What do you call someone you’ve been describing alternately as a narcissist and sociopath? Someone for whom neither diagnosis alone quite suffices as a complete description of the individual, but rather in whom both disorders seem as if wrapped up in one menacing individual?
Pardoning my grandiosity for daring to expand the already crowded psychiatric nomeclature, I propose to call these hybrid personalities“narcissiopaths.”
While I don’t expect the DSM folks to take me very seriously (or anyone else for that matter), I’m thinking (unfacetiously) that there’s a case to be made here.
The narcissiopath, as I envision him (using “him” for convenience’s sake) will meet many of the essential criteria for both narcissistic and sociopathic personality. The closest extant clinical description of this disordered individual that comes to mind is the confusing term “maligant narcissist.”
Now personally, I find the term “malignant narcissist” wanting: for instance, precisely at what point does a narcissist turn “malignant?” And doesn’t this imply the concept of non-malignant narcissists who, by definition, must be “benign?” (I’m not so sure their partners would attest to their harmlessness?)
My concept, the narcissiopath, suggests very directly the personality fusion of narcissism and sociopathy in this particular personality. The narcissiopath is the individual who effectively conflates narcissism and sociopathy.
Let me briefly review these separate personalities—the narcissist and sociopath—in their more classical presentations. The narcissist is fundamentally a recognition-craver, a reassurance-craver, a convenience-craver, and an inordinate craver and demander of attention, catering and special status. He is in many respects insatiably needy emotionally.
At root, the narcissist is an overly entitled personality. He feels entitled to be accomodated on a pretty much continual basis. This begs the question, on what basis does he accord himself this right—to expect, that is, the continual accomodation of his needs and desires? The answer is, on the basis of his sense of himself as “special,” and his expectation that others—indeed, the world—will also recognize him as special.
Psychologically, a compensatory process often occurs with the narcissist. His “sensed” and “imposed” specialness is often a compensation for underlying and threatening self-vulnerability; and compensation for doubts about his power, worth and attractiveness—doubts that he is too immature to face squarely and maturely.
Although exploitation is not typically the narcissist’s primary motive, we recognize his capacity to be manipulative, cruel, deceptive and abusive; yet his darker machinations are usually secondary to his demanding, and sometimes desperate, pursuit of others’ attention and cooperation.
The narcissist is imfamously inept at managing his disappointment. He feels that he should never be disappointed, that others owe him protection from disappointment. When disappointed, he will find someone to blame, and will quickly de-idealize and devalue his disappointer.
Devaluing his disappointer now enables him to abuse her or him with more righteous indignation and less guilt.
For the sociopath, this is all much easier. Unlike the narcissist, he doesn’t have to perform mental gymnastics to subdue his guilt in order to exploit others with an unburdened conscience. The sociopath has no guilt to manage.
But the sociopath’s dead conscience isn’t per se what makes him sociopathic. Many people have weak consciences who aren’t sociopaths. It is his dead conscience in conjunction with his orientation to exploit that gets to the heart (really, heartlessness) of the sociopath.
The sociopath is variously a manipulator, liar, deceiver and violator of others; and he is these things less to regulate his unstable self-esteem than, more often than not, to enjoy himself, amuse himself, entertain himself, and take what he feels like taking in a way he finds optimally satisfying.
The sociopath, as I have discussed previously, is an audacious exploiter. His lack of shame supports his imperturbability, which enhances the experience of his audacity. The sociopath leaves one shaking one’s head at his nerve, his gall. One imagines that to venture the deception and outrages the sociopath pursues with his famous, blithe composure, he must possess a chilling callousness and coldness beneath what may otherwise be his veneer of “normality.” One imagines correctly.
Now sometimes we find ourselves dealing, as I’ve suggested, with individuals who seem, at once, to be both narcissist and sociopath, as if straddling, or embodying both disorders.
These are the individuals I’m proposing to call narcissiopaths.
For a good celebrity example of this, consider O.J. Simpson. Simpson, as his story evolved, was someone you found yourself confusingly calling a narcissistic personality disorder (probably correctly) in one conversation, and in the very next, a sociopath (probably correctly).
You found yourself vacillating between the two diagnoses because he seemed to fulfill important criteria of both. There was O.J. the narcissist: publicly charming, charismatic, disarmingly engaging and seductively likeable while privately, behind closed doors, he was tyrannizing Nicole Brown whenever he felt his “omnipotent control” threatened.
Simpson came to epitomize the indulged athlete: catered to all his life for his special athletic gifts, somewhere along the line he came to believe, with ultimately violent conviction, in his right to control and be heeded, not defied.
Simpson was all about “looking good,” about public show; in Nicole Brown he’d found a woman—a “trophy wife—”who could “reflect well” on him publicly, and on his “greatness.” She was also, tragically, the “perfect” choice to engage his narcissistic compulsion to alternately idealize, and then devalue, her; that is, to idealize the perfect, and then devalue the perfectly dirty, sex object.
In other words, in choosing her, Simpson chose well for his narcissism.
In the end, Simpson was as charming, ingratiating, and as shallow and superficial as so many narcissists (and all sociopaths) are.
But he was more than that. He was also callous, and brutally violent. He descended upon Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman like the knife-wielding devil he was, nearly carving Brown’s head off and massacring Goldman.
And then”¦he lied.
He maintained his innocence with outrageous brazenness, determined to win the next stage of yet another game. And where was the remorse? There was none; just his arrogant, insulting contempt.
Simpson had executed a miraculous performance. He had escaped from double-murder and the incontrovertible evidence of his guilt as improbably, as impossibly, as he’d so often escaped (brilliantly) opposing defenses and game-plans geared to stop him.
Finally, although I’d say that Simpson probably tilts, on balance, more to a narcissistic personality structure than not, he also possesses many of the most dangerous and essential diagnostic features of the sociopath. He seems, in other words, to be not entirely one or the other, but both narcissist and sociopath all in one.
I intend to flesh out the concept of the narcissiopath in future posts. And I look forward, as always, to your feedback.
(This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
I assumed it to be sarcasm! From what I’ve read Miss Tilly fantastico write I didnt suppose for a minute it would be anything else.x
Tilly Tilly Tilly – Ain’t no way you would ring him up…I dont feel sorry for my X – I did feel pity for 3 years, pity is the main reason it lasted 3 years,,sorry? nope, not after I realized pity was his tool…….btw your welcome Steve B
I just want to clarify, I am not suggesting everyone should pity the slime balls from hell and think oh poor him he cant help i poor baby, come here and i’ll make it all better… noooo! no way!but I have found that yes I CAN shake my head and sigh at the dark and turmoil he will forever live in without wanting to dash in and try and save him… Its a big thing for me. An Ah-ha moment. I am naturally empathetic,YES, yes I AM (I am having empathy pride!) but it doesnt mean I have throw myself into the fray …
it not ‘i’.
While I agree that bad people on the narcissist/sociopath/psychopath continuum are pitiable in an abstract sense, count me as another with absolutely no pity for them as individuals. Any higher level emotion directed their way DOES make us vulnerable.
I leave them to God alone. It’s not my job to love them, forgive them, work to understand them, pity them, or care about them in any way. All I care about is whether or not I can RECOGNIZE them. Others are welcome to find their own peace when it comes to the disordered, but as for me, I choose complete indifference. No contact, not even in my prayers.
One of the most valuable lessons I learned during my recovery is that it is a spiritual process. At least it was for me. And with all due respect to Kathleen and others who truly believe that we can forgive the perpetrators, I am thankful that I have never gotten to forgiveness of the man who molested my children. Yes, I know that “forgiveness is for us, not them.” But truly, my heart is peaceful and my conscience is clear. The energy I once would have directed toward “forgiving” these sorts of monsters (even if it is only mental or spiritual energy) I now expend in better ways. I do my best to help my children recover. I do my best in my real, meatspace life to help other victims and potential victims. (And there’s no shortage of them…I live in a prison town. You wouldn’t believe the number of women who marry inmates and hang around prisons!)
My view of this question is still developing, and quite hard for me to explain at this point. I was forced by develop a kind of rudimentary “Christ consciousness,” in that I had to accept how misunderstood I was likely to be and how vilified I was likely to be, and how I would have to accept a degree of lifelong suffering because I, too, had met my own personal Satan while I wandered in the wilderness. The P experience is my own personal cross to bear. It marks me, and it will mark me until the day I die.
I had to accept that my own personal Satan had tempted me. I had to accept that in some temptations I was victorious and in others I was not. I did not emerge sinless, but I did emerge alive and capable of love, and that counts for something. I forgive only those people who ASK for forgiveness and who CHANGE THEIR WAYS.
Before, in the old life, I believed that in order to be a good person, I had to forgive, and believe in the possibility of redemption for everyone. Today, I believe that it is NOT MY JOB to forgive, and work toward the redemption of the irredeemable. I leave that to God alone. And I’m quite content to do that. I let go of my “Christ complex” and embraced my “Christ consciousness.” It’s a fine distinction (and perhaps one that exists only in my head), but it’s one of the big realizations that helped me survive the experience.
Because once upon a time, my self-image included a view of myself as a loving, forgiving, benefit-of-the-doubt, where-there’s-life-there’s-hope sort of gal. A do-gooder. A long-sufferer. That gal had her personality shattered by a full-on psychopath. That gal’s children were raped and molested. That gal barely got out with her sanity and life intact.
To get over a sociopath, become a sociopath, to quoth our resident attorney. And to STAY recovered, I say STAY hard-hearted, at least in their direction. To those who believe otherwise, I say “Good luck!” and “I’ll see you back here once you too have been mangled and discarded. Again.”
Psychos don’t forget, ever. And believe me, if they know you have their number, you’re THE ENEMY. My mother carried in her purse for years and years a note my father wrote to her upon the occasion of her (finally!) filing for divorce. In the psycho’s tiny, cramped handwriting, here is what it said (and yes, 40 years after his death I can still remember it):
“I will hunt you down and kill you no matter where you go. I will kill (Tood). I will kill (your father and your mother). When I am finished with them, I will kill (your cousins) and (your aunts and uncles). You think about that the next time you see your lawyer.”
Complete and total disengagement, for me, is the only way to go. And if the P can’t be avoided, then a complete and total willingness to match threat for threat. No emotion where they are concerned, none.
And as far as the naming goes, and where to draw a line between one disorder and the next, I leave that to the experts. Good luck to anyone who enters that particular hall of mirrors. To me, the debate over DSM criteria is as abstract as medieval scholars arguing over the number of angels on the old head of the pin.
After years of reading on the subject, I’m as confused as the next person. Narcissists, of the three types, are the only ones who can change, as I understand it. Sociopaths had a conscience once, but had it killed off by circumstance or choice. Psychopaths never had a conscience to begin with. All three types are dangerous, and the higher you go on the scale the more danger there is. Call them N/S/P or call them Moe, Larry and Curly, the wreckage they cause is still the same.
P.S. I love this place…we can agree to disagree and still engage one another on so many levels. Big vibes-o-love to all. Except the lurking psychos. Ha!
I got Tilly’s sarcasm too. But I also think, as blueskies points out, that there is a cognitive issue here. Or maybe one of social training.
Feeling sorry for anyone does not equate with having to rescue them. This is one of the things that I had to learn, or unlearn, in my recovery. That just because someone is in my space doing a pity ploy doesn’t mean that it has anything to do with me. If I want to get involved, it’s my choice. But it requires the same kind of personal risk analysis as well as considering of what good I’ll get out of it as anything else does.
Those are the “me” considerations. There’s also a separate consideration about what they’re going to get out of it.
One of the things I had to face was that all the rescuing I’ve done in my life probably didn’t do most of those people a lot of good. Because it was largely enabling their dysfunctional behavior, not (as I imagined) changing their lives.
I heard a really funny story last night from an old friend, who had gone out of her way to help me get a new client who would provide me with a big monthly retainer. She did this because, at the time when I was deeply involved with my ex-S, she was worried that he was going to bankrupt me. So what did I do with that additional income? I used it to pay for a second home in the Hollywood Hills, so the little monster could break into Hollywood. Which of course, he didn’t do. He abandoned me there, after 9/11 destroyed my income stream. And I lost both my California and New York homes. And all that money was lost, as well as virtually everything else, including my company, that I’d built.
As we were talking, she asked if I thought it would have made a difference if she hadn’t tried to help? Would I have bottomed out faster and gotten out of the relationship? No probably not. I actually got involved with “helping” him for two more horrible, quasi-romantic, ego-destroying chapters, before I finally threw him out of my life. I wasn’t going to leave this thing until I was so sick and so suicidal that it become a life-or-death thing.
So she probably didn’t do any damage, but she didn’t help either. Everything she invested in helping me — and it was considerable — was just lost in the wind.
It’s really hard to just stand back and let people live through their dysfunctional dramas, especially when we know them and care about them. Which is arguably the case when we’re involved with sociopaths and narcissists, which are clearly highly dysfunctional people. But the fact that they can hook us at all on pity ploys means, to me at least, that we’re not seriously considering the option of just letting them reap what they sow.
It doesn’t make us bad people to let other people suffer. I know that sounds strange, but the fact that someone is suffering may be part of their learning process. Of course, this is not always true. But it’s true often enough that I have established some rules for myself about who I rescue, why I rescue and how I do it. And they pretty much apply to everyone.
First, the only time I get involved is when I see someone making a great effort to change personally or change their circumstances. They’re taking responsibility for their own thinking and their own results, but for some reason, they just don’t have quite enough resources to pull it off. (This is why I invest money in Kiva, a microbank lending facility to entrepreneurs in third-world countries.)
Second, if I do it, I negotiate what I will get in return and on what schedule. And if the person doesn’t fulfill that commitment, I write it off and wash my hands of them. Immediately. (Obviously I don’t offer more help than I can afford to lose.)
Third, I accept the fact that, by making another person dependent on me in any way, even temporarily, it probably kills the potential for a future friendship (and certainly anything more). Peer relationships are not built on dependencies. In the very rare instance that the other person finds that whatever I’ve given is the final puzzle piece in building a level of independence that makes us peers, I celebrate it. But the fact that our relationship once involved my help can create an obstacle between us if the person continues to feel indebted. It’s a one-up/one-down thing that can create unhealthy power dynamics between us.
Fourth, I work on cultivating in myself a sense of gratitude, rather than a sense of debt. On the occasions I do get involved, it is a privilege to become involved in another person’s life in such a material sense. However it comes out, I’ll learn something from it. Gratitude opens my heart to allowing them to be whoever they are, living their own dramas and following their own path. So I don’t feel like I’ve lost anything compared to what I gained. And on the flip side, the only chance we may have for a future friendship is if, once they have paid back their obligation to me, they feel gratitude as well. That way, we are glad we found and got to know each other.
I’m adding all this, because I want to say what I done to replace my former sense that I was obligated to help anyone I felt sorry for. I’m not. I feel sorry for a lot of people, including some people I love, but in most of these cases, I take a hands-off position, beyond being a compassionate companion. I can feel for them, without trying to fix them or their lives.
In my mind, this is an optimistic position. I believe they’ll sort it out in their own way and time. It is also a position of self-management. I know what my resources are, and I cannot afford to get involved in certain situations.
And Tilly, I wasn’t trying to be unfriendly. I know you’ve been through a lot, and I want to cheer when I see you speaking out for yourself and against abuse.
Kathy
Tilly,
“You are right. I am ringing him up and asking him to take me back. I know he will. This whole thing of being on your own sucks.”
Get a grip girl. Feeling sorry for him is one thing, taking him back is another. Feel sorry from a distance.
Remember, I avoid the narcissist MORE assiduously than I avoid the sociopath. The narcissist makes himself ill with his messy emotions, AND he acts out in ridiculous ways. The best way to simultaneously help the narcissist and yourself is to get away and stay away.
Let’s put this another way: I rescue wild animals when I can. I have found that treating their injuries can be very difficult, because they experience so much distress when I’m close to them. There’s one thing they can do which tends to calm them down and stop their struggles; I can permit them to bite down on my arm or hand and not let go. Needless to say, I must be wearing very heavy clothing or gauntlets for this to work. After their injuries are treated, I care for them minimally, with little or no contact. When it’s time to free them, they leave without a backward glance. They still hate and fear me, and that’s A OK. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.
Narcissists are lot like the injured wild animals, in that the narcissists’ emotions are in an uproar when they’re in close proximity with the people they are in conflict with. In these situations, their compulsion to attack is overwhelming. The best thing for the narcissist and a person they’ve chosen to attack is distance.
Mind you, I enjoy sighting animals I’ve cared for in the past, and am happy to see that they still retain a healthy fear of me. I don’t pity them, I rejoice in the way they have retained their natural instincts. I do pity the narcissist, because I think his/her rage and fear are dysfunctional, not natural. It’s a sad thing, but it certainly doesn’t cause me to want to get closer. Getting close to a narcissist is a lose-lose proposition.
Tood, I loved your post x
Pity and forgiveness to me are separate things.I pity the fool (to quote Mr.T chuckle;) who lives his life in darkness unable to sustain himself without sucking the light and life out of everything he comes into contact with, never comprehending real love, real peace, real happiness, and with no chance of ever doing so… but the day I FORGIVE him for what he put me through is the day hell freezes over. x
P.S. In my case, the narcissist’s personal history is absolutely heart-rending. I do not share his personal history on this forum, because I think that would be a heartless invasion of privacy. If I was cold-bloodedly evil, and wanted to damn a person, I would raise that person from infancy the way the narcissist was raised.
His childhood is a textbook study in how environmental factors can deprive a person of their sanity before they’re old enough to be responsible for their choices or circumstances.
Sometimes evil occurs, and the consequences endure for an incalculably long time.
Tood,
I read your post, and I know that it makes what I talk about seem like New Age baloney. But everything I talk about is about how I’ve rearranged my inner life around this thing. Just as you’ve done.
I was lucky, in that I could isolate myself and just heal. I wasn’t able to isolate myself entirely. After I got rid of my ex, I realized I was working for someone at least as bad as him. And I had to get rid of him and live with losing the majority of my income. And then I rented the cottage on my property to people who started having underage drinking festivals two or three times a week, and had to deal with that. And when I got rid of them, the next tenant burned it down. All of this in the early stages of my recovery. And the list goes on.
But I didn’t have to deal with what you deal with on a daily basis. The painful reminders and repercussions. The hard work with people you love to help them heal, as well as the work you do with other survivors. Compared to you, I had the luxury of finding a cave to meditate in for a few years.
But I do want to make it clear that both my practices of compassion and forgiving have nothing to do with enabling or supporting people with aggressive personality disorders. On the matter of forgiving, in particular, I’m almost sorry sometimes that I wrote that article. Because the word itself seems to be such a trigger. People read things into it that I never wrote or suggested.
Forgiving, as I see it, is something we do for ourselves, as a kind of mental housecleaning, when we’re ready to stop giving the past so much energy. It is not about accepting or condoning. It’s not even about compassion. It’s just a personal decision to stop focusing on the unchangeable past. We do it when we feel pretty comfortable with what we’ve learned and our future ability to take care of ourselves. (Which does not mean forgetting either — just taking the lessons and moving on.)
And I don’t know if anyone who lives with constant reminders or recurring painful situations can do that.
I don’t think you and I are different in our ultimate viewpoints about what to do with these dangerous people. I leave them to their own karma, while never forgetting what I learned about self-care (including self-defense). I think it’s a dangerous self-indulgence to assume that the world is always benevolent or that my good intentions will always attract the same. But at the same time, there is a lot that is good, true and beautiful in the world, even in the worst situations.
Sometimes it takes a lot of healing and a lot of self-work to see what that is. But I’m determined to do that, because I believe that we are not meant to live in fear and anger. Those are healthy, logical responses to trauma, and not to be discounted. But they’re not the “norm” of our lives.
I’m sorry you have been through so much. And I deeply respect what you are doing for your children. There was no one to help me in similar circumstances, and I think my life would have been much different if there had been. These challenges we face are so huge. But I believe that the healing work we do literally changes the world. I’m not sure how that works, but I believe in it.
Kathy