Malignant narcissism is the nefarious confluence and comorbidity of classic narcissistic personality disorder, coupled with psychopathic behaviors and traits, a little more than antisocial, psychopathic, and above all, sadism.
Now I have dealt with malignant narcissism in other videos and I even proposed a new diagnosis, malignant covert narcissists, the malignant version of covert narcissists because the classic description of the malignant narcissist has to do with overt or grandiose narcissism.
There is actually very little on a covert narcissist who is also malignant. Although Otto Kernberg had alluded to this in several of his articles and books, when he described what he called the passive malignant narcissists.
At any rate, I recommend that you watch my video, Malignant Covert Narcissus Becomes Primary Psychopath to Compensate for Collapse. Quite a mouthful.
And once you have watched this video, come back here.
Because today I'm going to read to you an excerpt from an article by Otto Kernberg, which describes what I consider to be a little explored comorbidity between borderline personality organization and malignant narcissism.
So now we have three situations, three diagnoses, or three diagnostic clusters.
We have classic malignant narciss, who is actually an overt, grandiose narcissist, plus psychopathy, plus sadism.
We have covert, malignant covert narcissist, who is actually a covert, fragile, vulnerable narcissist, plus psychopathy, plus sadism.
Cluster number two.
In cluster number three, the borderline malignant narcissist, who is actually an overt, grandiose narcissist, plus psychopathy, plus sadism, plus borderline personality organization.
And no, it's not something I came up with, it's something the inimitable. And one and only, Otto F. Kernberg came up with in 2020, in an article titled Malignant Narcissism and Large Group Regression, published in the psychoanalytic quarterly in January 2020, as I said.
Let me just read the excerpt to you because one cannot improve on Kernberg any more than one can improve on Shakespeare. He is the Shakespeare of Cluster B personality disorder.
So here's what he wrote.
I have defined the syndrome of malignant narcissism in earlier studies of severe forms of pathological narcissism.
He refers to his work from dated 1984 in 2018, although he fails to give credit to the guy who actually was the first to describe malignant narcissism in 1964, I think from in the heart of men in his book the heart of men describes malignant narcissism and coins the phrase malignant narcissism.
Kernberg neglects to mention it not good.
So, back to Kernberg's article.
He says, I've defined the syndrome, etc., etc., as characterized by the presence of one, a narcissistic personality disorder with all its characteristic features, a pathological grandiose self, inordinate self-centeredness, and a sense of superiority, strong manifestations of envy, the valuation of others, severe limitations of the capacity of emotional investment in others, and a chronic sense of emptiness that requires an ongoing search for external stimulation or the excitement derived, for example, from drugs or sexual behavior.
So this is component number one in malignant narcissism as described by Kernberg.
Ingredient number two, significant paranoid personality features.
Number three, strong egosyntonic aggression directed against others or self.
Number four, significant antisocial behavior.
Kernberg continues to say, the basic psychopathological features of the syndrome of malignant narcissism are a dominance of unconscious conflicts around intense aggressive affect from whatever origin, together with the development of the compensating pathology of a grandiose self.
Aggressive motivation infiltrates the grandiose sense of self, leading to egosyntonic aggressivity on the one hand and to the projection of aggression in the form of paranoid tendencies on the other.
The severe deficit in the development of an internalized system of ethical values derived from the underlying basic failure in normal identity formation that affects the build-up of such an ethical structure, super ego development. This severe deficit determines the development of antisocial behaviors.
Patients with the syndrome of malignant narcissism function along a wide spectrum of social dysfunction.
The most ill patients with these characteristics suffer from a total breakdown of their capacity for social interactions, incapacity to function in work and profession, and breakdown in intimate relations, together with the development of severe affective dysregulation and such a degree of disturbed interpersonal behavior that makes for initial confusion with borderline personality disorder.
At the other extreme, are patients who are able to maintain their social functions and work conditions, and only show breakdown in their personal intimate relationships, an incapacity to significantly invest in non-exploitive behavior with others, and an extremely exaggerated concept of self and commitment to self-interest that are pursued in an aggressive way without moral restrictions.
So Kernberg points to the fact that there is a subtype of malignant narcissism, which is essentially indistinguishable from borderline personality disorder, or at the very minimum, as a borderline personality organization.
In passing, Kernberg comes up with a totally new diagnosis.
So we have, like, to summarize three types of malignant narcissists.
The overt grandiose malignant narcissist is simply a narcissist, a classic narcissist, who is also a psychopath.
The malignant covert narcissist is a covert narcissist who is a psychopath and a sadist.
And the borderline malignant narcissist is a malignant narcissist whose dysfunction and emotional regulation render him almost indistinguishable from borderline patients, from a borderline personality organization or even disorder or condition.
These are the three types of malignant narcissism.
Thank you, Professor Kernberg, Dr. Kernberg, and thank you, the viewers, for having endured with me thus far.