 My name is Sam Batnian and I am the author of Malignan self-love, Narcissism Revisited. The narcissist and the codependent possess introjets. These are inner voices, assimilated representations or parents, role models and significant peers. The narcissists and codependents inner voices are mostly negative and sadistic Rather than provide the narcissists with support, succor, motivation and direction, they enhance his underlying ego-listening. They render him unhappy with who he is and discontent with the way he acts. They also enhance the lability, the fluctuations of his sense of self-worth. Introjets possess a crucial role in the formation of an exegetic, interpretative framework. This framework of interpretation allows one to decipher the world, construct a model of reality. Gorge one's place in the universe and consequently decide who one is, form one's self-identity. Offer willingly negative introjets or inner voices which are manifestly fake, fallacious and manipulative, hamper the narcissists and codependents ability to construct such a framework, a true and efficacious interpretative framework. Gradually, the disharmony between one's perception of the universe and of oneself and reality becomes unverifiable. It engenders pathological, maladaptive and dysfunctional attempts to either deny this abyss, this hurtful discrepancy away by using delusions or fantasies, grandiosely compensate for the gap between reality and self-perception by eliciting positive external voices to counter and compensate for the negative inner voices. And this is what we call narcissistic supply elicited via the force-saving. Another option is to attack, head on, the abyss between one's model of the world, how the world should behave and how the world actually is. And this aggressive stance is typical of psychopaths and antisocials. You can withdraw from the world altogether and that's a schizoid solution. And finally, you can disappear by merging and fusing with another person. And that is what we call co-dependence. Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, wrote, Men can wield nothing unless he has first understood that he must count on no one but himself, that he is alone, abandoned on earth in the midst of his infinite responsibilities. Without help, we know other aim than the one he sets himself, we know other destiny than the one he forges for himself on this earth. The narcissist lacks empathy. He is therefore unable, constitutionally unable, to meaningfully relate to other people and to truly appreciate what it means, what it is to be human. Instead, the narcissist withdraws inside himself into a universe populated by other thoughts, simple or complex representations of parents, peers, role models, significant others, authority figures and other members of his social new year. There, in this twilight zone of simulacra, the narcissist develops so-called relationships and maintains an ongoing internal dialogue with them, but never an external one. The narcissist therefore does not interact with real people, but with representations of real people. Don't misunderstand, all of us generate such representations of meaningful others. All of us internalize these objects. This process is called introjection. We adopt, assimilate and later manifest the traits and attitude of these people, the introjects. But the narcissist is different. He is not capable of holding an external dialogue, as I said. Even when he seems to be interacting with someone else, the narcissist is actually engaged in a self-referential discourse with himself. To the narcissist, all other people are cardboard cutouts, two-dimensional animated cartoon characters or mere symbols. They exist only in his mind as handles. The narcissist is startled when people deviate from the script and prove to be complex and totally autonomous, independent of him. But this is not the narcissist's solar cognitive deficit. The narcissist attributes his failures and mistakes to circumstances and external causes. This propensity to blame the world for one's mishaps and misfortunes is called alloplastic effects. At the same time, the narcissist regards his successes and achievements, some of which are pretty imaginary, as proofs of his omnipotence and omniscience, affection and brilliance. And this is known in attribution theory as defensive attribution. Conversely, the narcissist traces other people's parents, other people's defeats, to their inherent inferiority, stupidity and weakness. Their successes, on the other hand, he dismisses as being in the right place at the right time. In other words, the outcomes of the inevitable outcomes of luck and circumstances. So his errors and defeats are the world's fault. Other people's errors and defeats are therefore his successes are owing our due to his skills and talents. Other people's successes are due to luck and circumstances. The narcissist falls prey to an exaggerated form of what is known in attribution theory as the fundamental attribution error. Moreover, these fallacies and the narcissist's magical thinking are not dependent on objective data and tests of distinctiveness, consistency and consensus. The narcissist never questions his reflexive judgments and never stops to ask himself, are these events distinct or are they typical? Do they repeat themselves consistently or are they unprecedented? And what do others have to say about them? These thoughts never cross his mind. The narcissist learns nothing because he regards himself as born perfect. Even when he fails a thousand times, the narcissist still feels that he is the victim of happenstance. And someone else's repeated understanding accomplishments are never proof of metal or merit. People who disagree with the narcissist and try to teach him differently are, to his mind, biased, aggressive, morons or all three. But the narcissist pays a dear price for these distortions of perception. Unable to gauge his environment with accuracy, the narcissist develops paranoid ideation and fails the reality test. Finally, he leaves the drawbridges and vanishes into a state of mind that can best be described as borderline psychosis. The narcissist is besieged and tormented by a sadistic super ego, which sits in constant judgment of him. This so-called super ego is an amalgamation of negative evaluations, criticisms, angry or disappointed voices, and disparagement, mitted out in the narcissist's formative views, childhood and adolescence. By parents, peers, role models and authority figures. These harsh and repeated comments reverberate throughout the narcissist's inner landscape, berating him for failing to conform to his unattainable ideals, fantastic goals and grandiose or impractical plans, for instance. The narcissist's sense of self-worth, his sense of what is colloquially known as self-esteem or self-confidence, is therefore catapulted from one pole to another, from an inflated, manic, euphoric view of himself in commensurate, real-life accomplishments to utter despair and self-denigration. This is a pendulum. The narcissist would explain the narcissist's needs for narcissistic supply, because he needs to regulate this wild pendulum. People's adulation, admiration, affirmation and attention restore the narcissist's self-esteem and self-confidence like no other thing. The narcissist's sadistic and uncompromising super ego affects three facets of his personality. His sense of self-worth and worthiness, the deeply ingrained conviction that one deserves love, compassion, care and empathy, regardless of what one achieves in life, what this has hampered. The narcissist feels worthless without narcissistic supply. The narcissist's self-esteem, self-knowledge, the deeply ingrained and realistic appraisal of his capacities, skills, but also limitations and shortcomings, is also affected. The narcissist lacks clear boundaries and therefore is not sure of his abilities and weaknesses, hence his grandiose fantasies, which are manifestly unrealistic, fantastic. The narcissist's self-confidence, the deeply ingrained belief based on life-long experience that one can set realistic goals and accomplish them, is badly damaged. The narcissist knows that he's a fake and a fraud. He therefore does not trust his ability to manage his own affairs and to set practical aims and realize them. Of course, if you confront the narcissist with his three, he will deny it. He will present himself as very self-assured, infallible and perfect. But this is only camouflage. It's simply plan B. It's a way for the narcissist to disguise his vulnerability, the chinks in his own. Becoming a success, or at least by appearing to have become one, the narcissist hopes to quell the voices inside him that constantly question his veracity, his aptitude, his worth. The narcissist's whole life is a two-fold attempt to both satisfy the inexorable demands of this inner tribunal and to prove wrong to the tribunals, the courts, harsh and merciless criticism. It is this dual and self-contradictory mission to conform to the edicts of his internal enemies and to prove their very judgment wrong that is at the root of the narcissist's unresolved and unresolvable conflicts. On the one hand, the narcissist accepts the authority of his introjected internalized critics. He disregards the fact that they hate him, that they wish him dead. He sacrifices his life to these inner degrading negative voices, hoping that his successors, his accomplishments, being of the sift will somehow ameliorate their rage. On the other hand, he confronts these very gods with truths of their fallibility. You claim that I am worthless and incapable, he cries. Well, guess what? You're dead wrong. Look how famous I am, look how rich, how revered and how accomplished. But then, much rehearsed, self-doubt sets in, and the narcissist feels yet again compelled to falsify the claim of his trenchant and indefatigable detractors by co-occurring another woman, giving one more interview, taking over yet another firm, making an extra million or getting re-elected one more time. It's like dry division. It's never enough, and it escalates. To no avail. The narcissist is his own worst enemy and foe. Ironically, it is only when incapacitated that the narcissist gains a modicum of peace of mind. When he's terminally ill, incarcerated, or inebriated, the narcissist can shift the blame for his failures and predicaments to outside agents and circumstances, to objective forces over which he has no control. It's not my fault he gleefully informs his mental tormentors. There was nothing I could do about it, but go away and leave me be. And then, when the narcissist is defeated and broken, these voices go away, and he is free at last.