Background

Narcissist's Traits: Lifelong? (Zagreb Clinicians Seminar, Part 5 of 5)

Uploaded 12/30/2024, approx. 1 hour 4 minute read

This chapter of our Odyssey has to do with the various traits of narcissists and other cluster B personality disorders.

I want to clarify something. There is this conception or concept idea that everything is on a spectrum. You know, there are extreme narcissists, not so narcissistic.

That is not true.

If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you either have it or you don't have it. It's like pregnancy.

However, the traits, the traits could be on a spectrum, the various traits. So it could be less grandiose, more grandiose, and so on. This would be the spectrum. Traits could be behaviors, could be, you know, more narcissistic, less narcissistic, and so and so forth.

We make a distinction between narcissistic style and narcissistic disorder.

Narcissistic style was first described by Len Sperry.

And so, narcissistic style is someone who is basically obnoxious, a little antisocial, what used to be called a-hole, jerk. Not pleasant person. But has no pathological clinical features the way I described. Someone whose behavior is, you know, grating and unpleasant, and that's it.

So this is narcissistic style.

When you look at studies, when you look at studies in the field of narcissism, vast majority of these studies actually do not deal with narcissists at all.

Because narcissists rarely attend therapy, they rarely, very rarely get diagnosed in non-prison settings. In prison, yes, but in non-prison setting, this doesn't happen.

So the vast majority of studies, they actually work with dark personalities.

I will explain the concept of dark personality and just to alert that dark personalities are not narcissists and they are not psychopaths.

So these studies are invalid in effect. I'm talking about most major studies are invalid completely. They deal with people with narcissistic style or dark personalities, but rarely, rarely, rarely, with people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, and even then, these are people with comorbidities. They have narcissism and borderline.

So that's why I'm telling you there are no serious studies about genetics, no serious studies about brain abnormalities. And I would even add that there are no serious studies period. I would even add that.


So dark personalities, we have two types of dark personalities.

Especially after 6 o'clock.

So the dark triad personality is someone who has narcissistic traits, psychopathic traits, and Machiavellianism. Narcissistic traits and behaviors, which cannot be diagnosed as narcissistic personality disorder.

In other words, subclinical.

So in dark triad, the narcissism is subclinical, cannot be diagnosed actually with narcissistic personality disorder.

And if you use this kind of people, your whole study is invalid.

I just gave an interview to BBC on one such study, which was published, and the study showed that narcissists change with age, they develop empathy and so on.

Only problem is all the sample was dark triad. And these are expressly not narcissists. These are people who have not, cannot be diagnosed as narcissists.

Same with psychopathy. Subclinical psychopathy. People who display psychopathic traits like defiance, they display psychopathic behaviors like recklessness, but they are not psychopaths. They're subclinical.

Machiavellianism is another word for manipulativeness when you manipulate people, intentionally. So that's Machiavellian.

Dark tetrad personality is a new construct, relatively new construct, and it is dark triad plus sadism.

Now, sadism used to be a personality disorder, but it was taken out of the DSM 4, or even 3, no, 4. It was taken out of the DSM 4, and there's a famous scholar, Theodore Millon, who was very pissed off about this. He was promoting sadistic personality disorder as an entry in the DSM, but his view was rejected.

So sadism is not a personality disorder at all.

An example of sadism is forcing people to sit for six hours and listen to a lecture about cluster B. Right? Can anything be more sadistic than this?

Yes, yes, seven hours.

So you can see that this has nothing to do with narcissism, well, clinically speaking of course.

The men in the street and the woman in the street and also the men and the woman in the street and they're together, they may describe people as narcissists or psychopaths, but it doesn't make them narcissists and psychopaths.

I have seen self-styled experts online claim that one in six people is a narcissist, which is pretty shocking. It's an extreme display of ignorance. Extreme.

The figures are much, much lower. Much lower.

Okay. Now, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the ICD edition 11, International Classification of Diseases, dark personality. It's getting darker by the personality. This is sadistic.

Not supply, I cannot read. This is just sadistic.

They're playing with us.


I think it's a form of entraining.

You know what is entraining? Brainwashing.

You know what is entraining, by the way?

Entraining is the use of sounds, repetitive sounds to synchronize brain waves.

So I suggested at the time that abuse, verbal abuse, is a form of entraining, because the verbal abuser tends to repeat the same sentences again and again.

And it synchronizes brain waves physically, like two EEGs would show the same brainwaves.

It was first discovered 10 years ago in music, in a music festival.

They discovered that the brains of rock players in a rock band, all of them became utterly identical as far as brain waves. They emitted the same brainwaves. It was like one brain with a single brainwave.

And so it was, this was described as entrainment or in training and they're doing this with the lines.

Okay, so I took the text of the DSM-5, I added to it the text of the ICD 11, I put some salt, cinnamon, and right. And this is the tasty results.


Ten clinical features, presenting symptoms, and trait domains of Cluster B personality disorders.

So it starts with the alternative model.

I told you that hidden at the very back of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, there'san alternative model of personality disorders, which is actually much more advanced than the text.

And the reason it was not included in the text is insurance companies. Not kidding.

Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies refuse to include this because you cannot convert it into numbers. It's very fluid, it's very literary.

I much prefer the alternative model, of course, the text of the alternative model.

So here's what the alternative model has to say.

The impairments in personality disorders should be stable across time and consistent across situations, not better understood as normative for the individual's developmental stage or socio-cultural environment.

They are not solely due to the direct physiological effects of a substance, like a drug or a medication, and they are not the result of a general medical condition, such as severe head trauma.

Now this is very important because, for example, in severe head trauma, in some cases, the end result is narcissistic personality disorder. We have documented cases starting in 1837.

In 1837, there was a guy called Phineas Gage, and he had a misfortune over, there was a metal rod, an iron rod that crossed his skull, like entered here and exited here, and he remained alive.

But he became a narcissist after that. Complete narcissists for life. I mean, they didn't know, they didn't use the word narcissism, but you read the description, it's a narcissist.

So severe head trauma causes personality disorders, actually.

Anyhow.

Number one.

Lack of affective emotional empathy, impaired ability to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of other people, excessively attuned to the reactions of others, but only if perceived as relevant to self, over or underestimation of own effects on others.

Point number two, these are clinical features. These are what we call in ICD, in the ICD we call it trait domains.

Okay. Number two, fear of intimacy. It's actually insecure, dismissive avoidant attachment style.

So, the DSM says, relationships largely superficial and exist to serve self-esteem regulation, mutuality constrained by little genuine interest in others' experiences and predominance of a need for personal gain.

Next, disturbed or diffuse identity. Excessive reference to other people for self-definition and self-esteem regulation. Exaggerated self-appraisal inflated or deflated or vacillating between extremes.

You know, of course, that there is a covert narcissist, which is the mirror image of overt.

Emotional regulation mirrors fluctuation in fluctuations in self-esteem.

Okay. Attention seeking behaviors. Excessive attempts to attract and be the center of attention to others. Admiration seeking. Giving lectures all the time.

No, so it's not in text. Okay. It's not in the text. I swear to you. You don't believe me. I can see you don't believe. It's not in the text. Yeah. Okay.

Goal setting based on gaining approval from others. Personal standards are unreasonably high. In order to see oneself as exceptional. Or too low, based on a sense of entitlement.

Often unaware of their own motivations. It's very important. People ask all the time, is he aware? Is he, does he know what he's doing?

Yes, narcissists know exactly what they're doing. They know exactly what they're doing, and they know exactly how it will affect other people, and they know the difference between right and wrong, completely.

However, they never or rarely know why they're doing what they're doing. The motivations are hidden. They don't know why they're doing it, but when they do it, they know what they're doing.

Grandiosity and entitlement. Feelings of entitlement, either overt or covert self-centeredness, firmly holding to the belief that one is better than others, condescension towards others.


And now we enter the territory of the ICD.

What the ICD does, in the ICD, there's a single personality disorder. It's like a menu, a do-it-yourself menu or self-service menu. You have lists of traits. Each trait is known as a trait domain.

And what you do, you take this trait and that trait and this trait, put it together, and you get your diagnosis. So it's much more flexible.

There are many, many domains, trait domains, and you combine them.

You as a clinician, as a therapist, as a diagnostician, you're not limited in boxes. You know, you say, this guy has emotional dysregulation, also obsessive-compulsive, also antisocial. Okay, let's combine the three. Maybe there's no name for it. It doesn't have to be a name for it. It describes the patient.

So I much prefer the ICD approach. I think it's much closer to reality.

So in the ICD there are three trait domains that if you put them together you get more or less narcissism, more or less cluster B even.

Okay, narcissism especially.

The first one is Alankestia. Alankestia is a fancy name for perfectionism.

Perfectionism, preservation, emotionalperseverance, emotional and behavioral constraint, stubbornness, deliberativeness, orderliness, being neat, crazily orderly, like Hercule Poirot, arranging everything, and concern with following rules and meeting obligations.

So this is known as Alankestia.

The second trait domain that you pick, if you want to describe a narcissist.

So the second trait domain is negative affectivity, including fragility, negative emotions and poor self-concept, anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, nervousness.

Okay. This is the second trait domain.

The third trait domain is dissociality. Dissociality is antisociality. Traits of impulsivity, high negative emotionality, low conscientiousness, and associated behaviors, including irresponsible and exploitative behaviors, recklessness, and deceitfulness.

You can already see that if I were to diagnose a psychopath, I would take this dissociality, the same block. It's like Lego, you know, I would take this block, but it can also be used for narcissism. So it's like Lego. The approach is like Lego. You combine. You make your own, make your own diagnosis. Do it yourself diagnosis.


Okay. Now a few trait domains where the DSM and the ICD agree.

Antagonism defines contumaciousness. Who knows what is contumaciousness? Honestly. Anyone knows what is contumaciousness? Honestly. Anyone knows what is contumaciousness? Why do you think I know what is contumaciousness?

Are you testing?

I'm being a prick.

Contumaciousness simply means rejection of authority. Hatred of authority. That's contumaciousness.

Okay, next. What is antagonism?

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

So the part that is in agreement has to do with what we know commonly is antagonism.

Both psychopaths and narcissists and many borderlines are antagonistic.

Antagonism, the low pole of agreeableness references traits related to immorality, combativeness, grandiosity, callousness, and distrustfulness. It is a correlate of externalizing behaviors, such as antisocial behavior, aggression, and substance use.

Next, external regulation, affective dysregulation, mood lability, reactance and impulsivity.

The tendency to act on a whim displaying behavior characterized by little or no forethought, reflection or consideration of the consequences. Impulsive actions are poorly conceived, prematurely expressed, unduly risky, or inappropriate to the situation that often result in undesirable consequences.

Reactance is a motivational state characterized by distress, anxiety, resistance, and the desire to restore freedom. We saw a lot of reactants in COVID-19, for example. Reactance was first described by Brehm in 1966, by the way.

And finally, lability, sudden, unpredictable, rapid changes in something, usually in a mood.

So we have mood lability, ups and downs, depressed tomorrow, and euphoric so forth, is not the same like bipolar.

In bipolar disorder, there are cycles, but non-lability.

When the bipolar is in a manic stage, the bipolar is manic all the time. When he's in the depressive stage, it's depressive all the time.

The borderline is depressed today and money tomorrow. Euphoric the next day and once commit suicide on the fourth day, suicidal ideation.

So this is the ability.

When psychopaths and narcissists, when they grow up, when they mature, some of these traits disappear, actually.

So to start with, start with the good news, about 81% of people with borderline personality disorder lose the diagnosis by age 45 without doing anything.

If someone with borderline personality disorder attends dialectical behavioral therapy, DBT, the chances of losing the diagnosis are higher than 50%, 5.0%. DBT is by far the most efficient therapy there is.

You know that it was developed by a psychotic patient while she was in a mental asylum.

You didn't know that.

She was in a mental asylum. She was committed. And she was very young and she was diagnosed with psychosis and so on so forth.

Until she finally grasped that she was being misdiagnosed. She actually has borderline personality disorder.

So she studied borderline personality disorder and started in the asylum to develop DBT.

Today she's a psychologist, very famous, Marsha McLuhan. But it's an interesting human interest story.

And borderlines therefore have a very good prognosis. That's the irony. They commit suicide the most. 11% of them commit suicide, but actually they have much better prognosis than narcissism, and infinitely better than psychopathy, which can never be cured or healed or change or anything.

So it's a pity. When psychopaths and narcissists age, they lose the antagonism. They become less conflictual, less antagonistic, less aggressive, and so on so forth.

No one is quite sure why. No one is quite true why. It's not a question of being afraid or something. It's age mellows people. No one knows why.

It's well known in prisons, for example, that older prisoners are much less aggressive and violent than younger prisoners. We also know that when a narcissist enters prison, all narcissistic behaviors disappear.

Well, the alternative is a very short life expectancy.

So fear seems to be a modulator or regulator of narcissistic behaviors, which raises the question, of course, if a narcissist has control over his or her behaviors, then what the narcissist is doing is essentially evil.

If there is control, there's no fear, so narcissists can do anything. When there is fear, the narcissists is a civilized human being.

So it's not nice, regardless of the motivation.


And in this sense, today we are beginning to conflate.

We are beginning to have a view of narcissism as a variant of psychopathy.

So we are beginning, for example, to consider overt, grandiose narcissists, we're beginning to consider them as primary psychopaths.

And we believe that only covert narcissists are the real narcissists, because they are compensatory.

So there are many movements in the field.

Recent studies have exposed the fact that borderlines become indistinguishable from secondary psychopaths when they are under stress or anticipate rejection or humiliation. they become psychopathic.

Now there is as you know secondary psychopath and primary psychopath that this distinction is made by Robert Hare in his famous test the PCLR.

So in the test you have factor one and factor two. The factor one is one type and factor two is another and they're distinguished.

Factor two, for example, can possess empathy and positive emotions.

That's a psychopath.

So today there are many, many studies that demonstrate that psychopaths do possess empathy. They just choose to use it differently. And they do have access to emotions. And I have a video about that as well. Literature review.

But our views are changing dramatically, I would say, changing dramatically regarding cluster B.

And we are beginning also to consider the possibility that all cluster Bs are facets of each other. And that on Monday the patient would be narcissistic, but definitely on Wednesday, this same patient can be borderline. And if we antagonize the patient, the patient can become psychopathic.

So we begin to think that all cluster B is actually one of the same. It's just a kaleidoscope.

And so there are many, many new things happening.

Cluster B personality disorders is the most exciting field in psychology nowadays.

Psychosis is behind us.

Many issues in psychology are being medicalized. So psychotic disorders are considered to be today medical disorders, bipolar disorder, many mood disorders are basically medicalized.

So what's left is essentially personality disorders and neurodevelopmental disorders like autism spectrum disorder. These are the fields that are now in a lot of ferment, and there are many changes and many new ideas, new perceptions, and there's the issue of emotions and emotional dysregulation.

We see, for example, there is a process called narcissistic mortification. Narcistic mortification is when the narcissist is humiliated, unexpectedly, abruptly, and usually in front of other people that the narcissist values.

So then there is narcissistic mortification.

At that point, the narcissist becomes totally indistinguishable from borderline. He develops emotional dysregulation, suicidal ideation, and all it takes is a single event of 10 minutes or 5 minutes or one minute where the narcissist is humiliated publicly. That's all. And it becomes a borderline.

So it raises serious questions about the validity of these clinical entities, the validity of these clinical constructs. Are they real? Or are we getting something wrong? It's not perfectly clear or understood.

And the history of these disorders, starting with the DSM 2 and much more so, the DSM 3, the history is also unclear.

For example, narcissistic personality disorder made its entry in 1980, the DSM 3 and, 3TR.

And prior to that, there was huge opposition, huge resistance, although narcissism was a topic that was studied first, like decades before the DSM.

But there was still huge resistance to you. And then somehow in the DSM 4 there was a major revolution, homosexuality. Homosexuality was decriminalized, de-pathologized, and there were many, many new things, and so they put in the narcissistic personality disorder.

And then there was a huge debate about psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. Is psychopathy real? It's not real. What is a relationship with antisocial personality disorder? What about narcissists who are mostly all the time antisocial? Why aren't they antisocial, like identified as antisocial personality? It's a big mess.

And what the ICD tried to do, the ICD tried to say, you know what, forget all these classifications and categorizations and lists, and forget all this nonsense. Let's just say that some people have problematic personality, disordered personality. And here is a list of traits that describe such people.

Now you go as a clinician, look at the list, see what fits, and create an idiosyncratic diagnosis. Custom-made, tailor-me-diagnosis.

In medicine, classical medicine, we are moving in this way as well. We are using genetics to determine which medicines you would react to the best.

So now medicine is becoming individually tailored. It's not widespread, but in 50 years or 20 years, it will be like that. You will come to the doctor. Doctor will scan your genome and will create a treatment specific only to you, with medication specific only to you, and the medication will be tailored also. The molecule will be tailored also, would be the molecule we've played with.

And this is what we are doing in psychology as well.

So a lot of what I've told you is antiquated and in some way.

However, I believe that when we will get rid of all these classifications and so on, the old explanations will come to life again. Because the old explanations, they were sweeping, they were literally, literature. They were much closer to humanity than the classification.

So when we get rid of this baggage of lists and categories and get rid of it, what will remain is the literature.

And already we see signs of that in the alternative model and definitely in the ICD.

So I think we are going back to literature. We're going back to the roots.

And when we go back to the roots, who are we going to find there?

Freud? We're going to find Jung.

Maybe we will not agree with some of the things they said. Maybe there's no way to experiment or to conduct studies, replicable studies, maybe it's sort of science. It's all possible, yes, of course. Everything is open to criticism.

But to discard this treasure of insights and so on, the way we are doing today is suicidal.

That's really suicidal. That's crazy. That's simply crazy. I'm shocked. I'm pretty sure.

So, anyhow, that's it for now.


Questions and answers is the triumph of optimism over reality.

For start, how to work with narcissistic style or tendency and how to work with ex-partners?

I have many clients that used to be narcissistic partners and they're drained in chaos in fact.

If you can't go.

The question was how to work with narcissists in the workplace, how to collaborate in the workplace, and how to survive when you have a narcissistic partner, what strategies and so on.

That's a very short question, a very long answer.

So, but I'll summarize it by saying that you have two groups of strategies.

One group of strategies is avoidance, minimizing contact, working only through lawyers and accountants, avoiding contact altogether, no contact, and so on so forth.

That's one group of strategies.

If these strategies are impossible, then you need to manage the narcissists.

And unfortunately, the only way to manage the narcissist is via narcissistic supply.

So you need to choose whether you wish to provide the narcissist with narcissistic supply. And then you can easily manipulate the narcissist.

Narcissists become dependent on you.

There's one strategy and the other strategy, basically, is to deny the narcissistic supply.

But you need to be very strong and to persevere. They'll take time.

There are a variety of techniques to deny supply.

For example, gray rock when you make yourself uninteresting to the narcissists, and he gives up on you.

Another way of denying supply is to challenge, direct confrontation.

Depending on the situation, the narcissists very often would back off and avoid you altogether. You could mortify the narcissist and then the narcissist would avoid you, definitely. So if you are into conflict, the conflictive posture you can do it. If you're into submissive posture, you can do it.

And the third alternative is avoidant posture.

That's in a nutshell.

You can go online on my channel and you have dozens of videos about dozens of techniques and exactly what to do, how to do to whom and why.


So just a second, I saw her first.

I will try to be louder.

So thank you very much for an interesting lecture professor. I have a few questions.

My first question is, can God be a successful source of narcissistic supply and in that way to be a regulator of NPD? God? If you understand my question, I mean to be part of some church or religious order or something like that.

My second question is maybe more appropriate for the team of experts like neurologists and psychologists, but I guess that you are aware of study saying that cluster B patients have thin gray matter in brain and other structural changes. So do you have any comments on that? And do you think that brain neuroplasticity can help with solving NPD?

Third question is a short and easy one. That's the fourth one, I think. No, no, no. How long prolonging grief can last approximately?

And the fourth one is, do NPDs return to narcissism when they are released from prison?

I couldn't hear the last one because people were laughing.

Ah, the release from prison. Do NPDs return to narcissism or they stay, let's say, cured?

Going to prison, I will start with the last one. Going to prison is usually a public affair, so it creates narcissistic mortification.

There are two solutions to narcissistic mortification. They were first described by Libby. There are two solutions to narcissistic mortification. One is known as external solution and one is known as an internal solution.

The internal solution is to say that everything that has happened, I made it happen. I wanted this to happen. I designed it. I'm a puppet master and everyone is my puppet. I made everything. So this is kind of said deception that I'm in charge. And even when I go to prison, it's because I wanted to go to prison. Or I'm going to prison, but I'm getting a sentence that is much smaller than I shouldn't got. So this is internal solution.

External solution is to say people are evil, people are malicious, there's a conspiracy against me, and so on so forth, and therefore I'm the victim.

The locus of grandiosity in the narcissist is anything that makes the narcissists special. It's again a common mistake. When you talk to self-styled experts online and so on, they will tell you that narcissists wants to be the best, the greatest, the richest.

The narcissist wants to be special. And if being a victim makes the narcissist special, then that's the locus of grandiosity. Even failure could be the locus of grandiosity.

The narcissists can say, do you know the bankruptcy of my company was the biggest in history? Or a narcissist would say, I don't know anyone who keeps failing like I do.

These are examples of grandiosity. So the external solution is I'm a victim.

And so when a narcissist exits prison, he has to choose one of these two solutions. And both solutions restore grandiosity. Both of them restore.

The first solution is a puppet master. The second solution is a victim.

In both cases makes him special. He has a special story.

So the grandiosity is restored and all the narcissistic behaviors repeat, of course.


So now we move from prison to God, which is natural progression.

Anything that provides a narcissist with attention could be a source of narcissistic supply, of course. So if being affiliated with God directly or indirectly, we can provide narcissists with attention, then God would become a source of narcissistic supply.

However, it's difficult to convert God into a source of narcissistic supply because many people are doing this.

Like if the narcissist joins a church, there's 200 people in the church, and all of them are going through the same experience. There's nothing unique there, nothing special.

So what the narcissist would do, the narcissist would claim that he has a special relationship with God. He is getting messages directly. Or God told him to do something. Or he's a scholar who discovered something amazing about God.

So he would create a special channel to God. It is not God that is the issue. It's being special, being unique.

And then anything could be a source of supply. Even being in prison could be a source of supply. Absolutely. If we become a famous prisoner, a cause celebrity, you know, someone who is absolutely.


Regarding the studies that you have mentioned, as I said, and I repeat again, there are rigorous convincing studies regarding psychopathy and borderline.

There are no rigorous convincing studies regarding narcissism, and the few studies that include narcissism or refer to narcissism actually deal with dark triad personalities.

So I have a very dim view about any claim that connects narcissism to brain abnormalities in structure or in function.

These were three out of five and it's not bad at my age.

What were the other two?

How long grief lasts?

The definition in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual is any grief that lasts more than one year.

No one knows, it's a new diagnosis.

It's a new diagnosis.

It could be her life, of course.

There's a famous story, Charles Dickens, where there's a woman who was about to get married and the guy ran away. And then the story is about how she sits at the table with her wedding dress and she's been doing it for decades. She's been waiting for him for decades. This is an example of prolonged grief.

No, no, there's no maximum. There's a minimum, but no maximum.

Last one.

Last question.

Can I ask you about neurotoxicity with this brain functioning and organic changes in the brain. Can this help in a way that tries to do some neuroplasticity training? Can this help NPD or no?

It is common knowledge that the brain is neuroplastic when it becomes to the outcomes of abuse.

So we know that the brain abuse shapes the brain and then the brain is sufficiently neuroplastic to recover and to reshape itself and so get rid of most of the adverse outcomes of abuse.

But in narcissism it's not only a question of abuse. It's not an event. It's not even a traumatic sequence. It's a totality. Everything in the shaping of the narcissists is such that the totality of the brain is affected.

So if ultimately we will be able to succeed to link brain abnormalities to narcissism, my bet is that the abnormalities in narcissism would be much more severe than in psychopathy or everything is affected.

The emotional centers, amygdala and so on, the prefrontal cortex, cognitive distortions, reality testing, the hippocampus long-term memory, ability to form long-term memories, every single area process is affected.

There's a limit to neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is about the redesign of specific pathways or specific regions to some extent. It's limited. You cannot take the whole brain and reshape it completely.

Which is the problem with narcissism. The damage is everywhere. It's ubiquitous. All pervasive. All pervasive is not my word. It's the word of the DSM.

The DSM says, and all pervasive. It's a total damage. It's like a total car. You know, if you have an accident, you can rebuild the car. But what if it's a total? You total the car? You total the car? You know?

Yeah.

Who was?

She?

Hello, she.

****REDACTED


Just as a second.

The brush. Where's the brush? This looks like a brush for the paint brush.

I'm interested in the process of dissociation. How to dissociate later in life from a mother that you didn't dissociate when you were three years old?

No, I think you're confusing dissociation and separation.

How to separate, Okay, how to... Separate, maybe.

Dissociation is nothing to do with a...

Dissociation is an integrative deficit or a defense, depending on which theory.

When the information is overwhelming and cannot be put together in a congruent way, in a cohesive way, and then part of the information is ignored in a variety of ways.

Yes, yes, you're right. Separation.

Separation.

It's not possible.

There are two phases of separation, two times in life that you get a chance to separate. The first time is 18 to 36 months, and the second time is adolescence.

In adolescence is a second round of separation, but it is fundamentally different to the first. In adolescence, it's a separation which is involved in identity formation. You create an identity in opposition to the parent. So this constitutes separation.

So it's much less profound. It's on the surface. It's superficial.

The separation in early life is supercritical because it's about forming individuality, forming boundaries, forming a sense of self, forming an ability to say, this is me, this is I.

There was a guy called Mead, George Herbert Mead, and Mead suggested that there are two types of selves, the I and the me. So the I, if you don't have the I, you don't have the me.

If you don't have a sense of self, you cannot function socially otherwise.

And there's no way to separate from mother if you failed. If you failed early on, there's no way to separate from mother if you failed.

Now there are techniques that, ego therapies, for example, ego psychology, ego state therapies and so on, that teach you how to develop a self, or how to, I would even say, how to simulate a self. How to simulate a self effectively.

But the self is only one component in separation. It's an important component, of course, because it deals with functionality. It has to do with functionality.

But it's only one. What about mentalization? What about object relation? What about emotional regulation? What about self-concept? What about so many? It's the whole list.

And if the mother fails this crucial process, it's irreparable. So there's nothing you can do.

That's why the narcissist keeps trying again and again and again. Never succeeds. Until the day he dies.

When he dies, he separates.

Please, let me tell him.

Okay. Okay, go.

Is that, there.

There, go. There.


I have two questions. Excuse me for my rusty English.

I wanted to ask a very similar question about separation, actually about this compulsive repetition of a narcissist. Let's say a narcissist gets a diagnosis, knows they are a narcissist, are, let's say, aware of it. What would be the best solution for them to just stay out of relationships eternally because they're just going to keep on this loop? Or should they just, is it possible for them to just be in a relationship, but aware that they have to not get rid of the partner, not discarded?

Why? What's a solution in terms of what kind of narcissist, even for a narcissist?

Like, if...

The narcissist doesn't care what happens to the partner.

Even if the narcissist care what happens to the partner?

No, I mean, if they get diagnosed, how would they help themselves to...

You assume that the narcissist does not want to hurt the partner?

No, no, no. How would they get the most satisfaction out of relationships if they're caught in this eternal.

You're making assumptions that are wrong. You're making assumption, for example, that the narcissist cares about the partner or that the narcissist doesn't get out of the relationship what the narcissist wants.

But as far as the narcissist is concerned, his relationships are optimized. They're perfect. It's a partner's problem, if she disagrees, as is often the case.

Narcissists don't see anything wrong with their relationship.

So even if they get diagnosed, they would just always stay the same. There would be no internal wish to change or heal or anything.

No, narcissists don't have a wish to change or heal because of grandiosity. It's a cognitive distortion, the assumption of superiority.

So why would you...

Imagine that I go to Donald Trump. Imagine. I say Donald, because, you know, we're on speaking terms. I said, listen, Don. Now it's Don. You still be Donald. Okay. Listen, Don. I have shocking news for you. You have narcissistic personality disorder. And just work with me for two years. We'll get rid of it.

He would say, what for? What for? I'm twice president of the United States. I had and still have all the gorgeous women in the world. I have money that I don't know what to do with. I have Elon Musk as my courier boy. I mean, why would I want to not be a narcissism?

And that's the answer you would get from 99.99% of narcissists regard narcissism, pathological narcissists as an evolutionary advantage, as a positive adaptation. They don't perceive narcissism as maladaptation.

Narcissists would tell you, I'm the next stage in evolution. People have to catch up with me, but I'm there.

And there are groups of academics who are glorifying narcissism, glamorizing it. You have academics who say that psychopaths are the best leaders, that narcissists are best suited for some jobs, that narcissists are high functioning.

There's a whole industry of academics, professors and so on who keep saying that narcissism and psychopathy are good, not only for the narcissists and psychopaths, but for society at large.

In July 2016, New Scientist, which is a prestigious science magazine, New Scientist had a cover story. Parents teach your children to be narcissists.

In today's society in civilization, narcissism is a positive adaptation.

There is a common misconception, common mistake, even among clinicians and so on, that some things are bad and some things are good.

There is no such thing in psychology, in psychopathology. There's nothing that is bad in itself and nothing that is good in itself.

Everything is either positive adaptation or maladaptation depending on the environment.

I'll give you an example, and immediately you will agree with me. And even if you don't agree with me, say that you agree with me. I'm kidding. I'll give an example. Auschwitz.

Imagine that you're in Auschwitz and you're happy. You're singing in the morning and you love the smoke and you know, it's wonderful.

Would you agree with me that something is wrong with you? Would you agree with me that you're mentally ill if you're like that in Auschwitz?

However, if you're in Auschwitz and you're depressed, that's an appropriate healthy reaction. So depression can be healthy. Depends on the context.

Narcissism in today's context is a positive adaptation, not a negative one. We have one in the White House now. It's a positive adaptation.

Narcissism gets you places. Narcissism pays. Narcissism puts you up, elevates you. Narcissists right through the top. Narcissists are influencers. Narcissists are presidents. Even professors of psychology. Where the world is coming to.


So, let's see.

I have a question about the children. How can they protect themselves from a narcissistic parent, for example?

And also I have the experience that the gifted children are actually victims of narcissistic teachers and narcissistic colleagues. How can they protect themselves?

Children cannot protect themselves. That's a short answer. Adults have the responsibility to construct environments and rules and so on that protect children.

One thing to do is to educate children, to recognize such problems, and to avoid them, to put boundaries.

Because narcissism devolves into behaviors that are seriously destructive. For example, incest. Incest is much more common among narcissists than in the general population.

So you need to teach children how to identify and avoid.

It's a complicated issue because how do you teach a child that her father is a narcissist and may have sex with her? It's a complicated problem.

I thought about parents are divorced because of us.

Even if the parent is divorced, there is visitation, there are opportunities for misconduct.

It's a complicated problem, I think, mainly because of social, moral, social expectations. It's not okay to talk this way. It's not okay to expose children to this information, which is wrong, in my view. Completely wrong.

I think education about mental health and mental illness should start very, very early.

But they are good news. And the good news is that studies in the schools of social cognitive theory or social learning theory, these studies have shown that modeling is a very powerful tool.

So if you have two parents, one of them is a narcissist and one of them is not a narcissist. Even if initially the child gravitates towards a narcissistic parent, ultimately the child will usually, not always, but usually choose the other model, the non-narcissistic parent.

So I think if I have to summarize, the best thing you can do is give the child an example. Just give an example. And the child will make a choice in due time whether it wants to be a narcissist or no more.

There are no other protections. Not really.

Narcissism is not a crime, for example, not criminalized. Even narcissistic abuse is not criminalized in most of the world. In some parts it's beginning to be, but most parts.

So you don't have effective tools. You don't have effective tools except education and modeling.

And I'm afraid I have to leave it to that because they are not tools that I'm aware.

As far as gifted children and their teachers, envy is a strong motivating force, strong motivating emotion. And these children will encounter envy throughout their lives.

They see others as equal, so it bothers the teacher.

Yes.

When the child is grandiose or when the child, that of, bothers because grandiosity bothers people generally, not only in children.

But in many other cases, the problem is envy, actually. Competitiveness, envy.

And I don't see anything wrong with it. These children will be exposed to envy and reactions to grandiose statements and so on. Throughout their lives, it will never end.

Because if you're gifted, you're gifted. You're gifted at age 10, at age 50, you're gifted.

So this is the environment they will live in. These are the reactions that will elicit from other people all the time. The boss will be envious at them. The wife will be envious to them. Their own children will be envious.

I worked with children of celebrities and gurus and so on, and I know how the children envy the parents. And so it might not be a bad idea to start early.

The exposure to envy and mistreatment and it's a kind of training.

Unfortunately, but these are facts of life.

All freaks of nature or not nature, man-made, all freaks encounter or experience an unusual life with very adversarial reactions by other people.

And the best thing you can do for a freak, and give the children a freak, the best thing you can do for a freak, is train them to expect such misbehavior and how to counter it, how to survive it, not to avoid it.

By avoiding you're not doing them a favor. It's like the famous hygiene issue, problem, you know, the hygiene crisis, where parents are so terrified of dirt, so they don't allow the children to be exposed to dirt, and the immune system of these children is much reduced, so they become much more sick.

You need to expose children to the dirt of life. Life is dirty, children need to learn it first-hand as early as possible. If they want to survive, they want to develop a psychological immune system.

So I'm much less protective of children than maybe others.


I have a question which continues what you asked, told the question before.

It's about narcissistic society. I had an idea when you were telling that narcissists see world as black and white, through dichotomies. It shows that most of today's political and social action, which goes from upwards, downwards, works this way, through polarization and through openly creating polarization among population of the people.

So what would you, as a clinic, as a professor, what would be your advice on regular people, not politicians, how to survive in such society?

I have a more, I think, realistic view of common people. And I'm one. I'm a common person.

So I think they don't need instructions from politicians to become polarized.

I think narcissism is spreading like wildfire. Among the poor and among the rich, among the politicians and among the scholars, among professors and among students, metastasizing, it's cancer, spreading like fire.

And wherever narcissism expands, it brings with it all the psychological baggage, including primitive defense mechanisms like splitting.

So I think the population would have split with or without the politicians.

Actually, I tend to think that politicians reflect the population, not the other way.

So common people are not exempt and they're not hapless victims of what's happening. They're instigators. They make it happen. They thrive in this kind of environment.

The famous social thinker, sorry, Jose Ortega y Gasset in 1932, I think, wrote a book called Revolt of the Masses. And in his book, he describes the rising role of mobs and crowds, and how mobs and crowds would shape future politics.

And he didn't use the word narcissism, but he describes narcissism, of course.

So it's a bottom-up, I think, not the other way. A bottom-up phenomenon, a grassroots phenomenon.


Why, I think a better question, if I may, no offense. I think a better question would be, why is narcissism so popular?

Why is narcissism becoming an organizing principle?

Why not, for example, saintlyhood and empathy? Why narcissism?

I can only speculate, of course, but I think we should start with the fact that there are too many of us. There are 8 billion of us, 8.3 billion of us.

So it's becoming more and more difficult to be noticed. More and more difficult to obtain attention.

When you are in a village with 2,000 people, everyone knows you, you know everyone, everyone pays attention to you, you feel seen. You feel seen by people.

When you're in a city of 20 million people, you don't feel seen.

So there is a need to be seen and it becomes compulsive because it's a survival issue. It becomes hysterical. You need to be seen.

So technology comes to the rescue with social media and so on and allows you to be seen, but it's fake, and you know it's fake. Your friends are not friends, your followers are not followers, it's all fake.

It's okay, but it's palliative. It's not a solution.

So then what do you do in order to be truly seen?

Well, you can shoot someone that always works. That's a way of being truly seen. Well, you can shoot someone. That always works. That's a way of being seen.

You can escalate behavior, online and offline.

So people begin to escalate.

Women become more and more naked. Men become more and more aggressive. The rich become more and more rich, ostentatiously, visibly. The poor become more and more poor. The victims become more, everyone becomes more, more victim, more, you know.

So this is escalation.

And I think narcissism is about this.

Narcissism is about, hey, I exist, I'm alive. Pay attention to me. I need someone to notice me.


The problem is the social structures failed in 1980. Not so long ago, 1980, we conducted a study in the United States and we asked people how many best friends you have.

And we defined in the question, in the questionnaire, we defined a best friend is someone you would confide in, you would share a confidence with if you have something horrible happen to.

So how many such people do you have?

And the answer was nine point something. That was 1980.

We conducted the same study in 2020. The answer was 0.9.

From 9, 10, 10 best friends to one best friend. I don't know what is 0.9, probably castrated friend. Not quite sure. I don't know what is 0.9, probably castrated, friend. Not quite sure.

But that's an indicator of how not seen we are. How alienated, how isolated, how atomized, how our world is shrinking socially but also psychologically, it's shrinking, simply shrinking.

We are alone in cells, you know, and so we need to break out. It's like prison. It's prison. You need to break out.

And the way to break out is narcissism. It's a very effective way to break out.

Because it provides you with a set of strategies which guarantee attention and guarantee the accomplishment of goals.

Narcissism is highly antisocial. It's ruthless, callous, and so on. So it's efficacious. It guarantees attention.

And I don't see any other solution. I don't see any other solution.

I think that is what is happening. We are so alone. We are so profoundly existentially alone that we need to break out of this prison cells of loneliness.

And narcissism is the key. That's how I see.

It's the same with the narcissists, a real narcissism.

What is narcissism?

Narcissism is the ultimate loneliness. The narcissist does not recognize the externality of other people.

In the narcissist's world, there are no other people. None. Solipsism. 100% solipsism. No other people. Internal objects to play with.

You know, you play with internal objects, but there's nobody there. No one is out there. Can you imagine how terrifying this is?

So the narcissist attempts to break out of this prison of loneliness by being noticed, by developing shared fantasies, these are desperate attempts to recreate a world that has vanished, has vanished, evaporated because of mother, lack of separation and so.

So we see this on a mega scale, simply on a mega scale.

And people don't have tools to cope with this. We are not built for this. We are not built for these extremes of loneliness. And we don't have the basic capacity to deal with them.

And so we don't know what to do. We are lost. We're disoriented. It's a terrifying period. Terrifying period.

In addition to that, and with that I will finish the answer to this question before we all get much too old.

So in addition to that, and with that I will finish the answer to this question, before we all get much too old. So in addition to that, you have major crisis in roles. The world is organized. The world is organized in a way that you're surrounded by people. Two, ten does a battle, you're surrounded by people, so this social milieu, social cell, and you're playing a role. So with some people you're playing husband, with some people you're playing husband, with some people you're playing father, with some people you're playing. So role playing is very crucial.

If you find yourself all alone, you're unable to play any role. No roles. No roles.

And this is why there are so many debates about roles.

You have, for example, who is a woman, who is a man, what is transgender? Everything is fluid. Everything is fluid because roles are deeply embedded in society. are deeply social things and so today there is a basic disagreement about for example genders gender gender gender is not biology male female is biology man woman is not man woman is a social construct performative construct is a performance and yet if is a social construct, performative construct, it's a performance.

And yet, if you have no one to perform to, then the whole thing crumbles and is open to question. And you have no one to perform to.

For example, 42% of adults in the West are lifelong singles, according to Pew Center, 2019. About, about half of people under age 25 did not have a single sexual encounter in the preceding year. This is a generation that has the least sex in human history, or documented history, the least. These kids have much less sex than I had, and that says a lot. You know? So they don't have the opportunity to exercise roles and scripts, what we call scripts, sexual scripts, social script. There's no opportunity for this. The isolation is beginning to affect their minds. Beginning to, it's really a disaster there. And then you have narcissism. In narcissism, you can be anything you want. It's a fantasy-based defense. You can be anything you want, anywhere you want, you could be superhero, you could be amazingly sexy, you could be anyone. All it takes is a fantasy. So when reality, to very long question summarized, when reality becomes unbearable and intolerable, intolerable, the solution is always fantasy.

And of the fantasies we have at our disposal today, narcissism is the best, the most effications.

Because narcissism, don't forget, is an imitation of religion. It's a religion. It's a religion.

In narcissism, you are the God and you are the worshipper. Narcissism is the first network religion, distributed religion, where we are all gods and worshippers. It has very powerful religious undertones and overtones, but without the need to sacrifice your superiority, because you're also God. So it has everything for everyone. What do you want? Money? Sex, sex, sex. Attention, attention. You want to be a god, be a god. I mean, it's perfect. It's a solution. Excellent.

Meta-vex. Hello?

Hello?

How can people with, not necessarily personality disorder, narcissistic, but with a narcissistic structure or narcissistic style, are they capable of recognizing their false self? And if they do, how do they do that? How do they recognize their false self?

And if I may add one more question, how to get rid of the narcissist in your head and how to get narcissists out of your head, any tricks maybe?

Cyanide?

Yeah, cyanide.

One minute.

People with narcissistic style do not have a false self.

Precisely one of the things that differentiate narcissistic style from narcissistic disorder.

They don't have pathological dynamics, they don't have pathological dynamics, false self. They don't have any of this. They're just obnoxious. They're entitled. They're exploitative. They're envious. They resemble narcissists. Their simulation of narcissists. But they're not narcissists in any sense.

So that was a short one.

The second question is how to get the narcissist out of your head.

There are techniques, there are therapies that deal with introjects, and how to remove introjects.

And on my channel, because we are running out of time, on my channel, there is a playlist, it's titled narcissisticabuse, healing and recovery. And in it, you will find several videos which deal with the removal of introjects. How to remove an intruder.

Yes.

Probably the last question.

You were saying, back to the basics, to the mother and the child, you were saying that a child is internalizing the not present mother, the emptiness.

So my question is, to what extent good enough father can compensate or repair for this lack of identity or emptiness?

Cannot.

As I explained, the father has psychological role that is important, but has nothing to do with issues such as identity formation or all these critical processes in the first three years of life known as the critical period, all these critical processes are exclusively dominated by the mother and again mother could be father, maternal figure.

If however there is a real mother, and she's a dead mother, she's narcissistic, she's absent, she's depressive, and she failed to provide the child with the conditions for the development of a self, functioning self, separation, individuation, the courage to take on the world, realizing that other people exist as separate external entities, etc.

This is the only way to cope with these issues is in therapy.

And even then, it's a long process.

It's a long process.

It's a long process.

Father will not be able to help you.

Not much.

Father is crucial in socialization and skill acquisition.

That is.

I think we ran out of time.

But okay.

One more.

Okay, okay. One more, okay, okay.

I wanted to ask the, or maybe, do I need it or? Where's the paintbrush?

The paintbrush?

Okay, okay.

It's not really a microphone, it's a paintbrush, but we pretend it.

It's a fantasy.

But really the last one, because we need to empty this space.


Talking about fantasies and shared fantasies, we spoke about religion as a shared fantasy, but also you told that pathological narcissism is at the core of most mental diseases.

That's what I heard.

So, yeah.

So in a way, it is in accordance with the ancient teachings, for example, from Buddhism, because in Buddhism actually Buddha recognized the reality of the things and he saw that actually selfishness is at the core of all the diseases in the mental sense.

So since we would like to make this world better in a way and heal it, so how you help the narcissist to heal?

I don't think narcissists can heal.

We need to recognize that some people are beyond healing, and we need to protect ourselves, defend ourselves. Simple as that.

How can you heal a terrorist?

The terrorist is a terrorist. Until they change their mind, you need to make sure that they cannot blow themselves up in the square.

We need to adopt a protective stance, not a utopian stance that maybe we can change or heal or...

There's no healing. Narcissism is the totality of the personality. It's not tuberculosis, it's THE personality.

Take away the narcissism, nothing is left.

So...

Is it really?

Yes. It's not only my view, it is how it is defined in the DSM, for example.

The DSM says that it is an all personality disorders are all pervasive, and they permeate every area in field of functioning and so. So yes, that is the personality.

If you stop to think about it, it affects cognition, it affects emotion, it affects, take away the narcissism. What is left? Nothing is left.

So rather than invest, I think, wasted resources in attempts to cure or heal or change, I don't know what, we need to accept that some people are predators and we need to vow or to make a decision to not be prey.

And I think that's the maxim you can obtain in such a seminar.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for coming.

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