Narcissism is on the rise. Our civilization is elevating the self into the highest object of love. This new narcissism is morphing into a religion which threatens to consume not just the narcissist, but everything else around them. Sam Vaknin argues that unless we tame and control our narcissism, the consequences for our culture could be devastating.

Growing numbers of people are becoming increasingly more narcissistic. And as our civilization rewards narcissism and veers towards it, the allure of the narcissism religion is growing exponentially. It is beginning to be widely and counterfactually glamorized - even in academe - as a positive adaptation. Counterfactually because narcissism ineluctably and invariably devolves into self-defeat and self-destruction. But how could narcissism be a religion? How could worship of the self stray off into faith?

Pathological narcissism develops as a set of complex defences against childhood abuse and trauma in all its forms, including not only “classical” maltreatment, but also idolizing the child, smothering it, parentifying it, or instrumentalizing it. The child forms a paracosm, a dream world, ruled over by an imaginary friend who is everything the child is not: omniscient, omnipotent, perfect, brilliant, and omnipresent. In short: a godhead or divinity. The child worships this newfound ally and therefore makes a human sacrifice to this Moloch: he offers his true self.