Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. How Narcissist Survives Defeats, Errors, Failures

1. 00:01 In the video titled narcissist mask of normaly, we discussed the constant dissonant state of the narcissist because pathological narcissism makes upon the narcissist imposes on the narcissist two demands which are completely incompatible. Two narratives
2. 00:23 which cannot be reconciled. They’re mutually exclusive. One narrative is Mr. a narcissist, miss narcissist. You are godlike. You’re divine. You’re perfection embodied. You’re omnicient. You’re omnipotent. You’re a genius. You’re brilliant. You’re drop dead gorgeous.
3. 00:43 And so this is one narrative. This is one voice. And the other one is everyone is out to get you. People conspire against you. They envy you. They hate you. um no one appreciates your um traits, your gifts, your qualities, your contributions. You’re being
4. 01:04 underestimated and discriminated against etc etc. So on the one hand total control, total omnipotence, all powerful, all knowing on the one hand and on the other hand helplessness and hopelessness learned in many ways. So which is it? Are you the narcissist,
5. 01:30 godlike? Or are you the happless victims of other people, the environment, institutions, collective, history, I don’t know, your society, your culture. Are you a victim or are you God? God cannot be a victim. And so this creates in the narcissist the dynamic of dissonance.
6. 01:53 um which gives rise to a lot of anxiety, overpowering uh overwhelming, disregulating anxiety. And the narcissist engages in a monopoly of regulatory or self-regulatory attempts at self-regulatory behavior in order to somehow impose on this dissolence dynamics and
7. 02:18 mechanisms that would dissipate it, reframe it or or stop it in its tracks altogether. And today we’re going to discuss a few of these mechanic mechanisms. A few of these me some of these mechanics because it’s a machinery. Athological narcissism is an
8. 02:35 inexurable all-consuming machinery. My name is Sambakin. I’m the author of malignant self- loveve. Narcissism revisited and a professor of psychology in the Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge, United Kingdom. So the narcissist inner experience, the narcissist’s inner
9. 02:57 experience is that of an external locus of control. The narcissist overriding narrative is that of a victim. The narcissist believes himself to be Goliver surrounded by lily pushions. He is supreme. He is superior in every way, intellectually, bodily, you name it.
10. 03:20 He has so much to give and he contributes so much. He is the the source of all knowledge and and he is the father of everything and he’s and yet people underestimate him to not appreciate him, discriminate against him. And why is that? Because they envy
11. 03:40 him. Envy him. They want to take him down. They want to destroy him. They want to appropriate his life and his work. They want to make him disappear and so on. So this is what is known in psychology as an external locus of control. When the narcissist attempts to
12. 04:00 make sense of his life, to imbue it with meaning, purpose and direction to somehow predict what’s going to happen next. In other words, to create a theory of his life, a working model of his life. The narcissist assumes that his life is determined from the outside by
13. 04:17 malevolent, malicious people, people who conspire against him, people who um abuse him and and maybe mock him and ridicule him. People who who uh somehow gossip about him or talk about him, people who denigrate him and shame him and humiliate him to his face and and
14. 04:38 backstab him and so on. So everything is coming from the outside and indeed the narcissist’s regulation is external. The narcissist does not is incapable of self-regulating because he doesn’t have a constellated integrated self. Instead the narcissist imports the narcissist
15. 05:00 solicits regulation from the outside. This is what is known as narcissistic supply. And so because is used to outsource his ego functions to outsource his regulation to the outside, he also assumes that everything important in his life, every junction, every development,
16. 05:24 every uh growth, every retardation, not only growth, arrested processes, everything, every effect, every emotion, every cognition, Every dynamic everything is coming from the outside. He ex narcissist experiences his regulatory environment, experiences
17. 05:44 his inner environment through the gaze of other people, through the eyes of other people. This is so terrifying. This dependency is so frightening that the narcissist deceives himself into believing that these people are not external, that they’re internal. They’re
18. 06:02 internal objects. So he doesn’t feel threatened anymore. It’s like the narcissist regulates his sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-concept, self-confidence, personal personal psychological dynamics, psychological processes, emotions, effects, cognitions, you name
19. 06:20 it. Decisions, choices, uh interactions, everything is 100% regulated from the outside. But the narcissist cannot admit this. It’s a horror. It’s terrifying to be to be dependent to this extent on other people. So he lies to himself and to others especially to himself by
20. 06:41 pretending that these people exist only in his mind the figments in his theater play actors in his movie. And so while the narcissist experiences his life as determined from the outside, while his inner experience is that of an external locus of control, he
21. 07:01 immediately flips the script and he feains and fakes an internal locus of control. He says, “Yeah, I like it when people adjulate and admire me and so on so forth, but this adulation and admiration is something aminish.” For example, this is known as the
22. 07:27 internal solution. Libby coined this phrase, the internal solution. Internal solution simply means I’m the source and the found and the reason for and the cause for absolutely everything that’s happening to me. My life is determined by me internally and by me internally
23. 07:44 only. Other people are puppets and I am the puppet master. It’s a lie. It’s selfdeception and it is not the narcissist internal experience. Absolutely not. And yet it is soothing. It’s a form of self soothing, self-coming and it is of course also it also constitutes self-upp.
24. 08:07 So what kind of stories does the narcissist tell him tell himself in order to kind of overcome the fact that he is so fragile, so brittle, so vulnerable and that his narcissism is a compensator compensatory yarn. It’s just a piece of fiction. It’s not real. It’s
25. 08:25 counterfactual. It’s fantastic. It’s insane. How does a narcissist reconcile all these elements? How does he tell himself on the one hand, evil people out there are colluding and conspiring against me in order to take me down on the one hand and they’re very successful at doing
26. 08:47 this because of their collusion and conspiracy. I’m not recognized. I’m demoted. I’m overlooked. I’m ignored. I my contributions are are stolen by others. So they’re powerful, they’re powerful, and they’re successful. This is one narrative. And the other
27. 09:05 narrative, I’m godlike. I’m divine. I’m all powerful. I’m these two narratives can go together. And the internal solution is intended to somehow reconcile this. And the internal solutions convoluted um approach is yes people are out there. Yes, they want to take me down. Yes,
28. 09:27 they want to destroy me. Yes, they want to make me disappear. Yes, they want to steal my my life and my work. Yes, they’re doing all these things. Yes, they’re evil. Yes, they envy me. Yes, it’s all true. But they only think that they’re operating independently. They only
29. 09:46 believe that they have agency. The reality is different. I’m the one who makes them behave this way. They are behaving this way because I trigger them to behave this way. I provoke them to behave this way. I manipulate them to behave this way. I’m
30. 10:02 in charge. I’m the boss. I’m the puppet master. I determine what happens. I’m pulling their strings. They those people who are conspiring against me, who hate me, who wish to destroy me, who are acting this very minute against me, these people believe
31. 10:22 that they are doing it autonomously. They believe that they are agentic. They believe that they’re driven by their own values, motivations, beliefs, and aspirations. They’re wrong. The truth is, I penetrated their minds. I infiltrated their being, and I’m in
32. 10:39 charge. They are just animated corpses, meat suits. They’re nothing. They’re nothing because I’m godlike. I’m divine. So that kind of narrative, this kind of compromise, this kind of internal solution on the one hand would sustain the narcissist’s belief that he is a victim,
33. 11:03 a victim of a collusion or conspiracy or whatever, and on the other hand would sustain the narcissist’s belief that he is all powerful. The narcissist is actually saying inly if not insanely, I’m the source of my own self-destruction. I’m the the the f I’m the reason for my
34. 11:22 selfdefeat. I’m orchestrating all this. I’m choreog choreographing all this. It’s all my doing. I’m the director of this movie in which I’m sacrificed in which I become the victim. Remember what Jesus said that the crucifixion was his own doing or at
35. 11:44 least the his father’s doing. It’s like it’s all planned, guys. Yeah, I’m going to become a victim. I’m going to be crucified. I’m going to suffer horribly and so on so forth. But don’t worry about it. I’m in control. I’m in charge. I am making the Romans and the Jews do
36. 11:59 it to me. That’s an internal solution. I made them do it. Forgive them. They know not what they are doing. Only I do. Only I know what they’re doing. I’m in charge. The next type of internal solution is they their the malevolent actions of other people, their malice,
37. 12:24 their attempts to visiate me and negate me, their envy, their negative effects, their all these they’re doing it they’re doing it with my permission. I’m I’ve given them permission to do it. So because they know that this is actually what I want that actually it’s
38. 12:51 allowed that they are not transgressing against me because they know it. They allow themselves to behave this way. It’s as if I broadcast to them. Go ahead, defeat me. Destroy me. Deep inside. That’s exactly what I want. you have my permission, my enthusiastic
39. 13:10 consent to proceed. It reminds me of the Supreme Court of the United States. They pretend to go along with Donald Trump’s lawless decisions and behaviors because they know that if they don’t, he’s going to ignore them. So it’s like the Supreme
40. 13:29 Court of the United States is saying we are giving permission to Donald Trump to behave this way. Whatever it is that he’s doing illegally in many cases, it’s because we gave him permission to do it. We actually want him to do it. We support the unitary executive theory,
41. 13:47 whatever they came up with to feel good with themselves. Why? Because they don’t want to be exposed as irrelevant and powerless. That’s exactly the same with the narcissist. The narcissist feels victimized. The narcissist believes that he’s being attacked and demoted and
42. 14:06 destroyed and vilified and negated and visiated and he’s being victimized. So, but narcissist cannot be victimized. He’s God in his own eyes. He’s godlike. So, probably he’s being victimized because he wants to be victimized or he’s being victimized with his own permission.
43. 14:27 That way the narcissist in his own demented uh mind maintains control over the situation. He’s the master’s is in charge. Again, same like the Supreme Court. Yeah. Donald Trump is breaking the law, but he’s breaking the law with our blessing and consent and permission.
44. 14:46 And he would not have dared to break the law without us. We are a critical feature in his breaking the law. Of course, it’s nonsense. he would have broken the law with or without the Supreme Court. It’s just that the Supreme Court, narcissistic as they are,
45. 15:00 are afraid to be exposed. The next internal solution is not only did I make them do it, not only did I give them permission to do whatever it is they’re doing against me, but I also made them who they are. I shaped them. I molded them. I made them happen. I created
46. 15:21 them. Whatever it is they think they’re doing is reactive to me. I have created the environment within which they operate. So I’m still the master of this universe. Now within the universe there are degrees of freedom of course and free will but I’m still the master. You
47. 15:42 have this in theology where many theologians would tell you that the problem of evil, theodysy, the attempt to solve the problem of evil. I mean, if there’s a benign, benevolent god, why does he allow evil to happen? Either because he’s powerless to stop it, in
48. 15:58 which case he’s not omnipotent, or he actually it’s not a bug, it’s a feature, in which case he is not benign and benevolent, he’s evil. So, how to reconcile this? Well, God created the environment. God created the universe and gave people free will. So, that’s
49. 16:16 the solution. God created us in a way that we engage in evil acts if we choose to. And because the choice is ours, God is exempt, is not responsible, is exonerated. And so this is a narcissistic perception of God. And the narcissist says the same.
50. 16:36 I made this environment, this company, this this class, this I created this environment. I defined the parameters of this environment. the boundaries and the boundary conditions. I I told everyone how to behave. I I created the code and now within this there are degrees of
51. 16:59 freedom and people are doing what they’re doing against me. It’s a form of fratric patriced that it’s like killing killing the father. I’m the father of all this and they’re killing me because patri seed is normal. And so is Patricet is even commendable because it’s part of
52. 17:17 the process of growing up according to the likes of Freud. So uh I made them
53. 17:24 who they are. Yes. And because I made them who they are by extension I created the space within which they can operate. This space is bounded and limited well definfined and this space is immutable. So I am actually running the show. It’s a simulation and I’m the master of the
54. 17:48 simulation. And finally another internal solution is they’re imitating me. They’re plagiarizing me. They’re stealing from me. They mimic me. It’s whatever it is they’re doing. It’s just a reflection of me. It’s they’re just attempting to become me. They would
55. 18:06 never succeed because of my supremacy and superiority. which is so extreme that it is well beyond the reach and attainment of any normal human being. But they’re trying. It is because they’re trying that they’re victimizing me in their attempts
56. 18:24 to imitate me, to emulate me, in their attempts to to plagiarize me or whatever. They want me gone because I’m a reminder of their derivative work. I’m a reminder of their plagiarism. I’m a reminder of the theft. I’m a reminder of their misbehavior. So,
57. 18:43 they want me gone and they’re victimizing me, attempting to destroy me and pull me down and do whatever it is that they they’re doing because of their own sins. The excalpation of their sins depends on my demise. Again, a very religious theme reminiscent a lot of
58. 19:00 Jesus whose death is led to the absolution of sins of humanity. So narcissism being a form of religion, the internal solutions are religious. I made them do it. And because I made made them who they are, it’s like God saying, “I created mankind.”
59. 19:25 And I gave mankind free will to choose between right and wrong. They did it with my permission. It’s exactly like God saying, you know, I’m in charge. I’m the big guy here. I’m the big honcho. I’m the chef. I’m the chief. And so whatever happens here has
60. 19:42 been foreseen and predicted. And you know, it’s the scenarios and the scripts that I’ve created early on. Everything people are doing is with my knowledge, for knowledge and permission. They they may experience it as free will and to some extent it’s free and they’re going
61. 19:58 to be punished for it of course or rewarded, but they’re operating within a confined well-defined space. They cannot exit this space and it’s my space. Finally, they’re imitating me or plagiarizing me and they want me dead because I’m a reminder of their sins.
62. 20:15 It’s again the Jesus narrative. You see that the affinity between religion and narcissism is is very close. And for well over 101 15 years I’ve been saying that narcissism is the next global religion distributed religion. and the internal solution. The attempt to reconcile
63. 20:34 uh the two narratives of victimhood and omnipotence or victimhood and and divinity to reconcile these two. This is exactly the attempt made or done in the New Testament. There is victimhood. Jesus is crucified and there is um divinity is is an aspect of God. How to
64. 20:57 reconcile the two? Well, then he wanted it to happen. He wanted it to happen. He made people do it. He shaped and molded humanity and he absorbs humanity with his own death. It’s very It’s all very noble, very selfless and may I add extremely narcissistic.