This is a historic video, because in it I'm going to admit unabashedly and humbly to having committed an inexcusable and admittedly humiliating mistake.
I, Sam Vaknin, author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of psychology, and a PhD in physics, and a professor of business management, and I have committed the most basic historical mistake.
In my interview with Ginger Coy I kept repeating that Luther had posted 53 theses.
And of course Luther, Martin Luther has posted 95 Theses. He allegedly nailed them on the door of all saints, all saints church and possibly other churches in Wittenberg on the 31st of October 1517. And this started the Reformation.
I'm saying allegedly because there is a huge debate among historians whether this actually happened.
We know that Luther has sent the thesis, the 95 thesis, enclosed with a letter to Albert of Brandenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, on 31 October 1517.
But we have no proof and no evidence and no eyewitness accounts to the nailing of these thesis to the door of the church in Wittenberg.
So it seems to be apocryphal. But there's a debate about this.
Anyhow, it's 95. It's not 53 theses. So why? Why did I commit this mistake? Will I ever survive it?
It's interesting because it gives insight into the mind of one narcissist, at least.
That's one.
There was another guy, and he was actually a close follower of Martin Luther. His name was Andreas Bodenstein von Karlstadt. He was a radical reformer in the Wittenberg Reformation movement. He worked hand-in-hand with Martin Luther.
Luther has left Wittenberg for about one and a half years between 1521 and 1522.
And then von Karlstadt posted 53 theses of his own, and hence the confusion in my mind.
When I look inwardly and I ask myself, why did I commit this mistake?
Because of course, I knew both facts. Why did I confuse them?
I think it has to do with cognitive decline that is very typical of narcissists of old age, in narcissism.
And I'm saying narcissists, although all people decline cognitively with age, with narcissism the cognitive decline is pronounced and is very reminiscent of the early stages or early onset dementia, actually.
And it has to do, I think, with the fact that pathological narcissism is about stress.
It's a very stressful situation. Throughout life, it's a defensive posture.
There's hypervigilance. There's paranoid ideation. There's a lot of antagonism and hostility.
These traits, what the ICD calls trait domains, they consume a lot of energy, they deplete the narcissists, and of course these hormonal imbalances and so affect the brain.
I think cognitive decline in narcissists is far more pronounced than in healthy, normal people, or people who are not narcissists.
I would say the same for people with borderline personality disorder. I think their cognitive decline is very, very emphasized and very unusual.
And so when I try to delve into my mind and to somehow metaphorically convey what's happening to you, my mind is like a giant archive, a huge encyclopedia, with every scrap of paper exactly in its place, neatly folded, neatly filed, and classified.
Then, cognitive decline is like a giant fan.
And the fan is turned on, and the papers are all over the place, floating in the air, hitting the ground, and so on so forth.
And there's pandemonium and chaos and utter extreme disorder.
And that's the cognitive decline.
When I try to pick up the paper with the 95 thesis of Luther, I picked up by mistake the paper which contained information about von Karlstadt's 53 theses, and hence the confusion.
But it's strongly indicative of the cognitive decline, is highly typical of narcissists. It is dementia-like, but it is not dementia.
I have a video dedicated to dementia, especially Alzheimer's. I have a video here on this channel in the comorbidities playlist.
And the cognitive decline of the narcissist is not dementia, although it is reminiscent of dementia.
So I would call it dementia. It's a dementiaoid kind of decline.
There is a lot of forgetting, a lot of fumbling, a lot of chaos, a lot of disjointed, disorganized thinking, sometimes meandering speech, rambling, and so on so forth.
Cognitive decline is more like entropy. It's not like an explosive device, but it's more like entropy.
An inexorable process that erodes the functionality and structure of the narcissist mind.
People could easily be forgiven if they confuse this with dementia and so many people say oh my narcissist has dementia no in majority of cases it's probably not the issue the majority of cases is simply narcissistic cognitive decline.
Okay, so I took advantage of this mistake of mine to elucidate yet another facet in the narcissist's endless, simple, internal, look it up, saga.