Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Me on Israeli TV 21 years ago. Life is a cruel master and a merciless mentor. By the time you have learned your lessons - you can no longer put them to good use.
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In 1995 I coined the phrase "narcissistic abuse" to describe the unique brand of abuse inflicted on victims by narcissists. One of the techniques of abuse I dubbed "gaslighting or ambient abuse". The Australian published an article titled: "Gaslighters and the Erosion of Self" You can read it here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/narcissisticabuse/conversations/messages/8674
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This is the original manuscript of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited". I wrote it in prison, in Hebrew, at night, by candlelight, standing and scribbling on my upper bunk in a barrack with 7 other men. I posted an English version online in 1997 and published the first edition in Prague two years later. http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
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Lecture on cryptocurrencies and blockchain. Was too technical and dry, definitely not one of my best. More about the topic here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/nm17.html
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No, not a horror movie. The corridor to my rented apartment in Krasnodar on a particularly bad day. The apartment itself is comfy and Ludmila the admin is as helpful and friendly as can be. My Mind Game stories are available here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html
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Fredericka, my blind ageing goldfish (like master, like pet). Got her from my wife, Lidija, when we effectively separated for one year as she was renovating an apartment to render it our home. The handimen she was working with brought it to her in a truncated Coca-Cola plastic bottle "to keep your husband company so that he is not lonely". Wrote a story about her here: https://samvak.tripod.com/petsnail-en.html
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This Bambi is loved, protected, feels safe enough to fall asleep and let its guard down. It know that is accepted and understood, bathed as it is in the warmth of the underlying hands. And the man holding it will never let go, will never just walk away. His hands are a commitment to the Bambi. My poetry is here: https://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
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I am losing my Magic Unicorn. Forty years and forty nights to find her. But she is no one's. Not mine and no one else's. She is wild freedom reified. Some say she does not even exist. She touches and transforms and gallops away in misty grey. I miss her so already and she is not even gone yet.
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[IMAGE OF TEXT] From my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
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Can anyone identify the object drawn on the whiteboard? No? No wonder. Either I am the world's worst sketcher - or I haven't had access to this kind of object in a great while. I will let you guess which. Videos about the narcissist's sexuality on my YouTube channel http//www.youtube.com/samvaknin
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Medical doctors falsify lab results and order unnecessary and sometimes injurious medical tests in order to extort money from gullible, scared, and hypochondriac patients. This is a global phenomenon - 200 BILLION USD in the USA alone! I initiated and participated in the healthcare committee of Macedonia headed by then Minister of Health (now Deputy Prime Minister) Bujar Osmani. Here is its interim report https://issuu.com/samvaknin/docs/health
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Interview with Milan Adzievski on a Macedonian TV station. Topic: Cryptocurrencies and the Financial Crisis. Milan, as always, with questions from left field. I, as always, know everything about everything (=narcissist). Some previous interviews we made are here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
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Interesting and courageous point of view. The Holocaust is a touchy subject. I received death threats on these 2 videos about Hitler, the Jews (I am a Jew!), and the Holocaust https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eIZv9QwoQVc and https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VjRwearNVII
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In Russia, "love" is measured by how many expensive gifts the woman extorts from her man. Relationships between men and women there are so hopelessly dysfunctional and antagonistic that the men have to bribe the women to stay with them. It is a part of the general culture of bribery and corruption in Russia. See my book on sex, monogamy, and relationships http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/sexmonogamy.pdf
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Hate and fear - the twin fuels of pathological narcissism of both individuals and collectives. A quote from my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" (http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html)
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Narcissists are emotional cannibals. A quote from my book "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" (http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html)
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There are no diagnostic HPV tests for MEN. All HPV "tests" for men are FAKE. Such tests are sold exclusively in poor countries to the gullible and ignorant population. The most prestigious private clinic in the USA, Mayo Clinic write: "The HPV test is available only to women; no HPV test yet exists to detect the virus in men." https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/hpv-test/about/pac-20394355 About Mayo Clinic https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayo_Clinic
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Empathy has three components: reflexive-instinctual, cognitive, and emotional. Narcissists and psychopaths have only the first two (I coined the phrase: "cold empathy" to describe it). More about empathy - or lack thereof - in personality disorders: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/personalitydisorders68.html
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These are my new - brandname - shoes. My previous branded shoes - bought in Geneva - disintegrated within the year. My 250 euros belt purchased a year ago started falling apart in 6 months. All my 25 euros belts and shoes are intact years - even decades - later. Brands are the biggest forms of commercial fraud ever perpetrated. They are manufactured in poor countries often using inferior materials (despite claims to the contrary) and then sold as status symbols in societies that elevate conspicuous and ostentatious consumption to the level of a religion. The gullible and the vain pay 10 times the right price just to own - and show off - the "right" label. More about differential pricing https://samvak.tripod.com/pp151.html
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The Histrionic (woman or man with Histrionic
Personality Disorder - HPD) does not like sex at all - she likes the POWER
that her sexuality gives her over men. So when the man is hers, when she had
won, conquered, mastered, and subjugated her man, she loses all sexual interest
in him and begins to pay sexual attention to other men. She reframes her
extinguished flame (discarded lover) and the now dead relationship or
infatuation: instead of a much desired lover he is now a good friend, a
sadistic enemy, or a much-needed interlude. My latest vid on the topic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9zoMG9Jzys
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"Sociopath" is not a mental health diagnosis. Neither is "psychopath". These are labels given - by the media and by an assortment of self-styled experts and scholars - to the extreme end of the spectrum of Antisocial Personality Disorder. Robert Hare, who spent all his career in the prison system, contributed more than anyone else to common misunderstandings and widespread misinformation regarding psychopathy. He also devised an idiotic and deeply flawed "test" for "psychopathy" - the PCL-R - that unfortunately caught on in corporate America and its typically ignorant media. Here is my critique of his "test": https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders11.html#pcl
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Only Switzerland has a real direct democracy. All other 104 “democracies” are actually PLUTOcracies (ruled by the moneyed elites). More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/democracy.html
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I am the quintessential wandering Jew (I hope I look somewhat better than this Nazi propaganda image). I haven't visited my homeland, met my family or any of my friends, or spoken my native tongue (Hebrew) since 1996. I have lived in 13 countries and worked in 53. I wrote this in 2001 and nothing has changed since then: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistroots.html
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Contemplating my lecture about "The Sexual Determinants of Personality" tomorrow and the day after, starting at 09:30 in Southern Federal University in Rostov on Don (Bolshaya Sadovaya street). More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/sexgender.html
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The evening after (the lecture about sex in Southern Federal University). In Onegin Dacha, a regal restaurant in Rostov on Don.
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The lecture's topic: psychology is not a science and does not describe reality. It is a descriptive and taxonomic language and a literary art form. More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/psychoanalysis.html
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Outside can be hell: snow and dirt and noise and worse. But when a woman flowers on your windowsill - all is well: she is happiness and love and life regained. Happy 8th of March to these magical wonder-filled fairies we call "women" and to the one special woman in every man's life.
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Thinking up clever answers for the comments on my Insta posts. The narcissist does not use language to communicate but to impress and subjugate: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal34.html
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Sherlock
Holmes in an ultimate display of cold empathy (instinct and cognition but no
emotion). Contrary to widely held views, Narcissists
and Psychopaths may actually possess empathy. They may even be
hyper-empathic, attuned to the minutest signals emitted by their victims and
endowed with a penetrating "X-ray vision". They tend to abuse their
empathic skills by employing them exclusively for personal gain, the extraction
of narcissistic supply, or in the pursuit of antisocial and sadistic goals.
They regard their ability to empathize as another weapon in their arsenal.
There are two possible pathological reactions to childhood abuse and trauma:
codependence and narcissism. They both involve fantasy as a defense mechanism:
the codependent has a pretty realistic assessment of herself, but her view of
others is fantastic; the narcissist’s self-image and self-perception are
delusional and grandiose, but his penetrating view of others is bloodcurdlingly
accurate.
I suggest to label the narcissist’s and psychopath's version of empathy:
"cold empathy", akin to the "cold emotions" felt by
psychopaths. The cognitive element of empathy is there, but not so its
emotional correlate. It is, consequently, a barren, detached, and cerebral kind
of intrusive gaze, devoid of compassion and a feeling of affinity with one's
fellow humans.
More about cold empathy (typical of narcissists and psychopaths): http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/personalitydisorders68.html
The FULL VIDEO: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=utwenXbh9hA
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[TEXT IMAGE] In an interview I granted to American Thinker in March 2016 I suggested that Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist. Since then this view went mainstream and became accepted wisdom. My texts on Trump, his personality, and his cult are available here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq19.html#trump
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Like every histrionic, she was flirtatious, voluptuous, obsessed with her looks, seductive, sultry, and irresistible. Like every borderline, she was labile, moody, terrified of abandonment, and somewhat delusional. Like every narcissist, she was grandiose. Like every psychopath, she was ruthless and callous. These "dramatic" cluster B personality disorders are frequently comorbid (diagnosed together in the same patient). She was a man's wettest dream and most horrifying nightmare, a withering addiction, an oasis of promise, and a fatal malediction. She was Marilyn Monroe. Read more about her psychology here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faqpd.html
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The first book ever written and published in Hebrew in 1987 on the topic of portfolio management. I proceeded to co-found a stock brokerage firm and co-own Israel Agriculture Bank. There I discovered mass corruption by several prominent politicians in power. I proceeded to sue them and ended up ... in prison. I learned my lesson: if you cannot join them, you will never beat them. A portion of the book's text is here: https://samvak.tripod.com/portfolio.html
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If your husband or boyfriend bullies you, he does not love you. Bullying and abuse can never coexist or go together. They are mutually exclusive because bullying ruins intimacy and engenders sex aversion - and there is no love without intimacy. If he bullies you and then buys you flowers for your birthday - it is not an act of love but a crude attempt to bribe you to not abandon him and thus collaborate in your own abuse. Throw these poisoned flowers back in his face. Do not succumb to intermittent reinforcement (hot and cold, approach and then avoidance, torture and then gestures of "love"). Of course, some women explicitly make the trade: they consent to being mistreated in return for a generous expense account. Such women say: "I'd rather be miserable in a Mercedes than happy on a bicycle." To each her own, I guess. More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/intimacyabuse.html
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My poems https://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
They say, with a knowing smile: "If he
is really a narcissist - how come he writes such beautiful
poetry?". "Words are the sounds of emotions" - they add -
"and he claims to have none". They are smug and comfortable in their
well classified world, my doubters.
I use words as others use algebraic signs: with meticulousness, with caution,
with the precision of the artisan. I sculpt in words. I stop. I tilt my head. I
listen to the echoes. The tables of emotional resonance. The fine tuned
reverberations of pain & love and fear. Air waves and photonic ricochets
answered by chemicals secreted in my listeners and my readers.
I know beauty. I have always known it in the biblical sense, it was my
passionate mistress. We made love. We procreated the cold children of my texts.
I measured its aesthetics admiringly. But this is the mathematics of grammar.
It was merely the undulating geometry of syntax.
Devoid of all emotions, I watch your reactions with the sated amusement of a
Roman nobleman.
My world is painted in shadows of fear and sadness. Perhaps they are related -
I fear the sadness. To avoid the overweening, sepia melancholy that lurks in
the dark corners of my being - I deny my own emotions. I do so thoroughly, with
the single-mindedness of a survivor. I persevere through dehumanization. I
automate my processes. Gradually, parts of my flesh turn into metal and I stand
there, exposed to sheering winds, as grandiose as my disorder.
I write poetry not because I need to. I write poetry to gain attention, to
secure adulation, to fasten on to the reflection in the eyes of others that
passes for my Ego. My words are fireworks, formulas of resonance, the periodic
table of healing and abuse.
These are dark poems. A wasted landscape of pain ossified, of scarred remnants
of emotions. There is no horror in abuse. The terror is in the endurance, in
the dreamlike detachment from one's own existence that follows. People around
me feel my surrealism. They back away, alienated, discomfited by the limpid
placenta of my virtual reality. Now I am left alone and I write umbilical poems
as others would converse.
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If you are self-loathing and
self-destructive and self-punitive, you would want to
stay in your sick relationship with a narcissist. Here are some tips:
FIVE DON'T DO'S – How to Avoid the Wrath of the Narcissist
Never disagree with the narcissist or
contradict him;
Never offer him any intimacy;
Look awed by whatever attribute matters to him (for instance: by his
professional achievements or by his good looks, or by his success with women
and so on);
Never remind him of life out there and if
you do, connect it somehow to his sense of grandiosity;
Do not make any comment, which might directly or indirectly impinge on his
self-image, omnipotence, judgment, omniscience, skills, capabilities,
professional record, or even omnipresence.
The TEN DO'S – How to Make your Narcissist Dependent on You If you INSIST on
Staying with Him
Listen attentively to everything the narcissist says and agree with it all. Don't believe a word of it but let it slide as if everything is just fine, business as usual.
Personally offer something absolutely unique to the narcissist which they cannot obtain anywhere else. Also be prepared to line up future Sources of Primary Narcissistic Supply for your narcissist because you will not be IT for very long, if at all. If you take over the procuring function for the narcissist, they become that much more dependent on you.
Be endlessly patient and go way out of your
way to be accommodating, thus keeping the narcissistic supply flowing
liberally, and keeping the peace. Act as “background noise”: ask no questions,
never criticize or disagree, when addressed confine your response to the issues
broached and do not introduce new topics into the conversation. In short: never
initiate or be proactive – always react meekly, compliantly, and subserviently.
Be endlessly giving. This one may not be attractive to you, but it is a take it
or leave it proposition.
Be absolutely emotionally and financially
independent of the narcissist. Take what you need: the excitement and
engulfment and refuse to get upset or hurt.
Additional tips here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/npdtips.html
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For some people, love and pain are flip sides of the same tortured coin. Intimacy is an agony that leads to lustful ecstasy and to an orgy of self-annihilation. The woman in such couples loves with all her being, her quiddity and essence. When rebuffed, she turns into an untouchable, stone-faced, and cruel Madonna-mistress and an unspeakable whore. The man prostitutes her, shares her with other men because his arousal crucially subsists on her humiliation and degradation. They punish each other via sadistic sex and desired betrayal in a futile attempt to restore justice and sanity to an escalating spiral of obsession and abandonment anxiety. Their love becomes a dungeon, their bodied tools of mutual execution. As for me: I have experienced several such relationships. There is nothing that comes close to them in intensity and color. I felt exuberantly alive and profoundly entombed. Such affairs are exhilarating. But not for the fainthearted. Reviews of films with a psychological angle here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/film.html
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Today, Russians vote in "elections" to the Presidency. Don't hold your breath: they will overwhelmingly vote for Putin. In 2001, I published this essay worldwide via United Press International (UPI): https://samvak.tripod.com/putin.html
Here is an excerpt:
"The Second Empire is very reminiscent
of Vladimir Putin's reign in post-Yeltsin Russia.
Like the French Second Empire, it follows a period of revolutions and
counter-revolutions. It is not identified with any one class but does rely on
the support of the middle class, the intelligentsia, the managers and
industrialists, the security services, and the military.
Putin is authoritarian, but not revolutionary. His regime derives its
legitimacy from parliamentary and presidential elections based on a neo-liberal
model of government. It is socially conservative but seeks to modernize
Russia's administration and economy. Yet, it manipulates the mass media and
encourages a personality cult.
Disparate Youths
Like Napoleon III, Putin started off as president (he was shortly as prime
minister under Yeltsin). Like him, he may be undone by a military defeat,
probably in the Caucasus or Central Asia.
The formative years of Putin and Louis-Napoleon have little in common, though.
The former was a cosseted member of the establishment and witnessed, first
hand, the disintegration of his country. Putin was a juvenile delinquent and a
low-key KGB apparatchik. The KGB may have inspired, conspired in, or even
instigated the transformation in Russian domestic affairs since the early
1980's - but to call it "revolutionary" would be to stretch the term.
Louis-Napoleon, on the other hand, was a true revolutionary. He narrowly
escaped death at the hands of Austrian troops in a rebellion in Italy in 1831.
His brother was not as lucky. Louis-Napoleon's claim to the throne of France
(1832) was based on a half-baked ideology of imperial glory, concocted,
disseminated and promoted by him. In 1836 and 1840 he even initiated (failed)
coups d'etat. He was expelled even from neutral Switzerland and exiled to the
USA. He spent six years in prison." Continued analysis here: https://samvak.tripod.com/putin.html
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It is amazing the hold that celebrities
with severe personality disorders have over the public imagination. Their
pathologies render them hypnotically charismatic. Princess Diana suffered from
every cluster B personality disorder supplemented by mood and affect disorders,
body dysmorphic disorder and more. She was a very sick woman. But underlying it
all was Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). Like both narcissists and
psychopaths, borderlines are impulsive and reckless. Like histrionics, their
sexual conduct is promiscuous, driven, and unsafe. Many borderlines binge eat,
gamble, drive, and shop carelessly, and are substance abusers. Lack of impulse
control and lability are joined with self-destructive and self-defeating
behaviors, such as suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, gestures, or threats,
and self-mutilation or self-injury.
The main dynamic in Borderline PD is abandonment anxiety. Like codependents,
borderlines attempt to preempt or prevent abandonment (both real and imagined)
by their nearest and dearest. They cling frantically and counterproductively to
their partners, mates, spouses, friends, children, or even neighbors. This
fierce attachment is coupled with idealization and then swift and merciless
devaluation of the borderline's target.
Exactly like the narcissist, the borderline patient elicits constant
narcissistic supply (attention, affirmation, adulation, approval) to regulate
her gyrating sense of self-worth and her chaotic self-image, to shore up
serious, marked, persistent, and ubiquitous deficits in self-esteem and Ego
functions, and to counter the gnawing emptiness at her core.
Borderline Personality Disorder is often co-diagnosed (is comorbid) with mood
and affect disorders. But all borderlines suffer from mood reactivity.
Borderlines shift dizzyingly between dysphoria (sadness or depression) and
euphoria, manic self-confidence and paralyzing anxiety, irritability and
indifference. This is reminiscent of the mood swings of Bipolar Disorder
patients. But Borderlines are much angrier and more violent." More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders18.html
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"The Last Tango in Paris" is a harrowing film about sex as a futile attempt to overcome loss
and secure love. Like in reality, the man is more romantic: he is the one who
falls in love and insists on emotional sharing and a relationship. The woman is
the cruel huntress who executes him because he transgressed against the
anonymity of their love-making.
I have had my share of anonymous sex and have had long sexual liaisons. One of
these "relationships" lasted more than a year of constant, wild
love-making exactly like in the movie. I felt not a trace or hint of emotion
throughout. So I know that it is absolutely possible to share bodies without
sharing minds. Intimacy is a choice - not an inevitable outcome of the exchange
of bodily fluids.
But, hey, I am a narcissist, what do I know about emotions, attachment, and
love? I am like a Martian writing his dissertation on Mankind. Not very likely
to get it right.
Only studies show that I AM right. In the current hookup culture, emotional
entanglements are assiduously avoided especially by young women. They want only
sex - good sex if possible, any kind of sex if not. They gave up on fantasies
of home and hearth and marital bliss because they do not regard their male
peers as marriage material. There is contempt and hostility between the genders
where attraction and love used to blossom. It is a sterile world. No wonder
many women elect to remain childless.
And as for loss: Paul's wife commits suicide and the new love he had found
shoots him dead. "Don't push you luck" - Bertolucci warns the viewers
- "If you can at least fuck in this alienated world of ours, count your
blessings and call it a day. Ambitions for love and intimacy can and will be
lethal - even in Paris, the city of Love and Lovers. Like Romeo and Juliet we
are all star-crossed and doomed to eternally search but never find. We can only
consummate, orgasm and ejaculate". Or cum. Don't forget the butter next
time!
Additional reviews of films with psychological angles here: https://samvak.tripod.com/film.html
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Body
image disorder. Body dysphoria. We are all unhappy with our bodies: we are
obese (too fat). Anorectic (too thin). Boobs are too small. Hips too wide. Lips
too pronounced. Cheeks. Even vaginas (outer labia get in the way or not
aesthetic). Diets. Gyms. Fitness training (and muscular trainers 😉). Plastic cosmetic surgeries (some of which go horribly wrong as in
the photo). This is a new phenomenon. It started in the 1950s. Prior to that
people just accepted their bodies as god-given and immutable.
Under the influence of fashion magazines, the media, the entertainment
industry, and medical fads, women - now increasingly joined by men - started to
hate their bodies and seek to divorce them by altering them beyond recognition.
The new ideal of feminine beauty was promulgated by homosexuals in the fashion
and beauty industries. Inevitably, it resembled a flat-chested pubescent boy.
Women were supposed to become Twiggies: thin, bosoms and asses suppressed, hair
cropped.
But this is all part of a larger trend: our bodies have become superfluous. We
do not need them anymore. We have outsourced most of the physical activities
that have once been indispensable: from food production to sex and childbirth.
We are all being transformed into atomized brains in cyber jars. No bodies
needed, thank you. Too much trouble, too much hassle, too much maintenance. Not
enough pleasurable return on onerous investment.
More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal31.html and http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal35.html
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Narcissists try to follow this sage advice
in Proverbs: they elicit narcissistic supply from their sources. But when they
fail to do so, they are not above bragging incessantly. They resort to
egregious and aggressive self-promotion: they attest to their own superior
traits, they embellish their alleged accomplishments, they lie about their
education or acquired skills, they attribute to themselves superhuman qualities
or powers. And they react with rage or even violence if you dare disagree with
this self-promulgated self-assessment.
But there is another, more insidious technique: false
modesty.
The "modesty" displayed by narcissists - especially covert, or inverted
narcissists - is false. It is mostly and merely verbal. It is couched in
flourishing phrases, emphasised to absurdity, repeated unnecessarily – usually
to the point of causing gross inconvenience to the listener. The real aim of
such behaviour and its subtext are exactly the opposite of common modesty.
False modesty is intended to either aggrandise the narcissist or to protect his
grandiosity from scrutiny and possible erosion. Such modest outbursts precede
inflated, grandiosity-laden statements made by the narcissist and pertaining to
fields of human knowledge and activity in which he is sorely lacking.
The narcissist publicly chastises himself for being unfit, unworthy, lacking,
not trained and not (formally) schooled, not objective, cognisant of his own
shortcomings and vain. This way, if (or, rather, when) exposed he could always
say: "But I told you so in the first place, haven't I?" False modesty
is, thus an insurance policy. The narcissist "hedges his bets" by
placing a side bet on his own fallibility, weakness, deficiencies and proneness
to err.
Yet another function is to extract Narcissistic Supply from the listener. By
contrasting his own self-deprecation with a brilliant, dazzling display of
ingenuity, wit, intellect, knowledge, or beauty – the narcissist aims to secure
an adoring, admiring, approving, or applauding protestation from his
interlocutor.
Much more here: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq36.html
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As a young man I spent time gambling professionally in all the major casinos of Europe from Greece's mountaintops to the Spanish capital.
Gambling reveals and accentuates human
nature like few other avocations. I have witnessed amazing events that few have
ever seen. Depths of depravity and heights of generosity. Violence. Greed.
Hope. Despair. Celebrities and hoi-polloi. Exuberance and terror.
Finally, I ineluctably came up with my own martingale: a gambling method. It
largely worked and got me banned by these dens of iniquity for a while.
This book I wrote in my 20s. It is an exploration of all known games of chance and of my own modest contribution to defeating or at least ameliorating the casinoes's "avantage" over us, their suckers.
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Histrionics
and psychopaths experience their needs and wishes as uncontrollable urges,
akin to extreme hunger or thirst. It is a torture to deny these insatiable
inner drives.
Though perfectly capable to control their impulses and delay gratification,
histrionics and psychopaths choose not to do so for two reasons:
1. Pathological narcissism is a diagnostic-clinical dimension of all cluster B
personality disorders.
Consequently, histrionics and psychopaths place a higher value and weight on
their needs compared to the needs of others. They come first.
2. They lack empathy and, therefore, do not really grasp the hurt and pain they
cause. Even when they do - they do not care. And even when they do care - they
believe that they have a right to gratify their desires and fulfill their
wishes no matter the cost to others. Histrionics may feel guilty and
ego-dystonic (bad about themselves and their actions) - but it will not prevent
them from misbehaving.
So when a histrionic feels the need for male attention and admiration, she will
seek it without dedicating a single thought to the pain and hurt she may be
inflicting on her nearest and dearest or on her male targets.
And when a psychopath wishes to secure money or power or sex he will go to any
ruthless length and embark on any number of unconscionable and callous acts
until he feels sated and gratified.
Histrionics and psychopaths are not evil. The pain, damage, harm, and hurt they
invariably cause are rarely premeditated. They are like self-absorbed children
or natural catastrophes replete with enormous collateral damage.
Are narcissists evil? https://samvak.tripod.com/journal65.html
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The narcissist forces his nearest and
dearest, his colleagues and employees to lie to him, to be dishonest.
Communicating openly and sincerely with the narcissist carries a high price
tag.
There is no winning strategy with the narcissist. If you are honest and
truthful with him, you are punished. If you are deceitful, you are equally
penalized because the narcissist feels that you have tried to manipulate him
with your lies and underestimated his intelligence.
Narcissists
invariably react with narcissistic rage to narcissistic injury.
Narcissistic injury (or wound) is any threat (real or imagined) to the
narcissist's grandiose and fantastic self-perception (False Self) as perfect,
omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled to special treatment and recognition,
regardless of his actual accomplishments (or lack thereof). The narcissist
perceives every disagreement – let alone criticism – as nothing short of a
threat. He reacts defensively. He becomes conspicuously indignant, aggressive
and cold. He detaches emotionally for fear of yet another (narcissistic)
injury. He devalues the person who made the disparaging remark, the critical
comment, the unflattering observation, the innocuous joke at the narcissist's
expense.
By holding the critic in contempt, by diminishing the stature of the discordant
conversant – the narcissist minimises the impact of the disagreement or
criticism on himself. This is a defence mechanism known as cognitive
dissonance.
Like a trapped animal, the narcissist is forever on the lookout: was this
comment meant to demean him? Was this utterance a deliberate attack? Gradually,
his mind turns into a chaotic battlefield of paranoia and ideas of reference
until he loses touch with reality and retreats to his own world of fantasised
and unchallenged grandiosity.
When the disagreement or criticism or disapproval or approbation are public,
though, the narcissist tends to regard them as Narcissistic Supply! Only when
they are expressed in private – does the narcissist rage against them.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq73.html
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The narcissist
masturbates with and in his partner's body. She is an inert object. He does
things to her - never with her. He rarely bothers to ascertain her likes and
dislikes. And because narcissists are misogynists, sex with the narcissist is
frequently sadistic, painful, repulsive, and humiliating. The partner feels
used if not abused. Many describe the encounters as "sick and
perverted". Yet, counterfactually, the narcissist considers himself to be
the world's greatest lover. Moreover: he coerces his unfortunate sexual
partners to uphold this grandiose fantasy and its attendant delusions.
He is likely to enquire if he is the best lover the woman has ever had, how
many times she climaxed, if she has had with him experiences she had never had
with another man. Sex with the narcissist is akin to an anxiety producing 100
meters dash coupled with a reality TV quizz.
The partner would do well to lie and acquiesce, to tell the narcissist that his
was the best sex she has ever had and that he is, by far, the most endowed,
creative, and skilled of lovers. Narcissists do not take well to being
contradicted, criticized, or disagreed with. Advice is not welcome. No equal
partnership bladderdash here.
But the deception has to be subtle and convincing because if the narcissist
finds out that he had been conned about his sexual prowess it constitutes
severe narcissistic injury and produces narcissistic rage or even withdrawal.
More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq29.html
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My article about Bolivar the narcissist
provoked many readers: "Bolivar, Simon
Simon
Bolivar (1783-1830) is a Latin American folk hero, revered for having been
a revolutionary freedom fighter, a compassionate egalitarian and a successful
politician. He is credited with the liberation from Spanish colonial yoke of
Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, a country named after him.
Venezuela's new strongman, Hugo Chavez, renamed his country The Bolivarian
republic of Venezuela to reflect the role of his "Bolivarian
revolution". Yet, while alive, Bolivar was a much hated dictator and - at
the beginning of his career - a military failure.
His aide and friend, Gen. Daniel O'Leary, an Irish soldier described him so:
"His chest was narrow, his figure slender, his legs particularly thin. His
skin was swarthy and rather coarse. His hands and feet were small …a woman
might have envied them. His expression, when he was in good humor, was
pleasant, but it became terrible when he was aroused. The change was
unbelievable." Bolivar explained his motives: "I confess this (the
coronation of Napoleon in 1804) made me think of my unhappy country and the
glory which he would win who should liberate it"
And, later, after a victory against the Spaniards in 1819: "The triumphal
arches, the flowers, the hymns, the acclamations, the wreaths offered and
placed upon my head by the hands of lovely maidens, the fiestas, the thousand
demonstrations of joy are the least of the gifts that I have received," he
wrote. "The greatest and dearest to my heart are the tears, mingled with
the rapture of happiness, in which I have been bathed and the embraces with
which the multitude have all but crushed me." Venezuela became independent
in 1811 and Bolivar, being a minor - though self-aggrandizing - political
figure, had little to do with it. After his first major military defeat, in
defending the coastal town of Puerto Cabello against royalist insurgents out to
oust the newly independent Venezuela, he advocated the creation of a
professional army (in the Cartagena Manifesto)." Continue: https://samvak.tripod.com/factoidb.html
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When
I was 26, I purchased, together with other partners, the Israel Agriculture
Bank. We discovered that senior government ministers (and former military
heroes and commanders) borrowed money from the ailing institution and never
bothered to repay it. So we took them to court. Needless to say who ended up in
prison.
This is the first interview I granted immediately on my release on probation.
In it, I am unrepentant, cocksure, defiant, contumacious, and more predatory
than ever. The poor interviewer, Dan Margalit, is flabbergasted and bemused,
like a deer caught in extraterrestrial headlights. Some women found this
posture irresistible - others creepy.
Soon enough, structures in the deep state made sure that I lost a job I found
with an Israeli satellite firm established by another ex-con whom I met in
prison, Dov Raviv, the father of Israel's missile program.
I was hunted down wherever I went. The organs of the state made clear - always
explicitly and often in writing - that it would be a bad idea to employ me or
collaborate with me.
Finally, even I got the hint. I packed two giant suitcases and moved live in
Macedonia.
My biography: https://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html
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The narcissist
ages without mercy and without grace. His withered body and his overwrought
mind betray him all at once. He stares with incredulity and rage at cruel
mirrors. He refuses to accept his growing fallibility. He rebels against his
decrepitude and mediocrity. Accustomed to being awe-inspiring and the recipient
of adulation - the narcissist cannot countenance his social isolation and the
pathetic figure that he cuts.
The narcissist suffers from mental progeria. Subject to childhood abuse, he
ages prematurely and finds himself in a time warp, constantly in the throes of
a midlife crisis. On the other hand, he is a puer aeternus, an eternal child:
immature, sulking and pouting, unable to delay gratification, unwilling to
commit or to assume adult roles and chores.
As a child prodigy, a sex symbol, a stud, a public intellectual, an actor, an
idol - the narcissist was at the centre of attention, the eye of his personal
twister, a black hole which sucked people's energy and resources dry and spat
out with indifference their mutilated carcasses. No longer. With old age comes
disillusionment. Old charms wear thin.
Having been exposed for what he is - a deceitful, treacherous, malignant
egotist - the narcissist's old tricks now fail him. People are on their guard,
their gullibility reduced. The narcissist - being the rigid, precariously
balanced structure that he is - can't change. He reverts to old forms,
re-adopts hoary habits, succumbs to erstwhile temptations. He is made a mockery
by his accentuated denial of reality, by his obdurate refusal to grow up, an
eternal, malformed child in the sagging body of a decaying man.
More about the pathetic, ageing narcissist: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal54.html
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The
Lifestyle involves sexual acts performed by more than two participants
whether in the same space, or separately. It is also known as “swinging”,
“wife-, or spouse-swapping”, “wife-, or spouse-sharing”, “group sex” and, where
multiple people interact with a single person, “gangbanging”. Swinging can be
soft (engaging in sexual activity with one’s own intimate partner, but in the
presence of others, including acts of candaulism), or hard (having sex not with
one’s spouse or mate.) Threesomes (commonly male-female-male or MFM) are the
most common configuration.
The psychological background to such unusual pursuits is not clear and has
never been studied in depth. Still, thousands of online chats between active
and wannabe adherents and fans in various forums reveal 10 psychodynamic
strands:
1. Latent and overt bisexuality and homosexuality: both men and women (but
especially women) adopt swinging as a way to sample same-sex experiences in a
tolerant, at times anonymous, and permissive environment;
2. The Slut-Madonna Complex: to be sexually attracted to their spouses, some
men need to “debase” and “humiliate” them by witnessing their “sluttish”
conduct with others. These men find it difficult to have regular, intimate sex
with women to whom they are emotionally attached and whose probity is beyond
doubt. Sex is “dirty” and demeaning, so it should be mechanical, the preserve
of whorish and promiscuous partners;
3. Voyeurism and exhibitionism are both rampant in and satisfied by swinging.
Oftentimes, those who partake in the Lifestyle document their exploits on video
and share photos and saucy verbal descriptions. Amateur porn and public sex
(“dogging”) are fixtures of swinging;
SEVEN additional psychological reasons for swinging (go to the link and choose
the "swinging" section in the text): https://samvak.tripod.com/pedophilia.html
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Cold
Therapy Level 1 seminar in Rostov-on-Don April 12-14. Cold Therapy is a
treatment for pathological narcissism and for depression.
Developed by Sam Vaknin, Cold Therapy is based on two premises: (1) That
narcissistic and depressive disorders are actually forms of complex
post-traumatic conditions; and (2) That narcissists are the outcomes of
arrested development and attachment dysfunctions. Consequently, Cold Therapy
borrows techniques from child psychology and from treatment modalities used to
deal with PTSD.
Cold Therapy consists of the re-traumatization of the narcissistic client in a
hostile, non-holding environment which resembles the ambience of the original
trauma. The adult patient successfully tackles this second round of hurt and
thus resolves early childhood conflicts and achieves closure rendering his now
maladaptive narcissistic defenses redundant, unnecessary, and obsolete.
Cold Therapy makes use of proprietary techniques such as erasure (suppressing
the client’s speech and free expression and gaining clinical information and
insights from his reactions to being so stifled). Other techniques include:
grandiosity reframing, guided imagery, negative iteration, other-scoring,
happiness map, mirroring, escalation, role play, assimilative confabulation,
hypervigilant referencing, and re-parenting.
Lecture notes: https://www.scribd.com/document/349440458/Cold-Therapy-Seminar-Level-1-Lecture-Notes
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[TEXT IMAGE] Here is a detailed guide
on how to divorce a narcissist or a psychopath: courts, custody, property,
stalking - what to do, how to behave, and what to expect.
Visit this link: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/5.html
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[TEXT IMAGE] There is no reliable
information on covert
narcissism online. None. It is all misinformed hype. "Covert"
sounds good: sneaky, shifty, cunning. Unscrupulous YouTubers caught on to this
mass psychosis and cynically and ignorantly leveraged the ominously-sounding
clinical construct to garner views - and money.
This table was put together by Akhtar and Cooper in 1989. It summarizes the
main traits and behaviors of the two cardinal types of narcissist:
overt/grandiose vs. covert/shy.
And what about the inverted narcissist? the clinical subtype that I proposed back
in 1999?
The Inverted Narcissist is a co-dependent who depends exclusively on
narcissists (narcissist-co-dependent) ... To "qualify" as an inverted
narcissist, you must CRAVE to be in a relationship with a narcissist,
regardless of any abuse inflicted on you by him/her. You must ACTIVELY seek
relationships with narcissists and ONLY with narcissists, no matter what your
(bitter and traumatic) past experience has been. You must feel EMPTY and
UNHAPPY in relationships with ANY OTHER kind of person. Only then, and if you
satisfy the other diagnostic criteria of a Dependent Personality Disorder, can
you be safely labelled an "inverted narcissist". Not all covert
narcissists are inverted narcissists. But all inverted narcissists are covert
(“shy”, “fragile”) narcissists. They are self-centred, sensitive, vulnerable,
and defensive, or hostile, and paranoid. They harbour grandiose fantasies and
have a strong sense of entitlement. They tend to exploit other, albeit
stealthily and subtly. Covert narcissists are aware of their innate limitations
and shortcomings and, therefore, constantly fret and stress over their
inability to fulfil their unrealistic dreams and expectations. They avoid
recognition, competition, and the limelight for fear of being exposed as frauds
or failures.
Much more about codependents, covert and inverted narcissists here: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq66.html
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The most vulnerable members of society are children. They end up paying the ultimate price for genocide, ethnic cleansing, war, neglect, corruption, stupidity, and indifference. Child prostitutes, child fighters, child labor, child abuse, pedophilia, and the burnt carcasses of trapped and terrified children - the hallmarks and signposts of anomic, ossified, dysfunctional societies ruled by rapacious and inhuman or rather subhuman "elites".
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The bibliotherapist Bijal A. Shah
recommends my book, "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisitdd" as
the number
1 tome President Trump should peruse.
A bibliotherapist is a mental health professional or life coach who recommends
books to facilitate personal healing.
Shah
writes: "I chose this book based on President Trump’s inherent ‘’NPD’
or ‘Narcissistic Personality Disorder’. defined as ‘an enduring pattern of
grandiose beliefs and arrogant behaviour together with an overwhelming need for
admiration and a lack of empathy for (and even exploitation of) others’. The
author, Sam Vaknin, a lifelong NPD sufferer hits the nail on the head when
describing the disorder and his experience, documenting it magnificently. On
reading the book, Trump may feel that the book is about him. Connecting
strongly with the author through his writing, he may get some insight and
awareness into his own behaviour."
You do not have to be Trump to afford to purchase my book. Just go here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
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The real
femme fatale is an ingénue, an innocent child poised on the verge of
decadent corruption. She is surrounded by salivating wolves and yet is the only
true predator among them, hunting with the joy and abandon of a toddler in a
toy shop.
The true femme fatale is never cunning or malicious - that would be
off-putting. She is not mature, an adult, or an intellectual - that is boring.
She is not a busty blonde - she is never vulgar.
Never mind what she wears, with or without makeup, just woke up, night or day -
the femme fatale makes your heart leap out of its cage, thump and throb. She is
an infarct in the flesh, in installments, and in slow motion. She is as
ineluctable as death and as foreordained as self-destruction. And equally
delectable.
Regardless of how she looks, the femme fatale is always the most beautiful and
irresistibly seductive woman you will have ever seen. She is both sex and
femininity reified.
But the true power of the femme fatale rests with her absentminded indifference
to the consequences of her actions: a puerile psychopathy that is never
malignant and always devastating.
She is selfish in the purest sense: she pursues her needs and wishes because
she cannot do otherwise: she experiences them as overwhelming, intolerable
urges and anxiety-inducing drives. She hurts even her loved ones because she
has no other choice.
The true femme fatale is UTTERLY UNAWARE of her "fataleness" and of
her unbridled power over men!
This obliviousness to her impact is irresistible: it makes her a relentless,
ruthless, and callous huntress and an impersonal force of nature.
More about female narcissists: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq34.html
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This is the bullet-riddled body of Shabtai
Kalmanovich, one of the two most vivacious men I have ever met (the other
is Eli Ronen). In 1985, I was stationed in London. Together with my girlfriend,
Sigal Bareket, I resided in a 5-storied mansion (34 Connaught Square, later
purchased by Tony Blair). I had two butlers, a personal secretary, live-in
maids. Having grown up in a slum, I was intoxicated with money and its
accoutrements and status symbols.
I co-owned s firm (IPE) with all the protagonists of the infamous Iran-Contras
affair that almost toppled POTUS Ronald Reagan: Ya'akov Nimrodi, Al Schwimmer,
Elkana Gali, Ephraim Ilin and others.
I met Shabtai in 1985 when he knocked unannounced on my door. An amazing man:
the quintessence of charm, a mane of black, oil-slicked hair framing a hawklike
face, eyes imbued with fierce intelligence, tall, muscular, and (to women)
irresistible.
He offered us a deal: we buy a private jet for President Momoh of Sierra Leone
(where Kalmanovich operated the only bus company, "Liat") and in
return get a concession for an island where we can bury nuclear and chemical
waste from Germany.
I spent the next 2 incredible years with Shabtai in Africa and Germany. It was
like an improbable story lifted straight out of "1001 Arabian
Nights". At the end I lost every penny I had and Shabtai was arrested in
London on trumped-up charges. It was only then that we all found out that this
former advisor to Israeli PM Golda Meir was a senior KGB officer. He ended up
doing time in a harsh Israeli prison.
Many aspects of my encounter with Shabtai are still highly classified by
several governments, including my own. But I invariably remember him fondly:
his creased smile, wry humor, imposing figure, astounding tales, and his
hypnotic influence on women.
Wikileaks Global Intelligence Files: https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/54/5432785_re-fw-follow-up-.html
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As far as our economic and financial
decisions are concerned, we all behave as though we are going to live forever
and we all act under the constraint that goods and services are scarce and a
zero-sum game ("I win, you lose"). Those of us who take these
underlying, hidden assumptions to their extreme become frugal or even stingy.
Stingy
individuals abstain from spending money even on essentials or when such
spending is rational. They therefore undermine both their long-term wealth and
their happiness.
The frugal save money by resorting to cheaper substitutes or, more rarely, by
refraining from consumption where it is inessential (luxury). But both those
pillars of economic thought - scarcity and immortality - are wrong.
Scarcity is the attribute of a "closed" economic universe. But it can
be alleviated either by increasing the supply of goods and services (or of
human beings) - or by improving the efficiency of the allocation of economic
resources. Technology and innovation are supposed to achieve the former -
rational governance, free trade, and free markets the latter.
Though aware of their finitude, most people behave as though they are going to
live forever. Economic and social institutions are formed to last. People
embark on long term projects and make enduring decisions - for instance, to
invest money in stocks or bonds - even when they are very old.
Childless octogenarian inventors defend their fair share of royalties with
youthful ferocity and tenacity. Businessmen amass superfluous wealth and
collectors bid in auctions regardless of their age. We all - particularly
economists - seem to deny the prospect of death.
Examples of this denial abound in the dismal science, economics.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/mortal.html and https://samvak.tripod.com/scarcity.html
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In the movie "Roman J. Israel,
Esq.", the eponymous character, a savant civil rights lawyer, is savagely
verbally abused by two women as "sexist and patronizing". His sin? He
suggested that 2 men in the audience vacate their seats and, in an act of
chivalry, offer them to the standing "ladies". Many #metoo claims of sexual
harassment made by women in the West would be considered laudatory
compliments in countries such as Russia. Women there regard such male macho
gestures as proof positive of their own irresistibility. They are devastated
when they are ignored by men. "Better inappropriate attention and behavior
- then no attention at all", they exclaim. They expect the men in their
lives - husbands and lovers, even one night stands or hookups - to defray all
their costs, treat them to expensive restaurants, hotels, and trips and shower
them with gifts. They are not shy about their precise wishes either.
I grew up, was educated and worked in many countries in the West. Women's Lib
rendered women there more manly. Gender roles have blurred to the point of
vanishing. Everyone is unisex.
In the West, women "go Dutch": they pay their share of the bills in
restaurants, their rooms in hotels. They believe that only prostitutes let men
pay their expenses and then fuck them. They reject gifts: only cheap whores
expect, accept or even demand gifts after sex or in an affair. Even flowers in
abundance are suspect and smarmy.
These women of the West would never dream of being the recipients of special
treatment (opening doors and such). They are emancipated and equal to men in
every way.
The women of the East regard the women of the West with disdain: as too
masculine, too aggressive, tasteless, charmless, even repellent. "They are
not women at all!" The women of the West regard the women of the East as
glorified prostitutes, always on sale to the highest bidder, slaves in
disguise, their tawdry and often vulgar femininity and sex a mere weapon.
I wrote this about the women of eastern and central Europe 20 years ago: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp70.html
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The funniest of books, "Three Men in a
Boat", opens with one of the protagonists - a man, obviously - convincing
himself that he is suffering from every affliction in a voluminous medical
encyclopedia with one exception (a disorder of the womb). Hypochondriasis
("somatic symptom disorder" coupled with "illness anxiety
disorder") is a combination of delusional disorder and the cognitive
impairment known as "catastrophizing"
It comprises elements of delusion because never mind how many times the patient
is reassured by medical authorities that he is healthy, he persists in his
insistence that he is not. Never mind how symptom-free the hypochondriac is,
she will conjure up some pain or malaise to support her narrative of imminent
doom and decomposition. She is emotionally invested (cathexed) in her
self-destruction, helplessness, and death.
The hypochondriac also catastrophizes: he regards even the slightest itch and
the most minor glitch as a sure portent of his long overdue demise. She
exaggerates to the point of comic inanity the daily vicissitudes of her utterly
normal and hale body.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal31.html and https://samvak.tripod.com/journal35.html
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Is the right
partner like-minded, a clone, a carbon copy? Common interests, same beliefs
and values, similar history?
I beg to differ. I disagree. The right woman for me is unlike me. She should
bring to our couple her differences with me. She should challenge and criticize
and disagree with me - even risking at times my retaliatory immature rage and
abuse.
My woman should push me out of my comfort zone. She should never be a mere
echo. She should deflate my grandiosity, not enhance it. She should be my firm
reality test and my trusted advisor - not my accomplice in a delusional shared
psychosis.
My ideal woman is curious but never fawning. She compliments but does not
idealize. She criticizes but does not devalue.
And of course my bambi woman is beautiful beyond words and intelligent in a
natural, wholesome kind of way, and irresistibly stubborn and intolerably cute
at times, even - actually, especially - when she is stubborn and petulant and
infuriating (but never ornery and contrarian). Which she is very often!
My woman gives me life and is my world in the sense that she is a necessary but
also a sufficient condition for my happiness. No reflection in the mirror or
echo in a chamber can accomplish that. Only a true, vibrant, vivacious,
ambitious, supportive, and transformative intimate partner who fosters my
personal growth and evolution into ever higher forms of myself. Isn't this what
love is all about?
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Fredericka,
my blind ageing goldfish (like master, like pet) passed away last night,
gently resting on the two mossy rocks she had long designated as her bed. I
cried like a baby. Beloved pets have this capacity to render us children all
over again.
We are childless, so my wife, Lidija, gave me Fredericka when we effectively
separated for one year as she was renovating an apartment to render it our
home. The handimen she was working with brought the button-sized fish to her in
a truncated Coca-Cola plastic bottle "to keep your husband company so that
he is not lonely". Ever since then my golden fish became a good friend to
me. Despite her attention deficits and hyperactive ways, she really tried to
listen attentively to what I had to say. She responded with emphatic "ba,
ba, bas" whenever she disagreed with my ossified ways (or when she
demanded food - which was always). She used my smartphone to correspond with
Lidija: commiserating with her for having to suffer my presence and ornery
personality, demanding attention, or just having a woman-to-woman chit-chat. In
my long emotional and physical absences, Fredericka and Lidija became true
mates.
Last evening, Lidija placed two table-cloth clad chairs in front of the
aquarium to hide Fredericka's last moments from her view. When I informed
Lidija that it is all over, she gasped and ran to her refuge, a small balcony
at the back where she spends all her time with the birds and cats and lone dog
of the neighborhood.
Then Lidija returned defeated, cheeks streaked with dried tears and said
forlornly: "Now I am really all alone in the world". I wrote a story
about Fredericka here: https://samvak.tripod.com/petsnail-en.html
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There are two possible pathological reactions to childhood abuse and trauma: codependence and narcissism. They both involve fantasy as a defense mechanism: the codependent has a pretty realistic assessment of herself, but her view of others is fantastic; the narcissist’s self-image and self-perception are delusional and grandiose, but his penetrating view of others is bloodcurdlingly accurate ("cold empathy"). Pathological narcissism is a form of addiction to narcissistic supply.
The narcissist is caught in a conundrum of
his own making: on the one hand he considers himself superior and godlike. On
the other hand, to maintain his inflated, grandiose, and fantastic sense of
self-worth, the narcissist is abjectly and humiliatingly dependent on constant
input from people whom he considers vastly inferior to him. He clings to them
but hates and resents them and himself for his dependence. This leads to bouts
of approach followed by avoidance, a repetition complex.
About codependency: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/personalitydisorders22.html
About narcissistic supply: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq76.html
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I adore children. Babies, toddlers, and even adolescents love me back unreservedly, enthusiastically, and wholeheartedly.
Being the narcissist that I am, it is a
self-interested affection: It is addictively gratifying to teach, to be a guru
and a sagacious, infallible guide. With children and teenagers everything I do
and say is imbued with a sense of wonder and revelation: I am showing them the
world and the way and they look up to me with awe. With the young I am always
awesome. Adults often perceive me as repellent, pathetic, or pitiable.
But if the child is immune to my charms (I have yet to come across one,
admittedly), if the child resists me and is ornery - my attitude darkens
considerably. I then regard the child as a competitor for scarce narcissistic
supply (attention, adulation). Moreover: I feel that the child is using his or
her unfair advantages to deprive me of what is rightfully mine. Read about my
state of mind when I am like that here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal36.html
Philip Larkin, my favorite modern poet described best my inner experience, my inscape when children fail to cater to my grandiosity: "... I should be unhappy ... having to put up indefinitely with the company of other children, their noise, their nastiness, their boasting, their back-answers, their cruelty, their silliness ... The realization that it was not people I disliked but children was for me one of those celebrated moments of revelation ..." (Philip Larkin, Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982, Faber, 1983, p. 111) “Anybody who hates children and dogs can’t be all bad.” (Leo Rosten, introducing W.C. Fields at a dinner)
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People
with severe dissociation (memory lapses and "lost time") are
often misunderstood and perceived as liars.
Frequently they appear to be lying - but they are actually not prevaricating.
It is just that because of their extreme dissociation, these people have
learned to NOT FORGET. They hoard memories, they never discard even the tiniest
detail. They memorize dates and numerous trivial data as "handles",
some things to hang on to in their hole-ridden minds.
Consequently, dissociative people often have CONTRADICTORY memories about the
SAME OBJECT, EVENT, or PERSON AT THE SAME TIME!
A dissociative man can regard the same woman as irresistible AND as repulsive;
the same building as prestigious and as decrepit; the same person as someone
who makes him feel good and bad.
Such gaping discrepancies make dissociative people appear inconsistent and
deceitful. But it is NOT LYING or deception! It is simply their archaeological
memory: they maintain access to ALL the conflicting layers and strata AT ONCE.
But why would they have radically differing viewpoints about the same person,
event, or object?
Precisely because of the way their struggle to maintain their unruly memory and
cling to it. They never DELETE a memory because they CHERISH their memories
like treasures. And they cherish their memories like treasures because they
have SO FEW OF THEM. Where there is a troubling gap & their memory fails
them, such patients CONFABULATE: they invent a plausible narrative or scenario
that must - or may - have happened.
So, they never get rid of a memory, replace it with another, or modify it. They
simply ADD to it another memory even if the 2 memories are diametrically
opposed.
Dissociation is typical in Borderline Personality Disorder. Borderlines are
LABILE. The changes in their internal states (cognitions, emotions, moods) are
so abrupt and violent that they disrupt any personal continuity and sense of
coherent identity. This discontinuity also makes them APPEAR to be lying - but
they are not! They are just struggling with their fragmented memories and
excruciating lability.
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AVOID AUSTRIAN AIRLINES if you possibly can.
Another horror experience with Austrian
Airlines, the worst run and most chaotic European airline. Stinginess that
borders on disgrace, operational glitches galore, a decrepit ageing fleet,
insolent and brutal cabin crews, frequently cancelled or mysteriously
non-existent flights, savagely exorbitant ticket prices and overworked ground
crews. Customer service centers are rarely manned by dour and impudent clerks
who are often incompetent.
The frequently antiquated craft are dirty, smelly, and disintegrating. Toilets
out of commission are a common sight. The "business class" consists
of a curtain moved back and forth among the rows according to demand.
Regrettably, this disastrous airlines has a virtual monopoly in the less savory
parts of Europe where politicians are amenable to venality and worse. One can
only guess why Austrian Airlines has no sorely needed competition in these
benighted and godforsaken locales. Indeed the shabby and tawdry Austrian
Airlines and its more forlorn destinations are a perfect fit: hopeless.
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Some
relationships are characterized by a degree of laissez-faire and
"freedom" that border on emotional absenteeism, neglect, and
abandonment.
Both members of these couples lead separate lives, minding their own business.
They rarely enquire about the other's whereabouts. DADT (Don't Ask, Don't
Tell). The reason they grant each other such latitude is because one of them is
a codependent with extreme abandonment anxiety - and the other a histrionic,
compensatory narcissist, or, more rarely, borderline who wants to be dumped by
her intimate partner.
When such a partner is dumped she feels good and relieved, even elated for 2
reasons:
1. It validates her view of herself as a bad and worthless object (usually the
main message of the introjects - inner voices - of a sadistic-narcissistic
mother or role models such as teacher or peers); and
2. It prevents intimacy. Such partners hate intimacy and fear it. Intimacy
suffocates them. Being dumped puts an end to this threat.
So, they push their partners to dump them by being avoidant,
passive-aggressive, plain aggressive, and verbally abusive.
If - no matter what they do and what they try - their partners keeps loving
them, they feel deeply frustrated. They begin to hate the patient, loyal, and
loving partner viscerally and wholeheartedly.
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I landed in Macedonia
in 1996, fresh out of Israeli prison. At that time, it was a poor, landlocked
country whose citizenry was rural or newly urban and ill-educated.
My first task was to find a woman to love and live with. Without a woman by my
side I am paralyzed. The woman I love is the fuel in my tank AND the driver of
my car. She is the one all and be all, the raison d'etre, and the primum
movens. Lidija and I married 6 years later (it took her that long to succumb to
my dubious charms). I then proceeded on a dual track: to make money and help to
change the venal and incompetent regime of the time.
I opened a thriving corporate finance consultancy and became a media celebrity
and an educator (I gave free lectures and lengthy seminars on economic and
financial issues). One of the participants in my seminars caught my eye. We
co-authored a book of dialogs on the Macedonian economy which made his name as
an up and coming technocrat: Nikola Gruevski.
I had to flee the wrath of the regime to Prague and then to Moscow. In 1999,
the opposition party won the elections. Nikola became Minister without
portfolio and then, in rapid succession, Minister of Trade and Minister of
Finance. He called me back to Macedonia where I served as Economic Advisor to
the Government together with Ante Markovic, the last Prime Minister of
Yugoslavia prior to its dismemberment.
This was only the beginning of a long and convoluted story yet to be recounted
here in some other post. Nikola became head of the opposition party, the
impossibly named VMRO-DPMNE and then Prime Minister. And that is when things
started to get really complicated, when the rented apartment we had been living
in suddenly burned down.
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The narcissist
can get better, but rarely does he get well ("heal"). The reason is
the narcissist's enormous life-long, irreplaceable and indispensable emotional
investment (cathexis) in his disorder. It serves two critical functions, which
together maintain the precariously balanced house of cards called the
narcissist's personality. His disorder endows the narcissist with a sense of
uniqueness, of "being special" - and it provides him with a rational
explanation of his behaviour (an "alibi"). Most narcissists reject
the notion or diagnosis that they are mentally disturbed. Absent powers of
introspection and a total lack of self-awareness are part and parcel of the
disorder. Pathological narcissism is founded on alloplastic defences - the firm
conviction that the world or others are to blame for one's behaviour. The
narcissist firmly believes that people around him should be held responsible
for his reactions or have triggered them.
With such a state of mind so firmly entrenched, the narcissist is incapable of
admitting that something is wrong with HIM.
But that is not to say that the narcissist does not experience his disorder.
He does. But he re-interprets this experience. He regards his dysfunctional
behaviours - social, sexual, emotional, mental - as conclusive and irrefutable
proof of his superiority, brilliance, distinction, prowess, might, or success.
Rudeness to others is reinterpreted as efficiency. He considers himself to be
the next step in the evolutionary ladder of humanity.
Abusive behaviours are cast as educational. Sexual absence as proof of
preoccupation with higher functions. His rage is always just and a reaction to
injustice or being misunderstood by intellectual dwarves.
Thus, paradoxically, the disorder becomes an integral and inseparable part of
the narcissist's inflated self-esteem and vacuous grandiose fantasies.
More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/narcissistlove.html
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In 1982, as I was living in Geneva,
Switzerland, I endured one of my attacks of clinical depression.
Only 3 years before, I was a media celebrity in Israel. Even in Geneva I made
inroads: I co-founded the unfortunately acronymed GLAS (Geneva Literary
Society) which counted among its members luminaries such as Peter Ustinov, the
actor and Peter Bailey, the photographer.
As the youthful vice president of the enormous NOGA-APROFIM group of companies
(owned by the enigmatic Nessim Gaon), I befriended billionaires of all ages,
from the 60+ years old Dudley Wright to the 20+ years old Azad Shivdasani. They
both offered me lucrative multi-annual scholarships if I abandon the world of
business and its trappings (the private jet - a story for another post). They encouraged
me to revert to my roots as a scholar.
I applied to Harvard University and was turned down by no less than Robert
Nozick himself - perhaps because in the oral interview I criticized his work
scathingly.
In my despair I attempted to join the secretive and powerful Jesuit
Order in Geneva. I am a non-practising Jew and had no compunction about
converting to any expedient religion - I regarded all of them as variants on
the same hogwash themes anyway.
I knew one of the Order's senior members who worked at the United Nations. I
was inexorably attracted to the Order's emphases on acquiring multiple academic
degrees and on teaching.
I was sent to Boston - incidentally, Harvard's domicile - and was again turned
away when I confirmed that I haven't yet "found Jesus". The whole
adventure concluded with the most incredible symbolic incident which I describe
here in "My Affair with Jesus": https://samvak.tripod.com/jesus-en.html
Happy Easter, Orthodox (Pravoslav) Christians, wherever you are.
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Most common wisdom on the effects
of divorce on children is wrong.
Children's emotional reactions to divorce dissipate within a maximum of 2
years. Only 15% continue to be distressed afterwards and into adulthood.
When the parents separate but do not divorce, the child adjusts even better,
perhaps because there is hope that the parents will reconcile and the marriage
will be restored.
The most severe long-term damages and traumas are incurred by children who grow
up in conflict families where the marriage is hopelessly and irreparably
dysfunctional.
The effects on children are particularly severe and long lasting when the
parents constantly fight volubly, abusively, aggressively, and violently.
Such children grow up to be maladapted adults and experience difficulties in
their own relationships
So, staying married "for the children's sake" ("parenting
marriage") is an extremely bad idea and detrimental to the child. If the
marriage is beyond salvage and there is no effective communication - the
parents should DIVORCE exactly FOR THE CHILDREN'S SAKE.
Scientific American https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-divorce-bad-for-children/
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Contrary to online popular online "information", most narcissists are self-aware.
Cognitive understanding of the disorder
does not constitute a transforming INSIGHT though: it has no emotional
correlate. The narcissist does not INTERNALIZE what he understands and learns
about his disorder. This new gained knowledge does not become a motivating part
of the narcissist. It remains an inert and indifferent piece of knowledge, with
minor influence on the narcissist's psyche.
Moreover: the narcissist may grow aware of certain behaviors of his that are
pathological, dysfunctional, or self-defeating. He may even label them as such.
But he never grasps the psychodynamic significance of his conduct, the deeper
layers of motivation, and the relentless and inexorable engine at the
convoluted and tormented core of his being. So he may say: “I really like
attention” or even, disparagingly or self-deprecatingly: “I am an attention
whore”. But, he won’t be able to fully account for WHY it is that he is
addicted to narcissistic supply and what role it plays in his psychology,
interpersonal relationships, and life. The narcissist may realize, belatedly,
that he is ticking – but never what makes him tick.
Sometimes, when the narcissist first learns about Narcissistic Personality
Disorder (NPD), he really believes he could change (usually, following a period
of vehement denial). He fervently wants to. This is especially true when his
whole world is in shambles. Time in prison, a divorce, a bankruptcy, a death of
a major source of narcissistic supply - are all transforming life crises. The
narcissist admits to a problem only when abandoned, destitute, and devastated.
He feels that he doesn't want any more of this. He wants to change. And there
often are signs that he IS changing. And then it fades. He reverts to old form.
The "progress" he had made evaporates virtually overnight. Many
therapists refuse to treat narcissists because of the Sisyphean frustration
involved.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/2.html
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In one of my gambling sprees I have witnessed
an event that occurs once a century if at all.
Eli and I were regular patrons of the casinos in Deauville & Divonne, where
we befriended the famous actor & unlucky card player Omar Sharif (of
"Dr. Zhivago" fame). One day we went with Omar to watch the
roulettes. A Saudi player was losing a fortune nonchalantly & off-handedly,
surrounded by beautiful corpulent women, possibly his wives.
Then he started to gamble more methodically. He placed bets on specific numbers
& lost. On whole rows - & lost. On half the board - and lost. Finally,
he placed bets on ALL the numbers bar one. Mysteriously, that number came up.
Clearly the roulette was being illegally manipulated with a brake.
Disgusted, having squandered the entire GDP of a small country, he left the
table. On his way out, in the very last second, as the croupier was exclaiming
"faites vos jeux, markes vos jeux", he threw his remaining assets on
a single number - over a million USD (4-5 million of today). And that number
came up!
Transfixed, we all - the Saudi included - stared with incredulous astonishment
at the decelerating colorful wheel. The croupier froze, mouth agape. All games
ceased. A hush descended.
A few seconds later, bulky security personnel converged on the Saudi and his
entourage and surrounded him with a firewall of muscles.
The pit manager rushed outside the steaming room to alert the casino manager.
The table was unlimited. The casino had to pay out in excess of 40 million USD
(c. 200 million in today's money). After a tense interlude the manager arrived
and handed the Saudi a check. The Saudi, warily eyeing the hostile setup
departed hurriedly.
The manager & two assistants left and then returned carrying a black velvet
sheet. Walking backward so as not to gaze at the benighted table, they flung
the yarn over it. The table was "dead". It almost killed the casino.
Now it was enshrouded funereally. The games resumed where they were
interrupted. Only then did we realize that we were holding our collective
breath.
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Another poetry prize: winner of the
International Open Amateur Poetry Contest.
Here is a poem
I wrote about the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is replete
with many references to the recounting of the crucifixion and resurrection in
the four canonical gospels in the New Testament.
Happy Easter to all my Christian Orthodox/Pravoslav friends and loved ones
wherever they are:
The Miracle of the Kisses
That night, the cock denied him thrice.
His mother and the whore downloaded him,
nails etched into his palms,
his thorny forehead glistening,
his body speared.
He wanted to revive unto their moisture.
But the nauseating scents of vinegar
and Roman legionnaires,
the dampness of the cave,
and then that final stone... His brain wide open,
supper digested
that was to have been his last.
He missed so his disciples,
the miracle of their kisses.
He was determined not to decompose.
Other poems I wrote: https://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
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Transubstantiation
(metousiosis, metabole, and other names) is the Christian doctrine that the
bread and wine in the sacrament of the Eucharist are mysteriously transformed
into the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ - literally, not figuratively, not
symbolically, not metaphorically - but IN REALITY.
Technically, therefore, every Eucharist is an act of cannibalism (if we accept
that Jesus was a human being). Cannibalism (more precisely, anthropophagy) is
an age-old tradition that, judging by a constant stream of flabbergasted news
reports, is far from extinct. Much-debated indications exist that our
Neanderthal, Proto-Neolithic, and Neolithic (Stone Age) predecessors were
cannibals. Similarly contested claims were made with regards to the 12th
century advanced Anasazi culture in the southwestern United States and the
Minoans in Crete (today's Greece). The Britannica Encyclopedia (2005 edition)
recounts how the "Binderwurs of central India ate their sick and aged in
the belief that the act was pleasing to their goddess, Kali." Cannibalism
may also have been common among followers of the Shaktism cults in India.
Other sources attribute cannibalism to the 16th century Imbangala in today's
Angola and Congo, the Fang in Cameroon, the Mangbetu in Central Africa, the
Ache in Paraguay, the Tonkawa in today's Texas, the Calusa in current day
Florida, the Caddo and Iroquois confederacies of Indians in North America, the
Cree in Canada, the Witoto, natives of Colombia and Peru, the Carib in the
Lesser Antilles (whose distorted name - Canib - gave rise to the word
"cannibalism"), to Maori tribes in today's New Zealand, and to
various peoples in Sumatra (like the Batak). Wikipedia numbers among the
practitioners of cannibalism the ancient Chinese, the Korowai tribe of
southeastern Papua, the Fore tribe in New Guinea (and many other tribes in
Melanesia), Aztecs, people of Yucatan, Purchas from Popayan, Colombia, denizens
of the Marquesas Islands of Polynesia, and natives of captaincy of Sergipe in
Brazil.
Much more here: https://samvak.tripod.com/cannibalism.html
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Asperger's
Disorder (renamed in the DSM V Autistic Spectrum Disorder Level 1) is often
misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), though evident as
early as age 3 (while pathological narcissism cannot be safely diagnosed prior
to early adolescence). In both cases, the patient is self-centered &
engrossed in a narrow range of interests & activities. Social and
occupational interactions are severely hampered & conversational skills
(the give and take of verbal intercourse) are primitive. The Asperger's patient
body language - eye to eye gaze, body posture, facial expressions - is
constricted and artificial, akin to the narcissist's. Nonverbal cues are
virtually absent and their interpretation in others lacking.
Yet, the gulf between Asperger's and pathological narcissism is vast.
The narcissist switches between social agility and social impairment
voluntarily. His social dysfunctioning is the outcome of conscious haughtiness
and the reluctance to invest scarce mental energy in cultivating relationships
with inferior and unworthy others. When confronted with potential Sources of
Narcissistic Supply, however, the narcissist easily regains his social skills,
his charm, and his gregariousness.
Many narcissists reach the highest rungs of their community, church, firm, or
voluntary organization. Most of the time, they function flawlessly - though the
inevitable blowups and the grating extortion of Narcissistic Supply usually put
an end to the narcissist's career and social liaisons.
The Asperger's patient often wants to be accepted socially, to have friends, to
marry, to be sexually active, and to sire offspring. He just doesn't have a
clue how to go about it. His affect is limited. His initiative - for instance,
to share his experiences with nearest and dearest or to engage in foreplay - is
thwarted. His ability to divulge his emotions stilted. He is incapable or
reciprocating and is largely unaware of the wishes, needs, and feelings of his
interlocutors or counterparties.
Much more here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal72.html
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Lecture in Southern Federal University in
Rostov-on-Don about "Mind
and Personality". Do dogs have a mind (hint: we anthropomorphize dogs
- but also people. In both cases, we only ASSUME the existence of a mind). Is
the mind "real" or just an element of the language we use to describe
our introspection? Is the construct of "individual" rigorously
defensible? Is the mind a-priori and categorical - or a-posteriori and
acquired? Are brain and mind one and the same? Will humans be enslaved by AI
(Artificial Intelligence)? Why wasn't the computer invented by giraffes? And
much more besides. Tentative conclusion: "mind" and
"personality" are theories used to reduce angst and make sense of our
experiences of ourselves and of the world.
More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq24.html
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How a predator
psychopathic narcissist describes his strategy of hunting for women,
penetrating their defenses and inflicting unbearable agony on them for profit
(psychopathy) or pleasure (sadism).
And before you ask: it is NOT about me. I am not like that in my relationships
with women. "You first create a fissure, a crack in the facade that runs
deep into the frozen quiddity of a love-starved woman. Then you introduce into
this abyss her tears born of arbitrary incomprehensible avoidance. As they
congeal and expand they tear the mental tissue apart, giving one access to and
view into the barely beating, rarely hopeful heart - all ready for the ripping,
the Aztec rite of appeasing the predatory hunter that is such a woman’s only
possible lover."
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Questions and answers session in Southern Federal University, mainly about god and religion and therapy as belief systems. Lots of opposition, shock, and awe.
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Nazism
was not merely a German political ideology. It was a global political
philosophy. At some point in the early 1940s, there were Nazi governments and
major political movements in a dozen countries from Egypt (Green Shirts),
through Iraq (Rashid Ali al-Khilani), Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Norway
(Quisling), not to mention Latin America.
Nazism offered an alternative to liberal capitalism, fascism, and communism. It
was an eclectic hodgepodge of halfbaked ideas lifted from socialism,
corporatism, etatism, imperialism, social Darwinism, eugenic racism, and
anything that caught the fancy of the voracious reader at its helm, Adolf
Hitler.
Hitler as an inverted saint https://samvak.tripod.com/hitler.html
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The civil
war in Syria started in the wake of an extreme multi-annual drought. In
this sense, it is a water conflict or water war.
Growing up in Israel in the 1960's, we were always urged to conserve precious
water. Rainfall was rare and meager, the sun scorching, our only sweet water
lake under constant threat by the Syrians. Israelis were being shot at hauling
water cisterns or irrigating their parched fields. Water was a matter of life
and death - literally.
Drought often conspires with man-made disasters. Rapid, unsustainable
urbanization, desertification, exploding populations, and economic growth,
especially of water-intensive industries, such as microprocessor fabs all
contribute to the worst water crisis the world has ever known.
Governments reacted late, hesitantly, and haltingly. Water conservation,
desalination, water rights exchanges, water pacts, private-public partnerships,
and privatization of utilities may have been implemented too little, too late.
Rising incomes lead to the exertion of political pressure on the authorities by
civic movements and NGO's to improve water quality and availability. But can
the authorities help?
Turkey is constructing more than two dozen dams on the Tigris and Euphrates
within the Southeastern Anatolia Project (GAP). Once completed, Turkey will
have the option to deprive both Syria and Iraq of their main sources of water,
though it vowed not to do so. In a cynical twist, it offers to sell them water
from its Manavgat river. Iraq's own rivers have shriveled by half. Still, this
is the less virulent and violent of the water conflicts in the Middle East.
Israel controls the Kinneret Sea of Galilee. It is the source of one third of
its water consumption. The rest it pumps from rivers in the region, to the
vocal dismay of Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan. Despite decades of indoctrination,
Israelis are water-guzzlers. They quaff 4-6 times the water consumption of
their Palestinian and Arab neighbors. Giant desalination projects cater to
their liquid needs.
Much more here: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp146.html
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Divorce
in modern times constitutes one of the biggest transfers of wealth in the
annals of Mankind. Amounts of cash and assets, which dwarf anything OPEC used
to have in its heyday, pass between spouses yearly. Most of the beneficiaries
are women. Because the earning power of men is almost double that of women
(depending on the country) – most of the wealth accumulated by any couple is
directly traceable to the husband's income. A divorce, therefore, constitutes a
transfer of part of the husband's wealth to his wife. Because the cumulative
disparities over years of income differentials are great – the wealth
transferred is enormous.
Consider a husband that makes an average of US $40,000 after-tax annually
throughout his working years. He is likely to save c. $1,000 annually (net
savings in the USA prior to 1995 averaged 2.5% of disposable income). This is
close to US $8,000 in 7 years with interest and dividends reinvested and
assuming no appreciation in the prices of financial assets.
His wife stands to receive half of these savings (c. $4,000) if the marriage is
dissolved after 7 years. Had she started to work at the same time as her
husband and continued to do so for 7 years as well – on average, she will have
earned 60% of his income.
Assuming an identical savings rate for her, she would have saved only US $5,000
and her husband would be entitled to US $2,500 of it. Thus, a net transfer of
US $1,500 in cash from husband to wife is one of the the likely outcomes of the
divorce of this very typical couple.
But this ignores the transfer of tangible and intangible assets from husband to
wife. A seven year old couple in the West typically owns $100,000 in assets.
When they divorce, by splitting the assets right down the middle, the man
actually transfers to the woman about $10,000 in assets, taking their income
differential into account.
An average of 45% of the couples in the Western hemisphere end up divorcing
within 7 years. Divorce is, by far, the most powerful re-distributive mechanism
in modern society.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/nm057.html
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What kind of a spouse/mate/partner
is likely to be attracted to a narcissist, or to attract a narcissist?
On the face of it, there is no (emotional) partner or mate, who typically
"binds" with a narcissist. They come in all shapes and sizes. The
initial phases of attraction, infatuation and falling in love are pretty
normal. The narcissist puts on his best face – the other party is blinded by
budding love. The narcissist is indiscriminate: if you are capable and willing
to provide secondary narcissistic supply - you "qualify" as his
partner.
Living with a narcissist can be exhilarating, is always onerous, often
harrowing.
First and foremost, the narcissist's partner must have a deficient or a
distorted grasp of her self and of reality. Otherwise, she (or he) is bound to
abandon the narcissist's ship early on. The cognitive distortion is likely to
consist of belittling and demeaning herself – while aggrandising and adoring
the narcissist.
The partner is, thus, placing herself in the position of the eternal victim:
undeserving, punishable, a scapegoat. Sometimes, it is very important to the
partner to appear moral, sacrificial and victimised. At other times, she is not
even aware of this predicament. The narcissist is perceived by the partner to
be a person in the position to demand these sacrifices from her because he is
superior in many ways (intellectually, emotionally, morally, professionally, or
financially). The status of professional victim sits well with the partner's
tendency to punish herself, namely: with her masochistic streak. The tormented
life with the narcissist is just what she deserves.
In this respect, the partner is the mirror image of the narcissist:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq6.html
The codependent, covert narcissist, and inverted narcissist: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq66.html
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In contemporary thought, incest
is invariably associated with child abuse and its horrific, long-lasting, and
often irreversible consequences. Incest is not such a clear-cut matter as it
has been made out to be over millennia of taboo. Many participants claim to
have enjoyed the act and its physical and emotional consequences. It is often
the result of seduction. In some cases, two consenting and fully informed
adults are involved.
Many types of relationships, which are defined as incestuous, are between
genetically unrelated parties (a stepfather and a daughter), or between fictive
kin or between classificatory kin (that belong to the same matriline or
patriline). In certain societies (the Native American or the Chinese) it is
sufficient to carry the same family name (=to belong to the same clan) and
marriage is forbidden.
Some incest prohibitions relate to sexual acts - others to marriage. In some
societies, incest is mandatory or prohibited, according to the social class or
particular circumstances (Ugarit, Bali, Papua New Guinea, Polynesian and
Melanesian islands). In others, the Royal House started a tradition of
incestuous marriages, which was later imitated by lower classes (Ancient Egypt,
Hawaii, Pre-Columbian Mixtec). Some societies are more tolerant of consensual
incest than others (Japan, India until the 1930's, Australia). Perhaps the
strongest feature of incest has been hitherto downplayed: it is, essentially,
an autoerotic act.
Having sex with a first-degree blood relative is like having sex with oneself.
It is a Narcissistic act and like all acts Narcissistic, it involves the
objectification of the partner. The incestuous Narcissist over-values and then
devalues his sexual partner. He is devoid of empathy.
But it is the reaction of society that transforms incest into such a disruptive
phenomenon. The condemnation, the horror, the revulsion and the attendant
social sanctions interfere with the internal processes and dynamics of the
incestuous family. It is from society that the child learns that something is
horribly wrong.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/incest.html
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Photos from some of the meetings I (and one
other Israeli delegate) held with Arab
politicians and intellectuals in 1984-89. The meetings were organized by
the PWPA (Professors World Peace Academy). I later became the President of the
Israel chapter of the PWPA.
In 1984-7 (1987 being the year of the First Intifada), Arabs (and, of course,
Iranians) refused to meet Israelis, so these meetings were groundbreaking and
highly unusual. They paved the way to the peace process that followed in 1991.
Among those photographed: Jawad Anani, Deputy Prime Minister of Jordan; Saad
a-Din Ibrahim, Egypt's leading intellectual; Yemen's Prime Minister at the
time; Jordan's Minister of Agriculture; participants from Iran, Turkey and
Syria and other countries.
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To a narcissistic
employer, the members of his "staff" are Secondary Sources of Narcissistic
Supply. Their role is to accumulate the supply (remember events that support
the grandiose self-image of the narcissist) and to regulate the Narcissistic
Supply of the narcissist during dry spells - to adulate, adore, admire, agree,
provide attention and approval, and, generally, serve as an audience to him.
The staff (or should we say "stuff"?) is supposed to remain passive.
The narcissist is not interested in anything but the simplest function of
mirroring. When the mirror acquires a personality and a life of its own, the
narcissist is incensed. When independent minded, an employee might be in danger
of being sacked by his narcissistic employer (an act which demonstrates the
employer's omnipotence). The employee's presumption to be the employer's equal
by trying to befriend him (friendship is possible only among equals) injures
the employer narcissisticly. He is willing to accept his employees as
underlings, whose very position serves to support his grandiose fantasies.
But his grandiosity is so tenuous and rests on such fragile foundations, that
any hint of equality, disagreement or need (any intimation that the narcissist
"needs" friends, for instance) threatens the narcissist profoundly.
The narcissist is exceedingly insecure. It is easy to destabilise his impromptu
"personality". His reactions are merely in self-defence.
Classic narcissistic behaviour is when idealisation is followed by devaluation.
The devaluing attitude develops as a result of disagreements or simply because
time has eroded the employee's capacity to serve as a FRESH Source of Supply.
The veteran employee, now taken for granted by his narcissistic employer,
becomes uninspiring as a source of adulation, admiration and attention. The
narcissist always seeks new thrills and stimuli.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq81.html
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It is very easy to "break" a narcissist
in court by revealing facts that contradict his inflated perception of his
grandiose (false) self; by criticising and disagreeing with him; by exposing
his fake achievements, belittling his self-imputed and fantasized "talents
and skills"; by hinting that he is subordinated, subjugated, controlled,
owned or dependent upon a third party; by describing the narcissist as average,
common, indistinguishable from others; by implying that the narcissist is weak,
needy, dependent, deficient, slow, not intelligent, naive, gullible,
susceptible, not in the know, manipulated, a victim, an average person of
mediocre accomplishments.
Detailed guide here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq78.html
How to Divorce a Narcissist or a Psychopath? http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/5.html
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Me. 1989. Sic transit gloria Mundi.
My biography https://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html
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The narcissist
is the guru at the centre of a cult. Like other gurus, he demands complete
obedience from his flock: his spouse, his offspring, other family members,
friends, and colleagues. He feels entitled to adulation and special treatment
by his followers. He punishes the wayward and the straying lambs. He enforces
discipline, adherence to his teachings, and common goals. The less accomplished
he is in reality – the more stringent his mastery, the more outlandish and
incredible his mission and message, and the more pervasive the brainwashing.
Cults are, therefore, person-centred organizations compared to other impersonal
bureaucracies. This is the ironic paradox at the heart of cults: even as cult
leaders dehumanize and objectify people, they do it with a “human face”, the
face of the cult’s charismatic founder and chieftain.
Cult leaders are narcissists who failed in their quest to "be
someone", to become famous, and to impress the world with their
uniqueness, talents, traits, and skills. Such disgruntled narcissists withdraw
into a "Pathological Narcissistic Space" that assumes the hallmarks
of a cult.
The – often involuntary – members of the narcissist's mini-cult inhabit a
twilight zone of his own construction. He imposes on them an exclusionary or
inclusionary shared psychosis, replete with persecutory delusions,
"enemies", mythical-grandiose narratives, and apocalyptic scenarios
if he is flouted. It is a mental enclave of suspended judgement which fast
becomes the disciples’s comfort zone where – devoid of all responsibilities and
the guilt attendant on failure (“performance anxiety”) – they feel calm and
assured of the master’s unconditional acceptance and “love”. It is a
re-enactment of the follower’s early childhood, only this time with an ideal,
benevolent parent.
Exclusionary shared psychosis involves the physical and emotional isolation of
the narcissist and his “flock” (spouse, children, fans, friends) from the
outside world.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal79.html
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I am a voracious reader of the most
convoluted and lexiphanic texts - yet, there is one author I prefer to most.
She gives me the greatest pleasure and leaves me tranquil and craving for more
when I am through devouring one of her countless tomes. A philosopher of the
mundane, a scholar of death, an exquisite chronicler of decay and decadence -
she is Dame Agatha
Christie. I spend as much time wondering what so mesmerizes me in her pulp
fiction as I do trying to decipher her deliciously contorted stratagems.
First, there is the claustrophobia. Modernity revolves around the rapid
depletion of our personal spaces - from pastures and manors to cubicles and
studio apartments. Christie - like Edgar Ellen Poe before her - imbues even the
most confined rooms with endless opportunities for vice and malice, where
countless potential scenarios can and do unfold kaleidoscopically. A Universe
of plots and countervailing subplots which permeate even the most cramped of
her locations. It is nothing short of consummate magic.
Then there is the realization of the ubiquity of our pathologies. In Christie's
masterpieces, even the champions of good are paragons of mental illness.
Hercules Poirot, the quintessential narcissist, self-grooming, haughty, and
delusional. Miss Marple, a schizoid busybody, who savors neither human company,
nor her inevitable encounters with an intruding world. Indeed, it is deformity
that gifts these two with their eerily penetrating insights into the
infirmities of others.
And there is the death of innocence. Dame Agatha's detective novels are quaint,
set in a Ruritanian Britain that is no more and likely had never existed.
Technologies make their debut: the car, the telephone, the radio, electric
light. The very nature of evil is transformed from the puerile directness of
the highway robber and the passion killer - to the scheming, cunning, and
disguised automatism of her villains. Crime in her books is calculated, the
outcome of plotting and conspiring - continue here: https://samvak.tripod.com/christie.html
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God is omniscient, omnipotent and good. Why, therefore does he allow evil and won't he eliminate it? If he cannot eradicate evil, then he is not all-powerful (or not all-knowing). If he will not do so, then surely he is not good!
Epicurus is said to have been the first to
offer this simplistic formulation of the Logical (a-priori, deductive) Problem
of Evil, later expounded on by David Hume in his "Dialogues Concerning
Natural Religion" (1779). Evil is a value judgment, a plainly human,
culture-bound, period-specific construct. St. Thomas Aquinas called it
"ens rationis", the subjective perception of relationships between
objects and persons, or persons and persons. Some religions (Hinduism,
Christian Science) shrug it off as an illusion, the outcome of our intellectual
limitations and our mortality. As St. Augustine explained in his seminal
"The City of God" (5th century AD), what to us appears heinous and
atrocious may merely be an integral part of a long-term divine plan whose aim
is to preponderate good. Leibniz postulated in his Theodicy (1710) that Evil
(moral, physical, and metaphysical) is an inevitable part of the best logically
possible world, a cosmos of plenitude and the greatest possible number of
"compatible perfections". But, what about acts such as murder or rape
(at least in peace time)? What about "horrendous evil" (coined by
Marilyn Adams to refer to unspeakable horrors)? There is no belief system that
condones them. They are universally considered to be evil. It is hard to come
up with a moral calculus that would justify them, no matter how broad the
temporal and spatial frame of reference and how many degrees of freedom we
allow.
The Augustinian etiology of evil (that it is the outcome of bad choices by
creatures endowed with a free will) is of little help. It fails to explain why
would a sentient, sapient being, fully aware of the consequences of his actions
and their adverse impacts on himself and on others, choose evil?
Find some answers here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sciencereligion4.html
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The narcissistic medical doctor or mental
health professional and his patients, the narcissistic guide, teacher, or
mentor and his students, the narcissistic leader, guru, pundit, or psychic and
his followers or admirers, and the narcissistic business tycoon, boss, or
employer and his underlings – all are instances of Pathological Narcissistic
Spaces.
The narcissist
naturally gravitates towards those professions which guarantee the abundant
and uninterrupted provision of Narcissistic Supply. He seeks to interact with
people from a position of authority, advantage, or superiority. He thus elicits
their automatic admiration, adulation, and affirmation – or, failing that,
their fear and obedience.
Several vocations meet these requirements: teaching, the clergy, show business,
corporate management, the medical professions, the military, law enforcement
agencies, politics, and sports. It is safe to predict that narcissists would be
over-represented in these occupations.
The cerebral narcissist is likely to emphasize his intellectual prowess and
accomplishments (real and imaginary) in an attempt to solicit supply from
awe-struck students, devoted parishioners, admiring voters, obsequious
subordinates, or dependent patients. His somatic counterpart derives his sense
of self-worth from body building, athletic achievements, tests of resilience or
endurance, and sexual conquests.
More: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/journal70.html
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Ironically, guilty people experience guilt
because they have had the power to make a different choice. One cannot feel
guilty when one is powerless or impotent and therefore not responsible for
events, circumstances, and decisions.
So, guilt goes with empowerment. Helpless people feel shame, not guilt.
This is why pathological
narcissism is associated with shame, not with guilt.
The Grandiosity Gap is the difference between self-image - the way the
narcissist perceives himself - and contravening cues from reality. The greater
the conflict between grandiosity and reality, the bigger the gap and the
greater the narcissist's feelings of shame.
There are two varieties of shame:
Narcissistic Shame – which is the narcissist's experience of the Grandiosity
Gap (and its affective correlate). Subjectively it felt as a pervasive feeling
of worthlessness (the dysfunctional regulation of self-worth is the crux of
pathological narcissism), "invisibility" and ridiculousness. The
patient feels pathetic and foolish, deserving of mockery and humiliation.
Narcissists adopt all kinds of defences to counter narcissistic shame. They
develop addictive, reckless, or impulsive behaviours. They deny, withdraw,
rage, or engage in the compulsive pursuit of some kind of (unattainable, of
course) perfection. They display haughtiness and exhibitionism and so on. All
these defences are primitive and involve splitting, projection, projective
identification, and intellectualization.
The second type of shame is Self-Related. It is a result of the gap between the
narcissist's grandiose Ego Ideal and his Self or Ego. This is a well-known
concept of shame and it has been explored widely.
Guilt is an "objectively" determinable philosophical entity (given
relevant knowledge regarding the society and culture in question). It is
context-dependent. It is the derivative of an underlying assumption by OTHERS
that a Moral Agent exerts control over certain aspects of the world.
More about guilt, shame, codependence, and narcissism here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq01.html
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I am often described as a creep
or freak or weirdo. This is because, as a narcissistic psychopath, I am not
fully human. I am a near perfect imitation or simulation - but not quite there.
There is something plastic and forced and artificial that people detect often
unconsciously. It puts them off or even frightens them, though some traumatized
women find my high-octane eeriness irresistible.
The concept of “Uncanny Valley” was coined in 1970 by the Japanese roboticist
Masahiro Mori. Mori suggested that people react positively to androids
(humanlike robots) for as long as they differ from real humans in meaningful
and discernible ways. But the minute these contraptions come to resemble humans
uncannily, though imperfectly, human observers tend to experience repulsion,
revulsion, and other negative emotions, including fear.
The same applies to psychopathic narcissists: they are near-perfect imitations
of humans, but, lacking empathy and emotions, they are not exactly there.
Psychopaths and narcissists strike their interlocutors as being some kind of
“alien life-forms” or “artificial intelligence”, in short: akin to humanoid
robots, or androids. When people come across narcissists or psychopaths the
Uncanny Valley reaction kicks in: people feel revolted, scared, and repelled.
They can’t put the finger on what it is that provokes these negative reactions,
but, after a few initial encounters, they tend to keep their distance.
At the other extreme of this spectrum, we find “empaths” whose super- or hyper-
empathy amounts to a kind of “Empathic Personality Disorder”: their
overabundant empathy leads them to ignore, deny, and suppress their own
personality, needs, wishes, desires, dreams, and priorities in order to cater
to the emotional requirements of significant others (or, in some cases, of
total strangers). Empaths are not necessarily codependent or even
people-pleasers: they are simply overwhelmed by their resurgent empathy, by
their “exposed nerve ends” to the point of self-suspension.
More https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders68.html
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Today is Adolf
Hitler’s birthday. We are living in the world that he shaped, in his
legacy.
Colonialism always had discernible religious overtones and often collaborated
with missionary religion. "The White Man's burden" of civilizing the
"savages" was widely perceived as ordained by God. The church was the
extension of the colonial power's army and trading companies.
It is no wonder that Hitler's Lebensraum colonial movement - Nazism - possessed
all the hallmarks of an institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals,
temples, worship, catechism, mythology. Hitler was this religion's ascetic
saint. He monastically denied himself earthly pleasures (or so he claimed) in
order to be able to dedicate himself fully to his calling. Hitler was a
monstrously inverted Jesus, sacrificing his life and denying himself so that
(Aryan) humanity should benefit. By surpassing and suppressing his humanity,
Hitler became a distorted version of Nietzsche's "superman". But
being a-human or super-human also means being a-sexual and a-moral. Hitler was
a post-modernist and a moral relativist. He projected to the masses an
androgynous figure and enhanced it by fostering the adoration of nudity and all
things "natural". But what Nazism referred to as "nature"
was not natural at all.
It was an aesthetic of decadence and evil (though it was not perceived this way
by the Nazis), carefully orchestrated, and artificial. Nazism was about
reproduced copies, not about originals. It was about the manipulation of
symbols - not about veritable atavism.
In short: Nazism was about theatre, not about life. To enjoy the spectacle (and
be subsumed by it), Nazism demanded the suspension of judgment,
depersonalization, and de-realization. Catharsis was tantamount, in Nazi
dramaturgy, to self-annulment. Nazism was nihilistic not only operationally, or
ideologically. Its very language and narratives were nihilistic. Nazism was
conspicuous nihilism - and Hitler served as a role model, annihilating Hitler
the Man, only to re-appear as Hitler the stychia.
More: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/hitler.html
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Taking a break from the hectic posting on Instagram which became a full-time job.
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I
am 57 years old today (well, in 6 minutes). Why do we celebrate birthdays?
What is it that we are toasting? Getting one year nearer to death? Is it the
fact that we have survived another year against many odds? Are we marking the
progress we have made, our cumulative achievements and possessions? Is a
birthday the expression of hope sprung eternal to live another year?
None of the above, it would seem.
If it is the past year that we are commemorating, would we still drink to it if
we were to receive some bad news about our health and imminent demise? Not
likely. But why? What is the relevance of information about the future (our own
looming death) when one is celebrating the past? The past is immutable. No
future event can vitiate the fact that we have made it through another 12
months of struggle. Then why not celebrate this fact?
Because it is not the past that is foremost on our minds. Our birthdays are
about the future, not about the past. We are celebrating having arrived so far
because such successful resilience allows us to continue forward. We proclaim
our potential to further enjoy the gifts of life. Birthdays are expressions of
unbridled, blind faith in our own suspended mortality.
But, if this were true, surely as we grow older we have less and less cause to
celebrate. What reason do octogenarians have to drink to another year if that
gift is far from guaranteed? Life offers diminishing returns: the longer you
are invested, the less likely you are to reap the dividenda of survival.
Indeed, based on actuary tables, it becomes increasingly less rational to
celebrate one's future the older one gets.
Thus, we are forced into the conclusion that birthdays are about
self-delusionally defying death. Birthdays are about preserving the illusion of
immortality. Birthdays are forms of acting out our magical thinking. By
celebrating our existence, we bestow on ourselves protective charms against the
meaninglessness and arbitrariness of a cold, impersonal, and often hostile
universe.
And, more often than not, it works. Happy birthday!
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This is what happens when I have had one too many. No inhibitions. Only exhibitions.
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The first-ever print runs were tiny and
costly. Gutenberg produced fewer than 200 copies of his eponymous and
awe-inspiring Bible & died a broken and insolvent man. Other printers
followed suit when they failed to predict demand (by readers) & supply (by
authors who acted as their own publishers, pirates, underground printers, and
compilers of unauthorized, wild editions of works). Confronted with the
vagaries of this new technology, for many decades printer-publishers confined
themselves to pornographic fiction, religious tracts, political pamphlets,
dramaturgy, almanacs, indulgences, contracts, & prophecies & mostly
disposable trash. As most books were read aloud – as a communal, not an
individual experience – the number of copies required was limited.
Despite the technological breakthroughs that coalesced to form the modern
printing press, printed
books in the 17th and 18th centuries were derided by their contemporaries
as inferior to their laboriously hand-made antecedents and to the incunabula.
One is reminded of the current complaints about the new media (Internet,
e-books), its shoddy workmanship, shabby appearance, & the rampant piracy.
The first decades following the invention of the printing press, were, as the
Encyclopedia Britannica puts it "a restless, highly competitive free for
all ... (with) enormous vitality and variety (often leading to) careless
work". There were egregious acts of piracy - for instance, the illicit
copying of the Aldine Latin "pocket books", or the all-pervasive
piracy in England in the 17th century (a direct result of over-regulation and
coercive copyright monopolies). Shakespeare's work was published by notorious
pirates and infringers of emerging intellectual property rights. Later, the
American colonies became the world's centre of industrialized and systematic
book piracy. Confronted with abundant and cheap pirated foreign books, local
authors resorted to freelancing in magazines and lecture tours in a vain effort
to make ends meet.
More about the history of the book: https://samvak.tripod.com/busiweb21.html
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On a windy day in Russia, wearing my new leather jacket, gazing at the Black Sea and contemplating past, present, the future, and other conundrums. Notice the “vision thing” faraway look and the James Dean posture as I lean on the indispensable balustrade. Even I am impressed!
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Pathological narcissism is an addiction to Narcissistic Supply (attention), the narcissist's drug of choice. It is, therefore, not surprising that other addictive and reckless behaviours – workaholism, alcoholism, drug abuse, pathological gambling, compulsory shopping, or reckless driving – piggyback on this primary dependence.
The narcissist – like other types of addicts – derives pleasure from these exploits. But they also sustain and enhance his grandiose fantasies as "unique", "superior", "entitled", and "chosen". They place him above the laws and pressures of the mundane and away from the humiliating and sobering demands of reality. They render him the centre of attention – but also place him in "splendid isolation" from the madding and inferior crowd.
Such compulsory and wild pursuits provide a psychological exoskeleton. They are a substitute to quotidian existence. They afford the narcissist with an agenda, with timetables, goals, and faux achievements. The narcissist – the adrenaline junkie – feels that he is in control, alert, excited, and vital. He does not regard his condition as dependence. The narcissist firmly believes that he is in charge of his addiction, that he can quit at will and on short notice.
The narcissist denies his cravings for fear of "losing face" and subverting the flawless, perfect, immaculate, and omnipotent image he projects. When caught red handed, the narcissist underestimates, rationalises, or intellectualises his addictive and reckless behaviours – converting them into an integral part of his grandiose and fantastic False Self.
A drug abusing narcissist may claim to be
conducting first hand research for the benefit of humanity or that his
substance abuse results in enhanced creativity and productivity. The dependence
of some narcissists becomes a way of life: e.g. busy corporate executives, race
car drivers, or professional gamblers.
Narcissists, addicts, 12 steps and more: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal66.html
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Listening attentively, brain
whirring, analyses swirling, scenarios written, deconstructed, deleted,
archived, contrasted, cognitions erupting, formulated, compared, reformulated,
associations, dissociations, data, facts, intuitions, speculations, theories
... stream of consciousness that never ever ceases, not even when I sleep. It
is tiring to be possessed by a mind like mine, depleting, exhausting.
More about the brain and its mind https://samvak.tripod.com/meta.html
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Some victims never learn. They say: "It is true that he is a narcissist and his behaviour is unacceptable & repulsive. But all he needs is a little love and he will change. I will rescue him from his misery and misfortune. I will give him the love that he lacked as a child. Then his narcissism will vanish and we will live happily ever after." Such sad examples of the powers of self-delusion that the narcissist provokes in his victims I call "malignant optimism". People refuse to believe that some questions are unsolvable, some diseases incurable, some disasters inevitable. They see a sign of hope in every fluctuation. They read meaning and patterns into every random occurrence, utterance, or slip. They are deceived by their own pressing need to believe in the ultimate victory of good over evil, health over sickness, order over disorder.
Life appears otherwise so meaningless, so
unjust and so arbitrary... So, they impose upon it a design, progress, aims,
and paths. This is magical thinking. "If only he tried hard enough",
"If he only really wanted to heal", "If only we found the right
therapy", "If only his defences were down", "There MUST be
something good and worthy under the hideous facade", "NO ONE can be
that evil and destructive", "He must have meant it differently"
"God, or a higher being, or the spirit, or the soul is the solution and
the answer to our prayers.” The Pollyanna defences of the abused are aimed
against the emerging and horrible understanding that humans are specks of dust
in a totally indifferent universe, the playthings of evil and sadistic forces,
of which the narcissist is one - as well as against the unbearable realization
that their pain means nothing to anyone but themselves.
The narcissist holds such thinking in barely undisguised contempt. To him, it
is a sign of weakness, the scent of prey, a gaping vulnerability. He uses and
abuses this human need for order, good, and meaning - as he does all other
human needs. Gullibility, selective blindness, malignant optimism - these are
the weapons of the abuser.
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It is common knowledge among unicorns that even the THOUGHT of a cake - especially a wedding cake - is enough to induce the most profound slumber, safe and at peace in the arms of Hypnos and Morpheus. But I have yet to meet a unicorn who could resist taking a bite of anything syrupy and sweet, perfect and luscious, and so promisingly round.
Having sunk her tiny teeth into the ambrosia, content, the unicorn rests her horny head on the roundness that so gratified her, her mark discernible in her besotted floury prey.
There, surrounded by smells and tastes and textures, she dreams of other lands and mighty adventures and of Love itself.
And when she wakes up, as all unicorns do, she finds that it is all reality, all true. Thus happy, she rushes to take another bite.
The older I get the better I can spot them. They typically pretend to be human, you know.
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Alone of all the social networks, Instagram
has two main functions, both highly narcissistic: 1. As a comparative measure
of social ranking and social status (the proxy being the number of likes); and
2. As a channel for interpersonal signalling and posturing.
Popularity on Instagram is therefore determined by how much the superstar
resembles his followers: the greater the resemblance, the more easy it is for
the followers to fantasize about attaining superstardom one day, exactly like
their ephemeral idol did out of nowhere. Instagram is, therefore, another
example of a platform of echo chambers of like-minded people replete with
rampant confirmation bias and communal reinforcement.
Thus, the more empty-headed, vain, and self-centered he or she appears to be -
the more influential the poster is. Of course there are notable exceptions,
even among teenage Instas: I follow and have met one or two of them whom I
appreciate. But these are the exceptions that prove the Rule.
But aren’t all social media the same? Nope! Read why I think so here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal67.html
To the narcissist, the Internet is an
alluring and irresistible combination of playground and hunting grounds, the
gathering place of numerous potential Sources of Narcissistic Supply, a world
where false identities are the norm and mind games the bon ton. And it is
beyond the reach of the law, the pale of social norms, the strictures of
civilized conduct.
The positive characteristics of the Net are largely lost on the narcissist. He
is not keen on expanding his horizons, fostering true relationships, or getting
in real contact with other people. The narcissist is forever the provincial
because he filters everything through the narrow lens of his addiction. He
measures others – and idealizes or devalues them – according to one criterion
only: how useful they might be as Sources of Narcissistic Supply.
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In 2000 I was the first to suggest to apply the new proposed diagnosis of CPTSD to victims of "narcissistic abuse" (a phrase I coined in 1995). Here are excerpts from my original article (The full text is available here: https://samvak.tripod.com/abusefamily22.html):
"Contrary to popular misconceptions,
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Acute Stress Disorder (or Reaction)
are not typical responses to prolonged abuse. They are the outcomes of sudden
exposure to severe or extreme stressors (stressful events). Yet, some victims
whose life or body have been directly and unequivocally threatened by an abuser
react by developing these syndromes. PTSD is, therefore, typically associated
with the aftermath of physical and sexual abuse in both children and adults.
This is why another mental health diagnosis, C-PTSD (Complex PTSD) has been
proposed by Dr. Judith Herman of Harvard University to account for the impact
of extended periods of trauma and abuse."
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Fear
of flying (aviophoboa, not aerophobia) affects well over 6% of the world's
adult population.
Like all phobias, aviophobia is irrational: air flight is by far the safest
means of transportation and a very safe technology. It symbolizes and reifies
inner mental processes which have little to do with actual flying, airplanes,
or airports.
Fear of flying is the symbolic representation and culmination of three other
psychological problems:
1. Performance anxiety 2. Fear of loss of control (over one's life) and 3. Fear
of being autonomous or independent.
Aviophobia is not associated with paranoid tendencies or other issues with
trust.
Aviophobia is treated like all other phobias: desensitization (exposure
therapy) coupled with talk therapy (usually CBT - Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy).
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In a historic summit the rulers of the two Koreas
- south and north - agreed to officially end the Korea War which flared up
in 1950-1953 and has ended with a ceasefire (armistice).
In 2010 I was asked to make ten predictions regarding the coming decade. This
was prediction number 2: "Korean Unification. By late 2010, a succession
war was simmering in North Korea. His panoply of suddenly-bestowed senior
political and military posts notwithstanding, the generals and military
establishment are less than happy and impressed with Kim Jong-un, the younger
son of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il. Each side flexes muscles in an attempt to
burnish their nationalist and martial credentials. The outcomes of this
internecine conflict are ominous: a series of ever-escalating military
skirmishes with South Korea and the ramping up of North Korea’s already
burgeoning nuclear weapons and cyberwar programs (as Sony discovered to its
cost.) North Korea’s leaders are likely to try to reform their country’s
economy and introduce capitalism, but this will fail. The regime in North Korea
is all but dead on its feet. These are its last days. China is facing the
terrifying spectacle of a crony failed state with tens of millions of starved
and destitute potential refugees swarming across its porous and indefensible
borders. China’s ascendance to superpowerdom and its respectability are
threatened by this association with the last remaining pariah rogue state.
There is only one solution to all the problems of the Korean Peninsula:
unification. The parties came close to discussing it in secret talks in 2002
and then again in 2009."
The other 9 predictions: https://samvak.tripod.com/blog.html
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The
Stupid, the Trivial, and the Frivolous are everywhere: among the working
classes, of course, but increasingly you can find them displacing the erstwhile
elites, spawning hordes of mindless politicians, idiot business tycoons,
narcissistic media personalities, gullible clergy, vacuous celebrities,
illiterate bestselling authors, athletes with far more brawn than brain,
repetitious pop singers, less than mediocre bureaucrats, bovine gatekeepers,
and even ignorant and semi-literate academics. Their cacophony drowns the few
voices of wisdom, expertise, and experience and their sheer number overwhelms
all systems of governance and all mechanisms of decision-making. Rather than
futilely fight back this tsunami, the well-educated, the erudite, and the
intelligent choose to withdraw and seclude themselves in self-constructed,
schizoid ivory towers, all bridges drawn.
Imbeciles are a menace to the continued existence not only of our civilization,
but also of our species. We may end up being all Homo, no sapiens.
Stupid people use DEMOCRACY and TECHNOLOGY to rule the world - and us. Learn
more about this threat to our survival here: https://samvak.tripod.com/blog.html
A study of nine million young adults over 40 years (conducted by Jean Twenge and her colleagues and published in the March 2012 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology) has starkly demonstrated the deterioration from one generation to another. Youngsters are now focused on money, image, and fame and disparage values such as community, volunteerism, the environment, and knowledge acquisition. Other surveys have documented a rising level of illiteracy. As if to illustrate the imminence of these new Dark Ages, the Encyclopedia Britannica announced that it will cease the publication of its print edition after 244 years. Its surviving digital editions are a far cry from the print equivalent in terms of depth, length, and erudition.
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Your intimate partner can't stand it when
your abode does not resemble a museum, when your things are strewn all over the
place, when there are splatters of coffee on the kitchen counter, when the
books and DVDs are not stacked at right angles, and when the towels in the
spotless bathroom are crumpled. He is a neat
freak and most probably suffers from Obsessive-compulsive Personality
Disorder (OCPD). Obsessions and compulsions are about control of self &
others. OCPDs are concerned (worried and anxious) about maintaining and being
seen to be maintaining control. They are preoccupied with the symbolic aspects
and representations (symbols) of control.
OCPDs are perfectionists and rigidly orderly or organized. They lack
flexibility, openness and efficiency. They tend to see the world and others as
at best whimsical and arbitrary and at worst menacing and hostile. They are
constantly worried that something is or may go wrong. They share some traits
with the paranoid and the schizotypal.
It is easy to spot them. They are constantly drawing up and dreaming up lists,
rules, orders, rituals, and organizational schemes. They demand from themselves
and from others perfection and an inordinate attention to minutia. Actually,
they place greater value on compiling and following rigid schedules and
checklists than on the activity itself or its goals.
OCPDs are workaholics, but not because they like to work. Ostensibly, they
sacrifice family life, leisure, and friendships on the altar of productivity
and output. Really, they are convinced that only they can get the job done in
the right manner. Yet, they are not very efficacious or productive.
Socially, OCPDs are sometimes resented and rejected. This is because some OCPDs
are self-righteous to the point of bigotry and tyranny.
Much more about this type of personality: https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders29.html
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There are four cardinal ways to regulate sex
within committed relationships, each with its own explicit or implicit
contract.
1. Sexual exclusivity
Contract: the intimate partners engage in all forms of sex acts as well as
flirting and dating only with each other. Any sexual, romantic, or emotional
interaction with someone outside the relationship is considered cheating and a
betrayal of the intimate partner.
2. Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT)
Contract: the intimate partner in a DADT relationship turns a blind eye to,
ignores, or denies the facts about his/her partner's infidelity. He/she
implicitly allows his/her partner to date others, flirt with them, and have all
manner of sex acts outside the relationship. But they have to be discreet about
their affairs, to eliminate all the evidence, and to continue to love their
partners and share a life with them exclusively.
Falling in love outside the relationship or setting up a parallel life are
considered not only cheating - but a betrayal of the intimate partner.
3. Open relationship
Exactly the same as DADT only the partners know about each other's sexual
involvement with others and approve of such escapades.
Falling in love outside the relationship or setting up a parallel life are
considered not only cheating - but a betrayal of the intimate partner.
4. Polyamory
The partners are allowed to date, flirt, fall in love, maintain full-fledged
relationships, and, of course, have sex with others. There is no concept of
cheating or betrayal although the partners are expected to not neglect or
abandon each other in favor of their other lovers.
More about the multifarious forms of modern marriage here: https://samvak.tripod.com/marriage.html
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Pope Francis is fighting a losing battle
against the conservative establishment of his own church.
The history of the Catholic
Church reads like the annals of a global crime concern. It gave the world
the inquisition, incestuous and murderous popes, religious warfare,
paedophiliac sex scandals, idolatry, money laundering scandals, and the gnawing
guilt that comes from embracing life-defying ideals. Its intentional lack of
transparency, murky dealings, and refusal to be held accountable for the
actions of its adherents and officials have rendered the Catholic Church
complicit in the most horrendous events of the last two millennia. It might
well meet the criteria for a “criminal organization” set in the London Charter
and endorsed and implemented in the Nuremburg Trials.
With a modicum of justice it has been accused of anything and everything from
collaborating with the Nazi regime (and helping war criminals flee justice) to
instigating and perpetrating the more insidious forms of anti-Semitism. The
Church’s former head – Pope Benedict XVI, former chief of the current-day
intolerant incarnation of the infamous Inquisition - was a member of the Nazi
youth movement: when he had joined, in 1939, only one third of Germany’s youth
belonged to the Hitlerjugend although membership of Aryan youth was
theoretically compulsory by law. The German Pope added insult to injury by
reinstating patently anti-Semitic bishops, excommunicated by his predecessor
(who, on his part, actively spread AIDS throughout the developing world by
prohibiting the use of contraceptives). Hence "The da Vinci Code" and
a slew of other anti-Catholic tomes. This genre thrives on the widespread
conviction that there is nothing the Catholic Church will refrain from doing or
find too abhorrent to further its earthly wealth and might. Alas, history this
time is on the side of the conspiracy theorists.
"The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest." (English historian Edward Gibbon on Pope John XXIII)
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Feel trapped
in an unhappy, sexless, emotionally-dead, loveless, and doomed marriage?
Don't dump your partner. Studies show that there is a 70% chance that in 10
years you will be very happy that you stayed. And your chances of finding
happiness and fulfillment in a new marriage are even lower than in the current
one.
You should, however, immediately divorce your partner if s/he is ABUSIVE:
verbally, psychologically, or physically. Bullying, rejection, humiliation,
neglect, and abandonment are all forms of abuse. If the lack of sex and love
are permanent features of the relationship, they are also forms of aggression
or passive-aggression. Then you should leave your spouse and the sooner the
better.
But what if divorce is out of the question? Common children, a common business,
social stigma, religious proscriptions ... Divorce is not always an option.
The truth is that separation or divorce are always viable alternatives to a bad
marriage, but they do call for painful sacrifices or compromises. People are
unlikely to divorce if they want the cake and to eat it, too; if they lack the
courage and self-confidence to go it alone; or if they fail to secure a viable
alternative to their current spouse. They are likely to opt for compromises
such as having fuck buddies or lovers rather than divorce.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/family.html
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The decriminalization
and legalization of recreational drugs and substances is a tangled issue
involving many separate moral/ethical and practical strands which can,
probably, be summarized thus:
Whose body is it anyway? Where do "I" start and the government
begins? What gives the state the right to intervene in decisions pertaining
only to my self and countervene them?
The government exercises similar "rights" in other cases (abortion,
military conscription, sex)
Is the government the optimal moral agent, the best or the right arbiter, as
far as drug abuse is concerned?
For instance, governments collaborate with the illicit drug trade when it fits
their realpolitik purposes.
Is substance abuse a PERSONAL or a SOCIAL choice? Can one LIMIT the
implications, repercussions and outcomes of one's choices in general and of the
choice to abuse drugs, in particular? If the drug abuser in effect makes
decisions for others, too - does it justify the intervention of the state? Is
the state the agent of society, is it the ONLY agent of society and is it the
RIGHT agent of society in the case of drug abuse?
What is the difference (in rigorous philosophical principle) between legal and
illegal substances? Is it something in the NATURE of the substances? In the
USAGE and what follows? In the structure of SOCIETY? Is it a moral fashion?
Does scientific research support or refute common myths and ethos regarding
drugs and their abuse?
Is scientific research INFLUENCED by the current anti-drugs crusade and hype?
Are certain facts suppressed and certain subjects left unexplored?
Should drugs be decriminalized for certain purposes (e.g., marijuana and
glaucoma)? If so, where should the line be drawn and by whom?
Recreational drugs sometimes alleviate depression. Should this use be
permitted?
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We are so grateful to our abusers when -
once in a blue moon, incomprehensibly and unpredictably - they are actually
nice and civil to us. We are in tears at the unexpected relief.
The more sadistic and bullying the abuser - the more profound our gratitude
when he is not.
Stockholm
Syndrome, traumatic bonding, and intermittent reinforcement - the trifecta of
weaponry in the abuser's arsenal.
Domestic abuse and family violence
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/abusefamily.html
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/abuse.html
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May 1. Chance for some quality family time
- but not for the narcissist!
Holidays
and birthdays should be times of family get-togethers, love shared, &
relatives and friends brought up to date. They are supposed to be the
reification of that contradiction in terms: mass or group intimacy.
Instead, for victims of family violence and abuse, holidays and birthdays are
recurring nightmares, replete with danger and duplicity, a theater of the
absurd with menacing overtones. It is important to understand the mindset of
such abusers.
Narcissists hate it when other people are happy if they are not the cause of
such happiness. Plus no one should tell the narcissist how to feel and WHEN.
Holiday blues are a common occurrence even among the mentally sound. In abusers
with narcissistic or antisocial personalities, they provoke a particularly
virulent strain of pathological envy. The psychopathic narcissist is jealous at
others for having a family, or for being able to celebrate, or for possessing
the right, festive mood. He keeps telling himself: "look at these inferior
people, wasting their time, pretending to be happy". Yet, deep inside, the
narcissist knows that he is defective. He realizes that his inability to
rejoice is a protracted and unusual punishment meted out to him by his own
hands. Though he will never admit it, the narcissistic or psychopathic abuser
is actually sad and enraged. Consequently, he wants to spoil the party for
everyone else. He wants them to share his misery, to reduce them to his level
of emotional abstinence and absence.
Holidays remind the narcissist of his childhood, of the supportive and loving
family he never had. The narcissistic and psychopathic abuser feels deprived
and, coupled with his rampant paranoia, he feels cheated and persecuted. To
him, holidays are a conspiracy of the emotional haves against the emotional
haves not.
Read about other reasons (control freakery and passive-aggression) and how to
behave here:
https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissisthappiness.html
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"Animal
rights" is a catchphrase akin to "human rights". It
involves, however, a few pitfalls. First, animals exist only as a concept.
Otherwise, they are cuddly cats, curly dogs, cute monkeys. A rat and a puppy
are both animals but our emotional reaction to them is so different that we
cannot really lump them together. Moreover: what rights are we talking about?
The right to life? The right to be free of pain? The right to food? Except the
right to free speech – all other rights could be applied to animals.
But when we say "animals", what we really mean is non-human
organisms. This is such a wide definition that it easily pertains to
extraterrestrial aliens. Will we witness an Alien Rights movement soon?
Unlikely. Thus, we are forced to narrow our field of enquiry to non-human
organisms reminiscent of humans, the ones that provoke in us empathy.
Even this is way too fuzzy. Many people love snakes, for instance, and deeply
empathize with them. Could we accept the assertion (avidly propounded by these
people) that snakes ought to have rights – or should we consider only organisms
with extremities and the ability to feel pain?
For a detailed analysis of the ethics and politics of animal rights - go here:
https://samvak.tripod.com/animal.html
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Narcissists
do not want to communicate: they want to impress and establish superiority
over their interlocutors (you see what I mean? 😂) In the narcissist's surrealistic world, even language is
pathologized. It mutates into a weapon of self-defence, a verbal fortification,
a medium without a message, replacing words with duplicitous and ambiguous
vocables. “Conversational narcissism”, Charles Derber calls it, replete with
“shift responses” (replicas that shift the attention back to the narcissist).
Narcissists don't talk, or communicate. They fend off. They hide and evade and
avoid and disguise. They lecture and hector and preach. In their planet of
capricious and arbitrary unpredictability, of shifting semiotic and semantic
dunes they perfect the ability to say nothing in lengthy, Castro-like orations.
Their speech is impregnated with first-person pronoun density: it is saturated
with first person pronouns ("I", "me", "my",
"mine"). The ensuing convoluted sentences are arabesques of
meaninglessness, acrobatics of evasion, a lack of commitment elevated to an
ideology.
It is often impossible to really understand a narcissist. The evasive syntax
fast deteriorates into ever more labyrinthine structures. The grammar tortured
to produce the verbal Doppler shifts essential to disguise the source of the
information, its distance from reality, the speed of its degeneration into
rigid "official" versions.
Buried under the lush flora and fauna of idioms without an end, the language
erupts, like some exotic rash, an autoimmune reaction to its infection and
contamination. Like vile weeds it spread throughout, strangling with absent
minded persistence the ability to understand, to feel, to agree, to disagree
and to debate, to present arguments, to compare notes, to learn and to teach.
Much more here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal34.html
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Miracles
have always been a lucrative business. But are miracles for real? Can God
suspend the Laws of Nature, or even change or "cancel" them?
Can we even contemplate a breach of the natural order? Isn't this very
juxtaposition meaningless, even nonsensical? Can Nature lapse? And how can we
prove divine involvement in that which is supranatural when we are at a loss to
conclusively demonstrate even His (God's) contribution to the natural?
Moreover, if God, or some other supernatural agency stand outside Nature, then
when they effect miracles, they are not violating the Laws of Nature to which
they are not subjected.
Another problem: machines and devices operate in accordance with and are
subject to the laws of nature. Can they record an event that is outside of
Nature? Do miracles occur within Nature or outside it? If miracles transpire
within Nature, shouldn't they be deemed ipso facto "natural" (though
ill-understood)? If miracles emerge without Nature, how can anything and anyone
within Nature's remit and ambit witness them? How can we record miracles
outside nature with means that are natural, inside nature?
Indeed, it is not possible to discuss miracles meaningfully. See why here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sciencereligion5.html
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Sexless
relationships have acquired pandemic proportions. Legions of sex-starved
women roam the streets, foraging for the ever-dwindling numbers of sexually
active men. These few remnants of virility end up with ravenous harems whose
morally conflicted inmates reluctantly seek extramarital intimacy and romance.
Most men now prefer porn and its solitary aftermath to the dubious pleasure of
modern female company. How have we come to that?
Modern Man is a narcissistic, porn-addicted misfit. Women have banished men
from their lives: they raise their children alone; they educate their offspring
on their own (90% of teachers are female); they are way more accomplished
academically and they are breaching all the remaining glass ceilings
forcefully. Men are on the retreat, hiding in cyber caves, self-medicating
perilously, assiduously avoiding the dual threats of intimacy and sex with
women, their newfound nemesis. It is War and all sides are losing it.
Women in sexless, loveless marriages often behave like single women (go out
alone, travel alone, drink alone in bars, associate with single women). I call
this kind of women ‘virtual singles’. They send out signals (broadcasts) which
are identical to the signals of single women. Men pick up on these signals and
respond to them powerfully by aggressively courting the virtual single, by
sexualising her behavior, and by reducing her to a sex object
("doll"). Additionally, other women react to virtual singles with
resentment and fear because they consider them to be predatory. Every woman in the
company of a virtual single is afraid that the virtual single will seduce her
husband and abscond or elope with him (steal him away from her). All the men
around the virtual single assume that she is available for sex, a
"whore".
Read (free) "The Death of Sex and the Demise of Monogamy" http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/sexmonogamy.pdf
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Those who believe in the finality of death
(i.e., that there is no after-life) – they are the ones who advocate suicide
and regard it as a matter of personal choice. On the other hand, those who
firmly believe in some form of existence after corporeal death – they condemn
suicide and judge it to be a major sin. Yet, rationally, the situation should
have been reversed: it should have been easier for someone who believed in
continuity after death to terminate this phase of existence on the way to the
next. Those who faced void, finality, non-existence, vanishing – should have
been greatly deterred by it and should have refrained even from entertaining
the idea. Either the latter do not really believe what they profess to believe
– or something is wrong with rationality. One would tend to suspect the former.
Suicide is very different from self sacrifice, avoidable martyrdom, engaging in
life risking activities, refusal to prolong one's life through medical
treatment, euthanasia, overdosing and self inflicted death that is the result
of coercion. What is common to all these is the operational mode: a death
caused by one's own actions. In all these behaviours, a foreknowledge of the
risk of death is present coupled with its acceptance. But all else is so
different that they cannot be regarded as belonging to the same class. Suicide
is chiefly intended to terminate a life – the other acts are aimed at
perpetuating, strengthening and defending values.
Those who commit suicide do so because they firmly believe in the finiteness of
life and in the finality of death. They prefer termination to continuation.
Suicide may be an obsessive-compulsive ritual aimed at forestalling
much-dreaded change. Indeed, suicide rates are highest among people whose lives
are adrenaline-filled roller-coasters: physicians and Bipolar patients, for
example. Yet, all the others, the observers of this phenomenon, are horrified
by this preference. They abhor it. This has to do with our understanding of the
meaning of life.
How? Find out here: https://samvak.tripod.com/suicide.html
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The sadistic
woman-lover (philogynist) is drawn to women, desires them, covets their
traits, admires them, and, generally, prefers to spend his time with them. But
it is precisely this inexorable pull that terrifies him: he is awed by women’s
hold over him and mortified by his own resultant women-centred obsessions and
compulsions. He is poorly equipped to deal with and is overwhelmed by the
emotions that women provoke in him. In a desperate attempt to extricate
himself, he adopts avoidant behaviors, shuns women and frustrates them, abuses
them, tortures and humiliates them. This panoply of behaviors restores his
sense of control, power, and superiority.
The sadistic woman-hater (misogynist) holds women in utter contempt, detests
them, wishes them ill, and seeks to punish them. He displays the same range of
behaviors as the sadistic women-lover but for an entirely different reason. The
sadistic women-lover seeks to restore a semblance of balance of potency between
himself and the women he finds so irresistible. The sadistic women-hater aims
to annihilate women, remove them from his life, penalize them harshly for
daring to intrude on his being with their demands for love, sex, and intimacy,
(which he perceives as women’s self-interested manipulation).
Narcissists hate women http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq79.html
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Do stereotypes
usefully represent real knowledge or merely reflect counter-productive
prejudice? We know that a disproportionate number of criminals in the USA are
black, that alcoholism and substance abuse among Native-Americans (Indians) is
rampant and that the vast majority of anti-Western terrorists are Muslim. In
light of these facts, racial profiling (a sub-species of stereotyping) appears
to be a rational and ethically justified act of self-defense. But is this a
“post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy? In other words: does racial profiling
cause the very ills it is intended to counter? Hardly likely.
In an age of information overload, "nutshell" stereotypes encapsulate
information compactly and efficiently and thus possess an undeniable survival
value. Admittedly, many stereotypes are self-reinforcing, self-fulfilling
prophecies. A young black man confronted by a white supremacist may well
respond violently and an Hispanic, unable to find a job, may end up in a street
gang.
But this recursiveness does not detract from the usefulness of stereotypes as
"reality tests" and serviceable prognosticators.
For an in-depth analysis of stereotypes and their roles: https://samvak.tripod.com/stereotype.html
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Selfies of a newfound
friend and me.
Narcissists can't empathise or love and, therefore, have no friends. The
narcissist is one track minded. He is interested in securing Narcissistic
Supply from Narcissistic Supply Sources. He is not interested in people as
such. He is incapable of empathising, is a solipsist, and recognises only
himself as human. To the narcissist, all others are three dimensional cartoons,
tools and instruments in the tedious and Sisyphean task of generating and
consuming Narcissistic Supply.
The narcissist over-values (idealizes) people (when they are judged to be
potential sources of such supply), uses them, devalues them (when no longer
able to supply him) and discards them nonchalantly. This behaviour pattern
tends to alienate and distance people.
Gradually, the social circle of the narcissist dwindles (and ultimately
vanishes). People around him who are not turned off by the ugly succession of
his acts and attitudes are rendered desperate and fatigued by the turbulent
nature of the narcissist's life. The narcissist especially resents his
benefactors and sponsors because they remind him of his inferiority, neediness,
and helplessness. Diderot, the 18th century French encyclopedist, wrote:
“Rousseau is a monster ... He said he hated all those he had reason to be
grateful to and he has proved it.” Rousseau, of course, was a prime narcissist.
Those few still loyal to the narcissist gradually abandon him because they can
no longer withstand and tolerate the ups and downs of his career, his moods,
his confrontations and conflicts with authority, his chaotic financial state
and the dissolution of his emotional affairs. The narcissist is a human roller
coaster: fun for a limited time, nauseating in the long run.
Read what Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Hercule Poirot have to do with all
that: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal85.html
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The world sure looks different through my new spectacles. Hiding from the Skopje sunshine in a typical Balkan coffeehouse. Long heart-to-heart talks, strong libations, and memories. The stuff life is made of.
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When the sexually healthy man watches porn, he says: "I wish my wife were like this." When the sexually inhibited man watches porn, he mutters: "God forbid my wife should ever be like this." Sam Vaknin, “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
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Some things are better left UNsaid. Some
thoughts, anxieties, and fears when formulated, vocalized, and verbalized
acquire a life of their own and become reality.
Sometimes, an utterance, an outburst, or a confession can affect oneself and
others in unexpected and unwanted ways: plant ideas where there were none or
give shape to ephemeral and unformed stirrings, thoughts, and emotions, or
yield sudden, life transforming insights. A kind of self-fulfilling
prophecy.
The Jews believed that the Hebrew alphabet, the true and occult name of God,
and words in general have the power to wreak havoc on the world (recall the
legend of the Prague golem). The Kabbalah - the Jewish mystical tradition - is
based on this. Gimatria (the Jewish numerological system) assigns values to
each letter and then sums them up in creative ways to yield insights and
predictions. God created the entire universe with His speech. The New Testament
starts with Logos (word). All systems of Magic, both white and black, are based
on locutions and exhortations.
Be careful what you wish for and doubly careful of what you fear - especially
when you say it out loud.
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If you are a rebellious child or teenager
you are at risk of being labelled and pathologized. The DSM informs us that
"The essential feature of Oppositional
Defiant Disorder is a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant,
disobedient, and hostile behavior towards authority figures that persists for
at least 6 months." Unbelievable as this Orwellian, Big Brother text is -
it gets worse. If you are under 18 years old and you lose your temper, argue
with adults, actively "defy or refuse to comply with the requests or rules
of adults", deliberately do things that annoy said adults, blame others
for your mistakes or misbehavior - then unquestionably you are a sick little
puppy. And who is to make these value judgements? An adult psychologist or
psychiatrist or social worker or therapist. And what if you disagree with these
authorities? They get annoyed and this is proof positive that you are afflicted
with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD). Did anyone mention catch-22?
And the charade continues, masquerading as "science". If you are
touchy or get easily annoyed (for instance by the half-baked diagnoses rendered
by certain mental health practitioners), you are ODD (i.e., you suffer from
Oppositional Defiant Disorder).You are allowed to be touchy when you are an
adult - it is then called assertiveness. You are allowed to get pissed off when
you are above the crucial (though utterly arbitrary) age limit. Then it is
called "expressing your emotions", which is by and large a good
thing.So tell us the charlatans that call themselves mental health
'professionals' (as though psychology is an exact science, not merely an
elaborate literary exercise). If you are habitually angry and resentful,
spiteful or vindictive and these traits impair your "normal" social,
academic, or occupational functioning (whatever "normal" means in
today's pluralistic and anomic culture), beware: you may be harbouring
Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD).
More about this"diagnosis": https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders43.html
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I am a foot fetishist. Give me a pair of
elegant, streamlined, sensuous, voluptuous feet to play with and I have little
need for the rest of the woman.
Sexual
fetishism is predicated on a pathological sexual attachment to a fetish.
The fetishist climaxes only in the presence of the fetish and cannot reach
orgasm otherwise. In the absence of their fetish, most fetishists are sexually
dysfunctional (for instance, they suffer from erectile dysfunction or are
sexually hypoactive). Some forms of fetishism involve sado-masochistic and
domination/submission fantasies (with fetishes such as feet or boots and
shoes). The circumstances surrounding the sexual encounter are immaterial to
the fetishist, as is his environment. Thus, a fetishist who is fixated on bras
or feet is unlikely to mind the physical characteristics of the proprietress of
either.
There are three types of fetishes:
I. An inanimate object, usually with a sexual connotation (such as a bra); II.
A body part that is clearly still connected to a complete body, dead or alive
(e.g., hair, feet); III. A reified trait, usually a deformity or idiosyncrasy
that implies inferiority, helplessness, or dependence (for instance, a lame, or
grotesquely obese, or hunchbacked person). Consequently, there are three
categories of fetishism and fetishists:
I. Objective fetishists, for whom the inanimate fetish stands for and
symbolizes a desired whole that is out of reach;
II. Somatic fetishists, for whom the body part stands for and symbolizes a
coveted human body (and, by extension, a relationship) that is unattainable;
III. Abstract fetishists, who latch on to a trait or a characteristic as a
means to indirectly interact with their "defective" bearer and thus
fulfill the fetishist's grandiose fantasies of omnipotence and innate
superiority (pathological narcissism). More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/pedophilia.html
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All
people lie some of the time. They use words to convey their lies while
their body language usually gives them away. This is curious. Why did evolution
prefer this self defeating strategy?
We lie for three main reasons and these give rise to three categories of lies:
The Empathic Lie – is a lie told with the intention of sparing someone's
feelings. It is a face saving lie – but someone else's face. It is designed to
prevent a loss of social status, the onslaught of social sanctions, the process
of judgment involved in both. It is a derivative of our ability to put
ourselves in someone else's shoes – that is, to empathize. It is intended to
spare OUR feelings, which are bound to turn more and more unpleasant the more
we sympathize with the social-mental predicament of the person being lied to.
The lie achieves its goal only if the recipient cooperates, does not actively
seek out the truth and acquiescently participates in the mini-drama unfolding
in his or her honour. The reverse, brutal honesty, at all costs and in all
circumstances – is a form of sadistic impulse.
Brutal honesty is:
1. Gratuitous (there is really no need to be honest)
2. Aggressive. You can say the same thing is many ways. Abrasiveness is not an
essential part of honesty.
3. Repeated despite the obvious discomfort of the listener(s). 4. With the
intent of causing pain or harm and with a clear enjoyment in inflicting them.
The Egocentric Lie – is a lie intended to further the well being of the liar.
This can be achieved in one of two ways. The lie can help the liar to achieve
his goals (a Goal Seeking Lie) or to avoid embarrassment, humiliation, social
sanctions, judgement, criticism and, in general, unpleasant experiences related
to social standing (a Face Saving Lie). The Goal Seeking Lie is useful only
when considering the liar as an individual, independent unit. The Face Saving
type is instrumental only in social situations. We can use the terms:
Individualistic Lie and Social Lie respectively.
The Narcissistic Lie – https://samvak.tripod.com/fragments2.html
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I never was a child. I was a "Wunderkind",
the answer to my mother's prayers and her intellectual frustration. A human
computing machine, a walking-talking encyclopaedia, a curiosity, a circus
freak. I was observed by developmental psychologists, interviewed by the media,
endured the envy of my peers and their pushy mothers. I constantly clashed with
figures of authority because I felt entitled to special treatment, immune to
prosecution and superior. It was a narcissist's dream. Abundant Narcissistic
Supply - rivers of awe, the aura of glamour, incessant attention, open
adulation, country-wide fame.
I refused to grow up. In my mind, my tender age was an integral part of the
precocious miracle that I became. One looks much less phenomenal and one's
exploits and achievements are much less awe-inspiring at the age of 40, I
thought. Better stay young forever and thus secure my Narcissistic Supply.
Plus, my life is my parents' punishment. Childless and a sad failure, I keep
hoping against hope and counterfactually that they care enough to hurt.
So, I wouldn't grow up. I never took out a driver's licence.
I do not have children. I rarely have sex. I never settle down in one place. I
reject intimacy. In short: I refrain from adulthood and adult chores. I have no
adult skills. I assume no adult responsibilities. I expect indulgence from
others. I am petulant and haughtily spoiled. I am capricious, infantile and
emotionally labile and immature. In short: I am a 57 years old brat.
I talk to Arlen about my childhood and other issues here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal22.html
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The narcissistic
or psychopathic leader is the culmination and reification of his period,
culture, & civilization. He is likely to rise to prominence in narcissistic
societies. The leader’s mental health pathologies resonate with the anomies of
his society and culture (“psychopathological resonance”.) The leader and the
led form a self-enhancing & self-reinforcing feedback loop, a dyad of
mirrored adoration & reflected love. By elevating and idealizing their
“Fuehrer”, the mob actually elevates and idealizes itself & the leader’s
harnessed ochlocracy; in the “Duce’s” ascendance they find hope, in his
manifest illness – curative solace & a legitimation of their own collective
insanity. The dictator himself equates being elected – however patently
unfairly – with being chosen by the transcendental forces of the gods &
history. His is a manifest destiny, his exceptionalism - the nation’s own.
The leader’s personal-intimate life and persona may be utterly different to his
political-public ones. It is an unsettling Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde effect. In private,
the narcissistic-psychopathic leader may be avuncular, empathic, sentimental,
helpful, dull, bourgeois, mediocre, middling, sickly, fussy, aloof, or
friendly. But, he is at great pains to conceal these attributes from the
public.
The narcissist's personality is so precariously balanced that he cannot
tolerate even a hint of criticism and disagreement. Most narcissists are
paranoid and suffer from ideas of reference (the delusion that they are being
mocked or discussed when they are not). Thus, narcissists often regard
themselves as "victims of persecution". The narcissistic leader
fosters and encourages a personality cult with all the hallmarks of an
institutional religion: priesthood, rites, rituals, temples, worship,
catechism, mythology. The leader is this religion's ascetic saint. He
monastically denies himself earthly pleasures (or so he claims) in order to be
able to dedicate himself fully to his calling.
Much more: https://samvak.tripod.com/15.html
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I have no
past and no identity because I have no memory. If I try very hard, I recall
only fleeting images, ephemeral moments, snippets floating and dissolving out
of context in a maddening dance of whack-a-mole.
I try to hang on to this shredded personal history, but as soon as the
recollections surface, they elude me and drift away into the penumbral
netherworld of my unconscious. Sometimes I am not sure as to who the other
people in these dreamlike sequences are: which of my wives or friends or
colleagues.
In a desperate attempt to make a rudimentary sense of this ever-shifting
kaleidoscope, to introduce a meaningful plot or narrative that I could call
"my life", I confabulate. I substitute what could or may have been
and should have occurred to what had actually transpired.
Pathological narcissism has been compared to Dissociative Identity Disorder
(formerly Multiple Personality Disorder). By definition, the narcissist has at
least two selves. His personality is very primitive and disorganized. Living
with a narcissist is a nauseating experience not only because of what he is -
but because of what he is NOT. He is not a fully formed human - but a
dizzyingly kaleidoscopic gallery of mercurial images, which melt into each
other seamlessly. It is incredibly disorienting.
It is also exceedingly problematic. Promises made by the narcissist are easily
disowned by him. His plans are ephemeral. His emotional ties - a simulacrum.
The narcissist contradicts himself from one minute to another. Most narcissists
have one island of stability in their life (spouse, family, their career, a
hobby, their religion, country, or idol) - pounded by the turbulent currents of
a dishevelled existence.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistdiscontinuous.html
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On this date the Soviet Union (USSR)
formally vanquished what was left of Nazi Germany's Third Reich. But it was too
late for the Jews. Hitler's only success was the annihilation of European
Jewry. By the end of the war Europe was Judenrein and there more Nazis in
Europe than Jews.
Rabid anti-Semitism, coupled with inane and outlandish conspiracy theories of
world dominion, is easy to counter and dispel. It is the more
"reasoned", subtle, and stealthy variety that it pernicious. "No
smoke without fire," - say people - "there must be something to
it!". I wrote a dialog
between an anti-Semitic Jew-hater and a Jew. I wrote both texts - not an
easy task considering my ancestry (a Jew) and my citizenship (an Israeli). But
to penetrate the pertinent layers - historical, psychological, semantic, and
semiotic - I had to "enter the skin" of "rational", classic
anti-Semite, to grasp what makes him click and tick, and to think and reason
like him.
I dedicated the last few months to ploughing through reams of anti-Semitic
tracts and texts. Steeped in more or less nauseating verbal insanity and sheer
paranoia, I emerged to compose the following exchange: "The Anti-Semite
says:
The rising tide of anti-Semitism the world over is universally decried. The
proponents of ant-Semitism are cast as ignorant, prejudiced, lawless, and
atavistic. Their arguments are dismissed off-handedly.
But it takes one Jew to really know another. Conditioned by millennia of
persecution, Jews are paranoid, defensive, and obsessively secretive. It is
impossible for a gentile - whom they hold to be inferior and reflexively
hostile - to penetrate their counsels.
Let us examine anti-Semitic arguments more closely and in an unbiased manner:
Argument number one - Being Jewish is a racial distinction - not only a
religious one." Continue to read the reasoned debate between the Jew and
his hostile detractor here: https://samvak.tripod.com/jews.html
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Schizoids
enjoy nothing and seemingly never experience pleasure (they are anhedonic).
Even their nearest and dearest often describe them as "automata",
"robots", or "machines". But the schizoid is not depressed
or dysphoric, merely indifferent. Schizoids are uninterested in social
relationships and bored or puzzled by interpersonal interactions. They are
incapable of intimacy and have a very limited range of emotions and affect.
Rarely does the schizoid express feelings, either negative (anger) or positive
(happiness). Schizoids never pursue an opportunity to develop a close
relationship. Schizoids are asexual - not interested in sex. Consequently, they
appear cold, aloof, bland, stunted, flat, and "zombie"-like. They
derive no satisfaction from belonging to a close-knit group: family, church,
workplace, neighborhood, or nation. They rarely marry or have children.
Schizoids are loners. Given the option, they invariably pursue solitary
activities or hobbies. Inevitably, they prefer mechanical or abstract tasks and
jobs that require such skills. Many computer hackers, crackers, and programmers
are schizoids, for instance - as are some mathematicians and theoretical
physicists. Schizoids are inflexible in their reactions to changing life
circumstances and developments - both adverse and opportune. Faced with stress
they may disintegrate, decompensate, and experience brief psychotic episodes or
a depressive illness.
Schizoids have few friends or confidants. They trust only first-degree
relatives - but, even so, they maintain no close bonds or associations, not
even with their immediate family.
Schizoids pretend to be indifferent to praise, criticism, disagreement, and
corrective advice (though, deep inside, they are not). They are creatures of
habit, frequently succumbing to rigid, predictable, and narrowly restricted
routines. From the outside, the schizoid's life looks "rudderless"
and adrift.
Some narcissists are also schizoid: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq67.html
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No
woman has ever wanted to have a child with me. In my 57 years, only two
women came close to wanting it - and then withdrew in haste. It is very
telling. Women have children even with incarcerated murderers. I know it
because I did time in prison with these people. Women have children with their
abusers. But not with me: no woman has ever felt the urge to perpetuate US -
the we-ness of she and I.
Women are very hesitant, even my fiance who fled and my 2 wives who agreed to
marry me only after years of begging. Women definitely do not want anything binding
with me. It is as though they want to maintain all routes of escape clear and
available.
Women are curious, even inexorably drawn. But as they inch closer, they sense
the void that I am; the howling abyss where a person should have been; the
abode of death cloaked in the deceptive hallmarks of an ebullient, exuberant,
ostensibly productive life. I am the quintessentially deceptive package, an
awry being, a mental alien in an uncanny carnal outfit.
In women I induce confusion. They are attracted and then repelled by some
essence that they cannot explain, nor name. "He is so unpleasant" -
they say, hesitantly - "He is so... aggressive and disagreeable". My
own girlfriends, paramours, and wives struggled with this fetid, repellent emanation.
They called me “sick” and “creepy” or “damaged goods.” They meant to say that I
am not a healthy person altogether, not all there. They invariably ended up
with other men, cheating, swinging, desperately trying to recoup their molested
self-esteem, feeling rejected and dejected.
The animals we are, women sense my infirmity. I read somewhere that female
birds avoid the sickly males in mating season. I am one sickly bird and they
skirt me with the hurt perplexity of the frustrated. In this modern world of
"what you see is what you get", the narcissist is an exception: false
advertising, a diversion, an android of virtual reality with bug-infested
programming.
Narcissists hate women https://samvak.tripod.com/faq79.html
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The function of bridging the gap between
our idiosyncratic, private languages and a more universal one was relegated to
a group of special individuals called artists.
Theirs is the job to experience (mostly emotions) and to mould their
experiences into the grammar, syntax and vocabulary of a universal language in
order to communicate to us the echo of their own idiosyncratic languages.
Artists are forever mediating between us and their own experiences. Rightly so,
the quality of an artist is measured by his ability to loyally represent his
inner unique language to us. The smaller the distance between the original
experience (the emotion of the artist) and its external representation, the
more prominent the artist.
We declare artistic success when the universally communicable representation
succeeds at recreating and evoking in us the original emotion (felt by the
artist). It is very much like teleportation which allows, in sci-fi yarns, for
the decomposition of the astronaut's body in one spot and its recreation, atom
for atom in another.
Even if the artist fails to faithfully recreate his inner world, but succeeds
in calling forth any kind of emotional response in his
viewers/readers/listeners, he is deemed successful.
Every artist has a reference group, his audience. They could be alive or dead
(for instance, he could measure himself against past artists). They could be
few or many, but they must be present for art, in its fullest sense, to exist.
Modern theories of art speak about the audience as an integral and defining
part of artistic creation and even of the artefact itself.
But this, precisely, is the source of the dilemma of the artist:
Who is to determine who is a good, qualitative artist and who is not?
An attempt to answer this question here: https://samvak.tripod.com/artist.html
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Pathological
narcissism - originally a defense mechanism intended to shield the
narcissist from an injurious world - becomes the main source of hurt, a
generator of injuries, counterproductive and dangerous. Overwhelmed by negative
or absent Narcissistic Supply, the narcissist is forced to let go of it.
The narcissist then resorts to self-delusion. Unable to completely ignore
contrarian opinion and data - he transmutes them. Unable to face the dismal
failure that he is, the narcissist partially withdraws from reality. To soothe and
salve the pain of disillusionment, he administers to his aching soul a mixture
of lies, distortions, half-truths and outlandish interpretations of events
around him.
Read about the FOUR SOLUTIONS to the narcissist's predicament when narcissistic
supply is scarce: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal42.html
I. The Delusional Narrative Solution
II. The Antisocial Solution
III. The Paranoid Schizoid Solution
IV. The Paranoid Aggressive (Explosive) Solution
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Is homosexuality
abnormal, not natural, a human aberration?
Recent studies in animal sexuality serve to dispel two common myths: that sex
is exclusively about reproduction and that homosexuality is an unnatural sexual
preference. It now appears that sex is also about recreation as it frequently
occurs out of the mating season. And same-sex copulation and bonding are common
in hundreds of species, from bonobo apes to gulls.
Moreover, homosexual couples in the Animal Kingdom are prone to behaviors
commonly - and erroneously - attributed only to heterosexuals.
Still, that a certain behavior occurs in nature (is "natural") does
not render it moral. Infanticide, patricide, suicide, gender bias, and
substance abuse - are all to be found in various animal species. It is futile
to argue for homosexuality or against it based on zoological observations.
Ethics is about surpassing nature - not about emulating it.
The more perplexing question remains: what are the evolutionary and biological
advantages of recreational sex and homosexuality? Surely, both entail the waste
of scarce resources.
Read my analysis here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sexnature.html
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Birth
is life's first major trauma. The womb is a self-contained though open (not
self-sufficient) ecosystem. The Baby's Planet is spatially confined, almost
devoid of light and homeostatic. The fetus breathes liquid oxygen, rather than
the gaseous variant. He is subjected to an unending barrage of noises, most of
them rhythmical. Otherwise, there are very few stimuli to elicit any of his
fixed action responses. There, dependent and protected, his world lacks the
most evident features of ours. There are no dimensions where there is no light.
There is no "inside" and "outside", "self" and
"others", "extension" and "main body",
"here" and "there". Our Planet is exactly converse. There
could be no greater disparity. In this sense, the baby is an alien. He has to
train himself and to learn to become human.
To assume that the child is born a "tabula rasa" is superstition.
Cerebral processes and responses have been observed in utero. Sounds condition
the EEG of fetuses. They startle at loud, sudden noises. This means that they
can hear and interpret what they hear. Fetuses even remember stories read to
them and music while in the womb. They prefer these stories and music to others
after they are born. This means that they can tell auditory patterns and
parameters apart. They tilt their head at the direction sounds are coming from.
They do so even in the absence of visual cues (e.g., in a dark room). They can
tell the mother's voice apart. In general, babies are tuned to human speech and
can distinguish sounds better than adults do. Chinese and Japanese babies react
differently to "pa" and to "ba", to "ra" and to
"la". Adults no longer do.
The equipment of the newborn is not limited to the auditory. It has clear smell
and taste preferences (it likes sweet things a lot). It sees the world in three
dimensions with a perspective (a skill which it could not have acquired in the
dark womb). Depth perception is well developed by the sixth month of life.
Much more about the amazing processes of pregnancy and birth: https://samvak.tripod.com/alien.html
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Could official
corruption actually be a GOOD thing?
Corruption runs against the grain of meritocratic capitalism. It skews the
level playing-field; it imposes onerous and unpredictable transaction costs; it
guarantees extra returns where none should have been had; it encourages the
misallocation of economic resources; and it subverts the proper functioning of
institutions. It is, in other words, without a single redeeming feature, a
scourge.
Strangely, this is not how it is perceived by its perpetrators: both the givers
and the recipients. They believe that corruption helps facilitate the flow and
exchange of goods and services in hopelessly clogged and dysfunctional systems
and markets (corruption and the informal economy "get things done"
and "keep people employed"); that it serves as an organizing
principle where chaos reins and institutions are in their early formative
stages; that it supplements income and thus helps the state employ qualified
and skilled personnel; and that it preserves peace and harmony by financing
networks of cronyism, nepotism, and patronage.
Bribes are paid in order to limit choice and eliminate competition.
Consequently, in corrupt environments consumers pay less than optimal prices.
The difference between the competitive price and the new, post-corruption cost
equals the amount of bribe paid in cash or in kind. Corruption amounts to a
unilateral transfer from the consumers's pockets to the manufacturers's. In
times of economic crisis, consumers tend to shop around (in other words: they
prefer price competition and encourage it via their behavior).
Producers/manufacturers tend to collude in order to fix prices. In recessions,
businesses regard consumers as enemies and vice versa: producer-firms court
consumers, but they also seek to limit their choices by "channelling"
their purchases and determining their preferences.
More about venality and corruption here: https://samvak.tripod.com/corruption.html
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Humans
made monsters by inhuman treatment abound in literature.
In "The Man Who Laughs", published in 1869, the French author, Victor
Hugo (1802-1885), described the comprachicos thus:
"The comprachicos (child buyers) were strange and hideous nomads in the 17th century. They made children into sideshow freaks. To succeed in producing a freak one must get hold of him early; a dwarf must be started when he is small. They stunted growth, they mangled features. It was an art/science of inverted orthopedics. Where nature had put a straight glance, this art put a squint. Where nature had put harmony, they put deformity and imperfection. The child was not aware of the mutilation he had suffered. This horrible surgery left traces on his face, not in his mind. During the operation the little patient was unconscious by means of a stupefying magic powder. In China since time immemorial, they have achieved refinement in a special art and industry: the molding of living man. One takes a child two or three years old and puts them into a grotesquely shaped porcelain vase. It is without cover or bottom, so the head and feet protrude. In the daytime the vase is upright, at night it is laid down so the child can sleep. Thus the child slowly fills the contours of the vase with compressed flesh and twisted bones. This bottled development continues for several years. At a certain point, it becomes an irreparable monster. Then the vase is broken and one has a man in the shape of a pot."
The Kyrgyz writer, Chingiz Aitmatov (or
Aytmatov) (1928 - ) recounts in "The Day Lasts More than One Hundred
Years" (1980) the legend of the Ana-Beiit cemetery and the zombies known
as "mankurts". According to tradition, the nomad Zhuan’zhuan, shaved
the heads of the younger and more fit prisoners of war and wrapped their skulls
in raw camel hide. The prisoners were then left to shrivel in the desert's
scorching sun, without food or water. As the caps shrank around their heads,
they perished in terrible agony. The survivors completely lost their memory.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/factoidm.html
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When
you wake the morning,
red headed children shimmer in your eyes.
The veinous map
of sun drenched eyelids
flutters
throbbing topography.
Your muscles ripple.
Scared animals burrow
under your dewey skin.
Frozen light sculptures
where wrinkles dwell.
Embroidered shades,
in thick-maned tapestry.
Your lips depart in scarlet,
flesh to withering flesh,
and breath in curved tranquility
escapes the flaring nostrils.
Your warmth invades my sweat,
your lips leave skin regards
on my humidity.
Eyelashes clash.
More of my poems https://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
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Mikhail Gorbachev wasn't the 1st to
introduce Perestroika: the economic liberalization of the communist system
along capitalistic lines.
During the Russian civil war (1918-1922) the Bolsheviks implemented "War
Communism" (1917-1921), the militarization of the economy. Between
1916-1920, industrial output plunged by more than 80%. Grain harvests in both
1920 and 1921 disastrously dwindled, leading to widespread famine, claiming 5
million lives. A series of rebellions of sailors broke out, most famously in the
Krohnstadt naval base.
To counter the party's loosening grip on power, Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924)
introduced the New
Economic Policy (NEP). Trade was liberalized, as were industrial and
agricultural production. Peasants were allowed to sell surplus produce on the
open market & taxes were made proportional to net output.
In stark departure from communist ideology, farmers could lease land and hire
laborers. The state embarked on an ambitious privatization program of small
& medium-size enterprises, though it maintained control of the finance,
transportation, heavy industry, and foreign trade sectors (the "commanding
heights"). In 1921-2, Lenin re-introduced money to re-monetize the economy
which consisted of barter, quotas, and centrally issued economic directives.
Within less than 7 years, production in many parts of the economy reverted to
pre-revolutionary levels. Nor did the NEP die with Lenin. It continued for 4
years after his death in 1924.
But the policy was not without its faults.
NEP was characterized by inflation and the need to cap the prices of
non-agricultural goods. Peasants hoarded grain for speculation purposes. A
black market in goods was developed by Nepmen - private traders. Communist
party General Secretary Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), reinstated agricultural
production quotas in 1929, collectivized all arable land, and criminalized
private trading in 1930. In 1928, he promulgated the first Five-Year Plan
(1928-1932) and central planning replaced market mechanisms. The NEP was dead.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/factoidn.html
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According
to British law, there were two types of suicide: an act committed by a
person of unsound mind and "felo de se" ("felon upon
himself") - an act of self-destruction committed knowingly and willingly
by a person of sound mind: “A felo-de-se, therefore, is he that deliberately
puts an end to his own existence.”—Blackstone: Commentaries, book iv. chap.
xiv. p. 189. But killing oneself inadvertently, while trying to kill another,
is also considered felo-de-se: “If one commits any unlawful malicious act, the
consequence of which is his own death, as if attempting to kill another he runs
upon his antagonist’s sword, or shooting at another the gun bursts and kills
himself.” Prior to 1870, the estate of a feb-de-se - except his land - reverted
to the crown. The relatives could redeem the chattels and goods for a fee. The
body was subjected to an “ignominious burial on the highway, with a stake
driven through the body.” The Burial Act of 1823 forbade such practices and
ordered to bury the feb-de-se within 24 hours after the coroner's inquest,
between 9 PM and midnight, and without Christian last rites.
The Interments act of 1882 permitted to inter the culprit in a churchyard or
parish burial grounds, again without rites - though a special kind of rite was
allowed.
British law did not cross the ocean. Thus, William Penn included this clause in
the charter of privileges he granted to the inhabitants of Pennsylvania:
"If any person, through temptation or melancholy, shall destroy himself,
his estate, real and personal, shall notwithstanding, descend to his wife and
children, or relations, as if he had died a natural death." More: https://samvak.tripod.com/factoids.html
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The "winter
blues" are supposed to cause suicidal ideation. There is even a mental
health syndrome called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), supposedly alleviated
by bright light therapy (therapy using artificial sources emulating daylight).
But suicide rates are HIGHEST in the spring and summer months. They are LOWEST
in winter. The propensity to commit suicide INCREASES with increasing hours of
daylight. It is not correlated with any other meteorological variable, such as
rainfall or temperature.
Suicide rates appeared to increase with increasing hours of daylight, and
showed no connection to other meteorological factors such as changing
temperature or rainfall.
Surprisingly , sunlight is known to indirectly induce heightened brain levels
of serotonin, a biochemical inversely linked to depression. The lower the
levels - the deeper the depressive episode. Serotonin drops during winter
months.
It seems that suicide has nothing to do with depression! Depressed people do
not commit suicide - they are too busy being their depressed selves.
If suicide were caused by depression, suicide rates would have been HIGHEST in
winter - when serotonin is lowest and depression rates are highest. But suicide
peaks in spring and summer.
Depression is a biochemical illness. One can feel hopelessness and helplessness
to the point of committing suicide WITHOUT being clinically depressed.
It is this feeling that is very dangerous: that there is no satisfactory
solution, no way out, that one is helpless, trapped. Of course it is SHEER
NONSENSE. There is always a way out and a solution. Always!
SOURCE: American Journal of Psychiatry 2003;160:793-795.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some narcissists seek to imitate or even
emulate their (ever changing) role models. It is as if by imitating the object
of his envy, the narcissist BECOMES that object. So, narcissists are likely
to adopt their boss' typical gestures, the vocabulary of a successful
politician, the views of an esteemed tycoon, even the countenance and actions
of the (fictitious) hero of a movie or a novel.
In his pursuit of peace of mind, in his frantic effort to alleviate the burden
of consuming jealousy, the narcissist often deteriorates to conspicuous and
ostentatious consumption, impulsive and reckless behaviours and substance
abuse.
Other narcissists "choose" to destroy the object that gives them so
much grief by provoking in them feelings of inadequacy and frustration. They
display obsessive, blind animosity and engage in a compulsive acts of rivalry
often at the cost of self-destruction and self-isolation.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistjealous.html
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I published this a few weeks after
9-11-2001, long before the ascent of Trump: "The United
States of America started out as a series of loosely connected, remote,
savage, and negligible colonial outposts. The denizens of these settlements
were former victims of religious persecution, indentured servants, lapsed
nobility, & other refugees. Their Declaration of Independence reads like a
maudlin list of grievances coupled with desperate protestations of love &
loyalty to their abuser, the King of Britain.
The inhabitants of the colonies defended against their perceived helplessness
& very real inferiority with compensatory, imagined, and feigned
superiority and fantasies of omnipotence and exceptionalism.
The United States was (until the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s) and still
is, a pre-Enlightenment, white supremacist society. It is rife with
superstition, prejudice, conspicuous religiosity, intolerance, philistinism,
and lack of social solidarity. Its religiosity is overt, aggressive, virulent
and ubiquitous. It is replete with an eschatology, which involves a changing
cast of demonized "enemies", both political and cultural.
In fact, America's ascendance over the British Empire owes a lot to the fact
that its social reforms lagged one century behind Britain's. This licence to
profiteer and exploit its slaves and laborers gave the United States a
competitive edge it has yet to amortize.
Americans' religion is a manifestation of their "Chosen People
Syndrome". They are missionary, messianic, zealous, fanatical, and
nauseatingly self-righteous, bigoted, & hypocritical. This is especially
discernible in the double-speak & double-standard that underlies American
foreign policy.
Narcissism is frequently comorbid with paranoia. Americans cultivate &
nurture a siege mentality which leads to violent acting out & unbridled
jingoism. Their persecutory delusions sit well with their adherence to social
Darwinism (natural selection of the fittest, let the weaker fall by the
wayside, might is right, etc.)"
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp112.html
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If you want to read ONLY ONE TEXT to
capture the essence
of the narcissist, read Ken Heilbrunn's insightful and magisterial
introduction to "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited" by Sam
Vaknin written back in 1999 when no one even heard of narcissism!
Read the full text here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/kenintro.html
"Hello. Recognise me? No? Well, you
see me all the time. You read my books, watch me on the big screen, feast on my
art, cheer at my games, use my inventions, vote me into office, follow me into
battle, take notes at my lectures, laugh at my jokes, marvel at my successes,
admire my appearance, listen to my stories, discuss my politics, enjoy my
music, excuse my faults, envy me my blessings. No? Still doesn't ring a bell?
Well, you have seen me. Of that I am positive. In fact, if there is one thing I
am absolutely sure of, it is that. You have seen me.
Perhaps our paths crossed more privately. Perhaps I am the one who came along
and built you up when you were down, employed you when you needed a job, showed
the way when you were lost, offered confidence when you were doubting, made you
laugh when you were blue, sparked your interest when you were bored, listened
to you and understood, saw you for what you really are, felt your pain and
found the answers, made you want to be alive. Of course you recognise me. I am
your inspiration, your role model, your saviour, your leader, your best friend,
the one you aspire to emulate, the one whose favour makes you glow.
But I can also be your worst nightmare. First I build you up because that's
what you need. Your skies are blue. Then, out of the blue, I start tearing you
down. You let me do it because that's what you are used to. You are dumfounded.
But I was wrong to take pity on you. You really ARE incompetent, disrespectful,
untrustworthy, immoral, ignorant, inept, egotistical, constrained, disgusting.
You are a social embarrassment, an unappreciative partner, an inadequate
parent, a disappointment, a sexual flop, a financial liability."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Arabs
in Palestine have equal rights to the Jews and an Arab engineer is one of
the leaders of the new society. A rabbi who runs for office on a platform of
Jewish nationalist chauvinism is defeated.
But these are the exceptions.
In "Altneuland" (translated to Hebrew as "Tel Aviv"), the
feverish tome composed by Theodore Herzl, Judaism's improbable visionary and
the founder of Zionism, the author refers to the Arabs ("negroes",
who have nothing to lose and everything to gain from the Jewish process of
colonization) as pliant and compliant butlers, replete with gloves and
tarbushes ("livery"). The country is sparsely populated and
underdeveloped.
In the book, German Jews prophetically land at Haifa, the only port in
erstwhile Palestine. They are welcomed and escorted by "Briticized"
Arab ("negro") gentlemen's gentlemen who are only too happy to assist
their future masters and colonizers to disembark.
Frequently, when religious or ethnic minorities attempted to assimilate
themselves within the majority, the latter reacted by spawning racist theories
and perpetrating genocide.
More about relationships between minorities and majorities in modern nation
states: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp27.html
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They say that the Present
is an illusion, comprised as it is of half a moment of Past and half a
moment of Future. In the last two days I feel that I have lost my entire past -
and my whole future. I am suspended in an emulsion of permanent Present, an
overweight insect caught in the amber of here and now.
We not only inhabit dreams - we ARE dreams. Some of these spectres are
retroactive, other prospective. But Man can survive without food or drink or
even air for a while. Take away his dreams and he dies forthwith, shrivels and
withers, and crumbles into a pile of dust and howling winds, a deserted abode,
a defiled shrine.
And so at present I eat and post on Instagram and listen to the news. An
automaton, the shell of Sam, a zombie in my image. Going through the motions,
the spirit long departed.
I know from a lifelong of searing losses that I will dissociate away my pain,
immerse myself in the ambrosia of amnesia, turn off all residual emotions until
I emerge triumphant from this trial by abandonment again a man of steel, the
impervious robot that I used to be before my life began. I will prevail.
Survive. Resurge. Return. Be Present.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In 1996 I published a series of prescient
essays about the future
of the Internet in the Israeli (Hebrew) edition of PC Magazine. The
Internet was in its infancy, its formative epoch. I have left the text
essentially unchanged, except for a few minor errata I corrected. I find time
travel fascinating. It is interesting to recall the mainstream view, twenty-odd
years ago, about the Internet, its goals, its role, and its future. So, here
goes, translated by yours truly to English:
https://samvak.tripod.com/internet.html
"As far as
content is concerned, the Internet cannot be currently defined as a medium. It
does not function as one - rather it is a very disordered library, mostly
incorporating the writings of non-distinguished megalomaniacs. It is the
ultimate narcissistic experience. The forceful entry of publishing houses and
content aggregators is changing this dismal landscape, though.
Ever since the invention of television there hasn't been anything as begging to
become a medium as the Internet.
Three analogies spring to mind when contemplating the Internet in its current
state:
1. A chaotic library
2. A neural network or the latter day equivalent of previous networks
(telegraph, telephony, railways)
3. A new continent
These metaphors prove to be very useful (even business-wise). They permit us to
define the commercial opportunities embedded in the Internet."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Skopje
is a city of extremes. Its winter is harsh in shades of white and grey. Its
summer is naked and steamy and effulgent. It pulses throughout the year in
smoke-filled, foudroyant bars and dingy coffee-houses. Polydipsic youths in
migratory skeins, eager to be noted by their peers, young women on the hunt,
ageing man keen to be preyed upon, suburbanites in search of recognition, gold
chained mobsters surrounded by flaxen voluptuousness - the cast of the watering
holes of this potholed eruption of a city.
The trash seems never to be collected here, the streets are perilously
punctured, policemen often substitute for dysfunctional traffic lights. The
Macedonians drive like the Italians, gesture like the Jews, dream like the
Russians, are obstinate like the Serbs, desirous like the French and hospitable
like the Bedouins. It is a magical concoction, coated in the subversive
patience & the aggressive passivity of the long oppressed. There is the
wisdom of fear itself in the eyes of the 600,000 inhabitants of this
landlocked, mountain-surrounded habitat. Never certain of their future, still
grappling with their identity, an air of "carpe diem" with the most
solemn religiosity of the devout.
The past lives on and flows into the present seamlessly. People recount the
history of every stone, recite the antecedents of every man. They grieve
together, rejoice in common and envy en masse. A single organism with many
heads, it offers the comforts of assimilation and solidarity & the horrors
of violated privacy and bigotry. The people of this conurbation may have left
the village - but it never let them go. They are the opsimaths of urbanism.
Their rural roots are everywhere: in the the division of the city into
tight-knit, local-patriotic "settlements". In the traditional
marriages and funerals. In the scarcity of divorces despite the desperate
shortage in accommodation. In the asphyxiating but oddly reassuring familiarity
of faces, places, behaviour and beliefs, superstitions, dreams &
nightmares. Life in a distended tempo of birth and death & in between.
Skopje as I see it: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp57.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A quintessential loser, an out-of-job
puppeteer, is hired by a firm, whose offices are ensconced in a half floor
(literally. The ceiling is about a metre high, reminiscent of Taniel's
hallucinatory Alice in Wonderland illustrations). By sheer accident, he
discovers a tunnel (a "portal", in Internet-age parlance), which
sucks its visitors into the mind of the celebrated actor, John
Malkovich. The movie is a tongue in cheek discourse of identity, gender and
passion in an age of languid promiscuity. It poses all the right metaphysical
riddles and presses the viewers' intellectual stimulation buttons.
A two line bit of dialogue, though, forms the axis of this nightmarishly
chimerical film. John Malkovich (played by himself), enraged and bewildered by
the unabashed commercial exploitation of the serendipitous portal to his mind,
insists that Craig, the aforementioned puppet master, cease and desist with his
activities. "It is MY brain" - he screams and, with a typical
American finale, "I will see you in court". Craig responds:
"But, it was I who discovered the portal. It is my livelihood". This
apparently innocuous exchange disguises a few very unsettling ethical dilemmas.
Read about them here: https://samvak.tripod.com/being.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I
have no roots. I have lived in rented hovels most of my life. I avoided
intimacy in my marriages, converting my loving spouses into abusive roommates.
I have no children, no driving licence, few clothes.
I was born in Israel but had left it many times and now have been away for 22
years. I haven't seen my parents since 1996. I have met my niece and a nephew
for the first and only time a decade ago. I haven't been in touch with any of
my "friends". I haven't exchanged one additional word with my ex
after we split up. I - an award winning author - am slowly forgetting my
Hebrew. I do not celebrate any nation's holidays or festivals. I do not pay
taxes in any country. I stay away from groups and communities. I wonder, an
itinerant lone wolf. I was born in the Middle East, I write about east Europe
and my audience is mostly American.
This reads like a typical profile of the modern expatriate professional the
world over - but it is not. It is not a temporary suspension of self-identity,
of group-identity, of location, of mother tongue and of one's social circle. In
my case, I have nowhere to go back to. I either burn the bridges or keep
walking. I never look back. I detach and vanish.
I am not sure why I behave this way. I like to travel and I like to travel
light. On the way, in between places, in the twilight zone of neither here nor
there and not now - I feel like I am unburdened. I do not need to - indeed, I
cannot - secure Narcissistic Supply. My obscurity and anonymity are excused
("I am a stranger here", "I just arrived"). I can relax and
take refuge from my inner tyranny and from the anxious depletion of energy that
is my existence as a narcissist.
I love freedom. With no possessions, devoid of all attachments, to fly away, to
be carried, to explore, to not be me. It is the ultimate depersonalisation.
Only then do I feel real. Sometimes I wish I were so rich that I could afford
to travel incessantly, without ever stopping. I guess it sounds like escaping
and avoiding oneself. I guess it is.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistroots.html
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Do
Aliens (extraterrestrial beings) exist and can we communicate with them? If
they do and we can, how come we never encountered an extraterrestrial, let
alone spoken to or corresponded with one?
There are six basic explanations to this apparent conundrum and they are not
mutually exclusive: (1) That Aliens do not exist; (2) That the technology they
use is far too advanced to be detected by us and, the flip side of this
hypothesis, that the technology we use is insufficiently advanced to be noticed
by them; (3) That we are looking for extraterrestrials in the wrong places; (4)
That the Aliens are life forms so different to us that we fail to recognize
them as sentient beings or to communicate with them; (5) That Aliens are trying
to communicate with us but constantly fail due to a variety of hindrances, some
structural and some circumstantial; (6) That they are avoiding us because of
our misconduct (example: the alleged destruction of the environment) or because
of our traits (for instance, our innate belligerence).
Before we proceed to tackle these
arguments, we need to consider two crucial issues: (1) How can we tell the
artificial from the natural? How can we be sure to distinguish Alien artefacts
from naturally-occurring objects? How can we tell apart with certainty Alien
languages from random noise or other natural signals? (2) If we have absolutely
nothing in common with the Aliens, can we still recognize them as intelligent
life forms and maintain an exchange of meaningful information with them?
Answers here: https://samvak.tripod.com/seti.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The irony is that narcissists, who consider
themselves worldly, discerning, knowledgeable, shrewd, erudite, and astute -
are actually more gullible
than the average person. This is because they are fake. Their self is false,
their life a confabulation, their reality test gone. They live in a fantasy
land all their own in which they are the center of the universe, admired,
feared, held in awe, and respected for their omnipotence and omniscience.
Narcissists are prone to magical thinking. They hold themselves immune to the
consequences of their actions (or inaction) and, therefore, beyond punishment
and the laws of Man. Narcissists are easily persuaded to assume unreasonable
risks and expect miracles to happen. They often find themselves on the
receiving end of investment scams, for instance.
Narcissists feel entitled to money, power, and honors incommensurate with their
accomplishments or toil. The world, or God, or the nation, or society, or their
families, co-workers, employers, even neighbors owe them a trouble-free,
exalted, and luxurious existence. They are rudely shocked when they are
penalized for their misconduct or when their fantasies remain just that.
The narcissist believes that he is destined to greatness - or at least the easy
life. He wakes up every morning fully ready for a fortuitous stroke of luck.
That explains the narcissist's reckless behaviors and his lazed lack of
self-discipline. It also explains why is so easily duped.
By playing on the narcissist's grandiosity and paranoia, it is possible to
deceive and manipulate him effortlessly. Just offer him Narcissistic Supply -
admiration, affirmation, adulation - and he is yours. Harp on his insecurities
and his persecutory delusions - and he is likely to trust only you and cling to
you for dear life. Both paranoia and grandiosity impair the narcissist’s
reality test and lead to the erection of complex and wasteful defences against
non-existent threats.
Narcissists attract abuse: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal68.html
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Narcissists cheat on their spouses, commit adultery and have extramarital affairs and liaisons for a variety of reasons which reflect disparate psychodynamic processes:
1. In the quest for narcissistic supply, the somatic narcissist resorts to serial sexual conquests.
2. Narcissists are easily bored (they have a low boredom threshold) and they have a low tolerance for boredom. Sexual dalliances alleviate this nagging and frustrating ennui. The quest for novelty, diversions, and thrills – a vacation from his own life - is combined with a journey of self-exploration and discovery that involves “filling in the gaps” in the narcissist’s biography: a missed adolescence, an old flame, a new aspect of his personality.
3. Narcissists maintain an island and focus of stability in their life, but all the other dimensions of their existence are chaotic, unstable, and unpredictable. This "twister" formation serves many emotional needs which I expound upon elsewhere. Thus, a narcissist may be a model employee and pursue a career path over decades even as he cheats on his wife and fritters their savings away.
4. Narcissists feel superior and important and so entitled to be above the law and to engage in behaviors that are frowned upon and considered socially unacceptable in others. They reject and vehemently resent all limitations and conditions placed upon them by their partners. They act on their impulses and desires unencumbered by social conventions and strictures.
5. Marriage, monogamy, and child-bearing
and rearing are common activities that characterize the average person. The
narcissist feels robbed of his uniqueness by these pursuits and coerced into
the relationship and into roles - such as a husband and a father - that reduce
him to the lowest of common denominators. This narcissistic injury leads him to
rebel and reassert his superiority and specialness by maintaining extramarital
affairs.
Other reasons why narcissists cheat: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq29.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inevitably, the sexual
fantasy life of narcissists and psychopaths reflects their psychodynamic
landscape: their fear of intimacy, misogyny, control freakiness,
auto-eroticism, latent sadism and masochism, problems of gender identity, and
various sexual paraphilias.
Fantasies which reflect a fear of intimacy involve the aggressive or violent
objectification of a faceless, nameless, and sometimes sexless person, often in
impersonal, alien or foreign settings (example: narratives of rape.) These
usually coalesce with misogynistic erotic storylines in which females are humiliated,
coerced into hurtful submission, and subjected to violation and degradation by
one or many. Where sadism-masochism, homosexuality, or sexual paraphilias such
as pedophilia are present, they are injected into the fantasy and colour its
composition and progression.
In his fantasies, the narcissist or psychopath is always in unmitigated control
of the environment. The assemblages of bodies and limbs which populate his
daydreams – his body included - are minutely choreographed to yield maximum
titillation. He is like an exhibitionistic and voyeuristic porn director with
an endless supply of well-endowed actors either cowed into compliance or
craving it. Naturally, the narcissist’s fantasies are devoid of any performance
anxiety or of the need to reciprocate in the sex act by pleasing his anonymous
and robotic partners. Such imaginarium invariably leads to acts of
self-stimulation, the ultimate manifestations of auto-eroticism. Even when the
narcissist incorporates his real-life partner in his fantasies, he is bound to
treat her as a mere prop, a body to masturbate with, in, or on, or an object to
be “defiled” in acts such as group sex, swinging (wife-swapping), or outright
sexual deviance (examples: urophilia, or coprophilia.) This crude & overt
denigration serves to render her a “slut”, or a “whore” in his mind, the kind
of woman with whom he can have lustful, emotion-free sex.
More about the narcissist's fantasy sex life: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq29.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
New Order one world government, Zionist and
Jewish cabals, Catholic, black, yellow, or red subversion, the machinations
attributed to the freemasons and the illuminati - all flourished yet again from
the 1970's onwards. Paranoid speculations reached frenzied nadirs following the
deaths of celebrities, such as "Princess Di". Books like "The Da
Vinci Code" (which deals with an improbable Catholic conspiracy to erase
from history the true facts about the fate of Jesus) sell millions of copies
worldwide.
But there is more to conspiracy
theories than mass psychology. It is also big business. Voluntary
associations such as the Ku Klux Klan and the John Birch Society are past their
heyday. But they still gross many millions of dollars a year.
It is impossible to tell how many people feed off the paranoid frenzy of the
lunatic fringe. I found more than 7000 lecturers on these subjects listed by
the Google search engine alone. Even assuming a conservative schedule of one
lecture a month with a modest fee of $250 per appearance - we are talking about
an industry of c. $20 million.
More about the multi-billion dollars industry of conspiracy theories here: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp132.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Irish voters opted in a referendum to allow
abortion.
They authorized their parliament to rescind the 8th amendment to the
constitution which forbids the medical procedure.
The issue of abortion is emotionally loaded and this often makes for poor, not
thoroughly thought out arguments.
The questions: "Is abortion immoral" and "Is abortion a
murder" are often confused. The pregnancy (and the resulting fetus) are
discussed in terms normally reserved to natural catastrophes (force majeure).
At times, the embryo is compared to cancer, a thief, or an invader: after all,
both cancers and fetuses are growths, clusters of cells. The difference, of
course, is that no one contracts cancer willingly (except, to some extent,
smokers – but, then they gamble, not contract). When a woman engages in
voluntary sex, does not use contraceptives and gets pregnant – one can say that
she signed a contract with her fetus.
A contract entails the demonstrated existence of a reasonably (and reasonable)
free will. If the fulfillment of the obligations in a contract between
individuals could be life-threatening – it is fair and safe to assume that no
rational free will was involved. No reasonable person would sign or enter such
a contract with another person (though most people would sign such contracts
with society). Much more serious problems arise when we study the other party
to these implicit agreements: the embryo. To start with, it lacks consciousness
(in the sense that is needed for signing an enforceable and valid contract).
Can a contract be valid even if one of the "signatories" lacks this
sine qua non trait (sentience)? In the absence of consciousness, there is
little point in talking about free will (or rights which depend on sentience).
So, is the contract not a contract at all? Does it not reflect the intentions
of the parties?
Arguments for and against abortion here: https://samvak.tripod.com/abort.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fantasy
is a psychological defense mechanism: "One day I will (divorce my spouse,
make millions, move to live in ...)". Fantasy has many functions: to avoid
a painful or disagreeable (ego-dystonic) reality; to rehearse, plan, and
prepare for possible futures founded on strong wishes or desires (including of
a sexual nature); to escape into imaginative daydreaming and render life more
pleasant; to act as an organizing principle with explanatory power; to
compensate for lacks and deficiencies in oneself (narcissistic compensatory
fantasy) or in one's life; and so on.
It is generally true that fantasy is a substitute for action. He who fantasizes
rarely acts and she who acts rarely talks. To fantasize is to procrastinate and
fantasies often include elements of unattainable perfectionism and unrealistic
goals, narratives, and scenarios precisely in order to justify and account for
such inaction. Often people conjure up conditional fantasies: "I will (do
that or be there) IF (certain usually difficult or impossible conditions) are
met." The conditions thus imposed ascertain that the fantasy can never be
realized.
Some people have made fantasy their main realm of existence and their
overriding preoccupation. Society affords such individuals socially-sanctioned
outlets: they can write fiction or make films. But the majority of fantasists
lose touch with reality and rapidly descend and degenerate into
psychopathological states such as narcissism or paranoia. Some people fantasize
precisely in order to transcend or flee social inhibitions, constraints, or
mores. Some paraphilias - such as pedophilia and fetishism - and some sexual
practices emanate from powerful conscious fantasies.
More about grandiose fantasies: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq3.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The mentally
ill form dyads or couples. Pathologies attract each and other and resonate
in alliances of pain, fused relationships.
Such partnerships are suffused with torment: the mentally ill spouses or
intimate partners engage in mutually hurtful conduct. It is also heartbreaking
to watch your loved one's inexorable decline.
Gradually, the parties settle on coping strategies that are either
"approach" or "avoidance" oriented.
The "approach" strategies include active denial of the problem often
via a shared psychosis which renders the mental illness something to espouse,
encourage, or be proud of.
Another strategy involves enabling. The enabler collaborates with the mentally
sick partner so as to accommodate his or her disability.
Sometimes one of the partners assumes the role and mantle of guru, teacher,
coach, guide, or father or mother. He or she suppresses dissent and re-molds
the mentally ill partner to conform to some ideal. This could involve harsh or
even sadistic criticism and humiliation on a daily basis as well as
intermittent reinforcement.
But more often the mentally ill members of the dyad end up avoiding each other
and the pain that they cause one another. This hurt aversion leads to extreme
estrangement and cruel disengagement. Being ignored and neglected results in
decompensation and acting out. The mentally ill partner tries to provoke
attention and punish his or her avoidant counterpart by engaging in promiscuous
and reckless behaviors.
In extreme cases the wayward partner internalizes and accepts the harsh
judgment of her significant other. This can lead to major depressive episodes,
psychotic disorders, and suicide.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I
hate routine. I always start off with a volcanic burst of promising and
irresistible energy - only to let down people who trusted me and followed my
leadership, succumbing to my misleading, goal-oriented charisma. I leave a
trail of embittered, bewildered, and disappointed people in my wake.
When I find myself doing the same things over and over again, I get depressed,
impossibly lazy, and inert. I oversleep, over-eat, over-drink and, in general,
engage in addictive, impulsive, compulsive, self-destructive and self-defeating
behaviours. This is my way of re-introducing risk and excitement into what I
(emotionally) perceive to be a barren life, the repetitive wastelend of
routine.
The problem is that even the most exciting and varied existence becomes rote
after a while. Living in the same country or apartment, meeting the same
people, doing essentially the same things (though with changing content) all
"qualify" as stultifying recursivity. I prefer fantasy to action. It
is much more varied.
I feel entitled to more. I feel it is my right - due to my intellectual
superiority - to lead a thrilling, rewarding, kaleidoscopic life. I feel
entitled to force life itself, or, at least, people around me - to yield to my
wishes and needs, supreme among them the need for stimulating variety.
This rejection of habit is part of a larger pattern of aggressive entitlement.
I feel that the very existence of a sublime intellect (such as myself) warrants
concessions and allowances. Standing in line is a waste of time best spent
pursuing knowledge, inventing and creating. I should avail myself of the best
medical treatment proffered by the most prominent medical authorities - lest
the asset that is I be lost to Mankind. I should not be bothered with
proofreading my articles (or even re-reading them) - these lowly jobs best be
assigned to the less gifted. The devil is in paying precious attention to
details.
More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal10.html
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Life
forces us to play the odds. Sometimes we have to place all our chips on a
single number to recoup our past losses. The casino always has the advantage
over us: whether we are cautious players or reckless ones, we still end up
bankrupt when dawn breaks.
Ask your elders and be told invariably:
The only stable thing is change.
The only certain thing is death.
The only predictable thing is the unforeseen. You cannot time your bets because
although you know a lot about the past and some things about the present, you
know nothing about the future.
So, do more living and a lot less planning and scheming and hedging. In the
long run all your stratagems will come to naught.
To claim "I had no choice" is to make a choice to see no options and
contemplate no alternatives. It is cowardice disguised as rationality.
Successful people are merely lucky, not superior. They know that to distrust is
wise, to indiscriminately suspect is folly. They realize that fear and caution
are good advisors but bad managers. They discover early on that there is
nothing that better serves their interests than selfless empathy, love,
compassion, and giving.
He who avoids risks at all costs ends up paying the highest price for his
reticence and paranoia.
She who insists on ironclad guarantees prior to any commitment dooms herself to
paralysis and finds herself committed to doom.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The majority of women in the world still
live in male-dominated
patriarchal societies replete with sex aversion, male chauvinism &
misogyny.
Such a societal mindset is the effluence of backward religiosity, oppressive
economic & legal circumstances, and, in some parts of the globe, a
numerical surplus of women over men.
Women in such environments encounter the same problems as women everywhere:
loveless & sexless marriages, pay gaps, glass ceilings, sexual harassment,
& economic hardship. They react in largely the same ways: they resort to
lovers, for example. Or they enter the workforce. Or they focus on their
offspring.
But there are major differences, too: women in patriarchal societies are fierce
supporters and defenders of the social order and its attendant values of male
superiority. Men are expected to be the primary providers, the sole
decision-makers, the leaders. Women are eminences grise: the power behind the
throne and behind the scenes. Western mores and solutions to inter-gender
problems are frowned upon as both decadent & unworkable, destructive &
dangerous.
In traditionalist cultures, women channel their rebellion and are
passive-aggressive & manipulative rather than being openly defiant. In such
societies men initiate divorces, not women. By comparison, in the West most
divorces are the initiative of disgruntled & disheartened women.
Even women who maintain long-term extramarital affairs will bear children only
to their estranged, alienated, hateful, and hated husbands. Most businesses are
family owned. The family - however dysfunctional - is sacred, an organizing
principle, & renders life itself meaningful.
So, most women in these backward communities lead double lives. They have a
hidden, occult inner world to which they retreat. They are unhealthily and
incestuously obsessed with their children. Homo-eroticism between women is rife
& rampant. Some of these women find love with other men but never as viable
options or substitutes to husband or family. They lead compartmentalized, sad -
indeed, tragic - lives.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Those scarred by economic and financial
traumas let
money dictate their lives. In the pursuit of safety and luxury they
sacrifice love, happiness, and self-actualization. Money also provides an
escape hatch akin to the oblivion afforded by drugs. In time, profligacy
becomes an addiction.
For some people money makes life meaningful and reifies its sense: moneymaking
provides a reason to get up in the morning. Money is an explanatory and
organizing principle which renders the world and human actions comprehensible.
Money helps regulate one's sense of self-worth: it is a measure of how much one
is appreciated and loved.
Possessing money is a shorthand testament to one's natural endowments, acquired
skills, sagacious and perspicacious choices, Darwinian fitness, and even moral
righteousness.
People feel that they deserve to have earned their money. If they end up
wealthy by some coincidence or stroke of luck, it is proof that both the gods
and the Universe favor them, that they have been singled out. Money is,
therefore, a form of quantifiable narcissistic supply and an utterly bias-free
ranking algorithm: alpha makes make more money than their beta brethren.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Depression
is a big component in the narcissist's emotional make-up. But it mostly has
to do with the absence of Narcissistic Supply, with nostalgia to more plentiful
days, full of adoration and attention and applause. It occurs after the
narcissist has depleted or had lost his Secondary Source of Narcissistic Supply
(his lover, spouse, mate, girlfriend, colleagues) - his external memory - and
thus the ability to "replay" his days of glory. Some narcissists even
cry - but they cry exclusively for themselves and for their lost paradise. And
they do so conspicuously and publicly to attract attention.
The narcissist is a human pendulum hanging by the thread of the void that is
his False Self. He swings between brutal and vicious abrasiveness - and
mellifluous, saccharine sentimentality. It is all a simulacrum. A
verisimilitude. A facsimile. Enough to fool the casual observer. Enough to
extract the drug - other people's glances - the reflection that sustains this
house of cards somehow.
But the stronger and more rigid the defenses - and nothing is more resilient
than narcissism - the bigger and deeper the hurt they aim to compensate for.
One's narcissism stands in direct relation to the seething abyss and the
devouring vacuum that one harbors in one's True Self.
I know it's there. I catch glimpses of it when I am tired, when I hear music,
when reminded of an old friend, a scene, a sight, a smell. I know it is awake
when I am asleep. I know that it subsists of pain - diffuse and inescapable. I
know my sadness. I have lived with it and I have encountered it full force.
Perhaps I choose narcissism, as I have been "accused". And if I do,
it is a rational choice of self-preservation and survival. The paradox is that
being a self-loathing narcissist may be the only act of self-love I have ever
committed.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We are surrounded
with malignant narcissists. How come this disorder has hitherto been largely
ignored? How come there is such a dearth of research and literature regarding
this crucial family of pathologies? Even mental health practitioners are
woefully unaware of it and unprepared to assist its victims.
The sad answer is that narcissism meshes well with our culture [see: https://samvak.tripod.com/lasch.html
]. It is kind of a "background cosmic radiation", permeating every
social and cultural interaction. It is hard to distinguish pathological
narcissists from self-assertive, self-confident, self-promoting, eccentric,
ambitious, or highly individualistic persons. Hard sell, greed, envy,
self-centredness, exploitativeness, diminished empathy are all socially
condoned features of Western civilization.
Our society is atomized, the outcome of malignant individualism gone awry. It
encourages and rewards narcissistic leadership and role models: https://samvak.tripod.com/15.html
Its sub-structures - institutionalized religion, political parties, civic organizations, the media, corporations - are all suffused with narcissism and pervaded by its pernicious outcomes: https://samvak.tripod.com/14.html
The very ethos of materialism and capitalism upholds and extols certain narcissistic traits, such as reduced empathy, exploitation, a sense of entitlement, or grandiose fantasies ("vision"). More about this here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal37.html
Narcissists are aided, abetted and
facilitated by four types of people and institutions: the adulators, the
blissfully ignorant, the self-deceiving and those deceived by the narcissist.
More about these supporters of narcissists here: https://samvak.tripod.com/journal62.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Abandonment
(separation) anxiety is the outcome of object inconstancy: the infantile
belief that the physical absence of a love object is forever and portends an
imminent emotional absence. This is why a baby cries when mommy leaves the
room: it catastrophizes. The inner narrative of doom is: mommy will never
return, she will not love me anymore, and, consequently, I am bound to die.
“Normal” people sublimate urges,drives, powerful emotions, and attendant
anxieties: they redirect the energy into other activities (sports, writing,
gardening, and so on). Adults with mental health disorders react to abandonment
anxiety in two major ways:
Codependents and Borderlines (people who suffer from Dependent or Borderline
personality disorders) cling. They seek to micromanage and control significant
figures in their lives with emotional blackmail, labile drama, modulated
aggression, or outright bribes (sex, money, power). "I cannot live without
you" is the manipulative battlecry of such personalities.
Narcissists and psychopath dissociate. They mentally delete the source of
frustration, anxiety, discomfort, and threat. They avoid emotional depth and
continuity. Shallow or flat affect and no emotional investment guarantee little
to no pain when they are abandoned or separated. They simply move on to the
next partner or sexualize their anxiety and frustration by becoming
promiscuous. The saying "out of sight, out of mind" must have been
coined by a psychopath.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My
interview for the WNAAD Telesummit 2018 was not broadcast and is not made
available to listeners. It is a bit like patricide: ironic that I coined the
phrase "narcissistic abuse" and started the whole narcissism
awareness movement online back in 1995 - and now the organizers of this for
profit event suppress and censor what I have to say.
Why did they do it? They won't say. They have also ignored all my requests to
provide me with a recording of my interview. They did not bother to inform me
that my interview will not be streamed online. They did not even apologize
until after I wrote to them an email titled: "A Primer in Courtesy and
Civility". I do not think anyone should decide for you what you should be
listening to and reading. Censorship is the exact opposite of empowerment.
If you want to listen to my one hour interview write to the organizers or call
them and let them know:
BREE breelcsw@gmail.com
ATHENA
athena@athenamoberg.com
CALL from outside the USA +1 808 283 1231
CALL from inside the USA
1 808 283 1231
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Every few years, I lose
the woman in my life. Weighed down by my broken fantasies, sadistic abuse,
control freakery, mood swings, & insistent grandiosity, my women invariably
walk out on me. Literally. They spend most of their time away from me, end up
with other men, divorce me, or abandon me and return to the life they had
before I sucked them into my demented maelstrom. Even those women who choose to
not let go of our togetherness, make it a point to retreat into a parallel,
hidden, Sam-free realm.
Narcissists are accustomed to loss. Their obnoxious personality &
intolerable behaviours, delusional fantasies, peripatetic nature &
instability make them lose lovers, friends & spouses, mates &
colleagues, jobs & family, their place of residence, property, businesses,
country, & language.
There is always a locus of loss in the narcissist's life. He may be faithful to
his wife & a model family man - but then he is likely to change jobs
frequently & renege on his financial & social obligations. Or, he may
be a brilliant achiever with a steady, long term and successful career - but a
lousy homemaker, thrice divorced & unfaithful.
In time, the narcissist develops defence mechanisms against the inevitable pain
& hurt he incurs with every loss & defeat. He ensconces himself in an
ever thicker skin, an impenetrable shell, a make belief environment in which
his sense of in-bred superiority & entitlement is preserved. He appears
indifferent to the most harrowing and agonizing experiences, inhuman in his
unperturbed composure, emotionally detached & cold, inaccessible, &
invulnerable. Deep inside, he, indeed, feels nothing.
The narcissist cruises through his life as a tourist would through an exotic
island. He observes events and people, his own experiences and loved ones as a
spectator would a movie that at times is mildly exciting and at others mildly
boring. He is never fully there, entirely present, irreversibly committed. He
is constantly with one hand on his emotional escape hatch, ready to bail out,
to absent himself, to re-invent his life in another place, with other people.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When is a mother
a good (enough) mother? According to Winnicott, when she gradually and
increasingly frustrates her child. These cumulative denials of the child's
wishes and negations of his delusional and fantastic magical thinking are
crucial to his emerging perception of an external world and his unimpaired
reality test.
The good mother encourages the child's separation from her and its
individuation via the formation of inviolable and respected personal
boundaries. She does not sacrifice her autonomy and identity and does not fuse
or merge with her child or treat it as her extension.
The good mother acknowledges her own moments of exasperation and depression.
She does neither idealize nor devalue herself or the child. She harbors
realistic expectations of the budding relationship and reacts proportionately.
She has no mood swings and is not labile. She is stable, firm but not harsh,
just and predictable but never dull. She encourages her offspring's curiosity
even as she indulges her own.
More about the dysfunctional mother: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq64.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Having abandoned, rejected, abused, &
humiliated my
intimate partner (my woman), I am hurt, shocked, & infuriated when she
reacts in kind by avoiding me, abandoning me, & becoming herself abusive.
I list more than 100 (!) behaviors the narcissist uses to avoid intimacy here: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissismemotional.html
I call them the "Emotional Investment
Prevention Measures" (EIPMs). The delusion that he is in total control
crumbles as the narcissist is abandoned time & again by lovers, spouses,
mates, friends & colleagues.
It is then - when loss is rendered tangible - that the narcissist regains his
former zeal & erstwhile fervour. He courts a long neglected wife, invests
himself in a hated job, befriends spurned colleagues, or engulfs with unnatural
warmth & empathy offended friends.
It is very common, for instance, for a narcissist to rediscover the joy of sex
with an adulterous intimate partner or spouse. Cerebral narcissists then become
somatic narcissists (type-switching) for as long as it takes to “re-acquire”
(hoover) the “target” (the source of supply). The narcissist professes to being
shocked & puzzled by the untoward behaviour of a hitherto faithful spouse,
loyal friend, or patient neighbour. "Whatever happened to them?" - He
wonders - "What brought this on?" Why did his wife cheat on him? Why
did his colleagues demand his resignation? Why did his neighbour turn violent
all of a sudden?
Aware of impending loss & doom, the narcissist embarks on a charm
offensive, parading the most irresistible, brilliant, captivating, titillating,
promising & thrilling aspects of his False Self. The aim is to reacquire
that which has been forfeited to neglect & indifference, to rebuild
relationships ruined by contempt & abuse and, thus, to regain Narcissistic
Supply.
Needless to add that once these targets are achieved, the narcissist reverts to
old form and goes back to being impatient, negligent, emotionally absent,
indifferent & abusive. Until another round of losses looms and reanimates
the narcissist - a sad, repetitive automaton, forever imprisoned by his own
repetition compulsion.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Is narcissism contagious? Can we become
narcissists just by living with a narcissist or working with him?
For example: many moderators & owners of discussion groups & support
forums for traumatized victims of abuse are tyrannical narcissistic bullies
with little or no impulse control & the tendency to form cult-like settings
where the wayward are sadistically penalized and publicly humiliated by peers
for speaking out of turn and in contravention of the “party line.” Some people
adopt the role of a professional victim. In doing so, they become self-centred,
devoid of empathy, abusive, and exploitative. In other words, they become
narcissists. The role of "professional
victims" - people whose existence and very identity rests solely and
entirely on their victimhood - is well researched in victimology. It doesn't
make for a nice reading.
These victim "pros" are often more cruel, vengeful, vitriolic,
lacking in compassion and violent than their abusers. They make a career of
their victimhood, real and alleged, factual and embellished. They identify with
this role to the exclusion of all else. I call this phenomenon
"Narcissistic Contagion" or "Narcissism by Proxy". The
proxy narcissist entertains the (false) notion that she can compartmentalize
her narcissistic behavior and direct it only at the narcissist. In other words,
she trusts in her ability to segregate her conduct and to be verbally abusive
towards the narcissist while civil and compassionate with others, to act with
malice where the narcissist is concerned and with Christian charity towards all
others.
She clings to the "faucet theory". She believes that she can turn on
and off her negative feelings, her abusive outbursts, her vindictiveness and
vengefulness, her blind rage, and her non-discriminating judgment. This, of
course, is untrue. These behaviors spill over into interactions with innocent
non-narcissists.
More about narcissistic contagion plus many interview transcripts: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq42.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Discarder
Any thing can serve as a Source of Narcissistic Supply
, providing that it has the potential to attract people's attention
& be the subject of their admiration. This is why narcissists are enamoured
of status symbols, i.e., objects, which comprehensively encapsulate and
concisely convey a host of data regarding their owners which generate a
reaction in people: they make them look on, admire, envy, dream, compare, or
aspire. In short: they elicit Narcissistic Supply.
But, generally, discarder narcissists do not like souvenirs & the memories
they foster. They are afraid to get emotionally attached to them & then get
hurt if the objects are lost or stolen or taken.
Objects, situations, voices, sights, colours provoke and evoke unwanted
memories. The narcissist tries to avoid them. The discarder narcissist
callously discards or gives away hard-won objects, memorabilia, gifts, and
property. This behaviour sustains his sense of omnipotent control & lack of
vulnerability. It also proves to him that he is unique, not like "other
people" who are attached to their material belongings. He is above it.
The Accumulator
This kind of narcissist jealously guards his possessions – his collections, his
furniture, his cars, his children, his women, his money, his credit cards...
Objects comfort him. They remind him of his status. They are linked to
gratifying events & thus, constitute Secondary Sources of Narcissistic
Supply. They attest to the narcissist's wealth, connections, achievements,
friendships, conquests, & glorious past. No wonder he is so attached to
them. Objects connected with failures or embarrassments have no place in his
abode. They get cast out.
More about narcissists and objects:
https://samvak.tripod.com/faq46.html
https://samvak.tripod.com/journal53.html
Euthanasia, whether in a
medical setting (hospital, clinic, hospice) or not (at home) is often
erroneously described as "mercy killing". Most forms of euthanasia
are, indeed, motivated by (some say: misplaced) mercy. Not so others. In Greek,
"eu" means both "well" and "easy" and
"Thanatos" is death.
Euthanasia is the intentional premature termination of another person's life
either by direct intervention (active euthanasia) or by withholding
life-prolonging measures and resources (passive euthanasia), either at the express
or implied request of that person (voluntary euthanasia), or in the absence of
such approval (non-voluntary euthanasia). Involuntary euthanasia - where the
individual wishes to go on living - is an euphemism for murder.
Modern medicine seems to be preoccupied with delusions of omnipotence and the
need to avoid the narcissistic injury to the doctor’s ego that death
constitutes. This preference of the profession’s image over the patient’s
welfare and quality of remaining life is patently unethical. But, to my mind,
passive euthanasia is equally immoral. The abrupt withdrawal of medical
treatment, feeding, and hydration results in a slow and (potentially) torturous
death. It took Terri Schiavo 13 days to die, when her tubes were withdrawn in
the last two weeks of March 2005.
Since it is impossible to conclusively prove that patients in PVS (Persistent Vegetative State) do not suffer pain, it is morally wrong to subject them to such potential gratuitous suffering. Even animals should be treated better.
Moreover, passive euthanasia allows us to
evade personal responsibility for the patient's death. In active euthanasia,
the relationship between the act (of administering a lethal medication, for
instance) and its consequences is direct and unambiguous.
For a thorough analysis of the ethics of euthanasia: https://samvak.tripod.com/euthanasia.html
According to David McClintick
("Swordfish: A True Story of Ambition, Savagery, and Betrayal"), in
the late 1980's, the FBI and DEA set up dummy corporations to deal in drugs.
They funnelled into these corporate fronts money from drug-related asset
seizures.
The idea was to infiltrate global crime networks but a lot of the money in
"Operation Swordfish" may have ended up in the wrong pockets.
Government agents and sheriffs got mysteriously and filthily rich and the whole
sorry affair was wound down. The GAO reported more than $3.6 billion missing.
This bit of history gave rise to at least one blockbuster with Oscar-winner
Halle Berry.
Alas, slush funds are much
less glamorous in reality. They usually involve grubby politicians, pawky
bankers, and philistine businessmen - rather than glamorous hackers and James
Bondean secret agents.
Slush funds infect every
corner of the globe, not only the more obscure and venal ones. Every secret
service - from the Mossad to the CIA - operates outside the stated state
budget. Slush funds are used to launder money, shower cronies with patronage,
and bribe decision makers. In some countries, setting them up is a criminal
offense, as per the 1990 Convention on Laundering, Search, Seizure, and
Confiscation of the Proceeds from Crime. Other jurisdictions are more
forgiving.
More about slush funds: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp138.html
Some officeholders binge on endless
quantities of lucre. They abscond with billions of USD from the coffers of
their destitute countries.
These inconceivable dollops of hard cash & valuables often remain stashed
& untouched, mouldering in bank accounts & safes in Western banks. They
serve no purpose, either political or economic. But they do fulfill a
psychological need. These stashes aren’t the megalomaniacal equivalents of
savings accounts. Rather they are of the nature of compulsive hoarding.
The ever-heightening mountains of greenbacks in their vaults soothe them, fill
them with confidence, regulate their sense of self-worth, and serve as a love
substitute. The balances in their bulging bank accounts are of no practical
import or intent. They merely cater to their psychopathology.
These politicos are not only crooks but also kleptomaniacs. They can no more
stop thieving than Hitler could stop murdering. Venality is an integral part of
their psychological makeup.
Kleptomania is about
acting out. It is a compensatory act. Politics is a drab, uninspiring,
unintelligent, & often humiliating business. It is also risky & rather
arbitrary. It involves enormous stress and unceasing conflict. Politicians with
mental health disorders (for instance, narcissists or psychopaths) react by
decompensating. They rob the state and coerce businessmen to grease their palms
because it makes them feel better, it helps them to repress their mounting
fears & frustrations, & to restore their psychodynamic equilibrium.
These politicians and bureaucrats "let off steam" by looting.
Kleptomaniacs fail to resist or control the impulse to steal, even if they have
no use for the booty. According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV-TR
(2000), the bible of psychiatry, kleptomaniacs feel "pleasure,
gratification, or relief when committing the theft." The good book
proceeds to say that " ... (T)he individual may hoard the stolen objects
...". As most kleptomaniac politicians are also psychopaths, they rarely
feel remorse or fear.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp138.html
“Alice - Ten Years Later”
is my sequel to Alice in
Wonderland. Here goes:
Ten year anniversaries are nothing to sneeze at”, thought Alice as she surveyed
the kitchen. Sure enough, someone sneezed vociferously and insistently just to
her left. “Have I been thinking aloud?” enquired Alice, alarmed. “No more than
usual,” answered the cook, “and the soup decidedly begs for more pepper, you
know.” Exasperated, Alice rolled her eyes (a gesture she mastered only recently
and was very proud of): “This time, I came armed with the recipe, Cook,” she
admonished her sternly, “Here, read for yourself: not a trace of pepper to be
had throughout the proceedings!” “Impossible!” declared Cook and eyed her
suspiciously. She snatched the tattered page, perused it awhile and then read
it aloud, triumphantly.
Disconcerted by this decisive rebuttal of her new-found bravado, Alice settled
on a three-legged stool which stood smack in the geometric navel of the
kitchen. “When will everyone be here?” she mused to no one in particular.
“Precisely when they will arrive!” bellowed Cook and hauled the sooty cauldron
onto the fire – “The Cat’s grin has been here since the morning!” “Is there
anything else on the menu?” enquired Alice “I am mighty hungry and don’t think
I can quell it with a mere dollop! And the pepper is bound to make everyone so
thirsty, not to mention sneeze-prone!” Cook grunted absentmindedly: “March Hare
promised to bring some wine. And to drag in Dormouse, if he is not asleep, of
course.” “Dormouse is always asleep” sighed Alice “and March Hare doesn’t know
the first difference between wine and tea!” “Wine, tea” snorted Cook as she
hurried around in a haze of pepper “It’s all the same to me. It should be all
the same to you, you know, makes life considerably simpler!” “Things can go
awfully wrong if you don’t call them by their proper names” insisted Alice
“Consider this recipe for chicken in wine. It wouldn’t be the same with tea, I
grant you!” Cook eyed her pityingly:
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/aliceanniversary.html
I love to be hated and I hate to
be loved. Hate is the complement of fear and I like being feared. It imbues
me with an intoxicating sensation of omnipotence. I am veritably inebriated by
the looks of horror or repulsion on people's faces. They know that I am capable
of anything. Godlike, I am ruthless and devoid of scruples, capricious and
unfathomable, emotion-less and asexual, omniscient, omnipotent and
omni-present, a plague, a devastation, an inescapable verdict. I nurture my
ill-repute, stoking it and fanning the flames of gossip. It is an enduring
asset.
The English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott suggested that
abused children need to hate and to be hated as a defense against the false
hope of ever being loved. They not only act out anti-socially but also seek to
provoke hatred in parents, caregivers, and authority figures. At least in this
comfort zone of mutual antagonism there is no risk of being shattered by the
disappointment and frustration that are the ineluctable outcomes of hope.
Of course, he who loves to be hated and hates to be loved also loves to hate
and hates to love (fears intimacy). The narcissist’s emotional complexity
(ambivalence) towards significant others is notorious: his “love” often comes
laced with bouts of vitriolic or even violent abuse and aggression.
But, the narcissist’s hatred is atypical. Rempel and Burris suggested in 2005
that hate is a stable experiential state; that it is an emotion; and that it
involves a goal-driven motivation to diminish or utterly eradicate the
well-being of the target of hate.
In contradistinction, the narcissist’s hatred is not stable; it is a
transformation of resentment and, therefore, an aggressive reaction to
frustration; and the narcissist does not care about his victim’s well-being: he
just wishes to remove the fount of frustration altogether and expediently. So,
by the lights on Rempel and Burris it does not qualify as hate at all.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistmasochist.html
When one is my age, all that remains is
one's memories. You are the director of the movie of your life : a decades long
film. Now, sit back and let the screening begin: is the yarn boring? would you
have watched this oeuvre had you not been its main protagonist? If the answers
are negative and positive, respectively, you have succeeded to live well,
regardless of the price you have paid.
One lesson I have learned the hard way is that chances to be happy come
rarely and unannounced and in the most unexpected form. These opportunities
must be seized upon irrationally, exuberantly, and forcefully. One must never
let go of such an opening, a portal to future joy and contentment. Nothing is
more risky than unhappiness. No one is poorer than the miserable. Mostly, the
true regrets we have are with regards to what we could have done or
accomplished - but didn’t, owing to pusillanimity and cowardice.
The true and only purgatory and hell are lost potentials, broken dreams,
forlorn hopes: who we could have been had we only dared to live instead of
plan, had we only seized the present day and not succumbed to the past night of
our soul.
[IMAGE] The “personality” part is dead wrong (“stays out of trouble”). The “life and opportunities” part absolutely right (“university is crucial”). More about my turbulent life: https://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html
Given a high enough level of frustration,
triggered by recurrent, endemic, and systemic failures in all spheres of
policy, even the most resilient democracy develops a predilection to "strong men", leaders whose
self-confidence, sangfroid, and apparent omniscience all but
"guarantee" a change of course for the better.
These are usually people with a thin political resume, having accomplished
little prior to their ascendance. They appear to have erupted on the scene from
nowhere. They are received as providential messiahs precisely because they are
unencumbered with a discernible past and, thus, are ostensibly unburdened by
prior affiliations and commitments. Their only duty is to the future. They are
a-historical: they have no history and they are above history.
Indeed, it is precisely this apparent lack of a biography that qualifies these
leaders to represent and bring about a fantastic and grandiose future. They act
as a blank screen upon which the multitudes project their own traits, wishes,
personal biographies, needs, and yearnings.
The more these leaders deviate from their initial promises and the more they
fail, the dearer they are to the hearts of their constituents: like them, their
new-chosen leader is struggling, coping, trying, and failing and, like them, he
has his shortcomings and vices. This affinity is endearing and captivating. It
helps to form a shared psychosis (follies-a-plusieurs) between ruler and people
and fosters the emergence of an hagiography.
The propensity to elevate narcissistic or even psychopathic personalities to
power is most pronounced in countries that lack a democratic tradition (such as
China, Russia, or the nations that inhabit the territories that once belonged
to Byzantium or the Ottoman Empire). More about leaders and leadership: https://samvak.tripod.com/leader.html
For her traumatic wounds to heal, the
victim of abuse requires closure
- one final interaction with her tormentor in which he, hopefully, acknowledges
his misbehaviour and even tenders an apology. Fat chance. Few abusers -
especially if they are narcissistic - are amenable to such weakling
pleasantries. More often, the abused are left to wallow in a poisonous stew of
misery, self-pity, and self-recrimination.
Depending on the severity, duration, and nature of the abuse, there are three
forms of effective closure.
Conceptual Closure
This most common variant involves a frank dissection of the abusive
relationship. The parties meet to analyze what went wrong, to allocate blame
and guilt, to derive lessons, and to part ways cathartically cleansed. In such
an exchange, a compassionate offender (quite the oxymoron, admittedly) offers
his prey the chance to rid herself of cumulating resentment.
He also disabuses her of the notion that she, in any way, was guilty or
responsible for her maltreatment, that it was all her fault, that she deserved
to be punished, and that she could have saved the relationship (malignant
optimism). With this burden gone, the victim is ready to resume her life and to
seek companionship and love elsewhere.
Dissociative Closure
Absent other forms of closure, victims of egregious and prolonged mistreatment
tend to repress their painful memories. In extremis, they dissociate.
Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) - formerly known as "Multiple
Personality Disorder" - is thought to be such a reaction. The harrowing
experiences are "sliced off", tucked away, and attributed to
"another personality". Sometimes, the victim "assimilates"
his or her tormentor, and even openly and consciously identifies with him. This
is the narcissistic defence. In his own anguished mind, the victim becomes
omnipotent and, therefore, invulnerable. He or she develops a False Self. The
True Self is, thus, shielded from further harm and injury.
Other forms of closure: https://samvak.tripod.com/abuse17.html
The Truman Show is a
profoundly disturbing movie. On the surface, it deals with the worn out issue
of the intermingling of life and the media.
The blurring line between life and its representation in the arts is arguably
the main theme. The hero, Truman, lives in an artificial world, constructed
especially for him. He was born and raised there. He knows no other place. The
people around him – unbeknownst to him – are all actors. His life is monitored
by 5000 cameras and broadcast live to the world, 24 hours a day, every day. He
is spontaneous and funny because he is unaware of the monstrosity of which he
is the main cogwheel.
But Peter Weir, the movie's director, takes this issue one step further by
perpetrating a massive act of immorality on screen. Truman is lied to, cheated,
deprived of his ability to make choices, controlled and manipulated by
sinister, half-mad Shylocks. As I said, he is unwittingly the only spontaneous,
non-scripted, "actor" in the on-going soaper of his own life. All the
other figures in his life, including his parents, are actors. Hundreds of
millions of viewers and voyeurs plug in to take a peep, to intrude upon what
Truman innocently and honestly believes to be his privacy. They are shown
responding to various dramatic or anti-climactic events in Truman's life. That
we are the moral equivalent of these viewers-voyeurs, accomplices to the same
crimes, comes as a shocking realization to us. We are (live) viewers and they
are (celluloid) viewers. We both enjoy Truman's inadvertent, non-consenting, exhibitionism.
We know the truth about Truman and so do they. Of course, we are in a
privileged moral position because we know it is a movie and they know it is a
piece of raw life that they are watching. But moviegoers throughout Hollywood's
history have willingly and insatiably participated in numerous "Truman
Shows". The lives (real or concocted) of the studio stars were brutally
exploited and incorporated in their films.
Continued: https://samvak.tripod.com/seahaven.html
Hemingway penned this excellent
encapsulation of impulse
control decades back, before I made narcissism a household epithet via my
work & online presence in the 1990s.
Narcissists are not prone to "irresistible impulses" &
dissociation (blanking out of certain stressful events and actions). They more
or less fully control their behavior & actions at all times. But exerting
control over one's conduct requires the investment of resources, both mental
and physical. Narcissists regard this as a waste of their precious time, or a
humiliating chore. Lacking empathy, they don't care about other people's
feelings, needs, priorities, wishes, preferences, & boundaries. As a
result, narcissists are awkward, tactless, painful, taciturn, abrasive &
insensitive.
The narcissist often has rage attacks & grandiose fantasies. Most
narcissists are also mildly obsessive-compulsive. Yet, all narcissists should
be held accountable to the vast and overwhelming majority of their actions.
At all times, even during the worst explosive episode, the narcissist can tell
right from wrong and reign in their impulses. The narcissist's impulse control
is unimpaired, though he may pretend otherwise in order to terrorize,
manipulate & coerce his human environment into compliance.
The only things the narcissist cannot "control" are his grandiose
fantasies. All the same, he knows that lying & confabulating are morally
wrong & can choose to refrain from doing so.
The narcissist is perfectly capable of anticipating the consequences of his
actions & their influence on others. Actually, narcissists are "X-ray"
machines: they are very perceptive and sensitive to the subtlest nuances (cold
empathy). But the narcissist does not care. For him, humans are dispensable,
rechargeable, reusable. They are there to fulfil a function: to supply him with
Narcissistic Supply. They do not have an existence apart from carrying out
their "duties". Still, it is far from a clear-cut case: https://samvak.tripod.com/personalitydisorders49.html
The tendency to remain in bad relationships -
abusive, hopeless, sexless, loveless, doomed - is known as the Sunk Cost
(Concorde) Fallacy (or bias). Co-owning a business or property, shared
memories, and especially co-parenting tend to cement this bias and pile it on
top of traumatic bonding and a fused relationship.
We throw good money after bad just because “we are already invested” in a
project. We watch an atrocious movie to the end because we have already spent
an hour doing so. We eat food we have ordered even if it sucks. We keep clothes
we never wear because we have paid for them. It is a particularly pernicious
brand of loss aversion (proclivity to avoid waste). This utterly irrational
behavior is motivated by malignant optimism: overestimation of the
probabilities of positive outcomes if we just keep going or do something
differently.
We are also afraid to look foolish if we admit to having made the wrong
decisions consistently (“narcissistic injury”). We sometimes feel responsible
and guilty for having made these decisions in the first place.
Of course the rational thing to do is to cut your losses and abandon the
dysfunctional relationship. But - divorce statistics aside - surprisingly few
do so in time. The results? Wrecked marriages, hateful exes, bruised children,
and crumbling enterprises.
My articles in economics: https://samvak.tripod.com/guide.html
My IQ was tested every time
I got myself into serious trouble: at age 9 (result: 185), in the army (180),
& in prison by an orthodox religious psychologist who made me his pet
project (190). There are only 60 people in the world with IQ 185 & only 7 with
IQ 190. It gets pretty lonely pretty fast. Being the sadistic asshole that I
am, I am fond of saying that the gap in IQ between me & the average human
is far bigger than the difference between that human & an orangutan (or a
chimpanzee). The prodigy – the precocious "genius" – feels entitled
to special treatment. Yet, he rarely gets it. This frustrates him & renders
him even more aggressive, driven, & overachieving.
As Horney pointed out, the child-prodigy is dehumanised & instrumentalised.
His parents love him not for what he really is – but for what they wish &
imagine him to be: the fulfilment of their dreams & frustrated wishes. The
child becomes the vessel of his parents' discontented lives, a tool, the magic
brush with which they can transform their failures into successes, their
humiliation into victory, their frustrations into happiness.
The child is taught to ignore reality & to occupy the parental fantastic
space. Such an unfortunate child feels omnipotent & omniscient, perfect
& brilliant, worthy of adoration & entitled to special treatment. The
faculties that are honed by constantly brushing against bruising reality –
empathy, compassion, a realistic assessment of one's abilities &
limitations, realistic expectations of oneself & of others, personal boundaries,
team work, social skills, perseverance & goal-orientation, not to mention
the ability to postpone gratification & to work hard to achieve it – are
all lacking or missing altogether.
People are envious of the prodigy. The genius serves as a constant reminder to
others of their mediocrity, lack of creativity, & mundane existence.
Naturally, they try to "bring him down to their level" &
"cut him down to size". The gifted person's haughtiness &
high-handedness only exacerbate his strained relationships.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistprodigy.html
Narcissists invariably react with narcissistic rage to
narcissistic injury.
These two terms bear clarification (also see note): Narcissistic Injury
Any threat (real or imagined) to the narcissist's grandiose and fantastic
self-perception (False Self) as perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, and entitled
to special treatment and recognition, regardless of his actual accomplishments
(or lack thereof). Narcissistic injury can be passive (when the narcissist
enviously compares himself to or measures himself against another person) or
active (the outcome of the interpretation or misinterpretation of someone
else’s act, inaction, or utterance as a humiliating insult). Narcissists are
hypervigilant and paranoid and they constantly scan for narcissistic injuries.
Narcissistic rage has two forms:
I. Explosive – The narcissist flares up, attacks everyone in his immediate
vicinity, causes damage to objects or people, and is verbally and
psychologically abusive.
II. Pernicious or Passive-Aggressive (P/A) – The narcissist sulks, gives the
silent treatment, and is plotting how to punish the transgressor and put her in
her proper place. These narcissists are vindictive and often become stalkers.
They harass and haunt the objects of their frustration. They sabotage and
damage the work and possessions of people whom they regard to be the sources of
their mounting wrath.
People with certain personality disorders
(mainly borderline, narcissistic, compulsive-obsessive, schizotypal, and
paranoid) have a persecutory
object. It is a tormenting, devaluing, and sadistic inner voice
(introject). It repeatedly and authoritatively informs them that they are bad,
worthless, weak, immoral, and a disappointment.
Such an inner critic, a relentless integrated prosecutor and judge is of course
intolerable. In an attempt to exorcise it, the patient projects it - usually
onto an intimate partner. The spouse, mate, or lover then become the outer
embodiment or reification of the internal agonizing construct.
The patient tries to coerce and shoehorn the intimate partner into behaving in
a way that upholds his newfound status as an enemy and a threat. This defense
mechanism is known as "projective identification". If the intimate
partner has his own issues, he will comply in his assigned role and transform
himself into an abuser ("introjective identification"). The patient
then proceeds to rebel against her externalized persecutory object (=her
intimate partner), punish, and defy him by behaving promiscuously and cheating
("being a slut or whore"); envying and sabotaging her partner's
career; passive-aggressively challenging and provoking him; humiliating,
rejecting, and undermining his well-being and self-esteem; compromising his
public image and standing in society; and penalizing him in myriad other ways.
Naturally, the patient then expects a penalty commensurate with her egregious
misbehavior. She becomes paranoid, hypervigilant, and exceedingly anxious.
These dissonant emotions only augment her perception of the intimate partner as
a source of unmitigated sadistic control and judgment, an imminent and
omnipresent threat, and the fount of ambivalence (love-hate relationship).
If your psychotherapy is painLESS -
change your therapist. Professionally administered and efficacious
psychotherapy is not about getting advice. The therapist is not your best
friend, avuncular guru, or bespectacled and loving granny. Therapy is about
dismantling and forgoing: defendes, narratives, habits, cognitions, deepset
behaviors, & emotions. It is about unearthing long buried & traumatic
content. And, most important, it is about wrenching & agonizing change.
Victims of abuse are saddled with emotional baggage which often provokes even
in the most experienced therapists reactions of helplessness, rage, fear &
guilt. Countertransference is common: therapists of both genders identify with
the victim & resent her for making them feel impotent & inadequate (for
instance, in their role as "social protectors"). To fend off anxiety
& a sense of vulnerability ("it could have been me, sitting
there!"), female therapists involuntarily blame the "spineless"
victim & her poor judgement for causing the abuse. Some female therapists
concentrate on the victim's childhood (rather than her harrowing present) or
accuse her of overreacting.
Male therapists may assume the mantle of a "chivalrous rescuer",
"savior", or "knight in the shining armour" – thus,
inadvertently upholding the victim's view of herself as immature, helpless, in
need of protection, vulnerable, weak, & ignorant. The male therapist may be
driven to prove to the victim that not all men are "beasts", that
there are "good" specimen (like himself). If his (conscious or
unconscious) overtures are rejected, the therapist may identify with the abuser
and re-victimise or pathologise his patient.
Many therapists tend to overidentify with the victim and rage at the abuser, at
the police, & at "the system". They expect the victim to be
equally aggressive even as they broadcast to her how powerless, unjustly
treated, & discriminated against she is. If she "fails" to
externalise aggression & show assertiveness, they feel betrayed &
disappointed.
Pitfalls of therapy: https://samvak.tripod.com/abusefamily24.html
We are brought up to believe that we have to choose between happiness and survival, that they are mutually exclusive.
"Marry the accountant or the dentist - not the poet or the dreamer who is the true love of your life. You need food on the table, roof over your head, first class travel, five star hotels, and brandnames in your closet! And marry him now - before he gets snatched by your similarly indoctrinated peers!"
Results? A sexless, loveless and sometimes abusive marriage; a gaggle of extramarital affairs; traumatized children; depression; and if all ends well - a divorce.
"Don't become an artist or an actress or a fiction writer as you have always wished to be. Study law or medicine or management. You need cash to survive, you know! And you need to have a family and a proper home and lifestyle! Only losers don't own these by their forties!"
Results? Nervous breakdown or midlife depression; broken homes; dysfunctional kids.
"Follow your heart's desire. Excellence is the outcome of happiness and its virtuous cause. Delve into your vocation and make it your avocation. Marry the spouse you love - never the one you should."
Results? John Lennon. And millions of other happy, energized, industrious, creative, productive people.
The terms "slut/whore", "sex
addict/nymphomaniac", and "promiscuous" are used interchangeably
- and wrongly so.
Slut/whore is an epithet
reserved - usually by men - to sexually assertive women with a healthy libido.
To satisfy their needs, urges, desires, and hunger such women do not hesitate
to outsource sex, intimacy, and love if their intimate partner fails to provide
or withholds them. They are usually disinhibited but in full control of their
choices of partners, locations, and settings. Their conduct is not pathological
though it may defiantly contravene the norms and mores - or even laws - of
their cultures and societies.
A promiscuous woman is disinhibited and indiscriminate as far as the quality
and the attributes of her sexual partners. She simply has no standards and
filters when it comes to copulation but this is an issue of vulgarity and bad
taste - not of any mental health problem. They are in full control of their
choices and actions - they simply love to fuck.
If the woman is compulsive about the quantity and frequency of her sexual
liaisons, or if she engages in a sex act because she feels that she cannot do
otherwise, or if she dissociates during sex (on "auto-pilot"), she
may be addicted to sex.
But such behavior may indicate other psychological issues or even the wish to conform to social expectations ("if I date a man and he spends money on me, I have to return the favor"). Some women with certain personality disorders act out: they sexualize frustration and anger at the partner and punish him by having sex with other men.