Welcome to another episode of the Vaknin Psychology Horror Show.
My name is Sam Vaknin, I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of psychology, and I am churning out videos as though my life depended on it.
You know what? It may well be.
So, today we are going to discuss anti-narcissism.
Antinarcissism is not what you think.
And we are going to connect anti-narcissism to sexual self-trashing. We are going to connect sexual self-trashing to masochism.
In short, we are going to have us a joyride in the Disneyland of the human mind.
Stay with me. Awake, please.
Okay, start with anti-narcissism.
Antinarcissism is not about being a nice person.
Many people, including Wikipedia, by the way, make this mistake. That anti-narcissism is about suspending the ego, ego death. I don't know what. It's not about Nelson Mandela. It's not about elevating the community above the self. It's not about subjecting oneself to the greater good. It's not about being an altruist. It's not about being charitable. It's not even about being a nice person.
Antinarcissism is actually another form of narcissism. It has a close affinity to covert narcissism, but it precedes covert narcissism as a theoretical construct. And it may have given rise to the clinical diagnosis of covert narcissism, which by the way is now an official part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Edition 5 in everything but name. They don't mention the words covert narcissism, but they describe it.
Okay. The word anti-narcissism was coined by a French psychoanalyst in 1964. His name was Francis Pash.
Francis Pash was a very cantankerous old chap, very grumpy, reminds you of someone, and he was clashing with everyone about how to conduct psychoanalysis, how to cure patients, should we cure patients, is therapy a coercive system where the analyst imposes his internal world on the patient, on the client, etc.
So he was fighting with everyone.
But one of his more obscure contributions is the concept of anti-narcissism.
At the time in the sixties, there was a big debate involving Lacan and others.
What is narcissism? What is the role of narcissism in psychological development?
Jung said that narcissism is a part of a process called introversion, and that introversion is a crucial phase in the development or constellation of a self.
Freud said long before Jung that narcissism is a bad thing. It's very good when you're a baby, but if you remain stuck with narcissism when you're an adult, you remain a baby.
So it's not good to be a baby when you're an adult.
Having narcissism when you're an adult is called secondary narcissism in Freud's language, and it's considered to be pathological in the Freudian branch of psychoanalysts.
It was this huge debate in the sixties, and in the sixties, the dominant psychological theory was indeed psychoanalysts, psychodynamic schools, object relations schools, and so on and so forth. All of them offshoots of Freud and his family, Anna Freud and others.
Pash said that anti-narcissism is where the narcissism investment of emotional and cognitive resources is not inside, is not in the self or the fragmented self, but instead it is externalized. It is thrown out. It's projected.
So while the classic narcissist overt and covert, grandiose and covert, all types of narcissists that we know invest their mental resources in themselves. They are, for example, auto-erotic. They are grandiose. They generate fantasies to support their self-image, inflated self-image. They invest a lot of energy in securing narcissistic supply.
So while the vast majority of narcissists are self-oriented, even though they don't have a self and they don't have an ego, they're kind of this protoplasmic mass that is goal-oriented and the goal is narcissistic supply. It's very much like a virus. The virus doesn't have a nucleus and yet it is purposeful. The virus has a purpose, has a goal, and has a trajectory and mode of operation and action.
The same with the narcissist. There's nobody there. There's no self, there's no ego, but there is an investment in this absence, if you wish, in the empty schizoid core as Seinfeld and others, called it.
So Pash said, well, that may be the majority of narcissists, but there is a small group of narcissists who take this investment, these mental resources, this energy, these emotions, these cognitions, negative emotions, yes, these cognitions.
What they do, they divest it. They divest it. They give up on these resources. They throw them away or they give them out and they do this not because they get anything, not because they obtain anything, not because it helps them to secure some goal, not even for narcissistic supply that is generated from the outside.
As we shall see a bit later, they do this in order to generate self supply, but to all appearances, looking from the outside, they appear to be benevolent, saintly, altruistic, charitable, helpful, supportive people, loving and caring and compassionate and empathic.
And yet this is all an externalization of energy that in the normal run of the mill, pedestrian narcissist goes towards buttressing grandiosity.
So these narcissists are grandiose, but in a very different way. And they are invested in narcissistic supply, but generated from the inside, the core, the engine of narcissistic supply, in their case, in the case of anti-narcissist, the engine is inside and the supply is self-generated.
It's the most extreme form of schizoid reclusivity. It's being the loner's loner. It's like cutting yourself off from everyone and everything and becoming a totally self-sustaining, self-containing unit of production and consumption.
So their interactions with other people are interactions of giving. It's about giving. It's about helping.
And people are very grateful to them and love them and admire them. But this admiration and gratitude, don't touch them. They are non-reactive to it.
Most anti-narcissists are actually schizoid. Then they find human company, including sex, to be very burdensome, very unpleasurable. They are unhedonic when it comes to human company and all human interactions, sex included. So they don't need people. Why do they do this? Why do they help people? Why do they become pillars of the community, saintly figures and so on?
Because as you will see a bit later, it's part of their masochism. We are talking to remind you about anti-narcissists.
The original thinker, Christopher Wallace, B-O-L-L-A-S, who came up with the unthought-known. I recommend to you to seek out the videos, my videos in which I discuss his concept of unthought-known. The concept of unthought-known is at the core of cold therapy, the treatment modality that I developed.
So I'm in great debt to Christopher Wallace and I'm in admirer, unbeknownst to him. So Christopher Wallace introduced the unthought-known, but he also introduced an elaboration on Pasha's concept of anti-narcissism. He said that anti-narcissism is a self-limiting kind of narcissist, a narcissist who refuses to develop himself, narcissist who refuses to decline to leverage his talents and skills, a narcissist who seeks defeat and failure, not an exaggerated sense of self-importance via success, but an exaggerated sense of self-importance via defeat.
It's like they're broadcasting to the world. Look how total and perfect my failure is. They revel in the impeccability and totality and absoluteness and perfection of their defeats. It's like the only thing they are truly good at is failing. The only thing they succeed in is failing and their only expertise is defeat. Everyone is proud. We are all proud of things we are good at.
They are proud of their failures because they are good at failing. We are all proud of our expertise or knowledge or scholarship.
They are proud of their defeats because they are experts at defeat.
This is the core of their grandiosity, their own humiliation, their own deterioration, their own degeneration and decomposition and disintegration, their own failure and defeat, their own ending up at the bottom of the ladder on the scrap heap of their own personal history, alone bereft, homeless if possible.
As he said, Bolas, Christopher Bolas said, this anti-elaborative person stews in his own juice and adamantly refuses to nurture himself.
So the anti-narcissist deep inside is actually hostile, is actually sadistic, but he covers up for this core, this seething volcanic core, this miasma of emanations of hatred, loathing, envy. He covers all of this up with a self-effacing facade of care, compassion and consideration for others.
Does it remind you of something?
Yes, that's the antecedent of the covert narcissist. That is the first formulation and the first construction of the idea of a covert narcissist, a shy, fragile, vulnerable narcissist who doesn't dare to speak its name, the homosexuality of the zoo of narcissism, the hidden propensity, the hidden proclivity, the hidden orientation.
So the anti-narcissist is what we would call today the covert narcissist. It's a narcissist, but with one variation, the covert narcissist actually seeks success, fantasizes about success, about power, about sex, about money, about access, about contacts, about fame, about celebrity.
So the fantasies of the grandiose narcissist and the fantasies of the classic covert narcissist are the same, but the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist, his fantasy is self-degradation, despoiling, demeaning himself, denigrating himself, debasing, humiliating himself, falling apart, disintegrating, failing at everything, being defeated, being trodden upon, being trampled on.
These are his fantasies and they're of course masochistic fantasies.
So the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist is a masochist.
Simply when covert narcissism teams up with masochism, we get the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist.
Another great mind who I quote very often is André Green.
Those of you who were unfortunate enough to watch my previous videos recall André Green because of his construct of the dead mother, the absent or selfish or narcissistic or insecure or codependent or paranoid mother who refuses to let her child separate and individually thereby creating sometimes narcissist.
So André Green got involved in this fracas, in this debate, and he also contributed to our understanding of anti-narcissism.
But before we go there, let's summarize what we know.
There are grandiose narcissists and classic covert narcissists. These people are revolved around grandiosity. Both the grandiose narcissists, overt narcissists, classic narcissists, and the covert narcissists of all types, somatic, cerebral, you name it, all of them revolve around securing narcissistic supply so as to uphold a sense of grandiosity and an inflated self image.
Now, the covert narcissist secures supply in underhanded passive aggressive ways or via another narcissist, in which case it is an inverted narcissist. The grandiose narcissist just goes at it, dare in due, he takes the initiative, he extracts narcissistic supply from his human environment.
There's a third type, the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist, masochistic covert narcissist, and that is type of narcissist who does not seek to uphold this grandiosity. On the very contrary, he wants the kind of supply that will put him down, humiliate him, prove him to be a loser, display in full view his defeats and failures, self-flagellation, self-torture, self-humiliation. That's the third variant.
And Gregory said that anti-narcissism is negative vestige of ego. In other words, seeks to abolish the true self.
The anti-narcissist is actually, because you remember the classic narcissist has a schizoid core. Schizoid core is a vacuum chamber. It's a vast emptiness encased in a rigid shell.
And on this core, there are layers and layers, like an onion, there are layers and layers of grandiosity, exploitativeness, lack of empathy. Put all of these together and you have a narcissist.
So all narcissists have an empty schizoid core.
The anti-narcissistic, the anti-narcissistic narcissist, the anti-narcissist covert narcissist, the masochistic narcissist has only the core. He doesn't have these onion layers. He has only the empty schizoid core.
So he seeks annihilation. His existence is emptiness. He exists only when he does not exist. For him to exist is to not be. Hamlet, to be or not to be, do not be. To exist is to not be. Unbeing or not being is the essence, the quiddity and the quintessence of the anti-narcissistic, masochistic narcissist, the covert, the second type of covert narcissist.
The emptiness, he guards the emptiness like a hallowed treasure. He nurtures it, he cultivates it, and he feeds this emptiness with self-annihilation, self-destruction, self-defeat, self-trashing, as we will see in a minute.
This way, he renders himself one with a schizoid core. He is at ease. He is at peace. His anxiety is ameliorated. His depression disappears.
The reason for ego destiny, for anxiety, and for depression in narcissism is the gap between the narcissist and internal constructs, such as the ego ideal.
So the narcissist is in constant dissonance between himself as he is and internal constructs, which expect him to be different, call upon him to be different. It's the same with the anti-narcissistic, masochistic covert narcissist.
The anti-narcissistic narcissist is an emptiness. That's his core. That's who he aspires to be.
Ultimately, he wants to merge with his real essence, like all of us do. All of us want this.
And he is no exception, but his essence is an absence. To become an absence, he must self-destruct.
Ironically, self-destruction in the case of the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist, self-destruction is self-construction. Annihilation is the only form of existence, the only way to guarantee existence. And being is the only shape of being.
When the anti-narcissistic narcissist destroys himself to smithereens, ruins himself, defeats himself, fails, and disintegrates, it is then that he becomes one with his empty schizoid core, which is nirvana, total sense of calmness, no dissonance. When you're one with your essence, that's happiness. That's, ironically, mental health.
So as Andrei Green writes, anti-narcissism is negative narcissism that seeks destructively to abolish the vestiges of the ego.
And Andrei Green suggested that there is what he called dual narcissism.
Dual narcissism, he said that one type of narcissism has to do with the life force, with the drive to life, with the libido, with the arrows in Freud's language. And another type of narcissism has to do with the death force, mortido or destrudo or moto in psychoanalytic parlance or lingo.
So he said one narcissism associated with life force, one with the death force, and he called it the duality of narcissism or dual narcissism or positive narcissism versus negative narcissism. He says positive narcissists, they want to reach unity. They want to reach unity.
Negativeunity. Negative narcissists, they want to reach zero. They aim at nothingness.
So the positive narcissist wants to become one, the one, God, the totality, perfection, omnipotence, omnipotence, means everywhere, everything. And the negative narcissist wants to become nothing. He wants to become zero. He wants to vanish. It is by vanishing that he exists. Absence is his essence.
His internal experience is that of absence.
Now you can ask, who is doing the experiencing? If there's nobody there, no self, no ego, no nothing. I mean, who is doing the experiencing?
The various internal objects.
Like every narcissist, the anti-narcissistic narcissist has internal objects, introjects, voices of important people in his life, mother, father, mother, father, teachers, all kinds of personality constructs without the personality, influential people, etc. So he has numerous internal vestiges of emotions, strained cognitions. They're all there in that space. And they're the ones who are introspective. They're the ones who observe the narcissist and give him marks, you know, you almost made it. One more push and you're zero. One push and you're nothing.
The concept of Andrei Green is very much like Francis Pash actually. As far as Francis Pash said that anti-narcissism is something that is characterized by object and direction. And Andrei Green is saying the same.
Anti-narcissist object is zero or nothingness and his direction is inward.
So this leads us to questions of masochism.
And I debated with myself because I'm the only one I consult. I need to consult with the most intelligent person I know.
So I debated with myself how to approach the subject of masochism, but not masochism in a classical sense.
The sexual masochist or the psychological masochist.
But masochism is a feature, is a figment, is a dimension of narcissism.
And I thought I would begin by something that all of you would understand. And that is sex.
Well, almost all of you.
And that is sex.
Let's talk about a type of behavior that can be divided into healthy and masochistic.
But from the outside, observing the healthy version and observing the masochistic version, you may be forgiven if you make the mistake of thinking they are one and the same.
So let's talk about the difference between promiscuity and sexual self-trachi.
Let's start with the fact. The number of sexual partners of both men and women until age 31 seems to have risen dramatically over the past 13 years.
Some studies say that the number of sexual partners had tripled, but only for a small minority of people. The average is skewed by the hyperactivity of a small minority.
Anyhow, promiscuity indiscriminate sex with relative strangers. Promiscuity is non-normative.
But there is a huge difference between promiscuity and sexual self-trachi. Both of them, by the way, are kind of masochistic activities. That's why promiscuity is intimately associated with borderline personality disorder, with histrionic personality disorder, with psychopathic personality disorder.
Self-trashing is also a narcissistic activity. It's like, let me see how low I can go. The lower I go, the more perfect I am. I'm perfect in trashing myself. It's like an art form. Self-trashing becomes an art form. And the person who self-trashes herself is an artist, and she's proud of how low she can go, how deep she can sink, what horrible and disgusting things she does.
And you know, when you stand aside and you see two people, one of them is promiscuous, one of them is self-trashing person, self-trasher, I will call them.
You can't tell the difference. They behave, they look, they act, they make choices, they make decisions which look absolutely identical, not the same, identical.
But the psychological background is dramatically different. These are two types of grandiosity, dramatically different types of grandiosity.
Self-trashing is always compulsive. Promiscuity is not compulsive. Promiscuity is impulsive. Sometimes promiscuity is situational, but it's never compulsive.
Self-trash, self-trashes, people who self-trash sexually cannot help themselves. They have to self-trash because self-trashing is not about sex. It's about finding your own identity. It's about merging with the empty schizoid core.
Self-trashing is about disappearing, about not being, about obtaining peace and calm by vanishing, by merging with your empty schizoid core, about reducing your anxiety.
So promiscuity is an active role. It is often experienced by promiscuous people as an empowering lifestyle, a choice, a conquest. Promiscuity boosts the participant's self-esteem and restores their sense of their inner locus of control.
To cut the long story short, they feel in charge. Promiscuous people feel in charge.
Self-trashing in contrast, in contradiction, self-trashing is not the same. Self-trashing is masochistic. It is self-punitive. It is self-punitive. It's passive.
Self-trashing is chiefly intended as an anxiolytic, anxiety ameliorating, or anxiety-reducing medication. It's an antidepressant.
Self-trashing is self-medication.
The person who self-trashes sexually, she self-medicates via temporary self-loathing sexual self-annihilation. It's like she says, the only way to get rid of my anxiety and depression is to not be, to not be for a while.
Well, if I trash myself sufficiently, I will cease to be.
In self-trashing, the preliminaries, flirting, courting, dating, talking, dancing, socializing with others, all these preliminaries are perfunctory, minimal, or in most cases, non-existent.
Sex, for the self-trasher, for the sexual self-trasher, sex is the first move, not the second and not the culmination of any process.
The self-trasher actually ends up bedding, going to bed, with unattractive means as a way to further despoil and degrade herself.
She typically engages in kinky, reckless, or extreme sexual acts in the first few minutes with unknown strangers. Alcohol and drugs frequently precede both promiscuity and self-trashing, but the use is different.
The promiscuous person uses substances, alcohol, drugs, to disinhibit themselves, to get over shyness or social mores or values. They want to overcome these and do things they would not normally do.
If they were sober, this process is called disinhibition, and promiscuous people disinhibit themselves with alcohol and drugs.
Self-trashing people leverage alcohol and drugs to numb themselves, to numb themselves, to put themselves to sleep.
They want to reach the point of unconsciousness. They want to have a blackout. They don't want to experience the sex or to remember it in detail or the circumstances surrounding it.
They want, even in the act of self-annihilation, to self-annihilate. They want, even as they vanish and disappear, in the arms of the total stranger who is abusing their body and preying on them.
Even in this act of vanishing, they want to vanish. They want, they want to drink and they want to get stoned or high in order to not be even before the ultimate act of not being, which is sexual self-trashing.
Not being is a leitmotif. It's the main common denominator and connecting feature and thread in the personality of the self-trasher.
The self-trasher is actually an anti-narcissistic narcissist, and there is a lot of grandiosity in this, because the self-trasher says, I control my destiny. I'm going to decide. I'm going to act. I'm going to defy society.
It's a bit psychopathic. I'm going to defy society, my parents, my upbringing, my values. I'm going to fly in everyone's face and I'm going to disappear. I'm going to vanish. I'm going to do whatever I want. Society tells me to succeed. I'm going to fail. Society tells me I'm a loser. I'm going to be a bigger loser. It's a grandiose act. It's a defiant act.
And finally, promiscuity is egosyntonic. Self-trashing is always egodystonic.
People who self-trash describe the sex as cursory or brief, disappointing, objectifying, disgusting, unpleasant, or uncomfortable. Many self-trashes report shame, regret, anger, disappointment, and guilt, emotional blunting, and an increase in anxiety and depression after the act.
So I gave you an example of the regular narcissist, the grandiose overt classic narcissist in action. That would be promiscuity, especially if the narcissist is psychopathic.
And the anti-narcissistic covert masochistic narcissist, which would be the self-trashing narcissist in sex.
But this is part, of course, of a bigger picture. The bigger picture is masochism.
Masochistic personality disorder made its last appearance, last lamentable appearance, because I think it was a mistake to get rid of the sadistic and masochistic personality disorders.
And in this, I have bigger lines to support me, Theodore Miller.
Anyhow, masochistic personality disorder made its last appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, in addition to edition three, text revision. It was removed in the DSM four and five.
So some scholars, as I mentioned, Theodore Miller, regard the removal of masochistic personality disorder as a mistake. And they had lobbied for many years to reinstate masochistic personality disorder in future editions of the DSM to no avail. It didn't work.
So let's talk about masochism.
Masochism is a critical element in the grandiosity of the anti-narcissistic covert narcissist.
The masochist had been taught from an early age to hate herself, to consider herself unworthy of love and worthless as a person.
Consequently, he or she is prone to self-destructive, punishing and self-defeating behaviors.
Though capable of pleasure and possessed of social skills, the masochist avoids or undermines pleasurable experiences. He also transforms them into unpleasurable experiences.
Example of self-trashing in sex. The masochist does not admit to enjoying himself, seeks suffering, pain, defeat, failure, hurt in relationships, in situations. The masochist rejects help. He resents those who offer help. She actively renders futile attempts to assist or ameliorate or mitigate or solve her problems and predicaments.
These self-penalizing behaviors are self-purging. They intend to relieve the masochist of overwhelming pent-up anxiety.
The masochist's conduct is equally aimed at avoiding intimacy and the benefits of intimacy, companionship, support.
Masochists tend to choose people and they tend to select circumstances that inevitably and predictably lead to failure, to disillusionment, to disappointment, to mistreatment.
Contraryly, they tend to avoid relationships, interactions, and circumstances that are likely to result in success or gratification. They reject, disdain, or even suspect people who consistently treat them well.
Masochists find caring, loving persons sexually unattractive.
Now, of course, you notice all these are elements of grandiosity.
This masochist holds other people in contempt. They consider themselves somehow superior because they can tolerate pain and suffering. They're strong people. They consider their defeats and failures not as defeats and failures, but as sublime choices. They're above the maddening crowd. They are not in the rat race, you know.
And so the masochist typically adopts unrealistic goals and guarantees underachievement. Masochists routinely fail at mundane tasks even when these are crucial to their own advancement and personal objectives, even when they adequately carry out similar assignments on behalf of other people.
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual gives this example. Masochist helps fellow students write papers but is unable to write his or her own paper. When the masochist fails at these attempts at self-sabotage, he reacts with rage, depression, and guilt. The masochist is likely to compensate for her undesired accomplishments and happiness by having an accident or by engaging in behaviors that produce abandonment, frustration, hurt, illness, or physical pain.
Some masochists make harmful self-sacrifices uncalled for by the situation and unwanted by the intended beneficiaries or recipients.
The Projective Identification Defense Mechanism is frequently at play. The masochist deliberately provokes, solicits, and incites angry, disparaging, and rejecting responses from others in order to feel on familiar territory, humiliated, defeated, devastated, and hurt.
So this is the core actually, the engine, the nuclear engine in the submarine of anti-narcissistic narcissists. These are narcissists who are essentially masochistic.
And so the narcissist, even classic narcissists, can sometimes revert to the masochistic variant.
So as I said in my previous videos, in my lecture in McGill University, in similar international conferences, presentations are made to numerous international conferences. By the way, there's a playlist here on this channel with 40-something presentations to international conferences. You're well advised to have a look.
So I said in all these presentations and lectures and so on that the narcissist, there's not tight constancy. Every overt or grandiose narcissist can become covert and vice versa. Now there's nothing new in this. It's even included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.
So there's nothing new in this. But what I'm proposing is that the narcissist is also capable to transition to the anti-narcissist masochistic position.
When the narcissist is angered and stressed by a lack of narcissistic supply, some narcissists direct the fury inwards.
So when there is deficient narcissistic supply, when the narcissist transitions to a new pathological narcissistic space, when he loses his audience, his sources of supply, in all these situations where supply is lacking and he does not have a regulatory second source of narcissistic supply, also known a regulatory source of secondary narcissistic supply, also known as intimate partner, when all this is lacking, the narcissist is furious and he directs this fury, some narcissists, redirect this fury inwards.
This process is called internalization. And when they direct it inwards, they are actually angry at themselves. They feel that they had failed to secure narcissistic supply. They are failures. They feel they had been defeated.
So they seek to punish themselves for this failure to obtain supply, for this defeat in the battle and the competition for supply.
And this masochistic behavior, this self-punitive behavior has the added benefit of forcing the narcissist's closest, nearest and dearest to assume the roles of rescuers, saviors, or dismayed spectators, or the role of persecutors, whichever way to pay the narcissist the attention that it creates.
So masochistic behavior is very goal-oriented by denigrating yourself, defeating yourself, punishing yourself, torturing yourself, self-trashing, consuming drugs, all these behaviors which are self-destructive. By doing this ostentatiously for everyone to see, you attract natural rescuers, saviors, family members, loved ones, ex-loved ones, friends. And so you attract, in other words, narcissistic supply.
You attract attention. Masochism is a strategy to obtain supply.
Self-administered punishment often manifests as self-handicapping masochism, a narcissistic cop-out. By undermining his work, by destroying his relationships, by subverting his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissist avoids additional criticism and censure, negative supply.
Self-inflicted failure, self-inflicted wounds. These are the narcissist's ways of broadcasting. I'm wounded now. Don't kill me. Don't add to my predicament and my conundrum and my bad situation. All the narcissist is doing. He's the master of his own fate, even when he self-destructs.
Everything to the narcissist is a strategy to all types of narcissists, including the anti-narcissistic narcissist.
Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances, which render success impossible.
And so as Millon says, they do this, they place themselves in situations where success is impossible in order to make an objective assessment of their performance improbable. They act carelessly. They withdraw in mid-effort. They're constantly fatigued, bored, or disaffected. And so they passively, aggressively, support their own lives. Their suffering is defiant.
And by deciding to abort, they reassert their own lives. By deciding to abort, they reassert their control and omnipotence.
The narcissist's pronouns and public misery, the narcissist's broadcast self-pity, ostentatious, conspicuous self-pity, self-pity party, these are compensatory.
And again, as Millon says, they serve to reinforce his self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness.
The narcissist's tribulations and anguish render him in his eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, sanctimonious, righteous, resilient, significant. He has attained the upper higher moral ground.
These self-inflicted wounds, these defeats and failures are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply.
Self-supply, watch the video I made about self-supply, is paradoxically the worstly anguished and unhappiness of the narcissist, the more relieved and elated and euphoric such a narcissist feels.
Because finally, he had come back to the womb. He had ceased to exist. And finally, he had found his perfect, ideal source of supply and audience.
Yes, the greatest fan of all, himself.