I understand, as you mentioned before, that the true self is kind of tired and became fossilized, but then the false self, who is behind the mask? Who is behind that person? Who is, that reacts after? Is it, comes by any chance from the old self, the true self, or is it every, all the time, always the false self?
Only the false. The only psychodynamically active element in the narcissistic structure is the false self.
The false self fulfills some ego functions. The false self interacts with the world, with reality, like a classical ego.
So narcissists actually don't have ego, in Freud's sense.
The irony is that narcissists are the only people who don't have ego.
Ego in Freud's trilateral modelwas the part of the personality that is responsible to interface with reality, to provide the person with reality test.
So the ego is the one who tells the person, don't do this. It will have bad consequences. Or yeah, go for it. You have the skills and you have the talents. You should try.
So it's the ego that keeps the contact, the interface between the person and reality.
Narcissists don't have ego. Again, it's ironybecause everyone says narcissists is inflated ego.
They don't have ego. That's precisely the problem.
And what they do, they export the ego functionbecause they don't have ego. They have to take the ego functions from outside.
So one important ego function is to give you a realistic appraisal of who you are, what you are capable of, what you are not capable of, your limitations, your skills, your talents. That's ego function.
Narcissist is that because he doesn't have ego. He has to talk to other people to get this information.
So narcissists would ask you, am I a genius? Was I good? Am I handsome?
Narcissists constantly will seek input from other peoplewhere in healthy person, the ego is doing this from inside.
Nowthe false self fulfills certain very important ego functions.
In this sense, what happened, the child kills, commits suicide, child commits mental suicide and transfers all is inside to the outside, transfers his internal psychological processes and functions to an outside entity. And this outside entity is the false self.
Now, of course, there are problems with the false self. While the false self functions as a person, fullfledged person, and therefore the narcissist can stop to exist.
It's a very crucial thing to understand. The narcissist's main concern and main occupation is to not exist. The false self allows the narcissist to remain in a state of death, suspended death.
The reason is that the child, the original childhad been severely traumatized and suffered intolerable pain.
To escape the pain, the child had to kill itself, no other way to escape the pain.
So the child killed itselfmetaphorically or symbolicallyand transferred his inner state, transferred his inner landscapeinto an external entityand that external entity cannot suffer pain.
Why? Because it's perfect. It's omnipotent, it's omniscient, it's God. God cannot suffer pain.
So the false self is the protection of the child against additional pain. Whatever happens from that moment on, the abuse, the trauma, they don't happen to the child. The child is dead, so they cannot feel pain. Everything happens to the false self, but the false self cannot experience pain.
So the child wins, wins, as the child is dead, so he cannot experience pain. And the false self cannot experience pain.
The parent loses its power to inflict pain.
That's a defense against trauma, classic defense, but against trauma.
But what the child learns is this, why not keep the false self?
I mean, I started the false self to protect myself against the pain of my parents, but why not to keep it?
It's omnipotent, it's omniscient, it's perfect, it's brilliant, it's handsome, it's genius. Why not to keep it? Let's keep it.
Also, it isolates me from pain. It protects me from hurt. It makes me impregnable, makes me invincible, makes me superior.
That's when grandiosity starts.
The child at the beginning says to himself, all my peers, all other childrensuffer pain, suffer hurt, I don't, I'm superior in someone. That's how grandiosity starts.
Then he says, wait a minute, I know everything. Of course, it's not the child, it's the false self speaking. I know everything, the others don't. So again, I'm superior.
Gradually, the false self becomes imbued, becomes immersed in grandiosity. Grandiosity becomes a critical feature of the false self.
And it is linked intimately to protection, to pain aversion, to avoiding pain.
So the false self is grandiose. It is by definition false because it's godlike. Of course, no one is godlike.
And it is so effective, so efficient, allows the child to survive somehow, so well, that ultimately the child says, I don't need anything else. I just need the false self, I can become the false self.
And nothing is left except the false self.
The narcissist is an emptiness hiding behind a false facade.
The huge frustration of the victims of narcissists, intimate partners of narcissists, spouses of narcissists, children of narcissists, friends of narcissists, the huge frustration is that when you finally penetrate the false self, when you reach in, you reach in only to discover there is nobody there. There's nobody home.
The narcissist is a perfect simulation of a human being. But there is no human being there. It's a hologram. It's a hologram. It's a form of very deceitful, masterfully constructed artificial intelligence.
There is no human being there, in any sense of the word. There's just one giant void, deep space.
And when victims, for example, realize that they are horrified.
When you interact with victims of narcissists, what strikes you the most is the sense of horror at what has happened to them. The sense of dislocation, disorientationand loss of identity, loss of self-awareness, but also sense of horror.
It's like having slept or having been with an illusion, hallucination, like waking up from a very bad drug trip, for those of you who have been in a drug trip. A bad drug trip feels like that because when you're in the trip, everything feels completely real, 100% real. And then you wake up and the feeling is nightmarish. You feel you've been in a nightmare.
The narcissist is a nightmare that you can never wake up from, never. Because even if you get rid of the narcissist physically from your life, you cannot get rid of the narcissist in your head.
The narcissist implants, interjects, these are voices inside your head. And this particular brand of contamination is very difficult to be rid of, it's not impossible.
So you can get the narcissist out of your life, but not out of your head.
And the thing is that the narcissist is a known entity. It's not an entity, it's a piece of void or emptiness inside your head that is talking.
In this particular way of looking at things, victims of narcissist experience psychosis. It's a psychotic reaction.
What is a psychotic reactionis when a known entity talks to you. I heard a voice, the voice told me something.
It's the same experience with narcissists. There's a known entity that talks inside your head, inside your head.
When this sense is bordering on pathology.