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1. 00:00 I wanted to begin by 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. Narcissism is a trait and as a trait it’s probably hereditary. There’s
2. 00:21 probably a genetic a genetic component that determines how much narcissism we’re going to have. But everyone has a modicum of narcissism. Everyone has narcissism to some degree. Now narcissism can be healthy. And when narcissism is healthy, it is the found
3. 00:38 at the foundation of the regulation of self-esteem and self-confidence and a sense of selfworth. Narcissism also allow allows us to redirect various energies. Um it’s kind of a channeling mechanism for various energies. And so it’s at the root of ambition and working hard and
4. 00:58 accomplishing things and so on. And so narcissism is good for you actually. But like everything else um like everything else that is healthy, it can go all right. It can become malignant or cancerous. And so then that’s when we use the phrase pathological narcissism.
5. 01:17 Now my understanding of it from my deep reading lo these many years wonder why 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
6. 01:38 it true that true narcissistic personality disorder is really resistant to treatment. We’ll start with the first question which is always a good idea and u they are aware of their actions and the impacts that their actions are having on other people. So it is not true that
7. 01:58 narcissists are not self-aware. They 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.
8. 02:13 Because they are unaware of motivation, they kind of come up with a narrative that would explain why they’re doing what they’re doing. And so, the narrative is always self-justifying. We call it an egoonic narrative. It’s a narrative that makes the narcissist feel
9. 02:28 good about himself or herself. It’s a it’s a narrative that that provides the the narcissist with the kind of context 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
10. 02:48 about himself I’m saying himself half of all narcissists are women but um a 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 trying to save you or you are not
11. 03:06 aware and I’m I’m I’m waking you up or so there’s there will always be some kind of story line or some kind of fiction or some kind of narrative that would justify what the narcissist is is doing. As to the second question, depends how you define narcissism and
12. 03:23 depends depends how you define treatment and depends how you define re healing and so on so forth. It’s a lot more complex than it sounds. In a nutshell, we are in clinical settings perfectly able to induce in the narcissist what we call behavioral modification. So, we’re
13. 03:43 able to change the narcissist’s behaviors. we 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 variety of treatment modalities, schema
14. 04:02 therapy, some variants of CBT, cognitive 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
15. 04:18 the effect of the therapy waines and kind of vanishes dissipates and the narcissist reverts to form to ill form 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
16. 04:36 problem because there are many people who misbehave there are many people whose whose misconduct is egregious and they’re not narcissists Mhm. The problem with the narcissist is not so much the narcissist behaviors and choices and decisions which are always
17. 04:51 kind of uh malevolent if you wish. But the problem is the narcissist personality, the narcissistic core, the narcissistic identity and how interacting with the narcissist within a fantastic space, the fantastic space the narcissist foists on you, how this
18. 05:10 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 intolerable. And I’m going to take you out of reality. I’m going to shield you. I’m
19. 05:28 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. And within this fantasy, you are perfect. You’re perfect being. You’re amazing. You are gracious. You are drop
20. 05:49 deadad gorgeous. You are super intelligent. You’re everything you have ever dreamed to be or being. And so the fantasy is self- aggrandizing. Uh and and it’s it it’s very addictive. It’s intoxicating. You see yourself through the narcissist’s gaze in a way that
21. 06:09 finally justifies selflove. You can finally love yourself because you’re perfect now. You’re flawless. And so this is the core of the fantasy. It isolates you from reality. Second part of the fantasy says, now that you are a guest in my fantasy, that’s what
22. 06:28 the narcissist says. Now that you’re a guest in my fantasy, now that I’ve I’ve 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
23. 06:46 ways. One, I will assume all responsibility for you and for your life. So, you will no longer have agency. You will no longer have independence. you’re not going to be independent. You will no longer have personal autonomy. I’m taking all this
24. 07:01 away from you. So, this is the Fostian deal with the narcissist. And the second thing, you’re going to provide me with uh several things. You’re going to provide me with what I call the four S’s. The four S’s are sex, services, supply, narcissistic or sadistic, and
25. 07:21 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 job interview. It’s called auditioning. And if you pass this job interview, you’re inducted into the fantasy. From
26. 07:39 that moment on, you become the narcissist servant. But it’s not a lopsided deal. It’s not a lopsided deal because many victims of narcissists have never experienced self-love before. Ros Rosenberg calls it a self-love deficit. And so and and here is the narcissist
27. 08:00 and through his gaze and within the fantastic space that he laboriously constructs for you Mhm. he makes you feel uh safe. He makes you feel perfect. He he takes away all the drudgery of life and all the responsibilities and all the need to make the need to make decisions and
28. 08:18 choices which might turn out to be the wrong ones. And he he he he he kind of regresses you. He infantilizes you. And now you’re a baby. You’re his baby. And as a baby, you’re entitled to unconditional love. And as a baby, you’re safe. And as a baby, all your
29. 08:36 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. You’re totally isolated as a baby. And so there’s a regressive element in the fantasy.
30. 08:54 At what point do you find in your experience the so-called victims of narcissists that the light bulb goes off that the that that that first phase which you described so eloquently the what colloquially we in America call the idealization phase or the lovebombing
31. 09:14 phase and that is that is a finite phase. It cannot go on forever. Uh, at what point do you see the non-narcissists light bulb go off and say, “Something’s ary here. Something’s very ary here.” Yeah. Light light bulb light bulbs hopefully go go on, not off, but yeah.
32. 09:34 Oh, sorry. Yes, of course. On. Thank you. Yeah, hopefully. Hopefully. Yeah. Um, there are two sets of circumstances where light bulbs may might go on. And the first one is if the narcissist overd does it. If the narcissist exaggerates. If the discrepancy between what you know
33. 09:54 about yourself and what the narcissist is communicating to you to you via lovebombing and if the narcissist is psychopathic grooming grooming you and the idealization phase which is a clinical term by the way. Oh okay good. Yeah. Yeah. Idealization is a clinical
34. 10:11 term. So I was trying to avoid clinical terms. So but yeah you’re right. the the correct term is idealization. So within this phase the narcissist might overdo the overdo it and then you kind of feel you you feel the discrepancy you say to yourself this can’t be true something’s
35. 10:28 wrong here you know is so for example if if you know that you’re good-looking but not particularly intelligent or highly intelligent but not particularly good-looking or whatever and here comes a narcissist and says that you’re the most beautiful person or woman he has
36. 10:43 ever seen in his life and simultaneously you far exceed Einstein’s Albert Einstein’s um IQ and so on if you have a minimal self-critical capacity a minimal a minimum a minimum of introspection a minimum self-awareness this this is a a light bulb light bulb
37. 11:05 moment because you’re going to wake up 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 and the Second and much more common set of circumstances is when the narcissist transitions ineluctibly. Ineluctibly is
38. 11:23 another word for inevitably from from idealization to devaluation. Mhm. Now devaluation is a builtin feature within the shared fantasy. It’s not a bug. It’s a feature. The narcissist must devalue you in order to discard you. And the narcissist must
39. 11:44 devalue you and must discard you because you are his mother and he is reenacting early childhood conflicts with the maternal figure. Will not go will not go there. But at some point the narcissist begins to reverse course and instead of intelligent you become stupid and
40. 12:03 instead of drop dead gorgeous you are merely drop dead and and so on so forth. And so this sudden shift and it’s very abrupt and and it has nothing to do with external circumstances unlike a lot of misinformation online. It’s not that you it’s not that you have
41. 12:19 criticized the narcissist or you you did not adhere to the narcissist’s demands and then the narcissist devalues you. The narcissist would devalue you even if you are the most obscuous submissive um you know catering to all his needs and he would still devalue you. It’s
42. 12:36 about him, not about you. And at that 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. Do you love olive oil? If so, have you ever tasted it farm fresh? If not, your first taste will be a revelation.
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