Do Narcissists Truly Hate?
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2017-01-31

Everything You Need to Know about Narcissists, Psychopaths, and Abuse - click on this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq1.html

The English Paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott suggested that abused children need to hate and to be hated as a defense against the false hope of ever being loved. They not only act out anti-socially but also seek to provoke hatred in parents, caregivers, and authority figures. At least in this comfort zone of mutual antagonism there is no risk of being shattered by the disappointment and frustration that are the ineluctable outcomes of hope.

Of course, he who loves to be hated and hates to be loved also loves to hate and hates to love (fears intimacy). The narcissist’s emotional complexity (ambivalence) towards significant others is notorious: his “love” often comes laced with bouts of vitriolic or even violent abuse and aggression.

But, the narcissist’s hatred is atypical. Rempel and Burris suggested in 2005 that hate is a stable experiential state; that it is an emotion; and that it involves a goal-driven motivation to diminish or utterly eradicate the well-being of the target of hate.

In contradistinction, the narcissist’s hatred is not stable; it is a transformation of resentment and, therefore, an aggressive reaction to frustration; and the narcissist does not care about his victim’s well-being: he just wishes to remove the fount of frustration altogether and expediently. So, by the lights on Rempel and Burris it does not qualify as hate at all.

The narcissist resents his abject dependence on his sources of narcissistic supply and by ridding himself of their constant presence he seeks to ameliorate the irritation that they cause him. Of course, even as he hatefully acts against his sources of supply, he is terrified of losing them and attempts to placate and bribe them into staying and fulfilling their function.

(From the book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" by Sam Vaknin - Click on this link to purchase the print book, or 16 e-books, or 3 DVDs with 16 hours of video lectures on narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html)