Victim reaction to Abuse by Narcissists and Psychopaths and Psychosis, Delusions, and Personality Disorders - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 139 - narcissisticabuse

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Sam Vaknin author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited

More options Jun 13, 2:42 pm

From: "Sam Vaknin author of \"Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited\"" <vak...@mt.net.mk>

Date: Fri, 13 Jun 2008 20:42:20 +0200

Local: Fri, Jun 13 2008 2:42 pm

Subject: Victim reaction to Abuse by Narcissists and Psychopaths and Psychosis, Delusions, and Personality Disorders - Abusive Relationships Newsletter - Number 139

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NEW! Egosurfing (Spanish)

http://www.elecodiario.es/internet/noticias/498434/04/08/Narciso-se-m...

NEW! Photos of a Psychopathic Narcissist and His World

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The Monster in the Mirror (Sunday Times)

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships...

Egomania (UK Documentary)

http://www.channel4.com/health/microsites/0-9/4health/mind/wwr_manic....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egomania_(UK_TV_Documentary)

Sam Vaknin has just published a NEW e-BOOK "Personality Disorders Revisited" (April 2007)

450 pages about the Borderline, Narcissistic, Antisocial-Psychopathic, Histrionic, Paranoid, Obsessive-Compulsive, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Masochistic, Sadistic, Depressive, Negativistic-Passive-Aggressive, Dependent, and other Personality Disorders!

Click on this link to purchase the ebook:

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An electronic book is a computer file, sent to you as an attachment to an e-mail message. Just save it to your hard disk and click on the file to open, read, and learn!
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Personality Disorders Topic Index and CASE STUDIES!

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NEW EDITION - Download The Narcissism Book of Quotes

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NEW EDITION - Download Sample chapters from "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

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NEW links directory here:

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NEW! Amazon blog

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Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP? Click on these links!

NEW, January 2007, EIGHTH Revised Impression of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited"

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III. NEW!!! "Toxic Relationships - Abuse and its Aftermath" e-book edition (February 2006)

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IV. NEW!!! "Abusive Relationships Workbook" e-book edition (February 2006)

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V. "Pathological Narcissism FAQs" - EIGHTH, Revised Edition (November 2006)

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VI. "The World of the Narcissist" - EIGHTH, Revised Edition (November 2006)

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VII. "Excerpts from the Archives of the Narcissism List" e-book edition

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VIII. "Diary of a Narcissist" e-book edition (November 2005)

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IX "The Narcissist and Psychopath in the Workplace" e-book edition (September 2006)

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X. "The Narcissism Series" - EIGHTH, Revised Edition (November 2006)

EIGHT e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

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Phone and Email consultations with Sam Vaknin - write for details:

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Victim reaction to Abuse by Narcissists and Psychopaths

"Personality Disorders Revisited" (450 pages e-book) - click HERE to purchase!

First published here: "Personality Disorders (Suite101)"

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Personality disorders are not only all-pervasive, but also diffuse and shape-shifting. It is taxing and emotionally harrowing to watch how a loved one is consumed by these pernicious and largely incurable conditions. Victims adopt varying stances and react in different ways to the inevitable abuse involved in relationships with personality disordered patients.

1. Malignant Optimism
A form of self-delusion, refusing to believe that some diseases are untreatable. Malignant optimists see signs of hope in every fluctuation, read meanings and patterns into every random occurrence, utterance, or slip. These Pollyanna defences are varieties of magical thinking.

"If only he tried hard enough", "If he only really wanted to heal", "If only we find the right therapy", "If only his defences were down", "There must be something good and worthwhile under the hideous facade", "No one can be that evil and destructive", "He must have meant it differently" "God, or a higher being, or the spirit, or the soul is the solution and the answer to my prayers".

From my book, "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited":

"The narcissist and psychopath hold such thinking in barely undisguised contempt. To them, it is a sign of weakness, the scent of prey, a gaping vulnerability. They use and abuse this human need for order, good, and meaning - as they use and abuse all other human needs. Gullibility, selective blindness, malignant optimism - these are the weapons of the beast. And the abused are hard at work to provide it with its arsenal."

Read "Is Your Cup Half-full or is it Half Empty?"

2. Rescue Fantasies

"It is true that he is chauvinistic and that his behaviour is unacceptable and repulsive. But all he needs is a little love and he will be straightened out. I will rescue him from his misery and misfortune. I will give him the love that he lacked as a child. Then his (narcissism, psychopathy, paranoia, reclusiveness) will vanish and we will live happily ever after."

3. Self-flagellation

Constant feelings of guilt, self-reproach, self-recrimination and, thus, self-punishment.

The victim of sadists, paranoids, narcissists, borderlines, passive-aggressives, and psychopaths internalises the endless hectoring and humiliating criticism and makes them her own. She begins to self-punish, to withhold, to request approval prior to any action, to forgo her preferences and priorities, to erase her own identity – hoping to thus avoid the excruciating pains of her partner's destructive analyses.

The partner is often a willing participant in this shared psychosis. Such folie a deux can never take place without the full collaboration of a voluntarily subordinated victim. Such partners have a wish to be punished, to be eroded through constant, biting criticisms, unfavourable comparisons, veiled and not so veiled threats, acting out, betrayals and humiliations. It makes them feel cleansed, "holy", whole, and sacrificial.

Many of these partners, when they realise their situation (it is very difficult to discern it from the inside), abandon the personality disordered partner and dismantle the relationship. Others prefer to believe in the healing power of love. But here love is wasted on a human shell, incapable of feeling anything but negative emotions.

4. Emulation

The psychiatric profession uses the word: "epidemiology" when it describes the prevalence of personality disorders. Are personality disorders communicable diseases? In a way, they are.

From my book, "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited":

"Some people adopt the role of a professional victim. Their existence and very identity rests solely and entirely on their victimhood. They become self-centred, devoid of empathy, abusive, and exploitative. These victim "pros" are often more cruel, vengeful, vitriolic, lacking in compassion and violent than their abusers. They make a career of it.

The affected entertain the (false) notion that they can compartmentalize their abusive (e.g., narcissistic, or psychopathic) behavior and direct it only at their victimizers. In other words, they trust in their ability to segregate their conduct and to be verbally abusive towards the abuser while civil and compassionate with others, to act with malice where their mentally-ill partner is concerned and with Christian charity towards all others. They believe that they can turn on and off their negative feelings, their abusive outbursts, their vindictiveness and vengefulness, their blind rage, their non-discriminating judgment.

This, of course, is untrue. These behaviors spill over into daily transactions with innocent neighbors, colleagues, family members, co-workers, or customers. One cannot be partly or temporarily vindictive and judgmental any more than one can be partly or temporarily pregnant. To their horror, these victims discover that they have been transmuted and transformed into their worst nightmare: into their abusers - malevolent, vicious, lacking empathy, egotistical, exploitative, violent and abusive."

Also Read

Back to La-la Land

Other People's Pain

A Letter about Trust

The Guilt of Others

Narcissism By Proxy

The Inverted Narcissist

Mourning the Narcissist

Abusing the Narcissist

How to Cope with a Narcissist

The Spouse / Mate / Partner

The Narcissist and His Family

The Victims of the Narcissist

How Victims are Affected by Abuse

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Recovery and Healing from Trauma and Abuse

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Many additional Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about Personality Disorders - click HERE!

(continued below)

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Abused? Stalked? Harassed? Victimized? Afraid? Confused? Need HELP?

"The Narcissism Series" - (November 2006)

Eight e-books regarding Pathological Narcissism, relationships with abusive narcissists, and the Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD).

http://www.ccnow.com/cgi-local/cart.cgi?vaksam_SERIES

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/thebook.html

NEW! Analyze This - Short Fiction about Narcissists

http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/analyzethis.msnw
Case Studies in the Narcissistic Personality Disorder List

http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/drvakninsweekly...

Ask Sam on the Narcissistic Personality Disorder Support Group

http://groups.msn.com/narcissisticpersonalitydisorder/general.msnw?ac...

http://groups.msn.com/NARCISSISTICPERSONALITYDISORDER/general.msnw?ac...

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Psychosis, Delusions, and Personality Disorders

"Personality Disorders Revisited" (450 pages e-book) - click HERE to purchase!

First published here: "Personality Disorders (Suite101)"

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin

Introduction to Psychosis

Psychosis is chaotic thinking that is the result of a severely impaired reality test ( the patient cannot tell inner fantasy from outside reality). Some psychotic states are short-lived and transient (microepisodes). These last from a few hours to a few days and are sometimes reactions to stress. Psychotic microepisodes are common in certain personality disorders, most notably the Borderline and Schizotypal. Persistent psychoses are a fixture of the patient's mental life and manifest for months or years.
Psychotics are fully aware of events and people "out there". They cannot, however separate data and experiences originating in the outside world from information generated by internal mental processes. They confuse the external universe with their inner emotions, cognitions, preconceptions, fears, expectations, and representations.

Similarly, patients suffering from Narcissistic Personality Disorder and, to a lesser extent, Antisocial and Histrionic Personality Disorders fail to grasp others as full-fledged entities. They regard even their nearest and dearest as cardboard cut-outs, two-dimensional representations (introjects), or symbols. They treat them as instruments of gratification, functional automata, or extensions of themselves.

Consequently, both psychotics and the personality disordered have a distorted view of reality and are not rational. No amount of objective evidence can cause them to doubt or reject their hypotheses and convictions. Full-fledged psychosis involves complex and ever more bizarre delusions and the unwillingness to confront and consider contrary data and information (preoccupation with the subjective rather than the objective). Thought becomes utterly disorganized and fantastic.

There is a thin line separating nonpsychotic from psychotic perception and ideation. On this spectrum we also find the Schizotypal and the Paranoid Personality Disorders.

The DSM-IV-TR defines psychosis as "restricted to delusions or prominent hallucinations, with the hallucinations occurring in the absence of insight into their pathological nature".

What are delusions and hallucinations

A delusion is "a false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary".

A hallucination is a "sensory perception that has the compelling sense of reality of a true perception but that occurs without external stimulation of the relevant sensory organ".

Delusion is, therefore, a belief, idea, or conviction firmly held despite abundant information to the contrary. The partial or complete loss of reality test is the first indication of a psychotic state or episode. Beliefs, ideas, or convictions shared by other people, members of the same collective, are not, strictly speaking, delusions, although they may be hallmarks of shared psychosis. There are many types of delusions:

I. Paranoid

The belief that one is being controlled or persecuted by stealth powers and conspiracies. This is common in the Paranoid, Antisocial, Narcissistic, Borderline, Avoidant, and Dependent Personality Disorders.

2. Grandiose-magical

The conviction that one is important, omnipotent, possessed of occult powers, or a historic figure. Narcissists invariably harbor such delusions.

3. Referential (ideas of reference)

The belief that external, objective events carry hidden or coded messages or that one is the subject of discussion, derision, or opprobrium, even by total strangers. This is common in the Avoidant, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Narcissistic, and Borderline Personality Disorders.

Hallucinations are false perceptions based on false sensa (sensory input) not triggered by any external event or entity. The patient is usually not psychotic - he is aware that he what he sees, smells, feels, or hears is not there. Still, some psychotic states are accompanied by hallucinations (e.g., formication - the feeling that bugs are crawling over or under one's skin).

There are a few classes of hallucinations:

Auditory - The false perception of voices and sounds (such as buzzing, humming, radio transmissions, whispering, motor noises, and so on).

Gustatory - The false perception of tastes

Olfactory - The false perception of smells and scents (e.g., burning flesh, candles)

Somatic - The false perception of processes and events that are happening inside the body or to the body (e.g., piercing objects, electricity running through one's extremities). Usually supported by an appropriate and relevant delusional content.

Tactile - The false sensation of being touched, or crawled upon or that events and processes are taking place under one's skin. Usually supported by an appropriate and relevant delusional content.

Visual - The false perception of objects, people, or events in broad daylight or in an illuminated environment with eyes wide open.

Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic - Images and trains of events experienced while falling asleep or when waking up. Not hallucinations in the strict sense of the word.

Hallucinations are common in schizophrenia, affective disorders, and mental health disorders with organic origins. Hallucinations are also common in drug and alcohol withdrawal and among substance abusers.