by MARTINE LARONCHE
He moves with stealth, finds his prey, and never lets go. He is smooth talking, understanding and thoughtful, always paying attention to his beloved, the person he claims means everything to him. He seduces her, makes himself indispensable, and then proposes.
The victim is thrilled. She is trapped, and will realize it quite quickly. Sooner or later, he shows his true colors. The man she married turns out to be a love predator, a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He humiliates his prey, brings her down, harasses and picks fights with her, but never in public. He is a master of manipulation, and she learns to fear his mood swings and his wrath. She does all that is in her power to mend things, to no avail.
This is a scenario typical of “narcissistic perverts.” The psychoanalyst Paul-Claude Racamier (1924-1996) first described this much-debated pathology in “Between psychic agony, psychotic denial and narcissistic perversion,” an article published in the French psychoanalysis revue in 1986.
Seduction – Power – Manipulation
The general public discovered the concept in a best selling book by psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Marie-France Hirigoyen called Moral harassment (La Découverte & Syros, 1998). “There are an equal number of men and women victims,” she explains. “Narcissistic perverts’ violence is based on a triptych: seduction, power, manipulation. They possess traits common to all moral perverts [as opposed to sexual perverts], but they are much more calculating and have a stronger capacity for destruction.”
Author of a recent book on manipulation (Abusing weakness and other manipulations, JC Lattès), the psychiatrist doesn’t pull her punches when describing them: “Vampires who need to boost their self-esteem by emptying that of their victims.”
The narcissistic pervert hates generosity, noble sentiments, or any moral qualities. “They take great pleasure in transgression. They like to hurt the other person’s morality or to pervert them, and to break the law,” explains Marie-France Hirigoyen. “There are more and more of them,” she adds. “Harsher working conditions encourage people to be resourceful or to cheat. Moral perversions, that is to say using other humans as objects, have become our society’s new pathologies.”
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