Narcissism as natural self-love is a good thing, essential to survival. It's what makes us value ourselves. It's the root of our instinct for self-preservation. In fact, humans don't have a corner on the market. Animals have a healthy self-love too. In his seminal 1914 essay on narcissism, Sigmund Freud called narcissism "the instinct of self-preservation" found in "every living creature."
In infants, narcissism is critical to survival, and some failure of it to develop may have something to do with unexplained infant deaths. For example, as I mentioned above, their narcissism is what makes baby birdies stick their heads up out of the nest every time Mother comes near, stretching their gaping mouths wide and chirping their heads off. They are crying, "Feed me! Not him, not her — ME. Feed me!" Any baby birdie that doesn't do this well enough is going to starve. Thus the infants of every species compete with each other and run Mother ragged, so that she forgets her own needs in preference to theirs.
Their heavy dose of narcissism is what delights me no end about Cairn Terriers. I think that's because their healthy, natural, good-natured narcissism is in such stark contrast to the malignant narcissism I have had to deal with in other people. Each Cairn thinks he or she is the greatest dog in the world. (See Gigi's Page.) They prance and strut and show off like crazy. And they will dominate just about any other dog, no matter how large. They will dominate you too if you don't watch out. They are entitled to and demand your attention! Now! And they know how to get it. They will get it by making you mad, if necessary. Nothing around here can be louder (and therefore be the center of attention) than Pierre. Them's the rules. It was the same with Gigi. And Cairns (like all terriers to some extent) have minds of their own. They won't do tricks to please you. Or for a treat, no matter how tasty. In fact they sulk at the offer, looking at you as if to say, "What do you think I am? a prostitute? Take that treat and eat it yourself. I ain't gonna do what you want just to get it." So, to "train" a Cairn, you have to persuade him to do what you want by making it a game in which he wants to do it to show off, because it's fun. Which is why he can never be loose — because if some varmint comes along, he won't care what you say: he's going after it. You can sort of train him to come when you call, but he will have to remind you first (by heading the other way for a moment) that he's coming only because he wants to, not because you told him to. I love it.
But malignant narcissism is perverted self-love. In fact, it isn't really self-love. It's self-hatred. The person "suffering" from NPD hates himself and loves his IMAGE instead. He makes it look good the easy way — by making others' images look bad by comparison. That makes him a predator on the image of everyone around him. Everyone.
So, at bottom, the nature of the narcissist is the nature of a predator on his own kind. The importance of that fact cannot be overstated.
The brain of a predator just does not relate to the living soul of its prey. If you don't believe this, just watch PBS. Watch the behavior, and look into the eyes, of predatory animals while they're making a kill. There's nothing there. They are like machines at that moment. They must be, or they couldn't do it. In other words, Nature has equipped them with hard-wired circuitry in the brain that takes over the moment prey is sighted when they are hungry. It suppresses what we could observe in that animal only a minute earlier while it was playing with its siblings or a waving leaf on a twig, tenderly nuzzling its offspring or mate. Perhaps it was even grieving over the death of a member of the pack. But that's all gone the moment it sights prey while hungry. Then suddenly it's a killing machine.
It likes killing. Nature has endowed it with a taste for killing as necessary equipment for its survival. It even considers killing fun. Which is why we sometimes see in nature killing made sport: Chimpanzees (who don't eat meat) will gang-up on and attack a monkey, cruelly tearing it to pieces and having a blast over its heart-rending cries. Killer whales sometimes play with baby seals like a cat plays with a mouse. Wolves sometimes bring down and eviscerate prey they feed on the guts of until it dies and then walk away. Sorry, that's just the truth. Humans are animals too and have that same predatory mode. Nature endowed us with it as hunters. It's in everyone. But in narcissists and sociopaths something has gone haywire. They go into this mode against their own kind. And they are permanently in this mode against all their own kind.
Why? Because they don't view themselves as of our kind. They are of a superior kind. They think we are here to feed them, just as we think cattle are here to feed us. Correction: we do (or should) treat cattle humanely. We don't relate to them as objects like narcissists relate to us = like we relate to bugs or plants. Compared to us, narcissists are gods. Alien beings.
They can't help it. They are not to blame for feeling this way. Today the prognosis is poor. There is little sign of any real success in treating these people. Those who commit prosecutable offenses are repeat offenders — such as pedophile priests, sexual predators, and serial killers. They get this way as children and demonstrate it by torturing animals or murdering other children on a whim.
Though they can't control their temptations, they can control their conduct. And this is what competent psychiatric care might help them with. It can show them better ways to deal with their problems, making them resistant to temptation.
And a lion tamer can walk into the lions' den. But they are still wild animals, so he can never be sure they won't give in to the temptation to attack the prey tantalizing them beyond their power to resist.
We don't morally condemn those lions for being lions. And the only thing more stupid and useless than morally condemning narcissists for being narcissists is trusting them. Don't tempt them. Just because a pedophile priest has behaved for the last five years doesn't mean he won't finally lose it and eat another altar boy. Indeed, it's cruel to tempt him daily thus! You wouldn't wave a bottle of whiskey in front of an alcoholic, would you?
I don't see what's so difficult to understand about this. Talk therapy isn't the answer with PREDATORS. We must do whatever it takes to minimize or eliminate their access to vulnerable prey as targets of opportunity. Period. For ever. Let's get a clue already and stop dangling bait before their eyes.
There are many ways to do this: prison isn't the only one. For example, don't let him teach school or be a police officer. Don't give him power over his fellow employees. Don't elect him to be President for Life. Don't let him live off his parents until they die. Don't follow him on a purge to cleanse the Holy Land. And if he steps over the line whack him, so that he thinks twice before doing it again.
And, especially, let's stop passing this curse from generation to generation by subjecting children to narcissistic parents. It takes the consent of the non-narcissistic parent for that to happen. So, just because your mother or father put up with it doesn't mean you should.
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Echo and the Narcissist
What Makes Narcissists Tick
Why Do You Put Up With Abuse?
It's hard to understand why people put up with narcissistic abuse. Because of that, many assume that the victim is "codependent," which usually translates to "a glutton for punishment."
But isn't it pretty far out to so easily assume that people seek pain? We are hard-wired against that! So why jump that far in jumping to a conclusion? This isn't the same as the "martyr complex." People with the martyr complex aren't being abused. In their own estimation they're being underappreciated. Not the same thing at all.
Virtually everyone who has ever loved a narcissist gets angry at him- or her-self, asking why they put up with the abuse. They ask themselves, "Am I a glutton for punishment? Why don't I leave? Why do I keep getting suckered back into a relationship?"
I have this much comfort to offer: You are reacting to narcissistic abuse the way normal people always do. Not that you should keep it up, but there's no reason to get angry with yourself or to wonder what's wrong with you.
This isn't to say that you might not be psychologically injured. Counseling might well be in order. But that doesn't mean you're crazy. The narcissist is the one who's crazy.
You are in a situation analogous to being on another planet with an alien who views you as prey but conceals that from you. The inner person in you is as far from its regard as the inner soul of a cockroach is from yours when you stomp it. In other words, this alien doesn't relate to you humanly — it is unaware of any common humanity shared by you both.
It relates to you as but an object. And that means exactly what it says: you might as well be a microscopic specimen or a nail this alien is hitting with a hammer.
Yet you are interacting as with another human being. That makes you dead meat. The norms of human interaction don't apply. Things don't mean the same to a narcissist as they mean to you. Narcissists are always acting on some alien premise that makes their reactions to things off-the-wall in our eyes. We aren't biologically, psychologically, or intellectually equipped to survive in such a world, which is rather like being on psychedelic trip.
We just make all kinds of wrong assumptions, that's all. So, it's crucial to make the effort to understand what's going on and to never, never, never, never go into denial.
Then you can make the best choices.
Return to Table of Contents
But isn't it pretty far out to so easily assume that people seek pain? We are hard-wired against that! So why jump that far in jumping to a conclusion? This isn't the same as the "martyr complex." People with the martyr complex aren't being abused. In their own estimation they're being underappreciated. Not the same thing at all.
Virtually everyone who has ever loved a narcissist gets angry at him- or her-self, asking why they put up with the abuse. They ask themselves, "Am I a glutton for punishment? Why don't I leave? Why do I keep getting suckered back into a relationship?"
I have this much comfort to offer: You are reacting to narcissistic abuse the way normal people always do. Not that you should keep it up, but there's no reason to get angry with yourself or to wonder what's wrong with you.
This isn't to say that you might not be psychologically injured. Counseling might well be in order. But that doesn't mean you're crazy. The narcissist is the one who's crazy.
You are in a situation analogous to being on another planet with an alien who views you as prey but conceals that from you. The inner person in you is as far from its regard as the inner soul of a cockroach is from yours when you stomp it. In other words, this alien doesn't relate to you humanly — it is unaware of any common humanity shared by you both.
It relates to you as but an object. And that means exactly what it says: you might as well be a microscopic specimen or a nail this alien is hitting with a hammer.
Yet you are interacting as with another human being. That makes you dead meat. The norms of human interaction don't apply. Things don't mean the same to a narcissist as they mean to you. Narcissists are always acting on some alien premise that makes their reactions to things off-the-wall in our eyes. We aren't biologically, psychologically, or intellectually equipped to survive in such a world, which is rather like being on psychedelic trip.
We just make all kinds of wrong assumptions, that's all. So, it's crucial to make the effort to understand what's going on and to never, never, never, never go into denial.
Then you can make the best choices.
Return to Table of Contents
On Your Feelings
I address the victims of narcissistic abusers here. But this can warn their friends about how hurtful the stock responses to their pain are. If you are the friend of an abused person, don't make it worse. If you can't say what comes naturally and honestly, it would be better to say nothing at all than to say what sounds right because it's politically correct.
He who angers you controls you.
Baloney. That popular adage does not pass a basic nonsense check. Look, it says that good boys and girls are numb so that nobody can make them feel an emotion. It is also exactly anti-logical, blaming the victim. It pathologizes you, the victim of the narcissist, instead of the narcissist.
Stuff like this is my pet peeve. Once you start noticing how much political correctness is anti-logic, you can't help but wonder (with Mark Twain) whether anyone examines an idea before swallowing it whole.
We should be more careful what we let into our minds (The Garden) than what we let into our bodies. Rot like that adage does great added harm to the victims of abuse. First the narcissist outrages you until you want to scream. Then the do-gooders come along and tell you your outrage is a sin. Now, if that ain't the Sin of Sodom (making someone bend over for it), I don't know what is.
But don't take my word for it. Think for yourself.
The reasoning goes like this: So, the narcissist's abuse is nothing to get angry about? You are to act as though it didn't happen? In other words, you are to make nothing of it, right?
Wrong. For, if it is nothing, then you are nothing. Why? Because everybody knows that if I bash an object, that's nothing, but if I bash a human being, that's something. If I step on a bug, that's nothing, but if I step on a human being, that's something.
Yet, no matter what, the do-gooders just don't get it — until they're the one that gets bashed. Then they see the degrading value judgment in making nothing of it.
By telling you to make nothing of it, they are telling you that abusing you was nothing. That means you are nothing. Indeed, if your abuser bashed your automobile, they wouldn't tell you to make nothing of it, would they? An automobile is a thing of value, so harm done to it requires reparation. But, harm done to you is nothing, eh? What a dehumanizing value judgment.
And it lands on top of the one the narcissist dumped on you. Feel better now?
First he got on your back, and now they pile on too. The holier-than-thous should be criticizing the abuser's behavior, not the victim's. There's a name for people like that, "Job's Comforters" or "troublesome comforters." That's what I mean when I say that people saying stuff like this do more harm than good. Pound, pound, pound, they all pound you down with that club that says Doing that to you was nothing = You are nothing. And it's a sin for you to not cover up for him by acting like it didn't happen.
Just what you needed to hear, right? So, who's side are they really on? whether they realize it or not? Hard to take, isn't it? What a heartless thing to do to someone already down.
Why can't they just break down and say that it causes them sorrow to hear what was done to you and that it really sucked? Then all they'd have to do is act like you mean something to them. Why is that asking too much? Why do you get all that other crap instead?
Sometimes I think they just don't want your sad face to rain on their day. I think it's for their sake that they want you to take Prozac. They just want you to make it go away, to act like it didn't happen.
If it's a sin to even be angry about degrading treatment, then what can you do to contradict the humiliating value judgment in it? Nothing. If merely feeling an emotion is stepping off the straight-and-narrow, what could they give you permission to do? Nothing!
Ah, it seems to me that the one whose hands they should tie is your abuser, not you. This way they are accessories to mayhem.
The more you think about it, the more ridiculous the moralizing gets, doesn't it? Parrots who get their morality from prime-time TV thus deny you the most basic human right — the right to protect yourself. Just what kind of person would docilely accept abuse? would make nothing of it? A person who thinks he or she is entitled to better treatment? A person who thinks anything of him- or her-self? A person with any self-respect? any dignity? integrity? a backbone? If you are the victim of a narcissist, you know that your anger is your assertion of your self-worth.
Sounders like to sound good by making others sound bad for not taking an affront to their human dignity as though it were nothing. Is that not rubbing the victim's nose in it? That's what it feels like. It's no longer just the narcissist abusing you, the whole world piles on to stifle your objection. This overwhelming pressure is what breaks the victim's back, forcing him to join in the zero valuation of himself. The result of this self-betrayal is self-hatred. Which is precisely what drives so many victims of narcissists to needing psychiatric help themselves.
A word for those who think this is what their God wants them to do: Run a logic check on that one too. Is docilely submitting to abuse supposed to be holy? Uneducated Joan of Arc at the age of eighteen could reason that if God made her, and God doesn't make trash, she should fight to keep others from trashing her. It would be letting others trash a gift from him.
An analogy: If God gives you a Jaguar, you show how much you appreciate his gift by letting others take a sledgehammer to it? And he is supposed to be pleased with you for not even getting angry about it? I don't think so.
Anyone with a brain cell or two functioning knows that he would be insulted by that. So, it would be better for holier-than-thous to let their brains catch up with their mouths when talking about God and/or morality.
Straight thinking says that those who believe in God should be angrier than those who don't. Moreover, why should the rules be different in moral rape than physical rape? Isn't the victim supposed to be outraged? If it doesn't make her mad, we say she liked it. And what do we call her?
So, if specious pontifications like the one at the top have you on a guilt trip, get off.
Feelings are not conduct. No clear-thinking person should confuse feelings with conduct. Conduct is a matter of choice. Feelings are not a matter of choice. So, the notion that feelings can be "right" or "wrong" is absurd. They just ARE, period. Indeed, if you get burned, you should feel burnt. If you don't, something is wrong with you.
Others should not judge your feelings. I do not understand why those who believe in God are the most prone to do this, for it out-gods their God (who, according to their scriptures, judges conduct only). Judging feelings is in itself a narcissistic behavior. In doing so, do-gooders are serving as a proxy for your abuser.
You can lie about your feelings. You can go into denial about them. And you can even repress them. But you cannot change them.
Denying or repressing feelings is a lie. Now that is a matter of choice, and lying is bad for you. It's self-delusion. It's a kind of self-induced hypnosis to a state of emotional numbness. Not mentally healthy.
Repressed feelings are merely submerged to the level of the subconscious. But the subconscious is just subconscious: it isn't gone. Things buried there are still active. They influence and motivate your behavior without your knowledge. In other words, repressed feelings rule your conduct like an unseen puppet master. Thus, ironically, it is by getting you to deny your anger that the narcissist controls you.
Accept your feelings. Own them. Know them. Experience the tremendous relief and comfort in that. Then you can temper their influence on your conduct with reason and good judgment. You are responsible for your conduct — your words and deeds — not your feelings. Just because you are angry does not mean you are out of control of yourself as that stupid saying implies. It is the narcissist who has no self-control, not his or her victim.
Your anger, like any pain, will pass. If someone punches you, he is to blame for your pain, not you. By the same token, the one to blame for your anger is your abuser, not you.
See also: Re-victimization by Victim Bashing.
Return to Table of Contents
He who angers you controls you.
Baloney. That popular adage does not pass a basic nonsense check. Look, it says that good boys and girls are numb so that nobody can make them feel an emotion. It is also exactly anti-logical, blaming the victim. It pathologizes you, the victim of the narcissist, instead of the narcissist.
Stuff like this is my pet peeve. Once you start noticing how much political correctness is anti-logic, you can't help but wonder (with Mark Twain) whether anyone examines an idea before swallowing it whole.
We should be more careful what we let into our minds (The Garden) than what we let into our bodies. Rot like that adage does great added harm to the victims of abuse. First the narcissist outrages you until you want to scream. Then the do-gooders come along and tell you your outrage is a sin. Now, if that ain't the Sin of Sodom (making someone bend over for it), I don't know what is.
But don't take my word for it. Think for yourself.
The reasoning goes like this: So, the narcissist's abuse is nothing to get angry about? You are to act as though it didn't happen? In other words, you are to make nothing of it, right?
Wrong. For, if it is nothing, then you are nothing. Why? Because everybody knows that if I bash an object, that's nothing, but if I bash a human being, that's something. If I step on a bug, that's nothing, but if I step on a human being, that's something.
Yet, no matter what, the do-gooders just don't get it — until they're the one that gets bashed. Then they see the degrading value judgment in making nothing of it.
By telling you to make nothing of it, they are telling you that abusing you was nothing. That means you are nothing. Indeed, if your abuser bashed your automobile, they wouldn't tell you to make nothing of it, would they? An automobile is a thing of value, so harm done to it requires reparation. But, harm done to you is nothing, eh? What a dehumanizing value judgment.
And it lands on top of the one the narcissist dumped on you. Feel better now?
First he got on your back, and now they pile on too. The holier-than-thous should be criticizing the abuser's behavior, not the victim's. There's a name for people like that, "Job's Comforters" or "troublesome comforters." That's what I mean when I say that people saying stuff like this do more harm than good. Pound, pound, pound, they all pound you down with that club that says Doing that to you was nothing = You are nothing. And it's a sin for you to not cover up for him by acting like it didn't happen.
Just what you needed to hear, right? So, who's side are they really on? whether they realize it or not? Hard to take, isn't it? What a heartless thing to do to someone already down.
Why can't they just break down and say that it causes them sorrow to hear what was done to you and that it really sucked? Then all they'd have to do is act like you mean something to them. Why is that asking too much? Why do you get all that other crap instead?
Sometimes I think they just don't want your sad face to rain on their day. I think it's for their sake that they want you to take Prozac. They just want you to make it go away, to act like it didn't happen.
If it's a sin to even be angry about degrading treatment, then what can you do to contradict the humiliating value judgment in it? Nothing. If merely feeling an emotion is stepping off the straight-and-narrow, what could they give you permission to do? Nothing!
Ah, it seems to me that the one whose hands they should tie is your abuser, not you. This way they are accessories to mayhem.
The more you think about it, the more ridiculous the moralizing gets, doesn't it? Parrots who get their morality from prime-time TV thus deny you the most basic human right — the right to protect yourself. Just what kind of person would docilely accept abuse? would make nothing of it? A person who thinks he or she is entitled to better treatment? A person who thinks anything of him- or her-self? A person with any self-respect? any dignity? integrity? a backbone? If you are the victim of a narcissist, you know that your anger is your assertion of your self-worth.
Sounders like to sound good by making others sound bad for not taking an affront to their human dignity as though it were nothing. Is that not rubbing the victim's nose in it? That's what it feels like. It's no longer just the narcissist abusing you, the whole world piles on to stifle your objection. This overwhelming pressure is what breaks the victim's back, forcing him to join in the zero valuation of himself. The result of this self-betrayal is self-hatred. Which is precisely what drives so many victims of narcissists to needing psychiatric help themselves.
A word for those who think this is what their God wants them to do: Run a logic check on that one too. Is docilely submitting to abuse supposed to be holy? Uneducated Joan of Arc at the age of eighteen could reason that if God made her, and God doesn't make trash, she should fight to keep others from trashing her. It would be letting others trash a gift from him.
An analogy: If God gives you a Jaguar, you show how much you appreciate his gift by letting others take a sledgehammer to it? And he is supposed to be pleased with you for not even getting angry about it? I don't think so.
Anyone with a brain cell or two functioning knows that he would be insulted by that. So, it would be better for holier-than-thous to let their brains catch up with their mouths when talking about God and/or morality.
Straight thinking says that those who believe in God should be angrier than those who don't. Moreover, why should the rules be different in moral rape than physical rape? Isn't the victim supposed to be outraged? If it doesn't make her mad, we say she liked it. And what do we call her?
So, if specious pontifications like the one at the top have you on a guilt trip, get off.
Feelings are not conduct. No clear-thinking person should confuse feelings with conduct. Conduct is a matter of choice. Feelings are not a matter of choice. So, the notion that feelings can be "right" or "wrong" is absurd. They just ARE, period. Indeed, if you get burned, you should feel burnt. If you don't, something is wrong with you.
Others should not judge your feelings. I do not understand why those who believe in God are the most prone to do this, for it out-gods their God (who, according to their scriptures, judges conduct only). Judging feelings is in itself a narcissistic behavior. In doing so, do-gooders are serving as a proxy for your abuser.
You can lie about your feelings. You can go into denial about them. And you can even repress them. But you cannot change them.
Denying or repressing feelings is a lie. Now that is a matter of choice, and lying is bad for you. It's self-delusion. It's a kind of self-induced hypnosis to a state of emotional numbness. Not mentally healthy.
Repressed feelings are merely submerged to the level of the subconscious. But the subconscious is just subconscious: it isn't gone. Things buried there are still active. They influence and motivate your behavior without your knowledge. In other words, repressed feelings rule your conduct like an unseen puppet master. Thus, ironically, it is by getting you to deny your anger that the narcissist controls you.
Accept your feelings. Own them. Know them. Experience the tremendous relief and comfort in that. Then you can temper their influence on your conduct with reason and good judgment. You are responsible for your conduct — your words and deeds — not your feelings. Just because you are angry does not mean you are out of control of yourself as that stupid saying implies. It is the narcissist who has no self-control, not his or her victim.
Your anger, like any pain, will pass. If someone punches you, he is to blame for your pain, not you. By the same token, the one to blame for your anger is your abuser, not you.
See also: Re-victimization by Victim Bashing.
Return to Table of Contents
On Conflicted Feelings
I think we all feel guilty at times about our feelings — or rather our lack of feeling — toward the narcissist. Something inside just dies when we confront the spirit in which a narcissist does what he or she does.
That is a confrontation with the pure will to evil. You know — the big chill. You stand on the edge of the abyss and look down into their soul and see there is no bottom. It's natural, it's human, to back off as if repelled by antigravity and abhor it. In fact, it's immoral not to.
But especially the parents and siblings of a narcissist often feel conflicted, because they sympathize deeply with the hurt little child inside the narcissist. They remember him or her. They witnessed the abuse of that child. Just remembering it creates such a vivid experience that it enrages them all over again, 20, 30, 40 years later.
And they have occasionally caught heartbreaking glimpses of this ghost, this murdered little child inside the narcissist.
Dealing with these conflicted feelings is simply a matter of understanding them. They are natural. It's the situation that is unnatural, bizarre. That's because this hatred of the monster is directed at seemingly the same object as the love and grief for the innocent child inside.
That's just the way it is, and there's nothing we can do about it except keep clear about it and try not to confuse those feelings. The narcissist, by misidentifying, by identifying with his or her false image, has created this bizarre situation with their false and abhorrent persona.
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That is a confrontation with the pure will to evil. You know — the big chill. You stand on the edge of the abyss and look down into their soul and see there is no bottom. It's natural, it's human, to back off as if repelled by antigravity and abhor it. In fact, it's immoral not to.
But especially the parents and siblings of a narcissist often feel conflicted, because they sympathize deeply with the hurt little child inside the narcissist. They remember him or her. They witnessed the abuse of that child. Just remembering it creates such a vivid experience that it enrages them all over again, 20, 30, 40 years later.
And they have occasionally caught heartbreaking glimpses of this ghost, this murdered little child inside the narcissist.
Dealing with these conflicted feelings is simply a matter of understanding them. They are natural. It's the situation that is unnatural, bizarre. That's because this hatred of the monster is directed at seemingly the same object as the love and grief for the innocent child inside.
That's just the way it is, and there's nothing we can do about it except keep clear about it and try not to confuse those feelings. The narcissist, by misidentifying, by identifying with his or her false image, has created this bizarre situation with their false and abhorrent persona.
Return to Table of Contents
On Forgiveness
These are just my thoughts on it. I present them as an alternative to what blows in the prevailing wind on the subject. I present them for those victimized by malignant narcissists to examine — not to swallow whole as the gospel according to some authority figure. In fact, I don't know whether I am an authority figure or not, but I certainly am no authority. And nobody has any authority over what goes into someone else's head.
How about a parable? Let's say that I steal $10 from you. You come to me and say, "You stole $10 from me. Give it back." I tell you that you're crazy. I deny the offense. What are you going to do about it?
Let's say that your response is to say, "I forgive you."
Now let's get real. What are we to think of you for that?
The first thing people think is, "RED ALERT — probably a false accusation." In other words, we suspect that your "forgiveness" heaps the insult of fraud upon the injury of calumny. Adding insult to injury is an outrage, extreme perversity, the Sin of Sodom.
The other possibility is that you have no power to assert your right to justice and that your so-called forgiveness is but a deceptive way to avoid admitting that. In itself, your powerlessness in the situation is nothing reprehensible, but what does it make of your forgiveness? If it is forced forgiveness, it is extortion. If it is phony forgiveness, it is fraud — under duress, of course, but fraud nonetheless. Either way, it's not legitimate forgiveness and no more valid than a false confession.
Indeed, doing this adulterates your forgiveness. What an awful thing to do to such a precious thing as forgiveness! If I really have stolen from you, why I should I desire such cheap forgiveness as yours? It certainly isn't worth the pain of coming clean. And, if you are so holy, you should not want to discourage me from doing that. In short, your scot-free forgiveness — especially if it's only to save face — is understandable perhaps, but not honorable. Because it's not genuine.
So, this little story would never happen, because your "forgiveness" is bogus, and everybody knows it. In fact, it marks you as indelibly as Cain's answer to the question Where is thy brother? So, that's the real world in the material sphere of action. Why should it be different in the moral sphere of action?
Note that our ancient philosophy, as expressed in the Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic scriptures, uses the same terminology for moral forgiveness as for the forgiveness of a financial debt. Why? Because they are the same thing in different spheres of action.
The parable shows why there is no such thing as the forgiveness of a whole debt. Only some portion of it. In real life, nobody forgives the entire amount of a debt! Some is always repaid before the balance is forgiven. If it weren't, the bank would call the FBI.
That's why you always pay at least $1 for that vehicle your father gave/sold you, don't you? That's the difference between forgiveness and stealing or extortion. That $1 acknowledges the debt/gift. The rest is mercy.
If we turn to the ancient Hebrew, Christian and Islamic writings, we see that the God of Abraham's forgiveness is legitimate, too. He does not forgive the unrepentant. To the contrary, he threatens them with fire and brimstone if they do not repent. Are his devotees not to emulate him?
I think that Catholic theology is the most detailed and precise on this point, though I do not see how secretly revealing my misdeed to a third party in an anonymous confessional amounts to a real confession and how paying that third party whatever he charges me for a penance releases me from my debt to YOU. Nonetheless, there is much common sense here that is taken for granted by the theologians of all Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
I neither accept nor reject notion that, if you believe in God, I owe him something too, as the father of us both. But that would be a separate transaction in a different offense — the one against him in my theft from YOU. At worst, I am disobeying his rules and causing him some grief in the harm done to YOU. So, I don't see how a just God could be satisfied if YOU ain't. If I don't have to make amends to YOU, he is just be profiteering on sin that harms only YOU. Only when the debt is material, such as through the theft of money, do the Catholic authorities require restitution. Otherwise they seem to see no harm done to the human victim. I do. That is why I here deal with my debt to YOU and leave my debt to any God for others to argue about.
This theory says that I owe you your $10 plus a penalty for stealing it from you. Let's say that a fair penalty is another $10. So I owe you $20.
Why the penalty? Because I wasn't born yesterday! If there is no penalty, the most I can loose is the $10 I stole. Then the bottom line is that I owe zero. So, I have no reason not to try again tomorrow. Unless I'm a complete idiot, I will keep trying to steal $10 dollars from you until I eventually get away with it. It's kinda like free gambling.
Now, how do I relieve myself of this $20 debt to you? Catholic/Protestant doctrine neatly breaks my obligation down into four distinct acts:
· Confession: I must own/acknowledge what I have done.
· Contrition: I must show remorse for it. Thus I acknowledge that what I did was WRONG.
· Penance: I must acknowledge my obligation to pay you $10 + $10 = $20. That's the amount of the theft plus a penalty for theft. In other words, I must amend the damage and pay a penalty to boot.
· Firm Purpose of Amendment: I must show that I am determined to never steal from you again.
Your reaction? You are overjoyed! You appreciate what I have done by considering my means and showing mercy. You say, "Thank you! Just pay me $15 and we are even."
That's why they call it "reconciliation."
In other words, merciful you forgives a portion of my debt. Which is exactly what the God of Abraham does in "remitting sin." If people are required to be fools who forgive the whole thing, I am idiot if I don't shed crocodile tears before the judge at my sentencing.
Indeed, Christian theology says the Unforgivable Sin is the unrepented sin, the unacknowledged sin. Yet the winds of political correctness would have us let that slip our minds.
The malignant narcissist is a master at cheating on repentance. Even if his other 99 dodges fail, he must be compelled by a serious and credible threat to take even the first step (Confession). Then he acts as though that's all that's required of him and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. Thus conned, you forgive him. After further abuse and humiliation, you are not so easy. Again compelled by a serious and credible threat, he finds it necessary to take the first two steps (Confession and Contrition). Again he acts as though that's all that's required of him and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. Thus conned, you forgive him some more. After further abuse and humiliation, you are not so easy. Yet again compelled by a serious and credible threat, he finds it necessary to take the first two steps plus a fraction of the third. That is, he pays no penalty for devaluing you: he merely takes back a smidgen of that devaluation and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. He may even think you're so stupid that you feel he has made amends by apologizing to you in private for what he said about you in public.
And so on. He never gets to Step Four: A Firm Purpose of Amendment. Oh, he may say he won't do it again, but he offers nothing as a sign of good faith. That is, he gives no guarantee or assurances. You just have to take this pathological liar at his changeable word.
A narcissist is a slippery fish who characterizes your remembering anything he did yesterday as "digging back into the past." He thus makes you the guilty party by answering your grievance with the accusation that you are guilty of "not putting it behind you" and are committing the sin of not forgiving. It's a Catch-22. (Catch-22 is the bottom level of Nether Hell in Dante's Inferno).
I doubt it was the good guys who made up this stupid rule. If Christians are to remember what happened to Jesus 2,000 years ago, shouldn't they remember what happened themselves and others yesterday?
What's more, the narcissist's crime is a crime in progress. That's because it is either ongoing abuse or slander and calumny that ruins the rest of a person's life. It is as impossible to forgive a crime in progress as it is to forgive a crime in advance. Purporting to do so amounts to saying that it is no crime = it is okay to be doing this to someone.
Did you ever notice that "Thank you" is the first thing out of a person's mouth when someone who has offended them sincerely repents? There's a reason for that.
In my own experience, forgiveness is something I long to give. In fact, I strongly suspect that those who "find it hard to forgive" have nothing to forgive. In other words, I suspect that they are narcissists. My greatest grievance against the narcissists in my life is that they won't let me forgive them.
It's sad, but the way I deal with it is by just writing them off. That is much worse than hate. That is for those unworthy of hate.
But don't expect your narcissist to understand that. His emotions are like the irrational weather. Mother is all good when she's there and all bad when she's not. He gets mad at a cat for hanging around his bird feeder, because he somehow views it as sinning and deserving punishment. He cannot understand that the cat is just being a cat. But we can understand that, and we can understand that a narcissist is just being a narcissist. No need to get mad about it.
This is not to say that narcissistic abuse does not outrage powerful emotions in us. But they diminish over time and leave nothing. Not hate, just NOTHING.
However you decide to handle your desire to forgive a narcissist, keep this in mind: Your mind is The Garden. Not wide-open spaces. A garden is cultivated, surrounded by a fence or wall, and has a gate. You are the gardener and the gatekeeper. If you know what's good for you, you will assume your right/responsibility to decide what enters, exits, and grows there.
Return to Table of Contents
How about a parable? Let's say that I steal $10 from you. You come to me and say, "You stole $10 from me. Give it back." I tell you that you're crazy. I deny the offense. What are you going to do about it?
Let's say that your response is to say, "I forgive you."
Now let's get real. What are we to think of you for that?
The first thing people think is, "RED ALERT — probably a false accusation." In other words, we suspect that your "forgiveness" heaps the insult of fraud upon the injury of calumny. Adding insult to injury is an outrage, extreme perversity, the Sin of Sodom.
The other possibility is that you have no power to assert your right to justice and that your so-called forgiveness is but a deceptive way to avoid admitting that. In itself, your powerlessness in the situation is nothing reprehensible, but what does it make of your forgiveness? If it is forced forgiveness, it is extortion. If it is phony forgiveness, it is fraud — under duress, of course, but fraud nonetheless. Either way, it's not legitimate forgiveness and no more valid than a false confession.
Indeed, doing this adulterates your forgiveness. What an awful thing to do to such a precious thing as forgiveness! If I really have stolen from you, why I should I desire such cheap forgiveness as yours? It certainly isn't worth the pain of coming clean. And, if you are so holy, you should not want to discourage me from doing that. In short, your scot-free forgiveness — especially if it's only to save face — is understandable perhaps, but not honorable. Because it's not genuine.
So, this little story would never happen, because your "forgiveness" is bogus, and everybody knows it. In fact, it marks you as indelibly as Cain's answer to the question Where is thy brother? So, that's the real world in the material sphere of action. Why should it be different in the moral sphere of action?
Note that our ancient philosophy, as expressed in the Hebrew, Christian, and Islamic scriptures, uses the same terminology for moral forgiveness as for the forgiveness of a financial debt. Why? Because they are the same thing in different spheres of action.
The parable shows why there is no such thing as the forgiveness of a whole debt. Only some portion of it. In real life, nobody forgives the entire amount of a debt! Some is always repaid before the balance is forgiven. If it weren't, the bank would call the FBI.
That's why you always pay at least $1 for that vehicle your father gave/sold you, don't you? That's the difference between forgiveness and stealing or extortion. That $1 acknowledges the debt/gift. The rest is mercy.
If we turn to the ancient Hebrew, Christian and Islamic writings, we see that the God of Abraham's forgiveness is legitimate, too. He does not forgive the unrepentant. To the contrary, he threatens them with fire and brimstone if they do not repent. Are his devotees not to emulate him?
I think that Catholic theology is the most detailed and precise on this point, though I do not see how secretly revealing my misdeed to a third party in an anonymous confessional amounts to a real confession and how paying that third party whatever he charges me for a penance releases me from my debt to YOU. Nonetheless, there is much common sense here that is taken for granted by the theologians of all Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
I neither accept nor reject notion that, if you believe in God, I owe him something too, as the father of us both. But that would be a separate transaction in a different offense — the one against him in my theft from YOU. At worst, I am disobeying his rules and causing him some grief in the harm done to YOU. So, I don't see how a just God could be satisfied if YOU ain't. If I don't have to make amends to YOU, he is just be profiteering on sin that harms only YOU. Only when the debt is material, such as through the theft of money, do the Catholic authorities require restitution. Otherwise they seem to see no harm done to the human victim. I do. That is why I here deal with my debt to YOU and leave my debt to any God for others to argue about.
This theory says that I owe you your $10 plus a penalty for stealing it from you. Let's say that a fair penalty is another $10. So I owe you $20.
Why the penalty? Because I wasn't born yesterday! If there is no penalty, the most I can loose is the $10 I stole. Then the bottom line is that I owe zero. So, I have no reason not to try again tomorrow. Unless I'm a complete idiot, I will keep trying to steal $10 dollars from you until I eventually get away with it. It's kinda like free gambling.
Now, how do I relieve myself of this $20 debt to you? Catholic/Protestant doctrine neatly breaks my obligation down into four distinct acts:
· Confession: I must own/acknowledge what I have done.
· Contrition: I must show remorse for it. Thus I acknowledge that what I did was WRONG.
· Penance: I must acknowledge my obligation to pay you $10 + $10 = $20. That's the amount of the theft plus a penalty for theft. In other words, I must amend the damage and pay a penalty to boot.
· Firm Purpose of Amendment: I must show that I am determined to never steal from you again.
Your reaction? You are overjoyed! You appreciate what I have done by considering my means and showing mercy. You say, "Thank you! Just pay me $15 and we are even."
That's why they call it "reconciliation."
In other words, merciful you forgives a portion of my debt. Which is exactly what the God of Abraham does in "remitting sin." If people are required to be fools who forgive the whole thing, I am idiot if I don't shed crocodile tears before the judge at my sentencing.
Indeed, Christian theology says the Unforgivable Sin is the unrepented sin, the unacknowledged sin. Yet the winds of political correctness would have us let that slip our minds.
The malignant narcissist is a master at cheating on repentance. Even if his other 99 dodges fail, he must be compelled by a serious and credible threat to take even the first step (Confession). Then he acts as though that's all that's required of him and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. Thus conned, you forgive him. After further abuse and humiliation, you are not so easy. Again compelled by a serious and credible threat, he finds it necessary to take the first two steps (Confession and Contrition). Again he acts as though that's all that's required of him and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. Thus conned, you forgive him some more. After further abuse and humiliation, you are not so easy. Yet again compelled by a serious and credible threat, he finds it necessary to take the first two steps plus a fraction of the third. That is, he pays no penalty for devaluing you: he merely takes back a smidgen of that devaluation and makes you feel mean if you are not satisfied. He may even think you're so stupid that you feel he has made amends by apologizing to you in private for what he said about you in public.
And so on. He never gets to Step Four: A Firm Purpose of Amendment. Oh, he may say he won't do it again, but he offers nothing as a sign of good faith. That is, he gives no guarantee or assurances. You just have to take this pathological liar at his changeable word.
A narcissist is a slippery fish who characterizes your remembering anything he did yesterday as "digging back into the past." He thus makes you the guilty party by answering your grievance with the accusation that you are guilty of "not putting it behind you" and are committing the sin of not forgiving. It's a Catch-22. (Catch-22 is the bottom level of Nether Hell in Dante's Inferno).
I doubt it was the good guys who made up this stupid rule. If Christians are to remember what happened to Jesus 2,000 years ago, shouldn't they remember what happened themselves and others yesterday?
What's more, the narcissist's crime is a crime in progress. That's because it is either ongoing abuse or slander and calumny that ruins the rest of a person's life. It is as impossible to forgive a crime in progress as it is to forgive a crime in advance. Purporting to do so amounts to saying that it is no crime = it is okay to be doing this to someone.
Did you ever notice that "Thank you" is the first thing out of a person's mouth when someone who has offended them sincerely repents? There's a reason for that.
In my own experience, forgiveness is something I long to give. In fact, I strongly suspect that those who "find it hard to forgive" have nothing to forgive. In other words, I suspect that they are narcissists. My greatest grievance against the narcissists in my life is that they won't let me forgive them.
It's sad, but the way I deal with it is by just writing them off. That is much worse than hate. That is for those unworthy of hate.
But don't expect your narcissist to understand that. His emotions are like the irrational weather. Mother is all good when she's there and all bad when she's not. He gets mad at a cat for hanging around his bird feeder, because he somehow views it as sinning and deserving punishment. He cannot understand that the cat is just being a cat. But we can understand that, and we can understand that a narcissist is just being a narcissist. No need to get mad about it.
This is not to say that narcissistic abuse does not outrage powerful emotions in us. But they diminish over time and leave nothing. Not hate, just NOTHING.
However you decide to handle your desire to forgive a narcissist, keep this in mind: Your mind is The Garden. Not wide-open spaces. A garden is cultivated, surrounded by a fence or wall, and has a gate. You are the gardener and the gatekeeper. If you know what's good for you, you will assume your right/responsibility to decide what enters, exits, and grows there.
Return to Table of Contents
Forgiving The One Who Deserves It
The most important thing to keep in mind is that your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship you have.
The same things can damage it that damage your other human relations. The deal-breaker is betrayal.
Have you ever felt betrayed? If so, then you know that it is the blackest feeling a human being can have. It is devastating. It is what makes people want to just turn their face to the wall and die. Because it shows what you and your suffering mean (are worth) to your betrayer = nothing.
Betrayal severs any human relationship. It puts the betrayed through Hell.
Just think what this means in terms of your relationship with yourself. If you betray yourself to abuse and humiliation, that betrayal severs your relationship with yourself.
How can this be? Easily. We are composite beings. We are a combination of true inner self and ego. The ego views us as others do, because it's wholly concerned with how we look to others. It's that little voice in the head that takes the viewpoint of bystanders and berates you in the second person, by saying such things as, "Why can't you hit a stupid backhand in? You are pathetic! Here you are, choking again in a big match!"
That's you (if you're a tennis player having a bad tennis day) talking to you. But why aren't you saying, "Why can't I hit a stupid backhand in? I am pathetic! Here I am, choking again in a big match!"
Answer: You address yourself as "you" instead of "I" to distance yourself from yourself. Because you don't like yourself at the moment and are disowning yourself, relating to yourself as though talking to a different person.
See what's happening to your relationship with yourself? You're not on your side, are you?
This happens to everyone, and it should serve as a strong warning of how easily our composite personality can breakdown, split.
Don't go there. Never, never, never betray yourself to bad treatment. You sin against yourself when you do, and the act will destroy your relationship with yourself.
Unfortunately, if you are the victim of a narcissist, it is safe to say that you have already done so.
THIS is what threatens the victim's mental health. You have allowed yourself to be used, ab-used. You see that for what it is — bending over for it, laying down for it. No matter how blessed people say that is, you know it's not. You know it is abject. It makes you feel like a worm. You are profoundly ashamed of it.
And very, very angry with yourself.
You hate yourself for it, no matter how hard you work to repress awareness of that to live in denial of it.
So, you have committed an offense against yourself (your human dignity). You can never be friends with yourself until you make peace with yourself.
Do it. Repair that relationship with yourself. The fruit of forgiveness is reconciliation (ask any theologian).
1. Admit that you have allowed the narcissist to abuse you.
2. Admit that it was wrong to do so, though be fair with yourself and consider the reasons why you were driven to do so.
3. Be sorry that you betrayed yourself to abuse.
4. Make whatever amends are possible and appropriate.
5. Most important, repent = promise to never betray yourself again.
You may recognize those as the 5 formal steps of repentance. They make you forgivable. They allow reconciliation to take place.
Indeed, how can you be reconciled with any offender who doesn't at least stop offending and give you some assurance that he won't keep right on doing it? It is absurd to think that you can.
And the people who like to bind up this big burden of forgiving to put on the victim are often doing it in the name of religion. But if they knew two things about their religion, they wouldn't say that. No theologian worth his or salt would say that you must forgive an ongoing offense.
How can forgiving an ongoing offense reconcile you with a person who is attacking you or stealing from you in some way? What, pray tell, do these holier-than-thous think "reconciliation" is? Just another non-thing, I suppose, vaguely supposed to suggest some sentiment they can lie about having in their foggy heads.
But even that is crazy, because no sane person can have anything but hostility toward anyone in the act of harming them.
And just because it's 3AM and the narcissist is sound asleep, unable to offend at the moment, doesn't mean that a state of war doesn't presently exist between you. What he did yesterday counts. What he has always done and never promised to stop doing counts. He must stop doing it before he can become forgivable.
"Forgive and forget" is a line penned in Hell, not Heaven.
It is absurd to think you can have any but a hostile relationship with someone offending you in any way, especially when they have refused to stop it.
If the offender stops doing it, you can be friends again. But only if he stops doing it. You don't have to be friendly to people attacking you or stealing from you. It's called the human right to self-preservation, self-defense. It's a Law of Nature. The very idea that you should like and be nice to someone doing things hostile to you is bizarre and absurd.
To the contrary: You anti-like people like that = you stay away from them. You build walls between yourself and people like that. You answer their attacks to make their attacks cost them dearly, so as to deter future aggression that you might live in peace instead of under constant attack by them. This is just common sense.
And it holds just as true in your relationship with yourself as in your relationship with others.
To be reconciled with yourself, you must say, "I betrayed myself to abuse in the past, but I will never do so again, so I am no longer a doormat to be ashamed of."
Be on your side.
Take those 5 steps to repair your relationship with yourself — especially the last one in which you establish a firm purpose of amendment to never betray yourself to abuse again.
Now you are forgivable. So, forgive yourself. Embrace yourself.
You are the one who deserves and needs your forgiveness. And chances are that you are the only one who deserves and wants it.
Return to Table of Contents
The same things can damage it that damage your other human relations. The deal-breaker is betrayal.
Have you ever felt betrayed? If so, then you know that it is the blackest feeling a human being can have. It is devastating. It is what makes people want to just turn their face to the wall and die. Because it shows what you and your suffering mean (are worth) to your betrayer = nothing.
Betrayal severs any human relationship. It puts the betrayed through Hell.
Just think what this means in terms of your relationship with yourself. If you betray yourself to abuse and humiliation, that betrayal severs your relationship with yourself.
How can this be? Easily. We are composite beings. We are a combination of true inner self and ego. The ego views us as others do, because it's wholly concerned with how we look to others. It's that little voice in the head that takes the viewpoint of bystanders and berates you in the second person, by saying such things as, "Why can't you hit a stupid backhand in? You are pathetic! Here you are, choking again in a big match!"
That's you (if you're a tennis player having a bad tennis day) talking to you. But why aren't you saying, "Why can't I hit a stupid backhand in? I am pathetic! Here I am, choking again in a big match!"
Answer: You address yourself as "you" instead of "I" to distance yourself from yourself. Because you don't like yourself at the moment and are disowning yourself, relating to yourself as though talking to a different person.
See what's happening to your relationship with yourself? You're not on your side, are you?
This happens to everyone, and it should serve as a strong warning of how easily our composite personality can breakdown, split.
Don't go there. Never, never, never betray yourself to bad treatment. You sin against yourself when you do, and the act will destroy your relationship with yourself.
Unfortunately, if you are the victim of a narcissist, it is safe to say that you have already done so.
THIS is what threatens the victim's mental health. You have allowed yourself to be used, ab-used. You see that for what it is — bending over for it, laying down for it. No matter how blessed people say that is, you know it's not. You know it is abject. It makes you feel like a worm. You are profoundly ashamed of it.
And very, very angry with yourself.
You hate yourself for it, no matter how hard you work to repress awareness of that to live in denial of it.
So, you have committed an offense against yourself (your human dignity). You can never be friends with yourself until you make peace with yourself.
Do it. Repair that relationship with yourself. The fruit of forgiveness is reconciliation (ask any theologian).
1. Admit that you have allowed the narcissist to abuse you.
2. Admit that it was wrong to do so, though be fair with yourself and consider the reasons why you were driven to do so.
3. Be sorry that you betrayed yourself to abuse.
4. Make whatever amends are possible and appropriate.
5. Most important, repent = promise to never betray yourself again.
You may recognize those as the 5 formal steps of repentance. They make you forgivable. They allow reconciliation to take place.
Indeed, how can you be reconciled with any offender who doesn't at least stop offending and give you some assurance that he won't keep right on doing it? It is absurd to think that you can.
And the people who like to bind up this big burden of forgiving to put on the victim are often doing it in the name of religion. But if they knew two things about their religion, they wouldn't say that. No theologian worth his or salt would say that you must forgive an ongoing offense.
How can forgiving an ongoing offense reconcile you with a person who is attacking you or stealing from you in some way? What, pray tell, do these holier-than-thous think "reconciliation" is? Just another non-thing, I suppose, vaguely supposed to suggest some sentiment they can lie about having in their foggy heads.
But even that is crazy, because no sane person can have anything but hostility toward anyone in the act of harming them.
And just because it's 3AM and the narcissist is sound asleep, unable to offend at the moment, doesn't mean that a state of war doesn't presently exist between you. What he did yesterday counts. What he has always done and never promised to stop doing counts. He must stop doing it before he can become forgivable.
"Forgive and forget" is a line penned in Hell, not Heaven.
It is absurd to think you can have any but a hostile relationship with someone offending you in any way, especially when they have refused to stop it.
If the offender stops doing it, you can be friends again. But only if he stops doing it. You don't have to be friendly to people attacking you or stealing from you. It's called the human right to self-preservation, self-defense. It's a Law of Nature. The very idea that you should like and be nice to someone doing things hostile to you is bizarre and absurd.
To the contrary: You anti-like people like that = you stay away from them. You build walls between yourself and people like that. You answer their attacks to make their attacks cost them dearly, so as to deter future aggression that you might live in peace instead of under constant attack by them. This is just common sense.
And it holds just as true in your relationship with yourself as in your relationship with others.
To be reconciled with yourself, you must say, "I betrayed myself to abuse in the past, but I will never do so again, so I am no longer a doormat to be ashamed of."
Be on your side.
Take those 5 steps to repair your relationship with yourself — especially the last one in which you establish a firm purpose of amendment to never betray yourself to abuse again.
Now you are forgivable. So, forgive yourself. Embrace yourself.
You are the one who deserves and needs your forgiveness. And chances are that you are the only one who deserves and wants it.
Return to Table of Contents
Where Logic Leads
Let us follow the course of simple logic, wherever it leads:
1. If people with NPD can keep themselves from abusing when there would be witnesses, they can keep themselves from abusing when there wouldn't be witnesses. They just don't.
2. By going to great lengths to abuse on the sly, while portraying themselves to the outside world as the very antithesis of what they are, narcissists prove that they know that their behavior is wrong and shameful = something to hide.
3. Most children of narcissists don't choose to imitate the parent who hurts them and therefore don't become narcissists themselves. So, the child who does choose to imitate that parent does so of his or her own free will.
This is why the courts in the United States don't regard NPD as a defense. It isn't insanity.
Insanity is unsoundness of mind. The insane show that their minds are unsound by the way they go about a crime. They show that
· they don't know what they're doing
· they don't know it's wrong, something to hide and be ashamed of
· they can't control themselves to keep from doing it.
How do the insane show this? They show it by...
· attacking people in broad daylight like a loose tiger would
· an absence of premeditation and cunning, in that...
· they don't do wrong on the sly
· they don't cover up their true character with an impressive facade
· they don't plan ahead so as to sneak around and get away with wrongdoing.
None of that fits the modus operandi of people with NPD. In fact, the M.O. of the narcissist couldn't be more opposite, could it?
· Narcissists sneak around to do their dirty work on the sly, in the dark, behind closed doors where there are no witnesses. Whenever there would be witnesses, they act like angels. What does that mean?
· They discredit the victim in advance through character assassination so that no one will believe her complaints. What does that mean?
· They go to great lengths to project a false public image of themselves as the exact opposite of what they are. What does that mean?
It proves that they know what they are doing and that it is wrong (something to hide and be ashamed of). It proves that they can control their conduct, because they do it well enough whenever the coast ain't clear. It proves that they are simply diabolical, not insane.
This is why NPD is legally a character disorder, not a mental disorder absolving one of responsibility for what he or she does.
In other words, NPD is NOT insanity. People with NPD are twisted, not insane.
Are they then just evil?
Nobody needs anyone to tell them the answer to that question. Just follow simple logic: Add it up: 2 + 2 = ?
Get the wrong answer?
Note that "psychopathic tendencies are conceptualized as being on a continuum with narcissism, with both involving a motivation to dominate, humiliate, and manipulate others." (Handbook of Psychopathy, by Christopher J. Patrick, p. 162). Does that desire proceed from a spirit of goodwill? Or ill will? Is it not pure malice?
Still get the wrong answer?
Ted Bundy wasn't evil? Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't evil? Ed Gein wasn't evil? Adolph Hitler wasn't evil? Josef Stalin wasn't evil? Saddam Hussein wasn't evil? Child molesters aren't evil? Rapists aren't evil? Serial killers aren't evil? It's all to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate others. That's "understandable"?
Wife-beaters aren't evil? Is anyone who intentionally harms others, including their own children, for no reason (but to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate) doing anything but evil?
The desire to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate others isn't the desire to harm them?
Is it not pure malignance to harm others who
· are not hurting you
· have never hurt you, and
· are no threat to hurt you?
That ain't natural. Indeed, malignant narcissists go further into perversity than that: they go to the extreme perversity of targeting their benefactors and the meek, the weak, children, and those who love them and trust them the most. Enough to make you want to throw up. They aren't after anyone they have any reason to resent: they are after easy prey, period.
So, don't try to tell me that they are not evil. I know the word is unfashionable, but I am an atheist who doesn't mind acknowledging the existence of evil, so why should anyone else mind?
A Caveat: Narcissists don't do evil to do evil though. They don't love evil for it's own sake. In fact, they are as loath to know themselves as evil as you or I would be. That is precisely why they live in denial of this reality and cover it up at all costs.
They do evil for a different reason, for the same reason a drug addict does drugs = because it makes them feel good. Hurting and humiliating others affects them like a pain-killer they get high on.
So, we cannot get on a high horse of moral superiority, for we aren't tempted as they are. We don't have their perverted predatory urges.
But that doesn't mean that we should close our eyes to what they are. If hurting others makes you feel good, you like hurting others. Sorry, there's just no getting around that.
If you want to hurt others, you're malevolent. Sorry, there's just no getting around that.
It's dangerous to be in denial of these facts. Dangerous to regard narcissists as people of goodwill who don't want to hurt others, don't mean to hurt others, and are suffering victims who just can't help hurting others. That's bullshit.
That just plays right into their hands. That's what they want — for you to be a sucker and feel sorry for them. To make excuses for them. To assign them a lower set of standards to live up to.
There's a sucker born every minute. Before you know it, they have you regarding them as the victim, feeling sorry for them instead of their victims. All hell must be laughing their heads off at this joke. What a travesty of justice. What a perversion of Truth.
Just because they occasionally suffer in the consequences of some bad thing they do is no reason to regard these victimizers as victims. So what if they have feelings — for themselves? There's a little more to being human than having feelings for yourself. A dog has feelings for herself! In fact, a dog is more humane, because she has feelings for her master and her pups, but a narcissist doesn't.
It's a false choice — that suggested choice between hating narcissists and sympathizing with them. The sensible choice is simply to regard them as what they are: predators.
You know, like lions, tigers, great white sharks, polar bears, grizzly bears. We don't bother to "hate" them: we just STAY AWAY FROM THEM, NEVER TRUST THEM, AND DON'T GO INTO THEIR CAGE.
If you lie, you are a liar. If you kill, you are a killer. We are the sum total of what our choices to date have made us. Narcissists too are the sum total of what their choices to date have made them. Adult narcissists have passed the point of no return long ago.
Perhaps some day psychiatrists will learn some way to help them pay the toll to that demon at the door, so narcissists can return to the human way of life. Let us hope for that day, but let us not, in the meantime, be dangerously naive.
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1. If people with NPD can keep themselves from abusing when there would be witnesses, they can keep themselves from abusing when there wouldn't be witnesses. They just don't.
2. By going to great lengths to abuse on the sly, while portraying themselves to the outside world as the very antithesis of what they are, narcissists prove that they know that their behavior is wrong and shameful = something to hide.
3. Most children of narcissists don't choose to imitate the parent who hurts them and therefore don't become narcissists themselves. So, the child who does choose to imitate that parent does so of his or her own free will.
This is why the courts in the United States don't regard NPD as a defense. It isn't insanity.
Insanity is unsoundness of mind. The insane show that their minds are unsound by the way they go about a crime. They show that
· they don't know what they're doing
· they don't know it's wrong, something to hide and be ashamed of
· they can't control themselves to keep from doing it.
How do the insane show this? They show it by...
· attacking people in broad daylight like a loose tiger would
· an absence of premeditation and cunning, in that...
· they don't do wrong on the sly
· they don't cover up their true character with an impressive facade
· they don't plan ahead so as to sneak around and get away with wrongdoing.
None of that fits the modus operandi of people with NPD. In fact, the M.O. of the narcissist couldn't be more opposite, could it?
· Narcissists sneak around to do their dirty work on the sly, in the dark, behind closed doors where there are no witnesses. Whenever there would be witnesses, they act like angels. What does that mean?
· They discredit the victim in advance through character assassination so that no one will believe her complaints. What does that mean?
· They go to great lengths to project a false public image of themselves as the exact opposite of what they are. What does that mean?
It proves that they know what they are doing and that it is wrong (something to hide and be ashamed of). It proves that they can control their conduct, because they do it well enough whenever the coast ain't clear. It proves that they are simply diabolical, not insane.
This is why NPD is legally a character disorder, not a mental disorder absolving one of responsibility for what he or she does.
In other words, NPD is NOT insanity. People with NPD are twisted, not insane.
Are they then just evil?
Nobody needs anyone to tell them the answer to that question. Just follow simple logic: Add it up: 2 + 2 = ?
Get the wrong answer?
Note that "psychopathic tendencies are conceptualized as being on a continuum with narcissism, with both involving a motivation to dominate, humiliate, and manipulate others." (Handbook of Psychopathy, by Christopher J. Patrick, p. 162). Does that desire proceed from a spirit of goodwill? Or ill will? Is it not pure malice?
Still get the wrong answer?
Ted Bundy wasn't evil? Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't evil? Ed Gein wasn't evil? Adolph Hitler wasn't evil? Josef Stalin wasn't evil? Saddam Hussein wasn't evil? Child molesters aren't evil? Rapists aren't evil? Serial killers aren't evil? It's all to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate others. That's "understandable"?
Wife-beaters aren't evil? Is anyone who intentionally harms others, including their own children, for no reason (but to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate) doing anything but evil?
The desire to dominate, manipulate, and humiliate others isn't the desire to harm them?
Is it not pure malignance to harm others who
· are not hurting you
· have never hurt you, and
· are no threat to hurt you?
That ain't natural. Indeed, malignant narcissists go further into perversity than that: they go to the extreme perversity of targeting their benefactors and the meek, the weak, children, and those who love them and trust them the most. Enough to make you want to throw up. They aren't after anyone they have any reason to resent: they are after easy prey, period.
So, don't try to tell me that they are not evil. I know the word is unfashionable, but I am an atheist who doesn't mind acknowledging the existence of evil, so why should anyone else mind?
A Caveat: Narcissists don't do evil to do evil though. They don't love evil for it's own sake. In fact, they are as loath to know themselves as evil as you or I would be. That is precisely why they live in denial of this reality and cover it up at all costs.
They do evil for a different reason, for the same reason a drug addict does drugs = because it makes them feel good. Hurting and humiliating others affects them like a pain-killer they get high on.
So, we cannot get on a high horse of moral superiority, for we aren't tempted as they are. We don't have their perverted predatory urges.
But that doesn't mean that we should close our eyes to what they are. If hurting others makes you feel good, you like hurting others. Sorry, there's just no getting around that.
If you want to hurt others, you're malevolent. Sorry, there's just no getting around that.
It's dangerous to be in denial of these facts. Dangerous to regard narcissists as people of goodwill who don't want to hurt others, don't mean to hurt others, and are suffering victims who just can't help hurting others. That's bullshit.
That just plays right into their hands. That's what they want — for you to be a sucker and feel sorry for them. To make excuses for them. To assign them a lower set of standards to live up to.
There's a sucker born every minute. Before you know it, they have you regarding them as the victim, feeling sorry for them instead of their victims. All hell must be laughing their heads off at this joke. What a travesty of justice. What a perversion of Truth.
Just because they occasionally suffer in the consequences of some bad thing they do is no reason to regard these victimizers as victims. So what if they have feelings — for themselves? There's a little more to being human than having feelings for yourself. A dog has feelings for herself! In fact, a dog is more humane, because she has feelings for her master and her pups, but a narcissist doesn't.
It's a false choice — that suggested choice between hating narcissists and sympathizing with them. The sensible choice is simply to regard them as what they are: predators.
You know, like lions, tigers, great white sharks, polar bears, grizzly bears. We don't bother to "hate" them: we just STAY AWAY FROM THEM, NEVER TRUST THEM, AND DON'T GO INTO THEIR CAGE.
If you lie, you are a liar. If you kill, you are a killer. We are the sum total of what our choices to date have made us. Narcissists too are the sum total of what their choices to date have made them. Adult narcissists have passed the point of no return long ago.
Perhaps some day psychiatrists will learn some way to help them pay the toll to that demon at the door, so narcissists can return to the human way of life. Let us hope for that day, but let us not, in the meantime, be dangerously naive.
Return to Table of Contents
