Are you the love object of the narcissist?
Does the narcissist love you or does he objectify you?
What are you more?
The love of his life or the object of his so-called love?
Because we know that narcissists mislabel emotions exactly like borderlines. What they call love is actually the elation and gratification of a shared fantasy well-accomplished.
Even so, are you more of an object or more of a love? The love of his life as he keeps professing and insisting every time he talks to you. Part of the love bombing, part of the idealization.
Which is it?
Today we are going to discuss two new concepts or concepts new to you.
Narcissistic transference and anaclytic transference.
We're going to use these concepts to try to understand the way the narcissist perceives you.
But you are not going to evade or escape my daddy jokes. It's a price you are paying for my free content.
This is my fifth video of the day. So my voice is a bit abraded and I've been thinking some people have dermatitis, some people have dormititis, like doormat, dermatitis, fanny, fanny.
These are old daddy jokes, especially if the old daddy is an aging self-styled expert with piercing eyes. Hypnotic.
Not working? Not even a tiny, weeny, biny smile? Nothing?
Let me try something else. Let's try another one. Let's try this one.
My name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited.
I knew it would do the trick. I knew it would get you to smile.
Before we get to the topic of the video, I will answer a few of your questions and comments.
Yes, I regard narcissists and psychopaths as the exact equivalent of domestic terrorists.
I think you need to instate, to apply security and cybersecurity measures because you are involved in the global war on narcissism, G-WON.
You know, there used to be the global war on terrorism. Now it's on terror. This is the global war on narcissism and you are in the forefront. You're all soldiers in this war.
So you need to do your job by keeping safe, applying security and safety measures, being cautious, anything from alarms to anti-malware softwares, etc.
Actually soon, I hope to have a dialogue with a cybersecurity expert and an ethical hacker, a hacker who is going to somehow help us, help you learn how to cope with narcissists.
Now, second question.
Someone wrote to me, "You can't be a real professor. You're mispronouncing dissociation. It should be disassociation." I heard it from this self-styled expert.
Well, anyone who uses the word dissociation is not an expert. Is not an expert. He's never read scholarly literature. He has never educated himself, etc.
It's dissociation, not disassociation. The correct term is dissociation.
Okay, honey bunch. Got it? I know you were having a blonde moment, but judging by your comment, you seem to be having a blonde life.
Vicious me.
Next, emotional dysregulation is not ups and downs.
Nope, nope, nope. Listen well, all you self-styled experts.
Emotional dysregulation is not the same as emotional cycling. Ups and downs.
This kind of cycling is called emotional lability. It's a big difference from lability and dysregulation.
Emotional dysregulation is when you are overwhelmed by your emotions, when they consume you, when you drown in your emotions, when they paralyze you, when they freeze you somehow.
So this is dysregulation.
Okay, chamad madim and chamad madot. Look it up.
Are you the narcissist's love object and are you more his love than his object?
This is the topic of today's video lecture.
Love object is the person towards whom an individual directs affection, devotion, and usually sexual interest, although not necessarily.
So there are behavioral hallmarks, behavioral signals, which kind of affirm the status of another person as a love object.
When you love someone, when it's a true love object, you're likely to become compassionate, affectionate, attentive, devoted, helpful, sexually aroused in the vast majority of cases and so on and so forth.
In psychoanalytic theory, a love object is the person who is loved by the individual's ego as opposed to the object that satisfies an instinct. An instinct, for example, like hunger or thirst. So food can never be a love object because it is instinctual. But you can be a love object because you could be loved by someone's ego.
The problem with narcissists, of course, is that they have never completed the phase of ego formation. They've never individuated. They couldn't separate from usually the mother.
So narcissists are selfless, ironically. They don't have an ego. I refer you to several videos on my channel which deal with this issue.
Those narcissists don't have an ego. Clinically speaking, narcissists are incapable of loving another person. They're incapable of rendering another person a love object.
Now, a little digression to self-psychology.
Self-psychology is a school of psychoanalytical theory that stresses the importance in healthy self-development of an individual's relationships with others. So it's a relational school. It kind of meshes well with earlier schools of thought, like object relations, especially the British schools of object relations.
So it's very important. Relationships with other people define who you are, define your identity.
The self-psychology school in psychoanalytical theory locates the source of many psychological problems in caregivers' lack of responsiveness to the child's emotional needs.
In self-psychological therapy, the therapist attempts to build an empathetic relationship with the patient rather than keep an emotional distance as in classic psychoanalytical practice.
Those of you who want to delve deeper for some oblivious reason, you may wish to go online and read lectures and papers and writings by Heinz Kohut. Heinz Kohut was a US psychoanalyst. He was born in Austria. He was a US psychoanalyst. He died in 1981. And he is amazing. He also coined the phrase narcissistic personality disorder, by the way.
So if we are to seriously discourse, discuss the issue of love objects, we definitely need to pay attention to what self-psychology schools of psychoanalytical theory have to say.
And the first thing that comes to mind is narcissistic or object choice.
In psychoanalytic theory, there are two types of object choice. Not just to clarify, object is you. Yes, in psychology an object is a human being, which tells you a lot about psychology and even more so about the state of mind of psychologists.
So we have two types of object choice or mate selection, two types of intimate partners that we choose.
The process could be driven by narcissistic object choice or by an eclectic object choice.
So what is narcissistic object choice?
It is a selection of a mate or some other love object, similar to one self.
So when you keep choosing partners who resemble you, partners who share your preferences and priorities and dreams and values and beliefs, you're engaging in narcissistic object choice. You're actually choosing a love object that is essentially you.
There's an auto-erotic element to this. You're making love to yourself via the agency of another person. Your love object, your intimate partner are essentially extensions of yourself or in the best of cases, reflections of yourself.
There is an eclectic object choice.
In psychoanalytic theory, it is a selection of a mate or some other love object who will provide the same type of assistance, comfort and support that the individual received from the parents during infancy and early childhood.
So if you were raised by mentally competent caregivers, primary objects, mother, father, grandmother, nevermind who, people who raised you, took care of you, who were essentially mentally healthy, good enough mothers, not dead mothers, for example, then you're likely to engage in an eclectic object choice.
You're likely to seek intimate partners who would continue and even perpetuate the same kind of care and compassion and love and holding and containing that you have received from your mother mostly and then later on from your father.
So a woman would choose a man resembling her father and a man would choose a woman resembling her mother. Nazir van Freud contrasted an eclectic object choice with narcissistic object choice.
An eclectic object choice, as you remember, is selecting a mate who looks and acts and thinks and believes exactly like you.
An eclectic object choice is choosing someone who could act as your mother or your father.
So the shared fantasy involves an eclectic love object choice.
And as we will see a bit later, the narcissist is the only type of person who engages in both narcissistic and an eclectic object choices.
All other people, people who are not narcissists, even borderlines, even psychopaths, healthy people, normal people, they are geared toward an eclectic or toward narcissistic object choice.
Later on, the narcissist is the only one who engages in both.
According to Freud, these are the only two possible types of object choice, an eclectic or narcissistic.
Now what the narcissist does, he selects an intimate partner who is essentially an extension of the narcissist, reflects the narcissist, continues the narcissist by other means, has the same beliefs, same values, same dreams, same hopes, same everything, same predilections and proclivities, same temperament, same character, same personality.
And then, so this is narcissistic object, love object choice.
And then the narcissist proceeds to convert this narcissistically chosen object into an an eclectic object.
The narcissist proceeds to convert the selected intimate partner, what I call the insignificant other, proceeds to convert her into a mother, into the mother, he never had the good enough mother, the mother he could safely separate from and then become an individual, inquire personhood.
So while all other people, everyone is either or narcissistically chooses partners or unequivocally chooses partners, the narcissist does both. He selects a mate based on narcissistic parameters.
Is she like me? Is he the same as I am? Do we share the same identity? Is he a soulmate? Is she a twin flame? I mean, use any any phrase you wish.
And then so this is narcissistic object choice. And then the narcissist proceeds to convert his intimate partner or her intimate partner into a mother figure, which is definitely an unaclectic choice.
Now, unaclectic is an extreme dependence on another person for emotional or physical support or both. It is the same same condition as infancy. The infant is dependent on the parents for the satisfaction of his or her basic needs.
So when the narcissist converts his intimate partner into a maternal figure, the narcissist actually regresses himself into an infantile state where he becomes an infant and he depends to the extreme. He extremely depends on his intimate partner for emotional and physical support.
Another thing the narcissist does, he regresses his intimate partner into an identical condition of infancy so that she becomes emotionally and physically dependent on him. They both become infants and they both depend on each other. They both develop anaclysis. Anaclysis.
Anaclysis is the condition of the shared fantasy. Shared fantasy is just another name for anaclysis where both parties are dependent on each other. Both of them are in an infantile state.
This is anaclysis in the classical psychoanalytical theory of Sigmund Freud. Anaclysis was the attachment of the sex drive to the satisfaction of another instinct, such as hunger or even defecation. Forgive me.
So what Freud said is we develop sexual attraction, we're sexually attracted to someone who can also satisfy other basic instinctual needs such as hunger.
And this is the foundation, the rudimentary primitive foundation of anaclysis.
The narcissist perceives the intimate partner as someone who can provide him, who can satisfy multiple needs, some of them very basic, some of them a bit more advanced, but all of them infantile.
He becomes an infant and he begins to depend on his intimate partner the way a baby depends on his mother.
And this is anaclysis. It's at the core of the shared fantasy.
Now in therapy, very often the same situation, same dynamic is created.
Therapy is a simulation of a parental situation. The therapist is a parent figure in many ways.
So we have narcissistic transference. In self-psychology, narcissistic transference is any one of a set of transference that involve, and I used to activate the narcissistic needs of the patient.
So in self-psychology, the therapist actually encourages transference. I do the same in cold therapy. I'm not a therapist, of course. I don't administer cold therapy, but my theory of cold therapy, which I trained therapists in, this theory contains this kind of narcissistic transference, which is encouraged.
And so it's one of a set of transference. It is used in treatment and it activates the narcissistic defenses of the patient in relation to significant others.
In a way, in self-psychology, the therapist creates an echo of a shared fantasy with encouraged and stimulated dependence.
And this is, of course, this flies in the face of classical psycho-analytic concepts of transference is a transposition of one's needs from various stages of psychosexual development early in life to a person who can fulfill the therapist.
So while psycho-analysis frowns on transference and counter transference, classical psycho-analysis regards these two as no-no bad things that should be controlled, should be eradicated, the therapist should be aware of what's happening and preventing self-therapy.
These things are encouraged narcissistic transference of various kinds exposed to the therapist, the dependency structure of the patient.
In this sense, shared fantasies between the narcissist and his intimate partner are always therapeutic.
Now I know this would shock many of you because shared therapies involve shared fantasies involve many dysfunctional coping strategies, many thwarted emotions, problematic behaviors and shared fantasies bad. There's no redeeming feature to shared fantasy, but I beg to disagree.
I actually think that the shared fantasy can and does have therapeutic features and I think shared fantasies should be leveraged in therapeutic settings in therapy.
Shared fantasy should be leveraged to induce the kind of dependency that is conducive to insight and transformation.
If the narcissist's partner, his intimate partner in the shared fantasy is sufficiently self-aware, mature, helpful, loving, caring, she can induce change in the narcissist, she can help the narcissist.
Similarly, if the narcissist is relatively mature, in self-control, self-aware, the narcissist can use the shared fantasy to induce transformation in his intimate partner.
Shared fantasy is a therapeutic tool, regrettably most narcissist abuse this instrument, misuse it because of their own limitations and shortcomings and personal mental health problems.
But it's not to say that it is without value or redeeming features.
So on rare occasions within the shared fantasy, there's a process of growing up and healing. And this is especially true when the shared fantasy involves a borderline with a narcissist.
Okay, there are various types of narcissistic transference, idealizing transference, mirror transference, twinship transference and so on.
Now the narcissistic transference in self-psychology is also called self-object transference. Self-object transference.
As usual, it was first described by Heinz Kohut, the aforementioned Heinz Kohut.
Let's discuss each of these types of transference, narcissistic transference.
Idealizing transference is the first subspecies of narcissistic transference.
Idealizing transference is when the patient experiences the analyst or the therapist as a powerful and benevolent parental figure.
You're beginning to see the similarities between the narcissist's shared fantasy and idealizing transference in therapy. The patient begins to regard the therapist as a mother in effect.
When engaged in this form of transference, the patient feels protected and able to share in the power and capabilities of the therapist. Very much like a young child, same way a young child idealizes his or her parents, same way a young child feels protected by his parents.
Idealizing transference is very common in shared fantasies, especially again shared fantasies involving a borderline narcissist.
But even when the intimate partner is not a borderline, there is still this kind of attributing or misattributing to the narcissist a parental role, usually that of a mother, and then idealizing the narcissist via transference.
Actually, this ties in with my new concept of coercive transference, I'm sorry, coercive introjection.
The narcissist uses the idealizing transference, leverages it in order to force his intimate partner to share his view of her.
I will explain how this is done.
The narcissist allows the intimate partner to idealize him. The narcissist first idealizes the intimate partner.
The intimate partner feels great. She sees herself through the narcissist's gaze as a perfect object. It's irresistible. She falls in love with this version of herself, which is idealized and perfect.
She then proceeds to idealize the narcissist. She says, the narcissist idealizes me. The narcissist thinks I'm perfect. The narcissist thinks I'm hyper-intelligence and drop dead gorgeous and what have you.
So I will idealize him back.
And this is the process of co-idealization. When the intimate partner begins to idealize the narcissist because he has idealized her and she wants to believe in the idealized version of herself.
So she idealizes the source of the idealized version of herself.
And this is the process of co-idealization.
At that moment, the narcissist is in the position to force his intimate partner to accept the way he sees her, to coerce his intimate partner into conforming to her idealized image in the narcissist's mind. And then to force his intimate partner, not only to conform to the idealized image, but to actually adopt it as a self-perception, as her self-image.
And then repeat this. It's a bit of a convoluted process.
When the narcissist comes across an intimate partner, a potential intimate partner, the narcissist idealizes her. He snapshots her, he takes a snapshot of her, he internalizes this snapshot, he photoshops the snapshot, he idealizes the snapshot. He creates an idealized version of his external intimate partner in his mind.
So in his mind, there's an idealized internal object that represents the external partner.
Then he grants access, he grants the external partner access to this idealized image. That's what I call the Hall of Mirrors effect. He grants her access and she sees herself through his gaze. She falls in love with the way he sees her and with her own idealized image.
And then she idealizes him because she needs to believe that the idealized image of her that he has in his mind is accurate, that he is infallible, that he is perfect, that he is godlike, so he's not getting it wrong when he is idealizing her.
She idealizes him, and this is a process of co-idealization.
At that point, the narcissist bounces on his intimate partner and forces her to mold herself, to shapeshift, to sculpt herself, to change herself and transform herself dramatically, to conform to the idealized image of her that he has in his mind.
And not only that, but to adopt this idealized image of her that he has in his mind as her own self-image and self-perception.
She begins to believe that the idealized image of her in the narcissist's mind is reality, is the truth, that's who she really is.
And this is what I call coercive snapshotting or coercive introjection, and it is founded totally on idealizing transference.
Then the next stage is mirror transference.
It's when the patient's grandiose self is reactivated as a replica of the early phase of his life when his mother established or undermined their sense of perfection by either admiring or devaluing exhibitionistic behavior.
I'm going to have to explain this to you, but I will fortify myself with a glass of wine.
This is the fifth lecture of the day and I'm cross-eyed.
Okay, mirror transference.
The patient has a grandiose self. I'm now talking about therapy. The patient has a grandiose self.
The grandiose self is reactivated by the therapist on purpose because it replicates early childhood experiences.
When mommy upheld the grandiose self, told the child, told the baby, yes, you are great, you are perfect, you are amazing, you are unique, you are special, you have a kind, or undermine the grandiose self by devaluing the child.
You're stupid, you are dangerous, you are worthless, you are ugly, and so on.
So there are two kinds of mothers. Mothers who uphold the grandiose self image of the child, mothers who undermine the grandiose self image of the child.
And mirror transference triggers this phase in early childhood, the phase of grandiosity, primary grandiosity, primary narcissism, in order to witness a reenactment of their relationship with a mother.
Okay, so this is mirror transference. The therapist serves as a mirror. Therapist reflects through the patient his or her grandiosity in order to elicit and provoke and trigger early childhood unresolved conflicts with a mother or early childhood resolved interactions with a mother.
This reactivation process aims to help the patient to develop a healthy self-esteem.
Okay, the narcissist does exactly the same thing in the shared fantasy.
The initial phase is idealizing transference, which provokes coercive snapshotting.
The second phase is mirror transference, where the narcissist reflects to his intimate partner a grandiose image of the partner.
Narcissist tells the intimate partner, you are perfect, you are amazing, you are brilliant, you are drop dead gorgeous, you are hyper intelligent, I have never met anyone like you, etc, etc, you are unique, you are a special self.
So this is mirror transference. Narcissist puts a mirror to his intimate partner, but the mirror is a carnival mirror. It doesn't reflect reality. It reflects his intimate partner's primary grandiosity.
And before you ask, all of us have primary grandiosity. All of us have primary healthy narcissism.
So the narcissist triggers this healthy narcissism.
And by doing so, the narcissist assumes a parental or more precisely a maternal role.
The mirror transference triggered by the narcissist is intended to convert the narcissist into the mother of his intimate partner.
This is the second phase.
And the third and last phase is the twin ship transference.
Now before we proceed, few narcissists have heard of these concepts.
Whatever the narcissist does in a shared fantasy is automatic, is unconscious.
The narcissist is a predator. These are predatory techniques. Exactly like a virus or a tiger, narcissist is not aware of what he's doing. He just does it.
Because in a way, it's a replay of his early childhood dynamics.
But narcissists invariably go through these phases.
They pick up an intimate partner or a potential intimate partner, they snap shorter. They introject the snapshot. They convert it into an internal object. They idealize it. They provide the partner with access to the idealized image, thereby addicting her, getting her addicted to the narcissist gaze.
Then having idealized the partner, they proceed to coerce the partner into accepting the idealized image in the narcissist's mind as the only reality. Coercive snapshotting.
Then they transition, proceed to mirror transference.
They use the idealized image to provoke in the intimate partner early childhood dynamics and to regress her to infancy, thereby assuming a maternal role. This is the aim and the function of the mirror transference.
And then the last phase of the shared fantasy involves a twin-ship transference.
In self-psychology, a twin-ship transference is when the patient experiences the analyst or the therapist is very similar in characteristics to himself or herself, thereby enhancing the patient's experience of being understood and being valued. It's also called the alter ego transference.
So in the third phase of the shared fantasy, the narcissist triggers merger and fusion, a shared psychotic space.
By invoking twin-ship transference, the narcissist emphasizes what he has in common with his intimate partner, how many things they share, how similar they are to twin flames, soul mates. He uses this to provoke in the intimate partner the misperception that she is fully understood and valued, that she has found finally the only person on earth who digs her, who gloms her, who gets her.
This is irresistible. It's addictive. All of us want to be understood profoundly. All of us want to be grasped. All of us want to be valued. Narcissist uses this.
Having transitioned through the three transference, idealizing transference, mirror transference, and twin-ship transference, the shared fantasy is complete.
Now the narcissist proceeds to the next phase, which is devaluation and discard.
But I will not discuss it in today's video because I've dedicated several videos to these phases of devaluation and discard and hoovering. I recommend that you search the channel. Yes, every channel on YouTube has a search function. Please use it. Just type the keywords.
The love bombing phase, the grooming phase, involves everything I've just described, leveraging the three types of narcissistic transference in order to subjugate your potential intimate partner, get her addicted to the narcissist.
And yes, of course, gender pronouns are interchangeable. I mean, just insert she when I say he.
It applies to both genders equally.
Okay, so what are you? Are you the narcissist's love or are you the narcissist's object?
The answer is unequivocal. You are the narcissist's love object. You're an object.
The narcissist objectifies you in order to lie to himself that he's in love.
Narcissists do lie to themselves, but they're in love.
Alas, not a single narcissist on earth can experience positive emotions. Narcissists have no access to positive emotions.
So it's all a lie. Self-deception in many respects, but you're an object.
You are, at first you're snapshotted, then you're internalized, then you are coerced into accepting your snapshotted version is the only real version.
Then you're subjected to three types of transference. Then you become addicted to the hall of mirrors, addicted to your newly discovered self-love via the narcissist gaze.
In all these dynamics, you're nothing, absolutely nothing but an interchangeable, replaceable, fungible object.
And this would become painfully clear to you when you're devalued and discarded and replaced. Only then you will have realized how much of a placeholder you are, how meaningless this has all been.
And this is exactly why I refuse to call the intimate partners of narcissists significant others. Rather, I call them insignificant others. They're not even others.
The narcissist is incapable of perceiving external objects. He interacts only with internal objects. It's a form of reverse psychosis.
And so you're not significant and you're not other.
What are you there for?
An excuse, an excuse to embark on a new shared fantasy because it feels great. It feels good.
You are, as the narcissist intimate partner, you are the exact equivalent of a drug. The narcissist is a shared fantasy junkie.
But he needs someone to construct the shared fantasy around who this person is, is irrelevant. Anyone would do as long as she complies and consents to become a pivot, an axis, a cog or a wheel in the narcissist's turnable machinery.
There are different types of abuse that seem to cause narcissistic personality disorder. It's a disorder that's rooted at a point of a stunted development. It happens early on.
Now, a lot of people will say, I knew a narcissist or I was with a narcissist that didn't have any trauma or abuse in their life.
Well, there's another side of abuse and that comes in the form of unearned praise, overagulating the child, spoiling the child.
Oftentimes this is transactional or an extension of a narcissistic parent's own ego, needing that child to be better than the next, needing that child to be more than they have even developed into yet.
And this is the very mechanism that stunts that child's ability to complete the milestone of individuation, to separate from the parent, to develop their own ego, to integrate their own shadow and to become, so to speak, whole.
A grandiosity gap. That's what professor Vaknin calls it. A grandiosity gap where reality doesn't meld with this persona that you've sold yourself on as a defense mechanism to the world's judgment, needing to be better than because of a deep fear and shame, you're not good enough.
So you have this false self that gets developed as this mechanism, but there's big gaps between your circumstances, reality, and the chaos that ensues, which is why they constantly need supply and adulation to be able to feel like their delusion is endorsed and real.