Malignant Narcissism Quotes

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Hate is the complement of fear and narcissists like being feared. It imbues them with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.
Stefan Molyneux
Often the narcissist believes that other people are "faking it", leveraging emotional displays to achieve a goal. He is convinced that their ostensible "feelings" are grounded in ulterior, non-emotional motives. Faced with other people's genuine emotions, the narcissist becomes suspicious and embarrassed. He feels compelled to avoid emotion-tinged situations, or worse, experiences surges of almost uncontrollable aggression in the presence of expressed sentiments. They remind him how imperfect he is and how poorly equipped.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
But both the narcissist and his partner do not really consider each other. Trapped in the moves of an all-consuming dance macabre, they follow the motions morbidly - semiconscious, desensitized, exhausted, and concerned only with survival.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Having invented himself, the narcissist sees no problem in recasting that which he had designed in the first place. The narcissist is his own repeated Creator - hence his grandiosity.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
If you think you're going to have a thoughtful discussion with someone who is toxic, be prepared for epic mindfuckery rather than conversational mindfulness. Malignant narcissists and sociopaths use word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gas lighting to disorient you and get you off track should you ever disagree with them or challenge them in any way. They do this in order to discredit, confuse and frustrate you, distract you from the main problem and make you feel guilty for being a human being with actual thoughts and feelings that might differ from their own. In their eyes, you are the problem if you happen to exist.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
The popular misconception is that narcissists love themselves. In reality, they direct their love at other people's impressions of them. He who loves only impressions is incapable of loving people, himself included.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his reflection. There is a major difference between one's True Self and reflected-self.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
In the narcissist's world being accepted or cared for (not to mention loved) is a foreign language. It is meaningless or even repellent. One might recite the most delicate haiku in Japanese and it would still remain utterly meaningless to a non-speaker of Japanese. This does not diminish the value of the haiku or of the Japanese language, needless to say. But it means nothing to the non-speaker. Narcissists damage and hurt but they do so offhandedly and naturally, as an afterthought… They are aware of what they are doing to others - but they do not care.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
The mythological Narcissus rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by the goddess Nemesis. He was consigned to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection - exactly as Echo had pined away for him. How apt. Narcissists are punished by echoes and reflections of their problematic personalities up to this very day. Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his reflection. There is a major difference between one's True Self and reflected-self.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Here lies the partner's salvation: if you, as his intimate, wish to sever your relationship with the narcissist, stop providing him with what he needs. Do not adore, admire, approve, applaud, or confirm anything he does or says. Disagree with his views belittle him, reduce him to size, compare him to others, tell him he is not unique, criticize him, give unsolicited advice, and offer him help. In short, deprive him of the grandiose and fantastic illusions, which holds his personality together. The narcissist is a delicately attuned piece of equipment. At the first sign of danger to his inflated False Self, he will quit and disappear on you.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
narcissist hates you wholeheartedly and thoroughly simply because you are.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)
malignant narcissism
O.J. Simpson (If I Did It: Confessions of the Killer)
Cognitive insight (knowing something) is not like emotional insight (feeling something). It has no psychodynamic effects. It does not affect the narcissist's behavior patterns, or his interpersonal interactions - the products of well entrenched and rigid defense mechanisms.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
The malignant narcissist has a split persona. They are like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute, they are sweet as sugar. The next minute, they fly into an uncontrollable seething rage! The narcissist loves playing mind games with you. They are clever to conceal who they are. Wherever there’s a narcissist, you can find a false mask plastered upon their face.
Dana Arcuri (Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma)
The dysphorias - the bitter fruits of the narcissist's impossible demands of himself - are painful. Gradually the narcissist learns to avoid them by eschewing a structured narrative altogether… The narcissist pays a heavy price for accommodating his dysfunctional narratives: emptiness; existential aloneness .. meaninglessness. This fuels his envy and the resulting rage.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Covert manipulators are quite gifted at provocation. As they learn more about you, they are investigating your weak spots and catering their comments towards what they know will hurt you the most. Knowing you’re triggered by their comments gives them a sadistic sense of satisfaction that alleviates their secret sense of inferiority and strokes their delusions of grandeur, control and aptitude. Having control over your emotions also gives them the power to effectively manipulate you and convince you that you don’t deserve any better.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
Narcissists (and often, by contagion, their unfortunate victims) don't talk, or communicate: they fend off, hide and evade . . . [They] perfect the ability of saying nothing in lengthy Castro-like speeches. Their locution is impregnated with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my", "mine" - aka "high pronoun density"). The ensuing convoluted sentences are .. a lack of commitment elevated to an ideology. The narcissist prefers to wait and see what procrastination brings: postponement of the inevitable leads to the inevitability of postponement as a strategy of survival.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
Romantic jealousy is a narcissistic defence. It reflects the narcissistic traits and behaviours of possessiveness;
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
The narcissist has to condition his human environment to refrain from expressing criticism and disapproval of him, or of his actions and decisions. He has to teach people around him that any form of disagreement, however mild and minor, throws him into frightful fits of temper and rage attacks and turn him into a constantly cantankerous and irascible person.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
Forcing a child into adult pursuits is one of the subtlest varieties of soul murder. Very often we find that the narcissist was deprived of his childhood. Consider the gifted child, the Wunderkind: the answer to his mother's prayers and the salve to her frustrations… The Wunderkind narcissist refuses to grow up. In his mind, his tender age formed an integral part of the precocious miracle that he once was. One looks much less phenomenal and one's exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 40 than the age of 4. Better stay young forever and thus secure an interminable stream of Narcissistic Supply. So, the narcissist abjures all adult skills and chores: he never takes out a driver's license; he does not have children; he rarely has sex; he never settles down in one place; he rejects intimacy. In short, he renounces adulthood. Absent adult skills he assumes no adult responsibilities. He expects indulgence from others.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
(The envious narcissist's existence is) a constant hiss, a tangible malice, the piercing of a thousand eyes, the imminence and immanence of violence, the poisoned joy of depriving the other of that which you don't or cannot have.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
[Abusers] blame the world - circumstances, other people - for their defeats, misfortune, misconduct, and failures. The abuser firmly believes that his life is swayed by currents and persons over which he has no influence whatsoever (he has an external locus of control). But there are even subtler variants of this psychological defense mechanism. Not infrequently an abuser will say: "I made a mistake because I am stupid", implying that his deficiencies and inadequacy are things he cannot help having and cannot change. This is also an alloplastic defense because it abrogates responsibility. Many abusers exclaim: "I misbehaved because I completely lost my temper." On the surface, this appears to be an autoplastic defense with the abuser assuming responsibility for his misconduct. But it could be interpreted as an alloplastic defense, depending on whether the abuser believes that he can control his temper.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
A notable difference between normal narcissistic personality disorder and malignant narcissism is the feature of sadism, or the gratuitous enjoyment of the pain of others. A narcissist will deliberately damage other people in pursuit of their own selfish desires, but may regret and will in some circumstances show remorse for doing so, while a malignant narcissist will harm others and enjoy doing so, showing little empathy or regret for the damage they have caused.
John D. Garner (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)
Remembering this has a survival
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)
The dynamic unconscious is made of basic mental experiences, which are really dyadic relations between self-representations and object representations in either of two contexts: elation or rage.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
The narcissist has to defend himself against his own premonitions, his internal sempiternal trial, his guilt, shame, and anxiety. One of the more efficacious defense mechanisms at his disposal is false modesty. The narcissist publicly chastises himself for being unworthy, unfit, lacking, not trained and not (formally) schooled, not objective, cognizant of his own shortcomings, and vain. This way, if (or, rather, when) exposed for what he is, he can always say: "But I told you so in the first place, haven't I?" False modesty is, thus, an insurance policy. The narcissist "hedges his bets" by placing a side bet on his own fallibility… Yet another function is to extract Narcissistic Supply from the listener. By contrasting his own self-deprecation with a brilliant, dazzling display of ingenuity, wit, intellect, knowledge, or beauty, the narcissist aims to secure .. protestation from the listener.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
The narcissist cannot admit that he had toiled and sweated to achieve his goal and, with this confession, shatter his alleged omnipotence and grandiose False Self. He must belittle every accomplishment of his and make it appear to have been a routine triviality. This is intended to support the dreamland quality of his fragmented personality. But it also prevents him from deriving the psychological benefits which usually accrue to to goal attainment… The narcissist is doomed to roam a circular labyrinth. When he does achieve something, he underestimates it in order to enhance his own sense of omnipotence, perfection, and brilliance. When he fails, he dare not face reality. He escapes to the land of no narratives where life is nothing but a meaningless wasteland. The narcissist whiles his life away.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
The psychopaths tend to be a more severe variant of malignant narcissism, while the sociopaths tend to be a more severe variant of covert narcissism.
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
Rage can easily convert to hatred. There is a wish to control the bad object in order to avoid persecution or fear. This control is achieved by the development of obsessive control mechanisms, which psychopathologically regulate the repression of aggression in such an individual.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited - The Essay)
Children happen to be more attached to the female narcissist due to the way our society is still structured and to the fact that women are the ones to give birth and to serve as primary caretakers. It is much easier for a woman to think of her children as her extensions because they once indeed were her physical extensions and because her on-going interaction with them is both more intensive and more extensive. [The] male narcissist is more likely to regard his children as a nuisance than as a Source of Narcissistic Supply - especially as they grow older and become autonomous. With less alternatives than men, the narcissistic woman fights to maintain her most reliable Source of Supply: her children. Through insidious indoctrination, guilt-formation, emotional sanctions and blackmail, deprivation and other psychological mechanisms, she tries to induce in her offspring dependence which cannot easily be unraveled.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited)
terrified of being abandoned and all narcissists need Narcissistic Supply Sources. These narcissists prefer to direct their furious rage at people who are meaningless to them and whose withdrawal will not constitute a threat to the narcissists' precariously-balanced personalities. They explode at an underling, yell at a waitress, or berate a taxi driver. Alternatively, they sulk (silent treatment). Many narcissists feel anhedonic, or pathologically bored, drink or do drugs - all forms of self-directed aggression. From time to time, no longer able to pretend and to suppress their rage, they have it out with the real source of their anger. Then they lose all vestiges of self-control and rave like lunatics. They shout incoherently, make absurd accusations, distort facts, and air long-suppressed grievances, allegations and suspicions. These episodes are followed by periods of saccharine sentimentality and excessive flattering and submissiveness towards the target of the latest rage attack. Driven by the mortal fear of being abandoned or ignored, the narcissist debases and demeans himself to the point of provoking repulsion in the beholder. These pendulum-like emotional swings make life with the narcissist exhausting.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)
We seem incapable of being led by any but the monstrous. The malignant narcissist. And there are many willing to take the place of a deposed tyrant, to ape them. And the rest of us, down here, cannot discriminate in the choice of our leaders, even if we have anything resembling a real choice. We cannot lead ourselves rationally or humanely or fairly, so we choose the most unscrupulous and egotistical to lead us. Into one war and one holocaust after another.
Adam Nevill (Last Days)
The social theorist Takamichi Sakurai wrote bluntly: “Group narcissism leads people to fascism. An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
During the discard phase the ignoring and silences that the narcissist uses and the cold hateful stares send coldness to your very spirit. Fire turns to ice,love to hate, attention to abandonment. It stays with you that malignant cruelty.
Alice Little, Narcissistic Abuse Truths
All narcissists are self-obsessed, but malignant narcissists are at the top of the scale. They have a pathological self-belief—a sense of grandiosity, even—which demands attention and admiration. They're convinced they're special in some way and want other people to acknowledge it as well. Crucially, they're also sadists who lack any conscience. They don't necessarily get fulfilment from inflicting pain, but they enjoy the sense of power it gives them. And they're indifferent to any suffering they might cause.
Simon Beckett (Whispers of the Dead (David Hunter, #3))
Genuinely nice people rarely have to persistently show off their positive qualities—they exude their warmth more than they talk about it and they know that actions speak volumes more than mere words. They know that trust and respect is a two-way street that requires reciprocity, not repetition.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
The real problem for others is when narcissistic features, especially a sense of entitlement and a lack of empathy, shade into antisocial and destructive behaviors. When this happens, the pattern might be described as aggressive or malignant narcissism, which is difficult to distinguish from psychopathy.
Paul Babiak (Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work)
the same time, a relationship with a narcissist is also a cataclysmic rude awakening into the fact that people are rarely who they portray themselves to be. It’s knowledge. It’s experience. It’s insight and wisdom—perhaps the kind you wish you didn’t have. Sometimes, it’s even social capital—enabling you to navigate even more intelligently and with more discernment than ever before. You’re wide-eyed and vigilant. You see what other people don’t see. You learn about boundaries and your values. You recognize the value of authentic people, those rare breeds who wear their hearts on their sleeve and bleed integrity instead of exploit that quality in others. It doesn’t have to be a “waste of time” to have been through this experience—even while validating how painful it is and the fact that no one should ever have to go through it. When you’ve been through something horrific like this, at the very least you are owed the fruits of its wisdom and the drive it provides you to kick some serious ass.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
narcissism.” Clinicians who encounter it often consider it a manifestation of insecurity—a sort of malignant overcompensation.
Ramani S. Durvasula ("Don't You Know Who I Am?": How to Stay Sane in an Era of Narcissism, Entitlement, and Incivility)
When NPD and psychopathy combine, they form a pattern of behavior called malignant narcissism. This isn’t a diagnosis, but a term coined by psychoanalyst Erich Fromm and elaborated on by personality disorder expert, Otto Kernberg, to describe people so driven by feeling special that they essentially see other people as pawns in their game of kill or be killed, whether metaphorically or literally.
Bandy X. Lee (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)
Once someone has been traumatized again and again by someone who claimed to love them, once an abuser has warped the victim's reality and caused him or her to mistrust their perceptions through gaslighting, once a victim has been made to believe he or she is worthless, they are already traumatically bonded to their abusers. It takes a great deal of professional support, validation and resources in order for victims to detach from their abusers and begin to heal.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
Characters who engage in murder, sadistic cruelty, malignant selfishness or narcissism, dishonorable and dishonest acts, and obsessions with relative frivolities such as political intrigue and playing the game of thrones transgress against not just individuals but society itself.
James Lowder (Beyond the Wall: Exploring George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire)
Why is it so hard for us to believe we could have possibly been “narcissized?” What is it about us that would prefer to believe we have some flaw or have made some major mistake to cause our partner to treat us the way he/she did? The truth is the partners blame themselves rather than doubt their N’s. Narcissistic Personality Disorder seems to be such a cold, malignant disease. No one wants to believe it exists…and if it does, no one wants to believe his or her partner is afflicted with a disorder which inflicts such cruelty.
Cynthia Zayn (Narcissistic lovers)
The social theorist Takamichi Sakurai wrote bluntly: “Group narcissism leads people to fascism. An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism." In modern times, this type of group narcissism has gripped two nations in particular, according to Fromm, the racial narcissism that existed in Hitler's Germany, and which is found in the American South, he wrote in 1964, at the height of the Civil Rights movement. Fromm well knew the perils of group narcissism from both his training in psychoanalysis, and his personal experience. He was a German Jew who fled to Switzerland, after the Nazis took power in Germany, and then to the United States in 1934. He saw, first hand, the Nazi appeals to the fears and insecurities of everyday Germans in the lead up to the Nazi takeover. "If one examines the judgement of the poor whites regarding blacks, or of the Nazis in regard to Jews", Fromm wrote, "one can easily recognize the distorted character of their respective judgements." Little straws of truth are put together, but the whole which is thus formed, consists of falsehoods and fabrications. If the political actions are based on narcissistic self-glorifications, the lack of objectivity often leads to disastrous consequences. In both instances, Fromm found the working class to be among the most susceptible, harboring an "inflated image of itself as the most admirable group in the world and of being superior to another racial group that is singled out as inferior," he wrote.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
This is a type of love story where the happy ending lies in not finding Prince Charming. Rather, it lies in the realization that he never existed at all.
Shahida Arabi (POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse)
Thus, when under threat, they are willing to sacrifice themselves and their ideals for the survival of the group from which they draw their self-esteem. The social theorist Takamichi Sakurai wrote bluntly: “Group narcissism leads people to fascism. An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism.” In
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
It was about malignant narcissism—a particularly sinister type of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD). A malignant narcissist sucks a victim in by mirroring her (“I thought I’d found my soul mate,” survivors recall): this is the honeymoon period. Once the victim’s hooked, the narcissist vampire feeds off her for his own “supply” until he inevitably finds another victim who he believes is a better source. Once victim number one is devalued in his mind, the malignant narcissist is free to drop the angelic act and to openly degrade and exploit her—and in doing so, reveals himself as the greedy, destructive, aggressive and sadistic predator he truly is. Omigod
Cat Marnell (How to Murder Your Life)
You really ARE incompetent, untrustworthy, disrespectful, immoral, ignorant, inept, egotistical, constrained, disgusting. You are a social embarrassment, an unappreciative partner, an inadequate parent, a disappointment, a sexual flop, a financial liability.
Sam Vaknin (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)
The Paranoid Schizoid Solution When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others' allegedly malign attention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own, sometimes exclusive, source of narcissistic supply. The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slights and insults where none were intended. He becomes subject to ideas of reference (people are gossiping about him, mocking him, prying into his affairs, cracking his e-mail, etc.). He is convinced that he is the centre of malign and mal-intentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate him, punish him, abscond with his property, delude him, impoverish him, confine him physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on his time, force him to action (or to inaction), frighten him, coerce him, surround and besiege him, change his mind, part with his values, victimize or even murder him, and so on.
Sam Vaknin (Narcissistic and Psychopathic Parents And their Children)
Group narcissism leads people to fascism. An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
Group narcissism leads people to fascism. An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents)
The social theorist Takamichi Sakurai wrote bluntly: “Group narcissism leads people to fascism.7 An extreme form of group narcissism means malignant narcissism, which gives rise to a fanatical fascist politics, an extreme racialism.
Isabel Wilkerson (Caste: The Lies That Divide Us)
When NPD and psychopathy combine, they form a pattern of behavior called malignant narcissism.
Bandy X. Lee (The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President)