Narcissistic Personality Disorder - Self Love and Self Destruction

Question:

If narcissists love themselves and are so self-centered, why do they have all these self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors? Isn't it a contradiction?

Answer:

There are two important differences between healthy self-love and malignant narcissism:

(a) in the ability to tell reality from fantasy, and (b) in the ability to empathise and, indeed, to fully and maturely love others. As we said, the narcissist possesses no self-love. It is because he has very little True Self to love. Instead, a monstrous, malignant construct – the False Self – encroaches upon his True Self and devours it.


... Moreover, our experience of what it is like to be human – our very humanness – depends largely on our self-knowledge and on our experience of our selves. In other words: only through being himself and through experiencing his self – can a human being fully appreciate the humanness of others.

By: Dr. Sam Vaknin