So I call you like that because you want to be called Professor Sam Vaknin.
Yeah, that's long, too long.
So then I deeply appreciate that you allowed me to put some questions to you.
I don't speak very well English because I speak French all the time and I'm Mexican on top. My English was from then when I was living there.
So from my perspective, you are an excellent professor of clinical psychology.
Thank you.
Many people write to you, and I read the text, write to you to say how many confusions they had overcome thanks to your videos, your books, Petro.
And this is my case, I had overcome so much pain and confusion thanks to your videos.
And, well, you even, with all of that, I get in contact with this incredible sense of living and happiness. Joy.
So, I'm glad to have been of help.
So your book is, I forgot the name, you have to say. Malignant self. Malignant narcissism: narcissism revisited.
And you have written so many articles and books, even books of economy and philosophy, I think.
That's true.
But let's not talk about me. Let's talk about the topic. It's much more interesting.
Okay. My subject is something that I am really like very interested about and my head goes on with that.
I had noticed that every one of us is focusing practically all the time on images.
I can hear you and see you.
Okay, because I had a short break.
So then this focus of attention in images is just natural for all of us.
Now I have this flat screen and you are flat, so I am seeing you.
But there is another observer, like a mechanical and unconscious observer, which is going on on the head.
For example, right now about all what happens, I am very nervous.
And then there is this observer looking, little brava, focusing in this insight.
So which is completely absurd because why on the head there is this going on, this observer focusing on images about ourselves and others, and in that moment we lose just contact with reality with what is going on, you know?
And so I would like that you talk about it if it possible.
And why is it that we come into transes, hypnotic transes with this observer.
And nobody talks about your observer. Even in dreams, for example, everyone talks about their dreams.
They talk about the images, but nobody says, but there was an observer there looking at those images. Nobody talks about the observer, and I think this is very important. What do you think?
No, the concept of observer is actually well embedded in psychology. That's why we have the process of introspection, introspection, looking inward, looking inside, so someone is looking. That's what you call the observer.
However, in psychology, the function of observation or it's known as monitoring, the function of monitoring is integrated with executive function.
In other words, in psychology, there is some entity. We are not quite sure what will in a minute I'll talk about, but there's some entity that monitors the situation internally and externally, provides feedback, and this feedback is used to decide on a behavior, out of a repertory of behaviors to decide on a behavior.
But this input is also used to decide on a state of mind.
So we have an observer that observes the environment, the external environment, the internal environment, provides information, and then there is a change in state of mind and or a change in behavior.
So this is actually pretty well grounded in psychology. The debate is who is or what is this executive? That's a debate.
So 100 years ago, there was a belief that this executive is unitary. It's a single entity, core, core entity. It was called the ego in Freud's work. It was called the self and Jung's work and so on so forth.
But the belief was that it was some core entity that is unchangeable, immutable, and that this core entity is unitary. In other words, it's not fragmented, it's cohesive, it's coherent.
And this, it was a bit like chief executive officer in a company.
But this belief has been challenged in the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s, has been challenged on multiple fronts.
And so, for example, there was the approach of the internal family system or the approach of transactional analysis or the approach of Philip Bromberg with self-states or the approach of ego state therapy or the approach of pseudo-identities and subpersonality.
So today we have a much more fragmented or kaleidoscopic view of the executive.
We think that the executive is more like a theater troupe, like a group in theater, or like the actors in a movie. And the executive is made up of multiple entities. And each one of these entities is responsive to a highly specific environment and a highly specific state of mind.
And when there is a confluence of environment with state of mind, this entity takes over.
But none of this is possible without monitoring, monitoring of the external environment and monitoring of the internal environment.
So observation is definitely a function in all these theories. It's actually a critical pillar of modern psychology.
Exactly, but this monitoring is unconscious. Part of it is unconscious. Part of it is not unconscious. Part of it is conscious.
For example, when you find yourself in a completely new environment, you observe the environment, and that's a very conscious act.
Sometimes you feel something internally, and it's very unclear, very fuzzy, and then you force yourself to monitor, you force yourself to observe yourself, you create a conscious act of introspection.
There's a famous experiment where students were shown, they were given a drink and the drink contained a small amount of drug and the drug increased their heartbeat. They developed tachycardia.
And then they were shown photographs of women. They were male students. They were shown photographs of women.
And they had to interpret. They asked themselves, why do I have tachycardia? Why do I have a very fast heartbeat?
They didn't know that there was something in the drink.
So they said, Ah, it's because I'm falling in love with a woman in the photograph.
So this is an example of introspection, which is totally conscious, and involves a reframing, a definition of your state of mind in relation to the environment.
Yeah, but my question is more about the focus of attention, you see, because when, for example, I do, I propose a process of introspection. I practiced introspection since very long time. Before, I did not know anything about narcissism or even codependency, even when I was the most codependent people, person you can imagine, you know.
So I was completely codependent, I did not know.
So where was my focus of attention? My focus of attention as any other codependent person, I ask, was in the other person.
But I did not see that the real focus of attention was on ontological insecurity, like self-doubt, and ontological insecurity, doubt in being, because a codependent person cannot be, can feel cannot be, exist without the other.
So in fact my focus of attention was not on the other, my focus of attention, the observer, was observing this doubt, this kind of emptiness, terrible void, emptiness, not nothingness, it's just emptiness and void.
And also the sense of lack of love or lack of value, worthiness or whatever. So lack of sense without the other.
So there is an observer which is focus, focusing attention, in things that we don't even realize that we are focusing in.
Some, as I said, some of the processes of monitoring and some executive functions are unconscious, yes. Some of them are not.
But I think your question involves several things.
One of them is, of course, attentional narrowing.
Attentional narrowing is when we focus all our attention on a goal. It could be any goal.
When you have a problem with internal emptiness, which is, by the way, typical of borderline personality disorder, not codependency. This is borderline.
Then there are many codependent people, which are a little bit borderline, in fact.
That emptiness, as you describe, is exclusive to borderline and to some extent narcissism. It's nothing to do with codependency.
But when there is this internal emptiness and so forth, it creates attentional narrowing in the sense that it creates a goal.
Any state of mind is directional.
When we love, we love someone, when we hate, we hate someone. Emotions are directional. Cognitions are directional.
The direction could be outward. The direction could be inward as well.
And then the directionality creates a goal. And then the attention is focused on the goal.
If you fail to regulate yourself internally, if you fail to regulate your emotions, to stabilize your moods, if you fail to have a stable or predictable sense of self-worth and self-esteem, like in the case of narcissism, then of course your goal would be external regulation.
You would look for someone from the outside to provide you with these missing functions.
Exactly.
But that's what you say, these missing functions are there in my observation.
I don't know, but my observation is that these functions or this way of being is related to this ontological insecurity.
Like the unconscious focus of attention of the observer is ontological insecurity.
How can someone think that they don't exist or that they don't feel love?
Because love is in that way that I am. I mean, love is there.
So how can you think that without the love of someone else, and especially if it's a narcissist, which is kind of impossible.
It's a solution.
When you are unable, as I said, when you have this emptiness of black hole, when you don't have a sense of continuous existence, because ontological insecurity is about the continuity of existence.
You feel that you exist, but there's no continuity. There's no narrative, overriding narrative.
So when you have problems with what is known as identity diffusion or identity disturbance, then you would look for a solution. You would look to outsource your identity. You would look to find someone who would regulate you. You can't regulate yourself. Someone should do it for you. You don't feel that you exist. So someone should tell you that you exist. Someone should convince you, make you exist, bring, make you become.
But these are solutions.
So the solution is another person, in this case. The solution is another person, and you focus your attention on securing the goal.
It's motivational. In other words, it's motivation. It's motivational.
But it's also like focusing the attention in matter, you know, in the body of someone.
Because in fact, the focus of attention is an absence. I mean, if the other is not there, then there is an absence. And this absence is unbearable for some people, especially codependents.
Borderline people with borderline personality disorder have a problem. They cannot create a representation of the other person in their minds, and they cannot maintain the stability of such a representation.
So when the other person is absent physically, they have a problem because they don't have an image of that other person in their mind. They don't have what is known as an introject.
So they don't, normal healthy people, when they are in a relationship, for example, they have an avatar. They have a representation of the other person in their minds, and when the other person is absent physically, they continue to interact with a representation of that other person.
Babies do that. When mother leaves the room, baby has a representation of mommy, of mommy in the baby's mind.
Bordelines are incapable of doing this. They have introject failure.
That I did not know.
But my question is not that.
The question is, how is it that the observer, the mechanism of observation, is focused either in inner objects or other objects?
Why, for example, we are not focused on nothingness?
Because it's not efficacious. You are focused on a solution, and the solution is the other person.
All human beings, healthy and not healthy, borderlines and normal, you are focused on a solution and the solution is the other person.
All human beings, healthy and not healthy, borderlines and normal, all human beings are focused on solutions and goal.
And the solution for the borderline is the intimate partner. So she is focused on the intimate partner. He becomes...
Wrong solution.
Well, that's her solution.
I agree, yes.
It's a dysfunctional solution, even pathological solution, but that's her solution.
And so that's why there is attention on narrowing.
That is where there's attentional focus on the partner.
If you're busy making money, your attentional focus would be on money. How to make it, how to accumulate it, how to save it, how to multiply it, you know.
So we're all goal-oriented if you have children. I don't know if you have had children, but if you have children, there is an issue of attention on narrowing when it comes to children, because the mother's life constricts, becomes narrow dramatically, and the child becomes everything.
Exactly.
And so that's another example. The child becomes everything because the child is perceived as the solution.
These mothers whose life is the child and nothing but their child are not healthy mothers.
That's instrumentalization, instrumentalizing the child all the time.
Instrumentalizing, parentifying, but in any case, the mother perceives the child as a solution. The child gives the mother's life meaning. The child becomes the purpose of the mother's life.
Of course.
And so these are functionalities. She lacks these functions inside, and she uses the child, she outsources these functions, these ego functions, actually. She outsources them to the child.
So it's not so much, I mean, the observation is the first act, but then observation is followed by adaptation.
Adaptation means that we redesign our environment internally and externally so as to yield beneficial outcomes. This is called self-efficacy.
So there is an adaptation. Adaptation could be positive adaptation or could be maladaptation.
In the case of the borderline, the adaptation is dysfunctional and it's all true. And so it is maladaptation, but the borderline perceives it as a positive adaptation. That's the problem. That's why it's very difficult to treat in therapy. Very difficult to treat people with borderline, with narcissism, because they perceive the solutions as positive adaptation. They don't see anything wrong with the solution.
Yeah.
So then, excuse me, if I interrupt you, but this, because I continue with my point.
I'm sorry.
This seeking for solution, the seeking for solution, is based on what?
See, the seeking for solution is based on this focus of attention on ontological insecurity.
Because if I am certain that I cannot not be and that whatever is happening, whatever I am seeking, like love or attention or whatever, is it really there, in that being that I am, that I am, in I amness itself, in nothingness itself, if I am clear of that, there I am not looking for solutions outside.
So the focus of attention is focus on ontological insecurity.
The moment you use the word solution, it means there is a problem.
And I thought I was very clear that there is a problem. There is emptiness, there is dysregulation.
Exactly.
And the borderline adopts a solution that is founded on life experience. She has tried it before, starting in childhood usually, and she thinks this is the solution.
When I say she, half of all borderlines are men.
Borderlines think this is the solution.
But the solution for borderlines or the solution for narcissists, or the solution for co-dependent people, or whatever other person, is all of those solutions comes from having origin in something.
And this is my point.
I'm sorry, but I feel that we are moving in circles. I agree that there is a problem, of course.
Solution means there is a problem. Otherwise, what it is that you're trying to solve?
Of course there is a problem.
And the problem is to believe that there is not existence or there is...
It's one of the problems. It's definitely one of the problems.
There is an issue of internal emptiness and so on and discontinuity, which is ontological insecurity.
And so that's one of the problems, but it's not the only problem, not at all.
For example, another problem is the inability to regulate emotions. Emotions overwhelm the borderline.
Another problem is labile moods, ups and down, cycling.
And there are many other problems.
The borderline uses people outside, especially intimate partner and special people. Borderline uses people to solve all these problems, not only one, but all of them.
Same with the narcissist. The narcissist uses people to solve all these internal problems. The internal machinery is not working.
So the narcissist and the borderline borrow the machinery of other people in order to compensate.
These are compensatory compensation strategies to compensate.
But of course there are problems, and one of them, one of them indeed is a problem of the experience of existence, which is different in a borderline and in a narcissist.
It's not continuous, it's not cohesive, it's challenged very often, it's fragile. We call it fragility.
But this is only one problem. It's wrong to say that this is the only problem.
It's only one problem.
So there are many, many problems.
Yes, there are many of you.
But it's still, if we could see that the fact that we cannot feel, feel without limitation, that's what we are, is the main problem.
I don't know what is main and not main. We don't have a way to establish hierarchy of problems.
But it is a serious problem, of course.
We call it identity diffusion or identity disturbance. Otto Kernberg described this emptiness, it's existential emptiness.
And when you don't have a core identity, that means you don't have an organizing principle. So your life is very chaotic.
So that's why earlier in the history of psychology, they identified identity or core identity with the executive. They said, you need to have a unitary nucleus, and this unitary nucleus takes care of everything.
And if you don't have a unitary nucleus, and this unitary nucleus takes care of everything.
And if you don't have a nucleus, if everything is broken to pieces, like there was some giant explosion, everything is fragmented, kaleidoscopy, then there's nobody there to take care of business.
And then you need other people to help you to take care of your internal business.
Which is a good way of describing these disorders.
Yeah, I found it a fantastic way to describe it, really, because this where I understood, that was one of my confusions.
But there is still something like prior to limited consciousness, prior to those confusions, prior to all this core identity, which is schizoid core identity or whatever.
So that there is prior to consciousness, to limited consciousness, that is beingness.
I cannot imagine that someone like narcissists that are identified with the false self have not really, are not really there because there is being, someone is breathing there. Someone is breathing all the body, the millions and millions and millions of cells in the body. Someone is there.
So that is like there's an obstacle to come back, the attention, coming back to that's what we are.
Isn't it?
I think the important thing is not what exists, but whether we have access to what exists.
For example, narcissists have emotions, but they are not able to access positive emotions. So even though they have positive emotions, it's meaningless.
It's meaningless.
Because, okay, so they have positive emotions. but they are not able to access the emotions. They're not able to experience the emotions. They're not able to direct these emotions at subjects.
So it's meaningless to say narcissists have positive emotions.
Okay, so they do. What can you do?
Similarly, what you call being is, of course, pre-verbal, pre-verbal because language plays a huge role in becoming and consciousness and self-awareness, and finally in the formation of identity, or the self, or the ego, whatever you want to call it.
Language is a crucial part, as Jacques Lacan observed in others.
So it must be pre-verbal.
And yes, there is no doubt that there is a pre-verbal experience of being, starting with being born, with the first few days, first four days or five days. There is definitely such an experience.
However, the dysfunction in borderline and narcissism and so on is the inability to access this primordial state.
Not that it doesn't exist. No one disputes that it exists, but access denied.
So, for example, we have this metaphor of true self and false self, which is a metaphor invented by Donald Winnicott.
And so no one is disputing that the narcissist has a true self, or that the borderline has a true self.
But there is no access to the true self. We say that it is dynamically inactive.
In other words, there's no dynamics, or to use Freud's language, it has no psychic energy.
So, okay, so there is a true self. It's a meaningless statement because it does not participate in any internal process.
Similarly, the borderline and the narcissists cannot access the stratum of pre-verbal being. And they consequently don't experience existence. They don't experience themselves as on-tos, as existing entities.
They experience themselves, I think, as a process, not as a subject, definitely not as an object, but they experience themselves as a process, which is very interesting because when you experience yourself as a process, processes are ways of distributing energy. It's an allocation of energy, basically.
But processes are goal-oriented. Processes have goals. They have beginning, they have an end, and they involve constructs, and they involve.
So what happens with the borderline, because she does not experience herself as an existing, boundaried, contoured entity, finite in time, finite in space, and so on so forth, but she experienced herself as a river. She's in flux. She's flowing all the time, you know?
And so consequently, because she's flowing all the time, and yet has no self-awareness, no self-consciousness, and no core identity, and no self, she's flowing towards what?
She's flowing towards the world. She doesn't flow internally because there's no inside. She flows only externally.
And this is exactly what we call psychosis.
Because in psychotic disorders, for example, schizophrenia and so on, in psychotic disorders, there isThe psychotic person has a voice in his mind and he says, it's not in my mind. It's out there in the street. He has an image in his mind and he says it's not in my mind it's in the next room I see it I can see it you know hallucination.
That's why Otto Kernberg said that borderlines are actually psychotic, that's why he called it borderline. The border between neurotic and psychotic.
And the reason he said that is that the borderline expands outward to include the world, to include reality, to include the intimate partner as part of herself.
Her mind is what we call in psychology, she has hyper-reflexivity. Her mind expands outwards and absorbs the world.
And there is a total confusion between internal and external, because she flows, this river flows outwardly and dissipates in the world around her.
And this is perhaps the source of the ontological insecurity that you keep mentioning.
You cannot have ontological security if you are not finite, if you are not boundary, if you are not aware of internal processes, if your internal processes extend to the outside, to reality.
And here I will finish my answer, which is very long.
Here, we go back to very, very early childhood.
When the baby is born, the baby is in a symbiotic state with a mother and with the world. We no longer use the phrase symbiotic state, Margaret Mahler's phrase, but it's a good phrase in my view.
The baby can't tell the difference between itself and mother, between itself and the world. The baby is one with mother, one with the world.
The baby also flows outwardly. We could say safely that all babies are psychotic. They're all psychotic.
So the process of growing up is a process of healing from psychosis. It's a reality medication. Reality medicates against this initial psychosis, which is in the first 18 months of life.
The borderline never grows up. The narcissist never grows up.
So it's more than healing, it's creating these boundaries.
Progressively, the baby creates progressively.
And that's why I keep saying.
Yes, that's why I keep saying that when the baby realizes for the first time, that there is a world out there, that there is internal, me, external, not me.
This is the major trauma in life, the biggest in my view, even bigger than being born.
That's a gigantic trauma when realizing that mother is not me, it means I cannot control mother, it means I cannot guarantee that I will have food, it means I cannot be sure of my survival.
And then there are compensatory mechanisms.
Initially, the baby depends on mother for survival, and consequently he perceives mother as the guarantor of existence.
Actually, in the first 18 months, the baby believes that it exists through mother, that it is mother. Her existence is the baby's existence.
But the minute there is this break in the world, the minute there is a realization of this boundary between I or me and not me, at that point, the baby has to invent another mechanism, another belief system about its own existence.
Because if mother can no longer be controlled and owned, if I'm not in a symbiotic bond with mother anymore, then I need to guarantee my own existence.
I need to become, and that's exactly the point of becoming, that borderline and the narcissists don't go through this stage.
This stage is known as separation, individuation. Borderline narcissists don't go through this stage. This stage is known as separation individuation. Borderline narcissists don't go through this stage. They remain stuck in the symbiotic phase.
So they don't have this, and I'm actually supporting what you're saying. They don't have this.
That is a source of ontological insecurity. That's why the observer, what you call the observer, what psychology calls the executive, in borderlines and narcissists, is very primitive. It's very primitive.
So obviously because it's primitive, it's very focused, very narrow, very goal-oriented. It's like a baby. Baby wants to eat. That's it. He wants to eat. He doesn't pay attention to colors and music and Mozart and he wants to eat.
The same with the borderline. She wants the intimate partner to make her feel good, stable, happy, regulated. That's her goal and that's her entire existence and dependence. Entire existence depends on a regular flow of feedback from the intimate partner.
The minute it is disrupted because he has to go to a business meeting, she panics.
So this is the issue with the borderline. And they cannot create an internal representation.
So if she has an intimate partner, she cannot say, okay, he's going to a meeting. It's okay. He will be back. Because I have him in my mind. I have his image in my mind. I have his avatar in my mind. It's okay. In two hours, we will reunite.
No such thing. There's a failure of introjection because interjection is a later phase in human development, which the borderlines never get to.
I understand why you say introjection.
So then the fact is that there are people who get stuck in the little baby stage, in fact, of not being able to create boundaries and then have this internal object of the other, but be in peace if the other goes out or whatever. It's all the time there, the feeling of insecurity.
Yes. It's called object inconstancy.
Object inconstancy. That's what it's called object inconstancy and now I get it. And the object is not constant.
But in the case of the borderline, she mainly has introject inconstancy. She cannot create mental representations. She cannot mentalize well.
She cannot create mental representations of other people. They dissipate, they fade, they're like smoke.
She cannot mentalize well. She cannot create mental representations of other people. They dissipate. They fade. They're like smoke.
She's trying to hold on to these images, but they're like smoke.
That's very strange because I thought that everyone has inner objects.
Yes, everyone does. She does also.
But her internal objects are short-lived.
She is unable to maintain these internal objects, except when the external object is there to remind her that it exists.
So as long as she is physically with the intimate partner, the introject of the intimate partner is okay, is alive and well.
But she needs to see the intimate partner all the time, interact, talk to the intimate partner all the time.
That's why borderlines absolutely panic when the intimate partner or the special person are physically absent or don't pay them attention.
But this is not the case with codependent people in fact.
Of course.
Because the co-dependent people have inner objects and they don't panic because the other ghosts or whatever.
That's not the case.
That's exactly why I told you at the beginning, about 30 minutes ago, that when you talk about emptiness, it mostly has to do with borderline, not with codependence.
Well, I could not say the codependence have ontological insecurity in that way, of course.
Co-dependency, it may not be pleasant to hear, but codependency is essentially a manipulative set of mind. It's a Machiavellian set of mind.
The codependent controls other people from the bottom. She controls other people through her neediness, through her clinging, through her helplessness, childlike helplessness.
So she triggers other people to become protective, to become providers, to become rescuers, to become saviors, and fixers and healers.
The codependent has a set of behavioral strategies that provoking other people parental instincts, basically.
So we could reduce codependency and say that it is mostly a Machiavellian strategy, survival strategy.
However, internally, co-dependence are much more healthy, much more mentally healthy, than borderlines, and narcissists, and so much more healthy.
They have object consistency, introject constancy. They have core identity.
It's no way to compare the situation.
Borderlines and narcissism, these are, can but believe that these are the second most serious disorders.
I fully agree.
Fully. There is psychosis and then there is borderline and narcissism. Definitely.
So the dependent people get stuck in something more later than in that time of being baby.
No, they're not stuck in anything. They just learned that specific strategies guarantee specific outcomes and they don't believe that they can obtain these outcomes otherwise.
So for example, they may have a very negative self-concept. They may think if I don't manipulate people, no one would like to be with me.
Or that's one example of a codependent.
Or they may say, you know, it's a shortcut. If I manipulate with helplessness, if I pretend to be helpless, or I feel that I'm helpless, and I need other people's help, that guarantees that they will be in my life. They will never abandon me.
So at the core of such a codependent, there is abandonment anxiety or separation insecurity.
There are many types of co-dependence.
Why?
Because it's a strategy. It's not a mental condition. It's a strategy.
So you could have many types of people using the same strategy for different reasons, completely unrelated reasons.
Exactly. That's why some of them tells me that they are a narcissist.
Yes. I agree fully.
Some codependents are covert narcissist, actually. And so they use control from the bottom.
That's a clinical term.
They use control from the bottom.
You put yourself at the bottom.
You put yourself at the bottom. You put yourself, you make yourself, you infantilize yourself. You make yourself childlike. It's like in the bottom.
And they use this control from the bottom to obtain attention from the partner.
There are other types of codependence who regard the world as very dangerous and risky and hostile.
So these co-dependence, they infantilize because they say, if I'm a child, no one will hurt me. The world is dangerous, but if I pretend to be a baby, no one will hurt me. That is a risk-free situation.
So here's another type of codependency.
I can continue like this for two hours because there are hundreds of types of codependency, hundreds.
And that's why codependency did not make it to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. We have something called dependent personality disorder. We have this, but it's actually not codependency. It's quite different, clinically quite different.
Wow.
So, our sense of I, our sense of I depends of all these, for example, the monitor or executive and all the process of creating boundaries and of whatever has happened in childhood.
So in fact, so many, many, many people in the world are age regressed, in fact.
It's very, very true.
So many processes, components, input from the environment, contributions of other people, starting with mother, so many people are involved in the formation of the self, if you want to call it the self, never mind, we'll use the word the self. So many people are involved in this, that it can easily go wrong. The formation of the self can easily be disrupted, and often is.
There are studies that show, pretty recent studies, that show that about 70% of a population are clinically and technically children. They have never grown up.
70% shocking.
Yeah, it's really terrible.
It's really terrible because most of the population are infantile and they don't even know it.
Exactly. Yes.
I did not know it.
I mean, when I was, I don't consider myself actually age regressed as I was, but as soon as I will enter in relation with someone, I will age regress completely.
Yes.
And I did not know that even when I had the story of the fact of age regression and whatever, I was completely unconscious, So now it's incredible.
And some types of individuals, for example, narcissists, they induce your regression intentionally.
But at the same time, they demand that you will be the mother.
So they want you to be at the same time, mother and child. And they regress with you. You help them to regress because you become a maternal figure. And at the same time, they regress you because it gives them power over you. And they become your parental figure. And this is mutual regression.
And so I think regression has become a dominant survival strategy in the modern world.
There is a debate whether narcissism or regression or whatever you want to call it is actually a positive adaptation in today's world. There's a big debate about this.
And there are academics who say, yes, it's a positive thing. Regressing is a way of coping with the world so that you obtain better outcomes.
In other words, it's self-efficacious.
Yes, self-efficacy.
But that doesn't mean that it's positive. It's called like that positive adaptation, but it doesn't mean that it's...
It's a common mistake that people make that in psychology we don't have positive and negative, or right and wrong, or bad or good. We don't have this.
I'll give you an example. If I tell you depression, I say the word depression. Immediately in your mind, depression is a negative thing.
It should be treated, should be medicated, should be...
It's a bad thing.
But if you were not depressed in Auschwitz, it means that you were mentally ill.
Depression in Auschwitz was a totally healthy, healthy, functional reaction. Of course. It was a sign of mental health to be depressed in Auschwitz. To not be depressed in Auschwitz means something was very wrong with you mentally.
So here you see a situation where depression could be a negative thing, but could also be a positive thing, depending crucially on the context.
Exactly. Now I understand.
So regression generally, regression generally, infantilization and so on.
There generally I would agree, a pathology.
But when you design the world in the way that we had, when the civilization we have made is such that to be an adult is penalized, if you're an adult, you pay a very heavy price.
And so it's a bad strategy to be an adult. It's a maladaptation.
Then, of course, what remains is to not be an adult, to avoid adulthood.
And that works well for people.
If you avoid adulthood, you end up being a multi-billionaire. If you avoid adulthood, you become President of the United States.
If you, yeah, it pays.
Imagine you go to Donald Trump. Imagine. You go to Donald Trump. Can I get your... Imagine. You say Don, you know, because we're good friends. Don. Maybe you don't know, but we're good friends. Don. Maybe you don't know, but you have narcissistic personality disorder. And it's really, really a horrible pathology. It's almost psychotic. But don't worry. I designed a new type of therapy, cold therapy, and I can cure you. I can change you.
Donald Trump will look at me and say, what for? I'm twice president of the United States, I'm a multi-billionaire, I married or I had sex with the most beautiful women on earth, give me one reason to change myself.
And indeed, there's no reason to change Donald Trump. He's very successful.
Exactly. And it's the most infantile person ever, you can imagine. And he does it without even any kind of change. He acts like it's incredible.
Children don't have shame. Shame isn't shame. Shame is a later effect. Shame develops a bit later.
When we internalize society, when we socialize, I mean socialization. When we internalize society, we develop what Freud called super ego and this and that. And then we have shame as beginning to be a dominant social regulator or social control affect.
But someone, in my estimate, is about two years old, mentally. I think it's about...
Maximum.
And this is like how to accept, how to be able to feel and accept the world as it is with 70% people child.
It's dangerous. It's not even a question of only of acceptance. It's difficult if you're an adult.
But it's dangerous because these children, 70-year-old children, 60-year-old children, these children have weapons. They have tools, they have instruments that children are usually denied access to. They're playing with fire when rain children are not allowed to play with fire.
So it's bloody dangerous.
It's not a child, it's not a children utopia, it's a children dystopia.
It's a little like Lord of the Flies. I don't know if you read the book by Golding.
No.
Golding, he won the Nobel Prize, I think. And he wrote a book called Lord of the Flies. It's a story about a group of children who are crashed, I think, with an airplane. Airplane or ship, I don't remember. I think the airplane. An airplane crashed with a group of children.
And so they are alone on an island. And they begin to create a society. They choose a leader. They have like parliament. They have, and they create all the institutions of society on the island, you know?
And it is the anatomy of a child dystopia. When he wrote it in the 60s, it was considered to be, you know, very distant, very remote. But today this is exactly what we have. We have a child, a children, dystopia.
Yeah.
Wow.
I am, exactly.
What to say about this sense of I?
One of the things with children, if I may add to what I just said is, one of the things with children is that they regulate externally.
In other words, they depend crucially on other people for the performance of internal psychodynamics, internal psychological dynamics.
So they need other people in order to feel that they exist, in order to feel that they have self-esteem, self-confidence, in order to feel love, they need other people for everything, basically.
So they outsource their minds to other people totally.
In this sense, all children are essentially borderline, which is exactly again what Otto Kernberg said. He said that borderlines are psychotic. And children are psychotic, as I just explained.
Children cannot tell the difference between internal and external. All borderlines are children, and all children are borderline.
And so when we have a children dystopia, we have a borderline society.
And in this borderline society, we need each other more than ever.
That's the irony. We need each other more than ever, but selfishly.
We don't need each other in order to collaborate, to love each other, to work together. No, we need, I need you because I need you to regulate me.
It's about me, not about you.
That could be the description of the people see in the different, the people said, see, how do you call, in sociology, they are talking about different stages of, yes.
So people see, you know?
Yes. So it's exactly this, that it's a primitive, primordial stage of social formation.
So we have here a situation where there is interdependence, greater than ever, by the way, that you see it on social media. There is interdependence and measurement and interaction between people more than ever.
Today you interact in a single day, more than your grandmother interacted all her life. You come across more people in a single day than your grandmother all her life.
But it's selfish. It's what can you do for me? Not what can I do for you or what we can do together, but what can you do for me?
I want you to tell me how great I am. I want you to regulate me. I want you to take care of great I am. I want you to regulate me. I want you to take care of my emotions and my moods. You are my service provider. I commoditize you. You are a commodity. I consume you. It's consumerism. We consume other people. The way we consume drugs, or we consume food or we consume entertainment.
And indeed, people are becoming a form of entertainment. And that's why entertainers become presidents.
You have Donald Trump, who is an entertainer. You have Zelensky, who is an actor. You had Ronald Reagan who was an actor, etc.
Schwarzenegger, when the main function of the other is to entertain you, then the other can be anything, can be a president, can be, you know, anything.
Entertainment now has replaced empathy, entertainment replaced work. We value entertainment much more than we value work.
So now entertainment is the key. And entertainment allows you to suspend yourself. When you watch a movie, you're in the movie. You're not very aware of the environment.
Exactly what you said. The attention is narrow. The attention is focused.
So the whole world is a movie now. And we dissociate when we watch the movie. We dissociate. There's narrow attention on focusing, tension on the movie in front of us.
It's all interconnected. Your concept of the observer, attentional narrowing, immaturity, it's all interconnected, because essentially you're talking about an infantile state of mind.
Wow, it's breathtaking. And the way you explained it, I love it. I'm very attached to your way of explaining things.
So could I ask another question?
So then I would like to come back to nothingness, to beingness itself.
So a person which is in that state of mind with this sense of I, what can this person do to come back to being this instead of going towards that type of behaviors.
Even a person who has a self-concept, a person who has a functioning self, or a person who doesn't?
No, a person who doesn't.
Because person who does is naturally established. I don't found the word in English. Established in the sense of beingness.
This is part of the autonomy, to have this fantastic sense of beingness and joy of being.
But what can a person who is not there do in order to let attention to resume, to come back to being?
You will not like the answer probably, but some processes can happen only in childhood.
Separation, individuation, the formation of the self, cohesive constellation, integration of the self-ego-function, emergence of ego functions, regulatory functions, all of them can happen only in childhood.
It's not like you can say when you're 40, 45, okay, I missed the train when I was 5, now I'm, you can't do that. There's no way to do that.
What you can do, you can teach the individual to be more functional. You can modify certain behaviors.
For example, you can teach the individual to control impulses. You can even can teach individuals to regulate emotions. DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, does this.
So you can teach the individual to acquire new internal functionality and thereby reducing dependency on external regulation, external sources of functionality. You can do that.
But you cannot touch the core. They cannot touch the missing core.
This absence masquerading as a presence, this absence is there for life.
This devastation, this battlefield, this explosive devices that destroyed everything and ruined it, this surrealistic landscape is for life.
There's no way to reverse it or to rebuild it or because it's too late. Some things are too late.
It's not that I don't like your answer. I like your answer because it may be very settled in reality.
But still, I guess that there is ways of coming back to that's what we are, you know.
And that because I have an experience about that. I had kind of an experience about that.
I don't know what is your diagnosis.
I'm talking about people with borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. They cannot come back to who they are because there's nothing there.
It's an option.
Okay, you talk only about them. You talk only about them.
Yeah, only.
Maybe.
Prognosis for codependent people is excellent, yeah. It's very good with therapy, absolutely.
Okay, okay.
No, no, no, no, codependents are not... Nowhere near, borderlines and narcissism. It's totally...
Okay, that's a point, because that's really a point. I understand now.
Codependents have all the structures, all the constructs, all the mechanisms, all the processes, everything. They just made a choice, a strategic choice. They made a survival choice. They decided that this set of strategies is best suited, it's more self-effications. That's how they do.
If you teach them that they can obtain the same outcomes without resorting to these strategies, some of them will change the strategies.
If you expose them, for example, to a loving, unconditional relationship, many codependents relax and they become more normal if you wish.
Co-dependency is very superficial. It's not a really deep-set psychological disturbance.
The borderline and narcissism are a devastation. There's nothing there. Simply nothing there.
I'm not the one who says that. I mean, you have Thurstein, you have Kernberg, you have Seinfeld, you have Gumptrip, you have Ferber, you have Winnicott, I can give you a very, very, very long list.
There's nobody there. There's nobody there.
Even if you go to more modern approaches, like systems theory, like social cognition or social cognitive theory, when you go to more modern approaches, they say essentially the same, but they use a different language.
So system theory will say that the narcissist and the borderline, they have apprehensive knowledge or comprehensive knowledge, but it's the same. It simply means not being aware of anything because there's nothing.
Social cognitive theory will say that there was a modeling failure.
So these borderlines and narcissists didn't have a role model which allowed them to become. It's all simply different languages saying the same thing.
The devastation, the obliteration, the moonscape, the Martian landscape of the soul, if you wish, of the narcissists and the borderline, is beyond redemption.
There is no therapeutic way to reconstruct this. There are no bricks even left.
You can, however, make the life of the borderline or the life of the narcissist much easier, much more pleasant, much more, perhaps, socially integrated, with better outcomes.
You can make the life of these people, you know, bearable, tolerable, or normally it's not.
But that's more or less the limit.
Anyone who says that they can heal or cure narcissism and borderline are lying. They're lying. They're con artists.
And I don't care how many professorships they have. They're con artists.
It doesn't mean that a borderline who goes through dialectical behavior therapy and is no longer impulsive, can regulate her emotions, is aware of her attachment style problems, so she is more bonded and attached in a healthier way, is less anxious about absence of the intimate part. You cannot accomplish many outcomes that make her life much more, you know, livable.
But it doesn't mean she's no longer a borderline.
Thank you.
Well, I am. In a way, I cannot, it has been very clarifying. Thank you.
I am honored to have this interaction with you because it's really you clarify so many things. Thank you for everyone.
I think we would need to call it today because on YouTube, if you are longer than one hour, no one watches. When they see a video, they...
Yeah, I don't know how much it will have been, but this is perfect.
They turn off, and then we will lose the audience completely. Thank you very much.
Thank you for inviting me and everything. I will send you the link if you don't have it.
I think I will have a recording, yeah.
Okay. And I appreciate your questions and so on. They were very interesting. Thank you. Yes so much. Take care. Happy New Year. I forgot to say. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Happy New Year to you. Ciao.