Today we are going to discuss gifted children and what happens to them when they become narcissists.
Before we go there, I would like to clarify something.
In one of my previous videos I mentioned that children or babies, newborns, are born with a blank slate.
And this created a lot of misunderstanding. People countered by saying that children or babies are not born as a blank slate. They are born with faculties, they are born with potentials, they're born with templates.
And I think the debate in psychology between pro-blank slates and anti-blank slates is founded on a profound misunderstanding of the concept of blank slate.
You see, when you say that a baby is born with a blank slate, you're implying that there is a slate. There is something there. The slate is blank. It has no content. But it is there. The slate is like a container, like a template to be filled in with experiences, observations, and sensory inputs.
I see no argument between the camps. I see no daylight between the camps.
Even linguists such as Chomsky, who came up with the Universal Grammar concept, even people in ethology and zoology who study innate release mechanisms in animals. In other words, even people who claim that we are born with a lot of equipment, they need to understand that the blank slate is the equipment.
Now where we differ is with people who claim that babies are born with ready-made content, for example, the collective unconscious.
There, I have a serious argument. I do not think that babies are born with any type of content, but they are born with the possibility, the capacity, the ability and the potentialto acquire content, assimilated and create narratives and theories about the world and about themselves.
And one such narrative is the narrative of giftedness.
Giftedness is a form of content based upon the blank slate as a template.
To understand what I'm saying, I encourage you to read the book, The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.
Now there are several videos on this channel regarding intelligence, IQ, giftedness and gifted children. I will try to provide pointers in the description.
But today I would like to focus on something else.
Few gifted children attain success later in life. The vast majority of gifted children end up being losers and failures. This is especially true when gifted children evolve into full-fledged narcissists.
Most of these people, most of these children, when they grow up, when they become ostensibly adults, and they actually never do, but most of these children who became adults end up being miserable failures in every field of life.
They're failures in their professional life, their failures in their careers, their failures in their friendships. They fail in their relationships, intimate or otherwise, interpersonal relationships. They fail in functioning, they fail in adopting.
It's like being gifted and then becoming narcissistic because you're gifted is a formula for rigidity, maladaptability, and the inability to cope with reality and with the world itself.
Most gifted children who end up being narcissists are impoverished, isolated, shunned, and denied the recognition that they sometimes deserve.
Well, why is that?
Because a gifted child is often informed by the environment, and especially by parental figures, that he is Godlike. A gifted child is idolized, pedestalized, sometimes parentified. A gifted child comes to the conclusion that he or she can do no wrong, that they're perfect, perfection reified.
So gifted children develop entitlement. They believe that they're entitled to special treatment just by virtue of existing.
They don't have to work hard, they don't have to study hard, they don't have to invest, they don't have to commit, they don't have to do anything. They just have to be there. And by virtue of their presence and existence, they deserve the best and only the best.
And this is known as entitlement. It's a key feature in pathological narcissism.
But the gifted child's entitlement has a vicious twist. Whereas all narcissists feel entitled, most narcissists, narcissists who were not gifted children, who did not start life off as God's gift to humanity. Most narcissists believe that they are entitled, but also realize and understand that they have to work hard, they have to study, they have to invest, they have to commit, they have to turn up for work, they have to collaborate with others and so on, so forth.
They realize, most narcissists realize, that their existence or presence is an insufficient condition, a necessary but an insufficient condition, for fame, celebrity, adulation, money, power, etc.
They resent the fact that they have to work. They're angry. They feel that it is injustice. They feel that they are being discriminated against. Or maybe other people are too stupid to understand how amazing they are.
All narcissists have this inbuilt well of resentment and rage. That is true for all narcissists.
But narcissists who grew up as regular children, narcissists who were not exposed to the special treatment of having been a gifted child, a genius. Such narcissists are much more adaptive. They accept reality much more. They just cope the best way they can.
While the gifted child, who later becomes a narcissist absolutely rejects reality and its demands, refuses to work, refuses to study, refuses to invest, declines to commit, is evasive, withdrawal, avoidant. The gifted child turned narcissists absolutely wouldn't lift a finger to guarantee favorable outcomes.
The self-efficacy of the gifted child turned narcissists is built upon sheer existence, not upon any effort or any labor or any input.
So gifted children turn narcissists are indolent.
Now, indolence is another word for laziness. But whereas laziness is a behavior, indolence is an ideology.
I don't have to work. I will get by. I will make money without any investment or commitment or work or toil. I will get away with it. Never mind what I do. I'll get away with it.
Whereas other people need to sustain the drudgery of pedestrian, quotidian, mundane life, I deserve better. My life should be spectacular, adventurous, colorful, and should not include such chores as having to get up in the morning to go to work or having to sustain the intimacy in a relationship.
So this magical thinking here.
The gifted child turned narcissists believes that thinking about an accomplishment will make it happen. All he has to do, or she has to do, in order to guarantee a favorable outcome is to want it very much, to imagine it, to think about it, but again never lift a finger.
So in the case of the gifted child turned narcissists, the entitlement is coupled with indolence. The gifted child turned narcissist is inert, immobile, lazy, maladaptive in this sense. He is much more into daydreaming and fantasizing than into planning, implementing and executing.
Next, all narcissists are misanthropes. All narcissists regard everyone else as inferior. That is common to all narcissists.
But with a gifted child turned narcissists, there's a complication. Other people are truly inferior, intellectually.
So the gifted child term narcissist keeps receiving positive reinforcement of his contempt towards other people. He holds other people in contempt and the reality of his intellect makes it true, makes it a correct assessment.
In other words, his reality testing in this sense is intact. When a typical narcissist says, everyone around me is more stupid than I am, that is just wishful thinking.
But when a gifted child who becomes a narcissist says, everyone around me is dumb compared to me, that is not wishful thinking, that is reality and it's an integral part of reality testing and makes it very difficult to get rid of this attitude.
The misanthropy, the hatred of other, in the case of the gifted child, is supported by reality and is contemptuous, profoundly contemptuous, not merely haughty.
This kind of hatred coupled with contempt precludes collaboration.
Why would the gifted child turned narcissists collaborate with anyone when everyone factually is more stupid? Why would he cooperate with anyone? Why would he act in a communal or pro-social way?
The communal and prosocial developmental paths of the gifted child turned narcissists have been blocked by the realization that no one is worthy of the gifted child's attention, investment, effort, energy, thinking, or consideration.
It's a core feature of the lack of empathy that characterizes all narcissists, but in the case of the gifted child, becomes an ideology.
If the child says, I don't have empathy towards other people because compared to me, other people are subhuman. They're not fully human. So they don't deserve empathy. My empathy would be lost on these people who are not on my level.
I don't resonate with them. I have nothing in common with them. I'm a species unto my own. I'm the next stage, or next phase in evolution. I should be adulated and deified.
Why would I interact with other people? Why would I have interpersonal relationships with other people? Isn't this a waste of time? Isn't this defiance of the truth? Isn't this faking and pretending? I'm not going to be like that. I'm my own law. I establish my own norms, normative behaviors. So I decide.
And so gifted children turn narcissists are very very often schizoid, in other words, socially dysfunctional. They are lonely or alone. They are isolated. They engage in solitary activities. They cherish solitude because solitude is proof positive of one's superiority.
And finally, some gifted children become malignant narcissists. They develop a panoply of disorders which includes psychopathy and sadism.
To remind you, a malignant narcissist is the delicious combination of narcissism, psychopathy and sadism.
When the gifted child becomes a malignant narcissist, the gifted child's sadism becomes unusually heightened, virulent, and ubiquitous.
The gifted child turned narcissist becomes sadistic or leverages sadism in almost all his interactions.
Never mind with whom, never mind in which setting or environment, never mind what is the goal. Sadism imbues, permeates, colors, all the interpersonal interactions of the gifted child turned malignant narcissists.
And of course, when you are sadistic to other people, when you torture them and torment them and humiliate them, shame them and abuse them habitually, reflectively, instinctively, when you're like that, you pay the price.
Ubiquitous or pervasive sadism guarantees accrued adverse outcomes in life.
People shun you, avoid you, put distance, badmouth you, plagiarize you, hate you, torture you back. There's backlash and payback, there's karma. Call it as you will.
Ultimately, it is the gifted child turned narcissist who pays the price of his or her sadism.
Nefarious, pernicious, insidious and yet ostentatious and joyful, the sadism of the gifted child is jubilant. It's a celebration of superiority via pain.
Pain becomes the indicator of superiority or the ability to overcome resistance and inflict pain.
I wrote in my book, Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited in 1997, the following.
Forcing a child into adult pursuits is one of the subtlest varieties of soul murder.
Very often we find that the narcissist has been deprived of his childhood. He has had no childhood.
The narcissist may have been a wunderkind, a wonder kid or a wonder child. The answer to his mother's prayers and the solve to her frustrations.
He was tasked with realizing the unfulfilled wishes of his parents.
He became the narcissist, he or she, became a human computing machine, a walking, talking encyclopedia, a curiosity, a circus freak.
He may have been observed by developmental psychologists, studied and interviewed by the media, endured the envy of his peers, and their pushy mothers.
Unusual experiences for childhood.
Consequently, such narcissists constantly clash with figures of authority because they feel entitled to special treatment. They feel immune to prosecution with a mission in life, destined for greatness, fated for idolization, therefore inherently superior.
The wunderkind narcissist refuses to grow up in his mind, his tender age formed an integral part of the precocious miracle that he once was.
One looks much less phenomenal, and one's exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 60 than at the age of six. Better stay young forever and by staying young forever secure adulation and admiration and narcissistic supply.
And so the narcissist refuses to grow up. He never takes out a driver's license. He does not have children. He rarely has sex. He never settles down in one place. He rejects intimacy. In short, this kind of narcissist refrains from adulthood and adult chores.
He has no adult skills. He assumes no adult responsibilities. He expects indulgence from others. He is petulant and haughtily spoiled, prone to temper tantrums and brattishness. He is capricious, infantile and emotionally labile and immature.
So this is the picture, the clinical picture and the behavioral picture, of gifted children who became narcissists later in life.
Not a pretty picture.