Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video.

1. 00:02 We are both recording. Okay. Okay. You can start, Julia.
2. 00:09 Uh I’m very glad because I can opportunity to communicate with such a
3. 00:16 great person as Sam Vaknin. Today I want to attend viewers. Uh I think that you
4. 00:22 know everyone know this person but I’ll um want to say that uh today professor
5. 00:31 Waknian uh uh Sam can you um help me to
6. 00:37 uh say how is called your uh book in English? Yes. My book is malignant self-love
7. 00:45 narcissism revisited. Mhm. That’s my book. Maybe maybe let me introduce myself. It will be Yeah, it will be good. Okay. Also, this is not this is not about me. This is about narcissism. Yes. So, I’m a professor of psychology. Um,
8. 01:01 currently my position is in Cambridge, United Kingdom, where I teach psychology
9. 01:08 to post-graduates in the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced Professional Studies. I’m also a visiting professor
10. 01:15 of psychology in many universities. Uh I have been a professor a visiting professor of psychology in federal in
11. 01:23 southern federal university in Roto Vandon for 5 years until 1922
12. 01:30 until uh 2022 and uh am also the author of many books. One of them you mentioned malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited. the other
13. 01:41 books that I’ve written. So, thank you for thank you for having me and for the kind words and let’s go get on get onto
14. 01:49 the subject. Thank you much. Uh at first I would like to speak about the reason
15. 01:56 of our forming uh uh such uh NPD
16. 02:03 uh and uh to ask to tell you because if I know
17. 02:10 uh I know reasons uh searches were shows that uh it’s um biological
18. 02:21 prison or forming uh NPD. What do you think about it and why uh I learned many
19. 02:28 elections and I know that you uh say about um influence of uh ch childhood
20. 02:37 or following this uh problem. Uh can you speak about it? Can you tell?
21. 02:43 Mhm. At this stage, we do not have any convincing rigorous studies that show
22. 02:51 that um pathological narcissism is biological or hereditary or genetic or
23. 02:59 even that pathological narcissism involves brain abnormalities. In other
24. 03:05 words, we do not have studies that prove any of this. However, we do know that there is a
25. 03:13 trait a trait of narcissism. This trait is universal. Every human being has the
26. 03:19 trait of narcissism to some degree. The trait of narcissism is hereditary. It is
27. 03:27 genetic. Like all traits, all traits are genetic. So the trait, this trait is genetic. Pathological narcissism is when this
28. 03:38 genetic trait of narcissism becomes pathized. So the pathology
29. 03:45 is at this stage we believe is created by the wrong family environment created
30. 03:51 by childhood abuse, childhood trauma, adverse childhood experiences,
31. 03:57 bad situations in childhood. The mainstream belief, the mainstream u
32. 04:04 teaching right now is that we should distinguish narcissism which is healthy. It’s universal.
33. 04:12 Narcissism is the foundation of our self-esteem and self-confidence and self-concept. So narcissism is always there. We should
34. 04:24 distinguish this from pathological narcissism. The same way we distinguish healthy cells from cancer cells. So
35. 04:36 uh we there is no proof whatsoever that pathological narcissism is genetic or hereditary or even involves brain abnormalities. Having said that, I think
36. 04:47 in due time, in 10 years time, in 20 years time, maybe longer, we will prove
37. 04:54 that pathological narcissism is hereditary, is genetic. Right now, we don’t have this information. We don’t
38. 05:00 have evidence for this. But I think it’s very reasonable to assume
39. 05:06 for two reasons. Um, reason number one, you can have a
40. 05:12 group of children. The children are exposed to the same parents, the same family, the same upbringing, but only
41. 05:19 one of them becomes a narcissist. The others don’t become narcissist. This is a very powerful indication that
42. 05:26 there is some genetic or hereditary component or maybe brain abnormality,
43. 05:32 something biological, neurobiological. You statistically if you expose 100
44. 05:40 children children to trauma and abuse statistically only 1.7 children would
45. 05:47 become narcissists and that is a strong indication of neurobiology at work. Another indication
46. 05:56 that probably it’s neurobiological is the fact that narcissistic
47. 06:02 personality disorder is one member of a family of disorders. They’re known as
48. 06:08 cluster B personality disorders. So narcissistic personality disorder is a family member of borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, psychopathy,
49. 06:20 um histrionic personality disorder. And we know that in borderline personality disorder there is a strong genetic
50. 06:27 component and also brain abnormalities. We know that in psychopathy similarly
51. 06:34 there’s a strong genetic component hereditary component and also that there are massive changes to the brain. The
52. 06:41 brain of the psychopath is highly abnormal. And so borderline and psychopathy
53. 06:48 are the cousins of narcissism. They are the relatives of narcissism. And so it’s
54. 06:54 it is very very reasonable to assume that narcissism is also genetic,
55. 07:00 hereditary and neurobiological. But we don’t have any proof for that. What we
56. 07:07 do know over the last 150 years because narcissism has been first described in
57. 07:14 1897 by Havlock Ellis long time ago. So what we do know over this period of
58. 07:20 studies and research more than 100 years is that pathological narcissism is
59. 07:26 intimately connected to abuse and trauma in early childhood.
60. 07:32 We know that in the background of every single narcissist there is a dysfunctional family. There is bad
61. 07:40 parenting, wrong parenting. Now when I say abuse, it doesn’t mean
62. 07:46 only physical abuse or sexual abuse. When I say abuse, it means when the
63. 07:54 parental figures, mainly the mother does not allow the child to separate from her and become an individual. So when I say abuse, a mother who is
64. 08:07 overprotective, a mother who is spoiling, a mother who is em who emotionally
65. 08:14 blackmails the child, a mother who creates an ambiencece of uh incest,
66. 08:21 incestral ambiencece, mothers who mothers who are depressive, mothers who
67. 08:27 are selfish, mothers who are insecure, all these kinds of mothers create an
68. 08:34 abusive environment because they don’t allow the child to separate and to go on in life and become an individual. So when we say abuse, a background of abuse, we mean any mother, mainly the
69. 08:47 mother who doesn’t know how to be a mother, doesn’t know how to function as a
70. 08:53 mother, is afraid of the role of a mother, is insecure or maybe emotionally
71. 09:00 absent. There are two ways that you can develop as a mother. There are two ways you can make sure that your child ends
72. 09:06 up being a narcissist. One way is if you spoil the child, pamper the child, idolize the child, pedestalize the child. If you
73. 09:17 overprotect the child, if you isolate the child from reality and from the environment, from peers,
74. 09:24 this is one pathway to narcissism. This could result in narcissism.
75. 09:30 The other way is of course classical abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, neglect,
76. 09:36 abandonment, emotional absence, they also create narcissists. So there are two ways to
77. 09:42 create a narcissist, not only one. Yes, this is in a nutshell how we look at narcissism right now. We know that
78. 09:51 narcissism as a trait is genetic hereditary. But unfortunately until now we have not been able to prove conclusively that pathological narcissism the cancer the cancer of the
79. 10:03 soul the cancer of narcissism is genetic hereditary or involves any brain
80. 10:09 abnormalities at this stage. I think this this situation will change soon. I think we will be able to prove it.
81. 10:18 Okay. Uh when they say about NPD, we say that about of absent of empathy. Empathia.
82. 10:27 Empathy. Empathy. Mhm. Uh how do you think uh is it uh biological thing or such person
83. 10:36 don’t want to this empathy prevent to prevent
84. 10:44 how they think as I said there at this stage we don’t have any conclusive studies we have a
85. 10:51 few studies with tiny number of people very very small number of people and
86. 10:57 many of these people have other mental health issues, not only narcissism, they have borderline, they have manic depression, they have so there are no serious studies that prove that there is
87. 11:09 any biological connection in narcissism, in pathological narcissism. So the lack of empathy is a reaction to abuse and trauma in early childhood. We
88. 11:20 do know uh we we have been able to prove this.
89. 11:26 Now, it’s not completely accurate to say that narcissists don’t have empathy. When I say narcissist, I mean someone diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. And half of all these people are women. So, even though I use the male gender
90. 11:44 pronouns, I say he, I actually also mean women with narcissistic personality
91. 11:50 disorder. So um it’s not correct to say that they
92. 11:56 don’t have empathy. They don’t have one component of empathy. They don’t have emotional
93. 12:02 empathy. They don’t have effective empathy. They do have cognitive empathy and they
94. 12:09 do have reflexive empathy. Now in empathy there are three three ingredients, three components. When you’re born as a baby you have reflexive empathy. Mother, mother smiles
95. 12:22 at you. As a baby, you smile back. That is reflexive empathy. You empathize with
96. 12:29 mother. She’s smiling. You’re smiling as a baby. Then a little later in life, you
97. 12:35 develop cognitive empathy. Between the ages of two and four, more or less, you develop cognitive empathy. Cognitive
98. 12:41 empathy is the ability to make sense to understand the states of mind of other
99. 12:48 people to understand other people’s minds. And this is done through a process called mentalization. We are able to mentalize other people. We are able to create a theory of mind, a theory about
100. 13:01 other people’s minds. What are the psychological processes that take place in other people’s minds? What makes other people tick? what are their motivations and so on. So we create a
101. 13:12 theory and this theory is the foundation of cognitive empathy. Cognitive empathy
102. 13:20 for example is when you see someone crying and you say to yourself this person is sad
103. 13:27 is sad that’s why he’s crying. This is cognitive empathy. Emotional empathy or effective empathy is when you react emotionally
104. 13:39 to the emotional states of other people. When you see someone sad, you become
105. 13:45 sad. When you see someone happy, you become happy. You put yourself in the
106. 13:51 other person’s shoes, in the other person’s place, and you experience vicariously, by proxy, indirectly, you
107. 13:59 experience their state of mind. This is known as emotional or effective empathy. And the narcissist and the psychopath
108. 14:06 don’t have this type of empathy. They are able to perfectly make make sense
109. 14:12 of the minds of other people, the state of mind of other people, the emotions of
110. 14:18 other people, the cognitions of other people. They’re perfectly able to decode, to decipher other people, to
111. 14:24 understand other people. But they never react emotionally to this knowledge to
112. 14:30 this understanding. They have no emotional reaction. On the contrary, once they have made sense of what is
113. 14:37 happening to another person, the next stage they’re asking themselves, how can I use this in my
114. 14:44 favor? I know that she said what can how can I use this? How can I obtain goals? How can I take money from her? How can I you
115. 14:56 know? So in in narcissism and psychopathy there is what I call cold
116. 15:02 empathy very cold empathy cold like empathy it’s empathy that is mainly
117. 15:09 cognitive where the narcissist looks at another person says to himself this is
118. 15:16 what’s happening to that other person and the next question is how can I take advantage of this how can I use this How can I uh obtain my goals, accomplish
119. 15:28 my goals now that I’ve understood what’s happening to that other person? How can I leverage it? How can so same with the psychopath? So they have cold empathy. It’s not that they don’t have empathy.
120. 15:40 They are just not able to react emotionally to knowledge that they gain about other people.
121. 15:48 Understand? I’ll speak mixly English and Russian.
122. 15:55 Okay, you understand me? I looked your lection about Yes. malignant.
123. 16:06 Uh how often we can meet it? The malignant narcissist. Yes. Yeah. Malignant. Yes. The malignant narcissist luckily for humanity is very rare. Uh, malignant
124. 16:18 narcissism is a phrase coined by Otto Kernberg in the 70s.
125. 16:24 Otto Kernberg described a narcissist who is also a psychopath and also a sadist.
126. 16:33 So in malignant narcissism we have clinical narcissism, clinical psychopathy
127. 16:40 and clinical sadism. And this combination is seriously
128. 16:47 dangerous and very bad. Luckily only about we think we don’t have studies but
129. 16:54 we think from clinical practice that only about 2 to 3% of narcissists are
130. 17:00 malignant narcissists. So it’s extremely rare. Only one in only one in 70 people
131. 17:08 one in 70 people is a narcissist and only two to 3%
132. 17:14 are malignant narcissist. So one one in 2,000 people is a
133. 17:20 malignant narcissist. It’s extremely rare. You are in a lifetime you’re very
134. 17:26 unlikely to come across a malignant narcissist. It’s very unlikely that you met met someone who is a malignant
135. 17:32 narcissist. And clinic you mean that they have changes in the brain? Yeah.
136. 17:38 No, clinical means that they can be diagnosed. We we distinguish between clinical and
137. 17:44 subclinical. Clinical means that the person can be diagnosed, can be given a diagnosis
138. 17:51 and subclinical means that even though the person is showing certain behaviors and certain traits,
139. 17:58 these behaviors and traits are not enough to diagnose the person, not enough to render a diagnosis. So that
140. 18:06 would be a subclinical person. An example of subclinical narcissism is
141. 18:12 what is known as dark dark triad. Dark triad and dark tetrate personalities.
142. 18:19 Dark personalities are people who have narcissistic traits and behaviors.
143. 18:25 Psychopathic traits and behaviors sometimes makavelianism. They’re
144. 18:31 manipulative. They manipulate people. And in the case of dark tetrd, they’re also sadistic.
145. 18:38 But these people are subclinical. Dark personalities are subclinical personalities. In other words, we cannot diagnose these people with narcissistic personality disorder. We cannot diagnose them with antisocial personality disorder because the traits and
146. 18:56 behaviors are not sufficiently extreme to justify or to warrant a diagnosis. So
147. 19:03 we call these people subclinical. Generally speaking in clinical
148. 19:09 psychology um we are just starting to consider
149. 19:16 brain abnormalities, genetics. This is new neuroscience, neuroscience and
150. 19:23 evolutionary psychology and behavioral genetics and these are all new fields
151. 19:29 very new and the studies are not very convincing and not very serious at this stage. I
152. 19:37 think maybe in the future the situation will become better. But right now none of us in universities as professors none
153. 19:46 of us we are convinced that in any of these studies. So we do we do from time
154. 19:53 to time mention these studies but they do not constitute a part of the curriculum or the syllabus.
155. 20:01 What we teach instead is what we are sure of. And what we are sure of is that
156. 20:07 childhood, upbringing, trauma, abuse, other adverse experiences, society,
157. 20:15 culture. We are sure of the of the impacts. We are sure of the influence of these
158. 20:21 things. We are not sure of the influence of brain abnormalities. And we are absolutely not sure of the involvement
159. 20:29 of neurobiology of or genetics. This I think maybe in 20 years or 30 years or 50 years but right now we are not sure at all. And um
160. 20:41 probably it’s an interaction between the two. Probably there is some genetic templates there is some brain
161. 20:47 abnormalities that interact with life experience to generate the pathology.
162. 20:54 Additionally, there’s a major problem here. We do not we cannot predict which
163. 21:00 child will become a narcissist. We don’t know. So, we never test the brain of the child
164. 21:08 as a child. We test the brain of the narcissist when the narcissist is 30 years old, 40 years
165. 21:15 old, 50 years old. So we cannot tell if the brain abnormality is the result
166. 21:23 of narcissism. Yes. Because we did not follow the brain longitudinally over a long period of time. We come to the brain of the narcissist
167. 21:35 when the narcissism is already there. So how do we know if the brain was
168. 21:42 abnormal in childhood and this abnormality led to narcissism
169. 21:49 or if a lifelong of narcissism 20 years of narcissism 30 years of narcissism
170. 21:56 affected the brain created abnormality in the brain. In other words, we have correlation, but we don’t have
171. 22:03 causation, which makes the whole situation very difficult. The only way we can be sure
172. 22:12 that narcissism is genetic, that narcissism involves brain abnormalities. The only way is to take 100 newborn
173. 22:21 children and to follow their brains all the time
174. 22:27 for 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. Only then we can be sure. Not 100 children, but a thousand children. Only then we can be sure, begin to be sure. But as the situation is right now, it’s a joke. It’s a joke. So what if you study the
175. 22:43 brain of a 100 narcissist and all these brains are problematic? Let’s assume. So
176. 22:50 what? It doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t prove anything. It doesn’t prove that the brain caused the narcissism. Maybe the narcissism caused this type of brain. We don’t know. Similarly, when we say that genetics is linked to
177. 23:06 narcissism, we need to see the expression of the genes. We need to follow the way the
178. 23:14 gene behaves from the moment you’re born until much later because genes are
179. 23:20 triggered by the environment. The environment triggers genes. This is called epigenetics.
180. 23:27 So how do we know that the genes were okay but then they were triggered by for
181. 23:33 example pollution, air pollution, chemicals, minerals, food.
182. 23:40 Yes. abuse, trauma. How do we know? We don’t know. That’s the answer. Because we are testing adults. We never ever test babies. We test test adults. And
183. 23:52 when we you test adults, it’s already too late because you don’t have the evolution of the disorder, the evolution of the pathology. So that’s why I think it’s much too
184. 24:04 early to talk about this. Understand? Okay. Uh you say that um this malignist
185. 24:14 narcissism is dividing on three types. One of them is
186. 24:23 Yes. covert. Mhm. Covert. Covert and covert. And I want to ask if uh two
187. 24:31 persons in the same abusing family, one
188. 24:37 one will be covert covert covert and another narcissist. Mhm. This distinction relies on very
189. 24:50 very old information that we we are no longer using.
190. 24:56 But it’s not your fault. They are still teaching this in university. They’re still in clinical in clinicians in the
191. 25:03 training of clinicians. This is completely wrong information. There are no two types of narcissists.
192. 25:10 There are two types of narcissism. So we don’t have a narcissist who is
193. 25:18 we don’t have a narcissist who is overt and a narcissist who is covert.
194. 25:25 No, what we have is two types of narcissism.
195. 25:31 And the same narcissist sometimes is overt, sometimes is covert.
196. 25:40 Covert and overt are two states of narcissism which manifest in every
197. 25:46 narcissist. So imagine that you’re an overt narcissist. By the way, um many many people use the phrase even even professionals use the phrase grandiose narcissist. That is not
198. 26:03 a good phrase. It should not be used because covert narcissists are also
199. 26:10 grandiose. So all narcissists are grandios. There’s no such thing as grandio narcissist and covert narcissist. No, they’re both
200. 26:21 grandios. Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. Grandiosity is when we falsify reality in order to confirm or uphold
201. 26:33 um some kind of inflated fantastic self-concept. So psychopaths are grandio,
202. 26:40 border lines are grandio, narcissists are grandio, people with bipolar bipolar disorder in the manic phase, they’re grandiose.
203. 26:51 Grandiosity is not limited to narcissism. It’s in many mental health psychotics. People with psychosis are
204. 26:59 very often grandiose. So this is not limited to narcissism. And when you say grandio narcissist, you’re confusing
205. 27:06 grandiosity with narcissism. So much better is to say overt and
206. 27:14 covert. Overt means open. Yes. And covert. Now the overt narcissist uh when the overt narcissist experiences
207. 27:27 failure, defeat, shame, humiliation,
208. 27:33 when the overt narcissist is criticized, when the overt narcissist is exposed,
209. 27:39 when something bad happens to the overt narcissist, he becomes covert.
210. 27:47 Covert narcissism is simply a reaction to what we call narcissistic injury or
211. 27:55 narcissistic motification. Narcissistic injury is any situation
212. 28:01 where there is a challenge to the inflated grandio fantastic self-concept
213. 28:08 or self-image. When this is challenged by reality or by other people, the
214. 28:14 narcissist experiences narcissistic injury. If the injury is very very big,
215. 28:22 we call it narcissistic mortification and the narcissist goes through a phase
216. 28:29 called collapse. The narcissist is unable to obtain attention, narcissistic supply. At that point, the narcissist becomes
217. 28:41 covert. So an overt narcissist who fails to obtain narcissistic supply, fails to obtain attention.
218. 28:52 An overt narcissist who is shamed, humiliated, criticized, exposed.
219. 29:00 This overt narcissist would become covert. The same person would transition from
220. 29:08 one state of narcissism to another state of narcissism from overt to covert. So
221. 29:15 it’s not true to say that there are two types of narcissists. It’s true to say that all narcissists go
222. 29:23 through phases of overt overt phases and covert phases. So why is this mistake?
223. 29:31 Why people say that there are two types of narcissists? Why this mistake? Because academics
224. 29:40 study narcissists when they are in the overt phase. The academic, the scholar, the professor, they they study narcissists
225. 29:52 who are overt nar in the overt phase. They are grandiose. They are arrogant.
226. 29:58 They are disempathic. They’re exploitative. They they are gung-ho. You know, they’re happy with themselves.
227. 30:04 They’re egoonic. They they feel good with themselves. And then these are the narcissists that we study at the
228. 30:11 university. These are the narcissists who participate in studies and research.
229. 30:18 So in academia, they think all narcissists are overt.
230. 30:24 The clinicians, the therapists, the psychologist, the psychiatrist, they see the covert phase of narcissism. When the narcissist comes to therapy,
231. 30:37 when the narcissist needs help, they are already covert. They are in covert state. They feel bad. They are suicidal. They
232. 30:48 are disregulated emotionally. So the clinician, the therapist, the
233. 30:55 psychologist, the psychiatrist, they see only covert narcissist because the overt
234. 31:02 narcissist never goes to therapy and the academics they see only overt narcissist because the covert narcissist would go to therapy not to academia. So
235. 31:13 consequently it created the illusion it created the wrong perception that there
236. 31:19 are two types of narcissists. It’s not two types is the same people sometimes
237. 31:25 they are overt sometimes they are covert and this is the situation. Yeah understand great. And how uh what must happen uh that
238. 31:39 narcissist understand that he has disorder or because some of
239. 31:47 them uh start to tell about his problems and explain what what because of what they behavior
240. 32:00 in this but And you help them to understand it
241. 32:06 because they start to hear you and so they tell because because of what
242. 32:12 Sambakian tells I am I am this person. What must happen
243. 32:18 person may understand it. First of all a narcissist would use
244. 32:24 anything to obtain supply. If by saying I’m a narcissist, I can
245. 32:33 obtain supply, I will shade it. So many of these self-aware narcissists,
246. 32:41 healing healing narcissists, recovered narcissist, this is nonsense. They’re just using it to obtain narcissistic supply, to obtain attention, to be in the center, to so anything goes. The narcissist
247. 32:57 would say anything. The narcissist would do anything to obtain supply.
248. 33:03 But there is a group of narcissists. There are some narcissists when they experience narcissistic injury or narcissistic collapse or narcissistic motification. In other words, when the
249. 33:15 narcissist when the narcissist is defeated or experiences failure or is
250. 33:21 humiliated or is shamed or is exposed, when the narcissist cannot obtain narcissistic supply, cannot secure attention, never mind what he does.
251. 33:32 So in this situation, the narcissist could develop in
252. 33:39 principle selfawareness. The narcissist could say something is wrong that’s why I am not obtaining attention. That’s why I’m not having
253. 33:50 narcissistic supply because something is wrong or that is why people are
254. 33:56 criticizing me and disagreeing with me and humiliating me and shaming me because I’ve done something or something
255. 34:02 is wrong. So it is possible for narcissists to develop selfawwareness, awareness of their own psychology, but it is extremely unlikely that they
256. 34:14 would believe that their narcissistic personality disorder is a bad thing, a
257. 34:21 disorder. A narcissist would regard his narcissism
258. 34:27 as an advantage as an next the next stage in evolution.
259. 34:34 A narcissist would regard as nar is narcissism as something that makes the narcissist superior to other people. So a narcissist could reach the
260. 34:46 conclusion that he is a narcissist but then he would glorify the
261. 34:52 narcissism. Glamorize it. He would say this is a great thing. I’m a narcissist means that I’m superior. I’m super
262. 34:59 intelligent. I am irresistible. I am strong. I’m kismatic. I am resilient. So
263. 35:07 they would glorify the disorder. They would use the disorder to self enhance.
264. 35:14 Self-enhancement is a critical concept in in narcissism. In the study of narcissism, narcissists are busy all the
265. 35:22 time self-enhancing. Self-enhancement is an attempt to
266. 35:28 reconcile reality with fantasy. The narcissist has a fantasy about
267. 35:36 himself. The narcissist’s self-concept, self-perception, self-image are
268. 35:43 fantastic. They’re not real. So, this creates a lot of problems because it’s
269. 35:49 difficult to reconcile. Reality is pushing back. Reality is
270. 35:56 challenging the fantastic inflated grandio self-concept.
271. 36:02 And so, the narcissist constantly selfenhances. He constantly tries to put
272. 36:09 together reality and fantasy by falsifying reality, refraraming it,
273. 36:16 creating an alternative reality. So this is the fame, this is the fantasy
274. 36:23 defense at the foundation, at the basis pathological narcissism.
275. 36:29 As the narcissist self-enhances, he uses everything.
276. 36:35 So if the narcissist has narcissistic personality disorder, he would use it to
277. 36:42 self-enhance. Even when the narcissist says,
278. 36:48 for example, on YouTube, if a narcissist says, “I am bad. I’m hurting people, I
279. 36:55 am uh something is wrong with me, I’m going to therapy,” and so on. This is a form of self-enhancement. We call this type of narcissist
280. 37:06 pro-social narcissist or communal narcissist. This is a narcissist who
281. 37:12 obtains attention by pretending to be a good person.
282. 37:18 Then this narcissist secures narcissistic supply by claiming to be
283. 37:25 charitable, altruistic, loving, compassionate, caring, empathic,
284. 37:31 and repentant. Um, a narcissist who says, “I know that I’m a bad person, and
285. 37:39 I’m so sorry for it.” That’s a pro-social narcissist because he wants to show us what a good person is, how
286. 37:46 moral and ethical he is, and so on. None of this should be believed.
287. 37:54 Nothing the narcissist says should be believed. It’s all because narcissists are junkies. They’re addicts. They’re exactly like addicts. If you know alcoholics and if you know drug addicts, they will lie to you to
288. 38:10 take your money. They would steal your money. You could be the mother, the mother of a drug addict and he would steal from you and he would tell you
289. 38:21 stories to force you to give him money. Narcissists are addicts. They’re junkies. They’re addicted to attention. They don’t use heroine. They don’t use
290. 38:33 cocaine. They don’t use alcohol. They use attention. This is their drug. But
291. 38:39 they’re exactly like junkies. They would tell you whatever you want to hear. They would they would pretend to be good people. And when you’re not looking, they will steal away your attention, your heart, your emotions, and much worse. It is not an accident that
292. 38:59 among people with narcissistic personality disorder, the incidence and prevalence of
293. 39:06 substance abuse is very high. In other words, alcohol use disorder,
294. 39:14 substance use disorder, drugs and so on, they are much higher among narcissists
295. 39:21 than in the general population. Narcissists are very likely to use alcohol, drugs, and so on because they
296. 39:29 have addictive personality. They have an addictive personality. They’re addicted to narcissistic supply.
297. 39:37 They are addicted to So, it’s easy for them since they are addicted to attention, it’s easy for them to become addicted to alcohol or even to become addicted to a fantasy.
298. 39:49 They believe that this fantasy is love. So they say that they’re addicted to love. It’s not love. It’s a fantasy of
299. 39:55 love. But they can become addicted to it. Definitely. Addiction is a core feature of narcissism. And if you want
300. 40:03 to understand the narcissist perfectly, all you have to do is think about the drug addict because they’re the same.
301. 40:14 Interesting. Um, how do you think is it any importance for evolution of narcissism? I I’m not sure I understood the
302. 40:25 question. I didn’t understand it. Uh, the question is u evolution
303. 40:32 importance evolutionary such people is narcissist. Evolution of humankind. She means I’m sorry. Revolution of humankind.
304. 40:43 Yes. Yes. I I got it now. Um thank you Andre. Um
305. 40:50 first of all in psychology there is no right and wrong no good and
306. 40:56 evil. Nothing in psychology is good or bad. No such thing. For example consider
307. 41:05 depression. If I ask people is depression good they will say no it’s bad. Depression is bad. But if you are in prison,
308. 41:17 if you’re in Aitz, depression is a healthy appropriate reaction. If you are in prison and you’re happy,
309. 41:29 you are not well. You’re mentally ill. If you’re in prison and you are depressed, you’re okay. You’re mentally healthy. It’s appropriate reaction to depression,
310. 41:41 to prison, to be depressed. So we cannot say depression is bad,
311. 41:47 narcissism is bad, psychopathy is bad. No, it depends on context,
312. 41:54 depends on environment, depends on bigger picture.
313. 42:02 As the environment changes, as civilization changes, narcissism and psychopathy can become positive adaptations. They can become
314. 42:14 positive things. If you live in a society um in a some types of society, if you’re a psychopath, it would be a good thing for you. It would be positive for you.
315. 42:27 You would make money. You would rise to the top. You would, for example, Nazi Germany. In Nazi Germany, to be a
316. 42:35 psychopath was a positive thing, positive adaptation.
317. 42:41 And so in some types of the civilization, narcissism and psychopathy are
318. 42:48 evolutionary advantages. In other words, these types of environments, these types of civilizations, these types of periods of history. They would be conducive to narcissism.
319. 43:01 They would reward narcissism. And narcissists would have bigger chance to to have children, to procreate. So there will be more and more narcissists all the time. This is
320. 43:14 natural selection, survival of the fittest. So it’s Darwinism.
321. 43:21 There are scholars, there are experts, there are professors
322. 43:28 like Kevin Dutton, like Makobi, others. They say that narcissism and psychopathy
323. 43:35 are a good thing. They’re good thing for humanity. They’re good thing for the species.
324. 43:42 They say that narcissists and psychopaths are uniquely positioned. They have advantages to be leaders. They’re good leaders.
325. 43:53 They say that in some professions, for example, surgeon, medical surgeons, psychopathy is helpful. In other words,
326. 44:00 they say that psychopathy is good for the individual in specific
327. 44:08 societies and cultures but also good for the human species. And so there is a big debate in academ
328. 44:19 to to if you have to make some decisions, some very difficult decisions.
329. 44:26 If you have empathy, it’s a problem. If you have to cut someone with a knife,
330. 44:34 you have to cut someone with a knife in a hospital because you’re a medical doctor, you know, you’re a surgeon.
331. 44:42 If you have a problem with that, that’s a disadvantage. But if you’re a
332. 44:48 psychopath, no problem. Indeed, we find that among medical surgeons,
333. 44:55 the prevalence of psychopaths is much higher. There are many more psychopaths among surgeons than in the general
334. 45:03 population. Uh so the answer to your question is it
335. 45:09 depends. In some context, in some civilizations, in some professions, in some roles,
336. 45:15 psychopathy and nar narcissism are positive adaptations and represent an
337. 45:21 evolutionary advantage. That is definite. In others, no.
338. 45:29 In the long term, psychopaths and narcissists are self-destructive in the long term. So
339. 45:37 psychopaths and narcissists always implode. They always end badly. They
340. 45:43 always destroy themselves and everyone around them. But in the short term and medium term,
341. 45:50 psychopaths and narcissists could be useful, especially if they are embedded in an environment with many, many healthy normal people. So healthy, normal people can make use of
342. 46:03 narcissists and psychopaths to obtain certain goals and so on, but still maintain some kind of control over these people. But if you don’t have control
343. 46:14 over these people, they will destroy everything. They’re like time bombs.
344. 46:20 Understand? Thank you. In we often say in psychotherapy we say
345. 46:27 that we don’t treat people uh with such disorders but we adaptate them.
346. 46:34 So I have a question. What um how it
347. 46:40 will be life of narcissist narcissist it will be uh comfortably for him
348. 46:47 and not damaged for everybody around.
349. 46:54 No no for him I think. Mhm. These two goals are mutually exclusive.
350. 47:00 They’re contradictory. If the narcissist feels when the narcissist feels good with himself, when
351. 47:06 the narcissist is egoonic, feels good with himself, feels comfortable with himself, is happy, it means that other
352. 47:13 people suffer. When people around the narcissist are
353. 47:19 happy, they don’t suffer. The narcissist suffers. These are you have to choose what is
354. 47:26 your treatment goal. If your treatment goal is socially oriented to minimize the damage that the
355. 47:34 narcissist inflicts on other people, then this is one treatment goal. If the
356. 47:40 treatment goal is to make the narcissist happy or egoonic or functional, that’s another goal. But then the the people around the narcissist will have to pay a price.
357. 47:52 So today in the majority of practices, the practice today in the west at least the practice is to emphasize the social
358. 48:03 dimension, the social aspect to minimize the damage and the impacts of the narcissist. And we do this by helping the narcissist modify some behaviors. We we teach the narcissist to modify some antisocial
359. 48:19 behaviors, some abrasive behaviors, some unpleasant behaviors. We we teach narcissist to conform more with society,
360. 48:28 to function better in social settings, to maintain longer term relationships and and so on so forth. It makes the narcissist
361. 48:39 uh more acceptable socially. It makes the narcissist less damaging and so on. on the one hand but on the other hand the narcissist pays a price because he has to deny himself. He has to become
362. 48:51 someone else. You know we can modify we have been successful at modifying
363. 48:58 behaviors of narcissist in the short term and even sometimes medium-term up to 6 months.
364. 49:05 But we need to do it all the time. We need maintenance. You cannot modify the behaviors of the narcissist and then
365. 49:12 send him away into society and forget about him because very soon the
366. 49:19 narcissist relapses, goes back to his old habits, old behaviors and so on.
367. 49:25 Again, this is very similar to alcoholism. In alcoholism, the relapse rate, the
368. 49:33 rate of relapse is 80 to 90%. It’s very similar in narcissism. You can
369. 49:39 teach a narcissist to be more acceptable, better person, more pleasant person, less obnoxious, less aggressive,
370. 49:46 less, you know, antisocial, less psychopathic, less defined. You can teach a narcissist to become more socially integrated. But that is going to last one month, two months, 3 months, four months. That’s it. Is going to
371. 49:58 relapse. You have to do it all over again. what you can definitely do not do.
372. 50:04 Never mind who claims otherwise because many many therapists and practitioners and clinicians they claim that they can
373. 50:11 cure narcissism. They can heal narcissism. This is charlatanism.
374. 50:18 This is this is completely untrue. Completely untrue. You cannot cure or
375. 50:25 heal. You cannot change any major clinical feature of narcissism. Not one.
376. 50:31 You cannot develop empathy. You cannot uh change uh envy. You can there’s no major clinical feature of narcissism. Antagonism, negative affectivity, dissociity, anastia, which means
377. 50:44 obsessive compulsive features. You cannot touch any of these. They are there forever.
378. 50:51 Now in the west, we have something called political correctness. There are some things you are not supposed to say.
379. 50:57 Never. Don’t say these things. Even if they’re true, you’re not allowed to say them. So, one thing you’re not allowed
380. 51:04 to say is that the narcissist is the disorder.
381. 51:12 You are supposed to say that the narcissist is someone with narcissistic personality disorder. You’re not
382. 51:18 supposed to say narcissist. You’re not supposed to say borderline. You say a patient or a client with borderline personality disorder. But that’s nonsense.
383. 51:30 The narcissist is the disorder. If you take away the disorder, there’s
384. 51:37 nobody there. There’s no one there. There is no client with narcissistic
385. 51:45 personality disorder. There’s only narcissistic personality disorder. The narcissist is the disorder. End of
386. 51:52 story. So you cannot cure or heal the narcissist because he is the disorder.
387. 51:59 That is the essence. That’s who he is. That’s his identity. Core identity that is his self substitute self. You cannot
388. 52:06 take that away. And so what you can do, you can play
389. 52:12 tweak certain behaviors and maybe worldview or maybe maybe you can create new narratives or you can play around but but you cannot take away the core features which are the individual. The these features are the individual. You
390. 52:29 cannot take that away. So it’s nonsense to say that you can cure or heal or so on. Narcissists in general are egoonic.
391. 52:38 Even covert narcissists. There is a misconception even in clinical literature that covert
392. 52:44 narcissists are egoistonic. That covert narcissists are unhappy. They don’t like
393. 52:50 themselves. They’re uncomfortable with themselves. That is not true. All narcissists are egoonic.
394. 52:57 All narcissists are very happy with who they are. The covert narcissist is unhappy with
395. 53:03 other people. The covert narcissist says, “I’m a genius, but no one recognizes me.
396. 53:12 I deserve I deserve promotion in work, but no one is giving me promotion
397. 53:18 because they envy me.” So the covert narcissist is very envious, very resentful, very passive aggressive. Yes. But it’s
398. 53:29 about other people, not about himself. The covert narcissist thinks that he’s godlike, he’s perfect, he’s genius, he’s
399. 53:35 amazing, it’s just other people, they’re stupid. Other people are envious. They don’t appreciate him. And the overt narcissist of course is
400. 53:46 happy because the overt narcissist thinks that he is God that he is a perfect entity that he is he has
401. 53:53 omniscience he’s all knowing is omnipotent he’s all powerful he’s brilliant he’s so
402. 54:01 um this egoonyy the fact that the narcissist feels very
403. 54:08 good with himself very happy with himself makes treatment very difficult.
404. 54:14 For treatment, you need some kind of crisis. You need some kind of
405. 54:21 uh discomfort to for treatment to be successful. The client the patient must
406. 54:27 acknowledge that there is a problem. The the client and the patient must be in distress. They must be unhappy for the treatment to work. If a client comes to
407. 54:38 you and says, “I’m perfectly happy. I don’t see anything wrong. I’m okay.
408. 54:44 Nothing to do. You cannot treat this client. And this is the typical Narsis.
409. 54:56 Do you want to break? Are you feeling okay? Yeah. Okay. I’ll try to understand.
410. 55:02 It’s very interesting. And what women do they choose? What women?
411. 55:09 Yeah, narcissists are incapable of perceiving other people as external entities. They
412. 55:17 are not capable of regarding other people as separate from them. The narcissist as a child did not experience
413. 55:26 separation from the mother. Consequently, the narcissist did not did not experience the mother as external.
414. 55:34 The narcissist was fused with the mother, merged in a symbiosis in a symbiotic state with the mother. So mother and and the child were one.
415. 55:45 Consequently, when this child grows up, the child is not capable of perceiving other people as external, as separate.
416. 55:56 The narcissist perceives other people as internal objects, introjects. Other
417. 56:03 people are inside his mind. They don’t exist outside. Consequently,
418. 56:09 the narcissist couldn’t care less who you are. It is not true that narcissists
419. 56:16 have types that they prefer, certain types of women that they prefer. That is
420. 56:22 not true. That is a myth. It’s a self- aggrandizing myth. It’s a myth that makes you feel good because you say, “The narcissist chose me because I’m
421. 56:33 very kind. The narcissist chose me because I’m very empathic. I’m a nice person.” Or, “The narcissist chose me
422. 56:39 because I’m intelligent or because I’m This is about you. You want to feel good with yourself. You’re aggrandizing
423. 56:46 yourself.” And so, but this is not the case.
424. 56:53 The narcissist cannot see you. The narcissist doesn’t realize
425. 57:00 and doesn’t care whether you’re empathic or nice or kind. If you’re intelligent, it’s a threat
426. 57:09 if you are. So Nazis couldn’t care less about you. They care a lot about what
427. 57:16 you can give them. So, what you can give them is what I call the four S’s. S’s like a letter S.
428. 57:24 The four S’s. The narcissist wants you to give him two. Two out of the four S’s.
429. 57:33 Any two that you choose. So, S number one is sex.
430. 57:40 S number two is supply, narcissistic supply. So for example, if you’re very beautiful, that gives the narcissist narcissistic supply
431. 57:51 because he owns you. You’re like a trophy. You’re like a beautiful car, luxury car, you know. So yes, narcissist may choose you because you’re very beautiful. But it’s not because of your
432. 58:02 beauty. It’s because he can get supply from other people, from other men, for example. Okay. So supply narcissistic sometimes
433. 58:13 sadistic supply. Can the narcissist be sadistic with you? If you allow the
434. 58:20 narcissist to be sadistic with you, you are giving him sadistic supply. If you attract attention to the narcissist, you are giving him narcissistic supply. If you admire the
435. 58:32 narcissist, if you adore the narcissist, if you worship the narcissist, you are
436. 58:38 giving him narcissistic supply. So sex, supply, narcissistic or sadistic.
437. 58:45 Services. Services. The the third S, you remember there are four S’s. Services. All kinds
438. 58:52 of services. driving him, shopping for him, taking care of him, making food for
439. 58:58 him, anything that he decides that he needs, serving as his personal assistant, his
440. 59:05 secretary, introducing him to other people, your contacts and so on. This is creating a
441. 59:13 business for him, financing him, giving him money. These are services. And the last thing is safety, stability, security to be there. The narcissist
442. 59:25 needs you to be there all the time. Never to abandon him, never to reject
443. 59:31 him, never to criticize him, never to disagree with him. So
444. 59:37 this is what the narcissist is interested in. Two of the four, sex,
445. 59:44 supply, services, stability, safety. So you can give him sex and safety. It’s
446. 59:50 okay. You can give him supply and services but not sex. It’s okay. You can
447. 59:56 give him sex and services. It’s okay. Any two
448. 60:02 He doesn’t care who you are. Again, if you have a lot of money, he
449. 60:08 cares about it because it’s part of the services. If you’re beautiful, he cares about it because of the narcissistic
450. 60:14 supply. But it’s not about you. It’s about what you can bring him
451. 60:20 from other people. So this is the picture. However,
452. 60:26 the other side of the coin, the flip side of the coin is valid. It is not
453. 60:33 true. It is not valid to say that narcissists are attracted to specific types of women. Not true. But it is true that specific types of
454. 60:45 women are attracted to narcissists. That is true.
455. 60:51 That would be women with highly specific psychological profile. These would be women for example who did not experience love in in childhood in
456. 61:02 early childhood. These would be women with mental health
457. 61:08 issues such as borderline personality disorder or dependent personality disorder, codependency. These would be women who have just experienced a crisis or a problem in life and they’re very vulnerable. They’re very weak.
458. 61:24 Uh these could be women who have have had very horrible life, very difficult
459. 61:31 life and they’re damaged. They’re broken. So these type of women are likely to gravitate to the narcissist.
460. 61:38 It is true that specific types of women prefer the narcissist, want the
461. 61:44 narcissist, feel comfortable with the narcissist. The narcissist is their comfort zone. That much is true because
462. 61:51 the narcissist projects superiority, self-confidence.
463. 61:58 The narcissist is like a rock. The narcissist gives you the impression that
464. 62:04 he can solve all your problems, that you never need to worry, that you can feel
465. 62:10 safe, that you are secure, that now you can rest, you can be calm,
466. 62:19 you don’t you don’t need to have anxiety. The narcissist is also very exciting,
467. 62:25 very dramatic, very adventurous. So he brings color into your life
468. 62:31 when you are vulnerable, when you are susceptible, when you’re damaged in some way permanently or
469. 62:40 temporarily damaged, when you’re broken, when there is a way to access you, to penetrate you, you are much more vulnerable to the narcissist. You’re much more in danger of ending up with a
470. 62:51 narcissist. You don’t need to be empathic. Narcissists, for example, have partners which are
471. 62:58 psychopaths. Narcissists have partners which are other narcissists.
472. 63:04 You don’t need to be empathic or nice or kind. You need to be vulnerable.
473. 63:11 You need to be so broken, so damaged that you are defenseless. You have no
474. 63:17 defense. It doesn’t matter who you are. But and this is the kind of woman who
475. 63:26 would gravitate to the would seek the narcissist, would like to be with the narcissist, would dream of being a
476. 63:33 narcissist. The narcissist provides you with an escape from reality. There are two things the narcissist gives you.
477. 63:40 Escape from reality because narcissism is based on fantasy. You no longer need to be in reality. Reality failed you. In
478. 63:47 reality, you felt bad. In reality, you were depressed and anxious. in reality you were scared and now narcissist comes
479. 63:55 and says you don’t have to be in reality anymore you can be in my fantasy in my playground in my Disney world you know
480. 64:02 and the second thing the narcissist gives you he allows you to love yourself finally
481. 64:10 because he idealizes you creates an ideal version of you perfect he tells
482. 64:16 you that you’re perfect and then finally you can love yourself because you’re
483. 64:22 perfect. You were not able to love yourself before. You were self-critical
484. 64:29 harshly. You you rejected yourself. You were selfharming or selfdefeating or
485. 64:37 self-destructive. And here comes a narcissist and tells you, “You’re the most perfect. You’re drop dead gorgeous.
486. 64:43 You’re amazing. You’re intelligent. You’re incredible. And suddenly you say to yourself,
487. 64:50 this is the kind of person I can love. If I’m really like that, I can love myself. And you experience self love.
488. 65:01 Additionally, the narcissist attracts you, attracts your maternal side, your m
489. 65:07 triggers your maternal instincts as a mother because the narcissist
490. 65:13 shows you his childlike features, his childlike aspects.
491. 65:20 Pathological narcissism is a disruption in the formation of the
492. 65:26 self in early childhood. pathological narcissism. The self was not completely
493. 65:33 formed because there were many problems, many adver a lot of adversity, abuse,
494. 65:40 trauma, wrong parenting and so on. The child fails to develop an ego. Cannot develop a self. So the child remains stuck. Psychologically speaking, narcissists
495. 65:52 are two years old. They’re three years old. psychologically, emotionally speaking.
496. 65:59 And so when you when you meet the narcissist, when you come across a narcissist, he’s a child. It’s a child.
497. 66:06 And he gives you access to this child. He introduces you to this child. And
498. 66:12 immediately you become a mother. Immediately your maternal instincts are triggered.
499. 66:18 By the way, not only if you’re a woman, also if you’re a man. When a man sees a
500. 66:24 baby, when a man sees a baby, they immediately become like mothers, they become, you know, they melt. They love
501. 66:31 the baby. Men, you don’t have to be a woman. Narcissist introduces you to his
502. 66:37 childlike aspects, to his inner child, and you fall in love with this child. It
503. 66:44 triggers your maternal aspects and instincts and you cannot let go because what mother can give up on her child? As a mother, you cannot give up
504. 66:56 on this child. It became your child. No. And this is the source of the
505. 67:03 narcissist’s power over you. This is the glue. This is the addiction. This is the driver that he converts you into a mother. And after that to give up on your child
506. 67:15 it’s very very difficult. And the grief the mourning after breaking up with the
507. 67:21 Nazis the grief is huge because it’s the grief of a mother who has lost her child.
508. 67:32 And is it possible to explain women who feel this abuse but they say I love him. He he he he may he may do everything
509. 67:43 with this woman and they say no I love him I want to be with him and it is mor
510. 67:52 is it possible to to explain such women that are dependent on this narcissists
511. 68:00 first of all there are this there there are women who feel good with abuse they
512. 68:08 feel comfortable If you grow up in a family where your
513. 68:14 father was abusing you all the time, beating you up or then you will feel
514. 68:20 comfortable with abuse. You know how abuse works. You can predict the abuse.
515. 68:26 You can manage the abuse. You will feel uncomfortable with a man who is not abusive because the only kind of man you know is an abuser. So you have all the tools and all the instruments to cope with abuse. We call it the comfort zone. Your comfort zone
516. 68:43 is abuse. There are women like that. And when the
517. 68:49 partner refuses to abuse them, imagine that they picked up a partner who is not abusive and he refuses to abuse. They
518. 68:57 will provoke the partner to abuse them. They will force the partner. They will trigger the partner. They will make sure
519. 69:03 that this partner abuses them because only then they feel good and comfortable.
520. 69:09 Only then this is this process is known as projective identification. Projective identification is when you attribute to another person a behavior
521. 69:20 or a trait and then force them to behave in the way that you want them to behave.
522. 69:26 So this is one group of women. Another group of women are women who
523. 69:34 connect abuse and love. They interpret abuse as a form of love
524. 69:41 and they believe that love must include abuse. So I’ll give you an example. You talk to a woman and
525. 69:52 her partner beat her up. She you ask her why did he beat you up? Oh, he was
526. 69:58 jealous. I was looking at another man and he was jealous and he beat me up. And how do you feel about it? I feel great. It proves that he loves me. That he beat me up. He was jealous. He loves me. That’s proof that he loves me.
527. 70:14 So these women connect love with abusive behavior, with jealousy, with beatings,
528. 70:22 with and if this kind of men would not be jealous. Imagine that she goes out
529. 70:28 with him, she looks at another man, she talks to another man, she flirts with another man, and her husband or whatever
530. 70:37 doesn’t react, doesn’t care. She would feel unloved. She needs she needs the husband to be jealous and she needs the husband to be
531. 70:48 aggressive and maybe even violent because this is proof of love and
532. 70:54 without it she has no proof of love. She is unloved. So that’s another another group of women
533. 71:01 who would would feel comfortable with abuse because it’s proof of love. The third group of women are women who
534. 71:08 feel that there is no alternative. These are women who say for example, so
535. 71:14 what what if I leave him? I will leave him. I will find another man and that other men will abuse me also. All men
536. 71:22 abuse. So why to why to exchange one man for another man anyhow? They will abuse me. So these are women who feel that there are no alternatives, no realistic alternatives and better stay where they are.
537. 71:39 The fourth group of women, they believe they feel trapped. They believe that there are alternatives. There are good men. There are men who will not abuse them and so on. But
538. 71:51 there’s no way for them to get there. There’s no way for them to find them. So, for example, these are women who are
539. 71:57 financially dependent on the abuser. or women who have children with the abuser and they are afraid that the abuser will end up taking the children.
540. 72:08 These women are in a trap. They’re entrapped. They cannot exit the trap. They feel that they cannot exit the
541. 72:15 trap. And so they accept the abuse as the cost of staying, you know.
542. 72:21 And finally, there’s a group of uh women who deny the abuse, they repress the
543. 72:27 abuse, they reframe the abuse. And so, for example, these women would say, “It was my fault. I made him do it. I
544. 72:35 provoked him. I shouldn’t have done this. I shouldn’t have behaved this way. I deserve it. I had it coming.” So,
545. 72:41 they’re reframing the abuse. And by reframing the abuse, they’re creating a
546. 72:47 narrative where they’re actually not abused because they made it happen. They are in control. When you say it’s my fault, I provoked him means you are in control.
547. 73:02 You control the situation. You made him abuse you. So you are you control him.
548. 73:09 You’re in charge. You’re the boss. So this restores what we call internal
549. 73:16 locus of control. It restores the sense of mastery, the sense of control. Th this kind of woman lies to herself. She says, “I am not being abused. I am
550. 73:28 triggering the abuse. I’m causing the abuse. I’m making the abuse happen, but I am in charge. I am in charge. I’m in
551. 73:36 control.” This is a lie. It’s selfdeception. But it’s the only way to survive in such an environment.
552. 73:42 Luckily, by the way, majority of women uh would realize would accept that this
553. 73:49 is unacceptable abusive behavior and majority of women would would seek a way
554. 73:55 out. Majority of women would leave. It is not true that majority of women stay with abusers. Majority of them leave the
555. 74:02 abuse. That’s luckily. But there is a sizable minority maybe 40% maybe that that stay
556. 74:10 with the abusers and and for the reasons that I just gave. Thank you.
557. 74:17 And if uh your child is narcissist and parents uh see that his behavior is
558. 74:27 not normal in very early age, how they should treat with him.
559. 74:35 We do not diagnose pathological narcissism before the age of 21.
560. 74:41 A child cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or even with pathological narcissism and similarly an adolescent
561. 74:52 and the reason is that narcissism in childhood and narcissism in adolescence is healthy is good.
562. 75:00 I will give you an example. At the age of 18 months, between the ages of 18
563. 75:06 months and 36 months of life, the child needs to say goodbye to mother
564. 75:13 and to begin to explore the world. The child needs to walk away from mother,
565. 75:19 needs to touch all kinds of things, needs to taste all kind of thing. The child needs to find other children to
566. 75:26 play with and so on. So at this age which is known as separation individuation phase at this stage in
567. 75:34 human development the child needs to say goodbye to mother and explore the world but to do so the
568. 75:41 child needs to be a narcissist. The child needs to be grandiose. The child needs to say, it’s a 2-year-old. Yeah. 2 years old. Child needs to say, I don’t need mother. I need mother. I’m
569. 75:54 strong. I’m great. I can take on the world on my own. This is a narcissist.
570. 76:00 Narcissism is healthy in childhood. Similarly, in adolescence, in teenage
571. 76:06 years, the adolescent or the teenager needs to reject their parents. It is by
572. 76:13 rejecting the parents that the teenager or adolescent develop an identity.
573. 76:19 They also need to be grandiose. They also need to have reduced empathy
574. 76:25 to some extent. Narcissism in adolescence and narcissism in childhood
575. 76:32 is very healthy. So we never diagnose it only in adulthood after the age of 25.
576. 76:39 And some some scholars like Jean Tuen and Campbell they say after the age of 25 only then we diagnose pathological narcissism.
577. 76:51 However you can see the signs of psychopathy
578. 76:57 not narcissism but psychopathy and we can diagnose
579. 77:03 psychopathy in children. It it is not called psychopathy. It is
580. 77:09 called conduct disorder. Conduct disorder. So in children
581. 77:15 we can see a pattern a pattern of behaviors which is highly psychopathic.
582. 77:21 These children for example they torture animals. They are they are aggressive with other
583. 77:29 children. They’re violent with other children. They disobey authority. They are consumacious. They disobey authority. They’re highly defiant and rebellious. They are their life is very chaotic. They are truent. They don’t go to school
584. 77:46 regularly and so on. They may begin to abuse substances to smoke or to do drugs or to drink alcohol. So children who behave in these ways, they can be
585. 77:57 diagnosed with conduct disorder. And conduct disorder is another word,
586. 78:03 another phrase for psychopathy. So we can have psychopathic children but
587. 78:09 we cannot have narcissistic children. And these children who are diagnosed
588. 78:15 with conduct disorder when they grow up they become adult psychopath.
589. 78:22 Not all of them 40% but 40% of them become adult psychopaths.
590. 78:28 So this is very high ratio. It’s a good predictor. Conduct disorder in childhood
591. 78:34 is a good predictor of adult psychopathy and criminal behavior. It’s a good predictor of criminal behavior. And this starts in childhood. This is one more reason to believe that psychopathy is genetic and involves brain disorders
592. 78:51 because we can see it in childhood while we cannot see narcissism in childhood. So that’s another reason to think that maybe it’s not biological. We
593. 79:02 don’t know yet. Psychopathy clearly you can see in childhood borderline. You can see at age 12 you can diagnose borderline personality disorder. It’s
594. 79:13 permitted. It’s official. You can diagnose BPD at age 12. You can never you’re not allowed to diagnose NPD narcissism in at age 12. No way. And you
595. 79:25 can’t diagnose psychopathy at age four. Four.
596. 79:32 understand the thing. Uh, two narcissists. Yes, true. Can they
597. 79:38 communicate each other long time? Is it possible to decide how to survive together? Yes, they can. But there is a condition. They need to be dissimilar narcissist. So we, for example, we have we make a distinction.
598. 79:54 We make a difference between cerebral narcissist and somatic narcissist.
599. 80:00 Cerebral narcissist is a narcissist who obtains attention supply by being an
600. 80:06 intellectual by being intelligent. So he uses his intelligence, his intellect to obtain attention supply.
601. 80:15 That is cerebral narcissist. Cerebral narcissists are mostly nonsexual.
602. 80:21 They’re mostly celibate. They don’t have sex. And we have somatic narcissist. This is a narcissist who uses his body to obtain attention. So he could be a bodybuilder.
603. 80:34 He could be an athlete, a sportsman. He could be um a kazanova sexual use sex to
604. 80:42 obtain supply. But he uses his body. So these two types are dissimilar.
605. 80:50 They’re not the same. because they are dissimilar, they could have a very happy uh functional
606. 80:58 long-term relationship because they’re dissimilar. So, for example, the cerebral doesn’t have sex.
607. 81:06 The somatic wants to have sex all the time. So, they are likely to reach an arrangement where the somatic can have sex outside the the marriage or outside the relationship, open relationship or
608. 81:18 open marriage. That’s an example of such an arrangement. Another another type of arrangement we there is a type there’s a kind of narcissist called inverted narcissist. Inverted narcissist is a covert narcissist
609. 81:35 and she obtains her supply. She obtains her attention through her partner. Her
610. 81:41 partner is an overt narcissist. For example, her partner is famous. Her partner is rich. Her partner is a
611. 81:48 celebrity. partner is a professional of high standing and so on. So reputation. So her partner is obtaining the supply is obtaining attention and she
612. 82:01 enjoys this attention. She benefits from this attention. So inverted narcissist
613. 82:07 and overt narcissist, they’re a match ma made in heaven. They’re perfect for each other and they can survive for decades. They’re dissimilar. The inverted
614. 82:18 narcissist because she is a covert narcissist cannot obtain supply.
615. 82:25 Only the overt narcissist can obtain supply. So it’s like the overt narcissist is bringing the food home and
616. 82:32 the inverted narcissist is partaking of the food, eating the food. This food is narcissistic supply. Attention. In uh Germany, in Germany in the 19th century,
617. 82:44 if you were married to a medical doctor, if your husband was a medical doctor,
618. 82:50 they would call you Mrs. Doctor, FRA, doctor. Even if you didn’t know how to read, even if you were stupid completely, you
619. 83:01 didn’t know even how to read, they had to call you F doctor because your husband was doctor.
620. 83:08 This is perfect example of overt narcissist and inverted narcissist.
621. 83:14 All the attention, all the respect, all the narcissistic supply, they go
622. 83:20 to the overt. But the inverted narcissist enjoys it.
623. 83:26 Like the sun and the moon. The light of the moon is the reflected light of the
624. 83:32 sun. It’s not the sun of the moon. The light of the moon is not doesn’t belong to the moon. It is the reflection of the sun. Same. So yes, absolutely. If the
625. 83:44 narcissist, the two narcissists are this similar, they’re not the same, they can
626. 83:50 survive together very nicely and have long-term relationships and and
627. 83:56 so on. Understand? Thank you.