Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)

Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)

The only kind of relationship the narcissist has is with his absence and impoverished, inner emptiness, via grandiosity or envy.

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Narcissism may be a universal reaction to the internally-generated trauma caused by other mental health issues, by mental illness in general. Narcissistic defenses mask the core issues, allocate scarce mental resources, and protect the individual from decompensation, acting out, and, ultimately, psychosis.

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The schizoid narcissist often acts gregarious or lovebombs in order to set up a shared fantasy. But, being the emotionally-flat, socially-averse and awkward loner that he is, these self-defeating acts are, actually, forms of self-destructiveness.

All narcissists are self-punitive. The schizoid’s way of accomplishing self-negation is by acting against his nature.

Consequently, schizoid narcissists are highly approach-avoidant: the minute they spot the threat of suffocating, stifling intimacy, they withdraw at once. This greatly baffles, angers, and disenchants their few friends and even fewer intimate partners.

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Studies have repeatedly revealed that swingers (adherents to the Lifestyle) are happier and in better mental health that monogamous couples.

The psychological roots of cuckoldry are many and I have written about them extensively (watch my recent video on the topic).

Two much neglected aspects are:

1. The cuck(old) reclaims his partner after she has had sex with another men (sometimes by copulating with her then and there). After the deed is done, she chooses to return to him. This clear preference for him as her man boosts the cuck’s self-esteem and helps him to reframe the situation: he now pities the other guy who just got a taste of what he would be missing henceforth: the cuck’s hotwife.

2. The entire choreographed scene is also a test of loyalty taken to an extreme: having bedded another man, will his mate still be faithful and loyal to him - or will she elope? Every time she elects to return to him from her exploits, she is renewing her vow to her dyad with the cuck.

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The narcissist is terrified of commitment, investment, and, in interpersonal relationships, of intimacy. He always opts for the path of least resistance, doing the minimum necessary to maintain appearances and faking it in the fervent, anxious hope of making it. To work hard and to really try to accomplish goals is to risk failure, defeat, abandonment and the grandiosity-shattering injuries and mortifications in their wake.

Even this state of affairs the narcissist considers onerous and unfair. At work or in a friendship, with the slightest whiff of depth or when faced with demands, he undermines the setup thoroughly and irreversibly: scorched earth policy and all bridges burned. He then peremptorily transitions to a new shared fantasy or pathological narcissistic space.

To fend off even the most basic expectations in his relationships and make it easier for him to bail out, the narcissist selects a mate who is vastly inferior to him or grossly incompatible. To overlook these glaring discrepancies, he is forced to idealize her and maintain a relationship solely with her immutable “snapshot” (her representation in his mind). As usual, the only intimacy he has is with himself.

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Event: Lecture at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, Canada, January 22, 2021

I will discuss my new concepts of covert borderline and the bridge between overt and covert cluster B states via collapse and narcissistic mortification. It is a standard model of personality disorders, akin to the standard model in particle physics.

Speaker in 2nd Webinar on Stress and Depression Management will be hosted on February 12, 2021, Frankfurt, Germany.

Speaker in International Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health, February 15, 2021

My topic: "Narcissists as Patients and Survivors of Accidents" (Certificate of Recognition and Appreciation)

My lectures and presentations are also made available on my YouTube channel. Watch the latest ones there.

Speaker in other international conferences on psychology, psychiatry, mental health, and neuroscience:

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html

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You can’t cheat on your abuser. Cheating implies the breach of a consensual contract and the one-sided violation of vows, obligations, and behavioral principles.

Abuse renders all such understandings and agreements null and void. What you have with your abuser is not a relationship: it is slavery, a hostage situation, a form of self-negating incarceration. “Cheating on” your abuser is, therefore, breaking free, reasserting your natural right to be you, to be valued and wanted, in every sense of the word. You cannot cheat when you are not in a committed relationship with a partner who is keeping his end of the bargain!

You owe your abuser nothing, least of all what he has been denying you for so long and so needlessly: respect, love, intimacy, sex, having your best interests in mind, refraining from hurting you gratuitously, impulse control, and honesty.

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The Narcissist’s Time https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissisttime.html

Patients with Cluster B personality disorders experience no time (timeless), memory, continuity, self, or core identity. They are mere simulacra and spectacles.

Most narcissists exhibit both overt (grandiose-entitled) and vulnerable traits. In my work, I suggest that cluster B patients transition between overt, collapsed, and covert states of their personality disorders when they are mortified.

But, how is it possible? After all, the traits of a covert are diametrically opposed to those of an overt!

Even in healthy, normal folks, traits are not constant over the lifespan and under conditions of extreme endogenous or exogenous stress or trauma.

This is especially true if the patient suffers from identity diffusion or disturbance.

Each state is narrative which provides a pseudo-identity. Pseudoidentities are ego functions (resources) and simulations (probes). In the absence of a unitary, stable core (identity disturbance and identity diffusion), the patient shape-shifts between self-states, replete with their own unique traits, affect, cognitions, and behaviors. In extremis, these self-states are utterly dissociated (most forms of DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder).

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The fact that Borderline personality disorder is often found among women makes it a controversial mental health diagnosis. Some scholars say that it is a culture-bound pseudo-syndrome invented by men to serve a patriarchal and misogynistic society. Others point to the fact the lives of patients diagnosed with the disorder are chaotic and that the relationships they form are stormy, short-lived, and unstable. Moreover, not unlike compensatory narcissists, people with the Borderline Personality Disorder often display labile (wildly fluctuating) sense of self-worth, self-image and affect (expressed emotions).

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 is 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 Personality Disorder 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.

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Buddhism compares Man to a river. Both retain their identity despite the fact that their individual composition is different at different moments. The possession of a body as the foundation of a self-identity is a dubious proposition. Bodies change drastically in time (consider a baby compared to an adult). Almost all the cells in a human body are replaced every few years. Changing one's brain (by transplantation) - also changes one's identity, even if the rest of the body remains the same.

Thus, the only thing that binds a "person" together (i.e., gives him a self and an identity) is time, or, more precisely, memory. By "memory" I also mean: personality, skills, habits, retrospected emotions - in short: all long term imprints and behavioural patterns. The body is not an accidental and insignificant container, of course. It constitutes an important part of one's self-image, self-esteem, sense of self-worth, and sense of existence (spatial, temporal, and social). But one can easily imagine a brain in vitro as having the same identity as when it resided in a body. One cannot imagine a body without a brain (or with a different brain) as having the same identity it had before the brain was removed or replaced.

What if the brain in vitro (in the above example) could not communicate with us at all? Would we still think it is possessed of a self? The biological functions of people in coma are maintained. But do they have an identity, a self? If yes, why do we "pull the plug" on them so often?

Continued https://samvak.tripod.com/identity.html

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Perfectionism has several psychodynamic components: grandiose infallibility, fear of failure, procrastination-avoidance, passive-aggressive sadism, people-pleasing (I can be loved only if and when I am perfect).

Narcissist can idealize only internal objects - hence snapshotting. Why? Because his grandiosity requires that he idealizes only himself and internalizing an external objects makes it a part of himself, his extension. This is co-idealization.

The idealized internal objects must be perfect - hence perfectionism. Others, out of envy, spite, malice, or self-interested ulterior motives conspire to render the internal objects less than perfect (aggression) or expose their imperfections (passive-aggression). 

The snapshots must also be perfect, so they are photoshopped.

But perfectionism sets the narcissist up for failure. It is self-defeating and ego dystonic. How come? It is intended to prevent destructive envy.

The narcissist has no core, so he experiences his internal objects as ego-alien. He is like a hive, ant colony, coalition, alliance, not unitary. His internal environment is regulated exclusively with negative emotions/affects such as shame, guilt, envy, anger, and hate. Narcissist not only hates himself, he is angry at himself, ashamed of himself - and envies himself!!!

Melanie Klein's three positions (baby's psychological progression)

1. Split bad (frustrating) object out there, good (gratifying) object in me

2. Depressive realization: everyone has both good and bad sides

3. Internalization of bad object and reparation: integration of both objects - good and bad - in single ego.

Sam Vaknin's three positions:

Normal, healthy progression

1. Split good object out there, bad object in me (mommy can’t be bad, it is too threatening)

2. Depressive position

3. Internalization of good object and reparation, single ego

Narcissist's maladaptive, disorganized, dysfunctional progression

Stage 3: instead of reparation, regression to paranoid-schizoid position (back to stage 1) and loop stages 1-2.

Jung was closest when he described pathological narcissism as failure of narcissistic investment in introversion.

The narcissist must deny the existence of any good outside himself.

The narcissist defends himself against raging, all consuming envy – by solipsistically claiming to be the only good object in the world.

This is an object that cannot be had by anyone, except the narcissist and, therefore, is immune to the narcissist's threatening, annihilating envy.

In order to refrain from being "owned" by anyone (and, thus, avoid self-destruction in the hands of his own envy), the narcissist reduces others to "non-entities" (the narcissistic solution), or completely avoids all meaningful contact with them (the schizoid solution).

The suppression of envy is at the core of the narcissist's being. If he fails to convince his self that he is the only good object in the universe, he is bound to be exposed to his own murderous envy. If there are others out there who are better than him, he envies them, he lashes out at them ferociously, uncontrollably, madly, hatefully and spitefully, he tries to eliminate them.

If someone tries to get emotionally intimate with the narcissist, she threatens the grandiose belief that no one but the narcissist can possess the good object (that is the narcissist himself).

Only the narcissist can own himself, have access to himself, possess himself. This is the only way to avoid seething envy and certain self-annihilation. Perhaps it is clearer now why narcissists react as raving madmen to anything, however minute, however remote that seems to threaten their grandiose fantasies, the only protective barrier between themselves and their lethal, seething envy.

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Where do we draw the line between normal and pathological?

I. Believing in Religious Scriptures Literally

Quantity of followers: cult, sect, or religion

Religious people as junkies

God Gene Hypothesis

DSM's pusillanimous Political Correctness

Delusional Disorder and DID possession

Marx and Freud on Religion

II. Conspiracism and the Psychology of Conspiracy Theorists

Paranoid Personality Disorder

Schizotypal Personality Disorder

III. Defiance, contumaciousness

Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Antisocial Personality Disorder

IV. Seductiveness

Borderline Personality Disorder

Histrionic Personality Disorder

V. Being a Loner

Schizoid Personality Disorder

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The ultimate and only emotional need of the narcissist is to be the subject of attention and, thus, to support his volatile self-esteem and to regulate his sense of self worth. The narcissist is dependent on others for the performance of critical Ego functions. While healthier people overcome disappointment or disillusionment with relative ease – to the narcissist they are the difference between Being and Nothingness.

The quality and reliability of Narcissistic Supply are, therefore, of paramount importance. The more the narcissist convinces himself that his sources are perfect, grand, comprehensive, authoritative, omniscient, omnipotent, beautiful, powerful, rich, brilliant, and so on – the better he feels. The narcissist has to idealise his Supply Sources in order to highly value the supply that he derives from them. This leads to over-valuation. The narcissist forms a fantastic picture of his sources of Narcissistic Supply.

The fall is inevitable. Disillusionment and disappointment set in. The slightest criticism, disagreement, or differences of opinion are interpreted by the narcissist as an all out assault against the foundations of his existence. The previous appraisal is sharply reversed: the same people are judged stupid who were previously deemed to possess genius, for instance.

This is the devaluation part of the cycle and it is very painful to both the narcissist and the devalued (for very different reasons, of course). The narcissist mourns the loss of a promising "investment opportunity" (Source of Narcissistic Supply). The "investment opportunity" mourns the loss of the narcissist. Sometimes, the narcissist idealizes a new source of supply or a source of superior, hi-grade supply by comparing it unfavourably to another source (“comparative devaluation” of an “idealization-devaluation couplet”.)

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The Cycle starts with the narcissist's hunger for Narcissistic Supply – the panoply of reactions to the narcissist's False Self (his feigned facade of omnipotence and omniscience). The narcissist uses these inputs to regulate his fluctuating sense of self-worth.

It is important to distinguish between the various components of the process of Narcissistic Supply:

1. The Trigger of Supply is the person or object that provokes the source into yielding Narcissistic Supply by confronting the source with information about the narcissist's False Self;

2. The Source of Narcissistic Supply is the person that provides the Narcissistic Supply;

3. Narcissistic Supply is the reaction of the source to the trigger.

The narcissist homes in on Triggers and Sources of Narcissistic Supply – people, possessions, creative works, money – and imbues these sources and triggers with attributed uniqueness, perfection, brilliance, and grandiose qualities (omnipotence, omnipresence, omniscience). He filters out any data that contradict these fantastic misperceptions. He rationalises, intellectualises, denies, represses, projects – and, in general, defends against – contrarian information.

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The narcissism of the schizoid-narcissist predisposes him to experience all external objects as bad. He forces all objects - even good ones - to actually become bad objects by infantilizing himself (and so frustrating them) and by abusing them. Consequently, he spends most of his life reacting to these manufactured bad objects with a depressed-angry state followed by a schizoid-avoidant one.

The schizoid-narcissist transforms every external good object (e.g., intimate, loving partner) into an internal bad object (the only kind he know) by frustrating her (child) and hurting her (abuse) within a shared fantasy. When, inevitably, she ends up hurting the narcissist cruelly and egregiously, he reacts with a short period (up to 1 year) of anger-depression (aggression) followed by years in a schizoid state (withdrawal, avoidance, indifference, sexlessness).

The schizoid-narcissist reacts with depression-anger and schizoid-withdrawal states to external bad objects - real or manufactured - and to the mortification that they produce, actual or anticipated.

The long sexless stretches in his relationships are artefacts of the reactive schizoid state, not a primary feature of his psychosexuality (which is autoerotic and often kinky, or even sadistic).

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Depression is aggression towards the bad external object directed inward for fear of destroying the desired and exciting - though frustrating - external object.

The Schizoid state is self-defense: it protects the grandiose self-perception and prevents the narcissist from being consumed by the hunger for a rejecting object (Fairbairn: or from consuming the external object).

Good objects in safe relationships are internalized as memories, not as objects (Bion and Fairbairn differ from Klein).

The Narcissist snapshots sources of supply (converts them to internal objects) owing to his abandonment anxiety and anticipated injury or mortification.

The partner is perceived as a bad, threatening external object and needs to be internalized in order to possess, neutralize, and control the threat.

The narcissist's object relationships are only internal (schizoid) and driven by anxiety (borderline): schizoid-borderline position.

Bad internalized objects are foreign, create dissonance and anxiety, and have to be projected.

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I am the last person to invalidate the harrowing experience of victimhood. I was the first to describe in great detail narcissistic abuse in 1995 and I coined the phrases “narcissistic abuse” and “victims of narcissistic abuse”.

But when victimhood becomes an ideology, a career, a profession, or an identity (like identity politics), it is manipulative and pernicious. Such victims turn into abusers, obsessed with power, celebrity, and money.

The only way out of victimhood is to assume full personal responsibility – to own – one’s life, choices, and the consequences of such choices.

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Karpman's drama triangle, Triangles and triangulation in Bowens' Family Systems Theory, Ackerman's pathological/perverse triangles, Victim playing, Learned helplessness, Bernard Weiner's attribution theory, and Fundamental attribution error.

Boredom IS the Meaning of Authentic Life: direct contact with nothingness as a form of Being, as self-awareness (not to be confused with worthlessness).
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Problem of Western civilization: intolerance of boredom and of nothingness (example: death).

Overstimulation=direct exposure to life --- leads to desensitization and ultimately to boredom via attunement.

Defenses are "meanings" of a Bad Faith Life: 1. Unconscious 2. Fantasy (incl. religion) 3. Mastery (action) 4. Diversion (entertainment).

We confuse these defenses with meaning but this leads to infinite regression nesting: meaning is dictated by others whose judgment is, in turn, determined by yet others ad infinitum.

When defenses fail, we are bored which is the only healthy state because:

1. It generates action or fantasy
2. Left untouched, inert, it brings enlightenment

We should seek boredom and aspire to it.

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I broke the heart of every woman I have ever been with not because I am a cad, or a macho womanizer, or a two-timing scoundrel, or an Apollo, or such a catch. Not because I am a virile quintessence, or a male epitome, too much of a man - but because I am not a man at all in any sense of the word and by any stretch of its meaning or definition.

Because I had tricked them into believing that I am whole and wise and mature and that I am a MAN - when in fact I am disabled beyond redemption and about as genderless as a toddler and as lifeless as a rusted robot. Even my sex is mere autoerotic pyrotechnics, a simulated, despoiling copulation.

When my women had found out the truth about my act, my non-existence, my utter lack of manhood, they perceived this as humiliating rejection and egregious abuse. They wrongly attributed to me false advertising and future faking. Wrongly because I had deluded myself into believing that this time, with this woman, it will all be different. I wasn’t lying - merely fantasizing yet again, dreading the motherless loneliness of my mind.

So, some women became gold-diggers, splurged and shopped and travelled at my expense while satisfying their needs with other men.

Others, blinded by unbearable anguish, riven by impotent rage, self-recrimination, and overwhelming sadness, disillusioned and disenchanted, they lurched and latched onto the first warm body, any passing predatory male, for the comfort, affection, and attention that I had denied them. The fake intimacy of casual sex, the make-belief of a fling or an affair. Then they abandon me to make a life with real MEN, however flawed and unaccomplished, even abusive.

Like Sisyphus himself, I had to witness this justified, but heart-rending betrayal unfolding time and again and, sighing, hopelessly heave the rock of my existence against the unrelenting slope that is my life.

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Regret makes sense only if there is personal continuity, immutable core identity. Person A can regret having acted in a certain way or having chosen inaction over action only if he has remained largely Person A.

But in identity disturbance, common in many personality disorders and other mental illnesses, self-states are far apart and transformations over time are startling: Person A effectively becomes an almost unrelated Person B. There is no constancy of traits, behaviors, values, or any other parameter of identity.

It makes no sense for Person B to regret the behaviors, choices, and decisions of Person A, although, of course, he can disagree with them and criticize or deride Person A.

Person B can, however, regret not having coalesced and emerged earlier: having allowed Person A to control all the resources hitherto. It is akin to resenting our mortality for limiting the number of possible experiences.

Moreover: Person B could not have emerged and taken over earlier - or he would have. Pseudoidentities are suboptimal, but they are ego syntonic narrative strategies asymptotic to the optimum. They are, therefore, mutually exclusive.

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The narcissist is happy AND depressed at the same time! (affective ambivalence). He regrets things he had done and choices he had made - but shouldn't!

In many personality disorders, approach-avoidance behaviors, repetition compulsions, identity disturbance, and alternating self-states create affective ambivalence: two concurrently experienced moods or affects which contradict each other and are, usually, mutually exclusive.

The avoidant and the schizoid narcissist, for example, endure simultaneous dissonant ego-syntonic happiness, gratification, and satisfaction and ego-dystonic depression and regret, mainly at the costs of the contentment (“happiness”) attained.

These costs include: social (schizoid), emotional (dysregulation), psychosexual (immaturity and relationship failures), and impairment of reality testing and cognition (delusions, grandiosity, other deficits).

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Paranoia is a defence against anxiety and against aggression. The latter is projected outwards, upon imaginary other, the agents of one's crucifixion.

Anxiety is also a defence against aggressive impulses. Therefore, anxiety and paranoia are sisters, the latter but a focused form of the former. The mentally disordered defend against their own aggressive propensities by either being anxious or by becoming paranoid.

Aggression has numerous faces. One of its favourite disguises is boredom.

Like its relation, depression, it is aggression directed inwards. It threatens to drown the bored in a primordial soup of inaction and energy depletion. It is anhedonic (pleasure depriving) and dysphoric (leads to profound sadness). But it is also threatening, perhaps because it is so reminiscent of death.

Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistboredom.html

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Protect Yourself from Narcissism Virus as It Evades Your Immunity!

Narcissism Epidemic (Twenge-Campbell)

Naïve susceptible population

Wildtype, mutants, variants (isolates), and strains: standard model

Evading immunity by shapeshifting and cloaking via mimicry

Genetic drift and antigenic shift

Reinfection

Community transmission

Masking (education)

Social Distancing

Gather outdoors (boundaries, no secrecy)

Hand washing

Vaccination: deliberate exposure to specific traits and behaviors creates (1) antibodies (active measures) (2) memory cells but also (3) cells that attack infected cells (soul searching)

Herd immunity, selective immunological pressure

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The sadistic narcissist reacts with contempt and predatory excitement to sexual advances.

Contempt because he interprets such behavior as neediness, weakness, and promiscuous sluttishness. The implication that the partner considers her offer irresistible (rendering him powerless to forgo it) provokes in him extreme aggression, to the point of rage. He is driven to annihilate the supplicant by humiliating and rejecting her disdainfully and, if at all possible, ostentatiously, in public.

Such displays of mercilessly brutal and destructive superiority arouse and gratify the sadist more than any sex: hence his anticipatory ravenous thrill, a carnivore’s reflex at the sight of a badly wounded antelope, a shark’s swift reaction to the scent of blood.

On the rare occasions that he does engage in sex, he is focused on degrading and despoiling the partner, like a child tearing apart a straw figurine. He gets off and high on the partner’s disgust, humiliation, submission, and entrapment. The actual acts are tangential: the victim’s reactions matter.

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Intimate partner enters the shared fantasy in order to facilitate the narcissistic solution to the schizoid state: serve as fetishized womb (mother) and affirm the reality and veracity of the False Self. She is misperceived as external object, when actually the narcissist internalized her to guarantee her functioning and prevent abandonment.

Narcissist internalizes all external objects. So Madonna Whore complex is not a splitting defense directed at external objects (women), but at an internal one: the self is split to all body and all mental (Guntrip).

Abandonment is equivalent of birth: being forced back into the world and external object relations. Hence the extreme anxiety, decompensation, acting out, and protector self-state (secondary psychopathy).

Ego evolves - moulded and jumpstarted - via external object relations. Derives strength and sense of reality.

Safety (fear flight reaction) via not being: absence, emptiness, ironically ego death.

Narcissism is an attempt to avoid this solution via grandiose fantasies of invulnerability, omnipotence, and omniscience.

Their locus is the False Self, a construct which represents a compromise: external object relations one step removed and with a decoy - and schizoid inner absence (being unborn, egoless) where a real core should have been.

Narcissism is fetishism: fantasy defenses against the schizoid state (death).

When they fail (mortification), narcissist becomes schizoid.

Then he resurrects (born again) into renewed narcissism.

Like narcissism, Paranoia and depression are also defenses against schizoid state: if external object relations are too threatening, next best is internal object relations (rather than schizoid no object relations and no ego).

Internal objects can be persecutory (eg inner critic). The narcissist, though, experiences them as external (paranoia) and, in an attempt to control his aggression, becomes depressed (substitute for guilt in healthy people). 

Schizoid chooses the safety of withdrawal-avoidance from reality and external objects to internal objects (esp. mother) via merger/fusion/assimilation (womb).

Narcissist chooses the pleasure of approach-mastery of external objects via grandiosity and exploitive entitlement (incest).

Both are regressive-infantile.

Codependency and Borderline are composites: merger and fusion are both safe and pleasurable. This is accomplished via pseudopsychosis: externalizing internal objects (such as mother's womb).

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During the lovebombing or grooming phases, the narcissist is always the sagacious, omniscient, and perspicacious guru-father. The potential partner is merely a source of narcissistic supply, a fan, admirer, follower, or adulator, the narcissist’s groupie, “patient”, acolyte, and member of his personality cult.

Only when already in the shared fantasy, does the puerile child aspect of the narcissist predominate. This regressive infantilization is mildly schizoid in nature: the narcissist anticipates betrayal, loss, and abandonment and is effectively withdrawing as an adult. In his child role, he expects less of the relationship and, by provoking the maternal reflexes of his partner, forestalls or postpones the inevitable desertion.

At this stage of the shared fantasy, the emphasis shifts from narcissistic to schizoid supply: there is a sense of stability and safety, but no engagement, commitment, attachment, investment, or intimacy, including sexual. The partner is now the narcissist’s playmate and newfound mother.

Sadistic supply manifests only in a shared fantasy and only with sadistic narcissists. Ironically, it is the only time the narcissist regards the partner as a woman. He derives misogynistic pleasure from demeaning, debasing, and despoiling her, also sexually.

Finally, a full schizoid stage sets in during the bargaining phase. The narcissist pushes his partner away and rejects her humiliatingly with extreme withdrawal, absence, and avoidance.

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Sputnik V, the Russian vaccine is 91.6% effective, enthused an article in Lancet. Based on what? Data provided wholly by the Russians. Yeah, right.

It reminds of the idiotic “diagnostic” “tests” which rely on the truthfulness of self-reporting by ... narcissists and psychopaths. The PCL-R corroborates their responses with intimidated family members and star-struck admirers. The NPI relies entirely on the narcissist’s honesty.

The PCL-R is based on a structured interview and collateral data gathered from family, friends, and colleagues and from documents.

The questions comprising the structured interview are so transparent and self-evident that it is easy to lie one’s way through the test and completely skew its results. Moreover, scoring by the diagnostician is highly subjective (which is why the DSM and the ICD stick to observable behaviours in their criteria for Antisocial or Dissocial Personality Disorder).

The hope is that information gathered outside the scope of the structured interview will serve to rectify such potential abuse, diagnostic bias, and manipulation by both testee and tester.

The PCL-R, in other words, relies on the truthfulness of responses provided by notorious liars (psychopaths) and on the biased memories of multiple witnesses, all of them close to the psychopath and with an axe to grind.

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The separation of emotions from sex has challenged our very ability to experience, engender, or enjoy intimacy within stable dyads.

Men have been incapacitated by such practices for millennia now. Currently, women are defiantly and ostentatiously going the same broken road of promiscuity and near-anonymous, masturbatory casual sex.

Emotionless sex is pathological: it is psychopathic and schizoid. It involves the objectification and dehumanization of the partner in an ambience of fake instant intimacy. Hence the splitting defense known as the Madonna-whore complex, for example.

Rampantly available casual sex removes the incentives to commit or to invest in a relationship and leads to atomization, alienation, and malignant, froward self-sufficiency.

Hundreds of studies have concluded that people born after 1995 have severe intimacy, relationships, and sexual deficits (they are largely asexual in between rare hookups) even as the rates of schizoid withdrawal (think social media), depression, and anxiety among them have skyrocketed. Watch my video on youth sexlessness.

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People with many types of personality disorders possess no constellated Self and no functional Ego: they are “selfless”. This is very bad news for them - and for others.

Jung's complexes, subpersonalities, Internal Family Systems Model (IFS), Ego-state therapy.

Each self-state is narrative which provides a pseudo-identity. Pseudoidentities are ego functions (resources) and simulations (probes). In the absence of a unitary, stable core (identity disturbance and identity diffusion), the patient shape-shifts between self-states, replete with their own unique traits, affect, cognitions, and behaviors. In extremis, these self-states are utterly dissociated (most forms of DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder).

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Intimate partner enters the shared fantasy in order to facilitate the narcissistic solution to the schizoid state: serve as fetishized womb (mother) and affirm the reality and veracity of the False Self. She is misperceived as external object, when actually the narcissist internalized her to guarantee her functioning and prevent abandonment.

Narcissist internalizes all external objects. So Madonna Whore complex is not a splitting defense directed at external objects (women), but at an internal one: the self is split to all body and all mental (Guntrip).

Abandonment is equivalent of birth: being forced back into the world and external object relations. Hence the extreme anxiety, decompensation, acting out, and protector self-state (secondary psychopathy).

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Advantages of refusing to grow up (Puer Aeternus/Peter Pan): 1. I am a child, so I am harmless and vulnerable, don’t hurt me 2. I am a still a toddler, so I am helpless and hurting, care for me, help me, take care of my needs. This is an extreme example of neoteny.

Schizotypy is psychological neoteny. It involves regression to pre-self childhood, when the self is either not constellated or not integrated, boundaries are fuzzy, and there is a confusion between external and internal objects. Creativity and imagination are enhanced and predispose to fantasy.

When we combine the schizotypy model with the Five Factor model of personality, we find that Borderline, Narcissistic, Schizoid, Schizotypal, Paranoid, Secondary Psychopathy, and other personality disorders emerge naturally. It seems that personality defenses are defenses against schizophrenia and psychosis.

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One strategy of coping with complex trauma and prolonged, all-pervasive egregious abuse is to internalize the abusers and identify with them.

In patriarchal misogynistic societies, women are fifth column traitors to their gender: they enforce men's rules and try to ingratiate themselves with the men by acting against their kind viciously and doggedly.

The Jewish capos in Auschwitz who collaborated with the SS against their their brethren are another example.

These sycophant abuser extensions (aware and consenting flying monkeys) are even much worse than the original tormentors in their zeal, intransigence, and sadism.

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Forgiving is an important capability. It does more for the forgiver than for the forgiven. But it should not be a universal, indiscriminate behaviour. It is legitimate not to forgive sometimes. It depends, of course, on the severity or duration of what was done to you.

In general, it is unwise and counter-productive to apply to life "universal" and "immutable" principles. Life is too chaotic to succumb to rigid edicts. Sentences which start with "I never" or "I always" are not very credible and often lead to self-defeating, self-restricting and self-destructive behaviours.

Conflicts are an important and integral part of life. One should never seek them out, but when confronted with a conflict, one should not avoid it. It is through conflicts and adversity as much as through care and love that we grow.

Human relationships are dynamic. We must assess our friendships, partnerships, even our marriages periodically. In and by itself, a common past is insufficient to sustain a healthy, nourishing, supportive, caring and compassionate relationship. Common memories are a necessary but not a sufficient condition. We must gain and regain our friendships on a daily basis. Human relationships are a constant test of allegiance and empathy.

More here: https://samvak.tripod.com/faq80.html

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Virulently and sadistically misanthropic (actually asocial schizoid) narcissists end up as dismal failures and lonely losers. Their prosocial communal (overt and grandiose) brethren end up as astounding successes, replete with personality cults.

Gregarious narcissists are natural leaders. They grant their followers three wishes:

1. Acceptance and belonging via a group identity as a fan, follower, or acolyte;

2. Fake empathic attention and ersatz succor (the narcissist misrepresents himself as a self-sacrificial “lover of humanity”); and

3. Privileged access to the leader in a game of patronage and favoritism among the cronies in the coterie.

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Most narcissists enjoy an irrational and brief burst of relief after having suffered emotionally ("narcissistic injury") or after having sustained a loss. It is a sense of freedom, which comes with being unshackled.

Having lost everything, the narcissist often feels that he has found himself, that he has been re-born, that he has been charged with natal energy, able to take on new challenges and to explore new territories.

This elation is so addictive, that the narcissist often seeks pain, humiliation, punishment, scorn, and contempt - as long as they are public and involve the attention of peers and superiors. Being punished accords with the tormenting inner voices of the narcissist which keep telling him that he is bad, corrupt, and worthy of penalty.

This is the masochistic streak in the narcissist. But the narcissist is also a sadist - albeit an unusual one.

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Generations of malleable Israeli children are brought up on the story of the misnamed Jewish settlement Tel-Hai ("Mount of Life"), Israel's Alamo. There, among the picturesque valleys of the Galilee, a one-armed hero named Joseph Trumpeldor is said to have died, eight decades ago, from an Arab stray bullet, mumbling: "It is good to die for our country." Judaism is dubbed "A Teaching of Life" - but it would seem that the sanctity of life can and does take a back seat to some overriding values.

Past cultures have been obsessed with death and its aftermath. Our culture is equally preoccupied with life. The right to life - at least of human beings - is a rarely questioned fundamental moral principle. In Western cultures, it is assumed to be inalienable and indivisible (i.e., monolithic). Yet, it is neither. Even if we accept the axiomatic - and therefore arbitrary - source of this right, we are still faced with intractable dilemmas. All said, the right to life may be nothing more than a cultural construct, dependent on social mores, historical contexts, and exegetic systems.

Rights - whether moral or legal - impose obligations or duties on third parties towards the right-holder. One has a right AGAINST other people and thus can prescribe to them certain obligatory behaviours and proscribe certain acts or omissions. Rights and duties are two sides of the same Janus-like ethical coin.

This duality confuses people. They often erroneously identify rights with their attendant duties or obligations, with the morally decent, or even with the morally permissible. One's rights inform other people how they MUST behave towards one - not how they SHOULD or OUGHT to act morally. Moral behaviour is not dependent on the existence of a right. Obligations are.

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Dramatic (cluster B) personality disorders are drama queens and kings.

Pandemic increases the need for drama (Lidija Rangelovska)

MOTIVES for DRAMATIC BEHAVIOR

Acting/distancing (Karpman Drama Triangle)

Self-esteem via reverting locus of control

Attention seeking: hero (gratitude), victim (pity)

Victim or rescuer mentality

Thrills, novelty-seeking, impulsivity

Provocation (projective identification)

Emotional blackmail

Staging, life as a novel or a movie (theatricality)

Manipulation via stress, brinkmanship

Distraction, decoy: shifting blame, diverting attention

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To avoid painful contradictions with reality or cognitive dissonances and also to ameliorate his raging abandonment or separation anxiety, the narcissist aims to micromanage and control his human environment by subsuming it or by merging and fusing with it (exactly as codependents do). His nearest and dearest are reduced to mere representations, avatars, extensions of himself, or internal objects.

This is where projective identification comes into play. Like the simpler projection defense mechanism, it consists of the attribution of the narcissist’s own psychological makeup, urges, desires, and processes to others. But it also involves forcing the target of the projection to conform to its contents: to actually become someone else and behave in ways prescribed by the narcissist (to undergo introjective identification).

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New Video on my YouTube channel: If the Narcissist Were Only Honest About Your “Relationship”

The Narcissistic Credo

I am a child tyrant emperor: infantile, petulant, moody, divine, and delusional.

I am a Wunderkind: a boastful genius.

I want just to play. Nothing else. To have fun. That's all (shared fantasy). I renounce reality and truth.

My game is: you are my vastly inferior slaves and disciples.

You must accept me as I am. You are expected to fully forgive and love me unconditionally, regardless of my conduct or misconduct, even when I inevitably hurt you badly time and again.

I am immutable, opinionated, obstinate, grandiose, labile, dysregulated, and depressive. You should not try to change or fix me or to bargain with me: you are not my equals.

You can play only with me, unless I let you play with others (when you are no longer my playmates, just my servants).

I am entitled to take anything I want from you. I can do to you and with you anything I wish. You have no right to protest, decline, or resist my demands. You are my property, my chattel to dispose of and do with as I please.

You must obey my wishes unthinkingly and promptly, never disagree with me, and even please me with your agony.

You have no right to expect or demand anything from me. If I give you anything, it is because I choose to. I give only what I decide to give, usually only as little of my time, attention, knowledge, and money as absolutely necessary to keep you hooked and around as my playmates.

Only I decide which game we play, based on how capriciously bored or thrilled I am at any given period.

If you are not fit to play my game, I lose all interest in you.

If you refuse to play my game exactly how and when I want it, or if you make any demands whatsoever, I walk away and look for a new playmate.

Simple, really. And it works! I have had no reason to regret any of it over the decades of my life. Compared to the overwhelming vast majority of humanity, I am in a good place and have spent the time allotted to me on this Earth precisely as I had wanted to: my way.

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There are two kinds of intimacy: one that leads to sex and another that inhibits it.

The first kind is almost instant and is based on physical attraction. Coupled with kindness and attentiveness, the parties feel safe precisely because they are strangers: no strings attached, never likely to meet again. They can afford to let go, share, be themselves, allow all masks to slip, and cater unabashedly, even recklessly, to their deepest urges.

Providing that the encounter did not end with abuse or assault, a whiff of the intimacy lingers on as a fond, lifelong memory. Sometimes, the one night stand evolves into a friendship, with or without benefits.

The second variant of intimacy is the mirror image of the first: it hails from a total absence of sexual tension. The parties feel secure exactly because sex is not in the air. As familiarity creeps in glacially, intimacy builds up. It is like the comfort of an old slipper and the coziness of a fireplace in dead winter.

Problems start when expectations mismatch: the homely friend aspires to become the torrid lover and the casual sex partner falls in love. Once rebuffed and spurned, they both feel exploited and abused.

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Narcissists always complain bitterly that they are being disrespected by one and all. Oftentimes, they are right - they just conveniently fail to recall who started it all.

Narcissists hold everyone in contempt as their inferiors. Consequently, they violate boundaries, trample on rights, contumaciously break rules, neglect chores, breach promises, egregiously abuse, and abrogate obligations and responsibilities.

Thus dishonored, or having witnessed the maltreatment of others, people around the narcissist, respond in kind. They lose any initial regard they may have held for the narcissist and they no longer feel bound by any interpersonal or social mores, codes, norms, values, rules, or agreement. They act antisocially (“reactive abuse”).

The narcissist is dissociative: the gaps in his memory result in discontinuity and identity disturbance. So, he resents being punished for earlier misdeeds which he has only a vague recollection of: he cannot form chains of cause and effect in his disorganized mind. He just feels suddenly and inexplicably malevolently attacked and humiliated.

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Some narcissists and psychopaths emphatically and repeatedly broadcast their monstrous traits and misbehave ostentatiously and publicly. They divulge their obnoxious nature, disclose their innate immorality and dysempathy, and brag about their antisocial misdeeds.

This self-advertising is intended to cater to three constitutional needs:

1. Anxiolytic

By fostering an intimidating and vengeful facade, they ward off and defend against a hostile world, populated by envious and malevolent minions who are conspiring to take down the far superior narcissist or psychopath;

2. Masochistic

Self-defeating and self-destructive disclaimers and warnings are a form of punitive regime intended to validate and buttress the narcissist's or psychopath's self-perception as a "bad, unworthy object";

3. Schizoid

Ultimately, taking the self-disparaging narcissist or psychopath at his word, people shun him altogether. His solitary, "lone wolf", space is thus restored and secured.

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More and links: https://samvak.tripod.com/time.html

https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.05244

In his PhD dissertation (1984, Library of Congress), Sam Vaknin postulates a particle (chronon, time quark) whose exchanges yield Time. Various time quarks (up, down, colors, etc.) cancel each other (in pairs, etc.), creating time arrow asymmetry.

Chronon is an ideal clock, but also mediates time itself (like Higgs boson & mass.) "Time" is the interaction between chronons in a field (5th force). This gives rise to a quasi-deterministic rendition of quantum theories & links time to other particle properties, such as mass.

"Events" are perturbations in the Time Field, distinct from chronon interactions.

The Universe is observing itself, the only privileged observer & frame of reference.

Future directions

Timespace can be regarded as a wave function with observer-mediated collapse. All the chronons are entangled at the Big Bang. This yields a relativistic QFT with chronons as Field Quanta (excited states.) with integration via the quantum superpositions.

The metric expansion of time is implied if time is 4th dimension of space or a PHONON of the metric itself.

Perturbative QFT: Time from the Big Bang is mediated by chronons & this leads to expansion (including in the number of chronons.) No bound states.

Chronons as excitation states (stochastic perturbations, vibrations) tie in with superstring theoriest without extra dimensions. Cumulative, "emerging" perturbations amount to a curvature of time-space. Both superstring theories and GRT are, therefore, private cases of a Chronon Field Theory (CFT).

Electro-Gravity Via Geometric Chronon Field and on the origin of mass

Eytan H. Suchard

In 1982, Dr. Sam Vaknin pondered the idea of reconstructing physics based on time as a field ... in his doctorate dissertation as an amendment to the Dirac spinor equation.

Sam saw Quantum Field Theory particles, momentum, and energy as results of the language of physics and of the way the human mind perceives reality - not as reality. ... It is a revolution of the language itself, not a new interpretation of the existing language.

The Special and General Theories of Relativity were revolutions but they did not challenge the use of momentum and energy but rather gave them new relativistic interpretation.

Quantum Mechanics used Energy and Momentum operators and even Dirac's orthogonal matrices are multiplied by such operators. Quantum Field Theory assumes the existence of particles which are very intuitive and agree with the human visual system. Particles may be merely a human interpretation of events that occur in the human sensory world.

This paper elaborates on one specific interpretation of Vaknin's ideas developed by the author (2003-August 2018).

A key idea in this paper is, that while a preferable coordinate of time violates the principle of general relativity, a scalar field does not, because it does not point to any preferable direction in space time and need not be unique.

Interacting particles with non-gravitational fields can be seen as clocks whose trajectory is not Minkowsky geodesic.

A field in which a small enough clock is not geodesic can be described by a scalar field of time whose gradient has non-zero curvature: either real (describes acceleration of neutral clocks made of charged matter), or imaginary (describes acceleration of clocks made of Majorana type matter).

This way the scalar field adds information to space-time, which is not anticipated by the metric tensor alone. The scalar field can’t be realized as a coordinate because it can be measured from a reference sub-manifold along different curves.

In a “Big Bang” manifold, the field is simply an upper limit on measurable time by interacting clocks, backwards from each event to the big bang singularity as a limit only.

In De Sitter / Anti De Sitter space-time, reference sub-manifolds from which such time is measured along integral curves are described as all the events in which the scalar field is zero. The solution need not be unique but the representation of the acceleration field by an anti-symmetric matrix is unique up to SU(2) x U(1) degrees of freedom.

Matter in Einstein-Grossmann equation is replaced by the action of the acceleration field (geometric action which is not anticipated by the metric alone).

New formalism of matter replaces the conventional stress-energy-momentum-tensor. A positive charge manifests small attracting gravity and a stronger but small repelling acceleration field that repels even uncharged particles that measure proper time, i.e. have rest mass.

The negative charge manifests a repelling anti-gravity and a stronger acceleration field that attracts even uncharged particles that measure proper time, i.e. have rest mass.

Theory leads to causal sets. Spacetime exists only where a chronon wave-function collapses.

It has technological repercussions, implications regarding "Dark Matter" and "Dark Energy".

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Two neologisms: nonsesphere and egosystem. The latter enables the former which, in turn, inflates the latter. A match made in heaven.

The nonsensphere or nonsenspace is the assemblage of disintermediated digital publishing platforms. It is haunted by dimwits, ignoramuses, whackos, and the con artist dilettantes and charlatans who cash in on the brain dead masses, laughing all the way to the nearest bank. It is a compendium of inanity, insanity, and malice, fueled by illiteracy and absent even the vestiges of critical thinking.

The main rule - nay, the ONLY rule - of the nonsensphere or nonsenspace is: “tell them what they want to hear”. Braying with self-aggrandizing delight, the denizens of this netherworld turn sadistically vicious at the slightest hint of disagreement or criticism: they are, after all, perfection reified.

This is the egosystem ecosystem: the dull lead the dumb, the damaged fix the broken, the unschooled preach sagely, the demented set the standards, criminals moralize, and psychopaths erupt in ostentatious saintly empathy and offer succor to the suffering multitudes (for a fee, of course). Reality, truth, and expertise are both derided and decried as anathemas.

We are doomed. If anyone has had any doubt of this prognosis, Nature sent us a compact emissary to confirm it. We have constructed technologies and nurtured institutions which elevate the most stupid, the delusional, and the most malign or avaricious - and suppress the most gifted and farsighted. No species can survive such choices. Nor will we.

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Separation is wound/void/empty core – individuation (“self”) scar tissue – dead mother (not good enough environmental mother who provides no ego care) creates Balint’s “basic fault”

Ego formation disrupted owing to problems in object relations

To fill the void: internal objects (phantasy, schizoid self-sufficiency, narcissistic grandiosity) or external objects (object relations, love)

Relationships with internal objects are same as with external ones, owing to confusion.

They involve:

idealization-devaluation cycles,

shared fantasy as organizing principle,

approach-avoidance

Idealized internal objects are nucleii of grandiosity, participate in co-idealization and self-idealization

Devalued internal objects either become persecutory or are projected

Shared fantasy involves

autoeroticism (sex),

omnipotence and omniscience (services),

and self-supply (emanating from idealized internal objects)

Approach-avoidance and intermittent reinforcement engendered by the schizoid core's pain aversion (love is pain, repressed to be avoided) but also to

convert partner to bad internal object (object constancy which applies to both good and bad objects).

The narcissist interojects ("snapshots") you and converts you (devaluation) into a bad, persecutory, and frustrating internal object, a repository of the narcissist's toxic waste, repressed memories, negative emotions, fears, and paranoid ideation.

The narcissist then projects onto you the bad, corrupt internal object (your representation in his mind). This allows him to discard you, his mother figure, and re-experience the original separation from his real mother and the exhilarating individuation that followed.

Reestablish safe solitary space (in healthy people, boundaries define the personal space, here they ARE the space)

Test parental sufficiency (unconditional love and acceptance)

Reenact early childhood conflict

Sadistic pleasure

Quote from "Empty Core: An Object Relations Approach to Psychotherapy of the Schizoid Personality" by Jeffrey Seinfeld, Ph.D., published by Jason Aronson, 1991

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Speaker in the 2nd Webinar on Stress and Depression Management, February 12, 2021.

My topic: "Anxiety and Personality Disorders".

My lectures and presentations are also made available on my YouTube channel. Watch the latest ones here.

Speaker in other international conferences on psychology, psychiatry, mental health, and neuroscience:

http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html

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Accurate, timely information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic has been slow to come. Web pages - even institutional ones - remained outdated, pull only, jumbles of text; apps were a debacle and spurned by users. Fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories created an infodemic.

The only solution is wiki and other crowdsourcing technologies. Citizens can provide real-time medical and other information to be curated by volunteering medical doctors.

Available here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings

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The narcissist takes a snapshot of you and proceeds to interact exclusively with that inner representation or avatar of you, usually converting it into a bad, persecutory internal object.

You can tell if you had been snapshot when:

1. The way the narcissist describes you is way too ideal;

2. He moves too fast, offering you marriage and children on a second date; and

3. He becomes possessive of you and starts to micromanage your life.

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Interview to Nova Makedonija

The pandemic has merely accelerated the decline of the USA and the rise of the historically dominant Eurasian landmass (Russia and its newfound ally, contiguous China).

Russia is providing weapons not only to Serbia, but to NATO allies like Turkey. It had cast itself as an important diplomatic force in the Middle East (not only in Syria, but even with Israel). It is now emerging as technological and scientific power both for good (vaccines) and bad (hacking).

China is now pivoting from a strictly economic superpower to a military one. It is purchasing critical infrastructure in Greece, Africa, and Latin America. Its soft power has surpassed the USA’s in terms of lending to sovereigns, online social media; payments, and retail; and propaganda. Its GDP is nearly the same as the USA’s and the EU’s.

As a tiny polity, North Macedonia cannot afford to surf the wrong geopolitical wave. It must strike a neutral stance between East and West, even if it means that it has to postpone its EU aspirations. It should adopt the Swiss model and welcome everyone. It should redirect itself and embrace industries which do not render it dependent on either superpower: services, green agriculture, medical tourism, offshore banking, coding and backoffice operations, etc.

Article by Aleksandar Srbinovski in today’s Nova Makedonia, quoting from my statement: “Macedonia cannot afford to surf the wrong geopolitical wave”.

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@teasingkafka is soliciting questions for her second interview with me (the first one is available on my YouTube channel and is rather popular viewing.

You can message (DM) her on Instagram, leave your question as a comment here, or as a comment on her YouTube videos (search for Dorcas on YouTube):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYXgFWAiEIA

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@mydefiningmoment was very kind to include this image in her story yesterday. Naturally, I agree with her fully.

I love her posts, by the way: an anthology of the most sidesplitting humorous quotes from other users coupled with her concise and incisive words abuse and recovery. Highly recommended.

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Narcissists have no ego. Ego death means narcissism.

Ego functions include: reality testing, impulse control, emotional regulation, judgment, object relations, cognitive processes, defense mechanisms, and a synthetic function.

Freud, Jung, Kohut, Horney, Klein, Mahler, Kernberg, Winnicott, Fairbairn, Guntrip, Stern - all had their mutually exclusive and contradictory versions of pathological narcissism. What are we to do?

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Sartre: Relationships can never work, they will always end up being inauthentic, deceptive, and fantastic-delusional.

Sartre: Consciousness has the capacity for nothingness which gives rise to freedom, choices, decisions, responsibility, authenticity, and, ultimately, self-identity. Being requires the involvement of the world, its objects, and rigid roles. It leads to dissonant and conflictive "bad faith" projects and inauthenticity.

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The narcissist confuses romantic jealousy with mortification and possessiveness.

Possessiveness is driven by FEAR. Mortification leads to INTROSPECTION. Romantic Jealousy is PAIN which results in withdrawal and aversion.

Possessiveness is abandonment/separation anxiety and fear of loss. As long as object constancy (ownership of the partner taken for granted) is maintained, she can outsource all her sexual and emotional needs. He becomes possessive (not romantically jealous!) only when he senses imminent abandonment. The narcissist also regards any attempt to lie to him and to deceive him as a challenge to his grandiose omniscience and a sign that he is not as feared and held in awe as he imagines himself to be.

The narcissist is romantically jealous only of women he “loves” (infatuation, limerence): decadent women who are both promiscuous and sophisticated (elegant and worldly). Both elements are necessary. A promiscuous woman who is too homely or a cosmopolitan one who is sexually conservative fail to arouse him. 

The narcissist is never romantically jealous or possessive of women who serve as mere playmates, drivers, companions, housekeepers, and PAs. He demands their presence (no abandonment), services, or sex – and pays for them. Otherwise, he wants to be left alone: solitude and solitary pursuits.

The cerebral narcissist has sex (typically kinky and sadistic) only within a shared fantasy and, even then, he much prefers object constancy (adulating presence) and services to sex, so he ultimately switches to celibacy and legitimizes the outsourcing by his partner of her needs.

ONLY mortification involves soul-searching and dysphoria. Romantic jealousy does not lead to introspection, only to pain.

The narcissist is especially mortified by women whom he doesn’t love and considers inferior to him, precisely because their betrayal is humiliating and unexpected, a WAKEUP CALL.

The narcissist can be mortified into accepting that he is a schizoid narcissist and should stay away from people, pursue narcissistic and sadistic supply, and lead a solitary life, devoid of sex, love, and intimacy.

He could also be mortified into realizing that: (1) He is abusive (sadistic), crazy, and his own worst enemy (for example: he inflicts unendurable pain on himself by knowingly driving women to cheat on him with predators); (2) Even quasi-“men” are vastly preferrable to him (he is irredeemably disabled and inferior, not superior, infantile, not a man at all); and (3) He has disrespected and berated himself, so people disrespect, fear, hate, and are revolted by him.

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Presentation in the 2nd Webinar on Stress and Depression Management, February 2021

No way to avoid anxiety whatever choices you make. Authenticity and Bad Faith projects both end in anxiety.

Horney's great contribution was the concept of anxiety. Freudian anxiety is a rather primitive mechanism, a reaction to imaginary threats arising from early childhood sexual conflicts. Horney argued convincingly that anxiety is a primary reaction to the child's dependence on adults for his survival.

Children are uncertain (of love, protection, nourishment, nurturance) – so they become anxious. They develop psychological defences to compensate for the intolerable and gradual realisation that adults are merely human and are, at times, capricious, arbitrary, unpredictable, unreliable. These defences provide both gratification and a sense of security. The problem of dangerous dependence still exists, but it is "one stage removed". When the defences are attacked or perceived to be attacked (such as in therapy) – anxiety is reawakened.

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The pandemic elicited two types of responses, among both individuals and collectives: (1) grief-related and (2) narcissistic defenses.

Separately, coronaphobia is neologism which encompasses extreme anxiety and phobia reactions to the coronavirus. It is defined as “an excessive triggered response of fear of contracting the virus causing COVID-19 leading to accompanied excessive concern over physiological symptoms, significant stress about personal and occupational loss, increased reassurance and safety seeking behaviors, and avoidance of public places and situations, causing marked impairment in daily life functioning." Narcissists – especially somatic ones – are far more likely to experience Generalized Anxiety Disorders than the general population.

GRIEF

Swiss-American psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross suggested a five stage model of grieving in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. It was actually inspired by her work with terminally ill patients

Similar models were proposed earlier by Erich Lindemann, Collin Murray Parkes, and John Bowlby.

1. Denial: the virus does not exist, the diagnosis or mechanism of action are wrong, the statistics are skewed, it will go away soon, it is not as serious as it is made out to be.

2. Anger: as the disease persists, denial becomes impossible. Frustration sets in and becomes aggression (Dullard, 1939) directed at others and at institutions and authority figures. "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"; "Why would this happen?". Claims of mistreatment, erroneous guidance, inefficiency, and discrimination mount.

3. Bargaining: attempt to mitigate the grief by avoiding its cause: changes in lifestyle and various compromises (masks, social distancing) are offered as sacrifices intended to secure health or an extension of life expectancy. Religiosity, conspiracy theories, some forms of environmentalism, belief in occult or esoteric practices, placebos – are all variants of rampant magical thinking. "If I could trade my life for his or hers" is also bargaining.

4. Depression: capitulation in the face of overwhelming odds, learned helplessness, and hopelessness owing to all-pervasive and extreme uncertainty. People say: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "I'm going to die soon, so what's the point?"; "I miss my loved one; why go on?" “I can’t continue to live like that for much longer”.
During the fourth stage, the individual despairs at the recognition of their mortality. Body language and affect regulations are impacted and mood lability sometimes sets in. The affected suspend communication and become schizoid, avoiding all contacts and interactions with the world and sinking into anhedonic inactivity.

5. Acceptance: finally, people become habituated to the natural or manmade disaster as an inevitable part of the new normal. Life goes on, time heals all wounds, better give up the fight. A new narrative accommodates and incorporates the hitherto unthinkable and gives rise to tender tendrils of hope, inner peace, and restored emotional regulation.

NARCISSISTIC DEFENSES

When narcissists fall victim to chronic or acute diseases, or survive a traffic accident, they react in either of four typical ways, depending on the type of narcissist:

1. The schizotypal reaction: the belief that the narcissist's predicament is a part of a larger, cosmic plan, or of a blueprint that governs the narcissist's life and inexorably leads him to greatness and to the fulfillment of a mission.

2. Narcissistic rage intended to allay feelings of helplessness, loss of control, and impotence and to re-establish the narcissist's omnipotent, grandiose self.

This is frequently followed by a schizoid phase (withdrawal) and then by a manic spurt of activity, seeking narcissistic supply (attention).

3. The paranoid reaction: the narcissist deludes himself that the accident was no accident, someone is out to get him, etc. The narcissist casts himself in the role of a victim, usually in the framework of some grand design or conspiracy, or as the outcome of "fate" (again, a schizotypal element).

4. The masochistic reaction: in the wake of the illness or accident, the narcissist's constant anxiety is alleviated and he is relieved, having been "punished" properly for his inherent "evilness" and decadence.

Narcissists hate weak (sick) people and hate it even more when their source of narcissistic supply ceases to function properly. Most of them just move on: they abandon the sick spouse and find another, healthier one. Some of them play the role of martyrs, victims, selfless saints and thus garner narcissistic supply as they "treat" their bedridden spouse.

The permanently disabled narcissists adopt one or more of three strategies:

1. Exaggerated helplessness which justifies emotional blackmail and the kind of insidious dependence that cripples his caregivers;

2. Control freakery in a frenzied attempt to reassert his grandiose sense of omnipotence now gravely challenged by his invalidity;

3. Sadism which renders his victim as helpless as he is and as frustrated as he feels and, thus, “levels the playing field” and normalizes his disability ("everyone is helpless and frustrated so there is nothing really wrong with me, I am, after all, still perfect.")

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All the philosophical systems and the religions of the world can be distilled into three options:

1. The psychotic school: magical thinking and misperceiving internal objects (such as “god”) as external;

2. The narcissistic school: entitlement, rights, obligations, and hubris, mistaking external objects and symbols (such as the “nation” or a love object) as internal; and

3. The schizoid school: withdrawing from the world and shunning reality altogether (“nothingness” and “authenticity”).

At any given period of history, one of these schools is on the ascendant and the other two are on the defensive. In our postmodern world, narcissism carried the day.

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Parents manufacture narcissists either by not loving their children enough or by loving them for all the wrong reasons.

The study of narcissism is a century old and the two scholarly debates central to its conception are still undecided. Is there such a thing as HEALTHY adult narcissism (Kohut) - or are all the manifestations of narcissism in adulthood pathological (Freud, Kernberg)?

Moreover, is pathological narcissism the outcome of verbal, sexual, physical, or psychological abuse (the overwhelming view) - or, on the contrary, the sad result of spoiling the child and idolizing it (Millon, the late Freud)?

The infant (ages 0 to 2) does not verbally formulate "thoughts" regarding his pressing needs (which are part cognitive, part instinctual). This nagging uncertainty is more akin to a discomfort, like being thirsty or wet (states of being). These are transformed into permanent Self-states if the needs are not met.

Self is constellated and integrated via satisfactory object relations. When object relations are frustrating or hurtful, the self remains fragmented into states, each state corresponding to an unfulfilled, unmet need.

Each state has its own set of coping strategies, cognitions, emotions (affects) which revolve around resolving the lack. Each state is invested with aggression.

The self-states are dormant and reactive to stressors. During hibernation, they are perceived as internal objects.

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Alpha males are self-confident, empathic, team players, negotiators, and motivators. They induce harmony and integrate feminine and masculine traits and skills. The exact opposite of the nonsense sold to the gullible by con artist dating and business "coaches" or within the intellectually challenged misogynistic Neanderthals of the Manosphere.

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Alpha males are not born, and they don't achieve their position based purely on size and temperament. The primate alpha male is a much more complex and responsible being than a bully.

Merciless tyrants do sometimes rise to the top in a chimpanzee community, but the more typical alphas that I have known were quite the opposite. Males in this position are not necessarily the biggest, strongest, meanest ones around, since they often reach the top with the assistance of others. In fact, the smallest male may become alpha if he has the right supporters. Most alpha males protect the underdog, keep the peace, and reassure those who are distressed. Analyzing all instances in which one individual hugs another who has lost a fight, we found that although females generally console others more often than do males, there is one striking exception: the alpha male. This male acts as the healer-in-chief, comforting others in agony more than anyone else in the community. As soon as a fight erupts among its members, everyone turns to him to see how he is going to handle it. He is the final arbiter, intent on restoring harmony. He will impressively stand between screaming parties, with his arms raised, until things calm down."

Mama's Last Hug by Frans de Waal, W.W. Norton & Company, 2019

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The narcissist perceives his partner's autonomy, independence, agency, and self-efficacy as threats which portend ineluctable abandonment. He reacts to them with paranoid hypervigilance, persecutory delusions, and aggression in multifarious forms, mainly intended to intimidate her into submission.

When the narcissist's partner reacts to his incessant abuse by maintaining a separate, secretive life, the narcissist escalates his attempts to hoover and stalk her, spy on her, and control her agenda and social circle, including "the competition" (male friends or lovers).

That she refuses to succumb to his charms and resuscitate the shared fantasy causes him a series of narcissistic injuries which are hard to overcome and may lead to mortification. He also envies her relative happiness and intact external object relations and aims to destroy and remove this frustrating object of his dependency.

It is a no-win situation for his mate: if she does try to re-establish the dyad, if she demands sex (at all or a more conventional variety), if she insists that the narcissist commit, invest, fulfill chores and keep promises - he pushes her away, avoids, withdraws, and shuns her altogether, reverting to a schizoid state.

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In casual sex, intimacy is incidental to the sex which is center stage. It is an occasional byproduct.

In a love relationship, sex is incidental to the intimacy that is the heart and fuel of the couple.

The quality of the sex is informed by this intimacy and it bears little resemblance to the casual variant.

In fact, a whopping 80% among women and 60% of men rated casual sex as terrible and a majority of both men and women did not reach orgasm.

The culprit may have been a lack of familiarity with the partner’s (objectified) body but also a lack of intimacy in a typical one night stand which is essentially a form of mutual masturbation between an animated dildo and a breathing sex doll.

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The last revised printing of the 10th edition (2015) of “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” is being delivered to the warehouse in the offices of Narcissus Publications as we speak!

Buy it from Amazon. It is the first book on narcissistic abuse ever written (1995) and, thanks to my wife, @reframingtheself, published (online in 1997 and in print 1999).

“Narcissistic abuse” is a phrase I had coined, among many others. It triggered a global online movement of staggering proportions and the language I had created now permeates the discourse in everything from culture to movies to politics worldwide.

No one even knows that I am the father of “flying monkeys”, “narcissistic fleas”, somatic and cerebral narcissist, hoovering, discard, and numerous other words and phrases. I gave voice and self-awareness to the victims and, for 9 grueling years (1995-2004), I have been all alone in running support groups and websites on narcissism. There was no one else but me online. Most current “experts” and “coaches” were teenagers at the time.

I am long forgotten, reduced to obscurity on my puny and abandoned YouTube channel. The organizers of Narcissistic Abuse Awareness Day even ban me from the event for “victim shaming and blaming”.

But my work lives on. A good parent takes pride in the separation and individuation of his offspring and brainchildren. I do. They have outgrown me.

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Setting boundaries is a two edged sword. On the one hand, boundaries inhibit unacceptable conduct. On the other hand, if they are established and promulgated in the wrong way, they can actually provoke aggression, defiance, and retaliation and incentivize lying and deception by others.

For boundaries to be effective, they must meet four conditions:

1. They should be firm and rigid, never fuzzy or negotiable;

2. They must be clear and unequivocal and communicated unambiguously;

3. They must come replete with carrots and sticks applied to everyone automatically and equally - including to oneself: rewards for behaviors that conform to the boundaries and punishments for any violation. The deterrent inherent in them must be credible and just - not knee-jerk and arbitrary.

4. Zero tolerance: first strike and you are out, first breach and you are gone, first offense or incident of maltreatment and the offending perpetrator is history.

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A whopping one third of the news coverage of PBS Newshour is now dedicated to African-American affairs. Such force feeding only serves to enhance racism rather than mitigate it.

Moreover, the reports are exercises in virtue signalling, replete with inaccessible jargon intended to convey solidarity and group affiliation.

Obtuse, arcane, and hermetic verbosity is clubbish, snobbish, and, ultimately self-defeating, a form of passive-aggressive contempt for all outsiders.

Pyrotechnic speech acts are exclusionary, much like secret handshakes or fraternity insignia.

As echo chambers and silos of the like minded proliferate both online and off, such impenetrable discourse is coming to characterize both private and public speech. It is nothing short of the breakdown of language itself and the inhibition of any meaningful communication.

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Your wife dolls up, grabs a bottle of liquor, excited, and rushes through the door at 21:30 PM. She says that she was invited for a late dinner by a friendly couple. Do you believe her?

Belief is not the same as trust. It is purely cognitive, not emotional.

First, you have to care enough to scrutinize and contemplate the issue. If the outcome is of no importance to you, the resource-efficient path of least resistance is to believe.

Next: the facts must align with the belief, they cannot be blatantly counterfactual. If the facts match a possible benign interpretation, you are likely to adopt it so as to reduce dissonance and hurt, owing to her deceit (confirmation bias). If you wish or are forced to maintain the status quo, turning an inner blind eye (self-deception) is the only viable option.

Finally, awareness and even vigilance are inversely proportional to the extent of idealization, splitting, projection, reframing , and other defense mechanisms. You are far more likely to believe your wife if you are still idealizing her, for example. Eyes wide shut are conducive to belief.

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I find the human mind fascinating even as I consider the overwhelming vast majority of people intolerably boring. Women are exceptionally and excruciatingly dull, constricted as they were by millennia of domestic slavery. Even guaranteed sex rarely induces me to endure an hour with a woman's inconsequential banter. Men are only infinitesimally and marginally more interesting.

How to reconcile this glaring contradiction? People possess minds and if I find the mind captivating, surely I should find its container equally appealing!

The problem is language.

Language is defense and a barrier against hurtful self-awareness, honest self-disclosure, and dangerous exposure of vulnerabilities. Rather than facilitate, it prevents access to the mind, firewalls it. We all put on masks and are personas when we interact with others.

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For millennia, politicians had represented the interest of the elites: they managed the bureaucracies which were required to ensure the smooth running of polities and economies.

Then, starting with the French Revolution, as empires and monarchies crumbled, the masses started to assert their power as they formed chaotic ochlocracies and executed hapless members of the erstwhile aristocracies.

Alarmed, the elites responded by introducing democracy and nation-stares (nationalism): part sham and part an effort to structure surging mobs and control them.

It backfired. The great unwashed leveraged democracy and disintermediating, empowering technologies to stage populist coups and take over the levers of states and establishments.

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Spouses and intimate partners cheat for several possible reasons and each cause dictates a different style of betrayal and adultery.

Some cheat in order to seek novelty, experience variety, and because they are aroused by the forbidden and socially proscribed fruit of two-timing.

Others are out to cater to their unmet needs, but they lie and deceive so as to not hurt the partner, or to preserve the marriage/couple for whatever reason, pecuniary or amorous.

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There is an almighty confusion regarding people with low or no sex drive. Here is a helpful disambiguation guide.

Asexual: someone who is devoid of an other-directed sex drive. Some asexuals do not crave intimacy, companionship, or romance either.

Hyposexual: a person whose sex drive is either infrequent or intermittent and is distressed by this self-perceived deficiency.

Schizoid personality: he finds sex unappealing, repetitive, and tedious and so avoids seeking it. Most schizoids also abstain from having any relationships.

Schizoid style: unlike the schizoid personality, the style enjoys sex but will not go out of his way to find it. He can go years or decades without sex, but when the opportunity throws herself at his feet, he thoroughly enjoys the proceedings.

Cerebral narcissist: he derives narcissistic supply from his intellectual pyrotechnics and converts his celibacy into a proud ideology, feeling superior to common folks who lust and bang bestially.

Histrionic: oddly, flirtatious and seductive as they are, most histrionics are sex-averse (“frigid”). They regulate their moods and self-esteem via the chase and the conquest, not the act itself.

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These are chaotic confusing times and we are all baffled puzzled worried a trifle paranoid wary cautious self-isolating long before social distancing we all reach out and retreat approach avoidance because the world had become an enigma wrapped in a puzzle embedded in a mystery. We no longer feel at home.

I will try to introduce order and meaning into the world as it is today by studying the way the world had always been, the immutable patterns rules that govern it now and always had, for millennia.

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