Background

Narcissist: No Sense of Humor

Uploaded 9/23/2010, approx. 4 minute read

I am Sam Vaknin, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.

The narcissist has a sense of humor, but he rarely engages in self-directed, self-deprecating humor. If he does, he expects to be contradicted, rebuked, and rebuffed by his listeners. He expects to be told, come on, you are actually quite handsome, or brilliant, or perfect. He expects to be commended or admired for his courage, for his wit, and intellectual acerbity.

I envy your ability to laugh at yourself, he expects people to say.

As everything else in the narcissist's life, his sense of humor is deployed in the interminable pursuit of narcissistic supply.

Yet to obtain narcissistic supply, one must be taken seriously, and to be taken seriously, one must be the first one to take oneself seriously.

Hence the gravity with which the narcissist contemplates himself and his life.

This lack of levity and perspective and proportion characterize the narcissist and set him apart. The narcissist firmly believes that he is unique, that he has a mission to fulfill, a destined life.

The narcissist's biography is part of mankind's legacy, spun by a cosmic plot which constantly thickens. Such a life deserves only the most serious consideration. It is not a laughing matter.

Moreover, every particle of the narcissist's existence, every action or inaction, every utterance, creation, composition, indeed every thought, are bathed in this universal significance.

The narcissist treads the ideal paths of glory, achievement, affection and brilliance. It is all part of a design, a pattern, a plot, which inexorably leads the narcissist on to the fulfillment of his task.

The narcissist may subscribe to a religion, to a belief or to an ideology in his effort to understand the source of this ubiquitous conviction of uniqueness. He may attribute his sense of direction to God, to history, to society, to culture, to a calling, to his profession, to a value system, but he always does it with a straight face and with dead earnestness.

And because to the narcissist the part is a reflection of the whole, he tends to generalize, to resort to stereotypes, to induct, to learn about the whole from the detail, to exaggerate, finally, to pathologically lie to himself and to others.

This self-importance, this belief in a grand design, in an all-embracing and all-pervasive pattern in which the narcissist is enmeshed, these make him an easy prey to all manner of logical fallacies and conartistry.

Despite his avowed and proudly expressed rationality, the narcissist is besieged by superstition and prejudice. Above all, he is a captive of the false conviction that his uniqueness destined him to fulfill a mission of cosmic significance.

All these make the narcissist a volatile person, not merely mercurial, but fluctuating, histrionic, unreliable and disproportional.

That which has cosmic implications calls for cosmic reactions. A person with an inflated sense of self-importance reacts with exaggeration to threats, greatly inflated by his imagination and by his personal mythology.

On the narcissist's cosmic scale, the daily vagaries of life, the mundane, the pedestrian, the routine, they are not important, they are even damagingly distracting. This is the source of his feeling of exceptional entitlement.

Surely, engaged as he is in benefiting humanity through the exercise of his unique faculties, he deserves some special treatment, is it not?

This is the source of the narcissist's virulent swings between opposite behavior patterns and between devaluation and idealization of others.

To the narcissist, every minor development is nothing less than a fortuitous omen. Every adversity is a conspiracy to offset his progress. Every setback and apocalyptic calamity, every irritation, the cause for outlandish outbursts of rage.

The narcissist is a man of extremes and only of extremes. He may learn to efficiently suppress or hide his true feelings and reactions, but never for long.

In the most inappropriate and inopportune moments, you can count on the narcissist to explode like a wrongly wound time bomb.

And in between eruptions, the narcissistic volcano, daydreams, indulges in delusions, plans his victories over an increasingly hostile and alienated environment.

Gradually, the narcissist becomes paranoid, aloof, detached, and disociative.

You must admit, in such a state of mind, there is not much room for a sense of humor.

If you enjoyed this article, you might like the following:

Narcissist's Routines

Narcissists have a series of routines that are developed through rote learning and repetitive patterns of experience. These routines are used to reduce anxiety and transform the world into a manageable and controllable one. The narcissist is a creature of habit and finds change unsettling. The narcissist's routines are often broken down when they are breached or can no longer be defended, leading to a narcissistic injury.


Faces of Narcissist's Aggression

Narcissists possess a grandiose sense of self-importance and believe in their unique mission, often viewing their lives as significant narratives meant for future documentation. They expect others to recognize their entitlement and comply with their needs, leading to frustration and aggression when the world does not accommodate them. This aggression can manifest in various forms, including passive-aggressive comments disguised as helpful advice, which serve to inflict emotional harm. Ultimately, narcissists harbor deep-seated hostility and resentment, making their interactions potentially harmful to those around them.


Negative, Fake, Low-grade Narcissistic Supply

Normal individuals seek a balanced amount of attention, while narcissists are insatiable, constantly craving affirmation to sustain their self-worth. They create a false self, projecting an idealized version of themselves to elicit reactions from others, which they refer to as narcissistic supply. Even negative attention can serve as supply for narcissists, as they prioritize any form of attention over being ignored, manipulating others to maintain their focus. Ultimately, the narcissist's existence revolves around this relentless pursuit of attention, which is intertwined with their internal struggles and feelings of worthlessness.


Narcissist Reacts to Criticism, Disagreement, Disapproval

Narcissists are hypervigilant and perceive every disagreement as criticism and every critical comment as complete and humiliating rejection. They react defensively, becoming indignant, aggressive, and cold. The narcissist minimizes the impact of the disagreement and criticism on himself by holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant conversant. When the disagreement or criticism or disapproval or approbation become public, the narcissist tends to regard them as narcissistic supply.


Narcissist as the Center of the World: Referential Delusions and Ideas of Reference

The narcissist is the center of the world and derives their sense of being and self-worth from the outside. They must delude themselves into believing that they are persistently the focus and object of the attentions, intentions, plans, feelings, and stratagems of everyone around them. This constant obsession with one's locus leads to referential ideation, ideas of reference. The narcissist becomes paranoid and would rather be the object of often imaginary and always self-inflicted derision, scorn, and vile than to be ignored.


Narcissist's Vulnerability: Grandiosity Hangover

Narcissists often engage in shared delusions and collective denial, clinging to an inflated sense of self and past moments of perceived superiority. Their vulnerabilities, particularly the grandiosity hangover and grandiosity gap, can be exploited, especially when they face authority or feel their self-worth is threatened. Any challenge to their perceived uniqueness or entitlement can provoke intense rage, leading them to react aggressively in an attempt to restore their grandiose self-image. Confronting a narcissist with questions or statements that undermine their self-perception can effectively deter their behavior.


Raging Narcissist: Merely Pissed-off?

Narcissistic rage is a phenomenon that occurs when a narcissist is frustrated in their pursuit of narcissistic supply, causing narcissistic injury. The narcissist then projects a bad object onto the source of their frustration and rages against a perceived evil entity that has injured and frustrated them. Narcissistic rage is not the same as normal anger and has two forms: explosive and pernicious or passive-aggressive. People with personality disorders are in a constant state of anger, which is effectively suppressed most of the time, and they are afraid to show that they are angry to meaningful others because they are afraid to lose them.


Witnessing the Narcissist's Glory: Secondary Narcissistic Supply

Narcissists rely on the memories and perceptions of others to validate their existence, as they live vicariously through the reflections of their past glory. They require active reminders of their achievements and moments of admiration to sustain their self-worth, especially during times of neglect or humiliation. As their sources of narcissistic supply age and pass away, the narcissist's sense of self diminishes, leading to a gradual fading of their identity. Ultimately, the narcissist's existence is deeply intertwined with the memories held by others, making them dependent on external validation for their sense of reality.


Narcissistic Rage and Narcissistic Injury

Narcissistic rage stems from narcissistic injury, which occurs when a narcissist perceives a threat to their inflated self-image. This injury can provoke intense and disproportionate reactions, as the narcissist is hyper-vigilant to slights and criticism, viewing them as significant threats to their fragile ego. The narcissist's dependence on external validation creates a cycle of aggression, where they lash out at perceived offenders while simultaneously devaluing them to mitigate the impact of criticism. Ultimately, narcissistic rage manifests in two forms: explosive outbursts directed at others and passive-aggressive behaviors aimed at undermining those they feel have wronged them.


Narcissist Re-idealizes Discarded Sources of Narcissistic Supply

Narcissists maintain discarded sources of supply in a mental reserve and may seek them out when other options are unavailable, attempting to recycle these sources for validation. To reconnect with a devalued source, they must re-idealize it without admitting past mistakes, creating a narrative that reconciles their previous devaluation with the new idealized view. Old sources of supply should remain indifferent to the narcissist's attempts to reconnect, as this indifference is intolerable to them and deprives them of the attention they crave. Ultimately, narcissists view everyone as potential sources of supply, even enemies, as any emotional response, positive or negative, serves to validate their existence.

Transcripts Copyright © Sam Vaknin 2010-2024, under license to William DeGraaf
Website Copyright © William DeGraaf 2022-2024
Get it on Google Play
Privacy policy