These classes help you discover the mythologies of  self-objectification and the object relationships that perpetuate your suffering and self loathing. You then have an opportunity to just stop the suffering and connect with your innate nature, which is conscious, happy, free and unlimited.  Pathological envy – the second deadly sin – is a compounded emotion. It is brought on by the realization of some lack, deficiency, or inadequacy in oneself. It is the result of unfavorably comparing oneself to others: to their success, their reputation, their possessions, their luck, their qualities. It is misery and humiliation and impotent rage and a tortuous, slippery path to nowhere. The effort to break the padded walls of this self-visited purgatory often leads to attacks on the perceived source of frustration.

There is a spectrum of reactions to this pernicious and cognitively distorting emotion:

Subsuming the Object of Envy Through Imitation

Some narcissists seek to imitate or even emulate their ever changing role models. It is as if by imitating the object of his envy, the narcissist becomes that object. So, narcissists are likely to adopt their boss’ typical gestures, the vocabulary of a successful politician, the dress code of a movie star, the views of an esteemed tycoon, even the countenance
and actions of the fictitious hero of a movie or a novel.

In his pursuit of peace of mind, in his frantic effort to alleviate the burden of consuming jealousy, the narcissist often deteriorates to conspicuous and ostentatious consumption, impulsive and reckless behaviors, and substance abuse.

In extreme cases, to get rich quick through schemes of crime and corruption, to out-wit the system, to prevail, is thought by these people to be the epitome of cleverness, providing one does not get caught, the sport of living, a winked at vice, a spice.

Destroying the Frustrating Object

Other narcissists “choose” to destroy the object that gives them so much grief by provoking in them feelings of inadequacy and frustration. They display obsessive, blind animosity and engage in compulsive acts of rivalry often at the cost of self-destruction and self-isolation.

This behavior manifests in many forms. From scratching the paint of new cars and flattening their types, to spreading vicious gossip, to media-hyped arrests of successful and rich businessmen, to wars against advantaged neighbors.

The stifling, condensed vapors of envy cannot be dispersed. They invade their victims,
their rageful eyes, their calculating souls, they guide their hands in evil doings and dip
their tongues in vitriol. The envious narcissist’s existence is a constant hiss, a tangible malice, the piercing of a thousand eyes. The imminence and immanence of violence.
The poisoned joy of depriving the other of that which you don’t or cannot have.

Self-Deprecation

There are those narcissists who idealize the successful and the rich and the lucky. They
attribute to them super-human, almost divine, qualities.

In an effort to justify the agonizing disparities between themselves and others, they humble themselves as they elevate the others. They reduce and diminish their own gifts, they disparage their own achievements, they degrade their own possessions and look with disdain and contempt upon their nearest and dearest, who are unable to
discern their fundamental shortcomings. They feel worthy only of abasement and punishment. Besieged by guilt and remorse, voided of self-esteem, perpetually self- hating and self-deprecating, this is by far the more dangerous species of narcissist.

For he who derives contentment from his own humiliation cannot but derive happiness
from the downfall of others. Indeed, most of them end up driving the objects of their own devotion and adulation to destruction and decrepitude.

Cognitive Dissonance

The most common reaction is cognitive dissonance. It is to believe that the grapes are sour rather than to admit that they are craved.

These people devalue the source of their frustration and envy. They find faults, unattractive features, high costs to pay, immorality in everything they really most desire and aspire to and in everyone who has attained that which they so often can’t.

They walk amongst us, critical and self-righteous, inflated with a justice of their making and secure in the wisdom of being what they are rather than what they could have been and really wish to be. They make a virtue of virtuous abstention, of wishful constipation, of judgmental neutrality, this oxymoron, the favorite of the disabled.

Avoidance – The Schizoid Solution

And then, of course, there is avoidance. To witness the success and joy of others is too painful and too high a price to pay. So, the narcissist stays away, alone and incommunicado. He inhabits the artificial bubble that is his world where he is king and
country, law and yardstick, the one and only. The narcissist becomes the resident of his own burgeoning delusions. He is happy and soothed.

However, the narcissist must justify to himself – on those rare occasions that he does catch a glimpse of his internal turmoil – why all this hatred and why the envy. The object of envy and hatred has to be magnified, glorified, idealized, demonized or
elevated to superhuman levels to account for the narcissist’s strong negative emotions.
Outstanding qualities, skills and abilities are imputed to it and the object of these emotions is perceived to possess all the traits that the narcissist would have liked to have but doesn’t.

This is very different from the purer, healthier, forms of hate directed at an object,
which is genuinely – or is genuinely perceived to be – ominous, dangerous, or sadistic.
In this healthy reaction, the properties of the hated object are not ones the person doing
the hating would have liked to possess!

Hatred is thus used to eliminate a source of frustration, which sadistically attacks the self. Jealousy is aimed at another person, who sadistically – or provocatively – prevents the jealous self from obtaining what it desires.

Anger is a compounded phenomenon. Most personality disordered people are prone to anger. Their anger is always sudden, raging, frightening and without an apparent provocation by an outside agent. It would seem that people suffering from personality disorders are in a constant state of anger, which is effectively suppressed most of the time. It manifests itself only when the person’s defenses are down, incapacitated, or adversely affected by circumstances, inner or external.

There is a psychodynamic source of this permanent, bottled-up anger. The person was, usually, unable to express anger and direct it at “forbidden” targets in his early, formative years (his parents, in most cases). The anger, however, was a justified reaction to abuses and mistreatment. The patient was, therefore, left to nurture a sense
of profound injustice and frustrated rage. This is the initiation of the Narcissistic
personality. Healthy people experience anger, but as a transitory state. This is what
sets the narcissistic personality apart: their anger is always acute, permanently present,
often suppressed or repressed. Healthy anger has an external inducing agent (a reason).
It is directed at this agent, it has coherence.

Pathological anger is neither coherent, nor externally induced. It emanates from the
inside and it is diffuse, directed at the “world” and at “injustice” in general. The person
does identify the immediate cause of the anger. Still, upon closer scrutiny, the cause is
likely to be found lacking and the anger excessive, disproportionate, incoherent. To
refine the point: it might be more accurate to say that the narcissistic personality is
expressing (and experiencing) two layers of anger, simultaneously and always. The
first layer, the superficial anger, is indeed directed at an identified target, the alleged
cause of the eruption. The second layer, however, is anger directed at himself. The
person is angry at himself for being unable to vent off normal anger, normally. He feels
like an alien. He hates himself. This second layer of anger also comprises strong and
easily identifiable elements of frustration, irritation and annoyance.

While normal anger is connected to some action regarding its source (or to the planning
or contemplation of such action) – pathological anger is mostly directed at oneself or
even lacks direction altogether. The personality disordered are afraid to show that they
are angry to meaningful others because they are afraid to lose them. The Borderline
Personality Disordered is terrified of being abandoned, the narcissist needs his
Narcissistic Supply Sources, the Paranoid – his persecutors and so on. These people
prefer to direct their anger at people who are meaningless to them, people whose
withdrawal will not constitute a threat to their precariously balanced personality. They
yell at a waitress, berate a taxi driver, or explode at an underling. Alternatively, they
sulk, are unable to feel pleasure or are pathologically bored, drink or do drugs – all
forms of self-directed aggression. From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to
suppress, they have it out with the real source of their anger. They rage and, generally,
behave like lunatics. They shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts,
pronounce allegations and suspicions. These episodes are followed by periods of
saccharine sentimentality and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the
victim of the latest rage attack. Driven by the mortal fear of being abandoned or
ignored, the personality disordered debases and demeans himself to the point of
provoking repulsion in the beholder. These pendulum-like emotional swings make life
with the personality disordered difficult.

The two main sources of anger are threat (a disagreement is potentially threatening)
and injustice (inconvenience is injustice inflicted on the angry person by the world).

These are also the two sources of personality disorders. The personality disordered is
molded by recurrent and frequent injustice and he is constantly threatened both by his
internal and by his external universes.

Anger is a primitive, limbic emotion. Its excitatory components and patterns are shared
with sexual excitation and with fear. It is cognition that guides our behavior, aimed at
avoiding harm and aversion or at minimizing them. Our cognition is in charge of
attaining certain kinds of mental gratification. The judgment of fairness or justice
(namely, the appraisal of the extent of compliance with conventions of social exchange)
– is also cognitive.

The angry person and the personality disordered both suffer from a cognitive deficit.
They are unable to conceptualize, to design effective strategies and to execute them.
They dedicate all their attention to the immediate and ignore the future consequences of
their actions. In other words, their attention and information processing faculties are
distorted, skewed in favor of the here and now, biased on both the intake and the
output. Time is “relativistically dilated” – the present feels more protracted, “longer”
than any future. Immediate facts and actions are judged more relevant and weighted
more heavily than any remote aversive conditions. Anger impairs cognition.

The angry person is a worried person. The personality disordered is also excessively
preoccupied with himself. Worry and anger are the cornerstones of the edifice of
anxiety. Anger is the constant fear of loss or the fear of what could be lost or has been
lost. This is where it all converges: people become angry because they are excessively
concerned with bad things which might happen to them. Anger is a result of anxiety
(or, when the anger is not acute, of fear).

Finally, acutely angry people perceive anger to have been the result of intentional (or
circumstantial) provocation with a hostile purpose (by the target of their anger). Their
targets, on the other hand, invariably regard them as incoherent people, acting
arbitrarily, in an unjustified manner.

We all fear the loss of our identity and uniqueness. We seem to be acutely aware of this
fear in a crowd of people. This wish to be distinct, “special” in the most primitive sense,
is universal. It crosses cultural barriers and spans different periods in human history.
We use hair styles, clothing, behavior, lifestyles and products of our creative mind to
differentiate ourselves.

The sensation of “being unique or special” is of paramount importance. It is behind
many a social custom. People feel indispensable, one of a kind, in a loving relationship,
for instance. One’s uniqueness is reflected by one’s spouse and this provides one with an
“independent, external and objective” affirmation of one’s specialness. This sounds very
close to pathological narcissism. Indeed, the difference is in measure – not in substance.

Healthy people “use” others to confirm their sense of distinctiveness – but they do not
over-dose or over-do it. Feeling unique is to the average person of secondary
importance. He derives the bulk of his sense of identity from his well-developed,
differentiated Ego. The clear-cut boundaries of his Ego and his thorough acquaintance
with a beloved figure – his authentic self – are enough.

Only people whose Ego is underdeveloped, immature, and relatively undifferentiated,
need ever larger quantities of external Ego boundary setting, of affirmation through
reflection. To such people, there is no distinction between significant and less
meaningful others. Everyone carries the same weight and fulfills the same
functions: reflection, affirmation, recognition, adulation, or attention. This is why,
to them, everyone is interchangeable and dispensable.

The narcissist employs the following mechanisms in his relationships (say, in a marriage):

1. He “merges” with his spouse/mate and contains him/her as a representation of the outside world.

2. He exerts absolute dominion over the spouse (again in her symbolic capacity as The World).

These two mechanisms substitute for the healthier forms of relationship, where the two
members of the couple maintain their distinctiveness, while, at the same time, creating
a new “being of togetherness.”

To ensure a constant flow of Narcissistic Supply, the narcissist seeks to “replicate”
his projected self. He becomes addicted to publicity, fame, and celebrity. Merely
observing his “replicated self” – on billboards, TV screens, book covers, newspapers
– sustains the narcissist’s feelings of omnipotence and omnipresence, akin to the ones
that he experienced in his early childhood. The “replicated self” provides the narcissist
with an “existential substitute,” proof that he exists – functions normally carried out by
a healthy, well-developed Ego through its interactions with the outside world
(the “reality principle”).

In extreme cases of deprivation, when Narcissistic Supply is nowhere to be
found, the narcissist decompensates and disintegrates, even up to having
psychotic micro-episodes. The narcissist also forms or participates in hermetic
or exclusive, cult-like, social circles, whose members share his delusions
(Pathological Narcissistic Space). The function of these acolytes is to serve
as a psychological entourage and to provide “objective” proof of the narcissist’s
self-importance and grandeur. When these devices fail, it leads to an all-pervasive
feeling of annulment and detachment.

An abandoning spouse or a business failure, for instance, are crises whose magnitude
and meaning cannot be suppressed. This usually moves the narcissist to seek treatment.

Therapy starts where self-delusion leaves off, but it takes a massive disintegration of
the very fabric of the narcissist’s life and personality organization to bring about merely
this limited concession of defeat. Even then the narcissist merely seeks to be “fixed” in
order to continue his life as before.

The boundaries (and the very existence) of the narcissist’s Ego are defined by others.
In times of crisis, the inner experience of the narcissist – even when he is surrounded
by people – is that of rapid, uncontrollable dissolution.

This feeling is life threatening. This existential conflict forces the narcissist to fervently
seek or improvise solutions, optimal or suboptimal, at any cost. The narcissist proceeds
to find a new spouse, to secure publicity, or to get involved with new “friends”, who are
willing to accommodate his desperate need for Narcissistic Supply.

This sense of overwhelming urgency causes the narcissist to suspend all judgment. In
these circumstances, the narcissist is likely to misjudge the traits and abilities of a
prospective spouse, the quality of his own work, or his status within his social milieu. He
is liable to make indiscriminate use of all his defense mechanisms to justify and rationalize
this hot pursuit.

Many narcissists reject treatment even in the most dire circumstances. Feeling
omnipotent, they seek the answers themselves and in themselves, and then venture to
“fix” and “maintain” themselves. They gather information, philosophize, “creatively
innovate”, and contemplate. They do all this single-handedly and even when they are
forced to seek other people’s counsel, they are unlikely to admit it and are likely to
devalue their helpers.

The narcissist dedicates a lot of his time and energy to establish his own specialness.
He is concerned with the degree of his uniqueness and with various methods to
substantiate, communicate and document it.

The narcissist’s frame of reference is nothing less than posterity and the entirety of the
human race. His uniqueness must be immediately and universally recognized. It must
(potentially, at least) be known by everyone at all times – or it loses its allure. It is an all
or nothing situation.

Uniqueness and intimacy are strong rivals.
Intimacy implies a certain acquaintance of one’s partner with privileged information.
Yet, it is exactly such partially or wholly withheld information that buttresses one’s
sense of superiority, uniqueness, and mystery which, inevitably, vanishes with
disclosure and intimacy. Additionally, intimacy is a common and universal pursuit.
It does not confer uniqueness on its seeker.

These classes, the movement and the Video Holo-Therapy help you discover the
mythologies, the self-objectification and the object relationships that perpetuate your
suffering and self loathing. You have an opportunity to just stop the suffering and
connect with your innate nature, which is conscious, happy, free and unlimited.

Narcissism is a survival strategy and as such is the creation of an Objectified-Self. It is a
cutting off from inner knowing, feeling, and of the inner expression of the authentic self.
Instead a false self image is created from the reflection of objects, people and
experiences that surround one. This false-self stifles healthy individuation from the
parent and development of a functional ego. Narcissism is a direct result of the
aggression the narcissist experienced from his surroundings, in early life. To better
understand the narcissist’s intimate relationships, we must first understand the genesis
of one aspect of narcissism: aggression.

Emotions are instincts. They form part of human behavior. Interactions with other
people provide a framework, an organizational structure into which emotions fit nicely.
Libido is the sexual instinct or sexual drive. Emotions are organized by object
relationships to the libido, the positive pole associated with safety or the negative pole
aggression, which is associated with hurt.

Anger is the basic emotion underlying aggression. As it fluctuates, it is transformed.
Anger has two aspects or two faces: hatred and envy. The libido has sexual excitation
as its basic emotion. This emotional object relationship is an ancient tactile
remembrance of the safety of the mother’s skin and the wholesome feeling and smell of
her breasts that provoke this excitement.

So important are these early emotional experiences, that an early age pathology of
object relationships can develop from traumatic experience—physical or psychological
abuse, abandonment —or these traumatic experiences can move aggression into a
dominant position over the libido. Whenever aggression rules over libidinal drives, we
have a psychopathology.

The emotional twins —libido and aggression —are inseparable. They characterize all
references of the self to an object rather than to the true inner nature, which is the
authentic self. A false world of emotionally-invested object relationships is formed with
each emotional wound and each subsequent objectified-self reference to the outer
world.

The dynamic unconscious-self is made of basic mental experiences, which are really
dyadic relations between self-representations and object representations in either of two
contexts: elation or rage. A subconscious fantasy of merging or unification of the self
and the object prevails in symbiotic relationships – both in euphoric moods and in
aggressive and wrathful ones.

Anger has evolutionary and adaptive functions. It is intended to alert the individual to
a source of pain and irritation and to motivate him to eliminate it. It is the beneficial
outcome of frustration and pain. It is also instrumental in the removal of barriers to the
satisfaction of needs.

As most sources of bad feelings appear to be human, aggression in the form of rage is
directed at human,”bad” objects – people around us who are perceived by us to be
deliberately frustrating our wishes to satisfy our needs. At the furthest end of this
range we find the will and wish to make such a frustrating object suffer. However, such
desire to make one suffer is a different game: it combines aggression and pleasure,
therefore it is sadistic.

Rage can easily convert to hatred. There is a wish to control the bad object in order to
avoid persecution or fear. This control is achieved by the development of obsessive
control mechanisms, which regulate the repression of aggression in such an individual.

Aggression can assume many forms. Biting humor, excessive candor, the search for
autonomy and personal enhancement, a compulsive effort to secure the absence of any
kind of outside intervention – are all sublimations of aggression.

Hatred is a derivative of anger which is intended to facilitate the destruction of the bad
object, to make it suffer and to control it. Rage is acute, passing and disruptive – hatred
is chronic, stable and connected to character. Hatred seems justified on the grounds of
revenge against the frustrating object. The wish to avenge is very typical of hatred.
Paranoid fears of retaliation accompany hatred. Hatred thus has paranoid, sadistic and
vengeful characteristics.

Another transformation of aggression is envy. This is a greedy wish to incorporate the
object, even to destroy it. Yet, this very object which the envious mind seeks to
eliminate by incorporation or by destruction is also an object of love, the object of love
without which life itself will not have existed or will have lost its taste and impetus.

The narcissist’s mind is pervaded by conscious and unconscious transformations of
enormous amounts of aggression into envy. The magnitude of hatred in such
individuals is so great, that they deny both the emotion and any awareness of it.
Alternatively, aggression is converted to action or to acting out.

This denial affects normal cognitive functioning as well. Such an individual has
intermittent bouts of arrogance, curiosity and pseudo-stupidity, all transformations of
aggression taken to the extreme. It is difficult to tell envy from hatred in these cases.

The narcissist is constantly envious of people. He begrudges others their success, or
brilliance, or happiness, or good fortune. He is driven to excesses of paranoia, guilt,
and fear that subside only after he “acts out” or punishes himself. It is a vicious cycle in
which he is entrapped.

Traditional therapy, in most cases, has little success with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), it can only mitigate and ameliorate the condition by modifying some of the narcissist’s behaviors.

Only narcissists, who go through a severe life crisis, tend to consider the possibility of therapy at all.  When they attend the therapeutic sessions, they, usually, bring all their rigid defense mechanisms to the fore.  The therapy quickly becomes a tedious – and useless – affair for both therapist and patient.

However, there is promise in a spiritually based process.  Many have gained insight and tools that lead them to a more productive life through the “Intensive Life Training” and the on-going group sessions.

Most cerebral narcissists are very intelligent.  They base their grandiose fantasies on this natural advantage.  When faced with a reasoned analysis, which shows that they suffer from “NPD” – most of them accept and acknowledge the new information.  But first they have to face it – and this is the difficult part: they all are deniers of reality.

Moreover, cognitively assimilating the information is a mere process of labeling. It has no psycho-dynamic effect.  It does not affect the narcissist’s behavior patterns and interactions with his human environment.  These are the products of well-entrenched and rigid mental mechanisms.

Narcissists are pathological liars.  This means that they are either unaware of their lies – or feel completely justified and at ease when lying to others.  Often, they believe their own confabulations and attribute to them “retroactive veracity.”  The very essence of the narcissist is a huge, contrived, lie: his False-Self, his grandiose fantasies, and his idealized objects.

Personality disorders are adaptative.  This means that they help to resolve mental conflicts and the anxiety, which, normally, accompanies them.  Narcissists sometimes contemplate suicide (suicidal ideation) when they go through a crisis – but they are not very likely to follow through.

Narcissists are, in a way, sadists.  They are likely to use verbal and psychological abuse and violence against their closest, nearest and “dearest.”

The “NPD” is a newcomer to the zoo of mental disorders.  It was not fully defined until the late 1980s.  The discussion, analysis and study of narcissism is as old as psychology – but there is a great difference between being a “mere” narcissist and having a “NPD.”  So, no one has a clue as to how widespread this particular personality disorder is – or, even, how widespread personality disorders are (estimates range between 3 and 15% of the population.  I feel it is much higher than this from my experience.  It could be as high as 90%.  In the last ten years I have seen a dramatic increase in “NPD” in my clients.  This increase is directly related to the media bombarding each generation with more and more intensely abusive and violent images, directing self-worth and happiness towards the materialistic and outer experience and away from true happiness derived from a relationship with the inner-self.

Can a narcissist ever get better and, if not, how should his partner end a relationship with him?  A Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a systemic, all-pervasive condition, very much like pregnancy: either you have it or you don’t.  Once you have it, you have it day and night, it is an inseparable part of the personality, a recurrent set of behavior patterns.

There are narcissistic touches in every personality and in this sense, all of us are narcissists to some extent. But this is a far cry from the “NPD” pathology.

One bit of good news: no one knows why, but, in certain cases, though rarely, with age (in one’s forties), the disorder seems to decay and, finally, stay on in the form of a subdued mutation of itself.  This does not universally occur, though.

Should a partner stay on with a narcissist in the hope that his disorder will be ameliorated by ripe age?  This is a matter of value judgment, preferences, priorities, background, emotions and a host of other “non-scientific” matters. There could be no one “right” answer.  It would seem that the only valid criterion is the partner’s well-being.  If he or she feels bad in a relationship (and no amount of self-help or of professional help changes that) – then looking for the exit door sounds like a viable and healthy strategy.

This raises the second part of the question: a relationship with a narcissist is of dependence, even symbiosis.  Moreover, the narcissist is a superb emotional manipulator and extortionist.  In some cases, there is real threat to his mental stability.  Even “demonstrative” (failed) suicide cannot be ruled out in the repertory of narcissistic reactions to abandonment.  And even a modest amount of residual love harbored by the narcissist’s partner makes the separation very difficult for him or her.

But there is a magic formula.  A narcissist is with his partner because he regards “IT” as a Source of Narcissistic-Supply.  He values the partner as such a source. Put differently: the minute that the partner ceases to supply him with what he needs – he loses all interest in “IT.”  (I use “IT” judiciously – the narcissist objectifies his partners, treats them as he would inanimate objects.)

The transition from over-valuation (bestowed upon Sources of Narcissistic Supply) to devaluation (reserved for other mortals) is so swift that it is likely to inflict pain upon the narcissist’s partner, even if he previously prayed for the narcissist to depart and leave him alone. The partner is the narcissist’s pusher and the drug that he is proffering is stronger than any other drug because it sustains the narcissist’s very essence (his False-Self).

Without Narcissistic-Supply the narcissist disintegrates, crumbles and shrivels – very much as vampires do in horror movies when exposed to sunlight.

Here lies the partner’s salvation.  An advice to you: if you wish to sever your relationship with the narcissist, stop providing him with what he needs.  Do not adore, admire, approve, applaud, or confirm anything that he does or says. Disagree with his views, belittle him (or put him in perspective and proportion), compare him to others, tell him that he is not unique, criticize him, make suggestions, offer help.  In short, deprive him of that illusion which holds his personality together.

The narcissist is a delicately attuned piece of equipment.  At the first sign of danger to his inflated, fantastic and grandiose self – he will disappear on you.

What happens to a narcissist who lacks even the basic potential and skills to realize some of his grandiose fantasies?

Such a narcissist resorts to deferred Narcissistic-Supply which generates an effect of deferred grandiosity. He forgoes his grandiose schemes and gives up on the present. He defers the fulfillment of his fantasies – which support his inflated Ego – to the (indefinite) future.

Such narcissists engage in activities (or in daydreaming), which they fervently believe, will make them famous, powerful, influential, or superior in some unspecified future time. They keep their minds occupied and off their failures.

Such frustrated and bitter narcissist’s hold themselves answerable only to History, God, Eternity, Future Generations, Art, science, the Church, the Country, the Nation and so on. They entertain notions of grandeur which are dependent upon the judgment or assessment of a fuzzily defined collective in an ambiguous time frame. Thus, these narcissists find solace in the embrace of Chronos.

Deferred grandiosity is an adaptive mechanism which ameliorates dysphoria and grandiosity gaps.  It is healthy to daydream and fantasize.  It is the antechamber of life and often anticipates its circumstances.  It is a process of preparing for eventualities.  But healthy daydreaming is different from grandiosity.

Grandiosity has four components:

Omnipotence

The narcissist believes in his omnipotence. “Believe” in this context is a weak word.  He knows.  It is a cellular certainty, almost biological, it flows in his blood and permeates every niche of his being.  The narcissist “knows” that he can do anything he chooses to do and excel in it.  What the narcissist does, what he excels at, what he achieves, depends only on his volition.  To his mind, there is no other determinant.

Hence his rage when confronted with disagreement or opposition – not only because of the audacity of his, evidently inferior, adversaries.  But because it threatens his world view, it endangers his feeling of omnipotence.  The narcissist is often fatuously daring, adventurous, experimental and curious precisely due to this hidden assumption of “can-do.”  He is genuinely surprised and devastated when he fails, when the “universe” does not arrange itself, magically, to accommodate his unbounded fantasies, when it (and people in it) does not comply with his whims and wishes.

He often denies away such discrepancies, deletes them from his memory.  As a result, he remembers his life as a patchy quilt of unrelated events and people.

Omniscience

The narcissist often pretends to know everything, in every field of human knowledge and endeavor. He lies and prevaricates to avoid the exposure of his ignorance. He resorts to numerous subterfuges to support his God-like omniscience.

Where his knowledge fails him – he feigns authority, fakes superiority, quotes from non-existent sources, embeds threads of truth in a canvass of falsehoods. He transforms himself into an artist of intellectual prestidigitation.  As he gets older, this invidious quality may recede, or, rather, metamorphose.  He may now claim more confined expertise.

He may no longer be ashamed to admit his ignorance and his need to learn things outside the fields of his real or self-proclaimed expertise.  But this “improvement” is merely optical.  Within his “territory,” the narcissist is still as fiercely defensive and possessive as ever.

Many narcissists are avowed autodidacts, unwilling to subject their knowledge and insights to peer scrutiny, or, for that matter, to any scrutiny.  The narcissist keeps re-inventing himself, adding new fields of knowledge as he goes.  This creeping intellectual annexation is a round about way of reverting to his erstwhile image as the erudite “Renaissance man”.

Omnipresence

Even the narcissist cannot pretend to actually be everywhere at once in the physical sense.  Instead, he feels that he is the center and the axis of his “universe,” that all things and happenstance revolve around him and that cosmic disintegration would ensue if he were to disappear or to lose interest in someone or in something.

He is convinced, for instance, that he is the main, if not the only, topic of discussion in his absence.  He is often surprised and offended to learn that he was not even mentioned.  When invited to a meeting with many participants, he assumes the position of the sage, the guru, or the teacher/guide whose words carry a special weight.  His creations (books, articles, works of art) are extensions of his presence and, in this restricted sense, he does seem to exist everywhere.  In other words, he “stamps” his environment.  He “leaves his mark” upon it.  He “stigmatizes” it.

Narcissist the Omnivore (Perfectionism and Completeness)

There is another “omni” component in grandiosity.  The narcissist is an omnivore. He devours and digests experiences and people, sights and smells, bodies and words, books and films, sounds and achievements, his work and his leisure, his pleasure and his possessions.  The narcissist is incapable of enjoying anything because he is in constant pursuit of perfection and completeness.

Classic narcissists interact with the world as predators do with their prey.  They want to own it all, be everywhere, experience everything.  They cannot delay gratification.  They do not take “no” for an answer.  And they settle for nothing less than the ideal, the sublime, the perfect, the all-inclusive, the all-encompassing, the engulfing, the all-pervasive, the most beautiful, the cleverest, the richest, and the most brilliant.

The narcissist is shattered when he discovers that a collection he possesses is incomplete, that his colleague’s wife is more glamorous, that his son is better than he is in math, that his neighbor has a new, flashy car, that his roommate got promoted, that the “love of his life” signed a recording contract. It is not plain old jealousy, not even pathological envy (though it is definitely a part of the psychological make-up of the narcissist).  It is the discovery that the narcissist is not perfect, or ideal, or complete that does him in.

Ask anyone who shared a life with a narcissist, or knew one and they are likely to sigh: “What a waste”. Waste of potential, waste of opportunities, waste of emotions, a wasteland of arid addiction and futile pursuit.

Narcissists are as gifted as they come.  The problem is to disentangle their tales of fantastic grandiosity from the reality of their talents and skills.  They always either over-estimate or devalue their potency.  They often emphasize the wrong traits and invest in their mediocre or less than average capacities at the expense of their true and promising potential.  Thus, they squander their advantages and under-rate their natural gifts.

The narcissist decides which aspects of his self to nurture and which to neglect. He gravitates towards activities commensurate with his pompous auto-portrait. He suppresses these tendencies and aptitudes in him which don’t conform to his inflated view of his uniqueness, brilliance, might, sexual prowess, or standing in society.  He cultivates these flairs and predilections which he regards as befitting his overweening self-image and ultimate grandeur.

But, the narcissist, no matter how self-aware and well-meaning, is accursed.  His grandiosity, his fantasies, the compelling, overriding urge to feel unique, invested with some cosmic significance, unprecedentedly bestowed – these thwart his best intentions.  These structures of obsession and compulsion, these deposits of insecurity and pain, the stalactites and stalagmites of years of abuse and then abandonment – they all conspire to frustrate the gratification, however circumspect, of the narcissist’s true nature.

An utter lack of self-awareness is typical of the narcissist.  He is intimate only with his False- Self, constructed meticulously from years of lying and deceit.  The narcissist’s True-Self is stashed, dilapidated and dysfunctional, in the furthest recesses of his mind.  The False-Self is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, creative, ingenious, irresistible, and glowing.  The narcissist often isn’t.

Add combustible paranoia to the narcissist’s divorce from himself – and his constant and recurrent failure to assess reality fairly is more understandable. The narcissist overpowering sense of entitlement is rarely commensurate with his accomplishments in his real life or with his traits.  When the world fails to comply with his demands and to support his grandiose fantasies, the narcissist suspects a plot against him by his inferiors.

The narcissist rarely admits to a weakness, ignorance, or deficiency.  He filters out information to the contrary – a cognitive impairment with serious consequences. Narcissists are likely to unflinchingly make inflated and inane claims about their sexual prowess, wealth, connections, history, or achievements.

All this is mighty embarrassing to the narcissist’s nearest, dearest, colleagues, friends, neighbors, or even mere on-lookers.  The narcissist’s tales are so patently absurd that he often catches people off-guard.  Behind his back, the narcissist is derided and mockingly imitated.  He fast makes a nuisance and an imposition of himself in every company.

But the narcissist’s failure of the reality test can have more serious and irreversible consequences. Narcissists, unqualified to make life-and-death decisions often insist on rendering them.  Narcissists pretend to be economists, engineers, or medical doctors – when they are not.  But they are not con-artists in the classic, premeditated sense.  They firmly believe that, though self-taught at best, they are more qualified than even the properly accredited sort. Narcissists believe in magic and in fantasy. They are no longer with us.

We all love ourselves. That seems to be such an instinctively true statement that we do not bother to examine it more thoroughly. In our daily lives – in love, in business, in other areas of life – we act on this premise. Yet, upon closer inspection, it looks shakier.

Some people explicitly state that they do not love themselves at all. Others confine their lack of self-love to certain traits, to their personal history, or to some of their behavior patterns. Yet others feel content with who they are and with what they are doing.

But one group of people seems distinct in its mental constitution – narcissists.

According to the legend of Narcissus, this Greek boy fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. In a way, this amply sums up the nature of his namesakes: narcissists. The mythological Narcissus rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by Nemesis. Consigned to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection – exactly as Echo had pined away for him. How apt, Narcissists are punished by echoes and reflections of their problematic personalities up to this very day.

They are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with, a projected self, his reflection.

There is a major difference between one’s True-Self and the reflected-self, the self reflected back from the world and others. Loving your True-Self is healthy, adaptive, and functional. Loving a reflection of self has two major drawbacks:

1. One depends on the existence and availability of a reflection to produce the emotion of self-love.
2. The absence of a “compass,” an “objective and realistic yardstick,” by which to judge the authenticity of the reflection. In other words, it is impossible to tell whether the reflection is true to reality – and, if so, to what extent.

The popular misconception is that narcissists love themselves. In reality, they direct their love to other people’s impressions of them. He who loves only impressions is incapable of loving humans, himself included.

But the narcissist does possess the instinctive desire to love and to be loved. If he cannot love himself – he must love his reflection. But to love his reflection – it must be loveable. Thus, driven by the insatiable urge to love (which we all possess), the narcissist is preoccupied with projecting a loveable image, compatible with his self-image (the way he “sees” himself).

The narcissist maintains this projected image and invests resources and energy in it, sometimes depleting him to the point of rendering him vulnerable to external threats. But the most important characteristic of such an image is its lovability.

To a narcissist, love is interchangeable with other emotions, such as awe, respect, admiration, or even mere attention (collectively known as Narcissistic-Supply). Thus, to him, a projected image, which provokes these reactions in others – is both “loveable and loved.” It also feels like self-love.

The more successful this projected image (or series of successive images) is in generating Narcissistic-Supply – the more the narcissist becomes divorced from his True-Self and married to the image.

I am not saying that the narcissist does not have a central nucleus of a ‘self.” It is just that he prefers his image – with which he identifies unreservedly – to his True-Self. The True-Self becomes serf to the Image. The narcissist, therefore, is not selfish because his self is paralyzed and subordinate.

The narcissist is not tuned exclusively to his needs. On the contrary: he ignores them because many of them conflict with his omnipotent and omniscient image. He does not put himself first – he puts his-self last. He caters to the needs and wishes of everyone around him – because he craves their love and admiration. It is through their reactions that he acquires a sense of distinct self. In many ways he annuls himself – only to re-invent himself through the look of others. He is the person most insensitive to his true needs.

The narcissist drains himself of mental energy in this process. This is why he has no energy left to dedicate to others. This fact as well as his inability to love human beings in their many dimensions and facets – transform him into a mental recluse. His soul is fortified and in the solace of this fortification he guards its territory jealously and fiercely. He protects what he perceives to constitute his independence.

Why should people indulge the narcissist? And what is the “evolutionary,” survival value of preferring one kind of love (directed at an image) to another (directed at one’s self)?

These questions torment the narcissist. His convoluted mind comes up with the most elaborate contraptions in lieu of answers.

Why should people indulge the narcissist, divert time and energy, give him attention, love and adulation? The narcissist’s answer is simple: because he is entitled to it. He feels that he deserves whatever he succeeds to extract from others and much more. Actually, he feels betrayed, discriminated against and underprivileged because he believes that he is not being treated fairly, that he should get more than he does.

There is a discrepancy between his infinite certainty that his is a special status worthy of recurrent praise and adoration, replete with special benefits and prerogatives – and the actual state of his affairs. To the narcissist, this status of uniqueness is bestowed upon him not by virtue of his achievements, but merely because he exists. His mere existence is sufficiently unique to warrant the kind of treatment that he expects to get from the world. Herein lies a paradox, which haunts the narcissist: he derives his sense of uniqueness from the very fact that he exists and he derives his sense of existence from his belief that he is unique.

Clinical data show that there is rarely any realistic basis for these grandiose notions of greatness and uniqueness.

Some narcissists are high achievers with proven track records. Some of them are pillars of their communities. Mostly, they are dynamic and successful. Still, they are ridiculously pompous and inflated personalities, bordering on the farcical and provoking resentment.

The narcissist is forced to use other people in order to feel that he exists. It is through their eyes and through their behavior that he obtains proof of his uniqueness and grandeur. He is a habitual people-junkie,” With time, he comes to regard those around him as mere instruments of gratification, as two-dimensional cartoon figures with negligible lines in the script of his magnificent life.

He becomes unscrupulous, never bothered by the constant use he makes of his milieu, indifferent to the consequences of his actions, the damage and the pain that he inflicts on others and even the social condemnation and sanctions that he often has to endure.

When a person persists in a dysfunctional, maladaptive or plain useless behavior despite grave repercussions to himself and to his surroundings – we say that his acts are compulsive. The narcissist is compulsive in his pursuit of Narcissistic-Supply. This linkage between narcissism and obsessive-compulsive disorders sheds light on the mechanisms of the narcissistic psyche.

The narcissist does not suffer from a faulty sense of causation. He is not oblivious to the likely outcomes of his actions and to the price he may have to pay. But he doesn’t care.

A personality whose very existence is a derivative of its reflection in other people’s minds – is perilously dependent on these people’s perceptions. They are the source of its Narcissistic-Supply. Criticism and disapproval are interpreted as a withholding of this supply and as a direct threat to the very mental existence of the narcissist.

The narcissist lives in a world of all or nothing, of a constant “to be or not be.” Every discussion that he holds, every glance of every passer-by reaffirms his existence or casts it in doubt. This is why the reactions of the narcissist seem so disproportionate: he reacts to what he perceives to imperil the very cohesion of his self. Thus, every minor disagreement with a Source of Narcissistic-Supply -another person – is interpreted as a threat to the narcissist’s very self-definition.

This is such a crucial matter, that the narcissist cannot take chances. He would rather be mistaken – then remain without Narcissistic-Supply. He would rather discern disapproval and unjustified criticism where there is none – than face the consequences of being caught off-guard.

The narcissist has to condition his human environment to refrain from expressing criticism and disapproval of him or of his actions and decisions. He has to teach people around him that these provoke him into frightful fits of temper and rage attacks and turn him into a constantly cantankerous and irascible person. His exaggerated reactions constitute a punishment for their inconsiderateness and their ignorance of his true psychological state.

The narcissist blames others for his behavior, accuses them of provoking him into his temper tantrums and believes firmly that “they” should be punished for their “misbehavior.” Apologies – unless accompanied by verbal or other humiliation – are not enough. The fuel of the narcissist’s rage is spent mainly on vitriolic verbal send-offs directed at the (often imaginary) perpetrator of the (oft imaginary) offence.

The narcissist – wittingly or not – utilizes people to buttress his self-image and sense of self-worth. As long and in as much as they are instrumental in achieving these goals – he holds them in high regard, they are valuable to him. He sees them only through this lens. This is a result of his inability to love humans: he lacks empathy, he thinks utility, and he reduces others to mere instruments.

If they cease to “function,” if – no matter how inadvertently – they cause him to doubt his illusory, half-baked, self-esteem – they become the subject of a reign of terror. The narcissist then proceeds to hurt these “insubordinates.” He belittles and humiliates them. He displays aggression and violence in myriad forms. His behavior metamorphoses, kaleidoscopically, from over-valuation of the useful other – to a severe devaluation of same. The narcissist abhors, almost physiologically, people judged by him to be “useless.”

These rapid alterations between absolute overvaluation (idealization) to complete devaluation of others make long-term interpersonal relationships with the narcissist all but impossible.

The more pathological form of narcissism – the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) – was defined in successive versions of the American DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual published by the American Psychiatric Association) and the international ICD (Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders, published by the World Health Organization). It is useful to scrutinize these geological layers of clinical observations and their interpretation. In 1977 the DSM-III criteria included:

1. An inflated valuation of oneself (exaggeration of talents and achievements, demonstration of presumptuous self-confidence).
2. Interpersonal exploitation (uses others to satisfy his needs and desires, expects preferential treatment without undertaking mutual commitments).
3. Possesses expansive imagination (externalizes immature and non-regimented fantasies, “prevaricates to redeem self-illusions”).
4. Displays supercilious imperturbability (except when the narcissistic confidence is shaken), nonchalant, unimpressed and cold-blooded.
5. Defective social conscience (rebels against the conventions of common social existence, does not value personal integrity and the rights of other people).

The narcissist is portrayed as a monster, a ruthless and exploitative person. Yet, inside, the narcissist suffers from a chronic lack of confidence and is fundamentally dissatisfied. On the outside, his is a mutable nature. This is far from reflecting the barren landscape of misery and fears that constitutes his soul. His tumultuous behavior covers up for a submissive, depressed interior.

How can such contrasts coexist? Freud (1915) offered a trilateral model of the human psyche, composed of the Id, the Ego and the Superego.

According to Freud, narcissists are dominated by their Ego to such an extent that the Id and Superego are neutralized. Early in his career, Freud believed narcissism to be a normal developmental phase between autoeroticism and object-love. Later on, he concluded that the development cycle can be thwarted by the very efforts we all make in our infancy to develop the capacity to love an object (another person).

Some of us, thus Freud, fail to grow beyond the phase of self-love in the development of the libido. Others refer to themselves and prefer themselves as objects of love. This choice – to concentrate on the self – is the result of an unconscious decision to give up an unrewarding effort to love others and to trust them.

The child learns that the only person he can trust to always and reliably be available, the only person he can love without being abandoned or hurt – is himself. In the early childhood of the narcissist, meaningful others were inconsistent in their acceptance of him and paid attention to him only when they wished to satisfy their needs. They tended to ignore him when these needs were no longer pressing or existent.

So, the child learned to avoid deeper relationships in order to escape this painful approach-avoidance pendulum. Protecting himself from hurt and from abandonment, he insulates himself from people around him. He digs in – rather than spring out.

As children, all of us go through this phase of disbelief. We all put people around us (the aforementioned objects) to a test. This is the “primary narcissistic stage.” A positive relationship with one’s parents or caregivers (Primary Objects) secures the smooth transition to “object love.” The child forgoes his narcissism.

Giving up one’s narcissism is tough. Narcissism is alluring, soothing, warm and dependable. It is always present and omnipresent. It is custom tailored to the needs of the individual. To love oneself is to have the perfect lover. Good reasons and strong forces – “parental love” – are required to motivate the child to give it up.

The child progresses in order to be able to love his parents. If they are narcissists, they subject him to the idealization (over-valuation) and devaluation cycle. They do not reliably satisfy the child’s needs. In other words, they frustrate him. He gradually realizes that he is no more than a toy, an instrument, a means to an end – his parents’ gratification.

This shocking revelation deforms the budding Ego. The child forms a strong dependence (as opposed to attachment) on his parents. This dependence is really a reflection of fear, the mirror image of aggression. In Freud-speak (psychoanalysis) we say that the child is likely to develop accentuated oral fixations and regressions. In plain terms, we are likely to see a lost, phobic, helpless, raging child.

But a child is still a child and his relationship with his parents is of ultimate importance to him. He, therefore, resists his reactions and tries to defuse his libidinal and aggressive sensations and emotions. This way, he hopes to rehabilitate the damaged relationship (which never really existed). Hence the primordial confabulation, the mother of all future narcissistic fantasies. In his embattled mind, he transforms the Superego into an idealized, sadistic parent-child. His Ego becomes the complementing part in this imaginary play of invented roles: a hated, devalued child-parent.

The family is the mainspring of support of every kind. It mobilizes psychological resources and alleviates emotional burdens. It allows for the sharing of tasks, provides material supplies coupled with cognitive training. It is the prime socialization agent and encourages the absorption of information, most of it useful and adaptive.

This division of labor between parents and children is vital both to development and to proper adaptation. The child must feel, as he does in a functional family, that he can share his experiences without being defensive and that the feedback that he is getting is open and unbiased. The only “bias” acceptable (often because it is consistent with constant outside feedback) is the family’s set of beliefs, values and goals that are finally internalized by the child by way of imitation and unconscious identification.

So, the family is the first and the most important source of identity and emotional support. It is a greenhouse where a child feels loved, accepted and secure – the prerequisites for the development of personal resources. On the material level, the family should provide the basic necessities (and, preferably, beyond), physical care and protection and refuge and shelter during crises.

The role of the mother (the Primary Object) has been often discussed and dissected. The father’s part is mostly neglected, even in professional literature. However, recent research demonstrates his importance to the orderly and healthy development of the child.

The father participates in the day-to-day care, is an intellectual catalyst, who encourages the child to develop his interests and to satisfy his curiosity through the manipulation of various instruments and games. He is a source of authority and discipline, a boundary setter, enforcing and encouraging positive behaviors and eliminating negative ones. He also provides emotional support and economic security, thus stabilizing the family unit. Finally, he is the prime source of masculine orientation and identification to the male child – and gives warmth and love as a male to his daughter, without exceeding the socially permissible limits.

We can safely say that the narcissist’s family is as severely disordered as he is. Pathological narcissism is largely a reflection of this dysfunction. This environment breeds self-deception. The narcissist’s internal dialogue is “I do have a relationship with my parents. It is my fault – the fault of my emotions, sensations, aggressions and passions – that this relationship is not working. It is, therefore, my responsibility to make amends. I will construct a narrative in which I am both loved and punished. In this script, I will allocate roles to myself and to my parents. This way, everything will be fine and we will all be happy.”

Thus starts the cycle of over-valuation (idealization) and devaluation. The dual roles of sadist and punished masochist (Superego and Ego), parent and child, permeate all the of the narcissist’s interactions with other people.

The narcissist experiences a reversal of roles as his relationships progress. At the beginning of a relationship he is the child in need of attention, approval and admiration. He becomes dependent. Then, at the first sign of disapproval (real or imaginary), he is transformed into an avowed sadist, punishing and inflicting pain.

It is commonly agreed that a loss (real or perceived) at a critical junction in the psychological development of the child – forces him to refer to himself for nurturing and for gratification. The child ceases to trust others and his ability to develop object love or to idealize is hampered. He is constantly shadowed by the feeling that only he can satisfy his emotional needs.

He exploits people, sometimes unintentionally, but always ruthlessly and mercilessly. He uses them to obtain confirmation of the accuracy of his grandiose self-portrait.

The narcissist is usually above treatment. He knows best. He feels superior to his therapist in particular and to the science of psychology in general. He seeks treatment only following a major life crisis, which directly threatens his projected and perceived image. The narcissist’s “pride” has to be severely injured to motivate him to admit his need for help.

Even then, the therapy sessions resemble a battlefield. The narcissist is aloof and distanced, demonstrates his superiority in a myriad of ways, resents what he perceives to be an intrusion on his innermost sanctum. He is offended by any hint regarding defects or dysfunctions in his personality or in his behavior. A narcissist is a narcissist is a narcissist – even when he asks for help with his world and worldview shattered.

Object Relations Theories and Narcissism

Otto Kernberg (1975, 1984, 1987) disagrees with Freud. He regards the division between an “object libido” (energy directed at objects, meaningful others, people in the immediate vicinity of the infant) and a “narcissistic libido” (energy directed at the self as the most immediate and satisfying object), which precedes it – as spurious.

Whether a “child” develops normal or pathological narcissism depends on the relations between the representations of the self (roughly, the image of the self that the child forms in his mind) and the representations of objects (roughly, the images of other people that the child forms in his mind, based on all the emotional and objective information available to him). It is also dependent on the relationship between the representations of the self and real, external, “objective” objects. Add to this instinctual conflicts related both to the libido and to aggression (these very strong emotions give rise to strong conflicts in the child) and a comprehensive explanation concerning the formation of pathological narcissism emerges.

Kernberg’s concept of Self is closely related to Freud’s concept of Ego. The self is dependent upon the unconscious, which exerts a constant influence on all mental functions. Pathological narcissism, therefore, reflects a libidinal investment in a pathologically structured self and not in a normal, integrative structure of the self.

The narcissist suffers because his self is devalued or fixated on aggression. All object relations of such a self are distorted: it detaches from real objects (because they hurt him often), dissociates, represses, or projects. Narcissism is not merely a fixation on an early developmental stage. It is not confined to the failure to develop intra-psychic structures. It is an active, libidinal investment in a deformed structure of the self.

Franz Kohut regarded narcissism as the final product of the failing efforts of parents to cope with the needs of the child to idealize and to be grandiose (for instance, to be internalization).

Idealization is an important developmental path leading to narcissism. The child merges the idealized aspects of the images of the parents (Imago in Kohut’s terminology) with those wide segments of the image of the parent which are cathected (infused) with object libido (in which the child invests the energy that he reserves for objects).

This exerts an enormous and all-important influence on the re-internalization processes (the processes in which the child re-introduces the objects and their images into his mind) in each of the successive phases. Through these processes, two permanent nuclei of the personality are constructed: The basic, neutralizing texture of the psyche, and The ideal Superego. Both of them are characterized by an invested instinctual narcissistic cathexis (invested energy of self-love which is instinctual).

At first, the child idealizes his parents. As he grows, he begins to notice their shortcomings and vices. He withdraws part of the idealizing libido from the images of the parents, which is conducive to the natural development of the Superego. The narcissistic part of the child’s psyche remains vulnerable throughout its development. This is largely true until the “child” re-internalizes the ideal parent image.

Also, the very construction of the mental apparatus can be tampered with by traumatic deficiencies and by object losses right through the Oedipal period (and even in latency and in adolescence).

The same effect can be attributed to traumatic disappointment by objects.

Disturbances leading to the formation of NPD can be thus grouped into:

Very early disturbances in the relationship with an ideal object. These lead to a structural weakness of the personality, which develops a deficient and/or dysfunctional stimuli-filtering mechanism. The ability of the individual to maintain a basic narcissistic homeostasis of the personality is damaged. Such a person suffers from diffusive narcissistic vulnerability.

A disturbance occurring later in life – but still pre-Oedipally – affects the pre-Oedipal formation of the basic fabric of the control, channeling and neutralizing of drives and urges. The nature of the disturbance has to be a traumatic encounter with the ideal object (such as a major disappointment). The symptomatic manifestation of this structural defect is the propensity to re – sexualize drive derivatives and internal and external conflicts either in the form of fantasies or in the form of deviant acts.

A disturbance formed in the Oedipal or even in the early latent phases – inhibits the completion of the Superego idealization. This is especially true of a disappointment related to an ideal object of the late pre-Oedipal and the Oedipal stages, where the partly idealized external parallel of the newly internalized object is traumatically destroyed.

Such a person possesses a set of values and standards – but he forever looks for ideal external figures from whom he aspires to derive the affirmation and the leadership that his insufficiently idealized Superego cannot supply.