D/s and protocol can be wonderful instruments for developing submissives in a positive way. A benevolent Dom/me can use them as a tremendous power of good in ways that reach far beyond merely play interaction. It can instil a sense of self-worth, be used to promote a desire to learn, develop self-discipline and punctuality…the list is endless. With great power comes great responsibility. It is a double-edged sword that can cut deeply when abused, destroying at a profound psychological level.
Here is an article by Gorgone who highlights one type of personality who should not wield this sword. She is anxious that readers take ‘he’ to mean any gender as it is merely a stylistic convenience. Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), a medical term for, roughly speaking, being under the illusion that the sun’s light emanates from ones own fundamental orifice, is by no means solely a male complaint. Some contributors to the Fetlife thread speculated that it might even be more prevalent in females but there are no citations to back this up. This is a lot more serious that a touch of Dominitus (an unpleasant but generally benign condition where a Dom/me starts to believe their own hype and expects the world to bow at their feet. Early lancing of the ego is recommended to avoid excessive swelling, often aggravated by accompanying ridicule). Neither should you not be mislead into thinking NPD sufferers reserve this manipulation only for partners. The behaviour patterns are common to all social interactions; friends, family, colleagues and business associates are all likely to receive similar treatment.
In any relationship that starts to go wrong, it is easy to wonder “Is it me?”. Of course, an NPD sufferer will take advantage of this and convince you that everything is all your fault and that he is the victim. The best reality check is to look at their past relationships. Did they end badly? How friendly are they with ex’s? The person who is on good terms with most of them is likely to be a better bet that the one who has blocked them out of their life or actively avoids them.
If this helps anyone spot the warning signs before they fall under the spell, it will save them a lot of heartache at the very least and possibly their sanity or life. Once entwined in the lies, it can quickly become the norm as your reality as your points of reference become distorted and it thus becomes harder to extricate yourself from the web of deceit. Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly…
Tricks, strategies and tactics of NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder)
Journal Entry | 5 months ago
THIS POST IS IN NO WAY AN ATTEMPT TO ATTACK OR DISCRIMINATE FOR FREE.
IT IS ONLY MOTIVATED BY THE WILL TO INFORM, SHARE AND DISCUSS KNOWLEDGE TO GIVE SUPPORT AND MAYBE HELP SOME OF THE VICTIMS.
I highly recommend you to read _Raine_’s writings about this, especially the following one.
This disorder is not to be confused with narcissistic troubles or megalomania which are only behaviours when NPD is very close from a psychotic structure. It is a perverse STRUCTURE, not only external behaviours.
This is NOT BDSM or play in any way, it is abuse, manipulation and harassment in a totally non-sexy way. It has to be recognized as such and people that suffer or have suffered this kind of relation have to be recognized as victims.
The NPD has generally a lot of imagination, and it is difficult to make an inventory of the thousands of tricks and tactics he/she (they can be both men or women) has in his arsenal. BDSM is unfortunately the ultimate tool and alibi for NPD to manipulate, control and destroy.
Like very wisely said by _Raine_ few time ago :
“SILENCE IS NOT GOLDEN.
Nobody deserves abuse. I hope this will add a stone to the edifice and maybe help. Though, I’d like to accentuate the fact that these are traits of mental illness and we have to find the strength not to hate our abusers, but only the disease. Not a piece of cake, for sure…
To all of you, please, remember to LOVE YOURSELF <3″
(edit : I’ll use “he” for these examples but “/she” is intended ;). )
– Seduction and playing with appearances
As anyone manipulative, he knows how to seem nice. He can changes mask as needed, sometimes seductive with all qualities, sometimes weak and innocent victim. He has a scrupulous sense of appearances, giving most of the time the image -valuable for his ego- of someone perfect. Image that hides his lack of emotion, love, sincerity and interest in all that is not himself. He is not interested in reality, everything is a game of appearances and manipulation of others. He excels to generate and amplify regrets and fears.
– Concealment
The NPD hides to act. Abuses rarely happen in the spotlights, but are rather committed in private. They are professionals of double life and double personality.
– Mimicry
They are true chameleons, able to mimic words and attitudes of others to create the illusion of a perfect agreement, of a growing and exceptionally deep conection. Mimicry is also one of the techniques used by the NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming)
– Divide to conquer/rule
For caution, the NPD divides up and compartmentalizes his relationships, so that they can not cross his lies and his victims are not likely to unite against him. His technique, in this field, end up to be incredibly masterful.
– Over-value you to destroy you better
He starts by praising you. You are the best, the most talented, the most beautiful… Nobody else matters as you do for him (he doesn’t hesitate to say the same things successively to several people). These praises and protestations of attachment allow him to “crush” you better then by playing on the element of surprise, and to reach you even more than you didn’t expect the attack and he had also take care to choose the moment when you least could expect it.
– The principle of authority
He uses his power of seduction, his talents as an actor, his serious appearance, all facets of his “personalities” to win. He likes to stop a discussion by any definitive sentence, using the principle of authority: “I’m tired!” or “Do you realize what you’re asking me!” ; ” I cannot talk to you right now, can’t you see that I’m busy”, or simply by threatening or shouting louder.
– Induction (suggesting an idea to another)
The great strength of NPD is the art of induction.
- He manages to spark off feelings, reactions, actions, or on the opposite, to inhibit them. It works sort of like an evil magician, an abusive hypnotist, successively using injunctions and seduction.
- He avoids to express what he really thinks to the other, to highlight his intentions, he proceeds by reference, without ever compromising himself. To trap better, he arouses the other’s interest in which will be the subject of deception, he will make it as attractive as possible without ever talking about it openly. Spreading his knowledge, values, certainty, he will push the other to want to know more, to seek the object in question.
- He proceeds in the same way if he intents to refuse something. The other will feel destabilized without knowing exactly why: he will then promise to himself never to ask anything any more, doubt of his own honesty, or even feel suspicious, entering unconsciously in the NPD’s game.
- To increase his power over his “victim” he can add a moralizing speech to appear as a being “pure and noble”, forcing the other who doesn’t want to be rejected to identify to this moral, may it be in acceptance or rejection of the suggested object. “You should act in the way that there is no doubt that you are me … and that everything you do, say or experience confirms that I am the only one, the greatest, even at the price of your own disqualification.” Here we touch the foundation of narcissistic induction.
– Contradictions
Even when the contradictions of his behaviour are evident and light doubts about his personality, intentions or sincerity, he most often manage to restore the beautiful image of himself. He can affirm, for example, that he was joking and only wanted to test his interlocutor. Most of the time, we forgive him, because he knows how to be friendly and forgiven, especially because he always has a good explanation for his contradictory behaviour. The mistake will be put on the account of a momentary weakness, tiredness, overwork, disease…
“The NPD […] loves controversy. He is able to support a point of view one day and defend opposite ideas the next day.”
– Use of paradoxical messages
The NPD delights in ambiguity. By paradoxical, double, obscure messages he blocks the communication and put his victims in impossibility to provide appropriate answers, since they can’t understand the situation. They run to find solutions that are by definition inadequate, rejected by the NPD and only generate criticism and blame. Completely baffled, they can fall into anxiety or depression.
– Confusion of boundaries between self and other
The NPD doesn’t establish boundaries between self and other. He incorporates the qualities of the other to overcome the weaknesses of his true personality and make his image looks great. These qualities are denied to their true owner, it is part of his strategy. The perverse seduction is done by using the protective instincts of the other. This is a narcissistic seduction: by that one-way seduction, the NPD tries to fascinate without getting caught. Seduction blurs reality and manipulates appearances. It is not about energy, it is made of signs, rituals and their evil use. Narcissistic seduction confuses, erases the boundaries of what is self and what is other.
It is different from a romantic idealization when we refuse to see the failures of the other, it is incorporation in order to destroy.
“The presence of the other is seen as a threat, not as a complement.”
– Use of false truths (huge or credible)
Perverse communication uses this strategy. It is primarily made of false truths. Subsequently, in an open conflict it obviously appeal without any shame to the biggest lies ! Whatever you say NPD always finds a way to be right, especially since the victim is already destabilized and feels, in opposite to his assailant, no pleasure in controversy. The blur induced to the victim is the result of permanent confusion between truth and lies. Lies become direct especially in the destruction phase. Then it is a lie in defiance of all evidence.
It is first and foremost a convinced lie that convinces the other. Whatever the enormity of the lies, the NPD will convince the other. True or false, it does not matter for them: what is true is what they say in the moment. These falsifications of truth are sometimes very close to delirious. They often are in total deny of any evidence or even use lies to cover other lies ! The lie is simply a need to ignore what goes against his narcissistic interest.
“The more a lie is big, the more we want to believe it.”
– Victimisation
During splittings NPD stands as the abandoned victim, taking the best role and allowing him to seduce another partner (comforter). He can pretend to be low, playing “lost dog”, to attract and reach feelings of dedicated, comforting women, those with a protective vocation, existing only by devotion to others, who often become their future victim. Easy to fall in his net…He has an incredible talent to sound like a victim. As an incredible talent for pretending to be sick or irresponsible or benefit from an illness (real or imaginary), accident, to use or abuse a real handicap etc..
– Creating dependency
The other’s existence is recognized as long as he/she remains to the assigned position. It is a way to annihilate, to deny any difference. The NPD establishes this “relationship of influence” for his own benefit and in detriment of the other.
“Whenever the NPD consciously express dependency needs, he manages to make it unrealisable : either the demand exceeds the capacity of the other and will be used to point the incapability of the victim or the request is made at a moment when we can not provide a proper answer.”
– Inhibition of the critical mind
During the hold phase, the NPD’s tactic essentially consists in inhibiting the other’s critical mind. In the next phase, he’ll provoke feelings, actions, reactions, by using mechanisms of injunction or induction. What matters is that the victim appears responsible for what happens to him/her. The hardest part for the victim is not to play the game, especially the game of artificial conflicts.
– Bullying tactics
Isolating someone, refusing any communication, do not send him instructions, multiply bullying, do not give him work or humiliating work , or even giving too much work or far above skills, etc.. .. These are tactics of bullying, which can be broken down to infinity.
According to the most common definition, “bullying is a set of behaviours and practices that are characterized by systematization, the duration and recurrence of injury to the person or personality, by all means, inflicting consciously or unconsciously intense suffering in order to eliminate and/or to destroy.”
Here are a few comments from the thread:
I knew someone exactly like this. Handsome, rugged, yet pretty, with that lost-boy appearance. He used to talk about how his mother and ex-girlfriend abused him emotionally and he would tell every woman he met and lured into his net that “they alone gave [him] hope that [he] could love again.” He would constantly be the hurt puppy to any woman he fancied until he got in their panties and then kept them on the hook when he got bored. A master at dividing women from her friends while he systematically nailed all of them. He would burrow into a person’s mind until all they could think of was him and his happiness. This is a sick individual (the NPD) and should be avoided at all costs.
@Gorgone: This is a great piece of writing. Thanks for sharing this. Yes, it is unfortunate that many of these people do appear to gravitate to BDSM communities. And yes, never a truer word spoken than silence is not golden.
A little while back I had an incredibly nasty run in with an individual with NPD. The levels of lying and abuse I encountered simply beggared belief, they were right off the register. I had never encountered anything even remotely like it.
One thing I found excellent in the OP was the comments about the principle of induction. This is a powerful yet subtle technique of persuasion, aimed at getting people to believe his lies. I have seen this happen first hand, and it is nasty and insidious stuff. Other good insights in the OP include those on the principle of concealment – abuses always happen in private while a public facade of charm and personability is maintained.
Another piece of writing I found very useful in understanding NPD was the Halcyon website
The site is a little bit clunky and difficult to navigate, however it is full of excellent insights and useful advice. I would recommend it as a useful resource to anyone who is unfortunate enough to have to deal with a person with NPD. Here’s some of the insights I found useful:
- The abrupt change from decent treatment to outright abuse is very shocking and bewildering, and it’s so contrary to normal experience that I was plenty old before I realized that it was actually my expression of affection that triggered the narcissists’ nasty reactions.
- Narcissists elicit profound and primitive wrath and hostility from sane and stable people.
These quotes relate to the impossibility of treating NPD:
“Narcissists rarely enter treatment and, once in treatment, progress very slowly. We’re talking about two or more years of frequent sessions before the narcissist can acknowledge even that the therapist is sometimes helpful. It’s difficult to keep narcissists in treatment long enough for improvement to be made — and few people, narcissists or not, have the motivation or the money to pursue treatment that produces so little so late.”
“… when they do receive treatment, the therapists’ first order of business is to restore and fortify the narcissists’ ego defences — i.e., the therapist must help the narcissist recover the habitual grandiose and self-obsessed self-image. When reasonably recovered, the narcissist usually leaves therapy before any work can be done on the underlying personality disorder.”
A quote on highlighting the difference between narcissist’s private behaviour and public persona:
“But truthful reports about narcissists’ private behaviour are often treated as symptoms of psychological problems in the person telling the tale — by naming the problem, you become the person with the problem (and, let’s face it, it’s more gratifying to work on changing someone responsive than it is to tackle a narcissist). And I’m talking about the experience many of us have had with “the helping professions,” including doctors, teachers, clergy, counsellors, and therapists. This stuff is hard to talk about in the first place because it’s weird, shameful, and horrifying, and then insult is added to injury when we’re dismissed as overreacting (how many times have we heard “You’re just too sensitive”?), deluded or malicious, as inventing stories, exaggerating, imagining things, misinterpreting — it goes on and on. The fact is that there is next to nothing anyone can do to modify a narcissist’s behaviour and the only useful advice I ever got (first from my non-narcissistic parent, later repeated by my Jungian analyst) was “Get out and stay out.””
“I empathise greatly with anyone who has to deal with a person with NPD. Unfortunately they do tend to be more prevalent in the kink community. The important thing to remember is that silence is not golden. Speak out openly about these people and the tactics they employ. This is for the good of the whole community. After all, These are the abusers at the heart of our communities.”
“I have an ex who fits this bill, and sadly know of a few people who fit this to a T who are regularly protected within the ‘community’ despite trails of destruction, pain, and abuse they leave in their wake.”