Gypsy Camp Blog

Have you ever wondered how it is that there is a certain type of character, narcissistic to the core, almost comically over confidant and smug, who despite a lack of talent or virtue, seems to coast through life, achieving far more than those who surpass them in every way. From my time living in Budapest, I still have a fond recollection of a pair of stories reported in the local paper, which speak to this topic.

The first of the two articles told of a young woman who, while running through a residential area, came suddenly under attack from a particularly tenacious German Shepherd. The dog chased her across several blocks, and it took all her strength and ingenuity to evade it for long enough to escape a mauling. Finally she was left with no choice but to swim away from the dog across the Danube, and the dog, not being fond of cold water, finally let her go. Eventually the police were called in and they tracked down the dog’s owner, a US expatriate living out the years of his retirement in Budapest. When informed of the dog’s attack on the young girl his only reaction was to call her a “silly bitch” for the way she had run from the dog, and inquire whether it had not occurred to her to climb a telephone pole?

In the second story, an entrepreneur, reported to be a foreigner of Hungarian descent, had purchased an old construction crane, set it up on a bridge across the Tisza River, and set himself up in the bungee jumping business. Akos, a man in his late 40s, known to be a bit of a firebrand, was his first paying customer, and as it turned out, he was also the last. When Akos jumped from the bridge, the stress was seemingly too great for the housing fixing the crane to the bridge. The article went on to say that the injuries Akos would have sustained from the fall would not have been so bad had the crane not dislodged from its housing and landed upon him. At the time the article was written, Akos was languishing in the hospital in a full body caste, but expected to make a full recovery.

Both stories may seem like extreme demonstrations of how the Players conduct their lives, but they both go to show that a Player will stop at nothing to serve his own interests.

Top talk of “denial” tends to conjure up the image of something unwanted or unpleasant, yet the truth is that we all live in denial – it is a useful regulator acting on our minds. Denial allows for dissociation, and for it to work we must, ironically enough, deny its very existence as part of our own psychological make-up. Denial allows us to avoid seeing what we do not want to see, allowing us to remain secure in our beliefs and free from any disconcerting challenges we might otherwise experience in the course of our lives. For the Players, the influence of denial is so great that it cannot be counteracted. The Players come to inhabit their own alternate reality in which facts are denied and replaced to suit them. Whereas the rest of us retain some sense of fixed ideas which transcend all else, the object of a Player’s denial is constantly in flux.

We can illustrate the effect of denial with the example of the paedophile. The terrible acts committed by Paedophiles sit incongruously with the image they often present to the world of respectability and virtue. To a paedophile, however, the two states are not mutually exclusive – by denying the horror of what they do, they embrace the value of what they pretend to be. It should come as no surprise to us that they often disguise themselves in the vestments of the priesthood. Even when brought to justice, many paedophiles see themselves as the wronged parties. They are narcissistic, and therefore difficult to rehabilitate. So convinced are they of their own virtue, and so convincingly do they portray it, that it becomes difficult to know when, if ever, they are truly repentant.

Entitlement and vindictiveness are central to the narcissistic personality. They are really two sides of the same coin. Narcissists feel naturally entitled to anything they desire. In fact, in their inner world, desires would be elevated to needs and rights. One of these is the right to always come out on top; to always win!

But even winning is not enough for the narcissist. He is an eternally hungry creature, and gratitude is an alien emotion to him. When a narcissist wins he does not feel sated, but when he loses he quickly becomes enraged. The inflated sense of self-worth which characterises the narcissist makes him respond severely to any provocation. Once a narcissist feels he has been slighted or deprived of his winnings a rage will consume him which may last for years. If they are good at nothing else, narcissists know how to hold a grudge.

As awful as there behaviour is and as much carnage as they leave behind on a certain level they must be pitied. For all their self importance and bombast they are behind it all just silly sad people doomed to repeat the same mistakes ad nausea.

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