Anxiety, Depression, and Narcissism
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2012-08-19

WARNING: This video requires acquaintance with professional terms in psychoanalysis and object relations theories. 

For a POPULAR TREATMENT of this topic, watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0WKL9oA5XU 

Click on these links: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq17.html (about depression) and http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal95.html (sadistic superego)

TERM EXPLAINED The Superego ("conscience") is the sum total of ideals and norms passed to us by our parents, teachers, and other role models. These parental and adult voices are internalized and become an integral part of our personality. Some parents are strict to the point of sadism and the resulting Superego is equally judgemental and taunting, promoting the individual to loathe himself and to be prone to self-destructive acts and self-defeating behaviors.

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

People often mistake depression for emotion. They say about the narcissist: "but he is sad" and they mean: "but he is human", "but he has emotions". This is wrong. True, depression is a big component in the narcissist's emotional make-up. But it mostly has to do with the absence of Narcissistic Supply. It mostly has to do with nostalgia for more plentiful days, full of adoration and attention and applause. It mostly occurs after the narcissist has depleted his secondary Sources of Narcissistic Supply (spouse, mate, girlfriend, colleagues) with his constant demands for the "re-enactment" of his days of glory. Some narcissists even cry -- but they cry exclusively for themselves and for their lost paradise. And they do so conspicuously, ostentatiously, and publicly in order to attract attention.

The narcissist is a human pendulum hanging by the thread of the void that is his False Self. He swings from brutal and vicious abrasiveness to mellifluous, maudlin, and saccharine sentimentality. It is all a simulacrum, a verisimilitude, and a facsimile: enough to fool the casual observer, enough to extract the narcissist's drug: other people's attention, the reflection that somehow sustains his house of cards.

But the stronger and more rigid the defences -- and nothing is more resilient than pathological narcissism -- the greater and deeper the hurt the narcissist aims to compensate for. One's narcissism stands in direct relation to the seething abyss and the devouring vacuum that one harbours in one's True Self.

Perhaps narcissism is, indeed, as many say, a reversible choice. But it is also a rational choice, guaranteeing self-preservation and survival. The paradox is that being a self-loathing narcissist may be the only act of true self-love the narcissist ever commits.

(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)