I am Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
There is a strong compulsive strand in the narcissist’s behavior. The narcissist is driven to exercise internal demons by means of ritualistic acts.
The narcissist’s very pursuit of narcissistic supply is compulsive. The narcissist seeks to recreate and reenact old traumas, ancient, unresolved conflicts with figures of primary importance in his life, mainly his parents.
The narcissist feels that he is bad and diffusely guilty, and that therefore he should be punished, so he makes sure that he is disciplined.
These cycles possess the tint and hue of compulsion.
In many respects, narcissism can be defined as an all-pervasive obsessive compulsive disorder.
The narcissist is faced with difficult conditions in his childhood. Either neglect, abandonment, capriciousness, arbitrariness, strictness, sadistic behavior, abuse physical, psychological, sexual, or verbal, or on the other hand, doting, smothering, annexation, and appropriation by narcissistic and frustrated parents.
The narcissist develops a unique defense mechanism. He constructs a story, a narrative, another self. This false self is possessed of all the qualities that can insulate a child from an ominous and hostile world. It is perfect, brilliant, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent.
In short, the false self is divine.
The narcissist develops a private religion, with the false self as its divinity. This religion is replete with rites, mantras, scriptures, and spiritual and physical exercises.
The child worships this new deity. He succumbs to what he perceives to be the false self’s wishes and needs. He makes sacrifices of narcissistic supply to the false self. He is awed by the false self because it possesses many of the traits of the hallowed tormentors, his parents.
The child reduces his true self, minimizes it, he is looking to appease the new divinity, the false self, not to incur its wrath.
The child does this by adhering to strict schedules, ceremonies, by reciting texts, by self-imposition of self-discipline.
Hitherto, the child is transformed into the servant of his false self. The child, daily, caters to the needs of the false self and offers it narcissistic supply.
He is rewarded for these efforts. He feels elated when in compliance with the creed. He emulates the characteristics of this newfangled identity. Suffused with narcissistic supply, his false self content, the child feels omnipotent, untouchable, invulnerable, immune to threats and insults and omniscient.
On the other hand, when narcissistic supply is lacking, the child feels guilty, miserable, and unworthy. The superego then takes over, and this is an inner judge which is sadistic, ominous, cruel, and even suicidal.
It chastises the child for having failed, for having sinned, for being guilty. It demands a self-inflicted penalty to cleanse, to atone, to let go.
Caught between these two deities, the false self on one hand and the superego on the other, the child is compulsively forced to seek narcissistic supply.
Success in this pursuit holds both promise and emotional reward and protection from the murderous superego.
Throughout, the child maintains the rhythms of regenerating his conflicts and traumas in order to try to resolve them. Such resolution can be either in the form of punishment or in the form of healing.
But since healing means letting go of his system of beliefs and deities, the child is more likely to choose punishment every time.
The narcissist tries to re-enact all traumas and to open old wounds. For instance, he behaves in ways that make people abandon him, or he becomes rebellious in order to be chastised and punished by figures of authority, or re-engages in criminal or antisocial activities.
These types of self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors are in permanent interaction with the false self, and they are compulsive.
The false self breeds compulsive acts.
The narcissist seeks for his narcissistic supply, compulsively. He wants to be punished compulsively. He generates resentment or hatred, switches sexual partners, becomes eccentric, writes articles, makes scientific discoveries, all compulsively.
There is no joy in his life or in his actions. Just relieved anxiety, the moment of liberation, and soothing protection. And he enjoys these only following the enactment of compulsive acts.
As pressure builds inside the narcissist, threatening the precarious balance of his personality, something inside warns him that danger is imminent. He reacts by developing an acute anxiety, which can be alleviated only with a compulsive act.
If this act fails to materialize, the emotional outcome can be anything from absolute terror to deep-set depression.
The narcissist knows that his very life is at stake, that in his superego lurks a mortal enemy. He knows that only his false self stands between him and his superego, because the true self is warped, depleted, immature, ossified, and dilapidated.
The narcissistic personality disorder is an obsessive-compulsive disorder writ large, where the false self is empowered to fight the superego and to maintain the life of the narcissist, to protect him.
Narcissists are characterized by reckless and impulsive behaviors, binge eating, compulsive shopping, pathological gambling, drinking, reckless driving.
But what sets them apart from non-narcissistic compulsives is two things.
One, with a narcissist, the compulsive acts constitute a part of a larger grandiose picture. If the narcissist shops, it is in order to build up a unique collection.
If he gambles, it is to prove right a method that he has developed or to demonstrate his amazing mental or psychic powers. If he climbs mountains, if he races cars, it is to establish new records. If he binges on food, it is part of constructing a universal diet or bodybuilding method.
The narcissist never does simple, straightforward things. These are to mundane, to pedestrian, to insufficiently grandiose.
He invents a context, a narrative within which his actions acquire outstanding proportions, outstanding perspectives and a purpose, a messianic cosmic purpose.
And thereby, they are rendered non-compulsive but part of a larger picture, part of a larger scheme, where the regular compulsive patient feels that the compulsive act restores his control over himself and over his life, the narcissist feels that the compulsive act restores his control over his environment and secures his future non-arcissistic supply.
Compulsive goes inward, the narcissist goes outward.
Second difference is that with the narcissist, the compulsive acts enhance the reward penalty cycle.
At their inception and for as long as they are committed, these compulsive acts reward the narcissist emotionally in the ways described above.
But they also provide him with fresh ammunition against himself. His sins of indulgence lead the narcissist down the path of yet another self-inflicted punishment.
So compulsive act is self-reinforcing.
Finally, normal compulsions are usually effectively treatable. The behaviorist or cognitive behavioral therapist reconditions the patient and helps him get rid of his constricting rituals.
This works only partly with the narcissist. His compulsive acts are merely an element in his complicated personality.
Compulsive acts of the narcissist are the sick tips of very abnormal icebergs. Shaving them off does nothing to ameliorate the narcissist’s titanic inner struggle for survival.
