Say no to Narcissism

Vacation break ...

2012-12-21T08:26:00.000+02:00

... until the New Year

The Self-Deprecating Narcissist

2007-12-11T08:08:00.000+02:00

By Sam Vaknin

I have a riotous, subtle, ironic, and sharpened sense of humor. I can be self-deprecating and self-effacing. I do not recoil from making my dilapidated ego the target of my own barbs. Yet, this is true only when I have narcissistic supply aplenty. Narcissistic supply — attention, adulation, admiration, applause, fame, celebrity, notoriety — neuter the sting of my self-directed jokes. In my more humorous moments I can present myself as the opposite of what is widely known to be true. I can unfold a tale of fatuous decisions followed by clumsy misbehavior — yet, no one would take me to be fatuous or clumsy. It is as though my reputation protects me from the brunt of my own jocular modesty. I can afford to be magnanimously forgiving of my own shortcomings because they are so outweighed by my gifts and by my widely known achievements or traits.

Still, the gist of what I once wrote stands:

"A narcissist rarely engages in self-directed, self-deprecating humor. If he does, he expects to be contradicted, rebuked and rebuffed by his listeners ('Come on, you are actually quite handsome'), or to be commended or admired for his courage or for his wit and intellectual acerbity ('I envy your ability to laugh at yourself'). As everything else in a narcissist's life, his sense of humor is deployed in the interminable pursuit of Narcissistic Supply."

I am completely different when I lack narcissistic supply or when in search of sources of such supply. Humor is always an integral part of my charm offensive. But, when narcissistic supply is deficient, it is never self-directed. Moreover, when deprived of supply, I react with hurt and rage when I am the butt of jokes and humorous utterances. I counterattack ferociously and make a complete arse of myself.

Why these extremes?

"The absence of Narcissistic Supply (or the impending threat of such an absence) is, indeed, a serious matter. It is the narcissistic equivalent of mental death. If prolonged and unmitigated, such absence can lead to the real thing: physical death, a result of suicide, or of a psychosomatic deterioration of the narcissist's health. Yet, to obtain Narcissistic Supply, one must be taken seriously and to be taken seriously one must be the first to take oneself seriously. Hence the gravity with which the narcissist contemplates his life. This lack of levity and of perspective and proportion characterize the narcissist and set him apart.

The narcissist firmly believes that he is unique and that he is thus endowed because he has a mission to fulfill, a destiny, a meaning to his life. The narcissist's life is a part of history, of a cosmic plot and it constantly tends to thicken. Such a life deserves only the most serious attention. Moreover, every particle of such an existence, every action or inaction, every utterance, creation, or composition, indeed every thought, are bathed in this cosmic meaningfulness. They all lead down the paths of glory, of achievement, of perfection, of ideals, of brilliance. They are all part of a design, a pattern, a plot, which inexorably and unstoppably lead the narcissist on to the fulfillment of his task. The narcissist may subscribe to a religion, to a belief, or to an ideology in his effort to understand the source of this strong feeling of uniqueness. He may attribute his sense of direction to God, to history, to society, to culture, to a calling, to his profession, to a value system. But he always does so with a straight face, with a firm conviction and with deadly seriousness.

And because, to the narcissist, the part is a holographic reflection of the whole — he tends to generalize, to resort to stereotypes, to induct (to learn about the whole from the detail), to exaggerate, finally to pathologically lie to himself and to others. This tendency of his, this self-importance, this belief in a grand design, in an all embracing and all-pervasive pattern — make him an easy prey to all manner of logical fallacies and con artistry. Despite his avowed and proudly expressed rationality the narcissist is besieged by superstition and prejudice. Above all, he is a captive of the false belief that his uniqueness destines him to carry a mission of cosmic significance.

All these make the narcissist a volatile person. Not merely mercurial — but fluctuating, histrionic, unreliable, and disproportional. That which has cosmic implications calls for cosmic reactions. The person with an inflated sense of self-import, will react in an inflated manner to threats, greatly inflated by his imagination and by the application to them of his personal myth. On a cosmic scale, the daily vagaries of life, the mundane, the routine are not important, even damagingly distracting. This is the source of his feelings of exceptional entitlement. Surely, engaged as he is in securing the well being of humanity by the exercise of his unique faculties — the narcissist deserves special treatment! This is the source of his violent swings between opposite behaviour patterns and between devaluation and idealization of others.

To the narcissist, every minor development is nothing less than a new stage in his life, every adversity, a conspiracy to upset his progress, every setback an apocalyptic calamity, every irritation the cause for outlandish outbursts of rage. He is a man of the extremes and only of the extremes. He may learn to efficiently suppress or hide his feelings or reactions — but never for long. In the most inappropriate and inopportune moment, you can count on the narcissist to explode, like a wrongly wound time bomb. And in between eruptions, the narcissistic volcano daydreams, indulges in delusions, plans his victories over an increasingly hostile and alienated environment. Gradually, the narcissist becomes more paranoid — or more aloof, detached and dissociative.

In such a setting, you must admit, there is not much room for a sense of humor."

Narcissist Cat - cartoon

2007-12-10T08:05:00.000+02:00

When Dad Hurts Mom

2007-12-09T08:52:00.000+02:00

When Dad Hurts Mom

by Lundy Bancroft

ISBN-10: 0399151109
ISBN-13: 978-0399151101

Book Description

In this groundbreaking book, a leading expert on domestic abuse and its effects turns his unique perspective on the littlest victims of spousal abuse-the children.

More than two-thirds of abused women have children, and the overwhelming majority of those children witness one or more incidents of violence. And that number would be even greater if we include children who have watched their mothers be verbally abused and intimidated. Studies have shown that children's exposure to domestic abuse is linked to virtually every category of emotional and behavioral problems.

When Dad Hurts Mom offers comfort, understanding, and a concrete plan of action to any woman concerned about the distress being caused to her children by her angry, controlling, or abusive partner. Written for mothers, this book aims to enlighten women about the effects of abuse on children, how an abusive partner distorts familial relationships, and what can be done about it.

Abused mothers are desperately seeking guidance on how to help their children heal from the abuse they witness. This is the first book to provide these women with the insight, support, and, most important, the solutions they need.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Nearly three-quarters of women who are chronically mistreated by their partners have children. In this sensitive, respectful book, counselor, speaker, trainer and activist Bancroft (Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men) gives those women ways to help their children heal from the pain of seeing such abuse. Using anecdotes, Q&As, bulleted "points to remember" and a caring but firm tone, Bancroft tells abused mothers exactly what actions they should take to help their children. Don’t blame children (or yourself), he says, and let children know it’s good to talk about the verbal or physical abuse they’ve been exposed to. Bancroft coaches moms to tell their children abuse is wrong, but warns them not to criticize the abuser as a person if he is a father-figure to the children. Bancroft’s important book addresses peripheral issues, too, such as the effects of separation and divorce, and dealing with child protective services and the family court system.

From Booklist
Bancroft draws on 16 years of counseling men who abuse women and as a custody evaluator and child-abuse investigator to offer sound advice to women who are abused by their partners and are concerned about the impact on their children. Without judging women in abusive situations, Bancroft emphasizes that they are in the best position to help their children heal after witnessing abuse. She begins by describing how children view abuse from verbal put-downs of their mother to physical abuse and how their conflict and confusion manifest in a range of symptoms from sleeping and eating disorders to underperformance in school. She ends each chapter with action guidelines for women called "What Can I Do?" Bancroft analyzes the pros and cons of deciding whether to stay with or leave an abusive partner and offers coping strategies that include teaching children to be open about their feelings and devising a "safety plan" of escape if necessary. She also offers advice on choosing therapists and support groups, and practical skills for rebuilding the family. Vanessa Bush Copyright © American Library Association.

Mental Health Today - Message Board

2007-12-08T08:45:00.000+02:00

The Mental Health Today
Message Board is worth a visit and a read.
Here is a sample:

is there hope at all? - maple5596

"I have read many stories of having a NPD husband. Almost all of them are really sad and frightening. Well, I have had bad experience with a NPD man myself. Whenever thinking of those frustration when being with him ( I am now living in different city from him), it scares me. He disturbed and poisoned my life. He has almost all the signs of a NPD.

But, I know it sound naive, maybe, I believe he loved me. He is very warm and loving. when he is alert, sometime, he hated himself so much for not being able to act "normal". I could tell the love lighten up his eyes when he saw me. When he is peaceful - feel accepted and loved totally, with all the attention that I couldn't always give. He is wonderful. He has all the good will, although in reality he doesn't act responsibly at all. I believe him for being lost than being bad. The thoughts of leaving him forever while cannot forget his crying, childlike eyes hurt me terribly. The sense of abandoning a lost child hurt me more than anything.

We all human, we all want our love to be received well. It is obvious that my being with him is very good for him - he become calm, happy, if only I can bear the pain of his unconscious abuse that I forgive him. I forgive him for his illness - it is not his fault. It is not by his choice after all.

I know very clearly that I cannot bear the abuse for long - I was driven almost crazy before moving away from his city. But how I hope that he will be cured somehow!! Isn't there a hope at all?

He is soulful, he wants to love and to be loved, just like every one of us, but more so. There is always hope, right?"

Narcissistic Rage In Leaders

2007-12-07T08:33:00.000+02:00

Narcissistic Rage In Leaders: Why Leaders Make a Mistake, Can't Fix it and Won't Admit it.

A world leader can make a huge mistake such as leading their nation to an unjust war, then, after the reasons for the war are shown to be invalid, not be able to bring themselves to admit that the mistake that the war was wrong or be “big enough” to reverse policy and stop the war. Instead, they continue to maintain that the war was right all along, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. They defend their error, fail to reverse course, and allow many more to die needlessly.

This happens often in history. One thinks of Napoleon’s foolish invasion of Russia. Hitler did the same a century later. One thinks of Vietnam. One thinks of Iraq.

Psychiatrists call it "narcissistic rage in leaders". It is direct evidence of a leader's fundamental psychological weakness--a damaged and fragile self-concept. But it can also lead to the destruction of individuals, groups, organizations, and even entire nations.

According to Drs. Mardi Horowitz and Ransom Arthur, leaders who exhibit narcissistic rage use "states of rage" to intimidate subordinates. That is, they use their anger, threats, and tyrannical tantrums to get their way. Narcissistic rage characterizes many historical figures, present world leaders, lesser politicians, corporate executives, heads of organizations, and even factory bosses.

Dr. Horowitz is the Director of the Center for the Study of Neuroses at the Langley Porter Psychiatric Institute in San Francisco and a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-San Francisco. Dr. Arthur is a professor of psychiatry at the University of California-Los Angeles. Their classic 1988 study still stands as the definitive work on this topic.

They theorize that leaders prone to narcissistic rage have inner fantasies of having unlimited power (omnipotence) while they actually possess varying degrees of real power. Because they realize, on some psychological level at least, that it is their fantasies that are invariably greater, they become easily threatened when their power is in the slightest way challenged. Even a subordinate's hesitation in carrying-out a leader's command can be misinterpreted as a threat, thus triggering an angry outburst--a narcissistic rage.

Referring to the classic cases of Caligula, Nero, Hitler, and Mussolini, Drs. Horowitz and Arthur write that "we infer that their inner psychodynamics also involved a fundamentally damaged self-concept, and that this might be why any action which appeared to cast doubt on the leader's omnipotence was savagely punished."

They note, "because of this situation, all independent thinkers must eventually leave the inner circle of advisers of such leaders. They will tend to be replaced by individuals whose primary objective is keeping the leader pleased. In order to keep the leader serene, bad news, however true, is either not presented or is presented in such a way that a scapegoat other than the leader can be found and punished."

One immediately thinks of Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War or Richard Nixon during Watergate.

In fact, there is much evidence that the advisers of many of today's leaders do precisely this. In fact, John F. Kennedy was the last U.S. President who was allowed by his minders to read newspapers in their original. All U.S. Presidents since have been given selected newspaper clippings and news briefings by White House staff. One former White House insider claims that on many days, Ronald Reagan was given only the comic strips. And even these were "edited". For instance, he was not given “Doonesbury” whenever it was critical of him.

George W. Bush “browbeat” advisers to find a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Quieda when they continually found none.

Drs. Horowitz and Arthur further theorize that when a leader's narcissistic rage is triggered, the target of the rage is portrayed as "a hostile aggressor who might insult, injure, subjugate, or engulf the [leader's] self. Instead of fear of deflation, injury, or subjection, the manifest feeling is anger." They add, "all evil attributes are externalized and others, not the self, are blamed. The self becomes the aggressor and an attack on the other becomes justified by the bad intentions attributed to him."

Perhaps this helps to explain, among other events such as Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini's revengeful outrage at Salmond Rushdie. In Rushdie's THE SATANIC VERSES, a character similar to the Ayatollah is satirized unmercifully. Rushdie is still in hiding, afraid for his life.

Saddam Hussein becomes the receptacle in which is contained all evil. “He tried to kill my Daddy” is frosting on the cake of war justification. No matter that Hussein was once an ally.

But not only are individuals the victims of the narcissistic rage in leaders. Wars, genocide campaigns, and the devastation of nations can result. Millions can perish because a leader is plagued by a fragile self-concept and a profound, but continually denied, sense of inferiority. In a desperate attempt to satisfy an insatiable thirst caused by an internal weakness of the self, the narcissistic leader drinks the hopefully quenching waters of external power. However, in doing so the leader must forever guard the well--lest others steal one drop for themselves.

It is no wonder that Hussein, an abused and neglected child, extracts revenge upon his enemies with genocide against the Kurds and ruthless elimination of his rivals.

The narcissistic rage of leaders can be extremely destructive to any organization, business, or political group. In his 1921 essay, "Group Psychology and the Analysis of Ego", Sigmund Freud partially described six phases of a group's behaviour after its leader exhibits narcissistic rage. Drs. Horowitz and Arthur have expanded on Freud's description. They write that at the end of the sixth phase, one of three scenarios results: "a) Ruination: The organization succumbs; b) Blood Bath: The leader removes most subordinates and starts over by a massive expenditure of his resources; c) Mutiny: The leader is removed, perhaps by a new hero who challenges and defeats him, and himself becomes the leader."

They observe, "The person who becomes a leader has usually done so in part because he has both extraordinary skills and ambitions for this goal. During his or her quest for power the person fantasized the pleasure he or she would experience in wielding it. To some extent, especially in those vulnerable to narcissistic rages, the pleasure may be in the relief of the chronic pain of a damaged self-concept and pervasive sense of inferiority."

Nevertheless, they ironically add, "When power is actually obtained by such individuals, it is found to be imperfect in relation to expectations. The majority of leaders weather such flies in the ointment of success in a mature manner, with wisdom and humor. Those leaders with vulnerable self-concepts cannot accept the disappointment, and strive for omnipotence."

Drs. Horowitz and Arthur observe, "What is so dramatically seen in the famous continues to be found at a more ordinary level of leadership and group process. Although injuring far fewer people than is the case with a head of state, narcissistic executives still impair institutions or individual lives through the destructiveness of bullying rages and their effects on group processes."

Our leaders are more fragile than they think.

Reference
Horowitz, M. & Arthur, R. (1988) Narcissistic Rage In Leaders: The Intersection Of Individual Dynamics And Group Process. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL PSYCHIATRY 34:2:135-141

Dr Stephen Juan

Obsessive Love: When It Hurts Too Much to Let Go

2007-12-06T08:36:00.000+02:00

Obsessive Love:
When It Hurts Too Much to Let Go

by Susan Forward & Craig Buck

ISBN-10: 0553296744
ISBN-13: 978-0553296747

Book Description

In this invaluable self-help guide, Dr. Susan Forward presents vivid case histories as well as the real-life voices of men and women caught in the grip of obsessive passion. Whether you're an obsessive lover or the target of such an obsession, here is a proven, step-by-step program that shows you how to recognize the "connection compulsion," what causes it, and how to break its hold on your life so that you can go on to build healthy, lasting, and pain-free relationships.

Reviews

Very helpful,
By A Customer
When I first got this book, I was so addicted to a person that I did not realize I was stalking him and invading his privacy. This book deals out some harsh truth in the beginning. At first I felt no sympathy for my painful ordeal and I couldn't read it. I would recommend reading this book after you have explored why you are the way you are and accepted that are obsessed or addicted to a person. Before reading this book, you might want to try How to Break an Addiction to a Person. That book is a little more sympathetic to how you feel and it helps you to understand why you are acting the way you act. Once you come to terms with yourself and your problems, read Obsessive Love. It gives clear concise directions on how to stop obsessing using behavior conditioning. The psychological techniques in this book really work because they do not focus on appealing to your logical mind but to your illogical emotions and thoughts. This book also provides some insight on how you got this way and it helps you to understand how the person you are obsessing over feels. That is important. This is a great book that really helps deal with a sickness appropriately. It is not a quick fix it is not cheesy. It deals you the truth and then tells you exercises to do everyday to help you deal with the pain. It takes work and dedication to make yourself a healthier person but with this book, you can do it.

Healing and Moving on...,
By A Customer
This book helped me break the Infatuation Cycles I had developed. It is written in a very concise and non-invasive way so as not to offend and make you feel...well...like a deranged and sick person. My behavior was deranged and sick, but after reading this book I made a determined and solid decision to move on AND not look back. I have not repeated my Obsessive Cycle since.

A Gem
By W. Kaplan "calyndula" (Wynnewood, PA United States)
I can't count the times I have pontificated by saying that I would never read or recommend a self-help book. Well I was wrong. "Obsessive Love..." is a gem of the genre, a truly insightful and helpful book for all ages.

In clear, thoughtful, and easy-to-read English, Susan Forward explains the difference between love--and obsession, quite a different animal altogether. Because it is written with a nonjudgmental attitude and the compassion comes through on every page, it allows the reader who may be caught up in such a relationship to take the first painful step: admitting that he/she is indeed caught up in this unhealthy situation.

The book then gives advice on how to break the attachment and to see the relationship for what it is--or is not. It is aimed at giving the obsessor his/her life back, and of course, the object of the obsession gains the same bonus. Those who are caught up in such a relationship often feel hopeless, helpless, and truly terrified at the prospect of ending a relationship that in fact may not even exist (or that exists no longer). Forward understands this, and does not try to explain it away. She simply guides the reader, quietly and firmly, if you will, through a series of steps that she says will help. And they do.

Letting go is never an easy process, and Forward does not pretend that it is. But her advice works, and leaves the obsessor with dignity and a sense of having come through a serious situation, and out to the other side.

I would imagine that this book would not help a truly psychotic stalker. I have recommended it repeatedly to friends who are locked into relationships that are obsessive and unhealthy, or that are over entirely. The advice has worked every time. I recommend this book to anyone who is grieving over a failed love affair, or a preoccupation with a person who does not reciprocate one's affections. If nothing else, this book will provide strong comfort.

War and Peace with the Narcissist

2007-12-05T08:46:00.000+02:00

And so, what do you do if you cannot forgive your abuser?

What SHOULD you do? Which party is the obstacle to reconciliation here? You or your abuser?

What should you do? Just accept it. It's a fact. Let it be. You cannot really change it: all you can do is delude yourself about it.

You can pretend to have "forgiven" your abuser all you want, but there is nonetheless, a state of war between you. It exists whether you admit it or not.

This is because your abuser owes you something he or she refuses to pay. The narcissist refuses to even admit what they DID yesterday. She may have punched you for 20 minutes straight, but today she denies that it happened, accusing you of "making things up" or of being the one who attacked.

Since she won't even admit what she did, she is also denying you acknowledgement that it was wrong. That she has wronged you.

So, what is there to "forgive," pray tell?

She is also denying you a promise and guarantees to stop it.

So, how can you "forgive" ongoing abuse in progress?

Fact: life with the narcissist continues as ever: whenever she feels like taking a crap on somebody, you're it. "Forgiving" that is just a codeword for permitting it.

You are not required to forgive that. You cannot forgive it. The narcissist's sin obligates the NARCISSIST to do something about it, not you. It obligates the narcissist to repent it duh.

Oh, yeah - that little prerequisite to forgiveness - repentance. The self-righteous harpies on you to "forgive" conveniently let it slip their slippery minds.

So, you can pretend there is peace between you and the narcissist, but there ain't any. There are just lulls between the surprise attacks.

Kathleen Krajco

Is the Narcissist Ever Sorry?

2007-12-04T08:15:00.000+02:00

The narcissist always feels bad. He experiences all manner of depressive episodes and lesser dysphoric moods. He goes through a full panoply of mood disorders and anxiety disorders. He experiences panic from time to time. It is not pleasant to be a narcissist.

But he has a diminished capacity to empathise, so he rarely feels sorry for what he does. He almost never puts himself in the shoes of his "victims". Sure, he feels distressed because he is intelligent enough to realise that something is wrong with him in a major way. He compares himself to others and the outcome is never favourable. His grandiosity is one of the defence mechanisms that he uses to cover up for this disagreeable state of things. But its efficacy is partial and intermittent. The rest of the time, the narcissist is immersed in self-loathing and self-pity. He is under duress and distress most of his waking life. In a vague way, he is also sorry for those upon whom he inflicts the consequences of his personality disorder. He knows that they are not happy and he understands that it has something to do with him. Mostly, he uses even this to aggrandise himself: poor things, they can never fully understand him, they are so inferior. It is no wonder that they are so depressed.

When confronted with major crises (a traumatic divorce, a financial entanglement, a demotion) – the narcissist experiences real, excruciating, life-threatening pain. This is the narcissist's "cold turkey", his withdrawal symptoms. Narcissistic Supply is, like any other drug, habit forming (psychologically). Its withdrawal has broad implications, all severely painful.

Only then is the answer unqualified, unequivocal and unambiguous: yes, the narcissist is in pain – when devoid of his stream of adoration and other positive reinforcements.

Sam Vaknin

The Narcissistic Organization

2007-12-03T08:51:00.000+02:00

Narcissism is especially prevalent in long-established organizations with a past track-record of success. They become so proud of their past, and so complacent about their prestige, that they no longer notice clear signs of pending problems and an obvious need for change. Just as psychotic organizations “breed” psychotic leaders, narcissistic organizations tend to have an unusually high proportion of narcissistic leaders fixated on issues of power, status, prestige, and superiority.

Here is how Professor Manfred Kets de Vries, writing in The European Management Journal (Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 183–200, April 2004), describes the “reactive” (i.e. negative) narcissistic leader:

"Reactive narcissistic leaders are not prepared to share power. On the contrary, as leaders they surround themselves with ‘yea-sayers.’ Unwilling to tolerate disagreement and dealing poorly with criticism, such leaders rarely consult with colleagues, preferring to make all decisions on their own. When they do consult with others, such consultation is little more than ritualistic. They use others as a kind of ‘Greek chorus,’ expecting followers to agree to whatever they suggest. Reactive narcissistic leaders learn little from defeat. When setbacks occur, such leaders don’t take any personal responsibility; instead, they scapegoat others in the organization, passing on the blame. Even when things are going well, they can be cruel and verbally abusive to their subordinates, and they are prone to outbursts of rage when things don’t go their way. Likewise, perceiving a personal attack even where none is intended, they may erupt when followers rebel against their distorted view of the world. Such ‘tantrums,’ re-enactments of childhood behavior, originate in earlier feelings of helplessness and humiliation. Given the power that such leaders now hold, the impact of their rage on their immediate environment can be devastating. Furthermore, tantrums intimidate followers, who then themselves regress to more childlike behavior."

How can you spot a narcissistic organization? Here are some clues:

* The members of the top leadership are revered and accorded almost god-like status.

* Employees treat the organizationally-approved way of thinking or acting as Holy Writ.

* No one ever admits to any mistakes. Problems are always blamed on someone else—often people outside the organization.

* People treat the bombastic, dictatorial behavior of certain bosses as justified by their exceptional status.

* Questioning any aspect of the organization is strongly discouraged. Objections to policy or procedures from outsiders are met by an amused and superior smile.

* Obtaining employment within the organization is seen as a life-changing achievement and a gift of immeasurable value, which must be repaid with unquestioning loyalty.

My own experience of narcissistic organizations confirms how easily they become a mutual admiration society, where employees act as if simply being part of the organization confers automatic superiority; and the leaders are more concerned to polish their image than take tough decisions. Such an idealized view of themselves and their organization quickly seduces executives into believing that they are in truth the wonderful managers and flawless business strategists that the organization’s PR has made them out to be.

One of the most negative aspects of working in a narcissistic organization is the way it forces everyone to take sides. Since narcissistic leaders typically show strong hostility to anyone who fails to give them the unquestioning loyalty to which they believe they are entitled, employees are faced with a stark choice: do what the leader wants or suffer nasty career consequences. Worse still, there will be no support from colleagues for any “rebellion.” As organizational “cult members,” people rapidly become like their leaders: deeply hostile to anyone who questions the prevailing organizational culture. Independent thought is squashed. Leaders are deprived of truthful feedback. The self-satisfied blindness that results can lead to catastrophe, as leaders are deprived of sensible reality-testing and followers provide sycophantic praise for personal gain. As Max McKeown wrote recently in Management Issues:

"Far too many organizations are stuffed with sycophants prepared to overlook anything shady, illegal, or unethical as long as they are getting to hang around and share some power."

Narcissistic organizations breed arrogant, power-obsessed leaders and sycophantic, manipulative followers. The archetypal “organization man” is a product of a narcissistic organization. So is the status-obsessed CEO who believes that he or she is entitled to use the organization’s resources to demonstrate superior standing. And, since whatever demands the organization sees as “reasonable” must be met, narcissistic organizations quickly produce zombie-like employees who sacrifice any other parts of their life to the organization’s needs. There can be no work/life balance where employment in the organization is seen as such a stupendous gift.

Is that where you want to spend your time? The longer you stay, the less your capacity for independent thought will be, and the more you will come to believe that whatever the organization approves is automatically right. I have known several people who spent most of their careers in an organization of this type. In conversation, their constant praise for the organization quickly became embarrassing. It was also obvious that they formed an elite group, at least in their own estimation. For example, all agreed that in any problem situation, anywhere in the world, their automatic response would be to turn to the local branch of their organization for help and guidance. Not the authorities. Not friends or neighbors or family. Not even their own commonsense or critical thinking ability. If you hadn’t worked in their organization, you were automatically seen as somehow inferior.

Unless this seems an ideal world to you, don’t be tempted to work in such an environment. If you’re in one, and haven’t yet succumbed to group-think, start job hunting right away.

Slow Leadership

"Real leadership isn't an instant activity any more than a healthy diet is a hamburger, fries and a large soda."

generation me - cartoon

2007-12-02T08:41:00.000+02:00

Masters of Denial

2007-12-02T08:27:00.000+02:00

As far as these patients are concerned,the problem is yours, not theirs.

It has got so psychologist Lawrence Josephs can tell right away which patients are likely to fire him. The narcissists may be the worst. These are the ones who are there in the first place only because their spouse would not quit hectoring them to show more interest in the marriage, and the people at work just didn’t seem to give them the credit or attention they deserve. Often, they stay only long enough to decide that what they really need is to leave the marriage and quit the job. After that, they sack the shrink. “They come in under duress:’ says Josephs, a psychology professor at Adelphi University in Garden City N.Y. “But they don’t commit. What they really want is to have everything on their own terms

If it’s any comfort to Josephs, he’s not alone in having such trouble managing nar- cissists—and it’s not just the narcissists giving therapists such problems. Narcissism is one of 10 conditions under the diagnostic heading of personality disorders (PD), and by most accounts, narcissists are among psychology’s toughest nuts to crack. Talk therapy often doesn’t touch them; drug therapy may do just as little. Researchers know why. Common mental conditions, such as anxiety disorders, eating disorders and depression, can be thought of as a pathological rind wrapped around an intact core. Peel the skin away through talk therapy or melt it away with drugs, and the problem may abate. Personality disorders, by contrast, are marbleized through the entire temperament. Narcissists may be self-absorbed, but they believe they jolly well have a right to be. Histrionic personalities may make too much of things, hut how else can they be heard? It’s hard enough to persuade most people to see a therapist—harder still when the patient denies there’s a problem at all. “People rarely come in with a self-diagnosed personality disorder,” says Josephs. “Friends and family push them into it.”

These days they have more reason than ever to push. As families increasingly frag- ment and as societal pressures grow, experts say they are seeing more cases of personality disorder than ever. As much as 9% of the population is thought to suffer from some kind of personality disorder, and as many as 20% of all mental-health hospitalizations may be the result of such conditions. Epidemiologists have not done a very good job of comparing these figures with those of earlier years, but many doctors report—anecdotally—that their PD caseload is indeed on the rise. “The more severe ones are increasing:’ says Josephs, “especially among people who grew up in homes with divorce or drug and alcohol problems.”

As this happens, more and more researchers are looking for new ways to treat the conditions—exploring both genetic and environmental roots, seeking both thera- peutic and chemical cures. And well they might. “The social costs of personality disorders are huge:’ says Dr. John Gunderson, director of the Personality Disorders Service at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. “These people are involved in so many of society’s ills—divorce, child abuse, violence. The problem is tremendous.” While solutions are elusive, the pathological arc of PDs is predictable. They tend to show up after age 18, striking men and women equally—though gender may influence which of the 10 disorders a person develops. The disorders are grouped into three subcategories, and of these, the so called dramatic cluster—borderline, antisocial, narcissistic and histrionic disorders—is the best known. But it’s the borderlines who cause doctors—to say nothing of families—the most headaches.

People with borderline-personality disorder form exceedingly volatile relationships, whipsawing between idealizing family and friends and dismissing them as worth- less or hateful. They are intensely afraid of being abandoned but react so savagely when a loved one disappoints them that abandonment is often just what they get. Prod these people into therapy, and the same dynamic unfolds there. “At one point, you’re their closest friend, and two weeks later, you’re the enemy,” says Norman Clemens, a psychology professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland.

Histrionic and narcissistic personalities use drama or self-absorption in much the same way—pushing away family and exasperating therapists. People with antisocial personalities raise the stakes higher, exhibiting aggressiveness, lack of conscience and indifference to the law, often folding criminal behavior into their pathology. Less dramatic but just as stubborn is the so-called anxious cluster, including the straightforwardly named dependent personality, the socially withdrawn avoidant personality and the rigid and rule-bound obsessive-compulsive personality (a different diagnosis entirely from obsessive-compulsive disorder an anxiety condition). The third group—actually called the odd cluster—includes the paranoid, schizotypal and schizoid personalities. Paranoid sounds like just what it is. Schizotypals and schizoids both have problems forming relationships and interpreting social cues; schizotypals may also suffer delusions. “Schizoids are lone wolves:’ says Clemens. “Schizotypals skate along the edge of real schizophrenia’

Before scientists can figure out how to treat these conditions, they must first figure out what’s behind them. Few researchers doubt that when disorders are so woven into temperament, some of what causes them is written into genes. A Norwegian study published in 2000 examined identical and fraternal twins and found that matched pairs—with their matched genetic blueprints—were more likely to share personality disorders than unmatched pairs. The borderline personality had an estimated 69% level of inherit-ability This confirms the observations of doctors in the field who notice higher rates of personality disorders among descendants of PD sufferers. “There are almost certainly multiple genes involved in predisposing people to PD5,” says Gunderson.

But genes aren’t everything. Therapists who work with narcissists often uncover ~ childhood abuse or some other trauma leading to low self-esteem or even self-loathing—just the kind of emotional hole that pathological grandiosity would be designed to fill. Borderline-personality disorder affects more women than men, and some research has shown that up to 70% of borderline women were sexually or physically abused at some point in their lives. It’s hard to hang that kind of mistreatment on the genes. Poorly handled bipolar disorder or learning disabilities may also evolve into personality disorders. Dr. Larry Siever, professor of psychiatry at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, believes that some of the rise in PDs may be linked to the loss of natural support groups, as individuals in an increasingly mobile culture migrate farther and farther from home. “In the past,” he says, “we lived close to our extended families in highly structured communities. People could take care of their own and rein them in:’

Whatever the specific roots of the conditions, once those environmental and genetic die are cast, is that it for the disordered personality? The short, bleak answer is of- ten yes—at least as long as PD patients resist acknowledging the problem. Anxiety disorders such as phobias are generally referred to as ego-dystonic illnesses: the suf

ferer acknowledges the problem and wants to do something about it. Personality disorders are ego syntonic: individuals believe that the drama, self-absorption and other traits that characterize their condition are reasonable responses to the way the world is treating them. That’s a hard patient to heal, but there is hope, and some of it starts in the pharmaceutical lab.

Researchers are finding that anti-psychotics can help alleviate paranoid, schizoid and schizotypal symptoms. A variety of drugs—including mood stabilizers, such as lithium and Depakote; anticonvulsants like Tegretol; and ssRls—may help control the impulsive element of the dramatic disorders. And while antidepressant and anti-anxiety medications do little to rejigger something as fundamental as personality, doctors find that if they prescribe the drugs to relieve the stress that comes with living so disordered a life, some motivated patients may then take on the harder work of talk therapy.

For those who do, the options are growing. Analytic therapy, which explores past traumas, can uncover the deeply rooted conflicts behind the conditions. More immediate results can be gained through cognitive and behavioral therapy, which teach coping skills. A new treatment known as dialectical behavior therapy, developed by clinical psychologist Marsha Linehan of the University of Washington, can teach borderlines to recognize the situations that trigger explosive feelings, helping them squelch a reaction before it erupts. “The first thing we teach is to get control of the behavior,” says Linehan. “After that, we work on feeling bettet” When patients commit to some form of therapy, even the doctors can be surprised. A study conducted by Gunderson and colleagues at Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Brown looked at borderline, avoidant, obsessive-compulsive and schizotypal patients and found that, after two years of treatments, including medication, psychotherapy, DBT or group and family therapy, they showed a 40% improvement. “That’s big news,” says Gunderson. “Nobody would have thought we’d get better than 15%.”

Forty percent, however~ still leaves 60% suffering, and researchers hope to tip that balance the other way. At Mt. Sinai, Siever is looking deeper into what makes people neurologically susceptible to Pds, studying the structure and function of the brain itself in order to determine which areas misfire in the course of the disorders as well as the role played by such neurotransmitters as serotonin and dopamine. Others are studying such possible causes as high levels of stress hormones in the womb or even poor nutrition during brain development. Understanding the biochemistry should make it easier to develop medications.

Until then, it will mostly be up to patients to deny the lie that the disorder tells—that there’s really nothing wrong with them—and make the therapeutic commitment necessary to fix things. “Nobody totally changes,” says Josephs. “But anyone can become more flexible and resilient. Anyone can make progress:’ That alone is already a better prognosis than most patients have had.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030120-407276,00.html

Narcissism, Addictions, and Abuse in an Upscale Marriage

2007-12-01T08:29:00.000+02:00

Calling all women out there living in golden cages: Can you relate to the title of this article? It might not be something you talk about openly--your husband's narcissism, addictions, and abuse, that is. Nonetheless, they probably cause you immense emotional pain and shame, too.

How did you ever find yourself in this predicament? you probably ask yourself almost daily now. Really, how could you marry a man who seemed so right but instead, has turned your life upside down?

I understand. After all, I made the same mistake.

There was an old Gladys Knight song they used to play on the radio on the oldies station. If it came on when my husband and I were listening to that station in the car, I would sing along, though not with such a terrific voice, of course. Yes, I would look at my husband with loving eyes and sing, "You're the best thing that ever happened to me."

I truly believed it at the time. I had fallen in love with a man whom I not only loved as a person, but I also considered myself fortunate because he provided me with the lifestyle of my dreams.

Yes, at least in the beginning, everything seemed so perfect. I admired his intellect and his success in an honorable profession. We shared some important common interests. And then he also supportive of me and my desire to go on and pursue a Ph.D. in clinical social work. In other words, what was there not to love?

Until the verbal abuse and emotional abuse began, that is.

I had never heard the Golden Rule to which many financially successful narcissists seem to adhere. No, really, I had always believed that you do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I also tried to let the Golden Rule guide the way I lived or approached my life.

It took me awhile to accept that he truly believed and lived his life by the premise that he who has the gold makes the rules.

Silly me since I had married with the expectation of a partnership whereas, like most men suffering from unhealthy levels or pathological narcissism, my husband believed that the rules did not apply to him anyway. But his rules certainly did apply to me!

You have undoubtedly encountered something similar. Really, isn't that way you are sitting here reading this article?

Dr. Susan Weitzman wrote a book, Not to People Like Us, where she deals with hidden abuse in upscale marriages. If you visit her website and run down the list she provides of the differences between the abusive men in these marriages and those in less affluent marriages, you will soon discover that basically, the men she is describing are narcissists. No, they might not be diagnosable as having full fledges Narcissistic Personality Disorder or NPD. Nonetheless, they suffer from what you might see referred to on the internet as unhealthy, pathological, or malignant narcissism.

If you are silently suffering the almost daily onslaught of your husband's verbal abuse and emotional abuse while living in a home worthy of House Beautiful, if not even Architectural Digest, you are likely living with a narcissistic abuser.

When you read Dr. Weitzman's list, you will note that she talks about how these abusive men are not remorseful, but they seem to feel entitled to do what they do. Also, they lack any empathy for their abused wives.

Have you read enough articles now about narcissism to recognize that these are some of the diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder? Indeed, this personality disorder is about a pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and a lack of empathy. So, it makes sense that the abusive man with high levels of narcissism would behave this way, wouldn't you agree?

What Dr. Weitzman also points out is that most of us who have ended up married to these successful narcissistic men with their abusive ways did not come from abusive homes ourselves. We often did not know people who engaged in the type of ongoing verbal abuse and emotional abuse that our husbands suffering from narcissism do. Perhaps because we did not, but we held a world view that included adherence to the ideals of a marital partnership and living life according to the Golden Rule as stated in the Bible and not as it might spill forth from the mouths of narcissistic men, we were easy prey for these manipulative individuals.

Even after I left my husband with his narcissism, addictions, and abuse, I used to say he was still the best thing that ever happened to me, however. After participating in therapy, attending Al-Anon, participating in a step-study groups, and working the program, I could say this for a much different reason than I had before.
I could say it because the pain and destructiveness of this marriage caused me to awaken not only to my codependency, or the fact I was looking to a man and a lifestyle to provide me with a sense of self worth or a self identity, but to the underlying problem.

I was spiritually bankrupt. And indeed, I needed to turn within and come to know and embrace my higher and true self to become the powerful woman I was meant to become.

Yes, this was why my financially successful narcissistic spouse was the best thing that ever happened to me, despite his narcissism, addictions, and abuse. I was forced to find and embrace my true self.

I hope the same ultimately happens for you, too.

===============================================

Diane England, Ph.D. is a licensed clinical social worker with other degrees in family studies and child development who specializes in women's issues. Visit her website now: Narcissism, Addictions, and Abuse.

http://www.narcissismaddictionsabuse.com/

Talking to the Owl

2007-11-30T08:43:00.000+02:00

I’ve had a morbid fascination with narcissism for about 4 years: How to recognize it. How to deal with it. How to laugh at it. Certainly narcissism has a dark side, but it also has a completely ridiculous side as well. One of my favorite narcissists is Nick Bottom in a Midsummer Night’s Dream. The scene where the director of a small theatrical troop (Quince) is introducing the play Pyramus and Thisbe is so insightful on how a narcissist approaches a project.

Quince: You, Nick Bottom, are set down for Pyramus.

Bottom: What is Pyramus? a lover, or a tyrant?

Quince: A lover, that kills himself most gallant for love.

Bottom: That will ask some tears in the true performing of
it: if I do it, let the audience look to their
eyes; I will move storms, I will condole in some
measure. To the rest: yet my chief humour is for a
tyrant: I could play Ercles rarely, or a part to
tear a cat in, to make all split. (blah…blah…blah)

So here is the wonderful introduction of the “workaday narcissist” he must function with charm to gather the idolation he feeds on but his real desire is to be a tyrant (like Richard III).

As Quince presents the roles to the other actors, Bottom interjects at each one, claiming to be able to do it better and he really would rather any role but the one he has been given. I can’t help but extrapolate to the development arena and think of how Bottom would act if he were a developer and not an actor. Bottom would want to write everything by himself! Instead of leveraging frameworks and application servers, Bottom would build not just the framework, but the entire application server - from scratch! His massive applications will transform computing as we know it!

The really funny thing about a Midsummer Night’s dream is Bottom’s treatment by Titiana after he becomes an infantile ass, braying about oats in the arms of a beautiful fairie. It is a wonderful deconstruction of the bully that he was in a few scenes before.

There’s a lot of interesting psychological stuff on narcissism on the net, but Bottom is my character study. I can usually spend about 10 minutes talking to someone and if their grandiose ideas and subtle intimidations start to trigger a “HeeHAW” in the back of my mind, I know I’ve made aquantance with a narcissist, and I would do well to let them crawl back into the unimportant anonymity where they belong.

http://owlmountain.com/

Whose Catastrophe?: The Narcissism of Nick Saban

2007-11-29T08:40:00.000+02:00

by Carl Stoffers

We've all heard the quotes—Alabama head coach Nick Saban comparing his team's loss to Louisiana-Monroe to September 11th and Pearl Harbor, as well as to an alcoholic hitting "rock bottom."

As the university tries to do damage control, Saban has remained silent—perhaps because he has both feet inserted firmly in his mouth.

"Changes in history usually occur after some kind of catastrophic event," Saban said after the loss. "It may be 9/11, which sort of changed the spirit of America relative to catastrophic events. Pearl Harbor kind of got us ready for World War II, and that was a catastrophic event."

And Saban wasn't done yet.

"They talk about alcoholics and people like that who never ever change until they hit rock bottom," he continued. "Well, they change because when they hit rock bottom they have an awareness, they have an acceptance and a commitment to change. That's what our players need to do right now because the past two weeks since the LSU game, I haven't seen the same spirit, the same work ethic. That's something we have to get right."

The shocking thing about the comments isn't just Saban's insensitivity—it's his narcissism.

However Alabama tries to spin it, it's entirely clear that Saban was indeed comparing the loss to the disasters. And that speaks volumes as to what's going on inside the coach's head.

The loss to Louisiana-Monroe was a 9/11-type catastrophe for Saban. In his little world, losing a football game to an opponent he considers unworthy is on par with the deaths of thousands of innocent people.

If Saban had had a relative or friend who perished on 9/11, maybe he wouldn't feel as comfortable drawing comparisons between a mass murder and a football game.

Or maybe he'd have a better understanding of where a game stands in terms of life's priorities.

In any event, I'm not angry with Nick Saban—I feel sorry for him.

We all should.

http://www.bleacherreport.com/

Take the test ... (fun)

2007-11-28T08:50:00.000+02:00

Which Personality Disorder Do You Have?

The narcissist boss - Symptoms

2007-11-27T08:09:00.000+02:00

How to deal with your crazy boss

Fortune's Stanley Bing shares his take on the five types of crazy bosses, and some strategies for dealing with one, from "Crazy Bosses" (Harper Collins).

By Stanley Bing

* Default emotion: emptiness. Think of a vast, blank wall that can be temporarily sprayed with any available can of paint, the prevailing color being the one most recently employed.

* Incapable of viewing others as real creatures with needs discrete from his or her own, consequently has no problem using others for any purpose that furthers his or her desires, up to and including their destruction, for which he or she will feel no remorse. Remorse in general not a strong suit.

* Bipolar internal landscape, vacillates between delusions of grandeur, during which time he or she may be quite pleasant, even "happy," and abject depression brought about by feelings of inadequacy and unimportance. At such times, may appear paranoid or mutate into hard-to-handle bully. Prone to terrible rage or suicidal self-pity when this artificial cosmic construct (with his or her self at the center) is contradicted by ample evidence to the contrary.

* Bold and heedless in the face of danger; highly imaginative, given to flights of fancy fueled by lack of any instinct for self-doubt, during which any and all ideas will be perceived as brilliant, even inevitable, no matter how lame.

* Capable of great generosity and random acts of kindness, because they make him feel good about himself and justify his egocentric worldview.

* Zero attention span, concentration of a small child. Most used word: "I." Second most used word: "Me."

* Contagion factor: 34 (not enough oxygen in the room). Narcissists make for great viewing, but you rarely want to be one of them.

* Level of difficulty: 45. For those unwilling to suck up: 96.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/stanleybing/

How To Cope With A Narcissist

2007-11-26T08:10:00.000+02:00

by Sam Vaknin

No one bears any responsibility whatsoever to the Narcissist’s predicament. For him, others hardly exist - so enmeshed he is in himself and in the resulting misery of this self-preoccupation. Others are hangers on which he hangs the clothes of wrath, of rage, of suppressed and mutating aggression and, finally, of ill disguised violence. How should the persons nearest and dearest to the Narcissist cope with his eccentric vagaries?

The short answer is by abandoning him or by threatening to abandon him. The threat to abandon need not be explicit or conditional ("If you don't do or if you do something - I will desert you"). It is sufficient to confront the Narcissist, to insist, to shout back. The Narcissist is tamed by the very same weapons that he employs to subjugate others. The specter of being abandoned looms large over everything else. Every discordant note assumes the monstrous proportions of solitude, abandonment, and the resulting confrontation with his Self. The Narcissist is a person who was irreparably traumatized by the behaviour of the most important adults in his life: his parents. By being capricious, arbitrary, sadistically judgmental - they molded him into an adult, who fervently and obsessively tries to recreate the trauma (repetition complex). Thus, on the one hand, the Narcissist feels that his liberation depends upon re-living these experiences. On the other hand, he is terrified by this prospect. Realizing that he is doomed to go through the same harrowing experience, the Narcissist distances himself from the scene of his own pending emotional catastrophe. He does this by using his aggression to alienate, to humiliate and in general, to be emotionally absent. This behaviour brings about the very consequences that the Narcissist so derides. This way, at least, the Narcissist can tell himself (and others) that HE was the one who controlled the events, that it was truly fully his choice. Of course, governed by his internal demons, the Narcissist has no choice to talk about.

The Narcissist is, therefore, a binary human being: the carrot is the stick in his case. If he gets too close to someone emotionally, he fears ultimate and inevitable abandonment. He, thus, distances himself, acts cruelly and brings about the very abandonment that he feared in the first place. In this paradox lies the key to coping with the Narcissist: If he has a rage attack - rage back. This will provoke in him fears of being abandoned and the resulting calm will be so total that it might seem unbelievable. Narcissists are known for these tectonic shifts in mood and in behaviour patterns.

Mirror the Narcissists actions and repeat his words. If he threatens - threaten back and credibly try to use the same language and content. If he leaves the house - leave it as well, disappear on him. If he is suspicious - act suspicious. Be critical, denigrating, humiliating, go down to his level - because that is where he permanently is. Faced with his mirror image - the Narcissist will always recoil.

We must not forget: the Narcissist does all these things to foster and encourage abandonment. Reflected at him, the Narcissist will see the imminent, impending abandonment, which is the inevitable result of his actions and words. This sight will so terrify him - that it will induce an incredible alteration of his behaviour. He will instantly succumb and try to make amends, moving from one (cold and bitter, cynical and misanthropic, cruel and sadistic) pole to another (warm, even loving, the sort of fuzzy, engulfing emotion that we feel on a particularly good or successful day).

The other way is to abandon him and go about reconstructing your life. Very few people deserve the kind of investment that is an absolute prerequisite to living with a Narcissist. To cope with a Narcissist is a full time, energy and emotion-draining job, which reduces the persons around the Narcissist to insecure nervous wrecks. Who deserves such a sacrifice?

No one, to my mind, not even the most brilliant, charming, breathtaking, suave Narcissist. The glamour and trickery wear thin and underneath them a monster lurks which sucks the affect, distorts the cognition and irreversibly influences the lives of those around it to the worse.

Others delineate a more sweeping dichotomous strategy. Both philosophically and pragmatically, we cannot and should not assume responsibility for other people and their lives. Narcissists are incorrigibly and notoriously difficult to change. Trying to change them is a wrong strategy. The two viable strategies are either accepting them as they are or avoiding them altogether. If one accepts a narcissist as he is - one should cater to his needs. His needs are part of what he is. Would you have ignored a physical handicap? Would you not have assisted a quadriplegic? The Narcissist is an emotional invalid. He needs constant adulation. He cannot help it. So, if one chooses to accept him - it is a package deal, all his needs included.

Also, narcissists cannot love. If you love only in order to be loved back - this is narcissistic love. Loving someone is not dependent upon emotional reciprocity. If your child stopped loving you - you do not stop loving him. You simply cannot NOT love him. The same applies to narcissists. They are incapable of loving. Does this render you incapable of loving them? If your answer is positive, then how different from them are you really?

Projection

2007-11-25T08:48:00.000+02:00

by Cobb

Narcissistic Projection

2007-11-24T08:42:00.000+02:00

Hypocrites are for looks only. They think a thing ain't wrong if they get away with it. In other words, they confuse appearances with reality. Consequently, they have no conscience — just an unconscience. That is, they repress their conscience. Hence, what they do in the dark is shockingly different than what they do in the light of day.

These are the people who put make-up on their image too thick in spots — right where the blemishes in their character are. Since it's all about their image, as Hamlet's mother said, they view sin as some kind of taint instead of as moral illness, or spiritual dis-ease. This is what gives them the notion that it can be "washed away" or smeared off. No wonder that, to get rid of it, they project instead of repent.

So, narcissists are by no means alone in accusing others so as to project their own flaws off onto a scapegoat. It's just that they invest so much energy in doing it. They are fixated on their image to the point that it is uppermost in their mind 100% of the time. It's impossible to overemphasize that.

In contrast, normal people project only when on the defensive. And then they're likely to shake themselves off on whoever happens to be near at the moment. So, their aim is poor, and sometimes they project a flaw off onto someone who actually has it. But a narcissist's aim is impeccable. For example, whom does he call a liar? The most honest person around. Who does he say is dangerous? The savior of the group. Every single time. His talent for farce is so great that you could mistake him for astute.

Also, normal people have normal, human and loving relationships. So they don't smear themselves off on just anyone. They wouldn't dream of harming those near and dear. And they stick to slander (which has at least some degree of truth in it), rarely engaging in calumny (lies). When they do calumniate someone, he or she is an enemy. Even then they don't go hog-wild and calumniate someone so badly and so widely as to destroy them and ruin their lives.

Not so with the narcissist. He is a mental child with no sense of measure or moderation. So, he is more dangerous with his mouth than an angry five-year-old is with an AK-47. He will say anything — ANYTHING — about you as lightly as one would brush a crumb from his sleeve. He loves only himself. He has no normal human relationships. He relates to people as objects. So he will smear himself off on his own children as thoughtlessly as we smear ourselves off on a towel.

In fact, he is most likely to smear off on someone he owes gratitude, because needing help damages his image. So he repays help as though it were an insult. He must devalue it by devaluing the giver of it, as if such a contemptible person is incapable of really helping someone as grand as he.

Since he is a mental little child, the only reign on a narcissist's behavior is what he feels he can get away with. So, the more he gets away with, the more repressed guilt he has to purge himself of.

It's a vicious cycle that he plays the hampster in all his life.

Kathleen Krajco

Enough about you: My explanation of narcissism

2007-11-23T08:31:00.000+02:00

Every year at Christmas my mother would buy me an expensive piece of clothing that I would never wear. Or, if luck was smiling on me, it might be several pieces of clothing meant to be worn together. I describe the clothing as “expensive” because when my mother gave me these gifts she would make a point of telling me how much everything cost, and how much effort she had expended. Unfortunately, every year, she would miss the mark of predicting my taste by such a wide margin that I thought she might know an alternate universe version of me who dressed in ethnic print skirts with gathered waists and blouses with Peter Pan collars festooned with appliqué ducks holding umbrellas. I began to dread getting these gifts because from December 26 on they hung in my closet unworn, causing me shame for having selfishly squandered my mother’s time and money.

Then one year, as our annual holiday gloom rituals were kicking in, the light went on. At age 35 I had finally conceived of a brilliant solution: I suggested that she and I go out shopping for my gift together. And I was truly thrilled when she agreed. I knew just what I wanted: A black, fitted blazer that I could wear with everything. Not only would it be stylish and versatile, it would herald the end to my guilt about unworn presents. On the appointed day, my mother and I walked around crowded department stores for hours on end as she waved hangers full of ethnic print skirts with gathered waists and blouses with Peter Pan collars at me in a flag-like manner, reminiscent of Napoleon on the bridge of Arcola. Not wanting to be the one to fire the first shot, I made sure to say, “Yes, that’s really lovely.” Or, “Wow! Great choice!!” in reaction to each new outfit she displayed. But I held firm. After the third time I said, “I could really use a new black blazer,” my mother made a grim face as only my mother could make, an expression lifted from a George Romero movie. She let loose with her patented lip curling “Yicccch,”, insisting that I at least try on the clothes she picked out. Respectfully, I played along, thinking to myself as I looked in the dressing room mirror, “If my goal was to look 15 years older and 30 pounds heavier, this is definitely the outfit I would buy.” At the end of the day, when closing time was requiring us to wrap this party up, I said, “Mom, as much as I love all those things you showed me, you know what? I really need this black blazer. I can wear it to work, for casual stuff, over pajamas—it’s a bull’s eye on every front,” She sighed, rolled her eyes, and exhaled an exasperated gust of air that caused all the clothing on all the racks in the Women’s Sportswear Department to sway. Then she muttered bitterly, as she handed over her Visa to the cashier, “This is the last time I am doing anything like this. I get no pleasure from buying you something I don’t happen to like.” As I followed her out of the store, carrying my “present” in a garment bag, she shook her head silently and pursed her lips. She could barely look at me.

I was shocked. Somehow I had gone and done it again: ruined Christmas for my mother. This incident puzzled me endlessly. How had I miscalculated so badly? Here I had thought I was not only saving my mother time and money, but I was ensuring her future happiness by being able to show up for family functions wearing a present she bought for me.

This was just one of many bafflingly similar incidents that cluttered my life for many years. By then I had begun to notice that my parents and boyfriends seemed to have the same complaints about me. I was “combative and contrarian,” according to one boyfriend who would become furious if I stayed up to watch a late movie by myself instead of going to bed at the same time he did. Other paramours would accuse me of caring about no one but myself, of always insisting on having things my own way.

This certainly didn’t sound like what was going on from my perspective, but because these complaints were coming from people I cared about in two separate arenas of my life, I figured I had better make a sincere and concerted effort to identify and repair my shortcomings. It seemed to behoove me to learn how to stop endangering my relationships with inflammatory behavior such as having my own taste in clothing and picking my own bed time.

So, I signed up for therapy hoping to discover what steps I needed to take to remedy the situation. But what I learned was not what I expected. I learned that I was the child of two law-abiding, middle-class narcissists, a man and a woman bound together by their twin passions of criticizing their offspring and picking fights in restaurants. And because of this legacy, I was also attracted to narcissists as lovers and friends.

I finally had a reasonable explanation for why my brother and I always seemed to be wearing and doing and saying the wrong thing whenever we attended family gatherings, even when we armed with perky outfits, tidy haircuts, and carefully selected topics of conversation. At last I had insight in to what was behind three decades of embarrassing restaurant incidents in which my parents behaved like aristocracy and treated the stammering wait staff with utter contempt. I can only marvel now at how well I survived the number of dinners I probably consumed in my youth that were drenched in the spit of revenge seeking restaurant employees.

What is a narcissist? Any time you find yourself living inside that classic New Yorker cartoon in which two people are dining together and one says to the other, “Well, enough about me. Let’s hear what you have to say about me,” your narcissism alert bells should be ringing. A friend of mine explained the credo of the narcissist as follows: “I’m the piece of shit the world revolves around.”

Narcissists are people who cover up feelings of shame and worthlessness inflicted during their own screwy childhoods by doing whatever it takes to maintain a false sense that they are very special and therefore not bound by ordinary rules. This requires them to surround themselves with people who will constantly pump them up by agreeing with them about everything. In narcissism talk this is called “feeding their grandiosity.”

Here is the short explanation for why they act like this: Narcissists essentially live in a world that is one person big because they never fully outgrow a phase of infantile behavioral development in which baby thinks he and Mommy are the same person. Therefore, when a brilliant, charming, elegant and grand narcissist honors you by allowing you entry into his or her very elite cadre, it is kind of like being annexed by an imperialist country. Your borders have now been erased. The subtext of all future interactions will be: “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine. Welcome to a world where there is no you!” When you are with a narcissist, their needs must become your needs. It’s not enough for a narcissist to be the center of his own world, he must also be the center of yours. Your job is to serve as admiring audience or vent for his anger, Fan Club President or Incompetent Maid. If you are not mirroring him or praising him, you are proving you are a separate person and thus a threat.

Once I understood this, I could finally solve The Mysterious Case of My Mother and The Christmas Present. My mother became peevish and aggressive about my desire to select my own present, because I was not paying homage to her excellent taste in clothes. Buying a present for me, in her mind, was not about getting me something I might like but about pumping up her own self-esteem. In her rigid and fragile world view, when I demonstrated that I had my own ideas about what was best for me, I had humiliated her.

At first, having my new knowledge was a mixed blessing. People I once regarded simply as family and friends were transformed before my eyes into strangely predictable robots whose limitations would always be greater than their capabilities. It was freeing to know that my behavior wasn’t causing the narcissism outbreak, no matter how much they like to assign blame. But it was certainly not good news to learn I had to give up on any of these people ever behaving with any real degree of empathy or interest in me.

As any book on this subject explains (in CAPS, italics, and underlined with bold exclamation marks!!!), the only method for coping with narcissists is to change your expectations. Maintain emotional distance. Stop trying to please un-pleasable people.

That was the sad part of it all. Because the death of expectations also meant the death of hope. Gone forever was the dream that by treating my mother with kid gloves, or even talking honestly, I was going to transform her in to someone more enlightened. Instead I had to face the depressing fact that to interact unguardedly with her (or any narcissist) was to set myself up as a sounding board in one-sided conversations that could easily morph in to petty personal attacks.

From that point on when she provoked me, I didn’t bite. My mother could sense that a certain familiar degree of push and pull in the dance between us had been modified. She knew things were different, that I was more aloof. And it confused her. But it would have done no good to explain any of it. There was nothing I could do or say to make things any better. By the end of her life, I was tip-toeing around her trying not to get into fights- or getting into fights but knowing what the outcome would be.

The good news is that learning about narcissism has protected me from wasting a lot of energy. Now when I find myself unexpectedly under attack and thinking “How did I get in to the middle of this stupid fight when I’m not even angry.”, the new smarter me knows that the answer is not to look within and figure out what I did wrong. The answer comes from without: I am probably hanging out with a narcissist.

And once that piece is in place, I also know I have only two sane options: Either agree with everything they say, or pick up and go elsewhere. To stay and fight is to confront an irrational, wounded animal. Knowing how all this works also helps me when I find myself being magnetized by the considerable charisma of some factory-fresh narcissist seeking my worshipful love. I rely on my sonar-like, early-warning detection abilities, fine tuned from years of static and misread signals.

I still think back proudly to a flirtation at a party with a guy who set off all my alarm bells: sad-eyed, brooding, artistic, articulate, hilarious and utterly self-absorbed. I knew instinctively to draw him out of his shell by asking many flattering questions, then listening to his answers with rapt attention and appreciation bordering on awe. I knew that if I greeted his every anecdote with extreme empathy and selfless offers of support, he would be mine. But despite the fact that every microbe in my body begged to do these things,(old habits die hard), I watched myself with amazement as the voice coming out of my face said instead, “Well, you seem like a smart guy. I’m sure you’ll figure it all out.” And then instead of allowing myself to get sucked in to his turmoil, I turned and went off to talk to someone else.

I’m happy to report that these days I no longer have to defend my opinions on trivial matters, such as what lightbulb to buy, or apologize for things that make no sense. It’s a relief not to feel guilty for failing to read a persoon’s mind or fan the flames of someone whether or not I think he has any flames to fan. In short, I’m not being batted like a cat toy by narcissists anymore. And in a way that is the greatest life lesson I received from my mother.

Merrill Markoe

How does narcissism occur in the workplace?

2007-11-22T08:04:00.000+02:00

What links patrimonial bureaucracy and totalitarian organizations? The answer is narcissism. Narcissism includes the narcissists and their codependents (or enablers/followers). Patrimonial bureaucracy occurs when employees become personally loyal to their superiors in such a way as to always feel the need to seek their approval before acting.

Corporate narcissism is spreading with epidemic proportions throughout the business world.

Narcissists foster this type of behaviour in their subordinates, and peers if possible, who become codependents. It works well for the narcissist's self-esteem, but not so well for the business. Narcissism in the workplace results in poor judgements that turn into costly decisions,Ref ultimately resulting in negative long-term outcomes. As patrimonial bureaucracy spreads throughout the business, it becomes a totalitarian organization.

Corporate narcissism occurs when a narcissist becomes the leader (CEO) or a member of the senior management team and gathers an adequate mix of codependents around him (or her) to support his narcissistic behavior. This leads almost inevitably to a deterioration in the organization's performance. Narcissists profess company loyalty but are only really committed to their own agendas, thus organization decisions are founded on the narcissists' own interests rather than the interests of the organization as a whole, the various stakeholders, or the environment in which the organization operates.

Narcissism relates back to Greek mythology; Narcissus was a handsome young boy who fell in love with his own reflection, then died of starvation by confusing that reflection with his true self. Thus narcissists are addicted to their own image, constantly manipulating others to validate that image, and endlessly searching for attainment of an idealized self, which of course, cannot be achieved. In other words, narcissists rely on manipulating work and social relationships to support a self that cannot internally sustain a sense of well being.

But the narcissist can't succeed without codependents. If the narcissistic personality trait is to be activated, then the narcissist needs to be exposed to trait-relevant situational cues. Codependents, who do whatever the narcissist needs, sometimes working beyond healthy (and sometimes ethical) limits, supply these cues. Narcissists and codependents/enablers are attracted to each other because narcissists crave power and codependents crave security.

A narcissist can be described in terms of a bipolar self that has two poles or dimensions. In early life, one pole involves an immature grandiosity or a confident self-superiority that can develop into adult forms of ambitiousness. The other pole is associated with tendencies to idealize or admire the superiorities of others, and those tendencies can mature into an internalized system of ideals. A narcissistic personality disorder represents an arrest in the development of healthy self-esteem.

Parental nurturance, or good parenting (see 'What causes narcissism?') is therefore critical in the transformation of normal narcissistic traits into mature ambitions and ideals; and parental nurturance predicts healthy self-esteem. It isn't surprising, therefore, that when you look into the parental relationships of narcissists and codependents, you find problems. Typically both narcissists and codependents come from dysfunctional families.

If you identify someone in your workplace who you think has narcissistic characteristics, check their behavior against 'How to recognize a narcissist', and look for their codependents, those do the narcissist's bidding and seek their approval before acting.

David Thomas PhD @ Winning-Teams.com

When He's Only Into Himself ...: A Memoir & Guide to Understanding a Narcissist

2007-11-21T08:16:00.000+02:00

by Ella Scott

ISBN-10: 1434319954
ISBN-13: 978-1434319951

Book Description

Awareness of the pernicious epidemy of pathological narcissism has been steadily growing over the last decade and has resulted in a prodigious and copious output of self-help guides,textbooks,and personal memories. Still,in all this cornucopia,it is difficult to find something akin to Ella's work:part textbook,part self-help tome,part personal and painful memoir. Narcissists are an elusive breed. They are shape-shifters and the nature of the disorder renders them alien,a sub-species of cunning artificial intelligence. Their ability to mimic human emotions is unsuprpassed,their charm sometimes irresistible,and their thespian skills unequalled. Narcissists defy,therefore,well-intentioned compilations of warning signs and batteries of psychological diagnostic tests. There is scarcely anything more painful than self-delusion. The narcissist is a cardboard cutout,the mere projection of a false self,unable to love,empathize,get intimate,or commit. Loving the narcissist is an exercise in protracted futility that invariably ends in heartbreak. What you see is never what you get. The narcissist is a drug addict. His psychological survival as a coherent,functional whole depends on the attention he garners(often,coerces)from others. He is a singleminded,single-purpose automaton. Behind the elaborate facade of these Potemkin humans lurks the void. The only way to effectively defend against a narcissist is to learn from the harrowing experiences of those who fell prey to the narcissist's advances and were subsequently victimized by him(or,more rarely,her).The emerging genre of victim lit is seriously enhanced by Ella's contribution. She has gone to great lengths to acquaint herself with the latest scholarly literature and to scrutinize her own encounters with narcissists with brutal honesty. The result is a compelling narrative:the detailed anatomy of two failed relationships with narcissistic men sagely set in the framework of the most current knowledge about the disorder. Makes for a riveting tour de force of the tortured landscapes of the la-la lands of malignant self-love. SamVaknin,author of "Malignant Self-love-Narcissism Revisited"

Narcissistic Lovers : How to Cope, Recover and Move On

2007-11-20T08:46:00.000+02:00

by Cynthia Zayn, Kevin Dibble

ISBN-10: 0882822837
ISBN-13: 978-0882822839

Book Description

In a revealing study of relationships where partners love themselves first, last, and always, Cynthia Zayn and Kevin Dibble help readers determine whether their partner is over the line and has narcissistic personality disorder. The book draws on the authors' research research and interviews with a variety of men and women who've been narcissized. Featuring compelling stories and scenarios, Lovers Who Love Themselves helps victims understand the pain brought on by their abusers, shows why these self-loathers can't change, and offer hope for healing from their "N-fliction."

Reviews

Very informative and easy to read!
maxy, victim of several narcissists, obvi, 09/26/2007

I have always wondered why certain people behaved in particular ways and this book helped me realize the possibility of narcissistic personality disorder. There are way too many coincidences and uncanny similarities for it not to have some possibility. This book has helped me to understand why certain things happened. I LOVED the whole 'gaslighting' chapter! What an awesome revelation! There are some typos in the book but it is so easy to understand and very informational. The authors seem to really get it and care. I highly recommend this book.

A must read!!
Sophie, A reviewer, 09/26/2007

This book is an easy read and so informative! Like other books on Narcissistic Personality it informs the reader of the disorder...but it explains things on a personal level without all of the clinical explanations. It is a very eye-opening book that informs and encourages. Totally worth your money and time!!

A Pandemic of Narcissism?

2007-11-19T08:11:00.000+02:00

I have just been reading an essay titled "The Pandemic of Narcissism" by Paul Toscano from his book The Sanctity of Dissent. It was originally a speech he made at the annual Honors Program Banquet at BYU in 1979. He makes an interesting point that narcissism breeds sentimentality in an effort to avoid genuine love and emotion.

The issue of sentimentality in the church has fascinated me for quite some time. How does one recognize it? Is one's sentimentality another one's true emotion? What's so bad about being sentimental anyhow? In Toscano's essay he makes some well made points. I usually don't like to make long quotations, but I thought it would be important for discussion.

"Another narcissistic symptom in Mormonism is sentimentality. As G.K. Chesterton observed seventy years ago, when truth quits the field, sentimentality, not error, takes over. Sentimentality was defined by Hugh Nibley as a 'tenacious clinging to pleasantries.' It is a state of mental torpor characterized by a craving for meaningless but pleasant stories and sayings. It is a craving for emotional experiences without regard to their source, their truth, or their value. The best example I can give of this is a short movie marketed by BYU called "The Sacrifice." The storyline is this: A little boy is hit by a train while walking over a trestle to be with his father, the switchman. The conflict in the story comes when the father must decide whether to let go of the switch and save his little son at the cost of the passenger train or whether to sacrifice his son and save the train. He decides to save the train. At the end of the movie, a caption overlays the closing scene, proclaiming, 'And God so loved . . . ' Obviously, the film is intended as an atonement analogy. Although well-intentioned (and sentimentality is well-intentioned), it succeeds only in being maudlin. It tugs as the heart-strings but does not edify the spirit. Why? Because the analogy is false. Jesus in not a mindless or disobedient child who wandered onto the train trestle of the universe to be accidentally flattened by a blind, indifferent cosmos. God the Father was not a powerless technocrat caught in the press of circumstances beyond his control. The relationship between them was not that of an infant son and a youthful father. The emotions the movie calls forth are nothing like the emotions the real participants felt, as reported by those who knew them best. It is false from top to bottom. Its net effect is to take our attention off truth and fix it upon our own emotions. It seeks only to induce a pleasant sense of spiritual euphoria - the kind of feeling we get when we hear about poor people being helped in far away places, but not like the feeling we get when we actually go to far away places to help the poor. The movie does nothing to further anyone's understanding of the nature of the Father and the Son, or of the Atonement, or of the love of God, or of anything that is spiritually significant."

His analysis of the movie seems solid. Reminds me of other popular stories used to explain the Atonement, primarily the parable of the bicycle by Stephen Robinson. I never really like that story, and never recounted it to anyone. But for a time in the early to mid-90s, that story spread like wildfire across church pulpits. Does that story hold up? or is that also sentimental hogwash?

I think the trap one can face in recognizing narcissistic sentimentality is that you could be viewed as a cynic, who likes to tear down people's beliefs. So where does one go from here? If sentimentality serves one's own emotions, at the avoidance of true spiritual understanding and sacrifice, how do we go about changing it, without offending the person we may be trying to reach? I guess the best answer is to change ourselves, since of course we can't change anyone else. (To think that we can change someone else would be narcissistic.)

What do you all think? Is there a pandemic of narcissism in the church? Has sentimentality overtaken doctrine and genuine charity? Can the tide be reversed?

From: This Mormon Life

Civilization vs. barbarism

2007-11-18T08:42:00.000+02:00

An extract from:

Civilization vs. barbarism: An analysis of the terrorist bombings of London

Fred Hutchison

Read full article here: www.renewamerica.us/analyses/050807hutchison.htm

Disappointed narcissism

Narcissism is a term derived from the Greek God Narcissus who fell in love with his own image in the water. Narcissism is inordinate self-love. Let us assume that the dog in the manger is a disappointed narcissist and is bitter about his inability to eat the corn. As a narcissist, the dog regards his inability to eat the corn as all-important. Whether or not the cattle eat is inconsequential to the dog except as it relates to his inability to eat. The narcissistic dog regards himself as the only being of value and all others as non-entities. Therefore, the dog might resent seeing the cattle non-entities eat when he, as the all-important one, cannot eat. He uses his fangs in malicious spite to refuse to allow the cattle to eat.

If the narcissistic dog in the manger is a correct metaphor for the malice of the terror bomber, it implies that disappointed narcissism can simultaneously lead to both the hate and despair of the terrorist.

The roots of the fallen nature

The fall of man, as described in the book of Genesis, brought into being the essential core of the sin nature we have all inherited. In my book The Stages of Sanctification, I discover three cardinal principles of the fallen nature based upon a study of Genesis and other scriptures. The three cardinal or primeval sins of Adam that have passed to every man are Pride, Inordinate Self-love, and Disobedience. With the aid of Bill Gothard's teachings, I found that these deep taproot sins give rise to three "second tier sins," or "sins of the world": Worldly Values, Moral Impurity, and Bitterness. The Apostle John warns us that the second-tier of sin comprises the corruption of the world.

"For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh (moral impurity), the lust of the eyes(covetousness and bitterness), and the pride of life (worldly values) is not of the Father, but is of the world." (1 John 2: 16) The three worldly sins directly grow out of the three primeval sins of the fallen nature.

Antisocial and suicidal narcissism

Narcissists are essentially antisocial because they resent any distraction from themselves. A homosexual narcissist riding in the seat behind me on the airplane during my recent home from England spoke loudly and incessantly in eccentric tones, so that no one could think about anything but her (or was it a he?). Her/his obnoxious sociability was anti-social in spirit because he/she destroyed the possibility of social communion among the other travelers. It was a dog-in-the manger trick. "If I cannot be the center of the social interaction, no one else will be allowed to communicate." I have learned by experience that if you ask such a person to quiet down, they are likely to fly into a rage. The dog in the manger snarls. The garrulous, narcissistic quasi-lesbian on the plane had the kind of antisocial spirit that is first cousin to those who commit violence out of spite. Indeed, the rates of gay-on-gay violence is extraordinarily high.

Can a narcissist be suicidal? Yes. The rates of gay suicide are also very high. The disappointed dreams of narcissistic glory easily lead to bitterness, bitterness leads to self-pity, and self-pity leads to despair. Every small child must experiment with threats of narcissistic suicide. "If I can't have my way, I shall hold my breath and die. Then you'll be sorry!" Narcissism is antisocial, violent, and suicidal and deals in emotional blackmail. The adult version deals in manipulation of friends and extortion of enemies. Terror attacks are an exotic political form of extortion.

Violent narcissistic cults

The two teen-age boys at Columbine High School who shot their classmates were narcissists devoted to murder and suicide. Narcissistic children hate the society of their peers, because it distracts from their self-absorption. They can tolerate social discourse only if they are the center of attention. Children on the playground dislike the anti-social narcissists and torment them. Small groups of narcissists sometimes band together, form paranoid conspiracy theories about their playground enemies, and plan their revenge. The two teenage boys who killed twelve fellow students, a teacher, and themselves were filled with hatred against the other teens and against the world. We cannot know if the boys would have had pangs of conscience if they had lived, but a fully developed narcissism can transform itself into a heartless sociopathy. A sociopathic murderer might feel no more pangs of conscience than one would feel about stepping on bugs. The extinction of "non-entities" does not trouble their sleep.

The teenage narcissists at Columbine formed a two-boy death cult for their vendetta. The terror bombers of London were nourished on conspiracy theories and an ideology of hatred of England and the West and joined small terror cults.

"Generation Me" again...

2007-11-17T08:34:00.000+02:00

"Generation Me" Author Visits Macon
November 15, 2007
By Eric Lee

Children born during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s are called "Generation Me."

Dr. Jean Twenge traveled Wesleyan College from San Diego to discuss her book. The topic is young people today who are more confident and ambitious - yet more anxious, depressed, and lonely. Twenge's findings are based on research from one point three million respondents over six decades. The Internet has changed young people's behavior tremendously.

We asked Twenge how networking sites, including Myspace and Facebook have that affected this generation? "That can be a problem, especially kids who are a little introverted and a little shy already," said Twenge. They'll also use the Internet as a replacement for a social life. And that's hard because humans thrive on face to face interaction. And if you just have the Internet interaction, it's just like eating french fries all the time instead of a good diet. You need the nutrition of the face to face interaction."

Twenge says that networking sites can promote narcissism. "Many young people seek attention on Internet sites like Youtube and Myspace for doing things that aren't really good like they'll take lots of pictures of themselves not wearing very much or they'll take pictures of themselves at a party drinking alcohol when they're underage. Or even worse, they'll beat up a kid at school, tape it, and put it on Youtube."

Twenge even suggests that parents praising their children excessively can be problematic. "I see some good signs and bad signs. The bad signs I see are the number of clothing for little girls that says "Little Princess" on it. Or I saw the other day in the grocery store a "bling" brand pacifier so you're a newborn and can't leave home without your bling."

While at Wesleyan, Twenge spoke to several classes, including a Freshman Seminary class that helps students transition from high school to college, and had a presentation tonight for the public. Next week Jami G. explores other aspects of the book with Twenge. Twenge says Internet friendships shouldn't be a substitute for real friendships. "Generation Me" is available in bookstores.

http://www.macon.tv/news/local/11376881.html

Police: 'Most Perverted' Man Forced Boys Into Sex Games

2007-11-17T08:16:00.000+02:00

Suburban Man Abused At Least 9 Children, Police Say

VERNON HILLS, Ill. -- A suburban man is charged with running a molestation club in his Vernon Hills condominium and police call him one of the most perverted sex offenders they've seen.

Police said Michael Rebecca, 50, molested at least 9 boys over a four-year period and organized the boys, ages 11 to 17, into a bizarre club.

Authorities say the man is "one of the most narcissistic, manipulative, perverted individuals" they've encountered.

Rebecca, they said, set up sex games in his apartment and rewarded the boys with iPods and video games.

He worked for one of the victims' parents at Walgreens, police said.

Rebecca has no prior record but was ordered held without bond Monday night, charged with criminal sexual assault.

Police said they believe there are more victims, but considering the charges against him, Rebecca could be imprisoned for life if found guilty.

Copyright 2007 by NBC5.com.

Narcissistic States and the Therapeutic Process

2007-11-16T08:38:00.000+02:00

by Sheldon Bach

ISBN-10: 0876683049
ISBN-13: 978-0876683040

Book Description:

Bach brings together here, his experience of narcissistic patients and that of the therapist who treats them, to provide a detailed presentation of narcissistic states and appropriate treatment for them. Avoiding theoretical language, he maintains emphasis on clinical matters and techniques.

Narcissistic Wounds: Clincal Perspectives

2007-11-16T08:15:00.000+02:00

by Judy Cooper & Nilda Maxwell

ISBN-10: 189763577X
ISBN-13: 978-1897635773

Synopsis

The core elements of narcissism concern the dificulty individuals encounter with the separating process and their use of the mechanism of splitting. Through the work of American thinkers (such as Kernberg and Kohut) on the advancement of the understanding of narcissistic disturbances is well known, the contribution of the British school has had a comparatively low profile. This book seeks to redress the balance by providing an up-to-date presentation of the work in this area of British psychotherapists and psychoanalysts of different theoretical orientations - contemporary Freudian, Kleinian and independent.

"... many killers are extremely narcissistic and only think about themselves.”

2007-11-15T08:42:00.000+02:00

Entwistle hinted at suicide in somber note

Experts doubt his intent

In a dark and bizarre note to his lawyers revealed to the Herald, accused double murderer Neil Entwistle worries that his body “would be made an example of” if shipped back to his native England and asks to be cremated when he dies.

While the letter does not directly mention suicide or the horrific crime, it strikes a gruesome tone.

“One day my mood was fine. Then it started to darken,” wrote Entwistle, whose arrest in England in February 2006 for the slayings of his wife Rachel, 27, and their baby girl, Lillian Rose, in Hopkinton made worldwide headlines.

The letter was found in Entwistle’s cell at the Middlesex jail last year, along with another one he penned to his parents, prompting officials to hospitalize him for three weeks. Two sources provided the Herald with the verbatim contents of the letter addressed to lawyers Elliot Weinstein and Stephanie Page.

Yesterday, Entwistle’s lawyers, in Middlesex Superior Court for a pretrial hearing with their client, refused to discuss the missive. But in the newly revealed note, Entwistle expresses a macabre wish to have his “ashes scattered on Rachel and Lillian’s grave.”

“Other than this, I do not care. It will cause too much fanfare if my body is sent back to the U.K. I do not want my body to be made an example of!”

Criminal psychologist John Kelly, who is the president of S.T.A.L.K Inc. - a team of professional profilers based in New Jersey - theorized the letter shows not a true suicide risk but a strategic manipulator trying to get attention to feed his narcissistic ego.

“It’s interesting that he pleaded not guilty, but nowhere in the letter does he say he’s not guilty. There is no, ‘I’m innocent.’ No ‘I’m sorry.’ No remorse. He is someone who thinks the world revolves around him,” Kelly said.

“The vast, vast majority of people who suffer from narcissism are not murderers” Kelly added. “But many, many killers are extremely narcissistic and only think about themselves.”

Northeastern University criminologist James Fox said the letter suggests Entwistle had no real intention of killing himself, but he was looking out for his own best interests, including a push to be moved to a hospital rather than a cell.

“It’s much too analytical to be a suicide note for someone who is truly depressed. It’s the ramblings of a selfish guy who doesn’t want to be in prison anymore,” Fox said.

Entwistle is charged with killing his wife and their baby on Jan. 20, 2006, as the mother and daughter slept nestled next to each other in the family’s bed at their rented Hopkinton home. Entwistle has denied any involvement with the murders, but has been held without bail since returning to the United States after fleeing to England.

Yesterday in court, Weinstein argued that he is grappling with some 9,000 documents in the case and asked for more time to prepare for the January trial.

Middlesex Superior Court Judge Diane Kottmyer denied the attorney’s request, saying Weinstein has had ample time to prepare.

Rachel’s mother and stepfather were in court yesterday, but Entwistle, looking pale, puffy and bloated in a rumpled suit, did not look at his former in-laws.

http://news.bostonherald.com/news/regional/general/view.bg?articleid=1044861

Narcissism - Jeremy Holmes

2007-11-14T08:14:00.000+02:00

Ovid's version of the Narcissus myth

Many contemporary ideas about narcissism can be found in embryonic form in the classical Narcissus myth which gave its name to the syndrome. Here I follow Ted Hughes' (1997) powerful translation of the Ovid version.

The story starts not with Narcissus but with Tiresias, the only person to have lived both as male and female, and whom Jove and Juno therefore called in to adjudicate in their dispute as to who derived the greater pleasure from the act of sex, man or woman. Tiresias' vote was for women (although in some versions he diplomatically replies that while women experience ten times the intensity of pleasure, men experience it ten times more often!). Juno, inexplicably angry, strikes him blind, while to compensate, Jove opens his inner eye and gives him the gift of prophesy.

Thus Ovid reveals the narcissistic themes of bodily pleasure, envy, and the difficulty in knowing how another truly feels, especially when one is oneself consumed with desire.

Narcissus was the product of his mother Liriope's rape by the river God Cephisus. Narcissus was outstandingly beautiful from birth, so much so that envious gossips came to Tiresias questioning whether a creature so beautiful could live for long. Here the profound theme of the transience of beauty, and therefore of the link between narcissism, envy and death is introduced.

Tiresias answers enigmatically: he can live long, 'unless he learns to know himself The paradox turns on the fatal word unless. The terrible dilemma of the narcissist is thus elegantly summarised. Either the narcissist remains trapped for ever in the shadow world of self-love, or he is released from the bondage of self-unknowing (and by implication being unable to know others), but on price of death. Although the narcissist thinks only of himself, ironically he can never really know himself, since he cannot take a position outside himself and see himself as he really is. If he could accept that beauty fades then his loveliness would be something to celebrate; by grandiosely denying the reality of loss and change, beauty is transformed into monstrosity.

Narcissus grows into a beautiful young man. Many fall in love with him, but he keeps his distance. Then the wood-nymph Echo sees him and is immediately stricken. Previously a chatter-box, she has lost her power of speech as punishment when Juno realised that she was being used as a decoy by Jove to engage her in conversation while he was chasing women. All she can do is to repeat the words she has just heard. How is she to declare her love? One day Narcissus is lost in woods and calls out to his friends: "come to me". Echo reveals herself: "to me" "to me", she calls. Narcissus turns and runs: "I would rather be dead than let you touch me". Echo is mortified, and slowly dies of lost love, until all that is left is her voice.

Narcissists heartlessly break hearts. They cannot see the impact of their actions on others. They attract flatterers and fawners, echoes all, themselves narcissistically traumatized, hoping for reflected glory. Echo's 'God-mother' (Juno) is so envious of her relationship with her 'God-father' (Jove) that she blights the father-daughter relationship so essential to healthy female narcissism (the adolescent daughter who knows that her father sees her as beautiful, and who is at the same time utterly respectful of her sexuality).

Echo, the hypervigilant becomes the mirror image of the oblivious Narcissus. He is untouchable; she eternally longs to be in his arms. He thinks only of himself and is ruthlessly selfish; she can only think of him and her self-esteem is fragile even unto her death. He cannot identify with others and so make their voices his own and thereby enlarge the range of his personality; she has no voice of her own, and is condemned to pale imitation. In attachment terms, both are anxiously attached: she clings insufferably to her object, he for ever keeps his at a distance.

Many others fall unrequitedly in love with Narcissus. Eventually one, in a crucial therapeutic move, has the courage to confront his tormentor (It is a 'his' - there is a suggestion of bisexuality throughout the myth, typical of some narcissists who in their grandiosity cannot be content with the love of only one sex):

'Let Narcissus love and suffer
As he has made us suffer
Let him, like us, love and know it is hopeless...'

One day, thirsty from hunting, Narcissus finds a `pool of perfect water' and there, as he stretches out to drink,

'A strange new thirst, a craving, unfamiliar,
Entered his body with the water,
And entered his eyes
With the reflection in the limpid mirror. . .
As the taste of water flooded him
So did love.'

He falls deeply in love with his own image. But the harder he tried to embrace himself, to kiss the lips that `seemed to be rising to kiss his' the more frustrated and lovesick he becomes. He bemoans his fate. Eternally separated from his love object, he experiences loss and grief for the first time. At last he comes to know himself:

'You are me. Now I see that....
But it is too late.
I am in love with myself...
This is new kind of lover' prayer
To wish himself apart from the one he loves'.

He realises that he must die: 'I am a cut flower' Let death come quickly'. At last he feels compassion for another: 'The one I loved should be let live. He should live on after me, blameless'. But he knows this is impossible. When he dies, both he and his observing self die - and even as he crosses the Styx he cannot resist a glimpse of himself in the water. But at the moment of his death he is transformed - metamorphosed - into a beautiful flower. To this day, the Narcissus, with its evanescent delicate trumpet and seductive fragrance, is a tribute to Tiresias' prescience.

Tiresias, like a good psychotherapist, knew that if we are to survive psychologically, we must outgrow our narcissism. If we can accept our own transience and mortality, then we can be transformed - our self-esteem will be secure and we will be blessed with an inner beauty. If not, we are condemned to a living or actual death, perhaps at our own hands, as our narcissism grows ever more demanding and insistent. We will grow a thick skin over the vulnerability which has made us shy away from relationships. Loving only ourselves we envy those who can relate to others, and do our damnedest to destroy them, using our beauty as a weapon....

Reference
Hughes, Ted (1997) Tales from Ovid London: Faber and Faber

http://www.freud.org.uk/narcissism.html

Literary Narcissism and the Manufacture of Scandal

2007-11-13T08:16:00.000+02:00

Ever since reading THE GREAT NAROPA POETRY WARS this summer, I have been thinking about narcissism in letters, alcoholism, Allen Ginsberg's substance abuse -- and how that book clearly shows that, though he would never fess up to it, Ginsberg was interested in the purposeful manufacture of Outrage, the politics of scandal and what might be called an Economy of Attention. I think too of other scandalists involved in a kind of ritual bondage of the Self -- whether the fewer famous ones, such as Pound, Eliot, Berryman -- or the many less famous ones, ephemera, bound up in Self but bound for the dustbin. Seems to be mainly a male phenomenon.

With the advent of listserves and then blogging, have we seen a spate of scandalmongering in the poetry world? Seems to be happening a lot recently.

1. A Literary Narcissist's behavior will not only tolerate but encourage attacks on himself so long as it can translate his own self-fascination into more news of himself.

2. Just as the Narcissist will use argument, catastrophe, disputation to attract attention, certain people will be willing to dispute the Narcissist in order to participate in the economy of attention. Others will dispute the Narcissist because they are so profoundly appalled by his/her behavior. Either way, the economy of attention is fueled.

3. The Narcissist needs Catastrophe. The more internal crises of shame the Narcissist endures and fails to heed, the more s/he will need to create external Catastrophes. A chief and signal way a Narcissist might attract attention is to start fights: Narcissists will gravitate toward satire and caricature as a means of creating argument. The Narcissist will attempt to construe strife with health: "These arguments need to happen," etc.

4. The Narcissist IS fascinating -- but not for the reasons the Narcissist thinks. S/he is fascinating because the energy s/he will expend in micromanaging the self image is so profoundly exceptional. People just sort of stand there slack-jawed wondering if this person has a life. The Narcissist however will mistranslate the fascination of others as admiration.

5. Poetry communities will tolerate narcissism so long as it is translated into a Social Energy which others can use to strengthen and promote their projects.

6. Narcissism and alcoholism. Alcoholism is a systematic way to push down socially regulating emotions like shame, guilt, and embarrassment at one's own self-aggrandizing behavior. The suppression of these emotions is never successful, even in the most energetic of self-aggrandizers, and they will periodically burst upward into brief displays of remorse and convictions to change. These brief spouts of regulatory behavior are sometimes shared publicly and sometimes privately among confidants. These displays however can often easily be "re-used" by the Narcissist as a way of showing his/her authenticity and emotional fealty to the community.

7. The Narcissist is aware of the economy of disgust surrounding his/her behavior. S/he becomes more and more sensitive to this and consequently begins to demand private declarations of loyalty from those people whom s/he knows consider themselves friends -- even if they have said nothing publicly against the Narcissist.

8. The Narcissist, aware of this disgust, will create a personal mythos in which s/he will be justified and exonerated by the rewards of literary "history." The stronger the disgust of others, the greater the energy used to maintain the mythos of exoneration by "history."

9. Narcissists are only interested in community so long as it pays dividends to their energy: they will support it if it feeds them.

10. The narcissist may outright demand in private that you "pay him" publicly with praise. Then he or she will publicly repay you with a communal mention.

11. In their attempt to cause others to adopt their self-fascination, Narcissists will become increasingly paranoiac, constantly searching the environment and community for news of themselves, for fealty or disloyalty.

12. The Literary Narcissist begins purposefully to conflate criticism of his social behavior into an indication of his/her literary worth. That is to say, the Narcissist will try to show that the reason others despise or are disgusted by him is in fact because he or she is a "Rebel," a true Literary "Revolutionist" -- and that the statements of disgust others publicly make at his behavior is merely an indication of (a) their necessary denial of the work because they are threatened by it, or (b) their jealousy of the work.

13. There comes a point -- and the point may come early -- where the community thinks to itself "teapot" and the Narcissist still hears "tempest." The truly insular narcissist (aka "the boor") will be met more and more with shunning, ignoring and silence. This will wrest the narcissist from his insularity -- such that he will begin another project designed to create Genuine Interest instead of mere scandalous attention. This project, like a new comet's head, will be followed by a long tail of manufactured scandal so as to call attention to its presence in the literary sky.

Gabriel Gudding

Grandiosity Without Self Respect

2007-11-12T08:04:00.000+02:00

Narcissism is, in many ways, a failure of self respect. Could anything be more ironic?

This is what I mean.

When a little child wants a toy that another child is enjoying, she demands it, telling herself that SHE must be the one to have it because SHE is important and that other child isn't.

That's a little rationalizer learning the art.

Now, how does she go about getting that toy?

Answer: any way she can. She may grasp at it and physically fight for it. She may scream and bawl and carry on as though that other child is killing her by simply not going without things to give Brat whatever she wants. She will make such an obnoxious racket that no one can stand it, and adults may even snap at the other child, telling her to give Brat what she wants so that she will shut up and they all can have some peace.

You see, Brat isn't above degrading herself that way. She is just a little child, at the age before children have any self respect. Nothing is beneath them at that age. Because they are very little people in a world of giants.

Soon they develop a personality and sense of personhood and gain some self respect. By the age of seven they are already above stooping to certain things. They would rather go without them than make screaming meemies of themselves just to get those things.

But the budding little narcissist never gets there. She never gains enough self respect to keep her from doing the most degrading things to get what she wants.

Even animals are sometimes better. One reason I love Cairns is because these terriers won't prostitute themselves to you for a treat. They get offended if they catch on that you are trying to train them to do tricks for treats, and they sulk off as if to say, "Take that treat and shove it, babe. I ain't prostituting myself to you for a treat."

Not that they're untrainable. But you have to make them want to do your trick to show off to you how smart and grand they are. They will study your every move and try to discern what you're trying to communicate to them, so they can do it for you just to make you "Ooooh!" and "Ahhhh!" But the moment they sense that it's manipulation instead of a game, their pride gets hurt.

Hard to believe, ain't it? Dogs have more self respect than malignant narcissists. There are things a dog is too proud to do, but not a malignant narcissist.

A narcissist will do anything to get what she or he wants - ANYTHING: scream, act crazy, carry on like it's the end of the world, act too stupid to know how stupid they're being, stomp their feet like a Drama Queen, hit, kick, sulk, bust things, blather a wall of flak that doesn't even make sense - anything to get you to give in and give the brat whatever he or she wants. They have no self respect. Nothing is beneath them.

Kathleen Krajco

Living with a true narcissist is difficult

2007-11-11T08:16:00.000+02:00

True narcissists behave as if the
world revolves around them.
Among their traits, they believe
they are special and superior to
others. They can be physically
or emotionally abusive to others
and do not understand how their
negative behaviors bother others.

Coping Techniques may help

Imagine living with a person who is controlling of all aspects of your life and who does not take responsibility for mistakes. Holding a person emotionally hostage or physically controlling a situation are hallmarks of a narcissist.

One person who lived with a narcissist described being pinned between two cars while the driver revved the engine. If his foot had slipped off the brake, she would have been crushed. The narcissist did not cause any harm - so he didn't see the problem. This feeling that nothing bad can ever happen to him, that he is in complete control and that he is special are also common with a narcissist.

Personality disorders can affect the person who has the disorder as well as those who live with that person. Although most people have aspects of their personality that can be frustrating and hard to live with, a person who usually has the personality traits described above is said to have narcissistic personality disorder.

Different from a psychosis, a personality disorder is a way of thinking and behaving, said Charles Michels, M.S.W., a clinical social worker at the Counseling Center of Marshfield Clinic Lakeland Center. "This is a pattern that develops over time," he explained. "It's a way of thinking or behaving that deviates from the what's normal for a person's culture."

People with narcissistic personality disorder tend to be grandiose and believe they are special, Michels said. "They want to be around people who they deem as special as they are," he explained. Those with narcissistic personality disorder also tend to have little empathy and they can't understand how their actions bother others, he continued.

About 1 percent of the population is believed to have narcissistic personality disorder - most often men, but some women are affected. Although people with narcissistic personality disorder rarely seek treatment for their problems, those who live with or love them often do. "These people with narcissistic personality disorder are high maintenance," Michels said. "They tend to take advantage of people."

Many narcissists are abusive, either physically or emotionally, Michels said. "It's very tough to live with a true narcissist. But a lot of people have narcissistic tendencies. There are some ways to cope with that. If a person is not abusive, it is possible to cope with the narcissist, although it can be a struggle."

One way to help the non-narcissist is assertiveness training, Michels said. "Feeling confident about where you are at would help," he explained. "Being able to hold your ground in a discussion and not have a war. If the narcissistic partner is willing to change, to try new things, that can be beneficial."

Narcissists do seek therapy during crises in their lives, Michels said. But because the results are slow and they may feel nothing is "wrong" with them, they do not tend to stick with it long enough to make significant change. "There is either a crises event in their lives, or their partner drags them to therapy," Michels said.

Because they believe they are "special" narcissists tend to believe nothing bad will happen to them, Michels said. "They exhibit many traits of young children, around whom the world revolves, or teenagers, who think they are immortal. Most of the time, adults realize bad things can happen. We take precautions; we drive carefully, for example. Narcissists never come to that realization. They take risks because they don't see the outcome as being a question."

http://www2.marshfieldclinic.org

Are You Involved With a Narcissistic Person?

2007-11-10T08:26:00.000+02:00

by Thomas J. Schumacher

According to the American Psychological Association, people with narcissistic personality disorder display a chronic and pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration, and lack of empathy. The Greek myth has it that Narcissus died enraptured by the beauty of his own reflection in a pool and feel forever in love with his own reflection. The Narcissist displays an operating style that involves extreme self-involvement, and a grandiose sense of self- importance. They exaggerate their achievements and talents, expecting others to recognize them as superior and often appearing arrogant and extremely self absorbed.

Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, or beauty, they require the constant attention and admiration of those around them, although they are very choosy about the people and institutions they will associate closely with. They often admit to being snobs and are actually proud of it. They also believe that their problems are unique and can be appreciated only by other “special” high - status people. Despite their charm, the favorable first impression they make, and their wide circle of notable acquaintances, people with this disorder are rarely able to maintain a stable, long-term relationship. With their boastful and pretentious manner, narcissistic persons are seldom receptive to the feelings of others. They show a general lack of empathy, an inability or unwillingness to recognize and identify with your thoughts and needs. Many are often successful, impressively knowledgeable, and articulate, yet bored and doubt ridden as well.

Conversely, healthy narcissism is essential for emotional well-being. We need narcissism to feel confident in ourselves, and to give adequate consideration to others. NOTE: The healthy narcissist does not focus exclusively on themselves, demanding that the world reflect back their false manufactured sense of self and an image of idealized perfection.

If you encounter this personality type, a grasp of the underlying psychology can help you cope more effectively. Lets explore the genesis of the narcissistic personality. As stated above, people with this personality disorder must constantly seek outside support and approval. If they get that support and approval, they feel complete and powerful. Without that support and approval, they feel deprived, exposed, vulnerable, angry, and lonely.

KEY: Early childhood conditioning also plays a part. The child’s real or authentic self has generally been ignored, or the child’s self may have been attacked and assaulted while the parents placed demands on the child to be “perfect.” When that occurs, the type of behavior we associate with a narcissistic disorder is overindulged. Fiercely driven to achieve, children never develop the capacity to consider others’ needs. Enter adulthood, and the same traits naturally carry over.

What To Watch Out For

Most people with this disorder advertise themselves… They seek to be the center of attention. In search of constant approval and praise to reinforce their false grandiose sense of self, they’re “on- stage,” dominating the conversation, often exaggerating their importance.

They lack empathy for others and have an inflated sense of entitlement, requiring others to respond to their demands and grant favors. They need everything for themselves and are envious of others’ accomplishments and possessions.

Criticism or disapproval takes them back to their difficult childhoods, sending them into a defensive fury, since any flaw or mistake means they’re not perfect. Also, when things go wrong, they cannot acknowledge the imperfections implicit in accepting responsibility.

Appearance matters more than substance. Power, wealth and beauty bolster their fragmented self-image.

They may be extremely driven because the “narcissistic fuel” of outside approval is so essential. Many are workaholics. Warning: this personality disorder may not be immediately obvious. The subtle ones won’t show their true colors until “deprived.” Caution: Others may actually pursue and cater to you, if you have something they want, such as looks, money, or status.

Can you change them? Reality check: No. Even constructive criticism is experienced by them as an affront and is met with anger and a sense of betrayal. Placating only results in more demands, not a return of thoughtfulness and consideration. In fact, if you always excuse or rationalize self-absorption and give in to constant demands, you are actually supporting and reinforcing their narcissistic needs and wants.

Coping Tips

Here are some tips on how to cope with the person in your life who processes the narcissistic style. Sometimes the best way to deal with extreme narcissistic behavior is to end the relationship. But since this solution isn’t always possible, I can only offer you some survival techniques…

It is important to set boundaries. Decide which demands you can meet or how much approval you’re willing to give to this person, and then stick to your decision. Also, terminate a self-centered conversation if you can, or at least set a time limit on how long you’ll listen.

Support yourself. If your resistance to them draws their anger or blame, refuse to be emotionally blackmailed. Remember that your time and feelings are not important in this person’s eyes. This can help remove your guilt.

Use bargaining chips. If you have something they want, such as a special expertise or solutions to problems—share it sparingly to keep their worst behavior under control. Be aware that when you no longer satisfy them, their old ways will resurface.

Avoid anger. Any confrontation should be conducted quietly and with control. But even a tactful approach may be greeted with anger or sometimes-frightening rage. Very likely, you’ll hear that the difficult situation is your problem and there’s something wrong with you. Arguing will only make you feel like you will want to blow your brains out. Be careful not to expect accommodation from the other person, but do give yourself points for standing up for your rights.

Finally, know when to leave. Dealing with this personality disorder can undermine your own sense of self. Ask yourself some questions…Do I continually feel depressed, irritable, devalued and worthless? Does my anger and resentment carry over into other relationships? Have I stopped supporting myself in general, not treating myself well or allowing others to coerce me? Bottom line: If you find yourself answering yes too frequently, you must examine the pay-off or importance of your relationship with this person.

Dr. Thomas J. Schumacher is a pshychotherapist who specializes in individual, couple, and marital counseling. He maintains practices in New York City and Long Island..

Factors Enabling Narcissism To Sabotage Sustainability

2007-11-09T08:11:00.000+02:00

How do these developmental and genetic factors which become dominant aspects of both individuals' and groups' consciousness and behaviors interfere with efforts at sustainability? The narcissistic defense seeks to dominate every space in which it participates – both on individual and group levels. This force of narcissism is interested in, committed to, and obsessed with power and control, and it will sacrifice people and resources indiscriminately. The narcissistic defense interferes by stonewalling, intimidating, and dominating attention in group settings.

NARCISSISM is distinguished from true leadership (which shares attention) by narcissism’s use, abuse and exploitation of people, as opposed to enhancing and facilitating the value of others. Sustainability is dependent on collaborative, mutually complementary group efforts that seek to maximize benefits for the largest amount of people without exploiting each other or the integrity of the environment. This is offensive to narcissism because it is in direct contradiction to narcissism’s values of dominance, exploitation and control.

So what does narcissism do in the presence of sustainability proponents? It resists. It resists in a methodical, calculated way toward the end of either distracting, derailing, or simply stopping whatever program the sustainability contingent is seeking to implement. Character assassination, misinformation, and blocking access to funding and other resources are commonly employed methods.

Before we discuss how narcissism can be detected and engaged effectively, it is important to review factors which contribute to narcissism being able to effectively control situations and relationships. First, if a person or a group is unaware of his or its narcissism, they will often be unable to recognize the presence of a narcissistic force. It is a well known dynamic in most psychological circles that if one is denying or cut off from an aspect of the self, it is very difficult position to recognize this aspect in others.

Second, many people have the fantasy that if they try hard, "do it right," be reasonable, logical, and have goodwill and a team approach, these factors will generate a positive outcome in interpersonal or group settings. This is about as deep a fantasy as one could possibly have, as it is not based in reality. Why is this? It is not based in reality because a narcissist survival is dependent on having control, or the perception of control. When a narcissist's control is challenged (and this is what efforts toward sustainability do by definition), he becomes threatened, and responds like his survival is at stake, transforming the environment into a veritable jungle. This is not the friendly environment of Mr. Rogers’ neighborhood! In addition narcissism is disdainful of such attitudes (fantasies).

A third factor which reinforces the stranglehold narcissism can have is when people are committed to being "nice" or fair, and as a result are unwilling or unprepared to hold the narcissist accountable for positions or behaviors. Finally, an unwillingness to "go for the throat," as champions do in sporting events, only allows narcissism to recycle and feed off its commitment to domination.

Bruce Gregory, Ph.D

Addictions and narcissism

2007-11-08T08:16:00.000+02:00

Anyone can become addicted to just about anything but people with high levels of narcissism are particularly prone to addictions.

Nobody enjoys the feeling of being wrong, making mistakes, failing, losing, being criticized, ignored, rejected, or disregarded, but we endure it. And as unpleasant as it is, feeling bad about ourselves just as frequently results in change and improvement as unhappiness. Feeling bad can often lead to learning and growth.

Narcissists though cannot and will not tolerate feeling bad about themselves. Narcissism, by its very nature, is an obsession and a compulsion. The narcissist is addicted to the illusion of his superiority, power, and control. He must always feel good and feel good about himself. So, with his difficulty in postponing gratification, his disinclination for self-denial, and the power of his illusory, grandiose, self-image, the narcissist is susceptible to all sorts of obsessions, compulsions, and addictions.

Successful narcissists are invariably obsessed with their work, often to absurd degrees. Narcissists often also overuse or abuse alcohol, drugs, sex, or food, get hooked on shopping, sport, religion, or become obsessed with “love”, money, security, power, their health, (hypochondria is common), their appearance, or be adrenaline junkies chasing thrills. They invariably believe they are lucky, that they are life’s winners, and so are susceptible to gambling addiction. Multiple addictions are common as can be seen on any Saturday afternoon for example, in hotels and bars all around the country where many of the men who congregate are addicted to alcohol, nicotine, and gambling.

Narcissistic personalities are liable to become obsessed with or addicted to anything that:

* allows them to self medicate to numb pain, discomfort, or any unpleasant emotion.

* helps them escape their vulnerable real self and fears about illness, death, misfortune, or the unpredictability of life.

* can act as a symbol of their rebellion against other’s control or influence and help prove they are free and not controlled.

* helps them demonstrate that “I do as I please, whether you like it or not”.

* demonstrates they are thumbing their nose at normal social expectations to prove that they are superior to, and different from, other people.

* helps them gain acceptance from a group to which they want to belong.

* gives them an excuse or justification for bad behaviour so they can avoid responsibility for it.

* soothes them when they are not feeling “special”.

* satisfies a need for stimulation.

* helps them avoid awareness of their limitations, failures, and ordinariness.

* consoles them when they don’t get what they want.

* relieves boredom and helps fill an inner emptiness.

* makes them feel good (and what narcissist can say no to pleasure?).

* helps them escape into a worry, thought, and trouble free state.

* gives them the illusion of control.

* lets them withdraw from the stresses and demands of reality.

* makes them feel strong and powerful.

Ultimate Self

© Ultimate-self.com 2007 All rights reserved.

The Black Ribbon Campaign

2007-11-07T08:45:00.000+02:00

"Your ego is your own worst
enemy, and anybody
being nice to it is not
being compassionate to you."
- Ken Wilber

The problem is staring us in the face

According to a recent Population Reference Bureau study on cross-cultural neuroses, over 2.5 billion people around the world suffer from the same disease: narcissism. By late 2012, through the increasing trend of globalization, or what New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls the “flattening” of the world, this epidemic may affect nearly every human being on the planet.

The plague is only growing. It’s time to find a cure.

What is narcissism?

Psychologists define it one way, spiritual teachers another. Here we define narcissism as the incessant self-infatuation displayed by the separate sense of self, or ego. In the classic Greek story of Echo and Narcissus, from which the term “narcissism” originates, Narcissus fell in love with his own reflection. Ignoring the cries of Echo, his would-be friend and lover, he withered away as he admired himself reflected in the surface of a pond.

Detached, uncaring, isolated, and alone: this is the fate of all narcissists. Don’t let it happen to you.

Is it really such a big deal?

The world is in a state of crisis. Today, like never before, humanity faces serious threats to its continued existence on this planet. Global warming, religious terrorism, nuclear arms proliferation, incurable viral contagions, peak oil, unchecked bioengineering, environmental degradation, Paris Hilton, and the ever-present threat of killer asteroids may seem like big problems. But these problems get far bigger when no one has the mental space to deal with them—when 99% of everyone’s attention is focused, 24/7, on themselves.

So what can I do about it?

“If you would deny the ego and scorch it by ignoring it,” said the 20th-century spiritual master Ramana Maharshi, “you would be free.”

That’s sage advice. Here at the Black Ribbon Campaign, we’re committed to making such a freedom a reality—not only for the chosen few, the spiritual elites, but for millions of perfectly ordinary narcissists out there just like you. On this website you’ll find the tools and information you need to help yourself, your friends, and your family to overcome the scourge of endless self-concern. You’ll find the inspiration, the direction, and the subversive techniques required to begin spreading the word about this most egregious and debilitating dis-ease.

So wear the black ribbon with pride, and join us in our fight against ego everywhere.

Together, we can find a cure.

http://www.theblackribbon.org/

Hot Teen Amateurs

2007-11-06T08:27:00.000+02:00

The virtuous circle of narcissism and voyeurism that explains why blogs and user-generated content aren't getting any smaller

Hearing that someone doesn't read blogs is, for me, akin to hearing that someone doesn't drink coffee. That is, I can imagine how one could lead a perfectly acceptable and fulfilling life in the developed world in 2006 without drinking coffee, I just don't know why one would. Sure, you'll get by just fine without coffee, but if the option is (so readily) available and cost-effective, why not just treat yourself? Same deal with the blogs -- I mean, you're not really missing anything by not scanning blogs, but there's a lot of good stuff there, stuff that's certainly worth adding to your rotation.

I don't mean to sound like the haughty "I can't believe you're still living in the Dark Ages" tech geek. If anything, we're long through the looking glass w/r/t blogs and their user-generated content cousins/ derivatives. The newsweeklies ran their cover stories years ago, and Myspace has made the cover of Business Week. Folks can't get enough of blogging and, more generally speaking, sharing their thoughts, photos, videos, ideas, and everything else that they can digitize with the rest of the world on the Internet. Blogs, in their strictest sense, were just the start of what is a very real shift in both the way pop culture content is created and consumed. Why just write when you post pictures? Why just write and post pictures when you can also add your writing and pictures to communities and networks so that anyone with an inkling of an interest in any part of your writings and pictures can find them in just a couple clicks?

Thus we have the tens of millions of folks on blogger, Yahoo 360 and MSN Spaces. We have the millions of photos on flickr. And we've got a gazillion teenagers and college students sharing maybe a little bit too much information on Myspace and Facebook. (And this doesn't even get into the YouTubes of the world, as the bar for making a video is still slightly out of most folks' reach.)

It's easy to dismiss some of these sites as fads (certainly the social networking sites seem to be pretty fad driven; we miss ya, Friendster!), but it's borderline absurd to think that the general trend toward decentralized content creation and consumption is going to disappear. Nope. This stuff isn't going anywhere. If anything, it's only going to get bigger and bigger. And here's why:

User-generated content has captured the imagination of a culture that was already more than convinced that it is every individual's right, if not destiny, to someday enjoy fame and celebrity. We've long since treasured the legends of the actors or models who were "discovered" on a street corner or at a restaurant, or the authors who were toiling in obscurity before their big break ("You should see the closet where JK Rowling used to live!"). Over the past ten years, reality TV and the tabloid press have packaged and productized precisely the improbable ("I can't believe it all happened so fast!") march to fame that surely awaits us all.

The Internet has taken the existing overnight celebrity meme and lowered the cover charge (what economists call barriers to entry). Sure, you could write a novel, submit articles to magazines, or move to LA and become a struggling actress, but really, why bother? Look at Wonkette, Bill Simmons, and Jenn Sterger! All you need is access to a computer, and within minutes, you can launch your own amazing career!

This is not to say that everyone who writes a blog or posts photos of themselves online is dying to be famous. But there's certainly a fair degree of narcissism involved in sharing yourself with the world online. Look at me! I've got something to say! And of course, we've all heard the legends of the folks who pay the bills on their monthly AdSense revenues -- if not fame, it sure would be nice to quit the day job. But even if you don't become famous or even get to quit your day job, blogging/ posting does offer a daily dose of positive reinforcement. That is, the nice thing about the Internet is that it's easy to keep score: you can see just how many people looked at your blog, your myspace profile, or your flickr photos. And every time you see your numbers go up ("I'm so clever!"; "I'm so pretty!"), you get just the encouragement you need to continue ("If there are people out there interested in me, I better keep givin' 'em the good stuff!").

But that brings up the other side of the equation: who the hell would want to read a stranger's boring diary or look at their vacation photos? I don't know these people; why would I care? Certainly there's a strong argument to be made for user-generated content being the ultimate niche content. That is, since it's so easy to publish online, tiny little interest segments will have their very own content -- and a built-in niche audience armed with a search engine. Thus, I post on F.C. Camena just in case there are other people out there who also watch a lot of soccer and can't get enough of Winning Eleven.

But the explosion in user-generated content is about more than connecting tiny little communities and niche interest groups; that only gets you so far. There's a much simpler answer to the explosion of the online community sites (the myspaces and xanga's of the world): voyeurism. People like to watch. Trained by reality TV, e-commerce and broadband porn, we have a generation that's completely comfortable surfing page after page of profiles/ blogs -- the photos and blurbs that are essentially ads for people. We like peering into other people's lives, and the Internet offers an essentially endless supply of folks who want us to look at them. So we click. We look. We read. We click again. Why not? Who knows what we might find? Don't cost nuthin. We click again.

Essentially, what we have is a virtuous circle, where narcissism leads us to share ourselves online, which is eagerly gobbled up by a voyerusitic culture, a culture which demonstrates its approval of the narcissists by clicking and looking, which in turn encourages even more narcissism ("Look at all those clicks! I better post more photos!").

This is what's convincing millions to blog, and also what's encouraging the teenagers to post compromising photos on myspace. If you want those clicks, you're going to need to lure the voyeurs. And if you want to lure the voyeurs, you're going to need to do something to break through the clutter. And who knows -- maybe fame and fortune await!

This is all a long way of saying that you shouldn't expect this user-generated content thing to disappear. If anything, just wait until everyone's blog and myspace page contains video as well (like, say, when they put a video camera in your mobile phone). So it's not going anywhere. Not so long as there is suficient narcissism and voyeurism lurking in Western culture, and I think we've got that one covered.

http://www.thatkidinthecorner.com

Superiority and perfection

2007-11-05T08:13:00.000+02:00

The foundation of narcissism is self-inflation. It is hard for someone with normal self-awareness, who acknowledges their shortcomings and vulnerabilities, to understand how someone could have total and unquestioning belief in their own perfection, superiority and greatness. It is inconceivable that ordinary, fallible humans could have such exaggerated beliefs about themselves.

Our inability to understand such delusion leads most of us to assume that problem behaviour must be the result of low self-esteem and over-compensation. But throughout history into modern times countless dictators, religious and cult leaders, aristocrats, royals and tyrants have believed they had the right to control and dominate other people or even the entire world.

The philosopher Bertrand Russell was perhaps only slightly exaggerating when he claimed that all men (and presumably many women) want to be God and that some can’t believe they are not. The narcissist, the heartbreaker, may not be a potential dictator believing they have an inalienable right to dominate (although some are) but their self-images of superiority are not poles apart. The comedian Peter Sellers for example, acted like royalty, insisting on deference and adulation, expecting to be feted and catered to in all things at all times. In the narcissist’s mind they are not only the centre of their own world but the centre of the lives of everyone around them and more important to other people than they are to themselves. They are the star and everyone else the supporting cast.

Just as we might see ourselves blown up to giant size in the distorting mirrors at a carnival, narcissists see themselves magnified, as bigger, better, and more important than they actually are. Narcissists believe they are already automatically whatever they want to be, that they need no teacher or role model to learn from, that they need no achievement to work towards, no maturity or growth to strive for, no ideals to pursue. They are perfect just as they are.

Narcissists truly believe they are more important than anyone else. They may have talent and ability, but never as much as they think. They exaggerate the smallest asset and if they lack some quality, they will create it in their imagination or denigrate it as beneath them. They might, for example, despised and disparaged anything at which they do not excel. They may be the most ordinary of men and women or even far below average yet still believe themselves to be superior to almost everyone. Narcissists believe they are unique and extraordinary and expect others to acknowledge and applaud their superiority whether or not there is any evidence to support it. Such self-inflation makes them immune to self-doubt and allows them to convince themselves they are all the things they have ever wanted to be. They are incapable of seeing themselves as ordinary or average.

Like Narcissus they love and admire an illusion, an inaccurate, idealized self and not the reality of a whole, authentic, if imperfect self. Beyond the image of perfection though, they are hollow because he or she denies, ignores, and neglects any aspect of themselves that is less than perfect and so rejects who they really are. They have no interest in discovering the whole self beneath the image of perfection, preferring to avoid self-awareness and self-examination with the assurance that if they believe something (that they are perfect) then it is so.

Such grandiosity leads to a feeling of invincibility, to recklessness, and an overestimation of one’s ability. The narcissistic girl for example will be casual about birth control because she does not believe she will get pregnant, drugs hold no danger because the narcissist never believes he could become addicted, speeding is OK because he is the best driver and accidents only happen to other people, not him. He or she will not listen to advice or let others contribute to decisions because their judgement is better than anyone else’s. Peter Sellers for example, thought nothing of telling specialist professionals - directors, cameramen, writers, even veteran actors - how to do their jobs. Although he left school at thirteen he didn’t think anyone else was as clever or talented as him and believed no matter what the circumstances or area of expertise, he knew best.

The narcissist may never actually say the words ‘I am better than you, I am perfect, infallible, invincible’. They may not even consciously think such things but they feel, know, and experience them as reality. Such a sense of superiority cannot help but affect relationships. The narcissist does not believe in equality or democracy but a hierarchy with them at the top. They don’t really believe that anyone, with the possible exception of a small elite they may admire, is their equal and they see no reason why they should waste time on lesser beings (unless they are of some use).

Narcissists make poor romantic partners because their lovestyle is so damaging. Any partner is naturally their inferior so can never be their equal and the relationship will never be equal. A partner is expected to be forever eager to please, to be devoted, accommodating, obliging, and singularly focussed on the narcissist’s needs, feelings, and desires. They demand obedience, unconditional surrender and total, unquestioning commitment. They on the other hand give only what they are inclined to, which is never as much as they expect to receive. Once a narcissist defines someone as ‘less’ than themselves (which is virtually everyone) it is impossible to prove, or to convince them, otherwise.

Because the narcissist believes they are innately superior they never feel the need to make an effort at anything. They believe everything should come to them automatically, and by never testing their abilities, never have to find them lacking. They don’t need to study or work hard because with their superiority they will naturally excel, and if they don’t, then the goal is not worth wanting. They don’t need to take care of their health, drive carefully, or weigh risks like ordinary people because nothing bad can happen to them. Their sense of security comes from their feelings of superiority rather than from any real achievements or close relationships.

To sustain their sense of superiority narcissists deny faults, limitations, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities. They never admit to being wrong or to making mistakes. They reject anything that challenges their narcissism because to them, by definition, anyone or anything that does not feed their ego or agree with their view of themselves as superior is automatically wrong and worthless.

Asking for help, advice, or directions is beneath them as that would mean admitting needing assistance, which would mean that they are less than perfect. Anyone needing help is an inferior who can’t survive on his or her own. Narcissists think they should automatically know everything and if they don’t, they will pretend to. It is impossible to learn from mistakes when you don’t believe you make any, and difficult to learn anything when you believe you know it all and in any case, how can lesser beings have anything to teach their superior? As a student for instance, the artist Picasso used to brag that there was nothing he could learn from any of his art teachers. Being perfect means you have nothing to learn.

Ultimate Self

Copyright Ultimate-self.com 2007 All rights reserved.

Why Me?

2007-11-04T08:46:00.000+02:00

The question why the narcissist has picked you is complicated. Firstly, the narcissist is opportunistic. This is, the narcissist is waiting for his victims like a spider does. Secondly, the narcissist must see the potential use in you. This is, the narcissist needs to see that you can potentially fulfill her/his needs (love, admiration, money etc). Thirdly, the narcissist must see some areas of vulnerability in you. If you seem invulnerable you are useless. Fourthly, you must be willing to sacrifice certain personal freedom and domains so that you have to live within the domain of the narcissist. This could involve moving in with the narcissist, giving up your work, life style or circle of friends. In short, if you are seeking love, you are the ideal candidate.

However, it is not helpful to blame it all onto the narcissist. The issue is that you allowed someone to walk all over you without putting a stop to it in time. Hence, you will have to learn from the experience. If you don't change, the same thing will happen to you time after time. You will have to learn to be assertive and to be able to say 'no'. You might want to see a therapist for this or you might want to do a course on assertiveness. But whatever you do, you have to change.

Interestingly, I found that things have changed quite drastically for me. I am still attractive to abusers, but I put a stop to it real fast when my alarm bells start ringing. A general easy criterion is the following one: If someone messes you around three times without any good explanation, leave the situation behind. Don't even bother asking questions.

Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl

Interacting Effectively With Narcissism Forces

2007-11-03T08:54:00.000+02:00

Recognizing the presence of narcissistic forces is an important aspect of the transformational process. Moving to the next phase, interacting effectively with narcissistic forces, involves a number of important factors which include: awareness of and freedom from victim complexes, freedom from being intimidated, skills to deal with intimidation efforts, excellent emotional boundaries, accountability skills, skills for building consensus with others in the group, empowering others, and a highly developed inner ability to tolerate frustration and anxiety.

Most people feel victimized by narcissistic forces and narcissists. This is because they have felt consistently oppressed, suppressed, or frustrated by narcissistic forces (e.g. bosses, companies, owners, partners, religious organizations, governments). This becomes problematic in terms of achieving sustainability. When one is in a "victim state," one sees the oppressor as the enemy, as the one with the power, and as a result, the victim is easily manipulated into frustration and anger. The narcissist will utilize this dynamic to incite people into emotional states which can be exploited into distractions from the core issues.

Victim states can be detected by the accent the person puts on "they, them, he or she", which conveys that the other is bad. The most debilitating component of victimhood in terms of sustainability and transformation is that the victim perceives the power as being in the other and outside of oneself. This is in direct opposition to a principle tenet of sustainability that power is shared, and essential power is achieved through collaboration, not dominance.

Narcissistic forces are also critical; they can be harsh in their judgments of anything short of perfection. They can be bullying and abusive in their verbal criticism, daring others to challenge their destructive communication tactics. Their underlying message contains some or all of the following: "I can intimidate you anytime I want. You are afraid to stand up to me, to challenge me. You are weak and spineless. Sometimes I will say something that I know is completely untrue or bullshit just to prove that you won't challenge me." Intimidation is used like a large boulder on a mountain road, saying "deal with me, or go down the mountain, and forget going ahead. I am the roadblock through which you must go."

Bruce Gregory, Ph.D

Should the Narcissist be Held Accountable for his Actions?

2007-11-02T08:47:00.000+02:00

I think that the narcissist should be held accountable for most of his actions. The list of what he should NOT be held accountable to is shorter: his rage and his grandiose fantasies. These are two exceptions which could allow us to make the rule clearer.

The narcissist CANNOT control his rage and, therefore, should not be held accountable for it. BUT, if he attacks someone physically, he should be held accountable because:

1. He can tell right from wrong.
2. He simply didn't care about the other person sufficiently to refrain from action.

Similarly, the Narcissist cannot "control" his grandiose fantasies. He firmly believes that they constitute an accurate representation of reality. BUT, if he lies about his education, he should be held accountable because:

1. He knows that lying is wrong and should not be done.
2. He simply didn't care enough about society and others to refrain from doing so.

Narcissists should be held accountable for most of what they do because they can tell wrong from right AND they can refrain from taking the actions they do take. They simply don't care enough about others to put to good use these twin abilities. A narcissist can be held responsible for some of his actions because he can tell right from wrong and can control most of his actions. He simply doesn't care to do so. Others are not important enough to him.

Sam Vaknin

Narcissism and the 'terrible twos'?

2007-11-01T08:54:00.000+02:00

(November 1, 2007) — Unvarnished human nature typically emerges from behind the beguiling mask of infancy sometime during the second year of life, and the picture is anything but pretty.

Anyone who has experienced this tumultuous metamorphosis and its aftermath knows that the philosophy of the "terrible" 2-year-old is comprised of three fundamental beliefs: what I want, I deserve to have; the ends justify the means; no one has a right to deny me or stand in my way.

Entitlement, pragmatism and narcissism: these are the makings of criminality.Toddlers are by nature violent, deceitful, destructive, rebellious and prone to sociopathic rages if they do not get their way.

Example: A 2-year-old who has never experienced, witnessed or even heard described an act of violence will slap his mother across the face or bite her most accessible body part if she dares deny him a cookie, then ventures too close to his tantrum.

Toddlers are convinced that the rules do not apply to them, that they are under no obligation to obey legitimate authority, that in fact it is they who are to be obeyed. Socializing the toddler is the single biggest challenge of parenthood.

Scaling this Mt. Everest requires a balanced combination of powerful discipline and powerful love. Neither alone will suffice. Loving authority liberates the human spirit, which is creative and loving, from human nature, which is destructive and selfish.
But make no mistake: Whereas the toddler may acquiesce, he never goes away.Every so often, even well into adulthood, he demands to be heard, to be the center of attention, to be catered to, to be obeyed.

You've seen other adult's toddlers suddenly burst forth, and if you are reasonably self-aware, you can even identify regrettable occasions when you let your own toddler take over and begin terrorizing the world.

John Rosemond is a family psychologist.

http://www.democratandchronicle.com

Do You Have a Narcissist in Your Life?

2007-10-31T08:43:00.000+02:00

"Narcissism: The Web of Illusion" is a powerful new E-book written by Rev. Kaleah LaRoche. It delves deeply into the topic of Narcissism in our society taking readers beyond the psychological perspective into a whole new world of understanding.

Spokane, DE, October 29, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Narcissism and Narcissistic Personality Disorder were once uncommon terms understood by few. However with the growing number of people who have been victimized by those who have this complex disorder, awareness is increasing. Narcissism is becoming a popular term in the United States and other Countries.

Kaleah LaRoche delves deeply into the topic of narcissism in her powerful new E-book “Narcissism: The Web of Illusion.” She approaches narcissism from many different perspectives looking at the relationship between narcissism and evil, and even shedding a bright light on what evil really is.

An Interfaith Minister, and survivor of narcissistic abuse, Kaleah has spent over seven years researching narcissism, which she believes is becoming a huge problem in our society. “Narcissism is not just a psychological issue” says Kaleah, “it is a spiritual issue! There is a soul rape that takes place amongst victims and I am on a personal mission to help people understand what is happening to them.”

Kaleah believes knowledge is power and the more one knows about the complex web of illusion created by the narcissist, the more tools one has to free herself from the abuse.

“Narcissism: The Web of Illusion” is a users manual for those recovering from narcissistic abuse and also for those who love someone who has gone through this type of abuse.

For more information about this E-book you can visit:

www.narcissismmalignant.com

The Joker

2007-10-30T08:42:00.000+02:00

This is something I think no one can tell you. I know that no one could have told me. I had to see it prove true many times in many ways, battering through my denial and knocking down my illusions till I could accept it.

So I don't expect to persuade anyone of this. In fact, if you're this easy to persuade, you're too easy to persuade. But I do put it out there for you to consider. Don't listen to the talk, watch the walk. Then judge for yourself and see what you think.

Narcissists are predators.

And of course these pathological liars will never admit that. They are perfect, you know. If caught being less than perfect, they put on a poor-little-harmless-me face and try to make people think that they lash out at others in self defense.

The biggest lie narcissists tell is that they hurt people more or less accidentally, without meaning to or because they are in pain and/or feel threatened or put down or insulted, because they have these tender, tender feelings that are just so sensitive you see.

Something like that. They are vague and hard to nail down to leave themselves wiggle room - but something like that.

I know that's a lie. I know that they are not playing defense when they lash out. I know that they are playing offense. You can tell by the nature of the prey they target. Easy prey, not people who have done anything to hurt them.

In fact, I know that they have impenetrably thick skin when the person insulting them is someone they would fear retaliation from. In other words, they're just bullies.

And when they get caught, and people say, "You naughty bully, why did you do that to your spouse or child?" they whine that it was because they had such a miserable childhood and because they felt "threatened."

Yeah, right, threatened by a child.

Speaking of their feelings, where are they now? Dig deep. You will not discover one ounce of feeling in the narcissist for that child. Clue: see if you can find one bit of genuine feeling in a narcissist for anyone but him- or her-self.

And, I'm sorry, but having feeling for yourself is no virtue. Even a great white shark has feelings for itself. Feeling sorry for yourself doesn't make you human.

When narcissists abuse someone, they are never even partly in the right. Simply because it's always an act of aggression. It is a reaction to nothing but the sight of a vulnerable target of opportunity.

Therefore, no matter how imperfect their victim, he or she is wholly blameless.

Of course their delusions are threatened by any truth. Nothing wrong with that kind of threat. The fault is all theirs for deluding themselves and trying to impose their delusions on others. Their delusions are a threat to us. Something very wrong with THAT kind of threat.

One minute the bullies are getting off on eviscerating the tender feelings of a little child, and the next minute they're whining that people think they're bad.

The devil is a joker, eh?

Kathleen Krajco

Man who threatened girlfriend, kids sentenced to prison

2007-10-29T08:48:00.000+02:00

By Kevin Behr
Winona Daily News

A Lewiston man who threatened to kill his girlfriend and her two children while holding a miniature baseball bat will spend at least the next five and a half years in prison.

James Garnett Briggs, 47, was sentenced to 8¼ years in prison for assault with a dangerous weapon in the April 28 fight with his ex-girlfriend and her daughter. He will be eligible for supervised release after 66 months.

Although Briggs was convicted on eight of 10 felony charges, Winona County Attorney Chuck MacLean only wanted to sentence Briggs on three of them to avoid double jeopardy. The third sentence of 21 months was stayed in favor of five years of supervised probation.

At Briggs’ sentencing hearing Thursday, MacLean labeled Briggs an anti-social, manipulative narcissist.

“It’s all about him,” MacLean said. “Nobody else.”

MacLean had sought a 105-month sentence because, he said, Briggs showed absolutely no remorse throughout the court proceedings and pre-sentencing investigations and is a danger to public safety.

Judge Margaret Shaw Johnson agreed with what MacLean said but also complimented Briggs’ attempt at self-representation during his jury trial.

“He tried very hard,” she said, “and in many respects, did a good job representing himself.”

Briggs had little to say for himself but maintained his innocence.

“I shouldn’t feel remorse for them,” he said. “I never did this.”

At the end of the hearing, Johnson asked if Briggs had any questions regarding his sentence.

“No ma’am. See you in a few,” Briggs said as he was led out of the courtroom.

His response referenced several case files still pending before Johnson.

Briggs is charged with 49 felonies and six gross misdemeanors alleging he violated orders for protection and tampered with witnesses, all while in jail. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for allegedly calling his victims from jail and sending letters to the children threatening to put them in jail or foster care for testifying against him.

No date has been set for Briggs’s next court hearing on those charges.

http://www.winonadailynews.com/articles/2007/10/26/news/02briggs26.txt

This blog is one year old!

2007-10-28T08:33:00.001+02:00

On 28 October 2006 the first post on this blog was made.

So as the first year draws to a close it is worthwhile to review the blog and make changes which may better serve its original purpose which was:

“This blog is therefore dedicated to encouraging individuals and communities to stand up to narcissists and expose their methods and activities at every opportunity.”

The first change in year two will be to encourage participation and this end contributions from others will be welcome.

Contributions should be sent to:

mister.skallywag@gmail.com

Thanks to you all for reading this blog and I sincerely hope that it has proved valuable to you in some small way and may it through the contributions of others grow to have a positive impact on many more people.

Best wishes to all,
Skally.

The narcissist’s revenge

2007-10-27T08:28:00.000+02:00

Because a narcissist’s very existence is based on their belief in their own superiority, any criticism, complaint or challenge to that belief is a serious threat.

When someone criticizes him (or her) he assumes they are trying to change him, influence, or lead him, or trying to exert power and control over him, all of which are affronts to his sense of superiority and perfection. If his ego is wounded he loses control of his self-created, grandiose identity so that he feels humiliated and powerless.

He sees himself as above reproach and his natural reaction to anyone who does reproach him is to feel attacked which in turn provokes rage, contempt, withdrawal, or hostility and the urge to punish.

The aim of punishment, which is essentially revenge, is to teach the culprit a lesson. They must suffer for displeasing or offending the narcissist, or for not believing in his superiority. Such retaliation gives the narcissist a sense of power and pleasure.

But sometimes the narcissist’s victim gives no obvious offence and his punishment seems without motive. Sometimes the hidden motive is hostility toward a parent displaced onto a less threatening scapegoat. Or to build himself up by putting another down, to force them to see that in comparison to him they are ordinary and helpless. Or he may hate the person he depends on because relying on another contradicts his fantasy of self-reliant superiority.

And like some super novelist he makes people up, creates them in his mind to fit his own needs, so that he thinks he knows them inside out and how they should behave. So he may punish someone simply for not playing the role he assigns them, even though they have done nothing wrong except be themselves. When they do not behave how he thinks they should, when they fail to fulfil his needs and wants, he rejects or punishes them for disobeying his unspoken rules and expectations. He is capable of extreme actions (such as road rage or stalking) against those who do not conform to how thing are supposed to be.

The narcissist doesn’t want a relationship based on equality and honesty. He wants flattery and adoration, to be put on a pedestal, to get everything he expects and when he doesn’t, he may retaliate with surprising vindictiveness. His attitude is: “Give me what I want and be what I want or you will suffer.”

Sometimes punishing behaviour is nothing more than a sadistic, ego-boosting pleasure in causing pain, especially when a partner still loves him and stays with him despite his atrocious treatment. She is supposed to be so utterly devoted to him that she will endure anything. But such devotion has to be tested. How much he can hurt her is to him a measure of how important he is to her. But the partner who submits to his ill-treatment may find herself being punished for being too subservient, for being inferior, cowardly, contemptible. It’s a no-win position.

He may punish a partner for not living up to his expectations and not meeting his ideal standards. He expects that she fulfil his wishes perfectly and feels cheated and disappointed when inevitably she does not. It never occurs to him that he may expect too much. He assumes she has deliberately, even maliciously, deprived him of satisfaction and so feels justified in retaliating. Or he may want to punish her for enjoying the company of other people, for having other interests besides him, for being something he is not, or simply to demonstrated his power over her to prove to her that he can destroy her happiness at will.

He may punish her for changing in any way, losing weight, putting on weight, getting pregnant, returning to education, leaving or returning to work, because any change in his partner changes the self that she reflects back to him and threatens his sense of himself. He needs her to be a certain way so that he can see himself in a certain way.

He may even see a partner’s smallest needs or requests as insults. If she needs something that he doesn’t give, or asks him to do something he doesn’t naturally do, then she is saying he is inadequate and imperfect. Her offence may be nothing more than behaving like a normal person in a normal relationship. She may for example only try to get him to behave with no more than normal reasonableness, consideration and decency, or try to curb some excessive habit, to find herself the scapegoat for hostility and treated more like an enemy than a loved partner.

“Adrian’s” mother always cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast. She was a stay-at-home mum devoted to the care and coddling of her family, and especially her only son. When Adrian married Sue, he expected the same service from her that his mother had provided. But Sue worked long hours and spent considerable time commuting and had no intention of getting up even earlier to cook Adrian breakfast when he was quite capable of doing it for himself. Adrian felt hard done by and the lack of a cooked breakfast became for him a major grievance and sign of Sue’s failure to care for him the way she “should”. When she pointed out how unfair his expectations were he agreed with her; of course she worked as hard as he did, of course he didn’t expect her to be his servant. But like a petulant and stubborn child, his resentment grew. He began waging a campaign of guerrilla warfare against her and their marriage. He refused to share domestic chores or was so incompetent that he damaged appliances and ruined clothes and food; he spent lavishly on himself, was absent from home as much as possible and when that didn’t satisfy his need for revenge he had a series of affairs. Sue was not going to get away with treating him as though he was ordinary, as though he was no better than her.

Affairs are a narcissist’s common form of retaliation against a partner he believes does not give enough. Sometimes abandonment is her punishment. He might leave because she disappoints, although he never told her what he wanted. Sometimes he punishes by withholding what he knows his partner wants most, affection, attention, companionship, children, sex, money, his presence, whatever will cause her the most distress. Sometimes his reaction to criticism or whatever else he is punishing is so extreme that his partner never dares do it again and tiptoes around his delicate ego. Sometimes his punishments are irrational, excessive and dangerous, as any battered woman can testify.

Ultimate Self

©Ultimate-self.com 2007 All rights reserved.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder and sex

2007-10-26T08:41:00.000+02:00

The sexual relationship with the narcissist is most peculiar. Narcissists are exhibitionists and sex is just one further means of being admired to her or him. There does not exist intimacy and you will frequently feel used. The narcissist will demand that you subdue yourself. Your own sexual preferences will be boycotted or twisted. Narcissists have a strong tendency to sexually abuse a partner and children. Here is a list of some of these abusive behaviors:

* You are prohibited from masturbating or feel good about your own body under the threat of punishment
* You are being made to watch porn although you don't want to
* You are not allowed any sexual gratification yourself
* The narcissist pretends to be sexual for you but is after her/his gratification only
* Your sexual past is being torn apart
* You are being told that all you want is sex (although you know this is not the case, however sex is central to the narcissist)
* The narcissist instigates sex (like telling you erotic things and sending you pictures or emails which are sexual) but then decides last minute that nothing is to take place or simply demands abusive sex
* The narcissist abuses you while you are asleep (sleep rape)
* You are being raped on a daily basis
* You are feeling humiliated and yet the narcissist claims that (s)he has been humiliated
* The narcissist finds it funny when you get hurt and enjoys it when you get hurt, this can be physically or emotionally
* The narcissist instigates and turns everything into a sexual game
* The narcissist demands prolonged sex way above the limit you can handle nor want to
* The narcissist tells you that you want to have sexual relations with everybody although the narcissist has a strong tendency to flirt with others and to be infidel
* You are being told off for the fact that you were flirting with someone although you are not flirting at all
* The narcissist makes fun of your sexuality in front of others (e.g. you have a small penis or small breasts)
* The narcissist demands sex when you make it clear that you don't want to
* The narcissist has to try out everything possible
* The narcissist is an exhibitionist and will want sex in public and dresses inappropriately at home and or elsewhere

There is another form of sexual abuse. In fact, so I believe, it is the most common one, and hence it took me so long to get it. This form of abuse comes in four stages:

* Firstly, the victim will be forced to reveal her or his sexual preferences and experiences to the perpetrator.
* Secondly, the perpetrator will condition the victim to direct her or his entire sexuality towards the perpetrator. At this stage, the sexual relationship is intense.
* Thirdly, the perpetrator reduces the intensity of the sexual relationship dramatically, so that the victim is in constant sexual need.
* Fourthy, the perpetrator grants inproper sexual gratification in order to maintain the sexual need of the victim. Now, the victim, who is (sexually) dependent on the perpetrator, can be humiliated, manipulated and used.

Dr. Ludger Hofmann-Engl

Narcissistic Leaders: Who Succeeds and Who Fails

2007-10-25T08:47:00.000+02:00

by Michael Maccoby

ISBN: 1422104141
ISBN-13: 9781422104149

From the Publisher
Today's business leaders maintain a higher profile than their predecessors did in the 1950s through the 1980s. Rather than hide behind the corporate veil, they give interviews to magazines like Business Week, Time, and the Economist. According to psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and consultant Michael Maccoby, this love of the limelight often stems from their personalities--in a narcissistic personality. That is both good and bad news: Narcissists are good for companies that need people with vision and the courage to take them in new directions. But narcissists can also lead companies into trouble by refusing to listen to the advice and warnings of their managers. So what can the narcissistic leader do to avoid the traps of his own personality? Maccoby argues that today's most innovative leaders are not consensus-building bureaucrats; they are "productive narcissists" with the interrelated set of skills -- foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering - that he terms "strategic intelligence." Maccoby redefines the negative stereotype as the personality best suited to lead during times of rapid social and economic change.

Customer Reviews

The N leader and the N led
By Ramana Rajgopaul (Pune, India)

I originally purchased the book as I had had a very bad experience with a narcissistic leader and had to eventually part company with him. I could easily identify his behaviour with the portrayal in the book. What however blew me was the realisation that I had some narcissistic traits in me too!

Since I had experienced failure prior to the ralization of my own narcissism, I particularly savoured the part of the type of Ns who succeed.

I recommend this book to all interested in studying human behaviour as often we do not really understand that our leader/s is/are narcissistic and go through very difficult times. If we ourselves have narcissistic tendencies, this book helps us to identify this trait to take such steps as necessary to lead a happy life.

Why some narcissistic leaders are productive...and others are not
By Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas)

As Michael Maccoby explains in his Preface, "To understand differences among narcissists and even predict which visionaries will succeed and which are likely to fail, this book dissects narcissistic personalities and contrasts narcissists with the other psychoanalytic personalities: the careful obsessives, caring erotics, and adaptive marketing types." Maccoby concludes, "I'm proposing that management theories need to take account of personality and context. Different personality types shine in different settings. Their approach to leadership may be right for one context but not another." Jack Welch offers an excellent case in point. He was selected by Reggie Jones to succeed him as CEO, challenging Welch to "blow up" GE. He had the right "personality" for that "context." (For years thereafter, he was referred to as "Neutron Jack.") Throughout the narrative that follows, Maccoby focuses on other examples of productive as well as non-productive narcissists, comparing and contrasting them in terms of their positive or negative impact, especially on their respective corporate cultures.

Of special interest to me is what Maccoby has to say about what he characterizes as "strategic intelligence," especially in Chapter 4. It consists of five elements. The first two (foresight and systems thinking) are "pure intelligence" skills. The other three (visioning, motivating, and partnering) are what Maccoby views as "real-world" skills. He rigorously examines each of the five elements, and what emerges is a composite profile of the productive narcissist: she or he thinks in terms of unprovable forces that are shaping the future...sensing a coming wave that [her or his organization] can ride on"; possesses "an ability to synthesize and integrate, to conceptualize the whole rather than a collection of separate parts"; has a holistic vision, then creates that vision in the real world of business; then achieves buy-in of that vision throughout the given enterprise to embrace a common purpose and implement the vision; and finally, understands "how each alliance, whether personal or corporate, fits into [her or his] vision for the company."

On Pages 197-200, Maccoby provides an especially clever summary of the five elements in the form of a series of statements (one cluster per element) that enables each reader to complete a preliminary (rather than definitive) self-diagnostic of her or his own strategic intelligence. It should also be noted that, previously in Chapter One, Maccoby provides a questionnaire that invites his reader to respond to a series of 80 statements, indicating Never, Almost Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Frequently, or Almost Always. Then in the Appendix, he explains how to interpret the questionnaire results and provides two forms to chart results. One suggests the degree to which the reader's responses fit the four personality types (i.e. erotic, possessive, marketing, and narcissistic); the other chart suggests the profile for the productive aspects of each type (i.e. caring, systematic, self-developing, and visionary). By the time his reader arrives at the Appendix, Maccoby has thoroughly discussed all of the various elements, personality types, and productive aspects.

To repeat, the self-diagnostic he offers is by no means definitive, nor does he make any such claim. It was of substantial value to me, however, because it increased my understanding of Maccoby's core concepts; also, by completing the self-diagnostic, I was challenged to think about those aspects of my own personality that I can - and should -- leverage to become more productive.

Responding to the Workplace Narcissist

2007-10-24T08:33:00.000+02:00

Title: Responding to the Workplace Narcissist

Authors: Wesner, Bradley S.

Advisor: Sandwina, Ronald

Keywords:
Narcissism
Narcissist
Coping Methods
Workplace

Issue Date: 10-Jul-2007

Abstract: The presence of narcissism in the workplace is well established. Some have even gone so far as to extol the virtues of the narcissistic personality and the effect that it has on the leadership roles in organizations. Still, research suggests that there are more narcissists than there are leadership positions that might be filled. It is well established that the presence of those with strong narcissistic tendencies at the lower levels of organizations are disruptive to the productivity and the morale of the organization as a whole. This paper found that five coping method categories existed: non-responding, quitting one’s job, befriending the narcissist, confronting the narcissist, and going to management. Contrary to existing literature, only quitting one’s job or going to management were perceived by respondents as effective methods.

Description: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)

URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1805/1102

Read the study here

Ask the Stress Doc

2007-10-23T08:23:00.000+02:00

The Corporate Narcissist: Can't Survive with Him, Can't Survive without Him

Q. Dear Doc, I need help deciding how to cope with a workplace Narcissist. He's very skilled (sometimes brilliant). Firing him would affect my business badly. Yet he has caused at least one employee to leave, and exhausts everyone else with his chaotic behaviors. He flashes hot and cold, first charismatic, then raging or rejecting. The worst is his artful evasiveness and/or fabrications when asked direct questions. When he senses female vulnerability, he charms and engages his new "friend" for a short time, then drops her. In short, he creates chaos. Yet, it's hard to let him go because for years he has asked me (and I believed he was sincere) to help him overcome his condition (which he acknowledges one month and denies in anger the next)! Are there effective ways to contain or manage or negotiate with a narcissist to decrease the impacts of his condition in a workplace environment? How can one temper the interaction with the Narcissist to keep him productively on the job?

A. Being a mostly reformed narcissist, maintaining a detached perspective is a bit tricky. I must admit for years I've been talking about starting an NA -- Narcissists Anonymous -- Group: for those of us who are truly legends in our own minds. Anyway...You certainly capture the narcissistic profile: an elusive, often volatile person with some talent and, even more, a bigger sense of entitlement. And while there may be a capacity for some pseudo intimacy, the person's often clueless about emotional boundaries. This individual was likely scarred in childhood -- abandonment, underlying humiliation, trust and control are often key issues. And when the necessary headwork, heartwork and homework is neglected, the person believes he deserves special treatment, both because of his "unique" gifts and because of his previous victimization. And always lurking is instantaneous shame and rage when feeling belittled, misunderstood, ignored, etc. This person's sensitivity is definitely double-edged.

It's also important to underscore the double-edged impact on your business: while there are company benefits to his brilliance, there are painful costs. If left to his own devices, he will be a "stress and chaos carrier" for many other employees, as you document.

As for effective strategies with this guy, several come to mind: 1) limit as much as possible the amount of interaction he has with other employees, 2) have him report to you, less that you are checking up on him, more that you want to stay cutting edge. (You may need to swallow some rage here.) And, finally, the only strategy I believe really has a shot is 3) having a psychological counselor/coach who understands this personality meet with both of you. I also envision two possible directions: a) frame the intervention initially as follows: "I need help in learning how to integrate your creativity and complex and uncommon personality into the organization." (Stroking a narcissist's ego is almost failproof. Or add a touch of humor, this will also appeal to his vanity and be less threatening to a vulnerable ego: "I need help in order to not let you drive me bananas." In light of you being female and of his issues with women, the consultant should be a male. The goal would be to have the narcissist bond with the coach, begin to recognize and control his shame and rage. Hopefully, he will also get some grounding and sense of boundaries with this male authority; b) the second option emerges if you've reached the point of knowing "freedom 's just another word for nothing left to lose." Have a joint meeting with the counselor or conflict specialist, and just be real with your anger and concerns. Let Mr. N know that you'd like to work out any issues the two of you have, support his getting counseling, etc. But you will not be able to accept his dysfunctional behavior in the office. And that's the bottom line! And that's how you...Practice Safe Stress!

Postscript: As for a specific consultant, I'm rested and ready. My motto -- "Have Stress? Will Travel: A Smart Mouth for Hire!" What can I say: Once a narcissist, always a narcissist. ;-)

Mark Gorkin, LICSW, the Stress Doc, a psychotherapist and nationally recognized speaker, trainer, consultant and author

http://www.stressdoc.com

Unnatural narcissism

2007-10-22T08:05:00.000+02:00

Narcissism is a normal and inherent part of human nature. We are all narcissistic to a degree but some people have excessive levels of narcissism. A little narcissism might be a good thing but a lot is not. Narcissism, and from here on by narcissism I mean excessive rather than normal narcissism, is not a disease or insanity but a basic motivation and a way of life. It is an unconscious, primitive, protective impulse, a set of beliefs, instincts, and urges based upon the superiority of the self that influence all thought and action.

The narcissist has an idealized, superior, self-image, which is the exclusive centre of his or her world and life. This sense of superiority can be based on:

* a person’s body (appearance, health, sexual prowess, physical fitness, or sporting ability).

* their mind (intelligence and knowledge, real or imagined, or some talent or ability).

* their ‘spirituality’.

* Or their social being—their status, leadership skills, competitiveness, ability to control and dominate others, or on being a ‘people person’, ‘life of the party’, someone popular and loved by all.

Narcissists usually elevate the importance of the area upon which they base their superiority and dismiss or denigrate the others. The French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre for example, was so invested in the power of his mind that he was impatient with the requirements of his own body and even resented having to shave, clean his teeth, and bathe.

Some narcissists see themselves as superior in more than one area or even in all four. Still others don’t feel any need at all to have, be, or do anything out of the ordinary, or to prove or justify their superiority in any way. They believe they were simply born superior. They see themselves as special, different, above the everyday faults, afflictions, obligations, problems, and responsibilities of ‘ordinary’ people. But as with all self-enhancing illusions, believing oneself to be superior does not necessarily make it so. It is possible not only to have an inaccurate self-view but a highly inaccurate self-view. It is possible for a plain, overweight person, for example, to believe they are stunningly attractive, or for someone with a lower than average IQ and little education to believe they are a genius. Even narcissists who are attractive, talented, or intelligent are rarely as exceptional as they believe themselves to be. Unrealistic self-assessment is the essence of narcissism.

Highly narcissistic people exist among all cultures, social classes and races, in young and old, male and female, heterosexual and homosexual. People with highly narcissistic personalities are everywhere—the neighbour who talks non stop about the minutiae of her life and her opinions on everything without the slightest interest in yours, the employee taking credit for other’s work and ideas, bullies, drama queens and prima donnas, computer hackers, louts, hoons, vandals, graffitists, ill-mannered oafs, pushy sales people, corporate cowboys, and con artists. The narcissist is the road-rager who thinks everyone should get out of his way, the domineering mother-in-law who wages guerrilla warfare against her child’s spouse, or the ‘best friend’ who seduces your partner. They might be your parent, sibling, child, employer, co-worker, friend, spouse, or lover. Narcissism fuels racism, sexism, snobbery, and religious bigotry. It contributes to many disturbed and dysfunctional relationships, is the central problem of many addicts, and is the cause of much abusive and criminal behaviour.

Narcissists have always been around and have always been trouble. We have many names for them—spoilt brat, delinquent, braggart, egotist, love-rat, rogue, scoundrel, villain, femme fatale, philanderer. Jails are full of them, so are drug and alcohol treatment programs, divorce courts, corporate offices, and singles bars (even when they are not single). At best, narcissists exasperate, at worst, they can be dangerous, but mostly they are unidentified, undiagnosed, and underestimated. Narcissism is a personality disorder and a powerful psychological force that in effect says:

* I am better than you, more important than you.
* I deserve whatever I want or need because I am special.
* The world should defer to me, recognize my greatness, and shower me with attention and admiration.
* Only what I want, think, feel, and believe, matters.
* Nobody tells me what to do.
* I never have to do anything I don’t want to or do anything that doesn’t feel good. And if it feels good it must be good no matter who it hurts.
* How dare anyone get in my way, inconvenience, or disappoint me.
* No one has the right to make demands on me or expect anything from me.
* If you are hurt that’s your problem not mine.
* Other people don’t have the same rights as I do.

Ultimate Self

Copyright Ultimate-self.com 2007 All rights reserved.

The narcissist, unmasked

2007-10-21T08:49:00.000+02:00

by Benedict Carey

Behind the confident face is a self-loathing
that therapists are just learning to confront.

They've got the most fabulous personal trainer in town, the best lawyer, the top BMW mechanic, and make sure the world knows it.

They're charming enough to attract friends, associates and lovers -- only to drop them as soon as better prospects show up. They need the best table in the house, the lion's share of the conversation and, above all, top billing, whether on the marquee or in the mailroom.

While familiar at almost any level of society, these peacocks find Southern California an especially comfortable habitat. In the warm bath of sunlight and celebrity, their behavior can be entertaining, even encouraged, and it's usually relatively harmless.

Yet some of these seemingly overconfident people are actually in considerable psychological trouble, suffering what psychiatrists call narcissistic personality disorder, one of the most self-destructive and difficult-to-treat conditions in the lexicon of mental illness.

For contrary to Narcissus of Greek legend, who was enthralled by his own reflection in a pool of water, researchers say that roughly 1 million Americans with this personality disorder act not from self-love but from a kind of self-loathing, a dread of failure and an inability to endure its emotional fallout -- shame.

Millions more are thought to suffer from narcissistic tendencies, due to similar but less extreme fears. Recent research suggests that this anguish develops in early childhood, and that therapists can help put it to rest. New treatments combine advice on handling everyday situations -- so-called cognitive therapy -- with emotional forays into the unconscious more typical of psychoanalysis.

This integration of biology and psychology amounts to a "paradigm shift" in the way that therapists understand conditions such as narcissism, said Allan Schore, a UCLA behavioral specialist and expert on the origins of personality disorders.

"The essential thing seems to be that the patient not only see their narcissism, and talk about it," he said, "but also that they have a physical experience of the emotion that underlies it -- rage, shame, sadness, whatever it is."

Disorder's specific traits

The word "narcissist" is so commonly thrown around that it's in danger of becoming an all-purpose label for any difficult character, in the same way that "chauvinist" or "fascist" was used a generation ago. When psychiatrists diagnose the disorder, however, they do so on the basis of several specific traits.
These include a grandiose sense of self-importance, in which talents and personal achievements are vastly exaggerated; a desperate need for admiration; an almost absolute blindness to the needs and feelings of others; and continual fantasies of power, ideal love and success that far outstrip the ordinariness of many narcissists' lives.

To be sure, when deployed in a business that feeds on self-promotion and star power, such as entertainment or music, these qualities often produce just that: a star, a sensation, the sort of executive or performer who lands in a Brentwood estate with a chef and a fleet of German sports cars.

But add to this carefully cantilevered life some imperfect elements -- a demanding spouse, young kids, sluggish box office or sales -- and you can almost hear the joists creaking.

When deprived of across-the-board success in the outside world, narcissists' need for attention may turn inward, causing depression, mood swings, even exacerbating physical pain, said Marc Schoen, a UCLA School of Medicine psychologist. "And of course their pain is always much, much worse than anyone else's," he said.

Marriages often wither under such selfish complaint. Alcohol and drug problems are commonplace. Usually it's only a matter of time, therapists say, before there's trouble in the arena that's often the most gratifying, work.

"That's when they come to see someone like me," said Dr. Robert Neborsky, a San Diego therapist who specializes in difficult-to-treat patients, some 40% of whom have narcissistic tendencies, if not the whole package, he estimates.

"At some point they look around and realize that at home, and at work, everyone hates them." The narcissistic longing for admiration has brought loathing instead, and they don't know why.

As patients, they're no treat, either. Pompous one moment and solicitous the next, alternately contemptuous and then exuberantly affectionate, narcissists qualify as among the worst therapy candidates on Earth. They may know something is wrong but resist treatment so vigorously because the nature of the disorder is based on self-defense and deception of others -- even a therapist trying to help.

In his description of the condition in 1914, Sigmund Freud declared them all but uncurable. At the first hint of disappointment or challenge they might stalk out of the room. Neborsky has told patients that unless they let down their guard and stop trying to outwit him, there's nothing he can do for them.

One such patient, a 36-year-old Los Angeles rock musician named Jason, returned to Neborsky's office when he found he could no longer bear his own company. Powerful narcissistic impulses had alienated those around him, he said. He was suffering severe bouts of depression.

"I was the type of person who had to be the biggest rock star within 100 miles, and every time I turned on the radio and heard other bands it was just torture," he said. "Partly, it's the business.... The definition of narcissist should say 'lead guitarist.' "

The mask of high self-approval must crack, under the strain of some catastrophe at home or at work, before there's any plea for help, therapists say. It is the new awareness among some therapists that they must be patient and wait for pain to show itself that has helped many of them achieve success.

That reaction does not have to spill out from a welter of childhood memories; it may be connected to something that happened at work the previous week, or even in therapy.

"Often there's a break when the therapist goes on vacation, and isn't around when the person is in need," said Dr. James Grotstein, a psychoanalyst in Los Angeles. "The patient is just outraged to learn that I'm not an extension of him, or her. That's the beginning of an emotional connection."

The hot flush of shame, or anger; the heavy ache of sadness, or loss: These physical sensations themselves, expressed in the presence of a capable therapist, appear to activate areas in the brain that did not develop normally in narcissists' second year of life, said Schore.

Researchers do not know exactly why the development goes awry. Some -- in a revival of what has become an out-of-fashion point of view -- attribute the problem to parents who can't or don't properly soothe their toddler's disappointments: teaching the child, in effect, to avoid failure at all costs, rather than learning to cope with it.

Frozen in childhood?

Other theorists are convinced that parents' indulgence of their child's moods and demands freezes the boy or girl in a state of childlike grandiosity.

Either way, brain imaging studies suggest that deficits in the emotional connection between small children and their mother (or primary caregiver) appear to affect the development of right-brain areas involved in empathy and compassion. Although speculative, this notion is influential in the way some therapists think about narcissism, and places the disorder in the context of some cutting-edge research.

The evidence that a therapist can directly affect these areas of the brain in narcissists is based on studies of similarly difficult conditions, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. In one recent experiment, for instance, researchers at UCLA did brain scans on obsessive-compulsive patients.

After 10 weeks of talk therapy, the patients improved, and the scans showed significantly reduced activity in a part of the right brain that has been linked to compulsive behavior and personality disorders, including narcissism. In another experiment, Swedish investigators reported in May that therapists induced similar changes in patients with social phobia. The very same principle is at work when narcissists are successfully engaged, Schore argues.

Certainly when an emotional connection is made, against all odds, patients become more open to practical advice they can use to regulate their behavior day to day, psychologists say. A patient learns to spot the destructive pattern as it develops and to defuse it.

"You're talking about the kind of person who might be standing in the checkout line, and suddenly have a flash of disrespect, a real hurt, because he doesn't feel he's being waited on properly--and now wants to punish someone for that," said Judith Beck, director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in suburban Philadelphia.

One of Beck's recent patients, a retired corporate executive, was so accustomed to star treatment at work and at home that he became furious whenever he was treated normally, whether at the dry cleaner or library checkout counter. Before attending social events the man would prepare himself to be preemptively nasty toward strangers he assumed would not appreciate his specialness.

Beck had him trade those put-downs for questions: What kind of work do you do? How did you get involved in that area? "He was flabbergasted at the response," Beck said. "No one attacked him; people reacted very positively. This went a long way in changing his idea that he had to always be on guard."

Techniques like this also can help narcissists avoid outbursts at friends or family members, psychologists say. When it comes to romantic relationships in particular, many patients consider their spouse or partner as an extension of themselves, there to provide admiration and support and nothing else, said Marion Solomon, a Westwood therapist whose 1992 book "Narcissism and Intimacy" discusses techniques for resolving narcissism in couples therapy.

"Sometimes all it takes is for the wife to be late to a dinner party," she said, "and now he's yelling at her, 'How could you do this to me?'

"For the true narcissist there's no acknowledgment that this is a separate person, with their own needs and thoughts and desires. Just getting a patient to see that can make a difference in a relationship."

October 14 2002 / Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times

The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership

2007-10-20T08:38:00.000+02:00

by Michael Maccoby

ISBN: 0767910230
ISBN-13: 9780767910231]

Synopsis
What is it that Oprah Winfrey, Jack Welch, Martha Stewart, and Bill Gates all have in common? According to psychoanalyst, anthropologist, and consultant Michael Maccoby, it's not just enormous success and celebrity - it's narcissism. In The Productive Narcissist, Maccoby proposes a new paradigm of modern leadership and zeros in on one common character trait: the narcissistic personality. Challenging prevailing leadership theories, Maccoby argues that today's most innovative leaders are not consensus-building bureaucrats; they are "productive narcissists" with the interrelated set of skills - foresight, systems thinking, visioning, motivating, and partnering - that he terms "strategic intelligence." Rejecting the negative stereotype of the individual who is destroyed by a pathological preoccupation with himself, Maccoby redefines the productive narcissist as the personality type who is best suited to lead during times of rapid social and economic change. At the same time, he makes clear that narcissistic leadership doesn't always mean successful leadership and that narcissists lacking strategic intelligence are fated to crash and burn.

Publishers Weekly
In this provocative analysis of contemporary business leaders, psychoanalyst and consultant Maccoby (The Gamesman) reminds readers of Freud's assessment of the narcissist as "the type of person who impresses us as a personality, who disrupts the status quo and brings about change." Maccoby finds examples of these personalities in Amazon.com's Jeff Bezos, Apple's Steve Jobs and Intel's Andy Grove. For Maccoby, the difference between the common view of narcissists as self-absorbed dreamers and the more contrarian notion of their being runaway successes like Microsoft's Bill Gates lies in their realizing personal potential ("productiveness") and being endowed with "strategic intelligence" (as opposed to measurable IQ). This type of intelligence mixes foresight, systems thinking, ability to create a vision, charisma to motivate others and a genius for partnering with complementary talents that Maccoby views as critical to success in managing innovative businesses. Maccoby does acknowledge that after recent corporate upheavals, many may be wary of this type of leader. For those working with productive narcissists, he offers strategies. Business readers willing to slog through Maccoby's sometimes academic prose will learn much here. And to counter the understandable reaction against hiring narcissists as corporate leaders-most corporations would rather avoid the type, Maccoby says-there's the cautionary tale of a 1971 Human Resources report on an executive applying to become CEO of a major company in which the man's renegade tactics and irascible personality were viewed as less than desirable; the man got the job despite HR's reservations. That applicant was Jack Welch.

Customer Reviews

Maccoby Cuts Through the Leadership Literature Clutter
George Casey, Ph.D., Director of Human Resources, 06/13/2003

My home library shelves are cluttered with many of the best selling books that present varied and conflicting leadership theories. Very often, those best selling theories are presented in popular and simplistic terms that appeal to wishful thinking but are not very applicable in the workplace. Maccoby cuts through the leadership literature clutter with a very clearly reasoned and persuasively presented vision of leadership. It is a very insightful and integrated vision based on 30+ years of practical field research and experience as a consultant, anthropologist, psychologist and leadership coach. As a Director of Human Resources with 20 years of experience, I found Maccoby's description of the narcissistic leader and other personality types to be a useful aid to understanding CEOs, Presidents, Vice-President and other leaders who were difficult to relate to and eluded explanation. Maccoby's self-inventory and descriptions of Freud's and Fromm's personality types are also pragmatic tools for any managers and would be leaders who are interested in understanding themselves and in developing their ability to partner effectively with other personality types. Maccoby's elegant writing style and use of entertaining poignant illustrations from productive narcissists we know and love make his analysis of the personality types and strategic thinking entertaining, lively and dynamic... without losing sight of what is practical. What you learn from reading this book may not leave you feeling warm and fuzzy, but it is very useful.

A Dangerous Liaison
Sam Vaknin (palma@unet.com.mk), author of Malignant Self Love, 06/04/2003

Three stars is a compromise between the deeply flawed - and even dangerous - 'advice' offered by the author - and the impressive scholarly overview it is embedded in. The book purports to teach us how to harness this force of nature known as malignant or pathological narcissism. Narcissists are driven, visionary, ambitious, exciting and productive, says Maccoby. To ignore such a resource is a criminal waste. All we need to do is learn how to 'handle' them. As the author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited', I had the chance to work with thousands of narcissists and their victims, including in corporate settings. Maccoby's prescription is either naive or disingenuous. Narcissists cannot be 'handled' or 'managed' or 'contained' or 'channeled'. They are, by definition, incapable of team work. They lack empathy, are exploitative, envious, haughty and feel entitled, even if such a feeling is commensurate only with their grandiose fantasies. Narcissists dissemble, conspire, destroy and self-destruct. Their drive is compulsive, their vision rarely grounded in reality, their human relations a calamity. In the long run, there is no enduring benefit to dancing with narcissists - only ephemeral and, often, fallacious, 'achievements'.

Resisting Manipulation

2007-10-19T08:06:00.000+02:00

Here is a suggestion for how to keep narcissists and other psychological manipulators from controlling you.

Never think to outsmart them or out-manipulate them. You might as well think to beat Roger Federer at tennis.

But straight thinking can help immensely.

Keep clear on this point: Your feelings are not under your control. Your conduct is. Do not let your emotions control your conduct. If you don't, you won't be manipulated.

Like a novelist, a manipulator manipulates your feelings. A novelist knows how to make you happy, sad. He knows how to put you on tenterhooks. He knows how to make you side with a certain character, even a villain. He knows how to make you desperate to see the hero get what she wants.

There are literary formulas for achieving all these things in the mind of the reader.

So, con artists, narcissists, and psychopaths aren't the only great manipulators out there. But they all manipulate by manipulating your emotions.

They CAUSE your feelings. If the situation is such that you can't keep them from abusing you at will, they control your feelings.

Bruised feelings are more sensitive feelings. So, continuing abuse gets more and more painful.

This is why it's best to get away from the narcissist. By doing so, you take away his or her power to control your emotions.

Those emotions aren't bad. In fact, they are what motivate you to put a stop to the abuse. They give you the courage to act.

Fine. But don't let those emotions do your thinking for you. They are housed in the primitive brainstem, so you can imagine what kind of bright ideas they come up with.

Not smart. Then YOU will have something to be ashamed of.

Your intellect should be in charge of your conduct.

Shakespeare's Hamlet is a masterful story of intellect and emotion battling for supremacy in this young man. His raging soliloquies are Emotion trying to make him just go murder that guy and be done with it, so that the world sees he does have a spine.

This inner battle tears him apart. The same inner battle tears the victims of narcissists apart. It's a living Hell.

But I'm sorry, but there's no way duck out of it. Many people think to do so by cheating: they just squelch their feelings.

There. Hell all gone.

Not.

That isn't the same thing as putting your intellect in control of your conduct.

What's more, these people don't really alter their feelings at all. They just delude themselves into thinking that they have controlled their feelings by repressing them. Repressed feelings aren't controlled. They are just pushed down to the level of the subconscious. And they still motivate your conduct from there.

The only difference is that now you are unaware of their influence on your conduct. So, you can't temper that influence with reason and good judgement.

That's dangerous. It's dangerous to have subconscious activity motivating your conduct!

So, there is no way to avoid this heart-rending inner battle of emotion and intellect. The psychological warfare of the narcissist has forced it on you. You are just going to have to win it.

Hamlet does. He never denies his emotions, but he also never cedes control of his conduct to his emotions. Painful as they are, his emotions are good for him. They keep him from the cowardice and treason of allowing the murder of his father by doing nothing about it. BUT, he never lets those emotions call the shots. His intellect steadfastly chooses to bide his time, waiting for an opportunity to do justice, putting the black hat on Claudius and the white hat on himself for the whole world to see. And when that opportunity arrives (at the end), Hamlet acts without hesitation as the legal Seat of Justice in the land.

Justice. Fiat justitia, ruat coelum!

The famous saying was coined by Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus, a Roman statesman and Julius Caesar's father-in-law.

It is usually translated as "Though the heavens fall, let justice be done!" Although to a native speaker of Latin the sense would be "To hell with heaven, let justice be done!" Or in another sense: "To hell with celebrities, let justice be done!"

Kathleen Krajco

The problem is all about him - Me?

2007-10-18T08:56:00.000+02:00

By Jack L Key

These past weeks have been bad ones for campus shootings, killings and other proposed mayhem by “students”. A teenager’s “arsenal” confiscated in one such incident was large enough to arm an entire school. A black-dominated school in Philadelphia became a shooting gallery. We should stop explaining killers on their terms. It's not about guns or culture. It's narcissism, and my life's long odyssey has provided plenty of examples for my inquiring mind.

From the chill dawn outside the Florida prison where serial killer Ted Bundy met his end, to the charred façade of a New York nightclub where Julio Gonzalez incinerated 87 people. On to a muddy Colorado hillside overlooking the Columbine High School where Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold wrought their own brand of mayhem. Along the way, I've come to believe that we're looking for "why" in all the wrong places.

I've lost interest in the cracks, chips, holes and broken places in the lives of men like Cho Seung-Hui, the mass murderer of Virginia Tech. The pain, grievances and self-pity of mass killers are only symptoms of the real explanation. Those who do those things have one common trait. They are all raging narcissists. "I died--like Jesus Christ," Cho said in a video sent to NBC.

Psychologists from South Africa to Chicago have begun to recognize that extreme self-centeredness is the forest in these stories, and all the other things--guns, games, lyrics, pornography, bullying, ridicule--are just trees. To list the traits of the narcissist is enough to prove the point: grandiosity, numbness to the needs and pain of others, emotional isolation, resentment and envy.

In interviews with Ted Bundy taped a quarter-century ago, two investigative reporters captured the essence of homicidal narcissism. Through hour after tedious hour, a man who killed 30 or more women and girls preened for his audience. He spoke of himself as an actor, of life as a series of roles and of other people as props and scenery. His desires were simple: "control" and "mastery". He took whatever he wanted, from shoplifted tube socks to human lives, because nothing mattered beyond his desires. Bundy said he was always surprised that anyone noticed his victims had vanished. "I mean, there are so many people," he explained. The only death he regretted was his own.

Criminologists distinguish between serial killers like Bundy, whose crimes occur one at a time and who try hard to avoid capture, and mass killers like Cho. But the central role of narcissism plainly connects them. Only a narcissist could decide that his alienation should be underlined in the blood of strangers.

The flamboyant nature of these crimes is like a neon sign pointing to the truth. Charles Whitman playing God in his Texas clock tower, James Huberty spraying bullets in a California restaurant, Columbine's Harris and Klebold in their theatrical trench coats--they're all stars in the movie of their self-absorbed minds.

Freud explained narcissism as a failure to grow up. All infants are narcissists, he pointed out, but as we grow, we ought to learn that other people have lives independent of our own. It's not their job to please us, applaud for us or even notice us--let alone die because we're unhappy.

A generation ago, social critics diagnosed narcissism as the signal disorder of contemporary American culture. The cult of celebrity, the marketing of instant gratification, skepticism toward moral codes and the politics of victimhood were signs of a society regressing toward the infant stage.

You don't have to buy Freud or the social critic's indictments, however, to see an immediate danger in the way we examine the lives of mass killers and campus murderers. In the days after Columbine for example, Harris and Klebold emerged as alienated misfits in the jock culture of their suburban high school. We learned about their morbid taste in music and their violent video games. Missing though, was the frame around the picture; the extreme narcissism that licensed these boys, in their minds, to murder their high school teachers and classmates.

Something similar was going on with Virginia Tech's Cho, whose florid writings and videos were an almanac of gripes. "I'm so lonely," he moped to a teacher, failing to mention that he often refused to answer even when people said hello. Of course he was lonely.

In Holocaust studies, I'm told, there is a school of thought that says to explain is to forgive. I won't go that far. But we must stop explaining campus killers on their terms. Minus the clear context of narcissism, the biographical details of these men and boys can begin to look like a plausible chain of cause and effect--especially to other narcissists. And they don't need any more encouragement.

What the Columbine child killers needed, some suggest, was for someone to listen to them. This is the narcissist's view of narcissism: everything would be fine if only he received more attention. The real problem can be found in the killer's own bathroom mirror.

--------------------------

Jack L Key writes feature articles and mainstream commentary on selected topics. He is a staff writer for the New Media Alliance, a published author and a freelance writer. He may be reached at: jockdoc@localnet.com

The Adrenaline Junkie

2007-10-17T08:52:00.000+02:00

Narcissistic Supply is exciting. When it is available, the narcissist feels elated, omnipotent, omniscient, handsome, sexy, adventurous, invincible, and irresistible. When it is missing, the narcissist first enters a manic phase of trying to replenish his supply and, if he fails, the narcissist shrivels, withdraws and is reduced to a zombie-like state of numbness.

Some people – and all narcissists – are addicted to excitement, to the adrenaline rush, to the danger inevitably and invariably involved. They are the adrenaline junkies. All narcissists are adrenaline junkies – but not all adrenaline junkies are narcissists.

Narcissistic Supply is the narcissist's particular sort of thrill. Deficient Narcissistic Supply is tantamount to the absence of excitement and thrills in non-narcissistic adrenaline junkies.

Originally, in early childhood, Narcissistic Supply is meant to help the narcissist regulate his volatile sense of self-worth and self-esteem. But Narcissistic Supply, regardless of its psychodynamic functions, also simply feels good. The narcissist grows addicted to the gratifying effects of Narcissistic Supply. He reacts with anxiety when constant, reliable provision is absent or threatened.

Thus, Narcissistic Supply always comes with excitement, on the one hand and with anxiety on the other hand.

When unable to secure "normal" Narcissistic Supply – adulation, recognition, fame, celebrity, notoriety, infamy, affirmation, or mere attention – the narcissist resorts to "abnormal" Narcissistic Supply. He tries to obtain his drug – the thrills, the good feeling that comes with Narcissistic Supply – by behaving recklessly, by succumbing to substance abuse, or by living dangerously.

Such narcissists – faced with a chronic state of deficient Narcissistic Supply – become criminals, or race drivers, or gamblers, or soldiers, or investigative journalists. They defy authority. They avoid safety, routine and boredom – no safe sex, no financial prudence, no stable marriage or career. They become peripatetic, change jobs, or lovers, or vocations, or avocations, or residences, or friendships often.

But sometimes even these extreme and demonstrative steps are not enough. When confronted with a boring, routine existence – with a chronic and permanent inability to secure Narcissistic Supply and excitement – these people compensate by inventing thrills where there are none.

They become paranoid, full of delusional persecutory notions and ideas of reference. Or they develop phobias – fear of flying, of heights, of enclosed or open spaces, of cats or spiders. Fear is a good substitute to the excitement they so crave and that eludes them.

Anxiety leads to the frenetic search for Narcissistic Supply. Obtaining the supply causes a general – albeit transient – sense of wellbeing, relief and release as the anxiety is alleviated. This cycle is addictive.

But what generates the anxiety in the first place? Are people born adrenaline junkies or do they become ones?

No one knows for sure. It may be genetically determined. We may discover one day that adrenaline junkies, conditioned by defective genes, develop special neural and biochemical paths, an unusual sensitivity to adrenaline. Or, it may indeed be the sad outcome of abuse and trauma during the formative years. The brain is plastic and easily influenced by recurrent bouts of capricious and malicious treatment.

Sam Vaknin

Look Me in the Eye

2007-10-16T08:40:00.000+02:00

Caryl Wyatt, Anita le Roux
798-1-920143-06-0

“One of the best personal odyssey stories I have ever read”
Dr. Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love

“This is a story that I will never forget”
Alison, author of I Have Life

Love addiction is every bit as addictive as any narcotic; ask me, I have been there. I knew I couldn’t stay in an unhappy, abusive and destructive marriage. I didn’t just love my husband; I was obsessed with him. I believed that if I stayed and loved him enough, he would change—but I was wrong. All addictions escalate and can result in death—mine was no different. Broken bones and a broken heart, private clinics and prison, would not stop me from going back, time and again for more of the same. I falsely believed I was powerless to leave. Out on the street with no money, without work and nowhere to go, after a failed third marriage, I didn’t make the choice to leave—but I did make the choice to survive. I chose to learn and understand the nature of domestic violence, its root and its cure. All addictions are ‘one day at a time’ journeys to recovery—join me on mine.

http://www.abuseisnoexcuse.co.za/

Review

Love doesn’t hurt

Caryl’s story is hard hitting and powerful, writes Annette Bayne

Look Me in the Eye is a window into the private prison of an abusive relationship.
With bars made of silence, guilt, fear and powerlessness. Yet it is also a remarkable journey of forgiveness that doesn’t end on the last page, but leaves the reader with hope, watching Caryl take the next steps into a more positive future.
Having finished the book I was able to meet up with Caryl Wyatt a little further down that road to discuss writing the book. We were joined by Anita le Roux, the co- writer of this remarkable story.
It is hard to imagine that this beautiful, confident artist was stuck in the vicious dance that goes on between the co-dependent and the narcissist.
This is not an easy book to read, Wyatt is brutally honest and hard on herself. “Many people have said I was too hard on myself,” she says, “but this was about taking responsibility for my life, there was no space for watering anything down, addiction (which is what this was) is not nice and I had to say it how it was”.
Although she details the tremendous domestic abuse she suffered at the hands of two husbands, this is primarily her story and the book is more about accepting her shortcomings and mistakes and becoming the women she is today than passing blame. She doesn’t tell the stories of her children, friends or husbands and believes those are for them to tell.
Writing this story was an eight month journey for Wyatt and le Roux and the closeness of their relationship is tangible. The story is so well understood by le Roux, that at no time in the book did I hear any other voice than Wyatt’s.
Le Roux was often responsible for reigning Wyatt’s thoughts and challenging what she had to say. For le Roux the book involved the difficult process of being both detached in order to avoid subjectivity, and engaged. “The book was an amazing healing journey for me” she admits “One never heals alone and I had to deal with my own personal baggage in order to write this story”.
“It was my story, at no time did Anita interpret the story in her own way,” Wyatt agrees.
“Writing the book was a very rewarding experinece, I was able to take back the parts of my life that I had lost.” .
If one believes the statistics, domestic violence affects at least a quarter of the South African female population, but because it so often shrouded in silence there is a lack of understanding for those who return time and again. Perhaps Wyatt’s story will open some of the tightly closed doors surrounding abuse, giving people a better understanding of the relationship between the abused and the abuser.
Due to the nature of story, it is a very personal read and and I think that one’s response would be determined by one’s own experience and understanding of abuse. But I know it is not a book I would loan to friend, I would buy them a copy of their own.

http://www.citizen.co.za/index/article.aspx?pDesc=48951,1,22

Love - it's not all about you

2007-10-15T08:46:00.000+02:00

SARAH HAMPSON
Globe and Mail

We were seated in a restaurant that had big barrels of peanuts and bowls of lollipops by the door. It was our neighbourhood haunt, where families routinely took their kids on a Friday night.

My three boys, then in the blur years, ranging in age from 6 to 11, rarely sat still. But they were now, and so were our friends' children, for the half hour it took to eat their chicken wings and fries.

As soon as they were finished, up they got all at once, like a flock of geese, and took off to the back where the video games were.

Adult conversation ensued. My friend was talking about a weekend trip she was about to take to New York.

"And David agreed," she said with some pride, explaining that she was going to leave her husband with their four children in Toronto while she went on a Prada hunt.

"I bargained with him."

She allowed a pause.

I leaned forward. "And he gets?"

"Three blow jobs whenever he wants them," she informed us, laughing.

Her husband, a Bay Street financial type, smiled sheepishly from across the messy table.

Such is life in the picture-perfect world of tony Rosedale, I thought to myself. It's all about what you have (or appear to have) and what you get.

Later, when we got home, my husband said he thought this kind of contractual arrangement was a cool solution to marital happiness.

I won't say this was the beginning of the end of our marriage - there were far more serious issues - but it did make me wonder: Is all love contractual? And can a marriage last if it is?

If we were honest, we would admit that romantic love begins with some narcissistic intent.

"Darling," you might say, if you dared to be honest. "When I look deeply into your eyes, I see my new Audi."

And it doesn't have to be just a material gain on offer. I often hear my single friends say about a prospective partner, "He's not what I need." Do we seek a partner who will fit our lifestyle, like the perfect sofa, where we can relax after a long day at work?

It's also about finding someone who serves as a flattering mirror. One great dating story came from a young woman I know who was speaking about her sister. "She went out with this guy she really liked. They ordered pizza. When his slice arrived, he folded it into a wedge, like an envelope, and ate it in his hands. For her, that was it. No more dates."

If you were with a pizza folder, what would that say about you? That you have questionable standards? That you wear day-old underwear? That you aspire to live in an Ajax, Ont., suburb and drive a gas-guzzling pollution-mobile?

Lynn Darling, in a well-known essay called For Better and Worse, first published in Esquire magazine in 1996, expressed the narcissism of marriage best: "I married the man I married because I liked his version of myself better than my own. ... I was pleased by the person I saw reflected in his eyes."

Even Sigmund Freud understood the subconscious exchange of what one partner gives to the other. In his 1914 paper On Narcissism: An Introduction, the famous psychoanalyst mused about the nature of romantic love. He believed that falling in love is a self-sustaining redeployment of energy.

It's about giving in order to get.

Love is an extension of erotic energy - Dr. Freud used the term "libido" - to another person, an action that depletes the narcissistic investment in one's own ego. Having love returned, however, restores one's self-regard.

Sorry, but the love I like to contemplate and which I think sustains true relationships is more selfless.

And that's where Phil Reinders comes in. He is a pastor at First Church, a Christian Reformed Church in Calgary. A 44-year-old father of two children, he wrote me an e-mail recently about lessons from his own 20-year marriage.

"Marriage is about growing us up, a context designed not only for our happiness but also for our emotional/spiritual formation. I'm learning to see marriage, loving another person, as a call to serve that person. I think when I got married, I was mostly thinking, 'What am I going to get out of the deal?' instead of, 'How am I called to give myself selflessly?' or 'How can I serve my spouse instead of first thinking about how she can serve me and my agenda?' I got married with some incredibly self-absorbed notions. And in marriage, I have experienced a dead end ... but I have found it to be the end of my self-absorbed heart."

In conversation, when I phoned him, he elaborated on his idea of marital love by calling it "a covenantal relationship - a sense that you enter into it not for yourself but for the other's best interests. It is very different from a contractual relationship."

The closest I have come to this kind of powerful love is with my children. The desire to have babies may begin with some narcissistic intent. I used to think of raising them as a way to perpetuate my philosophy. It's hard, at the start, not to think of each as a version of mini-me, especially when others exclaim how this one has his mother's eyes, that one has his father's mouth.

But soon, and especially when they grow to become fascinating young adults, you see how expansive that unconditional love is. They might get tattoos you hate. They don't always follow the career path you envisioned for them. They may even fold their pizza slices. They make mistakes. Sometimes, they embarrass you.

But you adore them through it all. And you learn the most beautiful lesson about love: that it is about allowing that beloved to become the individual he or she needs to be.

shampson@globeandmail.com

Who are you?

2007-10-14T08:14:00.000+02:00

Henley Morgan
The Jamaica Observer
Thursday, October 11, 2007

Over the long history of humankind there have been breakthroughs in thinking, the genius of which is astounding. Consider for instance some of the 19th century scientific ideas that continue to influence social, cultural and intellectual practices today. The cell theory of life, the germ theory of disease and the gene theory of inheritance are perceived to be active dimensions of reality; as if they are laws established by God himself.

The groundbreaking work in the field of psychology dealing with the origins and development of human personality is especially profound. Some of the names whose contributions have entered the common vocabulary are Carl Gustav Jung (introversion and extroversion), Alfred Adler (inferiority and superiority complexes), and Sigmund Freud (id, ego and superego).

Personality is intriguing because unlike skin colour, height or facial features it is not obvious to the eyes. As one journeys through life, one is attracted to a variety of personalities. Often it is only upon living with, working for or in some other intimate way relating to an individual that one comes to know or get a measure of the true personality. Since people do not wear a label identifying themselves by their personality type, it is helpful to at least be aware of the "truths" revealed by the work of geniuses who spent a
lifetime studying the relationship between a person's inward psychological makeup and his or her outward behaviour.
While Freud recognised that there are an almost infinite number of personality types, he identified three main ones. These are the erotic, the obsessive and the narcissistic personality.

In identifying the erotic personality, Freud did not generally mean a sexual personality, but rather one for whom loving and being loved is most important. The behaviour and feelings of people with this type of personality are to a degree dependent on those they fear may stop loving them. As leaders (whether in the home, in business or in government), they are caring and supportive but they tend to avoid conflict. At their most productive they are developers of those who would not otherwise make it; and are enablers and helpers at work. At their least productive, they tolerate "foolishness" with the resulting drift towards mediocrity. Freud classified such people as being outer-directed.

By contrast, people with an obsessive personality are inner-directed. They make sure instructions and standards are followed, and may become agitated by people who will not adapt to change or circumstances that are allowed to drift aimlessly. The most productive obsessives set high standards, communicate in a direct fashion, and are therefore strong mentors and team players. The least productive and uncooperative may lack the passion and charisma it takes to turn a good idea into a great one or to give people a "mountain-top" experience. These tend to become narrow experts and rule-bound bureaucrats.

Narcissists have big personalities, are egotistical and driven by personal (some would say selfish) ambition. These characteristics make them passionate achievers and good at breaking new ground, even if unable to hold territory once taken. Narcissism has a dark side. People with this personality type tend to be insecure and emotionally isolated, even at the point of success. Perceived threats can trigger rage. Often bordering on paranoia, the narcissist is continually on the lookout for enemies even when there is none. Achievements can fuel feelings of grandiosity and self-adulation. They want to be admired even more than to be loved. Freud named this personality type after the mythical figure Narcissus who died because of his preoccupation with himself.
It is unlikely anyone reading this will see himself or herself as a narcissist although we can each readily identify someone who is. For people in leadership positions, one of the tell-tale signs is the individual who surrounds himself or herself with a small band of sycophants, wimps and lackeys who in turn feed off the narcissist's insecurities, like maggots feeding off a rotting corpse. To people looking on, the mutual and often fatal attraction is embarrassingly evident.

People do not fit neatly into the categories. We all have demons, the exorcism of which must be part of a deliberate improvement plan. It is important that in assessing and coming to a reality of who we really are, we be guided by the admonition: "To thine own self be true".

hmorgan@cwjamaica.com

Women and Sacrifice

2007-10-13T08:20:00.000+02:00

Male Narcissism and the Psychology of Religion

by William Beers

ISBN-10: 0814323774
ISBN-13: 978-0814323779

About the book

Women and Sacrifice is an original and lucid book that explores the anthropology and developmental psychology of male violence in blood sacrifice and its implications in religion and culture. It is the first comprehensive study of the psychology of gender and religion using the controversial ideas of Heinz Kohut and self-psychology.

Beers not only makes an important contribution to our psychological understanding of sacrifice, he explores how narcissistic anxiety fuels rituals and social structures that subordinate women. He bases his provocative theory on three general premises: sacrifice is traditionally performed only by men; the gender specificity of sacrifice can be traced to gender-specific developments of men and women and is reflected in religions throughout the world; and the male violence of sacrifice is related to other forms of male violence. Beers develops the theory that such rituals have a psychological function that diminishes and controls women.

Reviews

"The book is to my knowledge unique in applying the insights of the self-psychology movement in psychoanalysis to sacrifice and is an excellent illustration of the applied value of that controversial psychoanalytic theory." — Ernest Wallwork, Syracuse University

Review - Coping with Infuriating, Mean, Critical People

2007-10-12T08:10:00.000+02:00

The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern
by Nina W. Brown
Praeger, 2006
Review by Aakash Singh, Ph.D.

I was attracted to the book, as any potential reader might be, because of its catchy title: Coping with Infuriating, Mean, Critical People -- Oh, do I know so many of them! I thought I had come across a book that would, as the title suggests, teach me how to cope with these people. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The reason this was not the case is to be found in the subtitle: The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern. That is, the book actually teaches us how to cope with people who exhibit the so-called destructive narcissistic pattern; such people tend to be infuriating, mean, and critical. However, not all infuriating, mean, and critical people can be said to exhibit the destructive narcissistic pattern; there are a myriad of other reasons why people might possess those nasty traits. Thus, the catchy title is evidently overbroad, and consequently somewhat misrepresentative of the book's actual scope and content.

The author or publisher may find the term "misrepresentative" far too strong. They may argue that, after all, the subtitle is there to narrow or define the wide scope implied through the main title. This is a plausible argument, but it itself grants that the subtitle is thus absolutely essential to the title in order for the title not to be misleading for potential readers. And this, precisely, is the main problem: the subtitle is toned down on the spine of the book cover; it is toned way down on the front cover; and, it is not even present on the first title page within the book. I am not at all suggesting that the playing down of the subtitle is evidence of deliberate misrepresentation on the part of the publisher. Far from it. But I am stating that I was indeed misled by the title, and, generalizing from there, that the title is in fact somewhat misleading.

But enough about that. There still may be plenty of interest in the topic that the book does cover, that is, coping with the people who exhibit the destructive narcissistic pattern, or DNP. Let us first address what the author means by DNP.

DNP is not a full-fledged psychological disorder or syndrome (it does not appear in the DSM-IV, for example), but rather a pattern of behavior. It is not defined by one particular trait, but rather by a cluster of likely characteristics. The author provides the following list as indicative characteristics of a DNP (24-25):

* Extensions of self and boundaries
* Exploitation
* Lack of empathy
* Grandiosity
* The impoverished self
* Attention-seeking
* Admiration-seeking
* Shallow emotions
* Emptiness
* Entitlement

The destructive narcissist need not exhibit all ten of these traits in order to exhibit a DNP, and people may exhibit some or even several of these traits without necessarily being a destructive narcissist. This makes it particularly difficult to know whether we even ought to conclude that a person exhibits a DNP, not to mention figuring out how to cope with him or her. Thus, over half the book (chapters 1-5) is devoted to exhaustively defining, describing, and explaining the nature and effects of a DNP, including several rating scales/questionnaires, as well as copious examples and anecdotes -- all this as preparatory to the task of learning how to deal with destructive narcissists (chapters 6-9). The rating scales consist of a series of questions that you should answer with the potential DNP person's behavior in mind. The author then provides you with an explanation for how to tally up the score derived from your answers at the end, et voila, you have a good basis upon which to decide what sort of person you are really dealing with. The rating scales include: Perception of Attitudes and Behavior Scale Related to a Destructive Narcissistic Pattern (6); Lingering Grandiosity Scale (64); Admiration-Seeking Behavior Scale (70); and, Center of Attention Rating Scale (78). It's quite fun to run oneself through the grinder and find out just how grandiose or admiration-seeking one really is.

Speaking of turning the scales to oneself, one of the most interesting aspects of the book is how the author concentrates on the reader's need to turn his or her attention inward, as an essential ingredient to coping with the DNP of others. Since the destructive narcissist is unlikely to change him or herself, and since, at any rate, it is highly unlikely that we can do anything to force a change in his or her behavior, it becomes necessary that we look at our own behavior, at the reactions evoked in us by the actions of a person exhibiting DNP. Our own behavior, reactions, feelings are far more pliable for us than those of others. As the author writes, "it becomes empowering to realize that there are actions you can take that will help to reduce or eliminate negative effects [of the DNP] on you" (ix).

The nine chapters that constitute the body of the work are preceded by a very brief, three-paragraph Preface, where the author explains why she is bringing out another book on the topic after her earlier assay on the subject, very appropriately entitled The Destructive Narcissistic Pattern (1998), and succeeded by an even shorter Bibliography, with only four entries not written by the author herself, which serves to illustrate just how little treatment the topic of DNP has received by psychologists and researchers.

What one gleans from the body of the work as well as from the front and back matter is that the author, Nina Brown, is clearly the authority on the DNP. Thus, if you have to interact regularly with someone you suspect may exhibit DNP, then this is without a doubt the book you should read for help. If, however, you are seeking for help in coping with infuriating, mean, and critical people in general, then carry on searching, because that is not the subject of the book under review.

© 2007 Aakash Singh
Aakash Singh (Reader in Philosophy, University of Delhi, South Campus)

Published in Metapsychology Online Reviews

Jekyll & Hyde

2007-10-11T08:40:00.000+02:00

Devaluing

To the outside world [narcissists] wear a mask, happy and charming, descriptions of narcissistic personality disorder don't begin describe the things that thier victims are stunned and confused in daily interaction with narcissists.

The victim is kept off balance, the narcissist displayed his false self in the beginning, (charming phase to gain the trust of victim) now starts the D&D phase (devalue and discard), in the beginning small devaluing comments and eventually cruel and heartless manipulations. They are absolutely the world's best manipulators, liars, and fabricators of truth. They do so convincingly because they believe their own lies.

Victims often view it as this poor soul just needs to see more empathy since the narcissist has manipulated them from the start with claims that they have been helpful to others in past and were victims in the end, so they are not trusting and helpful now. It's often the supply's good qualities that the narcissist sadly uses against them.

After an episode of devaluing, they quickly reel into reverse, they manipulate you to feel sorry for them again, they turn on charm and suck you right back in to regain your trust, the word "sorry" does not exist in their vocabulary because empathy does not exist in their world, they have no remorse, because people are merely objects to use, devalue and discard. Eventually they feel bored and create more drama, the emotional roller coaster ride for the victim starts all over again.

Caged

Narcissism and Addiction

2007-10-10T08:05:00.000+02:00

In our attempt to decipher the human psyche (in itself a mere construct, not an ontological entity), we have come up with two answers:

I. That behaviors, moods, emotions, and cognitions are wholly reducible to biochemical reactions and neural pathways in the brain. This medicalization of what it is to be human is inevitably hotly contested.

II. That behaviors, moods, emotions, and cognitions can be explained and predicted by the introduction of "scientific" theories based on primary concepts. Psychoanalysis is an early - and now widely disregarded - example of such an approach to human affairs.

The concepts of "addiction" and "(pathological) narcissism" were introduced to account for oft-recurring amalgams of behaviors, moods, emotions, and cognitions. Both are organizing, exegetic principles with some predictive powers. Both hark back to Calvinist and Puritan strands of Protestantism where excess and compulsion (inner demons) were important topics.

Yet, though clearly umbilically connected, as I have demonstrated elsewhere, addictive behaviors and narcissistic defenses also differ in critical ways.

When addicts engage in addictive behaviors, they seek to change their perception of their environment. As the alcoholic Inspector Morse says, once he had consumed his single Malts, "the world looks a happier place". Drugs make the things look varicolored, brighter, more hopeful, and fun-filled.

In contrast, the narcissist needs narcissistic supply to regulate his inner universe. Narcissists care little about the world out there, except as an ensemble of potential and actual sources of narcissistic supply. The narcissist's drug of choice - attention - is geared to sustain his grandiose fantasies and senses of omnipotence and omniscience.

Classical addiction - to drugs, alcohol, gambling, or to other compulsive behaviors - provides the addict with an exoskeleton: boundaries, rituals, timetables, and order in an otherwise chaotically disintegrating universe.

Not so for the narcissist.

Admittedly, like the addict's search for gratification, the narcissist's pursuit of narcissistic supply is frenetic and compulsive and ever-present. Yet, unlike the addict's, it is not structured, rigid, or ritualistic. On the contrary, it is flexible and inventive. Narcissism, in other words, is an adaptive behavior, albeit one that has outlived its usefulness. Addiction is merely self-destructive and has no adaptive value or reason.

Finally, at heart, all addicts are self-destructive, self-defeating, self-loathing, and even suicidal. In other words: addicts are predominantly masochists. Narcissists, in contrast, are sadists and paranoids. They lapse into masochism only when their narcissistic supply runs hopelessly dry. The narcissist's masochism is aimed at restoring his sense of (moral) superiority (as a self-sacrificial victim) and to prod him into a renewed effort to reassert himself and hunt for new sources of narcissistic supply.

Thus, while the addict's brand of masochism is nihilistic and suicidal - the narcissist's masochism is about self-preservation.

Sam Vaknin

Why doesn't the victim leave the abuser?

2007-10-09T08:53:00.000+02:00

"Why doesn't she leave him?"

People usually ask it in the context of a wife not leaving her abusive husband, but it could be the other way around. Or it could be a person not cutting off ties with an abusive family or a family that serves as a proxy for a narcissist within it. Whatever - why doesn't the victim leave?

Every victim asks him- or her-self the same question! Truth is stranger than fiction, but here is the controlling fact of the matter: That's what normal people do when subjected to abuse.

In other words, people who say "Why doesn't she leave him?" wouldn't leave him themselves if they were in her shoes.

Well, that isn't exactly right. People do vary in how much abuse it takes to get them to leave. That is, some will leave sooner than others. But they all take far more abuse than anyone would think a human being could. Why? It's counter intuitive.

The well documented Stockholm syndrome partly explains why. But making the victim cling to the victimizer is an ancient art. It's the art of the Inquisitor and the torturer. A black art that works like magic. The Inquisition and KGB had it down to an fine art form.

The crucial point is that this is what NORMAL people do. The abuser creates an upside-down world in which all normal human reactions work backwards.

Denial is the chief culprit.

How long? how much abuse does it take to make you face facts and see that he or she is just evil - this person you love with all your heart ... is evil. An unthinkable thought, no?

AND he or she loves you back about as much as you love a cockroach. Has just been playing you for a fool. Another unthinkable thought, no?

Denial.

Yet in the cases I know about, the victim always does eventually face facts and leave. None came into the relationship "seeking" abuse either. In fact, that is so contrary to the Law of Nature that I won't believe anybody does THAT till I see it.

The victim hates the abuse and tries to avoid it. The problem is that narcissists are deliberately impossible people, so the only way to avoid narcissistic abuse is to avoid the narcissist himself = get away from him.

Look at the situation you've got. Love is an attraction. You love this person with all your heart - an irresistible attraction to him or her. But he or she emits a blast of antigravity in the abuse they respond to your love with. An irresistible repulsion from him or her.

Something's gotta give in this bizarre situation. Sooner or later the victim realizes that it will be her mind if she doesn't come out of denial and face facts.

Here she is on her knees before her abuser, clinging to him for dear life in the naive belief that she can exorcise the demon inside him. The more violently he rejects her, the tighter she clings. Something's gotta give.

I myself have asked "Why doesn't she leave him?" about a neighbor. I understood all this very well already and had him pegged as a narcissist, but still I asked the question. It seemed to me that she was being exceedingly dense.

But she wasn't really. (She only lasted a year or two.)

All victims deservedly do suffer guilt and shame for eating lies and putting up with abuse longer than we should, especially if it was in a marriage (rather than a birth family) and there were children affected.

But that guilt isn't guilt for the abuse. To share in the guilt for abuse, you would have to be a CAUSE of it. And just being within range of it isn't causing it. One might as well blame a murdered bank teller for taking a job at a bank.

The victim's guilt is a failure of integrity. A failure to protect, a failure to have a backbone, a failure to be honest with ourselves and KNOW THE TRUTH.

But it's absurd to view that guilt as partly JUSTIFYING what the abuser did. Nor does it TEMPT the abuser. Just being there doesn't TEMPT anyone to abuse you. Loving someone doesn't TEMPT them to kick you around. Being vulnerable and defenseless doesn't TEMPT them to eviscerate you.

Yes, you should have run away. But the victim's failure to doesn't take one whittle of the guilt and blame FOR THE ABUSE off the victimizer and place it on the victim.

As it is often said, though a woman walks down the street naked, no man has the right to rape her. And in that case, she is tempting the abuser.

But I have never seen a victim of a narcissist tempt their abuser. In fact, it's quite the other way around.

Whenever I find myself asking "Why doesn't she leave him?" I withhold judgement. I do this on the basis of the concept of competence to judge. It's a judicial concept that holds true in personal judgement. I am just not competent to judge her for that, because I don't know the whole story. What's more, there are sometimes compelling practical reasons for why she cannot leave him and just draws battle lines within the household to keep him at bay.

We know enough only when the victim is ourselves, and then we are not competent either, because we will be either too easy on ourselves or too hard on ourselves.

But one thing is for certain: THAT guilt, is for a different sin. It doesn't matter that she hasn't run away from him. Her being there is no CAUSE of a predator attacking her.

The abuse is 100% the abuser's sin. He is 100% guilty of it and deserves 100% of the blame.

Ironic, isn't it? Blame is the only thing narcissists share.

Kathleen Krajco

A Field Guide To Narcissism

2007-10-08T08:03:00.000+02:00

Narcissists are charming, exasperating, captivating—and sometimes downright ludicrous. The weird world of the megalomaniac, explained.

By:Carl Vogel
Psychology Today

There's the groom who wouldn't let his fiancee's overweight friend be a bridesmaid because he didn't want her near him in the wedding pictures. The entrepreneur who launched a meeting for new employees by explaining that nobody ever gets anywhere working for someone else. The woman who had such confidence in her great taste, she routinely redecorated her daughter's home without asking. The guy who found himself so handsome, he took a self-portrait with a Polaroid every night before bed to preserve the moment.

As Ted Turner put it: "If I only had a little humility, I'd be perfect."

But narcissism isn't just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness. As a personality type, it ranges from a tendency to a serious clinical disorder, encompassing unexpected, even counterintuitive behavior. The Greek myth of Narcissus ends with the beautiful young man lost to the world, content to forever gaze at his own reflection in a pool of water. Real-life narcissists, however, desperately need other people to validate their own worth. "It's not so much being liked. It's much more important to be admired. Studies have shown narcissists are willing to sacrifice being liked if they think it's necessary to be admired," says Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University in Tallahassee.

Deep desire to be at the center of things is served by extreme self-confidence, a combination that makes narcissists attractive and even charming. Buoyed by a coterie of admiring friends and associates—protected by the armor of positive self-regard—someone with a mild-to-moderate case of narcissism can float through life feeling pretty good about himself. Since they feel entitled to special treatment, they are easily offended, and readily harbor grudges. Yet narcissists are often very popular—at least in the short term.

The beauty of being a narcissist is that even when disaster stares you in the face, you feel neither doubt nor remorse. In a recent study, for example, researchers asked a pair of participants to undertake a task that was rigged to fail. Most people tend to protect their partner, sharing either the credit or the blame. "But the narcissists would say, 'It's totally the other person's fault.' They're completely willing to step on someone," says narcissism researcher Keith Campbell, associate professor of social psychology at the University of Georgia.

Intensely narcissistic people often live tumultuous lives, as few people can tolerate them for long. But having a milder version of the personality type comes with many side benefits. Subclinical narcissists are happy. They are less likely to be depressed, sad or anxious, and rate their subjective well-being more highly. They're less reactive to stress, and recover more rapidly from it.

Mild narcissism also seems to help people recover from accidents or other trauma—it gives them an unrealistic sense of their own invulnerability, and they believe that they will be able to handle whatever else life throws at them. As one researcher put it, being somewhat narcissistic is like driving a huge SUV: You're having a great time, even while you hog the road, suck up extra resources and put other drivers at higher risk.

A narcissist can be hard to identify, in part because he is likely to be much more fascinating than you would expect for someone so self-absorbed, and in part because you wouldn't think someone with such self-regard could be so defensive and needy.

The Narcissist in the Conference Room

Some of the country's most successful companies are run by narcissists. It's been said about the founder of Oracle: "The difference between Larry Ellison and God is that God doesn't think he's Larry Ellison." Running on a full tank of confidence and charisma, narcissists often thrive as salesmen, entrepreneurs, surgeons or in other ego-intensive, cut-throat professions.

The downside? Temper tantrums, unreasonable expectations, shocking selfishness and a complete inability to engage in teamwork. "Every once in a while, someone would be in the bathroom in tears after one of her outbursts," Charlotte Tomic says of her former boss's behavior. Tomic, a media relations professional in New York City, says her narcissistic boss subjected her to endless discussions of her wardrobe and travel plans, and managed in total ignorance of either group effort or recognition. Unfortunately, short of quitting, Tomic could do little about it. You can't always escape the egomaniac in the cubicle next door, but a few techniques may help you endure the experience.

1. Butter him up. Novelist Candace Talmadge says her former boss was like a little boy stirring up an anthill with a stick. "His favorite practice was to come into our offices late on a Friday with a task that took up the entire three-day weekend," she says. "Then he wouldn't come in on Tuesday, or he'd just drop the whole thing." If you want to put an end to such wasteful behavior, try flattery, a time-honored way to manipulate a narcissist. Talmadge could have countered, "Can we start next week? Without your guidance, we're lost on tough stuff like this." Of course, you'd have to stomach your own servility.

2. Let her be the center of attention. Narcissists' self-confidence on the job has no basis in reality; in fact, one study shows that coworkers generally rate narcissists as below-average performers. However, they do tend to do well when all eyes are on them, and the opportunity to look like a star is ripe. Their immunity to self-doubt means that unlike most of the rest of us, they aren't afraid to be the center of attention. Stage fright isn't a big issue for these megalomaniacs. "For the average person, pressure gets in the way [of achievement]. But the narcissist is very happy in the moment of glory," says Baumeister. "It has to be glory, though. He's not going to be a team player." If you've got a Barry Bonds on your team, give him the chance to excel—and to be admired—and get out of the way.

3. Be clear on the quid pro quo. When a narcissist is in charge, he'll feel no compunction asking for a lot and providing very little in return. "He's totally focused on his vision for the project; it's all about him. Make clear the rules of the game, because he's not going to play fair," says Michael Maccoby, a psychoanalyst and business consultant who authored The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Perils of Visionary Leadership. That way, if you work 70 hours a week to hit a deadline, at least you'll be compensated for it.

4. Don't cross him. Entirely dependent on others' opinions, a narcissist can act like a cornered animal if he or she feels threatened. Research shows that narcissists become aggressive when they feel an ego threat—confronted with proof that they aren't special—or feel they aren't getting enough respect. In the lab, they are willing to punish other experimental subjects with a noise blast when they think they've been put down. If you have to tell a narcissist he isn't doing a good job, do it gently—and be prepared.

5. Keep a sense of humor. One upside: Narcissists can be entertaining, if you keep a sense of perspective. Frederick Rhodewalt, a professor of psychology at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, describes one assistant professor who joined the department softball team. Although he had no experience with a ball and bat, his background in tennis gave him enough of an edge that he won the batting title for the league. "And for a few months, every time I saw him in the office, he'd be carrying that trophy," Rhodewalt laughs.

The Narcissist In Love

As bad as narcissistic behavior can be in a coworker, golf buddy or relative, it's worse in a romantic partner. Male or female, narcissists are the quintessential sharks: Self-confidence and charm make them highly appealing in the early stages of attraction. Since narcissists are very concerned about appearance, they're likely to be well-groomed and fashionable. "He was into nice things, the best brand names. Everything was about treating himself well," says Lynn, a 30-year-old consultant in San Diego, about her ex-boyfriend. "And he was totally charismatic. After we were going out for a while, I could see him turn it on and off when he wanted something."

Lynn found out that her boyfriend was what Campbell, author of When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself, calls a "game-playing" lover. Campbell found that narcissists' need for power and autonomy leads them to shun commitment—and to cheat. Romantic relationships become just another way for them to pump up their own self-image. Narcissists look for mates with very high social status (for example, looks or success) which complements an inflated sense of self.

Lynn's narcissistic boyfriend was a poker player, and she says now that the relationship was just like a sport to him. "He would figure out the landscape, and he was never willing to gamble more than he was willing to lose," Lynn says. "He told me I had qualities he was looking for, but also that he needed to see other women."

After nine months, they broke up, also typical for narcissists, whose relationships don't last long. In Campbell's studies, "relationships with narcissists were more satisfying initially, and then dramatically less satisfying at the end," he says. The extreme example might be Scott Peterson, who was charismatic enough to attract a beautiful wife—and coldhearted enough to murder her when he wanted to move on.

Obviously, most narcissists aren't killers, but they do tend to be very unsatisfying mates. If he's had a string of relationships, if he can't stop talking about how much people admire him, if he gets easily riled when he doesn't get what he wants—he may not be just another commitment-phobic man. He's a narcissist.

Unfortunately, anyone can be seduced by a narcissist. One misconception is that only those with low self-esteem date someone who's so self-centered, but people with normal self-respect can also end up involved with a narcissist. They have decisive, take-charge personalities in a society that shuns wishy-washiness.

And after all, they're experts at making people admire them. Best-case scenario: when narcissists date each other. That way, both can have a self-confident, impressive and shallow mate—and leave the rest of us in peace.

The Care and Feeding of a Narcissist

Nobody knows for sure how someone becomes a narcissist. The expert consensus is that genetics plays a huge role. Overly permissive moms and dads who lavish their children with endless praise also seem to contribute.

Some researchers believe more men are narcissistic than women, while others counter that since many key traits—being self-centered, competitive, disinterested in intimacy—are more socially acceptable in men, women may be equally narcissistic but less visible as such. Female narcissists might install themselves at the center of a circle of friends, for example, rather than seize the stage at work. Similarly, some studies show that Westerners are more narcissistic than people from Asian cultures. Others posit that people "self-enhance" in every society—it's just that in a more collectivist culture, such as Japan's, narcissists are subtler, since self-aggrandizing behavior isn't rewarded or respected.

It stands to reason that if narcissism can be fostered, it can be treated as well. For years, personality disorders were thought to be essentially incurable. That thinking is changing, but narcissists may be among the hardest cases to crack. An unhappy narcissist generally believes that his main problem is that other people don't treat him as well as he deserves. When you think you're the greatest—and when other people mostly defer to you—why would you want to change?

"Narcissists are either dragged in by someone who is having trouble with them—a spouse or relative—or they show up because of feelings of emptiness," says Rhodewalt. "Why, they wonder, if they're so accomplished and wonderful, does life seem so empty?" When you've built a life on falsehoods, it's hard to grapple with questions that everyone faces, like the meaning of life. The needle's stuck on "I'm wonderful," and your personality doesn't allow you to grow—to change your behavior or attitudes in response to life's challenges.

Your Inner Narcissist

You're pretty pleased with yourself. And that's a good thing. Studies reveal that most ordinary people secretly think they're better than everyone else: We rate ourselves as more dependable, smarter, friendlier, harder-working, less-prejudiced and even better in the sack than others. "The paradox about narcissism is that we all have this streak of egotism," says Mark Leary, chair of the department of psychology at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. "Eighty percent of people think they're better than average."

Psychologically healthy people generally twist the world to their advantage just a little bit. If we do well on a test, for example, we're likely to congratulate ourselves. If we do poorly, we'll claim the test was badly written, unfair or wrong. It's normal, perhaps even necessary. By telling ourselves that our faults are universal but our strengths are unique, we can get through life's trials without losing faith in our own abilities.

These biases are only faint echoes of the serious distortions that a narcissist creates. A narcissist can't see anything wrong about herself, even when her world is crashing down all around her. "Negative emotions are often functional. They tell you when things need to change about the environment or yourself," Leary says. So the narcissist does, after all, have an Achilles' heel—being blind to her own faults. And that's perhaps the only way to console yourself when you've been subjected to the blunt edge of a narcissistic personality. Rather than admiration or fury, narcissists may in fact deserve our pity. From a very safe distance.

The Hollywood Cure

We love movies in which a raging ego is tempered by challenges. Dropkicking a character out of their grandiosity is a cherished plot twist. All the same, don't expect these tricks to work for the narcissists in your life.

* Relive one day a thousand times. (Groundhog Day) Self-centered, striving weatherman Phil (Bill Murray) finds emotional and spiritual growth after being trapped in a space-time anomaly.

* Get shot in the head. (Regarding Henry) A confrontation at a botched burglary transforms Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) from a lying, cheating, bullying corporate attorney to a charming innocent.

* Bond with your autistic brother. (Rain Man) Greedy go-it-alone Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) learns that he shouldn't exploit his autistic-savant older brother.

* Undergo hypnosis. (Shallow Hal) Hal (Jack Black) dates a string of beautiful vixens, then falls for an overweight woman while under Tony Robbins' spell.

* Be trapped by a sniper. (Phone Booth) Brash Stu Sheppard (Colin Farrell) is a philandering PR rep who learns what life is really about while in the crosshairs of a killer's rifle.

Wikipedia

2007-10-07T08:42:00.000+02:00

Read the entry for Narcissistic personality disorder in Wikipedia
the free encyclopedia.

A Rape of the Heart

2007-10-06T08:13:00.000+02:00

Donna Wasson
September 27, 2007

This article will be different from most I write because it’s a warning, especially for women, to exercise the utmost caution when forming any kind of relationship online. The internet is an exciting and fantastic source of information, entertainment and communication.

But, as we’ve all heard, it has its dark side also. The number and variations of online predators staggers the imagination. The web is the perfect vehicle to prey upon the innocence of others. Now get this..I’m NOT talking about children.

I’m warning you about online adults who target other adults. Cyberpaths. Their goals can vary from swindling you out of your money, trying to talk you into all sorts of schemes, but the vast majority is after sex and or power, plain and simple.

Oh, you wouldn’t be fooled by someone online, would you? You couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to fall for their manipulations, right? You are dead wrong!

Statistics tell us that approximately 1 out of 20 people we interact with have, on some level that is destructive, sociopathic tendencies. I’m sure you’ve heard that serial killers are sociopaths, and that is true to the extreme. Naturally, there are different levels of dysfunction, just as there are different levels of, say, depression.

The predators I speak of are sociopath-lite, for lack of a better term. These people have a seared conscience and they view other people as objects to manipulate to get what they want. Most of them are narcissists, and will use you to fulfill what is called, “narcissistic supply.”

Narcissistic Supply is the term for what these people are addicted to. It is not alcohol or drugs, or even sex per se. They need your adoration, admiration, attention and time. The appetite for this supply is insatiable as they are basically emotional black holes, sucking your love and energy into themselves to try to satisfy the emptiness inside their souls. They truly are the walking dead.

This emptiness is so profound and permanent that they are rarely helped by any kind of therapy, because they are so used to acting rather than actually being who they really are. They cannot allow themselves to lower their guard and let others know their real personalities.

This emotional deformity is usually the result of profound abuse, emotional trauma or neglect from a primary caretaker, even as early as infancy. They learned early on to mimic the kind of person the caretakers seemed to want in order to survive. In the process, they discard and despise their true selves and manufacture a false self that they present to the world.

Sad? Yes, absolutely. However, these folks are usually so full of rage that they quickly learn how to channel the anger into the ability to expertly manipulate and ultimately emotionally injure others which makes them feel superior and powerful. This way, they are in control and cannot be hurt again. They turn into an abuser.

A narcissist with sociopathic tendencies is a very dangerous person indeed; the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are constantly on the prowl for new sources of “supply” and can sense a potential victim almost immediately, even the first time they meet.

Let’s pause for a moment to examine the perfect victim of these monsters. Most people grow up in relatively normal homes where love, affection and truth were modeled. These future victims were taught to be courteous, trusting and compassionate and in the normal course of their lives, have personally encountered nothing untoward that would change their view of the world and the strangers they meet. They’ve heard of evil people on the news and have seen them depicted in movies but have never actually crossed paths with one. In other words, they’re sitting ducks.

These victims are not stupid or thickheaded. They should be able to basically trust in the goodness of others. They practice the golden rule and simply assume others do the same. They are naïve but once they encounter and comprehend the evil that truly exists “out there”, their lives are forever altered and their innocence shattered.

Once the narcissist/sociopath targets a victim, they immediately begin to idealize and over-value this new source of “supply.” They are gifted actors, having presented their false self for so many years, and are able to expertly simulate emotions as they “bond” with the victim. They are attracted, curious, and deeply interested in the source and begin a process of courting or grooming the victim. They are incredibly charming and present themselves to be a deep, passionate person capable of loving or of being hurt. They appear to be empathetic and caring but all of these signs are the sheep’s clothing of the narcissist.

The victim falls head over heels in love with the mirage or false self the narcissist projects and they completely buy into the lies they are told.

The narcissist’s seemingly genuine immersion and exaggerated high regard for the source is extremely alluring to the victim. It makes them feel safe, loved and admired. The narcissist showers them with attention and they are so convincing they’re all but impossible to resist when they are on the prowl for a source of supply.

However, and this is what you must understand, once the victim is completely hooked and emotionally enmeshed, the narcissist begins to deplete them of their “supply” like a vampire drinks the blood of his victim. This begins to manifest itself by the narcissist toying and playing head games with the source.

They deny they said certain things the victim knows they said; they woo seductively and then turn cold and angry causing the source to come running to apologize for some supposed transgression. They are covertly condescending to the source while continuing to rely on their advice. They play with the source like a deep-sea fisherman reels in a sailfish and then lets the line go slack, back and forth until the fish exhausts itself.

When the narcissist senses the source’s supply is depleted or is threatened, the narcissist instantaneously and abruptly loses all interest in the victim. To them, the victim no longer exists and is thrown away like a piece of trash.

Of course, to be idealized one minute and totally devalued the next is utterly incomprehensible to the victim. Normal people do not treat others this way. It is a mind bending experience that leaves the victim questioning their self worth, judgment and sanity not to mention having to grapple with the extreme grief of suddenly losing what seemed to be a perfect relationship.

There is a term for what a narcissist/sociopath does to his victims. It is called emotional rape. It is the systematic and deliberate abuse of a person’s higher emotions without their consent. The victim fully trusted the alluring false self that was presented to them and was made to feel emotions and bonding for the express purpose of being used and discarded. When they give the narcissist the privilege of looking into their soul they never dreamed it would be used and abused.

The narcissist feels no true emotions. They are incapable. The “love” they feel for the source disappears immediately when the victim’s usefulness runs its course or when a seemingly better qualified source of supply is noticed. They are able to go their merry way without the encumbrance of guilt or remorse.

Being a tender human being, the victim usually grieves and misses the relationship for quite some time. The loss is devastating and they can get very depressed, blame themselves, obsess about contacting the narcissist, feel like they’re going crazy, and experience many other emotional manifestations that physical rape victims endure. The emotional roller coaster is so horrific that some victims even display symptoms of post traumatic stress syndrome.

It’s shocking how many narcissists automatically gravitate towards positions of power, i.e., the military, pastors, counselors, Bible teachers, CEO’s, school teachers, etc. Once they spot a potential source, they misuse their authority to attract and control the victim.

Again, the internet is the perfect place for these creatures to troll for sources of supply. They expertly navigate chat rooms, looking for vulnerable, lonely women. They set up websites that offer advice or counseling for every kind of loss. They present themselves as warm, caring and compassionate and are extremely attractive.

The narcissist/sociopath exploits and then completely rejects his victims. The most bizarre aspect of this “person” is there little to no malice involved. He views people as things to be used. The same way we don’t feel malice or love for a garden hose, he feels the same about other people. Absolutely nothing.

Beware!

9/26/07

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=38716

Some of the Factors that Affect NPDers Chance at Recovery

2007-10-05T08:31:00.000+02:00

Healing is possible without excpetion for all persons who have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD). Having this condition is not an excuse not to take responsiblity for yourself or justify destructive acts simply because that is what NPDers do. In this article we will look at some of the factors that may influence how successful those with this condition may be in achieving healing.

The first variable is whether you are in a crisis. It is common for persons to seek therapy either during or in the aftermath of an emotional crisis, i.e., divorce or end of a relationship, being terminated from work, substance abuse, or death of someone close to you. It is common for a person going through such a crisis to see how they have limited access to their feelings and have acted in destructive ways throughout their life.

Coming to this place of awareness is an important step as it often leads persons to seek some form of treatment. Working through the crisis is essential though it is just the beginning of the healing journey. Very often a person will believe that they never had these feelings, or lack of feelings, or never acted destructively prior to this crisis. They may believe that resolving this crisis is the entire work of healing when in reality it is just the beginning for those of us who truly have NPD. If you stop looking and working on yourself once the immediate crisis is over there is a very good chance another crisis will come, and another one after that until you allow yourself to look at the whole picture of your life.

In reality it is almost impossible to do the actual work of healing until you have been able to achieve a peaceful or productive resolution to your crisis. A person in crisis often believes that their pain is so overwhelming that whatever their crisis may be idefines everything about their true identity. They are unable to step back and look at the good points in their life or see how their pain is not all consuming. If you truly have NPD it is essential to keep working on yourself after the crisis has passed so you can free yourself from this seemingly endless cycle of one crisis after the other.

Another important factor in your being able to recover is whether you have a support network of family and friends. It is emotionally draining to face yourself at the level required to recover from NPD. Having persons around you who can offer support away from therapy can be helpful in relieving some of the stress that is almost guaranteed to come along with therapy. Your therapist will expect you to not become overly dependent upon him and begin developing a life where he is playing less of a role in daily living. These persons don't have to be well versed on NPD. You might be able to begin developing such a network among family, friends, perhaps coworkers, ministers of members of real world support groups. The most important thing is they are compassionate listeners who are not judging you as flawed or evil. Once such a network is established you need to allow yourself to trust these people and to call upon them both when life is feeling painful and when things are going well and you just want to establish more of a connection with other people.

The matter of paying your therapy bill can in some cases be a factor in the overall success of your recovery. Accepting responsibility for your own bill is an essential step in becoming a functional adult. Sometimes a well intending friend of romantic partner may offer to pay all or some of your bill thinking this will help you get passed your emotional dysfunctions. If this is for a short period with a clear understanding you are going to pay them back and than assume full responsiblity for all further costs this is probably not a problem. However, if you are making no effort to find a job or do whatever is needed to get yourself in a position of responsiblity this has a very high risk of stalling rather than enhancing your healing.

This is a point that is as important for your friends and family to understand and accept as it may be for you. They may believe that whatever it takes to get you into therapy is worth it to them, including paying for your sessions. Once again if this is a short term solution it may not be harmful. However, the sooner you are paying for your own therapy the sooner you will have a personal investment in the process. Such an investment will, hopefully, inspire you to work harder and get the most of the therapy you can afford. You are entitled to heal but you are not entitled to a free ride where others are paying your way. Addressing feelings of entitlement is one of the areas many NPDers face and this is just one of the areas where it plays out in your practical daily living. If you are serious about your therapy and appear to be making progress you may find your therapist is willing to make payment arrangements. If you fail to honor such arrangements or if they become aware someone else is paying your therapy bill they may decide to terminate the partnership.

Arguably the biggest variable in your recovery is how much do you want to heal? Are you only in therapy to appease a spouse, family, or maybe a coworker or boss? If so the chances of your therapy bringing any true healing ranges between slim and none. You may be able to develop some new skills, but in all likelihood true recovery will remain elusive. Therapy will require you to experience extreme pain, view areas of your life that will make you very uncomfortable, and will drain you at physical and emotional levels. Being able to sustain yourself and do this work will require a deep committment unlike any you've likely ever made at any other juncture in your existence. It most definitely can be accomplished but you have to want it almost more than you have ever wanted anything before. You will have to push yourself to keep going even when you want to stop. How well you are able to experience and resolve conflicts, depression and other events throughout your therapy will depend to a large extent on this single question: How much do you really want it?

Healing Narcissism and Disorders of the Self

Narcissism and Successful People

2007-10-04T08:22:00.000+02:00

From CounsellingResource.com

Q: Hi, Thanks for taking my questions. I was curious about personality disorders (PD) and have a query. It seems PDs have a personality which is dyfunctional to themselves and others, and this personality should have developed by adolescence. We know that people with Narcissistic personalities exist in medical and science fields. How come these people have come to these levels of achievement when their personality is maladaptive? My second question: When adults have Narcissistic traits but not to a extreme degree (i.e., no PD), is it possible for them to develop a PD later in life?

Thanks.

A: Great question! Narcissistic Personality often develops in young adulthood or late teens and becomes a life-long problem, impacting their vocational success, family, relationships, and behavior. A key ingredient in Narcissistic Personality is that the grandiosity and inflated self-esteem are present without any socially or personally-recognized reason to have that level of narcissism. I’ve worked with many criminals who are incredibly narcissistic yet have no recognized accomplishments, no money, are incarcerated, have been rejected by their family, etc. Those who develop narcissism early don’t typically have successful careers or relationships — but they feel so important and great they usually don’t care. I was informed by a 16-year-old adolescent criminal a few weeks ago “I’m too good for a place like this (juvenile prison). I don’t need to talk to anyone who has an hourly wage…I demand a consultant!” His crime — riding in a stolen car…but wait, it was a BMW!

We do find narcissistic traits in people who are successful. Psychologist Belisa Vranich describes this as “acquired narcissism”. While physicians, entertainers, sports/music/political celebrities, and wealthy folks often work hard over many years to obtain their success, that same success often produces a personality pattern of “acquired narcissism”. After years of struggling — these folks are now famous, highly recognized, have lots of money/fame, don’t wait in line at restaurants, have limo service, are asked for autographs, etc. They begin to feel narcissistic and above the common person. It then becomes tabloid interest as they develop their narcissism and become demanding, feel they are above the law, become exhibitionistic, and gradually have social and emotional meltdowns (shaving their head, attempting suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, etc.). In these cases, the narcissistic traits developed as a result of their extreme success. In this situation, the narcissism becomes maladaptive after they have already achieved their success (Britney Spears, etc.). Such folks are considered emotionally incapable of handling their success.

Regarding your second question, moderate narcissistic traits are unlikely to amplify and become Narcissistic Personality Disorder unless accompanied by social/personal success. Again, a classic Narcissistic Personality has inflated self-esteem and grandiosity without tangible reasons for such high self-opinion. They have a tremendous sense of entitlement without a tangible reason to be entitled.

-----

This article was last reviewed by Dr Joseph M Carver, PhD on Thursday, 13th September 2007 at 10:06 am and is filed in the section(s): Personality Disorders.

http://counsellingresource.com/ask-the-psychologist/2007/09/13/narcissism-and-success/

Narcissism: Cheating Your Way through Life

2007-10-03T08:17:00.000+02:00

I think this is probably obvious to anyone who knows a malignant narcissist too well, but it apparently gets past most other people.

A narcissist is someone who has decided at an early age to cheat their way through life.

Little children learn that looking good is easier than being good. Cheating for "A's" is easier than studying for them. Sabotaging your peer's work is easier than doing a better job yourself. The list is endless.

"Hey," the narcissist thinks, "I can wage a public campaign against sexual immorality all day long and go cattin' around at night. That way I get a saintly name without having to live up to that standard. In other words, I get to have my cake and eat it too. Who wouldn't do that? I'd have to be an idiot not to."

Well, that's the way little children think. Because nothing is beneath them and their minds are playgrounds where they unknow what they are doing.

Moreover, at an early age they also learn that looking good always gets you treated as good, but being good often gets you condemned as bad. Case in point: Jesus of Nazareth, condemned as evil by holier-than-thous (whom he had laid a formal sevenfold curse upon).

I know of a pair of malignant narcissists at a school who characterize everyone else there as "saps."

Indeed, who plays by the rules in a game fixed for cheaters to win? Saps, that's who.

This is why treatment does no good for narcissists and psychopaths. In fact it just teaches them ways to fake it better. They don't want to change. Why should they? Their strategy for life is much more successful than ours.

Since their grandiose egos lack even a drop of self respect, they aren't above it, either.

Kathleen Krajco

Narcissism: A New Theory

2007-10-02T08:07:00.000+02:00

by Neville Symington

ISBN: 1855750473
ISBN-13: 9781855750470

Synopsis

The author presents fresh insights into the subject of narcissism, drawing on his vast clinical experience of treating people suffering from this disorder.

About the Author

Neville Symington is the author of established psychoanalytic classics including Emotion and Spirit; Narcissism: A New Theory; The Making of a Psychotherapist; The Spirit of Sanity; A Pattern of Madness and How to Choose a Psychotherapist. His previous volume A Pattern of Madness is a magnum opus which gives psychoanalysis a new theoretical structure. He works as a psychoanalyst in private practice in Australia.

Customer Review

what's new?, May 27, 2000
By Craig Chalquist, PhD (Bay Area, CA USA)

For me, the most valuable aspect of the book was its clinical wisdom. I don't consider a collection of ideas a "new theory," however, nor do I see why the "lifegiver"-disrupted relationship concept at the root of the author's vision of narcissism says anything more innovative than "the child has chosen unconsciously to turn away from his or her inner aliveness." Some good critiques of traditional theories of narcissism.

Narcissism (Ideas in Psychoanalysis)

2007-10-01T08:55:00.000+02:00

by Jeremy Holmes

ISBN-10: 1840462450
ISBN-13: 978-1840462456

Book Description
Narcissism traces the manifestation of this universal psychological phenomenon, from Ted Hughes' Ovid to Freud and Melanie Klein.

About the Author
Jeremy Holmes is Consultant Psychiatrist/Psychotherapist in North Devon, Senior Lecturer in Psychotherapy at Exeter University, and Chair of the Psychotherapy Faculty of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. His interests are in attachment theory, the integration of psychotherapy within psychiatry and the treatment of severe personality disorder.

Customer Reviews

Best introduction to psychoanalytic views of narcissism..., October 12, 2005
By Stephen Armstrong (Hadley, Ma USA)

This short book (70 pages of text) is Holmes' essay on the theory, origins of, developmental trajectory of, and end results of both healthy and unhealthy narcissism. It is remarkably free from jargon, so it is appropriate for the lay person, but also has enough references to guide the college student or early graduate student. The writing is quite good, in contrast to most of the stuff I have read on narcissism.

I also liked the linking of the psychoanalytic concepts in narcissism to examples from literature (Ovid, Oscar Wilde, for example), and, of course, the Greek story itself.

This short book took about two hours to read carefully.

Excellent Short Introduction, December 10, 2002
By Kenneth Angel (Colonial Heights, Virginia USA)

This very readable book is an excellent short introduction to the subject. Not very clinical though. For that get Sam Vaknin's "Malignant Self Love"

Introduction to Narcissism, November 16, 2003
By Sam Vaknin "author of Malignant Self Love - N... (Skopje, Macedonia)

A surprisingly thorough introduction to pathological narcissism, its formation, phenomenology, effects and treatment options. Though the book is biased in favor of the various psychoanalytic schools (e.g., Object Relations), it is still a great value. Sam Vaknin, author of 'Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited'.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough?

2007-09-30T08:22:00.000+02:00

Welcome To The Resource Website For Daughters Raised By Narcissistic Mothers

http://www.nevergoodenough.com/index.asp

“But enough about me. Let’s talk about you. What do YOU think of me?” - Bette Midler as CC Bloom in Beaches.

Dr. Karyl McBride : http://www.karylmcbridephd.com/

When I was a little girl, I had a talking doll named “Chatty Cathy”. Whenever I pulled her string, she spoke the same phrases: “Tell me a story” or “Please brush my hair.” It may seem strange, but when I think about how to describe a “narcissistic mother,” I have visions of that talking doll. A narcissistic mother’s interactions with her daughter are as predictably self-centered as the Chatty Cathy doll. No matter how many times the daughter “pulls the string”- hoping that her mother will focus on her and her needs, the mother’s involvement with her is always about Mom. As small children we don’t understand these dynamics between ourselves and our mothers. Mom may look like the perfect mother, just like Chatty Cathy looked like the perfect friend, yet the child is constantly struggling with feelings of disappointment, sadness, emptiness and frustration. She is longing for the emotional support and nurturing that she never receives from her mother.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough, is for the daughters of narcissistic mothers who have spent much of their adult lives dealing with the fallout of never having received maternal support and love.
Being the adult daughter of a narcissistic mother means that you were raised by someone who cared more for herself than she did for you. She approved of you only when your behavior reflected well upon her or your family. Since her love for you was conditional, you inherited a distorted sense of love and lacked the experience of genuine maternal nurturing. As a result, you have likely developed particular coping mechanisms: you hide or deny your pain, you become involved in intimate relationships that tend to be unhealthy or unsatisfying, you are an overachiever or a self-sabotager. There is the feeling, which directly relates to never having been able to please your mother, of never being quite good enough in relationship, career and life in general. Daughters of narcissistic mothers seem to flounder in life, struggling with chronic feelings of inadequacy and emptiness, knowing there is something wrong but not understanding what that something might be. For them, life thus becomes an agony of self-doubt.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough, gives a voice to the feelings these daughters have buried, offers them insight into the origins of their pain, and provides a blueprint for healing that can be personally tailored to each reader. Will I Ever Be Good Enough, explains the narcissistic mother dynamics to adult daughters and provides them with strategies so that they can begin to overcome their legacy of distorted love and enjoy their lives more fully.

Will I Ever Be Good Enough: Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers from the Legacy of Distorted Love, is a self-help book written for adult daughters of narcissistic mothers. In this book, Dr. Karyl McBride is sharing her years of clinical and personal research to help daughters heal.

Lies People Tell

2007-09-29T08:39:00.000+02:00

All people lie some of the time. They use words to convey their lies while their body language usually gives them away. This is curious. Why did evolution prefer this self defeating strategy? The answer lies in the causes of the phenomenon.

We lie for three main reasons and these give rise to three categories of lies:

1. The Empathic Lie – is a lie told with the intention of sparing someone's feelings. It is a face saving lie – but someone else's face. It is designed to prevent a loss of social status, the onslaught of social sanctions, the process of judgement involved in both. It is a derivative o our ability to put ourselves in someone else's shoes – that is, to empathize. It is intended to spare OUR feelings, which are bound to turn more and more unpleasant the more we sympathize with the social-mental predicament of the person lied to. The reverse, brutal honesty, at all costs and in all circumstances – is a form of sadistic impulse. The lie achieves its goal only if the recipient cooperates, does not actively seek the truth out and acquiescently participates in the mini-drama unfolding in his honour.

2. The Egocentric Lie – is a lie intended to further the well being of the liar. This can be achieved in one of two ways. The lie can help the liar to achieve his goals (a Goal Seeking Lie) or to avoid embarrassment, humiliation, social sanctions, judgement, criticism and, in general, unpleasant experiences related to social standing (a Face Saving Lie). The Goal Seeking Lie is useful only when considering the liar as an individual, independent unit. The Face Saving type is instrumental only in social situations. We can use the terms: Individualistic Lie and Social Lie respectively.

3. The Narcissistic Lie – is separated from his brethren by its breadth and recursiveness. It is all-pervasive, ubiquitous, ever recurring, all encompassing, entangled and intertwined with all the elements of the liar's life and personality. Moreover, it is a lie of whose nature the liar is not aware and he is convinced of its truth. But the people surrounding the Narcissist liar notice the lie. The Narcissist-liar is rather like a hunchback without a mirror. He does not believe in the reality of his own hump. It seems that where the liar does not believe his own lies – he succeeds in convincing his victims rather effectively. When he does believe in his own inventions – he fails miserably at trapping his fellow men.

Confabulations are an important part of life. They serve to heal emotional wounds or to prevent ones from being inflicted in the first place. They prop-up the confabulator's self-esteem, regulate his (or her) sense of self-worth, and buttress his (or her) self-image. They serve as organizing principles in social interactions.

Father's wartime heroism, mother's youthful good looks, one's oft-recounted exploits, erstwhile alleged brilliance, and past purported sexual irresistibility - are typical examples of white, fuzzy, heart-warming lies wrapped around a shriveled kernel of truth.

But the distinction between reality and fantasy is rarely completely lost. Deep inside, the healthy confabulator knows where facts end and wishful thinking takes over. Father acknowledges he was no war hero, though he did his share of fighting. Mother understands she was no ravishing beauty, though she may have been attractive. The confabulator realizes that his recounted exploits are overblown, his brilliance exaggerated, and his sexual irresistibility a myth.

Such distinctions never rise to the surface because everyone - the confabulator and his audience alike - have a common interest to maintain the confabulation. To challenge the integrity of the confabulator or the veracity of his confabulations is to threaten the very fabric of family and society. Human intercourse is built around such entertaining deviations from the truth.

This is where the narcissist differs from others (from "normal" people).

His very self is a piece of fiction concocted to fend off hurt and to nurture the narcissist's grandiosity. He fails in his "reality test" - the ability to distinguish the actual from the imagined. The narcissist fervently believes in his own infallibility, brilliance, omnipotence, heroism, and perfection. He doesn't dare confront the truth and admit it even to himself.

Moreover, he imposes his personal mythology on his nearest and dearest. Spouse, children, colleagues, friends, neighbors - sometimes even perfect strangers - must abide by the narcissist's narrative or face his wrath. The narcissist countenances no disagreement, alternative points of view, or criticism. To him, confabulation IS reality.

The coherence of the narcissist's dysfunctional and precariously-balanced personality depends on the plausibility of his stories and on their acceptance by his Sources of Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist invests an inordinate time in substantiating his tales, collecting "evidence", defending his version of events, and in re-interpreting reality to fit his scenario. As a result, most narcissists are self-delusional, obstinate, opinionated, and argumentative.

The narcissist's lies are not goal-orientated. This is what makes his constant dishonesty both disconcerting and incomprehensible. The narcissist lies at the drop of a hat, needlessly, and almost ceaselessly. He lies in order to avoid the Grandiosity Gap - when the abyss between fact and (narcissistic) fiction becomes too gaping to ignore.

The narcissist lies in order to preserve appearances, uphold fantasies, support the tall (and impossible) tales of his False Self and extract Narcissistic Supply from unsuspecting sources, who are not yet on to him. To the narcissist, confabulation is not merely a way of life - but life itself.

We are all conditioned to let other indulge in pet delusions and get away with white, not too egregious, lies. The narcissist makes use of our socialization. We dare not confront or expose him, despite the outlandishness of his claims, the improbability of his stories, the implausibility of his alleged accomplishments and conquests. We simply turn the other cheek, or meekly avert our eyes, often embarrassed.

Moreover, the narcissist makes clear, from the very beginning, that it is his way or the highway. His aggression - even violent streak - are close to the surface. He may be charming in a first encounter - but even then there are telltale signs of pent-up abuse. His interlocutors sense this impending threat and avoid conflict by acquiescing with the narcissist's fairy tales. Thus he imposes his private universe and virtual reality on his milieu - sometimes with disastrous consequences.

Sam Vaknin ( http://samvak.tripod.com/ ) is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He served as a columnist for Global Politician, Central Europe Review, PopMatters, Bellaonline, and eBookWeb, a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent, and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

When You Love a Man Who Loves Himself

2007-09-28T08:39:00.000+02:00

by W. Keith Campbell

ISBN-10: 140220342X
ISBN-13: 978-1402203428

From the Publisher

Narcissistic men seem like the ultimate catch: self-confident, attractive, charming individuals who are often the life of the party. The narcissist always knows the place to be and who to be seen with. His attention is initially very flattering, but eventually his behavior is not: he becomes aloof and controlling and may cheat. He still seems somewhat interested, however, and often makes enough nice gestures to maintain a girl's interest, leaving all but him to wonder: what is going on?The country's leading expert on narcissism, Dr. W. Keith Campbell, explains how to identify a narcissist, what it means to love a man who loves himself and how to break the cycle of dating men with this personality disorder.

Author Biography: W. Keith Campbell, PhD has studied narcissism and its effects on relationships for over 10 years. He is an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. Dr. Campbell has published articles in and/or been interviewed by numerous newspapers and magazines, including the New York Post, USA Today, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Shape Magazine and Men's Health. He lives in Athens, GA.

From Publishers Weekly

"Every time I talked about narcissists' romantic relationships," writes Campbell, who has studied the subject for years, "women would seem to pay particular attention...They would at first get a puzzled look in their eyes, then start nodding, and finally have an 'ah-ha' experience." Yes, women know about narcissistic men: those good-looking, extroverted, self-confident and, ultimately, uncaring and unfaithful men who seemed at first to be so exciting. Campbell, a young academic who wrote his doctoral dissertation on narcissists and romance, offers a book that's a couple of notches above the usual relationship advice book-intelligent, sober and well written. He clearly defines narcissism and how it is different from simple high self-esteem (narcissists need to be the best, and have a strong sense of entitlement); then offers a "narcissist's-eye-view" of a romantic relationship so readers can identify their traits (the narcissist see his girlfriend as a trophy whose purpose is to make him look good; he needs to be in control of the relationship); the difficulty of getting a narcissist to abandon his narcissism; and personal and social reasons why women date narcissists. Campbell has a wide range-he can draw on popular films as well as psychological research. If your man seems to love himself too much and you not enough, this is a good place to seek understanding and advice.

THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION

2007-09-27T08:17:00.000+02:00

How to Tell Healthy Self-Esteem from Narcissism

By Martha Beck

Try this: Go to the person in your life who reeks of self-esteem and ask, "In what ways do you think you need to grow or change?" If the person is psychologically healthy, the list will be as long as your leg. That's because real self-esteem is based on finding areas where we can improve ourselves and honestly working to overcome problems. Healthy people know that they are always a work in progress. Narcissists, on the other hand, will tell you they have nothing to change. Narcissists often live in anguish, while refusing to accept that their own behavior has anything to do with their discontent.

Have a Narcissist in Your Life?

To deal with narcissists, it helps to understand that they generally detest themselves at some level. They've fully incorporated the values of some highly judgmental social system (a family, a religion, a community), where love is given or withheld based on external criteria. (If you're beautiful, thin and smart, you'll be loved; if you're a fat, ugly grade-school dropout, forget it.) People who are socialized this way become addicted to status markers the way junkies are addicted to intoxicants; they crave praise because it's the closest they ever get to unconditional love.

Denial

2007-09-26T08:05:00.000+02:00

Most people who get involved with a malignant narcissist do eventually decide to break away. At some point, they sense that, to survive as a person, they must. This often takes a very long time, but that is no reason to say that they are gluttons for punishment. A glutton for punishment never breaks away. So we must be careful not to judge too quickly. Denial is a powerful thing, and it is instinctive in traumatic situations.

Though I am less prone to denial than most people, I had an unforgettable experience with it many years ago. I was on a flight from Paris to Rome, and the security was much tighter even than it is today. Everything got X-rayed and thoroughly hand searched, including your person. You probably would not believe me if I told you all the things that happened without me allowing myself to know what was going on. The more reality tried to impose on my consciousness, the more into a haze I went. I was in the boarding line for three hours before I gave in and looked up at the sign that said this flight was ultimately bound for Tel Aviv. My heart landed in the pit of my stomach. The people in that endless line behaved differently than Europeans. After nine days in Paris, it felt good to be among people like this, whom I felt must be mostly Americans. But now, for the first time I let myself see and looked around. Their hushed, almost whispering voices were not speaking English. And every twentieth man was bearded and dressed as an orthodox Jew.

But even that did not bring me out of denial. I kept whistling in the dark, to think this was probably routine and that there was no danger. The loaded plane then baked on the runway for several hours – I lost track of time. I didn't come out of denial till long after the cargo hold had been emptied, all the baggage re-searched by hand, and reloaded. Not once, or twice, but three times.

Denial is a slippery slope, so even that did nothing but accelerate me deeper and deeper into it. That's because every time a thought acknowledging reality managed to form, you quickly repressed it in denial to keep whistling there in the dark. I didn't come out of it till the plane had sat on that runway for so long you thought terrorists were in the cockpit and negotiations were underway. Not till the silent tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife and everybody was about to explode. (You were afraid to move or talk, for fear that everybody would attack you and tear you to pieces with their bare hands, thinking you were a terrorist.) The teenage girl in the seat behind me threw up for sheer fright and was comforted by two old men.

Then a young mother held up her one-or-two-year-old son at arm's length, obviously in some silent gesture that all understood. She made him giggle with delight for us. The center of all that silent attention, he held out his arms to be an airplane for us. To this day, whenever I recall that moment, I utterly break down into sobbing tears.

It changed my life. At the time though this vision just stunned me. Back into my senses. That's because I suddenly realized that people wanted to kill this child for being.

As if stuck by a hot poker or something, I turned around with a little voice in my head angrily asking, "Why? Where are they? Where are the bastards?" It was as though a gigabyte of understanding downloaded all at once. "Humph," I thought, sitting back in my seat, "Figures! They're hiding! Cute! But I'll be damned if I'll be afraid of the people I can see!"

Why did I think that? Because when I came to my senses I noticed somebody's invisible finger on my button and snatched back control of my mind. That's why I suddenly could think straight enough to know whom to hate.

I am too ashamed to share what I had been thinking before that, as half-formed thoughts repressed just would not stay down, despite my denial, and kept surfacing to consciousness on me. But I will say that the terror tactics had me fearing those innocent people around me, not the unseen terrorists. To this day, I am both ashamed and amazed at how backwards terror had made me think. Because they were dangerous to be around, the other passengers were the "dangerous" ones in my mind, not the unseen terrorists. What a toxic thought. Imagine how it made me view them.

And there is a very short step between fear and hatred. One takes it in a heartbeat.

Yup, I was blaming the victim, viewing the targets of terrorists like Canadians and Europeans view Americans today. Yup, if we saw a bunch of sheep blaming the attacked one while making excuses for the wolf and even being friendly with him, we'd know they're crazy. But terrorized human beings NEVER fail to do just that.

Sure, those stupid sheep think that if they suck up to him, he'll like them and not eat them too. But we know that's too stupid for even a dumb animal to think. Yet, terrorized human beings NEVER fail to think just that.

I liken this crazy, backwards thinking to the true story of some children caught on a railroad trestle bridge when a train came. Observers said that, if they had done the natural thing — if they had run to the nearer end of the bridge, away from the train — they would have reached safety. But like deer in an automobile's headlights, their terror made them all run right into the onrushing train. Truth is stranger than fiction, eh? That's how backwards terror makes people think, and narcissists use terror tactics.

Terror isn't fright. Terror is a darkened state of mind. Terror is your head buried in the sand. Indeed, the very word terror comes from the Latin word terra, which means "earth" and comes from this ancient figure of speech. Terror is that underground state of mind otherwise known as denial — fear of facing facts. In terror, you're on automatic pilot, acting on thoughts you repress to the level of the subconscious. Therefore, those thoughts can be absolutely absurd without your realizing it.

So, beware denial. It's a dangerous state of mind. A narcissist's shock tactics and terror tactics drive you into it. But don't go there. People in denial don't think straight. They think and do the most inexplicable things because denial compels them 180 degrees in the wrong direction. If I had not been deep in denial I would not have boarded that plane.

Kathleen Krajco

When Is Narcissism a Disorder?

2007-09-25T08:42:00.000+02:00

Narcissistic Personality as Category or Continuum

© Tami Port

When is narcissism a mental illness? New research indicates that it is all a matter of degree.
What’s the distinction between “normal” narcissism and psychological disorder? In a new study appearing in the May issue of Personality and Individual Differences, two American psychologists examined the contrasting perspectives on narcissism held by social psychologists and clinical psychologists.

Social Psychology and Clinical Psychology
Social psychologists are scientists who study people in their relationship to others and to society as a whole; the discipline where mental state meets social situation.

Clinical psychology focuses on diagnosis and treatment of emotional and behavioral disorders. These mental health clinicians usually have a PhD and work in a medical setting with psychiatrists and other physicians.

Different Perspectives on Narcissism
There are many similarities to how clinical and social psychologists view narcissism, but there is one very important difference. Clinical psychologists classify narcissism as a personality disorder. So, according to their diagnostic criteria, you either have Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) or you don’t.

Unlike clinicians, social psychologists generally view narcissism as a spectrum or dimension of personality, not as a category. They do not believe that there is a specific point within the continuum of narcissism where ‘normal’ suddenly becomes ‘narcissism’.

New Research on Narcissism
In their recently published research, Foster and Campbell (2007) measured narcissism using the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), an assessment tool often employed for evaluating narcissistic traits in social psychological research.

What Is the NPI?

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory is a forced-choice questionnaire that uses paired statements to assess narcissism in nonclinical, adult populations. In other words, the NPI is used for research on the general public, not necessarily mental health patients.

Although designed to measure narcissistic traits in the general population, the NPI was designed based on the clinical definition of narcissism found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). This diagnostic reference is published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), and is the manual that mental health professionals most commonly use to diagnose narcissism and other mental disorders.

Because the purpose of the DSM is to diagnose mental illness, the various disorders are presented as specific, discrete categories. However, in the creation of the NPI, this clinical definition of narcissism was used with the assumption that people who don’t have the psychological disorder of narcissism can still display narcissistic traits.

What’s the Difference between Narcissism and Normal?

So is narcissism a distinct disorder, or is it a dimension of personality that can range from mild to extreme? Since the DSM outlines the specific criteria necessary to diagnose a person as having the psychological disorder of NPD, one might expect there to be an abrupt shift or jump in NPI narcissism scores as a point of demarcation between what is considered “normal” and what is mental illness. This is essentially what Foster and Campbell set out to explore.

Narcissism Study Method

The researchers examined 3895 participants from the general population using an on-line version of the NPI. Subjects were presented with 40 paired statements and instructed to choose the one that best described them. For each statement pair, one choice reflected a more narcissistic perspective. For example, “I am much like everybody else” versus “I am an extraordinary person.”

Narcissism Research Results

Analysis of the scores revealed no point at which there was a distinct shift from “normal” to “narcissist.” Rather the scores ranged across a continuum, a finding more in agreement with the social psychological view of narcissism.

This suggests that narcissism is structured similarly to other aspects of general personality, as a range or dimension. For example, considering the characteristic of sociability, one might see it as ranging from shy and socially withdrawn to gregarious and socially outgoing. Foster and Campbell’s research suggests that narcissism also shows a continuum of individuals who do not strongly display narcissistic traits of self-absorption to those who are extremely or pathologically narcissistic.

More Information on Narcissism
There are numerous on-line and in print resources with additional information on narcissism and personality disorders in general, including: The Mayo Clinic: Mental Health Center and the article What Is a Personality Disorder?: Overview of the Ten Psychological Disorders of Personality.

This Suite 101 article summarizes one study investigating the nature of narcissism. The content of this article is not meant to be used for diagnosis and is not a substitute for professional help and counseling.

Additional Narcissism Sources
Grey, P. (2006). Psychology, 5th Edition. Worth Publishers.

Raskin, R. N., & Hall, C. S. (1979). A narcissistic personality inventory. Psychological Reports, 45.

Raskin, R. N., & Hall, C. S. (1981). The Narcissistic Personality Inventory: Alternate form reliability and further evidence of its construct validity. Journal of Personality Assessment, 45.

Foster, J. D. and Campbell, W. K. (2007). Are there such things as “Narcissists” in social psychology? A taxometric analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 6.

Judge's antics, disorder unrelated

2007-09-24T08:49:00.000+02:00

BY JANICE MORSE

The Enquirer

MASON – Judge George Parker’s bizarre behavior on the Mason Municipal Court bench might be caused by a personality disorder, but that disorder cannot explain his “blatant, calculated dishonesty,” a state attorney-discipline official says.

“There is not one shred of evidence connecting (Parker’s) pervasive dishonesty” to his narcissistic personality disorder, said Jonathan Coughlan, the Ohio Supreme Court’s disciplinary counsel.

Coughlan says a description of the disorder, with which Parker was diagnosed in October 2006, includes characteristics such as having inflated sense of self-importance, preoccupation with fantasties of unlimited power, and requiring excessive admiration.

“Conspicuously absent from the nine descriptors is conduct involving dishonesty, deceit, (and) misrepresentation...There is simply no correlation between (Parker’s) blatant, calculated dishonesty and his (disorder),” Coughlan said, adding that Parker “intentionally lied to try to avoid discipline.”

Parker, judge of the court that handles misdemeanors and traffic cases for Mason and Deerfield Township, couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.

Parker’s lawyer, George Jonson of Cincinnati, has argued for leniency, saying that his client’s narcissistic personality disorder is to blame for many of his antics, and that he is getting treatment.

The Ohio Supreme Court will consider what punishment, if any, to impose on Parker at a hearing set for Oct. 9 in Columbus. A decision, however, may not be issued for weeks after that hearing, officials say.

Critics have complained that the investigation into Parker’s conduct has been long and drawn-out.

The investigation began in 2004. Parker says he filed the initial complaint against himself.

This past June, the court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline found Parker violated dozens of conduct rules for lawyers and judges. He used tactics such as misusing the 911 emergency phone number to summon an officer to his chambers, and overstepping his judicial bounds by accompanying police when they served a warrant on a suspect. Parker also intentionally lied during disciplinary hearings in an attempt to avoid being disciplined, the board said.

The board had originally considered an indefinite suspension of Parker’s law license. But board members decided on the less-harsh recommendation of a yearlong suspension because Parker is getting treatment. However, Coughlan noted that narcissistic personality disorder doesn’t respond well to treatment.
The board recommended a yearlong suspension of Parker’s law license, with an additional six months unimposed as long as Parker continues treatment and meets other requirements.

Critics have complained that the process, which began in 2004, has taken so long. Parker’s elected term of office expires at the end of this year, but he is seeking re-election as a nonpartisan candidate. Four other candidates are challenging his bid to keep his seat in the Nov. 6 general election.

If the Supreme Court suspends Parker’s law license, that would disqualify him from serving as a judge.

Parker has been a lightning rod for controversy since he took the bench in 2002 after his election the preceding November.

http://news.enquirer.com

Public awaits O.J.'s final chapter

2007-09-23T08:48:00.000+02:00

Commentary

Robert Seltzer
San Antonio Express-News

He had one of those names that screamed out "geek," a name fit for a professor who favored tweed jackets with elbow patches.

Orenthal James.

But Orenthal James, aka O.J., was no geek; he was an artist in cleats, a runner who turned a game into a ballistic ballet.

If only his grace had extended beyond the stadium, but O.J. Simpson had a hard time distinguishing between power plays in football and power plays in life.

When he retired, Simpson took off his cleats and pads, but he never shed the pride and arrogance that make great players great.

And so, when he was acquitted of murdering his wife and her friend in 1995, he could have tried to rehabilitate his character — a challenging task, yes, but one he never even attempted.

After all, he was acquitted, so he had the law, if not public opinion, on his side.

But, no, instead of trying to redeem himself, he sank into a bizarre world of exploitation, trying to make money off the two corpses.

There was his autograph session two years ago in Los Angeles, part of a slasher movie convention staged on the 10th anniversary of the murders — nice.

Then, about a year later, he tried to turn blood into gold again, writing a book titled "If I Did It," recounting how he would have committed the murders if he were the killer.

No, Simpson is not exactly a marketing maven, his desire for money trumping his elegance in acquiring it.

Which may explain the latest incident, the bizarre episode in which the ex-football player dropped more F-bombs than he ever heard in the locker room, according to tapes released by the victims of an alleged robbery attempt.

But it was not the cussing that was so shocking; it was the brazen attitude of a man who, given his history with the legal system, should have been a little more circumspect.

Simpson, charged with 10 felony counts, faces life in prison for the alleged robbery attempt at a hotel room in Las Vegas.

"I'm intrigued by his presence everywhere," Harry Haines, a communications professor at Trinity University, said. "Just when you think he's old news, he's back again. It's amazing to me that he maintains such a high interest level."

One reason for the fascination, Haines said, is that his story reads like a play with the final act missing.

"There's a widespread feeling that a perpetrator was never brought to justice," he said. "So whenever he's in a jam, people ask, 'Is this the point where we see justice?'"

As a pop culture icon, Simpson is more interesting than the other figures jockeying for space in the celebrity magazines.

"I find Paris Hilton exceedingly boring," Haines said. "Every time I see her on television, I think about disconnecting the satellite dish."

The ex-football great was not always the controversial figure he is today; during his playing days, he condemned another great runner, Jim Brown of the Cleveland Browns.

Brown, acquitted of four assault charges between 1965 and 1985, has rehabilitated his character, working with gang members to keep them on a path that leads to success, not to prison.

Now an executive with his old team, he gets good press, his misdeeds so long ago that they seem illegible on his résumé.

Not so with Simpson, whose moral trajectory went in the opposite direction — from good to bad.

"Everybody loved O.J.," Haines said.

If there is a tragedy here, however, it is not that Simpson is beyond redemption. No human being is. No, the tragedy is that, unlike Brown, he does not realize that redemption is necessary.

"When it comes to narcissistic personality types, he's in a class by himself," Haines said. "He does not even consider the necessity of rehabilitation. My assumption is that he feels beset upon, that he has been inconvenienced and mistreated. It's mind-boggling."

Orenthal James Simpson might have been better off if he had been a geek.

Acquired Situational Narcissism

2007-09-22T08:49:00.000+02:00

© Sam Vaknin

The Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is a systemic, all-pervasive condition, very much like pregnancy: either you have it or you don't. Once you have it, you have it day and night, it is an inseparable part of the personality, a recurrent set of behavior patterns.

Recent research (1996) by Roningstam and others, however, shows that there is a condition which might be called "Transient or Temporary or Short Term Narcissism" as opposed to the full-fledged version. Even prior to their discovery, "Reactive Narcissistic Regression" was well known: people regress to a transient narcissistic phase in response to a major life crisis which threatens their mental composure.

But can narcissism be acquired or learned? Can it be provoked by certain, well-defined, situations? Robert B. Millman, professor of psychiatry at New York Hospital - Cornell Medical School thinks it can. He proposes to reverse the accepted chronology. According to him, pathological narcissism can be induced in adulthood by celebrity, wealth, and fame.

The "victims" - billionaire tycoons, movie stars, renowned authors, politicians, and other authority figures - develop grandiose fantasies, lose their erstwhile ability to empathize, react with rage to slights, both real and imagined and, in general, act like textbook narcissists.

But is the occurrence of Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN) inevitable and universal - or are only certain people prone to it? It is likely that ASN is merely an amplification of earlier narcissistic conduct, traits, style, and tendencies.

Celebrities with ASN already had a narcissistic personality and have acquired it long before it "erupted". Being famous, powerful, or rich only "legitimized" and conferred immunity from social sanction on the unbridled manifestation of a preexisting disorder. Indeed, narcissists tend to gravitate to professions and settings which guarantee fame, celebrity, power, and wealth.

As Millman correctly notes, the celebrity's life is abnormal. The adulation is often justified and plentiful, the feedback biased and filtered, the criticism muted and belated, social control either lacking or excessive and vitriolic. Such vicissitudinal existence is not conducive to mental health even in the most balanced person. The confluence of a person's narcissistic predisposition and his pathological life circumstances gives rise to ASN.

Acquired Situational Narcissism borrows elements from both the classic Narcissistic Personality Disorder - ingrained and all-pervasive - and from Transient or Reactive Narcissism. Celebrities are, therefore, unlikely to "heal" once their fame or wealth or might are gone. Instead, their basic narcissism merely changes form. It continues unabated, as insidious as ever - but modified by life's ups and downs.

The Self Seekers

2007-09-21T08:31:00.000+02:00

Richard, M.D. Restak

ISBN-10: 0385159765
ISBN-13: 978-0385159760

"Here is a compelling report that unmasks one of the most prevalent - and treacherous - personality disorders occurring in America today. Based on profiles drawn from the practices of prominent psychologists and psychoanalysts, Richard Restak provides a provocative psychological portrait of a personality fast becoming widespread in our culture - the individual who can only function by manipulating and exploiting others.

Who are the self-seekers? How can you recognize them? What techniques of behavior do they use to control you? What underlies their need to dominate others? Why are their numbers increasing? The answers to these questions may surprise and shock you, but they cannot be ignored. THE SELF SEEKERS is filled with insights into the complex personalities who perceive with alarming accuracy the dynamics of everyone’s behavior but their own."

Extract from the Introduction by Richard Restak:

"Contemporary American society is currently overrun with a personality that I call the manipulator. He exists at all levels of society, from the boardrooms of our nation's industries to the maximum-security wards of our prisons. Manipulators are numbered among our employers and spouses; many of our heroes are manipulators. So widespread is the manipulator, in fact, that manipulation has become a life-style which threatens to change the very fabric of American society.

Basically, the manipulator suffers from a deficiency in the sense of self: what we usually refer to as a sense of identity. This disturbance exists along a continuum beginning with innocent and commonly encountered difficulties in the regulation of self-esteem which we all experience from time to time and extending, at the other extreme of the continuum, toward dangerous psychopathic murderers. Along this continuum are encountered different kinds of manipulators: narcissists, borderline personality disorders, impostors and finally, psychopaths. This book explores each of these different personalities and illustrates how they all share a basic disturbance in the self. To this extent, the book is about the importance of self in modem life."

How Do I Love Me?

2007-09-20T08:17:00.000+02:00

New Study Presents A Twist On The Conventional Narcissist

Science Daily — Conventional wisdom suggests that narcissists have negative self views which are masked by their grandiose self-concept. However, new research in Psychological Science shows that narcissists actually view themselves the same on the outside as on the inside.A brush with a narcissist's inflated ego often leaves one reeling with resentment. Whether it is their constant need for attention or their unfounded sense of entitlement, we are often quick to attribute their shallow behavior to an unconscious self-loathing. However, new research from Keith Campbell at the University of Georgia, Jennifer Bosson at the University of South Florida and colleagues suggests that narcissists actually view themselves the same on the outside as on the inside.

Previous studies have shown that narcissists' conscious self-views are not uniformly positive. Narcissists see themselves as being above average in areas such as status, dominance and intelligence (what are referred to as agentic domains), but not in areas such as kindness, morality, and emotional intimacy (what are referred to as communal domains).

Following that line of thought, the researchers in this study tested the link between narcissism and unconscious self-views in these agentic and communal domains. Conventional wisdom suggests that narcissism would have negative self-views. In other words, narcissists' should unconsciously dislike themselves equally from their intelligence to their level of intimacy in relationships. Narcissists, however, had positive unconscious self-views on the agentic (but not communal) domains.

Campbell, Bosson and colleagues used an Implicit Association Test to assess the participant's underlying views on their self-esteem. Essentially, the test works by recording reaction times to computer-based word associations and relies on the notion that the participants are not aware that their self-esteem is being assessed while they are taking the test. This test was tailored to measure narcissism as it relates to agency, communion, and self-esteem.

The results, which appear in the March issue of Psychological Science, show that narcissists do not uniformly dislike themselves "deep down inside." Rather, narcissists reported positive unconscious self-views in agentic domains and not in communal areas. This study provides new evidence that narcissists exhibit a somewhat imbalanced self at both conscious and unconscious levels.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/

Mental Illness is No Get-Out-of-Jail-Free Card

2007-09-19T08:36:00.000+02:00

I will go out on a limb here and say that people who cannot control themselves are insane.

The word insane is derived from unsound. An insane mind is an unsound one.

The insane stick out among us like sore thumbs. You can often tell from a block away that some stranger is insane. As when, for example, you see him walking up a crowded street alone and wildly yelling and gesticulating to himself.

The insane may not realize what they're doing at any given moment. They may not remember doing something earth-shaking that they did an hour ago. They may do something horrendous and then be surprised that people disapprove of what they did. In other words, they don't know right from wrong. They have no idea that what they are doing will get them into trouble. They show this by not even trying to sneak around in order to get away with it. The insane are unable to control themselves and thus are but a puppet of their urges.

Insanity can be temporary, as when somebody just "snaps."

Now, what I have just said about insanity is consistent with legal theory here in the United States. This is why you need to prove sanity in order to get a conviction for a crime. The judgement of sanity is made according to the criteria I used above. Did this person show by their behavior that they knew what they were doing? Did they show by their behavior that they know right from wrong? Did they show by their behavior that they could control themselves?

The insane are not punished here: they are committed to psychiatric care.

But guess what? Serial killers and criminals with Narcissistic Personality Disorder are usually judged sane and sent to jail. Because they flunk the insanity test with flying colors.

We have a lot of sloppy thinking out there that all mental illness is insanity. That's exactly what you are saying if you claim that the mentally ill cannot control themselves and that they are not to blame for the bad things they do.

Well then, they deserve no credit for the good things they do either, right?

In other words, the mentally ill are all just machines with buttons that get pushed. Right?

Wrong. I challenge anyone to show me a psychiatrist or psychologist who will agree with that, in effect saying that all mental illness is insanity.

Mental illness causes TEMPTATIONS. Since when is temptation an excuse for anything?

What? People can't be expected to resist temptation? Jeez, then if I am tempted to steal someone's wallet, it's justifiable theft because poor, poor me was really, really tempted to! (sniff, sniff)

That sloppy thinking just doesn't hold up, does it?

It is sad that the mentally ill are tempted in ways the rest of us are not. But since when does TEMPTATION = CAUSE? We all get tempted 20 times a day. And we all are obligated to resist temptation. All but the insane are capable of resisting temptation. That includes the mentally ill.

The insane are not responsible for what they do. But other mentally ill people are. Mental illness is no Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card.

And the mentally ill shouldn't be treated as incapable of resisting their temptations. What a demeaning attitude! That's the way to lead them deeper into sickness, not the way to guide them to wellness.

Kathleen Krajco

The Reflection in the Pond

2007-09-18T08:47:00.000+02:00

By Wray Herbert

One of the most fascinating areas of human psychology is that gray zone where normality bumps up against pathology. We all know melancholy, even if we’re not all clinically depressed. We’re all bothered by fears, but few of us suffer through diagnosable paranoia.

And so it is with narcissism. At its pathological extreme, narcissism is a debilitating personality disorder, characterized by grandiose ego and total lack of personal intimacy. Closer to home, we have all dated a narcissist. Maybe even recently.

If you’re still harboring resentments against the narcissist in your life, then you would probably also embrace the prevailing theory about narcissists: that is, that underneath all that bravado and insensitivity narcissists loath themselves for their own inadequacies. Believing this offers a quiet, harmless kind of revenge.

Well, sorry. As satisfying as that theory is (and believe me, I’m right there with you), apparently it’s not entirely valid. When psychologists test narcissists, to tap into their hidden thoughts about themselves, those thoughts don’t come up uniformly negative. Indeed, they appear to have a mix of unconscious feelings, some negative but some as inflated as the face they show the world.

Does that mean we have to abandon our sense of superiority over the narcissists in our lives? Maybe not. Psychologist W. Keith Campbell of the University of Georgia suspected that narcissists might indeed be insecure—but only in certain ways. That is, they might love themselves when it comes to traits like intelligence and status and dominance—power traits. But that doesn’t mean they don’t harbor doubts deep down inside for failing to be moral, kind and compassionate human beings.

Campbell and his colleagues decided to test this idea. They had a group of confirmed narcissists take a word test that tapped into their automatic, uncensored views of themselves. But they modified the standard test so that sometimes it used mostly words that resonated a sense of cooperation, belonging and generosity on the one hand, or suffering and evil on the other—community values, in other words, but both positive and negative values. At other times they modified the test so that it emphasized values like assertiveness and energy on the one hand, or quiet and inhibition on the other.

The results were clear. As reported in the March issue of Psychological Science, the narcissists’ grandiosity—the obnoxious, self-absorbed person they project to the world—was mirrored in their unconscious self-assessments, but only when it came to things like achievement and dominance. Both internally and externally, they were puffed up, full of themselves—masters of their universe in their minds. But when it came to community values like helping and affection, there was no meaningful link, one way or the other. They didn’t hate themselves for failing to connect; it’s more like the vocabulary of connectedness didn’t exist for them.

So narcissists may not be secretly full of self-loathing. But their sense of self is cock-eyed and out of balance. Psychologists of course appropriated the concept of narcissism from the Greek myths. Narcissus was a young man of such commanding beauty that every mortal fell immediately and passionately in love with him, but the youth had no heart. He had no love to return because he loved himself so much, so much that he talked incessantly about his high-powered job and his stock portfolio and . . . no, wait, that wasn’t a myth.

Essays by Wray Herbert can be found at:

http://tinyurl.com/3ce3q4