One of the most dangerous misconceptions about Narcissism is that it is about the lack of something. Author Bruno Bettleheim uses the metaphor of ‘The Empty Fortress’, to convey this idea, that the Narcissist is just a bunch of defences surrounding a vacuum, forgetting that the fortress is empty because its contents have been projected. Shakespeare seems to concur with Bettleheim in Macbeth, Act V, Scene V.
“It (life) is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
Shakespeare is describing what life looks like from inside a soul that has destroyed its own moral centre. He seems to be saying that when you live as if nothing matters, the world eventually appears to mean nothing. Though this is hardly enough. After all, both Lord Duncan and the Queen lie dead…
In common parlance we speak about the Narcissist, ‘lacking empathy’, as though the problem was simply that they had something missing. Well wishers wonder if they could ‘learn’, as though what was required was simply a matter of corrective instruction.
Yet this is far from the truth and perhaps reflects the desire on behalf of said enablers to bury their heads in the sand whilst the malignant wrecking ball sweeps past their tail feathers.
In fact, the Narcissist is far from empty or beset by ‘lack’. The problem is not so much the absence of something positive, relatedness and connection, but the presence of something which regards such virtues as weakness and aberration.
The prime concern of Narcissism is to rid the fortress of unbearable feelings. It’s empty because its contents have been evacuated. The oft vaunted attributes of Narcissism, pride, arrogance, superiority, can only be had once one’s system is shot of vulnerability and human frailty. These unwanted feelings have to be projected onto some unwitting other which then brings the person into immediate conflict with his neighbour. In the special case of malignant narcissism, projection is not quite enough. Projections don’t always stick.
You might attribute your neighbour with weakness and stupidity but she is always free to disagree. Unless you actually make her feel weak and stupid. The malignant narcissist differs from his more common or garden cousin by the need to make sure that the projection sticks. It’s not enough to simply assert the other is weak and stupid,. You have to get them to agree. It’s called projective identification. I project my shit onto you and get you to claim it as your own, making you feel as though I am not merely insulting you but correctly identifying that you are indeed a piece of crap.
One of the most heinous manifestations of this is rape. Rape is not about sex, Rape is about the need to humiliate in such a way that the raped other is forced to carry and identify with the feelings of worthlessness and inferiority which so interrupt and interfere with narcissistic hauteur.
In May 2023, a New York civil jury found Trump liable in a lawsuit brought by writer E. Jean Carroll for sexual abuse and defamation related to an incident in the mid-1990s. Because this was a civil case (a lawsuit for damages), the jury did not criminally convict him of rape though he was ordered to pay damages. Some legal commentary said the conduct involved ‘non-consensual penetration’. Trump himself confessed, in the Hollywood access tapes, to ‘pussy grabbing’… He qualified his behaviour, ‘when you are a celebrity, they let you do it.’
Even more disturbing are the multiple accusations from underage girls at the time of being raped by Trump and his best mate Jeffrey Epstein over many years, all of which Trump has done his utmost to keep concealed from the public eye, both by DOJ withholding and the various distractions of Venezuela and Greenland. It does seem rather ironic that this deflection from public scrutiny of his sexual ‘indiscretions’ should be the penetration of one sovereign nation and the threat to ‘have’ another, ‘whether they like it or not’, which of course is rapist language.
It’s not simply that the malignant narcissist does not care. Lack of empathy is the least of your worries. What is so dangerous is the ontological need to make others suffer so that he does not. The wish to make others suffer is not just sadistic. The enjoyment of the pain, exulting over the degradation of others is an existential necessity, the glue that holds the fraying threads of mental imbalance in some semblance of order.
Governance, logic, international relations, all play second fiddle to the self preservation of unloading inferiority and humiliation into others. The recent runway interview at Davos was a prime example. When told that French president Macron had declined his 1 billion dollar ‘invitation’ (protection racket) to the ‘Board of Peace’, his response was a shaming, ‘no-one wants him’. Of course, Macron’s refusal was on the back of a written invitation which he would not have been offered unless Trump wanted him. Logic and international relations simply go to the wall in the face of the urgent need to demean, rubbish and humiliate. Say whatever is needed to rid hated feelings of being unloved. Even if it makes you look stupid; those feelings too can be shed in time, as they were only hours later with his demeanment of China’s (successful) wind farm programme.
If only Trump’s pussy grabbing was confined to those he considers enemies or sufficiently unprotected to be inconsequential. Lady America herself is not safe from the ravages of malignant offloading. ‘Going in’, to maiden cities with national guards and the unaccountable and deadly violations of ICE agents, who are really extensions of Uncle Donald’s feverish paws, ensure the continued humiliation of millions so that he doesn’t have to be afflicted by his own painful feelings. Someone else can be made to feel the pain on his behalf, in their countless droves.
Why? Because hatred comes first; the target is constructed afterward. In so doing you get others carry and identify with all the loathsome emotions of worthlessness so urgently in need of disinvestment such that a polished persona based on the fragile ground of self congratulation can be maintained. The world must be shat on or incorporated, the sovereign autonomy of girls and nations violated, all so that the Emperor Baby and his minions can sleep easy at night.
