How "Dead" Mother Creates "Dead" Child (Zagreb Clinicians Seminar, Part 3 of 5)

So children who are exposed to dead mothers, Guntrip called the dead mother, British, Guntrip called the dead mother, frustrating, rejecting mother. So it's the same.

When there is a dead mother in the background of the child, the child grows up without the capacity to perceive the external existence and separateness of other people, doesn't see the need to develop a theory of mind, because his mind, her mind is one, it's melded, it's fused, merged, and does not develop an internal, or actually develops an internal working model which is dysfunctional.

And this is what is known as insecure attachment style.

So, a dead mother completely destroys the child's capacity to relate to other people.

In other words, she destroys object relations. Object relations are undermined by the existence of a dead mother or a frustrating, rejecting mother.

And such a child has severe problems relating to other people.

And in a minute we'll see how the child solves this.

But even worse, the child, because the child is capable of relating only to a mother, the child never graduated. The child never graduated from, this is mother, and then there are others.

So I can relate to mother, but then I can relate to others. And then I can forget about mother and relate only to others.

Child doesn't graduate. Child remains stuck with mother.

So everyone is a mother. After that, everyone is a mother.

In order for this kind of child, when he grows up and becomes adult, for this kind of child to relate to other people, he needs to convert them into mothers, into maternal figures.

But the original mother was frustrating, was rejecting, was unpleasant, was absent. That's not a good model. It's not a good mother. It was a bad mother.

So everyone becomes a bad mother. Simply.

The maternal object imposed by this kind of child when he grows up, imposed on other people, is an object that is rejecting, frustrating, withholding, avoiding, an object that is malevolent, malicious.

The object is doing it on purpose. The object is frustrating me on purpose. The object is rejecting me deliberately.

It creates paranoid ideation and the object becomes what we call persecutory object. It's a persecutory object.

So these kinds of children when they grow up, they internalize persecutory objects.

In a minute we will discuss relationships. How this translates in a relationship through something called the shared fantasy.

This child grows up with no mentalization, no theory of mind, no internal working models which are functional, and no ego, no self, no boundaries.

There's been a massive disruption in ego formation, in self-formation. Call it as you wish.

The process didn't end.

Even if we believe, like me, for example, we believe that there is no such a thing as self. I believe that the concept is counterfactual and sometimes comic.

I don't believe there is a unitary self. I don't believe in a core identity. I think these are completely deranged concepts.

Anyone who works with people knows that people are not lakes, people are not ponds, people are rivers. They flow.

And Panta Rhei, you cannot enter the same river twice. It all flows.

But even if you believe in what is known as a theory of self-states, an assemblage of self-states that are reactive to the environment.

And so we have work by Philip Bromberg. We have complexes in Jung, which are reminiscent of this. We have internal family system with the parts. We have many, many such theories around subpersonalities, pseudo-identities, many theories, ego states, ego state therapy.

There are many schools in psychology that believe that there is no such thing as a self or an ego.

But we have a variety of actors and agents that are responsive to the environment. They take over, the others become dormant and vice-versa.

But even then, the assembly of self-states acts in the best interest of the individual. It's a self-efficacious assembly.

The principle governing the self-states is the principle of self-efficacy, to maximize the beneficial outcomes from the environment.

The child who has been exposed to a dead mother is not self-efficacious. It's not self-efficacious because this kind of child has no agency.

This kind of child is an extension. This kind of child is an avatar. This child is an internal object. It's not real.

So he has no self-efficacy. And so he is not able to act within the environment in an efficacious way.

And instead, this kind of child chooses fantasy.

The solution is fantasy.

Because reality is unyielding, reality is challenging, reality is hurtful and painful, reality is challenging, reality is hurtful and painful, realities undermining, and realities demanding the alternative, which is much more controllable, much more malleable, much more responsive, is fantasy.

And fantasy shapes the lives of these kind of children.

But the fantasy is a sad fantasy.

Because the two underlying emotions are grief and shame. These are the two underlying emotions of such children.

Now to be clear, children who were brought up by dead mothers, they're dead. They walk, they talk, they even give lectures, but they're dead.

Deep inside, they're dead. There's nobody there. Nobody. It's an absence. It's a simulacrum, simulation.

So because they are dead inside, these children who became adults, they are unable to access positive emotions.

Positive emotions are associated with pain, with hurt, with rejection, with frustration.

So they avoid positive emotions. They repress them, if you want to use Freudian terms. They repress positive emotions. They have no access in any case. They are unable to experience positive emotions at all.

However, they have full access to negative affectivity. Negative affectivity, anger, hatred, envy. Envy is a motivating force and so on.

And the reason they have full access to negative affects is double, twofold.

One, it's a simulation of self-efficacy. Like if I cannot be really self-efficacious, I can be great at destroying things. If I cannot build things, I can destroy them. If I cannot accomplish things, I can imitate or destroy the object of my envy.

It is through my anger and fury and rage that I make people do what I want. These emotions render me efficacious, self-efficacious.

That's one thing.

But there is a deeper thing.

Negative affectivity is a defense. It's a defense, or what we call in earlier psychology, displacement. It's a displacement activity.

This kind of child experiences negative affects that protect the child from experiencing other negative affects.

So this child displaces. The child displaces from shame and from sadness and from displaces from these emotions, from grief, from shame, to envy, anger and so.

So these are protective displacement mechanisms in order to not experience the shame and the grief.

What is this shame? What does a child grieve? What is this mourning process?

It is very shameful to be helpless. It is very shameful to be abused. It's very shameful to be ignored.

It's doubly shameful if your mother is doing this.

It's a feeling that you're unlovable, unworthy. It's what we call an internalized bad object.

It's as if you are a nobody, piece of trash, you know, nothing.

And it's very shameful. It's humiliating. It's a sense of constant humiliation.

And on the other hand, you grieve. Even as a child, you grieve. And anyone who says that children are incapable of grieving doesn't know what they're talking about.

I had a dubious pleasure of raising my three brothers and one sister. And I can tell you, children grieve.

So there is grief. And the grief is over the relationship with the mother, which is not as it should be.

The grief is about the inability to become, the inability to self-actualize, to use Maslow's term, you cannot self-actualize, you cannot realize your potentials, you cannot become, you're not allowed to become. You're not allowed to be an individual.

Dead mothers impede, they obstruct, they hinder what Margaret Mahler called the separation individuation phase.

According to Margaret Mahler, and this is commonly accepted nowadays, there was a debate at the time, nowadays it's accepted. According to Margaret Mahler, around the age of 18 months, the child begins to separate from mother.

And by separating, because separation has multiple phases, a rapprochement on these, never mind of that.

So, it is through separation that the child becomes, you become by negating mother in effect, that's an unpleasant fact. It is by rejecting mother in effect that you become, that's why the child is terrified of punishment. That's why a mother who is insecure and punishes the child when the child separates, hinders the separation, obstructs it.

But many mothers would punish because it's a rejection of mother. It's experienced as rejection.

So around 18 months the child separates and becomes an individual and a dead mother does not allow this.

She does not allow this either because she is protective, overprotective, holding, insecure, you know, depressive and uses the child as an instrument or instrumentalized or parental, whatever it, or she doesn't allow the separation because she doesn't provide a gaze separate from who? From whom?

If there's nobody there, if the mother is absent, if the mother couldn't care less, if the mother is on the contrary depressive or if she's narcissistic or she, in all these situations, who can the child, whom can the child separate from? There's no counterparty.

So this also destroys the separation individuation process.

Consequently, this child remains stuck in what used to be known as the symbiotic phase. The child remains melded and meshed, merged and fused with his mother.

It is, of course, in due time, a symbolic mother. The introjected mother, the internal object that represents mother in the child's mind.

Mother could die physically, and still this would not create separation of individuation. The mother is there forever. All of you have your mother here, whether you believe it or not. The introject is there.

And so this kind of mother does not allow separation individuation.

There is shame, there is grief, and the child begins to react in a variety of ways.

This situation needs to be resolved somehow.

Excuse me for a second.

This situation needs to be resolved somehow.

So the child begins to react in a variety of ways.

First, as I told you, the child invents an imaginary friend. Many children have imaginary friends. Imaginary friends are a form of what is known as transitory objects. They allow transition to object relations. So many children have imaginary friends.

But this child's imaginary friend is God, or at least God-like. It's a divinity.

So that's one solution.

The second solution is a rejection of reality. Reality is too much. It's too painful, too hurtful, unbearable, intolerable, the child rejects reality.

But when you reject reality, there's a vacuum. And to fill this vacuum, the child settles on fantasy. Fantasy is conceived as a defense, but it's not only a defense.

So, the child settles on fantasy.

And one of the initial phases, one of the first phases of fantasy taking over, because this kind of child's fantasy metastasizes. This is cancer.

The fantasy takes over completely, everything, cognitions, emotions, affects, behaviors, traits, interactions, relationships. Everything is consumed by this ever-expanding nebula of the fantasy, which metastasizes and leaves nothing untouched, nothing untouched.

And it starts small, starts small like many bad things, it starts small.

It starts with what is known as cognitive distortion. Cognitive distortion is a way to reframe reality or reconstruct it somehow that it becomes less painful, more acceptable, less hurtful.

And the most famous cognitive distortion is of course grandiosity. Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. It falsifies reality so that reality upholds and buttresses and supports an unrealistic, fantastic, inflated view of the self. A self-conceptive that is counterfactual.

That's how the fantasy starts, small.

I have a God and I have a special relationship with God, and that makes me special.

This process is known as co-idealization.

Later on in life, this kind of adult, he would look for an intimate partner. And he would recreate this exactly. He would idealize the intimate partner. And by idealizing the intimate partner, he would idealize himself.

If my intimate partner is perfect, if my intimate partner is drop dead gorgeous, if my intimate partner is hyper-intelligent and unique and unprecedented and amazing, and so on so forth, that makes me unique and amazing and unprecedented and so on, because I own her. She is my internal object. It's like owning a car, a luxury car. You know, it's a status symbol in a way.

But there is this process of co-idealization that starts very, very early with the idealization of the false self.

The child idealizes this imaginary friend, and then because it's a special relationship, like between the United Kingdom and the United States, it's a special relationship, then we have a situation that the child is also unique and special and essentially Godlike. Because if God belongs to you, what does it say about you? If you invented gold, what does it say about you?

So, this is how the fantasy starts.

Essentially, children settle on one of two solutions.

When I say children, remember, we are talking cluster B. We are talking children who become later adults with Cluster B personality disorders. I just don't want to repeat this very long, so I'm saying children.

So these children settle, children with dead mothers and so on, they settle on one of two solutions.

The first solution is known as the moral defense.

The moral defense is a phrase coined by Fairbairn. You heard of Fairburn?

The moral defense is a phrase coined by Ferber, who was one of the main figures in the British object relation schools in the 60s, 70s. And Fairbairn suggested that what the child does, this kind of child, what the child does is says, I am all bad. Mommy rejects me, mommy frustrates me, but she is right because she is all good.

I deserve to be punished. I am unlovable. It's true. What she's doing to me is just. That's the way she should begin.

So the child assumes the responsibility and this is a moral defense. The child says the situation is moral. It's not unethical, nothing wrong with it, it's totally moral. That's a moral defense.

And what the child does, the child internalizes a bad object. So the child has an object inside. Object is simply a constellation of voices, a group of introjects, cluster of voices. And this bad object is internal and it informs the child you're unlovable, you're unworthy, your failure, you're ugly, you're stupid, you're professor of psychology, you know, okay, just to wake you up from time to time.

Actually, Strachey, another guy, in the 1930s already described this moral defense 30 years before, and he called it the primitive superego. The primitive superego is internalization of these voices that tell you that you are bad and so on.

Melanie Klein, who was very much into pornography, called it the good breast versus the bad breast. I leave it up to you to imagine the situation.

The good breast versus the bad breast.

And moral defense is essentially good breast, a good breast strategy. The good breast versus the bad breast was how the child conceives of mother.

There is the frustrating mother, the mother who wouldn't give the child food, or leaves the room, or is not present when the child cries, that's the frustrating mother, that's the bad breast. And then there's the good mother, the mother that feeds and she's the good breast.

So she made this distinction, good breast and bad. So this is a good breast strategy. Mother is all good, I am all bad. And in this sense, it's what we call a splitting defense.

This strategy is an extended splitting defense with a child assuming all the negativity and relegating to the mother all the positivity.

That's one solution and it is a solution common in borderline personality disorder.

These people, when they grow up, they develop borderline personality disorder.

By the way, borderline personality disorder can be diagnosed as early as age 12.

It's not the same with narcissistic personality disorder or psychopathy. These can be diagnosed earliest age 18 and preferably 21 plus.

In psychopathy we have a precedent, we have another condition which is psychopathy for children. And it's called conduct disorder.

People with conduct disorder, some of them, a big percentage of them, go on to become psychopaths when they graduate.

But we don't have such a thing with narcissism. Narcissism starts as a pathology, 18, 21, something else.

However, the roots of pathological narcissism, or pathological narcissism, not the disorder, pathological narcissism, starts much earlier, and it's commonly accepted that it starts around 2, 3 years old.

The second type of defense is exactly the opposite.

Mother is all bad. I'm all good.

It's very uncommon for a child to say, mother is all bad. Any child says mother is all bad, it's very frightening, it's threatening.

If you have a mother who is bad, this mother will not feed you, will not protect you, will not pay attention to you, will not see you, you can die.

So children usually don't do that. They don't say, mother is all bad, I'm all good. This is an unusual situation.

That's why narcissism is a much later phenomenon.

Because narcissism requires this kind of splitting. I am all good, everyone else is all bad.

And the child cannot do that. A child cannot do that.

So narcissism is a later phenomenon, because this kind of splitting is essentially impossible in the first few years of life.

But this is narcissism. I'm all good, everyone else is all bad, the bad breast defense, and there's an internalized, idealized object.

Whereas in borderline and so on, you have an internalized bad object. In narcissism, you have both.

You have an internalized bad object and a defense, a defense against the bad object, the idealized object.

So the idealized object compensates. There is a compensatory structure.

Narcissists as opposed to borderlines, as distinct from borderlines, do not have a functioning self in any meaningful way.

And definitely they don't have what Freud used to call ego and superegoans. They don't have any of these structures.

They're structure less. They're amorphous. They're totally amorphous.

Which explains why narcissists are highly adaptable and why they kind of go with the flow and you cannot, they're kind of slimy, you cannot capture them.

Because they are amorphous.

Whereas in borderline, many of the personality structures are more advanced. Borderlines have access to positive emotions, too much access, to positive emotions, and so there's a major distinction between the two.

And Kernberg suggested that narcissism is a defense against borderline. He suggested that there's a terror of becoming borderline, and so the child develops narcissism as a defense against borderline.

Groszstein, who was another psychoanalyst, suggested that borderline is failed narcissism. He said the child attempts to become a narcissist, and when the child fails to develop narcissism, the child remains stuck in the stage of emotional dysregulation and becomes a borderline.

So they both agree, because Groszstein says that narcissism is a defense against the emotional dysregulation of the borderline.

And so in their view, the stages are a dead mother, or dysfunctional mother or whatever, borderline, and then some children, very few, develop narcissistic defenses or narcissistic hyperstructure, and they become narcissists.

So we are, narcissists are like evolved borderlines. Next stage in evolution.

And so this kind of child remains stuck. He is in a symbiotic state with his mother.

Remember, mother doesn't have to be real, doesn't have to be alive, it's the mother introject. He's in a symbiotic.

When I say he, she, I mean, half of all Cluster B personality disorders now we know are female and half a male.

There have been severe gender bias until recently.

We had a situation where majority of people with borderline personality disorder were diagnosed were women, and majority of narcissists were men.

But today we know that this was gender bias. Today we know that it's half and half. And it's really half and half. This is not politically correct.

So these children grow up and they develop the bad breast defense or the good breast defense.

They split one way or another, but they're all stuck. They're stuck in the symbiotic phase. They are merged and meshed with an internalized mother who is withholding, frustrating, aggressive, rejecting, and so on so forth.

And they naturally wish to get rid of this introject, to get rid of this introject. To get rid of this nagging voice of this bad, internalized bad object, call it as you wish.

And by the way, I'm using now to talk to you, I'm using concepts from object relations schools and so and so forth, but they have equivalence, absolute equivalence in much later theories, for example.

In social cognitive theory or social learning theory, as it used to be called, we have the concept of modeling. So there is a modeling failure. There's a modeling failure in such children with the dead mother. The dead mother has a modeling failure.

So the child cannot model, cannot create behaviors and cannot create conceptions of relationships and so on and so forth.

So you see, whichever theory you choose, it's just a changing language, essentially. Just a changing language.

I know that in the West today, it's not bon ton. It's for pa. To mention Freud and Jung and, you know, you don't. And in many universities in the West, I teach in Cambridge, for example, it's strictly forbidden to mention Freud. I cannot mention Freud. I have had my curriculum, my syllabus cut by half because it included Freud and Jung and I don't know what.

It's absolutely strictly forbidden to mention Freud and Donald Trump. These are two names you're gonna pay. So and so and I think it's a horrible mistake because I think these are simply alternative languages the insights are correct. It's just the language as a different.

And to discard something just because you don't like the language, that's not exactly a sign of wisdom.

So we use another statement, in my view.

So if you want to use social cognitive theory, then I would, what I would have told you is that the dead mother fails to model. She doesn't provide a model and there's a modeling failure.

Yes, if you want to use this language.

But it's all the same.

So the child remains stuck and there's this introject of the mother, there's the voice of the mother, call it whatever you will. The mother is present somehow, not in a good way.

The child needs to get rid of the mother. Call it whatever you will. The mother is present somehow. Not in a good way. The child needs to get rid of a mother.

How to get rid of this?

Separation, individuation.

The child failed to separate from the mother, failed to become an individual, and now the child needs to do that.

The child could be 64 years old, but he still needs to do it, you know?

So, and to do that, what do you need if you want to separate from mother and become an individual finally? What do you need?

Sorry?

You need a mother.

If you want to separate from a mother, it would be helpful to have a mother to separate from.

So you need a mother.

And this leads us to the shared fantasy, I'll mention Bella Grunberger.

I mentioned Bella Grunberger, yeah. I'll mention Bella Grunberger. Grunberger, yeah. I mentioned Bella Grunberger.

He was a psychologist, psychoanalyst actually. And he came up with the concept of narcissistic elation.

Narcissistic elation is what Freud used to call oceanic feeling.

You see, it just changes the language. That's all.

It means the feeling of becoming one with a, usually the mother figure, but not always, becoming one with another person.

This unity that we all aspire to, state of nirvana and merger and fusion and so on, is actually, I'm sorry to inform you, a severe pathology.

So, narcissistic elation or oceanic feeling and so on, so is the driving force behind this wish to find a mother.

Because the precondition for separation individuation is to first be one with a mother. If you are not one with a mother, you don't need to separate from her.

So in order to reenact, because this process is called reenactment, there's a reenactment of early childhood conflicts.

So in order to reenact early childhood conflicts or early childhood dynamics, you need to replicate them from zero.

So you need to find a mother, you need to merge with her and fuse with her, you need to have enmeshment, you need to have a symbiotic phase, you need to have a narcissistic elation and so on, and only then you can proceed to the next stage, and the next stage is separation.

Shared fantasy is not my concept, I regret to say. It was first described by Sanderin 1989.

And it was Sander who suggested that when we enter relationships, not necessarily intimate.

So if you have a good friend, the same dynamic, the good friend becomes the maternal figure. Even if you have a boss, the boss becomes the maternal figure.

You impose this kind of children who have had a dead mother, they impose a maternal view of others. They convert everyone into mothers, you know.

And so for example, they become very entitled. They become very demanding because mother owes me, you know, I'm a child, I'm a child.

As a child, I deserve special treatment, I deserve protection, I deserve concessions, I'm a child, and as a child, you shouldn't never hurt me, because it's not okay to hurt children, you know?

So whatever I do to you, you should tolerate and accept, as a mother you should love me unconditionally.

This is the expectations and they apply to everything, not only intimate relationships.

So the shared fantasy is a global concept of human relationships in Cluster B psychopathologies.

And again, not mine, it is Sanders. And so it has various phases.

But before we go to the various phases, I would like to clarify that shared fantasy in the case of borderline is very different to the shared fantasy in the case of the narcissist.

In the case of the borderline, the fantasy is object-oriented.

In other words, in the case of the borderline, the fantasy is centered on another person, on another human being.

So the borderline, for example, is likely to create a fantasy centered around an intimate partner or a special friend or a special person.

There's this concept, special person in borderline.

So the borderline would create a fantasy around a specific individual, a real one, recognized as external, and then the fantasy would revolve around that person.

That person would make her life perfect, would regulate her emotions, stabilize her moods. That person is the rock. He's like a rock. He will ground her. That person will ground her.

So this is the borderline's fantasy.

Whereas the narcissist's fantasy is process-oriented, not other-oriented.

In other words, as far as the narcissist is concerned, who you are is utterly irrelevant. Completely irrelevant. Whether you're empathic or nice or not nice, or it's completely not relevant, because the narcissist is focused on the process.

You just happen to be there. You're a placeholder. You're an icon, an avatar. You represent the mother.

In other words, we say that in the case of narcissism, pathological narcissism, it is an economy of representations. The main units in the exchange are representations.

While with the borderline, the main units are regulation and other people. The borderline is really focused on other people and she's focused on regulation.

The narcissist couldn't care less who you are, you're interchangeable, you're dispensable, you're nobody's, you're commodified, totally.

That's why when I go online and I see all these victims, I was special, I was chosen because I was super empathic, I was nice. I understand, you know, you need to feel good about what has happened to you, but that's not true. It's counterfactual.

And so, I would like to elaborate a bit on the very concept of fantasy before we go into the shared fantasy.

Start with the fact that fantasies are unrealistic. They defy reality. They are counterfactual. They are not factual, not based on facts.

And in this sense, many fantasies are delusional.

Now the difference between fantasy and delusion is that delusion provokes aggression when it is challenged. When you challenge your delusion, you end badly. And in some cases, you end, not being, it your delusion, you end badly.

Delusions are fiercely protected. Fantasies are not.

So the only difference is what kind of reaction they trigger.

A fantasy is a narrative, it's a story, so it has a beginning, an end, a middle, it has a plot, it has characters, it's exactly like a movie screen or a theater production. It's a regulatory mechanism.

People who are prone to fantasy use fantasies to regulate internal processes. It's a form of self-supply.

So through the fantasy, you can cater to your needs which are not met otherwise.

So for example, you need attention and you're not getting attention, so you create a fantasy where you are getting attention.

It could be, therefore, a paranoid fantasy. Paranoia is actually narcissism. It's a form of narcissism.

Because it's a fantasy in which you are getting attention by the CIA, by the government, by I don't know who, you are getting attention.

So this is a compensatory fantasy. It's a compensatory role.

Fantasy is a defense against fragility and vulnerability.

When you are inside the fantasy, you can be anything you want. You can be all-powerful. You can be all-knowing. You can be untouchable. You can be invulnerable. You can be infinite. You can have a fantasy. You'll never die. It's known as religion.

A fantasy is a time machine because it in almost in all cases involves regression.

Fantasies involve regression to an infantile state. Back to the womb, kind of, back to the womb, back to the matrix.

So, fantasies involve symbiosis. They have what Grunberger called the elation, narcissic elation, oceanic feeling, that you're becoming one with some, but that is the feeling of a baby.

So when you're in fantasy, you're infantilizing, you're regressing automatically. And when you're in a shared fantasy, when you find someone who participates with you in the fantasy, agrees to be your counterparty in the fantasy, both of you become children, both of you infantilize.

It's not possible for someone to be a partner in my shared fantasy if she refuses to become an infant, because she needs to regress with me.

with me.

Okay, there's an example. That was an example.

A fantasy is a good object, always.

So within the fantasy, you're good. You're not, you're worthy, you're lovable.

It's very rare to have a fantasy where you are ugly and stupid. This is an unusual fantasy.

A fantasy is a cognitive distortion, it's a misperception of reality and involves other cognitive distortions.

And finally, a fantasy is a pseudo-emotion. It's euphoric.

So as you can see, when the narcissist and the psychopaths and both, they're all engaging in fantasies.

When they engage in fantasies, there's a huge list of psychological needs that are met by the fantasy.

It's not just saying, you know, ah, fantasy because I cannot tolerate reality.

That's one aspect. But there are many other aspects, which I just mentioned. Many, many psychological needs.

We could say that fantasies are total solutions. They're total solutions.

So if reality is too much for you, not acceptable, you say, your total solution is a fantasy.

And that's why more and more people devolve into fantasy in our current world, in contemporary society, in civilization.

We devolve into fantasy. We have whole industries based on fantasy, movies, social media. They're all based on fantasies. They're all fantasy based.

So because it's a total solution. There's no element in you, psychological element that is not catered to by the fantasy, that is not taken care of by the fantasy, that the fantasy doesn't gratify. No such thing.

The Okudarian principles say, I'm abandoning reality altogether, and I'm emigrating to fantasy land.

And many people did that in the past.

Utopia. You know the word utopia means no such place. Utopia. No such place. Utopia. No such place.

So, fantasy is not a new thing, but in the case of the narcissists, a fantasy is ritual, it's choreographed, it has strict phases, and these phases are inexorable, and immutable, never changing.

In other words, the narcissists is not in control of the fantasy. The fantasy is in control of the narcissists.

The fantasy determines behavior, regulates, and affords what we call hermeneutic input.

In other words, the fantasy provides meaning, makes sense of the world, makes sense of life, and provides meaning.

I'm sorry that I'm mentioning religion all the time, but you see immediately the similarities. I mean, it's inevitable. It's very clear.

So let's discuss the seven stages of the narcissist shared fantasy.

Is it a fantasy to think that we've been talking for one hour? Or is it reality?

I hate reality.

Ten minutes because we are way behind the material. Ten minutes, guys. Please, not longer.