No agony, more exquisite and more harrowing than the pseudo-relationship with a narcissist, narcissistic abuse. It is a purgatory. It is hell itself with everlasting fires. And so you need to make sense of the senseless. You need to imbue with meaning the random events that led to your crucifixion and emulation in the fires of the narcissist. And so you tell yourself that you have been chosen. Chosen because you're empathic, because you're kind, because you're compassionate, because you wanted to give, you're a giver, because you are drop-dead gorgeous, hyper-intelligent, and so on and so forth. You keep trying to inject some, a modicum of sense into what has happened. You were chosen, that makes sense, you were chosen by someone who is essentially, quintessentially evil.
But of course, this is nonsense. It is self-aggrandizing nonsense. It renders you angelic, but it is also counterfactual nonsense. That is not what happens in reality.
The narcissist is indiscriminate. The narcissist is promiscuous when it comes to mate selection. He would choose as a mate anyone, anyone who is able to provide the narcissist with the four S's. The four S's are sex, supply, narcissistic or sadistic, safety and services. Two of the four S would suffice for you to qualify as the narcissist, long-suffering, intimate partner, best friend, co-worker, anyone, anyone who gravitates towards the ambit of the black hole that is known as the narcissist. So it's not that you are something special. Your traits, even your looks, are meaningless to the narcissist. What matters to the narcissist is your availability to play the game, to participate with him in his shared fantasy, and to become an extension of himself, and a servant, subservient, submissive, always there. This is what we're going to discuss today, because the question arises Servient, submissive, always there. This is what we're going to discuss today, because the question arises. There is no type that the narcissist is attracted to. The narcissist is not attracted to you, because he doesn't see you. The narcissist couldn't care less about empathy and kindness. He wouldn't recognize empathy and kindness if they were to fall on his head from a very, from very high.
So that's, this is not what matters to the narcissists. What matters to the narcissist is your willingness, enthusiastic willingness, to provide the four Ss. And yet, this raises the question, how does the narcissist recognize willing providers, ample providers, appropriate providers, qualified providers, how does the analysis separate, would be good providers from those who are unable to provide the narcissists to cater to the narcissists needs.
How does narcissists discern, usually on the first encounter within the first few minutes, how does the narcissists discern that you could be a great victim material? The prey that he is a predator is looking for how does a narcissists see you on a first date on a first meeting for the first time
my name is Sam Bakkney I'm the author of malignant self-love narcissism revisited the first book ever on narcissistic abuse I'm a professor of clinical psychology in Siaps in Cambridge United Kingdom and I am currently newly appointed visiting professor of psychology and economics in southeast European University. Okay, credentials aside, let's move on. The narcissist comes across you. You come across a narcissist. You see each other across a room. You date each other. You talk to each other. You find yourself engaged in the same project in the workplace. You become best friends with the narcissist or so you think.
How does the narcissist recognize you as the right partner the right partner in his, and participant in his shared fantasy. The narcissist puts you through three tests. And the tests are, are you capable of being idealized by the narcissist? Test number two, are you able to provide at least two out of the four S's?
And test number three, are you vulnerable?
Not vulnerable to the narcissist, but are you vulnerable to the shared fantasy?
And let me elaborate a bit on each of these tests.
Test number one are you capable of being idealized do you have the minimal traits, minimal assets, the minimal looks, emphasis on minimal, which would allow the narcissist to latch onto them, leverage them, exaggerate them, inflate them, and use them to idealize it.
The narcissist can idealize and would idealize anything.
If you're in a wheelchair, he would idealize your willpower. If you are drop dead gorgeous, it would idealize your looks. If you are minimally attractive and not so drop dead, more dead than gorgeous he would idealize that.
Narcissists would idealize anything if you graduated high school but never went on to college it would idealize your entrepreneurial spirit or free spirit or rebellious spirit if you did go on to college, you would idealize your intelligence.
The narcissist just needs an excuse to idealize you. He needs to get to know you better.
He creates an inventory in his mind of all your personal history, events, circumstances, people you know, traits, your traits, various assets you possess, physiological, mental, and material, your behaviors, your interactions and interpersonal relationships with other people, once he has amassed, once he has agglomerated and accumulated this database about you, once he has put together the file, the dossier about you, he can then idealize each and every one of these elements and create an image of you, a representation of you in his mind, an avatar, a snapshot, an introject, that has nothing to do with you.
He then grants you access to this idealized image of yourself in order for you to fall in love with yourself through him, through his gaze, and become addicted to the process.
So it is very rare that the narcissist finds nothing to idealize.
As I just mentioned, even if you are an underachiever, even if you are fagli, excuse the expression, excuse my French, even if you are dumb as a knight, even whatever you are, the narcissist would take it, run with it, and produce an idealized version of it.
You would create a narrative where your particular deficiencies and lacks and flaws are actually glamorized and glorify and render you a perfect entity, a perfect being.
The only time a narcissist fails to find anything to idealize is if you hold back if you avoid if you withdraw if you reject a narcissist if you're critical of the narcissists if you disagree with the narcissist repeatedly if you humiliate the narcissist and shame the narcissist, repeatedly, if you humiliate the narcissists and shame the narcissists, especially in public, at that point, the narcissist would be unable to idealize you.
Okay, that's test number one.
Having passed this test, the narcissist says to himself, there are quite a few things in this potential intimate partner, this best friend in this co-worker in this boss in this leader of a political party a pastor in the church a neighbor there are quite a few things I can idealize and therefore I can embark and move on to the next stage.
And the next stage is the question, is she or he able to provide two of the four S's?
And to remind you, the four S's are sex, services, supply, sadistic or narcissistic, and safety, your presence.
Let's break each one of these down.
Sex, the narcissist asked himself which two of the four ss this individual who can be idealized which two of the four s is he or she able to provide with relative safety regularly and predictably?
Start with sex. Do you find the narcissist attractive? Are you enthusiastic about having sexsafety, regularly and predictably?
Start with sex. Do you find the narcissist attractive? Are you enthusiastic about having sex with a narcissist? Would sex with you be both consensual and submissive? Are you prone to sexual fantasies? Are you unboundaried and kinky, sexually self-trashing and promiscuous? Are you likely to cater to the narcissist's own sexual fantasies? Go on an exploration of the auto-erotic nature of the narcissistic sex or psychosexuality?
If the answer to all these is yes, a resounding yes, then you're definitely able to provide the first S of the four, sex.
Next, services. Are you able to provide a narcissist with the services that he needs and lacks?
For example, a narcissist who does not have a driving license would look for someone who can serve as a chauffeur, as a driver. A narcissist who is unable to fix things at home would look for someone who is an able handyman or handy woman. A narcissist who is unable to interact well with other peoplewould look for someone who is sociable and can serve as an interface, a go-between, and provide intercession and intermediation with other people. A narcissist who is not very good in math would look for someone who is very good in math. Narcissist who is profligate and not spendthrift and very bad with money would look for someone who is a compliment.
Now this is common in normal, healthy, regular couples as well.
But the narcissist is not thinking in terms of synergy. His thinking does not dwell on let's work together, let's collaborate and become, I don't know, a power couple.
The narcissist is, how much can I take, how can I exploit her or him? It's an exploitative mindset. Can I make her drive me forever? Can I take her money forever? Can I make him cater to my needs on a regular basis?
So it's a highly exploitative mindset. The narcissist does not regard the other person as an integral part of a dyad or a couple. He regards the other person the way a miner regards a mine, as an opportunity for extraction.
Services.
Number three, supply. Number three of the four assets, supply.
Supply could be narcissistic or could be sadistic.
Narcissistic supply is adoration, admiration, adulation, being someone's fan and follower and so on so forth, aggrandizing the other person.
So this is narcissistic supply.
Sadistic supply is when the narcissist is able to inflict pain and suffering on people, thereby proving to himself that he or she is omnipotent or powerful and godlike.
Inflicting pain on other people gives the narcissist enormous pleasure, but not in the classical sadistic sense, but the enormous pleasure of validating and affirming the narcissist self-perception and self-image as Godlike.
He can inflict suffering on other people, he can cause them pain, he can witness them writhing in agony because he is divine, he is a deity.
So this is narcissistic supply and sadistic supply.
The narcissist puts you through another minute test.
Are you able to be an adoring fan? Are you able to be uncritical of the narcissists? Never disagree with him. Never find fault with him. Be submissive, masochistic, and even self-loading?
If you are like that, then you can provide supply. And you will have become a reliable, predictable source of supply.
Next, safety.
Do you have an addictive personality? Are you likely to get addicted to the narcissist or to the narcissist shared fantasy or to the way the narcissist sees you? Addicted to yourself, to your idealized self through the narcissist's gaze? Addiction. Addiction is the glue that holds the shared fantasy together.
So one of the questions that analysis asks, is this person potentially addicted, could potentially become an addict?
So of course, co-dependence are a good choice, borderlines are a better choice, but not necessarily. Many healthy people actually do have an addictive personality.
Next question, does he or she have a maternal instinct? Can I leverage this maternal instinct to induce bonding and attachment, especially trauma bonding?
Is this person loyal and inertial? In other words, unable to stop doing whatever it is she's doing, unable to exit a relationship because she's committed to the same course of action. Inertial simply means that you move in the same path unable to stop yourself or reverse. It has to do with addiction, of course.
So this is the second test.
Is he or she as an intimate partner, as a friend, as a colleague, as a boss, as a past, whatever, is he or she able to provide two of the four S's, sex, services, supply and safety?
If the answer is yes, you can be idealized, that's test number one, and you can provide two out of the four S's, we move on to the third stage.
The third stage is the narcissist scans you.
The narcissist and psychopaths possess cold empathy. Cold empathy is a confluence, a combination of reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy, but without the emotional component. Emotional empathy is absent, missing.
So, the narcissist uses cold empathy to penetrate you, to scan you, to map your vulnerabilities, the chinks in your armor, to traverse your defenses and invade your mind, to entrain you, etc.
So the narcissist scans you. This is the third test.
And the narcissist's question is, is he she vulnerable to the shared fantasy? Is there a vulnerability to the shared fantasy? For example, is this person damaged and broken? Is she a daydreamer? Does he abhor reality? Is this person, even as a friend, grandiose? Does this person have a deficit of self-love, etc.?
If the answer is yes to any of these, let alone to a combination of these, this is a kind of person who would be vulnerable to the charms of the shared fantasy, to the alternate reality offered by the shared fantasy, this paracosm of perfection, ideal hedonism, and the self-gratification that emanates from this paradise-like or heaven-like setting.
Let me summarize it for you.
You have not been chosen. There is no specific type the narcissist is attracted to.
The narcissist asks himself three questions and he makes you, he subjects you, to three tests.
If you pass these three tests, you qualify to be the narcissist's intimate partner, best friend, colleague, neighbor, or whatever. These are the three tests.
Are you capable of being idealized?
Are you there? Aren't you rejecting the narcissist? Aren't you disagreeing with the narcissist? Aren't you critical of the narcissist?
If you're not any of these and you're there, you're available, question of availability, you're qualified.
Test number two, are you able to provide two of the four critical essential S's, sex, services, supply and safety?
If yes, the third test is are you vulnerable to the shared fantasy?
And if the answer to these three is a resounding yes, you're in and the narcissist pounces on you, and you become the narcissist prey.
This is as simple as that, it's an algorithm. It's a mechanical or automated robotic algorithm.
The narcissist couldn't care less about your traits, your qualities, your kindness, your empathy, even your looks or intelligence or whatever.
On the very contrary, by the way, the narcissist abhors and resents competition. So he wouldn't choose someone who is hyper-intelligent, and super good looking when he is not.
He couldn't identify empathy even when confronted with it, and he regards empathy and love as weaknesses, intrusions, annoyances, actually, he regards any help and advise as narcissistic injury, because they are challenging his grandiosity.
In short, narcissists don't choose their victims because their victims are such wonderful angelic blameless flawless people that is a self-aggrandizing myth, a narcissistic myth, actually.
The narcissist chooses you not because of who you are, but because of what he can take from you, safely in the long term, predictably and regularly.
The narcissist depletes you. Think of yourself as a mine, and the narcissist, as a miner, or an excavator. That is the shared fantasy.
Ah, sorry, one more thing, I forgot. I received an avalanche of messages from many of you that it is not true that there is no spectrum of narcissism or other personality disorders.
There are definitely varieties of narcissism.
That there are mild cases, there are moderate cases, and there are severe cases. There's a spectrum.
And it could be less narcissistic, high-grade narcissists, mid-range narcissists.
Let me clarify something.
This is not what we think in academia. This is not the orthodoxy. That's not the mainstream. That's not what our studies in the past 40 years have shown.
However, it is true that the 11th edition of the ICD, the International Classification of Diseases, this addition does distinguish between mild, moderate and severe levels of clinically diagnosable personality disorders.
Personality disorder, there's only one diagnosis there.
But this distinction between mild, moderate and severe levels or intensities of personality disorder in the clinical phase, this is a highly contentious claim.
Actually, the majority of scholars, myself included, reject this claim in the ICD 11, we think it's a mistake.
It is utterly unsubstantiated, clinically. No study supports it.
We have no idea, none of us has any idea where it came from, maybe from YouTube.
And if you go to the description, there's a link to a recent article, I think two years old, where the authors recap this debate.
And they also make clear that there is no foundation for the claim that there is a spectrum or continuum of intensities of personality disorders or the single personality disorder in the ICD. There's no such thing.
We do of course have styles where, for example, narcissistic style versus narcissistic disorder or narcissistic personality disorder yes there are people who are narcissistic but they are not narcissists they cannot be diagnosed with nPD it's true that there is a spectrum or continuum of traits and behaviors.
All this is true.
But once a diagnosis has been rendered, once you've been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, it's binary. It's binary, like pregnancy. Either you have it or you don't.
And there are no gradations and no levels and no intensities and no grades in narcissistic personality disorder.
All the rest you can find in the video that I've made a few days ago.
Okay, time to let go of me. I know you're addicted, but, you know, give me a break. See you later.