Narcissistic abuse

Narcissistic abuse is a form of emotional abuse projected by a narcissist on to another individual. Although narcissistic abuse is primarily focused on emotional and psychological abuse, there are other types of narcissistic abuse that can be classified in this category. These include abuses such as financial, spiritual, sexual, and physical.

Types of relationships

Narcissistic abuse can occur in any kind of relationship. It occurs within families and workplaces and in all age groups.

Romantic

Narcissistic abuse may also occur in adult-to-adult relationships, where the narcissistic person tends to seek out an empathetic partner in order to gain admiration of their own attributes and feelings of power and control – narcissistic supply. The narcissist creates a dynamic abuser and victim relationship through a cycle of abuse, resulting in traumatic bonding that makes it hard for their partner to leave the increasingly abusive relationship.

People with codependent-type traits may seek relationships with narcissists.

The narcissists' relationships are characterized by a period of intense involvement and idealization of their partner, followed by devaluation, and a rapid discarding of the partner. Alternatively, that scenario can loop, with ghosting (ceasing communication with the former partner) and hoovering (luring the former partner back) instead of discarding. At the beginning of a relationship (or its new cycle) with a narcissist, the partner is only shown the ideal self of the narcissist, which includes pseudo-empathy, kindness, and charm. Once the partner has committed to the relationship (e.g., through marriage or a business partnership), the true self of the narcissist will begin to emerge. The initial narcissistic abuse begins with belittling comments and grows to contempt, ignoring behavior (i.e. silent treatment, which is a passive-aggressive form of emotional abuse), adultery, triangulation (forming any relationship triangles), sabotage, and, at times, physical abuse.

At the core of a narcissist is a combination of entitlement and low self-esteem. These feelings of inadequacy are projected onto the victim. If the narcissistic person is feeling unattractive they will belittle their romantic partner's appearance. If the narcissist makes an error, this error becomes the partner's fault. Narcissists also engage in insidious, manipulative abuse by giving subtle hints and comments that result in the victim questioning their own behavior and thoughts. This is termed gaslighting. Another common abusive tactic is underhanded public humiliation, when the narcissist says something seemingly neutral but offensive to the victim and enjoys the emotional reaction. This is called dog-whistling. Any slight criticism of the narcissist, whether actual or perceived, often triggers narcissistic rage and full-blown annihilation from the narcissistic person. This can take the form of screaming tirades, silent treatment or quiet sabotage (setting traps, refusing communication, hiding belongings, spreading rumors, making complaints to authority figures such as police, etc).

The discard phase can be swift and occurs once the narcissistic supply is obtained elsewhere. In romantic relationships, the narcissistic supply can be acquired by having affairs. The new partner is in the idealization phase and only witnesses the ideal self; thus once again the cycle of narcissistic abuse begins. Narcissists do not take responsibility for relationship difficulties and exhibit no feelings of remorse. Instead they believe themselves to be the victim in the relationship as of their self-debasing projections, their partner can only ever fail to meet their expectations.

A research study published in the International Journal of Research studies in psychology published a qualitative study based on the points of view of those who believed their romantic partners to be narcissistic abusers. The synopsis of the results is best quoted directly from the research study: "The core category/issue that emerged from the date was problems in self-esteem of the abuser. According to the date, the exercise of power, maladjustment, immorality, lack of sense of reality, and need for manipulation appeared as manifestations as serious problems in self-esteem (Määttä, 2009). Self-esteem is a salient part of personality affecting the functioning of one's ego. Self-esteem includes the feelings of self-respect, self-appreciation, self-acceptance, and self-proficiency. Furthermore,the desire for self-esteem from a fundamental need for psychological security, which is engendered by people's awareness of their own vulnerability and mortality (Greenberg, 2008)" The stories of the victims seem to narcissistic abusers have issues in all these areas which then reflects in their behavior. Self-esteem is considered to be a core reason for their behaviors.

Parent-child/family

Parent-child and any family relationship is based on the same principles of a narcissistic abuser. The narcissist needs validation of self and feelings of power and control. Results of research show that misbehavior in their children, for example, may provoke them to physically make them believe the child's misbehavior is a direct rebuke of their authority. The same can be true for any family members, although the dynamic between siblings, for example, is different than that between a parent and their child.

Workplace

Research suggests that narcissistic abusers can and do climb the corporate ladder more readily and are able to charm and gain trust from other co-workers and management to do so.

One study even showed that managers had three times the rate of the disorder than the general population. (Lipman, 2018). Nathan Brooks (2016), another researcher who studies psychopathy in the workplace notes, "Typically psychopaths create a lot of chaos and generally tend to play people off against each other... for psychopaths it (corporate success) is a game and they don't mind if they violate morals. It is about getting where they want in the company and having dominance over others." This is a typical pattern of narcissistic abusers.

Narcissistic abusers charm others to climb up the ladder and undermine co-workers in various ways to push them down. They covertly sabotage others by unethical means. They may even have these tendencies in their personal relationships outside of work.

According to the Workplace Bullying Institute, harassment, intimidation, and covert coercion at work "is akin to domestic violence at work, where the abuser is on the payroll." This form of covert abuse occurs more frequently then we might assume. Dr. Martha Stout (2004) estimates that 1 in 25 Americans are sociopaths, which is an alarmingly large number considering that many workplaces reward narcissistic and sociopathic traits. Research indicates that as many as 75% of workers have been affected by workplace bullying, either as a target or a witness (Fisher-Blando, 2008).

Viewpoints

• 21st century transactional analysis has highlighted clients who suffered some narcissistic abuse as children (that is, an injury to their developing selves), examining for instance the boy in an all-female household who only survived by developing powerful emotional antennae in order to respond to the emotional needs of his mother and sister.
• Post-Jungians have explored the after-effects of an intense narcissistic wound resulting from an oppressively unempathetic parent. In particular, Polly Young-Eisendrath emphasises how the narcissistic longings of mothers (or fathers) to amass reflected glory through their children...can bring disastrous results for mother and child if both lose their capacity for autonomous development.
• Object relations theory for its part stresses both that the most traumatizing experience of all is the absence of emotional giving from a mother or father, and that, in an intergenerational pattern, people who have been brought up by tyrannical authoritarian parents will often parent their children in the same way. Adam Phillips adds that the mother who colonizes her child and stifles gestures of autonomy and difference breeds in him or her an often unconscious craving for the dead-end justice of revenge.
• In another tradition, Julia Kristeva points out how a pairing of mothers and fathers, overprotective and uneasy, who have chosen the child as a narcissistic artificial limb and keep incorporating that child as a restoring element for the adult psyche intensifies the infant's tendency toward omnipotence.
• M. Scott Peck looked at milder but nonetheless destructive common forms of parental narcissism, as well as the depth of confusion produced by his mother's narcissism in a more serious instance.

Theorists

Antecedents: Ferenczi

Main article: Sándor Ferenczi

The roots of current concern with narcissistic abuse can be traced back to the later work of Sándor Ferenczi, which helped to shape modern psychoanalytic theories of "schizoid," "narcissistic," and "borderline" personality disorders.

In "Confusion of Tongues Between Adults and the Child", Ferenczi observed that patients often displayed "a striking, almost helpless compliance and willingness to accept my interpretations" even if he encouraged them not to agree with him. Ferenczi traced his patient's behavior to childhood trauma. He found that in cases of sexual abuse, children often misinterpreted the emotional responses of adults and responded to them by becoming passive toward the adult. The child developed an "anxiety-fear-ridden identification" with the adult, as well as "introjection of the guilt feelings of the adult":

"The same anxiety, however, if it reaches a certain maximum, compels them to subordinate themselves like automata to the will of the aggressor, to divine each one of his desires and to gratify these; completely oblivious of themselves they identify themselves with the aggressor."

Ferenczi also argued that a child's tender love for a caretaker often involves a fantasy of "taking the role of mother to the adult". In what he identified as the "terrorism of suffering", the child has a "compulsion" to right the wrongs of the family by taking on responsibilities that are far beyond the child's maturity level. In this manner, "a mother complaining of her constant miseries can create a nurse for life out of her child, i.e. a real mother substitute, neglecting the true interests of the child." Within such distorted patterns of parent/child interaction, 'Ferenczi believed the silence, lies, and hypocrisy of the caregivers were the most traumatic aspects of the abuse'—ultimately producing what he called 'narcissistic mortification'.

Ferenczi also looked at such distortions in the therapist/patient relationship, accusing himself of sadistic (and, implicitly, narcissistic) abuse of his patients.

Kohut, Horney, and Miller

A half-century later, in the wake of Kohut's innovative pronouncement that the age of "normal narcissism" and normal narcissistic entitlement had arrived – the age, that is, of the normative parental provision of narcissistic supply – the concept of its inverse appeared: narcissistic abuse. According to Kohut, maternal misrecognition amounts to a failure to perform the narcissistic selfobject functions of "mirroring"...the cause of a narcissistic disturbance. Paternal misrecognition could produce the same result: Kohut explored for example a son's transference reproaches directed at the non mirroring father who was preoccupied with his own self-enhancement and thus refused to respond to his son's originality.

Karen Horney had already independently highlighted the character disorder – particularly the compulsive striving for love and power – resulting from the childhood hurts bred of parental narcissism and abuse. She thus heralded today's work in this area by Alice Miller and others.

Alice Miller lays special emphasis on the process of reproduction of narcissistic abuse, the idea that love relations and relations to children are repetitions of previous narcissistic distortions. Miller's early work in particular was very much in line with Kohut's tale of deficits in empathy and mirroring, with a stress on the way adults revisit and perpetuate the narcissistic wounds of their own early years in an intergenerational cycle of narcissistic abuse. In Miller's view, when abused for the sake of adults' needs, children could develop an amazing ability to perceive and respond intuitively, that is, unconsciously, to this need of the mother, or of both parents, for him to take on the role that had unconsciously been assigned to him.

Modern theories

Current point of view of modern psychiatrists believe that today's society is at fault for the increase in narcissistic abuse because society promotes competitiveness. Many features of narcissism be sources of success in the modern competitive society. The question is that to what extent the opportunistic abilities to bring out one's own proficiency and constantly strive for the better result in trample on other people and having an irresponsible and insensitive attitude to other people (see e.g. Lucher, Huston, Walker & Alex Houtson, 2011)

In 2011 Maatta, Uusiautti & Matta published a study with an indication that modern society may shape the patterns of narcissistic abuse. The ideas of pleasing yourself first, taking care of yourself, climbing the ladder and general success in life are desired traits. And the explanation for the increase in narcissistic disorders may at least partly be found in the societal development as competitiveness, individualism, and opportunism are admired - those exact features that are often typical narcissists (yllärniemi, 2006).

Wider developments

Miller's work, in its emphasis on the real-life interaction of parent and child, challenged the orthodox Freudian account of Oedipal fantasy, in a sustained indictment of the moral and pedagogical underpinnings of the therapy industry; and did so at a point when 'the keyword of the 1980s was invariably "abuse".

With the passing of time (and of the polemical edge), a more slimmed-down, pragmatic version of the concept of narcissistic abuse gradually came to permeate most of the wider culture of psychotherapy.

Only in the Freudian heartland of mainstream psychoanalysis has the term retained a more restricted, pre-Ferenczi usage. Thus in a "comprehensive dictionary of psychoanalysis" of 2009, the only appearance of the term is in connection with misuse of the couch for narcissistic gain: The fact that it is seen by some patients and therapists as a "status symbol" lends it to narcissistic abuse.

See also

• Abusive power and control
• Atlas personality
• Child abuse
• Flying monkeys (psychology)
• Healthy narcissism
• Self psychology

Further reading

• Angela Atkinson, Jillian Tindall, Navigating No-Contact with a Narcissist: A Recovery Roadmap for Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse (2017)
• Patricia Evans, Controlling People: How to Recognize, Understand, and Deal with People Who Try to Control You (2003)
• Alice Little, No Contact - The Final Boundary: Surviving Parental Narcissistic Abuse (2016)
• Alice Miller, The Drama of the Gifted Child (1979)
• Steven Stosny, Treating Attachment Abuse (1995)
• Estela Welldon, Mother, Madonna, Whore: The Idealization and Denigration of Motherhood (1988)
• Shahida Arabi POWER: Surviving and Thriving After Narcissistic Abuse: A Collection of Essays on Malignant Narcissism and Recovery from Emotional Abuse Paperback (2017)