My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
I love to be hated and I hate to be loved. If I had to distill my quotidian existence in two pithy sentences, these would be they.
I love to be hated and I hate to be loved.
Being feared imbues me with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. I am veritably inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people’s faces.
They know that I am capable of anything. They know that I am godlike, ruthless, devoid of scribbles, capricious, unfathomable, emotionless, asexual, omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent.
I am like a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict.
I nurture my ill repute, stoking it and fanning the flames of gossip. My notoriety is an enduring asset.
Hate and fear are sure generators of attention.
It is all about narcissistic supply, of course, the drug which we the narcissists consume and which consumes us in turn.
So I attack sadistically. I make sure everyone knows about my eruptions. I purvey only the truth and nothing but the truth, but I tell it bluntly in an orgy of evocative Baroque English sadistically.
The blind rage that this induces in the targets of my vitriolic diatribes provokes in me a surge of satisfaction, an inner tranquility not obtainable by any other means.
I like to think about their pain, of course, but that is the lesser part of the equation, the pleasure that I derive from inflicting pain.
The other part of the equation, equally important, is my horrid future, an inescapable punishment.
It carries an irresistible appeal like some strain of alien virus. It infects my better judgment and I succumb.
In general, my weapon is the truth and human propensity to avoid it and deny it and suppress it.
Intactless bridging of every etiquette and netiquette, my chest eyes and haught and snub and shun and offer opprobrium, a self-proclaimed Jeremiah, my hector and harangue from my many self-made outfits.
I understand the prophets of the Bible. I understand Tokwemada.
I bask in the incomparable pleasure of being right. I derive my grandiose superiority from the contrast between my righteousness and the human fallibility of others.
I attain the high moral ground, but it is not even that simple.
It never is with narcissism.
Fostering public revolt and the inevitable ensuing social sanctions fulfills two other psychodynamic goals.
The first one I alluded to.
It is the burning desire, my need to be punished.
In the grotesque mind of the narcissist, his punishment is equally his vindication.
By being permanently on trial, the narcissist claims the high moral ground in the position of the market.
He is understood, discriminated against, unjustly roughed, outcast by his very towering genius or other outstanding qualities.
To conform to the cultural stereotype of the tormented artist, the narcissist provokes his own suffering.
He is thus validated.
His grandiose fantasies acquire a modicum of substance.
He says, if I were not so special, they wouldn’t have persecuted me so.
My own persecution is proof of my own uniqueness.
The persecution of the narcissist is his uniqueness.
He must be different for better or for worse. The streak of paranoia embedded in the narcissist makes the outcome inevitable.
He is in constant conflict with lesser beings, with his spouse, his shrink, his boss, his colleagues, his neighbors.
He is forced to stoop to their intellectual level.
He feels like a gulliver, a giant, strapped by lily cushions.
His life is a constant struggle against the self-contented mediocrity of his surroundings.
This is his fate, which he accepts, though never stoically.
It is the narcissist’s calling, a mission and a recurrence in his stormy life.
Deeper still, the narcissist has an image of himself as a worthless, bad and dysfunctional extension of others.
In constant need of narcissistic supply, the narcissist feels humiliated by his addiction.
Contrast between his cosmic fantasies and the reality of his dependence, neediness, clinging and often failure.
This discrepancy, which I call the grandiosity gap, is an emotionally harrowing experience. It is a constant background noise of devilish, demeaning laughter. The voices in his head say, you are a fraud, you are a zero, you are nothing and you deserve nothing.
If only they knew how worthless you were, who you are.
The narcissist attempts to silence these tormenting voices, not by fighting them, but actually by agreeing with them, unconsciously and sometimes consciously.
He says to them, I do agree with you. I’m bad, I’m worthless, I’m deserving of the most severe punishment for my rotten character, bad habits, addiction and constant fraud. That is my life. I will go out, I will seek my doom. Now that I have complied, will you leave me be? Will you leave me alone? Will you let me leave?
And of course, the voices never do.
