Institutional checks and balances are collapsing all over the world. Courts are compromised. Parliaments are subservient. Leaders are authoritarian. The family disintegrated. The church is no more, etc.
And this pernicious tide of decay and disintegration has affected academia. Academia is not as isolated as they would like to think.
So you have many wannabe scholars, fake scholars, and so on and so forth, whose main motivation is 15 minutes of fame and a lot of money. And they would do anything to get either and preferably both.
Today we are going to discuss the corruption in the pseudoscience of psychology, a corruption that manifests with the emergence of nonsensical concepts that take the world in storm, infect and infest the online space, hyped by the media and the scholars who brought this into fruition, bask in the glory of having their names mentioned, and some of them make good money out of the counterfactual, corrupted, contaminated pseudoscience that they peddle.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, and I'm a professor of psychology. I belong in academia, and yet I do not engage in these practices. I've dedicated my career to trying to fight off these scavengers and vultures and worse.
I want to tell you a story. A few weeks ago I got a phone call from the BBC. A study has been published which implied that narcissists develop empathy as they age, and that's the main dominant clinical features of narcissism ameliorate as the narcissus becomes older.
I perused this study and I found it exceedingly flawed methodologically and otherwise.
When the BBC called me, I told them so. They were infuriated. They said, you see, this is why we refuse to work with academics. This is why we never interview academics. Because you always nitpick. You're always contrarian. You can't be optimistic.
I told the producer and the research assistant, but that's not my role. The role of an intellectual is to fend off the barbarians at the gates. The role of intellectual is to pursue truth as he or she sees it. The role of the intellectual is to debunk.
Yeah, but you know, why can't you just say that the study is right? Why can't you just say that narcissists get better with age? Why can't you give a message of hope?
And I couldn't believe my ears. I understood then how people have completely lost trust in the mainstream media.
Recently, yet another venerable institution, Guardian, which is a newspaper in the United Kingdom, is hyping the nonsensical notion of dark empaths.
Now, dark empath is all the rage. There are millions of posts and hashtags and you name it.
Regrettably, it has nothing to do with reality, as you will see.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg.
So what I want to do in this video, one of many, by the way, I have several videos debunking all kinds of nonsense and so on, what I want to do in this video is review 17 such constructs and put the record straight and help you to gain access to verifiable scientific data rather than to hype and intellectualflotsam and jetsam, I have no other way to describe it.
Let's start with the concept of empath.
The concept of empath says that there are people whose empathy is off the scale. They empathize automatically. They can't help it. They absorb the sorrows and suffering of the world. They are able to resonate with other people, sometimes involuntarily and unwillingly. They suffer because of it. They're victims, they're martyrs. They're the new Jesus Christ.
It is true that a certain percentage of the general population, we don't know how much, there are studies that say 20%, there are studies that say that it's total poppycock and the real figure is closer to 1%, 2%, no one actually knows.
And so there are people who have a heightened sense of empathy. They are known as highly sensitive people or HSPs.
Nowhere do they come near to the torrent and avalanche and tsunami of people online. Not in number, not in traits, not in quality.
And so the notion of empathy is basically nonsensical because everyone possesses empathy. Yes, even narcissists and psychopaths.
And actually, narcissists and psychopaths are highly empathetic in a certain way. Their empathy is heightened, although it's deficient, as we shall see.
In 2021, there was a single study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences. The study suggested that there is a novel psychological construct, individuals who have simultaneously a high degree of cognitive empathy alongside with what is known as dark traits or dark personalities.
This is true. There are such individuals. They are known as narcissists and psychopaths.
There's nothing new in any of this. We have known this for well over 20 years.
I coined the phrase cold empathy 25 years ago to describe a confluence of cognitive and reflexive empathy which is common among narcissists and psychopaths.
Narcissists and psychopaths use the surplus of cognitive empathy, this ability to penetrate and scan the vulnerabilities of other people, they use it in order to manipulate, then exploit other people.
Narcissists use it in order to extract narcissistic supply and coerce people into a shared fantasy.
There's nothing new about this. There's no need to invent a new name of dark empath.
It's a nonsensical name because first of all, there's no such thing as empath. Most empaths online are probably covert narcissists.
And secondly, there's no need.
Many, many, many people in the field of psychology who are not original nor creative, what they do is they rename something that has already been discovered. And this is how they gain access to the media, a moment of celebrity and 10 minutes of fame.
This is unscrupulous, not to say unethical.
Dark empathy is a combination of dark traits or dark personality and a heightened cognitive empathy.
True? Nothing new? No need for a new name. The old name would do. The old name is narcissist.
Next, shy or quiet borderline.
All borderlines are sometimes shy or quiet, sometimes aggressive. They sometimes act out. They sometimes act in.
There's no specific subtype of shy or quiet borderline who never ever becomes aggressive, never ever acts out, never ever hurts other people, never ever engages in external regulation. There's no such borderline, simply put, none.
So, shy or quiet is a dimension, it's a determinant of borderline personality disorder, not a type of borderline, not a type of someone with borderline personality disorder.
And yet, you see online numerous people boasting and bragging how they are shy and quiet borderlines. Shy, quiet, nice borderline, you know?
Because borderlines are not nice.
And so there is an element of self-aggrandizement, self-vindication here. Similar to empath.
Empath is a highly grandiose term. Look at me. I'm an empath. I am super sensitive. I'm amazingly kind and nice and compassionate and attentive and caring. I'm so unique.
Empath is a form of narcissism, and so is shy or quiet borderline.
Remember, all borderlines are shy and quiet, one minute, and very outgoing, extroverted, even I would say self-trashing and not so quiet. Another minute.
There's no type constancy. There's no type constancy among covert and overt narcissists as well.
All narcissists are sometimes covert and sometimes overt, sometimes somatic, sometimes cerebral.
The next nonsensical construct is emotional flashback.
Emotional flashback is simply another name for memory. Flashback, the clinical name for flashback is vividness. It's the inability to tell the difference between reality and reliving a moment in the past.
So if you're a Vietnam veteran and you're in a supermarket and you are suddenly hurled back, thrown back to battlefield in Vietnam, and then you shoot everyone in the supermarket dead, that's a flashback.
Because at that moment, you as a Vietnam veteran were you were not able to tell the difference between reality, which is a supermarket, and your memory of a moment in the past, which is the battlefield.
Vividness is the obliteration of any boundary and demarcation and distinction between reality and the memory of a moment in the past.
That's not the case with emotional flashback. Emotional flashback is simply a seriously bad name for overwhelming memories. Memories that overwhelm you with emotions. End of story.
There's no flashback here of any kind. There's no vividness of any kind while you are being overwhelmed by these emotions and the memories connected to these emotions, you are still perfectly able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, reality and memory.
That's not the case in a flashback.
Next, gaslighting.
You go online and any self-styled experts and their dogs will tell you that narcissists gaslight.
That's because gaslighting is possibly the most mutilated word in the English language. It has completely lost its clinical meaning.
For gaslight to exist, there are several conditions. One, an asymmetry of power between the gaslighter and the gas lit victim.
Number two, the ability of the gaslighter to tell the difference between reality and fantasy or reality and scam.
And number three, premeditation. Gaslighting is intentional.
So, judging by this criteria, narcissists do not gaslight. Similarly, people with psychosis or schizophrenia do not gaslight. Paranoids do not gaslight.
Why? Because they're all delusional. They cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy, between reality and alternative reality, between reality and the story, the narrative they're making up, they can't tell the difference.
The minute you cannot tell the difference, you're not gaslighting. The minute you cannot tell the difference, you may be doing other things. You may be confabulating, for example, but you're not gaslighting.
Narcissists do not gaslight.
Next, fantasy is a decision. It's a choice, it's a choice to play a role.
When you're in a fantasy, you play a role, the same way you play a role in a cosplay.
That's of course ignorant and nonsensical simultaneously.
In role play, there is no impairment of reality testing.
When you play a role, for example, in a costume play, in cosplay, when you play a role, you're perfectly aware that you're playing a role. And you're simultaneously aware of your environment, of reality, and of your reality. You don't confuse the two.
If you play a role in a reenactment of the Civil War, you don't believe that you have been catapulted back to the Civil War and you're a soldier in the Union Army or the Confederate Army. You don't. You know that you're playing a role. You know that it's all acting. You know it's not real. You know it's not true. You know it's just fun.
That's not the case with fantasy.
The psychological, especially the psychopathological defense of fantasy, means that the individual who engages in fantasy is unable to tell the difference between the fantasy and reality.
So it's not a role play. It's real. As far as the fantasizing individual is concerned, the fantasy is reality, the only reality.
And when we use the phrase shared fantasy, it's because both participants in the fantasy have lost their capacity to evaluate and gauge reality appropriately.
All the participants in the shared fantasy have been rendered delusional, detached from reality, divorced from the world. They inhabit the fantastic space, which is known as paracosm.
Next, recovered narcissists, productive narcissists, high functioning psychopaths, and all this glamorization and glorification of narcissists and psychopaths including in academe, regrettably.
Number one, narcissism is not the flu, you can't recover from it. It's a personality structure. A disordered one, a chaotic one, a disorganized one, but it's a personality structure.
Narcissists cannot get rid of their narcissism more than you can get rid of your personality.
So there's no such thing as a recovered or healed or cured narcissist. None.
You can modify, certain therapies, certain treatment modalities, are very good at modifying the behaviors of narcissists. They can teach the narcissist to be, teach or motivate or incentivize the narcissist to be less abrasive, less antisocial, more pleasant, more palatable, more acceptable.
Yes, this can be achieved in therapy, but this is not recovery. This is not healing. The narcissistic core, the pathology, is untouched.
So there's no such thing as recovered narcissists.
Okay, what about high functioning or productive narcissists and psychopaths?
Narcissists and psychopaths can exhibit a pattern of accomplishments and in this way convince other people that they are productive and high functioning and that they are net contributors to society, they are prosocial, they're communal and so on.
But here's a rule, a law of nature, as valid as gravity.
Whatever it is a narcissist does, whatever it is a psychopath does, whichever project they embark on, whichever enterprise they undertake, whichever mission they pursue, whichever quest they are engaging, always end disastrously for themselves and for everyone around.
Narcissism and psychopathy end badly. Period. There's no exception. It's never been an exception in human history.
Narcissism is by definition, and psychopathy by definition, as Cleckley had observed, almost a century. They are disorders of a rejection of life. They constitute a rejection of life.
Narcissists and psychopaths are self-destructive. They're self-defeating. They're self-harming. They're self-trashing. And they destroy and defeat and harm and trash everyone around them.
It may take a year, it may take ten, it may take decades. But ultimately, they all end up in a bunker of their own making under the rubble of the cities they have built, awaiting the cyanide pill or the gun that would put an end to their lives.
Yes, I'm alluding to Hitler.
Narcissists and psychopaths cannot build anything in the long term. They're destructive. They're very good at destroying things. They're very bad at building things.
They build something and it looks very appealing and very convincing. It's actually a Potemkin village. It's an illusion.
They induce collective hallucinations in people. And many people fall in the trap and follow them, find them charismatic, find them amazing and creative and geniuses and so on.
But it's all, it's all fata morgana, it's all a mirage. Sooner or later, the House of Cards comes tumbling and crumbling down and nothing is left but desiccated bones and a lot of dust. That is the end of any narcissistic and psychopathic undertaking and endeavor.
Not such thing as productive narcissists or productive psychopath.
Next, these are myths propagated unfortunately not only by self-styled experts online, which we have learned by now to be wary of, but also by scholars.
So the next myth, luckily, is confined to the online space.
All narcissists are psychopaths.
No, a minority, a small minority actually, a very small minority of narcissists, are also psychopaths. They are known as malignant narcissists or psychopathic narcissists.
The rest are not psychopaths.
Where is the source of the confusion?
Both narcissists and psychopaths are grandiose. They are common elements.
Grandiosity is a clinical feature. It's a cognitive distortion. It is common in narcissism, in psychopathy, in borderline personality disorder, in bipolar disorder, in paranoid personality disorder, and the list goes on. Grandiosity is not unique to narcissists or to psychopaths, yet it is common to both of them.
Because the online experts, self-styled experts confuse grandiosity with narcissism, they say that all psychopaths are narcissists and all narcissists are psychopath, which is total ignorant, shockingly ignorant nonsense.
An equally shockingly ignorant nonsense is a claim that every six person is a narcissist.
The real figure is 1 to 3% depending on the cohort, population, age, group and so on.
1.6% according to the diagnostic and statistical manual.
There are four largest studies of the prevalence of narcissistic personality disorder in the general non-clinical population gave us the number of 1.6%.
Among alcoholics, it's 6.2%.
There's no study or a hint of a study that every six person on the planet is a narcissist.
This is the outcome of confusing narcissistic personality disorder, which is the only pathology, with narcissistic style.
Narcissistic style or the self-confidence style or the assertive pattern or whatever you want to call it.
These are people who are simply obnoxious. They're a-holes.
And they may be exploitative, bullying, dysempathic, unpleasant to be with and around.
But they're not narcissists.
Additionally, there's a confusion between dark personalities and narcissists.
People with a dark personality, dark triad, dark tetrad, they possess subclinical narcissism.
The type of narcissism that cannot be diagnosed, that does not amount to or equal to, or tantamount to narcissistic personality disorder, not.
So there's this god awful confusion among self-styled experts because they know not what they're talking about, I'm sorry to say.
And that includes people with academic degrees online. Not everyone with a PhD in psychology is an expert on narcissism. Psychology is a vast field.
Next, narcissism is hereditary. It is passed through the genes and it involves brain abnormalities.
I must say that I think this to be true. I believe that narcissism has a strong hereditary component similar to borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder the other two disorders in cluster B.
So it stands to reason that pathological narcissism has a kind of genetic predisposition and it's very likely that pathological narcissism is associated with, correlated with at least, brain abnormalities.
I'm not against these propositions. I think in due time as time passes they will be proven. I'm firmly believe in this.
However, to say this right now is wrong and counterfactual.
We have no rigorous evidence, no serious studies, no body of work that supports the nonsensical contention that narcissism is hereditary and involves brain abnormalities.
I'm saying nonsensical because in science, until you have proven something, it's nonsense. You need to prove it first. You can't go around saying narcissism is hereditary, narcissism is about the brain, and so on so forth, when you cannot prove it, even if you firmly believe it, like me, I would never say this, because I don't have any proof and any evidence to support these claims.
This is good ethical conduct and the opposite is unethical. It is intended to grab headlines, intended to enrich the claimant.
Money and celebrity have corrupted the scene completely, not only in psychology, even in fields like physics.
So it's a mess nowadays. You don't know what to believe and who to trust.
Next, traumas can be transmitted intergenerational via the genes.
Now I have a whole video dedicated to this, which I released a few days ago, two, three days ago, and I recommend that you watch it.
The long and the short of it is, at this stage, no such thing, and the claim is likely to be nonsense even after we have conducted studies, big studies, serious studies, randomized trials if possible, and so on, even then I believe, and this is only a belief, this is only speculation, because we do not have any evidence one way or another.
Even so, I believe that it will be found lacking, that this claim would be falsified.
Not the whole field of epigenetics, but this particular claim is likely to be falsified.
And yet, scholars go to media online and offline and make these claims with hubris.
They insist that this is the case, knowing full well, full well, that they are lying, that there is no such evidence, at least not rigorous and serious, that the samples are non-representative, that there could be alternative, much more convincing explanations.
The unethical misconduct of scholars and academics has exploded, rendering academe and the mainstream media utterly non-trustworthy.
And this every field, medicine, psychology, physics, biology, you name it.
It's total corruption and contamination of the whole edifice. It's rotting. It's rotting from the inside.
Owing to exposure to the media and to the money that goes with it.
It started with Albert Einstein, I regret to say.
Apropos this, when I said that narcissism, in my view, in my belief, is hereditary and involves brain abnormalities and so on so forth, this is a reasonable assumption. It makes sense intuitively. If you're narcissists, maybe this is determined by your genes. And if you are a array of genes, a combination of genes, and probably it affects your brain.
The notion that traumas can be transmitted via single genes across generations is a lot less intuitive. Sounds a lot less common-sensical and a lot more nonsensical.
So I started the video with my so clash so to speak with BBC regarding the claim that narcissists change, evolve with time and somehow develop empathy and become really nice guys because they develop empathy and they lose character traits such as antagonism and so on so forth.
There's nothing supporting this, nothing serious and rigorous supports this contention, and anecdotal evidence suggests that narcissists get worse with age.
With one exception, and that is antisocial behavior.
Exactly like in psychopaths, antisocial behavior is ameliorated and mitigated with time.
As the narcissist ages, he becomes less antisocial. Psychopath is the same. Borderline is the same.
Generally speaking, antisocial behavior declines with time, with age.
And that's because older people are less likely to be reckless, engage in risky behavior, and are less mobile, and so and so forth.
But other than that, there's no fundamental change in the narcissists as he grows older.
And there are many reasons to believe that pathological narcissism is exacerbated, becomes worse in old age, when the narcissists is no longer able to exercise superficial charm, pull the wool over people's eyes and secure narcissistic supply.
Next, and this is a widespread piece of nonsense, especially online, but not only online, I regret to say.
I even saw online people with academic degrees, advanced academic degrees in psychology, who make this mistake. This rookie mistake of an ignorant. Nobody. It's absolutely shocking.
They say that dark personalities are narcissists and psychopaths. People with dark triad personalities, dark traits, dark tetrad personalities are narcissists and psychopaths.
No, they are not. They're not.
Dark triad personality is a combination of subclinical narcissism, subclinical psychopathy and Machiavellianism.
In other words, it's a person, a human being, whose narcissism is not sufficiently elaborated and advanced to merit the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.
Some of the behaviors are there, some of the traits are there, but put them together and you do not get a narcissist. So this is subclinical.
Similarly, this kind of person, a dark triad person, would have subclinical psychopathy.
A few psychopathic traits, few psychopathic behaviors, but not a psychopath.
Dark tetrad is the added benefit and flavor of sadism.
But these are subclinical conditions.
Consequently, dark personalities are not narcissists. They cannot be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. They are not psychopaths. They cannot be diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder. They are subclinical.
The next bit of nonsense is borderline is just a form of CPTSD. It's not a real mental health diagnosis. It's about to disappear. It's a wrong diagnosis. It's actually just the way certain people react to complex trauma or CPTSD.
No, it is not. It is a diagnosis, it's going nowhere. It is associated sometimes, not always, with complex trauma, starting in early childhood or early adolescence, but not always. And it definitely has nothing to do with late life or complex trauma in adulthood.
You can't acquire borderline personality disorder. You can become a narcissist because you've been exposed to trauma. You can develop narcissistic behaviors, reactive behaviors. You can to some extent display narcissistic or borderline traits. They're all reactive, they're all temporary and they all disappear once the source of trauma is removed and there's been a process of healing.
Borderline is not a form of complex trauma. Complex trauma is involved in borderline etiology in some cases. Complex trauma may cause the exacerbation of certain borderline traits and psychodynamics, but complex trauma is not the same as borderline, and borderline is not the same as complex trauma.
Judith Herman, the mother of the complex trauma construct, suggested that borderline personality disorder is a combination of emotional dysregulation and CPTSD, but even she did not suggest that borderline is just CPTSD.
It has many other clinical presentations, dimensions and features which have nothing to do with complex trauma and which are unique to borderline.
There is a good case to argue that at least all Cluster B personality disorders are facets of a single personality disorder. There is a good case to argue that we should focus on traits rather than on differential diagnosis or categorical diagnosis. There's a good case to argue that we should focus on dimensions and spectra rather than on differential and categorical diagnosis.
These are all legitimate debates.
And indeed, in the international classification of diseases, there are no personality disorders as we find them in the DSM. There are traits, and then it's a Lego system where you put together traits and you get a profile that is customized to a specific client.
I like this system much more, of course. So for example in the international classification of diseases addition 11 you would take the trait of desociality, the trait of anankastia, the trait of negative affectivity. You may wish to add to it antagonism.
What you get is the equivalent of narcissistic personality disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual.
But no one, no serious scholar, at any time, anywhere that I'm aware of, suggested to conflate and unite the diagnosis of borderline personality disorder and complex trauma.
Borderline personality disorder is one of the most well-studied personality disorders in the history of psychology. And the number and amount of studies, documentation, case studies, observations, clinical experience with borderline is overwhelming. There's no way to reverse this tide.
Next is the sweeping claim that there's no such thing as mental illness, only neurodivergence.
Divergence is an exculpating phrase. It means you're not to blame, you're not guilty, you're just divergent.
And it's not really a disease, it's not a mental illness, we need to be politically correct, we need to be woke.
So we should never ever label anyone with mental illness. We should just say they are different, they are divergent, they are not like us, the neurotypicals.
The very concepts of neurodivergers and neurotypicality are suspect and I'm being charitable and gentle, which are my dominant traits, they are suspect because they are just labels.
They have no clinical entity behind them, there's no clinical validity. They lead nowhere.
So what if I call you neurotypical? What have I learned? What didthis label add to my knowledge, to my clinical experience, to my understanding of the human mind?
Nothing. It's just labeling. And it's a highly politicized form of labeling.
It seems that neurodivergence versus neurotypicality are ways to avoid insulting people by calling them, for example, personality disordered or bipolar or whatever, what have you.
So now there's no mental illness, only neurodivergence.
People with autism spectrum disorder, which could be an exceedingly debilitating mental health problem, people with ADHD, which equally could deteriorate and become seriously disabling, this kind of people, nothing is wrong with them. They're just neurodivergent.
This is complete unmitigated, politically correct woke bullshit to quote a great intellect Donald Trump.
There is mental illness. People are mentally ill and we need to take care of these illnesses the same way we take care of bodily illnesses.
Imagine that in medicine there would be a school that says there's no such thing as physical illness. There's only physical divergence.
Yeah? Cancer is just physical divergence. You have more cells than normal. That's all. Nothing's wrong with you. With your cancer, go home.
Imagine how ridiculous this would sound.
Next is the god-awful confusion, especially in certain countries, for example, Austria, Germany and so on, between borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder.
They are not the same. They have nothing in common. They are absolutely, from the nosological point of view they have absolutely no connection.
Borderline personality disorder is a personality organization and the main features of borderline personality disorder are emotional dysregulation, external regulation of internal states and other features, acting out and so.
The main features of bipolar disorder have to do with cycling between two types of moods, essentially manic and depressive. And bipolar disorder is a mood disorder, not a personality disorder. There's nothing to do with the personality.
Borderline personality disorder is a personality disorder, not a mood disorder. It is not reliant on a mood. There is mood lability in borderline personality disorder.
And you could of course have both borderline personality disorder and bipolar disorder, but they're not the same. And anyone who confuses them is ignorant regardless of how many academic degrees he or she possess.
And finally, echoism.
There is this tendency to name and rename and come up with resonant phrases and words and everyone is so happy when there's a new phrase emerging and latches on to the end there's hashtagging and an explosion of tweets and and TikTok videos and so and so on so forth.
ECHOism is one such example. I have no idea what is ECHOism, no clinician or clinical psychologist or professor of psychology that I'm aware of has any idea what is echoism.
It seems that the general construct or general concept is that some people are more suggestible, more amenable, more prone to team up with the narcissist because something in them resonates with what the narcissist has to offer.
And so they are like constitutionally deformed or constitutionally vulnerable.
And the narcissist takes advantage of it demonically of course because this is part of the demonization of narcissism he takes advantage of this and he latches onto the poor ecoist and she becomes his slave forever.
Well here's the thing.
We know that certain personality types, for example, people with dependent personality disorder, aka co-dependence, and yes, these are one and the same, dependent personality disorder is codependency. Codependency is not a clinical term, exactly like psychopath is not a clinical term.
And so we know that certain personality types are more amenable to the charms of the narcissists, the more responsive or more reactive to the shared fantasy that is preferred by the narcissist. They're more likely to end up with the narcissists. People with dependent personality disorder, people with borderline personality disorder, even people with paranoid or antisocial personality.
However, the reverse is not true.
The narcissist is indiscriminate and promiscuous in mate selection. The narcissist is focused on what's in it for me. What can the partner offer sex services, safety, supply, sadistic and narcissistic, complicit in the shared fantasy, willingness to participate in the shared fantasy, and that's it. Source of supply.
And so who you are, your traits, your personality type, is irrelevant to the narcissist.
So the narcissist is not selective. There's no selective membrane there.
Narcissists would latch onto anyone who offers these things on the other hand there is some selectivity in the main selection of the narcissist intimate partners they some types are more likely to gravitate towards the narcissist.
But I don't understand what the word echoism adds to this.
I don't see any new insight, any new construct, any new idea, any creativity in this, nothing whatsoever.
There is the implicit assumption of some kind of echo between the narcissist and his intimate partner.
I have a surprise for you. This kind of resonance is a pillar of all interpersonal relationships. We all resonate with our intimate partners, whether we are healthy or not, whether we are narcissists or not.
I don't understand this concept of echoism is simply superfluous, unnecessary.
And this is my beef with most of these constructs they are unnecessary they're superfluous they're not needed they add nothing new they just serve to confuse people the most of them are counterfact or nonsensical, or simply a rehash and renaming of very old discoveries.
I don't understand why would anyone do that unless there is an ulterior motive and an agenda of making money and becoming famous which should not be the driving forces in science.
Echoism is one of the worst examples in my view.
And finally sociopath is the old name for psychopath. Period. There is no such thing as sociopath in clinical literature. It's not a diagnosis. The word does not appear in the DSM or the ICD or any literature, serious literature at the time of where.
Yes, there are a few studies which use the word sociopath because they're dated, or because the scholars are not updated or whatever.
It's simply the old word for psychopath. There's no difference, there are no differences between sociopath and psychopath. Period.
And even the word psychopath is colloquial. It's not a clinical word. It's not a clinical entity. The correct clinical entity is antisocial personality disorder.
But psychopathy has been studied for 150 years.
So I personally think that we should make place for psychopathy in the diagnostic and statistical manual. I think it merits a special place, maybe as an extreme manifestation of antisocial personality disorder.
But this is not the case for sociopath. Even when sociopath was in use, in the heyday of sociopathy, no one knew what it is.
As the word implies, it has something to do with society or with social, which immediately renders it nonsensical in terms of clinical psychology.
Because we are not supposed to, clinical psychologists are not supposed to be the long arms of society, the agents of social control or social judgment.
So get rid of this sociopath nonsense. It's no longer in use, it's outdated and antiquated, it's always been ill-defined, it's been rejected by the entire community. It is not a word that is used in any of the diagnostic manuals and in very few textbooks.
And so, you know, again, exercise caution when listening to online experts.
The overwhelming vast majority of them have no idea what they're talking about, regardless of their academic degrees.
It's a really sad and problematic scene out there. These people have no credentials. They've never published anything in the field. They've never participated in international conferences. They haven't taught the subject and they have no clinical experience.
So these people are charlatans and worse. Try to stick to authoritativeexperience.
So these people are charlatans and worse. Try to stick to authoritative sources. Go to scholar.google.com. That's an authoritative source. Not artificial intelligence. It's full of lies and nonsense. You have scholar.google.com. You have databases. You have the possibility to do your own research with reliable authoritative sources.
Why resort to charlatans and con artists and fame seekers and self-enrichers? Don't value your time and love yourselves. Be sure that you're on safe and stable ground.
And finally, of course, maladaptive daydreaming.
No such thing, never established in clinical literature, no case studies. Even the construct is a bit bizarre.
Maladaptive daydreaming is when your propensity to daydream and to fantasize in a good sense takes over, metastasizes, disables you, renders you dysfunctional in a variety of fields. When your daydreaming consumes you becomes a kind of addiction and you are unable or unwilling to do anything else.
There has been a single case, single documented case of anything remotely like this.
People do engage in types of cognition which are essentially disabling and render the individual dysfunction. For example, rumination. Another example is paranoid ideation. Another example, suicidal ideation. There are various types of cognitions that do tend to consume the individual, paralyze the individual, and render the individual inactive or inoperative.
One could even say that the narcissist's false self is a fantasy defense gone awry. The false self eliminates or negates the narcissists, takes over the narcissists, subsumes the narcissists, and renders the narcissists' true self, utterly inactive, disabled, and essentially dead.
So one could say that the false self is this kind of cognitive process attached to an internal object. One could even extend this and say the very notion of unitary self and core identity are like that.
But daydreaming is actually, and fantasy are actually positive, positive psychological functions. They allow you to envision the future and plan ahead. They lead to programmatic steps which culminate in action.
Again, maladaptive daydreaming is a contradiction in terms because daydreaming is a good thing. Maladaptive implies that daydreaming is something bad, something that is, that leads to a dysfunction or misalignment with the environment.
That's completely not the case.
And so maladaptive daydreaming joins the torrent and current of concepts that on paper sound wonderful, but have no clinical reality. They are not clinical entities. They are not diagnosis. They're not helpful in any way, shape or form, they haven't been substantiated or studied, there's no evidence, and so on so forth.
Of course there will always be people who say, yeah, but I daydream and my daydreams disable me and so on so forth, this is probably traceable to mental health issues that have nothing to do with daydreaming. And I mentioned, for example, pathological narcissism, which involves an overwhelming fantasy, which fantasy basically is a kind of daydreaming.
So, maladaptive daydreaming rounds up the list and I hope you become a lot more aware of catchy phrases, jingles and jingos and all kinds of ear candy, which actually have no substance behind them and just sound nice, but they capture nothing and lead to nothing, at least in clinical practice.