My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
Three traits of a narcissist conspire to render him a failure and a loser.
The first trait is the narcissist's sense of entitlement.
The second is the narcissist's hotiness, arrogance, and innate conviction that he is superior.
The third trait is the narcissist's aversion to routine.
The narcissist's sense of entitlement encourages his indolence. He firmly believes that he should be spoon-fed and that accomplishments and honors should be handed to him on a silver platter without any commensurate effort on his part.
His mere existence justifies exceptional treatment.
Many narcissists are under-qualified, and they lack skills because they can't be bothered with the minutiae of obtaining an academic degree of professional training or exams. They are above such mundane chores.
The narcissist's arrogance and belief that he is superior to others whom he typically holds in contempt.
In other words, the narcissist's grandiose fantasies, these hamper his ability to function in society.
The cumulative outcomes of this social dysfunction gradually transform him into a recluse and an outcast. The narcissist is shunned by colleagues, employers, neighbors, erstwhile friends, and finally, even by long-suffering family members who tire of his tirades and rants.
Unable to work in a team to compromise, to give credit for a due, and to strive towards long-term goals, the narcissist's skilled and as gifted as he may be finds himself unemployed and unemployable, his bad reputation preceding him.
Even when offered a job or a business opportunity, the narcissist records. He bolts. He obstructs each and every stage of the negotiations or the transaction. He becomes passive-aggressive or in professional terms, negativistic.
But this passive-aggressive, negativistic and masochistic conduct has nothing to do with the narcissist's aforementioned indolence.
The narcissist is not afraid of some forms of hard work. He invests in ordinary amounts of energy, forethought, planning, zest, and sweat in securing narcissistic supply, for instance.
So it's not that he avoids work generally. He avoids certain types of labor and toil.
The narcissist sabotages new employment or business prospects is owing to his abhorrence of routine. He hates routine.
Narcissists feel trapped, shackled and enslaved by the quotidian, by the repetitive tasks that are inevitably involved in fulfilling one's assignments in a job. They hate the methodical, step-by-step, long-term approach.
Possessed of magical thinking, they'd rather wait for miracles to happen than make them happen. Jobs, business deals, and teamwork require perseverance and tolerance of boredom.
And not the narcissist likes both.
Life forces most narcissists into the hard slope of a steady job or a succession of jobs.
Such unfortunate narcissists, coerced into a framework they resent, are likely to act out and erupt in a series of self-destructive and self-defeating acts.
But there are other narcissists, the luckier ones, those who can afford not to work. They laze about and touch themselves in a variety of idle and trivial pursuits, seek entertainment and trills wherever and whenever they can, leave off others in parasitic form, and while their lives are away, at once content and bitter.
They are content with their lifestyle and the minimum demand it imposes on them. They are bitter because they haven't achieved before. They haven't reached the pinnacle of their profession. They haven't become as rich and famous or powerful as they believe themselves, deserving.
Yet, even though they realize that they are failures, the narcissist cannot draw a line between his current station in life, the defeats and failures that he has experienced, and the reasons, the causes his own traits, his own misbehaviors, his own misconduct.
The narcissist doesn't see the connection between these two. He does not realize that actions have consequences.
He believes that he is immune to the cosmic justice. He believes that everything should transpire without effort, without toy, without labor, without perspiration. He believes in inspiration. He believes himself to be an artist of life, and the world is his canvas.
He usually ends his life lonely, bitter, reckless, failure, a loser.