UNEDITED Why We Prefer Narcissism or Psychosis to Mental Health? (RAW WA Real Convo)

Uploaded 8/29/2020, approx. 1 hour 52 minute read

Summary

Professor Sam Vaknin discusses various topics related to psychology, including the trauma of selfhood, the role of the mother in shaping the self, the importance of narratives, and the concept of collective unconscious and archetypes. He argues that humanity has chosen narcissistic narratives, which have their roots in the enlightenment, and that narcissism is becoming a religion that deifies individuals. Vaknin warns that this trend towards narcissism and psychosis poses a risk to the survival of the species.

Now you’re going to get a narcissistic and a psychotic combo.

Narcissism is becoming esoteric. It’s becoming transcendental. It’s acquiring transcendental and esoteric features and dimensions. It’s becoming a religion, as I said.

But you can say, but wait a minute. You said that it’s either psychotic narratives or narcissistic narratives or nothingness narratives.

How come narcissism is merging with psychosis?

Because narcissism offers each individual the option to be a god.

Narcissism deifies individuals. And when they are deified, in their own mind, at least, when they are deified, they can then transition smoothly and seamlessly to a psychotic solution which involves only them.

So we have, like, psychotic, solipsistic, psychotic narratives embedded in a narcissistic narrative, which is collective.

By the way, this is very good that you asked this question because I wanted to point this.

This is the risk to the survival of the species.

We have never had a period in human history where there was a discrepancy between collective narrative and individual narrative.

If you had a psychotic collective narrative, you also had an individual collective narrative and psychotic narrative.

So if you had, for example, if the country was Christian, which is a psychotic collective narrative, every individual was Christian. The narrative permeated and pervaded. Narrative was ubiquitous or pervasive. There was no discrepancy between individual and collective narrative.

We are coming to a point where there will be a divergence. The individual narrative will be narcissistic.

Psychotic, individual narrative.

The individuals now are transitioning from narcissism, narcissistic narrative to psychotic narrative.

But the collective narrative will remain narcissistic.

Yes.

So you will have a narcissistic collective narrative, but individuals will have a psychotic narrative.

They will think of themselves as gods.

Yes.

Which means that for the first time in human history, there will be a massive conflict between individual narratives and collective narratives.

Now we already see this in action.

Yes.

Have a look how people are reacting to the virus.

You have a collective narrative, but since each one of us is a god, I mean, we say, fuck the narrative.

I’m going to decide if I put a mask. I’m going to decide if I social distance. I’m even going to decide if the virus is real. I’m going to decide if it’s a pandemic. I’m going to impose my paranoia, my conspiracism, I’m god.

Yes.

I’m omniscient. I know everything. I’m all powerful.

So for the first time, it’s not possible to have a collective response because a collective response necessitates the sharing of a collective narrative on the individual level.

If each individual is a psychotic because he believes or she believes that she’s a god, collective action is impossible. And if collective action is impossible, our days as a species are bloody numbered because we have nothing, no advantage. We are small. We are short. We run very slowly. We are very weak compared to any animal you choose. We are seriously badly designed. Yes.

We have only two advantages, intelligence and collective action. And both of these are compromised. Compromised beyond reconstruction by a discrepancy between a psychotic narrative, I am god, and a collective narrative, which is narcissistic.

So narcissism in individuals has been driven to such extreme that it became psychotic.

We know, by the way, we know, by the way, there is a theory called diaphysis stress theory, which you mentioned. We know that if we take a narcissist and we push him, we stress him a lot, he becomes psychotic. He begins to hear voices, begins to see things.

We know that psychosis is the end point of narcissism.

Not Vaknik, Kanberg, Otto Kanberg, the father of the field.

Kanberg said that borderline is borderline between neurosis and psychosis. And he said that every narcissist has a borderline foundation.

So narcissism pushed to the extreme become psychosis in individuals, end of story.

This is the orthodoxy.

That’s what we teach in school.

This is what happened to us.

We have been driven to such extremes, positively and negatively.

I mean, stress and rewards also.

If you are narcissist, it pays.

There are rewards for this.

It’s a positive adaptation.

You become president of the United States, you know?

So both positively and negatively, we have incentives to radicalize and escalate our narcissism.

But what we didn’t realize, when you radicalize and escalate a narcissist, he becomes psychotic at the border. He goes through a borderline phase and becomes psychotic.

It’s precisely what’s happening to us.


The collective remain narcissistic, but each individual has been radicalized, pushed to the limits, stressed out, rewarded for being a narcissist.

To the point that many, many individuals are beginning to be psychotic.

And we’re going to have a mass psychosis, superimposed on the foundation of mass narcissism.

Bad news.

It’s not going to work.

We fucked Sam.

It’s not the most elegant question, but it’s the first one that came to mind.

What was that?

Could you repeat it? And we fucked.

Oh, we fucked.

Not as much as I would like to be. Not as often either.

I am not optimistic. I’m not optimistic because I don’t believe in human capacity to the psychotic narrative and the narcissistic narrative.

They cater to too many simultaneous psychological needs.

It’s not like you cater to one need.

For example, you want to have sex or I give you sex.

They cater to everything.

Narcissistic narrative is a total solution.

It’s like the Nazis call the Holocaust the end solution.

Narcissism is the end-losing of humanity. The final solution of the human problem.

The same with psychosis.

There are two total solutions.

Why?

Because to adopt a psychotic narrative, you need to be passive.

To adopt a narcissistic narrative, you need to be passive.

That’s all.

But to adopt a nothingness narrative, a healthy narrative where you know where to stop, where you not to have a boundary, you need to work hard.

Who wants to work hard?

People are indolent.

The path of least resistance is psychosis or narcissism, as we see all around us.

It doesn’t bode well to the species.

I’m not saying we will disappear as a species.

By the way, we can live on, we can survive as individuals, but not as a species.

Very possible.

A species is a structure.

We think a species is just an entity.

It’s not a structure.

It has dynamics. It interacts with ecosystems. It has internal dynamics, external dynamics. It interacts with other species.

It’s a very complex system. And we think we can tamper with it and tinker with it like that at will.

This is really, you know, it’s not going to work. It’s not going to work.

And you see it happening. You see it happening already.

We have an emergency. We have a global emergency. There’s a virus. The virus created a pandemic. It’s not the worst pandemic we’ve ever experienced, mind you. There’s a bit of hysteria and panic around it.

But still, it’s a challenge. We can agree it’s a challenge.

Yes.

Are we managing it well? Are you bloody kidding me?

Yeah.

We managed the First World War better.

Yeah.

This is the most mismanaged crisis in human history.

We can’t get our act together.

So we are faced with a challenge that has the potential to become existential.

Tomorrow, the virus can mutate and begin to kill 70% of sick people, like Ebola. Ebola kills 70% of people.

Yeah.

Patients.

So right now, the virus is harmless, more or less.

But it can mutate. It has the potential to become existential threat.

Act together. We can’t, anywhere by the way, don’t be impressed by New Zealand, you know, it’s a penal colony.

So we can’t get our act together. And whatever you say about World War II, we got our act together. Whatever you say about World War I, we got our act together.

Bloody hell, we got our act together in the Black Death. We reorganized labor relationships and everything. I mean, it’s really the most horrifying spectacle how we discombobulated and disintegrated in the face of this hitherto pretty harmless pandemic. It’s not a major challenge.

And this explains, you know, I mentioned it with Richard, the sense that sometimes I’m wondering where the grownups have gone. They’re gone.

And of course, they’re gone because psychotic solution and narcissistic solution are, as I said before, the childish solution.

The childish solution, they characterize early stages of childhood. Boundaries emerge much later. Boundaries emerge after adolescence.

So no, I’m not optimistic.


So how does that sit with Sam himself?

Because, I mean, is what you’ve put together, is that something that’s recently come to you? Or has it been bit by bit by bit?

This particular what we discussed today is new. A new general.

So written.

But by coming to, by putting the modules together and then fully realizing and seeing where we are today, how does that sit within you?

I don’t particularly care for people.

What this pandemic had exposed to me and unfunded struck is the faulty premise of evolution and then that it took place.

I have discovered that people were stuck, still stuck at the stage of primus and apes.

I mean, evolution may be right, but we still have to see it in action.

The level of inanity, stupidity, retardation, childishness, lack of resilience, weakness, feebleness, feeble-mindedness, the levels that were exposed by this pandemic, in my particular case, online via comments and emails, I believe in Rachel’s case as well, defied my worst, darkest fears and expectations.

And that is saying a lot, because I’ve held people in contempt long before the pandemic. And I’ve discovered that my contempt was not nearly as profound as it should have been.

I am not particularly in a mood with the people. And I would not be very sorry to see a massive culling. It’s long-coming.

We need some eugenics in action. If it’s in the form of a virus, so be it. PT, the virus doesn’t target stupid people. We would have been left with 1% of humanity. That would be eugenics.

Yes.

Wow.

Again, talking to you, I’m left soaking it up.

Sorry, today was a bit a lot heavier than last time.

No, but still necessary.

Yeah, it’s good to put things in context, in context of individual development and collective development, a bit of history and so on.

We tend to lose sight of the context.

And we also tend to make distinctions which have no place, for example, distinction between religion and science. Science is religion. I mean, it’s religion with the different guys, and these guys.

It’s no wonder that science emerged in Christian Europe. And…

Yeah, you’re back. Yeah, I’m back.

Something happened to the connection, right?

I know.

Just at the point of it.

Yeah, I think it’s a cue for us to wrap up.

Indeed. So, since our last conversation, I have now changed my last question that I asked people.

Four weeks ago, I asked you, if you could upload a nugget of information into the collective consciousness, what would it be?

And now, based on we should start asking better questions, I’ve now started asking the intervening guests, if everyone could just slow down for seven minutes and you could pop a question into the collective consciousness, what would that be?

Had I wanted to induce change in people in the right direction, then of course, the cardinal question is, why are you the way you are?

I think if people start to disentangle and dismantle the processes that led to the formation, they might become aware of who they are.

And many people have been doing this during the pandemic.

But I make a fool of many people’s possibility for introspection and so on. So hopefully, it will have this favorable outcome.

But I think that’s on the individual level. On the collective level, I would ask, why do you make unnecessary distinctions?

Unnecessary distinctions are at the core of all conflict.

Consider, for example, science and religion. Science and religion are one and the same in many ways.

Science does not recognize the existence of God as a necessary and sufficient condition.

But science is a religion, another religion. It’s not an accident that science was born in Christian Europe. And it’s not an accident that most of the practitioners of science, for the first 200 years, by the way, were highly religious people. It’s not an accident.

So we make all these distinctions. For example, we make distinctions between nation states and we make distinctions between races. We have this tendency to create artificial constructs and then to make distinctions between these totally invented entities.

Every biologist will tell you there’s no such thing as race. It’s utter unmitigated nonsense.

Yes. Every political theorist will tell you there’s no such thing as nation state because there’s no such thing as nation. Every political theorist will tell you this. Every psychologist will tell you there’s no such thing as self or ego because today we have a much more holistic view, a system view, which incorporates interpersonal relationships, society, culture.

But we still use self, personality. Every physicist will tell you there’s no such thing as distinct objects because of entanglement and other issues.

And yet, when we relate to the world, we take these totally invented artificial classes, categories, entities, which have nothing whatsoever to do with reality and we give them power, much more than reality.

This is a perfect illustration of the psychotic narrative. It’s to invent something in your mind, race, the black race, then to externalize it, to project it, and then to start to behave as though it’s an entity, as though it’s ontological objective reality.

You had invented it a hundred years ago. It’s an invention. It’s the same in every field of human endeavor.

We live much more in fantasy and psychosis and narratives and stories and nonsense than in reality.

Why do we hate reality so much?

Why do we avoid reality so much?

It’s a fascinating question and I alluded to it in our conversation.

It’s because we find it very difficult to disentangle, to distinguish between external and internal.

We are very terrified.

So we have all kinds of strategists, how to reconcile external and internal.

We absorb the external. We expand the internal.

I don’t know what we were trying somehow to cope with this.

And the reason this is happening is because we have very faulty equipment for processing information.

Our information processing equipment is very faulty.

For example, we get less than one percent of the information we consider to be reality from reality. About 99 percent of the information we consider reality is derived from mathematical models in the brain.

So we sample reality. We sample. It’s about one percent input.

Then we process it in models in the brain. And these models generate what we call reality.

But this is 99 percent invented. Our whole apparatus, the programming of our machinery is based on avoiding reality at all costs. Information overload. I don’t know what.

Get away from me.

Get away from me.


The main message of the biology of humanity, the biology. Forget now.

Politics, forget biology.

The main message of our brain is get away from me. Don’t overload me. Don’t give me too much. Stay with me.

Avoidance. The main existential survival strategy is avoidance.

And I think if we confront reality, healing could start.

But I don’t see any hint of this on the very contrary.

Sure.

Sam, that’s just been awesome. Thank you.

Maybe we should break it to two parts.

A bit on the long side.

Yeah.

Maybe two parts, like one hour, one hour, something.

Yeah. Just an idea.

I’m going to stop the recording.

Thank you. Thank you.