My name is Sam Vaknin. I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited.
The following dream was related to me by a male, 46 years old, who claims to be in the throes of a major personal transformation. Whether he is a narcissist as he believes himself to be, or not, is quite irrelevant.
Narcissism is a language. A person can choose to express himself in this language, even if he is not possessed by the disorder.
The dreamer of this dream made this choice. He believes that he is a narcissist, and he wants to use the language of narcissism in describing and interpreting his dream.
Henceforth, I will treat him as a narcissist, though insufficient information renders a real diagnosis quite impossible.
Moreover, the subject feels that he is confronting his disorder, and that this could be a significant turning point on his way to being healed.
It is in this context that this dream should be interpreted.
Evidently, if he chose to write to me, he is very preoccupied with his internal processes. There is every reason to believe that such conscious content invaded his dream.
And so, on to the dream, in his own words.
I was in a run-down restaurant, bar, with two friends sitting at a table in a large open area with a few other tables in a bar. I did not like the music, or the smoky atmosphere, or other customers, or the greasy food.
But we were traveling, and we were hungry, and it was open, the only place we could find.
The dreamer continues, again in his own words.
There was a woman with other people at a table about ten feet in front of me. I found her attractive and noticed that she was noticing me as well. There was also another woman with other people at a table about thirty feet to my right. She was old, with heavy makeup and poorly dyed hair, loud, obnoxious, drunk. And she also noticed me. She started saying negative things to me, and I tried to ignore her. She just got louder and more derogatory, with horrible rude and jabbing comments. I tried to ignore her, but my other friends looked at me with raised eyebrows, as if to ask, how much more are you going to take before you stand up for yourself?
I felt sick to my stomach, and did not want to control her, but everyone in the place was now noticing her confrontation with me, and she was almost screaming at me. I couldn't believe no one was telling her to stop it, to be civil, to stop it.
I finally looked over at her and raised my voice and told her to shut up. She looked at me and seemed to get even angrier, and then looked at her plate and picked up a piece of food and threw it at me. I couldn't believe it.
I told her I wasn't going to take one more thing and to stop it right now or I would call the police. She got up, walked towards me, picking up a plate of popcorn from another table, and I ended it flat upon the top of my head.
I stood up and said, that's it, that is assault, you're going to jail, and I went to the cash register area by the door and called the police. The police instantly appeared and took her away, with her resisting arrest the whole time.
I sat down and someone at the table next to me said, now you can open up the damn gate. I said, what? And he explained how the woman was actually pretty powerful and owned a dam and had shut the gate down years ago, but that now she was locked up. We could go and open it up.
So we piled into a truck and I was led into a cavernous room and shown a small room with a glass wall in it and a big wheel, a control valve. I was told that I could turn it whenever I wanted to.
So I started to turn it and the water started flowing. I could easily see it through the glass. The level on the glass rose higher the more I turned the wheel.
Soon there was a torrent and it was striding. I had never seen such an incredible roar of water. It was like the Niagara falls flowing through the huge room.
I got frightened along with being thrilled, but discovered I could lessen the water with a valve if it got to be too much. It went on for a long time and we walked and laughed and felt so excited.
Finally the water grew less, no matter how wide I opened the valve and it reached the steady flow.
I noticed a pretty woman from the grill way across the huge area and she seemed to be looking for someone. I hoped it was me.
I opened the door and went out to go and meet her. On the way out I got grease on my hands and picked up a rag on the table to wipe it off. The rag had even more grease on it and so now my hands were completely covered in grease.
I picked up another rag on top of a box and there were wet spark plugs stuck with globs of grease to the underside of the rag, lined up in order as if they used to be in an entry and someone stuck them in this order on purpose.
Again some of the grease got on my clothes. The guys with me laughed and I laughed with them but I left without going to meet the woman and we went back to the grill.
I found myself in a tiny room with a table in it and a picture window looking out into the area where everyone was sitting and eating. The door was open into a back hallway.
I started to go out but a man was coming into the room. For some reason he frightened me and I backed up.
However he was robot like and walked to the window and looked out to the dining area making no indication that he even noticed me. He stared blandly at the people having fun.
I left and went out into the dining area. I noticed everyone staring at me in an unfriendly way. I started for the exit but one of the policemen who had arrested the woman from the night before was off duty in plain clothes. He grabbed my arm and twisted me around and shoved my face down on the table.
He told me that what I did to the woman was wrong and that no one liked me because of it. He said that just because I had the law on my side and was in the right didn't mean anyone would like me. He said if I were smart I would leave town.
Others were around me and spit on me. He let me go and I left. I was driving in a car alone out of town. I didn't know what became of the friends I was with.
I felt both elated and ashamed at the same time. Crying and laughing at the same time.
I had no idea where to go and what I was doing. Be sure to watch the next video with the interpretation of history.