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1. 00:01 Throughout many of my videos and over many decades, I've been claiming that pathological narcissism is contagious in the sense that if you're exposed to a narcissist, even if you are a victim, even if you're a target, even if you're the narcissist prey, narcissists are
2. 00:19 predators. I fully agree. Even then you would tend to acquire narcissistic behaviors and gradually what appears to be narcissistic traits. You would become more and more of a narcissist. As you try to grapple with a situation, make sense of it, cope, survive in it, you
3. 00:41 are likely to become a replica, a clone, an image, a reflection of the very abuser, aggressor, and narcissist who is making your life hell. There's no other way to survive with a narcissist except by becoming one. to out narcissize the narcissist.
4. 01:03 And the the thesis of today's video is that the victim develops a transient version of the false self kind of imaginary friend and protector on the other hand on the one hand and something which allows the victim to pleate the abuser to cater to the
5. 01:26 abuser's demands, expectations and psychological needs. This is a dual there's a dual facet um it's a dual facet false self not exactly um like the narcissist but not very far from it. Today we're going to discuss the psychoggenesis, the ideology of this
6. 01:51 particular variant of the false self that the victim develops when she is exposed or he is exposed repeatedly to narcissistic abuse. My name is Sam Baknin. I'm the author of the first book ever on narcissistic abuse, malignant self- loveve, narcissism revisited, and
7. 02:10 I'm a professor of psychology. The victim develops a trans transient false self as an imaginary friend and a transitional object in order to protect against the aggressor abuser and to plate him. This is the thesis. And now let's break it down. In 1995,
8. 02:33 I've written the following text. Unpredictability and uncertainty. Intermittent reinforcement. The abuser acts unpredictably, capricciously, inconsistently, arbitrarily, and irrationally. This serves to render other people dependent upon the next twist and turn
9. 02:54 of the abuser, his next inexplicable whim upon his next outburst, denial, or smile. Withholding of sex, affection, care, empathy, and other passive aggressive behaviors such as silent treatment are integral to this variant of abusive conduct. I continue to say in the text,
10. 03:18 the abuser makes sure that he or she is the only reliable element in the lives of his so-called nearest and dearest by shattering the rest of the world through his seemingly insane behavior. The abuser perpetuates his stable presence in their lives by destabilizing their
11. 03:41 own lives. And the tip I gave at the time was to refuse to accept such behavior. To demand reasonably predictable and rational actions and reactions to insist on respect for your boundaries, predelections, preferences, priorities, and social network. Okay,
12. 04:01 let's focus on the thesis. To remind you, the thesis of this video is that exposure to a narcissist causes the victim to become one initially by developing an eras, a fake kind variant of false self which is transient and has two features. Feature number one, an
13. 04:23 imaginary companion which is also a protector protects against the aggressor abuser and a transitional object which affords the victim a sense of security by conforming to the abuser's demands expectations by placating the abuser. Let's start with some of these concepts.
14. 04:45 The imaginary companion or the imaginary friend. The imaginary companion is a fictitious, a piece of fiction, fictitious person. But it doesn't need to be a person. Children, for example, regard certain animals or certain objects as imaginary companions or imaginary friends. And
15. 05:07 this could proceed well into adolescence. But adults usually invent, conjure up, imagine a friend or a companion which is another person, usually another adult. The individual endows the imaginary companion by giving it a name, talking to it, sharing
16. 05:31 feelings with it, pretending to play with it, and sometimes using the imaginary companion as a scapegoat for their own misdeeds. The phenomenon is considered to be an elaborate but common form of what we call in clinical psychology symbolic play. This is also
17. 05:48 known as the invisible playmate. Of course, now with the emergence of artificial intelligence companions, these imaginary friends, these imaginary companions, these invisible playmates, they're likely to become much more common and they I think artificial intelligence is
18. 06:10 going to become a major strategy of coping with abuse. I said that one facet of the victim's false self, the acquired false self, let's call it this way, one aspect of it, one facet is the transitional object, also known as the security blanket. Why is it known as a security
19. 06:35 blanket? Because it's very common in early childhood. small children, infants, toddlers, they adopt a doll, a blanket or some other object spontaneously. They choose it spontaneously and from that moment on the child uses it to ease anxiety of
20. 06:54 separation, separation, insecurity from um the first external object which usually is the mother. So there's the mother. The child suddenly realizes that the mother is an external object which is a major trauma. The child then develops separation insecurity is afraid
21. 07:14 to lose the external mother and he compensates in two ways. The child internalizes, introjects the the external mother, creates an internal object that represents the external mother in the child's mind, thereby restoring a sense of safety, a sense of
22. 07:34 stability, sense of object constancy, object permanence. That's one strategy. The second strategy is to create an imaginary companion, an imaginary friend via the agency of an external objects. Could be a doll, could be a blanket, could be a stuffed animal, could be
23. 07:54 definitely another child. And this imaginary friend or imaginary companion substitutes for the external mother until the child succeeds to ground establish the internal object the mental representation of the mother that provides a sense of security and
24. 08:15 comfort. This was first described by the famous British pediatrician turned psychoanalyst Donald Winnle. So any person or thing that provides security, emotional well-being and symbolic connection with another valued other is essentially a um security blanket or a
25. 08:37 trans transitional object. The false self is such a transitional object. both a narcissist and later on the victim who acquires a false self through her exposure to the narcissist develop this imaginary companion the false self in the object relations theory of Donald
26. 09:02 Winnott the self that develops as a defense against impingements against abuse against trauma the force that develops in an adaptation to such an adverse environment. This would be the false self. And the false self contrasts with the true self. The true self
27. 09:24 develops in an environment that adapts to the infant. The environment that doesn't expect the infant to adapt to it, but actually changes itself in order to accommodate the infant. Such an environment allows the infant to discover and express true impulses. And
28. 09:43 this put together over time constellates, integrates and becomes the self, this core identity that provides a sense of continuity across the lifespan. The child who is unfortunate enough to be exposed to bed parenting in a variety of ways as I keep telling
29. 10:07 you an overprotective parent, spoiling and pampering parent, instrumentalizing parentifying parent are as abusive as an incestuous parent or physically uh violent parent. All these parents are not good enough. They don't know how to be parents for a variety of reasons.
30. 10:26 They're insecure. They're depressive. They're narcissistic. Whatever the reason may be, they didn't want the child in the first place. Whatever the reason may be, this kind of child is exposed to an environment that is rigid and expects the child to adopt
31. 10:42 itself, expects the child to accommodate the environment. The child does this by denying itself and by developing a a
32. 10:54 self, a kind of self that is imitatory. It's an imitation. It's a simulation and this self which is the false self borrows elements from the environment and incorporates them rather than impose itself on the environment the way the true self does. And so we have this
33. 11:16 false self and true self. The true self in psychoanalytic theory is the total of an individual's potentialities that could be developed under ideal social and cultural conditions especially initially in the family. The term is used in the context of Eric from
34. 11:35 approach to neurosis as a reaction to cultural pressures and repressed potentialities. It is also used in the client centered therapy of Carl Rogers in the object relations school of winnot as I mentioned. And so the realization of the true self is a major goal of therapy.
35. 11:53 Actually when the formation of the false self is thwarted and disrupted the child forms a substitute which is the false self. Similarly in an adult victim when the true self is not allowed to be to express is not allowed to manifest is constantly re oppressed by
36. 12:16 the abuser or the aggressor is frowned upon by the abuser and aggressor. When the individual when the victim when the target is constantly penalized when she is being herself, the victim or the prey or the target would tend to develop a substitute for
37. 12:33 the true self. And that substitute is an acquired transitional false self. Why would she do that? Because every time she is true to herself, she suffers. And every ti time time she denies herself, every time she pretends to be something else or someone else, she is
38. 12:54 rewarded. This is exactly intermittent reinforcement which leads to some kind if you wish of conditioning, operand conditioning. and so on. The abuser deploys a variety of behavioral tactics and cues to bring about this contagion as a vector of attack into the body the
39. 13:21 psychic body or psychological body of the victim to penetrate it and to rearrange the the mental furniture. The first tactic is ambiguity. Ambiguity is the property of a behavior or a behavior pattern or a situation that might be interpreted in more than one
40. 13:42 way. In other words, something that creates uncertainty. And so this uncertainty gives the impression that there are hidden artifacts, hidden what what is called in linguistic linguistics deep structures, not surface structures. When the victim is exposed
41. 14:06 to ambiguity, she embarks on an attempt on a project of interpretation. She tries to make sense to read the mind of the abuser. She tries to decode and decipher the abuser. She tries to regain um a sense of control over the situation by somehow imbuing the abusers's actions
42. 14:26 and behaviors and speech acts with meaning. It has a theory. She attempting to create what we what is known as a theory of mind. She embarks on mentalization, a mentalization effort. So there's an overt text and a covert text. She's trying to to deconstruct the overt text
43. 14:50 in order to find and establish the covert text because she believes the covert text is the real one. And she believes this hidden agenda, this hidden ulterior motives, this this hidden these hidden emotions and cognitions in the abuser's mind, in the aggressor's mind
44. 15:07 would somehow give her the key to avoiding the abuse, to amilarating the mitigating the trauma and thereby reducing the anxiety attendant upon all this including the separation anxiety. So the victim is constantly on the alert, constantly trying to decipher and
45. 15:28 decode what's going on. And ambiguity is the way that the abuser or the aggressor keeps the victim on her toes walking on eggshells. Um many people have low ambiguity tolerance. Ambiguity tolerance is a degree to which one is able to accept and to function without distress without
46. 15:54 disorientation in situations that um harbor conflicting or multiple interpretations or outcomes. In other words, the ability to cope with the uncertainty, the indeterminacy of a situation is the ambu ambiguity tolerance. Many people are ambiguity
47. 16:16 intolerant and the narcissist takes advantage of this, the abuser, the aggressor by injecting ambiguity in dollops in huge quantities into absolutely literally every situation. The narcissist helps to foster indeterminacy. Indeterminacy is the inability to
48. 16:34 uniquely determine the form or magnitude of a relationship. The content, its content, it's a effects, the emotions attendant upon the relationship. Uh its direction, its vision, it's uh it's the the the interactions then relationship doesn't make sense because it's not
49. 16:53 determinate and it's ambiguous. This challenges deeply the sense of secure base. I remind you what is a secure base. A secure base is a place of safety represented by some attachment figure. Could be a parent, could be a lover, could be a spouse, could be a child,
50. 17:18 could be a priest, clergy, could be a teacher, could be a politician. We all need to feel safe with these people because we are attached to them. We're emotionally invested in them. We're affected in them. The first secure base uh is formed with the mother. When an
51. 17:38 infant uses the mother as a base from which to explore the world to discover novel new environments and new peers, it is a sense of safety and security that is that exudes from the mother that is emanated from the mother. Sense of safety and security and stability that
52. 17:58 the mother communicates to the child in a variety of ways verbal body language and so on. This this sense allows the child to grandiosely say goodbye to mother temporarily detach from mother transiently and explore the world. The infant often returns or looks
53. 18:19 back uh to the parent before continuing to explore. This is known as rapwashmo. The secure base phenomenon is at the core of our attachment style. If we have never experienced secure base, we would have an insecure attachment style. Luckily, the vast majority of people
54. 18:41 experience secure base phenomenon. So, what the abuser or the aggressor does, it challenges the secure base phenomenon. It does not provide the victim, the intimate partner, the insignificant other. It doesn't the the abuser and the aggressor never provide a
55. 19:02 sense of secure base. It never feels secure with an abuser. You never feel safe. It never feels stable. It's all volatile and mercurial and and predictable and terrifying. It's like walking on the deck of a ship during a massive storm and tsunami.
56. 19:22 And so it challenges your attachment style. Now we all develop attachment styles early in life. We develop what is known as an internal working model which describes attachments and relationships and we adhere to it throughout most life most of our life but and it's very
57. 19:41 difficult to change an attachment style if not impossible regardless of the nonsense online by self-styled experts. It's very difficult to change it. And yet abusers and aggressors, narcissists for example, tend to challenge your sense of secure base and induce in you temporary
58. 20:06 insecure attachment. What is a secure attachment? Secure attachment is is a phrase that emanated from an experiment experiment known as the strange situation experiment. The positive parent child relationship in which the child displays confidence when
59. 20:25 the parent is present shows mild distress when the parent leaves the room and quickly the infant quickly reestablishes contact with the parent when the parent re-enters the room. This is known as secure attachment within the context of the strange situation experiment
60. 20:44 in adult in adults. Secure attachment means it's a style. It it combines positive internal working model of attachment in of oneself. So there there are positive expectations about the way one would behave in a relationship when the way one would react to
61. 21:05 developing attachment. So it's a view of oneself as worthy of love lovable and as a and a positive internal working model of attachment to others. the so the the the secure attachment is a reflection of an internal working model that says I am lovable and other
62. 21:27 people are generally good people. They're accepting. They're responsive and so it's good to be in a relationship. It's good to get attached. The abuser, the aggressor, the narcissist challenges all this. Exposure to the narcissist undermines
63. 21:44 these assumptions because the narcissist broadcast to you. You are only lovable in your idealized form. As you are, you're not lovable. I need to change you in order to love you. I need to idealize you. That's the first message. You're not lovable as you are. You're lovable
64. 22:01 only if you change. In other words, love is conditional, performative, contingent on your idealization. I can't love you as you are. I need to change you. The first message. The second message, don't trust me. I'm unreliable. I'm ambiguous. I'm unpredictable. I'm intermittent.
65. 22:24 I'm here today tomorrow. I love you. I hate you. This ambivalence, communicated ambivalence, these two messages, these two signaling streams from the narcissist undermine your secure attachment and render you insecure, at least temporarily. It's
66. 22:44 another feature that changes in you as you're exposed to the narcissist. You develop a false self. You become insecure. Your empathy is reduced. You become a lot more aggressive. Put all of these together and what you get is a narcissist. You're becoming a
67. 22:58 narcissist. You're being transmogrified, mutated into a narcissist merely by being exposed to one. There is security theory. It's a proposition that infants and young children need to develop a secure dependence on their parents before they can explore unfamiliar situations. And
68. 23:18 so a lack of this secure base hampers the child from exploration and and this kind of child cannot acquire new skills. Mary Salter Insworth used this theory as the initial framework for his studies on infant attachment and it was basically developed by William Emmett Blatz.
69. 23:42 So there's security theory and there is what is known as security operations. Security operation is the approach of Harry Stac Sullivan. Security operation is a variety of interpersonal defensive meas measures such as arrogance, boredom, aggression, anger that are used
70. 24:02 as a protection against anxiety, loss of self-esteem and so on. This exactly is what the narcissist induces in you. He forces you to engage in security operations because he does not provide you with a secure base and he challenges your internal work. You begin to become
71. 24:23 bored, arrogant, aggressive, angry, disempathic. You begin to mirror to be to reflect the narcissist. You're being cloned. The narcissist uses um communication techniques such as entrainment to brainwash you into becoming him. The narcissist has never experienced
72. 24:47 separation from the parental figure and then individuation. He was not allowed to. So he doesn't allow you to separate from him because he perceives himself as your parent and he perceives you as his parent. This dual mothership concept causes the narcissist to deny you separation
73. 25:08 to prevent you from experience experiencing a secure base phenomenon. He wants you merge with him. He wants you fuse with him. He wants to regenerate what used to be called in Mala's work a symbiotic phase or a symbiotic state. And to do this he needs
74. 25:27 to take away your personal independence, your agency and so on. The only way to accomplish this, the only way to deny you personal autonomy is by converting you into an internal object and taking away all your external attributes. When you rebel against this, when you reject
75. 25:47 this, when you're fighting for your survival, psychic, psychological survival at least, gradually you have to adopt narcissistic strategies, techniques, behaviors. Finally, some semblance of traits, including psychological constructs such as the false self. You're becoming a
76. 26:06 narcissist. The longer you're exposed to the narcissist, the more narcissistic you become, and the longer it would take to purge and expunge this infection, this contamination. That's why no contact as soon as possible is a strategy of self-s survival, self-preservation.
77. 26:29 You can't afford to stay in a relationship with a narcissist. It's way too dangerous. You're losing yourself. You may never find yourself again.