Okay, Shoshanim, another interview between the long-suffering Scott Douglas Jacobson and the insufferable ostentatious Sam Vaknin.
And today's topic is in sheep's clothing, victims who are victims just in name. Like rhinos, you know, Republicans in name only, vinos, victims in name only.
Today's interview was published yesterday in News Intervention.
In the description area, you will find a link. Click on it and it will take you where you have never gone before. And that's a threat, not a promise.
Okay, enough nonsense.
Let's get to business.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, what else, and a professor of psychology. And I just gave an interview to News Intervention about the issue of victimization, victim movements, and so on and so forth.
I read to you the book, Scott Douglas Jacobson, what defines victimization, he asks, what defines a real victim in contrast to a fake victim?
The ineffable Sam Vaknin response, victimization involves the denial of the self-determination, identity, self-actualization, rights and boundaries of a person without their express consent and collaboration.
Dazzle Jacobson, what makes victim identity movements, in fact, movements?
Vaknin, when victimhood becomes an organizing, an explanatory hermeneutic principle, when victimhood becomes a determinant of the victim's identity and a socially binding force centered around grievances, pro-social or communal grandiosity, entitlement, conspiracism, paranoid or persecretary delusions, aggressive engagement, or on the other end of the spectrum, schizoid withdrawal, disempathy, lack of empathy or declining empathy, defiance, reactance, and contumaciousness, a rejection of expertise and authority.
When you have all these together, we have on our hands a victim identity movements.
You can find all these, by the way, in the narcissistic abuse movement with the likes of empaths and muses, supergalactic empaths and all this supernova bullshit. These are actually narcissists with grandiosity, aggression, paranoid ideation, and so on and so forth.
So that's a prime example of a movement in the making coalescing as we speak in front of our eyes.
And I say in the interview, no one is a victim. I repeat, no one is a victim.
We may end up being victimized, but it doesn't render us victims for life. It doesn't brand us.
Jacobson, some studies in British Columbia, as you have noted, found some victimhood movements have been hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths.
How does this muddy the waters of the real justice movements and make them ineffectual?
This was not the only study to have unearthed this very disconcerting undertow.
We are beginning to wake up to the reality of what Gabay and others called the tendency for interpersonal victimhood or TIV.
These are professional or career victims with emphasized narcissistic and psychopathic tendencies, and they find new homes, pathological narcissistic spaces in these social justice upswells. It makes it difficult to tell apart legitimate evidence-based grievances from entitlement-fueled manipulative and counterfactual claims.
One helpful way to distinguish the two, in other words, one helpful way to distinguish between narcissistic psychopathic controlled movements and real social justice grievance-fueled movements.
One way to tell the two apart is by noting that narcissists and psychopaths are destructive. They are not solutions-oriented.
Narcissists and psychopaths thrive on negative effects such as anger and envy. They are loathe to invest in the routine and tedious chores, attendant upon rectifying wrongs and building a better world.
And I refer Jacobson to a video of me titled Victimhood movements hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths.
I want to summarize this segment for you.
This is a bit difficult to grasp at first sight or upon first hearing.
So there is growing evidence that social justice movements and victimhood movements, grievance-fueled movements, are being taken over and hijacked by narcissists and psychopaths.
This makes it very difficult to tell the difference between legitimate evidence-based grievances and entitlement-fueled manipulative and counterfactual claims.
So how can we tell the difference?
Narcissists and psychopaths are destructive. They don't seek solutions. They don't work in the long term. They don't try to build a better world. They don't try to rectify wrongs. They are into the public display. They are into the spectacle. They are ostentatious.
Okay, Shoshani, we move on.
Jacobson asks, what have been extreme historical cases of this going awry as this phenomenon has been historically cyclical, including one close to home in 2004?
And I answer, narcissism is a victimhood movement gone awry.
And to a lesser degree, of course, the white man's grievance movement implausibly headed by Trump, Donald Trump, is a more recent example of such subversive dynamics.
Jacobson, what is the typical art of development of victim movements?
Wagner. The sociologist Bradley Campbell suggested that we have transitioned from a culture centered around dignity to one based on victimhood. You can learn more by reading Habermas, Fukuyama and Fuko. All justice seeking movements start with grievances, injustices. They decry and seek to remedy in reverse individual transgressions.
And this was typical of the narcissistic abuse movement online as well. They seek to somehow address societal and cultural biases, implicit or explicit, discrimination, suppression. These are the victimhood. These are the movements, the justice seeking movements, the societal activism movements at the inception, at the very beginning. The victims organize themselves around exclusionary identity politics and intersectionality.
And it is this orientation, this orientation for I'm a victim, I'm the exclusive victim, I'm the only victim, I'm the most victim. No one has been victimized before like me. And I'm a victim on multiple levels. I'm a black woman, so I'm a victim as a black and I'm a victim as a woman.
You know, intersectionality. So this, exactly this orientation results in grandiosity and entitlement. In other words, in growing narcissism.
Increasingly more aggressive, these movements often become psychopathic, defiant and contumacious. They demonize the other. Left-leaning victimhood movements center around entitlement and reparations claims on the majority, on social institutions and on history. This is a grievance focus or a grievance centered approach on the left.
Right-wing movements, because they are right-wing victimhood movements, of course, ask any white supremacists, right-wing movements are conspiracy minded and they are avoidant. They don't engage society in an attempt at reform, but they're avoidant. They're also more violent than left-leaning movements.
Narcissists and psychopaths gravitate towards such movements in order to obtain narcissistic supply, power, money and sex. So these movements become the watering holes of narcissists and psychopaths. They see a new victimhood movement. They are all over it. They become the public faces and the media darlings of these helpless victims, having hijacked the legitimate complaints and demands of the victims.
Jacobson, how much of the online content of narcissism and psychopathy is garbage, worthless or worse now?
Vaknin, about 90%, 90%. It is not only worthless, wrong. It is dangerously misleading and entrenches a lifelong self-defeating and self-aggrandizing victimhood stance, even as it demonizes and mythologizes the abusers.
Jacobson, what is the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood or TIV?
The Vaknin. A series of two studies by Israeli scholar Gabbai and others published in 2020. And in these studies, the authors provided this abstract.
In the present research, say the authors, we introduce a conceptualization of the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, TIV, which we define, say the authors, which we define as an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across different kinds of interpersonal relationships.
So I read to you again, the definition of Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood, TIV, an enduring feeling that the self is a victim across different kinds of interpersonal relationships.
The authors continue to say, then in a comprehensive set of eight studies, we develop a measure for this novel personality trait, TIV, and examine its correlates, as well as its affective, cognitive and behavioral consequences.
In part one, we establish the construct of TIV with its four dimensions.
In other words, need for recognition, moral elitism, lack of empathy, and rumination.
And then we assess TIV's internal consistency, stability over time, and its effect on the interpretation of ambiguous situations.
In part two, we examine TIV's convergent and discriminant validities using several personality dimensions and the role of attachment styles as conceptual antecedents.
In part three, we explore the cognitive and behavioral consequences of TIV. Specifically, we examine the relationships between TIV, negative attribution, and recall biases, and the desire for revenge, and the effects of TIV on behavioral revenge.
The findings highlight the importance of understanding, conceptualizing, and empirically testing TIV, and suggest that victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency.
I'm going to read these to you again.
Victimhood is a stable and meaningful personality tendency.
Again, in the description, you'll find relevant links.
I refer Jacobson to another interesting study. It's a study titled Signaling Virtuous Victimhood as Indicators of Dark Triad Personalities. It was authored by Yikian and others. It was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology of the American Psychological Association in May 2020.
And here's a sentence, an excerpt from this study.
New research provides evidence that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, maladaptive personality traits known as the dark triad, are associated with overt displays of virtue and victimhood.
I'm going to repeat this mind-boggling sentence.
Evidence shows that narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism, manipulativeness, maladaptive personality traits known as the dark triad, are associated with overt displays of virtue and victimhood.
The study suggests that people with dark personalities use these signals of virtuous victimhood to deceptively extract resources from other people.
It's pretty straightforward, I would say.
Stunned Jacobson.
What are the primary signifiers of narcissists and psychopaths who have or might hijack legitimate victimhood justice movements, looking for money, power, and sex?
Sex. Vaknin.
Ironically, these narcissists and psychopaths who latch onto social justice movements, they're usually pro-social or communal narcissists and psychopaths. They often control from the bottom. They emotionally blackmail other people by being self-sacrificial or by posing to be victims.
So the infestation of victimhood activism by narcissists and psychopaths is the tip of a submerged iceberg of Ersatz altruism.
Some narcissists, for example, are ostentatiously generous. They dedicate time and other resources to social justice movements and to activism. They donate to charity, lavish gifts on their closest, abundantly provide for the nearest and dearest, and in general are open-handed and unstintingly benevolent.
But all this is a facade. It's fake. It's a form of virtue signaling.
How can this be reconciled with a pronounced lack of empathy and with a pernicious self-preoccupation that is so typical of narcissists?
And so we need to understand that ostentatious giving is a way to extract narcissistic supply.
Posing as a victim is a way to garner attention. The act of giving enhances the narcissist's sense of omnipotence, his fantastic grandiosity, and the contempt that he holds for others.
It is easy to feel superior to the supplicating recipients of one's largess.
Narcissistic altruism is about exerting control and maintaining control by fostering dependence in the beneficiaries.
But narcissists give for other reasons as well.
The narcissist flaunts his charitable nature as a bait. He impresses others with his wealth or selflessness and kindness.
And in this way, he lures other people into his lair. He entraps other people. He manipulates other people and brainwashes them into subservient compliance and obsequious collaboration.
People are attracted to the narcissist's larger-than-life persona and posture, only to discover his true personality traits when it's far too late.
So it's a kind of give a little to take a lot. This is the narcissist's creed and motto.
And this does not prevent the narcissist from assuming the role of the exploited victim.
Narcissists always complain that life and people are unfair to them in justice. Narcissists complain that they invest far more than their share of the profit.
The narcissist feels that he is the sacrificial lamb, the scapegoat, and that his relationships are asymmetric and imbalanced.
The narcissist is likely to say she's getting out of our marriage far more than I do, or I do all the work around here and they are getting all the perks and benefits, or I'm a perennial victim. I should be representing the victimhood movement.
Some narcissists are actually compulsive about all this. They're compulsive givers, for example.
And to all appearances, the compulsive giver is an altruistic, empathic, and caring person.
Giving is not only about money. You could give time. You could give energy. You could give resources. You could give your place to be used.
But if it is done compulsively, it's a problem.
Again, on the surface, the compulsive giver is altruistic, empathic, charitable, caring person.
But actually, he or she is a people pleaser and a codependent. The compulsive giver is trapped in a narrative of his own confabulation, how his nearest and dearest need him because they are poor or young or inexperienced or lacking in intelligence and good looks and are otherwise inferior to him.
The act of giving makes him feel superior. Compulsive giving, therefore, involves pathological narcissism. In reality, it is the compulsive giver who coerces, cajoles, and tempts people around him to avail themselves of his services or money.
The narcissist forces himself on the recipients of his ostentatious largess and coerces the beneficiaries of his generosity or magnanimity in full public view. The narcissist is unable to deny anyone their wishes or requests even when these are not explicit or expressed and are mere figments of his own neediness and grandiose imagination.
Some narcissists, as I said, are ostentatiously generous. I don't know. They donate to charity. They volunteer. They lavish gifts on their closest, abundantly provide for their nearest and dearest, and so on and so forth.
And so, again, it makes them feel superior. There is a subgroup of narcissists, co-dependent narcissists and so on. These are people pleasers, and they also gravitate towards victimhood movements.
People pleasers dread conflicts, and they wish to avoid them. They're conflict averse.
And so, they need to believe that they're universally liked. They're always pleasant, well-mannered, civil, conflict averse, but at the same time they're evasive, vague, hard to pin down, sometimes obsequious, and generally spineless non-entity.
This is the profile of the covert of vulnerable narcissists. These qualities are self-defeating as they tend to antagonize people rather than please them.
But conflict aversion is only one of several psychodynamic backgrounds for the behavior known as people pleasing. And these other components or elements in people pleasing, in conjunction with the conflict aversion, drive these covert and vulnerable narcissists into victimhood movements.
There's kind of power in numbers. Some people pleasers cater to the needs and demands of other people as a form of penance or self-sacrifice.
Many people pleasers are co-dependence, and they strive to gratify their nearest and dearest in order to allay their own abandonment, anxiety, and ensuing, intense, and at times life-threatening dysphoria.
It's kind of like I am nice to him, so he won't break up with me, or if I cater to her needs, she will never leave me, and so on.
Then there are people pleasers who are narcissists. Pleasing people enhances their sense of omnipotence, grandiosity. These kind of narcissistic people pleasers seek to control and disempower their charges, the people who benefit from their services.
And so they say, she so depends on me, and she so looks up to me, to me, she so looks up to me that I cannot abandon.
Even the pity of these self-pleaser narcissists, even their pity, is a form of self-aggrandizement.
They say, only I can make her life so much better. She needs me. Without me, her life would be hell.
Even these narcissistic people pleasers are misanthropic altruists and compulsive givers.
All people pleasers, narcissistic or not, use common coping strategies which they import into victimhood movements.
Number one, dishonesty, in order to avoid conflicts and unpleasant situations. Number two, manipulation, to ensure desired outcomes, such as an intimate partner's continued presence. Number three, fostering dependence. Co-dependent people pleasers leverage their ostentatious helplessness. They manifest weaknesses in order to elicit the kind of behaviors and solicit the benefits that they are angling for, while narcissistic people pleasers aim to habituate their targets by bribing them with gifts, monopolizing their time, and isolating them socially.
And all these strategies are leveraged and imported into victimhood movements as they grow.
Look what's happening with Black Lives Matter, with the Me Too movement, and so on.
Infantalization, displaying childish behaviors in order to gratify the emotional needs of overprotective, possessive, paranoid, narcissistic, and codependent individuals in the people's pleasers, milieu, or life.
And finally, there's self-punishment, self-defeat, and self-sacrifice to signal self-annulment in the pursuit of people-pleasing.
Some of these strategies are not typical of narcissists and psychopaths, but all of them are typical of many social activists.
Exacerbated Jacobson. What, historically speaking, can be done to combat these cluster B bad behaviors connected to some social movements?
Vaknin.
As the grievances of these movements are addressed, these movements become a part of the establishment. This is when the hard work begins.
The labors of writing laws, regulatory oversight, politics, negotiations, and compromise, and the tedium of perseverance and routine.
These newfangled demands on the psychological and logistical resources of the movement and its adherence drive narcissists and psychopaths away. They are unaccustomed to, and they reject the hard slog and the often sisyphean undertakings of public policy.
In other words, they're lazy.
And then Jacobson, thank you so much for the time and opportunity, Dr. V. Dr. V, is it V for victim or V for Vaknin? Just kidding. Thank you for suffering me yet again. And to you too.