In the video I posted yesterday with meaning, I analyzed the cycle of emotional energy of the narcissist, the psychic energy, that the narcissist invests and withdraws and reinvest in the various stages of the shared fantasy.
You would do well to watch that video because it's a kind of introduction to today's video.
And today I want to deal with the question, how does the narcissist process your devaluation and discard and your replacement? How does he choose who to replace you with, when to replace you? What's the role of this substitute that he rushes to the minute he is done with you?
And to understand all this, we need to deal with a very, very complex concept, one of the most complex in psychoanalytic theory, complex set of ideas and concepts known collectively as counter-cathexis or anti-cathexis.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and I'm a professor of clinical psychology.
Now, before we proceed, psychoanalysis and the various models in psychoanalysis, the topographical model, this model, that model, id, ego, super ego, all these are metaphors. It is a kind of literature. These are words that capture the essence of psychological processes.
We don't know what is the id. We have never captured the ego in any laboratory. We have never studied the superego under a microscope.
But similarly, we have no idea what is consciousness. We cannot define the mind.
And yet we use these words in, even in science, very often we use metaphors. Even in physics, we have metaphors, dark energy, dark matter, quarks, these are all metaphors.
They are useful because they do capture some elements of reality in some way. Very often we don't know how. We have no idea why a specific metaphor works well and another doesn't.
But still, we are able to tell when our theories and our models correspond to reality in a way that allows us to yield predictions which are either verifiable or falsifiable.
The same with Freud's work.
The id ego and super ego are metaphors. They are adjectives or nouns used to describe something that's happening inside. They structure this internal experience, introspective world. They structure it, they introduce order into it.
No one says that these are real things, real entities, objective. No one says that this is a science.
But it's a language and a useful one.
So throughout this particular video, I have other videos dedicated to other models and other theories in psychology, but in this particular video, I'm going to use psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalytic literature, starting with cathexis and anti-cathexis.
Wordsthat Freud resented and hated, because the original in German means investment not cathexis.
Okay.
How does the narcissist choose his next victim?
Psychoanalytic theory suggests that we have something which they call psychic energy.
I call it emotional energy because it's mostly composed of emotions, but psychic energy is perhaps a better term because it incorporates cognitions.
Psychic energy, also known as libido, psychic energy is used by all the structures of the psyche, by the id, by the ego, by the superego.
The id is the repository of this psychic energy. It starts with the id. It's the fount of energy.
And cathexis is when this energy is directed towards something external. Could be an object, another person, a social group, an idea, a concept. Anything out there can be cathected. Anything out there could become the receptacle and the target and the repository of our inner psychic energy.
Now, there's one problem with this model, not with the model itself, but there's one problem with the participants, the parts that play a role in this model.
The id is very primitive, reptilian if you wish, definitely infantile. The id cannot tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
And in this sense, the id is highly narcissistic. It's the equivalent of a fantasy defense, embedded, rigid, structured fantasy defense.
And so the id often has impulses or urges that are negative, immoral, socially unacceptable, and definitely risky and dangerous. The id can drive us to act in ways that have adverse consequences, even extreme ones.
So someone should control or something should control the id.
When the id is uncontrollable, for example in narcissism and in psychopathy, the outcomes are very dire, especially to the narcissist and psychopath.
So here comes the ego.
The ego blocks these unacceptable desires of the id.
And this process of blocking, repressing the instinctual drives embedded in the id, this process involves anti-Cathexis.
Anticathexis blocks the unacceptable energy in the id. It's called anti-Cathexis because the energy in the id is cathexis.
And so this energy that is intended to repress, to block, to inhibit, to prevent the energy of the id is the opposite of cathexis or is fighting the cathexis of the id, is anti-cathexis.
Repression is an example, most common and well-known form of anti-cathexis, but there are others such as reactionformation, we'll discuss it a bit later.
In psychoanalytic theory, therefore, anti-cathexis is a process in which the ego withdraws psychic energy from certain unconscious wishes and ideas and then uses this psychic energy to strengthen other wishes and ideas capable of blocking the decathected materials entrance into consciousness.
So in the id we have desires and urges and wishes and impulses, they are imbued with a lot of energy, they are cathected, they have cathexis.
The ego takes energy from other places, from other psychological processes, and uses it to fight off the energies of the id.
The ego decathects some internal wishes, unconscious processes and ideas and so on, takes this energy and reallocates it, redeploys it to fight the cathexis of the id.
And the ego does this by strengthening wishes and ideas and concepts and perceptions that block the impulses and drives and desires and urges of the id.
Whenever the id comes up with a really hairbrained, crazy making id, wants to act out on impulses, wants to go haywire, the ego shops around, takes energy from other processes, deploys it, strengthenswishes, ideas and concepts that fight off the id.
It's like proxy wars, you know? The ego uses proxies like Iran. The ego uses proxies against the dementedness of the id.
This anti-cathected material may be similar to the original or opposite to the original, but somehow related to it.
So we will see examples in reaction formation.
So this is the general background.
Anticathexis is simply the transfer of energy from some processes, some structures in the mind to other constructs and processes, because these other constructs and processes can block the crazy making dementedness of the id. They are anti-id somehow and so they need to be strengthened because the id is about to do something really really nuts and endangered, put at risk the honor of the id.
The ego is a protector because the ego is in touch of reality. The ego is aware of the potential adverse consequences of crazy making, misbehavior, misconduct, wrong choices, wrong decisions, decisions acting on urges impulses and drives.
One could say that anti-cathexis is a form of adaptation.
But narcissists, as usual, are completely different.
In narcissism, anti-cathexis is a form of exaptation.
In other words, what narcissists do, they misuse. They assign new functions to existing processes and constructs.
Rather than merely reallocate scarce mental, psychic energy, what the narcissist does, he changes, or he or she, half of all narcissists are women, the narcissist changes the very functions of some elements in the psyche and so it is an exaptation not an adaptation.
We come to it a bit later.
Let's start with a basic fact. As you've come to understand by now, I hope, anti-cathesis is about making sure that you don't act on your impulses and drives, because that would be really, really wacko, and you're going to pay a dear price if you do.
The ego takes charge, uses energy from other parts of the mind in order to suppress the id, repress the material or the content associated with the id, the drives, the urges, the desires, and inhibit the id.
It's not the case with narcissists. In narcissism, there's no ego. The narcissist doesn't have a self.
Pathological narcissism is a disruption in the formation of the self or the formation of the ego.
So the id in narcissists, the id is in charge.
The narcissist does act on impulses, urges and drives. The narcissist is full of negative affectivity which is actionable. His envy, his rage, his hatred is often translated into decisions and choices that lead the narcissist astray, cause extreme egregious misconduct and very unsavory, unfavorable outcomes.
So the narcissist doesn't need to perceive or doesn't try to repress drives or impulses. There's nobody there. There's no ego to repress the id.
The id is autonomous and actually the strongest structure in the narcissist, because the superego is also largely missing.
And so what the narcissist uses antichathesis for is to repress inhibit persecutory objects, not drives, not impulses, not desires, not crazy making, but persecutory objects.
The narcissist mind is full of internal objects. There's no ego there so the whole place is a kaleidoscopic chaos. And there are many internal objects there.
And some of these internal objects perceived by the narcissist as enemies, persecutory, hateful, vengeful, envious, envy is a large element in the economy of the narcissist's mind.
So these internal objects are like Trojan horses. They torture and torment the narcissists from inside.
And there's always a sense of incipient, imminent abandonment and betrayal by these internal objects.
In short, it's a terrifying internal scene and the narcissist uses anti-cathesis to fight off these persecutory objects, to somehow silence them, render them latent or dormant, shut them up, in the best case maybe dissolve them, which never happened or rarely happens.
Now, why am I mentioning this?
Because in the devaluation phase of the shared fantasy, you become a persecutory object. You become an enemy.
When the narcissist devalues you on the way to discarding you, what he does, he transitions from idealization to devaluation using a primitive defense mechanism known as splitting.
You were all good, you could do no wrong, you were a perfect being, and now you are the exact opposite.
You are evil. You can do no right. And you are the exact opposite. You are evil. You can do no right. And you are imperfection reified.
So you are inside the narcissist's mind. You're an internal object.
Narcissists are incapable of perceiving the externality and separateness of external objects. They're incapable of othering.
So as far as the narcissist is concerned, there's an internal object in his mind that is evil. That is out to get him or to take him down. That hates him and envies him. That is corrupt and deceitful.
And so the narcissist needs to fight off this persecutory object. It's a war.
And so the narcissist uses anti-Cathesis. This potent, super-powerful, super weapon, which is used to repress the id in healthy people, in normal people, this internal redirection of energy that is utilized in order to prevent healthy people, normal people, from making mistakes, misbehaving, breaching boundaries, abrogating social norms and mores. This nuclear energy, this atomic energy, is now used by the narcissists to eradicate, obliterate, or at the very minimum hold back internal objects, highly specific internal objects, you being one of them.
But anti-cathexis is a dual purpose weapon.
On the one hand, it ameliorates and mitigates the untoward and adverse outcomes of persecutory objects.
On the other hand, anti-cathexis allows the narcissist to redirect libido, to redirect emotional energy and invested in a new target, in a new victim, in a new object, that he can then use against you in his mind.
So he redirects this energy. He invested in someone else, for example in a romantic relationship or a friendship. He invests in someone else and then he uses the internal object that represents this new person in his mind. He uses this against you.
So what he does, narcissists use anti-cathexes by diverting energy in order to create an internal object, a cathected internal object, that represents a new person in their life.
So when the narcissist devalues you, you become a persecutory object, you become an enemy. The narcissist needs to fight against you or to fight you off.
And one of the things the narcissist does, he withdraws energy from you, from the internal object that represents you in his mind. He takes away the energy that he gave you and he gives it to another target or another person.
And then he snapshots that other person, he creates an internal object representing that other person, he invents the energy in this internal object, and he uses this new, new shining internal object against the persecutory object that you had become in his mind.
Now this can happen during the devaluation phase, but most commonly it happens after the discard phase, after narcissist is gone or you are gone, and the relationship is dissolved.
At that point, the narcissist remains stuck with the persecutory object that used to be you. And he needs to fight it off by introducing a new object, a new internal object, which is cathected.
This transfer of cathexis, this reallocation of energy, is essentially narcissistic anti-cathexis.
There is a repression of persecutory objects, not of drives.
Actually, even in classical psychoanalytic theory, antithexis allows the possibility that certain reaction formations, certain manifestations of antacathexis are restricted to special object relations, and they do not spread over the entire character or personality of the person.
These are pinpointed anti-cathexes.
So this is not something I've just invented. This is actually well grounded in psychoanalytic literature.
Now the narcissist's anti-cathex at the end, at the end tale of the shared fantasy, when the early conflict, the early childhood conflict with a maternal figure has played out inexorably and led to the inevitable separation individuation, devaluation and discard.
The narcissist anti-cathex, he cathects new material, new person, new idea, new concept, new social group, new church, you name it, new something. He cathects the new in order to support the repression of the old, ID, person, or memory of the old.
So he uses ideas, internal object that represents people, memories. He uses all these as kind of support in the process of repression but when he creates a new internal object replete with the representation of an external object, another person, or a social group or a friend or a colleague or a workplace or an idea or a concept, never mind.
When the narcissist creates an internal object to represent in his mind external reality. He wants to use it against the persecutory object, the enemy that you had become in his mind.
But in order to accomplish this, he needs to link the new object to the old object. There needs to be some linkage between the repressing cathected material, the actively repressing cathected internal object, the repressing, the actively repressing cathected internal object, the new one, and the old one, the decathected object.
There needs to be a linkage because if there's no linkage whatsoever, no interaction is possible.
Obviously, if you're not in touch and some kind of touch with the old object, you as a new object can do nothing about the old object. So you should have something in common, some common space, some commonality, some common denominators. In a way, the new object must be reminiscent of the old object.
And the narcissist's way of establishing this bridge between new object and old object is idealization.
The narcissist idealizes the new object, rendering it a replica of the old object when it used to be idealized.
So the new object, idealized, is reminiscent of the idealized phase of the old object and they share many things in common because the idealized object is totally fantastic, it's not grounded in reality, so there are no differences. All idealized objects are clones of each other.
So now there's a bridge, now there's a commonality. The new idealized object is interacting with the idealized version of the old object, not with a persecutory element.
And then, as one idealized to another, they reach a kind of consensus. They collude against the persecutary object.
It's very, very intricate.
The new object, let's take an example, an intimate relationship.
You used to be, you are the narcissist's intimate partner. You used to be idealized. Then the narcissist devalued you and transformed you into an enemy, a persecutory object. Then the narcissist discarded you.
He goes around, he finds another intimate partner. He idealizes that intimate partner.
Now the narcissist has an internal object in his mind that represents the external object, the new intimate partner, but in an idealized form.
This new idealized object then collaborates and colludes with the idealized version of the object that represents you in the narcissist's mind and they work together in coalition against the persecutary object that represents you in the narcissists mind.
So actually what the narcissist does is he uses a new object, which is idealized, to provoke the idealized history of the object that represents you in his mind and together they act against the current object.
So the memory of your object in the narcissist's mind, the memory of your idealized object in the narcissist's mind, works hand in hand with a new idealized object against the current persecutory object that represents you in his mind.
It's a kind of induced civil war.
And because in narcissism, everyone is an internal object, the narcissist perceives this entire process as self-referential.
When the narcissist cathects, when he invests psychic energy, libido, emotional energy, when he invests it in an internal object, your internal object, someone else's internal object, whenever there's an investment of psychic energy in an internal object, the narcissist experiences it as self-cathexis, as if this energy is invested in himself.
Because these internal objects are part of the narcissist's mind. They're not external, they're in here.
So whenever the narcissists invests emotional energy, he invested in himself. Whenever he withdraws emotional energy, decathects, he withdraws it from himself.
And whenever there's anti-cathexes or countercathexis, there is a reallocation or redeployment or transfer of mental energy from one part of the narcissists to another part of the narcissists, and there's a civil war because that other part of the narcissist is fighting off the decathected part.
Whereas in a healthy normal person the ego uses antithexis to mobilize constructs, concepts, ideas, and processes, to mobilize them against the id and against the strategies and plans of the id.
In the narcissists, one group of internal objects uses this energy, this mental energy, uses it against another group of internal objects.
That's why in the narcissist, it's a civil war. It's a civil war. There's no one in charge. Nobody is in charge. There's no ego which is in charge.
And so narcissists in a constant state of turmoil and your representation in the narcissist's mind is also in a constant state of flux because the memory of your idealized version is there and is an internal object in its own right.
You could say that there are two objects representing you in the narcissist's mind. The latent dormant one, deactivated one, which is idealized, and the current one, which is a persecutor.
And then the narcissist uses another person, creates an internal object for that other person, an icon or an avatar that represents that other person in the narcissist's mind, transfers energy to this avatar, and uses this avatar to fight off the persecutory object in his mind that represents you in cahoots in collaboration with the memory of you, the memory of the idealized you.
So whoever the narcissist chooses to fight you off needs to have many things in common with you. So whoever the narcissist chooses to fight you off needs to have many things in common with you. Many things in common with you.
And some of these things are obvious and many of these things are not obvious.
But when you go deeper, you discover the commonalities, it's amazing because there's not type constancy but there is a functional constancy.
In other words, the narcissists don't go for a specific type, this is a myth online nonsense, but the narcissists go for a specific provider, a provider with specific capabilities.
So the similarity between you and your predecessor and you and your successor, the similarities are functional, not structural, but functional.
You provide the same functions in the same way, and you have the same attitude to the provision of these functions.
So you're reminiscent of each other.
Then the narcissist can efficaciously use the new object against you, the old object.
Now because a narcissist interacts only with internal objects, never with external objects, all this takes place inside the narcissist's mind.
When the narcissist affects himself, when the narcissist invests emotional energy, or mental energy, or psychic energy, in internal objects in order to turn them against each other, when the narcissist does this, he's actually investing this energy in himself.
And this is the foundation of something called auto-erotism. Auto-erotism, the infatuation with oneself as a sexual object. Autosexuality, infatuation with oneself as a sexual object.
This auto-sexuality, if you wish, drives the narcissist to find a new partner through whose gaze he can arouse himself as his own irresistible sex object.
I'm going to read it again.
Autoerotism, the fact that the narcissist invests energy only in himself via the mediation of internal objects.
Autoerotism drives the narcissist to find a new partner through whose gaze he can arouse himself as his own irresistible sex object.
And that is the first primordial basic commonality the narcissist looks for a new object, for example, a new intimate partner or a new friend, and this new object, exactly like you, must provide the narcissist with the arousal needed to make love to himself.
That's the first commonality, the most basic one, most primitive one.
Narcissism and autoerotism are congruent with one another.
Auto-erotic satisfaction is an adequate somatic expression of the libidinal cathexis of oneself.
In other words, as the narcissist invests mental energy, psychic energy, energy in his internal objects in order to conclude the morality play and to reenact the early childhood conflict with his original mother, as the narcissist goes through the stages of the shared fantasy inexorably, he can't help it, there are increasing amounts of mental energy invested internally in the narcissist, in the internal objects of the narcissist.
When the narcissist, for example, creates an internal object that represents you in his mind, he invests mental energy and sexual energy in this object, not in you, never in you, but in this object.
But this object is the narcissist.
So the narcissist has a sexual or psychosexual relationship with himself. The narcissist has an emotional relationship with himself. The narcissist is infatuated with himself.
You are there as a maternal object, as an internal object, as a representation, as an avatar, as a symbol.
You're never there in reality. There's no reality as far as the narcissist is concerned.
Whereas most people have object libidinal strivings. In other words, they direct libido, they direct the life force, and eros, the sex force, they direct it at other people.
Narcissists are auto-erotic, and that's why narcissists are very heavily into masturbation and even when they have sex they're just masturbating with the partner's body. The object erotic form of satisfaction relating to other people as real, external, separate, arousing is denied to the narcissist. He's incapable of accomplishing this.
And the reason he's incapable of accomplishing this is because he has no ego. The ego is the interface with reality. End of story. It's exactly like having a computer without a screen. It's useless. You can't work with it.
The narcissist doesn't have an ego. So his reality testingis impaired. The only reality is his fantasy.
Narcissism is a fantasy defense, gone awry, writ large.
And within the fantasy, there are all these internal objectsmilling about, arguing, this, that, there's a dialogue, polylogue among them, and so on.
I mention reaction formation, which is very common in what Freud used to call character neurosis and today we call personality disorders.
Freud distinguished between external anticathesis, mainly repression, and internal anticathesis, which is what we call reaction formation.
And I will come to it in a minute or two.
It's important to realize or to recall that anticathesis redeploys libido by decathecting other psychic elements, other internal objects in the case of the narcissists.
So libido is redeployed, and narcissists decathects certain internal objects, re-cathects others who are useful at any given moment.
This is the mirror image or the reflection, to be more precise. That's a reflection of the self-states of the narcissist.
Narcissus doesn't have a unitary, coherent, cohesive self. But he has, like every other human being, he has self-states, fragmented bits and pieces, kaleidoscopically assembled and dissolved and reassembled, ad hoc coalitions.
And these self-states are reactive to the external environment in healthy people and to the internal environment in narcissists, in psychotic, to some extent in borderlines and so on.
And what these internal or inward- looking self-states do, they are reactive to the internal environment, and their only tool or main tool is cathexis.
They are the masters of energy. They transform the internal environment by redeploying and reallocating and transferring energy the same way a government uses tax receipts to fund all kinds of programs.
And so the internal self-staffir, or the inward-looking self-states, what they do is they withdraw cathexis, invest it, and then use it to decathect other processes, and it's a merryround.
This is a process which was called at the time, Abwendung in Freud's work, turning away, withdrawal. Withdrawal. Withdrawal of investment. It's a withdrawal of cathexis.
And so they use this.
And another mechanism they use is, Auffrischung.
Auffrischung means renewal or reviviscence or revivification or in my vocabulary revividness. Auffrischung is a kind of recathexis. They decathect these internal processes, decoct, take away the energy, cathect, put it back in the same object that they've taken it from, they redeploy it, reallocate it, and so and so forth. Energy flowing throughout the system, like electricity.
But Auffrischung is very important because it allows us to understand the process of hovering.
It's recathexis of representations that have lost their cathexis, and along with it, there's psychic significance in the course of time.
So, old fantasies, old memories, old internal objects can be re-affected.
And so when they are re-affected, the narcissists and healthy people as well experiences these internal objects, again, when the internal objects are decathected, when the energy is taken away from the internal objects, they are no longer active and they're not brought to consciousness.
But when they are recathected, they are active, and the narcissist is aware of them.
Ironically in the process of antichesis there is partial recathexis of old objects as the new objects fight off the old objects, as the newly created internal objects, newly created avatars, which represent new people, new concepts, new ideas, new social groups, new friends, as these new objects fight off the old objects because they are perceived as enemies and persecutory and hateful and so on.
When this war is going on, there is an inadvertent transfer of energy from the new objects to the old object.
It's exactly if I slap you, I'm transferring energy to your face.
So all antichesis involves inadvertently recathexis of some elements.
Similarly, the persecutory object is recathected, partially, partially. Rec affected because of the antinacathesis of the new objects.
When the new objects attack the old objects, they transfer energy to the old objects.
Which is one major reason why Narcissus hoover.
Because ultimately it's a failing strategy.
Exactly like a terrorist organization, there's no way to eradicate the persecutory objects, no way to totally destroy them. The minute you try to destroy them you re-energize them. It's kind of an uncertainty principle, those of you know physics.
So when antics cathexis is taking place energy is withdrawn from the old object, largely, is withdrawn, and the old object is perceived, as I said, as the secretary, as evil, as hateful, as malign, as conspiratorial, and so on.
So the shared fantasy with the old object is no longer pleasurable. It's forbidden, actually. Thoughts and activities are being restricted and constricted.
And this gradual withdrawal from the shared fantasy and from the old object serves as an anxiolytic function. It reduces the narcissist's anxiety.
It's as if the narcissist says if I disengage, if I detach, if I ignore the old object, if I use new objects against the old object, I cannot rest in peace. I can calm down. My anxiety is ameliorated, I don't need to worry so much.
Now in normal people, the ego is in charge of anti-cathexis. The ego attempts to reconcile instincts, drives, in other words, the id, with an ideal permanent point of reference and with reality.
And the main tool of the ego in accomplishing all this is repressing or suppressing the id.
The ego is anti-id, definitely.
And so there's a war between the ego and the id. The id is unruly and unpredictable. The ego is stayed and traditional and reality facing, public facing. So they kind of don't get along.
And anti-cathexis is used by the ego to repress the id, that's in normal people.
In narcissists, the false self replaces the ego. There's no ego, there's a false self. And it is the seat of both cathexis and anticathesis. Everything takes place within the false self.
There is a pretension to normality, mask of sanity. The false self pretends to be normal. The false self pretends that it is also made up of ego, id, superego, but it's not.
The false self is unitary. It's unitary because it's the aggregation and amalgamation of absence.
It's a kind of black hole. It's a story. It's a symbolic representation of some kind of sadda.
It's not real. It's a movie. It's a movie pretending to be reality.
And so all the energy is invested in the false self. And the false self does with it as it pleases. Allocates it, reallocates it, deploys it.
So the false self fulfills certain ego functions when it comes to energy management. The false self cathects, decathects, recathects, and anti-cathects.
It's all done within the false self, similar in some ways to the functioning of the ego.
Remember that the id does not distinguish between reality and fantasy. And because of this, the id may act in ways that are unrealistic and so on so forth, unacceptable, dangerous, risky.
And fortunately, we have an ego. The ego blocks irrational, immoral, unacceptable actions. And the ego does it via anti-cathesis. He suppresses the cathexis, the multiple cathexis of the id.
But all this is happening in the false self. With the narcissist, all this is happening within the false self.
And it's all fake. It's all a pretension.
Now another mechanism that is in use is isolation. It's a defense mechanism in psychoanalytic theory proposed again, of course, by Freud.
Isolation is related to repression, but it's not exactly the same. Isolation is a mental process and it involves the creation of a gap between an unpleasant or threatening cognition and other thoughts and feelings.
It's like putting distance between a threat or discomfort or socially unacceptable thoughts, or in other words, putting a gap between id generated artifacts, ed generated products and ego generated products or artifacts.
By minimizing associative connections between thoughts, bad thoughts and good thoughts, there's a bit of splitting here in isolation, but some thoughts are deemed beyond the pale, risky, dangerous, threatening, horrible, discomforting, and some thoughts are thought to be okay, acceptable, normative.
And so these two groups are separated via essentially a kind of splitting, ambient or background splitting.
And then association between these two groups is minimal. The cord, the umbilical cord connecting these two groups of cognitions is cut.
So that the bad group, the evil group, the menacing group is cast adrift and can no longer penetrate consciousness. The threatening cognition is remembered less often and is less likely to affect, for example, a sense of self-esteem, self-concept and so on.
It is a defense against harmful content, harmful thoughts, and it prevents the self from allowing these cognitions to become recurrent, to repeat themselves and to damage the self-concept.
Of course, analysts make a profuse use. They use isolation a lot. It's like number two behind repression.
And isolation requires anti-cathexis or counter-cathexis.
Remember that antichesis or counter-cathexis is the energy used by the ego to kind of suppress or repress or bind the primitive impulses of the id.
And sometimes the ego follows the instructions of the superego in accomplishing this.
Sometimes the ego develops a double counter-cathexis to block feelings of guilt and anxiety deriving from the superego, as well as the id impulses.
The ego is fighting on two fronts. It's fighting the superego sometimes and the id always.
And isolation is very useful. Isolation can regard the id as a group of cognitions, a repository of cognitions. And the superego is a second repository or receptacle of cognitions.
And so then the ego uses isolation, it isolates the id and it isolates the superego the same way it isolates cognitions typically.
Now, anti-cathexis, by the way, again, that's not, Freud hated the word, cathexis, was invented by Ferenczi.
No, not French. Strachey.
He hated the word. His original word was Geigen Besetzen, besetzen. He hated the word. His original word was Gagan-Besetzen, investment. I mean, besetum, investment. And anti-Cathesis was Gagin-Bes-Zet-Um, anti-investment.
He was talking about emotional investment, investment of emotions, investment of mental energy, investment of psychic energy.
Anyhow, anti-cathexis is about repression, as I said, and the repressed is imbued with instinctual energy.
You remember that there's a lot of cathexis in the id. There's a lot of mental energy, psychic energy invested in the id.
Id is the seat of cathexis actually. That's where cathexis starts. It erupts from the id and then the ego kind of hijacks it and uses it.
But it's all generated. It's a generator of cathexis, the id and then the ego kind of hijacks it and uses it.
But it's all generated, it's a generator of cathexis, the id.
So the repressed is connected to a lot of instinctual energy, it's cathected, and it seeks to break into the ego. It seeks to reach consciousness. It seeks something called discharge.
Because the ego is in control of the pathways of the discharge of energy. The ego informs the psyche how energy could and should be discharged when, where and if.
It's the boss. He's the boss. And the repressed content could and should be discharged when, where and if. It's the boss. He's the boss.
And the repressed content or the repressed material seeks to erupt. Seeks in many ways to rebel or to usurp the power of the ego.
And of course you can apply all this to the shared fantasy, where you're the persecutory object that represents you, the enemy that you have become, has now been repressed by the new internal objects, has been decathected, and partly, partly de-cathected, and seeks to re-cathect and re-emerge into consciousness.
And as this feels that is sitting on a volcano replete with hundreds of persecutary objects, enemy soldiers, Trojan horses, and they all want to take over.
Narcissists feels that he is on the precipice of an imminent coup d'etat, imminent takeover, hostile takeover, imminent earthquake. With all these persecutary objects jostling for control and to usurp the power of the new internal objects.
Remember there's no ego and remember the false self is a facade, it's a mirage, it's a movie.
The only thing that stands between the narcissists and the old, the secondary objects, the only thing that stands between the narcissist and total mortification and integration and possibly suicide and depression, the only thing that protects the narcissists are the new internal objects that represent new people in the narcissist's life, new ideas, new friends, new intimate partners, new social groups.
These new objects, new internal objects, are the narcissists only army and protection. He doesn't have an ego. He doesn't even ego to protect him.
And these new internal objects are the only thing separating the narcissists from deep-set, perpetual anxiety.
And so what the narcissist does, he attributes to these internal objects, godlike qualities. He idealizes them. He renders them omnipotent.
And so he feels safe, totally protected, and his anxiety goes downis reduced, it's anxiolytic.
And this energy that goes into impeding repressed content, in the case of the narcissist, the secondary object, their main aim is to render these persecutory objects unconscious, to drive them away from memory and consciousness. And they constantly fail. The narcissist cannot get rid of the persecutory objects because they are being recathected during the battle, during the war. They're absorbing energy.
So this war is perpetual, never ending, Sisyphusian. There's no end to this battle, this combat inside the narcissist psyche. Anti-cathexis is a permanent expenditure of psychic energy because they repressed material, the persecutory objects, that objects of you that represent former lovers, former friends, colleagues, former social groups.
These persecutory objects inside the narcissists are permanently in a permanent state of rebellion. They're like terrorist organizations, absolutely terrorist organizations. They are constantly breaching the boundaries, assassinating civilians. I mean, they are in constant state of terror attacks.
And because the narcissist doesn't have a police force or a real army, doesn't have an ego, he recruits an army by converting external entities, external objects into internal objects which he then idealizes and considers godlike and perfect. So they are omnipotent and they can fight off the terror organizations or the rebellion.
Anticathexis proceeds from the unconscious portions of the ego in healthy people. It's because the narcissists doesn't have an ego. Anticathexis proceeds from the false self.
And because the false self is in large part conscious, not like the ego, it's a large part conscious because it's a concoction, it's an invention, it's like a religion, it's a private religion, because the false self is the anti- antithexis, the processes inside the false self are largely conscious, which is exceedingly unsettling.
Because anti-cathesis, this energy, challenges perceptions, opposes reality, and it creates a lot of havoc and chaos inside. The internal objects are fighting each other. Old versus new, de-cathected versus re-cathected or cathected. Or internal objects don't give up on energy that easily, it's like food or oxygen, they fight for it.
And so Freud would have said that the antacathesis or anti-cathetic, anti-cathected processes inside the narcissists create a narcissistic neurosis. That's how he would have put it.
I say that this is exactly the source of the personality disorder.
I believe that etiologically, narcissism, pathological narcissism is a post-traumatic condition. But functionally, it is the equivalent to what used to be called neurosis, a character neurosis. It's a personality disorder.
That is the outcome of the inability to deny access to consciousness. Almost everything in narcissism is conscious, not in the sense that the narcissist is aware of what's happening or that he can label it, but in the sense that it has an impact on him, an impact on his consciousness.
So everything bubbles up to the narcissist consciousness and then affects it somehow. And this is a great definition of neurosis.
I mentioned reaction formation. Reaction formation is a very interesting case of private case of antacathesis because it imbues, it includes all the elements of anti-catexies or counter-cathesis.
Remember that we said that in order to effectuate counter-cathexis, there needs to be a connection between the repressed material and the repressing material, even in narcissism. There needs to be some common ground between the repressed material and the repressing material, even in narcissism. There needs to be some common ground between the repressed internal object and the repressing internal object.
Reaction formation is a perfect example. Reaction formation is when you create a set of behaviors, cognitions, and emotions that represent the exact opposite of who you are.
You want to repress something in you. You reject something in you. You hate something in you.
And then you create a facade. You behave in a way, will behave in a way, you feel in a way and you think in a way that is the exact opposite.
So for example, if you're very weak inside you would pretend to be, you would say that you hate weak people. If you're a latent homosexual you would become a homophobe.
If you are stingy, and you rejected you believe yourself to be a good, generous person, but you're actually stingy. You would reject this part of you, the stinginess, by becoming overly philanthropic, generous and giving.
This is reaction formation and it is an outward enactment, a behavioral enactment of anti-cathexis. It's visible anti-cathexis. You can see it in action.
There's someone who is actually gay internally, resents it, rejects it, is afraid of it, and then they become gay haters, homophobic, active against gays. They go around, beating up gays.
So this is anti-Cathexis. It's perfect. It's like antichesis, reified or embodied somehow.
Reaction formation is fascinating. And I have a video dedicated to it. There's a link in the description.
This is generally the picture, and the differences between narcissists and normal people there's a lot more to antithesis for example it's a cardinal process in phobias in what used to be called hysteria or somatization disorders, paranoia and maybe one day I will dedicate a video to all these but antithexis is the narcissist way of attempting and failing to get rid of the persecutory object that you had become, on the one hand, and selecting a new object to fight you off, but a new object that is ironically reminiscent of you in some very significant ways.
Because only then could you have the common battlefield upon which the new object will use antacathesis against the old persecutory object that represents you in the narcissist's mind.
Let me see if there's anything else I want to say.
I made so many notes. There's a lot to be said, as I said, but I think we'll leave it for another day and another video.
The narcissist, I think when we say the narcissist's mind I think that's a contradiction in terms, an oxymoron, in the absence of an ego or, or whatever you want to call it, a core identity, an executive, in the absence of something like this, a coordinator, a host personality, we call it as you wish, in the absence of an Archimedean point that is you, even if it's mutable, even if it has multifarious manifestations as self-states, but there's something there that is you, in the absence of this essence, I don't think we could talk meaningfully about the mind.
I don't think the narcissist has a mind the way normal healthy people do. He has a hive mind.
And this hive mind is a reflection of feedback from the outside coming from multiple people. That is a Lacanian view, and feedback from the inside of the interlocution and interaction between internal objects.
There is a hubbub, there is a cacophony, there's a constant background noise of polylogs, dialogues, diatribes, debates going on inside the narcissist's mind between internal objects that represent actually external objects and suck feeding, suck input from these external objects in order to feed themselves.
It's a highly parasitic and yet symbiotic system.
And this conflict between being a parasite and being in a symbiotic relationship or symbiotic situation is at the core of the dissonance that we call pathological narcissism.
The narcissist resents his dependence on the outside, denies the outside, ignores reality, converts external objects to internal objects, all in a desperate attempt to become utterly self-sufficient, totally safe with an internalized secure base, auto-erotic, in need of no one, self-contained, and yet all this is predicated on the most extreme form of dependence, addiction, addiction to narcissistic supply.