“Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me.”
Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation
“Narcissists are said to be in love with themselves. But this is a fallacy. Narcissus is not in love with himself. He is in love with his ‘reflection’…
In the narcissist’s surrealistic world, even language is pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defence, a verbal fortification, a medium without a message, replacing words with duplicitous and ambiguous vocables.
When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives: self-directed confabulations which place him at the center of others’ allegedly malign attention.”
Sam Vaknin, Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited
“There’s a reason narcissists don’t learn from mistakes and that’s because they never get past the first step which is admitting that they made one. It’s always an assistant’s fault, an adviser’s fault, a lawyer’s fault. Ask them to account for a mistake any other way and they’ll say, ‘what mistake?”
Jeffrey Kluger, The Narcissist Next Door
Kluger’s comment is spot-on. I have first-hand knowledge because I used to be married to one of the beasts. And did you know that now, officially narcissistic personality disorder is no longer considered a “disorder” as of 2010?
“Narcissistic personality disorder, characterized by an inflated sense of self-importance and the need for constant attention, has been eliminated from the upcoming manual of mental disorders, which psychiatrists use to diagnose mental illness.”
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/narcissism-no-longer-a-psychiatric-disorder/comment-page-13/?_r=0
I’m married to one now.
No amount of facts, reality, or truth, could sway him from the belief in his own infallibility nor greatness.
He never needs to apologize, because he never makes mistakes.
So says he. History won’t judge him the same unless I die before I get out of this mess I created.