How to Spot a Dangerous Man

or how the narcissist makes you the problem There is an interesting article published in 1990 in a psychology journal that I'd like to reference in this and upcoming posts. Parts of the article are more interesting than others so I'll summarize some of them in my own words. The parts of this article that I plan to highlight here on my blog are those concepts that I've personally seen and experienced. If I've seen and experienced it, then it is likely you have too. One of the concepts this article visits is the subject of criticism as used by the narcissist. One of the terms this article uses is "narcissistically defended person". What this means is that the person is either a narcissist, or they have adopted narcissistic defenses even if their over-all personality can not be classified as someone with NPD. So, some of the behaviors can be seen in a person who can not be reasonably classified as having the full-blown disorder of narcissism. But, I'm

An interesting read.... I just finished the book titled "Uncommon Knowledge" written by Judy Lewis. She was the love child of Loretta Young and Clark Gable. The book was recommended in a list of books which portray a narcissistic parent an ACON email group I belong to. I ordered a used book from Amazon Marketplace. If you like biographical books about Hollywood stars, you'll probably like this one. There are many interesting characters that pop up throughout the narrative. The author is not whiny and doesn't seem to exaggerate. In fact, I got the feeling she underplays certain themes quite a bit. It feels like she gives her mother the benefit of the doubt more than she needs to. The crux of Judy's narrative is the secret of her conception and birth that carried on for decades. Judy was told that she was adopted. Somewhere along the way, she is not sure when, she understood that her mother was her biological parent. Then the only question in her mind was

A few days after I had my first baby my mom gave me some motherly advice. It went like this, "There are going to be times when your baby is going to make you very angry. In fact, you're going to be so angry that you'll wish you could throw him into a wall. You'll be tired and overwhelmed and the baby will just push you to absolute frustration. Now, you won't act out on those feelings, but you'll feel horrible about yourself for having them. I'm letting you know ahead of time so you won't feel like you're an awful mother for having those urges. All mothers feel like this from time to time." I nodded and thanked her for the wisdom. (I was quite young and still very much under my mom's control.) Of course, now that I'm many years away from this and have much perspective, I understand that she was revealing much about herself and nothing about me. I never had the urge to kill my babies. Never once did I want to smash their heads into

A webpage recommendation I came across this webpage a few days ago and thought I would post it here for your benefit. The author has impressed me with their ability to describe the subtleties of the relationship between a narcissistic mother and her child(ren), and how her methods of control are myriad and many of them fly below the radar for onlookers. Only the child sees the look, hears the tone of her voice, understands the dire threat of punishment in a raised eyebrow.... See if this person has captured your narcissistic mom. Characteristics of Narcissistic Mothers UPDATE (10/28/09): The link above has gone dead. Here is a link to another site which has reproduced the content of the Geocities site. Click here

and is sucking the life out of you It is essential for narcissists to live parasitically off of our humanness in order to be able to present themselves to the world as something other than the alien life forms they are. They use normal people around them to prop up their pretense of normalcy. This is accomplished in a million different ways. Projection, devaluation of your virtues, blaming and shaming are a few of the tools which accomplish this. Projection: The narcissist wipes the crap of their own behaviors or motives onto you making it seem like you are something you are not. Somehow the act of projection gives the psychological cover the narcissist needs. It distances themselves from what they do, say or think by wiping the shit off of themselves onto you. Then they stand back, shake their heads and marvel at what a stinky, dirty mess up you are. It is not rational, but it is psychologically effective for them. It works even better when you start to believe this alternate

They come along and attach themselves to a living being and proceed to take all they want from that life while contributing nothing except disease and, potentially, death. This is what we recognize in the natural world as a parasite. Like the parasite, the narcissist attaches itself to its host. It has identified what it sees as a source of life, a source of narcissistic supply. If their parasitism manages to suck the life out of the host they will quickly attach to the next one. There is no expression of concern or feeling for the diseased or dead host they left behind. Narcissists...like a tapeworm or a malarial protozoan....feel no regret for this way of making a living. We should feel no regret if we choose to use pesticides to get rid of them.

A study on the concept of Nothing How incredibly informative it would be if people could truly understand that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference. It would force them to recognize the pathological relationships they are stuck in that are destroying their lives in some way. Many ACONs struggle for so long with their narcissistic parents because we all have memories of some apparently benevolent acts. We look for "benevolent" acts in our history with the narcissist as a sign that they must love us "in their own way". We think that if they didn't love us then surely we'd know it because we think we would recognize the opposite of love. We think love's opposite is active hatred. I disagree. Not to say that our narcissistic parents don't display actively hateful behavior, by the way. They can and do. But we are perplexed by the times when they seem to be acting loving toward us. (The operant word here is acting .) So we come up with e

Whatta surprise.... An interesting article was posted on Drudge Report yesterday: Study: Celebrities More Narcissistic This little study seems to show that showbiz selects for narcissists, and not that showbiz turns ordinary people into narcissists. Another interesting tidbit is how the most narcissist people are those who do reality shows. If you've watched reality shows you already know this is true. What this article says confirms my hunches. I have heard those describe "situational narcissism" as an explanation for showbiz (and athletic stars) who only become narcissistic when they are thrown into these arenas. I am sure there are people who fall into this category and are therefore less likely to be malignant in their narcissism, but I have suspected that most of the narcissism we see in the stars was already present in them before they hit stardom. Of course, stardom amplifies the narcissism to levels of extreme that people love to read about in the gossip mags

I have a particular problem with the "abuse excuse". There are abusers who can point to a personal history where they were abused as children. (Sometimes the victims of an abuser will point to this history too in order to avoid having to deal with the concept of EVIL embodied in their abuser.) Those who try to explain the reason narcissists exist will often fall back on the old Freudian concept of early childhood "damage" caused by abuse or neglect. This is very unscientific and unreliable as an explanation. For one thing, for childhood trauma to explain the creation of a narcissist one has to ask the very important question, "why do so many children raised in abusive situations NOT become narcissists?" This theory is too inconsistent with what we see in real life. There is no clear cause and effect because there are more examples of children raised in these situations who do not become narcissists than who do. This is a clear indication that indiv

We have evidence that the narcissist knows he is mistreating you as we reflect on his deceptions and the many other ways he hides his bad acts. The term used in a criminal court is "consciousness of guilt". A person gives evidence of their awareness of the wrongness of their acts by their attempts to hide them. This concept is concrete enough to be used as evidence in a court of law, so it is concrete enough for us to use as evidence to convict our narcissist. The narcissist seeks targets of opportunity. You are abused by him because he thinks he can get away with it. To deliberately use, abuse, hurt and obliterate someone just because you can is evil . Those who argue that this doesn't mean the narcissist is evil make a good point. They say it isn't about you in the narcissist's thinking. They don't even see you so how can it be calculated evil? While there is some truth to the fact that the narcissist ignores your humanity I can't completely buy i