There is a new extensive update to the website and the Android app that contains the transcripts to all my videos on YouTube, all 1,400 of them. The website is vaknin-talks.com. Vaknin talks and talks and talks. Will this guy ever stop talking?
This author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of CIAPS.
Poor CIAPS!
Okay, shoshanim, chmad, madot. Look it up.
Today we are going to discuss hate bombing. Yes, not love bombing, but hate bombing. The opposite of love bombing. The antithesis, if you wish.
It's a very interesting phenomenon which serves to expose some dynamics of narcissism long neglected by self-styled experts online and even by scholars offline.
Here's the thing.
The borderline has too many emotions. Her emotions are too strong, too powerful for her. Her emotions overwhelm her, drown her, dysregulate her.
The narcissist has too many cognitions, especially distorted cognitions such as grandiosity. The narcissist's cognitions overwhelm him, drown him, dysregulate him.
So remember this equation. Borderline, dysregulated emotions. Narcissist, dysregulated cognitions.
Before I proceed, I anticipate your comments. He equals she. Everything I say applies to male and female narcissists the same way the dynamic is identical. 50% of all narcissists are women nowadays. Quite an accomplishment. Bravo feminism.
Okay, enough with politics, Vaknin. Get to the point if you are capable of it.
So the point is that when your cognition overwhelms you, when you're a cognitive animal, when you have no positive emotions to tap, when you are unable to access positive emotions, then anything can fit into your cognition. You can think about anything.
Something could become a reason for bragging, boasting, the narcissist is proud of things which would make other people cringe or flinch. And yet the narcissist finds these things, events in his past, alleged talents, ostensible skills and so on and so forth. He finds these things, reasons for pride. He's proud of them.
This is known as locus of grandiosity.
So the narcissist, for example, can be proud of being the ultimate victim, can be proud of being the most amazing criminal, can be proud of having failed consistently or having brought on the biggest bankruptcy in the history of his country. All these are reasons to be proud. All these are loci of grandiosity.
The locus of grandiosity is anything, any event, any environment, any person, any place, any accomplishment, any failure, any trait, any behavior, any action, any decision, any choice, any source of supply, anything, absolutely anything that sets the narcissist apart, that renders the narcissist unique and special, at least in his own eyes.
So the locus of grandiosity is the key to deciphering and decoding the narcissist's behavior.
And I want today to discuss a very unique locus of grandiosity, very rare, but still there.
The vast majority of relationships with narcissists start with a process known as love bombing.
Now love bombing is not grooming. As usual, self-styled experts online confuse the two and make a mess and a hash of things.
Grooming is limited to minors and is usually the purvey and behavior of psychopaths and sexual predators, especially sexual sadists. So this is grooming. You cannot groom an adult, only a minor, only a child.
But love bombing.
So most relationships start with love bombing, where you're the focus of attention, where you can do no wrong, where you are being idealized, where you are perfection, reified, where you are the most drop dead gorgeous and hyper intelligent person to have walked the earth, etc, etc. This is very flattering and very addictive. This is love bombing.
However, sometimes relationships with narcissists start with hate bombing. Hate bombing.
The narcissist is full of scorn, of contempt, of derision. The narcissist criticizes you, chastises you, castigates you, humiliates you, berates you, demeans and degrades you.
In the very beginning of the relationship, long before there's anything to share, the very first interactions, the first text message, the first chat on a dating app, the first exchange or intercourse, to use a 19th century word, the first exchange on a social media website, the first video, the first photo, the first text message, they are negative.
This kind of narcissist puts you down from the first moment. He establishes not only his superiority, but equally your inferiority, your inadequacy.
So this narcissist emphasizes, leverages, brainwashes you into believing that you are a bad object, unworthy, possibly ugly, stupid, grandiose, an arrogant, helpless, hopeless, a failure, a loser, and so on and so forth.
This is hate bombing, the mirror image of love bombing.
And amazingly, hate bombing does lead to relationships with narcissists, does result in the formation of a shared fantasy.
This is of course, when the counterparty with a potential intimate partner or friend, they are masochistic, self-hating, self-loathing, and self-rejecting.
The narcissist becomes an externalized introject, a voice that confirms, supports, buttresses, enhances and magnifies the bad object inside the potential partner or friend or whatever. Child, spouse, and so on.
So we have two types of shared fantasy.
The most common type starts with idealization.
The less common type, so idealization through love bombing, the less common type starts with evaluation actually through hate bombing.
Now, the latter type of shared fantasy, this second type of shared fantasy, which no one seems to discuss.
I believe this is the first video ever made about this kind of launching of a relationship.
So usually these are malignant, psychopathic, and sometimes sadistic narcissists.
The locus of grandiosity of the malignant, psychopathic, and sadistic narcissist is that he is invandrhoe. He has no vulnerabilities. He has no weaknesses. He has no chinks in the armor. He cannot be destabilized or hurt. He cannot be affected. He cannot be infected. He is godlike. He is firewalled from the slings and arrows of cruel time and cruel people. He is invulnerable. He is unemotional.
So this kind of narcissist brags and boasts about not having emotions. He says, "I have no emotions to speak of. Therefore, I'm immune to the vicissitudes, ups and downs, and dysregulation of other people. I'm much more resilient. I'm much stronger. I'm empowered by my unemotionality and invulnerability."
These kind of narcissists are incapable of attaching. They have flat attachment, not insecure attachment. Insecure attachment implies an attempt to attach, which constantly fails, approach avoidance.
This kind of narcissist doesn't even try to approach. He is, again, proud. He is vanglorious. He's proud of his lack of attachment. He says, "I never get attached. I never fall in love. I never bond. And this is a source of my strength. I am a lone wolf because I'm utterly self-sufficient. I need no one. I care about no one. No one can pull at my heartstrings. No one can blackmail me emotionally. No one can inflict pain on me. No one can compromise me in any way, shape or form."
He regards people as a kind of malware, computer viruses, if you wish.
So invulnerable, unemotional, unattached, incapable of getting attached or bonded, and therefore immune. Immune to the world. Immune to life itself. Immune to other people. Rigid and heartlessly, callously cruel, although sometimes this cruelty or sadism are disguised as altruism when the malignant psychopathic narcissist in question is of the prosocial or communal variety.
And I encourage you to watch the videos about prosocial, communal, hypermoral narcissist, rigidly moral narcissist.
So let's summarize this section. It's not easy to wrap your mind around.
Typical narcissists start with love bombing. They idealize you, and then they launch a shared fantasy, and then they introduce you coercively or not into the shared fantasy. They cajole you. They persuade you. They charm you. And they cause you to become a figment or an element in the shared fantasy.
This is what 97% of all narcissists do.
3% of narcissists, known as malignant, psychopathic, or sadistic narcissists, they don't start by idealizing. They don't love bomb. They hate bomb.
They start by devaluing you. Exactly the opposite.
And they cater to your self destructiveness, self rejection, self hatred, self loathing, self defeat.
They become the scourge of God. They're kind of a punishment inflicted on you by the universe itself.
You're spiraling down and they're there to push you over the edge, over the cliff. Forgive me for mixing my metaphors.
Now these types of narcissists are proud. They're grandiose. They're arrogant about. They feel superior because they regard themselves as invulnerable.
I don't care about anyone and anything. I don't need anyone or anything. I'm not dependent on anyone or anything. I'm unemotional. I never attach. I am rigid. I'm heartless. When necessary, I'm abrasive and cruel.
If this type of narcissist is also prosocial or communal, they transform all these into advantages, into merits.
They say, for example, my cruelty is a kind of tough love. I'm being altruistic. It's for your own good and so on.
But the fact is that they embark upon a shared fantasy which is destructive to you.
Sadistic in the sense that they enjoy the pain that they inflict on you.
And a shared fantasy whose main target, whose main goal is to devalue, humiliate, mortify, degrade, demean and berate you. Put you down, essentially.
These kinds of narcissists are transactional.
Now, all narcissists regard other people as useful tools in both senses of the word tool. They regard other people as collateral damage.
The narcissist perceives his life and the environment as a battlefield. There's a war going on between the narcissist and the rest of humanity. It's a zero sum game. The narcissist's win is other people's loss.
And so the narcissist needs to ascertain that he has the upper hand. He regards other people as useful instruments or collateral damage in this ongoing warfare.
The impact that the narcissist has on other people's lives is perceived by the narcissist as a mere byproduct or side effect of the pursuit of grandiosity affirming narcissistic supply, sadistic supply, or even self supply.
Sometimes the narcissist has a beneficial impact on other people's lives. If the narcissist is a healer, a guru, a teacher, they may end up having very good effects, benevolent effects, impacts, long term on other people's lives.
But even this is perceived by the narcissist as a byproduct, a side effect.
There's no motivation or intention to help people. The narcissist does everything in order to obtain narcissistic supply, period.
And the narcissist is pro-social and communal because these are easier ways, the path of least resistance to obtaining supply.
That's it. If he becomes a fixer or a rescuer or a savior or a healer or a guru or a teacher or a mentor, it's just because it's the easiest way to garner and harvest narcissistic supply.
Narcissistic supply, sadistic supply, or self supply. These are the only things that have any meaning in the narcissist's life. People are dispensable, interchangeable, meaningless, insignificant others. This applies to all narcissists.
So when you talk to the narcissist, imagine the following dialogue.
Do you care about me?
Narcissist. I do. I care a lot about you.
Why? You ask, why do you care about me?
The narcissist answers, because you are useful to me. I like your company. You help me. You service me. You solve my problems. You hear from me, etc. You're useful to me.
And then you ask, okay, but don't you have any emotions for me when you see me or something? Don't you react emotionally?
The narcissist says, proudly, I don't have emotions. I don't do emotions. I do relationship maintenance. I do business. I do give and take.
Emotions are for wizzles. Emotions are for dumb people. Emotions are weaknesses and vulnerabilities.
And I'm godlike. I'm invulnerable. I'm strong. I'm resilient. I'm all powerful, omnipotent. I'm all-knowing.
So, you ask, why do you stay in touch with me?
And the narcissist responds, I owe you. And I repay, I always repay my debts because I'm much more moral than other people. Plus, you could still be useful in the future.
So, it's a kind of hedge, a kind of insurance policy.
This is a typical narcissistic mindset. This is not unique to any variant of narcissism. It's not that it's only cerebrals, only somatics, only covert, only overt, or only malignant, or only sadistic. No, they all share the same attitude to people.
People are objectified, dehumanized, and treated as pawns on the chessboard of the narcissist's life on his constant striving and craving for narcissistic supply.
But there is something unique when it comes to malignant psychopathic and sadistic narcissists.
Their world is inverted.
Now, the narcissist's world is sufficiently distorted to be vertiginous, sufficiently upside down, topsy-turvy to cause vertigo, to render you dizzy.
Now, imagine that the malignant narcissist, or the sadistic narcissist, their world is an inversion of the narcissist's distorted and inverted world.
Can you go there? Can you even contemplate this? Can you conceive of this?
It's really outlandish, out of this world.
And so, whereas the typical narcissist regards you as a utility, as useful, in some way, in one way or another, you allow him to idealize himself. You collude with him in the shared fantasy. You're providing with sex, with services, with supply, sadistic or narcissistic, with the safety, you are there, you're always present, you fulfill a maternal role.
This is a typical narcissist.
Narcissists react, they're reactive to these offerings, to these gifts that you carry, and they bond with you. They create with you a shared something known as a shared fantasy. It is shared after all. It's a kind of a cult. It's a collusion or collaboration. It takes two to tango.
This is the typical narcissist.
And the typical narcissist starts off by convincing himself that he's falling for you, that he's in love with you, or that he has affection for you, or that he somehow understands you, so he resonates with you empathically. He provides you with sakur. He's on your side. He has your back and so on.
So the typical narcissist starts off with love bombing, which leads to a fantasy where both of you are united, both of you are symbiotically merged and fused against the world, against all other people.
The malignant narcissist, the psychopathic narcissist, the sadistic narcissist, their shared fantasy is totally inverted. It's a mirror image of the typical narcissist shared fantasy.
Malignant psychopathic sadistic narcissists start off, initiate the relationship with devaluation and discard.
It's like the shared fantasy is reversed in time. It's like time travel.
The malignant psychopathic sadistic narcissist starts by devaluing you, insulting you, humiliating you, shouting at you, attacking you, berating you, demeaning you, heaping scorn on you, holding you in contempt and utter ostentatious disdain, putting you down and so on and so forth.
Devaluation and then discard you. He blocks you on social media, even before you have met, and he does it consistently.
So it's as if the shared fantasy is reversed in time.
The malignant psychopathic narcissist starts with devaluation and discard.
Why is that?
Because remember, the malignant psychopathic and sadistic narcissist are goal oriented, all psychopaths are goal oriented. And the vast majority of narcissists, you have said this, are psychopathic.
So there's goal orientation there.
What is the goal of the shared fantasy? You remember?
The goal of the shared fantasy is to reenact early childhood failed separation individuation.
The narcissist has failed as a child to separate from the mother, to become an individual.
Now he needs you to act as a maternal figure from which he can separate successfully and become an individual, become an adult.
So this is the aim of the shared fantasy. This is the end point. This is the goal of the shared fantasy.
The psychopathic narcissist sees no reason not to go directly to the goal.
He doesn't understand why he has to go through a whole convoluted long winded shared fantasy if the goal is devaluation, if the goal is separation.
And the only way to obtain separation is via devaluation. If he has to devalue the potential intimate partner in order to obtain separation, he says to himself, let me start with the devaluation.
Why need to go through phases like love bombing that have nothing to do with the devaluation, nothing to do with the separation?
I need to get to the point. I don't have time. I don't want to waste my resources, which are scarce anyhow. I don't want to invest. I don't want to commit. I don't want to affect. I don't want to put an effort into this.
I need you to act as my maternal figure because I need to separate from you. And in order to separate from you, I need to devalue you.
So I'm going to devalue you now, ab initio, from the beginning.
And I'm going to go through the other phases, which have nothing to do with separation, nothing to do with the individuation, nothing to do with devaluation, nothing to do with the aim of the fantasy and goal oriented.
I'm going to realize and actualize the goal of the fantasy to start with.
This is the whole point of the fantasy, says the malignant psychopathic narcissist.
So I'm going to start by devaluing you and discarding you.
It's a form of negative idealization, mythological demonization, conversion of you into a persecutory object, into an enemy.
So the psychopathic malignant narcissist comes across a potential intimate partner, a potential friend, a potential spouse, a potential colleague, comes across someone who can collaborate in a shared fantasy or can become a part of the shared fantasy.
Whereas the typical narcissist would start to love bond and idealize in order to get to the point of devaluation and separation, the psychopathic malignant narcissist would go straight to the point.
He will start by devaluing the potential intimate partner, potential friend, he would start by devaluing. He will start by discarding, pushing that person away.
He would act aggressively, abrasively, humiliate, block, bend, go crazy, become sometimes violent.
And at the same time, he would devalue the potential partner, he would hate bomb rather than love bomb.
Hate bombing is a form of negative idealization.
The partner, the potential target is idealized, but she's idealized as a mythological demon.
So the malignant psychopathic narcissist, when he comes across someone who could fit into a shared fantasy, demonizes her, idealizes her as a mythological malevolent entity.
So he exaggerates the evil and wickedness and malice and malevolence of the partner.
That's his way of negatively idealizing her.
Naturally, the shared fantasies of malignant psychopathic narcissists are extremely short, nasty and brutal. They could last hours, sometimes days.
In rare cases, the malignant psychopathic narcissist meets his match. He comes across someone who he believes could serve as his partner, his collaborator in a shared fantasy.
He says to himself, "Wow, she's the one. I want her in my shared fantasy."
"I'm going to devalue her right now. I'm going to discard her right now. I'm going to insult her, I'm going to humiliate her, I'm going to shout at her, I'm going to verbally abuse her, I'm going to treat her coercively. I'm going to do all these things to her because she's perfect. She's the one I want to separate from. She is a perfect bad mother, perfect maternal figure. She's demonic. She's mythologically demonic. She's ideal. No one has been more demonic than ever."
So he says to himself, "I must have her. If anyone is worth separating from, she is the one. And I need to incorporate her in the shared fantasy now because I can incorporate her now and in two hours I can separate from her, devalue her, discard her, render her an enemy, the persecutory object, and I'm on my way to becoming an individual, to individuate.
I skip all the stages of love bombing and this and that. I skip all this nonsensical, mushy, tree-hugging mess. I don't need any of this. I'm tough, I'm resilient, I'm rough, I'm strong, I'm empowered, I'm untouchable. I'm immune. I am the malignant psychopathic narcissist so I can go straight to the point, avoiding and skipping all the interim stages which are for more supple and compliant and submissive narcissists."
Malignant psychopathic narcissist looks down at typical narcissist. He considers him weak, too weak for his own taste.
Actually malignant psychopathic narcissists take advantage of typical narcissists. They abuse them. They regard typical narcissists as delusional and gullible, which they are.
So sometimes the malignant psychopathic narcissist comes across this perfect, perfect partner in the shared fantasy. She's everything the malignant psychopathic narcissist has ever looked for in a partner from which he can separate by devaluing.
But on rare occasions, there's a misjudgment.
Whereas psychopathic malignant narcissists are likely to be attracted to submissive, pliant, malleable, weak, damaged and broken women or partners. Again, men, women, women, men, it's all interchangeable. The genders are interchangeable.
So whereas male psychopathic malignant narcissists are likely to be attracted to this type of partner, as I said, weak, malleable, pliant, submissive and so on and so forth.
Sometimes they misjudge. They don't realize that behind the facade of submissiveness, compliance, obedience, weakness, femininity or masculinity, and so behind this facade, there is actually a dangerous predator.
In rare cases where the potential partner is misidentified and is actually another malignant or sadistic narcissist, they have met their match. And there's a battle of wills, which evolves.
The original sadistic malignant psychopathic narcissist tries to devalue and discard the other psychopathic malignant narcissist.
And so you have two psychopathic sadistic malignant narcissists in a joint battle fighting each other. They're at war like, you know, Godzilla and King Kong. They're at war.
And the amazing thing is one of them is going to give in. One of them is going to become codependent or even borderline. One of them is going to become dysregulated. One of them is going to become submissive, like in nature, you know, one of them is going to submit one animal submits to the other visibly, frustrates itself.
So when you have two malignant psychopathic sadistic narcissists who misidentified each other and now are trying to devalue each other in order to reach the conclusion of the shared fantasy, you have a god awful mess. You have an enormous explosion of externalized aggression, acting out and crazy making and insanity.
One of them surrenders. That's inevitable in such a situation. One of them becomes dysregulated and cognitively dysregulated and essentially codependent and with borderline behaviors, borderline personality organization. They manifest dysregulated abuse and coercive behaviors toward each other.
So you see the two in the initial phase, you see the two psychopathic malignant narcissists cycling very fast. It's a kind of ritualized approach avoidance, but they cycle very fast between aggressive and submissive, violent and withdrawing, avoidant and approaching in your face and demurring, coercive and obedient. They cycle, both of them cycle very rapidly inthese behaviors.
And it's an amazing sight to behold, because it's like it's a kaleidoscope, but it's like shape shifting is as if there's a total dysregulation of the self state system and multiple self states, a dozen self states are trying to compete for the same physical body from the same for the same space.
And you can see everything shifting sometimes within minutes when each one of the two malignant sadistic psychopathic narcissists is trying to subdue the other, is trying to convert the other into a typical partner in a shared fantasy, a partner which can be then devalued who can be then devalued and discarded and allow for separation in the situation.
This attempt, this clash between these two dinosaurs, T-Rex and Brontosaurus, I don't know what.
This is earth shattering, earth quaking.
It's an amazing sight to behold.
In the inverted fantasy, inverted shared fantasy of the psychopathic malignant narcissists, typically following the devaluation and discard, the malignant psychopathic etc. would just go no contact with the target, with the victim because mission accomplished, separation has been accomplished and the target has been devalued and discarded and the narcissist who is essentially a psychopath can move on to the next target, to the next goal.
So in a typical case, there will be total withdrawal, total avoidance, no contact and the narcissist, the psychopathic malignant sadistic narcissist would simply vanish, disappear.
Unlike typical narcissists, psychopathic malignant sadistic narcissists rarely hover actually.
They rarely hover because they have never gone through the snapshotting idealization phase.
They went immediately to devaluation and discard.
They didn't have time to create a representation of the shared fantasy inside their minds.
So while they do have internal objects, these internal objects are not idealized. They are persecutory.
And these internal objects are very rudimentary, very primitive because there hasn't been enough time to idealize them and evolve them. They don't have a life story.
And so these objects, these internal objects are not energetic. They're not imbued with energy. They don't create dissonance. They don't create anxiety.
So the sadistic psychopathic malignant narcissist doesn't even need to hover except in extremely rare cases.
But when the sadistic psychopathic narcissist, the malignant narcissist comes across another malignant narcissist and when they compete for ownership of the shared fantasy, who will devalue whom? Who will be in charge? Who will control whom? Who will abuse whom?
When this battle of the giants goes on, finally one of them transitions to the role of a victim, letting the other one initiate the separation by betraying them.
And this is the famous betrayal fantasy.
So four scenarios with the shared fantasy.
A typical narcissist, love bombs, idealizes you, devalues you and discards you in order to separate from you and individuate.
And typically this kind of narcissist would hover you unless you have modified you.
The second type of shared fantasy is a malignant narcissist who from the get go, from first moment devalues you and discards you because this is the goal of the shared fantasy and they are goal oriented.
Having devalued and discarded you, this kind of narcissist obtains separation and because he doesn't have a developed internal object representing you in his mind, he doesn't need to hover you. That's the second type of shared fantasy.
The third type of shared fantasy is two malignant narcissists, one of them having misidentified the other and now they're in battle over control, over dominance and submission, over devaluation and idealization, over everything.
The shared fantasy is intact, but it incorporates extreme elements of abuse, coercion and aggression, sometimes devolving to violence.
And the fourth type of a shared fantasy is when one malignant narcissist becomes dominant and the other one becomes submissive.
In this particular case, the submissive malignant narcissist would claim the role of a victim and wouldperceive himself as having been betrayed. And this is the betrayal fantasy. I have videos dedicated to the betrayal fantasy on this channel.
Now you can search the channel either by using keywords, but much, much more easily you could visit the playlist on this channel. They are thematic playlists and you can choose the theme. You could just scroll through the playlist and find the video that answers your question.
So hate bombing and the role of the malignant narcissist, they're much neglected in literature since the 1970s and they are literally nowhere to be found online among self-styled experts.
The shared fantasy of the malignant narcissist is a mirror image, an inverted image of the shared fantasy of a typical narcissist.
It starts with devaluation, not with idealization. It aims to discard you long before you have become the narcissist partner. It is goal oriented and it is about power.
The psychopaths are about power. It's a power play.
With the role of narcissistic supply, serving as a kind of signaling, power signaling, the more narcissistic supply I have, the more powerful I am.
It's about power because this kind of narcissist feels proud of having power.
The locus of the grandiosity of this kind of narcissist is in the power that this kind of narcissist possesses in his own mind, the case. He regards himself as invulnerable, untouchable, immune to the consequences of his actions, unattached, rigid, heartless, sometimes moral, indefinitely abrasive and cruel, resilient.
So the shared fantasy of the malignant narcissist would reflect these preferences in grandiosity, the specific cognitive distortions of this particular type of narcissist.
It's a psychopath, so it's goal oriented. It's sadist, so pain has a role here, a positive role and it's a narcissist. So there's a need for separation and the shared fantasy.
Malignant narcissism is nothing but arrogance of an a-hole. It is, but there's a lot more to it than this.
So I've enjoyed my voice and your silence. Stick around for the next episode of the Sam Vaknin Horror Show.