Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Studies repeatedly demonstrate a very disturbing truth: men are predatory sexual
opportunists, regardless of their age.
Given the chance, large majorities of men will not
think twice about sleeping with underage girls, as young as 10 years old; with
women who are intoxicated or stoned to the point of being unable to walk or
talk and who slip in and out of consciousness; with evidently mentally ill
women; and with women in the throes of a severe emotional crisis (sobbing).
These data support the belief that men are
essentially autoerotic (masturbate with the partner’s body).
The mass media and show business - run by men -
collude to encourage these forms of egregious misconduct by sexualizing the
young, objectifying women, and glamorizing the “irresistible male”.
Laws on rape, sexual harassment, and statutory
rape are dead letter as the victims are actively discouraged and bullied even
by law enforcement and as prosecutors are extremely reluctant to take on cases.
Finally: women themselves contribute by minimizing
and reframing inappropriate behaviors in order to restore a sense of control.
They say: “I may have been a minor, but I initiated the sex”, or “I felt
grateful to him just for bring there to prop me up when I couldn’t walk” or “He
will never see me again” (as if it were some sort of punishment).
A majority of women continue to interact and even
bed their sexual abusers even when they had realized the abusive nature of the
sex.
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We feel justified to involuntarily commit someone to a mental
institution if he is a danger to himself or to others. Suicidal ideation and attempted
suicide are grounds for such drastic curtailing of individual freedoms
either by concerned family members or psychiatrists.
But many people commit “suicide by lifestyle”:
they smoke, do drugs, and drink heavily, they engage in dangerously reckless
behaviors, or they assume life-threatening risks. Yet, in these cases, we just
sit back and watch the ineluctable train wreck unfold.
It seems that we are more comfortable with
incremental, imperceptible dying than with the obvious, in your face, defiant
sort that is harder to sweep under the societal carpet of hypocrisy.
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At some point, even the most loving, dedicated, and caring
parents can give up on a self-destructive
or mentally ill child whose grandiosity prevents him or her from seeking
help and renders them resistant to learning and to life’s lessons.
The parent grieves over the child and mentally
inters it: she becomes entirely indifferent to the child’s whereabouts, comings
and goings, and exploits.
Such children are contemptuously defiant,
aggressively contumacious, passive-aggressive, and hopeless. They are hellbent
on dysfunctionality in all its forms and emotionally invested in self-defeat
and egregious self-trashing.
The only attachment these wayward offspring have
is to predators and agents of ruination, such as weapons, alcohol, or drugs.
They bond - and often engage in precocious sex - solely with other, like-minded
misfits and criminals of all age groups.
The parent is ultimately forced to make a painful
choice: sacrifice her life in vain - or let go of the bad apple that is rotting
the rest of the family and jeopardizing the parent’s own mental health and
wellbeing.
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Two much neglected issues in applied ethics involve
agency and self-efficacy.
If a person drinks heavily and then engages in promiscuous
and reckless sex it is not because the drink made her do it. She drank in order
to misbehave: she sought the adrenaline rush and she imbibed so as to
disinhibit herself and remove the obstacles on the way to gratification and
wish fulfillment.
So, we should distinguish between coercion,
volition, and inhibition. Disinhibited people make free choices on everything
from suicide to sex.
Second conundrum: that someone gives enthusiastic
consent doesn’t make the act right. It is not right to have sex with a
consenting teenager or with an intoxicated person. It is equally wrong to
breach medical or legal confidentiality even when the client allows it.
Values are independent of the people who uphold
them. It is this transcendence that endows them with validity and moral power.
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Between 1995 and 2015, I was the only self-admitted diagnosed
narcissist online. I was the first and until 2015 the only narcissist to
provide unmitigated access to his mind and inner machinations. This free service
was of incalculable value to victims of narcissistic abuse (a phrase I had
coined, together with most of the rest of the language in use today to describe
narcissism).
Around 2013, I made a catastrophic marketing
error: I pivoted and attempted to rebrand myself as a scholar of personality
disorders and a professor of psychology (which I am). On my platforms, in my
lectures and seminars and books, I suppressed and deleted all speech or texts
describing me as only a narcissist.
But everyone - including other scholars and
psychologists, shockingly even my nearest and dearest and my own clients -
would have none it. They doubt every single statement I make about myself and
refuse to check the facts and evidence, even when I offer it (“we have made up
our minds, don’t confuse us with the facts”). They smirk and imply that I am a
liar, but an endearing one, a charming scammer, like all other narcissists.
The result? I have lost my slot as the “go to
narcissist” to nonsense-spewing con artists online, I was dropped by the mass
media (which used to court me incessantly), and my scholarship is ignored (“you
cannot trust a narcissist with anything, let alone psychology”).
The number of visitors to my websites declined by
70% and the number of views on my YouTube channel by a whopping 95%. I have
nothing more to offer either as a narcissist - or as a scholar who is highly
suspect because I am a narcissist.
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Many people ask me: “What’s your beef with casual sex?” I
have none. Casual sex with friends (with benefits) or in situationships is a
wonderful way to communicate emotions, compassion, comfort, and enhance
wellbeing.
My problem is with one night stands. Never mind
what hookup adherents tell you, the biological and psychological data are
overwhelming: one nighters involve emotions, attachment, and intimacy to
varying degrees. To deny and repress these repeatedly sounds a lot like
self-trashing to me.
Moreover: participants in one night stands report
liking and trusting the partner. But they refuse to explore further: they deny
themselves the incalculable riches and pleasures that real intimacy - getting
to know the intricacies of another person - provides. One night stands are
about self-gratification, power, and objectification of the other: the
hallmarks of narcissism and psychopathy.
Indeed, recent studies in 21 countries have all
come to the same conclusions: the vast majority of people who engage in one night
sex (and compulsive sexting) possess marked dark triad traits (narcissism,
psychopathy, Machiavellianism).
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YOU are REFRAMED IN THE SHARED FANTASY
Narcissists reframe the way they perceive promiscuous partner to render them fit for the shared fantasy.
Extreme promiscuity reframed as having been
sexually exploited or abused (to preserve the woman’s essential “goodness”) –
this triggers the rescuer/savior in him.
Emotional stunting (infantilization) – this allows
him to render her dependent and submissive.
Lack of insightful self-awareness – this allows
him to play the role of guru or father.
Dissociation – this allows him to construct a fake
biography of the woman conducive to idealization in the shared fantasy.
Denial, literal thinking – this legitimizes his
aggression.
Adulation or acknowledgment of his superiority.
The combination of malicious total devaluation and self-trashing promiscuity
with others (transforming him into a mere statistic, an indistinguishable
conquest) causes severe injury, even mortification.
Easier to dump primary psychopathic borderlines
than secondary ones because they are malicious.
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Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 177, July 2021, 110780
Narcissism through the lens of performative self-elevation
"We conclude that grandiose narcissism is better understood as one manifestation of the high self-regard exhibited by a related condition - psychopathy. Conversely, vulnerable narcissism actually is narcissism proper, a behavioral adaptation to cope with and to mitigate the suffering imposed by insecurities about oneself."
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq66.html (1999)
Narcissism is ego discrepant and compensatory. Compensatory NPD criteria according to Dave Kelly ((http://www.ptypes.com):
"Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a pervasive pattern of unstable, covert narcissistic behaviours that derive from an underlying sense of insecurity and weakness rather than from genuine feelings of self-confidence and high self-esteem, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by six (or more) of the criteria below."
The Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Type:
• Seeks to create an illusion of superiority and to build up an image of high self-worth [Millon];
• Strives for recognition and prestige to compensate for the lack of a feeling of self-worth;
• May "acquire a deprecatory attitude in which the achievements of others are ridiculed and degraded" [Millon];
• Has persistent aspirations for glory and status [Millon];
• Has a tendency to exaggerate and boast [Millon];
• Is sensitive to how others react to him, watches and listens carefully for critical judgement, and feels slighted by disapproval [Millon];
• "Is prone to feel shamed and humiliated and especially (anxious) and vulnerable to the judgements of others" [Millon];
• Covers up a sense of inadequacy and deficiency with pseudo-arrogance and pseudo-grandiosity [Millon];
• Has a tendency to periodic hypochondria [Forman];
• Alternates between feelings of emptiness and deadness and states of excitement and excess energy [Forman];
• Entertains fantasies of greatness, constantly striving for perfection, genius, or stardom [Forman];
• Has a history of searching for an idealised partner and has an intense need for affirmation and confirmation in relationships [Forman];
• Frequently entertains a wishful, exaggerated and unrealistic concept of himself, which he can't possibly measure up to [Reich];
• Produces (too quickly) work not up to the level of his abilities because of an overwhelmingly strong need for the immediate gratification of success [Reich];
• Is touchy, quick to take offence at the slightest provocation, continually anticipating attack and danger, reacting with anger and fantasies of revenge when he feels himself frustrated in his need for constant admiration [Reich];
• Is self-conscious, due to a dependence on approval from others [Reich];
• Suffers regularly from repetitive oscillations of self-esteem [Reich];
• Seeks to undo feelings of inadequacy by forcing everyone's attention and admiration upon himself [Reich];
• May react with self-contempt and depression to the lack of fulfilment of his grandiose expectations [Riso].
Sources:
Forman, Max. Narcissistic Disorders and the Oedipal Fixations. In Feldstein, J.J. (Ed.), The Annual of Psychoanalysis. Volume IV. New York: International Universities [1976] pp. 65-92.
Millon, Theodore, and Roger D. Davis. Disorders of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond. 2nd Ed. New York: Wiley, [1996] pp. 411-12.
Reich, Annie, [1986]. Pathological Forms of Self-Esteem Regulation. In Morrison, A. P., (Ed.), Essential Papers on Narcissism. pp. 44-60. Reprint from 1960. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Volume 15, pp. 205-32.
Riso, Don Richard. Personality Types: Using the Enneagram for Self-Discovery. Boston: Houghton Mifflin [1987] pp. 102-3.
Speculative Diagnostic Criteria for Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder
A pervasive pattern of self-inflation, pseudo-confidence, exhibitionism, and strivings for prestige, that compensates for feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem, as indicated by the following:
• Pseudo-confidence compensating for an underlying condition of insecurity and feelings of helplessness;
• Pretentiousness, self-inflation;
• Exhibitionism in the pursuit of attention, recognition, and glory;
• Strivings for prestige to enhance self-esteem;
• Deceitfulness and manipulativeness in the service of maintaining feelings of superiority;
• Idealisation in relationships;
• Fragmentation of the self: feelings of emptiness and deadness;
• A proud, hubristic disposition;
• Hypochondriasis;
• Substance abuse;
• Self-destructiveness.
Compensatory Narcissistic Personality Disorder corresponds to Ernest Jones' narcissistic "God Complex", Annie Reich's "Compensatory Narcissism", Heinz Kohut's "Narcissistic Personality Disorder", and Theodore Millon's "Compensatory Narcissist".
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Feminism took a wrong, militant turn in the 1960s as it transitioned
from justified demands for equality to misandry, the undermining of all social
institutions (patriarchal or not), and the usurpation of gender roles (unigender,
which led to gender vertigo).
These disturbing orientations were exacerbated by
intersectional victimhood movements and their agendas.
Every disagreement, argument, conflict, and form
of critical thinking were cast as abusive. Women and men began to resent,
vilify, label - even hate - each other. This culminated in misogynistic
movements such as incels and MGTOW.
Divorce heralded the greatest transfer of wealth
in human history - from men to women. The academic attainments of women exceed
men’s and have led to the replacement of the latter by the former in many
middle-class professions.
So, now men refuse to marry and sire children.
Given unlimited access to sex and unfavorable matrimonial legislation, men are
left with no incentive to commit or invest in relationships.
Women and men pine for each other, cocooned in
bachelor pads - but, it is way too late: the schism won’t heal and is only
getting worse as people under age 25 date 56% less and lead almost celibate
lifestyles.
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Internet and localized grooming are an exponentially
growing scourge.
About half of all minors between ages 12-17 are
accosted online by sexual predators. One of every ten sext with these adults
who rarely hide their identity and intentions. In one third of the cases (3% of
all teenagers), an offline meeting is discussed and 1 in 300 adolescents
proceed with the express and premeditated intention of having sex with their
interlocutors. They are then often subjected to group sex, prostituted, and
handed alcohol and drugs.
These underage outliers have only two things in
common: 1. A fervent wish to belong to and be loved by a substitute
"family" (the real one is dysfunctional and neglectful); and 2. A
dark triad personality which becomes more pronounced and diagnosable as they
grow up. Their dysregulated and overwhelming sexual curiosity in puberty aligns
with these nascent disorders.
These kids learn that the "love" offered
by the predator was exploitive and fake. But they also come to realize that
they can use sex to manipulate people, wield power over them, and control
others.
The unspoken taboo conundrum is this: psychopathy
and borderline traits involve partly hereditary brain abnormalities and can be
diagnosed even in childhood (conduct disorder). Could these flaws have
propelled these specific children to seek and even initiate precocious sex with
like-minded predatory adults?
Internet and localized (offline) grooming leading
to actual sex had been associated with promiscuity, depression, and anxiety in
later life. But promiscuity, depression, and anxiety (including social anxiety)
are frequently dually diagnosed with psychopathy and BPD even when these
experiences are lacking. It is impossible to prove causation in this convoluted
psychological landscape. Precocious sex may simply be an early example of
psychopathic acting out.
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The classic borderline woman (diagnosed with Borderline
Personality Disorder, or BPD) turns into a secondary psychopath only when she
faces rejection and abandonment, real, perceived, or anticipated.
The secondary psychopath has empathy and emotions, but her behaviors resemble those
of the primary psychopath: reactance/defiance, recklessness, no impulse control
(impulsivity), aggression, vindictiveness, and other forms of antisocial
conduct.
The psychopathic (and the covert) borderline are
primary psychopaths who display borderline traits and behaviors only in
intimate settings.
When in a committed relationship, they tend to be
emotionally dysregulated, approach-avoidant, mood labile, object inconstant,
idealizing-devaluing, and grandiose.
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Excerpts from an interview I gave to the campus vlog of SIAS-CIAPS (Centre for International Advanced Professional Studies).
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People with high-functioning autism lack empathy and engage in criminal behaviors. Are they psychopaths? Narcissists?
Autism is not caused by vaccines, that much we know. But is it caused by bad parenting?
Refrigerator Mothers
The concept of “refrigerator mothers” has been long debunked. Autism is a brain disorder and possibly hereditary. It is not linked to bad parenting. But a dead, narcissistic mother can cause her autistic child to defend himself by developing narcissism.
ADHD has been intimately linked to the precursors in children of adult narcissism and psychopathy: conduct disorder and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD).
A bad, dead, cold, mother fosters in the autistic child narcissistic defenses and in her other children attention deficits, hyperactivity, and antisocial behavior. These dysfunctions make it difficult for the child to translate his/her reflexive empathy into mentalizing a theory of mind. Early childhood abuse and trauma, therefore, inhibit the development of a mature form of empathy, with cognitive and emotional components.
There are three problems with raising awareness and educating people about Autism Spectrum Disorders:
1. We don't know the aetiology of autism (what causes it) and whether the brain abnormalities often observed in autistic patients cause it, are caused by it, or are merely correlated (effectuated by a third, common factor);
2. Autism is a family of disorders which have little in common with each other. Some autistic persons are high-functioning and accomplished, others self-harm, are hypersensitive to stimuli, and noncommumicative; and
3. The long-discredited, "refrigerator mother" theory blamed emotionally unavailable, "dead", or "frigid" mothers for the pathogenesis of autism in their children. This deterred parents from seeking help.
The ignorance, taboos, stigma, biases, prejudices, and lack of evidence-based theories and practices that pervade mental health apply even more so to autism.
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Catastrophizing
can be reconceived as a “flashback” from the future, a portentous revividness of
adverse worst case scenarios. It is common among people with mental health
issues, especially personality and mood disorders.
Psychosis, delusional disorders, and paranoia are
desperate attempts to maintain touch with the world. Similarly, the schizoid
cores of narcissists and psychopath seek to preserve object relations via
dysfunctional behaviors.
Catastrophizing plays a crucial role in all these
cases: the perception of reality as hostile and of people as persecutory
objects. The various defenses deployed against these bothersome intrusive
realizations - such as hypervigilance or grandiosity - constitute the crux of
the mental illness.
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Everyone advises that falling in love with broken, damaged people is
self-destructive: they are bound to hurt you and traumatize you for life.
Ruination awaits in such an affair of the heart.
But this blanket advice is often wrong and
self-defeating.
The corresponding pathologies of the members of a
couple can either cancel each other out, bringing a sense of safety, anxiety
reduction, and even healing - or they amplify each other, exacerbating the
underlying conditions of everyone involved.
The shattered are much more open and vulnerable:
their “innards” are on full display. They are skinless and defenseless.
But exactly this susceptibility renders the
interactions and emotions in such relationships both deeper and more intense.
Loving the mentally ill is an exasperating
technicolor wild ride - not the black and white tones of healthy boundaries.
The hurt and the traumatized know each other’s
lingering volcanic agony intimately, better than any outsider can. The same way
alcoholics sponsor their kith and kind in AA 12 step programs, the broken see
each other through the howling miasmas of their souls.
It is a gamble with one’s life and sanity. Yet, so
many take it because loving such the wounded is the most selfless act there is
and a hyperdrive of personal growth even through adversity.
Such tortured relationships go south when we want
our partner either to wound us further (affirm our victim status) - or we
expect them to “fix” us.
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Anxiety is about a future outcome (catastrophizing). The future does
not exist. It is imaginary. Like the Monster Under the Bed.
Anxiety is about CONTROL.
Control is a delusion. We control very little.
Least of all ourselves.
Let it go. Que sera sera.
One minute at a time.
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Borderline
Personality Disorder is s form of
CPTSD (complex trauma) and, in many cases, gives rise to compulsive sexual
ideation and hypersexuality (“sex addiction”).
In early childhood, the Borderline had learned to
associate sex, pain, and love inextricably, sometimes owing to a history of
childhood sexual abuse. Hereditary brain abnormalities are at play, too,
predisposing the child to develop emotional dysregulation and mood disorders
and lability.
The Borderline sexualizes her emotions and her
needs: to be loved, to belong and be accepted and valued, to feel safe,
empowered, irresistible, in control, and “at home”.
Even in one night stands turned ugly - and she
goes through many of these - she is likely to embed the dissonant experience in
a fantastic narrative of love, redemption, and rescue.
Her litany of failed relationships - the inevitable
outcomes of selecting for all the wrong mates - predisposes the Borderline to
anticipate the worst: acrimonious and agonizing abandonment and rejection. She
often cheats her way out of such calamitous dyads.
She catastrophizes in all her liaisons and then, at the first
sign of discord or sexual rejection, she decompensates and acts out: becomes
violent, promiscuous, deceitful (cheats), or psychopathic (defiant, impulsive,
dysempathic, and reckless).
To cope with overwhelming shame and guilt having
egregiously misbehaved, she dissociates: becomes amnesiac, depersonalizes, or
derealizes.
Loving the Borderline is an amazing, fantastic, and deeply hurtful experience.
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I feel so helpless when I work with a client whose mental health
condition is hopeless and unmanageable.
Self-interested hype by therapists aside, many
patients are just beyond help, they have strayed away too far from home, their
mind is a jumbled, tangled mess, pulsating with the traumas and agonies that
had shaped them.
Some of them inherited miswired brains or toxic
cocktails of neurotransmitters and hormones.
I lose sleep over such clients, I agonize and fret
and pit the full might of my formidable intellect only to be defeated time and
again. It is a humbling, traumatizing experience, especially for a grandiose
narcissist. Maybe I just see myself in them.
These clients are so vulnerable and raw and so
abused, exploited, and shunned by everyone that they succeed to penetrate all
my defenses and dysregulate me badly.
They are endowed and great looking and sexy and
sensitive and hyperintelligent and such a terrifying waste. This cruel
discrepancy induces burnout in us who attempt to salve and heal and soothe.
When I studied medicine, I had witnessed the most authoritarian
and resilient doctors dissolve into tears having lost a patient they got
attached to, despite all the training and the warnings to not do so.
Sometimes, in secret, when no one is watching, so
do I.
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Certificate of Recognition for my presentation titled "The Sorry State of Psychology" in the 38th Psychiatry and Mental Health Conference, February 27, 2021
Special session for my presentation “Traumas as Social Interactions” in a Joint Event of the 31st Euro Congress on Psychiatrists and Psychologists and the 25th International Conference on Neurology and Neurophysiology, April 5, 2021.
"Workaholism: Addiction or
Lifestyle?"
Certificate of recognition for my presentation in
the 33rd International Conference on Mental and Behavioral Health.
Presentation titled "Spontaneous Remission in Cluster B Personality Disorders" in the 33rd Edition of International Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health, April 29, 2021.
Presentation titled "Traumas as Social Interactions" in the 2021 World Neuroscience and Psychiatry Conference, Bangkok, November 2021.
Presentation titled "Spontaneous Remission of Cluster B Personality Disorders" in the 33rd Edition of the International Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health, April 29, 2021.
Editor Certificate in Psychology and Behavioral Therapy.
2nd Webinar on Depression Management and PTSD, May 2021.
2nd Webinar on Depression Management and PTSD, May 2021 Promo.
Certificate of Recognition for my presentation in the 2nd Webinar on Depression Management and PTSD, May 2021.
Letter of invitation to Psychiatry and Mental Health 2021, May 2021.
My presentation on the fantasy defense mechanism in the International Webinar on Psychiatry and Mental Health
2021.
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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People
with personality disorders who are high-functioning are very disconcerting: they compartmentalize their
promiscuous, antisocial, addictive, sadistic, and defiant behaviors.
During the day, they are competent professionals,
diligent students, pillars of the community, responsible citizens and fathers
or mothers, loving husbands or wives, and thriving entrepreneurs.
Come evening, the mask drops, the drink and drugs
are out, replete with dissolute reckless sex with virtual strangers, gambling,
or any number of self-trashing and dysfunctional, even self-destructive
behaviors.
What baffles scholars is that all these
self-states are a part of the personality. There is no faking involved. The
switching is abrupt but seamless. Dissociation is often involved, but never to
the point of rupturing continuous autobiographical memory and core identity.
Cleckley called it the “Mask of Sanity”. It
challenges everything we thought we knew about psychology.
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Women who possess both strong, unfulfilled maternal instincts and
abandonment anxiety find in the narcissist the perfect solution: a
child who will never grow up and separate from them.
These intimate partners subtly encourage the
narcissist’s infantilization, immaturity, learned helplessness, and dependency.
They frown upon and disincentivize - even punish -
any attempts to transform, break away, or display adult behaviors (including
having sex).
Sometimes, they even give up on having children of
their own to dedicate themselves exclusively to this “safe” child at home.
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If you keep choosing intimate partners
who are catastrophically wrong for you (repetition
compulsion), my advice is: avoid relationships (and, if you can, sex)
altogether. Stay single and find other founts of gratification and happiness.
In short: sublimate.
Alcohol is pleasurable and disinhibiting, but
alcoholics deny themselves alcohol because they cannot manage its consumption
and owing to its long-term costs.
Similarly, sex and intimacy are wonderful, but,
owing to recurrent self-destructive mate selection, their long-term
consequences can be ruinous. The wrong partner can cost you your sanity - or
even your life. A succession of them is bound to doom you to an early grave.
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Some people maintain multiple, secretive,
separate relationships, cheating on everyone
simultaneously, and juggling numerous conflicting expectations and schedules.
Such deceptiveness is often the outcome of a
pernicious combo of insecurity and catastrophizing.
They anticipate the eventual and inevitable
disintegration of their relationships. Having a labile sense of self-worth and
low self-esteem, they equally distrust their ability to find a replacement.
So, they say “yes” to every passing opportunity,
hoarding options, taking out romantic or sexual insurance policies. Just in
case, you see.
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The number of sexual partners until age 31 for both men and
women had tripled (!) over the past 13 years. Promiscuity (indiscriminate sex with
relative strangers) is now normative. But there is a huge difference between promiscuity
and sexual self-trashing.
Self-trashing is always compulsive, promiscuity is not
(though it is sometimes impulsive and situational).
Promiscuity is an active role and is often experienced as an
empowering lifestyle choice or a conquest. It boosts the participants’
self-esteem and their inner locus of control.
In contrast, self-trashing is masochistic, self-punitive,
passive, and is chiefly intended as an anxiolytic (anxiety ameliorating) and
antidepressant activity. It is self-medication via temporary, self-loathing
sexual self-annihilation.
In self-trashing, the preliminaries (flirting, courting,
dating) are perfunctory, minimal, or nonexistent: sex is the first move, not
the culmination. The self-trasher actually ends up bedding unattractive mates
as a way to further despoil and degrade herself. She typically engages in kinky,
reckless, or extreme sexual acts in the first few minutes with unknown
strangers.
Alcohol and drugs frequently precede both types of sex. But
the promiscuous use substances to disinhibit themselves while the self-trashing
leverage the same to numb themselves often to the brink of a blackout or
unconsciousness.
Finally, promiscuity is usually ego-syntonic.
Self-trashing is sometimes ego-dystonic (though always defiant, assertive, and
self-efficacious). Self-trashers often describe the sex as cursory,
disappointing, objectifying, “disgusting”, “unpleasant”, or “uncomfortable”.
Some self-trashers report shame, regret, anger, disappointment, and guilt, emotional blunting, and an increase in anxiety and depression after the act. This is very rare among the truly promiscuous.
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The world is what YOU make of it. It is the
truest cliche ever.
If I may give two pieces of relationship
advice as an old man on his way out?
1. Do not try to eat the cake and have it. Do not play the
two ends down the middle. Do not two-time and cheat or deceive, never mind the
pretext and the context.
If you act this way, you end up losing everything - and alone.
Never mind how good your reasons to keep silent are - always
be honest and straightforward with your partner.
2. Never do everything and anything with total or relative
strangers. Keep something special for your intimate relationships. Make your
partner feel unique by reserving some experiences exclusively for your loved
ones.
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The antinarcissist
is a masochistic covert narcissist. His
grandiosity is founded on failure, defeat, self-annihilation, and
self-destruction as he seeks to merge with his empty schizoid core.
The grandiose narcissist someone switches to the
antinarcissist masochistic covert state.
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He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Nietzsche (Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (1886), Chapter IV. Apophthegms and Interludes, §146).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Presentation to the 25th International Conference on
Neurology and Neurophysiology, April 5, 2021
New directions in PTSD research: 1. Reconceiving of personality disorders as post-traumatic
conditions; and 2. Externalized PTSD results in acting out or experiential
avoidance while internalized PTSD may lead to emotional dysregulation,
flashbacks, emotional numbing, reduced or inappropriate affect display, or
emotional detachment.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Three
types of Borderline shared fantasy: Fairy
godmother, Princess, Damsel in distress. Each fantasy hails a different type of
intimate partner: Beneficiary of largesse, Fawning subject, Rescuer/savior.
The Borderline snapshots her intimate partner as a
persecutory object and this inexorably leads to decompensation acting out
(=borderline mortification).
The narcissist’s shared fantasy involves perfect
love and adulation. It attracts intimate partners who are willing to play the
roles of fan, playmate, and mother.
The narcissist first snapshots his intimate
partner as an idealized object and then – as she diverges from the snapshot –
converts her to a persecutory object, which induces mortification.
Discrepancies in the shared fantasy provoke the
narcissist to become a primary (F1) psychopaths and the borderline is rendered
a F2 (secondary) psychopath.
Recklessness
and fantasy are both clinical features of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). As a form of self-mutilation and self-trashing, Borderline
women often place themselves in harm’s way with relative strangers and end up
being defenseless and sexually assaulted.
Having been raped, they then use fantasy to defend
against the trauma and resolve the cognitive dissonance (“I initiated it, I
wanted the sex, he was attractive, I thought we could have a relationship”).
To prove the point, they may even meet and have
sex with the attacker again.
Fantasy characterizes the Borderline’s intimate
relationships as well. But her self-destructiveness, emotional dysregulation,
and mood lability are such that she always sabotages what she has.
As reality intrudes on the fantasy (which the
Borderline finds intolerable and anxiety inducing), she begins to devalue the
partner and act out egregiously. The resulting deterioration in the quality of
the bond justifies bouts of cheating on the partner and reckless self-trashing,
on the way to a new man within the next fantasy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reactance
in personality disorders often masquerades as
“boundaries”. The psychopath’s defiance and contumaciousness, for example, can
be easily mistaken that way.
True personal boundaries are endogenous and
proactive. In other words, they are not triggered by the environment, they are
immutable certainties and givens, emanating from a healthy and stable sense of
self-worth. They are forms of internalized self-defense.
Fake boundaries are reactive to events and people,
hair-triggered by them, are inconstant, and do not reflect any inner reality or
processes. They are forms of externalized aggression.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The descent into hell begins.
Please fasten your seat belts
Over decrepit bones.
Direct your sockets
Heavenwards,
Not into your phones.
Fear not the demons,
The fiery cauldrons,
As you are already dead.
Dread only your fellow passengers
On the road ahead.
There is no return ticket
On this hellish ride.
Only the smoldering memories
Of your haunted pride.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Certificate of membership in the editorial board of Journal of Addiction and Physical Dependence.
Certificate of membership in the editorial board of Mathews Journal of Psychiatry and Mental Health.
Certificate of Recognition for my presentation
titled "Traumas
as Social Interactions" in the 31st Euro
Congress of Psychiatrists and Psychologists, April 5, 2021
Editor in Chief and Editor of academic journals on
psychology, psychiatry, mental health, and neuroscience:
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Psychopaths: no switching and self-trashing
promiscuity.
Sexual Masochism:
Self-trashing in BPD, Cleckley (psychopathy).
Feeling bad/trashed leads to sexual arousal.
Self-trashing strategies:
Despoiling
Cheating (shame, guilt, immoral “bad object”)
Substances
Inappropriate mates
Cluster B personality disordered patients are goal
oriented.
All goals forms of supply: abandonment (BPD), sadistic
narcissistic supply (NPD), money-sex-power (AsPD).
Each personality disorder has its own form of
Supply:
HPD (Histrionic PD) – Derive their supply from
their heightened sexuality, seductiveness, flirtatiousness, from serial
romantic and sexual encounters, from physical exercises, and from the shape and
state of their body;
NPD (Narcissistic PD) – Derive their supply from
garnering attention, both positive (adulation, admiration) and negative (being
feared, notoriety);
BPD (Borderline PD) – Derive their supply from the
presence of others (they suffer from separation anxiety and are terrified of
being abandoned);
AsPD (Antisocial PD) – Derive their supply
from accumulating money, power, control, and having (sometimes sadistic)
"fun".
Borderlines, for instance, can be described as
narcissists with an overwhelming fear of abandonment. They are careful not to
abuse people. They do care deeply about not hurting others – but for a selfish
motivation (they want to avoid rejection).
Borderlines depend on other people for emotional
sustenance. A drug addict is unlikely to pick up a fight with his pusher. But
Borderlines also have deficient impulse control, as do Antisocials. Hence their
emotional lability, erratic behavior, and the abuse they do heap on their
nearest and dearest.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF5t3bQdGnQ
Lisa writes:
Perhaps the most neglected field in the study of Narcissism is: What can We as Individuals and as a Society do about it?
The guest this week is Professor Dr. Sam Vaknin who is the author of Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited.
Sam's Bio - https://samvak.tripod.com/cv.html
Sam's Book - Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Resisted - https://samvak.tripod.com/thebook.html
Sam's Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLad...
Vakninmusing Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/vakninmu...
00:00 Channel Introduction
00:26 Dr. Sam Vaknin Introduction
02:33 Correction on Narcissistic Supply
02:47 Definitions: Primary Narcissism, Secondary Narcissism, NPD
04:49 Distinctions between NPD and Narcissistic Style
06:06 NPD and Comorbidities
07:55 Healthy Narcissism
08:40 Reality Testing
09:37 Jung and Constellation of the Self
10:00 Separation and Individuation
11:41 Empathy
12:36 Cold Empathy
14:14 Narcissist are Selfless
14:36 Genetics and NPD
15:07 Reconceive Narcissism
15:55 Grandiose Narcissist
16:10 Primary and Secondary Psychopaths
17:09 Reconceiving Paranoid Disorder as Narcissism
17:52 ICD 11 - Only One Personality Disorder with Emphasis
18:58 DSM Being Antiquated
20:03 DSM - Alternate Model
20:47 Growth of Narcissism
21:33 Debate on the Rise of Narcissism
22:22 Sublimation and Collective Channels
24:40: Manifestations on Narcissism
26:02 The Death Cult and Valuing the Inanimate
26:33 Narcissism and Psychopathy as Positive Adaptions
27:12 Historical Traumatic Events
27:37 Complex/Repeated Trauma
28:51 Adaptation to Survive and Thrive
29:09 Walking Zombies and Flat Effect
29:47 Alternative Reality and Escapism
30:53 Resilient
31:04 Smartphones, Facebook, Subverted Language, Malice
33:20 Narcissistic Abuse
35:50 Introject
39:54 Trauma Bonding, Intermittent Reinforcement, Insecurity
41:16 Hall of Mirrors
43:23 Complex PTSD
48:48 Hope and Recovery is a Process
49:59 Self-styled Experts/Coaches/Gurus Perpetuating Victimhood
51:41 Taking Responsibility and Opportunity to Move Forward
52:13 What Can We Do About It?
52:33 Grandiosity, Entitlement, Lack of Empathy, Exploitativeness
55:40 Nothingness and Anti-narcissism Movement
57:20 Societal Level
59:51 Start at Home
1:00:31 Institutions vs. We Are Alone
1:02:33 Recreate Society
1:04:13 Diminishment
1:04:43 Fake Empowerment
1:06:23 Dating
1:08:58 Exit Movement
1:09:53 Social Media Consequences and Regulations
1:12:49 Be You, Don't Act
1:14:18 The Society as a Spectacle
1:15:11: Make Coffee Authentically
1:15:47 Please Leave a Comment
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists and psychopaths are an imitative “surface” only: there is no
depth, just an empty schizoid core where a person should have been. They are
carbon-based simulations.
As Hervey Cleckley noted already in 1942, these
mutants prefer sexual
self-trashing to normal
sex and to mainstream trashing (BDSM).
Sexual SELF-trashing is defiant and reckless: it is
assertive and involves self-efficacious agency, even when it is ego dystonic.
By contradistinction, sexual trashing by OTHERS is an entirely submissive, even
self-annihilating role which involves total objectification and ritualized
helplessness.
Self-trashers and subs are easily mistaken for each other.
Narcissists and psychopaths can never enjoy being the bottom masochistic sub:
they need to control and to defy. They self-trash to gratify their masochism.
Narcissists and psychopaths view the world, sex
included, as a zero sum game.
When they regard themselves as inferior or
superior to a potential sex partner, they gravitate impulsively towards
self-trashing casual sex.
When the possible mate is perceived as an equal
peer, they decline to have a one night stand and instead insist on grooming,
lovebombing, and an ensuing shared fantasy.
As narcissism and antisocial traits and behaviors
become more normative and widespread, sexual self-trashing is rendered a common
practice at least in the forms of “meaningless and emotionless sex” and
flagrant serial cheating.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When You Are Their Sex Prop: Exhibitionism, Autoeroticism, Masochism.
Autoeroticism (regarding oneself as one’s sex object) often goes hand in hand with exhibitionism (becoming sexually aroused by another’s objectifying gaze). The more numerous the observers, the more intense the sexual excitatory state. Exhibitionism is also a “conquest”, a power play and can easily become a paraphilia (exposing oneself to unwilling bystanders).
That is why the autoerotic - mainly narcissists and
psychopaths - gravitate to group sex with total strangers even in early
adolescence.
The autoerotic objectify not only themselves but
also the partner, whose body they use as a sex toy, to masturbate with.
Thus, the partner’s identity is utterly
incidental: he or she could be anonymous strangers encountered only minutes or
a few hours before the act.
Casual sex is the autoerotic’s staple: in his
committed relationships, s/he is typically sexless.
Sex with the autoerotic is an eerie sensation:
disembodied, mechanical, non-reciprocated, infantile, and lonely as the
autoerotic partners focus exclusively on their bodies and on their
self-gratification.
The intimate partners of the autoerotic invariably
develop sex aversion to them. The autoerotic’s solipsistic self-focus,
defiance, and oblivion to the partner is also a narcissistic injury and
triggers aggression in narcissists and psychopaths.
Paradoxically, precisely because the partner is a
mere generic, undifferentiated prop, as long as they are sexually catered to
within the relationship, the autoerotic rarely cheat on their mates. At any
rate, they are actually making love to themselves.
If s/he is masochistic, the autoerotic’s on the
fly sex involves extreme self-trashing: sex with unwanted, little-known, or
inappropriate partners in degrading circumstances or environments. Less
commonly, cheating serve or even celibacy the same purpose of self-despoiling
(“I am a bad, unworthy object”).
The self-trashing autoerotic abuses substances
with the aim of disinhibiting herself and numbing herself to her socially
unacceptable conduct and possible unconscious ego dystony.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Like the
schizoid and the narcissist, the Borderline has fantasies
and intrusive dreams of socially condemned sex. She recklessly
places herself repeatedly in harm’s way.
To counter the ego-dystony provoked by her sexual
exhibitionism and extreme self-trashing, she fantasizes that the man or men,
even in a one night stand or group sex, care about her, or “love” her.
She idealizes (“snapshots”) these sexual predators
and interacts with the internalized objects rather than with the brutish and
revolting - or even dangerous or risky - reality.
She weaves a narrative which she knows is
fictitious, but which allows her to pretend, make-believe, and dream.
Any manifestation of “kindness” – an “expensive” date,
free drinks or drugs, a place to crash in for the night, flirting and courting,
attentiveness, succor, affection, or outright physical intimacy – is
incorporated into the fantasy and legitimizes her actions.
Conversely, abuse, indifference, avoidance,
nastiness, or malice render her sex averse because they shatter the fantasy and
thus deny her the possibility to express her core psychosexuality safely (for
example: with a partner) and ego-syntonically (legitimately). In this she
differs from masochistic women and from subs (bottoms) in BDSM.
Thus confronted with rejection, the Borderline
becomes pseudo-stupid and passive-aggressive or antisocial (secondary
psychopath).
When the Borderline’s partner is as prone to
fantasy as she is or when he misreads her psychology entirely, she embarks on
fantastic “relationships” that are founded on sex but misinterpreted as love.
Having misjudged the nature of the liaison and
faced with the exigencies of reality, she again resorts to fantasy. She ends up
being discarded, or cheats on her “intimate” (but sexless) partner within a new
fantasy action figure.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
People tout the wisdom of having sex on a first
date and cohabitation before tying the knot. Research is unequivocal: both are
seriously bad ideas.
Sex on a first date often
becomes a one night stand. Social stigmas aside, because the parties know close
to nothing about each other, the copulation sucks and leads to disappointment
rather than to enhanced intimacy.
More than two thirds of practitioners of casual
sex report not having climaxed (the figure is much higher for women).
Moreover: you can learn nothing about your sexual
compatibility with someone from a single encounter with effectively a stranger.
Similarly: sharing living quarters results in a
much higher rate of breakups and divorces. Counterintuitive - but true, all the
same. Takes away the mystery, I guess.
And in the absence of the mysterious - what is
left between a man and a woman? Not much.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Psychosexual
sadists are hard-pressed to find sexual partners
nowadays. Psychosexual masochists are an extinct species: women had become
assertive, defiant, autonomous, and emancipated.
Contemporary women demand reciprocity, consent,
and a negotiated consensus before any sex act.
Even subs (bottoms) in BDSM are boundaried and
maintain control over the proceedings. Sexual self-trashers are psychopathic,
devaluing, and defiant - the exact opposite of the sadist’s wish list.
The sadist’s ideal partner regards him as a deity,
obeys him instantly and unthinkingly, has no boundaries and no agency, his will
supplants hers. She expresses no wishes or preferences, demands nothing, and
places her body at the unmitigated disposal of her partner to do with as he
desires and when he pleases, alone or with others.
Good luck finding such a woman even in the
remotest corners of the developing world. Psychosexual sadists have been forced
into involuntary celibacy (incel) by women’s lib.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Most
patients diagnosed with BPD lose the diagnosis spontaneously or with the help
of DBT, but retain the dysfunctional behaviors
associated with it.
Robert S Biskin
The Lifetime Course of Borderline Personality
Disorder
Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. 2015 Jul; 60(7):
303–308.
Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Hennen J, et
al. The McLean Study of Adult Development (MSAD): overview and implications of
the first six years of prospective follow-up. Journal of Personality Disorders.
2005;19(5):505–523.
Skodol AE, Gunderson JG, Shea MT, et al. The
Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders Study (CLPS): overview and
implications. Journal of Personality Disorders. 2005;19(5):487–504.
Gunderson JG, Stout RL, McGlashan TH, et al.
Ten-year course of borderline personality disorder: psychopathology and
function from the Collaborative Longitudinal Personality Disorders study.
Archives of General Psychiatry. 2011;68(8):827–837.
Paris J, Zweig-Frank H. A 27-year follow-up of patients
with borderline personality disorder. Comparative Psychiatry.
2001;42(6):482–487.
Zanarini MC, Frankenburg FR, Reich DB, et
al. The subsyndromal phenomenology of borderline personality disorder: a
10-year follow-up study. American Journal of Psychiatry. 2007;164(6):929–935.
Hopwood CJ, Morey LC, Donnellan MB, et al.
Ten-year rank-order stability of personality traits and disorders in a clinical
sample. Journal of Personality. 2013;81(3):335–344.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Extreme
promiscuity (self-trashing) is a form of self-mutilation,
akin to cutting or burning in Borderline Personality Disorder. It caters to the
same two mutually exclusive needs: to feel alive again and to numb overwhelming
and dysregulated emotions.
Extreme promiscuity is distinct from the healthy
variety in that the sexual partners and circumstances of the sex are both
wrong, unappealing, or degrading.
The reasons for extreme promiscuity are skewed
(reframed) or slight (sex for little or no cause and with very brief or few
antecedents).
Like in other forms of sexual compulsivity (“sex
addiction”), the self-trasher convinces herself that she is in full control and
that what she is doing is actually not “real or meaningful or full-fledged sex”
because it lacks the emotional component, it is only mechanical or physical.
Extreme promiscuity is closely correlated with
mental health issues, many of which are exacerbated by the unboundaried
self-trashing: depression, anxiety, and substance abuse (especially alcoholism).
Psychologically, self-trashers present an
intriguing duality.
They have the cognitive-linguistic-analytical
capacity of adults coupled with the unboundaried emotional immaturity,
impulsivity, reactance, and pseudo-naivety of a child aged 8-11.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The thing that amazes me the most about narcissists is the DISCONNECTS, the disparities, incongruities, and discrepancies.
Between their self-awareness and the utter lack of
transformative insight
Between their often towering intelligence and
their ubiquitous pseudo-stupidity
Between the sagacious wisdom which many of them
possess and display – and their pervasive inanity
Between their goal-orientation and their ultimate
and ineluctable failures
Between their non-existent positive emotions and
their disproportionate negative ones
Between their innate emptiness and their
prodigious creativity
Between their ability to emulate love and their
inability to consummate it
Between their unmitigated self-sufficiency and
their total dependence on others (for narcissistic supply, as parental figures
in a shared fantasy, etc.)
The cognitive-linguistic-analytical capacity of a
brilliant man or woman coupled with the unboundaried emotional immaturity,
impulsivity, reactance, and pseudo-naivety of a child aged 8-11.
Harvey Cleckley called it the “Mask of Sanity”.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Presentation to the 33rd Edition of
International Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health
Most patients diagnosed with BPD lose the
diagnosis spontaneously or with the help of DBT, but retain the dysfunctional
behaviors associated with it. Same goes for NPD and AsPD.
This raises two questions:
1. What is the meaning of "healing" when
the dysfunctional behaviors persevere?
2. Why this disconnect?
Answers:
Healing is a permanent alteration in the clinical
profile of the patient and in her psychodynamics. In healthier clients, it
induces behavior modification. But not in cluster B. In cluster B it is an
either/or proposition: behavior modification OR
healing.
The reasons for the disconnect: dissociative
self-states (subpersonalities, pseudoidentities) in these post-traumatic
conditions, anxiety, rich fantasy life, identity disturbance, reactance,
external locus of control (outsourcing ego functions), learned helplessness
(low personal autonomy and self-efficacy).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some people can’t stand silence during conversation. They fill the void with an endless stream of verbiage. Why
this anxiety reaction?
Intuitively, we - often counterfactually -
interpret the silence of an interlocutor as ominous: it is perceived as
denoting disapproval, disagreement, implied criticism, or even hostility. It
may provoke paranoid ideation. The sound of one’s voice has an anxiolytic
effect.
Protracted silence also challenges our ability to
idealize our conversation partners: “Does he have nothing to say? Is she
stupid?” To avoid and allay such ego dystonic thoughts, we talk aloud, drowning
the incipient devaluation in an avalanche of speech.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Unlike normal people, narcissists and psychopaths
are motivated by the environment, not by any internal process or psychodynamic. They are empty shells (schizoid cores) and so derive all
ego functions, scripts, and choices from the outside.
Normal people respond to needs, emotions,
cognitions, impulses, and moods as well as to external inputs or feedback.
So, when you ask “neurotypicals”: “Why did you act
this way?”, they are likely to describe motivations that are mixtures of
internal and external factors. “I had a need … wanted to … felt it … hoped …”
Asked the same question, a psychopath would
respond by saying: “He did this, so I did that” or “the circumstances made me do
it and justified my actions” or “I don’t know why I did it, maybe I shouldn’t
have”.
When the psychopath and narcissist express insight
(“What I did was wrong”), it is not accompanied by any emotional correlate and
so does not result in learning or in the modification of future, similar,
self-defeating or self-trashing behaviors (“repetition compulsion”).
Ironically, defiant, contumacious, and reckless as
they are, narcissists and psychopaths are non-autonomous (have an external
locus of control). They are like driftwood in a gale: propelled to act in ways
which are apparently whimsical and incomprehensible above all to themselves.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Approach-avoidance is a form of repetition compulsion. It is common in many personality disorders, especially in
the cluster B ones and also among victims of complex trauma (CPTSD).
Hypervigilance causes the approach-avoidant to
catastrophize the outcomes of relationships and then preempt abandonment by
acting first.
Narcissists also use projective identification to
coerce their intimate partners to act as bad, persecutory objects and reenact
early childhood conflicts with parental figures. The intimate partner’s
eventual acting out justified the narcissist’s ultimate withdrawal.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women diagnosed with Histrionic Personality
Disorder (HPD) are actually “frigid” (hyposexual). Their flirtatiousness,
provocative attire, inviting body language, and seductiveness mask an
indifference to sex, aversion to intimacy, and an addiction to power plays
(conquests and attention).
Promiscuous and sexually self-trashing women often
disinhibit themselves with alcohol in order to overcome social phobia, an
avoidant or schizoid personality, and anxiety (“shyness”).
What you see in mental health is rarely what you get!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Actions
speak louder than words. Only partly true.
An action can be interpreted - and misinterpreted
- in multiple ways.
Words are less equivocal but often intended to
manipulate, conceal, deny, obscure, deflect, or deceive.
So, you are liable to misconstrue actions and you
cannot trust words.
What’s left?
Ask yourself: WHY did that person choose these
words and not others, what were they signaling - and how do the words they had
chosen to utter correlate with their actions.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
No such thing as man, woman, just people (unigender, gender vertigo)
Language male POV: penetration, not engulfment
Studies only of college students, mainly in North America
Decline in vaginal, increase in oral, anal: influence of porn
Desexing of oral sex (“not sex”)
Compulsive sexting on the rise, strongly associated with dark triad traits
Increase in distress, depression, anxiety: few want to hookup (they prefer relationships), but everyone pressured to do so as bon ton and cool
Hookups typically with extreme substance abuse intended to disinhibit
Double standard prevails
GENERAL TRENDS
Decline in relationship formation (incl. FWB), marriage
Moreover, as number of sex partners increased, marital thoughts decreased, for both sexes (Townsend and Wasserman, 2011).
Sexlessness/celibacy increasing
Alcohol consumption decreasing
Sexting and other normative as form of LDR and substitute for casual sex with strangers
Explosive New Patterns of Sexually Transmitted Infection
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3
LITERATURE
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World Volume 7: 1–12, March 1, 2021. Why Are Fewer Young Adults Having Casual Sex? Scott South and Lei Lei
Social Problems, 2019, 0, 1–17. Doing Casual Sex: A Sexual Fields
Approach to the Emotional Force of Hookup Culture. Lisa Wade
Sexuality Research and Social Policy volume 7, pages 323–333(2010). Hook-Up Culture: Setting a New Research Agenda. Caroline Heldman & Lisa Wade
Archives of Sexual Behavior, June 2019. Associations Between Motives for Casual Sex, Depression, Self‑Esteem, and Sexual Victimization John Marshall Townsend, Peter K. Jonason, Timothy H. Wasserman
Review of General Psychology 2012 June 1; 16(2): 161–176. Sexual Hookup Culture: A Review. Justin R. Garcia, Chris Reiber, Sean G. Massey,
Ann M. Merriwether
Sociology Compass 1/2 (2007): 775–788. The Shift from Dating to Hooking up in College: What Scholars Have Missed. Kathleen A. Bogle
Sexuality & Culture (2020) 24:1397–1417. Lessons in Casual Sex: Narratives of Young Swedish Women. Michael Tholander, Ninni Tour
Journal of Gender Studies, Mar 2016. 'No girl wants to be
called a slut!’: women, heterosexual casual sex and the sexual double standard. Panteá Farvid, Virginia Braun, Casey Rowney
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 127, 1 June 2018, Pages 61-67. Why do women regret casual sex more than men do?
Leif Edward Ottesen, Kennaira Joy, P. Wyckoff, Kelly Asao, David M.Buss, Mons Bendixen
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 133, 15 October 2018, Pages 17-20. Exploring the hook-up app: Low sexual disgust and high sociosexuality predict motivation to use Tinder for casual sex. Barış Sevi, Tuğçe Aral, Terry Eskenazi
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Easter once again
It is Easter in Christian Orthodox and Pravoslav
countries. Why the discrepancy with all other denominations?
Pope Gregory XIII decided - in his tenth year in
office - to drop 3 leap years every 400 years by specifying that any year whose
number ended with 00 must also be evenly divisible by 400 in order to have a
29-day February.
This would have the effect of bringing the Julian
calendar closer to the natural length of the solar year - though an error of 26
seconds per year would still remain.
To calibrate the Julian calendar with the
Gregorian one and to move the Spring Equinox back to March 21, 10 days were
dropped from the civil calendar in October 1582. Thursday, October 4 was
followed by Friday, October 15. People rioted in the streets throughout Europe,
convinced that they have been robbed of 10 days.
But this was merely a convenient fiction. The
Spring Equinox in the Gregorian calendar was, indeed, celebrated on March 21 in
perpetuity. But, according to the Julian calendar, in the 17th century it
arrived on March 11th, in the 18th century on March 10th, in the 19th century
on March 9th, and in the 20th century on March 8th - 13 days earlier that even
the erroneous date adopted by the Nicea Council.
The Gregorian calendar was controversial in
Protestant countries. Britain and its colonies adopted it only in 1752. They
had to drop 11 days from the civil calendar and move the official new year from
March 25 to January 1. For centuries, dates followed by OS ("Old
Style") were according to the Julian calendar and dates followed by NS
("New Style") according to the Gregorian one. Sweden adopted the
Gregorian Calendar in 1753, Japan in 1873, Egypt in 1875, Eastern Europe
between 1912 to 1919 and Turkey in 1927. In Russia it was decreed by the
(bourgeois) revolutionaries that thirteen days would be omitted from the
calendar, the day following January 31, 1918 becoming February 14, 1918.
It was Pope Pius X who, in 1910, changed the
beginning of the ecclesiastical year from Christmas Day to January 1, effective
from 1911 onwards.