Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
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Love,
trust, and respect are the three legs of the relationship stool
(also in casual sex where lust could substitute for love).
If even one leg is missing, you end up on your
butt.
Then, it HURTS.
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I propose a new clinical entity in abnormal
psychology: Precocious
Adulthood Syndrome (PrAS) or adultification in
people who were forced into adult roles in their childhood or adolescence.
It is brought on (etiology) via three vectors:
chronic illness (including mental illness) of either the parent or the child;
sexual abuse; and parentifying or instrumentalizing the child.
Later in life, PrAs leads to compensatory
infantilism (“Peter Pan Syndrome”) coupled with an impostor syndrome.
Adultified children grow up feeling
responsible for everyone around them. They are incapable of having fun, never
have had a childhood.
Adultified children become control freaks,
are self-reliant, trust no one, and always get involved in conflicts as
arbiters or peacemakers.
They feel the need to be “good, worthy,
trustworthy, and reliable” even at the expense of their own needs (they are
self-sacrificial).
They always feel either that their efforts are not
appreciated – or that they should do more.
Consequently, some of them end up being
passive-aggressive (negativistic) or even covert narcissists and “empaths”.
Adultified
children resemble Borderlines in that they
engage in compensatory behaviors that are not calibrated and proportionate:
reckless promiscuity and substance abuse, for examples.
Some of them end up being codependent,
people-pleasers, and highly sensitive people (HSPs).
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ROCD
(Relationship Obsessive-compulsive Disorder)
includes two common presentations: relationship-centered and partner-focused
obsessive compulsive symptoms.
People with relationship-centered obsessions often
feel overwhelmed by doubts and worries focused on their feelings towards their
partner, their partner’s feelings towards them, and the “rightness” of the
relationship experience. They may repeatedly find themselves thinking “Is this
the right relationship for me?”, “This is not real love!”, “Do I feel
‘right’?”, and “Does my partner really love me?”
People who present with partner-focused obsessions
may focus on their partner’s physical features (e.g., “Her nose is too big.”),
social qualities (e.g., “He is not social enough”; “She does not have what it
takes to succeed in life.”), or personality attributes, such as morality, intelligence,
or emotional stability (e.g., “She is not intelligent enough”, “He is not
emotionally stable”)."
LITERATURE
1. Relationship OCD By Guy Doron, PhD, and Danny
Derby, PhD
This article was initially published in the Fall
2014 edition of the OCD Newsletter.
2. Doron, G., Derby, D., & Szepsenwol. O.
(2014). Relationship obsessive-compulsive disorder (ROCD): A conceptual
framework. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 3, 169-180.
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The three solutions to the Gender Wars offered by third and fourth wave feminism are:
Standardization: women should retain traditional gender role, one standard should apply to all
Emasculation: men should become more feminine even as women become more masculine (stalled revolution)
Masculinization: women should emulate men and outman them (raunch culture, slut walks).
Consequence:
Marriage, cohabitation, childbirth rates, and even sex fell off a cliff. About one third of women and men are lifelong singles. Another third are involved in ephemeral pseudo-relationships, including dead marriages. 40% are raised in single parent poverty-stricken households, most of them headed by women.
Men and women walked away.
How did we get here?
Until 17th century enlightenment, men and women shared work and home alike. Muscles provided men with an advantage, so patriarchy was formed.
French revolution and revolutions of 1848 emancipated women for a while and rendered them revolutionaries: they entered the public sphere
As the home was hollowed out, its functions outsourced, work and home became two distinct spheres.
Work for men was Darwinian jungle and survival of the fittest. Home was the sanctuary. Women's role was to comfort men and socialize boys and girls with traditional gender roles.
Women extended this domesticity to the public sphere, adopting social causes and entering caring professions, like nursing and teaching which used to be male enclaves.
The two world wars pushed women even further into male roles.
The first two waves of feminism were concerned with equity and equality: the franchise; property ownership; access to education, healthcare and the workplace; equal wages; anti-porn and anti-prostitution.
The third wave was about empowerment: women should do whatever made them feel empowered even if it meant conforming to male chauvinistic stereotypes, sex work, and self-objectification via sex and porn, including self-porn and group sex.
Problem is: women want to have the cake and eat it. They want to lead an emancipated, career-centred, and promiscuous lifestyle followed by a reversion to traditional gender roles.
But traditional gender roles depends crucially on purity, especially sexual purity - and on dedication to the domestic sphere. Women gave up the first and, having spent decades as singles, they lack the skillset for domestic, committed, long-term intimacy. Dating is extinct replaced with rare and disappointing hookups, replete with bad sex for women (the orgasm gap).
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Jacobsen: Is high intelligence required for
true genius?
Vaknin: If by intelligence you mean IQ then the
answer is a resounding no. The adage about perspiration and inspiration applies.
But, more importantly, genius is the ability to see familiar things in a fresh,
unprecedented way. Imagination, intuition, and the ability to tell apart the
critical from the tangential are the core constituents of genius – not
intelligence.
What intelligence does contribute to genius is
alacrity. It is a catalyst. It speeds up both the processes of theorizing and
of discovery.
Jacobsen: What happens to an insane person who
happens to have high intelligence too?
Vaknin: He is likely to construct theories that
will pass for genius, especially among laymen. The intelligence of the gifted
madman serves to camouflage the lack of rigor and the delusional,
counterfactual content of his creations. Rather than catalyze disruptive
discoveries, his intellect works overtime at the service of aggressively
defending a manifestly risible sleight of hand. It is not open to any
modificatory feedback from the environment. The madman’s intellect is
solipsistic and moribund.
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The narcissist captivates you by infecting you with his/her narcissism.
Watch: Narcissism Virus Vaccine NOW: It Evades Your Immunity! Real Pandemic Is Here! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uczI-m4Zb9o
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Love is about the strength to expose your weaknesses, the courage to trade your vulnerabilities, the stamina to endure the failure, losses, and hurt that are the ineluctable costs of its magic.
Predators home in on your strengths as well as on your
weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
They leverage your perfectionism, kindness,
commitment, and love.
Both your shortcomings and your positive traits
are chinks in your armor. Predators scan you with their cold empathy and then
they penetrate your defenses and intrude on your mind, to the point of
hijacking it.
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Predators home in on your strengths as well as on your weaknesses and
vulnerabilities.
They leverage your perfectionism, kindness,
commitment, and love.
Both your shortcomings and your positive traits
are chinks in your armor. Predators scan you with their cold empathy and then
they penetrate your defenses and intrude on your mind, to the point of
hijacking it.
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The faith-based
personality is characteristic of people who need to
believe in something or someone in order to feel safe and secure: god, an
intimate partner, the state, the family, an institution, a fantasy, or a
delusional conspiracy theory.
It has long been speculated that addicts have an
addictive personality: they tend to rotate from one addiction to another all
their lives.
Similarly, the faith-based personality switches
between socially condoned (sublimated) beliefs and delusions all her life.
Faith provides a sense of belonging, acceptance,
and embedment and is, therefore, functionally akin to self-love.
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The Digital Mind of Tomorrow by
Isabella Wang.
On my reading list during my sojourn in Bucharest
next month. Can’t wait!
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Psychopaths and narcissists have moral cognition (moral judgement) but, exactly like children, they make no distinction between moral transgressions and breaches of social mores and conventions.
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Profile
of the life of a modern woman:
She spends most of her time working, sometimes
trapped in jobs she hates or with people she detests (it is called her career);
She is burdened with a mountain of crippling debt;
She deliberately acts and dresses as a “slut” to
attract men (it is called sex positivity or raunch culture);
She has one night stands with total strangers
(hookups) and near strangers (“dates”);
Irregularly and infrequently, she has sex with
friends with benefits or a reluctant temporary “intimate” partner;
One in ten offer sex on camera even to random men:
that’s how desperate they are;
One in 12 participate in degrading group sex and
kink when they don’t want to. A shocking one third are sexually assaulted;
She fleets and flees from one pseudo-relationship
to another. Most of these liaisons end up being sexless, abusive, and last a
few months only;
She has 90% fewer best friends than in the 1980s;
She is far more likely to drink heavily regularly
and to suffer from mental health disorders: mood, anxiety, and substance abuse;
She is 31% likely to remain a lifelong single and
60% likely to divorce more than once or be a single mother;
She is 20% likely to be childless. Increasingly,
she gets pregnant via donor sperm in an IVF procedure.
Well done, third wave feminism. Women have arrived
for sure: they have become men and are “empowered”.
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Full Interview Resist Narcissism, Grassroots Up! (Interview with Dr. Lisa Alastuey) @lisaalastuey
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KYIV, UKRAINE
In August, I am heading to Ukraine, as a volunteer, to train local mental health practitioners
- therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists - on how to treat PTSD.
I am going to be joining a team of great and
generous people like Dr. Fernando of Harvard University (an expert in disaster
medicine) and the Australian therapist, Cheriekah Ramirez @cheriekah
If you are a mental health professional and want
to help us to alleviate the indescribable suffering of countless victims of
this brutal war, please write to me at samvaknin@gmail.com
BUCHAREST, ROMANIA
I will be visiting Bucharest, Romania in the first 10 days of July.
It you want to have face to face counselling with
me, please write to samvaknin@gmail.com or drop me a DM here.
If you want to organize an event for questions and
answers (minimum 30 participants), or if you want to attend such an event, I
will be happy to do it free of charge. Let me know.
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Excerpts from a 4(!) hours interview with a ferocious third wave
feminist.
The language used to describe sex is male-centric:
penetration, not engulfment. No difference of importance or involvement between
key and lock, protein and receptor, or substrate and reagent.
Couples are sexless because sex decoupled from
intimacy and associated with risk and novelty (sex positivity).
Casual sex is nothing new, but today it is the
dominant/exclusive practice and sexual script, not optional. And casual sex is
in lieu of relationships, intended to delay commitment owing, perhaps to fear
of divorce (intergenerational trauma).
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Isabella Wang (author of "The Digital Mind of Tomorrow") and Sam Vaknin discuss the human mind and brain, psychology, the human condition, and the future in a wide ranging talk between East and West.
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Types of identity disturbance or
diffusion in Borderline and Narcissistic patients: Cyclical, Allotropic, Object-related.
Autobiographical memory (narrative), dissociation,
and core identity.
Splitting and other primitive defenses and their
role in identity disturbance.
LITERATURE
1. Deutsch H. Some forms of emotional disturbance
and their relationship to schizophrenia. Psychoanal Q. 1942;11:301–321.
2. Autobiographical memories, identity disturbance
and brain functioning in patients with borderline personality disorder: An fMRI
study
Paola Bozzatello, Rosalba Morese, Maria Consuelo,
Valentin Paola Roccae, Francesca Boscob, Silvio Bellinoa
Heliyon, Volume 5, Issue 3, March 2019
3. Psychiatry Research, Volume 271, January 2019,
Pages 76-82
Facets of identity disturbance reported by
patients with borderline personality disorder and personality-disordered
comparison subjects over 20 years of prospective follow-up
Mohammad A.Gada, Hannah E.Pucker, Katherine
E.Hein, Christina M.Temes, Frances R.Frankenburg, Garrett M.Fitzmaurice, Mary
C.Zanariniac
4. Identity Disturbance, Feelings of Emptiness,
and the Boundaries of the Schizophrenia Spectrum
Maja Zandersen, Josef Parnas
Schizophrenia Bulletin, Volume 45, Issue 1,
January 2019, Pages 106–113, https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbx183
5. Journal of Personality DisordersVol. 35, No.
Supplement B
At the Junction of Clinical and Developmental
Science: Associations of Borderline Identity Disturbance Symptoms With Identity
Formation Processes in Adolescence
Shawna Mastro Campbell, Melanie Zimmer-Gembeck and
Amanda Duffy
Published Online:June 2021 https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2020_34_484
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Underpinning latter-day dualism are two
arguments:
1. Mental phenomena cannot be reduced into
material objects or fit into a strictly materialistic theory because they are
possessed of consciousness (felt subjective experience); and
2. Mental phenomena cannot be reduced into
material objects or fit into a strictly materialistic theory because they are
possessed of intentionality (the capacity to self-direct onto something
material external to the mental or onto an immanent internal object).
But consciousness can be construed as inverted
intentionality which is directed at the subject, the internal - rather than the
object, or the external.
So, the fundamental, primary process is
intentionality, not consciousness. I call this school of thought “intentionalism”.
It is also far from certain that the material
lacks intentionality. The ban on teleology reflected a grandiose anthropocentric
view of the world which has been challenged and undermined by modern science
every day for the past 150 years or so.
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Reaction
formation is when you behave in ways which defy who you
really are and how you truly feel: a homophobic latent homosexual, an
over-solicitous hating daughter, and overprotective resentful mother, an
pacifist who is violent at heart, a Black Lives Matter activist who is a racist.
LITERATURE
Juni, S. (1981). Theoretical foundations of
reaction formation as a defense mechanism. Genetic Psychology Monographs,
104(1), 107–135.
Journal of Personality
Freudian Defense Mechanisms and Empirical Findings
in Modern Social Psychology: Reaction Formation, Projection, Displacement,
Undoing, Isolation, Sublimation, and Denial
Roy F. Baumeister, Karen Dale, Kristin L. Sommer
First published: 04 January 2002
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-6494.00043
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How does the Borderline lure and captivate you?
Drama (boredom, anxiety)
Approach-avoidance (Intermittent Reinforcement)
Suicide threats
Neediness and clinging, helplessness (gratifies
grandiosity)
Idealization
Unboundaried Sex
Fantasy and Lies
Triangulation
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Cold
therapy has come a long way in the past 6 years and is
now a treatment modality for major depression as well as Narcissistic
Personality Disorder (NPD). More about it: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq...
You are invited to attend a FREE 7-days seminar on
Cold Therapy in Drobeta-Turnu Severin, the fairytale city in Romania.
To reserve your place, write to: samvaknin@gmail.com
Healing Narcissism: Cold Therapy Seminar (Part 1 of 11 - Link in Description), Vienna, May 2017
(watch the video on my YouTube channel).
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There is an affinity between low
functioning autism and borderline personality disorder.
In both cases, the sufferer is overwhelmed by
stimuli, external (autism) or internal (the borderline's dysregulated affects).
In both cases, self-harm serves to fulfill three
self-soothing functions:
1. Reassert control over the dynamic of irritation
and aggravation (via the elective act of self-mutilation);
2. Drown out sources of frustration and pain with
even greater agony; and
3. Reawaken and feel alive as the self-inflicted
hurt negates the erstwhile numbing.
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Watch the first part here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fco4_4VJ5A
Interview transcript here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/shotranscript.docx
Sometimes, civilizations reach a point where the only way out is a reset and starting from scratch.
I fully believe that we are at such an inflection or tipping point.
What needs to happen? We need to transition from cities back to nature - both mentally and physically https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-VAh4YeGbKQ From Narcissistic Cities to Psychopathic Metaverse (EXCERPT)
We need to suppress some kinds of pernicious speech, some ideologies (as we do today with fascism, Nazism, white supremacy, and racism). Example: third wave feminism, advertising (Althusser’s interpellation) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=M8z5d5NvZSk Feminism: From Equity to Psychopathy
We need to force people back into families and communities by monetarily penalizing certain asocial and antisocial behaviors.
We need to redesign and reform the workplace by seamlessly integrating it with the community and the home. But it should be obligatory to work with other people face to face. Workplace intrusions into private time should be criminalized. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Zm5cAhWe1S8 Workaholism: Addiction or Lifestyle?
We need to ban certain types of immersive technologies (the way we ban cloning, for example).
We need to certify people to use certain kinds of technology the same way we run background checks on people who use guns today.
We need to limit the use of all social media technologies to 2 hours a day.
We need to ban relative positioning practices such as “likes”.
Friends online could be only people you have actually met in real life.
We need to verify the identity of all users and criminalize the use of pseudonyms. Blockchain technology could be of great help here.
We need to educate children regarding sex and its physiological, medical, and mental implications.
Example:
We know that compulsive casual sex and sexting have deleterious outcomes later in life. We need to share this info widely. Sex positivity is a seriously bad idea.
Similarly, we need to inculcate in children the importance and benefits of intimacy and long term relationships.
We need to license parenting. Prospective parents would be required to complete a curriculum in child psychology, relationship management, age-appropriate technology use and so on. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl3cDC3TICY Parenting should be Licensed!
We need to enforce age-related restrictions on entertainment venues such as nightclubs, the use of alcohol in campuses, and other measures.
Education is a public good. We need to DEprivatize it.
We need to reorient education around the twin concepts of phronetics and eudaimonia - as well as life skilling (including how to manage relationships, for example).
Finally: psychology should become an obligatory subject starting in middle school.
Lifelong self-auditing and journaling should be taught and encouraged as ways to obtain insight and secure introspection.
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13 conversations with the renowned Israeli radio personality, Benny Hendel - 35 years after our first interviews (available in Hebrew in archive.org).
1. Is consciousness merely the subjective experience of introspection?
2. Is reality observer-dependent?
3. Is artificial intelligence indistinguishable from the human variety?
4. Does “Nature” exist?
5. Is modern physics - a metaphysics?
6. Is the multiverse a useful concept?
7. Are simulations as real as real reality? Is reality a simulation?
8. The dangers and promises of extended, virtual, and augmented realities: from cities to the Metaverse.
9. Is culture the successor to evolution? Are we headed towards a transhumanist future?
10. Are science and technology related?
11. What’s wrong with the concepts of self, individual, and personality?
12. Do we need others or is self-sufficient atomization the future?
13. Chronon Field Theory
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Emotional
blackmail
Guilt-tripping ("I sacrificed my life for
you…"), dependence-driven ("I need you, I cannot cope without
you…"), goal-driven ("We have a common goal which we must
achieve") and explicit ("If you do not adhere to my principles,
beliefs, ideology, religion or any other set of values, or if you don't obey my
instructions – I will impose sanctions on you").
Learned Helplessness
Learned or Acquired Parenting
External Locus of Control
Alloplastic Defenses
Grandiosity
Dysfunctional Responsibility
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The narcissist experiences periods of collapse: failure to obtain narcissistic supply.
The collapse can be subclinical (protracted and
incremental as barely sufficient maintenance levels of supply are at hand) or
traumatic (when he loses all his sources of supply simultaneously).
As long as the supply keeps coming, the narcissist
is ego-syntonic. The collapse results in severe ego-dystony and dysphoria
(often, depression). It resembles decompensation in borderlines (BPD) but, with
the narcissist, there is no emotional dysregulation.
The narcissist then transitions from one type to
another: cerebral to somatic or overt to covert. This is akin to the borderline
switching between self-states when she is abandoned, rejected, humiliated, or
stressed.
In the cerebral type, sexual abstinence is a form
of self-supply: it makes him feel superior. It is the collapse-induced
depression that drives him to become sexually voracious in a somatic phase.
So, contrary to the rest of humanity, in
narcissists depression leads to enhanced libido (sex drive).
The types are highly dissociative self-states,
almost distinct personalities.
For example: the somatic mourns the years of
cerebral sexlessness while the cerebral grieves over the time wasted by the
somatic in the relentless pursuit of sexual conquests.
Both of these types fail to recall the bliss they
had experienced during the time spent as the other type, regardless of the
“sacrifices” made. They misattribute the depression brought on by imminent or
actual collapse to the compulsive behavioral constriction of the other type (“I
was depressed as a cerebral because I didn’t have sex” or “I didn’t have sex
because I was depressed”).
Finally, both borderlines and narcissists
experience separation insecurity (abandonment anxiety) owing to object
inconstancy. Both also merge and fuse with an intimate partner in a symbiotic
phase (the shared fantasy).
But the borderline distances herself from her
partner owing to an overwhelming engulfment anxiety while the narcissist
devalues and discards his partner owing to his need to separate from a maternal
figure.
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The diagnosis matters - not the gender! Intra-diagnostic variation higher
than inter-diagnostic variation. In other words: narcissistic women and
narcissistic men are behaviorally different, but psychodynamically the same.
Borderline women are very different to narcissistic women.
The diagnoses are gender neutral. Feminists
criticize psychology and psychiatry as instruments of social control, a part of
the patriarchy.
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my
Amazon Store.
LITERATURE
Gender differences in the structure of narcissism:
a multi-sample analysis of the narcissistic personality inventory - Brian T.
Tschanz, Carolyn C. Morf, Charles W. Turner - Sex Roles: A Journal of Research
- Issue: May, 1998
Eagly, A. H., Makhijani, M. G., &
Klonsky, B. G. (1992). Gender and the evaluation of leaders: A meta-analysis.
Psychological Bulletin, 111, 3-22
Butler, D., & Gels, F. L. (1990). Nonverbal
affect responses to male and female leaders: Implications for leadership
evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 48-59.
Carli, L. L., Lafleur, S. J., & Loeber, C. C.
(1995). Nonverbal behavior, gender, and influence. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 68, 1030-1041.
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NEW Comorbidities and Differential Diagnoses YouTube playlist on my channel.
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The erroneous foundations of contemporary psychology: self, personality, individual should be replaced with seamlessly fluid self-states. Man is a river, not a lake. I discuss my new concept of covert borderline and the bridge between overt and covert cluster B states via collapse and narcissistic mortification.
The concept of the unitary self is being replaced with the idea that an internal operating system determines which of several self-states emerges, given internally and externally (environmentally) generated information.
Self-efficacy is the overriding constraint which the system seeks to optimize when hailing forth these sub-personalities or pseudoidentities.
When all relevant or available self-states at the disposal of the system are equally self-efficacious, the system may opt to keep two or more of them in operation (I call it a “state of residuals” or "binary system"). This ineluctably leads to dissonance and internalized aggression.
Each state is narrative which provides a pseudo-identity. Pseudoidentities are ego functions (resources) and simulations (probes). In the absence of a unitary, stable core (identity disturbance and identity diffusion), the patient shape-shifts between self-states, replete with their own unique traits, affect, cognitions, and behaviors. In extremis, these self-states are utterly dissociated (most forms of DID - Dissociative Identity Disorder).
Psychopathy is a self-state, protective of ego resource in DID, BPD (secondary), NPD, HPD, PPD.
Decompensation owing to intolerable anticipated or actual stress or trauma (CPTSD/PTSD): grandiose and fantasy defenses crumble and lead to acting out or to suicide leads to the emergence of a psychopathic protective self-state (same in DID).
But protect from what?
NPD: injury, mortification (hypervigilance) leads to contact with trauma traces, repressed emotions - NPD becomes BPD (Grotstein: BPD failed narcissist).
PPD: threat (paranoid ideation, persecutory delusions)
BPD: abandonment, rejection
HPD: rejection, injury
When the protective self is overactive or is the only self-state/resource, we get hybrids types (comorbidity) like the malignant narcissist (Fromm, Herbert Rosenfeld, Kernberg).
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Some borderline women (secondary or subclinical psychopaths and emotionally
dysregulated), with or without a prior history of promiscuity (sociosexually
unrestricted) embark on a spree of sexual self-trashing after they have been
discarded abruptly and cruelly by a long-term intimate partner to whom they had
been scrupulously faithful and who was the centre and pivot of their world.
Such self-harming can last for years or decades
and deteriorate into full fledged sex work.
By letting men - individuals and in groups - do
with and to her body as they please, the brutally abandoned borderline is
attempting to accomplish three goals:
1. Secure male attention and acceptance,
compassion and affection, however fake and even if only for a few minutes;
2. Reaffirm her self-perception as bad, worthless,
unworthy, whorish, and incorrigible;
3. Punish her erstwhile partner by cheapening and
prostituting his “property”.
Sexual self-trashing is non-autonomous,
non-agentic, and self-objectifying. It involves copious and ubiquitous
dissociation as well as self-incapacitating and disinhibiting substance abuse
intended to help legitimize the self-harm (“I was drunk”) and resolve cognitive
and other dissonances.
Self-trashing borderlines, especially those who end
up in sex work, create a counterfactual narrative of choice and empowerment.
But in reality, such behaviors are lifelong addictions. Studies show that such
women are unable to commit in relationships and they break up and cheat much
more often than the average.
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We are caught in the crosshairs of several historical and technological trends that have converged to render us all alone - and very lonely. Convo with Benny Hendel.
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PASCAL's WAGER (Wikipedia)
A rational person should live as though God exists
and seek to believe in God. If God does not exist, such a person will have only
a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he
stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and
avoid infinite losses (an eternity in Hell).
VAKNIN's WAGER
If god exists, he either does not care if I
believe in him - or he does care.
If he doesn't care - why should I bother to
believe in him?
If he does care - he is definitely not god.
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Cerebral narcissists rarely have sex. By
definition, any narcissist who is sexually active is somatic.
In the binary system of somatic-cerebral which often characterizes the period
of switching, the narcissist cycles rapidly between abstinence and
hypersexuality, a part of his approach-avoidance cycle (binary systems are
dissonant and dysregulated and so resemble the borderline personality).
The cerebral's narcissistic supply is a sublimation of his sex drive (eros or
libido). Consequently, a collapse and the ensuing dysphoria - his incapacity to
sublimate - render the cerebral sexual again and facilitates the switching to a
somatic phase.
There are two variants of
somatic:
1. The shared fantasy, single partner one; and
2. The promiscuous subtype.
What determines which sub-species of somatic the cerebral turns into is his
sociosexuality.
But subtypes can also collapse (fail), leading the somatic to switch from one
subtype to another.
Finally, when all subtypes have failed, the newfangled somatic narcissist
switches back to cerebral.
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The inimitable Grannon @richard.grannon and the sui generis Vaknin banter, howl, and generally have a good time as they upset everything you think you know about yourselves - and about the pseudoscience of psychology.
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Brain neuroplasticity supports self-states models in personality psychology. Phenomena such as ambivalence, cognitive dissonance, and compartmentalization also tally with the self-states model and militate against any model involving a unitary self or core identity.
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The narcissist requires 4 Ss
from his intimate partners: sex, supply (sadistic
or narcissistic), services, and safety. Supply is a sine qua non and the others
are optional on condition that at least one of them is fulfilled at any given
time.
I have expounded on the first 3 Ss in many videos.
But the new element of safety requires some elaboration.
The narcissist’s intimate partner is a
substitutive maternal figure. She assuages his separation insecurity
(abandonment anxiety) by providing him with a constant presence, reliable
support, and unwavering honesty, at least as far as facts go.
He interprets these as “unconditional love” and it
makes him feel safe and in control of the situation.
Still, safety is not as constitutive as supply. It
is just one of three options. Sex and supply are fine and so are services and
supply or safety and supply.
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In a NEW BOOK BY A WOMAN, the world would be a
far better place if all men were to perish overnight (“The Men” by Sandra
Newman).
If a man were to write a similar novel about women
- he would have been arrested by the FBI for hate crimes.
Feminism is fast becoming a death cult and it is
ruining men and women alike.
Time to reverse and criminalize its sicker manifestations
such as misandry and “sex positivity”. Toxic femininity is illegitimate.
There is a male-led backlash around the world.
Alas, it is as reactionary and dark as some second wave and all third wave
feminism: banning abortions (USA), legalizing domestic violence (Russia), and
preventing girls from attending school (Afghanistan) come to mind.
Add to this patriarchal whiplash rabid misogyny in
the form of toxic masculinity online (MGTOW, incels, piller red and black,
“dating” coaches) and the inter-gender scene of growing belligerence becomes
menacing.
Men have been subjugating and abusing women for
millennia. Now, driven by a patriarchal hangover of guilt and shame, most males
refuse to set clear boundaries to female misconduct. But leaving the rules
fuzzy helps sustain a double standard - another form of egregious abuse.
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In Bucharest, Romania providing one on one, face to face counselling. Doing my best to help people gain insight into their lives and reframe them in self-efficacious way.
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Even non-narcissists idealize
potential intimate partners during the limerence and
infatuation phases.
As time passes, they form a more realistic,
integrated, and nuanced view of the other and this leads to one of three
outcomes:
1. A long-term committed dyad;
2. Friendzoning; or
3. A breakup with no contact or communication
thereafter.
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Whenever someone tells me about their intention to end their life, I respond:
Staying alive is the only cogent argument for
staying alive.
We stay alive simply because the alternative is
NOT being and existence is always richer in potential than non-existence.
Life is full of pain and frustration. But pain and
frustration are not CAUSES. They just ARE - the same way that we ARE.
I hope you reconsider your decision.
And to those who contemplate suicide while claiming to have faith in the afterlife (whatever that
may be), I add:
You claim to have faith, but you sound like you
have lost ALL faith.
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People confuse purpose with meaning.
However devoid of goals it may be, your life is
meaningful because the universe would not be the same without you.
When you choose to live rather than to die, you
co-create the world. Your death renders it instantly other.
Had you not been born, reality for every atom and
person and entity would have been radically different.
Purpose and action and accomplishments are the
icing on the cake of your existence.
But your existence alone suffices to steer
everyone and everything in another direction and towards an alternative destiny.
You are truly the co-author of the universe. What
could be more significant than this?
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Interview granted to Remus Cernea of Newsweek regarding the forthcoming tsunami of PTSD in Ukraine and the connection between a rising wave of trauma globally and the breakdown of language and of institutions. Recreating ravaged communities online and leveraging the resilient to help the afflicted are the only solutions. An international brigade of mental health practitioners is called for.
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Chronon Field Theory is a completely new language of physics with Time as its sole word. In this theory, Time is a force with its own field of potentials and the building blocks are events, not particles. Benny Hendel Talks to Sam Vaknin (who came up with the theory in 1982-3) about this new way of looking at reality.
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On his deathbed, Voltaire was asked by a priest to
renounce the Devil. “It is not thr time to make new enemies!”- he famously
responded.
The electric chair was invented by a dentist, Alfred Southwick from Buffalo.
But the modern implement was designed and tested by Harold Brown with the
active support of Thomas Edison. Carlos McDonald and A. P. Rockwell contributed
to the engineering of the chair. But the patent is registered to one, Edwin
Davis, who used it to kill more than 300 prisoners.
Due to the body's high resistance, an alternating
current of 2000-2400 volts is applied to electrocute the condemned. Only two
electrodes, moistened with a salt solution, are attached to the scalp and to
the calf of one leg. Death occurs two to five whole minutes after the jolt has
been administered - but no one knows why or how. The electrical current may
stop the heart before the victims are practically burnt or cooked to death.
There is no proof either way. Willie Francis, who survived his first execution,
described it thus:
"My mouth tasted like cold peanut butter. I
felt a burning in my head and my left leg, and I jumped against the straps."
The chair has its own circuit, separate from the
prison's - but it does feed off the public grid. Prison officials pull the
switches or push the buttons.
The axe murderer, William Kemmler, was the first
to be electrocuted in Auburn State Prison, New York, on August 6, 1890. By 1972
the chair was adopted by 25 states and the District of Columbia. More than 4300
inmates, including dozens of women, were "grilled" by the device in
the United States. Only a few of the 28 states that currently allow the death
penalty still use the chair, though - and only 3 of those as an exclusive
method of execution, as do the Philippines and China.
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Do we create reality in our minds - or are our minds equipped to observe only a sliver of
reality?
Additional videos in this Cycle are on my other
channel: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
Narcissism is about YOU - not about HIM/HER. With @richard.grannon
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Self-actualization is
the sole engine of meaning in life: making a difference in an otherwise
indifferent universe.
So, why do I rail against consumerism and sex
positivity which are ostensibly about helping us to realize our potential?
Because both actually limit our promise and
constrict our lives. Both these ideologies are death cults: they objectify
people and humanize objects.
Consumerism and sex positivity also suppress our
free will by presenting fake choices between rigidly dictated alternatives and
by penalizing nonconformity.
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A relationship with a narcissist is a
surrealistic experience, part fantasy dreamscape, part nightmare. What is real
and what is imagined? How are you being transformed against your will?
Luke Elijah's YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/LukeElijah/
Read "Hurt
People hurt People" By Luke Elijah.
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The typical mass shooter is white, male, and young
The shooting spree is a spectacle, showmanship,
movie intended to make sense of life and render them meaningful by imbuing it
with purpose and a mission
Grandiosity is compensatory and connected to a
general rise in narcissism and relative positioning (social media)
It is about immortality, not suicidality, about a
legacy
It is a form of exerting control, empowerment, and
anxiolysis
Shooters have no social skills: feel rejected,
bullied, persecuted, humiliated, and a failure – real or perceived/imagined
The acting out follows a collapse and transition
to a factor 2 psychopathic self-state
The role of echo chambers and confirmation bias
Aggression and the path to violence
Negative affectivity (hatred, envy)
Intimate grievances and strangers
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Promiscuity is not about how many sex partners
you have - but about why you are having sex in the first place. If you seek sex
for all the wrong reasons with all the wrong people - you are promiscuous.
Promiscuity is not gender specific. Men can also
be promiscuous.
Promiscuity has only negative outcomes in every
way: it fosters anxiety, depression, and substance abuse. On the social level,
it renders men more entitled and aggressive when they are turned down.
The promiscuous have dark personalities: most of
them are subclinical psychopaths.
Promiscuity is addictive: it is thrilling
(dopaminergic) and involves novelty-seeking and reckless behaviors.
Finally: promiscuous people engage in sex without
intimacy, meaning, and emotions.
This becomes an ingrained habit, an addiction
which is bound to resurface at some stage.
Relapses are common: promiscuous intimate partners
are far more likely to cheat and do it serially. They are a lot more liable to
be unable to commit to the relationship and to break up.
Promiscuity rewires the brain and stunts the
development of relationship skills. It conditions its practitioner to sever any
connection between sex and true, profound long-term intimacy and vulnerability.
Sex positivity is counterfactual:
it flies in the face of decades if cumulative research. It is a pernicious and
dangerous ideology that has ruined and is still devastating the lives of
countless young men and women.
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The new text revision (TR) of
the DSM 5 includes several important changes:
1. Covert narcissism as well as malignant
narcissism finally made it into the text;
2. The DSM 5-TR recognizes the parity between
women and men in terms of NPD diagnoses;
3. Pathological narcissism is reframed as
compensatory in nature, intended to offset deep feelings of inferiority, shame,
failure, and inadequacy;
4. NPD is associated with depression, reactive to
self-perception of failure.
But, unlike the ICD-11, the DSM 5-TR fails to
transition fully from the categorical to the dimensional model of personality
disorders and fails to embrace the emerging realization that all personality
disorders are mere facets of one underlying condition, a single clinical entity.
Watch my video on DSM vs. ICD.
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Trauma is contagious. You can develop PTSD just being exposed to a victim’s story
(according to the DSM 5-TR). This is known as vicarious or secondary trauma.
The risk is especially high if you had experienced a primary trauma. Reactions
fall into two camps: avoidance or hyperarousal.
How to cope? Community and happiness (or
wellbeing) are the answers. Seek help if the symptoms get worse.