The brain begins to be built from the womb, but it is during the early years - beginning in infancy, a time of maximum defencelessness - that our emotional make-up is most profoundly shaped. This is due to the complexity of brain development, an organ which, being plastic and malleable, can be influenced even until the end of life. For its proper development, it needs constant and sophisticated care.
It is impossible that nutrition, the social environment and many aspects of family and extra-family life do not involve mistakes. Accepting this fact, we can affirm that human beings are forced to develop defences and put in place survival mechanisms, most of them unconscious, as components of their character.
These mechanisms can be observed from the outside as normal behaviours, or as obsessive, neurotic or psychotic manifestations, including psychopathy, narcissistic character and other personality configurations. In either case, defence systems are put in place that the infant will deploy for life in the face of environmental failures or deficiencies that shaped his or her development.
From this perspective, it is necessary to go back to the origin in order to understand what narcissism is, its degrees, intensities and variants. Narcissism is, in essence, a set of survival strategies. For this reason, it is complex and sometimes dangerous to relate to those who suffer from it. Underlying this psychological syndrome is a weak, emotionally underdeveloped being who needs to feel superior and perceives others as inferior. They even become bored with them.
We all love as we have been loved. Those who were poorly or unloved develop an armour to avoid reliving that painful feeling of inferiority and vulnerability. In the most extreme cases - when violence, though not always explicit, is part of the environment - early tears, deep powerlessness and seeds of anger, sadness, envy, hypocrisy and revenge are sown. These emotions, hidden from consciousness, can be the source of arsonists, thieves, tyrants and dogmatists.
Experiences, positive or frustrating, shape character. In some people, this insufficient development generates a visceral fear of any idea or proposal that challenges them. They always expect to be seen as superior, and if that does not happen, they will shut down, fight back or misrepresent what they hear or see. They fear that someone will show them a real mirror of their inner world, as this would collapse their defensive structures and return them to the deprived childhood in which they built their wall.
These structures sustain the narcissist: they allow him or her to appear sane, seductive and manipulative. They are ways of maintaining distance and control over others. They possess talent, yes, but it is for their own benefit. They change their minds easily because they are not committed even to their own ideas. Their only horizon is a grandiosity that compensates for an intimate feeling of loneliness. When they gain access to power, this need can become an addiction.
The narcissist possesses a survival intelligence - an almost animal cunning - that avoids wasting energy on culture or science. His whole inner life revolves around strategies of personal advancement, of representation in the social theatre. He fears his rivals, for there is a paranoid background in him that drives him to control every potential obstacle.
Like Narcissus, when he looks in the mirror he sees only his own merits. They may even symbolically or materially eliminate their competitors, just as leaders who eliminated their political rivals did. In small groups, they become destructive rumour-mongers, always on the fringes of the mainstream.
Even with modern "truth machines", they would not be able to recognise this inner turmoil. The latent depression and their deep fragility reveal an emptiness that they do not know how to fill. That is why they devote their lives to hiding behind appearances: goods, power, ornaments, money. They are experts in detecting other people's weaknesses and control their environment to adjust it to their vision. Like Narcissus, they seek their image and live for it. At Financial Times addressed the current plague of narcissists as heads of state. He noted that they inspire fear and are unapproachable because of their overweening ambition.
The encounter with a narcissistic personality generates an ancestral response in our brain: immobilisation. We do not feel listened to; we are the target of disqualifications, violence or cunning.
Some groups have taken advantage of this dynamic to dismantle fundamental values such as commitment, responsibility or ethics, building a narcissistic, infantilised society, focused on rights, but oblivious to values and responsibilities: everything that previous generations built as culture and civilisation.
A narcissistic woman, abandoned by her father, expresses her resentment and rage under the discourse of justice against patriarchy, or heteropatriarchy. But, deep down, she desires the symbolic disappearance of the man.
Narcissism has multiple traits. In some cases, these can take on perverse or psychopathic overtones, alien to empathy. Guilt is alien to them: they are ideal candidates for the motto "the end justifies the means". Their slide into psychopathy is possible because they do not feel values: they only proclaim them.
They seem to "go their own way", like an adult autism full of latent violence. They combine normality and arrogance, destructiveness and perversion. Feeling innocent, they can seduce, subdue and silence. A small offence can become a future revenge. To question them is to risk being attacked.
The narcissistic syndrome is latent in almost everyone. It is triggered by power, money, position, fantasies of superiority or a sense of being the spokesperson for the truth. In some cases, this inner tension manifests itself as the so-called imposter syndrome: a vague but persistent feeling of not measuring up.
Even if it barely peeks into their consciousness, it may be a sign that their apparent security is shaken by any attempt to question them. Therefore, the narcissist will seek to maintain an environment where no one confronts him or her or invites him or her to reflect. This constant need for reassurance reflects a profound lack of intrapersonal intelligence: the ability to know and understand oneself.
A well-conducted therapy by a professional with solid training and extensive life experience can help the person to initiate a slow process of internal exploration, capable of revealing the compensatory structure that has been built up to protect him or herself. This path can activate underdeveloped emotional regions of the brain, always with the accompaniment of the therapist. However, as we have already seen, this process requires strong determination on the part of the patient, which makes it rare.
Problematic behaviours, fanatical extremes, crimes or addictions have been researched for more than a century and share a common origin: the multiple influences that each person has received from the beginning of his or her life. The emotional immaturity of these people, which affects us so much as a society, is gestated from birth and continues in later stages, because our emotional system is highly plastic and vulnerable.
Human beings fear what they do not know about themselves, and therefore miss out on the enormous benefits of a well-directed therapy.
*Dr. José Antonio Rodríguez Piedrabuena
Doctor