So to recap, as a child, the narcissist fails stages one and two of Elexon.

As an adolescent, the narcissist fails stages three and four.

As a toddler, the narcissist fails stage three and four.

As an adolescent, the narcissist fails stage five.

The failure in stage five can be antisocial failure.

So the child or the adolescent identifies, for example, with criminals, out groups, or it could be a borderline failure where the identity is not formed, does not coalesce, does not come together.

There’s a failure at forming identity, identity formation failure, or collapse of identity formation.

And at this point, there’s huge confusion and huge diffusion.

And the child or the adolescent desperately continues to try to experiment with a variety of sexual orientation and gender roles and social roles and scripts.

And this experimentation, this moratorium never ends.

And because this experimentation becomes a way of life, it is not possible to pinpoint an identity for this individual.

This type of individual, and I’m talking about people age 30 and 40 and 50 and 60 and 70 and 80 and 90, this kind of individuals transition kaleidoscopically between a variety of gender roles and sexual orientations and belief systems and value systems and religions.

You can never pinpoint them. You can never say with any amount of certainty, this is who this person is. You can never rely or trust anything they say to you because their values, for example, change from one day to the next.

You cannot take their promises to the bank. They break their promises, not because they’re evil or malignant or whatever, but because they are not the same person from one day to the next in the most profound sense.

Identity diffusion is a lack of stability or focus in the view of the self or in any of the elements of an individual’s identity.

As I said, it’s common in borderline personality and so on.

So identity diffusion involves actually two elements.

In borderline personality disorder today, we don’t use the phrase identity diffusion. We use identity disturbance, but it involves two key elements, an inability to regard oneself, to observe oneself, to view oneself as the same person from one minute to the next, from one hour to the next, from one day to the next.

There is no constant, stable self-perception, self-image, view of one’s self.

The reason is very simple. There is no self there. There’s an emptiness. There’s a vacuum. There’s a void, what came to be known as the empty schizoid core.

And so this is element number one in identity diffusion.

Element number two, there is no conception of the various components and ingredients of one’s identity.

When such a person interacts with the world, interacts with other people, she’s not sure who she is. What parts of herself should interface and interact with the other? What should she bring to the table? What are her values or beliefs or hopes or dreams or wishes or needs or preferences? She’s not sure of any of this.

So identity diffusion impacts self-perception, but also impacts the perception of relationships and interactions, interpersonal interactions with other people.

It’s very destructive.

In ego psychology, Eric Erickson was a member of the school of ego psychology.

A possible outcome of the fifth stage, the stage of identity versus identity confusion is that the individual emerges with an uncertain sense of identity and confusion about wishes, attitudes, goals, and so on and so forth.

And this gave rise to something known as the identity status model.

It’s an expansion of the fifth stage of Erikson.

And this model says that there are four possible identity statuses.

Identity status, so there are four of them.

An individual can assume any of these four identity statuses, especially during adolescence – remember in adolescence, during the moratorium, there’s a lot of experimentation.

So the same adolescent, the same pubescent child can choose identity one and then the next week, identity status two.

So the same child can have different identity statuses in the same body and even in the same period.

So each identity status is characterized by a different level of exploration of a specific identity and a commitment to that identity.

So when you have a status, an identity status, you keep exploring your identity all the time.

You know when you say to yourself, “I never knew I had this in me. I could never believe that I’d be that strong.” That’s you exploring your identity all the time and then committing to your discoveries.

The more you find out about your identity, the more connected you are to it, the more committed to it you are.

And this is identity status.

And development in healthy people moves towards what is known as identity achievement status.

Status of identity exploration and commitment to this newly discovered evidence.

So at some point, identity is cemented, it is cast in stone, it’s accomplished, it’s achieved and your status is minimal exploration, maximum commitment.

So it starts in adolescence with maximum exploration, minimum commitment and it reverses in later life and now you’re committed to your identity.

You know who you are, you know your beliefs, you know your values, you know what you’re likely to do, what you’re very unlikely to do.

You know you can control your impulses, you can delay gratification, you know everything about yourself.

And this is your identity, your achieved identity.

And status is related to a stable sense of self-worth, not fluctuating but stabilized, self-esteem, self-confidence and healthy psychological function.

The identity achievement status is the final phase.

On the way to the identity achievement status, people usually go through what is known as moratorium status.

It involves as I said more exploration than commitment.

So there is something called foreclosure status.

It’s a commitment to an identity that adults have set forth for an individual.

So in the foreclosure status, you choose an identity that is dictated to you, expected of you, communicated to you, signaled to you by other people, usually parental figures.

But not only could be teachers, could be peers and so on.

And you adopt this important identity, identity from the outside.

It’s not really you.

It’s not an outcome of your exploration and your experimentation and your discoveries about yourself but you lock, stock and barrel, borrow it from someone else and it becomes you and there’s a failure to explore other options before the commitment is made.

There’s also something called the diffusion status.

It’s a lack of both exploration and commitment.

And this was proposed in 1966 by the Canadian psychologist James Marshier, M-A-R, CIA.

CIA, heh, proposed by the CIA.

So to summarize, in Erikson theory of psychosocial development, the experimental period of adolescence, in which during the task of discovering who one is as an individual, separate from the family of origin, as part of a broader social context.

So in this phase, young people try out alternative roles before making permanent commitments to end identity.

Adolescence who are unsuccessful at negotiating this stage, this fifth stage, they end up being confused about their identity, their role in life, their social functioning, who they are and what to expect of themselves and of others.

Narcissists fail this stage as well.

Narcissists fail this stage and usually get stuck in it.

But narcissists progress to stage six.

Narcissism is a failure of all eight stages.

Borderline is a failure of the first five stages.

That’s why Rothstein suggested that borderline is a failed narcissist, non-graduating narcissist, someone who is about to become a narcissist and stopped dead in its tracks in the identity confusion, stage five phase.

The narcissist progresses to stage six, which is intimacy versus isolation.

And this usually happens in late adolescence and early adulthood, young adulthood, probably up to age 25 or maybe today, nowadays, 27, 28.

It involves flirting.

It involves first experimentation with sex, courtship, early family life and so on.

And it lasts all the way to middle age.

And during this period, individuals learn to share, to care, to be vulnerable with each other without the fear of being invaded, taken over, engulfed, losing themselves.

The boundaries acquired during the first two or three stages protect the individual, allow the individual to open up to another person without fear or trepidation.

This, of course, is a good definition of intimacy.

The narcissist fails this.

It’s narcissist fails the sixth phase because the narcissist has failed in the previous five.

He doesn’t trust anyone.

He is not separated from his parental figures.

He is not an individual.

He has no identity.

He’s a mess.

He’s an absolute mess.

And so he fails.

He fails to create intimacy because he cannot offer himself.

There’s no self there.

He cannot offer himself on the one hand.

And on the other hand, he doesn’t trust anyone to not hurt him.

He has learned to associate love with pain, love with hurt, love with performance and success with failure.

Those were his thwarted, distorted six lessons from the previous five stages.

So he feels alone and isolated all the time.

Narcissists feel alone and isolated all the time.

Of course, being narcissists, they incorporate their loneliness and isolation into the cognitive distortion known as grandiosity.

They brag about being self-sufficient.

They don’t need anyone.

See if I care in your face.

They’re defiant.

They’re consummations.

They are totally independent, autonomous.

This is a form of counter dependency, of course.

So the narcissist having failed stage six, unable to create true intimacy, unable to commit in long-term relationships.

And even if he is in a long-term relationship, he’s not there. He’s absent because there’s nobody there. It’s an emptiness and absence pretending to be a presence.

So this whole thing fails and narcissists feel infinitely and existentially alone all the time.

The development of a cohesive identity in the previous stage, in stage five, provides the opportunity to achieve true intimacy.

But the development of identity diffusion makes it harder, if not impossible, to achieve a positive outcome in stage six, intimacy versus isolation.

Having graduated stage six, the narcissist is a person who doesn’t trust anyone, regards the world as hostile, feels completely alone, is confused about his or her identity, constantly experiments with all kinds of things that lead nowhere, constantly fails, is not self-efficacious.

And don’t confuse self-efficacy with accomplishments. You could be a multi-billionaire, you could be a president of a country and still be a mega failure.

Failure or success are not defined by what you possess or how high you climbed.

Failure and success are defined by integration, inner peace, capacity to live with yourself comfortably, to not be constantly enslaved by your negative effects, your envy, your hatred, your anger.

That is a definition of success and in this sense, all narcissists, never mind how accomplished are failures, they are failures.

And maybe the number one failure is the narcissist’s inability to engage in and experience intimacy and love.

What is a life lived without ever having felt love?

Is this a life?

I don’t think so.

So it’s an extended prison.

The seventh stage in Ericsson’s eight stages of psychosocial development is known as generativity versus stagnation.

Generativity is the positive goal in around middle, mid adulthood, let’s say 40 to 60.

It’s a positive goal interpreted in terms not only of procreation, having children, but also of creativity.

So you could be childless, but creative and you don’t need to be creative and win the Nobel Prize.

Creativity could be any kind of thing.

And so just regenerate, renewing yourself, refurbishing, nurturing yourself is known as generativity.

And sometimes this is done via parental and social responsibilities towards the next generation.

It’s one way to obtain generativity, it’s one way to regenerate yourself, to revive or resuscitate yourself somehow.

It’s one way.

But there are many others.

You write a book, it’s the same.

You sculpt, you do art, you collect things, you help your neighbors, you volunteer.

Many of these things is a form of creativity because it involves taking your life as raw material and then shaping it into something recognizable and something that makes you feel good with yourself and makes others feel good with you.

So again, typically this is done via procreation, by having children, but not always.

Typically less so in today’s world.

So if you don’t do any of these things, if you don’t create anything, if you just go through the motions, you robotically go through life, you have stifling routines that never change and never lead anywhere. They’re maintenance routines.

And this is how you waste your life.

This is stagnation.

This is self-absorption.

And this is fear of reality.

It’s a form of constricted fantasy defense.

If I just freeze, play dead, constrict my life, avoid others, avoid reality, avoid challenges, avoid risks, avoid dangers, I’ll be okay.

But of course, by the time you avoid all these things, you’ve avoided all these things, you’re not alive anymore by any definition of this world.

So either you’re generative or you’re mentally dead, stagnated, so self-absorbed that it’s as if you’ve been swallowed by your own black hole.

And this is the condition of the narcissist.

And again, creativity is not external.

A narcissist could be a bestselling author, an amazing director of films, an artist of world renown, and yet be stagnative, yet be self-absorbed.

Creativity is not measured by output.

It’s not an industrial process.

It’s not a manufacturing process.

Creativity is the ability to bring together disparate elements from within yourself in new ways, to put yourself together, to reassemble yourself without sacrificing your core identity in ways which yield new products, new outcomes, surprises, new ways to interact with people, and new ways to accommodate yourself in your environment and obtain favorable outcomes.

So creativity is about reinventing your capacity to fit in, not in the conformist, shipple sense, but to fit in in a way that would gratify your wishes and needs, to realize your dreams.

Maslow called it self-actualization.

Narcissists never ever reach this stage, not even remotely.

A narcissist who is a bestselling author is likely to deteriorate and degenerate into formal-like writing.

For example, that’s his way.

There will be his way of stagnating through in a process that appears to be creative, but is not.

Everything with narcissist is about appearances.

And when you’re focused on appearance and not on substance, when you’re focused on spectacle and not on essence, you can never be generative.

Never.

You stagnate like so much quicksand or swamp, and then you die.

And in this final phase, the eighth stage and the last one, final one, of Ericsson’s eight stages of psychosocial development, there is a battle between integrity and despair.

This happens in old age, my age.

In this stage, the individual reflects on the life they have lived, and they may develop as a reaction, either a sense of integrity, a sense of satisfaction in the way they have lived, a good life, to use an Athenian fifth century phrase, having lived a good life with the mania and the ability to approach death with equanimity, because I made the best of my life.

I’ve lived it to the full.

So this is an integrity response to soul searching.

An integrity response to taking stock in account of the life you have lived is to say, I have lived life the best way I could.

I never compromised.

I never sacrificed myself.

I never harmed myself.

I never destroyed or defeated or trashed myself.

I’ve been there for myself.

I self-loved, but have never been narcissistic.

I knew myself, I accepted my limitations, and I leveraged my strength, and I did the best with the cards that have been dealt.

And so now I’m ready to die.

I have no problem with that.

I don’t feel that I’ve missed something.

This is the integrity response.

Narcissus approaches death with despair, with a feeling of bitterness about opportunities missed, time wasted, a dread of the approaching end, because it’s an end to potentials that have never been realized.

The narcissus never becomes.

The narcissus always affords suppressed potential, and it’s a horrible feeling, mourning and grieving what you could have been and will never ever be, because you don’t have the basic tools to become.