Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Narcissistic Abuse: View from the Amazon (with Marcia Maia)
- 00:00 No, but it’s okay. We go. Okay. How do we start? I say my name. Yes. Your name? Yes. Okay. Um, why you’re here? What are you doing? Um, my name is Marcia. Uh, I’m a
- 00:16 biologist and I’m psychologist and I’m here to have this conversation
- 00:23 with Professor Sam Viking. Um, I’m about to publish a book about his
- 00:31 book and about my experience
- 00:37 uh with my narcissistic mother and um
- 00:45 my book is called uh snapshotting some bakning. I guess is very appropriate
- 00:54 due to uh the amount of citations in the book about professor Sam and
- 01:08 what what should I say now? Well, it’s entirely up to you where where are you from and why did you
- 01:14 decide to why did you decide to do this? I’m from Brazil. um from uh a city called Manau in north
- 01:24 of the country and I’m a bit nervous.
- 01:31 That’s the Amazon. No, the nose. Yes, Amazon is the the name of the state is Amazon.
- 01:37 Um why did you decide to to make such a book?
- 01:44 It’s a kind of catharticism. Is this correct? Cathosis. Yes. Uh I have I had this huge trauma
- 01:57 from my childhood. I was raised by a narcissistic mother. Of course, I was
- 02:06 only aware of this much much later
- 02:13 from my from my childhood and exactly when I was um a psychology
- 02:22 student when I started to make some notes about
- 02:28 her behavior. And uh as you know, I only get to know
- 02:35 your your work maybe 10 years later from my from my
- 02:44 psychology course and your work really made difference for
- 02:52 me. I I started to study some some things about narcissism.
- 03:00 It was my interest because we usually get interested uh about those things
- 03:08 that hurt us because we need to to understand we need
- 03:14 to get rid of them need to to get the these things out of our system.
- 03:23 Obviously we are always seeking for some healing, some kind of cure. Uh
- 03:32 this is important because uh otherwise our lives get stuck
- 03:39 and narcissist as you know better than anyone
- 03:49 have this power to spread
- 03:55 in in our lives. And I felt this so hard
- 04:01 because my mother’s narcissist was in my relationships all of them. I even thought many times
- 04:17 maybe I am the narcissist. You have to raise your voice and don’t do this all the time.
- 04:23 Okay. Thank you. And and I I I thought many times that
- 04:29 maybe I was the narcissist. Maybe I am fantasizing. Maybe there’s
- 04:36 nothing wrong with my mother. She is a mother.
- 04:42 And uh it it’s very hard to to put some ideas
- 04:50 against mother’s behaviors because it’s a taboo. Yes.
- 04:58 mothers has this this divinity thing
- 05:06 and it’s not easy for me talking because I am a mother
- 05:12 and we have this this mixed feelings we have this this position
- 05:20 that is uncomfortable because
- 05:26 I don’t want to hurt another mother’s feelings. I don’t want to to expose my my mother uh any anymore.
- 05:42 I did this writing the book and I I feel that this
- 05:50 was a need to do this. Usually um
- 05:58 the daughters are invisible. They they have to be there for their
- 06:05 mothers. There’s uh a lot of studies and
- 06:11 and they say this uh is are the daughters allowed to to
- 06:19 left to leave to to leave sorry to leave their their mother’s
- 06:27 house. They are allowed to
- 06:34 have their own lives to build their own lives.
- 06:44 So it feels like betrayal that you’re betraying your mother. Yes. The book does your book feel like a
- 06:51 betrayal? Are you still conflicted? Not conflicted anymore. Not anymore. You’re not You don’t feel guilty anymore. I felt in in a period of my life I felt very
- 07:04 guilty. Not anymore. Before my mother passed,
- 07:12 I I kind of felt her black hole.
- 07:22 I felt her void. It was extremely painful.
- 07:29 It It’s very, how can I say? It’s surreal.
- 07:38 It’s like you don’t have a life. You live
- 07:44 for her. Mhm. Only this.
- 07:51 But she doesn’t feel guilt about this. It’s incredible.
- 07:58 And and and I when I say this to you, it’s like I can see the the the picture
- 08:06 o of her not feeling guilty guilty at all. Why would you feel guilty? If she considers herself a wonderful person, then it is a privilege to be her. She is
- 08:19 giving you a privilege. Yes. She’s giving you a gift. The capacity to be her, to become her is a
- 08:26 gift, not a curse. It’s a blessing. So in her in her eyes, the fact that you
- 08:32 became an extension of her, the fact that she assimilated you, the fact that she swallowed you, digested you, took
- 08:40 away your independent existence, made her a part of her, made you a part
- 08:46 of her. That is a blessing. That is uh and that is something that you should be
- 08:52 very grateful for. Yes. And uh I mean in her eyes I’m describing
- 08:58 her point of view. Exactly. You should be very grateful for and u if you’re not if you’re ungrateful then
- 09:06 this is betrayal and this is and you that makes you automatically a bad
- 09:12 person maybe even evil but definitely bad. And so you need to not only be
- 09:18 punished but you need to be effectively renounced. You need to be let go because
- 09:26 the a narcissistic person considers
- 09:32 his his or her presence to be a gift. And so if you are too stupid to realize
- 09:40 that it is a gift or if you reject the gift for whatever reason and you’re either as I said stupid or evil malevolent there’s no middle ground and
- 09:52 why would you want to be with someone who is evil and malevolent you know I felt this so much when u when I
- 10:02 realized uh that this particular ularity of narcissism. Uh this bleeding thing
- 10:13 when I understood that I was the one divided,
- 10:21 this make me uh get to the conclusion that I was not the narcissist of this
- 10:30 particular pair because we constitute a pair. me and my mother
- 10:38 and she is not ashamed of this at all. But it’s uncomfortable for the daughter
- 10:46 because uh you you can’t have friends, you can’t have a boyfriend, you can’t
- 10:53 you can’t like anything because if it’s not her plans, you are
- 11:00 wrong. And my major feeling is that daughters of
- 11:09 narcissistic mother need to be seen.
- 11:16 They they will constitute their families one day
- 11:23 luckily. Yeah. It’s uh it’s the concept of the
- 11:29 wrongful gaze or the wrong gays. It’s not that they’re not seen. They are seen, but the gaze is wrong. The the
- 11:38 mother of a narcissistic daughter to lesser extent narciss the mother sorry the narcissistic mother of a daughter or to a lesser extent the narcissistic mother of a son.
- 11:49 She sees the daughter, but she then must make uh make the daughter
- 11:57 appropriate the badness that the mother divides the world because she’s a narcissist. She divides the world into
- 12:04 all good and all bad. Yes, there’s this infantile defense mechanism of splitting primitive.
- 12:11 And then someone has to be all good and someone has to be all bad. By definition, the mother is all good
- 12:17 because she cannot conceive of herself as all bad. And that leaves the badness,
- 12:23 the evil to you. You must fulfill your role of the repository and receptacle of
- 12:31 badness, of unworthiness, of inadequacy, of disappointment, of of uh misbehavior. You are receptacle
- 12:43 of everything that is wrong and bad and dysfunctional and so on because she cannot accept these aspects of her. And this is
- 12:54 of course projection and projective identification. Yes, the mother projects these negative parts
- 13:00 of her onto the daughter and then forces the daughter to adopt these negative
- 13:06 parts to tell the mother you’re right. So the mother would project the negative parts that she rejects in herself that she cannot accept in herself. The parts that she hates to the daughter
- 13:19 and then forces the daughter to conform and to become these parts really. So that’s the first issue. The first issue is the splitting. But the second issue, the gaze is wrong because it’s an
- 13:32 appropriating gaze. It’s not a gaze that pushes you away. It’s not a gaze that sets boundaries. It’s not a gaze that is conducive to the emergence of a self, but it’s a gaze
- 13:44 that appropriates, that assimilates, that absorbs, that digests you. It’s a
- 13:50 predatory gaze. It’s a gaze that all consuming gaze. So, it’s not that you’re
- 13:56 not seen, but that you are seen as a non- entity. You are seen as a
- 14:02 non-being. And not only are you a non- entity, not only are you a void, not only are you a
- 14:10 black hole in the eyes of the mother, but it’s a malevolent black black hole, an unworthy black hole, inadequate,
- 14:17 stupid, ugly, um potentially traitorous and and so on. So this is the problem
- 14:24 with the narcissistic gaze is not that it’s not there, it’s just just that it is an annihilating gaze. Whereas the
- 14:32 healthy mother, when the healthy mother perceives the child, when the when when the healthy mother gazes upon the child,
- 14:41 the gaze of the mother informs the child, you are not me. You are not me.
- 14:48 The child emerges. The child develops a self. The child forms boundaries. The child explores the world because the child sees through the mother’s gaze
- 14:59 that he or she is not mother. This is healthy gaze. The narcissist’s
- 15:07 gaze informs you that you do not exist
- 15:13 except as an element in the mother’s mind, except as an internal object,
- 15:19 except as an extension, except as an instrument. except as a tool except you
- 15:25 your the found the source of your existence emanates from the mother. The
- 15:31 healthy gaze says you exist because you are not me. You exist because you are
- 15:38 not your mother. That’s the healthy maternal gaze. Whereas the unhealthy
- 15:44 maternal gaze says if you are not me, you do not exist. You exist only when
- 15:50 you’re me. And that’s the this reminds me a very sad conversation,
- 15:56 very sad situation when I was with her watching the movie. It was a rare
- 16:04 occasion. I was watching the movie and she came
- 16:10 and you know the movie uh 2012 about the
- 16:16 the end of the the world etc. And that particular part when um they
- 16:24 are at uh at China already
- 16:30 and they the mother asks the the Chinese
- 16:36 to to take their the their children with them and and she says um
- 16:44 you don’t have to to bring us with you just say, “Take my children with you.
- 16:51 It’s all I want.” And she cries and and she asks the the grandmother, the the Chinese grandmother. And I was I got emotional
- 17:03 uh watching the this part and she she looked at me like, “What are you doing?
- 17:12 What do you feel like this?” And I and I asked her, “This is uh this
- 17:19 is something I would do.” I I I told her, “This is something I would do. I
- 17:25 would um I would stay there to die alone,
- 17:33 but uh make making sure that my children were safe, would be safe.” And she
- 17:42 looked at me one more time and she told me I don’t
- 17:48 feel like this if I will die you will die with me
- 17:57 and there was nothing there in her face and there was pretty normal for her
- 18:05 and and this scares a lot yeah this Um I think people find it very difficult to
- 18:17 accept even when they do understand but they find it difficult to accept. So there’s a cognitive realization but there’s no emotional reaction. They find difficult to accept that the inner experience of the narcissist is an experience of death.
- 18:33 Yes. The narcissist experiences her existence as non-existence, as
- 18:39 absence, as non-being. That is true for narcissism. That is also true for borderline. Actually, it’s
- 18:46 one of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder, the emptiness.
- 18:52 So, the experience is an experience of death. In this sense, narcissism is a death cult. And it’s predicated on what
- 19:00 Freud used to call phallattos or the death drive or the death force.
- 19:06 For the narcissist to appropriate another person, for the narcissist to convert another person to snapshot,
- 19:13 convert another person into an internal object. The narcissist must imbue the other
- 19:20 person with death. The narcissist must kill you metaphorically
- 19:26 before and as a condition for converting you into an internal object.
- 19:34 An internal object that is full of life cannot exist in a mind that is full of death. As the environment is a graveyard,
- 19:45 you need to be dead if you want a tombstone in that graveyard in that cemetery.
- 19:51 So the first thing the narcissist does, the narcissist kills you metaphorically.
- 19:57 The narcissistic mother kills her daughter in her mind and then takes the
- 20:03 corpse, converts it into an internal object and continues to interact with the internal object in something that is very reminiscent of a of a seance more
- 20:14 or less talking to ghosts. These internal objects in the narcissist’s mind are ghosts. People
- 20:21 think that the internal objects are alive, full of energy, you know, elvital, they have a force of life. And
- 20:27 that’s not true at all. The internal objects in NAS’s mind are ghosts. They’re ephemeral. They are ectoplasm.
- 20:34 They are spiritual apparitions. They’re not they’re not real. They don’t have contours. They don’t have depth,
- 20:40 dimensions, uh density. They’re not they don’t. And to reach this death stage to allow the
- 20:47 narcissist to convert you into internal object, the narcissist needs to take away from you all the attributes of
- 20:54 life. So first and foremost the narcissist needs to take away from you your joy.
- 21:00 The joy is a sign of life. Your sexuality and later on your independence, your
- 21:07 agency, your social circle, social network, your autonomy, personal autonomy, including financial independence. The Nazis need to take all these away
- 21:19 from you so that ultimately you’re not alive. You may be alive physically, but
- 21:25 you’re a zombie. Only then the narcissist can convert you. And because a mother has access to
- 21:33 you when you are defenseless, when you are when you have no life experience, mother has access to you from the very early stages. The mother kills you when you are 18 months old, when you are 36 months old. The mother
- 21:49 kills you early on. That was my point. And it’s very difficult after that to come alive to
- 21:56 resurrect. It’s a bit a bit of a religious process, a religious metaphor
- 22:02 if you wish. There is a crucifixion early in life. And the resurrection
- 22:08 requires a miracle. So it’s difficult to resurrect from this. If the gaze that defines you is a
- 22:16 lethal lethal gaze, a gaze that kills you,
- 22:22 then you define yourself via this gaze, the most crucial gaze, mother’s gaze. You define yourself via this gaze as dead. And all your so-called life is a
- 22:34 celebration of death. You actually feel very good. The more dead you are,
- 22:42 the less independent you are, the less autonomous you are, the less the fewer
- 22:48 friends you have, the fewer things you do, the more dead you are, the better
- 22:54 you feel. You’re egoonic only when you’re dead. Because you have learned early on in life to associate being existence with
- 23:07 death, not with life. This is your comfort zone. Death is your comfort zone. That’s why you feel when you’re about to abandon your mother, you feel very bad.
- 23:18 Yes. That’s a sign of life. You feel when you’re doing something totally independent, you feel very bad. You feel
- 23:24 guilty because that’s a sign of life. Ironically, the more lively you become,
- 23:32 the more alive you become, the more your internal mother, your mother introject,
- 23:38 maternal introject will sabotage you, will drag you back to the polarity of death because only then you could be at peace with your mother.
- 23:49 Any relationship with another person, for example, is a betrayal of your mother. automatic betrayal of your mother
- 23:56 because that other person person can give you life can give you another gaze
- 24:02 can trigger your independent uh choice making and decision making can so it’s a
- 24:09 competition to your mother. It’s it’s a very important thing very important point because in my mother’s case for
- 24:17 example um she took uh my financial independence.
- 24:25 Yes. And this was the best way to keep me there. Yes. Very common.
- 24:32 Very common. And this was clear for me.
- 24:38 This was my difficulty to to separate from her.
- 24:46 Just this just the financial issue. And uh when I was away from her uh I felt um this relief.
- 25:02 It was a huge relief being away from her.
- 25:08 But you also felt guilty. I felt that you were abandoning her. I I felt guilty when I was looking for
- 25:16 her and I felt she was alone. Yes. Because I felt that you were abandoning her. I didn’t want her to feel this way that way. And uh but I I have a a question
- 25:29 about this. Um the mother
- 25:35 kills her her son or her daughter very very early. Some some people do not agree with this,
- 25:46 but I do not agree with them. And um it’s a hard thing because
- 25:54 children will will get uh at the school
- 26:00 uh several hours per day.
- 26:06 And do you think we can teach teachers to recognize narcissistic
- 26:15 abuse? Because in um in a large sense
- 26:23 it’s early early childhood experiences
- 26:30 uh adversities and maybe people tend to only consider
- 26:38 this in in a in a wide range and
- 26:44 it’s like they they don’t understand uh
- 26:50 the importance of classifying as narcissistic abuse.
- 26:57 And do you think we could maybe um make some plans to educational system?
- 27:08 Depends on the age. Depends on the age. uh the dominant theory uh in child
- 27:14 psychology is uh Bandura’s modeling social learning social cognitive
- 27:20 learning theory um and within that theory there is the mechanism of modeling
- 27:27 where the child’s a child actually monitors observes role models and then
- 27:33 the child imitates the role models and internalizes the values and beliefs of the role models and so
- 27:40 So if you catch the child sufficiently early, let’s say 3 years old up to six years
- 27:47 old and you as a teacher provide an alternative model. So there’s a model of
- 27:53 a mother and the model of a teacher for example, then studies have shown that the child
- 27:59 is much more likely to adopt the model of the teacher but much later in life. the models stay
- 28:06 in the child’s mind and only when the child is 16 or 18 the child then tends to choose the healthy model over the pathological model. So it’s a little like planting a seed but the seed
- 28:18 blossoms much later in life but modeling at this period is very very crucial.
- 28:25 The mainstream uh position is that between the ages of 18 months and 36 months there is a conflict with the
- 28:36 mother. A mature, stable, mentally healthy mother would not engage in the conflict. She would
- 28:48 for example allow the child to separate from her and explore the world, walk away. She would not feel insecure. She would not become punitive. She would not
- 28:59 drag the child back. She would not emotionally blackmail the child. She would not. But immature mothers,
- 29:06 narcissistic mothers, selfish mothers, not to mention mentally ill mothers, depressive mothers, psychopathic mothers, that’s a whole range of of what we call dead mothers. This kind of
- 29:18 mother regards a child as not only her possession, an object. She objectifies
- 29:24 the child, but she also regards the child as a source of narcissistic supply. Yes. As a foundation of her sense of
- 29:30 self-worth, self-confidence, esteem. Owning the child enhances her. It’s a
- 29:36 form of self-enhancement. So, she would never let the child go away. And that is mainstream that is accepted I think by 99% of psychologists I know who who disagrees. Um, the only way to counter this pernicious, nefarious influence is by
- 29:54 providing the child with an alternative, a secure base simulation. Someone who provides a secure base.
- 30:01 Uh, grandmothers do this. Grandmothers step in and provide the child with an
- 30:08 alternative model and a sense of secure base. Secure base. Just to define for the
- 30:14 viewers, secure base is when the child believes that it can walk away from
- 30:21 mommy, explore the world without being punished. That is secure base. And then the child
- 30:28 walks away, explore the explore the world and comes back, returns to mommy. That is known as rahmo. The child
- 30:35 returns to mommy. And he knows that when he returns to mommy, he will not be punished for having walked away. And
- 30:41 that is the definition of secure base. If the mommy if mother cannot provide this a grandmother can, a good neighbor can, a teacher can. It’s very crucial at
- 30:52 this period to provide alternatives. And if alternatives are provided on a regular basis, I mean a presence in the child’s life, then this kind of child is very likely to turn out to be healthy and normal. But if the mother isolates the child,
- 31:08 which many mothers do, narcissistic mothers do. If the mother isolates the child, she becomes for example overprotective or she signals to the child that the
- 31:19 child can do no wrong. She tells the child everything everything that’s happening to you is other people’s fault. You’ve done nothing wrong. Oh, so it’s not only mothers that are abusive and
- 31:31 mothers that are controlling and not only mothers can become dysfunctional
- 31:37 and problematic in a variety of ways. If you pedestalize the child, if you spoil the child, if you pamper the child, the message you’re sending to the child, you’re not responsible for the
- 31:49 adverse outcomes in your own life. Your behavior has nothing to do with the consequences. You’re always right. It’s
- 31:56 the teacher’s fault. It’s your peers’s fault. It’s the headmaster’s fault. It’s it’s fundamentally aloplastic defenses.
- 32:04 Yes. Developing the child aloplastic defenses. So there are many ways to deform the child, many ways to render
- 32:10 the child defective. Yeah. But many childs are lucky. They have other adult figures that are not like that. And then that’s why the vast majority of people are not don’t turn
- 32:21 out to be luckily. Professor the Sam call me Sam.
- 32:28 I’ll try. Uh the narcissistic mother obviously uh she has no identity.
- 32:40 That’s correct. And I I wrote on the book that this kind of
- 32:50 mother seeks to realize
- 32:56 herself by the anolment of her children.
- 33:02 Is is this correct? She annals she annihilates the child or she deanimates the child. She takes away
- 33:09 the child’s life. um not necessarily in order to realize
- 33:16 herself but in order not to create dissonance between the death that she is and the life that
- 33:23 the child is. If you if you base your entire existence on death on non-being
- 33:32 and then you’re confronted with a life form something alive something joyful something you know energetic and so on
- 33:40 this very threatening creates dissonance and so you need to metastasize the death
- 33:46 the death her death the mother’s death metastasizes and consumes not only the
- 33:52 children consumes her spouse consume consumes everyone around her, consumes her own mother, consumes, you know, this
- 33:59 death is like a virus, it’s infection and it creates a death cult. The narcissist feels comfortable only within a death cult because then no one
- 34:11 contradicts this this the experience the inner experience of the narcissist is dead.
- 34:19 There’s there a famous movie where uh there’s a family and the family believes that the house is haunted that they’re ghosts especially the mother of the family
- 34:30 there’s a mother I think and two young children and they believe that the house is haunted because they’re all ghosts things are happening and so on so at the very end of the movie the mother
- 34:42 realizes that they are the ghosts they have they are the ones who have died and the ghosts are actually living
- 34:49 people that the others the others in the in the Yeah, I think it’s called the others. Yes. And so this is exactly the existence of the narcissist. The narcissist is a ghost
- 35:00 and and suddenly the narcissist is surrounded by living people. But the
- 35:06 narcissist doesn’t recognize others as living people. He insists that they are ghosts
- 35:12 and he converts them into ghosts in order to feel comfortable. Egoentony.
- 35:18 The narcissist is egoonous only when everyone around him is dead
- 35:24 so that he can appropriate the corpses and internalize and so on. Professor
- 35:30 Sam and there’s um a quotation from yours when
- 35:39 you say uh I guess it’s the bad trip lecture and when you say that it’s important to know that the
- 35:51 narcissist is a child and the moment we are aware of this everything uh takes place.
- 36:03 I I keep saying that I I we need to know that he was a child but okay let let’s
- 36:12 see for this angle he is a child
- 36:18 the moment uh a person realizes this
- 36:24 that he is a child this wouldn’t be enough for this person
- 36:31 step back and say, “Whoa, I can’t keep a relationship with a child
- 36:39 because this is wrong.” And I know you you understand this. It’s
- 36:45 in a philosophical term. Uh I I can’t do this. It’s very wrong.
- 36:52 No, I don’t think that’s what people say. I think what people say is I cannot have one type of relationship with this
- 36:59 child but I can have another. I can become the child’s mother for example.
- 37:05 So it’s not that they give up on having any kind of relationship with the with the narcissist because a narcissist is a
- 37:11 child but they say okay it’s a child I must redefine the relationship. I must have another kind of relationship. And
- 37:19 this is a very bad sign because why on earth you would find normal to be
- 37:28 the mother of your partner? It’s unhealthy. It’s indicative of
- 37:34 problems with the partner with a narcissist partner of course. Unfulfilled maternal wishes um need to
- 37:41 control um fear of abandonment. There are many many paths pathological paths
- 37:48 that lead to the conversion from a healthy normal relationship in a diet in
- 37:54 a pair in a couple to maternal a maternal relationship.
- 38:00 But the fact that the narcissist is a child simply alters the nature of the
- 38:06 relationship. Yes. Doesn’t destroy any possibility for a relationship. And also it’s important not to confuse several psychonamic and psychological dimensions. I said for example that the narcissist does not exist. Doesn’t have a core
- 38:22 identity. Doesn’t have a constellated integrated self because the formation of a self has been disrupted in early
- 38:29 childhood. So there’s nobody there. Nobody at home. There’s a void or what thirsting called black hole and and so on. Okay, we got the metaphor. There’s nothing there. It’s an emptiness, you
- 38:40 know. So you say, how can it be a child? It’s an emptiness. If it’s an emptiness,
- 38:46 it’s not adult. It’s not child. It’s not. The defining feature is absence. So there’s nobody there. Not even a child. That’s that’s not true because this emptiness, this void defines the
- 38:58 dimension of core identity. We have as human beings, we have multiple
- 39:04 dimensions and they are not associated with each other. For example, your identity has very
- 39:11 little to do with your effects. It is connected of course, but very little to do. And it’s the same with the narcissist. The core identity is missing
- 39:23 or fragmented in the best case scale. But at the same time, there is an
- 39:29 emotional dimension. There is an effective dimension. That effective dimension is immature and infantile.
- 39:37 It is there that the narcissist is two years old in terms of effect not in
- 39:43 terms of core identity. You could be both at the same time. For example, the
- 39:49 narcissist has very good semantic memory, procedural memory. In other words, memory about how to do
- 39:55 things, skills, professional memory. So, a narcissist could be simultaneously a
- 40:01 2-year-old child as far as emotions go, a non- entity, a non-being as far as
- 40:08 identity and a great professor of psychology.
- 40:15 So, it’s all possible simultaneously and people confuse. They say if he doesn’t have memory, if he’s dissociative and he doesn’t have memory and because he doesn’t have memory, he doesn’t have
- 40:26 identity, how does he remember to drive a car? No, it’s it’s another kind of memory.
- 40:32 Not no connection between these things. They’re disconnected. We we have this image erroneous image.
- 40:41 uh even many scholars have this image that we are kind of an integrated entity
- 40:49 like we are a kernel a nucleus and this nucleus is there it’s immutable
- 40:55 and it explains everything that is not how human beings are constructed
- 41:01 human beings are more like multiple parts that operate independently
- 41:08 and sometimes one could even say rarely interact with each other. Multiple dimensions
- 41:16 more similar to a network, let’s say, where you have many nodes in the network and you have a very distant node that
- 41:23 never interacts with that node. They’re all part of the network, but they don’t interact with each other. The nodes
- 41:34 also if you want in computer terms, you have operating system and you have softwares.
- 41:40 The softwares use the operating system of course and the operating system but they operate independently. They it’s
- 41:48 not the same thing. So narcissists like all human beings have all these dimensions and we should not be surprised that a narcissist can be absent as an as a core identity and and a child emotionally. And
- 42:05 professor people confuse many things and they usually confuse narcissist and
- 42:11 psychopath. Yes. Not so usually they confuse narcissist and borderline
- 42:19 even though they are more close they are closer than my English is
- 42:26 terrible and very and um when you when you say that
- 42:34 there’s nobody there uh how can we
- 42:41 uh differentiate disamigu away at this from the there’s nobody there in the
- 42:48 psychopath because there’s nobody there too. No psychopaths definitely there is
- 42:55 someone there. There is nobody there. Um as far as the socialization
- 43:02 process again it’s another dimension. Socialization in the case of the psychopath has failed. So the psychopath did not internalize
- 43:13 social expectations, social mories, conventions, norms and by extension
- 43:19 morality. There’s have been a failure of the formation of a conscience in the psychopath. This cluster of introjects
- 43:27 that inform inform us if we are doing something wrong or what we should and should not do, what we ought and ought
- 43:33 not to do. There’s no internalization of this in the psychopath. There’s no formation of of the conscience.
- 43:40 In life we go through a cascade de developmental cascade.
- 43:46 We first develop the self by contradistinction to the mother by
- 43:53 separating from the mother by walking away from the mother. A good mother pushes the child away. That’s the main
- 43:59 function of a mother. Main function of a mother is to push the child away. At that point the child realizes I am not
- 44:06 mother. And since I am not mother, I am me. The mei is born. The self with
- 44:14 boundaries. That’s the first stage of the cascade. Second stage of a cascade, emotions and comparative emotions known as empathy. We begin to observe peers
- 44:26 and other people and we begin to develop a theory of mind. How the minds of other
- 44:32 people operate. This process is known as mentalization. At the same time, a bit later actually,
- 44:39 sorry, we develop an internal working model, model about how relationships work. So there’s a cascade a bit later
- 44:47 around the age of six, depending on the individual, sometimes four, most times it’s six,
- 44:54 there is a process known as socialization and acculturation. It’s when we begin to adopt things,
- 45:01 beliefs, values, behavioral scripts from the environment
- 45:07 and these shape us and mold us. We adopt them as if they came from the inside,
- 45:14 not from the outside. So we know for for example how we should behave with older people, with younger people in sexual
- 45:21 situations. We we learn this. This is socialization. The narcissist fails in the first phase.
- 45:28 Selfhood, the formation of personality, what Jung called constellation or
- 45:34 integration. There’s a failure there. The narcissist stops here and never develops, never
- 45:41 continues. That’s where it stops. It’s frozen in time. That’s a failure. The
- 45:47 borderline fails um in the emotional stage. She doesn’t
- 45:53 know how to control emotions. She doesn’t know how to regulate emotions. She I’m saying she half of all border lines are men and she is gorgeous. Border lines don’t know how to control emotions, how to regulate them. They
- 46:04 don’t identify emotions properly. They mislabel emotions. Consequently, the empathy in borderline is impaired but
- 46:11 not for the same reason as a narcissist. In the narcissist, empathy is impaired because a narcissist cannot recognize
- 46:18 that other people are separate and external. So he cannot empathize with non-existent entities. He doesn’t realize that you’re external or separate. How can the narcissist
- 46:29 empathize with you? You don’t exist. In the borderline, the failure of empathy
- 46:35 is because she misidentifies emotions. She mislabels emotions and consequently
- 46:41 she misreads people because she misreads people exactly like autistic individuals with autism spectrum disorder. She has this kind of distorted empathy.
- 46:52 Yes, she has uh the effective component in borderline is compromised because the
- 46:59 emotion is disregulated and also mislabeled, misrecognized.
- 47:06 In the psychopath, the empathy is compromised because the socialization phase failed. Psychopath has a self
- 47:13 fully functional integrated constellated self. The psychopath has emotions ma
- 47:20 mostly negative actually almost exclusively negative emotions but he he
- 47:26 these emotions he controls these emotions he actually channels them he uses them he leverages to manipulate the
- 47:33 environment so there’s no problem of disregulation there’s another problem impulse control
- 47:39 but don’t confuse impulse control with emotions yes the the psychopath controls emotions so there’s no borderline element there but There’s a failure, developmental failure in socialization.
- 47:51 So there’s no empathy exactly like narcissist but for completely different reasons.
- 47:57 And so the psychopath because there’s a failure in socialization
- 48:03 recognizes that other people are external and separate but is highly predatory and exploitative. Does not
- 48:11 conform to laws. Does not accept authority. Rejects authority. does not
- 48:17 sit well within social structures and does not obey social mores, expectations, conventions, norms and so
- 48:23 on so forth. And consequently, vast majority of psychopaths internally at least are lone wolves.
- 48:31 They do not depend on other people. They seek nothing from other people emotionally.
- 48:37 They all they want is to take something. They want to take money, sex, power, access, contacts, whatever you have.
- 48:43 They want to take it from you. Your property, your life achievements, your something. They will take it from you.
- 48:50 But they don’t depend on you. Whereas both the narcissist and borderline are highly dependent on other people. The narcissist crucially depends on other people for the regulation of his or her
- 49:03 sense of selfworth. And this is unconscious. this dependency that
- 49:09 the dependency is not unconscious I would say but um reframed
- 49:15 reframed not unconscious u borderline um also depends on other people for example
- 49:22 on her intimate partner and she says he’s a rock you know he can stabilize my moods he can make me feel good he stabilizes my emotions when I’m with him I’m calm I’m relaxed I’m composed I’m
- 49:33 functional but only when I’m with So if he walks away, I fall apart.
- 49:39 That’s the borderline. So there there’s massive dependency in borderline and narcissism.
- 49:45 Uh whereas in psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, there’s no
- 49:51 dependency whatsoever. The psychopath is perfectly self-sufficient, self-contained. But we could say that in in psychopathy
- 50:04 the element of consciousness is is more uh present or than in the narcissism. Much more self-aware of course
- 50:16 much more because there is a self. How can you be selfaware if there’s no self? In
- 50:23 psychopathy there’s a self. It’s one of the one of the many reasons that I do
- 50:29 not think that psychopathy is a mental illness. Yeah, I agree fully. I don’t think it’s a mental illness. I think it’s a lifestyle choice. I think it’s a maybe social problem or maybe
- 50:40 even character problem, but it’s not a mental illness. There’s no mental illness there. There’s a functional
- 50:46 self. There’s a there are choices. They have no problem with reality. No, they’re perfectly attuned to
- 50:52 reality. The narcissist cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Narcissist same with the borderline.
- 50:59 Whereas the psychopath is knows reality acutely. He’s acutely aware of reality.
- 51:05 That’s how he manipulates people. He creates fantasies but he knows very well these are fantasies and then he
- 51:11 introduces people into the fantasy and abuses them. This is a hard thing to process
- 51:19 because uh u at least for me it’s it’s something is
- 51:25 very very surreal. How uh how can one uh put
- 51:32 someone into a fantasy and get rid of the this sense of of
- 51:42 seeing the world as real because they create another kind of
- 51:49 world for for the this person and not get into this world all together with
- 51:57 this people. this person, the narcissist can do this. If he
- 52:04 creates the this whole new world, he’s there together with the the person.
- 52:10 Yes. And and and I guess this this
- 52:16 but we do we do it all the time. A film director, a movie director is doing it all the time. is creating a fantasy, but he doesn’t confuse the fantasy with
- 52:27 reality. He knows it’s not real, professor. And when we watch a movie, by the way, we become dissociative.
- 52:33 Yes, totally. Especially when we we see something that
- 52:42 touches us that we identify with that like that scene I described for you earlier. And I
- 52:51 felt many times for example inside the the story of a book
- 52:57 when you watch a horror movie suddenly something happens you jump. Yes. Why you jumping?
- 53:03 You know that this is not real. Why? You hold your breath. Yes. But why? You know it’s not real.
- 53:09 The fantasy is working. Yes. So the psychopath is a movie director. He creates movies for you. These movies cater to your psychological needs. These movies um
- 53:24 satisfy some lack or some deficiency in your life. You want to get rich. You
- 53:30 want to have find love. You want so the fantasy is tailored to cater to aspects
- 53:37 of your personality which are overwhelming, which you cannot resist and which often are unconscious. But
- 53:43 even when they’re conscious, they’re very powerful. And the fantasy is created very
- 53:49 realistically. I mean, it’s very meticulous, attention to detail and so on. Exactly like a movie.
- 53:56 They It is shocking that some people are embedded in reality. I find that
- 54:02 shocking. reality is so dramatically harsh and difficult and and and
- 54:10 adversarial and conflictive and terrifying and terrorizing that I’m shocked that there’s even one individual, one human being who is grounded in reality. I find it shocking.
- 54:21 I think fantasy is the natural state. Reality testing is the abnormal state.
- 54:29 Exactly opposite. I also think addiction, for example, is the natural state. I think psychology, clinical
- 54:35 psychology got it completely backwards. It it makes a lot of sense because the
- 54:41 our brain gets addicted too easily to anything.
- 54:49 Yes, we get addicted to music, to movies, to books, to toys.
- 54:56 Yes, I think addiction is the way we relate to the environment. And I think I think clinical psychology got literally everything backwards. It emphasized reality. That’s not true. The natural state is fantasy. It emphasized addiction.
- 55:12 That’s not true. It emphasized lack of addiction. That’s not true. Natural state is addiction. It emphasized
- 55:19 egotism and selfishness as natural and altruism as abnormal. Whereas it’s exactly the opposite. Altruism is the natural state. Selfishness is the abnormality. Clinical psychology is
- 55:32 completely wrong about almost everything. And you to get it right, you need to put it on its head, then it’s right. And that is pretty shocking because I think
- 55:43 what happened is religious and moralistic ideals were superimposed on
- 55:49 clinical psychology. Clinical psychology is not a science but a reflection of
- 55:55 social and cultural mo morality, ethics, expectations, ideals, religious tenets
- 56:02 and so on. Because religions, religion tells you that you should be altruistic. Religion tells you it’s bad to be society tells you it’s bad to be addicted. There is a contamination of
- 56:14 clinical psychology with ideology. Yes. And that is bad. That means it will never be a science. Professor, uh getting a little back
- 56:27 um this um the creation of fantasy
- 56:35 in psychopathy and in narcissism. There is um some kind of moment
- 56:44 and that that is possible to recognize
- 56:52 and differentiate when is a fantasy
- 56:58 uh created by a psychopath and when is a fantasy created by a narcissist. Yeah,
- 57:04 it’s very easy. Actually, the psycho the psychopathic fantasy is goal oriented.
- 57:11 It usually is about something external like money, power, sex, something
- 57:17 outside the fantasy. So the fantasy is a means. It’s operational. It leads
- 57:24 somewhere. Whereas the whereas in in the narcissistic fantasy, it’s totalitarian.
- 57:32 Everything is in the fantasy. nothing outside the fantasy. Everything is in the fantasy and it deals with internal
- 57:40 processes. Whereas a psychopath deals with external things, usually materialistic,
- 57:46 the narcissist narcissistic fantasy, the shared fantasy deals with internal things, for example, love
- 57:54 or you know, romance or intimacy or it deals with psychological processes and
- 58:00 dynamics. That’s more common. Yeah. So the psychopath will offer you a fantasy. He will say listen um if you give me your money I have an investment and this investment will will double
- 58:13 your money in six months. So there is a fantasy here but it deals with something
- 58:19 that is not within the fantasy that’s external to it but it seems like something obscure
- 58:26 happens in the middle of this because I’ve been as you know I’ve been
- 58:32 searching online I observe a lot and uh and is your
- 58:41 opinion too that people often confuse the trade the behaviors, the features
- 58:49 and between psychopath and and and narcissist and it seems like something happened there and suddenly people uh
- 59:02 classified no this is I’m sure this is this was a narcissist and perhaps because we are psychologists and
- 59:15 And we we look at this. Well, I said, “No, there’s no way this is a narcissist. This I’m sure I am sure this
- 59:27 is a psychopath.” And it’s impossible to convince that that person.
- 59:34 People um demonize, wish to demonize or demonize
- 59:40 narcissist. They want narcissists to have no redeeming feature, no justification,
- 59:47 no explanation, no causation. There is a group of charlatans online
- 59:53 that say that narcissism is completely genetic and there’s no proof of that. I believe that there is a
- 60:00 hereditary component in narcissism, but there’s no proof of that yet. But if it’s genetic, that means they born evil. Mhm. So there is this equation of
- 60:11 narcissism with evil. But how can you support this
- 60:17 demonization if you go into the nuances and the details? You can’t because the narcissist whatever the narcissist may do, he believes in it.
- 60:29 He’s committed to it. He makes you a promise. He intends to keep it. He never keeps it, but he intends to keep it. So
- 60:36 there’s no future faking. He tells you a story about reality which is counterfactual, unrealistic, and crazy.
- 60:42 He believes in it, so he’s not gaslighting you. He creates a fantasy. He wants both of
- 60:48 you to be in it. So there’s no question of control. He idealizes you because he
- 60:55 really sees you as ideal, not because he’s manipulating you. It’s not a manipulating technique. He idealizes you
- 61:02 because he sees you as an ideal and it allows him to idealize himself. co idealization. So,
- 61:09 but if you accept all these, then the narcissist is not evil.
- 61:15 Is a narcissist mentally ill? Yes. End of story. It’s like a virus. Viruses
- 61:21 kill people. They’re horrible, but they’re not evil. It’s their program. So, what people do in order to demonize
- 61:30 the narcissist, they appropriate the behaviors of the psychopath. When they when they paint narcissist as psychopaths, then they can say, you see,
- 61:41 they are evil. That’s the source of the confusion. Ironically, if you demonize the narcissist, what
- 61:48 you’re doing is splitting. You’re splitting. The narcissist is all bad. I’m all good.
- 61:54 That is a narcissistic defense. The irony. Most victims online engage in
- 62:00 narcissistic defenses and narcissistic behaviors including self aggrandising and self-enhancement and so on. That’s
- 62:07 why I keep saying that empaths for example in my view are covert narcissist.
- 62:13 Yeah, I agree. This is um of course all of us have
- 62:20 defense mechanisms. But when I when I see the the complaint
- 62:28 of victims, of course, I I need to to believe they were victimized in in some way or in
- 62:38 many ways. Uh we cast no doubt about this. But we need to to make a a reflection
- 62:50 on this because the the way these people
- 62:56 talk it’s clear for me again maybe because I’m a clinical psychologist
- 63:03 and it’s clear that it’s um it’s a pride issue.
- 63:12 It’s a an an ego issue because they
- 63:18 in many ways maybe they were rejected
- 63:24 and it’s unaccept unacceptable
- 63:30 and of course I’m not uh providing an excuse for the abuse or or for the the
- 63:38 the bad behavior of a narcissist. It’s not about this but in order to to the
- 63:46 person to get a point uh
- 63:52 when she or he can heal from the situation because it’s sick. It’s sickness and this person
- 64:06 first need to realize that she or he is sick about the the
- 64:13 relationship. I want to make three comments. First of all, uh if you react to rejection or
- 64:19 perceive rejection this way, this is narcissistic. It’s a narcissistic defense. Yes.
- 64:25 Number two, narcissist can also be abused. Yes. are actually gullible. They’re very gullible because they think they know everything and so on. It’s easy to abuse narcissist. They are used to be abused. So that you have been victimized doesn’t prove that you are not a narcissist.
- 64:41 That’s why I strongly suspect that many victims online are actually narcissist. Mhm.
- 64:47 They have been victimized. Not always, but in majority of cases they have been victimized. But they have
- 64:53 been victimized because because or with the fact that they’re narcissist.
- 64:59 It’s wrong to say that all victims are not narcissist and all narcissists are narcissists. Absolutely not true. Many
- 65:05 many narcissists are victimized. This reminds me I’m interrupting you. Yeah. One one last point. Sorry. When you say that uh self-realization
- 65:16 and self-acceptance of your own contributions to the situation and so on is a precondition for healing.
- 65:23 There is a hidden assumption that these people want to heal. I think some do, but I think many don’t
- 65:31 because the victimhood status is very rewarding. As a victim, you get sympathy, you get
- 65:39 attention. Some people make money from being victims. They sell books, coaching
- 65:45 sessions and so on. Uh you are you find like-minded people who provide you with
- 65:51 all constant support. Victimhood is a a status that is very very um attractive.
- 66:02 To give up on victimhood is to give up on on many things. I am pretty convinced that many many many victims do not want to heal at all. Yeah, I agree. And do not want to move on. Actually, there are studies that support what I’m saying. Gabby, others.
- 66:19 And this is compet and there’s also competitive victimhood. I am much more of a victim than you are.
- 66:25 My abuser was much worse than your abuser and so on so forth. There’s a competition for scarce resources,
- 66:31 sympathy and support. Finally, victimhood um confers rights. As a victim, you have certain rights. And because you have these rights, you can impose obligations
- 66:43 on other people. Every right creates an obligation. So you have rights, you can impose obligation. You can become entitled. You can become demanding and you can express aggression and rage legitimately and you become more and more
- 66:58 psychopathic. And this I think these kind of victims start off as covert narcissists. They
- 67:06 have always been covert narcissists. The exposure online allows them to
- 67:12 externalize aggression legitimately, to self-enhance and self aggrandise
- 67:19 legitimately, to attract attention legitimately, to do everything a narcissist does under the cover of victimhood legitimately.
- 67:30 It’s a very unpopular view, but from 30 years of observation, I’m pretty convinced of what I’m saying.
- 67:36 I fully agree with you. It’s pretty clear
- 67:42 at leis um maybe because of the background because
- 67:49 of the years of not not all not
- 67:56 uh only being a clinical psych psychologist but being a teacher
- 68:04 because of my knowledge of biology of neurology ology of uh immunology and we
- 68:11 start to connect the dots and we say wait a minute this is not right.
- 68:18 The the this reaction is not uh of uh
- 68:26 the only victim in the system and we start to raise questions about
- 68:34 this. How? And as a psychologist, I I always uh see the this picture and say,
- 68:42 “How can I help this? How can I uh help to to disambiguate to
- 68:49 to show um or or to to to tell the this
- 68:55 person listen this this kind of thinking. It’s it’s not really the the
- 69:02 the best for you. And uh usually we can
- 69:08 we can do much because they they don’t accept the fact that these self-styled victims
- 69:16 react with enormous rage and aggression when you dare to challenge them in any
- 69:22 way. Even constructive challenge, even helpful challenge, even loving and compassionate challenge. No, doesn’t
- 69:28 have to be, you know, good challenging. When you dare to question anything they
- 69:34 say, they become violent, verbally abusive and so on. This is classical
- 69:41 sign of pathological narcissism. Classical narcissists cannot accept even
- 69:47 the tiniest bit of criticism, disagreement and so on. Real victims,
- 69:53 people who are not narcissist and who have been victimized by narcissists, they are likely to remain open-minded.
- 70:00 They’re likely to consider possibilities and options. They’re likely to reframe and rethink and perhaps adopt
- 70:07 alternative strategies in an attempt to solve um an internal state of victimhood and to heal and to move on. This is a
- 70:15 real victim. That’s how a real victim behaves. The people online, they’re not like that. No,
- 70:21 they become absolutely violent if you dare to say for example maybe maybe you
- 70:27 have contributed to your predicament to your situation. Let’s study how you may have contributed so that you don’t do it
- 70:34 again. They’re likely to ban you and block you and attack you and verbally abuse you and so on. This is narcissism.
- 70:41 End of story. No one will convince me otherwise. These victims are narcissist. Simply they have been outnarcized.
- 70:50 They’ve been narcissist who’ve been victimized by bigger narcissists. But that’s the whole that’s the whole story. This reminds me two two things. Uh one is the that I noticed online that the
- 71:04 these victims they have this this need of disqualifying
- 71:11 the the current partner of their ex partner.
- 71:18 Yeah. And this is very very indicative with uh a hurt pride, a hurt ego,
- 71:28 the the inability to to move on, the inability to competitiveness. Yes. They are too
- 71:36 concerned with um getting jealous.
- 71:43 They are too jealous uh about the the I’m sorry.
- 71:49 I think we’re dedicated enough to this. Let’s move on to another topic. Okay. Um
- 71:58 one time I I asked you about uh the real victims of psychopath.
- 72:05 I I you may not remember this. And uh
- 72:11 you you answered me that um I I asked you if
- 72:17 the real victims of psychopath are narcissist and you you told me no
- 72:26 but narcissists are easy targets. Yes. And there are another easy targets. Can
- 72:36 you tell about this a little bit? narcissist targets. The other targets uh uh together with
- 72:45 narcissists like um who are the other targets profile? I I think I answered this. So I said that we
- 72:51 there are needs, psychological needs and and so on that are actually I I was I was trying to ask you if we can consider as easy targets
- 73:06 uh all the the the mentally ill especially those who will
- 73:15 easily get out of reality like autistic
- 73:21 autistic ones, uh, schizophrenic ones. Um,
- 73:27 depressive people. Um because in in my view
- 73:34 this is something that a psychopath would would see and he would he would
- 73:42 think uh this is this is a um
- 73:49 uh a game that I can easily win. Yes, of course. the more the more
- 73:55 vulnerable a person is, the more broken, the more the fewer defenses, fewer boundaries, the fewer the the less the
- 74:02 person, the more impaired the reality testing, the less contact with reality.
- 74:09 Um, but not only yes, I think mentally ill people are one group including narcissists are one group. In the case of narcissists, narcissists believe that they know everything, that they are more
- 74:21 clever than anyone else. They hold people in contempt. They feel superior. So, it’s easy to they’re gullible. It’s easy to manipulate them. But I don’t think I don’t actually think this is the major group of victims of psychopaths. I
- 74:34 think majority of the victims of psychopaths are people who gradually find reality more and more unbearable
- 74:41 and intolerable in a variety of ways. So people after a life crisis like a
- 74:47 divorce or unemployed or uh people who um fell into the trap of conspiracy
- 74:54 theories or alternative explanations of reality people who so this is known as conspiracism it’s a trait conspiracism people who
- 75:05 um have um what I would call a supernatural point of view or religious
- 75:11 point of view people for example who believe in miracles or believe in in outcomes that are disproportionate to investment. Um people who want to get rich quick,
- 75:23 impatient, they don’t want to invest, they feel entitled, I think um or everyone can become a
- 75:31 victim of a psychopath. Yes. But they would tend to target people who have given up on reality, not
- 75:40 necessarily because they’re mentally ill, but because reality is not rewarding them anymore or even
- 75:46 penalizing them and they think that any fantasy would be better than reality.
- 75:53 How does the psychopath identify such people? That in my view is the interesting question that many many
- 76:00 people are like that and most of them are not mentally ill. Most of them are okay is one thing but how does he know
- 76:07 how does a psychopath know? How does this predator identify the prey?
- 76:14 It’s uh the the psychopath uses baits and hooks and lures and test questions.
- 76:21 In any encounter with a psychopath, the psychopath would simultaneously offer you a
- 76:28 realitybased statement and a fantasybased statement.
- 76:34 And then he would see which one you choose. If he repeats this process a few times and you keep choosing fantasy
- 76:41 based statements, that will be it. He would understand that you’re fantasy pro
- 76:47 and he is patient. And he is patient. Psychopaths are patient? Yes. Well, not clinically.
- 76:55 Clinically, psychopaths are impulsive. They have problem with impulse control like borderline.
- 77:01 Um, but they when they act on the impulse, they can be long-term and
- 77:09 patient. They can have long-term thinking, long-term planning, implementation of long-term strategies which are very complicated, require coordination of multiple factors and multiple people and so on so forth.
- 77:20 Yeah. But first there’s an impulse like the impulse is here’s a here’s a an old
- 77:26 couple they have a huge amount of money in pension I will take it and so the
- 77:32 transition from desire or what Freud used to call drive the transition from drive or desire to action in the case of the psychopath is impulsive and there’s
- 77:44 no impulse control it’s not mediated via inhibitions there’s no inhibition and or
- 77:50 social ethics or social control or whatever internalized no socialization so the transition is instantaneous
- 77:58 here’s money I want it and that moment action starts whereas in normal healthy
- 78:04 people um there’s money I want it but if I take it I will end up in prison yes so I’m not going to do it inhibition in the the psychopath is disinhibited there’s money I want it I’m going to take it. There are no consequences. It’s
- 78:21 totally present-based mindfulness. The psychopath is totally present based. But
- 78:28 then the action to take the money could be much very long and very detailed and
- 78:34 and so on. The initial phase of this is testing for
- 78:40 fantasy initial phase. Whereas the initial phase in narcissism, in the narcissist shared fantasy, the initial
- 78:47 phase is auditioning the target.
- 78:53 There’s a similar process of auditioning with the psychopath. But the narcissist auditions the target for specific
- 78:59 questions which have to do with um the structure of the fantasy and the
- 79:06 provision of the four S’s, sex, services, supply and so on. The psychopath auditions the subject for
- 79:13 gullibility. How gullible the subject is going to be and how fantasyprone.
- 79:19 The the main in tool or instrument of the psychopath is the fantasy. So he needs to know that people are gullible
- 79:27 in the sense that they would adopt a fantasy and prefer it to reality even when reality intervenes and interferes constantly with new information. For example, there’s a old couple with a lot
- 79:40 of money and they have a son and the son keeps telling them this guy is a
- 79:47 psychopath. He’s trying to take your money. So there is intervention from reality. A psychopath needs to evaluate
- 79:55 how gullible the couple is, how prone to fantasy, how resistant to
- 80:01 counterveailing information from reality. Having done this evaluation, auditioning, I call it auditioning, the
- 80:07 psychopath proceed. This reminds me that um about
- 80:13 that lecture when you say uh how the narcissist tests you three times and it
- 80:21 it’s a similar process as you mentioned and uh so these three points
- 80:30 first one is u if you are prone to to fantasy and this is very close to what
- 80:38 what uh the the psychopath thinks and I I guess this is this is um maybe I
- 80:48 don’t know uh I know you will correct me if I’m wrong and in in the narcissist
- 80:56 this is kind of unconscious then when he he
- 81:04 it’s it’s a it’s a way of of us to understand for us to understand how how
- 81:12 the the process o occurs in his mind. Yes.
- 81:18 But it is unconscious. It is. And when we are talking about a
- 81:24 psychopath is conscious. Yes. He’s aware what is of course he’s testing them specifically.
- 81:30 So he if he approaches this old couple with money, he will not test them generally. He will test them about fantasy about for money. We’ll test them
- 81:37 about money fantasy. We’ll test them generally. And that this point
- 81:44 uh when is conscience and when is not is
- 81:50 where victims fall. Yes. Because the psychopath is the unconscious of the narcissist. You could
- 81:57 look at it this way. The psychopath is the unconscious of the narcissist. If the unconscious of a narcissist became a
- 82:04 human being, it would be a psychopath in a way in many ways. But the psychopath is focused on on
- 82:11 goals that are external to the fantasy whereas the narcissist is focused on goals that are in the in the fantasy,
- 82:17 internal to the fantasy like love, intimacy, and so on. So that’s that’s
- 82:23 the difference between them. But the mechanisms are the same and the the capture of the victims is the same. The victimization process is the same and so on so forth. The difference is that the
- 82:35 psychopath is much more in control of the process. Yes. Much more in control. Whereas narcissist, the process is in control of the narcissist. Mhm. The shared fantasy in narcissism is an
- 82:47 inexurable internal dynamic that takes over the narcissist. And the narcissist
- 82:53 is as much a victim of the shared fantasy as the intimate partner for example or the friend will. We could say the uh the fantasy drives the the narcissist
- 83:08 and the psychopath drives the fantasy. Yes, it’s quite true. With the
- 83:14 psychopath, the fantasy is a tool. With the narcissist, the narcissist is the fantasy’s tool.
- 83:20 Yes, that’s the way to look at it. That’s why people are very wrong when they say the
- 83:27 narcissist is scheming, is cunning, is manipulative, he’s planning everything, is evil, is gaslighting. This is not a
- 83:34 narcissist. That’s a psychopath. No, he’s as victim of the fantasy as the the person, the partner.
- 83:42 And this is very serious because um
- 83:48 in the in in the large sense the partner have to be concerned about his narcissistic partner
- 84:00 because I I don’t know maybe some No, I just didn’t understand the No, it’s because it’s a mental health
- 84:08 issue. Oh, yeah. You’re living with a crazy person. It’s very is very serious.
- 84:14 Yes. Quberg thought and I fully concur fully agree that uh narcissism and
- 84:22 borderline are conditions which are not much less severe than psychosis.
- 84:28 That’s why he he is described them as pseudocyscychotic. It’s a borderline is
- 84:34 on the border between psychosis and neurosis. And he said that narcissism is a defense against borderline but it’s a
- 84:40 borderline state. So he thought that narcissism borderline a psychotic state. You are living with a totally crazy
- 84:47 person. Totally crazy who cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy internal external. It’s a mess
- 84:53 and it’s a dangerous mess. Of course it’s a dangerous. This is something this has to be clear for for people in
- 85:00 general because if you’re living with a person as for example I I was there with my
- 85:08 mother. I’m 46. I I I don’t know. It It’s a lot of time
- 85:15 for you to to stay w with a person uh with a a mental illness like like
- 85:23 narcissist because it’s dangerous. You can literally literally see
- 85:30 the the when when the person detached detached from from reality. It’s clear how how
- 85:41 these people who complain about the the narcissist uh inside their homes, how
- 85:49 can how can they see when this is happening?
- 85:57 What direction they are looking? Because it’s clear when the person is not in
- 86:04 reality. That’s that’s the reason I I told you
- 86:11 sometimes that these people online they
- 86:17 are describing psychopath for sure. Yes, I agree. They are they are not victims victims of
- 86:25 narcissistic abuse. I agree. They are victims of psychopath. they
- 86:31 apply the that applies the narcissistic cycle.
- 86:37 It’s a universal strategy. It’s it applies to border lines as well. All of them are using the same strategy. The
- 86:43 the key question is awareness or consciousness. Whereas in borderline and narcissism it’s totally unconscious. In
- 86:50 the psychopath is conscious. But they are identical from the from this point. For example, the narcissist
- 86:57 um contrapulates. He creates counterfactual unrealistic stories.
- 87:03 Yes. And then he convinces you that the way you perceive reality is wrong because
- 87:10 the confabulation is right. So from your point of view, it is gaslighting.
- 87:16 Mhm. You are experiencing as a victim gaslighting. Yes. But the narcissist is not gaslighting
- 87:23 you because he believes that the confabulation is real. He is not trying
- 87:29 to alter your perception of reality to in order to manipulate you, but he’s trying to alter your perception of
- 87:35 reality because he honestly believes that you are wrong about reality. So the
- 87:41 narcissist motivation is not gaslighting. However, the outcome for you as a victim is gaslighting.
- 87:49 So the psychopath is gaslighting you because he wants to manipulate you. The narcissist is gaslighting you because he
- 87:55 is gaslighting himself. Yes, totally. And so these are the differences. The
- 88:02 involvement in the fantasy is total in narcissism and borderline. And the
- 88:08 psychopath, if the psychopath is zero, is not involved in fantasy at all. He
- 88:14 created it for you to manipulate you, to take something from you, to abuse you, to exploit you, to and so so yes, people
- 88:20 are confusing. Of course, they are confusing. The primary sin
- 88:28 of the victim is that when the there’s a stage in the fantasy that she likes very much and she collaborates with this stage, she colludes.
- 88:40 She wants the fantasy. She begs for it and that is the idealization phase.
- 88:46 In the idealization phase, victims realize it’s a fantasy but they love it.
- 88:53 They want more of it. They encourage a narcissist to intensify the fantasy to
- 89:00 make it all pervasive to to replace reality with fantasy. So it is the it is
- 89:07 the victims that actually provide positive reinforcement for the narcissist to
- 89:14 enhance or increase his behaviors, his fantasy prone and fantasy creation behaviors. When the victim is idealized, the victim loves it. She falls in love with herself
- 89:28 through the narcissist’s gaze, she is now perfect. She’s dropped dead, gorgeous. She’s amazingly intelligent.
- 89:34 She’s and she it’s addictive. She becomes addicted to it. She doesn’t want to let go. She wants more of it. And
- 89:42 this is the primary sin. So later on when the fantasy turns sour,
- 89:49 goes south and the victim begins to be devalued and and so on, it’s already too
- 89:55 late. It’s already too late to wake up and say, “Oh, that’s a fantasy.” Because at that point, if you wake up as a
- 90:02 victim and say, “This evaluation is a fantasy. It’s not about me. It’s not me.” Then you must admit that the
- 90:10 idealization was also not you. And you can’t do that because you’re affected. You’re emotionally invested in the in
- 90:17 the in the idealization phase where you were perfect, brilliant, gorgeous,
- 90:24 amazing, unprecedented. In other words, you cannot give up on the fantasy in the
- 90:30 devaluation phase without giving up on the fantasy in the idealization phase. And you don’t want to give it up. You’re
- 90:37 addicted already. It’s an addiction. And this is the core of trauma bonding.
- 90:44 The core of trauma bonding is not about giving up on the narcissist. People say trauma bonding is you cannot give up on the narcissist because they trauma bonded you. Intermittent reinforcement and that’s not true at all. The trauma bonding is you cannot give up on your
- 91:00 idealized version on the idealized version of you on the narcissist’s gaze.
- 91:07 You cannot give up on seeing yourself through the narcissist’s eyes as a perfect entity worthy of course of love, lovable entity because you’re perfect.
- 91:18 You’re flawless. First time in your life you feel beloved
- 91:24 and justly so. You deserve the love. You deserve love not because you are doing anything but you deserve the love because you are you. What do you mean you are you? You are the ideal you.
- 91:38 Who would give up on something like that? That is not a narcissist. It’s exactly what a child experiences
- 91:44 with a mother, you know. So the narcissist
- 91:50 offers you the idealization. I call it the hall of mirrors because you see yourself everywhere. The narcissist
- 91:56 offers you to the idealization as a bait, as a lure. Gets you addicted on this drug of seeing yourself as perfect.
- 92:03 It’s a drug. You get addicted and then you would continue with the fantasy when even when it goes bad and dangerous, you would continue with it because you can’t give up the first part. You’re addicted
- 92:15 to an image of you to a version of you that is by definition unrealistic and fantastic.
- 92:22 That is of course self-enhancement is playing the narcissist is playing on your grandiosity.
- 92:28 Yes. But even when you’re in the idealization phase, you know it’s nonsense.
- 92:34 You know it. The narcissist tells you, for example, “Wow, uh, you are drop dead
- 92:41 gorgeous.” Okay, you know, you’re not badl looking, but you’re not drop dead gorgeous. Yes. Or he tells you, “You’re the most intelligent person I’ve ever met in my life, and you know, you’re a bit on the stupid side.” People know
- 92:53 it’s not true, but it is still addictive because of the maternal echo.
- 93:00 The mother loves the baby this way. For the mother to raise a baby, she
- 93:06 needs to idealize the baby because raising babies seriously sucks. It’s a
- 93:12 shitty job, you know. So, the mother needs to idealize the baby and offers
- 93:18 the baby idealization and unconditional love because of the baby’s perfection, perceived perfection. Yes, it’s a perfect entity. Therefore, it’s
- 93:29 lovable without further conditions because it’s perfect. So, it’s
- 93:35 unconditional love. When the narcissist idealizes you, you experience
- 93:41 unconditional idealizing maternal love. This is the maternal echo. And this is
- 93:48 what you cannot give up on. Your second childhood in effect, you cannot give up on this. And not because you believe it.
- 93:57 No victim believes the nonsense in idealization, you know. It’s a bit comic even. It’s a bit funny. Not because you
- 94:04 believe it because but because believing it creates what Freud called the oceanic feeling. Believing it h renders you, infantilizes you, renders you a very
- 94:17 very a newborn, a baby which then can be loved who then can be loved by a
- 94:24 maternal figure which is a narcissist. Professor, could we consider this as an indicative
- 94:33 that this victim um could be a narcissist because uh what you describe is
- 94:45 everything the narcissists are prone to. No, everyone is susceptible. Everyone is
- 94:52 vulnerable to this because reexperiencing
- 94:58 the unconditional maternal love is very primordial. It’s preverbal. It’s it it
- 95:05 nothing can resist it. Not the defenses, not life experience, not cognitions, not
- 95:11 emotions, not knowledge, not nothing can resist this. So because it goes really really really
- 95:18 deep down to the point where you were indistinguishable from your mother. You were in a symbiotic symbiotic state. You were one merger fusion call it what you want. You were one entity. So when the narcissist regresses you there when he
- 95:34 regresses you there at that point you’re 6 months old. Of course you have no no way to resist this. No one does. No one
- 95:43 is resistant to this mentally ill, mentally healthy. That’s why many many victims of narcissists are not mentally
- 95:49 ill. This is in accordance to the point three Yeah. of the that list that that casting and
- 95:59 um we we’ll take a break in a few minutes. Okay. No, no, please ask this last question. We’ll take a break and then we continue.
- 96:06 Okay. Uh I forgot. Uh this is in accordance with point three in the auditioning. Yes. Because this this uh it seems to be the the test to to know if the the
- 96:21 potential partner could be a narcissist too. It’s a it’s a way of because we can
- 96:30 identify some some there are people susceptible to this more than other people. Everyone is no
- 96:37 one is immune to this. No one is immune to this. If the manipulator, the psychopath for example, or the
- 96:43 narcissist unconsciously if they are good at what they do, no one
- 96:49 can resist this. However, it is true that some people will um will exceed, will will concede,
- 96:58 will succumb, will surrender much faster, much faster. And this is for example
- 97:04 people who did not experience maternal love who never experienced maternal people who have what Rosenberg calls
- 97:11 self-love deficit. People who who
- 97:17 believe that if they were given a second chance at a second childhood things would turn out to be better. The
- 97:24 narcissist is like that. The narcissist believes that a second childhood is so some groups of people would be more
- 97:31 susceptible and would react much faster like iminology would react much faster
- 97:37 to this kind of approach but everyone would react. There would not be a single person who would be able to resist this. This point three we can consider as
- 97:49 unconscious. All the auditioning is unconscious. It’s not the narcissist arrival at least now
- 97:55 with J. All the auditioning is unconscious. For example, the narcissist on on the first encounter or second
- 98:01 encounter begins to behave like a mother. Mhm. He begins to uh pay attention to to your
- 98:09 well-being. He encourages you to drink more or to eat more. He asks you if
- 98:15 you’re okay. He taps your head. So, he’s beginning to behave like a mother. And then he’s observing your reaction to the maternal cues, maternal behavioral cues. He sees how you react. But that is not done because he has a playlist and you know, okay, I have to do now this point
- 98:32 4.1. No, he’s doing it because this is it’s a predator. That’s how he behaves.
- 98:38 It’s it’s much narcissist is much closer to a virus or to a lion.
- 98:45 Whereas a psychopath is truly evil. If you want to associate the word evil with something, it’s not narcissism. It’s
- 98:52 psychopathy. If you want, I’m against it. But the narcissist is not evil. It just is. Mhm. Is no more evil than a virus who kills 5
- 99:04 million people. It’s a It’s a program running. Yes. Exactly. Algorithm. It’s an algorithm. And that’s why I keep
- 99:15 comparing narcissism or the narcissist to artificial intelligence. In artificial intelligence, you have deep set algorithms that are so complex that the behavior of
- 99:28 the of the artificial intelligence is not reducible, not traceable back to the
- 99:35 algorithm. The algorithm produces complexity that cannot be reduced to the algorithm. Mhm. on the one hand and on the other hand it
- 99:46 creates a pretty good simulation of a human being and that’s if you put the two together that’s the narcissist. There are deep set algorithms for example the shared fantasy deep set
- 99:58 algorithms. They’re super complex and they produce working together enormous
- 100:04 complexity. The complexity is so enormous in narcissism that it cannot be traced back mapped reduced to the algorithm or to any specific algorithm
- 100:16 cannot on the one hand and this complexity creates a simulation of a
- 100:22 human being that is beyond convincing and that’s why I keep saying that we are
- 100:29 waiting for artificial intelligence in the next 50 years. We already here. It’s here. It’s already here. And it’s been
- 100:36 here for millennia. Narcissists in my view
- 100:43 are not human. I know it’s politically incorrect to say this and so on, but they’re not human. Not in the sense that
- 100:49 they’re inhuman and evil. That’s not what I mean. They’re not human in the sense that to be human there are certain
- 100:57 minimal requirements, certain minimal prerequisites. Narcissists have no empathy.
- 101:04 They have no access to positive emotions. They cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. They cannot tell the difference between external and internal. So if you take all these away, what is left? What in
- 101:16 which sense are they human? They’re carbon based. I agree. But in which sense are they human? Do they have an
- 101:23 inner experience that is comparable to the inner experience of what we call humans? I don’t think so.
- 101:31 I think the inner experience of a narcissist and on this I am an authority more than any scholar in the world because I’m a narcissist. I think the inner experience of a narcissist is
- 101:43 incomparable to the inner experience of healthy normal people or even to the inner
- 101:49 experience of mental other mentally ill people. It’s really
- 101:57 uh idiosyncratic. It’s really bizarre. And uh the fact that narcissists simulate humanity very well on some cases doesn’t mean that they’re human.
- 102:09 It means that their algorithms and programming coding is super elaborate, highly complex. And ironically, it’s the mother that created the programming. The
- 102:20 mother is the super coder. She is the master programmer who created the narcissist. I think it’s a good point to take a break.
- 102:33 Okay.
