Just received these words in an email message, and I couldn't say it better:
When I first learned of NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) and believed I was married to someone with the disorder, I wondered why there were not public service announcements about it. Why wasn't it front-page news? Is it news only if someone is murdered as a result of domestic violence? If there is no "body", does it mean no one has been hurt? Much light needs to be shone on this disorder and on those who suffer from it. Because although they may be compelled by their feelings to abuse others, they are nonetheless accountable. I believe there are more people suffering from NPD than the reported 1%, since most knowledge of these people is supplied by their victims.I wholeheartedly agree. In more ways than one, this abuse ruins whole lives. It is absolutely dehumanizing. Internet support groups are fine but do nothing to stop the spread of all this pain. People find out about NPD too late, after they're already in too deep to readily escape the relationship. Children are damaged for life, many becoming narcissists themselves.
If you know people who can help, in the media or government, push the issue.
There should be public service announcements. People should know the warning signs so they take them seriously when somebody they're dating exhibits them. And people should know that some of the slanderers they listen to are malignant narcissists lieing their heads off.
I too am sure that NPD is much more common than the estimates -- because narcissists never admit there's anything less-than-perfect about themselves and because they are cunning wolves in sheep's clothing and because they usually never kill anybody. But they condemn people, especially their children, to a life sentence in hell, by killing the soul.
It's always the same old story: the malignant one comes out smelling like a rose, and the innocent victim gets the bad reputation.
Enough already. What every victim needs more than anything is justice. And so long as this living, breathing, walking disease stalks victims among us, justice will never come.
ORIGINAL
We need better laws to hold narcissists accountable for the damage they do.
We need better laws to hold narcissists accountable for the damage they do. Their MO allows them to get away with murder their whole lives, time and again.
For one thing, people have a right to their good name. We need laws against slander and calumny that have real teeth in them. That's the proverbial "fate worse than death," and yet the law holds it as no crime. We especially need strong laws when slander or calumny affects the status of employment. And when it has driven the victim to the bottom of Skid Row and/or suicide, the narcissist should go to jail. It shouldn't be so hard to prove. As in class-action cases, just allow proof by establishing a pattern. For, every narcissist has a trail of the destroyed in his or her wake.
We also need decent laws to protect people from emotional abuse. It ain't nothing. Indeed, anyone whose been abused both physically and emotionally says the emotional abuse was far worse. Rape is so heinous precisely because it's both physical and emotional abuse by somebody "tearing you down off that pedestal." Doing it some way other than sexually shouldn't make it okay.
Especially the emotional abuse of children. That should be jail time.
Narcissists should get sued for the psychological injuries they inflict. Maybe fear of that would help them restrain their predatory urges.
I do realize that saying we need strong laws is a lot easier than figuring out how to write them so that false accusations don't fly. But the difficulty in framing such laws is no excuse to just act like it ain't happening.
Countless innocent lives are ruined by serial slanderers/abusers who get away with taking people's lives from them, one after another after another, just because hurting others makes them feel good. These are human lives that go up in smoke. But the law calls no foul. So, the takers of those lives never have to pay for what they did. That isn't "liberty and justice for all."
