 I'm Sam Vakny and I'm the author of Malignan's Self-Lover, Narcissism Revisited. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the scandal-ridden former head of the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, is entitled to the presumption of innocence until, of course, proven guilty. But if he did try to rape the hotel maid in New York in May 2011, his behavior would conform to the type of misconduct common among malignant narcissists. Narcissists in positions of authority and celebrity narcissists exhibit a confluence of three pernicious phenomena. Pathological charm, in other words, the illusion of being irresistible, the delusion of omnipotence, and the intractable convention in their immunity to the consequences of their actions, and more particularly, misdeeds. Start with pathological charm. The narcissist is confident that people find him irresistible. His unfailing charm is part of his self-imputed omnipotence. This inane conviction is what makes the narcissist a pathological charm. The somatic narcissist and the histrionic flaunt their sex appeal, virility, or femininity, sexual prowess, musculature, physique, training, or athletic achievements. The cerebral narcissist seeks to enchant and entrance his audience with intellectual pyrotechnics. Many narcissists brag about their wealth, health, positions, position, status, collections, spouses, children, personal history, family tree, in short, anything that garners them attention and renders them, in their own eyes at least, alluring. The cerebral narcissist and the somatic narcissist firmly believe that being unique, they are entitled to special treatment by others. They deploy their charm offensive to manipulate their nearest and dearest, or even complete strangers, and use these as instruments of gratification. Exerting personal magnetism and charisma become ways of asserting control and obviating other people's personal boundaries. The pathological charmer feels superior to the person he captivates and fascinates. To him charming someone means having power over her, controlling her, or even subjugating her. It is all a mind game intertwined with a power play. The person to be thus enthralled is an object, a mere prop, a dehumanized entity and utility at the service of the narcissist's inflated and grandiose ego. In some cases, pathological charm involves more than a grain of sadism. It provokes in the narcissist's sexual arousal by inflicting the pain of subjugation of the big-eyed who cannot help but be enchanted. Conversely, the pathological charmer engages in infantile, magical thinking. He uses charm to help maintain object constancy and to fend off abandonment, in other words, to ensure that the person he bewitched won't disappear on him. Pathological charmers react with rage and aggression when their intended targets prove to be impervious and resistant to their alleged lure. This kind of narcissistic injury, being spurned, being rebuffed, being rejected and ignored, makes them feel threatened, rejected and denuded. Being ignored amounts to a challenge to their own uniqueness, entitlement, control and superiority. Narcissists wither without constant narcissistic supply. When their charm fails to elicit narcissistic supply, they feel annulled, nonexistent and dead. They decompose and disintegrate mentally. So, it is expectedly that they go to great lengths to secure narcissistic supply. It is only when their efforts are frustrated that the mask of civility and congeniality drops and reveals the true face of the narcissist, a predator on the prowl. The second strand is omnipotence. The narcissist believes in his own omnipotence. He believes in this context. And he is convinced. He knows. It is a cellular certainty. It's almost biological. It flows in his blood, fermates every niche of his being. He is God. He is all-powerful. There are no limits to what he can do. The narcissist knows that he can do anything he chooses to do and excel in it. What the narcissist does, what he excels at, what he achieves depends only on his volition. If he puts his mind to it, there are no limits to what he can achieve. To his mind, there is no other determinant, but his own determination. Hence, the narcissist's rage when confronted with disagreement or opposition. Not only because of the audacity of his evidently inferior adversaries, but because it threatens his worldview. It endangers his feeling of omnipotence, his self-perception, on which lie and rest his sense of self-worth. The narcissist is often fatuously daring, adventurous, experimentative and curious, precisely due to this hidden assumption of can do and daring do. He is genuinely surprised and devastated when he fails, when the universe does not arrange itself magically to accommodate the narcissist's unbounded fantasies. And when the world and people in it do not comply with his wings and wishes, it's a devastating blow, because it endangers, as I said, his self-perception as omnipotent. The narcissist often denies away such discrepancies. He deletes them from his memory. He filters out any information which challenges his self-image as a god-like figure, a divinity. As a result, the narcissist remembers his life as a patchy quilt of unrelated events and people, having deleted so many things in between. And then there's the issue of immunity. Narcissists like children possess magical thinking. As I said, they feel omnipotent. They feel that there is nothing they couldn't do or achieve, and they only really wanted to and applied themselves to it. But they also feel omniscient. They rarely admit to ignorance in any field. They believe that they are in possession of all relevant and useful knowledge. They are hotly convinced that introspection is a more important and more efficient, not to mention easier to accomplish, method of edification. They don't believe in systematic study of outside sources of information in accordance with strict, in other words, tedious, curricula. To some extent, narcissists believe that they are omnipresent, because they are either famous or about to become famous. Deeply immersed in their delusions of grandeur, the narcissist is firmly convinced that his acts have or will have a great influence on mankind, on his firm, on his country, on others. Having learned to manipulate their human environment, narcissists believe that they will always get away with it. Narcissistic immunity is the narcissist, of course, erroneous feeling that he is immune to the consequences of his actions, that he will never be affected by the outcomes of his own decisions. Opinions, beliefs, deeds, and misdeeds acts in action, that being a member of certain groups acting in a certain way will have no consequences on him. Narcissist believes that he is above reproach and punishment, that he is subject only to his own laws. He wants to be feared, he wants to be notorious, but without paying the price. Narcissist believes that magically he is protected and will miraculously be saved at the last moment. What are the sources of this fantastic appraisal of situations and chains of events? The first and foremost source is, of course, the false self. It is constructed as a childish response to abuse and trauma in early childhood or early adolescence. The false self is possessed of everything that the child wishes he had in order to retaliate. It is powerful, it is wise, it is magical. The false self is unlimited, it is instantaneously available. The false self, this Superman, is indifferent to abuse and punishment. It shields the vulnerable true self from the harsh realities experienced by the child. This artificial, maladaptive separation between vulnerable but not punishable true self and a punishable but invulnerable false self is an effective mechanism. It isolates the child from unjust, capricious, arbitrary, emotionally dangerous world. It shields him from the hostility of the universe. But at the same time, the false self fosters a false sense of nothing can happen to me because I'm not here. I cannot be punished because I'm immune, I'm all powerful, no one can touch me, no one can do anything to me. The second source of the Narcissist's sense of immunity is his belief in his own entitlement. This is possessed by every Narcissist. In his grandiose delusions, the Narcissist is sui generis, unique, a gift to humanity, precious, fragile object. Moreover, the Narcissist is convinced both that his uniqueness is immediately discernible and that it gives him special rights. The Narcissist feels that he is sheltered, cocooned, protected by some cosmological law pertaining to endangered species. He is convinced that his future contribution to humanity should and does exempt him from the mundane, from daily chores, boring jobs, recurring tasks, personal exertion, orderly investment of resources and efforts, or even aging and death. The Narcissist is entitled to special treatment. He is entitled to a high living standard, constant and immediate catering to his ever-shifting needs, the avoidance of the mundane and the routine, the absolution of his scenes, fast-track privileges to higher education, or in his encounters with bureaucracy. Punishment in the eyes of the Narcissist is for ordinary people, where no great loss to humanity is involved. Narcissists feel that they are above the law. The third source has to do with the Narcissist's ability to manipulate his human environment. Narcissists develop their manipulative skills to the level of an art form, because that is the only way they can survive their poisoned and dangerous childhood and adolescence. Yet they use this gift long after its best-before date. Narcissists are possessed of inordinate abilities to charm, to convince, to seduce and to persuade. They are gifted orators with non-thespian acting skills. In many cases, they are intellectually endowed. They put all these resources and assets into the limited use of obtaining narcissistic supply, and of course with startling results. Narcissists become pillars of society, members of the upper class. They mostly do get exempted many times by virtue of their standing in society, their charisma or their ability to find willing scapegoats. Having got away with it so many times, they develop a theory of personal immunity, which rests on some kind of societal or even cosmic order of things. Some people are just about punishment. They convince themselves. Some special ones, the endowed or gifted ones, are exempt. And this is what I call the narcissistic hierarchy. But there is a fourth simpler explanation to the narcissist's inalienable sense of immunity. The narcissist just does not know what he's doing. Divorced from his true self, unable to empathize to understand what it is like to be someone else, unwilling to act empathetically to constrain his actions in accordance with the feelings and needs of others, the narcissist is in a constant dreamlike state. He experiences his life like a movie, autonomously unfolding, guided by a sublime or even divine director. The narcissist is a mere spectator, mildly interested, greatly entertained at times, but a spectator. He does not feel that he owns his life and his actions. The narcissist therefore emotionally cannot understand why he should be punished. And when he is, he feels grossly wronged. To be a narcissist is to be convinced of a great, inevitable, personal destiny. A narcissist is preoccupied with ideal love, the construction of a brilliant revolutionary scientific theory, the composition or offering or painting of the greatest work about ever, the founding of a new school of thought, the attainment of fabulous wealth, the reshaping of the fate of an ancient or even humanity, becoming immortalized and so on and so forth. These are his daily concerns. The narcissist never sets realistic goals to himself. He is forever floating amid fantasies of uniqueness, record-breaking or breathtaking achievements. His speech is verbose and florid and reflects his grandiosity. So convinces the narcissist that he is destined to great things, that he refuses to acknowledge setbacks, failures, defeats and punishments. The narcissist regards all these as temporary, as someone else's errors, as part of a future mythology of his rise to power, brilliance, wealth, ideal love, etc. To accept punishment is to divert scarce energy and resources from the all-important task of fulfilling his cosmic mission in life. That the narcissist is destined to greatness is a divine certainty, a higher order of power as preordained the narcissist to achieve something lasting of substance of importance in this world in his life. The narcissist is fully convinced of that. How could mere mortals interfere with the cosmic? The divine scheme of things. Therefore, punishment is impossible, but will not happen. The narcissist is the narcissist's inevitable conclusion, ineluctable belief. The narcissist is pathologically envious of people and projects, and he diverts his aggression and directs his aggression at them. He is always vigilant, he is ready to fend off an imminent attack. When inevitable punishment does come, the narcissist is shocked and irritated by the nuisance. Being punished also spruces to him and validates what he suspected all along, that he is being persecuted, that he is a giant and misunderstood giant among dwarves. Strong forces are poised against him. People are envious of his achievements or angry at him, out to get him or to prevent him from achieving things, accomplishing things. He constitutes a threat to the accepted order. When required to account for his misdeeds, the narcissist is always disdainful and bitter. He feels like Galliva chained to the ground by teeming midgets, while his soul soars to the future in which people recognize his greatness and applaud it. There is a condition called acquired situational narcissism. Narcissistic personality disorder is a systemic or pervasive condition, very much like pregnancy. Either you have it, or you don't. Once you have it, you have it day and night. It is an inseparable part of the personality, a recurrent set of behavior patterns. Recent research by Ronning Stamm and others shows that there is a condition which might be called transient or temporary or short-term narcissism as opposed to the full-fledged version narcissistic personality disorder. Even prior to this discovery, reactive narcissistic aggression or regression was well known. People regress to a transient infantile narcissistic phase in response to a major life crisis which threatens their mental composure. Reactive or transient narcissism may also be triggered by medical or organic conditions. Brain injuries, for instance, have been known to induce narcissistic and anti-social traits and behaviors. But can narcissism be acquired? Can it be learned? Can it be provoked by certain well-defined situations? Robert B. Millman, Professor of Psychiatry at New York Hospital, Cornel Medical School, thinks it can. He proposes to reverse the accepted chronology. According to him, pathological narcissism can be induced in adulthood by celebrity, wealth and fame. The victims, billionaire tycoons, movie stars, renowned authors, politicians and other authority figures develop grandiose fantasies, lose their erstwhile ability to empathize, react with rage to slides both real and imagined and in general act like textbook narcissists. But is the occurrence of acquired situational narcissism inevitable? Is it universal? Or are there only certain people prone to it? It is likely that acquired situational narcissism is merely an amplification of earlier narcissistic conduct, traits, style and tendencies. Celebrities with acquired situational narcissism already had a narcissistic personality and they have acquired it long before it erupted. Being famous, powerful and rich, only legitimized and conferred immunity from social sanction on the unbridled manifestation of a pre-existing problem. Indeed, narcissists tend to gravitate to professions and settings which guarantee fame, celebrity, power and wealth. As Milman correctly notes, the celebrity's life is abnormal. The adulation is often justified and plentiful. The feedback is biased and filtered. The criticism muted and belated, social control either lacking or excessive and vitriolic. Such this situational existence is not conducive to mental health, even in the most balanced person. These people are usually imbalanced. The confluence of a person's narcissistic predisposition and his pathological life circumstances gives rise to acquired situational narcissism. Acquired situational narcissism borrows elements from both the classic narcissistic personality disorder ingrained and all-pervasive and from transient or reactive narcissism. It is a combination of both. Celebrities are therefore unlikely to heal once their fame or wealth or might are gone. Instead, their basic narcissism merely changes form, continues unabated, as insidious as ever, but modified by life's ups and downs. In a way, all narcissistic disturbances are acquired. Patients acquire their pathological narcissism using for overbearing parents, from peers or from role models. Narcissism is a defense mechanism designed to fend off hurt and danger brought on by circumstances such as celebrity beyond the person's control. Social expectations play a role as well. Celebrities try to conform to the stereotype of a creative but spoiled, self-centered, monomaniacal and highly emotive individual. A tacit trade takes place. We offer the famous and the powerful all the narcissistic supply their crave and they in turn act the consummate fascinating although repulsive narcissist.