Narcissism, Malignant Narcissism, and Paranoia: Part III

I have described in my earlier posts in this series how healthy narcissism develops and showed how it supplies the person with a deep seated conviction that he can be an effective agent in obtaining what he needs from the external world, that he has intrinsic value to himself and others, and that he has a reasonable expectation of a life lived close to his ego ideal.  Such a person has inherent resiliency for the vicissitudes of life and is able to withstand setbacks and failures that all of us must face from time to time.

When a child grows up with a mother who is poorly able to offer her child unconditional love and an adequate, empathic mirror (which a the child needs in order to make sense of his own inchoate affective states and experiences and develop a stable image of himself) it makes it extremely difficult for him to develop an image of himself as a person who has anything of value within himself.

A depressed mother, a deprived mother, an immature mother, a drug addicted mother, or a narcissistic mother, (not an exhaustive list) typically has a limited ability to respond to the needs of her child because her needs remain primary. (I do not mean to imply that any child born to a depressed mother, or a substance abusing mother, is doomed.  The complex interplay between the child’s inherent disposition and constitution and the quality of his nurturing, from parents, siblings, and other significant people, will ultimately determine his psychological status; to paraphrase Richard Feynman in another context, character development is non-computational.)

The damaged child must find ways to compensate or he will be unable to thrive. He may develop a narcissistic or sociopathic self representation. In our current cultural condition, this can be seen in the aggrandizement of the "gangsta". Rap music uses this image, of the tough thug who no one can touch, as a way to use the external world to support a self image that protects them from the weakness, humiliations, and depression that would affect anyone who feels of little worth; their bravado suggests to some that they have high self-esteem (in fact, many felons have high levels of self esteem as measured by superficial questionnaires) but their language and behavior reveals their sense of themselves as having less intrinsic value. Anyone who needs to demand respect, rather than earn respect, has some fundamental doubts about whether he deserves respect. As an aside, while I do not especially like Rap music, I do not think it is dangerous for the majority of children who grow up in secure, loving environments; for them, being a “gangsta” is a pose, often a provocative one, and usually an ironic one, but it doesn't keep them from doing their work, behaving well toward others, etc. In a more damaged child in a dysfunctional family and environment, the "gangsta", (along with the pimps, hos, and bitches glorified in the music) is more likely to become part of their self representation and ego ideal (who they are and who they want to be), making it much harder to manage their self esteem and function in society. If the community glorifies Rappers who project these self images, it leaves such children with very little to balance against it. This problem has long been ignored but recently people like Bill Cosby has begun to speak out on the subject which is an optimistic sign.

One of the outcomes of this kind of family and environmental (emotional) impoverishment is that such children grow up with minimal reserves of self esteem. They don't feel valued and the need to fend off despair requires them to find ways for the environment (the other) to support their self esteem. Other people become important props who can buttress or threaten their self esteem. (Think again of the “gangsta” who "demands" respect; if he is feared and respected, he is powerful and safe; once the fear is gone, he trembles. We see this at work on a larger scale in Afghanistan, the Ukraine, Iraq, now Lebanon and Syria, perhaps Egypt and Saudi Arabia; once the people are no longer afraid of the tyrants, the system can not long be maintained.) Other people are not related to as independent people (objects or selves, in analytic terms) who have their own desires and emotional lives, but as "need satisfying objects" whose sole purpose is to enhance the self esteem of the damaged one. In mild forms, this can lead to people who literally cannot conceive of another person's mind working differently from their own. We all know people who insist that “everyone cheats”; since they cheat (and justify their cheating by rationalizing that everyone else does it, too) they cannot believe that you might not cheat, if faced with the opportunity. 

In more severe cases, the existence of the other person’s mind and life is simply of no consequence.  For the Malignant Narcissist, other people are mere props in the pageantry of their lives.  A tyrant can throw someone into a shredding machine without a second thought because the victim only matters in relation to how he can support the grandiosity of the tyrant; beyond that, he is faceless, nameless, worthless.  It was no accident that Saddam Hussein was surrounded by sycophants who all grew mustaches to look just like him.

As might be apparent from the descriptions of narcissism, the attitude of the other is extremely important (narcissists are very sensitive to slights from others and almost anything that is not supportive is felt as criticism or attack  One can see how, as you move down the spectrum from the healthy narcissist who has a concern and regard for the best wishes of others, to the more pathological narcissist who is intensely needful of being aggrandized, to the malignant narcissist who demands obeisance just as he can not trust anyone to really think well of him, you are moving down a spectrum from sensitivity to paranoia. 

Further complicating the situation is that the Narcissistic Character is extraordinarily sensitive to humiliation and equally intolerant of it. 

What remains in this series is to explore how and why this can become dangerous for our body politic.