My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Narcissists are addicted to being famous. This is by far a predominant drive.
Being famous encompasses a few important functions for the narcissist. It endows him with power, provides him with a constant source of narcissistic supply, admiration, adoration, approval, all attention, and fulfills important ego functions.
The image the narcissist projects is hurled back at him, reflected by those exposed to his celebrity or fame, and of course, by the media.
This way, the narcissist feels alive. His very existence is affirmed, and he acquires the sensation of clear boundaries, where the narcissist ends and the world begins.
There is a set of narcissistic behaviors typical to the pursuit of celebrity and fame. There is almost nothing that the narcissist refrains from doing, almost no borders that he hesitates to cross in order to achieve renown or infamy.
To the narcissist, there is no such thing as bad publicity. What matters is to be in the public eye and in the limelight.
Because the narcissist equally enjoys all types of attention and likes as much to be feared as to be lost, for instance, he doesn’t mind if what is published about him is wrong. He says as long as they spell my name correctly, I’m content.
The narcissist’s only bad emotional stretches are during periods of lack of attention, publicity, or exposure. The narcissist hates to be ignored. The narcissist then, when ignored, feels empty, hollowed out, negligible, humiliated, wrathful, discriminated against, deprived, neglected, treated unjustly, and so on.
At first, the narcissist tries to obtain attention from an ever-narrowing group of reference. We call it supply scale down.
But the feeling that he is compromising, the feeling that he’s not getting the best quality narcissistic supply, knows that he’s anyhow fragile, self-esteem. And sooner or later, the spring bursts.
The narcissist plots, contrives, plans, conspires, thinks, analyzes, synthesizes. He does whatever else is necessary to regain the lost exposure and attention in the public eye, to be again in the limelight.
The more the narcissist fails to secure the attention of the target group, always the largest, most prosperous, most qualitative. The more he fails to gain their attention, the more daring, eccentric, and outlandish the narcissist becomes.
Firm decision to become known is transformed into resolute action, and then to a panicky pattern of attention-seeking behaviors. It may end badly. Some narcissists will even murder to be noticed.
The narcissist is not really interested in publicity per se. Narcissists are rather misleading in this sense as well.
The narcissist appears to love himself, and really, he abhors himself. Similarly, he appears to be interested in becoming a celebrity, and in reality is concerned with the reactions to his fame and celebrity.
Not with the celebrity or fame itself, but with the reactions to his fame and celebrity. He wants people to watch him, to notice him, to talk about him, to debate his actions. If they do, he exists.
The narcissist goes around hunting and collecting all the expressions on people’s faces and how they change when they notice him. He places himself at the center of attention, or even as a figure of controversy and hatred. He constantly and recurrently pesters those nearest and dearest to him in a way to reassure himself that he is not losing his touch, his fame, his magic touch, the attention of his social billiards.
He keeps saying, am I still famous? Did they notice me? My arrival, my departure.
Truly, the narcissist is not choosy. If he can become famous as a writer, he writes. If he can become notorious as a businessman, he conducts business or shady dealings. He switches from one field to another with ease and without remorse, because in all of them he is present without conviction.
Bar the conviction that he must and deserves to get famous. He doesn’t really love what he does. He loves the outcomes of what he does.
The narcissist grades activities, hobbies, and people, not according to the pleasure that they give him, but according to their utility. Can they or can’t they make him known? And if so, to what extent?
The narcissist is one-track minded, not to say obsessive or compulsive. The narcissist world is a world of black being unknown and deprived of attention, and white being famous and celebrated.
