May 30, 2007

• The Other NPD

  Even before my husband, Greyfox, diagnosed his own NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), when I first began looking up web resources on it, some intriguing and puzzling facts came up.  NPD is often viewed as mostly a male phenomenon. Only one out of five of those diagnosed with NPD are female.  I might have ascribed that to some testosterone-related factor and left it at that if I had not experienced so many examples of women who exhibit traits of the pathological narcissist.

  I knew that in my own youth I had the typical grandiosity of NPD, and I tended to drop relationships and move on to new friends when I did not get the support and approval I was seeking.  I had eventually outgrown these and other diagnostic markers for NPD, and I now know that virtually every normal adolescent goes through a phase when his or her behavior is highly narcissistic.  My own observations suggest that many women, about as many as the men I know, did not outgrow those narcissistic traits.

  It took a while for me to find information about the other NPD, the more feminine covert or hypersensitive narcissism.  Four to five years ago, when I was doing most of my web research on NPD, one person dominated the internet in that field.  At that time, the first page of results in a Google search on NPD would return only urls for pages directly created by him or extensively quoting him.  He is a pathological narcissist himself (his preferred term for the condition is, “malignant self-love”), not a psychologist, but a financial consultant convicted of banking irregularities.

  A decade or so ago, when he was released from prison, he began a program to inform, support and help the victims of other narcissists.  Apparently, the psychiatric and psychological communities decided they needed a greater presence on the internet.  Today, there is a proliferation of professional articles on the web, and my recent searches for “hypersensitive narcissism” and “covert narcissism” went through three pages of results before that man’s name turned up.  Sites such as about.com, which used to quote him exclusively, now are citing other sources.

  It is not that the man’s data is incorrect.  It is incomplete and idiosyncratic.  As can be expected of a pathological narcissist (for brevity, N) his work is self-aggrandizing even as it appears to be self-deprecating.  NPD is all about control, a desperate need to control the N’s perceived reality.  All Ns need “narcissistic supply” in the form of attention, approval, acceptance, and support for the beliefs that make up their personal fantasy worlds.  “Classic” Ns, mostly male, target people they judge as “superior,” having wealth, beauty, intelligence, status, fame, or some other characteristic admirable to the N.  Greyfox says that it was, “the mystique of psychism,” that got him attached to me.

  They ingratiate themselves with their targets and are sweet and agreeable until the other person gives “narcissistic injury” by saying or doing something that challenges the N’s self-image or threatens his fantasy.  Then, depending on the N’s personality and the value he places on the other person, he may react with increased ingratiation, redoubling efforts to convert the other to believe in his fantasy or trying to convince the other that their difference was really just a misunderstanding.

  If it is a more casual and unimportant relationship to the N, or the N feels that the reservoir of narcissistic supply is drying up, he is more likely to react to a narcissistic injury with narcissistic rage.  The friend or lover who had been placed on a pedestal is now denigrated and abused.  If he or she doesn’t respond with ingratiation and more supply for the N, then the relationship often will end.  An inverted narcissist, who is attracted to Ns and masochistically thrives on emotional abuse, may work hard at keeping such a relationship going even after the N has relegated her to second or third place and found newer, more abundant sources of supply.

  From the victim’s perspective, the N’s behavior may seem deliberately and aggressively cruel.  The N, however, feels he is the victim.  His rage is an unconscious defense mechanism guarding a grandiose self-image and unrealistic fantasy life that the N needs, at all costs, to maintain.  As miserable as the N may make life for those around him, he is just as unhappy.  An N may view himself as laid back and easygoing, but he is always on guard against narcissistic injury.  His attention and energy are focused on preserving a fantasy against continual assaults from conflicting reality.

  It is much the same for the covert or hypersensitive narcissist, but the overt rage is absent, relatively infrequent, or displaced onto secondary objects.  Instead of striking out physically or verbally at the person giving the narcissistic injury, the N may dissolve in tears and play the victim or go off alone, tear at her own hair and clothes, trash a room, or commit anonymous vandalism. Where the classic N reacts to narcissistic injury with scorn and abuse, the covert N may cry, wheedle, bargain, or beg for affection, attention, or “love.”  Both types of N are controlling, but the covert type uses subtler forms of manipulation.  The martyr act and guilt trip are common ploys.

  I have been heedlessly writing along here just as if the words I’m using actually mean something.  The trouble with this is that many of the words I have used don’t mean the same thing to you as they do to me.  “Narcissist,” in psych jargon, is shorthand for a person with narcissistic personality disorder.  It doesn’t mean someone who is in love with himself or herself.  The self-love is illusory, part of the fantasy that enables the emotional survival of the ego-damaged N.

  Ego is another word that is tossed around a lot in connection with Ns.  Some people’s religious beliefs declare that ego is inherently bad or wrong and must be suppressed or transcended.  Psychologists learn that everyone has an ego, and that suppression, wounding, or perverting it results in psychopathology.  This is less a matter of conflicting beliefs than of semantic differences.  The ego to which I refer is one’s sense of self, an essential part of the personality.

  Ns may appear to have mighty and monstrous egos, but strong, healthy egos do not puff themselves up that way.  Ns have fragile egos in constant need of reassurance.  They react to accusations of egotism with understandable denial, for they know how much effort they must put into maintaining an appearance of self-worth.  Richard Grossman, PhD, says, “All energy is devoted to inflating the self, like a persistent child trying to blow up a balloon with a hole.”

  In the support forums for victims of classic Ns, it is often said that those who suffer from the disorder don’t suffer, they make others do the suffering.  That’s about half true.  Ns strike out and try to hurt those who have hurt them through assaults on their fantasies.  Sometimes the N’s retaliation for narcissistic injury is a physical attack.  NPD is not uncommon among those on death row.  But most Ns are adept at verbal and emotional abuse.  If those they attack have fragile egos, it hurts their feelings and can do psychological damage.

  The damage done by the unhappy, perpetually unfulfilled covert, hypersensitive narcissist is subtler.  Her suffering can be distressful to those who care about her.  Living with and trying to fulfill her excessive emotional demands can be crazy-making.  Getting away from her can also be difficult, for she is clingy, ingratiating, and skilled at providing ego gratification.  You stroke her ego and she’ll stroke yours.  No child growing up with such a parent is going to have a healthy psyche without some therapeutic intervention.

  Conventional psychotherapists take a dim view of NPD.  Of all the Cluster B personality disorders, it has the most pessimistic prognosis.  Ns are not motivated to seek therapy because therapy threatens their fantasy life.  If they make it into therapy somehow, they are likely to walk out on it in early stages because facing reality is threatening and painful.  Classic Ns tend to burn out therapists, or threaten or attack them.  The therapists then withdraw from the case in frustration or fear.

  That all makes it sound, I know, as if therapy for NPD is pointless, a losing proposition.  I don’t see it that way.  I know that transcending NPD requires courage.  I have seen Greyfox’s courage in action.  It also takes vigilance, but the N’s vigilance is not enough.  Greyfox has said that the times when he has taken the most extreme, irrational narcissistic injury have been the times when he was least aware of his own insane reactions.  That is when my vigilance and my courage, as his therapist, have been vital to the process.

  I have to confront his rage at its worst.  Here at home, in the family, we joke that it’s a dirty job but somebody has to do it.  That’s a joke, as I said.  Nobody had to do it.  I could have allowed Greyfox to go on in his fragile and frequently shattered grandiose fantasy, self-medicating in his crises until the toxins killed him.  I’m glad I didn’t, and he’s glad, too.  But in my experience, in my educated opinion, classic NPD is easier to confront (at least for me, by the methods I have been taught) than is covert hypersensitive narcissism.

  I have tried confronting a few people I know well and love, and have tried to gently inform a few others whom I don’t know so well but have observed, about their covert narcissistic behavior.  They are slippery.  They run away, withdraw, go incommunicado, and seek out support and reinforcement from false or misguided friends who are willing to puff up their egos, shore up their fantasies, and enable their pathological behavior.  Thus they remain unhappy, unfulfilled, emotionally needy, guarding a wounded ego.

  I don’t know how to help them.  Do you?

  4degreez Personality Disorder Test

  The Hypersensitive Narcissism Scale

  Appalachian State University-The Shy/Covert Narcissist
  a complete, balanced explanation of NPD, with links to many associated features

  On Being Perfect- the narcissist’s guerilla war against reality
  an exposition of the dangers and hidden ramifications of Ns on the internet

  For anyone who wants to explore this subject further, discuss it, or suggest further reading, I will welcome your input.

  

  • 7:57 pm
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