Malignant Narcissism: Trending or Ending?

by Tommy George

I envision myself as an author dealt a unique thematic niche based on my personal recognition and experience of Malignant Narcissism, a psychiatric disorder declared by Erich Fromm (perhaps a touch melodramatically) as the “quintessence of evil.” I ask you--reader, story editor, agent, publicist, and publisher--to consider such claims 1) in light of the theme's still-evolving definition, 2) in terms of Media Relations: what professional protocol is needed to legitimize and differentiate a new niche within the Mass Mind. After those near-imponderables, if you are still willing, I ask that you take a look at my writing so far in this odd milieu.

My ambition is to carve a market-niche for myself on tales revolving around a personality disorder syndrome considered by some--notably Erich Fromm, the originator of the term, and psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, author of People of the Lie--as evil: malignant narcissism. 

The semiology (symptomology) of this psychic aberration is difficult to pin down because of its skillful, practiced duplicity. It scapegoats others for destructive acts wrought in secret by its own machinations, and its perpetrators display a convincing semblance of self-as-victim to the public. 

Its behavioral manifestations are as diverse as the range of comorbid disorders that attach themselves to the malignant core of the syndrome, and appear as secretly disordered inscrutabilities of so many stripes--some so scandalously outre that the author considers the hidden malignancy syndrome a "buzzworthy" phenomenon.

With mass audiences hungry for new twists, malignant narcissism (more properly called narcissistic personality disorder syndrome) could very well trend into mainstream popular media with a smartly coordinated, properly informed effort. The thematic conflict boils down to a simple, harrowing question: does evil have an independent existence, apart from human foibles? Is it a free-floating entity, searching for a host victim? Or is it a series of life- constricting cathexes instilled generation to generation, and purgeable via intense behavioral and emotional treatment? It is a universal question, answerable only when nothing but the unvarnished truth remains.