Something eerie and terrifying is happening.
More and more intelligent comments are cropping up on my YouTube channel.
I don't know what's happening. It may be an alien invasion or form of gang-stalking.
Okay, Shoshanim, I'm happy to see you there.
And today I'm going to read to you one of the comments and then answer another one. Twofer, a twofer. What a day.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. I'm also professor of psychology.
Let's start with the first comment and it has to do with the concepts of external object versus internal object.
Here's the comment.
Now I'm able to understand the concept why there is need of external object.
It's like in our CNC machining. In order to machine the job correctly, we have to set origin point.
And this is the external object.
After that, when we run the program, which is the fantasy, the tool moves according to the program with reference to the origin point, every time verifying its position with respect to origin.
Each and every coordinate movement machining is calculated and done with respect to the origin point.
If no origin point is there, then there would be an accident moving arbitrarily in space.
Yes, very good, simile. very good analogy.
The origin point is the external object.
Then there is the fantasy, which is essentially the program, and the machine, which is the narcissist, keeps comparing the progress of the program to the point of origin in order to calibrate the fantasy and in order to be somehow efficacious in the execution of the fantasy and its maintenance.
It's exactly like CNC machining. Machining.
Thank you.
Second intelligent comment in one day. Gasp. Shocking, I know.
Okay. Here's what the comment, I'm not sure if it's a male or a female, had to say.
Professor Vaknin, that's me, by the way. Could you please explain? I love the word please. I melt when you say it. Please say it.
Okay, let's be serious for a minute, can you?
Okay. Professor Vaknin, could you please explain?
If the narcissist is compulsively reenacting early childhood dynamics with a mother's substitute, but still fails to become, because they refuse to let go of the original mother.
And if they have internalized the projected bad object via mother's projection of her own bad unacceptable unwanted traits, therefore they still see mother as good, perfect, and they see themselves as unworthy, bad objects.
How are they able to revive their dead mothers in their intimate partners, substitute mother figures, and then call them bad? If they were not able to and have never perceived the original mother as bad, how can they perceive the substitute mothers as bad?
Thank you very much.
Oh, thank you. When you say thank you, I melt. Please say thank you. Thank you.
Okay, enough with this. Let us summarize the comment for you.
What he or she is asking is the following.
Since the narcissist has never seen the original biological mother as bad in childhood, because as a child, the narcissist was terrified to consider the possibility that mother is bad so he never saw her as bad so how come later in life in adulthood the narcissist is capable of perceiving the intimate partner as bad.
After all, the intimate partner is just another mother. It's a mother substitute.
The narcissist has had no experience of regarding the original biological mother as bad.
So how come the narcissist is able, much later in life, to regard the substitute mother, the maternal figure, as bad?
Okay, before I proceed to answer this, half of all narcissists are women, and whatever I'm about to say applies equally to them. Get off my back. Enough with this he and she and so on. I'm using he because it's good literature. It's a literary convention. But I agree. Half of all narcissists are women.
Next, the things I tell you in these videos are not based on personal experience. They're not the outcomes of introspection. And they are not speculation as to what narcissists might be or might feel or might do.
I have interviewed more than 2,300 people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder over the past 30 years, three decades, and I've worked hand in hand with at least 200 of them over the same period.
So I feel quite qualified to discuss narcissism. Actually, with all due respect, I don't know of a single scholar, alive or dead, who has had access to so many people who were diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder.
Compared to my database and my information, all the studies and so are laughable.
So, you know, have some respect and learn instead of challenging.
Let's answer the question.
First of all, there's a misrepresentation or misunderstanding in the original comment.
It is not the mother who refuses to let go of the child. It is not the child, I'm sorry, who refuses to let go of the mother.
It's the mother who refuses to let go of the child.
She does not allow the child to separate, not the other way. It's not the child who clings to the mother and refuses to leave her. It's the mother who makes it impossible for the child to separate from her and become an individual.
That's number one.
What happens is the narcissist mother is typically abusive.
And again, abuse doesn't have to be physical or sexual or psychological or verbal.
If you pedestalize the child, if you are overprotective as a parent, as a mother, if you instrumentalize the child, if you parentify the child, these are all forms of abuse.
So the mothers of narcissists are abusers. They have been or acted abusively. They traumatize their child.
So the child splits the mother into an all-good mother and an all-bed mother.
By the way, even normal, healthy, good-enough mothers induce this splitting in their children because inevitably a mother would always end up frustrating her child she can't be there on the child's beck and call 24-7 and this frustration gives rise to anger and aggression and this aggression leads to splitting the child splits the mother there's the all good mother the mother who is responsive the mother is available mother is loving and containing and caressing and always present and there's the bed mother who says no the mother who frustrates the mother who leaves the room the mother who is absent sometimes the mother who has a life of her own so all children split the mother into all good and all bad.
And in my view, and it is my view, the child rejects the all bad version of the mother.
There are scholars who agree with me. For example, Fairbairn of Object Relations Schools calls it the moral defense.
So the child says, I'm all bad. Mother is all good.
If I'm being ignored and neglected and punished, that's because I deserve it. This is because I'm unworthy. That's because I'm a bad object.
And so, children split the mother into all bad and all good, or what Melanie Klein called pornographically, good breasts and bad breasts.
But then where I disagree with classical object relation theories, and I agree with the British school of object relations, is that the child then says, mother is all good, I am all bad and I deserve what's coming. I had it coming. I earned it. I earned this mistreatment, this abuse.
But it doesn't mean when the child attributes to mother an all good disposition and to himself or itself an all bad disposition, when the child splits, mother is all good and all bad, it doesn't mean that the child loses sight of the all-bad mother.
So the child splits the mother. There's an all-good mother and all-bad mother. And then the child ignores the all-bad mother and says, I'm all-bad, splits itself.
So there is mother splitting, followed by self-splitting. Mother is all good, I'm all bad.
The child splits mother and the child splits itself.
But it doesn't mean that the child is not aware of the all-bad mother. It's just that he ignores it. He pretends that it doesn't exist. He does not attribute, does not connect it to the real mother, to the external object.
The child says, yes, here is mother. Mother is separate from me. Mother is external, and mother is all good.
There is a version of mother that is all bad, but it's not characteristic of mother. That's not who mother is. That's not mother.
Similarly, the child says, there is me, I'm separate from mother, and I'm all bad. There's an all good version of me, but I'm ignoring it. I'm ignoring it. I pretend it doesn't exist because if I'm all good, then mother is all bad. And if mother is all bad, that's very frightening and very threatening because an all bad mother wouldn't provide me with food and shelter and I will die.
Yet the all bad mother, having been ignored and relegated to the recesses of the child's mind, having rendered the real mother, the external object, the mother out there, having rendered her all good, the child is faced with a conundrum and the dilemma.
What to do with all bad mother? What to do with this neglected aspect of mother? Ignored aspect. Repressed, denied aspect of mother. What to do with it?
It's there. It's in the corner, it's in the shadows, the all bad mother. It's an ominous presence.
And one way of getting rid of the all bad aspect of mother is by rejecting the mother altogether, by separating from her.
And this process starts hesitantly and partially between the ages of 18 and 36 months, and it culminates in adolescence.
Every mother of an adolescent child would tell you that adolescent children reject their mothers. There is a rejection there.
The act of rejecting, the act of pushing away, the act of separating, individuating, becoming an individual, divided from the mother.
This is the only way to somehow mitigate the presence and impact of the all bad dimension of mother.
Having done that, having rejected mother altogether, good and bad, having separated, having become an individual in healthy adults, the good and bad aspects of mother are later integrated.
They begin to see mother as she is, a flawed individual, warts and all. Advantages and disadvantages, shortcomings and strengths, virtuous and sometimes immoral.
They see the nuances, the shades of gray of mother, and by implication, healthy, mature adults are able to see the good and bad sides of all other people.
They're able to relate to other people with subtlety, with subtlety and nuance.
They don't judge other people. They don't split them. They don't say, I don't know, narcissists are all bad. Victims are all good. That's splitting. And it's immature and it's not adult. It's an infantile defense.
So, let me recap before I move on to narcissism.
The child has a mother. The mother sometimes frustrates the child, denies the needs of the child, is absent for some reason.
The child then begins to see that mother is sometimes good and sometimes bad.
And he splits mother right down the middle. There's a bad mother, a good mother and a bad mother.
The child, too terrified to contemplate that maybe mother is all bad, says mother is all good.
If mother is all bad, I'm going to die. So mother is all good.
But. If mother is all bad, I'm going to die. So mother is all good.
But wait a minute. If mother is all good, why is she frustrating me? Why is she absent? Why is she ignoring me when I cry? Why does she not cater to my needs? Why am I not the center of her universe?
Because I'm all bad, says the child. I'm unworthy of her love and her presence.
So the child splits the mother, all good, all bad, splits itself, I'm all good, I'm all bad, and then says, mother is all good and I'm all bad.
And yet, the all bad mother remains. The all bad mother is there in the corner, in the shadows, lurking.
To cope with this ominous presence, the child rejects mother altogether, separates from her, becomes an individual, and from a position of strength, is able to integrate the bad mother and the good mother, this time not terrified, not in an existential angst, not dependent on the mother.
The integration of the two aspects, the good mother and the bad mother, usually takes place in late adolescence.
So, with narcissists, there is a disruption in the process.
In narcissists, the two aspects, the all good and the all bad, remain disjointed. They are not constellated, they're not integrated.
And because this is the situation, the separation from the mother is incomplete.
The narcissist is unable to separate from the mother because his dependency on her means that he can regard her only as all good.
If he were to step back, separate from her, become an individual, he would have been forced to see that she is sometimes all good, sometimes all bad.
And later on in life, he would have been forced to integrate.
But he is incapable of doing this, because his developmental path has been obstructed very early on.
In other words, there's nobody there. There's no unitary self. There's no core identity that can take over this process of separation, individuation, and integration of the bad aspects and good aspects of mother.
In order to separate from the substitute mother, the intimate partner, the narcissist adopts the all bad version of her.
He devalues her, and he renders himself all good, and he believes that he could now finally separate and individuate.
Something he should have done with his original mother, his biological mother, who is a secure base. A mother that will not penalize him for separating, a mother who would encourage him to individuate and reject her, actually.
He is now trying to do with his intimate partner.
With his original biological mother of origin, the narcissist failed to separate. He kept seeing her as all good.
And in his failure to separate, he also failed to become an individual and consequently to mature, to become an adult, and was unable to integrate the all good and all bad mother.
Now there's a substitute mother, a maternal figure, a second chance, the intimate partner.
And the narcissist tries to have with her the process that has failed with his original mother.
He tries to first see her, see the intimate partner as all good. This is known as idealization.
He then tries to reject her and separate from her by seeing her as all bad.
And the hope is, the hope that harbors is that now that he is separated, he could become an individual and possibly integrate the all good and all bad aspects of the intimate partner.
But this never happens. This never happens because the narcissist has no experience with separation and has no self which would allow him to separate.
Separation is about setting the boundaries of the self. If you don't have a self, you don't have boundaries. You cannot separate.
And so it's a perpetual mobility ad infinitum. The narcissist tries again and again and again and again with as many intimate partners as possible.
You could ask one last question if the narcissist sees his mother as all good, why do some narcissists hate their mothers, reject their mothers volubly and visibly and ostentatiously, castigate their mothers, chastise them, criticize them, avoid all contact with their mothers. If they see the mother as all good, why do they keep doing this?
Because by doing this, they confirm and affirm and uphold their view of themselves as bad objects. Only a bad person would do this.
So rejecting mother is proof positive of how bad and unworthy you are. It's an act of self-deprecation and self-denigration.
So the narcissist regards mother, the original biological mother, is all good until the day he dies. He has then two options in adult life.
He can embrace her as all good, remain dependent, the mama's boy, never separate from her, cater to her needs, service her, worship and idolize, and pedestalize her, and so. That's one option.
The second option, he can reject her vehemently, vociferously, visibly and ostentatiously, hate her and demean her and humiliate her and shame her and accuser of all kinds of things and criticize her.
But that is done not because the narcissist suddenly thinks that she is all bad, but because he thinks that he is all bad. And only really bad people do this to their mothers.
It's a trap and it's a catch-22 and there's no way out.
Whichever way the narcissist, the adult narcissist relates to his mother of origin, to his biological mother, he always ends up being the bad object with mother the quintessence and reification of an alloyed, unmitigated goodness.
The splitting defense, in other words, continues until the last breath of the narcissist.