The thing is this. Your very presence triggers the narcissist. You’re very present. It’s not what you say. It’s that you say. It’s your photograph. It’s something he reads on social media. He talks you through social media. It’s communication, however innocuous and impersonal. It’s a reminder that you exist. You’re the one who got away. You’re the one who challenged you. You’re the one who undermined his brandiosity. You’re the one who threatened the delicate precarious balance of his internal world by trying somehow to transform an internal object which represented you. You’re the one who betrayed him. You’re the one who exited the fantasy. You’re the one who forced him to confront reality at some point. You’re the one who took away his most prized possessions, as far as he’s concerned.

You are a trigger. It’s exactly like asking, and I’m sorry for the crass comparison, but it’s exactly like asking a Holocaust survivor, do you think you can maintain a civil impersonal relationship with the commandant of your concentration camp?

Well, theoretically it’s possible if both of them know German. But I wouldn’t advise. I would advise against it, wouldn’t you?

Should a Holocaust survivor maintain a civil discourse with the commandant of his extermination camp?

I doubt that any psychologist would endorse this kind of…

Oh well, I mean that opens up a whole thing for me because there’s so many so-called experts that will encourage victims of abuse to have a relationship with the other parent, the abusive parent, because they say otherwise you’re being a bad parent and you are not supporting your child and you are alienating and all these false allegations. I mean that’s one of the biggest issues we face in family courts is, well, some regulators, a lot of unregulated…

The other person, allow me to interject. The other person is not a parent. That’s a mistake of these so-called experts or self-directors. Everyone in his dog is an expert now. The other person is not a parent. The narcissist is incapable of discerning or interacting with an external object, his children included. He has no access to reality and no access to anyone in reality and no access to his own emotions. He’s incapable of loving. He’s incapable of caring. He has no empathy. How on earth would they interact with children properly? He is not a parent by any extension of the word. I’m not aware of any lexical definition of the word parent which would fit a narcissist. He is a sperm donor or a gamete, an egg donor. He has donated 50% of genetic material that does not make him a parent or her a parent.

But they will believe they are phenomenal parents.

Narcissists are incapable of the three most critical elements in parenting.

Love, empathy, modeling behavior. These are the three pillars of parenting. Narcissists are incapable of all three combined. They cannot act as parents, no more than they can act as intimate partners or lovers or reliable business partners, etc. They are not embedded in reality. They are fantasy creatures.

Otto Kernberg and many other very preeminent scholars, my humble self included, believe that narcissists are actually almost psychotic.

Psychosis, to remind people, schizophrenics are psychotic. Paranoid schizophrenics are psychotic.

Psychosis is the cancer of mental health. And many of us believe that narcissists are one inch removed from psychosis. They are so sick that they totally confuse external reality with internal reality.

Children, as far as they are concerned, are extensions, I don’t know, objects, avatars. They’re not real. The children are not real. They are real only in as much as they provide narcissistic supply. Or they are real only in as much as they allow them to leverage the children in order to score points with the estranged partner or whatever. They are real as functions and they are real as objects, but they’re not real as children. They’re definitely not separate from the narcissist. I would absolutely ban all access to children of anyone, to anyone diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. And I mean, no visitation rights, zero exposure, not one minute exposure.

Narcissists are very, very, very, sick people. Do you want a child to be with a sick person like this? You don’t. They’re even more sick than psychopaths, but much more sick than psychopaths.

I mean, a lot of people listening to this will be probably very moved. I feel moved.

Unfortunately, in the UK, there is a presumption of contact, like that is how the court system is based. And there’s a lack of any understanding for most legal professionals. There’s no compulsory training stand for any legal professional in the UK on any of these.

I mean, domestic abuse in its widest form, let alone this kind of information.

And yet most of the people that I see in my coaching clinic and that I campaign for behind the scenes are dealing with these kinds of personality disorders.

Undiagnosed, obviously most of the time because they won’t go and get the diagnosis or they’re being misdiagnosed. And it’s the victim of abuse that’s being diagnosed as the one who’s bitter and twisted and alienating.

And, you know, it’s a whole sort of, it’s always the opposite plays out so that, you know, children are being taken from the victims who are saying that the child doesn’t want to see the parent.

I don’t really understand what’s going on, but there has been abusive when I was in that relationship and the children are being forcibly removed and given to the perpetrator in these cases, just because there’s, well, the experts in the system is either corrupt or lack of education, whatever you want to say on that.

I mean, we’ve got very strong opinions on it, but it’s failing people because this information is just not widely accepted or known, Sam.

Yes.

Well, the classical works by Lundy Bancroft on battered women at the time. You see, I don’t think it’s a question of ignorance as much as it is a question of denial.

Yeah.

The court system is part of the establishment normally should be, by the way, should protect the status quo. Basically, it should protect rights to privacy and rights to human rights and so on.

And there is this presumption that unless you’re a knife wielding, you know, maniac, everything else is acceptable in parenting.

You know, men’s home is this castle and all this Anglo-Saxon bullshit. It’s Anglo-Saxon, by the way.

You don’t have this legal doctrine in many other countries. But in other countries, you have different issues.

For example, patriarchy or patriarchal thing in Russia, domestic violence has been decriminalized a few years ago.

Yeah. So it’s a patriarchal country where men rule. It’s a throwback to the, I don’t know, 16th century, I think, or something.

So in Afghanistan, of course, I mean, Mongolia, believe it or not, and so on. So you have societies where there’s men rule, patriarchal societies.

And so we don’t talk about narcissism and so on, so forth, because most narcissists, most diagnosed narcissists, at least are men, it used to be men. Now it’s 50-50.

And there’s another group of societies, I say the Anglo-Saxon societies, the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition, where the law stops at the threshold, the law stops at your door. The law has no right to intervene in domestic affairs. You should settle in between, unless it’s violence, overt violence, you know, with knives and guns and bazookas, and I know what else, all the rest should be settled between the involved parties.

Amazing behaviors, I mean, totally criminal behaviors, like assault, like rape, have been utterly legal until recently, when two intimate partners were involved. So, you know, your husband could rape you legally until the 1970s.

It was okay.

Even if you said, no, no, no, no, no, repeatedly, it was illegal.

So there is this, and there’s another presumption, which is counterfactual, idiotic, honestly, is that parenting comes automatically. You don’t need to train, you don’t need to learn anything, you don’t need, it’s an automatic instinctive or instinctual drive, like everyone can be a parent. If you have the right genitalia, you’re equipped to be a parent, which is of course, you know, we certify everything. You need a license to drive a scooter, you need a license to drive a minivan, you need a license to shoot a gun, you need a license to hunt foxes. You don’t need a license to do two things, which are the most important in human life. You don’t need a license to vote, and you don’t need the license to raise children.

These are the two things you don’t need a license for, which I think should be the only two things to be licensed.

And yet, this is the case.

So the legal system is not as much ignorant as reluctant, simply reluctant. It’s an enclave which has been off limits for so many centuries. It’s difficult to transform the state of mind.

It is, and it’s causing a lot of trauma.

In fact, there was some research done recently by a charity that found out that I think it was 82% of people going through the family courts, having suffered trauma from a toxic relationship, were re-traumatized by the family court system, not their expert. I mean, obviously that plays out in there too, but I mean, you know, I see this every day.

People say, I feel like I’m going to the court, and I’m the only sane person in that, because everyone sees it completely differently. Like I’m putting the evidence across and the facts and saying what I believe, and they’re saying, yeah, but you’re the problem.

And this is coming from psychologists and conversationalism, you know, the experts.

And there’s a disconnect. For example, lower courts in the United Kingdom have accepted narcissistic personality disorder as a mitigating circumstance. In other words, not guilty by reason of insanity in the Blackwell case, for example, was accepted as a defense. So criminal courts realize and accept narcissism as such a severe mental illness that it reduces criminal liability.

And yet family courts don’t.

So there’s a disconnect between various branches of the judiciary.

Yeah, I mean, it’s gosh, I mean, so I could talk to you for hours and hours. I’d love to talk to you more on this topic. And I’m so grateful for your time today.

I have one last question for you. I, my podcast is called Heartbreak to Happiness. And I usually ask my guests, what, what makes you happy? But I’m really interested. Is it, are they happy? Are these narcissists happy? Can they be happy?

Because when they treat people so unkindly and cruelly in a lot of cases, are they happy? Can they experience that level of happiness?

I think they’re euphoric, euphoric and with an elevated mood, which doesn’t last for long, by the way.

Narcissists need constant injections of narcissistic supply. They’re drug addicts. They’re junkies. They’re addicted to supply. But as long as the supply is, you know, flowing smoothly and regularly, narcissists are euphoric and elated, especially when the score points, when they’re triumphant and victorious, when they prevail, when they prove themselves to themselves, at least fantastically, when they inhabit a fantasy which is not challenged by anyone, either because people are afraid to challenge a narcissist or because they also subscribe to the fantasy.

Counts, counts are perfect examples.

So in all these situations, narcissists are what we call egosyntonic. Egosyntonic means you feel comfortable in your own skin and you’re relatively happy or lucky. Some narcissists are happy when they possess things. For example, I’m extremely happy when I buy new books. I’m absolutely euphoric.

Some narcissists are happy when they possess people. So somatic narcissists are happy with sexual conquests, new sexual conquests. Some narcissists are happy when they prevail.

Donald Trump, for example, is euphoric, visibly euphoric, when he triumphs over his adversaries.

Paranoids are actually narcissists because the paranoid likes to believe himself to be the center of malign attention by various institutions and conspiracies and whatever. It’s a form of narcissism.

So yes, narcissists, I would say, and counterintuitively, have many more opportunities to feel euphoric, elevated and dare I say happy than normal people, healthy people, because they live in fantasy.

It’s crucial to understand, it’s much easier to be happy in a fantasy than it is in reality.

Reality pushes back, it frustrates, it challenges, it’s harsh and nasty and brutish and short life.

Narcissists reject reality at a very early stage in life.

When they’re children, they reject reality. They invent an imaginary friend, which later becomes the false self, and a paracosm, an alternative virtual reality which they inhabit.

That’s the fantasy world. And they’re delirious in this fantasy world, but they’re not with us. They’re not here.

Narcissists are not here. Even when they’re granting an interview, they’re not here. They’re inside their heads.

I love it, I love it.

Sam, people want to find out more about you. Where can they go?

Well, Google, Sam Vaknin, YouTube, Sam Vaknin, whatever. There’s like hundreds of thousands of places.

I know I’ve spent the last 24 hours immersed in your content.

Oh my god, my apologies, my condolences.

Fascinating. Thank you, Sam. Thank you. You’ve been so enlightening, and I really appreciate you saving time out of your day.

Thank you, a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Stay on after we finish the recording, so I would like to ask your permission to sort.