On Jul 11, 5:40 pm, Anonymous Remailer
wrote:

it explains so much...

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Question:

Do narcissists feel guilty and if so, do they ever repent?

Answer:

The narcissist has no criminal intent (“mens rea”), though he may
commit criminal acts (“acti rei”). He does not victimise, plunder,
terrorise and abuse others in a cold, calculating manner. He does so
offhandedly, as a manifestation of his genuine character. To be
morally repugnant, one needs to be purposeful, to deliberate and
contemplate the options and then to prefer evil to good, wrong over
right. No ethical or moral judgement is possible without an act of
choice.

The narcissist's perception of his life and his existence is
discontinuous. The narcissist is a walking compilation of
"personalities", each with its own personal history. The narcissist
does not feel that he is, in any way, related to his former "selves".
He, therefore, does not understand why he has to be punished for
"someone else's" actions or inaction.

This "injustice" surprises, hurts, and enrages him.

The narcissist is taken aback by society's insistence that he should
be held accountable and punished for his transgressions. He feels
wronged, hurt, the victim of pettiness, bigotry, bias, discrimination
and injustice. He rebels and rages. Unable to link his act
(perpetrated, as far as he is concerned, by a previous phase of his
self, alien to his "current" self) to its outcomes – the narcissist is
constantly baffled. Depending upon how pervasive his magical thinking
is, the narcissist may develop persecutory delusions making him the
quarry of powers cosmic and intrinsically ominous. He may develop
compulsive rites to fend off this impending threat.

The narcissist is an assemblage. He plays host to many personas. One
of the personas is always in the "limelight". This is the persona,
which interfaces with the outside world, and which guarantees an
optimal inflow of Narcissistic Supply. This is the persona which
minimises friction and resistance in the narcissist's daily dealings
and, thus, the energy which the narcissist needs to expend in the
process of obtaining his supply.

The "limelight persona" is surrounded by "shade personas". The latter
are potential personas, ready to surface as soon as needed by the
narcissist. Their emergence depends on their usefulness.

An old persona might be rendered useless or less useful by a
confluence of events. The narcissist is in the habit of constantly and
erratically changing his circumstances. He switches between vocations,
marriages, "friendships", countries, residences, lovers, and even
enemies with startling and dazzling swiftness. He is a machine whose
sole aim is to optimise its input, rather than its output – the input
of Narcissistic Supply.

To achieve its goal, this machine stops at nothing, and does not
hesitate to alter itself beyond recognition. The narcissist is the
true shape-shifter. To achieve ego-syntony (to feel good despite all
these upheavals), the narcissist uses the twin mechanisms of
idealisation and devaluation. The first is intended to help him to
tenaciously attach to his newfound Source of Supply – the second to
detach from it, once its usefulness has been exhausted.

This is why and how the narcissist is able to pick up where he left
off so easily. It is common for a narcissist returns to haunt an old
or defunct PNS (Pathological Narcissistic Space, the hunting grounds
of the narcissist). This happens when a narcissist can no longer
occupy – physically or emotionally – his current PNS.

Consider a narcissist who is imprisoned or exiled, divorced or fired.
He can no longer obtain Narcissistic Supply from his old sources. He
has to reinvent and reshape a new PNS. In his new settings (new
family, new country, different city, new neighbourhood, new workplace)
he tries out a few personas until he strikes gold and finds the one
that provides him with the best results - Narcissistic Supply aplenty.

But if the narcissist is forced to return to his previous PNS, he has
no difficulty adjusting. He immediately assumes his old persona and
begins to extract Narcissistic Supply from his old sources. The
personas of the narcissist, in other words, bond with his respective
PNS's. These couplets are both interchangeable and inseparable in the
narcissist's mind. Every time he moves, the narcissist changes the
narcissistic couplet: his PNS and the persona attached thereto.

Thus, the narcissist is spatially and temporally discontinuous. His
different personas are mostly in "cold storage". He does not feel that
they are part of his current identity. They are "stored" or repressed,
rigidly attached to four-dimensional PNS's. We say "four dimensional"
because, to a narcissist, a PNS is "frozen" both in space and in time.

This slicing of the narcissist's life is what stands behind the
narcissist's apparent inability to predict the inevitable outcomes of
his actions. Coupled with his inability to empathise, it renders him
amoral and resilient - in short: a "survivor". His daredevil approach
to life, his callousness, his ruthlessness, his maverick-ness, and,
above all, his shock at being held accountable – are all partly the
results of his uncanny ability to reinvent himself so completely.