My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
The narcissist was conditioned from an early age of abuse and trauma to expect the unexpected.
His was a world in motion where sometimes sadistically capricious caretakers, parents, peers, teachers, often engaged in arbitrary behavior.
The narcissist was trained to deny his true self and nurture a false one.
Having invented himself, the narcissist sees no problem in reinventing that which he had designed in the first place.
The narcissist is his own creator, his own God, hence his grandiosity.
Moreover, the narcissist is a man for all seasons, forever adaptable, constantly imitating and emulating, a human sponge, a zen, a perfect mirror, a non-entity that is at the same time all entities combine.
The narcissist is best described by Heidegger’s phrase, being and nothingness.
Into this reflective vacuum, this sucking black hole, the narcissist attracts the sources of his narcissistic supply, you.
To an observer, the narcissist appears to be fractured, broken, discontinuous.
Autological narcissism has been compared to dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder.
By definition, the narcissist has at least two selves.
His personality is very primitive and disorganized and even chaotic.
Living with a narcissist is an negotiating experience not only because of what he is, but because of what he is not.
He is not a fully formed human being, but a dizzyingly kaleidoscopic gallery of mercurial images.
These images melt into each other seamlessly. And this is incredibly disorienting.
It is also exceedingly problematic.
Promises made by the narcissist are easily disowned by him. His plans are ephemeral, his emotional ties a simulacrum.
Most narcissists have one island of stability in their lives, a spouse, family, their career, a hobby, their religion, country, idol, whatever, founded by the turbulent currents of a disheveled existence.
Thus, to invest in a narcissist is purposeless, futile and meaningless.
To the narcissist, every day is a new beginning, a hunt, a new cycle of idealization and evaluation and a newly invented self.
There is no accumulation of credits or goodwill because the narcissist has no past and no future.
He occupies an eternal and timeless present. The narcissist is a fossil, caught in the frozen lava of a volcanic childhood.
The narcissist does not keep agreements, does not adhere to laws, regards consistency and predictability as demeaning traits of weaklings.
The narcissist hates one food one day and devours it passionately the next. He hates you one day and devours you passionately the next.
