Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Adolf Hitler, Madonna, Kim Kardashian, Kanye West and finally Donald Trump... What do all these people have in common? That they are considered the most famous daffodils of the past and present.

narcissism- this is a property of character, which consists in excessive narcissism and inflated self-esteem, in most cases not corresponding to reality.

In any field, climbing to the top requires incredible self-confidence and belief in your own strength. But at what point does this confidence grow into narcissism? In modern psychology, the term "narcissism" can describe three of its various shapes.

The most famous is the so-called grandiose type narcissism. Such a narcissist is usually a person with a highly inflated self-importance, a brazen or charismatic type, perhaps an extrovert, a manipulator who uses other people.

Narcissist Manipulation and More: 20 Dirty Ways Narcissists, Sociopaths and Psychopaths Manipulate Us. - Ed.

If you imagine a classic narcissist, for example, an actor or a politician, then this is most likely to be a narcissistic personality of the "grand" type.

Another form of narcissism, much less well known, is "vulnerable" narcissism. Such people also feel that everyone owes them, and they are also fixated on themselves, but on top of that they are vulnerable and shy. They may experience anxiety and low self-esteem, as well as being extremely sensitive to criticism. These covert narcissists are very difficult to spot. Although they crave attention, they are too afraid to go out in public.

Both of these types of narcissism are character traits, meaning they are present in "healthy doses" in each of us. But when the manifestations of narcissism are so prevalent in a person that they become a hindrance to her at work, in relationships with other people, and she cannot control it in any way, this can develop into a diagnosis - a narcissistic personality disorder.

Featured in Personal Experience: I have a narcissistic mother. How to overcome the toxic influence of parents. - Ed.

narcissistic personality disorder is a personality disorder in which there is a long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by an exaggerated sense of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of the feelings of others. In Russia, unlike the United States, such a diagnosis is not made. It is absent in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) used in our country.

A person who exhibits marked deviations from social norms is likely to be diagnosed with F60.8 - Other Specific Personality Disorders.

According to Western statistics, about 1% of the population suffers from narcissistic personality disorder, and more men than women. Its causes are not completely known, but it has been established that in some cases the disorder may be hereditary. Narcissistic disorder often co-occurs with other mental disorders, in particular with depression, bipolar disorder, anorexia, and substance abuse.

People with narcissistic personality disorder have been found to have less gray matter in the left anterior sheath, the part of the brain responsible for empathy, emotional regulation, compassion, and cognition.

If you have narcissistic personality disorder, then it probably affects your daily life... negatively. It is possible that you are dissatisfied with life in general and are upset when others do not admire you or do not pay special attention to you. Your work, personal life, and relationships with other people are also likely to suffer, however, you do not see your own role in this. People with narcissistic personality disorder are rarely able to recognize the devastating effects their behavior has on themselves and others.

By having a food addiction, in most cases, we create a co-dependent relationship. Codependent relationships tend to involve narcissistic people or people who have narcissistic parents.

Interestingly, there are still no studies of who is more among narcissists: men or women.

In the modern world, the term "narcissist" means nothing more than a person who loves himself too much and tries to look good, but narcissism is much more complicated than this superficial concept. Narcissism comes in many shades, from extra healthy to pathological grandiosity. It is necessary to distinguish the narrow-minded concept of "narcissist" from the full-blown narcissistic personality disorder.

You can determine how the relationship will develop in a pair with Narcissus already on the first date.

When we try to imagine a narcissist, as a rule, a sociable, self-confident person, the soul of the company, who always tries to be in the spotlight, appears in our imagination. However, this is only a general collective image, despite the fact that in reality there are many varieties and manifestations of narcissistic personality disorders.

In psychotherapy, the whole variety of narcissistic personality disorders is divided into 3 main subtypes: Open(Constructive narcissism) Closed(Deficit Narcissism) and Poisonous(Destructive narcissism). You can find different classifications and names from different authors, and the number of subtypes distinguished can also vary. Those narcissists that I call Poisonous are constantly criticizing themselves and those around them. In general, in order to understand the difference between these three subgroups, it is enough to highlight their basic psychological need. In short, then:

• Open daffodils: want to be admired;
• Closed daffodils: emotionally dependent on a partner, his success and position in society;
• Poisonous daffodils: strive for dominance and try to morally destroy the other person.

Why do you need to know which subgroup your Narcissist belongs to?

If you plan to continue dating a person suffering from narcissistic personality disorder, you need to be clear about what awaits you and how your relationship will develop. Already at the moment when you realize that your potential partner is somehow suffering from a narcissistic disorder, you will be able to determine what kind of person he is. If you have already studied the topic of narcissism enough, you probably noticed that the narcissist:

• Too preoccupied with the issue of self-esteem;
• Egocentric;
• Inability to empathize with others;
• Differs in hypersensitivity to occurring events;
• Loses self-control easily;
• Unable to adequately assess themselves and others;
• He is very concerned about his reputation.

These characteristics make it difficult for people with narcissistic personality disorder to maintain stable friendships and romantic relationships.

Narcissistic subgroups

In view of the foregoing, assigning an individual to one or another subgroup allows us to determine quite precisely how the relationship will develop.

It is possible that you have already dated a narcissist once without realizing it.

Each of the three narcissistic subgroups has its own "scenario" for the development of relationships. The problem is that in society it is customary to consider only those who belong to the Open subgroup as narcissists. Therefore, many may not even be aware that they have some form of narcissistic personality disorder. It is possible that you have been married to a Closed Narcissist for many years without even realizing it.

When a relationship breaks out and a spouse's narcissistic disorder suddenly kicks in, people ask me, "How could my husband suddenly become a narcissist after all these years?" The answer is negative. Narcissistic personality disorder is formed in childhood and can be diagnosed at an early age. adulthood. You just didn't notice its manifestation until this particular moment.

Why is narcissistic disorder suddenly manifesting itself now?

Most likely, your spouse recently experienced some kind of serious life crisis that seriously shook his self-esteem. In trying to cope with this challenge, he had to step up his narcissistic "self-defense". And that, in turn, made you pay attention to his narcissistic disorder.

Throughout your relationship, your spouse may have repeatedly used similar defensive tactics and exhibited their narcissistic "features." You just didn't understand the real reason before. But once you determine what is behind it, you will finally be able to understand what was behind the many conflicts and quarrels that you have had to go through over all these long years.

Let's try to give a brief description of each of the three narcissistic subgroups and their typical "scenarios" for the development of relationships.

The following is short description three main types of narcissistic personality disorder, as well as the most typical behavior of narcissists on the first date. The way they behave on the first date allows you to determine in advance how your future relationship will be built. So, you can decide in advance how expedient it is to continue this relationship. It is important to remember that on the first date, the narcissist will try to make you look better than he really is. And if already on the first date you feel uncomfortable in his company, you can be sure that in the future this feeling will only intensify.

Narcissists are quite easy to "read" by their behavior. What's more, they tend to carry the same model across all their relationships. So you can be sure that the way he behaves on the first date will be repeated again and again.

open daffodils

Perhaps this is the most popular subgroup. These people love to be the center of attention. They tend to dominate conversations, feel entitled to special treatment, act supremely self-confident, and love to tell stories and give advice. In case of danger, they begin to behave like "Great Almighty Critics".

With this behavior, narcissists try to drown out their insecurities and low self-esteem. Instead of remaining ordinary people with their own strengths and weaknesses, they begin to convince everyone around them that they are special and that they always know better what to do in a given situation. They also expect others to agree with their point of view, which is non-negotiable.

However, this is only a very thin protective "facade" behind which narcissists hide their experiences. This is why Open Narcissists are hyper-sensitive to all external stimuli. They lose their temper very quickly and lose their temper easily. They may show cruelty towards others due to the fact that they are not capable of empathy.

In those rare moments when they do not brag about their achievements or do not tell stories about their loved ones, they criticize and devalue everyone who disagrees with them. They may brutally taunt those within earshot: "Oh my God, she looks awfully fat in that dress!" or "I can't believe our waiter is so dumb!" They don't care about other people's reactions to their attitudes and actions. They are so blinded by their defense that they think everyone either agrees with them or thinks what they say is funny.

Example: a date between Sergei and Elena.

Sergey, an entrepreneur, an open narcissist, asked Elena, a pretty woman whom he met on the Internet on a dating site, for a date. This is how each of them described this date later:

Sergey:

Elena:“It was an evening wasted. The date was just awful. All he did was talk about himself all evening. He didn't care at all about me. He ordered me a steak and red wine despite my protest. I don't eat red meat and was about to order a salmon steak - it looked so appetizing! I wanted to try that peach cocktail with vodka, but he insisted on red wine ... And so it went on all evening. If he calls me or writes me at least once, I won’t even pick up the phone!”

Typical Relationship Development Scenario with an Open Narcissist: They are insensitive and powerful. They expect you to admire them and agree with them on everything. Disagreement is seen as criticism and provokes a sharp negative response. They need a partner to constantly remind them that they are special, perfect, and always right about everything.

closed daffodils

Unlike their "brothers" from the first subgroup, closed narcissists do not like to be in the spotlight. They want to be "special", but at the same time they are very aggressive. From childhood, they are taught that those around them envy them because they
"special". Such children often grow up with parents - Open Narcissists, who from childhood belittle the dignity of their child, because they see him as a rival. The only time a parent praised or admired such a child was when the child admired his parent. Thus, their own "megalomania" is constantly suppressed, and the child grows up deeply insecure.

Closed narcissists are uncomfortable being the center of attention and accepting compliments. They are afraid that sooner or later they will be “punished” for this praise, and their achievements will be devalued - as their parents did in childhood. Such people often enter into unhealthy dependent relationships, religious sects, and so on. This way they feel safe.

You will never hear from them:"I'm special, you should admire me!". Rather, he will convince you of the particularity and uniqueness of his partner, hobbies, hobbies, religion.

Instead of openly demanding things, closeted narcissists sometimes try to manipulate people into getting what they want. They may play the victim and press on compassion to convince you of something. They often try to appear better than they really are.

Many people with closed narcissistic personality disorder let their overconfident friends manipulate them. They hope to receive praise for their efforts and endeavors.

Example: a date between Sergei and Ekaterina.

We are already familiar with Sergey from the first example. Now he has his first date with Ekaterina, the Closed Narcissist. This is how they later commented on that evening:

Sergey: in general, his impressions of a date with Ekaterina are not much different from a date with Elena - we can say that he uses the same relationship scenario with all the girls. For open narcissists like Sergei, partners tend to be interchangeable as long as they perform the function he needs.

“I think I impressed her! I told her about my powerful friends, I took her to a fantastic restaurant, ordered a great dinner and chose a great wine that she had never tasted before. I can't wait for the next date. She's hot! Next time after the restaurant, we will go to my house.”

Catherine:“I really liked Sergey, he is amazing! I can't even believe that I can be interested in him. He's so confident! I liked that he organized everything himself and even helped me choose a dish in the restaurant. It's amazing that he guessed that I like steak and good red wine!

Being a closed narcissist, Catherine idealizes Sergei and praises those of his narcissistic qualities that Elena did not like so much. In addition, Catherine does not see the true motives of Sergei. Unlike Elena, who quickly saw through the selfish Sergey, Ekaterina idealizes his imperious qualities. She confuses confidence and selfishness.

Typical Relationship Development Scenario with a Closed Narcissist: They choose as partners those who idealize their personal qualities, who do not doubt their perfection and superiority. They are very dependent on this praise and are grateful for even a small compliment and praise addressed to them. They often enter into relationships with Open Narcissists because they mistake their external "magnificence" for true self-confidence.

Poisonous Daffodils

Perhaps this is the most unpleasant subgroup. It’s not enough for them just to be in the spotlight, they also need to morally destroy and suppress those around them. Among them are often sadists who love to humiliate and hurt other people. They want their partner to obey and fear them.

Some of them could well become Open daffodils, but in
at some point, something went wrong ... Inside they harbor resentment that they could not justify their unrealistic fantasies of limitless achievements. They are boundlessly jealous of those who have something that they would like to have themselves. Instead of building personal happiness and well-being, they do everything possible to ruin the lives of others and level their achievements.

Their venomous intentions are quite obvious when they are expressed openly. An example would be the head bully of the class, who constantly mocks those who are weaker than him, or the boss, who every day humiliates his subordinates in front of colleagues: “You ruined everything again! What an idiot you are! Maybe you just want to be fired so you can stay at home and get unemployment benefits because you're too lazy to work?!"

Poisonous daffodils can also hide their true motives quite well. You probably have some kind of aunt who constantly torments you with uncomfortable questions, putting you in an uncomfortable position in front of the whole family, for example: “Why are you so fat? At your age, your parents weren't that fat” or “You should be really ashamed that you lost your job again! How many times have you been fired? It's strange why such a bright girl like you is not able to stay in one place?

Example: Sergey and Julia

Our old friend Sergei invited Yulia, a poisonous daffodil, on a date. Sergei once again tried to crank out the same scheme. And this is what came out of it.

Sergey:“Let me order for you. I know you'll be delighted."

Julia: (After tasting the steak and taking a few sips of wine). “Oh, what a pity that quality beef is not served in restaurants today. But don't get upset. You are not the only one being deceived. Many people do not even suspect that they are eating a fake, simply because they have never tasted truly delicious meat in their lives! But the wine is pretty good. I understand why you chose this one - compared to other wines on the menu, this is nothing ... ".

As you probably noticed, Julia is trying in every possible way to drag the role of leader over to herself and suppress Sergey. She consistently destroys everything that can give Sergei pleasure. According to Yulia, she is a true steak and wine expert, and poor Sergey has simply never tasted truly delicious meat and wine. She does her best to belittle Sergei.

Typical Relationship Development Scenario with a Poisonous Narcissist: Their main goal is to assert themselves against your background, to make you feel inferior and inadequate. Living with them is sheer humiliation. You can never please them. They will never praise you. Your self-confidence with which you entered into a relationship with them is likely to be destroyed and replaced by self-doubt.

Devaluation and Narcissistic Personality Disorder

All narcissists devalue other people in one way or another in order to maintain the illusion of their own uniqueness. They may say terrible things to you that will make you believe you are worthless. The only thing that distinguishes the three types of narcissists is the object of their humiliation.

open daffodils: will openly belittle other people from whom they cannot get admiration, or who suddenly decide to criticize them. However, they are unlikely to attack those who are undeniably superior to them in status or achievement - only on their equals and those who, in their opinion, are clearly inferior to them in greatness.

Because of this feature, some people mistakenly confuse open daffodils with poisonous daffodils. As you can see from the examples above, Open Narcissist Sergey tried in every possible way to earn admiration, while Yulia, Poisonous Narcissist, immediately began to belittle Sergey.

closed daffodils: Poisonous narcissists are more likely to criticize themselves than those around them. They constantly apologize. If they criticize other people, it is usually behind their backs or in the form of sarcastic statements about them. They are more openly envious than publicly insulting or attacking others.

Poisonous daffodils: Poisonous daffodils love to confuse people. They also love to confuse people. They often begin communication by belittling the dignity of their interlocutor, putting him in an awkward position - the example of Yulia and Sergey. They can do it both explicitly and covertly. Unlike Open Narcissists, who at first try their best to impress their interlocutor with their greatness and resort to criticism only when they fail to get the desired admiration, poisonous narcissists immediately use their favorite weapon. They would rather be feared than admired.

Conclusion

As you can see from the examples above, daffodils are different. People with narcissistic personality disorder can be divided into three general subgroups: open, closed, and venomous narcissists, based on how they deal with a major problem in the narcissist's life: What can I do to restore my shattered self-esteem?

All narcissists use other people to restore their self-esteem. If you are thinking about entering into a relationship with a narcissist (or are already in a relationship with him), it will be useful for you to determine which subgroup your partner belongs to. So you can better understand what role he assigns to you in your relationship, and what you can expect from him in the future. Depending on your personality and beliefs, you may be quite comfortable with one type of narcissist, while another type can literally drive you crazy.

Know that it's never too late to change your life and relationships! It is possible to create a healthy, fulfilling, happy relationship with a man. Often this requires therapeutic work. The specialists of our Clinic have all the practical tools for the treatment of co-dependent relationships, especially with narcissistic types of people.

The experience of analyzing transference relationships in patients whose psychopathology is dominated by narcissistic omnipotent object relations and the resulting negative therapeutic reactions (as in the patients discussed in the previous two chapters) has drawn my attention to the important role of recognizing and analyzing aggression and destructiveness, and in what special way they are included in the life of the narcissistic individual. In the course of a fairly detailed study of narcissism, it seemed to me essential to distinguish between its libidinal and destructive aspects.

Looking at the libidinal aspect of narcissism, we can see that a revaluation of the self, based mainly on the idealization of the self, plays a central role. The idealization of the self is supported by omnipotent introjective and projective identifications with ideal objects and their qualities. Thus, the narcissist feels that everything of value relating to external objects and the world outside is part of him or omnipotently controlled by him. The negative consequences of such processes are obvious, and Freud (Freud, 1914) generally discussed narcissism in connection with the distribution of libido in the ego and its pathological consequences. According to Freud, in the conditions of narcissism there is a loss of all object cathexis and there is no transfer (due to indifference to objects). But Freud also described narcissism in connection with the narcissist's love of his self and in connection with self-regard. He emphasized, for example, that "everything that one possesses and that is achieved, every remnant of a primitive sense of omnipotence confirmed by experience contributes to raising self-esteem" (1914: SE 14: 98). In my opinion, this type of narcissism often acts as an essential shield of the self, and some patients become extremely vulnerable when frustrations and humiliations break through the narcissistic defenses and holes are created in it. That is why it is so important to distinguish the positive side of the idealization of the self from its negative side. Therefore, I would like to emphasize that, despite my attention to the negative consequences of narcissistic processes, I also carefully study the positive [their] results. Analyzing all narcissistic phenomena in the same way can be disastrous for therapy.

When we consider narcissism from its destructive aspect, we find that the idealization of the self again plays a central role, but now the omnipotent destructive parts of the self are idealized. They are directed both against every positive libidinal object relation and against every libidinal part of the self that feels the need for an object and wishes to depend on it. 2) The destructive omnipotent parts of the self often remain disguised, or may be mute and split off, which obscures their existence and leaves the impression that they have nothing to do with the outside world. In fact, they contribute extremely strongly to the prevention of dependence object relations and to the maintenance of a permanent devaluation of external objects, which causes the narcissistic individual to seem indifferent to external objects and the world.

Experience shows that in those narcissistic states where libidinal aspects predominate, overt destructiveness becomes evident in the analytic relationship as soon as the patient's omnipotent idealization of the self is threatened by contact with an object perceived as separate from the self (as in the case of Adam, discussed in chapter four). . Such patients feel humiliated and destroyed by the revelation that in fact the valuable qualities that they attributed to their creative power contain an external object. The primary function of the narcissistic state is to cover up any feeling of envy and destructiveness and to keep the patient away from these feelings. However, as soon as the analysis demonstrates to the patient the existence of these desires, his feelings of resentment and revenge for the stolen omnipotent narcissism are weakened. Then envy can be experienced consciously, and the analyst can gradually be recognized as a valuable external person who can help.

Conversely, when the destructive aspects of narcissism predominate, the difficulty is that this destructiveness is much harder to expose. Envy [in such cases] is more violent, and [the patient] finds it harder to endure. He is overwhelmed with the desire to destroy the analyst, who, through the transference, is the only object and the only source of life and prosperity. The patient is extremely frightened by the destructiveness that the analytic work exposes to him. Therefore, such a course of analysis is often accompanied by the emergence of violent self-destructive impulses. To put it in terms of an infantile situation, such narcissistic patients stubbornly believe that they gave life to themselves and are able to feed and take care of themselves without any help. Therefore, when faced with the reality of their dependence on the analyst (symbolizing the parents, in particular the mother), it is as if they prefer to die, to become non-existent, to deny the fact of their birth, and also to destroy all analytical and personal progress and all comprehension (which represents in them the child they feel was created by an analyst representing the parents). At this point, such patients often want to quit analysis, but more often they act out in other self-destructive ways, seeking to ruin their professional success and personal relationships. Some of them begin to experience severe depression and suicidal thoughts, and openly express a desire to die, to disappear into oblivion. Death is idealized as the solution to all problems. Our main goal in this chapter is to better understand how this kind of destructive narcissism functions and how to prevent and manage the negative therapeutic reactions that result from attempts to treat it.

death instinct

Over the past ten years I have made a series of detailed observations and have changed my views. I am now convinced that some deadly force within the patient, reminiscent of what Freud called the death instinct, exists and can be clinically observed. In some patients, this destructive force manifests itself as a chronic paralyzing resistance that can delay analysis for many years. In others, it takes the form of a deadly but hidden force that keeps the patient away from life and sometimes causes severe anxieties of overload and violent death. It is this deadly force that most resembles the death instinct described by Freud, which remains silent and hidden, but resists the patient's desire to live and get better. Freud himself did not think it possible to activate the destructive impulses hidden in the silent death drives. But our modern techniques of analysis are often able to help the patient become more aware of something deadly within him. His dreams and [unconscious] fantasies may reveal the existence of a murderous force within him. This force tends to be a greater threat when the patient tries to turn more to life and rely more on the help of analysis. Sometimes a deadly force from within threatens both the patient and his external objects with murder, especially when the patient feels that he is being seized by a deadly destructive "explosion".

By proposing his dualistic theory of the life and death instincts, Freud (Freud, 1920) opened a new era in the psychoanalytic understanding of the destructive phenomena of mental life. He emphasized that the death instinct silently draws a person towards death, and only through the action of the life instinct is this death-like force projected outward in the form of destructive impulses directed against objects in the external world. In 1920, Freud (SE 18: 258) wrote: "usually the erotic instinct (of life) and the instinct of death are present in living beings as a mixture or fusion (fusion), but may well occur in a separate form" 1) .

In 1933 Freud (SE 22: 105) returns to the discussion of the fusion of the erotic instinct and the death instinct. He adds that “[these] fusions can also break up, and such a break-up can have the most severe consequences for the function. But these views are still too new, no one has yet tried to use them in their work. He proves that usually the life and death instincts are mixed or merged to one degree or another, and hardly any of them can be observed in a "pure form". Many analysts objected to the death instinct theory and were tempted to ignore it as completely speculative and abstract. However, Freud himself and other analysts, including Melanie Klein, 3) soon demonstrated the enormous clinical significance of this theory - using it to understand masochism, unconscious guilt, negative therapeutic reactions and resistance to treatment. four)

In discussing this psychoanalytic approach to narcissistic neurosis, Freud (Freud, 1916) stressed that he had hit an insurmountable wall. However, when in 1937 he described deep-seated resistances to analytic treatment, he did not explicitly correlate resistances in narcissism with resistances in inert states and in negative therapeutic reactions: he attributed both to the death instinct. Nevertheless, there is a clear connection in his work between narcissism, narcissistic withdrawal, and the death instinct. 5) The infant must develop a self or ego, a means of coping with the impulses and anxieties emanating from the life and death instincts, and finding a way to relate to objects and express love and hate. In this context, Freud's theory of the fusion and separation of the life and death instincts seems to be of decisive importance. He proves that the development of the internal mental structure includes the "binding" of the derivatives of the life and death instincts so that they do not overwhelm a person. Whereas in normal development the instinctive impulses experienced in object relations are gradually recognized and directed towards the appropriate external objects (impulses of aggression, love, hatred, destructiveness, etc.), in pathological situations where there is considerable corruption, a destructive narcissistic organization. These, as a rule, omnipotent, forms of organization sometimes have an open, but more often hidden, powerful destructive effect; they are anti-life and destroy the bonds between objects and the self by attacking or killing parts of the self, but they are also destructive of any good objects and attempt to devalue and eliminate them as meaningful objects.

I believe that the emergence and persistence in adulthood of narcissistic omnipotent object relations is usually found in patients who show strong resistance to analytic treatment. They often react to analysis with deep and persistent self-destruction. In these patients, the destructive impulses have become separated (unrelated) and actively dominate the personality as a whole and all relationships of the patient. In analysis, such patients express their feelings only slightly disguised, devaluing the work of the analyst through stubborn indifference, artfully monotonous behavior, and sometimes through open belittling. Thus they assert their superiority over the analyst (representing life and creativity), wasting or destroying his work, understanding and pleasure. They feel superior in being able to control and keep to themselves those parts of themselves that want to depend on the analyst as a helper. They act as if the loss of any love object, including the analyst, leaves them cold or even excites them in a sense of triumph. Such patients experience occasional shame and some persecutory anxiety, but only minimal guilt, since too little of their libidinal self is kept alive to be cared for. These patients appear to have abandoned the struggle between their destructive and libidinal impulses by attempting to rid themselves of their concern for and love of their objects by killing their loving dependent self and identifying themselves almost entirely with the destructive narcissistic part of the self that provides them with a sense of superiority and self-adoration. Analyzing clinical symptoms, such as the desire to die or to withdraw into a state of non-existence or lifelessness, which at first glance can be taken as manifestations of the death instinct, described by Freud as a primary death drive, I generally found on closer examination that some active destructiveness is involved here, directed by the self not only against objects, but also against parts of the self. In 1971, I called this phenomenon "destructive narcissism," implying that it idealizes and submits to the destructive aspects of the self; they capture and hold positive dependent aspects of the self (Rosenfeld, 1971). They are opposed to any libidinal relationship between patient and analyst.

An example of such a phenomenon was observed in one of my narcissistic patients, Simon. For a long time he managed to keep all his relations to external objects and the analyst dead and empty by constantly killing every part of his self that was trying to establish object relations. On one occasion he illustrated this through a dream. There, a little boy was in a coma, dying from some type of poisoning. He was lying on a bed in the courtyard, and he was threatened by the hot midday sun, which was beginning to shine on him. Simon stood beside him but did nothing to move or protect him. He only felt his disapproval and superiority over the doctor treating the child, since it was he who had to see that the boy was moved into the shadows. Simon's prior behavior and associations indicated that the dying boy symbolized his dependent libidinal self, which he maintained in a state of death by preventing it from receiving help and nourishment from me, the analyst. I demonstrated to him that even as he approached the seriousness of his mental state experienced as a dying state, he did not lift a finger to help himself or help me take steps to save him, as he used the killing of his infantile dependent self to triumph over me or flaunt my failures. The dream showed that the destructive narcissistic state is maintained in force by keeping the libidinal infantile self in a position of death or dying. However, after a lot of work, it was sometimes possible to find a part of Simon that did not feel self-sufficient and dead, and communicate with him in a way that made him feel more alive. Then he admitted that he would like to get better, but soon felt that his soul was being carried away from my office. He became so distant and sleepy that he almost fell asleep. It was a colossal resistance, almost a stone wall that prevented any study of the situation. It only gradually became clear that Simon felt repulsed by any close contact with me, because as soon as he felt help, there was not only the danger that he might need me more, but also the fear that he would attack me with mocking and belittling thoughts. . 6)

Simon's case illustrates my assertion that the contact with help is experienced as a weakening of the patient's narcissistic omnipotent superiority and opens him up to conscious feelings of overwhelming envy, which his former detachment allowed him to completely avoid. It also illustrates the view I have come to in recent years: namely, that it is necessary to clearly recognize the operation of a highly organized chronic and active narcissistic defense organization on the one hand, and a more secret and latent deadly force that can be a chronic paralyzing resistance that delays analysis on for many years, on the other hand, and to distinguish between them. The latter operates very much like Freud's description of the death instinct - the silent and hidden force that opposes all progress - and includes (just like the death instinct) a deep obsession with death and destructiveness; it is often located outside the narcissistic defensive organization and supports it. It is characterized by overwhelming murderousness and a sense of deadness or mortality, which often conceals a preoccupation with consequences. The patient feels himself or the analyst dead, or feels that they will become so if the lethal force is recognized. This frightens the patient, as in Simon's case, to the point that it must remain hidden. The patient is often secretly convinced that he has destroyed his caring self, his love forever, and there is nothing anyone can do to change this situation. However, our modern technique of analysis, which involves careful observation of the patient's dreams and transference behavior, allows us to help the patient become aware of this certainty and the power that engenders it, and to become aware of the support that this certainty gives to the destructive omnipotent way of life in which the patient is content. Frequent interpretation and strong opposition to Simon's destructive narcissistic thoughts and behavior, to my complete surprise, brought about a significant change in the patient's personality and his attitude towards other people. He seems to have been helped by my behavior and interpretation that a part of him, especially his infantile self, masochistically colluded and accepted this paralyzing death state, submitting to torture instead of recognizing the need and lust for life. When he stopped treatment, he already felt better, although he was able to recognize how much he had recovered only after a while, when his symptoms disappeared. Subsequently, he had an extremely successful career, during which he had to deal with many people, and received high recognition.

The destructive omnipotent lifestyle of patients like Simon often seems highly organized, as if we are facing a powerful gang led by a leader who controls all members of the gang and makes sure they support each other, adding efficiency and power to the criminal destructive work. However, the narcissistic organization not only increases the strength of destructive narcissism and the lethal force associated with it, it has the defensive purpose of maintaining its rule and thus maintaining the status quo. The main goal seems to be to prevent the weakening of the organization and to control the members of the gang so that they do not defect from the destructive organization and join the positive parts of the self, or give out the secrets of the gang to the police protecting the Super-Ego, which supports the assisting analyst, that may be able to save the patient. Often, when this type of patient makes progress in analysis and wants change, he dreams of being attacked by mafia members or juvenile delinquents, and a negative therapeutic reaction ensues. In my experience, narcissistic organization is not primarily directed against guilt and anxiety; its purpose seems to be to preserve the idealization and irresistible force of destructive narcissism. To change, to accept help means weakness; this is experienced as a mistake or failure by the destructive narcissistic organization which provides the patient with a sense of superiority. In cases of this kind, there is the most determined chronic resistance to analysis, and only an extremely detailed demonstration of this system allows the analysis to get off the ground. 7)

In some narcissistic patients, the destructive narcissistic parts of the self are associated with a psychotic structure or organization that is split off from the rest of the personality. This psychotic structure is like a delusional world or object into which parts of the self tend to withdraw (Meltzer 1963, personal communication). It seems to be dominated by an omnipotent or omniscient, extremely ruthless part of the self, which creates the idea that there is absolutely no pain inside the delusional object and there is freedom to indulge in any sadistic activity. This whole structure serves the narcissistic self-sufficiency and is strictly directed against any reference to objects. Destructive impulses in this delusional world sometimes openly manifest themselves in the patient's unconscious material as irresistibly cruel, threatening the rest of the self with death in order to assert their power, but more often they manifest themselves in a hidden form, omnipotently benevolent, salutary, promising to provide the patient with quick, ideal solutions to all his problems. These false promises turn the patient's normal self into a dependent or drug-addicted one on his omnipotent self, and lure the normal sane parts into this delusional structure to imprison them there. When narcissistic patients of this type begin to advance slightly in analysis and form a dependence relation to analysis, severe negative therapeutic reactions occur as the narcissistic psychotic part exercises its power and dominance over life and the reality-symbolizing analyst in an attempt to lure the dependent self into the psychotic omnipotent dream state. , which leads to the loss of the patient's sense of reality and the ability to think. In fact, there is a danger of an acute psychotic state here if the dependent part of the patient, the most sane part of his personality, succumbs and turns away from the outside world, completely submitting to the dominance of the psychotic delusional structure. eight)

In these situations, in the clinical dimension, it is extremely important to help the patient find and rescue the dependent healthy part of the self from the trap of the psychotic narcissistic structure, since it is this part that is the most important connection with the positive object relation to the analyst and the world. Secondly, it is important to gradually promote the patient's full awareness of the split off destructive omnipotent parts of the self that control the psychotic organization, since it can only remain omnipotent in isolation. When this process is fully revealed, it will become clear that it contains the destructive envious impulses of the self that have become isolated, and then the omnipotence that has such a hypnotic effect on the self as a whole will weaken, and the infantile nature of this omnipotence can be demonstrated. In other words, the patient will gradually become aware that an omnipotent infantile part of himself dominates him, which not only pushes him to death, but also infantilizes him and prevents him from growing, preventing him from objects that can help him in growth and development.

Robert

The first case I want to report concerns Robert, a patient with chronic resistance to analysis. This case is meant to illustrate how the split-off omnipotent destructive aspect of the patient's [mental] functioning can be made visible in the analysis, and this brings good results. This patient had been analyzed for many years in another country, but his analyst eventually decided that his masochistic character structure was beyond analysis.

Robert was married and had three children. He was a scientist and longed for further analysis in order to overcome his problems. What is significant in his story is what he heard from his mother: when he was teething in infancy, he began to regularly bite her breasts, and so viciously that the breasts always bled after feeding, and they were scarred. But the mother did not take her breast after the bite and seemed to resign herself to suffering. The patient believed that he was breastfeeding over a year and a half. Robert also remembered being given very painful enemas from early childhood. It is also important to understand that his mother ran the household, and considered her husband an extremely insignificant creature who should live in a basement that looked more like a cellar. At first, Robert cooperated quite well in the analysis and advanced quite well. But in the fourth year of analysis, his progress slowed. The patient became difficult to reach and constantly undermined therapeutic efforts. Robert was forced to leave London from time to time on short business trips, often returning on Mondays too late and therefore missed either part of the session or the whole session. On these business trips he often met women, and brought into analysis many of the problems he had with them. It was clear from the outset that some acting out was going on, but it was not until he began to regularly report dreams with murderous acts that he had after such weekends that it became clear that violent destructive attacks on analysis and analytics were hidden in the acting out behavior. At first, Robert was reluctant to acknowledge the suicidal nature of the weekend acting out and blocked the progress of the analysis, but gradually changed his behavior, the analysis became more effective, and he reported a significant improvement in some personal relationships and in professional activity. At the same time, he began to complain that his sleep was often disturbed and that he woke up in the middle of the night with palpitations and itching in his anus, which prevented him from falling asleep for several more hours. During these anxiety attacks, he felt that his hands did not belong to him: they seemed violently destructive, as if they wanted to destroy something. He scratched his anus vigorously until it began to bleed profusely; his arms were too strong for him to control, so he had to yield to them.

Then he had a dream about a very strong, arrogant man of three meters in height, to whom he had to obey unquestioningly. His associations indicated that this man symbolized a part of himself and was associated with destructive overpowering sensations in his hands that he could not resist. I gave the interpretation that he considers this omnipotent destructive part of himself a three-meter-tall superman to be too strong to disobey. He has renounced this omnipotent self associated with anal masturbation, which explains the alienation of his hands during his nocturnal attacks. I further described this split-off self as its infantile omnipotent part, which claims to be not a child, but stronger and stronger than all adults, especially mother and father, and now an analyst. His adult self was so completely deceived and thus weakened by this omnipotent claim that he felt unable to fight the destructive impulses at night.

Robert reacted to this interpretation with surprise and relief, and after a few days reported that he felt more able to control his hands at night. Gradually he became more aware that the nocturnal destructive impulses were in some way connected with the analysis, as they increased after every success that could be attributed to the analysis. He saw it as a desire to rip out and destroy that part of him that depended on and valued the analyst. At the same time, the split-off aggressive narcissistic impulses became more conscious during the analytic sessions, and he remarked mockingly: "Well, you have to sit here all day and waste your time." He felt like an important person who should have the freedom to do whatever he pleases, no matter how cruel and traumatic it may be for others and himself. He was especially angry at the comprehension and understanding that analysis gave him. He hinted that this anger was due to wanting to rebuke me for helping him, as it interfered with his all-powerful acting out demeanor.

He then related a dream in which he took part in long-distance races and tried very hard. However, there was a young woman present who did not believe in anything he did. She was unscrupulous, vile and tried in every possible way to interfere with him and confuse him. Also mentioned was the woman's brother, who was called "Mundy" (Mundy). He was much more aggressive than his sister, and in his sleep growled like a wild animal, even at her. In a dream, it became known that the entire previous year, the brother had the task of confusing everyone. Robert believed that the name "Mundy" referred to the fact that a year ago he often missed Monday (Monday) sessions. He understood that violent uncontrolled aggressiveness had something to do with him, but he felt that the young woman was also himself. In the past year he had often insisted on sessions that he felt like a woman and treated the analyst with extreme arrogance and contempt. Subsequently, however, he occasionally dreamed of a little girl, receptive and grateful to her teachers, which I interpreted as a part of him seeking to show great gratitude to the analyst - but she was prevented from speaking openly by his omnipotence. In the dream, the patient admits that this aggressive, all-powerful part of him, represented by a man and which dominated the acting out a year ago, has now become quite conscious. His identification with the analyst is expressed in the dream as a determination to try his best in the analysis. However, this dream was also a warning that the patient might continue his aggressive acting out in analysis, insisting in a bewildering way that he could present himself omnipotently as an adult woman without allowing himself to respond to the work of analysis with feelings of responsiveness associated with a more positive infantile part of it. In fact, in analysis, Robert moved towards strengthening his positive dependence, which allowed him to openly demonstrate the opposition of the aggressive narcissistic omnipotent parts of his personality; in other words, the heavy stratification of the [life and death] instincts in the patient gradually turned into their normal fusion.

Jill

My second case, Jill, illustrates the difficulties that arise when the lethal force I mentioned earlier is combined with and sustains a destructive narcissistic lifestyle.

When the patient's destructive narcissism is fused with his omnipotent psychotic structure, he does not believe that anyone can resist his destructive unstoppable attacks. This increases his arousal and the splitting off of any positive feelings. The thorough demonstration of the destructive narcissistic structure in the course of analysis reduces the strength of the feelings of omnipotence, and thus the gap between destructive and positive impulses gradually decreases. Positive impulses, which were previously completely dominated and completely controlled by destructiveness, can now come back to life again, so that the patient's self-observation and his cooperation in analysis can improve.

Of course, it is always important to study the patient's medical history in detail in order to identify specific interpersonal relationships and traumatic experiences that existed in the past and influenced the construction of narcissistic structures. Even patients who seem to identify completely with the narcissistic structure are at times aware of being captured and imprisoned, but do not know how to escape from this prison. In Jill's case, I would like to illustrate how difficult it is to appreciate the nature of life's hidden, secret opposition to progress. The destructive narcissistic structure was gradually revealed in the analysis. It was possible to help Jill discover how overwhelming she felt the urge to turn away from life, as she confused it with her desire to achieve an infantile state of merging with her mother. As Jill gradually began to turn more to life, it was interesting to see how quickly the threat of murder arose in her dreams. This marked the manifestation in consciousness of the destructive narcissistic organization that had long been called "they" and was fused with the entangling lethal force.

Jill underwent many years of psychoanalytic psychotherapy in another country. At the start of this treatment, she experienced a violent impulse to cut her wrists, and when she did, her therapist had her hospitalized for more than three years. At the hospital, staff tried to empathetically understand her psychotic behavior and thinking. She was glad to be in the hospital, because for the first time in her life, her illness, as she called it, was taken seriously. She felt that her parents could not stand that she was sick and therefore did not believe that she was very sick. Her apparent psychotic state was an attempt to more openly express her feelings. Previously, she had felt so shackled by her psychotic rigidity that bleeding out felt less like a desire to die than an attempt to become more alive. Moreover, in a private hospital, she felt great to belong to a gang of patients who smashed windows, broke furniture and violated all hospital rules. She ridiculed any softness and need and considered “usi-pusi”.

Even more than ten years later, during her treatment with me, she often dreamed of those days in the hospital when she could do as she pleased and feel alive. But in fact, as soon as she achieved a little more success in her life, she was overwhelmed by an unknown force, which she called "they" and against which she could do nothing; this force compelled her to lie down in bed. She turned on all the heaters in the bedroom, creating a suffocatingly hot atmosphere, drinking alcohol and reading detective stories, which helped her to banish all meaningful thoughts from her mind. She felt that this behavior was necessary to appease "them" (that is, the destructive forces) that threatened her as she tried to come back to life.

At the time when she began to comprehend her problems, she had a dream in which she was kidnapped from her, but the kidnappers let her walk, taking her word of honor that she would not run away. At first it really seemed that the disease captured her forever. Only very gradually did she realize that the idealization of her destructiveness did not give her freedom, that this was a trap into which she fell under the influence of the hypnotic power of the destructive self, which took the form of a savior and friend, allegedly taking care of her and providing any warmth and nourishment, whatever she she didn't want to - and so she could get rid of the feeling of loneliness. It was this situation that played out during the state of withdrawing into oneself. In essence, however, this so-called friend sought to spoil any contact she tried to establish with regard to work or people. In the course of analysis, the patient gradually became aware that this extremely tyrannical and possessive friend was an omnipotent, very destructive part of her self, pretending to be a friend, which began to frighten her terribly when she tried to continue cooperation in analysis or any progress in life. For a long time, she felt too scared to challenge this aggressive force, and whenever she ran into this barrier, she identified with the aggressive narcissistic self and became aggressive and offensively rude towards me. Sometimes it seemed that I represented her mother, and sometimes - that her infantile self, which she projected into me. However, the main reason for her violent attacks was due to the fact that I challenged the dominance of her aggressive narcissistic state, had the audacity to want to help her or even treat her, and she showed her determination to defeat me at all costs. But after a few days of such attacks, I also felt a secret hope that I - and this "I" also included that self that was directed towards life - could eventually win. In addition, I began to realize that the only alternative to her violent attack on me was her admission that she really wanted to get better - and this put her in danger of being killed by her all-powerful destructive part. After we worked on this situation for many months, the patient had a dream that confirmed and illustrated this problem.

In this dream the patient saw herself in an underground hall or gallery. She decided she wanted to leave, but had to go past the turnstile to get out. The turnstile was blocked by two people standing near it, but on closer examination the patient found that both of them were dead, and in her dream she thought that they had recently been killed. She realized that the killer was still there and she needed to act quickly to save herself. Nearby was the detective's office, where she ran in unannounced, but had to wait a moment in the waiting room. While she was waiting, the killer appeared and threatened to kill her, because he did not want anyone to know what he was doing and already did, and there was a danger that she, the patient, would expose him. She was horrified, burst into the detective's office and so escaped. The killer had fled, and she feared that although she was now saved, the whole situation might repeat itself. However, the detective seemed to be able to follow the trail of the killer, and he was caught, to her almost incredible relief.

Jill immediately realized that the detective personified me, but otherwise the dream was a mystery to her. She never allowed herself to think how afraid she was of being killed if she believed me, asked for help, cooperated as much as she could, and provided all the information she had - especially information about the nature of her own deadly self. In fact, the two dead people in her dream reminded her of previous unsuccessful attempts to get better. In the dream, the analyst as detective was, of course, highly idealized as a man who would not only protect her from her madness, her murderous self and her destructive impulses, but would free her from those fears forever. I took the dream to mean that a part of her had decided to recover and leave the psychotic narcissistic state that the patient had equated with death. But this decision awakened a deadly force ready to kill. It is interesting that after this dream the patient actually turned more towards life, and her fear of death gradually subsided. It seems that in the theoretical and clinical dimension, the work with this patient confirmed the significance of the destructive aspects of narcissism, which in psychotic states completely dominate and overpower the libidinal, object-oriented, sane part of the self and try to deprive it of freedom.

The way Jill was pulled out of life over and over again into a paranoid state of self-isolation illustrates how the deadly force I mentioned earlier works to silently maintain a destructive narcissistic lifestyle. Deadly violence lay hidden behind this silent death drive for a long time before being revealed in the dream. After the killer appeared in the dream, the analysis was able to progress more successfully and the negative therapeutic reactions definitely decreased. This was possible partly due to the fact that Jill gradually became better and a much more loving and warm part of her personality came to light.

Claude

Patients like Jill are never sure if they are killers or if the deadly power is within them. Often they feel they must keep their fear of death and their fear of being a murderer a closely guarded secret. Claude, a patient that Dr. W. spoke about in one of my seminars, demonstrates this very clearly. He had a strong fear of death between the ages of four and seven and later. This horror arose when the parents were nearby, but the patient emphasized that they never knew anything about it, even when he felt on the verge of death. Complete independence from his parents seemed to the patient the only way to protect himself from his fear. He also remembered that sometimes he had secret murderous feelings directed against his mother, especially when she consoled him. One day, he missed an analytic session because he discovered that the windshield of his car was broken. He thought he did it himself sleepy state to prevent yourself from going to the session. He felt a strong need to keep the destructive feelings against the analyst a secret, even from himself. One day he went skiing with his girlfriend during analysis. He only warned Dr. V. of this leave the day before. He hoped to feel better by withdrawing from analysis, but in fact his girlfriend disturbed his mental balance so much that he had to run away from her in order to protect her from himself, and had to also give up skiing, which he loved. He spent most of his time reading a book by the mystical writer Carlos Castaneda. Returning to analysis, he was only gradually able to discover that the vacation had practically paralyzed and extremely exhausted him, and also realized that something inside him threatened to overwhelm him and could probably push him to death. He felt that Castaneda's book helped him in some way. So he got hooked on her. Castaneda explains his horror of death in the book, but advises everyone to make death their only friend in order to pacify it, since death is terribly eager to possess. It seemed clear to me that Claude was afraid that if he gave importance to the analyst and analysis, death would turn from a friend into a jealous mortal enemy. In Claude, the deadly feelings associated with death were directed more towards himself than towards others. It seems that the death drive came out in an almost undisguised form after a long period when he had to hide his fear of death - this secrecy is typical of all problems associated with the death drive. Claude tried to view death as a very kind figure, and avoided all dangers, allowing himself to completely submit to her dominance. With the help of Castaneda's book, he tried to do this, but a somewhat ingenious attempt to make friends with death failed, and he believed that during this so-called vacation he was practically killed.

Richard

My fourth case, Richard, illustrates the existence of a latent, destructive narcissistic way of being that was so idealized that the patient was extremely dependent on and succumbed to this mode of [mental] functioning as the most desirable way of life imaginable. Richard's psychopathology exemplifies how narcissistic object relations take over all aspects of the patient's personality and how a pathological fusion [of instincts] can be created. First of all, Richard was completely unable to make out what was good and bad for him, and this often led him to deep disappointment. He often misjudged situations, and then he was carried away by obvious enthusiasm, so that he could not admit the mistake. Then he became peremptory, arrogant and arrogant, which sometimes led to serious consequences for his life situation.

My patient was youngest child in family; it seems that his brothers and sisters have always treated him with great condescension. He survived an early trauma when, at three months old, he was suddenly weaned from his mother, who broke her hip and had to be hospitalized for several months. He retained memories of a later period, when his mother was sometimes seductive and condescending, but often extremely strict and harsh, which discouraged him. The father was reliable and supportive of the boy, but his mother was inclined to despise him, and at an early age evidently had a profound influence on him. As a child, Richard was very attached to the dog, which he considered an object with which he could do as he pleased, which implies that he not only loved this dog, but often completely neglected it. At the beginning of the analysis, he had a dream about an otter that lived under his house, was absolutely domestic and followed him everywhere. In associating, he had thoughts of his dog and also of a cow's udder. This dream shows that early in life Richard developed an extremely possessive part-object attitude towards his mother's breasts, and this situation continued with the participation of the dog and other objects. He remembered a little girl he played sex games with between the ages of four and six. She tried to stop these games when she grew up. However, her decision to refuse sexual partnership angered him so much that he killed her most beloved object, her cat. So his possessive love easily turned into murderous cruelty when he was rebuked.

The difficulty in Richard's analysis, as in his life, was the ease with which he turned away inwardly and outwardly from objects and seemed to follow impulses that presented themselves to him in a very seductive way and usually led him in the wrong direction. He seemed to be very eager for analysis, but often idealized his contribution to this activity. During his third year of treatment, he had the following dream, which gave us a clue to a better understanding of some of the problems he was struggling with.

In the dream, it happened on a weekend, and the patient suddenly realized that there was no milk in his house; he thought that maybe there was some shop open where he could buy milk, but he was indecisive and did not know what to do in order to get milk quickly. Then he thought of his neighbor, to whom he often turned for help, and did the same this time. The neighbor said that he could give him some milk, but confirmed that there was a dairy shop that was open on Sundays, and he took him to this shop. There was a long line when Richard entered the store, but he resigned himself to having to wait. Customers were served by two saleswomen in white. Before entering the store, a neighbor showed Richard a fivepenny coin with corners. The neighbor did not stand in line, but suddenly appeared again, quickly approached the cash register and exchanged a small coin for a thick bundle of ten-pound notes. He disappeared as quickly as he appeared, and the saleswomen did not notice him. Richard was stunned. At first he thought of informing the women of the brutal brazen theft, but then he remembered that he was primarily responsible for protecting himself and not interfering or meddling in the saleswomen's business for which they were responsible; but in fact he feared for his life. He thought that these women would not be able to protect him from the ruthless neighbor, who, as soon as Richard left the store, would definitely take revenge on him. Why should he endanger his life because of such a theft and because the saleswomen did not take care of their money by leaving the cash register open? When the neighbor ran out of the room with the money, the patient felt intense guilt for not saying anything and thereby colluding with the neighbor. He left the store before it was his turn, feeling very guilty and selfish and knowing it was wrong to remain silent; he felt extremely weak morally. The dream continued. The next moment the patient found himself in a dark narrow alley, dressed in dirty old rags, completely alone. He was the scum, the dregs of society, completely indifferent, completely paralyzed by the hopelessness and helplessness dictated by guilt. He felt that there was nothing good in him, that he himself was a merciless thief. He was a worthless, ruthless coward, incapable of even reporting a theft, let alone stopping it. He deserved to be rejected and forgotten by everyone. He felt that he would die, and rightly so. Then his first girlfriend came up to him and gently patted his cheek with warmth and sympathy. He was surprised, delighted, and warm inside him. Then he began to think that she must be sick and blind herself if she showed warmth to him, a hopeless, spineless nonentity. Or is she unconsciously in cahoots with him? Then his current wife appeared and also showed him some warmth. He felt that both of their lives were in danger of being ruined by their association with him.

The explicit content of the first part of the dream is more surprising, since here Richard reveals with absolute clarity his dependence on the idealized neighbor and his complete denial of the ruthlessness, greed and cruelty of this neighbor. In the dream, the neighbor is not only merciless, he is a murderer, because if he discovers that Richard knows about his cruel crime, he will kill him. This is again a typical personality structure for patients who are controlled by their destructive narcissistic aspect, who pretends to be the ideal friend and helper. In the dream the idealization is destroyed and the patient becomes aware of his collusion with his destructive part, represented by the neighbor. He is aware that he did nothing at all and did nothing to protect the caring milk saleswomen, originally symbolizing good relations with his mother in the feeding situation, and his dependence on the analyst. This problem played a very important role in his analysis. Often the patient, acting out recklessness and ruthlessness, blamed me for this, arguing that I should have known everything in advance and warned him of the problem. In the dream, Richard corrects this attitude, because he admits that what makes him such a difficult patient to analyze is his own collusion with his destructive part, the "neighbor", because he withholds important information about himself from me.

In the second part of the dream, Richard takes full responsibility for his destructive criminal part - which in the waking state he considered almost impossible to do, because he was afraid, as the dream shows, not only that he would be threatened and generally killed by his destructive part, but also that it will actually become completely bad. He was afraid that nothing good could exist in him because he was deceitful. In the dream, he admits that he needs love, but cannot accept it because he feels he does not deserve it; he deserves only death. Thus, in the first half of the dream, Richard is afraid that his bad destructive part will kill him, but in the second half he begins to fear that he will be destroyed by his conscience, his Super-Ego, which will sentence him to death. The problem in particular is the false nature of his idealization of his neighbor, as now Richard seems to question the basis of all adoration and all love, and fears that all love is a hoax and it is obvious that he is completely bad. Therefore, he also does not trust anyone who loves him; he is afraid that everyone who loves him is in cahoots with his badness, and therefore he is deceitful.

Precisely because he admitted his false adoration for his neighbor, it is now very difficult for Richard to trust anyone, including myself in the analysis, when I give any positive interpretation. However, if only destructive strivings are interpreted to such a patient, the analyst will certainly identify with an extremely destructive Super-Ego, which sees only destructiveness in the patient and does not at all appreciate his desire to get out of a bad state. It is clinically critical to distinguish between false idealization of the destructive narcissistic self (which plays such a significant role in drug and alcohol addiction, smoking abuse, etc.) and idealization based on good experiences with good objects in the past or present. Both treatment and theory can suffer if we consider as destructive all the "narcissistic" aspects of the personality, including those that many authors have regarded as healthy or normal components of the personality.

Richard's dreams were very helpful, as they made it clear that his false idealization of a destructive self pretending to be a good and ideal object contributed greatly to the indistinguishability of the good and bad aspects of his personality, so that the good aspects of the self were in danger of being equated with the bad or defeated. these bad things. It is extremely important to distinguish between the forces of life and the forces of death. Essentially they are opposed to each other; when good and bad parts of the self come together, there is a danger that the good and bad parts of the self, and good and bad objects, will become so entangled with each other that the good self will be crushed and temporarily lost in the confusion. This is quite likely when the destructive parts of the self predominate. It is this process that I call pathological fusion. In normal fusion, the aggressive forces of the self are tempered by the libidinal parts of the self. This function of synthesis is absolutely necessary for life - both for the survival of the self, which involves the development of the ego, and for the strengthening and stability of object relations, for normal narcissism and the ability to fight for the preservation of objects and oneself. I also want to emphasize here the pathological fusion or fixation of the patient at an early paranoid-schizoid level of development. Normal fusion is necessary for working through the depressive position: a process that Melanie Klein considers indispensable for all normal development. However, in order to establish a normal fusion, clinically and theoretically, it is necessary to firmly and decisively expose the confusion of good and bad objects and good and bad aspects of the self, since nothing positive or healthy can develop from confusion, and there is a danger of a permanently weak and fragile self. .

The neighbor's dream explained much of the patient's repetitive behavior in the analysis. For many years the patient was unable to communicate to me any self-observation or describe the conflict that led to his omnipotent behavior, which always comes as if unexpectedly. Through this dream about a neighbor, I was able to show him that whenever he encounters difficulties or obstacles, he does not remember that I can help him and take care of him, because then he will be forced to wait for me and admit his dependence on me. In his frustration and impatience, he bypassed his memory of me and appealed to the omnipotent and criminal part of himself, acting ruthlessly and following the impulse, devaluing analysis (which was described as just a fivepenny coin) and quickly grabbing whatever he wanted. He did not even realize to what extent his destructive and criminal narcissistic self (of which he was unconsciously proud because it could get its way quickly and imperceptibly) kept his dependent self under complete control through death threats, so that he felt unable to cooperate in the analysis. In the dream, it became clear that he also felt that there was a conspiracy between his dependent self and his all-powerful, greedy narcissistic self, as he declined any responsibility for having to inform the milkmaids of his observations of his neighbour. On the other hand, as I have already mentioned, I often found that when he told a dream or gave associations, he attributed all the progress to himself. This is, of course, a typical problem in the analysis of narcissistic patients who insist on possessing the analyst as a mother's breast. It is therapeutically important to demonstrate in such a patient the dominion over the whole self of his omnipotent destructive narcissistic self: since this allowed Richard to gradually better use the analysis, we were able to achieve a satisfactory therapeutic result.

Translation: Z. Babloyan
Editorial staff: I.Yu. Romanov

Notes:

1) The quotation should probably be dated 1922 (23), since it is taken from the encyclopedic article "The Libido Theory"; eight). - Note. transl.

2) This is also noted by Andre Green (1984) (see chapter one, note 6), but in a slightly different vein.

3) Abraham went much further than Freud in studying latent negative transference and in clarifying the nature of the destructive impulses he encountered in his clinical work with narcissistic patients. In narcissistic psychotic patients, he emphasized the arrogant arrogance and aloofness of the narcissist and interpreted the negative aggressive attitude in the transference. As early as 1919, he gave impetus to the analysis of latent negative transference by describing a particular form of neurotic resistance to the analytic method. He found a marked narcissism in such patients, and paid particular attention to the hostility and disdain that lurked beneath the seeming willingness to cooperate. He described how the narcissistic attitude attaches itself to the transference and how such patients belittle and devalue the analyst and reluctantly assign him an analytic role representing the father. They reverse the positions of the patient and the analyst in order to demonstrate their superiority over the analyst. Abraham emphasized that the element of envy is certainly manifest in the behavior of these patients, and thus clinically and theoretically linked narcissism and aggression. Interestingly, however, Abraham never tried to relate his findings to Freud's theory of the life and death instincts.

Reich (1933) opposed Freud's theory of the death instinct. In doing so, he made fundamental contributions to the analysis of narcissism and latent negative transference. He also emphasized, in contrast to Freud, that in the patient narcissistic attitudes and latent conflicts, including negative feelings, can be activated and brought to the surface in the analysis and then worked through. He believed that "in every case, without exception, the analysis begins with a more or less explicit attitude of distrust and criticism, which, as a rule, remains hidden" (Reich, 1933: 30).

Reich believed that the analyst should constantly point out what is hidden and should not be misled by an outwardly positive transference to the analyst. He explored in detail the armor of character, where the narcissistic defense finds its concrete chronic expression. Describing narcissistic patients, he emphasized their arrogant, sarcastic and envious attitude, as well as their contemptuous behavior. One patient, constantly occupied with thoughts of death, complained in every session that the analysis did not affect him and was completely useless. This patient also admitted an unbounded envy, not of the analyst, but of other people whom he felt inferior to. Gradually Reich became aware of and was able to show the patient his triumph over the analyst and his attempts to make the analyst feel worthless, worthless and powerless, unable to achieve anything. Then the patient was able to admit that he could not bear anyone's superiority and was always trying to subvert such a person. Reich notes (Reich, 1933: 30): "So there was repressed aggression, the most extreme manifestation of which has hitherto been the death wish."

Reich's findings on covert aggression, envy, and narcissism are in many ways reminiscent of Abraham's 1919 description of narcissistic resistance.

A number of serious analysts, apart from Freud, emphasized the importance of the death instinct and correlated it scrupulously with their clinical work and experience. Federn (1932: 148), in an article entitled "The Reality of the Death Instinct" - in German "Die Wirklichkeit des Todestriebs" - emphasizes that the death drive can be observed in its purest form in melancholia, where destructive impulses are significantly separated from any libidinal feelings:

“It is terrible to watch how a melancholic, in whom the death instinct is active, without any connection with Eros, constantly expresses hatred and all the time tries to destroy every possibility of happiness and good fortune in the outside world in the most cruel way. The death instinct in him fights with Eros outside.

Federn also correlates the death instinct with the feelings of guilt in the melancholic in great detail.

Eduardo Weiss, in an article "Todestrieb und Masochismus" published in 1935 in the journal Imago, describes how secondary narcissism is associated not only with libido turned against the self, but also with aggression, which he calls "Destrudo", behaving in the same way. Unfortunately, this article, containing a lot interesting ideas, written in rather obscure German.

Perhaps of all analysts, Melanie Klein, who recognized the significance of Freud's theory between the life and death instinct and applied it both theoretically and clinically, made the most notable contribution to the analysis of negative transference. She found that envy, especially in its split form, is an important factor in the development of chronic negative attitudes in analysis, including negative therapeutic reactions. She described the early infantile mechanisms of object-ego splitting, allowing the infantile ego to separate love and hate. In exploring narcissism, she emphasized the libidinal aspects more, and believed that narcissism is essentially a secondary phenomenon based on a relationship with an internal good or ideal object, which in the [unconscious] fantasy forms part of the beloved body and self. She believed that in narcissistic states there is a withdrawal from external relationships to identification with an idealized internal object.

Melanie Klein wrote in 1958 that she observed in her analytic work with young children a constant struggle between the unbridled desire to destroy their objects and the desire to preserve them. She felt that Freud's discovery of the life and death instincts was a tremendous step forward in understanding this struggle. She believed that anxiety arises from "the action within the body of the death instinct, which is experienced as the fear of annihilation" (Klein, 1958: 84). Thus we see that she perceived the death instinct as a primary anxiety in the infant, associated with the fear of death, while Freud generally denied the existence of a primary fear of death. The only clinical situation in which he saw the death instinct terrorizing the self or ego of the patient was described by him in 1923. In this text, he discusses the extreme intensity of guilt in melancholia, and suggests that the destructive component, the pure culture of the death instinct, has become entrenched in the superego and turned against the ego. At the same time, he explains the fear of death in melancholia by the fact that the Ego gives up and dies, because it feels hatred and persecution from the Super-Ego, and not love. Freud relates this situation both to the primary state of anxiety at birth and to the later anxiety of separation from the protective mother.

According to Melanie Klein, to protect itself from this anxiety, the primitive ego uses two processes: “Part of the death instinct is projected into the object, and the object thus becomes the persecutor; and that part of the death instinct which is left in the ego gives rise to aggression which will be directed against this persecuting object” (Klein, 1958: 85).

The life instinct is also projected into external objects, which are then felt to be loving or idealized. Melanie Klein emphasizes that for early development it is characteristic that idealized and bad persecuting objects are split and separated far from each other, which implies that the life and death instincts are kept in a state of stratification. Simultaneously with the splitting of objects, there is also a splitting of the self into good and bad parts. These ego splitting processes also keep the instincts in a state of stratification. Almost simultaneously with the projective processes, another primary process starts, introjection, “mainly in the service of the life instinct; it fights the death instinct, because it causes the ego to take into itself something that gives life (primarily food), and thereby binds the internal functioning of the death instinct” (Klein, 1958: 85). This process plays a crucial role in triggering the fusion of the life and death instincts.

Since the processes of splitting the object and the self, and therefore the states of separation of instincts [life and death], are rooted in early infancy in what Melanie Klein calls the paranoid-schizoid position, it can be expected that the most pronounced states of separation of instincts will be observed in those clinical conditions where paranoid-schizoid mechanisms predominate. We may encounter such conditions in patients who have never completely outgrown or regressed to this early stage of development. Melanie Klein emphasizes that early infantile mechanisms and object relations attach themselves to the transference, and thus the processes of self and object splitting that promote the stratification of the [life and death] instincts can be studied and modified in analysis. She also says that by exploring these early processes in the transference, she became convinced that the analysis of negative transference is a necessary condition for the analysis of deeper layers of the psyche. It was while exploring the negative aspects of the early infantile transference that Melanie Klein encountered primitive envy, which she considered a direct derivative of the death instinct. She believed that envy appears as a hostile, life-destroying force in relation to the baby to the mother, and in particular is directed against a good nursing mother, since the baby not only needs her, but also envies her, because she contains everything that the baby would like. own yourself. In transference, this manifests itself in the patient's need to devalue the analytic work that he has become convinced of. Envy, which represents an almost completely defused destructive energy, seems to be especially unbearable for the infantile ego, and it splits off from the rest of the ego early in life. Melanie Klein emphasizes that this split-off, unconscious envy often remains unexpressed in the analysis, but nevertheless has a negative and powerful influence, hindering progress in the analysis, which can ultimately only be effective when it reaches integration and embraces the personality in its entirety. integrity. In other words, the defusion of the [life and death] instincts must gradually be replaced by their fusion in any successful analysis.

4) In Freud's work, which followed Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud, 1920), where the approach is most speculative, it became clear that he was applying the theory of the life and death instincts to explain clinical phenomena. For example, in "The Economic Problem of Masochism" (Freud, 1924: SE 19: 170) he wrote: "Thus, moral masochism becomes the classical evidence for the existence of instinctual fusion. Its danger lies in the fact that it comes from the death instinct and corresponds to that part of it that has escaped outward circulation as some kind of destructive instinct. In The Dissatisfaction with Culture (Freud, 1930: SE 21: 122), Freud focuses more on the aggressive instinct. He writes: “This program of culture is opposed by the natural aggressive instinct of man, the hostility of one to all and all to everyone. This aggressive instinct is the offspring and main representative of the death instinct that we discovered next to Eros. He further adds: "This problem should demonstrate to us, on the example of humanity, the struggle between Eros and Death, the life instinct and the instinct of destruction."

In this discussion, Freud does not make a clear distinction between the death instinct and the destruction instinct, because he is trying to explain that there is a force which he calls the death instinct or the destruction instinct, and it is in constant struggle with the life instinct, the desire to live.

In the "Continuation of Lectures on Introduction to Psychoanalysis" (Freud, 1933: SE 22: 105) he discusses the confluence of Eros and aggressiveness and seeks to encourage analysts to apply this theory in clinical practice, noting:

“With this suggestion, we open the prospect for research that will someday become of great importance for the understanding of pathological processes. After all, fusions can also decay, and such a decay can have the most severe consequences for the function. But these views are still too new, no one has yet tried to use them in their work.

He also writes the following:

“In time immemorial ... an instinct arose that seeks to destroy life. … If we see in this instinct of self-destruction a confirmation of our hypothesis, then we can consider it an expression of the “death instinct” (Todestrieb), which cannot but exert its influence on every life process.”

“The death drive becomes a destructive drive when it is directed outward against the objects by means of special organs. A living being, so to speak, preserves its life by destroying someone else's. But still, a certain amount of the death drive remains active and inside living being, and in our practice we have tried to reduce a fairly large number of normal and pathological phenomena to this internalization of the instinct of destruction. (Freud, 1933: SE 22: 107, 211) [The second quote is from a letter to A. Einstein "Is war inevitable?" - Note. transl.]

In this work, Freud, in particular, emphasizes self-destructive feelings as a direct expression of the death instinct and notes that there are special organs through which the death instinct is turned into destructiveness and directed outward towards objects. According to this description, Freud's views here are somewhat similar to those of Melanie Klein, presented later. She shows that the primitive ego projects some aspects of the death instinct into external objects, which thus become the persecutors, while the rest of the death instinct turns into direct aggression which attacks the persecutors.

Only four years later, in "Analysis, finite and infinite" (Freud, 1937: SE 23: 242), Freud returns to the clinical application of his theory of the death instinct in order to understand the deep-rooted resistances to analytic treatment:

“Here we are dealing with those ultimate questions that psychological research can study: the behavior of two primary instincts, their distribution, mixing (mingling) and separation (defusion). The strongest impression of resistance in analytic work arises from the fact that there is a force that defends itself by all available means from recovery, a force that maintains disease and suffering with unshakable firmness.

He relates this to his earlier theory of negative therapeutic response, which he related to unconscious guilt and the need for punishment, noting (Freud, 1937: SE 23: 243):

“These phenomena point unmistakably to the presence in psychic life of a force which we call the instinct of aggression or destruction, depending on its aims, and which we trace back to the original death instinct of living matter. ... Only by the simultaneous or opposing action of two primary instincts - Eros and the instinct of death, which never meet alone - can we explain the richness and diversity of the phenomena of life.

5) One of the main reasons for this omission may be that Freud's theory of narcissism was originally based on the idea of ​​primary narcissism, in which a person directs his libido towards the self, and secondary narcissism, in which he withdraws libido from objects back to the self (Freud, 1914: 74). It was only later that Freud clarified his ideas about the pleasure principle and the reality principle, which he had expressed in 1911, and related them to love and hate in Instincts and Their Destiny, which he began to write as devoted to the important connection between the pleasant narcissistic state and hatred or destructiveness towards an external object, when the object begins to hook the individual. For example, it says (Freud, 1915: SE 14: 136): "Together with the appearance of the object at the stage of primary narcissism, the second opposite of love, hate, also develops." In the same article, he emphasizes the primary significance of aggression: “Hatred as an attitude towards an object is older than love. It comes from the narcissistic ego's initial withdrawal of the irritating external world" (Freud, 1915: SE 14: 139).

Something similar to this line of thought can be seen in Freud's principle of nirvana, which he considered a retreat or regression to primal narcissism under the dominance of the death instinct - where rest, lifelessness, and surrender to death are equated.

Hartmann, Kris and Loewenstein (1949: 22) seem to have a similar impression of Freud's idea of ​​the connection between aggression and narcissism; they write: “Freud used to compare the relationship between narcissism and object love with the relationship between self-destruction and the destruction of the object. Perhaps this analogy influenced his assumption that self-destruction as a primary form of aggression should be compared with primary narcissism.

6) The history of this patient is noteworthy. Simon told me that he had heard from his mother that from the first three months he was extremely difficult to feed. At the age of one and a half years, he scattered with exceptional skill all the food that was given to him with a spoon or allowed to take on his own from a plate; he made a real garbage dump on the floor and triumphantly looked at his very alarmed mother. These scenes were repeated over and over. The father criticized the mother for her inability to take care of the child, but did nothing himself to support her or cope with the boy. Finally, an experienced nanny was hired. A year later, the nanny told the mother that she had to admit that her work with the child had been a complete failure. She had never encountered a child who so stubbornly and obviously, but with obvious satisfaction, rejected all her attempts to feed and care for him. She quit and her mother continued her struggle alone.

The outstanding symptoms of this patient were impotence and a rather obscure perversion. He was extremely schizoid, aloof and had trouble relating to other people. I became his second analyst.

7) In many of these patients, destructive impulses are associated with perversions. In this situation, the apparent fusion of the instincts does not reduce the strength of the destructive instincts; on the contrary, power and violence are enormously increased by the eroticization of the aggressive instinct. I think it would be misleading here to follow Freud in discussing perversions as fusions between the life and death instincts, since in such cases the destructive part of the self has seized control of the totality of the libidinal aspects of the patient's personality and is therefore capable of misusing them. Such cases are in fact examples of a pathological fusion similar to states of confusion, where destructive impulses overpower libidinal ones.

8) This process is somewhat reminiscent of Freud's description of how the narcissistic object cathexes are abandoned and the libido is relegated to the ego (Freud, 1914). The state I am describing does indeed involve a retreat of the self from libidinal object cathexis into a narcissistic state reminiscent of primary narcissism. The patient seems to withdraw from the world, he is unable to think and often feels intoxicated. He may lose interest in the outside world and tend to stay in bed, forgetting what was discussed in previous sessions. If he nevertheless comes to the session, he may complain that something incomprehensible has happened to him, he feels trapped, feels claustrophobia and the inability to get out of this state. He often realizes that he has lost something important, but is not sure what it is. This loss may be experienced specifically as the loss of keys or a purse, but sometimes the patient realizes that his anxiety and sense of loss are connected with the loss of an important part of himself, namely, a healthy dependent self associated with the ability to think. Sometimes such a patient develops an acute and overwhelming hypochondriacal fear of death. Here one gets the impression that we can observe the death instinct in its purest form, as a force capable of pulling the whole self from life into a death-like state with the help of false promises of a nirvana-like state, which implies a complete stratification of the basic instincts. However, a careful study of this process shows that we are not dealing with a state of separation [of instincts], but with a pathological fusion, similar to the process I have described in perversions. In this narcissistic state of closure, the sane dependent part of the patient enters the delusional object, and projective identification occurs, in which the sane self loses its identity and is completely dominated by an omnipotent destructive process; this sound self has no power to resist or weaken it as long as this pathological fusion lasts; and vice versa, the strength of the destructive process is greatly increased in such a situation.

Literature:

1. Federn, P. (1932) The reality of the death instinct especially in melancholia. Psychoanalytic Review 19: 129–51.
2. Freud, S. (1914) On narcissism: an introduction. SE 14.
3. Freud, S. (1915) Instincts and their vicissitudes. SE 14.
4. Freud, S. (1916) Some character types met with in psycho-analytic work. SE 14.
5. Freud, S. (1920) Beyond the Pleasure Principle. SE 18.
6. Freud, S. (1924) The economic problem of masochism. SE 19.
7. Freud, S. (1930) Civilization and its Discontents. SE 21.
8. Freud, S. (1933) New Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis. SE 22.
9. Freud, S. (1937) Analysis terminable and interminable. SE 23.
10. Green A. (1984) Symposium on the Death Instinct held in Marseilles.
11. Hartmann, H., Kris, E. and Loewenstein, R. M. (1949) Notes on the theory of aggression. The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 3–4: 9–36.
12. Klein, M. (1958) On the development of mental functioning. 39: 84–90.
13. Reich, W. (1933) character analysis. New York: Orgone Institute Press, 1949.
14. Rosenfeld, H. A. (1971) A clinical approach to the psychoanalytic theory of the life and death instincts: an investigation into the aggressive aspects of narcissism. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 52: 169–78.
15. Weiss, E. (1935) Todestrieb und Masochismus. imago 21: 393–411.

Narcissistic women do not outgrow childhood aggression, but turn it into effective adult aggressive behavior using various manipulative tactics to achieve their own selfish goals and exploit others.

Female narcissists and sociopaths are harder to recognize than males. Although it is believed that 75% of narcissists are male, this is due to the fact that women are more likely to be diagnosed with borderline or hysterical disorder. However, as it becomes clear from practice, an increasing number of modern women reveal traits of narcissism. Because narcissistic women exhibit the same type of indirect aggression as teenage girls, they are labeled "nasty girl" from childhood - and others hope they will eventually "outgrow" this.

4 Main Behaviors You Can See in Narcissistic Women

However, studies show that adolescent girls who display high levels of indirect aggression also have low levels of empathy and concern for others.

This means that behaviors such as gossip, social injustice, isolation, alienation, and intentional disruption of relationships are common among adolescents with narcissistic and antisocial traits.

Malignant female narcissism transforms into an excessive sense of permissiveness and a thirst for interpersonal exploitation. At the same time, a woman is protected by stereotypes such as “a tender young girl”, “a loving mother” or “a caring grandmother”. No one expects that an elderly woman, who is supposed to be affectionate and kind, will turn out to be vindictive, cruel and merciless. No one expects a mother to abandon, neglect, or abuse her children.

So what happens when the "best friend" from high school becomes a scheming co-worker in the corporate world, using behind-the-scenes infighting to ruin other employees' careers? When does a malignant narcissistic mother drive her children to suicide after years of chronic childhood abuse? Or when a narcissistic girl starts a harem of admirers to terrorize her regular partner?

Narcissistic women do not outgrow childhood aggression, but turn it into effective adult aggressive behavior using various manipulative tactics to achieve their own selfish goals and exploit others.

Here are 4 main behaviors that can be observed in narcissistic women and tips on how to deal with them:

1. Sadistic feeling of pleasure from someone else's pain.

Perhaps one of the most hushed up qualities of women with malignant narcissism is that the pleasure and joy they experience in humiliating, hurting, and harming others.

They like to strike surreptitiously and gloatingly watch b, how until recently the former so self-confident victim looks dejected, trampled and insulted. If the conversation with them touches on any deep emotional issues, they show complete absence empathy.

Such women are ruthless in their ability to first idealize and then devalue and discard their victims without any regrets.

They are unable to form healthy, emotionally fulfilling relationships., because they get pleasure only by destroying the ties and friendships of other people for their own pleasure.

2. An insatiable desire to compete, caused by pathological envy and the need to be the center of attention.

Indirect aggression is considered the most common way of emotional abuse among girls, who, for social reasons, are forced to be less physically explicit in their aggression than men.

But in fact, female malignant narcissism is no different from male, moreover, its most extreme and insulting forms unfold against the backdrop of female friendship.

Assessing her surroundings, a narcissistic woman immediately determines who is a threat and who is ready to become her blind follower. Those who can pose a threat (through their success, appearance, personal qualities, wealth, status, attractiveness, or all of the above) must be destroyed, and the obedient will be used until their resources are depleted.

Those in whom they see a threat, narcissistic women may at first put them on a pedestal in order to maintain social propriety, but later they overthrow and expel them in disgrace. The gleam of admiration in the eyes of a narcissistic woman hides the contempt, envy and anger lurking in them. When it comes to envy, there are no more envious people than narcissistic women.

A female narcissist may use her need for attention to gain access to your resources or status, but once the idealization phase is over, it's time to devalue and discard the unnecessary.

She begins to spread unseemly rumors and organize entire smear campaigns. She can turn her friends against each other by claiming that they are slandering and backbiting each other, when in reality it is only her lies that cause conflict.

By subjecting victims to explicit or indirect insults, she thereby confirms her false sense of superiority.

You are likely to have a female narcissist or sociopath among your female friends if:

You note an awkward silence, a covert exchange of glances, or a strange liveliness when you unexpectedly enter a room. A friend who is emphatically welcoming and friendly to you is often the very person who says the most unpleasant things behind your back.

Your girlfriend idealizes you, you listen to sweet speeches, you are admired, praised and praised in every possible way at the dawn of friendship.

Feeling grateful, you may start sharing your most intimate secrets too early in response to her disarmingly sweet and trustworthy demeanor. Later, you find that you are excluded from group conversations, no longer invited to meetings and events.

You hear the retelling of your innermost secrets from third parties, and they are spoken of with derision. You notice a chilling self-satisfaction when a friend talks to you, and she devalues ​​all your achievements.

You witness the narcissistic girlfriend speak disdainfully of her other acquaintances while continuing to be friendly with them and appear in public. This testifies to her duplicity and ability to deceive.

A sincere person may say something harsh about others casually, in a situation of stress or conflict, but will not spread gossip or show aggression. He would rather cut down contact with those he considers toxic, or tell them directly about it, rather than criticize and intrigue behind their backs.

Make no mistake: as they talk about others, they will eventually talk about you.

3. Obsession with one's appearance, high level of materialism and superficiality/sense of intellectual pride and superiority.

Narcissistic women use their charm to achieve superiority.

Narcissistic women are quite consistent with the stereotype of the "femme fatale". Many of them are quite attractive and, like male narcissists, use sexuality for their own benefit. Because women in modern society meant to show off, narcissistic women use their physique to assert their power.

While narcissistic men tend to concentrate more money in their hands, women tend to overspend. They love to indulge in luxury at the expense of their loved ones or a rich husband.

Intelligent female narcissists can collect diplomas, degrees, and all sorts of achievements in order to control and terrorize those around them.

For example, one narcissistic female professor constantly subjected her students to insults, bullying, and cruel ridicule, disguising them as "constructive criticism," usually aimed at the most talented and bright female students in the audience. Despite all her professional experience and position of power, she still felt threatened by any woman whose intelligence could surpass her own.

4. A blatant disregard for boundaries in close relationships, including her own.

Narcissistic women tend to have harems of admirers- including former partners, all those who communicate with her in the background, and even unfamiliar people whom they entangle in their web to arouse jealousy in a romantic partner.

A narcissistic woman often creates "love triangles", with a regular partner and other men (or women, depending on her sexual orientation). She enjoys male attention and takes pride in being the object of desire.

A narcissistic woman willingly commits emotional and / or physical infidelity, usually without any regrets and remorse, easily deceiving a partner who, as a rule, does not have a soul in her and indulges her, not realizing the degree of her infidelity.

She also easily violates the boundaries of female friendship, making attempts to lure husbands or long-term partners of her girlfriends. However, she remains extremely frustrated and full of jealousy if her "seduction" fails or when her friend gets more attention from her partner than she does.

The revealed betrayal of a narcissist woman incredibly hurts and offends her partner– but this is just one of the signs of how far the pathological sense of narcissistic permissiveness can go.

I suspect I'm dealing with a female narcissist. How to be?

• If the narcissistic woman is your friend or work colleague, be careful.

Even if she seems sweet and charming to you, remember that her narcissistic traits can kick in at any moment, so don't be fooled into thinking that you will always be the exception to her propensity for interpersonal exploitation.

If you have a business relationship, stick to a communication format that can be easily documented. Do not disclose personal information in the early stages of communication, because this will later be used against you.

• If your narcissistic girlfriend wants to be with you all the time and is pressuring you to be around all the time, cut back on her and deliberately slow things down.

This is a great way to turn narcissists away from dating you. Moreover, it allows them to reveal their "true self" faster than it would happen in the process of developing a relationship.

The narcissistic woman's response to your attempt to draw boundaries will tell you everything you need to know.

Most narcissists can't stand being ignored. They feel entitled to demand constant attention from you, so they will keep trying until they get what they want, or they will quickly devalue you and fail.

• If you notice that your friend is spreading rumors or malicious gossip, cut back on any interaction with her. Better to keep silent.

Remember, a toxic person will try to convince others that you are speaking badly of them, so anything you say will be interpreted against you.

• Remain calm when a female narcissist tries to provoke you. Presence of mind and courage in the face of her threats and insults is the best tool against any of her tactics.

Narcissists are perplexed when the victim is not easily overwhelmed because it shows that you have more power than they thought.

• Remember that narcissists and sociopaths can be very persuasive and there will always be people they can fool.

Don't waste your energy trying to convince them. If they are easily misled by someone's slander, and they mean more to them than your loyalty and support, they are not worthy of your friendship.

Sooner or later they will find out the truth - and even if they continue to believe the narcissist, this will soon come to an end, because they have chosen a fake friend who will turn their backs on them at any moment.

• Don't join the "narcissistic harem"..

Resist the flattery and charm of a narcissistic woman in the early stages of the interaction - if it is sincere, you will receive positive feedback throughout the friendship or relationship with her and will never be taken aback by a sudden change in your address.

Remember that a narcissist's biggest fear is your stamina and the people they can't control.

As long as you are deeply convinced of your own worth, any narcissist - whether male or female - will not be able to truly threaten you, tarnish your reputation or "befriend" you, because they know, deep down, while they spend their lives on then, to protect your false self, your true integrity will continue to speak for itself.published .

Illustrations footage from the movie series "Camelot"

P.S. And remember, just by changing your consciousness - together we change the world! © econet

You have just met a person and after a few seconds of communication you feel that something is wrong with you. Before this meeting, everything was fine, and now you are tormented by doubts about appearance, career success and the like.

Imagine that this person is the mother of one of your child's friends. She not only looks great. She only had time to introduce herself, but in her tone one can undoubtedly guess the importance of her work, the ideal situation in the family and the fact that she always does the right thing.

In such a situation, it is very easy to fall into the purgatory of introspection. Casual conversation or business meeting - those who are eager to tell everyone about their own importance can make other people feel insignificant.

Wouldn't it be nice to avoid such encounters and live your life without any doubts? Armed with a small set of analytical tricks, you can not only feel better, but also find a weak spot in the armor of these almost perfect people.

The psychological basis of this process was explored by the Viennese psychoanalyst Alfred Adler, who coined the term "inferiority complex".

Inferiority complex and superiority complex

According to Adler, people who feel inferior to others resort to overcompensating every day through "achieving superiority." These internally insecure people can feel happy only by asserting their own significance. According to Adler, this is the essence of neurosis.

Today we know that the desire to achieve superiority is a manifestation of narcissistic personality disorder - a deviation that causes a person to constantly boost self-esteem. Narcissists are divided into grandiose (everyone owes them something) and vulnerable (those who, despite the ostentatious bravado, feel weak and helpless). Some scientists are of the opinion that the basis of both types of narcissism is low self-esteem, and grandiose narcissists are simply better at disguise. In any case, if you are dealing with a person who is trying to belittle you, then it is likely that he is narcissistic.

normal narcissism

Narcissism does not necessarily develop to the level of pathology, it may be present to a greater or lesser extent. Some personality researchers instead of grandiose and vulnerable types distinguish "covert" and "overt" narcissism. In 2015, psychologist James Brooks from the University of Derby (UK) decided to find out how such people feel in terms of self-esteem and self-efficacy (self-confidence).

Using a group of students as an example, Brooks analyzed the impact of overt and covert narcissism on self-esteem and self-efficacy. The two types of narcissism turned out to be completely unrelated to each other, which confirmed the legitimacy of such a division. People with pronounced narcissism had higher self-esteem: the need for "uniqueness" played a major role in the lives of these self-aggrandizing people. Covert narcissists had lower self-esteem.

When it comes to self-efficacy, overt narcissists are also ahead of their insecure and oversensitive counterparts. The need to command other people seems to have given overt narcissists a sense of omnipotence.

How to psychologically interpret the actions of your familiar narcissists: friends, colleagues, partners -.