8 Things You are Getting WRONG about Your Narcissist (EXCERPT)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2021-11-23

Segment about lying here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=re-dPtqJRtE

Debunking some narcissism myths:

1. Unambiguous physical or sexual abuse rarely results in adult (secondary) narcissism. To be afflicted with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), one needs to be pedestalized, idolized, pampered, instrumentalized, or parentified as a child and then abruptly and cruelly discarded. The adult narcissist spends a lifetime trying to recapture those lost moments of parental idealization.

2. Narcissists do have emotions, but they have access to and experience only negative affectivity: rage, envy, hatred and the like.

3. Narcissists have a truncated form of empathy ("cold empathy") which allows them to spot and leverage the vulnerabilities of their targets.

4. Narcissists dread abandonment ("separation anxiety") and are often dysphoric ("depressed"), especially when they fail to secure narcissistic supply.

5. Grandiosity is about being unique, not about being the best or the greatest or the most. So, the narcissist can brag about being the perfect loser, failure, or victim. This is especially true of covert narcissists.

6. Some narcissists are prosocial and communal: morally upright, altruistic, and charitable. They are ostentatious and grandiose about it all, though.

7. Psychopaths lie. Narcissists mostly confabulate: concoct self-aggrandizing narratives to bridge dissociative (memory gaps) with plausible scenarios.

8. Narcissists cheat less often than psychopaths because they are prone to abandonment anxiety and are terrified of losing their partners. They are less faithful during the bargaining and devaluation phases of the shared fantasy.

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