Narcissistic Personality - Projective Identification

Projective Identification

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Even if you hate to fight, if you have any self-respect you're bound to feel compelled to stick up for yourself now and then. For, people who actually have to do it know that docile submission ain't the virtue it's cracked up to be. They see it for what it is.

It's the worst thing that can happen to you. That's absolute power over you. Possession of you. That's bending over for it. It makes the victim hate himself. The only time it's conscionable is if you are a child, who really has no choice. Otherwise, you need to have a backbone.

So, now and then, you're bound to object to the degrading way the narcissist treats you. He or she will throw a fit at you for objecting, and there will be an argument.

Or, you're bound to say or do something that fails to reflect the narcissist's grandiose specialness and thus "slight" him or her. To do this, just relate to the narcissist as his or her equal; just behave as though you deserve consideration in some matter. Then look out. Uproar.

But even if you don't do these naughty things there are arguments, aren't there? Because a narcissist just has to take a crap on someone every so often to feel better to about him- or her-self.

He knows just how to pick a fight. And when he wants to pick a fight, there's no avoiding it, because he is a spoiled-rotten child, so he will keep at it until he gets what he wants. He will work you into some kind of corner, demand something impossible of you there, and then throw a fit when you can't do it.

The narcissist won't even let you walk away. She will follow you telling you how intolerable you are just for being the way you are, saying that she doesn't have to put up with that. If even that doesn't get a rise out of you, when she has you in a corner, she'll assault you, forcing you down on your back and climbing on top of you, saying, "I'm stronger than you."

During the argument, the narcissist throws up a wall of flak to keep anything you say from getting through. Sheer volume is the chief tactic, to drown you out so you give up trying to speak through the blast of that foghorn. Another technique is to seize upon some word near the beginning of your sentence and butt in on you to blast off with it on a tangent. Yet another technique of communication blocking is to call things what they ain't. Whatever.

Since you are trying to communicate, you try to calm him or her so that you can reason with them. Why do you never succeed? Because that is precisely what the narcissist doesn't want. So, forget it.

Face it: he or she is perfectly rational when they want to be, so they are being irrational now on purpose. To block communication.

For, the narcissist can't win any reasonable discussion, and a narcissist must always win. They haven't a leg to stand on, and they know it. Sense, reason, and decency are all on your side. So, the only way the narcissist can win is by shutting you up. Bullying.

During this fit, the raging narcissist projects his or her anger off onto you and accuses you of being the one who is "flying into one of your rages." How do I know? Because your narcissist is just a narcissist, and that's what narcissists do.

When narcissists pull this stunt, they aren't using you only as a dumping ground for their toxic emotions: they are also doing their best to make you act out their fantasy that you are the raging maniac here. In other words, they are trying to enrage you. Get it?

That trick is called "projective identification."

Projective identification (DSM-IV, pg. 756). The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors by falsely attributing to another his or her own unacceptable feelings, impulses, or thoughts. Unlike simple projection, the individual does not fully disavow what is projected. Instead, the individual remains aware of his or her own affects or impulses but misattributes them as justifiable reactions to the other person. Not infrequently, the individual induces the very feelings in others that were first mistakenly believed to be there, making it difficult to clarify who did what to whom first.

Indeed, when you're trying to pacify a raging maniac, and she heaps insult on injury by mocking you with the accusation that you are the one "who got mad," the one who's "flying into one of your rages," normal people do get angry.

There'd be something wrong with you if you didn't. In fact, even therapists, who are trained to avoid this pitfall, can hardly help getting angry when narcissists pull this stunt on them.

It is the result of an interplay between two other psychological ploys narcissists use.

One ploy is identifying with their reflected image as their self. The fancy name for this mental trick is "introjection." Introjection literally means "throwing inward," which is the opposite of projection, "throwing outward." Introjection is defined as relating to something that comes from the outside as though coming from the inside.

That's what Narcissus is doing here in relating to his reflected image as though it's his inner self.

We have an inner life in which we are constantly in touch with ourselves. We have no fear of losing contact with ourselves, so when we need to focus on other things or people, we can. But Narcissus has access to his self only through mirrors.

Mirrors that are sometimes naughty, because they want to express themselves instead of reflect him. Mirrors that sometimes want to pay attention to someone other than him. Mirrors that sometimes reflect a less than grandiose image of him. So, his whole life is about controlling those mirrors, in a desperate struggle to make sure nothing happens to his image/self.

When a person with introjections projects, their introjections determine the projections, distorting them. In addition, the projector pressures the victim to behave in a way that reflects his fantasy. That's projective identification.

INTROJECTION + PROJECTION => PROJECTIVE IDENTIFICATION

In other words, the narcissist pressures you to play along with his game of Pretend. He projects the anger, fear, envy, and character flaws inside him onto you and works to make you display them. For example, if he is stupid, he will project his stupidity off onto you AND make you feel stupid so that you act out his fantasy of the stupidity being in you rather than him.

In any case, he's dumping his pain into you, using you as a toxic waste disposal site. He also projects an image of himself as a God (compared to you) on you and works to make you reflect it in relating to him. In this he's using you as a mirror.

This explains most of a narcissist's weird behavior. He is just trying to make you act that way. To do that, he generally uses the same technique a spoiled brat does: he simply switches into Obnoxious Mode the moment you aren't acting that way.

Why manipulate you instead of just come right out and tell you how he wants you to act? Because then he'd have to suffer awareness of the crazy, imbecile thing he's doing. He won't do that. He refuses to know he's playing Pretend. If any awareness of that starts to surface to consciousness on him, he instantly represses it.

But that doesn't stop him from doing whatever it takes to make you act the way he wants so that your behavior reflects a superman in him.

It is vital to keep this in mind: this is what's going on in all your interactions with a narcissist.

© 2004 – 2008, Kathleen Krajco — all rights reserved worldwide.
The URL of this page is: http://www.narcissism.operationdoubles.com/projective_identification.htm.
It was last updated on 3/7/2008.
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