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Narcissist Uses Money to Enslave, Bribe Victim

Uploaded 4/1/2015, approx. 2 minute read

My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.

Last time, we discussed the narcissist's bizarre attachment to money. Money confers on a narcissist not only power or status. Money allows the narcissist to be himself, unreservedly and without repercussions. Money lets the narcissist, gives him hermit and license to be manipulative, sadistic.

The narcissist, with the aid of money, can finally be a narcissist.

But what about the recipients of the narcissist's tainted and unconditional largess? How do they perceive the narcissist, his money, and the fact that they are dependent on his handouts?

Well, victims of narcissistic abuse similarly equate money with love. Craving the latter, they very often settle for the former.

With so many strings attached to the narcissist's gifts, these people, his victims, his beneficiaries, end up entangled and dangling like dysfunctional marionettes, like puppets in the narcissist's theatre of the absurd.

The psychodynamic dimensions of money and giving are myriad, and they are crucial to maintaining the victim's precarious inner balance.

People embark on great feats of self-deception and cognitive dissonance in order to justify the sacrifices that they make in self-respect, in dignity and in the perception of reality. They have to make these sacrifices in order to remain on the narcissist's good books.

But self-awareness is never far under the surface.

Gradually, these human props in the narcissist's staged plays rebel, either outwardly or inwardly. Some of them become passive-aggressive, bitter, depressed and paranoid. They feel alienated, dehumanized, objectified, misunderstood and abused.

These victims seek to free themselves by becoming contumacious and unruly, counter-dependent, or by clinging to the narcissist and emotionally extorting all others as flaming codependents.

These reactive behavior patterns are ingrained. They are hard to break. They ossify into the malls in which the narcissist's victims fester and putrefy, writhing in agony and crumbling whenever the narcissist inflicts on them abuse in its many forms.

If these victims do not extricate themselves in time, they gradually acquire many of the traits and behavior patterns of their narcissistic tormentors and form with them a shared psychosis, a mini-cult of domination and subjugation that is mediated via the ubiquitous dollar sign.

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Money: Narcissist's License to Abuse

Money is a love substitute for the narcissist, allowing them to be their corrupt selves and buy absolution, forgiveness, and acceptance. It is a license to sin and a permit to be unmitigated self. Money liberates the mind of the narcissist, allowing them to concentrate on attaining the desired position on top. The narcissist is addicted to money because it is the freedom not to behave in a way that is unbearable to them in the long run.


womanmotherNarcissist's Partner: Admire Me, Play with Me, Mother Me

Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the three stages of a narcissist's interaction with women: admirer, playmate, and mother. Narcissists are incapable of adult intimacy with women and instead seek a mother figure, as their only experience of intimacy with a woman was with their own mother. When women refuse to adopt the role of a mother, narcissists resent them and may push them away. Narcissists are more focused on possession and control than romantic jealousy, reacting like a child when their partner shows interest in other men.


Expose Narcissist’s Secret Speech

Narcissists communicate using a dual-layered approach, where the overt message conceals a hidden, manipulative intent designed to trigger emotional responses in their targets. This hidden message often employs techniques such as counterfactuality, victimhood, projection, and gaslighting, which distort reality and shift blame onto others. Effective communication with narcissists requires ignoring the hidden messages and, if possible, involving intermediaries to prevent emotional manipulation. Ultimately, understanding the nature of narcissistic communication can help individuals protect themselves from the psychological harm inflicted by these interactions.


Narcissist's Insignificant Other: Typical Spouse or Intimate Partner

Living with a narcissist can be exhilarating, but it is always onerous and often harrowing. Surviving a relationship with a narcissist, maintaining a relationship, preserving it, insisting on remaining with a narcissist, indicates therefore the parameters of the personality of the victim, of the partner, of the spouse. The partner, the spouse, and the mate of a narcissist who insists on remaining in the relationship and preserving it is molded by it into the typical narcissistic mate, spouse, or partner. The two, the narcissist and his spouse, collaborate in this dance macabre.


Narcissist’s Two Rejections Giving, Love, And Abuse

The relationship cycle with a narcissist is characterized by a distorted understanding of love, where giving equates to love and entitles the narcissist to abuse, stemming from their childhood experiences of associating love with trauma. This cycle is transactional, with both parties believing that their acts of giving justify reciprocal abuse, leading to a dynamic where rejection and betrayal are perceived differently by the narcissist compared to their partner. Women, in particular, trigger deep-seated childhood traumas in the narcissist when they abandon or cheat on him, as he equates these actions to maternal rejection, resulting in feelings of mortification and unlovability. Ultimately, the narcissist's inability to form a healthy adult identity leads to a relationship dynamic that is fraught with emotional manipulation, role confusion, and a lack of genuine intimacy.


DO THIS When Narcissist Talks to You!

Focus on the underlying motivations behind a narcissist's communication rather than the content of their words, as their speech often serves specific goals such as impressing others, confabulating to fill memory gaps, supporting their grandiose self-image, or manipulating the listener. Narcissists do not engage in genuine communication; instead, they use language as a tool to manage impressions and reinforce their false identities. Their communication is often condescending and aimed at converting others into sources of narcissistic supply or participants in their shared fantasies. Understanding these motivations can help navigate interactions with narcissists more effectively.


Narcissist's Language as Weapon

Narcissists use language as a weapon of self-defense, to obscure, not to communicate, and to obtain narcissistic supply. They talk at others or lecture them, exchange subtexts, and spawn private languages, prejudices, superstitions, conspiracy theories, rumors, phobias, and hysterias. The rules that govern the narcissist universe are loopholeed, incomprehensible, open to interpretation so wide and so self-contradictory that it renders them meaningless. The narcissist, in this respect, is a great social menace, undermining language itself.


Narcissist in Court and Litigation

Narcissists are skilled at distorting reality and presenting plausible alternative scenarios, making it difficult to expose their lies in court. However, it is possible to break a narcissist by finding their weak spots and using them to inflict pain. The narcissist is likely to react with rage to any statement that contradicts their inflated perception of themselves or suggests they are not special. They feel entitled to be treated differently from others and cannot tolerate criticism or being told they are not as intelligent or successful as they think they are.


Communal, Prosocial Narcissist as Compulsive Giver

Compulsive givers are a type of narcissist who feel superior to those they give to, and feel exploited when they have to pay for the needs of others. They are people pleasers and co-dependents who force themselves on others and have unrealistic expectations of gratitude. They have alloplastic defenses with an external locus of control, meaning they rely on others to regulate their self-worth and blame the world for their failures. They keep a mental ledger of what they give and receive and use false asceticism and fake modesty to prove their nearest and dearest are ingrates.


Two Narcissists in a Couple

Two narcissists can establish a long-term, stable relationship if they are of different types, such as one being somatic and the other cerebral, as they can mutually provide the necessary narcissistic supply. When both partners are of the same type, competition for attention and admiration often leads to conflict and prevents intimacy, ultimately resulting in the relationship's collapse. The dynamic between dissimilar narcissists allows for a complementary relationship where each partner admires the other's strengths, creating a virtuous cycle of gratification. However, as they age and lose their primary sources of narcissistic supply, the relationship may face challenges, yet they can still rely on shared memories to maintain their bond.

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