Why Narcissists MUST Abuse YOU (Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025) - Vaknin Transcripts

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Why Narcissists MUST Abuse YOU (Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025)

Summary

The seminar, organized by the Vaknin Vangelovska Foundation, provided an in-depth, research-based exploration of pathological narcissism, its impact on victims, and the complex dynamics of the shared fantasy between narcissists and those they manipulate. Key topics included the distinction between narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic style, the contagious nature of narcissism, and the profound psychological damage inflicted on victims, including epistemic injury and identity estrangement. The speaker also addressed misconceptions about narcissism, such as the myth of victim selection and the nature of narcissistic sexuality, promising further detailed discussions in subsequent sessions on coping, recovery, and healing. Why Narcissists MUST Abuse YOU (Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025)

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Abuse, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

November 19, 2025

Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Why Narcissists MUST Abuse YOU (Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025)

00:16 It’s one way to start a seminar. Never happened to me before, but it’s interesting. Uh the seminar is organized by the Vaknin Vangelovska Foundation. Vaknin is me. Vanelovska is what is left of my
00:32 wife after 27 years with me. So we are together. We have established
00:38 this foundation and this foundation will give grants to people who wish to continue my work in psychology, in
00:45 physics, in economics. So the grant application process is open. Um the foundation has a sizable
00:53 endowment. So the grants would be nice.
00:59 Those of you who wish to visit the the website, recommend it to others and so on so forth. Those of you who think who
01:07 find some interest in my work in psychology or physics or economics, you’re invited to apply on condition
01:14 that you possess an academic degree in the field. Of course, because my work is a bit advanced. And if you don’t possess
01:21 an academic degree, you would be you’d have difficulty to understand the nuances and intricacies of some of the
01:28 work. Yeah. Uh here we have the long-suffering
01:34 lawyers, Topenovski, law office, and they are they are the midwives. They
01:42 brought this baby this foundation into the world extremely patiently. To work
01:48 with me is not an easy thing, believe me. And but here we are. There is a foundation and we are good to go. and we’re launching the foundation in effect with this uh seminar.
02:01 So without further ado, I will get to the point. You didn’t come here to to hear about the foundation. I suspect you came here to discuss narcissism.
02:13 Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank
02:19 you. Thank you.
02:25 Now a few a few procedural points. I know that many of you fall asleep to my
02:31 voice. Do not dare to do it here. There will be repercussions. So,
02:39 and the second thing is I know that many of you are obsessed with my hair.
02:46 So, here it is. I mean live. You can’t touch it, but you can
02:52 definitely look at it as long as you wish. At least get something out of this
02:58 seminar. Yeah. Okay. One last thing. In this seminar,
03:04 I’m going to use I don’t think that these two go well together.
03:11 Okay. In this seminar, I’m going to use the N word a lot. Americans would
03:17 appreciate it. The N word is narcissist, not what you’re thinking. Get your minds
03:23 out of the gutter, narcissist. So there’ll be a lot of use of the nword. But the seminar is concerned
03:31 not with narcissism or not mainly with narcissism, but with the victims of narcissists or the survivors of narcissistic abuse or whatever the designation is, people who
03:43 have been exposed to narcissism. And I’m using the word exposure because
03:50 narcissism is a contagion and it has many many epidemi epidemiological
03:57 dimensions. In other in other words, it’s very reminiscent to a viral disease
04:03 in effect. And I’m not demonizing narcissists here. By the way, generally speaking, mental illness is contagious. We have a series of studies most
04:14 recently in schools. I think in Netherlands, I’m not quite sure where um
04:20 when they introduced a single diagnosed boy or girl into a classroom, about half
04:28 the classroom develop mental health symptoms within a few weeks. Diagnosible
04:34 mental health symptoms. Like everything else in human life, our states of mind are contagious, are
04:43 communicable. and we say communicable disease. Yes. So we we’re going to discuss people exposed to narcissists. The exposure could be could be as short as 30 seconds. Actually, there there have been quite a
05:00 few studies where people have been exposed to a photograph of a narcissist,
05:07 to a recording, audio recording of a narcissist, to a video as short as 30
05:13 seconds, and these people reacted with extreme discomfort
05:19 and and what we call the uncanny valley reaction. So, even minimal exposure has an impact.
05:27 Of course the impact if you’re exposed to analys lucky enough to be exposed to analysis for 30 seconds the impact is
05:33 passing but what if you’re exposed to analysis for 30 months
05:39 or let alone 30 years. This is the topic of of the seminar.
05:45 Evidence-based, science-based research into the impacts that pathological narcissism has on the narcissist human mill human environment
05:57 nearest and never dearest. So, but we can’t go there. We can’t
06:04 reach this stage. We can’t have this conversation until we have perused pathological
06:11 narcissism in general and the way the narcissist relates to people
06:17 interpersonal relationships something known as the shared fantasy.
06:23 So here is the structure of the seminar. We’re going to start today with a single lecture
06:29 which deals with what we know about pathological narcissism. Tomorrow we’re going to dedicate half a
06:37 day to the shared fantasy. We’re going to go very deep into the shared fantasy and I’m going to demonstrate to you that each and every stage and subphase and substage has an impact on you. Each and
06:50 every ingredient component and transition within the shirt fantasy has
06:56 a massive mental health impact on you and physical by the way body the body reacts as well.
07:02 So this is the shared fantasy and then the second half of the day tomorrow we are going to begin to
07:08 discuss coping strategies and so on. So the second half tomorrow we’re going to discuss what happens if you are trapped
07:18 if you cannot leave the shared fantasy if you cannot disentangle yourself you cannot break up you cannot terminate the
07:24 relationship what happens then what can you do to protect yourself and
07:30 so on the next two days will be dedicated to healing recovery and healing one piece of warning or a disclaimer or a caveat. I’m saying
07:43 all these words to demonstrate to you my command of the English language. So that was a joke by the way. So um
07:54 the seminar is founded on psychology. I don’t want to say science
08:01 because psychology as some of you may know in my view at least is a pseudocience. I have a PhD in physics and physics does not resemble in any way, shape or form
08:12 psychology. I’m sorry to say. However, psychology is a great descriptive discipline. It captures things. It’s akin to excellent literature. Dstoyki
08:24 was a great psychologist for example. So this seminar is founded is based and emanates from studies
08:37 and only studies no online nonsense self-styled experts empaths and other
08:45 such hype and and boulder dash frankly. So, we’re going to discuss only what we
08:52 do know. And what we do know sometimes is going
08:59 to contradict, I hope it does, contradict your prejudices and biases
09:06 and convictions and stereotypes. You’re going to find that many of the things that I say provoke in your resistance. Say, “It’s not true. My experience is
09:18 different.” you know, I’ve read online that it’s not true. I’ve heard I’ve been to forums and
09:24 YouTube channels and none of this is true. It’s this guy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, which essentially is
09:30 true, of course, but but this is this is the science. These
09:36 are the facts. Of course, we have a tendency when we are victimized, we have a tendency to
09:43 demonize the victimizer or the abuser. We have a tendency to
09:49 absolve ourselves from any contribution to our predicament. Of we are not we are never
09:55 guilty. We’re never responsible or not to that extent. We have a tendency to
10:01 objectify the abuser, make the abuser a force of nature, something supernatural in many ways. And
10:10 when you go online, you will find many channels that proclaim and promulgate that the narcissist is a demon or the outcome of demon possession.
10:22 I’ll be the last to argue with that, but still. Um,
10:28 you will see that I’m going to challenge and undermine many of the things you came here believing to be founded and because they’re not. There’s a lot of
10:40 nonsense going on, misuse and abuse of terminology, for
10:46 example, gaslighting. There is wrong information, utterly
10:52 wrong information and so on. And at the end of this se seminar, you will be on firm ground as far as studies are concerned. And I’m talking studies dated 2024 and so on. the recent cutting edge
11:05 bleeding edge research. Okay,
11:14 one last thing and you notice that I’m saying one last thing every few minutes.
11:20 So, one last thing online there’s a link to a booklet. It’s a booklet that I’ve written specially for you. It’s 40 pages and the booklet summarizes the recent the state-of-the-art when it comes to recovery and healing from narcissistic abuse.
11:37 Historically, some of you may know, some of you may not know and are about to find out. So, historically, I’m the guy
11:45 who coined the phrase narcissistic abuse in the late 80s. And I was the first to write a book
11:52 about narcissistic abuse. Book was published in 1997. Lydia is responsible for that. I threw
11:59 the manuscript into the trash bin and Lydia salvaged it together with my PhD diploma. By the way, I was at that period I was a bit self-destructive.
12:10 Um, and there was Lydia there and she, you know, there’s a story there was a rabbi, his name was Rabbi Aka,
12:21 Rabi Akiva for the Israelis here. Rabbi Akiva lived in the last in the second
12:27 part of the first century. He was born about um 15 years after Jesus after the
12:34 crucifixion. And he lived in what is today the state of Israel and and so on so forth. And
12:41 Rabbi Aka went away went away to study and
12:48 he became very famous. He became very famous. He didn’t have a YouTube channel, but he still became very
12:54 famous. And he returned to his to his home city. He returned with 24,000
13:03 students. Like Jesus had 12, you know, wasn’t much of an influencer,
13:09 mind you, but Rabbi Aka had 24,000. So Rabbi Akiva came with the 24,000 to to the gateway to the entrance to his
13:20 home city and a woman charged forth. She was badly dressed. By the way, it’s
13:26 described in the text that she was badly dressed. She was badly dressed, unckempt, and she was his age. He was
13:33 not young anymore. He was like, you know, 70. He died he died at the amazing age of 85.
13:39 And so she came forth and she uh fell on the on the ground and she
13:46 kissed his feet which I pretty much like. And then and then his students
13:52 shued her away. They said to her, “What are you doing, woman? Get away from him. You’re not worthy of touching him.” And
13:58 so and he stopped them. This was his wife, Rachel.
14:04 And he stopped his students and he said to them, “What you have, what I have and what
14:11 what I know and what you know is hers.”
14:19 What is mine and what is yours is hers. She deserves the credit, not me, not
14:26 you. Same with my wife Lydia. What is mine and what is yours will become yours is hers.
14:41 Time to start the seminar. I know you don’t believe me yet, but let’s see.
14:48 Yesterday I wrote something and published it on uh Instagram. That’s the adolescent in me. I still have an
14:54 Instagram account. I published something and I I posted it on Instagram and I said that self-sufficiently
15:01 self-sufficiency I’m sorry is a delusion because we are all dependent on life
15:07 forms. For example, what would you be without your gut bacteria?
15:13 You wouldn’t be much. We all dependent on other life forms. But the narcissist
15:20 pretends to be self-sufficient. That is the core issue in narcissism. The pretension to self-sufficiency. It’s a pretention of course because narcissism is a form of extreme dependency. It’s actually a kind of addictive
15:37 disorder. The narcissist is addicted to input and feedback from other people
15:45 known as narcissistic supply. It’s an addict who is highly dependent and pretends to need no one, to love no one, to care for no one, pretends that
15:57 he could live alone and is perfectly is is perfectly godlike, encompasses the the whole universe. And yet there is enormous dependency
16:09 there. It is a denial of this dependency that is narcissism. We call this process compensation.
16:17 Narcissism therefore is a compensatory process.
16:23 The narcissist compensates for something and it is up to us as the detectives
16:29 that we are to find out what is a narcissist compensating for
16:36 to put it more more collo colloquially what is a narcissist hiding? What is he hiding? There is a feeling with a narcissist of imminent and
16:47 imminent duplicity. As if what you see is not always what you get. There is the narcissist and the
16:58 narcissist once removed and there is daylight between them. It
17:04 is this that gives rise to the uncanny valley reaction which I will discuss a
17:10 bit later. And so the narcissist pretends that he is not. I’m saying he
17:16 by the way 50% of all narcissists are women. That’s not some vaknin. That is a
17:22 diagnostic and statistical manual edition five text revision 2022. Finally
17:28 the DSM accepted that half of all narcissists are women. While previous editions 1980, the DSM3, 2000, the DSM4, the text revisions in
17:41 between, previous editions insisted that 75% of narcissists are men.
17:49 So, we don’t know exactly why the why this happened, why now half of all narcissists are women. We think, we
17:56 speculate in the academic community that it’s because women became much more masculine. These are studies by Lisa Wade and many others that demonstrate conclusively
18:09 that the self-perception and self-concept of women has changed dramatically. And now women perceive
18:16 themselves the way men used to perceive themselves in the 1980s.
18:22 So women describe themselves in way more stereotypically masculine terms. And
18:30 because narcissism has been always associated with masculinity, it was a masculinity disorder. Then of course as
18:38 women become more masculine, they become more narcissistic and don’t tell anyone
18:44 more psychopathic as well. Now half of all narcissists are women. I’m going to use he. I’m going to use the male gender pronouns because this is
18:55 good literature. This is Victorian. In good English literature, we use the male
19:02 gender pronoun because we are chauvinists.
19:08 Okay, we are getting there. So there is a pretention pretension to independence, pretention to personal autonomy,
19:20 pretention to superiority. These are all forms of self enhancement.
19:26 That’s a clinical term by the way, self-enhancement. Colloquially,
19:33 vernacularly we say self agrandisement. But the correct term is self-enhancement. And I will explain why a bit later.
19:48 People around the narcissist, especially intimate partners,
19:54 suffer betrayal. They’re betrayed. I’ll explain in a minute how and why they are
20:00 betrayed. But one thing is important to understand. The narcissist
20:06 interacts with other people regardless of their role or capacity
20:13 identically. So, the narcissist would interact with his or her intimate partner exactly the
20:20 same way the narcissist would interact with a friend, so-called friend, exactly the same way the narcissist would interact with his or her colleagues, exactly the same way the narcissist would interact with a pastor in church or with a neighbor. So
20:38 there is a scheme there is a scheme called the shared fantasy which the
20:45 narcissist uses in all his interpersonal interactions.
20:51 What I’ve just told you is mindboggling because healthy people construct each
20:58 relationship from the ground from the ground level up. When you interact with
21:04 your intimate partner, your interaction is never the same as with your colleagues, which is never the same as
21:12 with your neighbors, which is never the same as with the IRS agent that visits you after the seminar. So each relationship of a healthy normal
21:24 person is specially constructed idiosyncratically constructed. We don’t take the same scheme and we
21:35 apply it everywhere. The narcissist does apply it everywhere. And the reason is
21:41 the narcissist is unable to perceive you at all.
21:47 this it would be very difficult for you to wrap your mind around this. We’re going to come to it a bit later. I’m giving you just highlights. But the narcissist is unable to perceive
21:59 your separateness and your externality. As far as a narcissist is concerned, you
22:05 are not external and you are definitely not separate from him. And because you
22:11 are not external and you’re not separate, because you are merely elements and figments in the
22:17 narcissist’s big playground, his mind, then he treats all of you identically
22:24 because you’re all internal objects. So I’m beginning to point out to you, I hope that the differences in nar with with
22:36 nar differences between narcissism and healthy normal people are not minor.
22:42 We are not talking about someone who is like me for example obnoxious. We are not talking about someone who is haughty also like me. We are not talking merely about someone who is a bit disempathic, doesn’t care
22:58 about people. So when you when you go around labeling everyone a narcissist, I mean your
23:04 ex-wife is definitely a narcissist, but your ex-husband is a narcissist. The neighbor you’ve just had an argument with is definitely beyond any clinical doubt a narcissist. and of course
23:14 politicians and show business and entertainment and ultimately you discover that half the population
23:20 according to the UN census are narcissistic. You can see that this has nothing to do with pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism is a serious
23:32 severe mental mental illness severe. so severe that the father of the field, Otto Kernburgg, who is still alive by
23:44 the way, the father of the field suggested at some point in 1975 that narcissistic personality disorder as well as borderline personality disorders are forms of psychosis,
23:57 pseudocys. They are on the verge on the border of psychosis, hence border line.
24:05 They’re almost psychotic. These people are almost psychotic. Narcissists are almost psychotic. And in many many ways,
24:12 narcissists are psychotic. So of course, statistically, it’s highly
24:18 improbable that all the people you label as narcissists nonchalantly are actually
24:24 narcissists. Because as you will see when we delve deeper into the rabbit hole, narcissism is a fantasmagoria.
24:33 It’s a surrealistic landscape of utter devastation of all mental processes, mental constructs and so on so forth. It’s a lens it’s a dreamcape more like a
24:45 nightmare escape of unprecedented proportions which in many ways exceeds
24:51 even the even the desolation and devastation of the borderline.
24:57 It was Kernburgg who said that narcissism, pathological narcissism is a
25:03 defense against borderline personality organization. So because it’s a defense, it’s an added layer of mental of mental illness.
25:17 We have borderline personality disorder and we have an added layer of mental
25:23 illness which is the defense against the borderline organization.
25:29 At the core of the experience at the core of the experience with the narcissist exposure to narcissism. Yes.
25:35 At the core is a sense of betrayal. Why do you feel betrayed repeatedly and
25:41 constantly? By the way, why do you feel betrayed? There are several layers to the
25:47 betrayal. There’s the obvious betrayal. The obvious betrayal is he cheats on you or she cheats on you. The obvious
25:53 betrayal is rejection, devaluation, discard. These are obvious betrayals.
25:59 They’re trivial betrayals. But there is a much deeper layer, much deeper layer
26:05 of betrayal because the narcissist does not perceive you as external objects. Because the
26:12 narcissist converts you into an internal object, a figment, nonreal.
26:19 The narcissist continue to interact with a version of you which is never you.
26:25 So the narcissist would interact with an idealized version of you, but not with
26:31 you. The narcissist would interact with a devalued version of you, but not with
26:37 you. Ultimately, you perceive this as rejection.
26:44 If I re if a narcissist refuses to interact with you as you are,
26:51 if the narcissist insists on changing you in his mind into an idealized
26:57 version, into a devalued version, anything but you.
27:03 Anything is better than you. Like that’s rejection. That’s betrayal.
27:10 And you feel it. Even if you deny it, and most of you deny it. Most most people exposed to pathological narcissism deny in a minute. We’ll come to that. Even when you do deny it, in
27:23 your unconscious, deep inside, when the narcissist tells you, “Wow, you’re drop
27:29 dead gorgeous. You’re amazing. You’re hyper intelligent. You’re unprecedented. I’ve
27:35 never had such an experience like that in my life. You’re the one and only. That’s the first date. The second date
27:42 is let’s get married. The third date, how many children we will have together. So this elacrity,
27:48 this elacrity, this intensity, they are unreal. You perceive the lack
27:56 of reality in this. You you you somehow understand that it’s performative. It’s
28:02 a kind of performance not for your benefit for the narcissist’s benefit and there’s a sense a settling unsettling sense settling unsettling sense of
28:13 betrayal because who wants to be loved for who they are not.
28:19 You you want to be loved for who you are. You don’t want to be loved for who you are not.
28:26 And never mind how many times I will tell the narcissist will tell you you are um hyper intelligent if you know yourself to be of average intelligent.
28:37 The gap between his overt ostentatious assessment of you the love bombing. The
28:44 gap between the love bombing and who you know yourself to be. This is the gap that grates and creates the feeling the
28:52 feeling that you are being ignored. rejected, betrayed. Love bombing
28:58 therefore creates an an amazing um reaction of a counterintuitive
29:05 reaction of betrayal actually. So you are betrayed
29:12 and this is the most fundamental uh level. At some point the narcissist forces you to regulate him. That is common in
29:24 borderline personality disorder as well. These disorders, this family of
29:31 disorders, the family from hell, the erratic dramatic family of personality
29:38 disorders, also known as cluster B personality disorders. What is common to all of them is a problem with self-regulation.
29:49 Self-regulation in healthy people, in normal people, is the ability to somehow stabilize
29:59 emotions before they become overwhelming, somehow stabilize moods before they
30:06 consume you and paralyze you, and somehow stabilize cognitions before you become psychotic and and over the top. This ability to stabilize the internal environment, these internal shock
30:22 absorbers, they are known as self-regulation. The people who suffer from cluster B or not suffer, most of them don’t suffer
30:33 from cluster B personality disorders, these people have problems with selfregulation. The
30:42 only way they can regulate is from the outside via other people.
30:49 So the borderline for example, she would find an intimate partner. She I’m saying she again it’s sexist. I hope and I’m saying she because uh until
31:01 recently we believed that the majority of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder were women. This
31:07 was gender bias of course. Today, half of all people diagnosed with borderline are men. But I’m still using she for historical reasons. So the borderline would choose
31:18 an intimate partner and she would outsource outsource her regulation regulatory
31:26 functions. She would outsource them to the intimate partner. She would expect the intimate partner to keep her happy.
31:34 In other words, to stabilize her mood, her labile moods. She would expect the intimate partner to control her emotions. She would expect the intimate partner to tell her what’s real and what’s not. To substitute the ego function of reality testing. So this is called external
31:52 regulation. When inside there is nothing but absence and emptiness.
31:59 These disorders they are absences masquerading as presences.
32:07 They are they are empty. This emptiness pretending to be something. Nothing pretending to be something. By the way,
32:14 that’s not some vaknin. That happens to be the diagnostic and statistical manual. One of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder is
32:26 internal emptiness. And most of the work done since the
32:32 1970s until today deals with this empty skitsoid core with
32:39 this hollow void with howling winds where a person should have been.
32:48 Thirsten thirst not like thirsty but thirsting. Tu t h u r s t i n. She came
32:56 up with a with a metaphor of a black hole. She said there’s a black hole. She
33:02 was referring to autistic children by the way which today is politically incorrect. So today we apply this
33:10 metaphor to narcissists and to a large extent to border lines less than narcissists but mostly to narcissist and
33:16 psychopaths. They have this black hole. Nothing can escape.
33:23 Nothing can escape this black hole. And yet it is also a black box.
33:29 We have no idea what’s happening inside. Is there a way to decipher and decode the narcissist? Is this an enigma? If we are sufficiently versed in
33:40 cryptography, can we read the mind of the narcissist? The answer is no. There is nothing to
33:48 read. There is no one at home. There’s there’s no home.
33:55 When you have interacted with a narcissist, if you were unfortunate enough to interact with a narcissist,
34:03 you are actually interacting with the outer darkness, with oblivion, with deep space. If
34:11 you’re religious, you know, you can use these metaphors. You have been interacting with a non entity, a
34:19 nonbeing. And this of course is a highly terrifying and deconstructing experience. You know, we can cope pretty well with
34:31 vicious people, evil people, wicked people, the most extreme criminal.
34:38 Why can we cope with these people? Because we have something in common with these people. There is a commonality.
34:45 There is a shared ground. We can understand them somehow.
34:51 someone who murdered. We are not murderers yet. We’ll see by the end of the seminar what will happen. But we are
34:58 not murderers yet. But we can understand the kind of rage
35:04 or even calculation that could lead to murder. It’s not outside the remit of
35:11 what it is to be human of the human experience. But when we come across the narcissist,
35:19 there is no common ground. There is no commonality. There is an imitation, a
35:26 mimicry, an expert simulation of a human being,
35:32 standing before you or interacting with you or dating you or having sex with you
35:38 or loving you, claiming to love you. And this expert simulation
35:44 gives rise to what we know or what we call the uncanny valley reaction. The
35:50 uncali valley reaction was first described uh by a Japanese
35:56 uh his name was Masahiro Mori in 1970. That’s 70.
36:03 Yes, I was already alive. Um can guess my age. So Masahiwa Mori in
36:11 1970 came up with the idea of the with the discovery of the uncanny valley.
36:17 Masahamori very appreciiently and very prophetically said when robots will
36:24 become humanoid when you will not be able to tell the difference between a robot and a human
36:31 being anymore. In other words, when a robot will pass what is known as the Turing test. When robots will be
36:37 indistinguishable from from human beings, people will have a dis uh a reaction of
36:45 extreme discomfort. We call it dissonance. People will have a dissonant reaction.
36:51 The closer the robot resembles a human being, the higher the dissonance.
37:00 When you come across a narcissist, you come across a simulation of a full-fledged human being. Something is
37:06 all right. Something is missing. Something is off key. Something is not
37:12 well put together. This is halfbaked. It’s like a work in progress with no
37:18 progress. So you react with internal discomfort.
37:24 And this is the uncanny value reactions. Now if you go online, everyone in his
37:30 dog will tell you this is not true. The narcissist is a great actor,
37:36 thespian skills, and the narcissist succeeded to deceive you
37:42 sometimes for years because a narcissist is this great actor and succeeded to pull the wool over your eyes and mislead
37:49 you and you had no idea it’s a narcissist until much much later when the mask the mask fell. Studies do not
37:58 support this. Actually no study supposed this of dozens
38:05 that is absolutely untrue. It’s a postf facto justification. You
38:11 feel uncomfortable. Studies show that you are aware of the
38:17 narcissism. There is a scholar by the name of Lambadi and she came up with the with an
38:25 she’s from Harvard University. She conducted like decades of studies and she said that it takes 3 seconds. Most studies settle on 30 seconds.
38:37 Within 30 seconds you know that something is wrong with this person. Absolutely no why you’re denying it.
38:45 This is one of the issues we’ll discuss in the seminar. But you are denying it.
38:51 Possibly later you feel stupid. No one wants to feel stupid.
38:58 So you’ve been manipulated, right? So it’s one possibility. There others I think more more relevant reasons. We’ll come to it a bit later.
39:09 The minute you meet the narcissist, there is an inexurable
39:15 series of steps in a machinery that is set in motion.
39:21 This machinery is impersonal. It is activated and triggered with every
39:27 encounter with every kind of person in any role. And this is the machinery of the shared fantasy.
39:33 The shared fantasy lures you in, baits you and then spits you out and you are
39:42 transformed by it. We will discuss the shared fantasy tomorrow in great detail
39:48 and I will introduce to you some pretty shocking facts about the shared fantasy
39:54 and what is really going on in the mind of the narcissist and in your mind when you’re exposed to the shared fantasy. It’s one of the most amazing
40:05 psychological processes or dynamics or mechanisms that I know of.
40:12 And there is little that I don’t know in psychology. So it’s an it’s absolutely
40:18 possibly the most amazing thing I’ve ever come across. Regrettably, it was not my idea. The shared fantasy was
40:25 first described by Sander Ser in 1988. In 1989, I’m sorry.
40:35 Okay.
40:48 Before we proceed, we must make a distinction between narcissistic personality disorder,
40:56 narcissistic style and dark personalities such as dark triad and dark tetrd personalities. They are not the same.
41:07 Everything you’ve learned online from self-styled experts, discard. Unfortunately, there’s not a trash bin big enough for this. Almost everything because they would tell you that dark triad personalities are narcissists. They’re not.
41:23 Let me disambiguate. Narcissistic style is someone who is
41:30 obnoxious, someone who is haughty, arrogant, someone who is dismpathic, a little exploitative or a lot
41:36 exploitative and so on so forth. Someone you wouldn’t want to get married to unless he’s very rich of course and and
41:43 so on. So this kind of person has a narcissistic style, but this person is
41:50 possessed of empathy, is able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.
41:58 and can can make the distinction between internal objects and external objects.
42:05 This is the narcissistic style and we believe that the incidence and prevalence of narcissistic style is increasing dramatically has been increasing dramatically over the past 40 years. Studies by Tuen and Campbell, for
42:22 example, starting in 2009 up to 2018, these studies have shown
42:30 that among young people, among young people, people under the age of 25, believe it or not, adolescence today is until the age of 21 or 25. Okay. So
42:41 among these late adolescents um the prevalence of narcissistic style
42:49 has quintupled five times higher. So narcissistic style is becoming the bontonon because it’s a positive adaptation. In other words, if you have a narcissistic style, you’re a winner.
43:05 You get places. You accomplish things. you become a celebrity or whatever, especially today with a technology, an
43:12 enabling technology such as social media, YouTube and so on. So today it pays, it pays to have narcissistic
43:20 style. And so of course it’s proliferating, but do not confuse narcissistic style with narcissistic
43:27 personality disorder. Here are the figures. the the prevalence
43:33 of narcissistic personality disorder in the general population is 1.7. So in
43:39 this kind of classroom we would have 0.7 narcissists. Have you ever seen 0.7
43:45 narcissists? It’s a terrifying thing to behold. So in other words, you have met a lot fewer narcissists than you can than you believe. A lot fewer.
43:58 It’s only because No, that’s not true. That’s another
44:04 myth. First of all, it’s not true. Uh covert narcissists are attend therapy on in
44:15 much higher rates than the general population. So there’s there are studies by Pinkas
44:21 2009 and others and these studies there are about 40 studies by now show that
44:27 narcissists actually end up in therapy at a rate higher than the general
44:34 population and definitely higher than psychotics for example
44:40 higher than borderline personality disorder even. Why is that? Because every narcissist goes through a covert phase. Another myth is that there are overt narcissists and covert narcissists.
44:58 That is no longer the way we see narcissism and hasn’t been the way we see narcissism since 2012.
45:06 Today we believe that all narcissists are sometimes overt and sometimes covert. All narcissists go through overt phases and covert phases, especially if they
45:19 experience collapse or motification. When the narcissist goes through a covert phase, he is much more likely to
45:27 attend therapy than the general population. And because all narcissists
45:33 go through a covert phase, all of them, then this means that all narcissists in
45:40 effect end up in therapy. There are other reasons. For example,
45:46 today the awareness of narcissism is much higher. So a spouse would push her husband or
45:53 her his wife to go to therapy, which wouldn’t have happened 20 years ago.
45:59 Today a spouse would say listen I think you’re a narcissist because I watched some Vakn’s videos which makes me very
46:05 hated and you should you should go to therapy you should you should attend therapy and it happens even courts are
46:13 more aware uh guardians and so on. So the increasing awareness of narcissism
46:19 pushes narcissists to clinical settings. And today to say that narcissist do not
46:25 attend therapy and are underdiagnosed is a complete myth. Completely wrong. Not true. Okay.
46:37 So we have narcissistic style. We have narcissistic personality disorder 1.7% of population which means you have met a lot fewer narcissists than you think.
46:48 And we have dark personalities. Dark personalities are people who have
46:54 narcissistic traits but are not narcissists.
47:00 They have traits but they are not narcissist. They have psychopathic traits but they are not psychopaths.
47:08 and they have machavelianism. They’re manipulative in clinical terms because some of you
47:14 are clinicians and some of you are laymen and lay women and it’s I need to find the balance. So sometimes I will
47:21 throw some clinical terms and sometimes I will so forgive each half should forgive the other. In clinical terms we say that dark personalities are subclinical. They have subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy and
47:38 makavelianism. They are not narcissists and they are not psychopaths which creates an enormous confusion of
47:45 course including in scholarly literature where they investigate dark personalities in order to learn about
47:52 narcissism. I just gave an interview to BBC and I criticized the study and I said it’s the study is complete nonsense because the total population were dark personalities.
48:04 So none of them was a narcissist and so so these distinctions are very important.
48:11 The problems with victims of narcissistic abuse is that the experience is such an outlier.
48:18 The experience is so so realistic, so dreamlike that they are not believed.
48:26 We know that the majority of victims of narcissistic abuse are not believed while the majority of victims of abuse other abuse are believed
48:38 actually excessively believed. So
48:44 there this creates something known as epistemic injury. Epistemic injury leads to epistemic
48:52 injustice. What is epistemic injustice or epistemic injury? You know something and you know
48:59 that it’s true. And you’re trying to talk to people and tell them this is this is what’s happened to me and it
49:06 really happened. It’s true. I’m not delusional. I’m not dreaming it. I’m not and you are not believed. you are mocked or you’re criticized or you’re told that you are too sensitive or and this
49:17 condition is known as epistemic injury which leads to epistemic injustice.
49:26 You need to know that 80% 80% of the global population on earth we have 8.3
49:34 billion people. So 80% of them do not recognize the diagnosis of narcissistic
49:42 personality disorder. We have two major diagnostic manuals. One is called the diagnostic and statistical manual DSM and it is used in North America, the
49:55 United States of America, big parts of Canada, some parts of the United Kingdom, Anglo-Saxon countries.
50:01 The DSM therefore is used by 20% of the world population.
50:07 80% of the world population use another book. That book is known as International Classification of Diseases
50:15 or ICD. The ICD is published by the World Health Organization WH. And lo and
50:22 behold, in the ICD, which is used by 80% of humanity, there is no diagnosis of
50:29 narcissistic personality disorder. The ICD instead includes a list of trait
50:38 domains, a list of traits. And when a patient comes to a clinician who uses
50:44 the ICD, the clinician picks traits like Lego.
50:50 like Lego bricks. He picks traits and he creates a trait domain profile.
50:58 The trait domain profile which is the equivalent of narcissistic
51:04 personality disorder in the DSM includes three traits. Dissociity or
51:12 what is known as antisocial behavior in the United States. anastia which is a kind of obsession compulsion the tendency to repeat behaviors
51:25 ritualistic behaviors and so on what Freud called repetition compulsion Freud
51:31 called it repetition compulsion and this this leads to negative affectivity
51:42 so according to the ICD if a person is dissoci antisocial, a bit
51:49 psychopathic. If the person has negative effects, only negative effects, no positive emotions.
51:56 Narcissists have no access to positive emotions. Narcissists cannot love. End of story.
52:05 Any one of you who convinced themselves that they loved you. Narcissists have no access to positive emotions. So they cannot love, for example. They
52:16 have access only to negative emotions. For example, anger, hatred, envy. These are negative effects.
52:27 So narcissists have only negative affectivity. Similar to psychopaths. By the way,
52:33 psychopaths are the same. So when you put these three trade domains together, what you get under the
52:40 ICD equivalent of narcissism. Narcissists are therefore drowning in negative effects and exactly
52:52 like the borderline under certain situations and circumstances
52:58 the narcissist can disregulate. Remember that Kenberg suggested that
53:04 pathological narcissism is a defense against an underlying borderline
53:11 personality organization. And the main feature of borderline personality is emotional dysregulation. The inability to control emotions, being
53:22 overwhelmed by emotions, positive and negative. When the borderline loves, she
53:28 drowns in her love. when she hates, trust me, you drown in her hate. So this
53:35 is disregulation. When the narcissistic defenses are removed, when they are destroyed, what remains behind is a borderline.
53:47 So for example when the narcissist is humiliated and shamed in public
53:55 abruptly suddenly unexpectedly this creates a condition called narcissistic motification.
54:02 At that point all the narcissistic defenses collapse they shut off. They
54:08 switch off. This process is known as decompensation. So there is motification being humiliated suddenly in public. Then
54:19 there is decompensation. Tuck tuck. It’s like it’s like um you know all the
54:25 defenses closed down. You can hear it almost. And then what is left behind is
54:32 a borderline. Actually a borderline. And the narcissist then begins to
54:39 emotionally disregulate and becomes suicidal. the suicidal ideiation.
54:45 So narcissism is about negative emotions. When you develop a relationship with a
54:53 narcissist, you’re interacting with negativity. The negativity rubs off you. Even the
55:01 positive aspects, for example, during the love bombing phase, there’s something in it that is
55:07 poisoned. Something in everything the narcissist does is toxic. This it rubs off you. The
55:15 narcissist expects you to act as an external regulator. And for you to act as the narcissist
55:22 external regulator, he hands over to you his toxicity.
55:29 He gives you his poison. Like you will take his poison away. You are the antidote that he has been
55:35 waiting for all his life. usually. So then you become the repository of all
55:43 the negative emotions, negative effects, of the disregulation, of the fears, of
55:49 the everything becomes deposited in you. From that minute, the narcissist cannot
55:56 let you go. You realize that because you be you come to own to possess a part of
56:05 the narcissist’s mind. He cannot let you go more than he can let his brain go. From that moment, you
56:14 are captive. You’re a hostage. And to make sure that you remain within the shared fantasy and do not walk away as a captive, as a hostage, unbeknownst
56:25 to you, very often the narcissist uses a series of devices, series of strategies
56:33 to addict you, to cause addiction. We’ll discuss all this tomorrow.
56:40 The narcissist needs from you what I called the four S’s. You remember today
56:46 we are giving an overview of narcissism. That is not the topic of the seminar. Topic of the seminar is healing and
56:52 recovery. But I would like to make sure that we are all on the same level playing field. We all using the same
56:59 terminology and so on. So regard this as a dictionary building exercise. Okay.
57:05 Now if you go online I’m sorry negativity into another person. I can’t
57:12 I can’t I’ll discuss this tomorrow. I’ll discuss this tomorrow in the shirt fantasy. The narcissist actually blackmails you, but
57:18 I will describe tomorrow how he does it. Now, for you to understand before I proceed, what I’m describing is not a cunning,
57:27 scheming, premeditated mori type. It’s not a master arch criminal. We’re
57:34 saying, “Here it is. I’m going to take this intimate partner. I’m going to get her addicted. I’m going to poison her
57:40 mind. I’m going to That’s not the way it goes. This what I’ve just described is a
57:46 psychopath. Psychopaths do this. A narcissist is the victim of his own inexorable dynamics.
57:54 Most of the things I describe are unconscious and we learn about them by talking to
58:00 narcissists, analyzing them and andor observing behavior. But a narcissist is
58:06 not evil in the sense that there’s no premeditation here.
58:14 Now, if you go online, everyone and and his dog and his mother-in-law will tell you that the
58:21 victims are chosen. The victims of narcissistic abuse are chosen. I came up with a with a phrase
58:28 narcissistic abuse and with a concept of narcissistic abuse because narcissistic abuse is like no other. There is no
58:35 other form of abuse that comes close to this because the narcissist needs to kill you metaphorically otherwise you
58:42 are useless in the shed fantasy. The narcissist needs to deanimate you to
58:48 take away your vitality to render you an Egyptian mummy. So that’s why
58:55 narcissistic abuse is unique in this sense. But you are not chosen. I mean the victims are not chosen. There’s no process of choice and there is no type. That’s completely untrue.
59:08 It is true that given the opportunity, a narcissist would prefer, for example, a
59:14 trophy, a trophy wife or a trophy girlfriend given the opportunity. But
59:20 that’s happen stance. That’s coincidence. A narcissist wouldn’t go looking for that. There’s no
59:27 orientation. What the narcissist is interested in is what he can take from you. And I call it the four S’s. S.
59:39 So sex, supply, narcissistic or in rare cases,
59:45 sadistic supply, the pleasure of your pain. Yeah.
59:51 Services. Narcissist uses you for services and safety. Safety or
59:59 stability. The narcissist abuses you initially to test you. The
60:07 idea is to test you. As you will see tomorrow in the shed fantasy, the narcissist converts you into a maternal
60:13 figure. So one of the reasons, one of the reasons the narcissist abuses you is that is constantly testing you. is constantly testing whether essentially
60:24 you’re a good enough mother. Are you going to stick around, never mind what he does to you? He’s pushing the
60:30 envelope. He’s behaving egregiously because he wants to make sure that you love him unconditionally, that you will
60:38 never abandon him, never mind what he does to you. That never mind how extreme
60:44 his behavior or misbehavior or misconduct is, you’re going to overlook it. you’re going to suffer and you’re
60:52 going to stick around. So the four S’s are integrated into the shared fantasy. He expects you to provide him with two of the four S’s.
61:03 Any two by the way, but he expects you to provide the four S’s as a maternal figure. This we will discuss tomorrow with a shared fantasy.
61:16 Campbell. Keith Campbell is one of the most preeminent scholars of narcissism. And Keith Campbell suggested the
61:22 chocolate cake model of relationships with narcissists. Keith Campbell said being with a
61:29 narcissist is like eating a chocolate cake. Initially, it’s very tasty and
61:35 alluring and irresistible. And then you end up feeling guilty. You become obese and you go to seminars about narcissistic abuse.
61:46 So this is the chocolate cake model of Keith Campbell.
61:52 I’ll read to you how partners describe the relationships in studies. Studies
61:58 remember this is all studies. How did partners describe the relationship? They describe the relationship as shallow, transitory. By the way, when I say
62:09 relationships, not only intimate and romantic, because we’re talking about studies in the workplace, studies on Facebook, studies, studies generally.
62:20 So, shallow, transitory, non-committed, mind games, power plays, triangulation,
62:30 focused on the narcissist and his needs, emotionless, no intimacy.
62:37 The main complaints of the partners according to studies were the narcissist is self-centered, materialistic, deceptive, controlling, exploitative,
62:50 plays games with them, non-committed, and unfaithful.
62:57 The main emotions reported by partners of narcissist after the relationship is over or was over. Anger,
63:05 glad that it’s over, regret in this order. By the way, the
63:11 amazing thing about these studies, actually not the studies, but the amazing thing about things about these
63:17 responses is that many of these responses are counterfactual.
63:23 They do not reflect reality. For example, the unfaithful part. The
63:29 vast majority of partners, romantic intimate partners of narcissists were convinced that the narcissist is
63:36 cheating on them. Infidelity. They were convinced the narcissist is unfaithful. Massive studies demonstrate this is not true. I’ll come to it later.
63:50 Narcissistic women are more likely to cheat. Narcissistic men are actually less
63:58 likely to cheat according to studies. And yet the perception is that narcissistic men
64:05 cheat all the time on every opportunity or create opportunities. Monkey branching if you heard that is not true.
64:15 Other impressions of the partner within the shared fantasy were also not true.
64:23 Why was the partner were the partners so wrong? Why this impression for example the impression that the narcissist is deceptive?
64:34 Deception implies intention you know in the in criminal law mena.
64:40 So intention we know that narcissists are not deceptive actually they are just
64:46 confused about the difference between reality and fantasy. We know that they don’t lie more than
64:54 average people. But what they do is they confabulate. They create stories, narratives because they have huge memory gaps. They are
65:05 dissociative. So why did intimate partners who spend days and nights and years and decades
65:12 with narcissists, where do they get all this wrong information? And why? Because the main
65:18 thing the narcissist does to his victim or his partner or his friend or his colleague or whatever, the main thing is
65:26 to impair to destroy the reality testing of the other person. The main thing the
65:33 narcissist does is takes you divorces you from reality, takes you away from reality and creates an alternative reality for you. Again, there’s a mistake here, especially online, when people say that narcissists gaslight.
65:50 They do not gaslight. Actually, psychopaths gaslight.
65:56 Gaslighting involves premeditation, intention. And gaslighting involves the ability to
66:02 tell the difference between reality and fantasy. When the psychopath gaslights you, he is trying to destabilize your
66:12 judgment of reality, knowing full well what is reality. The psychopath knows what’s real. He just wants you to lose this capacity to know what’s real. The
66:24 famous movie Gaslight, two of them, by the way. So, but the narcissist, when the narcissist tells you this is real, he believes it. The narcissist fully
66:36 believes the fantasy. When the narcissist makes you a promise, he has every intention to keep it. So
66:43 narcissists do not future fake. That’s wrong. Narcissists never keep their promises. That’s another story. But when they make the promises, the promise they fully
66:56 intend to keep it. They fully believe it. They do not think think they’re deceiving you. There’s no intention here
67:03 to deceive. So this is these are very crucial aspects in this sense.
67:10 Narcissists are delusional. Narcissism is a delusional disorder.
67:17 So we already identified at the beginning of this lecture that narcissism is very close to psychosis
67:23 and now we are saying that narcissism is very close to delusionality, delusional disorder. And you are beginning to
67:30 understand that the narcissist is no longer with us. He is he has nothing to do with reality. He lives in the clouds of his own fantasy within which he is
67:41 godlike. And he introduces you into the shared fantasy. And one of the conditions is you give up on reality and
67:48 you give up on your reality testing. End of story. It’s a precondition for being
67:54 included in the shared fantasy. Consequently, the victims misjudge even the
68:00 narcissist. Their ability to gauge reality appropriately is so screwed up that they
68:08 can’t even evaluate appropriately their own intimate partner, the narcissist.
68:14 That’s the damage to the reality testing in in the shared fantasy.
68:22 I want to talk about my favorite subject
68:28 as a cerebral narcissist. My favorite subject is sex. So, we need to discuss sexuality. The narcissist sexuality. I will not go on about it, but we need to mention it because sexuality
68:44 first and foremost is highly indicative of internal processes. Sometimes we study sexuality in order to understand
68:51 the mind of the agent or the person and because sexuality pray plays a major
68:57 role in the shared fantasy at least in the initial in the initial phases in the initial stages.
69:04 Now you know by now that there are two types of I mean there are many types but there are two type one way to divide
69:10 narcissist is to cerebral narcissist and somatic narcissist. Cerebral narcissists
69:16 are narcissists who derive narcissistic supply. They garner attention and adulation and admiration and so on by
69:24 flaunting and displaying their intellect, intelligence, irrudition, knowledge and so on so forth, usually in seminars. And there is
69:36 there are somatic narcissists. Somatic narcissists are narcissists who use their bodies, leverage their bodies to
69:43 obtain supply. doesn’t have to be sex, could be bodybuilding, musculature,
69:49 could be some other use of the body. For example, uh ostentatious uh clothing or fashion, anything to do with the body. So going to the gym rats being a gym
70:00 rat. So the use of the body. So we have somatic and we have cerebral.
70:06 But both the somatic and the cerebral narcissis are what we call autoerotic.
70:13 Now let me explain this to you. It’s a bit disgusting but okay. So is so is most psychology. Um the somatic narcissist is hyper sexed.
70:28 In other words, the somatic narcissist is resembles very much uh sex addict
70:34 sex addiction but not a histrionic. The histrionic
70:40 someone with histrionic personality disorder hates sex and finds it repulsive.
70:47 People with histrionic personality disorder are ostentatiously hyper emotional. They use emotions and
70:55 flirtation. They’re flirtatious. They they they’re teasers. If you want to use a a sling, they’re teasers. But studies
71:03 have shown that people with distrionic personality disorder do not like sex. they actually find it disgusting.
71:10 Whereas the somatic narcissist is heavily into sex and resembles very much
71:16 a sex addict. He uses conquest, sexual conquest and so on as a form of
71:22 narcissistic supply. The cerebral narcissist is asexual.
71:30 Not clinically asexual because someone who is clinically asexual, there is such a thing. 1% of people don’t have a sex
71:37 drive. they’re asexual. Someone who is clinically asexual is someone who doesn’t have a sex drive, as I said, and
71:43 is not interested in sex, period, at all. Someone like that may masturbate, but
71:49 otherwise is not interested in sex. The cerebral narcissist is temporarily
71:56 asexual, like in the condition in the cerebral phase, he he or she is asexual.
72:02 So there’s no no he doesn’t engage in sex. He rejects people uh who approach
72:09 him for sex and so on and so forth. Both of them have two things in common.
72:16 Before I proceed, every cerebral goes through somatic phases. Every somatic
72:22 tries to go through cerebral phases. Unfortunately, there’s a prerequisite. You need a brain and some of them don’t
72:29 possess this particular part of the anatomy. But otherwise they try.
72:35 In other words, in narcissism there is no type constancy.
72:41 Every overt has covert phases. Every covert has overt phases. Somatic
72:47 cerebral. It’s one disorder. It’s wrong to divide it to slice it. It’s completely wrong.
72:55 Counterfactual. Any any clinician would tell you this. So every somatic has
73:01 cerebral phases and so on. Somatics and cerebrals have two things in common. Autoerotism
73:09 and betrayal fantasy. I will explain briefly. Autoerotism is when you are attracted to yourself as a sexual object. You found your you find
73:20 your own body sexually arousing. And so what you do, you use the
73:26 partner’s body to masturbate with. It is through the partner’s gaze that
73:33 you see your own body and become aroused. So you need the partner’s gaze
73:39 because it’s like a mirror. There’s an effect called mirroring. It’s like a mirror. You see yourself, oh my god, I’m
73:45 gorgeous. And at the same time you need a partner’s body as a form of murbatory
73:53 aid. That is autoerotism. And autoerotism is common to all narcissists. No exception. Covert, overt, somatic, cerebral, you name it. They’re all autoerotic. None of them has what we call object orientation. None of
74:10 them has a sex drive that is directed at other people. To put it in in more shocking terms, none of the
74:21 not not a single narcissist finds another person sexually arousing.
74:30 Not a single narcissist finds another person sexually arousing.
74:36 Never mind how many how many times you have had sex with a narcissist. It was about him. It was a form of masturbation. the main attraction is to their own bodies. The second feature
74:48 that is common to cerebral and somatic narcissist and all other narcissist is the betrayal fantasy. The narcissist needs
75:00 uh narcissist uses sexuality, uses sex to essentially degrade the partner, diminish her,
75:12 humiliate her or somehow render her inferior.
75:18 One way of doing this is forcing the partner to have sex with other people.
75:24 This is the most common fantasy. Yeah. Most common fantasy in narcissism. And this is why narcissists push their
75:35 partners to have three sons and king. And it’s about degradation. The second
75:41 most common fantasy is about rape. By the way, rape fantasy is very common in narcissism. This is fantasy. It’s not
75:47 action. But these fantasies are very common.
75:54 Narcissists, therefore, I’m coming back full circle to infidelity and cheating. They don’t need
76:02 to do this because they are sexually attracted to their own bodies and only to their own bodies.
76:09 We discovered in studies that the rate of actual sexual encounters with other people is low
76:16 especially among men strangely and definitely among cerebral narcissists.
76:24 So there is no incentive to cheat. So, so infidelity is actually low in uh I
76:32 wanted to explain to you why
76:48 we have conducted over the decades we have conducted clinical studies of
76:54 people who’ve been exposed to narcissism on a prolonged period. period, minimum 6 months, but more typically 3 years, 10
77:01 years and so on so forth. And here is what we discovered. This is a summary of the studies.
77:11 Victims of narcissistic abuse were more depressed, more anxious, more
77:17 disoriented, more aggressive. It’s called defiant reactants. The clinicians among you,
77:24 more defiantly reactant. So more aggressive, more dissociative,
77:32 trapped, hopeless and helpless.
77:39 They were traumatized and quite a few of them had psychotic
77:45 micro episodes reacted with the form of psychosis that is very short less
77:52 shorter than four days. So as you can see the damage is not small. We are not talking about typical abuse. Typical abuse you feel bad after that
78:03 you feel even worse. After that you feel glad that you have left a relationship and so on so forth. We are not talking about this. We are talking about
78:12 mental illness induced in the victim. So it’s a very very dangerous and grave
78:21 situation and it is encapsulated they’re trying we’re trying to encapsulated with concepts such as trauma bonding or
78:28 Stockholm syndrome or shared psychosis or cult mind or mass psycho psychoggenic
78:36 illness. These are desperate attempts that we are making as a profession to try to capture and understand what is happening to the victims of narcissistic abuse because something really bad is
78:48 happening to them and it is deep and it changes them. For example, we discovered
78:55 in most victims of narcissistic abuse a clinical feature called estrangement.
79:02 Estrangement is a clinical term. It means they felt like they were not themselves. They felt a stranger to
79:09 themselves. They felt a strange. They felt they were no longer themselves. It’s as if their core identity was ripped out of them. They were they no
79:21 longer had an identity and something alien was installed
79:27 in there. Now, this sounds very very Steven Spielberg, but it’s actually
79:33 real. There is a process called introjection and another process called entrainment.
79:39 We’re going to discuss both of them tomorrow. Narcissists make use of both processes. And the end results of these
79:46 processes is a takeover, for lack of a better word, a
79:53 a hostile takeover of your mind and even the brain itself, your hardware, not
79:59 only the software. Your identity is taken away, replaced
80:05 with some something that is not you and it is done in a way in a manner that is
80:13 methodical and creates impacts that are very difficult to reverse
80:20 which is the topic of of the seminar of course. So it’s it’s a bit of a horror movie you
80:28 must admit it’s like the body snatchers. That’s why I felt that narcissistic
80:34 abuse cannot be compared to any other kind of abuse. You know a typical abuser, he wants something from you or
80:41 she wants something from you. So they want money or they want sex or they want, you know, they want something or
80:48 they want to control you, control freaks or they want to humiliate you or they
80:54 want to beat you up because it’s fun. Okay, but at least it’s limited.
81:00 It’s a single dimension. It’s also to some extent predictable. Like it’s going to beat me up. I know
81:06 he’s going to beat me up, but in between we’re going to be okay. It’s like it’s a
81:12 limited phenomenon. That’s not the case with narcissistic abuse. That is not the case with
81:18 narcissistic abuse. Narcissists negate you. They erase you.
81:26 They deanimate you. They convert you into
81:33 a mirage, not even an object, by the way, a mirage, some craziness inside their mind. They
81:40 want you to conform. They want you to match this internal picture. And they will contort you and they will distort
81:47 you and they will manipulate you and they will push you and press you like so much patty until you conform to that
81:54 image. And if you don’t, they will punish you. Even when you don’t, even when you diverge, even when you deviate,
82:01 even when you fight back and disagree and criticize, they will punish you. And there are numerous, there’s a multitude
82:07 of punishments in store for you. Intermittent reinforcement of this kind
82:14 leads to the occupation of the mind. You you’re being invaded. I’m trying I’m using these words and these metaphors. They’re not clinical, but they capture well the process that’s
82:26 happening. As you will see tomorrow when I when I when there’s be a deep dive into the shared fantasy, believe me, a land you have never even imagined could
82:37 exist. The shared fantasy is the most terrain incognito of the human mind that
82:43 is conceivable. It’s shocking. It is a horror movie. So,
82:50 and it’s all unconscious to unconscious. It’s all subliminal. It’s all communicated in ways that you cannot prove. There’s no evidence.
83:01 You cannot verbalize. You cannot point to something. You cannot convince anyone. You cannot communicate. You
83:07 cannot. In a way, the rejection of society when society rejects you as a
83:13 victim. That’s the second prison term. The first prison was a shared fantasy
83:19 and your second prison bigger a bit bigger is society. and even even
83:26 clinicians, therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, many of whom are completely unversed and uneducated when it comes to narciss pathological narcissism and narcissistic abuse. Many,
83:38 I would say the majority, it’s difficult to believe, especially when a clinician
83:44 comes to face to face with a narcissist and the narcissist is superficially charming and glib and convincing and
83:51 accomplished. Many of them are accomplished. That’s another thing that throws people off when I say a
83:58 narcissist is a child. It’s not me. It’s the big body of scholarship on narcissism. It’s not some I did not invent this. When I say a narcissist is two years old, maybe three years old.
84:10 A really really evolved narcissist is 9 years old. But two and three are more common. Yeah. But they say, “But how can
84:17 he be two two three years old? He’s a professor of psychology.” Well, there’s a difference between
84:24 emotional maturity and what we call semantic memory or semantic capacity and
84:31 procedural capacity. So there’s a difference in short between your skills and your emotional maturity. You could be a professor of psychology or the president of the United States and still be two years old. Yes, it is possible because in modern
84:50 society, especially in postmodern society, we have created a division of labor between cognition and emotion. They don’t go together anymore. You
85:02 could be cognitively evolved and emotionally Forgive forgive the word. And you could be, by the way,
85:09 emotionally involved evolved, but cognitively
85:15 Some people, for example, with Dawn syndrome or intellectually challenged people or even low functioning autistic
85:23 people have evolved emotionality but impaired cognitive processes, impaired
85:31 cognition. There need not be a connection between the two. These are not preconditions.
85:38 So, it’s important to understand that when you interact with a narcissist, it’s a child and the narcissist uses all the baits and all the lures and all the wilds and all the manipulative techniques and all the that a child uses.
85:56 And there is one thing we cannot resist, not even narcissist, the one thing we
86:02 can never ever resist. a crying, traumatized, helpless baby.
86:08 Not women can’t resist this and men can’t resist this. When I keep saying
86:14 that the narcissist converts you into a maternal figure, I don’t mean that. I’m not talking about genitalia.
86:21 I mean, men react to babies the same way women react to babies. There’s a maternal instinct in men also. A man
86:28 would see a baby and you know, it’s normal. It’s normal reaction. These maternal instincts are appealed to by the narcissist, accessed by the narcissist,
86:39 activated, manipulated, and and so on and so forth. The narcissist wants you
86:45 to be his mother, but he wants you to be a specific type of mother. And of course, a giant of human psychology by the name of Alfred Hitchcock has captured, and I’m kidding you not, by
86:57 the way, one of the greatest psychologists ever, has captured this in the movie Psycho. Now the movie cycle preceded my birth by one year and I don’t think it’s an accident. So the movie psycho was was
87:10 shot in 1960 released in 1960 and in the movie Psycho there’s this guy Norman
87:16 Bates who by the way appears to be normal and so on and Norman Bates runs a
87:22 motel small motel and what happens is Norman Bates killed
87:28 his mother killed her like physically. Yes. Not metaphorically killed her, assassinated her. And then what he did, he embalmed her. He embalmed her. He converted her
87:40 into a a mummy. Egyptian mommy. So now she’s embalmed. And every morning, every morning he goes up, Norman goes up, takes his mother out
87:51 of his imbal dead mother to be clear, out of bed, washes her, sits her on a
87:58 chair facing the outside world on a window. There’s a window looking overlooking the the yard and I don’t know what. In the evening, he comes back, takes her out of the chair, washes
88:10 her, puts her to sleep, talks to her a bit, kisses her, and goes down. This is
88:16 the ideal intimate partner of the narcissist. More or less,
88:22 it’s a mother figure who is a bit on the dead side and a lot on the imbal side.
88:28 That’s more or less the picture. And of course, a narcissist has to test you all the time. Remember, narcissistic abuse
88:35 is 90% testing. People think that narcissistic abuse is evil and wicked.
88:42 The idea is to crush you and mash you and you’re crushed. Honey, you’re crushed.
88:48 If you’re already in the shirt fantasy, you have been crushed long time ago. Just no one told you. The idea is not to
88:54 crush you. That is to test you. how eligible you are, what type of
89:00 mother you are, how well do you play within the shared fantasy and and so on and so forth.
89:08 I want to discuss CPTsd and PTSD.
89:15 I will never ever let you go. You’re part of my shirt fantasy. Now I see the hope in your eyes. Extinguish
89:23 it. Abandon all hope you who enter.
89:37 Could you please repeat the list that you read about the induced in the in the
89:45 victims? What is in you have it in the booklet that is available online. I don’t want Thank you. Everything I’m saying is in the booklet that’s available online. I have no idea why you came. You could have downloaded the booklet, but kidding. Okay, I want
89:59 to discuss PTSD and CPTTSD. CPTSD is a proposed diagnosis
90:06 was first described by Judith Herman who is a professor in at Harvard the time in
90:13 1992. And Judith Herman said that we should distinguish between acute what we call
90:19 acute stress disorder ASD or acute PTSD and
90:25 the kind of post-traumatic reaction or the kind of trauma that takes a very long time and is complex and is reactive to repetitive behaviors of the abuser.
90:38 And she called it CPTTSD or complex trauma. Now, if you go online,
90:45 victims, real and self-styled, claim that they have PTSD. You cannot have PTSD in a relationship with a narcissist unless the narcissist tries to kill you or perhaps rape you violently, extremely violently. PTSD is
91:02 a reaction to lifethreatening situations experienced personally or witnessed. You
91:10 could have PTSD by witnessing a life-threatening situation. So it could
91:16 it includes natural disasters, war, rape, and all attempts to kill you. This
91:23 would provoke PTSD. Exposure to a narcissist over 10 years or 20 years or
91:29 30 years or 10 months is would never yield PTSD. That’s
91:35 complete misdiagnosis. I’m sorry. Even if it is a child.
91:42 Even if it’s a child. A child. Yes. APTSD is is unique to life-threatening conditions. Some some relationships with narcissists. Small minority may lead to complex trauma.
92:00 Trauma is a rare condition. Everyone walks around saying, “I’m traumatized. I’m traumatized. You know,
92:07 I uh this guy said no to me, I’m traumatized. She said yes to me, I’m traumatized.
92:13 Everyone is traumatized. That we we need to begin to use words more carefully. We are debasing
92:20 terminology. We are abusing, misusing words. Narcissism is a loaded word. It
92:26 has a clinical meaning. It’s a clinical entity. It’s called
92:36 I don’t think it’s air conditioning. I think it’s me.
92:42 Um, yeah, you can open the window.
92:48 Can open the window if you want. But there will be a lot of noise from outside. Okay. I I changed the temperature. It will take 10 minutes something like that and it will be okay. Um, complex I mean trauma is a loaded
93:01 word. We should be very careful with the words you use we are using you know because if you devalue and depreciate
93:07 words that’s one reason no one would listen to you next time. It’s like crying wolf all the time you know. So
93:14 small percentage of people who experience relationships with narcissists end up being traumatized and
93:21 their trauma is exclusively complex. Never ever PTSD.
93:27 anyone who claims otherwise unless of course we there were life-threatening events in the
93:33 relationship but then it has nothing to do with narcissism. It’s any life-threatening event in a relationship
93:39 would yield the same the same outcome
93:46 I want to I want to finish by uh yeah I want to
93:53 finish by I want to finish by uh noting two things. I said earlier uh when we were all much
94:04 younger that there’s betrayal and there is a scholar by the name of uh Jennifer
94:10 Fried F re and Jennifer Fried came up with the concept of betrayal trauma betrayal
94:18 trauma and uh betray and trauma blindness
94:24 essentially it’s the same like epistemic epistemic injustice freight said that in betrayal trauma and She has a whole theory about this. It’s called BTT, betrayal trauma theory. She said that
94:36 when you cannot actually let let me quote what she said.
94:42 When you cannot, when you are not allowed to express your experience of trauma and abuse,
94:49 when there’s a breach of trust, negative emotions, and profound betrayal by
94:55 someone you depend on in any crucial way, such denial and repression
95:01 lead to dissociation and a host of long-term mental health disorders, which I call betrayal, trauma,
95:09 and the inability to talk about your trauma because people are not receptive to your experiences or because you’re ashamed. Shame plays a major role in victims. They’re ashamed to talk about
95:21 their experiences. Uh in this situation there you have
95:27 betrayal blindness which leads to betrayal trauma. Betrayal is a key feature of such relationships because you make assumptions.
95:38 You make assumptions when you when you for example engage in a romantic or intimate relationship with someone. You there’s a basic assumption that they’re not going to harm you that you they want
95:49 your well-being at the very minimum. They want you to feel good or you know
95:55 and then they harm you and it’s a shocking reversal. It it shatters your worldview. It’s about worldview. It’s not about a specific event. And of course, this happens to narcissists.
96:11 The narcissist as a child trusts the parent, loves the parent. The narcissist
96:18 as a child assumes intuitively or unconsciously as a child that the parent
96:26 loves them. The child assumes the parent can be trusted. The child assumes the parent um
96:33 is there. what we call a secure base. The child assumes the parent is safe and then the very same parent abuses the child in in many ways. We’ll talk about abuse in a minute but in many ways and
96:45 then there is a betrayal trauma. The narcissist I told you at the
96:53 beginning hands over everything to you. The narcissist was betrayed. He hands
97:00 over the betrayal to you by betraying you. The narcissist is dissociative. He has
97:06 memory gaps. He induces in you memory gaps. The narcissist has never separated
97:12 from his mother. As we will see tomorrow, he never separates from you
97:18 and he never allows you to separate from him. How does he do that? He converts you into an internal object so you can never abandon him. So everything that has happened to the
97:31 narcissist as a child, he makes you experience vicarious experience. He wants you to experience being him.
97:42 The narcissist wants you to have the experience of being him or her.
97:49 So the shared fantasy is about vicarious
97:55 vicariously experiencing experiencing by proxy another person who is not there is emptiness
98:06 is a void is an absence. The narcissist forces you to experience
98:13 his absence his emptiness his black hole. You’re consumed
98:20 never to be seen again. Sorry. How does it help you?
98:26 I’ll come to that tomorrow. That’s a sh fantasy. I’ll explain tomorrow. It’s a good question. Explain tomorrow.
98:33 I want to read to you um I want to read to you 10 10 ways the
98:41 narcissist changes your perception of reality and of yourself. And then I want to warn you against six mistakes.
98:49 And then I will release you to go probably take the first flight out
98:55 of Macedonia as I see. And then those of you who are mazoistic enough or already
99:01 in my shirt fantasy and don’t know it will probably come back tomorrow for
99:07 more.
99:16 Here are the 10 ways the narcissist destroys the way you saw the world
99:22 before you met him. It is a destruction not only of your interiority, not only of your internal
99:29 state. It’s not only snatching away your identity and replacing it with something else. It’s not only taking over your
99:35 brain, not as a metaphor physically, as you will see tomorrow. It’s not only that. It’s he makes you distrust
99:43 everything you thought you knew, everything you believed, the tenets of your inner morality. It’s a moral injury. So, I’m going to read to you the
99:54 10 ways the narcissist does this. Narcissistic abuse challenges your
100:02 assumptions about the world. Hidden assumptions, implicit assumptions, or explicit assumptions. In philosophy, we
100:08 call it the hidden text and the overt text. We usually deconstruct the hidden
100:14 text to make sense of the world. Okay? So, he he challenges these assumptions. He challenges these assumptions and by challenging these assumptions he destroys two very important instruments
100:28 that every human being has. Every human being alive has I don’t know about the
100:34 dead. It’s another study. So the first one is known as theory of mind. A theory
100:42 of mind requires a process called mentalization or mentalizing.
100:48 Theory of mind is when we create a theory about other people,
100:54 what makes them tick, how do their emotion, how do they experience their emotions?
101:01 Um what are the internal dynamics of these people? The tool we use to create
101:07 a theory of mind later becomes empathy.
101:13 So we start as children as babies we start by mentalizing.
101:19 At that stage we have only what is known as reflexive empathy. Mommy smiles at
101:26 baby. Baby smiles at mommy. And then probably okay I’m not going to
101:33 it. My sense of humor runs away with me sometimes. So mommy smiles at baby, baby smiles at mommy. That’s reflexive empathy. The baby begins to mentalize mommy.
101:46 What is this thing? What is she thinking? He tries to make
101:52 sense of her. And he creates a theory about mommy. And then he creates theories about other people. And then he
101:58 creates a general theory of what it is to be human. And it’s called the theory of mind. Okay. The second mechanism that
102:05 all of us have, it’s called internal working model, IWM. It was first
102:12 proposed by Balby. The internal working model is a theory again it’s a theory about how
102:19 relationships work. So we have an internal working model about intimate relationships internal working model
102:26 about workplace relationships generally how relationships work. What the
102:32 narcissist dies does he destroys these theories. He destroys your theories of
102:38 mind and he destroys your internal working models and he leaves you bereft.
102:44 He leaves you with no tools to make sense of the world. We can say that the
102:50 narcissist creates in you an epistemic crisis.
102:56 It’s as if you are regressed to a stage that you are too young to
103:04 understand other people and too young to infantile to make sense of the world.
103:12 The reason the narcissist destroys these models is because he wants you to be a
103:18 baby. He wants to regress you. He wants to infantilize you. He wants you. And I
103:25 will explain tomorrow why, for what purpose. But the epistemic crisis, the
103:32 damaging of your epistemic tools, your ability to understand the world and other people has to do with this, with
103:39 the need to regress you and to infantilize you. Be that as it may,
103:46 there are 10 damages.
103:53 The narcissist causes you to believe 10 things that are not true.
104:00 Number one, people are irrational. They are self-interested.
104:06 Most people are exploitative and even and even evil. He causes you to believe this thing. In effect, the narcissist creates a
104:17 cult. A cult. We against the world. Everyone outside the cult is evil,
104:25 wicked, hostile, exploitative, untrustworthy. It’s you and me, baby, against the
104:32 world. So, it’s a cult mentality or what we call a cult mind. But to accomplish
104:38 this, the narcissist needed needs to convince you that other people are dangerous to you, hostile, and so on.
104:45 Number two, justice, order, structure
104:51 are rare in the universe. Chaos, uncertainty, indeterminacy
104:58 reign. They are in control. Reality and people in it are untrustworthy because
105:04 of this unpredictability. Number three, the world is hostile. At
105:11 best, it is indifferent to you. There’s no meaning. It’s a meaningless world.
105:19 The narcissist creates something epistemic crisis and at a later stage he
105:25 creates a doxastic crisis. This is for the clinicians. Yeah. A doastic crisis
105:32 means a crisis of beliefs. You no longer trust your own beliefs. And axiological
105:38 crisis, a crisis of values. So, you don’t trust what you see, the input, the
105:44 information. You don’t trust your beliefs, and you don’t trust your values. You’re completely
105:50 disoriented, exactly like a baby, a newborn,
105:56 which is exactly where the narcissist wants you to be. Number four, no good deed goes unpunished. Even if you try hard, even if you’re sincere, things rarely work out. You
106:10 need contacts and you need luck. Everything is pretty random. The narcissist takes away from you meaning,
106:18 your ability to inject meaning into the world. Victor Franco,
106:25 Victor Franco was a psychiatrist and he was sent to Awitz because he was a Jew. They were sent to Awitz and most people in Awitz
106:38 survived an average of six months if they were not
106:44 zon if they were not treated specially before. So these guys survived three and a half
106:51 years. Do you know what it means to survive in Avitz three and a half years? It’s a
106:57 miracle. It defies belief. When Victor Frankle was asked repeatedly, “How did
107:03 you survive? What kept you alive?” He said, “I invented a meaning for my
107:10 life.” And the meaning was to testify about the Holocaust. And later on the
107:16 meaning was to heal people. And he became a therapist. And he invented
107:22 logootherapy. Logootherapy is a treatment modality. And the idea is that
107:28 people don’t need food, they don’t need water, they don’t need air, they don’t need sex. I mean they need all these
107:35 things but they are not like they can you can survive long time long period of time without these things. But what you
107:41 cannot survive even for an extremely short period of time is meaning. What you cannot survive is meaninglessness. If there’s no meaning in your life, you die. If there’s no water, you survive 5
107:54 days. If there’s no food, you survive four months. If there’s no sex, you survive 64 years. But
108:01 if there’s no meaning in your life, you’re unlikely to survive long.
108:08 So what the narcissist does definitely, it takes away the meaning in your life. Not only the meaning of your life, but the ability to generate meaning takes
108:19 that away from you. Suddenly everything looks meaningless.
108:25 purposeless and so and that’s of course why people
108:31 end up adopting meanings for example in religion you know you adopt a meaning in
108:37 religion you can argue if religion is purile or whatever but definitely people
108:43 who believe people who have faith they have a sense of meaning so sometimes meaning requires delusion or fantasy and that is exactly the narcissist weapon
108:55 the nar Narcissist weaponizes fantasy. He gives you the impression that the
109:01 fantasy will give you meaning because we use fantasy, healthy people,
109:07 normal people, we use narratives, we use stories, we use fantasies
109:15 to create meaning. So the narcissist comes to you and says here’s a fantasy, here’s a narrative, here’s use this to create meaning and
109:26 forget all the other meanings and your ability to create meaning outside your shared fantasy is eradicated.
109:35 This is we’ll talk about this tomorrow. This is the shared fantasy which is mind-boggling. Number five, you gain no credit with people. Remember these are the sentences that the
109:47 narcissist kind of poisons your mind with it. It’s the he destroys he
109:53 destroys you see why you cannot use the he destroys your your internal assumptions about the world. It destroys
110:00 everything you’ve believed about the world about yourself in the world your place in the world other people. It destroys all this. So one of the things
110:06 it convinces you is that you gain no credit with people. When you behave well it’s it’s meaningless. It means nothing.
110:12 You’re a sucker. your pathy. Even when you do behave well, this credit is
110:18 forgotten and ignored. People hate to feel indebted. If you help people, they hate you. If you give if you give gifts to people, they hate you because they they hate to be the recipients and so on
110:32 so forth. He convinces you of that. Number six, reality, he says to you, is not a shared experience.
110:39 It’s not a shared experience. Each person is to his own or her. Each one of us is
110:48 on her own or on his own. We are all socyistic. We’re all floating in space, totally isolated. The narcissist destroys what we call the
111:00 intersubjective space. The interubjective space is the the imaginary space or metaphorical space where the minds meet. minds of people
111:11 meet when I’m talking to you between us there is an imaginary intersubjective
111:17 space I’m talking to you your brain absorbs what I’m saying hopefully to some extent I’m able to convey the same meanings and so on so what the narcissist does he destroys the
111:29 interubjective space by isolating you physically he isolates you from your
111:35 friends from your family from your social network he isolates and I but Then he begins to isolate you
111:41 psychologically. By isolating you, destroying the interubjective space, he then gains
111:48 control over you. You’re infilled. You’re weakened. You’re vulnerable. You’re susceptible. And he takes over
111:55 you because now there is no bridge left. He burns the intersubjective bridge and
112:02 you’re all alone. Most existentially alone that you have ever felt in your life. And what do you do when you’re existentially alone and there’s someone next to you? You reach
112:14 out. You lurch. You you cling, you know, because there’s nothing more terrifying
112:20 than being truly totally utterly cosmically existentially
112:27 alone. So the narcissist is there and he becomes your life raft. It’s like a
112:33 Titanic, you know, Titanic has sunk. He becomes your life raft. Okay.
112:39 Number seven, he tells you
112:45 being alone is often way better and safer than being together with other
112:51 people except me. So he says, “Don’t be with other people. It’s not safe. It’s not good also. It’s
112:57 a bad experience. You can be with me but otherwise isolate yourself because being
113:03 alone is preferable to this.” They’re great philosophers of loneliness. Narcissists uh narcissism as a
113:10 philosophy is the philosophy of soypism. It’s a philosophy of loneliness. The narcissist says
113:17 I am the only subject in the world. The only subjective experience is mine.
113:23 I’m the only mind. There’s no other mind. I’m the only mind. Everyone around me it becomes converted
113:34 into elements in my mind into an internal object into a figment. I’m
113:40 going to snapshot you going to take a snapshot of you and the snapshot is a reality. So it is my mind that includes
113:48 everything. Now just to take a break. Um
113:54 in psychosis we have a clinical feature of psychosis known as hyper reflexivity.
114:02 Hyperreflexivity is when the psy the mind of the psychotic expands outward
114:10 like a a supernova expands outward and consumes the world. That’s why the
114:18 psychotic cannot tell the difference between internal objects and external objects. The psychotic, the person with psychotic disorder, the person with psychosis like schizophrenia.
114:30 Schizophrenia is one type of psychotic disorder. There are others. So this kind of person, he has a voice in his mind.
114:38 There’s a voice in his mind. Uh the psychotic believes that the voice
114:44 is coming from there. So he confuses an internal object, the
114:50 voice, with an external object. He has an image in his mind. It’s an image of a
114:58 of a wrathful terrifying god. He thinks the god is there about to kill
115:04 him and consume him. And he insists that it’s there. There’s a confusion between internal and external.
115:10 Same happens in narcissism. In psychosis, hyperreflexivity
115:17 is the confusion of internal objects with external objects. In narcissism,
115:24 it’s the confusion of external objects with internal objects. Whereas a psychotic would say, “This image is not in my mind. It’s there.” The narcissist
115:36 would say, “This image is not there. It’s in my mind.”
115:42 It’s mirror image of classical psychosis. So he tries to convince you to believe the same. He tells you you should be alone. You should be lonely
115:53 because I’m the only real thing. I’m the only real thing. If you want to stick to
115:59 reality, stick with me. The next sentence is, “No one deserves love.” No one deserves love. And few, if
116:08 any, are lovable. He takes away your lovability. He convinces you actually that he’s the
116:15 only one capable of loving you. That you’re in principle not lovable. What he does, he creates in you what we call internalized bed object. Again, because
116:28 he has an internalized bed object. You remember the narcissist uses you to
116:34 reflect himself, to experience himself. Narcissist experiences himself,
116:41 his absent self through you. I’m going to repeat this sentence because I like the sound of my voice. Narcissist
116:50 Narcissist experience their absent self through you. Every dynamic inside the narcissist is thrown projected onto you and you own
117:03 it. And this process is known as projective identification. So one of these dynamics is lovability. The narcissist has an
117:15 internalized bed objects. It’s a group of voices, a cluster of introjects of voices and the voices say you are ugly. You are stupid. You’re unworthy.
117:28 You can never be loved. You’re not lovable. This is the internalized bad object of the narcissist. And he wants
117:35 you to experience this internal bad object. He wants to experience himself through you. So he gives you this bad
117:42 object. He hands over his toxicity. Remember how I started? He hands over
117:48 the toxicity. He hands you this bad object and you begin to believe that you are not lovable.
117:54 And we are talking now not on in the love bombing phase. We’re talking about the shared fantasy after the love bomb. Love bombing is like baiting you. Love
118:02 bombing is to bait you. Once you’re inducted into the shed fantasy, the daytoday life, the grind of the shed
118:09 fantasy. At that point leading to devaluation, the narcissist
118:15 in a narcissist infects you, contaminates you with a bad internalized object. By the way, the clinical term in the 30s, stretchy, was not bad
118:26 internalized object. It was amazingly primitive super ego. It’s interesting. It’s another topic for
118:32 another lecture. Okay. Nine. You cannot trust yourself. You cannot
118:38 trust your judgment. You cannot trust your reality testing. And you cannot trust your self-love.
118:45 This is gaslighting. But the narcissist doesn’t do it intentionally. He doesn’t say, “Okay,
118:51 stage nine. I’m stage nine today. I am going to gaslight her.” It it emanates.
118:58 It’s an emanation, you know. It’s like an apparition. It’s it’s like myasma. It comes out. The narcissist exudes narcissism. The
119:10 narcissist does not impose narcissism. The narcissist does not leverage narcissism. The narcissism doesn’t weaponize narcissism. That is a psychopath. Psychopaths do this. The
119:22 narcissist exudes narcissism. It’s like ambient atmospheric and you’re
119:29 captured in this myasma. You’re breathing the toxic gases. That’s that’s
119:35 more or less the experience. And finally, if I find the page, finally then remember these are sentences that the narcissist inculcates in you. Narcissist embeds these sentences in
119:51 you. Tomorrow we’ll go deeper. Number 10. There is always a way. There’s always a way to commit wrong and evil deeds because such actions are goal oriented. Regret, remorse, guilt, shame,
120:06 empathy, and conscience are contemptable weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
120:13 This particular indoctrination, this particular element of brainwashing is more typical of what
120:20 we call malignant narcissists. Malignant narcissist is a narcissist who is also a
120:26 psychopath and also a sadist. So he’s diagnosed a clinical narcissist,
120:32 clinical psychopath, not like dark personality. It’s not a dark personality because we have a dark tetrd. Dark tetrd personality is subclinical narcissist, subclinical psychopath, sadist and
120:45 machavelian. I’m not talking about this. A malignant narcissist first described by Otto Kberg is a narcissist who is
120:53 clinically a psychopath is also clinically a sadist.
120:59 And this kind of narcissist is likely to use this last sentence that I mentioned.
121:09 I apologize but each lecture would be three hours. You know that. Okay. Yeah,
121:16 I’m going to now I’m going now to mention six pitfalls, six errors, six mistakes that victims make. And then I’m
121:23 going to read to you a section from the DSM and I’m going to say goodbye. Okay,
121:29 here are the mistakes. Number one, victims
121:35 engage in what we call a morality play. In the medieval ages, middle ages, there
121:41 was a type of theater that was called a morality play. Morality play was good
121:47 versus evil. The devil versus God. And so victims engage in a morality
121:53 play. I’m an angel. I’m an empath. I’m blemishless. I’m impeccable. I’m
122:00 immaculate. I’m the Virgin Mary. The narcissist is a demon.
122:06 He’s irredeemable. He’s horrible. He’s I had nothing to do
122:13 with what happened to me. I contributed nothing. I am angelic. You know, this is
122:19 a morality play. The narcissist is all bad and the victim is all good. And it
122:26 also involves what we call a splitting defense. A splitting defense is an infantile
122:33 defense mechanism typical of children up to age two years old. And in a splitting
122:39 defense, we divide the world into black and white, bad and good, all bad, all
122:45 good, all black, all white, all right, all wrong. Now, do you know who engages
122:51 in splitting defense? Do you know who who is typically uh who typically uses
122:57 splitting defense? A narcissist. It’s a it’s a narcissistic thing to say
123:03 that the narcissist is all bad and you are all good. That’s exactly what narcissist do. It’s a splitting defense.
123:12 The next mistake is self-importance. Self-importance, self agrandisement,
123:19 empath. The empath movement is prime example of this. Um I’m special. I’m unique. I have a
123:28 cosmic. I’m on a cosmic mission. I’m fighting evil. I’m redeeming the world. I’m healing. I’m this. I’m that. This is self agrandisement. And it gives
123:39 it it gives rise to the reasonable speculation that many of these people are actually covert narcissists in my
123:45 view. So self agrandisement. Number three, shunning responsibility. Shunning
123:52 responsibility ironically by aggrandizing the narcissist.
123:58 You know, he was so powerful. He was so perfectly evil. He was a force of nature. He was Who could have resisted
124:09 him? Who could have fought with him? Who could I was a victim of a force of
124:15 nature? I was a victim of a cataclysmic event. The narcissist. So inflating the
124:22 narcissist out of proportion in order to minimize your own accountability,
124:28 responsibility and contribution to what has happened to you. Starting with your mate selection. So the next thing is the belief the
124:39 self- aggrandizing belief that you are chosen as a victim that you were chosen somehow that you are special somehow
124:45 because you are unusually beni benign or caring or loving or empathic and
124:51 compassionate and immaculate and what have you. The narcissist chose you because of these positive qualities. He
124:58 was envious of you because he’s not and he wants to be. Nothing could be further from the truth. Narcissist last thing
125:05 the narcissist wants to be is empathic and kind. That’s a no no. That’s a weakness. That’s for suckers and so on.
125:12 And definitely the narcissist couldn’t care less if you’re empathic or not. Narcissists very often team up with other narcissists and with psychopaths.
125:19 They couldn’t care less about empathy. So to say that you were chosen that it was not an accident or a coincidence or a mishap or the outcome of your bad
125:30 judgment and in some cases stupidity. To say that you were chosen
125:36 because of your specialness and uniqueness is a narcissistic defense and also happens to be counterfactual and
125:43 real. Not true. Next strategy. These are all
125:49 dysfunctional ways of coping with victimhood. Dysfunctional ways of coping with the fact that you’ve been victimized. Indeed, the next dysfunctional way is making yourself a victim. A perpetual
126:01 victim, a professional victim, competitive victimhood. My abuser was much worse than your abuser. Oh, you
126:08 don’t know what I suffered. You suffered nothing. It’s competitive victimhood. You know, signaling victimhood and
126:14 making victimhood your identity. You have been victimized. That doesn’t
126:20 make you a victim. A victim is an identity. Being victimized is an event or a process.
126:28 It’s not who you are. So, victimhood is a dysfunctional way to react.
126:34 Regressive infantilization. Um, I’m a baby. I’m a baby in the woods.
126:41 I’m a child. I’m very naive. I’m very innocent. I didn’t know what was done to
126:47 me. So infantilization all these are dysfunctional way dysfunctional ways of reacting to narcissistic abuse. The victims of narcissistic abuse and they are victims.
126:59 They’re being victimized. No question. They react in these ways and none of them is a good thing. None of these ways
127:06 a good thing. The truth is that victims of narcissistic abuse have made stupid
127:12 choices, have denied and repressed their own intuition, and they had a gut
127:19 instinct which they opted chosen to ignore.
127:25 The truth is that victims of narcissistic abuse in majority of cases
127:31 have are either constitutionally structurally vulnerable. So they have for example codependence or people with
127:39 borderline personality disorder and so on or they have been going through a vulnerable phase in their lives
127:46 immediately after a divorce or the loss of a loved one. So there was a vulnerability involved there. The truth
127:52 is that the victim of narcissistic abuse is interchangeable utterly replaceable a
127:59 mere service provider end of story. Nothing more elevated or hallowed or
128:07 amazing or romantic. It’s a business transaction. Narcissists are transactional.
128:13 We’ll discuss a transaction tomorrow. But you as a victim of narcissistic abuse, you fulfilled a role. It’s was
128:21 kind of a role play. You fulfilled a function. And the minute your function was over in the shed fantasy, you were
128:28 over as well. and you have never meant anything to the narcissist beyond what I’ve just said, a service provider. Do you care whether
128:40 your internet service provider is empathic and kind and compassionate?
128:46 Do you care whether the guy who maintains your refrigerator is a nice guy or not really? Service
128:53 providers are funible. They’re commodities. You have been commoditized
128:59 and commodified. No one can no one can hear this. You know, people find it very
129:06 difficult to accept this because it takes away their sense of who they are.
129:13 When you when you are you, it makes you special to yourself at least and usually
129:19 to other people. So if I’m telling you you’re not special, you’re totally interchangeable, funible, replaceable, a commodity. So many grains of rice, nothing. Here today, gone tomorrow.
129:30 Easily replaceable. It takes away not only, it’s not only a narcissistic injury like, oh my god, I’m not special.
129:37 It takes away your core identity because if I’m not special, if I’m not
129:45 outstanding, if I’m not unique in some way, if I’m not noticeable, if I’m not being seen,
129:51 then I am not. Don’t forget to be seen is a survival strategy. If you are a newborn and you are not seen by your
130:04 mother, your life expectancy is very short. You need to be seen. The first thing a
130:11 baby does is attracting the mother’s attention. It’s the first thing any
130:17 mother would tell you. Attracting the mother’s attention. Moving, smiling. These are called behavioral cues. So
130:25 providing cues, conditioning the mother in effect, creating conditioning. And so the need
130:32 to be seen is by far the most crucial aspect of human psychology by far. And
130:40 so you need to be seen. And I’m telling you, you were not seen. You were not seen by the narcissist ever.
130:48 And so this is not only shocking, it’s threatening. It’s a threatening message and that’s why victims go online and
130:54 say, “Of course I was sin. I was chosen. He wanted me because I was empathic or drop dead gorgeous or whatever.” Yeah,
131:01 drop dead gorgeous. You dropped dead. He was gorgeous. So,
131:07 so this is these are difficult truths that you that victims of narcissistic abuse and clinicians who work with victims have to assimilate.
131:18 Whenever we’re exposed to trauma or less than trauma, we have narcissistic defenses.
131:26 Every human being, healthy, normal human being has narcissistic defenses. Every human being consumes narcissistic supply. Believe it or not, every human being endures, experiences narcissistic
131:39 injuries. These are not unique to narcissists. Every human being has this. Every human being self-supplies. You know when you self soo when you self soo you know I’m
131:49 great I’m I’m good I’m okay I will be okay these are all narcissistic defenses narcissism simply means the self the ego
131:59 so it means self-directed when you’re attacked this way when I’m telling you you’re a service provider
132:05 you’re nobody you’re nothing you’re replaceable like this your narcissistic defenses kick in and you begin to
132:12 aggrandise to self aggrandise you begin to falsify reality You begin to anything just not to feel that you were not sin,
132:21 which is exactly what the narcissist does to you. And that is the big betrayal. Because the one thing you can
132:28 expect from someone who claims to love you or claims to be your friend or even claims to share a workspace with you,
132:35 the minimum you can expect is to be seen, to be noticed somehow, to be acknowledged. And the narcissist never ever gives you this.
132:46 It’s one of the major control instruments of the narcissist. Okay, we are reaching the end. As you can see, you can never trust a narcissist. We are reaching the end. And and right.
133:02 And the end is is I’m going to read you the text of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual regarding
133:08 narcissistic personality disorder, but it’s special text. I’ll explain to you the background.
133:14 um in 2010 and 2011
133:21 the committee of the diagnostic and statistical manual the committee that was writing the fifth edition.
133:29 So each committee focused on a specific disorder. So they had a committee for narcissistic
133:35 personality disorder. There was Gunderson and Ronstam and many others. and they decided to eliminate
133:42 narcissistic personality disorder from the DSM5. So their recommendation was narcissistic
133:49 personality disorder is a form of psychopathy. So let’s subsume it under psychopathy.
133:55 There were scholars like Robert Hair and others who recommended to consider
134:01 narcissistic personality disorder as an aspect or manifestation of psychopathy. Of course,
134:08 it’s almost completely wrong because it ignores the vulnerable aspects of narcissism which do not exist at all in
134:15 psychopathy. So the whole orientation was completely wrong. The covert narcissist there’s no
134:22 there’s no there’s no such thing in in psychopathy. So the whole orientation was wrong but never mind that. So this
134:29 was 2010 2011 and then they reconsidered and so on and finally there was a big fight as when you have two clinicians you have three opinions we have three opinions is a big fight and they decided
134:40 to compromise committee committees compromise. So we got ourselves a uh a
134:47 camel. You know that a camel is a horse designed by committee. Yeah. So we got ourselves a camel and we got two texts, two diagnostic
134:59 texts for narcissistic personality disorder. And today in the fifth edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual
135:07 text revision published in 2022, you have two diagnostic texts for
135:13 narcissistic personality disorder. You have one text copy pasted from the
135:19 egregiously outdated and old-fashioned DSM4. Most of this knowledge is completely
135:26 wrong. And you have another text. It is called the alternative model. It’s page
135:33 881 in the text revision. And the alternative model is a set of diagnostic
135:40 descriptions, dimensional descriptions of narcissistic personality disorder.
135:47 Now for insurance purposes, when you as a therapist, you want to charge the patient, you love to charge the patient and you want to get reimbursed by the insurance. So you use the DSM4 criteria because they are a bullet list.
136:03 There’s a bullet list of criteria. So it’s easy for insurance, but when you want to treat the patient
136:10 or work with the patient or or have an alliance with the pat, do anything with the patient, you work with the alternative model, not with the DSM4 bullet list. And today I’m going to read
136:21 to you the alternative model. It’s only 53 pages, so I’m kidding. I am kidding.
136:28 You need to get used to my sense of humor or some of you at a certain age group may have heart attacks.
136:38 I’m drooling. I’m getting old is not fun. Okay.
136:44 Huh? No. Because I I cannot under over this is be fast becoming my personal
136:50 enemy. I’m going to read to you uh the
136:56 alternative model. Not all of it. It’s it’s seriously long, but I’m going to read to you some segments from the alternative model of narcissistic personality disorder, which does reflect the current state of knowledge more or
137:09 less. Let us not exaggerate, but it’s good, much better than the DSM4. And then we say goodbye and tomorrow we dive into the Mariana trench of the
137:21 shared fantasy. Here is what the DSM5 al five text revision has to say in the
137:30 alternative model the the real diagnostic criteria not for insurance and not for the pharmaceutical companies the following criteria
137:41 must be met to diagnose narcissistic personality disorders disorder now I’m skipping I’m skipping about 70% of the text moderate or greater impairment in
137:53 personality functioning manifested by characteristic difficulties in two or more of the following areas.
138:01 Number one, empathy. Impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others. Excessively attuned to reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self. over or underestimation of own effects
138:20 on others. Um
138:26 I want to comment here that the narcissist clinically does not have a self. There’s a disruption in the
138:32 formation of a self in early childhood. So self here is a bit metaphorical. It’s not exactly the the construct. Yeah.
138:39 Another thing I want to comment is that narcissists and psychopaths do possess empathy. They definitely possess empathy. They possess two components of empathy. Reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy.
138:51 I put the two together and I dubbed it called cold cold like empathy.
138:57 Uh they they miss they don’t have effective empathy. They don’t have emotional empathy. So let let me give you um let me give an example. It’s a joke that I recently said in an interview. A narcissist, a psychopath,
139:15 and who? Who else? Narcissist, a psychopath, and someone enter a bar. A narcissist, psychopath, and a healthy person. Enter a bar. Okay, it’s like the start of a bed joke. And there’s a woman
139:28 crying, and they’re all men. There’s a woman crying in the corner. He’s crying her heart out and so on. So, here are
139:35 the reactions of each of these three. The healthy person who is possessed of reflexive empathy, cognitive empathy and emotional effective empathy. Yes, he has full-fledged empathy. So the healthy person will go through the phases. First
139:51 she’s crying, he will do this with his face. There will be change in microfacial expressions. That’s
139:57 documented by the way. There are videos that document this and so on. So this is reflexive empathy. Then cognitive
140:03 empathy. He will say that’s the healthy person. The healthy person will say, “Oh, she’s crying. She must be sad.” So,
140:12 it’s not only a healthy person, but it’s clearly a genius. Then this is the cognitive empathy. Then the third level is the effective or emotional empathy. The healthy person would say, “She’s crying. She’s sad. Oh,
140:28 I feel sad for her. I want to comfort her.” I mean, neutrally. I don’t want
140:34 anything from her, but I just want to her to stop crying. I don’t want her to be sad because it makes me sad also to
140:40 see her, you know, this way. That’s empathy. Now, there are big debates. Empathy, yes, empathy. I’m not going to this. That’s another seminar. The the narcissist looks at the crying woman.
140:53 He’s a male, heterosexual male, even somatic. He looks at the woman and he says, uh, so reflexive, he has reflexive empathy. Narcissists have reflexive
141:04 empathy. They will react with a face. Then the narcissist’s cognition will
141:10 kick in and it will say, “She is crying. She must be said.”
141:16 Up until now, there is total parity between healthy and narcissist. However,
141:22 there’s no emotional component, no effective component. The next stage where emotions should have arisen, the narcissist would say, “She’s contemptable. She’s
141:35 disgusting. She’s weak. But it’s a great opportunity to recruit her to my new
141:41 shared fantasy.” So, this is the narcissist. And the psychopath would look at the woman and the psychopath would say, “Again, reflexive empathy. Some psychopaths have
141:52 it, some not. Some psychopaths don’t have reflexive empathy. They have like poker face. We call it reduced effect
141:59 display. So some psychopaths have a reduced effect display. They don’t show anything on the face. Anyone who’s been
142:05 to prison knows the people you cannot read them. So he he would look at her
142:11 maybe react facially maybe not. Cognitively he would say she’s crying she’s sad. There’s no emotional
142:19 component no effective reaction. and where an emotional component should have been, the psychopath would say, “Great,
142:27 she’s vulnerable. I can have sex with her.” Or, “Oh my god, she’s crying and she she is not paying attention to her wallet. It’s a great chance to take her purse.” So, these are the differences. They do have empathy, but as you can see, the empathy plays differently and
142:44 different component are at play. Yeah. So, I’m just correcting some of the elements in the DSM because it’s not
142:50 fully up to up to scratch. I’m continuing DSM. The narcissist finds
142:57 it difficult to identify with the emotions and needs of others, but it is very attuned to their reactions when
143:03 they are relevant to himself. This is called empathy actually. Consequently, the narcissist overestimates the effect
143:11 that he has on others or underestimates the effect that he has on others.
143:19 Intimacy relationships are largely superficial. Relationships with narcissists are
143:25 largely superficial and they exist to serve self-esteem regulation. Mutuality is constrained by little
143:32 genuine interest in others experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain. No kidding. The narcissist relationships are self-serving and
143:43 therefore shallow and superficial. They are centered around and geared at the
143:49 regulation of his self-esteem. The narcissist is not genuinely
143:55 interested in his intimate partner’s experiences. The narcissist emphasizes his need for personal gain. These twin fixtures of the narcissist
144:07 relationships render them one-sided. No mutuality and no reciprocity.
144:15 We have finished the overview of the narcissist to the best of my ability. I could dedicate 10 additional seminars to
144:22 psychology of the narcissist, but that’s not the content of this seminar. Tomorrow
144:29 we are going, as I said, I’m reminding you, we’re going to divide it into two parts. The first part is a shared fantasy. You will be invited to go with
144:37 me deeper and deeper, never to emerge. And the second part is um what to do
144:44 when you are trapped in a shared fantasy and cannot exit. What? Subjectively or objectively,
144:50 you’re trapped. What to do? There’ll be the tomorrow, the day after that, and the day after the day after that. Oh,
144:57 that was long. These two days will be dedicated to having exited the shared fantasy and how to cope with the damage
145:04 done to you and with internal dynamics that are operating in you. For example,
145:10 grief and how to heal and recover yourself. All based on studies. I want
145:17 to recommend this book to you. It is old. It is 2012
145:25 handbook handbook of narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder.
145:31 The editors uh Campbell is the pre-minent scholar of narcissism.
145:38 It is 2012 and but I strangely I couldn’t find any
145:44 mistakes in it. But it’s like an echo from when we were speculating. So they were speculating in
145:52 2012. They were saying, for example, we think that there are no coverts and
145:58 overts. We think that every narcissist is covert and overt. So in this book, it’s a speculation, but we know today that it is true. So it’s like time travel to see how the
146:11 today’s thinking has emerged. But there’s no mistake in the book. I’ve read it cover to cover and I’ve also
146:17 defaced it of course because I feel entitled to do so. I defaced it with numerous uh you know com notes and so on. So if you buy this thing you’re not
146:29 mistaken. You you will not be misled in any way but a lot of the speculations there became completely true. It’s
146:36 fascinating in my view. It’s the only authoritative text on narcissism that I know. I don’t know of any other
146:42 authoritative text unfortunately pretty shocking in my view. Uh that’s it and
146:49 this is my book malignant self of love narcissism revisited for those of you who don’t know my name is Sam Vaknin and
146:56 I’m the author of malignant self love in here right
147:04 and that’s it for today it’s been a pleasure to torture you and yeah I’m
147:10 open to questions and answers you don’t have to stay here if you are not interested to Yeah. Uh, lead a mic,
147:18 please. Tomorrow 10:00 10:00 here.
147:28 Yeah,
147:36 you’re worse than me. Uh, Professor Vnu, thank you very much. It’s pleasure to see you in person. Meet
147:44 you finally after having watched uh for years. Your videos learned a lot and they helped a lot of a lot in my therapy uh process and recovery. Thank you very much. Uh I’m happy to be here and happy to be with you all and talking to you. I’m excited. Um I have two questions uh
148:02 from the content. uh narcissist makes m makes one mummy like tries to create a
148:09 mummy in the other and also infantilizes he also he also infantilizes uh so it’s like two
148:16 things how can the two things be together my first question this is the dual mothership dual
148:22 mothership I will explain tomorrow okay ah okay the second question professor vagin is um
148:29 when mothers or fathers are narcissistic for example is there How do they ch choose which children
148:36 they want to use as supply? Is there does birth order for example matter? Because I’m the last born for example
148:43 and I think I’m curious how my parents let’s say choose okay let’s make this
148:49 child not the other the supply and so narcissistic parents use what I I
148:56 called uh projective splitting. The splitting is uh dividing everything
149:02 to all bad and all good. And projection is when you attribute things inside you
149:09 to other people. When there is something just destroy the phone and that’s it. Why you
149:15 just want me to step on it at your service? Uh, projection is when you have parts in
149:22 you that you don’t like, parts of you that you reject, parts of you that feel alien to you or parts of you that negate
149:28 your self-concept. For example, you think you’re a good person, but there’s a part of you that is evil. So, you
149:34 reject this part. You think you’re heterosexual, but there’s a part of you that is actually homosexual. You’re latent homosexual. So, you reject this part. So, you take these parts and you attribute them to other people. You say,
149:46 “I’m not stingy. He’s stingy. I’m a good person. He’s a bad person. I’m I’m not angry. He’s angry. So you project. Projective splitting is when the parents
149:58 uh take the parts that they dislike about themselves and attribute these parts to a child to a specific child. That child becomes the scapegoat. Yeah.
150:10 So this child becomes the repository of all the parts of the parent that the parent rejected that the parent doesn’t like about himself or herself. At the same time, the narcissistic parent takes the parts that he likes
150:27 about himself and he attributes these parts to another child.
150:33 So it’s like the narcissistic parents splits himself or herself into I like
150:40 myself here or I dislike myself here. The part that I like about myself
150:47 belongs to this child. The part that the part that I hate belongs to this
150:54 child. This is projective splitting and that gives rise to the me to the dynamic of scapegoat and golden child. the just
151:01 let me answer your question. So we know that uh in some ways very
151:10 limited ways uh firstborns enjoy a special status in the in the family and because they enjoy a special status they have a higher um probability of
151:22 developing narcissism. Cohort called it the grandio self, grandio. Uh so for example, the
151:30 firstborns feel more entitled. They feel more entitled. They are more idolized. They so they there is a bigger chance
151:38 bigger risk of developing narcissism. However, in studies that we made of
151:44 golden children and scapegoats, we did not find a pattern.
151:50 And there were a few studies which by the way are mentioned in this book. There are few studies where actually the
151:56 last born became the golden child not the firstborn and the firstborn became
152:04 the object of demands and expectations. So the firstborn was instrumentalized
152:10 became an instrument. The parent had wishes and dreams and the parent failed.
152:16 So the parent wants the first child to realize these wishes to realize these dreams instrumentalize or parentifies
152:23 the first child and and so on and this gives rise to narcissism of course and
152:29 so on. But it seems that the last child is more likely actually to end up as a
152:36 golden child. Again, contrary to all to everything you hear online, if you go to the Bible, they actually agree with you with this because it is the last child in the Bible that is the golden child. Benjamin Benjamin is the last child is
152:52 the golden child. the last child in the family that’s the the smallest the youngest is usually become the but we
152:59 don’t have uh at this stage we don’t have sufficient um studies to say
153:05 anything with any certainty we only know that firstborns have a higher IQ
153:11 they feel more entitled they bear the expectations and demands of the parent and they’re more likely to
153:17 develop narcissism this we know however we don’t know much more than this and we
153:23 have one or two studies about last children becoming golden children but it’s not serious I don’t take these
153:29 studies too seriously so last thing professor vakn so um Sam Sam call me Sam professor vakn seminar will take six days okay Sam wow Sam
153:40 nice Sam Sam so do I understand correctly the firstborn child uh is more likely to be um the
153:51 source of supply for the parents. Exactly. Not only source of supply, but the love is conditional. The love is
153:57 performative. In other words, I’m going to love you if you perform. The relationship with the first child is
154:03 performance-based, transactional. I’m going to love you if you perform. What do you need to do? You need to realize my dreams. You need to realize my wishes. You need to give me supply. You need to make me proud. You need to
154:14 accomplish things. You need to become famous. You need to become rich. You know, but only then I’m going to love you. My love is conditioned on your performance. Of course, these kind of children high likelihood become
154:25 narcissist. And they their love is also transactional. I’m going to love you if
154:31 you give me services. I’m going to love you if you give me supply. I’m going to love you if you give me sex. So
154:37 they, as I said at the beginning, whatever happens to the narcissist, he wants you to experience, you know.
154:44 So he he experienced conditional love. He wants you to experience. It’s called contingent. The clinical term is contingent love. So we call firstborns as scapegoats, right? Yeah. But I think there are other people
154:55 who want Yeah. Sorry. The firstborns are scapegoats. Then can we say first? No, we don’t call it a scapegoat. It’s
155:01 uh we don’t have sufficient data who becomes a scapegoat except two studies that show that the last born a
155:08 scapegoat. Yes. The first child is a scapegoat. Yes. Yes. Yes. Sorry. You’re right. Yes. Sorry, my mistake. I I was
155:15 thinking about golden child. I’m a firstborn by the way. Hello Sam. My name is Marie. I have a
155:22 question referring to a video of yours. Um it’s called the fam fatal or versus
155:28 mother video or actually I think it’s uh in a few videos you talk around this topic. So if I hear um obviously I’m
155:35 here with my boyfriend and out of personal interest the question. Um so you talk a lot about the fact that the relationship is always transactional. there is no real love and what was this third major thing I forget um yeah I’m
155:52 I’m exchangeable or the woman or the partner is exchangeable so um of course
155:58 I’m I’m one of these women who hope for for a different case and therefore I
156:04 thinking of this video of the fam fatal because there you describe something completely different and the this fatal
156:11 mechanism so to speak uh I cannot relate the stuff that you uh talk about right
156:17 now to that case and yeah maybe this answer is too long but that is my question or maybe you speak tomorrow about it. Narcissists can be the victims of a shared fantasy nothing prevents it. The fatal creates a
156:33 shared fantasy where the narcissist is in the role of the victim if she is with a narcissist.
156:39 So the fact that you’re a narcissist doesn’t give you any immunity to a shared fantasy. Actually, many scholars
156:45 think it’s exactly the opposite because narcissists are prone to fantasy. Narcissism is a fantasy defense. They
156:52 many scholars say that narcissists are gullible. They’re naive. They are much
156:58 more victimized by scam art con artists and swindlers and scammers because they they think they know everything. They don’t need to, you know. So it’s easy for a woman, for example, who is psychopathic or a woman who is narcissistic. It’s easy for her to
157:14 create a shared fantasy and and trap or bait the narcissist. And then he his dynamics in the shed fantasy are
157:21 identical to dynamics of a of a victim. He experiences it differently. The inner
157:27 experience is different, but the outside outcomes and so on are identical. Absolutely identical. This means we do the same. I don’t know what you do to each other. I don’t know which one of you is. I think he’s the I think he’s the fatal.
157:39 He He is the fatal. Oh, I don’t know how to interpretate
157:45 that. But okay, we we do more or less the in this model, not us, but in this model that you described in this mechanism, we would do more or less the same to each other. Uh instead of one way, it would be two ways. very to put it very simple it’s usually uh in in a shirt fantasy
158:04 clinically is what we call um what we call fia it’s uh it’s uh what used to be
158:11 called shirt psychotic disorder in a shirt psychotic disorder in a fad there’s one person who is leading is
158:19 called the inducer there’s one person who induces the fadu and there’s one follower the person who induces the foliadu falsifies reality creates an
158:30 alternative reality and the person who is follower accepts the reality suspends
158:36 her reality testing so it’s very rare to have equal position to be equipotent in
158:43 a shirt fantasy okay but if you sorry I have to ask one more question so if it if if there’s this narcissist and he meets a fem fatal
158:50 and it is the um uh kind of relationship you’re speaking about in this video that he does everything for this woman not only the little stuff not transactional. So in that case um he is not creating the shared fantasy uh fantasy but the the woman or the partner
159:07 it’s very usually very clear who is creating the shared fantasy because it is the person imposing her reality or
159:14 his reality on the other. This would mean that a feat tribe woman can never be a victim of um narcissistic abuse in my logic. I I think this is not a counseling session.
159:26 Okay, I’m I’d be delighted to give you counseling, but I don’t think that’s that’s the form. Okay, but maybe you will have a better
159:32 insight. Maybe you’ll have a better insight after tomorrow when we go deeper into the shed fantasy and the dynamics.
159:38 Hi, and thank you. I’m following you for years. I’m really happy to be here. And you survived. Wow, impressive.
159:45 Ah, and the first part of the seminar also. Thank you. So, my understanding was that um and please correct me if I’m wrong. Um because narcissists
159:57 use the same relationship uh template with every everyone.
160:04 Maybe the partner doesn’t feel actually that special and that’s contributing to
160:11 the perception that he cheats and as a defensive grandiosity in a way
160:18 this is a way is this a way uh narcissism became contagious?
160:26 No, narcissism is contagious from the very first few seconds because to continue to continue to be
160:33 with the to continue to interact with a narcissist after the first 30 seconds you need to suspend your reality
160:39 judgment. You need to deny and repress the negative the uncanny valley the negative reaction that you have. So from the first second you’re under the narcissist control in the sense that you
160:50 suppress your reality. The shirt fantasy is much more much more
160:58 complex than than this. I think many of these questions better ask them after
161:04 the segment on the shirt fantasy because maybe they’re answered and if they’re not then we can tackle them but also people will have a lot more tools to understand. Okay.
161:16 So here Mhm. Oh hello little one little one. some thank you
161:22 very much for uh a lot of videos. I think that they saved my life and my
161:28 relation and self love somehow. I would and I heard Leslie a video your video
161:37 about the first signs how how how you can recognize uh narcissist but I would
161:43 like to to to know a little bit more if for example covert narcissist and psychopath are so so likely to to recognize on the first side because it’s
161:55 it’s a little bit I I know this a huge problem for for many of us to to recognize of it covert narcissism ist or
162:03 you you you wrote me in the mail that they have uh every type of narcissist
162:10 has subtle subtle signs, body language and so on. But about psychopaths. So is
162:17 this the same? No, this is not a seminar dedicated to psychopaths. Psychopaths are very good actors. Mhm. And with the psychopath studies show that you can be deceived even for long
162:29 periods of time. But all the studies about narcissists are very clear. Within the first 30 seconds, you develop negative impressions, but then you report positive impressions. And this
162:43 this discrepancy between how you really feel and what you report self-reporting
162:49 is very diff was when the book was written was very difficult to explain. But today we think it is cognitive
162:55 dissonance. You are repressing it, denying it, refraraming it. you’re saying something’s wrong with me or it’s
163:01 not fair to criticize someone after 30 seconds or I should give him a second chance or I’m so lonely let me compromise or you know I’m so sex starved and it looks good etc. So there
163:14 are many dynamics inside you that are attempting to resolve the dissonance at your expense at your expense. All
163:23 narcissists overt and covert exude the signals give give off the signals. There
163:29 was no difference when the studies were conducted. So
163:35 there were studies with Facebook photographs. I want you I want you to understand when I say studies I want you
163:41 to understand what I mean. people a group of people were shown um Facebook
163:47 photos single photo one photo not moving not photo then they were asked is this a
163:54 narcissist or not and they said this is a narcissist and they were shown thousands of photos it’s one study
164:00 example they were shown thousands of photos and they let’s say they identified for discussion sake 150
164:06 nurses the people in the photos were subjected to testing psychological testing and
164:13 were diagnosed already as narcissist or non-narcissist.
164:20 The correlation was very high zero in one study it was 81 exceedingly high
164:28 correlation anyone who knows statistics very high correlation means that people who are not trained they’re not
164:34 clinicians they did not conduct any tests they did not meet the people based
164:40 on a single photograph they were as accurate as diagnostician with a
164:46 psychological test as accurate When people were shown a video of 30
164:53 seconds, we had the same results. When people were shown um email, we had the
165:00 same results. So, it seems that people are able to diagnose narcissists within split seconds. I told you there’s a scholar in Harvard. She says 3 seconds. So why do
165:13 we why almost universally people report that the first impressions of narcissists were very good when we know
165:20 for sure that they’re able to identify a narcissist like that within seconds
165:26 they’re denying they’re reframing they are there’s a process going a what we call a secondary process there’s a
165:33 secondary process going on and this has a lot to do with neediness or with you know and and so on I depends how desperate also yes desperation and so on. So so here is another question. Um I’ve never met you. I have followed you absolutely all the time. I think
165:54 extensively I cannot stop thinking and uh I have quite a unique quickly I’ll
166:00 tell you a unique experience. I was the first girlfriend of the narcissist and
166:07 he was younger than my own children. Bit difficult. Um, my children at the time
166:13 that I was going through the difficulty with it, they were tolerant for a while and then as my older son said, “Lawrence
166:20 has changed his name and we don’t know what it is.” Which I thought was very funny and clever. They’re nice boys.
166:27 Anyway, I was incredibly isolated and the only person I was listening to is you, Sam. It’s kind of sad.
166:33 So, you were doubly doubly isolated. Sorry. So, you were doubly isolated. No, don’t insult yourself. You see, I
166:39 had a narcissistic grandiose narcissistic father and he was uh I I
166:45 identify all the traits. But I just wanted to say apart from the wonderful content, what is absolutely amazingly wonderful is to see your joy in being
166:58 with us. It’s not just what you say. You clearly love talking to us and that’s
167:04 wonderful. Just quickly, narcissistic supply is fine. It doesn’t matter. I don’t think there I don’t think there’s anything to excuse. I can’t help it. I I I can spot emotion. And uh so just
167:16 quickly, I developed red spots on my back from cortisol, which I didn’t know
167:22 what it was. I had twice. And I think that was due to do with stress from the narcissist. And I actually started to
167:30 speak in animal voices. Like I would make sounds that weren’t words. And my
167:37 children even said to me, “Mommy, you can show your emotions.”
167:43 The other thing was, I just wanted to say something before we got into a relationship. He went out one night. I
167:50 was actually his landlady. He went out one night and it was just before his 21st birthday. And he went out and he
167:58 had sent a text to me and he said in that text, and I believe this was honest, only 21. He went out. The the police brought him back from the local bridge. I didn’t go with him. I told him I didn’t think he should go. He should stay and talk. I said don’t go. But I
168:15 didn’t go with him. But anyway, you know what he said? And I’ve never forgotten it. He said, “When people show me love
168:22 and compassion, I feel lonely and emotionally cold.” And
168:28 I think that was a thousand% the truth. That was a defense of a child who never
168:34 felt loved. His mother told him that she took the morning after pill and it hadn’t worked. I mean, like she wanted
168:40 to kill him. She went to the supermarket and she forgot he was with her and didn’t bring her him back. He made his
168:46 own meals when he was five. And of course, he fed all that to me as facts. And then eventually when I took his
168:54 defense, eventually when he know the new girlfriend and I said, “Why is she bad naming me?” Well, he said, “You said bad
169:04 things about my mother and you never met her.” And then I knew he was giving back to me all his negativity which he had voiced through me because his new girlfriend being his age will meet his mother and I never will. So I understood
169:21 everything from watching, from listening, from analyzing. And it is
169:27 absolutely the most terrible thing I’ve ever experienced. And I experienced I think what one of my tenants said is
169:34 depression. I had never experienced depression before. I came from a family, my father was a narcissist, but we had
169:41 an enormous sense of humor. And I think a sense of humor can keep you trapped, but it does stop you being rigid and can
169:47 help you from being mentally ill. Thank you. You know, I hope that by
169:58 those photographs, were they all exactly the same stance? I’m sorry.
170:04 Yeah, was super quick. Just the photographs, were they all position? Each person was
170:11 positioned in exactly the same stance like mug shots. Uh a maternal figure, they will convert
170:17 you into maternal figure. The maternal figure will feature. No, no. In the in the the Facebook
170:23 thing. Oh. Oh. Were they all different different Facebook photos? Just randomly selected Facebook photos.
170:30 Not not same. Not same.
170:36 Um hello Sam. I’m I’m the Turkish filmmaker who’s making a film from your Thank you for coming.
170:42 Videos. Um so I’m um academic as well and I’m I’m an anthropologist but I find
170:48 this fascinating and um when you say um
170:54 that actually clinically diagnosed narcissism is much less than those with narcissistic traits. Does this mean most of the abuse
171:06 is actually happening by those with narcissistic traits if clinically
171:12 diagnosed narcissists are actually a rare uh specy? And then the second question,
171:18 which is a question you I think you’re gonna like is about sex.
171:24 And um does does um if most narcissists are
171:31 autoerotic and if most of them are addicted to sex, does this mean they’re
171:37 addicted to having sex to themselves? So these two I’ll start with the second uh question.
171:44 This will be the last question because these two gentlemen I I’m abusing them.
171:50 Okay, but these two gentlemen are you know I have to take think of their okay I will answer these two this one and that’s it. Uh I didn’t say that most narcissist are
172:01 into sex on the very contrary I said the cerebral narcissist are asexual. Cerebral narcissist are not into sex.
172:08 Somatic narcissist are also not into sex but they’re into sexual conquest. If the emphasis is on sex, the emphasis could be on bodybuilding or or athletic uh accomplishments, the use of the body. If
172:20 their use of the body is sex oriented, then they would be hypersexed.
172:26 Whereas cerebral narcissists are essentially hyposex or actually a asexual asex celibate.
172:34 Um remind me what was your first question?
172:44 The first the first question is Oh yes yes yes. So the answer to your question is the second question just to complete it is
172:55 that sexual attraction in narcissism is exclusively to one’s own body.
173:02 The attraction could be mediated via medium, could be mediated via pornography, via
173:09 partner, via So the attraction could be mediated, but it’s exclusively to one’s
173:15 own body. But the complication is it’s attraction
173:21 to one’s own body as perceived by others. Again the narcissist derives all ego what what is called ego functions
173:32 derives all internal dynamics from the outside. The narcissist imports his mind
173:39 from the outsides. It’s a hive mind. So all the functions are brought from the outside and internalized and then they operate. Similarly with sex to be
173:50 attracted to himself sexually the narcissist needs to have someone attracted to him.
173:57 Someone is attracted to him. He says she’s attracted to me. It means I’m attractive.
174:04 Now I can be attracted to myself. How will I do that? I can masturbate
174:10 with her body or I can just look in her eyes and see that she finds me irresistible or whatever. whichever way.
174:18 But this is the role of the partner. That’s why the narcissist needs a partner. You can ask if the narcissist is attracted to his body, why does he need another person? He needs another person because nothing is happening
174:29 here. Everything is happening outside. He needs the attraction to come from the outside. The he is importing the
174:37 arousal. Even the arousal is coming from outside. Regarding your first question, nar
174:45 people with narcissistic style are not abusive in the proactive sense, but they’re insensitive, they’re
174:51 exploitative, they are a-holes, they’re obnoxious, they’re unpleasant, they are and so if
174:58 you live with someone like that, it it grinds you. It it grates on you. It’s it’s corrosive. It’s corrosive. It erodess you. It’s you pay a price. You pay a price in terms of mental health if
175:11 you share your life with someone like that. It doesn’t need to be a pathology. And by the way, the vast majority of abusers, including domestic people who domestic violence, the vast majority are
175:24 not mentally ill. It’s a myth. They’re not mentally ill. They don’t have any personality disorder. They are perfectly
175:31 healthy. They’re obsessed with control. They’re very controlling. or they have a perception of justice
175:37 which is very distorted and so on but they’re mentally healthy. So you don’t have to be to share your life with a
175:43 narcissist or when you are with a someone with narcissistic style it’s a highly unpleasant coexistence and when but when you are with a
175:54 narcissist it’s annihilation it’s an extermination camp it is a two it’s it’s a it’s awitz recreated it’s about extermination
176:07 and that is a massive difference you cannot make a mistake if you date uh someone with narcissistic style, you may
176:13 come out with a bitter taste. You say, “What an idiot. What a jerk.” You know, but if you date a narcissist, you’re
176:20 totally disoriented, destabilized, discombobulated, confused. You’re lost internally, you’re lost externally. It’s it’s as if someone catapulted you to outer space. And the
176:33 there’s a massive impact there. Even the uncanny valley reaction is very deep, very profound, you know, because as I
176:41 said, the narcissist is an absence. I I keep saying in my videos, and it’s highly politically incorrect. One day it will cost me my my jobs. I keep saying
176:53 that narcissists are not fully human. They’re not fully human because take away empathy,
177:00 take away empathy, take away positive emotions, take away the ability to
177:06 distinguish fantasy from reality, take away the ability to recognize the externality and separateness of other
177:12 people. What is left? What makes us human? This is what makes people human. No,
177:18 they’re empathic. They recognize that other people exist and they have rights and so on. This is what makes us human.
177:25 Take away all these elements. Someone who cannot experience any positive emotion. Even joy, narcissist don’t
177:32 experience joy ever. They experience elation. We have special names. They are so crazy. They’re so out there that we have special names. We had to invent a whole new dictionary. Instead of joy, we
177:45 don’t say narcissistic joy. We say narcissistic elation. You understand? So we I had also in the
177:53 80s and 90s I had to come up with a completely new vocab vocabulary completely new language
178:00 most of which is still used but there are many others who came up with is elation not positive sorry is elation not positive no elation is uh triumphant elation is is uh yes it’s about it’s
178:14 a bit it’s not only a power play but it’s also has to do with ancient what is called oceanic feeling It’s ancient uh
178:21 replay replay of uh Yes, please. Uh thank you for all of your work and thank you for providing us with this seminar. It’s a huge pleasure to be
178:32 here. Since you mentioned Hitchcock, my question is do you happen to have a list
178:38 of cinematographic andor musical depictions of narcissism both from the
178:44 point of view of the narcissist and from the point of view of the victims? I have on my YouTube channel I have a playlist
178:51 of fiction and film. So you can find there films, reviews of films, analysis of films and so on. Thank you. You’re welcome. That was a short one.
179:02 Disappointing. Thank you all for coming and see some of you tomorrow at 10:00 I see.

Summary Link:

https://vakninsummaries.com/why-narcissists-must-abuse-you-skopje-seminar-opening-may-2025/

https://vakninsummaries.com/ (Full summaries of Sam Vaknin’s videos)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html (My work in psychology: Media Kit and Press Room)

Bonus Consultations with Sam Vaknin or Lidija Rangelovska (or both) http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/ctcounsel.html

http://www.youtube.com/samvaknin (Narcissists, Psychopaths, Abuse)

http://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings (World in Conflict and Transition)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com (Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited)

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/cv.html (Biography and Resume)

Summary

The seminar, organized by the Vaknin Vangelovska Foundation, provided an in-depth, research-based exploration of pathological narcissism, its impact on victims, and the complex dynamics of the shared fantasy between narcissists and those they manipulate. Key topics included the distinction between narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic style, the contagious nature of narcissism, and the profound psychological damage inflicted on victims, including epistemic injury and identity estrangement. The speaker also addressed misconceptions about narcissism, such as the myth of victim selection and the nature of narcissistic sexuality, promising further detailed discussions in subsequent sessions on coping, recovery, and healing. Why Narcissists MUST Abuse YOU (Skopje Seminar Opening, May 2025)

Tags

Abuse, narcissism, narcissist, Personality, Psychology, Reality, Sam Vaknin, Trauma, Vaknin, Vaknin Summaries

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