Views on narcissism

Vaknin has a prolific online presence, writing on narcissism and psychopathy.[14] His views have been solicited by the media.[3][15]

In his view, narcissists have lost their "true self", the core of their personality, which has been replaced by delusions of grandeur, a "false self". Therefore, he believes, they cannot be healed, because they do not exist as real persons, only as reflections: "The False Self replaces the narcissist's True Self and is intended to shield him from hurt and narcissistic injury by self-imputing omnipotence ... The narcissist pretends that his False Self is real and demands that others affirm this confabulation,"[16] meanwhile keeping his real-life imperfect true self under wraps.[17] Vaknin extends the concept of narcissistic supply, and introduces concepts such as primary and secondary narcissistic supply.[18] He distinguishes between cerebral and somatic narcissists; the former generate their narcissistic supply by applying their minds, the latter their bodies. He considers himself a cerebral narcissist.[19] He calls narcissistic co-dependents "inverted narcissists."[20] "[They] provide the narcissist with an obsequious, unthreatening audience...the perfect backdrop."[21] He believes that disproportionate numbers of pathological narcissists are at work in the most influential reaches of society, such as medicine, finance and politics.

He acknowledges that his theories on narcissism are not accepted by academics in the field, for instance his theory that narcissism is akin to a form of artificial intelligence.[5] <--- whereas I believe it is akin to a form of demonic possession

artificial intelligence how

like the person creates a separate intelligence in their own head?

without getting too much into the word intelligence

yes

the person creates a false identity, a false ego

a false intelligence

they create "another me"

that is used as a shield to cover up their TRUE "me" which for various reasons is stunted or near-absent

the classic stimulus would be childhood abuse

where the child sequesters away his true self to create an impervious facade

impervious doesn't mean strong willed, they can be exceptionally weak willed

masochistic

but the true self remains defended

exposure of the true self becomes acknowledgment of the trauma, reliving the trauma in a sense

as until they can get over it, their true self can never "come out"

and can therefore never grow

I believe the exact same thing occurs in homosexual men

why the manifestations are different I don't know, maybe it is more holistic for the narcissist etc.

maybe the stimuli are exclusively sexual in the homosexual case

A SOCIAL SELF

A CONSTRUCT TO MANIPULATE OTHERS

true self-false self theory goes far beyond the above

HMM

you could call it social self too, but there is a danger there of conflation because the false self is for most of these people, effectively their true self

their private self

some of them have insight, almost all of them will feel the hole of absence

of their true self

but they cannot really grasp it

I have been led to think that something similar to this state can be induced by mass media in ordinary people

all "hipster lies" create or come from false selves

where someone pretends to enjoy something, but doesn't really

but can even come close to, or actually fully believe that they do "enjoy" it

enough to identify with it strongly

hence the phenomenon of a mass of people who its obvious don't like metal music at all

but will nevertheless attempt to identify with it

not appropriate, they don't have another identity they want to muddy up the metal with

and in these cases also, there would the element that the true self is right there in the background

so you may actually end up with a mixed state, where someone genuinely likes one or two metal acts that for some reason they became receptive to

and the rest is false