drama-filled lives. Yes, you can (and will) see them whine, cry, throw temper tantrums, disown lovers, friends and family multiple times for as long as the friends and family stay hooked in to the narcissistic cycle, or for as long as they can find new sources of supply. The narcissist’s pain and misery is real, but it is also short lived and superficial.

Their core, original narcissistic wound of being brain damaged or deeply traumatized in childhood, being fundamentally flawed, and incapable of the fullness of humanity will never change and it will never be able to be healed.

People who feel vengeful and want them to ‘learn their lesson’ as a way of receiving punishment may enjoy watching them fall on their faces time and again, but people who want them to ‘learn their lesson’ in the sense that a person should be able learn from their mistakes and grow as humans will ultimately be frustrated in waiting for that to happen.

And anyone with a scrap of human kindness or compassion can’t help but feel terribly sorry for these miserable beings, who are so deeply flawed and so terribly incompetent at being human. It isn’t their fault but they can’t be fixed and they are very toxic to themselves and everyone around them.

If you can finally bring yourself to feel compassion, please do it from a distance and take care of your own mental and physical health as a priority rather than pouring any more energy down the black hole of the narcissist’s existence.

Footnotes

Judging from two family members who got involved with narcissistic abusers, from what I can tell the abusive narcissist has nothing but contempt for their spouse. They need their spouses unpaid manual labor and their paycheck, but they resent and despise[1] their spouse for everything, including for working outside the home to support the household.

The narcissist abuser will call and even visit their working spouse’s workplace constantly with complaints, demands, and ‘emergencies’ to the point where the working spouse may quit or get fired.

The abuser refers to their working spouse as a ‘wage slave’ and says things about how they aren’t smart enough to be a successful independent businessperson like the abuser is (their success depends on their working spouse’s paycheck, medical benefits, and unpaid manual labor)

The narcissist abuser enjoys telling embarrassing and humiliating stories about how stupid, useless, incompetent, and bumbling their spouse is. These stories always end with how the abusive narcissist is the one who knows everything and saves the day. The narc pretends these stories are ‘affectionate’ and ‘cute’ and ‘funny’ while their spouse sinks under the weight of every additional humiliating word.

If a friend or family member asks the narc to tell them something positive that their abused spouse has done or said, the narc will give a ‘deer in headlights’ look and will not be able to come up with a single kind or positive thing to say about their spouse.

The narcissist abuser enjoys calling their spouse humiliating names like ‘shmuck’ ‘failure’ ‘jerk’ etc. When a friend or family member of the abused spouse asks the abuser not to call them that horrible name, the abuser gaslights and declares that the humiliating insult is actually an ‘in joke’ between the two spouses. “you think it’s funny, don’t you, honey?” the abuser will demand of the abused spouse. The abused spouse will mumble ‘yes’ and stare at the floor, embarrassed and upset to be in the middle of a conflict between abusive spouse and concerned friend/family, knowing that no matter what they say, the abuser will scream and punish them for hours for their family or friend daring to contradict (Oh, wait, ‘attack’) the narcissist’s abusive name-calling verbal abuse.

The narcissist abuser likes to restrict their spouse’s sexuality while indulging themselves with affairs, online flirting, ‘webcam’ hook-ups, viewing horrifying, violent, humiliating pornography, and other disgusting behavior. The narcissist may say that they are ‘polyamorous’ and ‘bisexual’ and that is why they need to have multiple affairs, but of course since their spouse is heterosexual and monogamous, their spouse is not allowed other relationships. They will also accuse the spouse of affairs if the spouse sees an attractive actor on television or at the movies and admits that they find the actor attractive. If the spouse has an attractive friend, coworker, or even family member, they will accuse the spouse of cheating or wanting to cheat. They may accuse their spouse of cheating if they just have a bad dream where the spouse is cheating. They will then use their made up crazy ‘proof’ of the ‘affair’ to further restrict their spouse’s sexuality—no sex with the abusive narcissist spouse, no looking at attractive people, no masturbation, no nothing.

With most of us, marriage is finding a person we love enough to want to spend the rest of our lives with them. With a narcissist, it seems to be about finding someone they hate enough to want to spend the rest of their lives punishing and torturing, using and extorting. It is a sick and sad situation.

Footnotes

Good catch! I think you are spot on in your analysis of dysfunctional family dynamics centered around a narcissist authority figure, with the spouse and/or partner as codependent ‘supporting cast’ (AKA “Flying Monkeys”) helping the narcissist (Cult Leader) impose their reality and their will upon the rest of the family members.

I find that the BITE [1] model is useful for examining cult dynamics. The cult leader will attempt to control their followers’ Behavior, Information, Thoughts, and Emotions. Narcissists attempt to do the same to their family members, partners, flying monkeys, etc.

Behavior Control

1. Regulate individual’s physical reality

2. Dictate where, how, and with whom the member lives and associates or isolates

3. When, how and with whom the member has sex

4. Control types of clothing and hairstyles

5. Regulate diet - food and drink, hunger and/or fasting

6. Manipulation and deprivation of sleep

7. Financial exploitation, manipulation or dependence

8. Restrict leisure, entertainment, vacation time

9. Major time spent with group indoctrination and rituals and/or self indoctrination including the Internet

10. Permission required for major decisions

11. Thoughts, feelings, and activities (of self and others) reported to superiors

12. Rewards and punishments used to modify behaviors, both positive and negative

13. Discourage individualism, encourage group-think

14. Impose rigid rules and regulations

15. Punish disobedience by beating, torture, burning, cutting, rape, or tattooing/branding

16. Threaten harm to family and friends [in the case of N. abuser family model: the narc parent will also threaten to harm, kill, or ‘get rid of’ family pets as punishment, or actually do so.]

17. Force individual to rape or be raped [sexual abuse & incest become family secrets that the victims are made to feel guilty and ashamed of--the narc will use their feelings of shame and secrecy to manipulate them and make sure that they will never trust outsiders or form bonds with people outside the family who might help them escape]

18. Instill dependency and obedience [parental Narc will withhold allowances, not allow children to form normal friendships, will either not allow or put many rules on a child who is trying to engage in normal ‘growing up’ milestones such as getting a learner’s permit, drivers license, car, summer job, their own bank account, etc.]

19. Encourage and engage in corporal punishment [parental Narc will usually be physically abusive as well as emotionally abusive. Or parental Narc will give the job of physical punishment of the children to their spouse, partner, or a hand-picked ‘golden child’ who will comply or else face physical abuse themselves, leading to more guilt, shame, and family secrets]

Information Control

1. Deception:

`a. Deliberately withhold information

b. Distort information to make it more acceptable

c. Systematically lie to the cult member [family member/target/victim]

2. Minimize or discourage access to non-cult sources of information, including:

a. Internet, TV, radio, books, articles, newspapers, magazines, other media

b. Critical information

c. Former members [in the case of Narc family: other family members, such as grandparents, aunts or uncles who might provide a life line and a way out of the sick family unit]

d. Keep members busy so they don’t have time to think and investigate

e. Control through cell phone with texting, calls, internet tracking

3. Compartmentalize information into Outsider vs. Insider doctrines [family abuse, incest, etc. become family secrets that are not to be told to anyone, guilt and shame makes the children feel isolated and untrusting of outsiders]

a. Ensure that information is not freely accessible

b. Control information at different levels and missions within group

c. Allow only leadership to decide who needs to know what and when

4. Encourage spying on other members

a. Impose a buddy system to monitor and control member

b. Report deviant thoughts, feelings and actions to leadership

c. Ensure that individual behavior is monitored by group

5. Extensive use of cult-generated information and propaganda, including:

a. Newsletters, magazines, journals, audiotapes, videotapes, YouTube, movies and other media

b. Misquoting statements or using them out of context from non-cult sources

6. Unethical use of confession

a. Information about 'sins' used to disrupt and/or dissolve identity boundaries

b. Withholding forgiveness or absolution

c. Manipulation of memory, possible false memories.

Thought Control

1. Require members to internalize the group’s doctrine as truth

a. Adopting the group's ‘map of reality’ as reality

b. Instill black and white thinking

c. Decide between good vs. evil

d. Organize people into us vs. them (insiders vs. outsiders)

2. Change person’s name and identity

3. Use of loaded language and clichés which constrict knowledge, stop critical thoughts and reduce complexities into platitudinous buzz words

4. Encourage only ‘good and proper’ thoughts

5. Hypnotic techniques are used to alter mental states, undermine critical thinking and even to age regress the member

6. Memories are manipulated and false memories are created

7. Teaching thought-stopping techniques which shut down reality testing by stopping negative thoughts and allowing only positive thoughts, including:

a. Denial, rationalization, justification, wishful thinking

b. Chanting (repetition of meaningless  or emotionally charged slogans, mottoes, or buzz-words replace independent, critical thinking--"it is what it is," "let go and let god," "preacher/dad/mom/Rush is always right," )

c. Meditating

d. Praying

e. Speaking in tongues

f. Singing or humming

8. Rejection of rational analysis, critical thinking, constructive criticism

9. Forbid critical questions about leader, doctrine, or policy allowed

10. Labeling alternative belief systems as illegitimate, evil, or not useful

11. Instill new “map of reality”

Emotional Control

1. Manipulate and narrow the range of feelings – some emotions and/or needs are deemed as evil, wrong or selfish

2. Teach emotion-stopping techniques to block feelings of homesickness, anger, doubt

3. Make the person feel that problems are always their own fault, never the leader’s or the group’s fault

4. Promote feelings of guilt or unworthiness, such as

a. Identity guilt

b. You are not living up to your potential

c. Your family is deficient [the narcissist spouse will tell the codependent spouse/partner(s) that their own family of origin was the sick and wrong one, that they were ‘not raised right’ and that it is therefore now the narcissist’s job to teach them how to behave]

d. Your past is suspect

e. Your affiliations are unwise

f. Your thoughts, feelings, actions are irrelevant or selfish

g. Social guilt

h. Historical guilt

5. Instill fear, such as fear of:

a. Thinking independently

b. The outside world

c. Enemies

d. Losing one’s salvation

e. Leaving or being shunned by the group

f. Other’s disapproval

6. Extremes of emotional highs and lows – love bombing and praise one moment and then declaring you are a horrible sinner

7. Ritualistic and sometimes public confession of sins

8. Phobia indoctrination: inculcating irrational fears about leaving the group or questioning the leader’s authority

a. No happiness or fulfillment possible outside of the group

b. Terrible consequences if you leave: hell, demon possession, incurable diseases, accidents, suicide, insanity, 10,000 reincarnations, etc.

c. Shunning of those who leave; fear of being rejected by friends and family

d. Never a legitimate reason to leave; those who leave are weak, undisciplined, unspiritual, worldly, brainwashed by family or counselor, or seduced by money, sex, or rock and roll

e. Threats of harm to ex-member and family[2]

I find a lot of similarity between a dysfunctional family centered around a narcissist parent and a cult.

• Focus is on the wants and needs of the cult leader/Narcissist.
• Their version of reality is the correct version.--They will gaslight and abuse if you disagree about reality or what happened.
  
• Spouse/partner(s) and children are not allowed to have needs, thoughts, or feelings that deviate from those of the leader/narcissist/abuser.
  
• In many cases, the followers (children, spouse, partners) are treated as tools or toys rather than human beings.
  
• The cult leader/Narc is obsessed with power and control, often preoccupied with maintaining a false image of wealth, beauty, success, or other outward appearance of socially acceptable and desirable traits.
  
• The cult leader/narcissist uses their followers/victims as props, and takes their resources without consideration.
  
• The narc/cult leader/abuser blames outsiders and/or their followers/victims for any negative outcomes—bad things are never a result of their own behavior, but because the followers didn’t believe or pray hard enough, because the victim disobeyed the leader, or because outsiders are persecuting the leader and their followers.
  
• No matter what happens, the leader will not accept blame or responsibility. The abuser will use whatever consequences occur as a way to solidify their control of their victim(s) and cut them off from friends, family, external sources of support, information that counteracts the cult leader’s lies, or anything that might provide the victim with a path to freedom.

Footnotes

From the Mayo Clinic article on NPD:

Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder and the severity of symptoms vary. People with the disorder can:

• Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance
• Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration
• Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
• Exaggerate achievements and talents
• Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
• Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
• Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
• Expect special favors and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
• Take advantage of others to get what they want
• Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
• Be envious of others and believe others envy them
• Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
• Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office

At the same time, people with narcissistic personality disorder have trouble handling anything they perceive as criticism, and they can:

• Become impatient or angry when they don't receive special treatment
• Have significant interpersonal problems and easily feel slighted
• React with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make themselves appear superior
• Have difficulty regulating emotions and behavior
• Experience major problems dealing with stress and adapting to change
• Feel depressed and moody because they fall short of perfection
• Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation

In fact, three of the narcissists I have encountered in my personal life were the opposite: slovenly, sloppy, smelly, and did not wash for days or weeks, even (or maybe especially?) when it was requested that they bathe and put on clean clothes for a family occasion. At the same time, bizarrely, two of the three narcissists would behave in sexually suggestive manner, as if their unwashed, bad-smelling bodies, tangled greasy hair, and dirty ripped clothing would be attractive and arousing.

Washing or showering excessively could be a sign of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) - Symptoms and causes.

The person may have seen showering as a symbolic ‘washing away’ of other people from her life, and symbols can be a very powerful thing inside a person’s mind, but, again, I don’t believe that’s a universal trait or symbolic system used by all narcissists. (it's also possible to have co-morbid mental health conditions, so a person with NPD could also have OCD)

Footnotes