What on earth is an anti-narcissist?
It is someone who tortures a narcissist slowly, meticulously and with ever-increasing sadistic pleasure.
Nope, that's not an anti-narcissist. That's actually a typical self-styled expert on YouTube. You know, those who plagiarized my work shamelessly and repeatedly.
Today we're going to discuss this obscure topic in the study of narcissism, anti-narcissism.
It's not the first video I've made about this topic. There's a link to another video I've made about the connection between anti-narcissism and masochism, something I will discuss in this video as well.
But today I would like to give you a tour of how did the concept of anti-narcissism come about? What need, what problem did he try to solve in the study of narcissism.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I am a professor of clinical psychology and the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever about narcissistic abuse back in the days of the dinosaurs in the 1990s.
Okay, Kapzonim and Kapsonot, Fuanpanim and Shwanon, Shoshanim and Shoshanot, babies and babets.
Anti-narcissism.
The concept of anti-narcissism was first proposed as such by Francis Pasche. That was in the 1960s.
At the time, there was a raging philosophical and theoretical debate in psychology. People asked the question, what is narcissism? How should we define it? Do we even need to have it? Does it have any explanatory power? Does it add to our understanding of the human mind and of mental pathology and mental illness? What's the role of narcissism in psychic development?
Questions that seem to have been settled decades ago re-erupted with full force, mainly I think because of the emergence of the object relations schools, especially in the United Kingdom.
I'm referring to people like Fairbairn and Winnicott and others.
The concept of narcissism raised difficulties, complexities, aporeas, internal inherent contradictions. And there was an attempt to resolve these issues.
And people divided, psychologists, divided to three camps.
The first camp said, there's not such thing as primary narcissism. There's not such thing as narcissism actually. There's only object relations. Object means people or a self.
So there's only object relations. Initially there's a relationship with the object inside, with oneself as an object. That's initially, that's in early childhood, in infancy.
And then as we mature, as we grow up, those of us who do, we begin to develop object relations, not with an internal object, not with our self, but we begin to develop object relations with external objects. In other words, with other people.
There's no need in this model, in this theory, there's actually no need for narcissism.
Self-object relationships with the self, they could be described as narcissism, but the emphasis is more about the object rather than the energy.
Narcissism is an energy, according to Freud and Jung and others. It's an energy. It's a kind of redirected libido, life force.
And in the object-relation schools, there was no need for that. There were just objects and the way we interact with objects. The object would be internal when we are children and becomes external. We interact with external objects when we discover the joys of sex and intimacy.
So this was the first answer they abandoned these people abandoned the notion of primary narcissism and they gave a fundamental role to primary object relations talking about people that I mentioned before but also Michael Balint and even John Bowlby the Attachment School, the founder of the Attachment School.
And then there was a second camp, represented by the likes of Federn, Paul Federn, and Bella Grunberger, and others.
And these people said that, yes, there is such a thing as narcissism, but it's not an energy. Or if it is an energy, it's not part of the life force. It's not part of what Freud used to call the libido. It's something completely different. It is another type of energy, and it is as ubiquitous, as all pervasive, as powerful, and as motivating in mental life as is the libido.
So they created a system with multiple streams of energy. One of them is the libido, the life force, one of them is narcissism. It was an interesting duality or dualism.
And then there was the third school most prominently represented by Francis Pash. And he also believed in duality or in dualism.
Whereas Grunberger and Ferdin and others suggested that there's libido and there's narcissism and they're unrelated. Definitely narcissism is not part of libido.
Pash said it's true there is a duality, there is a dialectic even, there is a kind of dialogue between the forces, between the energies, but it's all encompassed and incorporated in the very concept of narcissism.
In 1964 and in 1965, he elaborated on these ideas.
He said that there's narcissism and there's anti-narcissism.
He said that both forces, both energies were defined by the object of the energy and the direction of the energy.
He said the object was the same. The object in his work was the ego.
Both narcissism and anti-narcissism in Pasha's work are directed at the ego. The ego is the recipient of these energies, similar to a large extent to Freud's libido.
The direction, however, is not the same. It's very different.
Narcissism is inwardly directed. Narcissism aspires to the ego, aspires to be subsumed by the ego, or to modify the ego, or to interact with the ego, somehow. It is centripetal.
While anti-narcissism aspires away from the ego, outward looking, it's public facing, and it's therefore centrifugal.
Before I proceed, just to make clear, in my work and in the work of many others, very prominent ones, much more prominent than Pash, we believe that narcissists, people with narcissistic personality disorder or a narcissistic pathology of the self, actually don't have an ego. They don't have an ego.
Pathological narcissism is the outcome of a disruption, severe disruption in the formation of the ego in infancy and early childhood. It is a perturbance to the formation of the self.
The self is unable to be constellated and integrated and become a unitary core identity. That's the current belief, I would say. Today, that's the way we regard narcissism.
But to Pasha's credit, and in his defense, he was not talking about pathological narcissism. He was talking about healthy narcissism, or actually all forms of narcissism.
He did not confine himself to the narcissistic pathology where there is an absence of self and an absence of ego. He was talking about narcissism as the equivalent of the libido, equivalent of a life force.
So narcissism in Pasha's work is always there. It could go wrong, it could go right, it could become malignant, of course, it could become pathologic, pathologize, but all people have narcissism, and all people have anti-narcissism.
Narcissism aspires inwards, with its ego as its object, anti-narcissism aspires outward, it aspires outward also with the ego as its motivator, as its interlocutor, shall we say, the ego is always there in Pasha's work.
It's just that it generates two currents, like ACDC, it generates two currents, one going outward and one going inward.
Anti-narcissism, therefore, is an investment, a form of cathexis, form of investment of psychic energy, but investment outside, investment to the world out there.
It is therefore centrifugal. It kind of rolls or revolves away from the ego. It's like a body in the universe which spins out of the control of the field of gravity.
So in anti-narcissism, the subject, the person, tends to be divested of the self.
In other words, in anti-narcissism, there is a lot more emotional investment or psychic investment, and a lot more emphasis on other people, on the outside world, on externity and separateness, on othering people.
There's a lot more emphasis on objects, external objects, than on the internal object, then on the self.
It's as if in anti-narcissism we wish to forego the self, forget the self, deny the self, repress the self, put the self away and focus on the environment, on the world around us, give this world and endow it with our own substance and reserves of emotion, emotional reserves, such as love.
And this is done altruistically. There's no evolutionary or utilitarian calculus here. It's done because the world is out there and the interaction with the world out there is compelled, this kind of compulsive is impelled by the very existence of the ego because you remember that the ego is reality oriented. It's the interface with the real.
So according to Pash, actually, there are two dynamics.
The ego is like a huge magnet, and this huge magnet attracts energy and investment to itself, psychic life force, is sucked into the ego as this gigantic magnet and this is classic narcissism at the same time exactly as magnets do the ego repels, projects, sends away some of the energy and this is anti-narcissism and this energy that is catapulted from the ego that is thrown off that is rejected and expelled from the ego, this energy is invested in other people or in the world at large or in the environment.
And it involves emotions. It involves emotions. It's not selfish. It's charitable. It's altruistic because it's not in relation with the self or with the ego. It's all about the world and all the emotional investments, investment goes out there.
And this is the essence of love, for example.
Anti-narcissism, in this sense could be perceived as highly positive.
Ironically, in Pasha's work, there is an immense paradox.
Pash says, listen, there's the ego, and there is emotional investment in the ego, and that is centripetal. It's drawn inwards, and it represents the life force.
Because when you love yourself, when you're invested in yourself, when your ego is the only object, when you are self-centered, that's your life. You're invested in your own life.
So that is the libido.
Ironically, when you're invested in other people, when you deny yourself, when you ignore your ego, when you are charitable and altruistic, that's not a manifestation of the life force. That's a manifestation of thanatos, the death force, at least in Pasha's work.
Because anti-narcissism involves unbinding.
There is a destruction or disruption to the attachment to the self. There's a separation. There's a dispersion of energy.
It's not aggressive, but it's still dissipative. There's dissipation and dissolution and radiation outward.
And so you cease to exist.
Anti-narcissism means the disappearance of the core, the disappearance of the self, the denial of the ego, and the total emphasis on the outside world by vanishing.
So it's a representation of the death force. It's very reminiscent of psychosis, by the way.
At the same time, classic narcissism, which we associate with negativity and destruction and horrible things and self-styled experts and whatever, classic narcissism is actually in Pasha's work an exemplification, manifestation, an expression and a reification of libido, of the life force.
It's a paradox, it's counterintuitive, but it's an interesting point of view.
Shando Fevenzi wrote about the altruistic drive and Shandau Fevency said very much the same things about 20 years prior to Pash. He said the altruistic drive is actually self-dissipating, self-destructive.
So there's a precedent to what Pash is saying.
And then there's of course the inimitable French psychoanalyst, Andre Green, AndreGreen. Andre Green wrote about narcissism and he came up with the idea of negative narcissism.
It's not exactly Pash's anti-narcissism, but it's still an interesting departure.
So I'll review now some of these ideas and then I will discuss my work on anti-narcissism, how I suggest to reconcile all these inherent internal contradictions and oxymorons in the work of Pash and Green and others.
Anti-narcissism is a form of narcissism, narcissistic character that is not invested in self-aggrandizing fantasy.
In other words, it's not cognitively distorted. It's not about reframing reality to support a fantastic, ideal, perfect self-image and self-perception. That's classical narcissism.
Anti-narcissism is not about a grandiose fantasy. It's about the outside, as I said. It diminishes the amount of self-investment and enhances the amount of other investment, investment in the other, or world investment in the world, in reality.
And so, Francis Pash in 1964 said that this centrifugal investment, this throwing away energy in a kind of centrifugal motion, this divestment of the self, this giving up on substance and reserves of love, and redeploying them or reutilizing them to the outside.
This is what we call altruism and charity.
Fehervary preceded Pash in this sense with his altruistic drive.
André Greene wrote about anti-narcissism as negative narcissism. He said that negative narcissism is self-destructive. He agreed with Pash.
Pash said that anti-narcissism, the altruism, being charitable, negative, and in Andre Green's words, negative narcissism, it's so destructive because it seeks to abolish the ego or to ignore it or to deny it or to repress it.
It is the aspiration for nothingness, which is where my notion of nothingness comes from.
Nothingness, I have a channel, YouTube channel titled Nothingness, Antidote to Narcissism. Nothingness is anti-narcissism, and I don't regard it as self-destructive. I regard it as self-negating. I regard it as an act of self-disappearance or self-vanishing.
When the self is pathologized, when the self is not constellated, when the self is not integrated, when the self is pathologized, when the self is not constellated, when the self is not integrated, when the self is a hindrance and an obstacle, like in the early childhood formation of narcissists.
So I agree with Andre Green that negative narcissism is self-destructive, but I think the destruction of the self, the unintegrated self, the non-constellated self, the self-contradictory self, the schizoid, empty self of the narcissists, the destruction of this kind of immature self is actually a blessing.
It is self destruction, but this kind of self is best destroyed if you seek healing as a narcissist.
And the alternative is negative narcissism or nothingness dual narcissism was mapped by Andre Green and Pash. They mapped it into the other type of duality or dualism in psychoanalysis between life and death.
They said the narcissism, anti-narcissism, life, death. They saw similarities, they saw equivalents. They mapped the drives.
They said narcissism is the life drive or the life force is libido and anti narcissism is the death force thanatos destrudo.
So they in a way grappled with the issue of positive narcissism. This positive narcissism applies some kind of unity, some kind of settlement, some kind of equilibrium and homeostasis which are conducive to maturity and growth and healing.
They had a problem with it. They had a problem with that.
Because they said that positive narcissism, what we call healthy narcissism, always comes in a pair with negative narcissism.
So there's no such thing as only positive narcissism. There's always positive narcissism and negative narcissism. So there's no such thing as only positive narcissism. There's always positive narcissism and negative narcissism.
Negative narcissism strives to annihilate the individual, to zero level, to nothingness.
And so this was Andre Green's view.
And whereas I'm a great admirer of Andre Green's work, especially his work on the dead mother, I vehemently disagree with it when it comes to negative narcissism or anti-narcissism.
I think it's a therapeutic tool, actually.
And in this sense, I'm much closer to the ideas of Christopher Bollas, not Bollocks but Bollas. Bollas also has dealt, well Bollas is famous for his unthought known, which I discussed in previous videos, but another contribution is made except the unthought known, I'm sorry another contribution is made is the concept of anti-narcissism.
He said that the anti-narcissist is a self-limiting kind of narcissist.
It's a narcissist who refuses to become. He refuses to grow up, refuses to mature, refuses to develop themselves or their talents, refuses in Maslow's phrase, refuses to self-actualize.
Why is that?
Because this kind of narcissist, the anti-narcissist, exaggerate their sense of self-important in defeat. Defeat is their locus of grandiosity.
In a minute I will deal with it when I describe my work.
Bollas said, this anti-elaborative person stews in his own juice and adamantly refuses to nurture himself.
The anti-narcissist is a hostile sadistic person or at least he has a hostile and sadistic core, envious also, behind the facade which is self-effacing, compassionate, caring, empathy, considerate.
And in this sense, the anti-narcissist is a very close relative, close kin of the covert narcissist.
So this is Christopher Bollas of the unthought-known thing and or his contribution to anti-narcissism.
There were others who have dealt with anti-narcissism.
Fritz Witels described anti-narcissism as a tendency of two lovers to lose themselves in each other.
So he regarded love as a form of anti-narcissism.
He said the essence of love is identification with each other. So we become conscious only through the other.
I strongly disagree with Witels. I think he's not describing love. He's describing symbiosis or dependency.
And this is a common mistake in psychological literature to mislabel many psychological dynamics and processes as love when they're actually the exact opposite of love.
So that leads to my work.
In my work, the anti-narcissist is a masochistic covert narcissist.
The grandiosity of this kind of narcissist, in my work, the anti-narcissist is a narcissist.
Only it's a covert narcissist who is masochistic, self-hating, self-defeating, self-destructive, and self-trashing.
So this kind of narcissist who is covert and at the same time self-hating and masochistic, put them together and we get the anti-narcissist in my work.
This kind of patient, this kind of person is grandiose, but his or her grandiosity is founded on failure, on defeat, on self-annihilation and self-destruction.
Because this kind of person seeks to merge with his empty schizoid core. He seeks to go back to the womb.
It's like a process of unbecoming, slow death, inexorable, a death that is actually a rebirth.
It's a very complex process described amply by Gantry and others.
So the grandiose narcissist sometimes switches to the anti-narcissistic, masochistic covert state. There's no type consistency.
So what is the dynamic of this kind of anti-narcissist?
He is angered by the lack of narcissistic supply and he directs some of this negative affect, some of this fury inwards, punishing himself for his failure.
And this masochistic behavior has the added benefit of forcing the narcissist nearest and closest to assume the roles of dismayed spectators or of persecutors.
So either way, he garners attention. His masochism is a way to attract attention.
And he basks and he glories or self-glories in his failures and defeats. His grandiosity consists of saying no one has failed as deeply and as pervasively as much as I had. My defeat is the largest ever. My bankruptcy is the biggest in history. It's like I'm unique even in failure and defeat. And this attracts the attention of people around him.
Self-administered punishment often manifested as a self-handicapping masochism, kind of narcissistic cop-out.
By undermining his work, his relationships, his efforts, his projects, this kind of fragile narcissist avoids criticism and censure, negative supply.
It's when you never complete anything, when you never succeed, when you never accomplish anything, when you are your worst enemy, when you undermine yourself, criticize yourself, hate yourself, reject yourself, external rejection has no power. External criticism has been preempted. It's all meaningless. Only you matter.
Self-inflicted failure is a kind of vaccine or an immunological reaction.
This is the anti-narcissist doing.
Choosing to fail and defeat oneself, trip up oneself, set oneself up for failure, means that you are in control of your life, the master of your own fate.
You decide to fail, so you're in charge. You defeat yourself, so you're the boss. You are calling the shots. You're in the driver's seat.
Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances, which render success impossible.
Because as Millon said, they're trying to avoid an objective assessment of their performance.
These people, the anti-narcissists, they act carelessly. They withdraw in mid-effort. They are constantly fatigued or bored or disaffected. They passive-aggressively sabotage their own lives. Their suffering is ostentatious and defiant. It's like performative suffering.
And by deciding to abort, they reassert the control, mastery, and therefore Godlike omnipotence over their own fate. I am the master of my fate, not even God.
The narcissist's pronounced and public misery and self-pity are compensatory. Again, to refer to Millon, he said, they reinforce his self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness.
The anti-narcissist tribulations and anguish render the anti-narcissist in his own eyes unique, saintly, immaculate, angelic, virtuous, righteous, resilient, significant.
And so, anti-narcissists use suffering and defeat and failure and self-handicapping, self-hindering, they use all this, the enhancing of difficulties in their lives and miseries, they use this as self-generated narcissistic supply, a form of self-supply.
And so the worse the anguish and the unhappiness, the more relieved and elated the anti-narcissist feels.
Like some of you, I assume.