Books like On Narcissism: An Introduction

Feelings of self-importance, the constant need for admiration, the complete lack of empathy, the passion for triangulation, the exploitation of others for personal gain, otherworldly skills to manipulate, nonexistent self-esteem; idealization, love-bombing, devaluation, discard, repeat. The signs of the narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are well-known, and if you didn’t know, now you do. However, it’s equally important to be aware of what comes next after you are done with people who are wired differently - an euphemism to say people who use anyone with a pulse and nothing else. When they have no control over you, they try to control others' perceptions of you. To retaliate, they may start a smear campaign to destroy your reputation and credibility among the people you have in common. It’s also an effective way to play the role of a victim who is suffering because of your "cruel actions" and thus they will be able to feed on other people’s compassion. They will also unleash their rage having lost all control. They will stalk, harass and try to come back to your life. Another option sent from heaven would be absence – they voluntarily disappear since you know who they really are now and they can’t get anything from you. An ideal response that will spare you the drama these pitiable creatures are capable of. Let them escape; paraphrasing Dostoyevsky, unable to love, they are already in hell.\ A person may love:— (1) According to the narcissistic type: (a) what he himself is (i.e. himself), (b) what he himself was, (c) what he himself would like to be, (d) someone who was once part of himself. (2) According to the anaclitic (attachment) type: (a) the woman who feeds him,(b) the man who protects him, and the succession of substitutes who take their place. The inclusion of case (c) of the first type cannot be justified till a later stage of this discussion.\ Even though we just covered basic notions in simple English, this essay is not about NPD per se. This introduction to self psychology, among many other concepts and disputes with Jung, explains the relation between the ego and external objects and the meaning of the 'ego ideal', the superego's ancestor.\ This ideal ego is now the target of the self-love which was enjoyed in childhood by the actual ego. The subject's narcissism makes its appearance displaced on to this new ideal ego, which, like the infantile ego, finds itself possessed of every perfection that is of value. As always where the libido is concerned, man has here again shown himself incapable of giving up a satisfaction he had once enjoyed. He is not willing to forgo the narcissistic perfection of his childhood; and when, as he grows up, he is disturbed by the admonitions of others and by the awakening of his own critical judgement, so that he can no longer retain that perfection, he seeks to recover it in the new form of an ego ideal. What he projects before him as his ideal is the substitute for the lost narcissism of his childhood in which he was his own ideal.\ June 20, 19* Later on my blog.