If
as a child you used to set up stuffed animals, action figures, and
dolls as your companions at a party, or as the audience for your show,
or as any other stand-in for human feedback, you've experienced both
sides of a Narcissism dynamic as both the Target and the Narcissist.
There is no circular, neutral, reality-based feedback or connection dynamic between a Narcissist and a Target.
So if the child who's having a party with action figures or stuffed
animals as attendees is getting about the same amount of genuine
connection as he or she would if they were alive, but Narcissists. The
child has to pretend and imagine that they're happy to be there in the
child's company, that they're enjoying themselves, that they're talking
with the child and one another (about topics other than gossip, other
than shooting ridicule or criticism), that they're actually listening to
one another politely, and responding to one another genuinely and with
good cheer.
It's not real; since there is no real connection, the
child's imagination takes over and fills in the blanks. Because of the
child's vivid imagination, the wonderful imaginary traits of each doll
seems real, and the child can grow to love them. But the child doesn't
realize that the personalities are from his or her own mind. Targets
receive little or no genuine connection, and the human imagination fills
in the blanks in order to make the situation more pleasant and less
painful.
We NEED connection as human animals, so when we don't
actually get it, we tend to create it where it doesn't really exist, or
embellish and add rosewater to weak or unhealthy connections.
With the child in the position of Narcissist, this is how he or she sees
others; as dolls that one projects one's own imagination onto. The way
the doll looks to the child is the imagined personality they're going to
be assigned. Dolls that the child likes get treated well, dolls that
the child doesn't like get punished. The reasons that the child likes a
certain doll are made-up, based on the child's imagination, and the
reasons that the child "punishes" certain dolls are also made-up, again,
based in the child's imagination. The child in the Narcissist position
feels completely entitled to dictate and orchestrate literally
everything that the dolls do or say, and of course, because they're
dolls, they're not "real", like the child is. There is no reason for the
child to listen to their points of view, to care about their needs,
their feelings, their plans, aspirations, or anything else. Their sole
purpose is to be whatever the child wants them to be, and do whatever
the child wants them to do. Nothing else. They don't have the "right" to
do anything else, or anything on their own; they're DOLLS.
The
only other "real" person that would exist would be if Mom or Dad walk
into the room, because they're "authority" figures, bigger than the
child, and have more power.
The day that the child notices that one
of them treats the other as a "lesser being" is the day the child (in
the Narcissist position) will lose respect for the bullied parent, and
try to emulate the bully. So then only the bully parent is "real" and
the other becomes a doll.