Are some narcissists worse than others?

I can see how the lay person falls for the notion that your garden variety narcissist or psychopath - who never commits a violent crime - is somehow not as sick as the one who does. But I am peeved at professionals for being so simplistic. It's their job to think a little better than that.

An example will show how flawed this notion is.

Let's take two narcissists. One happens to be the son of Saddam Hussein back in his heyday. The other happens to be the younger brother of an FBI agent.

These two predators live in very different environments. They have very different situations.

Saddam's son cannot be punished or retaliated against for anything he does. No one dares even look at him crosswise. When he says, "I want a woman in my torture chamber within the hour," a whole herd of people scramble to do his bidding. He is so powerful in his world that he doesn't even have to hide what he is. People see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil about him. Out of fear they bow and scrape to him. They glorify him for every detestable thing he does. He not only has no inhibitions, he actually is tempted to do violent crime for the sucking praise he'll be rewarded with for it.

Now compare him to the school teacher whose brother is an FBI agent. This teacher knows that if he starts hunting human prey and bringing victims to a torture chamber in his basement that his brother will notice things that make him suspicious. The neighbors might notice something. His colleagues at school might notice his inappropriate relationship with students. He is very vulnerable. No one would praise him for doing such things. Anyone would turn him into the police if they suspected him of doing such things. He'd be shamed for life in his world if anyone discovered that he was about such horrible things.

Now compare these two men. Which is sicker? We can't tell. One has inhibitions and the other doesn't. One can get away with murder and the other can't.

What if they switched places? Do you think that the FBI agent's brother, filling the shoes of Saddam's son, would be any different than Saddam's real son? Or vice versa?

Therefore, a narcissist's acting out could very well be a measure only of their FREEDOM TO ACT OUT, not a measure of how warped they are.

This part is just my own observation, but seeing is believing for me. More than once I have seen a narcissist's life circumstances change almost overnight, so that they suddenly could get away with much worse abuse. And guess what happened?

Bingo, it was like pushing a button on them. Overnight they began doing things that I'd have sworn the day before they were incapable of, shocking, odious things.

Which is why I am convinced that the only rein on a narcissist's behavior is what they think they can get away with. I'm not stating this as an authoritative opinion: it's my personal opinion. But my observations and thoughts have proven dead on so often that I now trust my instincts and will bet the farm that I'm right.

And I think it's time the professionals started investigating. I bet they will find that the only thing that one makes on N worse than another is his ability to get away with worse.

Because if you have no conscience, you have no conscience. And, just being afraid to have people think badly of you is not the same thing as having a real conscience.

What does this mean if it's true? It means that the N you live or work with now may become monster overnight someday when the situation changes.

A death in the family is an example of the type of thing that can can precipitate the event. It always results in a shake up of existing relationships and the balance of power. For example, many have observed that the death of a non-narcissistic parent often precipitates a coming-out of a narcissist. Though an adult, the narcissist still is that parent's child, so the non-narcissistic parent still had the old parental rein on the N child's conduct. But as soon as that parent is gone, the other children in the family had better look out.

This is why you shouldn't tempt fate. If someone is a malignant narcissist, he or she may be little threat to you today, but that can change. With a promotion, a death in the family, or any number of other everyday events.

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A Narcissist's Error Tactics

If you play tennis, you've probably heard of Bill Tilden. There are some things he wrote that I think are enlightening about narcissists.

He was, without a doubt, one of the greatest tennis players that ever lived. But he also thought he was the greatest writer. His writing is pretentious and stilted. And I have a feeling that he didn't like being edited. He got a couple tennis books published, but novel after novel was rejected. He wasted all the money he won at tennis writing and producing plays that he starred in. He was born William Tatum Tilden Junior, but the moment he reached legal age, changed his name to William Tatum Tilden II.

Get it?

Here is what another famous tennis player, George Lott, later wrote about the earthshaking phenomenon of Bill Tilden entering a room of other tennis VIPs:

Immediately there was a feeling of awe, as though you were in the presence of royalty. The atmosphere became charged and there was almost a sensation of lightness when he left. You felt completely dominated and you heaved a sigh of relief for not having ventured an opinion of any sort.

Can you imagine that? These are other successful and famous people, completely dominated by Tilden's imperiousness! So much for the theory that you have to be a doormat to get walked on by someone like this.

Tilden was legendary for toying with opponents to defeat them in a humiliating way. He wrote:

I may sound unsporting when I claim that the primary object of tennis is to break up your opponent's game, but it is my honest belief that no man is defeated until his game is crushed, or at least weakened.

Correction, Billy Boy, it wasn't their game you were out to crush. Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, and Roger Federer don't do that to low-ranked players they can defeat in straight sets. They just win the match. They don't try to make the other guy feel like you-know-what. In other words, they have self respect, so they don't HAVE TO disrespect other people. In fact, Roger Federer is on record with a remark to that effect:

I never play that my opponent looks stupid. I think that is wrong. I have too much respect for every opponent I play.

Oops, almost forgot. Women weren't good enough for Tilden. He preferred the company of famous, successful men. And he went to prison twice for molesting teenage boys.

The point here is that, with a narcissist, it's never what it's about: it's always about his or her ego. These tennis matches weren't about the trophy. They were about Tilden's ego. He wasn't out to just win. He had to crush his opponent, both morally and materially. He had to come out looking like a god compared to that other guy, so he had to psychologically tear his opponent down to the ground.

Narcissists are often very successful competitors. And that should be no surprise, since they get enough practice at competition. In every human interaction, they are competing with the other party. They are playing games.

Tilden's tennis advice wasn't very good except in one area: the use of psychological warfare in tennis. He broke new ground in that area, and I don't think anyone has surpassed him since.

His aim was to upset his opponent's poise:

Nothing so upsets a man's mental and physical poise as to be continually lead into error.

He didn't just lead people into error on the tennis court. Remember what George Lott said above. Anything you said about anything in Tilden's presence was likely to be the wrong thing.

I once saw a hilarious and yet frightening example of this, myself. It was at a staff meeting and the narcissistic boss asked for people's opinion about something. Thud. Nobody was stupid enough to venture one.

So, Boss called on the worst mental prostitute I have ever known and required him to state his opinion on the matter. Monty Python's Flying Circus has nothing on this episode. Employee literally laid out over the table top, taking a long slow stretch (as if to seem "relaxed") - palms up - toward Boss as he babbled incoherently, hemming and hawing and sounding like he was getting pretty uncomfortable straddling that fence — leaning this way and that, looking for signs from Boss for which was the right opinion to have. At first Boss just tortured him by giving no clue while employee tested the quicksand first on one side of the fence, then the other.

Alas! How would Employee know which opinon was the one that would be "looked favorably upon?"

So Employee finally had to guess. Then suddenly Boss gave a clue. ZAP - onto that side of the fence Employee jumped. Then Boss said, "On the other hand...." ZAP - back to the other side he jumped. I'm not kidding: this went on for several minutes.

Picture it: this guy was laid out prostrate over that table top, arms outstretched, palms up, to his boss, and FLOPPING from one side to the other and back again every time Boss interrupted his babbling to flip-flop him with a mere disapproving look, a "What?" or a "Do you mean...?"

It was the most masterful juggling act I've ever seen. Both Employee and his opinion rolled from side to side and back again, on cue, every time Boss interjected a clue that it was the wrong one. Thus Boss 'continually lead the man into error,' just as Tilden did.

Boss interjected these conflicting don't-go-there clues faster and faster till he had Employee literally flopping back and forth like a fish out of water. I could still hear his elbows thumping the tabletop as I headed for bathroom to collapse and laugh myself to tears.

This is why narcissists play God by judging everything you do, say, think, or feel. They want to make you feel like you have done something wrong. They are deliberately arbitrary and unpredictable in their judgements to keep you off balance and, like George Lott, afraid to venture ANY opinion on ANYthing, for fear that it will be the wrong one. It's a game to destroy your poise.

Once you lose your poise, you're done for. Tilden again:

I have often seen players collapse in a match after they have netted or driven out a crucial point which they should have won.

Yes, then you start acting as inept as you feel. In other words, by making you feel like an inept fool, they make you perform like one. It's a kind of black magic.

The aim of Error Tactics, then, is to demoralize us.

First, don't allow a narcissist to relate to you as your judge. You can confront any attempt to do so. But you don't have to. You can just non-respond to it. In other words, act as though the narcissist didn't say the judgemental thing they just said. Change the subject. Walk out of the room. You are taking away their mirror. Then they can't see the image they're projecting in it. That is very unsettling to a narcissist. Really. Since they identify with that mirage, by making it disappear you give them an existential problem!

There is probably nothing meaner you can do to a narcissist than just act like he ain't there. I think it's the most potent negative reinforcement you can deliver. He will quickly learn that he gets it for trying to relate to you as your judge.

Second, remember your poise. It's all a game people play. Mind games. Which means it's nothing, because it's all in the head. So, just keep your poise.

In fact, there is some of this going on in the holier-than-thous who blame the victim and say your feelings are a sin, those who find a sin in everything you could do to protect yourself from abuse, those who say it would be a sin to divorce the narcissist or to strike back in any way. Why do they bestow their judgments on YOU and why are they so "understanding" about the ABUSER's conduct and feelings?

Because they can't make amoral HIM feel like he has done anything wrong. So, they pick on good people (= the victim) instead. They like being able to control you by passing judgment on your thoughts, words, deeds, and even feelings. It's a power play. A self-righteous power play.

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People to Stay Away From

I take neither side in the debate about whether NPD (and psychopathy) is a mental illness or a character disorder. I don't think any reasonable person can deny that they are character disorders. On the other hand, I also think that the way narcissists think and perceive things is strange enough and knee-jerk reflexive enough to make it reasonable to classify NPD as a personality disorder and therefore a serious mental illness.

But we are presented with a false choice by many who claim that NPD is a mental illness: They claim that since NPD is a mental illness narcissists are not responsible for their conduct.

That is very sloppy thinking. It is largely due to the DSM deciding to stop describing mental illnesses and to start using short, vague, diagnostic check lists of CONDUCT to diagnose.

Conduct is but the fruit of mental illness, outward manifestations of an illness inside. You don't diagnose CONDUCT as an illness. What takes place in the mind of the actor is the illness.

But the sloppy thinking, for example, has lead to a billion parrotings on the Web of the statement that "psychopaths are people who commit a violent crime." That's absurd, even if the victim is a stranger and the killer is a serial killer (in which case you can safely bet that the perp is a psychopath). Saying that "psychopaths are people who commit violent crimes" is saying that "psychopathy is committing a violent crime."

Hence we get the nonsense of a man like Lee Harvey Oswald being a mere malignant narcissist until the day he murdered President Kennedy. In other words, being a psychopath was murdering President Kennedy. Even a Ph.D. behind that opinion doesn't make it credible.

Psychopaths and narcissists are probably mentally ill, yes, but that doesn't mean they should be classed as no different than other types of mentally ill people. They are very different.

In prisons they are often abused and murdered simply because the other prisoners can't bear being classed with them. Why? Well, put yourself in their shoes. You robbed a store because you're broke. You hit somebody in a fight because he insulted your mother. You stole a car and took a joy rise to show off to your friends. You killed someone who had done to your father what Hamlet's uncle did. Okay. But look at those motives. Understandable, natural human motives. Now compare such a motive with the motive of someone who rapes, molests a child, commits serial torture and murder. See the difference.

So, I don't blame the other prisoners for their loathing at being classed with predators. They don't do their crimes just to hurt and degrade other people, they do them for reasons. They aren't inherently dangerous just to be around, because they don't do evil just to do it.

Other mentally ill people must feel the same way at being classed with these truly dangerous types.

Other mentally ill people don't have a disordered character. They don't cunningly pass for normal. They aren't sneaky about what they do - putting on an angel face in the light of day and being a werewolf after dark. They are capable of love and genuine kindness (not just a conning phony display of love and kindness). They don't get off on hurting people and therefore have an addiction to hurting people, so that they hurt people just to hurt them. They haven't set themselves apart from the human race, like some alien predator who coldly views ALL human beings as prey.

Therefore, narcissists and psychopaths shouldn't just be lumped together with the rest of the mentally ill. Indeed, narcissists and psychopaths can think quite straight whenever they want to. Their twisted thinking might be 100% willful or a habit ingrained from decades of willfy twisted thinking as a Peter Pan.

Thank goodness that the great majority will never have their trigger tripped to commit a violent crime. But they go through life ruining careers, marriages, good names, and companies. They aren't just street con artists. Far more are "just" love thieves and gold diggers who con their prey out of life savings and leave them as emotional wrecks. When they steal, it's usually "just" from a family member, as in stealing an inheritence. They aren't just pedophile priests and ministers and parents who commit incest. Far more eat children in other ways, through emotional and verbal child abuse in their own homes and classrooms.

But all that ain't nothing. It is at bottom all the same - plundering people, destroying people.

Imagine a narcissist's life as a road coming from way back in childhood. Now look behind him or her at the heaps of human wreckage all the way along it. All the playmates and people trampled. All the littler kids beat up. All the animals abused. All the marriages and friendships busted. All the false accusations that got innocent people punished. All the careers ruined. All the spirits crushed. All the credit stolen. All the abuse. That ain't nothing.

Narcissists are people to stay far away from. All PREDATORS are. No one has to risk proximity to a predator: that's the Law of Nature known as the right to self preservation. No professionally pious prig can morally obligate you to offer yourself up to abuse by remaining anywhere within a predator's reach.

If the professionally pious prigs are so sure they're morally correct, let them befriend the narcissist and fill that vacancy. Then let's hear what they have to say.

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The Difference Between Narcissism and Malignant Narcissism

There are two kinds of narcissists. Your garden variety narcissist and your malignant narcissist. It is unfortunate that they go by the same name, because they are as different as night and day.

But most people think that a malignant narcissist is just an extreme form of narcissist. Hence they get the idea that narcissism is a mental disease that exists in varying degrees of severity.

In fact, many go further and say that psychopathy is just one more gradation of severity beyond malignant narcissism.

But this is flawed thinking. For then you're just a narcissist till you get caught and convicted of a physically violent crime, right?

That makes no sense. The very idea of a disease being the sick person's deed is absurd. For example, then Lee Harvey Oswald was only a malignant narcissist till the day he murdered President Kennedy, by which act he suddenly became a psychopath, right? Absurd.

As Dr. Robert Hare asserts, the vast majority of psychopaths never commit a physically violent crime. But that doesn't mean they aren't absolutely capable of committing one anytime they are tempted to and think they can get away with it.

And it certainly doesn't mean that they aren't destroyers nonetheless, who leave a vast pile of human destruction in their wake.

Because they have no conscience.

It's what people are CAPABLE of that counts, and that we never know. In fact, we never know what we ourselves are capable of in extremity until we discover it in extremity.

Everyone has a certain amount of narcissism as a personality trait. It is essential. It is responsible for our self love and instinct for self preservation. People we call "narcissists" are usually people who have inflated self esteem.

The typical stereotype is the one Mohamed Ali used to spoof when he was called Cassius Clay: "I am the greatest! The prettiest! The best!"

The narcissist puffs himself up. Note that this is POSITIVE.

Whom does it hurt? No one. At worst it can be inconsiderate, snobby, and condescending. Yes, the mere narcissist can be obnoxious. But he isn't a PREDATOR.

He doesn't have to hurt others to kill his pain. He doesn't have to establish his grandeur by tearing others down off that pedestal. He doesn't have to treat others like dirt to feel good about himself.

Why? Because he really does feel good about himself. In fact, his problem is that he feels too darned good about himself. He is typically someone spoiled, born with a silver spoon in their mouth, or someone in whom fame and fortune have gone to the head.

But is he capable of loving a spouse and his children? Yes! of course. If he sees a dog or person suffering in a gutter on the street will he kick them for the power rush it gives him? No! He will tenderly help them. He is a human being. He just has a bad personality trait. Who doesn't?

Now ask those same two questions about a malignant narcissist. The answers will be reversed. He will not respond humanly in either situation ... unless there's an audience to put on a kindly humanitarian act for.

The malignant narcissist is nothing at all like your garden variety narcissist. The malignant narcissist's narcissism isn't just a personality trait. He has a disordered personality, a broken one, a dysfunctional one. The malignant narcissist is a NEGATIVE narcissist. He thinks he can obtain grandeur by negative means. By taking it away from others.

Hence, he thinks to glorify himself by degrading you. He thinks to gain respect by denying any to you. He thinks to make himself important by treating you like dirt. He improves his reputation by ruining yours.

See the pattern? It is like he thinks grandeur some sort of substance he assimilates by devouring it in you. Like predator. That's what a predator is made out of - the bodies of all the prey it has eaten. Your malignant narcissist is just doing the same thing in the moral sphere of action.

He thinks all the regard, respect, love, attention, worth, and appreciation he robbed you of belongs to him now. In other words, the malignant narcissist is a moral cannibal. Kinda like a vampire who lives by drinking other people's blood (a symbol for life and suffering).

So, instead of praising himself like the garden-variety narcissist does, the malignant narcissist just denigrates you. See the difference? It's a huge difference.

Which is why he's a predator. He goes through life hungrily looking for good prospects to take a bite out of. He's addicted to that pain-killing narcotic. So the more he gets the more he wants.

Therefore, hurting people isn't something malignant narcissists do by accident: it's how they live.

In other words, they are not just mildly sick in the head: they are seriously sick in the head, no matter how good they are at passing for normal in public.

So, there you have it: the portrait of the narcissist and the malignant narcissist. The resemblance is purely superficial in that both are often (but not always) arrogant or even haughty. Both are inconsiderate.

But that's where the similarity ends. The narcissist has no malignance in him.

A malignant narcissist doesn't really have inflated self-esteem. He lives in terror of moments of self-awareness so as to unknow that though. He is just ACTING the part of a god, acting the part of someone who thinks his you-know-what doesn't stink. He is a little child playing Pretend by dressing up in Daddy's cloths. He actually despises himself. So much that he won't even know his true self.

He won't identify with his true wretched self. He prefers to be a mirage he makes in mirrors.

So, a malignant narcissist isn't just a severe case of narcissism. A malignant narcissist is a whole other thing.

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Acting for Your Own Good

Here is a bit more on your right to act for your good.

Even a criminal who is guilty of a crime cannot be forced to confess and thereby do himself harm. His right to self preservation, to a defense is THAT sacred. In the United States, our forefathers gave us this right, and specified the right to pursue happiness, because they detested the practice in Europe of denying these rights. To the point that the condemned had to kneel down in an act of begging their executioner to be executed by torture. The condemned had to offer himself up for torture (or he'd get it worse) and even had to PAY their executioner in this sick public ritual.

That is just wrong. I don't care how guilty the man was. That violated a Law of Nature. It's the Sin of Sodom (ask a theologian).

Again for example, anyone with an ounce of moral sense knows that you don't have to refrain from defending yourself just because someone else might get hurt if you do.

Frankly, it amazes me how devoid of moral sense many professionally pious prigs are.

They think you have no right to divorce your poor, poor abuser who would then be all alone and sad (sniff, sniff). It's the same with an abusive parent: shame on you if you break off relations with him or her. They think you must appear before your lifelong abuser regularly for more abuse, just because Mom or Dad is old now (= by definition "good" in thoughtless people's eyes). They think you have no right to defend yourself against character assassination by answering the accusations so as to show that they are projection. They think you have no right to lift a finger in your own defense or in the defense of other innocents.

In short, they think you must refrain from any negative reinforcement of abuse. Think what that means. You mustn't do anything that would tend to make your abuser stop it, or at least think twice before abusing you again. Whose side are they on?

In fact, they don't even stop at that: they make it a sin for you to even just get and stay away from your abuser. How sick is that?

They just slap the label "revenge" on anything you do to protect yourself and call you the "evil" one. In other words, they think you are to bend over for abuse. It's all they will allow you to do.

And if you disobey them, they will call YOU the sinner. And the kicker is what they DON'T SAY = any bad word about your abuser. Listen for one: you won't hear a single condemnatory word out of them about what HE has done.

They are a large part of the reason why narcissists get away with the things they do. They are his proxies, the audience he plays to. The self-righteous.

You have to have the backbone to stand up to them. For your own sake, or you will damage your relationship with yourself by betraying yourself to avoid their condemnation. You WILL soon hate yourself for doing so.

And that's what's wrong with a narcissist: deep down he actually hates himself. So, don't let him drag you down there into that abyss with him. Love yourself. You cannot love anyone else unless you do. And love is an action verb, not just a fleeting warm and fuzzy sentiment.

BUT, unless you get away from a narcissist - no contact - you will be confronted with the choice of fighting back or bending over for it every single day. Because a narcissist is a machine who will go just as far as you let him. If, for example, he knows he doesn't dare physically beat you, he will resort to mental cruelty. He will ALWAYS find a way to feed his addiction by taking a bite out of you.

So, you don't want to stay in the crucible that has you fighting back every time you turn around. Life is too short. But that doesn't mean that fighting back is wrong when something important like your self respect, career, or good name is on the line. Fight back and then get away so you never have to fight with the N again.

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The Most Important Relationship You Have

UPDATE: Revised for inclusion in the book.

What's the most important relationship you have?

That isn't a trick question, but it might as well be, because most people don't realize that the most important relationship they have is with themselves.

...

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Spotting Projection: Pinning the Tail on the Wrong Donkey

Here's a way to spot projection even when you haven't enough direct knowledge of a controversy to know through observation where the truth lies. It's something I suppose only a writer would notice about human dialog. One of those things we notice about the way people talk that we use to make fictional characters realistic.

Projection is of course intellectual dishonesty. People may project their own character off onto a another person, or they may project the character of one person in a conflict onto the other. In the second case, people are siding with the bad guy, such as the bystanders do when they blame the victim.

A sure sign is their diction - word choice. It's always ironic. Why? Because they're always busy "cleansing" their guy of wrongdoing with their talk.

So, to erase any glaring character flaws coming through in his behavior, they (perhaps almost subconsciously) dump a label for that very character flaw ON THE OTHER PARTY.

Do you see what they're doing? It's a little mental trick of wiping that dirt off the bad guy's image and smearing it on the good guy's.

The result is farce. Which easy to detect if you're paying attention.

For, if an honest person were talking, someone who honestly felt the other party was at least somewhat to blame, he or she wouldn't totally reverse reality this way.

This is how, for example, you get people characterizing the abuser as, of all the things, the victim. Enough to make the head spin. Getting things that backwards is no accident: it's projection.

We saw a perfect example in the case of the BBC's Raging Sweeney. Clowns called HIM, of all things, the "victim." Now, an honest person might be critical of the Scientolologist in that conflict, but no honest person (a person not thinking with lies) would get what happened THAT ass-backwards.

Of course, Sweeney played them like a fiddle for it, just like a narcissist does, by following his rage with a face-change into a "poor-little-ole-me-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly" act, but "I was so picked on that I lost my poor temper."

Not. He turned it on and off like a light switch, so he wasn't really provoked. But people invested in the message want to side with him, so they ludicrously misplace the labels of "abuser" and "victim" in this affair.

That isn't just wrong: it's a farce. That exactly REVERSES reality. They are just playing the shell game with labels.

To see through them, all you have to do is look at the video: which party is the abuser and which the victim couldn't be more obvious. That is something no honest person can get backwards.

So, projection is easy to detect if you just notice the labels people put on others. Just ask yourself which party that particular label is more fitting for. When you are hearing projection, you will immediately see that the person handing you this line is playing "Pin the Tail on the Wrong Donkey."

Here's another example. Another glaring thing about that video is that Sweeney just blows up suddenly, out of the blue. In other words, his rage is an outburst.

Therefore, no honest, clear thinking person would attribute the "outburst" to anyone but Sweeney.

But a projecter will. Since "outburst" is a perfect word for characterizing Sweeney's behavior, a projector will lay that label on someone else, instead. Projectors will call someone else's reaction to Sweeney, of all things, an "outburst."

Why would a projector choose that exact word? To remove it from Sweeney's account and put it on someone else's.

They are just pinning that tail on the wrong donkey.

Who are they trying to fool? Good question. Usualy themselves more than you.

Projectors thus give themselves away by always dumping the appropriate labels on the wrong party.

In this case, it's their way of cleansing Sweeney of his misconduct and smearing it off on someone defending against it.

They'll do the same with the hate. They don't lay that label on the bigot, they lay it on the offended party for answering the slur. The offended party must take the hatred of bigotry in good grace and with a smile or be guilty of ... you guessed it, "hate." Not a word from the projector about the hate in the bigot's slur.

What hate? He or she didn't detect any hate there.

One wonders what it's like to live in a head as cock-eyed as that!

In short, projectors are always getting the actor and acted upon reversed, the offender and offended reversed, the abuser and the victim reversed, the hater and hated reversed. That's why I call them clowns, for the original meaning of clown was someone with a foggy head.

Narcissists do this 20 times a day, and they are expert at manipulating the bystanders to do it, too.

So, watch for this in the diction of others. Pay attention to their diction, the labels they put on others. Is it a bridge too far? Does the word they choose to describe someone or something with seem peculiar? Do you wonder where it came from? Check it. Does it pin the tail on the wrong donkey?

Is it downright ironic in the light of what you know first hand?

If so, you are listening to someone deluding themselves. Don't let them delude you too.

An honest person may be wrong. But an honest person never reverses and makes a farce of reality.

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The Heart of Malice

A narcissist's need to have it all is something one must see, I'm afraid, to believe.

It literally pains a narcissist to see anyone else get any. "Any" being any credit, appreciation, praise, recognition - whatever - just any form of what one narcissist I know called "sugar." It's just any form of the regard and respect human beings show each other in human relations, that stuff by which we VALUE other human beings as WORTHY of any regard.

Narcissists are pigs who gotta have it all. They begrudge anyone else any. Like three-year-olds who haven't been taught to share.

Doubt it? Just watch a narcissist while anyone present is getting credit for something or is being thanked or praised. He or she will look just sick.

He acts HURT by it. Short changed, cheated of what rightly belonged to him. It's as though any shine on anyone else diminishes the glow of God Almighty's glory.

He's gotta smear that shiny spot on the other person and immediately sets about doing so. The mental illness doesn't take away the sheer malice in that. Yes, malice. If you want to deny others treatment as WORTHY of any credit or regard or respect, you are trying to impose on others treatment as UNWORTHY of any credit or regard or respect. That's malice.

And other mentally ill people are not malicious like that.

In fact, it's as though a narcissist really does have himself confused with God and thinks the Bible verse applies to him that says 'all glory, laud, honor, praise, and thanksgiving belongs to him forever and ever amen.'

Get any and he thinks you're stealing it from him. Like a three-year-old who screams because her little brother has one of the toys.

That narcissist will take it away. Because the brat has just gotta have it/them all.

This is why narcissists go through life trashing others and robbing them of their due. It's what gives them the mentality of the rapist who goes around tearing others "down off that pedestal."

That isn't just mental illness: that's the heart of malice.

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Narcissistic Predation

A narcissist's need to "have it all," all attention - all regard, all glory, all praise - the need to have it all is the need to deprive others of any. When you deprive others of good things, to the point that you deny then even a pittance of these good things, as though you need to hoard every last bit of it on earth to yourself, you ARE a predator.

By depriving people of what they NEED - love, acceptance, regard, respect, a good name and so forth - you are denying them what all people need as much as they need the air they breathe.

You are denying them necessities of life to hog it all to yourself.

That is a hostile act. It damages those people you deprive. That makes you a predator, a plunderer. No two ways about it. Predators never identify with their prey. Predators dare not have any feelings for their prey.

This is what makes malignant narcissists and psychopaths so inhuman to their victims.

See Predation at the Main Site and in the book.

narcissistic personality disorder