Tip: click a paragraph to jump to the exact moment in the video.

1. 00:00 Today I have the honor of talking to Professor Sam Vachnan. He's a professor of clinical psychology presently at CEOs, the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies. He's a former visiting professor of psychology at Southern Federal University in
2. 00:20 Rosamdan, Russia. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly. He's the he's the author of malignant self-love, narcissism revisited, and he's one of the world's leading experts on personality disorders. His work has shaped the way we understand disorders
3. 00:35 like narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and the devastating impact these dynamics can have on relationships. In my opinion, he's one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. Professor, it's an honor to have you this morning. Thank you for having me and thank you for the
4. 00:53 kind words. I almost recognize myself, but just almost. Wonderful. Well, today I wanted to talk about borderline personality disorder, especially as it relates to women. What does a woman with true borderline personality actually look like? And
5. 01:12 actually, what is borderline personality disorder? Perhaps before we start uh with with your excellent question, I think a few it would behoove us to have a look at the real statistics. Fewer than 2% um in the general population have narcissistic personality
6. 01:33 disorder. The accurate figure is 1.7%. That is a figure that has been adopted by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Committee in 2013.
7. 01:46 the prevalence may have gone up a bit. So now we're talking about 2%. But that's that's the ballpark figure. And it's a similar number when it comes to borderline personality disorder. This would mean that fewer than 0.9% of the general population have narcissistic personality
8. 02:11 disorder as women. In other words, fewer than 0.9% of the general population in terms of females, in terms of women, would have narcissism and another 0.9% would have borderline. One% one of every 50, that's 50, one of every 50 women might have narcissistic or
9. 02:34 borderline personality disorder. The other 49 are likely to be um out of the range of this of these disorders. So this is to set the record straight when it comes to incidence and prevalence of these personality disorders. Now what is borderline personality
10. 02:52 disorder? It is one of the most severe mental illnesses we know of. Um the father of the field Otto Kberg has suggested that borderline personality disorder was just the flip side of the coin of narcissistic personality disorder that they were
11. 03:10 essentially defenses against each other. He said that pathological narcissism was a defense against borderline personality organization. And so they were they were close close kin. They were like first cousins. And that both of them said Karenburgg were on the verge on the edge
12. 03:28 of psychosis. Psychosis or psychotic disorders being the most extreme forms of mental illnesses we are um aware of and they include among others schizophrenia. So this is a serious illness. Now it has seven distinguishing clinical features which are common to
13. 03:50 all people with borderline personality disorder, males and females. And about half of all people with borderline personality disorder are men. Actually it used to be a female disorder but that was the outcome of gender bias and under reporting by men.
14. 04:10 U men were not though it's not more predominant in women. No, it's not. Okay, that's a big myth then. Huh? That's a myth that dates back to the 1980s. If you were to read the third edition, fourth edition, and text revision of the fourth edition of the
15. 04:26 diagnostic and statistical manual, they still claim that about 75% of people with borderline personality disorder are women, but they date back they date back to the year 2000. It's this is antiquated misinformation. Okay. By the way, only 20% of humanity
16. 04:48 use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. 80% of humanity use another book, another diagnostic manual known as the International Classification of Diseases. And the I in the ICD, there is no such thing as narcissistic personality disorder. It doesn't
17. 05:08 exist. And actually, there's no such thing as borderline personality disorder. There is a generalized disorder of emotional dysregulation or emotional instability or emotional ability, but there's no borderline all narcissistic personality disorder. The DSM is two to
18. 05:28 three decades behind current research behind the times and yet it is leveraged by red pillars and self-styled experts and YouTube gurus and it is leveraged by them and they brandish it as some kind of bible of the of the profession and it is not. No one in the profession is
19. 05:56 taking when I mean profession I mean academ basically no one in academ is regards the DSM as an authoritative text. So borderline personality disorder however does seem to exist as a clinical entity. Whether it is utterly distinguishable from narcissistic
20. 06:17 personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and even psychopathy is open to debate. Recently, we are beginning to believe that borderline personality disorder may be a form of secondary psychopathy in women. That's the evolving trend currently in the study of borderline
21. 06:38 personality disorder. But in women specifically or in women specifically? Okay. Yes. Yes, you know specifically whereas in men it's likely to be a variant of narcissism or pathological narcissism. In short, borderline may be a kind of hybrid disorder manifesting more like more as
22. 07:00 narcissism in men and more as psychopathy or secondary psychopathy more precisely in women. But that's that's the cutting edge. That's the bleeding edge. It's not yet the mainstream. It's not yet the orthodoxy. Now there are seven clinical features
23. 07:16 which are common to men and women alike in borderline personality disorder starting with the most prominent and dominant without which you cannot diagnose borderline personality disorder and that is what we call effective instability. It is colloquially known as
24. 07:32 emotional volatility or emotional dysregulation. It's when emotions both positive and negative overwhelm the individual, disable the individual, render the individual dysfunctional, the individual drowns in the emotions and is unable to sub somehow shut them off or
25. 07:54 shunt them or redirect them or channel them or reframe them or sublimate them or do whatever we do to emotions. The emotions are raw. They they flood the individual. It's like flooding the zone if you wish. So this is known as effective instability. The second
26. 08:11 clinical feature is what we call mood reactivity. Used to be known as mood liability. Mood liability is ups and downs cycling between depression and mania. And this is why many clinicians misdiagnose borderline personality disorder as bipolar disorder which is a
27. 08:30 mood disorder. Let it be clear bipolar disorder is not borderline personality disorder no matter who says that who says that. So we have many clinicians and even scholars who make this mistake conflate the two when they're not. However, it is true that in borderline
28. 08:47 personality disorder there is cycling between depressive and pseudomanic euphoric cycles. These however are much faster than in in bipolar. In bipolar they take days, weeks, months. In borderline personality disorder they take minutes or hours.
29. 09:09 The third um the third clinical feature is the intensity of interpersonal relationships. The drama, the the amazing elacrity, the speed with which commitment is is affirmed and and the the inability to keep the relationship going on an even keel is underlying
30. 09:32 again underlying instability. By the way, if I had to choose a single word to typify characterize borderline personality disorder, it would would be instability. It's a disorder of instability in everything in emotions, in moods, in relationships and simply
31. 09:49 instability. So the intensity is huge. The drama is overpowering in these relationships and this is known as relational disorder. So the it involves a relational disorder. Why is that? Because the borderline engages in what we call infantile defense mechanisms.
32. 10:09 Defense mechanisms which are much more typical of toddlers and infants. The adults don't have these defenses. They don't use them. Border lines do. One of these defense mechanisms is is is known as splitting. Split splitting is is domous thinking. When you see everything and
33. 10:31 everyone in terms of black and white, all good or all bad, totally right, totally wrong, infallible and always erroneous or mistaken when you divide the world into two opposing camps. And so this dichotoous thinking leads the borderline to a cycling in
34. 10:53 relationships. So the borderline starts by idealizing for example her intimate partner, colleagues at work, neighbors, friends. She starts by or he starts by idealizing and then because of the splitting there is the inevitable devaluation. The idealization is such
35. 11:14 that it's like setting you up for failure. When the borderline idealizes you, her expectations are so unrealistic, counterfactual, delusional, and sky-high that you're very likely to fail her, disappoint her, and she's very likely to become disenchanted with you,
36. 11:35 which leads her to the devaluation phase. And this is the outcome of splitting. But there are other defense mechanisms that work such as projection, projective identification, and so on. I will not go into it right now. Sure. Twin anxieties is the next You have to
37. 11:52 bear with me because it's a very complex disorder. Sure. Sure. Sure. Um the next clinical feature and now I'm I'm to remind you I'm discussing the clinical features which are synanon without which you cannot diagnose borderline personality disorder. The next clinical feature is
38. 12:12 anxiety. There are even attempts to cast borderline personality disorder as a kind of anxiety disorder. There are similar attempts to describe psychopathy as a kind of anxiety disorder. But in the case of border lines, there are twin anxieties. There are two anxieties and
39. 12:32 they are mutually exclusive. They're contradictory. There is what we what colloquially is known as abandonment anxiety. The correct clinical term is separation, insecurity. There is the fear of being abandoned, rejected, ignored, dumped, let go of. So there's this
40. 12:55 anxiety and there is the opposite anxiety of being engulfed, being consumed, being suffocating in an as a result of intimacy. So the borderline pendulates. She's like a pendulum. She pendulates. She oscillates between a terror of losing, for example, her intimate
41. 13:19 partner, she becomes clinging and needy and demanding. And then when the intimate partner reciprocates, when the intimate partner expresses love, becomes intimate, supportive, loving, caring, compassionate, attentive, the borderline experiences suffocation. She feels that
42. 13:45 she's being shackled and incarcerated and imprisoned. She wants to run away. She can't tolerate intimacy. It is killing her. So this is known as approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion. The borderline approaches because she craves intimacy and love. So she
43. 14:08 approaches and at the beginning she's a dream. She's sexual dream. She is she is love personified and raified. She is subservient and submissive and caters to your needs and always there for you and so on. And then when you reciprocate, when you make the mistake of
44. 14:29 reciprocating, she runs away. She runs away. She externalizes aggression. She acts out. We can discuss it a bit later. Were you just Were you just describing what's known as lovebombing? No. Love bombing is love bombing is a phase in the narcissist shared fantasy.
45. 14:50 It's unique to narcissist. Oh, so nothing to do with borderline. Nothing to do with borderline. The borderline does not love bomb. The borderline the borderline truly is committed to the relationship truly love. She's capable of love which a narcissist is not. Okay.
46. 15:07 Truly wishes to make you happy, to cater to your needs. Um the in the inception of the relationship with the borderline is a dream come true. And it characterizes healthy relationships as well. It is only a bit later that the twin anxieties kick in. The borderline
47. 15:29 is constant constantly terrified that you're going to reject her, abandon her, let her go, dump her. And this is because she lacks something known as object constancy. She doesn't regard you as a constant in her life. You're ephemereral. You're like because you're
48. 15:48 a dream come true. You have you possess a dreamlike quality. You can dissipate at any minute. You're ephemereral. So there's anxiety about this. And on the other hand, whenever you try to show her love, whenever you try to be present, whenever you try to afford to provide
49. 16:06 her with sakur and advice, and whenever you you try to act as a good partner, she perceives this as engulfment, as in meshment, as an attempt to take over, a hostile takeover, as kind of merger infusion, which would render her a disappearing act, would make her vanish.
50. 16:28 So, she runs away terrified. Well, I'm glad I cleared that up because a lot of these fake experts when they talk about borderline personality disorder, they use the term lovebombing. Watch out for the lovebombing. Love bombing this, you know, love bombing that. And so, but
51. 16:44 that's not a term that has any relevance to borderline person. It's it's it is the first phase in the narcissist's attempt to establish a relationship with you. So, the narcissist would love bomb you. The the clinical term is the narcissist would idealize you, okay?
52. 17:01 Would idealize you and then the narcissist would grant you access to this idealized image making you fall in love with your with your idealized self. And this would you would be you become addicted to this. You become addicted to your exposure to your own perfection. In
53. 17:19 other words, the narcissist triggers in you narcissistic defenses. You become grandiose in effect. You want to see yourself via the narcissist's gaze as this perfect entity. Okay, that's not the case with borderline. Borderline from the getgo has a realistic uh
54. 17:36 initially as a realistic view of the relationship though she does idealize it. So, but the idealization from what I'm getting from you see because what these red pillars say is there's all these borderline women and they have this inauthentic they don't use the word
55. 17:54 idealization but they describe where they you know basically they describe basically something like idealization but with the idea that it's all malevolent. It's all to try to get you to commit to them so that they can then destroy your life. From what I'm hearing
56. 18:11 from you, it it sounds like it is authentic. It's just a little it's more delusional. Is that And the narcissist the narcissist is authentic as well. It's delusional. There's no malice in narcissism and in borderline. None. Okay. There is a tendency nowadays to
57. 18:31 relate to everything. Politics, psychology, you name it. There's a tendency to relate to everything as if it were some kind of morality play. Good versus evil, demons versus angels, you know, narcissist versus empaths, whatever the hell that may be. I have I
58. 18:49 want to ask you about that, too. Yeah. Narcissist versus So, there's this all good and fighting the all bad. And of course, this is a narcissistic defense mechanism. Ironically, these people when they cast the borderline as an all evil, all bad,
59. 19:11 all wicked person, what they're doing is they're splitting the the borderline. Remember, splitting is a defense mechanism where you see other people as all bad or all good. It's a defense mechanism. But it is in adults it usually is a powerful indicator
60. 19:30 strong diagnostic indicator of pathological narcissism. So ironically these people are likely narcissists. These red pillars these empaths all these people are actually narcissists and they and they are splitting other people. So when you see
61. 19:48 someone online saying I'm a poor victim of the narcissist. I'm an empath. Look what the narcissist did to me. You can bet your last penny in the bank that this person has at the very least narcissistic style and in all probability covert narcissism.
62. 20:07 Narcissistic style being not quite diagnostic. Okay, it's subclinical in the sense that the traits and the behavioral manifestations or expression of these traits do not amount or uh cannot satisfy the diagnostic criteria. So it's almost narcissist but not exactly
63. 20:31 subclinical. So you have many of these people walking around and claiming to be victims and and demonizing border lines of narcissist not realizing that that's precisely what narcissists do. Yeah. Narcissists split other people. When the narcissist idealizes you, for example,
64. 20:50 you're all good. You can do no wrong. You're perfect. And when the narcissist devalues you, you are the raification and embodiment and personification of evil. You can do no right. You're wicked. That's exactly what narcissists do. Border lines and narcissists are not
65. 21:10 malevolent. They are not malicious. They harm people. Let it be clear. They cause serious harm. They hurt people. They damage people. They break people. That that much is true. But they do this because they're mentally ill. They're delusional. They are compulsive. They're
66. 21:32 impulsive. They can't help it. They are who they are. So, so it's not intentional, per se. Sorry. it. The abuse when you're with a borderline partner or narcissistic partner is not intentional per se. No, there is no no intentionality in narcissism and in borderline. But it but
67. 21:58 it is it is it fair to say it's inevitable? It's inevitable. Yes. But it's not intentional. People are confusing especially online people are confusing psychopaths with narcissists and border lines. In psychopathy any abuse meed out is goal oriented and definitely premeditated and
68. 22:19 intentional. That's a psychopath and sometimes a malignant narcissist which is a combination of psychopathy, narcissism and sadism. But classic narcissist, both overt and covert and border lines, including border lines who are comorbid with narcissist. In other words, a borderline
69. 22:40 who is also a narcissist. These people do what they do. They hurt you. They break you. They damage you. They torment you. They torture you. And they they they do all these things. I'm not denying it. But they do all these things because they cannot help themselves. And
70. 22:58 they are not aware of the difference between reality and fantasy. They're utterly immersed in fantasy. As far as they're concerned, this is the only reality. They're sick. They're mentally ill. Okay. That's that's important to know. All right. So, the two things I've
71. 23:20 learned, well, I've learned a lot from you, but number one, borderline personality disorder is not common amongst women. It's not every other woman, and they're not malevolent. That's the second thing. How about the red pill narrative that uh they try to
72. 23:38 cast men as helpless victims of crazy borderline women? Um, is it accurate to say that some men are drawn are actually drawn to true borderline women? And and if that's the case, what is the profile if you could give me of the type of man that would be
73. 23:56 drawn to someone like that? A narcissist. A narcissist would be inexorably drawn to a borderline. So maybe these red pill stories about borderline girlfriends is is true because they all seem to have them. And in all likelihood, these people are narcissists.
74. 24:14 Narcissist. Why? Why is that though? Why are narcissists drawn to border lines? Well, there are actually two major reasons and like 200 minor reasons. I'll focus on the two major reasons. The borderline deifies her intimate partner. What the borderline does? It
75. 24:36 outsources her internal psychological processes to her intimate partner. In other words, she lets her intimate partner control her. She lets the intimate partner regulate her emotions, stabilize her moods. She allows the intimate partner to become the interface
76. 24:54 with reality. So, she suspends her own reality testing. She allows the intimate partner to establish a cult. She is the member of the cult and the narcissist is the cult leader. And so this caters to the narcissist's vanity, to the narcissist's grandiosity and the borderline is a
77. 25:18 perfect partner and participant in the narcissist's shared fantasy. She she elevates the narcissist. She she hands herself over to the narcissist and the narcissist has this role of healer,
78. 25:38 fixer, savior, rescuer, guru, teacher,
79. 25:44 leader. This is an irresistible proposition. During the idealization phase, the borderline caters to all the pathological needs of the narcissist. On the other hand, the narcissist provides with a borderline with exactly what she needs or what she believes she
80. 26:02 needs. Pathologically, this a pathological belief, but still she's looking for a rock. She's looking for someone who is supremely self-confident. Someone who would isolate her from bruising and harsh reality. Someone who would protect her and defend her and and uh idealize her
81. 26:28 and idolize her and save her and rescue her and so on. And the narcissist plays all this to perfection in the initial phase of the fantasy, the love bombing phase. So this is a process known as co- idealization. They both idealize each other and only they can idealize each
82. 26:47 other. That means the narcissist can be idealized by a non borderline. Of course there could be a non borderline who would idealize a narcissist but this would disappear very fast. the narcissist the the if if the narcissist partner when the narcissist partner is a
83. 27:05 non-borderline. She's this kind of partner is grounded in reality and is able to discern and observe the narcissist's shortcomings and failures and so on. She in other words her ability to idealize the narcissist is compromised by reality. I'm talking about a
84. 27:24 nonborderline partner. The non-borderline partner's ability to maintain the narcissist's delusions, to buttress his grandiosity, to cater to his fantasy, her ability is compromised by the fact that she is still well grounded in reality. While the borderline is not
85. 27:45 grounded in reality, she is immersed in her own fantasy. And the borderline's fantasy is to find a godlike rocklike supremely confident, perfect being which a narcissist is more than happy to provide. So people who are attracted to border lines inexurably are usually
86. 28:07 narcissist. That's reason number one, the mutual compatibility. In other words, in terms of pathologies, their pathologies resonate. my uh late lamented friend Joan Lachkar who was the first to describe narcissistic borderline couples in the early 80s believe it or not when no one
87. 28:28 has heard of these things. Joan used to tell me the archaic wounds of the borderline and the narcissist resonate. They solve each other's archaic childhood wounds. And this leads me to the next reason why narcissists are likely to be attracted to border lines. The
88. 28:51 ethology, the causation of narcissistic personality disorder, the history, the personal history that leads to narcissistic personality disorder, the personal the autobiography that leads to the emergence in border of borderline personality disorder has a lot in common.
89. 29:08 Both both narcissists and border lines grow up in households which are very very similar. Households where there is a some kind of dysfunction. The dysfunction could be negative omission, dysfunction of omission, for example, neglect, abandonment,
90. 29:27 uh emotional absence. So it could be this or it could be a a problem of commission. So it could be overprotectiveness, spoiling, isolating the child, not allowing the child to separate from the parent, emotional blackmail, emotional incest and so on. Be that as it may,
91. 29:48 border lines and narcissists come from the same household, same type of household. In other words, they belong to the same clan, the same family. They instantly recognize each other. They are both wounded, traumatized, abused children. They they they share so much
92. 30:10 they have so much in common as far as background, as far as eiology that they are drawn instantly to each other. Border lines typically say, "I have never been this understood in my life. I felt so understood, so accepted." And the narcissist says, "I have never had someone like
93. 30:35 you. I've never had someone who realized what I need and gave it to me." So they fit together because in both pathologies we have what is known as the empty skoid core. Emptiness. Now emptiness is not just a hyperbole or some kind of exaggeration. It's actually a diagnostic
94. 30:58 criterion. One of the diagnostic criterion of borderline personality disorder is emptiness. Internal emptiness. In both the narcissist and the borderline, there's nobody at home, nobody home. B b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b lines and narcissist are absences masquerading as
95. 31:19 presences. They don't really exist except through the gaze of the other. They they relegate critical psychological functions to the outside because there's nothing inside to carry these functions out. There's no executive. There's just a huge void, a
96. 31:39 black hole in both of them. So they need each other. The narcissist regulates the borderline. The borderline regulates the narcissist in many ways. and their fantasy is ironclad because it caters to deep set critical needs and functions of the
97. 32:00 psyche. So in a way you could say that the borderline provides the narcissist with some kind of therapy. It's a therapeutic experience. Even when the borderline retraumatizes the narcissist, and she does very often, it has a therapeutic effect. It is known as narcissistic
98. 32:23 motification. What the borderline does, she disables all the defenses of the narcissist, a process known as decompensation. And then the narcissist defenseless actually becomes a borderline and is able to get in touch with his longlost emotions, is able to
99. 32:43 see himself as he truly is. Loses the fantasy, loses the delusion. So it's a highly therapeutic outcome. Unfortunately, the narcissist is illequipped to deal with this newfound knowledge about himself with this new fangled self-awareness. So it leads to
100. 33:05 borderline outcomes such as suicidal ideiation and and you know emotional dysregulation and so but there is an element of therapy here. Similarly, border lines report that when they are in relationships with narcissists, they come alive. They feel safe. They say that the
101. 33:29 world is in technical, no longer black and white. They see the world in technical. They are energized. They're excited in a good way. Initially, the borderline is good for the narcissist. The narcissist is good for the border. They're good for each for each other. It is only later
102. 33:48 that the anxiety, the engulfment anxiety of the borderline kicks in and she abandons the narcissist. She runs away. She acts out. She may hurt and harm the narcissist in some way. She externalizes aggression. Anger is a key feature in borderline personality disorder.
103. 34:06 Inappropriate anger and uncontrolled anger. So, but it's a later stage. It's a secondary stage. And because the initial experience is so addictive and so rewarding, they keep coming back to each other, they keep re reestablishing the relationship time and again. And it's
104. 34:28 very difficult for them to to really part ways and break up. So when when you have someone saying, "I've all my life been attracted to border lines and they kept they kept harming me. They can. This kind of person is most likely a narcissist. Actually, that's very interesting.
105. 34:52 Um, I've heard some of these self-styled experts make claims such as uh, you know, borderline women have excessive empathy and they're hypersexual and that's why men tend to be attracted to them. Is that an accurate characterization or is there some truth to that? Or what I
106. 35:17 mean? They are obviously there's something about borderline women that even psychologically healthy men can be drawn to because I've heard you say that before. Could you explain that part of it though? What is it about borderline women that makes easy to generalize?
107. 35:37 easy to generalize when it comes to narcissist why narcissists are attracted to border lines. It's easy easy to generalize because we have all the pathological maps and we know exactly when when it when it when you mention when you talk about the the healthy
108. 35:51 cohort of the healthy population the heterogenity is huge. Narcissists narcissists are a homogeneous group while healthy people are heterogeneous. It's very difficult to generalize. Sure. I'll try to give you a few pointers. First of all, to dispel a
109. 36:09 myth. Uh we used to think that uh people with borderline personality disorder were hypermpathic. Uh the truth is exactly the opposite and it is reflected today in the fifth edition text revision of the diagnostic and statistical manual published in 2022.
110. 36:30 They're less empathic. They're less empathic. Okay, that's pretty shocking to hear. Yeah. Whereas narcissists are disempathic similar to psychopaths. Actually, narcissists and psychopaths possess possess something which I dubbed I I was the first to
111. 36:50 describe 35 years ago. Um I dubbed it called empathy. It's a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy but without effective without emotional empathy. So a psychopath or a narcissist would scan you and would say, "Oh, this guy is very depressed. He's very sad."
112. 37:10 He would be able to decode you. He'd be able to decipher you. And this requires cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy. For example, reading your body language. So they're very good at that. Narcissists and psychopaths in this sense are much more empathic than healthy people.
113. 37:27 They have called empathy like an X-ray machine which shows which allows them to penetrate your defenses to map your vulnerabilities to realize your weaknesses on the fly instantaneously. But they once for example the psychopath has decided that
114. 37:44 you are depressed the next question is how can I leverage this to steal this guy's money? Or this the narcissist would say, "How can I have sex with this crying woman? She's crying. She's sad. That's great. She's vulnerable. How can I have sex with her?" So the there's no
115. 38:03 emotional reactivity. There's no emotional component there. It's missing. So the narcissist and psychopath have no effective empathy. Has no emotional empathy. Whereas the borderline does have emotional empathy. And in this sense, the borderline has a
116. 38:19 the full-fledged monopoly of types of empathies. However, they all reduced in intensity. So, she has like all types of empathy, but much less than healthy people. That's the current state of knowledge. Exactly the opposite of what self-styled experts online are are
117. 38:42 spewing, the nonsense they are spewing online. So it's not the empathy. Narcissists for example don't care about empathy. They wouldn't identify empathy if it fell on their head on their heads. They don't know empathy. So they don't it's again some
118. 38:59 kind of online myth online nonsense and misinformation that narcissists are attracted to empathic people. Narcissists are attracted to super strong personalities. This these are self aagrandising claims by people who pose as victims but they're actually
119. 39:20 narcissists. So these people go online and they say I have been the victim of a narcissist because I'm so unique, because I'm so amazing, because I'm so special, because I'm so angelic, because I'm so perfect. And they don't realize that when they when they make these
120. 39:38 claims they are acting the way narcissists do. They aggrandize themselves. It's grandiosity you know. So the truth is that narcissists are not attracted to empathy. So and we now know that border lines lack empathy. Had empathy been a critical feature
121. 40:00 narcissist would not have been attracted to border lines. So the fact that they attracted to border lines is proof positive that border lines do not possess the kind of empathy we thought we used to think that they possess. However, where did why did
122. 40:14 we why was it usually thought that they why was the opposite usually thought? Where did where's that myth rooted in? If you people people confused people confused ostentatious emotionality with empathy. the dis the dramatic displays of emotions were
123. 40:33 conflated and confused with empathy. We have had the same situation in histrionic personality disorder. Personality disorder everyone and his dog claimed that histrionic women are hypersexual. They are they're interex. They are flirtatious. They're seductive.
124. 40:55 They tempt you. They drag you to the bedroom and they pseudo rape you there. They are like estrionic personality disorder is about sex. Why is that? Because estrionic women and men, they are hyper emotional. They they're they are emotionally expressive.
125. 41:19 So they externalize emotions and they conflate emotions with sexuality. So they act as if they are obsessed with sex. The truth is that histrionic women especially are frigid. They're hyposexual. They're completely uninterested in sex. They find sex repulsive. So sometimes we
126. 41:51 confuse emotional expressivity or emotional reactivity or emotional dysregulation or emotional manifestations or ostentation in emotions. We confuse these with real underlying psychological dynamics and traits. And that is a huge mistake. That's a a big mistake. It's more or
127. 42:14 less like confusing in in medicine like confusing a symptom with a with a diagnosis. So a a diagnos diagnosis uh requires drilling down and only when you drill down you begin to decode and decipher the various interlacing and interlocking mechanisms and processes in
128. 42:37 the body that lead amal alia to the emergence of this specific symptom. Same with borderline. So the borderline actually lacks empathy. Today we know and it is enshrined in the diagnostic and statistical menu. But it has other things which some people find
129. 42:56 appealing. I mentioned the drama. Some people are attracted to drama. They seek excitement and thrills and risks. The borderline is very frequently selfharming, suicidal. She has suicidal ideiation. She's reckless. She acts out. She's unpredictable. And so some people find
130. 43:22 her very exciting, very thrilling. And it's like being, you know, in a movie. These people compensate for boredom in their own lives for the humrum pedestrian existence with a colorfulness and the drama of the borderline. She's like a spice if you kind of spice. The borderline is
131. 43:50 impulsive and transitions from extreme tenderness, ostentatious kindness and and so on to the equivalent of psychopathy, externalized aggression, cruelty, very terrifying. This process is known as switching. That is that is especially true when the borderline is subject to
132. 44:13 stress tension and one of the two anxieties that I've mentioned the abandonment anxiety and the engulfment anxiety then the border borderline transitions and switches. It is a terrifying sight to behold a very reminiscent of what used to be called
133. 44:31 multiple personality disorder. And indeed there are many scholars, preeminent scholars who believe that we should subsume narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder under post-traumatic dissociation. Post-traumatic dissociative disorder.
134. 44:54 It's like these are post-traumatic reactions which essentially are constructed around some form of dissociation. And in borderline we call it identity diffusion or identity disturbance. The borderline has no stable identity. She transmogriies and
135. 45:18 shapeshifts from one day to the next. Her values, her beliefs, her conduct, her traits, her physical appearance change from one day to the next. It's like a kaleidoscope. And this again some people find very appealing. However, it is founded on dissociation. It is founded on the
136. 45:45 borderline's inability to maintain continuity. Continuity of identity. Continuity of memories. She has memory gaps. Continu behavioral continuity. Doxastic continuity. continuity of beliefs and axiological continuity, continuity of values. Her values
137. 46:08 change. Some people find it super attractive. They are it's like, you know, being with multiple women at the same time and and the physical appearance can change so dramatically that it is really like being with multiple women at the same time. It's addictive.
138. 46:28 These people also tend to have a rescuer savior complex, a healer fixer complex. They need to save people. They need to rescue them. They need to fix them and heal them and change them and modify them and and make their lives better. They need they are givers. They
139. 46:48 are people pleasers. They are they are so they are they altruist pathologically altruistic if you wish. And the borderline exactly like the codependent is constantly needy. She's clinging. She's demanding. She has expectations. She's not abashed
140. 47:08 about expressing these expectations, communicating them. And some people need to be needed. As my wife says, they need to be needed. And so, no one needs you more than the borderline. If you're the kind of person who needs to be needed, a medical doctor
141. 47:28 for example, then you know a borderline is a perfect match because she's the eternal patient and she keeps informing you that you're having a benevolent benign effect on her that you are fixing her, you are healing her, you are saving her, you are
142. 47:49 rescuing her. This is known as the Copman drama triangle. It is an element of the drama. And so you feel when you're with the borderline, you feel that you've been catapulted into Hollywood. It's a twoman Hollywood. It's like you're on a set, a movie set of
143. 48:09 some kind. It doesn't feel real most of the time. It feels that you're participating in some kind of script the access to which is denied you. And at the same time, it's clear that you are the star of the movie. that the borderline is there just to
144. 48:26 direct you or facilitate you or somehow introduce you into the narrative. You're a captive of the narrative, but you like it because it's an aggrandizing narrative. It's an exciting narrative. It's a thrilling narrative. It's a narrative you don't want to exit. It's
145. 48:43 addictive. It's very addictive. What's the alternative? Life? What's the alternative? Reality. Reality. Yeah. What it's interesting is you describe some of these things. I'm thinking to myself, what's what's ironic is in a lot of these red pill
146. 49:03 communities, they tell men, you know, you should only go after women that are interested in you. Like one common phrase is that have burning desire for you. But oftent times the way they describe it is kind of with some of the traits that you're describing where uh
147. 49:21 women are obsessed with you tracking your location on their phones constantly, even um going into fits of rage for no reason and accusing you of cheating for no reason and even engaging in I I think what you're describing is, you know, psychotic behaviors where they
148. 49:43 threaten suicide. These are like heavily romanticized um traits online. I don't know if you if if you've noticed that. Um so it just get it got me thinking that actually that that makes sense that many of these um red pill influencers in fact are narcissists
149. 50:02 because I guess they are attracted to that in a way. Is that fair to say? It's fair to say I think um narcissist or narcissistic at the very least narcissistic style. However, I must say that especially in the wake of the pandemic but maybe even before that life
150. 50:24 or reality has become unbearable, intolerable, threatening, unpredictable. the indeterminacy and the uncertainty on the one hand and the boredom and the ro and the and the the rot the the inability to extricate yourself from something that increasingly is perceived as a
151. 50:49 simulation pre-programmed and predetermined. This sense of growing helplessness and hopelessness now begins to characterize healthy people as well. And that is why the incidence of depression has skyrocketed and the incidence of anxiety disorders skyrocketed in certain
152. 51:11 populations up to three to five times uh more than uh 14 years ago. No, I'm sorry 17 years ago. So we have longitudinal studies and we know that today in some age groups depression is five times more common than it was 17 years ago. Anxiety is three times more
153. 51:33 common. Why is that? Because of reality. And what is the escape from reality? Fantasy. And who are the masterminds of fantasy? Narcissists and border lines. They've been doing fantasy since age zero. Like they've been training. They are the You know, they're the chess masters of
154. 51:53 fantasy. So, we begin to elevate narcissists and border lines. We begin to let them lead us and teach us and enlighten us and because they know fantasy better than anyone else. And what's and the alternative is being gradually discarded and and held in contempt which is
155. 52:16 reality. Reality has failed. reality. Reality is not real. Reality is an organizing principle. Reality is a consensus. Reality is a hermeneutic principle. It's a explanatory principle. There's no such thing as reality. Have you ever eaten reality? Have you ever
156. 52:34 captured reality in a lab? Have you ever spoken to reality? Reality is a an agreement between 8.3 billion people on how to see the world. Now, we have a variety of ways to see the world. We have religion, we have science, we have but it's still a language. It's still an
157. 52:52 organizing principle. It's still an abstract. So yes, it is possible to discard reality and survive. Contrary to the positivist philosophers of the 19th century and 20th century, absolutely, you can discard reality and survive. Actually, the vast majority of humanity's
158. 53:14 existence, we we inhabited fantasies rather than reality. What is religion? Not a fantasy. It's a shared fantasy. We survived the Middle Ages, haven't we? Where there was no reality, only a fantasy is an organizing principle. There was no science. There was except
159. 53:32 except in in the Muslim Muslim countries, but like you know in Europe and so there was no science, no nothing. There was a fantasy and it worked well for us. It we survived it and we're here. So I think we've had an interlude of let's say 400 years since the
160. 53:51 enlightenment. We've had an interlude since let's say the 17th century, an interlude of reality, an attempt to use a different language, the language of reality. And we failed. We failed. That's the truth. We failed politically because we tried
161. 54:10 every ism in the book. We tried fascism and socialism and liberalism and Nazism and every ism. None of them worked. Not one of them worked. They all degenerated. Some of them degenerated into Awitz and some of them degenerated into walk movements, but they all
162. 54:26 degenerated. They're not working. So politically we failed. We failed scientifically because science gave us many things. smartphones and peniselline, but it also gave us atomic bombs and it also gave us a virus probably that escaped from a lab. I'm I
163. 54:44 believe that single conspiracy theory. So, you know, science also failed us big time and who who what's left who to trust? All the languages of reality have failed and now we are going back to the languages of fantasy. We're going back to religion. There's a religious
164. 55:01 revival. We are going back to the occult. We are going back to to you know movies and entertainment which is a form of fantasy. We're elevating fantasy into politics. So we have actors such as Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and Zilinski. They become
165. 55:22 presidents and so Bollywood now is is in charge. It's all fantasy. And who are who are the masterminds of fantasy? I repeat again, border lines and narcissists. We need border lines and narcissists to lead us in the land of fantasy. And we need public
166. 55:44 intellectuals such as myself, let's say, to lead us in the land of reality. But I am an expert. Uh I am a a scientist. I'm a physicist, by the way. I'm a scientist. I'm a I'm an intellectual and I'm no longer my services are no longer needed. There is because when you transition
167. 56:05 from reality to fantasy, no longer needed or no longer valued. No longer valued and no longer needed. I don't have I can't help you much in the land of fantasy because I refuse to give up on reality. I refuse to become religious. For example, to my dying day,
168. 56:26 I will consider religion a form of delusional disorder. Of course, they believe in nonsensical entities such as God and so on. So, can I ask you this, and I hope this isn't a diversion, but being in a an intimate relationship with a a woman who has borderline personality disorder,
169. 56:46 is that a form of giving up on reality as well? Both narcissists and border lines have a false self and both of them have a fantasy defense. The fantasies differ. The narcissist fantasy is about self agrandisement about butressing and sustaining the grandiosity. So the
170. 57:07 self-concept which is inflated and fantastic defending against vulnerabilities and shame. It's a protective defensive fantasy. The borderline's fantasy is I'm going to outsource my mind. I'm going to give someone access to my mind and control over my mind so that I don't have to
171. 57:24 feel borderline anymore because it sucks to be a borderline when I'm a borderline all by myself all alone. I want to die. I want to kill someone. I'm hysterical. I'm dramatic. I'm aggressive. I don't I don't want that. I don't. But if there's someone in my life who is
172. 57:42 self-confident, self assured, reality uh tested and is a rock, I can trust him forever and ever. I can let go of my identity as a borderline. I can relax. I can come down. So these are the fantasies. And yes, if you accept the terms and conditions of the borderline,
173. 58:02 if you sign on the dotted line, if you enter her fantasy, if you agree to play the role of a stable presence who caters to all her needs, stabilizes her moods, regulates her emotions, tells her what's real and what's not, and so on. If you play this role, of course, you're you're
174. 58:22 a figment of that fantasy. you're participant in it and you are no longer able to be in touch with reality because if you were in touch with reality you would abandon the borderline instantly because being with the borderline is selfharming.
175. 58:40 Okay. See, and that actually leads me to two things I've heard you say before. One of them was being with a borderline requires higheffort coping and staying with a borderline eventually can make you develop narcissistic traits. Am I accurately representing
176. 59:06 what you said? And I if if I am, could you explain h how does that happen? for example, how does someone who's relatively psychologically healthy or at least definitely not a narcissist, how do they become one by being in a relationship long term with a
177. 59:24 with a untreated borderline? How how does that happen? You're touching upon the the hot wire um of psychology. Are we born who we are or are we made into who we are? N nature versus nurture. If we are born who we are, then no experience including a relationship
178. 59:45 with the borderline can change us fundamentally. However, if we are the sum of our reactions to the environment, the sum total of the reactions to environ then change the environment and it changes who we are. So it stands to reason with we are
179. 60:04 born with some templates for example a language template. is tensorism that some things are encoded in our genes and so on so forth. No question that our brain the structure and functionality of our brain especially as it emerges in the first 21 years of life all these are
180. 60:22 boundary conditions. They are constraints. You cannot exit these constraints. You cannot design a new system. You're not godlike. Obviously you're constricted and limited in what you could become. However, within this space, within this predefined boundary
181. 60:39 space, which is essentially neurobiological and hereditary space, within this, the variance is so enormous, the number of combinations is literally infinite. So it's I think the right way to look at it is that we're essentially reactive creatures and that
182. 61:04 when environments change we do change and sometimes rarely but sometimes in fundamental ways. Now when you're exposed to exigencies and difficulties and vicissitudes and challenges, you react and you usually react by modifying something. You could
183. 61:28 modify your behavior in order to obtain favorable outcomes, secure favorable outcomes. And this process is known as self-efficacy. You can modify your cognitions. You can, for example, deny the challenge. There's no challenge. Environment is great. I don't see any
184. 61:46 problem. So you can lie to yourself. These are known as psychological defense mechanisms. You can modify your emotions, how you feel about the situation. You can say I actually I like it. This is known as dissonances. Cognitive dissonance for example. So
185. 62:04 there are many ways we change. I'm not saying that the only way to change is to become a narcissist. Yeah. You could instead of becoming a narcissist, you could become a people pleaser, submissive, or you could become um pseudocycotic, totally divorced from
186. 62:21 reality. I mean, there are many ways to react. One of the ways that you are likely to react to the presence of a borderline in your life is by defending yourself because you're being attacked. You're being attacked not in the malevolent sense, but you are being
187. 62:39 appropriated. You're being consumed. You're being subsumed. You are being forced to deny your identity. This process is known as estrangement. You're being you're becoming a stranger to yourself. You find yourself doing things, thinking things, emoting in ways which are
188. 62:59 unprecedented as far as you're concerned, have never happened to you before. You don't recognize yourself anymore. You're changing. The change is terrifying. And so most people react to this by establishing boundaries and protections of all kinds. One of the one
189. 63:19 of the most important set of protections are known as narcissistic defenses. We have narcissistic defenses. And so one way to resist the borderline's inexurable influence on you which you're increasingly p increas you're likely to increasingly perceive as insidious and
190. 63:39 penicious. So one of the ways to resist this is to for for example push her away, mistreat her, abuse her um undermine the intimacy, sabotage the relationship unconsciously. um become aggressive, externalize aggression. All these are narcissistic behaviors and
191. 64:02 traits. Increasingly, you become more and more narcissistic, less empathic, more exploitative. Um you have you have difficulty to empathize with her with the borderline in your life. So your empathy is reduced. We know for example that people who've been traumatized have reduced
192. 64:23 empathy suffer reduced empathy. People with chronic illnesses have reduced empathy. So but the good news is that these are usually transient effects that once out of the unbeaten remmit of the borderline not exposed to the borderline uh within a few months or in very
193. 64:46 extreme cases a few years you revert to who you used to be plus the new knowledge the new learning but mostly you become you again. the defenses crumble are no longer necessary and so luckily these impacts are transient of course I'm not talking about situations where the
194. 65:08 borderline becomes super aggressive externally aggressive essentially becomes psychopathic very well-known coorbidity by the way I'm not talking about situations where the borderline emotionally blackmails you or extorts you by for example attempting to commit
195. 65:24 suicide repeatedly a very common behavior. This could leave a scar. This could leave a scar and could affect your functioning and your cognitive processes for the rest of your life. For example, if she does succeed to commit suicide, you may feel guilty.
196. 65:43 You may feel to blame. You would develop what we call autoplastic autoplastic defenses. You would blame yourself. And this is a lifelong thing. this would be with you for the rest of your life and would impact your behaviors dramatically. So that's an extreme
197. 66:00 example. Aggression could similarly be or she could for example act out in ways which would hurt you to the quick so profoundly that you would not be able to recover. For example, many bo some border lines would cheat on you. They would they would use infidelity,
198. 66:21 ostentatious infidelity. They would make sure you find out about it. You find about it. They they would expose you to what what they're doing, you know. And this is known as acting out the borderline. When she feels that you have wronged her or when she feels that
199. 66:37 you're about to wrong her, that is known as anticipatory anxiety. She act she acts out. She loses it and she acts out. And the aim is to either modify your behavior or to punish you. And the punishment could be very severe. Some people, men especially, don't recover
200. 66:56 when their partner becomes super promiscuous and has sex with is a gang bang with seven guys. You know, this is an event that there's no coming back from as far as some people are concerned. So you when you're with a borderline in all likelihood you will not suffer
201. 67:16 lifelong consequences but you are taking the risk of you're playing with fire definitely and this I've heard you describe that eventually it just becomes very difficult to you describe in terms of objects external objects so the borderline as an external object object becomes so
202. 67:42 painful that in order to stay with her you create an internal object which is has no and that and that's what you interact with do I have that correct and it's one solution how does that work one solution is what we call introjection introjection is when you create an
203. 68:01 internal object something in your mind that represents the other person the other person is too painful to be with or to interact with so to withdraw inwardly and but that is already an extreme pathology. It's first of all a very crucial aspect of narcissism. So
204. 68:19 clinically you become a narcissist and if taken to extreme it's what is known as hyper hyper reflexivity essentially rendering you psychotic. So yeah, in very extreme cases, this is you might what you might end up doing and you will will will continue to interact with a
205. 68:42 representation of that person in your mind that is less painful, less hurtful, more predictable, more controllable and so on in order to allay or defrain what's happening in reality. But that means that you have withdrawn from reality is you no longer with us.
206. 68:59 That's so it never ends. Whatever the case may be, it never ever ends well. So, relationships with border lines are no, there's no real way to win long term. Don't it's a lose-lose proposition because the borderline ends up being hurt as well. She she's hurt to
207. 69:18 the point of suicidal ideiation or suicidal attempts. She's really hurt. So, both both parties end up being hurt. But the process exactly when in narcissism we have the shared fantasy. It has seven stages. They are pre-ordained. It's like predestination in Calvinism. There's
208. 69:37 nothing you can do about it. Nothing the narcissist can do about it. It's a de exmachina. It's a machinery that's put in motion play and is an inexurable and has to complete the cycle and restart and so on. It's the same with the borderline. There's a machinery put in
209. 69:58 motion and you're both consumed by it. You're both digested by it and torn apart to shreds. Shredded by these are machineries. That's what I'm trying to say. This there's nobody there clinically speaking. There is in borderline and and narcissism there is been has been a
210. 70:19 disruption in the formation of the self at a very early stage. Consequently, these people don't have a self. They don't have this organizing capacity. They don't have this inner core, this kernel, this operating system if you wish. They don't have this. And so they have to consume
211. 70:41 you in order to compensate for this lack. And it never works because the machinery is in the background taking over. And so there is this mo this primitive deity or divinity which is the shared fantasy narcissism the false self in narcissism and borderline the border
212. 71:02 lines fantasy. These monocs these divi these ancient primitive cruel deities you are human sacrifice to them. Everyone is ends up being sacrificing. Okay. So one thing I can understand how you know you have a borderline partner. She acts out. She
213. 71:21 cheats. She gambles. Spends a lot of money. I mean, obviously I could see how that could be highly traumatic, but just in the day-to-day being with them, one thing I've heard you say, they they lie very frequently. They're pathological liars.
214. 71:41 So, and that's a little confusing to me. Um, I guess it's a little confusing. Why why do they why are they pathological liars number one and then how being with someone who lies all the time obviously is is annoying because you can never trust what they
215. 72:03 say but then somehow I've heard also that you know that can distort your own sense of reality too or or impact your own reality testing. So, is what I just said accurate? And how how does that really work? Or how does that happen? Well, everyone lies. Like you ask me how are
216. 72:26 you, I'm great. I'm not great, but okay. Everyone lies. We haven't about these kind of lies. We're not talking about white lies or we're talking about lies, machavelian lies, lies that are manipulative and goal oriented. Psychopaths lie this way. They
217. 72:44 construct an alternative reality by promulgating a lie and they use the lie to obtain something from you, manipulate you, modify your behavior. That's psychopaths. Narcissists do not do this. Narcissists confabulate. There's a huge difference between confabulation
218. 73:01 and lying. They believe it. In other words, they believe the lies. They believe the fantasy. They cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. They they don't future fake. When they make you a promise, they have every intention of keeping it. They
219. 73:13 never do, but that's not their fault. It's the fantasy's fault. They are caught in the fantasy even more than you are. The borderline does lie intentionally. But she lies intentionally because she's terrified. She's terrified of losing you. She's terrified of abandonment and
220. 73:35 rejection and humiliation. Exactly like the narcissist. She's centered around avoiding shame and avoiding the experience of shame. So her lies are manipulative. Her lies are goal oriented. But whereas the psychopath's goal is power, money, sex, access,
221. 73:54 contacts, you name it. The borderline's goal is the maintenance of the fantasy with you. She just wants you to be there. She doesn't want you to walk away. So she would lie about this. And The borderline is very childish in this sense, very infantile, because she
222. 74:12 usually would expose her own lies. Whereas the psychopath would continue to lie, never mind what evidence to the contrary you present, even in court. The narcissist would continue to lie, not because he's lying, but because he believes his own lies and he thinks your
223. 74:31 evidence is tainted or fabricated. The borderline would continue to lie up to a point and then she would expose her own lies. She would even e either confess or she would undermine, sabotage, self-defeat and make you find out that she was lying, introduce you to
224. 74:53 the lie indirectly. She would leave a smartphone lying around with messages to her lover so that you find it. I see. She would self undermine. So again you see we have a symptom exactly like temperature fever we have a symptom the symptom is lying but you see
225. 75:11 the disparity this is disconnectedness between the types of lies and the it's wrong to conflate all these which is that's a great great deal of nuance there then for sure um because none of those three things are technically the same at all. So um how about just the impact on the
226. 75:33 partner um in terms of just constant lies sometimes border lines it seems they lie I mean I'm when I say for no reason I know they have a reason but it almost seems like silly um some of their some of their lies what's the effects of being with a partner who just lies constantly
227. 75:56 when you lose you you're being gasolled, you Okay, so that that's actually what I was getting to. Gaslighting. That's another common phrase used by self-styled experts. I've heard you say narcissists do not gaslight. Well, what is gaslighting? And do border
228. 76:14 lines gaslight their their partners? Borderline gaslight. Yeah. Gas gaslighting is a premeditative premeditated intentional and planned attempt to make you doubt your own perception of reality and your own judgment by presenting to you a plausible alternative
229. 76:37 reality which conflicts dramatically with the way you perceive reality. So there are cumulative cumulative elements in gaslighting and the absence of any one of these elements render the action not gaslighting even if it looks like gaslighting. If you for example are a
230. 76:58 narcissist or a psychotic person and you're unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, there's no way you can gaslight the gaslighter. The person who initiates the gaslighting knows the difference between reality and fantasy and superimposes the
231. 77:20 fantasy on you. Tries to convince you that the fantasy is the reality, but they never lose sight of reality. They know what they're doing. Now, border lines do that. Yes, they construct an alternative reality and then they try to convince you that
232. 77:40 you're the one who's crazy. For example, a borderline would cheat on you. Then she would come back home and you would say, "I found messages on your phone the with the signation and you know the place, the date and the and the actions involved." And she would accuse you of being
233. 78:00 paranoid. She would say, "You're you're overly jealous. you're controlling, you're paranoid, you're So that's an attempt to construct an alternative reality where your alleged mental illness is the cause for these accusations and not the real reality,
234. 78:19 the facts, factual reality. And therefore, border lines do gaslight. They know exactly what they're doing. They also lie, which makes them makes this disorder much closer to psychopathy. Again, the difference between a psychopath and a borderline is that
235. 78:35 psychopaths are interested in what you and I are interested. They want money.