Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
The borderline has difficulties to maintain stable introjects (inconstancy) and so when the object (e.g., the intimate
partner) is gone, s/he is out of sight out of mind.
The narcissist has difficulties to maintain object constancy (recognizing the separate existence of an external object)
and so when the object (e.g., the intimate partner) is gone, s/he is out of
sight out of mind.
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Never adapt your life to others. Let others catch up with your life.
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In Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), self-mutilation and
behavioral reckless self-harm fulfill four
functions:
1. To numb dysregulated emotions and the hurt of
real or perceived rejection or abandonment that threaten to overwhelm;
2. To allow the borderline to feel alive through
pain;
3. To punish, defeat, and self-destroy the
borderline as a self-loathed and self-hated bad object;
4. To punish other people for having failed to
cater to the borderline’s needs and succumb to her whims.
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People are like trees (Courtesy Jennifer Howard).
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A fine conversation is more mirrors than smoke - and never smoke and mirrors!
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An ontologically insecure person does not accept at a fundamental level the reality or
existence of things, themselves, and others. In contrast, the
ontologically secure person has a stable and
unquestioned sense of self and of his or her place in the world in relation to
other people and objects.
Ontological insecurity is important for
understanding identity because it is an essential foundation for a person to
achieve a stable sense of self-identity. In an existential sense, if a person
does not believe that he or she exists and that other people and objects are
real, that person does not have the necessary foundations to develop a stable
self-identity.
(From "Encyclopedia of Identity")
Further Readings
Giddens, A. (1990). The consequences of modernity.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). The self: Ontological security
and existential anxiety. In Modernity and self-identity: Self and society in
the late modern age (pp. 35–69). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Laing, R. D. (1965). Ontological insecurity. In
The divided self (pp. 39–61). Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books.
Spitzer, S. P. (1978). Ontological insecurity and
reflective processes. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 8(2), 203–217.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
People who grew up in dysfunctional families
tend to develop insecure attachment styles and flawed mate selection. They choose the wrong intimate partners in order to reenact
unfinished early childhood conflicts within a comfort zone.
The two types of “eligible”
mates are those who offer absence and threaten
presence and those who smother with their presence and threaten with their
absence.
The first kind are transactional, aloof, detached,
cold, and emotionally absent. They make their presence known only when they
want to accomplish a purpose (they are goal oriented).
The second variety of partner are exactly the
opposite: their constant nagging, clinging, romantic jealousy, and dependency
border on emotional blackmail. When in the throes of engulfment anxiety or when
they anticipate or perceive rejection and abandonment - they tend to withdraw
and avoid as both a self-preservation strategy and punitively.
Most frequently, one type of partner is selected
lifelong, but sometimes there is type inconstancy.
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In the study of identity, reflexivity refers to the human capability of turning the attention of
consciousness back upon itself—being aware of the
fact that we are aware, thinking about thinking,
or more mundanely, perhaps, providing accounts of our selves.
Giddens’s model of selfhood consists of three
components: the unconscious, practical consciousness, and self-reflexivity. The
realm of the unconscious is of primary importance for the development of
self—identity as it is here where relationships of basic trust are initiated.
The experience of trust at an unconscious level in
infancy provides the individual with a secure orientation toward the world that
protects her or him from engulfment when threats to identity inevitably come.
It is only in posttraditional societies that the
self becomes a genuinely reflexive project. Traditions once provided people
with fairly rigid and temporally constant points through which to navigate a
sense of self and thus facilitated self-reflexivity within fairly narrow
existential parameters; narrow because much of what might be questioned is
effectively answered by the givens of tradition.
(Encyclopedia of Identity)
Further Readings
Adams, M. (2007). Self and social change. London:
Sage.
Adkins, L. (2003). Reflexivity: Freedom or habit of
gender? Theory, Culture & Society, 20(6), 21–42.
Alexander, J. (1996). Critical reflections on
“reflexive modernization.” Theory, Culture & Society, 13(4),
133–138.
Beck, U., Giddens, A., & Lash, S. (1994).
Reflexive modernization. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1991). Modernity and self-identity.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Giddens, A. (1992). The transformation of intimacy.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Plumridge, L., & Thomson, R. (2003).
Longitudinal qualitative studies and the reflexive self. International
Journal of Social Research Methodology, 6(3), 213–222.
Threadgold, S., & Nilan, P. (2009).
Reflexivity of contemporary youth, risk and cultural capital. Current
Sociology, 57(1), 47–68.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In an attempt to gain fame and celebrity and secure funding, neuroscientists are making thousands of ill-founded claims based on very flimsy and often nonreplicable research. Like psychology, the field is fast becoming a pseudoscience.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
New
effective treatments for BPD as the
disorder is being redefined. Correction: 1:04:31 "This difference was NOT
statistically significant".
LITERATURE
1. The hidden borderline patient: patients with
borderline personality disorder who do not engage in recurrent suicidal or
self-injurious behavior
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29
July 2022
Mark Zimmerman and Lena Becker
Psychological Medicine , First View , pp. 1 - 8
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S003329172200...
2. Effectiveness of Predominantly Group Schema
Therapy and Combined Individual and Group Schema Therapy for Borderline
Personality Disorder: A Randomized Clinical Trial
Arnoud Arntz, PhD; Gitta A. Jacob, PhD;
Christopher W. Lee, PhD; et alOdette Manon Brand-de Wilde, PhD; Eva Fassbinder,
MD; R. Patrick Harper, MSc; Anna Lavender, DClinPsy; George Lockwood, PhD;
Ioannis A. Malogiannis, DrMed; Florian A. Ruths, DrMed; Ulrich Schweiger,
DrMed; Ida A. Shaw, MA; Gerhard Zarbock, PhD; Joan M. Farrell, PhD
JAMA Psychiatry. 2022;79(4):287-299.
doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.0010
3. Effect of 3 Forms of Early Intervention for
Young People With Borderline Personality Disorder: The MOBY Randomized Clinical
Trial
Andrew M. Chanen, MBBS(Hons), PhD; Jennifer K.
Betts, DPsych(Clin); Henry Jackson, PhD; et alSue M. Cotton,
MAppSc(Statistics), PhD; John Gleeson, PhD4; Christopher G. Davey, MBBS(Hons),
PhD; Katherine Thompson, PhD; Sharnel Perera, PhD; Victoria Rayner, BBSci(Hons);
Holly Andrewes, PhD; Louise McCutcheon, DPsych(Clin)
JAMA Psychiatry. 2022;79(2):109-119.
doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2021.3637
4. Borderline Personality Disorder: 6 Studies of
Psychosocial Interventions
Sy Atezaz Saeed, MD, MS; Angela C. Kallis, MD
Curr Psychiatr. 2022;21(2):18-26.
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Reading "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist"
p.132 mind mine, p. 154 parsimony Occam’s, p. 155 multiple solutions to same puzzle (=environment)
A. Kant: we cannot know the real world
CA. Kant said that we cannot know the world as it is, but never denied its reality.
Ornery agnostic: god is not knowable or provable. Not atheist (faith that there is no god).
Reason works, hence my trust in reason when it comes to reality.
Trust and faith should not be confused: the former is evidence-based, the latter is axiomatic.
So, I trust religion because it seems to work in society and psychology, it is a psychosocial regulator.
I reject it because of my values: I prefer chaotic and dangerous reality to structured and safe delusional disorder.
Delusions and fantasies resemble rationality but are bounded by something other than rationality (e.g. god), they are not self-referential, iterative, or recursive like rationality.
A. Big bang: why is there something rather than nothing? Beginnings (of the Universe, of life) present a challenge to science: ex nihilo creation.
A. Anthropic argument
CA. Dying homeless does not imply a designed weather
A. Life never arose spontaneously, it contains a message in the DNA (specified complexity and irreducible complexity – both debunked)
CA. Complexity and evolution are spontaneous, over time negentropy (localized increase in order); current, complexity endpoint.
Not all info is a message.
Most info is mindless, natural, does not imply intelligence.
All messages are accessible to intelligence, but not all hail from intelligence (Fibonacci). Pareidolia and apophenia.
Intelligence is inferior to non-intelligence, not superior (grandiose Bible). The distinction itself may be spurious, anthropocentric, and reflects human limitations.
Design is not the same as intelligence.
Info emerges from irregularity, not from order (=not from design).
A. Every becoming has a cause
CA. Antecedents are not causes (correlation vs. causation).
What caused god to create everything and us? It assumes an internal process. This is anthropomorphism: god cannot want or love unless he is imperfect.
A. Naturalism and spirituality are mutually exclusive
CA. Spirituality is how we experience and structure material processes and objects.
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Poetry of Healing and Abuse http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/contents.html
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There are 3 types of people:
Those who wish to learn HOW things work (for
example: engineers);
Those who want to find out WHY things work the way
they do (e.g. scientists and theologians);
And those who want to find out WHAT works best
(like medical doctors, politicians, military personnel, or workers in
information technology).
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Narcissist is bothered by
your presence – borderline by your absence
Both try to dissolve you and eliminate your
separateness, agency, personal autonomy, and independence
Either by rendering you inanimate and penalizing
you for any deviation and divergence
Or by merging and fusing with you while outsourcing
to you critical psychological needs and functions.
Both need to devalue and discard you:
The narcissist in order to reenact
separation-individuation from a mother figure
The borderline in order to ameliorate engulfment
anxiety.
Both of them become avoidant and schizoid at some
stage.
The narcissist either because of deficient or
negative supply (narcissistic injury or mortification) or to process a
corrupted introject
The borderline in order to lick her wounds and
develop abandonment anxiety sufficient to trigger another round of
approach-avoidance repetition compulsion.
Should not be confused with Avoidant Personality
Disorder which is an anxiety reaction to perceived or anticipated rejection –
rather than a psychopathic reaction (like the Borderline’s).
AvPD is connected to people pleasing,
indecisiveness, schizoid states, and to risk and conflict aversion, hesitancy,
and extreme self-doubt.
WATCH Hypervigilance and
Intuition as Forms of Anxiety.
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Covert narcissist is a narcissist who develops Avoidant Personality
Disorder in order to cope with a permanent state of
collapse.
Major difference between Borderline and Avoidant:
ACTING OUT (not the same as ACTING IN or ENACTMENT).
Bowlby’s monotropy.
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Tele2 TV reporting about
the Cold Therapy seminar in Drobeta Turnu
Severin. Reporter @andreealasculescu
https://m.facebook.com/Tele2drobeta2021/videos/667440637722165/?refsrc=deprecated&_rdr
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Cats are psychopaths, a new study finds. But, if we were to apply some of the same questions to our pet dogs or even ourselves, by the study's standards, we may all be psychopaths!
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Available for
personal, face to face counselling in Budapest on October 12-13 and 19-22.
Write to: samvaknin@gmail.com if you would like to
schedule an appointment.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Interview on
the Heartbreak
to Happiness Podcast with Sara Davison is live.
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/interview-with-a-narcissist-what-really-goes-on-in/id1542659968?i=1000581683232
Excerpt https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tC_XXX94jac
Full interview https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HyuLhMKWE0o
Instagram & Facebook - @saradavisondivorcecoach
Twitter SDDivorceCoach
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-davison-742b453/
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My first TV interview, age 19.
Translated
to English! My first interview on national TV, age almost
20, with the late lamented Meni Pe'er. Arrogant, humorless, but really young,
so can be excused. At least this video proves that I haven't been lying about
my IQ and academic background (attending university from age 9).
Courtesy my brother Shimon Vaknin.
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Nature and nurture are just two determinants of who we
become. Chance (randomness) and intergenerational
trauma are the other two ingredients.
LITERATURE
Sutin AR, Stephan Y, Luchetti M, Aschwanden
D, Lee JH, Sesker AA, et al. (2022) Differential personality change earlier and
later in the coronavirus pandemic in a longitudinal sample of adults in the
United States. PLoS ONE 17(9): e0274542. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0274542
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I am super excited to be back with Sam Vaknin
and Richard Grannon for this one day live event where we will be discussing….
What is going on in the mind of a Narcissist?
How do you get into a relationship with a
Narcissist?
Why do you stay?
How do you divorce a Narcissist?
How to coparent with a Narcissist
How to take your power back after your toxic
relationship
How to rebuild your life and feel happy again
And much more…
Join us in person or virtually on 4th February
2023 tickets are limited and going fast!
Link to buy tickets in bio & below
https://www.saradavison.com/coaching/one-day-live-with-special-guests/
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Sexual identity is not the same as sexual orientation. The former comprises self-perception, the latter is about
others and involves sexual behavior.
Sexual identity forms in 5
stages:
1. Introjection of primary objects and role
models, including parents, siblings, and peers. The child at this stage is
genderless and pansexual and consequently autoerotic.
Initially, he is merged and fused with the parent
(symbiosis). When he begins to separate from the mother, his narcissistic
libido remains invested in her (Oedipal complex);
2. Emulation of a parent (same sex or other sex).
This is affected by the parents’s behaviors (e.g., abuse or sex aversion or sex
positivity);
3. Exploration of potential sex partners of all
sexes. This is coupled with identity diffusion;
4. Sublimation (a part of the socialization
process): excluding certain sex partners as forbidden or inappropriate,
acquisition of sexual skills and scripts;
5. Orientation: settling on a pattern of mate
selection and attendant sexual behaviors.
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The Oedipus and Electra
complexes have two etiologies. Freud and Jung have
identified only one of them: competition with the same sex parent for the love
and attention of the other-sexed one.
But there is an even more compelling source.
Until age 18-24 months, the infant is both genderless and pansexual and consequently autoerotic. His libido is turned towards
itself as a love object.
But the infant is merged and fused with the mother
throughout this period (symbiosis). They are one and the same. His narcissistic
libido cathexes her as well!
When he begins to separate from the mother, his
narcissistic libido still remains invested in her residually - and this is the
Oedipal complex.
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The borderline
patient requires an intimate partner who would
partake in her approach-avoidance dance. Only the narcissist fits the bill.
When the borderline is in the throes of her abandonment anxiety (separation
insecurity), the narcissist regulates her emotions and
stabilizes her labile moods with his lovebombing and idealization.
When the borderline experiences engulfment
(enmeshment) anxiety, he obliges by devaluing and discarding her, pushing her
away.
The twin cycles are compatible and feed on and off
each other.
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I talk to Andras Lacfi of Bronson
Men about narcissistic
abuse as distinct from all other types of abuse
owing to its underlying psychological dynamics and why victim identity leads to
aggression.
I talk to Andras Lacfi of Bronson Men about toxic romanticism and how it ruined intimacy and relationships.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Yesterday, discussed with @csilla.temesvari of Hungary’s RTL TV the war in Ukraine, Putin, Zelensky, and the internal situation in
Russia.
Watch additional videos and interviews on the war
here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
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The concept of "nature" is a romantic invention. It was spun by the likes of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century as a confabulated utopian contrast to
the dystopia of urbanization and Darwinian, ruthless materialism. The traces of
this dewy-eyed conception of the "savage", his alleged harmony and
resonance with nature, and his unmolested, unadulterated surroundings can be
found in the more malignant forms of fundamentalist environmentalism and in
pop-culture (the most recent example of which is the propaganda-laden cinematic
extravaganza, “Avatar”).
At the other extreme are religious literalists who
regard Man as the crown of creation with complete dominion over nature and the
right to exploit its resources unreservedly. Similar, veiled, sentiments can be
found among scientists. The Anthropic Principle, for instance, promoted by many
outstanding physicists, claims that the nature of the Universe is preordained
to accommodate sentient beings - namely, us humans.
Industrialists, politicians and economists have
only recently begun paying lip service to sustainable development and to the
environmental costs of their policies. Thus, in a way, they bridge the abyss -
at least verbally - between these two diametrically opposed forms of
fundamentalism. Similarly, the denizens of the West continue to indulge in
rampant consumption, but now it is suffused with environmental guilt rather
than driven by unadulterated hedonism.
Still, essential dissimilarities between the
schools notwithstanding, the dualism of Man vs. Nature is universally
acknowledged.
The Ecology of Environmentalism, or the False
Dichotomy
https://samvak.tripod.com/nature.html
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When the Borderline’s intimate partner is
enmeshed and immersed in her shared fantasy as the external regulator of her
dysregulated emotions and labile moods, he is likely to internalize her inner
turmoil, thereby ending up amplifying it.
Once he gets disenchanted with her, she is likely
to mirror image his newly gained unperturbed equilibrium by reacting with
dysregulation to his perceived indifference and rejection.
Finally, the dyad settles into a transactional regulatory valley when the Borderline re-idealizes her partner within a new
halcyon fantasy or withdraws into a nostalgic state coupled with desperate
attempts to hoover erstwhile partners or descends into a promiscuous whirl.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Again staying at the inimitable Dolder Grand. Available for personal, face to face counselling in Zurich
on October 27-30.
Write to: samvaknin@gmail.com if you would like to
schedule an appointment.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Certificate of Recognition for my Keynote Speech in GAB 2022 (3rd Global Conference on Addiction Medicine, Behavioral Health and Psychiatry), Orlando, October 2022.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Victimhood
as grievance-based identity politics often
results in entitlement, frustration, and violence.
Taken from: https://twitter.com/ShellenbergerMD/
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Culture is the continuation of evolution by other means and it involves epigenetics. Are we headed towards a transhuman future?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Life transforming insight requires the involvement of cognitions, emotions,
motivations, and actions. The more intelligent the person is, the smoother and
more integrated the person is.
The problem with narcissists is that they are cathected (emotionally invested) in their
disorder and are motivated to perpetuate it. This cathexis precludes any other
dynamic.
Narcissists are also denied access to positive
emotions and this impairs their reality testing and ability to decode
environmental cues.
Consequently, disabled yet delusional they are,
narcissists are loth to exit their comfort zone. They are hurt-averse and
control freaks. Their grandiosity and perfectionism (performance anxiety and
fear of failure) obstruct any benefits which may be conferred by insight even
when self-awareness and introspection are intact.
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The narcissist uses on you entraining, a kind
of trance. Hypnosis may be a form of extreme empathy, a suggestible state of
mind or a people-pleasing experience.
LITERATURE
Best evidence yet that hypnotised people aren't
faking it
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2125645-best-evidence-yet-that-hypnotised-people-arent-faking-it/
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Victimhood
pays: identity politics coupled with aggressive
entitlement are hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths to further their
pernicious and nefarious goals.
Interview with Guilhem Dedoyard of https://atlantico.fr
Atlantico.fr interview about the era of victimhood and its political and social ramifications.
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“But I only had 30 sex partners! Most of them
were one night stands, so I am not worn out, spent or used!”
Would you buy a car that changed 30 owners, even
if the mileage is low?
Men and women have the same sex drive and should enjoy the same liberties.
The problem is that, for many disparate reasons,
an early promiscuous lifestyle is incompatible with later life romance,
intimacy, relationships, and family. It is an either/or proposition. Sexuality
and intimacy are like muscles: use them or lose them.
Additionally, some young women (and fewer young
men) go through phases of validation for their sexuality and then seeking
committed relationships. These raise their “body counts” to sex worker levels
and render them “not relationship material”. The sexual double standard is
still very much in force.
PS
While the data cited in the reel are wrong - the
general thrust of the argument is scientifically accurate.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Is there a common psychopathology (p) factor that accounts for all mental illnesses? Join the hottest controversy in psychology and psychiatry!
LITERATURE
The seed of suffering
The p-factor is the dark matter of psychiatry: an invisible, unifying force that might lie behind a multitude of mental disorders
Alex Riley
https://aeon.co/essays/what-the-p-factor-says-about-the-root-of-all-mental-illness
Lahey BB, Applegate B, Hakes JK, Zald DH, Hariri AR, Rathouz PJ. Is there a general factor of prevalent psychopathology during adulthood? J Abnorm Psychol. 2012 Nov;121(4):971-7. doi: 10.1037/a0028355. Epub 2012 Jul 30. PMID: 22845652; PMCID: PMC4134439.
Achenbach TM. The classification of children's psychiatric symptoms: a factor-analytic study. Psychol Monogr. 1966;80(7):1-37. doi: 10.1037/h0093906. PMID: 5968338.
Caspi A, Houts RM, Belsky DW, Goldman-Mellor SJ, Harrington H, Israel S, Meier MH, Ramrakha S, Shalev I, Poulton R, Moffitt TE. The p Factor: One General Psychopathology Factor in the Structure of Psychiatric Disorders? Clin Psychol Sci. 2014 Mar;2(2):119-137. doi: 10.1177/2167702613497473. PMID: 25360393; PMCID: PMC4209412.
van Bork, R., Epskamp, S., Rhemtulla, M., Borsboom, D., & van der Maas, H. L. J. (2017). What is the p-factor of psychopathology? Some risks of general factor modeling. Theory & Psychology, 27(6), 759–773. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959354317737185
Caspi A, Houts RM, Ambler A, et al. Longitudinal Assessment of Mental Health Disorders and Comorbidities Across 4 Decades Among Participants in the Dunedin Birth Cohort Study. JAMA Netw Open. 2020;3(4):e203221. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.3221
Plana-Ripoll O, Pedersen CB, Holtz Y, et al. Exploring Comorbidity Within Mental Disorders Among a Danish National Population. JAMA Psychiatry. 2019;76(3):259–270. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.3658
Kessler RC, Amminger GP, Aguilar-Gaxiola S, Alonso J, Lee S, Ustün TB. Age of onset of mental disorders: a review of recent literature. Curr Opin Psychiatry. 2007 Jul;20(4):359-64. doi: 10.1097/YCO.0b013e32816ebc8c. PMID: 17551351; PMCID: PMC1925038.
Elliott ML, Romer A, Knodt AR, Hariri AR. A Connectome-wide Functional Signature of Transdiagnostic Risk for Mental Illness. Biol Psychiatry. 2018 Sep 15;84(6):452-459. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2018.03.012. Epub 2018 Apr 10. PMID: 29779670; PMCID: PMC6119080.
Lichtenstein P, Yip BH, Björk C, Pawitan Y, Cannon TD, Sullivan PF, Hultman CM. Common genetic determinants of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in Swedish families: a population-based study. Lancet. 2009 Jan 17;373(9659):234-9. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)60072-6. PMID: 19150704; PMCID: PMC3879718.
Pettersson E, Larsson H, Lichtenstein P. Common psychiatric disorders share the same genetic origin: a multivariate sibling study of the Swedish population. Mol Psychiatry. 2016 May;21(5):717-21. doi: 10.1038/mp.2015.116. Epub 2015 Aug 25. PMID: 26303662.
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Mate
selection and attachment style are two
separate things.
For relationships to work, attachment styles need
to match.
Impaired mate selection (choosing the wrong partners
and then going on to have horrible relationships) is the core problem. It is
typically the outcome of bad parental programming.
In our most modern approach to attachment, we
divide all attachment styles to secure and insecure (avoidant).
Even someone with an anxious-ambivalent attachment
style would be avoiding relationships and intimacy or destroying them because
of anxieties and doubts.
My contribution is to suggest the additions of a
flat attachment style.
Everyone has an attachment style. But some people
have "flat attachment": they are incapable of any kind of bonding or
relatedness at all.
Flat attachers regard other people as utterly
interchangeable, replaceable, and dispensable objects or functions.
When a relationship is over, people go through a
period of "latency": mourning the defunct bond and processing the
grief and withdrawal symptoms associated with a breakup.
Not so the flat attacher: he or she transition
instantaneously, smoothly, abruptly, and seamlessly from one (in)significant
other to the next "target" and fully substitutes a newly found beau,
lover, mate, or "intimate" partner for the discarded one whose
usefulness has expired for whatever reason.
Many narcissists and almost all psychopaths are
flat attachers. Borderlines, on the other hand, tend to sexualize attachment
(sex is proof of attachment and assuages abandonment anxiety).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Intimacy is a state
of affairs, not a state of mind.
It has nothing to do with emotions.
This is why people can and do have sex (the
ultimate intimacy) with total strangers.
Intimacy means sleeping together, talking, eating,
making love. All these do not require any affect.
There is intimacy in prison, with a prostitute, in
a hospital between patient and doctor, in psychotherapy. All these are
emotionless states.
Intimacy in the clinical sense is a state of
affairs involving proximity, vulnerability, and joint activities (life).
No strong emotions here.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. I will treat myself with dignity and demand respect from others. I will not allow anyone to
disrespect me.
2. I will set clear boundaries and make known to
others what I regard as permissible and acceptable behavior and what is out of
bounds.
3. I will not tolerate abuse and aggression in any form or guise. I will seek to
terminate such misconduct instantly and unequivocally.
4. I will be assertive and unambiguous about my
needs, wishes, and expectations from others. I will not be arrogant - but I
will be confident. I will not be selfish and narcissistic - but I will love and
care for myself.
5. I will get to know myself better.
6. I will treat others as I want them to treat me.
I will try to lead by way of self-example.
7. If I am habitually disrespected, abused, or if
my boundaries are ignored and breached I will terminate the relationship with
the abuser forthwith. Zero tolerance and no second chance will be my maxims of
self-preservation.
(From the book "Malignant Self-love:
Narcissism Revisited" by Sam Vaknin).
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Sex is being redefined for the rest of us by sociosexually
unrestricted people (the majority of whom are subclinical psychopaths).
Oral sex - especially blowjobs - as well as all
forms of kissing (including French kissing) are now considered very common
nonsexual acts.
There is a debate whether they are utterly
meaningless or denote intimacy, but few would consider them sex acts let alone
on par with penetrative sex.
Holding hands and kissing are widely believed to
be way more intimate than oral sex and penetration.
This decoupling of sex from intimacy leads to new
sexual scripts and practices among the young: sex is only for and with
strangers.
Scholars noted statements such as: “I wanted it to
remain impersonal, so I gave him a blowjob” or “I don’t have sex with my
partner because we are intimate and I respect him.”
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Debunking three myths about women:
The female sex drive is more potent and
multifaceted than the male’s. Both sexes experience declines in sexual desire
with age
Women are far less content in relationships and as
parents than men. Childless but coupled women are the happiest, followed by
singles, and then by mothers in relationships. Single mothers are the least
happy (and the poorest).
Women initiate breakups and divorces 3 times as
often as men and the best predictor of weak commitment and relationship
dissatisfaction is the number of past sexual partners (“body count”, a
correlate of sociosexuality and subclinical psychopathy).
Women cheat half as much as men and when they do,
they typically seek a long-term affair. But they fantasize about specific
extradyadic potential partners a lot more than men do (hence romance lit).
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In the transition from agriculture to industry,
many functions - like education and healthcare - were outsourced from the
family to specialists.
But as work ethic is in a freefall, educational
standards and attainment on a precipitous decline, and many people opting out
of labor altogether - many are forced to fend for themselves and reacquire
skills as handymen, craftsmen, educators, and even medical doctors.
With the democratization of information and the
emergence of enabling and empowering technologies, our age is fast becoming a
reprise of the 19th century: the era of the gifted amateur.
But this time, self-sufficiency is driven by atomization and profound distrust, the rending
of the social fabric itself.