Читать книгу All About Me: Loving a narcissist - Simon Crompton - Страница 11

Sonia: ‘I love you, Alan.’

Alan Partridge: ‘Thanks a lot!’

I’M ALAN PARTRIDGE

BY STEVE COOGAN, ARMANDO IANNUCCI

AND PETER BAYNHAM, 2002

Let’s cut to the chase. Is your life being ruined by a narcissist? Let’s look at how narcissism manifests itself in our love lives and elsewhere. Could your partner, friends, relations or work colleagues be narcissistic?

Or, more unnervingly, could you be narcissistic? I pose that as a passing point, because if you really were a narcissist you probably wouldn’t be reading this. You would have either binned this book already, or concluded that it didn’t apply to you – but maybe to your friends and lovers instead. Self-delusion is one of the strongest traits of the true narcissist – the image they have created around themselves renders them largely impervious to self-analysis or criticism. So the main object of this chapter is not to crack the protective shell of genuinely narcissistic personalities. It’s really meant as a way of spotting the narcissists around us. But, at the same time, some of us with milder narcissistic traits may recognise something of ourselves in the characteristics described here. If you do, don’t call the men in white coats – at least, not for the time being.

Because that’s something we’ve got to bear in mind from the start. Not all narcissists are monsters. In some people this tendency to self-obsession is relatively mild, still allowing other people in. In others, it’s severe because the demands of the self are so great that they become hugely problematic.

Propping up one’s all-important self-esteem involves creating fantasies about one’s own worth, achievements and looks. It requires using other people to reflect glory and worth. The true narcissist needs other people only in so far as they can support their own fantasy image of themselves.

Some psychoanalysts and writers¹ make a distinction between ‘healthy narcissism’ and ‘unhealthy narcissism’, with the unhealthy narcissist someone who, no matter what their age, has not yet developed socially or morally, and the healthy narcissist being someone who has a real sense of self-esteem that can enable them to leave their imprint on the world, but who can also share in the emotional life of others.

That may be a bit of an abrupt distinction, but it’s worth bearing in mind. For the rest of this book, I’ll try to give an indication of which end of the continuum we’re talking about, by referring to ‘people with narcissistic traits’ at the milder end, ‘narcissists’ towards the middle of the spectrum, and ‘narcissistic personalities’ at the more extreme end. It’s an inexact science – in fact, it’s not science at all – but it at least conveys the fact that in some people narcissistic traits are all-consuming, and in others they’re not.

Once we begin to recognise narcissistic traits, in ourselves and others, the possibility opens up of beginning to understand previously confusing, and even demeaning, situations. And understanding is the first step to resolving.

Let’s start by introducing you to a narcissist called John, recalled by former girlfriend Rosie in her own words. What Rosie has to say demonstrates exactly how narcissists wheedle their way into our hearts, but also how they drive us to distraction.

I’d grown up reading Wuthering Heights and my romantic ideal was Heathcliff – someone who was volatile and made big gestures. In my teens, my boyfriends were very dull – I thought at the time they’d all become accountants, and actually I was right. I started going out with John when I was nineteen and just starting at art college. I was very idealistic and wanted something real, wanted to be with people who really lived and did real things – though ironically, in the end, that all turned out to be rather false.

John was exciting because his social background was far less privileged than my own, which meant there was something rebellious about going out with him. But he also made me feel the most special person in the world. That’s how narcissists get hold of you and keep you. I was made to feel special with incredible letters and poems, and little thoughtful things like him remembering everything I said I liked, and then weeks, possibly months later, buying them as presents. I mentioned that I used to collect hippos as a child, and he went out and bought as many toy and model hippos as he could find. And I heard from mutual friends that he talked about me admiringly all the time, which was very flattering.

John was very good-looking, and lots of people flocked around him adoringly, and others wanted to be his girlfriend, and that made me feel very special.

He kept on saying that I would never have another relationship like this – and I felt that too. The trouble was, I came to realise that this was his way of keeping me emotionally tied in with him at the times when his erratic and sometimes cruel behaviour was making things impossible for me. He was breeding a kind of dependence that was impossible to live with, because you were constantly up and down according to his whims. He would take up a persona and totally live it, and then move on to something else – one week he’d be into chill music, and the next he’d be totally immersed in hip hop. Everything was always extreme, and at the beginning that was very attractive.

But it was complete attention-seeking. We lived in the same student house, and one day a girlfriend from home came to see me, but John refused to meet her. He locked himself in the bedroom and refused to come out. He’d just sneak out when he needed to use the bathroom or get something to eat, but he wouldn’t see me until she’d gone, and wouldn’t say why he was doing it. He had to be the centre of attention.

And sometimes he had to humiliate me too. He’d have these depressions, where he wouldn’t eat anything or talk. He said that if I left his side, he didn’t know what he’d do – so of course, I’d stay with him for days on end, during which time he’d be just vile to me. Once John got really angry – I can’t remember what it was about, but I think he felt that I was neglecting him, or hadn’t understood him. He punched a wall. What was interesting was that he was right-handed, and he punched the wall with his left – it was obviously considered, rather than impulsive, and he was careful not to hit himself somewhere that mattered. And he made a point of doing it in my student house, while all my friends were around.

I’ve read about narcissism since, and I think narcissists behave like this because they want to show that the world revolves around them. If they are nice to you, it’s because they want you to love them. That adds to their sense of self-importance. But then they also have to prove that they are better than you, and that you have to be at their beck and call.

So yes, John made me feel wonderful, but he also made me feel absolutely terrible. We were both really into painting, but whenever I painted anything, he said it was rubbish. He was incredibly competitive. I really liked films and knew quite a lot about them, and as soon as we started going out, he had to get into films and become the world’s greatest expert on them. He certainly had to prove he knew more than me, and would buy books and swot up.

I don’t know what made him the way he was. Maybe it was his family. He hardly ever spoke to his dad, and had no relationship with him. His mother was incredibly close to him, and thought the sun shone out of his arse.

John and I split up after two years, and I didn’t see him for three years. Then I called him because I wondered how he was. We met a few times and he wanted to get back together again. He said he’d changed, and part of me wondered whether he had. But then I met him with some of my friends around, and he made it clear he wanted me to himself and that he didn’t want to share me. Then it all came back, and I remembered how he’d been about my friends in the past, and how isolated I felt, and it made me realise that he hadn’t really changed at all. I went round to his house and, despite him insisting that we’d get back together one day, I told him that we really were finished. He took me to the station, and my last image was of him weeping hysterically on the platform as my train drew out.

This is a portrait of a narcissist. You can see what a classic case Rosie encountered when you turn to the criteria that American psychiatrists use to identify people they believe have narcissistic personality disorder. They are found in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition – a manual that covers all mental-health disorders for both children and adults.

The manual says that people who have five or more of the following traits can be classed as having a narcissistic personality disorder:

has a grandiose sense of self-importance

preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty or idealised love

believes that they are special and should only associate with special, high-level people

needs excessive admiration

has a sense of entitlement

exploits others

lacks empathy

envious of others, or thinks they are envious of him

haughty, arrogant behaviour.

It’s not a pleasant combination, but for all his charms and attractions it fits John like glove. Perhaps his strongest narcissistic traits are as follows:

A preoccupation with fantasises of unlimited brilliance and idealised love

John genuinely believed that Rosie and he constituted something unique and special – no one had ever loved like that, no one could feel stronger, nothing could be more romantic. For Rosie, however, it eventually became clear that this glamorous image of the romance was illusory because it involved a man who had no genuine interest in how she was feeling, and who depended on humiliating her to make himself feel better.

A belief that he was special and could only be understood by special people

John was very dependent on Rosie, partly because he had singled her out as one of the few people worthy of his attention. Only she could come close to understanding him – that was the key to their great romance. But that didn’t mean she was an equal, because, ironically for someone he’d picked out as being special, he was also deeply competitive with her. He had to prove constantly that he was better than her. He needed that to create a sense of self-esteem – something that, deep down, he really didn’t have.

Exploiting others

This was not a relationship of equals. Good relationships revolve around being able to maintain one’s own sense of self while allowing a partner to manifest their own identity too – preferably with the two of you also boosting each other’s sense of self-worth. But John depended on Rosie for his self-esteem, and nothing went the other way. He humiliated her and exploited her in quite a demoralising way. It was the way he propped up his own entirely artificial sense of confidence.

Lacking empathy

It was impossible for John to see things from Rosie’s perspective. He couldn’t see how infuriating his behaviour was, or how it made Rosie suffer. And it’s all because he had created a delusional world where he was centre stage – there’s no room for anyone else. Only his own emotions mattered – and his dramatic, but staged, demonstration of anger by hitting a wall is a revealing gesture from a man who could not bear to be ignored by those who should be reflecting his importance.

Envious of others

John wasn’t just envious of Rosie, her painting skill, and her interests. He was envious of her friends – and the fact that they might have some sort of hold on Rosie. Because narcissists are so choosy about who to spend time with, they are deeply suspicious and jealous of others who spend time with their chosen ones. Other people are not to be enjoyed or interacted with in their own right – they are either reflectors of grandiosity, or competitors.

That’s five out of the list. No doubt, you’ll probably now be applying those criteria to yourself and those you know. Fair enough – some of these are traits found to a certain extent in everyone. But do remember (and this is something we’ll deal with more in later chapters) that the American Psychiatric Association’s checklist of traits was designed to help psychiatrists identify people with a personality disorder characterised by narcissism. And though the list forms a useful baseline for establishing narcissistic behaviour, being able to tick those boxes doesn’t necessarily mean that the person has a personality disorder – just one per cent of the population are believed to have an actual narcissistic personality disorder. So let’s try to refine the process of characterising narcissists a bit further.