I like writers like Suzanna Quintana for making the difficulties of writing on the Narcissist stand out so clearly!

And if we draw out the consequences of her unfortunate story, it is noticeable that what the author actually describes is not simply - or mainly - narcissism, but paranoia:

Over time, when the mask started to slip and I felt as though I were living with both Jekyll and Hyde, never knowing which one would walk in the door at any given moment, I became a shell of my old self as I struggled to make sense of this man I no longer knew.

So the question must be asked whether a narcissist is always coupled with a paranoiac?

Like rival twins, to get to the bottom of this relationship we must not only ask what is the mask of ‘The Narcissist’ but ‘The Paranoiac’.

Notice, if the Narcissist is always masked and double, then the mask of the Paranoiac is unique, it won’t come off, it is an iron mask that is, oddly, enough presented as un-masked. I mean, if the Narcissist is always deceitful and masked, the Paranoiac presents herself as God’s truth, ‘I am who I am’: an unmasked state that is all the more deceitful since it is a state that only a God could achieve.

If the Narcissist is always bad and ignorant, the Paranoiac is presented as someone good and educated.

Habitually, the Narcissist is presented as a male and the Paranoiac female.

etc., etc. etc.

Thank you for making these stereotypical oppositions between masks stand out so well in your story.

But in the end, isn’t something being left out? Can’t we go further than analysis of the stereotypes of masks?

Short response: the Paranoiac and Narcissist, like two sides of the same coin, are just effects of a more dastardly problem: the problem of modern individualism qua egoism.

Everyone being considered equal, what are the consequences of the modern-day couple, most often doing 9–5 jobs, isolated in an increasingly fragmented family and social structure?

A guaranteed Narcissist/Paranoiac couple?

Can the predictable problems such individualism pose be resolved by reducing human subjectivity to mere rivalry relations between masks? the Narcissist fighting the Paranoiac, the Masculine against the Feminine, etc.

With more time than there is here, narcissism, if it were ever to be explained adequately, can actually be shown to be a cure for egoism and the deficient masks of the modern individual.

Just a few grains of salt,

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