Narcissist False Modesty

(faq page 36)

http://www.healthyplace.com/Communit...ism/faq36.html

http://www2.cddc.vt.edu/gutenberg/etext03/malsl10h.htm

Question:

I met many narcissists who were modest – even overly so. This
seems to conflict with your observations. How do you reconcile the
two?

Answer:

The "modesty" displayed by narcissists is false. It is mostly and
merely verbal. It is couched in flourishing phrases, emphasised to
absurdity, repeated unnecessarily – usually to the point of
causing gross inconvenience to the listener. The real aim of such
behaviour and its subtext are exactly the opposite of common
modesty. It is intended either to aggrandise the narcissist or to
protect his grandiosity from scrutiny and possible erosion. Such
modest outbursts precede inflated, grandiosity-laden statements
made by the narcissist and pertaining to fields of human knowledge
and activity in which he is sorely lacking. Devoid of systematic
and methodical education, the narcissist tries to make do with
pompous, or aggressive mannerisms, bombastic announcements, and
the unnecessary and wrong usage of professional jargon. He
attempts to dazzle his surroundings with apparent "brilliance" and
to put possible critics on the defence. Beneath all this he is
shallow, devoid of real knowledge, improvising, and fearful of
being exposed as deceitful. The narcissist is a conjurer of
verbosity, using sleight of mouth rather than sleight of hand. He
is ever possessed of the inner sensation that he is really a petty
crook about to be unearthed and reviled by society.

This is a horrible feeling to endure and a taxing, onerous way to
live. The narcissist has to protect himself from his own
intimation, internal on-going trial, guilt feeling and anxiety.
One of the more efficacious defence mechanisms is false modesty.
The narcissist declares himself unfit, unworthy, lacking, not
trained and not (formally) schooled, not objective, cognisant of
his own shortcomings and vain. This way, if (rather, when) exposed
he could always say: "But I told you so in the first place,
haven't I?" False modesty is, thus, a hedging mechanism. The
narcissist "insures his bets" by placing a side bet on his own
fallibility, weakness, deficiencies and proneness to err.

Yet another function is to extract Narcissistic Supply from the
listener. By contrasting a belittling and reducing statement about
himself with a brilliant, dazzling display of ingenuity, wit,
intellect, knowledge, or beauty – the narcissist intends to secure
an adoring, admiring, approving, or applauding protestation from
the listener. The person to whom the falsely modest statement is
directed is expected to vehemently deny the narcissist's claims:
"But, really, you know much more than you pretend to know", or
"Why did you say that you are unable to do (this or that)? Truly,
you are very gifted at it!" The narcissist then shrugs his
shoulders, smirks, blushes and moves uncomfortably from side to
side. This was not his intention, he assures his correspondent. He
did not mean to fish for compliments (exactly what he did mean to
do). He really does not deserve the praise. But the aim has, thus,
been achieved: the Narcissistic Supply has been granted and avidly
consumed. Despite the narcissist's protestations, he feels much
better now.

The narcissist is a dilettante and a charlatan. He glosses over
complicated subjects and situations in life. He sails through them
powered by shallow acquaintance with rapidly acquired verbal and
behavioural vocabularies (which he then promptly proceeds to
forget). False modesty is only one of a series of false behaviour
patterns. The narcissist is a pathological liar, either implicitly
or explicitly. His whole existence is a derivative of a False
Self, a deceitful invention and its reflections. With false
modesty he seeks to implicate others in his mind games, to co-opt
them, to force them to collaborate while making ultimate use of
social conventions of conduct. The narcissist, above all, is a
shrewd manipulator of human character and its fault lines. He will
never admit to this. In this sense he is verily modest.