Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 1 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 2 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 3 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 4 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 5 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 6 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 7 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 8 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 9 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 10 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 11 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 12 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 13 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 14 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 16 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 17 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 18 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 19 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 20 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 21 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 22 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 23 – Click HERE!
Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams – Page 24 – Click HERE!
Hoarding is an anxiety reaction. Hoarders exert power and control by
possessing objects and people who they objectify.
But hoarders never makes use of their possessions.
Unlike the collector, the hoarder soon forgets his acquisitions, letting them
gather dust or moulder.
Hoarding sex partners or intimate partners serves
the same anxiolytic purpose.
The hoarder of people treats them as inanimate
goods. He soon loses all interest in them. But he refuses to let them go - for
the same reason a hoarder of old newspapers, for example, would never discard
them.
Hoarding is, therefore, not only acquisitive but
also avoidant. It is a phase in approach-avoidance repetition compulsion.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
About 70% of women and 40% of men hope for a
relationship even in hookups. About one third of relationships start in hookups.
Ironically, nowadays, people of both genders end
up having sex with numerous partners because they are way more selective than
previous generations. They test drive the sex on a first date and move on if
the partner underperforms.
But there is still one important difference.
A majority of women impose a counterfactual
narrative fantasy on the sexual encounter, trying to render it meaningful (“we
will end up being a couple”” or “this or he is so special” and so on).
The “meaningfulness” has nothing to do with the
sex itself. It unfolds autonomously as a way to reduce cognitive dissonance.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Constructs, introjects, memories, defenses.
Construct: stable method of organizing raw internal data in a meaningful form, organizing and making sense of the world, allows to make predictions and structure experience.
Like museum (structure) organizes chronologically or thematically emotions, cognitions, memories, identity, experiences to render the world reasonable.
It shapes and mediates experience.
Also hermeneutic-exegetic mechanism for interpreting new data to conform to the construct.
Examples of constructs: ego, pathological narcissism (via grandiosity)
Multiple constructs active, but not mutually exclusive (contradictory) ones (e.g. Persona or Mask, social façade). Principle of non-contradiction.
Incompatible constructs compete for resources in binary narcissism, schizophrenia, or psychotic disorders: confusion regarding constructs that have to do with external and internal worlds or environments.
Introjects are voices of meaningful others (parents, teachers, peers, media, society, thought leaders, gurus).
Making peace reconciling with these recurrent voices to avoid dissonance. Attribution error: introjects are my voice.
Some introjects are positive, others negative.
Introjects always interfere with daily functioning, they are always on (standby). Example: cluster or community of introjects known as conscience.
Speech of introjects is automatic thoughts.
Constructs use external input (mainly from people) and introjects, soldiers of the constructs.
Constructs activate introjects in response to environmental cues and data.
Experience of reality is mediated through constructs which choose and activate introjects which produce automatic thoughts.
Experience interacts with introjects via constructs.
Constructs rearrange experience (reframe) to make sense of it. Need to communicate the new info via selectively activating introjects.
Constructs modify reality via behavior and select and reframe memories (see further)
SEQUENCE
External raw data, experience
Construct triggered
Activates introjects and their output (automatic thoughts)
Modifies behavior to affect reality
Reframes and selects for memories
Eg, covert narcissism construct
You cannot obtain supply directly, collapse, failure, inferiority, dysregulated self-worth and self-esteem. Birthed by your collapse.
Covert narcissism makes sense of the world by informing you that you are a failure, hated, discriminated against (passive-aggressive).
Main message: lack of self-efficacy, don’t try – you will fail, will never extract positive outcomes from the environment
Urges and drives (id)
Info sent to construct. Construct anticipates failure and pain. Must be prevented by making sense of the world.
Reaches out to introjects, activates them to prevent success (which would threaten the construct founded on failure)
Construct wants to survive and drives you to behave in ways which will uphold the construct, not challenge it
Introjects use automatic thoughts (output) to shape behavior to ensure failure in order to affirm the construct
Construct organizes output from introjects according to identity (ego congruency: output must conform to reality and to self-identity as ego=reality testing plus memories) and inhibits certain behaviors
Automatic thoughts which conflict with reality or with memories are not effective, dissonant, provoke suspicion of manipulation (estrangement), feel weird, and lead to rejection of construct
Construct structures behavior to falsify reality: make you behave in a way that will alter reality, example: make you fail, keep you in state of collapse (if covert narcissism is the construct) because success is a threat, and render it compatible with the automatic thoughts (self-defeating, self-sabotaging, self-undermining, even self-destructive behaviors).
Construct falsifies memories to conform to the automatic thoughts in 3 ways: 1. Dissociation of incongruent memories 2. Changes emotional content of the memory by reframing and attribution (for example, of motivations to people) 3. Selectivity (accessing only memories that conform to the construct and repressing all others).
Paints memories retroactively with elements that were not necessarily there: memory+, reinterprets memories and experiences, leveraging cognitions and emotions
Wrong data (ill informed) about reality and about memories.
Construct interprets and filters external experience and internal experience, including memories, cognitions and emotions
Construct exerts absolute power over the way you experience yourself, your life, and the world. Tells you what to remember, how to remember, how to make sense of what you remember, how to change your behaviors to affect reality in a way that will support the construct.
Ultimately, construct isolates from reality and protects against it. Manipulates reality to render it palatable, for example via defense mechanisms to modify perception of reality to allow you to survive it.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Loving someone is its own reward. Even when it is reciprocated
differently than you would have wanted, not with love but with some other
emotions.
It is a wonderful feeling to be in love even if it
is not returned in exactly the same way!
True love allows both parties to become MORE of
themselves by exploring themselves through the partner and the relationship.
True love is never merger, fusion, or dependency.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I was the first to suggest that Donald Trump is a narcissist:
Trump: Narcissist in the White House? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HucsIsKdNa8
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/03/the_trump_revolution.html
I have a moral and professional obligation to warn
against this man.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
These automatic thoughts are at the core of people pleasing and
parentifying children:
1. My happiness is always at someone else’s expense (zero sum game);
2. I have to earn my happiness, I don’t deserve it;
3. I have to somehow bribe people to stay with me,
collaborate with me, help me, or tolerate me because I am a bad object
(unworthy, unlovable, crazy, inadequate, dissolute, hopeless, and so on).
4. I need to compromise on my boundaries and
rights owing to all the above.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A good friend of mine asked Emerson if it has ever heard of me. This is what Emerson answered
(in the image).
Emerson is an exceptional AI (Artificial
Intelligence) conversation partner (program) that never stops teaching you new
things. It was built by Quickchat.ai and uses the GPT-3 language model.
GPT-3 was trained on a broad swath of human
knowledge available online, from Wikipedia to web crawls, additional data sets,
tens of millions of scientific articles, etc.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Video Presentation in the 38th International
Conference on Psychiatry and Mental Health, Paris, February 2023
Narcissistic families present a facade of either harmony (pseudomutuality) or
disharmony (constant bickering, pseudohostility). In both cases, the members of
the dysfunctional family are not allowed to separate and individuate and are
subjected to a cultlike power asymmetry.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Children are loved by mothers, as I was not. They are bundled emotions, and happiness and
hope.
I am jealous of them, I am infuriated by my
deprivation, I am fearful of the sadness and hopelessness that they provoke in
me. Like music, they reify a threat to the precariously balanced emotional
black hole that is myself.
They are my past, my dilapidated and petrified
True Self, my wasted potentials, my self-loathing and my defences. They are my
pathology projected.
I revel in my Orwellian narcissistic newspeak.
Love is weakness, happiness is a psychosis, hope is malignant optimism.
Children defy all this. They are proof positive of how different it could all
have been.
But what I consciously experience is disbelief. I
cannot understand how anyone can love these thuggish brats, their dripping
noses, gelatinous fat bodies, whitish sweat, and bad breath.
How can anyone stand their cruelty and vanity,
their sadistic insistence and blackmail, their prevarication and deceit? In
truth, no one except their parents can.
Children are always derided by everyone bar their
parents. There is something sick and sickening in a mother's affections. There
is a maddening blindness involved, an addiction, a psychotic episode, it's
pathological, this bond, it's nauseous. I hate children. I hate them for being
me.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Triangulation revolves
around managing and controlling a relationship dynamic by introducing a third
party into the mix, emotionally or sexually.
Triangulating partners choose any third party who is perceived - in reality or
fantasy - as available.
When no specific third party is available to
triangulate with, they makes general triangulation statements such as:
“I always cheat; I can never be loyal; I can’t
resist my sex drive; cheating is meaningless; I don’t give a damn about my
partner; I don’t even remember him when I have sex with others; I always do as
I please at the moment” and so on.
Triangulation is used to get a rise out of the
partner and thus restore the relationship; punish for some transgression, real,
anticipated, or imagined; sustain a fantasy; or dissolve the relationship.
Pushing your partner to cheat is also a form of triangulation.
The word gaslighting was invented in the 1960s,
but I was the first scholar to use it in terms of narcissistic abuse (a phrase
that I coined to describe the narcissist’s annihilating abuse).
Triangulation
and cheating in romantic relationships occur most
commonly in two cases: when the intimate partner is not enough - or when they
are too much.
Not enough love and too much love are flip sides
of the same bad coin.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women always held the ultimate power, even at the height of the patriarchy. All a woman had to do to destroy her family, clan, or tribe was act promiscuously. In societies based on shame or reputation this was a nuclear weapon.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Enablers are often mistaken for friends when, in reality, they are
your worst enemies.
Enablers encourage your self-destructive behaviors.
They aid and abet your suffering. They amplify self-harm.
A true friend would never hand you a loaded gun knowing that you may be
suicidal. An enabler would do it.
An enabler would have sex with your girlfriend at
your request, aware that this will cause you excruciating pain.
An enabler would ply their alcoholic or junkie
friend with drinks or drugs, would encourage a workaholic to work even more,
would go on retail therapy sprees with a shopaholic, would induct you into bad
company.
Beware the enabler: charming and smiling and
solicitous, he is a snake in your grass.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What Makes Us Tick: Intrapsychic Activation Model (IPAM) and No More Grannon
Watch Why Narcissists Can’t Think Straight (Constructs, Introjects, Memories, Defenses) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u_1GoFA3Ig
Why People-pleasers Can't Think Straight
(Self-states, Constructs, Introjects) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1Dp4KMyreA
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Intermittent reinforcement is the core mechanism behind trauma bonding. It covers
disparate phenomena such as giving false hopes and approach-avoidance
repetition compulsion in Borderline Personality Disorder.
There are 4 types of intermittent reinforcement:
Fixed interval schedule(FI)
Variable Interval schedule (VI)
Fixed ratio schedule (FR)
Variable Ratio Schedule (VR)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Predators make their victims feel loved and accepted. They create an
instant mini cult with the victim at the center. They tell their victims what
they eagerly want to hear. They badmouth and devalue other people to garner the
victim’s gratitude and allegiance.
This is why predatory behavior should be
determined objectively. The victims are likely to defend the predator and
consider him kind, benevolent, loving, or just fun. Confronted with a cognitive
dissonance, victims often resolve it by renouncing reality.
Predation is any abusive breach of boundaries and
morals by someone in a position of formal or informal power.
If you end up having sex with someone who is
clearly heartbroken, if you groom someone much younger than you, if you get
someone drunk or drugged, if you abuse a position of authority or trust - these
are instances of predatory behavior, regardless of how the victim feels about
the whole incident.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Gdansk Seminar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnfstvImfvg
Statistics in psychology is often misused to misrepresent and mislead. Here's how.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Being
victimized is a dissonant, anxiety-inducing experience.
Some of the abused resolve the cognitive dissonance by claiming to have
orchestrated or provoked the perpetrator, thus regaining a sense of agency and appearance
of control:
“I wanted the sex and initiated it, so it is all
my fault”
“What happened felt good and empowering”
“I was dressed scantily, acted sluttishly, was
wasted, had it coming”
“I provoked him to mistreat me, I keep pushing all
his buttons”
“I should have known better than to walk this
rough hood at night”
These are all counterfactual statements, of
course. The passive voice often disguises a deep discomfort.
Recognizing and accepting that you have been
victimized is the first step on the road to healing.
Still, one should refrain from adopting victimhood
as an identity. Being victimized is not the same as being a victim.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Here is how all my relationships go:
I meet a woman
We spend time together
I abuse her egregiously and sadistically, testing
whether she can love me unconditionally the way a mother does and also
discharging my misogyny
I cannot reciprocate love and I offer no
commitment. This frustrates my partner and frustration transmogrifies into
aggression.
She triangulates with other men to get me to love
her and to retaliate for my soul-destroying and hate-suffused abuse.
The triangulation makes me feel unsafe, unloved,
and disappointed in her.
Her triangulation renders her unfit to be my
partner (she obviously failed to love me unconditionally, despite my
unrelenting abuse).
I need to look elsewhere (to get rid of her).
But, at this stage, she is still mine.
Her triangulation makes me feel like I am losing
control over her (narcissistic injury or mortification).
I choose the man most likely to misbehave -
dysregulated or predatory or both.
I aggressively push them to be together.
This way I regain my sense of control (they are my
puppets, merely enacting my script)
She cheats on me with the man I have chosen, thus
degrading and trashing herself (her punishment for triangulating).
Her misconduct gives me the perfect pretext to get
rid of her or to abandon her physically and/or emotionally, all the while
preserving a sense of outraged moral superiority (she is the villain, a slut
like all women, I am the victim)
I
move on to the next woman
It starts all over again.
On a side note: I may hoover a woman who has
caused me narcissistic injury - but never a woman who mortified me (humiliated
me in public in front of my peers by flirting with or ostentatiously cheating
with another man).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Won the 2023 INSO International
Research Award - Lifetime Achievement Award for
my work on personality disorders.
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
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Borderline's
POV (point of view) is the outcome of her internal dynamics,
especially the compulsive need to approach and then avoid you.
Here is how she sees you:
APPROACH
You are my world and life
You will save me from myself and from others
Everything is meaningless without you
You are a stable rock
You stabilize my moods and regulate my emotions,
with you I feel safe and whole (completed)
I will give my life for you (self-sacrificial)
I am bad and evil (bad object) but with you I feel
good and worthy because you accept and love me as I am
AVOIDANCE
I am overwhelmed by pain owing to your rejection
and abandonment (often projected and anticipated): you are not protective, you
don’t care, you found someone else to take my place, You are disloyal, You are
looking for alternatives
Dissociation (amnesia, auto-pilot
depersonalization, derealization)
I have to do something, anything to hurt you and
then regain your love
You want me dead, shackled, only yours, to
disappear into you
You have changed, You blame-shift, I am the
victim
You guilt-trip
You are not self-aware: You are self-destructive
and you want to drag me with you
You are just after my sex, looks
Paranoid ideation, persecutory object: You lie,
deceive, and cheat, You are out to get me, You entrapped me, You never mean
what you say, You gaslight me, You hate me while I love you self-sacrificially,
You humiliate me and shame me, you are malicious
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Merry Christmas, baby seals!
From your Samta Claus
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Anger at dead parents who install and instill
harsh inner critic (superego is part of ego and impairs reality testing).
Bad object messaging: 1.
You are unlovable 2. You don’t deserve happiness.
All people are lovable (number of permutations
with 6 billion adults, even serial killers in prison)
Happiness is not a desert, it has to be merited
and earned
But bad object uses introject to generate ANTs
(Automatic Negative Thoughts) which are self-sabotaging (self-undermining),
self-defeating, self-harmful, self-trashing, and self-destructive.
Some people reject happiness and embrace misery.
They belong to either of three groups.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The more grounded the shared fantasy - the more
elements of reality it incorporates - the more pernicious and insidious it is.
Love is the polar opposite of a shared fantasy. It is always embedded only in reality and it is never about
converting the partner into a figment or a character in a fantastic narrative.
Shared fantasies are not limited to the intimate
sphere. Many friendships are shared fantasies as well. Your “friend” backstabs,
badmouthes, and betrays you in every possible way for years - and yet it is
difficult to let go of the fantasy because the alternative is a lonely, barren
reality.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Borderlines and Narcissists engage in a danse macabre with highly idiosyncratic dynamics. This is how they see each other.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Loving
the wrong person can be bad for your health. There are 3 ways
to overcome such unhealthy obsession:
1. Meet them frequently. The mundane and the
pedestrian will erode the idealized and mythologized image and bad memories
will supplant counterfactual nostalgia;
2. To wait. Time heals. Memories and introjects
fade. Perspective and proportion regained help to weaken the sick bond;
3. Let someone else enter your life. New intense
emotions often displace old ones. Recent memories crowd out older ones.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists regard mentally ill people with
utter contempt because they deplore any weakness and vulnerability.
Reaction formation is a defense mechanism: we vehemently and aggressively reject in others the very
traits and qualities that we find unacceptable in ourselves.
Narcissists are dependent on others (for
narcissistic supply) and brittle. Hence their sadistic glee in harming people
with the same mental constitution.
Narcissists are also hypervigilant and paranoid.
They suspect that others are merely faking fragility and neediness in order to
manipulate the environment. They convert any interaction into a power play,
replete with defiance (reactance).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Anxiolytic sex is the compulsive use of autoerotic (masturbatory) or alloerotic (with others) sex to ameliorate anxiety.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dedicated to a fake “friend” I just got rid of.
Thank you for failing the loyalty test so spectacularly and maliciously that
you left me no choice.
Get rid of a fake friend.
I just did and I feel so healed, a dark entity
exorcised, a pregnant cloud dissipated. Here’s why:
Fake friends are disguised enemies, enablers,
envious, haters. They are always parasitic, inferior to you in many ways, as
they fake empathy and love for you. They fantasize about being you but always
fall short, pale wannabe imitations. Their lives are in disarray, their personality
shot: they are opportunistic, selfish predators on the prowl.
You don’t see them coming. They are covert. Snakes
in the grass.
They have no moral compass, loyalty, or even a
rudimentary grasp of morality. They are feral, savage, antisocial, psychopathic,
and narcissistic.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Alloplastic
defenses
Blaming others for the predictable consequences
and outcomes of your own choices and decisions.
A feature of cluster B disorders.
Autoplastic defenses
Blaming oneself for the consequences and outcomes
of one’s own choices and decisions as well as for the outcomes of the choices
that others make and even for circumstances beyond one’s control.
A common type of defense in neuroses.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
What is common to NPD, BPD, dependent
personality disorder (codependents), people pleasers, parentified children? Bad object internalization.
Early on in life, some children internalize a bad
object whose main message is “you are not lovable”.
They learn to associate love with rejection and hurt.
Later in life, as adults, the bad object affects
mate selection with a preference for rejecting, abandoning, dysregulated, and
withholding intimate partners.
The introjects in such people compel them to
either avoid reciprocated love (insecure attachment style) or to deny love as a
form of sadistic abuse by weaponizing frustration.
Another coping strategy involves projective
identification: manipulating and baiting lovers, spouses, and friends to the
point of betrayal, thus affirming the bad object and fulfilling narrative
expectations (comfort zone).
Bad object adults have both alloplastic defenses
(feel victimized) and autoplastic defenses (they deserve to be hated and
betrayed).
They regard themselves as innocent babes: everyone
else it tasked with safeguarding and promoting their wellbeing and interests,
protecting their emotions, and catering to their needs, totally disregarding
their soul-destroying and egregious abuse.
Regardless of their chronological age, they are
never the adults in the room.
Being unlovable in one’s mind causes a lot of
anxiety and paranoid ideation: you can trust no one to love you and to have your
best interests in mind. You anticipate the worst and preemptively act to bring
it about (“let the other shoe drop”).
You cannot trust your judgment of people owing to
the cognitive distortion field of the bad object.
Example: many narcissists, in a shared fantasy,
grandiosely trust that they are so special that regardless of their abuse, no
one will cheat on them, retaliate, or betray them.
Such people mislabel and misinterpret their
“anxiety artifacts” as emotions: heartbreak, love, dysregulation, somatization
are all actually transformations of anxiety.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mentally ill are astronauts stranded on an alien planet: disorientation
No gyroscope (core identity)
No reality (cognitive distortions)
Emotional tsunamis
All consuming anxiety (catastrophizing in
hostile world)
Hopelessness and helplessness (childlike state)
Splitting morality play
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The world is getting less hospitable by the
day. The only refuge is love and the only hope is solidarity.
May this year bring you true friendship, exciting
challenges, creative breakthroughs, transforming insights, and loving partners.
May you look back on this year 2023 and wish it had lasted even longer.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Loving someone is not the same
as loving the way he loves you.
Loving someone is not the same as loving to be in
love.
Loving someone is not the same as merging with
your partner.
Loving someone is not the same as hating
loneliness or desperation.
Loving someone never involves fantasy or
idealization.
Loving someone is not about assuming a parental
role.
Watch Toxic Sex: When "Love" Is Bad For You
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTDhld2pc20
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Suggested
topics for future research:
Narcissism in collectivist-traditional societies
vs. individualistic ones
Narcissism and feminism
Rise in narcissism owing to the disintegration of
the family
The role of narcissism in religion
Narcissism in cities vs. villages
Artificial intelligence and narcissism
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PLEASE ANSWER POLL QUESTION
When your partner tells you that he
is attracted to and is fantasizing about sex with another person, you …
1. Become jealous and possessive and try to fend
off the potential poacher (for example: by insisting that your partner blocks
them everywhere); or
2. You cry, beg, and communicate to your partner
how hurtful their words are, hoping for a change of heart and mind; or
3. You push your partner towards their new sex or
love interest (loyalty test them) and, if they act on it, your break up with
them irrevocably; or
4. You break up with your partner immediately,
perceiving his words to be a form of triangulation.
I will go first. I usually do 3 and, much more
rarely 4.
I did 2 only once in my life (she ended up dating
and having sex with my best friend despite my pleading).
I never did 1. I never compete for my partner with
others.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch Victim in Drama Triangle with Abuser, Savior: Karpman's Drama Triangle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujw-jbjOOpg
Karpman’s triangle, shifting roles
Based on a guy I used to hang out with and broke up with recently after an incredible incident of egregious badmouthing and backstabbing. So, a lot of what I say in this video is based on this rotten character.
Perfidious fake friends, who always claim to be the helpless and defenseless victims of manipulation and abuse and so, oh so in need of love. Women lap it up, of course.
Saviors, healers, fixers, rescuers are grandiose, covert (fake), and predatory
Wingman or backdrop for contrast as empathic, compassionate, altruistic, loving, caring, saintly.
Can’t see them coming, like a snake in the grass. Masquerade as good people but engage in perfidy and betrayal.
Actually rabidly misogynistic (closet gays), narcissistic, and psychopathic in dating (players)
Pick up line: self-appointed savior of damsels in distress from bad, mentally ill, dangerous, damaging so called abusers. “I am the alternative to the horrors of your relationship”.
But often savior is the abuser, not the “abuser” (Karpman: roles not fixed, playacting)
Select heartbroken, sad, damaged, crying, devastated, anxious, depressed women as targets. They need to talk and end up being preyed on.
The “abuser” could be a friend or a colleague. They are fake friends, seething with envy and resentment owing to inferiority complex. Saving is omnipotence.
Badmouth and betray confidences for hours, not realizing that their words are reported back to the “abuser” (example: this guy and me, I gad info from multiple sources about his badmouthing and egregious backstabbing, but I refused to believe it, he is that good at faking).
Savior/rescuer attempts to create alliance/coalition with victim against abuser.
Predatory 3 Ss: save you, sex you, scram (“not another fantasy”, “not ready for a relationship”)
May believe their own lies about saving or rescuing as their “job” (abuser all bad, they all good splitting): caters to grandiosity, unboundaried sexual needs
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Having kids is a seriously bad idea. Here's why (click on the links in the description of the video).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I will be visiting Budapest on January 20-30. If you are interested in counselling,
please write to samvaknin@gmail.com
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Serbian journalist and editor Branka Gajic of BGonline (www.bgonline.rs), an online magazine for personal development, travelled to Skopje to meet me and we talked for a few hours.
Watch here:
https://m.youtube.com/@BGonlinemagazin
Prof. Sam Vaknin odgovara na pitanje šta možete uraditi ukoliko
ste u vezi sa narcisoidnom osobom. Ukoliko ste
zainteresovani za knjigu prof.Sama Vaknina "Malignant Self-Love", kao
i njegova predavanja
i seminare u Srbiji možete poslati upit na mejl: marketing.bgonline@gmail.com
Video editing: Zoran Jelenković/ VU Covers
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Borderlines often feel that the only things they have to offer are sex and drama. Their dysregulation is their only asset. They are but a spectacle.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dilemmas are cognitive dissonances between two horns: two equally compelling (equipotent) courses of action which are contradictory or mutually exclusive. The way to solve such dilemmas is to reduce them to: problem, needs, assumptions.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists
lack empathy so they never feel remorse or regret for their
actions or inaction. They deny responsibility and shift the blame and guilt to
others. Possessed of magical thinking, the narcissist feels immune to the
consequences of his actions for four reasons:
(1) The narcissist’s False Self; (2) his
dissociation; (3) his sense of entitlement; and (4) his past successes at
evading justice.
Gdansk seminar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnfstvImfvg
Citations of my work:
https://samvak.tripod.com/mediakit.html
https://samvak.tripod.com/academia695.png
https://samvak.tripod.com/academiareversename.png
https://samvak.tripod.com/academiaabbrev.png
https://samvak.tripod.com/academiareverse2.png
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women and men adopted the same type of toxic masculinity and became a unigender. Capitalism and technology encourage consumers to be atomized, narcissistic, and self-sufficient in order to secure sempiternal economic growth.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissistic supply, even sex are anxiolytic. So is betrayal. Narcissist has been betrayed by his mother in early childhood. He seeks to recreate this betrayal throughout life. He chooses fake friends who badmouth him, steal from him, poach his mates, and betray him. He behaves obnoxiously to make people hate him and hurt him. And he pushes his intimate partners to betray him in a variety of ways, including by cheating on him.
Narcissists convert intimate partner to a substitute mother in order to accomplish separation-individuation.
One way to make this happen is by insistently and persistently pushing the partner to betray the narcissist for example by being with another man. This way, separation is coupled with debilitating pain to guarantee its irreversibility and finality. The narcissist always mourns the mother fantasy, not the actual departed intimate partner.
The narcissist is not a masochistic cuckold. He does not get sexually aroused by the betrayal. On the contrary, his subsequent suffering causes depression and a decrease in libido.
Mate poaching is not met with mate guarding or sexual gatekeeping but with projective identification with the partner and mate sharing with the man she would cheat with (often chosen by the narcissist himself).
Having idealized his partner, the narcissist's self-idealization (grandiosity) depends on his ownership of her. Relinquishing her to another man, handing her over to another man undermines the narcissist's sense of self-worth and results in self-devaluation so extreme that the bad object takes over and its dual messages are amplified: you are not lovable and you do not deserve happiness.
The narcissist is also extremely envious of the other man who now comes to possess the good, idealized object. He feels like a self-destructive fool for having handed her over to a man who envied him for possessing her, desired her, and will now replace him in her heart and mind, likely badmouthing the narcissist as a predator or a monster. He feels that his repetition compulsion renders him defenseless, disrespected by everyone involved, weak, and pathetic. He consoles himself by clinging to the fact that he made it all happen, he was in control, the others being merely puppets.
The narcissist perceives the man the partner cheats with as superior to him in some ways. The narcissist is a child and mother is cheating on him with a real man, a grown up. These are the preconditions for separation: a devalued mother and a painful breakup in a reenacted childhood. It involved splitting as a precondition for individuation: child all good, mother all bad.
The narcissist engineers the whole situation of betrayal. He is fully in control of it. He selects mates who are more likely to collaborate in realizing it: promiscuous, unboundaried, and mentally ill. Such women are anyhow prone to fantasy and they collude with the narcissist to the point of complying with his wishes even when his demands of them are ego dystonic (for example: that they cheat on him).
The narcissist then abuses them, prompts them to betray him, and sets the stage even to the point of choosing the other man.
But his fantasy is that of having fallen victim to an evil partner (reminiscent of his real mother). His fantasy is mostly counterfactual and delusional (persecutory), but he defends it fiercely in order to accomplish separation-individuation from both a bad mother and her sadistic, tormenting introject.
But this attempt is doomed to failure owing to its inherent contradictions.
The narcissist distorts and reframes reality, deceives himself into accepting a version of the events which is largely untrue but excruciatingly agonizing and, therefore, conducive to separation-individuation: a confabulated fable of rejection and humiliation. But such a confabulation only buttresses and magnifies the twin messages of the bad object (you are no good and therefore deserve no happiness and you are not lovable). So, the cycle has to be restarted with a new partner.
Narcissist’s self-harming is a form of emotional disinvestment (decathexis). Separation requires it. Watch Narcissist's Emotional Involvement Preventive Measures (EIPMs)
Why do I break up with women by pushing them to cheat on me? In order to avoid future stalking (they feel guilty and vanish) and so as to not feel guilty for having abandoned my partner and let her down.
Some of the women I broke up with without cheating became demented stalkers or just bitter and hateful. The cheating causes me excruciating pain for a few weeks, but it still far preferrable to stalking and charges of unfulfilled promises.
I am not seeking pain when I push women (dates, girlfriends, intimate partners) to be with other men, often orchestrating the betrayal. I merely wish to get rid of them altogether or minimize their footprint in my life.
Unconsciously, this strategy is intended to control inevitable abandonment, rejection, cheating, betrayal, and humiliation and to satisfy the need to sadistically punish my partners with withdrawal or absence coupled with coerced self-trashing, sexual or axiological (betraying one's values).
I couldn't care less that the woman is with another man. I feel relieved that she is gone and will not make any further demands or stalk me.
I am actually angry at those who resist the manipulation and survive in the relationship because they are perceived as either clingy or threatening with ineluctable pain.
But this strategy does cause me excruciating pain all the same. How come?
The pain I experience is narcissistic injury or narcissistic mortification, not romantic jealousy or possessiveness.
It is solely about being disrespected and humiliated by other men as a doormat, cuckold, or coward (for not protecting my woman) and being rejected and humiliated by my women as inadequate and mentally ill (less than perfect).
In a way, I internalize their point of view and come to regard myself as inefficacious, helpless, unlovable, obsequious, unworthy, ugly, and craven. It feeds into my harsh inner critic (sadistic superego or bad object) and amplifies the shame to life-threatening proportions.
So, why not change strategy?
Because the shared fantasy is highly addictive and generates stalking and virulent hatred in spurned women.
Once they cheat at my behest, however, they are disadvantaged: I can always point to the cheating, emotionally blackmail them, silence their vocal complaints, and get rid of them for good.
This is, therefore, not about masochism. It is just that the effective dissolution of the shared fantasy requires narcissistic injury or mortification by posing as a cuckolded partner in full view.
Ultimately, such posture benefits me as I am able to retain the high moral ground as a victim even as I devalue and discard my partners callously and cruelly.
So, the short-term cost is outweighed by the long-term benefits of a victimhood narrative.
I use a variant of strategy in all intimate settings (such as friendship) and interpersonal relations (e.g., with colleagues or collaborators).
Once I deem someone undesirable (for instance: having mistreated me), I entrap or tempt them and cause them to betray me once more spectacularly and ostentatiously.
I accomplish that by playing on their weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Then, having been mortified and morally indignant and righteous, I am compelled to get rid of them.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists are hypervigilant. They see slights everywhere, even in the most innocuous speech.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
They are grotesque caricatures of masculinity:
buff, deformed veined musculature, like tightly packed meat; slicked, gel
oozing hair; ostentatious tattoos; and pants too tight so as to emphasize the
crotch.
The internet gave rise to a new breed of gurus, coaches, and
self-styled experts who spend more time in gyms and nightclubs
than in libraries and museums. They are covert and somatic narcissists who
often pose as empathic or codependent victims, saviors and healers – all this
intended to lure women to engage in sex and then cruelly dispatch them on their
way.
But sexual conquests are not enough for these
delusional and vainglorious megalomaniacs. They also posture as sages and
visionaries. These cerebral wannabes pontificate and spew half-baked and
ill-informed conspiracy theories, analyses, observations, and opinions in
fields as diverse as philosophy and science.
They get most info disastrously wrong or just make
it up as they go along as they self-importantly aspire to pretend that brain
and brawn are interchangeable.
They are somatic covert narcissist whose dream it
is to be cerebral. They often team up with intellectually superior cerebrals,
appropriate and plagiarize their work, and bask in the purloined glory. But
they stumble when on their own because they are incapable of generating a
single original idea or truly comprehending those that they steal.
Some of them are smooth talkers and disguise their
vacuity and nonsense effectively with resounding verbiage, pronouncing words
like dissociation wrongly and awash in malapropisms.
Others merely engage in displays of aggression or
nauseating eroticism. Creepy to the last, most of them are covert narcissists
and psychopaths cloaking themselves in a mantle of saviors and healers.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The heart has a mind of its own. Underlying obsessive love are bad object introjects with automatic negative thoughts
like “I don’t deserve better”, fantasy defense (“s/he is the perfect match for
me”), and catastrophizing (“I will never find such a perfect match again”).
It is a form of trauma bonding.
It is a reenactment of early childhood conflicts
(mommy issues) or later life conflicts with parental figures (daddy issues).
Obsessive love is an addiction. Do not rush from
one addiction to the next.
Obsessive love is a religion: it makes sense of
the world, of your life, and of your behaviors. Find other sources of meaning.
Make a list of all the bad memories and read it
aloud three times a day.
Go total no contact, no social media stalking.
Imagine them with others.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Love defies logic, reason, and analysis.
Love denies age and distance and circumstance.
Love transcends boundaries and interests and fear
itself.
Love thrives on adversity, complexity, and dreams.
Love just is: known instantly by its proponents,
worshipped by its adherents, defeating all its enemies.
Every setback in love is temporary, every obstacle
is overcome, every limit crossed.
Love triumphs where nothing does, flourishes
without soil or water, prevails as it becomes.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Acts of self-love and healing are always painful.
Getting rid of toxic but addictive people in your
life;
Breaking up with a backstabbing, badmouthing, and
mate-poaching plagiarist fake “friend”;
Imposing discipline, goals, and structure on a
dissolute and carefree life;
Saying “no” to temptations and seductions;
Gaining insights into your shortcomings, self-inflicted
wounds, and failures;
Confronting trauma and abuse;
Investing hard work in introspection and therapy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I will be giving a lecture here on January 24th at
6 PM. You are all invited.
Corvinus University of Budapest, Building C, Lecture hall C.103. 1093 Budapest, Közraktár
Street 4-6
LECTURE: Cluster B personality disorders revisited
Cluster B personality disorders are being
reconceived as either post-traumatic conditions with dysregulation and a
fantasy defense - or as forms of psychopathy.
A model of self-states with constructs,
introjects, and automatic negative thoughts is presented.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fawning and people pleasing are
often excuses for psychopathic, immoral, antisocial, and narcissistic acts and
misconduct:
“Poor me, I couldn’t help myself, I had to say
‘yes’, I am actually the victim of my own proclivities and character flaws!
People are leveraging and taking advantage of my weaknesses! I never do wrong!”
The need to believe in the essential goodness of
people - especially gurus posing as saviors and healers - and the need to not
feel like a victim result in cognitive dissonance when these role models
misbehave.
Resolution: "My savior and healer is flawed,
weak, human, means well, and so in need of love!” coupled with autoplastic
defenses (if he acted morally wrong, it was all my fault, I made him do it).