Millon describes how the narcissistic person handles threats and failures as follows: “What happens if narcissistic persons are not successful, if they face personal failures and social humiliations? What behaviors do they show, and what mechanisms do they use to salve their wounds? Although they are still confident and self-assured, narcissistic individuals deceive themselves with great facility, devising plausible reasons to justify self-centered and socially inconsiderate behaviors. With an air of arrogance, narcissistic people are excellent at rationalizing their difficulties, offering alibis to put themselves in the best possible light, despite evident shortcomings or failures on their part. If rationalizations fail, they will likely become dejected, feel shamed, and feel a sense of emptiness. In contrast to the antisocial personality, most narcissistic persons have not learned to be ruthless or competitively assertive and aggressive when frustrated. Neither have most acquired the seductive strategies of the histrionic person to solicit rewards and protections. Failing to achieve their aims and at a loss as to what they can do next, they are likely to revert to themselves to provide comfort and consolation and let the talent for imagination take over. These facile processes enable them to create a fanciful world in which they can redeem themselves and reassert their pride and status.“What the narcissistic individual is unable to work out through fantasy is simply repressed—put out of mind and kept from awareness. Because narcissistic persons are unaccustomed to self-control and objective reality testing, their powers of imagination have free rein to weave intricate resolutions to their difficulties. Flimsily substantiated rationalizations are offered, but with a diminished air of confidence and authority. However, narcissistic individuals may never have learned to be skillful at public deception; they usually said and did what they liked without a care for what others thought. Their poorly conceived rationalizations may, therefore, fail to bring relief and, more seriously, may evoke scrutiny and deprecating comments from others. At those times, narcissistic people may be pushed to the point of using projection as a defense, as well s to begin to construct what may become rather primitive delusions.”1
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Click on the note number to return to where you were above; click on the author's name to go to the bibliographic entry.1Millon, 1998, pp. 86-87