Her son was her Prince, and whether she actually told him that his birth had been prophesied hardly needs to be proved. Given Anna Wright’s convictions, Frank Lloyd Wright saw himself as predestined.
— MERYLE SECREST,
Frank Lloyd Wright: A Biography1
In many ways, the birth of the future narcissist is a second coming, the fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of the parents. Because they feel empty and inadequate and are often narcissistic themselves, the child is the chosen one, the answer to all of their prayers. In a family of several children, the special one(s) is picked for his handsomeness or extraordinary beauty, athletic prowess, charm and magnetism, intellectual brilliance, artistic talent, or some combination of these qualities. In some instances, the budding narcissist is an only child or first child, the focus of attention in the household. A common message communicated by the parents is: “Everything we do is for you—you are the center of our world. We are counting on you to save us.”
In normal psychological development, the infant begins life in a state of fusion and oneness with the mother. Gradually, by the age of two to three months, he slowly begins to differentiate himself from her. As time passes and he reaches toddlerhood, he asserts himself more and more as a distinct person—physically, mentally, and psychologically. The toddler is ambivalent about this separation. He struggles back and forth between the old dependency and his growing independence. With the help and love of a mother who always has his interests in mind, he slowly claims his individuality. About the time that the child takes his first steps, he is dizzy with a sense of omnipotence. He feels that there is nothing that he cannot do. There are struggles between his desires and wishes and the natural limits placed upon him by his parents. Along the way, mother and father teach their child that there are consequences to his behavior. The growing child gradually and at times painfully learns to deal with frustrations. The future narcissist never achieves separation from the mother (or father); nor does he acknowledge prohibitions on anything that he wants or chooses to do. Psychologically, he remains a small child, behaving as if only his wishes matter. Mother’s (or father’s) constant mantra of success and winning resonates in his ears. Slowly and surely, he is indoctrinated to believe that he is superior. The narcissist spends his life convincing others of his greatness.
These parents often choose a particular attribute in their child—beauty, intelligence, artistic talent—that demonstrates his extraordinary uniqueness. If he or she is beautiful or handsome, this quality becomes the focus of attention. A mother who feels inadequate about herself as a woman will fixate on her child’s attractiveness to compensate for her flaws. In a sense, this mother believes that her daughter’s beauty or son’s handsomeness will make both of them desirable and powerful. Even as a small child, Natalie attracted attention with her striking facial features. Her mother, Deirdre, was obsessed with her daughter’s beauty. Deirdre pursued a career for her daughter as a child model in magazines. Before finishing high school, Natalie signed a modeling contract with an international agency. In her travels back and forth, Natalie, now eighteen, met Ronald, a middle-aged man who was attracted to her physical beauty. Rather than encourage her daughter to finish her education or allow her time to grow up, Deirdre pressured Natalie to move in with Ronald. Within a short time, he began physically and emotionally abusing Natalie. Deirdre argued with her daughter to stay with him. She was much less concerned about Natalie’s happiness and safety than her loss of status as the mother of a daughter who was associated with an important man.
On a psychological level, Deirdre had colluded in selling her daughter into a life of bondage and abuse. As long as Natalie was married to him, Deirdre benefited indirectly from the narcissistic supplies her daughter was receiving: social status and financial comfort. Keeping this marriage intact, vicariously fulfilled Deirdre’s wish from childhood to be recognized as a person of privilege. In her mind it compensated for all the years of deprivation and shame she suffered as the child of poor working parents. Lacking the ambition, drive, or discipline to seek these accomplishments through her own efforts, Deirdre forced this pathological relationship on her child, despite the danger to Natalie’s emotional and physical well-being.
From the beginning, it was clear that Anna Lloyd Jones favored her son Frank over her five other children. His sisters and his father, William, knew that from mother’s point of view Frank “accepted his position as the be-all and end-all of her life with understandable satisfaction.”2 In his autobiography and stories about his childhood, Frank routinely distorted the biographical facts. He changed his date of birth from 1867 to 1869, as well as his place of birth.3 These modifications solidified the myth of his specialness. Although he protested and fought against Anna’s adoration, her worship of him created a self-image of overriding grandiosity, arrogance, and a marked insensitivity to the feelings of others.
Throughout his life, Wright felt strongly ambivalent about his mother. She was a constant and frequently unwanted monitor of his thoughts and actions. He turned to her as an ever-present ally in times of personal and professional difficulty. He knew she would always be there to champion him. At the same time, Anna was critical, temperamental, and controlling. Wright often felt the full weight of this maternal albatross pulling him down. During most of his life, he fought to pry himself from her sharp-taloned clutches.
Anna treated her son, whether he was a toddler or a middle-aged man, like her possession and creation. Early on, a tense psychological triangle developed and grew between mother, father, and son.4 Frank perpetuated this family schism by showing favoritism and identification with his mother and disconnection and alienation from his father. Anna reinforced this dysfunctional family pattern by choosing her son as a psychological intimate over her husband. Anna “now loved something more, something created out of her own fervor of love and desire, a means to realize her vision.”5 She adored Frank and demeaned her spouse, William. Frank relished his role as a gnawing source of divisiveness between his parents. These family dynamics had the effect of making his father a diminished figure in the family tableau.
Before Frank Lloyd Wright was born, his mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, had already decided that he would become a master builder, an architect. From earliest childhood, she filled him with Celtic tales of a mythological hero named Taliesin, who had supernatural powers. Wright chose to call two of his homes Taliesin. This “betrays the force of [his mother’s] early indoctrination since Taliesin is not only an actual historical personage but also a poet-savior, magician, spinner of riddles, seer and supernatural being.”6
Taliesin is viewed as a figure capable of godlike feats beyond human scope.7 Taliesin in Welsh means “radiant brow.” It is no accident that Frank Lloyd Wright chose this name for his personal residence. He and Taliesin are intimately associated with one another. Wright explained that he had named his home Taliesin because it rested on the brow of a hill, providing a commanding view of the countryside surrounding it. A more likely interpretation is Wright’s identification with Taliesin as the magical prophetic seer of bygone centuries.
Anna Lloyd’s retelling of these Welsh heroic tales created a new family history that counterposed the brutal truth. The Lloyd Joneses came from impoverished conditions and low social status. Frank Lloyd Wright fiercely concealed the actual site of his real birthplace. He remained unpleasantly defensive about the time and place of his birth. If questioned, he became churlish and unresponsive. He could not bear to reveal feelings of shame surrounding his humble beginnings. Rather than stating the truth as a source of strength and integrity in illustrating his life story, Wright, like all classic narcissists, obfuscated the facts of his childhood. He compensated for these humiliations through a continual re-creation and embroidering of his autobiography. This shiny, new history began at his mother’s knee as he listened to the ancient stories of her heroic Welsh ancestor, Taliesin.
The origins of the Taliesin character are fascinating. They begin with a village boy named Gwion Bach, who is commanded by the goddess Caridwen to stir a large cauldron.8 When Gwion licks off three drops of the boiling liquid that have fallen on his finger, the goddess overtakes him and eats him. She carries him for nine months in a form of pregnancy and delivers the baby. She plans to kill him but cannot because of his extraordinary beauty. She spares his life by wrapping him in a leather bag and casting him into the sea. The following morning the village boy who has been reborn is discovered by Elphin, the son of a wealthy man. Overwhelmed by his beauty, Elphin and his companions call out: “Behold a radiant brow! Taliesin be he called.”9
The constant reiteration and belief in these mythical origins and Anna’s unremitting adulation of her chosen son stand at the core of Wright’s development as a classic narcissistic personality. The Anna Lloyd Jones family proudly possessed the motto “Truth against the world.”10 Brendan Gill, an eloquent Wright biographer, modifies this motto for Frank to “Me Against the World with Mother Always Right Beside Me.”11
Alongside her indulgence and favoritism toward Frank, Anna insisted that drive and ambition superseded the understanding and caring for others. Frank learned from his mother that empathy was not an essential ingredient of being human. Anna always made excuses for her son, allowing him to develop an automatic way of overlooking his many negligences and cruelties. This lack of empathy and a personality trait of pure callousness is clearly evident, especially in his personal relationships with his wives, children, and mistresses. Biographer Meryle Secrest perceptively speaks of Wright’s “dark side: the ideal of himself as a misunderstood and persecuted genius encouraged him to see motes only in the eyes of others.”12 She continues: “It is safe to say that he was the most un-self-aware of men.”13
The focus for Wright was always on himself as a true golden child, intrinsically entitled to do whatever he wished, despite the traumatic and tragic cost to others for whom he was responsible, even his six children. In a letter written to his mother after he had abandoned his wife, Catherine, and their six children and fled to Europe with his mistress, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright complains that he is a victim of circumstances in a complex human melodrama. This is a typical ploy of the classic narcissist. He mercilessly injures others and then whines noisily that he is being persecuted. The golden narcissistic child, unlike most of us, cannot be tethered by the dictates of decency or morality or the thoughtful considerations that affect the psychological conditions of others.
Frank’s emotionally charged relationship with his mother continued throughout their lives. He was joined to her as a finger to a hand, a leg to the trunk of the body, a heart to the chest cavity. He basked in the praise she heaped upon him and was especially impressed with her insistent belief that he was an unparalled genius without human limits. All of Anna’s maniacal, dramatic energy contained a darker aspect. One of Wright’s biographers describes her as “a pious, cold-blooded disciplinarian who fought to keep Frank bound forever to her apron strings.”14
At Spring Green, Wisconsin, on a mountain overlooking the valley, Wright built his home, naming it Taliesin after the mythical Welsh seer and demigod with whom he so intimately identified. Here, he was lord of his domain. God help “the others” who dared to question how he conducted his life. This wish of the golden child, created and nurtured at his mother’s knee, would now take shape and be fulfilled through the design and building of his refuge to self. In Wright’s mind, the mystical Welsh hero and he were now one.
As Anna drew nearer to the end of her life, Wright was nowhere to be found. There is strong evidence that he was not present at her death and did not attend her funeral. After a lifetime of symbiosis with her son, she left this world without Frank beside her. Like a fish entangled in an intricately woven net, Frank was never able to extricate himself psychologically from the pathological bond with his omnipresent mother.
Mothers and fathers of narcissists are often narcissistic themselves. These parents have cold and ruthless relationships with their children, based on manipulation not love and respect. Although these parents are often attentive to the physical needs of their children, they fail to respond to them emotionally. A narcissistic parent is incapable of empathy, the ability to understand or care about how someone else is feeling. The focus of the narcissist is selfish and insular. A life dedicated exclusively to self cannot encompass a genuine love of one’s children. To become solid and whole, a child must be cherished for himself alone, for his precious individuality. When a child is loved in this way, he feels secure and grounded.
He is free to be himself no matter what the circumstances. He is capable of loving himself and others without guilt or fear. The care and understanding he received as a child is internalized, becoming a core part of him. The capacity to emotionally invest in someone else resonates through all of his future relationships.
The child who suffers the cold embrace is a puppet of the parent. In order to wear the family crown, he must relinquish the psychological essence of his true self, that part of him that thinks creatively and feels authentic. He must abandon the part of himself that is most alive. Mother (or father) is a master puppeteer who directs the child in his or her play. Responding to the parent’s commands, under the expert movement of her hands, the puppet becomes animate on stage. The child puppet is captive to the will of the puppet master. He is not the author of his own life. The budding narcissist is an able pupil who learns to act convincingly in various roles. The parent rewards the child for mastering the play. After years of rehearsal and imitation, the future narcissist no longer needs prompting. He has mastered every facet of his many parts. He now waits in the cool, dark wings, eager to launch his starring role.
In some instances, it is the narcissistic father who offers his child a nonrelationship, devoid of genuine feeling or empathy. Allen, a television network executive, married Elaine, his fourth wife. She had two teenage children from a previous marriage, whom Allen adopted to provide himself with a built-in family. Allen and Elaine were highly social and entertained frequently. On most weekends, they invited company to stay in the main house. Allen insisted that the children live in a separate residence on the property. He displayed a formal affection toward the children but didn’t really love them. He provided for their physical and educational needs. He expected them to have perfect grades, and when they didn’t measure up, he devalued them with sarcastic remarks and gratuitous attacks. The children served as narcissistic supplies that offered Allen an image of devoted father and family man.
Although Allen encouraged his stepchildren to succeed, he did everything possible to make sure that they could never compete with him. He discouraged them from seeking careers in his business—entertainment. He made it clear that he would not use his influence to help them professionally. While Allen spoke of his stepchildren to his business associates and social circle in glowing terms, extolling their academic and athletic achievements, he didn’t hold any real affection or concern for them. Elaine appeared to be devoted to the children, but she abdicated her role as mother in exchange for living in the reflected light of her husband’s success. Even with every material possession at their disposal and all educational roads open to them, these children were psychological orphans, absent a true mother and father.
The parent who lacks empathy may provide every earthly advantage and fail his child completely. This parental relationship is not based on any real closeness but on a cold embrace. For some of these parents, rearing children is like a business arrangement. The child is never understood or appreciated for his own sake. He cannot go to his mother or father for comfort or emotional support. He is valued or demeaned, depending on how brilliantly he performs. The child is controlled by the parent puppeteer, who expertly moves the strings to satisfy his own thirsty ego.
An essential part of the cold embrace involves the exploitation and manipulation of the child. Though the narcissistic parent may appear to be devoted, he thinks only of himself. He sacrifices his child on the altar of fulfilling his own needs. Laura, a successful professional woman, highly accomplished in her field, had insisted since early in life that she didn’t want children. She enjoyed her own company and those chosen few who graced her social circle, and did not want to be interrupted and intruded on by a needy, dependent infant. At age forty and with many romantic relationships behind her, Laura relished her freedom and never expected to marry. Quite by accident she attended a college reunion and reacquainted herself with an old boyfriend. After dating briefly, Laura and Arthur married. Within a year she unexpectedly became pregnant. Very reluctantly, Laura decided to have the baby. She returned to work six weeks after the birth of her daughter, Amy.
Although Laura spent very little time with Amy (she was cared for by a series of nannies), she had very specific ideas of how her child should be raised. As a little girl, Amy looked up to her mother, viewing her as some kind of superior being. Laura divorced Arthur when Amy was an infant. He disappeared and had no further influence in his daughter’s life. Although Laura spent most of her time at the office, she always left detailed instructions on how Amy should be handled. Amy was an obedient, compliant child. Deep inside, she was afraid of expressing any of her own true feelings, since this would mean that she was defying her mother. She feared that any confrontation with Laura would reap harsh disapproval, humiliation, and emotional neglect. She had already lost her father. She couldn’t afford to be abandoned again. Amy believed that she had to go along with Laura; if she complied, her mother wouldn’t leave her. A child who is manipulated in this way doesn’t feel real. She suffers from an intractable emptiness. She may be beautiful and bright and talented, but inside she feels like a fraud. All of her life Amy will suffer from the wound of maternal deprivation, which leaves a psychological hole at the heart’s core.
In the beginning, mother and infant are inseparable, an island unto themselves. In the first months, the tiny baby cannot distinguish himself from his mother; his entire world revolves around her. This is a natural and necessary psychological state called symbiosis. The unique fusion between mother and child exists to guarantee the baby’s physical and psychological survival. In the womb, the mother nurtures her baby through her own body. In the months after birth, the mother’s role is to provide a secure, safe, calm, and protected physical and emotional environment for her infant. The adequate mother is exquisitely tuned into her child. The special sounds and gestures that communicate his hunger, frustration, pain, joy, and distress are recognized and responded to by her in unique ways that satisfy his needs. When he cries with hunger or fear or loneliness, she is there to minister to him. There are expected lapses when mother cannot attune herself perfectly to her baby. These minor interruptions in the baby’s care teach him in small increments to temporarily postpone the immediate satiation of his needs. Through the weathering of these benign frustrations, the growing child comes to understand that mother is coming and, in the meantime, he can depend on himself. When the baby smiles, coos, and laughs, mother is watching and reinforcing his positive responses to himself and his world. She is the loving witness and caretaker. With consistency and time, these positive maternal patterns are internalized in the child’s psyche, nervous system, in all his cells.
The course of the baby’s psychological birth begins in the first cycle of separation from the mother around the age of two to three months. This process is slow and subtle. The baby starts to differentiate between himself and his mother, to make the distinction between what is “me” and what is “not me.” His world expands beyond her body. When mother is not physically present, he is able to evoke her image in his mind and feel safe and comfortable. The capacity to internalize the mother takes place over time and is not complete until age three or four. The adequate mother is capable of separating her needs from those of her baby. She makes every effort not to place her wishes and desires first. As the child progresses, he learns to actually and psychologically walk farther and farther from her as he secures an intact separate self. Inside of him reside the imprints of all of his maternal nurturing—the capacity to calm himself, to feel whole, to control his moods, to be comfortable alone, to harbor a feeling of inner strength. He is becoming a solid self, a person in his own right.
The mother (or father) of the future narcissist has another agenda. She (or he) experiences her child as part of herself. The symbiosis that began at birth is never severed. Maintaining this unbroken union serves the narcissistic needs of the parent. As a result, the child is profoundly injured psychologically. When the mother pursues her own egotistical needs for extraordinary attention, recognition, and praise, she impairs her child’s growth. In a contradictory fashion, the child is viewed as her saving grace, more vital to her than spouse, relatives, or friends. The mother’s unconscious belief is that through him she will achieve the special status to which she is entitled. With the maintenance of this unbroken union, she redefines her sense of personal power while conjointly sharing in her child’s glory and perfection.
This parent is often seductive with his child. In some instances, the natural erotic tensions between parent and child are accentuated. The mother of a narcissist is often more attached to her son than to her husband. She idolizes the son and turns to him for a level of closeness that she cannot find in her spouse. Psychologically, the son becomes a marital partner who will fulfill her longings for intimacy and emotional gratification. Although no actual incestuous acts have occurred, the exaggerated erotic tie between them disrupts the child’s growing personality. The seductive quality of this union diffuses the child’s sexual identity. The narcissistic man cannot love women; he both hates and fears them. In his relationships he chooses women who are emotionally dependent on him and whom he can completely control. He interacts with women in a callous and demeaning way. The narcissist, as child and adult, hides a dark hatred for his exploitive mother. He despises the mother who tied him to her with seductive adoration and secret manipulations. He is trapped. Like a small animal caught in the lethal grip of a predator, he cannot extricate himself from mother’s deadly embrace. This pathological fusion can also occur between father and daughter.
Sheila, the CEO of her own software company, thought of her father, Alex, as her only parent. Alex was his daughter’s source of inspiration. He projected an image of self-confidence, absolute control, and personal power. She was awed by his extraordinary drive and irresistible charm. Deep down she idolized her father and hated her mother, Barbara. She had always been jealous of her mother’s intimate role with her father. As a child, Sheila threw tantrums designed to keep them apart. She insisted on sleeping in their bedroom. Barbara suffered from a variety of psychosomatic illnesses, many of them perpetuated by the extreme stress of Alex’s chronic sexual betrayals. Sheila viewed her mother as sickly, dependent, and weak; she despised her for these traits. Much of this hatred was fueled by her father’s disrespectful and demeaning treatment of Barbara.
Although Alex was often away on business, when father and daughter were together, he focused an extraordinary amount of personal attention on her. Sheila believed that he preferred her to his wife. Alex reinforced the erotic feelings between himself and his daughter. He took her to grown-up places, like horse races and gaming establishments, when she was very young. Sometimes Sheila traveled on business with her dad. She often imagined that her mother would permanently disappear and leave Daddy all to herself. Sheila viewed her father as her hero, even her mate. She was incapable of acknowledging who he truly was—a ruthless, manipulative narcissist.
Although Sheila appeared to be professionally successful, her personal life with men was a disaster. She chose dependent men who offered the adoration she expected. She quickly grew tired of each one, disposing of them without ceremony. Sheila had a lifelong pattern of initiating adulterous relationships, repeating her father’s destructive patterns with women. Sheila reveled in the thrill of taking another woman’s man. She felt triumphant each time a married man came under her spell. These affairs were intensely exciting to Sheila. In them, she fulfilled her unconscious childhood wish of taking the wonderful Daddy away from the weak bad mother. Sheila spent her life playing the role of the “other woman.” In childhood, Sheila felt sought after by a seductive father. Alex had placed her above his wife. He had offered her sexual closeness, which ended in disillusionment and frustration from which Sheila could not free herself. In the end, she played a ravenous man-hunter, trapped by her father’s unfulfilled erotic promise.
When we make eye contact with babies, we experience them directly in a way that is both startling and refreshing. We look into their eyes and feel known on an intimate level. Babies disarm us with their realness. Psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott coined the term “True Self”: “Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real.”15 Babies don’t pretend. They are neither perpetuating nor protecting an image. They experience life fully in the present moment. A healthy, happy baby is naturally spontaneous. He laughs, cries, verbalizes, gurgles, gestures in response to his own body and mind and to the world around him. The adequate mother appreciates her baby’s unique responses. She makes loving sounds and gestures in return. She communicates the message “I know and love you for yourself.” The empathic mother doesn’t impose herself on her child or force him to react in certain ways that aren’t his own. She simply loves her baby for his unique self.
If the earth trembles in the presence of the narcissist, this isn’t because of his authenticity or force of character. Rather, these are the stirrings of the grandiose False Self. Like the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, the rumblings of the narcissist can be heard throughout the kingdom. The narcissist at the core is a False Self obsessed with ego and image. The origins of the False Self begin with a mother (or father) who is unable to recognize and accept her child’s individuality. Winnicott describes how the mother creates a False Self in her child: “The mother who is not good enough…repeatedly fails to meet the infant gesture [the infant’s unique spontaneity]; instead she substitutes her own gesture which is to be given sense by the compliance of the infant. This compliance…is the earliest stage of the False Self, and belongs to the mother’s inability to sense her infant’s needs.”16 Rather than value her child as a separate, precious person, the inadequate mother insists that he echo her responses rather than his own. The False Self of the narcissist grows insidiously. As a result, he is incapable of expressing genuine emotions, particularly those that demonstrate the slightest hint of warmth or vulnerability. In a vital sense, a narcissist is not truly human. He is incapable of deep emotions—sorrow, joy, tenderness, love, remorse. A high-level narcissist is a supreme actor who fakes emotion brilliantly. He fools most people. Each move is carefully studied and choreographed to elicit positive reactions from others. He may even believe what he is feeling at the time. However, these feelings are fleeting and pass away as quickly as clouds rolling by.
Being real begins with a sensorimotor aliveness in the body. Babies and young children are present in every way. Their sounds and movements flow naturally. The narcissist is false at all times. Even when he is “sincere,” he is false. He is practiced, a person playing a part. The narcissistic personality is the central figure in his own drama. The role that he writes for himself is brilliant and masterful but disingenuous. He struts across the stage, savoring each line. Many narcissists are handsome or beautiful. Some appear to have perfect bodies or faces (often maintained by multiple plastic surgeries). On closer glance, their bodies are hard and rigid, their faces unwrinkled and immobile. We watch them at a distance with a certain awe, admiring their flawlessness. Unmovable and unmoved, they are living mannequins. Their bodies stopped feeling long ago; their faces, taut and shining, are beautiful and handsome but blank, vapid, and emotionless.
From her earliest memory, Adela revered her mother. She was a physically striking woman who wore the loveliest clothes and had a refined sense of style. She ran her home with meticulous efficiency. When her two children came along, Eileen promised herself that she would raise them as flawlessly as she had always conducted her life. Her first child, Adela, showed early talent for singing and dancing. She was taken to the finest teachers, and soon was doing commercials and performing on the stage. Eileen presided over her daughter’s career every step of the way. When Adela became a teenager and went through a physically awkward stage, Eileen insisted that she have plastic surgery on her nose to make it smaller and more aesthetically pleasing. Adela felt very conflicted by her mother’s decision to change her face. If she kept her original nose, she would displease mother and possibly lose her love; if she had it surgically changed, she would sacrifice a vital part of her identity. In the end, Adela capitulated and had her nose surgically reshaped. Eileen, a narcissistic personality, was fulfilling her dream of redoing her child into her own image and likeness. The fact that her mother’s act of selfishness was immensely traumatic to Adela was overridden by her desperate need to present the world with a beautiful and talented daughter. The narcissistic mother attempts to extract from her child what she needs to feel special. She plunders her child’s soul.
Many of us who are not narcissistic personalities have internalized some of the qualities of a False Self that seeks to please and charm others to get what we want. For the purpose of psychological survival, we learn to adjust our behavior to parental expectations. When the False Self takes over the personality, the real person inside is suffocated by all the “shoulds” and “should nots” imposed by the parents. As babies, we are raw and spontaneous. This is followed by a period of learning how to adapt to the world so that we will be accepted and cared for by others. In many individuals, the False Self overshadows the genuine personality. When this happens, we live in an illusion, donning a series of elaborate masks throughout life. When the empty masquerade becomes too painful to bear, some of us remove our masks, go deep inside, revealing to ourselves and others who we are and always have been. The cycle is complete: from real to false to real.
There are wide variations among people with regard to being true to themselves. The narcissist resides within a self that is not only false but highly deluded. The self-assurance of his omnipotence and his sheer personal force provide a fertile environment for convincing others of his superiority. For the narcissist and his sacred circle, he has transcended the human sphere to become a god.
The narcissist is a magician, a master of the art of deception. His confidence and charm draw others into his delusional world. A trickster in the shadows, he weaves intricate plots of betrayal and treachery that ensure victory. He appears to be invincible. But this is an illusion. Beneath the perfect mask of grandiosity and self-entitlement lies a tormented soul—empty, enraged, despairing, paranoid.