Personality Disordered Couples Can Get Along (Compilation)

Now let's consider two other types of narcissists the somatic narcissists the cerebral narcissists these were first, I was the first to describe these types or subtypes of narcissists in 1995. I gave them the names also. I coined the phrase somatic narcissism and cerebral narcissism.

The somatic narcissist relies on his body and his sexuality as sources of narcissistic supply.

The cerebral narcissist uses his intellect, his intelligence and his professional accomplishments to obtain the same narcissistic supply.

So narcissists are either predominantly cerebral or overwhelmingly somatic.

In other words, narcissists either generate the narcissistic supply by using their bodies or by flaunting their amazing pyrotechnic minds.

The somatic narcissist flashes his sexual conquests, parades his possessions, puts his muscles on ostentatious display, brags about his physical aesthetics or sexual prowess or exploits, and is often a health freak and a hypochondriac.

The cerebral narcissist is a know-it-all, haughty and contemptuous and hyper-intelligent, computer-like person.

The cerebral uses his awesome intellect or knowledge, real or pretended to secure adoration, adulation and admiration.

To the cerebral narcissist, his body and its maintenance are a burden, a distraction, a mere container for his amazing, unprecedented brain.

Both types of narcissists, the somatic and the cerebral, are auto-erotic. They are psychosexually in love with themselves, with their bodies and with their brains. Both types prefer masturbation to adult, mature, interactive, multidimensional, and emotion-laden sex.

The cerebral narcissist is often celibate. Even when he has a girlfriend or a spouse, he avoids or shuns sex to the best of his ability. He prefers pornography and sexual auto-stimulation to the real thing.

The cerebral narcissist is sometimes a latent, hidden, not yet outed, homosexual.

The somatic narcissist, on the other hand, uses other people's bodies to masturbate with.

Sex with the somatic narcissist, pyrotechnics and acrobatics aside, sex is likely to be an impersonal and emotionally alienating and draining experience.

The partner of the somatic narcissist is often treated as an object, an extension, a toy, a warm and pulsating vibrator.

It is a mistake to assume type constancy, though. In other words, all narcissists are both somatic and cerebral.

In each narcissist, one of the types is dominant.

So the narcissistic is either largely cerebral or dominantly somatic, but the other side, the recessive side that is manifested less frequently, this type is there, it is lurking, waiting to erupt.

The narcissist swings between his dominant type and his recessive type which manifests mainly after a major narcissistic injury or life crisis.

The cerebral narcissist brandishes his brain power, exhibits his intellectual achievements, basks in the attention given to his mind and to its products.

He hates his body, he neglects it. The body is a nuisance, a burden, a derided appendix, a decried inconvenience, and a punishment.

The cerebral narcissist is asexual. He rarely has sex, often years apart. He masturbates regularly and very mechanically.

His fantasies are homosexual, or pedophiliac, or tend to objectify his partner, group sex for example.

He stays away from women because he perceives women to be ruthless predators who are out to consume him.

The cerebral narcissist typically goes through a few major life crises. He gets divorced. He goes bankrupt. He does time in prison. He is threatened, harassed and stalked. He is often devalued, betrayed, denigrated and insulted. He is prone to all manner of chronic illnesses.

Invariably, following each life crisis, the somatic narcissist inside the cerebral narcissist, the somatic side of the cerebral narcissist takes over.

The cerebral narcissist suddenly becomes a lascivious lecher, a philanderer.

When this happens, the narcissist maintains a few relationships replete with abundant and addictive sex and these relationships are going simultaneously.

He sometimes participates and initiates group sex and mass orgies. He exercises, he loses weights, he hones his body into an irresistible proposition.

And this outburst of unrestrained primordial lust wanes in a few months, and he settles back into his cerebral ways. No sex, no women, no body.

These total reversals of character stun the cerebral narcissists' mates and intimate partners. His girlfriend or his spouse find it impossible to digest these eerie transformations from a gregarious, darkly handsome, well-built and sexually insatiable person that swept them off their feet, to the bodiless, book-warmish hermit with not an inkling of interest in either sex or other carnal pleasures.

The cerebral narcissist misses his somatic half, but finding a balance is a doomed quest.

The satiric side, with a why, that is the somatic narcissist, this sexually insatiable part that is the somatic narcissist, is forever trapped in the intellectual cage of the cerebral one, in the brain.

And so if both members of the couple are cerebral narcissists, for instance, if both of them are scholars, the resulting competition prevents them from serving as ample sources of narcissistic supply to each other.

Finally, the mutual admiration society crumbles and envy sets in, and then malevolent and vicious attacks on each other.

Consumed by the pursuit of their own narcissistic gratification, two cerebral narcissists or two somatic narcissists have no time or energy or will left to cater to the narcissistic needs of their intimate partners.

Moreover, the partner is perceived as a dangerous and vicious contender for a scarce resource, narcissistic supply and its sources.

This may be less true if the two narcissists work in totally unrelated academic or intellectual fields, but this is a mild amelioration and mitigation.

If the narcissists involved are of the same type, the relationship devolves into acrimony and worse.

But if the narcissists involved are of different types, if one of them is cerebral and one of them is somatic, for example, a long-term relationship based on the mutual provision of narcissistic supply can definitely survive.

Example, if one of the narcissists is somatic, uses his or her body as a source of narcissistic gratification, and the other member of the couple, the intimate partner is cerebral, uses his intellect or his professional achievements as a source. There is nothing to destabilize such a collaboration, nothing to destroy such a relationship. It is even potentially emotionally rewarding.

The relationship between these two narcissists, between a somatic and a cerebral, resembles the one that exists between an artist and his art or a collector in his collection.

This can and does change, of course, as the narcissists involved grow older, labile, and less agile intellectually.

The somatic narcissist is also prone to multiple sexual relationships and encounters. They are intended to support his somatic and sexual self-image.

But these constant dalliances, this constant affairs, this constant cheating, may subject the relationship to fracturing strains.

This is why typically cerebral and somatic narcissists, when they are in a couple, they agree on having an open relationship, an open marriage, polyamory, swinging, or something like that.

And so, all in all, a stable and enduring relationship can and often does develop between dissimilar narcissists, narcissists of different types.

This rule of thumb, opposites attract does not apply to the classic inverted pairing.

Cerebral narcissists tend to pair with inverted cerebral narcissists who can appreciate their intellectual accomplishments and appropriate them as vicariously their own.

Similarly, somatic narcissists bond with their inverted somatic counterparties. Though content to derive her narcissistic supply from the odd reactions to her intimate partner's accomplishments, the inverted narcissist being of the same type, still feels envious and frustrated by her relative obscurity.

So let me recap this for you.

Narcissists of the same type can never survive in a relationship. Cerebral and cerebral, somatic, forget about it.

Narcissists of opposing types, cerebral and somatic, overt and covert, do survive in the long term profitably in a relationship.

Narcissists and inverted narcissists can have a long-term relationship but with growing envy and acrimony because the cerebral narcissists would tend to attract cerebral inverted narcissists and the somatic narcissists would tend to attract inverted somatic narcissists and this would create competition and a lot of envy and a lot of wish to destroy the frustrating object, the intimate partner.

And this is the summary of these bizarre couplings in the Cluster B universe. I hope you had fun and I hope I did not take you too far into hell and back.

Hello Shoshanim. It is not a good morning, so I'm not going to say it.

Civilians have been slaughtered in Israel savagely, and then civilians are being decimated, ruthlessly in Gaza. Both parties are killing each other ferociously and voraciously.

Good morning, it is not.

But life goes on and borderline personality disorder awaits no one.

So today we're going to discuss what happens when a covert borderline falls in love with a borderline personality disordered person.

Both these disorders, borderline personality disorder and covert borderline, which is a variant of borderline personality disorder, both of them are exceedingly complex, possibly the most multi-layered mental illnesses or mental dysfunction ever.

Now imagine putting the two of them together in a pressure cooker, also known as relationship, and witness what's happening.

So today I'm going to divide the video to three parts.

The first part, a mini summary of some of my work on borderline personality disorder, then an overview of borderline personality disorder, especially the alternative model in the text revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Edition 5 published last year.

I couldn't find any of this online, by the way.

And then I'm going to review the clinical features and aspects of covert borderline and compare them to the clinical features and aspects of the borderline, so that we see where the borderline intimate partner pushes the buttons of the covert borderline in a good way or in a bad way.

And what happens, what transpires after the covert borderline has been triggered by his borderline, loved one, girlfriend, spouse, intimate partner.

So this is a complex video, but stay with me because nothing is more interesting than the borderline Disneyland, the borderline landscape.

My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. I am a former visiting professor of psychology. And currently, I'm on the Faculty of CIAPS, Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies.

First of all, I recommend that you watch two videos, a video titled Borderline's partner, some enter healthy, exit mentally ill, and another video titled Borderline Demonizes Partner, Apologizes Narcissist.

And then there is literature in the description. I've listed the 20 most influential thinkers on borderline personality disorder. And definitely the 20 scholars or thinkers who have most influenced my work in borderline personality disorder and I recommend that you chase them down using libraries or scholar.google.com is an academic search engine for academic papers and academic articles. Wonderful. I always use it.

As you can maybe hear, there's a black helicopter hovering above this building, probably sent by Hamas, but I will try, I'll do my best to ignore it.

It seems that wherever we are in the world, and right now I'm not in Israel, I'm in Macedonia, wherever we are in the world, we can't escape the reality, the encroaching reality of conflict, of weaponry, of militarization, of aggression, of violence. This is the world we live in nowadays. It is in essence a borderline narcissistic world. Yes, they've taken over and it's not a conspiracy theory, according to recent studies.

Okay, enough with my political pontification. I hope you can hear me over and above the noise, the unpleasant noise of the rotating chopper.

Start with something that Grotschstein, a famous psychoanalyst, has said, he said, a borderline is a failed narcissist.

Now many of people ask me, where on earth did he say this? We couldn't find it anywhere.

Well, he said it in a personal correspondence with the late Joanne Lachkar.

Joanne Lachkar was the first to write a book about the borderline narcissistic couple. She published it in 1982 and there's a second edition. She died recently. She was a very good and close personal friend. And she shared with me her personal correspondence with Grochstein where he said that a borderline is a failed narcissist but Grouchstein failed to explain completely the mechanism and the dynamic behind this.

What Grouchstein suggested is that a traumatized and abused child attempts to become a narcissist.

Because narcissism is a defense mechanism. It's a compensatory way to kind of block pain, to avoid hurt by pretending to be Godlike.

So the child invents this private religion with a false self, and the false self is everything the child is not the false self is all knowing the false self is all powerful, the false self is invalorable, the false self is perfect and brilliant, the false self is a totally good object, etc. And the child deflects the pain and hurt and trauma at the false self, thus avoiding the consequences of trauma and abuse.

Grotschstein suggested that some children attempt to develop a narcissistic solution to the abuse and trauma, but then they fail. And having failed, they remain stuck in a stage of emotional dysregulation and a lot of pent upshame and hurt and pain. And this is called borderline personality organization.

Okay, I'm going to stop the recording right now because the noise is becoming...

Oh, it went away. You see, magical thinking.

So why the failure? Why do some children fail to become narcissists and remain stuck in the borderline phase?

I have an answer where Grochstein essentially doesn't. My answer is that the child who becomes a narcissist has a dead mother, dead in the metaphorical sense. She's absent. She's depressive. She's selfish. She is manipulative. She's instrumentalizing and parentifying, sometimes pedestalizing and idolizing the child.

At any rate, she breaches the child's boundaries. She doesn't allow the child to separate and individualize because she's not there. She's not emotionally available to the child.

So the child then proceeds to create a parental substitute, the false self, and interact with the false self to the extent that the child merges and fuses with the false self rather than with the unavailable mother. And this way the child becomes a narcissist.

But what happens when the mother is sometimes dead and sometimes alive, sometimes absent, and sometimes present, sometimes negligence, and sometimes protective, sometimes aggressive and criticizing, and sometimes loving and holding and caring, sometimes bad, and sometimes caring, sometimes bad, and sometimes good, sometimes evil, and sometimes righteous, sometimes, in short, black and sometimes white. What happens when the mother provides what we calla hot and cold, intermittent reinforcement?

I call this kind of mother an intermittent mother, not a dead mother, but an intermittent mother. And this kind of intermittent reinforcement allows the child to remain somehow grounded in the relationship with the mother while also developing some narcissistic defenses such as grandiosity.

The child is stuck in a twilight zone, in a no man's land. The child doesn't become a full-fledged narcissist because the child craves the mother, wants to interact with her, loves her, so it doesn't want to go away because mother is sometimes there for the child, sometimes available, sometimes loving. There's no incentive for the child to totally disconnect from the mother.

So this kind of child becomes half narcissists and half borderline. Gradually, there's a failure to develop narcissism because the mother is sufficiently there, sufficiently present, sufficiently caring and loving to prevent the full-fledged emergence of pathological narcissism. And this is how the child becomes borderline.

Now this kind of child is distinct from the narcissist. This kind of child does perceive external objects. The narcissist, you recall, is incapable of perceiving or appreciating the externality of objects, the separateness of objects, because the narcissist, the child turned narcissist is incapable of separating from mummy, of individuating. So the narcissist has no concept of separation.

And so the narcissist doesn't see other people as separate from him, as external to him. He regards everyone as a kind of internal object to be manipulated by the narcissist. And the narcissist continues to interact only inside his mind with this Disneyland of internal objects.

The borderline child is capable of perceiving that other people, also known as objects in psychology, other people do exist and they exist separately. They're not extensions of the child. They're out there. They're objects which are not the child.

And this is because the borderline child does have a mother which is out there, a mother which is sometimes loving and present and holding and containing. This kind of mother allows the child to realize the externality of objects.

So what the child does, it outsources ego functions. It outsources internal processes such as emotional regulation. It also outsources them to external objects. Sometimes the borderline outsources her body to external objects. And this is known as promiscuity.

So when I say her, it's also him. About half of all borderlines nowadays are men and half of all narcissists are women.

Okay. So forget the gender now. Replace them in your mind if you're so inclined.

So the borderline has a huge narcissistic investment in herself. It's a compensation for the times when mother is absent, when mother is negligence, when mother is away, mother is depressive.

Then the child invests, invests, invest emotional energy in herself. This is narcissistic investment.

But on the other hand, the mother is sufficiently there to allow the child to develop what we call object relations.

But this is a very sick kind of object relations. It's outsourcing oneself to an external object.

So while the narcissist gave up on the externality of separate objects because they are bound to frustrate him, to hurt him, to humiliate him, to provoke shame.

Sothe narcissist gives up on external objects. He says, I don't need anyone. I'm self-sufficient because I'm Godlike. I'm omnipotent. I'm omniscient. God doesn't need anyone. And I don't either.

The borderline still maintains some kind of hope and it's not necessarily sick or pathological kind of hope.

She interacts with separate external objects via merger and fusion.

And here is something very interesting.

The narcissist wants other people to become his internal objects. He internalizes, introjects other people, a process that I call snapshotting. And then he coerces these people to conform to the internalized representation in his mind. And this I call coercive snapshotting.

The borderline is different. The borderline wants to become someone's internal object. She wants someone to create with her, to engender with her, a symbiosis. She wants to become one with someone else. She wants to merge and fuse similar to the codependent. And so she wants to become an internal object.

The narcissist is looking for someone he could convert into an internal object and they are a perfect fit.

Now don't forget that covert borderlines are in large part narcissists as well. So the covert borderline is enticed and lured and seduced and tempted by the borderline's willingness to suspend herself as an external object and re-emerge in the covert borderline's mind as an internal object.

Yes, the covert borderline also snapshots and introjects.

So here's a perfect match.

The first point of contact between these two.

The covert borderline comes across a borderline and the borderline tells him, signals to him in a variety of ways, including body language, not necessarily verbally. The borderline signals to him.

I'm willing to yield. I'm willing to submit. I'm willing to enter your mind and never exit because that's a safe space for me. I feel good inside your mind. I feel stable and secure. Please let me enter your mind. Let me convert myself from an external object which is painful for me to an internal object which is held in the womb of your mind. It's going back to the womb as Gantry had observed.

So this match between two victims because remember that narcissists and covert borderlines and borderlines are victims, victims of trauma and abuse in early childhood. They resonate their victimhood, their state of being having been victimized resonates and they dig each other, they glom each other, they understand each other to perfection.

And here the borderline says I'm willing to symbiotically merge with you tobecome one and as one we are going to be godlike because you are godlike. I'm going to be godlike by proxy, and this caters to her grandiosity.

The covert borderline is a child who was first subjected to a dead mother and then to an intermittent but loving mother. And he's trying to recreate this love for the rest of his life.

Let us summarize this part.

The narcissist is a child who has been exposed to a dead mother trauma and abuse inflicted by a mother who was absent, disinterested, selfish, instrumentalizing, parentifying, etc.

The borderline is a child who has been exposed to a mother who engaged in intermittent mothering. She was sometimes there, sometimes not, sometimes loving, sometimes indifferent, etc.

Horton called. Okay, that's why borderlines split.

And the covert borderline is a child who has been exposed initially to a dead mother, but then the dead mother had been supplanted by, replaced by, a real, good, loving mother, or even an intermittent mother.

So the covert borderline retains the experience of having been loved and craves this experience.

I would say that covert borderlines are love addicts. They are addicted to a fantasy of ideal, all-encompassing, all-engulfing, all-pervasive love that consumes them.

And they want them to embed this love, to rigidify it, to code it into a relationship, a marriage.

And they regard children as the ultimate reification, manifestation, and expression of ideal love, because children are innocent, children are malleable, children are open to learning and evolution and growth and development.

And so for them, children are the perfect conduit of love.

And now, a very important point.

There is a suggested diagnosis, bandied about, it's called shy or quiet borderline.

Let's start by stating that there is no such thing.

All borderlines, all people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, sometimes act out, they misbehave, they lose themselves, they do crazy making things, and sometimes act in, they become self-destructive and self-defeating and depressive.

All borderlines are therefore sometimes shy and quiet and sometimes classical and aggressive.

So there's no need for a separate diagnosis.

However, it is a useful idea, unfortunately miscast as a diagnosis, but it's a useful idea because the covert borderline, for example, is attracted mightily to the shy or quiet aspects of the borderline, while the narcissist is attracted to the aggressive in your face, defiant, antisocial aspects of the borderline.

So the narcissist would be attracted to a borderline which is externalizing aggression, which is flamboyant, which is defiant, reckless, contumacious, and a bit psychopathic, factor two psychopathy.

While the covert borderline would be attracted to a borderline which is a bit withdrawn, a recluse, introverted, shy, quiet, self-defeating, self-destructive.

So the narcissist with one type of borderline and the covert borderline with another type of borderline.

Now the borderline has, exactly like the narcissist, has an anaclyticobject choice.

In other words, she chooses mates, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends. She chooses intimate partners who are reminiscent of parental figures, mainly mother, but also father.

So the borderline is primed to respond totally to the narcissist fantasy of a maternal figure. And also she is primed to provide the covert borderline with a fulfillment of his wish to team up as a parental figure with someone actually, not only with a borderline.

So the narcissist wants to infantilize, wants to regress, the narcissist wants to become a child, the covert borderline wants to become a father, or more precisely, a mother.

And that's why the covert borderline and the narcissist perfectly fit with the borderline, because the borderline has anaclytic object choice. He chooses exclusively, almost, intimate partners who represent, stand in for her mother or father.

The narcissist's fantasy is to be loved by a mother figure. The covert borderline's fantasy is ideal love expressed through his children with him as a parental, educating, edifying figure, a figure that induces change, transformation, growth and development in his partner.

And the borderline's fantasy is to be regulated externally via an intimate partner who would serve as a parental figure, who would constitute a secure base, a special friend, a rock.

So they all fit perfectly like locks and keys, substrates and reagents. The fit is perfect. There's not daylight between these types the borderline either caters to the narcissist need to be a child or caters to the covert borderlines need to be a father and in all these types of relationships she is engaging in parental role play.

And I have a video dedicated to role theory in conjunction with everything I've just said.

But it goes deeper than that.

And I have to provide you with this clinical background for you to understand the super complex, hyper complex relationship between covert borderline and borderline. It's not easily explained.

Okay, so let's continue with the clinical landscape.

Borderline personality disorder. The borderline suffers from persecutory delusions, paranoid ideation. It is the borderline's way to extricate herself from engulfment.

Remember that borderlines have twin anxieties, not one, but two.

The overwhelming fear is separation insecurity. The borderline is terrified, terrified of being rejected or being abandoned.

But at the same time, the borderline dreads intimacy because she feels suffocated. She feels engulfed. She feels enmeshed.

And this is the second anxiety. Engulfment anxiety.

And so she develops paranoid ideation or persecutory delusions. And the persecutory dynamic allows her to separate from her partner.

Because if she suspects her partner or something, if she's paranoid about her partner, she could easily let go of the partner.

And this is approach avoidance, repetition, compulsion.

She approaches the partner. She's terrified of being abandoned by the partner because he fulfills the parental roles that she needs.

And then she feels suffocated she feels that she's dying and she needs to run away so the way to run away by the way running away doesn't have to be physical it could be emotional withdrawal it could be avoidance within an existing relation so running away is facilitated via paranoid ideation she suddenly begins to regard her intimate partner as a kind of enemy I hate you don't leave me

This persecutory dynamic can go both ways it's either autoplastic or alloplastic.

And then the borderline tells herself, I'm really evil. I'm a bad object. I'm an abuser.

Or it could be alloplastic. I'm a victim.

This is different to the narcissists.

The narcissist reaction is always alloplastic. I'm a victim. I've been set up. I am not guilty. I've done nothing wrong, etc.

When you hear someone saying all these things, that's a narcissist. These are alloplastic defenses.

The borderline, however, is a mixture of autoplastic and alloplastic defenses.

The borderline, however, is a mixture of autoplastic and alloplastic defenses because she is capable of negative emotions which are autoplastic, such as shame or feeling guilty, of feeling blameworthy or responsible. This sets the borderline apart from the narcissist.

And so when the borderline needs to run away because she feels engulfed, she feels enmeshed, she feels that she's being consumed and subsumed by her partner, she would then develop paranoid ideation about the partner and accuse him of victimizing her or accuse herself of victimizing her partner.

Now, when there is a failure of defense, when the borderline cannot convert her partner, the idealized object in her mind, cannot convert her intimate partner to a persecutory object.

In other words, when she cannot lie to herself that her loving intimate partner is actually an enemy, because there's too much reality out there, too much information to the contrary. The data contradict this kind of conversion or transformation. The partner is really loving, really caring, really there for her, always.

So there's no way to convert the partner into an enemy, and this is a problem because she then cannot regard herself as a victim and the only thing that's left for her is to say something is wrong with me I am damaged I'm broken I'm a bad object I'm an abuser and this is a dissonance this is egodystony, and it leads her then, ironically, to decompensate, she falls apart as a bad object.

She can't tolerate this. She can't, it's unbearable for her to see herself as she really is abusive, for example.

So she falls apart, this is decompensation. Her defenses are disabled and she acts out psychopathically, ironically, often against the intimate partner in order to remove him as a source of frustration, self-examination, self-doubt and the pain of self-awareness and introspection.

Borderline, therefore, legitimizes forbidden, repressed introjects. She resonates with pathological parts in her intimate partner, and she becomes a vector of contagion.

Again, my late lamented, very good personal friend, John Lachkar, suggested that borderlines and narcissists, and covert borderline is a form of narcissists. Borderlines and narcissists experience their shadows through their partners.

She said that the archaic wounds, Freudian term, the archaic wounds of these two resonate. Later she called it v-spots, vulnerability spots.

So the same process is happening here. The borderline kind of dumpsforbidden, shameful, repressed introjects on the partner, and this is known as projective identification.

She tries to compel the partner to behave in a way that would render her an all good object and the partner is trying to do the same and so they infect each other they kind of transfer to each other the parts in themselves that they regard as deplorable, that they reject, they consider shameful. They don't want these parts in themselves. And so they hand these parts over to the partner.

They say to the partner, please take these parts away from me. Please take these traits, these misbehaviors, these weaknesses, these shortcomings away from me because I'm ashamed of them. Please make them your own so that I can then feel that I'm all good and you are all bad.

It's a form of splitting, of course. The borderline splits herself in this process because she hands over critical parts of her mentality, of her psychology, of her psyche, her psyche, she hands them over to her intimate partner.

This is the outsourcing. The borderline actually considers herself a bad object externally, but not internally.

She says, I'm a good person inside. I'm just misbehaving.

My misbehavior, which is bad, which is not okay, I shouldn't have done it, I feel guilty, I feel ashamed, my misbehavior is not indicative of who I truly am, and who I truly am is a good object, an all good object, perfectly good object.

This is grandiosity combined with splitting. And the narcissist is exactly the opposite.

The narcissist considers himself a bad object internally, but a very good person externally, behaviorally.

So narcissists would deny that he misbehaves. He would say, everything I did, I did for good reason and for the good of others. I'm a benevolent person. I'm a good person.

Yeah, but inside, I feel bad. I feel evil. I feel an imposter. I feel unworthy, I feel ugly, I feel stupid.

So this is the symmetry, this is the mirroring between borderline and narcissists and borderline and covert borderline.

The borderline says, I'm all good inside, all bad outside. And the narcissist and covert borderline say, I'm all bad inside, I'm all good outside.

In other words, the covert borderline says, I am trying to overcome my bad object by doing good things. I may be mentally ill, I may be mentally dysfunctional, I may be problematic, I may be less than ideal, but my actions speak louder and they compensate for all these deficiencies.

While the borderline says exactly the opposite I'm a good soul trapped in an evil body please take me away from me, take the good object and nurture it. She says to the covert borderline, she says to the narcissist, take my good object, see me, I want to be seen as I am, and what I am is a good object.

So the borderline is the mirror image of the narcissist. She has introject inconstancy. She has severe difficulties to maintain internal representations of other people in her life.

Now internal representations have nothing to do with emotions. Don't confuse the two.

For example, the borderline can be jealous of her intimate partner even when he is not present. And she can pine for an intimate partner who has rejected her and abandoned her, discarded her. She can spend years pining for him, longing for him, missing him.

Andso that is not an introject, these are emotions, and actually these emotions have nothing to do with the intimate partner, they are forms of self-pity, they are self-referential emotions.

The introject representing the intimate partner in her mind is not stable, is not constant.

Many borderlines have severe difficulty to imagine the faces of loved ones having been out of touch for a while. Many borderline lives behave as if loved ones don't exist when they are out of sight, out of mind.

So this is what I termed introject inconstancy.

While the narcissist has object inconstancy, he has very stable, rigid introjects of other people, representing other people, but he's not able to interact with these other people outside, externally in reality, so that he has no objects.

The borderline has few stable introjects. The narcissist has few stable objects.

And again, they fit each other perfectly, as you can see.

The borderline can provide the covert borderline or the narcissist with a constant object because she's clinging, she's needy, she's always there, she never lets go. So she provides the covert borderline and the narcissist with a constant object.

While the narcissist can provide the borderline and the covert borderline can provide the borderline with a constant interject which is safe and secure and parental, sometimes paternal and loving.

Again, there's a perfect match. The borderline encourages the narcissist to interact exclusively with his internal objects because she doesn't want him to realize that she is an external bad object.

In other words, you remember the borderline considers her externality, her behavior, her presence to be bad. And she doesn't want someone, she doesn't want an intimate partner who would notice, who would discover how bad she is. She doesn't want to be exposed.

So the narcissists is perfect because he idealizes her in his mind and then he continues to interact with the idealized introject, with the idealized internal object in his mind, not with her.

So no matter what she does to the narcissist, he will continue to love her as an idealized object.

The borderline considers herself bad and flawed. She says, if my intimate partner gets too close to me, he will abandon me. If he finds out the truth about me, he will run away. Better that he should live in a fantasy of me.

The idealized introject or internal object, this is true for the covert borderline as well. Everything I'm saying right now applies to both.

And narcissists and the covert borderline is remember when the covert borderline interacts with the borderline she triggers in him his narcissistic side. The covert borderline is a hybrid between narcissists and borderline.

The borderline incentivizes and reinforces the covert borderline's pathological fantasy defense and the narcissist. She feeds the covert borderline or the narcissist with drama and with conflicts to keep him busy and distracted as he desperately attempts to realign, reframe and redefine his internal objects.

The borderline pushes the narcissist to become psychotic, while the narcissist pushes the borderline to become a psychopath.

Now that's not a very appetizing dynamic, I agree.

The borderline requires object constancy. She pushes all her partners to develop introject constancy. She's too painful a partner to develop introject consistency. She is too painful as an external object in any case, so they all prefer to interact with a representation of her, which is ideal and loving and caring and cutie pie and so on.

Interacting with a borderline external object requires high effort coping.

To ensure object constancy, the borderline needs to freeze the partner, to avoid any change in dynamic, this way provoking the partner's engulfment anxiety and avoidant behaviors.

I'm talking about partners with insecure attachment styles.

So some partners react with narcissistic defenses and interject anxiety and so on and so forth.

The third part is the interaction between the covert borderline and the borderline pathology, before we go to the third part, the third part is the interaction between the covert borderline and the borderline in much greater detail.

So I will start by simply reading to you the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-4, which are far inferior to the alternative model in the text revision of the fifth edition of the DSM.

Start with the fourth edition of the DSM.

Borderline personality disorder is defined there as a pervasive pattern of instability of interpersonal relationships, self-image and effects, marked impulsivity, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five or more of the following diagnostic criteria.

Number one, frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment. This does not include suicidal or self-mutilating behaviors, which are covered in 0.5.

Criterion 2, a pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships, characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and evaluation.

Number three, identity disturbance, markedly and persistently unstable self-image of or sense of self.

Number four, impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging. Spending, sex, substance abuse, reckless driving, binge-eating.

And again, this does not include suicidal or self-mutilating behavior we are coming to.

Criterion number 5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.

Number six, affective instability due to marked reactivity of mood. It's also known as mood lability. Intense episodic dysphoria, irritability or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days.

Number seven, chronic feelings of emptiness.

Number eight, inappropriate intense anger or difficulty, controlling anger, frequent displays of temper, constant anger, recurrent physical fights. This all comes from the empty schizoid core mentioned in Criterion 7.

Number 9. Transient stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

This is the shopping list or the grocery list of diagnostic criteria which capture a few facets of borderline personality disorder and are exceedingly inadequate.

I am now going to read to you a much better this rendition, diagnostic rendition of borderline personality disorder, known as the alternative model to be found in the appendices of the text revision of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, regrettably, because it should have replaced the DSM4 text. And the only reason it didn't is pressure by the insurance of pharmaceutical industries.

So here is the real picture of borderline personality disorder, or the picture that transcends symptoms only.

Remember this picture when we reach a third part of this video, and I begin to discuss the interaction with covert borderline.

So pay attention now.

Alternative model for borderline personality disorder. This is also known as a dimensional model instead of a categorical model in addition four.

Moderate or greater impairment in personality functioning, manifested by characteristic difficulties in two or more of the following four areas.

Number one, identity. Identity in borderline is markedly impoverished, poorly developed or unstable self-image, often associated with excessive self-criticism, chronic feelings of emptiness, dissociative states under stress.

Number two, self-direction, instability in goals, aspirations, values or career plans.

Number three, empathy, a compromised ability to recognize the feelings and needs of others associated with interpersonal hypersensitivity, hypervigilance. The borderline is prone to feel slighted or insulted. Perceptions of others selectively biased toward negative attributes and unrelatability.

It's the first time there's an admission that there is a deficiency or deficit in empathy, also in borderline personality disorder.

Number four, intimacy, intense, unstable and conflicted close relationships, marked by mistrust, neediness, and anxious preoccupation with real or imagined abandonment. Close relationships often viewed in extremes of idealization and devaluation and alternating between over-involvement and withdrawal, approach avoidance, repetition compulsive.

B, four or more of the following 7 pathological personality traits, at least one of which must be 5 impulsivity, 6 risk-taking or 7 hostility.

1. Emotional ability, an aspect of negative affectivity, unstable emotional experiences, and frequent mood changes, emotions that are easily aroused, intense, and or out of proportion to events and circumstances.

Number two, anxiousness, again an aspect of negative affectivity, intense feelings of nervousness, tenseness or panic, often in reaction to interpersonal stresses. Worry about the negative effects of past unpleasant experiences and future negative possibilities. Feeling fearful, apprehensive or threatened by uncertainty. Fears of falling apart or of losing control.

Number three, separation insecurity, also known as abandonment anxiety. An aspect of negative affectivity.

Fears of rejection by and or separation from significant others associated with fears of excessive dependency and a complete loss of autonomy and government anxiety.

Number four, depressiveity, an aspect of negative affectivity, frequent feelings of being down miserable and hopeless difficulty recovering from such moods, pessimism about the future, pervasive shame, feelings of inferior self-worth, thoughts of suicide and suicidal behavior.

Number five, impulsivity, an aspect of disinhibition, acting on the spur of the moment in response to immediate stimuli, acting on a momentary basis without a plan or consideration of outcomes, problems in impulse control, difficulty establishing or following plans, a sense of urgency and self-harming behavior under emotional distress.

Number six, risk-taking, an aspect of disinhibition, engagement in dangerous, risky and potentially self-damaging activities, unnecessarily and without regard to consequences. A lack of concern for one's limitations and denial of the reality of personal danger.

This is the antisocial dimension aspect of borderline which is now being conceived as factor two psychopathy. Under stress, the borderline is a self-state which is psychopathic.

Okay, hostility, an aspect of antagonism, persistent or frequent angry feelings, anger or irritability in response to minor slights and insults.

Now, some of these elements, some of these diagnostic elements exist in the covert borderline.

Covert borderline is a hybrid to narcissists and borderline, but the covert borderline is substantially different to the classic borderline, to the shy borderline. It's substantially different.

It's substantially different because of the impacts of the narcissistic part. It's a hybrid, which essentially is a very high functioning type of borderline.

So let us delve right into the clinical picture of the covert borderline and how classical borderlines and shy, quiet borderlines affect the covert borderline with regards to each and every one of these.

Firstthis.

First of all, the covert borderline is grandiose, the classical borderline is grandiose, and this creates a lot of friction and antagonism and competition, competitive grandiosity.

The shy or quiet borderline, and again to remind you that's not a diagnosis, it's a borderline who is introverted and would tend to self-aggress, who tend to act in rather than act out, but she also is capable of acting out. There's not pure shy or quiet borderline. That is the nonsense of the suggested diagnosis.

The shy or quiet borderline is very similar to the covert narcissists. She would suppress her grandiosity. It will not be overt. It would lead to a lot of seething, envy, a feeling of having been discriminated against, injustice, and so on, but she will not externalize the grandiosity. Definitely, she will not compete head-on with the covert borderline.

So the shy, quiet borderline is a match for the covert borderline in this sense.

Now, covert borderline is preoccupied with fantasies of outstanding ideal love. It is a love that is so special that it renders the covert borderline special.

The covert borderline sense of uniqueness relies on ideal love. The narcissistic sense of uniqueness relies on narcissistic supply, on being recognized as special, as outstanding, as amazing, and unprecedented, not so the covert borderline.

The covert borderline sense of uniqueness is, for example, if he's a good father, or an amazing husband, or both.

So ideal love is a foundation, or the search for ideal love, which doesn't exist, of course. It's a fantasy defense. It's the foundation of covert borderline. Makes him feel unique. Makes him feel entitled because if he's such a great father and a good husband, is entitled to, for example, appreciation and admiration.

And even facilitates his alloplastic defenses because his preoccupation with ideal love, with the perfect family, with amazing children, and his unbelievable parental functioning, this allows him alloplastic defenses.

He can say, I'm a good object. Look how good I am. So if something bad happens to me, it's someone else's fault. I'm a victim, in short.

So here, again, there's a perfect match with both types of borderline. It's the borderline initially, the first few hours, the first few days, the first few weeks, if she's really high functioning, the first few months or the few years of the relationship, will broadcast to the covert borderline.

Your search for ideal love is my search also. I am also looking for a perfect family and as you wish to be a perfect father, I wish to be a perfect mother or vice versa.

So she mirrors the covert borderline. She deceives the covert borderline effectively into believing that she shares this fantasy, that she is also fully dedicated and committed and addicted to the family as the ultimate environment. Love as the supreme ideal goal.

And then the covert borderline says, oh my God, I found my, I don't know, saw my twin flame, whatever. I can't let her go. I can't let her go.

And the covert borderline becomes very controlling. It's a reflection of separation insecurity or abandonment anxiety and it is the outcome of idealizing the borderline.

Covert borderline tells himself, this is my perfect match. There's only one in the whole world. If I let her go, I'm doomed to loneliness. And I will never realize my fantasy or an ideal love within a perfect family with the most loving children.

So he becomes very controlling, micromanaging, super, super interested in critically and analytically decomposing, deconstructing, breaking apart the psychology of his partner.

He unconsciously perceives this as a guarantee or insurance policy against abandonment separation and rejection or cheating being cheated on.

The more I understand my partner, the better the match, the glue that holds us together, and the more exclusive I shall become.

The covert borderlineis an internal locus of control. He is self-sufficient. So he is not needy. He is not clinging.

But he is authoritative, controlling, hyper-analytical. And this triggers the engulfment anxiety of the borderline, the classic borderline. And she runs away from him. She does exactly. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Covert borderline's behavior pushes away the borderline until she bolts and vanishes into the horizon because she feels suffocated she feels subsumed and consumed by the covert borderline and she doesn't want that.

And while with the narcissist it's only imaginary with the covert borderline it's real and so the classic borderline will not survive the shy or quiet borderline on the other hand is very similar to the narcissist in the sense that she doesn't inhabit an external space.

In short, it's like water off the back of a duck. She doesn't pay attention to the covert borderline. She doesn't really care what the covert borderline does or doesn't do his choices, decisions. She doesn't even listen to the covert borderline in any meaningful way.

She adopts herself, she shapeshifts, she's like Zeleg in a Woody Allen's movie. She becomes what the covert borderline wants her to be. She's malleable, she's submissive.

One could say that a shy or quiet borderline also has strong components or elements of a codependent. So she would play along, it's a role play. She would fit into the theatre production of the covert borderline much better than the classical borderline.

She would feel engulfed but then she would act in, she would become morose, she would possibly self-mutilate, maybe try to commit suicide. She would be very sad all the time. Her energy levels will go down. She'll begin to abuse substances and so on.

Next, the covert borderline is also subject to lability, emotional dysregulation.

But what he does, the covert borderline, he imposes on this lability and on this dysregulation, he imposes on it his intellect and his antisocial features.

Because the covert borderline is partly a narcissist, he has strong a kind of psychopathic self-state, antisocial traits.

And these antisocial traits are defiance, recklessness, reactance, in your face, contumaciousness, kind of posture, cage fighter posture.

And so this posture coupled with grandiosity and coupled with the covert borderlines typicallysharp, overwhelming intellect. These are major defenses against dysregulation and against lability.

So when you observe the covert borderline, it's very difficult to reach the conclusion that he is labile or that he is emotionally dysregulated, except after very extreme crisis, when it's clear that he's depressed or you know but otherwise he appears to be totally normal and definitely a stark contrast to the classical borderline or even the shy or quiet borderline and this is exactly what attracts borderlines of all types to the covert borderline.

This apparent ability to control lability and dysregulations.

Like he found the magic key, the magic formula, the spell, the solution to their internal turmoil and tumult and chaos. They hope to somehow that he somehow will be able to regulate them.

And this is called external regulation. They want him to regulate them. They want him to stabilize them. His borderline partners. They outsource regulation to him.

He becomes a rock, a secure base, a special friend, somewhere a refuge, a sanctuary. And this binds them and bonds them to the covert borderline.

Incredibly. They are very loath to give up on it.

And so when they run away, they feel very guilty and very ashamed and very angry at themselves. They become very self-destructive and self-defeating. And they come back or they attempt to come back they attempt to hoover the covert borderline very frequently.

Remember that the covertborderline exactly like the psychopath has a low boredom threshold, low tolerance for boredom. He needs intellectual stimulation or other types of stimulation, sexual stimulation. He needs stimulation all the time or he gets extremely bored and then he gets frustrated and then he externalizes aggression.

So the covert borderline is not self-mutilated, is not suicidal, he has no suicidal ideation, but he can and does become very often, or sometimes, depending on the character, aggressive, even violent.

Now, these clashes head-on with the classical borderlines acting out. This is exactly what happens to the classical borderline. She becomes aggressive and violent as well sometimes. And then there are God Almighty battles and fights and conflicts, breaking objects, hurting each other physically, beating, I mean, terrible.

This never happens with the shy or the quiet borderline. The shy and quiet borderline provides the covert borderline with everything he needs, but without the costs associated with a classical borderline.

The quiet or shy borderline, when exposed to the covert borderline's aggression, would exercise, it would trigger in her autoplastic defenses. She would say, I provoked him, I did something wrong to him. I victimized him. I abused him. And then she would punish herself. She's very self-punitive. She would direct his aggression. She would absorb it. And her aggression as a bad object, she would self-directed and become depressive or suicidal or something.

So on the one hand, exuberant Hamas Israeli fights are not likely between a covert borderline and a shy borderline, but on the other hand the risk of suicide self-mutilation depression in the shy quiet borderline is much higher and that's the price the covert borderline pays for being with her.

The covert borderline cannot help himself. He does engage in addictive behavior. So sometimes the covert borderline cannot help himself. He doesn't self-mutilate. He does engage in addictive behavior.

So sometimes the covert borderline is a shy borderline, or even the covert borderline and the classical borderline, find common ground in abusing substances. It becomes a ritual. It structures their lives and give the common life meaning. It's like they've established a diet or a partnership for abusing substances. Or for other types of addiction, like sex addiction.

And the addiction becomes an exoskeleton. The addiction structures a day, provides purpose and direction and meaning and so on and the addiction becomes the shared fantasy of the covert borderline and the borderline or even the shy borderline. This often happens.

But apart from this, a borderline would react very badly to the covert borderlines aggression and the aggression doesn't have to be physical of course could be verbal being overcritical is a form of aggression a biting dark sense of humor is a form of aggression, analyzing constantly the other parties deficiencies and shortcomings and defects and mental problems, it's a form of aggression, of course, it's externalized aggression.

Now both of them, the covert borderline and the borderline classical or shy, all these types, narcissists as well, they all experience dissociative self-states, in the case of the covert borderline, usually selective attention, confabulation, repression, denial.

There's a primary psychopathic protector in the covert borderline which comes out when the covert borderline dissociates and it's the same with with the borderline but the borderline dissociates differently she experiences amnesia derealization de-personalization. And this, of course, is a different type of dissociation, which is much more visible and much more deep and profound.

So while the covert borderline's dissociation is passing and transitory and not very serious, similar, let's say, to the narcissists dissociation. And confabulation solves the problem.

With a borderline, both classical and shy, the dissociation is much more extreme and severe. So the borderline, intimate partner of the covert borderline often uses dissociation as a defense against the overwhelming, domineering, micromanaging, controlling presence of the covert borderline.

And the covert borderline perceives suicidal ideation, attempted suicide, self-mutilation, and dissociation. It perceives them as insults, as a form of criticism, it's narcissistic injury, even mortification, because here he is the ideal partner offering ideal love, unblemished and perfect love, trying to establish a family or a couple which is beyond reproach and then creating together life.

Here he is offering this perfect package and the other party, the borderline, attempts to commit suicide. How humiliating this is. She self-mutilate. She's not happy, she's depressed.

So the covert borderline perceives the borderline's mood lability and emotional dysregulation, of course suicidal ideation, suicidal attempts, self-mutilation, episodes, as criticism of his capacity to attain and to maintain ideal love and a perfect relationship.

And this is for him devastating. This is a destruction of the fantasy foundation of his existence.

When the covert borderline is exposed to the dynamics of the borderline, shy or not, he feels devastated. He feels that he would never be able to recover. It challenges most profoundly his sense of self-worth, his sense of self-efficacy, his ability to trust himself. His optimism and hope about the futuredestroys everything.

And then he develops paranoid ideation. He begins to suspect the borderline partner in a variety of ways. Primitive ways, like she's cheating on me, and much more subtle ways. She's playing with my mind.

But there's paranoid ideation there. He's attempting to convert her into a persecutory object, into an enemy, which is what all borderlines do.

So covert borderline is a borderline. It's a typical borderline reaction.

And then having been broken and damaged by the borderline partner, usually the covert borderline will exit a long-term fantasy-based loving relationship with a borderline partner and would become essentially a psychopathic narcissist with promiscuous shallow relationships, numerous relationships.

It's an interim phase until his need for ideal love will re-emerge and reassert itself, and he would go on another route.

The borderline, the covert borderline, has an intense need to be loved by other people, to the point that he becomes a people-pleaser.

But he has a lack of real empathy, especially in the psychopathic phase. He values his children above his partner which introduces extreme difficulties into a couple.

So the covert borderline is unable to maintain healthy long-term relationships unless and until he secures a totally submissive, co-dependent partner who is also a borderline, and preferably a shy or quiet borderline.

So the ideal partner for covert borderline is someone who has dependent personality disorder, also known colloquially as codependency, coupled with borderline personality disorder of the shy or quiet variant where mostly she acts in rather than acts out she is able to accept that most of his love will be vested, his cathexis would be vested in his children rather than her.

All borderlines, including the covert borderline, can become passive-aggressive, sullen, surly, sub-denying. All of them are capable of cunning and premeditation. That's straight smart.

The classical borderline is capable of malevolence and malice, which is frequently vindictive, and this is something the covert borderline never takes into account.

He's always shocked when the secondary psychopathy of the classical borderline manifest itself. He's devastated by her malice, by her ill intentions.

He says to himself, I would have never believed it on her. I would have never expected it of her.

And here she is attempting to destroy him, to ruin him or his reputation, to take him down, to kill him in a variety of ways. I mean, it's bad.

When a classical borderline is triggered, it could be bad. When a covert borderline is triggered, it's never that bad, ever. It's a passing phase. It can get angry, can get disregulated, can get aggressive or violent, but it gets it out of his sister. And he's again his old self, not so the borderline, she can remain fixated, for example, on a revenge fantasy.

And this is a huge risk that the covert borderline is taking when he teams up with borderlines, even shy and quiet borderlines. In some ways the shy and quiet borderline is even more dangerous because she's passive-aggressive, you don't see it coming. Very similar to the covert narcissist.

Now, in a desperate attempt to somehow regulate the mood labil moods and the dysregulated emotions of the borderline in his life, and the covert borderline loves her dearly. He's really emotionally invested in her. He's really into her. He really merges and fuses with her. There's a symbiosis there, unhealthy symbiosis.

So in the desperate attempt to somehow manage the moods, most covert borderlines devolve into intermittent reinforcement, hot and cold, hate and love, ambivalence, and so and so forth. They use it as a management tool, somehow coping strategy in the relationship.

Of course it has extremely devastating, extremely destabilizing effects on the borderline because it takes away her sense of safety and stability. She suddenly can't trust the covert borderline to be her secure base. He's not a rock. He doesn't forgive her everything she does. He doesn't accept her unconditionally and he doesn't love her unconditionally. He's not like a mother. He's a bad mother. He's a dead mother.

And the dynamics starts, the covert borderline cannot tolerate fools, nonsense, is very sharp intellectually, has scorn and contempt for most people but disguises it sometimes with pseudo humility, false modesty. It's a bad recipe when it comes to the borderline because the borderline is grandiose as well and she's exactly like this, she's a mirror image of the covert borderline. So they end up clashing over this.

And in this case, a very strange transmutation takes place.

When there is a clash of grandiosities, I'm more intelligent than you, no, I am, I'm more this, you are more that, I'm less this, you are, etc. When there's constant comparison of relative advantages and disadvantages and so on and so forth, very often covert borderlines develop histrionic attention seeking. They become histrionic attention seeking. They become histrionic.

Now if the covert borderline has been mostly cerebral, the narcissistic part has been mostly cerebral, the narcissistic part suddenly becomes somatic. So there is a lot of histrionic attention seeking, hyper emotional behavior. It is as if the covert borderline is trying to out borderline his borderline partner. He says, anything you can do, I can do better. Annie Oakley, anything you can do I can do better. You disregulate, I can disregulate better. You are labile, I can be more labile than you. You're crazy, more crazy than you. You know?

So he devolves into histrionic behavior. And the more the borderline pushes his buttons, the more she leverages his vulnerabilities, the more she pierces or invades him through the chinks in his narcissistic armor, the more histrionic he becomes.

And his histrionics become ostentatious. He shares them with many people because he's a narcissist. The covert borderline is a narcissist also. So he wants other people to confirm to him that he is not hallucinating, he's not delusional, it's all true, it's real. So this public histrionic attention seeking, coupled with recklessness, a lot of recklessness.

It finally becomes sadistic or punitive in a way, and then it is a form of disengaging from the partner. So the sadism, the punitive aspect is first directed at the partner and then redirected at the self.

And the covert borderline begins to develop or rediscover the original bad object. You remember that the covert borderline is someone who in childhood had a bad object, then spent an entire lifetime creating a compensatory good object.

The borderline destroys the good object and puts the covert borderline in touch with his bed object, which is a reservoir of shame, and that pushes the covert borderline to become sadistic and punitive towards her and later on towards himself.

So there is a classic cycle of idealization, devaluation, discard and replacement.

In an attempt to get rid of the borderline partner, shy or quiet borderline, the cycle would be much more prolonged, but the same. Essentially the same.

So the best the covert borderline can hope forif he finds a partner, who is codependent and borderline, shy borderline, is a period of a few years or maybe longer, in which they both inhabit and reside in a shared fantasy of ideal love and work towards realizing it, even having children together.

In the social functioning area, you remember that the covert borderline is exactly like the narcissist, socially charming, charismatic, because he's a hard worker, unlike the narcissist who is lazy, the borderline is seriously into his work. He's a hard worker because he is seeking admiration, recognition, attention, and so on.

So this is known as pseudo-sublimation, but he still works hard. He has a work ethic. He has intense ambition, and he's often very successful.

But he's also preoccupied with appearances, so he's a lot into impression management. Anything from the way he dresses to the way he talks, to who he's seen with, and so on so forth.

And so, this requires the covert borderline to find an intimate partner which can enhance his status.

So he is very much into trophies, trophy wives, trophy spouses, trophy girlfriends, trophy.

So he would emphasize, for example, the professional accomplishments of his intimate partner, or how young she is attracted to him, or how amazingly sexy or sexual she is in bed, or how unusual she is in some way, her biography, he would idealize her, he would idealize her but he would idealize her in public as a form of bragging this process is known as co-idealization look how my beautiful my wife is look how intelligent she's look how accomplishes look how we what a young girlfriend I have and this is a way of broadcasting or signaling that the covert borderline's grandiosity is fully justified.

The covert borderline is either morally indifferent or morally rigid, but then the morality is the covert borderline's morality, not the accepted social mores and so on.

So he has a very rigid moral code, of his own making, or is indifferent, or is a faker. It's pretending to be a spiritual kind of person, a guru, and so on so forth.

All types are irreverent towards authority. Narcissist types reject authority because they are their own authority they set the law they are Moses but there's no God they write their own they offer their own ten commandments and this is again an area with a potential conflict with a borderline.

The borderline is morally relativistic and she is morally relativistic because she has identity disturbance.

I've tried to explain this. The classic borderline and the shy and quiet borderline, they have no identity because they are dissociative, they have no memories, for a variety of reasons which I deal with in other videos, they have no stable identity.

So tomorrow, today they have one set of values and tomorrow they have a set of values which diametrically contradicts the first set of values.

Today they're against cheating. Tomorrow they're all for cheating. Today they are against something and tomorrow they're all four that's something. Today they're vegetarian. Tomorrow they are carnivorous.

There's not stability. It's known as identity disturbance or diffusion.

So it makes it very difficult for the morally rigid covert borderline. The morally rigid covert borderline is very much into contracts, agreements, the stability that is afforded by social consensus or consensus with the intimate partner.

The covert borderline is trying to afford the borderline safety and stability to become a secure base by clarifying and announcing and promulgating the rules of the game.

These are my conditions. These are my rules.

The borderline is incapable of observing these rules, not because she is a bad person, but because she's infantile and because her defenses trigger her and because she has no identity.

The covert borderline is negotiating with a child and with a child whose identity is not formed and who is in flux. Same goes to the narcissist by the way.

So this is a really bad situation as far as the covert borderline is concerned because he's always shocked and surprised by the borderline's behavior. He's always let down. He's always disappointed, disenchanted, disillusioned by her. He's angry at her. Provokes aggression.

And as you recall, he tends to externalize aggression, physically, verbally, or in some other way, is incapable of obtaining dyadic stability, stability of the dyad, of the couple.

And so he then rebels against this, and he becomes cold, unstable, greedily seductive, calculated, even promiscuous, uninhibited sexual life. It's his way of externalizing his pain, his hurt, his disappointment.

Here he is offering his borderline partner an ideal life with a perfect relationship, and what she does is betray him all the time, let him down all the time, not realizing the treasure that he is and the amazing things he's offering her.

How stupid can she be?

He then begins to devalue her in his mind. And because he's in pain, and because he hurts, he acts out in effect. He's a borderline, don't forget. And his way of acting out is to become seductive, predatory, promiscuous, and uninhibited.

As far as the cognitive styles, there's a problem with the cognitive styles as well.

You remember that the covert borderline is super highly intelligent, but in the analytical sense. He is very machine-like or robotic. Human considerations don't enter much into his equations.

Whereas the borderline, including the quiet borderline, totally engages in emotional thinking. It's the only mode of thinking she's capable of.

So they can't communicate. The covert borderline is trying to talk to, communicate to, kind of correspond with the borderline's intellect. And the borderline is trying to resonate with the covert borderline's emotions.

And they both keep getting it wrong, Mars and Venus. They can't communicate well. And so the result is a breakdown in communication which leads to splitting or dichotomous thinking.

They gradually convert each other via devaluation, by a process of devaluation, they convert each other into enemies, persecutory objects, my lover my enemy, and they begin to split.

I'm all good, he's all bad. I am attentive. I am listening. He is not. I am communicating. He refuses to communicate. She is evil and conspires against me. She won't listen.

And so a lot of splitting and dichotomous thinking.

And the covert borderline won't take no for an answer. He doubles down. If he attempts to communicate with the borderline and fails, he won't say, okay, maybe it's a bad time, maybe she's incapable of communication along these lines. Maybe her intellect is not developed enough. Maybe her emotions are overwhelming her, are overdeveloped. She's hyper-emotional. Maybe I should let go.

No, the covert borderline is unable to let go. It's like a dog with a bone. It's totally compulsive, also ruminates a lot.

So he brings to the table, he doubles down, he makes it even worse. He then brings additional arguments, more knowledge, his perception of reality. He becomes more decisive, more opinionated, more controlling, more demanding, more hectoring, more preaching, more analytical, more and more. He escalates, in short.

The communication style of the covert borderline is escalatory. Escalation.

Well, the communication style of the classical borderline and the shy borderline is, let's convert everything into the language of emotions. Let's talk heart to heart, not brain to brain or mind to mind.

Ironically, that's the language of love which the covert borderline claims to want.

And this is the sad predicament of the covert borderline. His heart is in the right place, but his mind won't let him get there, ever.

Okay, shwanpanim.

Today we are going to discuss covert borderline with covert narcissists in a couple, in a friendship, in the workplace, but especially in an intimate relationship, interpersonal relationship.

How do they cope together? How do they fit? How do they conflict? What is the outcome? How do they fit? How do they conflict? What is the outcome? How do they come together? Why do they come together? Etc.

This is the second video in my series on odd couples.

The first video, you'll find a link in the description.

And the description is under the video, not above the video, under the video. There's a link to the first one in the series Odd Couples.

In that video I discussed two narcissists, borderline and narcissists and so and so forth.

And today the whole second episode is dedicated to coverts. Covert borderline versus covert narcissists.

Now, just to make clear, for disclaimer sake and full disclosure, covert borderline is not an official diagnosis. You cannot find it in the diagnostic and statistical manual. It is a diagnosis that I suggested I came up with a few years ago.

Another diagnosis that I came up with many, many decades ago is inverted narcissists.

So covert borderline is my second born diagnosis.

Covert borderline is simply a hybrid, a hybrid between borderline and narcissist.

But it's not a comorbidity.

Comorbidity is a situation where we diagnose the same person with two or more personality disorders or other mental health issues.

A covert borderline is an integrated structure. It's a system which borrows elements from narcissistic personality disorder and elements from borderline personality disorder, puts them together in a coherent, cohesive, self-maintaining, self-sustaining and self-reinforcing system.

So it's a hybrid, not a comorbidity.

And there is no way to treat the narcissistic part of covert borderline separately to the borderline part of the covert borderline.

Because the covert borderline is a vertical and horizontal integration of aspects of narcissism, pathological narcissism, with aspects of classical borderline.

Now both types act out but in very different ways. I mean both the covert borderline and the overt normal classical borderline. They act out but in very, very different ways.

And their internal landscape, their psychology, psychodynamics are very, very different.

That's why there was a clear need to invent or to come up with the covert borderline diagnosis.

Because in clinical practice, this is something every therapist would tell you exists, it is just that academia took many decades to catch up with reality as it usually does.

So my name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited. I am also a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the Faculty of SIAPS, Centre for International Advanced and Professional Studies.

And the video you're about to watch is based mostly on the work of Cooper, the late Arnold Cooper and Akhtar, Salman Akhtar, starting in 1989 when they were the first to describe the covert or fragile or shy narcissists.

So let us delve right in and use the scheme of Akhtar and Cooper applied to the covert borderline and then try to see how the elements of covert borderline would interact with the elements of a covert narcissist. And what would it bring, what would it create, what kind of hurricane, maelstrom it will create.

Start with the fact that the covert borderline is slightly antisocial, not full-fledged, not criminal, but definitely defiant, contumacious, resentful or rejecting of authority, and to some extent, reckless.

So these are the anti-social dimensions of covert borderline. The ones that are captured with Robert Hare, PCLR, type 1, factor 1.

So there is some factor 1 psychopathy involved in the covert borderline diagnosis.

The covert borderline, exactly like the covert narcissist, has a false sense of grandiosity, a false self.

The covert borderline perceives himself, and the majority of covert borderlines, I think, are men. The covert borderline perceives himself as this inflated, fantastic, all-knowing, all-powerful, perfect being.

Maybe not godlike, like the classic narcissist, but not far from it, let's say, an authority figure, a guru, a teacher, a leader, a guide, a healer, a rescuer, a savior, the most intelligent, superior, intellectually, or in some other way, etc., etc.

Similarly, there's a strong element of grandiosity in the covert narcissist.

But in the covert narcissist, the grandiosity is compensatory.

The covert narcissist has a core of shame, a sense of inferiority, an inadequacy, lack of worth. And we call this a bad object.

So while the covert narcissist has a bad object, a constellation of introjects, a constellation of voices that keep informing the covert narcissists, that is not good enough. That is a failure. That is a loser. That is going nowhere. That is inadequate.

The covert borderline doesn't have such a constellation of voices.

The covert borderline, in other words, does not have a dominant bad object.

And that is because the covert borderline succeeded to overcome the bad object.

The covert borderline succeeded through, for example, accomplishments in life to supplant the bad object, to suppress it somehow, to convert it into essentially a good object.

The covert borderline's bad object emanates from childhood. These are introjects of important people in the covert borderlines life. For example, parental figures, mother, peers, and so on.

So the Covert Borderline starts off with a bad object, but then dedicates his life to falsifying the bad object, proving to the bad object that the bad object is wrong.

So ultimately the covert borderline ends up with a good object.

And in this sense, the covert borderline is very, very similar to the overt narcissists.

Now we today are reconceiving of overt, grandiose narcissism as a form of psychopathy.

And so the covert borderline might also be considered or conceived of as another variant of psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder, definitely in this sense.

So here we are, there's a covert borderline with an essentially good object. It's a self-invented good object, it's a self-created good object, it's grandiose, it's fantastic, it's counterfactual in many cases, it's a piece of fiction, in short, it's a fantasy defense.

But the covert narcissist has a bad object and so the covert narcissist would attempt to somehow appropriate the covert borderlines good object.

Covert narcissist, in other words, would try to somehow merge or fuse or even take over the covert borderline, condition the covert borderline, manipulate the covert borderline, threaten the covert borderline, blackmail the covert borderline, into a situation where the covert borderline would become an extension of the covert narcissists.

Because remember, all types of narcissists, whether grandiose and overt, whether covert and fragile and shy, all narcissists are incapable of perceiving other people as external objects. They internalize other people, interject them, incorporate them, and convert them into internal objects, and they continue to interact only with the internal objects.

So when the covert narcissist comes across a covert borderline, the covert narcissist automatically and immediately snapshots the covert borderline, converts the covert borderline into an internal object.

And the covert narcissist continues to interact with this internal object.

But in the case of the covert borderline, there's an added reason to the snapshotting and later to the coercive snapshotting and added reason and that added reason is that the covert narcissist covets, wants, desires to take over, to leverage, to access the covert borderlines good object.

It's as if the covert narcissist is saying, I don't have a good object of my own, I want the covert borderlines good object. It's gonna become my good object and I will heal. I will heal.

So the relationship between the covert narcissist and the covert borderline is a typical Karpman triangle where the covert narcissist pedestalizes the covert borderline, idolizes and idealizes the covert borderline, at least initially, but not in order to somehow create a relationship with the covert borderline, but in order to abscond with the covert borderline's good object.

To be able to say, I own the covert borderline, to say I own the covert borderline therefore I own the covert borderlines essential goodness superiority and perfection.

Don't forget that narcissists of all kinds and all types envy people.

Now they don't only envy people, they envy a potential good object inside themselves and outside themselves.

When the narcissist comes across a good object in someone else, and even when the narcissist comes across a good object inside himself, his envy is triggered.

That's why shockingly, narcissists envy themselves sometimes.

And this is not an observation by Vaknin, that's an observation by Melanie Klein.

So the initial reaction of the covert narcissist, when she comes across a covert borderline, and again with covert narcissists, he is she are interchangeable. When she comes across a covert borderline her initial reaction is double one envy, extreme envy which is transformed into aggression and second reaction is I want him I want the good object inside this covert borderline I want to. I want the good object inside this covert borderline. I want to own this covert borderline.

So it's covetousness coupled with envy in order to compensate somehow for the innate inferiority, the morose self-doubts, egodystony, ego-incongruence, discrepancy, ego-discrepancy, the wrongness of being a covert narcissist, and the kind of defenses that are triggered by this constant sense of shame.

The covert narcissist is a failure. It's a form of permanent collapse. It's not only the inability to obtain narcissistic supply. It's not only the failure, the real-life failure, they're trying to make a mark or to be remembered or to leave a legacy, it's also the inability to cope with a bad object. It's also the failure to somehow self-regulate and self-control.

The covert narcissism is just another name for someone, a narcissist who got in touch with his or her shame, primordial shame, atavistic shame, childhood shame.

And this shame dysregulates the covert narcissist. This shame actually drives the covert narcissist to the point of a borderline personality organization.

And here comes the covert borderline, it can take away the shame. Or at least it can isolate the covert narcissist from the covert narcissist shame. It can create a firewall, a partition, a fence between the covert narcissist and this reservoir of humiliation, negation and breach of boundaries, an inability to separate and individuate, inability to become.

The covert borderline provides in short, protection.

And it is the antisocial element or psychopathic element in the covert borderline that most appeals to the covert narcissists.

Remember my theory of self-states where the psychopathic self-state is a protector.

And this is like an external psychopathic self-state, the covert borderline.

Covert borderline is an outside psychopath who can protect me.

This appeals a lot to the covert narcissist.

So she forms a relationship which is essentially a kind of dependency.

But it's a dependency with nefarious and pernicious intentions, however unconscious.

It's a dependency between predator and prey, let's say, in an ecosystem.

The covert narcissist is the predator, not the covert borderline.

Covert borderlines, as you will see momentarily are very much into love, into relationships, they love their children for example, really not like the narcissist, they really love the children and so on, we'll come to that.

The covert narcissist is on the hunt. The covert narcissist is done on the hunt.

The covert narcissist is hunting for a source of narcissistic supply, however by proxy and vicariously.

On the one hand, and on the other hand, self-regulation, external self-regulation.

In this sense, of course, the covert narcissist is very much like a borderline.

But at that point, the covert narcissist has to hand over control to the covert borderline.

If you are regulated from the outside, it becomes an external locus of control, which sits well with alloplastic defenses.

The covert narcissists gradually would begin to blame the covert borderline for anything that goes wrong.

Mood lability, emotional liability, emotional dysregulation, mistakes, failures, defeats, everything is the covert borderlines fault. It will become acrimonious.

The alloplastic defenses of the covert narcissist, because of the external locus of control, these defenses are triggered massively and recurrently, repeatedly. There's no control of this.

So the covert borderline becomes a target of the covert narcissist.

And she, as usual, engages in passiveaggressive behaviors. She undermines the relationship. She sabotages everything in order to take down the covert borderline, kind of, to bring the covert borderline down to her level and to inducing him her state of mind.

Of course he fails. This covert borderline has strong narcissistic defenses and he's a bit of a psychopath.

But the power play and the mind games start almost from day one because the very presence of the covert borderline and his psychological composition and constitution trigger the covert narcissist badly.

So why? If she's triggered so badly, why does she seek a relationship with a covert borderline? Why not with an overt narcissist?

Well that's because only a specific type of covert narcissists would be attracted to a covert borderline. Some covert narcissist would be attracted to a classic narcissist, to an overt, grandiose narcissist, and this subtype of covert narcissist is known as inverted narcissists.

Other types of covert narcissists are much less submissive. They are much more agentic. They have a modicum of personal autonomy and independence. They're self-sustaining and self-sufficient.

This kind of covert narcissists would gravitate towards the covert borderline.

Because under the overt or grandiose narcissist, you're supposed to be 100% obedient. You're supposed to self-negate. Supposed to be totally submissive. You're supposed to fit into the shared fantasy. As a mummy, an ancient Egyptian mummy, with no life of your own, no agency, no independence, no personal autonomy.

Many covert narcissists are way beyond this they are more high functioning so they would gravitate towards the covert borderline.

One of the reasons is that the covert borderline is preoccupied with fantasies of ideal and outstanding love. Love is a major driver in the covert borderlines psychology.

The covert borderline has an undue sense of uniqueness, entitlement, has alloplastic defenses, and in this sense, covert borderline resembles very much a narcissist.

But what sets the covert borderline apart from the narcissist dramatically and irrevocably is that the covert borderline can and does experience positive emotions, most notably love. The narcissist is incapable of ever experiencing positive emotions like love. Ever, narcissus is dead inside. There's an empty schizoid core there. It's howling winds in an abandoned corridor that's the narcissus

the covert borderline is way more human way more emotion and in this sense and this is why he's a borderline borderlines have empathy it's reduced reduced, diminished empathy, by the way, but they do have empathy. And they definitely have emotions. They're overwhelmed by emotions. Their emotions are so strong that they threaten to drown them. They're dysregulated. That's the case with the covert borderline. And among all emotions, the covert borderline is heavily into love. Covert borderline has a good object inside himself. It's a self-generated good object. It's partly fictitious. It's very fantastic, but it's still essentially a good object. The bad object that the covert borderline started with in childhood is all but defunct and repressed. So because the covert borderline has a good object, he is capable of love. And the covert borderline being a borderline is essentially able to experience emotions without being totally overwhelmed or dysregulated. Although there is this emotional dysregulation, we'll come to it in a minute, the covert borderline dares to experience emotions, especially love because he is, he has a good object and he's a bit psychopathic. He's a bit more in control, it's a bit tougher, a bit more rough, usually also much more experience in life. So the covert borderline goes for love. Of course, love in the covert borderline's case also fits into the narcissists shared fantasy. Covert narcissists and overt narcissists impose a shared fantasy on their interpersonal relationships, definitely in intimate relationships. The covert borderlines ability to respond with love fits perfectly into the covert narcissists shared fantasy. This is by the way why grandiose and overt narcissists gravitate towards borderlines, classic borderlines. Because classic borderlines can reciprocate with love. Now the covert borderline's love is real love, even I would say healthy love. But the covert narcissist in the couple converts in her mind the covert borderlines love into a fantasy. So the covert borderline loves the covert narcissists really, and the covert narcissists uses the covert borderline's love to augment buttress and support a shared fantasy. And so they end up, both of them end up, in a shared fantasy and so they end up both of them end up in a shared fantasy because the covert borderline loves the covert narcissist truly he wishes to gratify and satisfy her not submissively not obediently he wants her to be happy so So he says to himself, if fantasy, if the shared fantasy is her thing, I'm going to give her a shared fantasy because it would make her happy. It's like, you know, if she wants a car, I'll buy her a car. If the shared fantasy involves money, by the way, material goods or a lifestyle, luxurious lifestyle, the covert borderline, if he can afford it, would provide it. The covert borderline would do anything to make his covert narcissist happy. And that's why he often finds himself and trapped in the covert narcissist shared fantasy. It's the same to some extent with the classical borderline. Classical borderline requires external regulation. She needs an intimate partner to regulate her emotions, stabilize her labile moods, and so on. So when the narcissist offers the borderline, I will do all this for you, I will regulate you, I'll stabilize you, and be safe, but you have to fit into my shirt fantasy. The borderline, the classic borderline strikes this Faustian bargain, agrees to it.

Same with the covert borderline. When the covert narcissist says to the covert borderline, I'm going to love you, I'm going to provide you with the love that you're looking for, but my condition is that we do it in a fantastic setting, in a paracosm, in a virtual reality, the covert borderline goes for it and says yes.

Now, because the covert borderline is a borderline, mind you, he has modular ability, he is emotionally dysregulated, and so on so forth.

But the difference between the covert borderline and the classical borderline is rationalization.

The covert borderline uses his intellect, he intellectualizes, he uses his intellect to control, justify, explain, predict his emotional dysregulation.

When the covert borderline experiences ups and downs, mood swings, when he experiences emotional dysregulation, he immediately refers to his intelligence, to his intellect, and he uses his intellect, his brain. He uses it to somehow make sense of the dysregulation and the lability and that way get them under control and get rid of it in effect.

So while the classical borderline simply falls apart and disintegrates and runs away, something known as approachavoidancerepetitioncompulsion. She experiences engulfment anxiety and she runs away.

While the classical borderline simply reaches the point of psychosis in effect, the covert borderline is much more rational, intellectual, cold, calculated, detached, able to observe himselfand what's happening to him from the outside, a bit like a scientist, an observer.

And so he is much more in control of his own internal situation.

The reactance of the covert borderline, defiance, contumaciousness, even recklessness serve to control and counteract dysregulation and mood lability because the covert borderline can self-medicate with, for example, risky situations, adventures, intellectual stimulus, and so on. It's much more in control.

Now this appeals very much to the covert narcissists because the covert narcissists is able to regulate his her seething envy rage sense of injustice and whatever she's able to regulate all these via the mechanisms of the covert borderline.

So while the covert narcissist always feels ashamed, sometimes guilty, definitely always fragile, always vulnerable, always anxious, passive aggressive, full of pent up rage and shame and humiliated all the time, she can then resort to the covert borderline.

And with this overpowering, overriding intellect, he can calm the covert narcissist down, can regulate it and stabilize it.

By the way, he would have the same effect on a borderline, on a classic borderline.

So the covert narcissist is in a relentless search for safety and for completion. She wants to be whole.

She can do it with a classic narcissist if she's inverted, but she can do it also with a covert borderline if she's much more independent.

And so the covert narcissist is sensitive to criticism hypervigilant and realistic setbacks which everyone takes in stride can demolish, devastate the covert narcissists.

Okay, the covert borderline's problem in a relationship with covert narcissist is that, exactly like the psychopath, the covert borderline has a very low threshold of boredom. He doesn't tolerate boredom. He gets bored very easily. He gets bored very easily. He gets bored very easily.

And the covert narcissist is very boring.

Unlike the grandiose or overt narcissist, the covert narcissist has a constricted life, very limited life usually.

And when she does have an adventurous, interesting life, it is so out there off the charts and crazy that it is actually threatening rather than interesting.

So the covert narcissist is unable to provide the covert borderline with the intellectual and existential stimuli that he requires to keep him interested, to keep him on his toes, except in extremely rare cases.

Also the covert narcissist has an impaired reality testing and difficulty in reading other people's social and other cues. She has alexithymia. She's a bit autistic.

So she doesn't really pick up on the signals of the covert borderline. She fails to read him properly. And therefore she cannot provide him with what he needs in a timely fashion in real time.

So that creates a lot of frustration and a lot of aggression in the covert borderline, which in turn terrifies the covert narcissists or provoke in her extreme passive aggression because it triggers her shame. She again has failed in a relationship, for example.

So this issue of stimulation, boredom, and so on so forth, is very critical actually in the relationships between covert borderline and covert narcissists.

And the covert borderline often drives the covert narcissist into depression and anxiety with his constant scrutiny, analysis, criticism and kind of dissatisfaction, disappointment, disillusionment, disenchantment. This enhances the covert narcissists sense of failure and defeat, which taps into her infinite reservoir of shame, inadequacy and inferiority.

While the covert borderline's initial reactions are always externalized, the covert borderline, for example, is very honest, very open, very direct, oftenabrasive, externalizes frustration and aggression, and only then comes down and internalizes things.

The covert narcissist is exactly the opposite. She internalizes and internalizes and internalizes until the rage or the envy or the negative affectivity reach some critical point and then she explodes or implodes. Something bad happens. It's like a nuclear chain reaction.

Now, suicidal ideation is rare in covert borderlines and relatively rare in covert narcissists. So there is no problem here. There is no fear that the covert borderline might drive the covert narcissists to suicide or to aggression that would be self-directed and dangerous. This danger is low.

But the covert narcissists can trigger the covert borderline to aggress against third parties. In a variety of ways, she's very Machiavellian. She can lie to him, tell him stories, mislead him, etc.

And very often, she uses these deceptive powers to drive the covert borderline to conflict with third parties that the covert narcissist has considered as threats or that the covert narcissist feels have humiliated her or shamed her or criticized her or whatever.

So whenever there's narcissistic injury, let alone narcissistic mortification, the covert narcissist would attempt to use the covert borderline to punish those who caused her the injury and the mortification.

Of course, the covert borderline often narcissistically injures the covert narcissist. Sometimes causes her mortification, in which case she would try to induce him self-directed aggression. She would make his life hell, try to distort his reality, a form of gaslighting if you wish, ruin the fantasy or change the fantasy into a phantasmagoric nightmare so that he would be driven to suicide. She rarely succeeds. Luckily because covert borderlines are not prone to suicides, self-mutilation, and so on so forth. They do have some addictive behaviors, so the covert narcissists can drive the covert borderline to abuse substances. And this is the ultimate in self-destructiveness in the case of the covert borderline.

Now, both the covert narcissist and the covert borderline are prone to dissociation. They have dissociative self-states, they have selective attention. They confabulate, both of them, confabulate in order to bridge memory gaps. They engage in massive repression and denial. They have a primary psychopathic protector, as I said. The covert narcissist has extreme amnesia. This is less the case with the covert borderline.

But ultimately both of them depersonalize or de-realize. So they're both in dissociative states.

On the one hand, this fact is protective of the relationship because they can forget things, gloss over things, ignore things, conflicts or, you know, and move on.

On the other hand, this creates a lot of friction, misunderstandings, debates, arguments. You did this. I didn't do this. You did do it. I have proof. I don't have proof. It's a mess.

So the relationship becomes adversarial. As if they were in a court of law, arguing all the time over some complicated case adversarial and acrimonious.

The covert borderline is prone to paranoid ideation and is very hypervigilant. Similarly, the covert narcissist is unable to genuinely depend on other people, to trust other people, and is equally hypervigilant.

You can imagine two paranoid personalities together. You can imagine what's happening. There's a lot of mutual suspicion, distrust, cross-checking, spying on each other, trying to analyze each other as a way to gain a modicum of ability to predict future behavior and so on and so forth.

There's a lot of walking on eggshells and frankly a sense of looming, bulbous fuzzy threat in the air not knowing exactly what might happen.

The covert narcissist is a narcissist, so her intimacy is either instant similar to the histrionic or fake. So she could engage in casual sex, for example, and misinterpret the situation, believing that it would become an intimate relationship, or she can be in a relationship and fake the intimacy.

So this is a bad fit. This is incompatible with the borderline.

Because the borderline has a covert borderline, I'm sorry. It's incompatible with a covert borderline because a covert borderline has an intense need for love from other people. He's in many ways a people pleaser.

When he is in a primary psychopathic phase, when his anti-social aspects or dimensions come to the fore and manifest, he's not empathic, but usually he's actually empathic. And he values his children. Actually, he values his children over his spouse. He would place his children above his own relationship with his spouse. He values them. He loves them. He takes care of them. It's a good father or mother, the covert borderline.

Not so the covert narcissist. She's fake. She's hesitant when it comes to intimacy. She dreads intimacy, actually. She has abandonment anxiety, an imposter syndrome. And then she has engulfment anxiety, like the classic borderline and fear of intimacy she has rejection sensitivity, she is a control freak and so on.

So why does the covert borderline, why would a covert borderline team up with a covert narcissist? He's capable of real love, she's not. Why would he team up with her?

Because she's deceptive. Simply put, the covert narcissist is extremely deceptive, much more than the overt or grandiose narcissist.

So the covert borderline is in love with love. He is in search of the ideal fantastic love. He wants to be deceived. He renders himself gullible. He wants to fit into the covert narcissist fantasy because his love is fantastic.

He cannot conceive of love, the covert borderline cannot conceive of a love that is not a fantasy, that is not ideal, that is less than perfect, all engulfing, all consuming. His desire is like a fire, he is self-combusting when he's in love.

So the covert narcissist knows how to push his love buttons, to deceive him, to mislead him into believing that she is the ideal partner because she is also into fantasy, exactly like him and is capable to provide him with the perfection an ideal form of love that he is searching for.

But in reality, she's chronically envious of the covert borderlines talents, possessions, capacity for deep object relations. She hates him. There's ambivalence there. Even when the covert narcissist professesto love the covert borderline she actually hates him there is hate there and so she becomes passive aggressive sullen surly sov denying other denying cunning premed, and very often malevolent. She begins to target the covert borderline with intermittent reinforcement, disregard for his time, for his limitations, obligations, and resources, trying to undermine and sabotage his life, his professional life and career included. And the intermittent reinforcement, hot and cold, I love you, I hate you, you know, resemble very much, resembles very much a borderline. But it's intended to ruin the covert borderline. She's on a mission of disintegrating the covert borderline. And she's very unpredictable, and she's very explosive, very impulsive, sometimes even reckless. The situation for the covert borderline becomes untenable, intolerable, unacceptable, unbearable. And so he reacts with a combination of scorn, criticism, mockery, analysis, intellectualizing and rationalizing the situation, trying sometimes to justify the covert narcissists and sometimes to self-justifying. So pendulating, vacillating, oscillating between autoplastic defenses and all alloplastic defenses, sometimes blaming the covert narcissists, sometimes blaming himself for what's happening. And this generates what is known as pseudo-humility. The covert borderline would develop a form of humbleness and modesty that is intended to disguise his growing unease frustration and anger with the covert narcissists for what he's doing to him. At some point, the covert borderline would seek to escape, to somehow evade the situation because it's extremely painful, extremely hurtful. The covert borderline is capable of experiencing deep hurt and deep pain grounded in a love gun or a love gun bed.

Covert nocese is incapable of any any of this but the covert borderline is really hurt is bleeding and so he begins he defaults to a narcissistic to his narcissistic side he becomes this trionic attention seeking invested in narcissistic supply in some way. He becomes sometimes reckless. He begins to hurt other people or affect other people adversely. This is all unintentional. This is his narcissistic. These are his narcissistic defenses kicking in. Some covert borderlines in very extreme situations become sadistic, punitive, goal oriented. They triangulate, they cheat, they misbehave egregiously. Now, the covert narcissists reacts to all this by interperson via interpersonal triangulation, coupled with people pleasing. So she would feign and fake a response of being fawning, being submissive, obedient, listening to the covert borderline, complimenting him for his insights and amazing sagacity and wisdom, and so people pleasing, at the same time conspiring against him, manipulating him, triangulating, and very often cheating, this reflects the covert narcissist approach, avoidance, repetition, compulsion, and preemptive abandonment coupled with object in constancy.

Yes, exactly like the classic borderline. Covert narcissists are drama queens. At this stage in the relationship, the covert borderline is almost completely a narcissist. He begins to go through the idealized, devalue, discard, revert or replace cycle. So he begins to devalue his partner, attempt to discard her, replace her with someone else, exactly like a narcissist, indistinguishable clinically from a narcissist. Now they covert narcissist is subject to a sense of nagging aimlessness. No purpose, no direction, no meaning. She can't make sense of her life. She experiences social anxiety. She has a shallow vocational commitment yes very few of them have roaring meteoric careers because they're not committed it's a dilettant or shalotan-like attitude multiple but superficial interests chronic boredom as I mentioned, and the aesthetic taste or any kind of taste is often ill-informed or imitative. So it's like mimicry, emulation and imitation on the surface. It's a supercilious and superficial phenomenon, a surface phenomenon.

The covert borderline on the other hand is socially charming, charismatic, incapable of consistent hard work, which is done mainly to seek admiration and adulation and recognition, money, and power. So it's a form of pseudo sublimation. But still, the covert borderline often has very successful businesses, careers, you know, vocations, famous in his field, accomplished.

Not so the covert narcissists. Covert borderline has intense ambition, preoccupation with appearances, but based on substance.

Covert narcissist is the exact opposite.

This creates enormous friction between them because it triggers the covert narcissist's envy, destructive envy. Destructive envy that she cannot, absolutely cannot control. It devours her, consumes her, and she must get rid of the source of the envy, her partner, the covert borderline.

And here we come into a territory that involves unethical conduct, sometimes criminal, between the two parties. They deteriorate, their relationship degenerates into a territory that is at best immoral, but very frequently immoral and sometimes criminal.

You see, the covert borderline is moral, is a moral person. But his morality is very idiosyncratic, self-selected.

It's like a buffet. He tailors his morality. He makes his own morality, his own law. He is a law unto himself. Makes his own rules as he goes along. So his morality is uneven. It involves caricatured modesty or pseudo-humility, some kind of activism, apparent enthusiasm for socio-political affairs, but it's all highly, highly individualistic.

Covert borderlines don't do belonging. They don't affiliate themselves with groups, their allegiance is mainly to themselves so they have personal standards and they measure themselves compared to these personal standards and if they ever experience guilt and shame it's because they haven't matched up to their own expectations. They're inordinately relativistic when it comes to ethnic, moral issues, ethical issues, and so on so forth.

I said relativistic, I didn't say flexible they're not flexible actually they're rigid but they're relativistic in the sense that they don't adhere to group mores or conventions they don't conform. They're highly, highly special, unique.

They have pretended contempt for material goods and money sometimes, and sometimes exactly the opposite, admiration for money, and so on.

But when they hold money in contempt ostentatiously is because they want to attain a position of spiritual guru leader guide they have any reverence towards authority unless it is vested in them so the picture is that the covert borderline is actually a moral agent, a moral creature, highly ethical, rigidly ethical actually, but on his own terms and conditions.

Now compare this to the covert narcissist. She shifts values to gain favor and narcissistic supply. She has almost identity diffusion or identity disturbance. She has one set of values today, another tomorrow. She is a pathological liar. She is a materialistic lifestyle very often and delinquent tendencies.

So again, it's an area of friction between the covert borderline and his covert narcissistic partner.

She would not adhere to the covert borderline's morality and ethics because she doesn't adhere to any system of morality or or or ethics not even her own she doesn't have a system of morality or ethics even her own system so she is immoral and then immoral and this really irks, irritates and aggravates the covert borderline. They have a lot of fights regarding these issues.

The covert borderline is capable of marital stability, capable of that, and has phases of marital relationship or dyadic stability, capable of that, and has phases of marital relationship or dyadic stability.

On the other hand, in between long-term relationships, the covert borderline is actually a narcissist, is coldly seductive, he's greedy regarding sex, he has extramarital affairs sometimes, and he's promiscuous, highly promiscuous, he has an uninhibited sexual life. So it's like the covert borderline has a split personality if you wish.

When he is embedded in a long-term relationship, usually he would be loyal, usually, although extramarital affairs are a possibility. In most cases, it would be loyal, stable, and would work as a team with his partner for the common goals of the couple.

When he is not embedded in a long-term relationship, he's a narcissist. The worst kind of narcissist. He's cold, is calculated, is seductive, is greedy, is uninhibited when it comes to sex.

So the only possible match between the covert borderline and the covert narcissist is when the covert borderline is not embedded in a long-term relationship.

Because the covert narcissist is unable to be in love, unable to experience love or to remain in love. She has an impaired capacity to view the romantic partner as a separate individual, with her own interests, rights, values, fears, hopes, wishes, etc. She is unable to genuinely comprehend taboos, including the incest taboo. And she has occasional sexual deviant behaviors, paraphilias.

So she fits the covert borderline in between relationships, in between his relationship.

Now, the covert borderline may of course find himself trapped in a long-term relationship with a covert narcissist.

But this kind of relationship will ultimately fail and fall apart. There will be a lot of breakup, a lot of heartbreak in the breakup.

Because sexually, the covert borderline and the covert narcissist are not compatible when they are inside a deep, meaningful, intimate, romantic relationship.

The covert borderline truly loves, is truly committed, truly pursues the goals of the couple, is truly loyal. The covert narcissist isn't any of these things, even in a long-term relationship.

Finally, there's a problem in terms of cognitive styles.

The covert borderline usually is highly intelligent and engages in intellectual pyrotechnics. He's very curious, wishes to learn, is decisive, his opinionated, acquires knowledge, this knowledge acquisition, although the covert borderline uses shortcuts exactly like the narcissist.

His perception of reality is a bit skewed he has impaired reality testing exactly like the narcissist but he loves language and is often very articulate and impressively knowledgeable.

Dichotomous thinking black and white thinking, splitting doesn't help. And ultimately the covert borderline usually doesn't amount too much intellectually because of these problems of cognitive distortions and cognitive biases.

But he still cuts a very impressive figure intellectually.

When it comes to the covert narcissist, that is never the case. Had the covert narcissist been successful intellectually, she would have become a cerebral, grandiose narcissist. But she fails.

The root of the collapse is the covert narcissist's inability to accomplish anything. She has exactly like the covert borderline. She splits, she has dichotomous thinking, but she also catastrophizes.

Her knowledge is often limited to trivia, we call it headline intelligence. She is forgetful of details, anything, from names to historical details. She is impaired in the capacity to learn new skills because of the bad object that keeps informing her that she is about to fail. She has a tendency to change meanings of reality when she's faced with a threat to her sense of self-worth and self-esteem.

So she wouldn't mind to lie and to falsify it's not lying actually it's confabulation but she wouldn't mind to confabulate and to falsify her language and speaking are used strictly for regulating her self-esteem and sense of self-worth. She's very limited. The covert narcissist is a very limited being intellectually and has little to offer to the covert borderline.

So now the critical question, there are so many incompatibilities, fundamental incompatibilities, unbridgeable incompatibilities, discrepancies, an abyss between the covert borderline and the covert narcissists how on earth do they end up being together?

The answer is twofold.

The covert borderlines wish to be deceived and the covert narcissists will to deceive him.

The covert borderline is hungry for love. He is starved of love. He's looking for a fantastic ideal relationship, including children. And he's willing to deceive himself, to lie to himself, to falsify reality, to ignore warning signs, to suppress any doubts in order to finally find the partner that he's been looking for.

And the covert narcissist provides him with what he wants to hear with a fantasy of perfection and utter compatibility, which he lacks, gorges on, he can't let go of it, she renders him an addict, he becomes addicted not to her, not to her because soon the covert borderline wakes up to the covert narcissist inhering deficiencies and delinquencies, but he becomes addicted to the fantasy. He can't let go of the dream.

And the covert narcissist, exactly like the overt narcissists, is a creature of dream. There's nobody there. There's only a narrative, a story. And this is a story the covert borderline wants to hear.

There is a new extensive update to the website and the Android app that contain the transcripts to all my videos on YouTube, all 1,400 of them. The website is wakening-vaknin.com.

Vaknin talks and talks and talks. Will this guy ever stop talking?

This author of Malignant Self Love: Narcissism Revisited, a former visiting professor of psychology, and currently on the faculty of SIAS-CIAPS.

Poor SIAS-CIAPS!

Okay, Shoshanim Ahmad Madonot. Look it up.

Today we are going to discuss hate bombing. Yes, not love bombing, but hate bombing. The opposite of love bombing, the antonym, if you wish.

It's a very interesting phenomenon which serves to expose some dynamics of narcissism, long neglected by self-styled experts online and even by scholars offline.

Here's the thing. The borderline has too many emotions. Her emotions are too strong, too powerful for her. Her emotions overwhelm her, drown her, dysregulate her.

The narcissist has too many cognitions, especially distorted cognitions, such as grandiosity. The narcissist's cognitions overwhelm him, drown him, dysregulate him.

So remember this equation. Borderline, dysregulated emotions. Narcissist, dysregulated cognitions.

Before I proceed I anticipate your comments, he equals she, everything I say applies to male and female narcissists. The same way, the dynamic is identical. 50% of all narcissists are women nowadays. Quite an accomplishment. Bravo feminism.

Okay, enough with politics, Vaknin. Get to the point if you are capable of it.

So the point is that when your cognition overwhelms you, when you're a cognitive animal, when you have no positive emotions to tap, when you are unable to access positive emotions, then anything can fit into your cognition. You can think about anything, anything could become a reason for braggingand boasting.

The narcissist is proud of things which would make other people cringe or flinch. And yet the narcissist finds these things, events in his past, alleged talents, ostensible skills, and so on so forth, he finds these things reasons for pride, is proud of them.

This is known as locus of grandiosity.

So the narcissists, for example, can be proud of being the ultimate victim, can be proud of being the most amazing criminal, can be proud of having failed consistently, or having brought on the biggest bankruptcy in the history of his country.

All these are reasons to be proud. All these are loci of grandiosity.

The locus of grandiosity is anything, any event, any environment, any person, any place, any accomplishment, any failure, any trade, any behavior, any action, any decision, any choice, any source of supply, anything, absolutely anything that sets the narcissist apart, that renders the narcissist unique and special, at least in his own eyes.

So the locus of grandiosity is the key to deciphering and decoding the narcissist behavior.

And I want today to discuss a very unique locus of grandiosity, very rare, but still there.

The vast majority of relationships with narcissists start with a process known as love bombing.

Now love bombing is not grooming as usual self-styled experts online confuse the two and make a mess and a hash of things. Grooming is limited to minors and is usually the purvey and behavior of psychopaths and sexual predators, especially sexual sadists. So this is grooming. You cannot groom an adult, only a minor, only a child.

But love bombing.

So most relationships start with love bombing.

Where you are the focus of attention, where you can do no wrong, where you are being idealized, where you are perfectionified, where you are the most drop-dead gorgeous and hyper-intelligent person to have walked the earth, etc., etc. This is very flattering and very addictive. This is love bombing.

However, sometimes relationships with narcissists start with hate bombing.

The narcissist is full of scorn, of contempt, of derision.

The narcissist criticizes you, chastises you, castigates you, humiliates you, berates you, demeans and degrades you.

At the very beginning of the relationship, long before there's anything to share.

The very first interactions, the first text message, the first chat on a dating app, the first exchange or intercourse, to use the 19th century word, the first exchange on a social media website, the first video, the first photo, the first text message, they are negative. This kind of narcissist puts you down from the first moment.

He establishes not only his superiority, but equally your inferiority, your inadequacy.

So this narcissist emphasizes, leverages, brainwashes you into believing that you are a bad object.

Unworthy, possibly ugly, stupid, grandiose and arrogant, helpless, hopeless, a failure, a loser and so on so forth. This is hate bombing, the mirror image of love bombing.

And amazingly, hate bombing does lead to relationships with narcissists, does result in the formation of a shared fantasy.

This is of course when the counterparty with a potential intimate partner or friend, they are masochistic, self-hating, self-loathing and self-rejecting.

The narcissist becomes an externalized introject, a voice that confirms, supports, buttresses, enhances and magnifies the bad object inside the potential partner or friend or whatever, child, spouse, and so on.

So we have two types of shared fantasy.

The most common type starts with idealization through love bombing.

The less common type starts with devaluation actually through hate bombing.

Now these the latter type of shared fantasy, this second type of shared fantasy which no one seems to discuss, I believe this is the first video ever made about this kind of launching of a relationship.

So usually these are malignant, psychopathic and sometimes sadistic narcissists.

The locus of grandiosity of the malignant, psychopathic and sadistic narcissist is that he is invulnerable.

He has no vulnerabilities. He has no weaknesses. He has no chinks in the armor. He cannot be destabilized or hurt. He cannot be affected. He cannot be infected. He cannot be infected. He is godlike. He is fireworn from the slings and arrows of cruel time and cruel people. He is invulnerable. He is unemotional.

So this kind of narcissist brags and boasts about not having emotions.

He says, I have no emotions to speak of. Therefore, I'm immune to the vicissitudes, ups and downs and dysregulation of other people. I'm much more resilient, I'm much stronger, I'm empowered by my unemotionality and invulnerability.

This kind of narcissists are incapable of attaching. They have flat attachment, not insecure attachment. Insecure attachment implies an attempt to attach which constantly fails, approach avoidance.

This kind of narcissist doesn't even try to approach. He is again proud. He is vainglorious. He is proud of his lack of attachment.

He says, I never get attached. I never fall in love. I never bond. And this is the source of my strength. I am a lone wolf because I'm utterly self-sufficient. I need no one. I care about no one. No one can pull at my heartstrings. No one can blackmail me emotionally. No one can inflict pain on me. No one can compromise me in any way shape or form.

He regards people as a kind of malware, computer viruses if you wish. So, invulnerable, unemotional, unattached, incapable of getting attached or bonded and therefore immune. Immune to the world, immune to life itself, immune to other people, rigid and heartlessly callously cruel, although sometimes this cruelty or sadism are disguised as altruism when the malignant psychopathic narcissist in question is of the prosocial or communal variety.

And I encourage you to watch the videos about prosocial, communal, hyper-moral narcissists, rigidly moral narcissists.

So let's summarize this section. It's not easy to wrap your mind around.

Typical narcissists start with love bombing. They idealize you and then they launch a shared fantasy and then they introduce you coercively or not into the shared fantasy. They cajole you, they persuade you, they charm you, they cause you to become a figment or an element in the shared fantasy.

This is what 97% of all narcissists do.

3% of narcissists, known as malignant, psychopathic or sadistic narcissists, they don't start by idealizing. They don't love bomb. They hate bomb. They start by devaluing, exactly the opposite.

And they cater to your self-destructiveness, self-rejection, self-hatred, self-loathing, self-defeat. They become this scourge of God. They are kind of a punishment inflicted on you by the universe itself.

You're spiraling down and they're there to push you over the edge, over the cliff. Forgive me for mixing my metaphors.

Now, these types of narcissists are proud, they're grandiose, they're arrogant, they feel superior because they regard themselves as invulnerable.

I don't care about anyone and anything. I don't need anyone or anything. I'm not dependent on anyone or anything. I'm unemotional. I never attach. I am rigid, I'm heartless, when necessary, I'm abrasive and cruel.

If this type of narcissist is also pro-social or communal, they transform all these into advantages, into merits. They say, say for example my cruelty is a kind of tough love, I'm being altruistic, it's for your own good and so on.

But the fact is that they embark upon a shared fantasy which is destructive to you, sadistic in the sense that they enjoy the pain that they inflict on you, and a shared fantasy whose main target, whose main goal is to devalue, humiliate, mortify, degrade, demean and berate you. Put you down, essentially.

This kind of narcissists are transactional.

Now, all narcissists regard other people as useful tools in both senses of the word tool. They regard other people as collateral damage.

The narcissist perceives his life and the environment as a battlefield. There's a war going on between the narcissist and the rest of humanity. It's a zero-sum game. The narcissist's win is other people's loss.

And so the narcissist needs to ascertain that he has the upper hand. He regards other people as useful instruments or collateral damage in this ongoing warfare.

The impact that the narcissist has on other people's lives is perceived by the narcissist as a mere byproduct or side effect of the pursuit of grandiosity affirming narcissistic supply, sadistic supply, or even self-supply.

Sometimes the narcissist has a beneficial impact on other people's lives. If the narcissist is a healer, a guru, a teacher, they may end up having very good effects, benevolent effects, impacts long term, on other people's lives.

But even this is perceived by the narcissist as a byproduct, a side effect. There's no motivation or intention to help people.

The narcissist does everything in order to obtain narcissistic supply, period.

When the narcissist is prosocial and communal, it's because these are easier ways, the path of least resistance to obtaining supply. That's it.

If he becomes a fixer or a rescuer or a savior or a healer or a guru or a teacher or a mentor, it's just because it's the easiest way to garner and harvest narcissistic supply.

Narcissistic supply, sadistic supply, self-supply, these are the only things that have any meaning in the narcissist's life.

And people are dispensable, interchangeable, meaningless, insignificant others.

This applies to all narcissists.

So when you talk to the narcissist, imagine the following dialogue, do you care about me?

Narcissist, I do, I care a lot about you.

Why? You ask, why do you care about me?

The narcissist answers, because you are useful to me. I like your company, you help me, you service me, you solve my problems, you're here for me, etc. You're useful to me.

And then you ask, okay, but don't you have any emotions for me when you see me or something? Don't you react emotionally?

The narcissist says, proudly, I don't have emotions. I don't do emotions. I do relationship maintenance. I do business. I do give and take. Emotions are for whistles. Emotions are for dumb people. Emotions are weaknesses and vulnerabilities. And I'm godlike. I'm invulnerable. I'm strong. I'm resilient. I'm all powerful, omnipotent, I'm all knowing.

So you ask, why do you stay in touch with me?

And the narcissist responds, I owe you and I repay, I always repay my debts because I'm much more moral than other people. Plus, you could still be useful in the future. It's a kind of hedge, a kind of insurance policy.

No, they all share the same attitude to people. People are objectified, dehumanized, and treated as pawns on the chessboard of the narcissists' life, on his constant striving and craving for narcissistic supply.

But there is something unique when it comes to malignant, psychopathic and sadistic narcissists. Their world is inverted.

Now, the narcissist world is sufficiently distorted to be vertiginous, sufficiently upside-down, topsy-turvy to cause vertigo to render you dizzy.

Now imagine that the malignant narcissist or sadistic narcissists, their world is an inversion of the narcissists distorted and inverted world.

Can you go there? Can you even contemplate this? Can you conceive of this?

It's really outlandish out of this world.

And so, whereas the typical narcissists regards you as a utility, as useful, in some way, in one way or another, you allow him to idealize himself. You collude with him in the shared fantasy. You provide him with sex, with services, with supply, sadistic or narcissistic, with safety, you are there, you're always present, you fulfill a maternal role.

This is typical narcissists. They are reactive to these offerings, to these gifts that you carry, and they bond with you, they create with you a shared something known as a shared fantasy.

It is shared after all. It's a kind of a cult. It's a collusion or collaboration. It takes two to tango.

This is the typical narcissists.

And the typical narcissist starts off by convincing himself that he is falling for you, that he is in love with you, or that he has affection for you, or that he somehow understands you. So he resonates with you empathically. He's on your side, he has your back, and so on.

So the typical narcissist starts off with love bombing, which leads to a fantasy where both of you are united, both of you are symbiotically merged and fused against the world, against all other people.

The malignant narcissists, the psychopathic narcissists, their shared fantasy is totally invertedtypical narcissistic, fantasies, malignant psychopathic, sad typical narcissists shared fantasy, malignant psychopathic sadistic narcissists starts off, initiate the relationship with devaluation and discard. It's like the shared fantasy is reversed in time. It's like time travel. The malignant psychopathic sadistic analysis starts by devaluing you, insulting you, humiliating you, shouting at you, attacking you, berating you, demeaning you, heaping scorn on you, holding you in contempt and utter ostentatious disdain, putting you down, and so on so forth, devaluation, and then discards you. He blocks you on social media, even before you have met, and he does it consistently. So it's as if the shared fantasy is reversed in time. The malignant psychopathic narcissists starts with devaluation and discard. Why is that?

Because remember, the malignant psychopathic and sadistic narcissists are goal oriented all psychopaths are goal oriented and the vast majority of sadis are psychopathic so there's goal orientation there

what is the goal of the shared fantasy you remember the goal of the shared fantasy? Do you remember?

The goal of the shared fantasy is to reenact early childhood failed separation individuation.

The narcissist has failed as a child to separate from the mother to become an individual.

Now he needs you to act as a maternal figure from which he can separate successfully and become an individual, grow up, become an adult. So this is the aim of the shared fantasy. This is the end point. This is the goal of the shared fantasy. The psychopathic narcissists sees no reason not to go directly to the goal. He doesn't understand why it has to go through a whole convoluted, long-winded shared fantasy.

If the goal is devaluation, if the goal is separation, and the only way to obtain separation is via devaluation, if the goal is separation, and the only way to obtain separation is via devaluation. If he has to devalue the potential intimate partner in order to obtain separation, he says to himself, let me start with the devaluation. Why need to go through phases like love bombing that have nothing to do with the devaluation, nothing to do with the separation.

I need to get to the point. I don't have time. I don't want to waste my resources which are scarce anyhow. I don't want to invest. I don't want to commit. I don't know to cathect. I don't want to put an effort into this. I need you to act as my maternal figure because I need to separate from you. And in order to separate from you, I need to devalue you. So I'm going to devalue you now. Abinichu from the beginning.

I'm going to go through the other phases which have nothing to do with separation, nothing to do with individuation, nothing to do with evaluation, nothing to do with the aim of the fantasy. I'm goal-oriented. I'm going to realize and actualize the goal of the fantasy to start with this is the whole point of the fantasy says the malignant psychopathic narcissists so i'm going to start by devaluing you and discarding you it's a form of negative idealization uh mythological demonization conversion of you into a persecutary object, into an enemy. So the psychopathic malignant narcissist comes across a potential intimate partner, a potential friend, a potential spouse, a potential colleague comes across someone who can collaborate in a shared fantasy or can become a part of the shared fantasy.

Whereas the typical narcissists would start to love bomb and idealize in order to get to the point of devaluation and separation the psychopathic malignant narcissists will go straight to the point he will start by devaluing the potential the potential intimate partner potential friend who started by devaluing it will start by discarding pushing that person away. He would act aggressively, abrasively, humiliate, block, ban, go crazy, become sometimes violent.

And at the same time, he would devalue the potential partner, rather he would hate bomb rather than love bomb.

Hate bombing is a form of negative idealization. The partner and the potential target is idealized, but she's idealized as a mythological demon.

So the malignant psychopathic narcissist, when he comes across someone who could fit into a shared fantasy, demonizes her, idealizes her as a mythological malevolent entity.

So he exaggerates the evil and wickedness and malice and malevolence of the partner. That's his way of negatively idealizing her.

Naturally, the shared fantasies of malignant psychopathic narcissists are extremely short, nasty, and brutal. They could last hours, sometimes days.

In rare cases, the malignant psychopathic narcissist meets his match. He comes across someone who he believes could serve as his partner, his collaborator in a shared fantasy.

He says to himself, wow, she's the one. I want her in my shared fantasy.

I'm going to devalue her right now. I'm going to discard her right now. I'm going to insult her. I'm going to humiliate her. I'm going to shout at her. I'm going to verbally abuse her.

I'm going to treat her coercively. I'm going to do all these things to her because she's perfect. She is the one I want to separate for.

She is a perfect bad mother, perfect maternal figure. She's demonic, she's myth maternal figure, she's demonic, she's mythologically demonic.

She is ideal. No one has been more demonic than ever.

So he says to himself, I must have her. If anyone is worth separating from, she is the one.

And I need to incorporate her in the shared fantasy now, because I can incorporate her now and in two hours I can separate from her, devalue her, discard her, render her an enemy, a persecutory object, and I'm on my way to becoming an individual, to individuate.

I'm on my way to becoming an individual to individuate. I skip all the stages of love bombing and this and that, I skip all this nonsensical mushy tree hugging mess. I don't need any of this.

I'm tough and resilient and rough and strong. I'm empowered. I'm tough, I'm resilient, I'm rough, I'm strong, I'm empowered, I'm untouchable, I'm immune. I am the malignant psychopathic narcissist.

So I can go straight to the point, avoiding and skipping all the interim stages which are for more supple and compliant and submissive narcissists.

Malignant psychopathic narcissists looks down at typical narcissists. He considers them weak, too weak for his own taste.

Actually, malignant psychopathic narcissists take advantage of typical narcissists. They abuse them. They regard typical narcissists as delusional and gullible, which they are.

So sometimes the malignant psychopathic narcissist comes across this perfect partner in the shared fantasy. She's everything the malignant psychopathic narcissist has ever looked for in a partner from which he can separate by devaluating.

But on rare occasions, there is a misjudgment.

Whereas psychopathic malignant narcissists are likely to be attracted to submissive, pliant, malleable, weak, damaged, and broken women or partners, again, men, women, women, men, it's all interchangeable. The genders are interchangeable.

So whereas male, psychopathic, malignant narcissists are likely to be attracted to this type of partner, as I said, weak, malleable, pliant, submissive, and so and so forth, sometimes they misjudge.

They don't realize that behind the facade of submissiveness, compliance, obedience, weakness, femininity, or masculinity, and so behind this facade, there is actually a dangerous predator.

In rare cases where the potential partner is misidentified and is actually another malignant or sadistic narcissist, they have met their match and there's a battle of wills which evolves.

The original sadistic, malignant, psychopathic narcissist tries to devalue and discard the other psychopathic malignant narcissist.

And so you have two psychopathic sadistic malignant narcissists in a joint battle, fighting each other. They're at war like, you know, Godzilla and King Kong. They're at war.

And the amazing thing is, one of them is going to give in. One of them is going to give in, one of them is going to become codependent or even borderline, one of them is going to become dysregulated, one of them is going to become submissive like in nature, you know, one of them is going to submit, one animal submits to the other, visibly, frustrates itself.

So when you have two malignant psychopathic sadistic narcissists who misidentified each other and now are trying to devalue each other in order to reach the conclusion of the shared fantasy, you have a god-awful mess, you have an enormous explosion of externalized aggression, acting out and crazy making and insanity. One of them surrenders, that's inevitable in such a situation. One of them becomes disregulated and cognitively regulated and essentially codependent and with borderline behaviors, borderline personality organization.

They manifest dysregulated abuse and coercive behaviors toward each other.

So you see the two in the initial phase, you see the two psychopathic malignant narcissists cycling very fast, it's a kind of ritualized approach avoidance, but they cycle very fast between aggressive and submissive, violent and withdrawing, avoidant and approaching, in your face and demurring, coercive and obedient. They cycle, both of them, cycle very rapidly among these behaviors.

And it's an amazing sight to behold, because it's a kaleidoscope, but it's like shape shifting. It's as if there's a total dysregulation of the self-state system and multiple self-states, a dozen of states, are trying to compete for the same physical body, for the same space. And you can see everything shifting sometimes within minutes when each one of the two malignant sadistic psychopathic narcissists is trying to subdue the other, is trying to convert the other into a typical partner in a shared fantasy, a partner who can be then devalued and discarded and allow for separation, individuation.

This clash between these two dinosaurs, T-Rex and Brontosaurus, or I don't know what, this is earth-shattering, earthquakeing, it's an amazing sight to behold.

In the inverted fantasy, inverted shared fantasy of the psychopathic malignant narcissists, typically, following the devaluation and the discard, the malignant psychopathic, etc. would just go no contact with the target, with the victim, because mission accomplished, separation has been accomplished, and the target has been devalued and discarded, and the narcissist who is essentially a psychopath can move on to the next target, to the next goal.

So in a typical case, there will be total withdrawal, total avoidance, no contact, and the narcissist, the psychopathic, malignant sadistic narcissist would simply vanish, disappear.

Unlike typical narcissists, psychopathic malignant sadistic narcissists rarely hoover, actually. They rarely hoover because they have never gone through the snapshotting idealization phase. They went immediately to the evaluation and discard.

They didn't have time to create a representation of the shared fantasy inside their minds.

So while they do have internal objects, these internal objects are not idealized. They are persecutory. And these internal objects are very rudimentary, very primitive, because there hasn't been enough time to idealize them and evolve them. They don't have a life story.

And so these objects, these internal objects are not energetic. They're not imbued with energy. They don't create dissonance. They don't create anxiety.

So the sadistic psychopathic malignant narcissist doesn't ever need to hoover, except in extremely rare cases.

But when the sadistic psychopathic narcissist, the malignant narcissist, comes across another malignant narcissist, and when they compete for ownership of the shared fantasy, who will devalue whom? Who will be inof the shared fantasy, who will devalue whom? Who will be in charge? Who will control whom? Who will abuse whom?

When this battle of the giants goes on, finally one of them transitions to the role of a victim, letting the other one initiate the separation by betraying them.

This is the famous betrayal fantasy.

So four scenarios with a shared fantasy.

A typical narcissist's love bond, love bond, idealizes you, devalues you and discards you in order to separate from you and individuate.

And typically this kind of narcissist would hover you unless you have mortified him.

The second type of shared fantasy is a malignant narcissist who, from the get-go, from the first moment, devalues you and discards you because this is the goal of the shared fantasy and their goal-oriented.

Having devalued and discarded you, this kind of narcissist obtained separation and because he doesn't have a developed internal object representing you in his mind, he doesn't need to hover him.

That's the second type of shared fantasy.

The third type of shared fantasy is two malignant narcissists, one of them having misidentified the other and now they're in battle over control of over dominance and submission, over devaluation and idealization over everything.

The shared fantasy is intact, but it incorporates extreme elements of abuse, coercion and aggression, sometimes devolving to violence.

And the fourth type of a shared fantasy is when one malignant narcissist becomes dominant and the other one becomes submissive.

In this particular case, the submissive malignant narcissist would claim the role of a victim and would perceive himself as having been betrayed and this is the betrayal fantasy.

I have videos dedicated to the betrayal fantasy on this channel now you can search the channel either by using keywords, but much, much more easily you could visit the playlist on this channel, their thematic playlist. And you can choose the theme, you could just scroll through the playlist, and find a video that answers your question.

So hate bombing and the role of the malignant narcissist, they're much neglected in literature since the 1970s and they are literally nowhere to be found online among self-styled experts.

The shared fantasy of the malignant narcissist is a mirror image, an inverted image of the shared fantasy of a typical narcissist.

It starts with devaluation, not with idealization. It aims to discard you long before you have become the narcissist partner.

It is goal-oriented and it is about power.

The psychopaths are about power. It's a power play.

With the role of narcissistic supply, serving as a kind of signaling, power signaling.

The more narcissistic supply I have, the more powerful I am.

It's about power because this kind of narcissists feels proud of having power.

The locus of the grandiosity of this kind of narcissists is in the power that this kind of narcissists possesses in his own mind, at least.

He regards him so, is invulnerable, untouchable, immune to the consequences of his actions, unemotional, unattached, rigid, heartless, sometimes moral, and definitely abrasive and cruel, resilient.

So the shared fantasy of the malignant narcissists would reflect these preferences in grandiosity.

The specific cognitive distortions of this particular type of narcissists.

It's a psychopath. So it's goal oriented. It's sadist. So pain has a role here. A positive role. And it's a narcissist. So there's a need for separation and the shared fantasy.

And you thought narcissism is nothing but arrogance of an a-hole.

It is, but there's a lot more to it than this.

So I've enjoyed my voice and your silence. Stick around for the next episode of the Sam Vaknin Horror Show.