Narcissist’s Addiction to Fame and Celebrity
Narcissists are addicted to being famous as it provides them with power, constant narcissistic supply, and fulfills important ego functions. The narcissist’s only bad emotional stretches are during periods of lack of attention, publicity, or exposure. The more the narcissist fails to secure the attention of the target group, the more daring, eccentric, and outlandish the narcissist becomes. The narcissist is not really interested in publicity per se, but with the reactions to his fame and celebrity.
Narcissist of Substance vs. Narcissist of Appearances
There are two types of narcissists: those who derive ample narcissistic supply from mere appearances and those whose narcissistic supply consists of doing substantial deeds. The former type of narcissist aims for celebrity, defined as being famous for being famous, while the latter type aims for careers in the limelight. The celebrity narcissist has a short attention span, is indolent, and prefers the path of least resistance. The career substantial narcissist is very concerned with leaving his mark and stamp of the world with his legacy, is a natural-born leader, and is willing and able to negotiate, compromise, and network.
Normal Personality and Personality Disorders
Personality is a complex pattern of deeply embedded psychological characteristics that are expressed automatically in almost every area of psychological function. Personality traits are enduring patterns of perceiving, relating to and thinking about the environment in oneself that are exhibited in a wide variety of social and personal contexts. Our temperament is the biological genetic template that interacts with our environment. Our character is largely the outcome of the process of socialization, the acts and imprints and edicts of our environment and nurture, and how they work on our psyche during the formative years, 0 to 6 and in other lists. Personality disorders are dysfunctions of our entire identity, tears in the fabric of who we are.
Narcissist: Women as Sluttish Huntresses or Sexless Saints
Heterosexual narcissists desire women but are frustrated by their inability to interact with them meaningfully. They hate women virulently, passionately, and uncompromisingly, and their hate is primal, irrational, and the progeny of mortal fear and sustained abuse in early childhood. Narcissists are infinitely pessimistic, bare-tempered, paranoid, and sadistic, and their daily routine is a rigmarole of threats, complaints, hurts, eruptions, moodiness, and rage. They are their own worst enemy and cannot conceive of life in one place with one set of people, doing the same thing in the same field with one goal within a decades-old game plan or career path or relationship.
Narcissist’s Romantic Jealousy and Possessiveness
Narcissists experience anxiety when they become aware of their possessive and jealous tendencies. Anxiety characterizes all their interactions with the opposite sex, especially in situations where there is a possibility of rejection or abandonment. The narcissist’s envy of their female mate is a result of an unconscious conflict, and they exercise their imagination to justify their negative emotions. Narcissists often strike an unhealthy balance by being emotionally and physically absent, which drives their partner to find emotional and physical gratification outside the relationship.
Schizoid and Paranoid Narcissist
Narcissistic personality disorder is often diagnosed with other mental health disorders, other personality disorders such as borderline, histrionic or antisocial. This phenomenon of multiple diagnosis in the same patient is called co-morbidity. Narcissists are often paranoid and some of them are schizoid. The narcissist depends on people, but hates them and despises them. A minority of narcissists choose the schizoid solution.
Issues in Narcissistic Supply
Narcissists devalue their sources of supply for the very qualities that make them sources of supply in the first place. The narcissist resents his dependency on narcissistic supply and perceives intimacy and sex as a threat to his uniqueness. Narcissistic supply includes all forms of attention, both positive and negative, fame, notoriety, adulation, fear, applause, approval. Narcissists frantically try to recycle their old and wasted sources when they have absolutely no other sources of supply at their disposal.
Can Narcissism be Cured?
Pathological narcissism is difficult to cure, and most narcissists resist psychotherapy. However, some progress has been made in effecting small changes in personality disorders through talk therapy and medication. The earlier the therapeutic intervention, the better the prognosis, and aging tends to moderate or even vanquish some antisocial behaviors associated with pathological narcissism. The existence of empathy is a serious predictor of future psychodynamics, and the prognosis for a classical narcissist with grandiosity, lack of empathy, and all is not good as far as long-term, lasting, and complete healing.
Narcissism: Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder?
Narcissistic personality disorder is not a form of dissociative identity disorder (DID) because the false self of a narcissist is not a full-fledged personality, as happens in DID. The false self is a mere construct, a reactive pattern, and lacks many functional and structural elements. DID alters have a date of inception, but the false self is a process without a cut-off date. Narcissism is a total, pure solution of self-extinguishing and self-abolishing, while other personality disorders are diluted versions of self-hate and perpetuated self-abuse.
Remain Friends with the Narcissist?
Narcissists are only friendly when they need something from you, such as narcissistic supply, help, support, votes, money, or sex. They also become friendly when they feel threatened and want to smother the threat with pleasantries. Narcissists are also over-friendly when they have just been infused with an overdose of narcissistic supply. Some people prefer to live with narcissists because they have been conditioned to treat narcissistic abuse as background noise and are compensated for the abuse by the thrills provided by living with a narcissist. However, inverted narcissists are typically unhappy and in need of help, which suggests that they are victims who experience the Stockholm Syndrome.