A multidisciplinary study of narcissistic systems, explored through theory alongside art, poetry, myth, narrative, and case study. These range from family units to global corporations and beyond.

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Part I: Perpetration

Maps how these systems function
Familiar tactics include gaslighting, triangulation, and reversal—where the offender presents as the victim (DARVO). Individually, these tactics are destabilising. Combined, they overwhelm.
 

When multiple tactics operate at once, they create sustained pressure—confusion, self-doubt, and loss of ground. From this, patterns emerge: damage passed across generations, responsibility shifted onto others, internalised control, and systems that appear chaotic but follow a logic.

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Part II: Impact

Explores what this does to the body and mind
Impact traces lived experience across forms of trauma often overlooked: myriad forms of dissociation; what lies beneath boredom; the ghost twin as ancestor; the devouring mother; death states as survival; artistic phantoms from the unconscious; privileged versus annihilating silence; institutional betrayal enacted through procedure; ruptured networks; and how constant travel can become a condition of survival. These are dimensions often omitted in clinical accounts.

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Part III: Resistance

Turns to strategy
Humour, irony, passive aggression, malicious compliance, plausible deniability, weaponised incompetence, strategic silence, and collective action. These are not incidental—they are tools. Satirists and narcissistic systems often use the same mechanisms, but toward opposite ends. Here, theory and satire meet as forms of resistance.

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Written for a general readership, the book uses art, poetry, humour and narrative to make complex systems visible, visceral, and accessible.