Annals of Behavioural Science

Commentary

Let me quickly develop this line of thought... a short one extrapolated from Freud's 1938 essay, 'Splitting of The Ego in The Process of Defence'.

Narcissism can hide in unexpected places...not always the rude and crude, old, bold, and cold type....but in the 'split disorders' like in the behaviour of 'pleasers' and 'appeasers' who hide their 'passive aggression' behind the mask of a friendly, smiling face.

If we contemplate the 'birth of an approval-seeking disorder or neurosis', it is usually in the context of a child reacting to and defensively compensating against a righteous-hottempered- narcissistic type father or mother (I would say more often the father in that the father has traditionally been the main family disciplinarian although that may be changing).

The child learns how to please and/or appease the hottempered parent for purposes of avoiding punishment and/or avoiding conflict. However, two other things happen in 'the splitting of the ego in the process of defence' (Freud, Klein, Fairbairn, Object Relations, Transactional Analysis).

One, the child 'introjects' (internalizes) the hot-tempered, righteous-narcissistic parent (the rejecting superego, objectego, or top dog ego depending on your choice of labels), and in addition, a second child undergo or alter-ego 'splits off' from the 'pleasing and/or appeasing undergo'.... and, in effect, becomes the 'righteous-narcissistic undergo' ready to do battle with the rejecting top dog ego.

This aggression can take at least three different subdirections, each of which we will give a 'sub-ego-state' name to: 1. the 'paranoid-confrontational undergo'; 2. the 'paranoidschizoid undergo' and/or 3. 'the passive-aggressive undergo'.

Thus, we have three different ego-states interacting with each other inter-psychically which I will name 'The Bermuda Triangle' (dominance-submission-rebellion; or 'alpha-omegabeta'): 1. the righteous-rejecting-narcissistic top dog; 2. the pleasing-appeasing undergo; and 3. the righteous-rejectingnarcissistic undergo.

To this we can add a fourth (4) the nurturing-encouraging top dog ego that attempts to try to 'keep peace and harmony and do 'therapy' in the personality while the other three ego states either align 1 or 2 often 'doing battle' against the other.

To repeat, within the confines of the righteous-narcissisticrejecting undergo, there are three subtypes: 1. paranoidconfrontational; 2. paranoid-schizoid'; and 3. passiveaggressive.

Within this inter-psychic context, a 'sneaky narcissist' is born and both an underdog dualism and an underdog dialecticism can usually be seen to evolve or 'de-evolve' where compromise-formations can be made between the pleasing undergo and the narcissistic undergo (in the form of one of the three sub-types mentioned above confrontational, schizoid, and/or passive aggression). In thus fashion, the two undergo states present a 'united, ambivalent' position against the narcissistic top dog: i.e., I will tell you what you want to hear, and then do or believe what I want which is not what you are 'feeding' me (or 'taking away' from me). Or, alternatively, a dominant-submissive alignment between the narcissistic superego and the pleasing undergo can present itself in opposition to the rebellious, narcissistic undergo.

Then this inter-psychic conflict drama becomes projected extra-psychically into the external world in relation to a perceived external top dog or underdog (super or undergo; object or subject ego) object.

Thus, under the oppression of top dog external parental righteous-narcissism, a 'sneaky, split up, mixed up, narcissist' is born....and evolves and/or de-evolves.