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1. 00:01 we have no conclusive convincing evidence that narcissism pathological narcissism is the outcome of genetic transmission that there is a hereditary component in pathological narcissism although it stands to reason it makes sense also at this stage we have no
2. 00:21 convincing studies that demonstrate brain abnormalities in narcissism so we are forced to stick to what we have learned over the last 130 years that in the background of every narcissist there is some problem with upbringing with child rearing with
3. 00:45 parenting some kind of dysfunctional family now we use the words abuse and trauma but we should use them cautiously and we should expand the definition of abuse anything that breaches the child's boundaries anything that prevents the child from separating and
4. 01:07 individuating anything that doesn't let the child walk away from the parent and become their own person should be construed as abusive and traumatizing so parents who pamper and spoil are equally as bad as parents who neglect and reject and physically
5. 01:29 abuse today I would like to discuss four theories of the psychoggenesis the ideology of pathological narcissism what makes a narcissist what transforms the child innocent and happy as it is into a brooding narcissist in later life now there's about a zillion theories
6. 01:57 um and I'm going to cover many of them in future video for example one of the future v my future videos will deal with social investment the social investment model of trade development and so on but today I would like to focus on four psychonamic theories that have been
7. 02:13 proven actually have been substantiated by multiple studies and experiments in the past 20 years it's pretty amazing because the people who came up with these theories had no access and no wish maybe no willingness to engage in actual experimentation actual studies actual
8. 02:34 field work and yet their insights their ideas have proven to be unairringly one could even say eerily true and today I'm going to cover these four points of view what makes a narcissist what converts and transforms a child into one my name is Sambakin i'm the author of malignant
9. 02:59 self- loveve narcissism revisited i'm also a professor of psychology narcissistic parents subvert the child's ability to separate from them the separation individuation phase they don't let the child walk away in a variety of ways and one of the main
10. 03:20 reasons is that narcissistic parents are incapable of telling the difference between internal objects and external objects the child should be treated as an external object and yet the parent perceives the child as nothing more than a figment of the parents mind a kind of
11. 03:40 furniture or prop an extension in the best case so it is an internal object letting the child walk away letting the child separate let letting the child set nent boundaries letting the child individuate become an individual individual divided from the parent
12. 03:59 that's very threatening to a narcissistic parent because because it's an internal object it's as if the narcissistic parent is required to give up a piece of her or his mind and that's terrifying it's anxogenic it creates anxiety so the parent clings on to the
13. 04:22 child envelopes the child engulfs the child refuses to let the child walk away and again we are not talking only about indulgent overprotective parent when you abuse the child physically and sexually and so on so forth you are merging with the child you're fusing with the child
14. 04:42 you're instrumentalizing and objectifying the child and of course you're not letting the child become separate from you an individual a person you're not allowing the child to develop a self or personhood the 1970s saw a flurry of theorizing on what creates narcissism in
15. 05:06 otherwise perfectly healthy children how does does this transmogrification transmutation come about what renders a child joyful curious happy what renders such a child suddenly divorced from itself a antagonistic withdrawn and subject to the whims and
16. 05:35 vicissitudes of a divinity a new divinity the false self what generates and engenders this incredible process of uh psychopathology psychoggenic process so start with Kohut Hines quote 1977 koh suggested that in the development of a child there are two
17. 05:59 primary dimensions two primary aspects one is the one is grandio exhibitionism and one is idealization obviously a child who is 18 months old or two years old or three years old needs to develop some kind of grandiosity in order to take on the world in order to observe in order to
18. 06:22 explore in order to interact with peers this kind of child needs to develop a godlike sensation a feeling that it is godlike and similarly the child needs to observe adults and convert them in his mind into role models he needs to idealize initially his parents and more
19. 06:48 specifically his mother in order to somehow internalize them and render them an integral part of a developing self grandio exhibitionism requires parental empathic mirroring the parents should mirror the grandiosity to the child by encouraging the child to walk away to
20. 07:12 separate to explore to discover to interact to experience loss and failure and pain and hurt grandiosity is the key to the world
21. 07:26 out there the absolute precondition for object relations later on in life and parents should be should empathize with the child should not put the child down criticize the child mock the child ridicule the child and humiliate the child but should actually encourage the child by
22. 07:45 mirroring and idealization requires the appropriate behavior behavioral role modeling requires a model so the parents should act the way they want their child to be brought up and act later in life if the parents do not want the child to lie they should not lie if the
23. 08:09 parents do not want the child to be hypocritical nor should they be if the parents want the child to be a just and empathic person they should act justly and be empathic and the child would emulate and imitate all this this is called social learning theory or social
24. 08:26 cognitive learning theory and I have a video dedicated to it in the CU um
25. 08:34 playlist consistent parental support however should not become a form of overprotectiveness stifling uh monitoring and some kind of superindulgence pampering spoiling pedestalizing idolizing it should not go there consistent parental support means
26. 09:01 that the parents are there as a secure base as a safe background as a launching launching base from which the child emerges and to which the child returns having harvested information about the environment new knowledge and having experienced good
27. 09:21 and bad things the parent should always be there in on the at the ready ready to absorb the child ready to help the child process ready to allow the child to develop without fear of punitive measures so on at the same time the parental support should be atmospheric ambient and it
28. 09:47 should alternate with specific intermittent and non-traumatic optimal frustrations periods however limited few minutes few hours in which there's no parental guidance no guidance no affirmation and sometimes not even presence these optimal frustrations these many
29. 10:12 frustrations modulate the child's grandiosity and then convert it into self-confidence these many frustrations render the child help the child to become grounded in reality and they also aid in the internalization of parental ideals the many frustrations in other
30. 10:40 words help the child to develop reality testing gradually the child is able to get rid of the splitting defense my parents are all good i'm all bad or vice versa and begin to see the parents in a nuanced much more realistic light in other words these many frustrations eliminate
31. 11:06 grandiosity help to create a realistic image of the parents which makes it much easier to internalize them and to emulate and imitate them these many frustrations are super critical over parenting and permissiveness over responsiveness indulgence
32. 11:28 in other words parents who refuse or fear afraid to frustrate the child parents who do not mitigate the child's gr nent grandio self parents who do not allow the child to separate from them these are bad parents essentially abusive parents because they by behaving this way by
33. 11:53 isolating the child in a bubble of their own making they don't allow the child to develop a self to differentiate to explore reality to shape itself and adapt and to be prepared for life later on as an adult on the other hand at the other pole of the spectrum under parenting
34. 12:20 nonresponsive or rejecting parents they cannot be internalized they cannot be idealized the child cannot idealize such parents because he feels the lack of love the absence of empathy and the ambient implicit rejection so he cannot idealize these parents he cannot
35. 12:42 internalize them and without internalized idealized objects there's no self and so again there's a problem with the formation of the self henceforth this kind of child depends crucially and always on interpersonal feedback in order to somehow stabilize the precarious fragile
36. 13:10 pseudo self kaleidoscopic self that takes takes the place of a fully integrated cohesive and constellated self self of such a child is not functional because it misses crucial elements most notably internalized idealized loving parents no self-love no no love of others no object
37. 13:37 relations this is cahoot kberg in 1975 two years prior to cohort suggested a completely different picture he said that parental coldness strictness hostility harshness unloving covertly aggressive parents they cause defensive reactions in the child and these defensive
38. 14:01 reactions inhibit the formation of a fully functional healthy self and the outcome is a pathological organization of the self the beliefs about the self are totally biased and skewed and defective deformed and counterfactual the ideal self the idealized image of
39. 14:22 the cell is defunct and problematic and there's no ideal object there's no idealized image of the parents there is no ideal object to internalize so there's no stable core of self- reggard it is through the parents gaze that initially the child learns to love
40. 14:42 itself to regard itself positively narcissistic children as Kern put it and I'm quoting often occupy a pivotal point in their family structure such as being the only child or the only brilliant child or the one who is supposed to fulfill the family's aspirations and such
41. 15:05 expectations that's end quote and such expectations foster a chronic need for some kind of refuge some kind of escape some kind of sanctuary so the child runs away from flees the scene of this kind of parents who are constantly demanding and harshly
42. 15:28 so and are very punitive if their expectations and demands are not met and the child's refuge is the false self this sense of superiority and lifelong inflated illusory worth kberg's formula is parental coldness plus extremely high expectations plus harsh demands equal a
43. 15:52 narcissistic self onward to the object relations schools which preceded even Kber most of them worked in the 1960s in Britain of all places we're talking about winnot gun trape uh fair baron and others according to object relations schools narcissism is a result of the parents
44. 16:14 strategic use of the child the parent uses the child to fulfill their own ambitions realize their own unfulfilled dreams and fantasies the child is instrumentalized becomes a tool in the armory of the of the parent the parent uses the child to self-regulate child
45. 16:33 becomes a source of external regulation of the parent rothstein in 1979 introduced a injected a motivational component he said that parental behavior is driven by two sometimes competing motivational systems the self-focused system with a question
46. 16:56 how does my child meet my needs and the child focus system how am I meeting my child's needs and so he said that empathic parents functional good enough parents whatever empathic systems they they tip towards the child focused an empathic system a correct form of parenting is
47. 17:20 child focused not selfish not self focused emphasis on self focus said Rothstein leads to a narcissistic child in self focus the parental investment is conditioned on the child's performance affection compassion empathy and of course love is contingent is conditional
48. 17:45 the child must meet certain parental standards and expectations or otherwise the child is denied all access to the meaningful access emotional effective access to the parent the child's narcissism is a defensive response refixation the parent is objectified and
49. 18:06 the child aims to cater to the parents emotional needs and in this whole process the nurturance of the child is abandoned and neglected and overlooked karen Hornai wrote in 1939 decades before all this I'm quoting "Parents who transfer their own ambitions to the child develop
50. 18:29 in the child the feeling that he is loved for imaginary qualities rather than for his true self and because of that the child discards the true self in favor of a parent flavored a parentlike aar parent parantoid idealized false self mind you the real parent is not available to be
51. 18:56 idealized so the child creates a fictitious imaginary parental figure which can be idealized and is idealized and becomes the false self the narcissistic self is a manifestation of the attempt to seek approval from this idealized object and from idealized objects in general which
52. 19:20 is exactly why the narcissist idealizes you at the inception of a relationship romantic or otherwise on to Milan in 1981 milan came up with the idea of social learning actually preceded Bandura by a few years and he said that children learn about themselves and
53. 19:41 about others children are mentalize others and they do this by observing their parents' behaviors permissive indulgent parents parents who set very few rules limitations and boundaries they teach the child that it is superior that it is entitled and this is what Milan had to
54. 20:03 say children that have been exposed repeatedly to acquiescent and indulgent parents will expect comparable treatment from others and they learn to employ the presumptuous and demanding strategies that quickly elicit favored reactions from their parents quickly elicited
55. 20:21 favored reactions from their parents so these children used the strategies that worked with their parents with other people later in life and of course it leads to dysfunctional relationships resentment the narcissist the narcissist who uses these strategies the narcissist
56. 20:43 who feels entitled and who expects other people to indulge him to acquies in his abuse and and mistreatment and lack of empathy and so on this kind of narcissist is likely to be badly disappointed and such parental behaviors these parental behaviors model for the
57. 21:04 child and the the message of the modeling is other people are beneath you my child other people are weak and contemptable and manipulable and the child learns the child manipulates his own parents or her own parents the parents cater to the to the child's every whim and and temper
58. 21:28 tantrum this kind of child learns that people as I said as I just said are inferior they are weak they're easily manipulable can be manipulated child becomes makavelian and this set of beliefs they form the child's interpersonal core internal working
59. 21:50 model highly narcissistic one the parents boundless worshipful adoration is information it's a form of signal Finally the child uses this information this data to construct a narcissistic view of both himself as superior godlike and others as servitude people who are
60. 22:14 doomed to servitude because of their innate inherent inferiority most theories of parenting describe several dimensions warmth monitoring and psychological control studies have used this dimensional approach and constructed tests and experiments and these tests
61. 22:39 and experiments in the past 30 years have or 25 years have proven pretty conclusively that Cohort's insights Karnberg's insights Milon's insights and the insights of object relations schools are all absolutely correct shockingly the intuition of these people
62. 22:57 which was not based on any evidence has proven to be true so the parenting dimensions include warmth monitoring and psychological control warmth is the emotional and material support the nurturance the involvement the acceptance the child- centeredness and the responsiveness that
63. 23:21 the child expects and deserves and that make the child a health healthy adult individual monitoring is keeping track of the child's whereabouts actions and social circle and psychological control involves intrusive actions guilt tripping manipulation sometimes via the
64. 23:44 withdrawal of love possessiveness overprotectiveness disappointment and shame in the child and even spoiling pampering pedestalizing and idolizing the child instrumentalizing the child to realize the parents fantasies and dreams unfulfilled as they are and parentifying
65. 24:04 the child rendering the child the parents parent parenting styles were described by Balin in 1971 bowrin b a u m r i n d
66. 24:19 1971 he suggested three authoritative parenting style which is high on warmth low high on monitory and low on psychological control authoritarian parenting style low on warmth high on monitoring high on psychological control permissive parenting style which is high on warm
67. 24:43 warmth but low on monitoring and low on psychological control and Makobi and Martin in 1983 added the neglectful parenting style everything low warmth is low monitoring is low um psychological control is low in other words the par parent is completely uninterested in the
68. 25:03 child it's a form of absentee par parenting reminiscent of Andre Green's dead mother these four theories that I've presented to you these four points of view on how a narcissist is made today are substantiated by research and we believe that these other pathways the
69. 25:24 developmental pathways that result in pathological narcissism in the child initially as an adolescent but much later as an adult uh however there are other theories and they're being tested as we speak and I will give you an overview of these theories later uh on this channel
70. 25:44 channel i'm also going to delve deep into the parental involvement not only in the formation and maintenance of pathological narcissism but in the metaphorical narrative that underlies narcissism and the child's life later as an adult