For narcissists, is it all about crime and punishment? Is this an organizing principle in their lives?
Are they sadistic and masochistic at the same time? Which factors determine when they get to a sadistic or masochistic phase?
People often confuse masochism with self-destructiveness.
Masochism is not self-destructiveness. Masochism is the opposite of self-destructiveness.
Masochism is self-love. Masochism causes you pleasure. Because you love yourself, you're masochistic. It's the way to get pleasure.
So masochism is a form of self-love.
Narcissist doesn't love himself because, first of all, there's no self. And he had been taught from early age that he is not lovable. He doesn't deserve to be loved. So he also doesn't love himself.
And therefore, by definition, the narcissist can never be a masochist.
Masochist are people who seek pleasure via pain.
But they seek pleasure. They want to have fun.
And the narcissist hates himself or at least doesn't love himself enough to seek pleasure in any way.
Narcissist's sadism and masochism appear from the outside are actually instrumental and functional.
One of them is to control people, motivate them, control them, and so on.
It has nothing to do with classic sadism.
There's no joy from the pain. The pain doesn't give pleasure.
It's just a way of asserting control, establishing social order, obtaining results.
And in sexual settings, the sadism is part of the power play that the narcissist plays in every field of his life.
And it's therefore not sadism.
The sadism must have a component of emotion. The sadist loves to hurt people. He loves to cause pain. It gives him pleasure to cause pain.
That's not the case with narcissist. Narcissist doesn't derive pleasure from causing pain.
He derives pleasure with what he can make people do using pain. Pain is an instrument.
And he derives pleasure with what he can make people do with his money also.
He doesn't love money. Narcissists don't love money. They love what money can allow them to do to people.
And they don't love pain or enjoy pain or inflict pain. They love how they can use pain to motivate people.
It's about the narcissistic supply.
These are tools. Sadism is a tool. Money is a tool. Being famous is a tool. Being feared is a tool.
So these are all tools to obtain narcissistic supply.
So it's not sadist in any psychological definition. And he's not a masochist.
But he's self-destructive. Not all narcissists but vast majority are self-destructive.
And it appears from outside like masochism.
When the narcissist will seek masochism in sex or in discipline or when the narcissist will seek pain or hurt, wherever it is, it has nothing to do with masochism.
It has to do, again, with obtaining goals or fulfilling functions.
So discipline will remind him of love and intimacy. If he's masochistic in a relationship with a woman, it will fulfill other functions. Maybe the woman wants it.
It's always goal-oriented or functional or instrumental. It's never pleasure for the sake of pleasure. There's no such thing with a narcissist. By the way, I mean anything, not only sex.
So I think the correct terms for the narcissists are instrumental pain and self-destructiveness.
And they move between these now.
When are they this and when are they this?
Well, they are self-destructive when they are collapsed. When they cannot obtain narcissistic supply, they want to self-destruct.
The main reason they want to self-destruct has to do something with punishment, of course, because it confirms that they are bad and unworthy and so on, so they deserve to be destroyed.
But I think on a much deeper level, when the narcissist does not obtain supply, he feels that he does not exist.
And self-destructiveness is exactly like self-mutilation, like cutting. It's a way to prove to himself that he's alive.
So if you do something really self-destructive and you end up in prison, trust me, you feel very alive in prison.
If you do something, if you have unprotected sex and you contract AIDS, from that moment you're very alive.
It's this threat, this challenge, this horror, this destruction that wakes you up.
The narcissist needs to wake up when he doesn't have supply. He's like the battery is running down. He's gradually, all the functions are, you know, like this, and he's like these dolls that run off the battery.
And he needs to charge the battery.
And the way to charge the battery is self-destructiveness.
If he failed, he cannot get supply. The only other way left, he's self-destructiveness.
He self-destructs, he feels sufficiently animated, and he feels again alive.
Ironically, after self-destruction is when the narcissist is most productive.
I wrote eight books in prison in 11 months.
First I went to prison. When I felt dead, I needed prison to wake me up.
When I was in prison, I wrote eight books. I wrote Malignant self-love in prison, among other books.
This was my period of my maximal productivity, never before, never after.
And it's very common with narcissists.
The next type of BDSM is submission or dominance.
This is where different fetishes appear including submission, servitude, or self-sacrifice. For example: foot fetish, goddess role play, boot, shoe, or pantyhose fetish.
Please tell me, Sam: how can someone who is a dominant, moreover sadistic and narcissistic person in his everyday life (he plays the tyrant and abuses his family at home, he controls everything at work etc.) desire to be someone else's slave, who slaps him in the face, spits on him, verbally abuses him, ties him up, restrains and humiliates him while he adores her and satisfies all her desires (otherwise he gets punished)?
How can he crave to stay quiet, waive all his rights and control? To be naked, vulnerable, exposed, powerless, hairless? To endure physical pain?
Can this be a manifestation of his true self, or is it a repressed need of the false self?
It's the narcissist's experience as a part of himself, that he has no access to and that he denies and that he represses, via someone else, in a safe environment. It's ultimately safe
By not existing, in these settings, the narcissist stops to exist.
Someone else has the will, someone else dictates, someone else decides. The narcissist finally can rest.
To be a narcissist is very energy depleting, it's very energy consuming.
And you need to control everything, especially yourself, but also the world and everything around you, everything is a threat, everything is frightening. It's very tiring, at some point you want to rest.
But to rest, to really rest, you need to have trust. And the narcissist is paranoid, he doesn't have trust.
So he needs a second in command, he needs a co-pilot, he needs to say, listen I have to have a shot, I have to sleep for 20 minutes, in these 20 minutes would you mind to take control of the airplane?
So he transfers the control, he transfers the will, and he can now relax, he can rest, he can sleep in a way, mentally sleep, for these 20 minutes.
But if he doesn't transfer total control, then the whole exercise is undermined, it's sabotaged.
He needs to really sleep. Mentally, when we sleep we don't exist, we don't control the environment, we don't make decisions, when we sleep. It's a state very similar to sleep.
And in order to sleep he needs to transfer all functions, and all decision making powers. If he transfers only some functions and some decision making power, then he needs to stay awake, to control the rest. It's binary state, it's total, it's either or, or zero or hero, nothing in between.
And so when he finds someone he can trust, he engineers a situation with zero risk, in effect, the situation is safe. It's a zero risk situation, but still allows him to go to sleep.
He cannot go to sleep in the corporate headquarters when he's with the board of directors, he cannot go to sleep. He cannot say, for example, in the board of directors, John would you mind taking over, I want to sleep for 20 minutes. He cannot do this.
He cannot do this with his wife, he needs to control all the time, what she's doing, what she's not doing, because love is pain, pain is threat, threat is paranoia.
So he needs all the time to be in control, all the time to be monitoring. Is she cheating on me? Is she stealing from me? And then he needs to manipulate her, and then he needs to obtain supply from her. So he cannot sleep.
And indeed narcissists suffer, the majority of them suffer from extreme insomnia and so they have sleep disorders, it's very well known.
So he cannot really sleep, so he needs a space where there will be an activity, life will go on, but in a totally safe, secure manner, and something that doesn't matter to him really much. He's not going to lose a lot of money, like in the board of directors, he's not going to lose his wife, you know, what can he lose, nothing.
So he comes to the dominatrix, and he says, I want to sleep. Now you take over, take over the world for 20 minutes. And he knows that when he wakes up after 20 minutes, nothing has happened, there's no damage, no risk, no cost, it's cost free, except a few euros. It's cost free. It's a cost free situation that allows him to create this haven, this enclave.
Now, many people do that, not only narcissists, healthy people. So you have, for example, in very busy cities, people who suddenly go to a temple, a Buddhist temple, and all they do is they sit on the floor and meditate for 20 minutes. And that's their safe environment. And these people run mega corporations, major banks, government agencies, and so on. But they need these 20 minutes of going to a safe space where they can hand over control, rest, sleep, relax, knowing that nothing bad will happen. And then 20 minutes later they go back to being whatever the tyrants, as you call them.
This is essentially this, this part is a kind of meditation, yoga, relaxation technique.