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1. 00:00 It also seems we cannot generalize. We cannot say all narcissists um are likely to have sexual dysfunction. It depends crucially on which type of narcissist and which
2. 00:11 elements of narcissism and even which elements of a dark triad personality are emphasized. Some types of dark triad personalities are actually less likely
3. 00:22 than have erectile to have erectile dysfunction than the general population. And sometimes are some types are more
4. 00:29 likely. Some types of narcissists are less likely, others are more likely. All in all, if we had to generalize, I would
5. 00:36 say that covert narcissists are more likely to experience sexual dysfunction, including erectile dysfunction, uh, premature ejaculation and general impotence. and that it is somehow
6. 00:50 related to a state of collapse, a state of distress and therefore may be a
7. 00:56 depressive artifact. It may be an indication of underlying depression. All
8. 01:02 in all, all narcissists, overt and covert, all narcissists suffer from the
9. 01:08 same set of problems. autoerotism which does not allow them to focus on the
10. 01:14 other as a as a true and proper three-dimensional sexual partner. A fear
11. 01:20 of intimacy because intimacy is a level playing field field and um annals or
12. 01:29 annihilates or or undermines the narcissist’s sense of superiority. uh the need to treat the partner as equal in a reciprocal and emotionally involved and invested and committed relationship. All these
13. 01:45 are anathema to the narcissist. All these negate narcissism. All these
14. 01:51 uh elements of intimacy, elements of relationships, ele all these actually
15. 01:58 challenge the narcissist self-concept, force a narcissist to confront reality
16. 02:04 about himself and about others. Uh reduce the narcissist to the level that he has to negotiate and compromise with his sexual partner as an equal. And so
17. 02:15 narcissists would rather limit themselves to objectifying sex, aggressive sex, although never coercive. Coercion is extremely rare because the
18. 02:27 narcissist needs to feel desirable and irresistible. So the sex is cons consensual and even enthusiastically
19. 02:34 consensual but it involves aggression and it involves a degradation of the partner, the reduction of the partner to
20. 02:41 an aid to masturbation, an instrument, a tool and ultimately the narcissist
21. 02:48 reverts to himself. He or she is the only sexual object. Masturbation is the
22. 02:56 only real sex. When the narcissist is forced by circumstances or by the
23. 03:02 demands of the partner to confront an actual sexual situation, the likelihood of erectile dysfunction or premature
24. 03:09 ejaculation is higher than in the general population. Again, critically
25. 03:15 dependent on the specific type or profile of the narcissist and or the dark personality. But if we if we were to generalize, one could say that a
26. 03:27 narcissist who is confronted with reciprocal mature sexuality and the demand for intimacy or the need for intimacy and the evolution of a of affected committed relationship.
27. 03:40 Narcissist would react with panic because this is a direct undermining and
28. 03:47 challenging of the narcissist grandio inflated fantastic self-concept as above
29. 03:53 it all as nonhuman as godlike and as superior to his or her partner. This
30. 03:59 cannot be tolerated. The narcissist under sabotages the the sex withdraws
31. 04:07 avoids sexual situations which are intimate by physiologically
32. 04:14 u evading the sin, evacuating the sin physiologically. Erectile dysfunction,
33. 04:20 premature ejaculation, and impotence are ways of summatizing the narcissist
34. 04:27 aversion to equality, consensus, and reciprocity.
35. 04:34 It is the body that keeps the score, and it is the narcissist body that says, “I’m out of here. This is not for me. Bye-bye.
36. 04:49 What topic is more appropriate to discuss when you were in Paris than sex?
37. 04:58 This is the topic of today’s video. The impotent narcissist with erectile dysfunction and other major sexual problems. My name is Sam Baknin. I’m the author of
38. 05:09 Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. I’m a professor of psychology and no don’t ask me. I know you’re going
39. 05:18 to ask but don’t just don’t. Here we go. Let us discuss aspects of the narcissist
40. 05:27 sexual dysfunction. Various studies have demonstrated conclusively that pathological narcissism is associated with surprise
41. 05:38 surprise sexual entitlement. the degradation, the sexual degradation or
42. 05:44 even sadistic degradation of the sexual partner, although consensual and aggression, sexual aggression. Pathological narcissism is not
43. 05:55 associated with any type of coercion. It’s all consensual and the partner is involved sometimes enthusiastically. Pathological narcissism is the opposite
44. 06:06 of sexual coercion because the narcissist needs to feel irresistibly
45. 06:12 desirable. Raping someone is not exactly proof of desiraability or irresistibility. So
46. 06:20 that’s what not what narcissists do. This is what sexual sades do. This is what psychopaths do. But narcissists are
47. 06:26 entitled. They are aggressive. They are assertive when expressing their sexual
48. 06:32 wishes and demands and they tend to degrade the sexual partner in a variety
49. 06:39 of ways for asking her to have sex with others or using her body to masturbate
50. 06:46 with and so on. So this is the general overview. The problem starts when the relationship
51. 06:52 progresses and there is the spectre of true intimacy.
52. 06:58 There is a firm demand for reciprocity. At that point, the narcissist feel shoehorned. They feel coerced. They feel even abused. And some narcissists react or experience erectile
53. 07:14 dysfunction, ed or premature ejaculation. Whenever narcissists are confronted with
54. 07:22 the blossoming of their relationship into something more normal, more average, more common, it negates the
55. 07:28 sense of uniqueness, specialness, and um it undermines their grandiosity and
56. 07:36 sense of superiority. At that point, the narcissist withdraws mentally but also
57. 07:43 bodily. This is expressed via impotence.
58. 07:49 Such nonverile malfunctions are the discernable outcomes of performance anxiety and the challenge to grandiosity that is engendered by an equal partner.
59. 08:00 The equality of the partner, it’s um the egalitarian state
60. 08:06 negotiated, compromised, the need to pay attention to the partner’s wishes, sexual wishes, desires
61. 08:15 and preferences. All these remind the narcissist that between the sheets, we all the same. And
62. 08:23 nothing terrifies the narcissist than being the same as other people. Narcissists perceive themselves as
63. 08:31 godlike, elevated, superior. Their supremacy is one of the main pillars of
64. 08:38 their inflated, fantastic, unrealistic, grandio self-concept.
65. 08:44 And so while in a relationship the narcissist is capable of engaging in
66. 08:52 sex, especially if the sex is entitled, aggressive, degrading,
67. 08:58 and as long as consensus and as long as consent is reached, as long as the partner willingly and sometimes enthusiastically participates in the game, that gives a narcissist the
68. 09:10 feeling that he’s supreme, that he’s unique, that is irresistible, that is desirable, that is a sexual at the sexual apex.
69. 09:21 But the minute the partner begins to display signs of independence,
70. 09:27 sexual autonomy, preferences, um the minute she makes demands or
71. 09:35 requests, the minute she expresses wishes or even disappointment, at that moment the narcissist is turned off. he
72. 09:43 switches himself off. Don’t forget that narcissism is involves
73. 09:51 autoerotism. I’ll uh talk about it in a minute. But the narcissist’s main attraction, main
74. 09:58 sexual attraction is to himself or to herself. The narcissist is his or her
75. 10:04 main and only sexual object. At the same time, the narcissist expects
76. 10:10 his partner to be a aed, inspired, entertained, irresistibly attracted by
77. 10:17 the narcissist’s impersonal performance in other settings such as the workplace.
78. 10:23 And so there’s a vicarious courtship going on, vicarious flirting, wing,
79. 10:29 wooing by proxy. The narcissist displays his feathers like a peacock, his flashy
80. 10:37 car, his income, his standing in the workplace, his status symbols. And this
81. 10:43 is a non-romantic shortcut in lie of true attentiveness to the partner. The
82. 10:50 same applies in bed. Once a narcissist has um entered the sexual situation,
83. 10:58 once the narcissist is forced to act sexually, at that point the narcissist wishes to
84. 11:05 maintain this air of supremacy, the narcissist wishes to objectify the
85. 11:12 partner so that she recognizes the narcissist ascendance over her and the
86. 11:19 narcissist superiority and succumbs and plays the sexual slave.
87. 11:27 Spending time with a woman in case the narcissist is a heterosexual male. Spending time with a man if the narcissist is a heterosexual woman and it applies to same-sex relationships.
88. 11:38 Spending time with the opposite sex in or the same sex in a sexual relationship
89. 11:44 which is becoming is transforming into a romantic relationship.
90. 11:50 investing, persisting intimacy,
91. 11:56 sakur in a budding relationship, all bore the narcissist to tears because he has to feain interest in another person essentially a prop and a mute witness to
92. 12:07 the narcissist grandeur. No one can conceivably be as interesting
93. 12:13 as the narcissist. No one is desire as as desirable as irresistible as
94. 12:19 breathtaking as fascinating as amazing as a narcissist. And therefore no one deserves any capexis emotional
95. 12:26 investment or any other type of invest investment I mean psychological investment coming to think of it. The narcissist wishes to limit himself and
96. 12:37 restrict himself to the sexual act. The narcissist does not bargain or did not bargain for anything more than that. And when the partner um tries to level
97. 12:50 the playing field, when the partner demands reciprocity, when the partner insists on investment
98. 12:57 and commitment, capexis, emotional energy, when the partner hunts for signs of interest and attentiveness and
99. 13:08 compassion, at that point the narcissist perceives the partner as a competitor.
100. 13:14 She is never allowed to steal the his thunder to be in the limelight center of
101. 13:21 attention and focus of uh of his um energy. So they are competing undercurrents
102. 13:32 whenever a narcissist engages in sex because on the other hand he can use the
103. 13:38 partner’s body to masturbate with and gratify his or her autoerotism
104. 13:45 but on the other hand there’s a price to pay for sex because in many cases it leads to emotional involvement on the part of the partner and then she becomes
105. 13:56 demanding or he becomes demanding. And then there’s there are expectations of reciprocity and investment and
106. 14:02 commitment. And the narcissist is not ready for any of these. Even when the narcissist
107. 14:09 plays acts the infatuated. Even the nar when the narcissist claims to be in love.
108. 14:17 Even when the narcissist immediately transitions to offerings of marriage and
109. 14:23 and sharing a living space and having children together and so on so forth. This has nothing to do with a partner.
110. 14:29 This is about the narcissist’s fantasy of what a family should be like and how to prove himself normal. first and foremost to himself. So all this has a massive impact on sexual
111. 14:45 performance. Obviously the core problem in erectile dysfunction, impotence and um premature ejaculation.
112. 14:57 The key factor, the key determinant is psychological, not physiological.
113. 15:03 There’s a tiny there’s a small minority of people whose problem is physiological but the majority it’s a psychological issue. If the narcissist perceive sex as threatening,
114. 15:14 if the narcissist regards sex as the path to conflict with a demanding
115. 15:20 partner. If the narcissist begins to view sex as degrading to himself, as
116. 15:28 negating his own grandiosity and superiority and godlike supremacy, at that point sex becomes a no no um a nogo zone or a battle zone. And of
117. 15:40 course, the narcissist sexual performance deteriorates dramatically. Narcissistic sex unfortunately is
118. 15:48 becoming the prevalent form of mating in our contemporary dystopia of casual anonymous animalistic romps. Even when technically accomplished, the sex is
119. 16:00 either mechanical clinical peruntory or pyrochnic and competitive. It is a
120. 16:06 spectacular decoupling of sex from any emotion and of courtship from culation.
121. 16:13 Sex now contemporary sex is a form of ritualized rape in effect or at best
122. 16:20 mutual masturbation. It involves only power and self-gratification
123. 16:26 as gender rolls a gun and everyone emulate and imitate psychopaths and narcissists. Unisex and uni gender are fast becoming the twin scers of the
124. 16:37 wasteland that our interpersonal relationships had become.
125. 16:43 So narcissists and psychopaths try thrive in postmodern contemporary
126. 16:49 society. Narcissistic and ego and and egoentric patterns of behavior have become
127. 16:55 normative have become the norm. I mentioned of course autoerotism
128. 17:03 and uh it’s very important to realize the soypism of the narcissist even when
129. 17:10 it comes to sex the narcissist is always alone always embedded in a fantastic
130. 17:18 space which is exclusive. It pre it precludes other people. It excludes other people. And within this fantastic
131. 17:26 space, within this paracosm, the narcissist is his own or her own lover. The narcissist is the sole sexual object. The intrusion of the other into
132. 17:37 the paracosm into the fantastic space is not perceived as laudatory or desirable.
133. 17:46 It’s perceived as an invasion. Um that’s why the need to convert the other into a masturbatory aid, a sex toy, a sex slave, an object in order not
134. 18:00 to challenge the narcissist’s unique position within the sexual fantasy.
135. 18:07 The narcissist is his his or her own param more own lover and therefore the
136. 18:16 narcissist would be jealous of anyone else who strives to attain this position. The narcissist would compete actually with his or her sexual partner
137. 18:27 as a narcissist is emotionally and sexually attached, bonded and sexually
138. 18:34 interacts with himself or herself. Think of it as a split personality. The
139. 18:41 narcissist when it comes to sex is two people, not one. He makes love to
140. 18:48 himself or to herself. And then someone else enters the picture and there’s a triangle.
141. 18:54 There is a form of triangulation. There’s a form of competition. There is the feeling of infidelity to some extent. And the narcissist rejects the invader, not necessarily by ex expelling her from the fantastic space, from this
142. 19:10 paradise, but by converting her into an an inanimate instrument or tool of
143. 19:19 gratification. Now in the scholarly literature the there’s quite a few there quite a
144. 19:30 few there’s a big number of articles regarding narcissistic or veryistic autistic patterns of behavior and the overall umbrella term is sexual
145. 19:42 narcissism. Sexual narcissism is one type of somatic narcissism. To remind
146. 19:50 you, somatic narcissism is when the narcissist leverages his or her body in order to obtain narcissistic supply. And there are many ways to leverage the body. Sexuality being one of them.
147. 20:03 Muscle building is another example. There are many ways. And so sexual narcissism is a form of somatic
148. 20:10 narcissism. And it’s been observed not only in narcissistic personality disorder but also in borderline
149. 20:17 personalities, in histrionic personality disorder and and so on and of course in psychopathy. These individuals um use their bodies to self-regulate.
150. 20:31 They use their bodies to obtain external regulation. The narcissist uses the somatic narcissist uses his or her body to obtain adjulation and admiration or sexual conquest and this serves to regulate the internal environment the sense of selfworth, self-esteem,
151. 20:48 self-confidence and self-concept, self-image. Uh the borderline uses such
152. 20:54 overt uh sexuality again in order to regulate herself. So
153. 21:01 what the emphasis is on on the n when the narcissist uses other people in
154. 21:08 sexual settings in order to regulate his sense of selfworth the emphasis and the
155. 21:14 focus is on himself not on these other people. These other
156. 21:20 people are incidental. They just happen to be there. They’re instruments and tools like service providers. And that’s why autoerotism and external regulation
157. 21:32 are the opposite or preclude intimacy. And all these types of individuals have
158. 21:39 intimacy issues. They are prone to u behaviors which
159. 21:45 destroy intimacy. For example, infidelity. they are and this leads to a lot of distress in their relationships
160. 21:56 including their sexual relationships. This distress has been linked to neuroticism and attachment insecure
161. 22:04 attachment styles. Um and they’re very very common for example in vulnerable um
162. 22:12 types of narcissism in what is known as covert narcissism or fragile narcissism. Now to remind you every narcissist goes through overt and covert phases but there are dominant types. The narcissist could be dominantly overtit
163. 22:29 phases in the lifespan and vice versa. Narcissists who are predominantly covert
164. 22:36 would tend to experience relationship distress and to have to display neurotic
165. 22:43 responses because of the problems they have with intimacy.
166. 22:49 And overt narcissist would exper would not they would not experience relationship distress but they would
167. 22:55 experience relationship failures precisely for the same reasons. Sexual
168. 23:01 narcissism is an egocentric pattern of sexual behavior characterized by sexual
169. 23:07 exploitation, sexual entitlement, sexual skills, and low sexual empathy.
170. 23:14 So the higher the level of narcissism, the higher um the levels of need for
171. 23:22 agency within relationships. In other words, agency is intimately linked with narcissism or the need for agency is
172. 23:28 intimately linked with narcissism. And when you are narcissistic or when you are a narcissist, you would compete
173. 23:35 within the relationship for power, for status, for intelligence, for attractiveness. There would be a
174. 23:42 relative positioning contest. The relationship would be competitive. And
175. 23:49 um of course all this is not conducive to physiological sexual performance. Men
176. 23:56 with narcissistic patterns of sexual behavior um are often sexually dysfunctional
177. 24:02 because of this distress. And again the distress could be as a result of failure
178. 24:08 of the relationship or the distress could be as a result of competition in the relationship. But there’s always distress because the rejection of fear of intimacy. And this distress is the
179. 24:19 reason for the phys is is somatized. This distress becomes physiological or
180. 24:26 is expressed physiological through the body and leads to inadequate um sexual functioning. Um I would like to now review or survey
181. 24:38 some of the literature. Start with an article titled from prevention to promotion in women’s sexual
182. 24:45 self-perceptions of efficacy the sexual self-efficacy questionnaire etc was written by Ugalar Blanco Lara Moreno and others and you have a list of literature
183. 24:57 in the description you can read the article for yourself I’ll quote from the article because now we need to move further into the psychological ethology
184. 25:08 of sexual dysfunctioning. When I say sexual malfunctions or sexual dysfunctions, I mean erectile
185. 25:14 dysfunction, impotence and premature ejaculation. So a key concept is what is known as
186. 25:22 sexual self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is people’s beliefs regarding their ability to successfully perform an action to achieve desired consequences. It was first defined by
187. 25:34 Bura in 1977. Self-efficacy is a strong predictor of behaviors including those leading to health related outcomes. According to Leman and others in 2021,
188. 25:48 I’m now quoting from the article. Sexual self-efficacy refers to the confidence in one’s own ability to make decisions and actions regarding sexuality, particularly when faced with barriers and obstacles, including avoiding high-risk sexual behaviors. For example,
189. 26:05 having sex after alcohol intake and performing healthy protective and promotive behaviors to prevent undesired
190. 26:12 outcomes, for example, using condoms and also behaviors to enhance positive
191. 26:18 aspects such as sexual satisfaction, for example, communicating personal desires.
192. 26:24 All these together constitute sexual self-efficacy and it plays a significant
193. 26:30 role in people’s control over their sexual life. It is associated with behaviors and outcomes related to healthy sexuality, sexual communication, non-risky sexual
194. 26:41 behaviors and sexual satisfaction. So this is sexual self-efficacy.
195. 26:48 Now let’s see how this concept is applied in the study of sexual dysfunction in narcissist in narcissism. So on to the next
196. 26:59 article. the relationship between erectile dysfunction, sexual self-efficacy, and the dark triad.
197. 27:06 To remind you, dark triad personalities are not narcissists and they are not psychopaths. They are subclinical
198. 27:12 narcissists and subclinical psychopaths, but it’s good enough in approximation. The artic the article was authored by
199. 27:19 Banbury, Moneta, Chandler, and others. Here’s what they have to say. Erectile
200. 27:25 dysfunction is the lack or loss or loss of ability to achieve or to maintain an erection and is a commonly reported sexual dysfunction in healthcare. Whilst
201. 27:36 research has centered on the dark triad personality and sexuality, association between dark triad traits and sexual dysfunction appear scarce. Results
202. 27:48 suggested the results of this study suggested a moderate to high positive correlation with narcissism and psychopathy traits on irrectile dysfunction and aggravating effect and a
203. 28:01 negative moderate to high correlation with machavelianism and sexual self-efficacy a protective effect.
204. 28:10 Strangely, therefore, if you are if you have narcissistic tendencies or psychopathic tendencies, you are more likely to experience erectile dysfunction than if you are merely
205. 28:22 machavelian a manipulative person and if you have high sexual self-efficacy,
206. 28:29 which is not surprising. Both Mcavelianism specifically subscale reputation and
207. 28:36 sexual self-efficacy were predictors of erectile dysfunction.
208. 28:42 This suggests uh that higher levels of sexual self-efficacy and higher levels
209. 28:48 of machavelianism, higher mak on the reputation subscale were associated with
210. 28:55 lower levels of erectile dysfunction and narcissism and psychopathy were associated with higher levels of
211. 29:01 erectile dysfunction. However, until further research is conducted on a larger and diverse cohort, which
212. 29:08 examines the casual pathways, sexual self-efficacy and the dark triad
213. 29:15 um do impact erectile dysfunction, but we are not quite sure how and to what
214. 29:21 extent. Nevertheless, this area warrants further exploration. Another article
215. 29:27 authored by Krishnan Thomas and others is titled sexual narcissism among men
216. 29:33 with sexual dysfunctions an exploratory study and it says previous studies have
217. 29:40 associated sexual narcissism with aggressive behaviors prevalent among most cluster B populations.
218. 29:47 Recent evidence shows that certain characteristics of sexual narcissism could be beneficial for sexual and
219. 29:54 marital satisfaction. The present study is an exploration of the role of narcissism in sexual
220. 30:01 dysfunctions. results indicated that beliefs about female sexual power, a helplessness
221. 30:09 schema, and exploitative behaviors of sexual narcissism were the best predictors that differentiated the two groups. The higher the scores on these variables, the lower the erectile functioning.
222. 30:25 uh female sexual power shared a positive correlation with both exploitation and helplessness while the latter two variables were unrelated. That’s pretty interesting.
223. 30:38 Um, it seems that even narcissists when they have a high belief in female
224. 30:45 sexual power, when they feel helpless, for example, in covert narcissism and when their behaviors are exploitative, sexually exploitative, they would tend to have less um lower incidence and prevalence of erectile dysfunction.
225. 31:03 While other dimensions and other determinants of pathological sexual narcissism would tend to predict a
226. 31:10 higher level of erectile dysfunction. Conclusions of the study are a higher
227. 31:16 need a higher need to stick to traditional gender roles and fear of being overpowered
228. 31:22 could be contributing to sexually exploitative behaviors and relationship distress which in turn could affect
229. 31:29 self-efficacy and contribute to sexual dysfunction.
230. 31:35 Now the next study is titled personality and psychiatric disorders in chronic
231. 31:41 pain male um in chronic pain male affected by erectile dysfunction
232. 31:47 prospective and observational study. The authors were AO Matthew and others. And
233. 31:53 this is a very interesting study because it links erectile dysfunction to chronic
234. 31:59 pain sufferers who are also who are comorbid with personality issues or
235. 32:05 personality disorders. So we have a group of men in this particular case who
236. 32:11 have personality disorders and also experience chronic pain. The question is how this combination might affect
237. 32:18 erectile dysfunction. And here’s what the article has to say. The prevalence of personality disorders and sexual
238. 32:24 dysfunction in chronic pain patients is higher than in the general population.
239. 32:30 Our main objective was to analyze the influence of personality disorders in patients with erectile dysfunction and
240. 32:38 chronic non-cancer pain and their response to andological treatment.
241. 32:44 So they they studied about 100 patients and and so on so forth and they
242. 32:54 uh they reached several interesting um conclusions. First of all, uh
243. 33:05 the the profile of the group was pretty special that we’re talking about people
244. 33:11 who are relatively men who relatively late middle age and even old.
245. 33:17 70% of them were sexually active and
246. 33:23 many of them presented moderate to severe erectile dysfunction. Personality
247. 33:29 disorders were very frequent. 31% cut off uh 85 and 84% cut off 75 scores.
248. 33:38 And additionally they had anxiety, compulsive uh uh disorders, somatform
249. 33:45 disorders and and uh narcissistic personality disord. So
250. 33:52 um the first thing the the study found was that the self-defeating feature presence
251. 33:59 was significantly correlated with a more severe baseline uh erectile dysfunction
252. 34:05 and narcissistic narcissistic profile and a better response to treatment. So this deals
253. 34:13 mainly with covert narcissists. They have a self-defeating or even self-destructive
254. 34:19 strand in them and because they’re full of resentment and bitterness and and
255. 34:26 they’re very angry at themselves and at the world. And these people um are narcissists of course and they have they usually have severe erectile
256. 34:37 dysfunction but at the same time they react well to treatment. Patients with
257. 34:43 dysmeia features, a constant background depression or dysphoria required significantly higher doses versus control. So
258. 34:54 what the study shows is that it’s important to diagnose personality disorders in order to rigorously treat patients with chronic pain who are also suffering from sexual dysfunction. It seems that personality disorders are the
259. 35:10 main determinant While many people with chronic pain would say, “I have an erectile
260. 35:16 dysfunction because I’m constantly in pain.” Actually, it’s pretty likely that the reason is a person an underlying or occult hidden personality disorder. Eat.