My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Who is the fairest of them all? asks the bed-queen in the fairy tale, and having provided the wrong answer, the mirror is smashed to smithereens.
This is not a bad allegory for how the narcissist treats his friends.
Actually, literature helps us grasp the intricate interactions between the narcissist and members of his social circle.
Consider, for instance, Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot. Holmes and Poirot are the world’s most renowned fiction detectives, and both of them are quintessential narcissists. Poirot and Holmes are also schizoid. They have few friends, and they are largely confined to their homes, engaging in solitary activities.
Both detectives have fatuous, sluggish and anodyne sidekicks who slavishly cater to their whims and needs and provide them with an adulating gallery.
Holmes has Dr. Watson, and Poirot makes do with poor instincts. Both Holmes and Poirot assiduously avoid the competition. They avoid sharp minds who seek their company for a fertilizing intellectual exchange among equals.
They do not like equals. They feel threatened by the potential need to admit to ignorance and to confess to error. Both gumshoes are self-sufficient, and both consider themselves peerless and superior.
The Watons and Hastings of this world provide the narcissist with an obsequious, unthreatening audience, and with a kind of unconditional and unthinking obedience that confirms to him his own omnipotence.
Hastings and Watson are sufficiently vacuous to make the narcissist look sharp and omniscient, but on the other hand they are not so asinine as to be instantly discernible as idiots.
They are the perfect backdrop, never likely to attain certain center stage and never overshadowing their masters.
Moreover, both Holmes and Poirot sadistically and often publicly taunt and humiliate their central figures, explicitly chastising them for being dewitted in front of others in public.
Narcissism and sadism are psychodynamic cousins, and both Watson and Hastings are perfect victims of abuse. They are docile, they are understanding, they are malignantly optimistic, they are self-deluding, and they are idolizing.
Perfect friends for the narcissist.
Narcissists cannot empathize or love, and therefore have no friends, no real ones at least.
The narcissist is one-track minded. He is interested in securing narcissistic supply from narcissistic supply sources. That’s it, period. He is not interested in people as such. He is incapable of empathizing, he is a solipsist, and he recognizes only himself as human.
To the narcissist, all other people are three-dimensional cartoons. They are tools, they are instruments in the tedious and sisyphean task of generating and consuming narcissistic supply.
The narcissist overvalues people when they are judged to be potential sources of supply, of attention, for instance. He uses them, and he devalues them when no longer able to supply him, and he discards them non-challenging.
This behavior pattern tends to alienate and distance people.
So the narcissist remains finally lonely and isolated.
Gradually, the social circle of the narcissist dwindles and ultimately vanishes.
People around the narcissist, who are not turned off by the ugly succession of his acts and attitudes, are rendered desperately fatigued by the turbulent nature of his life.
The narcissist especially resents his benefactors and sponsors because they remind him of his inferiority, his neediness, and his hurtlessness.
Diderot, the 18th century French encyclopedist, wrote, Rousseau is a monster. He said he hated all those he had risen to be grateful to, and he has proved it. Rousseau, of course, was a prime narcissist. He had a series of benefactors, mainly ladies, and without a single exception, he devalued them and discarded them when they reached the end of their useful life.
Those few who still remain loyal to the narcissist gradually abandon him because they can no longer withstand and tolerate the ups and downs of his careers, his moods, the confrontations and conflicts with authority, his chaotic financial state, and the dissolution of his emotional affairs.
This is very taxing and energy consuming. The narcissist is a human rollercoaster. Fun for a limited time, nauseating in the long run.
