Top Highlights

• But acting without feeling is, as we shall see, the basic disturbance in the narcissistic personality.
• How can one explain what feeling is? It is something that happens, not something one does. It is a bodily function, not a mental process.
• And one has to keep up a constant effort to suppress all feeling, to act “as if.”
• Erich exploited his girlfriend: He got her to love him without any loving response on his part.
• Narcissists do not function in terms of the actual self-image, because it is unacceptable to them. But how can they ignore it or deny its reality? The answer is by not looking at the self. There is a difference between the self and its image, just as there is between the person and his or her reflection in a mirror.