Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder (CNPD)

This material was originally posted two years ago on Reddit at this location, where it was substantially revised 03-25-2021. 

Compensatory narcissism is by far the most common type of NPD (see ScienceDaily and Kowalchyk, Palmieri, et al below, which fully supports my direct experience with NPD and AsPD pts for almost two decades). So much so that it seems normal to many (most) people in any authoritarian, dominance-and-submission-oriented sub-cult-ure.

And to anyone familiar with the developmental histories of as many of them as I have become since 2005, it's way obvious to me that CNPD is a collection of defense mechanisms that can become conditioned, instructed, socialized and normalized into the brain's default mode network to attempt to deal with having been raised by an NPD parent (or principal caretaker) who

a) physically neglects,

b) emotionally abandons, and/or

c) invalidates the reality of a child,

d) usually in the first five years of life, and

e) models the pseudo-self-empowerments of "righteous rectitude."

Otto Kernberg discussed all this in his seminal book, Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism all the way back in 1975.

I have seen it in females, as well as males. Though females tend to display CNPD in a polarized "borderline organization" (a.k.a. "splitting," see not-moses's reply to the OP on this Reddit thread) along with stress-induced decompensation to temporary Learned Helplessness & Victim Identity far more often and noticeably than males with CNPD. Females with CNPD can be expected to flip back and forth from assertive "fight" to "flight," "freeze" or (very occasionally) submissive "fawn." Most males with CNPD tend to "fight" (intimidation is waaaay typical), moving only to very covert "flight" if they cannot win (be dominant).

Most males and some females with CNPD tend toward being -- not are far from always -- physically large, pushy and noisy, btw. Bullying -- verbal as well as physical -- is very common in this PD. Rage IS a Stage... that marks the narcissistic frustration of the "terrible twos," and the person with CNPD seems stuck in it. They are almost always, however, "right about everything" and sure that everyone would understand that if they would just "shut up" and listen to them. Which is almost always exactly what one or both of their parents did NOT do, making them frightened, frustrated, insecure, rageful and in dire need of some way to suppress, repress or even dissociate the symptoms of their complex post-traumatic stress disorder however they can.

Hurt people hurt other people.

A suggestion vis confirming your suspicion: If you run into someone who acts that way, gently find out what their parents were like. In my experience, one or both parents were the same way, though one may have been a doormat the current CNPD person wants no part of being.

Resources & References

New York University: Narcissism driven by insecurity, not grandiose sense of self, in Science Daily, March 25, 2021.

Mary Kowalchyk, Helena Palmieri, Elena Conte, Pascal Wallisch: Narcissism through the lens of performative self-elevation, in Personality and Individual Differences, Vol. 177, July 2021 (March 2021 online). DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2021.110780

Nina Brown's Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up's Guide to Getting Over Narcissistic Parents

Eleanor Payson's The Wizard of Oz and other Narcissists: Coping with the One-Way Relationship in Work, Love, and Family

Lindsay Gibson's Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

Elan Golomb's Trapped in the Mirror: Adult Children of Narcissists in the Struggle for Self

Susan Forward's Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life (a bit long in tooth now, but still useful) and Emotional Blackmail: When the People in Your Life Use Fear, Obligation, and Guilt to Manipulate You

Otto Kernberg's Borderline Conditions and Pathological Narcissism

Sharon Ekleberry"s Integrated Treatment for Co-Occurring Disorders: Personality Disorders and Addiction

Patricia Evans's Controlling People

George Simon's In Sheep's Clothing: Understanding and Dealing with Manipulative People

Patrick Carnes's The Betrayal Bond: Breaking Free of Exploitive Relationships

Sam Vaknin's (excruciating but seminal) Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited

Theodore Millon & Seth Grossman's (technical but deeply illuminating) Overcoming Resistant Personality Disorders

John Clarkin & Mark Lenzenweger's Major Theories of Personality Disorder

Aaron Beck & Arthur Freeman's Cognitive Theory of Personality Disorders

"Never Grew Up" -- Developmental Stunting & Elements of Recovery Therefrom

I stumbled into Reddit's r/nevergrewup a few days ago. I fit right in with the crowd there (in one of my dissociative alters, at least) for decades. As appears to be the case with most of the participants on that sub, it's a fascinating combination of what the DSMs have called Avoidant Personality Disorder, Depressive PD and Dependent PD since the 1980s.

And thus a collection of cognitive and behavioral compensations for having been so overwhelmed by some collection of having been neglected, ignored, emotionally and/or functionally abandoned, discounted, disclaimed, and rejected, as well as invalidated, confused, betrayed, insulted, criticized, judged, blamed, shamed, ridiculed, embarrassed, humiliated, denigrated, derogated, scorned, set up to screw up, victimized, demonized, persecuted, picked on, vilified, dumped on, bullied, gaslit..., scapegoated..., emotionally blackmailed, defiled and/or otherwise abused by others upon whom they depended for survival in middle or later childhood that the ego has elected to more or less permanently regress to an earlier period of time that is seen as more pleasant and acceptable.

At a price: Elements of Piaget's cognitive, Erikson's psychosocial and Kohlberg's moral development may be so semi-consciously suppressed, unconsciously regressed, wholly dissociated or just never achieved in the first place that the person simply cannot function in a few or even many areas of adult or even adolescent life... because he or she simply doesn't have the skills to do so.

While I never met the criteria for either Avoidant or Depressive PDs, I did spend much of the 1990s stuck in various Dependent PD traits, for sure. The following includes most of how I was able to dig my way out of having been conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized to a lingering state of childlike Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity by my dysfunctional, adoptive parents and their later surrogates:

Dis-I-dentifying with Learned Helplessness & the Victim I-dentity (and not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there),

Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing and pretty much everything else,

Dissociation, Memory Retrieval, "Resociation" & Reprocessing,

Appropriate & Effective "Narrative Therapy" vs. Potentially Counterproductive, Unguided Journaling,

Re-Development, and the rest of...

A 21st Century Recovery Program for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma... because IME there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

Resources & References

NXIVM was Not the First Human Potential Cult to Take Off in the Media Culture. Nor was it the Second, or even the Third. And it Won't be the Last. There's a Real Good Reason.

Vice's "Why So Many Celebrities Joined NXIVM, According to Cult Experts" is one of the most illuminating of the many articles available online. And it does get close to The Real Good Reason. But fails to go all the way.

A curious (but suspicious) dabbler in the Church of Scientology, Jose Silva's Mind Control seminars and the Eric Morris Acting School, and far more than a dabbler in Werner Erhard's est, Richard Corriere's Center for Feeling Therapy, and the Nathaniel Branden Institute (not truly a cult so far as I could tell at that time), I spent much of 1973 to 1980 getting a feel for not only the Pyramid Cult-ure of the Human Potential Movement Gone Awry, but the easily definable personality drawn to it.

And suffice it to say that personality is pretty much this:

Histrionic,

Compensatory Narcissistic, and

Addiction-prone.

Things are no different among the HPM cult aficionados in Seattle, Cali's Santa Clara "Silicon" Valley and the 101 Corridor, Manhattan, Miami, or DC (yes; DC). Anyone who knows the look, the lingo and the moves can spot them all over Media City Burbank, Studio City, Hollywood and Beverly Hills. They're fame-power-&-fortune-obsessed YUPpies looking for network connections and the promise (a.k.a. the bait) of moving beyond the Consensus Trance.

They'd do a lot better to read the book first.

NXIVM is still around -- though considerably disgraced -- along I-5 and Cali 134. What the Vice article failed to get into is just how "big" the deal was there until the trial. All one had to do was hang out at any Starbucks on Burbank or Lankershim Boulevard and listen carefully. NBC, ABC, CBS, Disney, the WB, Universal, blah, blah and further blah. Or drive down to Sony and hit a 'Bucks on Venice or Culver Boulevard near Overland.

Not to worry, however. If there's anything one can count on in "Greater Hollywood," there will be a Next Big Thing.

If sufficiently -- or obsessively -- intrigued, you're welcome to browse through A Free online BOOK on How Cults Work.

Why we Fail to Grow Up: The Legacy of Child Abuse & It’s Upshots

I was introduced to r/nevergrewup today. Needless to say, I immediately found that sub fascinating. A Redditor there wrote, "When I see my adult body even though I know I am a mentally a child, I still will say, 'I wish I was a child.' I am not sure why really."

So I launched into the following...

IME, Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity is the state the untreated, traumatized, "inner" child (or children) live in here... and "split off" Compensatory Narcissism is the state the untreated, traumatized, "inner" child (or children) live in there.

See the second of the Three Definitions of “Splitting” in not-moses’s reply to the OP on that Reddit thread. Because I think that's the version of "splitting" to which most of us became conditioned, in-doctrine-ated, instructed, imprinted, socialized, habituated, and normalized in our misspent youth. And the version that produces the "not-okay inner children" first discussed by Eric Berne as he developed his "Transactional Theory" back in the 1950s... later much -- and very usefully -- "amplified" by Richard Schwartz in his Internal Family Systems Model.

Once I understood all that stuff I picked up along the path in almost ten years of postgraduate school in psychopathology and the remediation thereof, I was able to apply Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing (and for pretty much everything else) to keep an eye on my own IFSM, it's increasingly occasional regressions into LH & tVI and, its employment of CN to jump out of it.

Over time, I learned to spot the regressions and "head them off at the pass" before the other kids on my big yellow (mental) school bus started to jump back on the Karpman Drama Triangle with them and either try to "rescue" or "persecute" them.

Mindfulness really is the bomb, but we don't need all that woo-woo window dressing that usually distorts the useful product. For me, at least, this guy was a huge help on that.

If interested, see also:

Dis-I-dentifying with Learned Helplessness & the Victim I-dentity (and not-moses's answers to a replier's questions there),

Appropriate & Effective "Narrative Therapy" vs. Potentially Counterproductive, Unguided Journaling,

Re-Development, and the rest of...

A 21st Century Program of Recovery for Someone with Untreated Childhood Trauma.

Because there's a LOT one can do without spending a fortune on psychotherapy, as well as to speed up the process if one is in therapy or at least at the fourth of the five stages of therapeutic recovery.

And thanks for triggering me to connect all those dots this way... as benefits may accrue for others as a direct result.