Narcissists: Making Others Do Their Dirty Work

By Linda Martinez-Lewi, Ph.D.

Narcissists beneath it all are cowards and phonies. Despite their psychological shallowness they perpetrate tremendous damage on other human beings—emotional, financial, mental. Pernicious lying, deceptions and manipulations are part of their psychological dna. For most narcissists their image is uppermost in their minds at all times. How they appear to others, how many followers they are accumulating, how much praise and adulation they are receiving and how wonderful people believe they are—these are their touchstones. I have communicated with many of those who were married to narcissists who were stunned by their partner’s ability to maintain a pristine public image while privately causing severe trauma, emotional distress and even terror to members of his/her family, business partners, etc.

Narcissists who succeed in the world preserve their pristine images by having favored members of their tight inner circle do their dirty work. Whether it is bringing down a business competitor by stealth and intimidation, using corps of attorneys to break down a former spouse who is asking for child support and custody arrangements, narcissists find the best follower, the most devoted—to carry out their malicious goals. I have had contact with many of their victims, especially their discarded and broken spouses, partners and children. The damage that they do is immeasurable. Part of the insidious problem is that the current culture rewards narcissistic behaviors–“I’ve got mine; the hell with you.” The narcissistic style of acting superior, being over-entitled and a laser focus on outward appearance and “image” has become pervasive in many stratas of our culture today.

Those who have survived the narcissist and are prevailing by moving forward with their lives despite all of the pain they are suffered, deserve our deep respect and empathy. These individuals are real. They come without facade, artifice or hidden agendas. Visit my website: www.thenarcissistinyourlife.com.  

Good, to the point article. Narcissists do recruit others to do their dirty work. It’s surprising how many so-called professional women in positions of authority are so willing to pile on with the MN abusers. Methinks they must be up to no good, and acting in collusion with the sociopath for their own personal gain.

This is how I found out that my dad died - thanks to the scumbag lawyer who has made a fortune taking advantage of a "vulnerable" Estate. I guess after all the money the sociopath sent your way; you owed her a "favor."

I was just informed my dad died.... by a lawyer!

Adult Children of Narcissists: Survivors or Transcenders?

Survivors and Transcenders

By Andrew Vachss

I believe that many people who were abused as children do themselves—and the entire struggle—a disservice when they refer to themselves as "survivors." A long time ago, I found myself in the middle of a war zone. I was not killed. Hence, I "survived." That was happenstance ... just plain luck, not due to any greatness of character or heroism on my part. But what about those raised in a POW camp called "childhood?" Some of those children not only lived through it, not only refused to imitate the oppressor (evil is a decision, not a destiny), but actually maintained sufficient empathy to care about the protection of other children once they themselves became adults and were "out of danger."

To me, such people are our greatest heroes. They represent the hope of our species, living proof that there is nothing bio–genetic about child abuse. I call them transcenders, because "surviving" (i.e., not dying from) child abuse is not the significant thing. It is when chance becomes choice that people distinguish themselves. Two little children are abused. Neither dies. One grows up and becomes a child abuser. The other becomes a child protector. One "passes it on." One "breaks the cycle." Should we call them both by the same name? Not in my book. (And not in my books, either.)

The Sociopath Takes What She Wants

The “sociopath,” boiled down, is someone who routinely does, and takes, what she wants, unconcerned with the impact of her behavior on others. Nothing in my mind defines her essence more than this concise, factual description. She is rather unique, and thus diagnosable as a sociopath, to this precise extent. 

Sure, we’ve discussed this before, but it always merits, in my view, fresh reconsideration. And so let me add, I think, an important caveat: The sociopath doesn’t necessarily feel she has the “right” to what she’s pursuing, or planning to take.

Rather, she doesn’t feel she needs the right. She just needs the want.
Simply wanting what she wants, with or without the right to it, meets her standard for laying claim to her quarry.

Because after all, you may ask the sociopath, “Did you have a ‘right’ to take that? To steal it?” And she may answer, with intellectual honesty, “No. I realize, intellectually, that I had no right to what I took.”

Which gets to the nub, the essence, of her condition: Her “right” to what she wanted wasn’t relevant, didn’t even enter her thinking; rather, her wanting it was the sole factor necessary to support her comfortable, non-conflictual pursuit of it.

To sum up, the sociopath’s disordered essence is captured best in her pattern of taking, without remorse, what intellectually she may very well know doesn’t belong to her—she has no right to it—yet she takes it anyway.

To be clear: when I say that the sociopath intellectually can understand she may lack the “right” to what he’s taking, I’m not suggesting that she lacks a sense of entitlement. Quite the contrary: her sense of entitlement is all the more astounding for her intellectual awareness that she may lack the “right” to what she wants, yet still takes it. In doing so, she is exhibiting self-entitlement, and attitudes of contempt, in their gaudiest, most audacious forms.

One always must beware of oversimplifying complicated concepts. The sociopath’s disorder is complex on many levels. Yet on some levels the sociopath’s mentality isn’t so complicated at all. In some respects it’s pretty simple.

In this article I suggest the sociopath is, essentially, that strange, disconcerting, disruptive individual with a history, and pattern, of taking from others what doesn’t belong to her with an impoverished sense of shame and remorse. When you confront an individual with this history and pattern, you are dealing with a sociopath.


Source Steve Becker, LCSW. 

DID A SOCIOPATH LOOT YOUR FAMILY'S ESTATE?