Narcissism is one of the most prevalent toxic personality structures today, to such an extent that it threatens to become a ‘new normal’. In all walks of life one encounters individual narcissists, but also narcissistic groups, institutional and, increasingly, social cultures which prevent the creation and flourishing or organic social bonds.
To proceed with this overview of narcissism I will start with explaining the link between the organic community and the narcissistic culture, and will then proceed to elaborating how the community-creating dysfunction further manifests in personal dysfunction, or in the influence that seemingly socially functional narcissists exert on their victims, who then become socially dysfunctional.
The organic bond
Organic communities are those not mediated by institutions or officially established rules. The most organic traditional community is the family, and its destruction in the modern western civilization is an indicator of the demise of organicism as a principle of social structure. Other organic groups include neighborhoods, professional groups when they are informally organized, romantic relationships (although even these are increasingly institutionally regulated through various family laws which extend into informal romantic partnerships and tend to intrude on private issues both when it is justified, and when it is unjustified), friendships, etc. In societies where organic bonds are strong, mental disorders are less prevalent. Contrariwise, in industrialized and exceptionally institutionalized societies mental disturbances are a rule and quickly becoming ‘the new normal’. The best example is the extremely widespread contemporary use of antidepressant drugs, not as a cure for depression (for antidepressants can’t ‘cure’ depression, they can only sometimes reduce pain it inflicts), but as enhancement drugs, intended to generate ‘good mood’ (which, again, they usually do badly), which is required at work and in polite social interactions (the proverbial artificial smiles in the shop and in the street).
Legend has it that, when the makers of Prozac, the most prevalent antidepressant at the time, negotiated with the Chinese authorities on the placement of the drug on the Chinese market, they received a permit along with the remark by the Chinese that they doubted the drug would be a market success. Asked whether that meant that the Chinese people did not suffer from depression, they retorted: ‘No, we do suffer from depression, but when we are depressed we talk to close people, we don’t take antidepressants’. This is perhaps the best formulation of the healing role of the organic community, such as a close extended family. It is precisely in societies where organic communities have been completely squeezed out of people’s everyday existence that the consumption of antidepressants is the most prevalent. It is also in such societies that psychotherapy, for those who can afford it, is largely a replacement for organic community, the only organic relationships so many people have at their disposal.
The role of narcissism in obstructing organicism
According to classic psychoanalysis, narcissistic personality suffers from a disorder of the life instinct, or libido. While in a healthy person the libido is projected from inside the person towards other people, and actually aims at those other people, so that bonds of love, affection, or romantic attachment are created, the narcissist projects their libido towards others in a circular motion, so that through animating others into validation of the narcissist’s own value, the narcissist’s own libido comes back to the narcissist. To put this structure simple, while a healthy person tends to love other people, the narcissist loves only themselves, through the seeming relationships with other people. When a narcissist is in a relationship, it is the narcissist herself that is the object of the narcissist’s desire, while the other person is merely a tool to effect the validation and gratification of the narcissist’s love for herself.
This dynamic structure makes impossible organic relationships for the narcissist, because the seemingly organic bonds in which the narcissist enters quickly turn into betrayal, false affection, or open narcissistic abuse (manipulation to exert validation or gratification, followed by the rest of the familiar narcissistic cycle that has become the standard set of diagnostic criteria, namely devaluing, discarding, hoovering (attracting back), followed by a repetition of the same cycle.
The narcissist uses an array of techniques, now well known to psychotherapists, to manipulate a relationship which may seem organic to the other participants in the relationships, and to connected others, however that relationship is instrumental and devoid of the key attributes of organicism, including a genuine desire for the wellbeing of others. Some of the tools the narcissist uses include the infamous ‘gaslighting’ (challenging the victim’s reality, so that the victim constantly thinks of recording what the narcissist has said to prove that they did say that, or that certain events did happen), ‘breadcrumbing’ (offering so little in a relationship, like feeding someone with breadcrumbs, that it is just enough for the other person to remain in the relationship, but never enough for a decent and quality emotional life of the other person), ‘love-bombing’ (typically at the beginning of the relationship, when the narcissist acts their best and does extremely pleasant things for the other person, in order to establish influence over them, after which time the love bombing turns into very different attitudes), etc. By using these tools, the narcissist manipulates the relationship to their advantage, in order to receive what is called ‘narcissistic supply’. This can include a variety of ‘goods’, including company, sex, financial benefits, social and career advantages, etc. The relationship is very similar to the manipulative governance of a political community, and this is where we come to the critical point of the role of the narcissistic culture.
The narcissistic culture
The internal dynamics of narcissism is like that of a contagious disease: it spreads easily. There is an infamous diagnosis in psychiatry of Folie a Deux, or shared psychosis, where one person who suffers from a psychosis causes another close person, with whom one lives or shares significant time, to also succumb to the same symptoms of psychosis. Thus the odd appearance of a marital couple, or another two close people, showing up, or being brought in, for psychiatric evaluation with exactly the same psychotic ideation. If they are separated, physically, with no treatment, it soon becomes clear who carries the primary psychosis, because the other person, who had ‘caught’ the psychosis from their close one, recovers with no special help. The one who initially introduced the psychosis in their relationship, however, remains ill and requires treatment. Thus mental disorders are in fact contagious illnesses; this requires a degree of care in their handling and a timeliness in diagnosis and treatment.