In the wake of my incendiary video yesterday about twin flames and empaths and recovered narcissists and quiet and shy borderlines, I had been subjected to an avalanche of inquiries.
Do I consider indigo children in the same category? What about other kin, star people, guys, reptilians, soulmates and unicorns? Are they all the same? Yes, they are all the same and they are all the same because all these labels had been invented by con artists and scammers and swindlers and all these labels are used by people to self-aggrandize.
People want to feel special, they want to feel unique, they want to feel superior and they do not have the kind of biography or accomplishments to support such a narcissistic, entitled view of themselves.
So they self-impute, they self-adopt these labels.
And the con artists, what about the con artists who invented these labels? What about these people?
Well, they are laughing all the way to the nearest bank at the brain-dead people who had fallen in the traps, they said for them.
Allow me to quote Rebecca West.
Rebecca West was a journalist, analyst and so on and so forth in the early part of the 20th century and she had written one of the best, if not the best travelogues ever, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
It's a travel through the Balkans later to become Yugoslavia.
And here is a quote from the introduction to her book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, Rebecca West.
She says, the word idiot comes from a Greek root, meaning private person. Idiocy is the female defect.
Intent on their private lives, women follow their fate through darkness, deep as dead cast by malformed cells in the brain.
It is no worse than the male defect, which is lunacy.
Men are so obsessed by public affairs that they see the world as by moonlight, which shows the outlines of every object, but not the details indicative of their nature.
And here is a fact for you, which I suspect most women had known for a very long time.
On average, a woman's brain makes up two and a half percent of her body weight. A man's brain only contributes two percent to his body weight.
Men's brains are less well formed than women's brains. Men's brains shrink at a rate much faster than women's brain.
Of course, all women knew that for millennia. This is a quote from the book, The World's Greatest Book of Useless Information, published in 2009 and authored by Noel Botham and the Useless Information Society.
Okay, Shovavin, today we are going to discuss taking the narcissistic abuse red pill, breaking out of the narcissist prison, out of the narcissist Truman Show, out of the narcissist Matrix.
Taking the red pill, you might recall, in the original tetralogy of movies, was waking up, waking up to an unpleasant reality, but still being finally woke.
So victims of narcissistic abuse needed to take the red pill.
And then if they want to get rid once and for all of their abuser, both externally in real life and internally as an introject in their minds, the only way regrettably is to modify the narcissist.
Now, before we go further, if your narcissist has a history of violence, physical violence, do not use this technique and do not use the mirroring technique. Do not reflect his behavior, because then the narcissist might become violent and it may end very badly.
Past violence is the best predictor of future violence. If he had been violent with you even once, slapped you once, threatened you with violence, even once, do not engage in conflictive techniques.
And modifying is the mother of all conflicting techniques. Modifying includes three stages.
Confront the narcissist, humiliate the narcissist, usually by reflecting him to himselfand then soothe the narcissist, believe it or not, calm him down. By calming him down, you allow him to contemplate, to ponder, to rehash, to replay the mortification, which amplifies its intensity and its potency.
So the mortification technique includes three stages.
You confront the narcissist on an issue that is essential to him. For example, his grandiosity, his self-imputed irresistibility, his alleged irreducibility, his omnipotence, his omniscience, his brilliance, if you think he's a genius, you confront him on these issues. And you confront him in a way which humiliates him by reflecting, reflecting elements in his behavior, things that he had said, traits of his which contradict the essentials of his grandiosity.
The humiliation part is critical. It is the core of mortification.
Following mortification, the narcissist is going to leave you alone. He will never ever hoover you again.
But much more importantly, by mortifying the narcissist, you reduce him back to size. You suddenly perceive him as the pathetic figure that he is, as the clown and buffoon that he is.
You see, the narcissist in your mind acquires mythical dimensions. He becomes godlike. He is idolized even when you don't idolize. It's his thing.
That's what he does. The narcissist invades your mind as some kind of parasitic entity. And he symbiotically pushes hidden buttons that even you were not aware had existed.
And so by doing this, he integrates with critical constructs and critical and self critical internal objects within your mind, inhabits, inhabits your mind.
I call this process mind snatching, not body snatching, but mind snatching.
You need to get him out of your mind, or you will get out of your mind. You go out of your mind. Either you get him out of your mind, or you go out of your mind.
These are your two options. And to get him out of your mind, one of the best ways is mortification, because then you see him for what he is. A child, a helpless, stupid, buffoonish idiot.
And you know, he loses all his power. The king is naked. Suddenly you see him the way he should always have been seen. Suddenly you see past the idealization, past your fear of him. Past the intermittent reinforcement. All his techniques are laid bare and are rendered impotent.
Somortification is a two-way process.
On the one hand, you force the narcissist to become self-aware. On the other hand, you become self-aware. You both see the narcissist the way he is.
Suddenly the narcissist sees himself in the mirror, exactly the way he is, warts and nothing else. And suddenly you see the narcissist in the same mirror.
And what you see renders the narcissist impotent, has no power over you anymore, is out of your mind in every possible sense.
Mortification is liberation.
Let me remind you what is mortification.
Narcissistic mortification. I'm quoting from Sigmund Freud paraphrased by Ronningstam in 2013.
Narcissistic mortification is intense fear when the narcissist has intense fear associated with narcissistic injury and humiliation.
The shocking reaction when individuals face the discrepancy between an endorsed or ideal view of themselves and a drastically contrasting realization.
Rothstein, who had studied borderline and narcissistic conditions, described narcissistic mortification as fear of falling short of ideals with a loss of perfection and accompanying humiliation. And this fear extends to intimacy in interpersonal relationships, as Foa had observed. It extends to unrealized or forbidden wishes and related defenses, horror ways. Or as Kohut summarized it, it's a fear associated with rejection, with isolation and a loss of contact with reality and a loss of admiration, a loss of equilibrium, a loss of important objects, loss and humiliation.
Make clear to the narcissist that he is going to lose you because he is not what he thinks he is. He's going to lose you because he's inferior, because he's dumb, because he is ignorant, because he is important, because he is asexual, because he is ugly.
Make clear to the narcissist that he is losing you, not because he is superior or grandiose in any way. Make clear to him that his self-inflated fantasy, the fantasy of himself, his self-perception, is utterly groundless.
Couple.
Humiliation with loss. Abandonment is a critical part of mortification. You humiliate the narcissist by reflecting to the narcissist who he really is. You become a mirror, a real mirror, and then you abandon him.
This is a double whammy. It's a one-two. It's a left hook and right hook, and the narcissist never recovers.
He is mortified. And because he's mortified, he's going to avoid you like the plague. And because he's mortified, you see him for what he is. A puddle. He becomes a puddle.
Very often, he will break into tears, collapse physically, but also mentally. You see how weak he is. You see how ignorant he is. You see how not self-aware, how infantile, how repulsive and revolting he is.
It makes it much easier for you to get over him.
Motification is for you as much as for the narcissist.
Kanberg said that narcissistic mortification is a fear of dependency and destroying the relationship with the intimate partner.
Fear of retaliation of one's own aggression and destructiveness. A fear of death.
Narcissistic mortification, therefore, is a sudden sense of defeat. A sudden sense of loss of control over internal or external objects or realities caused by an aggressing person, you, or by a compulsive trait or behavior.
Motification induces disorientation. Terror. Terrornot anticipatory fear. Absolute terror.
And a kind of what used to be called destrudo or motido, the opposite of the life force, a wish to die.
That is an observation by Eidelberg who coined the phrase narcissistic mortification in 1957.
He said that mortification leads from life to death, from libido.
Ego libido is damned. Narcissistic libido is blocked.
And what comes rushing into the void is a wish to die.
Motido or destrudo, the opposite of libido.
And so the entire personality of the narcissist is overwhelmed by impotent ineluctability and a lack of alternatives.
The narcissist feels cornered, besieged, at a dead end, at the end. It's inability to force objects like you to conform or inability to rely on their goodwill. Suddenly you're his enemy. And you're his enemy because of who he is.
That's a crucial part.
Motification involves reflection. The narcissist is losing you. You're abandoning the narcissist. Not because of who you are, but because of who he is.
And you must make it clear to him so that he sees himself in the mirror and recoils at the hideous monster facing him, looking back at him.
Motification reflects the activity of infantile strategies of coping with frustration or repression such as grandiosity and the attendant psychological defense mechanisms like splitting, denial and magical thinking.
Motification is actually a combination of projection, introjection and acting out.
Let me remind you what is introjection.
Eric Erickson, one of the most brilliant psychologists ever, definitely the greatest developmental psychologist in history.
Erickson wrote as late as 1974 in his book, Childhood and Society. In introjection, we feel and act as if an outer goodness, outer goodness had become an inner certainty.
So we introject goodness.
In projection, we experience an inner harm, inner evil as an outer one. We endow significant people with the evil, which is actually in us.
Motification is the reversal of this process.
You're forcing the narcissist to introject his own poison. You're giving him a taste of his own medicine. You're forcing him to look at the misfit and miscreant in the mirror and to realize that it's him and then internalize this horrible, intolerable, terrorizing image and become one with it, identify and merge with it.
You see, the narcissist denies ways. The whole point of the false self and grandiosity is to separate the narcissist from any realization of his true nature and the effects that he is having on other people, the deleterious destructive effects he is having on everyone, including his allegedly or ostensibly nearest and dearest.
And most narcissists are forced to introject this unpalatable, repressed and denied knowledge. You're forcing him to face himself for the first time. You're forcing him to face who he is, but also what he had done to you.
And he can't take it. He can't take it because mortification disables grandiosity and other defenses.
In other words, it's a form of decompensation.
Mortification involves decompensation and decompensation leads to acting out.
Decompensation is when all defense mechanisms are disabled and you are skinless. You're in direct touch with reality. Reality is harsh. Reality is abrasive. Reality is unforgiving. Reality is sadistic and horrible and you don't have defenses against it. And you're exposed to it like so many elements and natural disasters and you don't know where to turn and how to cope and what to do.
You are again, as a narcissist, you're again a baby, a child. And this time, mommy hates you or mommy is revolted by you and mommy is going away. Mommy is abandoning you because you're a bad baby. You're an unworthy baby. It's cruel.
Mortification is cruel, but it's the only effective technique in the long term.
Let's delve deeper into the psychology of mortification and how does it come about and what's the connection to acting out, etc, etc.
Let's delve deeper, in other words, into the whole theoretical background and landscape from which these concepts emerged.
We start with attachment style.
First of all, I encourage you to watch my video on insecure attachment styles.
Attachment style is determined in early childhood and remains relatively fixed and stable throughout life, throughout the lifespan.
Theoretically, it's possible to change attachment style, but there are the cases of you and far between.
Attachment style is a gift that primary objects, mother, father, give you when you are around two to four years old.
And you're left with this. You're stuck with it for the rest of your life.
Attachment style is about object constancy.
The absence of important significant objects like mother or the presence of such objects. The interplay between presence and absence determines your attachment style.
If there's much more absence than presence, you end up with an insecure, avoidant, paranoid attachment style. If there is much more presence than absence, you end up with an adult, mature, reciprocated, autonomous, secure attachment style.
So the balance between presence and absence and the quality of the absence and the quality of the presence determine critically the type of attachment style you're going to have.
And essentially attachment style reflects and is created by the balance between anxiety or fear and need.
You need to be loved. Babies, children need to be loved. It's an overwhelming need. It starts from day one.
This need to be accepted. This need to be enmeshed in a way with someone else. The need to share. The need to be to be held. And above all, the need to be seen. This is the need to be loved in one word.
But there's also fear. There's a fear of being engulfed. There's a fear of being hurt. There's a fear of disappearing in the other. There's a fear of becoming an object to the other. There's a fear of not being.
Simultaneously, the only way for a child to feel that he exists, the only way for a child to feel that she is, that she has a presence, that she's alive, is to be loved.
But at the same time, simultaneously, love provokes enormous fear. The fear of not being, of disappearing, of being subsumed, digested, engulfed and enmeshed, fusing and merging out of existence.
So there is a primordial, rudimentary initial conflict between the need to be loved, which is a precondition for existence or the sensation of existence, and the fear of being loved, because love is equated with disappearance.
And this determines your attachment style. We get over this conflict. We overcome this conflict as adults by creating a shared space.
I don't know how many of you have seen Venn diagrams, V-E-N-N diagrams. There's like a circle, there's another circle, and there's a portion of the circle that is common to both circles. They overlap. There's a portion that overlaps.
And this is a Venn diagram. This is the overlap part. The shared space that we create with others as we grow old is this overlap.
The two circles, you and your intimate partner, for example, you remain separate, but you have something in common. And this something in common is a shared space.
Within this shared space, you feel safe to be loved. Love inhabits, love resides only in this shared space.
But you maintain your separate autonomous existence, you maintain your agency, you maintain your self-efficacy as a separate circle.
The two circles are separate, but they share something in common, the love space.
Within this space, when you're loved, when you're seen, when you're held, when you're contained, when you're soothed, when you are approached within this space, you don't feel there's a risk of engulfment, of being subsumed and assimilated, of disappearing, because you know that this is only a small part of your entire circle.
And within this small part, you're willing to suspend some of your existence by merging with another person.
So the shared space must be limited, is created by the need to be loved. And it is within the shared space that you experience intimacy.
You share experiences, adventures, memories, emotions. In a way, it's a scheme, like in Schema theory.
Yeah, it's a scheme, because it comprises also values, common values, and comprises beliefs.
So the partners, the two circles have an overlap area. And within this overlap area, they share many things in common.
They also strike agreements within this area. This area, the outer side of this area, are the personal boundaries. The line, the delineation of this area, these are the personal boundaries, where the partner stops, and you begin, and under you begin.
This is a healthy relationship, a shared space, a shared love space, is evocative, and it is so pleasant, so gratifying, feels like a safe base, that you allow yourself actually within this very limited shared space, you allow yourself some infantilism, some childlike elements, because you feel safe.
You know that the other partner, the other party, will not leverage or take advantage of your infantilism to subsume you, to merge with you, to fuse with you, and to make you vanish.
So it is there within the shared space that people feel comfortable to be playful. It's play, it's an area of play, as Eric Byrne had observed, and later in transactional analysis. There's a play between mother, child, adult, and there are transactions taking place within this space.
Consequently, this space becomes part of your identity, of one's identity. You identify with this space, and it defines you to some extent.
There's a big difference between a functional shared love space, in healthy couples, and a shared fantasy. The shared space is based on reality. The shared fantasy is based on a fantasy. It's counterfactual. It's against the facts. It's unreal. It's fictitious. It's imaginary.
First big difference, the shared love space helps you to maintain reality testing. The shared fantasy detaches you from reality, suspends your judgment and disbelief. The shared fantasy is not a part of identity. It's alien. It's intrusive. It's a strange.
There's you, and there's the shared fantasy. It doesn't become a part of your identity unless it evolves into something even more pernicious, the shared psychotic space.
But that's out of the realm of this lecture.
So the shared fantasy is counterfactual. It's not a part of identity.
But most importantly, the shared fantasy's main role, main function, is to make you disappear. To make you disappear as an independent autonomous agent, and to make you reappear as a figment of reality. As a figment, as a component, as an ingredient, as an object, as a service provider, as a sex slave.
So the shared fantasy role is to reduce and diminish your separateness.
Shared fantasy is a mechanism against separateness.
The shared love space upholds your separateness. It celebrates your, it celebrates your differentness. The shared love space, the healthy love space, is founded on the fact that you're different. The shared fantasy is founded on the fact that you're similar.
So there are huge differences between shared fantasy and shared love space, although from the outside, they may look the same.
That's why people find it very difficult to understand the difference between relationships with a narcissist and relationships with a healthy person.
The relationships with a narcissist are based on fantasy. Relationships with a healthy person are based on autonomy and reality, but they look the same. They look identical from the outside.
You can tell the difference only from the inside.
And the difference, the reason for the difference, the reason why relationships with narcissists are not the same, like healthy liaisons, or healthy dyads, or healthy couples, is because of the conflict.
Within the narcissist, there is a conflict between attachment style and the shared space. And that's why the narcissist chooses shared fantasy as a solution.
What I've just said is very profound for two reasons. I said it, so of course it's profound.
And second thing, it's really profound.
Stay with me.
I said before that there is attachment style, which is determined in childhood. And then as we grow older, we develop the shared space as a solution because the attachment, being attached, is very frightening. You need to be loved.
But if you love and if you are loved, if there is attachment, you disappear a little. You vanish in some way.
There's a single organism suddenly with a loved one. So it's frightening
and government is frightening.
So the solution of healthy adults is to carve out, take out a part of their lives and share it with someone, but not the totality.
The narcissist has a problem. The narcissist's attachment style emphasizes the fear only. Not the need to be loved, but the fear. The narcissist needs to be loved.
The narcissist craves love, intimacy. The narcissist wants to be held and wants to be contained more perhaps than healthy people.
Having been deprived of this in early childhood, this is the pivot and the axis and the core of the narcissist's life.
Narcissist seeks ceaselessly love and intimacy, but he keeps failing and he keeps failing because of his attachment style and the conflict between his attachment style and the shared space.
The attachment style of a narcissist is paranoid, rejecting, abusive, avoidant, fearful, insecure. The narcissist's attachment is motivated and relies on almost exclusively fear, anxiety, negative emotionality. The narcissist is afraid to be engulfed, afraid to be consumed, afraid to be assimilated, afraid to be shackled, imprisoned, incarcerated, afraid to lose his freedoms. The narcissist places a huge premium on freedom because he's a schizoid, he has a schizoid core.
So attachment is the antonym, is the opposite, is the anathema of the narcissist being.
Narcissist identifies attachment with suffocation, with strangulation. It's in small measure a form of death, a form of dying.
So attachment to the narcissist is a negative thing, almost totally negative thing.
On the other hand, the narcissist once and seeks love and intimacy.
How to solve this?
The shared fantasy is the solution.
In the shared fantasy, the narcissist is acting, it's a theater play, it's a production, it's a piece of fiction, it's a concoction, it's a movie script, it's not real, it's not real.
Liberation, freedom, it's not real. Because it's not real, the narcissist can attach without fear of consequences. It's not real, so there are no consequences. He can withdraw it any minute, devalue and discard. He can shut off the shared fantasy. He can move on to another shared fantasy. He can be without a shared fantasy for a while, the schizoid phase.
But because it's not real, the narcissist feels that he is in total control of the shared fantasy. He's the movie producer, he's the film director, he's the theater director. It's his production. So he allocates roles to everyone, like a script, like a movie script. And so he feels in control. And because he feels in control, he's no longer afraid of attaching and within the shared fantasy, he does attach.
He attaches dysfunctionally, because the shared fantasy requires merger, fusion, engulfment and enmeshment.
The narcissist's condition for attaching to you is that you should disappear. You should disappear as an autonomous independent agent, as a separate person. You should delete, annihilate your separateness. You should go back to the phase of two years old, when you were not separated, you were not individuated from your parents.
And the narcissist now is going to be your mother or your father. So the narcissist regresses you into early childhood so that he can control you.
And the way to control you is to merge with you, to become one with you in kind of codependent way, to become one with you within a shared space, which is actually fantastic, unreal, imaginary and fake.
And this is the narcissist's solution, convoluted, contrived solution to the eternal conflict between his negative attachment, his need to not attach, and his need to be loved.
Narcissist is putting a square peg in around, you know, it's incompatible.
If you want to be loved, you need to know how to attach. Attachment is a precondition for love.
And the narcissist cannot contemplate or countenance attachment. He threatens him, intimacy threatens him, suffocates him, kills him on the one hand. On the other hand, he cannot live without love and intimacy. He is eager, eager to become an object of desire. He wants to be wanted, and he needs to be needed. And he needs to be, you know, he's like a child, like a baby.
And so to put these two together, he needs to create a space which is not real, where all this is a fantasy, a phantasm, a mirage, phatamogana.
But he needs you to enter this space as a figment of his imagination, as unreal, or you need to be equally unreal, as unreal as the fantasy. Any hint of reality, any, it threatens the shared fantasy. Any need, any hint of independence, any display of autonomy threatens the shared fantasy.
The shared fantasy is about manipulating internal objects, introjects, and symbols. It's symbolic space. It's not a real space. Narcissist cannot attach reality. It's terrifying, but he can attach to an internal object. And when he introduces you into his shared fantasy, you need to become an internal object. You're snapshotted. You need to become a snapshot, not a video.
And so this constant conflict leads to the shared fantasy. And your only way to exit the shared fantasy is to modify the narcissist.
The narcissist's only way to exit the shared fantasy is by devaluing you and discarding you, but that's good, not good enough. He needs to act out. Acting out is a release of anxiety, which is the consequence of dissonance.
When there is an inner conflict, it's known as dissonance. It creates anxiety.
Acting out is a steam valve. It releases this anxiety.
Acting out involves defiance, reactance, contumaciousness, hatred of authority, counterdependence, withdrawal, and avoidance.
I want to read to you an excerpt from Jeffrey Seinfeld's excellent book about the schizoid empty core. The book is titled empty core. Seinfeld.
There is an important distinction between the problem of schizoids and borderlines in the workplace. He's talking about the workplace, but all this is 100% applicable to intimate relationships.
Both schizoids and borderlines may defy work regulations, authority, and schedules. However, their motivations are often different.
In acting out, the borderline typically expresses a sense of helplessness, weakness, the wish to be taken care of. The borderline is crying. Everyone demands too much of me. I can't do it. I'm helpless. Take care of me.
The schizoid patient is not expressing helplessness, but rather rebels against engulfment and being petrified into an object of the workplace. The schizoid patient is often quite competent and hardworking, and unlike the borderline patient, does not suffer from generalized ego weakness.
The problem is that the schizoid often functions in opposition to the general system of the workplace. He will create his own systems, which are antisocial functions. The schizoid often disparages the established ways of doing things. The schizoid patient who fears engulfment or being petrified into an object is attempting to protect the isolated, secret self from impingement.
Winnicott's views suggest that during the early formative states, these patients lacked protection from impingement by noisy, chaotic, or unattuned environment.
In 1956, Winnicott wrote that the antisocial adolescent is protesting against environmental failure and the deprivation of good ego care, and that the antisocial tendency is therefore a sign of hope, actually.
In the antisocial tendency, the true secret self is protected by oppositionalism. Winnicott compares the antisocial schizoid patient to the false self passive compliance schizoid, who is hopeless and has permitted himself to be petrified and engulfed.
He says that in the last chapter of the book, he will focus on the false self passive compliance schizoid patient.
In a sense, the antisocial schizoid has also established a false self in that his conduct is determined in opposition to what the other desires and not on the basis of his own desires, separate from the other.
Nevertheless, there is hope and protest in the antisocial schizoid as compared to the passive compliant patient, who desires only what the other wishes him to desire.
Similarly, mortification is a hopeless moment for the narcissist. You may think it's cruel, you may think it's heartless, you may think it's sadistic, but you're actually giving the narcissist a window of opportunity, having confronted himself.
It cannot lead to healing or cure or even any meaningful change, but it could lead to very enhanced self-awareness and to better future interpersonal relationships.
A narcissist who has been mortified once is likely to behave better with the next intimate partner for a while, because mortification fades off and wanes off and then narcissist is back to his old habits.
We can regard, Seinfeld mentioned the false self in the context of the schizoid. Of course, the borderline has a false self, the narcissist has a false self.
We can reconceive of the false self as actually an attempt to be loved. It's like the baby is saying to mother or to his parents, you cannot love my true self. Clearly, you don't love my true self. You're abusing me, you're breaching my boundaries, you're objectifying me, you're parentifying me. You are beating me up, you're molesting me, whatever it is, whatever form of abuse it is.
The child says to himself, as I am, as I am right now, I cannot be loved, I'm unlovable. So I must change myself, I must reinvent myself, I must come up with a false self.
And so the false self is a desperate message, message in a bottle. You can't love my true self.
Can you please love my false self? How about this one, this rendition of me? Can you love this new rendition of me? I'm new, I'm not the same, I'm the false self now.
So the false self is a rejection of oneself as unlovable, in an attempt to render oneself lovable, in a way.
And this ties in with the problem of attachment and the shared fantasy, because the narcissist attempt to be loved, every effort that the narcissist makes in order to be loved is made by the false self.
In the narcissist's mind, no one can love him as he is. No one can love his true self. If he wants to be loved, he has to trot out, he has to display, he has to exhibit the false self. People are going to love his false self, but never his true self.
How does he know that? His own parents, his own parents did not love the true self, but did love the false self.
So he's learned his lesson. He's going to show people his false self so that he can garner or secure love.
And so when he does that, the false self, as the name implies, is false. And when he does that, anything that comes forth, anything that emanates from the false self, anything the false self does and creates, is also false.
And that's the shared fantasy. The narcissist is terrified of attachment, because when he was a baby, when he was a child, when he tried to attach for the first time, he was rejected. He was hurt.
In his mind, attachment is associated with hurt, with pain, rejection, with humiliation. So he's afraid to attach in the real world as he is. He's afraid to attach via his true self in the real world.
So he attaches via his false self in a shared fantasy, which is not the real world. He's divorced from reality. He even structures his life, the narcissist structures his life, in order to avoid conflict with the powerful introjects within his mind, with the internal objects which are godlike and represents his parents and important role models and influential peers. He doesn't want to conflict with his internal objects, because they are very powerful. They can modify him. These internal objects can do to him what I'm advising you to do to him. They can force him to confront himself as he is in adequate, deficient, ugly, hideous monstrous. And he can't take this. He can't take that.
It might drive him to suicide. It might reduce him to a borderline state, as Grotstein had suggested.
So the narcissist structures his life in a way that will gratify and satisfy the internal objects.
He structures his life in a way that the internal object will praise him, will support him, will provide him with internal supply.
So if the internal objects tell him that he's bad, that he's unworthy, he's going to behave bad, and he's going to prove them right by being unworthy. If the internal objects tell the narcissist that she's a whore or sluttish, she's going to become promiscuous to justify the internal objects. She doesn't want to conflict with the internal objects.
Self-destructiveness in narcissism is a desperate attempt to not provoke the all-powerful in the gods, the internal objects in the narcissist's mind. And the narcissist does this by negating his own identity.
The narcissist creates a false self. It's not him. It's not him.
It's a piece. It's a work of art. It's a piece of fiction.
And he creates the false self because the internal objects want love except the false self. They don't love. They don't accept the true self, who the narcissist really is. And the true self therefore ceases to function and remains stuck at age two or four if the narcissist is lucky.
Mortification. Mortification is about proving that the internal objects of the narcissist are right. He is not lovable. He is bad. He's deficient. He's inadequate. He's unworthy. He's a piece of trash. He is hopeless. He's incorrigible. He will end badly. These are the sadistic tormenting and taunting voices of these internal objects.
The narcissist has a very powerful, harsh inner critic, used to be known as sadistic superego. And mortification is about telling the narcissist whatever these internal voices are saying about you, they're all right. You are deficient. You are inadequate. And you are a failure even as a fake. You failed even to fake. You're such a failure, such an abysmal loser and nobody that you can't even fake properly. You can't even act properly.
So this is like pushing the narcissist to rock bottle where he confronts the terrorizing horror show of his mind and it replete with the disparaging and hateful and aggressive internal objects. He's faced with his own death wish and aggression.
In transactional analysis, I mentioned they analyze parent, child, adult transactions. And it ties in with a few other concepts. I mentioned two of them, but I will not elaborate and I advise you to go and search for relevant literature.
This is from Eric from Neo Freudian. Eric from suggested that there are four orientations which are dysfunctional and one functional orientation. And these are the receptive, exploitative, hoarding and marketing orientations. These are dysfunctional ones. I recommend that you go on and read about it.
And Karen Horne suggested that people move toward other people, they move against other people, or they move away from other people.
In 1950, she suggested this. It's a very useful framework of analyzing.
But what I want to focus on today is relationship awareness theory.
Relationship awareness theory was first suggested by Elias Hall Porter, H-U-L-L Porter. Like P-O-R-T-E-R. He was an American psychologist.
And he kind of created a blend, he created a mishmash of a mashup of ideas from Edward Tolman, Court Lewin, Carl Rogers, Klein-centered therapy or humanist therapy, Erich from and Karen Horne put all of these together in a very, very interesting way.
And I would like to read to you from something he had written, Elias Hall Porter himself had written, which describes relationship awareness theory.
Now, as I read, applying these concepts to the shared fantasy, the attachment issue, and your relationship with another system, of course, to mortification is an exit strategy.
Hall Porter wrote, relationship awareness theory is based on the premise that one's behavior traits are consistent with what one finds gratifying in interpersonal relations.
I repeat, this is a very important sentence, a revolutionary actually. One's behavior traits are consistent with what one finds gratifying in interpersonal relations.
And with concepts or beliefs, one holds about how to interact with other people in order to achieve these gratifications.
So what Hall Porter was actually saying, there's no such thing as personality. We mold and modify, even what we call traits are actually reactions to perceived gratification, desired gratification, and the people around you, which can provide this, who can provide this gratification.
I'm continuing to read from Porter's work. The theory was planned to help people organize their concepts of themselves and their concepts of others around three basic motivations.
Wanting to be of genuine help to others, wanting to be the leader of others, and wanting to be self-dependent. Behavior traits are not conditioned responses or reinforce behaviors as B.F. Skinner would imply. Behavior traits are not primary personality factors, as Raymond Cattell stated in 1971.
The theory assumed, as does Tolman's theory, that behavior traits arise from purposive strivings for gratification mediated by concepts or hypotheses as to how to obtain these gratifications.
Tolman, 1967.
Put in simple terms, behavior traits are the consistencies in our behavior, the patterns in our behaviorthat stem from the consistencies in what we find gratifying in interpersonal relationshipsand from the consistencies in our beliefs or concepts as to how to interact with other people in order to achieve these gratifications.
We open ourselves, says Porter, we open ourselves to feedback on the efficacy of the behavior in which we engage with a result that all patterns of behavior may be readily modified or even abandoned for more effective behavior patterns.
They are, at the very least, two clear, distinguishably different conditions in the stimulus world that affect patterns of behavior. One of these conditions exists when we are free to pursue the gratifications we seek from others.
The second condition exists when we are faced with conflict and opposition so that we are not free to pursue our gratification but must resort to the preservation of our own integrity and self-esteem.
The behavior traits we exhibit under these two conditions truly differ. When we are free to pursue our gratifications, we are more or less uniformly predictable but in the face of continuing conflict, continuing opposition, we undergo changes in motivations that link into different bodies of beliefs and concepts that are in turn expressed in yet different behavior traits.
We are predictably uniform in our behavior when we are free and we are predictably variable as we meet with obstructing conditions in our stimulus worlds.
From said, Eric Fromm said, that a personal weakness is no more nor no less than the overdoing of a personal strength. It's amazingly insightful observation. Brilliant. Eric Fromm was brilliant.
I advise you to read his work about freedom and so on. I repeat what he said. It's counterintuitive but it's stunningly insightful.
Fromm said, a personal weakness is no more and no less than the overdoing of a personal strength.
An individual says, Hal Porter, Hal Porter continues and says, an individual operates from personal strength when he behaves in a manner that enhances the probability that an interpersonal interaction will be a mutually productive interaction. An individual operates from personal weakness when he behaves in a way that decreases the probability that an interpersonal interaction will be mutually a mutually productive interaction.
So productivity, strength enhances productivity in intimate relationships or interpersonal relationships. Weakness reduces productivity.
To act in a trusting manner, and he gives examples, to act in a trusting manner is a strength. It's a strength. It enhances the probability of mutual productivity. To act in an overly, overtly, sorry, to act in an overly trusting, to act in a gullible manner is a weakness. It decreases the probability of mutual productivity. It increases the probability of a destructive or at least a non-productive outcome for one or even both of the individuals concerned.
So if you trust in the right measure, it's a strength. You're productive. If you trust too much and too often, you're gullible. It's a weakness.
The same things can be said for being self-confident. Self-confidence is a strength. And the non-productive form, being overly self-confident or arrogant, to be cautious is a strength. To be overly cautious or suspicious is a weakness.
So the theory is based on four premises.
The relationship awareness theory is actually based on four premises.
One, behavior is driven by motivation.
He said the primary motive, the primary motivation of all people is that they want to feel worthwhile. They want to feel worthy.
In other words, they want to regulate and stabilize their sense of self-worth.
Each person is motivated to achieve feelings of self-worth in different ways.
The narcissist, of course, via grandiosity. These different ways are a kind of energy, psychic energy, to use Freud's unfortunate term, that is stuck in various ways of development and relationship with mother.
So they are productive orientation and they are not productive orientation.
And if you're stuck at a very early developmental phase, your orientation would be non-productive. The narcissist regulates his sense of self-worth by projecting a lie, by projecting a false self, by lying to the world.
But it's counterproductive, it's self-defeating. The narcissist knows it's a lie. Deep inside, when he's alone, he knows. He knows it's a storyboard, it's a confabulation.
And so all the accolades, all the applause, all the affirmations, all the adulation, he doesn't feel, he does nothing for him because he knows it's fake.
Porter said that the primary drive is to stabilize and regulate a sense of self-worth.
Not he disagreed with Maslow, he agreed with Froman and he disagreed with Maslow because Maslow said the primary motivation, primary drive is self-actualization. Porter disagreed with him.
He said what we want first and foremost is to feel worthwhile, to feel worthy.
And relationship awareness theory highlights seven distinct motivational value systems and describes them in terms of positive strivings for self-worth by adults in relationships.
And Porter described a conflict sequence.
People experience changes in motivation, predictably and sequentially in three stages.
The first stage is characterized by a concern for oneself, the problem and the other person.
The second stage by a concern for oneself, the problem and the third by a concern only for the self.
And the theory states that the universal productive motive of behavior and conflict is to preserve personal integrity and the sense of self-worth.
Of course, when this motivation are taken to extreme, when they become malignant, we have narcissism. We have narcissism.
And so the relationship awareness theory is actually an excellent explanation of how narcissism comes to be.
What it claims actually is that everyone engages in narcissistic behaviors and everyone is narcissistic traits. As long as they're productive within interpersonal relationships, nothing's wrong with it. They serve to regulate properly and effectively the sense of self-worth, the sense of worth wildness, of worthiness based on reality.
It is when it becomes malignant and fantastic that we end up with narcissism and the only way for you to exit this hall of mirrors, this madhouse, this carnival attraction. The only way for you to exit is to modify the narcissist because the minute he's mortified, all his defenses are down, his grandiosity vanishes, his false self is inactivated and disabled.
And you see finally the wizard of Oz, the real person, the baby out there. And then you can make up your mind how you wish to proceed.
But if you do wish to disengage, here's your chance. The narcissist will never pursue you or try to over you, having endured mortification.
Good luck with it.