One of the behaviours that is highly characteristic of pathological narcissism is the making of unjust accusations.
Letâs suppose that, out of the blue, a narcissist has unjustly accused you of deliberately doing something bad, X. (Iâve stipulated âout of the blueâ, because the situation is slightly more complicated if the narcissist has made such an accusation in response to something that youâve said. Nevertheless, itâs relatively straightforward to extrapolate from the âout of the blueâ case to the responsive/reactive case.)
Probably, there will be an important sense in which this unjust accusation constitutes a pathological lie. However, the main point I want to make is this: there will always be a more useful sense in which such an accusation is also an inadvertent telling of the truth (albeit an encrypted telling of the truth).
When an unjust accusation is narcissistically motivated (and out-of-the-blue), it is always either an instance of what Dr Malkin calls âemotional hot potatoâ, or an instance of what might be called âemotional bleedâ (something like a mood-congruent delusion).
In the former case (emotional hot potato), the narcissist has unjustly accused you of deliberately doing something bad, X, because he is in fact guilty of deliberately doing X (or some other blameworthy thing).
One of the typical features of pathological narcissism is a pathological desperation to avoid feeling shame, and to avoid accepting that one is flawed or that one has done something wrong. Moreover, one of the dysfunctional narcissistic ways of avoiding such thoughts and feelings is to blame-shift, or to accuse others of wrongdoings. In part, narcissists do this to distract or deflect from their own feelings of shame. However, they also do it in the service of a strange, dysfunctional way of processing the aversive emotions that theyâre so desperate to avoid, which is try to make others feel those very same aversive emotions (in this case, shame). Thus, the narcissist might have accused you of deliberately doing the relevant bad thing, X, because he has himself deliberately done X or some other blameworthy thing. In this way, his unjust accusation tells you something true, namely that he might have deliberately done X or some other blameworthy thing.
In the latter case (emotional bleed), the narcissist has made the unjust accusation because he is already experiencing an aversive emotion. Typically, pathological narcissists struggle to differentiate between reality and the contents of their own thoughts and feelings, especially when theyâre under stress or feeling a strong emotion. (This is closely related to their impairment of empathy, i.e. to their difficulty with taking the perspectives of others, and acting with consideration for the thoughts and feelings of others.) It seems as though pathological narcissists have only a limited awareness of the emotions that they happen to be feeling, and are relatively incapable of identifying such emotions and reporting to others that theyâre feeling them (this latter difficulty is as much due to distrust and fear of vulnerability as it is to an inability to recognise experienced emotions). Instead, itâs as though the narcissistâs emotions invisibly influence and distort reality itself, as perceived by the narcissist.
Additionally, pathological narcissists tend towards paranoia, inasmuch as they tend to construe ambiguous social cues in a negative light, and assume that others are out to get them unless they have (what they perceive to be) strong evidence to the contrary. (This is ironic, of course, since itâs more usually the narcissist whoâs exploiting and hurting others.) Therefore, if a pathological narcissist happens to be experiencing a strong aversive emotionâespecially if it coincides with something that youâve doneâthen this might automatically affect his representation of reality, and cause him to believe that youâve gone out of your way to make him feel the relevant emotion.
Thus, the narcissist might have accused you of deliberately doing the relevant bad thing, X, because he is presently experiencing an aversive emotion, and X is something that, if youâd deliberately done it, would have implied your intention to cause this bad feeling in the narcissist. In this way, the narcissistâs unjust accusation tells you something true, namely that he might be feeling a particular aversive emotion (specifically, whatever aversive emotion you would have deliberately caused if youâd deliberately done X).
Since these are the only two possibilities, there is a clear and determinate truth that the narcissistâs unjust accusation has conveyed. By unjustly accusing you of doing something bad, X, the narcissist has resolutely conveyed that
either he has himself deliberately done X or some other blameworthy thing, or heâs feeling whatever bad emotion you would have caused if youâd actually done X.
In other words, if you know that an unjust utterance of
âYou did X deliberately!â
is narcissistically motivated, then thereâs a sense in which you may justifiably reinterpret it as an utterance of:
âEither I did X or some other blameworthy thing, or Iâm feeling bad in whatever way you would have caused if youâd actually done Xâ.