Posted by There is a part four and I thank pulchritudinous7 for helping to point it out.
I doubt her ex-husband is really a malignant narcissist. I think it is a dangerous term to throw around. But I definitely believe it is something you need to know an awful lot about if you think you are living with one or if you are raising children with one.
Sociopath and psychopath are very strong words to be using too. It is very hard to define them and harder yet to apply them to individuals.
Now I am writing like M. Scott Peck: I already wrote that there is ambiguity and perhaps misuse within the maladies and terms for them. Now I am going to write that there is also truth and science in them.
They are the extreme and they are less clear and recognized. For me, I could never understand the full cycle, or the extreme, if you will. Freud described it as the superego. “The superego is the ethical component of the personality and provides the moral standards by which the ego operates” (a simple definition found online). I will explain.
This helps to explain people who go overboard, people who cannot understand the repercussions of their actions. They lack empathy to start with. They cannot tell, or they do not care, when they hurt someone. They may be very smart people. They may even believe they are moral and ethical. But they do not understand that they hurt other people.
Often they hurt people close to them. They may reach a point where they hurt everyone (or even kill). They do not understand how their actions, or the repercussions of their actions (e.g., alcoholism) affect others.
They become dangerous. You have to be very cautious. Maybe you even have to stay away.