Uploaded March 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Narcissists cultivate a public persona (mask) and are heavily invested in it. The public persona can be prosocial, communal, and accomplished. But the public persona can also be evil, negative, obnoxious, abusive, intimidating or it can be about failure and victimhood.
It is not about superiority but about uniqueness and whatever garners attention the most (Locus of grandiosity)
Self-concept (narrative)
Exposure that is ego-syntonic and narrative-congruent is eagerly awaited.
Any public counter-narrative leads to narcissistic injury or mortification.
Competition for same type of narrative is also injurious (e.g, competitive victimhood or competitive evil or competitive bullying or competitive prosociality/communality)
To complicate things further: the locus of grandiosity is contextual and protean
Reputation vs. impression management: no long-term planning or thinking
When healthier people come across narcissists, they are often struck by their rigid immaturity and childlike vibe. There is a clearly infantile entity where an adult (or a person) should have been.
At the same time, the narcissist makes them feel infuriatingly inferior by establishing his or her grandiose delusional superiority: intellectual, pecuniary, biographical, or otherwise.
This discrepancy creates a jarring dissonance: children are not supposed to make us feel inferior! And we are not supposed to feel aggressive, envious, and competitive towards kids! On the contrary: we should find them endearing and protect them! Narcissists are like aliens as they were depicted in old sci-fi movies: of slight build with giant (babylike) eggheads. And inaccessibly foreign.
Less grandiose narcissists (and goal-oriented psychopaths) try to redress this offensive, dissonant, and incongruent power asymmetry by pretending to need and desire the other party. Narcissistic and psychopathic men tell women how charming, intelligent, and irresistible they are and how much they yearn for their company and sex. They let men know that they find them shrewd and reliable and knowledgeable and would like to hang out with them.
But some narcissists are too full of themselves to play this game. They are utterly self-sufficient and solipsistically self-contained. They are superior and are not ashamed to communicate it. Nor do they intend to ameliorate the impact of this natural imbalance. They care little what people (the lesser specimens) think about them (for example: that they are unattractive or asexual or gullible) or what they do to them in retribution. This apparent invulnerability only frustrates their interlocutors even further and renders them more aggressive, devaluing, and vindictive - a vicious circle of hurtful escalation.
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/stores/Sam-Vaknin/author/B000APLOFK/allbooks
Narcissists cultivate a public persona (mask) and are heavily invested in it. The public persona can be prosocial, communal, and accomplished. But the public persona can also be evil, negative, obnoxious, abusive, intimidating or it can be about failure and victimhood.
It is not about superiority but about uniqueness and whatever garners attention the most (Locus of grandiosity)
Self-concept (narrative)
Exposure that is ego-syntonic and narrative-congruent is eagerly awaited.
Any public counter-narrative leads to narcissistic injury or mortification.
Competition for same type of narrative is also injurious (e.g, competitive victimhood or competitive evil or competitive bullying or competitive prosociality/communality)
To complicate things further: the locus of grandiosity is contextual and protean
Reputation vs. impression management: no long-term planning or thinking
When healthier people come across narcissists, they are often struck by their rigid immaturity and childlike vibe. There is a clearly infantile entity where an adult (or a person) should have been.
At the same time, the narcissist makes them feel infuriatingly inferior by establishing his or her grandiose delusional superiority: intellectual, pecuniary, biographical, or otherwise.
This discrepancy creates a jarring dissonance: children are not supposed to make us feel inferior! And we are not supposed to feel aggressive, envious, and competitive towards kids! On the contrary: we should find them endearing and protect them! Narcissists are like aliens as they were depicted in old sci-fi movies: of slight build with giant (babylike) eggheads. And inaccessibly foreign.
Less grandiose narcissists (and goal-oriented psychopaths) try to redress this offensive, dissonant, and incongruent power asymmetry by pretending to need and desire the other party. Narcissistic and psychopathic men tell women how charming, intelligent, and irresistible they are and how much they yearn for their company and sex. They let men know that they find them shrewd and reliable and knowledgeable and would like to hang out with them.
But some narcissists are too full of themselves to play this game. They are utterly self-sufficient and solipsistically self-contained. They are superior and are not ashamed to communicate it. Nor do they intend to ameliorate the impact of this natural imbalance. They care little what people (the lesser specimens) think about them (for example: that they are unattractive or asexual or gullible) or what they do to them in retribution. This apparent invulnerability only frustrates their interlocutors even further and renders them more aggressive, devaluing, and vindictive - a vicious circle of hurtful escalation.
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/stores/Sam-Vaknin/author/B000APLOFK/allbooks
