Word Salad - Dan Cassenti, Novelist

Concept: Schizophrenia often includes rambling speech patterns rapidly shifting from one focus to another. Picture a chef chopping up sentences, putting the words into a bowl, and then tossing the contents. The resulting creation would resemble a word salad. Narcissists have the same propensity to word salad but use it as a deliberate attempt to evade responsibility. Instead of responding to a question or explaining behavior, the narcissist uses word salad to redirect to unrelated topics. This causes circular reasoning, misdirecting a conversation from the original topic to never address it.

How this leads to greater control over a victim: Word salad evokes frustration in the recipient. It becomes such an aggravating experience (especially when the narcissist turns the tables and brings up issues that put the questioner on the defensive instead) that the questioner often gives up seeking the truth and quits the conversation in frustration, thus letting the narcissist remain unaccountable.

Examples:

Instead of outright refusing to answer a reporter’s questions, a politician speaks as if an answer is coming but ends up changing the subject while speaking—attempts to reorient the politician end similarly.
“You’re reading those text messages all wrong. And furthermore, what were you doing looking at my phone? You know your problem is a lack of respect, especially for privacy. How would you like it if I hunted down your phone and started rifling through it? You know, I knew there was something wrong with you when….”
When his wife asks Jack about his whereabouts the night he cheated on her, he tells her everything that happened, which others could corroborate, then starts talking about what the people around him were wearing or saying until his wife gets too tired to continue listening and goes to bed.

Advice: Notice when your partner uses a rambling rant in response to a direct question and keeps bringing the topic back into focus. Count the number of times your efforts fail to elicit an answer. Assume the worst when you can’t get a straight answer.

Narcissism Encyclopedia

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