Narcissistic mortification
I never had the pleasure of watching the two narcissists that were once in my life descend into what is called Narcissistic Mortification. What is Narcissistic Mortification, you ask? It’s when a narcissist crosses over into visions of their own disintegration. It’s when their personal decline becomes so obvious that even they begin to see it. It’s the extreme terror that grips a person with a grandiose pathology when he or she is exposed as defective or even inferior.
It’s one of those still-useful terms first coined by Sigmund Freud in his book “Moses and Monotheism.” A person in the grip of Narcissistic Mortification will make mistakes that are so devastating that even the narcissist himself can’t miss them. As a result they make even more mistakes. That is when they begin to unravel. That is the point when their greatest fear is realised, when they can see their own failure, and that failure is inevitable.
I’m referring to Donald Trump, of course. Trump’s great unravelling, the point after which he started to exhibit signs of Narcissistic Mortification, began shortly after the assassination attempt on his life. That was when Trump was at the pinnacle of his chances. We all remember it. The ghastly polls, the surge in Trumpian popularity, the point when we realised that Trump might be unstoppable. Then, in one glorious succession of Trumpian catastrophes after another, Trump fell from his high place and smashed into a million pieces.
His decline was swift. A week after the assassination attempt, Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race. He then anointed Kamala Harris in his place. She gave a series of scintillating speeches. Then she chose Tim Walz as her running mate, and Walz was equally fantastic. Then they came up with a triad of absolutely knock-out slogans: “When we fight we win,” “We are not going back!” and “Mind your own damn business.” It was monumental. It was electrifying. And it was like rat poison for Trump. And for once, he was painfully aware of it.
To understand how awful this is for Trump you need to understand something fundamental about narcissists. Not only do they need praise and reassurance of their greatness, they need it constantly, incessantly, one might even say intravenously. It’s now a poisonous needle that feeds terror and despair into Trump’s veins. He is losing the thread of his selfhood. If Trump can be said to have a true underlying slogan it would be, “Make Trump Great Again.” That slogan is now ashes in his mouth.
Sources close to the Trump campaign are noticing this. An air of darkness and defeat is descending on the once-grand and grandiose Trump camp. Doom is the order of the day. The spectre of defeat looms large.
Attempts to discredit Kamala Harris and Tim Walz look more than desperate. They are starting to look silly to the people who matter. MAGA doesn’t notice, but Trump doesn’t need to win over his drooling, glassy-eyed cult. He needs to woo the independent voter, and in this he’s failing badly. Polls are beginning to reflect this failure.
Part of the problem is the classic inelasticity of the narcissist. Trump and his cultists were constantly heckling Joe Biden to drop out. They had neither thought about nor written a Plan B by the time he finally did. No one expected the explosion of enthusiasm for Kamala Harris. No one expected she would be so damned good and so damned persuasive. No one knew what an inspired choice Tim Walz would be. The combination of lucky events has Donald Trump on the ropes. And it shows.
Meanwhile Trump is being mollycoddled by his handlers. They may not be aware of the Freudian term Narcissistic Mortification, but they are only too familiar with its symptomatology. What comes after Narcissistic Mortification? Narcissistic Collapse. It could even happen before the election in November, but it doesn’t really have to. Donald Trump is losing. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.