Quando essere buoni diventa un bisogno: cos’è il narcisismo comunitario

We're accustomed to recognizing narcissism through arrogance, ostentation, obvious selfishness, and the need to occupy center stage. We look for it in people who only talk about themselves, devalue others, and demand special treatment. Precisely for this reason, we risk overlooking it when they change their language and present themselves through kindness, generosity, empathy, and sacrifice.

Dr. Ramani Durvasula, in a video dedicated to the communal narcissist who hides behind the appearance of a good person, describes a specific mechanism: some narcissists construct their identity around the need to be seen as kind, caring, and altruistic. They may be admired for their dedication, their commitment, and their seemingly inexhaustible availability. The revealing shift comes when this image is challenged.

This is where the theme connects to what I call suicidal empathy and, more generally, to cult of sacrifice and suffering. Because behind the inability to set limits, we don't always find a naive person, too good, or conditioned to take care of everyone. Sometimes we find a person who has built their value, their power, and even their right to control others on the identity of the one who gives more than anyone else. In short, we find particular interests, economic and power-driven.

A seemingly good action shouldn't be judged solely by the immediate image it produces. Motivation enters the structure of the relationship and becomes visible in the relationship with the other, with its limits, recognition, reciprocity, and autonomy.

Community Narcissism: When Grandiosity Passes Through Kindness

The term used in psychology is communal narcissism. "Communal," in this context, does not refer to the narcissism of a community and should not be confused with collective narcissism. It describes a form of self-aggrandizement that expresses itself in the realm of caring, cooperation, morality, and service to others.

The most recognizable narcissist wants to be considered the most intelligent, the most competent, the most powerful, or the most desirable. The communal narcissist wants to be considered the kindest, the most generous, the most empathetic, the most indispensable. Grandiosity remains; the foundation on which it is built changes.

Research on this construct reveals a particularly interesting aspect: people with high levels of communal narcissism may perceive themselves as extraordinarily prosocial without appearing, in external evaluations, more prosocial than others. This doesn't mean that all their actions are fake or that they don't truly help. It means that their grandiose representation of their own goodness can outweigh what others observe and experience in the relationship.

And this is an important difference, because it prevents us from falling into a childish simplification: a good gesture equals a good person, a generous gesture equals altruistic intention, sacrifice equals moral purity.

An action can be useful and still have an ambiguous motivation

A person can actually do something useful for another and, at the same time, use that action to gain approval, prestige, control, or a position of moral superiority. The two can coexist.

Acknowledging this doesn't mean claiming there must be a chemically pure altruism, devoid of any personal gratification. It's normal to feel satisfaction when we help someone. It's normal to want a gesture to be recognized. The point isn't to process every human emotion in pursuit of an impossible purity.

The point is to observe what happens when gratification, recognition, or the identity of a "good person" doesn't arrive. Does the person continue to respect the other? Does he or she accept a no? Can he or she tolerate the person he or she helped choosing a different path? Is he or she happy if the other becomes independent and no longer needs him or her? Or does he or she present the bill, recall everything he or she has done, demand obedience, instill guilt, and transform the other's limitations into an offense?

Motivation doesn't remain locked in the mind of the person acting. It enters the structure of the relationship.
If I help you because your well-being matters, I may be disappointed when you don't follow my advice, but I must recognize that your life remains yours. If I help you because I need to be your savior, your autonomy becomes a threat. It no longer validates my role. Worse still: it can make me superfluous.

The moment the mask falls

It's not the amount of good displayed that tells us what's happening. It's the reaction to frustration.

The mask falls when the recipient fails to show sufficient gratitude; when he begins to ask questions and question the intentions behind the gesture; when he sets boundaries; when he refuses unsolicited advice; when he heals, grows, or distances himself; when he also reveals the painful aspects of the relationship; when he fails to participate in the public construction of the benefactor's image.

At that point, the person who presented themselves as infinitely understanding can become punitive, aggressive, victimized, or denigrating. They can use their archive of sacrifices as an indictment: "After all I've done for you." They can mobilize the community's judgment, because in the eyes of others, their reputation as a generous person already counts as evidence and makes anyone who recounts what happens in their private space less credible.

The useful question, then, is not just: does this person help others? It's also: what does he do with the power that help gives him?

The link with suicidal empathy

By suicidal empathy, I don't mean authentic empathy, nor the willingness to support someone when it requires effort, presence, and responsibility. I mean an empathy stripped of discernment, transformed into an absolute obligation to understand, absorb, forgive, and continue giving even when the result is the destruction of one's own boundaries and the renunciation of responsibility in the other.

This form of empathy belongs to the cult of sacrifice because it attributes a moral value to suffering itself. The more you consume yourself, the more you show love. The more you endure, the more evolved you are. The more you renounce yourself, the better you are.

Many people enter this dynamic because they were raised to deserve love through usefulness, because they fear conflict, because they've learned to survive by anticipating the needs of others, or because they can't yet distinguish compassion from unlimited availability. It would be wrong to automatically transform them into narcissists.

But it would be equally incorrect to exclude the possibility that, in some cases, sacrifice becomes a form of grandeur. I am the one who endures the most. I am the only one who truly understands. I save people no one else could save. I never abandon anyone, unlike you. Suffering is not merely tolerated: it becomes proof of moral exceptionality.

This is where suicidal empathy can meet communal narcissism. Not because the person is "too empathetic," but because they use empathy as an identity, hierarchy, and source of moral credibility.

When good intentions produce a destructive outcome

We're culturally very lenient toward declared intentions. If a person claims to have acted out of love, to help, to protect, or for the greater good, we tend to consider analyzing the effects almost indecent. Yet it's precisely from the repeated effects that we can understand the true quality of a dynamic.

An intervention may seem positive in the short term: it solves a problem, avoids a crisis, relieves someone of responsibility. In the long run, however, it can create dependency, fuel irresponsibility, impede learning, make separation impossible, and allow for increasing control.

If intention is tainted by the need to be indispensable, the result is unlikely to be the autonomy of the other, because autonomy eliminates the function on which that identity is based. If the gesture serves to gain moral superiority, sooner or later the credit will be recovered. If empathy serves to ignore the conflict, the problem is not solved: it is merely shifted and magnified.

This is why motivation matters. Not as a moralistic exercise, but because it guides subsequent decisions, how we react to unexpected events, and the type of relationships we end up building.

This is not a criticism of good people.

Analyzing motivation isn't the same as suspecting every generous gesture or declaring that goodness doesn't exist. On the contrary, it helps restore precision to goodness, freeing it from pretense, blackmail, and the obligation to self-destruct.

Mature care doesn't require the other to remain small. It may involve effort, dedication, and even significant sacrifices, but it doesn't turn those sacrifices into a promissory note. It respects the limits, freedom, and responsibility of both people. It knows that stopping harmful behavior can be more respectful than continuing to facilitate it. It knows that understanding someone's wounds doesn't require you to surrender your life to them.

The difference isn't measured in the sweetness of words or the amount of visible sacrifice. It's seen in the ability to do good without overpowering the recipient.

We can't know the full intent of another person, and often we don't even clearly know our own. However, we can observe the structures an action creates: how much freedom it allows, what responsibility it distributes, what happens when it isn't rewarded, and what results it continues to produce over time.

It's a less reassuring criterion than the "he did it for good" formula, because it forces us to look beyond the image and ask ourselves questions (I suggest some in the box below). But it's also a criterion more respectful of reality. Goodness that tolerates no questions, no limits, and no autonomy risks protecting, above all, the identity—and interests—of those who stage it.

If you recognize the need to understand everyone, to continue giving and justifying behaviors that are consuming your clarity, you can continue reading my in-depth study on suicidal empathy. The point isn't to become less sensitive: it's to learn to distinguish healing from complicity in what destroys you and relieves others of responsibility.