Can We Break Narcissism’s Intergenerational Transmission? (with Chris Senise)

Summary

It it it's you know the the way that I can sort of how that resonates for me is you know I have two children who I love very much but it's it's a matter of when they're young when they're adolescents in my opinion it was to raise them so well that they wouldn't need you later right that they could have their own lives and um not you know you will always be there for them, but raise them well enough that they won't need to come back or will be fine living their own lives regardless of successes and failures. So there are two paths to identity formation and if you're a positive person then positive identity.

Abuse, it's, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

July 10, 2025

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00:00 things. Do you Yeah. Do you prefer to be referred to as Sam, Dr. Vakton? What is your My given name is Sam? Yeah, me too. Well, mine is Christine,
00:11 but I go by Chris. So, okay. Chris, my name is We We could go with Chris. So, if um usually the way
00:18 that that this has been running is we have about 30 to 40 minutes of content.
00:24 That's what we've allotted for unless you want to run longer. I'm happy to do that. It's up to you.
00:30 I'm available. I'm available for longer, but let's see how it goes. If you feel that you would like
00:37 Yeah, I think if if it's a good conversation and it keeps going, why stop? Yeah. Well, that's entirely up to you.
00:44 You're in the in the driver's seat. I'm I'm at your disposal. Yes. Thank you for walking me through
00:50 those um you know, items to to to get you recorded. And I also thank you very
00:57 much for joining. um you are our eight uh guests and our goal was to have eight
01:03 guests recorded so that we could launch. So now we have an an official launch
01:09 date of July 2nd. So I'm very excited about that and I thank you very very much because um I'm not sure how much
01:16 you do you know anything about where this podcast is headed at all?
01:22 Nothing I've read nothing more than I've read online. Okay. So it's it's basically about helping people live their best lives
01:29 with and just creating awareness, giving them information and then I believe once
01:35 people have the even slightest amount of awareness, it gives them a little bit of
01:41 direction into you know maybe how to make better decisions in their lives or fix what they think needs to be fixed if anything. But um narcissism is one of
01:53 these things. I know for me, I've been affected by that. So, um I'm very excited about this episode. So, whenever
02:00 you're ready, I'm going to hit record on my end as well. Sure thing. I'm ready. Um and just give me one second to do
02:07 this because I don't normally use uh
02:14 the record the record button is at the bottom. Yeah. Like you're recording. Yeah.
02:20 All righty. All right. Um, welcome to the Christristine podcast where we have 1%
02:26 better each day, one episode at a time because small strides make the biggest impact. I'm very excited to have Sam
02:33 Backton here on our episode today. He's going to be giving us a little more information on narcissism.
02:41 Um, thank you Sam for being on our episode. Thank you for having of course. Well, in my search on
02:49 narcissism, much to my surprise, even though I thought I knew what it was, uh was that there are many forms of
02:57 narcissism, not just one type of narcissism where it seems
03:03 like perhaps there's um an unfair disadvantage with someone's behavior over somebody else. There are many types
03:10 of narcissism. I'd like to start there. What can you share with us today? Well, when things go wrong, they can be go wrong in various ways obviously and
03:21 narcissism is about things going wrong in early childhood. So when things go wrong in early childhood, some people, some children, a small minority, luckily for us, develop
03:34 pathological narcissism probably because pathological narcissism is somehow linked to a genetic predisposition.
03:42 Al although at this stage we haven't been able to prove that there is a genetic background hereditary background
03:48 we haven't been able to isolate the genes that supposedly predispose someone to develop pathological narcissism but
03:55 it stands to reason because many there's a group of children they're all siblings they're exposed to the same thing twins
04:03 they're twin studies and then only one of them becomes a narcissist so it stands to reason
04:09 and so actually there are only two types of narcissists, not many. There is the
04:15 overt overt narcissist. The overt narcissist is supremely confident, feels superior, lacks effective or emotional empathy, is
04:28 demanding, is entitled, is exploitative, and is a bit psychopathic, is a bit anti
04:34 antisocial. That's the overt narcissist. Now mistakenly online and there are many
04:40 mistakes online. The vast majority of the information is mistaken actually. So mistakenly online people call say that
04:48 this is the grandiose narcissist but all types of narcissist all manner of narcissist. They're all grandiose.
04:54 Grandiosity is a common feature to all varieties of narcissist. So this is the overt narcissism. The overt narcissist is happy golucky. He's a go-getter.
05:06 is uh as I said supremely self-confident to the point of being a bit foolish. So he's a risktaker. He's reckless
05:15 and when push comes to shove he becomes a bit as I said psychopathic, defiant and consumacious, rejecting of authority and even criminalized.
05:26 And then we have the covert narcissist, the vulnerable narcissist, fragile narcissist. There are many many
05:33 adjectives that are attached to this particular type of narcissism. It's a narcissist who is unable to
05:40 obtain what we call narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is admiration,
05:46 adulation, attention. This kind of narcissist keeps failing is what we call a collapsed narcissist. It's a narcissist who is not very efficient, not very
05:58 efficacious at securing the recognition that he or she believes believes that they deserve. And so this the covert narcissist is
06:10 passive aggressive. He's seething seething with suppressed rage and envy.
06:17 He's highly manip I'm saying he but half of all narcissist is the women. He is highly manipulative. is um you you don't see the covert narcissist coming because he puts on a facade of humility. So he's he has
06:33 pseudo humility, fake modesty. He's also in many cases pro-social. In
06:40 other words, it's a narcissist who deres his narcissistic supply by claiming to
06:46 be morally superior, attaining the high moral ground, by being altruistic and
06:52 charitable, but in an ostentatious way. Look at me. Look how charitable I am. Look what a wonderful person I am. Look
06:59 how kind and nice and amazingly altruistic and helpful I am and so on. So, this is known as a pro-social or
07:05 communal narcissist. The covert narcissist is uh is also a
07:11 phase. Today we used to believe that all narcissists are either overt or covert.
07:17 This used to be the belief until recently. But starting about 10 years ago, we have
07:24 come to the conclusion that all narcissists are both overt and covert. That these are actually phases. As long as the narcissist is successful in obtaining narcissistic supply, the
07:36 aforementioned attention, he is overt. But then when he fails or when he's
07:42 narcissistically injured or when he's challenged or when he's criticized or when he's mocked and shamed and
07:48 ridiculed or when he's when people disagree with him or when people expose him for what he is, which is often a
07:55 fraud or worse, at that point the overt narcissist becomes covert.
08:02 So it seems that all narcissists are both overt and covert. They have a core.
08:08 The core is fragile and vulnerable and brittle. And then they have a facade kind of an
08:15 envelope or shell. And they present this facade to the world. And the facade is I'm godlike. I'm perfect. I'm brilliant. I'm amazing. I'm a genius. I am, you know, omniscient. I know everything. I'm
08:26 all knowing. I'm I'm all powerful. I'm omnipotent. I'm a I'm a god. I'm a divinity, you know, but this facade is
08:34 compensatory. It compensates for the fact that deep inside there is this
08:40 immutable core of shame and vulnerability and fragility. That's why the narcissist becomes very violent and very aggressive when you challenge the narcissist or when you criticize because
08:53 he's def he's becoming defensive. He's defending the core. He it doesn't he can't afford to get in touch with his shame and his vulnerability because he will fall apart. A process known as
09:05 decompensation and motification. This in a nutshell is narcissism.
09:14 I can't hear you. Maybe you've muted yourself. No, I don't
09:21 know. Okay, let's try again. You can hear me
09:27 very very remotely, very vaguely. Let me check.
09:34 How about now? I can make out the words, but your sound is very low.
09:40 Not so much. Yeah. Let me see. It's okay. We can I can make out the words. But
09:46 how about now? A bit better. Yeah. Is that better? It's better. Yeah. Better. Can I hear you? Uh you you can hear me. Hopefully I can
09:57 hear you. It's okay. We can uh edit this always.
10:06 That's what's great about an editor. It's a lot of power, isn't it? Remaking the files.
10:16 Well, I think we can proceed. I can hear you well.
10:28 How's that? It's okay. We can proceed. You can hear me? Okay. All right. Just give it a a second to come in with my question. as you speak about the different types of narcissists. It's what's interesting about it is that I can run through so
10:47 many personalities I've been exposed to in my own life. Um different types of
10:55 and you've mentioned I've heard you mention before that there are I don't like to use the words good and bad but
11:01 there are how about healthy I think you've mentioned healthy narcissists. Mhm. Healthy, healthy narcissism. There
11:08 are no healthy narcissist, but there there's healthy narcissism, right? And the difference between
11:14 narcissist and narcissism is narcissist is a person who's narcissistic. No, narcissism narcissism is a trait. We all we all possess narcissism.
11:25 And there is a test. It's called narcissistic personality inventory, NPI.
11:31 And it allows us to measure the intensity and quantity of narcissism that any individual possesses. But all individuals possess narcissism.
11:42 Healthy narcissism is the foundation of self-esteem and self-confidence and the ability to regulate your sense of self-worth and to trust yourself and to have your back and to be your own best
11:54 friend. These are all dependent crucially on healthy narcissism. However, like everything healthy, like
12:01 anything biological, biological, it can go ary. It can become malignant like a healthy cell which becomes cancerous. Healthy narcissism can can go cancerous on you and can become malignant narcissism. And malignant narcissism is basically
12:18 um divided in two big groups. There is what we call narcissistic style.
12:24 narcissistic style. These are people who are obnoxious.
12:30 They are unpleasant. They are a-holes. They are not someone you would like to marry or befriend or work with um or date. They are very um exploitative and
12:43 self-centered. They they their empathy is a bit reduced. They um and so these are not nice
12:52 people, but they're not mentally ill. There's no mental health issue there. They're just not nice people. It's a it's a variant. It's a variety of character on a you know character exactly like sexuality and so on is a
13:08 spectrum. So you have unpleasant people around. It's a fact of life. And these people would have narcissistic style. Narcissistic style has little to do with
13:20 narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder is a is a serious severe mental illness. It involves
13:32 um a disruption in the formation of a of a functioning self. So narcissists don't
13:39 have a functioning self. They're ironically selfless and they don't have a core identity.
13:46 They have what we call identity disturbance or identity diffusion. They can't tell the difference between
13:52 external and internal. So they misidentify people as internal objects and they treat people as if they are figments of the narcissist's mind.
14:03 So the narcissist would treat you as an object, an extension because you you are inside his mind.
14:10 You're not out there. There's a total confusion between external out there separate from me and internal in here in
14:18 my mind. So this is a very serious mental disease, psychological disease.
14:24 And many many eminent scholars such as Otto Kernburg and many others have suggested that
14:32 narcissism is one step removed from schizophrenia or from psychosis, psychotic disorder.
14:39 Luckily, only 1.7% of the population have narcissistic personality disorder.
14:45 If you go online and listen to self-styled experts, you get the impression that everyone and his dog and
14:51 his mother-in-law is a narcissist. But that is expressly untrue.
14:57 Less fewer than 2% of population, probably 1% have narcissistic personality disorder. There's another
15:04 five, six, who knows percent of population who are who have a narcissistic style. They are simply
15:11 unpleasant people, not nice people, not kind, not empathic, not compassionate, not affectionate, not attentive,
15:18 self-centered, egotistical, exploitative, envious and so on so forth. But this is nothing to do with
15:24 the disease with a disorder. And that's where the confusion starts online.
15:30 Another confusion online is between narcissism and psychopathy. Very often behaviors that are attributed
15:37 to narcissists are actually the behaviors of psychopaths not of
15:43 narcissists. For example, narcissists do not gaslight. Psychopaths do. In order to
15:50 gaslight, you need to be able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Narcissists cannot tell the difference
15:57 between reality and fantasy. Narcissism is a delusional disorder. they they're no longer with us. They're completely
16:03 crazy, you know. So when people say they are
16:09 evil, they are cunning, they're scheming, they're manipulative, they gaslight, they're future fake, they
16:15 they're talking about psychopaths. They're not talking about narcissists. And so narcissism is a pitiful condition. Narcissists harm people. Of course, they
16:28 harm people badly. They traumatize people severely. But they do so not intentionally. This is not premeditated. It's not part of a plan.
16:40 There's no goal. They do so because they're unable to recognize your separateness and your
16:46 externality and the fact that you have a life. They're threatened. They're threatened by your independence and
16:52 personal autonomy and agency and self-efficacy. They need to disable you
16:58 because you exist inside the narcissist mind only there. And when you externally
17:06 behave differently when you challenge the internal object, this is a threat.
17:13 So the narcissist, for example, there's an image of you in his mind, a snapshot. The clinical term is introject, but it's
17:19 like a snapshot, like a photograph. is an image of you in his mind and he continues to interact with that image,
17:25 not with you. When you start to act independently, you are challenging the image because
17:32 you're creating a discrepancy, a gap, a divide between you and the
17:38 image. This is very threatening to the narcissist. It's like you're taking absconding with the narcissist mind. So,
17:46 he needs to disable you. He needs to deactivate you. He needs to to he needs you to become inert
17:53 a never moving object an immo object. So he needs to take your life away.
18:00 And this is the damage that narcissists do. They kill you gradually, incrementally.
18:06 They poison you slowly but inexurably. You die in increments and ultimately
18:14 you're totally paralyzed. You you've lost your identity. You've lost your drive. You've lost your motivation. You
18:21 don't know who you are anymore. You have no personal autonomy. You can't make decisions. You're totally paralyzed and
18:28 disabled. Then you're crippled. And so narcissism
18:34 is slow acting poison. But whereas the psychopath would do exactly the same intentionally. He knows
18:41 exactly what he's doing. He has a goal. He wants your money. He wants to have sex with you. something. The narcissist
18:48 does this because of who he is or who she is. I compare narcissist to viruses.
18:54 It's like a virus. You know, you can't say that a virus is evil because the
19:00 virus kills you. Viruses are not evil. They kill people because that's what they are. Period. you know. Mhm. Whereas a psychopath is cunning and scheming and criminalized and goal oriented and deliberate. The narcissist
19:16 would make you doubt your own judgment of reality. Gaslighting.
19:22 Narcissist would make you promises he never intends to keep. Narcissist, the psychopath, I'm sorry. The psychopath
19:28 knows the difference between reality and fantasy. When he plunges you into fantasy, he knows he's deceiving you.
19:34 the psychopath. Psychopaths are, if you wish, evil. Narcissists are just dangerous. Narcissis are dangerous, but they're not evil. Psychopaths are both dangerous and evil. And would you say the difference between
19:52 I mean, you've explained a lot of differences, but it really just in the end comes down to intention, right? So
19:58 the psychop and the ability not only intention but the ability to tell apart
20:04 reality and fantasy. The narcissist is immersed in a fantasy
20:10 is delusional. He's psychotic. He's not with us. He's living in a dreamscape
20:16 which is his mind. And in this dreamscape you exist as well but as an internal object as an avatar as a
20:23 representation. and he he tours this imaginary space. He he walks through
20:30 itinerately and he interacts with the various internal object and he's totally divorced from reality. Narcissist has what we call impaired reality testing. He's totally divorced from reality. He's sick. It's mental illness. Whereas the psychopath knows exactly
20:48 what he's doing. You have money. He wants your money. He will sell you on a fantasy. He will deceive you. He will
20:54 make promises. He will pretend to be someone else. He will, you know, play act and fake and everything and then he
21:02 will take your money and you will never see him again. That's a psychopath. That's not a narcissist.
21:09 And the psychopath would keep telling you that reality is different to the way you perceive it. He would keep gaslighting you. That's a psychopath. That's not a narcissist. When the narcissist tells you something about
21:20 reality, when he makes a statement about reality, it's not because he's trying to deceive you or make you doubt your own
21:26 judgment, it's because he firmly and truly believes it. He truly believes his
21:33 totally insane confabulations and and nonsense and fantasies and and science
21:39 fiction stories. He full is fully believes it, committed to it. He would defend it aggressively if you dare to
21:46 challenge it because he believes it's true. And when he makes you a promise, the narcissist, he has every intention
21:53 in the world of keeping it. He intends to keep it. He just never keeps his promises. But he never keeps his promises because of the dynamic of the fantasy. But when he makes a promise, he
22:05 has every intention to keep it. If he says, "I'm going to marry you." Yes, every intention. If he says, "We're going to have three children." If he
22:11 says, you know, we're going to move in together or let's make a business and get rich or whatever, he means it. He
22:17 really is in it. Whereas a psychopath would tell you exactly the same things knowing full well that he's lying to you
22:25 and deceiving you and manipulating you because he wants something from you. These are critical differences and people don't make these differences online. I would I would agree with that
22:36 because I they see if you look this up online, it just seems like they're two entirely different and they are different, but um it just seems that
22:47 everything's dumped into this whole like bucket of narcissism and there aren't many differentiations between the two.
22:55 Um, let's go back a little bit because I've heard you mention that a lot of
23:02 narcissism is often rooted with the mother and you have this distinction
23:08 between the first three years and the first 18 months. Can we talk about that a little bit? I think that's really
23:14 important to understand. Something that's new to me for sure, but I would love to give our audience a
23:21 little more information on that. Well, that's not my view. It's the view of most most of the major psychologists
23:28 in the history of psychology from Freud to Babby. I mean Samvakn's view all
23:34 major psychologists agree that um narcissistic pathological narcissism at
23:40 least and and other mental health issues but mainly pathological narcissism is the outcome of a problem with the
23:47 formation of a self. some problem with the ability to maintain a sense of
23:54 continuity, a sense of this is I. This is me and and I am the same today and
24:01 tomorrow and the day after. Never mind what happens to me. Right? Whatever is happening is happening to me. And this me is core is immutable,
24:12 unchangeable, is always me. the the child who later in life becomes
24:18 a narcissist was disrupted. This this this process of forming the the self was
24:24 disrupted and the only person with the capacity to disrupt this is the mother because the father comes into play after age 36 months. The father becomes a very important figure when the child reaches the age of 3 years because the father then teaches
24:41 the child all kinds of skills. teaches a child how to behave in society. The the
24:48 father is the purveyor, the conveyor of what we call social scripts and sexual scripts. The father is a critical figure after age 3 years old. Okay? Whereas prior to age three years old, the father's contribution is minimal.
25:04 The the reason the father's contribution is minimal is that for a very long time, the child is unable to recognize anyone
25:11 except the mother. When the child is born, the newborn, the child is able to recognize the mother's face and react to it, but not the father's face.
25:22 And for the first 18 months, the the child defines itself in conjunction with the mother. Initially, the child is merged with the mother. This used to be called the
25:34 symbiotic phase. The child was one with the mother. And then when the child finally acquires a sense of this is me
25:41 and this is not me, then not me is the mother. The child defines itself in
25:48 opposition to the mother. A process known as separation individuation. The mother therefore is the absolute determinant of the child's identity,
25:59 emerging identity, nesscented, nesscent self. So the child first regards itself and
26:07 mother and the world as a single entity. Then the child sees itself through the
26:13 mother's gaze. The child realizes that mother is looking at me and I see myself through
26:20 her gaze. So this means that I'm not mother. Wait a minute. If I'm not mother then
26:26 there are two people here in the universe. And if there are two maybe there are more. And if there are more
26:33 people out there, there's a concept of external and internal. So there are things out there that are not me. So then there are boundaries. These are
26:44 boundaries. There are boundaries of the self. So all this is facilitated through the mother exclusively to the mother. Now when I say mother, it's important to emphasize mother means anyone who fulfills the maternal functions. So it could be a single father. Mhm.
27:04 It doesn't have to be it doesn't have anything to do with genitalia. It has to do with who is fulfilling the
27:11 maternal functions. Could be a grandmother, a grandfather, father, mother, a neighbor. could anyone who is
27:18 taken over a child who is adopted you know would have a foster mother. So
27:25 anyone who fulfills this critical functions in the first 36 months is the mother. Starting at age 18
27:34 the child have already internalized the fact that he and mother or the child and
27:40 mother are two separate entities distinct from each other. mother is out there is external somehow separate from
27:47 the child. That is a very traumatizing realization. It's terrifying. The child
27:53 doesn't feel safe anymore and so on. It's it's frightening to realize that mother is not you. Mother is someone
27:59 else because if she's someone else, she can walk away. She can abandon you. You can die. It's terrifying. So the child begins to create an insurance policy. The child begins to
28:12 separate from mother and explore the world. This process is known as separation individuation. Initially the child walks a few steps away from mommy and then runs back to
28:23 mommy because child is afraid to lose mommy. This is called the rapushmo and the child hugs mommy's legs and won't
28:30 let her go and and a good mother would not punish the child for venturing forth for exploring the world. A good mother would encourage this actually. She wouldn't feel insecure.
28:41 She wouldn't blackmail the child emotionally. She wouldn't threaten the child with punishment. But not all
28:47 mothers are good. Some mothers would not allow the child do not allow the child to separate from them because they're emotionally dependent on the child or because they're highly insecure and
28:58 overprotective or for a variety of reasons. When the mother does not allow the child to separate from her, the
29:05 child remains enmeshed with the mother and can never become an individual
29:11 ever. At that point, the child needs protection because this kind of mother
29:18 is not only abusive but this kind of mother prevents the child from becoming.
29:24 Child cannot become doesn't acquire personhood, personality, identity. It's
29:30 a death sentence. So the child feels threatened justly. So
29:36 the child grieavves grieves the fact that it cannot develop and evolve and
29:42 grow. And then the child invents an alternative universe, an alternative
29:48 reality when none of this is happening. Because real reality, actual reality has
29:55 become intolerable and unbearable and very threatening. So the child escapes
30:01 into an alternative reality, withdraws. The first thing the child does, it creates an imaginary friend. This
30:08 imaginary friend is everything the child is not. This imaginary friend is all powerful. This imaginary friend is
30:16 godlike. This imaginary friend is all knowing. It's everything the child is not. and is the great protector of the
30:22 child. It protects the child. It insulates the child from the influence of the seriously bad mother
30:30 and then the child gradually merges with this imaginary friend and becomes one with it and a narcissist is born.
30:41 That's that's how a narcissist is born. And then the narcissist spends the rest of his natural life looking for another mother. is he has failed with the first mother.
30:53 He needs to find another mother, a mother substitute. This is called repetition compulsion. So there is a repetition and it's compulsive. He keeps looking for a mother figure. Now again
31:05 it's not about genitalia. A mother figure could be a good friend for example. Doesn't have to be an
31:12 intimate partner of the opposite sex. It could be a good friend. It's a maternal figure. And so the Narcissist keeps looking for a maternal figure with a
31:23 hope that the nar that he can reenact the childhood can have a second chance
31:29 second chance at a second childhood. And this time he's going to get it right.
31:35 This time he is going to separate and become an individual. There's a craving to become and there's
31:42 a grief over not having been given the chance to become. It's a grief reaction.
31:48 So the narcissist is compelled to find someone who would feel who would feel
31:54 safe enough to separate from a secure base. The clinical term is a secure base. And so the narcissist, for example, finds a potential intimate partner. So he converts her into a
32:06 maternal figure. She becomes his mother. And in order for her to become a mother,
32:12 she needs to divorce reality because she is not his mother. So she needs to become his mother in a fantasy. She can
32:19 never become his mother in reality. She can become his mother only in a fantasy. So we call it the shared fantasy.
32:27 Narcissist creates a shared fantasy within which his intimate partner for example becomes his mother. And then he
32:34 begins a dynamic the dynamic of the shared fantasy with the intimate partner.
32:40 Now if you want I can describe the dynamic. You didn't ask me about it so I will shut up here.
32:46 Uh, you know, it makes me think uh, you know, we operate in circles. We have
32:53 friends, we have family, um, we have we work, right? We work with others. It just it's it's bringing up so many
33:04 personalities I've known over the years. and regardless of what you know the circumstances were or what group we were in. But is there some you did touch on
33:16 this actually there is some relation to the the narciss being raised in under
33:23 these circumstances and then the type of personality you can attract but it's not that you
33:30 attract it more than you seek it. Would you agree with that that you just seek
33:38 that type of you know those traits in friends, partners, you know, work people
33:45 and I would agree with the modification. I would agree with the modification of this thing. It's not seek what we used
33:52 to have, but it's we seek what we never had. So if we never had love, if we were never loved as children, we were never loved.
34:03 Definitely if we were never loved unconditionally and right if we never received love that had not
34:10 been conditioned on performance then we would seek someone to love us unconditionally.
34:16 If we never had a functioning mother we would look for a mother. If we never had a father's love we would look for a
34:22 father. daddy issues. We are not seeking unless accepting pathologist but healthy
34:28 normal people do not seek do not seek to reenact what they had.
34:35 Okay? They seek to fulfill unmet needs. They
34:41 want to find what they never got, what they've never received, what they've never been exposed to, what they've never so the deficiencies, the lacks. So people, as I said, who have never been
34:53 loved properly in childhood, they would go looking for an ideal love, an
34:59 imaginary type of love that does not exist among adults, but they would look go looking for it and they would become love addicts. Interesting. They become love addicts. People who never had a mother, like the narcissist,
35:10 they would go looking for a mother. People whose environment was never safe
35:16 for example economically they would go look they would go and look for economic security economic safety. We look for
35:23 what we have never had. That is a compulsion. Similarly the narcissist is no exception. He has never
35:30 had a functioning mother. He's looking for one. And now he converts you into his mother. But then a series of really
35:38 bad dynamics starts because you're not his mother. But of course you're playing the role of his mother in his mind. Remember, you don't exist externally. You exist only internally.
35:49 In his mind, he has rendered you his mother. You're already his mother. And because you're already his mother, he is he is engaging with you
36:00 in interactions which are very bizarre and very destructive and very self-defeating and that have nothing to do with normal relationships. interactions which are
36:12 essentially a reenactment or replay of something that has gone really wrong in his childhood. So you're trapped. It's as if you are
36:23 timeraveled, teleported into his childhood there to assume the role of a
36:30 mother and then he takes out on you. It it kind of displaces onto you everything
36:37 that has gone wrong with his mother. Everything went wrong with his mother. But he does it in a highly specific way.
36:43 So the shared fantasy is very structured, very inexurable, and very predictable. And you have nothing to do
36:49 with it. That's one thing victims really, it's comforting for victims to know to to learn that it's not their fault. There's nothing they could have done and there's nothing they have done
37:01 that in any way has impacted the shared fantasy. Even the narcissist himself is trapped in the shared fantasy. He's a
37:08 hostage of the shared fantasy. The shared fantasy is a is a third entity. It there's you, there's a narcissist and there's a shared fantasy. And the shared fantasy is a third entity that takes
37:20 over both of you, hijacks you. It's hostile takeover. And then the shared
37:27 fantasy makes use of both of you as some kind of theater production, a rippling.
37:34 And so it's it's highly sick. It's it's a huge problem. And narcissists keep hurting people all the time because
37:41 shirt fantasy is the only way they know how to relate to. Mhm. So in these relationships where whether it's you know a relationship between two
37:54 people romantic relationship or friendships or work relationships because we do like to address how these
38:02 sort of circumstances affect us in all aspects of our lives. Are there assume it's two people right? So it's this narcissist is seeking seeking to
38:14 fulfill something they did not have. What about the other person? Same same thing, right?
38:20 Same thing. The other person, for example, is seeking a figure that exudes confidence,
38:27 right? Because this kind of person, the the intimate partner, for example, has grown up in a household where
38:33 the parents were less unreliable, less unsafe.
38:39 they did not they did not afford or provide what we call a secure base or the parents have failed in their functions they couldn't they couldn't provide economically or they could right so when you grow up in in an environment
38:51 which is replete with uncertainty and indeterminacy and unpredictability and so on you would look you would look for
38:59 someone who is a rock someone who is a rock someone who would stabilize
39:06 everything who would stabilize your labile moods. Who would who would uh
39:12 stabilize your emotions because your emotions threaten to overwhelm you? Who would provide you with a safe environment which is utterly predictable? Who would take over, who would be in charge, become a leader, who
39:24 would be someone who rock border lines use the word rock. So you would look for rock.
39:30 If on the other hand, um you have learned at an early age to manipulate people with your neediness. You've learned that when you're sick, mommy pays you attention,
39:41 right? And when you when you express needs in a very demanding way, usually people will
39:49 give in and you know succumb to your demands. When you learn this, you become a codependent. Codependents control from the bottom. Codependents use their neediness,
40:01 ostentatious, conspicuous, expressed neediness. They use it as a weapon. They
40:07 weaponize neediness and they use the neediness to manipulate. They are highly machavelian
40:13 and this is called control from the bottom. So depends what depends on your personal experience. We learn
40:20 strategies. Life is about learning strategies. What works and what doesn't work. Depending on the environment you grew up
40:26 in, some things work, some things don't work. So you develop this toolkit of
40:33 strategies that used to work when you were a child. And then you carry it forward into adulthood.
40:40 And then you're looking for someone with whom these strategies will work again.
40:46 Because these strategies are highly specific. They are not going to work with everyone. They're going to work with highly specific people.
40:53 So you're scanning, you're auditioning people. You're auditioning people. And then you say, "Okay, audition number 96, that's the guy or that's the girl." Mhm.
41:04 Strategies I've developed as a child work perfectly with this guy. I love
41:10 him. I'm in love with him. That's love. Mhm. Essentially,
41:18 I seriously I I walked in to this interview with several questions and
41:25 we're like at the middle of this and I have even more. This is such an interesting topic. Um I I feel like I
41:33 could go on forever on it. You don't need to apologize for asking questions. Supposedly that's what you
41:39 you should do in um so I another question I have is you
41:45 know about seeking what you don't have. If it's a person who has grown up with
41:52 conceivably an overabundance of unconditional love,
42:00 what does that create in in the future? Is it someone seeking freedom? Is it
42:06 someone maybe that is it possible that that overabundance of unconditional love was suffocating? What kinds of what what does that present? If it presents anything at all,
42:20 any anything that is over abandoned is not good. Right? I think overabundance of unconditional love is just a a long way of saying
42:31 overprotectiveness or or spoiling or pampering or pedestalizing
42:37 the child or idolizing the child or worshiping the child or whatever. This is abuse.
42:43 This is it is it is abuse because it isolates the child from reality. It prevents the
42:50 child from interacting with reality. Consequently, the child fails to develop boundaries. Reality pushes back. Reality
42:57 is harsh. Reality reality causes loss
43:03 and loss is a major engine of personal growth and development. We grow and evolve and develop psychologically through a sequence of losses and only
43:14 reality can cause you to lose something. And if you are isolated and causeted and
43:20 cotton bold and you're not allowed to interact with reality, you will never experience failure. You'll never
43:26 experience loss. You'll never experience the consequences of your mistakes, bad choices, wrong decisions. You're isolated from reality. You will never grow. You
43:38 will never evolve. You will remain your development will be arrested. You will remain stuck. Similarly, these kind of parents tend to isolate the child from peer interactions. Mhm. Because they regard peers as unworthy of
43:55 the child or dangerous to the child or whatever. So they don't allow the child to interact with peers
44:02 which is of course extremely abusive because peers are the major engine of of maturation and they pro peers provide context and after a certain age peers
44:14 are the main source of education. Mhm. Especially sexual education but not only. So this these are abusive behaviors and they have nothing to do with
44:25 unconditional love. They have to do with the with the parents insecurities and need and control freakery need to control and manipulativeness and possessiveness and so on. These are sick totally pathological dynamics.
44:41 Unconditional love is when the parent loves the child for who for who it is
44:49 not conditioned on the child's performance. Unconditional love is conditioned on the
44:56 child's behavior but not on the child's performance. Now this confuses many people. What do you mean? I mean the
45:04 following. If the child misbehaves, an unconditionally loving parent would
45:10 discipline the child and if necessary punish the child. That has to do with behavior.
45:17 But an unconditionally loving parent would never penalize the child for
45:23 failing to perform. An unconditionally loving parent would not link love to any type of accomplishment or performance.
45:34 So yes, behavior could be penalized and discipline should be imposed. However,
45:42 if you love the child because of accomplishments and achievements and performance and appearances and then you
45:49 don't love the child. Then you don't it's not the child you're loving. You're loving the child's output.
45:56 So this is unconditional love. The unconditionally loving parent has one
46:02 major task to push the child away. That's the major role of the parent.
46:10 Mhm. The good parent or what Winnott called the good enough mother. The good parent
46:17 pushes the child away from the parent because a child needs to separate from the parent. Needs to confront the world, needs to experience failures and losses,
46:28 needs to evolve, needs to mature, needs to walk away, needs to disappear from
46:34 the parents life optimally. So the test of good parentthood are you
46:41 pushing your child away or are you holding it back tied to your Apron strings or whatever whatever passes apron strings nowadays.
46:52 Yeah. So and if you are if you love the child unconditionally then you let it go. There there was um there was a Persian
47:04 poem poet his name was Alam okay and he he wrote if you love the bird if
47:12 you love the bird you should let her out of the cage that is a sign of love the
47:18 the ability to let go for the benefit of the party that you love. Sometimes in
47:24 romantic relationships as well, if you really love your partner, maybe the best
47:30 thing to do is to let it let him go because you're not good for him or together you're not good. There's incompatibility, you're not happy, he's not happy, whatever, whatever the reason may be, you need to have the strength
47:42 and the resilience to let go. Letting go is the test of good parenting.
47:49 And so, yeah, please go ahead. It it it's you know the the way that I can sort of how
47:57 that resonates for me is you know I have two children who I love very much but
48:03 it's it's a matter of when they're young when they're adolescents in my opinion it was to raise them so
48:14 well that they wouldn't need you later right that they could have their own lives and um not you know you will
48:21 always be there for them, but raise them well enough that they won't need to come back or will be fine living their own
48:28 lives regardless of successes and failures. Um, understanding, you know, that they could dust themselves off and
48:35 and move on. And with that level of confidence, I'll share a little bit. Um,
48:41 I'm Hispanic. Hispanics don't like to let go, right? Everything is about keeping the family together almost forever. And historically, it's been living nearby,
48:54 even living in the same household, you know, once you're married, once you have a family, and then it just gets bigger
49:01 and bigger and bigger. And that was something that
49:07 needed that was a cycle I felt in my family needed to be broken, that everyone should be able to live their
49:13 own lives, stay close, and stay in contact. But that concept of people
49:22 generations living in the same home for so long just seems so
49:29 unnatural. Depends I think depends I think on the dynamics between the people. If uh but
49:35 if people are intrusive and controlling and manipulative and yeah then it's bad. The Hispanic thing it's definitely
49:41 but I didn't I didn't actually I didn't actually answer your question by the way which is a habit of mine. You ask me these kind of people who have been who've been exposed to overabundance of of so-called unconditional love.
49:54 How would they how would they react? Well, they would miss it. They would want to perpetuate it. So, they would
50:01 look for a partner who would also be overprotective and spoiling and pampering and so on. Mhm.
50:08 This the in most cases in the majority of cases because when they exit the the parental nest or
50:16 parental home this is what they miss. This is what they don't have. We're all looking for
50:22 what we don't have. Remember? So this is what they don't have and they want to perpetuate it. A tiny minority
50:30 would rebel against this and they would become psychopaths and so on. So a tiny
50:36 minority of people may actually become criminalized, antisocial and so on so forth because of the freedom that they
50:43 lacked, the freedom that they were not afforded as children. But that's a tiny
50:49 minority because this kind of treatment by the parents is very addictive.
50:55 It's very addictive and it creates a sense of safety. Creates a sense of I can get away with anything. I will never pay the price. there will be no consequences to my
51:07 actions and and so on. So it's addictive as this kind of person will continue to
51:13 look for a partner intimate partner or friends or whatever who would do the same. However, this there's a pitfall
51:20 here because of the belief that one this these people believe that they're immune
51:27 to the consequences of their actions. So they are likely likely to act in ways
51:33 which are self-endangering. selfdefeating and self-destructive. So you find in prison many many people who have been pampered and spoiled and corseted as children they grow up to believe that they can do no wrong that
51:49 whatever they do there will be no price to pay you know and then they do something and there's there is a price to pay and it's called prison. Mhm. So you find many of these there. You know, psychopathy, the genesis of
52:01 psychopathy, psychopathy is a mostly a neurobiological disease. There are brain
52:07 abnormalities, severe brain abnormalities, physiological abnormalities. Someone who whose brain is, you know, kaput. But psychopathy is triggered by this
52:19 kind of treatment, parental treatment. It's there, it's latent, it's waiting to erupt. And then it's triggered by either
52:26 by overprotectiveness, spoiling, pampering, or by the exact opposite, total neglect and and um abdication,
52:36 absentism of the parent. What I think many psychologists fail to appreciate is that
52:43 both situations are addictive. When you are pampered and spoiled and so on, you get addicted to it. It's
52:49 wonderful, isn't it? Who wouldn't want to? It's like a five-star hotel, a resort for life. You you
52:56 every day, every day you'd look for a partner who would continue to do this for you, take care of all your needs and you know uh
53:02 always praise you and adjulate you and but the opposite is also true. When your
53:08 parents are neglectful and absent, disinterested in you, couldn't care
53:14 less. This is also addictive because of the freedom.
53:21 The freedom this affords is intoxicating. It also leads to the belief that you can
53:28 do no wrong because there's no voice that tells you that what you're doing is wrong. And so it's also an addictive
53:36 state. Either way, this produces the equivalent of a psychopath because there's a
53:43 psychopath who has been abandoned and neglected by his parents, learn to grow up all by himself and adores the freedom
53:51 that comes with it and would never let go of this freedom. And the freedom means that he can do
53:57 anything he wants. He's a law unto himself. And as a psychopath who grew up in spoiling, overprotective, pampering
54:04 environment and believes that he's entitled to this and will become very aggressive if he doesn't receive it. And
54:10 so he is a psychopath as well. His goal oriented. His goal is to perpetuate this kind of environment. The narcissist on
54:17 the other hand is someone who has experienced intermittent parenting.
54:23 an environment that is not clear. Sometimes agulating, sometimes neglectful, sometimes abandoning,
54:30 sometimes present, sometimes you're the greatest, sometimes you're you're a zero, you're nobody, some you're loser.
54:37 So this m these mixed signals, this highly confusing environment where the
54:43 parent tells you, for example, let me give you an example of of mixed signaling. I love you, but I expect you
54:50 to perform. So this is a mixed signal because if you love me, what does it matter if I'm
54:57 performing or not as a child, right? Like you have to love me because of who I am, not because what I do. So So how do you separate? You know, clearly that's a that's that's one
55:09 message. I love you. I don't believe in I love you, but that's love is love. You either love or you don't love, right? But how, you know, especially with a younger child, how do you differentiate?
55:22 between pride I'm proud that you did this and that you achieved certain thing
55:28 and can that be confusing for a child
55:34 depends if you are consistently proud even when the child makes mistakes and
55:40 is is wrong then of course that's that's very bad signaling because it means you can never do wrong like the child gets a message you can never do wrong everything you do is always right everything else is everyone else is
55:52 wrong. You're always right. Everyone else is wrong. And a narcissist narcissist is born. Yeah. Your teacher is wrong for having treated you this way. The principal of the school is wrong for having disciplined
56:04 you. The coach is wrong for for not having included you in the football team or whatever. So, everyone else is wrong.
56:10 You're right. That creates a narcissism. Um if pride is expressed in a way that
56:18 is grounded and real like there's pride only when the accomplish accomplishment
56:25 is exceptional. Mhm. Not for every accomplishment and not
56:31 always regardless of accomplishment but only when the accomplishment deserves praise and being proud and whatever. So discriminatory pride. Oh.
56:43 uh and and when the pride is disconnected from expressions of love. So if you tell the child I'm so proud of you and then you hug the child and you kiss the child and you buy the child a
56:55 gift and you that is a very confusing message. It means I'm proud of you and this led
57:02 me to kiss you. I'm proud of you and this led me to hug you. This is the reason I'm hugging you. I'm hugging you
57:08 and kissing you because I'm proud of you. So this confuses love and pride.
57:15 The message I'm proud of you should be reserved for exceptional achievements
57:22 and should be divorced from any expression of love because this could be very confusing.
57:29 It is feedback. It is input regarding one's accomplishments. A boss can be proud of his workers. A colleague could be proud of his colleagues accomplishments. I mean pride
57:41 should never be confused with love but many many parents do confuse it with love and the message a child gets is my
57:49 parents love me only when I accomplish things only when the neighbors are
57:56 envious you know only when I when I outdo the neighbor's son only when I you know only when they love me only when
58:08 that is This is conditional. Mhm. Sam, there's there's there's so
58:14 there's no handbook for this. I mean, I know you've got your books. I know that. And we can talk about that in a bit. Um,
58:23 with everything you've mentioned, it makes me think of, and I I'm not sure if this would be the
58:30 correct terminology, but it makes me think of generational trauma. Is there a
58:36 way to break these cycles? So, if you were raised under any of these circumstances that you've mentioned
58:42 already, how do you not raise your own children that way? How is
58:49 that? How do you move? Yeah, it's it these cycles that are
58:56 going to be created. I I think you know you can learn throughout life. Obviously, you I would hope are learning
59:03 more over time versus regressing. Uh but you know I I had my daughter at n my
59:09 first child at 19 you know and then there's a seven-year gap between my two children. What I knew with my son versus
59:16 my daughter was was very different whether it was in what I have learned in
59:22 life through my own successes and failures which the failures have worked out so well in my life because it's I've
59:28 I've grown and expanded because of that. But that seven-year gap, I think really
59:35 had an impact on how I raised each of those children through my own learnings. But how deep
59:43 is are these experiences with our mothers or fathers or whoever raises and how possible is it to break these these cycles? You know, how are my children
59:54 not going to raise their children in whatever version of myself they got? And that would be true for any parent, I
60:00 would think. Well, there's nothing wrong for your child to be a variant of you as long as
60:07 you're a good person. Sure. Values and so on. I mean, don't see anything wrong with it.
60:13 We have we know of two ways that identity forms. We have positive identity formation. Positive identity
60:19 formation is I'm going to be like my mother. And we have negative identity formation. I'm never going to be like my mother ever. So there are two paths to identity
60:30 formation and if you're a positive person then positive identity formation is a great thing you know
60:38 uh we know from studies of uh Holocaust survivors there have been many studies of the descendants and the offspring of Holocaust survivors and we know that the
60:49 trauma has been handed over intergenerationally and impacted at least the first generation of offspring it attenuated and mitigated and
61:01 amilarated with further generations like the trauma is much less in the grandkids generation and then the grandparents die
61:08 and the trauma is over I mean like the transmission is over okay so it seems that there are several several things that affect the whether
61:21 there's transmission or not number one awareness self awareness many traumas survivors deny the trauma, bury the
61:29 trauma, refrain the trauma or deny that they are victims or have been victimized
61:35 in in a traumatic way and so on. So if you sweep things under the rug, if you
61:41 if you deny things and so on, that's bad. That creates really bad dynamics and actually amplifies the trauma and
61:47 guarantees intergenerational transmission. M the self-awareness and the courage to
61:54 accept that you have been damaged by the trauma. Number two is developing strategies to
62:01 cope with transmission of trauma. They are to do so you need to resort to a professional. You to work with professional if you deny that anything is wrong with you and you say yeah I've gone through
62:12 the Holocaust but it was nothing. I'm okay now. Like what are you talking about? Are you serious? You should be in
62:18 therapy for the rest of your life. Mhm. I mean, who are you kidding? And that's the majority of them. Like the majority said, "It's okay. It's behind me. I put it behind me. I'm okay
62:29 now." And so that's bad. You need help. You need help in order to not transmit it further, not hand it over the next generation, forward, head it forward, you in the wrong way. The third element is to render the trauma uh an element in daily
62:51 existence. In other words, for example, to discuss the trauma, to explore the trauma together with the younger
62:58 generations to embed the trauma in a context, make sense of it somehow to so
63:08 exposing the trauma. I say that sunlight disinfects trauma. Exposing the trauma reduces its potency,
63:15 its power dramatically. We know it from rape victims. Rape
63:21 victims who do not discuss the rape, deny it, refuse to acknowledge it or say, "I don't want to confront my rapists. I, you know, I just want peace. I've had there was an incident. I want
63:32 to forget about it." Move on. Move on. They are They're in bad shape. And they're in bad shape for many years. and
63:38 they transfer the trauma onward forward and so on. So we know that it's a really bad idea.
63:45 Ironically, it's a bad idea to discuss trauma immediately after the trauma. We
63:51 used to make this mistake. It was called debriefing. Today, we never do this. You need to you need to let the trauma sink in and kind of settle in for a few
64:02 weeks. So the first few weeks actually the indication is to not discuss the trauma.
64:08 But then you definitely need to process the trauma and the only way to do this is head on to be courageous enough to
64:15 confront it. What has happened to you in the Holocaust as a rape victim whatever. Mhm. And when you do that you need to involve your family members. You need to involve your children if you have any. Of course
64:27 you need to adapt to the age and you know the message is to be tailored customized to each age
64:33 and so on. But it needs to be permanent. So the child is exposed to the story at
64:39 age three. When the child reaches age 13, he needs to be exposed to the same story on a different level. This is an ongoing process. It's lifelong. When the trauma is is acknowledged, when
64:52 it is tackled, it dies. It has no no power. It's disempowered.
64:58 So these are the three elements. Regrettably, the overwhelming vast majority of trauma victims don't do any
65:04 of the three. They're not self-aware. They deny the trauma. They refuse to refuse to accept professional help. They
65:11 don't discuss the trauma. They do they do everything wrong. And the end result is the children suffer.
65:17 And aides from that I mean we might go a little off topic on this but aides from
65:24 the potential impacts to future generations. Um
65:30 what are the imminent impacts? Right? But what what happens with that person when they are not addressing
65:38 these kinds of events that occur in their life, right? If they bury it, sweep it under the rug, pretend it didn't happen or I'm I'm moving on. I'm over it. It it already happened. I can't do anything about it. What happens to the person in their lifetime? Right.
65:54 First, uh we need to accept that traumas are not objective things. They're subjective things.
66:00 Okay. Mhm. You and I can be exposed to the same event. I'll walk away unscathed and unaffected. Zero impact and you will be devastated for life. Right. So trauma clearly is not objective. It's
66:13 not something you know external that you can you know people react differently to different things and so on. Yeah. It's not the same for everyone. Mhm. It's not the same. And it's it's not a clinical entity. It's not like if we are
66:24 both exposed to a virus both of us will get sick. That's a clinical entity. But
66:30 if we are both exposed to an event, one of us will be traumatized, the other will not. So it's not like a virus. It's
66:38 not a clinical entity. It's a reactive process. It's it's and it has a lot to
66:44 do with the your specs, with your specifications, your personal history, your experiences, your prior trauma
66:52 and a million other things, just about a million other things. So this is the first thing which we need to clarify
66:58 because people get the impression that the trauma is something that's happening out there and if you're exposed to it
67:04 you catch it. It's like contagious. You you know it's like you you get infected with the trauma. That's the case at all.
67:11 Uhhuh. And then a trauma is just a name for energy. It's a packet of energy. And this bolt, lightning bolt, the trauma
67:23 enters your mind and then it begins to rearrange the furniture or destroy it altogether.
67:30 Mhm. It is energy rampant in your mind. Energy out of control. Everything is affected. Absolutely everything. If you
67:37 are if you end up being traumatized and then again it depends which type of trauma because we distinguish between
67:44 two major families of trauma. We have post-traumatic stress disorder. This is
67:50 exposure to a life-threatening event exclusively life-threatening event,
67:56 natural disaster, accident, plane crash or whatever. Exposure personally
68:02 or witnessing it also as a witness. You can acquire PTSD but only
68:08 life-threatening events. And then we have complex trauma or CPTTSD
68:14 where repeated exposure to maltreatment, abuse, torture and so on so forth can
68:21 ultimately lead to a state of mind that is post-traumatic.
68:27 But the two don't share CPTTSD and PTSD. It's very misleading. They don't share
68:33 many clinical features. They are completely distinct. They're not the same. For example, in PTSD we have
68:40 flashbacks whereas in CPTTSD we do not have flashbacks. So these are not the same
68:46 conditions. If you deny the the trauma, as Freud had
68:52 realized long ago and something years ago, if you deny the trauma, this packet of energy will continue to circulate and
69:00 and rebound within your mind, continue to destroy your mind and later your body
69:06 as well until you harness it somehow. this energy till you somehow
69:15 reframe it or create a narrative that incorporates it or come to terms with it or do something about it. The worst
69:22 thing you can do is ignore it or deny it. The worst for you as well as for others and the number of of
69:29 implications, number of imp consequences is huge. like anything from sleep disorders and startled reaction like you know jumpiness and anything from this to
69:40 to psychosis and I mean the damage is is tremendous and the longer you keep the
69:47 trauma caged inside your mind the longer you refuse to confront it because you're afraid to be retraumatized the long the the the more extensive the damage at some point irreversible
70:00 at some point. Oh wow. Yeah. So, you need to work on it. Do you think um would you say everyone
70:09 has something to work on? Yeah. I think uh one of the major mistakes that we make as laymen and as
70:17 professionals is the belief that psychotherapy is about fixing things. Not fixing things. Many people ain't broke, nothing to fix. It's not about fixing things. It's about
70:28 optimizing. optimize. You have, for example, you have certain assets. You're making use
70:34 of these assets, but you could make a better use of these assets, right? So, we teach you how. Or you have
70:41 liabilities and you let these you give these liabilities too much power. So, we teach you how to disempower these
70:48 liabilities, these shortcomings, vulnerabilities, the frailties, you know, or you didn't come to terms with
70:55 something. And so, we teach you how to come to terms with it. The overwhelming vast majority of therapeutic meetings,
71:03 sessions in clinics and so on is with mentally healthy and totally normal people. Overwhelming vast majority.
71:11 There are many many practitioners and clinicians who have never come across a psychotic person or a narcissist. Even
71:19 if they they've come across a narcissist, they'll never come across one. Let alone a psychopath. Very few
71:25 have come across a psychopath. It's not about broken people, damaged people, whatever. This is not a garage and
71:32 they're not mechanics. This is about showing you ways, structured ways based
71:38 on some evidence hopefully. Showing you ways to be a better version of yourself,
71:44 more efficacious, more improved, more happy with who you are or content at least, if not happy, less maybe depressed from time to time. less. So it's tinkering. Most
71:56 psychotherapy is about tinkering. When we come across total loss like psychotic disorder or schizophrenia, psychotherapy is powerless.
72:08 That's why we give medications. Mhm. Psychopath therapy with schizophrenia for example is pretty powerless. It was Freud who said that psych psychotherapy psychoanalysis should should never be
72:19 used with schizophrenia. So when we come to really biological diseases such as bipolar disorder,
72:26 schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, you know, these are neurobiological diseases.
72:34 There the role of psychotherapy is much diminished because psychotherapy is about healthy people,
72:40 right? And then we use medication or we use techniques which are technically
72:47 we call them psychotherapy, but they're not. They're actually manipulative techniques in a good sense. We
72:53 manipulate for example verbal skills or we manipulate eyes, eyesight or so.
73:00 And so this and this is where classical medicine
73:06 has a bad influence on psych on psychology because classical medicine has made the mistake
73:14 of defining itself as the science of fixing human beings.
73:22 Classic medicine is not not focusing on prevention. Classic medicine is not focusing on
73:29 tinkering on optimizing. Not it's focusing on postf facto fixing
73:37 when things have already gone wrong. That's a giant giant mistake of medicine. Giant.
73:43 Today medicine is beginning to try to make amends. For example, the emphasis
73:49 on obesity. Yeah. So or smoking, you know, they're beginning to try to make amends. But
73:55 it's a bit too late because for 2,000 3,000 years medicine claimed to not be
74:01 interested in healthy people. Zero interest in healthy people. If you open a medical textbook,
74:07 healthy people occupy 30 pages very I mean sick people occupy 1,300 pages,
74:14 right? And this leeched on this influence psychology because psychology
74:20 wants to be a branch of medicine in the wet dream. the wet dream of the psychologist that he would be considered
74:26 a doctor, a medical doctor, which could never happen because psychology is a pseudocience. But okay, right. So psychologists when they grow up, they want to be medical doctors. So they misdefined and mischaracterized
74:40 psychology as the science of fixing mentally ill people. It's not. It's a
74:47 science of making our lives better. Simple. Very simple.
74:54 I I like your reference to optimization because I that that's a good way to look
75:00 at it. You know, we do so many things like I don't know, work out, go to the gym. There's so many things that we do
75:06 to optimize our get good sleep. You know, we have a um a sleep specialist that's done an
75:14 episode for us that her goal is sleep optimization and you know, it's you know, water consumption. There's so many
75:20 things that we do to try to be at our best every day. And I
75:27 think this is something that kind of gets missed of of it's, you know, you only do it if you're broken. And I
75:35 really I really disagree with that. I think there's so much benefit to speaking to someone that is not your
75:42 friend, is not your family member. Uh definitely not a co-orker. I wouldn't agree with that one either. Um, but just
75:50 an independent person that other than trying to help you optimize your life has no other bearing.
76:01 Yeah. And someone who they're not showing up at your parties or your gatherings or anything like that, right? They are just there to help
76:07 you. And also someone who has seen someone who has seen many people like you. So there's experience. is uh I've seen many people like you has learned something from this
76:19 and is you gives you the benefit of his experience says I've seen three people like you and this is what what I've
76:25 tried this didn't work this worked try this you know simple it's very simple it's a psychotherapist is a glorified grandmother a glorified grandmother more or less
76:38 a grandmother a mother no mother is too young but a grandmother someone who has seen it all she's seen it all
76:44 She has seen she's seen infidelity and she has seen drinking and she's seen raising children and she's seen losing
76:50 children. She's seen she's she's seen wars and she's seen peace and she's seen it all. And you go to work to grandma and she's 81 years old or 93 years old if you're lucky.
77:01 True. She has seen it all. And this is a huge benefit because she can truly optimize you with three words,
77:09 right? And a psychotherapist is a glorified grandmother in a in I love that. I love that. It makes me think of not just my children but um I
77:20 have a lot of mentees, a lot of people that I mentor um and even my my
77:26 children's friends have come and asked me for professional advice just because they you know my daughter's you know she
77:33 she's already been working in our profession for some time but when they graduated from college or when they graduated from high school maybe having their eyes on what am I going to do next and maybe they just didn't have that at
77:45 home or what have you and they'd come to me and my I've always had the same response to people. I'm not better. I'm
77:51 not smarter. I'm just older. Right. And it makes me think about what you just said because there's so much truth to
77:58 just being older and having lived a little longer. Yeah. Uh I like that grandmother reference. I think it's a glorified grandmother. Yeah. Of course, it's a grandmother with a huge experience because when you read
78:09 the you read the literature, so grandma has been exposed to 20 people like that. You've been exposed to 200 as a
78:15 psychotherapist, right? So, you have some advantage of a grandma because you're like super grandma. Yeah.
78:22 Much bigger exposure. But that's all that's really all. Excellent. That that's that's I I like I like that reference. Um Sam, I have one more question for you,
78:35 but I do need like a quick bathroom break. Um is that okay? Can you stick around? I'll be three minutes and I'll
78:41 be right back. Excellent. Thank you so much. I do have one more question for you. Okay.
79:54 Okay. Thank you for being patient. No, no problem. Nature calls.
80:00 So, I have a question for you. Um, I like to study my guests before I have
80:06 them on, just to have different questions for them than what they're typically talking about. I want to on
80:13 the heels of you talking about being a a glorified grandmother. You mentioned going back to our original discussion, you mentioned that sometimes it's even better for children in their first three years not to be
80:29 raised by a par by any of the parents either the mother or um the father or a
80:35 family member if I understood correctly right it should be others that will be in the ch in the child's
80:41 life. Yeah. Um
80:47 we believe that the concepts we are using are eternal and universal.
80:54 Mhm. But the concept of a child is very new.
81:00 It's a new invention. They were not children until the end of the 19th century.
81:06 For example, Louisa May Olcot, have you heard of her? The author? No. Louisa May Olcot. She she wrote a book.
81:13 It's called Little Women. Oh, Little Woman. Yes. Okay. Little Women. Why not Little Girls?
81:20 Why not Little Children? She calls them women. Charles Dickens in his books call
81:29 boys little men. Ch. What we call children today used to
81:35 be considered little men and little women. They're just little, but they're men and women.
81:41 This is small. That's all. That's the only difference. The size.
81:47 So the concept of child and mother and so on is very new.
81:53 Well into the 18th century, a mother was a very fluid thing. For
81:59 example, you could be born to one, but you would be raised by someone else, some other mother. And there were
82:06 special mothers. The mothers who gave you milk, breastfed you. So you were born to one mother, but another mother gave you milk. And both of them were your mother.
82:17 And there was a third mother who raised you. There would be also a mother. A mother
82:24 was not a single individual. It was a function. In the majority of cultures and
82:30 societies in human history, there were no mothers.
82:36 The child was raised by the collective. The Bible, for example, is not a misogyn
82:43 misogynistic text. On the very contrary, in the Bible, there are many heroins and women who are, you know, outspoken and
82:50 outstanding leaders, women who are leaders and so on. It's an amazing text
82:56 in this sense because it's very old and it's not misogynistic and it's not patriarchal at all contrary to what
83:02 feminists say. But there are almost no mothers. There's a mother here and there mentioned you know but mostly for biological reasons like she gave him birth but the child is clearly raised by
83:14 collectives. It takes a village. Famous saying it takes a village to That's what it makes me think of. Yeah.
83:20 Yeah. I've lived in Africa for four years. Children are raised by villages.
83:26 In many societies, children are raised more by uncles than by fathers. For
83:32 example, in Arab societies, in Arab society, the child is raised by
83:38 a collective of women and a collective of men. There's no identifiable mother. It's
83:46 everyone is raises the child. It's, you know, everyone has to raise a child. Mhm. There was a famous social what
83:54 turned out to be social experiment the kibbutim. The kibbutim are communal settlements in Israel.
84:00 Mhm. And for several decades children in the kibbutim were raised collectively by trained nannies and by psychologists and
84:12 by designated teachers, not by their mothers and fathers. Children saw the mother and father once a week. They interacted with the mother and
84:24 father once a week on the resting on the rest day of the Shabbat. And um the rest
84:31 of the week they spend with strangers so-called strangers. Yet this cohort of
84:37 children about 100,000 between 70 and 100 depending on the study. This cohort of children grew up to grew up to be
84:45 mentally healthy. It is by far the most accomplished group in Israeli society by
84:51 far. They ended up being prime ministers and leaders of the army and top scientists and like you amazingly
84:58 accomplished people. It's a small group so we know we can identify them by name almost and we know the level of accomplishment there is mindboggling. They're completely mentally healthy. The race rates of dysfunctions and anomalies such as for example divorce
85:14 in this group is no different to the general population who were raised by ma
85:20 designated mother or father. So it seems that mother and father are not necessary
85:26 to raise totally perfectly balanced healthy and normal children. 100,000 is
85:32 a big big study over several decades. That's a big sample, right? And definitely representative sample.
85:38 So, right, that's one one case. Unfortunately, there are no studies of Africa
85:45 where I spent four years and witnessed firsthand where I I can't think of a case where a child was raised by a mother and a father, a nuclear family. I can't think of such a
85:57 case in Africa. I'm a Moroccan. I'm half Moroccan and so and half Turkish and in Morocco
86:05 at least. There's no such thing as a child raised by his mother and father. The entire
86:11 extended family, sometimes hundreds of people raised a child. When I had to go to the army, I had a group of fathers who kind of
86:22 trained me prior to to the any crisis I had in in my life. if I had
86:28 several fathers and and so on. So
86:34 uh the question the question while pretty common and normal is biased
86:40 is biased historically because we assume that the nuclear family arrangement that we are witnessing the contemporary arrangement has been
86:51 universal and eternal when actually it's an extremely recent invention and a
86:58 failed one. The nuclear family has failed. Mhm. Completely failed. Consequently, 40% of
87:06 children in industrialized countries are raised in single parent families. And children who were raised by n in nuclear families
87:17 are actually worse off in many ways. Mental health, drug abuse, substance abuse, alcohol abuse, I mean you name
87:24 it. Delinquency and so on. It is true that when the family, the
87:30 nuclear family is intact and there's a a a feminine figure and a masculine figure, so-called mother and father, it's true that the the child is better functioning
87:42 later on in life. Uh it is also it is also applies to single parent families
87:48 headed by a mother. Mhm. uh but I don't think it has anything to do with the mother or the father or the I don't know what I don't think this is the core issue here because we have
88:00 we have many other cases where there's no mother and father and populations which are perfectly functioning and
88:07 normal and happy and you name it and everything so I think we are overemphasizing
88:15 and overexaggerating the role of mother and father because
88:21 we have given up on extended arrangements like you've been complaining about the intrusive Hispanic
88:27 environment and what have you. Oh, right. It's a little over the top sometimes. This used to be the norm. This used to
88:34 be when people grew up in villages and and or in extended families, they were seen.
88:42 It was very intrusive. It was everybody's business. Everyone was nosy and busy body and was not
88:49 always a pleasant experience. But you were always seen. You were you were noticed for who you
88:56 are. People cared about you. Even if they cared about you the wrong way, you
89:02 know, even if they cared about you only in order to gossip, but you someone
89:08 cared about you. Today we're automized. We are not seen. Which explains social
89:14 media. Social media is a compulsion to be seen. We want someone to pay attention to us.
89:21 Someone, even if it's a troll, you know, just pay attention to me. I'm alive. Hello. Hey, you know, yeah, I'm here. Like, we're all on islands. We're all castaways and we all trying to
89:33 attract the the ship, the passing ship ship's attention, you know, with with semaphors and fires and what? And this
89:40 is a sad sad state of things. I think children become mentally healthy when
89:46 they are seen. And I think it doesn't matter who is doing the seeing.
89:53 I don't think I think children become mentally healthy when they are seen by a
89:59 group of loving neighbors. Even if both mother and father are dead. Mhm. I don't think it's very important who sees the child. It is very important for
90:10 the child to be seen and that kind of child would grow up healthy and balanced and happy even if
90:16 they never had parents. I think the main function of the parent
90:22 is to see the child. So mothers see the child, fathers see the child. Even when you're pushing the child away, allowing the child to separate and so on, you're doing it in a way that conveys to the
90:33 child it's about you. It's not about me. It's about you. So you it's a form of seeing the child.
90:39 But if you were not there and a father is not there and and so on and there was just a grandmother and a grandfather who
90:46 saw the child or loving neighbors or good foster parents or whatever.
90:52 This should children be okay because they seen the big the big ill the big
90:59 the big problem in modern society is that there are too many of us. There's 8.3 billion of us and it's very
91:06 difficult to be seen. It's very difficult to stand out. I agree with that. Very difficult to stand out, very
91:12 difficult to garner attention, very difficult to, you know, so people go crazy. They escalate. They go berserk in a desperate attempt to be seen.
91:23 Listen, to be seen is a survival thing because as a baby, if you're not seen,
91:29 you're dead. Babies. Babies from day six. Actually,
91:35 from the sixth day, babies are hellbent and totally focused on attracting
91:42 attention. They smile at mommy and they do everything crazy and they cry, of
91:48 course, and everything just to attract attention. Attracting attention is the first survival strategy that we develop
91:55 as babies. Because if we fail to attract attention, there's a risk that we would die. We would not be attended to. No one will feed us. No one will. So this
92:06 remains with us for life. We are babies ultimately inside the inner child, whatever you want to call it. And so we
92:12 believe we believe in a kind of uh primitive way that if if we are not seen, we're going to die. We equate not being seen with imminent
92:24 death. And so it's a huge compulsion. It's ter it's terror, you know, and when
92:30 you're not seen, you would do anything to be seen. Anything. And social media luckily came along in this sense that it
92:37 channels the need to be seen because if there were no such thing, people would kill each other in the streets just to
92:43 just to garner just to be seen. A headline just to be seen. if at least
92:49 by the police and the courts and the media, you know, someone to see them finally.
92:55 That's how I see it. I don't think mothers and fathers are important. I think being seen is important. I I would say that that is a a very
93:06 different take on parenting. It makes me think of so many
93:12 things. It makes me think about um you know when you talk about how many
93:18 people there are in the world right now um and then we're limited to mother and father
93:24 you know why is that when we can truly have a village I mean I I I'm on the other side of the where are you right
93:30 now Europe you're in Europe okay I'm on Miami Beach in Florida beautiful place I wouldn't trade it for the world but um you know
93:41 it's it's We're so big. We're so many people. Um, and then we're confined to mother
93:47 and father. This is a very different perspective. That's why we wanted to talk to you. Um, because
93:54 it used to be that you were, you know, it takes a village and you know, I have a group of friends that this is how we
94:01 try to approach things. Um, yet
94:07 there doesn't feel like a village, especially when we're raising children. And I'm thinking of future generations
94:13 and you know how many generations have already been raised by just mother and father. The nuclear family the nuclear family nuclear family had
94:24 nothing to do with raising children. Nothing. Nuclear family nuclear family had to do
94:30 with property. The nuclear family was created by people
94:36 who wanted to secure that property will go to their own descendants and that it will be redistributed along the bloodline along the genetic heritage.
94:48 So the nuclear family was created recently. It's a recent invention. Um up
94:54 until um not long ago, people could marry four four women. Women could marry multiple
95:01 men in many cultures and societies. Um, uncles raised the children of the of the sister their you know it up until not long ago I would say 19th century
95:13 the nuclear family was a bit was very innovative idea. For example in French
95:19 society in the 18th century it was perfectly acceptable to have a what they called menata. That means u two women
95:26 and a man or two men and women. perfectly common arrangement and and
95:32 everyone went out to dinner together and you know everyone was happy, everyone was raising everyone's children and so on. The nuclear family, one male, one female and their the offspring. This had
95:46 to do with property. When people when when the feudal when the feudal order
95:52 the feudal you know structures collapsed people started to accumulate property
95:58 because prior to that you didn't you couldn't own property all your property belonged to the feudal lord but when
96:05 feudalism has collapsed and capitalism has emerged people started to own property now what to do with the
96:11 property I'm going to die who am I going to give it to I'm going to give it to my son but how do I know that it is my son.
96:18 How do I know that this is my son? Well, I need to marry a woman and I need to
96:25 hold her prisoner. I need to hold her hostage so that I can be 100% sure that
96:31 it is my son and pass on the property to him. And so this was all about property.
96:39 The nuclear family, I have very eccentric views about many issues. So
96:45 bear with me. But I think the nuclear family has been a a seriously bad idea. Seriously bad idea for a variety of reasons. We could dedicate maybe another talk to it. And and a recent idea. And I
96:58 think it's falling apart because it was never meant to work. And it had a lot to do with property, not with emotions, not
97:04 with love, not with raising children, not with caring for them. All the wrong motivations, money, land, and who will inherit them. Mhm. As simple as that. And then of course if you create a nuclear family
97:20 and it's all about property you need to dissociate disassociate. You need to disengage from other people because they are threats. They can take your property somehow.
97:31 So you need to reject your family members, your friends, your this created automization. The need to defend or protect your property meant that you had to deny
97:43 access to many other people. who const constituted a threat to your property
97:49 after your death postmortm. It all became very defensive. The whole structure became extremely defensive and
97:55 suddenly you had property laws and intellectual property laws. These are new things. Copyright is a new thing,
98:02 completely new thing and so on and so we invented the nuclear family but it's
98:08 dying. I'm glad to say it's dying and now there are much more flexible
98:14 arrangements and I think in due time what is going to happen I hope at least is we're going to we're going to reestablish collectives to raise children.
98:25 Mhm. How this is going to come about I'm not quite sure. I think the internet will play a role but I think ultimately we will have we will outsource raising children to collectives. We will be involved in the collective. Of course,
98:37 we remain involved but the collective will include multiple people. We've been doing this before. Schools, a school is a form of outsourcing child rearing to
98:50 an expert called the teacher. So, we've been outsourcing functions of the family. For example, we've been outsourcing health and medicine. We've been outsourcing education. We've been
99:01 we've been outsourcing we've been hollowing the family. We've been emptying the family and handing
99:07 functions over to experts. So today our child spends a lot of time with teachers. It's you know and ultimately what will happen is that all
99:18 these people involved in raising the child the teacher the doctor the medical doctor and you and the neighbors and all
99:24 of you will form informal collectives to raise the child. And I think that will
99:30 contribute to the demise of the mental illness pandemic that is gripping
99:36 humanity and which I attribute to this unnatural way of bringing up children.
99:44 That's how I see. I don't find that to be very eccentric. Actually, I would actually I would
99:51 really agree with that because I I can if you study humanity, you know,
99:57 especially in the last two 300 years, you can see how that's been playing out.
100:03 And um I do believe that we I I like how you referred to that as a pandemic
100:09 because I would agree with that as well with the mental illness crisis. Um it's
100:15 the more the more time goes by the the more it seems that there are so many people affected. Um
100:23 it's a massive a massive failure of psychology and psychiatry. I mean no one says that it's politically incorrect to say this and so on but these disciplines have failed abysmally and dismally. Mhm.
100:36 Imagine that you had a you had a branch of medicine which tackled a specific
100:42 family of diseases and imagine that rather than diminishing these diseases and reducing their incidence these diseases exploded suddenly and affected onethird of the population. Wouldn't you
100:53 say that these doctors are incompetent and should be probably sued for?
100:59 That's psychologists and psychiatrists. The failure is mindboggling is is amazing. The failure because now onethird of the adult population are
101:10 affected by diagnosible mental illnesses. One/ird. It's a shocking number.
101:18 Shocking. Yeah. Everything psychology and psychiatry have been doing for the past 150 years
101:24 led us to this. And the diagnostic and statistical manual in 1952, the first edition had
101:32 100 pages comp was comprised of 100 pages. Today it's 1,100 pages.
101:40 That's 52 now 70 years. 70 years later, the diagnostic manual for mental illnesses is 11 times larger than the
101:51 original in 1952. Says a lot. And that is due to more awareness or we are pathologizing totally normal behaviors. We are pathologizing the the
102:03 diversity of of human nature. We we reject the the diversity of the human
102:10 mind. While we are beginning to accept the diversity of the human body, transgender and what have you, we are still rejecting the diversity of the mind. We refuse to accept that some
102:22 people don't like the law. They don't like authority.
102:28 They are goal oriented and they're going to do anything and everything it takes to obtain goals. We refuse to accept
102:36 that this is totally normal. It's part of the variance and the variety of the human experience. So we pathize it and
102:43 we call it psychopath. One example. So we have pathized many
102:49 many things. We p apologized recently coffee coffee consumption and don't ask internet addiction
102:56 that's one reason but the other reason I think is because it's out of hand there's a sense of panic
103:03 especially among especially among young people panic sense I think we've taxed the
103:11 patience of our listeners agreed but I was actually even thinking
103:17 that because we discuss so many topics This could even be two episodes. At least for me,
103:23 it we could split it up and I would obviously not do anything without letting you know what that No, you don't need to let me know. I don't I don't exact censorship. You do whatever you want. Just let me have
103:33 these two episodes and I'll upload them to my YouTube channel. Fair enough. Definitely. Definitely. We are in We are
103:40 already editing everything. So, I think um that should Yeah, we need we need to edit out the bathroom break and all kinds of things.
103:46 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I mean not much gets edited, but we do have sort of an
103:52 intro that's created and all of that. So that's sort of what I would just I would just ask you um if
103:59 you wish to edit something I've said then I would like to be consulted. So I can't imagine that there's going to be anything but I will always I will send
104:10 you what we publish. No, I don't I don't have time to compare and nor do I have the inclination. If you feel that you want to exclude something, just let me know. I'm not gonna censor it. I'm not going to say no, I disagree, but I just need
104:23 to know that you've made this decision. That's all. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, let's end it real quickly. So,
104:30 Professor Sam Benin, thank you so Yeah, agree. Vakn,
104:38 Professor Sam Vakton, thank you so much for joining us. Where can our viewers, listeners find you if they want to hear more about you? I'm inescapable. Just Google Sak. You'll
104:49 find YouTube channels, Wikipedia page. I mean, you name it. It's uh just Google my name. It's links to your books, everything. Books, everything. I I've been everything. I'm a dinosaur. I've been online since
105:00 the inception of the internet. That's the truth, by the way. And so Oh, excellent. Wonderful. This was a
105:06 fantastic conversation. Thank you. I enjoyed it, too. There's been a lot of good information here that I know our viewers are really going to appreciate and and um enjoy as well. So, thank you so much for being on our first
105:17 and success success with your podcast. Thank you. Same to you. Take care. Bye. Bye.
105:23 All

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

Abuse, it's, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin Summaries

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