Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Narcissists Never Criticize: They Vanish YOU Instead

1. 00:01 Today I’m going to present you to you a very counterintuitive thesis. Narcissists never criticize you. Never. They seek to demolish you. They want to crush you, but they never criticize you. I’ll try to explain why. Narcissists do use what appears to be
2. 00:26 criticism, a language which is harsh and sadistic. But the aim, the motivation behind the usage of such language is different. It is not to criticize you. It is to eliminate your externality, obliterate your separateness, take away your autonomy and agency
3. 00:54 as an external object. Out of control, you are threatening. You’re menacing for two reasons. You could abandon and reject the narcissist, which would cause narcissistic motification. and you conflict with the internal object that represents you in the
4. 01:14 narcissist’s mind. And this creates a lot of dissonance and anxiety. The narcissist therefore needs to take away your life force to deanimate you to render you an inert object. And this is the main use of language in pathological narcissism.
5. 01:36 Narcissists do not criticize you because that which does not exist cannot be criticized. Narcissists are incapable of perceiving external objects. They interact only with internal objects internally. And so you don’t exist out there. And since you don’t exist out there, you
6. 02:02 could never ever be criticized. We can pass master only on that which exists or that whose existence we acknowledge. And that’s not the case with you. When we say this is missing, it’s a form of criticism. What we we really mean to say there is
7. 02:25 something that does not exist. There is something that is not in this which is in other words when we criticize something when we criticize someone we acknowledge the existence of that someone or that something. Criticism therefore would be very minutious
8. 02:50 ominous to the narcissist. By criticizing you, the narcissist would be admitting your external existence, accepting and acknowledging your separateness from him or her. Narcissist are unable and unwilling to do this for the reasons that I’ve mentioned.
9. 03:13 So criticism is out of bounds, out of question. To criticize is to communicate. However, you know, fiferously, however harshly, it’s still a form of communication. And to criticize you is to communicate with you, but it’s to communicate with
10. 03:32 you out there. The attempt to change you because criticism is goal oriented. The idea is to change you, to change your behavior, to change your trades, to change your choices and decisions, to change something in you. But an attempt to change some something in you
11. 03:52 involves implicitly and explicitly the recognition that you are out there and out of control, out of anyone’s control, away from anyone’s control. And that is something the Nazis would never countenance or even contemplate. Absence is discernable only against the
12. 04:15 background of existence. Criticism is aimed at changing. When I criticize you, I’m saying this thing, this trait, this behavior, this choice, this decision, this action, they’re missing in you. You’re missing these things and you need to have them. So a statement about absence
13. 04:39 is also a statement about existence. There is you and you’re missing something and I want you to change. So criticism is a change agent. It’s in many ways machavelian or manipulative. It relates to what is missing but also wishes to bring it about. And you can’t
14. 05:00 bring about something that is missing into another entity with another non- entity. You need you need an existing template, an existing entity, an existing someone, an existing something in order to criticize it, in order to change it. And this is where it all
15. 05:17 breaks down. Because narcissists cannot recognize that you’re an external object out there. They can’t admit it to themselves. They can never criticize you actually. This is not a mere sentence or a mere proposition. It is an assertion. Criticism is goal oriented.
16. 05:40 It strives to alter and modify that which exists with regards to its quantity, its quality, its functions, its program of vision and whatever its path. All these parameters of change cannot relate to an absolute absence. The narcissist is an absence
17. 06:02 masquerading as a presence. And that’s why narcissist reject criticism vehemently and aggressively. And the narcissist projects his own or her own absence onto you. As far as a narcissist is concerned, you are also an absence. Only the internal objects exist.
18. 06:22 And so the parameters of change emanate from the existence of an entity. Something must exist as a precondition for criticism. Only then can criticism be aired in that which exists. The quantity, quality or functions are wrong, lacking, altogether missing. That’s criticism.
19. 06:47 The common er error is to believe that we are criticizing the absence and it’s the outcome of the fact that we are making use of an ideal. We compare that which exists with a platonic idea or form which according to modern thinking does not really exist.
20. 07:11 So we compare that which exists with a potential, an idea, a symbol, um an an image, imagination, a piece of fiction, a narrative. And so that which exists is compared to that which does not exist. And this gives rise to criticism. But we sometimes
21. 07:35 make the mistake of believing that the criticism is about that which does not exist. It’s a mistake. And the narcissist makes this mistake time and again. The narcissist harbors
22. 07:49 an ideal image of you or a devalued image of you, a platonic ideal idea, a platonic form and interacts with that platonic form all the time, with that internal object, with that representation, with that introject all the time, with that snapshot, not with you. And then
23. 08:12 in his messed up mind, the narcissist believes that this internal object is actually external, is actually real, not realizing that it represents your absence in the outside world. And so the narcissist criticizes the internal object, but the criticism is not real because
24. 08:34 it’s not directed at an external objective object. It’s subjective. The criticism is subjective. It’s actually the narcissism criticizing himself, devaluing himself, playing around with internal figments of his imagination and mind, rearranging them, rearranging the furniture.
25. 08:58 It’s all internal. We feel that criticism is a product not of the process of comparison, but of these ideal ideas or forms. And since they do not exist, the thing that is criticized is felt to not exist either. That’s how the narcissist feels.
26. 09:20 But why does the narcissist assign the critical act, the act of criticizing and its outcomes, not to the real, but to the ideal. again because he cannot perceive the real. He lives immorted, immersed and embedded in a fantasy. He renounces reality. The ideal is jud judged by the
27. 09:45 narcissist to be preferable, superior, a criterion of measurement, a yard stick of perfection. The narcissist prefers to dwell inside his mind than outside it where the risk of mortification or injury is ever present. And so when the narcissist verbalizes
28. 10:08 what appears to be criticism is actually talking to himself. He’s not trying to modify you because you don’t exist. He’s trying to modify or alter or change the internal object. not you. It’s an internal dialogue, in a dialogue, not not an external one, not a real one.
29. 10:31 The narcissist is inclined to regard the ideal. And when I say the ideal, it could be a devalued um a devalued image because the devalued image is perfect in its devaluation. The devaluation is total and the idealized image is perfect in its idealization. All these internal
30. 10:51 objects are perfect. They’re flawless. The one they they they’re all encompassing. They they’re total. So the narcissist is inclined to regard these internal objects as the source rather than the byproduct or as the finished product of the critical process.
31. 11:13 Raw material and finished product. So everything takes place inside. Of course, the narcissist verbalizes many of these internal processes, but you should not mistake this verbalization for communication. It’s not communication. And it’s easy to refute this way of
32. 11:36 thinking, this intuitive assignment. Criticism is always quantitative. It can always be translated into quantitative measures or expressed in quantitative propositions whereas um other types of communication are not criticism is a trait of the real never
33. 11:58 of the ideal. That which emanates from the ideal is not likely to be quantitative but qualitative. You could of course criticize qualitative aspects of an object out there but then there is goal orientation and demands for performance. Criticism is always
34. 12:17 coupled. Exactly like anger. Criticism is directional and exactly like anger it seeks to modify something to change something. And this is why narcissists have enormous problems with anger and with criticism because of their they’re cut off from reality. They’re unable to
35. 12:37 perceive the externality of others. Criticism must be seen to be the outcome of the interaction between the real and the ideal, not the absolute emanation from the ideal, the way the narcissist perceives it. In short, when the narcissist criticizes
36. 12:56 you, he’s criticizing the internal object that represents you in his mind. And he’s criticizing the internal object because of inexorable psychological dynamics that have nothing to do with you. You will learn nothing from the narcissist criticism because it’s
37. 13:13 unreal. It’s grounded in fantasy. It’s it emanates from an impaired reality testing. It’s delusional. It’s sick. It’s psychotic. Nothing to learn from it.