this is part of the series on Shaming
In one of my last posts, I was challenged in the comments section about whether narcissists had any shame, and from there I felt that I needed to write this post, and to feature other posts by other authors and researchers (below), that differentiate between Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder.
In fact, as the title suggests, that's where the dividing line is between the two disorders: Narcissists can feel quite a bit of shame, and can even feel much more of it than other people, and their tactics and abuse don't help them diminish their shame, which increases their shame even more, but the Antisocial (i.e. sociopaths and psychopaths) don't feel regret or shame at all when they hurt other people.
Or they might feel it a little when they are being incarcerated, but it's more like they'll be telling themselves that they committed some act of abuse "stupidly" and that they'll plan it out better next time.
Why is this significant? Because people with Antisocial Personality Disorder are quite a bit more dangerous and menacing. These are people you should not directly confront - they will never accept, or even hear with an open mind, what you have to say about their behavior. They don't care what you have to say, and they don't have the empathy to care if they hurt other people either. For most of these folks, empathy died for them in their childhood. There are a number of factors that go into why their empathy is so dead, but to keep this post relatively short compared to others I have written, I will be focusing on the difference between them and the narcissists.
One major difference is that they aren't driven by morals or ethics. While your run-of-the-mill narcissist may be low on ethics, most of them don't commit crimes against others, while the Antisocial Personality Disordered folks have no ethics at all, and are likely to be dangerous and hurt people with impunity, with no regrets because of that fact. They are driven by self-serving agendas always, period, and as simplistically as I stated it. Most of them are basically con-men or con-women through and through, exploiting who ever they think they can exploit with as little effort as they think is necessary. They don't care what other people are going through at all.
In order to make it easier to talk about the Antisocial Personality Disordered types, I will refer to them as psychopaths. Why? Well because Antisocial Personality Disorder has subtypes: primary psychopaths and secondary psychopaths. To confuse you more, secondary psychopaths are often referred to as sociopaths. Primary psychopaths are born with their disorder, and have different autonomic nervous systems (which boils down to the fact that they don't feel fear or trauma when confronted with dangerous situations or of being overwhelmed by the enemy in a battle) and sociopaths are much more influenced by home life and the environment they grew up in, but have the same autonomic nervous systems as the rest of us have.
Then there are sub-categories of sociopaths, mainly the functional sociopath and the dysfunctional sociopath, but even there, psychologists keep coming up with even more subcategories.
And to confuse you even more, there is a brand of narcissist called the malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissists have a combination of Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Antisocial Personality Disorder. They aren't likely to feel much regret or shame either if they hurt other people, though they may pretend to. And that's the problem; they are big pretenders, and they can appear very, very functional except for their rages, manipulations and very commanding, demanding natures. It is hard to tell the difference between malignant narcissists and the psychopaths, and sometimes the difference between malignant narcissists, the run-of-the-mill narcissists, and to some extent, one of the sub-types of Borderline Personality Disorder. Malignant narcissistic traits tend to stand out more than run-of-the-mill narcissists, and like the psychopaths, they don't feel much remorse for hurting others (they tend to engage in domestic violence, some crimes and bullying) and they over-react to anyone who questions their self-appointed superiority and grandiosity with incredible amounts of rage.
Even with malignant narcissists, there are subcategories: the overt malignant narcissist, the covert malignant narcissist, the vindictive narcissist, the sociopathic narcissist, the dark triad, the dark tetrad, and the dark empath.
In some of my explanations, including the malignant narcissist, I'll be calling them psychopaths. For the malignant narcissist, it's not all that accurate to proclaim them psychopaths, only that they have psychopathic tendencies to a large or small degree, depending on the person. However, like purely psychopathic individuals, they do have traits and proclivities to do harm to others.
But I'm trying to simplify it so that you can be aware of the differences between them as opposed to the run-of-the-mill narcissists who do carry around quite a bit of shame inside them.
(simplistically covered)
Tends to be emotionally abusive or dismissive of anyone who stands in their way of their agendas, including people in their personal lives.
Fairly charming.
Feels shame and regret, but not in an empathetic way. The shame and regret comes from people finding out that they are not who they are making themselves out to be. It is expressed more as paranoia, and rage at the person who exposed them (so that the person doesn't expose them further).
While you can't appeal to them to be empathetic and to care about the feelings and life situations of others, you can appeal to them in terms of how what they are doing might destroy their reputation since they are reputation oriented.
Psychopaths: primarily driven to take from others by force, or to bully people into submission. Some psychopaths only target people who they think are "easy" or who they deem to be weak: children, women, the disabled, the elderly, etc.
Exceptionally charming.
Feels no shame or regret. They are so driven to take from others, or over-power others, that regret would short-circuit their ambitions. Their attitude is that people are to be used.
Malignant narcissists: a combination of both agendas.
If male, tends to be domestic violence offenders and child abusers. Very menacing and cruel if they don't get their way.
Exceptionally charming, two-faced, Jekyll/Hyde personality, can fool others easily, can act the part of being fawning to get what they want.
It is very rare for them to feel shame or regret. Attaining power, control, domination, wealth, and an air of superiority is so overwhelming that they rarely, if ever, consider the feelings of others. If someone tries to get them to consider the feelings of others, they may rage like a narcissist, or punish and get violent like a psychopath.
THE CHILDHOOD BACKGROUNDS
AND BELIEF SYSTEMS THEY ADOPTED
(simplified)
Narcissists grew up in traumatic environments where there was a lot shaming and blaming going on, and there was likely to be emotional abuse in those environments too, as well as emotional neglect at the very least, if not other forms of neglect. In other words, they tended to have a narcissistic parent with authoritarianism at the center.
Now narcissists can be plenty exploitative of their children too, just like the psychopaths, because of entitlement issues. Both disorders display entitlement.
But narcissists are driven by different ambitions than psychopaths. Their ambition is to be thought of as a "superior being" compared to other people around them, to be thought of as "special" with special attributes that only other special people can decipher. Narcissists want to be spoiled with constant praise. They feel they need to compete with others in terms of who can win at beauty or handsomeness, who can win at arguments and debates, who can win at "wealth games", who can win at "head games", who can win at "phoniness" (most of them believe others are as phony as they are), who can win at fooling others, who can win at work through work place bullying, or triangulation, or sweet-talking a boss, and who can win at being thought of as the most charming upstanding citizen, who can win at being thought of as a victim if they don't get their way in their relationships.
Narcissists are basically in competition all of the time. They wake up with manipulating others in mind, and they go to sleep with thoughts of manipulation in mind too. They don't like the thought of "letting things be". The agenda, in other words, is primarily social: looking and acting superior, trying to get people to listen to them with baited breath, getting lots of positive attention. It is exhausting for the narcissist to put up this front all the time, especially in front of people or children who they deem to be weaker or voiceless compared to themselves. "The mask" falls, and they become abusive to take off steam, especially if they feel that their superiority is being questioned, and they worry that they'll get caught at being abusive, at being phony, that people will see their perfection and superiority as phony too, and that they might have to deal with community shame.
Narcissists in their early environment were much more likely to be expected to "fawn to power and control." If you watch them carefully, they will be exceptionally fawning to anyone who has wealth, popularity, fame, and who they believe is "superior" to them. Whereas, they will tend to be abusive to children, the disabled, females, people in poverty, people of a minority race or religion, people who have weight issues, and so on, especially in their close personal relationships. They are very dependent on societal disenfranchisements to tell them who they can pick on and who they have to look up to.
And because they fawn to power, and were expected to fawn to power when they were children, they expect others in their close personal relationships to fawn over them too when they insist on being dominant and bully others.
As I said above, the psychopath is driven by different agendas. Again, they are con-men through and through, and usually learned to take from others or to impose themselves on others in their childhood environment.
They tend to grow up in environments where parenting was spotty, or neglectful, or where they had to parent themselves. While some of them are taught ethics, it may have been a situation that was inconsistent, or where the rest of the environment was not particularly ethical (growing up in environments where there is gun violence, war, little adult supervision, a lot of crime, and so on).
They can also grow up to be a golden child, where anything they do is enabled, including hurting other people, or being violent.
Malignant narcissists and psychopaths tend to be very, very exploitive of children especially, expecting them to do things which take away a child's maturation process, and their dignity and individual selves, to serve the parent. They must be a pretty close version of a mini-me version of their parent to not be abused. The malignant narcissist or psychopath has the fantasy that they are a tyrant king or queen, and that their children are to be either submissive little helper servants or to be abused (and they more or less infer or say outright: "take your pick").
For malignant narcissists, it is to make their children into narcissistic supply, to puppet them into spouting unequivocally that their parent(s) are "the grandest of the the grand", the all-superior, the all-knowing, the all-wonderful, all-superior beings. And they must promote the idea that they are the all-helpful doting parent(s) too. Or again, the child will be punished. It kind of reminds me of the Turpin family who were unchained and put in matching outfits in public and to smile for the camera, even though they were being starved, lying in their own excrement and abused at home.
The malignant narcissist who tends to want both social acceptability and to exploit others (having others do work for them while taking credit for it, lying about workers in the workplace to get them fired so that no one will stand in their way of getting to be the boss's only reliable and knowledgeable source, winning a race by disabling their opponent, the extremes of being brought up by a narcissistic parent who put competition before anything else) will manipulate others through terror and rewards to take control of the narrative, to get others to believe them.
Neither the malignant narcissist nor the psychopath are interested in child welfare, "good practices in parenting 101", treating children with dignity and respect, treating them in age-appropriate ways, encouraging their own personalities and interests to come forward, and unconditional love (they wouldn't even know what this is, and if they did, they wouldn't want it anyway - a mind set on exploitation can't love unconditionally).
Narcissists and malignant narcissists manipulate their children and grown children through rewards and punishments as a way to temper the behaviors and speech of those closest to them, particularly compared to those they feel hierarchically superior to.
I have talked in other posts about how fawning is incredibly unhealthy and traumatic, especially when the fawning is done because of the threats, punishments, blackmail, silent treatments, coercive control, and other forms of abuse by narcissists and malignant narcissists. It is particularly traumatic for children because children learn over and over again that they have to fawn to abuse, any abuse. With normal healthy families, children are taught to have good boundaries and self respect instead, to keep safe, to leave people who abuse. Narcissists teach their children the opposite, and many children are even exposed to narcissists who expect them to apologize to other abusers. They are also at risk of other predators: child molesters, rapists, kidnappers, child abductors and child murderers.
In the case of the two kinds of narcissists, note that rewards are not benevolence. Benevolence is giving because someone needs help, or is hurting, or is overwhelmed with a life situation, and it requires empathy. Rewards are a manipulation: "I'll reward you for x, y, and z , but if you slip up, the rewards go away." In other words, it's transactional and dependent on something: for scapegoats, whether they can be used for blame, shame and abuse in return for rewards, and for golden children, whether they can uphold a perfect, superior image of the parent (this is what they are rewarded for). Narcissists learn early on that people, and especially young children, can be manipulated and molded very easily with the reward/punishment tactic, and they use it for the entire life of that child, into old age if necessary. This can and is of detriment to themselves, and often their images are at stake because of it too, so there is a backfire built in to all of it. Rewards and punishments are used by them for self-serving purposes only, and not for their children.
In contrast, psychopaths tend to manipulate through terror primarily. They also tend to choose victims who they deem to be more powerless than others, who are hurting, vulnerable or alone than others because they feel they are easier to prey upon, and get things from. They aren't going to reward if they can, at all, help it. They don't care about impressing unless they feel they have to in order to exploit, and take advantage of.
Their agenda also tends to be less about shaming than just taking, unless they are malignant narcissists. In contrast, run-of-the-mill narcissists love to shame because their agenda is more social than material, to appear as someone to worship, look up to, to have power and control so that they don't ever have to fawn to power and control themselves as they did as children. They get the feeling that power and control is all that matters.
Psychopaths get the feeling that only money, material things, property and forcing themselves on others are all that matter, and that they don't have to work for them because others who work are an easy mark. "They have too much and can share, so I will take ..."
In fact, all narcissistic, malignant narcissistic and psychopathic parents will have a "me first" agenda and attitude when it comes to how they relate to their children. The psychopathic parent will just be more "me first" than the others (i.e. all of the time) than narcissistic parents.
If you are a child who grew up with any of these parent types, you are either going to be a "hurting mess", feel trauma-bonded and imprisoned by your parent, and have trauma symptoms, or you are going to have the coping skills of another Cluster B, one being another "rewarded" immature narcissist who fawns to power, and abuses the powerless.
One reason why psychopaths become so dangerous is that they believe that by hurting others, or threatening others, that it will bring the reward of submission of the other person they are abusing every single time. They don't think of any other ways to deal with others other than to "charm and harm." And if they don't get submission, they keep hurting the other person, and escalating the pain that the other person is in, more and more and more, sometimes to the point of outright torture.
We see this in leaders of countries who invade other countries without provocation too, who commit atrocities in order to make a population submit (i.e. fawn to being overtaken).
They don't worry about accountability, or of getting caught, or paying for their aggressions, or even concern themselves with a societal reputation because they are so arrogant and really do believe they will never get caught, ever. They believe they will get away with their abuses and terrorizing over, and over, and over again, indefinitely. Some of them play "catch me if you can" games and cat-and-mouse games with police to assure themselves they will never be caught, that they can even win with law enforcement hunting them down, surveillance, DNA evidence, and teams of agents brainstorming where and when they will make their next move.
Likewise, tyrannical invading psychopathic leaders who commit atrocities also do not believe they will ever be held accountable either, that they can wear any opposition down. Most will always believe they have more power and destructive capabilities than anyone who confronts them.
But it is also their arrogance and the feeling they have rights to aggress upon people, and their property, that cause them to make blunders.
Here is an illustration of what can go on:
The psychopath: "How can I get money and material things, and wealth, and servitude from this situation? How can I fool people out of what they have?"
Malignant narcissist: "How can I get money and material things, and wealth, power, control, domination, and most of all, most everyone's attention on me, and get the admiration from the rich and powerful? How can I make others serve me to these ends? What connections do I have to have, and how much do I have to lie about my status to ensure that this happens? How much lying do I have to do to remain on top at all times, or at least give the appearance that I'm on top? How much blame-shifting and gaslighting do I have to do to keep my status as 'top dog'. How much fawning do I have to do to the rich and powerful? How much threatening of the peons do I have to do?"
The run-of-the-mill narcissist: "How can I get attention, admiration, get to be known as a superior likeable charming person who would never harm anyone or compete with anyone? How can I get power, control and domination over others? How unselfish do I have to appear to be? How much of myself do I have to hide, how much fawning do people expect of me, how much do I have to reveal about myself to get what I want, how much empathy do I have to pretend to have, how many people do I have to lie to, how many people do I have to pretend to be empathetic towards, to be accepted as one of them, how many people do I have to reward for putting me on a higher hierarchy or pedestal, how many people do I have to discard or hurt to get what I want?" - you can see that this kind of narcissist would care a lot about how other perceive him or her, and why they are vulnerable to shame and regrets, and why the other two types aren't as much.
The shame and regrets, by the way, have nothing to do with empathizing. It has to do with their standing in social circles and in society, and how much their standing is rising or falling. They feel they cannot manipulate people if it is falling.
One of the reasons your plain envelope narcissists hate their scapegoats is because scapegoats are usually not so quiet and they know first hand that the grandiosity is false, and that there is an abuser underneath. Some of them do not have the incentive to stay quiet either. They know that no one ever had a law changed, or helped the abused, disenfranchised and downtrodden by being quiet. They know they aren't going to help themselves by being quiet either. Societal changes, in large part, mean going against what narcissists and psychopaths want, and are getting away with, and getting rid of their loopholes including coercive control, corporal punishment of children, silencing the opposition to abuse, and reducing or eliminating assault weapons (mass murders are overwhelmingly committed by young collapsed narcissists, malignant narcissists who are negative on others and have significant prejudices, malignant narcissists who also have other personality disorders like Paranoid Personality Disorder, obsessed psychopaths, and Paranoid Schizophrenics, none of which can easily be detected, even the paranoid schizophrenics because most of them don't get symptoms or show mental illness until their twenties at the earliest).
Anyway, the narcissist, the malignant narcissist, and the secondary psychopath learned in childhood (from it being modeled by a parent or other authority figure) how to be this way. The likelihood that they will pass this down to at least one child is very high.
This is very simplistic, but when I get to adding to the list of the rest of the Cluster B personality-disordered (I only have the primary psychopath at the present time), I will talk much more about how childhood influenced them.
Run of the mill narcissists tend not to break the law when it comes to hurting other individuals. They are rarely violent, choosing to use emotional, psychological, proxy, and financial abuses to achieve their ends. If they are accused of abuse, they will usually tell others that their victims are crazy. When it comes to breaking the law, they will break laws that won't incarcerate them. Instances are: carrying illegal drugs, going swimming on beaches that have "No Swimming" signs, smoking in designated "no smoking" rooms, jay walking, purposely ignoring "no trespassing signs", nude swimming on beaches that are designated for swimsuits and families, the smaller illegal activities and crimes in other words.
When they abuse, it is usually ego driven. They want flattery, even when other people are having issues with them.
They tend to be hypocrites, and will not treat others the way they demand to be treated.
They are "terrible listeners" because everything you say will be filtered by them in terms of how your message will influence them, what it will do for their ego and what it won't do, what is in it for them, and some childhood background issues: not believing in the truth because the truth was not practiced in the childhood home, not believing in what you say because they are so agenda driven to get power and control and figure everyone around them is too, and so on. So whether you are silenced by them, or whether they listen to you, they aren't going to hear what you have to say regardless, even if you try to get them to understand you. They live in their own reality, and they also don't care what you have to say beyond how things effect them. If you feel like you are talking to a dense brick wall, it has to do with the narcissist's selective hearing.
Male malignant narcissists tend to be domestic violence offenders. They get in your face, they rage in your face, they grab you, they can push you around without your permission, and otherwise aggress upon you in a physical manner, which very often leads to physical attacks: punching, tripping, slamming you into the wall, and so on. They think that if they are in enough of a rage or angry, that they have a right to act in this manner even though it is against the law and you are both adults.
If they do commit domestic violence and are confronted by authorities, their favorite thing to say is: "She made me do it."
Some of them engage in false imprisonment or trying to isolate you from the empathetic people in your life. If they can't do it through persuasion, they will try to do it financially, or disabling your car, or losing your keys on purpose, and other kinds of motives to keep you in some sort of state of bondage to them.
If this is a partner relationship, they are very suspicious of you, where you go, what you tell others, if you are trying to escape, if you might be thinking of an affair, and so on. This is especially true if they have had affairs on a partner themselves. Malignant narcissists cheat on you as a way to ensure they have another love relationship to go to if you aren't acting like a puppet, or if you leave. It's just one way they like rubbing your nose in the fact that they don't need you as their partner, that you aren't special.
Child abuse tends to be more severe than the run-of-the-mill narcissists too, with child exploitation, lots of gaslighting, absurdly long and pointless silent treatments and infantilizing lectures (lectures meant for a child much younger than the child is), and "child discipline", a lot of it lasting well past childhood, and almost always accompanied by shaming, and verbal abuse. Tearing down a child's self esteem is mostly part of the picture too with at least one child (usually their designated scapegoat child).
Children are often "silenced" when the malignant narcissist does not want to hear anything that is not in line with how they want to see things, and what they want to believe, or that alters their perception of other people or phenomenon. They like to be the authorities on speech and knowledge, and that goes for what "the truth is" too, even if what they believe or are spouting isn't the truth. This is one reason they are prejudiced, either on a personal level against a number of people, or on a societal level. It tends to be both, each influencing the other.
Like all narcissists they insist that they appear faultless, except with a capital "F". They will not tolerate being blamed for anything, even when they commit illegal acts. They can and do react with violence to being blamed, especially if the one confronting them is their child or partner. You are "supposed to" believe what they want you to believe, and you are pressured via rewards and punishments to go along with their beliefs in every facet of life. And we wonder why therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists tell their patients to get away and stay away from malignant narcissists as soon as they can.
The "you have to's" don't end there, however. Malignant narcissists also often tend to be micro-managers, and don't ask you permission to be that, even if you are both adults. They just aggress themselves upon you in that way. "Take out the garbage! Do this, do that!" If you counter them, they go into a rage. Let's say that you feel sick during one of their micro-managements, they are likely to shout, "You aren't sick! Get out there and do it now!" - and from that you can also tell that they don't deal with reality. They make it pretty clear that they can't deal with excuses, no matter how relevant the excuses are.
They are bullies, using their status, or power to order you around. If they fail miserably at ordering you around, they treat you with contempt or violence or a discard.
This means that relationships with malignant narcissists aren't really relationships. They are a drill sergeant or terrorist ordering you around, and for you it is a test of endurance only, until you either break from the trauma bond, or if you leave, or if you call authorities.
It is common to have trauma symptoms or PTSD if you relate to malignant narcissists in any long term way.
They very rarely confess their wrongs unless there are some social benefits for them in doing so. For instance, some of them start channels on You Tube because You Tube pays them if they have enough of an audience. But aside from that, most of them do not admit to any wrong, and if anything, will blame their victims time and time again.
They tend to break other laws and codes of conduct because they are also driven by what psychopaths are driven by, plus what narcissists are driven by. If they have more psychopathy than narcissism, they will insist that joint property be theirs entirely, or mostly, and if property or money belongs to others, they will insist to themselves that they have to have it. They don't have the ethics to care how these attitudes effect others, or the empathy to care how it effects others either. They'll say things like, "All that you care about is stuff and money!" (showing projection of how they behave) or "You need to stop thinking about what you've lost and enjoy life!" (trying to persuade you not to notice what they are taking from you).
Home invasion is not out of the question for malignant narcissists, even though it carries huge risks. It's part of the psychopathy part of malignant narcissism.
On the world stage, malignant narcissists love to invade other countries, including invading citizens' houses, and taking their belongings and farm land. It's usually a "bloody war" where they try to take over as much as they can by killing as many people as they can too. If they succeed, they are often on to invading the next country on their list of "places to own". They really feel that this will catapult them into a "great memorable leader status."
They have little to no regret for hurting other people, believing that people should fawn to their authority. They will keep hurting others if they feel they can get away with it, depending on how much psychopathy they have compared to narcissism.
They also won't care too much what their reputation is if the psychopathy is more pronounced than their narcissism. One way to tell is if they are more "loner" than wanting to be around others, and to impress others.
Psychopaths are a lot like malignant narcissists, except that they don't really care about their reputations that much, unless having a reputation can help them acquire more property, wealth, sex and material things. Either way, they tend to be more secretive, master-minding plans to achieve more and more wealth. They are extremely driven to take from others, and to get others to serve them, with the more functional psychopaths using more societally acceptable means to get there, and the more dysfunctional psychopaths resorting to petty theft, and sometimes graduating to home invasion, grand larceny, burglary, assault, aggravated assault, rape, etc.
It's hard to get people to part with their money, children, property or things without crimes being committed. So the functional psychopath has thought of ways around those loopholes. And what profession attracts functional psychopaths the most?
Venture capitalism. There are a lot of psychopaths who are venture capitalists. When big companies fail or start to falter, one of the reasons they start to falter and fail is that they have capital shortages. The owners or CEOs of these companies look to venture capital firms to keep the company going. But most often, venture capitalists try to take them over and force huge "discount sales" of inventory to raise cash. In some instances they sell merchandise at such a discount that it costs more to make the merchandise than what they are selling it for. Then the venture capitalists have a liquidation sale and close the business. The venture capitalists walk away with millions, and occasionally billions.
And all kinds of sectors are played with to enrich a few while destroying otherwise sound and needed businesses, and can include loaning institutions, housing, consumer goods and supplies, banks (credit default swaps, quantitative easing, and other tactics including lobbying for less regulation) ... in other words, the emphasis is on money much more than on society, relationships, and taking care of relationships.
All psychopaths sacrifice relationships, and even benefits for the society they are living in, for an insatiable appetite for more money and property for themselves.
So many of the shows out today glorify psychopaths including The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Billions, and Yellowstone to name a few. I really liked Outlander until the main character, a man in this case, was tortured and raped over a few episodes by a psychopath. Television is actually so flooded with shows about psychopaths, and their sadistic acts, that you can't possibly watch all of them, even if you wanted to. And in those shows, the victims are barely considered, barely a character. Even if we look at history shows like Ken Burn's The American Buffalo on PBS, it is likely that psychopaths killed the herds down to only 27 buffalo from hundreds of millions of them through what is now known as The United States (murder and making money are very much a psychopath's calling - they don't have ethics; they don't have compassion or empathy; they don't care who it effects or if it leaves people starving; they are always going to justify taking in ways that are purely destructive, and in this case their excuse for such destruction was "to solve the American Indian problem" - horrible!).
How can featuring and glorifying psychopaths to the extent that our media companies are, going to lead to peace, such that invasions are intolerable, that school shootings and other mass murders are intolerable, that money mixed with murder is intolerable? Are we becoming numb to what psychopaths do to us and just accept them and their deeds forever?
On a personal level, psychopaths threaten or practice egregious forms of abuse against their siblings while at the same time spouting false narratives about their siblings so that the parents will believe the psychopath is the victim, and leave their entire inheritances only to the psychopath. They tell bosses false narratives about anyone who they feel threatened by, in terms of dedication and talent, so that the boss is left with no one but the psychopath to lean on in making sure the business runs smoothly (but it won't). They steal money from businesses if they can get away with it. As bosses, they are tyrannical and expect people to be total puppets. They tend to fire a lot of people. They tend to be divorcees unless a spouse lets them order them around. They try to make everyone except themselves seem like money grubbers, only obsessed with what they can gain out of a situation, because they are like that.
Psychopaths rarely tell the truth about anything because they are so focused on "getting something" out of every situation that truth is inconvenient to that ambition.
Are psychopaths charming? Yes, they are, probably a lot more than any of the other Cluster Bs. But again, whether it is charm or harm you are getting from them, every single conversation and encounter is going to be "me" oriented, or it is going to be fluff or fawning that they feel they have to endure until they can get "the goods".
You can see why the secondary types of psychopaths might be produced by narcissistic parents who try to exert power and control via constant rewards and punishments. The rewards and punishments don't end in childhood either.
They are going to be lying for ego-related reasons.
And they will hate and often reject anyone who finds out otherwise. This is how narcissists are exploitive. They demand flattery, and if you don't give it to them, you're "out". However, they are hyper-critical of others, and often like breaking the self esteem of others. Go figure. That kind of entitlement is part of the disorder, and everyone who is close to them will see it eventually.
They will lie about what great parents they are, and sometimes manufacture events that never happened. Often they put down their spouse, even when they aren't an x, to make themselves look like the hero in every situation.
They can't stand to be in any kind of relationship where the other person isn't flattering them constantly, or at the very least, isn't doing enough to prop them up into some superior position, whether that is at work, at home giving them power and control over you, or in their friendship circles.
They are so focused on that, that hardly anything else really matters to them, even their own children and spouse unless their children and spouse are acting like the flattering marionettes they were trained to be through rewards and punishments.
These standards were probably multi-generational. Children of narcissistic multi-generational families aren't valued or loved for intrinsic reasons (i.e. for who they are), only for extrinsic values (whether they can make the family look good, whether they have admirable professions, whether they are wealthy, whether they flatter authority figures, and so it goes down the generations).
Most narcissistic families are also authoritarian families who tell the younger generations what to do with themselves and their lives, what to say to whom, and who to accept and not accept in terms of their relationships, and it is life-long, even if it is not in the best interest of the member. If the member doesn't go along with the authoritarian, and tries to explain why it is not a good idea (perhaps they are being abused by another family member, or do not want to be part of the family business), they can be marginalized or ostracized to teach them a lesson as to what happens if they don't go along with what an authoritarian wants, including a false narrative that an authoritarian is trying to get many others to believe. Very unhealthy, very heartbreaking, if not totally toxic.
So budding narcissists who are still children learn that they have to be "special" and "superior" because of those circumstances, or they won't be accepted or acceptable, thus all of the posturing, lying about their credentials, lying about how much money they have, lying about how prestigious their job is even if it is not, lying about being good friends with whoever is rich and famous, pretending to be much more than they actually are. They were not accepted by an authority figure for themselves in childhood, or their sibling wasn't, so they try to be accepted through distortions, false narratives and outright lies.
They tend to lie less than the other two types I discuss next, however.
Again, it depends on whether they are more narcissist or more psychopath as to what they will lie about.
One favorite phrase of malignant narcissists and psychopaths is "I would never lie to you."
Since they are such phonies (while tearing up people behind their backs), they sincerely believe that everyone is a phony, and they often accuse others of being phonies.
Thus no one can get very close to them because "no one is home" in terms of them having a reliable personality type. They have drives certainly, but they use others' personalities and mirroring to get what they want. As children, they may have felt that they had to do it to survive, and when it worked to get them what they wanted, they kept using it.
Flattery won't necessarily work on malignant narcissists; they don't trust anyone. However, they may not show their distrust.
It is possible that malignant narcissists grew up in a similar style to run-of-the-mill narcissists, but I bet you anything that someone in that environment was being threatened and terrorized, whether it was another child or their other parent.
To illuminate your understanding of malignant narcissists and their ties to how secondary psychopaths grow up, the dysfunctional types of psychopaths usually are exposed to quite abusive, traumatic, crime-ridden, or war-like environments, so this would be the added element to the way run-of-the-mill narcissists grew up. Perhaps they felt they needed to steal food, or others' belongings to sell.
Secondary functional psychopaths can grow up in environments where "money is everything" to the point where how you attain it can be unethical. For instance, they commit white collar crimes. Or they are 22 when they inherit money, and they buy a slum apartment building and live off of the income and become quite wealthy from other people's poverty. The poverty, of course, would be blamed on the tenants solely, rather than looking into whether the culture or society contributed to it. They become anaesthetized to the suffering of others, and they learn to be unempathetic in all relationships to the suffering of others.
Malignant narcissists lie to aggrandize themselves, to sully the reputation of others, to get money, property, power, control, and domination over others. And they tend to lie a lot. They lose people in the process of doing all of this and move on to the next person to take advantage of them without remorse too, and without empathy for the next person's life they have destroyed.
Malignant narcissist men are known for committing domestic violence, and even if they have put someone in the hospital they will lie about how their partner fell down the stairs, or crashed into a tree, or hurt themselves in some manner, anything to keep from being accountable.
They use people, lie about people, lie to people, all with a lot of deadly charm. They can sadistically laugh at everything they are getting away with, and do. They can come across as huge fawners, flatterers, sensitive little boys or girls who cry for show when others have had enough, whereas when they are with people who they deem to be weak, they act like terrorists, bullies, tyrannical bosses, micro-managers, and insulting contempt-filled megalomaniacs, and in close personal relationships can graduate very fast into being physical abusers.
They don't have regrets about hurting other people because they have been brought up in a hierarchical way where the weak get abused and the powerful are the abusers. If they think they can get more power, control and wealth by being a bully, they will keep escalating bullying to get ever more power, control and wealth. Again, it doesn't matter how they get it; it only matters that they attain it.
That's why they don't care about anyone but themselves: their whole system is about getting rewards from bullying and disenfranchising, period, by pretending and lying to get others to go along with them, including how to get help bullying others.
On the larger scale, this is why malignant narcissistic tyrannical leaders can go into another country and commit atrocities. It only matters that they "get" what ever property and wealth that exists in the countries they invade. They do not care about the people, or populations they destroy in the process, not even the number of people they are hurting and traumatizing - the psychopathy part of them gets off on the acquiring of other people's property and territory, and the narcissistic side believes they will be worshipped and held up as great fearless forceful leaders who got their country more territory, more wealth and who crushed a population of rebels.
And all of how they "get" it is based on lying about the people they are invading, and false narratives to soldiers in the trenches as well as their own country-men, and self aggrandizement that is left from their deeds.
Like the run-of-the-mill narcissists, they will only listen to fawning sycophants and flatterers.
As for the psychopath, the loner types of psychopaths who don't trust people who flatter, or who fawn ... These psychopaths know they aren't trustworthy when they fawn, so they don't trust others who fawn either.
"What are you trying to do here!? Are you trying to get something from me?!" - this is how some of them think, if they are flattered. So if you flatter someone and get an aggressive hostile response, consider that they may be a psychopath.
The dysfunctional psychopaths can be loners and tend to be alone when they plan their misdeeds or crimes because they assume they aren't liked.
Dysfunctional secondary psychopaths tend to grow up in abusive homes, and in crime-ridden neighborhoods, or in full time traumatic situations. Often there is very little parenting, ethics aren't enforced or introduced; it's like a free-for-all where they do what compels them to do. Without an adequate background of care and concern for their well-being, or the well-being of others that the psychopath is pursuing, they are going to choose the easiest path to obtaining money, wealth, and property.
The more functional psychopaths, however, who grew up in financially stable situations, but who were neglected or ignored in other ways, can also grow up with the feeling that they can do anything that compels them to acquire wealth, or what ever they want including sex by force. They are also not likely to grow up with ethics either, or they were modeled unethical behaviors so much that they don't care about how their behaviors impact others.
They also lie and plan to obtain what ever it is they want to attain, no matter what it does to the lives of others.
Because they are so singularly driven to exploit, if you confront them, and try to stop their aggressions towards others, they will project it all back on to you and use shame, contempt, rage, manipulation, abuse and sometimes even violence to get you to stop confronting them. Any time you confront a sociopath, you will "pay" (as in their revenge against you) for having confronted them, challenged them, or questioned them and their motives. You are not supposed to see their motives or agendas, so their retaliations will be pretty extreme.
That is all I have to say on this subject for now. I will discuss fawning to abuse more in other posts, as it causes much more trauma than other forms of trauma reactions ... It is necessary to know about in terms of healing, in terms of holding those who traumatize accountable for causing it, and hold politicians accountable for passing laws that protect its citizens from violence and abuse, so that we can all live in a world of more peace and empathy.
The further reading section below goes more thoroughly into the differences. The posts in the "recommend" categories explain some things that I have not covered in this post.
Recommended: Is There A Psychopath, Sociopath, Or Narcissist In Your Life? How To Know - by Brianne Hogan for the Scary Mommy website (includes interviews with Sterlin Mosley)
Recommended: Sociopath vs. Narcissist: What's the Difference? - by Elizabeth Plumptre, medically reviewed by David Susman, PhD for Very Well Mind
Sociopath Vs. Narcissist: Understanding the Difference - by Renee Skedel, LPC and reviewed by Kristen Fuller, MD for Choosing Therapy
Basic Differences Between Psychopathy & Narcissistic Personality Disorder [Part I] - by Rhonda Freeman, Ph.D. for Neuroinstincts
Married to a Narcissist or a Psychopath? - by the administrators of Rich in Relationship
Psychopath, Sociopath or Narcissist — How To Spot The Difference (No — they’re not all serial killers the way they are portrayed in movies.) - by Kim Mia for Medium.com
Antisocial Personality Disorder - by the administrators of the Mayo Clinic
How to Tell If Someone Is a Psychopath - by Laura Dorwart and medically reviewed by Michael MacIntyre, MD for Very Well Health
Recommended: The #1 Myth About Psychopaths and Malignant Narcissists: What People Get Wrong About These Types - by Shahida Arabi, MA, for Psych Central
Recommended: Why psychopaths cannot love their own children, according to a psychologist - by Lindsay Dodgson for Business Insider
Real-life psychopaths actually have below-average intelligence - by Jessica Hamzelou for New Scientist
How to Stay Mentally Strong When You're Dealing With a Psychopath at Work (Working alongside a toxic person will take a toll on your psychological well-being. These strategies can reduce the damage.) - by Amy Morin for Inc.com
8 Common, Long-Lasting Effects of Narcissistic Parenting (What happens when you live in the shadow of a narcissistic parent?) - by Craig Malkin Ph.D., reviewed by Kaja Perina for Psychology Today
Narcissistic Obsession with Attention (The most important person in the life of a narcissist is the narcissist.) - by Kristy Lee Parkin Ph.D., reviewed by Gary Drevitch for Psychology Today
Narcissistic Men and Their Mothers (Why selfish mothers tend to raise selfish sons.) - by Berit Brogaard D.M.Sci., Ph.D, and reviewed by Kaja Perina for Psychology Today
Subtypes of psychopathy: proposed differences between narcissistic, borderline, sadistic, and antisocial psychopaths - by by Carolyn Murphy and James Vess
