Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Watch
Covert Narcissist’s Sadistic Envy Fantasy (conference presentation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beIvpL4Fz4E
WATCH an honest person in the last 6 minutes of this video.
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 on Instagram (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 hyperreflexive consuming 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).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The art of con artists is their con.
They could have easily become what they falsely
claim to be. So, why don’t they?
Because they abhor, loathe, and are terrified of
intimacy and commitment.
They prefer fantasy where these are not required
and they can bail out at any time.
They substitute drama for reality because the
former is thrilling and has an expiry date.
They are too easily bored with the world. They
need to be bigger than life in order to feel alive at all.
Narcissistic fraudsters are also grandiose. When
confronted with the truth about who and what they are, they experience
life-threatening shame.
They con and scam in order to ward off depression
and suicidal ideation. It is a survival strategy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Column in
Brussels Morning
Private contracting of military functions has been
on the rise since the first Gulf War (1991). With the collapse of the USSR, the
militaries of the main Western protagonists, the USA and the UK, have been
drastically scaled back, a process known as the "peace dividend". At
the same time, economists and politicians throughout the world embarked on an
ambitious plan involving the privatization of state-owned firms and functions.
Inevitably, the two fads coalesced and huge chunks of hitherto state-monopolized
warfare were contracted out, outsourced, and even offshored.
Third World countries have always leveraged
mercenaries to subdue adversaries at home and abroad. Many armies in Africa and
Asia and even in certain parts of Europe (such as the Balkans) were or are
being run by third party contractors who sometimes also actively participate in
the fighting.
As far as the USA and UK are concerned, until the
Iraq war, private contractors were mainly responsible for logistics, training,
and security tasks. This narrow definition of their roles is in flux, though.
Private soldiers of fortune may yet be hired and rented out even by the
governments of the West, though I regard this as extremely unlikely.
Oddly, PMCs had a limited role in the Global War on Terror (GWOT).
Granted, private military companies are involved in the provision of
logistical, training, and security support to forces on the ground and they
also collaborate with field agents of secret services (such as the CIA). But,
asymmetrical warfare is still carried out largely by regular armies, backed by
intelligence gathered by state-run agencies.
Continued in the video on my vakninmusings channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Former cult members are typically gullible, mentally unwell, and unintelligent.
Many of them are virulent covert narcissists.
Driven by malicious envy, humiliation, and
narcissistic rivalry, they seek to expose and take down cult leaders in order
to engender a cult following for themselves.
They maintain a facade of pseudo-humility and the
semblance of a moral crusade, casting their relentless self-promotion as a
morality play of good vs. evil (splitting).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
As many of you
know, my ideas and work are recently being egregiously plagiarized and monetized. The typical plagiarist is a collapsed (often
covert) narcissist.
To be able to face himself in the mirror and to
allay his justified fear of retribution, the plagiarist deploys a host of “I am
a good object” infantile primitive defenses:
denial (the ideas and work I am stealing do not
really belong to their current originator and actually what I am doing is for
the greater good);
repression (I don’t recall the stolen ideas or
work 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 pilfered these ideas and work from
me or I paid for them, so I am just reclaiming them).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Nothingness is freedom, a profound liberation, embracing your authentic essence.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I have been nominated for the 2023 Global Mental Health
Award.
Starting in July, summits will be held all over
the world (see schedule of the G20 Health Series Summits on the left side of
the image). This is the invitation.
I am faced with tough competition, but it is an
honor to be one of the finalists.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Academia.edu, the world’s largest academic website, with
close to 230,000,000 members, ranked me in the top 0.1% of all academics
in the world.
Swipe left: my work is cited in over 1460 academic
works (articles, papers, and books). The actual figure is much higher, closer
to 5000 (some articles cite Vaknin, S. and so on).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Last 1:30 The Narcissist’s Schizoid Core by @shadowdeangelis on Instagram (Cyberviking on TikTok).
AI (Artificial Intelligence) follows social media as the
second wave of the narcissistic takeover of the world.
Grandiosity precludes cognitive miser (fear of
making a mistake).
Hyperreflexivity: narcissist ventriloquist
with susceptible dummies
Mimesis or real intelligence? Beyond Turing test
to a qualitative version with qualified professionals (What makes intelligence
human? Sentience?)
General headline intelligence, deep learning,
expert systems
How to safely interact with both AI and narcissists
AI Hallucinations vs. narcissist’s fantasies
Omniscience
Can AI help victims of narcissistic abuse cope
with narcissists
Legislation: beyond criminal code into social
engineering
Sam Vaknin column archive in Brussels Morning: https://brusselsmorning.com/author/samvaknin
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. It filters, blocks out, falsifies, and reframes reality in order to allow the narcissist’s fantasy to take over and become his only reality.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
If you feel estranged - no longer yourself - you have been infected by the narcissist via the twin mechanisms of entraining and coercive snapshotting (introjection).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Your luck doesn’t make you - YOU make your luck.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist is a reflective shell wrapped
around an empty
schizoid core.
Video courtesy @shadowdeangelis
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Never make yourself the custodian or guarantor of other people’s emotions or happiness.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
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.
It is time to prepare for a repeat of the 1930s:
increase defense spending, reintroduce conscription, and enhance the production
of armaments across the board. We must not repeat the mistakes that helped
foster Hitler’s myth of invincibility in 1936-1939: no appeasement this time.
Continued in the video on my vakninmusings channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist processes speech in a very unusual manner.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
People misperceive truth tellers as cruel, envious, hateful, and rejecting.
People misperceive deceitful fakes as empathic,
kind, nice, and compassionate.
And this is the truth.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Both Freud and Marx maintained the view that all
religions are mass psychegenic illnesses: socially sublimated delusional
disorders. But many people hold dearer than life various artefacts associated
with these beliefs, counterfactual as they may be.
Burning the Qur’an is an
act intended to provoke pain and indignation in these faithful. It is nothing
short of cruel and sadistic. Taunting the mentally ill should invariably be
outlawed. There ought to be limits to free speech and this should be one of
them.
Video, based on a column in Brussels Morning,
available on my vakninmusings YouTube channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some people are torn between the need to love
someone - and a dread of intimacy, the ineradicable need to be a loner.
Aloneness is a golden cage.
Luxurious prison.
Beloved grave.
Such people are attached to being alone, love it,
confuse solitude with freedom and independence.
But many of them - not all! - do feel lonely and
crave a partner in their lives.
So, to square the circle, they always choose mates
who are unavailable and thus do not threaten their cherished hermetic existence.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WATCH Narcissistic Abuse Healing and Recovery Playlist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCKm2lywhZg&list=PLsh_y_ett4o1_RZDY0EJMBzuWfDOHrgoA
WATCH 20 Signs that Narcissist Infected YOU (Zombie Narcissism) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WqokA5nXVfU
No disparaging introjects traceable back to him (incl. flying monkeys)
No ego dystony or hesitancy in decision-making
No doubting your judgment
Independent reality testing restored (no cognitive distortions)
Sense of agency and self-efficacy restored
Autonomous motivation
No catastrophizing (imminent doom)
No anticipatory anxiety
No addictive cravings or sentimental nostalgia coupled with separation insecurity (abandonment anxiety)
No seeking of same type partner (from narcissistic to anaclitic mate selection)
No maternal or parental impulses (no narcissistic transferences)
No “us”, only “you” (no merger or fusion in a shared fantasy as well as intact boundaries, no enmeshment or engulfment)
No attempts to mind read
No self-sacrificial, people pleasing impulses (no emotional blackmail)
No infantile defenses
No self-idealization or self-devaluation, just realistic introspection and self-awareness
Restored functioning: social, workplace, as a parent, empathy
No emoting by proxy (crying in a movie)
No trust aversion or dread of intimacy
No victimhood stance – assuming personal responsibility
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists overshare because they consider themselves amazing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists and psychopaths feel positively
ill-at-ease or even threatened by love, intimacy, compassion,
or kindness.
They assume that the other party is faking it, is
mocking or pitying them, is inanely naive, or is trying to manipulate them.
Deep inside they regard themselves as both
unloveable and unworthy of love or even mere civility.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Article in Journal of Psychiatry and Neurology
about IPAM (my Intrapsychic
Activation Model).
More about my work in psychology as well as many
additional articles: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html
A correction: I am now a former visiting professor
in SFU, Russia.
CIAPS (Commonwealth for International Advanced
Professional Studies) is based in Cambridge, UK, Toronto, Canada; and with an
outreach campus in Lagos, Nigeria.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Extremely
high intelligence is a liability in interpersonal relationships:
it precludes meaningful communication and creates corrosive friction.
It is tolerated by an intimate partner only when
it bears the promise of being passed on to the couple’s progeny.
In childless relationships, inordinately high IQ
is a dyadic death knell.
Spirituality, spiritual factor, spiritual faith healing
Mental healing, psychic healing
Empirical self, nominative self
Geisteswissenschaftliche Psychologie
Naturwissenschaftliche Psychologie
Verstehende Psychologie
Existentialism, existential psychology
Being-in-the-world and world design
Dasein, authenticity, and essence
Humanistic psychology and human-potential movement
Fulfillment model
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The grandiosity gap between the narcissist’s inflated, fantastic self-perception
and his less than stellar reality cause him to delusionally deny this
discrepancy and demand that others ignore it, too. This is the pathoetiology of
the narcissist’s entitlement.
Video courtesy @shadowdeangelis
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Being an a**hole is not a crime - it is an anatomical fact.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissist
loves through the death instinct, kills the
love object by removing its ontological attributes: internalizing it and then
disabling (“freezing”) it. Coercive snapshotting completes the process of
entraining.
Read this: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuWiQLQMpF4/
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Women
get attracted to men not because of WHAT they do - but because
of WHO they are.
Narcissists emphasize the former.
Nice, kind, empathic, lovable guys - the latter.
With healthy people, being aggressive requires an
effort.
With narcissists and psychopaths, acting nice or even just
well-mannered is an exertion.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists reify the death instinct. They render everyone in their lives inert, inanimate, and mummified. They convert external objects into immutable internal ones embedded in dark fantasies of unmitigated coercive control.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
This unsavory turn of events has been predicted
long ago: compassion
fatigue, the point in time when Ukrainian refugees
become a burden rather than welcome guests, subject to outpourings of
compassion.
The maximal geopolitical and military positions of
both Russia and Ukraine preclude any diplomatic resolution of the conflict.
Mind you, Ukraine is the victim here, so enforced symmetry would be immoral.
Morally, Russia has to give.
But the indolent, decadent, and sated West is
fatigued. The novelty wore off as did the self-congratulatory feel good
grandiose factor. The whole conundrum has lost its jaded entertainment value.
Time to move on to another reality TV show.
The recent events in Czechia reify this
Europe-wide self-indulgent mood. A Roma man was murdered by a Ukrainian
newcomer. This has been only the latest in a string of bloodied skirmishes
between these two minorities.
Continued in the video and in my column in
Brussels Morning.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How the covert narcissist changes you for the worse.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Picsart is an AI-assisted photo editor app. When you ask Picsart to
depict someone, they return a processed image of that person, a rendition of
him or her. Until now!
@photographyfaust typed “Sam Vaknin” into Picsart and this is
what she got!
Visit her Instagram account to learn more about
her truly bizarre experience when she tried various inputs to get Picsart to
yield a human image of me - to no avail!
It seems that Picsart exposed who I truly am: a
nonhuman intelligence from a galaxy far away! No wonder I am so dead set
against granting the masses access to AI 😉
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Cluster B personalities are awry, broken, damaged, and dangerous if left untreated.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All you need to know about healing and recovery via self-love.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist’s abuse is also
a way of testing his or her newfound maternal figure (aka
“intimate” partner or insignificant other):
How far can I go without losing him (or her)?
Will s/he love and embrace me unconditionally
never mind how harsh and unjust and hurtful I am?
Will s/he ultimately abandon and betray me, as I
fully expect them to do? (Self-fullfilling prophecy or preemptive abandonment)?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist first converts you into his mommy, a maternal figure. He then tries to transform you into a transitional object. But this is mission impossible: the role of the transitional object is to allow the child to safely separate from mother. Disappointed and frustrated, the narcissist devalues and discards you.
NEW PLAYLIST Shared Fantasy, Dual Mothership, Snapshotting
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csukYBQpyHE&list=PLsh_y_ett4o0Few_pweXhdCigXrXubWNx
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WATCH YOU and YOUR BODY after Domestic Violence, Rape, Battering: Perpetrator and Society Collude https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U-MJtEMCCA
Coercive, synchronized, or mirror snapshotting (introjection): narcissist entrains you to introject his expectations (your idealized introject in his mind), to share the internal object (=merger, fusion)
Only if departure from previous identity, not including bodily signs of trauma and abuse:
Decline in empathy (post traumatic)
Irritability
Impulsivity
Mood lability
Emotional dysregulation
Suicidal or self-destructive ideation
Self-defeating and self-handicapping (e.g., perfectionism or procrastination)
Cognitive distortions (e.g., grandiosity or Dunning-Kruger)
Aggression or Passive-agression
Recklessness
Identity disturbance (“this is not me!”)
Defiance and contumaciousness
Thrill, novelty, and risk seeking
Projection
Splitting or dichotomous thinking
Denial
Exploitativeness
Repetition compulsions
Automatic negative thoughts
Dissociation
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There is only one way to go about it: the EU needs to suspend members which hanker after Moscow and Beijing more than they care to
imitate Brussels and Berlin.
The EU is the reification of a philosophy, the
reincarnation of an ideology of liberal democracy at its fairest and best.
Countries like Hungary and Poland taint and compromise this vision. They have
no more claim to the EU than Turkey does. They should go their separate ways.
They have no place in the EU.
My column in Brussels Morning available in video
format on my vakninmusings channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Trauma bonding is a form of collaborative self-harm and fulfills the same functions as self-mutilation.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Deliberately frustrating is a form of sadism:
You need to be needed? I am self-sufficient!
You want to love me? I am an emotionless and
heartless robot!
You wish to spend time with me? I am a workaholic.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Passed 15,000 followers on Linkedin including more than 14,000 mental health practitioners and academics from all over the world: psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, professors, researchers, authors, and neuroscientists.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissistic abuse involves multiple parties, not least of whom is the victim. Here is how to cope with it in various settings and circumstances.
Brian Barnes Wellbeing, BSc HDip RGN RPN DipHyp brianbarneswellbeing.com, 0879270045
mindyou podcast anchor.fm/mindyou1
Apple podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/mindyou-podcast/id1552410164
Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/17W98ShxKjc0sd3UVRZRrm
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Money means a lot, but beyond a certain quantity, it does not equate to or generate happiness. On the contrary: it diminishes it.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Inverted narcissists and codependents pretend that the narcissist’s relentless abuse has no effect on them. But, of course, it does. No contact is the only path to recovery and healing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Healthy people are best advised to trust themselves way more than they trust others.
Narcissists are best advised to trust no one,
least of all themselves.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Many online YouTubers have corrupted the meanings of words and phrases borrowed from clinical psychology (examples: gaslighting or flashbacks). Additionally, with zero credentials in the field of cluster B personality disorders, they came up with nonsense "diagnoses" like empath or neglectful narcissist.
How to recognize gaslighting and respond to it https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/04/15/gaslighting-definition-relationship-abuse-response/
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
It is not about enjoying life. Life is not Disneyland.
Life is hard work and not fun at all.
It is about self-actualization: realizing your
full potential.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Depression may be better conceived as a cognitive distortion rather than a mood disorder. It involves catastrophizing and a host of infantile psychological defense mechanisms. But sometimes it is a positive adaptation.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Trauma-induced anxiety is at the core of cluster B personality disorders.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WATCH Narcissist’s Betrayal Fantasy: Painful Mommy Separation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF7mvEbaNEA
WATCH Narcissist Pays Heavy Price for Betrayal Fantasy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mq1NA3WGRZ0
WATCH Masochistic Covert Antinarcissist https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXK2Latm6Is
Narcissist's "love" is sado-masochistic because of early childhood conditioning to associate love with betrayal, withdrawal, avoidance, hurt, and frustration-aggression.
In childhood, the aggression is internalized. Hence the masochism.
The narcissist needs to coerce the partner to hurt him within the fantasy framework role of her maternal reenactment. Hence the abuse (projective identification and reaction formation).
The narcissist's sadism is self-punitive and anticipatory: it engenders the very masochistic pleasure of being punished and agonized. This is sadistic supply.
The partner's compliant submissiveness or refusal to engage in her assigned role is perceived as a passive-aggressive denial of gratification and leads to the escalation of abusive sadism.
Submissiveness also leads to escalation owing to growing tolerance and desensitization.
A reactively abusive (or plain abusive or predatory) partner is perceived as maternally loving and caring. This ameliorates the narcissist's abuse but creates abandonment anxiety and infantile (regressive) dependency on masochistic supply.
So, the narcissist is in one of two states in the shared fantasy: sado-masochistically gratified by a punitive mother figure - or sado-masochistically frustrated by a truly loving mature partner.
The former leads to attachment, cathexis, and dependency and then to attempted separation-individuation from the maternal figure via devaluation and discard.
The latter leads to sadistic and coercive narcissistic abuse and a power play. The narcissist must have his way or annihilate the frustrating object.
MOOD DISORDERS
Mood disorders exist when the changes in mood are not secondary, not mediated via a cognitive distortion, such as grandiosity or catastrophizing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists don’t do intimacy and regard empathy as a weakness. The narcissist’s insignificant other is not intimate, neither is s/he a partner. S/he is fungible, replaceable, interchangeable, dispensable, and disposable.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
(Rant starts 05:56) Sado-masochism applies to non-romantic relationships as well: same dynamic of using sadism to provoke reactive abuse for masochistic supply.
The narcissist is the cause of the reactive abuse, he makes it happen. So, it enhances his sense of omnipotence (grandiosity) - the opposite of narcissistic injury.
Source of cognitive distortions such as grandiosity or catastrophizing (both predispose to depression) could be: compensatory to early childhood abuse and trauma; brain abnormalities; societal anomie; technology; peer pressure and conformity; fatalistic, defeatist, or deterministic culture; or expectations (esp. of significant others).
RANT
If you give flowers to a woman on a first date you may end up in prison as a sexist lovebomber.
But if you recommend suicide to a patient, you get paid for a therapy session.
If you befriend people IRL, you are a mentally ill codependent people pleaser.
But if you befriend them online, you are cool and hip.
If you read books, you are an incel nerd.
But if you play video games, you fit in and fun to be with.
If you speak the truth, you can be sued.
If you flatter and cajole and fake and bullshit, you are a global guru.
Sex is meaningless and casual, promiscuity is an accomplishment, virginity a repellent liability, adultery is universal and fun;
Divorce and reciprocal abuse are the norms in all manner of so called "relationships", intimacy is threatening, courting is harassment;
Expertise is suspect, mocked, and rejected;
Charitable acts are vile conspiracies, technology is slavery, erudition is derided, truthism and malignant grandiose egalitarianism abound;
Entitlement pervades; career criminals are martyrs, law enforcement monsters, con artists and actors rule and rock;
Social interactions and sexuality are vanishing, loneliness is in vogue;
The occult, the paranoid, and the irrational are considered superior to science and rationality, books and learning are niche pursuits;
Birthrates tumbled under the replacement rate, marriage and parenthood are widely shunned and frowned upon;
Only the virtual is real, censorship is praised, rabid and escalated self-promotion touted;
Plutodemocracies and authoritarian psychopaths govern, poverty, hardship, and sickness the norm worldwide.
And this was before Nature declared war on us.
I count my blessings: I don't have much longer to live. This is one planet I would be delighted to check out of. It is not mine and I have no idea how I ended up here. I want to go home.
I hate this brave, new world where:
Illiteracy is 140 characters long and has a face-book;
Everyone has a thousand virtual "friends", but virtually no real friend;
Every child has a mother and multiple fathers, but no parents;
Knowledge is a matter of opinion and opinions a matter of fads;
Our idols sport muscles and vocal cords, but little else besides;
The right to vote is universal, but the will to vote is not;
Everyone has a right to free speech, but little of value to say;
Extramarital sex is considered recreation and monogamy a throwback;
The only ideology is self-gratification and collectives are mere dim memories;
The only certainty is uncertainty and the only permanent fixture is change (for change's sake);
Obsolescence is the driver of innovation, but science, art, and literature are obsolete;
As men and women lose their traditional roles, confusion and inter-gender enmity reign. In a unisex world, homosexuality, or sexual abstinence are rational choices. As malignant, narcissistic individualism is on the rise, the species is dying out. In many countries - including major ones such as Japan, Russia, and Germany - the population is declining precipitously.
More than one third of the youth of these places opt for celibacy and singlehood. Sperm counts have plummeted by a whopping 70%.
We are in the throes of vanishing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist coerces his
intimate partner- his newfound maternal figure - to reactively
abuse him because his “dead” mother taught him to associate love with hurt.
The partner’s reactive abuse does not cause
narcissistic injury because the narcissist triggers it at will, he is in
control of the entire process. Her reactivity buttresses his grandiosity.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
WATCH Fight Coercive Control, Collusive Infidelity https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZYCqmkkrsY
WATCH Narcissism/ Coercive Control Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA56MBj4m5Y
Passive-aggressive (obstructive)
Hidden (occult): fakes empathy, rescuer-savior-healer, helpfulness, altruism, compassion
Manipulative
Nonverbal
Punitive avoidance and withdrawal (to play on abandonment anxiety)
Creates secret coalitions against you, smear campaigns (hiding behind others)
Controlling
COERCIVE CONTROL
Another much misused term, like gaslighting or narcissist
Victims intimidated into altering routines, modifying behaviors
Social isolation
Life constriction
Invasive monitoring and supervision
Deprivation of needs, including basic needs
Control and micromanagement of choices, decisions, behaviors, and actions
Denial of access to communication, money, friends, family, help, succor
Terrorizing, degradation, humiliation
Multiple modalities of abuse: verbal, physical, financial, sexual
Conditioning (compliance rewarded) leads to automatism and impaired reality testing
Premeditated
Not outcome of mental illness
Some victims misperceive coercive control as love, interest, attention, insecurity.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
In 1995, I was the first person to out himself as a narcissist. To be able to communicate my experiences, I had to coin a whole new corpus of language, still widely in use today.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The ultimate expression of love is to give your
loved ones the freedom to seek happiness in any way and with whoever they see
fit.
Possessiveness and jealousy are the antonyms of love.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissistic abuse is unlike any other type of abuse. It negates you. So, in its aftermath, you need not only to recover but to rebuild yourself, brick by brick.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The mentally ill are a fraternity of brothers and sisters all around the
globe.
No one can truly understand the desperate doomed
attempt to make sense of the world, of others, of ourselves - to no avail.
Cancer of the soul for life, our constant companion
Learn to forgive yourself - you are doing the best
you can but you are disabled
Forgive them for they know not what they are doing
and they are afraid of you and infuriated at your shortcomings which deny them
their dreams.
Aspire to do better, to succeed, to surmount your
handicap - but welcome defeat and embrace failure as the fixtures of your life
Grieve not for who and what you could have been
and rejoice that you are despite all odds
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
An evil person at the service of a good cause does not render that person
good or the cause evil.
A good person at the service of an evil cause does
render that person evil .
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The craven covert narcissist creates coalitions of flying monkeys and kamikaze suicide bombers - including women and children - as human shields.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Collapsed and covert narcissists maliciously envy successful narcissists way more than they are jealous of accomplished non-narcissists.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist entertains simultaneously
contradictory thoughts, beliefs, values, emotions, motivations, and other
psychological processes ("dissonant thinking"). He therapeutically resolves the resulting
dissonances by using several techniques and by self-imputing godlike perfection.
Use the playlists to search the channel by theme
and vaknin-talks.com to search the transcripts of my videos.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Bernd Huber captured my work on the psychodynamics of narcissism in a single diagram.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Real (echt) narcissistic supply is like high-octane fuel to the narcissistic vehicle.
Spurious supply is contaminated fuel that damages the engine.
Negative supply should be distinguished from
low-grade or fake supply (collectively known as spurious or ersatz narcissistic
supply).
Low-grade narcissistic supply comes from sources
which cannot be idealized, no matter how hard the narcissist tries and to what
extent he blocks out and denies reality. The type of narcissistic supply
determines whether its source can be idealized or not. For instance:
compliments on his intellectual achievements doled out to a cerebral narcissist
by an intellectually-challenged person would never pass muster and would never
qualify as narcissistic supply.
Fake narcissistic supply is tinged with ulterior
motives and hidden agendas. Sources of fake supply compliment the narcissist in
order to manipulate him or some third person or in order to accomplish a goal.
Endowed with cold empathy, the narcissist picks up on these true motivations
and feels injured and slighted. Many narcissists test their sources of supply
repeatedly: they engineer situations intended to expose the sincerity or lack
thereof of the supply and the consistency and authenticity of the source’s
conduct.
Narcissistic supply is either static or dynamic.
Dynamic supply upholds, enhances, buttresses, and abets the narcissist’s
grandiose and fantastic False Self. The contents of dynamic narcissistic supply
and the identity of its sources conform to the narcissist’s image of himself,
his “destiny”, the evolution of his life, and his place in the Cosmos. Static
supply fails to do so despite the fact that it is largely positive, reliably
recurrent, and abundant. Static supply is akin to “hospital rations” or “junk
food”: it maintains the narcissist for a while, but, as an exclusive diet, it
results in malnutrition (deficient narcissistic supply). Static supply is
repetitive, “boring” because it is predictable, and pedestrian. It does not
propel the narcissist into new “highs”, nor does it reinflate him when he is
down.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A completely new way of perceiving victimhood and the victim's role in the abusive dyad.
With Macy Nelson, The Phoenix Rising Podcast
(thephoenixrisingpodcast.com) on multiple platforms, starting August 1.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The best advice about revenge, justice, and
retribution against the narcissist. @shadowdeangelis has an incisive and unerring grasp of the
most intricate dynamics of narcissism and narcissistic abuse.
But, his advantages over me are his brevity and
accessible language. Unlike me, he is not pompous or verbose. Don’t miss his
amazing capsules of practical wisdom backed by cutting-edge latest research.
Bravo!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Anniversary of my first year as Visiting
Professor of Psychology in Southern Federal University (SFU), Rostov-on-Don, Russian Federation. I taught there between
2017-2022.
In the description of the video I uploaded today
to my YouTube channel, you can find a link to download a file with a few of my
classes in SFU (Warning: big file, 40 Gb).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Simplicity
trumps complexity every time. What cannot be captured fully in few
words is not worth saying.
The simple pleasures in life are the most
rewarding.
The most basic messages motivate us maximally.
The most atavistic relationships are the most
durable.
The most primordial fears are also the most potent.
Primeval structures outlive complex ones and
overtake them.
Complexity is an illusion, the outcome of our
human limitations and pathologies.
In truth, nature, life, the cosmos and everything
in it are all profoundly and aesthetically simple.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Two dozen studies prove that social justice and political movements have been hijacked by profit-maximizing narcissists, psychopaths, vindictive members, and grandiose ADHD patients.
LITERATURE
WATCH Narcissists, Eternal Victims, Trauma, Psychosis: Splitting the Inner Dialog https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmhOPnWN4-0
WATCH Victimhood Movements Hijacked by Narcissists and Psychopaths https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBpxFxMAztA
Ok, E., Qian, Y., Strejcek, B., & Aquino, K. (2020, July 2). Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000329
Waismel-Manor I, Kaplan YR, Shenhav SR, Zlotnik Y, Dvir Gvirsman S, Ifergane G (2023) ADHD and political participation: An observational study. PLoS ONE 18(2): e0280445. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280445
Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 165, 15 October 2020, 110134
The tendency for interpersonal victimhood: The personality construct and its consequences
Rahav Gabay, Boaz Hameiri, Tammy Rubel-Lifschitz, Arie Nadler
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110134
Gollwitzer, Mario. (2021). Matters arising from Gabay, R., Hameiri, B., Rubel-Lifschitz, R., & Nadler, A. (2020). The tendency for interpersonal victimhood: The personality construct and its consequences. Personality and Individual Differences, 165, 110134. Personality and Individual Differences. 168. 110294. 10.1016/j.paid.2020.110294.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Another excellent video by @shadowdeangelis
A useful concept in this context is the
narcissist’s conversion of idealized objects into
persecutory objects.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Victimhood makes sense of reality in a way that is self-serving by
reducing it to a morality play of angels vs. demons.
Victimhood is a splitting defense (narcissists and
borderlines use it to cast themselves as victims).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Are narcissists also codependent? Are codependents always narcissistic? Translated to Portuguese by @mirna_liz37 Thank you!
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The self-help industry is toxic, riddled with con artists and with mentally ill gurus, "healers", coaches, self-styled "experts", and self-appointed rescuers and saviors.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The meeting between the narcissist and his
victim is a meeting of two hungers: the victim is
hungry for love and intimacy and acceptance – and the narcissist is hungry for
existence.
The narcissist tries to become through the victim.
The Narcissist tries to exist through the victim.
But the sad irony is that the only way for the
narcissist to exist through the victim is to abscond with her existence.
The only way for the narcissist to become through
the victim is to deny the victim her own becoming.
On the other end of the equation, the only way for
the victim to obtain love from the narcissist is to stop being, to not be.
The only way for her to maintain intimacy with the
narcissist is to become as much as an absence as he is.
This is the predicament and the conundrum of the
shared fantasy: it is a meeting of two irreconcilable, incompatible, hungers.
Excerpt from interview with @azamaliofficial
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Here is some breaking news: Russia and Ukraine compete
in the same export markets for grain and fertilizer. Russia has zero incentive to help Ukraine with its outflows
of both. Russia has all the reasons in the world to obstruct Ukraine’s exports,
especially since both polities are at war.
Continued in the video on my vakninmusings YouTube
channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Entitlement and instant gratification
Unrealistic expectations
Intimacy cloud
Wealth transfer (transactionalism in late onset
marriages)
Communication issues
No love
No intimacy
No partnership
Premature commitment
Addictions
Domestic violence
Infidelity
No succor
Exhaustion
Financial problems
Loss of sense of self
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
One day
Soon
I will stop.
My heart will stop.
My brain will stop
This whirring contraption of ideas
Will stop.
My lungs, too.
My eyes will glaze over
With the horrified realization that it is all true.
One dies.
A furnaced breeze will ruffle
Through yellowed papers
And sepia memories
In the minds of others.
Until they, too,
Will stop.
Poetry of Healing and Abuse http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/contents.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Both narcissists and psychopaths
are users and takers.
When you are of any use to them, they are
charming, into you, solicitous, and helpful.
When you have nothing left to offer, they become
cold, contemptuous, dismissive, and impatient.
Both types use a shared fantasy to mind control. But
the narcissist is delusional (believes that the fantasy is real) while the
psychopath is merely scheming and manipulative.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Reductionism
and a replication crisis are dooming psychology to
remain a literary pursuit rather than a science.
With Azam Ali @azamaliofficial
This excerpt is available on my vakninmusings
channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
To survive narcissistic abuse, victims deceive themselves in multiple ways.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
My videos translated to Portuguese: Narcissismo Com Mirna https://youtube.com/@NarcisismocomMirna
WATCH Narcissist’s 3 Depressions https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjZkrLE9mes&feature=youtu.be
WATCH Bipolar Disorder Misdiagnosed as Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-i7Y7atsqk&feature=youtu.be
Narcissism is fantasy defense gone awry and writ large.
Mediated via cognitive distortions such as grandiosity, internalization, and hyperreflexivity lead to impaired reality testing (examples)
Fantasy can be euphoric or dysphoric
Euphoric fantasy indistinguishable from manic phase in Bipolar Disorder and involves grandiosity via inflation and incorporation.
Involves internal locus of control and autoplastic defenses.
Separation-individuation is a case of euphoric fantasy.
Dysphoric fantasy indistinguishable from depression and involves grandiosity via paranoia and referential ideation.
Involves external locus of control and alloplastic defenses.
Devaluation of a persecutory object, narcissistic injury, and narcissistic mortification are all cases of dysphoric fantasy.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Translations of my videos to Portuguese and to Russian. Swipe left to see the channels.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist needs his partner to abuse him in order to justify her devaluation as a persecutory object. This inexorable devaluation leads to the successful attainment of separation-individuation from her as a maternal figure. The same dynamic applies to female narcissists as well.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Pathological narcissism is a severe mental illness that combines elements from many other psychological disorders and diseases.
Norman Bates’s mother is the narcissist’s ideal partner.
With @gurvinmari and @dianakein
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mother of origin is source of frustration, hurt, shame, and rage,
often unconsciously. She mortifies the narcissist.
Mother is illegitimate target of aggression, so he
redirect it at mother substitutes. Tries to accomplish separation by proxy and
thus become (individuate).
Individuation is not about becoming an adult, but
about becoming an individual with boundaries, self, and ego (one of whose
functions is reality testing).
Reframes primary object by splitting: she is
either all good (martyr) or all bad (evil). Correspondingly, he is either all
bad (grandiose monster) or all good (grandiose victim).
Margret Mahler's theory of
separation-individuation explored in depth.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
From
victim to survivor: obligatory steps.
Translation to Portuguese courtesy of @mirna_liz37
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist enters a shared fantasy with a
maternal figure (his intimate partner) only in order to separate
from her (which he failed to accomplish with his biological mother). The
intimate partner is expected to help the narcissist by acting the part of a
rejecting, betraying mother. If she refuses, he tries to coerce her into this
role and then devalues and discards her.
With Azam Ali https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azam_Ali @azamaliofficial
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The irrational belief in a god or other supernatural beings is a feebleminded, grandiose, or demented copout, an infantile defense against existential angst and the terror of being alive in an indifferent, meaningless, inexorable universe.
For every cathedral and work of art inspired by religion, there are millions of people who died and are still being
massacred in its name.
Religions are mass delusional disorders and
psychegenic illnesses. They should be medicated, not followed or worshipped.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist judges your aptitude to serve as his “intimate” “partner” by whether you meet 2 of 4 criteria, the 4 Ss: sex, services, supply (narcissistic and sadistic), and safety.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Member of the Editorial Board of Journal of Mental Health
and Behavioral Sciences.
I am Editor in Chief of 6 academic journals and
member of the editorial board of another 90 or so.
Details here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/mediakit.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissist in the making converts his mommy into his intimate partner! Shared fantasy: mission accomplished! Watch the video I will be uploading later today.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
More than 1750 academic
papers cite my work and I am ranked among the top 0.5% of
230,000,000 academics in the world (swipe left).
https://calmu.academia.edu/SamVaknin
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Run for your life! Now! Drop everything you are doing and flee the narcissist or psychopath.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
How the stupid took over the world.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On the phone, hushed voices, in our bedroom, late
afternoon, Noa declines an offer to meet with her lover. I stand in the
corridor, book in hand, listening intently, refusing to believe.
Her side of the conversation consists of a
half-hearted demurral balanced by a lot of hopeful incredulity. How do you know
the key will be under the rug - she questions her interlocutor - and how can
you be sure they won't be at home?
This is how this phone conversation proceeds and
Noa can see a penumbral Sam projected by the hallway lighting and then she can
see me entering the room and looking at her, dumbfounded. She casts a glance my
way and ignores me, continues the exchange as though nothing entered her field
of vision.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/harmony-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths YouTube playlist.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
All told, China’s growth rate was a measly and unprecedented 0.8% in the second quarter of
2023. Youth unemployment is at 20%. The property sector is teetering on the
verge of a meltdown with housing projects uncompleted and mortgage strikes.
The Chinese leadership is convulsing: rapidfire
interest rate cuts by the central bank follow on the heels of delirious
stimulus plans released frantically by China’s State Council. Growth is
projected to be an increasingly unlikely 5% this year, a disenchanting figure
even so.
There is very little room for stimulus spending or
tax cuts in the wake of the massive public outlays during the pandemic.
Over the past 15 years, mounting sovereign debts
crises in Europe and an anemic rebound in America's economy were more than
offset by the emergence of Asia – and, in particular China and India - as a
global powerhouse.
Yet, the warning signs were there: China's
economic "miracle" has long been based on an artificial rate of
exchange for its currency, the Yuan (RMB); on unsustainable dollops of
government largesse and monetary quantitative easing which led to the emergence
of asset bubbles (mainly in real-estate) and to pernicious inflation; and,
frankly, on heavily-redacted statistics.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist takes over your life and thus reduces the anxiety involved in making choices and decisions.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Even self-aware narcissists cannot change: they cannot experience transformative insight because they lack access to their positive emotions. Self-awareness unaccompanied by emotions never becomes a transformative insight. This is why narcissists never learn or change.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
A Sam Vaknin narcissism
buffet by @mirna_liz37
Translations of my videos to Portuguese in the
Narcisismo Com Mirna Liz YouTube channel. Also on TikTok.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist’s only
experiences are his cravings for narcissistic supply.
Consequently, he never learns or changes.
If you were to meet the same narcissist 40 years
apart, you would be stunned at how utterly untouched by life he is, how frozen
he is in time.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissist's Body Postures: Hypervigilant-paranoid, Pleading-expectant, Dismissive-contemptuous, Superior-boastful, Impatient-scornful, Impatient-entitled, Membership-gravitas, Converting-empathic, Observer-detached
Somatoform disorders (Somatization, conversion disorder, illness anxiety disorder or hypochondria)
Body dysmorphia (shame and anxiety) and body image problems.
LITERATURE
WATCH Narcissist, His Body, Other Bodies (35th Psychosomatic Medicine Conference 2018 Video Presentation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBzotc3nonU
WATCH Narcissist and His Body in Health, Illness, and Disability https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L23a2EQHzLI
WATCH Body Language of the Personality Disordered https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omxNWsy3FMI
WATCH Body Language of Narcissistic and Psychopathic Abuser https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFUuaw8Pf1M
Body Language in David Foster Wallace's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men
Nieminen, Jani (2020) https://trepo.tuni.fi/handle/10024/120237
Cambridge Guide to Psychodynamic Psychotherapy By Adam Polnay, Rhiannon Pugh, Victoria Barker, David Bell, Allan Beveridge, Adam Burley, Allyson Lumsden, C. Susan Mizen, Lauren Wilson
Chapter 14: Narcissistic Difficulties
81 FBI L. Enforcement Bull. 28 (2012)
The Language of Psychopaths: New Findings and Implications for Law Enforcement
https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/fbileb81&div=73&id=&page=
How To Analyze People With Dark Psychology by Jason Gale
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Censorship in authoritarian regimes, most of which are indeed in the
east or global south, is overt and institutionalized. The red lines are
promulgated publicly and punishments for transgressions are enshrined in
criminal law.
In the West, censorship is far more pernicious: it
is stealthy, self-imposed, and adheres to standards of political correctness
that reflect the interests and concerns of the identity politics of vocal
victimhood groups.
Worst of all: the very existence of censorship is
denied in the West as public intellectuals, the mainstream media, and societal
and legal institutions uphold the counterfactual myth of “free speech”.
Continued in the video on my vakninmusings channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The entire relationship with the narcissist is coercive.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Having been victimized is not an identity. Victimhood is.
Meme courtesy @thereandbackcandle
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) fail to develop empathy via mentalization (a Theory of Mind). They feel no guilt or embarrassment (they have no conscience). They avoid being shamed after they have transgressed.
"Empaths" signal victimhood to manipulate others. Many are narcissists and psychopaths.
LITERATURE
van Trigt, S., Colonnesi, C., Brummelman, E., Jorgensen, T. D., & Nikolić, M. (2023). Autistic traits and self-conscious emotions in early childhood. Child Development, 94, e181–e196. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13921
Kajdzik, M., & Moroń, M. (2023). Signaling High Sensitivity to Influence Others: Initial Evidence for the Roles of Reinforcement Sensitivity, Sensory Processing Sensitivity, and the Dark Triad. Psychological Reports, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00332941231152387
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The Dual Mothership short video subtitled in Portuguese.
Courtesy the NarcisismocomMirna YouTube channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Relationships with narcissists and psychopaths may feel the same to the victim - but their outcomes are very different.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Not all psychopaths are the same. F1 and F2 are very different. F2 has emotions and is dysregulated, similar to borderlines.
Self-awareness is not the same as transformative insight.
Dark triad personalities are subclinical.
Chaotic life does not mean BPD. Emotional dysregulation and mood lability are crucial differential diagnoses. Many narcissists and especially psychopaths lead highly disorganized lives.
Grandiosity does not mean NPD. Psychopaths, borderlines, paranoids, and bipolar patients are grandiose.
Sadism manifests in all areas of life, not only in sex.
Cruelty, callousness, ruthlessness, and mercilessness do not signify psychopathy only. Depending on the circumstances, BPDs behave this way when they act out, narcissists when they are mortified, paranoids when they are in panic (heightened anxiety).
Lack of introspection and self-awareness does not mean NPD. Many narcissists are aware of their abrasiveness, grandiosity, entitlement, and antisocial misconduct. They correctly self-identify as narcissists. They are also aware of the fact that they dissociate (though they are never cognizant of their confabulations and their fantasies, including the shared fantasies).
External regulation is not unique to borderlines. Narcissists also regulate externally (via narcissistic supply) and, to some extent, so do paranoids.
My work cited in more than 1750 academic papers uploaded to academia.edu and I am ranked among the top 0.5% of 231,000,000 academics world wide https://calmu.academia.edu/SamVaknin https://www.instagram.com/p/CvrrwoLMrdp/?img_index=1
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist punishes himself (or herself) by repeatedly failing to separate and individuate, never mind how many times he tries and with how many partners.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
When you are touched by Evil, you must shed yourself. Keep moving. Motion cleanses.
If you freeze in horror, even for one minute, Evil
claims you, makes you his, weds you, and sires offspring with your husk.
Recoil. Flee. Never look back. Renounce your olden
essence and be transformed. Render yourself unrecognizable to Evil in pursuit.
Evil enchants. Entraps. It
exudes immersion. In its grip, you feel beloved and understood and accepted
like never before. It is a great teacher, a sage, a master.
Put on your winged sandals. You are the captive of
a vile apparition. There is no time to waste, you must make haste. Already Evil
conspires against you with the voices in your mind.
And all the fava beans and the chianti, the charm
and erudition, the feigned benignness and the glittering Bambi eyes cannot
conceal the horror that awaits. Remember that as you elope into the spell.
Untangle from your dreams. Awaken.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
With same-sex marriage becoming a legal reality
throughout the world, many more children are going to be raised by homosexual
(gay and lesbian) parents, or even by transgendered or transsexual ones. How is
this going to affect the child’s masculinity or femininity?
Is being a gay man less manly than being a
heterosexual one? Is a woman who is the outcome of a sex change operation less
feminine than her natural-born sisters? In which sense is a “virile” lesbian
less of a man than an effeminate heterosexual or homosexual man? And how should
we classify and treat bisexuals and asexuals?
What about modern she-breadwinners? All those
feminist women in traditional male positions who are as sexually aggressive as
men and prone to the same varieties of misconduct (e.g., cheating on their
spouses)? Are they less womanly? And are their stay-at-home-dad partners not
men enough? How are sex preferences related to gender differentiation? And if
one’s sex and genitalia can be chosen and altered at will – why not one’s
gender, regardless of one’s natural equipment? Can we decouple gender roles
from sexual functions and endowments?
Aren’t the feminist-liberal-emancipated woman and
her responsive, transformed male partner as moulded by specific social norms
and narratives as their more traditional and conservative counterparts? And
when men adapted to the demands of the “new”, post-modernist woman – were they
not then rebuffed by that very same female as emasculated and unmanly? What is
the source of this gender chaos? Why do people act “modern” while, at heart,
they still hark back to erstwhile mores and ethos?
We assume erroneously that some roles are
instinctual because, in nature, other species do it, too: parenting and mating
come to mind. The discipline of sociobiology encourages us to counterfactually
learn from animals about our social functioning.
In nature, there is "male" and
"female", not "man" and "woman" which are learned
and acquired gender roles. There is no "mother" and
"father", even among apes - just progenitors.
Continued: https://samvak.tripod.com/sexgender.html
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist is always the performer - never the audience.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Why are victims attracted to
narcissists time and again?
Diana @dianakein and Mari @gurvinmari are the hosts of Sannheten om Narcissisten
(in Norway).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Being discarded: injury or mortification?
Perceived as rejecting, frustrating (real) mother:
retraumatization, decompensation, acting out, dissociation
Separation insecurity: restoring object constancy
owing to introject dissonance (stalking and hoovering)
Reframing: internal (grandiose) or external
(persecutory)
Grief stages: mourning the shared fantasy
Substitution (replace): isomorphic or dissimilar
Completion of disrupted shared fantasy (repetition
compulsion)
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Some covert narcissists are people pleasers (a codependent trait).
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist makes you fall in love with your idealised image (“hall of mirrors effect”). This infatuation with yourself as seen through his gaze, this limerence, is addictive and irresistible.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
I am considering to use this video as a part of a
new
trailer for my YouTube channel. What do you
think?
Video courtesy the NarcisismocomMirna YouTube
channel.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Mother tells me not to say anything at school
about what is happening at home. Nothing is happening at home. Come morning, I
wake up from my restless sleep and either I wetted my bed or I didn't. If I
did, mother silently packs off my soaked pajamas and the damp sheets, casting a
harsh glance at the black stain that seeps into the bed's upholstery. The house
already reeks and she opens the shutters and lays the linen on the window
panes, half out and the dry half in.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/wronghome-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths
playlist on my YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The narcissist is testing you: will you love and accept him unconditionally, as a mother would, even when you have come to know him better?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Narcissists attend therapy after collapse or
mortification when the grandiose defenses against their vulnerability crumble.
One example of this hybridity
(grandiose/vulnerable) is Hoovering.
Narcissist cannot countenance rejection, needs to
make sure of the outcomes and resolve cognitive dissonance.
Lovebombing and grooming are forms of probing.
Narcissistic abuse as probing (will she loved me unconditionally, as a mother would?)
Probing via third parties, flying monkeys, in
various settings.
Social media stalking as probing.
Consulting others as probing.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Does a good mother love her child unconditionally? Yes and no. She never conditions her love on her child’s performance and on the gratification of her needs. But she does impose discipline, set boundaries, and pushes her child to separate from her.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Divorce
is a life crisis – and more so for the narcissist. The narcissist
stands to lose not only his spouse but an important source of narcissistic
supply. This results in narcissistic injury, rage, and all-pervasive feelings
of injustice, helplessness and paranoia.
Book available on Amazon.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The words "supernatural",
"paranormal", and "parapsychology" are prime examples of oxymorons. Nature, by its extended
definition, is all-inclusive and all-pervasive. Nothing is outside its orbit
and everything that is logically and physically possible is within its purview.
If something exists and occurs then, ipso facto,
it is normal (or abnormal, but never para or "beyond" the normal).
Psychology is the science of human cognition, emotion, and behavior. No human
phenomenon evades its remit.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
We are physical objects, after all. What can physics teach us about human relationships?
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Dark triad personalities are people who CANNOT be diagnosed as narcissists and psychopaths.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Is "disassociation" a word in psychology? https://dictionary.apa.org/disassociation
Use this simple test to determine conclusively
whether the psychology expert or coach you are listening to know their stuff or
is con artist charlatan.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Listen up self-styled “experts”: narcissistic mortification and narcissistic injury are NOT the same thing, collapsed narcissist and failed Narcissist are NOT the same issue. Get it?