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1. 00:02 Hello from Paris. The narcissist lust refuge. Today we’re going to discuss slave mentality. How does the narcissist inculcate slave mentality in his victims and why do they collaborate with it? Why do they succumb to it? Why do they play the role of
2. 00:28 indentured servitude to the narcissist shared fantasy? My name is Saknin. I’m the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I’m also a professor of psychology. Here’s the problem. Many victims fight back. They try to maintain a modicum of
3. 00:54 personal autonomy, independence, agency. They try to remain who they are. They try to be themselves. They try to preserve a core identity to establish boundaries to push back. But being yourself is an affront to the narcissist. It’s not only an insult or a slight, it’s a threat.
4. 01:21 And that is because whenever you are yourself, whenever you display signs of boundared behavior that is uniquely yours and cannot be traced back to anything the narcissist has said or done. Whenever you refuse to be the puppet in the puppet master’s puppet theater,
5. 01:48 the narcissist rages. He perceives it as rejection. It’s not only a rejection of the role allocated to you within the shared fantasy. It is also a rejection of the narcissist himself. Whenever you reject the shared fantasy, whenever you insist on being yourself,
6. 02:14 whenever you you refuse to change to the extent that you vanish, whenever you would not cowtow and succumb and obey and become submissive and obscurious, whenever you insist on preserving an inner territory that is uniquely yours with no access and and where you are the sovereign
7. 02:43 personal sovereignty. Whenever you do any of this, the narcissist not only worries about the shared fantasy. If you refuse to play your role within the shared fantasy, if you insist on being someone else, in other words, if you insist on being yourself, that threatens
8. 03:04 that undermines the very foundations of the shared fantasy. The shared fantasy is like a movie or theater production. You are the actress. The narcissist is a director, the producer, and the screenwriter, and you must obey the script. If you don’t, you’re destroying
9. 03:20 the movie. You’re ruining the theater production, theater play. So, there’s that. But because the narcissist is so
10. 03:31 um intensely and totally identified with the shared fantasy because the narcissist regards the shared fantasy as an extensive parameter. In other words, the shared fantasy is an extension of the narcissist, a projection of the narcissist. The the shared fantasy is
11. 03:49 the narcissist. Everything in the narcissist’s mind is internalized. There is no there is no external world. There are no external objects. Everything is is happening inside in the playground and landscape of the narcissist mind in this dreamscape. This paracosm, this
12. 04:09 alien planet where everything happens. Reality is perceived actually as a dream whereas the fantasy is perceived as reality mispersceived as reality. That is a narcissist impaired reality testing. So when you’re rejecting the shared fantasy, you are rejecting the
13. 04:28 narcissist by implication and by extension. Whenever you reject anything the narcissist has come up with, any idea, any belief, any claim, any theory, any opinion, and of course the shared fantasy which comprises and encompasses all of is comprised of and encompasses all of
14. 04:50 these, you’re rejecting the narcissist. The narcissist perceives this as a personal attack, not only a slight or an insult, but a subvers subversive challenge to
15. 05:09 his or her core identity. The the narcissist regards you as someone who is trying to deconstruct him. I’m saying him. Half of all narcissists are women. So the narcissist perceives you as if you’re trying to deconstruct him, as if you’re trying to tear him apart.
16. 05:31 You know, like the famous medieval punishment of horse horsedrawn quartering. It’s it’s as if you’re trying to pull the narcissist apart and reduce him to a heap of components and ingredients which are completely incohesive and have nothing to do with
17. 05:50 each other. So whenever you whenever you you put a limit whenever you establish a boundary and enforce it whenever you say this is what I’ve decided this is my choice what you are suggesting to me does not reflect who I am I have a core identity
18. 06:08 I know who I am I’m loyal to who I am and I have a perception of reality I can gauge and evaluate reality appropriately without your mediation Mr. or Mrs. narcissist. Whenever you broadcasting these things and of course whenever you insist on doing things on acting agency
19. 06:28 this is very very threatening to the narcissist but it’s also very humiliating. It’s very shameful. It triggers shame. This inner reservoir of shame which is life-threatening to the narcissist. all the compensatory structures collapse and this is known as decompensation.
20. 06:50 This is the essence. This is the core engine of narcissistic injury and narcissistic motification. So being yourself in itself is sufficient to render you the enemy a secondary object. Your insistence on not letting go of who you are. Your perseverance in the face of a
21. 07:17 ferocious attack on everything that makes you. this when you perseverate and when you stand firm and when you draw a line in the sand and when you don’t allow the narcissist to cross this these red lines and all these are perceived as a declaration of war kazus belly
22. 07:43 and um the narcissist then converts you into a secretary object devalues you internally renders you an enemy from from within because you are within. You’re never outside and then has to eradicate you somehow. Maintaining a c when you maintain a core identity
23. 08:04 in an independent behavior when you make choices and decisions, you’re undermining the internal monologue between the puppets in the narcissist puppet theater. These puppets, these marionets are actually the internal objects. Even the puppet master, even the narcissist
24. 08:27 is one of the puppets. The self, what the narcissist passes for self, what he mistakes for a self, the self is actually an internal object, a puppet. And this particular puppet uh interacts with all the other puppets, all the other internal objects. Even the
25. 08:48 false self is a puppet. It’s an internal object. There’s nothing but internal objects in the narcissist’s mind, life, and reality. That’s why narcissists inhabit seaternal fantasies. They never exit. So here you are challenging the fantasy from the
26. 09:09 outside, standing outside the bubble and piercing the bubble. You’re piercing the bubble not proactively, not malevolently. You’re piercing the bubble simply by refusing to step in into the bubble and get incorporated in the bubble in the blob, become a part of the matrix.
27. 09:28 This refusal, as I said, is a form of rebellious or revolutionary subversion and needs to be put down by the regulatory and police forces within the narcissist uh mind. Marcus’s mind is constructed the way authoritarian regimes are. An interesting analogy
28. 09:49 which I will expand on one day, one of these days. But sometime, very often actually the narcissist does succeed to take away from you your core identity. You wake up one proverbial morning morning and you don’t recognize yourself anymore. your gun.
29. 10:11 Where you used to be, there’s a void in your shape, but you have been rendered a black hole, an emptiness. You’re no longer there. And because there’s no core identity anymore, you are alienated. You’re estranged. And you begin to act in ways which are completely foreign to you,
30. 10:31 unrecognizable. narcissist uh cartels curtails your independent behaviors, put a damper on your agency and personal autonomy. In the majority of cases, narcissists are successful at accomplishing this. They’re successful at accomplishing this. And the minute
31. 10:53 you have entered the shed fantasy and the minute you’ve been absorbed by it, assimilated, the minute you’ve become woven into the fabric of the shed fantasy, a thread in the total in the tapestry, that minute you no longer exist in any meaningful sense. That minute you’ve
32. 11:13 become a slave. And as a slave, the more you’re exposed to the shared fantasy and its exigencies and demands and expectations and rules and regulations and boundaries and and especially the narrative underlying the shared fantasy. The more you’re exposed to all these,
33. 11:32 the more you develop slave mentality. Now there are many perks and re rewards. Shared fantasy is not all bad. Otherwise, no one would have stayed in it. Shfatazi, as I as I said in many other videos, affords affords the the intimate partners of narcissists with
34. 11:55 many benefits. For example, the ability to see themselves through the narcissist’s gaze as this idealized perfect being, the ability to love themselves, the ability to experience unconditional maternal love, etc., etc. The shared fantasy has numerous
35. 12:14 ways to cater to the psychological needs of the victims. But above all, when you as a victim develop slave mentality, when you have a master and you’re the slave, you’re indentured, you are obsu
36. 12:35 obedient, it feels safe. The main perhaps benefit is this enormous relief, a sense of safety, a sense of having found safe he haven, a port of call, a home, the familiar. It’s a safety which is infantile. We call it secure bay. There’s a secure bay
37. 13:03 feeling. The same way a child, an infant or a toddler experiences this with a mother. Part of the shared fantasy, an integral part of the shared fantasy is a dual mothership principle. Fact that the narcissist acts as your mother affords you the unconditional love that
38. 13:23 you should have received as a child and allows you to reexperience childhood, to have a second chance at childhood. This is enormous. This is priceless. Very few people, very few people give up on it willingly and without a fight. People fight to stay in the shed
39. 13:43 fantasy. It is so addictive and so intoxicating and so promising and above all so safe. This sense of safety afforded by the narcissist is incalculable. And so it is as if the narcissist is offering you a deal. You become my slave. And by becoming my slave, you don’t need to
40. 14:08 make decisions. You don’t get to have choices. And at the same time, you assume no responsibility. And you will never be held accountable for anything because the locus of control has shifted from you to me, says the narcissist. I’m your master. I’m in charge. I’m in control.
41. 14:28 And I’m I am hellbent on affording you an environment which is sta stable, certain, determinate, and safe. Safe to do what? Ironically, safe to survive. The shared fantasy poses, disguises itself as a survival environment, an environment where you can survive.
42. 14:56 And one of the main messages of the shed fantasy is if you were to exit me, you would never survive. Only here within the shed fantasy, says the narcissist, can you survive as a baby who is being loved by a mother whose love knows no end, whose love is
43. 15:20 all permeating and all pervasive, whose love is all protecting. People agree to this Fouian deal. The narcissist, intimate partners, best friends, whoever agree to this Fouian deal, embrace it. They they consent to become slaves. They adopt a slave mentality just in order to
44. 15:46 experience this primordial infantile sense of secure base, immersion and safety like going back to the womb. The matrix matrix is womb is another word for womb. We can see that not only in individual shared fantasies or shared fantasies in interpersonal relationships like a
45. 16:10 romantic shared fantasy or in intimate fantasy. We can see it in politics where a multitude become slaves to a demagogue or a dictator simply because he makes them feel safe by vanquishing their enemies. For example, we see that with women. Women are
46. 16:35 the most committed to the patriarchy. Women uphold the patriarchy. Women punish other women who deviate from the patriarchy. Women condemn feminism way more than men do. The slaves uphold slavery, never the masters. The slaves outnumber the masters any by a factor of 10 or 100 or
47. 16:58 thousand or a million. They could easily overturn the order the structure of slavery. But they never do or rarely do because slave mentality feels predictable, feels certain, feels safe. Slave mentality and abuse. Abuse is an organizing principle. It is a hermeneutic,
48. 17:27 explanatory, interpretative principle. In other words, slavery and abuse make sense of the world. Imbue it with meaning, direction, and purpose. When you’re a slave, you know your place. And the master has obligations. You have rights. And the master has
49. 17:47 commenurate obligations. The master has rights. and you have commenurate obligations. It’s all very structured, very clear, very orderly, never changing, everlasting. It’s very comforting. Religion plays on the same psychological foundations. Religion plays on the same need for
50. 18:09 safety and predictability with God as the dictator and all the adherence and faithful as essentially slaves. Abuse is an organizing principle. Abuse is an explanatory principle. Abuse also provides a theory of mind, a theory of the world, an internal working model.
51. 18:28 Abuse, in other words, is a total ideology. And slavery is a form of abuse. It’s a total ideology. And it makes it renders life meaningful and meaning. People people seek meaning. People can live without food and to some extent without water and you know they
52. 18:49 can survive anything as long as their lives are meaningful. As long as the sacrifice is connected somehow to something external and significant. Abuse in this sense organizes reality. It’s a it’s a reality principle and it is addictive. Abuse is addictive. It’s intoxicating.
53. 19:13 It’s very frightening to step outside the abusive relationship or the abusive structure because it has become it becomes a comfort zone. You know the rules, you know the ropes, you know what to expect. There’s a give and take. It’s all codified. It’s all cast in stone.
54. 19:34 And what’s out there when you lose your status as a slave? When you when you are no longer abused, when you are not a victim anymore, when you have survived, what’s out there? It’s terrifying. The king I know, however cruel and ferocious, is better than the king I don’t know.
55. 19:55 And many people adopt the familiar. The familiar and the recognize and prefer them to the ideal or the fantastic or the imagineer. imaginary. So, the narcissist leverages all these psychological defenses and mechanisms and needs, puts them together in a neat package,
56. 20:24 replete with a ribbon, and then you find yourself in the box, unable to exit. Not because the box is inaccessible or not because there’s no exit, not because there’s no way out of the box. Because one morning you wake up and to your great horror
57. 20:45 like Kafka’s metamorphosis, you discover that you have become the box. That the box is you.