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1. 00:02 One of the greatest problems in the scholarly literature on pathological narcissism is the misuse of the labels grandiose and vulnerable. I'm saying misuse because the way these words are used in the literature is highly misleading, gives the wrong impression and misrepresents the
2. 00:26 internal psychology and psychoynamics of pathological narcissism. Inevitably, of course, there's a spillover from scholarly literature to the online sphere. So the classical narcissist, the overt narcissist is often described as grandiose. Whereas the covert, fragile,
3. 00:50 vulnerable narcissist is often described as fragile and vulnerable. What's wrong with this? Everything. Both the overt and the covert narcissist are grandiose. There is no narcissism. There's no pathological narcissism without grandiosity, devoid of
4. 01:12 grandiosity, divorced from grandiosity. Grandiosity is the cognitive distortion and the impaired reality testing that underly pathological narcissism. There's no survival for the narcissist without the contortion and distortion of reality via grandiosity.
5. 01:32 So both overt and covert narcissists are grandio. The grandiosity manifests and is expressed differently in both cases. The overt narcissist is grandiose in one way, more extroverted, more self-confident, exudes charisma and magnetism and so on
6. 01:53 so forth. Whereas the covert narcissist is grandiose in a passive, aggressive, resentful, envious, hateful way. But both of them believe that they are the raification and reincarnation of God on earth. So when the scholarly literature makes a distinction between grandio
7. 02:16 narcissist and vulnerable narcissist, that's patently wrong. They are both grandio. What about the covert narcissist? When the literature, the scholarly literature this time labels the covert narcissist vulnerable, they imply that overt narcissists are not vulnerable,
8. 02:39 which is completely untrue. Pathological narcissism is a compensatory mechanism. It compensates for vulnerability, compensates for an innate shame or a sense of shame and self-rejection. The narcissist puts puts up a facade of look at me, I'm godlike, I'm a perfect
9. 03:03 entity, I'm brilliant, I'm amazing, I'm unprecedented, I'm cosmically significant, etc., etc. precisely because he doesn't believe internally does not believe any of this. This lack of self-esteem known as implicit low implicit self-esteem. This lack of self-esteem
10. 03:28 which is sometimes unconscious gives rise to behaviors which are known as self-enhancement. Self-enhancing behaviors. The totality of pathological massism is a compensation for a sense innate sense of inferiority, a rejection of who one is. Narcissist
11. 03:50 rejects himself. He does not like who he is. And so he invents someone else. He invents something else. He invents the false self and identifies with it. So to say that there is a vulnerable narcissist and a nonvulnerable narcissist is completely untrue.
12. 04:10 All narcissists are grandiose and all narcissists are vulnerable. We cannot make a distinction between two groups of narcissists based on grand graniosity because they're they're all grandiose and we cannot make a distinction a differential diagnosis between two
13. 04:28 groups of narcissists based on vulnerability because they're all vulnerable. The correct terms should be overt narcissist and covert narcissist. A narcissist who is ostentatiously narcissistic and a narcissist who is hiding his or her narcissism.
14. 04:46 in a variety of ways, you know, under a pro-social facade or pseudo humility or what have you. In both cases, there is pronounced grandiosity that covers up for bottomless vulnerability. So this distinction, these labels used in scholarly literature are exceedingly
15. 05:11 misleading, ignorant and misrepresent the psychological and psychonamic landscape of the pathological narcissism. Even worse, all narcissists are sometimes overt and sometimes covert. It is not true that there are two types of narcissists. completely untrue. A narcissist who
16. 05:37 underos severe narcissistic injury, narcissistic motification and so on so forth is very likely to become covert given the right circumstances and environments and people and a covert narcissist may blossom up and become overt. Overt and covert are states, states of
17. 05:57 mind, states of being. Psycho psychopathological states of the same person. Pathological narcissism sometimes manifests as overt, sometimes expresses itself as covert depending on many external factors and quite a few internal ones. The most important
18. 06:22 determinant of whether the narcissist becomes overt or covert is the availability of uninterrupted narcissistic supply. When such supply is lacking or uncertain as a state of collapse and collapse is the bridge the that upon which the narcissist crosses
19. 06:43 from of an overt state to a covert state and back. So the collapse mediates the transition from overt to covert and the recovery from collapse mediates the transition from covert to overt. All narcissists are both at different times in their lives.
20. 07:04 Why the why this common mistake even in the scholarly literature the assumption that there are two types of narcissists which are mutually exclusive because clinicians, therapists, psychiatrists come across covert narcissists almost exclusively
21. 07:21 whereas theoreticians and scholars and professors of psychology come across overt narcissist almost exclusively. So this miscommunication between clinicians and theoreticians, between therapists and scholars, between psychiatrists and professors, this
22. 07:42 miscommunication, this abyss, this gulf, this mutual contempt. To be honest, this is what gave rise to the erroneous clinical picture of overt narcissist as a pure type and covert narcissist as a pure type. They don't exist. Every narcissist is sometimes overt, some sometimes
23. 08:03 covert. All narcissists are grandio. All narcissists are vulnerable. End of story. Next time you come across these terms online from self-styled experts and of course in scholarly literature, remember what I've just said. This is a huge misunderstanding which have has led
24. 08:24 to the emergence of extremely misleading counterfactual terminology. Yes, even scholarly literature can be wrong and sometimes wrong for decades. The another problem is that many scholars seek the limelight. They want their 15 minutes of fame. So they come up with
25. 08:46 all kinds of um you know phrases and so on which guarantee exposure in the media there's a the field is highly contaminated with money with celebrity and so on even in academ even even among scholars just look around you and you will see what I mean be careful it's a minefield