Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Politics, in all its forms, has failed. The
notion that we can safely and successfully hand over the management of our
daily lives and the setting of priorities to a political class or elite is
thoroughly discredited. Politicians cannot be trusted, regardless of the system
in which they operate. No set of constraints, checks, and balances, is proved
to work and mitigate their unconscionable acts and the pernicious effects these
have on our welfare and longevity.
Ideologies - from the benign to the malign and
from the divine to the pedestrian - have driven the gullible human race to the
verge of annihilation and back. Participatory democracies have degenerated
everywhere into venal plutocracies. Socialism and its poisoned fruits -
Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism - have wrought misery on a scale
unprecedented even by medieval standards. Only Fascism and Nazism compare with
them unfavorably. The idea of the nation-state culminated in the Yugoslav
succession wars.
It is time to seriously consider a much-derided
and decried alternative: anarchism.
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Did Prigozhin fake his own death? I would have
had I been in his shoes. But it seems that another one has bitten the dust.
Literally. Prigozhin plummeted to his death together with 9 of his lieutenants
in an exploding private jet a mere 2 months after having squared off against
Russia’s inept and corrupt military establishment, aka Putin’s long arm.
Prigozhin is only the latest in a long list going
back at least two decades. Putin’s adversaries meekly surrender their business empires, die (Berezovsky,
Nemtsov), almost die (Navalny), or spend the better part of their lives in
lethal penal colonies (Khodorkovsky, Navalny).
Russia is frozen in time. Nothing has changed
since the days of Peter the Great. Here is an excerpt from the first edition of
my book, “Putin’s Russia”, published in 2002 (!)
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Confabulation is an attempt to bridge memory gaps by constructing
scenarios of what is most likely to have happened. It is a theory about missing
time.
But, the narcissist believes that the theory
(confabulation) is real and true because he is the one who came up with it.
Being infallible and omniscient, in his mind, he never makes mistakes.
Why does the narcissist vehemently deny hard evidence and reality? Because confabulation is critical to his grandiosity.
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Confabulation in psychotic disorders, dementia, court (Loftus).
Confabulation is an attempt to bridge memory gaps
by constructing scenarios of what is most likely to have happened (possible,
plausible, probable).
It is a theory about missing time. But the
narcissist believes that the theory (confabulation) is real and true because he
is the one who came up with it. Being infallible and omniscient, in his mind,
he never makes mistakes.
Confabulation in narcissism:
Covers for narcissistically injurious dissociation
(a challenge to omnipotence), trying to make sense of a chaotic, disjointed
world.
Bridges gap between immutable internal and mutable
external objects to restore object constancy and secure base.
Connects present with maternal object to past with
real mother.
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Victims of narcissistic abuse want to be told that they are all good and narcissists are all bad; they want to learn how to exact revenge on the narcissist; and they want their victimhood status validated. A crop of coaches and self-styled “experts” cater to these pathological needs while laughing all the way to the bank.
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There are 4 conditions to any self-transformation and personal growth: self-awareness, empathy, emotions, motivation.
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Narcissists
always claim to be victims, play the victim's card,
sometimes convincingly.
Codependents and people-pleasers use control from
the bottom and victimhood. But so do narcissists. Many of them claim to have
been devalued and discarded.
How to tell which is which?
Splitting (I am all good, they are all bad)
Non-discrimination (every girlfriend, spouse,
business partner victimized them)
Self-pity
Ostentation coupled with goal orientation:
celebrity, money, sex
Alloplastic defenses and an external locus of
control: no responsibility or blame as a defense against shame and guilt (none
of this was my fault, I am not responsible, I contributed nothing to my
predicament)
Denial of misconduct or proportionality of
response, grandiose morality, claims of coercion or brainwashing
Never apologize
Automatism (never reflect and analyze)
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By now, it is a trite observation that meaning
is context-dependent and, therefore, not invariant or immutable.
Contextualists in aesthetics study a work of art's historical and cultural
background in order to appreciate it. Philosophers of science have convincingly
demonstrated that theoretical constructs (such as the electron or dark matter)
derive their meaning from their place in complex deductive systems of
empirically-testable theorems. Ethicists repeat that values are rendered
instrumental and moral problems solvable by their relationships with a-priori
moral principles. In all these cases, context precedes meaning and gives
interactive birth to it.
However, the reverse is also true: context emerges
from meaning and is preceded by it. This is evident in a surprising array of
fields: from language to social norms, from semiotics to computer programming,
and from logic to animal behavior.
By now, it is a trite observation that meaning is
context-dependent and, therefore, not invariant or immutable. Contextualists in
aesthetics study a work of art's historical and cultural background in order to
appreciate it. Philosophers of science have convincingly demonstrated that
theoretical constructs (such as the electron or dark matter) derive their
meaning from their place in complex deductive systems of empirically-testable
theorems. Ethicists repeat that values are rendered instrumental and moral problems
solvable by their relationships with a-priori moral principles. In all these
cases, context precedes meaning and gives interactive birth to it.
However, the reverse is also true: context emerges
from meaning and is preceded by it. This is evident in a surprising array of
fields: from language to social norms, from semiotics to computer programming,
and from logic to animal behavior.
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How
does the narcissist see you? You won’t believe -or
like - the answer.
Video continued with Portuguese subtitles in the
NarcisismocomMirna YouTube channel.
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Decline in cognitive functioning owing to stress and anxiety.
Dementias are like mortification because they involve public shaming in front of significant others.
Concealment strategies including confabulations that resemble gaslighting.
Narcissist’s grandiosity challenged, especially omniscience and perfection.
Withdrawal and avoidance unsustainable strategies.
Depression and grief.
Loss of independence challenges omnipotence, exposes vulnerability.
Frustration breeds aggression, agitation, impatience, alloplastic defenses (blaming others).
Paranoid ideation and rage.
Defiance and contumaciousness (refusing medical treatment).
Role of secondary supply (recounting past glories), selective memory (island of stability preferred).
Suicidal ideation.
LITERATURE
Deví Bastida J, Genescà Pujol J, Valle Vives S, Jofre Font S, Fetscher Eickhoff A, Arroyo Cardona E. Disorder of the personality: a possible factor of risk for the dementia. Actas Esp Psiquiatr. 2019 Mar;47(2):61-9. Epub 2019 Mar 1. PMID: 31017274.
Poletti M, Bonuccelli U. From narcissistic personality disorder to frontotemporal dementia: a case report. Behav Neurol. 2011;24(2):173-6. doi: 10.3233/BEN-2011-0326. PMID: 21606578; PMCID: PMC5377953.
Austin J Clin Neurol 2015;2(7): 1057.
Narcissism Vulnerability as Risk Factor for Alzheimer´s Disease- A Prospective Study By Daniel Serrani, Department of Psychobiology, Faculty of Psychology, National University of Rosario, Berutti 250 bis, Rosario, Santa Fe (S2000QBE), Argentina
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The narcissist comes to regard people -
especially intimate partners - as enemies, persecutory
objects. How does this happen? Paranoia and projection.
With Portuguese subs courtesy the
NarcisismocomMirna YouTube channel.
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Very surprising reason why borderlines and narcissists
are a perfect match.
Video with Portuguese subtitles courtesy
NarcisismocomMirna YouTube channel.
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The same brain circuitry is responsible for processing space and memory.
Infant amnesia vs. childhood amnesia
Flaw in spatial processing and language processing
caused by trauma and abuse (hiding and being entrained) results in:
1. Inability to tell external from internal
(psychosis, narcissism), hyperreflexivity
2. Impaired ability to form memories
3. Impaired reality testing
4. Grandiose magical thinking (referential
ideation, paranoia, psychotic megalomania, erotomanic delusion)
5. Identity diffusion and disturbance
6. Arrested development (infantilism)
LITERATURE
Wayfinding: The Science and Mystery of How Humans
Navigate the World by M. R. O'Connor, St. Martin's Press, 2019
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The study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD) is evolving. Categorical criteria in the DSM 4-TR are being phased out in favor of the DSM 5-TR’s dimensional alternative model. Additionally, we are transitioning from a static to a dynamics model (no type constancy) and from an ego-syntomic to an ego-dystonic (compensatory) model.
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(Swipe left) Invited by the European Society of Medicine to write an article about my recent advances in the study of personality disorders for their Medical Research Archives. This year’s journal will be dedicated to “Challenges and Opportunities in Personality Disorders”.
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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.
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The narcissist never learns how to behave himself with others, in social settings. His/her childhood is abusive and traumatizing (even pampering and idolizing the child are forms of abuse). So, he has no role models to model his behaviors on.
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Language is a transmission mechanism.
An intergenerational conveyor belt.
A vector of mind contagion.
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Mind reading is a test of maternal symbiosis and unconditional love (the non-verbalized unspoken content of the narcissist’s mind do not deter the accessing partner). It is proof of a grandiose and anxiolytic mind-meld (“I am the world”).
Not telepathy but internal object communication: partner is an extension (hyperreflexivity)
Failure to mind read provokes frustration-aggression but also anxiety because it challenges the maternal object and extensionality/intensionality of external objects/extrojects.
The narcissist specifies the internal content that he attributes to an external object (solely his projections, a clone of the narcissist’s mind) and the null set of all possible instances of the external object (the narcissist and the external object are one, coextensive).
Failure at mind reading implies that the external object possesses content that is not identical to the content of the narcissist’s mind and is, therefore, separate. This provokes separation insecurity (abandonment anxiety owing to a lack of object constancy/permanence).
Similarly, a failure at mind reading implies that the external object is unique, not a clone and therefore not interchangeable or fungible.
CONCEPTS
intension and extension, in logic, correlative words that indicate the reference of a term or concept: “intension” indicates the internal content of a term or concept that constitutes its formal definition; and “extension” indicates its range of applicability by naming the particular objects that it denotes. For instance, the intension of “ship” as a substantive is “vehicle for conveyance on water,” whereas its extension embraces such things as cargo ships, passenger ships, battleships, and sailing ships. The distinction between intension and extension is not the same as that between connotation and denotation.
In mathematical sets, the null set is a set that does not contain any values or elements. It is expressed as { } and denoted using the Greek letter ∅ (phi). A null set is also known as an empty set or void set. There is only one null set because, logically, there's only one way that a set can contain nothing.
Videos translated to Portuguese https://www.youtube.com/@narcisismocommirna
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This is a comment on a @shadowdeangelis recent post. Don’t miss even one of all his
other invaluable capsules of well-informed, wise advice on his Instagram.
Amazing work.
The problem with projective identification is the identification part of it. The victim identifies
himself/herself with the narcissist’s projected parts: the traits and emotions
that the narcissist rejects in himself/herself and misattributes to the victim.
The victim then becomes these parts (hence
“identification”) and begins to behave accordingly.
Projective identification is, therefore, a defense
mechanism of the narcissist’s that ends up modifying the victim’s behaviors!
Projective identification causes the victim to modify her/his behavior by adopting as theirs the narcissist’s shame and guilt.
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I am not a nice person. Should I fake it or remain true to myself, authentic?
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Substantial minority of narcissists encourage - NOT COERCE!- their partners to be unfaithful via casual sex, swinging, group sex (threesomes).
Victims often misinterpret the narcissist’s encouragement as a wish or a command and seek to gratify the narcissist by acquiescing.
Narcissist is rarely a cuckold.
WATCH Cuckolds, Swingers (Lifestyle), and Psychopathic Narcissists: Death of Intimacy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alGmDyjvRZM
Betrayal fantasy and devaluation: discard the partner by shifting the blame.
WATCH How Narcissist Betrays YOU to Become Himself (Compilation) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CesOO1R2YbI
Loyalty test (bait).
Dare, see if I care, power play (following triangulation or the partner's acting out).
Uphold view of other sex as untrustworthy and whorish.
Sadism: defile the partner by witnessing her/his debauchery and self-prostitution (just WITNESSING!)
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The shared fantasy involves the narcissist and another person (intimate partner, friend, offspring, even co-worker). But is it founded on having daddy issues? And how does this square with my principle of dual mothership?
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We validate other people’s victimhood because we want them to
validate ours.
Competitive victimhood pays: it is a profitable
proposition. It can be used to manipulate people (“deceptive signaling”).
Many victims and “victims” are entitled, grandiose,
vindictive, and abusive.
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Narcissists are externally indistinguishable from full-fledged human beings. But they have no core or stable identity. Your uncanny valley alarm system doesn't go off because it is damaged. The narcissist proceeds to penetrate your defenses and leverage your vulnerabilities in order to convert you into a clone of himself, his traits and behaviors (this is known as CPTSD or complex trauma). Narcissism is contagious.
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This time the house was shuttered doors and windows. My grandma wouldn't respond to his increasingly desperate entreaties. He flung himself against the entrance and found her sprawled on the floor, her bloodied mouth ajar. As she fell, she must have hit her head against the corner of a table. She was baking my grandfather his favorite pastries.
Her eyes were shut. My grandpa knew she died. He placed her remedies on the floured and oiled table and changed into his best attire. Kneeling beside her, he gently wiped clean my grandma's hands and mouth and head and clothed her in her outdoors coat.
His business done, he lay besides her and, hugging her frail remains, he shut his eyes.
My uncles and aunts found them, lying like that, embraced.
Full story: https://samvak.tripod.com/agala-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
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What the narcissist’s “big lie”?
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The war in Ukraine forced Europe to face up to its energy dependencies and brought it to the brink of a crisis. Net zero emissions regulatory upheavals only enhanced the mayhem. The obvious answer seems to be the diversification of energy sources away from much maligned fossil fuels and into renewables.
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If having an affair has revitalized your marriage - then your union has always
been sick and dysfunctional, based on deception, mistrust, and abject
dependency.
A mentally healthy marriage never survives an
affair.
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Watch the video I released today on my YouTube
channel (@samvaknin). This video here is a great summary of what I have been saying all along.
I want to thank this guy on TikTok @tabs_sojourn for his brave support for my work in the
face of great opposition.
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Self-awareness is knowing who you are. Authenticity is being and acting who you are. But can you ever be authentic in conditions of fear and uncertainty?
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:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
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Yesterday, I published this on my Instagram ( https://www.instagram.com/narcissismwithvaknin ):
"If having an affair has revitalized your marriage – then your union has always been sick and dysfunctional, based on deception, mistrust, and abject dependency. A mentally healthy marriage never survives an affair."
It provoked a bit of a storm. So, here is what I meant to say:
I refer to cheating: an affair involving deception. Not to an open marriage or open relationship or polyamory or the lifestyle (swinging) or cuckoldry which do not involve deceptive practices.
Any arrangement between consenting adults which involves no coercion of any kind and no harm whatsoever to others is perfectly legitimate as a way to pursue happiness and wellbeing.
Some affairs are consensual (for example in polyamory).
When the affair involves concealment and lying, to forgive this magnitude of deception and rejection, you need to be mentally impaired somehow.
If the marriage is of two psychologically impaired people, no number of affairs can fix it. This is rank nonsense. Serious mental illness is for life and incurable (though manageable). Ignore the self-interested nonsense online about “healing”. It is a scam.
Mentally healthy people break up after a deceptive affair. If they do not - then they are mentally impaired in some manner. No two ways about it.
Their boundaries are porous or nonexistent. They are dependent (codependent). They regulate externally. They are trauma bonded. They are too anxious to face life and reality (constriction). They cannot perceive their partner as real. They are dissociative.
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The pinnacle of narcissistic supply! Even animals in the wild call out my name! King Solomon had nothing on me!
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The narcissist is firmly convinced that he is infallible and omniscient. Godlike, he knows everything, can learn nothing, and never makes mistakes.
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Narcissists are takers - until there is nothing left to take. Swipe left to learn more.
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All wisdom of life in under 1 minute.
With Portuguese subtitles in the
NarcisismocomMirna YouTube channel.
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WATCH Is Borderline Multiple Personality? (BPD and OSDD) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wl9RHGxS3yM
WATCH Narcissism: Multiple Personality Disorder/Dissociative Identity Disorder? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJWwfaJPS5w
WATCH Narcissist's Multiple Personas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yxo4gjG8GpM
Main role of compensatory False Self is to protect the True Self which is shy, fragile, and vulnerable.
True Self no longer psychodynamically active, but False Self is inertial, believes that narcissist will die without it. So, False Self is anxiolytic and aimed to prevent regression to borderline emotional dysregulation.
Like all mental constructs, False Self is self-preserving (aka resistances).
False Self regards therapy and intimacy as not only threats (hurt, pain, heartbreak, hostile takeover), but also as competition: they offer emotional self-regulation and a coherent sense of self-worth, obviating the needs for narcissistic supply and grandiosity, the False Self’s main functions.
Cathexis in the False Self is diverted to therapist or partner and this generates envy of both outsiders and self as good object.
Therapy and healthy (non-dependent) intimacy (friend, lover, child, parents, mentors, etc.) also push towards the emergence of a core identity to replace the False Self. This newly emerging identity feels imposed and external. It constitutes a repeated narcissistic injury (vulnerability rather than omnipotence).
False Self fights back by inducing the twin anxieties (insecure attachment style), amplifying aggression and grandiosity, impairing reality testing via the shared fantasy, leading to paranoid and psychotic ideation thus undermining therapist or intimacy partner. Paranoia is also a form of self-supply.
WATCH Narcissism as Theatre: More on the False Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jdFexohftNg
WATCH Narcissist's False Narrative and False Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTUsmliZl-g
WATCH Loving Gaze, Adulating Gaze: False vs. True Self https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlBevrfwabM
WATCH YOU: Trapped in Fantasy Worlds of Narcissist, Borderline https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHa1hsxglPU
WATCH Loving the Borderline in Her Fantasy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isDXioOEztE
WATCH Borderline Seeks Fantasy but Flees to Reality https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxAM0Yt-a-Y
WATCH Borderline vs. Narcissist Idealization Fantasies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luegzfzClCY
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IN MONGOLIAN! “Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited” published by @enkhempire
Watch the interviews with the publisher on my
YouTube channel.
Narcissism
is a dreamscape, surrealistic, an alien planet. Welcome to the tour!
Narcissism makes perfect sense to the narcissist.
It is an organizing principle which imbues the narcissist’s life with meaning,
purpose, and direction.
On the occasion of the publishing of the Mongolian
language translation of "Malignant Self-love: Narcissism Revisited".
Part 2 of an interview with the Mongolian
publisher Enkhbayar Jargalsaikhan (Enkh Empire https://m.facebook.com/enkhempirepublishing Instagram: @enkhempire)
And my wife, publisher Lidija Rangelovska ( https://www.facebook.com/NarcissusPublications )
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The narcissist trades you his inner death for your life.
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Therapist reluctant to label and stigmatize.
Narcissist rejects his diagnosis, though is self-aware.
Pangs of conscience and soul-searching are not
signs of mental health or of empathy. Neurotics have autoplastic defenses, for
example. It is the bad object manifesting. Narcissists just resolve such
agonizing processes differently: alloplastic defenses. Is something wrong with
me: emphasis on self-efficacy, fear of just punishment or being caught
red-handed, not empathy (oneself – not others).
12 STEPS OF NARCISSISTS ANONYMOUS
1. I admit that I am powerless over narcissism —
that my life had become unmanageable.
2. I have come to believe that no power greater
than myself could restore me to sanity owing to my grandiosity (False Self).
3. I have made a decision to turn my will and my
life over to the care of my False Self (narcissism).
4. I have made a searching and fearless moral
inventory of myself.
5. I admit to myself and to others the exact
nature of my wrongs.
6. I am entirely ready to overcome these defects
of character and behaviors.
7. I challenge our grandiosity to remove my
shortcomings.
8. I have made a list of all persons that I had
harmed, and am willing to make amends to them all.
9. I have made direct amends to such people
wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. I continue to take personal inventory and when
I am wrong promptly admit it to myself and then to others.
11. I seek to improve my conscious contact with my
narcissism (False Self), hoping only for knowledge of its will for me and the
power to oppose it.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result
of these Steps, I will try to carry this message to other narcissists, and to
practice these principles in all my affairs.
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Narcissists always claim to be victims. How can we tell them apart? They never offer a true, sincere, heartfelt apology or take responsibility for their actions.
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WATCH Videos in Contemporary Sexuality Playlist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68rvgSHhqqY&list=PLsh_y_ett4o1HB7NNs1-qBqk6bU6D8PUe
Collapse of traditional gender roles and gender vertigo (Barbara Risman) exacerbated by sex fluidity
Caricatured, performative, exaggerated masculinity adopted by both sexes (Lisa Wade, Sczesny)
Toxic masculinity emphasizes dominance, goal orientation, defiance, possession, and hierarchy (fake alpha male) over team work, leadership, sharing, compassion, and empathy (true alpha male)
Toxic masculinity goes hand in hand with Darwinian (jungle) capitalism, urbanization, consumerism, and spectacle. These are all zero sum games which emphasize escapism within artificial counter-realities.
Both toxic masculinity and jungle (Anglo-Saxon) capitalism are founded on relentless and ruthless ambition and adversarial competition.
Spectacle thrives on negative emotions, self-preoccupation, self-promotion, and make-believe fantasy - the hallmarks of narcissism. Even justice becomes a retributive reality show with defendants as gladiators.
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Narcissistic abuse is unlike any other type of abuse.
This is the world we have created: a giant prison with all the inmates at each others’s throats.
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Gaze not physical fact: it is a caregiving attitude.
The infant has no conception of self, other, and world (external-internal). It is, therefore, initially unable to identify itself in the mother’s gaze (symbiotic phase). When it finally does recognize itself in her gaze, the child experiences a trauma, the schism of the world, and the emergence of the other.
Initially, the child rejects the mother’s traumatizing gaze. He pushes her away, thus realizing her externality. Ironically, it is precisely this rejection that leads to differentiation, the first instance of proto-separation (Lacan's apperception or self-objectification or ambivalent self-alienation).
Lacan suggested that the unconscious - the seat of repressed traumas - is a compendium of other people’s gazes. Thus, the mother’s gaze is the cause of the formation of the unconscious, its nucleus is this primal trauma of being seen.
Why does the unconscious emerge? To resolve the existential dissonance between the survival need to be seen - and the trauma of being seen. The latter has to be repressed in the interest of survival.
Now, the child is ready to objectify and instrumentalise the mother as its first mirror. This gives rise to primary narcissism. The mother actively reflects the child to itself, idealized and aggrandized (“hall of mirrors effect”).
This affords the child the grandiose energy to take on the world and cathect it. The mother’s proactive benevolent gaze is synonymous with her secure base and gives rise to healthy attachment.
The mother’s gaze engenders mentalizing and object relations founded on separate external objects of secure attachment.
But when the mother is “dead”, so is her gaze. The child sees only her (the mirror) and the world, not himself. He fails to develop a concept of the external and operative object relations as well as a constellated self and an ego.
Such a child is incapable of mentalizing (attributing states of mind to others). He remains stuck in narcissism. He offers to his partners the hall of mirrors effect but without mentalizing and object relations, it does not progress beyond grandiose cathexis and causes regressive infantile retraumatization.
At the same time, the partner is converted into a dead, frustrating, withholding, betraying mother who mirrors herself and the world rather than the narcissist - thus undermining the shared fantasy as a persecutory object.
Hegel's negation of the negation
Empathy a form of healthy narcissism
WATCH (ACADEMIC) Empathy as Narcissistic-Psychotic Defense https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeMx3jYfWUs
WATCH Empathy: It is about YOU, not the OTHER person https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzckRFmQHPA
We need to explore automaticity and mentalization. Where I differ from classic theory (Winnicott, Lacan, Fonagy).
“Automaticity” is probably the wrong model for human behavior – but so is rationality. Even bounded rationality is an optimistic approach.
Fonagy’s teleological non-mentalizing fits insects as well as humans. It is tautological. The existence of a goal implies perforce the existence of intentionality (Brentano) and vice versa.
What we cannot be sure of is the existence of GOALS! This is why teleology is a bogeyman in science.
LITERATURE
Empathy and Mirror-gazing by Giovanni B. Caputo in: Psychology and Neurobiology of Empathy ISBN: 978-1-63484-446-8, Editors: Douglas F. Watt and Jaak Panksepp © 2016 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
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In the lovebombing phase of the shared fantasy, the narcissist introduces you
to his dead inner child (True Self) and to his bad object (the introjects that
hate him).
This way he induces in you maternal reflexive
bonding and pity for him. Do not fall in this trap ever again! Knowledge is
power!
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The narcissist instantly modifies his behaviors in different settings and environments. It tells you that even the most egregious narcissistic misbehaviors are CHOICES.
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Regarding reactive abuse: Horrendous as it is, narcissistic abuse is merely a
mitigating circumstance - not an exoneration or an absolution.
You are responsible for your misbehavior, choices,
and decisions and should be held accountable for them in every way.
Narcissistic abuse renders your misconduct
understandable, but never excusable, legal, or justifiable.
Don’t act like a narcissist - and you won’t be
judged as one.
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In my case, the only way to lose weight is to
take a haircut!
But the books make up for it. I travel the world
mainly to visit bookstores. Books are the closest I ever get to true love!
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Common
phrases that narcissists use:
I love you (dual mothership in shared fantasy)
You have changed (coercive snapshotting,
devaluation-separation)
I am … (grandiosity)
They are (projection) …
This is wrong (useless, inefficacious)
I don’t remember having done/said that, it doesn’t
sound like me at all, the truth is this (dissociation and confabulation)
If you refuse, it means that … (coercive control)
Why can't you decode the narcissist's speech?
In the lovebombing phase of the shared fantasy,
the narcissist introduces you to his dead inner child (True Self) and to his
bad object (the introjects that hate him). This way he induces in you maternal
reflexive bonding and pity for him. Do not fall in this trap ever again!
Knowledge is power!
The narcissist can maintain an image of you in his mind (“snapshot”, “introject”) - the borderline cannot (out of sight, out of mind or “introject inconstancy”). This is why the borderline needs you by her side 24/7/365 (abandonment anxiety or separation insecurity).
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My mother instructed us severely:
"If daddy's youngest brother calls, don't answer. Nor he neither his wayward sister are part of our family. Your father excommunicated them forever and cursed their lineage. They have disgraced us. Now they are perfect strangers."
I liked my uncle - boyish and outgoing, hair long, and smooth, and often brushed and dried, his clothes the latest fashion from abroad. He was a seaman. His visits smelled of outlying cities and sinful women thin-clad in bustling ports. He carried stacks of foreign bills stashed in his socks and bought my mother foreign, costly fragrances (she buried them among her lingerie until they all evaporated).
At the bottom of his magic chest lay booklets with titillating tales of sizzling sex and awesome drug lords. I waited for his visits with the impatience of an inmate. He was the idol of my budding willfulness and nascent freedom. I resented our forced estrangement.
And so began my mutiny. Lured by the siren songs of far-flung lands, of sexual liberation, and of equality, I traveled to my grandma's home, an uninvited guest. My uncle, whose name now we could not pronounce, was there. We strolled the windswept promenade of Beer-Sheba, kicking some skeletal branches as we talked. He treated me as an adult.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/redemption-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
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The narcissist seeks revenge in order to restore his or her damaged grandiosity.
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An ode to the Borderline. I have no idea who this woman is - but she seems to be enjoying my eulogy.
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Narcissists
are domestic terrorists. Use counter-terrorism
techniques and strategies to cope with them. Go FBI and NSA and CIA on them!
Put down the law!
Translation courtesy the NarcisismocomMirna
YouTube channel.
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Many ways to breach the child’s nascent boundaries and abuse the child.
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Growth,
like progress, is a culture bound Western ethos. In Japan,
growth is collectivist, in the West, it is individualistic.
Growth is desirable, a goal (teleology), and
linear-derivative. Not always true. Infantilism is a positive adaptation in
certain environments, for example. Growth is cyclical (Freud). There is no end
goal, it is about survival (evolutionary).
Growth is not the same as skill acquisition,
personal autonomy, agency, independence.
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Have just received my copy of this amazing tour de force confessional. A story of extreme child abuse turned into an exploratory journey of self-redemption. I am proud and honored to have written the foreword to it.
My foreword to One Way to Get Out of the Kitchen: From Subservience to Narcissism by Roberta Elsie Jay.
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This guy is very right: narcissists BELIEVE their
own fantasies and confabulations. Grandiosity
is a cognitive DISTORTION.
The narcissist has NO grasp of reality at all!
S/he is not goal-oriented like the psychopath. So, narcissists do not gaslight,
lie instrumentally, nor do they future fake!!! They SELF-DECEIVE delusionally
and then coerce you to concur with and participate in their fantasy (share it).
Still: as far as the victim is concerned, abuse is
abuse is abuse. Psychopaths and narcissists often behave in an
indistinguishable manner - but for very different reasons. But the victim
couldn’t care less! The suffering and damage are there.
https://www.tiktok.com/@tabs_sojourn
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LIES
that victims tell themselves:
I was chosen for my qualities (truth: you were
chosen for the 4 Ss)
The narcissist was obsessed with me (nope,
obsessed with the shared fantasy – you were fungible, a thing, a commodity, a
puff of smoke)
The best revenge is to have a good life, it will
drive the narcissist insane
The narcissist keeps obsessing about me (only for
revenge or hoovering – or in order to pose as a victim and attract new
“mothers” into the shared fantasy)
The narcissist regrets having lost me (this was
the aim of the whole exercise: separation-individuation)
I did nothing to deserve this and I have
contributed nothing to this happening (splitting: narcissist all bad, I am all
good or innocent)
I have learned so much and this experience has
taught me a lesson
Therapy will empower me, heal me, and set me free
(taking action will)
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The narcissist firmly believes that it is his disorder that makes him special, superior, creative, and accomplished. Any change could only be for the worse.
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Watch my videos translated into
Portuguese by Mirna Liz:
https://www.youtube.com/@narcisismocommirnaliz
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Exactly like Kosovo in former Yugoslavia, tiny
mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh is culturally and historically significant to both foes.
Exactly like Kosovo, it enjoyed an autonomous
status within the surrounding territory of Azerbaijan during the good ole’
times of the USSR.
Exactly like Kosovo, the Armenian majority drove
out the indigenous Azeris in an act of ethnic cleansing made possible by the
abrupt disintegration of the Russian land empire.
In 2020, the picture had been reversed, with about
90,000 Armenians displaced, setting their abodes ablaze to deny them to the
incoming Azeri settlers.
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Men delight in women’s newfound promiscuity, objectifying
women for their own sexual gratification.
Men live off the earnings of better educated,
accomplished women.
And women call it “emancipation” and “liberation”.
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Any emotion you show can and will be used against you by the narcissist.
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Narcissists do introspect. They are self-aware. They do soul-search. But what are the outcomes of these processes? A victimhood stance. Blaming others. Self-righteousness.
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The conflict between the absence
that I am and the presence that I wish I were is ongoing.
I was denied as a child, I was not allowed to become, so I never formed. I
remained an unfulfilled promise or a dream.
Courtesy of @narcissistic.abuseawareness
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WATCH Self-supplying Narcissist: Miracle Cure? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yyab_olkfp0
The narcissist self-supplies in order to avoid collapse and dysphoria or depression. This delusional solution renders him autoerotic and cerebral.
Plentiful external narcissistic supply results in resilient, ever more counterfactual siege and betrayal (but not shared) fantasies and residual libido rendering the narcissist somatic.
Narcissist’s Free, Reserved, and Residual Libido
https://samvak.tripod.com/msla7.html
Future orientation (future generations will appreciate my legacy, I will be proven right)
Exclusive, privileged, or superior referents (only geniuses can understand my work)
Self-referential transcendence (I am hyper moral, strong, gifted, a martyr or victim)
Self-audiencing (journaling, self-documenting, self-appraisal)
Self-referential ideation and attribution (everyone envies me, my ideas are influential and pilfered)
Contemptuous withholding (they don’t deserve me or my output, I am alone because no one is on my level)
Paranoid ideation (I am the focus of malign intentions and attention).
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"We have a Jewish guest, from Israel today" - he hesitated - "He will say grace for us. In Hebrew."
The hall reverberated. My host impelled me forward. A sea of crimson skullcaps as they rested foreheads on locked, diaphanous digits. I uttered the Jewish prayer slowly, improvising some. The alien phrases recoiled from the masonry, bounced among the massive trestle-tops, ricocheted from the clay utensils, the crude-carved cutlery, the cotton tablecloths. A towering Jesus bled into a candled recess.
The abbot led me to a chair and placed a bowl of nebulous soup in front. He stuck a wooden spoon right in the swirling liquid and went away. I ate, head bowed, maintaining silence, conforming to the crowd's ostentatious decorum. The repast over, I joined the abbot and his guests in the procession to his office. He recounted proudly the tale of my most imminent conversion.
They looked aghast. One of them enquired how I found Jesus. I said I hadn't yet. The abbot smiled contentedly. "He is not a liar" - he averred - "He doesn't lie even when lying leads to profit". "Perhaps the profitable thing to do is to be truthful in this case" - one bitterly commented.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/jesus-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
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Rogerian therapy is now practiced very differently with the client and therapist usually spatially separated or partitioned by an intervening desk.
Therapy is a very intimate relationship. We have failed to find the balance between boundaried behavior by the therapist and empathic resonance with the patient and her emotions.
Pioneer in regarding countertransference as diagnostic and healing technique. It sometimes involves projective identification.
Client-based therapy tried to introduce basic humane and human gestures that comfort, contain, hold, enhance the patient's trust and sense of safety, and buttress the bond of the therapeutic alliance.
Power and knowledge asymmetries in therapy, medicalization (expert, patient, medications)
Dehumanizing and objectifying the patient: the reductionist and goal-oriented approach
WATCH Sylvia: The Struggle for Self-Acceptance | Saybrook University
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ZdeOYwjgY
WATCH Carl Rogers and Gloria - Counselling 1965 Full Session
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ee1bU4XuUyg
READ Therapists and Touch: 5 Reasons Clients Should Be Hugged
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What are the hallmarks of a sick family of origin, a pathogenic family that induces mental illness in its
members?
Translation courtesy the NarcisismocomMirna
YouTube channel.
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The presence of pets activates in us two primitive psychological defense mechanisms: projection and narcissism.
Projection is a defense mechanism intended to cope with internal or external stressors and emotional conflict by attributing to another person or object (such as a pet) - usually falsely - thoughts, feelings, wishes, impulses, needs, and hopes deemed forbidden or unacceptable by the projecting party.
In the case of pets, projection works through anthropomorphism: we attribute to animals our traits, behavior patterns, needs, wishes, emotions, and cognitive processes. This perceived similarity endears them to us and motivates us to care for our pets and cherish them.
But, why do people become pet-owners in the first place?
Caring for pets comprises equal measures of satisfaction and frustration. Pet-owners often employ a psychological defense mechanism - known as "cognitive dissonance" - to suppress the negative aspects of having pets and to deny the unpalatable fact that raising pets and caring for them may be time consuming, exhausting, and strains otherwise pleasurable and tranquil relationships to their limits.
Pet-ownership is possibly an irrational vocation, but humanity keeps keeping pets. It may well be the call of nature. All living species reproduce and most of them parent. Pets sometimes serve as surrogate children and friends. Is this maternity (and paternity) by proxy proof that, beneath the ephemeral veneer of civilization, we are still merely a kind of beast, subject to the impulses and hard-wired behavior that permeate the rest of the animal kingdom? Is our existential loneliness so extreme that it crosses the species barrier?
There is no denying that most people want their pets and love them. They are attached to them and experience grief and bereavement when they die, depart, or are sick. Most pet-owners find keeping pets emotionally fulfilling, happiness-inducing, and highly satisfying. This pertains even to unplanned and initially unwanted new arrivals.
Could this be the missing link? Does pet-ownership revolve around self-gratification? Does it all boil down to the pleasure principle?
Pet-keeping may, indeed, be habit forming. Months of raising pups and cubs and a host of social positive reinforcements and expectations condition pet-owners to do the job. Still, a living pet is nothing like the abstract concept. Pets wail, soil themselves and their environment, stink, and severely disrupt the lives of their owners. Nothing too enticing here.
If you eliminate the impossible, what is left - however improbable - must be the truth. People keep pets because it provides them with narcissistic supply.
Continued here: https://samvak.tripod.com/animal.html
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Narcissists are children. But they are like Stephen King’s Children of the Corn or like the siblings in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw: horror coupled with the innocence of the deluded, entombed in a fantasy.
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There is no such thing as "crazy", "insane", "normal", and sane". So, what about illnesses like Schizophrenia and Bipolar Disorder?
Lisa's YouTube channel YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/LisaAlastuey/featured
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Trust yourself to spot a narcissist. Vow to yourself to act when you do: Walk away! NO CONTACT!
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How to get the job of intimate partner of a narcissist.
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Choosing reality involves grieving over losses. The narcissist's offers you the addictive fantasy of a second childhood as an idealized version of you with a perfect mother (=the narcissist) in a comfort zone.
Michele Paradise's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZZjhi9Q7w5_PTUx3f5EDGw
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Question and verify every single thing the narcissist says. Narcissists confabulate, they are delusional, and prone to fantasy.
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Two types of abuse. From my book “How to Divorce a Narcissist or a Psychopath”.
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Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) is a post-traumatic condition. But is it the same as complex trauma (CPTSD: Complex Post-traumatic Stress Disorder)?
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Movie is a mirror (maternal figure). Induces dissociation, regression, merger/symbiosis. Triggers shame and grief.
We identify with the characters and introject or incorporate (internalize) them. This triggers regression to pre-separation phase.
WATCH Mirrored Narcissist Gazes at YOU: Do Other People Exist? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=H7Gy-vIXCDc
Psychopaths are not narcissists
Incapacity to perceive external objects coupled with dissociation
Frustration, loss of control, anxiety
Emotional dysregulation of negative affects
Challenged grandiosity (shame, vulnerability)
Self-pity
Virtue signaling
Manipulation
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"Spiritual" narcissists manifest as victims, godlike deities, or healers-rescuers-saviors. They use narratives to enchant and captivate within cultlike structures.
Lisa's YouTube channel YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/c/LisaAlastuey/featured
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The narcissist’s behavior changes in different settings and environments. This implies that the narcissist is in full control of his abuse and misconduct.
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When
you wake the morning
red headed children shimmer in your eyes.
The veinous map
of sun drenched eyelids
flutters
throbbing topography.
Your muscles ripple.
Scared animals burrow
under your dewey skin.
Frozen light sculptures
where wrinkles dwell.
Embroidered shades,
in thick-maned tapestry.
Your lips depart in scarlet,
flesh to withering flesh,
and breath in curved tranquility
escapes the flaring nostrils.
Your warmth invades my sweat,
your lips leave skin regards
on my humidity.
Eyelashes clash.
More poetry of healing and abuse by Sam Vaknin
here: https://samvak.tripod.com/contents.html
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Ever since 1997, I have been advocating a unified view of personality disorders as post-traumatic conditions.
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WATCH “Dead Mothers” and Their Offspring: Narcissistic, Borderline, Psychotic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csukYBQpyHE
WATCH How to Raise a Narcissistic Child, Winner in a Sick World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Do8rj4w_nf0
Breach of boundaries, annexation and appropriation, objectification
Appeasement or rebellion strategies (wrath of the gods vs. apotheosis: codependent people-pleasing vs. antisocial narcissism)
Splitting (child all bad, mommy all good), never integration
Projection is always projective identification
(because parents perceived as infallible: child identify with parts that a parent placed on them, well into adulthood)
Social isolation +Self-referential isolation (negative bad object or inflated, impossible ideal ego that transforms into bad object)= impaired reality testing
Obstructed separation-individuation via ambient emotional blackmail or emotional incest
Sibling hierarchies and competition
Cult vs. Others (they are wrong, they are enemies, they will never understand, they are evil, we must protect our secrets)
Instrumentalizing leads to adulation but unrealistic expectations and coercive snapshotting
Parentifying: I am never good enough, I am responsible for other people’s welfare
Immaturity, regressive infantilism, imaginary friends, paracosm, fantasy as defense and shared
Ego failure (no integrated or constellated self, just fragments)
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“Twin flames” are narcissistic mind-snatchers and brainwashers. They use entraining to control and manipulate you.
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Both the Russian Empire and the USSR of yore
leveraged access to the Black Sea to project influence – and menace – in multiple domains: the
Mediterranean, North Africa (recent example: Libya), southern Europe, and the
Middle East (e.g. Syria and the Russian naval base in Tartus).
The much celebrated – and recently battered by
Ukraine - Black Sea fleet has been a continuous presence in Sevastopol in
Crimea ever since 1793. It is the only deep water port at Russia’s disposal and
can therefore be used in winter, too.
Under international law of the seas, Russia by
right should own only about 10% of the coastline. In reality, though, it deters
any attempts to encroach on its control of more than one third of it. It
invaded Georgia and established Abkhazia – a Black Sea hugging Kremlin puppet
“state” – precisely for this reason.
Military considerations apart, most of Russia’s
non-energy exports, such as grain and fertilizers, transit via Black Sea ports.
This is especially vital now: Western sanctions served to redirect Russia’s
trade at non-complying countries which can be supplied only via these littoral
outlets.
But the same applies to Ukraine: about 50% of its
exports – mainly wheat, barley, and sunflower oil - were processed prior to the
war in Odesa, the country’s most sizable Black Sea port.
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My books: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/thebook.html
Find and Buy MOST of my BOOKS and eBOOKS in my
Amazon Store: https://www.amazon.com/stores/page/60F8EC8A-5812-4007-9F2C-DFA02EA713B3
Video courtesy of @mirna_liz37
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“Empaths”
or covert narcissists?
LITERATURE
WATCH Narcissists, Eternal Victims, Trauma,
Psychosis: Splitting the Inner Dialog
WATCH Victimhood Movements Hijacked by Narcissists
and Psychopaths
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.
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
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.
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Libidinal investment (cathexis) in external
(love) or internal (narcissistic cathexis, megalomania) object common in
schizophrenia, paranoia, BPD, NPD: positive only affects, idealization (object
perfection)=infantile regression, magical thinking (omnipotence of thoughts,
magical power of words)
Fantasy-infused thoughts (dereism) or narcissistic
and egocentric self-absorption (autistic).
Reality alienation
(hypnoid states, twilight states)
Amentia: decathexis in both external world and
internal objects, cathexis in total wish-fulfillment universe
Postponement of pleasure, tension (reality
principle): involves grandiosity (omniscience of future pleasure,
catastrophizing as in depression)
LITERATURE
Abend, Sander. (1979). Unconscious fantasy and
theories of cure. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 27,
579–596 and (1982). Reality testing as a clinical concept. Psychoanalytic
Quarterly, 51, 218–238.
Arlow, Jacob A. (1969). Fantasy, memory, and
reality testing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 38, 28–51.
Freud, S. (1911). Formulations on the two
principles of mental functioning. S.E. 12: 213–226. and (1915). Instincts and
their vicissitudes. S.E. 14: 109–140. And (1917). A metapsychological
supplement to the theory of dreams. S.E. 14:217–235.
Grossman, L. (1996). “Psychic Reality” and reality
testing in the analysis of perverse defences. International Journal of
Psycho-Analysis, 77: 509–518.
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To
love a narcissist is to keep a wave upon the sand, to hold a
moonbeam in your hand, the sound of music and your offered heart.
To love a narcissist is to
gaze into your abyss, to darkly peer through glass, to refract in the liquid
metal of the kaleidoscopic he, to weightless float adrift into his absence -
and then be gone.
Poetry of Healing and Abuse
http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/contents.html
Image courtesy of @mirja_mir
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Total narcissistic collapse is the same as narcissistic mortification. Partial collapse leads to type inconstancy (transition from one type of narcissism to another) and is the outcome of deficient narcissistic supply: negative, low-grade, fake, or static. Partial collapse is also triggered by any failure in any of the phases of eliciting narcissistic supply: triggering, conversion, and provision. Partial collapse is a response to an imbalance between sources of primary and secondary narcissistic supply or to a failure to form a Pathological Narcissistic Space (PNS).
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On my Nothingness YouTube channel
HISTORICAL ROOTS of VICTIMHOOD
Fatalism and determinism
Sacrifice vs. Victimhood: Chosen by God, Path to
apotheosis (narcissism), Catholic martyrology, Protestantism
Jewish victimhood (slavery in Egypt, Roman exile,
Holocaust)
Entitlement: calculus of rights and obligations
Overgeneration of grievances and rights (USA
founding documents)
Anti-Colonialism (Western narrative adopted by
colonized)
Secular religions (Nazism, Communism, nationalism)
reaction formation
MODERN VICTIMHOOD
Organizing principle that replaces gender, race,
nation-state
Ahistorical
Mental illness
Malignant egalitarianism
Planet as a victim, animals as victims
Together with Jordan Peterson and other scholars, I helped Ginger Coy compile a taxonomy of the psychopathology of woke movements. It is now available on public.substack.com, Michael Shellenberger’s and Peter Boghossian’s blog. Watch my interview with Ginger Coy on my vakninmusings YouTube channel.
Victimhood in history and its contemporary renditions in a far ranging talk with Ginger Coy, compiler of the Woke Psychopathology List and Chart. Available on my vakninmusings YouTube channel.
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I strongly recommend the work of @shadowdeangelis : fact-based capsules of well-researched knowledge about narcissism, narcissists, and narcissistic abuse. Priceless.
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Magical thinking is an infantile psychological defense mechanism: it is the erroneous conviction that one’s thoughts and words have an immediate and direct effect on reality.
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There are two types of gaslighting: verbal and behavioral (signaling).
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Psychopath’s gaslighting and narcissist’s confabulation are experienced the same way by victims. But gaslighting
requires premeditation and intact reality testing, so only psychopaths
gaslight. Narcissists truly believe their own fantasies and confabulations:
they self-gaslight.
Gaslighting is a form of dissociation
(derealization, depersonalization). The narcissist uses entraining to convert
the victim into an extension of himself. He then experiences himself
vicariously, via the victim: his dissociation and fantasy.
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You are the human sacrifice that the narcissist makes to his False Self, the deity that governs his life.
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Masculinity is whatever Men do.
Even changing diapers, raising children, and
crying are masculine - if and when done by Men.
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Narcissists are children. But they are like Stephen King’s Children of the Corn or like the siblings in Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw: horror coupled with the innocence of the deluded, entombed in a fantasy.
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On Saturday, a Jewish holy day, more than 1500 Palestinian fighters, affiliated with Hamas, penetrated the security wall (fence) from the Gaza Strip and entered the territory of the State of Israel. They took over several villages and towns, killed about 900 Israelis, most of them civilians, including women and children, and abducted more than 100 Israelis, both military personnel and civilians, including children. Another 2,500 are wounded, about 400 of them in critical condition.
Interview regarding the Hamas-Israel war on “Glasot na Narodot”, a talk show by the veteran journalist Slobodan Tomik on VTV TV. Translated by Jean Stanoevski of Constan.
Excerpt from a longer interview I granted to
Newsweek regarding Israel's
war with Hamas and Hezbollah, 2023. With
the excellent and erudite @remus.cernea
Watch it on my vakninmusings YouTube channel.
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The somatic narcissist flaunts his sexual conquests, parades his possessions,
exhibits his muscles, brags about his physical aesthetics, youthfulness, sexual
prowess or exploits, and is often a health freak and a hypochondriac.
Like most males, somatic narcissists are plagued
with a sexual overperception bias, but in a more pronounced way than normal:
they tend to interpret every female behavior, utterance, and gesture as an
unambiguous invitation to have sex.
The somatic narcissist regards his body as an
object to be sculpted and honed (via extreme diets, multiple cosmetic
surgeries, bodybuilding, or weightlifting). When coupled with psychopathic
tendencies, the somatic appropriates other people’s bodies and treats these as
“raw materials” to be dismembered, tampered with, altered, invaded, or
otherwise abused.
Somatic narcissists are often portrayed as sex
addicts or histrionic. They are thought to possess “manic defenses” (avoidance
of feelings of discomfort, loneliness, and inadequacy by seeking states of
hyperactivity, arousal, and excitement). They are also prone to cognitive
biases such as sexual overperception (misinterpreting even innocuous female
behaviors as indications of sexual interest and flirtation, a mild form of
erotomania).
But really somatic narcissists derive their
narcissistic supply not so much from the sex act as from the process of
securing it: the conspiracies and assignations, the chase and conquest, the
subjugation and habituation of their targets, and even from dumping and
discarding their prey, once having extracted the attention and admiration they
had sought.
These extracurricular activities endow them with a
sense of omnipotence and all-pervasive control. Their sway over their paramours
and would-be lovers proves to them (and to others) their uniqueness,
desirability and irresistibility.
Somatic narcissists also seek almost compulsively
to induce their partners to climax. Orgasms – their frequency, duration, and
intensity - are a measure of virility and “success” and, therefore, a form of
narcissistic supply.