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.
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.
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.
Meet the Narcissist: Issues in Narcissism
Narcissistic personality disorder is difficult to treat due to the pervasiveness of autological narcissism in every aspect of the personality. The narcissist’s resistance to authority figures such as therapists makes treatment almost unattainable. Narcissism is often comorbid with other disorders such as depression, substance abuse, and reckless behavior patterns. While some of these problems can be treated with medication and talk therapy, the core defense mechanisms of the narcissist are untouchable. Narcissism is a vicious circle.
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.