Sam Vaknin’s Instagram Epigrams (archive only)
Narcissism with Vaknin on Instagram (active account)
Healthy vs. pathological narcissism.
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The victim’s hunger resonates with the narcissist’s own hunger.
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You have been victimized. Don’t let victimhood define who you are and constrict your life. Don’t become a victim! Don’t perpetuate the abuse!
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Trauma is the vector of transmission of the Cluster B “virus” and
especially of pathological Narcissism.
This is why it is hard to tell apart clinically
trauma victims from borderlines, narcissists, and even psychopaths.
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Question: What is Narcissistic Supply?
Answer: Healthy narcissism (self-love) is the
foundation of self-esteem and underlies self-confidence. We all need and
consume narcissistic supply. We all search for positive cues – feedback,
approval, affirmation, love, or even hard-earned admiration - from people
around us. These cues reinforce in us certain behaviour patterns. There is
nothing special in the fact that the narcissist does the same. However, there
are two major differences between the narcissistic and the normal personality.
The first is quantitative. The normal person is
likely to welcome a moderate amount of attention, both verbal and non-verbal.
Too much attention, though, is perceived as onerous and is avoided. Destructive
and censorious criticism is shunned altogether. Healthy people can endure long
periods without these inputs and their absence does not affect their
self-regulation and psychological health and functioning.
The narcissist, in contrast, is the mental
equivalent of an alcoholic. He is insatiable. He compulsively directs his whole
behaviour, in fact his life, to obtaining these pleasurable titbits of
attention. He embeds them in a coherent, completely biased, fantastic picture
of himself. He uses them to regulate his labile sense of self-worth and
self-esteem. He needs narcissistic supply to carry out basic mental (ego)
functions. Without it he crumbles and becomes dysfunctional.
More here: http://www.narcissistic-abuse.com/faq76.html
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"Now, I don't even have a snail" - tears blended with startled exhalations - "You will be gone, too! I thought we could fight the world, you and I, that we are invincible. But it is not like that at all! We can't even look after one snail together!"
"Are you mad at me?" - I asked and she snorted, part pain and part contempt. She scooped the shattered snail with a paper towel and dumped both in the overflowing trash bin. She froze like that awhile and then, as if reaching a decision, she deposited the box, replete with lettuce leaves, in the garbage can.
"I don't think I am going to need it. I am never going to have another snail" - she paused - "At least not with you."
https://samvak.tripod.com/snail-en.html
Short Fiction About Narcissists and Psychopaths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtLdPsCsQPc&list=PLsh_y_ett4o3haxsa62BXUwz8mB6eXWur
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Joint
Event on Neurology and Addiction keynote presentation.
4th Global
Conference on Addiction Medicine, Behavioral Health, and Psychiatry, Boston,
October 2023.
I am no longer with
Southern Federal University (the event was planned before the war in Ukraine
started).
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Seeking closure is a refusal to move on, getting stuck in the past, handing power to your abuser. Embrace your grief, avoid closure.
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What to do when the narcissistic parent turns your children against you?
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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 narcissist outsources his/her sense of existence. They derive it from others. The narcissist appropriates other people’s existence and lives (“substitutive becoming”).
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The covert borderline craves love and a family. The covert narcissist deceives him by offering him both. He lets her mislead him and gets addicted to the shared fantasy.
WATCH Odd Couples: Codependent-Codependent, Narcissist-Narcissist (1st in Series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuegI8OWERk
Presentation in the 36th International conference on Mental Health and Psychiatry, January 11-12, 2024 Dubai, UAE
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Interview regarding the war between Hamas and Israel and the EU’s enlargement to the Balkans.
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CORRECTION and APOLOGY: The Hamas beheaded soldiers and murdered babies. But mercifully, they did not behead the babies. My apologies for getting this detail wrong.
There is a trauma response playing on both sides. Israel is a product of the Holocaust and the Palestinians have their Naqba.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a form of competitive victimhood: a clash between two entitled and self-centred dysempathic victimhood movements.
Like every conflict in history, it gives rise to:
Paranoid ideation and conspiracism
Narcissistic defenses (cognitive distortions such as grandiosity),
Impaired reality testing,
Magical thinking,
Splitting (dichotomous thinking): We are all good, our enemies are all bad.
Reactance (defiance and contumaciousness),
Recklessness,
Mood lability and emotional dysregulation,
Suicidal ideation coupled with religious righteousness (Masada, shahada)
The parties to the conflict abuse and manipulate each other by
externalizing aggression,
gaslighting,
and projective identification (provoking the other party to behave in a way that conforms to expectations and negates a negative self-image).
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Kanal 5 TV: “Hamas is only a symptom. The disease is the occupation. The problem is: it is a zero-sum game”.
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With the inimitable Vasko Eftov, discussing whether Israel could become America’s new Vietnam. @vaskoeftov007
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When the life force is self-directed after childhood, the resulting break with others and with reality is known as pathological narcissism. With @dr_bornamanesh A foray into the land of narcissism: from Freud to cutting-edge research.
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Why the intelligence failure of Israel on October 7? Kod on Telma TV.
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Stop fighting. It pathologizes you. There is help in acceptance.
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If we succeed to change the orientation of both Jews and Palestinians from the past to the future and if we get rid of the shame-based retribution cycles, we have hope.
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Cluster B personality disorders are post-traumatic conditions. As such they are indistinguishable from sufferers of CPTSD (complex trauma). But CPTSD is transient and curable.
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Only YOU can Heal Yourself. No One Can Do It for You.
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0:00 Borderline as failed narcissist: why the failure? 40:18 Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) in DSM 49:01 Covert Borderline and Borderline Types in Love
The classic Borderline offers the Covert Borderline an ideal love fantasy which he craves. But his ideal partner is a codependent "shy or quiet" borderline.
Borderline is a failed narcissist because she has an intermittent mother, not a dead one: intermittent reinforcement allows the borderline to perceive external objects by outsourcing ego functions and even her body despite her huge narcissistic investment.
The narcissist gave up on the externality of separate objects because they are bound to frustrate and hurt. The borderline still has hope: she interacts with separate external objects via merger and fusion, by becoming their internal object.
Covert borderline is a child who was first subjected to a dead mother and then to an intermittent but loving mother. He is trying to recreate this love.
Shy or quiet borderline: useful idea miscast as a diagnosis.
Borderline’s anaclitic object choice
Narcissist’s fantasy is to be loved by a mother figure
Covert Borderline’s fantasy is ideal love expressed through children
Borderline’s fantasy is be regulated by secure base, special friend, rock
All experience shadow via their partners (Archaic wounds, V-spots)
LITERATURE
WATCH Borderline’s Partner: Some Enter Healthy, Exit Mentally Ill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16x7bvr85u8
WATCH Borderline Demonizes Partner, Pathologizes Narcissist (Or Herself) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yc5yf4pjt5Y
Articles and book by: Grotstein, Kernberg, Masterson, Rinsley, Searles, Gunderson, Rosenfeld, Steiner, Brown, McDougall, Green, Modell, Volkan, Giovacchini, Stone, Boyer, Meissner, Bion, Balint, Khan, Bowlby, Winnicott, Jacobson
WATCH Odd Couples: Codependent-Codependent, Narcissist-Narcissist (1st in Series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuegI8OWERk
WATCH How Covert Narcissist Deceives Covert Borderline and He Loves It (2nd in Odd Couples Series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FonsjXlf_I0
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Co-idealization is when the narcissist idealizes you in order to idealize himself.
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Some people know how to love only by giving.
When their gifts are rebuffed or ignored, they
panic.
Their giving then becomes compulsive, controlling,
and coercive - the very opposite of love.
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The narcissists converts you
into an internal object and invests his libido
(cathects) in this idealized or devalued (in other words: false) internal
representation of you.
Video courtesy of the NarcisismocomMirna YouTube
channel.
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With China's acquiescence and then help, Russia transformed
its invasion of Ukraine into a proxy war with the West. This led to escalation in conflicts along the fault lines
between East and West all over the world, including in the Middle East and soon
in Taiwan.
We are in the throes of a global realignment of
power, similar to the period of the 1950s and 1960s when the West tried to
contain the USSR and Communist China.
The United States is polarized and paralyzed. It
has no budget. It can barely support with military aid more than 2 conflicts at
a time. NATO is underfunded and under-trained. As Ukraine is going to find out
very soon, the West is not a reliable or long-term ally.
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Recipe
for success:
1. Stir victimhood
2. Add fake empathy
3. Claim ostentatious riches and adventures
4. Sprinkle paranoia and rage
Best served while laughing all the way to the bank.
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Importance of mother demonstrated via studies of orphans (ERA), adoptees, and foster care children. When mistreated, children often inquire: “Am I adopted?”
We need to revolutionize the adoption process: full disclosure to the adoptee from day 1 and close collaboration between the family of origin and the adoptive family.
LITERATURE
Selma Fraiberg and Rene Spitz on pathological defenses in infancy
WATCH Why Childhood Abuse Victims Hate and Are Hated https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jQ2kqDj-vQ
What Are the Mental Health Effects of Being Adopted?
By Theodora Blanchfield, AMFT
Published on February 14, 2022
Paine, A.L., Fahey, K., Anthony, R.E. et al. Early adversity predicts adoptees’ enduring emotional and behavioral problems in childhood. Eur Child Adolesc Psychiatry 30, 721–732 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01553-0
Paine A, and others. The neurocognitive profiles of children adopted from care and their emotional and behavioural problems at home and school. Child Neuropsychology. 2020;16;1-20
Meakings S, and others. Birth sibling relationships after adoption: the experience of contact with brothers and sisters living elsewhere. British Journal of Social Work. 2016;30:386-396.
Paine A, and others. Charting the trajectories of adopted children’s emotional and behavioral problems: the impact of early adversity and post-adoptive parental warmth. Development and Psychopathology. 2020;1-15
Depression and anxiety symptoms of British adoptive parents: a prospective four-wave longitudinal study. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2019;16:5153
Anthony R, and others. Adverse childhood experiences of children adopted from care: The importance of adoptive parental warmth for future child adjustment. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 2019;16:2212
Anthony R, and others. Patterns of adversity and post-traumatic stress among children adopted from care. Child Abuse Negl. 2020;7:104795
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As the therapist Michele Paradise says: labelling your abuser as a narcissist doesn’t matter. If you find yourself trapped in a toxic relationship - just GET OUT!
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When the introject is sadistic and dominant, it may lead to OSDD and hijack the person's body, pretending to be a protector self-state. A psychological analysis of Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, "Psycho".
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Israel is committing an existential error by seeking to expand the conflict on multiple fronts in order to cleanse the region of Iranian influence. Interview to Sitel TV.
Gaza would be a nightmare of urban warfare for the Israeli army that has been destroyed by decades of budget cuts and politicizing. With @borjan_jovanovski
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Ask yourself: why did I end up with a narcissist?
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Narcissists
are incapable of love:
They are incapable of loving
And
They are incapable of being loved.
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Opposites
attract is the only rational mating strategy. But
narcissism corrupted it: now people team up only with similar partners who
serve as extensions, mirrors, and an audience.
LITERATURE
Horwitz, T.B., Balbona, J.V., Paulich, K.N. et al.
Evidence of correlations between human partners based on systematic reviews and
meta-analyses of 22 traits and UK Biobank analysis of 133 traits. Nat Hum Behav
7, 1568–1583 (2023).
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Six
General rules for LIFE, not only in relationships:
1. You get as much respect from others as you
respect yourself;
2. People will give you the absolute minimum
unless you openly and vocally insist on more;
3. If it possibly COULD BE a lie or a fantasy - it
very often is;
4. Loneliness, anger, and sadness are the worst
ever advisors. Time is the best one;
5. If you want to see the true face of a person,
try saying “no” to them;
6. Your behavior changed and bad outcomes avoided.
This means that you have changed.
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Cruelty is not the same as sadism. Sadism is the art of pain: gratification, pleasure, creativity. It is often coupled with masochism which is self-punitive (bad object). Cruelty is self-regulatory and narcissistic:
In the wake of mortification (public shaming and humiliation)
Intended to restore grandiose, inflated self-perception because it is unnecessary and excessive, a choice, an expression of dominance and control (coercion). It causes elation (Grunberger), but not pleasure.
Sustains a narrative of retributive justice (quid pro quo, eye for an eye (lex talionis): competitive, grandiose, entitled victimhood
Requires the cooperation of the victim: an admission of vulnerability, hurt, damage, pain. A kind of shared fantasy.
WATCH Sadist: Pleasure of Your Pain, Anguish of Your Pleasure (+Narcissist) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcgHRdcw3mU
WATCH Narcissistic vs. Sadistic Supply https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFyPWQggAiA
WATCH Narcissist's Pain: Narcissism, Sadism, and Masochism https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL-CS0jtFWk
WATCH Narcissist's Sadism, Masochism, and Self-Destructiveness (ENGLISH responses) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56evsD9lzL8
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Interview in tomorrow’s edition of Nova Makedonija about the Berlin Process and the much delayed accession of the polities of the Western Balkans into an enlarged European Union.
Interview I granted to Nova Makedonija on October 9, predicting accurately the following developments in the conflict.
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In jealousy-based societies, successful people
are role models to be admired and emulated.
Jealousy (not romantic jealousy!) is a positive, motivating force.
In envy-based (narcissistic) societies (like the
USA), the accomplished ones are taken down, hounded, and virulently hated.
Envy feeds on victimhood, conspiracism, and
witch-hunting.
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Narcissists give little in their relationships because they overvalue their inputs and experience an effort-reward imbalance. Their victims, on the other hand, frequently overcommit.
Video Presentation to the 24th World Congress on Psychology and Behavioral Science, Toronto, March 2024
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The more you try to SUPPRESS an intrusive thought - the more pervasive and potent it becomes (Ironic Rebound)
Try the opposite:
Force yourself, knowingly and consciously, to
contemplate ONLY the intrusive content.
Whenever another unrelated thought occurs to you,
immediately recall the intrusive thought and focus on it in great detail.
Gradually, the intrusive thought will cease.
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Bernie Madoff: how one narcissist fooled them all for decades.
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Few narcissists are also sadists. Sadistic Personality Disorder should be included in the DSM 6 and merged with Masochistic Personality Disorder (from Freud to Millon).
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Truth-tellers don’t get laid. Truth-tellers get waylaid.
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In the absence of empathy and
access to positive emotions - in which sense are
narcissists human?
Courtesy @narcisi_klaster_b
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FEATURES OF URBAN WARFARE
The more you destroy, the more concrete defenses
you provide, rubble is optimal, booby traps
Small units
Killing zones and ambushes
Hidden enemy, constant guessing, surprises, shocks
Hand to hand combat
Underground, on the ground, from top of buildings
(three-dimensional death envelope)
Grind, no clear end or horizon, feels like it
could last forever: from shaping operations to actually urban warfare (invasion)
Advantages to defender: bloody, slow, complex
(great equalizer)
Civilian collateral damage inevitable: attackers
are bad guys
Need to besiege defenders in pockets (siege
mentality, static trench warfare)
No prisoners, kill everyone in sight
Night operations (superiority of night vision
technologies)
Assets (drones, robots): mechanical, impersonal
airborne or land warfare (to clear rooms, for example), blowing up building in
contested urban warfare – war as a video game
Combined arms maneuvers: infantry and commando
units guide pilots and navy, artillery
Heavily armed force followed by isolation force
Personal responsibility, you are on your own, no
one has your back
PSYCHOLOGICAL DEFENSES and OUTCOMES of URBAN
WARFARE
PTSD
No movement or accomplishments, frozen scene,
surreal
Gruesome death as constant companion
Sense of abandonment, extreme dependency on
others: external locus of control, splitting, alloplastic defenses, defiance,
acting out/crazymaking, moral collapse, magical or superstitious thinking
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Empathy reduces aggression, prevents malevolence, and is the antidote to narcissism.
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I am glad that what I have been saying since the 1990s is now accepted and adopted by intellectuals all over the world. Thank you both Nelson Ferreira @nelson.ferreira.visual.artist and @dr_bornamanesh
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Narcissists hold in cold, demeaning contempt the very people they envy.
They hold in virulent, sadistic contempt people
that they depend on for narcissistic supply (attention) and for the maintenance
of the shared fantasy (“love”).
Above all, they hold themselves in utmost disdain
and compensate for this self-loathing with pretend godlike grandiosity.
The contempt is on 24/7/365.
No letup.
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I experience my False Self through a glass darkly, partition, observer only.
Truthful voices distant, dimmed, echoes.
Depersonalization and derealization.
It serves as a decoy, it "attracts the fire". It is a proxy for the True Self. It is tough as nails and can absorb any amount of pain, hurt and negative emotions. By inventing it, the child develops immunity to the indifference, manipulation, sadism, smothering, or exploitation – in short: to the abuse – inflicted on him by his parents (or by other Primary Objects in his life). It is an invisibility cloak, protecting him, rendering him invisible and omnipotent at the same time.
The False Self is misrepresented by the narcissist as his True Self. The narcissist is saying, in effect: "I am not who you think I am. I am someone else. I am this (False) Self. Therefore, I deserve a better, painless, more considerate treatment." The False Self, thus, is a contraption intended to alter other people's behaviour and attitude towards the narcissist.
Re-Interpretation
It causes the narcissist to re-interpret certain emotions and reactions in a flattering, socially acceptable, light. The narcissist may, for instance, interpret fear as compassion. If the narcissist hurts someone he fears (e.g., an authority figure), he may feel bad afterwards and interpret his discomfort as empathy and compassion or courage, having balls. To be afraid is humiliating – to be compassionate or brave is commendable and earns the narcissist social commendation and understanding (narcissistic supply).
Emulation, Mimicry
The narcissist is possessed of an uncanny ability to psychologically penetrate others. Often, this gift is abused and put at the service of the narcissist's control freakery and sadism. The narcissist uses it liberally to annihilate the natural defences of his victims by faking empathy.
This capacity is coupled with the narcissist's eerie ability to imitate emotions and their attendant behaviours (affect). The narcissist possesses "emotional resonance tables". He keeps records of every action and reaction, every utterance and consequence, every datum provided by others regarding their state of mind and emotional make-up. From these, he then constructs a set of formulas, which often result in impeccably accurate renditions of emotional behaviour. This can be enormously deceiving.
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A good enough mother pushes the child away from her to explore and take on the world. She encourages the child to separate and individuate by frustrating the child strategically and wisely. She fosters in the child agency, personal autonomy, independence, and self-efficacy.
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Narcissists appear to be indolent - but they are not.
They perceive themselves as godlike.
God created the entire universe in 6 days and 8
short utterances. God didn’t have to work hard for it!
God is also entitled to special treatment,
service, and supplication.
Other people should labor and toil to realize the
nitty gritty of the narcissist’s “big picture vision”. He is above such tedium.
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We no longer find commitment, investment,
companionship, hard work, responsibility, seriousness, and honesty sexually appealing.
Hence phenomena such as promiscuity and
pseudo-relationships.
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WATCH Hitchcock's Halloween Treat (or Trick?): Psycho, or Embodied Introject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-p_CyCTHuc
WATCH “Dead" Mothers and Their Offspring: Narcissistic, Borderline, Psychotic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csukYBQpyHE
In my work, the death drive is not a primal drive. It is internalized and inculcated – not innate. It is the dead mother’s gift to her child.
Dead mother engenders death-seeking ego ideal (superego) to:
1. Emulate the mother’s deadness (fantasy or phanatsy defense);
2. Get rid of the bad object (fantasy or phantasy defense, Akhtar, 1991;Shengold, 1991);
3. Re-experience symbiosis (oceanic feeling, loss of boundaries) in self-extinguishing rather than in love (perceives love as dissolution, merger/fusion, disappearance=death) (Lacan, 1938; Lewin, 1950; Jacobson, 1964; Mahler, 1971; Kaplan, 1978; Chasseguet-Smirgel, 1984, 1991 “nostalgia for primary narcissism”);
4. Ensure immediate and automatic gratification of needs without agency, guilt, and shame/inferiority (Stone, 1971).
Lacan, 1946: death drive is the suicidal tendency of narcissism.
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Trauma is no excuse for abuse.
Abuse is no excuse for abuse.
Mental illness is no excuse for abuse.
Nothing justifies abuse.
Not a single thing.
Period.
End of Story.
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Watch my videos about geopolitics
and economics as well as social issues in my
vakninmusings YouTube channel.
Video courtesy @mirna_liz37
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Pathological narcissism is how healthy narcissism reacts to early childhood traumatizing abuse. It is a post-traumatic condition.
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Men misinterpret female friendly gestures as
sexual signaling (sexual
overperception)
Women interpret male sexual cues as friendly
gestures (sexual underperception).
Consequently, inter-sex and inter-gender sexual
communication is a minefield.
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Planarian flatworms can either regrow their heads - or reproduce sexually. Sounds like all men, to me.
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GOOD
MOTHER
A good enough mother pushes the child away from
her to explore and take on the world. She encourages the child to separate and
individuate by frustrating the child strategically and wisely. She fosters in
the child agency, personal autonomy, independence, and self-efficacy.
CONTEMPT
Narcissists hold in cold, demeaning contempt the
very people they envy. They hold in virulent, sadistic contempt people that
they depend on for narcissistic supply (attention) and for the maintenance of
the shared fantasy (“love”). Above all, they hold themselves in utmost disdain
and compensate for this self-loathing with pretend godlike grandiosity. The
contempt is on 24/7/365. No letup.
LOVE
Narcissists are incapable of love: They are
incapable of loving and they are incapable of being loved.
LAZY NARCISSIST
Narcissists appear to be indolent - but they are
not. They perceive themselves as godlike. God created the entire universe in 6
days and 8 short utterances. God didn’t have to work hard for it! God is also
entitled to special treatment, service, and supplication. Other people should
labor and toil to realize the nitty gritty of the narcissist’s “big picture
vision”. He is above such tedium.
INTRUSIVE THOUGHTS
The more you try to SUPPRESS an intrusive thought
- the more pervasive and potent it becomes (Ironic Rebound). Try the opposite:
Force yourself, knowingly and consciously, to contemplate ONLY the intrusive
content. Whenever another unrelated thought occurs to you, immediately recall
the intrusive thought and focus on it in great detail. Gradually, the intrusive
thought will cease.
LOVING by GIVING
Some people know how to love only by giving. When
their gifts are rebuffed or ignored, they panic. Their giving then becomes
compulsive, controlling, and coercive - the very opposite of love.
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Idealization takes from a few hours to a few days from the moment of introjection (snapshotting).
Snapshotting occurs instantly when the narcissist decides that you could serve as an intimate partner in the shared fantasy or a source of narcissistic supply.
Signs that you are being snapshotted (introjected) and idealized (lovebombing phase):
Probing (scanning for vulnerabilities) disguised (and experienced) as limerence or infatuation
Data mining
Accelerated intimacy and ostentatious trust
Impairing reality testing (for example, by constantly justifying your behaviors; casting you as a victim; comparing you favorably as superior to others, past and present; reframing your failures as unmitigated, unalloyed success)
Communicating idealized internal object and behavioral expectations (possessiveness, monopolizing your time, control freakery, intrusiveness, surprises, realization of fantasies)
Trophy parading you in public (ostentation)
Hypersexuality and competitive sexual praising (bait, trap, intended to cause addiction or form a bond)
Coercive snapshotting
When the idealization is complete, the narcissist stops talking mostly about you and starts to talk mostly about himself.
Signs of imminent devaluation and discard by the narcissist:
Emotional absence, indifference, and coldness
Affected “civility”
Constant criticism and denigration
Passive-aggression
Unfavorable comparisons
Setting you up for failure and misconduct
Paranoid ideation and pathological jealousy
Sudden secret actions (financial or romantic)
Public disparagement and humiliation, also with common children
Sex withholding or degradation
Cessation of all joint activities, especially of a social nature
Pervasive distrust and micromanagement
Discard reenacts unresolved separation phase.
Individuation depends on devaluation (in order to preserve grandiosity and exit the shared fantasy) and externalization-projection (reversal of internalization-introjection). When either of these two processes fails, hoovering results.
So, emotionally, discard precedes devaluation. The narcissist hangs on to his partner only in order to complete the devaluation.
Devaluation resembles also the separation phase in adolescence: reactance (defiance), contempt, distancing, negative identity formation, approach-avoidance.
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The truly strong and resilient are not afraid to surrender, to give up the fight, to act with caution, and to expose their vulnerabilities. Nothing is more stupid, weak, inauthentic, and immature than defiance.
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Some suggestible patients try to please their therapists by faking behaviors and by introducing a shared fantasy (transference and countertransference). Boundaried therapists should prevent this from happening.
WATCH Transference as Flashback: Wife=Mother, Therapist=Father https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GcFZ88MNIQ
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Follow this man! @shadowdeangelis
The narcissist is capable of having pseudointimate
relationships that do not involve a shared fantasy. In such liaisons, he is
indifferent and dismissive, but not abusive.
Within a shared fantasy, the narcissist snapshots (introjects) his partner and then
idealizes the resultant internal object.
Henceforth, the narcissist abusively coerces his
partner into conforming to this inner representation of her (avatar) in his
mind.
This course of action guarantees the ultimate
dissolution of the bond via devaluation and discard and the long sought after
separation from a maternal figure.
The narcissist’s partners end up abandoning him,
triangulating or mortifying him with infidelity or other forms of betrayal in a
desperate attempt to jump start the moribund relationship (a cry for help,
having been exposed to the narcissist’s inexorable betrayal fantasy), or
succumbing and becoming a figment in his fantasy.
When his partner consents to suspend her autonomy
and agency and give in to the shared fantasy, separation-individuation fails.
Resentful and frustrated, the narcissist
defeminizes and maternalizes the obsequious partner: the relationship becomes
sexless and transactional.
She becomes a full-fledged mother figure, free to
have sex and romance with others, but always at the beck and call of the
permanently infantilized narcissist.
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To use euphemisms and then giggle shyly and nervously is prepubescent and
immature behavior.
Yet, we are told to do exactly that as adults in
our increasingly more infantile societies.
The latest additions: unalive (commit suicide) and
neurodivergent (mentally ill or disordered or dysfunctional - or plain nutjob
whacko).
Insert F word here (shy, nervous giggle).
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To the narcissist, you are a character in his dream-state and shared fantasy dreamscape. He condenses and symbolizes
your figure and displaces negative affects onto you in preparation for your
devaluation and his separation. An interpretation of one narcissist's dream
follows.
The Sad Dreams of the Narcissist https://samvak.tripod.com/narcissistdreams.html
A Dream Interpreted https://samvak.tripod.com/faq55.html
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My
YouTube channel on narcissism is highly
academic and encumbered with 10 dollar words (you see?). But since the
beginning of this year, it has been skyrocketing: subscribers are up 40% to
300,000 and views are up 70%. I have added 500 hours of prime quality content
in just 10 months.
This past year has been one of the most productive
and creative in my life: published 3 books, 50 columns (in Brussels Morning),
400 videos, gave dozens of interviews to media all over the world.
I also collaborated with multiple mental health
practitioners (15,000 of them follow me on Linkedin). I have just received the
contract for my next academic book. What a year!
I wish you the same contentment and
accomplishments in your lives!
Last image (swipe left) courtesy @mirna_liz37
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Courage is about not being afraid to be afraid.
Resilience is about not being afraid to be
vulnerable.
Strength is about not
being afraid to seek help.
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Are you too concerned with how you are perceived
and with possible rejection?
You are catastrophizing and then you act on your
own catastrophic scenarios as if they were facts and not just possible scripts!
You need to adopt a posture of: “This is who I am
and I accept a certain amount of rejection as inevitable. Being rejected will
not kill me!”
I say to myself: 1. Rejection will not kill me 2.
It is their loss, not mine 3. Not everyone rejects me. So, the rejection has to
do with them, not with me!
Of course, you need to avoid harming others or
hurting them.
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Full text here: https://samvak.tripod.com/jews.html
Video here: https://www.youtube.com/vakninmusings
Rabid anti-Semitism, coupled with inane and outlandish conspiracy theories of
world dominion, is easy to counter and dispel. It is the more
"reasoned", subtle, and stealthy variety that it pernicious. "No
smoke without fire," - say people - "there must be something to
it!".
In this dialog I try to deconstruct a
"mild" anti-Semitic text. I myself wrote the text - not an easy task
considering my ancestry (a Jew) and my citizenship (an Israeli). But to
penetrate the pertinent layers - historical, psychological, semantic, and
semiotic - I had to "enter the skin" of "rational", classic
anti-Semites, to grasp what makes them click and tick, and to think and reason
like them.
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The fact that you are a paranoid means they are not after you. Watch the full video on my YouTube channel.
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Childhood abuse is not only physical, sexual, verbal, or psychological.
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On my vakninmusings YouTube channel. Where are
we, a month after the atrocities committed in south Israel by 3000 Gaza
Palestinians?
I am using the phrase “Gaza Palestinians” rather
than the habitual Hamas because by now it has become clear that civilians and
criminals who breached the fence committed most of the heinous crimes.
Hamas terrorists were
relatively disciplined throughout the 12-24 hours incident (it took the
hallowed and hollowed IDF that long to reach the scene in any meaningful way).
Israel dawdled for 3 unnecessary and costly weeks
before it mustered the courage and determination to invade the aerially
devastated Gaza Strip. A stream of triumphant messages followed the ground
invasion.
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Louis Althusser said that the ideology of
consumption (which is, undeniably, the most material of all practices) uses advertising to transform individuals to subjects (=to consumers). It
uses advertising to interpellate them.
The advertisements attract attention, force people
to introduce meaning to them and, as a result, to consume.
The most famous example is the use of “People like
you (buy this or do that)” in ads. The reader / viewer is interpellated both as
an individual (“you”) and as a member of a group (“people like...”). He
occupies the empty (imaginary) space of the “you” in the ad.
This is ideological “misrecognition”. First, many
others misrecognize themselves as that “you” (an impossibility in the real
world). Secondly, the misrecognized “you” exists only in the ad because it was
created by it, it has no real world correlate.
The reader or viewer of the ad is transformed into
the subject of (and subject to) the material practice of the ideology
(consumption, in this case).
Thanks to @mirna_liz37
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In long-distance relationships, the narcissist interacts
with one internalized object (image on a screen, voice in a chat) to create
another internal object (the snapshot, or introject). This completely distorts
the entire dynamics of the shared fantasy.
Long-distance relationships (LDR) conducted mostly online are very triggering for mentally ill
people.
Example of NPD-BPD applicable to all types of LDRs
involving narcissists and borderlines.
NPD becomes borderline and borderline becomes
narcissistic.
Poor communication skills (instrumentalized
alloplastic monologues, never a constructive, results-oriented dialog).
External locus of control by internal objects in
NPD (estrangement) and external regulation in BPD.
Impossible to maintain object constancy and
introject constancy.
Snapshotting (introjection) and idealization
disrupted.
Shared fantasy intermittent and gives rise to
paranoid ideation (no trust) and nonproductive devaluation (splitting,
approach-avoidance repetition compulsion, but no separation-individuation).
Hoovering and self-hoovering
No reclaim or reconciliation sex owing to
distance, fear of outsourcing (infidelity).
This leads to perceived abandonment and rejection
(persecutory object and triggering of bad object), possessiveness (romantic
jealousy is fear of loss), frustration-aggression, acting out in psychopathic
self-state.
Finally, LDRs lead not to classic
devaluation-discard but to a sadistic and vengeful wish to destroy the
frustrating object. This resembles the external solution in mortification.
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From the creator of this documentary: “In August
2018 Chris
Watts took the lives of his wife Shanann, their two
daughters Bella and CeCe and unborn son Niko.
While nobody could have predicted that Watts was
capable of these crimes he did exhibit traits common in men who commit DV.
This film, a cautionary tale released / uploaded
during the month of October - National DV Awareness Month - is based on widely
available public research on the type of men who commit extreme forms of
intimate partner DV w/ short clips taken from experts such as Dr. Phil, Sam
Vaknin and others.
Topics include gaslighting, the pity play, Watt's
attempt to frame his wife for the crimes he committed, red flags, conspiracy
theories surrounding the case, why people victim blame and the importance of
trusting one's intuition and gut feelings.
This is not a story about an average father and
husband who suddenly snapped but of a troubled and dangerous man, a
wolf-in-sheep’s clothing, an imposter, who hid his dark side from his family
for years behind a carefully constructed caricature of the perfect husband.
This video is an educational, non-profit,
non-commercial film. Please do not contact me about using it for commercial
purposes. Any ads that appear on this channel are run by YouTube on behalf of
the artists whose music appears in this film.
Why did I create this film?” (Continued in the
description of the video).
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The god of the Old Testament is a malignant narcissist conjured up by equally psychopathic, narcissistic, and psychotic “prophets” throughout history.
Any civilization that values and emphasizes physical objects (land,
possessions, money) over human life is a death cult.
Image courtesy of @mirna_liz37
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Narcissists have no identity and no access to reality.
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Narcissists
in the workplace use the shared fantasy framework to interact
with bosses, subordinates or underlings, team members, and significant
co-workers. All the clinical features and psychodynamics of pathological
narcissism come into play in that environment.
Image courtesy of @mirna_liz37
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Old
people are more experienced and less mentally ill
(certain mental health disorders ameliorate with age). But they are affected by
cognitive decline and impairment which render them heavily impaired and,
therefore, dangerous.
LITERATURE
Stern Y, Albert M, Barnes CA, Cabeza R,
Pascual-Leone A, Rapp PR. A framework for concepts of reserve and resilience in
aging. Neurobiol Aging. 2023 Apr;124:100-103. doi:
10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2022.10.015. Epub 2022 Dec 19. PMID: 36653245; PMCID:
PMC10424718.
Wagster MV, King JW. Lost - and Found - in
Translation. Neurobiol Aging. 2023 Apr;124:98-99. doi:
10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2022.12.008. Epub 2022 Dec 17. PMID: 36641370.
What to Know About Cognitive Decline in Older
Adults
Medically Reviewed by Jennifer Robinson, MD on May
02, 2023
Written by WebMD Editorial Contributors
Geriatric Neurology
Jason A. Cohen, Joe Verghese, in Handbook of
Clinical Neurology, 2019
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Sometimes, on your trip, you find an unexpected friend. I have always liked turtles and tortoises. They have been
my first pets as I attempted to survive my childhood.
Tortoises are the perfect allegory of mental
health: tough on the outside, soft inside, adaptable to many environments,
peaceful, deliberate, constant, and efficacious.
PS
The tortoise is the one on the left in this photo.
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Shared
fantasy and especially idealization defense against
triggering of early childhood traumas (hurt aversion, dread of intimacy and
love): she is ideal, so will not hurt me, I am perfect, so above reproach and
invulnerable.
Recreates secure base and symbiosis (back to womb).
Shared fantasy differs from infatuation and
limerence:
Anomic (antisocial)-rigid delusional kingdom
Intensity (controlled dysregulation, like
addiction)
Addiction
Immersion
Resonance, instant recognition
Divinity (invincibility)
Wholeness
Inexorability
No plateau, only transcendence
Impaired reality testing, fantasy, paracosm
Attribution errors, projection, splitting
Mutual infantile regression
Anxieties (loss, abandonment, rejection),
catastrophizing
Negative affectivity
Anxiolytic control
Sublimated aggression, frustration, abuse
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Empathy is a much more complex process than the dumbed down version we are fed by mass media, social media, and the entertainment industries.
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Narcissism
and evil: part of God’s plan or proof of His
non-existence?
Full text here: https://samvak.tripod.com/sciencereligion4.html
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Recent research is blurring the differential diagnoses between high-functioning autists (people with Autism Spectrum Disorder), patients with ADHD, BPD, and narcissists with Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), and even with psychopathy (antisocial or malignant narcissists).
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In a civilization founded on narcissism, ignorance, and idiocy, moronic and nescient narcissists make it big and rise to the top. Think Elon Musk.
In my youth, our role models were scientists and intellectuals, authors and thinkers.
Today’s role models are brain dead footballers,
actors, and influencers.
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Emotional
or covert incest part of parentifying and adultifying (Atlas
personality): succor but no sex, sexless intimate partnership
People-pleasing coupled with a constant sense of
failure and inadequacy
Insecure attachment owing to enmeshment
Oedipus/electra complexes: The Oedipal and Electra
complexes have two etiologies. Freud and Jung have identified only one of them:
competition with the same sex parent for the love and attention of the
other-sexed one. But there is an even more compelling source. Until age 18-24
months, the infant is both genderless and pansexual and consequently
autoerotic. His libido is turned towards itself as a love object. But the
infant is merged and fused with the mother throughout this period (symbiosis).
They are one and the same. His narcissistic libido cathexes her as well! When
he begins to separate from the mother, his narcissistic libido still remains
invested in her residually - and this is the Oedipal complex.
Prevents separation-individuation: child’s needs
ignored or suppressed, parent’s needs predominate, no boundaries, parent
possessive and romantically jealous (no one is good enough and no one will ever
be as good as I am)
Autoerotism owing to object relations with a
forbidden object, later life sexual difficulties (need to objectify and
dehumanize maternal figures in order to have sex – sadistic punishment - or
sexual dysfunction and asexuality)
Is the primordial and prototypical shared fantasy
Mostly nonverbal, subverts communication by
creating hidden, forbidden text
Effects much worse than sexual incest because it
is not clearly wrong, it is disorienting role confusion: both parties habituate
Ambivalence
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The narcissist can do no wrong, so he never says “I am sorry” and means it. What he does instead is apologize on your behalf.
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Psychological defense mechanisms (aka defenses) fulfill two functions: 1. They prevent the dissonance and anxiety that arise when one is confronted with internal or external information that challenges one’s self-image and equilibrium; and 2. They help to deny, reject, and disavow parts of the personality, traits, or behaviors of themselves that the individual finds unacceptable or intolerable.
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You are perfectly entitled to feel bad and sad and even mad! It is alright to put yourself and your emotions first, ahead of others and their emotions. It is healthy.
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Jew-hatred (antisemitism) is the only ideology that unites logic-defying bedfellows such as Islamist fundamentalists, white supremacists, leftist liberal-progressives, conspiracy theorists, and criminalized terrorists.
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Reaction
formation is when we protest ostentatiously and
vociferously in order to deny or reject traits and behaviors in ourselves that
we find unacceptable so as to avoid a dissonance.
A misogynist who keeps insisting that he loves
women, a latent homosexual who is a rabid homophobe, a racist or an antisemite
who insists: “Some of my best friends are blacks or Jews.”
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Pathological Narcissism (NPD) is a very severe form of an all-pervasive mental illness.
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BPD: Intact reality testing; NPD not
BPD: Reaction to stress, substance abuse; NPD reaction to deficient supply, injury, and mortification
Disrupted integration of self-perceptions with sense of self (estrangement). BPD: situational and reactive; NPD: constant
Both: Watching oneself from a distance, as if in a movie
BPD: Out of body and mystical experiences; NPD not
Both: Auto-pilot (going through the motions, automatism, roboticism)
Both: Acting vs. observing (BPD’s bad object, NPD self-audiencing)
Both: Dream, fog (BPD trauma response; NPD fantasy defense)
Both: Body dysmorphia, detached from mirror image, organs, whole body (especially cerebral NPD)
BPD: Out of control speech or locomotion, ventriloquist’s dummy; NPD grandiosity defense
BPD: Alien or intrusive thoughts; NPD only after injury or mortification
Both: Memory retrieval issues, alien memories
Both: Numbed emotions (BPD intermittently and defensively, NPD all the time)
Both: Unfamiliarity or detachment from surroundings, people, objects, time (BPD after rejection; NPD at the devaluation-discard phase of shared fantasy).
NPD: Hypoemotionality plus unreality, unfamiliarity
From “Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: Past, Present, and Future”, 2023
“Depersonalization (DP) describes a disrupted integration of self- perceptions with the sense of self so that individuals experiencing depersonalization are in a subjective state of feeling estranged, detached, or disconnected from their own being.
The following are common descriptions of depersonalization experiences (Sierra & Berrios, 2000): feeling strange, as if not real or as if being cut off from the world; feeling as if parts of one’s own body do not belong to oneself; having the feeling of being a ‘detached observer’ of oneself, including the feeling of being outside of one’s body or watching oneself from a distance; perceiving the body as very light, as if floating on air; perceiving one’s own voice as remote and unreal; feeling detached from autobiographical memories as if not having been involved in them; not feeling any affection towards family or close friends; feeling as if not in charge of movements, as if moving automatically or like a robot; perceiving one’s own image in the mirror as strange and unreal; feeling the need to touch oneself to make sure that one’s body is real and exists; feeling disconnected from one’s own thoughts and feelings.
Depersonalization is frequently accompanied by derealization (DR) – a sense of unfamiliarity, alteration or detachment from one’s own surroundings, other people, and objects. The following are common descriptions of DR: seeing the surrounding as ‘flat’ or ‘lifeless’ as if looking at a picture; feeling detached from surroundings or perceiving them as unreal, as if there is a veil between the person and the outside world; impression that objects seem to look smaller or further away; experience of familiar places looking unfamiliar, as never seen before (Sierra & Berrios, 2000).
Notably, all the above experiences are “as if” experiences, meaning that an individual with DP/ DR has intact reality testing; this point is crucial to the differentiation from psychosis.
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There was a lovely cute child there, before it has been turned into a narcissist. Pathological narcissism involves a prolonged grief reaction.
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People with anxiety disorders become anxious when they anticipate forthcoming anxiety and
panic attacks.
They prefer to be anxious because anxiety is
familiar, it is a comfort zone, it is home.
So, ironically, their anxiety is triggered at its
peak when there is no reason to be anxious and when they are in a calm and
tranquil state of mind.
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In his childhood, the “love” of the narcissist’s mother (or, later in life,
father) was conditioned on his/her performance.
In intimate setting, the narcissist’s partners are
substitute mothers (maternal figures).
To gain their love, to be rendered lovable, the
narcissist feels compelled to perform.
Hence the shared fantasy.
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Peel the onion layers until all that’s left is
its aroma: YOU.
Video courtesy of @mirna_liz37
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The narcissist’s credo: I refuse to regard life as a territory to be conquered, a
ladder to climb, or a destination to strive for.
I treat life as a theme park with myriad carnival
attractions, a toy store with infinite offerings, a mall with endless rows of
alluring shops.
I commit to nothing and invest in nothing. Ever.
I am a tourist on this planet, not a citizen.
My time here is too precious to be wasted on being
earnest. My only constants are change, the desultory, the adventurous, and the
itinerant.
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Narcissists are organisms which mimic and imitate human beings.