A narcissist would tend to display the sadistic aspect of his personality in one of two cases: That the very acts of sadism generate Narcissistic Supply to be consumed by the narcissist ("I inflict pain, therefore I am superior and omnipotent"), or That the victims of his sadism are still his only or major Sources of Narcissistic Supply but are perceived by him to be intentionally frustrating and withholding. Sadistic acts are his way of punishing them for not being docile, obedient, admiring and adoring as he expects them to be in view of his uniqueness, cosmic significance, and special entitlement.
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I am describing is a state of omnipotent self-sufficiency; the belief that one does not need anything from others , which is an illusion that may paradoxically deny an extreme dependency. Such people may not be able to freely give or receive affection; they may be truly isolated within their fortress so that they neither hear nor receive anything from the outside. Some of my patients describe themselves as being encased in a plastic bubble, a mummy case, or, as Sylvia Plath perceived it, a bell jar. As one penetrates further into this phenomenology, one learns that the illusion of self- sufficiency is reinforced by a magical belief that they occupy a protected sphere, removed from the dangers of the world, removed from the possibility of death, disease, and misfortune, that they are not "really in the world". In this sense they have achieved an illusion of invulnerability; they cannot be surprised, influenced, or controlled. The critic Lionel Trilling,...
The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment Published on March 21, 2010 If you are confused about your own people pleasing tendencies, need for external approval, and even your own feelings, I suggest you read The Narcissistic Family: Diagnosis and Treatment by Stephanie Donaldson-Pressman and Robert M. Pressman. In their work as therapists, the authors discovered an unusual trend - patients with traits similar to adult children of alcoholics, but no evidence that their parents were substance abusers. Moreover, many of the patients did not recall any overt abuse as children. So why then were these patients exhibiting the dysfunctional psychological, interpersonal, and work traits of abuse survivors? The answer was a different type of dysfunctional family. Coined by the authors as the narcissistic family , what these patients all had in common was that as children, the needs of their parents took precedence over their ne...
The dynamics of narcissism Narcissism and its pathologies are commonly tackled by the application of the various psychodynamic models. The mother-child bond According to these models, parents ("Primary Objects") and, more specifically, mothers are the first agents of socialization. It is through his mother that the child explores the most important questions, the answers to which will shape his entire life . How loved one is, how lovable, how independent can one become, how guilty one should feel for wanting to become autonomous, how predictable is the world, how much abuse should one expect in life and so on. The mother, to the infant, is not only an object of dependence (survival is at stake), love and adoration. It is a representation of the Universe itself. It is through her that the child first exercises his senses: the tactile, the olfactory, and the visual. Later on, she is the subject of his nascent sexual cravings (if the child is a male) - a diffuse se...
Narcissus , the Greek hero after whom narcissism is named, became obsessed with his own reflection. The term narcissism was first used in relation to human psychology by Sigmund Freud after the figure of Narcissus in Greek mythology (right). Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo . As a punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away and changed into the flower that bears his name, the narcissus . Psychoanalysis teaches that we are all narcissistic at an early stage of our lives. As infants and toddlers we all feel that we are the center of the universe, the most important, omnipotent and omniscient of beings (even though we may also feel that all or other people share our omnipotence). At that phase of our development, we perceive our parents as mythical figures, immortal and awesomely powerful, but existing solely to cater to our n...
Narcissism and the Dynamics of Evil D. McManaman The first step to appreciating the subtleties of evil is to begin at the most basic level of philosophical inquiry, the philosophy of being. Evil, as St. Augustine pointed out centuries ago, is not a positive quality or a substance, but a privation or corruption of being. This implies that "good" is a property of being. Whatever is, is good insofar as it is. When we speak of good food, for example, we mean much more than that it simply tastes good. We mean that is good for us. Such food promotes the fullness of our being. Food that is bad for us brings about a corruption or deficiency of health. Aristotle wrote that the good is that which all things desire.[1] This, despite appearances, is congruent with the notion that the "good" is fullness of being; for all things desire first and foremost their own perfection, that is, all things desire "to be" and "to be" most ful...