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Witnessing the Narcissist's Glory: Secondary Narcissistic Supply

Uploaded 5/26/2015, approx. 4 minute read

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

The narcissist's existence, his life, his vicarious, he lives through others. He inhabits their memories of him. Bits and pieces of the narcissist are strewn across continents among hundreds of casual acquaintances, friends, lovers, teachers, admirers, and despisers. He lives by proxy through the eyes of others.

Narcissists exist by reflection.

And this is the essence of what I call secondary narcissistic supply, witnessing the narcissist's glory days, secure knowledge that the narcissist is replicated in the minds of many.

The narcissist wants to be remembered because without being remembered, he is not. He does not exist without memories of him.

The narcissist needs to be discussed because he has no being except as a topic of conversation.

So passive memory is not enough. It needs to be active. The narcissist needs to be actively reminded of his achievements, of his moments of glory, of past adulations, of applause.

The constancy of these streams of memories smooths the inevitable fluctuations in primary narcissistic supply.

In lean moments, in lean times, when the narcissist is all but forgotten or ignored, or when the narcissist feels humiliated by the gap between his reality and his grandiose self-perception, his fantasies, in these moments, memories of past grandeur related to him by outside observers, these memories lift his spirits, sustain him.

It's like the drip line, like transfusion.

The narcissist needs his memories when he is not getting active, constant, repetitive narcissistic supply. They substitute for narcissistic supply.

This is the main function, actually, of people in the narcissist's life. Their function is to tell the narcissist how great he is because of how great he was.

So narcissists subsist of other people's reiteration of their accomplishments, achievements, breakthroughs, applause, affirmation, confirmation.

In this sense, narcissists are vampiric. They prey on the past. They suck the blood out of the archaeology of their own lives.


Consider the cerebral narcissists.

Cerebral narcissists are usually precocious children, gifted children. They are the wunderkind, the child with the oversized spectacles, the freak, the geek.

Such narcissists, even at an early age, befriend only people many years their senior. At the age of 20, the youngest of their best friends, among which there's a variety of professions and locations and so on, the youngest would be 40.

The age, experience, and social standing of the narcissist's so-called friends make them ideal sources of narcissistic supply.

Such friends feed the narcissist, host them in their bones, bring them books, introduce them to each other, interview them, take them on expensive trips to foreign lands, and in general sustain the narcissist's grandiosity.

The narcissist becomes the darling of these people, the subject of much awe and adulation. As a wunderkind, as a wanderer boy, the narcissist becomes a phenomenon. To some, a circus freak. To others, a genius.

Exactly the source of narcissistic supply for a cerebral.

But decades later, these, his erstwhile sources of supply, are by now old people, and they die off one by one. Their kids are in their 20s, but they are out of the loop. They are not in the know. They don't recall the narcissist hating.

And when his friends die, their memories of him die with them. They take to their grave his secondary narcissistic supply.

They are unable to regulate the narcissist's flow of narcissistic supply, unable to support a stable sense of self-worth based on this supply.

So, with the disappearance of these witnesses, the narcissist slightly fades with every passing of one of them.

They, the dying and the dead, are the only ones who know, the only ones who recall, the only ones who are able to tempt the narcissist to confirm to him that he is real, has been real, and therefore will be real.

His existence is so ephemeral that the narcissist requires this constant input from the outside, just to be sure, just to ascertain his own existence.

We are the witnesses of who the narcissist was back then, and why. They are the narcissist's only chance at ever getting to know himself at all.

When the last of them is in turn, in the ground, the narcissist will be no more. The narcissist will have lost his tab, a proper self-introduction.

It feels so sad that the narcissist is incapable of ever knowing himself except via and through other people.

It feels so lonely, like a child's grave in autumn.

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Negative, Fake, Low-grade Narcissistic Supply

Normal individuals seek a balanced amount of attention, while narcissists are insatiable, constantly craving affirmation to sustain their self-worth. They create a false self, projecting an idealized version of themselves to elicit reactions from others, which they refer to as narcissistic supply. Even negative attention can serve as supply for narcissists, as they prioritize any form of attention over being ignored, manipulating others to maintain their focus. Ultimately, the narcissist's existence revolves around this relentless pursuit of attention, which is intertwined with their internal struggles and feelings of worthlessness.


Narcissist's Routines

Narcissists have a series of routines that are developed through rote learning and repetitive patterns of experience. These routines are used to reduce anxiety and transform the world into a manageable and controllable one. The narcissist is a creature of habit and finds change unsettling. The narcissist's routines are often broken down when they are breached or can no longer be defended, leading to a narcissistic injury.


Faces of Narcissist's Aggression

Narcissists possess a grandiose sense of self-importance and believe in their unique mission, often viewing their lives as significant narratives meant for future documentation. They expect others to recognize their entitlement and comply with their needs, leading to frustration and aggression when the world does not accommodate them. This aggression can manifest in various forms, including passive-aggressive comments disguised as helpful advice, which serve to inflict emotional harm. Ultimately, narcissists harbor deep-seated hostility and resentment, making their interactions potentially harmful to those around them.


Selves, True and False in Narcissism (ENGLISH responses, with Nárcisz Coach)

The true self of a narcissist is a dead part that no longer contributes or consumes energy, it is ossified and fossilized. The narcissist's insides have been externalized, and they use their false self to regulate and interact with the world. Narcissists need other people to regulate their internal environment and form a coherent identity, and they solicit narcissistic supply to regulate their sense of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-esteem. Without narcissistic supply, the narcissist will disintegrate into molecules, and their very sense of existence depends on input from others.


How Narcissist Experiences His Collapse (Grandiosity Bubbles and Delusional Solutions)

When a narcissist is unable to obtain narcissistic supply, they experience a phenomenon known as narcissistic collapse, leading to various internal dynamics and emotional responses. This collapse can result in a range of maladaptive solutions, including delusional narratives, antisocial behavior, and paranoid ideation, as the narcissist attempts to cope with their perceived failures and maintain a sense of self-worth. The absence of supply can trigger severe emotional dysregulation, withdrawal from reality, and even psychotic episodes, as the narcissist struggles to reconcile their grandiose self-image with the harshness of reality. Ultimately, the narcissist's reliance on external validation creates a precarious existence, where the loss of supply leads to profound feelings of emptiness and self-destruction.


Narcissist Re-idealizes Discarded Sources of Narcissistic Supply

Narcissists maintain discarded sources of supply in a mental reserve and may seek them out when other options are unavailable, attempting to recycle these sources for validation. To reconnect with a devalued source, they must re-idealize it without admitting past mistakes, creating a narrative that reconciles their previous devaluation with the new idealized view. Old sources of supply should remain indifferent to the narcissist's attempts to reconnect, as this indifference is intolerable to them and deprives them of the attention they crave. Ultimately, narcissists view everyone as potential sources of supply, even enemies, as any emotional response, positive or negative, serves to validate their existence.


Narcissist: No Sense of Humor

The narcissist's humor is rarely self-deprecating and is often used to seek validation and admiration from others. This inflated sense of self-importance leads to a belief in a unique mission and cosmic significance, causing the narcissist to view every aspect of life as part of a grand design. Consequently, the narcissist reacts to life's challenges with extreme emotions, oscillating between idealization and devaluation of others, and often perceives minor events as significant omens. This mindset fosters paranoia and detachment, leaving little space for genuine humor or levity.


Narcissist's Pathological Space: His Kingdom

The pathological narcissistic space is a geographical area, group of people, or an abstract field of knowledge in which the narcissistic pathology reaches its full expression and effectiveness. It is a territorially expanded false self that is achieved via sources of narcissistic supply. The existence of the pathological narcissistic space is independent of the existence of sources of narcissistic supply. The pathological narcissistic space constantly consumes and drains narcissistic supply, and it generates negative narcissistic accumulation.


Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD) Misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)

Narcissists are anxious for social approval and seek narcissistic supply compulsively, which creates attendant anxiety. They require external feedback to regulate their sense of self-worth, self-confidence, and self-esteem, making them irritable. Narcissists are terrified of being embarrassed or criticized in public, and they fail to function well in various settings. It is easy to mistake the presenting symptoms of certain anxiety disorders with pathological narcissism, but the narcissist is egosyntonic, while the anxious patient is distressed and looking for help.


Narcissist Imagines Himself Through YOUR Gaze (Attributional Delusions)

Narcissists derive their self-worth from the perceived admiration of others, a phenomenon known as narcissistic supply, and they often construct narratives about what others think of them. They react more strongly to their assumptions about others' perceptions than to the actual feedback they receive, leading them to believe they are either geniuses or irresistibly attractive based on these imagined thoughts. This self-idealization allows narcissists to become their own love objects, redirecting their desires towards themselves, which is more akin to infatuation than genuine self-love. Additionally, narcissists can shift between cerebral and somatic identities, but their constant need for external validation remains a defining characteristic of their behavior.

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