All variants of narcissists, overt, covert, malignant, you name it. All of them are sometimes startlingly honest. They come out with the most amazing observations. They are sincere, they're open.
But actually, all these types of narcissists are weaponizing honesty. Brutal, ostentatious honesty is a weapon and it hurts.
And this is the general idea to use it to hurt other people.
Now narcissists do it in two ways
Number one, hurtful observations about other people. They would say things like you really should weight, or this dress doesn't compliment you, or you have bad breath, or...
And they would camouflage it, or they would disguise it as being actually friendly and helpful and supportive and altruistic and charming and charitable, but the idea is to hurt other people.
In short, this is a manifestation of the sadistic streak, for example, in malignant narcissism.
Covert narcissists hurt other people in order to manipulate them. It's a Machiavellian strategy.
The idea is to cause other people to modify their behaviors or choose specific causes of action based on their reaction to an insult.
The insult need not be overt. The insult could be covert.
And covert narcissists are very good at insulting you in a way that appears to be, for example, a compliment that is known as a backhanded compliment.
This is a passive aggressive strategy, but it is still aggression.
Honesty is abused, misused, and leveraged by narcissists as a weapon against you.
So this is strategy number one.
Strategy number two, self-disclosure, self-disclosure, confession, admittance to specific facts or events and so on so forth, but in a way that is intended to hurt other people, by disillusioning them, by challenging their worldview, by rendering them stupid or dumb in retrospect.
So some types of narcissists, especially covert ones, some types of narcissists would wax on infinitely about themselves.
They would disclose facts about themselves. They would describe their internal world, choices they've made, actions they have taken, events that have occurred, and they would be very honest and open about it.
And on the surface, this would appear to be admirable because honesty is good, isn't it?
But the real motivation behind such extreme, extreme confessional propensity, the real motivation would be to hurt you, to cause you pain one way or another.
So these are the two ways that narcissists weaponize honesty.
The sadism of the narcissist is coupled with antisocial behavior.
The narcissist, especially the malignant narcissist, is both a sadist and a psychopath.
And so by being honest, the narcissist can gratify both impulses simultaneously. He can act in a way that is essentially psychopathic and antisocial, a way that hurts people, damages them, causes them discomfort at the minimum.
And so this gratifies his antisocial dimension or aspect or tendency and the sadistic one.
Such narcissists usually are also completely self-sufficient.
When a narcissist has made the decision that hurting other people is acceptable, the costs incurred by hurting other people are acceptable, this kind of narcissists has given up on other people.
When you hurt other people as a strategy in order to gratify your sadistic and psychopathic impulses, when you damage and break other people, when you disillusion and disenchant them, when you push them to act against you, to punish you, or to seek to punish you, when you do all these things, it's because you have given up on other people.
So thesekinds of narcissists have reached a stage in their personal development where they see no further benefit or reason to continue to interact with other people in a pro-social manner. They see no reason to invest in other people in a pro-social manner.
They see no reason to invest in other people, to commit to other people, to work with other people, to accommodate other people, to compromise with other people, to negotiate with other people.
They regard all these strategies as a waste of time, their precious time.
And so they've given up on other people on one hand, and now they regard people as toys.
Toys. They're playing with toys.
The same way a child would break apart a radio set or take apart a doll, the sadistic psychopathic narcissiststreats other people as decomposable instruments, tools and toys. He plays with them. He breaks them apart. He peers inside. He tests them in a variety of ways, unethical mostly. And he subjects them to enormous stress and torsion in order to see what would happen.
So people become raw material, commodified, and play things.
And this sadism and this psychopathy are accommodated by the narcissist because he no longer needs people. He no longer needs people even for narcissistic supply.
He has given up on people even as sources of narcissistic supply.
He supplies himself, a process called self-supply, which I've described in many of my videos.
He is his own audience, a process called self-supply which I've described in many of my videos he is his own audience a process called self-audiencing which I've described in my videos this kind of narcissists becomes an utterly self-contained system.
He is the narcissist but at the same time he's also the source of narcissistic supply. He is the performer or she is the performer and at the same time she is her own audience.
It's an utterly solipsistic bubble completely disconnected from the environment with minimal interactions.
And the only reason to continue to be in touch with other people is because it's great fun to hurt them to test them to break them to witness their suffering and writhing.
So it's entertainment value. This is the narcissists entertainment, this kind of sadism.
He indulges in it, not because it provides him with any narcissistic supply or not because it furthers any goals or aims, but he indulges in sadistically breaking down people, usually via extreme honesty, as I've mentioned.
He does this because it gratifies him. It's great fun. As I said, it's entertainment.
And so this late stage narcissism, because this is the ultimate stage of narcissism when narcissists become actually schizoid. They become completely separated from the environment, utterly independent on it, and utterly self-autonomous and self-containing and self-effications.
This late stage of narcissism, the only form of supply is sadistic supply.
And the only mode of interacting with other people is hurting them, causing them pain, anguish and suffering, imposing on them hopelessness and pessimism, debilitating them, paralyzing them, paralyzing them by catastrophizing, being honest to the point of disillusionment and disenchantment, ruining the trust between people.
All these goals have to do with the narcissists need to feel omnipotent, godlike.
The same way a psychopathic child, a child with conduct disorder, tortures animals. This kind of children burn bees with magnifying glasses or set cats on fire.
Why do these children do it?
Because it gives them double yummy. They feel godlike and it's very, very funny to watch a burning cat.
Children with conduct disorder, majority of them, anywhere between 50 to 70% of them, become psychopaths. And most psychopaths are grandiose. And we have this overlap known as malignant narcissism.
And so these kind of children, when they grow up, they continue to burn, but they don't burn cats anymore. They burn people, metaphorically at least.
This is the last form of communion the narcissist has with his fellow beings.
Gradually, narcissists drift apart as they age.
They don't mellow in any meaningful way. They simply drift apart.
The frequency and incidence of antisocial behavior and sadistic behavior declines not because there's any internal change in the narcissists, but because his opportunities to hurt other people become more and more limited as he ages. He loses his friends, he loses his family, everyone keeps their distance, he has acquired a reputation, and this reputation precedes him, people are careful, people keep their distance, and so he has far less, far fewer opportunities to torture people.
But when he does, he takes it on with glee and jubilation. There's nothing more fun to see another person writhing in agony.
Of course, another way to look at sadism is as a form of self-destructiveness. It's a set of self-defeating behaviors.
The sadist rejects the advances of a beautiful woman, in the process hurting her, causing pain, rejection is never pleasant, but at the same time, of course, he gives up on the benefits of having sex.
A sadist would hurt people intentionally in a variety of ways, transformations of aggression.
Consequently, people would avoid the sadists, would refuse to collaborate with him, would stay away, would put distance between themselves and the sadist.
So on the one hand, the sadistic impulse is gratified but on the other hand the social cost or the social price paid by the sadist is enormous. His possibilities are unlimited, the opportunities vanish with time.
His ability to evolve, to grow, to prosper, to thrive. This ability is a direct outcome and derivative of how many people you are surrounded with.
What the sadist causes, inflicts on himself, isolation, shunning, ostracism, that is a punishment. It's a self-punishment.
Sadism, therefore, could be described as self-punitive and bears close affinity to other self-destructive behaviors.
It's as if the sadist by hurting other people hurts himself.
There's a famous saying, suicide by cop. It's the same with the sadist.
When he pushes other people to the limit, when he causes them to erupt with indignation and resentment, when he inflicts upon himself the backlash and punishment brought on by other people or by society, the sadist is actually self-destructing, self-punishing.
And so sadism is not entirely one-directional or unidirectional.
Sadism, as many, many thinkers throughout the last 150 years have suggested, sadism has a very, very pronounced component, ingredient of masochism.
That's why we keep using the phrase subtle masochism.
The narcissist's sadism is the equivalent of committing social and mental suicide.
By isolating himself, by driving away and pushing away everyone, by alienating and estranging everyone, by causing everyone to hate him, to resent him, to reject him, to wish to punish him, a sadist and sadistic narcissist is actually being self-punitive. It's his way of punishing himself for who he is.