Writings on Narcissism, Part 6

Rastinews — The Faces of Narcissism

I was at a conference. After the speaker finished, the floor opened for questions. One listener asked a question. The speaker's answer was silence. Silence, though, can be a deeply narcissistic act. The speaker simply did not deign to reply. Because earlier questions had been answered, this refusal felt abnormal — and it left the questioner feeling at fault, almost guilty and embarrassed. Such scenes are common, on television especially. By leaving certain questions unanswered, people place themselves above others; they even answer by staying silent, widening the gap between the two sides. This kind of silence is manipulative: the narcissistic subject uses it to corner the other person. Silence is turned into a tool. What plays out is a small display of power — a miniature "fascist moment," in which another person's presence is ignored, erased. Met with silence, the one who asked the question is treated as though they do not exist. The speaker may not be a narcissist by character. But in that moment, a clear narcissistic posture takes over.

The psychoanalyst Heinz Henseler, in Narzisstische Krisen (Narcissistic Crises, 1990), argues that narcissistic injuries wound people more deeply than almost any other experience. That is why such wounds are so hard to forget. A narcissist does not apologize, because a narcissist does not admit to being wrong. To apologize is to confess a fault, and that confession cracks the image of perfection. An apology, in this view, is read as weakness. The strength of the ego lies precisely in never saying sorry. Yet everyone suffers narcissistic injury at some point, and everyone can react narcissistically now and then. For most people, though, these reactions stay confined to certain areas of life. In a narcissistic personality structure, by contrast, most reactions run along this single axis — because no other, more flexible and humane way of responding has been allowed to develop.

Reinhard Haller writes that at its core, the narcissist's need is a need for power. For a narcissist, power means the capacity to make others do as one wishes — to break another person's will.

I was on vacation. I witnessed a traffic accident. One of the drivers involved tried to attack the other physically. His relationship to his car looked almost fetishistic — as though he had stretched the boundaries of his own ego to take the car in. The car was no longer a mere object; it had become an extension of his personality. So the thing he was really fighting for was not the car, but himself. Cars sometimes turn into phallic symbols, objects onto which competition, speed, power and display are staged. Good driving stops being about adapting to traffic and becomes, instead, a story of narcissistic boasting. In this way, even the most ordinary scenes of daily life can become a stage for narcissism. Narcissism is not only self-love; it is also the effort to turn the world into an extension of oneself.

The narcissism of victims

Let me say this at the outset: next to the real pain and hardship people actually live through, what follows may look trivial, even beside the point. Set against a victim's concrete suffering, this kind of analysis can seem thin and insufficient. But a psychoanalyst examining a phenomenon has to look past its visible, direct surface and weigh the parts that operate more quietly, less openly discussed. Trying to grasp an event as a whole means treating these seemingly "secondary" dynamics as part of the analysis too. For a victim, what matters above all, without question, is the victimization itself. None of this is meant to belittle or diminish that pain. And yet, in some cases, people can be observed settling into a narcissistic position by way of the very pain and victimhood they have suffered. Take a simple example: two people are comparing surgeries. One describes how difficult the stomach operation was, how long the recovery took. The other, listening, shrinks that pain down in order to inflate their own: "Is that all? Mine took twelve stitches." What surfaces here is not the sharing of pain but the building of a hierarchy out of it. The question stops being "what did each of us go through?" and becomes "whose pain counts for more?" By inflating their own suffering, a person demands more attention, more recognition, more importance. Pain, in that moment, stops being simply something lived through and becomes a tool for producing status. Both people did suffer, genuinely. But instead of being shared, the suffering is compared; instead of being understood, it is raced. Right here, the thin line between victimhood and narcissistic investment appears. Pain is, on one hand, real and undeniable; on the other, in certain cases, it can turn into the ground on which a subject positions itself, gains value, and demands recognition. Having one's victimization acknowledged, having one's suffering made visible, often works like a balm for the victim. To be recognized, understood, and seen is a real part of healing. But that recognition can, in some cases, be instrumentalized. Some people do not simply give voice to what they have suffered — they convert it into a kind of narcissistic capital. Victimhood then becomes not a road to healing but a tool for gaining status, and for holding on to it.

Pain can heal. But it can also generate power.

Nearly every day now lands on some "commemoration day": Teachers' Day, International Women's Day, and so on. Each of these dates rests on a specific historical context, a founding moment, and, more often than not, an experience of victimization. That is why these days are not only celebrations — they are also acts of remembrance. But the practice of remembering does more than make past suffering visible; it also gives certain identities a chance to step into the foreground on that day. The group being commemorated becomes visible, is heard, is recognized. That recognition is not merely symbolic — it produces value. And right there a tension appears: the line between remembering victimhood and letting victimhood settle at the center of one's identity can blur. Because the position that brings recognition, attention and moral legitimacy can, in some cases, turn into a status people want to protect. Victimhood then stops being simply something that happened in the past; it becomes a narrative reproduced and circulated in the present. Individuals or groups position themselves through this narrative, make themselves visible, and at times work to preserve the value that position brings them. In this sense, victimhood can intersect with narcissistic investment. When social attention turns toward a given identity, that attention can become not just recognition but a source of self-worth. Victimhood, in that case, is not only a loss — it also becomes a ground for power and legitimacy.

One of the most striking political examples of this dynamic is Erdoğan's own imprisonment in the past. No one's arrest or prison term is a holiday or a festival, of course. But not every negative experience is automatically traumatic. Erdoğan's time in prison is not an experience that has to be filed, in psychological terms, under "trauma." Even so, over time it was built into a powerful narrative of victimhood. That narrative is more than a memory of a past event — it has become a piece of political mythology, reproduced year after year. Erdoğan has treated this narrative of victimhood not as a loss but as an asset: he has drawn legitimacy from it, mobilized support with it, and used it to strengthen his political position.

Past grievances do not always stay in the past. In some cases, they turn into a justification for present actions. A person or group can place the injustice they once suffered behind their current conduct, rendering their own harshness invisible. The critical point here is this: victimhood is not merely a painful experience; it is also a past that gets interpreted, narrated and put to use. And that past can, in some cases, produce a kind of moral immunity. A similar shift can be observed when power relations change. What one suffered while powerless can be reproduced once power is gained. This points to a dynamic known at the individual level too: a child who suffers violence may go on to reproduce it. The issue here is not the individual's "evil"; it is the repetition of unprocessed experience.

A similar structure can be seen at the social level. A subject or group that moves out of the position of victim can, upon gaining power, reverse and re-establish the very forms of exclusion or oppression it once suffered. Victimhood then becomes not merely something remembered, but also the ground for a reproduced form of relation. This dynamic can be observed, in certain respects, in the debates surrounding the headscarf as well. Headscarf bans and the exclusion they produced have undoubtedly created real and profound grievance for many people. This reality is not in question. But the way this grievance is represented in the public sphere can, over time, move beyond a mere rights claim into a narrative — at times even a mythology of victimhood. Beyond making past pain visible, this narrative can also serve to legitimize present positions. The issue here, then, is not to deny the reality of the grievance, but to understand how it is processed, how it is represented, and under what conditions it turns into a tool that shapes new power relations. And perhaps the hardest point to accept is this: victimhood can become the ground not only for suffering oppression, but, in some conditions, for reproducing it. Headscarf bans and the exclusion they produced have undoubtedly created real and profound grievance for many people. But the way this grievance is represented in the public sphere can, over time, move beyond a mere rights claim into a narrative — at times even a mythology of victimhood.

Victimhood sometimes functions as a "symbolic capital", a "social capital" (Pierre Bourdieu, Die männliche Herrschaft [Masculine Domination], 2012). It grants a strong moral position; it confers legitimacy, immunity and a right to speak. For that same reason, it is also prone to being instrumentalized and abused. Historical examples show this tension clearly. The French Revolution set out with the ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity, yet executions by guillotine were carried out in the name of those very ideals. In other words, the claim to liberation could, at a certain point, turn into ground on which violence was legitimized.

A similar shift can be observed in different contexts. Examples such as the move from the real grievances produced by headscarf bans to new forms of exclusion and oppression at times built around the headscarf itself show that victimhood is not always a fixed position. This shift, in which the one who was victimized can move into the position of perpetrator under certain conditions, also points to a dynamic familiar from psychoanalysis. This mythology is not confined to remembering past injustices; it can also become, in the present, a tool for producing identity, legitimacy and political position. In this context, victimhood is not merely an experience given voice; it becomes a symbolic value that is circulated, reproduced and, in some cases, "marketed". The issue here is not to deny the reality of victimhood. Rather, what matters is how that victimhood is processed and what it is turned into. The same experience can, in one context, serve the pursuit of rights and liberation, while in another it can turn into a structure that fixes identity and confines the subject to a certain position. Victimhood, then, is not always merely a state of weakness. Under certain conditions, it can become a tool for producing power, position, and even authority. And it is precisely at this point that the relationship between victimhood and narcissistic investment becomes visible. Victimhood heals when it is recognized; but when instrumentalized, it produces new wounds.

In his book Opferfalle (The Victim Trap, 2016), Daniele Giglioli argues that today's heroic figure is increasingly the "victim". Power now derives not only from the capacity to act, but also from the visibility and recognition of suffering endured. Within this framework, victimhood becomes not just an experience but also a position, an identity and even a kind of symbolic capital. The person who has been victimized gains legitimacy, immunity and a right to speak through the harm they suffered. But a paradox emerges here: victimhood ceases to be merely a condition seeking recognition and repair; it can also turn into a position that must be protected. Because this position grants the person a certain power, attention and moral superiority. For this reason, in some cases victimhood becomes an identity one does not want to lose. To maintain this position, a person or group continually reproduces and makes visible their own story, and even, to a certain extent, learns to "stage" it. Victimhood, in a sense, turns into a language that is represented, circulated and demands recognition. At this point, it must be said that victimhood, too, can turn into a kind of object of narcissistic investment. Because here the subject constitutes itself through being "the one who was wounded", and this woundedness settles at the center of identity. The need for recognition, over time, becomes intertwined not only with a desire to heal but also with the anxiety of remaining visible and not losing that position. The issue, then, is not the reality or legitimacy of victimhood — these are beyond dispute. The issue is under what conditions victimhood turns into a process of healing, and under what conditions it turns into a fixation of identity and a narcissistic investment.