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    20 Shades of Narcissism
    20 Shades of Narcissism
    20 Shades of Narcissism
    Ebook137 pages2 hours

    20 Shades of Narcissism

    By David Thomas

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    About this ebook

    Narcissists can seriously diminish the happiness of those around them. Everyone knows people who display narcissistic behaviour, either family members or in the workplace, or for many people, both. The narcissist looks to others in his or her environment for a view that will reflect and confirm how wonderful he or she is.
    This book shines the spotlight on narcissism in all of its micro and macro manifestations. Each of the book’s 20 chapters examines a different aspect of the topic. Some explore the theoretical aspects of narcissism and some look at the damage that well-known narcissists have inflicted on their businesses or their countries. Other chapters tell true stories about how people, with varying degrees of narcissism, have diminished the happiness of those around them, with the names changed to protect the identities of both the “innocent” and the “guilty”!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDavid Thomas
    Release dateFeb 24, 2013
    ISBN9781301613151
    20 Shades of Narcissism
    Author

    David Thomas

    David Thomas, LMSW, is the counseling director for men and boys at Daystar. A popular speaker and the coauthor of five books, he is a frequent guest on national television and radio, and a regular contributor to ParentLife magazine. David and his wife, Connie, have a daughter and twin sons

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      Book preview

      20 Shades of Narcissism - David Thomas

      20 Shades of Narcissism

      David Thomas PhD

      David Thomas is the author of

      Narcissism: Behind the Mask

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 David Thomas PhD

      Discover other titles by David Thomas at Smashwords

      20 Shades of Narcissism

      Table of Contents

      Preface

      1. How Do Narcissists Get Away With Abusing Decent People?

      2. Moral Virtue, Control, and Boundaries

      3. Narcissism in Unequal Societies

      4. Narcissistic Responses to Social Comparison Threats

      5. Are Narcissists Bad People?

      6. Can Narcissists Be Emotionally Healthy?

      7. Can you Trust a Narcissist or a Co-dependent?

      8. Co-dependent and Narcissistic Behaviour at Work

      9. Happiness and Depression: Can You Choose?

      10. How Does the Narcissist Control People?

      11. The Banking Sector: Profit or Moral Justness?

      12. Leadership in Twenty-First Century Society: Hitler or Gandhi?

      13. A Child’s Brain: Is it a Blank Slate Waiting to be Written On?

      14. Positive Anchors for the Young

      15. Parental Love and Abuse

      16. Women Who Love Too Much

      17. Whistle Blowing: A Moral Dilemma

      18. Nature v Nurture: Is Steven Pinker Wrong?

      19. Narcissism and Self-Esteem: Is Steven Pinker Wrong?

      20. Narcissism: A Life of Deception and Lies?

      Notes and References

      Preface

      Narcissists can seriously diminish the happiness of those around them. The narcissist looks to others in his or her environment for a view that will reflect and confirm how wonderful he or she is. Narcissists don't have high self-esteem, indeed they often feel very empty. Since they find it difficult to live like this, they look constantly to external sources to boost their self-esteem – by draining it from family members, including their children, and from friends, lovers, or workmates.

      People who have been brought up as trusting individuals are most at risk of being lured in by narcissists. Once narcissists have established what another person believes to be a trusting relationship, they have acquired the power to exploit!

      The obsessive pursuit to boost their self-esteem brings short-term emotional benefits to narcissists; their anxiety is reduced and they feel better about themselves, but only temporarily. As a result, they are constantly on the lookout for other suitably naive and trusting individuals to manipulate, in order to further bolster their feelings of self-worth. This becomes a constant, never-ending cycle because, since the boosts that narcissists get don’t last very long, their demands, sometimes unreasonable and even bad-tempered, continue.

      Some authors argue that people’s self-worth or self-esteem is contingent upon what they believe they need to be, or to do, in order to have value and worth as a person.1 It certainly makes sense that people want to feel worthy and valued. If this is the case, then, narcissists must be no exception. How and where we invest our self-esteem determines our thoughts, our emotions and, consequently, our behaviour. However, for many people, such self-esteem is generated internally; they have no need to extract compliments from others and do not crave their admiration. On the other hand, narcissists invest huge amounts of effort into boosting their self-esteem by drawing on external factors, such as competition, a must-win-at-all-costs attitude, or the approval of others, in an obsessive desire to be liked and admired. This, along with envy and paranoia, is what drives their behaviour. However, research points to the fact that basing self-esteem on external factors can lead to more negative consequences than basing it on internal factors, such as moral virtue.2

      I have encountered and have had to deal with a number of narcissists throughout my life. Probably my first encounter with a narcissist, although I didn’t know it at the time, was with my own mother. She was highly competitive, and anyone whom she perceived as being better than she was, or who failed to give her the admiration that she thought she deserved, was either ignored or denigrated. Her brother unwittingly fell victim to her neurotic behaviour simply by being too successful. He was a kind and generous man, and she got along well with him until, through his hard work and initiative, he succeeded in his business and became wealthy. From that point on, my mother stopped speaking to him – and this continued throughout the last 13 years of his life.

      I first encountered a narcissistic boss when I was a teenager working at a large aerospace company. My boss refused to allow me to continue with my college courses, even though it had been agreed at my interview that I would do so. At the time, I didn’t understand why he chose to try and stop me from pursuing my education, although I did call in the union and he was forced to rescind.

      My work and my research have brought me into contact with many other narcissistic individuals, at all levels: bosses, subordinates, and colleagues. As part of the research for my PhD in managerial psychology, I interviewed members of senior management teams, mainly CEOs and directors, and asked them to complete questionnaires. Analysis of the results highlighted just how many senior managers exhibit narcissistic characteristics. The academic research I undertook for my PhD, combined with my own life experiences, has given me an in-depth understanding of narcissism.

      This book shines the spotlight on narcissism in all of its micro and macro manifestations. It looks at narcissists from a variety of angles: how they think, how they gain control over their prey, how they become narcissistic, how they manipulate others into feeding their insatiable appetites for admiration, how they envy others, and how their paranoia drives them to take action when, in many cases, no action is needed. Each of the book’s 20 chapters examines a different aspect of the topic. Some explore the theoretical aspects of narcissism and some look at the damage that well-known narcissists have inflicted on their businesses or their countries. Other chapters tell true stories about how narcissists have diminished the happiness of those around them, with the names changed to protect the identities of both the innocent and the guilty!

      1 – How Do Narcissists Get Away With Abusing Decent People?

      It is a sad indictment of today’s society that one person can hate another person when that person has done nothing to harm him. It may simply be that the hated person, through kindness and hard work, is well liked and successful. He or she may have even helped the person doing the hating, but through envy and paranoia, the kind and hard-working person is hated.

      This behaviour is becoming all too familiar in contemporary society through narcissists who envy or hate everyone in their environment who doesn’t show admiration for them. Sandy Hotchkiss wrote in her book Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism, that the misery this behaviour creates ‘...is a by-product of a personality flaw that, by cultural standards, has become disturbingly normal.’1

      Thomas Aquinas2 described envy as ‘sorrow for another's good’, and it was Geoffrey Chaucer3 who said that envy is full of sorrow in another man’s goodness and prosperity, but joyous in another man’s misfortune. He refers to the fault finding and spoiling behaviour used to attack the very person or qualities that the individual admires.

      The reason that the narcissist is consumed with hatred is simply because the kind and hard-working person has done better than he has, and when he (or she) compares himself against such a person, he feels bad about himself. He feels this way not because of any conscious thoughts of what a failure he is, which may or may not be the case, but because he is reminded of emotional traumas from his past that were so bad that his brain drove them from consciousness; this self-protective behaviour has evolved to shield the conscious mind from thoughts that could otherwise make living not worthwhile.

      But the emotional traumas from the past still leave a trace in the brain’s amazingly complex neural networks, and with the appropriate prompts, it will locate those emotions and transfer them into consciousness. Unfortunately, only the emotional pains transfer, not the knowledge of what caused them. Then the owner will find it difficult to deal with the emotional pains, not knowing why such turmoil has hit him. He only knows who spoke or acted in the present to arouse these pains. The knowledge of who put the emotional pains there in the first place, probably when he was a child, exists outside his conscious mind.

      As he doesn’t know that the problem is inside his head, he thinks, quite logically that the problem must be with the other person. Consequently, he projects his malevolent feelings onto that person in the belief that it was he who caused them. This sequence of behaviour occurs many times per day in all sorts of settings, from friendly family discussions that turn sour, but are forgotten a short while later, to individuals who fall out with friends or relatives and embark upon a lifetime of hatred and recrimination.

      Machiavelli recognised many years ago that doing good deeds does not necessarily bring appreciation, saying, ‘Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil’.4 When these situations occur at the top of organisations and the leader is a decent hard-working person, with the narcissist a senior manager, the potential for organisational turmoil is great. Unless the leader is very politically savvy, the emotionally traumatised and probably highly narcissistic senior manager will work ceaselessly to undermine his leader’s position. The emotional traumas he suffers will drive him to fight with every sinew to oust the person he believes is the cause of his trauma.

      However, the root of the narcissistic senior manager’s emotional traumas is not his boss, but his past. The origin of his mental problems will very likely lie in his childhood interactions with his parents. Initially, this often occurs when the mother shows love conditionally, only when he behaves in a particular way. The problem can be exacerbated when, particularly during the son’s adolescent period, the father makes his son feel inferior as a way of boosting his own ego. The adolescent then grows up always feeling that he has to prove that he is not inferior.

      There are examples throughout history of people behaving in ways that make little sense when objectively assessed. For example, it is common for narcissistic leaders of businesses to manage their companies in the manner that brings them the most short-term personal boosts to their ego, typically in terms of admiration. Whilst the

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