Jill Szoo Wilson

By Jill Szoo Wilson
Writer | Theatre Artist | Educator

A smear campaign carries a narcissist’s private verdict into the wider world, where repetition can begin to look like proof, and the person under attack is forced to answer a story created around her.

By Wednesday afternoon, Lena had received a message from a woman she last spoke with eight months earlier. The message was short: I heard you left Daniel during the worst night of his life. I hope you understand what you’ve done.

Lena read it at the kitchen counter beside a box of plates she had carried from the apartment. The woman knew only Daniel’s account, though she wrote as if she had stood in the hallway and watched Lena walk past him.

An hour later, a mutual friend asked whether Lena had met someone else. Infidelity belonged entirely to the story now traveling around her. Daniel had spent the days since she left explaining what happened, and each explanation placed another person between Lena and her own life.

Rachel had been the first third person. Daniel called his sister and told her that Lena abandoned him during an argument. Her sympathy gave him what he needed. As his account spread beyond Rachel, the purpose widened. Lena’s reputation became part of the conflict.

That wider effort is commonly called a smear campaign. The term describes an attempt to damage someone’s credibility through selective stories or direct invention. A smear campaign may grow from deliberate strategy or repeated self-protection. In either case, the audience becomes part of the way the story works.

When the Story Leaves the Room

People speak about painful relationships. They seek comfort and try to understand what happened. In a smear campaign, relief comes through changing how other people see the former partner.

The teller chooses details that support a conclusion about the target and carries that conclusion into a social group. Listeners begin seeing the target through that interpretation before they encounter her account. Concern for one person gradually becomes certainty about the character of another.

Daniel’s story contained facts. Lena packed a bag at two in the morning and left while he was crying. His calls went unanswered. The story gained its force from the fact he left outside it: an hour earlier, he had blocked the doorway when she tried to end the argument.

That missing fact changed the meaning of every other one. Packing looked cruel after Daniel removed the reason for it. Silence became punishment once he separated it from Lena’s fear.

Smear campaigns often work this way. A piece of truth gives the story weight, while the arrangement of the facts determines where that weight falls. Because parts of the story are accurate, the teller sounds reliable. The target is left explaining a conclusion built from an edited record.

The Story That Protects the Self

Smear campaigns sit outside the diagnostic criteria for narcissistic personality disorder (American Psychiatric Association, 2022). Their connection to narcissism comes from the psychological work they can perform.

Carolyn Morf and Frederick Rhodewalt describe narcissism as a self-regulating system that repeatedly turns to the social world for support. Other people provide admiration and help defend a grandiose yet fragile view of the self (Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001). When a relationship ends in a way that brings shame, the surrounding community can be recruited to stabilize the preferred account.

Daniel faced a painful picture of himself after Lena left. The blocked doorway placed control and fear inside his behavior. Accepting that picture would require him to experience himself as the source of harm.

The smear campaign gave Daniel a story he could live with. Lena became a cold woman who disappeared during his moment of greatest need. Daniel remained the loving partner who had been discarded.

The split version of Lena gained an ally through triangulation. Once that ally carried the story into the community, Daniel’s internal picture began shaping Lena’s public identity.

Narcissistic rivalry helps explain the movement. Mitja Back and his colleagues describe rivalry as a self-protective form of narcissism organized around devaluing other people and striving for supremacy (Back et al., 2013). Later work on narcissistic status pursuit describes other-derogation as one route by which a person tries to raise his relative position (Grapsas et al., 2020).

A smear campaign performs both tasks at once. It lowers Lena’s standing and restores Daniel’s place as the sympathetic person at the center of the story. The darker Lena appears in the community, the more innocent Daniel can feel inside it.

The Injured Man at the Center

Popular writing often uses the term covert narcissism. Psychological research usually discusses the same general presentation as vulnerable narcissism. Both terms point toward grandiosity expressed through hypersensitivity and grievance, with the person appearing wounded or overlooked.

Joshua Miller and his colleagues found meaningful differences between grandiose and vulnerable narcissism. The vulnerable form was associated with emotional distress and low self-esteem, while both forms shared antagonistic features (Miller et al., 2011). Kelly Dickinson and Aaron Pincus also found vulnerable narcissism associated with interpersonal distress and vindictive relational patterns (Dickinson & Pincus, 2003).

The vulnerability is real. The person may experience criticism with enormous intensity and may ruminate on the injury long after the conversation ends. Zlatan Krizan and Omesh Johar found narcissistic vulnerability to be a strong driver of rage and hostility, especially as suspiciousness and angry rumination deepen the wound (Krizan & Johar, 2015).

Sam Vaknin describes the comparison at the center of this behavior: “He does all this in order to elevate himself by comparison, render himself or herself superior” (Vaknin, 2025). Daniel’s campaign gives him that elevation each time another person accepts the reduced version of Lena.

This presentation can make a smear campaign especially effective. Daniel arrives in tears and speaks in the language of heartbreak. He asks to be understood, which places the listener in a caring posture before Lena’s character enters the conversation.

Because Daniel is hurting, the accusation sounds gentler than it is. A listener may feel that questioning his account would add another injury, so sympathy begins carrying conclusions that received little examination.

An openly grandiose narcissist may attack a reputation in public. Daniel’s vulnerable style travels through intimate conversations and worried messages. He can damage Lena’s reputation while appearing to ask only for comfort.

Suffering deserves compassion. The campaign becomes visible through what the suffering asks other people to believe and what it asks them to do. Daniel wants comfort, and he also wants Lena’s social world to confirm that she caused the pain.

The Useful Piece of Truth

The strongest smear campaigns can sound restrained. Daniel tells Rachel that Lena “walked out in the middle of a hard conversation.” He tells a mutual friend that she “needed space” and adds a tired little laugh.

His phrasing allows the listener to complete the accusation. Daniel can appear careful while the audience supplies words such as selfish or unstable. The story grows harsher as it travels, even when Daniel keeps his own voice low.

At dinner, one friend tells another that Lena disappeared when Daniel needed her. A week later, someone remembers hearing that Lena had become emotionally cruel. Each retelling moves farther from the doorway and closer to a judgment about who Lena is.

This is where the earlier mechanisms in the series begin working together. The devalued introject from the previous essays now travels through the triangles Daniel has built.

The smear campaign turns an internal object into a public identity. People who have spent little time with Lena begin speaking about the woman Daniel carries in his mind.

When Repetition Begins to Feel Like Proof

Repetition can give a story more authority than it has earned. A statement becomes easier to process after we hear it several times, and that familiarity can increase its perceived truth. Alice Dechêne and her colleagues found this truth effect across a meta-analysis of 51 studies (Dechêne et al., 2010).

Daniel tells Rachel that Lena abandoned him. A mutual friend later repeats the same phrase, and Rachel hears it again from someone who appears to be a second source. The interpretation began with Daniel, though its return makes it feel independently confirmed.

Lena experiences the same distortion from the other side. By the time she speaks, her explanation sounds like a rebuttal. Daniel’s version arrived first and settled into the group as news.

This is how a smear campaign becomes much larger than its source. One person’s interpretation can return through several mouths and appear to represent a community. Volume begins standing in for evidence.

Research on gossip offers another piece of the picture. Friederike Hartung and her colleagues found that higher narcissism was associated with using gossip to validate information and build relationships with the person hearing it (Hartung et al., 2019). Daniel gains closeness with each listener through the shared story about Lena.

The conversation also draws Daniel closer to the people who hear it. Anyone who later questions the story also threatens the connection built through believing it.

The Audience Receives a Role

A smear campaign gives the listener a moral task. The audience is asked to comfort the injured person and protect other people from the target. Passive sympathy can quickly become participation.

Rachel sends Lena a message urging her to call Daniel. A mutual friend begins watching Lena’s social media for evidence of another relationship. Each person feels helpful as Daniel’s interpretation gains access to more relationships through them.

This mechanism can move through families and workplaces. A relative becomes the selfish one everyone manages carefully. An employee becomes difficult after a supervisor repeatedly describes ordinary disagreement as disloyalty.

The language changes with the setting. The story travels through relationships the target once trusted, and she gradually discovers that those relationships now contain someone else’s account of her.

A large review by Sophie Kjærvik and Brad Bushman found narcissism associated with direct and indirect aggression, including gossip, with stronger effects under provocation (Kjærvik & Bushman, 2021). The finding helps place a smear campaign within a broader pattern of reputational aggression following narcissistic injury.

Daniel felt provoked by Lena’s departure because it challenged his authority and exposed behavior he needed to keep outside his public identity. The campaign allowed aggression to appear as explanation. He could injure Lena’s standing while presenting himself as the person asking for support.

The Trap in Answering

By Friday, Lena understood that every conversation moved quickly from the night itself to her character. Facts could answer what happened. The larger question of what kind of woman she was could consume the rest of her year.

If Lena stayed quiet, some people treated her silence as guilt. A long defense gave Daniel material for another story about her instability. The campaign placed her in a position where every response might be folded back into his account.

She began with the people whose decisions touched her life. To her closest friends, she described the blocked doorway and showed them the messages from that night. With the wider circle, she used one sentence: “I left after Daniel prevented me from walking out of the room, and I am comfortable with my decision.”

The sentence restored the missing context and kept the focus on Lena’s experience. Daniel’s character stayed outside the argument.

Accuracy also helped her decide where to spend her energy. Some people were capable of hearing a fuller account. Others had become attached to Daniel’s version because it gave them a role in his life.

Lena stopped treating every listener as a jury. Her attention moved toward the relationships where truth could be spoken once and allowed to stand.

Living Beyond the Story

A smear campaign can outlive the relationship that produced it. The story continues protecting the teller, and the people who accepted it may become invested in their own judgment. Revising their view of Lena would require them to reconsider the part they played.

Daniel kept updating his account as Lena rebuilt her life. He treated her silence as coldness. When she seemed happy again, he decided she had moved on suspiciously fast. Each new fact entered a story whose verdict had already been chosen.

Lena gradually understood that the campaign’s size came from repetition. The people carrying Daniel’s story still represented separate relationships, each with its own history and limits. Their agreement could influence her reputation. Lena still knew what happened in the hallway.

One Saturday, Lena saw Rachel near a display of lemons at the market. Rachel gave her a small, tight smile. Lena returned it and went back to choosing lemons.

Rachel continued believing Daniel’s account. Lena chose two and took them home.

All characters in this essay are fictional. Daniel and Lena are continued from earlier pieces in this series.

If something in this series feels familiar in your own relationship, confidential support is available through the National Domestic Violence Hotline or by calling 800-799-SAFE (7233).

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Sources and Further Reading

American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed., text rev.). American Psychiatric Association Publishing.

Back, M. D., Küfner, A. C. P., Dufner, M., Gerlach, T. M., Rauthmann, J. F., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2013). “Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry: Disentangling the Bright and Dark Sides of Narcissism.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 105(6), 1013–1037.

Dechêne, A., Stahl, C., Hansen, J., & Wänke, M. (2010). “The Truth About the Truth: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Truth Effect.” Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 238–257.

Dickinson, K. A., & Pincus, A. L. (2003). “Interpersonal Analysis of Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism.” Journal of Personality Disorders, 17(3), 188–207.

Grapsas, S., Brummelman, E., Back, M. D., & Denissen, J. J. A. (2020). “The ‘Why’ and ‘How’ of Narcissism: A Process Model of Narcissistic Status Pursuit.” Perspectives on Psychological Science, 15(1), 150–172.

Hartung, F. M., Krohn, C., & Pirschtat, M. (2019). “Better Than Its Reputation? Gossip and the Reasons Why We and Individuals With ‘Dark’ Personalities Talk About Others.” Frontiers in Psychology, 10, 1162.

Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2021). “The Link Between Narcissism and Aggression: A Meta-Analytic Review.” Psychological Bulletin, 147(5), 477–503.

Krizan, Z., & Johar, O. (2015). “Narcissistic Rage Revisited.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 108(5), 784–801.

Miller, J. D., Hoffman, B. J., Gaughan, E. T., Gentile, B., Maples, J., & Campbell, W. K. (2011). “Grandiose and Vulnerable Narcissism: A Nomological Network Analysis.” Journal of Personality, 79(5), 1013–1042.

Morf, C. C., & Rhodewalt, F. (2001). “Unraveling the Paradoxes of Narcissism: A Dynamic Self-Regulatory Processing Model.” Psychological Inquiry, 12(4), 177–196.

Vaknin, S. (2025). “Covert Narcissist’s Insidious Speech.” Vaknin Talks. Video transcript.