The Humble Pie Man

FIL is a man of the soil. He wears overalls over stained shirts that reek of working for days in the hot sun. He has a humble air, self-effacing, solicitous, ever-helpful. It is easy to be fooled. As long as you are on a shallow level of interaction, and require nothing of him and only want to thank him for his efforts, you are safe.

But wait awhile, and you will discover that any and all gifts to you from him require a double gift back, whether it is of your time and attention, your resources, the apricots on your tree that he covets and the water in your pipeline that should by rights of entitlement be his. He should not have to ask you for permission, since you have already granted it by accepting gifts from him.

He will get teary-eyed thinking about his sinful nature, since he is a Christian and all Christians need to repent. This is especially so in front of fellow members of the local congregation he attends. A lot of the Humble Pie is meant for them.

But once you get to specifics, the only sins he can really think of are yours. He is happy with his life, he says. He maintains that he knows people who don't need to repent, and he lets you know with a wink that he thinks he's in that company. If he ever needs to repent, he wants to pay the price himself. He doesn't want to ask too much of Jesus' atonement. He doesn't need anybody else--except to keep the Narcissistic Supply coming.

"Question: I met many narcissists who are modest – even self-effacing. This seems to conflict with your observations. How do you reconcile the two?

Answer: The "modesty" displayed by narcissists is false. . . The real aim . . . is intended to either aggrandise the narcissist or to protect his grandiosity from scrutiny and possible erosion. Such modest outbursts precede inflated, grandiosity-laden statements made by the narcissist and pertaining to fields of human knowledge and activity in which he is sorely lacking. . .

One of the more efficacious defence mechanisms is false modesty. . . This way, if (or, rather, when) exposed he could always say: "But I told you so in the first place, haven't I?" False modesty is, thus an insurance policy. . .

With false modesty he seeks to involve others in his mind games, to co-opt them, to force them to collaborate while making ultimate use of social conventions of conduct.

The narcissist, above all, is a shrewd manipulator, well-acquainted with human nature and its fault lines. No narcissist will ever admit to it. In this sense, narcissists are really modest."

http://samvak.tripod.com/faq36.html