Types of Narcissists - Excerpts Part 27

Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 27

1. Types of Narcissists
2. The Inverted Narcissist - A Masochist?
3. Love
4. It is not What You DO
5. You Know What You Have to DO
6. Presumptions
7. Humanizing the Beast

1. Types of Narcissists

There are a FEW TYPES of narcissist. Thus, there are narcissists who are predominantly sexual communicators and others who are predominantly transactional communicators (this taxonomy roughly corresponds to the "somatic" and the "cerebral" narcissists). The only difference between narcissists and normal people is that where the latter experience real emotions, the narcissist either IMITATES their behaviour or mistakes his addiction to narcissistic supply and to narcissistic accumulation - for the Real Thing, for LOVE. Narcissists do not and absolutely cannot love in any meaningful sense of the word. By the way, "falling in love" or infatuation should be distinguished from "loving". But the narcissist experiences neither.

2. The Inverted Narcissist - A Masochist?

The Inverted Narcissist (IN) is described in great detail in both FAQ 66 and in many of the Excerpts.

The IN is much closer to the co-dependent. The archives of the Narcissistic Abuse Study List contain a lot of material regarding this similarity. The archives address is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/narcissisticabuse/messages

Masochism is a whole different ballgame. Strictly speaking it is only of a sexual nature (as in sado-masochism). But I assume that you mean masochism not in the strict clinical sense but in the wider use of "seeking gratification through pain".

This is not the case with co-dependents or IN. The latter is a specific variant of codependent who derives gratification from a relationship with a narcissist or an anti-social personality disordered partner. But the gratification has nothing to do with the (very real) emotional (and, at times, physical) pain inflicted upon the IN.

Rather, in the case of the IN, the gratification has to do with shadows of the past re-awakened. In the narcissist, the IN feels that he found a lost parent. The IN seeks to re-enact old unresolved conflicts through the agency of the narcissist. There is a latent hope that this time, the IN will get it "right", that THIS emotional liaison or interaction will not end in bitter disappointment and lasting agony.

Yet, by choosing a narcissist, the IN ensures an identical outcome of the relationship. Why should one elect to FAIL in his or her relationships is a deep question. Partly, it is the comfort of familiarity bestowed upon the IN by repetition. It seems that the IN prefers predictability to emotional gratification and to personal development. There are also strong elements of self punishment and self destruction added to the combustible mix that is the dyad narcissist-inverted narcissist.

3. Love

If reciprocated - it is love.

If not reciprocated - it is a torment.

If you persist in loving someone even after he humiliates you, refuses you, rejects you - then you do not love him.

You objectify him. Your "loved one" becomes the object of your "love".

By ignoring HIS emotions, his statements, his preferences - you dehumanize him, you reduce him to little more than a trigger for your transferences and mental disorders.

Such "love" is a cruel, ugly, repulsive, and dehumanizing experience.

Because it ignores the "loved one" completely.

He/she does not exist but as a two dimensional notation.

This is narcissism at its worst: the abstraction of the other.

Never mind what the "loved one" says, it will not sway the "lover".

This proves that the "loved one" does not really exist, as far as the "lover" is concerned.

Because had he or she existed, the "lover" would have respected their fervent wish not to be loved, not to be imposed upon, not to become an instrument for the satisfaction of the "lover's" needs.

4. It is not What You DO

This is what you fail to understand:

It is not what you DO to a narcissist.

It is not what you SAY to a narcissist.

It is that you ARE.

Sufficient reason for abuse.

5. You Know What You Have to DO

You know what you have to do: get rid of him as fast as you can.

You are also aware of your inability to do so.

When we are unable to seek our own welfare and consent to being abused and threatened - we need help and should seek it.

This is not agape - this is masochism.

Read FAQ 66

6. Presumptions

I have been thinking a lot about my behaviour last night (my time).

I think it has to do with your presumptuousness which leads to my dehumanization.

I will try to explain:

You presume to be my friend, on intimate terms with me.

You presume to understand me.

You presume to understand me better than I understand myself.

You presume to "feel" me even at a distance of thousands of miles.

You presume to be able to predict my moves and my behaviour.

When I protest and tell you that you are wrong - you forgivingly smile as though you know better than to believe me.

You give me a cyber-wink.

You tell me that I am lying or cognitively defunct.

This is demeaning, humiliating and dehumanizing.

It is a continuation of past abuse I suffered, sugar-coated.

So, to summarize:

Don't dare decide for me.

Don't dare doubt my sincerity.

Take me at face value.

Or buzz off.

7. Humanizing the Beast

You are in the throes of a constant and panicky effort to humanize the beasts in your life, to appease and sign truces with the monsters that passed for humans in your biography.

And you wish to believe that it is only because you withheld from them the supreme sacrifice they demanded (you, your needs, your children) that you failed in transforming them from what they are to what they could have been.

People make the mistake of thinking that in my writings about narcissism (or geopolitics, or whatever) I represent a moral stance. Of course I am not.

Lacking empathy, I am a completely amoral person. I have no moral position.

I observe dispassionately and describe what I have observed indifferently. I am an entomologist observing the black widow, a historian documenting Auschwitz, a professor of medicine diagnosing a brain tumour. Needless to say that many historians, brain surgeons, and entomologists are possessed of moral stances - but, to me, this is a contamination of their science, not an enhancement of it.

You accuse me of sadism in my effort to see "how far she would reach, how much she can suffer in her love to you, a monster, an alien". Ignoring the compliments for a minute, I beg to differ. In my interactions with women I am not an experimental scientist. I am an emotional sadist. There is a big difference between the vocation and the avocation. I have no interest in determining "how far" they will go in their obsession or "how much" suffering they can endure. There is nothing to be learned from the answers to these questions because each individual has her own threshold. No, I simply enjoy the momentary ability to inflict traumatic pain (emotional pain - I am not the physical type and will never harm a woman physically). It is as close as I can get to omnipotence. It is the perfect gender revenge.

As a Jew I would have done the same to Nazis. As a victim of a woman, I celebrate with unrestrained glee my ability to degrade women, to humiliate them, to frustrate them, to make them beg for life itself, for they see their (often imagined) relationship with me as life itself. This is why I abstain from sex. This is why I dazzle them with my intellect and charm and wit and knowledge, with unprecedented intrusive interest in their petty, boring, housewivish lives - and then I let go abruptly. At this stage, they are so brittle, so vulnerable that they crash to a million shreds with the crystalline sound of agony.

next: Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List Part 28