Narcissist’s Psychological Defense Mechanisms
The psyche is a battlefield between instinctual urges and drives, the id, the constraints imposed by reality on the gratification of his impulses, ego, and the norms of society, the superego. Narcissism is a defense mechanism, and narcissists have a monopoly of other defense mechanisms. There are dozens of defense mechanisms, including acting out, denial, devaluation, displacement, dissociation, fantasy, idealization, isolation of affect, omnipotence, projection, projective identification, rationalization, cognitive dissonance, reaction formation, repression, splitting, sublimation, and undoing. All these defense mechanisms operate within the narcissist.
Narcissist: No Custody, No Children!
Parents diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder should be denied custody and granted only restricted rights of visitation and care under supervision, according to Professor Sam Vaknin. Narcissists regard children as sources of narcissistic supply and can be abusive, putting children at risk of emotional, physical and sexual abuse. Narcissistic parents can also use control mechanisms to sustain the illusion that the child is a part of them, which can be emotionally turbulent for the child. The child is the ultimate secondary source of narcissistic supply, and the narcissist’s love is conditional upon the supply of narcissistic supply.
Zombie Narcissist: Deficient Narcissistic Supply
Narcissists are constantly seeking praise, adoration, admiration, approval, applause, attention, and other forms of narcissistic supply. When they fail to obtain sufficient supply, they react much like a drug addict would. They become dysphoric, depressed, and may resort to alternative addictions. In extreme cases of deprivation, they may even entertain suicidal thoughts. Narcissists also have a sense of magical thinking, believing that they will always prevail and that good things will always happen to them, rendering them fearless and cloaked in divine and cosmic immunity.
Anxiety, Depression, and Narcissism
Depression is a form of aggression that is directed at the depressed person rather than at their environment. This regime of repressed and mutated aggression is a characteristic of both narcissism and depression. Narcissism is sometimes described as a form of low-intensity depression. Depression is how this kind of patient experiences their overflowing reservoir of aggression.
Narcissist: No Sex, please, I am Cerebral!
Narcissists are autoerotic and prefer masturbation to sex. They view women with contempt and seek to torment them. The cerebral narcissist is often celibate and prefers pornography and sexual auto-stimulation to the real thing. They are afraid of encounters with the opposite sex and are even more afraid of emotional involvement or commitment that they fancy themselves prone to develop following a sexual encounter.
Bullying as Art, Abuse as Craftsmanship
Abuse is about control and is often a primitive and immature reaction to life’s circumstances. The abuser’s primary colors include unpredictability, disproportionality of reaction, dehumanization, objectification, and abuse by proxy. The abuser engineers situations in which he is solely needed and generates his own indispensability in the victim’s life. The abuser fosters an atmosphere of fear, intimidation, instability, unpredictability, and irritation, which erodes the victim’s sense of self-worth and self-esteem.
Why Narcissists Laugh in Funerals?
Narcissists fake emotions to manipulate their environment and lack true feelings. They have emotional resonance tables but no real emotions, and they defensively distort facts and circumstances to preserve their delusions of grandeur. Narcissists use emotional delegation to defend themselves against past hurts, delegating their emotions to a fictitious self, the false self. This duality is fundamental to the narcissistic personality and is evident in every interaction with them.
How Can I Trust Again?
Trust is an essential component of love and an important test of it. Mistrust or distrust are induced by life’s circumstances, and to continue to not trust is to reward the people who had wronged us and rendered us distrustful in the first place. Trust must be put to the test lest it go stale and stale. Whatever the act of betrayal, it has limited hint, and putting a bridge of trust in perspective goes a long way towards the commencement or healing process.
Abuse Victims Fear Holidays, Birthdays
Holidays can be a nightmare for victims of family violence and abuse, especially when the offender has narcissistic or antisocial psychopathic personality disorders. Holidays provoke a particularly virulent strain of pathological envy in abusers with these disorders. The narcissistic and psychopathic abuser feels deprived and wants to spoil the party for everyone else. It is important to set boundaries and punish misbehavior and maltreatment.
Narcissist as Spoiled Brat
Narcissists require attention and narcissistic supply, and when they cannot obtain it, they may experience decompensation, which can lead to acting out in various ways. Narcissists may resort to several adaptive solutions, including delusional narratives, antisocial behavior, passive-aggressive behavior, paranoid narratives, and masochistic avoidance. These behaviors are all self-generated sources of narcissistic supply. Masochistic narcissists may direct their fury inwards, punishing themselves for their failure to elicit supply, and this behavior has the added benefit of forcing those closest to them to pay attention to them.