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I really appreciate the examples we get in the comments. I think examples really help people get it about NPD.

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The NPD Lie Detector Test

Here is a suggestion you can make to a bystander who doubts you, believing the smear campaign of the devil in the group.

I warn you at the the top though that it often won't help. But even in failure it does a good thing: it proves that the bystander is willfully believing lies and doesn't really want to know the truth. Then you know the truth about that bystander.

Nonetheless, there are some people honestly mislead among the pack. They should jump on this bit of good advice.

I learned it while caught for awhile in a mini holocaust - a back-stabbing melee in the mud orchestrated by a malignant narcissist.

The wildest stories were circulating about people I had known for years...just before they got thrown out and blackballed. I didn't know about NPD at the time. So, I couldn't imagine why anyone would go to so much trouble calumniating one person after another. The source of this witch hunt had to be spending the greater part of his working day, every day, on private conversations with one person after another, planting lies in their ears to keep this conflagration going.

You'd think that, for purely practical reasons, nobody had that much time to waste on character assassination. So, not knowing that destroying others is vaunting yourself on them and a huge NPD high that no narcissist boss with unchecked power can resist, I was asking myself the proverbial question: "Now, why would anybody do that?"

To judge what I was hearing objectively, I began running a little test on it. Here's how it goes.

When you hear Person A insinuate or tell you something bad about Person B, just compare it with what you already know for for a FACT about Person B's CHARACTER.

If this is someone in your family, neighborhood, or workplace, you usually know a lot about them and their character. Know that you know it. For, you have seen them in action daily for many years. And actions speak much louder than words.

For example, you have seen them in trying circumstances. Think back. How did Person B react in trying circumstances before? You WILL see a pattern. Does Person B's behavior in all those instances square with what Person A is trying to tell you about him or her today? If not DON'T BELIEVE IT!

You can know with a good deal of confidence that Person A is lying, because you know with a good deal of certainty that Person B is not the kind of person who would do that.

Failing to know what you know about someone IN ORDER TO BELIEVE JUCY LIES about them is hateful. It's a breech of faith. Infidelity. Bad faith. Treason. Because you are betraying that person to character assassination. Indeed, this was the Original Sin the Bible = believing the sneaky serpent's transparant lie that God was the liar.

This is why one of the most ancient and venerable principles of jurisprudence demands that people be tried in their own home town or in the place where a crime was committed. The assumption is that THERE people know the accused. So, no liar can come along and tell them just ANYTHING about him and have them believe it. They would know he is a false accuser, because what he says about the accused doesn't square with what they know about him.

So, we are not helpless when it comes to distinguishing truth from lies. Forget the TALK that blows all weathercock minds in the wind and judge by ACTIONS you have observed firsthand. In other words, don't trust hearsay. Stick to known facts.

For example, you have seen accused Person B happy, sad, and angry many times in the past. Think back. How have they reacted to situations that would tempt people to lie? You have heard how Person B talks about other people, so you know whether they have a bad mouth or a wholesome one. You have seen proof of whether they are sensible or a fool. You have seen proof of whether they keep their promises. You have seen proof of whether they overreact. I could go on, but you get the idea.

In your memory, you have a treasure house of evidence about Person B's CHARACTER that applies to whatever Person B is being accused of. Consider it. Weigh it.

When someone with NPD is the accuser, your task is easy, because the accusations are a joke. That's because he or she is projecting their own faults off onto the accused and trying to smear one of the accused person's VIRTUES with it. Therefore, the moment you consider the past conduct of both Person A and Person B, your Irony Detector goes wild.

For example, a red flag of NPD is maligning others all the time. The narcissist will project that off onto the most conspicuously well spoken person in the group, someone who avoids gossip and never spreads vicious rumors about others, someone who often praises and speaks well of other people instead. Therefore, you have to be a complete idiot to believe the narcissist when he tells you that this person is maligning him.

It's a simple matter of having the brain on to examine information before letting it into your head = The Garden.

What's more, if Person B is accusing Person A of abusing her, she has a high degree of credibility, simply because she has never before spoken badly of anyone = she must have a damned good reason to be doing so now.

This process of weighing words is like you do in school when studying the characters in a novel or play. The author doesn't tell you that the hero is "thrifty, clean, and reverent." The author SHOWS you that he is "thrifty, clean, and reverent" through what that character DOES.

In Hamlet, for example, Shakespeare methodically compares Hamlet with Laertes this way. We see how Hamlet reacts to the killing of his father. Then we see how Laetres reacts (starts a civil war but immediately gets happy when bribed not to pursue it). We see Hamlet's true grief at Ophelia's grave and Laertes' grandstanding for attention. Even in death Laertes is a shallow ass thinking only of himself and behaves in a manner sharply contrasting with Hamlet's.

Having enough sense to judge people by their actions instead of by the words of others about them is the key to understanding that play. This thunders at the climax when you have to ask, "Who is crazy here? Hamlet, or this whole gang (the Court of Denmark) stampeding off into the dark crying for - of all things - "LIGHT."

And why? Simply because they are that determined to unknow the truth. Their willful contempt for it shows in the end when they are eye-witnesses to the treason of Claudius and Laertes but cry out that Hamlet is the traitor.

Shakespeare knew the human race well.

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The Narcissist's Mirror

From Dracula, by Bram Stoker, a good example of how a narcissist sees a grandiose reflection of himself in the look on your face:

...while Count Dracula was speaking, there was that in his eyes and in his bearing which made me remember that I was a prisoner, and that if I wished it I could have no choice. The Count saw his victory in my bow, and his mastery in the trouble of my face, for he began at once to use them, but in his own smooth, resistless way.

Your face is a mirror of the image the narcissist projects. It need only be grandiose. Therefore, admiration isn't the only thing narcissists want to make appear on your face. They also love to see defeat and trouble there.

If you are more powerful than they, someone they fear, you are at little risk of abuse, though you'll be conned and exploited like crazy. But if you are someone he or she can get away with trampling, you WILL get trampled, simply because trampling others is the ultimate narcissistic fix.

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Narcissism and a Terrible Temper

Another red flag of malignant narcissist is what is commonly called "a terrible temper." In fact you can Google a certain past President for that and find a ton of results, most of them related to us by his former aides.

But that cliche, a "terrible temper," is vague. What does it mean? It implies that some people get angrier than others.

Actually, that generally isn't true. Generally, there isn't much difference in how normal people feel as a result of a particular stimulus. If it is an angering stimulus, for example, it will make all normal people feel about the same degree of anger.

Yes, there are exceptions. If a particular person has had this very sort of thing done to them willfully and wantonly in the past, he or she may be more sensitive to it. An analogy is that bruises are tender.

Another exception of course is when a particular person is under a great deal of pressure or is very tired. But even then, the difference is mainly in the EXPRESSION of EMOTION, not the actual amount of anger felt.

Some people just feel a need to express themselves more. And louder. But that doesn't mean they're really any angrier than someone who prefers to keep their feelings to themselves.

In fact, someone who lies and pretends to feel no anger (or represses consciousness of anger) may be just as angry as either of them.

So, just what is a "terrible temper?"

It's blowing up over things that no normal person would be angry over. That's a red flag. Not anger - getting angry is no red flag. But getting angry over things no normal person would get angry about - that's a red flag.

The glaringest red flag is that it's sudden anger that blows up taking the attacked by surprise.

What I like is the dimwits who then blow it off by saying, "Yesbut he gets over it quickly."

That's a BAD sign, not a good one! Another red flag.

For, it seldom means that he simply doesn't carry a grudge. It usually means that Rage Boy has two settings: Rage On and Rage Off. His anger doesn't warm up or cool down like a normal person's does.

In other words, his anger is calculated to abuse. Then he just switches masks and acts like it didn't happen. He is all smiles and sweetness the very next day. Nobody would believe that ole Two-Face was a raging maniac the afternoon before.

And you are sinner who "doesn't forgive and forget" if you don't play along and act like it didn't happen, too. Cute, eh?

Perversity is endless.

When a normal person becomes angry with you and lets you know it, he or she also lets you know exactly what you did that made him or her angry. You walk away knowing what it was all about.

But when a malignant narcissist becomes angry, his anger not only blows up out of the blue, he never tells you a thing you did to set him off. (It's always some deficiency in you that God Almighty can't tolerate.) You walk away never knowing what it was all about.

He just blew up at you because things are going badly and of course the failure can't be in him: he must must be losing because you are deficient. But what you did wrong, you'll never get to know.

Or he just blew up because someone asked him a pointed question he couldn't lie his way out of. Diversionary tactics.

Sometimes he just blows up at you for talking about the wrong thing = your free speech instead of following his script. He has a fit, for example, over you mentioning one malignant narcissist when he wants you to find narcissism only in some other person instead.

Shame on you for noticing narcissism in anyone but the person this little Hitler wants to hear raked over the coals!

A little problem with "object relations," eh?

So, there you have three examples of the absurd kind of thing a malignant narcissist blows up about. All are transparent, revealing putrid motives.

Therefore, what are you going to do to keep that kind of crackpot happy? Nothing. There's nothing you can do.

That ain't normal. You don't inadvertently set off normal people just by being the way you are, just by being there, or just by noticing or talking about someone or something other than they want you to.

That's because you must actually do something TO normal people to get them angry. They don't regard you as an object they must control with strategic outbursts of anger.

It would be impossible to overstate the significance of inappropriate anger - NOT anger ... INAPPROPRIATE anger. Rage-On/Rage-Off style anger. Anger that takes you by surprise and makes you pinch yourself. Only to be gone then - poof - as if it never happened. Take that as a red flag, a very red flag.

People like that are not wholesome. Get and stay away from them.

True, so long as their ego's interests and ours happen to coincide, things may go fine. But the moment his image is at stake, expect to be betrayed with zero regard for the consequences to you.

Because it's all about HIM. Therefore, people like that should never be given a position of trust. The only thing you can trust them to do is let you down.

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The Projection Machine

This shook up person just cracked my funny bone with three instances of the following - of which this is most comical:

I never had you marked down as a coward but it seems I was wrong.

Signed "anonymous".

The Malignant Narcissist and Serial Infidelity

Like psychopaths, narcissists are serial offenders, and this is because of the reason why they offend. It's an acting out of something they do for a high.

So, for example, if they molest children, they will be serial offenders. Serial infidelity is another red flag of malignant narcissism.

Why? Because serial infidelity isn't normal. It's just cattin' around. It is the narcissist's way of acting out that his or her marriage means nothing to them. They prove this in deed by risking that marriage for a lark, every chance they get. They're downright promiscuous.

That's why serial infidelity is pathological, and normal infidelity is human.

Normally, a person tempted to have sex with someone other than their spouse will first think of the risk to their marriage. If their marriage is valuable to them, they won't do it unless very greatly tempted (by genuine affection for the other) and while taking great care not to have anyone find out.

That at least tells your wife or husband that you mean something to them. The serial tomcat is proving that his wife and their marriage mean nothing to him. He couln't VALUE her or anything she does for him, you see. He must DEVALUE it.

And what better way to do so?

Again and again and agian. It's a risk-taking high. If she knows, he gets to rub it in, just daring her to leave him. Grand him. And he is sure she can't live without grand him.

She needs him, something he's got (his magic wand?) but he doesn't need her.

A degrading value judgment. Which is why these kind like kinky sex, with the other party on their knees to his grandiosity. Not love. Just grandiosity to look down on others.

So, don't let any simpletons confuse you about the difference between normal (and forgivable) infidelity and the serial infidelity of the malignant narcissist. It ain't the same thing at all, and no one with any self respect can put up with it. Not even the holier-than-thous who try to tell you that you should.

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Narcissism's Delusions of Grandeur

Normal people do have fantasies. But they distinguish fantasy form reality.

What's more, normal people's fantasies do not come between them and themselves. In other words, their fantasies do not violate the normal healthy relationship between a person and his or her self. Only narcissists bust that relationship by replacing their relationship with their true self with a relationship to a false image of themselves that they create by art.

Normal people's fantasies take the form of narratives (stories) about what they would like to do. They are fantasies in which the dreamer dreams of doing something great.

Dreams of DOING SOMETHING great.

Narcissists have no such fantasies. As Joanna Ashumn observes ...

Narcissists don't see themselves doing anything except being adored, and they don't see anyone else doing anything except adoring them.

Hence the narcissist before a crowd sees the polite applause as the thunderous applause of a general outpouring of exceptional love and admiration for him.

Twisted perceptions. Like a child playing pretend that he is Superman and basking in the glow of worldwide glory. The narcissist just edits reality on the fly to create this work of art in his head.

Create is the wrong word for it, because you'll notice that this work of art isn't original: it's plagiarized from reality - altered-at-will reality. Reality altered on the fly by warping perceptions on the fly.

Here is another example, one that shows how far into denial this can go, from my book What Makes Narcissists Tick:

I know of one narcissist whose name was a byword in his hometown for never recognizing anyone he knew. Whenever he returned and was seen in a restaurant or bar, people formed an audience to make laughingstock of him. They knew an audience put him into a state of (narcissistic) bliss.

Like a drunken performer who loses his head in the glow of an audience, he would really try to show off how clever and grand he was. One by one, people would take turns coming up to talk with him. "Do you remember me, Chuck?" Chuck assured him that he did. After a minute of the requisite small talk about job and family, that person would ask Chuck if he remembered some shared experience in their past. Chuck assured him that he did.

Then the person would start reminiscing about it. "Do you remember old man Peterson then . . . ?" Yes, Chuck remembered and roared with laughter about this supposedly funny detail. His audience went wild, laughing at, not with, him because old man Peterson had nothing to do with the event. But Chuck was oblivious to everything but the attention he was getting.

"Do you remember me then going to . . . ?"

Ditto.

After a few minutes of thus suckering Chuck into hanging himself by trying to fake it came the denouement. "Hmm. Do you really know who I am, Chuck?" Chuck assured him that he did.

A minute later, the coup de grace. "I don't think you know who I am, Chuck. You sure? What's my name?"

Chuck's mouth would open wide and begin to form various words, intently studying the other man's mouth. It didn't work. So then he would mouth the first syllables of names in long, drawn out strains, slurring from to the next while his contorted facial expression and bodily pose desperately begged that man to help him. He sounded like a baby experimenting with his mouth before he can talk.

Needless to say, the roof raised with laughter, people laughing so hard they were in tears and had to bend over and hold their stomachs.

But there was no way to make Chuck know that he was being laughed at! He just laughed along, pretending he had (intentionally) said something funny. So, he never learned. He never recognized any of these people, and he never quit coming back for more of all that sweet, sweet, sweet attention.

By the way, a narcissist has conspicuous problems recognizing people because he or she never notices a mere mirror they are just checking themselves out in. But that's beside the point here. The point is that this is how far a narcissist will go to unknow the truth about what people think of him. This is how far he'll go to edit reality on the fly: he will imagine that all those people are laughing with him at some joke he imagines that he is trying to make.

WARNING: the tangled contortions of narcissistic antilogic and illogic may cause gymnastic injuries to a brain that thinks straight, so be sure to warm up and stretch out properly before trying to follow the twisted course of logic through a narcissist's twisted brain :)

As Freud said of narcissists, these people act like they're in love with themselves. And they are in love with an ideal image of themselves -- or they want you to be in love with their pretend self, it's hard to tell just what's going on.

Ashmun emphasises that they want their pretend self to be the one seen and loved. She notes that this isn't the same as thinking it's their real self.

Say what? Well get this for an example of how a narcissist thinks ...

The most dramatic example I can think of is from John Cheever's journals. Throughout his life he had pursued surreptitious homosexual activities, being transiently infatuated with young men who reminded him of himself in his youth, while also living in a superficially settled way as a married family man, a respected writer with an enviable suburban life, breeding pedigreed dogs and serving on the vestry of the Episcopal church. When his secret life (going to New York City for a few days every now and then to pick up sailors and other beautiful boys for brief flings) came to scandalous light, his family sought to reassure him by telling him that they'd known about his homosexual activities for years. Now, a normal person would be ashamed and embarrassed but also relieved and grateful that scandal, not to mention chronic emotional and marital infidelity, had not caused his wife and children to reject and abandon him -- but not the narcissist! Oh, no, Cheever was enraged that they would ever have thought such a thing of him -- if they really loved him, they'd have bought his artificial "country squire" persona: they would have seen him as he wished to be seen.

In other words, a narcissist wants you to believe known lies for him! Which amounts to wanting you to delude yourself for him. Which amounts to not caring what you REALLY believe, but insisting rather that you just play along with his lies, pretending that these lies are true.

That's exactly like a three-year-old playing pretend. She throws a fit insisting that YOU PLAY TOO.

Behind the Looking Glass there in the Land of Pretend, the real world has melted away. Narcissists remain in that mental mode their whole lives.

As Ashmun says, "They don't see these images [fantasies about themselves] as potentials that they may some day be able to live out, if they get lucky or everything goes right: they see these pictures as the real way they want to be seen right now ...."

Therefore, like John Cheever, the narcissist's family mustn't know the truth about him or her. They are being bad by not getting behind the Looking Glass there in the Land of Pretend where it ain't true. He gets mad at them for living in reality instead.

Just like a three-year-old gets mad at her playmates when they don't feel like playing pretend.

So, malignant narcissism ain't just being full of yourself. It's being seriously twisted.

If this doesn't describe your "N," then maybe he or she is just full of themselves and not a malignant narcissist. If so, hold your fire and be glad to learn that. Be very glad to learn it. Be very, very glad to learn it.

Because people who are just full of themselves can be communicated with.

Whereas malignant narcissists are but ghosts. The ghosts of people somewhere else. People not in this world or of it. People in some other world.

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A Narcissist's Strange Relationships

A narcissist's strange relationship with himself has many ramifications for his relationship to others, which is just as warped.

He relates to himself as a fictional character. He also authors the story.

Everyone has a personal narrative, but a narcissist's gives new meaning to the term.

He relates to you as but a character, not a real person.

Now, imagine you're a novelist writing away, and some character comes out on the page telling you that, no, the story doesn't go this way: it goes that way.

Bizarre, eh? Well, in a way, that's what you are doing when you contradict the narcissist's fantasy. He has utter, utter contempt for reality and truth. He is the creator of his own universe, which he makes up on the fly.

No exaggeration.

He is like a little child playing Pretend with her friends. She wants to author the story, and her little friends must just play along. She will stamp her foot and yell at a playmate who doesn't like the role she's assigned him and cry, "NO! You're not supposed to that! You're supposed to do this!"

Narcissists don't dare admit that this is what they're up to with their pathological lying. Probably they repress consciousness of it themselves. But this is what they're doing when they tell you bizarre lies that they (should) know you couldn't possibly believe.

They don't want you to BELIEVE it. They just want you to play along. They just want you act as though it's true. They want you not to contradict their fantasy. For, you make it hard for them to maintain their delusions when you don't play along.

That's all they want.

You are nothing but a bit character in a story all about them.

Characters aren't persons. Characters aren't human beings with minds and thoughts and feelings. They are figments. Ask any narcissist what they think you think. They will gape at you as if the question doesn't make sense. You might as well ask him what his screw driver thinks.

One might as well have asked Shakespeare what he thought Hamlet thinks about the play.

Hamlet ain't a person. He's just a character. A caricature. A piece on the author's chess board.

And so are you in the smoke and mirrors of a narcissist's world, which is the Twilight Zone.

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Narcissistic Nirvana: Sweet, Sweet, Sweet Attention

If you ever get a chance, watch videos of all these leaders' speeches: Hugo Chavez, Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Muammar Kadafi, Fidel Castro. See how their eyes light up before a crowd as they undergo a transfiguration in their glory — all that sweet, sweet, sweet attention.

They rant or ramble on and on and on for incredibly long speeches, making their people stand there for hours, even in the rain, while they yak off the top of their head about whatever comes to mind, certain that the whole world is hanging on their every word and dying for the fruit of their lips on any topic they care to expound about.

They milk a moment in the spotlight for all it's worth. Bill Clinton does this best. Notice how long he pauses to milk every last second of applause. He can milk one with a pregnant pause for over 60 seconds. In fact, he is so good at wringing out an audience that he can get the applause to start up again after it has died out several times! All without even saying anything! Watch.

He gets a nice welcome and acts as though it's a sublime one that has him deeply moved and overwhelmed by it. Never underestimate the power of suggestion: the people in the audience begin to share this delusion and act it out for him.

Then, after the applause has completely died out, he just starts out as if to say something, then does his giggle into a pause as if he's so gratified by all this warmth that he is speechless. Everybody's hanging, hanging, hanging. And people tend to fill gaps, you know, so eventually the audience finally gives him more of what he's extorting from them, just to fill the giggly silence.

What a piece of work.

I never knew a narcissist whose eyes didn't just sparkle at the sight of a crowd with all eyes on them. They just beam in the glow. It's like they're transported.

Never ask them to write an autobiography. You'll be lucky to get them to stop at two volumes and 200,000 words.

We're all so interested in every minute detail of their whole lives and every extraneous thought they have on the way of telling it to us, you see :)

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Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Predation

If you are reading this, the chances are that someone or something has given you a clue that you might find the key to a profound mystery in a mental illness known as Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

Maybe it was only yesterday. If so, you are probably still reeling from the discovery that you weren't imagining things, that something is wrong with a certain person in your life, and that your experience with him or her isn't unique.

Maybe all your life they've made you feel like a tethered bird, never allowed to feel good about yourself. Or maybe you have a sense of foreboding that comes through in bad dreams because it seems that this person, for no known reason, is out to get you.

But who would believe it? You yourself can't believe it. You've had to keep pinching yourself, because Why would anyone do that? Especially this person. And why would he or she do that to you? It defies reason.

Which makes it the perfect crime = the one no one believes. Because it goes against nature. And because it has no possible motive.

Yet, when you think twice, it's stupid to doubt that such things happen. The daily news proves that they do. For we could ask the old Why-would-anyone-do-that? question about every rape, every random murder, every child molestation, every random act of vandalism.

They are abundant proof of the FACT that some people need no motive. They act out of pure malice. They do it just to do it.

In fact, jurisprudence has long recognized the motive of pure malice.

Some people hurt you because hurting others makes them feel good. It makes them feel good in the same way that eating makes a starving person feel good. It makes them feel good in the same way that a narcotic makes a person in pain feel good.

Just as hungry people like eating and just as pained people like taking narcotics, they like hurting you.

They need to hurt you. Just as a hungry person needs food and a person in pain needs a narcotic. That's what you are to them, food, as to a vampire, or a punching bag to transfer their pain to.

For, they are predators.

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Diagnostic Confusion

Recent discussions have got me thinking, and whether we all agree or not, one thing is clear. In other areas of medicine, second opinions rarely vary much. But in mental health, diagnoses are all over the place.

Result: People who fit the description of APD are being labelled psychopaths. People who are narcissistic but not malignant narcissists are being diagnosed with NPD.

This must be very painful to them. Though far from innocent, they are also far from malicious with pathological envy for every happy person they see. Yet they are lumped together with the malicious and regarded as malicious when they aren't. And, as I mentioned before, this confusion trivializes the abuse suffered by those abused by real malignant narcissists or psychopaths. So this confusion hurts people on both ends of the issue.

When will it end? Predators are as distinct a category as could be. Distinct in behavior, motivation, brain physiology, and respense to treatment. Distinct in their own estimation as well!

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A Bad Joke

Please check out the link in the previous post. It reveals that when the DSM confused psychopathy with antisocial personality disorder in the diagnostic criteria, it labelled most of the prison polulation as psychopaths. Which is grossly wrong. Most of the prison population does meet the diagnostic criteria for APD, but the Psychopathy Checklist is the accepted standard for diagnosing pychopathy, and only about 40% of violent criminals imprisoned meet the criteria for psychopathy. Violent criminals.

Why did the DSM suddenly say Antisocial PD = psychopathy, thereby making millions of people (like car thieves) suddenly psychopaths? Why? That's obscurantism.

Look at the diagnostic criteria for NPD. Vague. Does it keep mere (non-malignant) narcissists from being diagnosed with NPD? Not at all.

Why the fuzziness? The fruit of fuzziness?

One issue in the diagnostic assessment bias literature is errors in applying the diagnostic criteria (Rabinowitz & Efron, 1997). In one demonstration of this bias, Morey and Ochoa (1989) asked 291 psychiatrists and psychologists to complete a symptom checklist for a client whom they had diagnosed with a personality disorder. When the checklists were later correlated with the DSM criteria, nearly three of four clinicians had made mistakes in applying the diagnostic criteria. Kappa coefficients of agreement between clinicians' checklists and the DSM criteria varied from 0.09 to .59, indicating a poor-to-modest level of agreement (Babbe, 1998). These results demonstrate the pervasiveness of errors in applying diagnostic criteria.

Errors in applying the DSM criteria were also reported by Davis, Blashfield, and McElroy (1993). They asked 42 psychologists and 17 psychiatrists to read and diagnose case reports containing different combinations of the DSM-III-R criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD; APA, 1987). They found that 94% of the clinicians made mistakes applying the diagnostic criteria, and nearly one out of four clinicians made a diagnosis of NPD even if fewer than half the DSM criteria were met.

Rubinson, Asnis, Harkavy, and Freidman (1988) found clinicians making more mistakes of omission than of commission in applying the DSM criteria. Researchers sent 113 questionnaires to a random sample of clinicians asking them what criteria they used to make a diagnosis of Major Depression. The 54 questionnaires returned indicated that clinicians' most often erred by failing to use all the diagnostic criteria in their diagnostic decision making.

— Jerry McLaughlin, "Reducing diagnostic bias," 01-07-02, Journal of Mental Health Counseling

Read the rest. Those statistcs are way out there in Bizarre Land. In other words, they diagnose by the seats of their pants, apparantly DIVINING their diagnosis. Whatever PD is most popular this year gets diagnosed most. The most prevalent PD is "other" on the diagnostic checklist. And most diagnoses cover all bases by diagnosing more than one PD.

This is a joke. Not only is the seriousness of malignant narcissism and psychopathy watered down, but people who are not really malignant narcissists or psychopaths are are labeled as such and thus made to seem heartless predators when they are not.

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Malignant Narcissism & Psychopathy

One of the oldest and most powerful propaganda devices is confusing (literally "pouring together and fusing") two different things as one. In ancient times, doing this was known as speaking the language of babbel/Babel. To this day, the root meaning of babble is "confused language." It was also known as speaking with tongues.

Confusing mere narcissism as a character trait with malignant narcissism, a personality/character disorder does great damage. It makes malignant narcissists seem much less bad than they are.

When authorities, who are supposed to know better, do this, what are we to conclude?

In fact, narcissism and malignant narcissism are FUNDAMENTALLY different. Narcissism is the fruit of inflated self esteem, whereas malignant narcissism is the fruit of deflated self-esteem. The resemblance is purely superficial and due to the fact that malignant narcissists compensate for their sense of inferiority with a superiority act that mimics simple narcissism. But simple narcissism is benign, whereas malignant narcissism is predatory. A world of difference.

We see the same thing with psychopathy and Antisocial Personality Disorder. They have been confused. This makes psychopathy sound much less serious than it is.

Incredibly, the DSM itself does this!

The distinction between psychopathy and ASPD is of considerable significance to the mental health and criminal justice systems. Unfortunately, it is a distinction that is often blurred, not only in the minds of many clinicians but in the latest edition of DSM-IV.

Why? To justify their cavalier attitude toward predators = malignant narcissists and psychopaths? To shore up cherished myths that there are no bad people in the world and that society is the one guilty of every crime someone commits and that some people having more money than others is to blame? Why?

Malignant narcissism should be taken seriously, and psychopathy should be taken taken seriously. So, the mental healthcare industry must stop obstinantly camouflaging them by confusing them with relatively minor matters.

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Utopia

Here's a little more on the subject of the last two posts. But not from me.

First, a statement of the problem:

Hare's research upset a lot of people. Until the psychopath came into focus, it was possible to believe that bad people were just good people with bad parents or childhood trauma and that, with care, you could talk them back into being good. Hare's research suggested that some people behaved badly even when there had been no early trauma. Moreover, since psychopaths' brains were in fundamental ways different from ours, talking them into being like us might not be easy. Indeed, to this day, no one has found a way to do so.

"Some of the things he was saying about these individuals, it was unheard of," says Dr. Steven Stein, a psychologist and ceo of Multi-Health Systems in Toronto, the publisher of the Psychopathy Checklist. "Nobody believed him thirty years ago, but Bob hasn't wavered, and now everyone's where he is. Everyone's come full circle, except a small group who believe it's bad upbringing, family poverty, those kinds of factors, even though scientific evidence has shown that's not the case. There are wealthy psychopaths who've done horrendous things, and they were brought up in wonderful families."

Hare himself doesn't estimate the numbers of the willfully obtuse as low as his publisher does though. He says...

"There's still a lot of opposition -- some criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists don't like psychopathy at all," Hare says. "I can spend the entire day going through the literature -- it's overwhelming, and unless you're semi-brain-dead you're stunned by it -- but a lot of people come out of there and say, 'So what? Psychopathy is a mythological construct.' They have political and social agendas: 'People are inherently good,' they say. 'Just give them a hug, a puppy dog, and a musical instrument and they're all going to be okay.' "

Criminologists? Sociologists? Psychologists? These folks are supposed to be the solution, not part of the #*$%/ problem! Fire them all. There is no excuse for this willful and wanton rejection of the known truth. That crowd needs a new you-know-what reamed.

They should be putting out public service announcements warning us that psychopaths pass for normal among us and instructing us to exercise caution in whom we trust. They should be giving practical advice on how to spot the warning signs. But what are they doing instead? Denying this truth! Who side are they on? Ours or the psychopaths'?

The more I learn about this crowd, the more I see how routinely invalid their tricky statistics are, the more games I find in the DSM diagnostic critera (designed to let foks with a God-complex diagnose by the seat of their Omniscience's pants), the more exposed bias and and error in their deplorably low accuracy-of-diagnosis rate, the more ridiculous illogic that no first-year science student would dare try to put in a report, the more social engineering I see...the more suspicious I get of this pseudoscience.

Actually, their ignore-ance of reality wouldn't be so bad if they didn't persecute anyone as mean and nasty and (of all things) "intolerant" for disagreeing to know the truth. How's that for projection?

That's the problem. The mental healthcare establishment and academia have to get out of the way. Clericalism is clericalism, and obscurantism is obscurantism, whether it's the medieval Catholic Church committing it or them.

You get a good idea of the goose-stepping peer pressure that enforces conformity within that group from the blog of a former therapist, Neo-NeoCon, in her bio and her archive of posts on political homogeneity and groupthink among therapists and her archive on the treatment she gets for political apostasy.

How political is their agenda?

Theoretically, therapists can work with anyone, but in actuality they tend to specialize and refer out those patients who press their buttons (such as, for example, child molesters). And, although this sounds like some sort of bad joke, I know quite a few therapists who say they would have difficulty treating a client whom they know to be a Republican.

And who calls whom "simplistic"? To think that way you have to think that Republican = evil. To that I say, why seek therapy from someone who needs it themselves?

Hare and others have shown that the neural network of gray matter in the brains of psychopaths is actually different, that you can't get through to them with therapy, because they are using different parts of their brains to process information than normal people. For example, a stimulus that would produce an emotional response in the emotional centers of normal people produces almost no activity in the emotional centers of brutal, cold-blooded psychopaths.

A surprise? Hardly. Anyone can switch off their human feelings. The entire nation of Nazi Germany switched them off on Kristalnacht. It is normal for us to switch them off in life-threatening violent situations (like a natural disaster or combat). Psychopaths and narcissists just have theirs switched off permanently and for everyone, even their own children.

Asked if he thinks there will ever be a cure for psychopathy -- a drug, an operation -- Hare steps back and examines the question. "The psychopath will say 'A cure for what?' I don't feel comfortable calling it a disease. Much of their behaviour, even the neurobiological patterns we observe, could be because they're using different strategies to get around the world. These strategies don't have to involve faulty wiring, just different wiring."

But the willfully obtuse pretend they don't hear that and are too stupid to realize that this brain difference could be by choice that becomes habit over time. No, they ASSUME that the brains of psychopaths are defective and need to be fixed with some microchip. Presto-chango! Now you would have a good person, they say, because there is no such thing as a person who chooses to be evil - just good people with malfunctioning brains damaged by society, which they also want to fix.

As Hare points out, by their screwy logic, true saints, selfless people, are different too, but we don't regard them as diseased. Yet.

These are the very people who run a system that stubbornly ignores the fact that their treatments only make psychopaths worse and lets the criminally violent ones out of jail, time and again, to rape and con and molest and murder some more.

How callous their bleeding hearts.

Are we not yet fed up with them? I say damn their political agenda. By deliberately keeping their prey in the dark about the existence of predators among us, they are contributing to the pain and suffering narcissists and psychopaths cause. They gotta stop lying. Ns and Ps aren't good people "suffering" from some disease: they are malignant. If it's a disease they have, they are thoroughly enjoying it.

One must just plain lie to deny that they freely CHOOSE to do evil, that they get their jollies from it, and that they know right from wrong.

The mental healthcare establishment must stop suppressing this knowledge, because everyone needs to know it. We need to know that there are people in OUR life who would go up to a puppy (when nobody's looking) waving a treat, saying, "Here doggie, doggie!" only to get close enough to torture and kill that puppy.

I don't care how much it rattles our cage to face the fact that there are people like that passing for normal among us. We need to know it.

Because that knowledge will make us stop ASSUMING that everyone we meet means us no harm. It will make us careful whom we trust. Just think how many con artists that would put out of business.

Knowing whom to trust ain't rocket science. It's just a matter of paying heed to the warning signs of bad faith. Like lying, imposing on personal boundaries, perverted reactions to things, slander, control freakism, and the like. It's just common sense: if a person lies today, they will lie tomorrow and therefore have no credibility, no matter how fine their reputation is. If he hit you once, he will hit you again. If she never says a good word about anyone behind their back, she never says a good word about you behind your back.

In other words, we need to know that there are predators among us so that we all take these warning signs seriously. Like all prey, we have to know that we are prey, and sniff the breeze so that we smell a wolf in sheep's clothing. So that we don't marry one, hire one, work for one, elect one, believe one, or follow one on a crusade.

No big deal. Till the 20th century, that's the way we lived - in the knowledge that there were human and animal predators around us. If we all still showed the necessary caution, imagine what a different and better world it would then be.

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A Clockwork Orange

I'm glad that "the people who think" that we, the unwashed masses, are incapable of taking care of ourselves - I'm glad that they think we need to be protected from the narcissists and psychopaths among us.

On that, I couldn't agree with them more. I don't maintain this website and blog because I have nothing more profitable to do with my time. I do it because of the long line of ruined lives in every narcissist's wake through life. Ruined lives. Utterly, utterly ruined lives.

If you could weigh in a scale all the untold misery their kind bring to this world, surely the planet would sink like a stone in the waters of time.

Narcissists/psychopaths are a curse on humankind. They are destroying machines. That's because they are predators, and like all predators they sustain themselves by ripping apart others.

I don't like the math. To keep one creep happy, dozens, hundreds, thousands, or even millions (depending on how much power the narcissist gets) have to have ruined lives. I say "nuts" to that. Let the one creep be unhappy instead. Very unhappy. Very, very unhappy. Yes, I say, let the vampires among us starve.

Oooh, how nasty of me, eh? Well, at least I'm on the right side. Whose side are the authorities on? the side of the vampires? or their prey?

Let's give the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church a break: they are no worse than the rest of society in betraying us to them ... to the point of feeding us to them. The mental health industry does no better. Neither does the law. They and the bystanders are a miserable failure.

Who loves ya, babe? Certainly not them.

They love their power and authority and advocate anything that will increase it. They are so narcissistic themselves that the last thing I want to see is them suckering us into giving them the kind of power and authority they think their kind should have over us.

We don't need A Clockwork Orange to protect us from the narcissists and psychopaths among us.

We need nothing but information and good, old fashioned self reliance. Why? Because narcissists and psychopaths are predators. That's both the bad news and the good news about them. Predators are almost never a threat to prey aware of their presence.

Unconcerned impalas drink at the same watering hole the lions do. In peace. Why? Because the impalas smell the bloody lions and keep their distance! A lion beyond striking distance is a lion that is no threat.

What's more, predators are easily discouraged, because they can't afford to be injured in a fight. An injury would handicap them in trying to obtain future meals and thus bring about their death through starvation. Hence predators take "testing runs" at large prey and head off in search of easy prey if the victim fights back.

Narcissists and psychopaths do the same thing. They live in dread of exposure for what they are. If they should be unmasked in their Pathological Space, they would have to flee it and establish a new hunting ground among unsuspecting prey in a new environment. So they ALWAYS test their prey. If they see that you are suspicious of them, they leave you alone.

This is true no matter what kind of predator a narcissist or psychopath is. The pedophile priest tests his prey. The street con artist tests his prey. The love thief tests his prey. The abusive boyfriend tests his prey. They all want to make sure their prey is clueless before they attack.

In other words, they want to make sure their prey doesn't suspect a wolf underneath the sheep's clothing. They are scared to death of people they fear are wise to them. What if such a person should sound a general warning and report the first punishable thing they do? That narcissist or psychopath would be in deep trouble, as the rest of herd chimes in and others start spilling their guts about what he has already done to them.

And so the cure for the curse of narcissists and psychopaths among us is an informed society, one that knows that predators exist among us, that we all encounter them every day, and that we must take care of ourselves - not expect Mother State to.

A hundred years ago, people weren't so childish as they are today. People didn't trust strangers. They paid attention to signs of bad faith and heeded the warning in them. They were not clueless, naive babes in Wonderland who thought everyone is a good person. They didn't look to Mother Government to sterilize society for them so that they could gambol about like lambs in May in an environment all the wolves have been removed from.

Narcissists do behave in the presence of witnesses. Punishment and other adverse consequences is the only language they understand. So think what would happen in a world where getting away with murder was hard. What if narcissists couldn't easily get away with character assassination and abuse all their lives? What if they usually got shamed and punished for it instead?

What if they lived in a world where 99% of people weren't so naive? The vampires would starve, wouldn't they?

So, we don't need A Clockwork Orange. All we need is an informed society. A society that knows that 15-20% of people meet the criteria for at least one personality disorder and that psychopaths and narcissists are as plentiful in our world as big cats are in the wilds of Africa.

In other words, we need the social engineers to quit keeping the facts a secret from us. We need these arrogant ones to quit regarding knowledge as dangerous in our hands. What is this? A new brand of clericalism - secular clericalism - or what?

Hey, so much for their argument that we would overreact and be mean to narcissists and psychopaths if we knew the truth - THEY are the ones ballistically overreacting by proposing A Clockwork Orange, not us.

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Untangling Fast Talk

More from the Big Brother faction. Here is the transcript of a British program entitled "Mind of a Murderer" on Equinox channel 4 in 2000. Notice how the narrator warps your perception of what is said - literally abusing quoted words to make them out to say other than what they say. All to make sure that we don't get the politically incorrect idea that there is any such thing as a bad person.

First, at the top, the narrator heads us off in the wrong direction by making us expect to hear that psychopathy is brain damage people are born with.

What the scientists are discovering suggests that psychopaths are born, not made; that their condition is the result of a specific malfunction of the brain.

No it doesn't suggest that. Now, either this television narrator isn't intelligent enough to have his job or he is trying to pull a fast one on us.

In fact, not one of the scientists this program quotes says such a thing, and one, Dr. Robert Hare, specifically says that the differences in a psychopath's brain may well be due to the way they habitually think. In other words, they could well be the result, not the cause, of psychopathy.

I skip to Part 3, where the con job occurs.

Narrator: There is a growing consensus among the experts that psychopathy is a specific biological condition, the result of a malfunction in the brain. Bob Hare's psychopathy checklist is the accepted benchmark for identifying psychopaths. It could also be the key that unlocks the cause of the condition.

Bob Hare: A lot of people say that this causant of psychopathy is nothing more than a myth and people have said that it's a moral judgement masquerading as a science. Well, if we define people according to this cluster of characteristics, do they have brain images for a particular task that are different from those of other individuals? The answer is definitely yes.

Quoting Dr. Hare at this point SUGGESTS that he is one of those unnamed sources who are joining this unproclaimed consensus. But nothing could be further from the truth.

And what was cut from Hare's statement? (It would be something Hare says that ends with, "...the answer is definitely no.") Why does the narrator interrupt at this point a fill in the gap with the following?

Narrator: Hare has been using brain-scanning techniques to determine whether the mental processes of the psychopath are different from those of the non-psychopath. If they are it could be revealed in brain images.

Yes, jerk, you already told us that. So, what are you cutting out that you must fill in with this redundant fluff?

Bob Hare: Some of the brain imaging research that my group and other groups in several parts of the world are now conducting indicates that it appears that the psychopath had difficulty in actually processing, understanding and using emotional material. Now is this because they are biologically put together differently, or they are wired differently right from birth, or are the brain differences that we observed the results of using different strategies to perform the tasks that we use? We just don't know that yet.

Now as I read plain English, that makes it clear that you cannot conclude that people are BORN with these brain differences or that they are the CAUSE of psychopathy. It could well be the other way around: psychopathy causes them.

But here comes the narrator, pretending that Hare didn't just say that, pretending that Hare's statement says something it doesn't say.

Narrator: In one experiment, a psychopath's response to emotive words is tested and the brain activity it produces is compared to that of a non-psychopath. The difference is significant. The white areas denote parts of the brain that are actively processing an emotional response to the words. In the brain of the non-psychopath there is considerable activity; in the psychopath's brain there is far less. It seems there is less emotional involvement. Hare's research into the workings of psychopaths' brains is encouraging. It's clear that there are striking differences in areas that are associated with processing emotions.

Yes, jerk! How many times are you going to block a point to keep it from getting through people's heads? All by simply responding as though your source said something else.

Indeed, the parts of the brain you use develop more than the parts of the brain that you don't use. That is an undisputed fact. Cold-blooded psychopaths don't use the same wiring in the brain that normal people do. So, it is no wonder that those parts should be less developed in them.

So that narrator is not only jumping to a conclusion, he's jumping to the less likely conclusion.

The social engineering narrator here is counting on a brain-dead audience failing to run a logic check on what he's saying.

Note the abuse of language in the diction, too. Psychopaths don't refuse to empathize: they "have difficulty empathizing." That's "poor" functioning of their "unhealthy" brain, not just brutality. Their brains aren't working right, because they don't have the "right" feelings. They aren't just maybe bad, they are "impaired," poor things.

Voiceover: The degree, or where that, um, impairment comes from, whether it's genetic or whether it's early trauma, or whether it's some sort of social variables that are affecting the development of the amygdala, that's what we can't tell. But it's clear that there is pathology in the brain of these individuals.

I knew I detected the odor of the far left in there. Ah, the intelligentsia.

And, no it's not clear that there is "pathology" in their brain. In fact, there is not one shred of evidence that anything in the brain is malfunctioning. That's typical of these clowns: your brain doesn't work right if you don't think the way they do.

Next, of course, comes Utopia. We just give everybody the test and then operate on those who flunk. For, "We have to protect people; we have to protect society."

If there are any narcissists out there, I want you to know that on that day I will be on your side. These people are far more dangerous.

Adrian Rain: The prefrontal cortex is involved regulating and controlling behaviour. It's the part of the brain that says: 'Hey, let's stop and think about this before we actually go through with things.' It's the emergency brake.

Yes, sir, why don't you use yours?

Adrian Rain: We're not too far away in the future when what we will be able to do is replace dysfunctional brain mechanisms with microchips. This sounds like science fiction, and clearly it's not here yet, but within the next 10 years we will have the first microchip brain implant.

A Clockwork Orange. Unbelievable, just unbelievable.

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My Story

Believe it or not, I am often asked about my story. But I don't tell it. There are several reasons, but here are the two most important ones.

First, most of the narcissits I know, or have known, or know about, are probably still alive. Even these creeps have a right to privacy. Plus, innocent people associated with them could be damaged by publically exposing them. Besides, that isn't the purpose of this site.

And neither is telling my own story. I see nothing wrong with such a blog or website, but that isn't what this one is for. It's stated purpose is it's stated purpose - nothing more, nothing less, and I write under my real name.

Yet there is no reason to keep secret that my father was a malignant narcissist. He died a few years ago.

I was called over to be there when the coroner and priest arrived. I felt nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Yet, strange it seemed that his body sitting there in the chair where he died, looked human in death. I responded to that.

In fact, for some strange reason, everyone else got up and walked out of the room. Like they forgot it was there. Like it was something to just leave laying around.

I dare say that I was the only atheist on the premises, the only who had hated this man on the premises, and yet the only one with enough respect for the presence of a dead person's body to sit respectfully with it until the undertaker took it away.

Respect - you know, that something he never had for anyone he wasn't scared of.

Finally the priest got around to saying something to Frank's offspring. "Well, we know we don't have to worry about where your father is now," he said, "because surely he is in Heaven."

That almost did it. I'm normally a thoughtful person, but I nearly lost it this time. Before I knew it, I was giving that priest a wondering double-take and had my mouth half open with these words on my tongue:

"Frank is just lucky there is no God, father, because otherwise he'd be getting his ass singed about now."

But I caught them. The man was dead, this was somebody else's house, and I didn't have to correct the fool in black, who thinks he knows enough to judge people just from the way they act in a pew.

But that's what happens when somebody tries to steal my past by imposing a false history on my life: you are going to hear me ANSWER your falsehood with the truth about Frank loud and clear.

Otherwise, I never have anything to say about the guy.

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The Power of Suggestion on Bystanders

UPDATED FOR CLARITY

How do narcissists and psychopaths pull off such a carnival of absurdity as I described in my previous post?

It's easy. Any cynic can do so. All you need do is exploit the fact that the vast majority of people NEVER think. Ever.

Narcissists get away with what they do by playing the bystanders, who actually protect the N and help him or her abuse the victim.

This is nothing new. Till recently, till it became politically incorrect, the bystanders played the same role in rape and racism and such things. Always blaming the victim and making excuses for the abuser. Never able to quite fathom what anyone might see wrong with what they were doing.

Kinda like blaming the vicim for disease during Biblical times - it's always the same old story: blame the victim. The bystanders are Job's Comforters. Even the victims of narcissists have been bystanders in other situations and behaved no differently than they complain about the bystanders behaving in theirs.

Only one thing puts an end to it and makes the bystanders "get it" about what is wrong with what they're doing - punishment. Start punishing the bystanders for it, and they suddenly get unstupid and stop it.

For example, you don't hear anyone daring to blame the victim for rape anymore, do you? Why do you suppose that is? What made people suddenly stop doing that? And if they suddenly became enlightened about blaming the victim, then why do they continue blaming the victim like crazy for other things, like narcissistic abuse and terrorism? So, how come bystanders know right from wrong only in cases of rape?

How's your Hypocrisy Detector doing?

People have nothing against the stupidity and immorality of blaming the victim, do they? They simply avoid blaming the victim in certain taboo cases (like rape) because they do not want to be frowned on for it. But in all other cases, they just act like they don't know any better.

And you can't teach them, because, no matter what, they just don't get it.

So, if you want to change the way the bystanders behave, you can forget moralizing. Byestanders are amoral. To get them off the enemy's side, just punish them for being on the wrong side. Then they get religion fast.

In other words, call their stupidity what it is - stupid. Call their unfairness what it is - unfair. Call their infidelity what it is. Just stop giving them a pass to act like they don't know what they're doing.

I am sorry to say this about the human race, but it is true. It's an undeniable, deplorable fact. People don't think. (Except about how to make fame and fortune.) Ever.

In fact, humanity's so-called intellectuals are arguably the worst. Recent studies in the UK show that their minds tend to remain permanently in the "immature" state, "educable mode," which results in congnitive flexibility, blindly believing whatever some authority figure says, and a wide open mind that will let anything in without first running a logic check on it.

And so, the behavior of most people is like that of cattle. By that I mean that they do not "occupy the driver's seat," so to speak. They are not consciously deciding how they behave. In fact, they are hardly aware of how they're behaving. They are just unconsciously mirroring the behavior of the other cattle around them in the herd.

For example, if you are walking down a street in New York City and come upon some scene that demands a reaction from people, you will see no one react without first quickly glancing around to see what others are saying and doing.

That's why incredibly lopsided poll results are the rule (more than 90% of New Yorkers agree). You control that herd's collective mind just by labeling the other 10% as evil.

Now, if the same thing happens in Kansas City, you will probably encounter some folks who don't do that, but even there, where humanity isn't tight-packed like sardines, most people just absent-mindedly graze on, unaware of reorienting themselves every few minutes with the rest of the herd (to the movement of the sun).

But, at any given moment, you will find more than 90% of cattle facing the exact same direction. It's the same with people. Because they don't think.

Narcissists and psychopaths just exploit that to make fools of people, even making fools of the professionals in the field of psychology.

One trick is just making things sound like what they ain't.

For example, let's say you told me that it will be fair-to-partly cloudy today and I went around carrying on like this:

"Did you hear what she said! Holy manure! She said it will be fair-to-partly-cloudy!!! Can you believe that!"

That's it. I guarantee that if I do that, I will get 9 of every 10 people I approach to MIRROR my absurd reaction to your weather forecast. They will gasp at it, agreeing that it is outrageous. How on earth could you say such a thing? Shame on you!

Why will I thus succeed in getting 9 of 10 people to make fools of themselves? Because 9 out of 10 people are brain dead.

Don't take my word for it. Try this magic trick yourself: just react to a thing as though it were something else. And don't be subtle about it. Be extravagant. Try it. It works. You'll see. It's hilarious. Because people are brain dead.

In this example, I make your statement about the weather SOUND outrageous. How? By nothing but an ANTIC tone of voice in reaction to it. That is, I make a perfectly reasonable thing sound outrageous simply by screaming about it.

Picture me doing that. If your brain is on, you see farce. TV screen writers overuse this cliche so much that it's hardly even funny anymore.

Yet when we see some clown like a narcissist enact this antic farce in real life, nobody gets the joke.

Narcissists pull this stunt all the time, because people don't listen and don't think. So never underestimate the power of suggestion in just your antic TONE OF VOICE on the bystander.

And this happens EVERY TIME, not just sometimes, because the bystanders' stupidity is (as pointed out above) willful. They want NOT to know what is wrong and stupid in what they're doing. There is great advantage to them in it.

A perfect example of how narcissists play bystanders like a fiddle is the one mentioned yesterday, because many victims of narcissists describe this stunt.

The narcissist tries to impose her delusion on you by shoving it into your face and forcing you (through fear of her temper) to act as though it's true. For example, the narcissist portrays the sky as purple. If you won't play along, if you disrupt her imaginary world by trying to answer that the sky is blue, the narcissist throws a fit.

Narcissists are at their most blatantly childish at such moments: they actually cover their ears, shut their eyes tight, and stamp their foot - just like a tempestuous four-year-old brat - to silence you.

Why? Because you must not contradict her delusion. You must support her delusions by accepting her false statements of fact and acting as though they are true. In other words, you must follow the narcissist's script.

The chief delusion the narcissists tries to foist on you is that she is a good person and has never done the sickening things she's done to you and others.

This does more than wipe her slate clean. To understand the full significance, imagine a Germany in which Hitler was "our beloved leader," not a sick-o. Hard to imagine...but try. Imagine what such a deluded Germany would be like. Imagine what kind of talk would flow.

Would the Germany created by this fictitious version of history be anything like the real Germany of today? No, it would be a radically different world, one in which things of the real Germany would be upside down. Like Alice. In Wonderland.

Now imagine someone trying to make you shut up and play along with such a lie, to act the same way you would act if Hitler were "our beloved leader", not a sick-o.

But wait, Hitler attacked you and your kind as evil. And you are going to support his phony reputation of being a good person? Are you suicidal or what?

YOU LEND CREDENCE TO HIS FALSE ACCUSATIONS AGAINST YOU AND ALL HIS INNOCENT VICTIMS if you contribute to the lie that he was a good person.

You can tell a bystander one million times that every narcissist's middle name is Slanderer and it will just go in one ear and out the other a million times. Read my lips, stupid bystanders: every narcissist goes through life deliberately ruining repuations by the dozen through telling the most sickeningly malicious lies about people WHO HAVE DONE HER NO HARM. She even does this to people who have done nothing but love her - her brothers and sisters and parents and spouse. I'm sorry, but anyone who doesn't smell the stink of that is stupid as a stick.

That isn't just a personal character flaw: that is wickedness. It's the heart of narcissism - the mentality of the rapist: tear others down off that pedestal and drag them through a gutter to look good by comparrisson.

People who go through life doing this deserve nothing but our abhorrence.

Never, never, never support the phony facade this wickedness hides behind. If you do, you help the narcissist do you in. If you act like you trust her, you make those she's lying to about you trust her. If you act like her relationship with you is friendly, you can hardly then claim that it was really predatory. Yes, lying isn't just something done with the mouth. Actions speak louder than words. Never play along with the narcissist's fiction about the past. Honesty IS the best policy.

And so, just as in the Hitler example, there's two sides to the coin: He was either a fiend or a good person. And, since he attacked you, that reflects on YOU. He was a fiend, and you have every right to defend your name by letting others know that he was a fiend.

Otherwise his attack of you will be viewed as non-malicious and therefore as evidence against your character.

Narcissists know this. They are expert at this game they've played all their lives. They know every dirty trick in the book. They constantly try to force their victims to behave as though the abusive narcissist is a good person. Constantly.

Thus, like every con artist, they get the victim to cover up their crime for them.

You mustn't correct her version to clear your name from the onus of having been attacked as evil by Lady Hitler. Instead, you must shut up and just play along with the fiction that she is person of goodwill.

Which amounts to...you must support the myth that YOU are the bad guy, not Hitler.

Would you accept that characterization of history? Would you thus HELP perpetrate this great lie against yourself and all the other innocent people slandered and abused by the Hitler? Would you legitimize what he did to them by representing him as a good person? I hope not.

That's what narcissists do to you with their constant assault on reality through their lies.

If you insist on your right to act as though Hitler was a sick-o, to thus answer the narcissist's false claim, look out. The narcissist screams bloody murder. She makes what you're doing (i.e., simply answering something she has said to correct a falsehood in it) sound HORRIBLE!!!!!

And the brain-dead bystanders go "Yup, yup, yup" and suck it up. It never dawns on them to think, "What's so horrible about answering assertions that have damaging personal implications?"

All the brain dead bystanders hear is the narcissist bawling that you won't shut up. As though YOU are the one making the ear-splitting racket. Shame on you. You insist on equal time for your say about reality. How EVIL of you!!!!!

I am sorry, but the bystanders who fall for this stunt are idiots.

The victims of narcissists often report that a narcissist won't stop at threatening to call the police if you don't shut up and just let her lie stand as the truth.

Yes, she makes out your answering her lie as "harrassment."

Now, one must be incredibly stupid to fall for a misrepresentation like that: You, a narcissist, declare the sky purple and get mad when the other person won't behave as though the sky is purple. He tries to state that he knows and believes the sky to be blue, not purple. You try to prevent him from saying so by plugging your ears and yelling at him to shut up. If he refuses to be silenced immediately, you threaten to call the cops for "harrassment."

How does a narcissist fool even cops into such absurdity? Just by using a screaming-bloody-murder tone of voice, that's how. You could be reciting the words to "The Star Spangled Banner" in that tone of voice for all your actual words matter.

Just as the intellectually lazy look at nothing but the pretty pictures in books, they hear nothing but the antic tone and gestures in what people say. Forget the words: idiots can't be bothered to give the matter a thought.

That cop never stops to think of what actually is happening. He or she is just being manipulated like a puppet by the power of suggestion in the narcissist's antic tone of voice. I have heard this same story once too often, and I myself have seen a narcissist make a fool of cops. Cops? Of all people, shouldn't COPS know better? Even when they see his rap sheet? Sheesh.

That's stupid. Cops, judges, juries, neighbors - all the bystanders do this. If they used their heads for ten seconds they'd get the joke: ANSWERING someone else's false assertions about your shared past is NOT evil. It is not harrassing the poor, poor, narcissist. Indeed, he or she is the harrasser - harrassing their victims constantly with false assertions about the past.

...that your narcissistic parent was loving and kind. Or that the narcissist didn't punch herself out on you for 20 minutes straight yesterday. or that what the narcissist calls you isn't exactly what SHE is.

But the brain dead support the narcissist's claim of the right to say anything she wants to you, even direct abuse, and have her UNANSWERED say...because the brain dead somehow consider it a crime for you to answer her.

That was just one example of how narcissists make fools of bystanders. Here's the prinicple example of how they do it.

If the victim becomes angry over the abuse, the narcissist goes the other way -- putting on her "Who-me?-I-wouldn't-hurt-a-fly" mask. How hurt she is! How painful and cruel is the victim's anger at her! How sad and hurt she'll be if the victim divorces her!

Get it? Most people don't get the joke. Read my lips, numbskulls: To view the abuser as the injured party is wildly stupid. You have to disregard the abuse and see the natural reaction to it as the issue. Which means that you are too stupid to even get the issue straight.

Then you have to deny the victim's right to self preservation and insist that the narcissist has a right to a live-in victim to abuse.

You do this utter, utter stupidity because you are brain dead automatons being controlled by the power of suggestion in faces that you mindlessly just mirror.

So any absurdity is possible with you, because not one line of sensible thought occurs in your heads.

Why bother even mentioning this unpleasant truth?

Because the stupid bystanders are enablers and a major reason for the harm narcissists and psychopaths get away with. There is only one thing that will get bystanders to stop the stupid act.

That is if they start getting called "stupid" for it. When it ceases to be politically correct to be stupid, it's amazing how fast people suddenly get a brain.

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