In Love with an Image
Sam Vaknin author of "Malignant Self-love"
In Love with an Image
About
This site is a map of my psyche as it pertains to Narcissism.
Why would anyone build such a site? And if they did, what could persuade them to put it online?
Claiming Narcissism is about as popular as admitting that you you are a Trojan Horse. There are a few patterns that I have struggled with for years. Not knowing that they had a common thread running through them, I was at a loss as to figure out how to understand them, much less how to heal them.
When I came upon Sam Vaknin's book, Malignant Self Love, it fascinated me to learn that many of these pieces of me have a common home, a common undercurrent. Sam never really talks about how to heal from this, as a matter of fact he makes it very clear that not a lot can be done to change such a train wreck. But it is soothing to me to finally understand my own patterns, and to look for ways to betray those patterns.
When I first was reading Sam's book, I started voraciously underlining things that matched patterns I have noticed in myself. There was this craving in me to understand it all, to put all the pieces together so they would make sense. Soon there were so many underlinings that I started scribbling in a notebook, paraphrasing each underlined snippet. One "chapter" in my notebook held all the parts where I hold unreasonable expectations. Another "chapter" reflected they ways that I likely got hurt as a kid. Each note I jotted down included a page number from Malignant Self Love. As the pages filled up, the data eventually begged to be keyword cross-referenced, which led me to build this site.
My therapist and my girlfriend both tell me I don't have a terribly bad case of Narcissism. Yes, I do have the traits that I have named. But not all the time, and in some cases not full strength.
I hope you enjoy this site.
-- Oregon Jack