The Dead Eyes of the Narcissist

The dead eyes of the narcissist are often commented upon. Whether it is someone you know personally or a photograph you have seen of somebody else, you will, in all likelihood have come across the presentation of dead eyes. It is especially the case where this has occurred in a personal interaction, this particular facet of that person´s appearance becomes especially stark.

Flat, glassy, vacant, dead eyes. Comments about those eyes include shark eyes, doll eyes, the lights are on, but nobody’s home. The observation is so consistent that it has outlived individual photos and it has become a signature and it is an accurate one in relation to the fact that a person  is a narcissist. In the early ascendant phase, when the narcissist is in the golden period, the eyes looked different. They appeared wide, sparkling, performing, apparent warmth on demand. That was because it was the idealisation stage, where the grandiose self is flooded with fuel and this allows the eyes to shine because the narcissist is in effect is high on fuel, off his or her tits on reflected glory. But the problem is, the more fuel that is required, the harder it becomes to keep it fresh, and thus, in relation to the position of  the intimate partner primary source, he or she gets devalued. The problem that then arises and especially so if the narcissist is affected by overexposure to either you or the world at large, the mask that was utilised to make it seem like he or she was warm and engaging with sparkling eyes no longer fits. It has to be held in place by force of will, and when the mask is all that remains, it is the eyes that die first.

The narcissist  doesn’t experience a stable inner self the way that emotionally healthy people do. The narcissist´s identity is simply a performance, repeatedly edited to ensure maximum provision of fuel, the pursuit of the prime aims. In the beginning, the performance tends to be effortless for the narcissist because the world, and in some instances that means the intimate partner primary source, in other instances it might literally be the world, is applauding. But when the applause fades, when that fuel starts to become stale, the performance must be dialled up to compensate. The smile becomes wider, the eye contact more intense, the head tilts more choreographed. But the harder that the face works to signal warmth/authenticity/joy, the more the eyes start to contradict it. They go blank because there is no authentic feeling behind them to animate the gaze, there is no emotional empathy.

What you are seeing in the pictures of the dead-eyed narcissist is the narcissist manually operating the corners of their mouth while the once-powered spontaneous expression has long since retreated. Narcissists are capable of only a narrow band of emotions – grandiosity, envy, rage, hatred, everything else is simulated. The narcissist, when you enter sustained devaluation, by this stage, is now facing repeated threats to control. You have let the narcissist down and your refusals, arguments, questions, boundary enforcement, assertion and in effect general presence, becomes an affront to the narcissist´s need for control.

Each failure of compliance on your part is a threat to the narcissist´s need for control and self-generated belief of superiority. To protect the narcissist from disintegration, the narcissism slams the emotional shutters closed. Effect flattens. The eyes, which are the most honest part of the human face, register the shutdown first. What the camera catches isn’t sadness on the narcissist´s part,  the narcissist doesn’t actually experience sadness. It actually is the absence of any legible human feeling. The technical term is flat effect, but the internet and many others call it dead eyes.  The narcissist experiences chronic dissociation. The narcissist is simultaneously performing the role of husband, wife, spouse, friend, brother, sister etc while internally monitoring audience responses like a stock ticker. The necessity of maintaining control and drawing fuel. This split attention creates a thousand-yard stare.

Watch the narcissist now , her or she will be looking at the camera, but the narcissist is also looking at how he or she is being looked at. There’s no-one home in the gaze because the self is busy directing the movie in real time. The eyes never soften. They never dart with genuine curiosity. They never crinkle with real laughter. They remain fixed in a mid-distance trance as if the  soul, if the narcissist had one, is floating three feet behind the narcissist´s head, watching the shoot on a monitor and barking notes. Healthy eyes light up because they mirror the emotions of the people that they look at. As you know, narcissists mirror also, but only for the purpose of the pursuit of the prime aims. When fuel becomes scarce, mirroring is abandoned as inefficient. The fact is that the narcissist doesn’t, when engaging with people, track the children or person’s expressions, the narcissist´s eye do not widen in shared delight, they  remain locked on the lens, performing a particular role for the benefit of the viewers.

Those around the narcissist might as well be cardboard cut-outs. The absence of any reciprocal animation on the part of the narcissist is what creates the chilling doll effect that many people  instinctively recoil from. Beneath the narcissist´s presentation of I’m a wonderful human being, empathic and kind, sit the repeated threats to control. The threat to control at the realisation that the world sees through the act. These threats to control are intolerable and therefore they have to be walled off and nullified. The physiological signature of this walled-off nullification of the threat to control is muscular tension around the orbits and a fixed, unblinking stare. Look at the close-up pictures of the narcissists eyes.  The lower eyelids are slightly raised, the classic Duchenne tension of suppressed emotion. The pupils are often constricted and the gaze never softens into the micro fissures that signal vulnerability. It is the look of a person whose narcissism has armoured the windows to within, because letting anything real escape would risk total collapse.

The  narcissist, is no longer capable of object relations. People have ceased to exist as separate centres of consciousness. The narcissist´s eyes reflect this reality. When the narcissist stares into the lens now, the narcissist is not seeing photographers, readers or even haters. The narcissist is seeing a mirror that is no longer reflecting the image that the narcissist needs. The deadness is the void staring back. The smile continues because the mask must be upheld at all cost, but the eyes have surrendered. They have nothing left to say because there is no other left to speak to. That is why, in photo after photo, year after year, the expression hardens into something waxy and inanimate. It is the visible end-point of a personality structure that has consumed any authentic spark in the pursuit of grandiosity. This projects the hollow gaze of a mannequin that has finally realised the store is closing and no one is coming to buy. The dead eyes are not a glitch, they are the feature, the final, unretouched proof that the performance has outlived the performer.