Wednesday, July 26, 2006

Narcissists are Intelligent?

A narcissist targets the small, defenseless, or gentle because he can have the most powerful effect on them = he gets the strongest power rush from abusing them. So, for example, he feels best when viciously snarling at his tender little daughter, because that eviscerates her, whereas it would only wound his wife. If you carry this anti-logic to its conclusion, he makes himself God almighty by stomping an ant. Right?

No, come on, a BABY can stomp an ant. Even a puppy can stomp an ant. Demolishing an ant requires no great power. But destroying a city does. Yet every bully on the planet cheats by destroying something small or vulnerable and then thumping his chest as if that proves him mighty.

Sun Tzu, in his ancient treatise On the Art of War, notices the same thing about bullies:

To lift an autumn hair is no sign of great strength;
to see the sun and moon is no sign of sharp sight;
to hear the noise of thunder is no sign of a quick ear.

Yet every narcissistic bully makes the same egregious error of logic. That blasts to smithereens the myth that narcissists are exceptionally intelligent. To the contrary, only a moron makes such an egregious error in logic.

Yet, a minute later, while he's filling out his tax return, the moron is suddenly intelligent enough to do it right. So, what gives?
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Monday, July 03, 2006

The Narcissist's Rages

Nearly everyone has seen something like the following little scene...

A three-or-four-year-old is with his mother in the grocery store. He points at a candy bar, looking at his mother with the brightest, cutest, most engaging little face you ever saw. Mother is busy and hardly glancing at him as she reads her grocery list and says, "No, you don't---"

She was going to say, "No, you don't need that," but she didn't get half the words out before he erupted into "WAAAAH!!!!"


Everyone in the store jumps, wondering who's killing that kid. In one split-second his face has undergone a startling transfiguration into something grotesque.

But he hasn't got the first "WAAAH!!!" half out yet before his mother, with a quick look around at all the people looking at her, grabs that candy bar and thrusts it into his hand.

WAAAAH--off, mid-WAAAH, and there is that darling little beaming angel-face again, unwrapping his his candy bar.

That's what you call a spoiled brat -- a kid who has learned to use temper tantrums to control his parents. The dead giveaway is how instantaneously he switches from one emotional extreme to the other. Real people don't do that in one split second, do they?

He can do that because those emotions are bogus. Faked. He isn't upset when he's screaming, and he isn't happy when he's not. He's just a little actor. He has two masks. One is for positive reinforcement, and the other is for negative reinforcement. He switches from one to the other in the blink of an eye.


Yes! This four-year-old has learned the art of Behavior Modification! It's childsplay, ain't it? His happy face is a carrot to reward you for good behavior, and his mad face is a stick to punish you for bad behavior.

Now notice how similar this is to an adult narcissist's rages. They are exactly the same thing.

Whenever you aren't behaving the way they want, they throw a fit. Like that brat in the grocery store, they don't think they should even have to ask for what they they want. They think you should be so attentive to their desires that you just offer it to them. It would be beneath them to ask for anything. So they throw a "Don't-go-there!" tantrum whenever you aren't playing the part they've assigned to you in the stageplay of their life.

That could be because you are behaving like you deserve respect. Or maybe you are busy and do not have lunch on the table yet. Whatever, the cowboy just herds people by yelling and waving things whenever the cattle in his home get out of line.

His wild act is so obnoxious and menacing that people soon learn how to turn it off. They would rather conform to his specifications than put up with that obnoxious wild act all the time.

Thus he trains them to behave the way he wants them to.
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