Guest Author Sam Vaknin: Putting the Broken Humpty-Dumpty Narcissist Back Together

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“Tempest” by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Guest Author Sam Vaknin writes:

Positive feelings (about oneself or pertaining to one’s accomplishments, assets, etc.) are never gained merely through conscious endeavor. They are the outcome of insight. A cognitive component (factual knowledge regarding one’s achievements, assets, qualities, skills, etc.) plus an emotional correlate that is heavily dependent on past experience, defense mechanisms, and personality style or structure (“character”).

People who consistently feel worthless or unworthy usually overcompensate cognitively for the lack of the aforementioned emotional component.

Such a person doesn’t love himself, yet is trying to convince himself that he is loveable. He doesn’t trust himself, yet he lectures to himself on how trustworthy he is (replete with supporting evidence from his experiences).

But such cognitive substitutes to emotional self-acceptance won’t do.

The root of the problem is the inner dialogue between disparaging voices and countervailing “proofs”. Such self-doubting is, in principle, a healthy thing. It serves as an integral and critical part of the “checks and balances” that constitute the mature personality.

But normally, some ground rules are observed and some facts are considered indisputable. When things go awry, however, the consensus breaks. Chaos replaces structure and the regimented update of one’s self-image (via introspection) gives way to recursive loops of self-deprecation with diminishing insights.

Normally, in other words, the dialogue serves to augment some self-assessments and mildly modify others. When things go wrong, the dialogue concerns itself with the very narrative, rather than with its content.

The dysfunctional dialogue deals with questions that are far more fundamental (and typically settled early on in life):

“Who am I?”

“What are my traits, my skills, my accomplishments?”

“How reliable, loveable, trustworthy, qualified, truthful am I?”

“How can I separate fact from fiction?”

The answers to these questions consist of both cognitive (empirical) and emotional components. They are mostly derived from our social interactions, from the feedback we get and give. An inner dialogue that is still concerned with these qualms indicates a problem with socialization.

It is not one’s “psyche” that is delinquent but one’s social functioning. One should direct one’s efforts to “heal”, outwards (to remedy one’s interactions with others) not inwards (to heal one’s “psyche”).

Another important insight is that the disordered dialogue is not time-synchronic.

The “normal” internal discourse is between concurrent, equipotent, and same-age “entities” (psychological constructs). Its aim is to negotiate conflicting demands and reach a compromise based on a rigorous test of reality.

The faulty dialogue, on the other hand, involves wildly disparate interlocutors. These are in different stages of maturation and possessed of unequal faculties. They are more concerned with monologues than with a dialogue. As they are “stuck” in various ages and periods, they do not all relate to the same “host”, “person”, or “personality”. They require time- and energy-consuming constant mediation. It is this depleting process of arbitration and “peacekeeping” that is consciously felt as nagging insecurity or, even, in extremis, self-loathing.

A constant and consistent lack of self-confidence and a fluctuating sense of self-worth are the conscious “translation” of the unconscious threat posed by the precariousness of the disordered personality. It is, in other words, a warning sign.

Thus, the first step is to clearly identify the various segments that, together, however incongruently, constitute the personality. This can be surprisingly easily done by noting down the “stream of consciousness” dialogue and assigning “names” or “handles” to the various “voices” in it.

The next step is to “introduce” the voices to each other and form an internal consensus (a “coalition”, or an “alliance”). This requires a prolonged period of “negotiations” and mediation, leading to the compromises that underlies such a consensus. The mediator can be a trusted friend, a lover, or a therapist.

The very achievement of such an internal “ceasefire” reduces anxiety considerably and removes the “imminent threat”. This, in turn, allows the patient to develop a realistic “core” or “kernel”, wrapped around the basic understanding reached earlier between the contesting parts of his personality.

The development of such a nucleus of stable self-worth, however, is dependent on two things:

1) Sustained interactions with mature and predictable people who are aware of their boundaries and of their true identity (their traits, skills, abilities, limitations, and so on), and

2) The emergence of a nurturing and “holding” emotional correlate to every cognitive insight or breakthrough.

The latter is inextricably bound with the former.

Here is why:

Some of the “voices” in the internal dialogue of the patient are bound to be disparaging, injurious, belittling, sadistically critical, destructively skeptical, mocking, and demeaning. The only way to silence these voices or at least “discipline” them and make them conform to a more realistic emerging consensus is by gradually (and sometimes surreptitiously) introducing countervailing “players”.

Protracted exposure to the right people, in the framework of mature interactions, negates the pernicious effects of what Freud called a Superego gone awry. It is, in effect, a process of reprogramming and deprogramming.

There are two types of beneficial, altering, social experiences:

1) Structured interactions that involve adherence to a set of rules as embedded in authority, institutions, and enforcement mechanisms (example: attending psychotherapy, going through a spell in prison, convalescing in a hospital, serving in the army, being an aid worker or a missionary, studying at school, growing up in a family, participating in a 12-steps group), and

2) Non-structured interactions, which involve a voluntary exchange of information, opinion, goods, or services.

The problem with the disordered person is that, usually, his (or her) chances of freely interacting with mature adults (intercourse of the type 2, non-structured kind) are limited to start with and dwindle with time. This is because few potential partners—interlocutors, lovers, friends, colleagues, neighbors—are willing to invest the time, effort, energy, and resources required to effectively cope with the patient and manage the often-arduous relationship. Disordered patients are typically hard to get along with, demanding, petulant, paranoid, and narcissistic.

Even the most gregarious and outgoing patient finally finds himself isolated, shunned, and misjudged. This only adds to his initial misery and amplifies the wrong kind of voices in the internal dialogue.

Hence my recommendation to start with structured activities and in a structured, almost automatic manner. Therapy is only one and at times not the most efficient choice.

by Guest Author Sam Vaknin — the author of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East, as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction.

He is the Editor-in-Chief of Global Politician and served as a columnist for Central Europe Review, PopMatters, eBookWeb , and Bellaonline, and as a United Press International (UPI) Senior Business Correspondent. He was the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory and Suite101.

Visit Sam’s Web site.

Read “Narcissism” by Alison Poulsen

Watch “How to become less self-critical.”

Read Sam Vaknin’s: “Inner Voices, False Narratives, Narcissism, and Codependence.”

“At first he was the pursuer, but now he’s the distancer. When I asked him whether this relationship was going anywhere, he told me that for him our relationship has not developed into anything special yet, although it might in the future but it also might not….”

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“Fire ‘n Ice”—Mark Wood & Laura Kaye
by Mimi Stuart ©

He is clearly telling you that he is not in love with you, while at the same time keeping his options open. Someone who says after nine months that “it has not developed into anything special yet” is saying that he is in this relationship for his convenience until something better comes along. You are selling yourself short by staying together with someone who views his relationship with you so lackadaisically.

A fulfilling relationship should be based on mutual desire and respect. Despite the intermittent fun and exciting dates together, mutual desire is replaced here by apathy and ambivalence. This is clear from his own words, his lack of curiosity about you, and the scarcity of his efforts to talk to you when you are in town, out of town, or out of the country.

His lack of desire for a deeper connection with you is likely to leave you feeling more and more frustrated and disappointed. Unless you are satisfied with a perpetual feeling of unrequited longing, I would get out of this relationship now before your self-esteem deteriorates. Stop seeking his occasional validation and hoping that he will change.

Beware though, when you do back away, he will probably re-double his efforts and start saying things that you may enjoy hearing. Although you might take pleasure in his pursuit of you once again, if you go back to him every time he pursues you, his pattern of avoiding intimacy by distancing himself will probably become more exaggerated.

In the future, beware of the person who pursues you hotly in the beginning and then loses energetic interest. People like that often are drawn to the chase, but retreat from emotional intimacy.

When someone’s interest in you becomes lackluster, it’s time to let go.

by Dr. Alison Poulsen

Read “Pursuit and Distancing: Intimacy vs. Needing Space.”

Watch “Seven keys to a great relationship.”

Guest Author Sam Vaknin
Cold Empathy: The Narcissist as Predator

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“Audacity” by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

Guest Author Sam Vaknin writes:

The narcissist is cursed – or blessed – with mental X-ray vision. He sees through people’s emotional shields, their petty lies, their pitiable defences, their grandiose fantasies. He knows when they deviate from the truth and by how much. He intuitively grasps their self-interested goals and accurately predicts the strategy and tactics they will adopt in order to achieve them.

The narcissist cannot stand self-important, self-inflated, pompous, bigoted, self-righteous, and hypocritical people. He rages at the inefficient, the lazy, the hapless and the weak.

Perhaps this is because the narcissist recognize himself in them. He tries to break the painful reflection of his own flaws in theirs.

The narcissist homes in on the chinks in their laboriously constructed armours. He spots their Achilles heel and attaches to it. He pricks the gasbags that most people are. He deflates them. He forces them to confront their finiteness and helplessness and mediocrity. He negates their sense of uniqueness. He reduces them to size and to proportion and he provides them with a perspective. The narcissist does all this cruelly and abrasively and sadistically and lethally efficiently. He has no compassion or compunction. And he preys on their vulnerabilities, however microscopic, however well-concealed.

The narcissist exposes their double-talk and derides their double standards. He refuses to play their games of prestige and status and hierarchy. He draws them out of their shelters. He destabilizes them. He deconstructs their narratives, their myths, their superstitions, their hidden assumptions, their polluted language. He calls a spade a spade.

The narcissist forces them to react and, by reacting, to confront their true, dilapidated selves, their dead end careers, their mundane lives, the death of their hopes and wishes and their shattered dreams. And all the time he observes them with the passionate hatred of the outcast and the dispossessed.

The truths about them, the ones they are trying so desperately to conceal, especially from themselves. The facts denied, so ugly and uncomfortable. Those things that never get mentioned in proper company, the politically incorrect, the personally hurtful, the dark, ignored, and hidden secrets, the tumbling skeletons, the taboos, the fears, the atavistic urges, the pretensions, the social lies, the distorted narratives of life – piercing, bloodied and ruthless – these are the narcissist’s revenge, the settling of scores, the leveling of the battlefield.

The narcissist lances them – the high and mighty and successful and the happy people, those who possess what he deserves and never had, the object of his green eyed monsters. The narcissist inconveniences them, makes them think, reflect on their own misery and wallow in its rancid outcomes. He coerces them to confront their zombie state, their own sadism, their unforgivable deeds and unforgettable omissions. He dredges the sewer that is their mind, forcing to the surface long repressed emotions, oft suppressed pains, their nightmares and their fears.

And he pretends to do so selflessly, “for their own good”. The narcissist preaches and hectors and pours forth vitriolic diatribes and exposes and imposes and writhes and foams in the proverbial mouth – all for the greater good. He is so righteous, so true, so geared to help, so meritorious. His motives are unassailable. He is always so chillingly reasoned, so algorithmically precise. The narcissist is frozen wrath. He plays their alien game by their very own rules. But he is so foreign to them, that he is unbeatable. Only they do not realize it yet.

Afterword: Cold Empathy

The narcissist’s ability to penetrate the defenses of his victims is instinctual and intuitive, not the outcome of deliberative analysis. He homes in on other people’s vulnerabilities as a tiger mauls a straying, weakened gazelle ; he leverages his target’s fears and neediness the way a virus breaches cellular defenses and then uses the cell’s machinery to replicate; and he taunts, abuses, torments, harasses, and stalks his prey because it’s fun and imbues him with a sense of pleasurable omnipotence. Acting this way is in the narcissist’s nature, it’s an integral and crucial part of who he is.

The narcissist’s “x-ray vision” is strictly limited to the traits, qualities, and behaviors of his would-be and actual victims that are useful in subjugating them and converting them into sources of narcissistic supply. The narcissist’s arrested personal development, his massive psychological defenses, his poor reality test (his grandiose and persecutory fantasies), and his cognitive deficits render him incapable of true, profound, and comprehensive insight into others and into the human condition.

Contrary to widely held views, Narcissists and Psychopaths may actually possess empathy. They may even be hyper-empathic, attuned to the minutest signals emitted by their victims and endowed with a penetrating “X-ray vision“. They tend to abuse their empathic skills by employing them exclusively for personal gain, the extraction of narcissistic supply, or in the pursuit of antisocial and sadistic goals. They regard their ability to empathize as another weapon in their arsenal. There are two possible pathological reactions to childhood abuse and trauma: codependence and narcissism. They both involve fantasy as a defense mechanism: the codependent has a pretty realistic assessment of herself, but her view of others is fantastic; the narcissist’s self-image and self-perception are delusional and grandiose, but his penetrating view of others is bloodcurdlingly accurate.

I suggest to label the narcissistic psychopath’s version of empathy: “cold empathy”, akin to the “cold emotions” felt by psychopaths. The cognitive element of empathy is there, but not so its emotional correlate. It is, consequently, a barren, detached, and cerebral kind of intrusive gaze, devoid of compassion and a feeling of affinity with one’s fellow humans.

Narcissists and psychopaths also appear to be “empathizing” with their possessions: objects, pets, and their sources of narcissistic supply or material benefits (often their nearest and dearest, significant others, or “friends” and associates). But this is not real empathy: it is a mere projection of the narcissist’s or psychopath’s own insecurities and fears, needs and wishes, fantasies and priorities. This kind of displayed “empathy” usually vanishes the minute its subject ceases to play a role in the narcissist’s or psychopath’s life and his psychodynamic processes.

Cold Empathy evokes the concept of “Uncanny Valley”, coined in 1970 by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori. Mori suggested that people react positively to androids (humanlike robots) for as long as they differ from real humans in meaningful and discernible ways. But the minute these contraptions come to resemble humans uncannily, though imperfectly, human observers tend to experience repulsion, revulsion, and other negative emotions, including fear.

The same applies to psychopathic narcissists: they are near-perfect imitations of humans, but, lacking empathy and emotions, they are not exactly there. Psychopaths and narcissists strike their interlocutors as being some kind of “alien life-forms” or “artificial intelligence”, in short: akin to humanoid robots, or androids. When people come across narcissists or psychopaths the Uncanny Valley reaction kicks in: people feel revolted, scared, and repelled. They can’t put the finger on what it is that provokes these negative reactions, but, after a few initial encounters, they tend to keep their distance.

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Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited and After the Rain – How the West Lost the East, as well as many other books and ebooks about topics in psychology, relationships, philosophy, economics, international affairs, and award-winning short fiction.

Visit Sam’s Web site.

Read “Narcissism” by Alison Poulsen

Guest Author Sam Vaknin: Inner Voices, False Narratives, Narcissism, and Codependence

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"Snobberville" by Mimi Stuart © Live the Life you Desire

Guest Author Sam Vaknin writes:

The narcissist constructs a narrative of his life that is partly confabulated and whose purpose is to buttress, demonstrate, and prove the veracity of the fantastically grandiose and often impossible claims made by the False Self. This narrative allocates roles to significant others in the narcissist’s personal history. Inevitably, such a narrative is hard to credibly sustain for long: reality intrudes and a yawning abyss opens between the narcissist’s self-imputed divinity and his drab, pedestrian existence and attributes. I call it the Grandiosity Gap. Additionally, meaningful figures around the narcissist often refuse to play the parts allotted to them, rebel, and abandon the narcissist.

The narcissist copes with this painful and ineluctable realization of the divorce between his self-perception and this less than stellar state of affairs by first denying reality, delusionally ignoring and filtering out all inconvenient truths. Then, if this coping strategy fails, the narcissist invents a new narrative, which accommodates and incorporates the very intrusive data that served to undermine the previous, now discarded narrative. He even goes to the extent of denying that he ever had another narrative, except the current, modified one.

The narcissist’s (and the codependent’s) introjects and inner voices (assimilated representations of parents, role models, and significant peers) are mostly negative and sadistic. Rather than provide succour, motivation, and direction, they enhance his underlying ego-dystony (discontent with who he is) and the lability of his sense of self-worth.

Introjects possess a crucial role in the formation of an exegetic (interpretative) framework which allows one to decipher the world, construct a model of reality, of one’s place in it, and, consequently of who one is (self-identity). Overwhelmingly negative introjects – or introjects which are manifestly fake, fallacious, and manipulative – hamper the narcissist’s and codependent’s ability to construct a true and efficacious exegetic (interpretative) framework.

Gradually, the disharmony between one’s perception of the universe and of oneself and reality becomes unbearable and engenders pathological, maladaptive, and dysfunctional attempts to either deny the hurtful discrepancy away (delusions and fantasies); grandiosely compensate for it by eliciting positive external voices to counter the negative, inner ones (narcissism via the False Self and its narcissistic supply); attack it (antisocial/psychopathy); withdraw from the world altogether (schizoid solution); or disappear by merging and fusing with another person (codependence.)

by Sam Vaknin, Author of the comprehensive book on narcissism “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited.”

Read Sam Vaknin’s “Please Don’t Leave me!” When Your Abuser Becomes Codependent

Read “Symptoms of Narcissism.”

Guest Author Sam Vaknin:
“He sometimes behaves like a Narcissist, but he is so shy and withdrawn, modest, and self-critical. It is very confusing. Is he a narcissist or isn’t he? Is he just acting?”

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"Dreams and the Underworld" by Mimi Stuart © Live the Life you Desire

Contrary to misinformation spread by “experts” online, covert narcissists are not cunning and manipulative. Classic narcissists are: they often disguise their true nature effectively, knowingly, and intentionally. They are persistent actors with great thespian skills. Not so the covert narcissist: he suppresses his true nature because he lacks the confidence to assert it. His is not a premeditated choice: can’t help but shy away. The covert narcissist is his own worst critic.

Inverted narcissists are covert narcissists. They are self-centered, sensitive, vulnerable, and defensive, or hostile, and paranoid. They harbour grandiose fantasies and have a strong sense of entitlement. They tend to exploit other, albeit stealthily and subtly. Covert narcissists are aware of their innate limitations and shortcomings and, therefore, constantly fret and stress over their inability to fulfill their unrealistic dreams and expectations. They avoid recognition, competition, and the limelight for fear of being exposed as frauds or failures. They are ostentatiously modest.

Covert narcissists often feel guilty over and ashamed of their socially-impermissible aggressive urges and desires. Consequently, they are shy and unassertive and intensely self-critical (perfectionist). This inner conflict between an overwhelming sense of worthlessness and a grandiose False Self results in mood and anxiety disorders. They team up with classic narcissists (see below), but, in secret, resent and envy them.

Compare the classic narcissist to the covert narcissist is this table (Cooper and Akhtar, 1989):

The Inverted Narcissist is a co-dependent who depends exclusively on narcissists (narcissist-co-dependent). If you are living with a narcissist, have a relationship with one, if you are married to one, if you are working with a narcissist, etc. it does NOT mean that you are an inverted narcissist.

To “qualify” as an inverted narcissist, you must CRAVE to be in a relationship with a narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him/her. You must ACTIVELY seek relationships with narcissists and ONLY with narcissists, no matter what your (bitter and traumatic) past experience has been. You must feel EMPTY and UNHAPPY in relationships with ANY OTHER kind of person. Only then, and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of a Dependent Personality Disorder, can you be safely labelled an “inverted narcissist”.

by Sam Vaknin, PhD, Author of the comprehensive book on narcissism “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited.”

Read Sam Vaknin,’s “Is He Truly Modest or Just Faking It?”

Read “Flattery: ‘Meet my amazing friend who has two masters degrees, is CEO of a big company, and is an iron-man tri-athlete.’”

Read Sam Vaknin’s “Schizoid Personality Disorder: ‘He is either the spirit of the party – or a hermit.’”

Read “Bragging on a First Date: ‘I graduated with top honors and live on Snobhill.’”

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Category Archives: Personality Traits

Guest Author Sam Vaknin: Putting the Broken Humpty-Dumpty Narcissist Back Together

“At first he was the pursuer, but now he’s the distancer. When I asked him whether this relationship was going anywhere, he told me that for him our relationship has not developed into anything special yet, although it might in the future but it also might not….”

Guest Author Sam Vaknin
Cold Empathy: The Narcissist as Predator

Guest Author Sam Vaknin: Inner Voices, False Narratives, Narcissism, and Codependence

Guest Author Sam Vaknin:
“He sometimes behaves like a Narcissist, but he is so shy and withdrawn, modest, and self-critical. It is very confusing. Is he a narcissist or isn’t he? Is he just acting?”