The Developmental
Psychology of
Psychopathology
2nd EDITION
Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
Editing and Design:
Lidija Rangelovska
Lidija Rangelovska
A Narcissus Publications Imprint, Skopje 2006
Not for Sale! Non-commercial edition.
© 2002-6 Copyright Lidija Rangelovska.
All rights reserved. This book, or any part thereof, may not be used or reproduced in
any manner without written permission from:
Lidija Rangelovska - write to:
palma@unet.com,mk or to
vaknin@link.com.mk
Find additional articles about personality disorders here - click on the
links:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faqpd.html
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq82.html
http://open-
site.org/Health/Conditions and Diseases/Psychiatric Disorders/Personality/
http://personalitydisorders.suitel01.com/
Philosophical Musings and Essays
http://samvak.tripod.com/culture.html
Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
http://samvak.tripod.com/
Created by: LIDIJA RANGELOVSKA
REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA
CONTENTS
A. Notes on Developmental Psychology
Brain and Personality
Psychosexual Stages of Development
Gender and Personality Disorders
The Genetic Roots of Personality Disorders
Defense Mechanisms
B. Topics in Developmental Psychology
The Narcissistic Parent
The Narcissist's Mother
Born Alien
Parenting - The Irrational Vocation
The Development of Narcissists and Schizoids
Serial Killers
Sex, or Gender
The Natural roots of Sexuality
The Incest Taboo
The Roots of Pedophilia
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists
The Insanity of the Defense
The Author
Notes on Developmental
Psychology
Brain and Personality
First published here: "Personality Disorders (SuitelOl)"
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Phineas Gage was a 25 years old construction foreman
who lived in Vermont in the 1860s. While working on a
railroad bed, he packed powdered explosives into a hole
in the ground, using tamping iron. The powder heated and
blew in his face. The tamping iron rebounded and pierced
the top of his skull, ravaging the frontal lobes.
In 1868, Harlow, his doctor, reported the changes to his
personality following the accident:
He became "fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the
grossest profanity (which was not previously his
customs), manifesting but little deference to his fellows,
impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his
desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate yet capricious
and vacillating, devising many plans for future operation
which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in
turn for others appearing more feasible ... His mind was
radically changed, so that his friends and acquaintances
said he was no longer Gage."
In other words, his brain injury turned him into a
psychopathic narcissist.
Similarly startling transformation have been recorded
among soldiers with penetrating head injuries suffered in
World War I. Orbitomedial wounds made people
"pseudopsychopathic": grandiose, euphoric, disinhibited,
and puerile. When the dorsolateral convexities were
damaged, those affected became lethargic and apathetic
("pseudodepressed"). As Geschwind noted, many had
both syndromes.
The DSM is clear: the brain-injured may acquire traits and
behaviors typical of certain personality disorders but head
trauma never results in a full-fledged personality disorder.
"General diagnostic criteria for a personality disorder:
F. The enduring pattern is not due to the direct
physiological effects of a substance (e.g., a drug of abuse,
a medication) or a general medical condition (e.g., head
trauma)." (DSM-IV-TR, p.689)
From my book "Malignant Self-love - Narcissism
Revisited" :
"It is conceivable, though, that a third, unrelated
problem causes chemical imbalances in the brain,
metabolic diseases such as diabetes, pathological
narcissism, and other mental health syndromes. There
may be a common cause, a hidden common denominator
(perhaps a group of genes).
Certain medical conditions can activate the narcissistic
defense mechanism. Chronic ailments are likely to lead
to the emergence of narcissistic traits or a narcissistic
personality style. Traumas (such as brain injuries) have
been known to induce states of mind akin to full-blown
personality disorders. Such "narcissism", though, is
reversible and tends to be ameliorated or disappear
altogether when the underlying medical problem does.
Other disorders, like the Bipolar Disorder (mania-
depression) are characterised by mood swings that are
not brought about by external events (endogenous, not
exogenous). But the narcissist's mood swings are strictly
the results of external events (as he perceives and
interprets them, of course).
But phenomena, which are often associated with NPD
(Narcissistic Personality Disorder), such as depression
or OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder), are treated with
medication. Rumour has it that SSRI's (such as
Fluoxetine, known as Prozac) might have adverse effects
if the primary disorder is NPD. They sometimes lead to
the Serotonin syndrome, which includes agitation and
exacerbates the rage attacks typical of a narcissist. The
use of SSRI's is associated at times with delirium and
the emergence of a manic phase and even with psychotic
microepisodes.
This is not the case with the heterocyclics, MAO and
mood stabilisers, such as lithium. Blockers and
inhibitors are regularly applied without discernible
adverse side effects (as far as NPD is concerned).
Not enough is known about the biochemistry of NPD.
There seems to be some vague link to Serotonin but no
one knows for sure. There isn 't a reliable non-intrusive
method to measure brain and central nervous system
Serotonin levels anyhow, so it is mostly guesswork at this
stage. "
Read more about Narcissism and the Bipolar Disorder -
click HERE!
Read more about Narcissism and Asperger's Disorder -
click HERE!
Back to Table of Contents
Psychosexual Stages of Personal Development
First published here: "Personality Disorders (SuitelOl)"
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
The Viennese neurologist, Sigmund Freud, was among the
first to offer a model of psychological development in
early childhood (within the framework of psychoanalysis).
He closely linked the sex drive (libido) to the formation of
personality and described five psychosexual stages, four
of which are centered around various erogenous zones in
the body.
The pursuit of pleasure ("the pleasure principle") and the
avoidance of pain drive the infant to explore his or her self
and the world at large. Pleasure is inextricably linked to
sexual gratification. In the oral phase (from birth to 24
months), the baby focuses on the tongue, lips, and mouth
and derives gratification from breast feeding, thumb
sucking, biting, swallowing, and other oral exploratory
activities.
This is naturally followed by the anal stage (24 to 36
months). The baby immensely enjoys defecation and
related bowel movements. But it is also the first time in
his or her life that the toddler is subjected to the censure
and displeasure of caretakers. Hitherto unconditionally
adoring adults now demand that the infant delay
gratification, relieve himself only in the bathroom, and not
play with his feces. This experience - of hitherto
unprecedented adult approbation - can be traumatic.
The phallic stage (age 3 to 6 years) involves the discovery
of the penis and clitoris as foci of pleasurable experience.
This tantalizing novelty is coupled with sexual desire
directed at the parent of the opposite sex (boys are
attracted to their mothers and girls, to their fathers). The
child overtly and covertly competes with the same-sex
parent for the desired parent's attention: boys joust with
their fathers and girls with their mothers. These are the
famous Oedipal and Electra complexes.
If the parent is insufficiently mature or narcissistic and
encourages the attentions of the child in acts of covert
(emotional) and overt (physical) incest, it could lead to the
development of certain mental health disorders, among
them the Histrionic, Narcissistic, and Borderline
personality disorders. Doting, over-indulgence, and
smothering are, therefore, forms of child abuse. Sexual
innuendo, treating the child as an adult or substitute
partner, or regarding one's offspring as an extension of
one's self also constitute abusive conduct.
The phallic stage is followed by 6 to 7 years of latent
sexuality that is rekindled in puberty. Adolescence is a
period of personal development labeled by Freud the
genital phase. In the previous rungs of psychosexual
evolution, the child's own body was the source of sexual
pleasure. Hitherto, the adolescent and young adult seeks
sexual gratification from and invests sexual energy in
others. This object-relatedness is what we call mature
love.
Also read these:
10
The Pathology of Love - click HERE!
In Defense of Psychoanalysis - click HERE!
On Incest - click HERE!
Many additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
about Personality Disorders - click HERE!
Back to Table of Contents
11
Gender Bias
In Diagnosing Personality Disorders
First published here: "Personality Disorders (SuitelOl)"
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Ever since Freud, more women than men sought therapy.
Consequently, terms like "hysteria' are intimately
connected to female physiology and alleged female
psychology. The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual,
the bible of the psychiatric profession) expressly professes
gender bias: personality disorders such as Borderline and
Histrionic are supposed to be more common among
women, but the DSM is rather even-handed: other
personality disorders (e.g., the Narcissistic and Antisocial
as well as the Schizotypal, Obsessive-Compulsive,
Schizoid, and Paranoid) are more prevalent among men.
Why this gender disparity? There are a few possible
answers:
Maybe personality disorders are not objective clinical
entities, but culture-bound syndromes. In other words,
perhaps they reflect biases and value judgments. Some
patriarchal societies are also narcissistic. They emphasize
qualities such as individualism and ambition, often
identified with virility. Hence the preponderance of
pathological narcissism among men. Women, on the other
hand, are widely believed to be emotionally labile and
clinging. This is why most Borderlines and Dependents
are females.
Upbringing and environment, the process of socialization
12
and cultural mores all play an important role in the
pathogenesis of personality disorders. These views are not
fringe: serious scholars (e.g., Kaplan and Pantony, 1991)
claim that the mental health profession is inherently
sexist.
Then again, genetics may be is at work. Men and women
do differ genetically. This may account for the variability
of the occurrence of specific personality disorders in men
and women.
Some of the diagnostic criteria are ambiguous or even
considered "normal" by the majority of the population.
Histrionics "consistently use physical appearance to draw
attention to self." Well, who doesn't in Western society?
Why when a woman clings to a man it is labeled
"codependence", but when a man relies on a woman to
maintain his home, take care of his children, choose his
attire, and prop his ego it is "companionship" (Walker,
1994)?
The less structured the interview and the more fuzzy the
diagnostic criteria, the more the diagnostician relies on
stereotypes (Widiger, 1998).
Quotes from the Literature
"Specifically, past research suggests that exploitive
tendencies and open displays of feelings of entitlement
will be less integral to narcissism for females than for
males. For females such displays may carry a greater
possibility of negative social sanctions because they
would violate stereotypical gender-role expectancies for
women, who are expected to engage in such positive
social behavior as being tender, compassionate, warm,
13
sympathetic, sensitive, and understanding.
In females, Exploitiveness/Entitlement is less well-
integrated with the other components of narcissism as
measured by the Narcissistic Personality Inventory
(NPI) - Leadership/ Authority, Self-absorption/Self-
admiration, and Superiority/Arrogance- than in males -
though 'male and female narcissists in general showed
striking similarities in the manner in which most of the
facets of narcissism were integrated with each other'. "
Gender differences in the structure of narcissism: a
multi-sample analysis of the narcissistic personality
inventory - Brian T. Tschanz, Carolyn C. Morf Charles
W. Turner - Sex Roles: A Journal of Research - Issue:
May, 1998
"Women leaders are evaluated negatively if they
exercise their authority and are perceived as autocratic. "
Eagly, A. H., Makhijani, M. G., & Klonsky, B. G. (1992).
Gender and the evaluation of leaders: A meta-analysis.
Psychological Bulletin, 111, 3-22, and ...
Butler, D., & Gels, F. L. (1990). Nonverbal affect
responses to male and female leaders: Implications for
leadership evaluations. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 58, 48-59.
"Competent women must also appear to be sociable and
likable in order to influence men - men must only
appear to be competent to achieve the same results with
both genders. "
Carli, L. L., Lafleur, S. J., & Loeber, C. C. (1995).
14
Nonverbal behavior, gender, and influence. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 1030-1041.
Gender and the Narcissist - click HERE!
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists - click HERE!
Sex and Gender - click HERE!
Many additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
about Personality Disorders - click HERE!
Back to Table of Contents
15
Genetics and Personality Disorders
First published here: "Personality Disorders (SuitelOl)"
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Are personality disorders the outcomes of inherited traits?
Are they brought on by abusive and traumatizing
upbringing? Or, maybe they are the sad results of the
confluence of both?
To identify the role of heredity, researchers have resorted
to a few tactics: they studied the occurrence of similar
psychopathologies in identical twins separated at birth, in
twins and siblings who grew up in the same environment,
and in relatives of patients (usually across a few
generations of an extended family).
Tellingly, twins - both those raised apart and together -
show the same correlation of personality traits, 0.5
(Bouchard, Lykken, McGue, Segal, and Tellegan, 1990).
Even attitudes, values, and interests have been shown to
be highly affected by genetic factors (Waller, Kojetin,
Bouchard, Lykken, et al., 1990).
A review of the literature demonstrates that the genetic
component in certain personality disorders (mainly the
Antisocial and Schizotypal) is strong (Thapar and
McGuffin, 1993). Nigg and Goldsmith found a connection
in 1993 between the Schizoid and Paranoid personality
disorders and schizophrenia.
The three authors of the Dimensional Assessment of
Personality Pathology (Livesley, Jackson, and Schroeder)
joined forces with Jang in 1993 to study whether 18 of the
16
personality dimensions were heritable. They found that 40
to 60% of the recurrence of certain personality traits
across generations can be explained by heredity:
anxiousness, callousness, cognitive distortion,
compulsivity, identity problems, oppositionality,
rejection, restricted expression, social avoidance, stimulus
seeking, and suspiciousness. Each and every one of these
qualities is associated with a personality disorder. In a
roundabout way, therefore, this study supports the
hypothesis that personality disorders are hereditary.
This would go a long way towards explaining why in the
same family, with the same set of parents and an identical
emotional environment, some siblings grow to have
personality disorders, while others are perfectly "normal".
Surely, this indicates a genetic predisposition of some
people to developing personality disorders.
Still, this oft-touted distinction between nature and nurture
may be merely a question of semantics.
As I wrote in my book, "Malignant Self Love -
Narcissism Revisited" :
"When we are born, we are not much more than the
sum of our genes and their manifestations. Our brain - a
physical object - is the residence of mental health and its
disorders. Mental illness cannot be explained without
resorting to the body and, especially, to the brain. And
our brain cannot be contemplated without considering
our genes. Thus, any explanation of our mental life that
leaves out our hereditary makeup and our
neurophysiology is lacking. Such lacking theories are
nothing but literary narratives. Psychoanalysis, for
instance, is often accused of being divorced from
17
corporeal reality.
Our genetic baggage makes us resemble a personal
computer. We are an all-purpose, universal, machine.
Subject to the right programming (conditioning,
socialization, education, upbringing) - we can turn out
to be anything and everything. A computer can imitate
any other kind of discrete machine, given the right
software. It can play music, screen movies, calculate,
print, paint. Compare this to a television set - it is
constructed and expected to do one, and only one, thing.
It has a single purpose and a unitary function. We,
humans, are more like computers than like television
sets.
True, single genes rarely account for any behavior or
trait. An array of coordinated genes is required to
explain even the minutest human phenomenon.
"Discoveries " of a "gambling gene" here and an
"aggression gene" there are derided by the more serious
and less publicity -prone scholars. Yet, it would seem that
even complex behaviors such as risk taking, reckless
driving, and compulsive shopping have genetic
underpinnings. "
Read More
Liveslye, W.J., Jank, K.L., Jackson, B.N., Vernon, P.A..
1993. Genetic and environmental contributions to
dimensions of personality disorders. Am. J. Psychiatry.
150(0 12): 1826-31.
On Dis-ease - click HERE!
The Interrupted Self- click HERE!
The Genetic Roots of Narcissism - Click HERE!
Many additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
about Personality Disorders - click HERE!
Back to Table of Contents
19
Defense Mechanisms
First published here: "Personality Disorders (SuitelOl)"
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
According to Freud and his followers, our psyche is a
battlefield between instinctual urges and drives (the id),
the constraints imposed by reality on the gratification of
these impulses (the ego), and the norms of society (the
superego). This constant infighting generates what Freud
called "neurotic anxiety" (fear of losing control) and
"moral anxiety" (guilt and shame).
But these are not the only types of anxiety. "Reality
anxiety" is the fear of genuine threats and it combines
with the other two to yield a morbid and surrealistic inner
landscape.
These multiple, recurrent, "mini-panics" are potentially
intolerable, overwhelming, and destructive. Hence the
need to defend against them. There are dozens of defense
mechanisms. The most common among them:
Acting Out
When an inner conflict (most often, frustration) translates
into aggression. It involves acting with little or no insight
or reflection and in order to attract attention and disrupt
other people's cosy lives.
Denial
20
Perhaps the most primitive and best known defense
mechanism. People simply ignore unpleasant facts, they
filter out data and content that contravene their self-image,
prejudices, and preconceived notions of others and of the
world.
Devaluation
Attributing negative or inferior traits or qualifiers to self
or others. This is done in order to punish the person
devalued and to mitigate his or her impact on and
importance to the devaluer. When the self is devalued, it
is a self-defeating and self-destructive act.
Displacement
When we cannot confront the real sources of our
frustration, pain, and envy, we tend to pick a fight with
someone weaker or irrelevant and, thus, less menacing.
Children often do it because they perceive conflicts with
parents and caregivers as life-threatening. Instead, they go
out and torment the cat or bully someone at school or lash
out at their siblings.
Dissociation
Our mental existence is continuous. We maintain a
seamless flow of memories, consciousness, perception,
and representation of both inner and external worlds.
When we face horrors and unbearable truths, we
sometimes "disengage". We lose track of space, time, and
the continuum of our identity. We become "someone else"
with minimal awareness of our surroundings, of incoming
information, and of circumstances. In extreme cases, some
21
people develop a permanently rent personality and this is
known as "Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)".
Fantasy
Everyone fantasizes now and then. It helps to fend off the
dreariness and drabness of everyday life and to plan for an
uncertain future. But when fantasy becomes a central
feature of grappling with conflict, it is pathological.
Seeking gratification - the satisfaction of drives or desires
- mainly by fantasizing is an unhealthy defense.
Narcissists, for instance, often indulge in grandiose
fantasies which are incommensurate with their
accomplishments and abilities. Such fantasy life retards
personal growth and development because it substitutes
for true coping.
Idealization
Another defense mechanism in the arsenal of the
narcissist (and, to lesser degree, the Borderline and
Histrionic) is the attribution of positive, glowing, and
superior traits to self and (more commonly) to others.
Again, what differentiates the healthy from the
pathological is the reality test. Imputing positive
characteristics to self or others is good, but only if the
attributed qualities are real and grounded in a firm grasp
of what's true and what's not.
Isolation of Affect
Cognition (thoughts, concepts, ideas) is never divorced
from emotion. Conflict can be avoided by separating the
cognitive content (for instance, a disturbing or depressing
idea) from its emotional correlate. The subject is fully
22
aware of the facts or of the intellectual dimensions of a
problematic situation but feels numb. Casting away
threatening and discomfiting feelings is a potent way of
coping with conflict in the short-term. It is only when it
become habitual that it rendered self-defeating.
Omnipotence
When one has a pervading sense and image of oneself as
incredibly powerful, superior, irresistible, intelligent, or
influential. This is not an adopted affectation but an
ingrained, ineradicable inner conviction which borders on
magical thinking. It is intended to fend off expected hurt
in having to acknowledge one's shortcomings,
inadequacies, or limitations.
Projection
We all have an image of how we "should be". Freud
called it the "Ego Ideal". But sometimes we experience
emotions and drives or have personal qualities which don't
sit well with this idealized construct. Projection is when
we attribute to others these unacceptable, discomfiting,
and ill-fitting feelings and traits that we possess. This way
we disown these discordant features and secure the right
to criticize and chastise others for having or displaying
them. When entire collectives (nations, groups,
organizations, firms) project, Freud calls it the Narcissism
of Small Differences.
Projective Identification
Projection is unconscious. People are rarely aware that
they are projecting onto others their own ego-dystonic and
unpleasant characteristics and feelings. But, sometimes,
23
the projected content is retained in the subject's
awareness. This creates a conflict. On the one hand, the
patient cannot admit that the emotions, traits, reactions,
and behaviors that he so condemns in others are really his.
On the other hand, he can't help but being self-aware. He
fails to erase from his consciousness the painful
realization that he is merely projecting.
So, instead of denying it, the subject explains unpleasant
emotions and unacceptable conduct as reactions to the
recipient's behavior. "She made me do it!" is the battle cry
of projective identification.
We all have expectations regarding the world and its
denizens. Some people expect to be loved and appreciated
- others to be feared and abused. The latter behave
obnoxiously and thus force their nearest and dearest to
hate, fear, and "abuse" them. Thus vindicated, their
expectations fulfilled, they calm down. The world is
rendered once more familiar by making other people
behave the way they expect them to. "I knew you would
cheat on me! It was clear I couldn't trust you!".
Rationalization or Intellectualization
To cast one's behavior after the fact in a favorable light.
To justify and explain one's conduct or, more often,
misconduct by resorting to ":rational, logical, socially-
acceptable" explications and excuses. Rationalization is
also used to re-establish ego-syntony (inner peace and
self-acceptance).
Though not strictly a defense mechanism, cognitive
dissonance may be considered a variant of rationalization.
It involves the devaluation of things and people very
24
much desired but frustratingly out of one's reach and
control. In a famous fable, a fox, unable to snag the
luscious grapes he covets, says: "these grapes are
probably sour anyhow!". This is an example of cognitive
dissonance in action.
Reaction Formation
Adopting a position and mode of conduct that defy
personally unacceptable thoughts or impulses by
expressing diametrically opposed sentiments and
convictions. Example: a latent (closet) homosexual finds
his sexual preference deplorable and acutely shameful
(ego-dystonic). He resorts to homophobia. He public
berates, taunts, and baits homosexuals. Additionally, he
may flaunt his heterosexuality by emphasizing his sexual
prowess, or by prowling singles bars for easy pick-ups
and conquests. This way he contains and avoids his
unwelcome homosexuality.
Repression
The removal from consciousness of forbidden thoughts
and wishes. The removed content does not vanish and it
remains as potent as ever, fermenting in one's
unconscious. It is liable to create inner conflicts and
anxiety and provoke other defense mechanisms to cope
with these.
Splitting
This is a "primitive" defense mechanism. In other words,
it begins to operate in very early infancy. It involves the
inability to integrate contradictory qualities of the same
object into a coherent picture. Mother has good qualities
25
and bad, sometimes she is attentive and caring and
sometimes distracted and cold. The baby is unable to
grasp the complexities of her personality. Instead, the
infant invents two constructs (entities), "Bad Mother" and
"Good Mother". It relegates everything likable about
mother to the "Good Mother" and contrasts it with "Bad
Mother", the repository of everything it dislikes about her.
This means that whenever mother acts nicely, the baby
relates to the idealized "Good Mother" and whenever
mother fails the test, the baby devalues her by interacting,
in its mind, with "Bad Mother". These cycles of
idealization followed by devaluation are common in some
personality disorders, notably the Narcissistic and
Borderline.
Splitting can also apply to one's self. Patients with
personality disorders often idealize themselves
fantastically and grandiosely, only to harshly devalue,
hate, and even harm themselves when they fail or are
otherwise frustrated.
Read more about idealization followed by devaluation -
click on the links:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/fag43.html
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/fag44.html
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/devaluediscard.html
Sublimation
The conversion and channelling of unacceptable emotions
into socially-condoned behavior. Freud described how
26
sexual desires and urges are transformed into creative
pursuits or politics.
Undoing
Trying to rid oneself of gnawing feelings of guilt by
compensating the injured party either symbolically or
actually.
Back to Table of Contents
27
Topics in Developmental
Psychology
28
The Narcissistic Parent
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Question:
Is there a "typical" relationship between the narcissist and
his family?
Answer:
We are all members of a few families in our lifetime: the
one that we are born to and the one(s) that we create. We
all transfer hurts, attitudes, fears, hopes and desires - a
whole emotional baggage - from the former to the latter.
The narcissist is no exception.
The narcissist has a dichotomous view of humanity:
humans are either Sources of Narcissistic Supply (and,
then, idealised and over-valued) or do not fulfil this
function (and, therefore, are valueless, devalued). The
narcissist gets all the love that he needs from himself.
From the outside he needs approval, affirmation,
admiration, adoration, attention - in other words,
externalised Ego boundary functions.
He does not require - nor does he seek - his parents' or
his siblings' love, or to be loved by his children. He casts
them as the audience in the theatre of his inflated
grandiosity. He wishes to impress them, shock them,
threaten them, infuse them with awe, inspire them, attract
their attention, subjugate them, or manipulate them.
29
He emulates and simulates an entire range of emotions
and employs every means to achieve these effects. He lies
(narcissists are pathological liars - their very self is a false
one). He acts the pitiful, or, its opposite, the resilient and
reliable. He stuns and shines with outstanding intellectual,
or physical capacities and achievements, or behaviour
patterns appreciated by the members of the family. When
confronted with (younger) siblings or with his own
children, the narcissist is likely to go through three
phases:
At first, he perceives his offspring or siblings as a threat to
his Narcissistic Supply, such as the attention of his
spouse, or mother, as the case may be. They intrude on his
turf and invade the Pathological Narcissistic Space. The
narcissist does his best to belittle them, hurt (even
physically) and humiliate them and then, when these
reactions prove ineffective or counter productive, he
retreats into an imaginary world of omnipotence. A period
of emotional absence and detachment ensues.
His aggression having failed to elicit Narcissistic Supply,
the narcissist proceeds to indulge himself in daydreaming,
delusions of grandeur, planning of future coups, nostalgia
and hurt (the Lost Paradise Syndrome). The narcissist
reacts this way to the birth of his children or to the
introduction of new foci of attention to the family cell
(even to a new pet!).
Whoever the narcissist perceives to be in competition for
scarce Narcissistic Supply is relegated to the role of the
enemy. Where the uninhibited expression of the
aggression and hostility aroused by this predicament is
illegitimate or impossible - the narcissist prefers to stay
away. Rather than attack his offspring or siblings, he
30
sometimes immediately disconnects, detaches himself
emotionally, becomes cold and uninterested, or directs
transformed anger at his mate or at his parents (the more
"legitimate" targets).
Other narcissists see the opportunity in the "mishap".
They seek to manipulate their parents (or their mate) by
"taking over" the newcomer. Such narcissists monopolise
their siblings or their newborn children. This way,
indirectly, they benefit from the attention directed at the
infants. The sibling or offspring become vicarious sources
of Narcissistic Supply and proxies for the narcissist.
An example: by being closely identified with his
offspring, a narcissistic father secures the grateful
admiration of the mother ("What an outstanding
father/brother he is"). He also assumes part of or all the
credit for baby's/sibling's achievements. This is a process
of annexation and assimilation of the other, a strategy that
the narcissist makes use of in most of his relationships.
As siblings or progeny grow older, the narcissist begins to
see their potential to be edifying, reliable and satisfactory
Sources of Narcissistic Supply. His attitude, then, is
completely transformed. The former threats have now
become promising potentials. He cultivates those whom
he trusts to be the most rewarding. He encourages them to
idolise him, to adore him, to be awed by him, to admire
his deeds and capabilities, to learn to blindly trust and
obey him, in short to surrender to his charisma and to
become submerged in his follies-de-grandeur.
It is at this stage that the risk of child abuse - up to and
including outright incest - is heightened. The narcissist is
auto-erotic. He is the preferred object of his own sexual
31
attraction. His siblings and his children share his genetic
material. Molesting or having intercourse with them is as
close as the narcissist gets to having sex with himself.
Moreover, the narcissist perceives sex in terms of
annexation. The partner is "assimilated" and becomes an
extension of the narcissist, a fully controlled and
manipulated object. Sex, to the narcissist, is the ultimate
act of depersonalization and objectification of the other.
He actually masturbates with other people's bodies.
Minors pose little danger of criticizing the narcissist or
confronting him. They are perfect, malleable and
abundant sources of Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist
derives gratification from having coital relations with
adulating, physically and mentally inferior, inexperienced
and dependent "bodies".
These roles - allocated to them explicitly and
demandingly or implicitly and perniciously by the
narcissist - are best fulfilled by ones whose mind is not
yet fully formed and independent. The older the siblings
or offspring, the more they become critical, even
judgemental, of the narcissist. They are better able to put
into context and perspective his actions, to question his
motives, to anticipate his moves.
As they mature, they often refuse to continue to play the
mindless pawns in his chess game. They hold grudges
against him for what he has done to them in the past,
when they were less capable of resistance. They can
gauge his true stature, talents and achievements - which,
usually, lag far behind the claims that he makes.
32
This brings the narcissist a full cycle back to the first
phase. Again, he perceives his siblings or sons/daughters
as threats. He quickly becomes disillusioned and
devaluing. He loses all interest, becomes emotionally
remote, absent and cold, rejects any effort to communicate
with him, citing life pressures and the preciousness and
scarceness of his time.
He feels burdened, cornered, besieged, suffocated, and
claustrophobic. He wants to get away, to abandon his
commitments to people who have become totally useless
(or even damaging) to him. He does not understand why
he has to support them, or to suffer their company and he
believes himself to have been deliberately and ruthlessly
trapped.
He rebels either passively-aggressively (by refusing to act
or by intentionally sabotaging the relationships) or
actively (by being overly critical, aggressive, unpleasant,
verbally and psychologically abusive and so on). Slowly -
to justify his acts to himself - he gets immersed in
conspiracy theories with clear paranoid hues.
To his mind, the members of the family conspire against
him, seek to belittle or humiliate or subordinate him, do
not understand him, or stymie his growth. The narcissist
usually finally gets what he wants and the family that he
has created disintegrates to his great sorrow (due to the
loss of the Narcissistic Space) - but also to his great relief
and surprise (how could they have let go someone as
unique as he?).
This is the cycle: the narcissist feels threatened by arrival
of new family members - he tries to assimilate or annex
of siblings or offspring - he obtains Narcissistic Supply
33
from them - he overvalues and idealizes these newfound
sources - as sources grow older and independent, they
adopt anti narcissistic behaviours - the narcissist devalues
them - the narcissist feels stifled and trapped - the
narcissist becomes paranoid - the narcissist rebels and the
family disintegrates.
This cycle characterises not only the family life of the
narcissist. It is to be found in other realms of his life (his
career, for instance). At work, the narcissist, initially, feels
threatened (no one knows him, he is a nobody). Then, he
develops a circle of admirers, cronies and friends which
he "nurtures and cultivates" in order to obtain Narcissistic
Supply from them. He overvalues them (to him, they are
the brightest, the most loyal, with the biggest chances to
climb the corporate ladder and other superlatives).
But following some anti-narcissistic behaviours on their
part (a critical remark, a disagreement, a refusal, however
polite) - the narcissist devalues all these previously
idealized individuals. Now that they have dared oppose
him - they are judged by him to be stupid, cowardly,
lacking in ambition, skills and talents, common (the worst
expletive in the narcissist's vocabulary), with an
unspectacular career ahead of them.
The narcissist feels that he is misallocating his scarce and
invaluable resources (for instance, his time). He feels
besieged and suffocated. He rebels and erupts in a serious
of self-defeating and self-destructive behaviours, which
lead to the disintegration of his life.
Doomed to build and ruin, attach and detach, appreciate
and depreciate, the narcissist is predictable in his "death
wish". What sets him apart from other suicidal types is
34
that his wish is granted to him in small, tormenting doses
throughout his anguished life.
Appendix - Custody and Visitation
A parent diagnosed with full-fledged Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD) should be denied custody and
be granted only restricted rights of visitation under
supervision.
Narcissists accord the same treatment to children and
adults. They regard both as sources of narcissistic supply,
mere instruments of gratification - idealize them at first
and then devalue them in favour of alternative, safer and
more subservient, sources. Such treatment is traumatic
and can have long-lasting emotional effects.
The narcissist's inability to acknowledge and abide by the
personal boundaries set by others puts the child at
heightened risk of abuse - verbal, emotional, physical,
and, often, sexual. His possessiveness and panoply of
indiscriminate negative emotions - transformations of
aggression, such as rage and envy - hinder his ability to
act as a "good enough" parent. His propensities for
reckless behaviour, substance abuse, and sexual deviance
endanger the child's welfare, or even his or her life.
Also read
Narcissistic Parents
Beware the Children
Leveraging the Children
Tell Your Children the Truth
35
The Roots of Pedophilia
The Incest Taboo
What is Abuse (series)
Abuse in the Family (series)
Parenthood - The Irrational Vocation
The Genetic Underpinnings of Narcissism
Back to Table of Contents
36
The Narcissist's Mother
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
A. The Loved Enemies - An Introduction
An oft-overlooked fact is that the child is not sure that it
exists. It avidly absorbs cues from its human environment.
"Am I present?", "Am I separate?", "Am I being noticed?"
- these are the questions that compete in his mind with his
need to merge, to become a part of his caregivers.
Granted, the infant (ages to 2) does not verbally
formulate these "thoughts" (which are part cognitive, part
instinctual). This nagging uncertainty is more akin to a
discomfort, like being thirsty or wet. The infant is torn
between its need to differentiate and distinguish its self
and its no less urgent urge to assimilate and integrate by
being assimilated and integrated.
"Just as we know, from the point of view of the
physiologist, that a child needs to be given certain foods,
that he needs to be protected against extreme
temperatures, and that the atmosphere he breathes has
to contain sufficient oxygen, if his body is to become
strong and resilient, so do we also know, from the point
of view of the depth-psychologist, that he requires an
empathic environment, specifically, an environment that
responds (a) to his need to have his presence confirmed
37
by the glow of parental pleasure and (b) to his need to
merge into the reassuring calmness of the powerful
adult, if he is to acquire a firm and resilient self "
(J. D. Levine and Rona H. Weiss. The Dynamics and
Treatment of Alcoholism. Jason Aronson, 1994)
The child's nascent self must first overcome its feelings of
diffusiveness, of being an extension of its caregivers (to
include parents, in this text), or a part of them. Kohut says
that parents perform the functions of the self for their
child. More likely, a battle is joined from the child's first
breath: a battle to gain autonomy, to usurp the power of
the parents, to become a distinct entity.
The child refuses to let the parents continue to serve as its
self. It rebels and seeks to depose them and take over their
functions. The better the parents are at being self-objects
(in lieu of the child's self) - the stronger the child's self
becomes, the more vigorously it fights for its
independence.
The parents, in this sense, are like a benign, benevolent
and enlightened colonial power, which performs the tasks
of governance on behalf of the uneducated and uninitiated
natives. The more lenient the colonial regime - the more
likely it is to be supplanted by an indigenous, successful,
government.
"The crucial question then is whether the parents are
able to reflect with approval at least some of the child's
proudly exhibited attributes and functions, whether they
are able to respond with genuine enjoyment to his
budding skills, whether they are able to remain in touch
with him throughout his trials and errors. And,
furthermore, we must determine whether they are able to
38
provide the child with a reliable embodiment of calmness
and strength into which he can merge and with a focus
for his need to find a target for his admiration. Or, stated
in the obverse, it will be of crucial importance to
ascertain the fact that a child could find neither
confirmation of his own worth-whileness nor a target for
a merger with the idealised strength of the parent and
that he, therefore, remained deprived of the opportunity
for the gradual transformation of these external sources
of narcissistic sustenance into endopsychic resources,
that is, specifically into sustaining self-esteem and into a
sustaining relationship to internal ideals. " [Ibid.]
B. The Narcissistic Personality
"When the habitual narcissistic gratifications that come
from being adored, given special treatment, and
admiring the self are threatened, the results may be
depression, hypochondriasis, anxiety, shame, self-
destructiveness, or rage directed toward any other
person who can be blamed for the troubled situation.
The child can learn to avoid these painful emotional
states by acquiring a narcissistic mode of information
processing. Such learning may be by trial-and-error
methods, or it may be internalised by identification with
parental modes of dealing with stressful information. "
(Jon Mardi Horowitz. Stress Response Syndromes:
PTSD, Grief and Adjustment Disorders. Third edition.
New York, NY University Press, 1998)
Narcissism is fundamentally an evolved version of the
psychological defence mechanism known as splitting. The
narcissist does not regard people, situations, entities
(political parties, countries, races, his workplace) as a
compound of good and bad elements. He is an "all or
39
nothing" primitive "machine" (a common metaphor
among narcissists).
He either idealises his objects or devalues them. At any
given time, the objects are either all good or all bad. The
bad attributes are always projected, displaced, or
otherwise externalised. The good ones are internalised in
order to support the inflated ("grandiose") self-concepts of
the narcissist and his grandiose fantasies and to avoid the
pain of deflation and disillusionment.
The narcissist's earnestness and his (apparent) sincerity
make people wonder whether he is simply detached from
reality, unable to appraise it properly or willingly and
knowingly distorts reality and reinterprets it, subjecting it
to his self-imposed censorship. The truth is somewhere in
between: the narcissist is dimly aware of the
implausibility of his own constructions. He has not lost
touch with reality. He is just less scrupulous in
remoulding it and in ignoring its uncomfortable angles.
"The disguises are accomplished by shifting meanings
and using exaggeration and minimisation of bits of
reality as a nidus for fantasy elaboration. The
narcissistic personality is especially vulnerable to
regression to damaged or defective self-concepts on the
occasions of loss of those who have functioned as self-
objects. When the individual is faced with such stress
events as criticism, withdrawal of praise, or humiliation,
the information involved may be denied, disavowed,
negated, or shifted in meaning to prevent a reactive state
of rage, depression, or shame. " [Ibid.]
The second psychological defence mechanism which
characterizes the narcissist is the active pursuit of
40
Narcissistic Supply . The narcissist seeks to secure a
reliable and continuous supply of admiration, adulation,
affirmation and attention. As opposed to common opinion
(which infiltrated literature), the narcissist is content to
have any kind of attention - good or bad. If fame cannot
be had - notoriety would do. The narcissist is obsessed
with his Narcissistic Supply, he is addicted to it. His
behaviour in its pursuit is impulsive and compulsive.
"The hazard is not simply guilt because ideals have not
been met. Rather, any loss of a good and coherent self-
feeling is associated with intensely experienced emotions
such as shame and depression, plus an anguished sense
of helplessness and disorientation. To prevent this state,
the narcissistic personality slides the meanings of events
in order to place the self in a better light. What is good is
labelled as being of the self (internalised) Those
qualities that are undesirable are excluded from the self
by denial of their existence, disavowal of related
attitudes, externalisation, and negation of recent self-
expressions. Persons who function as accessories to the
self may also be idealised by exaggeration of their
attributes. Those who counter the self are depreciated;
ambiguous attributions of blame and a tendency to self-
righteous rage states are a conspicuous aspect of this
pattern.
Such fluid shifts in meanings permit the narcissistic
personality to maintain apparent logical consistency
while minimising evil or weakness and exaggerating
innocence or control. As part of these manoeuvres, the
narcissistic personality may assume attitudes of
contemptuous superiority toward others, emotional
coldness, or even desperately charming approaches to
idealised figures. " [Ibid.]
41
Freud versus Jung
Freud was the first to present a coherent theory of
narcissism. He described transitions from subject-directed
libido to object-directed libido through the intermediation
and agency of the parents. To be healthy and functional,
these transitions must be smooth and unperturbed.
Neuroses are the outcomes of bumpy or incomplete
transitions.
Freud conceived of each stage as the default (or fallback)
of the next one. Thus, if a child reaches out to his objects
of desire and fails to attract their love and attention, it
regresses to the previous phase, to the narcissistic phase.
The first occurrence of narcissism is adaptative. It "trains"
the child to love an object, albeit this object is merely his
self. It secures gratification through the availability,
predictability and permanence of the loved object
(oneself). But regressing to "secondary narcissism" is
maladaptive. It is an indication of failure to direct the
libido at the "right" targets (at objects, such as the
parents).
If this pattern of regression persists and prevails, it leads
to a narcissistic neurosis. The narcissist stimulates his self
habitually in order to derive pleasure. He prefers this
mode of deriving gratification to others. He is "lazy"
because he takes the "easy" route of resorting to his self
and reinvesting his libidinal resources "in-house" rather
than making an effort (and risking failure) to seek out
libidinal objects other than his self. The narcissist prefers
fantasyland to reality, grandiose self-conception to
realistic appraisal, masturbation and fantasies to mature
adult sex and daydreaming to real life achievements.
42
Jung suggested a mental picture of the psyche as a giant
warehouse of archetypes (the conscious representations of
adaptative behaviours). Fantasies to him are just a way of
accessing these archetypes and releasing them. Almost by
definition, Jungian psychology does not allow for
regression.
Any reversion to earlier phases of mental life, to earlier
coping strategies, or to earlier choices is interpreted by
Jungians as simply the psyche's way of using yet another,
hitherto untapped, adaptation strategy. Regressions are
compensatory processes intended to enhance adaptation
and not methods of obtaining or securing a steady flow of
gratification.
It would seem, though, that there is only a semantic
difference between Freud and his disciple turned-heretic.
When libido investment in objects (esp. the Primary
Object) fails to produce gratification, the result is
maladaptation. This is dangerous and the default option -
secondary narcissism - is activated.
This default enhances adaptation (is adaptative) and is
functional. It triggers adaptative behaviours. As a by-
product, it secures gratification. We are gratified when we
exert reasonable control over our environment, i.e., when
our behaviours are adaptative. Thus, the compensatory
process has two results: enhanced adaptation and
inevitable gratification.
Perhaps the more serious disagreement between Freud and
Jung is with regards to introversion.
Freud regards introversion as an instrument in the service
of a pathology (introversion is indispensable to
43
narcissism, as opposed to extroversion which is a
necessary condition for libidinal object-orientation).
As opposed to Freud, Jung regards introversion as a useful
tool in the service of the psychic quest for adaptation
strategies (narcissism being one of them). The Jungian
adaptation repertoire does not discriminate against
narcissism. To Jung it is as legitimate a choice as any.
But even Jung acknowledged that the very need to look
for new adaptation strategies means that adaptation has
failed. In other words, the search itself is indicative of a
pathological state of affairs. It does seem that introversion
per se is not pathological (because no psychological
mechanism is pathological per se). Only the use made of it
can be pathological. One tends to agree with Freud,
though, that when introversion becomes a permanent
feature of the psychic landscape of a person - it facilitates
pathological narcissism.
Jung distinguished introverts (who habitually concentrate
on their selves rather than on outside objects) from
extroverts (the converse preference). According to him,
not only is introversion a totally normal and natural
function, it remains normal and natural even if it
predominates one's mental life.
But surely the habitual and predominant focussing of
attention upon one's self, to the exclusion of others, is the
very definition of pathological narcissism. What
differentiates the pathological from the normal and even
the welcome is, of course, a matter of degree.
Pathological narcissism is exclusive and all-pervasive.
Other forms of narcissism are not. So, although there is no
44
healthy state of habitual, predominant introversion, it
remains a question of form and degree of introversion.
Often a healthy, adaptative mechanism goes awry. When
it does, as Jung himself recognised, neuroses form.
Last but not least, Freud regards narcissism as a point
while Jung regards it as a continuum (from health to
sickness). Modern views of narcissism tend to adopt
Jung's view in this respect.
Kohut's Approach
In a way, Kohut took Jung a step further. He said that
pathological narcissism is not the result of excessive
narcissism, libido or aggression. It is the result of
defective, deformed or incomplete narcissistic (self)
structures. Kohut postulated the existence of core
constructs which he named the "grandiose exhibitionistic
self and the "idealised parent imago" [see below].
Children entertain notions of greatness (primitive or naive
grandiosity) mingled with magical thinking, feelings of
omnipotence and omniscience and a belief in their
immunity to the consequences of their actions. These
elements and the child's feelings regarding its parents
(whom it tars with the same brush of omnipotence and
grandiosity) coagulate and form these constructs.
The child's feelings towards its parents are his or her
reactions to their responses (affirmation, buffering,
modulation or disapproval, punishment, even abuse).
These responses help maintain the self-structures. Without
appropriate parental responses, infantile grandiosity, for
instance, cannot be transformed into healthy adult
ambitions and ideals.
45
To Kohut, grandiosity and idealisation are positive
childhood development mechanisms. Even their
reappearance in transference should not be considered a
pathological narcissistic regression.
"You see, the actual issue is really a simple one ...a
simple change in classical [Freudian] theory, which
states that autoeroticism develops into narcissism and
that narcissism develops into object love . . . there is a
contrast and opposition between narcissism and object
love. The (forward) movement toward maturation was
toward object love. The movement from object love
toward narcissism is a (backward) regressive movement
toward a fixation point. To my mind (this) viewpoint is a
theory built into a non-scientific value judgement ... that
has nothing to do with developmental psychology. "
(H. Kohut. The Chicago Institute Lectures 1972-1976.
Marian and Paul Tolpin (Eds.). Analytic Press, 1998)
Kohut's contention is nothing less than revolutionary. He
says that narcissism (subject-love) and object-love coexist
and interact throughout life. True, they wear different
guises with age and maturation - but they always
cohabitate.
Kohut:
"It is not that the self-experiences are given up and
replaced by ... a more mature or developmentally more
advanced experience of objects. " [Ibid.]
This dichotomy inevitably leads to a dichotomy of
disorders. Kohut agreed with Freud that neuroses are
conglomerates of defence mechanisms, formations,
symptoms, and unconscious conflicts. He even did not
46
object to identifying unresolved Oedipal conflicts
(ungratified unconscious wishes and their objects) as the
root of neuroses. But he identified a whole new class of
disorders: the self-disorders. These are the result of the
perturbed development of narcissism.
It was not a cosmetic or superficial distinction. Self-
disorders are the outcomes of childhood traumas very
much different to Freud's Oedipal, castration and other
conflicts and fears. These are the traumas of the child
either not being "seen" (that is not being affirmed by
objects, especially the Primary Objects, the parents) - or
being regarded merely as an object for gratification or
abuse.
Such children grow up to become adults who are not sure
that they exist (lack a sense of self-continuity) or that they
are worth anything (labile sense of self-worth and
fluctuating or bipolar self-esteem). They suffer from
depressions , as neurotics do. But the source of these
depressions is existential (a gnawing sensation of
emptiness) as opposed to the "guilty conscience"
depressions of neurotics.
Such depressions: "...are interrupted by rages because
things are not going their way, because responses are
not forthcoming in the way they expected and needed.
Some of them may even search for conflict to relieve the
pain and intense suffering of the poorly established self,
the pain of the discontinuous, fragmenting,
undercathected self of the child not seen or responded to
as a unit of its own, not recognised as an independent
self who wants to feel like somebody, who wants to go its
own way [see Lecture 22]. They are individuals whose
disorders can be understood and treated only by taking
47
into consideration the formative experiences in
childhood of the total body-mind-self and its self -object
environment - for instance, the experiences of joy of the
total self feeling confirmed, which leads to pride, self-
esteem, zest, and initiative; or the experiences of shame,
loss of vitality, deadness, and depression of the self who
does not have the feeling of being included, welcomed,
and enjoyed. "
(Paul and Marian Tolpin (Eds.). The Preface to the
"Chicago Institute Lectures 1972-1976 ofH. Kohut",
1996)
One note: "constructs" or "structures" are permanent
psychological patterns. But this is not to say that they do
not change, for they are capable of slow change. Kohut
and his self-psychology disciples believed that the only
viable constructs are comprised of self self-object
experiences and that these structures are lifelong ones.
Melanie Klein believed more in archaic drives, splitting
defences and archaic internal objects and part objects.
Winnicott [and Balint and other, mainly British
researchers] as well as other ego-psychologists thought
that only infantile drive wishes and hallucinated oneness
with archaic objects qualify as structures.
Karen Homey 's Contributions
Horney is one of the precursors of the "object relations"
school of psychodynamics. She observed that one's
personality was shaped mostly by one's environment,
society, or culture. She believed that one's relationships
and interactions with others in one's childhood determine
both the shape and functioning of one's personality.
48
She expanded the psychoanalytic repertoire. She added
needs to drives. Where Freud believed in the exclusivity
of the sex drive as an agent of transformation (to which he
later added other drives) - Horney believed that people
(children) needed to feel secure, to be loved, protected,
emotionally nourished and so on.
She believed that the satisfaction of these needs or their
frustration early in childhood are as important a
determinant as any drive. Society came in through the
parental door. Biology converged with social injunctions
to yield human values such as the nurturance of children.
Horney's great contribution was the concept of anxiety.
Freudian anxiety is a rather primitive mechanism, a
reaction to imaginary threats arising from early childhood
sexual conflicts. Horney argued convincingly that anxiety
is a primary reaction to the child's dependence on adults
for his survival.
Children are uncertain (of love, protection, nourishment,
nurturance) - so they become anxious. They develop
psychological defences to compensate for the intolerable
and gradual realisation that adults are merely human and
are, at times, capricious, arbitrary, unpredictable,
unreliable. These defences provide both gratification and
a sense of security. The problem of dangerous dependence
still exists, but it is "one stage removed". When the
defences are attacked or perceived to be attacked (such as
in therapy) - anxiety is reawakened.
Karen B. Wallant in "Creating Capacity for Attachment:
Treating Addictions and the Alienated Self" [Jason
Aronson, 1999] wrote:
49
"The capacity to be alone develops out of the baby's
ability to hold onto the internalisation of his mother,
even during her absences. It is not just an image of
mother that he retains but also her loving devotion to
him. Thus, when alone, he can feel confident and secure
as he continues to infuse himself with her love. The
addict has had so few loving attachments in his life that
when alone he is returned to his detached, alienated self.
This feeling-state can be compared to a young child's
fear of monsters without a powerful other to help him,
the monsters continue to live somewhere within the child
or his environment. It is not uncommon for patients to
be found on either side of an attachment pendulum. It is
invariably easier to handle patients for whom the
transference erupts in the idealising attachment phase
than those who view the therapist as a powerful and
distrusted intruder. "
So, the child learns to sacrifice a part of his autonomy and
of his identity in order to feel secure.
Horney identified three neurotic strategies: submission,
aggression and detachment. The choice of strategy
determines the type of neurotic personality. The
submissive (or compliant) type is a fake. He hides
aggression beneath a facade of friendliness. The
aggressive type is fake as well: at heart he is submissive.
The detached neurotic withdraws from people. This
cannot be considered an adaptative strategy.
Horney's is an optimistic outlook. Because biology is only
one of the forces shaping our adulthood - culture and
society being the predominant ones - she believes in
reversibility and in the power of insight to heal. She
believes that when an adult understands his problem (his
50
anxiety), he also acquires the ability to eliminate it
altogether.
Yet, clinical experience shows that childhood trauma and
abuse are difficult to completely erase. Modern brain
research tends to support this sad view and, yet, offer
some hope. The brain seems to be more plastic than
previously imagined - but no one knows when this
"window of plasticity" shuts. What has been established is
that the brain is physically impressed with abuse and
trauma.
It is conceivable that the brain's plasticity continues well
into adulthood and that later "reprogramming" (by loving,
caring, compassionate and empathic experiences) can
remould the brain permanently. Clearly, the patient has to
accept his disorder as a given and work around it rather
than confront it directly.
After all, our disorders are adaptative and help us to
function. Their removal may not always be wise or
necessary to attain a full and satisfactory life. We should
not all conform to the same mould and experience life the
same. Idiosyncrasies are a good thing, both on the
individual level and on the level of the species.
C. The Issue of Separation and Individuation
It is by no means universally accepted that children go
through a phase of separation from their parents and
through consequent individuation. Most psychodynamic
theories [especially Klein, Mahler] are virtually
constructed upon this foundation. The child is considered
to be merged with his parents until it differentiates itself
(through object-relations).
51
But researchers like Daniel N. Stern dispute this
hypothesis. Based on many studies, it appears that, as
always, what seems intuitively right is not necessarily
right.
In "The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from
Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology" [New
York, Basic Books - 1985], Stern seems to, inadvertently,
support Kohut by concluding that children possess selves
and are separate from their caregivers from the very start.
In effect, he says that the picture of the child, as proffered
by psychodynamic theories, is biased by the way adults
see children and childhood in retrospect. Adult disorders
(for instance, the pathological need to merge) are
attributed to children and to childhood.
This view is in stark contrast to the belief that children
accept any kind of parents (even abusive) because they
depend on them for their survival and self-definition.
Attachment to and dependence on significant others is the
result of the non-separateness of the child, go the classical
psychodynamic/object-relations theories.
The self is a construct (in a social context, some add), an
assimilation of the oft-imitated and idealised parents plus
the internalisation of the way others perceive the child in
social interactions. The self is, therefore, an internalised
reflection, an imitation, a series of internalised
idealisations. This sounds close to pathological
narcissism. Perhaps it is really a matter of quantity rather
than quality.
D. Childhood Traumas and the Development of the
Narcissistic Personality
52
Traumas are inevitable. They are an integral and
important part of life. But in early childhood, especially in
infancy (ages to 4 years), they acquire an ominous aura
and an evil interpretation. No matter how innocuous the
event and the surrounding circumstances, the child's vivid
imagination is likely to embed it in the framework of a
highly idiosyncratic horror story.
Parents sometimes have to be abxsent due to medical or
economic conditions. They may be too preoccupied to
stay attuned at all times to the child's emotional needs.
The family unit itself may be disintegrating with looming
divorce or separation. The values of the parent may stand
in radical contrast to those of society.
To adults, such traumas do not equate abuse. Verbal and
psychological-emotional abuse or neglect are judged by us
to be more serious "offences". But this distinction is lost
on the child. To him, all traumas - deliberately inflicted or
inevitable and inadvertent life crises - are of equal abusive
standing, though their severity may differ together with
the permanence of their emotional outcomes.
Sometimes even abuse and neglect are the results of
circumstances beyond the abusive or neglecting parent's
control. Consider a physically or mentally handicapped
parent or caregiver, for instance. But the child cannot see
this as a mitigating circumstance because he cannot
appreciate it or even plainly understand the causal linkage.
Where even a child can tell the difference is with physical
and sexual abuse. These are marked by a co-operative
effort (offending parent and abused child) at concealment
and strong emotions of shame and guilt, repressed to the
point of producing anxiety and "neurosis". The child
53
perceives even the injustice of the situation, though it
rarely dares to express its views, lest it be abandoned or
severely punished by its abusers.
This type of trauma which involves the child actively or
passively is qualitatively different and is bound to yield
long-term effects such as dissociation or severe
personality disorders. These are violent, premeditated
traumas, not traumas by default, and the reaction is bound
to be violent and active. The child becomes a reflection of
its dysfunctional family - it represses emotions, denies
reality, resorts to violence and escapism, disintegrates.
One of the coping strategies is to withdraw inwards, to
seek gratification from a secure, reliable and permanently-
available source: from one's self. The child, fearful of
further rejection and abuse, refrains from further
interaction with others. Instead, it builds its own kingdom
of grandiose fantasies where it is always loved, respected,
and self-sufficient. This is the narcissistic strategy which
leads to the development of a narcissistic personality.
E. The Narcissist's Family
"For very young children, self-esteem is probably best
thought to consist of deep feelings of being loved,
accepted, and valued by significant others rather than of
feelings derived from evaluating oneself against some
external criteria, as in the case of older children. Indeed,
the only criterion appropriate for accepting and loving a
new-born or infant is that he or she has been born. The
unconditional love and acceptance experienced in the
first year or two of life lay the foundation for later self-
esteem, and probably make it possible for the pre-
schooler and older child to withstand occasional
54
criticism and negative evaluations that usually
accompany socialisation into the larger community.
As children grow beyond the preschool years, the larger
society imposes criteria and conditions upon love and
acceptance. If the very early feelings of love and
acceptance are deep enough, the child can most likely
weather the rebuffs and scoldings of the later years
without undue debilitation. With increasing age,
however, children begin to internalise criteria of self -
worth and a sense of the standards to be attained on the
criteria from the larger community they observe and in
which they are beginning to participate. The issue of
criteria of self-esteem is examined more closely below.
Cassidy's [1988] study of the relationship between self-
esteem at age five and six years and the quality of early
mother-child attachment supports Bowlby's theory that
construction of the self is derived from early daily
experience with attachment figures. The results of the
study support Bowlby's conception of the process
through which continuity in development occurs, and of
the way early child-mother attachment continues to
influence the child's conception and estimation of the
self across many years. The working models of the self
derived from early mother-child inter-action organise
and help mould the child's environment 'by seeking
particular kinds of people and by eliciting particular
behaviour from them ' [Cassidy, 1988, p. 133]. Cassidy
points out that very young children have few means of
learning about themselves other than through
experience with attachment figures. She suggests that if
infants are valued and given comfort when required,
they come to feel valuable; conversely, if they are
55
neglected or rejected, they come to feel worthless and of
little value.
In an examination of developmental considerations,
Bednar, Wells, and Peterson [1989] suggest that feelings
of competence and the self-esteem associated with them
are enhanced in children when their parents provide an
optimum mixture of acceptance, affection, rational
limits and controls, and high expectations. In a similar
way, teachers are likely to engender positive feelings
when they provide such a combination of acceptance,
limits, and meaningful and realistic expectations
concerning behaviour and effort [Lamborn et al., 1991].
Similarly, teachers can provide contexts for such an
optimum mixture of acceptance, limits, and meaningful
effort in the course of project work as described by Katz
and Chard [1989]."
(Lilian G. Katz - Distinctions between Self-Esteem and
Narcissism: Implications for Practice - October 1993 -
ERIC/EECE Publications)
F. The Narcissist's Mother - A Suggestion for an
Integrative Framework
The whole structure of the narcissistic disorder reflects the
prototypical relationship with frustrating primary objects
(usually, the mother or main caregiver).
The narcissist's "mother" is typically inconsistent and
frustrating. She thus thwarts the narcissist's ability to trust
others and to feel secure with them. By emotionally
abandoning him, she fosters in him fears of being
abandoned and the nagging sensation that the world is a
dangerous, hostile, and unpredictable place. She becomes
56
a negative, devaluing voice, which is duly incorporated in
the narcissist's Superego.
But there is a less traditional view.
Our natural state is anxiety, the readiness - physiological
and mental - to "fight or flight". Research indicates that
the Primary Object (PO) is really the child, rather than its
mother. The child identifies itself as an object almost at
birth. It explores itself, reacts and interacts, it monitors its
bodily reactions to internal and external inputs and
stimuli. The flow of blood, the peristaltic movement, the
swallowing reflex, the texture of saliva, the experience of
excretion, being wet, thirsty, hungry or content - all these
distinguish the child from its self.
The child assumes the position of observer and integrator
early on. As Kohut said, it has both a self and the ability
to relate to objects. This intimacy with a familiar and
predictable object (oneself) is a primary source of security
and the precursor to emerging narcissism. The mother is
only a Secondary Object (SO). It is this secondary object
that the child learns to relate to and it has the
indispensable developmental advantage of being
transcendental, external to the child. All meaningful
others are Auxiliary Objects (AO).
A "good enough" SO helps the child to extend the lessons
he had learned from his interaction with the PO (his self)
and apply them to the world at large. The child learns that
the external environment can be as predictable and safe as
the internal one.
This titillating discovery leads to a modification of naive
or primitive narcissism. It recedes to the background
57
allowing more prominent and adaptative strategies to the
fore. In due time, and subject to an accumulation of the
right positively reinforcing experiences, a higher form of
narcissism develops: self-love , a stable sense of self-
worth, and self-esteem.
If, however, SO fails or is abusive, the child reverts back
to the PO and to its primitive form of narcissism. This is
regression in the chronological sense. But it is also an
adaptative strategy.
The emotional consequences of rejection and abuse are
too difficult to contemplate. Narcissism ameliorates them
by providing a substitute object. This is an adaptative,
survival-orientated act. It provides the child with time to
"come to grips with its thoughts and feelings" and perhaps
to revert with a different strategy more suited to the new -
unpleasant and threatening - data.
So the interpretation of this regression as a failure of
object love may be wrong. The child merely deduces that
the SO, the object chosen as the first target of object love,
was the wrong object. Object love continues to look for a
different, familiar, object. The child merely replaces one
object (his mother) with another (his self). The child does
not relinquish his capacity for object-love.
If this failure to establish a proper object-relation persists
and is not alleviated, all future objects are perceived either
as extensions of the Primary Object (the self), or as
external objects to be merged with one's self, because they
are perceived narcissistically.
There are, therefore, two modes of object perception:
58
The narcissistic (all objects are perceived as variations of
the perceiving self) and the social (all objects are
perceived as others or self-objects).
The core (narcissistic) self precedes language or
interaction with others. As the core self matures it
develops either into a True Self or into a False Self . The
two are mutually exclusive (a person possessed by a False
Self has no functioning True Self). The distinction of the
False Self is that it perceives others narcissistically. As
opposed to it, the True Self perceives others socially.
The child constantly compares his first experience with an
object (his internalised PO, his self) to his experience with
his SO. The internalisations of both the PO and the SO are
modified as a result of this process of comparison. The SO
is idealised and internalised to form what I call the SEGO
(loosely, the equivalent of Freud's Superego plus the
internalised outcomes of social interactions throughout
life). The internalised PO is constantly modified to justify
feedback from the SO (for example: "You are loved", or
"You are a bad boy"). This is the process by which the
Ideal Ego is created.
The internalisations of the PO, of the SO and of the
outcomes of their interactions (for instance, of the results
of the aforementioned constant comparison between
them) form what Bowlby calls "working models". These
are constantly updated representations of both the self and
of Meaningful Others (what I call Auxiliary Others).
The narcissist's working models are defective. They
pertain both to his self and to ALL others. To the
narcissist, ALL people are meaningful because NO ONE
really is. This forces the narcissist to resort to crude
59
abstractions (imagine the number of working models he
needs!).
The narcissist is forced to dehumanise, objectify,
generalise, idealise, devalue, or stereotype in order to cope
with the sheer volume of potential interactions with
meaningful objects (i.e., with everyone!). Trying not to be
overwhelmed, the narcissist feels superior and inflated -
because he is the only REAL three-dimensional character
in his mind.
Moreover, the narcissist's working models are rigid and
never updated because he does not feel that he is
interacting with real objects. How can one feel empathic ,
for instance, towards a representation or an abstraction or
an object of gratification? How can such representations
or abstractions grow or change?
Follows a matrix of possible axes (dimensions) of
interaction between child and mother.
The first term in each of these equations of interaction
describes the child, the second the mother.
The Mother can be:
Accepting ("good enough");
Domineering;
Doting/S mothering ;
Indifferent;
Rejecting;
Abusive.
The Child can be:
60
• Attracted;
• Repelled (due to unjust mistreatment, for
instance).
The possible axes or dimensions are:
Child / Mother
How to read this table - an example:
Attraction - Attraction/Accepting
Means that the child is attracted to his mother, his mother
is attracted to him and she is a "good enough" (accepting)
mother.
1 . Attraction - Attraction/Accepting
(Healthy axis, leads to self-love)
2. Attraction - Attraction/Domineering
(Could lead to personality disorders - PDs - such
as avoidant, or schizoid, or to social phobia, etc.)
3. Attraction - Attraction/Doting or Smothering
(Could lead to Cluster B Personality Disorders)
4. Attraction - Repulsion/Indifferent
[passive-aggressive, frustrating]
(Could lead to narcissism, Cluster B disorders)
5. Attraction - Repulsion/Rejecting
(Could lead to personality disorders such as
paranoid, borderline, etc.)
61
6. Attraction - Repulsion/ Abusive
(Could lead to DID, ADHD, NPD, BPD, AHD,
AsPD, PPD, etc.)
7. Repulsion - Repulsion/Indifferent
(Could lead to avoidant, schizoid, paranoid, etc.
PDs)
8. Repulsion - Repulsion/Rejecting
(Could lead to personality, mood, anxiety
disorders and to impulsive behaviours, such as
eating disorders)
9. Repulsion - Attraction/Accepting
(Could lead to unresolved Oedipal conflicts and to
neuroses)
10. Repulsion - Attraction/Domineering
(Could have the same results as axis 6)
1 1 . Repulsion - Attraction/Doting
(Could have the same results as axis 9)
This, of course, is a very rough sketch. Many of the axes
can be combined to yield more complex clinical pictures.
It provides an initial, coarse, map of the possible
interactions between the PO and the SO in early childhood
and the unsavoury results of internalised bad objects.
This PO/SO matrix continues to interact with AO to form
the person's self-evaluation (self-esteem or sense of self-
worth).
62
This process - the formation of a coherent sense of self-
worth - starts with PO/SO interactions within the matrix
and continues roughly till the age of 8, all the time
gathering and assimilating interactions with AO
(=meaningful others).
First, a model of attachment in relationships is formed
(approximately the matrix above). This model is based on
the internalisation of the Primary Object (later, the self).
Attachment interactions with SO follow and in the wake
of a critical mass of of interactions with AO, the self is
formed.
This process of the formation of self rests on the operation
of a few critical principles:
1 . The child, as we said earlier, develops a sense of
" mother-constancy " . This is crucial. If the child is
unable predict the behaviour (let alone the
presence) of his mother from one moment to
another, it finds it hard to trust anything, predict
anything and expect anything. Because the self, to
some extent (some say: to a large extent), is
comprised of the internalised outcomes of the
interactions with others - negative experiences are
be incorporated in the budding self as well as
positive ones. In other words, a child feels
loveable and desirable if it is indeed loved and
wanted. If it is rejected, it is bound to feel
worthless and worthy only of rejection. In due
time, the child develops behaviours which yield
rejection by others and the outcomes of which thus
conform with his self-perception.
63
2. The adoption and assimilation of the judgement of
others and its incorporation into a coherent sense
of self-worth and self-esteem.
3. The discounting or filtering-out of contrarian
information. Once Bowlby's "working models" are
formed, they act as selective membranes. No
amount of external information to the contrary
alters these models significantly. Granted, shifts in
relative positions may and do occur in later stages
of life. A person can feel more or less accepted,
more or less competent, more or less integrated
into a given social setting. But these are changes in
the values of parameters within a set equation (the
working model). The equation itself is rarely
altered and only by very serious life crises.
Reprinted with permission from:
"For Want of a Better Good" (In process)
Author: Alan Challoner MA (Phil) MChS
(Attachment Theory Researcher Counsellor in Adoption
& Fostering, and associated child development issues.
MA awarded by thesis on the psychology of handicap - A
Culture of Ambiguity; 1992):
"A developmental line for narcissism has been devised by
Temeles, and it consists of twelve phases that are
characterised by a particular relationship between self-
love and object-love and occur in a precise order."
(Temeles, M.S. - A developmental line for narcissism:
The path to self-love and object love. In Cohen, Theodore,
64
B.; Etezady, M. Hossein; & Pacella, B.L. (Eds.) The
Vulnerable Child. Volume 1 ; The Vulnerable Child.
International Univ. Press; Madison, CT, USA - 1993.)
Proto-Self and Proto-Object
As the infant is incapable of distinguishing either the self
or the object as adults do, this phase is marked by their
absence. However he is competent in certain attributes
particularly those that allow him to interact with his
environment. From birth his moments of pleasure, often
the instrument of infant-mother interaction, are high
points in the phase. He will try to avoid the low points of
un-pleasure by creating a bond that is marked by early
maternal intervention to restore the status quo.
Beginning Self-Object Differentiation and Object
Preference
The second phase can begin as early as the third week,
and by the fourth month the infant has prescribed his
favourite individuals (apart from mother). However he is
still not really discriminating between self and subject. He
is now ready to engage in a higher state of interaction with
others. He babbles and smiles and tries to make some
sense out of his local environment. If he should fail to
make the sort of contact that he is seeking then he will
turn away in a manner that is unequivocal in its meaning.
His main social contact at this stage is by the eye, and he
makes no bones about his feelings of pleasure or
displeasure.
His bond with his mother, at best, is now flowing and, if
he is fortunate, there is a mutual admiration society
established. This is not however an isolated practice for
65
there is a narcissistic element on both sides that is
reinforced by the strength of the attachment. His
continued development allows him to find an increasing
number of ways in which he might generate,
autonomously, personal pleasure. He finds delight in
making new sounds, or indeed doing anything that brings
him his mother's approbation. He is now almost ready to
see himself in contrast to others.
Self -Constancy and Object-Constancy
The infant is now becoming able to know himself as
"me", as well as being able to know familiar others as
"them". His fraternisation with father, siblings and
grandparents or any other closely adjacent person, endows
this interaction with a tone of special recognition as "one
of the gang". This is of vital importance to him because he
gains a very special feedback from these people. They
love him and they shown their approbation for his every
ploy that he constructs in an effort to seal this knot. He is
now at the beginning of a period when he starts to feel
some early self-esteem. Again if he is lucky, he will be
delighted at being himself and in his situation. Also at this
stage he can often create a special affinity for the same-
sex parent. He throws up expansive gestures of affection,
and yet can also become totally self-absorbed in his
growing confidence that he is on a "winning streak".
Awareness of a Awareness: Self-Centredness
This is an extension of the third phase and he is
continuously becoming more aware of himself and is
adept at gaining the pleasures he seeks. The phase also
coincides with the beginning of the decline of maternal
feeling that he is the best thing on this earth. His activities
66
both positive and negative have started to draw on
maternal resources to the point where they may at times
be sapping. Thus at the beginning of the child's second
year the mother starts to realise that the time has come
when she must "shout the odds". She begins to make
demands of him and, at times, to punish him, albeit in a
discrete way. She may not now respond as quickly as she
did before, or she may not seem quite so adoring as she
was three months ago.
The most dynamic intervention that a child can have at
this time is the fear of the loss of love. He needs to be
loved so that he can still love himself. This beginning of a
time of self-reflection needs him to be aware of being
aware. It is now possible for him to be injured
narcissistically, for example, perhaps through sibling
rivalry. His relationship with his same-sex parent takes on
a new importance. It now goes beyond just a "mutuality
club". Because he is becoming aware of his limitations, he
needs to know through this relationship with the same-sex
parent, just what he may become. This allows his
narcissistic image of himself to be regularly re-polished
after any lapses that might have tarnished it.
Object-Centred Phase: The First Libidinal
Disappointm ent
This is what has been described as the Oedipal period,
when genital and object-directed sexuality comes to the
fore. He must continue to recover whenever he receives a
blow to his self-esteem; but more, he must learn not to
over-compensate. As Temeles puts it, narcissistic supplies
from both the adored Oedipal object and also the loved
rival are threatened as the child's libidinal investments are
sporadically supplanted by negative impulses. [Idem.]
67
The child will refresh his relationships on a different
platform, but nevertheless maintains and is sustained by
his attachments to his parents, and other subsidiary
figures. At a time when he begins to divest himself of
some of the libidinal baggage he may enter into a new
"love affair" with a peer. The normal pattern is for these to
disintegrate when the child enters the period of latency,
and for the interregnum to be typified with a period of
sexual segregation. By now he is going to school and is
acquiring a new level of self-sufficiency that continues to
enhance his narcissism.
Beginning Prominence of Peer Groups: New Objects
This phase, which begins sometime in the third year, is
marked by a resolution of the Oedipal period and a
lessening of the infant ties with the parents as the child
turns his attention towards his peers and some other
special adults (such as teachers or other role models). In
some respects these new objects start to replace some of
the narcissistic supplies that he continues to gain from his
parents.
This of course has its dangers because other objects can
be notoriously fickle, especially peers. He is now at a
stage where he has journeyed into the outside world and is
vulnerable to the inconstancies of those who now are
around him in greater numbers. However all is not lost for
the world revolves in circles and the input that he requires
from others is shared by the input that they need from
him.
On an individual basis therefore if he "falls out" with one
person then he very quickly will "fall in" with another.
The real potential problem here is for him to be disliked
68
by so many others of his peers that his self-esteem is
endangered. Sometimes this can be rectified by his
mastery of other elements; particularly if they contribute a
steady flow of narcissistic supplies. However the group-
ideal is of great significance and seems to have become
more so in recent times.
The development of a burgeoning independence together
with a sense of group recognition are both in the nature of
self-preservation issues. The parental influence, if it has
been strong and supportive and consistently streaked with
affection and love, will be the launching pad for an
adequate personality and a move towards eventual
independence.
Beginning Prominence of Self-Assessment: Impact on
Self-Love
This pre-adolescent phase encompasses a child who still
needs the reassurance of his peers, and hereabouts his
attachments to certain individuals or groups will intensify.
The assaults on his self-esteem now come from a different
quarter. There is an increased concentration on physical
attributes, and other comparisons will be made that might
diminish or raise his narcissistic supplies. His self-
confidence can be strained at this time, and whilst the
same-sex peer is still dominant, the opposite-sex peer
starts to catch the corner of his eye.
At this time, when he needs all the support he can gather,
he may find to his chagrin that a certain ambivalence is
coming to pass in his relationships with his parents. They
in turn are discovering a rapidly changing, not so
compliant, and more independent child. They may be
astounded by the group ideals that he has adopted, and
69
whilst in reality he still needs to receive from them
abundant narcissistic supplies, the affectionate ties may be
strained and the expected or desired support may be
somewhat withered.
Beginning Sexual Maturity: Importance of the Sexual
Object
At this stage ties with parents continue to slacken, but
there is an important change taking place as the
affectionate characteristics are converging with libidinal
ones. The need to be loved is still there and the adolescent
version of narcissism begins to trail its coat. Gradually the
narcissistic element is enhanced as the subject becomes
more self-assured and develops the need to win the frank
admiration of a sexual object. Hormonal mood swings can
underlie the degree to which rejection reduces the
narcissistic supplies. Where there is a blatant over-
valuation of the self it is often the result of a defence
mechanism coming in to play to protect the subject.
Individual subjects compare themselves with others in
their group and may become aware of either shortcomings
or advantages that add to the feelings in self-assessment.
Over-inflated Ego ideals may bring about a negative
assessment, and the need arises for young people to
confront themselves with reality. A failure to do this will
result in a much more severe assault on their narcissism
later.
Resurgence of Master Issues: Impact of Self-Love
Having now experienced the change of love object, and
tasted the new relations that stem from it, there is a need
to resume the issues of mastery. These are no longer
childhood fantasies but are the basic requirements for a
70
successful future. On them depend the acquisition of a
successfully completed education, skill training and
employment. At this stage narcissistic supplies depend
upon success, and if this is not obtained legitimately then
it may be sought by other means. His culture and to some
extent his peer group will tend to dictate what the criteria
of success will be. Within some societies there is still a
gender difference here but it is reducing with time.
Temeles suggests that, If the woman's narcissistic supplies
are, in fact, more dependent on maintaining a relationship
with the libidinal object, then perhaps it reflects a greater
need to maintain more affectionate ties reminiscent of the
past. [Idem.]
When the time comes for parenthood earlier ties tend to
be reinvigorated; parents become grandparents and the
cycle begins again.
The Balance between Self- and Object-Generated
Narcissistic Supplies
Each culture has its unit of social characteristics. These
often revolve around family, work, leisure and on the
extent to which they are successful will depend the
amount of contentment and pride that is generated. A
continuance of narcissistic supplies will continue to flow
from partners, colleagues, children, parents etc. The more
success the greater the flow; and the greater the flow the
more success can be achieved and the better the subject
will feel about life. The downside of this is when things
go wrong. We are in a situation generally where many
people have lost jobs and homes; where marriages have
broken up and children are separated from one of the
parents. This causes great stress, a diminution of self-
esteem and a loss of narcissistic supplies. This may result
71
in the loss of the power to sustain an effective life style
and with a continuing diminution of narcissistic supplies
the result may bring about a negative aspect to life.
Accommodation versus Self-Centredness
The subject has now arrived at middle age. Whatever
success has been achieved it may well be that he will be at
the summit of his personal mountain, and the only way
forward is down. From here on mastery is waning and
there is a tendency to rely more and more on relationships
to supply the good feelings. The arrival of grandchildren
can herald a return to earlier mutuality and may account
for narcissistic supplies for both generations. In the long-
term the threat of, or the reality of, a reduction in physical
capacity or ill-health may play a part in the reduction of
narcissistic supplies.
Self versus Object
Advancing age will develop its threat. Not only is this at a
personal and physical level, but often it is at an emotional
level. Long gone are the inter-generational family settings.
Grand parents, parents and children now not only reside in
different houses, but in different counties or even different
countries. The more one is separated and possibly alone
the more one feels threatened by mortality which is of
course the ultimate in the loss of narcissistic supplies.
When loved ones disappear it is important to try to crate
substitute associations either through re-entering into
group activities or perhaps the solitary pleasure that can
be gained from a domestic pet. Loss of the good feelings
that were present in earlier times can lead to depression.
This is countered by those who have developed a degree
of self-sufficiency and who have maintained interests that
72
provide a continuance of narcissistic supplies. Once any
or all of these start to disappear there enters a factor of
dissimulation, and we can no longer reconcile what we
were to what we now are. We lose our self-esteem, often
our will to live, but even though this is not consonant with
a will to die it often leads to a failure to thrive.
Also Read
Warped Reality
A Letter about Trust
Self Love and Narcissism
The Delusional Way Out
The Discontinuous Narcissist
The Dual Role of the False Self
The Narcissist's Object Constancy
The Narcissist's Reality Substitutes
The Narcissist's Confabulated Life
Narcissists, Inverted Narcissists and Schizoids
Narcissists, Narcissistic Supply and Sources of Supply
Pathological Narcissism - A Dysfunction or a Blessing?
Back to Table of Contents
73
Born Aliens
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Neonates have no psychology. If operated upon, for
instance, they are not supposed to show signs of trauma
later on in life. Birth, according to this school of thought
is of no psychological consequence to the newborn baby.
It is immeasurably more important to his "primary
caregiver" (mother) and to her supporters (read: father and
other members of the family). It is through them that the
baby is, supposedly, effected. This effect is evident in his
(I will use the male form only for convenience's sake)
ability to bond. The late Karl Sagan professed to possess
the diametrically opposed view when he compared the
process of death to that of being born. He was
commenting upon the numerous testimonies of people
brought back to life following their confirmed, clinical
death. Most of them shared an experience of traversing a
dark tunnel. A combination of soft light and soothing
voices and the figures of their deceased nearest and
dearest awaited them at the end of this tunnel. All those
who experienced it described the light as the
manifestation of an omnipotent, benevolent being. The
tunnel - suggested Sagan - is a rendition of the mother's
tract. The process of birth involves gradual exposure to
light and to the figures of humans. Clinical death
experiences only recreate birth experiences.
The womb is a self-contained though open (not self-
sufficient) ecosystem. The Baby's Planet is spatially
confined, almost devoid of light and homeostatic. The
74
fetus breathes liquid oxygen, rather than the gaseous
variant. He is subjected to an unending barrage of noises,
most of them rhythmical. Otherwise, there are very few
stimuli to elicit any of his fixed action responses. There,
dependent and protected, his world lacks the most evident
features of ours. There are no dimensions where there is
no light. There is no "inside" and "outside", "self" and
"others", "extension" and "main body", "here" and "there".
Our Planet is exactly converse. There could be no greater
disparity. In this sense - and it is not a restricted sense at
all - the baby is an alien. He has to train himself and to
learn to become human. Kittens, whose eyes were tied
immediately after birth - could not "see" straight lines and
kept tumbling over tightly strung cords. Even sense data
involve some modicum and modes of conceptualization
(see: "Appendix 5 - The Manifold of Sense") .
Even lower animals (worms) avoid unpleasant corners in
mazes in the wake of nasty experiences. To suggest that a
human neonate, equipped with hundreds of neural cubic
feet does not recall migrating from one planet to another,
from one extreme to its total opposition - stretches
credulity. Babies may be asleep 16-20 hours a day
because they are shocked and depressed. These abnormal
spans of sleep are more typical of major depressive
episodes than of vigorous, vivacious, vibrant growth.
Taking into consideration the mind-boggling amounts of
information that the baby has to absorb just in order to
stay alive - sleeping through most of it seems like an
inordinately inane strategy. The baby seems to be awake
in the womb more than he is outside it. Cast into the outer
light, the baby tries, at first, to ignore reality. This is our
first defence line. It stays with us as we grow up.
75
It has long been noted that pregnancy continues outside
the womb. The brain develops and reaches 75% of adult
size by the age of 2 years. It is completed only by the age
of 10. It takes, therefore, ten years to complete the
development of this indispensable organ - almost wholly
outside the womb. And this "external pregnancy" is not
limited to the brain only. The baby grows by 25 cm and
by 6 kilos in the first year alone. He doubles his weight by
his fourth month and triples it by his first birthday. The
development process is not smooth but by fits and starts.
Not only do the parameters of the body change - but its
proportions do as well. In the first two years, for instance,
the head is larger in order to accommodate the rapid
growth of the Central Nervous System. This changes
drastically later on as the growth of the head is dwarfed by
the growth of the extremities of the body. The
transformation is so fundamental, the plasticity of the
body so pronounced - that in most likelihood this is the
reason why no operative sense of identity emerges until
after the fourth year of childhood. It calls to mind Kafka's
Gregor Samsa (who woke up to find that he is a giant
cockroach). It is identity shattering. It must engender in
the baby a sense of self-estrangement and loss of control
over who is and what he is.
The motor development of the baby is heavily influenced
both by the lack of sufficient neural equipment and by the
ever-changing dimensions and proportions of the body.
While all other animal cubs are fully motoric in their first
few weeks of life - the human baby is woefully slow and
hesitant. The motor development is proximodistal. The
baby moves in ever widening concentric circles from
itself to the outside world. First the whole arm, grasping,
then the useful fingers (especially the thumb and
forefinger combination), first batting at random, then
76
reaching accurately. The inflation of its body must give
the baby the impression that he is in the process of
devouring the world. Right up to his second year the baby
tries to assimilate the world through his mouth (which is
the prima causa of his own growth). He divides the world
into "suckable" and "insuckable" (as well as to "stimuli-
generating" and "not generating stimuli"). His mind
expands even faster than his body. He must feel that he is
all-encompassing, all-inclusive, all-engulfing, all-
pervasive. This is why a baby has no object permanence.
In other words, a baby finds it hard to believe the
existence of other objects if he does not see them (=if they
are not IN his eyes). They all exist in his outlandishly
exploding mind and only there. The universe cannot
accommodate a creature, which doubles itself physically
every 4 months as well as objects outside the perimeter of
such an inflationary being, the baby "believes". The
inflation of the body has a correlate in the inflation of
consciousness. These two processes overwhelm the baby
into a passive absorption and inclusion mode.
To assume that the child is born a "tabula rasa" is
superstition. Cerebral processes and responses have been
observed in utero. Sounds condition the EEG of fetuses.
They startle at loud, sudden noises. This means that they
can hear and interpret what they hear. Fetuses even
remember stories read to them while in the womb. They
prefer these stories to others after they are born. This
means that they can tell auditory patterns and parameters
apart. They tilt their head at the direction sounds are
coming from. They do so even in the absence of visual
cues (e.g., in a dark room). They can tell the mother's
voice apart (perhaps because it is high pitched and thus
recalled by them). In general, babies are tuned to human
speech and can distinguish sounds better than adults do.
77
Chinese and Japanese babies react differently to "pa" and
to "ba", to "ra" and to "la". Adults do not - which is the
source of numerous jokes.
The equipment of the newborn is not limited to the
auditory. He has clear smell and taste preferences (he
likes sweet things a lot). He sees the world in three
dimensions with a perspective (a skill which he could not
have acquired in the dark womb). Depth perception is
well developed by the sixth month of life.
Expectedly, it is vague in the first four months of life.
When presented with depth, the baby realizes that
something is different - but not what. Babies are born
with their eyes open as opposed to most other animal
young ones. Moreover, their eyes are immediately fully
functional. It is the interpretation mechanism that is
lacking and this is why the world looks fuzzy to them.
They tend to concentrate on very distant or on very close
objects (their own hand getting closer to their face). They
see very clearly objects 20-25 cm away. But visual acuity
and focusing improve in a matter of days. By the time the
baby is 6 to 8 months old, he sees as well as many adults
do, though the visual system - from the neurological point
of view - is fully developed only at the age of 3 or 4
years. The neonate discerns some colours in the first few
days of his life: yellow, red, green, orange, gray - and all
of them by the age of four months. He shows clear
preferences regarding visual stimuli: he is bored by
repeated stimuli and prefers sharp contours and contrasts,
big objects to small ones, black and white to coloured
(because of the sharper contrast), curved lines to straight
ones (this is why babies prefer human faces to abstract
paintings). They prefer their mother to strangers. It is not
clear how they come to recognize the mother so quickly.
78
To say that they collect mental images which they then
arrange into a prototypical scheme is to say nothing (the
question is not "what" they do but "how" they do it). This
ability is a clue to the complexity of the internal mental
world of the neonate, which far exceeds our learned
assumptions and theories. It is inconceivable that a human
is born with all this exquisite equipment while incapable
of experiencing the birth trauma or the even the bigger
trauma of his own inflation, mental and physical.
As early as the end of the third month of pregnancy, the
fetus moves, his heart beats, his head is enormous relative
to his size. His size, though, is less than 3 cm. Ensconced
in the placenta, the fetus is fed by substances transmitted
through the mother's blood vessels (he has no contact with
her blood, though). The waste that he produces is carried
away in the same venue. The composition of the mother's
food and drink, what she inhales and injects - all are
communicated to the embryo. There is no clear
relationship between sensory inputs during pregnancy and
later life development. The levels of maternal hormones
do effect the baby's subsequent physical development but
only to a negligible extent. Far more important is the
general state of health of the mother, a trauma, or a
disease of the fetus. It seems that the mother is less
important to the baby than the romantics would have it -
and cleverly so. A too strong attachment between mother
and fetus would have adversely affected the baby's
chances of survival outside the uterus. Thus, contrary to
popular opinion, there is no evidence whatsoever that the
mother's emotional, cognitive, or attitudinal state effects
the fetus in any way. The baby is effected by viral
infections, obstetric complications, by protein
malnutrition and by the mother's alcoholism. But these -
at least in the West - are rare conditions.
79
In the first three months of the pregnancy, the central
nervous system "explodes" both quantitatively and
qualitatively. This process is called metaplasia. It is a
delicate chain of events, greatly influenced by
malnutrition and other kinds of abuse. But this
vulnerability does not disappear until the age of 6 years
out of the womb. There is a continuum between womb
and world. The newborn is almost a very developed
kernel of humanity. He is definitely capable of
experiencing substantive dimensions of his own birth and
subsequent metamorphoses. Neonates can immediately
track colours - therefore, they must be immediately able
to tell the striking differences between the dark, liquid
placenta and the colourful maternity ward. They go after
certain light shapes and ignore others. Without
accumulating any experience, these skills improve in the
first few days of life, which proves that they are inherent
and not contingent (learned). They seek patterns
selectively because they remember which pattern was the
cause of satisfaction in their very brief past. Their
reactions to visual, auditory and tactile patterns are very
predictable. Therefore, they must possess a MEMORY,
however primitive.
But - even granted that babies can sense, remember and,
perhaps emote - what is the effect of the multiple traumas
they are exposed to in the first few months of their lives?
We mentioned the traumas of birth and of self-inflation
(mental and physical). These are the first links in a chain
of traumas, which continues throughout the first two years
of the baby's life. Perhaps the most threatening and
destabilizing is the trauma of separation and
individuation.
80
The baby's mother (or caregiver - rarely the father,
sometimes another woman) is his auxiliary ego. She is
also the world; a guarantor of livable (as opposed to
unbearable) life, a (physiological or gestation) rhythm
(=predictability), a physical presence and a social stimulus
(an other).
To start with, the delivery disrupts continuous
physiological processes not only quantitatively but also
qualitatively. The neonate has to breathe, to feed, to
eliminate waste, to regulate his body temperature - new
functions, which were previously performed by the
mother. This physiological catastrophe, this schism
increases the baby's dependence on the mother. It is
through this bonding that he learns to interact socially and
to trust others. The baby's lack of ability to tell the inside
world from the outside only makes matters worse. He
"feels" that the upheaval is contained in himself, that the
tumult is threatening to tear him apart, he experiences
implosion rather than explosion. True, in the absence of
evaluative processes, the quality of the baby's experience
will be different to ours. But this does not disqualify it as
a PSYCHOLOGICAL process and does not extinguish the
subjective dimension of the experience. If a psychological
process lacks the evaluative or analytic elements, this lack
does not question its existence or its nature. Birth and the
subsequent few days must be a truly terrifying experience.
Another argument raised against the trauma thesis is that
there is no proof that cruelty, neglect, abuse, torture, or
discomfort retard, in any way, the development of the
child. A child - it is claimed - takes everything in stride
and reacts "naturally" to his environment, however
depraved and deprived.
81
This may be true - but it is irrelevant. It is not the child's
development that we are dealing with here. It is its
reactions to a series of existential traumas. That a process
or an event has no influence later - does not mean that it
has no effect at the moment of occurrence. That it has no
influence at the moment of occurrence - does not prove
that it has not been fully and accurately registered. That it
has not been interpreted at all or that it has been
interpreted in a way different from ours - does not imply
that it had no effect. In short: there is no connection
between experience, interpretation and effect. There can
exist an interpreted experience that has no effect. An
interpretation can result in an effect without any
experience involved. And an experience can effect the
subject without any (conscious) interpretation. This means
that the baby can experience traumas, cruelty, neglect,
abuse and even interpret them as such (i.e., as bad things)
and still not be effected by them. Otherwise, how can we
explain that a baby cries when confronted by a sudden
noise, a sudden light, wet diapers, or hunger? Isn't this
proof that he reacts properly to "bad" things and that there
is such a class of things ("bad things") in his mind?
Moreover, we must attach some epigenetic importance to
some of the stimuli. If we do, in effect we recognize the
effect of early stimuli upon later life development.
At their beginning, neonates are only vaguely aware, in a
binary sort of way.
1. "Comfortable/uncomfortable", "cold/warm", "wet/dry",
"colour/absence of colour", "light/dark", "face/no face"
and so on. There are grounds to believe that the distinction
between the outer world and the inner one is vague at
best. Natal fixed action patterns (rooting, sucking,
82
postural adjustment, looking, listening, grasping, and
crying) invariably provoke the caregiver to respond. The
newborn, as we said earlier, is able to relate to physical
patterns but his ability seems to extend to the mental as
well. He sees a pattern: fixed action followed by the
appearance of the caregiver followed by a satisfying
action on the part of the caregiver. This seems to him to
be an inviolable causal chain (though precious few babies
would put it in these words). Because he is unable to
distinguish his inside from the outside - the newborn
"believes" that his action evoked the caregiver from the
inside (in which the caregiver is contained). This is the
kernel of both magical thinking and Narcissism. The baby
attributes to himself magical powers of omnipotence and
of omnipresence (action-appearance). It also loves itself
very much because it is able to thus satisfy himself and his
needs. He loves himself because he has the means to make
himself happy. The tension-relieving and pleasurable
world comes to life through the baby and then he
swallows it back through his mouth. This incorporation of
the world through the sensory modalities is the basis for
the "oral stage" in the psychodynamic theories.
This self-containment and self-sufficiency, this lack of
recognition of the environment are why children until
their third year of life are such a homogeneous group
(allowing for some variance). Infants show a
characteristic style of behaviour (one is almost tempted to
say, a universal character) in as early as the first few
weeks of their lives. The first two years of life witness the
crystallization of consistent behavioural patterns, common
to all children. It is true that even newborns have an innate
temperament but not until an interaction with the outside
environment is established - do the traits of individual
diversity appear.
83
At birth, the newborn shows no attachment but simple
dependence. It is easy to prove: the child indiscriminately
reacts to human signals, scans for patterns and motions,
enjoys soft, high pitched voices and cooing, soothing
sounds. Attachment starts physiologically in the fourth
week. The child turns clearly towards his mother's voice,
ignoring others. He begins to develop a social smile,
which is easily distinguishable from his usual grimace. A
virtuous circle is set in motion by the child's smiles,
gurgles and coos. These powerful signals release social
behaviour, elicit attention, loving responses. This, in turn,
drives the child to increase the dose of his signaling
activity. These signals are, of course, reflexes (fixed
action responses, exactly like the palmar grasp). Actually,
until the 1 8th week of his life, the child continues to react
to strangers favourably. Only then does the child begin to
develop a budding social-behavioural system based on the
high correlation between the presence of his caregiver and
gratifying experiences. By the third month there is a clear
preference of the mother and by the sixth month, the child
wants to venture into the world. At first, the child grasps
things (as long as he can see his hand). Then he sits up
and watches things in motion (if not too fast or noisy).
Then the child clings to the mother, climbs all over her
and explores her body. There is still no object permanence
and the child gets perplexed and loses interest if a toy
disappears under a blanket, for instance. The child still
associates objects with satisfaction/non-satisfaction. His
world is still very much binary.
As the child grows, his attention narrows and is dedicated
first to the mother and to a few other human figures and,
by the age of 9 months, only to the mother. The tendency
to seek others virtually disappears (which is reminiscent
of imprinting in animals). The infant tends to equate his
84
movements and gestures with their results - that is, he is
still in the phase of magical thinking.
The separation from the mother, the formation of an
individual, the separation from the world (the "spewing
out" of the outside world) - are all tremendously
traumatic.
The infant is afraid to lose his mother physically (no
"mother permanence") as well as emotionally (will she be
angry at this new found autonomy?). He goes away a step
or two and runs back to receive the mother's reassurance
that she still loves him and that she is still there. The
tearing up of one's self into my SELF and the OUTSIDE
WORLD is an unimaginable feat. It is equivalent to
discovering irrefutable proof that the universe is an
illusion created by the brain or that our brain belongs to a
universal pool and not to us, or that we are God (the child
discovers that he is not God, it is a discovery of the same
magnitude). The child's mind is shredded to pieces: some
pieces are still HE and others are NOT HE (=the outside
world). This is an absolutely psychedelic experience (and
the root of all psychoses, probably).
If not managed properly, if disturbed in some way (mainly
emotionally), if the separation - individuation process
goes awry, it could result in serious psychopathologies.
There are grounds to believe that several personality
disorders (Narcissistic and Borderline) can be traced to a
disturbance in this process in early childhood.
Then, of course, there is the on-going traumatic process
that we call "life".
85
Parenting - The Irrational Vocation
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
The advent of cloning, surrogate motherhood, and the
donation of gametes and sperm have shaken the
traditional biological definition of parenthood to its
foundations. The social roles of parents have similarly
been recast by the decline of the nuclear family and the
surge of alternative household formats.
Why do people become parents in the first place?
Raising children comprises equal measures of satisfaction
and frustration. Parents often employ a psychological
defense mechanism - known as "cognitive dissonance" -
to suppress the negative aspects of parenting and to deny
the unpalatable fact that raising children is time
consuming, exhausting, and strains otherwise pleasurable
and tranquil relationships to their limits.
Not to mention the fact that the gestational mother
experiences "considerable discomfort, effort, and risk in
the course of pregnancy and childbirth" (Narayan, U.,
and JJ. Bartkowiak (1999) Having and Raising
Children: Unconventional Families, Hard Choices, and
the Social Good University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania
State University Press, Quoted in the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy).
Parenting is possibly an irrational vocation, but humanity
keeps breeding and procreating. It may well be the call of
nature. All living species reproduce and most of them
86
parent. Is maternity (and paternity) proof that, beneath the
ephemeral veneer of civilization, we are still merely a
kind of beast, subject to the impulses and hard- wired
behavior that permeate the rest of the animal kingdom?
In his seminal tome, "The Selfish Gene", Richard
Dawkins suggested that we copulate in order to preserve
our genetic material by embedding it in the future gene
pool. Survival itself - whether in the form of DNA, or, on
a higher-level, as a species - determines our parenting
instinct. Breeding and nurturing the young are mere safe
conduct mechanisms, handing the precious cargo of
genetics down generations of "organic containers".
Yet, surely, to ignore the epistemological and emotional
realities of parenthood is misleadingly reductionistic.
Moreover, Dawkins commits the scientific faux-pas of
teleology. Nature has no purpose "in mind", mainly
because it has no mind. Things simply are, period. That
genes end up being forwarded in time does not entail that
Nature (or, for that matter, "God") planned it this way.
Arguments from design have long - and convincingly -
been refuted by countless philosophers.
Still, human beings do act intentionally. Back to square
one: why bring children to the world and burden ourselves
with decades of commitment to perfect strangers?
First hypothesis: offspring allow us to "delay" death. Our
progeny are the medium through which our genetic
material is propagated and immortalized. Additionally, by
remembering us, our children "keep us alive" after
physical death.
87
These, of course, are self-delusional, self-serving,
illusions.
Our genetic material gets diluted with time. While it
constitutes 50% of the first generation - it amounts to a
measly 6% three generations later. If the everlastingness
of one's unadulterated DNA was the paramount concern -
incest would have been the norm.
As for one's enduring memory - well, do you recall or can
you name your maternal or paternal great great
grandfather? Of course you can't. So much for that.
Intellectual feats or architectural monuments are far more
potent mementos.
Still, we have been so well-indoctrinated that this
misconception - that children equal immortality - yields a
baby boom in each post war period. Having been
existentially threatened, people multiply in the vain belief
that they thus best protect their genetic heritage and their
memory.
Let's study another explanation.
The utilitarian view is that one's offspring are an asset -
kind of pension plan and insurance policy rolled into one.
Children are still treated as a yielding property in many
parts of the world. They plough fields and do menial jobs
very effectively. People "hedge their bets" by bringing
multiple copies of themselves to the world. Indeed, as
infant mortality plunges - in the better-educated, higher
income parts of the world - so does fecundity.
In the Western world, though, children have long ceased
to be a profitable proposition. At present, they are more of
88
an economic drag and a liability. Many continue to live
with their parents into their thirties and consume the
family's savings in college tuition, sumptuous weddings,
expensive divorces, and parasitic habits. Alternatively,
increasing mobility breaks families apart at an early stage.
Either way, children are not longer the founts of
emotional sustenance and monetary support they allegedly
used to be.
How about this one then:
Procreation serves to preserve the cohesiveness of the
family nucleus. It further bonds father to mother and
strengthens the ties between siblings. Or is it the other
way around and a cohesive and warm family is conductive
to reproduction?
Both statements, alas, are false.
Stable and functional families sport far fewer children
than abnormal or dysfunctional ones. Between one third
and one half of all children are born in single parent or in
other non-traditional, non-nuclear - typically poor and
under-educated - households. In such families children are
mostly born unwanted and unwelcome - the sad outcomes
of accidents and mishaps, wrong fertility planning, lust
gone awry and misguided turns of events.
The more sexually active people are and the less safe their
desirous exploits - the more they are likely to end up with
a bundle of joy (the American saccharine expression for a
newborn). Many children are the results of sexual
ignorance, bad timing, and a vigorous and undisciplined
sexual drive among teenagers, the poor, and the less
educated.
89
Still, there is no denying that most people want their kids
and love them. They are attached to them and experience
grief and bereavement when they die, depart, or are sick.
Most parents find parenthood emotionally fulfilling,
happiness-inducing, and highly satisfying. This pertains
even to unplanned and initially unwanted new arrivals.
Could this be the missing link? Do fatherhood and
motherhood revolve around self-gratification? Does it all
boil down to the pleasure principle?
Childrearing may, indeed, be habit forming. Nine months
of pregnancy and a host of social positive reinforcements
and expectations condition the parents to do the job. Still,
a living tot is nothing like the abstract concept. Babies
cry, soil themselves and their environment, stink, and
severely disrupt the lives of their parents. Nothing too
enticing here.
One's spawns are a risky venture. So many things can and
do go wrong. So few expectations, wishes, and dreams are
realized. So much pain is inflicted on the parents. And
then the child runs off and his procreators are left to face
the "empty nest". The emotional "returns" on a child are
rarely commensurate with the magnitude of the
investment.
If you eliminate the impossible, what is left - however
improbable - must be the truth. People multiply because it
provides them with narcissistic supply .
A Narcissist is a person who projects a (false) image unto
others and uses the interest this generates to regulate a
labile and grandiose sense of self-worth. The reactions
garnered by the narcissist - attention, unconditional
90
acceptance, adulation, admiration, affirmation - are
collectively known as "narcissistic supply". The narcissist
objectifies people and treats them as mere instruments of
gratification.
Infants go through a phase of unbridled fantasy, tyrannical
behavior, and perceived omnipotence. An adult narcissist,
in other words, is still stuck in his "terrible twos" and is
possessed with the emotional maturity of a toddler. To
some degree, we are all narcissists. Yet, as we grow, we
learn to empathize and to love ourselves and others.
This edifice of maturity is severely tested by newfound
parenthood.
Babies evokes in the parent the most primordial drives,
protective, animalistic instincts, the desire to merge with
the newborn and a sense of terror generated by such a
desire (a fear of vanishing and of being assimilated).
Neonates engender in their parents an emotional
regression.
The parents find themselves revisiting their own
childhood even as they are caring for the newborn. The
crumbling of decades and layers of personal growth is
accompanied by a resurgence of the aforementioned early
infancy narcissistic defenses. Parents - especially new
ones - are gradually transformed into narcissists by this
encounter and find in their children the perfect sources of
narcissistic supply, euphemistically known as love. Really
it is a form of symbiotic codependence of both parties.
Even the most balanced, most mature, most
psychodynamically stable of parents finds such a flood of
narcissistic supply irresistible and addictive. It enhances
91
his or her self-confidence, buttresses self esteem, regulates
the sense of self-worth, and projects a complimentary
image of the parent to himself or herself.
It fast becomes indispensable, especially in the
emotionally vulnerable position in which the parent finds
herself, with the reawakening and repetition of all the
unresolved conflicts that she had with her own parents.
If this theory is true, if breeding is merely about securing
prime quality narcissistic supply, then the higher the self
confidence, the self esteem, the self worth of the parent,
the clearer and more realistic his self image, and the more
abundant his other sources of narcissistic supply - the
fewer children he will have. These predictions are borne
out by reality.
The higher the education and the income of adults - and,
consequently, the firmer their sense of self worth - the
fewer children they have. Children are perceived as
counter-productive: not only is their output (narcissistic
supply) redundant, they hinder the parent's professional
and pecuniary progress.
The more children people can economically afford - the
fewer they have. This gives the lie to the Selfish Gene
hypothesis. The more educated they are, the more they
know about the world and about themselves, the less they
seek to procreate. The more advanced the civilization, the
more efforts it invests in preventing the birth of children.
Contraceptives, family planning, and abortions are typical
of affluent, well informed societies.
The more plentiful the narcissistic supply afforded by
other sources - the lesser the emphasis on breeding. Freud
92
described the mechanism of sublimation: the sex drive,
the Eros (libido), can be "converted", "sublimated" into
other activities. All the sublimatory channels - politics and
art, for instance - are narcissistic and yield narcissistic
supply. They render children superfluous. Creative people
have fewer children than the average or none at all. This is
because they are narcissistically self sufficient.
The key to our determination to have children is our wish
to experience the same unconditional love that we
received from our mothers, this intoxicating feeling of
being adored without caveats, for what we are, with no
limits, reservations, or calculations. This is the most
powerful, crystallized form of narcissistic supply. It
nourishes our self-love, self worth and self-confidence. It
infuses us with feelings of omnipotence and omniscience.
In these, and other respects, parenthood is a return to
infancy.
Also read
Beware the Children
The Narcissist's Mother
Born Alien
The Development of Narcissists and Schizoids
Back to Table of Contents
93
Narcissists, Inverted Narcissists and Schizoids
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Question:
Some narcissists are not gregarious. They avoid social
events and are stay-at-home recluses. Doesn't this
behaviour go against the grain of narcissism?
Answer:
Click here to read the definition of the Schizoid
Personality Disorder (SPD) in the DSM-IV-TR [2000].
Or, as the Howard H. Goldman (Ed.) in the "Review of
General Psychiatry" [4th Edition. London, Prentice Hall
International, 1995] puts it:
"The person with Schizoid Personality Disorder sustains
a fragile emotional equilibrium by avoiding intimate
personal contact and thereby minimising conflict that is
poorly tolerated. "
Schizoids are often described, even by their nearest and
dearest, in terms of automata ("robots"). They are
uninterested in social relationships or interactions and
have a very limited emotional repertoire. It is not that they
do not have emotions, but they express them poorly and
intermittently. They appear cold and stunted, flat, and
"zombie"-like.
94
Consequently, these people are loners. They confide only
in first-degree relatives, but maintain no close bonds or
associations, not even with their immediate family.
Naturally, they gravitate into solitary activities and find
solace and safety in being constantly alone. Their sexual
experiences are sporadic and limited and, finally, they
cease altogether.
Schizoids are anhedonic - find nothing pleasurable and
attractive - but not necessarily dysphoric (sad or
depressed). They pretend to be indifferent to praise,
criticism, disagreement, and corrective advice (though,
deep inside, they are not). They are creatures of habit,
frequently succumbing to rigid, predictable, and narrowly
restricted routines.
Intuitively, a connection between SPD and the
Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) seems plausible.
After all, narcissists are people who self-sufficiently
withdraw from others. They love themselves in lieu of
loving others. Lacking empathy , they regard others as
mere instruments, objectified "Sources" of Narcissistic
Supply .
The inverted narcissist (IN) is a narcissist who "projects"
his narcissism onto another narcissist. The mechanism of
projective identification allows the IN to experience his
own narcissism vicariously, through the agency of a
classic narcissist. But the IN is no less a narcissist than the
classical one. He is no less socially reclusive.
A distinction must be made between social interactions
and social relationships. The schizoid, the narcissist and
the inverted narcissist - all interact socially. But they fail
to form human and social relationships (bonds). The
95
schizoid is uninterested and the narcissist is both
uninterested and incapable to due to his lack of empathy
and pervasive sense of grandiosity .
The ethno-psychologist George Devereux [Basic
Problems of Ethno-Psychiatry, University of Chicago
Press, 1980] proposed to divide the unconscious into the
Id (the part that is instinctual and unconscious) and the
"ethnic unconscious" (repressed material that was once
conscious). The latter includes all the defence
mechanisms and most of the Superego.
Culture dictates what is to be repressed. Mental illness is
either idiosyncratic (cultural directives are not followed
and the individual is unique, eccentric, and schizophrenic)
- or conformist, abiding by the cultural dictates of what is
allowed and disallowed.
Our culture, according to Christopher Lasch , teaches us to
withdraw inwards when confronted with stressful
situations. It is a vicious circle. One of the main stressors
of modern society is alienation and a pervasive sense of
isolation. The solution our culture offers - to further
withdraw - only exacerbates the problem.
Richard Sennett expounded on this theme in "The Fall of
Public Man: On the Social Psychology of Capitalism"
[Vintage Books, 1978]. One of the chapters in Devereux's
aforementioned tome is entitled "Schizophrenia: An
Ethnic Psychosis, or Schizophrenia without Tears". To
him, the United States is afflicted by what came later to be
called a "schizoid disorder".
96
C. Fred Alford [in Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt
School and Psychoanalytic Theory, Yale University Press,
1988] enumerates the symptoms:
"...withdrawal, emotional aloofness, hyporeactivity
(emotional flatness), sex without emotional involvement,
segmentation and partial involvement (lack of interest
and commitment to things outside oneself), fixation on
oral-stage issues, regression, infantilism and
depersonalisation. These, of course, are many of the
same designations that Lasch employs to describe the
culture of narcissism. Thus, it appears, that it is not
misleading to equate narcissism with schizoid disorder. "
[Page 19]
The first to seriously consider the similarity, if not
outright identity, between the schizoid and the narcissistic
disorders was Melanie Klein. She broke ranks with Freud
in that she believed that we are born with a fragile, brittle,
weak and unintegrated Ego. The most primordial human
fear is the fear of disintegration (death), according to
Klein.
Thus, the infant is forced to employ primitive defence
mechanisms such as splitting, projection and introjection
to cope with this fear (actually, with the result of
aggression generated by the Ego). The Ego splits and
projects this part (death, disintegration, aggression). It
does the same with the life -related, constructive,
integrative part of itself.
As a result of all these mechanics, the infant views the
world as either "good" (satisfying, complying, responding,
gratifying) - or bad (frustrating). Klein called it the good
and the bad "breasts". The child then proceeds to introject
97
(internalise and assimilate) the good object while keeping
out (defending against) the bad objects. The good object
becomes the nucleus of the forming Ego. The bad object
is felt as fragmented. But it has not vanished, it is there.
The fact that the bad object is "out there", persecutory,
threatening - gives rise to the first schizoid defence
mechanisms, foremost amongst them the mechanism of
"projective identification" (so often employed by
narcissists). The infant projects parts of himself (his
organs, his behaviours, his traits) unto the bad object. This
is the famous Kleinian "paranoid-schizoid position". The
Ego is split.
This is as terrifying as it sounds but it allows the baby to
make a clear distinction between the "good object" (inside
him) and the "bad object" (out there, split from him). If
this phase is not transcended the individual develops
schizophrenia and a fragmentation of the self.
Around the third or fourth month of life, the infant realises
that the good and the bad objects are really facets of one
and the same object. He develops the depressive position.
This depression [Klein believes that the two positions
continue throughout life] is a reaction of fear and anxiety.
The infant feels guilty (at his own rage) and anxious (lest
his aggression harms the object and eliminates the source
of good things). He experiences the loss of his own
omnipotence since the object is now outside his self. The
infant wishes to erase the results of his own aggression by
"making the object whole again". By recognising the
wholeness of other objects, the infant comes to realise and
to experience his own wholeness. The Ego re-integrates.
98
But the transition from the paranoid-schizoid position to
the depressive one is by no means smooth and assured.
Excess anxiety and envy can delay it or prevent it
altogether. Envy seeks to destroy all good objects, so that
others don't have them. It, therefore, hinders the split
between the good and the bad "breasts". Envy destroys the
good object but leaves the persecutory, bad object intact.
Moreover, envy does not allow re-integration
["reparation" in Kleinian jargon] to take place. The more
whole the object - the greater the destructive envy. Thus,
envy feeds on its own outcomes. The more envy, the less
integrated the Ego is, the weaker and more inadequate it is
- and the more reason for envying the good object and
other people.
Both the narcissist and the schizoid are examples of
development arrested due to envy and other
transformations of aggression.
Consider pathological narcissism.
Envy is the hallmark of narcissism and the prime source
of what is known as narcissistic rage. The schizoid self -
fragmented, weak, primitive - is intimately connected
with narcissism through envy. Narcissists prefer to
destroy themselves and to deny themselves rather than
endure someone else's happiness, wholeness and
"triumph".
The narcissist fail his exams in order to frustrate the
teacher he adores and envies. He aborts his therapy in
order not to give the therapist a reason to feel gratified. By
self-defeating and self-destructing , narcissists deny the
worth of others. If the narcissist fails in therapy - his
99
analyst must be inept. If he destroys himself by
consuming drugs - his parents are blameworthy and
should feel guilty and bad. One cannot exaggerate the
importance of envy as a motivating power in the
narcissist's life.
The psychodynamic connection is obvious. Envy is a rage
reaction to not controlling or "having" or engulfing the
good, desired object. Narcissists defend themselves
against this acidulous, corroding sensation by pretending
that they do control, possess and engulf the good object.
This are the narcissist's "grandiose fantasies (of
omnipotence or omniscience)".
But, in doing so, the narcissist must deny the existence of
any good outside himself. The narcissist defends himself
against raging, all consuming envy - by solipsistically
claiming to be the only good object in the world. This is
an object that cannot be had by anyone, except the
narcissist and, therefore, is immune to the narcissist's
threatening, annihilating envy.
In order to refrain from being "owned" by anyone (and,
thus, avoid self-destruction in the hands of his own envy),
the narcissist reduces others to "non-entities" (the
narcissistic solution), or completely avoids all meaningful
contact with them (the schizoid solution).
The suppression of envy is at the core of the narcissist's
being. If he fails to convince his self that he is the only
good object in the universe, he is bound to be exposed to
his own murderous envy. If there are others out there who
are better than him, he envies them, he lashes out at them
ferociously, uncontrollably, madly, hatefully and
spitefully, he tries to eliminate them.
100
If someone tries to get emotionally intimate with the
narcissist, she threatens the grandiose belief that no one
but the narcissist can possess the good object (that is the
narcissist himself). Only the narcissist can own himself,
have access to himself, possess himself. This is the only
way to avoid seething envy and certain self-annihilation.
Perhaps it is clearer now why narcissists react as raving
madmen to anything, however minute, however remote
that seems to threaten their grandiose fantasies, the only
protective barrier between themselves and their lethal,
seething envy.
There is nothing new in trying to link narcissism to
schizophrenia. Freud did as much in his "On Narcissism"
[1914]. Klein's contribution was the introduction of
immediately post-natal internal objects. Schizophrenia,
she proposed, was a narcissistic and intense relationship
with internal objects (such as fantasies or images,
including fantasies of grandeur). She proposed a new
language.
Freud suggested a transition from (primary, object-less)
narcissism (self-directed libido) to objects relations
(objects directed libido). Klein suggested a transition from
internal objects to external ones. While Freud thought that
the denominator common to narcissism and schizoid
phenomena is a withdrawal of libido from the world -
Klein suggested it was a fixation on an early phase of
relating to internal objects.
But is the difference not merely semantic?
"The term 'narcissism ' tends to be employed
diagnostically by those proclaiming loyalty to the drive
model [Otto Kernberg and Edith Jacobson, for instance
101
- SV] and mixed model theorists [Kohut], who are
interested in preserving a tie to drive theory. 'Schizoid'
tends to be employed diagnostically by adherents of
relational models [Fairbairn, Guntrip], who are
interested in articulating their break with drive theory...
These two differing diagnoses and accompanying
formulations are applied to patients who are essentially
similar, by theorists who start with very different
conceptual premises and ideological affiliations. "
(Greenberg and Mitchell. Object Relations in
Psychoanalytic Theory. Harvard University Press,
1983)
Klein, in effect, said that drives (e.g., the libido) are
relational flows. A drive is the mode of relationship
between an individual and his objects (internal and
external). Thus, a retreat from the world [Freud] into
internal objects [as postulated by object relations theorists
and especially the British school of Fairbairn and Guntrip]
- is the drive itself.
Drives are orientations (to external or internal objects).
Narcissism is an orientation (a preference, we could say)
towards internal objects - the very definition of schizoid
phenomena as well. This is why narcissists feel empty,
fragmented, "unreal", and diffuse. It is because their Ego
is still split (never integrated) and because they had
withdrawn from the world (of external objects).
Kernberg identifies these internal objects with which the
narcissist maintains a special relationship with the
idealised, grandiose images of the narcissist's parents. He
believes that the narcissist's very Ego (self-representation)
had fused with these parental images.
102
Fairbairn's work - even more than Kernberg's, not to
mention Kohut's - integrates all these insights into a
coherent framework. Guntrip elaborated on it and together
they created one of the most impressive theoretical bodies
in the history of psychology.
Fairbairn internalised Klein's insights that drives are
object-orientated and their goal is the formation of
relationships and not primarily the attainment of pleasure.
Pleasurable sensations are the means to achieve
relationships. The Ego does not seek to be stimulated and
pleased but to find the right, "good", supporting object.
The infant is fused with his Primary Object, the mother.
Life is not about using objects for pleasure under the
supervision of the Ego and Superego, as Freud suggested.
Life is about separating, differentiating, individuating, and
achieving independence from the Primary Object and the
initial state of fusion with it. Dependence on internal
objects is narcissism. Freud's post-narcissistic (anaclitic)
phase of life can be either dependent (immature) or
mature.
The newborn's Ego is looking for objects with which to
form relationships. Inevitably, some of these objects and
some of these relationships frustrate the infant and
disappoint him. He compensates for these setbacks by
creating compensatory internal objects. The initially
unitary Ego thus fragments into a growing group of
internal objects. Reality breaks our hearts and minds,
according to Fairbairn. The Ego and its objects are
"twinned" and the Ego is split in three [or four, according
to Guntrip, who introduced a fourth Ego]. A schizoid state
ensues.
103
The "original" (Freudian or libidinal) Ego is unitary,
instinctual, needy and object seeking. It then fragments as
a result of the three typical interactions with the mother
(gratification, disappointment and deprivation). The
central Ego idealises the "good" parents. It is conformist
and obedient. The antilibidinal Ego is a reaction to
frustrations. It is rejecting, harsh, unsatisfying, dead set
against one's natural needs. The libidinal Ego is the seat of
cravings, desires and needs. It is active in that it keeps
seeking objects to form relationships with. Guntrip added
the regressed Ego, which is the True Self in "cold
storage", the "lost heart of the personal self".
Fairbairn's definition of psychopathology is quantitative.
How much of the Ego is dedicated to relationships with
internal objects rather than with external ones (e.g., real
people)? In other words: how fragmented (how schizoid)
is the Ego?
To achieve a successful transition from focusing on
internal objects to seeking external ones, the child needs
to have the right parents (in Winnicott's parlance, the
"good enough mother" - not perfect, but "good enough").
The child internalises the bad aspects of his parents in the
form of internal, bad objects and then proceeds to
suppress them, together ("twinned") with portions of his
Ego.
Thus, his parents become a part of the child (though a
repressed part). The more bad objects are repressed, the
"less Ego is left" for healthy relationships with external
objects. To Fairbairn, the source of all psychological
disturbances is in these schizoid phenomena. Later
developments (such as the Oedipus Complex) are less
crucial.
104
Fairbairn and Guntrip think that if a person is too attached
to his compensatory internal objects - he finds it hard to
mature psychologically. Maturing is about letting go of
internal objects. Some people just don't want to mature, or
are reluctant to do so, or are ambivalent about it. This
reluctance, this withdrawal to an internal world of
representations, internal objects and broken Ego - is
narcissism itself. Narcissists simply don't know how to be
themselves, how to be and act independent while
managing their relationships with other people.
Both Otto Kernberg and Franz Kohut contended that
narcissism is somewhere between neurosis and psychosis.
Kernberg thought that it was a borderline phenomenon, on
the verge of psychosis (where the Ego is completely
shattered). In this respect Kernberg, more than Kohut,
identifies narcissism with schizoid phenomena and with
schizophrenia. This is not the only difference between
them.
They also disagree on the developmental locus of
narcissism. Kohut thinks that narcissism is an early phase
of development, fossilised, and doomed to be repeated (a
repetition complex) while Kernberg maintains that the
narcissistic self is pathological from its very inception.
Kohut believes that the narcissist's parents failed to
provide him with assurances that he does possess a self (in
his words, they failed to endow him with a self-object).
They did not explicitly recognise the child's nascent self,
its separate existence, and its boundaries. The child
learned to have a schizoid, split, fragmented self, rather
than a coherent ad integrated one. To Kohut, narcissism is
really all-pervasive, at the very core of being (whether in
105
its mature form, as self-love, or in it regressive, infantile
form as a narcissistic disorder).
Kernberg regards "mature narcissism" (also espoused by
neo-Freudians like Grunberger and Chasseguet-Smirgel)
as a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron. He observes
that narcissists are already grandiose and schizoid
(detached, cold, aloof, asocial) at an early age (when they
are three years old, according to him!).
Like Klein, Kernberg believes that narcissism is a last
ditch effort (defence) to halt the emergence of the
paranoid-schizoid position described by Klein. In an adult
such an emergence is known as "psychosis" and this is
why Kernberg classifies narcissists as borderline (almost)
psychotics.
Even Kohut, who is an opponent of Kernberg's
classification, uses Eugene O'Neill's famous sentence [in
"The Great God Brown"]: "Man is born broken. He lives
by mending. The grace of God is glue." Kernberg himself
sees a clear connection between schizoid phenomena
(such as alienation in modern society and subsequent
withdrawal) and narcissistic phenomena (inability to form
relationships or to make commitments or to empathise).
Fred Alford in "Narcissism: Socrates, the Frankfurt
School and Psychoanalytic Theory" [Yale University
Press, 1988] wrote:
"Fairbairn and Guntrip represent the purest expression
of object relations theory, which is characterised by the
insight that real relationships with real people build
psychic structure. Although they rarely mention
narcissism, they see a schizoid split in the self as
106
characteristic of virtually all-emotional disorder. It is
Greenberg and Mitchell, in Object Relations in
Psychoanalytic Theory who establish the relevance of
Fairbairn and Guntrip ...by pointing out that what
American analysts label 'narcissism ', British analysts
tend to call 'Schizoid Personality Disorder'. This insight
allows us to connect the symptomatology of narcissism -
feelings of emptiness, unreality, alienation and
emotional withdrawal - with a theory that sees such
symptoms as an accurate reflection of the experience of
being split-off from apart of oneself. That narcissism is
such a confusing category is in large part because its
drive-theoretic definition, the libidinal cathexis of the
self- in a word, self-love - seems far removed from the
experience of narcissism, as characterised by a loss of,
or split-in, the self. Fairbairn 's and Guntrip 's view of
narcissism as an excessive attachment of the Ego to
internal objects (roughly analogous to Freud's
narcissistic, as opposed to object, love), resulting in
various splits in the Ego necessary to maintain these
attachments, allows us to penetrate this confusion. "
[Page 67]
Also read
On Empathy
To Age with Grace
Collective Narcissism
Narcissist, the Machine
Narcissistic Confinement
The Delusional Way Out
107
The Narcissist in the Workplace
Narcissists and Social Institutions
Grandiosity Hangover and Narcissistic Baiting
Back to Table of Contents
108
Serial Killers
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Countess Erszebet Bathory was a breathtakingly beautiful,
unusually well-educated woman, married to a descendant
of Vlad Dracula of Bram Stoker fame. In 1611, she was
tried - though, being a noblewoman, not convicted - in
Hungary for slaughtering 612 young girls. The true figure
may have been 40-100, though the Countess recorded in
her diary more than 610 girls and 50 bodies were found in
her estate when it was raided.
The Countess was notorious as an inhuman sadist long
before her hygienic fixation. She once ordered the mouth
of a talkative servant sewn. It is rumoured that in her
childhood she witnessed a gypsy being sewn into a horse's
stomach and left to die.
The girls were not killed outright. They were kept in a
dungeon and repeatedly pierced, prodded, pricked, and
cut. The Countess may have bitten chunks of flesh off
their bodies while alive. She is said to have bathed and
showered in their blood in the mistaken belief that she
could thus slow down the aging process.
Her servants were executed, their bodies burnt and their
ashes scattered. Being royalty, she was merely confined to
her bedroom until she died in 1614. For a hundred years
after her death, by royal decree, mentioning her name in
Hungary was a crime.
109
Cases like Barothy's give the lie to the assumption that
serial killers are a modern - or even post-modern -
phenomenon, a cultural-societal construct, a by-product of
urban alienation, Althusserian interpellation , and media
glamorization. Serial killers are, indeed, largely made, not
born . But they are spawned by every culture and society,
molded by the idiosyncrasies of every period as well as by
their personal circumstances and genetic makeup.
Still, every crop of serial killers mirrors and reifies the
pathologies of the milieu, the depravity of the Zeitgeist,
and the malignancies of the Leitkultur. The choice of
weapons, the identity and range of the victims, the
methodology of murder, the disposal of the bodies, the
geography, the sexual perversions and paraphilias - are all
informed and inspired by the slayer's environment,
upbringing, community, socialization, education, peer
group, sexual orientation, religious convictions, and
personal narrative. Movies like "Born Killers", "Man
Bites Dog", "Copycat", and the Hannibal Lecter series
captured this truth.
Serial killers are the quiddity and quintessence of
malignant narcissism.
Yet, to some degree, we all are narcissists. Primary
narcissism is a universal and inescapable developmental
phase. Narcissistic traits are common and often culturally
condoned. To this extent, serial killers are merely our
reflection through a glass darkly.
In their book "Personality Disorders in Modern Life",
Theodore Millon and Roger Davis attribute pathological
narcissism to "a society that stresses individualism and
self-gratification at the expense of community ... In an
110
individualistic culture, the narcissist is 'God's gift to the
world'. In a collectivist society, the narcissist is 'God's
gift to the collective'".
Lasch described the narcissistic landscape thus (in "The
Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an age of
Diminishing Expectations", 1979):
"The new narcissist is haunted not by guilt but by
anxiety. He seeks not to inflict his own certainties on
others but to find a meaning in life. Liberated from the
superstitions of the past, he doubts even the reality of his
own existence ... His sexual attitudes are permissive
rather than puritanical, even though his emancipation
from ancient taboos brings him no sexual peace.
Fiercely competitive in his demand for approval and
acclaim, he distrusts competition because he associates it
unconsciously with an unbridled urge to destroy ... He
(harbours) deeply antisocial impulses. He praises respect
for rules and regulations in the secret belief that they do
not apply to himself. Acquisitive in the sense that his
cravings have no limits, he ... demands immediate
gratification and lives in a state of restless, perpetually
unsatisfied desire. "
The narcissist's pronounced lack of empathy, off-handed
exploitativeness, grandiose fantasies and uncompromising
sense of entitlement make him treat all people as though
they were objects (he "objectifies" people). The narcissist
regards others as either useful conduits for and sources of
narcissistic supply (attention, adulation, etc.) - or as
extensions of himself.
111
Similarly, serial killers often mutilate their victims and
abscond with trophies - usually, body parts. Some of them
have been known to eat the organs they have ripped - an
act of merging with the dead and assimilating them
through digestion. They treat their victims as some
children do their rag dolls.
Killing the victim - often capturing him or her on film
before the murder - is a form of exerting unmitigated,
absolute, and irreversible control over it. The serial killer
aspires to "freeze time" in the still perfection that he has
choreographed. The victim is motionless and defenseless.
The killer attains long sought "object permanence". The
victim is unlikely to run on the serial assassin, or vanish
as earlier objects in the killer's life (e.g., his parents) have
done.
In malignant narcissism, the true self of the narcissist is
replaced by a false construct, imbued with omnipotence,
omniscience, and omnipresence. The narcissist's thinking
is magical and infantile. He feels immune to the
consequences of his own actions. Yet, this very source of
apparently superhuman fortitude is also the narcissist's
Achilles heel.
The narcissist's personality is chaotic. His defense
mechanisms are primitive. The whole edifice is
precariously balanced on pillars of denial, splitting,
projection, rationalization, and projective identification.
Narcissistic injuries - life crises, such as abandonment,
divorce, financial difficulties, incarceration, public
opprobrium - can bring the whole thing tumbling down.
The narcissist cannot afford to be rejected, spurned,
insulted, hurt, resisted, criticized, or disagreed with.
112
Likewise, the serial killer is trying desperately to avoid a
painful relationship with his object of desire. He is
terrified of being abandoned or humiliated, exposed for
what he is and then discarded. Many killers often have sex
- the ultimate form of intimacy - with the corpses of their
victims. Objectification and mutilation allow for
unchallenged possession.
Devoid of the ability to empathize, permeated by haughty
feelings of superiority and uniqueness, the narcissist
cannot put himself in someone else's shoes, or even
imagine what it means. The very experience of being
human is alien to the narcissist whose invented False Self
is always to the fore, cutting him off from the rich
panoply of human emotions.
Thus, the narcissist believes that all people are narcissists.
Many serial killers believe that killing is the way of the
world. Everyone would kill if they could or were given
the chance to do so. Such killers are convinced that they
are more honest and open about their desires and, thus,
morally superior. They hold others in contempt for being
conforming hypocrites, cowed into submission by an
overweening establishment or society.
The narcissist seeks to adapt society in general - and
meaningful others in particular - to his needs. He regards
himself as the epitome of perfection, a yardstick against
which he measures everyone, a benchmark of excellence
to be emulated. He acts the guru, the sage, the
"psychotherapist", the "expert", the objective observer of
human affairs. He diagnoses the "faults" and
"pathologies" of people around him and "helps" them
"improve", "change", "evolve", and "succeed" - i.e.,
conform to the narcissist's vision and wishes.
113
Serial killers also "improve" their victims - slain, intimate
objects - by "purifying" them, removing "imperfections",
depersonalizing and dehumanizing them. This type of
killer saves its victims from degeneration and degradation,
from evil and from sin, in short: from a fate worse than
death.
The killer's megalomania manifests at this stage. He
claims to possess, or have access to, higher knowledge
and morality. The killer is a special being and the victim
is "chosen" and should be grateful for it. The killer often
finds the victim's ingratitude irritating, though sadly
predictable.
In his seminal work, "Aberrations of Sexual Life"
(originally: "Psychopathia Sexualis"), quoted in the book
"Jack the Ripper" by Donald Rumbelow, Kraft-Ebbing
offers this observation:
"The perverse urge in murders for pleasure does not
solely aim at causing the victim pain and - most acute
injury of all - death, but that the real meaning of the
action consists in, to a certain extent, imitating, though
perverted into a monstrous and ghastly form, the act of
defloration. It is for this reason that an essential
component ... is the employment of a sharp cutting
weapon; the victim has to be pierced, slit, even chopped
up ... The chief wounds are inflicted in the stomach
region and, in many cases, the fatal cuts run from the
vagina into the abdomen. In boys an artificial vagina is
even made ... One can connect afetishistic element too
with this process of hacking ... inasmuch as parts of the
body are removed and ... made into a collection. "
114
Yet, the sexuality of the serial, psychopathic, killer is self-
directed. His victims are props, extensions, aides, objects,
and symbols. He interacts with them ritually and, either
before or after the act, transforms his diseased inner
dialog into a self-consistent extraneous catechism. The
narcissist is equally auto-erotic. In the sexual act, he
merely masturbates with other - living - people's bodies.
The narcissist's life is a giant repetition complex. In a
doomed attempt to resolve early conflicts with significant
others, the narcissist resorts to a restricted repertoire of
coping strategies, defense mechanisms, and behaviors. He
seeks to recreate his past in each and every new
relationship and interaction. Inevitably, the narcissist is
invariably confronted with the same outcomes. This
recurrence only reinforces the narcissist's rigid reactive
patterns and deep-set beliefs. It is a vicious, intractable,
cycle.
Correspondingly, in some cases of serial killers, the
murder ritual seemed to have recreated earlier conflicts
with meaningful objects, such as parents, authority
figures, or peers. The outcome of the replay is different to
the original, though. This time, the killer dominates the
situation.
The killings allow him to inflict abuse and trauma on
others rather than be abused and traumatized. He outwits
and taunts figures of authority - the police, for instance.
As far as the killer is concerned, he is merely "getting
back" at society for what it did to him. It is a form of
poetic justice, a balancing of the books, and, therefore, a
"good" thing. The murder is cathartic and allows the killer
to release hitherto repressed and pathologically
115
transformed aggression - in the form of hate, rage, and
envy.
But repeated acts of escalating gore fail to alleviate the
killer's overwhelming anxiety and depression. He seeks to
vindicate his negative introjects and sadistic superego by
being caught and punished. The serial killer tightens the
proverbial noose around his neck by interacting with law
enforcement agencies and the media and thus providing
them with clues as to his identity and whereabouts. When
apprehended, most serial assassins experience a great
sense of relief.
Serial killers are not the only objectifiers - people who
treat others as objects. To some extent, leaders of all sorts
- political, military, or corporate - do the same. In a range
of demanding professions - surgeons, medical doctors,
judges, law enforcement agents - objectification
efficiently fends off attendant horror and anxiety.
Yet, serial killers are different. They represent a dual
failure - of their own development as full-fledged,
productive individuals - and of the culture and society
they grow in. In a pathologically narcissistic civilization -
social anomies proliferate. Such societies breed malignant
objectifiers - people devoid of empathy - also known as
"narcissists".
Click here to read the DSM-IV-TR (2000) diagnostic
criteria for the Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Click here to read my analysis of the DSM-IV-TR and
ICD-10 diagnostic criteria for the Narcissistic
Personality Disorder
116
Read about the serial killer Edward (Ed or Eddie) Gein
Click HERE.
Read this for in-depth information - A Primer on
Narcissism
Back to Table of Contents
117
Sex or Gender
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
"One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman. "
Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (1949)
In nature, male and female are distinct. She-elephants are
gregarious, he-elephants solitary. Male zebra finches are
loquacious - the females mute. Female green spoon
worms are 200,000 times larger than their male mates.
These striking differences are biological - yet they lead to
differentiation in social roles and skill acquisition.
Alan Pease, author of a book titled "Why Men Don't
Listen and Women Can't Read Maps", believes that
women are spatially-challenged compared to men. The
British firm, Admiral Insurance, conducted a study of half
a million claims. They found that "women were almost
twice as likely as men to have a collision in a car park, 23
percent more likely to hit a stationary car, and 15 percent
more likely to reverse into another vehicle" (Reuters).
Yet gender "differences" are often the outcomes of bad
scholarship. Consider Admiral insurance's data. As
Britain's Automobile Association (AA) correctly pointed
out - women drivers tend to make more short journeys
around towns and shopping centers and these involve
frequent parking. Hence their ubiquity in certain kinds of
claims. Regarding women's alleged spatial deficiency, in
Britain, girls have been outperforming boys in scholastic
118
aptitude tests - including geometry and maths - since
1988.
In an Op-Ed published by the New York Times on
January 23, 2005, Olivia Judson cited this example
"Beliefs that men are intrinsically better at this or that
have repeatedly led to discrimination and prejudice, and
then they've been proved to be nonsense. Women were
thought not to be world-class musicians. But when
American symphony orchestras introduced blind
auditions in the 1970' s - the musician plays behind a
screen so that his or her gender is invisible to those
listening - the number of women offered jobs in
professional orchestras increased. Similarly, in science,
studies of the ways that grant applications are evaluated
have shown that women are more likely to get financing
when those reading the applications do not know the sex
of the applicant. "
On the other wing of the divide, Anthony Clare, a British
psychiatrist and author of "On Men" wrote:
"At the beginning of the 21st century it is difficult to
avoid the conclusion that men are in serious trouble.
Throughout the world, developed and developing,
antisocial behavior is essentially male. Violence, sexual
abuse of children, illicit drug use, alcohol misuse,
gambling, all are overwhelmingly male activities. The
courts and prisons bulge with men. When it comes to
aggression, delinquent behavior, risk taking and social
mayhem, men win gold. "
Men also mature later, die earlier, are more susceptible to
infections and most types of cancer, are more likely to be
119
dyslexic, to suffer from a host of mental health disorders,
such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
(ADHD), and to commit suicide.
In her book, "Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man",
Susan Faludi describes a crisis of masculinity following
the breakdown of manhood models and work and family
structures in the last five decades. In the film "Boys don't
Cry", a teenage girl binds her breasts and acts the male in
a caricatural relish of stereotypes of virility. Being a man
is merely a state of mind, the movie implies.
But what does it really mean to be a "male" or a "female"?
Are gender identity and sexual preferences genetically
determined? Can they be reduced to one's sex? Or are they
amalgams of biological, social, and psychological factors
in constant interaction? Are they immutable lifelong
features or dynamically evolving frames of self-reference?
In the aforementioned New York Times Op -Ed, Olivia
Judson opines:
"Many sex differences are not, therefore, the result of
his having one gene while she has another. Rather, they
are attributable to the way particular genes behave when
they find themselves in him instead of her. The
magnificent difference between male and female green
spoon worms, for example, has nothing to do with their
having different genes: each green spoon worm larva
could go either way. Which sex it becomes depends on
whether it meets a female during its first three weeks of
life. If it meets a female, it becomes male and prepares to
regurgitate; if it doesn 't, it becomes female and settles
into a crack on the sea floor. "
120
Yet, certain traits attributed to one's sex are surely better
accounted for by the demands of one's environment, by
cultural factors, the process of socialization, gender roles,
and what George Devereux called "ethnopsychiatry" in
"Basic Problems of Ethnopsychiatry" (University of
Chicago Press, 1980). He suggested to divide the
unconscious into the id (the part that was always
instinctual and unconscious) and the "ethnic unconscious"
(repressed material that was once conscious). The latter is
mostly molded by prevailing cultural mores and includes
all our defense mechanisms and most of the superego.
So, how can we tell whether our sexual role is mostly in
our blood or in our brains?
The scrutiny of borderline cases of human sexuality -
notably the transgendered or intersexed - can yield clues
as to the distribution and relative weights of biological,
social, and psychological determinants of gender identity
formation.
The results of a study conducted by Uwe Hartmann,
Hinnerk Becker, and Claudia Rueffer-Hesse in 1997 and
titled "Self and Gender: Narcissistic Pathology and
Personality Factors in Gender Dysphoric Patients",
published in the "International Journal of
Transgenderism", "indicate significant psychopathological
aspects and narcissistic dysregulation in a substantial
proportion of patients." Are these "psychopathological
aspects" merely reactions to underlying physiological
realities and changes? Could social ostracism and labeling
have induced them in the "patients"?
The authors conclude:
121
"The cumulative evidence of our study ... is consistent
with the view that gender dysphoria is a disorder of the
sense of self as has been proposed by Beitel (1985) or
Pfafflin (1993). The central problem in our patients is
about identity and the self in general and the transsexual
wish seems to be an attempt at reassuring and stabilizing
the self-coherence which in turn can lead to a further
destabilization if the self is already too fragile. In this
view the body is instrumentalized to create a sense of
identity and the splitting symbolized in the hiatus between
the rejected body-self and other parts of the self is more
between good and bad objects than between masculine
and feminine."
Freud, Kraft-Ebbing, and Fliess suggested that we are all
bisexual to a certain degree. As early as 1910, Dr. Magnus
Hirschfeld argued, in Berlin, that absolute genders are
"abstractions, invented extremes". The consensus today is
that one's sexuality is, mostly, a psychological construct
which reflects gender role orientation.
Joanne Meyerowitz, a professor of history at Indiana
University and the editor of The Journal of American
History observes, in her recently published tome, "How
Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United
States", that the very meaning of masculinity and
femininity is in constant flux.
Transgender activists, says Meyerowitz, insist that gender
and sexuality represent "distinct analytical categories".
The New York Times wrote in its review of the book:
"Some male-to-female transsexuals have sex with men
and call themselves homosexuals. Some female-to-male
transsexuals have sex with women and call themselves
lesbians. Some transsexuals call themselves asexual."
122
So, it is all in the mind, you see.
This would be taking it too far. A large body of scientific
evidence points to the genetic and biological
underpinnings of sexual behavior and preferences.
The German science magazine, "Geo", reported recently
that the males of the fruit fly "drosophila melanogaster"
switched from heterosexuality to homosexuality as the
temperature in the lab was increased from 19 to 30
degrees Celsius. They reverted to chasing females as it
was lowered.
The brain structures of homosexual sheep are different to
those of straight sheep, a study conducted recently by the
Oregon Health & Science University and the U.S.
Department of Agriculture Sheep Experiment Station in
Dubois, Idaho, revealed. Similar differences were found
between gay men and straight ones in 1995 in Holland
and elsewhere. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus was
larger in heterosexual men than in both homosexual men
and straight women.
According an article, titled "When Sexual Development
Goes Awry", by Suzanne Miller, published in the
September 2000 issue of the "World and I", various
medical conditions give rise to sexual ambiguity.
Congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), involving
excessive androgen production by the adrenal cortex,
results in mixed genitalia. A person with the complete
androgen insensitivity syndrome (AIS) has a vagina,
external female genitalia and functioning, androgen-
producing, testes - but no uterus or fallopian tubes.
123
People with the rare 5 -alpha reductase deficiency
syndrome are born with ambiguous genitalia. They appear
at first to be girls. At puberty, such a person develops
testicles and his clitoris swells and becomes a penis.
Hermaphrodites possess both ovaries and testicles (both,
in most cases, rather undeveloped). Sometimes the ovaries
and testicles are combined into a chimera called ovotestis.
Most of these individuals have the chromosomal
composition of a woman together with traces of the Y,
male, chromosome. All hermaphrodites have a sizable
penis, though rarely generate sperm. Some
hermaphrodites develop breasts during puberty and
menstruate. Very few even get pregnant and give birth.
Anne Fausto-Sterling, a developmental geneticist,
professor of medical science at Brown University, and
author of "Sexing the Body", postulated, in 1993, a
continuum of 5 sexes to supplant the current dimorphism:
males, merms (male pseudohermaphrodites), herms (true
hermaphrodites), ferms (female pseudohermaphrodites),
and females.
Intersexuality (hermpahroditism) is a natural human state.
We are all conceived with the potential to develop into
either sex. The embryonic developmental default is
female. A series of triggers during the first weeks of
pregnancy places the fetus on the path to maleness.
In rare cases, some women have a male's genetic makeup
(XY chromosomes) and vice versa. But, in the vast
majority of cases, one of the sexes is clearly selected.
Relics of the stifled sex remain, though. Women have the
clitoris as a kind of symbolic penis. Men have breasts
(mammary glands) and nipples.
124
The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition describes the
formation of ovaries and testes thus:
"In the young embryo a pair of gonads develop that are
indifferent or neutral, showing no indication whether
they are destined to develop into testes or ovaries. There
are also two different duct systems, one of which can
develop into the female system of oviducts and related
apparatus and the other into the male sperm duct
system. As development of the embryo proceeds, either
the male or the female reproductive tissue differentiates
in the originally neutral gonad of the mammal. "
Yet, sexual preferences, genitalia and even secondary sex
characteristics, such as facial and pubic hair are first order
phenomena. Can genetics and biology account for male
and female behavior patterns and social interactions
("gender identity")? Can the multi-tiered complexity and
richness of human masculinity and femininity arise from
simpler, deterministic, building blocks?
Sociobiologists would have us think so.
For instance: the fact that we are mammals is
astonishingly often overlooked. Most mammalian families
are composed of mother and offspring. Males are
peripatetic absentees. Arguably, high rates of divorce and
birth out of wedlock coupled with rising promiscuity
merely reinstate this natural "default mode", observes
Lionel Tiger, a professor of anthropology at Rutgers
University in New Jersey. That three quarters of all
divorces are initiated by women tends to support this
view.
125
Furthermore, gender identity is determined during
gestation, claim some scholars.
Milton Diamond of the University of Hawaii and Dr.
Keith Sigmundson, a practicing psychiatrist, studied the
much-celebrated John/Joan case. An accidentally
castrated normal male was surgically modified to look
female, and raised as a girl but to no avail. He reverted to
being a male at puberty.
His gender identity seems to have been inborn (assuming
he was not subjected to conflicting cues from his human
environment). The case is extensively described in John
Colapinto's tome "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who
Was Raised as a Girl".
HealthScoutNews cited a study published in the
November 2002 issue of "Child Development". The
researchers, from City University of London, found that
the level of maternal testosterone during pregnancy affects
the behavior of neonatal girls and renders it more
masculine. "High testosterone" girls "enjoy activities
typically considered male behavior, like playing with
trucks or guns". Boys' behavior remains unaltered,
according to the study.
Yet, other scholars, like John Money, insist that newborns
are a "blank slate" as far as their gender identity is
concerned. This is also the prevailing view. Gender and
sex-role identities, we are taught, are fully formed in a
process of socialization which ends by the third year of
life. The Encyclopedia Britannica 2003 edition sums it up
thus:
126
"Like an individual's concept of his or her sex role, gender
identity develops by means of parental example, social
reinforcement, and language. Parents teach sex-
appropriate behavior to their children from an early age,
and this behavior is reinforced as the child grows older
and enters a wider social world. As the child acquires
language, he also learns very early the distinction between
"he" and "she" and understands which pertains to him- or
herself."
So, which is it - nature or nurture? There is no disputing
the fact that our sexual physiology and, in all probability,
our sexual preferences are determined in the womb. Men
and women are different - physiologically and, as a result,
also psychologically.
Society, through its agents - foremost amongst which are
family, peers, and teachers - represses or encourages these
genetic propensities. It does so by propagating "gender
roles" - gender-specific lists of alleged traits, permissible
behavior patterns, and prescriptive morals and norms. Our
"gender identity" or "sex role" is shorthand for the way we
make use of our natural genotypic-phenotypic
endowments in conformity with social-cultural "gender
roles".
Inevitably as the composition and bias of these lists
change, so does the meaning of being "male" or "female".
Gender roles are constantly redefined by tectonic shifts in
the definition and functioning of basic social units, such
as the nuclear family and the workplace. The cross-
fertilization of gender-related cultural memes renders
"masculinity" and "femininity" fluid concepts.
127
One's sex equals one's bodily equipment, an objective,
finite, and, usually, immutable inventory. But our
endowments can be put to many uses, in different
cognitive and affective contexts, and subject to varying
exegetic frameworks. As opposed to "sex" - "gender" is,
therefore, a socio-cultural narrative. Both heterosexual
and homosexual men ejaculate. Both straight and lesbian
women climax. What distinguishes them from each other
are subjective introjects of socio-cultural conventions, not
objective, immutable "facts".
In "The New Gender Wars", published in the
November/December 2000 issue of "Psychology Today",
Sarah Blustain sums up the "bio-social" model proposed
by Mice Eagly, a professor of psychology at Northwestern
University and a former student of his, Wendy Wood,
now a professor at the Texas A&M University:
"Like (the evolutionary psychologists), Eagly and Wood
reject social constructionist notions that all gender
differences are created by culture. But to the question of
where they come from, they answer differently: not our
genes but our roles in society. This narrative focuses on
how societies respond to the basic biological differences -
men's strength and women's reproductive capabilities -
and how they encourage men and women to follow certain
patterns.
'If you're spending a lot of time nursing your kid', explains
Wood, 'then you don't have the opportunity to devote
large amounts of time to developing specialized skills and
engaging tasks outside of the home'. And, adds Eagly, 'if
women are charged with caring for infants, what happens
is that women are more nurturing. Societies have to make
128
the adult system work [so] socialization of girls is
arranged to give them experience in nurturing'.
According to this interpretation, as the environment
changes, so will the range and texture of gender
differences. At a time in Western countries when female
reproduction is extremely low, nursing is totally optional,
childcare alternatives are many, and mechanization
lessens the importance of male size and strength, women
are no longer restricted as much by their smaller size and
by child-bearing. That means, argue Eagly and Wood, that
role structures for men and women will change and, not
surprisingly, the way we socialize people in these new
roles will change too. (Indeed, says Wood, 'sex
differences seem to be reduced in societies where men and
women have similar status,' she says. If you're looking to
live in more gender-neutral environment, try
Scandinavia.)"
Also Read
Gender and the Narcissist
The Roots of Pedophilia
The Pathology of Love
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
The Offspring of Aeolus: On the Incest Taboo
Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists
Back to Table of Contents
129
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Recent studies in animal sexuality serve to dispel two
common myths: that sex is exclusively about reproduction
and that homosexuality is an unnatural sexual preference.
It now appears that sex is also about recreation as it
frequently occurs out of the mating season. And same-sex
copulation and bonding are common in hundreds of
species, from bonobo apes to gulls.
Moreover, homosexual couples in the Animal Kingdom
are prone to behaviors commonly - and erroneously -
attributed only to heterosexuals. The New York Times
reported in its February 7, 2004 issue about a couple of
gay penguins who are desperately and recurrently seeking
to incubate eggs together.
In the same article ("Love that Dare not Squeak its
Name"), Bruce Bagemihl, author of the groundbreaking
"Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and
Natural Diversity " , defines homosexuality as "any of
these behaviors between members of the same sex: long-
term bonding, sexual contact, courtship displays or the
rearing of young. "
Still, that a certain behavior occurs in nature (is "natural")
does not render it moral. Infanticide, patricide, suicide,
gender bias, and substance abuse - are all to be found in
various animal species. It is futile to argue for
homosexuality or against it based on zoological
observations. Ethics is about surpassing nature - not about
emulating it.
130
The more perplexing question remains: what are the
evolutionary and biological advantages of recreational sex
and homosexuality? Surely, both entail the waste of scarce
resources.
Convoluted explanations, such as the one proffered by
Marlene Zuk (homosexuals contribute to the gene pool by
nurturing and raising young relatives) defy common
sense, experience, and the calculus of evolution. There are
no field studies that show conclusively or even indicate
that homosexuals tend to raise and nurture their younger
relatives more that straights do.
Moreover, the arithmetic of genetics would rule out such a
stratagem. If the aim of life is to pass on one's genes from
one generation to the next, the homosexual would have
been far better off raising his own children (who carry
forward half his DNA) - rather than his nephew or niece
(with whom he shares merely one quarter of his genetic
material.)
What is more, though genetically-predisposed,
homosexuality may be partly acquired, the outcome of
environment and nurture, rather than nature.
An oft-overlooked fact is that recreational sex and
homosexuality have one thing in common: they do not
lead to reproduction. Homosexuality may, therefore, be a
form of pleasurable sexual play. It may also enhance
same-sex bonding and train the young to form cohesive,
purposeful groups (the army and the boarding school
come to mind).
Furthermore, homosexuality amounts to the culling of 10-
15% of the gene pool in each generation. The genetic
131
material of the homosexual is not propagated and is
effectively excluded from the big roulette of life. Growers
- of anything from cereals to cattle - similarly use random
culling to improve their stock. As mathematical models
show, such repeated mass removal of DNA from the
common brew seems to optimize the species and increase
its resilience and efficiency.
It is ironic to realize that homosexuality and other forms
of non-reproductive, pleasure-seeking sex may be key
evolutionary mechanisms and integral drivers of
population dynamics. Reproduction is but one goal among
many, equally important, end results. Heterosexuality is
but one strategy among a few optimal solutions. Studying
biology may yet lead to greater tolerance for the vast
repertory of human sexual foibles, preferences, and
predilections. Back to nature, in this case, may be forward
to civilization.
Suggested Literature
Bagemihl, Bruce - "Biological Exuberance: Animal
Homosexuality and Natural Diversity" - St. Martin's
Press, 1999
De-Waal, Frans and Lanting, Frans - "Bonobo: The
Forgotten Ape" - University of California Press, 1997
De Waal, Frans - "Bonobo Sex and Society" - March
1995 issue of Scientific American, pp. 82-88
Trivers, Robert - Natural Selection and Social Theory:
Selected Papers - Oxford University Press, 2002
132
Zuk, Marlene - "Sexual Selections: What We Can and
Can 't Learn About Sex From Animals " - University of
California Press, 2002
Also Read
Sex or Gender
Gender and the Narcissist
The Roots of Pedophilia
The Pathology of Love
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists
The Offspring of Aeolus: On the Incest Taboo
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists
Back to Table of Contents
133
On the Incest Taboo
The Offspring of Aeolus
Incest as an Autoerotic Social and Cultural Act
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
"...An experience with an adult may seem merely a
curious and pointless game, or it may be a hideous
trauma leaving lifelong psychic scars. In many cases the
reaction of parents and society determines the child's
interpretation of the event. What would have been a
trivial and soon-forgotten act becomes traumatic if the
mother cries, the father rages, and the police interrogate
the child. "
(Encyclopedia Britannica, 2004 Edition)
In contemporary thought, incest is invariably associated
with child abuse and its horrific, long-lasting, and often
irreversible consequences. Incest is not such a clear-cut
matter as it has been made out to be over millennia of
taboo. Many participants claim to have enjoyed the act
and its physical and emotional consequences. It is often
the result of seduction. In some cases, two consenting and
fully informed adults are involved.
Many types of relationships, which are defined as
incestuous, are between genetically unrelated parties (a
stepfather and a daughter), or between fictive kin or
between classificatory kin (that belong to the same
matriline or patriline). In certain societies (the Native
American or the Chinese) it is sufficient to carry the same
family name (=to belong to the same clan) and marriage is
forbidden.
134
Some incest prohibitions relate to sexual acts - others to
marriage. In some societies, incest is mandatory or
prohibited, according to the social class (Bali, Papua New
Guinea, Polynesian and Melanesian islands). In others, the
Royal House started a tradition of incestuous marriages,
which was later imitated by lower classes (Ancient Egypt,
Hawaii, Pre-Columbian Mixtec). Some societies are more
tolerant of consensual incest than others (Japan, India
until the 1930's, Australia).
The list is long and it serves to demonstrate the diversity
of attitudes towards this most universal of taboos.
Generally put, we can say that a prohibition to have sex
with or marry a related person should be classified as an
incest prohibition.
Perhaps the strongest feature of incest has been hitherto
downplayed: that it is, essentially, an autoerotic act.
Having sex with a first-degree blood relative is like
having sex with oneself. It is a Narcissistic act and like all
acts Narcissistic, it involves the objectification of the
partner. The incestuous Narcissist over-values and then
devalues his sexual partner. He is devoid of empathy
(cannot see the other's point of view or put himself in her
shoes).
For an in depth treatment of Narcissism and its
psychosexual dimension, see: "Malignant Self Love -
Narcissism Revisited" and "Frequently Asked Questions" .
Paradoxically, it is the reaction of society that transforms
incest into such a disruptive phenomenon. The
condemnation, the horror, the revulsion and the attendant
social sanctions interfere with the internal processes and
135
dynamics of the incestuous family. It is from society that
the child learns that something is horribly wrong, that he
should feel guilty, and that the offending parent is a
defective role model.
As a direct result, the formation of the child's Superego is
stunted and it remains infantile, ideal, sadistic,
perfectionist, demanding and punishing. The child's Ego,
on the other hand, is likely to be replaced by a False Ego
version, whose job it is to suffer the social consequences
of the hideous act.
To sum up: society's reactions in the case of incest are
pathogenic and are most likely to produce a Narcissistic or
a Borderline patient. Dysempathic, exploitative,
emotionally labile, immature, and in eternal search for
Narcissistic Supply - the child becomes a replica of his
incestuous and socially-castigated parent.
If so, why did human societies develop such pathogenic
responses? In other words, why is incest considered a
taboo in all known human collectives and cultures? Why
are incestuous liaisons treated so harshly and punitively?
Freud said that incest provokes horror because it touches
upon our forbidden, ambivalent emotions towards
members of our close family. This ambivalence covers
both aggression towards other members (forbidden and
punishable) and (sexual) attraction to them (doubly
forbidden and punishable).
Edward Westermarck proffered an opposite view that the
domestic proximity of the members of the family breeds
sexual repulsion (the epigenetic rule known as the
Westermarck effect) to counter naturally occurring
136
genetic sexual attraction. The incest taboo simply reflects
emotional and biological realities within the family rather
than aiming to restrain the inbred instincts of its members,
claimed Westermarck.
Though much-disputed by geneticists, some scholars
maintain that the incest taboo may have been originally
designed to prevent the degeneration of the genetic stock
of the clan or tribe through intra-family breeding (closed
endogamy). But, even if true, this no longer applies. In
today's world incest rarely results in pregnancy and the
transmission of genetic material. Sex today is about
recreation as much as procreation.
Good contraceptives should, therefore, encourage
incestuous, couples. In many other species inbreeding or
straightforward incest are the norm. Finally, in most
countries, incest prohibitions apply also to non-
genetically-related people.
It seems, therefore, that the incest taboo was and is aimed
at one thing in particular: to preserve the family unit and
its proper functioning.
Incest is more than a mere manifestation of a given
personality disorder or a paraphilia (incest is considered
by many to be a subtype of pedophilia). It harks back to
the very nature of the family. It is closely entangled with
its functions and with its contribution to the development
of the individual within it.
The family is an efficient venue for the transmission of
accumulated property as well as information - both
horizontally (among family members) and vertically
(down the generations). The process of socialization
137
largely relies on these familial mechanisms, making the
family the most important agent of socialization by far.
The family is a mechanism for the allocation of genetic
and material wealth. Worldly goods are passed on from
one generation to the next through succession, inheritance
and residence. Genetic material is handed down through
the sexual act. It is the mandate of the family to increase
both by accumulating property and by marrying outside
the family (exogamy).
Clearly, incest prevents both. It preserves a limited
genetic pool and makes an increase of material
possessions through intermarriage all but impossible.
The family's roles are not merely materialistic, though.
One of the main businesses of the family is to teach to its
members self control, self regulation and healthy
adaptation. Family members share space and resources
and siblings share the mother's emotions and attention.
Similarly, the family educates its young members to
master their drives and to postpone the self-gratification
which attaches to acting upon them.
The incest taboo conditions children to control their erotic
drive by abstaining from ingratiating themselves with
members of the opposite sex within the same family.
There could be little question that incest constitutes a lack
of control and impedes the proper separation of impulse
(or stimulus) from action.
Additionally, incest probably interferes with the defensive
aspects of the family's existence. It is through the family
that aggression is legitimately channeled, expressed and
138
externalized. By imposing discipline and hierarchy on its
members, the family is transformed into a cohesive and
efficient war machine. It absorbs economic resources,
social status and members of other families. It forms
alliances and fights other clans over scarce goods, tangible
and intangible.
This efficacy is undermined by incest. It is virtually
impossible to maintain discipline and hierarchy in an
incestuous family where some members assume sexual
roles not normally theirs. Sex is an expression of power -
emotional and physical. The members of the family
involved in incest surrender power and assume it out of
the regular flow patterns that have made the family the
formidable apparatus that it is.
These new power politics weaken the family, both
internally and externally. Internally, emotive reactions
(such as the jealousy of other family members) and
clashing authorities and responsibilities are likely to undo
the delicate unit. Externally, the family is vulnerable to
ostracism and more official forms of intervention and
dismantling.
Finally, the family is an identity endowment mechanism.
It bestows identity upon its members. Internally, the
members of the family derive meaning from their position
in the family tree and its "organization chart" (which
conform to societal expectations and norms). Externally,
through exogamy, by incorporating "strangers", the family
absorbs other identities and thus enhances social solidarity
(Claude Levy-Strauss) at the expense of the solidarity of
the nuclear, original family.
139
Exogamy, as often noted, allows for the creation of
extended alliances. The "identity creep" of the family is in
total opposition to incest. The latter increases the
solidarity and cohesiveness of the incestuous family - but
at the expense of its ability to digest and absorb other
identities of other family units. Incest, in other words,
adversely affects social cohesion and solidarity.
Lastly, as aforementioned, incest interferes with well-
established and rigid patterns of inheritance and property
allocation. Such disruption is likely to have led in
primitive societies to disputes and conflicts - including
armed clashes and deaths. To prevent such recurrent and
costly bloodshed was one of the intentions of the incest
taboo.
The more primitive the society, the more strict and
elaborate the set of incest prohibitions and the fiercer the
reactions of society to violations. It appears that the less
violent the dispute settlement methods and mechanisms in
a given culture - the more lenient the attitude to incest.
The incest taboo is, therefore, a cultural trait. Protective of
the efficient mechanism of the family, society sought to
minimize disruption to its activities and to the clear flows
of authority, responsibilities, material wealth and
information horizontally and vertically.
Incest threatened to unravel this magnificent creation - the
family. Alarmed by the possible consequences (internal
and external feuds, a rise in the level of aggression and
violence) - society introduced the taboo. It came replete
with physical and emotional sanctions: stigmatization,
revulsion and horror, imprisonment, the demolition of the
errant and socially mutant family cell.
140
As long as societies revolve around the relegation of
power, its sharing, its acquisition and dispensation - there
will always exist an incest taboo. But in a different
societal and cultural setting, it is conceivable not to have
such a taboo. We can easily imagine a society where
incest is extolled, taught, and practiced - and out-breeding
is regarded with horror and revulsion.
The incestuous marriages among members of the royal
households of Europe were intended to preserve the
familial property and expand the clan's territory. They
were normative, not aberrant. Marrying an outsider was
considered abhorrent.
An incestuous society - where incest is the norm - is
conceivable even today.
Two out of many possible scenarios:
1. "The Lot Scenario "
A plague or some other natural disaster decimate the
population of planet Earth. People remain alive only in
isolated clusters, co-habiting only with their closest kin.
Surely incestuous procreation is preferable to virtuous
extermination. Incest becomes normative.
Incest is as entrenched a taboo as cannibalism. Yet, it is
better to eat the flesh of your dead football team mates
than perish high up on the Andes (a harrowing tale of
survival recounted in the book and eponymous film,
"Alive").
2. The Egyptian Scenario
141
Resources become so scarce that family units scramble to
keep them exclusively within the clan.
Exogamy - marrying outside the clan - amounts to a
unilateral transfer of scarce resources to outsiders and
strangers. Incest becomes an economic imperative.
An incestuous society would be either Utopian or
dystopian, depending on the reader's point of view - but
that it is possible is doubtless.
Also Read
Sex or Gender
The Narcissist's Family
The Roots of Pedophilia
The Pathology of Love
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
Parenting - The Irrational Vocation
Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
Back to Table of Contents
142
The Roots of Pedophilia
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children and act
on their sexual fantasies. It is a startling fact that the
etiology of this paraphilia is unknown. Pedophiles comes
from all walks of life and have no common socio-
economic background. Contrary to media-propagated
myths, most of them had not been sexually abused in
childhood and the vast majority of pedophiles are also
drawn to adults of the opposite sex (are heterosexuals).
Only a few belong to the Exclusive Type - the ones who
are tempted solely by kids. Nine tenths of all pedophiles
are male. They are fascinated by preteen females, teenage
males, or (more rarely) both.
Moreover, at least one fifth (and probably more) of the
population have pedophiliac fantasies. The prevalence of
child pornography and child prostitution prove it.
Pedophiles start out as "normal" people and are
profoundly shocked and distressed to discover their illicit
sexual preference for the prepubertal. The process and
mechanisms of transition from socially acceptable
sexuality to much-condemned (and criminal) pedophilia
are still largely mysterious.
Pedophiles seem to have narcissistic and antisocial
(psychopathic) traits. They lack empathy for their victims
and express no remorse for their actions. They are in
denial and, being pathological confabulators , they
rationalize their transgressions, claiming that the children
were merely being educated for their own good and,
anyhow, derived great pleasure from it.
143
The pedophile's ego-syntony rests on his alloplastic
defenses . He generally tends to blame others (or the world
or the "system") for his misfortunes, failures, and
deficiencies. Pedophiles frequently accuse their victims of
acting promiscuously, of "coming on to them", of actively
tempting, provoking, and luring (or even trapping) them.
The pedophile - similar to the autistic patient -
misinterprets the child's body language and inter-personal
cues. His social communication skills are impaired and he
fails to adjust information gained to the surrounding
circumstances (for instance, to the kid's age and maturity).
Coupled with his lack of empathy, this recurrent inability
to truly comprehend others cause the pedophile to
objectify the targets of his lasciviousness. Pedophilia is, in
essence, auto-erotic. The pedophile uses children's bodies
to masturbate with. Hence the success of the Internet
among pedophiles: it offers disembodied, anonymous,
masturbatory sex. Children in cyberspace are mere
representations - often nothing more than erotic photos
and screen names.
It is crucial to realize that pedophiles are not enticed by
the children themselves, by their bodies, or by their
budding and nubile sexuality (remember Nabokov's
Lolita?). Rather, pedophiles are drawn to what children
symbolize, to what preadolescents stand for and represent.
To the pedophile ...
/. Sex with children is "free" and "daring"
Sex with sub teens implies freedom of action with
impunity. It enhances the pedophile's magical sense of
144
omnipotence and immunity . By defying the authority of
the state and the edicts of his culture and society, the
pedophile experiences an adrenaline rush to which he
gradually becomes addicted. Illicit sex becomes the outlet
for his urgent need to live dangerously and recklessly .
The pedophile is on a quest to reassert control over his
life. Studies have consistently shown that pedophilia is
associated with anomic states (war, famine, epidemics)
and with major life crises (failure, relocation, infidelity of
spouse, separation, divorce, unemployment, bankruptcy,
illness, death of the offender's nearest and dearest).
It is likely - though hitherto unsubstantiated by research -
that the typical pedophile is depressive and with a
borderline personality (low organization and fuzzy
personal boundaries). Pedophiles are reckless and
emotionally labile. The pedophile's sense of self-worth is
volatile and dysregulated. He is likely to suffer from
abandonment anxiety and be a codependent or
counterdependent .
Paradoxically, it is by seemingly losing control in one
aspect of his life (sex) that the pedophile re-acquires a
sense of mastery. The same mechanism is at work in the
development of eating disorders . An inhibitory deficit is
somehow magically perceived as omnipotence.
//. Sex with children is corrupt and decadent
The pedophile makes frequent (though unconscious) use
of projection and projective identification in his
relationships with children. He makes his victims treat
him the way he views himself - or attributes to them traits
and behaviors that are truly his.
145
The pedophile is aware of society's view of his actions as
vile, corrupt, forbidden, evil, and decadent (especially if
the pedophiliac act involves incest). He derives pleasure
from the sleazy nature of his pursuits because it tends to
sustain his view of himself as "bad", "a failure",
"deserving of punishment", and "guilty".
In extreme (mercifully uncommon) cases, the pedophile
projects these torturous feelings and self-perceptions onto
his victims. The children defiled and abused by his sexual
attentions thus become "rotten", "bad objects", guilty and
punishable. This leads to sexual sadism , lust rape, and
snuff murders.
III. Sex with children is a reenactment of a painful past
Many pedophile truly bond with their prey. To them,
children are the reification of innocence, genuineness,
trust, and faithfulness - qualities that the pedophile wishes
to nostalgically recapture.
The relationship with the child provides the pedophile
with a "safe passage" to his own, repressed and fearful,
inner child. Through his victim, the pedophile gains
access to his suppressed and thwarted emotions. It is a
fantasy-like second chance to reenact his childhood, this
time benignly. The pedophile's dream to make peace with
his past comes true transforming the interaction with the
child to an exercise in wish fulfillment.
IV. Sex with children is a shared psychosis
The pedophile treats "his" chosen child as an object, an
extension of himself, devoid of a separate existence and
denuded of distinct needs. He finds the child's
146
submissiveness and gullibility gratifying. He frowns on
any sign of personal autonomy and regards it as a threat.
By intimidating, cajoling, charming, and making false
promises, the abuser isolates his prey from his family,
school, peers, and from the rest of society and, thus,
makes the child's dependence on him total.
To the pedophile, the child is a "transitional object" - a
training ground on which to exercise his adult relationship
skills. The pedophile erroneously feels that the child will
never betray and abandon him, therefore guaranteeing
"object constancy".
The pedophile - stealthily but unfailingly - exploits the
vulnerabilities in the psychological makeup of his victim.
The child may have low self-esteem, a fluctuating sense
of self-worth, primitive defence mechanisms, phobias,
mental health problems, a disability, a history of failure,
bad relations with parents, siblings, teachers, or peers, or a
tendency to blame herself, or to feel inadequate
(autoplastic neurosis). The kid may come from an abusive
family or environment - which conditioned her or him to
expect abuse as inevitable and "normal". In extreme and
rare cases - the victim is a masochist, possessed of an
urge to seek ill-treatment and pain.
The pedophile is the guru at the center of a cult. Like
other gurus, he demands complete obedience from his
"partner". He feels entitled to adulation and special
treatment by his child-mate. He punishes the wayward and
the straying lambs. He enforces discipline.
The child finds himself in a twilight zone. The pedophile
imposes on him a shared psychosis, replete with
persecutory delusions, "enemies", mythical narratives, and
147
apocalyptic scenarios if he is flouted. The child is
rendered the joint guardian of a horrible secret.
The pedophile's control is based on ambiguity,
unpredictability, fuzziness, and ambient abuse . His ever-
shifting whims exclusively define right versus wrong,
desirable and unwanted, what is to be pursued and what to
be avoided. He alone determines rights and obligations
and alters them at will.
The typical pedophile is a micro-manager. He exerts
control over the minutest details and behaviors. He
punishes severely and abuses withholders of information
and those who fail to conform to his wishes and goals.
The pedophile does not respect the boundaries and
privacy of the (often reluctant and terrified) child. He
ignores his or her wishes and treats children as objects or
instruments of gratification. He seeks to control both
situations and people compulsively.
The pedophile acts in a patronizing and condescending
manner and criticizes often. He alternates between
emphasizing the minutest faults (devalues) and
exaggerating the looks, talents, traits, and skills (idealizes)
of the child. He is wildly unrealistic in his expectations -
which legitimizes his subsequent abusive conduct.
Narcissistic pedophiles claim to be infallible, superior,
talented, skillful, omnipotent, and omniscient. They often
lie and confabulate to support these unfounded claims and
to justify their actions. Most pedophiles suffer from
cognitive deficits and reinterpret reality to fit their
fantasies.
148
In extreme cases, the pedophile feels above the law - any
kind of law. This grandiose and haughty conviction leads
to criminal acts , incestuous or polygamous relationships,
and recurrent friction with the authorities.
V. The pedophile regards sex with children as an ego-
booster
Subteen children are, by definition, "inferior". They are
physically weaker, dependent on others for the fulfillment
of many of their needs, cognitively and emotionally
immature, and easily manipulated. Their fund of
knowledge is limited and their skills restricted. His
relationships with children buttress the pedophile's twin
grandiose delusions of omnipotence and omniscience.
Compared to his victims, the pedophiles is always the
stronger, the wiser, the most skillful and well-informed.
VI. Sex with children guarantees companionship
Inevitably, the pedophile considers his child- victims to be
his best friends and companions. Pedophiles are lonely,
erotomanic, people.
The pedophile believes that he is in love with (or simply
loves) the child. Sex is merely one way to communicate
his affection and caring. But there are other venues.
To show his keen interest, the common pedophile keeps
calling the child, dropping by, writing e-mails, giving
gifts, providing services, doing unsolicited errands "on the
kid's behalf", getting into relationships with the preteen's
parents, friends, teachers, and peers, and, in general,
making himself available (stalking) at all times. The
149
pedophile feels free to make legal, financial, and
emotional decisions for the child.
The pedophile intrudes on the victim's privacy, disrespects
the child's express wishes and personal boundaries and
ignores his or her emotions, needs, and preferences. To
the pedophile, " love " means enmeshment and clinging
coupled with an overpowering separation anxiety (fear of
being abandoned).
Moreover, no amount of denials, chastising, threats, and
even outright hostile actions convince the erotomaniac
that the child not in love with him. He knows better and
will make the world see the light as well. The child and
his guardians are simply unaware of what is good for the
kid. The pedophile determinedly sees it as his or her task
to bring life and happiness into the child's dreary and
unhappy existence.
Thus, regardless of overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, the pedophile is convinced that his feelings are
reciprocated - in other words, that the child is equally
infatuated with him or her. He interprets everything the
child does (or refrains from doing) as coded messages
confessing to and conveying the child's interest in and
eternal devotion to the pedophile and to the "relationship".
Some (by no means all) pedophiles are socially-inapt,
awkward, schizoid , and suffer from a host of mood and
anxiety disorders. They may also be legitimately involved
with the child (e.g., stepfather, former spouse, teacher,
gym instructor, sibling) - or with his parents (for instance,
a former boyfriend, a one night stand, colleagues or co-
workers). They are driven by their all-consuming
loneliness and all-pervasive fantasies.
150
Consequently, pedophiles react badly to any perceived
rejection by their victims. They turn on a dime and
become dangerously vindictive , out to destroy the source
of their mounting frustration. When the "relationship"
looks hopeless, some pedophiles violently embark on a
spree of self-destruction.
Pedophilia is to some extent a culture-bound syndrome,
defined as it is by the chronological age of the child
involved. Ephebophilia, for instance - the exclusive sexual
infatuation with teenagers - is not considered to be a form
of pedophilia (or even paraphilia).
In some cultures, societies and countries (Afghanistan, for
instance) the age of consent is as low as 12. The
marriageable age in Britain until the end of the nineteenth
century was 10. Pedophilia is a common and socially-
condoned practice in certain tribal societies and isolated
communities (the Island of Pitcairn).
It would, therefore, be wise to redefine pedophilia as an
attraction to or sexual acts with prepubescent children or
with people of the equivalent mental age (e.g., retarded) in
contravention of social, legal, and cultural accepted
practices.
Also Read
Sex or Gender
The Narcissist's Family
The Pathology of Love
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
151
Parenting - The Irrational Vocation
Ethical Relativism and Absolute Taboos
The Offspring of Aeolus: On the Incest Taboo
Back to Table of Contents
152
Homosexual and Transsexual Narcissists
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Question:
What is the typical profile of a homosexual narcissist?
Why is he always on a lookout for new victims? Is he
lying or is he telling the truth when he says that he "wants
to get laid" by one and all? If he is not suicidal, is he not
afraid of AIDS?
Answer:
I am a heterosexual and thus deprived of an intimate
acquaintance with certain psychological processes, which
allegedly are unique to homosexuals. I find it hard to
believe that there are such processes, to begin with.
Research failed to find any substantive difference between
the psychological make-up of a narcissist who happens to
have homosexual preferences - and a heterosexual
narcissist.
They both are predators, devouring Narcissistic Supply
Sources as they go. Narcissists look for new victims, the
way tigers look for prey - they are hungry. Hungry for
adoration, admiration, acceptance, approval, and any other
kind of attention. Old sources die easy - once taken for
granted, the narcissistic element of conquest vanishes.
Conquest is important because it proves the superiority of
the narcissist. The very act of subduing, subjugating, or
acquiring the power to influence someone provides the
narcissist with Narcissistic Supply. The newly conquered
idolise the narcissist and serve as a trophies.
153
The act of conquering and subordinating is epitomized by
the sexual encounter - an objective and atavistic
interaction. Making love to someone means that the
consenting partner finds the narcissist (or one or more of
his traits, such as his intelligence, his physique, even his
money) irresistible.
The distinction between passive and active sexual partners
is mechanical, false, superfluous and superficial.
Penetration does not make one of the parties "the stronger
one". To cause someone to have sex with you is a
powerful stimulus - and always provokes a sensation of
omnipotence. Whether one is physically passive or active
- one is always psychosexually active.
Anyone who has unsafe sex is gambling with his life -
though the odds are much smaller than public hysteria
would have us believe. Reality does not matter, though -
it is the perception of reality that matters. Getting this
close to (perceived) danger is the equivalent of engaging
in self-destruction (suicide). Narcissists are, at times,
suicidal and are always self-destructive .
There is, however, one element, which might be unique to
homosexuals: the fact that their self-definition hinges on
their sexual identity. I know of no heterosexual who
would use his sexual preferences to define himself almost
fully. Homosexuality has been inflated to the level of a
sub-culture, a separate psychology, or a myth. This is
typical of persecuted minorities. However, it does have an
influence on the individual. Preoccupation with body and
sex makes most homosexual narcissists SOMATIC
narcissists.
154
Moreover, the homosexual makes love to a person of the
SAME sex - in a way, to his REFLECTION. In this
respect, homosexual relations are highly narcissistic and
autoerotic affairs.
The somatic narcissist directs his libido at his body (as
opposed to the cerebral narcissist, who concentrates upon
his intellect). He cultivates it, nourishes and nurtures it, is
often an hypochondriac, dedicates an inordinate amount
of time to its needs (real and imaginary). It is through his
body that this type of narcissist tracks down and captures
his Supply Sources.
The supply that the somatic narcissist so badly requires is
derived from his form, his shape, his build, his profile, his
beauty, his physical attractiveness, his health, his age. He
downplays Narcissistic Supply directed at other traits. He
uses sex to reaffirm his prowess, his attractiveness, or his
youth. Love, to him, is synonymous with sex and he
focuses his learning skills on the sexual act, the foreplay
and the coital aftermath.
Seduction becomes addictive because it leads to a quick
succession of Supply Sources. Naturally, boredom (a form
of transmuted aggression) sets in once the going gets
routine. Routine is counter-narcissistic by definition
because it threatens the narcissist's sense of uniqueness .
An interesting side issue relates to transsexuals.
Philosophically, there is little difference between a
narcissist who seeks to avoid his True Self (and positively
to become his False Self) - and a transsexual who seeks to
discard his true gender. But this similarity, though
superficially appealing, is questionable.
155
People sometimes seek sex reassignment because of
advantages and opportunities which, they believe, are
enjoyed by the other sex. This rather unrealistic (fantastic)
view of the other is faintly narcissistic. It includes
elements of idealised over-valuation, of self-
preoccupation, and of objectification of one's self. It
demonstrates a deficient ability to empathise and some
grandiose sense of entitlement ("I deserve to be taken care
of") and omnipotence ("I can be whatever I want to be -
despite nature/God").
This feeling of entitlement is especially manifest in some
gender dysphoric individuals who aggressively pursue
hormonal or surgical treatment. They feel that it is their
inalienable right to receive it on demand and without any
strictures or restrictions. For instance, they oftentimes
refuse to undergo psychological evaluation or treatment as
a condition for the hormonal or surgical treatment.
It is interesting to note that both narcissism and gender
dysphoria are early childhood phenomena. This could be
explained by problematic Primary Objects, dysfunctional
families, or a common genetic or biochemical problem. It
is too early to say which. As yet, there isn't even an agreed
typology of gender identity disorders - let alone an in-
depth comprehension of their sources.
A radical view, proffered by Ray Blanchard, seems to
indicate that pathological narcissism is more likely to be
found among non-core, ego-dystonic, autogynephilic
transsexulas and among heterosexual transvestites. It is
less manifest in core, ego-syntonic, homosexual
transsexuals.
156
Autogynephilic transsexuals are subject to an intense urge
to become the opposite sex and, thus, to be rendered the
sexual object of their own desire. In other words, they are
so sexually attracted to themselves that they wish to
become both lovers in the romantic equation - the male
and the female. It is the fulfilment of the ultimate
narcissistic fantasy with the False Self as a fetish
("narcissistic fetish").
Autogynephilic transsexuals start off as heterosexuals and
end up as either bisexual or homosexual. By shifting
his/her attentions to men, the male autogynephilic
transsexual "proves" to himself that he has finally become
a "true" and desirable woman.
Also Read
The Natural Roots of Sexuality
Gender and the Narcissist
Sex and Gender
Dr. Jackal and Mr. Hide
The World of the Narcissist
The Narcissistic Couple
Physique Dysmorphique
Narcissists and Women
The Two Loves of the Narcissist
Portrait of the Narcissist as a Young Man
157
That Thing Between a Man and a Woman
Back to Table of Contents
158
The Insanity of the Defense
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
"You can know the name of a bird in all the languages
of the world, but when you 're finished, you '11 know
absolutely nothing whatever about the bird. . . So let's
look at the bird and see what it's doing - that's what
counts. I learned very early the difference between
knowing the name of something and knowing
something. "
Richard Feynman, Physicist and 1965 Nobel Prize
laureate (1918-1988)
"You have all I dare say heard of the animal spirits and
how they are transfused from father to son etcetera
etcetera - well you may take my word that nine parts in
ten of a man's sense or his nonsense, his successes and
miscarriages in this world depend on their motions and
activities, and the different tracks and trains you put
them into, so that when they are once set a-going,
whether right or wrong, away they go cluttering like hey-
go-mad. "
Lawrence Sterne (1713-1758), "The Life and Opinions of
Tristram Shandy, Gentleman" (1759)
/. The Insanity Defense
"It is an ill thing to knock against a deaf-mute, an
imbecile, or a minor. He that wounds them is culpable,
but if they wound him they are not culpable. " (Mishna,
Babylonian Talmud)
159
If mental illness is culture-dependent and mostly serves as
an organizing social principle - what should we make of
the insanity defense (NGRI- Not Guilty by Reason of
Insanity)?
A person is held not responsible for his criminal actions if
s/he cannot tell right from wrong ("lacks substantial
capacity either to appreciate the criminality
(wrongfulness) of his conduct" - diminished capacity), did
not intend to act the way he did (absent "mens rea")
and/or could not control his behavior ("irresistible
impulse"). These handicaps are often associated with
"mental disease or defect" or "mental retardation".
Mental health professionals prefer to talk about an
impairment of a "person's perception or understanding of
reality" . They hold a "guilty but mentally ill" verdict to be
contradiction in terms. All "mentally-ill" people operate
within a (usually coherent) worldview, with consistent
internal logic, and rules of right and wrong (ethics). Yet,
these rarely conform to the way most people perceive the
world. The mentally-ill, therefore, cannot be guilty
because s/he has a tenuous grasp on reality.
Yet, experience teaches us that a criminal maybe mentally
ill even as s/he maintains a perfect reality test and thus is
held criminally responsible (Jeffrey Dahmer comes to
mind). The "perception and understanding of reality", in
other words, can and does co-exist even with the severest
forms of mental illness.
This makes it even more difficult to comprehend what is
meant by "mental disease". If some mentally ill maintain a
grasp on reality, know right from wrong, can anticipate
the outcomes of their actions, are not subject to irresistible
160
impulses (the official position of the American Psychiatric
Association) - in what way do they differ from us,
"normal" folks?
This is why the insanity defense often sits ill with mental
health pathologies deemed socially "acceptable" and
"normal" - such as religion or love .
Consider the following case:
A mother bashes the skulls of her three sons. Two of them
die. She claims to have acted on instructions she had
received from God. She is found not guilty by reason of
insanity. The jury determined that she "did not know right
from wrong during the killings."
But why exactly was she judged insane?
Her belief in the existence of God - a being with
inordinate and inhuman attributes - may be irrational.
But it does not constitute insanity in the strictest sense
because it conforms to social and cultural creeds and
codes of conduct in her milieu. Billions of people
faithfully subscribe to the same ideas, adhere to the same
transcendental rules, observe the same mystical rituals,
and claim to go through the same experiences. This shared
psychosis is so widespread that it can no longer be
deemed pathological, statistically speaking.
She claimed that God has spoken to her.
As do numerous other people. Behavior that is considered
psychotic (paranoid-schizophrenic) in other contexts is
lauded and admired in religious circles. Hearing voices
161
and seeing visions - auditory and visual delusions - are
considered rank manifestations of righteousness and
sanctity.
Perhaps it was the content of her hallucinations that
proved her insane?
She claimed that God had instructed her to kill her boys.
Surely, God would not ordain such evil?
Alas, the Old and New Testaments both contain examples
of God's appetite for human sacrifice. Abraham was
ordered by God to sacrifice Isaac, his beloved son (though
this savage command was rescinded at the last moment).
Jesus, the son of God himself, was crucified to atone for
the sins of humanity.
A divine injunction to slay one's offspring would sit well
with the Holy Scriptures and the Apocrypha as well as
with millennia-old Judeo-Christian traditions of
martyrdom and sacrifice.
Her actions were wrong and incommensurate with both
human and divine (or natural) laws.
Yes, but they were perfectly in accord with a literal
interpretation of certain divinely-inspired texts, millennial
scriptures, apocalyptic thought systems, and
fundamentalist religious ideologies (such as the ones
espousing the imminence of "rapture"). Unless one
declares these doctrines and writings insane, her actions
are not.
we are forced to the conclusion that the murderous mother
is perfectly sane. Her frame of reference is different to
162
ours. Hence, her definitions of right and wrong are
idiosyncratic. To her, killing her babies was the right thing
to do and in conformity with valued teachings and her
own epiphany. Her grasp of reality - the immediate and
later consequences of her actions - was never impaired.
It would seem that sanity and insanity are relative terms,
dependent on frames of cultural and social reference, and
statistically defined. There isn't - and, in principle, can
never emerge - an "objective", medical, scientific test to
determine mental health or disease unequivocally.
II. The Concept of Mental Disease - An Overview
Someone is considered mentally "ill" if:
1 . His conduct rigidly and consistently deviates from
the typical, average behaviour of all other people
in his culture and society that fit his profile
(whether this conventional behaviour is moral or
rational is immaterial), or
2. His judgment and grasp of objective, physical
reality is impaired, and
3. His conduct is not a matter of choice but is innate
and irresistible, and
4. His behavior causes him or others discomfort, and
is
5. Dysfunctional, self-defeating, and self-destructive
even by his own yardsticks.
Descriptive criteria aside, what is the essence of mental
disorders? Are they merely physiological disorders of the
brain, or, more precisely of its chemistry? If so, can they
be cured by restoring the balance of substances and
secretions in that mysterious organ? And, once
163
equilibrium is reinstated - is the illness "gone" or is it still
lurking there, "under wraps", waiting to erupt? Are
psychiatric problems inherited, rooted in faulty genes
(though amplified by environmental factors) - or brought
on by abusive or wrong nurturance?
These questions are the domain of the "medical" school of
mental health.
Others cling to the spiritual view of the human psyche.
They believe that mental ailments amount to the
metaphysical discomposure of an unknown medium - the
soul. Theirs is a holistic approach, taking in the patient in
his or her entirety, as well as his milieu.
The members of the functional school regard mental
health disorders as perturbations in the proper, statistically
"normal", behaviours and manifestations of "healthy"
individuals, or as dysfunctions. The "sick" individual - ill
at ease with himself (ego-dystonic) or making others
unhappy (deviant) - is "mended" when rendered
functional again by the prevailing standards of his social
and cultural frame of reference.
In a way, the three schools are akin to the trio of blind
men who render disparate descriptions of the very same
elephant. Still, they share not only their subject matter -
but, to a counter intuitively large degree, a faulty
methodology.
As the renowned anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, of the
State University of New York, notes in his article "The
Lying Truths of Psychiatry" , mental health scholars,
regardless of academic predilection, infer the etiology of
164
mental disorders from the success or failure of treatment
modalities.
This form of "reverse engineering" of scientific models is
not unknown in other fields of science, nor is it
unacceptable if the experiments meet the criteria of the
scientific method. The theory must be all-inclusive
(anamnetic), consistent, falsifiable, logically compatible,
monovalent, and parsimonious. Psychological "theories" -
even the "medical" ones (the role of serotonin and
dopamine in mood disorders, for instance) - are usually
none of these things.
The outcome is a bewildering array of ever-shifting
mental health "diagnoses" expressly centred around
Western civilisation and its standards (example: the
ethical objection to suicide). Neurosis, a historically
fundamental "condition" vanished after 1980.
Homosexuality, according to the American Psychiatric
Association, was a pathology prior to 1973. Seven years
later, narcissism was declared a "personality disorder",
almost seven decades after it was first described by Freud.
///. Personality Disorders
Indeed, personality disorders are an excellent example of
the kaleidoscopic landscape of "objective" psychiatry.
The classification of Axis II personality disorders -
deeply ingrained, maladaptive, lifelong behavior patterns
- in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, fourth edition,
text revision [American Psychiatric Association. DSM-
IV -TR, Washington, 2000] - or the DSM-IV-TR for short
- has come under sustained and serious criticism from its
inception in 1952, in the first edition of the DSM.
165
The DSM IV-TR adopts a categorical approach,
postulating that personality disorders are "qualitatively
distinct clinical syndromes" (p. 689). This is widely
doubted. Even the distinction made between "normal" and
"disordered" personalities is increasingly being rejected.
The "diagnostic thresholds" between normal and
abnormal are either absent or weakly supported.
The polythetic form of the DSM's Diagnostic Criteria -
only a subset of the criteria is adequate grounds for a
diagnosis - generates unacceptable diagnostic
heterogeneity. In other words, people diagnosed with the
same personality disorder may share only one criterion or
none.
The DSM fails to clarify the exact relationship between
Axis II and Axis I disorders and the way chronic
childhood and developmental problems interact with
personality disorders.
The differential diagnoses are vague and the personality
disorders are insufficiently demarcated. The result is
excessive co-morbidity (multiple Axis II diagnoses).
The DSM contains little discussion of what
distinguishes normal character (personality), personality
traits, or personality style (Millon) - from personality
disorders.
A dearth of documented clinical experience regarding
both the disorders themselves and the utility of various
treatment modalities.
166
Numerous personality disorders are "not otherwise
specified" - a catchall, basket "category".
Cultural bias is evident in certain disorders (such as the
Antisocial and the Schizotypal).
The emergence of dimensional alternatives to the
categorical approach is acknowledged in the DSM-IV-TR
itself:
"An alternative to the categorical approach is the
dimensional perspective that Personality Disorders
represent maladaptive variants of personality traits that
merge imperceptibly into normality and into one
another" (p.689)
The following issues - long neglected in the DSM - are
likely to be tackled in future editions as well as in current
research. But their omission from official discourse
hitherto is both startling and telling:
• The longitudinal course of the disorder(s) and their
temporal stability from early childhood onwards;
• The genetic and biological underpinnings of
personality disorder(s);
• The development of personality psychopathology
during childhood and its emergence in
adolescence;
• The interactions between physical health and
disease and personality disorders;
• The effectiveness of various treatments - talk
therapies as well as psychopharmacology.
IV. The Biochemistry and Genetics of Mental Health
167
Certain mental health afflictions are either correlated with
a statistically abnormal biochemical activity in the brain -
or are ameliorated with medication. Yet the two facts are
not ineludibly facets of the same underlying phenomenon.
In other words, that a given medicine reduces or abolishes
certain symptoms does not necessarily mean they were
caused by the processes or substances affected by the
drug administered. Causation is only one of many possible
connections and chains of events.
To designate a pattern of behaviour as a mental health
disorder is a value judgment, or at best a statistical
observation. Such designation is effected regardless of the
facts of brain science. Moreover, correlation is not
causation. Deviant brain or body biochemistry (once
called "polluted animal spirits") do exist - but are they
truly the roots of mental perversion? Nor is it clear which
triggers what: do the aberrant neurochemistry or
biochemistry cause mental illness - or the other way
around?
That psychoactive medication alters behaviour and mood
is indisputable. So do illicit and legal drugs, certain foods,
and all interpersonal interactions. That the changes
brought about by prescription are desirable - is debatable
and involves tautological thinking. If a certain pattern of
behaviour is described as (socially) "dysfunctional" or
(psychologically) "sick" - clearly, every change would be
welcomed as "healing" and every agent of transformation
would be called a "cure".
The same applies to the alleged heredity of mental illness.
Single genes or gene complexes are frequently
"associated" with mental health diagnoses, personality
traits, or behaviour patterns. But too little is known to
168
establish irrefutable sequences of causes-and-effects.
Even less is proven about the interaction of nature and
nurture, genotype and phenotype, the plasticity of the
brain and the psychological impact of trauma, abuse,
upbringing, role models, peers, and other environmental
elements.
Nor is the distinction between psychotropic substances
and talk therapy that clear-cut. Words and the interaction
with the therapist also affect the brain, its processes and
chemistry - albeit more slowly and, perhaps, more
profoundly and irreversibly. Medicines - as David Kaiser
reminds us in "Against Biologic Psychiatry " (Psychiatric
Times, Volume XIII, Issue 12, December 1996) - treat
symptoms, not the underlying processes that yield them.
V. The Variance of Mental Disease
If mental illnesses are bodily and empirical, they should
be invariant both temporally and spatially, across cultures
and societies. This, to some degree, is, indeed, the case.
Psychological diseases are not context dependent - but the
pathologizing of certain behaviours is. Suicide, substance
abuse, narcissism, eating disorders, antisocial ways,
schizotypal symptoms, depression, even psychosis are
considered sick by some cultures - and utterly normative
or advantageous in others.
This was to be expected. The human mind and its
dysfunctions are alike around the world. But values differ
from time to time and from one place to another. Hence,
disagreements about the propriety and desirability of
human actions and inaction are bound to arise in a
symptom-based diagnostic system.
169
As long as the pseudo-medical definitions of mental
health disorders continue to rely exclusively on signs and
symptoms - i.e., mostly on observed or reported
behaviours - they remain vulnerable to such discord and
devoid of much-sought universality and rigor.
VI. Mental Disorders and the Social Order
The mentally sick receive the same treatment as carriers
of AIDS or SARS or the Ebola virus or smallpox. They
are sometimes quarantined against their will and coerced
into involuntary treatment by medication, psychosurgery,
or electroconvulsive therapy. This is done in the name of
the greater good, largely as a preventive policy.
Conspiracy theories notwithstanding, it is impossible to
ignore the enormous interests vested in psychiatry and
psychopharmacology. The multibillion dollar industries
involving drug companies, hospitals, managed healthcare,
private clinics, academic departments, and law
enforcement agencies rely, for their continued and
exponential growth, on the propagation of the concept of
"mental illness" and its corollaries: treatment and
research.
VII. Mental Ailment as a Useful Metaphor
Abstract concepts form the core of all branches of human
knowledge. No one has ever seen a quark, or untangled a
chemical bond, or surfed an electromagnetic wave, or
visited the unconscious. These are useful metaphors,
theoretical entities with explanatory or descriptive power.
"Mental health disorders" are no different. They are
shorthand for capturing the unsettling quiddity of "the
170
Other". Useful as taxonomies, they are also tools of social
coercion and conformity, as Michel Foucault and Louis
Althusser observed. Relegating both the dangerous and
the idiosyncratic to the collective fringes is a vital
technique of social engineering.
The aim is progress through social cohesion and the
regulation of innovation and creative destruction.
Psychiatry, therefore, is reifies society's preference of
evolution to revolution, or, worse still, to mayhem. As is
often the case with human endeavor, it is a noble cause,
unscrupulously and dogmatically pursued.
Also Read
On Disease
The Myth of Mental Illness
In Defense of Psychoanalysis
he Metaphors of the Mind - Part I (The Brain)
The Metaphors of the Mind - Part II (Psychotherapy)
The Metaphors of the Mind - Part III (Dreams)
The Use and Abuse of Differential Diagnoses
Althusser, Competing Interpellations and the Third Text
Back to Table of Contents
171
THE AUTHOR
Shmuel (Sam) Vaknin
Curriculum Vitae
Born in 1961 in Qiryat-Yam, Israel.
Served in the Israeli Defence Force (1979-1982) in training and education
units.
Education
Graduated a few semesters in the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology,
Haifa.
Ph.D. in Philosophy (major: Philosophy of Physics) - Pacific Western
University, California, USA.
Graduate of numerous courses in Finance Theory and International Trading.
Certified E-Commerce Concepts Analyst by Brainbench .
Certified in Psychological Counselling Techniques by Brainbench .
Certified Financial Analyst by Brainbench .
Full proficiency in Hebrew and in English.
Business Experience
1980 to 1983
Founder and co-owner of a chain of computerized information kiosks in Tel-
Aviv, Israel.
1982 to 1985
Senior positions with the Nessim D. Gaon Group of Companies in Geneva,
Paris and New- York (NOGA and APROFIM SA):
- Chief Analyst of Edible Commodities in the Group's Headquarters in
Switzerland
172
- Manager of the Research and Analysis Division
- Manager of the Data Processing Division
- Project Manager of the Nigerian Computerized Census
- Vice President in charge of RND and Advanced Technologies
- Vice President in charge of Sovereign Debt Financing
1985 to 1986
Represented Canadian Venture Capital Funds in Israel.
1986 to 1987
General Manager of IPE Ltd. in London. The firm financed international
multi-lateral countertrade and leasing transactions.
1988 to 1990
Co-founder and Director of "Mikbats-Tesuah", a portfolio management firm
based in Tel-Aviv.
Activities included large-scale portfolio management, underwriting, forex
trading and general financial advisory services.
1990 to Present
Freelance consultant to many of Israel's Blue-Chip firms, mainly on issues
related to the capital markets in Israel, Canada, the UK and the USA.
Consultant to foreign RND ventures and to governments on macro-economic
matters.
Freelance journalist and analyst for various media in the USA.
1990 to 1995
President of the Israel chapter of the Professors World Peace Academy
(PWPA) and (briefly) Israel representative of the "Washington Times".
1993 to 1994
Co-owner and Director of many business enterprises:
- The Omega and Energy Air-Conditioning Concern
- AVP Financial Consultants
- Handiman Legal Services - Total annual turnover of the group: 10 million
USD.
Co-owner, Director and Finance Manager of COSTI Ltd. - Israel's largest
computerized information vendor and developer. Raised funds through a
series of private placements locally in the USA, Canada and London.
1993 to 1996
Publisher and Editor of a Capital Markets Newsletter distributed by
subscription only to dozens of subscribers countrywide.
173
In a legal precedent in 1995 - studied in business schools and law faculties
across Israel - was tried for his role in an attempted takeover of Israel's
Agriculture Bank.
Was interned in the State School of Prison Wardens.
Managed the Central School Library, wrote, published and lectured on
various occasions.
Managed the Internet and International News Department of an Israeli mass
media group, "Ha-Tikshoret and Namer".
Assistant in the Law Faculty in Tel-Aviv University (to Prof. S.G. Shoham).
1996 to 1999
Financial consultant to leading businesses in Macedonia, Russia and the
Czech Republic.
Economic commentator in " Nova Makedonija ", " Dnevnik ", "Makedonija
Denes", "Izvestia", "Argumenti i Fakti", "The Middle East Times", " The New
Presence ", " Central Europe Review ", and other periodicals, and in the
economic programs on various channels of Macedonian Television.
Chief Lecturer in Macedonia in courses organized by the Agency of
Privatization, by the Stock Exchange, and by the Ministry of Trade.
1999 to 2002
Economic Advisor to the Government of the Republic of Macedonia and to
the Ministry of Finance.
2001 to 2003
Senior Business Correspondent for United Press International (UPI) .
Web and Journalistic Activities
Author of extensive Web sites in:
- Psychology ( "Malignant Self Love" ) - An Open Directory Cool Site ,
- Philosophy ( "Philosophical Musings" ),
- Economics and Geopolitics ( "World in Conflict and Transition" ).
Owner of the Narcissistic Abuse Study List and the Abusive Relationships
Newsletter (more than 6000 members).
Owner of the Economies in Conflict and Transition Study List , the Toxic
Relationships Study List , and the Link and Factoid Study List .
Editor of mental health disorders and Central and Eastern Europe categories
in various Web directories ( Open Directory , Search Europe , Mentalhelp.net ).
174
Editor of the Personality Disorders , Narcissistic Personality Disorder , the
Verbal and Emotional Abuse , and the Spousal (Domestic) Abuse and
Violence topics on Suite 101 and Bellaonline .
Columnist and commentator in "The New Presence", United Press
International (UPI) , InternetContent, eBookWeb, PopMatters , " Global
Politician ", eBookNet , and " Central Europe Review ".
Publications and Awards
"Managing Investment Portfolios in States of Uncertainty", Limon
Publishers, Tel-Aviv, 1988
"The Gambling Industry", Limon Publishers, Tel-Aviv, 1990
" Requesting My Loved One - Short Stories ", Yedioth Aharonot, Tel-Aviv,
1997
" The Suffering of Being Kafka " (electronic book of Hebrew and English
Short Fiction), Prague and Skopje, 1998-2004
"The Macedonian Economy at a Crossroads - On the Way to a Healthier
Economy" (dialogues with Nikola Gruevski ), Skopje, 1998
" The Exporters' Pocketbook ", Ministry of Trade, Republic of Macedonia,
Skopje, 1999
" Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited ", Narcissus Publications,
Prague and Skopje, 1999-2007
The Narcissism Series (e-books regarding relationships with abusive
narcissists), Skopje, 1999-2007
" After the Rain - How the West Lost the East ", Narcissus Publications in
association with Central Europe Review/CEENMI , Prague and Skopje, 2000
Winner of numerous awards, among them Israel's Council of Culture and Art
Prize for Maiden Prose (1997), The Rotary Club Award for Social Studies
(1976), and the Bilateral Relations Studies Award of the American Embassy
in Israel (1978).
Hundreds of professional articles in all fields of finances and the economy,
and numerous articles dealing with geopolitical and political economic issues
published in both print and Web periodicals in many countries.
Many appearances in the electronic media on subjects in philosophy and the
sciences, and concerning economic matters.
175
Write to Me:
palma@unet.com.mk
narcissisticabuse-owner@yahoogroups.com
My Web Sites:
Economy/Politics: http://ceeandbalkan.tripod.com/
Psychology: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/
Philosophy: http://philosophos.tripod.com/
Poetry: http://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
Fiction: http://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html
176
Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Bullied? Victimized?
Afraid? Confused? Need HELP? DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Had a Narcissistic Parent?
Married to a Narcissist - or Divorcing One?
Afraid your children will turn out the same?
Want to cope with this pernicious, baffling condition?
OR
Are You a Narcissist - or suspect that You are one. . .
This book will teach you how to...
Cope, Survive, and Protect Your Loved Ones!
You should read...
"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
The EIGHTH, REVISED PRINTING (January 2007) is now available!
Seven additional e-books, All NEW Editions, JUST RELEASED!!!
Malignant Self Love, Toxic Relationships,
Pathological Narcissism, Coping with Divorce,
The Narcissist and Psychopath in the Workplace - and MORE! ! !
Click on this link to purchase the PRINT BOOK and/or
the EIGHT E-BOOKS
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
NEW OFFER Sell my books and earn commissions!
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.eom/thebook.html#affiliate
177
Sam Vaknin published the EIGHTH, REVISED IMPRESSION of his book
about relationships with abusive narcissists, "Malignant Self Love -
Narcissism Revisited".
The book deals with the Narcissistic Personality Disorder and its effects on
the narcissist and his nearest and dearest - in 102 frequently asked questions
and two essays - a total of 600 pages!
Print Edition from BARNES AND NOBLE and AMAZON
Barnes and Noble - "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
EIGHTH, Revised, Impression (January 2007)
ON SALE starting at $40.45 ! ! !
INSTEAD OF the publisher's list price of $54.95 (including shipping and
handling)!!!
That's more than $14 off the publisher's list price!!!!
Click on this link to purchase the paper edition:
http://bamesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=8023833847
"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" is now available from
Amazon Canada - Click on this link:
http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/tg/detail/offer-listing/-/8023833847/new/
And from Amazon.com - Click on this link:
http://www.amazon.eom/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/8023833847/
"After the Rain - How the West Lost the East" - Click on this link:
http://barnesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=802385173X
Print Edition from the PUBLISHER
The previous revised impression of Sam Vaknin's "Malignant Self - Love -
Narcissism Revisited".
178
Comes with an exclusive BONUS PACK (not available through Barnes and
Noble or Amazon).
Contains the entire text: essays, frequently asked questions and appendices
regarding pathological narcissism and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder
(NPD).
The publisher charges the full list price - but throws into the bargain a bonus
pack with hundreds of additional pages.
Click on this link:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam MSL
Free excerpts from the EIGHTH, Revised Impression of "Malignant Self
Love - Narcissism Revisited" are available as well as a free NEW
EDITION of the Narcissism Book of Quotes
Click on this link to download the files:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/freebooks.html
"After the Rain - How the West Lost the East"
The history, cultures, societies, and economies of countries in transition in the
Balkans.
Click on this link to purchase this print book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam ATR
Electronic Books (e-books) from the Publisher
An electronic book is a computer file, sent to you as an attachment to an e-mail
message. Just save it to your hard disk and click on the file to open, read, and learn!
1 . "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
Eighth, Revised Edition (January 2007)
The e-book version of Sam Vaknin's "Malignant Self - Love - Narcissism
Revisited". Contains the entire text: essays, frequently asked questions
(FAQs) and appendices regarding pathological narcissism and the Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD).
179
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam MSL-EBOOK
2. "The Narcissism Series"
Eighth, Revised Edition (January 2007)
EIGHT e-books (more than 2500 pages), including the full text of "Malignant
Self Love - Narcissism Revisited", regarding Pathological Narcissism,
relationships with abusive narcissists and psychopaths, and the Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD).
Click on this link to purchase the EIGHT e-books:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam SERIES
3. "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath"
Fourth Edition (February 2006)
How to identify abuse, cope with it, survive it, and deal with your abuser and
with the system in divorce and custody issues.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam ABUSE
4. "The Narcissist and Psychopath in the Workplace"
(September 2006)
Identify abusers, bullies, and stalkers in the workplace (bosses, colleagues,
suppliers, and authority figures) and learn how to cope with them effectively.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam WORKPLACE
5. "Abusive Relationships Workbook" (February 2006)
Self-assessment questionnaires, tips, and tests for victims of abusers,
batterers, and stalkers in various types of relationships.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi7vaksam WORKBOOK
6. "Pathological Narcissism FAQs"
180
Eighth, Revised Edition (January 2007)
Dozens of Frequently Asked Questions regarding Pathological Narcissism,
relationships with abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality
Disorder.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cei-local/cart.cgi7vaksam FAQS
7. "The World of the Narcissist"
Eighth, Revised Edition (January 2007)
A book-length psychodynamic study of pathological narcissism, relationships
with abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder, using a
new vocabulary.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cei-local/cart.cei7vaksam ESSAY
8. "Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List"
Hundreds of excerpts from the archives of the Narcissistic Abuse Study List
regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with abusive narcissists, and
the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cei7vaksam EXCERPTS
9. "Diary of a Narcissist" (November 2005)
The anatomy of one man's mental illness - its origins, its unfolding, its
outcomes.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cei7vaksam JOURNAL
10. "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East"
The history, cultures, societies, and economies of countries in transition in the
Balkans.
Click on this link to purchase the e-book:
http://www.ccnow.com/cei-local/cart.cei7vaksam ATR-EBOOK
181
Download Free Electronic Books
Click on this link:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/freebooks.html
More about the Books and Additional Resources
The Eighth, Revised Impression (January 2007) of the Print Edition of
"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" includes:
• The full text of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"
• The full text of 102 Frequently Asked Questions and Answers
• Covering all the dimensions of Pathological Narcissism and Abuse in
Relationships
• An Essay - The Narcissist's point of view
• Bibliography
• 600 printed pages in a quality paper book
• Digital Bonus Pack! (available only when you purchase the previous edition
from the Publisher) - Bibliography, three e-books, additional FAQs,
appendices and more - hundreds of additional pages!
Testimonials and Additional Resources
You can read Readers' Reviews at the Barnes and Noble Web page dedicated
to "Malignant Self Love" - HERE:
http://bamesandnoble.bfast.com/booklink/click?ISBN=8023833847
Dozens of Links and Resources
Click on these links:
The Narcissistic Abuse Study List
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse
The Toxic Relationships Study List
182
http://eroups.vahoo.com/group/toxicrelationships
Abusive Relationships Newsletter
http://groups.google.eom/.group/narcissisticabuse
Participate in Discussions about Abusive Relationships
http://personalitvdisorders.suitel01.com/discussions.cfm
http://groups.vahoo.com/group/Narcissistic Personality Disorder
http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER
Links to Therapist Directories, Psychological Tests, NPD Resources,
Support Groups for Narcissists and Their Victims, and Tutorials
http://www.suitel01.com/links.cfm/npd
Support Groups for Victims of Narcissists and Narcissists
http://dmoz.org/Health/Mental Health/Disorders/Personality/Narcissistic
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/freebooks.html
BE WELL, SAFE AND WARM WHEREVER YOU ARE!
Sam Vaknin
183
Malignant Self Love
Narcissism Revisited
The Book
"Narcissists live in a state of constant rage, repressed aggression, envy and
hatred. They firmly believe that everyone is like them. As a result, they are
paranoid, aggressive, haughty and erratic. Narcissists are forever in pursuit
of Narcissistic Supply.
They know no past or future, are not constrained by any behavioural
consistency, 'rules' of conduct or moral considerations. You signal to a
narcissist that you are a willing source - and he is bound to extract his
supply from you.
This is a reflex.
He would have reacted absolutely the same to any other source. If what is
needed to obtain supply from you is intimations of intimacy — he will supply
them liberally. "
This book is comprised of two parts.
The first part contains 102 Frequently Asked Questions related to the various
aspects of pathological narcissism, relationships with abusive narcissists, and
the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).
The second part is an exposition of the various psychodynamic theories
regarding pathological narcissism and a proposed new vocabulary.
The Author
Sam Vaknin was born in Israel in 1961. A financial consultant and columnist,
he lived (and published) in 12 countries. He is a published and awarded
author of short fiction and reference and an editor of mental health categories
in various Web directories. This is his twelfth book.
184
Live Music Archive
Librivox Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Internet Arcade
Console Living Room
Books to Borrow
Open Library
TV News
Understanding 9/11