Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited - Softcover

Vaknin, Sam

4.18

755 ratings by Goodreads

9788023833843: Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited

Softcover

ISBN 10: 8023833847 ISBN 13: 9788023833843

Publisher: Narcissus Publications,Czech Republic, 1999

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When the personality is rigid to the point of being unable to change in reaction to changing circumstances - we say that it is disordered. Such a person takes behavioral, emotional, and cognitive cues exclusively from others. His inner world is, so to speak, vacated. His True Self is dilapidated and dysfunctional. Instead he has a tyrannical and delusional False Self. Such a person is incapable of loving and of living. He cannot love others because he cannot love himself. He loves his reflection, his surrogate self. And he is incapable of living because life is a struggle towards, a striving, a drive at something. In other words: life is change. He who cannot change cannot live. The narcissist is an actor in a monodrama, yet forced to remain behind the scenes. The scenes take center stage, instead. The Narcissist does not cater at all to his own needs. Contrary to his reputation, the Narcissist does not "love" himself in any true sense of the word.

He feeds off other people, who hurl back at him an image that he projects to them. This is their sole function in his world: to reflect, to admire, to applaud, to detest - in a word, to assure him that he exists. Otherwise, the narcissist feels, they have no right to tax his time, energy, or emotions.

The main body of research about Narcissism is surveyed.

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited offers a detailed, first hand account of what it is like to have a Narcissistic Personality Disorder. It offers new insights and an organized methodological framework using a new psychodynamic language. Narcissism is a slippery subject: only with great difficulty can it be captured with words. A new vocabulary had to be invented to account for the myriad of facets and appearances - false and true - of this disease. Thus, the essay part of this book requires some understanding of psychoanalytic terminology.

The first part of the book is more accessible and less jargon-laden. It comprises more than 80 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) regarding Narcissism and personality disorders.

The posting of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited on the Web has elicited a flood of excited, sad and heart rending responses, mostly from victims of Narcissists but also from people suffering from the NPD. This is a true picture of the resulting correspondence with them.

This book is not intended to please or to entertain. NPD is a pernicious, vile and tortuous disease, which affects not only the Narcissist. It infects and forever changes people who are in daily contact with the Narcissist. In other words: it is contagious. It is my contention that Narcissism is the mental epidemic of the twentieth century, a plague to be fought by all means.

This book is my contribution to minimizing the damages of this disorder.

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Review:

"...This book has an important purpose. I am sure it will be appreciated in a library,classroom or among the mental health profession." -- Katherine Theriault, Inscriptions Magazine, Vol. 2, Issue 20

"The strength of this book comes from the author's vantage point: he is a Narcissist (with a capital N). He is an 'insider,' who discovered that he has the unbridled trait of narcissism and that this was the source of many of the difficulties in his professional and personal life. So we shall say at the outset that if you wish to get under the skin of a Narcissist (we shall call him the 'N type'), if you wish to get to know how he thinks and feels and why he behaves as he does, then this is the book for you. Of particular interest is Dr. Vaknin's description of one type of symbiotic relationship between and N type and a submissive type (his particular 'danse macabre') in which the Narcissist's partner is tolerant of the abuse that he receives to the point of 'masochism.' This symbiotic relationship is somewhat reminiscent of Karen Horney's 'morbid dependency' between an aggressive type and a submissive type." -- A.M. Benis, Sc.D., M.D., Mount Sinai Hospital, New-York, Author of Towards Self and Sanity - On the Genetic Origins of the Human Character

From the Author:

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Re-Visited was written under extreme conditions of duress. It was composed in jail as I was trying to understand what had hit me. My nine years old marriage dissolved, my finances were in a shocking condition, my family estranged, my reputation ruined, my personal freedom severely curtailed. Slowly, the realization that it was all my fault, that I was sick and needed help penetrated the decades old defenses that I erected around me. This book is the documentation of a road of self-discovery. It was a painful process, which led to nowhere. I am no different - and no healthier - today than I was when I wrote this book. My disorder is here to stay, the prognosis is poor and alarming. -Sam Vaknin

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