My name is Sam Vaknin, I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Patients afflicted with a factitious disorder, colloquially known as Minischausen Syndrome, seek to attract the attention of medical personnel by feigning or by self-inflicting serious illness or even injury.
Minschausen biproxi Syndrome, another type of disease, is also known as factitious illness or disorder by proxy, factitious illness imposed by another, or in the United Kingdom, FII, fabricated or induced illness by carers.
Anyhow, Minschausen biproxi Syndrome involves the patient inducing illness in or causing injury to a dependent, usually a child or an old parent. This is done in order to gain in her capacity as a caretaker the attention, praise and sympathy of medical care providers.
Both syndromes, Minschausen Syndrome and Minschausen Biproxi Syndrome are forms of shared psychosis, foliar deux or foliar plizio. It is a form of crazy-making with hospital staff as unwilling and unwitting participants in the drama.
Superficially, this overwhelming need for consideration by figures of authority, by role models such as doctors and nurses, this need for attention resembles the narcissist's relentless and composite pursuit of narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic supply to remind you, consists of attention, adulation, admiration or being feared and noted. Still, there are important differences between classical narcissism and Minischausen and Minischausen Biproxi.
To start with, the narcissist, especially the somatic narcissist, worships his body and cherishes his health. If anything, narcissists tend to be hypochondriacs. They are loath to self-harm and self-mutilate. They are reluctant to fake laboratory tests and consume potentially deleterious substances in medications.
Unlike the Minischausen patient, they are not likely to harm themselves. They are also unlikely to seriously damage their sources of supply, in other words, their own children, as long as they are compliant and adulating.
As opposed to narcissists, people with both Minischausen syndromes desire acceptance, love, caring. They seek relationships and naturally, not merely, attention. Theirs is an emotional need that amounts to much more than the mere regulation of their sense of self-worth, as is the case with narcissists.
People with Minischausen syndrome have no full-fledged false self. Only a clinging, insecure, traumatized, deceitful and needy true self.
Minschausen syndrome may be called morbid, can be diagnosed with personality disorders.
And patients are pathological liars. Some of them are schizoid, paranoid, hypervigilant and aggressive, especially when they are controlled.
But this doesn't make them narcissists. While narcissists are indiscriminate and promiscuous when it comes to their sources of narcissistic supply, anyone would do.
Patients with Minischausen syndrome derive emotional nurturings and sustenance mainly from health care practitioners.