 My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malign and Self-Flava, Narcissism Revisitor. Some narcissists rarely fail, but they are not roaring successes either. They linger in a limbo, somewhere between minimal attainment and mediocrity. They pass, but they never quite make it. They seem to fear and avoid failure and success in equal measures. How can this be explained? Failure can be defined as realizing one's full potential. Not failing can be defined as not realizing one's full potential but only summary. So not failing is the opposite, the antonym of succeeding. Not failing equals not succeeding equals failing to succeed. Most people who fear failure try hard not to fail. Since as we have shown, not failing amounts to failing to succeed, such people equally drain success, and therefore try not to succeed. They opt, in other words, for mediocrity. Not a failure, but not a success. In order to not succeed, one needs to not apply oneself to one's tasks, or to not embark on new ventures and other datings. Often such avoidant and constricted behaviors are not a matter of choice, but the outcomes of inner, very strong psychological dynamics that compel them. Narcissists cannot tell the difference between free-will choices and irresistible compulsions, because they regard themselves as omnipotent and therefore not subject to any forces external or internal greater than their own willpower. Narcissists tend to claim that both their successes and their failures are exclusively the inevitable and predictable outcomes of their choices and decisions. No other force is involved except the narcissist. Okay, the preference to not fail is trivial, no one wants to fail. But why the propensity not to not succeed? It's crucial to understand that not succeeding actually abates the fear of failure. After all, a one-time success calls for increasingly more unattainable repeat performances. Success just means that one has got more to lose, more ways to fail. Deliberately not succeeding also buttresses the narcissist's sense of omnipotence, because he is able to say, I, and only I, choose to what extent and whether I succeed or fail. Similarly, the narcissist's grandiose conviction that he is perfect is supported by his self-inflicted lack of success, because he can tell himself, I could have succeeded had I only chose to and applied myself to it, better to fantasize than to test this theory in reality. The narcissist always says, I elect not to manifest my perfection by a success. I could have been a success, if I really wanted to. Indeed, as a philosopher, Benedict Spinoza observed, perfect beings have no wants and no needs. They don't have to try and prove anything, they're perfect. In an imperfect world, such as ours is, the mere continued existence of a perfect being constitutes a success. I cannot fail as long as I merely survive, it's the perfect entity's narcissists motto. Many narcissistic defenses, traits, and behaviors revolve around this compulsive need to sustain a grandiose self-image of perfection, colloquially known as perfectionism. Aradoxically, deficient impulse control, inability to control one's impulses, helps achieve this crucial goal. Impulsive actions and addictive behaviors render failure impossible, as they suggest a lack of premeditation and planning. If you don't plan anything, if you don't premeditate, you can't fail. Moreover, to the narcissistic patient, these kinds of decisions, indeed, feel imminent and intuitive, an emanation of his core self. The true expression of his quiddity is being, his essence. This association of the patient's implied uniqueness, with the exuberance and elation often involved in impulsive and addictive acts, is intoxicating. It also offers support to the narcissist's view of himself as superior, invincible, and immune to the consequences of his actions. So when the narcissist gambles compulsively, shops, drives recklessly, or abuses substances, he feels godlike, and thoroughly happy, at least for a fraction of a second. Personal gratification, the infinitesimal delay between volition and desire, and fulfillment. This small delay, short delay, enhances this overpowering sense of omnipotence. The patient and narcissist inhabits an eternal present, actively suppressing the reasoned anticipation of the future consequences of his own actions. Failure is an artifact of a future tense. You anticipate failure, you start something in the present, and you fail in the future. In the absence of such a horizon, in the absence of a future tense, success is invariably guaranteed, or at least implied. Some narcissists, admittedly, are ego-destotic. They load their lack of self-control. They berate themselves for their self-defeating profligacy and self-destructive immaturity. But even then, their very ability to carry out the impulsive or addictive feat is by definition a success. If you succeed to gamble, succeed to shop, succeed to drive recklessly, you succeed. You are a success. The patient is accomplished at behaving irresponsibly and erratically. His laborious self-reunification is his forte and his achievement, as he masterfully navigates his own apocalyptic path to doom. Only by failing to control his irresistible impulses and by succumbing to his addictions is this kind of narcissistic patient able to act at all, otherwise he is paralyzed. His submission to these internal, higher powers provides him with a perfect substitute to a constructive, productive, stable, truly satisfactory engagement with the world at large. Thus, even when he is angry at himself, the narcissist castigates the ominous success of his disillusioned ways, not his own failure. He says, I am very good at destroying myself, I am very good at defeating my own purposes and goals, but there is this sentence I am very good at, I am a success at. His rage, the narcissist's rage is displaced. Rather than confront his avoidant misconduct, he tries to cope with the symptoms of his underlying or pervasive and pernicious psycho-dynamics. Ironically, it is this ineluctable failure of his life as a whole that endows the narcissist with a feeling of self-control. He is the one who brings about his own demise, nexurably but knowingly.