This is the age of unicorns.
Donald Trump won the elections.
Elon Musk is considered to be a genius.
And I'm receiving intelligent comments on YouTube.
Miracles never cease.
And here's the latest one.
Professor Vaknin, that's me by the way. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, and I'm also a professor of psychology in multiple universities.
So, here goes the comment.
Professor Vaknin, I am trying hard to wrap my head around the concept of snapshotting. I watched many of your videos on the topic, which has been clarified. Still, questions persist.
Why do narcissists still seek the attention and interactions with the external objects after snapshotting?
If the external object ceases to exist, why do they still want to hang out, talk on the phone, visit, email, text, etc.?
Is it because they lack the awareness that the external object is not actually the interject? Can they not tell the difference?
I'm having hard time understanding why don't they just end all interactions with the external object following interjection.
What am I missing?
A lot.
Okay.
First of all, I never said that interactions with the external object ceases.
What I said is that the narcissist's interactions proceed with the internal object. The relationship unfolds with the internal object.
That is because the narcissist is unable to perceive your externality and separateness. The narcissist confuses the externality and separateness of the external object with the internal object.
So when the narcissist is arguing with the internal object, abusing the internal object, shouting at the internal object, caressing the internal object, loving the internal object, hating the internal object, whatever the narcissist does, even when the narcissist communicates via phone or email or text, communication is with the internal object.
Whenever the narcissist does this, he is under the illusion that he is communicating with the external object. He simply thinks that the internal object is the external object.
That happens also in psychosis, where there is a god awful confusion between internal and external.
The psychotic hears a voice, the voice is in his mind, but the psychotic would say the voice is coming from the outside. Or the psychotic would see an image in his mind's eye, and he would believe that the image is out there, is external. This is known as hallucination, auditory and visual hallucinations.
So the narcissist, in some way, is hallucinatory. Clinically, the narcissist is delusional, but there is an element of a hallucination where the narcissist, as he carries on interacting with the internal objects, fully believes and would insist that he's actually interacting with the external object.
So I know it's difficult to wrap your mind around this, but try.
When the narcissist is shouting at you, he is actually shouting at the internal object. When he is love bombing you, he is actually love bombing the internal idealized object. When he berates you and demeans you and denigrates you and humiliates you and shames you, criticizes you, he's actually doing all these things to the devalued persecutory internal object.
The narcissist simply can't tell the difference between reality and fantasy, between out there and in here. He has no boundaries that separate himself or herself from reality because he doesn't or she doesn't have a self.
When you don't have a self, then you're diffused, you're like a cloud, you're fuzzy, you're like fog or mist, you're kind of dissolve into the environment. And you can no longer tell the difference where you stop and other people begin and where other people stop and you begin.
It's as if other people are extensions or figments of the imagination or elements and ingredients of the mind. And it is as if the mind is reality, the mind is the world. This is known clinically as hyper-reflexivity. I know, like many other things in pathological narcissism, this is extremely difficult to comprehend.
Similarly, it's difficult to comprehend how the narcissist is actually an absence, an emptiness, a void, a black hole, an absence masquerading as a presence. So all these things are counterintuitive. They defy our daily experiences and our expectations and what we've been taught about people, about ontology, the existence of objects, about external and internal.
And the reason this is happening is because the narcissist's development, the narcissist's personal growth, especially in early childhood, has been severely disrupted. So the narcissus is a work, not even in progress. The narcissists is a work, work interrupted. It's like a, the narcissist himself, it's like a snapshot of, of a human being that could have been, that could have become, and that would never, would never be, and would never become.
And so, the narcissist seems to be interacting with you, isn't he? I mean, he's chatting with you, is agreeing with you, is disagreeing with you, he's criticizing you, he is praising you, he is loving you, he's hating on you, it's you, it's all about you, isn't it?
No, it's not. It's not about you.
Okay. So why does the narcissist insist that you should be physically present? Why? Why wouldn't it simply let you go in the aftermath of the snapshoting?
Well, there are several very good reasons.
First of all, if you were to vanish in the wake of the snapshotting, the delusional aspect, the hallucinatory aspect, the illusory aspect of the snapshot would have been too evident.
The narcissist keeps you around, keeps you around. The narcissists insist on your presence, continuous presence, in order to convince himself that he is not insane. He is not delusional. His internal object is real. His internal object is external. The fact is, you're there. I mean, the narcissist has senses, he can see, he can hear, she can smell, so, you know, there are sensor, there's sensory inputs from the environment. And these sensory inputs emanating from you, how you look, how you talk, the sounds you produce, the smell, your scent, all these sensory inputs serve to convince the narcissists that the internal object is interacting with is actually not internal. It's external.
You're a bit like a placeholder, a bit like a peg in a cupboard, upon which one hangs one's clothing. The narcissist hangs the internal object on you, the external object, and you serve as an inert peg, an inert hanger in a closet. So this is function number one. Your continued existence, your presence, the very fact that you're responding to the narcissists' prompts and speech acts and communication and body language and verbal abuse usually and so. The very fact that you are there and you're responsive serves to convince the narcissists that nothing is wrong with him. That the internal object is actually external, that he is not delusional, that he is not hallucinating, that is not psychotic, that is not, in other words, mentally ill. The mask of sanity, as Hervey Cleckley called it, the appearance of normalcy. Narcissists are heavily emotionally invested, they're heavily affected, in maintaining a normal facade, a sane mask. And your role is to convince even the narcissist that his life is normal, his behavior is typical, his, you know, nothing's wrong. Your presence in the narcissist's life conveys to the narcissist that nothing is wrong with him or her half of all narcissists are women. This is function number one.
Second function is narcissists exactly like people with borderline personality disorder suffer from separation insecurity, abandonment anxiety. They lack object constancy.
In other words, they have difficulty to relate to people when they are not there physically.
Early on in life, baby becomes infuriated and terrified when mother leaves the room because baby is unable to visualize mother in baby's mind. This is known as object constancy.
Babies up to age 18, 24, 36 months, they suffer from object impermanence, object inconstancy. They cannot create an introject, they cannot create an image, they cannot create an avatar. They cannot create a representation of mother in their own minds that would substitute for the real mother when she exits the room, when she is no longer available, when she frustrates the baby.
So the narcissist is stuck, developmentally stuck much earlier than that.
So narcissists lack object constancy. Consequently, narcissists are terrified. They have abandonment anxiety, separation anxiety, or the clinical term is separation insecurity. They are terrified when you are not physically present, exactly like babies. They are two years old, mentally, emotionally speaking.
And finally, the third reason, the narcissist needs you to be physically there, needs you to occupy the same space to share with him the spatial and temporal dimension, despite the fact that there is a total confusion in the narcissist's mind between you as an external object and you in his mind.
The narcissist conflates your avatar, the internal object that represents you in his mind with you. He thinks this internal object is actually external, very much like a psychotic.
That's why Kernberg suggested that these are actually pseudo-psychotic disorders.
And there's a third reason.
And to my mind, it's possibly the first or second most important.
The narcissist compulsively transitions through the phases of the shared fantasy. He cannot help it. He idealizes, he is forced internally, he is compelled to devalue, then he's compelled to discard.
And he needs to transition between these phases. He needs, for example, having idealized you, he now needs to devalue you.
But why would he devalue you? What would justify the devaluation?
I mean for a while you could do no wrong. You were perfectioned. You're amazing, you're fascinating and unprecedented, unique.
How come suddenly you can do no right. You're you're stupid.
This transition is very sharp. The narcissist's internal objects need to be changed so dramatically that the narcissist needs, is forced to create some kind of justification, some kind of narrative explanation that will smooth over the transition from an idealized perfect entity to a totally devalued wicked evil entity, which you become in his mind in the devaluation phase.
So whenever the external object you deviate, deviates and diverges from the internal object that represents you in the narcissist's mind, this allows the narcissist to modify the internal object.
The contradictions, the conflicts, the dissonances, the disagreement, the mismatch between you as an external object and the internal object that stands in for you in the narcissists' mind, these grating differences or differentials allow the narcissists to devalue you safely, to change the contours and the content of the internal object, to reflect these deviations and divergences, which are perceived to be malevolent and wicked.
So the narcissist is compelled. It's a compulsion. He cannot help it. Compelled to convert you from an idealized beloved so to speak object to a hated wicked evil inferior and above all, malevolent, sadistic, hostile enemy object.
How to accomplish this?
By contrasting the idealized object with the real you, with the external object and accumulating a rap sheet, a rap sheet of transgressions, mismatches, challenges, criticism, disagreement, arguments, and so on until the cumulative weight of all this justifiesthe redefinition and reinvention of the internal object as an enemy.
So the narcissist needs you to be there for the inflection points, for the transition points.
At that particular point in time, at that particular, as I said, inflection point.
The narcissist recognizes not your externality, but the impacts and effects of your externality.
So there is the internal object. The narcissist is interacting with the internal object.
The displaced internal object, for example, is idealized. It's perfect. It's amazing.
And then the narcissist begins to take note of the impacts and effects of you as an external object.
It doesn't, is incapable of noticing you or perceiving you as external, but it is perfectly capable of making a derogatory, accusatory list of everything you're doing wrong. Everything you're doing to take him down.
There's parallel ideation.
So not you as an external object, but what the external object is doing to the narcissist, the impact on the narcissist.
In other words, a narcissist is monitoring not you as an external object, but himself as a recipient of everything that emanates from the external object.
Again, the narcissist is trapped within his mind.
On the one hand, his interlocution, his dialogue is with internal objects, not with external objects.
And on the other hand, he is constantly monitoring the impacts of external objects on himself.
For example, narcissistic injuries or narcissistic mortifications.
And whenever there is daylight between the expectations from the idealized internal object and reality in the sense that the behaviors of the external object, the impacts of the effects of the external object on the narcissists are such that they conflict, they're dissonant, they conflict with what the narcissist expects from the internal object.
Then he's able to revise the internal landscape, rewrite the internal object as persecutory, as paranoid, as hypervigilant, as enemy, enemy object, hostile object.
So I want you again to wrap your mind around it. It's highly counterintuitive.
Narcissists are incapable of discerning the separateness and externality of objects. They cannot, for the life of them, except understand, perceive, grasp, grok, use any word you want, that people are external, that people are separate, that they are not part of the narcissist mind. They can't do that. They are psychotic in this sense.
However, exactly like people with psychosis, narcissists are capable of observing themselves, monitoring themselves.
So they are capable of discerning, observing, perceiving the impacts and effects of external objects on themselves.
So the narcissist says, this external object is actually inside my mind. This internal object is the external object. There's no difference between them. They're one and the same. I'm interacting with an object. I don't think it's internal. I think it's external. That's the illness. That's the mental illness of the narcissist.
At the same time, the narcissist says this object which I think is external, erroneously, the object is internal, but the narcissist thinks it's external.
So the narcissist says, this object which I'm convinced is external is making me feel bad. It's attacking me. It's injuring me. It's humiliating me. It's mortifying me. It's a bad object. It's an evil object. It's a malevolent object. This object conspires to take me down, this paranoid ideation.
So, the narcissist experiences the emanations from the object. What the object does to the narcissist.
The narcissist conflates and confuses these with the internal object.
So the narcissist is wrongly convinced that the internal object is actually external.
And whenever there's some transmission from the external object, the narcissist attributes it to the internal object.
And if this transmission is dissonant, for example, if the external object disagrees with the narcissists, criticizes the narcissist, exposes the narcissist, humiliates the narcissist, injures the narcissist, whenever there is this kind of input, the narcissist perceives it as coming from the inside, from the internal object, because he can make no difference between internal and external.
And then he says this internal object is bad, is evil, is against me, is hostile, and I'm going to devaluate.
So the existence of an external object which provides the narcissist with input that is countervailing, contradicting, humiliating, injury and so. It's critical because this is what allows the narcissist to transition from idealization to devaluation within the shared fantasy.
This is the engine of the motion within the shared fantasy.
And yet, make no mistake about it.
Throughout, the narcissist is incapable of perceiving the external object as external. He perceives the internal object as external, not the external object.
And anything that happens, internally or externally, is attributed to the internal object, which is misperceived by the narcissist as external.
In short, the narcissist is 100% solipsistic.
He is interacting with himself. He's talking to himself. He's arguing with himself. He's talking to himself. He's arguing with himself. He's shouting at himself. He's humiliating and debasing and degrading and devaluing himself.
The internal object.
As a kind of compensatory defense, he attributes all these dynamics to the outside world, to objects out there. He confuses his internal objects and regards them as external.
And this gives him the illusion that he is normal, that he is sane, that nothing is wrong with him.
So narcissists interact exclusively with representations of external objects in their minds. Everything is taking place there.
Input and feedback from external objects is misattributed to the internal objects and changes their nature in the narcissist's mind.
Both idealized and persecutory objects are introjects. They're internal, they're never external.
Narcissists idealize and devalue as stages in a compulsive shared fantasy.
Now, as a last note, what's the difference with borderlines?
Huge. Difference is huge.
First of all, borderlines are able to tell the difference between external and internal. They perceive external objects as external. They're much healthier in this sense than narcissists.
Narcissism is a pathological defense against borderline. So it's, you know the whole nine yards, it's one bridge too far.
Borderlines are much more embedded in reality, yet borderlines are also hampered or impeded in their ability to manage introjects.
Whereas the narcissistic solution is to say, my introjects, the internal objects in my mind are actually not internal, they're external and I'm totally normal.
The borderline has a huge difficulty because she possesses introject inconstancy. She is unable to form representations in her mind, representations of other people in her mind that would somehow survive or persist. They dissolve, they fade.
With a narcissist, the problem is object inconstancy. The narcissist creates a representation in his mind of other people, he creates internal objects, and these internal objects survive. They overpower the narcissists and they actually eliminate the narcissistic reality testing. They render the narcissists delusional and fantastic.
The borderline, the problem is exactly the reverse. The borderline cannot create, generate such internal representations. She fails to maintain them. She fails to keep them alive, out of sight, out of mind.
And this is why borderlines vacillate between idealizing and devaluing the partner so frequently, because borderlines cannot maintain a stable, idealized, opposes secretary, introject, whatever the case may be.
And so they recreate the introjects, they recreate the internal objects on the fly, time and again, always starting from scratch, always from zero, no credit accumulated, no guilt accumulated as well.
So it's like with the borderline, you're having a new relationship every day. This is also known as identity diffusion or identity dyson. It's like having a new relationship every day because every day she's confronted with the external object which is fully capable of perceiving as external and then she tries to create an internal object that would represent the external object in her mind and she fails.
The internal object dissolves, fades, she can't hold on to it. So every day she needs to create a new internal object.
And depending on her moods and her disregulated emotions, labile moods, disregulated emotions, circumstances, God knows what, the object generated every day could be radically different to the object generated the day before. So today's object could be the exact opposite of yesterday's object.
This is the core of the borderline's identity diffusion or identity disturbance because of course the self is also an internal object.
So the borderline's incapacity to maintain the stability of internal objects extends to her own selfhood, to her own self. She is incapable of maintaining a stable self. Her self dissolves into emptiness. She is like ink in water.
So you're beginning to see that internal objects, external objects, and explain a lot in terms of the narcissistic pathology and the borderline pathology. Not to mention, of course, psychotic disorders.
It is an offshoot of object relation theories, especially Melanie Klein's theories and so on, but taken further.
And my work leads to the concept of self-states. So I recommend that you watch the videos in the IPPEM personality.
So I've taken this a bit further and I merged it with the work of Philip Bromberg and others to generate a personality theory, a complete, comprehensive personality theory.
I think all of us are struggling with the distinction between external objects and internal objects. All of us have difficulties in this sense.
Luckily, the vast majority of people, sane, healthy, normal, call them what you wish, normative, neurotypicals, I mean, use any word you want, vast majority of people are capable of telling the difference of establishing firewalls and boundaries and of not confusing internal and external.
When this collapses, for example in times of crisis, in times of stress or tension or anxiety, when this ability is shut off, then we may have psychotic micro-episodes, we may suddenly trigger narcissistic defenses so even healthy people could become temporary narcissists or temporary borderlines or even temporary psychotics.
Now here's a terrifying thought for you.