Sam Vaknin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Sam Vaknin |
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Vaknin
in 2019 |
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Born |
Shmuel Vaknin
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Occupation |
Writer |
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Known for |
Self-help
material on narcissistic personality disorder.
Work on chronons. |
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Spouse(s) |
Lidija
Rangelovska |
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Website |
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Shmuel "Sam" Vaknin (born
April 21, 1961) is an Israeli writer and professor of psychology.[1].He
is the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited (1999), was
the last editor-in-chief of the now-defunct political news website Global
Politician, and runs a private website about narcissistic personality disorder
(NPD).[2]
He has also postulated a theory on chronons and time asymmetry.[3]
Background[edit]
Early
life[edit]
Vaknin was born in Kiryat Yam, Israel, the eldest
of five children born to Sephardi Jewish immigrants. Vaknin's mother was from Turkey, and his
father, a construction worker, was from Morocco. He
describes a difficult childhood, in which he writes that his parents "were
ill-equipped to deal with normal children, let alone the gifted".[4]
He left home to serve in the Israel Defense Forces from 1979 to 1982 in
training and education units. Between 1980 and 1983 he founded a chain of
computerized information kiosks in Tel Aviv,
and in 1982 worked for the Nessim D. Gaon Group in Geneva, Paris, and New
York City.
In the mid-1980s, he became aware
of difficulties in his relationship with his fiancée, and that he had mood
swings. In 1985 he sought help from a psychiatrist, who diagnosed him with narcissistic personality disorder
(NPD). Vaknin did not accept the diagnosis at the time.
From 1986 to 1987 he was the general
manager of IPE Ltd. in London. He moved back to Israel, where he became
director of an Israeli investment firm, Mikbatz Teshua.[2]
He was also president of the Israeli chapter of the Unification Church's Professors for World Peace
Academy.[1]
Arrest
and imprisonment[edit]
In Israel in 1995 he was found
guilty on three counts of securities
fraud along with two other men, Nissim Avioz and
Dov Landau. He was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment and fined 50,000 shekels (about
$14,000), while the company was fined 100,000 shekels.[5][6] In
1996, as a condition of parole, he agreed to a mental health evaluation, which
noted various personality disorders. According to Vaknin,
"I was borderline, schizoid, but
the most dominant was NPD," and on this occasion he accepted the
diagnosis, because, he wrote, "it was a relief to know what I had."[7]
Later
life[edit]
Vaknin moved to Skopje, Macedonia, where he married Macedonian Lidija
Rangelovska. They set up Narcissus Publications in 1997, which publishes
Vaknin's work.[8]
Between 2001 and 2003, Vaknin was a Senior Business Correspondent for United Press International.[1][9]
He has also written for Central Europe Review
about political issues in the Balkans,[10]
as well as for the Middle East Times.[1][11]
Until a few weeks before the September 2002 Macedonian election, he served as
an adviser to Macedonia's Ministry of Finance. He writes regularly for other
publications, such as the International Analyst Network,[12] and
the online American Chronicle.[13]
Vaknin was visiting professor at Southern Federal University in Rostov
Oblast, Russia
in 2017–22[14] holding
a course of lectures there on personality theory in psychology.[15]
He is also a professor of finance and a professor of psychology in the Centre
for International Advanced and Professional Studies (CIAPS) in Nigeria, Canada, and the
United Kingdom.[16][17].
Writing and interviews[edit]
Work on chronons
and time asymmetry[edit]
A model of quantised
time was proposed by Vaknin in his 1982 Ph.D. dissertation, titled "Time
Asymmetry Revisited".[18] The
dissertation was published by Pacific Western University (California). The
dissertation submitted postulates the existence of a particle (chronon).
In the proposed theory, time is the result of the interaction of chronons, very much as other forces in nature are the
result of other particle interactions. Vaknin postulates the existence of
various time quarks (up,
down, colors, etc.) whose properties cancel each other and thus the arrow of
time is derived (time asymmetry). The postulated particle (chronon)
is not only an ideal clock, but also mediates time itself (analogous to the
relationship between the Higgs boson and
mass). In other words, what we call "time" is the interaction between
chronons in a field. Chronons
exchange between them a particle and thereby exert a force. "Events"
are perturbations in the Time Field and they are distinct from chronon interactions. Chronon
interactions (particle exchanges) in the Time Field generate "time"
and "time asymmetry" as we observe them.[18][19][20][21]
Views on narcissism[edit]
Vaknin has a prolific online
presence, writing on narcissism and psychopathy.[22] His views have been solicited
by the media.[4][23]
In his view, narcissists have
lost their "true
self", the core of their personality, which has been replaced
by delusions of grandeur, a "false self".
Therefore, he believes, they cannot be healed, because they do not exist as
real persons, only as reflections: "The False Self replaces the
narcissist's True Self and is intended to shield him from hurt and narcissistic injury by self-imputing omnipotence…
The narcissist pretends that his False Self is real and demands that others
affirm this confabulation,"[24] meanwhile keeping his
real-life imperfect true self under wraps.[25] Vaknin extends the concept of narcissistic supply, and introduces concepts
such as primary and secondary narcissistic supply.[26] He distinguishes between cerebral and somatic narcissists; the former generate
their narcissistic supply by applying their minds, the latter their bodies. He
considers himself a cerebral narcissist.[27] He
calls narcissistic co-dependents "inverted
narcissists."[28] "[They] provide the
narcissist with an obsequious, unthreatening audience… the perfect backdrop."[29] Vaknin suggests that
narcissists and their intimate partners regard each other as maternal figures
in a shared fantasy and attempt to re-enact early childhood dynamics in their
relationships, in what he dubs a "dual mothership"[30]. He believes that disproportionate
numbers of pathological narcissists are at work in the most influential reaches
of society, such as medicine, finance and politics.[7]
Vaknin developed a new treatment
modality for narcissism and depression, dubbed "Cold Therapy".[31] It is based on recasting
pathological narcissism as
a form of CPTSD (Complex
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder) and arrested development which result in an addictive personality with a
dysfunctional attachment style. The therapy uses
re-traumatization and a form of reframing.[32][33][34]
Film appearances[edit]
In 2007, Vaknin appeared in the
episode "Egomania" of the British Channel
4 documentary series Mania.
In 2009, he was the subject of an
Australian documentary film, I, Psychopath, directed by Ian Walker. In
the film, Vaknin underwent a psychological evaluation in which he met the
criteria for psychopathy according to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, but did not
meet the criteria for narcissism.[33][34]
In 2016, Vaknin appeared in the
documentary How Narcissists Took Over the World produced by Vice Media.[35]
In 2019, Vaknin appeared in the
online documentary "Plugged-in: The True Toxicity of Social Media
Revealed" produced by Richard Grannon.[36]
Selected
publications[edit]
- Requesting
my Loved One (Bakasha me-Isha Ahuva) published by Yedioth Aharonot Miskal, Tel-Aviv,
1997[37]
- (with Nikola Gruevski) Macedonian Economy on a
Crossroads. Skopje, NIP Noval Literatura, 1998. ISBN 9989-610-01-0[38]
- Malignant
Self Love: Narcissism Revisited. Narcissus Publications, Prague,
1999.
ISBN 978-80-238-3384-3
- After
the Rain: How the West Lost the East.
Narcissus Publications, in association with Central Europe Review/CEENMI,
2000.
ISBN 80-238-5173-X[39]
See also[edit]
- Malignant narcissism
- Narcissistic abuse
- Narcissistic rage and
narcissistic injury
- Flying monkeys (popular
psychology)
References[edit]
1.
^ b c d Vaknin, Sam. "Curriculum Vitae",
samvak.tripod.com, accessed October 27, 2021
2.
^ b Race, Tim. "New
Economy; Like Narcissus, executives are smitten, and undone, by their own
images", The New York Times, July 29, 2002, p. 2.
§ For his position with the GP
website, see "GP
Editors" Archived 2010-11-09
at the Wayback Machine, Global Politicians, accessed
February 6, 2011.
§ For Vaknin's website, see here.
3.
^ Vaknin S Time Asymmetry Re-Visited
4.
^ b Roberts, Yvonne (September 16, 2007). "The monster
in the mirror". The Sunday Times.
London, England: News
UK. Archived from the original on
June 15, 2011.
5.
^ Rosenfeld, Jose (July 27, 1995). "Business
Briefs". The Jerusalem Post.
6.
^ Gordon, Evelyn (June 14, 1996). "Supreme
Court rejects appeal of three stock manipulators". The
Jerusalem Post.
7.
^ b Tempany, Adrian
(September 4, 2010). "When
narcissism becomes pathological". Financial Times.
8.
^ Vaknin, Sam. "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited",
samvak.tripod.com, accessed October 30, 2010.
9.
^ Vaknin, Sam (October 4, 2002). "Commentary:
The morality of Child labor". United Press International. Archived from the original on
March 15, 2005. Retrieved October 30, 2010.
10.
^ Central Europe Review. Author Archive:
Sam Vaknin. Accessed December 22, 2020
11.
^ Vaknin, Sam (April 3, 2003). "The 'axis
of oil'". Middle East Times.
Archived from the original on
April 30, 2003.
Retrieved October 30, 2010.
12.
^ International
Analyst Network
13.
^ American
Chronicle
14.
^ Letter of Appointment Southern Federal
University
15.
^ Southern Federal
University website
16.
^ CIAPS faculty Sam Vaknin's page
17.
^ CIAPS locations
worldwide
18.
^ :a b Pacific Western University, available on
Microfiche in UMI and from the Library of Congress http://lccn.loc.gov/85133690
19.
^ Vaknin S Time Asymmetry Re-Visited
20.
^ Journal of Physics: Conference Series
Electro-gravity via geometric chrononfield https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/845/1/012019/meta
21.
^ Cornell University ArXiv.org Physics
Electro-gravity via Geometric Chronon Field and on
the Origin of Mass https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05244
22.
^ Sam Vaknin
website
23.
^ France, Lisa Respers
(February 2, 2011). "Reality
bites after the lights go out". CNN. Retrieved 6 February 2011.
24.
^ Vaknin S The Dual Role of the Narcissist's False Self
25.
^ "The Dual Role of the Narcissist's False Self".
26.
^ Vaknin, Sam Narcissists, Narcissistic Supply and Sources of Supply
27.
^ Vaknin, Sam The Cerebral vs. the Somatic Narcissist
28.
^ Vaknin, Sam The Inverted Narcissist
29.
^ Crompton, Simon (2007). All About Me:
Loving a Narcissist. London, England: HarperCollins UK.
p. 31. ISBN 9780007585977.
30.
^ Vaknin, Sam How Narcissist Betrays You to Become Himself
31.
^ "Cold
Therapy, Warmly Recommended", condensed and translated from
German.
32.
^ Narcissism:
Treatment Modalities and Therapies
33.
^ Vaknin, Sam (6 August 2018). "Cold Therapy and Narcissistic Disorders
of the Self" (PDF). Journal of Clinical Review
& Case Reports.
34.
^ German language
introduction to Cold Therapy
35. ^ Woolaston, Sam "Last
night's TV", The Guardian, February 6, 2007.
§ "I,
Psychopath", CBC, May 25, 2009.
36.
^ Walters, Conrad (March 25, 2010). "Brain
scan". Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 23 April 2011.
37.
^ How Narcissists Took Over the World Vice
Media 12 September 2016
38.
^ Plugged-in: The True Toxicity of Social
Media Revealed
39.
^ ואקנין, שמואל (1997). Baḳashah me-ishah ahuvah. Prozah. ISBN 9789654483414. LCCN 97826249.
40.
^ Project Gutenberg - books by Sam Vaknin
41.
^ Central Europe
Review Accessed December 22, 2020