 I have some back-name and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love and Narcissism Revisited. We often marvel at the discrepancy between the private and public lives of our idols. Celebrities, statesmen, stars, writers and other accomplished figures. It is as though they have two personalities, two selves, the true self, which they reserve for their nearest and dearest, and the fake or false self, or concocted self, which they flaunt in public. In contrast, the narcissist has no private life, he has no true self, he has no domain reserved exclusively for his nearest and dearest. His life is 100% spectacle, with free access to all, constantly on display, garnering narcissistic supply from his audience on a permanent basis. In the theatre that is the narcissist's life, the actor is not relevant, it is the show that goes on. Pathological narcissism is a reaction to prolonged abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The source of the abuse or trauma is immaterial. The perpetrators could be parents or teachers or other adults or even peers. Moreover, pampering, smothering, spoiling and engulfing the child are also forms of abuse. The narcissist's true self, his inner child if you wish, is obliterated early on by this barrage of mistreatment. The narcissist possesses a prominent forced self, as well as a suppressed and dilapidated true self, is common knowledge. Yet how intertwined and inseparable are these two selves? Do they interact at all? How do they influence each other? And what behaviors can be attributed squarely to one self or the other? Does the true self assume traits and attributes of the true of the false self or vice versa in order to deceive the world? The false self is an adaptive reaction to pathological circumstances. But its dynamics make it predominant. It devours the psyche. It's kind of a source nature or body's nature if you wish. The false self prays upon the true self, thus it prevents the efficient, flexible functioning of the personality as a whole. It replaces, supplants, substitutes for the true self. Many scholars and therapists try to grapple with a void at the core of the narcissist. The common view is that the remnants of the true self are so ossified, so shredded, so cowed into submission and so repressed, that for all practical purposes the true self is dysfunctional and pretty useless. In treating the narcissists, most therapists try to reconstruct and nurture a completely new, healthy self, rather than build upon the distorted wreckage strewn across the narcissist's psyche. In other words, they give up on the true self. They try to invent a new true self to take over from the false self. In a full-fledged narcissist, the false self imitates the true self. That is what makes it so convincing. That is why it is so difficult for us observers, nearest, dearest, colleagues, friends, family, spouses to tell the difference between when the narcissist is truly, so to speak, himself and when he is acting. The false self deploys two mechanisms in emulating the true self. First of all, there is the mechanism of reinterpretation. This mechanism causes the narcissist to reinterpret certain emotions and reactions in a flat rig, socially acceptable light. The narcissist may, for instance, interpret fear as compassion. If the narcissist hurts someone, he fears, for instance, if he hurts an authority figure, he may feel bad afterwards and interpret his own discomfort as empathy and compassion. To be afraid is humiliating. To be compassionate is commendable and earns the narcissist social commendation and understanding. So the narcissist takes negative emotions, negative humiliating emotions, transforms them into socially acceptable and laudable behaviors and emotions. That way he elicits narcissistic supply from his environment, even for his most despicable and obnoxious traits and behaviors. The second mechanism that the false self uses is emulation. The narcissist is possessed of an uncanny ability to psychologically penetrate others. Often he abuses this gift. He puts it at the service of his own control freakery and sadism. The narcissist uses this ability to discern the vulnerabilities, frailties and weak points of other people. He uses this ability liberally to annihilate the natural defenses of his victims by faking empathy. This capacity is coupled with the narcissist's eerie ability to imitate emotions and their attendant behaviors affect. The narcissist possesses kind of emotional resonance tables. He keeps records of every action and every reaction, every utterance and every consequence, every datum provided by others regarding their state of mind and emotional makeup and how they behave. So he has these enormous gigantic tables in his mind and from these tables he then constructs a set of formulas which often result in impeccably accurate renditions of emotional behavior. This can be enormously deceiving. Many narcissists are considered to be highly emotional and sentimental merely because they imitate these behaviors. Once formed and functioning, the false self stifles the growth of the true self and paralyzes it. Henceforth the true self is virtually non-existent and plays no role, either acting or passive, in the conscious life of the narcissist. It is difficult to resuscitate the true self, even with psychotherapy. This body-snatching or self-snatching, this substitution of the true self with the false self is not only a question of alienation, as was suggested by Karen Holey, the famous psychotherapist. She said the psychoanalysts, she said that because the idealized, the false self sets impossible goals to the narcissist, the results are frustration and self-hate, which grow with every setback and failure. It is true that the false self sets impossible goals on purpose. This is to torture and punish the narcissist. It's a kind of internal court, a sadistic judgment, and it generates a self-berating, suicidal ideation, which emanates from the narcissist's idealized, sadistic super-ego. So, the false self also has the function of punishing, repeatedly punishing, and humiliating and berating the narcissist, sort of internalizing the voice of those who abused him in early childhood and early adolescence, and perpetuating these voices forever. Because the true self is so dysfunctional and so defunct, there is no conflict between the true self and the false self. First, the true self is much too weak to do battle with the overbearing false self. Second, the false self is adaptive. It helps the true self to cope with the world. Without the false self, the true self will be subjected to so much pain, so much hurt, that it will disintegrate. This happens to narcissists who go through a life crisis. The false self becomes dysfunctional for a while, and they experience the harrowing feeling of annulment, of disintegration, of annihilation. They no longer are protected by the false self, they die internally and emotionally. The false self has many functions. The two most important are, it serves as a decoy. The false self attracts the fire. It is a proxy for the true self. It is tough as nails, and it can absorb any amount of pain, any amount of hurt and negative emotions. By inventing it, the child develops immunity to the indifference, manipulation, sadism, smothering or exploitation that he was subjected to by, for instance, his parents, or by peers. It is a cloak, magic cloak, protecting the narcissist, rendering him invisible and omnipotent at the same time. The second function of the false self is to pretend to be the true self. The narcissist often misrepresents his false self as the true self. He says, I am not who you think I am. I am someone else, I am this false self. Therefore I deserve a better, painless, more considerate treatment. I am entitled. The false self is omnipotent, omniscient, is brilliant, is perfect, is superior, and thus the false self is a contraption intended to alter other people's reactions, behavior, and attitude towards the narcissist. These roles should not be underestimated. They are crucial to the narcissist's survival and to the proper psychological functioning of the narcissist. The false self is by far more important to the narcissist than his dilapidated, dysfunctional true self. A sad statement, but true. All the same.