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Buy most of my books in Amazon The narcissist’s grandiosity crucially depends on co-idealization: he idealizes his partner so that he can feel idealized. If his partner is the most drop-dead gorgeous super-genius, what does it say about him that she is his and no one else’s? Co-idealization occurs simultaneously in two spaces, one real and one imaginary. The narcissist’s pathological narcissistic space is his stomping ground: his home, church, neighborhood pub, volunteer organization, or workplace. In short: the location in which his sources of supply habitually congregate and interact to provide him with adulation and affirmation. Concurrent with this physical site, the narcissist maintains a shared fantasy space within which he idealizes both himself and his intimate mate. When the narcissist is forced to return to reality, when he is brutally awakened and decompensates (his defenses crumble), he usually does so by having been narcissistically injured or even mortified. He then devalues the fount of hurt and frustration. He uses the infantile splitting defense mechanism to render his partner the polar opposite of her erstwhile idealized version. But, exactly as idealizing the partner resulted in self-idealization, devaluing her results in self-devaluation (“how could I have been so stupid and blind and gullible and wrong and fallible to not see how inferior she is”). To avoid this excruciating outcome, the narcissist engenders an external mortification (“she is an evil, dumb, psychopathic bitch and I must punish her”) and immediately embarks on a new round of co-idealization with the next available and willing victim.
