 To be a narcissist is a full-time job. The narcissist needs to secure narcissistic supply on an ongoing basis, exactly like a junkie has to secure his next fix. Without narcissistic supply, the narcissist crumbles. It's a full-time job, it's energy depleting, and many narcissists do not have the skills, talents, or qualifications to obtain supply. They are the collapsed narcissists. And today, I would like to discuss the collapsed narcissist and a new concept I have come up with, the collapsed histrionic. My name is Sam Dakhnin, and I'm the author of Balignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revism. Pathological narcissism is thought to be the result of a prolonged period of severe abuse by primary caregivers, or by peers, or authority figures. In this sense, pathological narcissism is a reaction to trauma. It's a post-traumatic condition. Narcissism is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder that got ossified and fixated and mutated into a personality disorder. All narcissists are traumatized. All narcissists suffer from a variety of post-traumatic syndromes, such as abandonment anxiety, reckless behaviors, and other anxiety disorders, mood disorders, somatophone disorders, or the image problems, and so on. But the presenting signs of narcissism rarely indicate post-trauma. This is because pathological narcissism is an efficient coping defense mechanism. It's adaptive. The narcissist presents to the world a facade of invincibility, equanimity, superiority, skinfulness, cool-headedness, invulnerability, nonchalance, any short indifference. This front that the narcissist presents to the world is penetrated in times of great crisis that threaten the narcissist's ability to obtain narcissistic supply. It is also breached and collapses when narcissistic supply is spurious, fake, or low-grade, negative, or static. And then the narcissist becomes a collapsed narcissist. Many self-styled experts online use the term failed narcissist, but it's a failed term. It's a mistake. Failed narcissist is a term that was invented by Gorstein, a scholar, to describe one of the phases in the development of borderline personalities. The correct term is collapsed narcissist. Collapsed narcissist is very much like the collapsed histrionic. The collapsed histrionic is usually a woman with body image, somatopharmations, and a low sense of self-worth. Yet, she still needs men, and she uses men to regulate her flagging self-esteem and deficient self-confidence. This creates a permanent dissonance and anticipatory anxiety as such a woman expects fully to be rejected and humiliated by men. Low self-esteem often leads to an impaired reality test. The collapsed histrionic misreads environmental, social, and sexual cues. She often ends up being mocked, shunned, abused, or sexually assaulted by men. She compensates for her insecurities with brazen defiance and grandiosity, as well as with substance abuse, alcoholism, all of which compound her ability to properly gauge reality. The collapsed histrionic's feelings of inferiority and inadequacy lead the collapsed histrionic to social withdrawal and to reclusiveness. She rarely dates men, and when she does, she aggresses against, pushes away, and abuses alphamades, winners, accomplishment, even when they are genuinely interested in her. She engages in pre-emptive abandonment. She dumps them before they dump her. Instead, the collapsed histrionic picks up safe betamades, weak, ugly losers, who are very unlikely to painfully reject them. Both histrionics and narcissists require a form of narcissistic supply. And when the narcissistic supply is deficient when it's missing, they resort to several adaptive solutions. The first solution is the delusional narrative solution. The narcissist, or histrionic, construct a narrative in which he figures as the hero, brilliant, perfect, irresistibly handsome, or beautiful, destined for great things, entitled powerful, wealthy, the center of attention, etc. The bigger the strain of this delusional charade, the greater the gap between fantasy and reality, the grandiosity gap, the more the delusion coalesces and solidifies. Finally, if the delusion is sufficiently protracted in time, it replaces reality. The collapsed histrionic and narcissistic reality test deteriorates considerably. He or she withdraws the bridges and may become schizotypical, catatonic, or schizoid. Another solution is the antisocial solution. The narcissistic or histrionic renounce reality. To the narcissist or histrionic's mind, those who pucillanimously fail to recognize his unbound talents, his innate superiority, his overarching brilliance, his benevolent nature, her stunning beauty, entitlement, cosmically important mission, affection, etc. Anyone who fails to recognize the real foundations of the narcissist or histrionic's grandiosity, they don't deserve consideration. The narcissist's natural affinity with the criminal, the lack of empathy and compassion, efficient social skills, disregard for social laws and morals, they are also common to the histrionic. Both narcissists and histrionics have a psychopathic overlay. Actually, many scholars claim that histrionic personality disorder is the female variant of psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. In all these conflicts, all these antisocial, defiant, brute, erupts and blossoms. The rejected narcissist, the rejected histrionic, becomes a full-fledged antisocial, sociopath or psychopath. He or she ignores the wishes and needs of others, breaks the law, violates all rights, naturally legal, holds people in contempt and disdain, derides in the Christ society and its codes, punishes the ignorant ingrates and transgresses on the emotions and rights of even loved ones. That, to his or her mind, these people drove him over to this state. They are guilty. They are responsible for her or his acts. By acting criminally and by jeopardizing their safety, lives and property, the narcissists, the collapse narcissists of the collapse histrionic, exacts vengeance, reciprocates, restores balance and justice. It's a power play within a power matrix. A variant of this pattern of conduct is a passive-aggressive solution. Passive aggressiveness wears a multitude of guises, procrastination, malingering, perfectionism, forgetfulness, neglect, truancy, intentional inefficiency, stubbornness and outright sabotage. This repeated and advertent misconduct has far-reaching effects. Consider the negativists in the workplace. He or she invests time and efforts in obstructing their own chores and in undermining relationships. But these self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors wreak havoc throughout the workshop of the office, same in romantic relationships. Despite the obstructive role of their play, passive-aggressives feel unappreciated, bored, cheated and misunderstood. Left out, they chronically complain why calm and criticize. They blame their failures and defeats on others, posing as martyrs and victims of a corrupt, inefficient and heartless system or corrupt, inefficient and heartless people. In other words, they have alloplastic defenses and an external locus of control. Passive-aggressives sulk and give the silent treatment in reaction to real or imaginary slides. They suffer from ideas of reference, referential ideation. They believe that they are the but of derision, contempt and condemnation. They are mildly paranoid. The world is out to get them, which explains their personal misfortune or they are being purposefully left out and cut out. In the words of the diagnostic and statistical manual, they may be silent, irritable, impatient, argumentative, cynical, skeptical and contrary. Rageful and spiteful, they are also hostile, explosive, they lack impulse control and they are sometimes reckless. The next solution to deficient narcissistic supply, the next solution commonly adopted by collapse narcissists and histrionics, is the paranoid schizoid solution. When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives, self-directed confabulations, which place him at the center of others allegedly maligned intention, attention and intention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own sometimes exclusive source of narcissistic supply. The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slides and insults when none were intended. Collapse narcissists and collapse histrionics are hyper-vigilant. The narcissist or histrionic becomes subject to referential ideation. People are gossiping about her, mocking him, trying into his affairs, cracking her emails, etc. The narcissists and histrionic become convinced that he or she is the center of malign and malintentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate her, punish him, abscond with his property, delude her, impoverish him, confine her physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on her time, force him to action or to inaction, frighten her, coerce him, surround and besiege her, change his mind, part with her values, victimize or even murder her, ignore her, cut her out, leave her aside, etc. Some narcissists withdraw completely from the world, populated with such malicious, anomalous objects. They are really projections of internal objects and processes, the secretary objects. These collapse narcissists and histrionics avoid or social contact except the most necessary. They refrain from meeting people, from falling in love, from having sex, from encouraging intimacy, from talking to others, or even from correspondingly. In short, they become schizoids, not out of social shyness or social anxiety, but out of what they feel to be their choice. This evil, hopeless world does not deserve me, goes the inner refrain, and I shall waste none of my time and resources on it. The next solution is the paranoid, aggressive or explosive solution. Other narcissists who develop the secretary delusions, histrionics with the same, resort to an aggressive stance, a more violent resolution of their internal conflict. They become verbally, psychologically, situationally, and very rarely physically abusive. They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean and derive, they're nearest and dearest, often well-wishes, often loved ones. These narcissists and histrionics explode in unprovoked displays of indignation, righteousness, spite, condemnation and blame. There is the exegetic bedlam. They interpret everything, even the most innocuous, inadvertent and innocent comment, as designed to provoke and humiliate them. They so fear, revulsion, hate and malignant envy. They flail against the windmills of reality, apathetic, forlorn side for sure. But often they cause really and lasting damage. They hurt people, and sometimes they hurt themselves. The next solution is the masochistic avoidance solution. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics are angered, is angered by the lack of narcissistic supply or attention or admiration or being desired. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics direct some of his or her fury inwards, punishing himself or herself for his or her failure. This masochistic behavior has the benefit of forcing the narcissists or histrionics closest to assume the roles of dismayed spectators of or persecutors, and thus either way to pay him the attention that he creates. So he forces people around him to observe what's happening and to pity him or to pity her or to persecute him or her. Self-administered punishment often manifests as self-handicaping masochism, the narcissistic or histrionic cobalt. By undermining his work, his relationship and his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissist and histrionic avoids additional criticism and censure, negative supply. Self-inflicted failure is the narcissist of the histrionics doing, and thus proves that he or she is the master of his or her own fate. Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances which render success impossible, and an objective assessment of their performance improbable to quote Milan, Theodore Milan. They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued, bored or disaffected, and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their suffering is defined, and by deciding to abort, they reassert their omnipotence. The narcissists, the collapsed narcissists and histrionics, pronounced in public misery and self-pity are compensatory. Again, Theodore Milan says, they are intended to reinforce his or her self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness. The collapsed narcissists and histrionics, tribulations and anguish render him or her, in his or her eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, righteous, resilient and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply. Thus paradoxically, the worse the anguish and unhappiness of the collapsed narcissists or the collapsed histrionic, the more relieved and elated such a narcissist or histrionic feels. It feels good to feel bad. In extremis, when all these default behaviors and solutions fail, or when only negative, fake, low-grade and static narcissistic supplies to be had, the collapsed narcissists or histrionic falls apart. In a process of disintegration known as decompensation, it's the inability to maintain psychological defenses in the face of overwhelming and mounting stress. And this is accompanied by the next stage, which is acting out. It's when an inner conflict, most often frustration, translates into aggression. It involves acting with little or no insight or reflection, and in order to attract attention and disrupt other people's cozy lives. The dynamic forces which render the narcissists and the histrionic paralyzed and fake, his or her vulnerabilities, weaknesses and fears, these are starkly exposed as his or her defenses crumble and become dysfunctional. The narcissist or histrionic's extreme dependence on his or her social milieu for the regulation of his or her sense of self-worth is painfully and pitifully evident as he or she is reduced to begging and cajoling or to threatening. At such times, the collapsed narcissists or the collapsed histrionic acts self-destructively and antisocial. The mask of superior equanimity is pierced by displays of impotent rage, self-loathing, self-pity, passive aggressiveness and cross-attempts at manipulation of friends, family, loved ones and colleagues. The narcissist or collapsed narcissists or collapsed histrionic's ostensible benevolence and caring evaporate suddenly and shockingly. The mask falls evenly, erupts and emanates or maliciousness. The collapse narcissists and collapsed histrionic seek to destroy the source of frustration, to punish it, to punish loved ones, to ruin other people's lives, to cause enormous emotional havoc and anguish and pain. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionic feel caged and threatened and they react with, as any animal would do, by striking back at their perceived tormentors, at their hitherto nearest and dearest. The fear is no sight, no sight, on God's given earth, more unsettling than this transition, from caring, empathic, loving, tender person, the acting, from acting to acting out, the vicious, cornered, malicious animal, that strikes out at anyone and everyone around her and causes the maximum possible damage, pain and blood, both figurative and literal.