Narcissist in Macho Land (with Kristýna Tylšová)

Narcissism, pathological narcissism is a disruption in the formation of the self.

The child grows up in an environment that doesn't allow the child to develop a core identity with clear boundaries.

So there's no self, there's no ego, or at least there's not constellated self, integrated self.

So narcissists are selfless. They are the opposite of egoists. They don't have an ego. They don't have a core identity. They don't have something inside which is essential and immutable doesn't change. They don't have this.

They have something known as identity diffusion or identity disturbance. They shape-shift. They shape-shift from one situation to the next, one person to the next. They're never stable. Their beliefs, their values, their identity, their biography change from one situation and one person to another to the next.

So there's nobody there. It's an absence. It's an empty core. It's a black hole. There's nothing there. I keep saying that the narcissist is an absence masquerading as a presence.

And this is not the case with narcissistic people. They're fully there.

So you can see already that the narcissistic is not an extreme case of a narcissistic person. That's not true.

These are two totally different and separate phenomena.

Yes, of course, we have scholars like Len Sperry and Theodore Millon, they agree with this. This is what they say.

That it's not true that the narcissist is simply exaggerated version of a narcissistic person, exaggerated version of an A-hole or a macho. That's not true.

It's a qualitatively, clinically different entity that looks, appears to be the same because of similar behaviors. But of course it's not the same.

From what I understood in very early age, mostly it's because they don't feel accepted by their parents or mostly mother, I think. You said it in one video.

So they kind of lose their personality and then they copy the personality of others when they like it.

For example, they are kind of jealous of the personality of the person so they copy it. Or they kind of look for the personality that they lust.

Oops, you're... Very young. You're cut off. You're cut off.

But I understand the gist of the question.

Victims of narcissistic abuse like to believe that they're special.

There are groups of victims which are as narcissistic as any narcissists that I've seen. They are self-aggrandized. They're empaths and super emphots and supernova emphots and I don't know all kinds of nonsense.

And people, these victims want to believe that they are special because what has happened to them is so incomprehensible, so crazy, so random that they need to make sense of it somehow. So they say I was chosen.

The narcissist shows me. He envied my personality. He was jealous of my personality. Or I'm so empathic and kind and amazing. And I'm an angel. And the narcissist just, you know, that is complete nonsense.

The narcissist couldn't care less who you are. He is never envious of your personality. He is envious of your possessions.

If you have a nice car, he would be envious. If you have a good job, he would be envious. If you have a lot of money, he would be very envious. Yes, if you have power, he wants to be more powerful than you. He would be envious of things you possess.

But he would never be envious of who you are. Because narcissists couldn't care less who you are.

They don't care about who you are. They care what you can give them.

What can you give them? You can give them sex. You can give them supply. Narcissistic supply. Admiration, attention. You can give them sadistic supply. That means you can be a dormant. The narcissist can torture you and abuse you and feel very powerful, very strong, macho. You can give them services. You can service the narcissists like a servant, like an employee. And you can give them safety. Your presence gives the narcissist a sense of security.

This is known as a secure base. I call this the four S's. Sex, supply, services, safety.

This is what the narcissist cares about. He does not care if you are empathic, if you're kind, if you're nice.

He doesn't do empathy. He doesn't do kindness, he doesn't do nicety. He's not a nice person and he couldn't care less if you are.

Narcissists team up with psychopaths, with other narcissists. You can give him two of the four S's. He's yours. He will team up with you.

I'm mentioning this because no, narcissists do not copy or emulate or imitate the personalities of other people.

What happens is in early childhood, the narcissist grows up in a dysfunctional family in some way.

The mother could be, for example, emotionally absent, or depressive, or narcissistic, or psychopathic, or psychotic, or couldn't care less, or doesn't want, you know this kind of mother is known as the dead mother. She's dead, metaphoric. So a dead mother is a possibility.

Or classical abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, psychological abuse, etc. It's a classical form.

But there are many other types of abuse.

For example, if you are overprotective of the child, you don't allow the child to play with other kids, to go out to the street and so on. You isolate the child from reality and from peer interaction. That's also abuse.

If you use the child to realize your own dreams as a parent, you wanted to become a pianist, you never became a pianist, but you will force your child to be pianist. That's abuse. This is instrumentalizing the child.

If you use the child as a surrogate, a substitute spouse, you have a bad relationship with your husband, so you make your child your husband, that is known as parentify. That's abuse.

There are hundreds of ways to abuse. Some of these ways do not look, do not appear to be abusive.

For example, when you spoil the child, when you spoil the child or pamper the child, other people say, wow, what a good mother. Look how she takes care of the child.

But that's a bad mother. That's a bad mother who does not allow the child to become independent, to separate from her and become an individual, a process known as separation individuation.

That's a mother who does not accept the child's boundaries. That's a mother who merges with a child, fuses with a child, becomes one with the child in a symbiosis. That's a bad mother, a highly abusive mother.

So in all these forms of abuse, abuse which we are used to, and we recognize immediately, and abuse which masquerades as good parenting.

In all these forms of abuse, the child is shamed, experiences enormous shame. The child is unable to become a person, unable to develop a personhood, an individuality, unable to individuate, and unable to develop a functioning self, or ego, whatever you want to call it.

At that point, what the child does to avoid this situation, the child develops an alternative self, a kind of imaginary friend.

And this imaginary friend is everything the child is not.

The child is small. The imaginary friend is big.

The child is helpless. The imaginary friend is omnipotent. All powerful.

The child cannot guess, cannot predict the behavior of adults. The imaginary friend is all knowing, omniscient.

The imaginary friend is everything the child is not. The imaginary friend protects the child, and the imaginary friend absorbs the abuse instead of the child.

The child hides behind the imaginary friend and this imaginary friend is the false self.

Gradually the child disappears. If we don't use something, it atrophies. It dies.

The child doesn't use his mental capacities. The false self is doing this.

So gradually the child disappears, the true self, disappears. And all that is left is this facade, this piece of fiction, the false self, the invention. That's all that's left. There's nothing behind the false self. The small child that used to exist died long ago.

And so there's aAnd there's the facade of the false self, and the false self is godlike. False self is perfect. False self is all powerful. False self knows everything. False self is brilliant and amazing, false self knows everything, so.

From that moment on, the false self compensates for the internal emptiness, the shame, the negative emotions, and what is known as the internalized bad object, the feeling that you are not worthy, that you are a failure, that you did not self-actualized, that you could have done much better.

So the false selfcompensates for this.

The narcissist becomes the falsehood.

So when you interact with the narcissist, you're interacting with a mask. 100% mask. There's nothing behind the mask. There's no face behind the mask. If you were to remove the mask, there would be empty space. Darkness maybe.

And this is the mechanism of the narcissist. That's how the narcissist interacts with other people.

My question is, I know many people that went through sexual or physical abuse when they were in very early age, but they don't become narcissists. How is that possible that some of them grow up with this disorder and some of them don't?

Probably genetics.

Unfortunately, we don't have studies that link narcissistic personality disorder to any specific genes or array of genes. We have this in psychopathy.

We know that in psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder there's a very strong hereditary genetic component. We know the same in borderline. In borderline there's a strong genetic linkage, but we fail to find this stage any genetic background for narcissistic personality disorder, but your question just proves that it must exist.

Because you're right. Twins, situation with twins, we have twin studies. They were exposed to the same mother.

It's usually the mother, by the way. People ask me, what about the father? The father comes into play much later.

The reaction of pathological narcissism, the formation of the false self, the death of the true self, they happen up to age 36 months.

And in this critical age, known as the formative years, in this critical age, it's the mother. It's 99% of the mother. The father has no influence or not. Father begins to be very influential and later becomes more influential than the mother after age three years, but not before.

So the narcissist is formed at this early age.

It's true that twins, for example, exposed to the same mother, and obviously the same treatment, identical twins, same treatment and so on. One of them becomes narcissists, the other does not.

And so the only explanation we have is that there must be some variation, minimum variation, that is sufficient.

We have, of course, cases of siblings. There are many studies on this. Siblings expose more or less within two to three years to the same treatment, same environment, same family setting, same dysfunction, same everything. And only one of ten develops a personality disorder of any kind, narcissism, borderline, etc.

So yes, I believe fully there's a genetic background, a predisposition to develop narcissism.

Ah, yeah, you see it as well.

Yeah, so as you want, I can ask you another question or we can...

Ask me another question.

Okay. So my another question is that from my experience or... And now I'm not sure if actually the person that I know is a narcissist or just narcissistic. But from my experience, he was very attached to his mother and his mother became the most important person in his work.

Is it a rule? Does it happen? And if yes, how is it for a woman? Do they get attached to the mother too or how is their relationship with mother in general?

The mother of the narcissist did not allow the child that became a narcissist later, child who became a narcissist. Did not allow the child to separate from him. She did not allow the child to separate from her. She did not allow the child to separate because she spoiled the child, pampered the child, pedestalized the child, overprotected the child, or because she was a bad mother, absent, aggressive, violent, abusive, etc.

In both cases, the child couldn't separate from the mother.

So this is a core problem of narcissism, separation failure.

Because the narcissists fail to separate from the mother, he carries the mother in his mind everywhere he goes.

And what he tries to do, he tries to separate from her actually. And he converts his intimate partners, his friends even, into maternal figures.

It's like that.

It's like the narcissist is saying, I failed as a child to separate from my real mother. I'm still very attached to her, very attached positively or very attached negatively. Hating the mother is the same like loving the mother. There's no difference. It's the same intensity of emotion. Same bonding, trauma bonding.

So the narcissist sort of says, it's unconscious dialogue. He says, I'm too attached to my mother. I never separated. I never became my own person. I never became an individual. I never self-actualized. It's very sad.

Let me try with someone else. Let me find another mother, a mother substitute. Let me then separate from her. I will separate from her. And then once I've separated from her, I can become an individual. I can go on with my life.

And so he converts especially intimate partners, but not only. When I say he, by the way, half of all narcissists are women. Let it be clear.

So he converts the intimate partner, but not only intimate partner. Could be a friend, could be a mentor, could be a role model, could be a boss, a very benevolent boss, could be, you know.

So he convert these people into maternal figures. He says, I'm now a child. This is my new mother. Let's say, his girlfriend. That's my new mother.

And now what I need to do, number one, I need to test her to see if she loves me unconditionally. Like a mother should. A mother should love me unconditionally. If this new girlfriend is truly my new mother, she must love me no matter what.

How to test her? I will abuse her. If I abuse her, if I cheat on her, if I, you know, and she still loves me, she's a real mother. I can trust her to be my mother.

So it's a testing process.

Narcissistic abuse is also a testing process. Will you still be around? Will you not abandon him? Will you stick around? Will you insist? Would you love him? Never mind what he does to you?

This is phase one. I mean, the initial phase is love bomb. He idealizes you and you fall in love with your own idealized image throughyou, okay, you pass, you stick around for some reason. You must have you stick, I don't know, you stick around, you pass the test, now you're masochistic I don't know you stick around you pass the test now you're a real mother

I'm recording so you pass the test now you're an idealized mother

Because initially in the love bombing phase the narcissist idealized you so now you are idealized mother.

Because initially in the love bombing phase, the narcissist idealized you. So now you're idealized mother.

And now the narcissist says, I have a new mother.

And the whole purpose of the exercise, this exercise is known as the shared fantasy. It was first described by a psychoanalyst by the name of Sander in 1989.

So the narcissist says, okay, I have a new mommy.

Narcissus at this stage is a child mentally. He is into the shared fantasy to such an extent and you have become his mother to such an extent that he infantilizes. He regresses. He becomes very childlike.

And so at this point, the narcissist says, I have a new mommy and now my job is to separate from her.

That was the whole point of the exercise. I went out to look for a new mommy in order to separate from her. That was the whole point of the exercise.

I went out to look for a new mummy in order to separate and become an individual, a full-fledged human being, which you are not.

So how to separate from them?

She's ideal. She's the Virgin Mary. She's idealized. She's impeccable. She's perfect. She's beautiful. She's amazing. She's this.

How and why to separate from her.

I need to devalue. I need to give myself reason to get rid of her. I need to separate from her by rendering her a bad mummy or not mommy or something that will allow me to, so I need to devalue her.

And this leads to the devaluation and the discard.

The narcissist devalues you and then he discards you.

This is automatic, autonomous process. This has nothing to do with you.

The narcissist intimate partner, friends, everyone in the narcissist life is commodified. It's like a commodity. You are interchangeable. You're fungible. You're dispensable. You are like everyone else.

The narcissist doesn't care who you are. As long as you fulfill the role within the shared fantasy of a mother. You are like a placeholder. Placeholder.

So, the narcissist is not terrified that he will get rid of you because there are another million like you.

And yes, they don't look like you, but who cares? He doesn't care. You're one of a million, One of a ten million. One of a ten million.

So he then devalues you and he discards you and he moves on. He moves on because the separation fails.

We're not going to the reason, but the attempt to separate fails all the time.

The narcissist to his dying day never succeeds to separate and to become an individual. Never.

He is always in relationships which are based on fantasy, idealization, devaluation, enmeshment, symbiotic symbiosis and relationships which convert the other party into a maternal figure.

Even for you to understand, the narcissist converts into a maternal figure everyone. If the narcissist is a man and he has a male friend and he is heterosexual, he would convert the male friend, his best friend. He would convert the best friend into maternal figure.

The only way the narcissist can relate to other people is by converting them to maternal figures and the only way he can have a relationship is by embedding these people, putting them, coercing them into a fantasy, a shared fantasy. That's why it feels so unreal. That's why you feel that the narcissist took away from you, your identity.

He did. He replaced it with another identity.

That's why you feel, after the process is over, you feel that you are not yourself anymore, that you have changed in ways which are so dramatic and drastic, that you have to regain yourself, you have to work hard to become yourself again. Because that's exactly what's happening.

The narcissist uses a technique called entraining. He brainwashes you. He converts you into a maternal figure in a theater play, in a movie. It's never real. It's always fantastic. And it feels more and more surrealistic, more and more dreamlike. It's like a dream scape and you're trapped.

Throughout the relationship with the narcissist, people ask, when victims describe it, people ask the victims, so why didn't you leave?

There's a process of entrapment.

When the narcissist converts you into a maternal figure, he becomes your child. Becomes your child.

When you break up with the narcissist, there is multiple grief.

You are grieving the child that you have lost. The narcissist became your parental figure, so you are grieving the parent that you have lost. The narcissist became your parental figure.

So you are grieving the parent that you lost. You are grieving the relationship. You are grieving the narcissists as a human being, as a person. You are grieving what could have been and never happened. You are grieving the fantasy and the dream that you had together, that you thought you had together.

There is no breakup like breakup with a narcissist. None.

Because in all typical breakups, we have two or three processes of grief and mourning going on simultaneously, and last about one year and that's it.

But with a narcissist, you lose simultaneously a mother or a father, a child, a lover, you lose so many things simultaneously, a dream.

So the grief is what is known as prolonged grief. It's catastrophic. It's a disaster.

You can recover, lucky. The prognosis is very good for victims.

But it takes a long time. It takes a long time.

I would like to add something to what you said about the role of mom.

Because this person that I was with, so the relationship he had with a woman while he had wife and while he was with me.

Actually, I don't want to say that she's a psychopath, but she was a little bit crazy because I kind of talked to her later.

And what I saw is that what he liked a lot about her is that she was kind of like his mom.

So she would always come back to him, even if he abused her. He did horrible things to her. She would always come back and she would always come back to him, even if he abused her, he did horrible things to her.

She would always come back and she would clean for him and cook for him all the time and treating him like a king.

That's what he always used to say, that he really liked that he treats him like a king.

And he would most of the time talk very badly about her. he would always say she's crazy i don't want to have anything with her but then he would always come back to her so that's kind of what you said it makes sense now.

Yes, it's a conflicted relationship the narcissists, as I said, has a love-hate relationship with his original mother.

When he makes you the new mother, he loves you and hates you at the same time.

Because he's afraid that you will do to him the same thing.

You will not allow him to separate. He will become addicted to you. You will control him. It's about control. And so on so forth.

So there is a terror. There's a panic reaction there. He needs to get rid of you. He gave you the power. He idealized you. He made you the mother.

So now he needs to discard you and devalue you and so on, separate and become his own men.

But he can never do that. He is never able to do that.

Why?

Because he's stuck in childhood.

Narcissus, the mental age, the psychological age of a narcissist, from my experience is 30 plus years, you know, and I have a database of 2,400 narcissists that I studied over these decades.

I think the average mental age is around two years. There are exceptions, six years, even what nine, found a few who were nine.

I never found a narcissist who was older than nine years old. Never.

Typically two years old. I have in my database only, not only people who have been diagnosed officially with narcissistic personality disorder and no other disorder.

I insist on that so that I have pure cases and they are all very, very, very young, two years old, three years old and so.

They can never accomplish separation. Never.

They can replace you as a maternal figure, which they often do, but they can never accomplish separation. Never. They can replace you as a maternal figure, which they often do.

But they can never accomplish separation.

And the more you resemble the original mother, or the more you resemble a dead mother, the more dependent they are on you.

They become attached to you much more when you are a bad mother.

So ironically, if you want to keep your narcissists, you have to abuse him and mistreat him. He will never leave you.

Because you treat the narcissists well, because you are a good mother, or as Winnicott, there was a scholar by the name of Winnicott, Donald Winnicott.

Donald Winnicott called it the good enough mother.

When you try to love the narcissist, empathize with the narcissist, be supportive, helpful, understanding, and so on, you are playing the good enough mother.

And that's not the mother he's used to. He's not used to this kind of mother.

So he suspects you. He suspects your motivation. Are you manipulating him? He becomes paranoid.

Here's the mother he recognizes, the model of the mother that he recognizes. It feels like home. It feels familiar. It's a comfort zone. You understand?

Yes, it makes a lot of sense because I always felt like he expects me to cheat on him or do something against him.

There is something called the betrayal fantasy. Some narcissists, not all.

But some narcissists push you to be with other men. They literally push you. They engineer situations where you will be with another man, drunk or something. They introduce you to other men.

And finally, they openly tell you, open to sleep with other men. Maybe in my presence, not three sons, not three sons.

They are into this betrayal fantasy because mother needs to betray me. I'm a kid, I'm two years old, I'm three years old. The only mother I know, instantly recognizable, is a betraying mother.

And this is known as betrayal trauma. The narcissists have betrayal trauma.

I suggested that narcissists are in constant grief over their lost childhood, over what they could have been and would never be, over the bad mothers they had, they are in constant grief, they're in constant mourning.

And I suggested that narcissism is not a personality disorder, but a post-traumatic condition. That's my work. My work is it is a post-traumatic condition.

And I also suggested that it is wrong to treat narcissists with adult therapy. We need to treat narcissists with child psychology, with child therapy, and so on.

But it's difficult to change the minds of the profession because they have these boxes, you know, this is personality disorder, this is a, even very famous scholars like Judith Herman.

Judith Herman invented, came up with the idea of complex trauma, CPTSD. And Judith Herman keeps saying, these are post-traumatic conditions.

Borderline personality disorder is emotional dysregulation because of trauma.

So stop talking about personality disorders. There's nothing to do with the personality.

Whatever that is, I also think the concept of personality is stupid, but whatever it is. Stop talking about personality. Let's talk about clinical trajectory. There was trauma, there's reaction to trauma.

That's a medical model, you know, in the body. When we have trauma, we go to hospital and they know what to do.

We don't say if you're wounded in an accident, we don't say, oh, you have a body disorder. It's a body disorder. It's a wound. It's a problem in your hand, in your arm, in your leg, in your head, somewhere. There's a problem and we treat it.

So we need to medicalize these conditions.

Right now, it's more like literature than science. It's not scientific. It's very all over the place, you know. And it's not serious.

I would say that currently psychology is not serious. It's a pseudo-science.

I know because I'm a PhD in physics. So I know the difference between science and not science. This is not science. What we have today is not science.

Yes.

Well, it was kind of my question later, but I can ask it now. Is it possible to recover from the personality disorder, the narcissistic personality disorder?

I believe that the person needs to understand that they have a problem, which is quite hard, I think, for a narcissist.

But with therapy, is it possible to recover completely or you just, is it like a work for all life?

No, no, this is lifelong. It's a lifelong condition.

The trauma is so immense with the first figure that the child trusted. With the first experience of love.

The trauma is linked intimately with positive emotions like love. With trust.

So it's too late for any meaningful change.

However, you can modify the behaviors of narcissists.

For example, you can leverage, you can play on the narcissist's grandiosity, give the narcissist a challenge, you can say, I know only you can accomplish this.

These are children. These are kids. It's two years, two year old kids, three year old kids.

Very easy to manipulate, very gullible, very naive, ironically. Narcissists are very naive and very gullible.

So as a therapist, it shouldn't be too difficult to challenge the kid, the kid in a way that the child would like to prove to you something. You know, because it's a child.

So you can modify behaviors. These modifications will be usually short-term, so you need booster, like the COVID-19 vaccine. You need to boost the process.

So you can teach a narcissist, for example, to be less rude, less abrasive, less verbally abusive or aggressive. You can teach this to the narcissist.

And for six months it would be okay. He would not insult you, it would not attack you, it would not criticize you. Partially, he would not put you down, he would not humiliate you, not shame you for six months.

Six months, everything will be back. And it needs to go again and get the booster and so on.

But a narcissist who agrees to such a regime, in principle, some behaviors, especially anti-social behaviors, more like psychopathic elements, defines recklessness, abrasiveness, aggression, violence, verbal abuse. These behaviors are observing boundaries of other people, sharing, these behaviors can be more.

Now some people say, if you modify all these behaviors, the narcissist is gone. Who cares what's happening inside? We care about these behaviors.

Some people say, we don't care what's going on in the narcissist's mind as long as it has no effect on us.

Okay? Well, in this case, yes, narcissism can be cured.

But the narcissist's mind is beyond repair. Severely, severely damaged and broken. There's no way to put it back together. No way.

And even narcissists who are 100% self-aware, even narcissists who are experts on the disorder, like me, they are still inside children and broken. And there's nothing to be done about this.

Cognitive awareness without emotional reaction or emotional response is meaningless. It doesn't lead to change. Insight, the concept of insight in psychology is combination of cognition, knowledge and emotion, which lead to transformation.

But the narcissist doesn't have emotions, I mean, doesn't have access to positive emotions, only negative.

Narcissus can experience envy and rage, hatred, but never love, joy. You cannot experience positive emotion.

So all the knowledge in the world is meaningless.

That was actually my question, because I understand that they don't, they lack empathy, or they don't feel empathy at all, but can they actually feel love or loved?

No.

No.

Not love.

And they do experience empathy. It's a common mistake in the literature until recently and definitely a huge mistake among self-styled experts online.

Narcissists and psychopathsexperience empathy.

But there are two things about.

First of all, the empathy is highly specific. I called it cold empathy, cold, opposite of thought. Cold empathy.

It's a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy, but no emotional empathy.

So, for example, a narcissist would look at you and you're crying. He would say, she is crying. She must be sad. That is cognitive empathy.

He would even imitate your face, you're crying and he would do this. That is reflexive empathy. That is what babies do when they smile at mommy. When babies smile at mother, that is a reflexive empathy.

So narcissists have reflexive empathy and cognitive empathy.

Psychopath is the same.

But they have no emotional.

He would say, she's sad, but he would not experience this sadness. So it would not motivate him to help you.

The psychopath would say, she said, I can take something from her because she's vulnerable.

So the narcissist would say, she's crying, she's sad, she's useless to me. She cannot give me supply. Bye, bye.

The psychopath would say, she's crying, so she's not paying attention I can steal her wallet or she's broken she's crying I can have sex with her if I fake fake empathy and so I can have sex with her.

This is the difference they're like predators, these are like predators opportunistic predators.

So they use empathy of course cold empathy to penetrate

These are like predators, opportunistic predators, you know.

So they use empathy, of course, cold empathy, to penetrate you, to scan you, to find your vulnerabilities, how to invade you, how to take over you, and how to use you to obtain goals.

The goal could be sex, could be money, could be action, could be participation in the Shet Fountain. Whatever the goal is, narcissistic supply, attention, whatever the goal is.

So this is the first thing and the second thing about empathy is that even when the narcissist and the psychopath realize that they should react in a certain way, you are sad, so they should tell you everything will be okay, give you a handkerchief, I don't know, you know, they don't care, they don't care to do that.

The motivational element is missing. Not the empathy, but the motivational element to use the empathy.

Whereas people are motivated when you see a crying baby, you want to hug the baby, or you want to ask the baby, what's happened, what's wrong?

There is motivation which leads to action. This motivational module is missing in psychopath and narcissists.

They look at you, I told you the narcissist doesn't see you as external objects, he sees you as internal object. So why would he empathize with himself?

And the psychopath regards you as a package of benefits somehow.

So how can you use this opportunity, more or less?

It's a strange, think of it as optimizing machines, kind of artificial intelligence, but predatory. Artificial intelligence that is not meant to help humanity, but to take advantage of humanity.

It's alien.

I can talk, I've been talking for 30 years. I've had the first YouTube channel on narcissism. I don't think I can talk.

I've been talking for 30 years. I've had the first YouTube channel on narcissism, but I don't feel that I'm getting through.

Honestly, it is such an, and it's not the fault of the listeners. It's not even my fault, I think.

It is such an alien landscape, inaccessible in my view. It is outside the shared human experience, outside what we call the intersubjective space. It is outside what makes us human.

And in this sense, I keep saying, and it's very unpopular that I'm saying, these are not humans. These are not human beings.

If you take a human being, if you take away the empathy, you take away the emotions, what is left?

What is left? The physiological functions, that's not a human being.

I think psychopaths and narcissists have been prevented from becoming human beings. They were in the middle and disrupted. And they never made it.

And they're like this primitive protozoa, primitive life forms that seek to eat and to digest and to consume. They're moving around like in a Pac-Man, you know, the old video game. They're moving around, tak-tac-tac-tac-tac, looking to eat something, you know, that's how I see them.

Even the intelligence of narcissists and psychopaths, which could be very high sometimes, is so goal-oriented that they're actually stupid.

Their intelligence is instrumentalized, but because it's instrumentalized, it's so narrow that in all other ways they're stupid.

For example, they're unable to learn from experience.

Narcissists and psychics never learn from experience. It's shocking. They would repeat the same mistake, myself included by the way, the same mistake a hundred times and they would never learn.

Because their intelligence is laser focus. How can I get my next attention dose? How can I get my next sex? How can I get my like that? Like a horse.

And we call this constricted life. The clinical term is constriction.

Their life is like they're moving between two walls in a tunnel, inside a tunnel.

Imagine you grow up all your life in a tunnel and you live all your life in a tunnel. You could be the most, it could be the world's greatest genius.

But since you spent all your life in a tunnel, why would I listen to you? You're stupid. If your experience, your entire life is limited to this tunnel, you have tunnel vision and you are by definition an idiot.

End of story.

So the intelligence of narcissists and psychopaths is a potential, not an actuality.

Is it true that they cannot be alone? So they kind of try to have one relationship after another or multiple relationships at one time. So they never spend time alone?

No, it's not true. It's not opinion. Everything I say is based on studies and so. I don't believe in opinions, which is the big problem in YouTube. Everyone has an opinion. Abandonment, the need to be witha partner is typical of borderline personality.

So people with borderline, they can never be alone, can never stay alone, for reasons that are not going to write.

Narcissists, some narcissists are gregarious. In other words, they're very social. They need to be in, with groups of people, life of the party, they need to be ostentatious, because that's the way they get to take attention.

They also go through a rapid cycling of relationships.

Some narcissists, but there are many narcissists who are actually exactly the opposite. They're schizoid.

Schizoid narcissists not only don't have relationships, they don't interact with human beings, with people at all, in any way, shape or form. They isolate themselves, and so it's not true to generally.

Psychopaths don't have relationships, period. They use people for sex, for example.

So they could have like a million one-night stands or very brief relationship, so-called relationship, pseudo-relations, very brief, I don't know what to call it, liaisons, interactions or something. And until they get tired or bored or whatever, they move on.

So psychopaths are itinerant. They don't get attached. They don't get bonded. They don't get, there's no dyadic. Maternal, not maternal, there's none of this. People are objects. I am horny. I need a place to, you know, do what I have to do. So I pick up someone. If she's good at what she does, in bed or outside, I'll keep her for a while, a week, two, three, you know, I'll move on.

So there, of course, there's no need to be with anyone. And psychopaths are perfectly okay being alone.

Actually, majority of psychopaths are lone wolves. Perfectly, that's why they don't have any problem in prison. That's why they survive prison, even longer incarceration and so on, They survive with flying colors.

Narcissus are more attached, but they are attached to the fantasy, not to any individual.

They need to reenact the fantasy. So yes, there is a repetition compulsion. They have a compulsion to repeat, the reenactment of early childhood conflicts. They need to repeat the shared fantasy with multiple partners.

And this is a compulsive urge. So yes, they are compulsive about it, but there is a substantial portion of narcissists who avoid all human contact, and they are known as schizoid narcissists.

So if they just broke up with someone, that very day they will find someone in a bar and they will have sex. That very day, because they just can't be alone. It's terrifying. The abandonment anxiety, the clinical term is separation insecurity. The separation insecurity, the abandonment anxiety, threatened the borderline.

If she cannot be seen, if she doesn't have someone to regulate her internal environment from the outside, an external someone to take care of her moods, of her emotions, then she falls apart. She decompensates. She disintegrates. and then she will immediately look for someone.

So that's much more typical border.

For my experience, it's not only that they need someone physically, but they need to be in contact with someone all the time.

So even if they are with the person physically, they are chatting with someone else on the phone, for example.

Depends. Again, there are many narcissists who are not like that. They avoid human contact, actually, and they are known as Schizoid narcissists.

There's a huge group of narcissists known as covert narcissism. And covert narcissists definitely don't do what you just described, because they're very insecure. They're very insecure about themselves. They have an inferiority complex. They think they're not attractive. They think no one appreciates them. They're very passive, aggressive, they're envious. And they usually are loners. Most covert narcissists are loners.

And then there's actually a minority of narcissists, known as overt or grandiose narcissists. And they are the typical narcissists, that everyone has the stereotype. But they are about 30, 40% of narcissists.

And we are increasingly in the profession beginning to consider that overt, grandiose narcissists are actually not narcissists at all, but a subspecies, sub-variant of psychopaths. And that the only real narcissists are the covert and the schizoid. These are the real narcissists.

Narcissism is a reaction to shame. There's a lot of shame there.

And the overt or the grandiose narcissists plays a game as a facade and is gregarious, is sociable, needs to be in contact with people all the time. And he's not loyal, of course, is disloyal because he knows that he's about to devalue and discard the partner. It's inevitable, it's a compulsion. It's repetitive.

But again, it's not true to generalize on all narcissists, because coverts are not like that at all.

From, again, my experience, this man, he would be extremely insecure. But I think that chatting with women actually gave him some feeling of interest. So that's why he did to feel better. And he would, for example, talk with them about some fantasies, as you described.

This is an overt. This is the overt analysis.

The difference between overt and covert, both of them have what is known as an internalized bad object. An internalized bad object is voices, a set of voices, a group of voices, that tell the narcissists, you're bad, you're unworthy, you're inadequate, you're a failure, or maybe even you're ugly, you're stupid. These voices exist in all narcissists, overt, covert, schizoid, prosocial, there are many types. All of them have an internalized bad object.

The difference between narcissists is the strategy, the solution that they found to these voices, because these voices are intolerable. You cannot survive with these voices. If they talk to you and you have no defense, you will commit suicide.

Which is exactly what happens in borderline personality disorder. 11% of people with borderline personality disorder commit suicide.

So the narcissist is an evolved stage, next stage in evolution, beyond the borderline.

There was a psychoanalyst by the name of Brochstein, and Brochstein said that the borderline is a failed narcissist. So the borderline dreams to be a narcissist and cannot be.

The narcissist found a solution to these voices.

There are two solutions. Three, actually.

Solution number one, I'm wonderful. The voices are wrong. I'm exactly the opposite what the voices say. They say, I'm ugly, I'm beautiful. They say I'm stupid, I'm a genius. They say, whatever they say, I'm the opposite. They say, I'm not attractive. Look how many women want me so the voices are wrong.

This solution is known as the grandiose overt solution.

The next solution is I agree with the voice I am what the voices say. But I cannot accept it.

So this makes me very angry. This makes me envious. This makes me passive aggressive. You know, snake in the grass.

And this is the covert.

The solution of the covert is to say, people judge me and these voices judge me, but they don't know anything about me. Had they known the truth, they would not say these things.

So while I agree with these voices in the sense that I am a failure, and this process is known as collapse, narcissistic collapse, the covert is a collapsed narcissist.

So while I agree with these voices, if I was just given a chance, I would prove everyone wrong. And so that makes me very angry. And I want to punish everyone. And I want to destroy everything.

So that's a covert.

And the third solution, I'm going to be a very good person. The voices tell me I'm bad, I'm going to be good. I'm going to be moral. I'm going to be charitable. I'm going to be altruistic. I'm going to be a saint. I'm going to be amazing. I'm going to be a guru. People will admire me. I will change people's lives.

And this is known as the pro-social or communal narcissists.

The solution of the pro-social narcissists is to say to the voices, you're talking nonsense. Look at me. I'm helping people. I'm altruistic. I'm admired. I'm appreciated. I'm a saint. I'm helping people I'm altruistic I'm admired I'm appreciated I'm a saint and this and that you're wrong

these are the three solutions

but of course many gurus are extreme narcissists, extreme. Many teachers, many public intellectuals. I would say the majority. They are narcissists. They just found a different solution.

Morally, people who are always very moral. They tell you what you're doing is wrong, you're sinful. They are never doing anything wrong. They're sinful. They are never doing anything wrong. They're perfect. They are.

These are narcissists.

Empaths. So-called empaths online. They are angels. They are super sensitive, hyper-empathic. They are kind. They are nice. They're amazing. They're angels. They're angelic.

These are narcissists. Many empaths are actually narcissists.

So this self-aggrandizement that like I am the Pope of morality. I am the top of the charity. I am amazingly altruistic.

This is also a solution.

But these are different solutions to the same underlying problem.

The inferiority, what Adler called the inferiority complex. The secret belief that you are an imposter. You're faking it. You're fake.

Really, really, really inside? You're nothing. You're nobody. You're a failure. You're disgusting. You're this. You're dead, you're disgusting, you're this, you're stupid, you can't let anyone see that, especially not yourself.

So this involves self-deception known as grandiosity and the deception of others.

And this is the core of narcissism. It's a compensatory mechanism. This is called compensatory. It compensates for this negative self-perception, negative self-negating view.

So for these so-called empaths that are actually narcissists, do they know that they fake it, or is it possible that they don't realize that they actually are a racist?

First of all, it's self-aggrandized. The minute you say you're special in some sense, it's self-aggrandizing.

Of course, all of us are special in some sense.

But what I mean is the minute this becomes your identity, your specialist becomes your identity. That is grandiosity. Pure and simple.

And then when you make a career out of it or when you become a public figure because of it, even in a forum, never mind, when you externalize it, when you become ostentatious, when you demand attention, or you think you have special rights, because you're a victim. And to be a victim is a privilege and people owe you, owe you, because you're a victim.

And when you use a defense mechanism known as splitting, splitting is an infantile defense mechanism where the child says, mommy is all good, I'm all bad. Or this person is all good, I'm all bad. This is known as splitting.

This is what the empaths do. The narcissist is all bad and they are all good.

But this is exactly what narcissists do. Narcissists all the time claim to be victims. And narcissists all the time saying, everyone else is all bad, I'm all good. Everyone is imperfect, I'm perfect.

That's why they hold people in contempt because there's so much more than other people.

So if you look at empath, just again, I'll see if so, yeah, I'm recording as well.

So when I observe empaths, everything I see is strongly indicative of narcissism.

If you join an empath forum, disagree with them, or criticize them, or suggest another point of view, you will see what I mean.

The aggression, the violence, the extreme grandiosity, the defensiveness, these are all strong indicators of narcissism.

But empaths are just one example of what is known as virtue signaling or victimhood identity or competitive victimhood.

It's a general phenomenon and not a healthy one.

One more question and we will have to say goodbye. I have to cook. I love to cook.

Yes, of course. Thank you for your time. Anyway, my last question is very interesting for me.

I would like to know if narcissists know that they hurt people, if they actually realize that they do something that hurts them or if they know if they enjoy it, for example?

Well, there's a tiny minority of narcissists, very, very small. They are known as malignant narcissists. It's about 3% of all narcissists. Malignant narcissists are narcissists who are also psychopaths and also sadists.

So malignant narcissists enjoy inflicting pain on other people because the power that they have to cause other peoplepain, humiliation, discomfort, not only pain, this power proves to them that they're godlike, proves to them, buttresses, supportstheir self-perception is omnipotent.

But that's a tiny percentage of narcissists.

The overwhelming vast majority of narcissists wouldn't care less how you feel. People don't understand that.

To be a sadist, you need to care about the emotions of the other person.

If I'm a sadist and I need you to be in pain, I care about you, I want you to be in pain, otherwise I'm not gratified.

The narcissist couldn't care less if you're in pain, not in pain and so. So most narcissists are not sadists.

Narcissists are fully aware of their behaviors. They know that their behaviors are harmful to other people.

Sometimes they would say that people are too stupid to appreciate the behavior. They say that, for example, they would say, this is tough love. I'm educating people. I'm opening their eyes. I am improving them somehow. I am so. And yes, it's a painful process. And people feel hurt.

So for example, a narcissist could be abusively and sadistically honest. Honesty is weaponized. The narcissist weaponizes honesty.

Or he could weaponize a sense of humor. He could weaponize boundaries. Narcissists weaponize everything.

But they are fully aware of what they're doing. We know that they're fully aware of what they're doing. And we know that they are fully in control of their behaviors.

Because when we put narcissists in prison, these behaviors stop. All the narcissistic behaviors stop in prison because the narcissist is scared, scared of the reaction of the other prisons.

So suddenly, all the narcissistic behaviors and traits vanish. So we definitely think it's a choice.

However, do not confuse behaviors with psychodynamics and motivation.

The narcissist is aware of his behaviors, is aware of the impacts of his behaviors on other people, usually adverse, usually not good, and he is capable of stopping these behaviors, for example, in prison or in a hospital.

But the narcissist is not aware why he's behaving this way. He's not aware of his psychology, dynamics, processes, motivations, most of his emotions is not aware. And even his cognitions, his thoughts are totally distorted by cognitive distortions, for example, grandiosity.

So he's aware of what he's doing, but he has no idea why he's doing it.

That's why he keeps inventing all kinds of stories.

I'm doing it because I love you. I want to teach you things, you know, because he is not aware of why he's doing.

So on the one, it's a very bizarre mixture because on the one hand, can we hold them responsible if they don't know what they're doing, if they don't know why they're doing what they're doing?

On the other hand, they know what they're doing, and they can stop it at any minute. So it's a choice. They know right from wrong. Some of them are legal scholars, and they know right from wrong. Some of them are judges, policemen. You can't say these people don't know right from wrong.

All in all I would say that even though in at least two or three cases that I heard of including cases, narcissistic personality disorder was accepted by the court as an insanity defense.

I don't think it's correct. I don't think it's right.

While the narcissist is definitely insane by any measure, definitely an insane person, it could be intelligent, it could be charming, it would be many things, but you know, he's insane. One of the main authors of the Oxford English Dictionary was in a mental asylum. Intelligence is not proof of sanity.

While the narcissist is insane, is the kind of insane person who has control over his actions, has no uncontrollable impulses, and knows the difference between right and wrong. So should be punished, should be held accountable fully for everything he does. That's the way I see it.

Yes, thank you. That was important answer for me.

Well, thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure and thank you for having. Your courageous young lady. No, thank you, really. It was so interesting for me and have a beautiful day. You too. Take care. Off to my cooking. Yes, of course. Enjoy. Take care. I will. Thank you. Bye.