Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
BPD suffer from persecutory delusions, paranoid ideation as an
instrument to extricate themselves from engulfment/enmeshment anxiety.
The persecutory dynamic is either autoplastic (I
am a bad object abuser) or alloplastic (I am a victim).
When there is a failure of the defense allowing
the Borderline to convert an idealized object to a persecutory object, she
can’t regard herself as a victim, but only as bad object, an abuser. This ego
dystony leads to decompensation and acting out.
Borderline legitimizes forbidden, repressed
introjects, resonates with pathological parts in her intimate partner, becomes
a vector of contagion.
Borderline is the mirror image of the narcissist:
She has introject inconstancy, he has object
inconstancy.
She considers herself as a bad object externally
but not internally, he considers himself a bad object internally but not
externally.
The Borderline encourages the narcissist to
interact exclusively with his internal objects because she doesn’t want him to
realize that she is an external, bad object.
She considers herself bad and flawed: “If he gets
too close to me, he will abandon me; if he finds out the truth about me, he
will run away. Better that he should live in a fantasy”.
She incentivizes and reinforces his pathological
fantasy defense. Feeds him with drama and conflicts to keep him busy and
distracted as he desperately attempts to realign, reframe, and redefine his
internal objects.
Borderline pushes narcissist to become psychotic
while narcissist pushes borderline to become a psychopath.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It is a maxim of current economic orthodoxy that governments compete with
the private sector on a limited pool of savings. It is considered
equally self-evident that the private sector is better, more competent, and
more efficient at allocating scarce economic resources and thus at preventing
waste. It is therefore thought economically sound to reduce the size of
government - i.e., minimize its tax intake and its public borrowing - in order
to free resources for the private sector to allocate productively and
efficiently.
Yet, both dogmas are far from being universally
applicable.
Full text: https://samvak.tripod.com/pp164.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
No need to overthink everything:
If someone behaves in a self-destructive way, it
is because they are self-destructive, period.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The DSM and ICD wrongly pathologize many behaviors, but cravenly ignore the delusional disorder that is “religious faith”.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi Foreign Minister
Count Schwerin-Krosigk– not Churchill – coined the evocative phrase “iron curtain” in a last ditch attempt to drive a wedge between the allies
during World War II.
Today, a second iron curtain has descended between
the West and the rest. The overwhelming majority of humanity – and the bulk of
the world’s GDP – are on one side and beleaguered liberal-democracy is on the
other.
This is a startling turn of events. Only 30 years
ago, the values of the West were winning everywhere. Communism crumbled like
the house of cards that it has always been. What went wrong?
Three things: nationalism, instability, and
inequality.
The long-suffering denizens of the USSR and its
east European satellites loathed the moribund system they inhabited and sought
to undermine it passive-aggressively. Nowadays, the likes of Putin enjoy
stratospheric approval ratings among their subjects.
Watch the video on my vakninmusings channel ( https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings )
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Courage requires an awareness of risks and overcoming justified
fears.
Recklessness commands neither. It is a fool’s
errand.
Courage is about overcoming - being foolhardy or
defiant is merely showing off.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch Freud and Jung: Re-integrating the Narcissist's Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLV8P_2spuo
"When alarmed, the child seeks proximity to a
caregiver. But proximity to a frightening caregiver
increases the alarm" (Hazen and McFarland, 2010)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Where others strive to be nice, the narcissist is always
contemptuous, coercive, and abusive.
People communicate by sharing - the narcissist
lectures and hectors.
And while most people are, indeed, transactional -
the narcissist is always exploitative.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When lovebombing is an integral part of coercive control, intermittent reinforcement, and not the behavioral outcome of mental illness - it should be criminalized. But we are treading a thin line: we are beginning to criminalize flirting, courtship, intimacy, and sex.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Promiscuity is the opposite of being able to have a relationship. In later life, sex becomes transactional.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Men suffer from sexual overperception: they misinterpret feminine kindness as an invitation to
copulate.
Histrionics suffer from intimacy overperception:
they misinterpret attention as an invitation to fall in love.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Childhood
sexual abuse often results in BPD, DID (mainly OSDD) in
adulthood.
Victims of sexual abuse in childhood dread and
sexualize intimacy and being loved because they misidentify and conflate those
with pain and boundary wrecking abuse.
Sex becomes an anxiety reaction or stress response.
The strategies used by these children, starting in
adolescence involve: self-objectification, absenting oneself from sex and
intimacy via dissociation (most notably derealization, depersonalization, and
amnesia), and self-punitive choices intended to restore the good object (by
penalizing and subduing the bad one).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Giving doesn’t always make people happy. It cannot guarantee that
you will be loved or accepted.
Your style of giving makes all the difference:
giving ostentatiously can even create resentment and humiliation in the
“beneficiaries”.
Transactional giving is perceived as a form of
blackmail: give in order to take. True giving is no strings attached: it comes
from the heart, not from the wallet; it is about helping others, not about
aggrandizing yourself.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Assemble these
definitions into a Mental Health Dictionary!
Acting Out
When an anxiogenic inner emotional conflict (a
dissonance most often experienced as frustration) is communicated via
behavioral aggression.
Acting out involves little or no insight,
foresight, impulse control, self-awareness (it is dissociative), or
self-reflection.
Affect
Affect is how we express our innermost
feelings and how other people observe and interpret our expressions. Affect is
characterized by the type of emotion involved (sadness, happiness, anger, etc.)
and by the intensity of its expression. Some people have flat affect: they
maintain "poker faces", monotonous, immobile, apparently unmoved.
This is typical of Schizoid Personality Disorder Others have blunted,
constricted, or broad (healthy) affect. Patients with the dramatic (Cluster B)
personality disorders - especially Histrionic and Borderline - have exaggerate
and labile (changeable) affect. They are "drama queens".
In certain mental health disorders, the affect is
inappropriate. For instance: such people laugh when they recount a sad or
horrifying event or when they find themselves is morbid settings (e.g., in a
funeral).
Ambivalence
Possessing equipotent - but opposing and
conflicting - emotions or ideas.
In someone with a permanent state of inner
turmoil: her emotions come in mutually exclusive pairs, her thoughts and
conclusions arrayed in contradictory dyads. The result is extreme indecision,
to the point of utter paralysis and inaction.
Sufferers of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders and
the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder are highly ambivalent, for
example.
Amnesia, Anterograde
Loss of memory pertaining to events that occurred
after the onset of the amnetic condition or agent.
Amnesia, Retrograde
Loss of memory pertaining to events that occurred
before the onset of the amnetic condition or agent.
Amok
Male-specific culture-bound syndrome: an
alternating pattern of dissociation, brooding, and violence directed at objects
and people. Provoked by real or imagined criticism or slight and accompanied by
persecutory ideation, amnesia, automatism, and extreme fatigue. Sometimes
co-occurs with a psychotic episode. Common in Malaysia (where it was
discovered), Laos, Philippines, Polynesia (where it is called cafard or
cathard), Papua New Guinea, Puerto Rico (mal de pelea), and among the Navajo
Native-Americans (iich'aa).
The loss of the urge to seek pleasure and the ability to experience it.
Major Depression and schizophrenia often involve anhedonia. The patient is unable to conjure sufficient mental energy to get off the couch and do something because s/he finds everything equally boring, tedious and unattractive.
Diminished appetite to the point of refraining from eating. Whether it is part of a depressive illness or a body dysmorphic disorder (erroneous perception of one’s body as too fat) is still debated.
Anorexia is one of a family of eating disorders which also includes bulimia (compulsive gorging on food and then its forced purging, usually by vomiting).
Antisocial Personality Disorder (Psychopathy)
APD or AsPD; Formerly called “psychopathy” or, more colloquially, “sociopathy". Some scholars, such as Robert Hare, still distinguish psychopathy from mere antisocial behavior.
The disorder appears in early adolescence but criminal behavior and substance abuse often abate with age, usually by the fourth or fifth decade of life. It may have a genetic or hereditary determinant and afflicts mainly men. The diagnosis is controversial and regarded by some scholars as scientifically unfounded.
Psychopaths regard other people as objects to be manipulated and instruments of gratification and utility. They have no discernible conscience, are devoid of empathy and find it difficult to perceive other people’s nonverbal cues, needs, emotions, and preferences.
Consequently, the psychopath rejects other people’s rights and his commensurate obligations. He is impulsive, reckless, irresponsible and unable to postpone gratification. He often rationalizes his behavior showing an utter absence of remorse for hurting or defrauding others.
Their (primitive) defence mechanisms include splitting (they view the world - and people in it - as "all good” or "all evil"), projection (attribute their own shortcomings unto others) and projective identification (force others to behave the way they expect them to).
The psychopath fails to comply with social norms. Hence the criminal acts, the deceitfulness and identity theft, the use of aliases, the constant lying, and the conning of even his nearest and dearest for gain or pleasure.
Psychopaths are unreliable and do not honor their undertakings, obligations, contracts, and responsibilities. They rarely hold a job for long or repay their debts.
They are vindictive, remorseless, ruthless, driven, dangerous, aggressive, violent, irritable, and, sometimes, prone to magical thinking. They seldom plan for the long and medium terms, believing themselves to be immune to the consequences of their own actions.
Aphonia
Inability to produce speech (or sounds) through
the larynx due to psychological, nonorganic, reasons.
Automatic obeisance or
obedience
Automatic, unquestioning, excessive, uncritical,
mechanical, and immediate obeisance of all commands, requests, and suggestions
of others - even the most manifestly absurd and dangerous ones. This suspension
of critical judgment is sometimes an indication of incipient catatonia.
Avoidant
Personality Disorder
Social shyness and anxiety coupled with feelings
of inadequacy, deformity, and dysfunction and with hypersensitivity to
criticism, real or imagined.
Sufferers of the disorder avoid interpersonal
contact because they dread rejection, embarrassment, disagreement, and
disapproval.
They strive to ascertain that their counterparty
likes them and approves of their conduct, or their choices, before they
actually meet him (or her).
They prefer solitary occupations and are very
restrained and “cold” in intimate relationships.
They limit their world, escape challenges and
risks and stunt their personal growth and development by avoiding the new
(e.g., unfamiliar people, novel activities, or pursuits).
They are mortified by shame and the possibility of
being mocked, criticized, rejected, or ridiculed in public.
They are prone to having ideas of reference (see
entry).
They are perceived by others as reserved, timid,
and inhibited because they regard themselves as socially inept, repellant,
unattractive, inferior, inadequate, dysfunctional, defective, or deformed.
Some Avoidants develop Body Dysmorphic Disorders.
Avolition
Inability to initiate goals and goal-directed
activities - or pursue them once initiated. Overpowering and pervasive lack of
"will", perseverance, and stamina in various fields of life (work,
self-care, intellectual tasks and interests, family life, etc.)
Blocking
Halted, frequently interrupted speech to the point
of incoherence indicates a parallel disruption of thought processes.
The patient appears to try hard to remember what
it was that he or she were saying or thinking (as if they “lost the thread” of
conversation).
Borderline Personality
Disorder
BPD; A controversial mental health diagnosis in
cluster B (erratic-dramatic).
Borderlines are characterized by stormy,
short-lived, and unstable relationships matched by wildly fluctuating (labile)
self-image and emotional expression (unstable affect). Some scholars suggest
that BPD is merely emotionally dysregulated CPTSD.
Borderlines are impulsive and reckless, their
sexual conduct is frequently unsafe, they binge eat, gamble, drive, and shop
carelessly, or are substance abusers.
They also display self-destructive and
self-defeating behaviors, such as suicidal ideation, suicide attempts,
gestures, or threats, and self-mutilation or self-injury.
The specter of abandonment provokes anxiety in the
Borderline as do the feelings of engulfment or enmeshment. They make frantic -
and, usually, counterproductive - efforts to preempt or prevent both conditions.
Clinging, codependent acts are followed by
idealization and then by an abrupt devaluation of the Borderline’s partner
(approach-avoidance repetition compulsion and splitting).
Borderlines have pronounced mood swings, shifting
between dysphoria (sadness or depression) and euphoria, manic self-confidence
and paralyzing anxiety, irritability and indifference. They are often angry and
violent, usually getting into physical fights, throw temper tantrums, and have
frightening rage attacks.
Under stress, some Borderlines become briefly
psychotic, or develop transient paranoid ideation and ideas of reference (the
erroneous conviction that one is the focus of derision and malicious gossip).
Dissociative symptoms such as amnesia,
derealization, and depersonalization are common ("losing" stretches
of time, or objects, and forgetting events or facts with emotional content).
Borderline Personality
Organization Scale (BPO)
Diagnostic test designed in 1985. It sorts the
responses of respondents into 30 relevant scales. It indicates the existence of
identity disturbance, primitive defenses, and deficient reality testing.
Catalepsy
The rigid maintenance of a position of the entire
body or of an organ over extended periods of time ("waxy
flexibility"). “Human sculptures” are patients who freeze in any posture
and position that they are placed, no matter how painful and unusual. Typical
of catatonics. See: Cerea Flexibilitas.
Catatonia
A syndrome comprised of various signs, amongst
which are: catalepsy, mutism, stereotypy, negativism, stupor, automatic
obedience, echolalia, and echopraxia.
Until recently it was thought to be related to
schizophrenia, but this view has been discredited when the biochemical basis
for schizophrenia had been discovered.
The current thinking is that catatonia is an
exaggerated form of mania (in other words: an affective disorder).
It is a feature of catatonic schizophrenia,
though, and also appears in certain psychotic states and mental disorders that
have organic (medical) roots.
Catatonic
Behavior
Severe motoric abnormalities, including stupor or
catalepsy (motoric immobility), or, at the other end of the spectrum, agitated
(excessive), purposeless, repeated motoric activity, not in response to
external stimuli or triggers.
Also (apparently motiveless) resistance or
indifference to attempts to being moved or to being communicated with (extreme
negativism).
Catatonic behavior often comprises mutism, posturing
(stereotyped motion), echolalia, and echopraxia.
CCMD
Chinese Classification of Mental Disorders. The
Chinese equivalent of the DSM. Currently in its third edition (CCMD-3).
Recognizes culture-bound syndromes (e.g., Koro) as diagnosable and treatable
mental health disorders.
Cerea Flexibilitas
Literally: wax-like flexibility. In the common
form of catalepsy, the patient offers no resistance to the re-arrangement of
his limbs or to the re-alignment of her posture. In Cerea Flexibilitas, there
is some resistance, though it is very mild, much like the resistance a
sculpture made of soft wax would offer.
Circumstantiality
When the train of thought and speech is often
derailed by unrelated digressions, based on chaotic associations. The patient
finally succeeds to express his or her main idea but only after much effort and
wandering. In extreme cases considered to be a communication disorder.
Clang Associations
Rhyming or punning associations of words with no
logical connection or any discernible relationship between them. Typical of
manic episodes, psychotic states, and schizophrenia.
Clouding
(Also: Clouding of Consciousness)
The patient is wide awake but his or her awareness
of the environment is partial, distorted,or impaired. Clouding also occurs when
one gradually loses consciousness (for instance, as a result of intense pain or
lack of oxygen).
Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive dissonance is when someone holds
simultaneously two conflicting views, thoughts, values, or bits of information
which call for diametrically opposed decisions or actions.
This state of things generates an inner conflict
and triggers several primitive (infantile) defense mechanisms such as denial,
splitting, projection, and reaction formation.
Compulsion
Involuntary repetition of a stereotyped and
ritualistic action or movement, usually in connection with a wish or a fear.
The patient is aware of the irrationality of the compulsive act (in other
words: she knows that there is no real connection between her fears and wishes
and what she is repeatedly compelled to do). Most compulsive patients find
their compulsions tedious, bothersome, distressing, and unpleasant - but
resisting the urge results in mounting anxiety from which only the compulsive
act provides much needed relief. Compulsions are common in obsessive-compulsive
disorders, the Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD), and in certain
types of schizophrenia.
Concrete Thinking
Inability or diminished capacity to form abstractions
or to think using abstract categories. The patient is unable to consider and
formulate hypotheses or to grasp and apply metaphors. Only one layer of meaning
is attributed to each word or phrase and figures of speech are taken literally.
Consequently, nuances are not detected or appreciated. A common feature of
schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorders, and certain organic disorders.
Confabulation
The constant and unnecessary fabrication of
information or events to fill in gaps in the patient’s memory, biography or
knowledge, or to substitute for unacceptable reality. Common in schizophrenia,
Cluster B personality disorders (narcissistic, histrionic, borderline, and
antisocial), in organic memory impairment (such as Korsakoff Syndrome,
dementias), and in the amnestic syndrome (amnesia).
Conflict Tactics Scale
(CTS)
Diagnostic test invented in 1979. It is a
standardized scale of the frequency and intensity of conflict resolution
tactics – especially abusive stratagems – used by members of a dyad (couple).
Confusion
Complete (though often momentary) loss of
orientation in relation to one’s location, time, and to other people. Usually
the result of impaired memory (often occurs in dementia) or attention deficit
(for instance, in delirium). Also see: Disorientation.
Culture-bound Syndrome
Recurrent dysfunctional behavior linked to
troubling experiences regarded, in a specific locale by its native denizens, or
in a specific culture, as aberrant or sick.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissist
is in a constant state of NDE, inhabits an
inner landscape of internal objects, absent from reality. Borderline is in a
constant state of NDE, absent from her inner world.
The abused and traumatized child was not allowed
to become (separate-individuate) and so remained in a state of suspended mental
animation, dead inside (emptiness or empty schizoid core).
Introjects represent significant figures the same
way NDE patient meets up with deceased relatives.
Borderline depersonalizes the same way an NDE
patient hovers about her body and observes resuscitation attempts.
Both hear voices the same way an NDE patient does.
But they do not misidentify or misconstrue the sources of the voices as
external (not psychotic).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rummaging through the debris of my past life in Israel, I found the long lost manuscript of my second book of
Hebrew short fiction!
My first tome of short stories, “Requesting My Loved
One” won the 1997 Israeli Ministry of Culture Maiden Prose Award.
Swipe left to read the decision of the award
committee - if you know Hebrew that is!
I translated some of the stories into passable
English here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sipurim.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
2 of every 3 people gave the silent treatment. It is increasing as alternative modes of interpersonal
communication become mainstream.
Silent treatment is (1) efficiently punitive (2)
social (takes a perpetrator and a target) (3) manipulative (controlling) (4)
emotionally distant (5) exclusionary (6) plausibly deniable (element of
gaslighting: not abuse) (7) coercive (forces the victim to apologize) (8)
alloplastic (9) preserves negative affects (10) addictive (11) expressive
(displeasure, disapproval, frustration, anger, disappointment, contempt) (12)
creates uncertainty (13) attention-seeking (14) negating
Shunning, stonewalling, ghosting, blocking,
banning, deleting comments between individuals – but not Tactical ignoring.
Passive givers perceive silent treatment as
graceful, dignified, and conflict-avoidant.
Responsive to pressured requests, pleas, demands,
or criticism.
Both verbal and bodily (avoidance of eye contact,
physical distance)
Generates in both giver and receiver threatened
needs of belonging, self-esteem, and meaningful existence. Giver’s perceived
control enhanced.
Activates same area in brain that codes for
physical and emotional pain anterior cingulate cortex.
What to do about silent treatment?
Chill rather than silent treatment: ‘I can’t talk
to you right now, but we can talk about it later, in 1 hour.’
Voice the pain of being ignored (Margaret Clark,
psychology professor at Yale)
Set Healthy Boundaries
Communication protocols (I statements and naming
the situation)
Acknowledge other person’s feelings
Apologize only if justified, do not reward
(positively reinforce) silent treatment
Practice self-care
Don’t take it personally
Stay calm
Use humor
Avoid escalation, blaming, shaming
Seek help and succor
LITERATURE
Williams, K. D., Shore, W. J., & Grahe, J. E.
(1998). The Silent Treatment: Perceptions of its Behaviors and Associated
Feelings. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 1(2), 117–141. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430298012002
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Abuse is about breaching boundaries and not allowing the child to separate and individuate (become a person). Both BPD and NPD are the sad outcomes of such bad parenting.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Two
laws of human nature:
The minute you empower a group, some of its
members will abuse that power;
The minute you create an exception, creating
exceptions becomes the rule.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch Narcissist's Psychological Defense Mechanisms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AOJXOoQz3k
The evolutionary conundrum: why would evolution allow for self-deception?
Defenses separate internal reality (instincts, pain, guilt, shame, fear, anxiety) from external reality to avoid conflict, real dangers, interpersonal failures, and anxiety (they are anxiolytic). They are, therefore, dissociative.
Narcissists have no functioning ego and only primitive defenses. Borderlines have a functional ego, but their defenses are either primitive or compromised.
They reflect an internal working model of a bad object (I am inadequate, will catastrophically fail, am a danger to myself, need to be defended from myself).
To avoid ego dystonic conscious contact with the bad object, the defenses remain unconscious. To affect reality and render it ego-congruent, they operate via behaviors (watch my video on IPAM).
WATCH Narcissist Entrains Codependent, Borderline: Brainwash, Regulate, Repeat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHAeew65frU
WATCH How to Individuate, Heal from Narcissistic Abuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gmcbWsyBM
WATCH Narcissistic Abuse Recovery: First Separate, Individuate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QBUV9CR_4
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The shared fantasy results in a mass psychogenic illness affecting both members of the couple as well as in the victim's prolonged grief disorder.
This is because the grooming phase involves the induction of a trans or pseudo-hypnotic dissociative state in the suggestible targets: amnesia, depersonalization, derealization (gaslighting), and fantasy (paracosm).
The abuser entrains ("brainwashes") the abused party's mind and deploys intermittent reinforcement, approach-avoidance, trauma bonding, and abuse in all its forms to effect a transfer of regulatory functions from the victim to himself.
The entrainment of the abuser's intimate partner consists of the reorganization of her mind so that it generates nonautonomous cognitions and emotions ("artefacts") intended to make sense of the shared fantasy. These linger long after it is over.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Vaknin Talks Full transcripts of Sam Vaknin's videos https://vaknin-talks.com/
Android App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vaknin_talks.twa
Video presentation at the 5th World Mental Health Congress, May 2023.
Watch Narcissistic Families: Pseudomutual, Pseudohostile
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8gEjo37S5Bw
Watch Toxic Family Holidays Gathering Survival Guide
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MbtHlhkofc0
The family acts as a single organism (an enmeshed system) and is exclusionary (xenophobic or paranoid) or permissive (promiscuous or unboundaried)
Emphasizes appearances and perfectionistic (pseudohostile or pseudomutual)
Provides a selective interface between internal and external realities (defenses)
Enforces a narrative (cultish)
Reinforces emerging roles and competitive hierarchies
Is ambient or implicit (hidden text), not overt and explicit
Makes use of emotional blackmail, ostracism, and coercion
Is sexually and emotionally inappropriate (wrongful intimacies)
Is past or future oriented, but never mindful (present) or content
A sink and an amplifier of negative affects
Allows for role reversals (parentifying or adultifying)
Its members are ego dystonic, unhappy, anhedonic, depressed, anxious, even suicidal and always eager to flee its confines and never look back
Reifies insecure attachment styles and mental health issues (“They are all so dour … grandiose … reticent …”)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Two types of shared fantasy: companionship (with compensatory, cerebral and covert narcissists) or submissive (with overt-grandiose and psychopathic narcissist).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I published this article 23 years ago: “If all
else fails, the abuser recruits friends, colleagues, mates, family members, the
authorities, institutions, neighbours, the media, teachers – in short, third
parties, a kind of “flying monkeys” – to do his bidding.
He uses them to cajole, coerce, threaten, stalk,
offer, retreat, tempt, convince, harass, communicate and otherwise manipulate
his target. He controls these unaware instruments exactly as he plans to
control his ultimate prey. He employs the same mechanisms and devices. And he
dumps his props unceremoniously when the job is done.
One form of control by proxy is to engineer
situations in which abuse is inflicted upon another person. Such carefully
crafted scenarios of embarrassment and humiliation provoke social sanctions
(condemnation, opprobrium, or even physical punishment) against the victim.
Society, or a social group become the instruments of the abuser.
Abusers often use other people to do their dirty
work for them. These - sometimes unwitting - accomplices belong to three
groups:”
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/abuse11.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The elites are taking advantage of our existential loneliness and
paralyzing anxiety. We need to unseat the elites by embarking on a
grassroots revolution which would involve: self-seeing, storytelling, and
networked community cells.
When no one else sees us, we see ourselves as a
form of self-soothing. Narcissism is everywhere, even in fashion, the food
industry and physics! It is an organizing principle of our civilization, not
merely a clinical entity.
Available here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The most profound “wisdom” by the most
“sagacious” gurus is often comprised of trite banalities combined with inane
nonsense.
The above statement is no exception.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
According to the dual mothership principle, when you break up with the narcissist or are discarded by him, you are orphaned. You need to parent yourself. Here's how:
See yourself: document yourself, revisit yourself, be your friend and mentor, get to know yourself.
Frustrate yourself, push yourself away (give yourself space), allow yourself to separate, individuate, and form proper boundaries, reality testing, get rid of magical thinking.
At the same time, be your own secure base: empathic, attuned, caring, loving, accepting.
Invest in and prepare yourself for physical reality, social reality (socialization), hegemonic culture (acculturation), and skills acquisition: research, skills acquisition, education, training.
Love yourself.
Self-love is a healthy self-regard and the pursuit of one's happiness and favorable outcomes.
It rests on four pillars:
1. Self-awareness: an intimate, detailed and compassionate knowledge of oneself, a SWOT analysis: strengths, weaknesses, others's roles, and threats;
2. Self-acceptance: the unconditional embrace of one's core identity, personality, character, temperament, relationships, experiences, and life circumstances;
3. Self-trust: the conviction that one has one's best interests in mind, is watching one's back, and has agency and autonomy: one is not controlled by or dependent upon others in a compromising fashion;
4. Self-efficacy: the belief, gleaned from and honed by experience, that one is capable of setting rational, realistic, and beneficial goals and possesses the wherewithal to realize outcomes commensurate with one's aims.
Self-love is the only reliable compass in life. Experience usually comes too late, when its lessons can no longer be implemented because of old age, lost opportunities, and changed circumstances. It is also pretty useless: no two people or situations are the same.
But self-love is a rock: a stable, reliable, immovable, and immutable guide and the truest of loyal friends whose only concern in your welfare and contentment.
WATCH Love Yourself: Here’s How - or, The Four Pillars of Self-love https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vzBf9QvClo
WATCH Narcissistic Abuse Recovery: First Separate, Individuate https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95QBUV9CR_4
WATCH How to Individuate, Heal from Narcissistic Abuse https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3gmcbWsyBM
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Suffering is never the end - but it is often the means.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Psychopathic narcissist would imitate a sensitive, much-wronged victim of narcissistic abuse, or an empathic savior-rescuer. S/he then proceeds to reel you in by offering you everything you ever dreamed of.
How to Recognize a Narcissist or a Psychopath on Your First Date, Before It is Too Late?
https://groups.google.com/g/NARCISSISTIC-PERSONALITY-DISORDER/c/XpBghb0rZL0
How to Spot an Abuser on Your First Date: The Tocsins of Abuse https://samvak.tripod.com/abuse7.html
How to Recognise a Narcissist? https://samvak.tripod.com/faq58.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The May print edition of Brussels Morning contains three of my columns.
My author archive: https://brusselsmorning.com/author/sam-vaknin/
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To justify our cognitive bias (the belief in karma, or "just-world hypothesis"), we blame and shame victims: they deserve their suffering, they had it coming.
Psychology attempts to stand out from philosophy and religion as a rigorous, almost exact science. Hence the rejection of morality and value judgments in psychological theories and practices.
But narcissistic abuse shatters our belief in a just cosmos. In this sense, it is a moral calamity.
LITERATURE
Griffin, B.J., Purcell, N., Burkman, K., Litz, B.T., Bryan, C.J., Schmitz, M., Villierme, C., Walsh, J. and Maguen, S. (2019), Moral Injury: An Integrative Review. JOURNAL OF TRAUMATIC STRESS, 32: 350-362.
https://doi.org/10.1002/jts.22362
Shay, J. (2014). Moral injury. Psychoanalytic Psychology, 31(2), 182–191. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0036090
Jinkerson, J. D. (2016). Defining and assessing moral injury: A syndrome perspective. Traumatology, 22(2), 122–130. https://doi.org/10.1037/trm0000069
Shay, Jonathan. "Moral Injury." Intertexts, vol. 16 no. 1, 2012, p. 57-66. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/itx.2012.0000.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Covert self-supplies and is avoidant. He is his own audience.
Overt depends on external sources and approaches them.
When unable to deceive himself owing to public shaming, the covert endures narcissistic injury and the overt endures mortification.
When unable to deceive others, the covert endures self-efficacy injury and the overt endures narcissistic injury.
Mortification in the covert is the simultaneous occurrence of both injuries: narcissistic and self-efficacy. It is an internal event, independent of any witnessing. It is self-shaming.
Crisis and drama - anxiety - are defenses against depression. Narcissist provokes and engineers crises intentionally and artificially to mask like-threatening emptiness, dysphoria, and anhedonia. Abusive misconduct is one such crisis-inducing dramatic strategy. Abuse is anxiogenic - but also anti-depressant. It is more common when the narcissist is deflated.
Reacts with self-aggrandizing paranoia or mythologizing fantasy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nothingness: conceive of yourself as an onion. Peel back all the layers until all that is left is your essence, the onion’s smell. Nothingness is the antidote to narcissism.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch 7 Phases of Shared Fantasy: Why Narcissist Needs YOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kp3YFC0OQfU
Why does narcissistic abuse cease after the shared fantasy is definitely over? What in the shared fantasy triggers abusive misconduct?
The shared fantasy metamorphesizes and mutates. It can become paranoid or anticipatory or courting or nostalgic.
It is terminated only via mortification, successful devaluation (betrayal), or appropriation (introject taken over by a substitute maternal figure).
Once switched off, the abuse stop instantly and thoroughly. Why is that?
The maltreatment within the shared fantasy is reframed by the narcissist as tough love, reactive abuse, a test of loyalty and allegiance, or the outcome of disillusionment with and exposure of the partner (devaluation).
But the abuse is also a form of cathexis. It is a pattern of attempts to coercively align the external object with the idealized internal object in order to maintain the idealization.
The narcissist mislabels idealisation as profound love because it is a reciprocal process (co-idealization) and involves maternal introjects.
But the narcissist associates love with hurt and anxiety. The abuse is a prophylactic: preemptive effort to forestall pain and, possibly, mortification by controlling and manipulating the potentially frustrating objects, both external and internal.
When the internal object is dormant (suspended), discarded, or no longer idealised (cathected), it no longer possesses the power to hurt the narcissist. At that point, there is no longer call for abuse. Any interaction following this phase is civil, even amiable.
Still, the minute the object is re-idealized (recathected in the hoovering phase), the abuse starts all over again.
Abuse and idealisation are inextricably linked because idealisation is a form of abuse: it involves objectification, parentification, and instrumentalization.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Envy is destructive: the wish to destroy the frustrating object.
Romantic Jealousy is a fear of losing a love object.
Regular jealousy is the wish to emulate an object of desire.
If you are not ambitious or grandiose, you are unlikely to experience envy or jealousy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
But this may be the wrong question. IQ tests measure types of intelligence that have little to do with life skills and perspicacity (wisdom).
The cluster B personality disordered are pseudo-stupid (covert) or actually stupid (overt, grandiose): their grandiosity (a severe cognitive distortion) impairs their reality testing and self-efficacy and it alienates people, narrowing their opportunities and subjecting them to adversity.
They often lack impulse control, are defiant and contumacious, or decompensate under stress. These drawbacks guarantee frustration or worse.
They are dissociative, so are bad at learning from past experiences.
They are entitled and manic, so never plan thoroughly or execute with attention to detail.
They are immature: the mental equivalents of children. This renders them naive and gullible. They leverage the appearance of infantile haplessness to signal: please don’t hurt me!
Most of them suffer from identity disturbance and so unable to maintain continuity and coherence. They depend on others for external regulation of a sense of self-worth (NPD) or of emotions and moods (BPD). This dependency involves alloplastic defenses and a paralyzing external locus of control.
These dark personalities may be Machiavellian but they are so embedded in fantasy, paranoid, and firewalled by defenses that they are not very good at deceiving people or manipulating them in the long run. This is why they resort to entraining and coercion.
Finally, cluster B personalities are post-traumatic and compensatory. Broken and false. They also tend to abuse substances or develop addictions.
Image: page 169 of the manuscript of my autobiography (in Hebrew, written 1996-7 in Israel).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How talking to your future self can improve your health and happiness
Your future self is a stranger, your past self is real, there is no present self.
Identity is made of memories. But memories are unreliable and, consequently, your identity is in flux.
So, to orient ourselves in a future world, we hark back to the past: our autobiographical memory plus our emotional reactions to catastrophic events. Hence repetition compulsion.
Fantasy, Daydreaming, Wishful Thinking, and Plain Dreams.
3 techniques:
1. Talk to your past self from POV of actualized fantasy
2. Write a letter to your future self (guided imagery)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Eytan Suchard built on my PhD dissertation in physics (1984) and fleshed out the Chronon Field Theory. Read his testimonial. Swipe left for citations of my work in academic papers and articles.
My dissertation is available via the Library of Congress.
I started to upload academic papers and articles that cite my work here: https://calmu.academia.edu/SamVaknin
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The elites are taking advantage of our existential loneliness and paralyzing anxiety. We need to unseat the elites by embarking on a grassroots revolution which would involve: self-seeing, storytelling, and networked community cells.
When no one else sees us, we see ourselves as a form of self-soothing. Narcissism is everywhere, even in fashion, the food industry and physics! It is an organizing principle of our civilization, not merely a clinical entity.
This video is available only here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Consumerism and materialism prefer the inanimate to the live. Moreover: they objectify the living. Our civilization is a death cult.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist is omnipresent and always present because he interacts only with internal objects. So he is the cause of both the behavior - and its absence!
This dialectic is resolved by having to radically transform the traits and identity of the internal objects - or by denying reality (e.g., by reframing inaction as action).
Narcissists and even moreso psychopaths adhere to a rigid entity theory, cathect it (are proud of their rigidities), and convert it into an ideology, organizing and interpretative principles, and set of rules and values (axiology and deontology).
In cluster B PDs, the motives can be self-defeat, self-handicap, self-harm, self-trashing, and self-destruction. Rational self-love is inhibited. The mirror image of mental health.
Observing the behaviors of people with cluster B PDs leads to wrong inferences. They are compulsive, not free; chaotic not intentional (identity disturbance); always act abnormally and always in a way that brings opprobrium and worse (penalties).
Narcissist confuses external and internal objects and his cognition is distorted (grandiosity).
So, he is incapable of situational attribution, only of the dispositional kind with regards to the positive aspects of himself (grandiosity, hyperreflexivity) - and incapable of dispositional attribution only of the situational kind when it comes to the negative aspects of himself (alloplastic defenses).
He is incapable of any kind of attribution with regards to others. This is especially evident in the shared fantasy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Psychology of Border Violations in Mental Abuse
Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast
Centre of Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge.
On Apple Podcasts and Spotify: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/declarations/episodes/Season-7-Episode-6-The-Psychology-of-Border-Violations-in-Mental-Abuse-e246v1b
In our sixth episode, host Neema Jayasinghe is joined by previous podcast host and panelist, Dr Maryam Tanwir. With special guest, Professor Sam Vaknin, the episode unpacks discourses related to the psychology of personal border violations in mental abuse.
The conversation questions how borders and boundaries are not only demarcated, violated, or transgressed in global politics, but also at the level of the personal. Here, physical or mental abuse is a form of structured aggression, and can be surreptitious, coercive, or disguised in a myriad of ways.
Invariably, it involves the violation of our borders and boundaries - both personal and societal. In this episode, we explore these various levels of abuse and their psychological implications.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Grieving in the wake of narcissistic abuse is a fantasy. We mourn the shared fantasy via a fantasy of grief.
We internalize the narcissist’s snapshot of us which started off as a mental representation of reality and then became an idealized, fantastic, constant, internal object. We do it to both please the narcissist and to answer the question: what does he want from me? (Lacan’s neurotic fantasy).
Self-contained vs. incorporating fantasy: reality repressed or reframed (cathected fiction, symbols, signifying structure), involves compensatory wish fulfillment (future) or reconstruction (past): erotic, aggressive, self-aggrandising, ego-syntonic, soothing (defensive, to avoid trauma, Lacan), and experimental (testing out scenarios safely).
In a shared fantasy, these roles are outsourced, allowing for passivity and a sense of safety and stability. In this sense, the intimate partner in a shared fantasy is rendered a borderline.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In the wake of narcissistic abuse, attend therapy
only once you have eradicated the narcissist’s voice in your
mind (his introject). Otherwise, it will hijack the process and use
it against you.
With clinical psychologist @zukowska.daria
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Swipe left for additional screens. I am uploading to my academia.edu page my published academic articles as well as academic articles which cite my work (well over 1500 do!)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When we touch someone, our negatively charged electrons
bounce off theirs. What we sense is this mutual repulsion.
All human contact is, therefore, about overcoming negativity and rejection.
The only way to win the battle of life is to give up the fight.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Self-supply is critical in the regulation of the narcissistic
personality, especially during the schizoid phases. These are some of the
techniques the narcissist uses to self-supply:
Reframes reality
Inflated, counterfactual self-perception (good
person victimized or paranoid ideation)
Reassigns weights to sources of supply with you as
sole arbiter
Converts negative to positive supply (locus of
grandiosity)
Future or past orientation (will be adulated in
the future or would have been appreciated in the past)
Self-aggrandising referential ideation
Delusional revenge fantasies
Magical Thinking
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Atoms become gases, liquids, solids, and objects
by sharing their electrons.
Reality is, therefore founded on sharing and emanates from it.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WATCH Why Narcissist Hoovers, Replaces YOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACdRrnfcQKQ
WATCH "Hoovering": Narcissist Re-idealizes Discarded Sources of Narcissistic Supply https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Va32SSPWa1w
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Embracing Nothingness is the only rational solution to life’s conundrums.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Two
narcissists of the same type (somatic,
cerebral, classic, compensatory, covert, inverted, etc.) cannot maintain a
stable, long-term full-fledged, and functional relationship. Same goes for two
codependents or two coverts.
Soon: video about covert borderline with
borderline, covert narcissist, or codependent.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Column published in Brussels Morning. Video
available on my vakninmusings YouTube channel.
Europe is faced with a real war, not a cold one. The invasion of Ukraine engendered a domino
effect, a vortex which might easily consume countries such as Belarus and
Moldova and adversely affect Russia’s neighbors: Romania, Poland, the Baltic
states, and Scandinavia’s new NATO members. Even far-flung polities such as
Bulgaria and Serbia are bound to be sucked into the maelstrom.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You are out of the shared fantasy with your mentally ill ex.
But now reality itself feels unreal!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Rejection,
abandonment trigger separation insecurity and constitute
extreme narcissistic injury (trigger grandiosity cognitive distortion).
The cognitive dissonance is resolved via a mix of
aggression and passive-aggression.
Drama linked to hyperemotionality, fills the
existential void, a simulated and compressed life
Entitlement to be unique and exclusive as measured
via currency of attention.
Splitting (I am all good, s/he is all bad).
Projection
Hoovering is the ultimate goal unless
mortification sets in (Borderline: unsafe, Narcissist: publicly shaming)
Aggressive techniques (histrionic and psychopathic
comorbidities):
Revenge fantasies (rarely translated to action beyond
ostentatious demonstrative acts like a smear campaign because the fantasy is
perfect and action might fail and exacerbate the narcissistic injury).
Delusional reframing (I rejected him/her).
Actual violence.
Passive-aggressive techniques:
Triangulation (esp. emotionally injurious with
best friend, worst enemy, colleagues, stable of exes, and so on)
Setting you up for failure (undermining,
sabotaging, defeating, handicapping you):
Unrealistic demands or expectations.
Engineering situations that are bound to trip you
up.
Motivating others to withhold help, support, or
collaboration or to actively conspire against you.
Fostering an environment that requires talents,
skills, or knowledge that you do not possess or do not excel at.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We are not in direct contact with reality - only with our minds.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In a junk food joint, we don’t complain even when the food is
bad. In a Michelin restaurant, we raise hell even when the cutlery is dirty.
Some people are like good looking junk food: we
consume them just to have a good time or a one night stand. They are soon
forgotten and we expect nothing further from them.
Others are like a Michelin restaurant of the mind:
they hold the promise of intimacy and a profound, life-altering connection, maybe even love.
If they let us down, we never forgive or forget.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Autistic and dereistic thinking are the only exceptions to enactivism.
Ways of relating to reality, experience, logic, and to other people.
Fantasy-infused thoughts (dereism) or narcissistic and egocentric self-absorption (autistic).
These patients’s illogical and idiosyncratic cognitions derive from an overarching and all-pervasive daydreaming or fantasy life. They infuse people and events around them with completely subjective meanings.
They regard the external world as an extension or projection of the internal one.
Such patients often withdraw completely and retreat into his inner, private realm, unavailable to communicate and interact with others.
Examples: autists, narcissists, paranoids, delusional (religious).
Mindful Wealth Mastery AI channel https://www.youtube.com/@mindfulwealthmastery/videos
The Psychology of Border Violations in Mental Abuse (Declarations: The Human Rights Podcast, Centre of Governance and Human Rights, University of Cambridge)
Vaknin Musings channel https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
Sam Vaknin’s work on Academia.edu (top 0.5% of 270,000,000 academics) https://calmu.academia.edu/SamVaknin
Smear campaign debunked http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/rebuttal.html
Work in psychology: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you are nice, kind, and drama-averse, stay away from cluster B dark personalities: they need,
seek, and impose drama, even at the personal cost of being abused.
They are unforgiving when their cravings for drama
go unmet.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
People
belong to one of these four groups:
1. Scavenger hyenas
2. Predatory lions
3. Hyenas pretending to be lions.
4. Lions pretending to be hyenas.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
"Dead" mothers are emotionally unavailable, self-absorbed, withholding, frustrating, neglectful, and hurtful. I examine three types: the mother with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and the psychotic mother. The last 20 minutes are dedicated to a deeper analysis of Andre Green's work.
WATCH How to Be Good Enough Mother https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFTlUGFvQEU
WATCH 13 Signs of Mentally Ill Family (5th World Mental Health Congress) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxKkBkbOeMA
WATCH Are Fathers Needed? Mothers Are, For Sure! (Literature Review) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQd5jIQbfF0
LITERATURE
Green, André. (2001). The dead mother. In his Life narcissism/death narcissism (Andrew Weller, Trans.). London, New York: Free Associations Books.
The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green (New Library of Psychoanalysis), Gregorio Kohon, 1999
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Here is the bleeding-edge info about Antisocial Personality
Disorder and its extreme form, psychopathy. From heredity
and neuroscience to psychopathology and medication.
Just reload/refresh the page after YouTube’s
warning.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You are victimized through no fault of your own.
But, you choose to be a victim.
Victimhood is a grandiose
identity, self-defeating, toxic, and coercive.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The diversity of microorganisms in the gut and the ratios between different phyla of bacteria have a substantial effect on the brain and on mental health and illnesses, including Borderline Personality Disorder, Major Depressive Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Anxiety Disorders.
LITERATURE
The gut microbiome and mental health: advances in research and emerging priorities, by Andrew P. Shoubridge, Jocelyn M. Choo, Alyce M. Martin, Damien J. Keating, Ma-Li Wong, Julio Licinio & Geraint B. Rogers, Molecular Psychiatry volume 27, pages1908–1919 (2022)
Gut microbiome-brain axis and inflammation in temperament, personality and psychopathology by Alexander Sumich, Nadja Heym, Sabrina Lenzoni, Kirsty Hunter
Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, Volume 44, April 2022, 101101
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cobeha.2022.101101
Alterations of the gut microbiota in borderline personality disorder by
Hannah Rössler, Vera Flasbeck, Sören Gatermann, Martin Brüne
Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 158, July 2022, 110942
Pathoetiology and pathophysiology of borderline personality: Role of prenatal factors, gut microbiome, mu- and kappa-opioid receptors in amygdala-PFC interactions by George Anderson
Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
Volume 98, 2 March 2020, 109782
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Grandiosity is a diagnostic dimension in NPD, BPD, psychopathy, Bipolar
Disorder (the manic phase), paranoid PD, some psychotic disorders, and a host
of other mental health problems.
But grandiosity is not the same as pathological
narcissism, which includes many more clinical aspects.
Therefore, NPD has to be diagnosed separately in
all the above conditions (comorbidity).
If it is not diagnosed - then the patient is not a
narcissist, regardless of their grandiosity and haughtiness.
Thus, only a minority of borderlines and
psychopaths are narcissists.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Contradictory
expectations from one’s intimate partner are
unrealistic. No single person can be a passionate, exciting lover; an empathic,
patient friend; a stalwart companion; a good father/mother, cook, and
handyperson; an intellectual equal; an adventurer; a stable breadwinner; and
myriad other functions besides.
Hence the need to outsource and the recurrence of
emotional and sexual affairs, the disruptive outcomes of overwhelming,
all-pervasive ennui.
Continued here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/marriage.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissist’s insignificant other provides any 2
of the following 4
Ss:
Sex
Services
Supply
(narcissistic or sadistic)
Safety
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Wherever I am, I go shopping for books. This time, with a special aim in mind: to revive my mastery
of the Hebrew language after 27 years of absence and disuse.
So, I bought me 2 dictionaries (one more
contemporary than the other), several non-fiction titles (including the Zohar -
look it up), the Qur’an, Alice in Wonderland commentary - and a book of
children verse translated from the English. Found my own book of short stories
in a second hand store!
Swipe left for 2 amazing book-related initiatives
around the world!!!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist internalizes a “snapshot” of you (introjects you) and continues to interact only with
it, never with you out there. Narcissists never interact with external objects,
only with internal ones.
The narcissist punishes and devalues you every
time you deviate and diverge from the static, idealized snapshot.
Video by @shadowdeangelis
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Watch Child's Defense Against Madness: Personality Disorders (Schizotypy and Neoteny) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0az5F9igi8
Schizotypal, Schizoid, Paranoid Personality Disorders are pre-psychotic.
Role play in (erotic, aggressive, self-aggrandizing) fantasy (e.g., hero) about self (others=self)
Self-directed self-efficacy (wish-fulfilment and substitutive action as self-regulation)
Pathetiology: childhood trauma (PTSD)
Internal vs. External (hyperreflexivity)
Paranoia and Paranoid PD
Magical thinking (persecutory: demons or grandiose: hero, tasked by god)
Delusions (cognitive distortions such as grandiosity)
Hallucinations (stress in BPD)
Derealization and depersonalization
Lability and dysregulation (erratic)
Self-perception (e.g., as victim)
Anhedonia
Reduced affect display
Avolition
Asociality
WATCH Narcissist to Schizoid to Psychotic: Progression, Common Roots, Modernity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzYq6HvL9eM
LITERATURE
Psychosis and Schizophrenia-Spectrum Personality Disorders Require Early Detection on Different Symptom Dimensions by Frauke Schultze-Lutter, Igor Nenadic, and Phillip Grant
Front. Psychiatry, 11 July 2019, Sec. Psychopathology, Volume 10 - 2019 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00476
Psychotic symptoms in borderline personality disorder: developmental aspects by
Marialuisa Cavelti, Katherine Thompson, Andrew M. Chanen, Michael Kaess, Current Opinion in Psychology, Volume 37, February 2021, Pages 26-31
The Concept of Narcissism in Psychosis and in Severe Personality Disorders by Trifu, Simona; Zamfir, Raluca. Euromentor Journal; Bucharest Vol. 5, Iss. 1, (Mar 2014): 120-127.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How Narcissist Breaks Your Spirit: conditioning (both classical and operant), entraining, shared fantasy, coercive control, snapshotting.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The extent of the narcissist’s self-deception defies belief.
He even deceives himself into believing that he is
not deceiving himself.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“Empaths” are self-aggrandising professional victims, most likely covert narcissists. Everyone has empathy, even narcissists and psychopaths.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My
new concepts are now being shamelessly plagiarized and stolen - and not for the first time: “snapshotting” (confusing
external and internal or introjected objects), the dual mothership (regression
to infancy in intimate relationships), and the shared fantasy space, among
others.
I found one exception, a breath of fresh air: this
guy @shadowdeangelis (Cyberviking on TikTok).
The covert narcissist steals from you habitually:
your ideas, your life’s work, your girlfriends and wives, your job, your money,
anything he can.
He acts this way for 3 reasons:
Self-aggrandisement
Oneupmanship
Passive-aggression (symbolic destruction of the
frustrating object of narcissistic rivalry and malicious envy)
To be able to face himself in the mirror and to
allay his justified fear of retribution, the covert narcissist deploys a host
of good object infantile primitive defenses:
denial (the things I am stealing do not really
belong to him and actually what I am doing is for the greater good);
repression (I don’t recall the stolen ideas or
goods being someone else’s);
splitting (he is a bad person and deserves what I
am doing to him, so my acts of pure theft are punitive and morally upright); and
projection (he stole these things from me or I
paid for them, so I am just reclaiming them).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Is malicious envy a form of sadism? Wish to destroy your betters is. Covert narcissist’s pseudo-humility and victimhood stance masks sadistic malicious envy. He compensates with fantasies (good person, superhero against supervillains, behind the scenes power, rescuer/savior/healer, etc.)
Our wellbeing depends on connectivity and narcissists are hurtful because they deny this possibility.
Sadistic component in narcissistic pathological related to power, not only to pain. More precisely: to the power to inflict pain, even if it is not used. Sadism is mediated via sadistic rivalry and malicious envy.
Sadism can be externalized-aggressive (inflicting pain) or passive-aggressive (frustrating, withholding, avoiding).
Wary of possible retribution, narcissists withdraw into a world of fantasy where they are adulated, loved, and shielded from the consequences of their actions (because they are preciously unique or childlike).
LITERATURE
Pathological narcissism and sadistic personality: The role of rivalry and malicious envy by Guyonne Rogier, Alessandro Amo, Beatrice Simmi, Patrizia Velotti, Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 205, April 2023, 112097, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2023.112097
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist acts childlike and weaponizes his infantile vibe in order to:
1. Manipulate people to do his bidding
(“How can you do this to a toddler, not give them
what they want?”)
2. Avoid and evade adult responsibilities and
culpabilities
(Learned helplessness coerces others to step in, a
codependent strategy)
3. Disarm potential intimate partners and
adversaries by provoking parental reflexes (“I am just a kid, don’t hurt me, I
need your love and forgiveness”)
4. Garner narcissistic supply (“He is so creative!
He sees the world through a child’s eyes!”)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Welcome to our conference! We are delighted to
have Sam Vaknin with us as a member of our organizing committee.
Sam Vaknin brings a wealth of experience and
knowledge that will help make this a successful event. Please join us in
welcoming Sam Vaknin into the team!
Sam Vaknin’s presentation
at the 40th Global Psychiatry and Mental Health Conference, July 17-18, 2023
Is malicious envy a form of sadism? Wish to
destroy your betters is. Covert narcissist’s pseudo-humility and victimhood
stance masks sadistic malicious envy. He compensates with fantasies (good
person, superhero against supervillains, behind-the-scenes power,
rescuer/savior/healer, etc.)
Conference Website
Follow Social Media pages
Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter: https://twitter.com/conferenceseri
About Conference Series:
Meet Inspiring Speakers and Experts at our 3000+
Global Conference Series Events with over 1000+ Conferences, 1000+ Symposiums,
and 1000+ Workshops on Medical, Pharma, Engineering, Science, Technology,
Business, and Non-Medical conferences all over the world like Dubai, USA, UK,
Japan, Singapore, Spain, Netherlands, Canada, Sweden, Scotland, Switzerland,
Belgium, Germany, Russia, Czech Republic, Italy, Ireland, France, Austria, etc.
Website: https://www.conferenceseries.com
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A simple principle in life:
Give up on …
Getting more of what you already have
Or
On obtaining what you don’t need
In order to secure
What you lack
Or
What you require more of.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
You can see overt-grandiose narcissists coming. They are in your face. You can take protective measures. Not so with covert narcissists: they snakes in the grass, slow-acting poison.