Sex, Restraining Order Abuse, and the “Dark Triad”: Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and Psychopathy

May 31, 2014June 29, 2023Moderator 2 Comments

“Socially aversive personality traits such as Psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and Narcissism have been studied intensively in clinical and social psychology. […] Although each of these three constructs may have some unique features not shared by the other two, they do appear to share some common elements such as exploitation, manipulativeness, and a grandiose sense of self-importance. Accordingly, Paulhus and Williams (2002) have called these three constructs the ‘Dark Triad’ of personality….”

—Kibeom Lee and Michael C. Ashton

“Members of the Dark Triad tend to be especially untrustworthy in the mating context.”

—Daniel N. Jones and Delroy L. Paulhus

Restraining orders are commonly used to sever relationships. The assumption is that the applicant of a restraining order has been the victim of mistreatment. Many who’ve been implicated as abusers, however, report mistreatment by manipulative personalities who then exploited court process to dominate them, garner attention, and/or deflect blame for their own conduct—typically by lying through their teeth.

It turns out there’s a sexy phrase for the collective personality traits exhibited by manipulators of this sort: the “Dark Triad.”

Several of the posts on this blog have discussed personality-disordered and high-conflict people (who may be personality-disordered), and such people are a central focus of the work of attorney, mediator, and therapist Bill Eddy and psychologist Tara Palmatier, whom I’ve frequently quoted and who’ve written volubly about abuses of legal process by predatory personalities. Narcissism and psychopathy, two of the constituents of the Dark Triad, also qualify as “Cluster B” personality disorders.

As should be evident to anyone who’s read up on these matters, there’s a high degree of overlap among attempts to define, differentiate, and distinguish the mentally kinked.

The context in which the phrase Dark Triad is applied is interpersonal relationships that are familiarly called “romantic.” This should be of interest to victims of court process, because their abusers are more often than not current or former spouses, boy- or girlfriends, or intimates.

The concept of the Dark Triad should also be of interest to them because clinical labels may only roughly match their abusers’ conduct, conduct like deception, inexplicable betrayals, irreconcilable (mixed) messages, etc. (behaviors that “don’t make sense”). People who fall within this (subclinical) delta of personality quirks represent their interest and intentions to be sincere, and reveal them, often abruptly, to have been shallow or even sinister.

From “How the Dark Triad Traits Predict Relationship Choices” (Jonason, Luevano, & Adams):

The Dark Triad traits should be associated with preferring casual relationships of one kind or another. Narcissism in particular should be associated with desiring a variety of relationships. Narcissism is the most social of the three, having an approach orientation towards friends (Foster & Trimm, 2008) and an externally validated ‘ego’ (Buffardi & Campbell, 2008). By preferring a range of relationships, narcissists are better suited to reinforce their sense of self. Therefore, although collectively the Dark Triad traits will be correlated with preferring different casual sex relationships, after controlling for the shared variability among the three traits, we expect that narcissism will correlate with preferences for one-night stands and friend[s]-with-benefits.

In contrast, psychopathy may be characterized by an opportunistic, exploitive mating strategy (Figueredo et al., 2006; Jonason et al., 2009b; Mealey, 1995). Booty-call relationships by their very name denote a degree of exploitation. That is, individuals use others—their booty-call partner[s]—for sex by a late night phone call with the expressed or implied purpose of sex (Jonason et al., 2009). Therefore, we expect that after controlling for the shared variability among the three traits, psychopathy will be correlated with preferences for booty-call relationships. Such a relationship may be consistent with their exploitive mating strategy. Last, although prior work has linked Machiavellianism with a short-term mating style (McHoskey, 2001), more sophisticated analyses controlling for the shared correlation with psychopathy has revealed that Machiavellianism might not be central to predicting short-term mating (Jonason et al., 2011). Therefore, we expect Machiavellianism to not be correlated with preferences for any relationships.

What we’re talking about, basically, are people who exploit others for sexual attention and/or satisfaction (that is, players). The common denominator is a disinclination toward or disinterest in what’s called a “meaningful” or “serious” relationship. The motive is noncommittal, urge-driven self-pleasure (assisted masturbation, as it were). Psychologists sometimes remark in writing about narcissists in other contexts that they entertain “romantic fantasies” but conclude that these fantasies are exclusively about personal feelings and not interpersonal anything.

What we’re talking about in the context of abuse of restraining orders are people who exploit others and then exploit legal process as a convenient means to discard them when they’re through (while whitewashing their own behaviors, procuring additional narcissistic supply in the forms of attention and special treatment, and possibly exacting a measure of revenge if they feel they’ve been criticized or contemned).

Since it’s only natural that people with normally constructed minds will struggle to comprehend the motives of those with Dark Triad traits, they conveniently set themselves up for allegations of harassment or stalking, which are easily established with nothing more than some emails or text messages (that may, for example, be pleas for an explanation—or demands for one). People abused by manipulators who then abuse legal process to compound their injuries typically report that they were “confused,” “angry,” and/or “wanted to understand.”

This is the Jonason & Webster “Dirty Dozen” scale for assessing Dark Triad candidacy:

I tend to manipulate others to get my way.
I tend to lack remorse.
I tend to want others to admire me.
I tend to be unconcerned with the morality of my actions.
I have used deceit or lied to get my way.
I tend to be callous or insensitive.
I have used flattery to get my way.
I tend to seek prestige or status.
I tend to be cynical.
I tend to exploit others toward my own end.
I tend to expect special favors from others.
I want others to pay attention to me.

Victims of restraining order abuse by manipulative lovers or “romantic” stalkers will note a number of correspondences with their accusers’ personalities, as well as discern motives for their lying to the police and courts, which elicits special treatment and attention from authority figures…and subsequently every other sucker with whom they share their “ordeal.”

*Some specialist monographs on this subject are here.

Fantasists Fatales: More on Narcissistic Sociopaths and Restraining Order Abuse to Gratify Stalkers’ Anger and Jealousy

February 27, 2014August 21, 2023Moderator Leave a comment

“Narcissistic people do fall in love, but they usually fall in love with being in love—and not with you. They crave the excitement of love, but are quickly disappointed when it becomes a relationship—and not just a trip into fantasy.”

—Mark Banschick, M.D.

In a recent post, I surveyed some scientific literature about stalking and narcissism, probably to excess, because qualification by experts makes arguments more palatable to a certain audience. That post’s epigraph, by two distinguished researchers, concluded that the motives of stalkers could be reduced in sum to anger and jealousy, both of which emotions are ones to which the narcissistic personality is pathologically prone.

Narcissistic stalkers are anomalous in their abuse of restraining orders (as they are in most respects). Some stalkers use restraining orders serially or as part of a campaign of harassment and attention-seeking, and not always against a current or former romantic partner or love interest. The same qualifications of anger and jealousy apply to the woman who torments a former boyfriend’s or husband’s new girlfriend, fiancée, or wife with restraining orders. Only last week, one such victim wrote to report that as soon as she got one restraining order quashed, another was petitioned.

The narcissistic stalker, by contrast, may pour all of his or her venom into one consummate fraud. The point is to get revenge and discard the offending threat to his or her ego-stability once that person’s use value has been exhausted. A false restraining order may simply represent the final blow that shifts the narcissist’s pathological courtship behavior onto its target. The narcissist walks and leaves his or her victim splayed in the dust.

Essential to bear in mind is that a relationship with a narcissist is always a one-way relationship and always confusing. The only person actually trying to relate is the person the narcissist targeted or baited; the narcissist can’t relate. The narcissist’s intentions—not necessarily understood as such by the narcissist him- or herself—were never real in the first place but based on fantasy fueled by the solicited attention and interest of the other person. Once that other person ceases to mirror back to the narcissist what s/he wants to see, that person is expendable. Some psychologists suggest, moreover, that in his or her paranoia about being rejected/abandoned, s/he may be motivated to act preemptively, that is, to reject first and thereby preserve his or her ego from an imagined injury.

Something I neglected to explicitly observe in the recent post referenced in the introduction that may merit observation is that all narcissists are stalkers (whether latent or active) insofar as the objects of narcissists’ romance fantasies are always merely objects to them (psycho-emotional gas pumps); they’re never subjects. What distinguishes the narcissistic stalker is that s/he’s seldom recognized for what s/he is, so s/he’s seldom rejected for what s/he is. Realize that the difference between normal pursuit behavior and aberrant pursuit behavior may be nothing more than how the pursued feels about it. Narcissists choose targets they perceive as vulnerable (empathic, tolerant, and pliable).

Because narcissists are extroverted, confident, aggressive, and socially commanding, “stalking” is seldom applied to their conduct. Narcissistic pursuit is by allure, false promise, and emotional coercion. The narcissist preys on the expectations of the cognitively normal, which s/he understands intuitively and manipulates with horrible proficiency. S/he often isn’t recognized as a user with no sincere investment in the other’s feelings until it’s too late.

To compound the difficulty either of making categorical pronouncements about narcissistic motives or exposing them, they’re not always known to narcissists themselves. To read most diagnostic explications of their mentality, the uninitiated would come away with the impression that narcissists are sharks, cunning, predatory automatons with false smiles and devious intentions. Anyone who’s had intimate and sustained relations with a narcissist, though, will perceive that s/he’s following what to him or her seem normal, romantic impulses in the moment. The difference is the narcissist is able to disown the moment with reptilian facility when his or her fantasy conflicts with interests of more pressing concern to the narcissist’s ego-preservation—or the interests of the other conflict with the narcissist’s fantasy.

It’s often argued that narcissists aren’t crazy, that they know what they’re doing. But this isn’t strictly so. In the throes of fantasy, narcissistic consciousness may be schizoid. Narcissists may lead parallel lives, even multiple parallel lives, like polygamists with spouses in different cities. And they may indulge an impulse with abandonment…then coldly—oh, so coldly—return to business as usual and plot the necessary steps to erase traces of the lapse. The narcissist runs either hot or cold. There is no warm.

Once the other fails to satisfy the psycho-emotional needs of the narcissist, corrupts his or her fantasy, or by intimacy threatens the autonomy of the narcissist or the reality s/he’s primarily invested in, the narcissist’s pathology is such that s/he can instantly blame the other (whom the narcissist targeted in the first place) for his or her perceived “betrayal.”

It’s at this stage that the anger and jealousy, identified as the germinal motives of the stalker, rear their scaly heads. For the narcissist, a restraining order may not only satisfy his or her lust to scourge and cripple his or her target; it may also be a way to satisfy jealousy: “Now no one else will have you.”

Revenge for the narcissist, too, is an impassioned fantasy. The preternatural vehemence of the narcissist is dismaying to its target. In a sense, though, it’s just a redirection of ardor that provides a different source of narcissistic supply. The restraining order process accommodates the narcissist exquisitely, allowing him or her to summon police like a dignitary and ham it up for a judge or several of them. S/he owns the spotlight. And once in possession of a restraining order, the spotlight will follow him or her wherever s/he wants.

The monstrous caricature of the other s/he’s authorized to present to friends, family, and acquaintances current and future serves as the perfect surrogate for the other. It delivers all of the attention while being free of any of the expectations.

Targeted by a Narcissistic Sociopath: When a Stalker Obtains a Restraining Order to Dominate and Destroy

February 19, 2014August 21, 2023Moderator 5 Comments

“Accumulated forensic, clinical, and social research strongly suggests that the two most prominent emotions of most stalkers are anger and jealousy…. Such feelings are often consciously felt and acknowledged by the stalker. Nevertheless, these feelings often serve to defend the stalker against more vulnerable feelings that are outside of the stalker’s awareness. Anger can mask feelings of shame and humiliation, the result of rejection by the once idealized object, and/or feelings of loneliness, isolation, and social incompetency.

“Anger may also fuel the pursuit, motivated by envy to damage or destroy that which cannot be possessed…or triggered by a desire to inflict pain on the one who has inflicted pain, the primitive impulse of lex talionis, an eye for an eye.

“Angry pursuit can also repair narcissistic wounds through a fantasized sense of omnipotence and control of the victim. Victim surveys, in fact, have noted that the most common victim perception of the stalker’s motivations is to achieve control….”

—J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., and Helen Fisher, Ph.D.

This discussion’s epigraph is drawn from “Some Thoughts on the Neurobiology of Stalking” and touches on a number of the motives of restraining order abuse both by stalkers generally and, in particular, by those stalkers who are most vulnerable to narcissistic wounds, namely, pathological narcissists.

The narcissist is a living emotional pendulum. If [s/he] gets too close to someone emotionally, if [s/he] becomes intimate with someone, [s/he] fears ultimate and inevitable abandonment. [S/he], thus, immediately distances [him- or herself], acts cruelly, and brings about the very abandonment that [s/he] feared in the first place. This is called the ‘approach-avoidance repetition complex’ [Sam Vaknin, Ph.D., “Coping with Various Types of Stalkers: The Narcissist”].

While procurement of a restraining order is commonly perceived as the definitive act of rejection, possibly rejection of a stalker’s advances, it may in fact be an act of possession and control by a stalker (a perverse form of wish fulfillment). A restraining order indelibly stamps the presence of a stalker onto the public face of his or her target (“I own you”). It further disarms the target and mars his or her life, possibly to an extremity. Per Meloy and Fisher, a stalker achieves control and damages or destroys that which cannot be possessed. The “connection,” furthermore, can be repeatedly revisited and harm perpetually refreshed through exploitation of legal process.

The authors of the epigraph use the phrase attachment pathology. For a stalker who’s formed an unreciprocated attachment or an unauthorized one (as in the case of someone who’s married), a restraining order presents the treble satisfactions of counter-rejection (“I reject you back” or “I reject you back first”), revenge for not meeting the authoritarian expectations of the stalker, and possession/control. Procurement of a restraining order literally enables a false petitioner to revise the truth into one more favorable to his or her interests or wishes (cf. DARVO: Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender). A judge is a rapt audience who only has the petitioner’s account on which to base his or her determination. The only “facts” that s/he’s privy to are the ones provided by the restraining order applicant.

In “Female Stalkers, Part 2: Checklist of Stalking and Harassment Behaviors,” psychologist Tara Palmatier identifies use of “the court and law enforcement to harass” as a female stalking tactic (“e.g., making false allegations, filing restraining orders, petitioning the court for frivolous changes in custody, etc.”), and this form of abuse likely is more typically employed by women against men (women tending “to be more ‘creatively aggressive’ in their stalking acts”). Anecdotal reports to this blog’s author, however, indicate that male stalkers (jilted or high-conflict exes and attention-seeking “admirers”) also engage in this form of punitive subversion against women. (Dr. Palmatier acknowledges as much but explains, “I tailor myself writing for a male audience.”)

Clinical terms for this kind of stalking—less stringent in their scope than legal definitions of stalking, which usually concern threat to personal safety—are “obsessive relational intrusion, intrusive contact, aberrant courtship behavior, obsessional pursuit, and unwanted pursuit behavior,” among others (Katherine S-L. Lau and Delroy L. Paulhus, “Profiling the Romantic Stalker”).

For someone with narcissistic personality disorder, someone, that is, who lives for attention (and is only capable of “aberrant courtship behavior”), a restraining order is a cornucopia, a source of infinitely renewing psychic nourishment, because it can’t fail to titillate an audience and excite drama.

(As noted in The Psychology of Stalking: Clinical and Forensic Perspectives, “Axis II personality disorders are…evident in a majority of stalkers, particularly Cluster B [which includes the narcissistic and borderline personality-disordered]”).

Per the DSM-IV, a narcissist evinces:

A. A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements).

2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love.

3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions).

4. Requires excessive admiration.

5. Has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations.

6. Is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends.

7. Lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others.

8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her.

9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

Correspondences between this clinical definition and what might popularly be regarded as the traits of a stalker are uncanny (e.g., preoccupation with fantasies of “ideal love,” dependence on admiration not necessarily due, interpersonal exploitation, and an inability to identify with or a disregard for others’ feelings). It further suggests why a narcissist wouldn’t scruple about abusing legal process to realize malicious ends.

In “Threatened Egotism, Narcissism, Self-Esteem, and Direct and Displaced Aggression: Does Self-Love or Self-Hate Lead to Violence?”, psychologists Brad Bushman and Roy Baumeister observe that aggressively hurtful behavior is more likely to originate from narcissistic arrogance than from insecurity:

[I]t has been widely asserted that low self-esteem is a cause of violence (e.g., Kirschner, 1992; Long, 1990; Oates & Forrest, 1985; Schoenfeld, 1988; Wiehe, 1991). According to this theory, certain people are prompted by their inner self-doubts and self-dislike to lash out against other people, possibly as a way of gaining esteem or simply because they have nothing to lose.

A contrary view was proposed by Baumeister, Smart, and Boden (1996). On the basis of an interdisciplinary review of research findings regarding violent, aggressive behavior, they proposed that violence tends to result from very positive views of self that are impugned or threatened by others. In this analysis, hostile aggression was an expression of the self’s rejection of esteem-threatening evaluations received from other people.

The DSM-5 notes that for the narcissist, “positive views of self” are everything (and others’ feelings nothing). Diagnostic criteria are:

A. Significant impairments in personality functioning manifest by:

1. Impairments in self functioning (a or b):

a. Identity: Excessive reference to others for self-definition and self-esteem regulation; exaggerated self-appraisal may be inflated or deflated, or vacillate between extremes; emotional regulation mirrors fluctuations in self-esteem.

b. Self-direction: Goal-setting is based on gaining approval from others; personal standards are unreasonably high in order to see oneself as exceptional, or too low based on a sense of entitlement; often unaware of own motivations.

AND

2. Impairments in interpersonal functions (a or b):

a. Empathy: Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others; excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self; over- or underestimate of own effect on others.

b. Intimacy: Relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation; mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others’ experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain.

B. Pathological personality traits in the following domain:

1. Antagonism, characterized by:

a. Grandiosity: Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert; self-centeredness; firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others; condescending toward others.

b. Attention seeking: Excessive attempts to attract and be the focus of the attention of others; admiration seeking.

The picture that emerges from clinical observations of the narcissistic personality is one of a person who has no capacity to identify with others’ feelings, a fantastical conception of love, and unreasonable expectations of others and an irrational antagonism toward those who disappoint his or her wishes.

It’s further commonly observed that narcissists’ antagonism toward anyone whom they perceive as critical of them—that is, as a threat to their “positive views of self”—is boundless. The object, then, of a narcissist’s attachment pathology who rejects him or her (disappointing his or her “magical fantasies”), who challenges his or her entitlement, or who manifests disdain or condescension toward the narcissist (even in the form of sympathy) becomes instead the object of the narcissist’s wrath. As psychologist Linda Martinez-Lewi notes, “For the narcissist, revenge is sweet. It’s where they live in their delusional, treacherous minds.”

Narcissists adopt a predictable cycle of Use, Abuse, Dispose. This pathological repetition can last a few weeks or decades…. With a narcissist, there is never an authentic relationship. He/she is a grandiose false self without conscience, empathy, or compassion. Narcissists are ruthless and exploitive to the core [Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D., “Narcissistic Relationship Cycle: Use, Abuse, Dispose”].

The restraining order process, because it enables a petitioner to present a false self and caters to fraudulent representation, is a medium of vengeance ideally suited to a narcissistic stalker. Its exploitation plays to a narcissist’s strengths: social savvy, cunning, and persuasiveness. Its value as an instrument of abuse, furthermore, is unmatched, offering for a minimal investment of time and energy the rewards of public disparagement and alienation of his or her victim, as well as impairment of that victim’s future prospects.

There are sociopathic narcissists who will not be satisfied until their ‘enemy’ is completely vanquished—emotionally, psychologically, financially. They seek revenge, not for what has been done to them but [for] what they perceive in a highly deluded way…has been done to them [Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D., “Sociopathic Narcissists—Relentlessly Cruel”].

Fraudulent abuse of legal process elevates the narcissistic stalker to prime mover and puppet-master over his or her prey and compensates his or her disappointment of “ideal love” with the commensurate satisfactions of “unlimited power” over his or her victim and an infinitely renewable source of ego-fueling attention. By his or her false representations to the court, the narcissist’s fantasies become “the truth.” S/he’s literally able to refashion reality to conform to the false conception s/he favors.

In conclusion, an observation by psychologist Stanton Samenow:

The narcissist may not commit an act that is illegal, but the damage [s/he] does may be devastating. In fact, because the narcissist appears to be law-abiding, others may not be suspicious of him [or her] leaving him [or her] freer to pursue his [or her] objectives, no matter at whose expense. I have found that the main difference between the narcissist and antisocial individual, in most instances, is that the former has been shrewd or slick enough not to get caught…breaking the law.

Narcissism: A Study in Distortion

December 19, 2013August 23, 2023Moderator 5 Comments

The narcissist is a study in distortion.

You’d think someone as intently preoccupied with mirrors as the narcissist is would be brutally self-critical. You’d be mistaken, though. The narcissist exalts him- or herself, very possibly in defiance of a host of reasons not to. This isn’t to say the narcissist is immune to negative judgments; it’s to say that instead of responding to reproaches as normal people do and adapting or modifying his or her behavior and perspectives accordingly, the narcissist resents and would have others adapt their perspectives to match his or hers instead.

The narcissist has a distorted sense of his or her own self-worth, distorts perceived slights or criticisms into monstrous proportions, and endeavors to distort others’ perceptions of those who dared to “criticize.”

The temptation is to say that narcissists are masters of both deception and self-deception. “Mastery,” however, implies skill. Narcissists can’t help lying. It’s a propensity to which they’re enslaved. It can therefore hardly be called a talent.

Increasing numbers of visitors to this blog are brought here because they’ve had a brush with one of these piteous people, and it’s damaged them badly.

There’s an attractiveness to detecting mental illness or personality disorders in people who’ve injured us, because it provides us with a label, a way to quantify and qualify misconduct that’s otherwise inexplicable to a normal mind. Typically visitors to this blog have been victims of false allegations leveled publicly, often through the courts, and they’ve discovered the difficulty of exposing the motives of frauds committed by the mentally aberrant: they don’t make sense.

Distortion is very effective at poisoning the minds of others, particularly authorities and judges, because they in particular have no reason to suspect and have been trained to chasten any suspicions they might naturally have of accusers. Suspicion is what they’re supposed to reserve for the accused.

If this sounds backwards, that’s because it is.

Everything to do with narcissists distills to distortion. Narcissists evince all outward signs of plausibility, and outward signs are all most people attend to. Hence narcissists readily induce others to join them in their altered perspectives.

Scrutinize a photograph of a narcissist, and what you may detect in his or her eyes is not only a consciousness of being looked at but a degree of excitement approaching sexual thrill. Those eyes are hotly relishing the attention and may almost seem prehensile, as if they’re not just trying to make an impression but trying to grab the viewer by the collar. A significant measure of what’s called a narcissist’s “magnetism” borders on coercion.

Narcissists have the power of utter faith in their convictions, and they’re no less convinced of falsehoods than normal people are of truths. Their faith in their own frauds is contagious, because most people only perceive lies that are told abashedly, and narcissists are immune to shame and self-rebuke. The mentally ill (i.e., crazy people) are correspondently convincing, because to them illusions of the mind are real. The parallel is telling.

I once read a biography of Ayn Rand that cited an instance of the philosopher’s being thrown into a fit of pique, because someone had caused her to doubt her perceptions (she called her method Objectivism, a word based on objectivity, which means perception of the world honestly and without preconceived notions). Had she ever fallen prey to a narcissist, she’d have probably throttled the mendacious wretch purple.

Not Evil Geniuses but Brats in Slacks: On Narcissists and Restraining Order Abuse

November 22, 2013August 2, 2023Moderator 3 Comments

Pathological narcissism is apparently a titillating topic.

A growing number of visitors to this blog are brought here by search terms that include words and phrases like narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder, and NPD. More commenters, too, have lately reported abuses by narcissists through the courts, typically restraining order abuse. This surge is less likely due to an uptick in abuses by narcissists than to a dawning awareness of the psychological motives that underlie many vicious legal assaults. More Internet support groups and websites devoted exclusively to exposing abuses by narcissists are emerging, and the same words and phrases glossed above are now appearing in headlines, such as those on The Huffington Post and Salon.com.

My own opinion, on reflection, is that narcissists are banal. Evil, as Hannah Arendt famously noted, usually is (Arendt was a teacher and writer who fled Nazi Germany). The truth is the sorts of legal mischief narcissists get up to only work because our courts are accustomed to crediting lies (however painfully transparent they might be to a disinterested party). Narcissists assuredly congratulate themselves on their courtroom triumphs (congratulating themselves is among narcissists’ principal preoccupations). Yet any precocious child would see through their counterfeit dramatics.

Narcissists aren’t, in fact, epic anything; they’re pathetic. You may perceive narcissists’ pathological lies as devious; you’d more usefully perceive them as compulsive. (A compulsion is an irresistible urge.) What gives their frauds that aura of grandeur is the astonishing ease with which they’re committed, particularly on authorities and judges, and the facility with which narcissists enlist others in those frauds or convince others that they’re true. (Narcissists’ allies and pawns are more often than not morally normal people, that is, “neurotypicals.” Sometimes they’re even seemingly intelligent and discerning ones.)

Casual charlatanism, though, is hardly an accomplishment for people without consciences to answer to. And rubes and tools are ten cents a dozen.

There probably are some narcissistic masterminds out there. None of the narcissists whose conduct I know of, however—and I’ve had dozens of stories shared with me and read scores of other accounts, besides—has ever impressed me as more than a child in big-boy pants or a big-girl skirt. Narcissists succeed by virtue of soulless inveiglement and outward plausibility, neither of which bears up under close scrutiny. (Courtroom decisions made in restraining order cases are the products of a few minutes.)

I’ve read many people differentiate between narcissism and “mental illness.” Narcissists aren’t crazy, they’ll write. I’m unconvinced. I think it’s more accurately pronounced that narcissists don’t seem crazy and that most people are taken in by narcissists not because there isn’t something about them that alerts the antennae of others that there’s something off about them than that what’s off about them doesn’t match any of the familiar paradigms of craziness.

I’m not a psychologist, but my personal opinion is that narcissists are mentally ill and, when their frauds and ploys are resisted to any significant extent, that that mental illness becomes more prominent and perceptible, particularly to those whom they’ve abused. Normal people won’t run themselves ragged defending such frauds and ploys. A narcissist will.

Narcissism is about surface. And surface, despite the warning of that adage about book covers, is what we judge by. Narcissists are good with audiences. They’re also good with stress. They don’t slide into that state of neglected personal hygiene that we associate with “madness” even when pushed to an extremity. This isn’t a reflection of their interior hygiene, however.

Scratch beneath the surface, and you will find disorder.

Contrary to what many online writers counsel, people in legal contests with narcissists shouldn’t think of their opponents as reasoning beings in possession of highly developed albeit wicked minds; they should reckon themselves to be in struggles against recalcitrant children. Much ado is made of the cunning of narcissists. That apparent cunning is really just a manifestation of obsessive-compulsive self-justification combined with infantile rage provoked by the narcissist’s not getting his or her way.

Narcissists aren’t Hannibal Lecters; they’re brats in permanent temper tantrums who recognize no moral boundaries or authority.

TALKING BACK to restraining orders

THEY’RE NOT JUST ABUSED BUT ABUSIVE

Tag narcissism