Self-supplying Narcissist: Miracle Cure?
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2023-05-05

The narcissist reacts with borderline-style emotional dysregulation, decompensation, and acting out to deficient narcissistic supply, narcissistic injury, and narcissistic mortification. 

Current therapies attempt to harness the narcissist's grandiosity and fantasy defense to effect transformation and behavior modification in lieu of an adult therapeutic alliance.

This often results in even more impaired reality testing even as the narcissist adapts himself to the demands he faces. In short: it induces dissociative and schizoid reactance (as a form of passive-aggressive defiance).

The solution is to transition from manipulative dependency on narcissistic supply to self-reliant and anxiolytic albeit delusional self-supply.

Transition from external supply to self-supply is also a regression from object relations to primary or introverted narcissism with cathexis of infantile narcissistic structures.

This creates an addictive dependency of the False Self on internal structures and processes, a kind of estrangement, as if the False Self has been not only introjected but also projected. Paradoxically, this allows the narcissist to experience a healthy differentiation of external from internal objects. 

Self-supply also guarantees a sense of secure base and open the door to good enough self-parenting. It is a bit like self-soothing. Self-supply skirts all the pitfalls of narcissistic injuries and mortifications and the one upmanship power play with the therapist.

Self-supply is regulatory: it stabilizes the sense of self-worth, restores an internal locus of control, and diminishes the need or opportunity for alloplastic defenses.

The fact that all good things (supply) emanate from the inside counters the pernicious effects of the bad object and reduces the frequency of antisocial or non-sublimated misconduct. 

Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3