What are you doing here? Why aren't you going out to socialize, to have one-night stands, to drink yourself to oblivion in obscure bars and pubs whose names you will not remember the next morning? Why don't you play video games for an average of four and a half hours a day, latest data? Why don't you, I don't know, watch reruns? Stuff yourself with popcorn?
Ah, there's a pandemic out there. That's the reason.
Well, in this case, lovely people. I'm the next best option.
And today I'm going to discuss two instruments, two tools.
They are very rough and tumble. They're very rule of thumb heuristics. They're not tested. They're not peer-reviewed. They're not vetted.
But they rely on a database of 1,791 people diagnosed by mental health practitioners, not by their spouses and angry children diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder and their family members, a total of several million data points.
So using the most rigorous statistical methods, I keep analyzing this database, which I've accumulated over the past 23 years. And I keep coming up with surprising answers.
And based on these surprising answers, I am now trying to construct a series of tools, psychological tests, and other tools with internal validation.
In other words, tools that the database itself validates.
Now, of course, the database is flawed. It is self-selecting. It's not representative. It's comprised only of people with the extreme form of narcissism. And they're suffering family members. It's all true.
But still, it's by far, by far, the largest corpus, the largest body of knowledge about this disorder. Just for you to have a basis for comparison.
The biggest tests ever conducted, biggest experiments, biggest studies ever conducted involved anywhere between 24 and 100 people diagnosed with narcissism. That's it.
So I think I have what to contribute.
And today I'm going to discuss two rough instruments, raw instruments that I'm working with, which might be of interest, definitely of interest to narcissists, and of some interest to people who are forced to live or collaborate or work with narcissists, looking from the outside.
So the first tool is what I call the HERS, H-E-R-S, the heartbreak and recovery scale. It's actually a tool to gauge mortification.
You remember mortification. And if you don't, I recommend an advice to search for mortification on my channel.
By the way, my channel, the YouTube channel is searchable. There is a magnifying glass symbol and you can click on it and search the channel for relevant videos. You can search by title, you can search by keyword and so on.
So there are about four, if I recall correctly, videos dedicated to mortification.
Now, just to remind you what is mortification. Mortification is a state of mind of the narcissist induced by an extreme challenge or injury to his self image, the way he sees himself or the way he sees himself as a pronounced component of grandiosity.
So that is challenge and undermined in a process of mortification.
But there are also other components. For example, egosyntony, the narcissist feels good with himself. Some narcissist even convince themselves they're good people.
And so any challenge to the self image and self perception of the narcissist that is sufficiently abrupt, sufficiently strong to penetrate his defenses can cause mortification by forcing the narcissist to see himself as other people see him.
Narcissist then cannot escape. It becomes inescapable, cannot escape himself. He sees himself as a creep, as a monster, as an abuser, as a bad guy and he can't cope with it. He can't tolerate it.
So he decompensates, disintegrates and very often acts out or develops clinical depression, etc.
I discussed all this in the previous videos.
And to remind you, mortification is caused by in most cases in romantic relationships. Mortification is caused by substituting another man for the narcissist in a new shared fantasy.
This tends to cause mortification and exit from the shared fantasy by the romantic or intimate partner and shifting all the blame and responsibility to the narcissist, especially if such a shift is merited.
These are the three components that lead to what we call external mortification of the narcissist.
And I've designed a tool which could tell the narcissist to what extent he's mortified. This tool also predicts how long will it take the narcissist to recover from a traumatic breakup or from infidelity by his cherished partner. This tool also predicts if the narcissist would be able to remain friends with the cherished partner or will try to hoover her or will he go no contact.
And finally, this tool is useful in predicting will the nice narcissist try again, hoovering, aforementioned hoovering. Will he try again but seriously? Will he try to reestablish the shared fantasy? Will he give the intimate partner a second chance at relationship recovery?
So the instrument, which I again, I call the instrument heartbreak and recovery scale, the instrument has six questions. And each of these questions, you need to answer yes or no. If it's a no, it's a zero. If it's a yes, it's a one.
So the first question is, did what she or he, I'm going to use she, but of course it applies also to male intimate partners or female narcissists.
So in this case, we are talking about female intimate partners or male narcissists, but there is no gender prejudice here. It's simply for convenience sake.
So the first question is, did what she do come as a shock to you? Or was it predictable, the culmination of a visible evident process?
If the answer is yes, it came as a shock, give yourself one point. If the answer is no, I saw it coming, give yourself zero.
Number two, question number two, did she humiliate you in the process, especially in public and in front of your peers? If the answer is yes, one, the answer is no, zero.
Number three, did you react with anger or even rage that just wouldn't go away even after the event? Yes or no.
Number four, following the events which led to the mortification, were you desperate? Were you in the throes of catastrophizing? Did you say to yourself, I will never find someone to replace her? Or did you have negative automatic thoughts? I always fail in my relationships. I'm a monster. I made it happen, etc.
Did you have all this? And this is called internal notification. If you had any of these thoughts, give yourself one. If you didn't give yourself zero.
Question number five, in the aftermath, did you experience profound sadness, dysphoria, and did nothing give you pleasure? You couldn't find pleasure in anything. It's called anhedonia. If you experience dysphoria or depression and nothing gave you pleasure in the aftermath of the event, give yourself one. If everything was okay a week or two or three later, give yourself zero.
And finally, the last question, in the wake of the dissolution of the bond, did you feel excruciating pain, overwhelming romantic jealousy, or pathological envy? Any of these. If the answer is yes, one, no, zero.
Now, if you scored in this test two to three, it is improbable that you will ever be in touch with that traumatizing person again with the former intimate partner. If you scored four, it usually prefaces, predicts, and foresees a new phase of mere friendship or companionship between the two of you, but no re-establishment, no reconstituting the shared fantasy, no romance.
Just transition to another form of relationship. And if you scored five or six, this usually would lead to frenzied, although doomed, attempts to restore the relationship to its former romantic self, to reconstitute the shared fantasy.
And I explained why narcissists tried to reconstitute the shared fantasy in another video. They are trying to replace external mortification with internal mortification or another external mortification. It's the only way they can survive.
But at any rate, this tool gives you from an analysis of my database, this tool gives you very, very accurate prediction. The sensitivity is about 98%, and the specificity is well over 95%. The prediction is ironclad.
And I'll summarize it again. If you scored two to three, you will never be in touch with me. If you scored four, after some time, you will make contact, you will try to hoover her, but not as a romantic partner, usually as a friend, as a companion friend with benefits. If you scored five or six, you will be hysterical. You will be in panic, you will be driven, you will be compulsive, trying to reestablish the shared fantasy with her, trying to hoover her, to scoop her back, to brainwash her again, to addict her, to condition her, to be again, your intimate romantic partner, in order to resolve actually, the mortification.
Now the second instrument that I've designed, I've designed quite a few dozen, actually, I'm going to introduce them gradually over time.
The second instrument that I would like to discuss today is what I call the S1-S2 score.
S1 is promiscuity, and S2 is self-efficacy.
Now let me explain what is promiscuity and what is self-efficacy.
Promiscuity is indiscriminately engaging in sex with partners, almost regardless of their qualities, traits, behaviors, and profile.
Self-efficacy is the ability to induce beneficial outcomes in the environment and in your life through your efforts.
By exerting yourself, by investing, by working hard, you succeed to obtain results, you succeed to accomplish things. The more you succeed, the more self-efficacious you are, you then have agency over your life.
So these are the two parameters, promiscuity and self-efficacy.
When I say promiscuity, I'm referring to someone.
And again, I'm going to use the female pronoun, but it equally applies to the male pronoun.
Right now, there are excellent reasons to believe. There are equal numbers of narcissists among men and women, as opposed to 20 years ago.
Narcissism has risen dramatically in a tsunami wave of narcissism among women.
So I'm going to use the female voice, but it's just for convenience sake.
Supremiscuity is sleeping with multiple partners simultaneously, engaging in group sex, engaging in casual sex habitually as a habit or as the main form of sex, serial cheating on a dedicated intimate partner in a primary relationship.
So for example, cheating on your husband, group sex with relatives or sex with relatives, including incest, sex with age-inappropriate partners, very old men, very young, casual sex with strangers in unusual, impersonal settings, rape, sexual acts and teasing.
So teasing as a form of sexual act. Sex while drunk or while high or while stoned or while wasted, habitually, again, not as a one-off, but as a habit and sexting as a habit.
All these things are strong indicators and components, ingredients of promiscuity.
So this is promiscuity. I found out from analyzing my database that there are five traits of a potential source of supply, which rendered the source of supply irresistible to the narcissist.
If the potential source of supply has these five traits in varying degrees, she becomes a natural as a source of supply and the narcissist will invest and pursue her and court her much more than others.
So promiscuity is number one.
It seems that narcissists react very powerfully to promiscuity.
Number two, self-trashing.
Narcissists are attracted very strongly, almost irresistibly to women who self-trash.
When I say self-trash, engage in reckless behaviors, self-damaging, self-defeating and self-destructive behaviors as a form of self-punishment, as a form of self-devaluation, self-degradation and self-dispoiling. That attracts the narcissist a lot.
The next thing that seems to be a determinant and a predictor, a prognosticator of attraction is disclosure.
So the more open the future partner about her promiscuity and self-trashing, the more the narcissist is going to be attracted irresistibly, inexorably and at the same time develop severe abandonment anxiety, feel pain, feel a lot of pain and react with desperate attempts to re-establish object constancy.
So if the woman is promiscuous, self-trashing and talks openly about it, this trifecta almost guarantees that the narcissist will gravitate towards such a partner and will try to acquire her, to make her his, to possess her and to convert her and transform her into his partner, his intimate partner in the shared fantasy.
The next two components are diametrically opposed to the first three in many ways.
First of all, the level of organization of the personality, a high level of organization, the higher the level of organization of personality, the more the narcissist is attracted.
Now, it usually doesn't go together. A high level of organization of personality doesn't usually go with self-trashing or promiscuity.
Women who self-trash and are promiscuous and especially if they're proud of it are usually women with very low self-esteem, labile moods and dysregulated emotions. This is, for example, a typical profile of a woman with borderline personality disorder or even histrionic personality disorder, hyper dysregulated emotionality.
But if the narcissist finds this unicorn, a promiscuous self-trashing woman whose personality is highly organized, and they do exist by the woman whose personality is highly organized, that renders her, as I just said, a unicorn.
And finally, self-efficacy. A high self-efficacy is again very attractive to the narcissist, something that draws him in in a way that he cannot resist, does not want to resist.
Put the five together, promiscuity, self-trashing, full proud disclosure, high organization of personality and high self-efficacy, and you get the ideal profile of a partner in the shared fantasy.
Of course, the narcissist never finds this profile in his totality. He compromises, he finds three out of five elements, he's good enough, finds four, wonderful.
But if he finds five, this is going to be the woman of his life.
Why is that?
Can we try to understand the psychodynamic background to this bizarre concoction of traits and behaviors?
Well, first of all, you do remember that narcissists are subject to a Madonna horror complex.
They divide all women into Madonnas, asexual Madonnas, sexless Madonnas, saints, men with whom they can develop a business, establish a family, do many things together, be great companions, but no sex. They will not have sex with them because sex is defiling, self is despoiling, self is degrading and you don't do this to a saint or to a Madonna or to your truly intimate partner in life.
So there's Madonna and then there's horror.
Horror all the other women, the women who aren't legitimate sex objects, the women who can be subjected to sadistic, dismantling, despoiling, degrading, demeaning, debasing by the narcissist, the only type of sex he knows, kinky, but with humiliation, with a pronounced element of humiliating the woman.
And they're all these other women.
So the promiscuity and self trashing elements that we mentioned before, and especially if the woman is proud of these things, they indicate, they're strong indicators of a horror, of exactly the type of woman who would constitute a legitimate sex object in the narcissist's mind.
It's like a red light goes on. Wow, a siren. Yeah, she is the one. She is the prostitute. She is the woman who would allow me, who would let me do anything to her. She will not resist or object or reject me. Nevermind what I do to her. Nevermind how I humiliate her. Nevermind how I despoil her, cause her pain, etc.
The sadistic element.
And so these are the indicators of this.
And then the personality organization and the self-efficacy, their hallmarks of a mother.
Mothers are highly organized. Well, supposed to be highly organized. They are highly self efficacious. They obtain results. They accomplish things. They are the safe base of the child. The child feels that the mother is a pillar. She's a foundation. She's stable. She's always there. She's safe. She's protective.
So a high personality organization, high self-efficacy, a mother-like elements, saint-like elements. So the Madonna horror complex causes the narcissist to look for the impossible. A woman who on one hand is a playmate, a playmate in the whorish sense, in the sexual sense, promiscuous, self-trashing, open to submissiveness, open to sadism, open to kink, open to humiliation. And on the other hand, he wants in the same woman to have strong personality traits, entrepreneurship, go getter, daredevil, self efficacious, gets what she wants, goes for it as a high personality organization, stable, strong, cool-headed, etc.
And he wants this combination.
Now, believe it or not, this combination does exist and the narcissist spends most of his life looking for exactly this kind of woman. And when he finds her, his infatuation is limitless, is limitless. And the subsequent shared fantasy is full substitute for reality. He then totally migrates from reality into the shared fantasy. And when he's inevitably mortified, because this kind of woman is likely to cheat on him, likely to betray him and likely to finally discard him and abandon him, having realized who he is.
So the end of such a shared fantasy is a massive, usually not always, a massive modification. And remember, the modification is caused by when the woman migrates to another shared fantasy with another man, exiting the shared fantasy with a narcissist, but she must also blame the narcissist for her transition, blame him for her cheating, for her abandonment, for dumping him, transfer all the responsibility to him, make him feel bad about himself. If she only does the first two, if she transitions to a shared fantasy with another man and exits a fantasy with a narcissist, but takes responsibility, blame, guilt and shame upon herself, exempting the narcissist, exonerating the narcissist, there will not be a modification.
So these are two tools that narcissists can, you know, use at their leisure and pleasure, nothing much to do during this pandemic. And I hope they will derive some insights, although that's a very tall order when it comes to narcissists.
The next video I'm going to make is in response to a series of questions I've received about how I'm coping during this pandemic. What's my, what's my inner landscape? How do I feel?
And so, so stay with us for the next episode.