My name is Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
The narcissist depends for narcissistic supply on his coterie of fans, followers, and admirers, but he resents this addictive dependence, and he resents himself for being so frail and impotent.
It negates his self-delusional grandiose fantasy of omnipotence.
To compensate for this shameful neediness, the narcissist holds his psychophantic acolytes in contempt. He finds his fans, admirers, and followers repulsive, and he holds them to be inferior to him.
He sees himself reflected in their presumptuousness and in their sense of entitlement, and he resents this constant and tawdry reminder of who he really is.
Fans often claim to possess inside information about their idol, and to have special rights to privilege access simply because of by virtue of their unbridled adulation and time-tested loyalty.
But the narcissist, not being a mere mortal, believes himself to be beyond human comprehension, and refuses to render anyone special by granting him or her concessions tonight to others.
Being special is the exclusive prerogative of the narcissist.
His followers conduct implies a certain egalitarian camaraderie, which the narcissist finds abhorrent, humiliating, and infuriating.
No one can be the narcissist’s real and true friend because no one is equal to him.
Groupies and hangers-on somehow fancy themselves entitled to the narcissist’s favor and lodges his time, attention, and other resources.
They convince themselves that they are exempt from the narcissist’s rage and wrath, and immune to his vagaries and abuse.
This self-imputed and self-conferred status irritates the narcissist no end, as he challenges and encroaches on his tending as the only source of preferential treatment and the sole decision-maker when it comes to the allocation of his precious and cosmically significant wherewithal.
The narcissist is a guru, at the center of a cult, and like other gurus he demands complete obedience from his flock, his spouse, his offspring, other family members, friends, and colleagues.
If he is entitled to adulation and special treatment by his followers, he punishes the wayward and the straying lambs.
He enforces discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals.
The less accomplished he really is, the more stringent his mastery and the more pervasive the brainwashing.
Cult leaders are narcissists who failed in their mission to be someone, become famous and to impress the world with their uniqueness, talents, traits, and skills.
Such disgruntled narcissists withdraw into a zone of comfort known as the pathological narcissistic space, and this zone assumes the whole marks of a cult.
But even as cult leaders, even as gurus, even as the center of attention, they realize deep inside their fraudulence and their failure, and they resent everyone around them, and especially their friends and their admirers and their followers, for witnessing this painful truth.
