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- 00:00 No text by now many of you know the difference between narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic style they're not the same they're profoundly different narcissistic style involves a pattern of behaviors that are asocial or antisocial
- 00:23 or abrasive or unpleasant these people are obnoxious obnoxious a-holes but the narcissistic style does not involve any mental health pathology it is difficult to coexist with someone with the narcissistic style but there's no mental illness there and
- 00:45 the damage is therefore much more limited and passing only people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder 1.7% of the population can and should be called narcissist i would like to introduce a third stage between narcissistic style and narcissistic personality
- 01:10 disorder and I call it the narcissistic pattern the narcissistic pattern is a pattern of behaviors reactions that are either intermittent or ingrained are typical of pathological narcissism but are isolated in some way so that there is an individual there's a
- 01:39 person and that individual displays from time to time behaviors which are usually associated with pathological narcissism these behaviors these reactions these speech acts they mislead people into believing that the individual is a narcissist but
- 02:01 they're not i call it a narcissistic pattern because it is reminiscent of narcissism and yet the ideology the background the causation and the psychonamics are completely different the narcissistic pattern is not the same as narcissistic style people with narcissistic
- 02:24 style are are behaved the same way all the time so they are obnoxious all the time they're exploitative all the time they're abrasive and unpleasant all the time they're not nice they're not kind all the time the emphasis is all the time these are
- 02:43 behavioral characteristics and trait domains that are specific to the individual and typify the individual capture the individual's essence it is a narcissistic style whereas in the narcissistic pattern there are flashes of behaviors and reactions
- 03:05 which are very reminiscent of narcissism of pathological narcissism can mislead us into believing the individual is a narcissist when actually they are completely not my name is Sam Baknney i'm the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I'm a professor
- 03:23 of psychology No text i would like to describe a few of these behaviors and reactions which are common in pathological narcissism but when they appear in an isolated intermittent manner when they are not characteristics of characteristic of the individual's
- 03:44 entire behavioral reperatory and behavioral history then we are talking about a pattern narcissistic pattern start with splitting both narcissists and border lines people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder use an infantile defense mechanism known as splitting
- 04:06 they divide the world into all good and all bad all right and all wrong all black and all white this is known as dichomous thinking they tend to idealize people and then they're all good when they devalue the same person later that person becomes all
- 04:24 bad something is either 100% right or 100% wrong someone is a thousand% enemy or a million% friend this tendency to divide the world into black and white with no nuances of gray with an inability to perceive subtleties this is known as splitting and narcissists do
- 04:46 this a lot but so do otherwise mentally healthy people given extreme circumstances giving given enough grievances or perception of victimhood splitting can emerge as a defense mechanism an individual who believes himself or herself to be a victim of
- 05:13 egregious continuous premeditated deliberate abuse such an individual often regresses psychologically infantilizes and then the splitting defense mechanism erupts and the individual may say my um abuser the perpetrator the victimizer the aggressor they're all bad and I'm all good
- 05:41 splitting therefore is not necessarily proof or evidence of pathological narcissism because it sometimes happens sometimes occurs in people who are otherwise completely mentally healthy this is very typical for example of victims of narcissistic abuse victims of
- 06:04 narcissistic abuse tend to split as a defense anyone who anyone can go online and witness the exchanges in forums of victims of narcissistic abuse and self-styled empaths and regard the rampant splitting there where the narcissist is all bad and demonic and so
- 06:24 on and the victim is an angel immaculate and impeccable another example of an isolated behavior or reactive pattern which are typical of pathological narcissism but can make an appearance in an otherwise completely normal and healthy person well balanced
- 06:45 grounded and centered person is aloplastic defenses both narcissists engage in aloplastic defenses it's a tendency to blame other people the environment institutions the state someone else the neighbors the colleagues the bosses to blame someone else for one's fiascos
- 07:07 defeats mishaps bad decisions wrong choices and so on this tendency to shift the blame and to refuse to accept responsibility and to be held accountable for one's decisions and choices this is known as aloplastic defense whereas aloplastic defenses are
- 07:28 common in in narcissism in pathological narcissism healthy people sometimes engage in aloplastic defenses and it does not mean that these people are narcissists would be narcissists or want to be narcissist aloplastic defenses are um a firewall a
- 07:49 shield against extreme duress extreme stress extreme distress and extreme anxiety when these become intolerable unbearable exceed a certain qualitative as well as quantitative level many people engage in aloplastic defenses as a way to not burden themselves with addition the
- 08:15 additional stress of guilt so it's a way when when the person is stressed exposed to tension um faces unpredictability uncertainty indeterminacy and so so on so forth many people shift the blame they accuse other people institutions and the reason is that
- 08:40 guilt is very very burdensome shame is devastating and so as a defensive measure anyhow being subjected to a lot of stress and distress the individual shifts the blame and thus avoids feeling guilty and avoids experiencing shame aloplastic defenses therefore are much
- 09:03 more common than we care to admit and it is at the core and the foundation of victimhood movements victimhood identities competitive victimhood victimhood signaling and virtue signaling all unpleasant social phenomena but not indications and not proof of pathological narcissism
- 09:28 No text next is confabulation confabulation to remind you is when the narcissist attempts to bridge nagging memory gaps by inventing a story coming up with a narrative which is both plausible and probable and then mistaking this concocted conjured up
- 09:49 narrative for reality for facts and defending the narrative uh aggressively against any challenges and evidence to the contrary this is confabulation it's common not only in narcissistic personality disorder but also in psychotic disorders many many people from time to time
- 10:13 confabulate these confabulations are perceived by others as a form of gaslighting or future faking or outright lying but they're not there are desperate attempts last ditch measures and last resort choices intended to somehow maintain a sense of continuity and to make sense
- 10:36 and imbue make sense of one's life and imbue it with meaning so whereas confabulation could be pathological or a strong indication of a pathology in healthy normal people confabulation is much more rare and it is intended to serve as a kind of glue that would hold
- 10:56 the core identity together that would engender a sense of personal autobiographical continuity and that would serve as a hermeneutic principle an explanatory interpretative principle that make sense of one's life and events in one's life including cataclysmic
- 11:15 events or life crisis so if you contrapulate it doesn't mean you're a narcissist the test here is the frequency narcissists contribulate all the time whereas healthy normal people do so intermittently far far few and far No text between another example of a behavior
- 11:39 which is usually identified with pathological narcissism but could occur could happen could instantiate in totally healthy and normal people is self-enhancement narcissists seek input from the environment and sometimes coers other people to provide them with such
- 12:00 feedback that allows them to enhance their sense of self to butress and support an inflated fantastic grandio self-concept and so self- enhancement is an automatic response of the narcissist faced with challenges to a grandio unrealistic counterfactual
- 12:29 self-concept that is in pathological narcissism but healthy normal people also from time to time self-enhance and
- 12:41 self-supply the difference between the narcissist's self-enhancement and a healthy person's self-enhancement is that the narcissist's self-enhancement is not based on facts it is divorced from reality it is coupled with an impaired reality testing the narcissist is no
- 13:00 longer with us whereas the self self- enhancement and self-suppy normal individual is usually grounded in reality adheres to a factual narrative conforms to norms conventions and mores that are widely shared the narcissist therefore is so olipistic the
- 13:25 narcissist is fantastic the narcissist is unrealistic whereas the healthy person who confabulates usually confabulates out of the ground swell of reality and remains tethered to it never leaves sight never loses sight of reality and this has to do with the difference in
- 13:47 self-concepts whereas the narcissist self-concept is fantastic grandiose inflated unrealistic dramatically divorced from reality a normal healthy person's self-concept preserves intact reality testing the self-concept reflects accurate or semi accurate information
- 14:10 about the individual's strengths and weaknesses limitations and skills talents and accomplishments that's not the case with the narcissist where the self-concept is falsified where the self-concept is utterly imaginary where the self-concept has bears no bearing to reality of
- 14:33 course self-enhancement of the of such a self-concept would also be fantastic and divorce from reality and that's not the case with healthy normal people they also have a self-concept and sometimes this self-concept is mildly grandio and they self-enhance this self-concept from
- 14:52 time to time when needed when for example they're under stress and duress or when they're distressed or when they've just gone through a major life crisis or when they're down and depressed and so on then people self-enhance normal healthy people
- 15:08 self-enhance but their self-enhancement is easily traceable to anticidence and precedence in reality can easily reflects accurate information about the No text individual take for example the victimhood stance whereas nar narcissists default automatically to a
- 15:30 state a self-imputed state of victimhood normal healthy people rarely claim victimhood the narcissist's alleged victimhood has to do with the narcissist's aloplastic defenses tendency to blame others and external locus of control the belief that one's
- 15:52 life is determined from the outside by possibly envious and malevolent people so this paranoid ideation coupled with aloplastic defenses which are often very aggressive they give rise to a victimhood stance which is also actually aggressive demanding whereas in healthy
- 16:16 people healthy people can sometimes feel as if they have been victimized and even develop a kind of mild attenuated extenuating extenuated um victimhood identity but it would be passing it would be intermittent it would be grounded in reality actually in a real case of having been
- 16:38 victimized in a real case of victimizing and it would generally lead to actions that visiate and negate the victimhood which extricate the individual from the victimhood whereas in narcissism victimhood just leads to more victimhood deeper victimhood more profound
- 16:58 victimhood or pervasive ubiquitous victimhood No text entitlement remember what we're doing here we are distinguishing between pathological narcissism and its behaviors and its traits narcissistic style and its behaviors and the same behaviors and the
- 17:22 same reactions in completely healthy and normal individuals where there's no narcissistic style and the path there's no pathological narcissism not subclinical and not clinical absent completely these are functional people healthy people normal
- 17:41 people and still yet from time to time they display narcissistic behaviors and narcissistic reactions that doesn't make them narcissist nor does it mean that they're possessed of a narcissistic style because these narcissistic behaviors and traits are intermittent
- 18:01 few and far between the frequency the quantitative measurement of these behaviors matters a lot if you behave the in these ways repeatedly consistently all the time then you are either possessed of narcissistic style or you suffer from narcissistic
- 18:21 personality disorder if you engage in these behaviors and reactions from time to time subject to extreme circumstances in a in a way that is intermittent and transient then you're perfectly healthy and normal and again consider for example entitlement the pathological narcissist
- 18:42 the person diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder is a form of virulent demanding aggressive entitlement entitlement that is externalized imposed on other people and coerces them into modifying their behaviors or limiting their freedoms
- 19:01 narcissist entitlement emanates from a self-concept that is godlike a self-concept that is perfection raified a self-concept that that allows a narcissist to develop the conviction that he or she is entitled to highly special treatment by virtue of being a
- 19:21 special unique unprecedented individual in the narcissistic style entitlement is a lot weaker it's there but it's a lot weaker and usually does not involve externalized aggression it's ambient it's atmospheric and the punitive measures if you don't gratify or satisfy the
- 19:46 entitlement in the case of narcissistic style the punitive measures are minimal they are more like sulking than like punishment whereas the narcissist would punish you if you refuse to cater to the narcissist's needs if you refuse to support and uphold the narcissist's view
- 20:06 of himself as a perfect being entitled to everything and everyone's time resources energy and property if you refuse to accept this narrative of the pathological narcissist you'll be punished severely so this aggression is a differential uh differential feature
- 20:30 differential clinical feature between narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic style in the case of the healthy normal person when such a person shows entitlement for example sick people usually demonstrate sometimes entitlement people who have been
- 20:50 rendered helpless owing to an accident or life crisis they become a bit entitled but in healthy normal people entitlement is completely non-aggressive it's not even communicated it's just an internal feeling a sensation an inner experience these healthy normal people
- 21:11 don't go around demanding they don't go around imposing they don't go around extorting and blackmailing they don't go around threatening other people because they believe they're entitled to something or someone while narcissists people with narcissistic
- 21:32 personality disorder people with narcissistic style to a much lesser extent do and finally rage people rage healthy normal people rage absolutely and narcissists rage and people with narcissistic style rage but whereas in normal healthy people anger may be common rage is highly
- 21:57 uncommon in narcissists in people with narcissistic personality disorder anger is uncommon rage is common and in people with narcissistic style it's about 50/50 again it's a question of frequency it's a question of intensity it's a question of quantity therefore it's highly
- 22:18 measurable i have noticed a lacuna i've noticed a gap between narcissistic personality disorder narcissistic style and normal healthy people who sometimes display narcissistic behaviors and reactions make narcissistic speech acts and generally become temporary a-holes
- 22:42 and transiently obnoxious i call this the narcissistic pattern and I think there's a good clinical reason to distinguish it from narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic style what do you think i'm curious to hear