Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
The narcissist's communication is a cipher, it is coded. Here are two simple rules: 1. The narcissist is never sad - and always mad (at you) and bad; and 2. When the narcissist says "I am bad" (is ostensibly repentant), he means to say "I am afraid" (of the consequences of his actions)
Envelope: reasonable, flexible/compromising, socially-acceptable, commonsensical
Hidden/occult coded message which triggers (pushes buttons) based on shared past experiences and speech acts
Hidden not accessible or comprehensible, so people tend to think that something is wrong with you when you try to share it and enlighten them
Techniques:
Countrtfactuality or non-facticity: big picture agreed, now to the details (shared psychosis)
Victim stance and language never mind what you do or say, you are always the abuser (role): comfort zone, projective identification
Projection because imagined victimhood is confabulated: encouraging ego dystony, shame, guilt tripping, self doubt
Gaslighting via equivocation (“maybe”), challenge to reality testing, rewriting history
Hostility disguised as formality
Manipulativeness and coercion, provocation
Ignoring you and your input/requests
Malingering, procrastination
Perfectionism
Forgetfulness
Neglect
Truancy
intentional inefficiency
stubbornness
pseudo-stupidity
outright sabotage
Use lawyers to respond
Palindromic Speech
There are three types of manipulative speech:
Victim
Child
Psychopathic
Lying and Confabulating
Abusing Speech Acts: Three Examples
Big Picture Evasiveness
Alloplastic Defenses and Shifting Blame
Passive-aggressive Gaslighting
No Reasoning with the Mentally Ill
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In the DSM-5, male hypoactive
sexual desire disorder is
characterized by "persistently or recurrently deficient (or absent)
sexual/erotic thoughts or fantasies and desire for sexual activity", as
judged by a clinician with consideration for the patient's age and cultural
context.
Female sexual interest/arousal disorder is defined
as a "lack of, or significantly reduced, sexual interest/arousal",
manifesting as at least three of the following symptoms: no or little interest
in sexual activity, no or few sexual thoughts, no or few attempts to initiate
sexual activity or respond to partner's initiation, no or little sexual
pleasure/excitement in 75–100% of sexual experiences, no or little sexual
interest in internal or external erotic stimuli, and no or few
genital/nongenital sensations in 75–100% of sexual experiences.
For both diagnoses, symptoms must persist for at
least six months, cause clinically significant distress, and not be better
explained by another condition. Simply having lower desire than one's partner
is not sufficient for a diagnosis. Self-identification of a lifelong lack of
sexual desire as asexuality precludes diagnosis.
(Wikipedia)
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Your Twin Flame is Narcissist, Psychopath, Con(fidence) artist
Twin flame, other half
Idealized mirroring of an idealized version of
yourself (past, present, future)
Co-idealize yourself (narcissistic defense
grandiosity)
Same traits, preferences, behaviors, values,
goals, boundaries, dreams PLUS (you on steroids plus added features)
Legitimizes, sense of belonging, being seen
(existence validated affirmed)
He is perceived as either superior or a
reinforcement the cavalry which will allow you to reach utopia (no place, a
pessimistic word)
Cold empathy, scans vulnerabilities, idealizes
you, self-limerence, hall of mirrors, shared fantasy, cult
He becomes both parental figure and your false
self and is introjected as such regresses you to before
separation/individuation (infantile state): iternalized objects reduce dependence
on external objects.
Monopolizes regulatory functions
Others perceived as dysregulatory and deflating
which leads to paranoia and isolation
Continued self-aggrandizement (as empath)
perpetuates his roles and reinforces his introject, continues the abuse
Like in Stockholm syndrome he becomes source and
regulator of life, self-esteem, wellbeing, self-love and has the power to
inflict hurt.
Regression to pre-separation/individuation forces
you from external to internal object relations (schizoid), his introject is
parental but it is also YOU, a component of your identity.
Symbiosis is not merger fusion (empty core)
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Exit the narcissist's prison, Truman show, or matrix: take
the red pill! Mortify the
narcissist and abandon him: confront, humiliate/reflect, then soothe.
Soothing him creates internal mortification (he cannot cast you as the evil one
and has to blame himself for his predicament).
Mortification is combo projection, introjection,
and acting out.
Attachment style determined in early childhood and
is about object constancy (absence/presence): created by balance between
anxiety/fear (of engulfment or hurt) and need to be loved.
Shared space created by need to be loved:
intimacy, experiences, memories, emotions (=schema). It never leads to
engulfment, enmeshment, merger, or fusion.
Shared space is evocative and a part of identity.
Shared fantasy is counterfactual and not part of
identity (alien, intrusive, estranged). You become a mere internal object in
the narcissist's mind.
Conflict between attachment and fantasy leads to
acting out.
Acting out in personality disorders:
defiance/reactance, contumaciousness/counterdependence, withdrawal/avoidance.
False Self is also an attempt to be loved (you
can’t love my true self, how about this?).
The narcissist's life is structured in order to
avoid conflict with powerful godlike introjects by negating one’s identity
(parents, god, society, role models, influential peers).
Mortification proves the introjects right: "I
am not lovable because I am deficient and inadequate even as a fake/actor".
Relationship awareness theory
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A whopping 80% of alcoholics relapse within one year after rehab. This dismal failure is
replicated in treatments for other substances and addictions. Why is that?
Because we misunderstand the nature of addiction and consequently adopt one of
three wrong orientations:
1. Medicalize the addiction, rendering it a disease
and absolving the addict of any personal accountability or responsibility for
his actions (“I can’t help it, I am sick”);
2. Substitute one addiction for another. The
addict becomes addicted even to the very process of treating his condition;
3. Confront the addiction as a proscribed and
self-destructive impulse when, actually, it caters to numerous dissociated and
overt psychological, social, as well as physiological needs. Rather than attend
to the totality, we zero in on the least important derivative aspect: the
craving, leaving the rest intact and raring to have another go.
About 40% of the brain is dedicated to engendering
and processing addiction. Animals frequently display addictive behaviors.
Addiction is the normal state. But like every other common and useful function,
it can veer out of control and become malignant and all-consuming.
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People profess to be wary or even scared of psychopaths. Yet, psychopaths overwhelmingly report being disrespected,
humiliated, and ridiculed by others, often in public and even when their
reputation as psychos and criminals precedes them. How come?
Some self-destructive people bait psychopaths on
purpose, attempting to commit “suicide by psycho”. But these cases are few and
far between.
It seems that people are more afraid of the
mythical psychopath than the real life ones - and for very good reasons: there
is nothing to be afraid of, most psychopaths are harmless. Serial killers, for
example, are sadistic narcissists, rarely actual psychopaths who are much more
likely to be found among petty criminals and CEOs.
A small minority of antisocial psychopaths are
pathetic losers with poor boundaries. They are defiant and lack empathy and
impulse control, but they are not self-efficacious and are often schizoid lone
wolves.
When confronted, derided, offended, or abused,
they just skulk away, tail between the legs. They are bullies and cowards, but
direct and displace their aggression at weak inferiors or at their “nearest and
dearest”.
People largely shun this variant of the species.
Granting them access and confiding your vulnerabilities legitimizes your
mistreatment, in their eyes.
But the overwhelming vast majority of psychopaths
are high-functioning and even prosocial. They are extremely unlikely to commit
violent crimes. Even when affronted, mocked, shamed, and offended against, they
just shrug, roll their eyes, and move on without retaliating because they are
very goal-focused and not easily distracted.
In short, paradoxically, it is much more dangerous
to insult a “phallic” narcissist in public than to confront a psychopath or a
psychopathic (malignant) narcissist. The latter is just likely to disengage and
move on - the former bears grudges and is vindictive.
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Projective identification is a form of coercive control within the shared fantasy. It sometimes results in collusive
infidelity. Paradoxically, serial cheating BUTTRESSES object constancy: (“he
keeps coming back to me, choosing me over all his other women”).
The term "shared fantasy" was coined by
Sander, F. (1989) in "Shared unconscious conflicts, marital disharmony and
psychoanalytic therapy", published in J. Oldham & R. Liebert, eds.,
The middle years: New psychoanalytic perspectives (pp. 160–176). New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press.
Why SOOTHE the narcissist when you had mortified
him?
Enabling and Codependency
Toxic Masculinity
"Coercive control refers to a pattern of
controlling behaviors that create an unequal power dynamic in a relationship.
These behaviors give the perpetrator power over their partner, making it
difficult for them to leave."
Monitoring activities, Exerting financial control,
Isolating the other person, Insulting the other person, Making threats and
being intimidating, domestic violence, Using sexual coercion, Involving
children or pets.
Projective Identification and Collusive Infidelity
“Collusive Infidelity, Projective Identification,
and Clinical Technique
Robert Mendelsohn, The Psychoanalytic Review Vol.
101, No. 4, August 2014
Criminalizing Coercive Control
I want to tell you how much I am afraid of pain. To me, it is a pebble in Indra's Net - lift it and the whole net revives. My pains do not come isolated - they live in families of anguish, in tribes of hurt, whole races of agony. I cannot experience them insulated from their kin. They rush to drown me through the demolished floodgates of my childhood. These floodgates, my inner dams - this is my narcissism, there to contain the ominous onslaught of stale emotions, repressed rage, a child's injuries.
Pathological narcissism is useful - this is why it is so resilient and resistant to change. When it is "invented" by the tormented individual - it enhances his functionality and makes life bearable for him. Because it is so successful, it attains religious dimensions - it become rigid, doctrinaire, automatic and ritualistic. In other words, it becomes a PATTERN of behaviour.
I am a narcissist and I can feel this rigidity as though it were an outer shell. It constrains me. It limits me. It is often prohibitive and inhibitive. I am afraid to do certain things. I am injured or humiliated when forced to engage in certain activities. I react with rage when the mental edifice supporting my disorder is subjected to scrutiny and criticism - no matter how benign.
Narcissism is ridiculous. I am pompous, grandiose, repulsive and contradictory. There is a serious mismatch between who I really am and what I really achieved - and how I feel myself to be. It is not that I THINK that I am far superior to other humans intellectually. Thought implies volition - and willpower is not involved here. My superiority is ingrained in me, it is a part of my every mental cell, an all-pervasive sensation, an instinct and a drive. I feel that I am entitled to special treatment and outstanding consideration because I am such a unique specimen. I know this to be true - the same way you know that you are surrounded by air. It is an integral part of my identity. More integral to me than my body.
This opens a gap - rather, an abyss - between me and other humans. Because I consider myself so special, I have no way of knowing how it is to be THEM.
In other words, I cannot empathize. Can you empathize with an ant? Empathy implies identity or equality, both abhorrent to me. And being so inferior, people are reduced to cartoonish, two-dimensional representations of functions. They become instrumental or useful or functional or entertaining - rather than loving or interacting emotionally. It leads to ruthlessness and exploitativeness. I am not a bad person - actually, I am a good person. I have helped people - many people - all my life. So, I am not evil. What I am is indifferent. I couldn't care less. I help people because it is a way to secure attention, gratitude, adulation and admiration. And because it is the fastest and surest way to get rid of them and their incessant nagging.
I realize these unpleasant truths cognitively - but there is no corresponding emotional reaction (emotional correlate) to this realization.
There is no resonance. It is like reading a boring users' manual pertaining to a computer you do not even own. It is like watching a movie about yourself. There is no insight, no assimilation of these truths. When I write this now, I feel like writing the script of a mildly interesting docudrama.
It is not I.
Still, to further insulate myself from the improbable possibility of confronting these facts - the gulf between reality and grandiose fantasy (the Grandiosity Gap, in my writings) - I came up with the most elaborate mental structure, replete with mechanisms, levers, switches and flickering alarm lights. My narcissism does two things for me - it always did:
1. Isolate me from the pain of facing reality;
2. Allow me to inhabit the fantasyland of ideal perfection and brilliance.
These once-vital function are bundled in what is known to psychologists as my "False Self".
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Keynote
Speaker in Webinar on Neuroscience, Psychiatry and Tissue Science, February 27, 2021
My topic: "The Sorry State of
Psychology".
Psychologists cannot agree on even the most basic things,
psychology can never be a science.
Speech at the 38th Global Psychiatry & Mental
Health Conference: “The Sorry State of Psychology”.
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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Intimacy
is often perceived to include a license to abuse. The abuser treats his nearest, dearest, and closest as mere
objects, instruments of gratification, utilities, or extensions of himself. He
feels that he "owns" his spouse, girlfriend, lovers, children,
parents, siblings, or colleagues. As the owner, he has the right to
"damage the goods" or even dispose of them altogether.
Some abusers are scared of real intimacy and deep
commitment, afraid of the intolerable hurt wrought by an eventual and
inevitable abandonment. They have been taught to consider themselves unlovable
and unworthy of being loved. Being hated and feared is within their comfort
zone: they know the ropes of intimidation and alienation as means of
controlling their environment and rendering it less threatening.
These abusers lead a "pretend",
confabulated life. Their "love" and "relationships" are
gaudy, fake imitations. Such an abuser seeks to put a distance between himself
and those who truly love him, who cherish and value him as a human being, who
enjoy his company, and who strive to establish a long-term, meaningful
relationship with him. He becomes emotionally or physically absent, or “ghosts”.
Some abusers even turn a blind eye to their
intimate partner’s sexual or emotional liaisons with others, allowing her to
develop and maintain a parallel life as long as she continues to observe her
“contractual” obligations to provide services and companionship. Such emotional
absenting can take many forms: from workaholism to sexual swinging.
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With one notable exception, I had
never set boundaries in any of my
relationships. I let my partners behave and misbehave every which way. I
afforded them unmitigated, anarchic freedoms and a complete lack of scrutiny.
Even when ALL of them had abused these privileges
with ostentatious and egregious serial cheating, I never protested or
restrained them (except once).
My girlfriends, spouses, and mates resented this
benign neglect: it felt like indifference to them, as if I don’t care and don’t
mind. They couldn’t get a rise or even a modicum of attention out of me, no
matter how bad their escalated misconduct had become.
This unflappable and implacable posture engendered
loads of uncertainty in the tortured minds of my ostensible intimates: Does he
truly love me? If so, why does he never set rules or intervene, never mind to
what extent I disrespect him in private and in public? Is his apathy a form of
passive-aggression?
Gradually, they could no longer see me as a man.
Real men are somewhat possessive and romantically jealous and they are
definitely boundaried. Genderless and spineless doormats like me lack these
features.
Repelled by my obsequiousness and angry at
themselves for having made such a disastrous mate selection and furious at my
avoidance, my partners became extremely sex averse. They cut off all sex with
me and started to sleep around in order to cater to these most basic of their
unmet needs: intimacy, love (or emotionality), and sex with a man.
My partners did not choose other men over the man they were having a committed relationship with. Rather, they chose actual virility over me: the entity back at home which was neither man nor human. They chose presence over absence, actual throbbing life over a pallid simulacrum, and warm, pulsating bodies over my dead flesh.
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The narcissist hates love – however and wherever it is manifested.
Thus, for instance, when his spouse demonstrates
her love to their children, he wishes them all ill. He is so pathologically
envious of his spouse that he wishes she never existed. Being a tad paranoid,
he also nurtures the growing conviction that she is showing love to her
children demonstrably and on purpose, to remind him how miserable he is, how
deficient, how deprived and discriminated against.
He regards her interaction with their children to
be a provocation, an assault on his emotional welfare and balance. Seething
envy, boiling rage and violent thoughts form the flammable concoction in the
narcissist's mind whenever he sees other people happy.
Many people naively believe that they can cure the
narcissist by engulfing him with love, acceptance, compassion and empathy. This
is not so. The only time a transformative healing process occurs is when the
narcissist experiences a severe narcissistic injury, a life crisis.
Forced to shed his malfunctioning defences, an
ephemeral window of vulnerability is formed through which therapeutic
intervention can try and sneak in.
The narcissist is susceptible to treatment only
when his defences are down because they had failed to secure a steady stream of
Narcissistic Supply. The narcissist's therapy aims to wean him off Narcissistic
Supply.
But the narcissist perceives other people's love
and compassion as forms of Narcissistic Supply!
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With one notable exception, I had never set boundaries in any of my
relationships. I let my partners behave and misbehave every
which way. I afforded them unmitigated, anarchic freedoms and a complete lack
of scrutiny.
Even when ALL of them had abused these privileges
with ostentatious and egregious serial cheating, I never protested or
restrained them (except once).
My girlfriends, spouses, and mates resented this
benign neglect: it felt like indifference to them, as if I don’t care and don’t
mind. They couldn’t get a rise or even a modicum of attention out of me, no
matter how bad their escalated misconduct had become.
This unflappable and implacable posture engendered
loads of uncertainty in the tortured minds of my ostensible intimates: Does he
truly love me? If so, why does he never set rules or intervene, never mind to
what extent I disrespect him in private and in public? Is his apathy a form of
passive-aggression?
Gradually, they could no longer see me as a man.
Real men are somewhat possessive and romantically jealous and they are
definitely boundaried. Genderless and spineless doormats like me lack these
features.
Repelled by my obsequiousness and angry at my avoidance,
my partners became extremely sex averse. They cut off all sex with me and
started to sleep around in order to cater to these most basic of their unmet
needs: intimacy, love (or emotionality), and sex with a man.
My partners did not choose other men over the man
they were having a committed relationship with. Rather, they chose actual
virility over me: the entity back at home which was neither man nor human. They
chose presence over absence, actual throbbing life over a pallid simulacrum,
and warm, pulsating bodies over my dead flesh.
In my previous post, I discussed my lack of boundaries in my
intimate relationships. But the same applies to every other interpersonal relationship I have ever had: from “friendships” to business.
I seek only two mutually exclusive outcomes: 1. To
be adulated and mothered or fathered as a Wunderkind; and 2. To be left alone
to play.
These incompatible goals lead to extreme
immaturity and approach-avoidant behaviors.
Until very recently and for decades, I gave away,
free of charge, lectures, seminars, services, and all my writings. This
self-prostitution provoked both suspicion and derision in the recipients of my
inexplicable and irrational largesse (“Why is he doing this? What an idiot!”)
Exactly like my romantic partners, everyone else
reached the conclusion that I am not a man, but a spineless doormat.
Numerous people brazenly stole my work and my
ideas and men picked up my women in my presence, undeterred by me and
contemptuous of my acquiescing silence in their egregious misconduct.
My reputation as a craven and easy mark preceded
me. My women became public domain as did my intellectual property.
I had become the butt of loathing and mockery
wherever I went because I declined to protect my property from plagiarists or
lay claim to my spouses or girlfriends or lovers when they were approached by
other men and went with them into the night.
I had been and am still being humiliated and
profoundly disrespected because I had disrespected myself in public in every
way imaginable and still do (as these last two posts so unequivocally
demonstrate).
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Some spouses elect to have extramarital affairs, deceive their partners, and remain in a marriage devoid of
love, intimacy, or, often, sex. Why would any person in his right mind make
such a self-defeating and demoralizing choice? Why not abandon ship altogether?
Why eat the stale and putrid cake and still have it?
In order of frequency and import:
1. Money: the most recurring and crucial reason.
Financial security and prosperity trump all other considerations. Driven by
fear, insecurities, and sheer avarice, people sacrifice their individuality,
identity, morality, values, their children's mental or physical health as well
as their own, and their happiness.
2. Pity, compassion, and care for the partner.
This is especially common in couples where one of the partners is parentified.
Divorce feels like abandoning a helpless, hurting child.
3. Shared memories and common history. The
attachment and bonding are displaced into a counterfactual and fantastic
sentimental form of nostalgia. It renders the couple "sticky".
4. The children's interests and welfare come last
and are rarely a truly decisive part of the calculus of pros and cons. Parents
deceive themselves into believing that their kids are the reasons they are not
divorcing when the true, profound motives are the above.
5. Cultural and social mores. In some societies
and cultures, divorce is still frowned upon and stigmatized. It also carries
inordinate costs (such as losing access to the children and the share in the
community property).
6. Peer and family pressures and expectations,
including the influence of pastors, therapists, judges, and friends who
advocate against the dissolution of the dyad.
Pathological demand avoidance in the bargaining phase of the shared fantasy explains why narcissists cheat (commit adultery, infidelity, have extramarital affairs).
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In all my relationships, I allow my partners to be with other men as sexual or even long-term romantic partners. I am forbidden to have any contact whatsoever with women, unless my partner is present and could terminate the meeting at any time. Why this lopsided doormat arrangement?
I accept that, in order to persevere and survive within my increasingly more sexless shared fantasy (in which I am intermittently a child or a father, but never an adult man), my woman has to meet her sexual and emotional needs with (other) men.
I accept that I am not allowed to do the same. I acquiesce in this asymmetry for various reasons:
A. As long as there are no indications of imminent abandonment, I don’t care if she is with other men, she is hurt and feels insecure when I am having any interaction with other women.
B. I should be grateful to her for any time spent with me and on my needs: I am so broken that her presence in my life is a sacrifice on her part, she is doing me a huge favor. I have no right and am in no position to establish boundaries or rules and to then enforce them.
C. She is an adult and I am not - she needs mature, conventional, reciprocated, and regular sex and intimacy, I don't. So, I have to compromise and sacrifice in order to secure her presence and commitment to the relationship. My women are virtual singles with a petulant child or a stern father at home: dating others is their only outlet and escape.
Proof of my infantile immature state of mind: only during an active shared fantasy, I experience fear of loss and abandonment/separation anxiety (in the form of romantic jealousy), but not competition with other men, as all male do. I (cerebral) have only the first (typical of a pre-Oedipal child, though some narcissists have all three, esp. psychopathic and somatic);
D. I can have sex only within a shared fantasy (a new relationship) while she can compartmentalize and not abandon me.
E. Any new shared fantasy will end the same way, with sexlessness and acrimony, so why bother? As long as I am getting supply and services (however meager), better stay put and forget about sex. I move on to a new shared fantasy only when 2 of the 3 Ss are missing at which point the woman had come to replicate my bad, dead mother and failed in her role as a good enough mother;
F. Only mentally ill, broken, damaged, and traumatized women will succumb to my psychosexuality and enter the shared fantasy and this poses serious risks (exposure, blackmail, suicide, criminal liability). Scouting for a new shared fantasy is an absolute desperate last resort;
G. I successfully sublimate my autoerotic sadistic kinky sex drive: I really prefer learning and entertainment (books, internet, my collections) to sex and am far more gratified by these solitary activities. My biological drive is entirely satisfied with porn. My psychosexual kink and sadism require a compliant live body, but the prize is not worth the price: I suppress my urges, exactly the same way practitioners of other paraphilias (like pedophilia) do. Plus, rejecting women, frustrating, and humiliating them when I cannot have them for my sadistic pleasures feels as good as sex.
H. Allowing my partner to cheat on me restores my delusion of being in control.
As long as there is no risk of abandonment in the shared fantasy, I turn a blind eye or even encourage my intimate partner tacitly or openly to cheat on me and resort to other men as extensively and for as long as she needs to.
The only two faux adult roles I am willing to play (father and guru, in order to secure the shared fantasy) are brief and devoid of any responsibilities, chores, or commitment. My investment is proportional to my expectations and to benefits derived. Future faking is only a small part of the manipulative ploy which also includes delusional role playing by everyone involved.
As my woman has emotional and sexual affairs and casual sex with other men, I do not experience any romantic jealousy or any other emotion except sometimes a relief that I do not have to cater to her demands as a woman: it is someone else's problem now, she had outsourced the potentially thorny and threatening issue.
With her gone, imposing on another man's time and resources, I have now regained mastery of my life and feel euphoric and liberated (like a child home alone, when the nagging adults are away). Nuisance is busy elsewhere, I am left to my pleasurable devices and time consuming vocations or avocations. I can finally be a child and play in the sandbox unperturbed and unencumbered.
My natural state is schizoid: when I am successful, I feel empowered, self-sufficient, and sadistic ("fuck off factor") and when I fail, I withdraw in order to avoid narcissistic injuries and mortifications. I have always been solitary, introverted, and generated a constant stream of intellectual arousal and self-stimulation (probably out of necessity), alone with my books, in the library, or in my study.
I fulfill the Guru Father role only when my woman seeks my advice or asks for money - and then I promptly revert to childish form.
The Guru Father role is not necessarily masculine: it can be woman (like in lesbian couples who raise children)
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The
narcissist's ability to engage in a shared fantasy rests of
three pillars.
The environment has to be rootless (easy to
discard), fantastic or dreamlike (to uphold grandiosity), timeless (an eternal
present, so that actions do not bear consequences), and boundless (no limit to
what can be done or accomplished).
The circumstances ought to be right: conducive to
grandiose fantasies by yielding lots of money, sex, power, access, fame
(celebrity or notoriety) effortlessly, with no commensurate investment or
commitment.
The partner in the shared fantasy has to be present (to avoid abandonment anxiety), submissive, fawning, adulating, playful or childlike, mothering (or fathering as a business associate), and addicted to the narcissist.
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Confronted
with humiliating or shaming input, the narcissist revises all his memories and
creates numerous false memories. He desperately attempts to convert an external
mortification to an internal one: “I made them do and say these things, so
I am still godlike, in control of everyone and everything that’s happening!”
This is the misinformation effect.
The narcissist has no idea what being human feels
like. He has “empathy apahantasia”. That is why he needs to make sense of
people, their motivation, emotions, behavior patterns, and actions by rewriting
and reframing history on the fly and all the time.
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Risk transfer is the gist of modern economies. Citizens pay taxes
to ever expanding governments in return for a variety of "safety
nets" and state-sponsored insurance schemes. Taxes can, therefore, be
safely described as insurance premiums paid by the citizenry. Firms extract
from consumers a markup above their costs to compensate them for their business
risks.
Profits can be easily cast as the premiums a firm
charges for the risks it assumes on behalf of its customers - i.e., risk
transfer charges. Depositors charge banks and lenders charge borrowers
interest, partly to compensate for the hazards of lending - such as the default
risk. Shareholders expect above "normal" - that is, risk-free -
returns on their investments in stocks. These are supposed to offset trading
liquidity, issuer insolvency, and market volatility risks.
In his recent book, "When all Else Fails:
Government as the Ultimate Risk Manager", David Moss, an associate
professor at Harvard Business School, argues that the all-pervasiveness of
modern governments is an outcome of their unique ability to reallocate and
manage risk.
He analyzes hundreds of examples - from bankruptcy
law to income security, from flood mitigation to national defense, and from
consumer protection to deposit insurance. The limited liability company shifted
risk from shareholders to creditors. Product liability laws shifted risk from consumers
to producers.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp147.html
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There is a
revolutionary paradigm shift regarding personality disorders in the 11th
edition of the ICD
(International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health
Problems), published by the WHO (World Health
Organization).
The Personality and Personality Disorders Work Group
of the Committee of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, edition 5 (2013)
cravenly succumbed to commercial special interests, feuds among scholars, and
visceral hatred of psychoanalysis.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Psychopathology: Foundations for a Contemporary
Understanding, 5th ed., Routledge, 2020:
"Personality disorders are
among the most difficult of disorders to treat because they involve well-established behaviors that can be
integral to a client’s self-image (Millon, 2011) ...
The development of an ideal or fully healthy
personality structure is unlikely to occur through the course of treatment, but
given the considerable social, public health, and personal costs associated
with some of the personality disorders, such as the antisocial and borderline,
even moderate adjustments to personality functioning can represent substantial
social and clinical benefits."
In their seminal tome, "Personality Disorders
in Modern Life" (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 2004), Theodore Millon
writes:
"Most narcissists strongly resist
psychotherapy. For those who choose to remain in therapy, there are several
pitfalls that are difficult to avoid ... Interpretation and even general
assessment are often difficult to accomplish..."
The "Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry"
(Oxford, Oxford University Press), cautions:
"... (P)eople cannot change their natures,
but can only change their situations. There has been some progress in finding
ways of effecting small changes in disorders of personality, but management
still consists largely of helping the person to find a way of life that
conflicts less with his character ... Whatever treatment is used, aims should
be modest and considerable time should be allowed to achieve them."
The authoritative "Review of General
Psychiatry" (London, Prentice-Hall International), says:
"(People with personality disorders) ...
cause resentment and possibly even alienation and burnout in the healthcare
professionals who treat them ... (p. 318) Long-term psychoanalytic
psychotherapy and psychoanalysis have been attempted with (narcissists),
although their use has been controversial."
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References
Arnau, R., Green, B., Rosen, D., Gleaves,
D., & Melancon, J. (2003). Are Jungian preferences really categorical? An
empirical investigation using taxometrical analysis. Personality and Individual
Differences, 34, 233–251.
Carlyn, M. (1977). An assessment of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Journal of Personality Assessment, 41, 461–473.
Case, P., & Phillipson, G. (2004). Astrology,
alchemy and retro-organization theory: An astro-genealogical critique of the
MBTI. Organization, 11, 473–495.
Dawes, R. (2004). Time for a critical empirical
investigation of the MBTI. European Business Forum, 18, 88–89.
DeVito, A. J. (1985). Review of the Myers-Briggs
type indicator. Ninth Mental Measurements Yearbook, 1, 1030–1032.
Furnham, A. (1996). The big five versus the big
four: The relationship between the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) and the
NEO-PI five factor model of personality. Personality and Individual
Differences, 21, 303–307.
Furnham, A., & Crump. (2014). The dark side of
the MBTI. Psychology, 5, 166–171.
Martin, C. (2015). Highlights from the past ten
years and coming changes for the Journal of Psychological Type. Journal of
Psychological Type, 75, 1–6.
McCrae, R., & Costa, P. (1988). Reinterpreting
the MyersBriggs type indicator from the perspective of the fivefactor model of
personality. Journal of Personality, 57, 17–40.
Murray, J. (1990). Review of research on the
Myers-Briggs type indicator. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 10, 1187–1202.
Myers, I., & McCaulley, M. (1985). Manual: A
guide to the development and use of the Myers-Briggs type indicator. Palo Alto:
Consulting Psychologists.
Myers, I., & Myers, P. (1990). Gifts
differing. Palo Alto: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Querk, N. (2000). Essentials of
Myers-Briggs type indicator assessment. New York: Wiley.
Saggino, A., & Kline, P. (1996). The
location of the Myers-Briggs type indicator in personality factor space.
Personality and Individual Differences, 63, 445–450. M
(From MBTI by A. Furnham - Encyclopedia of
personality and individual differences, 2020 - Springer)
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Wrote this in 1999:
The Narcissist's Refrigerator
Imagine that your refrigerator would have
constantly demanded your attention beyond rudimentary and passing maintenance.
Wouldn't you be amazed and angry at it?
To the narcissist, you are a mere function, an
instrument whose fate and destiny is to supply the narcissist with the
attention or adulation that he requires (i.e., with Narcissistic Supply). The
narcissist recognizes that he has to maintain you to a certain degree. Your
performance tends to deteriorate if not properly treated. But he does his best
to minimize his investment in you in terms of time and energy.
The narcissist is a highly efficient machine.
Should you demand more - you will become a nuisance, a drag, a burden. The
narcissist will dump you. He will disconnect swiftly and remorselessly,
ruthlessly and cruelly.
The narcissist is in a constant,
resource-consuming pursuit of an elusive commodity. He has nothing left for
human relations. Human emotions and intimacy - constitute an inefficient
allocation of resources because of their low yield of Narcissistic Supply. It
is better to invest and be invested in appearances, in the False Self, in
superficial interactions - these consume a minimal amount of energy and time
and yield the most Narcissistic Supply per energy and time units invested.
First Published in 1999.
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With severe emotional deficits, the narcissist may be self-aware and knowledgeable about Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but these do not lead to healing, merely to behaviour modification.
Narcissists balance a sadistic superego and a
demanding and fantastic False Self. Narcissists describe themselves as machines
or automata.
When they do gain self-awareness and engage in
soul-searching it is in order to enhance their skills at attracting and
maintaining their sources of narcissistic supply.
Narcissists balance a sadistic superego and a
demanding and fantastic False Self. Narcissists describe themselves as machines
or automata.
When they do gain self-awareness and engage in
soul-searching it is in order to enhance their skills at attracting and
maintaining their sources of narcissistic supply.
The Narcissist's Warped Reality and Retroactive
Emotional Content
The Narcissist's Depersonalization and
Derealization
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Everyone has an attachment style. But some people have "flat attachment": they are
incapable of any kind of bonding or relatedness at all. Not even an avoidant,
fearful, or dismissive one. Nothing, nada, zilch.
Flat attachers regard other people as utterly interchangeable,
replaceable, and dispensable objects or functions. They lack emotional empathy
and are robotic and emotionless. They instrumentalize and weaponize sex, but
find the adult, mature, reciprocated variety excruciatingly dull.
When a relationship is over, people go through a
period of "latency": mourning the defunct bond and processing the
grief and withdrawal symptoms associated with a breakup.
Not so the flat attacher: he or she transition
instantaneously, smoothly, abruptly, and seamlessly from one (in)significant
other to the next "target" and fully substitutes a newly found beau,
lover, mate, or "intimate" partner for the discarded one whose
usefulness has expired for whatever reason.
All schizoids, many narcissists and almost all
psychopaths and paranoids are flat attachers.
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Failure
of enlightenment project
Malignant individualism (no religion, no
institutions, no social networks, self-sufficiency, no objective benchmarks,
disintermediation, no gatekeepers, no institutional memoryàtimelessness)
Malignant egalitarianism/grandiosity (no role
models, access to technology, destructive envy,
Malignant tolerance (moral relativism, political
correctness, truthiness)
Malignant reasoning (ideas and concepts over
people, interdisciplinarity and pseudosciences, technology not science,
technology not civilization, information not knowledge or education)
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Fantasies are either compensatory (you can’t get the real thing, so
you fantasize) - or inhibitory (you are afraid to pursue the real thing, so you
fantasize). All fantasies are, therefore, healthy (“normal”) regardless of
their contents.
There is no such thing as "perverse"
sexuality. Victorian middle-class values aside, if the sexual behavior harms no
one (including oneself) and is consensual (between consenting adults), then it
is considered by psychologists and psychiatrists alike to be utterly both
healthy and normal.
Homosexuality, bisexuality, BDSM (Bondage,
Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadomasochism), cross-dressing, water sports
(golden showers), role playing and fantasy, and group sex or threesomes - all
these are nowhere to be found in the two bibles of psychiatry: DSM 5 and ICD
11. I have done them all and they have enriched my sex life and rendered it a
pleasurable pursuit and an adventure.
So, next time someone tells you that you or your
sexuality are perverse - tell him to get rid of his hangups and inhibitions
with the help of a good sex therapist.
Ironically, taken to extreme, such a judgmental,
puritanical, and restrictive-normative attitude towards sex IS a sign of mental
health problems, IS in the DSM, and is the hallmark of backward societies and
arrested personality development or sick upbringing ("some sex is
dirty"), or, commonly, both.
What about pedophilia? No consenting adults.
Coprophagia? Medically dangerous. But even these are not
"perversions". They are paraphilias.
More: https://samvak.tripod.com/pedophilia.html
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The cerebral narcissist detests his body and resents it as an encumbrance and a maintenance
chore. He neglects it egregiously.
Most cerebrals are also schizoids, so they derive
no pleasure from any physical activity, sex included.
Everything the cerebral does is colored by this
corporeal self-disavowal. He reverts to the somatic type and actually revels in
profuse and imaginative sex only when he is hunting for a new intimate partner
to embed in a nascent shared fantasy. Mission accomplished, he reverts to
celibate hibernation.
Similarly, if he is a sadist, his sadism is likely
to be psychological, not physical. Only in the somatic grooming phase, his sex
is sadistic. And he is repelled by physical pain and suffering as he is
revolted by anything bodily.
Why
does the cerebral narcissist insist on having promiscuous and dysregulated
women as his partners? Why doesn’t he target asexual
or sex-averse women (for example: victims of abuse or hyposexual)?
After all, he is aware of his essential asexuality.
He enjoys sex only when he is grooming a new partner for an emerging shared
fantasy. Once the partner is acquired and secured, he becomes celibate and
loses all interest in sex. So, why go through the inevitable deception and
acrimony in the wake of ineluctable sexlessness?
1. To convert his partner into a bad, persecutory
object, thereby justifying and perpetuating the cerebral’s morally superior
victim stance (Gabay’s Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, TIV);
2. To reenact early childhood traumas with his
rejecting and absent mother;
3. To test his partner’s unconditional love and
allegiance;
4. To control his partner via her guilt and shame
over her inevitable misbehavior with men as she seeks to cater to her most
basic needs of love, intimacy, and sex;
5. It legitimizes defiance and contempt for his
partner and restores a sense of grandiosity: she has to answer for her
misdeeds, deceive, act, pretend, and be scared while the cerebral observes her
pitiful squirming smugly and forgives her magnanimously;
6. Allowing his partner total freedom also
guarantees that she will stay out of the cerebral’s affairs and let him be and
delight in solitary pursuits within his solipsistic black hole (schizoid style).
7. To masochistically punish himself for his self-loathing and self-hatred owing to his disabling mental illness (“bad, unworthy object”). Such women guarantee extreme pain and mortification.
8. Sadistic narcissists use sex withdrawal to punish and control their partners.
9. Choosing asexual women as partners would defeat the self-delusion of normalcy (same reason a latent homosexual gets married).
10. Sex – even the memories of the sex - guarantees addiction and continuing delusional hope, bind the woman powerfully to the cerebral schizoid narcissist and this reduces the risk of abandonment.
11. The more promiscuous the partner, the more grandiose the role of savior/rescuer is.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The good ol’ days, before the viral coup: teaching in Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation (2018).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
FASCINATING TOUR: Jessica and I talk about everything mental health and mental illness: from narcissism to parenting, from China to the West, from trauma to coping, from addiction to psychology, from the brain to the mind, and from Freud to YouTube "experts".
Chicago Resilience Expert , Life Coach, Corporate Health and Wellness, Public Speaker, Mental Health Advocate: https://jessicacorvo.com/
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“How can I keep my cerebral narcissist sexually
active throughout our relationship?”
Answer: Approach-avoid all the time, keep him on
his toes, guessing, anxious, expecting the next blow to fall. Intermittent
reinforcement. Imminent abandonment. Hints at triangulation (but not actual
misbehavior). He will remain hypersexed as long as you remain halfheartedly
committed. Make sure you are never taken for granted and never fully and
irrevocably there. Keep your suitcases packed at all times.
“Is it true that cerebral narcissists do a lot of
casual sex and cheat?”
Cerebral narcissists are asexual, so they do not cheat. But even when they are in a somatic
phase, they are sexually active only during the lovebombing stage of the shared
fantasy.
More generally: like all narcissists, cerebrals
need to feel unique. Casual sex implies that the cerebral is just one of many,
about to be discarded once the sex is over, and stripped of the locus of his
superiority (his intellect), having been transformed into a mere sex object.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Accustomed to “normal”, mentally healthy
people, the intimate partners of narcissists and psychopaths keep probing,
attempting with growing desperation and disbelief to pry open their inscrutable
mates.
Move on, folks, there’s nothing to see here.
The psychopath and the narcissist are shimmering surfaces. They have no depth. Behind the
alluring facade, there is only an empty, self-abandoned schizoid core. No ego
and self can ever form without object relations (meaningful interpersonal
interactions).
Narcissists and psychopaths are goal-oriented
two-state impersonal automate, gleaming metal swamped by primitive defenses and
drowning in negative emotions.
The harder one tries to get to the know the
essential core of the narcissist and psychopath, the more ruinous the descent
into the black hole that is their quiddity. They are entities made of
all-consuming absence, a form of carbon-based antimatter.
And you can’t wrap your head around this
realization that your narcissist or psychopath, the man you love with all your
heart just isn’t there, he is a mere apparition, a simulacrum and simulation,
not human in any possible sense of the word. You are attached to an
ever-receding mirage of an oasis, shape-shifting to mirror you ideally.
Ultimately, this deep space emptiness infects and
permeates you and you find yourself tumbling head over heels in the dark void
of this absent soul, tethered to nothing but your impending doom.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Self-sustaining self-sufficiency within firm, centred personal boundaries is a sign of a
stable sense of self-worth, maturity, resilience, and inner strength: the
ability to spend time with yourself, productive and content is a gift.
Self-sufficiency is intimately link to a sense of agency and personal
autonomy (internal locus of control): a distinct,
demarcated self; smooth, seamless, assured self-governance; and the capacity to
act independently, based on free choice. These are the hallmarks of and the
prerequisites to self-efficacy (Bandura): "how well one can execute
courses of action required to deal with prospective situations" and
extract beneficial outcomes from one’s environment, human or physical.
But self-sufficiency is often confused with
insecure, fear-based, hurt-averse attachment styles: avoidance and withdrawal.
Other mental health problems masquerade as self-sufficiency: the narcissist’s
grandiosity, the psychopath’s defiance, the schizoid’s essential emptiness and
solipsistic reclusiveness, and the borderline’s dysregulated emotions and mood
lability. These are all forms of counterdependency, the exact opposite of
self-sufficiency.
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The narcissist’s intimate partners cheat on him
openly, his ideas and inventions are plagiarized and stolen brazenly and
contemptuously, his property is seized, his children - if he has any - made
hateful and alienated. All these negative outcomes because he steadfastly refuses to
commit, invest, or compromise. Why not?
1. Entitlement: “I deserve the best, the world
owes me everything without any commensurate accomplishments or efforts on my
part”;
2. Magical thinking: “If I want something strongly
enough, it will manifest and come to pass. I am immune to adversity and to the
consequences of my misdeeds”;
3. Schizoid core: the narcissist misreads social
and sexual cues, avoids hurt, is pain and toil averse, and catastrophizes. The
safest course is to shun intimacy or any committed, meaningful relationships;
4. Impostor syndrome: “I am faking it and most
people are sufficiently brain dead to fall for it, hook, line, and sinker. But,
one day, I am bound to be exposed and forced to move on - so, why bother?”
5. Grandiosity: “I am unique, superior, above the
fray and the rat race. I don’t need to prove or justify myself in any way. I
don’t owe a thing to anyone.”
6. Self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors,
a “rejection of life” (Cleckley, Guntrip, Sutherland, Seinfeld), victim mentality and
comfort zone (Gabay’s TIV). Self-punishment via failure and
recurrent losses, narcissistic injuries and mortifications: the equivalent of
self-mutilation in BPD.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
According to the DSM, people diagnosed with Schizotypal Personality
Disorder possess “Peculiar, eccentric or unusual
thinking, beliefs or mannerisms ... Belief in special powers, such as mental
telepathy or superstitions ... Unusual perceptions, such as sensing an absent
person's presence or having illusions.”
These unusual cognitive patterns can involve
counterfactual grandiosity, either narcissistic or paranoid, often involving
pseudomania. This makes it difficult at times to distinguish the schizotypal
from the narcissist, the paranoid, or the Bipolar patients.
A schizotypal may consider himself a revolutionary
genius, possessed of superhuman or supernatural skills. Or he may erupt with
unbridled insomniac energy as he seeks to implement harebrained schemes or
concoct new “theories”. Or he may become convinced that he is being followed,
surveilled, and about to be assassinated.
Disorganized thinking and speech are common in
these phases as the schizotypal slides perilously close to schizophrenia.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A series of earth-shattering social, economic, and
technological trends converged to render their jobs loathsome to many - a tedious nuisance best avoided.
Text here: https://samvak.tripod.com/workethic.html
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NEW STUDY: Many Victims are Dark Triad
"New research provides evidence that
narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism — maladaptive personality traits
known as the “Dark Triad” — are associated with overt displays of virtue and
victimhood. The study suggests that people with dark personalities use these
signals of “virtuous victimhood” to deceptively extract resources from others."
(“Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of
Dark Triad Personalities“, was authored by Ekin Ok, Yi Qian, Brendan Strejcek,
and Karl Aquino, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, American
Psychological Association, May 2020)
ANIMAL EMPATHY
Do Animals Have Feelings? Examining Empathy In
Animals
Posted April 3, 2019 by UWA | Psychology and
Counseling News
NEUROSCIENCE VINDICATES FREUD
Sigmund Freud’s theories are often dismissed by
neuroscientists, but Mark Solms argues that they are in fact relevant to
today’s brain research.
TRUE ALPHA MALES (and Females)
"True alphas, ... are fearless protectors
against outside incursions, but they rarely have to assert themselves within
the pack, rarely have to act with aggression, bark orders, or use physical
means of control."
(From "Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents
by Isabel Wilkerson")
SCHIZOTYPAL PERSONALITY.
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Why do people seek partners - sexual and romantic - from "out groups" (other religions, races, ethnicities, and minority groups, not their own)?
More about victimhood state of mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIfTn7x6tzk&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3B44ProV_XB05Cd2MjvWxX
Sex drive is autoerotic. Object relations redirect it. When we are atomized, we regress to being autoerotic in a schizoid state.
Generational gap in psychology studies
Gender vertigo: women – especially VICTIMS of abuse – more psychopathic and narcissistic. Confuse assertiveness with aggression. Emulate psychopathic men.
Bodies in public domain (sexting, cams, digital forever, not perceived as sex so digital promiscuity)
21% of all couples in the USA are sexless (fuck fewer than 10 times a year). The real figure is probably much higher.
Among people under age 35, the situation is unmitigated disaster.
5 years without sex is very very common. Many go 10 years without sex
A sizable proportion of the population gave up on sex - and relationships! – altogether. People gave up on all types of connection, not only sex.
Gender Reversal example: "men have started to withhold sex as an act of protesting , traditionally a feminine move" (P. S. Dupont)
Men just talk with women. They flee at the first sign of assertive sexual advances.
Men are terrified of sex because they perceive women as judgmental, aggressive, defiant, and psychopathic - or “insane” (dysregulated, labile) and bitter.
And men are right: women have become a lot more antisocial and man-haters. The change in gender roles (women stronger, more independent) turned men off completely.
The abyss between the genders is hopelessly unbridgeable, in my opinions.
Misogynists like Muslims and Italians are reaping the rewards, ironically.
Today, to find a willing sex partner is like winning the lottery. People lose it when they finally come across someone who actually likes to have sex: they cheat on their spouses, degrade themselves as subs, do anything, even in casual sex. Things have never been worse.
Heterophily low, so the potential for conflict is high.
Members of out groups like to mate with white women as a form of payback and a way of humiliating “white whores”. Hangover from colonialism (post-colonialism).
Interracial porn and cuckoldry
As far as male members of the out-groups, white women are whorish but status symbol, have arrived, belonging and acceptance.
Exogamy rare (interracial couples) result extended or virtual singlehood.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Healthy, normal people base their decisions - mate selection
included - on weighing risks or costs against projected rewards (opportunity
cost and risk to reward ratio).
Their long-term commitment, investment, and
ability to compromise are commensurate with an anticipated stream of benefits
emanating from unique (non-fungible) human partners.
Narcissists and psychopaths base their decisions
on a “prize to price” calculus (the prize - the goal - is worth or not worth
the price).
The prize to price approach is short term, reductionist (focused on a single
aim or outcome), and either coercive or avoidant (when “the prize is not worth
the price”).
In this strategy, commitment, investment, and
compromise are minimal and people are interchangeable and commodified.
My work in psychology,
economics, and other disciplines is cited in
over 3000 books (according to Google Books and Amazon) as well as close to 900
academic papers.
Additional citations of my work are on Google
Scholar.
More about my work in psychology, psychiatry,
mental health, and neuroscience:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html
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Narcissist’s
4 Secret Buttons: 1. Precocious Child (prodigy); 2. Conquering
Hero (superman); 3. Father Guru; and 4. Divinity (Old/New Testament).
Narcissists are agents of chaos and madness
because they force you to think and reflect
Schizoid cerebral narcissists are gamma men.
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Why remain in an abusive, dead relationship, constantly betrayed, humiliated, and reduced? Because
multiple relationship failures in your past had convinced you that you can do
no better, so why bother to try again, with someone else?
If you have a personality disorder, such gloomy
self-disparagement is fully justified and realistic: all future liaisons are
doomed to end in acrimony, cheating, and hurt.
Why not remain single then? Isn't it preferable to
the hell of a dysfunctional dyad? It is - and most mentally ill people indeed
end life alone, in a schizoid state.
But some narcissists require a shared fantasy with
an insignificant other in order to avoid decompensation and depression. They
settle for anything on the table, however lurid and degrading and render
themselves unboundaried doormats.
Ironically, this very prostration drives their
partners away, disgusted, disappointed, and angry at themselves for having
settled for a spineless worm rather than a man. Having been repeatedly damaged,
they recoil from any attempt by the errant narcissist to hoover, lovebomb, or
groom them into a new round of approach-avoidance.
Sooner or later, this kind of narcissist is
abandoned, time and again, until it is too late for him to find the next
willing collaborator in his charade of a life unlived.
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Download checklists here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sharedfantasysignstests.pdf
ROMANTIC JEALOUSY TESTS
1. When the narcissist "loves" a woman,
he socializes with her friends and family as well – if he does not love her, he
rejects them, too.
2. When the narcissist loves a woman, he reacts to
triangulation. If he does not love her, he does not react at all with jealousy,
competitiveness, or possessiveness.
3. Women conform to the narcissist’s expectations
and mould themselves in order to please him: women he loves play the sluts,
women he does not love act as homely service providers
MORTIFICATION SIGNS
The mortified narcissist says:
(1) I am abusive (sadistic), crazy, and my own
worst enemy (I inflict unendurable pain on myself by knowingly driving women
who I love to cheat on me with predators or otherwise betray and abandon me);
(2) Even quasi-“men” are vastly preferrable to me
(I am irredeemably disabled and inferior, not superior, infantile, not a man at
all);
(3) I disrespected and berated myself, so people
disrespect, fear, hate, and are revolted by me;
(4) I am not loved, not safe, and my needs and
health are no one’s priorities: even my most profound need weighs less than the
most trifling desire or wish of my “nearest” and “dearest”;
(5) The shared fantasy, post-traumatic state,
dissociation, impaired reality testing, grandiosity, and dysempathy render me
gullible, gaslighted, and an easy mark.
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Presentation to the 2nd International Webinar on Psychology and Psychiatry, March 2021
Casual sex is a continuum: from pornography, to cybersex and sexting, one night stands, to casual sex, like FWB (Friends with Benefits). The spectrum runs from the impersonal to the personal and from the merely visual to a total experience.
One night stand and casual sex satisfaction very low and participants insist that it is emotionless, meaningless/meant nothing, and the partner is a nobody. They compare it to masturbating with another’s body (autoerotic empathy through the other’s gaze, L. Rangelovska): animated sex doll or dildo.
But it is easy to prove that this is false: casual sex is anything but casual, it is narrative intended to resolve multiple dissonances triggered by the lack of subsequent bonding. It is a rupture of the typical sexual script even when both parties are fully aware and consensual.
(1) Intimate partners (who had experienced casual sex first hand) react with jealousy and breakup when their mates have one night stands: they consider it to be a significant deal breaker;
(2) Some of these encounters evolve into relationships. Had casual sex been totally emotionless and meaningless, this would have never happened;
(3) Participants report negative or positive emotions after the sex: shame, guilt, and anger (mostly among women or following substance abuse), satisfaction, pride, and elevated self-esteem (among men and also among women with personality disorders). This signifies that the sex was a meaningful experience that triggered an emotional cascade;
(4) Sex: initial info exchanged, hormonal cascade, long-term memories (hippocampus);
(5) Use of alcohol and drugs to alter the perceptions of the potential partner’s attractiveness, to enhance intimacy (via ritual), and disinhibit (overcome socialization) proves that casual sex is a momentous event that requires a massive effort and investment and an alteration of the personality and its scripts;
(6) Casual sex involves trust (physical and emotional), a sense of safety (hence beta preference), suspending defenses, and exposing vulnerabilities. These are some of the most profound and transformational emotional experiences (also common in love and in therapy);
Sex is a drive/urge, so opportunity driven: even unattractive partners with incompatible smells and offputting behavior (such as stinginess/being cheap, pushy, vulgar, aggressive) are game.
Casual sex is a part of mate selection: a test drive. Many attempt to convert it to some type of relationship (friends with benefits, or even a romantic one).
Intimacy in casual sex involves: attentiveness, kindness/succor, passion (irresistibility), directness/honesty, matching expectations, leadership, good time/fun, affection, compassion, comfort, non-judgmental/non-critical, equality.
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Women choose "beta" males on Tinder when they date or have casual sex, not "chads". They want to remain empowered singles. "Alpha" males on Tinder are Dark Triad personalities (narcissists and psychopaths), interested in hookups. People use dating apps almost exclusively for entertainment, to boost to self-esteem, and to find an intimate romantic partner. When it comes to real-life face-to-face dating or to finding sex, the apps are a total failure.
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There is always a discrepancy between one’s
chronological and emotional or mental ages. When
the gap is inordinately big, regressive infantilization sets it (Puer Aeternus
or Peter Pan Syndrome).
This happens when the child is not allowed to
separate from the parent, establish personal boundaries, and become an
individual. The primary objects (caregivers) objectify, idolize, instrumentalize,
or parentify their offspring or violate the boundaries via more classical forms
of abuse (sexual, psychological, verbal, or physical).
The Ego or Self constellate and integrate via
repeated exposure to bruising reality and via external object relations with
people. Absent these, one feels estranged from one’s life and cannot own it
(“whose life is it anyhow).
Unable to inhabit his own life, alienated and
confused, the adult retreats into familiar modes of infancy and remains fixated
there.
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Surveys conducted by Zoom, Webex and other
popular videoconferencing apps discovered that users are very worried about
sexually explicit material exchanged in sexting making it into the public domain.
In this day and age of rampant digital promiscuity
and infidelity, attitudes about nudity and sexuality are far more permissive
and relaxed. So, why the extreme discomfort and anxiety?
Because indiscriminate sexting with virtual
strangers (but not with friends or intimate partners) is highly correlated with
mental health issues such as a dysregulated sense of self-worth, low
self-esteem, alcoholism, mood lability, emotional dysregulation, erotomanic
delusions, cluster B personality disorders, reactance (defiance), recklessness,
issues with power and control, depression, decompensation, acting out, object
impermanence, lack of impulse control, eating disorders, sleep deprivation,
body dysmorphia, among others. Such behavior is indicative of self-trashing
which is a self-defeating or even self-destructive behavior.
In other words: someone who constantly and
compulsively sexts with multiple random acquaintances is very likely to be bad
news - first and foremost to herself. No one wants to be stigmatized with such
disclosures, not even the mentally disordered or ill.
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Speaker in 33rd International
Conference on Mental and Behavioral Health,
March 23, 2021
My topic: "Narcissism and Autism".
Speaker in 2nd International Webinar
on Clinical Psychology and Psychiatry, March 19,
2021
My topic: "Is the Narcissist Self-aware,
Introspective?"
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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History of the Inner Child Concept
Developmental needs meeting strategy (DNMS)
Working with the Inner Child
Procedural memory
Transference to people on whom we depend:
intensity of reactions disproportional
Children seek to influence a grownup to solve
problems magically
View of adulthood: all work and no play, I am a
fraud (pretending to be an adult)
Dysfunction is coming from an inner child
Carl Rogers corrective emotional experience
Affect Avoidance Model
Adult reactions more self-efficacious
Values militate against childlike (shame, anger,
self-punishment, and repression)
Intrusive
Adult reshaping child content, growth and
integration
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Domestic
abuse and family violence documentary on Ukrainian National Broadcasting
Company.
When Loved Ones Murder You: the full interview, now available on my YouTube channel in
English.
Some abusive relationships end in murder. How does
love become death? From Stockholm Syndrome through Trauma Bonding to Tendency
to Interpersonal Victimhood: a survey of current knowledge.
Interview granted to Alla Sadovnyk of Ukrainian
National Broadcasting Company
The full documentary (Ukrainian): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JtWKB8PLOo&t=0s
More about abuse in intimate relationships:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/abuse.html
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/abusefamily.html
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The surprisingly efficient and safe vaccines
against SARS CoV2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are NOT going to restore life to normal: not in a year, not in 2 or 3 years. Forget about your
previous lives, they are gone for at least this decade.
In the next few years, we will still have to wear
masks and socially distance. International travel and indoor activities will be
curbed and limited to people who had been vaccinated or who had survived the
disease.
Deaths and hospitalizations will decline
dramatically in a few lucky and wealthy countries and the burden on their
stretched healthcare systems will ameliorate. But that’s it.
Why this gloomy outlook?
Because it will take upwards of 3-5 years to
vaccinate 70% of humanity, the minimal threshold for herd immunity. As long as
the vast majority of humanity are susceptible - everyone, everywhere is at risk.
This is the first fast mutating Coronavirus.
Variants will emerge among the non-vaccinated and make their way everywhere.
Most of these mutations will be harmless or even detrimental to the virus. Some
will coalesce and recombine with other viruses to create new pathogens, less
vulnerable to the current crop of vaccines. We will all need annual booster
shots.
Yet, owing to vaccine nationalism and the
insatiable avarice of Pharma, less than 3% of the global population have been
partly vaccinated (first shot of two) in the past 3 months. At this rate, it
will take 5 years to reach planetwide protection.
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Can you trust a professional who is
a narcissist? A medical doctor, a lawyer, or a psychologist,
for example?
The answer is: it depends on the locus of his (or
her) grandiosity.
If the narcissist is invested in his career
accomplishments and professional integrity as the engines and underpinnings of
his superiority - you are safe. Such a narcissist will provide impeccable
service and will act ethically.
If, however, the narcissist is sadistic or
psychopathic ("malignant"), you are in trouble.
He will abuse the access you grant him to your
body, mind, finances, property, and life to secure his own goals: money, sex,
the pleasure of your pain, or power over you and, often, over your nearest and
dearest.
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There are two paths to
self-destruction: doing too much and not doing anything.
Extremes of behavior and addictions are signs of underlying mental health
issues.
Compulsive sex with strangers is as pathological
and self-defeating as avoiding sex altogether, for example.
The same goes for any human activity: workaholism
vs. slacking, alcoholism vs. having a drink, itinerancy vs. travelling,
overeating vs. savoring food.
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Here are four types of
breakups/divorces:
1. Honest
The initiating party clarifies her motivations and
plans, packs her things, divides the community property, and is gone for good.
No lingering, procrastination, or stalking.
2. Cheating
The initiating party cheats on her partner or
betrays him ostentatiously, forcing him to be the one to take action and
dissolve the couple.
3. Dissonant gold-digger
The initiating party is addicted to the money,
material goods, and freedoms that the otherwise dead relationship affords. This
creates in her a cognitive dissonance (“I am a good, authentic person, not an
exploitative abuser!”)
To resolve the dissonance, she convinces herself
that her partner needs her and would suffer grievously if she were to leave. If
she cheats on him in order to satisfy her unmet needs, she lies and deceives
him (“what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him”).
4. Overt or proud gold-digger
This partner breaks up only when the money runs
dry. She is open about what drives her and about the transactional nature of
her relationships.
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You
had been VICTIMIZED, you are not A VICTIM.
Trust your intuition, it will never guide you astray. Work on your issues. Get
the abuser out of your mind, not only out of your life.
Caroline Strawson's YouTube.
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“Koroshi” in Japanese is death by overworking.
Herbert Freudenberger coined the term burnout in 1974. The ICD 11 recognizes
burnout as an “occupational phenomenon”.
Workaholism has negative
consequences: job stress, work-life imbalance, interpersonal difficulties,
burnout, workplace conflict, and adverse health outcomes.
Presentation to the 33rd International conference
on Mental and Behavioral Health, March 2021
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In my line of work, I come across evil a lot.
It is multifarious and cunning and often unidentifiable. You know you had been
exposed to it when you shower compulsively after the encounter, to cleanse
yourself.
Evil is not only the psychopathic, sadistic,
premeditated sort. Evil has numerous faces.
Evil is in every power play, when winning is set
above happiness and above life itself.
Evil is in being weak, spineless, unboundaried and
giving your body away promiscuously and your mind away obsequiously.
Self-contempt, self-loathing, self-hatred, and
dysregulation are all forms of evil: psychopathy in these cases is just a
heartbeat away. She who despises and disrespects her body and mind is bound to
abuse the bodies and minds of others.
Indifference to the sufferings and needs of others
is evil - as is suffering and neediness themselves. Flat affect, flat
attachment, making excuses for or minimizing bad or self-destructive
misconduct, and an unmitigated lack of self-awareness are the marks of this
beast.
The distractions that cause apathy and render
calamities a mere form of entertainment is wicked.
Valuing the inanimate and the material and the
dead above the living is the epitome of malice.
Egotism is evil reified.
Evil rubs off on you, it
is contagious. Cleanse yourself. Avoid it, no matter the temptation, regardless
of the costs. Evil often masquerades as dazzling beauty or unfathomable wisdom
- yet, it is their anathema.
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The problem of digital discoverability has become unmanageable: it is utterly impossible to find
quality content (texts, videos, books) because of the tsunamis of
user-generated junk and trash that drown scholarly, informed, and measured
voices.
As people retreat to preferred and exclusive
sources of information, dialog, critical thinking, and intellectual
cross-fertilization have all but gone extinct.
The search algorithms of the likes of Google and
its subsidiary YouTube are driven by the popularity of the content, not by its
quality. Hits and likes are quantifiable, profundity is not measurable, at
least not as easily: it is fuzzy and ambiguous.
This mathematical constraint leads to the
dominance of the lowest and most indolently accessible common denominator.
It also drives ad revenues as more eyeballs are
monetized. So, there is every incentive to dumb down ever more. Even
crowdsourced outlets such as Wikipedia have declined precipitously in recent
years as they are deemed too literate and too complicated by the teeming,
illiterate masses.
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I find it difficult to accept that I am irredeemably evil, that I ecstatically, almost orgasmically enjoy hurting
people and that I actively seek to inflict pain on others. It runs so contrary
to my long-cultivated and tenderly nurtured self-image as a benefactor, a
sensitive intellectual, and a harmless hermit. In truth, my sadism meshes well
and synergetically with two other behavior patterns: my relentless pursuit of
narcissistic supply and my self-destructive, self-defeating, and, therefore,
masochistic streak.
The process of torturing, humiliating, and
offending people provides proof of my omnipotence, nourishes my grandiose
fantasies, and buttresses my False Self. The victims' distress and dismay
constitute narcissistic supply of the purest grade. It also alienates them and
turns them into hostile witnesses or even enemies and stalkers.
Thus, through the agency of my hapless and
helpless victims, I bring upon my head recurrent torrents of wrath and
punishment. This animosity guarantees my unraveling and my failure, outcomes
which I avidly seek in order to placate my inner, chastising and castigating
voices (what Freud called "the sadistic Superego").
Similarly, I am a fiercely independent person
(known in psychological jargon as a "counterdependent"). But mine is
a pathological variant of personal autonomy. I want to be free to frustrate
myself by inflicting mental havoc on my human environment, including and
especially my nearest and dearest, thus securing and incurring their inevitable
ire.
Getting attached to or becoming dependent on
someone in any way - emotionally, financially, hierarchically, politically,
religiously, or intellectually - means surrendering my ability to indulge my
all-consuming urges: to torment, to feel like God, and to be ruined by the
consequences of my own evil actions.
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I am not a religious man, but “god” is a useful
metaphor and the scriptures contain untold wisdom.
God speaks through time, space, silence, and being ("I shall be what I shall be" - BECOMING).
Just stop acting for a while, sit still for a
minute for a minute, contemplate
Monks go to mountaintops.
Big religious figures (Moses, Jesus, Muhammad)
when they sought self-transformation did not ACT, they went to the desert, to
not be distracted by the city, waited, the bush burned for Moses, Jesus bested
the devil, Gabriel spoke in the cave to Muhammad.
Could cope, think, change, listen to god.
In the desert, even if you want to, you cannot
act, you are forced, finally to listen to God and to yourself.
Create a mental desert around you, close your
eyes, no social media, no news, and wait for the voice of god, your inner god
maybe, wait for the voice, don’t drown the voice in action, see who talk to you
and what it says.
You are not listening. Religion is dialog – not
monolog – with god. You are just talking, never listening. You are too busy
being religious, being you.
Passive (supplication, Islam) good submission to
allow word of god to flow through you, become a vessel (Kabbalah), empty
yourself, not full (if you are full it cannot flow through you).
Do not demand reciprocal action from god.
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Organizing Committee Member and Keynote Speaker
in International
Conference on Neuroscience and Psychiatry,
March 7-8, 2022, Paris, France.
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
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Once promiscuous – always promiscuous? The short answer is: yes, but intermittently.
Promiscuity is having sex with multiple partners,
mostly total strangers, indiscriminately and impulsively. It is a compulsive
reaction intended to ameliorate to stress, anxiety, and perceived rejection. It
is a form of reckless self-trashing that sometimes involves practices such as
group sex, and adverse outcomes such as rape and recurrent sexual assault.
Promiscuity often starts in early to mid-adolescence
and then it involves incest, molestation, gang rape, or pedophiliac and
hebephiliac sex. With age, promiscuity is replaced with other addictions and
with substance abuse (most often, alcoholism).
Many promiscuous individuals apparently settle
into a more or less sublimatory (socially acceptable) functional lifestyle,
replete with jobs and families. But the trait never goes away: it is there,
lurking. Given the right adverse circumstances, acting out leads to flareups
and relapses: bouts of uncontrolled sex, flagrant infidelity, and
self-endangerment.
Promiscuity is highly correlated with many mental
health disorders, among them Borderline Personality Disorder and psychopathy.
The promiscuous psychopath is an especially menacing type as she tends either
to objectify her partners (in one night stands) or to stalk or blackmail them.
Both types use promiscuous sex to shore up their self-esteem and regulate their
moods. For the psychopath, sex is an aggressive winner takes all zero sum power
play.
Short-term promiscuity is also a common behavior
among mentally healthy people who had undergone a traumatic breakup or divorce.
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The partner’s cheating and
promiscuity legitimizes the sexlessness of the schizoid
cerebral narcissist in 2 ways:
1. The partner is dirty, corrupted, sick,
revolting and, therefore, it is her fault that she is sexually undesirable; and
2. She does not regard the narcissist as special
to her or unique. He is merely a statistic, just one of many. It negates his
grandiosity and provokes legitimized aggression expressed via sex withdrawal.
Such a partner challenges the narcissist’s
grandiosity: he is the one who will get her hopelessly addicted to him and get
her to give up on her sexuality, sacrifice it just so as to not lose him. It is
a perverted form of the typical male savior/fixer/rescuer role.
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The psychopath tends to see
life and interactions with people as zero sum,
winner takes all conflicts.
Consequently, he is hypervigilant. He scores
points, he wins, he loses, constantly alert as to who is having the upper hand.
The psychopath never feels shame or remorse when
he MISBEHAVES - only when he is caught red-handed or shows a weakness or a
vulnerability to the “adversary”.
The psychopathic borderline is not INTENTIONALLY
evil. She IS evil. Like a virus or a tigress: she kills not because she is
malicious - but because she IS. Never mind her kind intentions and solemn
promises - she can’t help it, it is not up to her.
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Sexual promiscuity is often coupled with what I call “life promiscuity”: throwing away one’s life (not only one’s body) as if it were meaningless, worthless, and disposable. Cleckley called it “a rejection of life”, Seinfeld (the psychoanalyst): “a life unlived”.
This dual promiscuity is a common feature of psychopathy. The psychopath casts away himself, his prospects, accomplishments, future, and “nearest and dearest” like so much trash.
Hallmarks of life promiscuity:
The psychopath may be educated, but he is DUMB, NOT intelligent. His decisions are not merely extremely self-defeating, but inane and utterly random, lacking any organizing principle.
He has:
No insight of any kind into his motivations (actual and pseudo-stupidity).
Flat affect: even when he rages, it is instrumental and goal-oriented. Otherwise, he expresses and experiences no emotions whatsoever.
A dumbfounding lack of self-awareness coupled with counterfactual reframing and outright self-deception and denial. . The evasiveness is infuriating because it closely mimics passive-aggressive gaslighting.
No boundaries whatsoever and no respect or recognition of others’ boundaries.
Zero self-respect: incapable of shame, guilt, or remorse.
He is prone to substance abuse: he is typically both a junkie and an alcoholic.
The psychopath resembles an animal, possessed of only the most basic reflexes and drives. Sex. Eat. Drink. Nothing sublime or transcendental. Constantly bored and in search of stimulation and excitement.
No higher functions. No intellectual life. No interests or hobbies. No conversation (“flat speech”): dismissive one-liners with no depth or background. As dull as drying paint.
Most psychopaths know that they have little else to offer, so that’s why they head straight to sex, their only alleged endowment. If borderlines traits are present, they confuse sex with relatedness, belonging, and being loved or appreciated.
But even sex requires imagination, empathy, maturity, reciprocity, and creativity. So, sex with the psychopath is mechanical and uninspired.
Cleckley described psychopathy as the “Mask of Sanity”. It is even more profound - or shallower - than this: only the mask exists. The psychopath is a 3D glitchy simulation of a human being gone awry, the ultimate corrupted simulacrum.
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Why do narcissists, psychopaths, borderlines, and schizoids infuriate us? Why do they bring out the aggressive worst in us?