Cerebral Narcissist’s Confession: Regulation of Narcissistic Supply
The cerebral narcissist describes his pattern of selecting women inferior to him, engaging in brief periods of sex, and then becoming a recluse interested only in his studies. He sees his intimate partners as fulfilling roles such as admiring him, reminding him of his past accomplishments, and doing chores. He does not care what else they do with their time or with whom they spend it, but panics when they show signs of leaving him. He embarks on a charm offensive, but it is usually too late. The women feel that something is wrong with the relationship, but cannot place their finger on it.
People-pleasers and Pathological Charmers
People pleasers are often dishonest and manipulative, seeking to foster dependence in their beneficiaries. They use a range of coping strategies, including infantilization and self-sacrifice. People pleasers are a subset of pathological charmers, who are mostly narcissists. Pathological charmers use their charm to manipulate others and exert control, and feel threatened when their charm fails to elicit narcissistic supply.
Narcissist: Stable Life or Roller Coaster?
Narcissists are dependent on and addicted to fluctuating narcissistic supply, leading to volatility in their lives and moods. Classic narcissists maintain an island of stability in their lives, while the other dimensions of their existence wallow in chaos and unpredictability. Borderline narcissists react to instability in one area of their life by introducing chaos into all other dimensions of their existence. Narcissists of all kinds hate routine and avoid it as part of their emotional involvement prevention mechanisms, which prevent them from getting emotionally involved, bonding, attaching, and subsequently being hurt.
MMPI-2 Psychological Test: Controversial, but Hard to Fake
The MMPI-2 test booklet has 567 items, but a rough assessment can be made based on the first 370 queries. The items are arranged in scales, and the responses are compared to answers provided by control subjects. The nature of the deviation determines the patient’s traits and tendencies, but not their diagnosis. The test results place the subject in a group of patients who reacted similarly, and the validity scales indicate whether the patient responded truthfully and accurately or was trying to manipulate the test. The clinical scales measure various mental health issues, and the interpretation of the MMPI-2 is now fully computerized.
Masochistic Personality Disorder (Masochism)
Masochists have been taught to hate themselves and consider themselves unworthy of love, leading to self-destructive behaviors. They avoid pleasurable experiences and seek suffering, pain, and hurt in relationships. They reject help and render attempts to assist futile. Masochists tend to choose people and circumstances that lead to failure and avoid those that result in success or gratification. They adopt unrealistic goals and generate underachievements, leading to rage, depression, and guilt.
Narcissist Re-idealizes Discarded Sources of Narcissistic Supply
Narcissists keep discarded sources of supply in reserve and seek them out when they have no other supply source. They frantically try to recycle their old sources and re-idealize them without admitting to having been mistaken in the first place. To preserve their grandiosity, they come up with a narrative that accommodates both the devaluing content and the re-idealized image of the source. If you are an old source of narcissistic supply, simply ignore the narcissist as indifference is what they cannot stand.
DSM V Gets Narcissistic Personality Disorder Partly Right
The DSM-5 criteria for diagnosing narcissistic personality disorder include impairments in personality functioning, both self and interpersonal, and the presence of pathological personality traits. The impairments in self-functioning include identity and self-direction, while the impairments in interpersonal functioning include empathy and intimacy. The DSM-5 also focuses on pathological personality traits of the narcissist, which are characterized by antagonism, grandiosity, and attention-seeking. The diagnostic criteria should be stable across time, consistent across situations, and not solely due to direct physiological effects of a substance or general medical condition.
Narcissist’s Wonderboy Mask
Narcissists have a conflicted relationship with their emotions, investing in things they feel they have full control over, such as themselves. To protect themselves from emotional contamination, they construct a false self, which insulates them from the risks of intimacy. The narcissist also creates a second mask, the wunderkind mask, which broadcasts to the world that they are both a child and a genius, making them less emotionally vulnerable. However, the indiscriminate use of these two masks can be detrimental to the narcissist’s well-being, leading to emotional devastation and abandonment.
Lonely, Schizoid Narcissist
Narcissistic personality disorder is often diagnosed with other mental health disorders, such as borderline, histrionic or antisocial psychopathic personality disorder. Narcissism is often also accompanied by substance abuse and other reckless and impulsive behaviors, and this we call dual diagnosis. There is one curious match, one logic-defying appearance or co-appearance of mental health disorders, narcissism, together with schizoid personality disorder. A minority of narcissists, therefore, choose the schizoid solution. They choose to disengage, to detach both emotionally and socially.
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.