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1. 00:01 healthy narcissism as the name implies is healthy it underlies our self-esteem and self-confidence our ability to regulate our sense of self-worth the capacity to set goals and actualize them all these derive from healthy narcissism which starts basically in very early childhood
2. 00:27 around 18 months when we say goodbye to mommy we separate from her and we take on the world we explore we discover and this takes a lot of grandiosity a lot of fantastic inflated self-concept some of it remains with us for life and allows us to sometimes be less than
3. 00:53 realistic aspire dream fantasize reach daydream and plan these are all extremely healthy and positive traits and adaptations and healthy narcissism is an integral part a sufficient and necessary condition for all these things without healthy narcissism we have
4. 01:16 mental health issues actually yet healthy narcissism should never be confused with a pathological malignant sort in what the narcissist does the narcissist leverages healthy narcissism corrupts it adulterates it contaminates it transforms it reframes it
5. 01:37 transmogriies it beyond recognition and then injects it into the shared fantasy as I will explain later in this video the topic of today's video is when is narcissism a good thing the answer is in early childhood and in adolescence but never ever later than
6. 01:59 this my name is Sambaknin i'm the author of Malignant Self- Love Narcissism Revisited the first book ever on narcissistic abuse i'm also a professor of psychology and a poor children let's delve right in in both childhood and adolescence narcissism is a positive
7. 02:19 adaptation it contributes to what is known as self-efficacy the ability to set goals and then realize favorable consequences and outcomes extract favorable outcomes from the environment it's a form of positive adaptation now this kind of healthy narcissism stays with us for
8. 02:42 life and as I said earlier it has nothing to do with pathological narcissism let's first tackle these two periods in personal development and personal growth as I said in early childhood between 18 months and 36 months the child separates from the
9. 03:03 secure base that is in most cases a maternal figure mother or anyone who fulfills maternal functions the child says goodbye for increasingly longer periods of time ventures out and forth explores the world discovers things interacts with peers returns to the
10. 03:23 secure base knowing that his behavior exploratory behavior would be rewarded and not punished the secure base is not punitive it may discipline the child but never punish the child for attempting to become autonomous and independent and so in early childhood
11. 03:44 narcissism is a precondition cohort called it the grandio self the child needs to develop some kind a modicon of grandiosity and the parent the good parent mother especially mirrors the child the parents mirror the child they encourage the child they egg the child
12. 04:06 on they provide the child with all the pre preconditions for this exploration this um discovery of the terrain incognita around the child so the parents are there and when the child behaves in ways which are less than optimal not so realistic a bit fantastic
13. 04:27 and always always inflated and grandio parents don't shoot the child down don't put the child down don't take the child down on the very contrary they're there to help the child now of course this should not persist beyond 36 months because this may foster a grandio self for
14. 04:49 life but in this critical period the grandiosity should be overlooked and even to a large extent mirrored and encouraged adolescence is a bit of a different story adolescents are more narcissistic in general we have studies by bl the pioneer of the field in 1962 Winnott in
15. 05:10 ' 65 Koh in 77 Bllyberg in 94 etc etc we know that there is a close correlation a high correlation between narcissistic traits and behaviors and even some narcissistic dynamics for example fantasy defense and adolescence especially when adolescents experience
16. 05:30 difficulties with separation individuation when they construct a self-concept an ego an identity away from their parents so the narcissistic defenses of the adolescent are going to escalate become more overpowering and overwhelming more virulent and finally
17. 05:51 pathological if the adolescent is not allowed to separate from the parents become an individual construct his or her own self-concept ego whatever identity away from the parents adolescents need away time from the parents ericson described these these
18. 06:13 stages in 1950 moratorium and so on 1968 marcia in 1980 Blossion Bloss in ' 62 Josephson in 88 Banai Mikulinser and Shaver in 2005 Lapsley and Alsma in 2006 the again Lapsley Fitzgerald Rice and Jackson in ' 89 etc etc there are multiple studies all of them demonstrate
19. 06:36 conclusively that adolescents are narcissistic they're not narcissists but they do have a narcissistic style and they are subclinical narcissist wrong choices by adolescence lead to self-doubt and a sense of inadequacy if the parents are overprotective spoiling pampering
20. 07:00 idolizing pedestalizing instrumentalizing parentifying or otherwise abusive physically sexually and otherwise if the parents don't let go don't allow the adolescent to develop boundaries to experiment to experience loss and failure these kind of bad
21. 07:17 parents insecure parents selfish depressive whatever the reason may be these kinds of parents do not allow the adolescent to recover from bouts of self-doubt self-castigation self-loathing and a a pervasive sense of failure and inadequacy grandio narcissism butresses
22. 07:41 and restores self-esteem on such occasions so parents need to be very tolerant of grandio statements and grandio gestures and grandio schemes and plans of the adolescent his grandiosity is an antidote to self deconstruction to self disintegration to self harm to self-hatred
23. 08:05 self-rejection the grandiosity which is essentially a fantasy cognitive distortion allows the adolescent to withdraw and retreat into a sphere or a space where the self-doubt can be mitigated amilarated the anxiety could be taken down it's anxolytic and the
24. 08:25 sense of inadequacy replaced with fake for omnipotence and omniscience adolescents who feel omnipotent score and omniscient and so on score higher on measures of mastery coping they they become more masterful they they own their lives they control
25. 08:47 their lives and they have decreased depressive and self-esteem issues graniosity is healthy in adolescence grandiosity is healthy in childhood good parenting is critical in both adolescence that are covert adolescence that believe they are they are so unique that no one can ever
26. 09:09 understand them they exhibit many pathological symptoms studies by Alma Lapsley Flannry Hill and Lapsley 2006 2011 have demonstrated this some clinical features of narcissism exhibitionism exploitativeness entitlement predict delinquency and problems in conduct while features
27. 09:31 related to greater self-esteem actually portend a much healthier and better future so again um when the adolescents feel sufficient when the adolescent feels in authority that's healthy when the adolescent is estrionic exhibitionistic exploitative
28. 09:53 entitled that is not a good sign i refer you to studies by Barry Graveman Donalan Janevski Robbins Moffett Kaspi and many others narcissism is conducive to setting occupational and financial life goals the more narcissistic the adolescent up to a point the more likely
29. 10:16 the adolescent is to accomplish things and succeed later in life arnet Stoutinger have already elucidated this issue early on in 96 and 2000 roberts and Robins a bit later setting goals focused on money and recognition which is essentially narcissistic is adaptive
30. 10:36 during college college children in college kids in college should be a bit grandiose and should be a bit narcissistic in their goal setting and life plan though it's not necessarily correlated with well-being later in life ironically in other words some
31. 10:54 maturation is required later some compromise with life some realization that money and recognition are superficial and not everything hill Brow Brendanburgger Lapsley Quiranto and many others scholars that you may wish to look online if you want to learn
32. 11:14 more so generally speaking self-focus and individualism are adaptive during the adoption of new roles and new expectations having an inflated sense of self leads towards setting goals that promote self-interest although not well-being that's a very interesting distinction
33. 11:34 narcissism in other words can be adaptive in certain periods of life like early childhood and adolescence or it could be maladaptive and again I refer you to Barry Graveman Adler Picass Lukovitzki Hill Lapsley and many others this distinction is very crucial
34. 11:53 it's wrong to say that all narcissism is bad maladaptive dysfunctional leads to to the wrong or bad outcomes it's completely And the problem starts when the grandiosity of adolescence and even more so the toddler infantile grandiosity what Freud used to call primary grandio
35. 12:18 narcissism the problem starts when these remain intact they never dissolve life and reality do not intrude do not push back the friction with peers and with life does not teach the individual anything and the primary narcissism which is infantile and the
36. 12:38 adolescent narcissism remain as they are unchanged immutable then the problem starts because for example in the shared fantasy the narcissist behaves behaves the same the way a child does he applies this grandiosity to the shared fantasy as a reenactment of separation
37. 13:01 individuation and it becomes a repetition compulsion heightened narcissism is then perceived within the shared fantasy as a coping strategy as an adaptive strategy let me explain the narcissist approaches these relationships interpersonal relationships intimate intimate romantic
38. 13:21 and otherwise friendships even in the workplace narcissist approaches these relationships as a replay a reenactment of childhood or adolescence he brings to the table the same narcissism the same grandiosity that worked well for him as an adolescent or as an as a child
39. 13:44 this is of course highly maladaptive highly dysfunctional the narcissist attempts to separate an individuate there are two phases of separation individuation in life 18 to 36 months and during adolescence the narcissist tries to reenact them to replay them it's like
40. 14:05 cosplay it's a role play within the shared fantasy attempting to separate from the romantic intimate partner who is now in the role of maternal figure and then individuate and to accomplish this separation individuation a third time lucky the narcissist imports
41. 14:26 unchanged the same narcissism and grandiosity that he used as a child or as an adolescent and this ends badly this ends badly it leads to repetition compulsor the narcissist mispersceives heightened narcissism and overwinning grandiosity as winning strategies as adaptive
42. 14:48 strategies but in adult relationships love is unconditional separation is taken for granted individuation is not the outcome of rejecting someone very often it's the other way around so it's all wrong all these strategies that worked well in childhood and adolescence if they are
43. 15:09 exported as they are into an adult relationship they destroy the relationship so this is where the narcissist is getting it wrong he is frozen in time or she is frozen in time as a child or as an adolescent a pira a Peter Pan and then this child this early
44. 15:33 adolescent tries to have an adult relationship with an adult and of course it never works