My name is Sam Vaknin, I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
I chose a few sentences from my book Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, which I thought may resonate with you. You can convert them into fridge magnets, for instance.
Let’s go.
Quote number one, to forgive is never to forget, but to remember is not necessarily to re-experience.
Quote number two, pathological narcissism is a lifelong pattern of traits and behaviors which signify infatuation and obsession with one’s self to the exclusion of all others and also the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one’s gratification, dominance and ambition.
Number three, Narcissus is not in love with himself, he is in love with his own reflection.
Number four, the narcissist is an actor in a monodrama, yet he is forced to remain behind the scenes. The scenes take center stage instead.
Number five, the narcissist ages without mercy and without grace, his withered body and his overwrought mind betray him all at once.
Six, children to the narcissist are both mirrors and competitors. Children reflect authentically the narcissist’s constant need for adulation and attention.
Their grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and omniscience are crass caricatures of his own internal world.
Seven, in the narcissist’s surrealistic world, even language is pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defense, a verbal fortification, a medium without a message, replacing words with duplicitous and ambiguous blockables.
Number eight, the narcissist’s lies are not goal-oriented. This is what makes his constant dishonesty both disconcerting and incomprehensible.
The narcissist lies at the drop of a hat, needlessly and almost ceaselessly.
Nine, the narcissist holds his psychophantic acolytes in contempt. He finds his fans, admirers and followers repulsive. He holds them to be inferior precisely because they are his fans, followers and admirers.
Number 10, the narcissist is never whole without an adoring, submissive, available, self- denigrating partner.
His very sense of superiority, indeed, his grandiosity, depend on such a partner.
Number 11, the narcissist identifies being loved with being possessed, encroached upon, shackled, transformed, reduced, exploited, weakened, engulfed, digested and excreted.
Number 12, psychopathic and narcissistic abusers hate it when other people are happy.
Besieged by knowing inadequacy, the narcissistic abuser does his best to destroy everybody else’s celebratory mood.
Number 13, the raging narcissist usually perceives their reaction to have been triggered by an intentional provocation with a hostile purpose.
Number 14, deep inside the narcissist hates himself. He doubts his own worth. He deplores his desperate addiction to narcissistic supply. He judges his actions and intentions harshly and sadistically.
And number 15, when narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives, self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others’ allegedly malign intention and conspiracies.
Magnificent, remember.
