Recall that another person's attention is a kind of mirror reflecting the image of ourselves we're portraying in the interaction. We all notice when we are making a good impression on somebody. We see it reflected in that person's response to what we're doing and saying. We often adjust our words and behavior to tune that response. People do this in a job interview, for example. They also do this when meeting a potential mate or anyone they wish to favorably impress, such as the traffic cop who just stopped them for speeding or some V.I.P. they're being introduced to.
Playing to the mirror of another person's eye is perfectly normal — under certain circumstances. In fact, it's adaptive. Like scorpions approaching each other as potential mates, or ships at sea or in space, people play this game to smooth the interaction and establish a safe connection.
But we don't like doing this. It's a bit nerve-wracking. And we know it's a game. (See the excellent book The Games People Play by Dr. Eric Berne.) Playing it makes us uncomfortable. And there are limits to how far we will go. We don't mind being civil and friendly or even humble and overly agreeable to avoid topics of conflict and smooth our interaction with a person. But we immediately sense the prostitution in our actions when our hypocrisy sensor goes off. Then our self-respect kicks in. In fact, we prefer the company of intimates and friends — people we can be ourselves with.
Narcissists are different in that they are never themselves. They identify with their image instead. So, they are in game-playing mode 100 percent of the time. And they are not trying to make a safe connection. Or a good impression. The reflection they're playing for is grandiose — not necessarily pleasing, friendly, or good.
For example, if someone looks at you in fear, that reflects an image of you as powerful. Being powerful is grandiose, so a narcissist really likes to see people looking at him in fear. In fact, he'd rather see people looking at him in fear and trepidation than in admiration, because it's grander to be powerful than to be merely admirable.
This is why a narcissist who becomes a dictator becomes a Nero, Stalin, Hitler, or Saddam Hussein. These men were just narcissists capitalizing on the fact that no one could hold them to account for anything they did. So, when they gained absolute power, the angel-faced mask came off, and they concentrated on making everyone just plain terrified of them.
Because that's the biggest ego boost, all narcissists bully and intimidate whomever they can whenever they can. Some don't dare bully and intimidate anyone outside their immediate family. Others go around intimidating everyone in their presence so that a hush falls around them wherever they go, because when people fear to say anything — ANYTHING — he might overhear.
It's amazing how charged the atmosphere around such a person is. The cliché that "the tension is so thick you could cut it with a knife" is no overstatement. You'd swear that any moment somebody is going to crack and scream, "This is crazy! What are we all so afraid of this guy for?" But nobody ever does.
I know of two who did that daily for decades to everyone in their workplace, even their superiors. A normal person would feel terrible if people reacted to his approach that way. But to a narcissist, it's nirvana. Because that's the way people act when God walks into a room.
Notice how abnormal this behavior is. Normal people don't like to see others looking at them in fear. That would hurt and deeply disturb a normal person. So, we almost never behave in a manner to evoke fear. We do that only (a) while engaged in a fight, to persuade the other party that he might as well give up or (b) when we feel threatened and are posturing to avoid a fight by making that other party think twice about attacking. In other words, we use fear-evoking behaviors for an essentially peaceful purpose — to discourage fighting. That's why the moment the other party backs off, the steam stops coming out of our nose and ears.
In fact we see the same thing throughout the animal kingdom: animals are ferocious one second and acting like nothing happened the next.
But narcissists use fear-evoking behavior out of the blue to threaten and thus initiate strife. That's because they have a completely different purpose — to make themselves feel grand by intimidating whomever they can whenever they can (and get away with it).
Unlike us, they don't seem to mind strife. I don't think it's an unpleasant experience for them, like it is for us. In fact, they seem to enjoy it. After all, it gets them what they want. And they don't want to get along; they just want to get their way. They don't want to be liked by anyone; they just want to be obeyed, feared, or admired by others. Like children, they want what they want and they want it NOW. They never think ahead to future consequences.
I'm sure they know that strife is an unpleasant experience for us, one that we try to avoid. So, they menace us with it as a way to say, "If you don't do what I want, I'll start a fight. And how will you like that?"
Manipulation. It works too, doesn't it?
So, the reflection a narcissist plays you for varies greatly. The common denominator is that it always reflects an image of him or her that is grandiose.
Narcissists want you to look at them in admiration, adulation. They want you to look at them approvingly, gratefully. They want you to look at them in awe. Oooh, that's a good one — very grandiose. They want to see a reflection of themselves as magnificent in your eyes. They want you to hang on their every word. They want you to never remove your eyes from them. They want you to reflect their grand importance by carefully discerning and attending to their every need, without them even having to ask for what they want. For, when you wait on them hand and foot, you reflect an image of his highness that is majestic.
Therefore, grandiosity need not be reflected in the mirror of someone's pleased or admiring face. In fact, as every chest-thumping rapist knows, it is best reflected in the outraged, desolate and wretched face of someone who can do nothing to stop him from demolishing her for maximum impact.
That's the victim, but the rapist's reflection in it is that of one who is so powerful as to have such a demolishing impact on her.
It's a rare narcissist who can vaunt himself on just anyone though. So, a narcissist plays different people/mirrors for different kinds of grandiose reflections. He'll play a priest for one kind of reflection, his buddy in a bar for another kind, his boss for yet another kind, and so on. As the narcissist Sam Vaknin explains it, each person in his world is like a different kind of flower that the narcissist (a bee) visits to exploit for a different type of nectar. That's as good an analogy as any.
I knew one narcissist that I wish people could see on a split screen, with his persona in a church compared with his persona in a tavern. The difference was so extreme that the show would be hilarious! If his bar buddy saw him in church and his priest saw him in a bar, neither would believe it could be the same person.
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Echo and the Narcissist
What Makes Narcissists Tick
The Self Absorbed
As mentioned above, a malignant narcissist is fixated 100% of the time on his image. To the exclusion of virtually all other sensation — sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. In other words, he is absorbed in/by his image.
Our brains are programmed to "learn" what we pay little or no attention to. They adapt over time to filtering this type of information. A good example is background noise. There is probably plenty of background noise in the room you're in right now, but you were unaware of hearing it until I called it to consciousness by mentioning it.
Aren't you glad your brain has learned to filter it out? Otherwise you'd be distracted by every fly that buzzed. You'd never be able to focus on anything, because every passing car on the street outside would distract you.
So, what happens when a person with narcissistic personality disorder willfully remains in a world of Pretend, trying to pay attention only to what he wants to see = his reflected image in others interacting with him? He is fixated on that reflection of his. Preoccupied with it. He deliberately pays little or no attention to anything else — no attention to those other annoying sights and sounds that distract him from his image = false self.
He goes through life trying to put all other things out of his mind as much as possible. Especially things he must pretend are beneath his notice, like you. So, though he doesn't mind watching geese and squirrels when there are no mirrors around, he always willfully blocks out things like the sound of your voice and the sight of your face (all he wants to see is his reflection there, not your face).
Can you see how such a person actually trains their brain to malfunction? He trains his brain to "tune out" that sort of sensory information right along with the sensory information it's supposed to tune out, like the background noise, the picture on the wall behind you, the pressure of his chair on his butt.
The result is that a narcissist is permanently in an almost autistic state of self-absorption. He misses an astonishing amount of what's right before his eyes.
For example, a narcissist often fails to notice even a drastic change in the weather outside. My most memorable observation of this occurred while I was getting hectically blabbed at by a narcissistic woman who thought I should be interested in every mundane thing she had to do that day. A few errands and a trip to the grocery store. Oh, she was so busy, busy, busy and these household chores were so demanding. Especially on this gloomy day in the rain.
My jaw dropped, because we were standing next to a bank of huge windows, showing that the sky had cleared a couple hours ago and that the sun was brilliantly shining.
Over time, it becomes truly hard for a narcissist to focus on anything but the type of information he normally wants. He may go to a drug store, for example, and be unable to focus well enough to find the product he wants among the others on the shelf.
And as for things he really wants to block out, like what other people are saying to him, forget it. Try as he may, he can't tune in that signal well enough to focus on whether they are telling him to get red wine or white for supper.
Tip: Don't say, "Don't get red wine." Don't even say the word red if red wine is what you DON'T want. Just write him a note like you would for a little child, and be done with it.
Joanna Ashmun has noticed the same phenomenon:
I have observed very closely some narcissists I've loved, and their inability to pay attention when someone else is talking is so striking that it has often seemed to me that they have neurological problems that affect their cognitive functioning.
Since the narcissist identifies with his image, his absorption in it is self-absorption. It's like absorption in a book or a computer or television screen. People with good power of concentration can become absorbed in thought. In fact, to some degree, we are always absorbed in whatever we are paying attention to.
Our ability to become absorbed enables us to focus, or concentrate. Great tennis players, for example, report being so absorbed in the approaching ball, that it actually seems to grow larger, filling their field of view. The result is — whack — a beautifully heavy shot right off dead center on the strings.
Our brains accomplish this focus by filtering out 99% of the information they receive and diverting it to areas in unconscious zones. There, it does not distract us. For example, that's what your brain is doing right now with the sensation of your butt pressing down on the chair you're sitting in. Right? You were unaware of that sensation, until I mentioned it. Then it instantly leapt to consciousness. That's because the brain is a relational database that immediately retrieved that information, calling it to consciousness when it was referenced.
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Our brains are programmed to "learn" what we pay little or no attention to. They adapt over time to filtering this type of information. A good example is background noise. There is probably plenty of background noise in the room you're in right now, but you were unaware of hearing it until I called it to consciousness by mentioning it.
Aren't you glad your brain has learned to filter it out? Otherwise you'd be distracted by every fly that buzzed. You'd never be able to focus on anything, because every passing car on the street outside would distract you.
So, what happens when a person with narcissistic personality disorder willfully remains in a world of Pretend, trying to pay attention only to what he wants to see = his reflected image in others interacting with him? He is fixated on that reflection of his. Preoccupied with it. He deliberately pays little or no attention to anything else — no attention to those other annoying sights and sounds that distract him from his image = false self.
He goes through life trying to put all other things out of his mind as much as possible. Especially things he must pretend are beneath his notice, like you. So, though he doesn't mind watching geese and squirrels when there are no mirrors around, he always willfully blocks out things like the sound of your voice and the sight of your face (all he wants to see is his reflection there, not your face).
Can you see how such a person actually trains their brain to malfunction? He trains his brain to "tune out" that sort of sensory information right along with the sensory information it's supposed to tune out, like the background noise, the picture on the wall behind you, the pressure of his chair on his butt.
The result is that a narcissist is permanently in an almost autistic state of self-absorption. He misses an astonishing amount of what's right before his eyes.
For example, a narcissist often fails to notice even a drastic change in the weather outside. My most memorable observation of this occurred while I was getting hectically blabbed at by a narcissistic woman who thought I should be interested in every mundane thing she had to do that day. A few errands and a trip to the grocery store. Oh, she was so busy, busy, busy and these household chores were so demanding. Especially on this gloomy day in the rain.
My jaw dropped, because we were standing next to a bank of huge windows, showing that the sky had cleared a couple hours ago and that the sun was brilliantly shining.
Over time, it becomes truly hard for a narcissist to focus on anything but the type of information he normally wants. He may go to a drug store, for example, and be unable to focus well enough to find the product he wants among the others on the shelf.
And as for things he really wants to block out, like what other people are saying to him, forget it. Try as he may, he can't tune in that signal well enough to focus on whether they are telling him to get red wine or white for supper.
Tip: Don't say, "Don't get red wine." Don't even say the word red if red wine is what you DON'T want. Just write him a note like you would for a little child, and be done with it.
Joanna Ashmun has noticed the same phenomenon:
I have observed very closely some narcissists I've loved, and their inability to pay attention when someone else is talking is so striking that it has often seemed to me that they have neurological problems that affect their cognitive functioning.
Since the narcissist identifies with his image, his absorption in it is self-absorption. It's like absorption in a book or a computer or television screen. People with good power of concentration can become absorbed in thought. In fact, to some degree, we are always absorbed in whatever we are paying attention to.
Our ability to become absorbed enables us to focus, or concentrate. Great tennis players, for example, report being so absorbed in the approaching ball, that it actually seems to grow larger, filling their field of view. The result is — whack — a beautifully heavy shot right off dead center on the strings.
Our brains accomplish this focus by filtering out 99% of the information they receive and diverting it to areas in unconscious zones. There, it does not distract us. For example, that's what your brain is doing right now with the sensation of your butt pressing down on the chair you're sitting in. Right? You were unaware of that sensation, until I mentioned it. Then it instantly leapt to consciousness. That's because the brain is a relational database that immediately retrieved that information, calling it to consciousness when it was referenced.
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Tuning You Out
The brain is marvelously adept at choosing what information to filter out and what to let in. It does not filter out all extraneous information. It lets certain things in to distract us and grab our attention. For example, while absorbed in a book, you may not hear, "Honey, would you take out the trash?" or "Honey, would you get me a beer?" But you certainly will hear "Fire!"
Nature programs the brain to bring certain things, like loud noises, to our attention. Yet we can train the brain to filter certain loud noises out. This enables people living near airports or railroad tracks to sleep through the noise. Indeed, they are unaware of a passing plane or train unless it drives the dog nuts or they are trying to carry on a conversation.
Similarly, we can prime or train the brain to bring certain special things to our attention. For example, we can prime the brain to scan a written page for a word or phrase. We can train the brain to "notice" things others would not. For example, three or four good open-water lifeguards can guard a thousand swimmers (not that I recommend so few!). They have trained their brains to remain alert while focusing on no one, allowing certain types of movement to grab their attention.
Note that the brain does not block out filtered information. It just "represses" it to the level of the subconscious. There, it is processed without distracting us. This ability to collect and subconsciously process information is responsible for Natural Learning. Without it we couldn't do the simplest things like walking or talking. Remember how inept you were the first time you got behind the wheel of an automobile? You'd still be that inept if it weren't for Natural Learning.
Unfortunately, people often abuse their minds by repressing information they shouldn't. Like guilt, unwanted facts, conflicting beliefs, and feelings. Doing this puts them in a trance, a self-induced hypnotic state. It is thought that many people do this twenty times a day. To a slight degree, of course.
But, when they want to, people can practically knock themselves out. This is a phenomenon that must be seen to be believed. It reminds one of the newsreels showing the crowds gazing up at Hitler during one of his fist-pounding rants against Jews. All eyes glazed.
I saw it happen in a room of people scared of a hatchet man orchestrating a backstabbing melee in the mud to divide and conquer. Sitting in a circle, their (repressed) guilt made them so unwilling to know what was going on that none noticed the one picking her nose and eating it right in front of them. Incredulous, I had to pinch myself. I elbowed the one on my left, then on my right, asking whether they noticed. Both gave a little start as if awakened. Then their eyes widened at the sight, and they groggily replied that they hadn't noticed. Then — boom — they went right back under again so suddenly it was as if you'd clubbed them on the head.
Ever since, it has been no mystery to me how people downwind of Hitler's death camps could unsee, unhear, and even unsmell in order to unknow what was going on. Amazing experiments have been done to show that some people can go under so deep they feel no pain from minor surgery without an anesthetic. I don't think this is a mental skill that people should develop.
It is, after all, intellectual dishonesty. Friends don't lie to friends, and if you lie to yourself you are your own worst enemy.
All that repressed information is still there. Whether it's guilt, hatred, knowledge, or whatever. The subconscious mind still processes it. So, it still motivates behavior. For example, a narcissist's repressed feelings of inferiority and guilt motivate his behavior like an unseen puppet master.
It's better to be conscious of what's motivating your behavior. Then you can apply reason, good judgment, and measure to your decisions. Also, at the slightest reference, repressed guilt, knowledge, or feelings can surface to consciousness like a flashback. Narcissists live in constant dread of this. It's like some corpus delicti that just won't stay buried. No matter how frantically they keep shoveling.
Malignant narcissists are masters of this skill. At an early age they begin training their brains to filter out everything but what they want to see and hear and know. Everything but the reflection of their false image in the mirrors around them. In other words, like Narcissus, they are totally absorbed in it 100% of the time. Why? Because, unlike us, they identify with it. They have thus substituted it for their true, inner selves.
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Nature programs the brain to bring certain things, like loud noises, to our attention. Yet we can train the brain to filter certain loud noises out. This enables people living near airports or railroad tracks to sleep through the noise. Indeed, they are unaware of a passing plane or train unless it drives the dog nuts or they are trying to carry on a conversation.
Similarly, we can prime or train the brain to bring certain special things to our attention. For example, we can prime the brain to scan a written page for a word or phrase. We can train the brain to "notice" things others would not. For example, three or four good open-water lifeguards can guard a thousand swimmers (not that I recommend so few!). They have trained their brains to remain alert while focusing on no one, allowing certain types of movement to grab their attention.
Note that the brain does not block out filtered information. It just "represses" it to the level of the subconscious. There, it is processed without distracting us. This ability to collect and subconsciously process information is responsible for Natural Learning. Without it we couldn't do the simplest things like walking or talking. Remember how inept you were the first time you got behind the wheel of an automobile? You'd still be that inept if it weren't for Natural Learning.
Unfortunately, people often abuse their minds by repressing information they shouldn't. Like guilt, unwanted facts, conflicting beliefs, and feelings. Doing this puts them in a trance, a self-induced hypnotic state. It is thought that many people do this twenty times a day. To a slight degree, of course.
But, when they want to, people can practically knock themselves out. This is a phenomenon that must be seen to be believed. It reminds one of the newsreels showing the crowds gazing up at Hitler during one of his fist-pounding rants against Jews. All eyes glazed.
I saw it happen in a room of people scared of a hatchet man orchestrating a backstabbing melee in the mud to divide and conquer. Sitting in a circle, their (repressed) guilt made them so unwilling to know what was going on that none noticed the one picking her nose and eating it right in front of them. Incredulous, I had to pinch myself. I elbowed the one on my left, then on my right, asking whether they noticed. Both gave a little start as if awakened. Then their eyes widened at the sight, and they groggily replied that they hadn't noticed. Then — boom — they went right back under again so suddenly it was as if you'd clubbed them on the head.
Ever since, it has been no mystery to me how people downwind of Hitler's death camps could unsee, unhear, and even unsmell in order to unknow what was going on. Amazing experiments have been done to show that some people can go under so deep they feel no pain from minor surgery without an anesthetic. I don't think this is a mental skill that people should develop.
It is, after all, intellectual dishonesty. Friends don't lie to friends, and if you lie to yourself you are your own worst enemy.
All that repressed information is still there. Whether it's guilt, hatred, knowledge, or whatever. The subconscious mind still processes it. So, it still motivates behavior. For example, a narcissist's repressed feelings of inferiority and guilt motivate his behavior like an unseen puppet master.
It's better to be conscious of what's motivating your behavior. Then you can apply reason, good judgment, and measure to your decisions. Also, at the slightest reference, repressed guilt, knowledge, or feelings can surface to consciousness like a flashback. Narcissists live in constant dread of this. It's like some corpus delicti that just won't stay buried. No matter how frantically they keep shoveling.
Malignant narcissists are masters of this skill. At an early age they begin training their brains to filter out everything but what they want to see and hear and know. Everything but the reflection of their false image in the mirrors around them. In other words, like Narcissus, they are totally absorbed in it 100% of the time. Why? Because, unlike us, they identify with it. They have thus substituted it for their true, inner selves.
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To Be Or Not To Be...
Now, logic dictates that if you identify with an apparition, you have an existential problem when it disappears. I cannot imagine being in such a state, and I doubt any normal person can. But it is well documented that narcissists say they feel "empty inside" and that they feel they "do not exist" when alone — that is, when they have no mirror.
This belief reminds one of the stupid question If nobody hears a scream in the dark, did it happen? Or, If nobody sees a planet, does it exist? Many "complex" people answer no. But if that were correct, you couldn't even ask the stupid question.
This comes close to the stupid question Is the moon made of green cheese (instead of moon rock) if you choose to believe that it is? Many "complex" people answer yes. I ask, How can they believe in anything if they do not even believe in Truth? Since the vast majority of them say they believe in God, I ask how they can, since they can create and discreate him at will?
So such beliefs conflict with other things they must believe. But you can't believe two contradictory things at once. Just as in a computer, conflicting information crashes your brain if you don't keep it segregated into different partitions, at least one of which is shut down. Doing that is called compartmentalizing.
To believe known falsehoods and irrational things, many people compartmentalize, but they usually compartmentalize just the stuff they need only on Sundays. A narcissist believes something irrational about his very essence! That fouls up the very foundation and logical structure of the mind. This malfunction must have myriad ramifications in his thought processes.
This is the predicament narcissists are in. Since they identify with their image reflected in mirrors, if their mirrors abandon them, they feel that their very existence is snuffed out. The fate worse than death. Now, a normal person may feel buried alive by total abandonment. But even in that hell, he will say, "I think, therefore I am."
Not a narcissist. Hence, narcissists fear abandonment so much that they are terribly insecure. Also, since they invest nothing but bad-faith in their end of a relationship, they think everybody is as untrustworthy as they. All this makes them so insecure that they have a frenetic compulsion to constantly reassure themselves of your attachment to them by testing its strength.
The only way to test that is by treating you badly to gauge how much abuse you will take. Stupid? or what? What the narcissist thus does to reassure himself of your attachment to him destroys it, causing what he dreads — abandonment. And he knows that. But he just can't stop it. Because he is a mental four-year-old who lives in terror of abandonment and can't control himself.
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This belief reminds one of the stupid question If nobody hears a scream in the dark, did it happen? Or, If nobody sees a planet, does it exist? Many "complex" people answer no. But if that were correct, you couldn't even ask the stupid question.
This comes close to the stupid question Is the moon made of green cheese (instead of moon rock) if you choose to believe that it is? Many "complex" people answer yes. I ask, How can they believe in anything if they do not even believe in Truth? Since the vast majority of them say they believe in God, I ask how they can, since they can create and discreate him at will?
So such beliefs conflict with other things they must believe. But you can't believe two contradictory things at once. Just as in a computer, conflicting information crashes your brain if you don't keep it segregated into different partitions, at least one of which is shut down. Doing that is called compartmentalizing.
To believe known falsehoods and irrational things, many people compartmentalize, but they usually compartmentalize just the stuff they need only on Sundays. A narcissist believes something irrational about his very essence! That fouls up the very foundation and logical structure of the mind. This malfunction must have myriad ramifications in his thought processes.
This is the predicament narcissists are in. Since they identify with their image reflected in mirrors, if their mirrors abandon them, they feel that their very existence is snuffed out. The fate worse than death. Now, a normal person may feel buried alive by total abandonment. But even in that hell, he will say, "I think, therefore I am."
Not a narcissist. Hence, narcissists fear abandonment so much that they are terribly insecure. Also, since they invest nothing but bad-faith in their end of a relationship, they think everybody is as untrustworthy as they. All this makes them so insecure that they have a frenetic compulsion to constantly reassure themselves of your attachment to them by testing its strength.
The only way to test that is by treating you badly to gauge how much abuse you will take. Stupid? or what? What the narcissist thus does to reassure himself of your attachment to him destroys it, causing what he dreads — abandonment. And he knows that. But he just can't stop it. Because he is a mental four-year-old who lives in terror of abandonment and can't control himself.
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