Object Constancy Narcissists often carry on talking (rather, lecturing) long after their interlocutors - bored stiff and resentful - have physically departed or mentally switched off. They are shocked to discover that they have been conversing with thin air for awhile. They are equally astounded when they are abandoned or shunned by spouses, friends, colleagues, the media, their fans, or audiences. The root of this recurrent astonishment is the narcissist's perverse object constancy. According to the great developmental psychologist, Margaret Mahler, between the ages of 24 and 36 months of life, the infant is finally able to cope with the mother's absence (by finding appropriate substitutes to her presence). It knows that she will return and trusts her to do so time and again. The psychic image of the mother is internalized as a stable, reliable, and predictable object. As the infant's sense of time and verbal skills evolve, it becomes more immune to delayed gratifica...
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This is one of the BEST articles on NPD that I have used most extensively over the years. NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER http://www.unr.edu/cla/polisci/famaria_hsia_chang.htm By Dr. Maria Hsia Chang, Professor, Political Science, University of Nevada , Reno mariac@unr.nevada.edu In psychology, personality disorders refer to individual traits that reflect ingrained, inflexible, and maladaptive patterns of behavior that cause discomfort and impair a person’s ability to function--including her relations with friends and family. At least ten distinct personality disorders have been identified, one of which is the narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) that the American Psychological Association (APA) classifies as a “cluster B” disorder. NPD is a highly complex psychological - behavioral syndrome that confounds and baffles those close to the afflicted. Once understood, however, one achieves clarity of vision. Socio-biologists maintain that narcissism is natural f...
Masochistic Avoidant Solution – Embracing the Victim Role The narcissist is always angered by the lack of an adequate narcissistic supply that he has depended on in his life thus far until threatened. His masochistic N will direct some of this fury inward, punishing himself for his "failure". This masochistic behavior has the added "benefit" of forcing the narcissist's closest relationship to assume the role 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 fate. Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeat...
Grandiose Self Unrealistic ideas of one’s superiority, uniqueness, invulnerability, phantasms of outstanding success, power, and self-aggrandizement, insatiable cravings for attention, approval, admiration, love, over-ambitiousness, with unrealistic high goals, and schemes, intolerance of imperfection, feelings of entitlement, expectation of special favors, negative, hostile, haughty, pretentious, self-centered, boastful in interpersonal relationships. The effort of the child to be perfect and thereby, given “good enough” parents to gain their approval and affirmation of the child’s self- worth and value. A pathological grandiose self develops in the face of parental empathic failure. Simply a carry over from infancy that one is the center of the universe that everyone and everything exist only to serve the needs of the Narcissist. This is expressed through the merger transference . This is when others are merged with and used as tools or mac...
Another clear and concise Article, that I have found useful over the years on understanding those that are still essentially developmentally arrested, immature, lack enough self-awareness to self- regulate in a healthy mature adult manner, unable to move forward, instead driven more my completely unconscious urges, otherwise known as sins, unresolved, always paralysed in ambivalence from past traumas and memories. Review any profile of the characteristics of Satan and it fit with these individuals. That is why they are unauthentic, duplicitous, fabricators, pretenders who are master manipulators and exploitive of others. They are habitual liars, Living a Life of Lies in a False Self, stumbling around blind and ignorant, always addicted to something, power and control for sure and all the evils of destruction and violence towards others and themselves. Self-integrity, Holism, Authenticity, Individualism, and "To Be"....... are bu...