Psychopathic narcissists would go to any length to secure their goals. They might even pretend that they are terrified of you in order to play on your grandiosity, manipulate you, and claim victimhood.
Beware, nothing with narcissistic psychopaths is as it seems.
But mostly they want you to fear them. Mostly they want you to hate them.
And the thing is that some narcissists are incapable of securing admiration, adulation, positive feedback, the kind of input on narcissistic supply or attention that would buttress a basically positive self-concept.
So, in order to avoid collapse, what they do, these narcissists, they see alternatives.
If positive attention is not forthcoming, then negative attention would do.
If one cannot be appraised positively, if one cannot be approbated and so on, then you know, a negative appraisal would do. If positive is absent, inaccessible, the negative becomes a source of narcissistic supply.
This is the locus of grandiosity.
There is a process of collapse-averse reframing.
This kind of narcissist tells himself, I am feared, I am hated, I am the center of malign attention and intention, paranoid ideation.
And this is a form of self-supply. It's as if this narcissist is saying, I've tried. I've tried to be lovable. I've tried to be likable. I've tried to be applauded and admired and adulated and esteemed and evaluate and valued. And I've tried all this. It didn't work. I'm on a verge of collapse because I cannot secure positive narcissistic supply. So all that's left is for me to be hated and feared. All that's left is to intimidate people, to bully them. All that's left is infamy rather than fame. All that's left is notoriety rather than celebrity.
Be that as it may, these are all forms of attention and the narcissist is an attention seeker.
The locus of grandiosity is immaterial.
Narcissists just want to be unique. They just want to be able to brag about something, to boast about something.
I'm the greatest victim. I've had the most extreme bankruptcy ever. I'm an amazing failure. I'm perfect at failing.
So the locus of grandiosity doesn't necessarily have to be about comparative advantage or relative positioning.
I'm the best, I'm the greatest, and the richest, and the most clever, I'm a genius.
No, it doesn't have to be there.
Many narcissists, or some narcissists, go the other way, because they know that had they tried the positive route, they would fail.
And so this is a lacuna, this is in my view, a mistake in the diagnostic and statistical manual, where they imply that the narcissists seeks only positive attention, only positive feedback.
The narcissist regulates internally by resorting to input from the environment that is mostly positive.
I disagree. Any kind of input is better than no input.
Donald Winnicott, the famous pediatrician turned psychoanalyst later in life suggested that abused and traumatized children do not dare to hope for love. They regard themselves as unlovable.
And to protect themselves against disappointment, they hate others preemptively and ostentatiously and they desire to be hated in return.
It's as if they're saying hate is reliable. Love is unpredictable. Hate is expected and comfortable. It's a comfort zone. Love is associated with pain and hurt and abandonment.
And so it is their way of testing the waters. Can these people or institutions or my intimate partner, whoever, can they hate me without resorting to maltreatment and rejection? Can they even better? Can they love me unconditionally? Never mind what I do.
So traumatized and abused children, many, some of whom grow up to be narcissists, of course, much prefer hate to love.
Now it's true that there is good reason to believe that narcissism has a hereditary component and involves brain abnormalities, this is all, but it is also besides the point.
Because in the background, in the historical background, the biography of almost all narcissists, there is abuse and trauma.
And abuse and trauma may be the triggering event. You know, you're genetically predisposed to become a narcissist. Then you're abused and traumatized and this triggers the narcissism. That's possible.
Abuse of trauma may have shaped the brain, may have damaged the brain somehow, or rewired the brain somehow.
All this is irrelevant. What is relevant is a disorder. The disorder is definitely experienced subjectively, and is therefore a psychological issue.
And these people who grow up to be narcissists, they distrust love and they rely on hate. Hate becomes a relationship management tool.
That's why ultimately they devalue everyone and they hold everyone in contempt.
If the narcissist has to distill his quotidian existence in two pithy sentences the narcissist would say I love to be hated and I hate to be loved.
Hate is the complement of fear, they go together, and the narcissist likes to be feared. It imbues the narcissist with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. If people are afraid of me, it means I'm godlike.
And paranoia, as I keep, is a form of narcissism. Paranoid ideation, it's a form of narcissism. I'm the center of attention. The attention is malign. It's a conspiracy against me, but I'm still the center. I'm still in the limelight, I'm still the life of this malevolent party.
The narcissist is veritably inebriated by the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces.
These narcissists, who choose hate and fear, as sources of narcissistic supply, they like it when they horrify people or when they repel people. They know that people are terrified of them.
And they say to themselves, people are aware that I'm capable of anything. I'm godlike. I'm ruthless. I'm devoid of scruples. I'm capricious. I'm unfathomable. I'm emotionless. And possibly asexual, depending on the narcissist. I'm omniscient. I'm omnipotent. I'm omnipresent. I'm a plague. I'm a devastation. I'm an inescapable verdict.
That's the spirit of retribution in the narcissist.
And yes, if it reminds you of Donald Trump, I definitely agree with you 100%.
This kind of narcissist nurtures his ill repute, his criminal convictions, his repute, bad reputation, bad rep, they become assets. This kind of narcissists stalk and fan the flames of gossip. It's an enduring leverage which they use.
Coming back to Donald Winnicott who suggested, may I remind you, that abused children need to hate and to be hated as a defense against the false hope of ever being loved.
So these children, when they grow up, and also as children, they not only act out, they are not only antisocial, but they also seek to provoke hatred in parents, in caregivers, in authority figures, later on in intimate partners, in their own children, in society at large, and so on so forth.
They revel, they celebrate being hated.
At least in this comfort zone of mutual antagonism, there is no risk of being shattered by the disappointment and frustration that are the ineluctable outcomes of hope and love.
Of course, he who loves to be hated, she who hates to be loved, also love to hate and hate to love.
I'm going to repeat this sentence. He who or she who loves to be hated and hates to be loved also loves to hate and hates to love.
It's a fancy way of discussing the fear of intimacy.
The narcissist's emotional complexity, ambivalence towards significant others is notorious.
His so-called love often comes laced with bouts of vitriolic and even violent abuse, verbal or sometimes physical, and aggression.
But the narcissist's hatred is atypical.
Rampel and Burris suggested in 2005 that hate is a stable, experiential state, that it is an emotion, and that it involves a goal-drivenmotivation to diminish or utterly eradicate the well-being of the target of hate.
That's not the way the narcissist hates. The narcissist's hate is idiosyncratic. It's not the same.
The narcissist's hatred in contradistinction is not stable. It is a transformation of resentment and therefore an aggressive reaction to frustration.
It resembles much more Dollard's aggression, frustration, and the narcissist does not care about his victims' well-being. The narcissist just wishes to remove the fount of frustration altogether and expeditiously.
And so by the lights of Rampel and Burris, what the narcissist experiences and expresses does not qualify as hate at all.
The narcissist resents his object dependence on his sources of narcissistic supply. He hates the partners in his shared fantasy. He hates that he has to share the fantasy. And by reading himself of their constant presence, he seeks to ameliorate the irritation that they cause him.
Now, as I say him, you know, the famous rigmarole, half of all narcissists are women.
Of course, even as the narcissist acts against his sources of supply, against his intimate partner, against his partners in the shared fantasy, against figures of authority, even as he acts this way, which appears to be hateful and is definitely aggressive, he's terrified. He's terrified. He's anxious about losing them.
He attempts to placate and bribe them into staying and to fulfilling their function as targets of sadistic supply.
But hate and fear are also certain generators, short generators of attention.
It is all about narcissistic supply, of course. There's nothing else in the narcissistic world.
Only narcissistic supply. Not money, not sex, not power. They are all means to an end and the end is narcissistic supply, the drug which we, the narcissists, we supply the narcissist thus he consumes this drug and in turn consumes us.
So narcissists attack authority figures, institutions, hosts, friends, intimate partners, children, they attack. They are constantly on the attack mode, like a rabid dog, and they make sure that everyone around them walks on eggshells and tiptoes because of their temper tantrum eruptions.
The narcissist leverages everything at the service of his or her aggression, in the case of the overt narcissist, and passive aggression, in the case of the covert narcissists.
Even the truth, even a sense of humor, are weaponized.
The narcissist, for example, purveys only the truth and nothing but the truth, but he tells the truth bluntly, brutally. He partakes of it in a way that inflicts pain and damage on other people.
It's an orgy of evocative, Baroque English or any other language intended to harm, to mutilate, to molest people, both language and truth are therefore weaponized by the narcissist.
The blind rage that this induces in people around the narcissists, that his vitriolic diatribes evoke and elicit and provoke, give the narcissist a surge of satisfaction and inner tranquility, not obtainable by any other means.
When the narcissist sees people, if infuriated, hurting, terrified, this causes a feeling of elation, a euphoric kind of wave.
The narcissist likes to think about other people's pain, other people's hurt, other people's terror.
And at the same time, experiences himself or herself, being the source of all these emotions as godlike.
It is the horrid future and inescapable punishment of the narcissists that actually carries an irresistible appeal.
The narcissist at heart is masochistic. Since he does not perceive himself as lovable, he perceives himself as a hate figure, and as a hate figure deserving of punishment.
There is an internalized bad object in the narcissist. And all his facade, all these grandiose exclamations and it's all a wizard of o's compensatory attempt to deny who the narcissist feels that he is inferior, contemptible, deserving of punitive measures.
The narcissist denies this. He knows it, but he denies it. He denies it by pretending to be someone else, diametrically opposed to the bad object.
The epitome and reification of perfection, God, like some strain of an alien virus this anticipation of doomsday and Armageddon infects the narcissist's better judgment and he succumbs to it. He adopts a carpe diem attitude.
You know, I'm going to fall anyhow, I'm going to disintegrate anyhow, I'm going to be punished anyhow, things are going to end really badly, I know it, and so I'd better enjoy today because there's not tomorrow.
Even narcissists who claim otherwise, narcissists who claim that the future is glorious, that they are visionaries, they are leading themselves and others into a much better neighborhood or much much better life, even they deep inside expect the calamitous, disastrous, and catastrophic worst ending to their endeavors and to their person, which is object, which is reprehensible and which is something the narcissist doesn't feel he can prevent, ineluctable, or compromise with.
In general, the narcissist's weapon sometimes is the truth or destruction. Destructive truth and the human propensity to avoid it.
In tactless breaching of every etiquette and every rule, narcissists chastises and berates and denigrates and snubs and offers vitriolic opprobrium.
Some narcissists are self-proclaimed Jeremiah's, other narcissists are messiahs, and they hector, they harangue, and from many self-made pulpits, they sympathize or empathize with the prophets, biblical prophets. They understand Torquemada, the chief of the Inquisition, and so on. They are on a rampage and a campaign of brimstone and trickle.
Again, this is only some narcissists, only some narcissists wish to be hated and to be feared because they believe that they would fail with any other alternative.
They firmly regard themselves as unlovable or repulsive and so they are unlikely to obtain positive supply.
Let me obtain negative supply.
The narcissist, this kind of narcissists, basks in the incomparable pleasure of being always right, inflicting righteousness or self-righteousness on others.
In this sense, it's a pro-social narcissist.
Ironically, the narcissists who seek to be feared and hated are mostly pro-social narcissists.
Gurus, leaders, public intellectuals, and so on. They derive their grandiose superiority from the contrast between their righteousness and the fallible humanness of others.
But it is not that simple. It never is with narcissists.
Fostering public revolt and the inevitable ensuing social sanctions fulfills two other psychodynamic goals.
The first one I alluded to, it's the burning desire, need to be punished, to validate the internalized bad object.
The grotesque mind of the narcissist, his punishment is equally his vindication.
By being permanently on trial, permanently on the precipice, about to be flagellated and lashed, the narcissist claims the high moral ground.
The position of a martyr or a victim, misunderstood, discriminated against, hounded, unjustly roughed, outcast by his very towering genius or other outstanding qualities, rebelliousness or whatever.
To conform to the cultural stereotype of the tormented artist, the tormented leader, the misunderstood visionary, the narcissist provokes his own suffering. This is the way that he is validated. His grandiose fantasies acquire a modicum of substance by actually playing out the way the narcissists had anticipated.
The narcissist keeps everyone, I'm about to be persecuted and prosecuted. And then it happens. You see, he says, I knew it all along. If I were not so special, they wouldn't have persecuted me so.
The persecution of the narcissist is his uniqueness. He must be different for better or for worse. He must be unique.
The streak of paranoia embedded in the narcissist makes the outcome all but inevitable.
He is in a constant conflict with lesser beings, with inferior people, his spouse, his shrink, his boss, his colleagues, you name it. His peers, he is forced to stoop to their intellectual level.
Narcissist feels constantly like Gulliver, a giant strapped to the ground by an army of Lilliputians.
His life is a constant struggle against the self-contented mediocrity of his surroundings.
This is his fate, and he accepts it, humblythough rarely stoically.
It is a calling, a mission, a recurrence in his cosmically significant stormy life.
And yes, I'm not only talking about the President of the United States or the richest men on earth. I'm talking about plumbers and electricians and street sweepers and homeless people. They're unhoused. Sorry.
Even this kind of narcissists develop grandiose visions of themselves as cosmic agents of change.
Deeper still, the narcissist has an image of himself as a worthless, bad and dysfunctional extension of others.
As I said, the narcissist is in constant need of narcissistic supply, and he makes him feel humiliated. Humiliates him, this dependency, this neediness, this clinging.
The contrast between his cosmic fantasies and the reality of his dependence, neediness, and often failure, the grandiosity gap, is an emotionally harrowing experience.
It is a constant background noise of devilish, demeaningridicule.
Voices inside the narcissists say, you're a fraud, you're an imposter, you're a zero, you deserve nothing. If only they knew how worthless you are, they would have all abandoned you.
The imposter syndrome is just another name for narcissism, it seems.
The narcissist attempts to silence these tormenting voices, not by fighting them, but by agreeing with them actually, unconsciously, sometimes consciously, the narcissist says to these voices, I do agree with you. I am bad and I am unlovable and I am worthless and I'm deserving of the most severe punishment for my rotten character, bad habits, addiction, bad choices, antisocial behavior, the constant fraud that it is my life and that I am.
So I will go out and I will seek my own doom and annihilation.
Now that I've complied with your demands, will you leave me be? Will you let me be?
And of course, they never do, to the detriment of everyone around the narcissist.