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FROM THE BOOK "MALIGNANT SELF
LOVE-NARCISSISM REVISITED"
BY DR. SAM VAKNIN
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/6297/index.html
http://members.tripod.com/~samvak/thebook.html
or
http://thebook.cjb.net
False Modesty
Frequently Asked Question #36
By : Dr. Sam Vaknin
Question:
I met many Narcissists who were modest - even
overly so. This seems to conflict with your
observations. How do you reconcile the two?
Answer:
The "modesty" displayed by Narcissists is false. It
is mostly and merely verbal. It is couched in
flourishing phrases, emphasized to the point of
absurdity, repeated unnecessarily - usually to the
point of causing gross inconvenience to the
listener. Its real aim and its subtext are exactly
the opposite of common modesty. It intends either
to aggrandize the Narcissist or to protect his
grandiosity from scrutiny and possible erosion.
Such modest outbursts precede inflated, grandiosity
laden statements made by the Narcissist and
pertaining to fields of human knowledge and
activity in which he is sorely lacking. Devoid of
systematic and methodical education, the Narcissist
tries to make do with pompous mannerisms, bombastic
announcements, and the unnecessary and wrong usage
of professional jargon.
He attempts to dazzle his surroundings with
apparent "brilliance". Beneath all this he is
shallow, devoid of real knowledge, improvising, and
fearful of being discovered as deceitful. The
Narcissist is a conjurer of verbosity, using
sleight of mouth rather than sleight of hand. He is
ever possessed of the inner sensation that he is
really a petty crook about to be exposed and
reviled by society.
This is a horrible feeling to endure and a taxing,
onerous way to live. The Narcissist has to protect
himself from his own intimation, internal ongoing
trial, guilt feeling and anxiety. One of the more
efficacious defense and protection mechanisms is
false modesty. The Narcissist will declare and
reveal himself as unfit, unworthy, lacking, not
trained and not (formally) schooled, not objective,
cognizant of his own shortcomings and vain. This
way, if (to him, when) exposed he could always say:
"But I told you so in advance, didn't I?". False
modesty is, thus, a hedge mechanism. The Narcissist
"insures his bets" by placing a side bet on his own
fallibility, weakness, deficiencies and proneness
to err.
Yet another function is to extract Narcissistic
supply from the listener. By contrasting a
belittling and reducing statement about himself
with a brilliant, dazzling display of ingenuity,
wit, intellect, knowledge, or beauty - the
Narcissist intends to secure an adoring, admiring,
approving, or applauding protestation from the
listener. The person to whom the falsely modest
statement is directed is expected to vehemently
deny the Narcissist's claims: "But, really, you
know much more than you pretend to know", or "Why
did you say that you are unable to do (this or
that)? Truly, you are very gifted at it!". The
Narcissist then will shrug his shoulders, smirk,
blush and move uncomfortably from side to side.
This was not his intention, he would assure his
correspondent. He did not mean to fish for
compliments (exactly what he did mean to do). He
really does not deserve the praise. But the aim
has, thus, been achieved: the Narcissistic supply
has been granted and avidly consumed. Despite the
Narcissist's protestations, he feels much better
now.
The Narcissist is a dilettante and a charlatan. He
glosses over complicated subjects and situations in
life. He sails through them powered by shallow
acquaintance with rapidly acquired verbal and
behavioral vocabularies (which he then proceeds to
forget). False modesty is only one of a series of
false behavior patterns. The Narcissist is a
pathological liar, either implicitly or explicitly.
His whole existence is a derivative of a False
Self, a deceitful invention and its reflections.
With false modesty he seeks to implicate others in
his little games, to co-opt them, to force them to
collaborate making ultimate use of social
conventions of conduct. The Narcissist, above all,
is a shrewd manipulator of human characters and
fault lines. He will never admit to this. In this
sense he is verily modest.
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