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.

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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.

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The good ol’ days, before the viral coup: teaching in Southern Federal University in Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation (2018).

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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/

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“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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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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?

 

 

 

 

 

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