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1. 00:02 the narcissist holds everybody in utter unmitigated profound contempt disdain disgust the narcissist considers everyone inferior somehow intellectually morally physically accomplishmentwise historically some way contempt therefore is intimately linked
2. 00:31 with a sense of innate superiority don't get me wrong narcissists do have role models they do admire and adulate top dog narcissists there's a hierarchy in narcissism but even the the contempt the disdain they're never far below the surface they're close to the surface they are
3. 00:57 ready to erupt any second the narcissist exudes this potential for contempt in all interactions broadcasting i know that I'm superior to you or even if I consider you superior to me it's a momentary position momentary situation sooner or le later later I will reassert
4. 01:21 my incontestable indisputable superiority over you contempt is a complicated effect many self-styled experts link it erroneously to grandiosity it is not linked to grandiosity it is actually the outcome of shame the narcissist projects his or her shame and
5. 01:48 in this process of projection the shame alchemically becomes contempt how we're going to explore in this video and I propose contempt my name is Savakin i'm the author of malignant self love narcissism revisited and I'm a professor of psychology which is indeed worthy of disdain
6. 02:14 okay Shashim stay with me i know it's a Monday and everything but you know we have to survive all of us and so the narcissist contempt for you is shame projected let's start with the construct of shame there's another video on this channel which I posted a few days ago where I
7. 02:34 explained that shame is a reaction to abuse to trauma to hurt to pain when you're exposed to pain and hurt and abuse and trauma you develop shame because you're helpless helplessness breeds shame and why is that because to feel helpless is is intolerable it's unbearable
8. 03:05 when you're helpless you're dehumanized you're objectified you lose agency you're just a play thing a throw around you are in many ways deanimated without a life force so pain and hurt and trauma and abuse especially protracted ones they create
9. 03:32 an in a strong sense of helplessness we call it learned helplessness how to overcome this by developing shame what is shame let's deconstruct this effect or this emotion of shame shame means that you're somehow responsible for something that has happened shame
10. 03:54 goes hand in hand with personal responsibility but wait a minute if you're responsible for what has happened then you are in control there is mastery here you're you're the master of what has happened you've orchestrated it you have somehow made it happen
11. 04:13 i mean if you were not responsible for what has happened if you did not contribute to what has happened if you did not make what has happened happen then why would you feel ashamed there would be no shame so shame is the assumption of responsibility
12. 04:33 to a situation that is perceived as adversarial or to some kind of adverse situation and this mastery and control gained ironically through shame imbue the circumstances with hope because shame means I have made this happen i have caused this to
13. 04:56 happen i'm responsible i've contributed to this therefore I can undo this i can make amends i can remedy the situation and I render the whole thing predictable so the transition from pain and hurt and trauma and abuse the transition from helplessness to shame
14. 05:18 is an attempt to reassert control and mastery over the situation and thus restore predictability and hope and at the same time take responsibility for whatever has happened and feel ashamed this is the irony in shame shame empowers actually and to not confuse
15. 05:41 shame with guilt guilt is an entirely different effect guilt has strong social components and guilt is intimately linked and enhances actually helplessness although at some point guilt transforms to shame which is in many ways motivational we'll discuss this some other time so
16. 06:04 this is the first thing you need to understand pain and hurt especially in early childhood lead to helplessness and the only way to get out of helplessness is by developing a sense of shame it's all my responsibility i have made this happen i've contributed
17. 06:22 to this okay but narcissism pathological narcissism is a rejection of shame the narcissist shuns avoids shame the narcissist is terrified by the repository of shame inside him because it is life-threatening when the narcissist gets in touch with his his or
18. 06:47 her shame the narcissist experiences lifethreatening motification narcissistic motification so narcissists avoid shame they evade it they escape it they reject it and they shun it at all costs nothing terrifies a narcissist more than humiliation and shame
19. 07:09 but we have just said that shame is a strategy for reasserting a sense of control self-empowerment and mastery over the situation and so by rejecting shame by avoiding shame the narcissist gives up on one of the main strategies we have for feeling re-empowered and agentic
20. 07:34 so by avoiding shame the narcissist remains stuck in the helplessness phase the narcissist cannot transition from helplessness to shame because the narcissist dreads shame much more than the narcissist is afraid of helplessness narcissists in other words prefer prefer a sense of
21. 07:57 helplessness to the experience of shame and yet because the narcissist never accepts responsibility because the narcissist has aloplastic defenses everyone else is to blame everyone else is guilty everyone else has has misbehaved because of this the narcissist's helplessness
22. 08:23 is morally righteous it's it's a form of moral injury or righteous indignation so here's the sequence the narcissist experiences pain and hurt and abuse and trauma especially in early childhood but also throughout life when the narcissist is exposed or humiliated or or attacked
23. 08:45 or criticized or whatever then the narcissist is under the threat of getting in touch with his or her life-threatening reservoir of shame to avoid this the narcissist remains stuck in the helplessness phase the narcissist refuses to transition from helplessness
24. 09:08 to shame the narcissist refuses to reassert control and mastery over his life by embracing shame as a motivational effect naris refuses to do this and he's permanently permanently stuck in the phase of hurt and shame and helplessness so the narcissist is constantly helpless
25. 09:33 how to overcome this sense of helplessness or pervasive consuming subsuming sense of helplessness how to overcome this by demonizing other people
26. 09:47 by saying by attributing to other people malevolence and malice and envy and stupidity the narcissist helplessness is not the narcissist's fault the narcissist helplessness is perceived by the narcissist as proof positive of the moral and intellectual inferiority of other people
27. 10:12 other people are evil the narcissist is helpless because he refuses to be evil the narcissist's helplessness therefore supports ironically the narcissist grandiosity as a morally upright agent he attains the high moral ground as an intellectually superior person worthy of
28. 10:38 the envy and malice of everyone around him as someone with accomplishments or with looks or with with with intelligence or with assets of this or that kind and all these provoke envy in others the narcissist is helpless because he chooses to be helpless he
29. 11:00 convinces himself helplessness is my choice as the alternative is aggression the alternative is wickedness and I am a good person so when the narcissist is confronted by the choice helplessness or shame the narcissist cannot embrace shame because shame implies
30. 11:25 some kind of misbehavior responsibility some kind of inferiority moral at least inferiority shame is humiliating shame undermines grandiosity so the narcissist gives up on shame and the only alternative to shame is the helplessness of being abused of being mistreated and so the
31. 11:51 narcissist becomes a victim in his own mind his helplessness is converted or transmogrified transforms into a form of victimhood his helplessness is the helplessness of the morally righteous and upright victim of the blameless victim of the pure angelic victim
32. 12:15 that's his helplessness the narcissist's helplessness and by doing so the narcissist regains or restores or butresses his grandiosity how to regain a sense of mastery when one rejects shame as a strategy how to regain a sense of mastery an internal locus of control
33. 12:38 when one feels helpless all the time the play thing of malevolent malicious wicked evil forces the victim of circumstances and people and environments and institutions how in this narrative can one at the same time claim to be godlike masterful in control
34. 13:03 how does one square the circle on the one hand if you are the victim of evil people then you are not in control you are not the master and you're definitely not godlike victims are not godlike they're not omnipotent they are not omnisient victim victimhood is the exact opposite of
35. 13:25 divinity so how to square the circle how to restore a sense of mastery as a victim how to leverage helplessness to regain control and to restore the grandio inflated fantastic self-enhancing perception as godlike how to do that contempt is the answer contempt
36. 13:53 is a way to project the shame to project the helplessness onto other people it's what we call what Libby called an external solution contempt is as I said I'm going to repeat this it's very important contempt is the narcissist projected shame content
37. 14:17 contempt is the narcissist projected helplessness what is contempt what is the underlying sentence the underlying narrative of contempt they ought to be ashamed of themselves they are contemptable they are inferior so by adopting contempt as the overriding effect
38. 14:45 the narcissist squares the circle the narcissist says "I'm not ashamed i'm responsible for nothing i've done nothing wrong i'm not ashamed on the very contrary I'm helpless because I'm being victimized i'm the victim." But the people who are victimizing me
39. 15:07 they should be ashamed of themselves they are inferior they are contemptable morally intellectually and so on i hold them in disdain and disgusted by them and by saying this by deploying this narrative the narcissist restores a sense of superiority
40. 15:30 restores a sense of mastery and control because if you're surrounded by midgets and you're the only Giver it's not your fault nothing is your fault if you are misunderstood discriminated against envied it's not your fault nothing is your fault they should be ashamed you
41. 15:52 have nothing to be ashamed of and your helplessness is simply the outcome of the inferiority of people around you of their shortcomings of their envy of their deficiencies and of their moral turpitude they are the ones who are stingy and impetuous and envious and destructive
42. 16:15 and hateful they are the ones you're just there superior and august morally and intellectually you're helpless you're helpless against the horde you're helpless against the crowd and the mob of people besieging you attempting to take you down it's not
43. 16:34 much to do but you are never ashamed and you're definitely superior contempt is not the same as grandiosity grandiosity is motivational grandio Grandiosity motivates you to act in order to sustain maintain preserve batteries and augment your grandiosity you have to do things
44. 17:01 for example you have to coers people to provide you with narcissistic supply you have to behave in highly constricted well- definfined ways grandiosity generates behavioral scripts grandiosity is also a cognitive distortion it's a misperception of reality a reframing of it a
45. 17:20 falsification of the world grandiosity is a narrative within which you are God you are godlike the narcissist grandiosity is godlike is this perfect perfect entity and grandiosity is motivational because it it generates as I said behavioral scripts it dictates behaviors whereas
46. 17:43 contempt is not motivational is attitudinal contempt is inert the narcissist holds everybody in contempt but it doesn't motivate him to do anything that is distinct from the psychopath the psychopath holds everyone in contempt and this motivates the psychopath
47. 18:05 to harm people to damage people to take advantage of people so in not in in psychopathy contempt is motivational not attitudinal in psychopathy whereas in psychopathy the grandiosity is attitudinal psychopathy in this sense is a mirror image of narcissism
48. 18:28 in narcissism grandiosity is motivation it motivates a narcissist to act in certain ways in order to sustain and preserve the grandio view of himself and to self-enhance whereas in narcissism contempt is attitudinal i hold everyone in contempt but it
49. 18:48 doesn't mean that I have to do something about it says the narcissist whereas in psychopathy it is exactly the reverse in psychopathy the grandiosity is attitudinal i'm superior to everyone everyone is stupid that's an attitude whereas the contempt
50. 19:07 in psychopathy is motivational the contempt is the effect that drives the psychopath to harm and take advantage of people in narcissism in pathological narcissism grandiosity is about uniqueness not about superiority grandiosity is about being special one
51. 19:30 of a kind suiis not about being superior for example the narcissist could feel grandiose as a victim the narcissist could feel grandiose as someone who has failed spectacularly grandiosity is about the spectacle not about feeling superior many narcissists many narcissists
52. 19:57 use their inferiority their failures their defeats their checkered history their they use this they leverage their own victive victimhood they leverage their inferiority in order to render themselves unique and special and this is their locus of
53. 20:18 grandiosity their inferiority in other words narcissists can feel grandiose for being uniquely inferior uniquely victimized uniquely unique failures uniquely defeated and so on and that is the seat of grandiosity in these specific narcissists whereas contempt
54. 20:42 is not about uniqueness it is not about being special like grandiosity grandiosity is about being special and unique contempt is about being superior to others contempt is a horty sense of superiority over other people who are perceived as in some way or some ways inferior
55. 21:05 so grandiosity is about being special or unique contempt is about being superior and they're not the same they're not the same if the locus of grandiosity also happens to be superiority in other words if the narcissist way of self-enhancing is via displays ostentatious displays of
56. 21:33 superiority if the narcissist narrative or way of thinking is that I'm special and unique because I'm superior then contempt can contribute to the butressing preservation and enhancement of the grandiosity contempt can contribute to the falsification of reality the impairment
57. 21:53 of reality testing but if the grandiosity is about being inferior contempt has nothing to do with it contempt will preserve some kind of a sense of superiority ironically some sometimes contempt can mean I am superior for my inferiority like no one has been victimized the way
58. 22:20 I have been victimized that renders me superior and all other victims inferior no one has failed the way I have failed spectacularly my failure was headline news my failure was all over the media i'm I I was my failure is being taught in university business business
59. 22:42 administration classes and so that's my failure so in that case the contempt would be would be reserved for people who have failed less than the narcissist in a lesser way so contempt is malleable the sense of superiority is linked to the grandio narrative
60. 23:05 but grandiosity in itself is not necessarily about superiority grandiosity can revolve around unique and special and unprecedented inferiority and the contempt then would still retain a sense of superiority and when it is linked with a grandiosity
61. 23:27 it would be the superiority of one's own inferiority you see how convoluted narcissism is and when self-styled experts and even scholars band about all kinds of observ observations I'm sorry to say but in most cases they have no idea what they're talking about because
62. 23:50 very few people on earth understand narcissism pathological narcissism intimately i think to some extent it takes introspection as well as observation and in this sense scholars who are also narcissistic or scholars who are narcissists they have an insurmountable advantage over
63. 24:17 scholars who are healthy normal people and we should listen to the first group and discount to a large extent the second