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Narcissist's False Narrative and False Self

Uploaded 8/9/2014, approx. 2 minute read

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

The narcissist has no private life, no true self, no domain reserved exclusively for his nearest and dearest.

The narcissist's life is a spectacle, with free access to all, constantly on display, garnering narcissistic supply from his ever-changing audience.

In the theatre that is the narcissist's life, the actor is irrelevant, only the show goes on.

The false self is everything the narcissist would like to be, but alas, cannot. It is omnipotent, omniscient, invulnerable, impregnable, brilliant, perfect and in short, it is godlike.

Its most important role is to elicit narcissistic supply from others, admiration, adulation or obedience and in general, unceasing attention.

The narcissist constructs a narrative of his life that is partly confabulated and whose purpose is to buttress, demonstrate and prove the veracity of the fantastically grandiose and often impossible claims made by the false self.

This narrative allocates roles to significant others in the narcissist's personal history.

Inevitably, such a narrative is hard to credibly sustain for long. Reality intrudes, and a yawning abyss opens between the narcissist's self-imputed divinity and his drab, pedestrian existence and attributes, and I call this the grandiosity gap.

Additionally, meaningful figures around the narcissist often refuse to play the parts allotted to them by him. They rebel. They get exhausted. They abandon the narcissist and move away.

The narcissist copes with this painful and ineluctable realization of the divorce between his self-perception and this less-than-stellar state of affairs by first denying reality, by delusionally ignoring and filtering out all inconvenient truths that contravene and contradict his narrative.

Then, if this coping strategy of denying reality fails, the narcissist invents a new narrative, which accommodates and incorporates the very intrusive data that served to undermine the previous, now discarded narrative.

The narcissist even goes to the extent of denying that he ever had another narrative at all, except the current modified one.

That is the narcissist power of self-delusion.

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Narcissists have a dysfunctional true self, which is introverted and comatose. The ego, which performs certain functions in healthy people, is dormant in narcissists. Narcissists need feedback from the outside world to perform basic ego functions, which is what is called narcissistic supply. The false self is a collage of reflections, a patchwork of outsourced information, and is a kind of hive self.


Narcissistic Supply Deficiency Coping Strategies

Sam Vaknin explains that the grandiosity gap between a narcissist's self-image and reality is grating on their nerves. As a result, the narcissist resorts to self-delusion, which can lead to various solutions. These include the delusional narrative solution, the antisocial solution, the paranoid schizoid solution, the paranoid aggressive or explosive solution, and the masochistic avoidance solution. Ultimately, the narcissist's pronounced and public misery and self-pity are compensatory and reinforce their self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness.


Narcissist: Life as a Film

The narcissist lives in a state of profound disconnection from their true self, which is overshadowed by a false self that lacks genuine emotional experience. This internal conflict leads to a pervasive sense of anxiety and detachment, causing the narcissist to feel as though they are merely observing their life rather than actively participating in it. As a result, they often engage in egodystonic behaviors, distancing themselves from the consequences of their actions and rewriting their personal history to align with the false self's narrative. Ultimately, this process erodes the narcissist's sense of self, leaving them alienated and dominated by their disorder.


How Narcissist Is Mortified

Narcissism can be addressed through behavior modification and treatment modalities, but pathological narcissism remains largely immutable. Mortification occurs when a narcissist's grandiose self-perception is challenged, leading to a collapse of their defenses and a confrontation with their true self. This process is exacerbated by aphantasia, which prevents narcissists from visualizing others empathetically, and the misinformation effect, which distorts their memories and self-perception based on external inputs. Ultimately, narcissists may create rich false memories to cope with the shame and humiliation of mortification, reinforcing their grandiosity and distorting their reality.


Narcissists: Achievers and Failures

Narcissists are either compulsively driven overachievers or chronic underachieving wastrels. The disparity between the accomplishments of the narcissist and his grandiose fantasies and inflated self-image is what is called the grandiosity gap. It is a staggering abyss and in the long run, it is insupportable and unsustainable. The narcissist's false self is so unrealistic and his expectations of himself are so way out there, his superego is so sadistic, these inner voices that criticize him, that there is nothing the narcissist can do to extricate himself from the Kafkaesque trial that is his life.


Why Narcissists Love Borderline Women and Why They Hate Them Back

Narcissistic mortification is a challenge to the false self, which crumbles and is unable to maintain defenses and pretensions. Narcissists use two strategies to restore some cohesiveness to the self: deflated and inflated narcissist. Narcissists engage in mortification, a form of self-mutilation, to feel alive and free from commitment to their false self. Narcissists seek out borderline women to mortify them and experience the unresolved primary conflict with their mother.


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.


Narcissist: Ego Outsourced, Self Faked (ENGLISH responses, with Nárcisz Coach)

The false self is the only psychodynamically active element in narcissistic individuals, functioning as a substitute for the ego, which they lack. This false self allows narcissists to interact with reality and fulfill essential ego functions, such as self-appraisal, by seeking validation from others. The original self, having been traumatized, metaphorically "dies" to escape pain, leading to the development of a grandiose false self that isolates the individual from suffering. Ultimately, this results in a profound emptiness, as the narcissist becomes a hollow facade, leaving victims with a sense of horror and disorientation upon realizing the absence of a genuine self behind the mask.


How Narcissists Grieve Their Collapse

Narcissistic collapse occurs when a narcissist can no longer secure the attention and validation they crave, leading to feelings of abandonment and a profound loss of self. This state is characterized by intense grief, shame, and a sense of disintegration, as the narcissist's identity is heavily reliant on external validation. The process of recovery involves a cycle of shock, denial, anger, fear, guilt, and ultimately a re-emergence into a new narrative that allows the narcissist to regain a sense of control and self-worth. However, this recovery is often superficial, as the narcissist remains fundamentally unchanged in their exploitative and insensitive behaviors.


Narcissist: Your Pain is his Healing, Your Crucifixion - His Resurrection

Narcissists need their victims to suffer to regulate their own emotions and feel a sense of control. They keep a mental ledger of positive and negative behaviors, with negative behaviors weighing more heavily. Narcissists need counterfactual statements to maintain their delusion of being special and superior. The grandiosity gap is the major vulnerability of the narcissist, and they are often in denial about their limitations and failures.

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