Transcription
Malicious envy is when you want to destroy someone who keeps frustrating you by being superior to you. Someone who is above you intellectually, someone whose accomplishments you crave but can't attain, someone who gets all the beautiful girls, all the wealthy clients, and all the academic recognition, or whatever. And you want to destroy this object of frustration.
Malicious envy should be distinguished from benign envy and jealousy. They're not the same. Benign envy and jealousy motivate you to measure up to the object, to the person that you admire, to emulate them, to imitate them, to better yourself. So malicious, destructive envy is when you want to destroy someone. Benign envy, jealousy, especially benign envy, is when you want to build yourself up to be like the person that you admire.
And envy, now, is malicious envy a form of sadism? And how are all these connected to narcissism? This is the topic of today's video: the covert narcissist, sadistic envy, and its fantasy, because fantasy has something to do with it. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of "Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited." I'm a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of CPS, Center for International Advanced Professionals, at Commonwealth—I'm sorry, they changed their name—Commoner for International Advanced Professional Studies in Cambridge, United Kingdom, Toronto, Canada, and an outreach program in Lagos, Nigeria.
Today's topic is dark indeed. Sadism is one of the four elements in the Dark Tetrad personality, as we shall see a bit later. The topic of today's video has been triggered by a recent study, a study published in the journal, the academic journal "Personality and Individual Differences," volume 205, April 2023. So it's cutting edge, it's the latest. And the study is titled "Pathological Narcissism and Sadistic Personality: The Role of Rivalry and Malicious Envy." It's a mega-study conducted on a huge sample of adults in, where else, Italy, where envy rules and reigns.
But before we go into the study, analyzing the study, benefiting from its outstanding outcomes, let me give you a bit of an introduction. I started this video by asking, is malicious envy a form of sadism? Is the wish to destroy your rivals a form of sadism? Does it involve an evil intent to, for example, inflict pain, in the agony of others, gratify yourself with their writing, torturing them to the point of feeling omnipotent? This is all true in the makeup of the covert narcissist.
Now, to remind you, covert narcissism has several elements. Envy is a major, major thing with covert narcissists. They display pseudo-humility, false modesty, "just one of the guys," "I'm exactly like you," "I can understand you." They also have victimhood, a victimhood stance. They're always the victims. They never do wrong. They can never do wrong. They're always somehow, they always somehow fall prey to unscrupulous people, or abusive intimate partners, or institutions which are out to get them. And in this sense, covert narcissism is a close, close cousin of paranoia. Most covert narcissists entertain paranoid ideation on a regular basis.
The victimhood stance, the victimhood position, being a perpetual and professional victim, this excludes any other explanation to reality except some conspiracy against you. If you spend your entire life believing that you're a victim, then people are out to get you. There's my line, intention and intention focused on you. Of course, it's narcissistically gratifying. It's a form of displaced grandiosity. If you can't obtain supply, narcissistic supply directly, and covert narcissists are covert because they can't obtain supply directly, they fail. There's kind of collapse narcissists, then you can obtain supply by believing yourself to be the victim of your rivals, the victim of institutions, public intellectuals, God knows what.
So, pseudo-humility, a victimhood stance, but underneath all these, there is sadistic, malicious envy. It's the number one characteristic of the covert narcissist, in my view. It drives the passive-aggressive urges of the covert narcissist, as we shall see a bit later. Now, the covert narcissist compensates for this with fantasy, because it is not self-efficacious in reality. He is unable to secure outcomes in reality. He resorts to fantasy. And the fantasy could be anything: "I'm a good person," "I'm a superhero," "I'm doing battle with supervillains," "I am the power behind the scenes," "I am the true inventor or discoverer of this and that," "I'm a rescuer, a savior, a healer," etc., etc., etc. One of the roles of the fantasy is to make the covert narcissist feel safe. We'll discuss it a bit later.
Okay, our well-being depends on connectivity. So narcissists of all stripes, overt, covert, somatic, cerebral, inverted, you name it, all kinds of narcissists are hurtful. They hurt people. Hurt people hurt people because they denied the possibility of true connection. They are one step removed. They're behind the glass, darkly.
The sadistic component in narcissistic pathologies is related to power, not only to pain. Classical sadism is about deriving gratification from hurting others. Other people's pain is nectar and ambrosia, a wonderful, wonderful thing to behold. You know, sadistic supply is about being gratified by inflicting pain on others and witnessing their writhing agony. But in the case of narcissism, sadism is connected to power, not only to pain, also to pain, but to power more precisely. The sadism in narcissistic personality disorder has to do with the power to inflict pain. So it's pain one step removed. The narcissist derives a sense of omnipotence, a gratification of his grandiose, inflated self-image, the buttressing of his fantasy of omnipotence and omniscience. His whole structure lies on the ability to inflict pain on other people who are at his mercy, back and call. In other words, the narcissist is more likely to act sadistically with his nearest and dearest.
The narcissist interprets intimacy. This is the license to inflict pain. Intimacy empowers the narcissist. It grants him the power to inflict pain. It gives him access. It provides him with the levels and the leverage to somehow torture people around him. And so this is about power, not only about pain, and most notably, the power to inflict pain.
Now, sadism can be externalized and aggressive, inflicting pain. But it can also be passive-aggressive, which is the bread and butter of covert narcissists. Passive-aggressive sadism involves frustrating someone, withholding, tantalizingly suggesting something and then going back on your word, breaking promises. All these are forms of sadism. But of course, narcissists, whether overt or covert, are not totally cognitively impaired, and some of them are not even intellectually challenged. They realize that inflicting pain on people can have adverse outcomes, can result in vengeance, vindictiveness, revenge, and retribution. Somewhere deep inside, they know. Narcissists and covert narcissists know that they are playing with fire, that there is karma. But one day, they're gonna pay the price.
Wary of these possible unwanted outcomes, narcissists withdraw into a world of fantasy. And in this world of fantasy, they are not hated, they are not derided, they are not decried, they are not shunned. In this world of fantasy, no one wants to harm them, no one wants to punish them for their misdeeds. In this world of fantasy, they can torture other people, they can inflict pain, they can exert power, and none of this is going to have any consequences.
Now, sadism, the sadistic component in narcissistic personality disorder, has to do with the power to inflict pain, even if this power is not used, even if it is ambient and atmospheric. But in the narcissist's mind, once he has the power, even if it's not used, it is somehow discernible, visible. Remember, the narcissist interacts with internal objects, not with external objects. So if he has the power to torture you, in his mind, he has tortured you, because he interacts with your representation in his mind. So the potential to cause you pain, in his mind, translates into having caused you pain.
So narcissists are constantly hyper-vigilant, on their toes, and anxious to say no, that they are hurting people on a regular basis. They realize that some people are gonna lash out and lash back. There's gonna be payback. They know this. And the only refuge is the fantasy world. And in this fantasy, nothing bad is ever gonna happen, because the narcissist is adulated and loved and adored, and inquisited and shielded from the consequences of his actions, because the narcissist, in this fantasy world, perceives himself as some kind of treasure, a preciously unique artifact, or a childlike entity. Who's going to punish a child? Who's going to hurt a child? And who's going to destroy the magnificence and uniqueness of an intellectual treasure such as the narcissist?
The more sophisticated the narcissist, the more evolved the fantasy. Fantasy, in this sense, is compensatory. Now, covert narcissists have a much richer fantasy life than overt or grandiose narcissists for two reasons. Number one, covert narcissists are cannot operate well in reality. They're not self-efficacious. They fail. Their failures, they collapse. So the only way for them to generate supply is via self-supply in a fantastic world, in a paracosm. The second reason covert narcissists have a much more developed fantasy world is that they hurt people much more. They are overt, grandiose narcissists are in your face. You see them coming. You can defend yourself and protect yourself against them. The covert narcissist is there's a snake in the grass. He's subterranean. The covert narcissist works via subterfuge and stratagems. He is Machiavellian, he is conniving, he's cunning, he's scheming. And in this sense, the covert narcissist is very much like the psychopath, only without the daring acknowledgment of the psychopath, without the psychopathic facade, or the psychopathic defiance or recklessness. Covert narcissists are poison, slow-acting poison.
In realizing their impact on people around them, they know that retribution and payback are coming, and they defend against it with a very well-evolved fantasy world. Now, let's go to Italy, shall we? I mentioned the study. You can find it in the literature, in the description, or the description is under the video, not above the video. Thank you.
And what do they say in this research? These are people from Italy. Guillon, Roger, Alessandro, Amo, Beatrice. They sound like retired mafiosi, but actually, they are psychologists. And so they were curious if sadism and grandiose narcissism are related. And they wanted to find what in narcissism predisposes a narcissist to act sadistically, or even to be a full-fledged sadist. Not just to clarify, only a small minority of narcissists, very small minority, are full-fledged sadists in the sexual sense. In the emotional sense, sadism is a mental health disorder. It used to be a personality disorder until it's been removed by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual committee, but it's still distinct from narcissism. However, sadistic elements, sadistic artifacts, sadistic behaviors, a sadistic tinge to certain traits, these do exist in literally all narcissists.
And the researchers in Italy ask themselves, how is this sadism mediated? How does it penetrate and permeate narcissism? And how does it interact with the demands and exigencies and ups and downs, vicissitudes of narcissism? And they found out that sadism is intimately connected to malicious envy and narcissistic rivalry. These are two dimensions of pathological narcissism. And they succeeded to connect, pretty convincingly, I think, sadism to grandiose narcissism.
Sadism refers to the tendency to derive pleasure from the suffering of others. So, as I said before, it's a component of the new construct of the Dark Tetrad. The Dark Tetrad is Machiavellianism, the tendency to manipulate people; subclinical psychopathy, psychopathy that could not be diagnosed as psychopathy, but there are hallmarks and behaviors of psychopathy; subclinical narcissism; and clinical sadism. Now, the tendency to control other people is common to both grandiose narcissism and sadism. Both of these disorders have to do with control freakery, the need to control other people. And underlying that, an anxiety reaction, or even anxiety disorder. So there's anxiety about the environment. The only way to mitigate or ameliorate this anxiety is by controlling it. And there are two ways to control it: grandiosely, via narcissism, or by inflicting pain or threatening to inflict pain, sadism.
The relationship between narcissism and sadism has to do with narcissistic rivalry and malicious envy, as I mentioned. So what is narcissistic rivalry? It's having negative emotions when someone else receives attention, and having positive emotions when other people fail. So you are elated when people fail, collapse. And you feel bad to the point of suicidal ideation when other people succeed, especially if they succeed in something or in some endeavor or some undertaking or in some task or in some field that directly competes with the locus of your grandiosity. So it's a narcissist, if you feel that you're a genius, and then someone else gets accolades and applause for his intellectual achievements, you're likely to experience rivalry, narcissistic rivalry. And if you consider yourself handsome, and someone else ends up getting all the girls, you're going to experience narcissistic rivalry. And then when they fail with a girl, you're going to experience elation, happiness, contentment, jubilation, even cheer and joy. So this is narcissistic rivalry.
Malicious envy is when people compare themselves unfavorably to other people. This is done, for example, copiously in social media. Social media people keep comparing themselves to other people, a phenomenon known as relative positioning. Social media platforms encourage malicious envy and relative positioning via mechanisms such as likes. So there is malice in social media platforms. They maliciously leverage elements of narcissism and elements of sadism. That's why there's so much verbal abuse and violence and trolling in social media platforms, because they want it to be this way.
Okay, social media sites. In relationships, within individuals, people compare themselves to others. And if there's someone who possesses qualities, property, success, a partner, intimate partner, or whatever that you envy, then if you're a narcissist, you are likely to experience malicious envy. Malicious envy involves anger, hostility, and aggression, the wish to destroy the object, the person that causes you envy, the object of frustration. The wish to destroy it is a critical component of malicious envy. And this is in this new study.
Here and colleagues, they wanted to elucidate somehow the complex relationship between sadism and grandiose narcissism, and these two traits, rivalry, narcissistic rivalry, and malicious envy. And they found that they are negative and positive aspects of envy. Malicious envy is the negative aspect. And there is an affirmative link between grandiose narcissism and sadism, mediated via rivalry and envy. They said, they said the following: "Narcissistic rivalry is a multi-dimensional construct that includes aggressiveness, struggle for supremacy, and joy in response to other people's failures. Individuals with grandiose narcissism would be therefore prone to experience pleasure when assisting to cause other people pain, and especially when this pain is related to a position of inferiority. Our results suggest that grandiose narcissism may be related to the seeking of pleasure in provoking or observing pain in others, as it would strengthen the positive self-image of the narcissist, eliciting positive feelings of self-worth."
Regarding malicious envy, a similar interpretation of our results can be formulated. Indeed, malicious envy, in contrast with benign envy, would be triggered by the observation of other people's success and good fortune. Theoretically, in individuals with grandiose narcissism, this perception would elicit hostile feelings towards the fortunate other, as its good fortune would be perceived as an ego threat. This would motivate these narcissistic individuals to desire other people's failure and the destruction of the superior status.
So you can see these people, most of them covert narcissists, but also overt narcissists, trying to take down someone they envy, someone who is intellectually superior to them, more accomplished in their own field, and so on and so forth. They can't sleep at night. They are absolutely possessed and obsessed with destroying this person, this object that keeps reminding them how inferior they are. It keeps generating constant narcissistic injuries and modifications. And if this person is a public figure or appears in public, this would create a constant state of modification, which is unbearable and intolerable. The narcissist, the envious narcissist, has to destroy the person who causes him injuries and modification on a permanent basis. There's no other choice, no other solution. Sooner or later, the narcissist is going to erupt in an orgy of malevolent, malicious, and evil attempts to take down the object of frustration.
And the findings of this study have implications because envy plays a role in various psychological and psychopathological outcomes, even, for example, in depression and anxiety. But I have a lot to go into. Many interesting new tools were used in this study, a study which I highly recommend. But I was very impressed. Italians, would you believe this? No offense.
So they used the benign and malignant envy scale. They administered self-report questionnaires evaluating sadistic personality, for example, the Assessment of Sadistic Personality Questionnaire. They use the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, which is much better than the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, although far from perfect. And they use the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire. Then they applied structural equation models to test hypotheses. Very nice work when it comes to statistics. And they found that grandiose narcissism, narcissistic rivalry, and malicious envy positively and significantly, significantly predicted by the scores on the sadism questionnaire. Pretty shocking. It means that sadism is an excellent predictor of narcissism, or even maybe a precursor.
Remember that in early childhood, pathological narcissism has to do with frustration. A child is frustrated by a dead mother, a mother who is emotionally unavailable, not nurturing, not caring, unloving. There's a lot of frustration there. There's a lot of rage, a lot of impotent, helpless, hopeless anger. A child could well become, could well develop sadism in response to this inner turmoil, this volcano of repressed negative affectivity, negative emotions. The child is unable to attack the mother. This child is dependent on the mother. He is dependent on the source of frustration. Can you imagine the conflict, the dissonance in the child? So instead of attacking the mother, the child develops sadism. In extreme cases, the child develops conduct disorder, which leads later in life to psychopathy in 40% of the cases. And such a child would torture animals or other children, peers.
In less extreme cases, the sadism gets subsumed into the general narcissistic pathology of the self. Sadism becomes a dimension, an element of the child's nascent narcissism. The child then learns to hurt people, cause pain, in order to secure control and power over an environment that causes him frustration. The child learns to link frustration with control, frustration with pain. As this child grows up and becomes an adult, this adult is going to react the same way to any form of frustration. Dollard and Miller, in 1939, suggested the frustration-aggression hypothesis. It says that every frustration is converted into aggression. This is true here as well. The narcissist, when he faces frustration, envy, inability to remedy a situation of inferiority, constant narcissistic injuries, modification, this narcissist is going to be driven to extremes of psychopathy. It's going to become seriously malevolent and evil. He's going to conspire, undermine, lie his way through, forge, fake. It's going to become criminalized in his attempts to take down and destroy the object that constantly causes him frustration, injury, and modification.
And so, Umira defines sadism as a tendency to inflict pain and humiliation on others and to experience pleasure in relation to people's suffering. But this is an inadequate definition, although it's a fairly new one, 2011. We need to reconceptualize sadism as a subclinical variable, not full-fledged, not explosive, not criminal. This sadism in daily life, the sadism of trifles, the sadism of nuance, the sadism of ambiance, sadism by proxy, and of course, the sadism of the covert narcissist, who is maliciously envious and needs to destroy a person that causes him, causes him the envy. And because covert narcissism is one step removed from primary psychopathy, the covert narcissist becomes a primary psychopath and criminalized in effect.
Investigation of sadism, conceptualized this way, and the association of sadism with antisocial behaviors, including sexual violence, fraud, conspiracy, and so on and so forth, these were investigated by Russell in 2017. Russell and allies, 2017. Subclinical sadism has been linked to bullying, cyberbullying, by Van Gael and others in 2017. And it was shown that sadism often leads to unprovoked aggression by Bonfire and others in 2022. Some authors argued for considering sadism as a component of the Dark Tetrad, as I mentioned, the extension of the Dark Triad. And we have authors such as Buckles in 2000, and allies in 2013, Kyogi and others in 2019, Paul, Hussein, Williams, as early as 2002. It's not a new idea, it's more than 20 years in the making.
Most recently, the aforementioned Bonfire and his colleagues in 2022 performed a meta-analysis, and they concluded that there is a pattern of observed associations between sadism and Dark Triad components, including subclinical psychopathy and subclinical narcissism. And there are distinct associations of sadism with certain psychological outcomes that I've mentioned before. And this supports the idea that sadism can be considered a component of an overriding dark personality.
What this implies is that we would be hard-pressed to find a narcissist or a covert narcissist who is not also sadistic. When the covert narcissist attempts to take down a rival because of narcissistic rivalry, when he attempts to destroy someone who causes him unbearable envy because of malicious envy, the covert narcissist takes pleasure in doing this. There is sadistic pleasure there, hedonic sadistic pleasure. This covert narcissist feels empowered, if he is omnipotent, if he is capable, if his self-efficacious when he destroys someone else. This is his way of regaining control and obtaining narcissistic supply.
Of course, all this is done under the cover of morality, ostentatious morality, of rescuing or saving someone or a group of people, of ethics, and of pseudo-humility. It's done humbly, it's done reluctantly, visibly reluctantly, like, you know, "I don't want to do it, but I have to do it because I'm a moral person and I'm a superhero and I'm going to protect people and I'm going to fight evil." This is the cover of the covert narcissist. But underneath this, simple, simple, unmitigated, unadulterated, pure evil, sadism, period.
Okay, so this study established the connection between sadism, Dark Triad components, and rivalry and envy in narcissism. And so they try to understand how is it possible that narcissism, which is a very complex construct, how is it possible that it's linked to sadism, which is a very simple concept? To remind you, the core features of narcissism are an exaggerated sense of personal importance, entitlement, feelings of superiority, lack of empathy, at least lack of emotional empathy, there is cognitive empathy. And individuals with high levels of narcissism are focused on themselves, they are self-centered, and they overestimate their abilities. Oh, a study by Ware in 2019 substantiated that, basically.
Now, today it's established and accepted, even to some extent, although obliquely, in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, it's established that there are two types of narcissism: one is grandiose, and one is vulnerable. The most recent survey of this is Wise and Miller, 2018. Grandiose narcissism is this arrogance, self-promotion, immodesty, haughtiness. You know, and vulnerable narcissism involves self-centeredness, hypersensitivity, introversion, and so on. And I refer you to work by Miller in 2017.
So how do we associate a single dimension, sadism, with these two types, which are diametrically opposed? Actually, overt grandiose narcissism and covert narcissism are so different to each other that there is a serious debate in the profession whether one of these two is actually a form of psychopathy, and the only real form of narcissism is covert narcissism, which is compensatory. I have a video dedicated to this debate. But how can we associate sadism with both the overt and the covert versions if they are almost mutually exclusive?
Because both of them involve pleasure. In both types of narcissism, there is pleasure that the narcissist feels in response to other people's perceived pain, and a willingness to exert dominance on other people, that is worked by Umira in 2011. This is what's common to both types of narcissism. Beyond the seeking of pleasure, the central feature underlying sadistic behaviors is the willingness to exert power, dominance. In narcissism, overt and covert, it's about controlling people, manipulating people, dominating people. Tendency, the proneness, the propensity to exploit and manipulate other people is a central feature of grandiose narcissism, and it's measured by the Pathological Narcissism Inventory, work by Pincus and others in 2009. It's so, we know this about grandiose narcissism.
But it's equally common, and even I would say more so, in covert narcissism, because covert narcissists are not self-efficacious. They cannot obtain supply or extract supply from the environment by themselves. So they need to control other people to do it for them, and they need to control the environment to avoid narcissistic injuries or modifications, which could be lethal, literally lead to suicide in the case of covert narcissism. Covert narcissists get emotionally dysregulated much faster than overt or grandiose narcissists because they don't have the added layers of defense of narcissistic supply and self-efficacy.
And so, from this perspective, the tendency to be dominant and to engage in power plays, to try to exert power over other people, is a shared component between narcissism and sadism, and also explains the association between these two, because sadism is a way to gain control and is a way to exert power through pain. Stalin said that you can motivate people with love or with fear. Well, if you have narcissism, you have both. You can charm people into loving you, especially if you're a covert narcissist who masquerades as a kind, empathic, loving person. And you can terrify people into and hurt them and torture them into submission. And this is an integral part of cohesive control, by the way.
And so this sadism has been overlooked in the past, even I have made a mistake in my early, in the early versions of "Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited." Individuals with high levels of narcissistic rivalry experience negative feelings when someone else is receiving attention. They devalue other people and they experience positive feelings when other people fail or find themselves in an inferior position, as I said. And this process helps the individual with a narcissistic pathology to maintain the grandiose image of himself. There are studies by Rogoza and others, 2018. The struggle for supremacy, the rivalry itself, the hostile behavior, underlie, support, buttress, uphold the grandiosity. It is grandiose to engage in battle. It is grandiose to act as a superhero. It's grandiose to take down villains. It's grandiose to destroy the object that frustrates you and to prove yourself better than you or her or her. It's grandiose to take your rivals out. It's this is all grandiose. What are we talking about? Sadism is grandiose, exactly like paranoia.
Narcissistic rivalry explains why individuals with high levels of grandiose narcissism experience positive feelings when other people fail, when other people are in pain, by exerting power over other people, subduing them, subjugating them, because there is a sadistic element there. And so, according to this reasoning, the latest study of narcissistic rivalry explains the process by which grandiose narcissism leads to or is connected somehow to sadism. Same, same applies to malicious envy. It's a good candidate to explain the relationship between grandiose narcissism and sadism.
Envy is a reaction or a disposition towards other people. It's the outcome of comparing yourself to other people. It's related to a sense of innate inferiority or some kind of injustice or discrimination. If you're passive-aggressive, when you compare yourself to other people's traits, their wealth, their success, envious is provoked and triggered. That's only human. But when this envy leads you to act malevolently in order to destroy the other person, that's malicious. And it is distinct from benign envy. This is known as the Dual Envy Theory, Cohen, Chagash, Larson, 2017, Van de Van, 2016, etc. It's a new theory of envy.
Benign envy is a tendency to improve your lot, to improve your life, to change yourself, to better your condition. It stimulates you to work on yourself in accordance with the role model that you envy. Malicious envy is not about any of this. It's not about you. It's about the other person. Benign envy is about you and how you could become a better version of yourself. Malicious envy is about the other person and how you could destroy that other person so that it doesn't irritate you and annoy you and cause you narcissistic injuries and narcissistic modification on a permanent basis. It's characterized by hostility, malicious envy, anger, devaluation, and harming others intentionally, deliberately, in order to reduce the threat to the ego, if you wish, or to the false self, Van de Van, 2016.
So, both benign envy and malicious envy are motivational. But benign envy causes positive motivation. It motivates you to do positive things. What malicious envy literally drives you to become a psychopath. Now, malicious envy supports in grandiose narcissism a positive image of the self. How you construct your positive image of the self in narcissism compared to the negative image of the other. Malicious envy tells you, if you destroyed the other, it's because the other is negative, and by destroying this negative other person, you will have upheld, supported, and proved your positive self-image. So it's an exclusionary identity. It's an identity by comparison.
Malicious envy is derivative. Narcissism is derivative. The narcissist regulates his sense of self-worth, in whatever sense of self he has, via comparison with others. He derives narcissistic supply from others to regulate this internal environment. Narcissists, like borderlines, have external regulation. So the narcissist, who is besieged and consumed by malicious envy, needs to destroy the other person in order to feel good about himself. But to do that, he needs to reframe reality, and he needs to say, "The other person deserves it. He is bad. He is evil. He is a villain. I am moral. I am a good person. I am impeccable. I am the victim. I have a right, moral, ethical, and legal, to do whatever I want because he had it coming, and he should be punished, and he should be taken down." Why? Because it's the right thing to do. But of course, all this is too, all this is nonsense, nonsensical narrative hiding forces inside the narcissist, especially the covert narcissists, that are overwhelming, dysregulating, and ruinous. Ultimately, this kind of narcissist is consumed to utter destruction and annihilation by his own malicious envy and narcissistic rivalry. They drive him to destruction, and then to destruction. Nothing is left of him.
Envy has been linked more to covert narcissism or vulnerable narcissism than to grandiose narcissism. I refer you to studies by Gold, as early as 1996, Kristen and Johar in 2012, Neufeld and Johnson, 2016, Lunch and others in 2016. It's a literature review and so on and so forth. Malicious envy is related somehow to narcissistic rivalry, but it's not the same. Again, there's a study by Dinesh and Bronkovich, 2021. Some authors argue that rivalry leads to malicious envy. I argue that Lunch, for example, I argue the opposite. That this rivalry that leads to malicious envy. It doesn't matter, they're connected.
So, malicious envy and rivalry motivate the narcissistic individual with high levels of narcissism to become aggressive, to aggress against others in order to destroy their much coveted and unattainable good fortunes. The narcissist wants them gone because they are a constant reminder of their superiority compared to his inferiority, which is unacceptable. And from this perspective, aggression motivated by malicious envy, or the observation of failure in someone envied, the envy object, this may be the source of sadistic pleasure in narcissistic individuals.
Now, the sadism re-establishes the grandiosity of the self, supports the feelings or sense of self-worth, and it strengthens the sense of self-efficacy. It does good things. Destroying other people feels good to narcissists as a whole. There is an association between all these elements. There's a great article by Klauf and others in 2019. And the mediation between narcissism and sadism via envy and rivalry makes sense, eminent sense, study aside.
But sadism in this case leads to aggression and psychopathy, in malevolence, malice, to use a very antiquated term, it's evil.