Why are the narcissists, so successful, so capable of manipulating people if they are so wounded? Because they only succeed when they engage someone who is also wounded and unaware of their own wounds. A narcissist can only prey on someone else's wounded confused ego. Narcissists have perfected a game that, to some degree, we all play. It only works if you accept the rules of the game. E.g., that you can be owned, that your value is contingent on the perception of others or even of your own. Overt narcissists target covert narcissists, those who are willing to feel like victims, who believe themselves morally superior in their suffering, who bemoan their 'devaluing' by the overt narcissist while simultaneously covertly building a sense of social value in their perception of themselves as victim, as the decent member of the narcissistic dyad. The 'victim' is the enabler and seeks power and control as surely as does the narcissist.
Thus narcissists are only dangerous in a society full of other people struggling with narcissistic wounds. Someone fully grounded in the truth that humans cannot be valued by objective terms (social positioning) cannot be played by a narcissist. Someone who truly, instinctively understands their own inherent value and who does not subscribe to the multitude of objectifying definitions - you are valuable if useful, if rich, if charming, if beautiful, if creative, etc. - this person has no fuel that the narcissist can access. There is no narcissistic supply.
Let me soften the message. First, I know that there are people with no choices. I know that there are women with no financial resources, trapped by controlling, violent men - women who have no desire to be a victim but who are trapped by circumstance. I know there are people who suffer the abuse of a narcissist because they simply have no options. Unfortunately, that is not most of us, no matter what we tell ourselves. Second, I know the above because I have been the covert narcissist pretending to the victim of a narcissist. As a therapist, I was badly played by a couple of severely narcissistic clients and as I worked through my professional obligations and consulted with colleagues, I had to admit that they had successfully extended our therapy relationship beyond its effectiveness, because they had played on my own narcissistic wound.
In one case, the client had worked his/her way through a significant number of therapists and was very critical of all of them, openly mocking them in session to me. The client had a commanding tone and was professionally successful. I felt a little intimidated. The client slowly became more critical and insulting, alternating with reminders that they didn't believe therapy worked but was trusting me to take a shot at it. My lack of confidence, my fear of being fired, my desire to be better than other therapists was a big part of why I put up with increasingly insulting behavior without openly addressing it. That might sound like I was a victim of a narcissist, but the truth is, the narcissist was able to manipulate me because my wounded ego was in the room. In other words, I was not being a good therapist. I wasn't truly honoring the best interests of the human being in front of me and treating the client like a human being. I was accepting petty infantile behavior in exchange for the implication that I might be succeeding where others had not. This was not healthy for the client and likely reinforced enabling behavior that the client had elicited from people for most of his/her life.
My wounded ego was the motivation. It was my job to recognize the pattern and display greater respect for my client, for myself as well as for the therapeutic relationship. That would have required facing the fear that I could be fired, facing the discomfort of confronting someone's poor behavior and the possibility that I might lack the skill to deal with it. I allowed social perception, a desire for professional status, a desire to avoid the questioning of my skill set to drive my behavior. I did it very quietly while telling myself that I was being a kind, gentle, patient therapist who was offering the safe attachment this person desperately needed.
This is classic codependency. I am taking your abuse to set myself up as the powerful/mature/moral person in the relationship, as your healer. That is some level of covert narcissism and the client succeeded in keeping me pinned in a relationship that was neither healthy for them nor for me. Ultimately, I worked through my confusion and fears with my own therapist and ended the relationship while providing referrals.
In the second case, the narcissism was extreme enough to verge on sociopathy. The client presented as extremely fragile, struggling desperately to heal a broken relationship, taking full ownership of the damage they had inflicted. Sessions were fraught with remorse. The client presented as terribly confused and badly traumatized (which is true by definition, no one is a narcissist because they had a good childhood). However, I don't believe the client ever intended to change his/her behavior as there was little to no change over a two-year period. However, during that period, I felt more and more pinned by assertions that I was the boss, the therapist who could fix this. Simultaneously a contrasting message started being inserted by the client. Suggestions for therapy directions from the client’s suffering partner, the client's partner's therapist, including what should be addressed in our sessions and how it should be addressed. When I suggested that I might not be the right therapist, there would be instant assurances that these were just ideas or curiosities. I was simultaneously sent the message that I was the only hope and also that nothing we were doing was working. The client demanded that I consult with the partner’s therapist, then spent an hour, angry and frustrated about what exactly I had said to them, what they had said in response, finally noting that the client did not feel that I was being honest about the content of the conversation.
Ultimately, again with learning, self-exploration, I became aware much earlier and began confronting these behaviors. This resulted in real anger, some insulting comments ultimately leading to a mutual agreement to end the relationship.
You can see the underlying mechanisms by which I was manipulated, and you can see that they only worked because I was not aware of the level of professional validation I was still seeking. Early in my career, I still lacked confidence, was still objectifying myself. I was seeking healing in an inappropriate place and a client with a deep narcissistic wound was able to manipulate sessions to gain an unhealthy level of control, to elicit reassurances about his/her behavior and lack of will to change when, in fact, he/she was being severely negligent, perhaps mildly abusive, certainly infantile in their relationship. Again, I did not confront the uncomfortable truths in the client's behavior, because at some level the client was alternating between offering validation of me as a professional and then tearing that validation down to make me feel a greater need to be reassured that I was doing a good job. Lost in the smoke screen were some unhealthy behaviors, that I was not addressing – both mine and the client’s
This is not the client's fault. It is my job to be aware of this dynamic. I'm thankful for these cases, because they taught me more about being a good therapist than any psychological technique could.
These experiences highlighted the fact that these clients could never have succeeded in controlling or manipulating me with alternating validation and insults if my desire to be professionally validated had not been inappropriately present in the room. To reiterate the machinery that makes this possible: I was telling myself, I was the therapist who was so kind, so understanding, so skilled that I would help these clients where no one else could. The truth was, I was afraid to confront their inappropriate behavior early enough. I did not act out of respect for them as human beings and demand that they respect themselves by owning their stubborn behavior or respect me or the therapeutic alliance by making use of it or moving on to a therapist who would be more effective with them as individuals. I accepted their deceit of self and others to hide my own self-deceit. My narcissism might have been very covert and very diplomatic, but it was there, and they succeeded in manipulating me because it was present.
If you will accept my assertion as based on hard-won experience, not meant to malign victims of narcissism, I state again: Narcissism only works because they have built highly tuned instincts to sniff out other people's narcissistic wounds, weaknesses, and needs. The people we who fit clinical narcissistic personality disorder are fundamentally the same as everybody else. They are just a lot more wounded and a lot more skilled at using others' wounds to cope with their own suffering. If we took all the toxic narcissists and put them on half the globe, healed everyone else of their narcissistic wounds and then reintroduced all the narcissists, they would quickly learn healthier coping skills because there would be no game left to play. The quickest way to make a narcissist move on is to do some tough and honest self-evaluation and identify what fear you are attempting to sooth by putting up with the behavior.