Abuse, Trauma, and Torture - Their Consequences and Effects (5 page)

The veteran employee, now taken
for granted by his narcissistic employer, becomes uninspiring as a
source of adulation, admiration and attention. The narcissist
always seeks new thrills and stimuli.

The narcissist is notorious for
his low threshold of resistance to boredom. His behaviour is
impulsive and his biography tumultuous precisely because of his
need to introduce uncertainty and risk to what he regards as
"stagnation" or "slow death" (i.e., routine). Most interactions in
the workplace are part of the rut – and thus constitute a reminder
of this routine – deflating the narcissist's grandiose
fantasies.

Narcissists do many unnecessary,
wrong and even dangerous things in pursuit of the stabilisation of
their inflated self-image.

Narcissists feel suffocated
by intimacy, or by the constant reminders of the
REAL
,
nitty-gritty world out there. It reduces them, makes them realise
the Grandiosity Gap between their fantasies and reality. It is a
threat to the precarious balance of their personality structures
("false" and invented) and treated by them as a
menace.

Narcissists forever shift the
blame, pass the buck, and engage in cognitive dissonance. They
"pathologize" the other, foster feelings of guilt and shame in her,
demean, debase and humiliate in order to preserve their sense of
superiority.

Narcissists are
pathological liars. They think nothing of it because their very
self is
false
, their
own
confabulation
.

Here are a few useful
guidelines:

• Never disagree with the
  narcissist or contradict him;
  

• Never offer him any
  intimacy;
  

• Look awed by whatever attribute
  matters to him (for instance: by his professional achievements or
  by his good looks, or by his success with women and so
  on);
  

• Never remind him of life
  out there and if you do, connect it somehow to his sense of
  grandiosity. You can aggrandize even your office supplies, the most
  mundane thing conceivable by saying: "These are the
  BEST
  art
  materials
  ANY
  workplace is going to have", "We get them
  EXCLUSIVELY
  ", etc.;
  

• Do not make any comment, which
  might directly or indirectly impinge on the narcissist's
  self-image, omnipotence, superior judgement, omniscience, skills,
  capabilities, professional record, or even omnipresence. Bad
  sentences start with: "I think you overlooked … made a mistake here
  … you don't know … do you know … you were not here yesterday so …
  you cannot … you should … (interpreted as rude imposition,
  narcissists react very badly to perceived restrictions placed on
  their freedom) … I (never mention the fact that you are a separate,
  independent entity, narcissists regard others as extensions of
  their selves)…" You get the gist of it.
  

Manage your narcissistic boss.
Notice patterns in his bullying. Is he more aggressive on Monday
mornings - and more open to suggestions on Friday afternoon? Is he
amenable to flattery? Can you modify his conduct by appealing to
his morality, superior knowledge, good manners, cosmopolitanism, or
upbringing? Manipulating the narcissist is the only way to survive
in such a tainted workplace.

Can the narcissist be harnessed? Can his
energies be channeled
productively
?

This would be a deeply flawed
–
and even dangerous
–
"advice". Various management gurus purport to teach us how to
harness this force of nature known as malignant or
pathological
narcissism
. Narcissists are driven, visionary,
ambitious, exciting and productive, says
Michael
Maccoby
, for instance. To ignore such a resource is a
criminal waste. All we need to do is learn how to "handle"
them.

Yet, this prescription is either naive or
disingenuous. Narcissists cannot be "handled", or "managed", or
"contained", or "channeled". They are, by definition, incapable of
team work. They lack empathy, are exploitative, envious, haughty
and feel entitled, even if such a feeling is commensurate only with
their grandiose fantasies and when their accomplishments are
meager.

Narcissists dissemble, conspire, destroy and
self-destruct. Their drive is compulsive, their vision rarely
grounded in reality, their human relations a calamity. In the long
run, there is no enduring benefit to dancing with narcissists
–
only ephemeral and, often, fallacious,
"achievements".

Return

The perpetrators of the
recent spate of financial frauds in the USA acted with callous
disregard for both their employees and shareholders – not to
mention other stakeholders. Psychologists have often
remote-diagnosed them as "malignant, pathological
narcissists".

Narcissists are driven by
the need to uphold and maintain a False Self – a concocted,
grandiose, and demanding psychological construct typical of the
Narcissistic Personality Disorder. The False Self is projected to
the world in order to garner Narcissistic Supply – adulation,
admiration, or even notoriety and infamy. Any kind of attention is
usually deemed by narcissists to be preferable to
obscurity.

The False Self is
suffused with fantasies of perfection, grandeur, brilliance,
infallibility, immunity, significance, omnipotence, omnipresence,
and omniscience. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great,
inevitable personal destiny. The narcissist is preoccupied with
ideal love, the construction of brilliant, revolutionary scientific
theories, the composition or authoring or painting of the greatest
work of art, the founding of a new school of thought, the
attainment of fabulous wealth, the reshaping of a nation or a
conglomerate, and so on. The narcissist never sets realistic goals
to himself. He is forever preoccupied with fantasies of uniqueness,
record breaking, or breathtaking achievements. His verbosity
reflects this propensity.

Reality is, naturally,
quite different and this gives rise to a Grandiosity Gap. The
demands of the False Self are never satisfied by the narcissist's
accomplishments, standing, wealth, clout, sexual prowess, or
knowledge. The narcissist's grandiosity and sense of entitlement
are equally incommensurate with his achievements.

To bridge the Grandiosity
Gap, the malignant (pathological) narcissist resorts to shortcuts.
These very often lead to fraud.

The narcissist cares only
about appearances. What matters to him are the facade of wealth and
its attendant social status and Narcissistic Supply. Witness the
travestied extravagance of Tyco's Denis Kozlowski. Media attention
only exacerbates the narcissist's addiction and makes it incumbent
on him to go to ever-wilder extremes to secure uninterrupted supply
from this source.

The narcissist lacks
empathy – the ability to put himself in other people's shoes. He
does not recognise boundaries – personal, corporate, or legal.
Everything and everyone are to him mere instruments, extensions,
objects unconditionally and uncomplainingly available in his
pursuit of narcissistic gratification.

This makes the narcissist
perniciously exploitative. He uses, abuses, devalues, and discards
even his nearest and dearest in the most chilling manner. The
narcissist is utility – driven, obsessed with his overwhelming need
to reduce his anxiety and regulate his labile sense of self-worth
by securing a constant supply of his drug – attention. American
executives acted without compunction when they raided their
employees' pension funds – as did Robert Maxwell a generation
earlier in Britain.

The narcissist is
convinced of his superiority – cerebral or physical. To his mind,
he is a Gulliver hamstrung by a horde of narrow-minded and envious
Lilliputians. The dotcom "new economy" was infested with
"visionaries" with a contemptuous attitude towards the mundane:
profits, business cycles, conservative economists, doubtful
journalists, and cautious analysts.

Yet, deep inside, the
narcissist is painfully aware of his addiction to others – their
attention, admiration, applause, and affirmation. He despises
himself for being thus dependent. He hates people the same way a
drug addict hates his pusher. He wishes to "put them in their
place", humiliate them, demonstrate to them how inadequate and
imperfect they are in comparison to his regal self and how little
he craves or needs them.

The narcissist regards
himself as one would an expensive present, a gift to his company,
to his family, to his neighbours, to his colleagues, to his
country. This firm conviction of his inflated importance makes him
feel entitled to special treatment, special favours, special
outcomes, concessions, subservience, immediate gratification,
obsequiousness, and lenience. It also makes him feel immune to
mortal laws and somehow divinely protected and insulated from the
inevitable consequences of his deeds and misdeeds.

The self-destructive
narcissist plays the role of the "bad guy" (or "bad girl"). But
even this is within the traditional social roles cartoonishly
exaggerated by the narcissist to attract attention. Men are likely
to emphasise intellect, power, aggression, money, or social status.
Narcissistic women are likely to emphasise body, looks, charm,
sexuality, feminine "traits", homemaking, children and
childrearing.

Punishing the wayward
narcissist is a veritable catch-22.

A jail term is useless as
a deterrent if it only serves to focus attention on the narcissist.
Being infamous is second best to being famous – and far preferable
to being ignored. The only way to effectively punish a narcissist
is to withhold Narcissistic Supply from him and thus to prevent him
from becoming a notorious celebrity.

Given a sufficient amount
of media exposure, book contracts, talk shows, lectures, and public
attention – the narcissist may even consider the whole grisly
affair to be emotionally rewarding. To the narcissist, freedom,
wealth, social status, family, vocation – are all means to an end.
And the end is attention. If he can secure attention by being the
big bad wolf – the narcissist unhesitatingly transforms himself
into one. Lord Archer, for instance, seems to be positively basking
in the media circus provoked by his prison diaries.

The narcissist does not
victimise, plunder, terrorise and abuse others in a cold,
calculating manner. He does so offhandedly, as a manifestation of
his genuine character. To be truly "guilty" one needs to intend, to
deliberate, to contemplate one's choices and then to choose one's
acts. The narcissist does none of these.

Thus, punishment breeds
in him surprise, hurt and seething anger. The narcissist is stunned
by society's insistence that he should be held accountable for his
deeds and penalised accordingly. He feels wronged, baffled,
injured, the victim of bias, discrimination and injustice. He
rebels and rages.

Depending upon the
pervasiveness of his magical thinking, the narcissist may feel
besieged by overwhelming powers, forces cosmic and intrinsically
ominous. He may develop compulsive rites to fend off this "bad",
unwarranted, persecutory influences.

The narcissist, very much
the infantile outcome of stunted personal development, engages in
magical thinking. He feels omnipotent, that there is nothing he
couldn't do or achieve if only he sets his mind to it. He feels
omniscient – he rarely admits to ignorance and regards his
intuitions and intellect as founts of objective data.

Thus, narcissists are
haughtily convinced that introspection is a more important and more
efficient (not to mention easier to accomplish) method of obtaining
knowledge than the systematic study of outside sources of
information in accordance with strict and tedious curricula.
Narcissists are "inspired" and they despise hamstrung
technocrats.

To some extent, they feel
omnipresent because they are either famous or about to become
famous or because their product is selling or is being manufactured
globally. Deeply immersed in their delusions of grandeur, they
firmly believe that their acts have – or will have – a great
influence not only on their firm, but on their country, or even on
Mankind. Having mastered the manipulation of their human
environment – they are convinced that they will always "get away
with it". They develop hubris and a false sense of
immunity.

Narcissistic immunity is
the (erroneous) feeling, harboured by the narcissist, that he is
impervious to the consequences of his actions, that he will never
be effected by the results of his own decisions, opinions, beliefs,
deeds and misdeeds, acts, inaction, or membership of certain
groups, that he is above reproach and punishment, that, magically,
he is protected and will miraculously be saved at the last moment.
Hence the audacity, simplicity, and transparency of some of the
fraud and corporate looting in the 1990's. Narcissists rarely
bother to cover their traces, so great is their disdain and
conviction that they are above mortal laws and
wherewithal.