Echo and the Narcissist

Echo and the Narcissist
What Makes Narcissists Tick

The Narcissist's Strategy

Remember that a narcissist's goal is attention. His or her whole life is a game of monopoly for it all. Keep in mind that attention comes in many forms, including regard, love, and respect.

The grandiosity is an excuse to justify hogging it all.

The abuse denies it, bringing the victim low, either by slander or treating them like dirt.

The lack of empathy is partly play-acting grandiosity by viewing the deprived victim as a bug and partly to un-conscience the cruelty of narcissistic abuse.

So, at bottom, it's all about attention.

Though a narcissist may be overtly exhibitionistic at times, NPD is different from other attention-getting disorders. A narcissist's attention getting is covert most of the time. There are two reasons for this.

· She can't abuse just anyone without risk of payback. So, (normally) she needs to project an image that reflects well on her. People respond negatively to any but subtle exhibitionism that somehow stays beneath their radar. So, exhibitionism rarely gets a narcissist the reflection she wants to see in people's faces.

· Needing to be the center of attention is a childhood trait. Being childish is not grandiose, so the narcissist must get attention without seeming to seek or want it.

Besides, a god isn't exhibitionistic. God is self-sufficient, needing nothing from anyone. God never cries out for attention. Instead, she is subtle: she needs to project an image of herself as so special that others owe her all their attention without her having to ask for it. Or appreciate it (which would be paying some attention back). In other words, she acts like a queen, who is above noticing all the attention she gets from everyone around her but regards her dignity as slighted by anything less than all of it.

This absurdly haughty attitude is born of another thing that distinguishes narcissistic attention-getting from other personality disorders. Narcissists are infinitely stingy with their own attention and infinitely covetous of everybody else's. In fact, their most characteristic behaviors are behaviors that deny attention to anyone but themselves.

She cannot stand to see anyone else get any. That's stealing from her. She is just like a spoiled brat who won't share her toys.

So, whenever possible, she deprives others of all forms of attention. That is, she contrives to make sure others get no regard, affection, appreciation, consideration, respect, and so forth. She must get it all.
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Projection

Projection is a new name for an old thing, scapegoating. In this section I just explain it in general terms, with examples. In the next section, we zero-in on how narcissists project and what is unique about the way they do it.

Projection. We find it everywhere. Which should be no surprise. It's actually the oldest trick in The Book. Really. The Serpent pulled it on Eve in the Book of Genesis when, in the very act of lying to Eve, he accused God of being the liar.

Here's how the story goes. The serpent had just suggested that Eve eat the Forbidden Fruit, and she replied that God told them not to because eating it would bring about their fall. The cunning serpent said, "God told you THAT?"

Slick, eh? In the very act of telling a whopper, the sneaky snake left-handedly called God a liar, through the power of suggestion. Thus the Prince of Lies pulled an identity-switch with God.

Moses ritualized a demonstration of projection in the Book of Leviticus as the prescribed rite for the annual Day of Atonement.

In this "atonement" ritual, all the people had to come forward, one by one, and make the scapegoat (a perfect yearling firstborn male to represent someone unblemished and with great potential) take their sins away from them and onto himself. How did they do this? By accusing him of their sins and laying the blame on his head. Then they had to purge themselves of him and make him atone for their sins. How did they do that? By chasing him away into the desert until he gave up trying to follow them back home, and then deserting him there. Which was the sentence worse than death = doom, because he would slowly die of thirst.

One hardly thinks they enjoyed doing this. Would you?

Wouldn't you instead get Moses' message? More powerful than a sermon, eh? Wouldn't you hang your head a little, thinking, "Jeez, are we that transparent?"

But never underestimate willful obtuseness' power to get things exactly backwards. Soon, people had done just that. Instead of being duly shamed by this ritual reenactment of how they "cleansed" and "saved" themselves (from justice) by scapegoating those who have the most to lose and are the least deserving, they decided that this ritual meant that this despicable behavior is the right thing to do! the way to cleanse yourself of sin!

How convenient.

They didn't get it later, either, when John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth came along and said: "Read our lips: To cleanse yourselves of your sins, don't punish an innocent scapegoat for them! Just R-E-F-O-R-M. Too complex?"

People still managed to just anti-get the message yet again, deciding that this meant they should graduate from animals and sacrifice these two men as the scapegoats to die for/of (in scripture you have this double entente, because the word used can mean either for or of) their sins.

So, then St. Paul gave it a shot. He really tried to make people see that they'd better quit acting stupid and projecting, instead of repenting, their sins. In his letter to the Romans, he basically put it in the plainest terms possible — those of a threat that asked, "Just whom do you think you're fooling?"

You — who steal — preach that other people should stop stealing. You — who commit adultery — preach that others should stop committing adultery. You — who commit sacrilege — preach that others should stop being idolaters.

— Letter to the Romans, Chapter 2, verses 21-22

How's that for letting the self-righteous know that you know all their finger pointing is just projection/scapegoating?

Ah, but obtuseness is invincible, and twisted thinking can make black white. So, again this simple message went in one ear and out the other. All three peoples of that Book (Jews, Christians, and Moslems) still got it exactly backwards. They all say that the blood of the innocent victim on them "cleanses" them of their sins.

Projection. We see it everywhere. It's a kind of baptism = a mud bath people give their betters, by rubbing themselves off on them. Here's how it works.

Got a guilty conscience? If so, you've certainly been tempted to say to yourself, "I'm not so bad." To prove that, you must look around for an example of someone who's worse. Then you can say to yourself, "Aha! I'm not as bad as So-and-So."

But guess what? You didn't pick a So-and-So who really has that fault and has it worse than you. You picked someone with very little mud on his name, someone who looks cleaner than you, if possible, someone who has the corresponding virtue instead of that fault.

We're all tempted to pull this stunt. Some of us do, and some of us don't.

For example: If you're stingy, look for someone with a reputation for generosity, because generosity in your neighbor puts your stinginess to shame by serving as a foil that (by contrast) makes your stinginess more noticeable. Then smear your vice off on him. Tell everybody that he's stingy. Make everything he does sound stingy.

Thus you kill two birds with one stone: you rid yourself of your stinginess and him of his generosity.

Not. But looks are everything, and Truth doesn't matter, and this fraud makes you look good by comparison with him. Ah, cheating is much easier than freeing yourself of sin the legitimate way, by repentance.

You can see why narcissists highly prize this device called "projection" and become expert in it.

Projection. We see it everywhere. For example, guess who's favorite portrayal of the President of the United States is as "a Hitler" or "even worse than Hitler?" You guessed it, the Germans. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder did it in campaign speeches to turn the tide and get elected. And guess whose favorite and constant characterization of Americans is as "arrogant?" You guessed it, the French. Projection.

Once you catch on to projection, you do recognize it in a vast amount of the badmouthing you hear.

Magicians call this trick "misdirection." With one hand magicians misdirect our attention so we don't see what they're doing with their other hand.

Finger-pointers do the same thing. They direct people's attention (critical attention, negative attention) away from themselves and what they're doing by accusing someone else of doing the same, or essentially the same, thing. Thus they make themselves seem like people who never would dream of doing such a thing themselves — while in the very act of doing it.

The worst examples of this that I personally know of happened in schools. In one case, a teacher (a malignant narcissist in a private school) took indecent liberties with, and sexually abused, pubescent boys he lured into his home while his wife was at work on the night shift. It was later discovered that many people knew that he invited boys to his home on Friday nights. But nobody had seen anything wrong with that. Over time, many school employees had caught him in his classroom alone with a boy — behind a closed, sometimes locked, door and in the back where neither could be seen from hall. Nobody had seen anything suspicious in that. Many people knew this teacher had an explosive temper that he often had to make excuses to a berated student for, but nobody had seen anything abnormal in that. In fact nobody saw anything inappropriate in the inappropriately patronizing and intimate relationship he had with his students. Even when it came between them and their parents.

And nobody thought anything of it when, every few years, he seized any opening in a conversation to pop off with "What? Are you the only one around here who doesn't know? He likes boys," referring to some unmarried teacher. One unmarried teacher after another.

Thus he play-acted the part of his anti-type, a man who was abhorred by homosexual child abuse = certainly NOT the type who might do such a thing himself. Though people saw plenty to view with suspicion in that unmarried teacher, nobody saw anything suspicious in the accuser failing to cite any evidence or report these allegations he was so sure of.

They didn't even see anything suspicious in the accuser glomping onto that unmarried teacher to become his best friend. Even when his doing this became a glaring pattern.

Indeed, every single unmarried teacher who came to that school got assassinated by this, his best friend. And nobody thought anything of it! Satan polished his halo by being a pillar of his parish, a lector and lay communion distributor. And he got away with this for over fifteen years.

A serial killer is less cruel. He doesn't betray a sacred trust by doing it to people who have every good reason to trust him. And even if he tortures them, he doesn't doom his victims to a life-sentence of torture in Hell.

Notice that the "innocent" people he fooled ain't innocent. They committed the Original Sin, believing an obvious lie just because it was juicy. Like Eve.

To wit: It flew in the face of reason for her to think God might be lying. He was her creator. He provided everything for her and Adam. Which means that he had proved he wanted what was good them. He denied them but one thing, telling them that it was for their own good. So, what was she thinking? She had every good reason to believe that he was telling the truth.

Moreover, what credibility is there in a stranger who slithers up to you like a sidewinder? Why not doubt the serpent — someone she had no reason to trust?

Bottom Line: God has high credibility; serpent has about zero credibility. So, Eve wasn't honestly fooled: she just liked serpent's version of the world better, because it made her able to be as God. Adam's reason for swallowing the lie was even worse: he just did it to agree with Eve. In other words, to please her he prostituted his mind to her. And thus political correctness was born.

Narcissists and political character assassins are dangerous precisely because people do this. If, say, you have known someone for 10 years, you know a lot about him. Doubtless, you have seen his honesty tested and seen that he proved to be an honest man. So, nobody should be able to slither up to you tomorrow and tell you he's dishonest. If you buy that, you are betraying that honest man. To believe that lie, you must annihilate history and 10 years of evidence to the contrary. You are not innocent.

Here's an example of the finger-pointer being guilty of the moral equivalent: Mr. Self-Righteous union-busts to keep the workers in his shoe factory so poor they go barefoot — and shows moral indignation in loudly condemning his neighbor for "muzzling an ox trampling the grain." He gets all fuzzy looking if you try to explain to him that he's doing the same thing, only worse. That's because he views rules, not as guidelines to be followed, but rather as red lines to catch other people with one toe over so he can condemn them. So he ignores the spirit of the law and obsesses over the letter of it.

Here's another example of projection that camouflages guilt for the moral equivalent. It also shows that even religious institutions are guilty of projection to polish their image.

The Catholic Church points the finger at mothers who have abortions, saying, "What kind of mother does that?" Okay, that position on the issue is reasonable, and it is the type of thing religion is expected to express its opinion on. But why does the Church harp on abortion when it has so little to say about countless other issues?

What issues? Well, for example, why don't we hear the Church crying out against Catholic dictators who mass-murder and torture their own people? You never hear a peep out of Rome about that. Why does the Church declare women who have abortions excommunicated but not these Catholic dictators? Why didn't it condemn the Irish Catholics in the IRA murdering Protestants? Why doesn't it cry out against the Catholic Mafia? Why doesn't it stop taking money from gangsters and burying them as Catholics in good standing? Why don't we hear the Church crying out against the scourge of child-beating and wife-beating, anti-Semitism and other bigotry, drugs, sweat shops, union-busting, exploiting undocumented migrant workers, and so forth? Why don't we hear it preaching against slander and character assassination? Why is it obsessed instead with just gays and women who have abortions?

The answer is obvious. The Church points the finger at others only for "sins" of which IT is guilty. This deflects attention for those sins off itself and onto others. Damage repair for the Church's image. Not to mention misdirection like that of the teacher in the example above.

The Church goes to great lengths to portray an image of itself as our "holy mother," virtually fusing its image with that of Jesus' mother. The harping on abortion is just part of that act. All this holy motherhood posturing tends to make us forget what Holy Mother Church has done to her own children.

Recall how truculently she has waded through her children by the tens of thousands throughout history. She aborted the lives of countless of her children — throughout the 900 years of the episcopal and monastic inquisitions and now by allowing predatory priests and other religious to sexually prey on countless more of her children. She has stonewalled justice, intimidated victims who seek it, and protected criminals — spiriting them off to Rome or to a distant school or parish for a fresh set of unsuspecting prey.

And to be fair, the Catholic Church certainly isn't the only religious institution guilty of using the pointed finger for misdirection to get our attention off its own sins and act like the opposite of what its conduct makes it. In fact, it does at least have something officially on record against many other evils: religious preachers of other denominations don't even seem to know that the other great evils exist.

Paul was in line with the ancient Hebrew scriptures. Scripture has a name for the spirit in which people point the finger at someone crying, "Look what they're doing! It's evil!" The name of that spirit is satan, which means the "finger-pointer," the "name-slayer" (slanderer, character assassin), the "prosecutor/persecutor," or the "accuser." In some places (e.g., the Book of Job) they also call this spirit "the policer of the world."

So, projection is everywhere.

The worst thing about it is that mud sticks best to a clean spot. I'm sure that people who do this think they're clever, but it's childsplay. Send a muddy child into an unsupervised schoolyard and wait to see what happens. He will rub himself off on every cleaner, smaller child he can find, until they are all crying and he looks good by comparison.

Looks good by comparison. Those are the all-important words. The hypocrite makes himself look good by comparison with others. He does that the easy way — by smearing himself off on others to make them look bad. This is the root of envy. Which is NOT a rare motive for what people say about others. It's an all-too-common motive.
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The Projection Machine

Narcissists don't just project their faults and failings (character flaws and bad acts) onto you, they also project their feelings, emotions, and beliefs onto you. Actually, "into" you (See Projective Identification next).

The projected beliefs may be beliefs about themselves or beliefs about you or beliefs about anything. In fact, in posing to the mirror of your face, they are projecting their image onto you = their belief about themselves onto you.

The projected feelings and emotions may be positive ones or negative ones that they want to get rid of.

Note that the narcissist projects both positive and negative things onto you. In projecting positive things on you (e.g., his grandiose false image) he is using you as a mirror.

In projecting negative things on you, he is using you as a dumping ground.

Here we focus on the bad, or negative, things narcissists project, their faults and failings in particular.

When narcissists slander and calumniate you, they have two objectives. One is projection, and the other is to muddy a bright spot in your character with whatever slander or calumny they're projecting at you. It's as though any shine on your image diminishes the glow of their glory.

Don't take my word for it: test a narcissist. Praise someone before a group and see what happens. The next day the narcissist launches a smear campaign against that praised person.

This is, of course, the mentality of the rapist, who must tear others "down off that pedestal." The narcissist just does the deed in a non-sexual way.

Now, you'd think it would be hard to accomplish both objectives — projection and smearing — at the same time. But it's uncanny how narcissists manage to do so! It's all in the way they word their "line" on you. They are glib and amazingly adept at killing two birds with one stone: they not only ditch one of their faults, they muddy one your virtues in the process.

Note that in doing this, the narcissist isn't attacking your faults and shortcomings: she is attacking your virtues and accomplishments. Consequently, when she is conducting a campaign of character assassination against someone, the arrows she shoots never hit one of that person's real flaws.

The result is something like Dr. Frankenstein accomplished with body parts. A chimera. The narcissist's false image contains the virtuous qualities in other people's characters, and their images have had those virtuous qualities replaced with the flaws in the narcissist's character. In other words, the narcissist steals your virtues and dumps on you her faults.

In doing so, the narcissist is stealing your identity, pulling an identity switch with you, piecemeal.

It's a kind of magic, an illusion created with nothing but words, which can warp perceptions by making anything of anything.

For example, let's say that the narcissist is stingy and that one of your virtues is that you are outstanding for your generosity. She hates the glow of that shiny spot in your character, because it serves as foil to her stinginess, making it more noticeable by contrast. So she muddies your image and glorifies her image by misappropriating your generosity to herself and misappropriating her stinginess to you.

How? She goes around lying about how much she gives to charity and about helping people out all the time. More important (since one must be careful and subtle about boasting), she just makes everything she does sound generous. She also goes around telling lying stories about you, stories that have you being stingy. More important, she makes everything you do sound stingy, however generous it manifestly is. In The Art of Lying I gave an example of how a narcissist can make one $500 purchase sound like payment for room, board, toiletries, cigarettes, and laundry services for twenty years — in order to unsound like a freeloader.

This is what makes narcissists stand out. Normal people do project. They sometimes even smear. But not in such a calculated fashion. In "What Makes Narcissists Different" (in What Makes Narcissists Tick), I enumerated the difference between the way normal people project and the way narcissists do:

· Normal people project when put on the defensive. Narcissists project in unprovoked attacks.

· Normal people don't smear themselves off on just anyone. They wouldn't dream of harming those near and dear. All people are nothing but objects to narcissists, so they smear themselves off on their own parents and children as thoughtlessly as we smear ourselves off on a towel. For no reason other than to cause pain, they will say anything — ANYTHING — about them, without a second thought.

· Normal people are likely to shake themselves off on whoever happens to be near at the moment. So, they sometimes project a flaw off onto someone who actually has it. But narcissists project ironically, accusing those with the corresponding virtue of a vice.

· Normal people stick to slander (which has at least some degree of truth in it), rarely engaging in calumny (lies). When they do calumniate someone, they at least have a natural reason for animosity toward the target. Narcissists are perverted. There is no natural reason for what they do.

· Even when normal people do calumniate someone, they don't go hog-wild and calumniate that person so badly and so widely as to destroy them and ruin their whole lives. Narcissists do go hog wild. They are mental children and therefore as dangerous with their mouths as an angry five-year-old with an assault weapon.

In fact, a narcissist is most likely to smear off on someone he owes gratitude, because needing help damages his image. So he repays help as though it were an insult. He must devalue it by devaluing the giver of it, as if such a contemptible person is incapable of really helping someone as grand as he.

Unlike narcissists, normal people don't do it because damaging others makes them feel good. In fact, doing this makes a normal person feel ashamed. But it makes a narcissist feel grand.

When it's fully conscious calumny a narcissist is spreading, he just thinks it's funny that people are such idiots that he can get away with it, feeding them ridiculous lines about others. Lines that are preposterous in the light of the target's known conduct. The narcissists I have known all let it show at one time or another that they had nothing but contempt for the people who believed them. I am sure that a narcissist views his success at lying as proof that he is brilliant and that all mere mortals are as stupid as sticks.

Narcissists aren't projecting guilt so much as they're projecting shame. In fact, it may well be that they have no concept of guilt and have it confused with shame. Which is pain.

So this wicked behavior is a way to ditch their pain onto you. It's a psychological pain-killer, like a drug, and that's why causing you pain makes them feel good.

Here's an example of a famous smear that illustrates how it works.

The first thing people noticed about Jesus of Nazareth was that, unlike the other prophets, he spoke on his own authority, appealing only to logic, and never prefaced his teaching with "God says…." This is but one of many examples of his exceptional care to avoid blasphemy. He went way beyond custom in this regard. His tremendous reverence for the name of God was his most glaring virtue, because he put everyone, including the prophets, to shame in this.

Okay, so, if you or I wanted to smear Jesus, blasphemy would be the last thing we'd accuse him of, right? Because that accusation would be laughed at as a joke.

Or would it?

Well, whether people would get the joke or not, we're normal, so we'd accuse him of something believable, like being a drunk or something. But that isn't the way a narcissist thinks.

The narcissist(s) in the Sanhedrin who plotted against Jesus went right for that greatest shining virtue of his in leveling the charge of blasphemy against him. They just had to muddy it o'er.

Unbelievable. Yet the people believed it!

And consider the source of this accusation. Look who's accusing him of blasphemy. The Sanhedrin, blasphemously acting in the name of God.

In other words, in the very act, they were projecting the blot of their sin onto his outstanding virtue.

Unbelievable. Yet the people believed it.

Near the beginning of the Spanish Inquisition, a Spanish archbishop or cardinal (whose name I forget) remarked that the accusations leveled by the Inquisition were so widely believed because people are much readier to believe the unbelievable than the obvious. He said a mouthful.

I call narcissists "projection machines." I am convinced that projection is a knee-jerk reflex in them. That is, whenever a moment of self-awareness threatens to let them know a flaw in their character they're revealing or some bad thing they're doing, they instantly go into denial about it (= repress conscience of shame) by projecting the semblance of that flaw or misdeed off onto the handiest scapegoat — usually the very victim of whatever abuse they're dishing out.

How's that for maximum irony? Hence, while hurling a hailstorm of wild accusations at you, you can count of one them being that you are hurling wild accusations at them. Every single time. They can't help it. I think they have been twisting their thinking for so long (since early childhood) that twisted thinking is hard-wired into their brains. I think projection is such an ingrained habit in them that often they're unaware that they're doing it.

Projection is such a reflex in them that they give themselves away by some of the accusations they hurl. For example, if a narcissist says he fears you might attack him physically, look out: he is at least pondering whether to attack you physically. If she says she fears you might get into her bank account, know that she is at least pondering getting into yours. Every single time.

Narcissists aren't the only people who project. But they are different in that they have done it so much for so long that they do it like a machine — automatically, every single time. And they rarely hit one of the target's real faults. Instead the accusation is a joke, smearing one of that person's virtues as a vice.
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Projective Identification

Even if you hate to fight, if you have any self-respect you're bound to feel compelled to stick up for yourself now and then. For, people who actually have to do it know that docile submission ain't the virtue it's cracked up to be. They see it for what it is.

It's the worst thing that can happen to you. That's absolute power over you. Possession of you. That's bending over for it. It makes the victim hate himself. The only time it's conscionable is if you are a child, who really has no choice. Otherwise, you need to have a backbone.

So, now and then, you're bound to object to the degrading way the narcissist treats you. He or she will throw a fit at you for objecting, and there will be an argument.

Or, you're bound to say or do something that fails to reflect the narcissist's grandiose specialness and thus "slight" him or her. To do this, just relate to the narcissist as his or her equal; just behave as though you deserve consideration in some matter. Then look out. Uproar.

But even if you don't do these naughty things there are arguments, aren't there? Because a narcissist just has to take a crap on someone every so often to feel better to about him- or her-self.

He knows just how to pick a fight. And when he wants to pick a fight, there's no avoiding it, because he is a spoiled-rotten child, so he will keep at it until he gets what he wants. He will work you into some kind of corner, demand something impossible of you there, and then throw a fit when you can't do it.

The narcissist won't even let you walk away. She will follow you telling you how intolerable you are just for being the way you are, saying that she doesn't have to put up with that. If even that doesn't get a rise out of you, when she has you in a corner, she'll assault you, forcing you down on your back and climbing on top of you, saying, "I'm stronger than you."

During the argument, the narcissist throws up a wall of flak to keep anything you say from getting through. Sheer volume is the chief tactic, to drown you out so you give up trying to speak through the blast of that foghorn. Another technique is to seize upon some word near the beginning of your sentence and butt in on you to blast off with it on a tangent. Yet another technique of communication blocking is to call things what they ain't. Whatever.

Since you are trying to communicate, you try to calm him or her so that you can reason with them. Why do you never succeed? Because that is precisely what the narcissist doesn't want. So, forget it.

Face it: he or she is perfectly rational when they want to be, so they are being irrational now on purpose. To block communication.

For, the narcissist can't win any reasonable discussion, and a narcissist must always win. They haven't a leg to stand on, and they know it. Sense, reason, and decency are all on your side. So, the only way the narcissist can win is by shutting you up. Bullying.

During this fit, the raging narcissist projects his or her anger off onto you and accuses you of being the one who is "flying into one of your rages." How do I know? Because your narcissist is just a narcissist, and that's what narcissists do.

When narcissists pull this stunt, they aren't using you only as a dumping ground for their toxic emotions: they are also doing their best to make you act out their fantasy that you are the raging maniac here. In other words, they are trying to enrage you. Get it?

That trick is called "projective identification."

Projective identification (DSM-IV, pg. 756). The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by falsely attributing to another his or her own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts. Unlike simple projection, the individual does not fully disavow what is projected. Instead, the individual remains aware of his or her own affects or impulses but misattributes them as justifiable reactions to the other person. Not infrequently, the individual induces the very feelings in others that were first mistakenly believed to be there, making it difficult to clarify who did what to whom first.

Indeed, when you're trying to pacify a raging maniac, and she heaps insult on injury by mocking you with the accusation that you are the one "who got mad," the one who's "flying into one of your rages," normal people do get angry.

There'd be something wrong with you if you didn't. In fact, even therapists, who are trained to avoid this pitfall, can hardly help getting angry when narcissists pull this stunt on them.

It is the result of an interplay between two other psychological ploys narcissists use.

One ploy is identifying with their reflected image as their self. The fancy name for this mental trick is "introjection." Introjection literally means "throwing inward," which is the opposite of projection, "throwing outward." Introjection is defined as relating to something that comes from the outside as though coming from the inside.

That's what Narcissus is doing here in relating to his reflected image as though it's his inner self.

We have an inner life in which we are constantly in touch with ourselves. We have no fear of losing contact with ourselves, so when we need to focus on other things or people, we can. But Narcissus has access to his self only through mirrors.

Mirrors that are sometimes naughty, because they want to express themselves instead of reflect him. Mirrors that sometimes want to pay attention to someone other than him. Mirrors that sometimes reflect a less than grandiose image of him. So, his whole life is about controlling those mirrors, in a desperate struggle to make sure nothing happens to his image/self.

When a person with introjections projects, their introjections determine the projections, distorting them. In addition, the projector pressures the victim to behave in a way that reflects his fantasy. That's projective identification.


INTROJECTION + PROJECTION => PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION


In other words, the narcissist pressures you to play along with his game of Pretend. He projects the anger, fear, envy, and character flaws inside him onto you and works to make you display them. For example, if he is stupid, he will project his stupidity off onto you AND make you feel stupid so that you act out his fantasy of the stupidity being in you rather than him.

In any case, he's dumping his pain into you, using you as a toxic waste disposal site. He also projects an image of himself as a God (compared to you) on you and works to make you reflect it in relating to him. In this he's using you as a mirror.

This explains most of a narcissist's weird behavior. He is just trying to make you act that way. To do that, he generally uses the same technique a spoiled brat does: he simply switches into Obnoxious Mode the moment you aren't acting that way.

Why manipulate you instead of just come right out and tell you how he wants you to act? Because then he'd have to suffer awareness of the crazy, imbecile thing he's doing. He won't do that. He refuses to know he's playing Pretend. If any awareness of that starts to surface to consciousness on him, he instantly represses it.

But that doesn't stop him from doing whatever it takes to make you act the way he wants so that your behavior reflects a superman in him.

It is vital to keep this in mind: this is what's going on in all your interactions with a narcissist.
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Control by Temper Tantrum

Let's pretend you're a steer and I'm a cowboy. I am peaceable enough when you're doing what I want. That is, mainly, when your behavior is in the direction I want. Due north, toward Kansas.

But when you get out of line, I throw a temper tantrum. That is, I ride my big horse at you, waving that big, attention-getting thing (otherwise on my head) at you, yipping and yelling and making other loud, sharp, threatening noises and whistles at you. I may even brandish my lasso at you. If necessary, I will cut you off. But usually that isn't necessary, because the moment you see me start to act up, you just veer back into the right direction. Due north, toward Kansas.

The fancy name for that trick is "behavior modification," through "negative reinforcement."

It's what you housebreak your puppy with. It works like this: if Puppy does something other than what is wanted, make him miserable. You know, loud noises, scowls, nasty tone, antic and threatening gestures — a temper tantrum. Just make his whole little world totally obnoxious.

When, by chance, he happens to do what you want, give "positive reinforcement" by making his existence pure bliss.

Wouldn't you give in and develop a preference for pooping and piddling outside?

Here's another example, when training Mamma, point at a candy bar in the grocery store. The moment she starts to say "No" erupt into screaming and bawling as loud as you can so Mamma fears that everyone in the store thinks she's beating you.

Then the instant she hands you that candy bar, break off mid-"WAAAAAH!" and burst into the biggest, cutest, sweetest smile she ever saw.

She may be slow, but she'll learn.

Note that the temper tantrum in each case is a put-on. Yes, Cowboy may be a little ticked off at Steer, and you may be a little ticked off at Puppy, but not that ticked off. Your act is just a grossly exaggerated and menacing display of displeasure that unnerves the object and makes him anxious to turn it off and avoid triggering future replays.

Even a spoiled three-year-old child's temper tantrums are put-ons. For, they occur exactly as I described the one above. The spoiled brat switches the temper tantrum on and off in the blink of an eye, with no warm up or cool down. Which means that he isn't that upset over the candy bar: he's just mask switching.

He uses the temper tantrum as a stick to regulate Mother's behavior. The sweet, adorable smile he breaks into when she conforms to his specifications is just a carrot (positive reinforcement) to reward her for being a good Mommy by doing what he wants.

Even infants catch on! They sometimes throw a temper tantrum, not because they're suffering with hunger or a soiled diaper or for any other conceivable reason. They just do it to get attention:

I do not remember my first lie, it is too far back; but I remember my second one very well. I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn't any. You would have done it; George Washington did it, anyone would have done it. During the first half of my life I never knew a child that was able to rise above that temptation and keep from telling that lie.

— Mark Twain

This may be hard to hear, but your narcissist is controlling you with a device no more sophisticated than the good old temper tantrum.

Throwing temper tantrums to manipulate your behavior is but an aspect of narcissists doing everything for effect, an aspect of them going through life playing to mirrors so as to get the wanted looks and behaviors in reaction. In other words, remember that this is what he's doing the whole time...

This is what you are to him...

And this is what your looks and behavior are to reflect...

You get the temper tantrum the moment you aren't doing that, the moment you aren't playing along with his game of 'Pretend.' In it he is God. He is the center of your universe as well of his own. You are to be in awe of him, to admire him, to see to it that the King lacks nothing he needs or wants, and to change his diaper regularly.

Since all narcissists do 24/7 is play Pretend, and all they want is for you to play along, they never needed to mature and find other ways to interact with people. So, they just use . . . and use . . . and use . . . and use the temper-tantrum technique. The moment you stray from his script, he raises an obnoxious ruckus.

You know what he wants. If not, keep trying things, like you do with a baby, until you hit on the right thing and the ruckus stops. This is extortion. Give him what he wants, or he won't let you have any peace.

One thing that will push a narcissist's temper-tantrum button for sure is objecting to their abuse. You mustn't do that. You must docilely submit to abuse from God Almighty. In fact, it isn't abuse for God Almighty to treat you like dirt, because that's what you are relative to God Almighty, so quit insulting him by expecting him to treat you as an equal.
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Forcing Submission to Abuse

Life with a narcissist is a never-ending put-down. How does he or she force the other members of the family to put up with it?

The narcissist just does whatever it takes to make them submit to her abuse. Any complaint goes in one ear and out the other, as if unhearing it annihilates it. Then the narcissist flies in the face of the complaint by repeating the offense, more forcefully and with contempt. She thus trains her family to submit by teaching them that demanding better treatment only gets them worse treatment.

What if that doesn't work? To repulse any further insistence that she treat them with respect, she just throws a temper tantrum.

One might as well try to talk into the blast of a foghorn. Sheer volume and irrationality can silence the other party, because nobody beyond the age of reason will degrade themselves by getting down to her three-year-old spoiled-brat-throwing-a-fit level to argue with her. Nonetheless, terror tactics, like hateful looks and a threatening posture in a menacing advance, or even windmilling fists, may be part of the tantrum.

Every narcissist I have known has such uncanny skill in perverting the course of logic that every statement one makes bounces off his or her forehead twisted a full 180 degrees. They grab some word near the front of your sentence and blast off with it in God-knows-what direction to yell you down in a whirlwind of bewilderment.

One might as well argue with a cantankerous three-year-old.

And the Projection Machine gets going like crazy. I mean really crazy.

For example, here's how one man I knew reacted to any complaint about his insulting treatment of others or his jumping all over his kid for trying to get attention: he always bawled "WAAH!" Get off my BAAAAACK!"

That's right, he told the jumped on party to get off his back!

Presumably this crackpot thought he was imitating the person complaining to him about his insulting treatment of her. He was making her out to be the big baby ... in the very act of bawling like a big baby for her to get off his baaaaack! Projection of his big babyhood in the very act of being a big baby.

So, give it up. Narcissists do not permit you to communicate with them. They pervert everything and just blast it back in your face. Not one word you say can get through that wall of flak. To twist everything a full 180 degrees, they use anti-rationality and acting crazy as debating tactics.

I think they have a fear of communication taking place and frantically try to block it. So, trying to have a talk with them makes as much sense as trying to have a talk with a dumb beast.

You get nothing but Nimrodian nonsense out of them. It's enough to make the head spin. The offender makes the offended the offender. There's no end to this shit. There is no getting through that irrational wall of flak. They will do anything to make you give up and be silent.

Presumably that's because, as I mentioned above, narcissists want their unanswered say. When they accuse you, you mustn't answer the accusation. When they insult you, you mustn't answer to tell them not to insult you. When they treat you abusively, you mustn't answer to complain about it. You must shut up and docilely submit to it.

For, remember, you are worthy of NO attention, no regard, no consideration, and so forth. They won't even listen to you speak.

Narcissists are desperate to shut you up so you don't answer them, lest human voices wake them there in the Land of Pretend and they drown.

How desperate? So desperate that they go nuts if you won't shut up. From what I've seen and heard, it's common for them to threaten to call the police on a family member who won't just shut up and take it but insists on a chance to speak.

To deny you your right to speak, the narcissist just blabbers at the top of her lungs to drown you out. Or refuses to stay put and listen. She obdurately refuses to let you say anything she doesn't want you say. If it's not in her script, she won't let you say it.

You are supposed to shut up and just bend over for her abuse, to play along and pretend with her that she is God Almighty and you are dirt who deserves to be treated like that.

Do it or she will get so obnoxious that it will make you scream.

Narcissists throw temper tantrums because their personality development was arrested (at least in some aspects) at the stage of three-year-old. Again, let's remember what Mark Twain said about an infant's temper tantrum:

I was nine days old at the time, and had noticed that if a pin was sticking in me and I advertised it in the usual fashion, I was lovingly petted and coddled and pitied in a most agreeable way and got a ration between meals besides. It was human nature to want to get these riches, and I fell. I lied about the pin — advertising one when there wasn't any.

In other words, a temper tantrum is just a baby's lie. Baby acts enraged, like something is killing him. Why? To command your attention and control your behavior.

You can tell it's a lie — a melodramatic acting job — because Baby turns it on and off as if by throwing a switch. It's just his way of saying, "Don't go there" when you do something other than he wants you to. His way of saying, "Pet and coddle and humor me if you want any peace."

That's exactly what a narcissist does. And, like an infant, he is liable to hit you in one of his fits — in the same mindless state of mind as an infant hits its mother: as though you are but an object, a naughty toy, not a human being.

So, in a crucible, such as a home, the only way to coexist with a narcissist is to just let the brat have his way. He wants all the toys in his corner of the room so that nobody else can have any.

Often he is the man of the family. Since nothing short of beating him up for it could make him share his drug, his wife and children have no recourse. Nevertheless, if the man of the family is a real man, who will not use physical force on a woman or child, a narcissistic wife can be just as big a bully as the stereotypical narcissistic father.

The situation is better today, now that we are rid of the religious and social taboos against divorce that formerly doomed a narcissist's family to the hell that is his home. Also, today women have earning power, which allows them to escape without condemning their children to poverty. Nonetheless, the narcissists I have known had ingenious, even diabolical ways of trapping their spouse and making him or her financially dependent. For example, they immediately get their spouse pregnant and keep her pregnant so that, by the time Dr. Jekyll's mask is off, she has several babies and no job. Or, they seek out a woman who already has several young children, heroically insist that she quit working, and cunningly manipulate the situation to burn the bridges behind her. Or they stealthily calumniate their prey to get them fired and destroy their career, then play the part of a rescuer to support them. The prey is usually a spouse, but it can be a child, a sibling, a parent, or any other unfortunate person who can't just walk away.

Though allowing a narcissist to get away with it is a big mistake, people do this because of their GOOD qualities. Indeed, the narcissist preys on the good qualities of normal, decent people. It is their GOODNESS that betrays them.

That's because normal, decent people don't like to fight. Also, they are rational and therefore know that the narcissist himself is the one degraded by the stupid game he plays, not them. Moreover, they have self-respect, so they can't bring themselves to stoop to the level he brings an argument down to. So, they rise above it, allowing the overgrown child to have his way in treating them without respect.

Unfortunately, thus, they spoil the brat, teaching him that his tactics work.

Since he can't live up to the basic standards of decency, they allow God the lower set of standards he needs, expecting no better behavior from him. Quite correctly, they see that he is inferior and incapable of better behavior. But there is a terrible pitfall in thus allowing him to relate to them inappropriately, as though he deserves all attention and they are insignificant. Thus, the whole family engages in tragic role playing that insidiously stamps its face on their character.

No wonder the narcissist gets grandiose delusions and believes that he really is something special. No wonder he takes on a dominant character becomes a domineering person.

And no wonder that his family becomes docile, even to the point of reduction to a state of victimhood. In fact, in a Christian society, they are pressured by outside forces to do so, because their anger (which is a feeling, not an act of the free will) is somehow regarded as a sin, and docile victimhood is somehow touted as a Christian virtue. Though it takes strong people to take narcissistic abuse, submitting docilely to it is bad for the backbone.

And the double standard thus established is insidious. By expecting no better behavior from the narcissist, his family makes him infallible. That is, he cannot be faulted for anything he does. So, who is to blame for his behavior then? You guessed it — the victim.
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Withholding

I knew a man whose first family moved out on him, and, when another woman and her children moved in, they were overjoyed at the sight of the swing set and the basketball hoop. You could tell those poor kids had nothing and suddenly felt rich.

But letting their delight in these things show was a big mistake. The jerk suddenly stopped mowing back by the swing set, so that the weeds grew so tall around it they couldn't play on it. And he started parking old junked cars underneath the basketball hoop.

It was so obvious — because that was the only part of the lawn not mowed, and there was no need to park those vehicles right under the basket. Those boys often looked wistfully at it, but I never heard them ask if they could play.

I'm sure I know why they didn't.

Been there. Everyone who's ever lived with a narcissist has.

My mother told me about a man many years ago, whose sons worked hard all week on the farm (back in the days when they chopped wood, milked cows by hand, and plowed with horses). They had to come and ask him every Friday evening for a little money to spend at the local dance. And he always took off on a long walk out in the fields to make them chase him all the way out there for their pay.

I used to call it playing "Keep Away." Psychologists call it "withholding."

By withholding whatever they know you want, narcissists make themselves feel important. If you are observant of little children, you'll notice they do the same thing. For example, a child can be bored with a toy and about to leave it lay — until he notices that some other child wants it: then he plays Keep Away. If the other child pleads for it, he just gets more determined to keep it away, clutching it tightly to himself and yelling, "Nnno!"

Never forget that: the narcissist you are dealing with is full grown but every bit the three-year-old, and not a sweet one, either.

This stunt is a power play too, of course. I know a woman in whom it's a knee jerk reaction: whenever someone says "Will you...?" or "Can I...?" the first thing out of her mouth is, "You'll have to wait." However long you can wait, she will make you wait longer.

Narcissists often have to make you beg or grovel too.

When they see your eyes light on something you want, they look at it and see nothing but a stick to use as leverage on you. God Almighty wants to make you pray to him for it.

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