Compare these two statements.
The overt, grandiose narcissists.
I pioneered the study of narcissistic abuse in the 1990s, and especially in my book, Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
The covert narcissist.
Some people tell me that my work is groundbreaking, amazing, unprecedented, and revolutionary. But I doubt all these statements. I'm not quite sure of myself and of the veracity of these evaluations.
Still, people adulate me and admire me, something which upsets me. I go on the street and people ask for my autograph, or they tell me how much they like my YouTube videos and all I wanted to do was just go do grocery shopping.
Yes, this is known as the humble brag, the humble brag, a brag which masquerades as a form of humility.
Sigmund Freud was the undisputed master of this kind of backhanded speech.
And the whole phenomenon is known as pseudo-humility or fake modesty or false modesty.
Pseudohumility is the covert narcissist's Swiss knife. It covers so many and caters to so many dynamics and so many needs that if I had to reduce covert narcissism into a single clinical feature, I would choose pseudo humility.
Pseudo is as if, Helen Deutsch called it the as if personality.
And there are many pseudoes in the covert narcissists makeup.
There is pseudo stupidity. There is pseudo honesty. There is pseudo humility.
It's all under the radar, subterranean, hidden, occult, and insidious.
Today we're going to focus on pseudo humility. I have another video where I discussed and described pseudo stupidity I recommend that you watch it.
The as if personality. What is the role? What is the function? What's the point?
In being overtly modest. In your face, humble. Ostentatiously self-deprecating. What's the aim of all this?
Aim, you say?
Nope.
Many aims, many needs are gratified via pseudo-humility in the case of covert narcissism.
And let's start with the most obvious, fishing for compliments, eliciting supply.
It's a form of ostensibly inverted grandiosity, the aforementioned humble brag.
It's a way of getting you to contradict and to dispute the statement, the humble statement, so as to aggrandize the covert narcissists.
So the covert narcissist would say, for example, I am so ugly, and you're supposed to say, you're not ugly at all. You're handsome devil.
Or the covert narcissist is supposed to say, I know there are many, I know there are people who are much more intelligent than I. And you're supposed to say, well, you are very, very, very intelligent. I doubt that there are many who are more intelligent than you.
So, by refuting the humble brag statement, you're actually contributing to the grandiosity of the covert narcissistic supply.
This is function number one.
Function two, to minimize expectations, and therefore guarantee excellence, triumph, and victory.
The covert narcissist uses pseudo-humility to reduce the ambient expectation level, to reduce the expectations of people around him, to modify the expectation level of his human environment, so that when he does do something, when he does accomplish something, it looks outsized, it looks amazing.
Expectations have been so low that he keeps surprising everyone with various features of his personality, his eloquence, his intelligence, his perspicacity, his insight, and so on, so forth.
If you keep telling people, I'm stupid, I'm stupid, I'm stupid, and then you prove to be intelligent, even moderately intelligent, the contrast between your prior statements and your actual behaviors is such that you would tend to be overestimated.
So it's grandiosity by contrast.
Next, self-disclosure, preemptive self-disclosure.
The covert narcissist discloses preemptively in an unsolicited manner. No one asked him, no one asked him to, but he volunteers negative information about himself, in a variety of ways.
And this negative information is a form of preemption when he is proven right, or she is proven right when all these negative self-assessments are sustained with egregious behaviors or the traits which are less than savory the covert narcissist could say well, I told you so.
And then he doesn't feel guilty. She doesn't feel blameworthy. They don't feel shame.
Why?
Because they've been honest. There was self-disclosure. There was openness and transparency.
So why should they feel bad when they misbehave, when they hurt you, when they undermine you, when they sabotage you, it's to be expected. They told you so.
Function number three.
Function number four.
A defense against inevitable rejection, humiliation and criticism.
Remember that the covert narcissist is vulnerable, is fragile, fully anticipates ostracism, mockery, ridicule, rejection, humiliation and criticism are inevitable features of life, not bugs, but features.
And so the covert narcissist is often avoidant and mistaken for being shy, when he's actually not shy at all, he's grandiose, and inside he's seething with resentment and envy. He hates the fact that he has to avoid, he has to withdraw. The slings and arrows of societal interactions and interpersonal relationships are too much for him.
So pseudo-humility is a defense.
By being pseudo-humble, faking, falsaking modest, falsely modest, the covert narcissists creates firewall, moat around this fortress, kind of a residue of self-humiliation, self-deprecation.
And then when the inevitable rejection, exposure, humiliation, shaming and criticism come, the covert narcissists can say, been there, seen it, done that. So nothing new. I've gone through it myself, I actually did it to myself.
Zygmunt Freud went through a phase of self-analysis and then published his famous 1925 autobiographical study, which was exactly this, a defense against the overwhelming blanket rejection of his work, of himself as a person, and the humiliation that he must have felt.
Next, pseudo-humility allows you to test people. Their reactions tell you a lot about what they truly think about you.
So the covert narcissist self-deprecates, self-criticizes, self-analyses, self-demeans, and then sits back and observes.
As I said, the reactions of people around the covert narcissists tell him a lot regarding what people really think about him.
So this way, the covert narcissists ferrets out traitors and sources or potential sources of negative supply.
He would say, for example, you know, sometimes I'm very stupid. Sometimes I act very stupidly. I may be intelligent, but I'm not wise. I'm really stupid.
And then he would sit back and he would observe.
And some people would say, you're not stupid at all, you're a fountain of wisdom.
And these people are in. These people become members of the in group.
And some people would say yeah you're very self-destructive and often you act stupidly you really should get a hold of yourself.
And these people are in the out group they are persecutory objects and enemies in the making.
So pseudo humility is a kind of litmus test who possesses the potential to become a fan, a follower, an acolyte, a psychofan, who could fit into the internal coterie and who should never, who should be avoided, should never be allowed into the inner sanctum of the covert narcissists.
Next, pseudo-humility is a way to test narratives, sales pitches, self-promotion, impression management.
So pseudo-humility allows the covert narcissists to try out specific pitches and slogans and mottos and memes.
So the pseudo-humble covert narcissist would say something like, I don't deserve all the accolades and all the applause that I'm getting for my work. I did contribute, but you know, people are exaggerating.
This is a test balloon. It's a test balloon. He's testing narrative. He's testing a storyboard. He's testing a piece of fiction about himself.
And he wants to see, he wants to gauge people's reactions.
And then, if the narrative flies, if the narrative actually aggrandizes him and elevates him, because people say, wow, he's so modest, wow, he's amazingly self-aware, wow, he's so self-analytical, wow, he's so admirable, then the narrative becomes fixated and an integral part of the covert narcissist's concocted, in most cases, autobiography.
Pseudo-humility goes hand in hand with the other pseudo's, and especially with pseudo-honesty, but also with pseudo-stupidity.
Pseudo-humility implies that the covert narcissist is compulsively honest, even to the point of self-defeat and self-destruction, he's willing to sacrifice himself on the altar and for the benefit and cause of truth. He's addicted to the truth. He is a champion of the truth. He's a disciple of the truth.
So pseudo-honesty is a precondition for pseudo-humility. Pseudo-humility has to sound transparent. Pseudo humility has to sound true. Pseudo humility has to sound grounded, as if it is grounded in reality.
And so it involves a lot of honesty.
But it's not really honesty. It's performative. It's ostentatious. It's in your face. The covert narcissist thrust his honesty down your throat. He forces you to acknowledge it and he sanctions you if you don't.
It involves also pseudo-stupidity to some extent, because the covert narcissist pretends that he is not fully cognizant or aware of his positive sides, that he is more attuned to the negative aspects of his personality and the negative dimensions of his identity.
And so there's an imbalance here. There's an asymmetry which the covert narcissist's interlocutors, the covert narcissists human environment, are supposed to correct.
So it involves a kind of pseudo-stupidity, but again, watch the video about pseudo-stupidity. The link is in the description.
You are beginning to see that pseudo-humility is a critical central feature in covert narcissism. It's not a byproduct. It's not a side effect. It's not something that just happens. It is at the core. It's the engine of covert narcissism.
Next, pseudo-humility is used in order to manipulate people via the management of impressions and expectations.
As I said, the covert narcissist throws out there all kinds of self-deprecating, self-negating, self-critical sentences, and very often he does this in order to modify the behaviors of people around him, to cause them to say things, to induce speech acts, or to cause them to behave in certain ways, for example, to adulate him, and so on.
So this is highly Machiavellian, highly manipulative, a manipulative strategy, and it involves gaslighting and leveraged counterfactuals.
As distinct from the overt narcissists, the covert narcissist is closer to reality in some respects.
Both overt narcissists and covert narcissists do not gaslight intentionally because they believe their own fantasies and lies and prevarications. The covert narcissists and overt narcissists are denizens of Lala Land and they want to induct you into and coerce you into their fantasies and convert them into shared fantasies.
So we can't say that the covert narcissists intentionally gaslight, or that he is aware that he's gaslighting.
But the end result is the same. The covert narcissists challenges your perception of reality, makes you doubt your own judgment.
And he does this via pseudo-humility.
He spews out counterfactual statements which define reality, the truth, and facts.
And then he leverages your disorientation and your recoil. He leverages these in order to make you doubt your own kind of interaction or your own relationship with reality.
And then he takes over and it makes you an easy prey, a potential intimate partner or friend or whatever, within a shared fantasy.
So, while the overt, the grandiose narcissist invites you into the shared fantasy by making promises, promises that look a lot like future faking, but they're not, because the narcissist believes these promises. This is the overt, grandiose narcissists way.
The covert narcissist invites you into his shared fantasy by leveraging pseudo humility and pseudo honesty.
Again, study the formation of the psychoanalytic movement and you will see this in action. There has never been a greater covert narcissist than Sigmund Freud.
Next, conformity.
When the covert narcissist is a member of a society or embedded in a culture or inhabits an area, physical, geographical area, the pathological narcissistic space, where humility, humbleness, humble pie is valued, where being modest is considered to be a grandiose feature, actually. Morality, being prosocial and being communal and charitable and altruistic, elevate you, render you superior.
In such environments, the covert narcissists pseudo-humility is actually conformant. It's conforming.
That way the covert narcissists conforms to his congregation, to his community, to his culture, and to his society.
By being humble, he fits in. By fitting in, he belongs. By belonging, he is introduced into the inner dynamics of the group and then takes over the group usually one way or another via subterfuge, conspiracy, underhanded techniques, and passive aggression.
Conformity acts, pseudo-humility is a vector of contagion.
Next, pseudo-humility, of course, is a form of virtue signaling.
There are many forms of virtue signaling.
For example, victimhood is a form of virtue signaling, and pseudo-humility is definitely a form of virtue signaling.
Look how virtuous I am. Look how humble I am despite all my evident gifts. Look how amazingly down to earth I am. Look how grounded I am. Look how boundary I am.
So it's a form of virtue signaling. Sometimes it is linked intimately with self-victimization as a kind of presentation, masochistic self-defeat as a way to elevate yourself by becoming a sacrificial lamb.
So, virtue signaling, self-victimization, masochistic self-defeat. They are all embedded in a narrative of the greater good, the cause.
And then, of course, these covert narcissists become political leaders, ideological and so and so forth.
They're not charismatic, but they're very pernicious, insidious and penetrative, because they cater to, not to the base instincts, but to the good reflexes and instincts of the human mind, and to people's need to believe in the essential goodness of other people.
So the humility, as I mentioned before, is a manipulative technique. It involves intentional triggering.
Sometimes the covert narcissist so exaggerates his ostentation, makes it so visible, so in your face, that it's disgusting. It provokes disgust, it's so shabby, so evident, that you feel insulted. You feel as if the covert narcissist thinks that you're stupid enough to buy into his act of being humble, and you resent this, you resent this, and you become angry.
So pseudo-humility, when taken to extreme, again, is a performative act.
When it is clear that it involves faking and pretension, it triggers very violent, visceral reactions in the observers and bystanders and social milieu of the covert narcissists.
And this triggering is intentional.
The covert narcissists destabilizes you. The covert narcissists causes you to misbehave, to become aggressive, to display revulsion.
And then you feel guilty, and then you feel ashamed for the way you have reacted.
And then the covert narcissists zooms in, homes in on you like a cruise missile, and leverages and uses and abuses your shame and guilt.
So this is the sequence. He is being overtly modest, proud of his modesty, so to speak. Like saying, had I been humble, I would have been perfect.
So his pseudo-humility becomes a kind of theater act. It is so evidently false, so evidently feigned, that it triggers a new aggression, which is out of control.
You become revolted, you become disgusted, you become resentful for being taken for a fool, you react.
And at that moment, the covert narcissist latches onto you, shames you, guilt trips you, and abuses you.
It's a form of behavior modification. The elicited aggression when fake modesty is perceived by you as Machiavellian lying, which it is.
So this elicited aggression is the leverage that the covert narcissist has been seeking all along, his hold on you, the handle which you can then use to manipulate you.
So pseudo-humility can be, not always, but can be at the service of the covertist's essential passive aggression.
Covert narcissists are always passive aggressive. It's a key feature, key clinical feature of covert narcissism, and pseudo-humility ties into this passive aggression.
It's again under the radar masquerading as something else. It's a form of mimicry, pernicious mimicry.
And so then the covert narcissist uses the pseudo-humility, becomes passive-aggressive, triggers you, makes you misbehave, guilt trips you, shames you, and then you're his or her now you'll do anything to make amends and you allow, you give the covert narcissist power over you.
So the humility, therefore, is a form of self-empowerment and self-supply in covert narcissism.