Portrait of the Narcissist as a Young Man

Abuse has many forms. Expropriating someone's childhood in favour of adult pursuits is one of the subtlest varieties of soul murder.

I never was a child. I was a "wunderkind", the answer to my mother's prayers and intellectual frustration. A human computing machine, a walking-talking encyclopaedia, a curiosity, a circus freak. I was observed by developmental psychologists, interviewed by the media, endured the envy of my peers and their pushy mothers. I constantly clashed with figures of authority because I felt entitled to special treatment, immune to prosecution and superior. It was a narcissist's dream. Abundant Narcissistic Supply - rivers of awe, the aura of glamour, incessant attention, open adulation, country-wide fame.

I refused to grow up. In my mind, my tender age was an integral part of the precocious miracle that I became. One looks much less phenomenal and one's exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 40, I thought. Better stay young forever and thus secure my Narcissistic Supply.

So, I wouldn't grow up. I never took out a driver's licence.

I do not have children. I rarely have sex. I never settle down in one place. I reject intimacy. In short: I refrain from adulthood and adult chores. I have no adult skills. I assume no adult responsibilities. I expect indulgence from others. I am petulant and haughtily spoiled. I am capricious, infantile and emotionally labile and immature. In short: I am a 40 years old brat.

When I talk to my girlfriend, I do so in a baby's voice, making baby faces and baby gestures. It is a pathetic and repulsive sight, very much like a beached whale trying to imitate a seaborne trout. I want to be her child, you see, I want to regain my lost childhood. I want to be admired as I was when I was one year old and recited poems in three languages to stunned visiting high school teachers. I want to be four again, when I first read a daily paper to the silent astonishment of the neighbours.

I am not preoccupied with my age, nor am I obsessed with my dwindling, fat flapping body. I am no hypochondriac. But There is a streak of sadness in me, like an undercurrent and a defiance of Time itself. Like Dorian Gray, I want to remain as I was when I became the centre of attention, the focus of adoration, the heart of a twister of media attention. I know I can't. And I know that I have failed not only at arresting Chronos - but on a more mundane, degrading level. I failed as an adult.

Interview with ARLLEN

Q: As a narcissist, did you go to school? If so, what kind? What did you think of the facilities? The other students? The teachers? And what was your overall experience of the school years?

A: I attended both primary and high school in my hometown in Israel - a community of immigrants hardened by economic duress and constant insecurity. The facilities - sponsored by wealthy American Jews out to immortalize themselves - were more than adequate. I especially loved the library, an oasis of serene knowledge in a sea of boorishness and irrationality. I was a bespectacled, flabby, smelly and inert student but considered myself, haughtily and unjustly, intellectually superior to both my fellow pupils and our youngish and inexperienced teachers. Overall, I felt, school was a drudgery I had to endure before my meteoric rise to unbridled fame commences.

Q: Was any of the subject matter they taught of any interest to you, if so, what and why? What was your most favourite and least favourite subject and why?

A: My most favourite subject was history because I was allowed to teach it and thus to indulge in theatrics and power plays. I detested math because my inaptitude in it deflated my grandiosity and my claim to be a Renaissance Man.

Q: How were you treated by the other students? By the teachers?

A: Largely with pity and disdain, I guess. Though a few - both students and teachers - succumbed to my dubious charms and admired my accomplishments, whether real and imagina
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ry. These acolytes were at the mercy of my capricious and overweening conduct. They formed my fan club, a source of adulation, affirmation and obsequious applause.

Earlier on I was allowed to skip one year and go directly from fourth to sixth grade. For a short while, I became the toast of the town. I then leveraged this fortuitous celebrity by brazenly lying about the extent of my academic achievements. I learned a few crucial lessons: you are what you say you are, people crave to be manipulated, victims prefer fantasies to reality and it is obscenely easy to gain fame.

Q: Did you have a pet during your school years, if so, what happened to it?

A: I never had a pet, though I came close by sharing a turtle with my siblings and a snail with my ex-wife.

Q: Did you happen to make any friends from the student body? If so, do you still keep in contact with them?

A: My life is rigidly compartmentalized. "Friends" belong to time periods, forever locked in mental boxes. The minute I move from one period to the next, relocate, or find a new interest - I lose my "friendships" and "relationships" as that much ballast. I never look back and I actively refuse contact with figures from my former lives.

I did have "buddies" in both primary and high school - mainly collaborators in nasty deeds conceived largely by me and, at the time, deemed hilarious by all of us. But these were shallow and ephemeral liaisons. My prankish creativity did not buy me he other students' love or affiliation. They regarded me as a freak whose very freakishness allowed him to innovate.

Additionally, I attached myself to a series of mentally disordered or challenged students and deliberately played meticulously executed mind games on them intended to gain unmitigated control over their mental functions. One of the victims ended up in an asylum. This propensity did not survive primary school, I am glad to say.

Q: Did you have favourite teachers, if so why were they your favourites?

A: I had two favourite teachers - one in primary school and one in high school. The first was chosen due to a confluence of circumstances. She taught me English in my aforementioned brief days of glory and was, therefore, associated in my mind with the "good old times". I had a crush on her - the urbanite, sexually liberated, glamorous, well-read woman that she was. She was the first person I dared disclose my overwhelming emotional distress to.

The other favourite instructor, in high school, was her antithesis. Fat, a-feminine, brooding, moody - but she worshipped the ground I walked on. I needed this kind of unconditional acceptance. I was going through a rough patch. My grades deteriorated. My budding sexuality was thwarted by my perverted self-image. She gave me hope and restored in me a modicum of self-confidence by surrendering her classes. I taught as she sat at the back of the class, glowing.

Q: Were you involved in any extracurricular activities such as clubs, sports, or theatre?

A: I lectured a lot and made numerous appearances in school plays. I was the town cri
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er and the master of ceremonies of the local municipality. I published poetry and, by the age of 16, had my own column in a regional rag. I worked in the local library and also tutored immigrants, mainly from Russia and Soviet Georgia. I was a very active lad. I even invented an extremely detailed and micromanaged daily schedule to better myself through a self-imposed syllabus of reading and theatre-going.

Q: Did you attend parties or dances during the school years?

A: Not even once.

Q: Did you learn how to play any musical instruments, sing or dance? Is art something you enjoy? If so, why?

A: The only form of art I really enjoy - to the point of addiction - is cinema. I do pretend, of course, to be interested in higher-brow pursuits: painting, sculpture and music. But at heart I am not, it is merely perfunctory. I played the flute when I was young because my mother wanted to. I stopped the minute she lost interest.

Q: What activities did you do for fun?

A: Reading and - far more rarely - watching movies.

Q: Did you seek out or were approached by suitors?

A: In hindsight I now understand that some girls found me attractive - though why, it eludes me. But I was unable - and, at times, resentfully unwilling - to decipher their increasingly desperate signals. I, myself, never courted. I haven't had sex until the age of 25and have first fully masturbated - with ejaculation - only when I was 19. I was - and am still - very retarded sexually, on the verge of being a-sexual.

Q: What role did your parents play in your life during the school years?

A: I perceived my mother as both an evil entity, out to harm me, hating and contemptuous - and the driving force in my life. For a stretch of time, everything I did was geared to impress her and disprove her lowly opinion of me. When it was clear that I do not stand a fighting chance against her searing disappointment and disdain, I gave up completely. I did not proceed to university and have been peripatetic ever since with little to show for my efforts.

My father was tyrannical but also more lovable because he was mostly absent, toiling hard to extract us from the slums. When present, he was so manifestly sad and frustrated, so down-trodden and ineffectually rebellious that my insurrection against his arbitrariness was inevitably interspersed with moments of great pity.

Q: Did you have any siblings? If so, what role did they play in your life then?

A: I am the first born and my siblings are far younger than me. I, thus, emulated my father's despotism in my relationships with them. In later years, as I became economically independent, I endeavored to secure their affection with numerous gifts. In all, I was a fun brother, always full of stories and wild poems - but, more typically, remote, uninterested and ensconced in an imaginary escapist Universe of my own making. My prolonged and recurrent emotional - and, later, physical - absences have deeply injured my siblings who, throughout their childhoods, were my most ardent, persistent and blind admirers.

Q: Did you notice any racism or prejudice amongst the students?

A: I belong to a minority - the Moroccan Jews - much derided in Israel for its alleged backwardness, ignorance, proneness to superstition, paranoia and hot temper. Inevitably, I was judged more by the stereotype than by any biographical fact. This greatly affected my anyhow volatile sense of self-worth, self-esteem and self-confidence. For a short time I was even active in divisive ethnic politics in Israel.

Q: How did you tend to dress while attending school?

A: We wore obligatory school uniforms so personal choice was never an issue. Off-school, though, I fitted my unwieldy body into whatever clothes my parents bought me. To this very day, I dress shabbily and inappropriately - when at home, virtually in tattered rags.

Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited
The Narcissistic Personality Disorder and abusive relationships with narcissists described and analyzed. 82 frequently asked questions (FAQs), excerpts from the archives of the Narcissism Revisited List, essay, journal entries and appendices.