Society. “Narcissistic abuser”: investigating a term that went viral

Type the expression into a search engine and its popularity is obvious: online tests, videos, thousands of testimonies. The “narcissistic pervert”, as it is called in French, has become a familiar figure, almost a character. Behind the trend, however, lies very real suffering, and a word whose history is worth recalling.

A concept born among psychoanalysts

It was a French psychoanalyst, Paul-Claude Racamier, who coined the notion of “narcissistic perversion” in the 1980s. He described a way of protecting oneself from one's own inner conflicts by making the other person carry them: building oneself up by putting them down, using them as an object. In 1998, the psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Marie-France Hirigoyen brought the issue to a wide audience with her book on moral harassment, which made everyday psychological violence widely known.

It is not an official diagnosis: what matters is what the relationship makes you go through.

What the word does not say

The expression appears in no international medical classification. Psychiatrists speak rather of narcissistic personality traits, a different notion. Above all, the label is sometimes applied too quickly: not every selfish, hurtful or clumsy person is a manipulator. Conversely, putting a name on the other person is not enough to set yourself free.

The situations described do have things in common: a very seductive start to the relationship, then repeated criticism, humiliation, constant guilt, gradual isolation from loved ones, the feeling of “going mad”. Specialists also speak of coercive control, or of gaslighting when the other person makes the victim doubt their own memory.

What the law says

French law does not punish a personality type, but acts. Since 2010, moral harassment within a couple has been an offence in the Criminal Code: repeated words or behaviour that degrade the victim's living conditions and harm their physical or mental health.

Parliament is also debating the notion of “coercive control”, meaning all the behaviour by which one partner deprives the other of their freedom. Adopted by the National Assembly in January 2025, then by the Senate in a different version in April 2025, its inclusion in the Criminal Code has not yet been completed. Amendments were tabled at the end of September 2026 to add it to a new bill. Some courts of appeal, including Poitiers, have already relied on the notion since 2024.

Getting out of coercive control

Leaving is often long and difficult, because coercive control isolates you and makes you doubt yourself. Keeping a record of the facts, talking to someone you trust, getting support: every step counts. Psychoanalytic work also helps understand why you stayed, so as not to live the same story again.

This article is for information only. It replaces neither a consultation nor a diagnosis, which is a doctor's role.