A very hard fact to face
It seems to me that a malignant narcissist can't help his or her temptations, predatory urges. Maybe they are the fruit of a lifetime of twisted thinking and therefore the narcissist's own fault ultimately. Maybe not.
For example, if you are addicted to heroin, your desire for it today is the end of a path you chose to take and never repented from. We should understand how strong your temptation is, and we have no right getting up on a moral high horse with respect to you, because we don't have to resist such a strong temptation.
But that's where understanding ends. You COULD quit. Many people do! Look how many people quit smoking for the minor reason that it became politically incorrect. Millions quit drinking annually. Multitudes give up a drug habit. Often without treatment or any 12-step program. So your addiction is your fault.
Moreover, if for the money to get your next hit of heroin you murder somebody for the cash in their wallet, your temptation/addiction is no excuse.
You are responsible for your conduct. The same with a malignant narcissist. If you abuse someone for the high you get out of treating others like dirt, that addiction to the high is no excuse.
This is the egregious logical error narcissist sympathizers make: they regard the TEMPTATION to do something as an EXCUSE. Absurd. They regard the TEMPTATION to do something as acquitting the perpetrator of ILL WILL. Even more absurd. What cloudy thinking.
Indeed, malignant narcissists prove (a) that they know what they're doing and that it's wrong and (b) that they CAN resist the urge and thus control themselves. (If that isn't obvious to you, see the proof here.) They just don't. Think what that means.
What's more, those are the criteria for determining sanity. In other words, malignant narcissists are NOT insane and therefore ARE responsible for what they do. This is why they go to jail for crimes they commit, despite a diagnosis of NPD/psychopathy.
What does this mean? It means that it is dangerously naive to remain within arm's length of a malignant narcissist. Because of how that TEMPTS them, you might as well dangle yourself as bait before a predator. Only professionals, who are safe (as in a controlled psychiatric environment), should be messing with them. You cannot help them, because in you all they see is mouth-watering prey.
A very hard fact to face. A very, very hard fact to face.
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7 Comments:
I couldn't agree more. Many people have not understood why we don't have contact with two of my stepchildren. They just haven't got a clue what sort of life they have chosen to emulate. One note, some people choose to be a narcissist because they see other people not only getting away with it but profiting by it.
Writer, check out this post:
http://narcissists-suck.blogspot.com/2008/02/it-is-easy-to-be-narcissist.html
It is quite true.
Here is an example in action. My father, who may or may not be an inverted N, but is definitely a passive aggressive (is there a difference?) constantly spoilt things but refused to take responsibility, so the same old stuff happened over and over again. My father said that he was clumsy and couldn't help it. I did not want to be cruel and considered the possibility that he may have a disability. However, as soon as I suggested that if he was that disabled, then perhaps he should refrain from driving until he had some tests done. All of a sudden he was totally competent and didn't have a problem after all.
-Cassandra
P.S. Hi so what IS in a heart?, I am about to respond to the post you have linked to, as I disagree with Anna here.
Kathy-
Your title just hit me when I loaded your page.
It is, I think that's the hardest part...I have seen an alcoholic/drug addict change...but they admitted there was something wrong, yeah it took too long- but they got sober and have been for 15 years.
Short of brain injury--I don't foresee a change in the narcissist/psycho I know. It's a process letting that reality settle in.
I wish I could just accept it emotionally, I do intellectually.
kathy -
i agree completely.
in my opinion, it is dangerous thinking though, to think the N is doing things "on purpose."
if i think that way, it keeps me sucked into believing that if he is cruel 'on purpose' he can be kind 'on purpose.'
he can't.
if you or i see an old woman struggling to load groceries in her car, we will likely help. not only does it help the old woman, we get a good feeling out of it.
but we are not purposely seeking out the old woman to get a good feeling for ourselves.
i believe it is the same way for the N.
he is not purposely seeking us out, but if he comes across us and there is an opportunity through us for him to get a good feeling, he will take it.
the difference? he gets a 'good feeling' out of the power to hurt instead of, like us, the power to help.
so while he is not insane, his experience of life is not as we see it.
the only way, in my opinion, for us to make sense of his behavior is to think of him doing it 'on purpose,' because in OUR experience, the ONLY way we could be so cruel, is to do it 'on purpose,' because it is not within us to do it without thinking.
the scorpion does not sting 'on purpose' or because he is insane.
he stings because that is who he is and that is what he does.
what do you think? am i on the right track with this?
@ anonymous 11:25 AM
You are on NO track with that gobbledygook.
I usually don't bother to answer attempts at mystification like this. But this piece of work offers a good opportunity to show how narcissists and the dishonest "authorities" attack truth and logic. With a bewildering blur of vague nonsense, like the inky cloud an octopus ejects when it is trying to confuse you so you can't follow its trail.
You're supposed to be too lazy to do all the mental work it takes to disentangle their snarled logic and just ASSUME that it makes sense. Well, it doesn't. This time I'm taking the bait, so look out.
"in my opinion, it is dangerous thinking though, to think the N is doing things "on purpose.""
What's "dangerous" about it? I think this opinion of yours is what's dangerous. Thought police always characterize ideas and opinions that they disagree with as "dangerous."
That cheap rhetorical device implies that they are bad, not just wrong. Oooh, I'm supposed to worry that your kind will think me a bad person if I don't change my "dangerous" mind.
Get this straight: My ideas are not dangerous, and you haven't backed up your statement by showing any way in which they are.
Apparently, your idea of "dangerous" is that this idea forces a logical conclusion you don't want any line of reasoning to reach.
"if i think that way, it keeps me sucked into believing that if he is cruel 'on purpose' he can be kind 'on purpose.' he can't."
Baloney. Yes he can. And reason doesn't "suck" you into that idea. That's pejorative diction, like my idea being "dangerous." Cheap rhetorical device.
And your argument is garbled. It doesn't even hold together. One can hardly get a handle on the confusion of ideas not logically connected to each other. I don't think you are this addled. I think you are doing this on purpose, to confuse the issue in a cloud.
You say that he can't be kind on purpose because he runs into that old woman by chance.
Huh? Run that babble by me again. What has how he encounters her got to do with it? Because he runs into her by chance, his cruelty to her afterwards isn't on purpose? That's a non sequitur.
In no way does that mean he isn't being cruel to her on purpose. And yes he can be kind to her instead. Just because he meets her on the street doesn't mean that he must be cruel to her. But that's what you're saying. Nonsense. Make sense, please.
And yes, narcissists often do go out on the hunt for prey. They do often "cultivate" a "mark" just as any con artist does. For example, they will go to a singles bar and eyeball the patrons for one who seems to have a personality they think they can dominate. Like the con artist waits outside the bank for an older person with a sourpuss to come out. Ns may even target someone in particular, such as a particular person in the company, chosen for purely strategic reasons. So, no, they DO seek out their prey. Like all predators, they are constantly on the alert for any prey.
You also say that we are "likely" to help that old woman because we will get a good feeling out of it, but that an N "will" abuse her because he will get a good feeling out of that.
In other words, we are only "likely" to help her because we are not robots and have a free will, but an N is robot with no free will. So, if something will make him feel good, it pushes his button to do it.
You are dehumanizing, degrading narcissists.
Ironically though, Ns themselves characteristically do this to themselves to disown their responsibility, because they are fatalists. (There was a time you could get burned at the stake for that "dangerous" idea.)
But here again you fog up your line of reasoning thusly…
"he is not purposely seeking us out, but if he comes across us and there is an opportunity through us for him to get a good feeling, he will take it. the difference? he gets a 'good feeling' out of the power to hurt instead of, like us, the power to help."
No, that isn't the difference. The difference isn't that different things make him feel good; the difference YOU MADE is that, unlike us, he is a robot and automatically does whatever makes him feel good.
This is the typical egregious logical error of the "experts." They cannot seem to get it through their heads that temptations aren't CAUSES.
Why? Why is this so difficult for them to understand?
They argue as though we are such biologically pathetic creatures that, like a jellyfish or something, if you poke us here, we jerk there. Therefore, they try to hand us the line that just because it feels good, poor narcissists can't but do it.
Baloney. If that were true, Ns would do their dirty deeds in broad daylight instead of sneaking around and using diabolical tactics to get away with things in the dark.
By the way, you do not tackle that argument of mine. Why? That is logical proof that they act out of their own free will. You do not knock down this proof by ignoring it.
That is the chief stunt intellectually dishonest people play. They just ignore cogent arguments on the other side and bury them in a blizzard of obscurantism like this. The idea is to make you forget the absolute proof that Ns act out of free will = the fact that they behave like angels whenever the coast ain't clear.
Either concede the argument to me or come up with a valid answer to that point, anonymouse.
And by the way, a scorpion does sting on purpose. Even this ancient arachnid is a higher life form than you ascribe to narcissists.
And, as for this …
"he stings because that is who he is and that is what he does."
..that isn't reasoning. It's another no sequitur, couched in a specious but empty saying that is just a meaningless slogan. Like the banality of sounding smart.
"what do you think? am i on the right track with this?"
There is no track in this.
I didn't answer this garbage thinking to persuade the commenter. That is a lost cause. I just did it to show that you must examine everything the so-called authorities and narcissists say before you ASSUME that it makes sense. They deliberately DON'T make sense. That's called "fast-talk," "confusing the issue."
A week or so from now this bugged bugger will come back and try to dump another load of this loose4 crap here. So, pardon me if I just click "delete" and don't answer the tedious snarl of gobbldygook.
You can diagree all you want here so long as your arguments are rational. But don't expect me to publish your lies or Nimrodean nonsense. Get your own blog for that.
PS
How could I forget? How could I forget to compliment you on that opening?
"kathy -
i agree completely."
BUT...and then you disagree with me completely.
Good one! Are you a journalist by any chance?
The only problem with that little trick is that if it fails your mark KNOWS you are just a con artist setting him or her up.
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