Narcissists Are from Pluto

Do you ever feel like screaming something, because you've said it till you're blue in the face but somehow it has failed to sink in?

I sometimes feel like screaming that NARCISSISTS ARE PREDATORS ... PREDATORS ... PREDATORS -- GET IT? PREDATORS!

You know, like sexual predators, serial killers, child molesters, rapists, con artists: notice the common denominator. They all have a common mentality = they view human beings as PREY.

That makes them profoundly different from the rest of us. Not in every aspect of their personality, but in the most important one, their very membership in the human race. They don't consider themselves members of the human race. That's why they have no empathy.

Most people who comment here seem to get it, but elsewhere you can see that the word predator goes right through many people's brains like a neutron. It is common knowledge that narcissists are predators, like sociopaths.

That means something. Predation on one's own kind isn't natural. It's unnatural, perverse. It's an alien mentality.

So, duh -- it's stupid to expect them to respond the way normal people do to things.

This is a terrible mistake.

We see the catastrophic result in our penal system, and it's even worse in Europe where sentences are lighter and NPD is considered a legitimate defense (like insanity). When criminal predators turn 18 or come up for parole, they are released. Duh, then people wonder why they do it again. One might as well train a tiger to be nice and then think it's safe to let him out to prowl the streets.

What's with the people who decide to do that? Don't they have any idea what a PREDATOR is? Any idiot knows that, sooner or later, no matter how well you trained him, Tiger going to give in to the temptation and attack someone. Count on it. In fact, you're tempting him with bait by letting him roam the streets. Day after day, you're tempting him. You might as well wave a bottle of whiskey before an alcoholic. And not just once -- by every single day, twenty times a day. Sooner or later, he's gonna grab it.

Two recent comments similarly point up the danger of this same mistake when narcissists do present for counseling or psychiatric care: On professional diagnosis: How much of a chance does a professional have to diagnose a narcissist... and My N 'friend' who I have known basically from childhood.... The first points out why narcissists often go undetected by health-care professionals. It's quite understandable, but it's also a serious problem that the mental-health care profession must address. Why? Because the second comment shows the damage done when narcissists are treated by health care professionals as normal patients should be treated.

Hey, the first rule of medicine is Do no harm.

Everyone who walks in the door should be carefully screened for narcissism/sociopathy before deciding upon a treatment -- to prevent possibly worsening a predator's behavior and making it more dangerous to others.

Why is treatment that's right for non-narcissists wrong for narcissists? Because Narcissists Are from Pluto. You can't expect treatment based on normal human premises to evoke the right response from an alien being functioning on alien premises -- predatory premises. It ain't gonna work. It's gonna backfire, every single time.

Here's a simple example of why: Show someone a photo of a sweet and pretty little child. It will evoke warm feelings from a normal human being, even if he's a hardened criminal. But if you show that photo to a narcissist or sociopath, all he or she sees is prey = lunch. Bottom Line: Same stimulus, opposite reactions.

So, professionals need to be absolutely certain whether each patient they see is a predator or not. Only then can they treat appropriately.

Otherwise, narcissists who may not yet be much of a threat to others can learn to become one. For, the only rein on a narcissist's conduct is what he thinks he can get away with. When desperate enough, if he thinks he can get away with it, he will do ANYTHING.

Yes, I know it's politically incorrect to be caught regarding anyone mentally ill as "different" from the rest of us. You will be accused of accusing the narcissist/soiopath of "otherness." You will be viewed as making them "alien beings."

But, I'm sorry, they ARE. And it isn't a sin to know that. Because knowing the truth is never a sin. What's more, YOU don't make them aliens, THEY make themselves aliens.

This is just another example of how the half-baked moralizing of people wanting to look holier-than-thou does more harm than good. As if what's right and wrong is carved in stone somewhere. Sorry, morality isn't a no-brainer that you can practice by rote.

We don't need the useless moralizing. In fact, if we face the fact that narcissists/sociopaths have set themselves apart from the human race, viewing human beings with inhumanity as prey who exist to feed them, then perhaps we will find a cure.

Indeed, it seems to me that the cure for narcissism would be in persuading the narcissist to quit identifying with his false image and identify with the real him, that hurt little child deep in the dungeon inside, the HUMAN BEING that the demon who took over his house ate.

In other words, persude him to rejoin the human race.