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1. 00:02 A few years ago, I came up with the proposed diagnosis of covert borderline. The covert borderline is a hybrid of narcissistic and borderline traits and behaviors and effects and cognitions. narcissistic and borderline dynamics or as Kernburgg would put it a borderline personality
2. 00:26 organization coupled with a narcissistic disorder or narcissistic character disorder. If you conflate the two, if you put them together, there’s a confluence. There’s a synergy between them and it gives rise to the covert borderline. You may ask, what was the
3. 00:43 need for a new diagnosis? Aren’t there enough proliferating as they are? Well, there is a void. There is a lacuna. There is a missing link between pathological narcissism and borderline. And I think the covert borderline is the bridge between these two. Um,
4. 01:03 those of you who are interested in learning more about covert borderline, please visit the covert borderline playlist which includes uh videos about this proposed diagnosis. But today we’re going to discuss something completely different. When under which circumstances
5. 01:21 does the covert borderline become a narcissist and under which circumstances does the covert borderline becomes a borderline? What happens externally and internally to drive the covert borderline to shed one dimension, one aspect of his or her personality and
6. 01:43 become a so-called pure type? Again, covert borderline is a hybrid. What happens when we take away one of the two elements? When we take away the narcissism, what’s left is a borderline. Take away the borderline. What’s left is a narcissist. But when does this happen
7. 02:01 spontaneously in the wild, so to speak. Since coming up with the idea of the covert or the diagnosis, proposed diagnosis of the covert borderline, I’ve had a lot of time to observe covert border lines. As I said in the wild, I’ve corresponded with many people. Many
8. 02:19 people said that the diagnosis of covert borderline resonates with them after decades of trying to understand themselves. They were misdiagnosed as narcissists. They were misdiagnosed as borderline. They were misdiagnosed as bipolar, you name it, autism.
9. 02:36 And finally, they came home. Finally, they found a diagnosis that covered all their symptoms, all their traits, all their behaviors, and they and internal psychological processes and dynamics that they have been experiencing lifelong. So, it seems to me, although I’m a bit
10. 02:57 biased, but it seems to me that covert borderline should take its place among other diagnosis in due time. In psychology, it’s a very long process. Okay, before we go uh into the topic of today’s video, I would like to make a few announcements. I’m going to be in
11. 03:17 Vienna the second week of September. If you would like to book a paid consultation with me face to face, write to me. My email address is in in the description of the video and the description of the video is under the video. Shockingly, another thing, um, I’m going to be in
12. 03:39 Paris soon. So, if you would like to organize something in Paris, lecture, seminar, it’s free of charge. I do not charge a speaker fee. If you would like to book a face toface consultation with me in Paris, again, my email address in the description under the video, write to me.
13. 03:59 Um, another announcement. Um, we have now a website of transcripts, fulllength, full-fledged transcripts of all my videos. We have another website dedicated to summaries, text summaries of all my videos. And so, you can get the gist of my videos without having to
14. 04:23 endure the bad audio, my thick accent, and hours of uh verbosity. And finally, there’s a YouTube channel. It’s called Vaknin Narcissism Summaries. This YouTube channel is not affiliated with me. It’s not my channel. But on this channel, the owners of the channel
15. 04:44 are posting clips and shorts which again capture the essence of my videos, my message, my concepts and so on so forth. So there’s a transcripts website, summary, text summaries website, and a video summaries website uh channel, YouTube channel. And you can find the
16. 05:01 links to all three in the description. Yes, the description is getting cluttered. I fully concur. And now before we proceed to discuss the deconstruction of the borderline of the covert borderline um the devolution of the covert borderline into a narcissistic state or
17. 05:24 a borderline state before we go there I would like to clarify the concepts of coorbidity and type constancy concepts which emerge from the flawed methodology of the diagnostic and statistical manual.
18. 05:44 You have all heard the term coorbidity. Co-orbidity is when the same patient is diagnosed with two or more um mental health issues. So if for example you’re diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and at the same time with borderline personality disorder you have
19. 06:05 a comorbidity. If you are diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and at the same time with a mood disorder, for example, depression, you have a dual diagnosis or a co-occurrence which is also considered to be a coorbidity. But actually, there’s no such thing as
20. 06:24 coorbidity. There’s no such thing as coorbidity because it is an artifact of the flawed system of diagnosis in the diagnostic and statistical manual. The DSM uses a categorical system to diagnose people and this categorical system is counterfactual
21. 06:46 does not reflect reality clinical reality and yields coorbidities. Similarly, there’s no such thing as a pure mental illness or a pure personality disorder or a pure mental health issue. No such thing. There’s no type constant cate categories.
22. 07:09 Take for example overt narcissism versus covert narcissism. Many people, especially self-styled experts online, would tell you that there are two types of narcissists. The overt ones, also mistakenly called the grandiose ones, and the covert ones,
23. 07:28 also mistakenly called the vulnerable ones. Why mistakenly? Because because all narcissists are both grandiose and vulnerable. And all narcissists go through phases of covert narcissism and phases of overt narcissism. All you heard me right. There are no
24. 07:52 different types. It’s just different phases in the lifespan or life cycle of the narcissist. So let’s summarize. There’s no such thing as coorbidities or co occurrences. There’s no such thing as pure type constant categorical disorders. These are mere artifacts of
25. 08:12 the flawed diagnostic and statistical manual system. Clinicians who use the international classification of diseases don’t come up with coorbidities or co- occurrences or pure types. If you want to learn how people are diagnosed under the international classification of
26. 08:32 diseases, watch the two videos links in the description. Click on these links and enlighten yourself as to how the ICD is used. My name is Sambakn and I’m the author of Malignant Self Love, Narcissism Revisited and a professor of psychology. Covert border lines belong in the
27. 09:00 cluster B personality disorders. Again, to remind you, it’s a proposed diagnosis. It’s not mainstream. It’s not been accepted widely yet. And so, like every other cluster B personality disorder, covert border are subject to collapse dynamics. Collapse simply means
28. 09:24 that the person or the patient or the client with cluster B personality disorder is unable to regulate internally because of lacking deficient interrupted or wrong feedback from the environment mainly from other people. So for example, when the psychopath fails,
29. 09:49 when the psychopath is unable to secure his or her goals, when the psychopath fails to accomplish a target, then the psychopath experiences collapse. Similarly, in classic pathological narcissism, when the narcissist fails to obtain narcissistic
30. 10:08 supply, attention, fails to maintain appearances, fails to butress, uphold, and support his or her grandiosity, fails to somehow preserve the inflated fantastic, unrealistic, counterfactual self-concept. When this happens because of an interruption in the flow of
31. 10:32 narcissistic supply or lack of availability of highquality narcissistic supply or isolation for some reason or whatever in this case the narcissist experiences a state of collapse. What would be a collapse in covert borderline? How would the covert borderline collapse
32. 10:53 or more precisely why would the covert borderline collapse? Well, there are two reasons basically and they both involve substantive failures. Now, pay attention to the to the difference. Pathological narcissism. Narcissists they endure and experience
33. 11:10 collapse when they fail to maintain appearances when they fail to communicate their fantasy their inflated grandio self-concept to other people and elicit and solicit from them narcissistic supply. So narcissists are not concerned about substance. They’re not concerned
34. 11:33 about what’s real. They have a very complicated relationship with the truth. Narcissists are focused on convincing other people that their false self is not false. That their fantasy is real. That their self-concept as brilliant geniuses, omniscient,
35. 11:57 omnipotent, all powerful, amazing, drop deadad gorgeous, handsome, perfection ray. They want to convince other people that these are true assertions. That is all true. And so the narcissist is focused on impression management, on communication.
36. 12:16 The narcissist couldn’t care less if any of this is true because the narcissist is delusional. the f the first person the narcissist deceives in the long parade in the in this long voyage the first person who falls prey to the narcissist’s fantastic
37. 12:34 delusionality is the narcissist himself he convinces himself that he is truly godlike he is truly a perfect entity or being and then he sets out to convert other people to this point of view to communicate this self-concept as if it who are 100% factual, grounded in
38. 12:55 reality and absolutely correct. So when this fails, when this enterprise of impression management fails, the narcissist experiences collapse. In covert borderline, the collapse is completely different. It also involves failure, but it involves real substantive
39. 13:16 failure. Not a failure of fantasy, not a failure of a narrative, not a failure of a movie or a piece of fiction, but a real failure. A real failure, for example, of an interpersonal relationship, a real failure of intimacy or a romantic leazison, a real failure
40. 13:37 in in at the workplace in in a career. So when the narcissist fails to convince other people how great he is, the narcissist experiences collapse. When the covert borderline fails truly and really in something he or she attempts to do, maintain a relationship, succeed at work, get
41. 14:04 promoted, make money, you name it. then the covert borderline experiences collapse. We could say that the locus of the collapse of the narcissist is in the fantasy. It’s a failure of the fantasy. Whereas the locus of collapse of the covert borderline is in reality. It’s a
42. 14:25 failure in reality. In this sense, ironically, the covert borderline is much closer to the psychopath than to the narcissist. Psychopaths are goal oriented and when they fail to obtain goals they endure or experience a collapse. We’ll not discuss this today. Okay.
43. 14:47 So we distinguish between two types of collapse in covert borderline. The collapse a a career related collapse a collapse at the workplace failing to get promoted. Fail failing to get appreciated or recognized for some accomplishment. being sidelined, being
44. 15:05 bullied, you name it. A failure at work, failure at the job, at the job, even if you’re self-employed, a failure to obtain self-set goals. So this is one type of collapse, career induced or career related collapse. And the second type of collapse is the interpersonal
45. 15:25 collapse. When the covert borderline fails to maintain a relationship with another person that somehow conforms to or adheres to the intensity demanded by the covert borderline, the commitment, the investment. Remember that covert border lines as the name implies are border lines.
46. 15:49 They are they are terrified of abandonment and rejection. They have problems with introject constancy. They are addicted to object constancy to the presence of the other person in their lives. They are heavily into intense passionate dramatic relationship
47. 16:09 relationships. They have a love fantasy. They’re love addicted. And this applies also to relationship with best friends. And so the second type of collapse in covert borderline is the interpersonal collapse. Now let’s see what happens in each of these two types of collapse.
48. 16:27 In the career induced collapse or the career related collapse, the false self of the covert borderline emerges, takes over, kind of suppresses all the other aspects of the personality and substitutes for them, becomes the personality. Now bear in mind that both narcissists and
49. 16:54 border lines have a false self. The false self is a construct that is theorized or observed in both people with pathological narcissism, narcissistic personality disorder and people with borderline personality organization or borderline personality
50. 17:09 disorder. Both these types of people, patients, clients, they have a false self. The false self is therefore doubly doubly amplified in the covert borderline. And yet it is latent in most cases. The false self in the covert borderline is more like an intellectual or
51. 17:31 intellectualized organizing principle or hermeneutic principle explanatory principle. So the false self the the covert borderline uses the false self to make sense of his life of reality to set goals purpose and direction and to self aggrandise or
52. 17:51 self- enhance and in this sense the covert borderline is similar to the narcissist. But when there is a crisis, when there is a career related collapse, the false self takes over is rendered much more grandiose, delusionally grandiose. Cognitive distortions are enormous.
53. 18:15 The perception of reality is completely impaired. There’s impaired reality testing. And this misapprehension of one’s self-concept, this sudden belief that one is invincible, immune to the consequences of one’s actions, endowed with impunity, that one is impermeable, untouchable,
54. 18:38 superior in every way, can do no wrong, gets everything right, always. This sudden onslaught of counterfactual delusional grandiosity floods the zone of the covert borderline and he becomes completely detached from reality. And because the main message is I am
55. 19:00 supreme. I am more intelligent than anyone. I’m more I’m all powerful. I’m I am omnitate. I’m all omnisient. I’m all knowing. I’m perfect. I’m a genius. I’m amazing. I’m super handsome and so on. This leads to antisocial or psychopathic behaviors, defiance, consumatiousness,
56. 19:22 reject rejection or conflict with authority, externalized aggress aggression mainly verbal and recklessness. The covert borderline having experienced a career related collapse becomes a malignant narcissist, a confluence of psychopathy and narcissism. It’s not a
57. 19:44 dark personality. It’s not a dark trial personality because dark personalities are subclinical. Whereas in the case of the covert borderline, the transition to malignant narcissism is totally clinical. In other words, a covert borderline that would
58. 20:01 present in clinical settings to a clinician or diagnostician would be diagnosed as either a narcissist or a borderline or a coorbidity of narcissism and borderline. But a covert borderline who presents in a state of collapse would be diagnosed by the diagnostician as a malignant
59. 20:22 narcissist. Okay. What happens when the collapse is interpersonal? The disintegration of a relationship, a very acremonious divorce, um betrayal by one’s best friend, um cheating, infidelity of the partner, um ruination and eradication of the love
60. 20:49 fantasy or the addiction to love. What happens when the covert borderline wakes up is awakened or enlightened suddenly and realizes that it’s all been a lie. It’s all been fake. It’s all been a fantasy. He feels betrayed, stabbed, backstabbed. He feels he feels lonely,
61. 21:08 soypistically lonely, existentially lonely. What happens then in this state of interpersonal collapse? The covert borderline becomes a classic borderline. The locus of control becomes external. The covert borderline is suddenly clinging, needy, codependent.
62. 21:30 At the same time, the covert borderline develops moodability, ups and downs, disregulated effects, disregulated emotion. He is overwhelmed by all kinds of sensations and feelings which he cannot control which drown him which disable him and and the disregulation
63. 21:54 is perceived as a kind of paralysis. The behaviors of the covert borderline in an interpersonal collapse become highly highly borderline, highly erratic, highly dramatic, passive aggressive, promiscuity and other types of recklessness take over. drinking,
64. 22:17 substance use disorders, sadistic, punitive misconduct, splitting, where the covert borderline begins to see everyone as either enemy, friend or foe, uh all good, all bad, angelic or demonic. There’s a lot of switching between identities, identity diffusion
65. 22:41 which is highly reminiscent of some types of dissociative identity disorder. This is known as switching and there’s a lot of cycling between idealization and devaluation. Let’s summarize in the work related career related goal related collapse when the covert
66. 23:04 borderline fails to externally attain some goals the covert borderline becomes a malignant narcissist. When the collapse has to do with an interpersonal relationship the covert borderline becomes a classic borderline. In both states of collapse,
67. 23:25 there are common clinical features. For example, a high level of dissociation with compensatory confabulation. There’s a lot of acting out, paranoid ideiation, and attention seeking. I deal with each and every one of the things that I’ve said in this video in separate
68. 23:44 videos. So, all you have to do is go through the relevant playlist or go to the search box and type Type in dissociation or confabulation or acting out and you will find the video you’re seeking. Similarly, as I said, there are playlists. For example, there’s a
69. 24:01 playlist dedicated to trauma and dissociation. Work your way through the website through the channel. They’re well over 2,000 videos. But this in a nutshell is what happens to to the covert borderline when reality intrudes harshly and does not accommodate the
70. 24:17 covert borderline narcissistic grandio aspects. coupled with the covert border lines need desperate need for the kind of fantastic love that exists only in Disney movies and not even there anymore.