People-pleasers and Pathological Charmers

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People-pleasers dread conflicts and wish to avoid them (they are conflict-averse) - hence their need to believe that they are universally liked. Always pleasant, well-mannered, and civil, the conflict-averse people-pleaser is also evasive and vague, hard to pin down, sometimes obsequious and, generally, a spineless "non-entity". These qualities are self-defeating as they tend to antagonize people rather than please them.

But conflict-aversion is only one of several psychodynamic backgrounds for the behavior known as "people-pleasing":

1. Some people-pleasers cater to the needs and demands of others as a form of penance, or self-sacrifice;

2. Many people-pleasers are codependents and strive to gratify their nearest and dearest in order to allay their own abandonment anxiety and the ensuing intense -- and, at times, life-threatening - dysphoria ("if I am nice to him, he won't break up with me", "if I cater to her needs, she won't leave me");

3. A few people-pleasers are narcissistic: pleasing people enhances their sense of omnipotence (grandiosity). They seek to control and disempower their "charges" ("she so depends on and looks up to me"). Even their pity is a form of self-aggrandizement ("only I can make her life so much better, she needs me, without me her life would be hell."). They are misanthropic altruists andcompulsive givers.

All people-pleasers use these common coping strategies:

1. Dishonesty (to avoid conflicts and unpleasant situations);

2. Manipulation (to ensure desired outcomes, such as an intimate partner's continued presence);

3. Fostering dependence: codependent people-pleasers leverage their ostentatious helplessness and manifest weaknesses to elicit the kind of behaviours and solicit the benefits that they angle for, while narcissistic people-pleasers aim to habituate their targets by bribing them with gifts, monopolizing their time, and isolating them socially;

4. Infantilization: displaying childish behaviours to gratify the emotional needs of over-protective, possessive, paranoid, narcissistic, and codependent individuals in the people-pleaser's milieu;

5. Self-punishment, self-defeat, and self-sacrifice to signal self-annulment in the pursuit of people-pleasing.

(From the book "Malignant SelfloveNarcissism Revisited" by Sam Vaknin Click on this link to purchase the print book, or 16 ebooks, or 3 DVDs with 16 hours of video lectures on narcissists, psychopaths, and abuse in relationships)