Abuse, Trauma, and Torture - Their Consequences and Effects (16 page)

Here are the Compensatory NPD
criteria according to Dave Kelly:

"Personality Types
proposes Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder as a
pervasive pattern of unstable, covert narcissistic behaviours that
derive from an underlying sense of insecurity and weakness rather
than from genuine feelings of self-confidence and high self-esteem,
beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts,
as indicated by six (or more) of the criteria below.

The basic trait of
the Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Type is a pattern of
overtly narcissistic behaviours (that) derive from an underlying
sense of insecurity and weakness, rather than from genuine feelings
of self-confidence and high self-esteem."

The Compensatory Narcissistic
Personality Type:

• Seeks to
  create an illusion of superiority and to build up an image of high
  self-worth [Millon];
  

• Strives for
  recognition and prestige to compensate for the lack of a feeling of
  self-worth;
  

• May "acquire
  a deprecatory attitude in which the achievements of others are
  ridiculed and degraded" [Millon];
  

• Has
  persistent aspirations for glory and status [Millon];
  

• Has a
  tendency to exaggerate and boast [Millon];
  

• Is sensitive
  to how others react to him, watches and listens carefully for
  critical judgement, and feels slighted by disapproval
  [Millon];
  

• "Is prone to
  feel shamed and humiliated and especially (anxious) and vulnerable
  to the judgements of others" [Millon];
  

• Covers up a
  sense of inadequacy and deficiency with pseudo-arrogance and
  pseudo-grandiosity [Millon];
  

• Has a
  tendency to periodic hypochondria [Forman];
  

• Alternates
  between feelings of emptiness and deadness and states of excitement
  and excess energy [Forman];
  

• Entertains
  fantasies of greatness, constantly striving for perfection, genius,
  or stardom [Forman];
  

• Has a history
  of searching for an idealised partner and has an intense need for
  affirmation and confirmation in relationships [Forman];
  

• Frequently
  entertains a wishful, exaggerated and unrealistic concept of
  himself, which he can't possibly measure up to [Reich];
  

• Produces (too
  quickly) work not up to the level of his abilities because of an
  overwhelmingly strong need for the immediate gratification of
  success [Reich];
  

• Is touchy,
  quick to take offence at the slightest provocation, continually
  anticipating attack and danger, reacting with anger and fantasies
  of revenge when he feels himself frustrated in his need for
  constant admiration [Reich];
  

• Is
  self-conscious, due to a dependence on approval from others
  [Reich];
  

• Suffers
  regularly from repetitive oscillations of self-esteem
  [Reich];
  

• Seeks to undo
  feelings of inadequacy by forcing everyone's attention and
  admiration upon himself [Reich];
  

• May react
  with self-contempt and depression to the lack of fulfilment of his
  grandiose expectations [Riso].
  

Sources:

Forman, Max.
Narcissistic Disorders and the Oedipal Fixations. In Feldstein,
J.J. (Ed.), The Annual of Psychoanalysis. Volume IV. New York:
International Universities [1976] pp. 65-92.

Millon, Theodore, and
Roger D. Davis. Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond. 2nd
Ed. New York: Wiley, [1996] pp. 411-12.

Reich, Annie, [1986].
Pathological Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation. In Morrison, A. P.,
(Ed.), Essential Papers on Narcissism. pp. 44-60. Reprint from
1960. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Volume 15, pp.
205-32.

Riso, Don Richard.
Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin [1987] pp. 102-3.

Speculative Diagnostic Criteria
for Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder

A pervasive pattern
of self-inflation, pseudo-confidence, exhibitionism, and strivings
for prestige, that compensates for feelings of inadequacy and low
self-esteem, as indicated by the following:

• Pseudo-confidence compensating for an underlying condition of
  insecurity and feelings of helplessness;
  

• Pretentiousness, self-inflation;
  

• Exhibitionism
  in the pursuit of attention, recognition, and glory;
  

• Strivings for
  prestige to enhance self-esteem;
  

• Deceitfulness
  and manipulativeness in the service of maintaining feelings of
  superiority;
  

• Idealisation
  in relationships;
  

• Fragmentation
  of the self: feelings of emptiness and deadness;
  

• A proud,
  hubristic disposition;
  

• Hypochondriasis;
  

• Substance
  abuse;
  

• Self-destructiveness.
  

Compensatory
Narcissistic Personality Disorder corresponds to Ernest Jones'
narcissistic "God Complex", Annie Reich's "Compensatory
Narcissism", Heinz Kohut's "Narcissistic Personality Disorder", and
Theodore Millon's "Compensatory Narcissist".

Millon, Theodore, and
Roger D. Davis. Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond. 2nd
ed. New York: Wiley, 1996. 411-12.

Compare this to the classic
type:

Narcissistic Personality
Type

The basic trait of the
Narcissistic Personality Type is a pattern of grandiosity, need for
admiration, and lack of empathy.

The Narcissistic Personality
Type:

• Reacts to criticism with
  feelings of rage, shame, or humiliation;
  

• Is interpersonally
  exploitive: takes advantage of others to achieve his own
  ends;
  

• Has a grandiose sense of
  self-importance;
  

• Believes that his
  problems are unique and can be understood only by other special
  people;
  

• Is preoccupied with
  fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal
  love;
  

• Has a sense of
  entitlement: an unreasonable expectation of especially favourable
  treatment;
  

• Requires much attention
  and admiration of others;
  

• Lacks empathy: fails to
  recognise and experience how others feel;
  

• Is preoccupied with
  feelings of envy.
  

This is mainly the
DSM-III-R view. Pay attention to the not so subtle changes in the
DSM-IV-TR – click
here
to view them and
here
for more about
pathological narcissism.

The Inverted Narcissist

It is clear that there is,
indeed, an hitherto neglected type of narcissist. It is the
"self-effacing" or "introverted" narcissist. We call it the
Inverted Narcissist (hereinafter: IN). Others call it
"narcissist-codependent" or "N-magnet" (which erroneously implies
passivity and victimhood). Alan Rappaport suggested the name (and
diagnosis)
"co-narcissist"
.

This is a narcissist who, in many
respects, is the mirror image of the "classical" narcissist. The
psychodynamics of the Inverted Narcissist are not clear, nor are
its developmental roots. Perhaps it is the product of an
overweening Primary Object or caregiver. Perhaps excessive abuse
leads to the repression of even the narcissistic and other defence
mechanisms. Perhaps the parents suppress every manifestation of
grandiosity (very common in early childhood) and of narcissism – so
that the narcissistic defence mechanism is "inverted" and
internalised in this unusual form.

These narcissists are
self-effacing, sensitive, emotionally fragile, sometimes socially
phobic. They derive all their self-esteem and sense of self-worth
from the outside (others), are pathologically envious (a
transformation of aggression
), are likely to intermittently engage in
aggressive/violent behaviours, are more emotionally labile than the
classic narcissist, etc.

There are, therefore, three
"basic" types of narcissists:

1. The offspring
   of neglecting parents
   – They default to
   narcissism as the predominant object relation (with themselves as
   the exclusive love object).
   

1. The offspring
   of doting or domineering parents (often narcissists
   themselves)
   – They internalise their
   parents' voices in the form of a sadistic, ideal, immature Superego
   and spend their lives trying to be perfect, omnipotent, omniscient
   and to be judged "a success" by these parent-images and their later
   representations and substitutes (authority figures).
   

1. The offspring
   of abusive parents
   – They internalise the
   abusing, demeaning and contemptuous voices and spend their lives in
   an effort to elicit "counter-voices" from other people and thus to
   regulate their labile self-esteem and sense of
   self-worth.
   

All three types experience
recurrent and Sisyphean failures. Shielded by their defence
mechanisms, they constantly gauge reality wrongly, their actions
and reactions become more and more rigid and the damage inflicted
by them on themselves and on others is ever greater.

The narcissistic parent seems to
employ a myriad primitive defences in his dealings with his
children:

Splitting
– Idealising the child
and devaluing him in cycles, which reflect the internal dynamics of
the parent rather than anything the child does.

Projective
Identification
– Forcing the child to
behave in a way which vindicates the parent's fears regarding
himself or herself, his or her self-image and his or her
self-worth. This is a particularly powerful and pernicious
mechanism. If the narcissist parent fears his own deficiencies
("defects"), vulnerability, perceived weaknesses, susceptibility,
gullibility, or emotions – he is likely to force the child to
"feel" these rejected and (to him) repulsive emotions, to behave in
ways strongly abhorred by the parent, to exhibit character traits
the parent strongly rejects in himself.

Projection
- The child, in a way,
becomes the "trash bin" of the parents' inhibitions, fears,
self-loathing, self-contempt, perceived lack of self-worth, sense
of inadequacy, rejected traits, repressed emotions, failures and
emotional reticence.

Coupled with the parent's
treatment of the child as the parent's extension, these
psychological defenses totally inhibit the psychological growth and
emotional maturation of the child. The child becomes a reflection
of the parent, a conduit through which the parent experiences and
realises himself for better (hopes, aspirations, ambition, life
goals) and for worse (weaknesses, "undesirable" emotions,
"negative" traits).

Relationships
between
such
parents
and their progeny
easily deteriorate to sexual or other modes of
abuse
because there
are no functioning boundaries between them.

It seems that the child's
reaction to a narcissistic parent can be either accommodation and
assimilation or rejection.

Accommodation and
Assimilation

The child accommodates, idealises
and internalises (introjects) the narcissistic and abusive Primary
Object successfully. This means that the child's "internal voice"
is also narcissistic and abusive. The child tries to comply with
its directives and with its explicit and perceived
wishes.

The child becomes a
masterful provider of
Narcissistic Supply
, a
perfect match to the parent's personality, an ideal source, an
accommodating, understanding and caring caterer to all the needs,
whims, mood swings and cycles of the narcissist. The child learns
to endure devaluation and idealisation with equanimity and adapt to
the narcissist's world view. The child, in short, becomes the
ultimate extension. This is what we call an "inverted
narcissist".

We must not neglect the abusive
aspect of such a relationship. The narcissistic parent always
alternates between idealisation and devaluation of his offspring.
The child is likely to internalise the devaluing, abusive,
critical, demeaning, berating, diminishing, minimising, upbraiding,
chastising voices.

The parent (or caregiver) goes on
to survive inside the child-turned-adult (as part of a sadistic and
ideal Superego and an unrealistic Ego Ideal). These voices are so
powerful that they inhibit even the development of reactive
narcissism, the child's typical defence mechanism.

The child-turned-adult keeps
looking for narcissists in order to feel whole, alive and wanted.
He craves to be treated by a narcissist narcissistically. What
others call abuse is, to him or her, familiar territory and
constitutes Narcissistic Supply. To the Inverted Narcissist, the
classic narcissist is a Source of Supply (primary or secondary) and
his narcissistic behaviours constitute Narcissistic Supply. The IN
feels dissatisfied, empty and unwanted when not "loved" by a
narcissist.