Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited by Sam Vaknin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Present Without Conviction

According to Sam Vaknin, Narcissism is sort of PTSD resulting from either an extreme overvaluation or undervaluation of a person in infancy. It is an habitual adaptation that defends against the fear of emotional and physical abandonment by the parents, especially the mother. The most self-destructive and socially manifest form of Narcissism is Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) which is defined officially by the AMA as a mental disease. Vaknin interprets the official jargon thus: ”Pathological narcissism is a lifelong pattern of traits and behaviours which signify infatuation and obsession with one’s self to the exclusion of all others and the egotistic and ruthless pursuit of one’s gratification, dominance, and ambition.”

Malignant Self-Love is an ill-written and badly edited book (the editor is apparently the author’s wife and the book is self-published). It resembles notes in preparation for a doctoral thesis in abnormal psychology (and certainly would not be allowed to be submitted to much less approved by a review committee). The book’s main sections contain analytical extracts from professional bodies, and a curious phenomenology of the condition organised under ‘100 Frequently Asked Questions’. Many of these questions are not actually answered and the answers given are often repetitive. There are no footnotes and very few internal citations in the answers to these questions. The source of the questions themselves is unstated.

Despite its flaws, however, Malignant Self-Love is not without value. Narcissism, not COVID, is likely to be the dominant human disease of the future. The fact that it originates and proliferates in social relationships rather than viral vectors makes it harder to track and trace but easier to spread through social technology. It is also a condition which has many more variants than even widespread viral infections.

Pathological narcissism was first described in detail by Freud in his essay “On Narcissism” in 1914. Apparently he considered the condition relatively rare. NPD was not fully defined and described until the late 1980’s. But since then it is clear that the condition is (or has become, the tense makes little difference) far more prevalent than previously realised, possibly because of its symptomatic variability and and diverse aetiology.

Each case of Narcissism could indeed be a unique manifestation of the condition, reflecting the individual circumstances which produced it. Although no epidemiological data is available today, it is likely that the disease may ultimately be more deadly than COVID, and certainly causes at least as much human misery. NPD is also incurable by any known pharmacological or other psychiatric regime.

The symptoms of the disease are becoming increasingly well known thanks to Donald Trump who has demonstrated them all publicly on a global platform for the last six years or so. As the Harvey Weinstein of Narcissism, his casual mendacity, persistent self-glorification, unashamed grandiosity, insatiable need for attention, vengefulness, and dearth of stable relationships are exposed continuously. He constitutes a sort of encyclopaedia of shared knowledge about the disease.

Trump lives off the “Narcissistic Supply” provided by his followers. He has no commitment to their political or personal issues except that through them their source as his narcissistic ‘fuel’ will be maintained. Trump is politically, intellectually, and emotionally vacuous and relies on these followers to affirm the self-image he projects to them. He needs them not primarily for electoral or commercial position but for maintaining his own identity. As Vaknin puts it rather well, Trump is “present without conviction.”

And as Vaknin also points out, “Narcissists tend to breed narcissists and perpetuate their condition.” Such breeding need not be genetic. The spreading of the disease socially is far more effective: “Some narcissists are covert, or Inverted Narcissists. As codependents, they derive their Narcissistic Supply from their relationships with classic narcissists.” Trump’s supporters are not unaware of his disorder. On the contrary, they admire it and get satisfaction from it. The level of support he receives from these people is an indication of the incidence of the disease as well as its persistence in the general population.

So while Malignant Self-Love is not a good book, it is a necessary book. It lacks the authority of a professional mental health worker and the focus of a journalist. It nevertheless exposes what may well be the real human crisis of the next century.

Postscript: Sam Vaknin is a former securities trader who was convicted of securities fraud in Israel for which he spent some years in the pokey. He is also a self-confessed Narcissist who speaks with the authority of personal experience. At several points in the text he confesses to using his own understanding of narcissism to scam similarly narcissistic investors. Who knows, the current narcissistic coalition around Trump may one day wake up to the scam they are in…. Then again…. Nah

Postscript 07/02/22: another GR reader sent me this which documents the Trumpian disordered mind: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/arc...

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