Real-life Exchange with a Narcissist

Sometimes the heavens just align right and what you need is served up to you on a gleaming, sparkling silver platter. And so it is with this blog post because not only have we had a visit from a real narcissist, he has gifted us with an object lesson in how a narcissist can go from appearing normal to showing his real self in the space of a few conversational exchanges. What is particularly droll about this exchange is that he did it all in context with the last blog post, which is about how a narcissist cannot choose his nature but he can choose his behaviour.

James, our narcissist, initially presents as a rational person who disagrees with my basic tenet that a narcissist can choose his behaviour. James further identifies himself as autistic and in passing, describes narcissists as not being neurotypical. This popped my first red flag. James said: I disagree completely that you, Sweet Violet, are capable of "making everything wrong in your life the fault of someone else rather than choices you have made." because you, unlike your mother, are not a narcissist. It has probably never occurred to you to engage in the blame game your mother plays; likewise it has probably never occurred to your mother to take responsibility for her own actions. You, Violet, cannot choose to be narcissistic. Your mother cannot choose to be neurotypical.

There is nothing in the literature that I have been able to find that indicates a narcissist is not neurotypical. In fact, a PsychologyToday article would seem to discount that possibility with the observation that, in a test wherein the subjects were shown pictures of facial expressions and asked to identify them, “only narcissists were accurate at recognizing anger. Therefore, … narcissists appear to stand out as having enhanced cognitive empathy.” This is the antithesis of the autistic, who has great difficulty in reading facial expressions, including anger. Autistics and narcissists do share some characteristics, namely difficulty with empathy. Additionally, both autistics and narcissists can get fixated on something to a degree that is astonishing to others and they have often have a lot of trouble with change that they, themselves do not initiate. Narcissists are opportunists and it would not be surprising for a narcissist to seize on these shared characteristics to excuse his behaviour: people make allowances for autistics, knowing they are incapable of certain things and what better disguise for a narcissist to slip under the radar than to pretend to be an autistic?

But, like narcissists everywhere, James took it a step too far when he implied that narcissists are not neurotypical because the science simple does not support that. Unlike the autistic, who is not neurotypical and commonly has trouble discerning the meanings of facial expressions, the narcissist has an enhanced ability to do so. A search on Google, PubMed and NIH revealed no peer-reviewed articles supporting the idea that narcissists are not as neurotypical as you or I.

I responded to James—you can read the entire exchange here—and reiterated my position using examples, closing with “That you don't grasp this very fundamental fact of narcissists, that they can show one face to you and another face to me, tells me that either you have no narcissists in your life or that you have them but are deep in denial. Either way, you are one of the ones who doesn't “get it.’”

James responded with what appeared to be an empathetic response but then reiterated his position. Another red flag for me. He is unwilling to give up…I suspected at this point that he would not give up until I agreed with him, that he would rephrase and reframe his position until he got me to agree that he was right and I was wrong. This felt very manipulative: first show empathy to soften me up, agrees with my basic premise—that narcissists can show one face to some people and another face to others—and then reiterates his position, which implies they have no choice in the matter.

Again I refuted his contentions, again giving examples, and his next response gave me the “aha!” moment I was expecting: he twisted my words to support his contention. I replied: “Sophistry doesn't work with me. When faced with my brother's misdeeds, my mother did not punish him, she punished ME for ‘letting him’ misbehave. Narcissism or no, she had a CHOICE in who to punish.

“Narcissists cannot change their natures but they are perfectly capable of changing their behaviour. If they can treat one of their children well, they can treat them ALL well. They simply choose not to.”

And the gloves were off. James replied “It's not sophistry, but a rational argument, something which you unfortunately lack. I'm not going to waste any further time speaking to you, not because we disagree but because, despite my best efforts to not offend you and apologising when I thought I had, you have been consistently rude in return. It's entirely your choice as to whether you publish this comment; just knowing you read it is enough for me.”

I replied, pointing out how narcissistic this exchange was, but giving James the benefit of the doubt just in case he really was autistic, and pointing out that when he did not succeed in getting me to change my position, he became rude and attacked me. I then said I would not publish any more correspondence from him because “If a person can’t get his point across without attacking, then they don’t get space here.”

And that is where it got really interesting!

I didn’t publish his next response, which was “Well played, very well played. If I am a narcissist, I am not the only one here.” Note that I had given James the benefit of the doubt in my previous comment. I had specifically said “Now I am not saying James is a narcissist… I am going to be generous here and write off James’ rudeness to autism and an inability to grasp concepts that do not support his personal perception.” So James’ response to this was to gaslight and take the position that I called him a narcissist when I most specifically did not. He then attacked me yet again, calling me a narcissist. And amongst all of this, he revealed that this was a game to him… “well played, very well played” he said, like a chess player admiring an unexpected move by his opponent.

Then, in an attempt to outflank me, he sent two messages anonymously. How do I know they were from him? Because they were gaslighting: they accused me of being rude to James instead of the other way around. They accused me of wrongdoing and tried to hoover me back into the game, a typical ploy for a narcissist who is smarting from being bested in a competition that exists only in his mind. James (as Anonymous) said: Sweet Violet....what I saw was you going on the attack first and tried to argue your point so vehimently that you didn't allow him to have his own opinion. He also reacted as did you. You both have the right to your opinion and I would welcome to hear more of how the two of you worked through this. It's not about black and white, right or wrong, it's about really listening to the other person's point of view and letting them have their own opinion. BOTH of you....all of us.

I didn’t publish it so, a few hours later another message from James came in (narcissists hate to be ignored), also under the Anonymous name: It's o.k. for you to attack him? Sooooo those that disagree with you have no "voice"? hmmmm just curious  Remember, my last published comment about James specifically excused his rudeness just in case he really was autistic…

Well, I didn’t publish that comment either and, true to narcissistic form, he was back this morning, this time with an email entitled: “Autistic? You wish.” The message said:

I lied about that, I'm a psychopath. I've written about being one: [link redacted]

You were a fun distraction for a little while, but your insistence on blocking anybody you don't like got in the way of that. Didn't the narc bitch who squeezed you out teach you not to get in a psychopath's way?

It's very interesting reading of your tales of scapegoating when you were a child. Have you ever wondered why Petey was the chosen one while all you got was blame and bruises?

As if you're going to answer, you'll hide away from me like the weak speck (though these days I read you're more of a blob) of nothing your mother always knew you were.

This, of course, made me laugh out loud. Talk about being butt-hurt and petulant! Victim-blaming, attacking, James came to the blog expecting to be a cat toying with a mouse and found a big dog who bested him at every turn. Narcissists don’t scare me anymore nor do they have the power to intimidate me. I will be generous here and answer the questions James posed in his email for you all:

1) Didn't the narc bitch who squeezed you out teach you not to get in a psychopath's way? Obviously if she did, that was not a lesson I cared to retain. Like a typical narcissist, you inflate yourself and call yourself a "psychopath" so you will sound more formidable but, like all narcissists, you are a weak person who creates a powerful false persona to hide behind. I was onto you in your first message…my red flag system works extremely well.

2) Have you ever wondered why Petey was the chosen one while all you got was blame and bruises? No, I never wondered at all because I knew why: she favoured him over me. And I knew why: because my birth caused her to have to change all of her plans for her future. And, instead of handling that fact like a mature adult, she childishly blamed me for it.

3) …you'll hide away from me like the weak speck (though these days I read you're more of a blob) of nothing your mother always knew you were. There is a difference between hiding and refusing to give an asshole a forum. Pity you don’t know the difference, James.

And so here you have it…an exchange with a narcissist from pseudo-empathetic beginning to truth-revealing end, complete with gaslighting, hoovering, sweet talk and attacks. A real smorgasbord of narcissistic interaction: I could not have given you a better example if I had created an illustrative analogy myself! Thanks, James!

The Malignant Narcissist

An elderly woman visits her doctor for a check up after a mild heart attack. While in the examining room she has a sudden stroke and the doctor immediately admits her to the hospital to which his clinic is attached. The following day her sister-in-law, a registered nurse who is the executor of the elderly woman’s will, calls the small family together for a conference. The hospital will not turn off the woman’s life support without the consent of her next-of-kin, who are the nurse’s two sons, the old lady’s nephews. One son votes to turn off the life support—oxygen and IV fluids—while the older son advocates waiting until his aunt regains consciousness and then ask her. Because the family does not unilaterally agree, the life support remains in place and when the old woman regains consciousness a few days later, she opts to keep it going.

At a family dinner two months later the nurse castigates her older son for voting against pulling the plug. The old woman is now in a nursing home and the cost of maintaining her is eating away at her (not inconsiderable) assets. “This is your fault!” the nurse screams at her son. “I should take the cost of this nursing home out of your share of the estate! She is using up all the money because she’s taking too long to die!”

Another malignant narcissist plotted for more than two years to steal her grandchildren from her daughter so that she could give them to her childless brother to adopt. She sends her son to the daughter’s house to spy on her and, after years of ignoring her daughter and grandchildren, she begins dropping in unexpectedly—laden with gifts for the children—and snoops in her daughter’s cupboards and rooms. She even calls Child Protective services and makes baseless claims so that there will be a record of the daughter being investigated. With her son’s corroboration, the woman then spreads false tales of drug addiction, prostitution, child neglect and other horrifying stories among the extended family, blackening the name of her daughter and turning the family against her. In a court hearing in which the young mother’s uncle (brother of the grandmother) perjured himself—he had not seen his niece in more than five years, yet testified he had witnessed events in the last few months—the judge gave the grandmother a one year temporary guardianship, admonishing the stunned mother that she had a year to “clean up her act.” Visitation was granted, but when the young mother arrived to see her children several weeks later, grandma’s house was empty and a “For Sale” sign stood in the front lawn.

The grandmother took the children to another state where she obtained a permanent guardianship of the children by telling the court their mother had abandoned them. She got around the requirement to notify the mother of a court hearing by saying she had no idea where her daughter was and publishing a notice of the hearing in a newspaper in a city in which her daughter had lived several years prior, calling it the young mother’s “last known address.” The court terminated the mother’s parental rights and gave permanent guardianship of the children to their grandmother whereupon she uprooted the children yet again, moved them to the state where her childless brother lived, and gave the children to him for adoption. The children’s mother did not know where they were for eight years.

Yet another malignant narcissist, on admitting her terminally ill husband to the hospital, lied to her brother and sister about the nature of his admission, knowing the word would get back to her estranged daughter: she said he fell off a ladder at home and injured his back. When the man died of his illness a few weeks later, his daughter was not notified and she eventually discovered the fact of his death through a cousin, weeks after he had been cremated: her name was left out of his newspaper obituary as well. There is no gravesite for the bereaved daughter to visit and his ashes, according to a family member who has visited, are kept in a plastic bag in the closet of the spare room of the widow’s home.

Another daughter worked for more than 30 years in the family business, side by side with her father. On the few occasions she considered going out into the general workforce, her father convinced her to stay. “I need you here,” he told her. “I can’t run this place without you.” When he died unexpectedly, her mother inherited the business and promptly fired the daughter without notice, severance pay or references.

At Christmas dinner a woman who was the executor of a relative’s estate thrust some legal papers in front of her son, one of the heirs, demanding that he sign them immediately. The son, who suffered from dyslexia and for whom reading was difficult, politely demurred, saying he would take them to a lawyer to review when the holidays were over. She began screaming at him in front of the assembled guests, saying that if he didn’t sign the papers immediately, he was “stupid.” This insult cut him to the quick, as she knew it would, because he had struggled with feeling stupid for a lifetime because of his dyslexia, even though he was of above-normal intelligence. The man’s fiancée stepped up and told his mother “He’s not stupid! Do not call him that!” to which the mother replied, eyes narrowed and mouth twisted triumphantly “I am his mother and I will call him anything I want!”

The man took the papers and immediately left the dinner with his fiancée. The mother loudly blamed the fiancée, screaming that she was a bad influence on her son. She ignored his wedding five months later, as did the rest of his family. Early in November, however, the mother called her son to invite him and his new wife to Thanksgiving dinner, as if nothing had transpired between them over the past year.

Another woman received a series of disturbing letters in which her mother threatened to go to a lawyer and have the daughter brought up on criminal charges for defrauding the government. She claimed she had proof and she was just waiting for the “right time” to instruct her lawyer to proceed. The daughter spend weeks in a state of anxiety, not knowing what her mother was talking about, but fearing that the police would be knocking on her door at any time. It was not until she conferred with friends and sympathetic family members that she realized that a private attorney does not have the power to bring criminal charges against anyone, and she was then able to write it off as yet another random, unwarranted attack by her malignant narcissistic mother.

Yet another woman began spreading malicious rumours about her mother, calling her a liar, after reading her mother’s blog. The blog contained some ugly truths about her own mother (the young woman’s grandmother), a malignant narcissist who had disinherited her daughter in favour of her granddaughter, guaranteeing continued family discord. The young woman told the extended family about her mother’s blog, saying it was nothing but lies (although the majority of the entries were about events that had occurred before the young woman’s birth and about which she could have no first-hand knowledge) and suggesting that the family cut ties with her mother. Not only did the young woman cut off all communication with mother, so did many other members of the family, fearful they would be recognized in the blog and be shamed or held up to ridicule or public embarrassment by her revelations. Nobody, least of all the young woman, stopped to consider that if the blog was a lie, as she contended (and no real names were used), nobody could be recognized since the stories would not be true. It was five years before the writer of the blog learned why her family had shut her out.

A man sat with his soon-to-be ex-wife, signing papers. “Why have you been so angry with me?” she asked. “You wanted this divorce as much as I did.”

“Because you stole my thunder,” he answered.

“I don’t understand,” she replied.

“I was planning to go out to do some late Christmas shopping,” he told her. “And never come back.”

They had separated in June—he had been planning an exit guaranteed to make her and their 13-year-old son frantic and ruin Christmas for them—and he was planning it more than six months in advance! Why? Because the first Christmas they were married, when the boy was just an infant, she had bought a Christmas tree, ornaments and gifts and he was outraged that she would not return the purchases for a refund. He did not want to spend money on—or celebrate in any way—Christmas, he considered it a waste of money. She refused, saying he didn’t have to participate if he didn’t want to, but she was not going to allow him to ruin the holiday for their child. He had waited 13 years for his opportunity to retaliate.

Malignant narcissists are the personification of human evil. Well-known psychologist and author, Erich Fromm, coined the phrase “malignant narcissism” back in 1964 and characterized it as the “quintessence of evil.” Psychoanalyst Otto Kermberg claimed that the antisocial personality was essentially narcissistic and lacked morality, indicating that malignant narcissism includes a sadistic element, which serves to create a sadistic psychopath. In 1984, Kermberg proposed malignant narcissism as a psychiatric diagnosis. Writer and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck (People of the Lie) identified malignant narcissism as “the primary root of most human evil.” Peck further characterized it as “militant ignorance.”

According to Wikipedia and Richard N. Kocsis in Criminal Profiling, “malignant narcissism can be described as ‘an extreme form of antisocial personality disorder that is manifest in a person who is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, and with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.’

“As a syndrome, it may include aspects of schizoid and narcissistic personality disorder, as well as paranoia — recent ‘contributions have confirmed the importance of malignant narcissism and the defense of projection’ in the latter syndrome, as well as ‘the patient's vulnerability to malignant narcissistic regression.’

Malignant narcissism can be comorbid with other psychological disorders such as borderline personality disorder, sociopathy, even psychopathy. Malignant narcissists, however, cannot be helped by therapy. According to Jacques Lacan in Écrits: a Selection, “the patient attempts to triumph over the analyst by destroying the analysis and himself or herself.” The patient cannot stand the idea that anyone other than his own lofty self has the power to free him from his condition which, all too frequently, the narcissist sees as being preferable—even superior—to being mundanely normal.

In What Makes a Narcissist Tick by Kathy Krajco, it is stated that while a personality disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis, in the law the narcissist’s behaviour is viewed as “premeditated and volitional.” She later opines “…it is quite likely that psychopathy (Antisocial Personality Disorder) and malignant narcissism are one and the same. [They] go through life doing their thing by laying waste to lives in other ways like malignant narcissists do, as “love thieves,” parasites, gold diggers, climbers, slanderers, verbal abusers, child abusers, wife beaters, pied pipers (i.e., religious and political messiahs), and the like…leaving poverty, destroyed careers, ruined potential, lost nest eggs, psychological injury and even suicide in their wake.” I can personally attest to poverty, ruined potential, psychological injury, and even near-suicide as the result of relationships with malignant narcissists. These people are just plain dangerous. They are evil.

Peck says that evil has to do with killing, it is that which is against life and liveliness. “When I say that evil has to do with killing, I do not mean to restrict myself to corporeal murder. Evil is also that which kills spirit. There are various essential attributes of life–particularly human life–such as sentience, mobility, awareness, growth, autonomy, will. It is possible to kill or attempt to kill one of these attributes without actually destroying the body.” Emotional abuse, manipulating and controlling another person, denying them autonomy and freedom: these acts, common to narcissists of all stripes, are acts of evil.

Evil, however (according to Peck) is not so much the sin itself but the refusal to acknowledge the sin, to admit you were wrong and seek to make amends. So while any person may do something that hurts another, like participating in the bullying of a co-worker, for example, the truly evil are those who refuse to acknowledge their wrong-doing. This is the difference between having a conscience, knowing remorse, and the narcissistic lack of conscience, even going so far as to blame the victim for his feeling hurt: “…he was asking for it, wearing those pink socks with yellow pants, dressing like a geek—we just gave him what he had coming…”

Malignant narcissists take it one step further: instead of waiting for an opportunity to ride someone, they make their own opportunities. They stalk, cyberstalk, harass, bully, and even plot against their targets for extended periods of time. There is nothing too low for them to stoop to, no behaviour too extreme for them as they pursue their goal of power and dominion over those around them. A malignant narcissist will do anything she thinks she can get away with in order to get what she wants. There is nothing they will not do to get their way, to create ways to get gratitude and admiration from others, to punish those who thwart them. From intentionally digging at someone’s emotional tender spots to stealing their children, to keeping a terminally ill man home until he collapses on the way to the bathroom and breaks a bone, then concealing both his illness and death from an adoring daughter (who didn’t so much adore the narcissistic mother), these people have no boundaries, no sense of shame, no limits to what they are willing to do to get what they want.

Malignant narcissists: they are the evil that walks among us.