Article Type : Review Article
Authors : Sam Vaknin
Keywords : Narcissistic mortification; Personality disorder; Mental health
All mental health issues arise from confusing external and
internal objects (examples: that psychosis, narcissism). I suggest that there
is a single clinical entity Personality Disorder with overlays (narcissistic,
antisocial, borderline, histrionic).
Each overlay has 3
states: overt, collapsed, covert.
Transition between the
states and the overlays is a reaction to gaps (reality intrusion or failure)
and narcissistic mortification.
Covert states aspire to
become overt.
Covert states are not
self-efficacious. They fail to secure:
·
Narcissistic
Supply (NPD)
·
Goals (AsPD)
·
Sex Partners
(HPD)
·
Relationships/intimacy
(BPD)
Transition from overt to
covert and back via collapse and mortification.
The Inverted Narcissist
is a co-dependent who depends exclusively on narcissists
(narcissist-co-dependent). If you are living with a narcissist, have a
relationship with one, if you are married to one, if you are working with a
narcissist, etc. – it does NOT mean that you are an inverted narcissist.
To "qualify" as
an inverted narcissist, you must CRAVE to be in a relationship with a
narcissist, regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him/her. You must
ACTIVELY seek relationships with narcissists and ONLY with narcissists, no
matter what your (bitter and traumatic) past experience has been. You must feel
EMPTY and UNHAPPY in relationships with ANY OTHER kind of person. Only then,
and if you satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of a Dependent Personality
Disorder, can you be safely labelled an "inverted narcissist".
Not all covert
narcissists are inverted narcissists. But all inverted narcissists are covert
(“shy”, “fragile”) narcissists. They are self-centred, sensitive, vulnerable,
and defensive, or hostile, and paranoid. They harbour grandiose fantasies and
have a strong sense of entitlement. They tend to exploit other, albeit
stealthily and subtly. Covert narcissists are aware of their innate limitations
and shortcomings and, therefore, constantly fret and stress over their
inability to fulfil their unrealistic dreams and expectations. They avoid
recognition, competition, and the limelight for fear of being exposed as frauds
or failures. They are ostentatiously modest.
Covert narcissists often
feel guilty over and ashamed of their socially-impermissible aggressive urges
and desires. Consequently, they are shy and unassertive and intensely
self-critical (perfectionist). This inner conflict between an overwhelming
sense of worthlessness and a grandiose False Self results in mood and anxiety
disorders. They team up with classic narcissists (see below), but, in secret,
resent and envy them.
Contrary to
misinformation spread by "experts" online, covert narcissists are not
cunning and manipulative. Classic narcissists are: they often disguise their
true nature effectively, knowingly, and intentionally. They are persistent
actors with great thespian skills. Not so the covert narcissist: he suppresses
his true nature because he lacks the confidence to assert it. His is not a
premeditated choice: can't help but shy away. The covert narcissist is his own
worst critic. Lidija Rangelovska suggests that covert narcissism may develop
late in life (during adolescence or even early adulthood) as a reaction to abuse
by peers or to social rejection.
Inverted narcissism may
be the outcome of arrested narcissistic development: the formation of the False
Self is disrupted and incomplete and the inverted narcissist is forced to
resort to and depend upon the False Self of another narcissist (her partner) in
order to regulate her sense of self-worth.
Compare the classic narcissist to the covert narcissist is this table [1-11]:
Arrogant/Overt |
Shy/Covert |
|
Self-Concept |
Grandiosity; preoccupation with fantasies
of outstanding success; undue sense of uniqueness; feelings of entitlement;
seeming self-sufficiency |
Inferiority; morose self-doubts; marked
propensity toward feeling ashamed; fragility; relentless search for glory and
power; marked sensitivity to criticism and realistic setbacks |
Interpersonal
Relationships |
Numerous but shallow relationships;
intense need for tribute from others; scorn for others, often masked by
pseudohumility; lack of empathy; inability to genuinely participate in group activities;
valuing of children over spouse in family life |
Inability to genuinely depend on others
and trust them; chronic envy of others talents, possessions, and capacity for
deep object relations; lack of regard for generational boundaries; disregard
for others time;
refusal to answer letters |
Social Adaptation |
Socially charming; often successful;
consistent hard work done mainly to seek admiration (pseudo- sublimation);
intense ambition; preoccupation with appearances |
Nagging aimlessness; shallow vocational
commitment; dilettante-like attitude; multiple but superficial interests;
chronic boredom; aesthetic taste often ill-informed and imitative |
Ethics, Standards, and
Ideals |
Caricatured modesty; pretended contempt
for money in real life; idiosyncratically and unevenly moral; apparent
enthusiasm for sociopolitical affairs |
Readiness to shift values to gain
favor; pathological lying; materialistic lifestyle; delinquent tendencies;
inordinate ethnic and moral relativism; irreverence toward authority |
Love and Sexuality |
Marital instability; cold and greedy
seductiveness; extramarital affairs and promiscuity; uninhibited sexual life |
Inability to remain in love; impaired
capacity for viewing the romantic partner as a separate individual with his
or her own interests, rights, and values; inability to genuinely comprehend
the incest taboo; occasional sexual perversions |
Cognitive Style |
Impressively knowledgeable; decisive and
opinionated; often strikingly articulate; egocentric perception of reality;
love of language; fondness for shortcuts to acquisition of knowledge |
Knowledge often limited to trivia
(headline intelligence); forgetful of details, especially names; impaired in
the capacity for learning new skills; tendency to change meanings of reality
when facing a threat to self-esteem; language and speaking used for
regulating self-esteem |
As Horney pointed out, the child is dehumanized and
instrumentalized. His parents love him not for what he really is - but for what
they wish and imagine him to be: the fulfillment of their dreams and frustrated
wishes. The child becomes the vessel of his parents' discontented lives, a
tool, the magic brush with which they can transform their failures into
successes, their humiliation into victory, their frustrations into happiness.
The child is taught to ignore reality and to occupy the parental fantastic space.
Such an unfortunate child feels omnipotent and omniscient, perfect and
brilliant, worthy of adoration and entitled to special treatment. The faculties
that are honed by constantly brushing against bruising reality - empathy,
compassion, a realistic assessment of one's abilities and limitations,
realistic expectations of oneself and of others, personal boundaries, team
work, social skills, perseverance and goal-orientation, not to mention the
ability to postpone gratification and to work hard to achieve it - are all
lacking or missing altogether. The child turned adult sees no reason to invest
in his skills and education, convinced that his inherent genius should suffice.
He feels entitled for merely being, rather than for actually doing (rather as the
nobility in days gone by felt entitled not by virtue of its merit but as the
inevitable, foreordained outcome of its birth right). In other words, he is not
meritocratic - but aristocratic. In short: a narcissist is born.
But such a mental structure is brittle, susceptible to
criticism and disagreement, vulnerable to the incessant encounter with a harsh
and intolerant world. Deep inside, narcissists of both kinds (those wrought by
"classic" abuse and those yielded by being idolized) - feel inadequate,
phony, fake, inferior, and deserving of punishment. This is Millon's mistake.
He makes a distinction between several types of narcissists. He wrongly assumes
that the "classic" narcissist is the outcome of overvaluation,
idolization, and spoiling and, thus, is possessed of supreme, unchallenged,
self-confidence, and is devoid of all self-doubt. According to Millon, it is
the "compensatory" narcissist that falls prey to nagging self-doubts,
feelings of inferiority, and a masochistic desire for self-punishment. Yet, the
distinction is both wrong and unnecessary. There is only ONE type of narcissist
- though there are TWO developmental paths to it. And ALL narcissists are
besieged by deeply ingrained (though at times not conscious) feelings of
inadequacy, fears of failure, masochistic desires to be penalized, a
fluctuating sense of self-worth (regulated by Narcissistic Supply), and an
overwhelming sensation of fakeness.
The Grandiosity Gap (between a fantastically grandiose
- and unlimited - self-image and actual - limited - accomplishments and
achievements) is grating. Its recurrence threatens the precariously balanced
house of cards that is the narcissistic personality. The narcissist finds, to
his chagrin, that people out there are much less admiring, accommodating and
accepting than his parents. As he grows old, the narcissist often become the
target of constant derision and mockery, a sorry sight indeed. His claims for
superiority appear less plausible and substantial the more and the longer he
makes them.
Pathological narcissism - originally a defense
mechanism intended to shield the narcissist from an injurious world - becomes
the main source of hurt, a generator of injuries, counterproductive and
dangerous. Overwhelmed by negative or absent Narcissistic Supply, the
narcissist is forced to let go of it.
The narcissist then resorts to self-delusion. Unable
to completely ignore contrarian opinion and data - he transmutes them. Unable
to face the dismal failure that he is, the narcissist partially withdraws from
reality. To soothe and salve the pain of disillusionment, he administers to his
aching soul a mixture of lies, distortions, half-truths and outlandish
interpretations of events around him. These solutions can be classified thus:
The
delusional narrative solution
The narcissist constructs a narrative in which he
figures as the hero - brilliant, perfect, irresistibly handsome, destined for
great things, entitled, powerful, wealthy, the centre of attention, etc. The
bigger the strain on this delusional charade - the greater the gap between
fantasy and reality - the more the delusion coalesces and solidifies.
Finally, if it is sufficiently protracted, it replaces
reality and the narcissist's reality test deteriorates. He withdraws his
bridges and may become schizotypal, catatonic, or schizoid.
The
antisocial solution
The narcissist renounces reality. To his mind, those
who pusillanimously fail to recognize his unbound talents, innate superiority,
overarching brilliance, benevolent nature, entitlement, cosmically important
mission, perfection, etc. - do not deserve consideration. The narcissist's
natural affinity with the criminal - his lack of empathy and compassion, his
deficient social skills, his disregard for social laws and morals - now erupt
and blossom. He becomes a full fledged antisocial (sociopath or psychopath). He
ignores the wishes and needs of others, he breaks the law, he violates all
rights - natural and legal, he holds people in contempt and disdain, he derides
society and its codes, he punishes the ignorant ingrates - that, to his mind,
drove him to this state - by acting criminally and by jeopardizing their
safety, lives, or property.
The
Paranoid schizoid solution
When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the
narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which
place him at the center of others' allegedly malign attention. The narcissist
becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own, sometimes exclusive,
source of narcissistic supply.
The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He
perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to
ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into
his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the centre
of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate
him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine
him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to
action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him,
change his mind, part with his values, victimize or even murder him, and so on.
Some narcissists withdraw completely from a world
populated with such minacious and ominous objects (really projections of
internal objects and processes). They avoid all social contact, except the most
necessary. They refrain from meeting people, falling in love, having sex,
talking to others, or even corresponding with them. In short: they become
schizoids - not out of social shyness, but out of what they feel to be their
choice. "This evil, hopeless world does not deserve me" - goes the
inner refrain - "and I shall waste none of my time and resources on
it."
The
paranoid aggressive (explosive) solution
Other narcissists who develop persecutory delusions,
resort to an aggressive stance, a more violent resolution of their internal
conflict. They become verbally, psychologically, situationally (and, very
rarely, physically) abusive. They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean,
and deride their nearest and dearest (often well wishers and loved ones). They
explode in unprovoked displays of indignation, righteousness, condemnation, and
blame. Theirs is an exegetic Bedlam. They interpret everything - even the most
innocuous, inadvertent, and innocent comment - as designed to provoke and
humiliate them. They sow fear, revulsion, hate, and malignant envy. They flail
against the windmills of reality - a pathetic, forlorn, sight. But often they
cause real and lasting damage - fortunately, mainly to themselves.
The
masochistic avoidant solution
The narcissist is angered by the lack of narcissistic
supply. He directs some of this fury inwards, punishing himself for his
"failure". This masochistic behavior has the added
"benefit" of forcing the narcissist's closest to assume the roles of
dismayed spectators or of persecutors and thus, either way, to pay him the
attention that he craves.
Self-administered punishment often manifests as
self-handicapping masochism - a narcissistic cop-out. By undermining his work,
his relationships, and his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissist avoids
additional criticism and censure (negative supply). Self-inflicted failure is
the narcissist's doing and thus proves that he is the master of his own fate.
Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in
self-defeating circumstances which render success impossible - and "an
objective assessment of their performance improbable" (Millon,
2000). They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued,
bored, or disaffected and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their
suffering is defiant and by "deciding to abort" they reassert their
omnipotence.
The narcissist's pronounced and public misery and
self-pity are compensatory and "reinforce (his) self-esteem against
overwhelming convictions of worthlessness" (Millon, 2000). His
tribulations and anguish render him, in his eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous,
righteous, resilient, and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated
narcissistic supply.
Thus, paradoxically, the worst his anguish and
unhappiness, the more relieved and elated such a narcissist feels! [12-27].
Collapse leads to mortification and disables the False
Self. This immediately results in ostentatious indifference (“doormat”), no
enforced boundaries, extreme conflict aversion, and the amelioration or
reduction of dissonant anxiety. The Covert than embarks on reconstructing the
False Self via antisocial displays of defiant, impulsive, reckless, and callous
misconduct. Another round of collapse and mortification follow and the False
Self is restored.
The Covert than reverts to Overt NPD.
The collapsed histrionic is usually a woman with body
image (somatoform) issues and a low sense of self-worth. Yet, she still needs
men and uses them to regulate her flagging self-esteem and deficient
self-confidence. This creates a permanent dissonance and anticipatory anxiety
as such a woman expects fully to be rejected and humiliated by men.
Low self-esteem often leads to an impaired reality
test: the collapsed histrionic misreads environmental, social, and sexual cues
and often ends up being mocked, shunned, abused, or sexually assaulted by men.
She compensates for her insecurities with brazen defiance and grandiosity as
well as substance abuse, all of which compound her ability to properly gauge
reality
Her feelings of inferiority and inadequacy lead the
collapsed histrionic to social withdrawal and reclusiveness. She rarely dates
men and when she does, she aggresses against, pushes away, and abuses alpha
males, even when they are genuinely interested in her (“preemptive
abandonment”). Instead, the collapsed histrionic picks up "safe"
males: weak, ugly losers, who are very unlikely to painfully reject her.
Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) combines traits
of both Narcissistic and Antisocial (psychopathic) personality disorders. It,
therefore, stands to reason that these three cluster B ("dramatic")
stalwarts share the same etiology and psychodynamics.
Many histrionics ("attention whores") use
the opposite sex - their attention, infatuation, and arousal - to regulate
their emotions, moods, affect, and sense of self-worth (self-esteem and
self-confidence). Potential mates are their "histrionic supply".
Similarly, when roundly and resolutely rejected, collapsed histrionics react
with "histrionic rage". They resort to in your face defiance, often
by triangulating with a third person in order to provoke jealousy or grievously
hurt the frustrating and rejecting object.
The histrionic's aggression is focused on restoring
his or her grandiosity via a new and ostentatious sexual conquest. But it can
and does wear many other, mostly passive-aggressive or reckless forms or
behaviors: compulsive shopping ("shopaholism"), gambling, lying,
sabotaging, procrastinating, substance abuse, verbal abuse, brutal honesty,
offensive humor and mockery, and so on.
When a woman with mental health issues is sexually or
otherwise rejected by her intimate partner she acts out in one of two typical
ways. This is especially true if the husband also justifies his sadistic
cruelty by adding abuse & overt humiliation to injury: "You are ugly,
you do not turn me on, you do not know how to be a woman, you are stupid &
repulsive, you are whorish, you do not understand my sexual & psychological
needs." The union then devolves into a power match. The personality
disordered (narcissistic, histrionic, borderline) woman seeks to obtain two
goals to redress her grievances & her sense of offended justice.
The first goal is to disprove her partner's evaluation
of her & restore her self-esteem & self-confidence by proving mainly to
herself how other men desire her. This she accomplished by becoming a flirtatious,
promiscuous & seductive cockteaser.
The second goal is to punish her (non) intimate
partner by rendering "his woman" (herself) a slut - or by
transmogrifying into a non-woman.
By sexually egregiously misbehaving with multiple men,
the rejected woman transforms herself into a "whore". This is her way
to penalize her abuser by devaluing & debasing herself (his
"property"). But some women choose the exact opposite solution: they
passive-aggressively stop being women altogether. In a way, they unconsciously
adopt the abuser's view of them as repellent & validate it. They neglect
their appearance, abandon their personal hygiene, dress in tattered &
shabby garb, put on no makeup, are physically inert, and neglect their duties -
including in business, childbearing & childrearing.
This is their way of defying their mean and nasty
partner: "You say that I am not a woman? Well, here you are, I stop being
one". These women eradicate their femininity & womanhood as a way of
getting back at their mistreating spouse.
The shy or quiet borderline internalizes her struggles rather than externalize them. She becomes the exclusive target of her own turmoil. She “acts in”. Both the classic and covert borderline (many of the latter are men) act out. Here is a table which compares the clinical features of the two subtypes. It is based on the schematic present by Arnold M. Cooper and S. Akhtar in 1989 for classic vs. cover narcissist.
|
Covert/Antisocial |
Classic/ Dysregulated |
Self-Concept And Emotional Regulation |
2. false self-grandiosity; 3. preoccupation with fantasies of outstanding
love; undue sense of uniqueness; feelings of entitlement; alloplastic
defenses; 4. internal locus of control; seeming self-sufficiency; 9. mood
lability; 10. emotional dysregulation and rationalization
or reactance and defiance, contumaciounsess; 12. low boredom threshold and tolerance; 14. externalizing-internalizing; 15. No suicidal ideation, aggression other-directed; 16. No self-mutilation, hypochondriasis,
addictive behaviors; 17. dissociative self-states, mainly: selective
attention, confabulation, repression or denial, primary psychopathic
protector |
1. identity diffusion; 2. inferiority; 3. morose self-doubts and ego-dystony or ego
discrepancy (“wrongness”), autoplastic defenses; 4. external locus of control; 5. marked propensity toward feeling ashamed,
guilty, or to blame; 6. fragility, vulnerability; 7. relentless search for safety and completion; 8. marked sensitivity to criticism and realistic
setbacks; 9. mood lability; 10. emotional dysregulation and numbing and
dysempathy; 11. alexithymia; 12. low frustration threshold and tolerance; 13. depression and anxiety; 14. internalizing-externalizing; 15. suicidal tendencies; 16. self-harm and substance abuse or
self-trashing (like egregious promiscuity) 17. dissociative self-states, mainly:
realization, depersonalization, or amnesia |
Interpersonal |
1. paranoid ideation; 2. numerous but shallow relationships; intense
need for love from others, people pleasing; lack of real empathy in primary
psychopathic phase; valuing of children over spouse in family life; 7. inability to genuinely participate in group
activities; 9. passive-aggressive, sullen, surly,
self-denying, behaviors; cunning and premeditated malevolence; 10. intermittent reinforcement; 11. scorn for others, often masked by
pseudohumility; 12, 17. histrionic attention seeking; 13. recklessness aimed at hurting or affecting
others; 14. sadistic-punitive or goal-oriented
triangulation; 15, 16. object inconstancy:
idealize-devalue-discard-revert or replace |
1. inability to genuinely depend on others and trust
them, hypervigilance; 2. instant or fake intimacy (sometimes in casual
sex) 3. abandonment anxiety (impostor syndrome); 4. engulfment anxiety and fear of intimacy; 5. rejection sensitivity; 6. effortful control; 7. chronic envy of others talents,
possessions, and capacity for deep object relations; 8. lack of regard for generational boundaries; 9. disregard for others’ time, limitations,
obligations, and resources (unreasonably demanding); 10. unpredictable, 11. explosive behavior; 12. impulsivity; 13. recklessness; 14. interpersonal triangulation; people pleasing; 15. approach-avoidance repetition compulsion and
preemptive abandonment; 16. object inconstancy; 17. drama queens |
Social |
2. Socially charming, charismatic; 3. consistent hard work done mainly to seek
admiration (pseudo- sublimation); 4. intense ambition; 5. often successful; 7. preoccupation with appearances |
1. nagging aimlessness; 2. social anxiety; 3. shallow vocational commitment; 4. dilettante-like attitude; 5. multiple but superficial interests; 6. chronic boredom; 7. aesthetic taste often ill-informed and
imitative |
Ethics, |
1. idiosyncratically and unevenly moral, caricatured
modesty, activism and apparent enthusiasm for sociopolitical affairs; 2. inordinate ethnic and moral relativism; 3. pretended contempt for money in real life,
feigned spirituality and “guru” status; 4. irreverence toward authority |
1. readiness to shift values to gain favor; 2. pathological lying; 3. materialistic lifestyle; 4. delinquent tendencies; |
Love |
1.
marital instability; 2. cold and greedy seductiveness; 3. extramarital affairs and promiscuity; 4. uninhibited sexual life |
1. inability to remain in love; 2. impaired capacity for viewing the romantic
partner as a separate individual with his or her own interests, rights, and
values; 3. inability to genuinely comprehend the incest
taboo; 4. occasional sexual perversions |
Cognitive |
1. dichotomous thinking; 2. splitting; 4. impressively knowledgeable; 5. egocentric perception of reality; 6. fondness for shortcuts to acquisition of
knowledge 7. decisive and opinionated; 8. love of language, often strikingly articulate;
|
1. dichotomous thinking; 2. splitting; 3. catastrophizing; 4. knowledge often limited to trivia (headline
intelligence); 5. forgetful of details, especially names; 6. impaired in the capacity for learning new
skills; 7. tendency to change meanings of reality when
facing a threat to self-esteem; 8. language and speaking used for regulating
self-esteem |
The Covert Antisocial or Psychopath is a composite of Covert
NPD+Classic BPD which together yield secondary psychopathy. This raises the
distinct possibility that AsPD is not clinical entity or diagnostic category
but a culture-bound, derivative comorbidity.
Borderline and Histrionic personality disorders may be
manifestations in females of secondary type psychopathy (as measured by Factor
2 of the PCL-R test). In other words: Borderline and Histrionic women may
actually be psychopaths. A growing body of recent studies supports this
startling conclusion. Survivors of CPTSD also manifest psychopathic and
narcissistic behaviors (overlay)
Intimate partners won't not surprised: impulsivity, defiant
grandiosity, antisocial and interpersonal aggression, manipulativeness,
dysregulated negative emotionality, lack of object constancy (object
impermanence), attachment dysfunctions, hostility, splitting (dichotomous
thinking), high levels of distress, anxiety, depression, and substance abuse
are all typical of and common among secondary psychopaths - and among
Borderlines. These women also defy gender roles and behavioral norms (act
masculine). But the Borderline adds a twist to this cocktail: dissociation.
Whenever stress levels and inner dissonance become intolerable, she hands over
control to her inner psychopath, depersonalizes, derealizes, or develops
amnesia.