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1. 00:02 I am. Thank you. Fantastic. Um, and you guys are going to let Sam in as soon as I finish with the intro so I can see him. Okay, great.
2. 00:14 Why would you want to do that? Telling me who you are. I love it. Sam,
3. 00:20 you’re misoistic. Ah, well, you’re sadistic. We’re going to have fun. Yes, we are the perfect couple. Here we go. Indeed. Um, okay. 3 2 1
4. 00:32 Hello and welcome to the nerve. Hello and welcome back to the nerve. I
5. 00:40 am your host Moren Callahan. Now we received so much incredible feedback on
6. 00:46 our segment on borderline mothers and our incredible guest Sam Vaknan that he
7. 00:52 has come back at our request. And a lot of you sent emails saying, “Would you do
8. 00:58 difficult fathers or addicted parents or toxic siblings?” And so what we decided
9. 01:04 to ask Sam about today is narcissism because I think narcissism is at the
10. 01:10 root of so many of these difficult uh relationships um and the attempts of
11. 01:16 those of us not in that particular stew to navigate them. So, welcome back, please, to Sam Vchan, professor of psychology at CIAPS and the
12. 01:29 author of several books, including the book that is our reference point today, Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. Welcome back, Sam.
13. 01:42 Thank you for having me and thank you for the plug. Of course. You know, the book is eminently readable. you know, when I got
14. 01:49 it, I thought, “Oh, it’s like it’s like a textbook. It feels almost academic.” And then I started getting into it, and it’s so conversational and so readable. Um, and in it, you you break down
15. 02:00 several several subsets of narcissism, but in the main, I wanted to begin by
16. 02:06 asking, do do we all possess a degree of narcissism? And is a certain degree of narcissism necessary to be a healthy functioning human being? Yes, the answer is yes and it is.
17. 02:20 Narcissism is a trait and as a trait it’s probably hereditary. There’s probably a genetic a genetic component that determines how much narcissism you’re going to have. But everyone has a
18. 02:33 modicum of narcissism. Everyone has narcissism to some degree. Now narcissism can be healthy. And when narcissism is healthy, it is the f at the foundation of the regulation of self-esteem and self-confidence and a sense of self-worth.
19. 02:50 Narcissism also allow allows us to redirect various energies. Um it’s kind
20. 02:56 of a channeling mechanism for various energies and so it’s at the root of ambition and working hard and
21. 03:02 accomplishing things and so on. And so narcissism is good for you actually. But
22. 03:08 like everything else um like everything else that is healthy it can go all right
23. 03:14 it can become malignant or cancerous and so then that’s when we use the phrase pathological narcissism. Now my understanding of it from my deep reading lo these many years wonder why
24. 03:27 is that um the narcissist the true narcissist and I do want to get to the other end of the spectrum but we’ll walk there to the malignant narcissist. Do they know a how bad they are and b is
25. 03:43 it true that true narcissistic personality disorder is really resistant to treatment?
26. 03:51 We’ll start with the first question which is always a good idea and u they are aware of their actions and the
27. 03:58 impacts that their actions are having on other people. So it is not true that narcissists are not self-aware. They
28. 04:05 know exactly what they’re doing and they know exactly uh what are the consequences and outcomes of their choices, decisions and ultimately actions. However, they’re completely unaware of their motivations.
29. 04:17 And because they are unaware of motivation, they kind of come up with a narrative that would explain why they’re
30. 04:24 doing what they’re doing. And so the narrative is always self-justifying. We call it an egoonic narrative. It’s a
31. 04:31 narrative that makes the narcissist feel good about himself or herself. It’s a it’s a narrative that that provides the the narcissist with the kind of context
32. 04:42 and motivation and attitude that would render the narcissist’s actions socially acceptable in the narcissist’s eyes. So, a narcissist would never say about about himself, I’m saying himself, half of all narcissists are women, but um a
33. 04:58 narcissist would never say about himself um I’m a bad person. He would say he would say I’m giving you tough love or I’m doing this for your own sake or I’m
34. 05:09 trying to save you or you are not aware and I’m I’m I’m waking you up or so there’s there will always be some kind
35. 05:15 of story line or some kind of fiction or some kind of narrative that would
36. 05:21 justify what the narcissist is is doing. As to the second question, depends how you define narcissism and depends depends how you define treatment and depends how you define healing and so on
37. 05:32 so forth. It’s a lot more complex than it sounds. In a nutshell, we are in
38. 05:39 clinical settings perfectly able to induce in the narcissist what we call
39. 05:45 behavioral modification. So, we’re able to change the narcissist’s behaviors. we
40. 05:51 are able to render the narcissist less antisocial, less abrasive, less obnoxious, uh more palatable, easier to live with. We can do this in therapy. There’s a
41. 06:04 variety of treatment modalities, schema therapy, some variants of CBT, cognitive
42. 06:10 behavior therapy, and so on so forth. And they’re pretty successful at accomplishing this. The problem with behavior modification, it is short-term. So you need many you need a lot of maintenance sessions otherwise the the
43. 06:23 the effect of the therapy waines and kind of vanishes dissipates and the narcissist reverts to form to ill form
44. 06:30 if I may add that’s the first problem and the second problem is that the narcissist’s behaviors are not always the main issue are not always the main problem because there are many people who misbehave there are many people whose whose misconduct is egregious and
45. 06:47 they’re not narcissist The problem with the narcissist is not so much the narcissist’s behaviors and
46. 06:53 choices and decisions which are always kind of uh malevolent if you wish. But
47. 06:59 the problem is the narcissist personality, the narcissistic core, the narcissistic identity and how
48. 07:07 interacting with the narcissist within a fantastic space, the fantastic space the narcissist foists on you, how this
49. 07:14 impacts you in the long term. When you say fantastic space, Sam, could you define that and describe that a bit? Yeah. The narcissist offers you a deal. He says, “Reality is unbearable. It’s
50. 07:27 intolerable. And I’m going to take you out of reality. I’m going to shield you. I’m
51. 07:33 going to create a firewall between you and reality. And I’m going to transport you into a Disneyland kind u of a fantasy. And you’re going to inhabit this fantasy.
52. 07:44 And within this fantasy, you are perfect. You’re perfect being. You are
53. 07:50 amazing. You are gracious. You are drop deadad gorgeous. You are super
54. 07:56 intelligent. You’re everything you have ever dreamed to be or being. And so the fantasy is self- aggrandizing and and it’s it it’s very addictive. It’s intoxicating. You see yourself through the narcissist’s gaze in a way
55. 08:12 that finally justifies self-love. You can finally love yourself because you’re
56. 08:19 perfect now. You’re flawless. And so this is the core of the fantasy.
57. 08:25 It isolates you from reality. Second part of the fantasy says, now that you are a guest in my fantasy, that’s what the narcissist says. Now that you’re a guest in my fantasy, now that I’ve I’ve
58. 08:37 afforded you access to an idealized version of you which allows you to love yourself finally, now that I’ve done all this for you, I expect you to reciprocate. And I expect you to reciprocate in two ways. One, I will
59. 08:53 assume all responsibility for you and for your life. So you will no longer have agency. You will no longer have independence. You’ll no longer be independent. You will no longer have
60. 09:04 personal autonomy. I’m taking all this away from you. So, this is the Fostian deal with the narcissist. And the second
61. 09:11 thing, you’re going to provide me with uh several things. You’re going to provide me with what I call the four
62. 09:18 S’s. The four S’s are sex, services, supply, narcissistic or sadistic, and
63. 09:26 sta stability, safety, a sense of safety. Now, if you if you provide the narcissist with two out of the four S’s, you’re in. The job is yours. There’s a
64. 09:37 job interview. It’s called auditioning. And if you pass the job interview, you’re inducted into the fantasy. From
65. 09:44 that moment on, you become the narcissist servant. But it’s not a lopsided deal. It’s not a
66. 09:51 lopsided deal because many victims of narcissists have never experienced self-love before. Ros Rosenberg calls it
67. 09:59 a self-love deficit. And so and and here is the narcissist
68. 10:05 and through his gaze and within the fantastic space that he laboriously constructs for you
69. 10:11 Mhm. he makes you feel uh safe. He makes you feel perfect. He he takes away all the
70. 10:17 drudgery of life and all the responsibilities and all the need to make the need to make decisions and
71. 10:23 choices which might turn out to be the wrong ones. And he he he he kind of regresses you. He infantilizes you. And now you’re a baby. You’re his baby.
72. 10:34 And as a baby, you’re entitled to unconditional love. And as a baby, you’re safe. And as a baby, all your
73. 10:41 needs are taken care of. And as a baby, nothing bad would would ever happen to you. And of course, as a baby, you never get to make decisions and choices or to have friends or whatever.
74. 10:52 You’re totally isolated as a baby. And so there’s a regressive element in the
75. 10:58 fantasy. At what point do you find in your experience the so-called victims of narcissists that the light bulb goes off
76. 11:09 that that that that first phase which you described so eloquently the what colloquially we in America call the idealization phase or the lovebombing phase and that is that is a finite
77. 11:21 phase. It cannot go on forever. Uh, at what point do you see the non-narcissist’s light bulb go off and say, “Something’s ary here. Something’s very ary here.”
78. 11:34 Yeah. Light light bulb light bulbs hopefully go on, not off. But yeah. Oh, sorry. Yes, of course. On. Thank
79. 11:40 you. Yeah. Hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, there are two sets of circumstances
80. 11:49 where light bulbs may might go on. And the first one is if the narcissist overd does it. If the narcissist exaggerates.
81. 11:56 If the discrepancy between what you know about yourself and what the narcissist is communicating to you to you via
82. 12:03 lovebombing and if the narcissist is psychopathic grooming grooming you and
83. 12:09 and the idealization phase which is a clinical term by the way. Oh okay good. Yeah idealization is a clinical term. So I was trying to avoid clinical terms. So but yeah you’re right. the the correct
84. 12:20 term is idealization. So within this phase the narcissist might overdo the overdo it and then you kind of feel you
85. 12:28 you feel the discrepancy you say to yourself this can’t be true something’s wrong here you know is so for example if
86. 12:35 if you know that you’re good-looking but not particularly intelligent or highly intelligent but not particularly
87. 12:41 good-looking or whatever and here comes a narcissist and says that you’re the most beautiful person or woman he has
88. 12:48 ever seen in his life and simultaneously you far exceed Einstein’s Albert Einstein’s um IQ and so on. I mean, if you have a minimal
89. 12:59 I’m terribly sorry, if you have a minimal self-critical
90. 13:05 capacity, a minimal a minimum a minimum of introspection, a minimum self-awareness, this this is a a light bulb light bulb moment because you’re going to wake up.
91. 13:17 You’re going to say, “He’s manipulating me. He’s just he’s just trying to manipulate me. Is is and so this is one one option.
92. 13:25 And the second and much more common set of circumstances is when the narcissist transitions ineluctibly. Ineluctibly is
93. 13:32 another word for inevitably from from idealization to devaluation.
94. 13:39 Now devaluation is a builtin feature within the shared fantasy. It’s not a
95. 13:45 bug. It’s a feature. The narcissist must devalue you in order
96. 13:51 to discard you. And the narcissist must devalue you and must discard you because you are his mother and he is reenacting early childhood conflicts with the maternal figure.
97. 14:02 Will not go will not go there. But at some point the narcissist begins to reverse course and instead of
98. 14:11 intelligent you become stupid and instead of drop dead gorgeous you are merely drop dead and and so on so forth.
99. 14:17 And so this sudden shift and it’s very abrupt and and it has nothing to do with
100. 14:23 external circumstances unlike a lot of misinformation online. It’s not that you it’s not that you have
101. 14:29 criticized the narcissist or you you did not adhere to the narcissist’s demands and then the narcissist devalues you.
102. 14:36 The narcissist would devalue you even if you are the most obscious submissive
103. 14:42 um you know catering to all his needs and he would still devalue you. It’s about him, not about you. And at that
104. 14:48 point, of course, you wake up. At that point, you wake up. Yes. There’s no winning. There’s no winning with a true narcissist.
105. 14:56 What is your experience, Sam, with say clients who are married, non-narcissists, and I want to get to covert narcissists when we’re done with this because I’m fascinated by the
106. 15:07 covert. But to non-narcissists who realize they are either partnered or married to partnered with or married to
107. 15:14 narcissists, they have been going through the discard phase and they want to stick it out. They want to justify to
108. 15:22 themselves that this is a cyclical thing that they can somehow bear.
109. 15:28 Well, just a minor um minor um disclaimer. I am not a clinic I’m not a
110. 15:34 clinician. I’m a professor of psychology. So, I don’t have clients. Fair enough. So, you don’t Okay, that’s that’s a legal obligation. I have to say it. So, understood. Uh but of course, I I monitor clinical literature. I have clinical colleagues.
111. 15:46 I mean, colleagues who work in clinical settings. So I’m I’m well aware of everything that’s happening. So
112. 15:52 the powers of self-d delusion are enormous especially especially if the fantasy caters to deep set real psychological needs that have never been met before.
113. 16:04 For example, the need to self-love, the need to feel safe, the need to feel understood and accepted,
114. 16:11 the need to feel that you’re superior because you are somewhat narcissistic and it caters to your grandiosity when
115. 16:17 the narcissist tells you you are, you know, perfect being or a perfect entity, there’s also that. So, if these deep set
116. 16:26 fundamental needs are being met in the fantasy, there’s little incentive to abandon ship. And so then
117. 16:35 uh the partner would create counterfactual narratives would create justifications
118. 16:42 of the narcissist behaviors. One possible such narrative is it’s all my fault. Had I only behaved
119. 16:48 differently, if I only done that or said that or only refrained from saying this or doing this, I would have been treated
120. 16:55 well. So it’s all my fault. That’s one. We call it the autoplastic narrative. Mhm. Another type of narrative he’s going through through a difficult period. It’s a passing phase. Another narrative is well that’s the way he is. You know, it’s some when he’s when he’s loving his
121. 17:13 love is like nothing else. And when he’s abusive, you know, we it’s worth it’s worth the price. The prize is worth the price. And so there are many such selfdeceiving narratives. They’re
122. 17:24 selfdeceiving because none of them is true. None of them is real. What is the only the only narrative
123. 17:31 that’s real is the clinical narrative. The narcissist is inexurably drawn into a fantasy and the fantasy dominates the narcissist. Narcissist has
124. 17:42 no control over the fantasy. And as I just said, the fantasy is inexraable in the sense that narcissist cannot stop
125. 17:48 the fantasy, rechan the fantasy, reframe the fantasy. The the fantasy is in full
126. 17:54 control and mastery. The narcissist is its slave and the fantasy has well-defined phases. Idealization,
127. 18:02 devaluation, and ultimately discard. There are inevitable phases. Nothing to be done.
128. 18:08 Even the narcissist cannot do anything about it. Sam, is there a difference between selfishness and narcissism? Well, egotism or or selfishness
129. 18:22 um are derogatory terms. Um, narcissism is a clinical term and one could even say that in certain
130. 18:34 types of circumstances, selfishness is healthy. Mhm. Putting yourself first is a healthy thing. Mhm. Um, not putting yourself first is
131. 18:46 actually an indication of pathology. So we say for example that people pleasers are it’s a pathological state pathological set of behaviors you know mazukis it’s a pathology I mean I can I can name 10 pathologies codependency I
132. 19:02 can name 10 types of pathologies where the individual um puts himself or herself their needs
133. 19:10 last. That also applies in certain societal cultural context. For example, mothers
134. 19:17 are supposed to put themselves last. Yes. Um, in many societies, wives are
135. 19:24 supposed to put themselves last. Yes. In in I would I would even say that
136. 19:30 universally children have to put themselves last. Like if you if you have an aging mother or Yes. you have to cater to their needs. You have to take care of them. You have to sacrifice yourself, your family, your money, your time, your resources to take care of them.
137. 19:47 None of this is healthy. Agreed. None of this is healthy and none of this can be justified either psychologically or philosophically, even ethically, none of it. So self I would say that
138. 19:59 selfishness unfortunately we don’t have a word in English which is the the antonym or the
139. 20:05 opposite of selflessness. Yeah. But okay, let’s let’s say that selfishness is the opposite of
140. 20:11 selflessness. Then I would say that selfishness is healthy, whereas narcissism is not.
141. 20:17 You’re so right. We need a middle word that summarizes, you know, because what you’re describing, I’ve seen people I love do it. And it’s it’s never a bill
142. 20:28 that’s fully paid, right? in terms of it’s you know situationally putting an
143. 20:34 aging parent first for a moment or a day or this that bill never gets paid and once you get locked in that cycle I see
144. 20:41 it’s so difficult for people to get out of it. Yes. Because it’s um it’s a clinging
145. 20:48 needy form of emotional blackmail. We call it clinically we call it control
146. 20:54 from the bottom. You interesting. Yes. You control people by rendering yourself helpless and needy. And this creates an ambiencece of extortion. Like
147. 21:05 if you don’t take care of me, I’m going to die. Or if you don’t do this for me, I don’t know how to do it by myself and
148. 21:12 I’m incapable of learning how to do it. And and so on so forth. These are all forms of of blackmail. I would suggest
149. 21:18 the word uh the word selfness. Selfness. Selffulness.
150. 21:24 Selffulness. I I interesting selffulness is healthy whereas perhaps
151. 21:31 selfishness is is frowned upon socially or be albeit it’s not pathological and
152. 21:37 narcissism is pathological but selffulness selfness like mindfulness yeah selffulness is I think very very healthy it is the self that defines
153. 21:48 boundaries it is the self that informs us where we stop and the world begins and vice versa it is the self that
154. 21:55 fulfills very critical functions. For example, um reality testing.
155. 22:01 What is reality testing, Sam? Reality testing is the ability to tell what’s real and what’s not. What the
156. 22:07 narcissist does to you, it the narcissist impairs your reality testing. The narcissist challenges your perception of reality. The narcissist does it unintentionally,
157. 22:18 not deliberately as the psychopath does. Psychopath gaslights you. Mhm. The narcissist gaslights you
158. 22:24 unintentionally. So within the fantasy, the narcissist tells you everything you think you know
159. 22:30 about reality is wrong. You you perceive other people wrongly. For example, maybe maybe you’re too weak
160. 22:38 or you’re too submissive and people are taking advantage of you or you shouldn’t love your friend because she’s she’s
161. 22:45 backstabbing you and betraying you or whatever you think you know about the government is wrong. So there’s a lot of conspiracism involved and so on. This is this is when your reality testing collapses or becomes impaired and you begin to rely on the narcissist as your
162. 23:02 sole exclusive gauge of reality. So you’re going to come to the narcissist and say uh tell me is this real? Do you
163. 23:09 think it’s real? Do you believe it? Is it believable? As if you have no mind of your own. You you have outsourced your
164. 23:17 mind. The the shared fantasy is when you outsource your mind and your ego
165. 23:23 functions, that’s a clinical term to the narcissist and he becomes your external mind like an external hard drive. You
166. 23:30 know, it becomes your external mind. I love that analogy and what you mentioned too about the um the sort of isolating
167. 23:39 of the non-narcissist to keep them from I mean I think we can see many examples of this in our popular
168. 23:45 culture today to keep the victim from the others in their lives who actually would serve as reality enforcers
169. 23:56 right whether it’s a family of origin or long-standing friends that if they’re
170. 24:02 going to counter the narcissist version of events, they have to go. Yes, there are two reasons for that. The narcissist superimposes, we call it
171. 24:14 projection. The narcissist projects, superimposes his own distorted and thwarted mind on others and on reality.
172. 24:22 So he says, they’re doing the same thing. They have their own fantasies. I have my own
173. 24:28 fantasies. They have their own fantasies. Friendship, it’s a fantasy. Love, that’s a fantasy. Empathy, BS,
174. 24:35 it’s a fantasy. It’s all fantasy because it’s the only thing the narcissist knows. It’s the only kind of experience
175. 24:41 the narcissist has. And so the narcissist superimposes this conceptual framework of fantasy on others. And then if you have a friend, if you have the narcissist partner and you have a
176. 24:53 friend, so that these are two competing fantasies. your friendship which is a fantasy in
177. 24:59 the narcissist’s mind. It’s not real. Your friendship competes with his fantasy.
178. 25:05 So he needs to eliminate the competition. So that’s one reason. Second reason, friends, family,
179. 25:12 co-workers, institutions such as the church or I don’t know, you know, the your
180. 25:18 therapist, they the royal family perhaps royal family perhaps on some occasions.
181. 25:24 They offer you um sustenance, vigor, sakur, strength,
182. 25:32 resilience. They render you more. They render you immune to the narcissist fantasy. That
183. 25:40 is something the narcissist cannot countenance or accept. He needs to
184. 25:46 convert you into a susceptible entity. If we use imunology like COVID 19, he
185. 25:52 needs to take away your immune system because I love that because his fantasy is a v is a mind
186. 25:58 virus. He needs to infect you with a fantasy. As long as you have an imunological
187. 26:04 system which is comprised of people around you and their inputs, that’s not going to work. So when you’re isolated, your mind plays tricks on you. We know this. That’s a clinical fact. When
188. 26:17 you’re isolated, your mind plays tricks on you and then it it appears as if the narcissist is the only stable presence, the only thing the only person you can trust,
189. 26:28 right? The only gauge and measure of reality. and you latch onto the narcissist as if you’re a drift in the ocean and you kind of latch onto a piece of drifting wood, driftwood, you know. So that’s what he
190. 26:41 does to you. He removes from your life all certainty, all determinacy, all
191. 26:47 stability, all reality and then he renders you dependent. By doing this you become you
192. 26:54 become addicted to the self- aggrandizing idealizing aspects on the one hand and you become addicted to your newly found self-love on the one hand but on
193. 27:06 the other hand you are rendered so weak so mentally emassiated that the narcissist becomes your only lifeline he maintains maintains exclusivity
194. 27:18 so this is what is this what would be um termed the file Leia do where the non-narcissist then becomes sort of fully psychologically emotionally dependent and in order to survive has to has to mesh themselves into that
195. 27:35 delusion into that noxious fantasy. Yes, absolutely. The shared fantasy
196. 27:41 which is a term coined by Sander in 1989 was just another rendition of what we used to be known as Fiadur and today is known as mass mass psychoggenic illness. That’s a clinical term the updated clinical term. So yeah these are two people where one
197. 27:57 of them is a leader, one of them is a narrative generator, one of them is the one of them is the author and the other
198. 28:04 one is a character. So, it’s exactly like a video game or a movie where there’s a director and a
199. 28:10 producer and a screenwriter and then there are actresses and actors and you are an actress in the narcissist
200. 28:17 fantasy. Again, let me clarify half of all narcissists are women. I’m using he because it’s a Victorian literary convention and I’m very
201. 28:28 I love the way your mind works. I love these descriptors and allegorories and metaphors you come up with. um you just
202. 28:35 bring it all so vividly to life. I want to talk to you about what now if my if
203. 28:41 my interpretation is correct based on my own reading as a lay person. The inverted narcissist or the covert
204. 28:48 narcissist is a relatively recent discovery in the field. Is that right? And can you describe what because I find these people I know them in my own life
205. 28:59 and they go around undetected and it drives me nuts. So I want to bring the covert narcissist to the four. Please
206. 29:06 enlighten us. Yeah, that’s a very risky thing to do to bring a covert narcissist to the floor.
207. 29:12 But we’ll see what we can we’ll see how to manage the situation. So first of all, the current the current
208. 29:18 thinking, the mainstream thinking currently is that all narcissists go through overt and covert phases. So all
209. 29:26 narcissists are sometimes in yourrface, defiant, reckless, go-getters,
210. 29:32 you know, arrogant, haughty, disempathic, entitled, obnoxious. I
211. 29:39 don’t want to continue the list. So that’s the overt narcissist. But right, but even overt narcissists go through
212. 29:47 covert phases, phases of covert narcissism and vice versa. So we no longer as we used to we no longer make a distinction between pure pure types like
213. 29:59 the overt is never covert and the covert is never overt. Got it? That used to be the thinking until about
214. 30:05 10 15 years ago and unfortunately it still prevails online because everyone online is like 15 years back
215. 30:12 but today today we don’t see it that way. Now the covert narcissist is simply
216. 30:18 someone whose capacity to secure attention narcissistic supply is
217. 30:25 diminished constitutionally because for example he’s not very intelligent or not very handsome or not very good-looking
218. 30:31 or whatever doesn’t have charismatic charismatic any of those not talented doesn’t have
219. 30:37 the skills or whatever. so constitutionally unable to obtain narcissistic supply or has other mental
220. 30:45 health issues. For example, he’s passive aggressive or he’s seething with envy and resentment or what have you.
221. 30:51 And so some narcissists would spend most of their lives, majority of their lives
222. 30:57 being in a covert state. So maybe that’s what we could call a covert narcissist.
223. 31:04 Okay. So what do they how what are the manifestations of covert narcissism? Now we have two types uh we have three types of covert narcissist. One of them
224. 31:15 is a type that I was the first to describe. It’s the inverted narcissist and that’s a narcissist who deres her
225. 31:22 narcissistic supply her attention. I’m saying her because majority of inverted narcissists are women.
226. 31:28 Fascinating. She deres her her narcissistic supply, her sense of self-worth, her self-confidence,
227. 31:34 self-esteem by teaming up with a dominant in-your-face overt narcissist.
228. 31:42 That reminds me that in Germany in the 19th century, if you were married to a medical doctor, they called you fra
229. 31:49 doctor. Even if you didn’t Wow. Even if you didn’t have one year of education, you were still FRA doctor. So
230. 31:57 the inverted narcissist is a FRA doctor. She finds Oh my god, I love this. Fra doctor.
231. 32:04 Putting that in the lexicon at the nerve. Okay. So, she’s like by teaming up with the narcissist, she is vicariously
232. 32:13 um enjoying the narcissist exposure, the attention he’s getting, the admiration
233. 32:19 and adulation that he’s subject to and so on vicariously. I’m the narcissist’s wife, you know, this kind of thing. The
234. 32:26 second type is known as the pro-social. Pro-social or communal narcissist. That’s by far the most dangerous type. I
235. 32:35 would even say more dangerous than the malignant narcissist. Do you have a pro-social narcissist as an a communal
236. 32:42 nar as the name implies pretends to be empathic, loving, charitable,
237. 32:49 compassionate, um pretends to be a dogooder who is hellbent on improving the lot of of other people. So he he would likely be a
238. 33:00 social activist or he would volunteer for an NGO in the furthest corners of Africa or he would and it’s all done
239. 33:09 ostentatiously. It’s all for public consumption. It’s all very visible on the surface. It’s
240. 33:15 all conspicuous and so it’s all public facing and communicable and this is a
241. 33:22 pro-ocial communal losses. The problem with these people is that they are believable. And we have something called the BA ratebased policy. Never mind that. It’s it’s the fact that people believe 90 to
242. 33:34 95% of what they are told without factchecking, verifying, or even
243. 33:41 exercising minimal critical thinking. So when a narcissist like that comes and tells you, listen, I love humanity. I
244. 33:50 have empathy for all my fellow beings. I’m engaged all my life. I’ve sacrificed
245. 33:56 my well-being and my wealth and my capacity and talents and skills. I’ve put all of them, harnessed all of them to help humanity. And you you would I
246. 34:07 mean vast majority of people would believe this kind of person and then they enter a shared fantasy
247. 34:14 and then they easily manipulable. So these kind of people end up being cornartists or swindlers or they end up
248. 34:24 uh abusing their positions as as for example members of the clergy. Mhm. Or they end up raising humongous sums of money and then you know taking off to
249. 34:35 Barbados or wherever wherever these kind of people run away nowadays and so on so forth. It ends badly. All
250. 34:42 the gurus, all the public intellectuals, all the charitable figures, all the mother theas of the world, and I mean the overwhelming vast majority of them in all likelihood, uh, pro-social communal narcissists. How do I know that? Because they’re famous.
251. 34:59 The so fascinating, Sam, because this reminds me of Christopher Hitchens writing an expose of Mother Teresa for
252. 35:06 Vanity Fair. And God, did he catch a ton of crap for that, but he was right. he was right to be looking under that hood. And I want to ask you about so we’re talking about in the macro the sort of
253. 35:17 most extreme examples who you know propel themselves onto the global stage but in the micro in in this in in in
254. 35:25 your own community or your own network of friends or family. I find these people manifest as the following.
255. 35:31 They’re just so generous. They’re just so giving. They just they they they advertise what is is close to a kind of
256. 35:39 martyrdom. They’ll put the they’ll put others before themselves any day of the week, but they want you to see it. You
257. 35:46 don’t give a gift behind a closed door. You don’t do something generous for someone without somehow blaring it out
258. 35:52 on social media, which by the way, I think the combination of social media and reality television has embedded
259. 35:59 narcissism and this kind of narcissism in the culture to the point where it’s becoming normalized so as to be
260. 36:05 undetectable. Yeah, they are the communal pro-ocial narcissist is a precursor the father if you wish of influencers.
261. 36:16 It’s a kind of influencer. But the influencers are not hiding their commercial affiliations and that they’re
262. 36:24 benefiting from all this and so in in this sense they’re honest and take it it’s a take it or leave it situation. Right. The pro the pro-social communal narcissist plays on victimhood. It’s as
263. 36:35 as you mentioned, it’s self-sacrificial. It’s I’m the sacrificial lamb and I’m doing this for you and I’m paying a
264. 36:42 horrendous personal price for doing this, but I’m still doing this. Why? Because I’m a good person. I’m essentially a good person. That’s my quidity, my goodness, you know. And so, these are very dangerous people. That’s
265. 36:53 the second type of covert narcissist. I’m I’m mindful of the time and I don’t want to keep going. Don’t worry about it. Go
266. 36:59 ahead. And the third type of uh of covert narcissist is someone who is as I said seething with envy and resentment.
267. 37:06 He’s highly grandiose but believes himself to be discriminated against, overlooked. um develop some kind of personal conspiracy
268. 37:17 theory where people are envious of him and they are they they have a malign
269. 37:23 intent and they are holding him back or taking him down or conspiring against him or or something. So it’s someone who is immersed in a narrative, a sthing
270. 37:35 narrative, a narrative that fester festering narrative of um look at me,
271. 37:43 I’m being victimized by everyone, by the entire world because of my superiority.
272. 37:49 I am supremely intelligent and that’s why my academic supervisors hate me or
273. 37:55 my teachers hate me. I am amazingly skilled and talented and that’s why my boss uh never gives me a promotion. I am
274. 38:04 my colleagues envy me and that’s why they are undermining my work and it’s always not my fault. This is known as
275. 38:10 aloplastic defense. So this type of covert narcissist blames the world. Institutions, colleagues, neighbors, family members, spouses, children, his
276. 38:21 dog, you name it. Blames the world for any defeat, any mishap, any error, any
277. 38:27 mistake, any miscalculation, any wrong decision, any uh choice that have panned
278. 38:33 out badly and so on. So this is the third type, the most common type actually of covert really. Yeah, that’s the most common type. Why do you say, Sam, let’s say even in a
279. 38:43 in a pro-social context that’s in the micro, right? So, just someone in your own community, in your field of vision,
280. 38:50 that those are the most dangerous kinds of narcissist. What is the worst outcome that could happen? You don’t see them coming. You don’t see them coming. The malignant narcissist is a caricature. The malignant narcissist
281. 39:02 is a narcissist. He’s also a psychopath. And he’s also a sadist.
282. 39:08 and you see him coming from miles away and you can protect yourself, you can defend, protect yourself.
283. 39:14 Interesting. If you listen, if you are self-destructive, that’s your ideal partner. And many many self-destructive
284. 39:20 people team up with narcissists and psychopaths and malignant narcissists because this guarantees their own
285. 39:27 demise. It’s a it’s a safe and certain way to end essentially your productive life, if not your physical life. So, but you see them coming. You can, you know, you don’t see
286. 39:39 the pro-social or communal narcissist coming. You don’t see them coming. The covert narcissist is by definition
287. 39:46 covert. It’s very difficult. We have studies. How do you How do you Sorry. Go on. Go on. We have studies where we have exposed people to photographs and email messages
288. 39:57 of narcissists and people were able to spot overt narcissists. They had um they had what
289. 40:04 we call the uncanny valley reaction. They became highly uncomfortable. They were able to spot overt narcissist
290. 40:10 within 3 to 30 seconds. They were exposed to a video or a photograph or an
291. 40:17 email and within 3 to 30 seconds they have correctly the majority of people
292. 40:23 have correctly identified others who have been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Overt narcissism
293. 40:31 triggers something in you makes you feel uncomfortable. Something is off key, something is halfbaked, something is wrongly put together. We call it the uncanny value reaction. Covert narcissists don’t trigger this in you. They are really under the radar. It’s
294. 40:47 very very difficult to spot them. And even I would even say that they are not
295. 40:53 as aware of their actions as overt narcissists are really. So it’s not that they’re hiding anything from you. It’s there there isn’t even what the overt narcissist knows exactly
296. 41:03 what they’re doing. Yeah, he know he knows he’s hurting you. He’s going to invent some kind of story to justify himself and everything, but he
297. 41:10 knows exactly what what he’s doing. Very often the covert narcissist is selfdeceiving, extremely selfdeceiving. We say that the overt narcissist is self-enhancing
298. 41:21 whereas the covert narcissist is selfdeceiving. The covert narcissist just wants to feel
299. 41:28 at peace. Whereas the overt narcissist wants to feel superior.
300. 41:34 So with the overt it’s about superiority. With the covert it’s about reducing anxiety. It’s an anxolytic
301. 41:42 state. An attempt to reduce anxiety. Anxolytic state. Yeah. So it’s really really really
302. 41:49 penicious, insidious. And when when the covert narcissist finds a way to obtain supply by pretending to be a good person and by deceiving not only himself but millions
303. 42:00 of others, you can imagine the damage. I find that these people also are never
304. 42:07 given rarely if ever given to expressing what I would consider a healthy degree
305. 42:13 of anger. You know they they are it seems that their investature is in in
306. 42:19 their public facing role. They are even killed. They can take anything. Nothing is a big deal. Everything is cool because to be angry would somehow be
307. 42:30 compromised. Compromise their image. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you’re talking about covert narcissist. And that’s exactly that’s very true because as I mentioned earlier, they are passive aggressive.
308. 42:42 Passive aggression is when you do not express anger overtly, when you do not verbalize it, when you do not
309. 42:48 communicate it, when you are not trying, when you’re not attempting to influence the behavior of other people by telling
310. 42:54 them, “I’m angry at you.” There’s no honesty, right? Covert narcissism is a dishonest
311. 43:00 condition. And what the covert narcissist does instead, he’s being passive aggressive. He sabotages you. He
312. 43:07 undermines you. He poisons your mind with a trickle incremental kind of. So
313. 43:16 uh while the overt narcissist is highly overt. So there’s nar narcissistic rage.
314. 43:23 When the overt narist is angry at you, it becomes disproportional and crazym. It’s a form of acting out. And we call it narcissistic rage. It’s unique to narcissist. It’s not exactly anger. It’s
315. 43:35 not an attempt to modify your behavior. It’s an attempt to annihilate you or Yes. or at the very least subjugate you at
316. 43:41 the very least. Yes. Sam, what do you do? I guess we’ll leave
317. 43:47 we’ll leave it with this. This I think is the most common question we have gotten from our audience. As a
318. 43:55 non-narcissist, if you are forced to be in proximity with a narcissist, you either realize you are married to one or they are in your family and there’s no getting away from them. You realize that
319. 44:06 there’s a covert among you. Agreed. The most malevolent, destructive, difficult to spot. How do you defend yourself?
320. 44:16 Let’s start with the fact that I mentioned you spot a narcissist within three to 30 seconds. 3 seconds studies
321. 44:23 by in Harvard and so these are serious universities and serious study. You spot them. Don’t kid yourself. Don’t deceive yourself. Don’t say I’ve been played. You know, the narcissist is such a great
322. 44:36 actor and I’ve been played. I discovered this months later. Not true. In all likelihood, you knew that something was wrong within seconds. And so this is the fact, the first fact.
323. 44:48 Second fact, the longer you are exposed to the narcissist, the more likely you are to develop narcissistic defenses and ultimately to be to resemble the narcissist very very much. You’re likely
324. 45:01 to become a narcissist. Narcissistic defenses involve for example a reduction in empathy, becoming
325. 45:07 much more aggressive or even violent, verbally abusive at least and so on. So
326. 45:13 nar narcissism is contagious. It’s infectious. Point number three, narcissistic abuse
327. 45:20 is not like other types of abuse. Is not like being beaten, you know, which is bad. Of course, battering is bad, but
328. 45:26 it’s not the same. It’s not like being uh subject to financial abuse or legal abuse or or I don’t know verbal abuse.
329. 45:34 It’s not the same. All other forms of abuse limit themselves to an aspect of
330. 45:40 you, to some dimension of you, to some area of of your life, to some particular group of friends, to some to your bank
331. 45:47 account, to your sexuality, to it’s an annexed part of your life. Yeah. Yeah. It’s a I wouldn’t say it’s
332. 45:54 in the fringe, but it’s limited. Other types of abuse are limited. Narcissistic abuse is unlimited.
333. 46:02 The main goal of narcissistic abuse is to eliminate you as an independent agentic entity and to reproduce you as an internal artifact in the narcissist
334. 46:13 mind. Mhm. That is annihilation. That is eradication. That’s not abuse. I think
335. 46:19 narcissistic abuse, the phrase that I coined, I beginning to regret it. I think I should have coined the phrase
336. 46:25 narcissistic eradication. Never too late, Sam. Yeah, never too late. Yeah, right. I’m
337. 46:31 young. So, so uh you you can tell the difference because with classical types of abuse, it’s a
338. 46:42 touch and go. The abuser is there, then the abuser is not there, then the abuser, it’s intermittent. It comes and goes. With the with narcissistic abuse, it’s all pervasive. It’s all consuming.
339. 46:54 There’s no rest bit. There’s no rest. There’s no break. There’s no pause. It’s it’s it. This is it. This has become your life, you know. And so, well, as you said at the top of the
340. 47:05 show, it’s a mind virus once it gets into your mind and that parasite takes hold of the host body. The narcissist could be away for a month. It doesn’t matter. It’s working on you.
341. 47:17 It’s very true. The the clinical term is introjection. the narcissist introjected
342. 47:23 insinuated himself into your mind never to leave unless you take care of it via therapy and so on. But
343. 47:30 so uh when you feel that the abuse is this kind of abuse that is taking over you a hostile takeover
344. 47:37 when when you are losing your identity we wake up in the morning you say that’s not me I don’t feel the same I can’t
345. 47:43 believe I can’t believe I’ve said that I can’t believe I’ve done that I can’t believe I’ve made this choice I can’t you know if you can’t believe if you find yourself incredulous and incredible
346. 47:54 in the worst sense of the the meaning of the word then it’s time to go because
347. 48:00 you are becoming him. You’re becoming your narcissist and that’s that’s a very dangerous
348. 48:06 process because the it triggers in you very infantile primordial primitive defenses like splitting. It reduces your
349. 48:14 capacity to empathize. It takes away your sense of identity and and core self.
350. 48:20 It renders you more automatic, more robotic. It makes you a skitstoid. In
351. 48:26 other words, you you begin to isolate yourself. Selfisolation, forget the narcissist and so on so forth. These are
352. 48:32 detrimental and deletterious impacts that would take years to un unravel in
353. 48:38 therapy and so on. The sooner you abdicate, the sooner you abandon sheep, the the more the better your prognosis later on. Now, people say, “But I can’t
354. 48:49 abandon sheep. I can’t leave the narcissist. It’s my mother.” Oh, I can’t leave the Naris. It’s my son.
355. 48:55 I don’t buy that. I don’t buy that. A narcissist is a
356. 49:02 clear and present danger and a mortal one. It’s a mortal danger. And so you
357. 49:09 need to go you need to let go. You need you need to go no contact, which is a set of 27 strategies that I was the first to propose in the 80s. You need to go no contact. No contact means no
358. 49:22 contact, not directly, not indirectly, not by litigating, which is a way of staying in touch,
359. 49:28 right? Not by not by stalking social media, not no contact means no contact. Now, some
360. 49:35 people say, “So, I don’t buy the it’s my son, it’s my mother kind of response.” Another kind of response. I can’t live because I’m financially dependent on the narcissist. Well, give up on your
361. 49:47 lifestyle and flip burgers in McDonald’s. That’s my answer. Anything is better.
362. 49:55 Sam, what do you say to the people who who would say, “Oh, Sam, it’s no contact in theory.” Sure, but here’s the
363. 50:02 pressure I get when my nephew is getting married or there’s a 90th birthday
364. 50:10 celebration and I’m going to be the bad guy because I refuse to be in the same room with the narcissist who is so dark
365. 50:16 and damaging. I’m the one who’s supposed to just suck it up for an hour or two and play nice. I don’t have to interact
366. 50:22 with him. What is your response to that? What is your best advice? If you suck it up, you will be sucked in.
367. 50:30 As simple as that. Any single time that you suck it up, you’re going to be sucked into the narcissist’s whirlwind
368. 50:37 and vortex and shared fantasy. You exposing yourself to one hour in the
369. 50:43 presence of a Narcissist would mean another few months or another few years of having to cope with the outcomes
370. 50:50 amongst which is a new shared fantasy. This is what what narcissists do. They infect you. You don’t need much. So
371. 50:58 um what other people you have to you I mean you have to decide what are your priorities your well-being your s your
372. 51:06 mental health your ability to function being there for people you love your agency your independence your personal autonomy your core identity knowing who you are feeling one and the same with
373. 51:18 yourself not experiencing estrangement and alienation this is one set of priorities and another set of priorities What would what would your nephews and nieces and
374. 51:29 the neighbor would say? So if what other people would say say about you matters to you more than everything else I’ve just enumerated, go ahead, attend the attend the wedding.
375. 51:40 Well, if you if you if you are to go with option option B and remove yourself
376. 51:46 permanently, I think you also have to allow yourself to know you’re going to
377. 51:52 have to grieve. if you’re going to have to grieve all of those people who take the side of the narcissist and continue
378. 51:58 to suck it up because it’s better to go along to get along which is I think the default position of most dysfunctional
379. 52:05 families. There is massive grief grief involved in giving up on the narcissist the likes of which there’s none because you are giving up on a mother figure. You are giving up on your child. The narcissist becomes your child. You become a maternal figure in the shared fantasy.
380. 52:22 So it’s like giving up on your child simultaneously. You’re grieving the the death of a mother figure, the death of a
381. 52:28 child figure, the death of the fantasy, the death the death of the narcissist gaze or the removal of the narcissist
382. 52:35 gaze which allowed you to selflove finally the death of of the the disappearance of
383. 52:42 that person. I mean there’s attachment, there’s bonding, sometimes trauma bonding with the with the person.
384. 52:48 So there are multiple layers of grief. This is archaeological grief. There are multiple layers of of grief
385. 52:55 and uh the grief is is not superficial and not but is the grief becomes who you are and the grief becomes your new
386. 53:06 shared fantasy. The grief is fantastic because what you’re mourning has never been there.
387. 53:12 The narcissist you are mourning has never existed. The fantasy you’re mourning is a fantasy. The all of it is
388. 53:18 is nonsense. It’s it’s a dream. You’re mourning the dream and and so it become
389. 53:26 the grief itself becomes a captivating intoxicating harmful shared fantasy or form of
390. 53:32 fantasy and you’re unable to let go. We call it prolonged grief disorder. There’s a clinical term for that.
391. 53:39 There’s a clinical term for anything for everything. By the way, I I’m getting that. I’m getting that. For me, we love to pathize people with some
392. 53:45 money making device. Yeah. Right. Well, you know, very that’s very funny and somewhat there’s some
393. 53:51 truth to what you’re saying, but I love your phrase archaeological grief. I would love for that to penetrate the
394. 53:58 lexicon. archaeological grief, complicated grief, moving through grief and knowing that if it’s profound and
395. 54:06 true as opposed to the fantasy that one is grieving, when you get to the other side, there is a level of freedom that
396. 54:14 is hard one but truly real. Allow me to add one more sentence with
397. 54:21 your permission. Yes, please. The biggest the biggest element in this grief is that you have lost yourself. You’re no longer you. You’re no longer you in any meaningful way. You have lost
398. 54:32 your core identity, your agency, your autonomy, your self-perception, what we call self-concept. You’ve lost your
399. 54:39 self-concept. You no longer know who you are. You derive your sense of being and existence and your sense of reality from
400. 54:45 the narcissist having been exposed to to the narcissist. So there’s nothing there. Once a narcissist is gone, you’re
401. 54:52 floating in deep space. It’s um it’s a state of obliv obliviousness and oblivion. There’s nothing to latch on to. There’s no core. You are in a totally fluid
402. 55:04 state. And so this is very menacing. It’s it’s terrifying. Additionally,
403. 55:10 you have merged with a narcissis. You fused with an you melded. We call it the symbiotic phase. You became you created
404. 55:17 a symbiosis with a narcissist. And you need to separate from the narcissist to become again an individual. Narcissist regressed you to a baby state. And as a
405. 55:28 baby, you’re always one with mommy. So having regressed you to an infantile
406. 55:34 state, you became one with the narcissist. And now you need to break. It’s like Siamese twins. You need a a
407. 55:42 kogical oper. You need an operation, an intervention to the good news is and I
408. 55:48 want to I want to end on a good note which is highly atypical of me and I apologize but the good the good news is
409. 55:56 that uh having been exposed to a nar been victimized by a narcissist having
410. 56:02 survived a narcissist in some way the prognosis is excellent. Mhm. Uh if you subject yourself to soulsearching and self exploration and
411. 56:13 and and at the same time to therapy Mhm. and the the various modalities of
412. 56:20 therapy. Again, I refer people to a playlist on my YouTube channel. It’s titled narcissistic abuse healing and
413. 56:27 recovery. There’s I think 200 videos by now, okay? And and it’s totally free and so on. But
414. 56:35 in a nutshell, if you attend therapy and which kinds of therapies you can find on the list in the list that I’ve mentioned
415. 56:41 and there’s another list titled therapies which is very suggestive and so if you visit these two playlists
416. 56:48 um and you attend therapy and you do a lot of studying and learning and soulsearching and talking to yourself
417. 56:55 and becoming your best friend again, reacquiring your best friendship with yourself and exploring your core and who
418. 57:02 you truly are and and so on so forth. The prognosis is excellent. Your chances for healing and recovery verge on 100%.
419. 57:11 This is not narcissism where healing is absolutely impossible. Mhm. This is not psychopathy where we don’t even attempt therapy. It’s like lost case completely.
420. 57:23 This is not this. This is not it. This is whatever however long the share
421. 57:29 therapy has been with the narcissist. It is a temporary phase. It’s a transient phase and you can reemerge from this. Don’t give up on yourself and don’t
422. 57:40 despair. As I I repeat, the the outcome of therapy and self-exloration is very
423. 57:48 close to 100% recovery and healing. So, go for it. I love that message. And I, you know, I guess against your own best impulses, Sam, this is the second time you’ve been
424. 58:00 here and you’ve ended on a high note. You want to give people a little bit of Yeah. I’m I’m I’m ashamed. I feel
425. 58:06 guilty. There’s a lot of dishonor. You’re a mench. Yes. You’re a mench. Yes. I’m Jewish. How can I help it? No.
426. 58:13 Oh, well, thank you again so much for coming on the nerve and having yet another fascinating, illuminating
427. 58:20 discussion, archaeological grief. I will be taking that with me in my back pocket. Um, thank you, Sam. Thank you for having me. It’s been a pleasure as usual. Always a pleasure.
428. 58:31 Take care. See you soon. Bye.