 My name is Sanatnian and I'm the author of Malignal Self-Law, Narcissism-Revisited. You sit at home and you wonder, is my narcissist a covert narcissist? So, you pick up your smartphone, you flap open your laptop, and you Google, covert narcissist. Then you're faced with an avalanche of nonsense, inanity and outright misinformation, preferred and spewed out by self-styled experts with or without academic degrees. It's time to set the record straight. Who is a covert narcissist? How can you judge whether the narcissist in your life, your spouse, your boss, your neighbor, your so-called best friend, your children, whether these are covert narcissists or not? Covert narcissism was first described in the 1980s, and by 1989 it was well introduced into scholarly literature by the likes of Cooper and Akhtar. In 1996 I suggested the concept of inverted narcissists. Inverted narcissism is a subtype, a subspecies of covert narcissists. But first things first, what is a covert narcissist? Covert narcissists is a narcissist who suffers from an in-depth sense of inferiority. He feels inferior all the time. He has morose self-doubts. He has a marked propensity toward feeling ashamed. He's shy. He is fragile. He is engaged in a relentless search for glory and power, but without the attendant, vain glorious ostentation and conspicuous socializing and regardiousness. He is markedly sensitive to criticism, and he cannot stand setbacks and reality in effect. He is therefore, to some extent, delusional. The covert narcissist is unable to genuinely depend on others or to trust them. He suffers from a chronic envy of others. It's corrosive, like acid, eating him alive from the inside. He hates the talents, their possessions, their capacity for deep objects' relations. He can't stand their successes and his failures, even if these failures are only in his mind or by comparison. He has a lack of regard for generational boundaries, so he shows no respect for older people and no love towards children. He has general disregard for other people's time, and he refuses to communicate on a regular basis, maintaining unpredictability as sort of a carrot and stick situation. The covert narcissist is not goal-orientated. He is besieged by nagging aimlessness. He has shallow vocational commitment in the words of Cooper and Akhtar. His dilettant, his attitudes are those of a charlatan or a dilettant. He is an amateur, sometimes a gifted amateur, but always an amateur. He has multiple interests, but all of them are very superficial. Skin deep. He is chronically born. His aesthetic taste is often uniform and imitated. He switches on a dime. He is ready to shift values, to gain favor. He is a pathological liar, exactly like the classic master. And his lifetime is materialistic. But he has delinquent tendencies and inordinate moral relativism. He is irreverent towards authority, so in this sense he is what we call counter-dependent. He hates authority, can't stand authority. He feels humiliated when he is bossed around, when he is the recipient of instructions and orders, or even advice. The covert narcissist is unable to remain in love. Some authorities think that covert narcissists as opposed to classic narcissists are capable actually of falling in love and being in love, but they are unable to remain in love. They have an impaired capacity to view their romantic partner as a separate individual with his or her own interests. They don't uphold other people's rights and values. To them, other people are extensions of themselves. That's the reason why covert narcissists are unable to succumb, to accept, or to adhere to social strictures and to social modes of behaviors and laws. This is why, for instance, we find an inordinate proportion of covert narcissists among parents engaging in incestuous relationships. Incest is a typical covert narcissistic behavior. And covert narcissists, more so than classic narcissists, are prone to sexual perversions, or parapherias, as we call them. The knowledge of the covert narcissist is often limited to trivia. Actar called it headline intelligence. They sort of skim the surface. They know, can say a sentence or two on almost any topic, but if you try to delve deeper, you discover that it's a very shallow conflict, masquerading as an ocean. Therefore, careful of details, especially names, they are impaired in their capacity for learning new skills. They have a tendency to change the meanings of reality when they're confronted with threat to their self-esteem. So they recast history, rewrite history, reinvent themselves, and reinvent people around them. Language skills and speaking generally are used by covert narcissists to regulate the sense of self-worth and self-esteem. They don't use language to communicate. They use language to impress. They use language to humiliate. They use language to establish a hierarchy and order of things, but they do not communicate. So we can say that covert narcissists often feel guilty over and ashamed of their socially impermissible aggressive urges and desires. Shame, as Masterson said, shame is a very prominent feature of covert narcissists. They dislike themselves. They are ego-distorted. The classic narcissist likes himself. He finds himself appealing, attractive, the next stage in the evolutionary ladder superior. So the classic narcissist is ego-syn tonic. The covert narcissist is ego-distonic. He doesn't like himself. Covert narcissists are shy, as we've said. They are unasserting. They are intensely self-critical. They are perfectionists. They are in a conflict between an overwhelming sense of worthlessness and a grandiose force of self. This conflict results in mood, moodiness, and even mood and anxiety disorders. Covert narcissists usually team up with classic narcissists, but in secret they resent their partners. They envy them. They would have liked to be classic narcissists, but they can't. Contrary to the aforementioned misinformation spread by at least self-styled experts, covert narcissists are not cunning. They are not manipulative. Classic narcissists are cunning and manipulative. They often disguise their true nature effectively, knowingly and intentionally. Classic narcissists are persistent actors with great thespian skills, but the covert narcissist is not. The covert narcissist suppresses his true nature because he lacks the confidence to assert it. He doesn't act. He simply is not. The covert narcissist's choice is not remedied. He can't help but shy away. The covert narcissist is his own worst self-critical. He has what we call a sadistic superego, a voice, an inner voice, internalized usually during childhood, an inner voice that keeps telling him, you're inadequate, you're failure, you're no good, you're a bad object. As I said, in 1996 I proposed a subspecies of covert narcissism, which I called inverted narcissism. Inverted narcissists is a covert narcissist. The inverted narcissist is self-centered. She, usually it's a she, she is sensitive, vulnerable and defensive, sometimes hostile and paranoid. Inverted narcissists harbor grandiose fantasies. They have a strong sense of entitlement. They tend to exploit others, albeit stealthily, subtly. Covert narcissists are aware of their inner limitations and shortcomings and therefore constantly fret and stress over their inability to fulfill their unrealistic dreams and expectations and grandiose fantasies. Covert narcissists and inverted narcissists avoid recognition, competition and a limelight because they are afraid to be exposed to faults and failures. They are ostentatiously modest, fake modesty. Inverted narcissists crave to be in a relationship with a narcissist regardless of any abuse inflicted on the inverted narcissists and the classic narcissists with whom she has teamed up. Inverted narcissists actively seek relationships with classic narcissists and only with classic narcissists. They can't be with anyone else. No matter what the bitter and traumatic past experience has been, they still gravitate and inexorably attracted to classic narcissists. Inverted narcissists feel empty. They feel happy in relationships with normal people, with any other kind of person except a narcissist. Only when they are with a narcissist, they feel alive. They call it technicolor existence. With all types of other people, it's black and white. Narcissists come into the room, color flares up, the inverted narcissist perks up and is alive. Inverted narcissists therefore is a codependent who depends exclusively on narcissists. A narcissist codependent. If you live with a narcissist, if you have a relationship with a narcissist, if you're married to a narcissist, if you're working with a narcissist, this does not qualify you. It does not mean that you're an inverted narcissist. You have to crave to be with one. You have to be unable to survive without one. You have to shrivel and wither when your narcissist is gone.