What is a Narcissist? What is Projection?
Narcissism, projection, and their political manifestations
I think everyone has recognized by now that there is a kind of insanity in the deep state, media, and in a segment of the population that blindly support whatever they say. But what is it? Understanding what is going on with the psychology of the these people is one of the keys to the great awakening which is underway. This substack will be about the topic of the mass insanity of the supporters of the deep state and offer an interpretation of the way this insanity is manifesting societally based on the works of Andrzej Lobaczewski, Mattias Desmett and others. Political Ponerology is the name of Lobaczewskis’ book which he wrote on the subject. Desmett recently wrote a book further exploring the idea of mass insanity called the Psychology of Totalitarianism.
Political Ponerology was a book written in the Soviet Union over a long time by a team of researchers. Most of them were killed, as the people in charge did not like this field of research. It attempted to study the madness of the ruling class, explain its origins and offer some practical ideas on both how this could be avoided in the future and how people might protect themselves from it. It was an attempt to start a new science, which the author called Ponerology, or the study of Evil. It is a valuable work not just for its historical value, but because the situation we find ourselves in today is quite analogous to what Lobeczewski was describing.
So, what is the scientific psychological view on Evil? Well, the word has kind of gone out of fashion hasn’t it? However, in modern psychology there has been in the last few years a flurry of interest in cluster B personality disorders, which are Narcisisstic Personality Disorder (NPD), Antisocial Personality Disorder (Psychopathy, Sociopathy, ASPD), Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), and Histrionic Personality Disorders (HPD. These disorders are called the dramatic disorders and predispose the afflicted to interpersonal behavior that we need to start recognizing as Evil. The afflicted are prone to aggression, manipulation and lies, and have a compulsion to seek power and control, while avoiding being held responsible for their actions. They have commonalities between them in many ways.
So, what is NPD (narcissism)? This is a subject many books have been written on, its a very complex topic. This is an attempt to briefly explain it, but there are many interpretations of the disorder, and many theories of what it is and how it works. We can start with the diagnostic criteria.
Grandiosity with expectations of superior treatment from other people
Fixated on fantasies of power, success, intelligence, attractiveness, etc.
Self-perception of being unique, superior, and associated with high-status people and institutions
Needing continual admiration from others
Sense of entitlement to special treatment and to obedience from others
Exploitative of others to achieve personal gain
Unwilling to empathize with the feelings, wishes, and needs of other people
Intensely envious of others, and the belief that others are equally envious of them
Pompous and arrogant demeanor
These are from the DSM-IV. These are descriptions of the behavior of NPD sufferers, not a complete definition, but criteria by which a diagnosis is made. So, does this remind you of anyone in the media or politics? Or maybe everyone? Our society tends to reward these traits, and people having them tend seek power and fame. It seems that it would be difficult to find a person in the deep state, politics, or their sponsored media outlets who is not like this to an extent. They like to imagine themselves as special, and only associate with other special people or high status institutions. They exploit people. They are entitled and arrogant. They don’t care what the people want or need, but only about feeding their grandiosity, tightening their control and feeding their grandiosity.
So, remember, this is only a descriptive label, which tells us nothing about what the internal life of the NPD person is like, or what they are. So, what motivates them? Why do they act this way? This has been studied by many people, and research is ongoing. The current thinking is that they are people who have been traumatized as children, and have not processed this trauma in an adaptive way. So, the emotional wounding of childhood can train a child not to process their emotions authentically, but instead, to invest emotional energy into narratives. This can take many forms, not everyone who does this has NPD. The authentic emotional self is termed the true self, while the mass of narratives that develop around the emotional wounding to protect the child from abusive and invalidating parents is called the false self.
The child imagines himself to be omnipotent, special, powerful, and through this hopes to avoid the pain associated with abuse and invalidation. He creates narratives, (stories) and tells himself that if only they were true, he would never be abused again. He sacrifices in a sense, his authentic emotional self (the true self) to these narratives (the false self). He then looks for people and experiences to confirm this view of himself and who he is, and rejects and dismisses experiences which cause him to question them. This is all a subconscious process, the NPD sufferer is not aware of any of this, and indeed cannot be, because he imagines himself to be perfect.
This person then as an adult, seeks only experiences and relationships which feed these kinds of narratives. This is a complex topic, this explanation is meant to be brief and to the point, there is a lot to be understood on this topic. So, as this adult is perfect, godlike, omnipotent, in his own mind, and must be to avoid the emotional wounding and pain. He avoids experiences that make him feel weak, human, and imperfect. Obviously, this is difficult, or more accurately impossible, as we are all human, none of us are gods, none of us are perfect, but the NPD sufferer must maintain these narratives at all costs, or so he feels. The prospect of the narratives being disrupted leads to great anxiety, and pain, and he perceives them to be a threat to his own life.
So what does he do with these unwanted parts of himself, these proofs of his own fallibility and weakness? He projects them onto others. This is what projection is. he must believe that these qualities belong to others, never himself. He spins narratives that reinforce this false sense of self, then looks for external validation of their truth. He manipulates others to believe their truth. He censors the facts that prove his own fallibility from the discourse of those in his circles. He cannot face that the flaws, the mistakes and errors that are the common experience of humans, are his fault at all, they must be someone else’s fault. He projects.
The narcissist knows that he is always right, and omnipotent besides, and cannot bear to face anything else. So, he will only associate and listen to those who tell him he is right, who reinforce this narrative of godlike power and unlimited success. For those are in his orbit (this is termed enmeshment) he demands absolutely to be recognized as never the source of any problems, never wrong, and never flawed, as only others have those traits. He controls the perceptions of others rather than controlling himself. He does this by a variety of means that will be further explored in later articles, as will many of these concepts.
So what happens when people realize that the narcissist must be wrong sometimes or sees their imperfections? What happens when people see through their controlling nature, or recognizes their imperfections? Narcissists are incapable of dealing with shades of grey, in himself or in others, this is called splitting. If you are someone who is reinforcing his false self (this reinforcing is called supply) you will be seen as good, all good. If you are calling this fantasy of omnipotence and universal adoration into question, then you must be bad. Because the narcissist is never the problem in his mind. If you call his narrative into question, you must be bad. Because you make him feel bad. So he projects his unwanted parts onto you.
So, politics. How are our leaders acting right now? How is the narrative being controlled right now? How do they react when its challenged? They are acting as if they are beyond reproach. As if they are never wrong, and entitled to admiration and adoration. Entitled to unlimited power. Questioning their motives, their integrity, their entitlement is met with similar manipulative tactics as narcissists use in intimate relationships. Gaslighting is employed regularly by the media and political mouthpieces. Unquestioning and uncritical obedience to the key parts of their collective political narrative is not requested, it is demanded.
What are the responses to narrative challenges? Deception, manipulation and censorship. This works for a while, for some. People go along with “the current thing”, and some seem to be accepting it completely uncritically. This is absolutely vital to the narcissists in charge, remember that they need to be admired, they need to be recognized as what they have alway imagined themselves to be. Which is infallible and omnipotent. Maintaining this narrative is a matter of compulsion for the narcissist, not a conscious thing. So, what of those who see through our leaders deceptions?
They are called names, smeared in the media, and increasingly harrassed and monitored by state power. Those who are in the societal enmeshment web, the devotees of “the current thing”, must accept these labels and smears or be themselves attacked. The dissenters of the narrative are accused of being fascist, while the deep state and their supporters act increasingly fascist. The dissenters are accused of endangering lives, as the maintenance of the narrative costs more lives every day. They are called liars, as the lies of the powerful become increasingly obvious. They are accused of being violent by an increasingly violent deep state.
This is projection writ large. We have whole institutions who seem to be behaving narcissistically, conerned only with maintaining their fantasies of unlimited success, omnipotence, omniscience, and entitlement to exploit and demand absolute obedience to their worldview. The faults and failings and imperfections of the institutions are blamed on those who have strayed from the narratives they promote. They accuse the dissenters of being everything they are, and employ increasingly abusive tactics to keep the people who are still going along in line. It very much resembles the dynamics of an abusive family. The official narrative, which is increasingly obviously a tissue of lies and misrepresentations, is vigorously promoted by people who call the dissenters liars, even as we tell the truth as we see it.
It has become a dogma, questioning which is met with coordinated smear campaigns by the media, by those who are enmeshed, and by those in power. In this way the truth is suppressed, as people do not want to be abused. Guilt by association, gaslighting, coercion through social pressure and threat of job loss are employed to keep people in line with the dogma. The truth is suppressed by censorship, which is increasingly heavy handed and obvious. For those who are smeared as fascists and liars, violence is seen as justified by those in the societal enmeshment web, this is carried out both by violent mobs, as well as sometimes, the state. Even while those conducting the smear campaigns are increasingly fascist and obviously liars.
This is the same as what Andrzej Lobaczewski was describing in his book, describing the abuses of the Soviet Union. Which is not say that the guiding ideology is the same, but the behavior, and the roots of the behavior, is exactly the same as what he saw. So, this substack will be an attempt to present the concepts in his work and others in as accessible a form as I can manage, as the original work, entitled Political Ponerology, uses out of date terminology and is hard to read. Modern psychology has also expanded our understanding of cluster B personality disorders, so I will attempt to bring these concepts into the framework of ponerology. In this work, he recommended popularizing the concepts within should anything ever happened again, this will be an attempt to do that, as knowledge will help people to recognize this for what it is and respond appropriately.