But to summarize the answer, there is no narcissist with a false self. There is only false self.
The false self is the narcissist. The narcissist is a piece of fiction. It's a script.
It's a movie. It's a horror movie. That's the narcissist.
He's not there.
Is that the reason why narcissists wouldn't go and seek help and go through therapy? Would it be terrifying that this false self would be identified and changed?
I don't think narcissists go deeply. I think not going to therapy is mainly a question of grandiosity, because the relationship with the therapist, by definition, is hierarchical.
The therapist knows more than you. Otherwise, what do you go through? He's an expert. So he knows more than you.
But how can he know more than you if you know everything, your mission?
The narcissist has power within the therapeutic setting. He can tell you what to do. He can end the session. He can say, you know, 50 minutes, finished. He can demand money from you. So he can make you do things you don't want to do. You don't want to pay the therapist.
But he can ask you to pay. So the therapist's therapy is a situation where you surrender control and surrender power. And this is something anathema to narcissists, something narcissists would never, never countenance, never consider.
So it has more to do with grandiosity than with false self. False self and all this is how we know. We understand how things are happening behind the scenes.
But as the narcissist experiences it, he immediately starts to challenge the therapist.
What do you know? Who are your clients? You're not very successful. I know more than you. I watch many videos on YouTube. I read books. Do you know?
And he mentioned some authority. He competes with narcissists. He challenges in order to, at the very minimum, equalize himself with the narcissist as far as knowledge, as far as power, as far as activities, as far as control of the process.
He wants to control the process.
So it is not possible to conduct therapy on such conditions.
Why does the victim want to help or wants to help the narcissist?
Why does the victim want to kind of take it out of the situation and still in love with the narcissist?
We just said that the narcissist does not exist. And to some extent the victim does not exist. We'll come to that in a minute.
The narcissist does not exist.
What is a narcissist?
It's a reflection. Narcissist has a false self. People see the false self.
Not the narcissist, see the false self.
And they reflect the false self to the narcissist.
Narcissist collects these reflections, puts them together in a collage, and that is the narcissist.
I suggested in my work that the narcissist doesn't have a mind, a unitary mind. He has a hive mind, like bees. He has a hive mind.
He takes reflection of feedback from him. Then he puts them all together in a collage, montage. And this is his mind. This is his soul.
So it's not unitary. It's fragmentary. And it's kaleidoscopic.
While in a healthy person, the identity, the core, is stable. In the narcissist, it's crucially dependent on feedback.
So when the feedback comes, the narcissist's core, narcissist's soul, shifts shape. It's a shape-shifter. Shapes colors, shapes angles.
Narcissist's soul or psyche all the time moves, like kaleidoscope. You can never see the same narcissist twice. Like you can never enter the same river twice.
Narcissist changes second by second, depending on feedback. Constantly monitoring, constantly sucking attention, sucking feedback, and using this input to reconstruct his self on the go. So he reconstructs his entire identity and self second by second by second by second.
And no wonder that narcissism is very energy-depleting, very exhausting process.
So I said that the narcissist is a reflection.
Now the tool we use to generate reflections is called the mirror.
So a narcissist is a hall of mirrors. It's a mirror reflecting a mirror, reflecting a mirror, reflecting a mirror, reflecting a mirror. It's a hall of mirrors.
When the victim enters this hall and in this hall of mirrors, there is nobody.
This is something victims must understand. There is no person there. There is nobody. It's an empty hall of mirrors. There are only mirrors.
Who is the narcissist? What is reflected in the mirrors?
The narcissist is the sum total of the reflection in the mirrors.
Now what happens is the victim enters the hall of mirrors, falls in love with the narcissist, enters the hall of mirrors.
What does she see? Herself. She sees herself.
The narcissist reflects to the victim herself, actually. Who does she fall in love with? Her reflection.
Not the narcissist.
Because there is no such thing. There is no narcissist. There isn't.
She falls in love with her reflection. It is the victim's only way to love herself.
She is in love with herself in the mirrors. She falls in love with her multiplication, with her amplification, with her finally.
What she considers to be her essence.
So when she enters the hall of mirrors, there is an immediate effect of extreme love.
Why extreme love?
Because it's she. She falls in love with herself.
And then it becomes literally impossible to disengage from the narcissist or to fall out of love.
Why?
Because you don't love the narcissist. You love yourself. How can you fall in love out of yourself? How can you fall out of love with yourself? How can you stop loving yourself? You can stop loving an external person, another person.
But you can never ever stop loving yourself. That's the narcissist's trick. It's magic.
The narcissist is a magician. He makes you fall in love with yourself through his hole of mirrors.
At that point, the hole of mirrors becomes...