Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video. Sudden Insight, Psychopathic Narcissists & Why Narcissists Manipulate Their Children | LIVE Q&A

00:00:00.320 So let’s have a look at what you guys
00:00:03.360 have to say.
00:00:07.200 Okay. Can sudden insight into identity
00:00:11.440 thoughts and narcissistic family
00:00:13.440 dynamics be destabilizing or
00:00:16.960 retraumatizing
00:00:18.880 and how is that treated?
00:00:22.320 I’m not quite sure what is meant by
00:00:25.279 sudden insight.
00:00:27.760 If you mean um a recall, a sudden
00:00:31.359 memory, the emergence of a memory that
00:00:33.840 has been suppressed or repressed for a
00:00:36.320 very long time,
00:00:38.480 then yes, it could be destabilizing. I’m
00:00:41.280 not sure about retraumatizing. It’s a
00:00:43.280 bit of a strong word, but it could be it
00:00:45.440 could cause upset. It could cause even
00:00:48.079 to some extent anxiety and depression.
00:00:51.760 In therapy, in psychotherapy, within
00:00:55.039 treatment, we try to control the
00:00:58.719 emergence of such memories and to
00:01:01.680 structure the process so that the
00:01:04.000 individual is not overwhelmed.
00:01:07.119 We have also changed our attitude when
00:01:09.200 it comes to the treatment of trauma.
00:01:12.320 Initially, up until recently,
00:01:15.439 we used to debrief people. We used to
00:01:18.159 ask people tell us about your trauma,
00:01:21.040 tell us what has happened. Try to
00:01:23.200 remember as many details as you can. And
00:01:26.000 we discovered that this is a very bad
00:01:28.560 idea. It entrenches the trauma and makes
00:01:32.000 it much more difficult to treat and to
00:01:33.680 eradicate. So today we’re not doing
00:01:36.079 this. Generally speaking, the role of
00:01:40.159 role of memory in treatment and the role
00:01:43.280 of memory in normal day-to-day life
00:01:47.280 is a double-edged sword. On the one
00:01:50.320 hand, without memory, you cannot heal
00:01:54.640 and recover and move on, process what
00:01:57.759 has happened to you, integrate it
00:01:59.920 somehow, and go on with your life.
00:02:03.520 Memory is the glue that holds you
00:02:06.079 together. Memory is the fund the
00:02:08.639 fundament the foundation of identity.
00:02:12.319 But on the other hand, if memories and
00:02:16.000 insights, insight is is a refined kind
00:02:18.800 of memory. Insight is a memory that goes
00:02:22.239 together with interpretation and with
00:02:24.400 some emotions. So it’s what we call a
00:02:26.640 scheme, schema therapy, right? There’s a
00:02:29.680 scheme, beliefs, values, memories,
00:02:32.720 emotions and so on. So without memories
00:02:36.080 you cannot have insights. But if you um
00:02:40.000 come across memory, if you raise
00:02:41.840 memories, if memories emerge
00:02:44.800 in a way that is not structured,
00:02:47.200 unexpected,
00:02:49.280 then it can overwhelm you. It’s not
00:02:52.640 always a good idea. And during the 60s
00:02:55.200 and 70s, we had the phenomenon
00:02:57.920 phenomenon of false memories.
00:03:01.360 uh people were told to remember things
00:03:04.239 and then just to gratify the therapist
00:03:07.440 they came up with what they felt to have
00:03:10.080 been memories but they were actually not
00:03:12.239 memories they were fiction so people
00:03:15.440 came up with all kinds of stories of
00:03:16.879 sexual abuse in childhood and I don’t
00:03:18.879 know what which were patently untrue and
00:03:22.239 some people ended up in prison so memory
00:03:26.480 is a very delicate thing we know for
00:03:29.440 example that memories are constructed on
00:03:33.680 the fly. There’s no such thing as
00:03:36.720 retrieval. Memories are not like book
00:03:40.319 books in a library that you go to the
00:03:42.400 shelf and you take out the book, but you
00:03:45.040 create the book as you go along and you
00:03:47.200 you never create the same book twice.
00:03:49.440 You never create the same memory twice.
00:03:52.560 So yes, it’s memories are like
00:03:55.599 explosives. They should be handled very
00:03:58.000 cautiously, very carefully.
00:04:00.239 But when they handled properly, they can
00:04:02.959 do a lot of good. And if they are not
00:04:05.360 handled properly, they can do a lot of
00:04:06.879 harm. Dear Professor Sam, a narcissist
00:04:09.920 who is goal oriented, strives for money
00:04:13.280 and other benefits through
00:04:14.799 relationships,
00:04:16.639 brags that he is fearless and deviant,
00:04:19.918 doesn’t want to conform to the social
00:04:21.839 system. Is this a psychopathic
00:04:24.240 narcissist?
00:04:26.000 It’s difficult to tell. And the reason
00:04:28.479 it’s difficult to tell is that the vast
00:04:30.800 majority of primary psychopaths,
00:04:34.320 the more well-known type of psychopath,
00:04:37.759 the vast majority of primary psychopath
00:04:40.400 have grandiosity.
00:04:42.560 Exactly like the narcissist, they have
00:04:44.400 the trait, they have the cognitive
00:04:45.840 distortion of grandiosity. In other
00:04:47.440 words, narcissists are grandiose,
00:04:50.160 psychopaths are grandio, and border
00:04:52.400 lines are grandiose. So if we were to
00:04:54.960 look only at grandiosity
00:04:58.080 then we would not be able to tell the
00:04:59.600 difference between these three. In other
00:05:02.000 words, the differential diagnosis, the
00:05:04.720 ability to diagnose someone
00:05:06.320 appropriately
00:05:08.080 cannot be constructed solely on grandio
00:05:12.080 behavior and everything you mention here
00:05:14.720 is grandio behavior. Goal orientation is
00:05:18.160 typical of psychopaths. Only psychopaths
00:05:21.360 are goal oriented. Narcissists
00:05:24.800 are goal oriented but the only goal they
00:05:27.039 have is to obtain narcissistic supply.
00:05:30.160 The psychopath is goal oriented in the
00:05:32.320 sense that the psychopath wants money,
00:05:35.360 sex, access, contact and above all
00:05:38.880 power. So the minute you say goal
00:05:41.360 oriented, it’s a strong indicator of a
00:05:44.000 psychopath, not a narcissist. But then
00:05:47.120 the rest strives for money and other
00:05:48.960 benefits is also psychopathic. And then
00:05:51.199 the rest is indication some indication
00:05:54.240 of grandiosity. So that’s very difficult
00:05:56.320 to tell. However, generally speaking
00:05:59.199 from the little that you have written,
00:06:01.520 this is a psychopath, not a narcissist
00:06:04.800 and not a malignant narcissist. It’s a
00:06:07.360 psychopath.
00:06:09.280 All types of narcissists, including the
00:06:11.759 malignant narcissist, also known as the
00:06:13.680 psychopathic narcissist, their main and
00:06:16.880 only goal in life, the axis around which
00:06:20.800 everything revolves,
00:06:22.800 their orientation, their dreams and
00:06:25.360 fantasies and wishes, everything is
00:06:28.080 around narcissistic supply. And what you
00:06:31.520 have described here, someone who likes
00:06:33.199 money, someone who’s goal oriented, he’s
00:06:37.360 defiant, he’s fearless, defiant, and is
00:06:40.720 a bit sexually deviant. That is a
00:06:42.880 classical picture of what we call a
00:06:44.639 primary psychopath. Now, I take this
00:06:46.720 opportunity to digress as is my habit,
00:06:49.520 of course, and mention to you that there
00:06:52.160 are two types of psychopaths. There is
00:06:54.160 the primary psychopath, which we all
00:06:55.840 know, and there is the secondary
00:06:58.479 psychopath. Why do we call them primary
00:07:01.039 and secondary? Because there is a test
00:07:03.440 called the PCLR. It’s a test invented or
00:07:06.479 created by Dr. Robert Hair. And in this
00:07:10.000 test, we have factor one and factor two.
00:07:14.080 And the psychopath which conforms to the
00:07:17.440 profile in factor one is known as factor
00:07:21.599 one psychopath or primary psychopath.
00:07:24.880 And the psychopath that conforms to
00:07:27.199 facto 2 is the secondary psychopath. And
00:07:30.080 what’s the difference between them? The
00:07:32.639 secondary psychopath is impulsive,
00:07:35.599 is capable of emotions and is capable of
00:07:38.720 empathy even. And today many scholars
00:07:41.440 are trying to conflate and suggest that
00:07:44.319 borderline personality disorder is
00:07:46.800 actually secondary psychopathy
00:07:49.680 especially in women. But I will not do
00:07:51.919 go into all this. Why are narcissists
00:07:55.280 unwilling to give to give their small
00:07:57.680 children the closeness and bonding they
00:08:00.560 naturally need but force closeness on
00:08:03.759 their older children who no longer need
00:08:06.240 closeness to their parents? Narcissists
00:08:09.440 if it is indeed a narcissist and I want
00:08:12.080 to mention
00:08:14.000 take this occasion to mention that
00:08:16.960 very few of us are qualified to diagnose
00:08:19.520 people. So when you say my husband is a
00:08:22.400 narcissist, my wife is a narcissist, the
00:08:25.440 likelihood of this being true is very
00:08:27.280 low. Actually, according to the
00:08:29.919 diagnostic and statistical manual text
00:08:32.320 revision, the latest edition, edition 5
00:08:35.519 published in 2022,
00:08:38.000 the number of people with narcissistic
00:08:40.000 personality disorder is 1.7%
00:08:43.919 of the general population. So your
00:08:46.399 chances of coming across someone who is
00:08:48.959 truly a narcissist is 1 in 60.
00:08:52.880 Your chances of having consecutive
00:08:55.760 relationships, intimate relationships,
00:08:58.000 work relationships, friendships with one
00:09:00.720 narcissist after the other are extremely
00:09:04.800 minimal, extremely small. It’s very
00:09:07.040 unlikely actually.
00:09:09.360 Okay, let’s assume that someone is
00:09:11.680 diagnosed or is diagnosable with
00:09:14.320 narcissistic personality disorder. And
00:09:16.720 the question is why
00:09:20.320 um they don’t provide younger children
00:09:23.279 with closeness and they provide older
00:09:25.040 ones with closeness. They don’t.
00:09:27.519 Narcissists don’t do closeness. They
00:09:30.320 don’t do intimacy. They don’t do
00:09:32.399 meaningful relationships. They don’t do
00:09:34.480 any of this. They don’t do love. They
00:09:36.000 don’t do solicitude. They don’t do
00:09:38.000 compassion. They don’t do affection.
00:09:40.080 They don’t do any of this. Narcissists
00:09:42.399 do narcissistic supply.
00:09:45.360 Small children are perceived as
00:09:48.080 instruments of gratification.
00:09:50.640 They’re instrumentalized.
00:09:52.800 Small children adulate the narcissist,
00:09:55.839 admire the narcissist, obey the
00:09:58.320 narcissist. So, small children are
00:10:00.880 treated as objects. They’re objectified.
00:10:04.640 Whereas older children,
00:10:07.600 for example, in early adolescence or
00:10:10.240 middle adolescence, older children have
00:10:13.600 a mind of their own. They’re less
00:10:16.079 obedient.
00:10:17.600 They are more defiant.
00:10:19.839 They are more they have critical
00:10:21.680 thinking. They are more they criticize
00:10:24.320 the narcissist. They disagree with the
00:10:26.000 narcissist. They observe the narcissist
00:10:28.160 closely. And so the narcissist feels
00:10:31.200 that whereas the small children, the
00:10:33.200 younger children can be taken for
00:10:35.440 granted as sources of narcissistic
00:10:37.440 supply, the older children need to be
00:10:41.839 managed
00:10:43.440 in order to convert the older children
00:10:45.920 into nar sources of narcissistic supply.
00:10:49.360 The narcissist imitates
00:10:52.480 intimacy and closeness and love and
00:10:55.760 empathy and compassion and so on. This
00:10:58.720 imitation is makavelian.
00:11:01.839 It’s manipulative.
00:11:04.000 Its sole intention
00:11:06.399 is to make sure that the older children
00:11:10.160 continue to provide the narcissist with
00:11:12.560 narcissistic supply. If they refuse to
00:11:15.920 do so, the narcissist regards them as
00:11:19.360 enemies.
00:11:21.120 If the older children refuse to provide
00:11:24.079 the narcissist with narcissistic supply
00:11:26.640 to admire, to adulate, the narcissist
00:11:29.200 then immediately converts them into what
00:11:31.440 we call in psychology persecuto objects,
00:11:34.959 enemies. And the narcissist then becomes
00:11:38.480 abrasive, antisocial, violent,
00:11:41.680 aggressive, and exceedingly abusive
00:11:44.560 towards these older children. which
00:11:47.360 demonstrates to you conclusively that
00:11:50.079 what you call closeness is just an
00:11:53.360 imitation mimicry is not real. It’s
00:11:55.839 fake. Narcissists are fake.
00:11:59.600 The definition of narcissism is fakery.
00:12:03.600 False self. Everything is false.
00:12:07.519 Everything is faked. Everything is
00:12:09.920 imitated. There’s nobody there and
00:12:12.720 there’s nothing real. especially not
00:12:15.760 intimacy. As far as a narcissist is
00:12:18.320 concerned, his children are not
00:12:21.680 different to any other person. They
00:12:24.079 don’t have a privileged status. His
00:12:26.399 children, they are or are not sources of
00:12:31.360 narcissistic supply either or or you’re
00:12:34.639 with me or you’re against me. This is
00:12:37.040 this kind of thinking is known as
00:12:39.360 splitting. The narcissist divides
00:12:42.160 everyone. His children, his co-workers,
00:12:45.040 his spouses, his you name it. Everyone,
00:12:48.000 his neighbors, everyone. Divides
00:12:50.880 everyone into you’re with me or you are
00:12:53.120 against me. You are source of supply.
00:12:55.040 You will not provide me with supply. And
00:12:57.760 if you don’t provide me with supply,
00:12:59.680 says the narcissist, then you hate me.
00:13:02.079 You hate me. I hate you. And I’m going
00:13:03.920 to punish you. As simple as that. And
00:13:06.320 that applies to his children as well.