We all have narratives, pieces of fiction, stories about ourselves, other people in our lives, the environment, our society, culture, personal history, general history, our nation.
We are surrounded by an ambience of dozens of stories and we comport ourselves, we direct our conduct, we experience reality. Everything subjective and objective is mediated via these narratives.
These storyboards determine not only who we are, but also how we behave. What we think, how we moat.
Narratives are very powerful, organizing structural principles.
But as usual, as usual with patients with cluster B personality disorders, there's a problem with a narrative.
Whereas each and every one of us has a dominant narrative at any given time. Narratives can change, but at any given time regarding a specific issue, a specific person, a specific situation, a specific circumstance, we have a dominant narrative.
That narrative dictates everything, organizes, makes sense of life, imbues it with meaning, and directs us, guides us, provides purpose, aims and goals. One narrative at a time.
People with cluster B personality disorders have multiple simultaneous narratives. They have, if you wish, a fragmented narrative landscape.
And apropos fragmented, my name is Sam Vaknin. I am a professor of clinical psychology and the author of the first book about narcissistic abuse ever, Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
And with this particular narrative, let's delve right in. Deep dive.
People with disorganized erratic personalities, also known as cluster B personalities, personality disorders.
The very word disorder tells you everything you need to know.
These people create simultaneous but mutually exclusive narratives of their lives.
Why do they do that?
Why healthy, normal people have a single dominant narrative at any given time and find it more than adequate, more than sufficient, while people with Cluster B personality disorders need to come up with a plethora, with a multiplicity of narratives?
And what's worse, these narratives are incompatible. They don't sit well together.
Ironically, the reason cluster B disorder people do that, is because they experience constantly dissonance.
Personality disorders, especially cluster B personality disorders, are forms of an inner battle, an internal conflict, which unresolvable in any normal way, in any healthy way, because the roots and foundations of this conflict, this internal conflict, are pathological. They're not embedded actually in reality.
So what happens is whenever the narcissist or the borderline, the psychopath, the histrionic, and even I would add the schizoid and the schizotipo and the paranoid, whenever they feel torn apart by internal conflict.
What they do, they come up with multiple narratives.
Each narrative caters to a horn of the dilemma. Each narrative caters to one of the warring factions. Each narrative adheres to and is intended to somehow mitigate and ameliorate the conflict and the anxiety.
So each narrative adheres to a specific combatant, a specific participant in the conflict.
So people with Cluster B personality disorders and other personality disorders as I've mentioned, they constantly generate narratives. They are like the never-ending story. They constantly come up with narratives, constantly come up with plots and storylines and conspiracies and so and so forth.
All of these are intended to make sense of the feeling of dissonant conflict within them.
If you have three narratives and each of these narratives takes care of another element in the conflict, another side or party to the conflict, then somehow perhaps you can restore inner peace, equilibrium, and homeostasis.
But these narratives, as I've said, represent different sides of a conflict.
Theconsequence is that these narratives don't fit together.
They tend to negate each other, contradict each other, undermine each other, challenge each other.
And paradoxically what happens is, the narratives are intended to somehow control the internal conflict, somehow ameliorated, mitigated, reduce it, reframe it, do something about it.
And yet the narratives themselves generate secondary conflicts.
The narratives themselves clash.
The narratives themselves break the personality even further, fragmented as so many hand grenades.
And so while originally they are meant to manage dissonance they actually add to it and generate new clashes, new skirmishes, new dissonances, both internal and external with reality, because many of these narratives are counterfactual.
They're not grounded. They don't derive from any observation of facts, from any theorizing about the external world.
Many of these people, people with Cluster B personality disorders, are unable to gauge and appraise reality correctly, or they are unable to recognize the externality and separateness of other people. They are unable to other than othering failure.
And so these narratives are divorced from reality and external and internal.
And they clash with reality, external and internal.
And this adds to the tension, the stress, and the anxiety, rather than reduce them.
These narratives are not anxiolytic.
On the very contrary, they generate depression, anxiety, acting out, aggression, externalized and internalized.
And they may lead ultimately to substance abuse and other forms of destructiveness.
These narratives are the equivalent of self-states in my work and the equivalent of multiple personalities in the old conception of the social identity disorders. These narratives are kind of sub personalities. They have a life of their own. They are like ego states or self-states. They have a life of their own. They have their own dynamics. They have a beginning and an end. They have a history.
And they generate internal processes, psychodynamics, that lead to outcomes, behavioral outcomes, emotional outcomes, cognitive outcomes.
And so these narratives are not passive. They are proactive, dynamic entities.
You can imagine the internal mess and chaos and havoc that this creates, a Magadon personified.
Examples of such narratives, I am not disordered. I am perfectly normal. That's a narrative.
Or I have a loving family. Or I'm a good person. Or I'm a bad person, I'm a psychopath, or I'm promiscuous, or I'm capable of great love.
These are all narratives.
What happens when these narratives are undermined by reality to such an extent, then that no amount of filtering and no number of membranes, and no form of active dissociation and denial work? Reality is too much. Intrudes, invades and overwhelms the narrative. The narrative collapses.
What happens then? What's the next step?
When these narratives collapse, the disorder, the personality disordered person allocates the narratives to other people.
He kind of gets rid of them by projecting them, or actually more precisely he uses, or she uses, projective identification.
The person with personality disorder, the patient with personality disorder, has multiple narratives.
They're counterfactual, they're not grounded in reality, and they often collapse under their own weight.
They are so fictional, so imaginary, so exaggerated, that sooner or later they crumble in the face of evidence or owing to some interaction with someone. This is known as narcissistic mortification.
Sooner or later these narratives collapse, disintegrate, reduced to dust.
What the personality disordered person does, he takes these narratives and he forces them on people around him, his nearest, his closest, his family circle, his friends, his colleagues, you name it.
He forces these narratives on other people, in his ambit, in his environment.
But it not only attributes these narratives to these people, he not only projects these narratives onto these people, he coerces them to behave according to the narrative. He blackmails them, he threatens them, he tortures them, he abuses them, he cajoles them, he begs them, he would do anything.
For these people to adopt the discarded narratives and act accordingly as if they were actors or actresses in some theatre production or some movie.
The narcissist shared fantasy is exactly such an example.
It is the outcome of a collapse of a narrative.
There's a collapsed narrative and then what the narcissist does, he imposes this collapsed narrative on a potential intimate partner and she is supposed to conform.
The intimate partner is supposed to comply with the narrative imposed on her or on him.
The intimate partners of the narcissist are supposed to become elements in the script, in the narrative. They are supposed to become elements in the script in the narrative.
They are supposed to fictionalize themselves, to render themselves abstract entities, plot lines.
So the role of these people, these actors, is to validate the reality of the narratives.
And this is of course the same function like narcissistic supply in narcissistic personality disorder.
External validation, which allows for internal regulation.
The narcissist harvests or garners supply, attention, admiration, adulation, being feared, whatever, attention mainly.
He garners it, he harvests it, and then he uses it as input, as supply, as fuel, as feedback towards the maintenance of an internal homeostatic environment in equilibrium.
It's the same with the narratives.
The narratives that have failed, when the person with personality disorder has experienced a collapse or a failure of a narrative, he then attributes, projects the narrative into someone in his immediate environments, so someone like a child or spouse, or a colleague or a friend and so on.
He imposes or superimposes the narrative on that person. He forces or coerces that person to behave according to the narrative, that is projective identification.
And the aim of all this, the purpose of all this convoluted and elaborate mechanism is to reestablish the narrative, to revalidate the narrative, to prove that the narrative is still functional, still applies, still useful.
So the actors reenact the narrative, replayed in a way that allows the personality disordered person to regain trust in the fidelity, authenticity, validity and applicability of the narrative.
Now the actors react badly to this.
The vast majority of actors react badly.
Even actors who have willingly submitted to a fantasy, a shared fantasy or a narrative, even actors who sought it actively, wanted to fit in, wanted to conform, wanted to join the cult, even such actors in due time feel the onerous outcomes of living someone else's life, of having to cater to someone else's needs, ceaselessly, of having to suspend one's existence, and of having to pretend and to fake most of the time.
These are demands which are excruciating.
So the actors gradually fall apart.
Then the presence of the person with personality disorder is burdensome, becomes intolerable, suffocating.
The imposition of the narratives by the personality disorder person is a form of strangulation, mental asphyxiation, denial of liberty, absconding with the person's core identity, emptying the person, voiding and negating the actor within the projected shared fantasy or narrative.
So the people who are sucked into the black hole that is the narcissist or the malignant, sucked into this narrative management system, the people who become actors and actresses in a script not of their making, not of their doing, the people who are coerced into existing in someone else's narrative and fantasy and storyboard and movie and theater play, the people who are denuded of autonomy, personal autonomy, independence, agency, the capability to make decisions and choices which are independent of the personality disorder, focus or center.
These people ultimately begin to dissociate because it's a very, very traumatic experience.
Self-denial, self-negation, self-viciation, self-erasure, just in order to become a figment, an element in someone else's story, that's a harrowing experience.
And it leads to trauma and trauma, the defense against trauma, one of the defenses is dissociation, depersonalization, de-realization within the fantasy, within the narrative.
This is not happening to me. I am here in body, but not in mind. Or this is not real. It's all make-belief. Or I completely forget everything the minute it happens.
These are all amnesia. These are all dissociative defenses.
Because these actors are misperceived as internal objects, especially by narcissists, they're misperceived as internal objects.
Offloading the narratives onto these people unburdens the disordered person.
Remember the sequence. There's a narrative. And suddenly the narrative fails, fails for some reason, collapses, crumbles.
At that point, the narrative generates enormous dissonance, enormous injury, enormous mortification.
And so the narcissist, for example, let's take a narcissist as an example, but it applies to many other personality disorders.
The narcissist has to reconstruct, recreate, reconstruct the narrative.
And he asks someone else to do it for him. He coerces someone else to do it for him, by inducting that person, introducing this person into a fantasy or a narrative.
And now this person validates the narrative and the fantasy. In the case of a narcissist, via narcissistic supply, but validates the narrative, validates the fantasy, suddenly feels real.
And because that person is perceived as internal, not external, the narcissist convinces himself that he is the one who has validated and re-established a narrative that caters, that appeals to his sense of omnipotence.
On the other hand, if the narrative is egodystonic, in other words, if the narcissist, for example, feels uncomfortable with the narrative for some reason, that someone else now is in possession of the narrative, that someone else now enacts the narrative, that someone else now is saddled and burdened with the narrative, relieves the narcissist.
This narrative that has caused the narcissists discomfort, despair, dissociation, depression, this narrative is gone. It belongs to someone else now.
And because that someone else is an internal object, the narcissist still maintains control and possession of the narrative without incurring the costs.
The actions of the actors, the steps that the agents take are owned by the narcissists because these people are internal objects. They are figments of the narcissist's mind. They live in the narcissist's internal space.
So whatever they do, within the narrative, is actually perceived by the narcissists as coming from the inside as his or her own actions so that these actions are owned by the disordered person but without the emotional cost without the attendant risks without the adverse consequences.
It's like experiencing the narrative by proxy.
The people who are now burdened with the narrative, the people who have now the sole authority over the narrative, not authority, but sole responsibility for the narrative. These people will suffer the consequences. They will carry the risks and they will experience the discomfort and displeasure that may arise from the narrative, not the narcissists.
And yet, these people are nothing but internal objects so the narcissist still owns them, still controls the whole situation. He is the sole authority, he's like God who plays with elements in his creation.
It's exactly like the relationship between God and humanity.
Like God who plays with elements in his creation. It's exactly like the relationship between God and humanity.
Humanity are agents that enact the divine narrative.
And yet, it is not God who has to die. It is not God who has to suffer in childbirth. It is not God who is tempted, who is sad, who is depressed, who commit suicide. It's not God.
While whatever happens to humanity is the narrative of God and happens within the godly realm, happens within the divinity. The consequences of the narrative are born by humanity, not by God.
This is exactly the narcissist perception.
When the actors at some point rebel, when they rebel, when they regain independence and agency and personal autonomy, the narcissist or the person with personality disorder becomes infuriated, feels threatened, converts these people who have defied him and walked away, converts them into a secondary object.
The disordered person experiences narcissistic mortification.
And then, having been abandoned and rejected by his agents, by his long arms, by the actors that were supposed to take over the narratives, and re-enact them and activate them dynamically.
When there's this kind of massive abandonment, the disordered person adopts one of two strategies.
He tries or attempts to hover these people, to hover them and to co-opt anyone new in their lives.
So the person with personality disorder would try to cajole and persuade and convince and charm and would try anything to get the actor of the narrative back.
And if the actor of the narrative has another new person in his or her life, the person with personality disorder will try to befriend them, who try to create a coalition with him, who try to insinuate himself into that person's life, who try to intrude, take over, assimilate somehow.
The actor and the new people in the actor's life.
This is one strategy, mega-moovery, if you wish.
And the second strategy, should this strategy fail?
The second strategy is try to destroy the frustrating object, the actor, destroy her or him physically, destroy their reputation, destroy their lives, interfere, intervene, undermine and sabotage, etc.
So when the narcissist has allocated a narrative to you, when he has made you an integral part of his shared fantasy, when a personality disordered person, a paranoid, a psychopath, a schizoid, borderline, histrionic, when someone with a personality disorder has allocated the narrative to you, has made you in charge, the manager, the director of the narrative.
You can't walk away. You're not allowed to walk away unless you're being devalued and discarded, but you're not allowed to have agency, personal autonomy, independent decision making. They are not allowed to make choices.
You are captive within the narrative. You're hostage. The narrative hijacks you.
And if you do exit the narrative, and if you do abandon the narrative, or sabotage the narrative or challenge it or undermine it or reframe it or just walk away and break up or whatever you become an enemy and the the perpetrator of the narrative the instigator of the narrative the author of the narrative, the instigator of the narrative, the author of the narrative that has been imposed on you, tries to hover you, tries to get you back to your old position and old role.
And if there's baggage with you, new people in your life, you just got married, you have children, I know what, the narcissist or the psychopath or the borderlines, they will try to co-opt these people. They will try to introduce these people into the narrative as well.
Only if all these fails, do you become the avowed enemy of the personality-disordered person?
And then there's a panoply of behaviors, stalking, smear campaigns, threats, attempts to recruit law enforcement with false accusations, I mean, you name it. There's a panoply of strategies and behaviors intended to punish you, to punish you for having absconded with the narcissistic narrative, for having abandoned the narcissists, for having betrayed your destiny, your role and your function.
This is the narrative way of looking at the progression, unfolding of personality disorders.
They are narratives, the stories that the disordered person tells himself.
But even this is done so dysfunctionally and in such a fragmented and fractured manner that the personality disorder person has no choice but to introduce others into the game in order to somehow restore a semblance of order and structure and meaning and sense into the whole mess.
And if you decline this irresistible offer, you will be punished severely.