 My name is Sandak Nin and I am the author of Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. Clearly there are two types of narcissists. Some narcissists end up being over-achievers, fillers of the community, accomplished professionals. Other narcissists, their brethren, fade into obscurity, having done little of nothing with their miserable lives. So these are two types of narcissists. Those who derive ample narcissistic supply from near-appearances, and I call them potemkin narcissists. And then there are those narcissists whose narcissistic supply consists of doing substantial deeds, of acting as change agents, of making a difference, and of creating and producing things of value. The former type, the narcissist of appearances, aim for celebrity, defined as being famous for being famous. They try to foster and promulgate what I call an empty brand, name recognition without commensurate real-life accomplishments. Contradistinction, the narcissists of substance, strive for meaningful careers, significant lives, or be it all the time in the limelight. We find potemkin narcissists with empty brands everywhere. For example in politics, I call it the being there syndrome. It's manifested in the likes of Obama, Putin, and Sarah Palin. We find them in the media, where, for example, compulsively self-promoting physicists like Michoui Kaku or even Stephen Hawking are worshipped as transformative geniuses, even though in reality they are credited with a mere, single, esoteric, and marginal contribution to physics decades ago. We find them in business, and the best example would be of course Donald Trump, or the infamous empty suits of yesteryear. And we of course find them in entertainment and show business. Remember Harris Hilton, or the Kardashians. To create the empty brand, the narcissist cultivates a following. He cultivates a following by emphasizing his alleged distinct character traits. He overlooks behavioral modes, daring audacity, and even sometimes shallowness. The narcissist would emphasize his shallowness in order to present his facade as truth that he is a common man, a typical member of the crowd. Of course everything I say applies to female narcissists as well, to women. The narcissist transforms himself or herself into a fantastically grandiose cartoon. Kind of a caricature of the unfulfilled dreams, aspirations, hopes, and wishes of his acolytes. The Putemkin narcissist, the narcissist who emphasizes appearances over substance, accomplishes the impossible. On the one hand, he resonates with the shortcomings, losses, and failures of his obsequious constituencies, of his roughed audiences. But at the same time, he ostentatiously flaunts his flamboyance, riches, and glamorous meticulously documented life. And this is a paradoxical admixture. It imbues his proponents, his fans, his followers, his adherents, and his admirers with hope. Because they say, we are so alive, you know, this guy could have been me. If he made it, then surely can I? TV reality show programs like The Apprentice or American Idol capture this yearning for a breakthrough. A deus ex machina, resolution and solution to the dreariness, shabbiness, and miserable hopelessness of the average spectator's life. As the late lamented Bruno Betelheim noted, these are the very same elements that make up great fairy tales like Cinderella or Red Riding Hood. The celebrity narcissist has a short attention span. He rapidly cycles between the idealization and the devaluation of ideas or ventures, places, and people including his own fans. This renders the Potemkin narcissist unfit for teamwork, though energetic and at times manic. This kind of narcissist is indolent, lazy. He prefers the path of least resistance, and he adheres to show these standards of production. His lack of work ethic can partly be attributed to his overpowering sense of entitlement and to his magical thinking, both of which give rise to unrealistic expectations of effortless outcomes within grandiose or self-aggrandizing fantasies. The life of the celebrity narcissist is chaotic and characterized by inconsistency and by a dire lack of long-term planning and commitments. He is not really interested in people, except in their roles as instruments of instant gratification and of sources of narcissistic supply. Otherwise, there are of no consequence to him. He actually usually abhors and detests their dreary, shabby, pedestrian lives. The celebrity narcissist's learning and affected erudition are designed solely to impress, and therefore this kind of narcissist is shallow and his knowledge is anecdotal. His actions are not geared towards creating works of lasting value, towards affecting change or making a difference. All he cares about is attention, provoking and garnering attention, attention and attention in copious quantities in never-ending stream. The celebrity narcissist is therefore not above confabulating or in plain English lying, plagiarizing outright crime and otherwise using shortcuts to obtain his fixed narcissistic supply. He's a junkie, a drag animal. The other strain of narcissists, the career of narcissists, the narcissists of substance. Now that's a totally different animal. This kind of narcissist is very concerned with leaving his mark and stand on the world with his legacy. He feels a calling, often of cosmic significance. He is busy reforming his environment, transforming his milieu, making a difference in producing and creating an other body of work, an opera of standing value. He is a grandiose ideophics which he then catexes, invests with emotion and mental energy. To scale these lofty, self-imputed peaks and to realize his goals, the career narcissist acts with unswerving passion and commitment. As opposed to the celebrity narcissist, he is very stable and consistent and even I would say predictable. He plans, he inexorably and ruthlessly executes and implements his schemes, his strategies, his conspiracies. He's a workaholic and he's in relentless pursuit of fame and celebrity and glory. The career narcissist, the narcissists of substance, does not recoil from cutting the odd corner, preferring the occasional confabulation or absconding with the fruits of someone else's labor. And in this sense, he is similar to the celebrity narcissist. But while these amount to the entire arsenal and the exclusive modus operandi of the celebrity narcissist, they are auxiliary and marginal as far as the career narcissist is concerned. The career narcissist of the substance narcissist, main weapon, is not inspiration, it's perspiration. It's toil and moral. It's hard work. The career narcissist is also a natural born leader. When not a guru at the center of account, he operates as the first among equals in a team, and he is capable of extended fruitful teamwork. This is where the differences between the celebrity narcissist and the career narcissist are most pronounced. The relationships maintained by the celebrity narcissist are manipulative, exploitative and ephemeral, passing and fleeting. The career narcissist by comparison is willing and able to negotiate, compromise, give and take, motivate others, induce loyalty, forge alliances and coalitions and benefit from these in the long term. It is this capacity to network that guarantees the career narcissist a place in common memory and an abiding reputation among his peers. This guarantees his legacy.