Today's effing topic is why narcissists curse so much. Why do they constantly swear?
You go online. There are coaches and self-styled experts and self-proclaimed victims and so on so forth. And they all go like effing, f, f, f-you, f-that, so and so forth. Every second word is an f-word like f-35 and f-16.
Oh, sorry, these are aircraft. Sorry, my Israeli background kicking in.
So that's the topic of today's video. Is there any clinical utility? Is there any reason for why the narcissists uses so many expletives and so many obscenities and so many swear words? Does it fulfill any psychological need? Is there a social or psychosocial reason for this kind of misbehavior, basically, foul language leveraged to obtain a goal?
Stay with me and you will effing understand the reason.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and an effing professor of psychology. Clinical psychology of all things.
And the New Year is upon us. Happy New Year sounds more trite and more delusional with every single passing year.
So I want to come up with a new greeting. How about have a not worst new year? Like I wish you a not worse new year. Much more realistic, isn't it?
I have an idea. How about have a new year à la carte with all your dreams and wishes on the menu? Signed, Sam Vaknin.
Okay.
Obscenities, foul language, expletives are defined in clinical dictionaries as verbal expressions, drawings, gestures and written material that grossly violate the norms of good taste and decency in any given society.
The narcissist and the psychopath, by the way, make profligate, ostentatious and gratuitous use of obscenities, invective, curse words, swear words, and they do it with evident delight in your face.
I mention profligate a lot. Ostentatious, visible, conspicuous, and gratuitous, unnecessary.
The obscenity of the expletive or the curse word or the swear word or the foul language don't add anything to the content, they don't even serve to emphasize anything.
Anyone who uses curse words and swear words and obscenities and expletives and foul language profusely is probably a narcissist. It's a strong indication of narcissism and psychopathy.
So if you go online and you see a YouTuber whose every second word is Fing and F and F you and F-U and F-16 this kind of person is in all likelihood a narcissist or a psychopath, sometimes masquerading as a victim or as a guru or as a coach or as a self-style expert or what have you.
The use of obscenities unnecessarily, defiantly, and multiply is a powerful indication of narcissism and psychopathy, and you will understand why in a few minutes.
When these people use foul language, it's as if they were spewing replicas from some kind of internalized script.
Every time they say the F word, there is a pregnant silence. There's a pause or a break. It's as if they're awaiting some kind of applause, some kind of approbation and affirmation.
It is a form of self-audiencing, like titivating in front of a mirror and imagining the audience applauding you because of your good looks.
So whenever the narcissist of the psychopath daringly uses the F word, he or she fully expect some kind of social approval, social adulation.
The frequency of expletives and obscenities increases as the need for narcissistic supply grows.
So it's a form of risk-free signaling.
I mean, if you were to commit a crime, that's not risk-free. If you were to go on a mission with special forces in Baghdad or Gaza, that's not risk-free.
Narcissists and psychopaths are cowards. That's why they are bullies.
So as cowards, they try to kind of construct a facade, a facade of bravery and courage and daring without paying the price, a risk-free some.
So when the narcissist and the psychopath use F-words, obscenities, expletives, deleted or not deleted, they are trying to signal, they're signaling.
And the signaling is, the message is, I'm cool, I'm hip, I'm defiant, I'm amazing, I'm carefree, I'm undeterred, I'm brave, I'm a rebel, I'm insightful, and I'm basically one of you, a common man.
I can still be a model, a role model. I can still become a model man, but as a common man.
You see, the narcissist and psychopaths are implying, I'm building a linguistic bridge with you.
I'm using the F word, the same way you are using the F word. It creates affinity. It creates a kind of common space, or at least linguistic space. It creates a commonality. It creates a common denominator. It creates warmth and fuzziness and a few laughs. It's a cool. It's a cool thing. It's a hip thing to curse and to swear and to indulge in obscenities and foul language in full view, usually on camera.
The use of our language is part of a larger phenomenon.
Narcissists and psychopaths also make use of first-person pronouns, especially first-person singular pronouns, much more frequently than healthy normal people. This is known in psychology as I talk I talk so the first person singular pronouns I, me, mine etc or the first person plural pronouns we, ours. So all these serve to self-enhance the grandiosity of the narcissist or the psychopath and this is known as first-person pronoun density.
And so in the speech of the narcissist and the psychopath, there is an inordinately excessive use of foul language, which as I said, is a form of signaling, look how cool I am, look how daring I am, look how companionable I am, look how amazing I am, etc.
But there is also an inordinately excessive use of first-person pronouns, which serve to aggrandize the narcissist and the psychopath.
In psychology over the decades, starting in the 1950s, we conducted several experiments. They're known as verbal conditioning experiments. And we succeeded to show that positive reinforcements enhance the use of specific types of language.
If by using the F word, you're getting positive feedback. When you use the F word, people consider you cool and amazing and fascinating and daring and incredible and a rebel and a hero, then you would use the F word much more frequently.
If every time you use the words I, me, mine, you get positive feedback in some way, and nodding of the head, mm-hmm, whatever, then the frequency of these words in your speech would increase dramatically.
This is known as verbal conditioning.
And so the narcissist and the psychopath solicit and illicit these positive reinforcements.
To the narcissist, these reinforcements are forms of narcissistic supply.
When the narcissist uses foul language, he induces awe, shock, trust, he's like me, adulation and compliments, and sometimes fear. Fear is more the domain of the psychopath.
The psychopath uses foul language. He intends to intimidate, to bully, to induce terror in his or listeners, especially his.
The narcissist is after compliments, after adulation and admiration. Look what a stand-up guy I am. Every second word is the F word.
It is very infantile, of course, very childish. It's exactly like small children who find fart jokes, hilarious, children who go around saying the F word and then looking at others, especially at their peers, to gauge the impact.
It's a childish, it's an infantile, it's an immature behavior.
And because narcissists are childish and infantile and immature, it is much more frequent in their speech than in healthy normal speech.
The same applies to psychopaths.
So next time you go online and you see a guy or a girl or a YouTube video and every second or third word is some kind of foul language, some obscenity or some expletive, rest assured, there's narcissism at play. If that.