In the video you're about to watch, I'm advancing the idea that fantasies are reactive defenses.
What do they defend against?
They defend against trauma, pain, hurt, abuse, and egregious protracted breach of boundaries. They also defend against a reality that had become intolerable, burdensome, and unbearable.
Naturally, the content of the fantasy is dictated by the type of trauma and the contours of reality that are being rejected, avoided, defended against, and this way repressed.
The traumatic event, the sequence of occurrences, the type of pain, the variety of agony and hurt, the reality that could not be countenanced any further, they dictate the contours and the content of the fantasy.
The prime example is of course pathological narcissism.
Narcissism is probably a genetic predisposition, although we have no proof of this yet.
But there's a specific environment that triggers this predisposition, makes the genes express themselves.
A specific environment, specific surroundings and circumstances, and specific types of people who trigger pathological narcissism in the child.
In early childhood, the child is exposed to trauma and abuse in various forms.
And the solution is fantasy.
The trauma and abuse in the early childhood of narcissists usually involves a dead mother, metaphorically speaking, a maternal figure who was unable to provide for the emotional needs of the child, a breach of boundaries, and an inability to separate and become an individual, kind of enmeshment with a parental figure.
These were the harrowing details and elements and components and ingredients of the reality rejected by the child.
And so the child develops a fantasy which is the exact opposite of that reality.
In the fantasy of the child, there's a loving, caring, unconditionally accepting maternal figure. There are positive emotions. There is a type of enmeshment that elevates and empowers. And there is no sense of helplessness and unpredictability.
And so the fantasy of the narcissist is the exact opposite of the traumatizing and abusive reality experienced by the child who would become a narcissist later on in life.
This connection between the contents of the trauma and the contents of the fantasy, the contents of the rejected, avoided, denied reality, and the contents of the fantasy.
This connection between them allows us to reverse engineer the fantasy in order to find out what it is that has happened, that had happened, to cause the fantasy to emerge in the first place.
We can go back, trace back from the fantasy to the reality that gave rise to the fantasy, from the fantasy to the trauma that undergirded the fantasy.
The fantasy is like a cipher, is like a coded message, and we can decipher and decode it to discover and to unearth and to explore the nightmarish, surrealistic experiences that gave rise to this need, this dire need, to defend against reality by completely ignoring it, by emigrating to an internal planet, a galaxy far away, the paracosm, the fantasy.
As you cross the event horizon into the black hole that is the narcissist, howling winds of grief and shame, too old, too forgotten, too repressed. They haunt the narcissist's inner space.
It is deep, and this darkness is kinetic, animated, lurking, even malevolently. It is a kind of darkness that engulfs and encompasses and ultimately consumes.
And floating in this penumbral miasma are fragments of people, images, voices, disjointed memories.
And the only glue that holds all of this together somehow, precariously, not always, is fantasy.
Welcome to the narcissist mind.
My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited, the first book ever on narcissistic abuse. I'm also a professor of clinical psychology.
And today we're going to discuss, elaborate a bit further on fantasy.
May I remind you, there's a whole list, playlist on this YouTube channel dedicated to the shared fantasy with a lot of analysis of the very concept of fantasy.
Now, if you listen to self-styled experts online, which I strongly recommend against, they would tell you that fantasy is just an imagination or that it is a defense against something and so on and so forth.
In classic psychoanalytic theory, fantasy is not a defense. It is not a defense mechanism.
In classic psychoanalysis, the Freudian school, fantasy is simply a figment of the imagination, a mental image. It could be a daydream, it could be a night dream.
And in this image, which usually has a plot, usually is a piece of fiction, usually things happen. It's more like a video than a still photograph.
And in this imagination, the person's conscious or unconscious wishes and impulses are fulfilled.
Melanie Klein begged to differ. In her school of object relations theory, Melanie Klein suggested that the unconscious constructions, wishes and impulses underlie all thoughts and all emotions and she called these foundational elements, she called them fantasies with a pH.
So as you can see, nowhere in psychoanalytic or psychodynamic literature is fantasy described as a defense mechanism.
It is in my work, in my work, fantasy is a defense.
Defense against what?
Defense against unbearable reality. Which reality? External, of course, but also internal.
The narcissist uses fantasy to defend against a reality out there which is intolerable, unacceptable, challenging, undermining, injurious and mortifying.
But at the same time, the narcissist uses fantasy against himself.
Narcissists, as you know by now, those of you have been listening to this channel, narcissists are devoid of a self.
The process of formation of a self, constellation of a self, integration of the self, the process of ego formation has been disrupted in early childhood, and consequently, ironically, narcissists are selfless.
But there are fragments and fractures and distant memories and echoes of what is, and more importantly, of what could have been.
And these are highly depressive. These are life-threatening. These are coupled with inexorable shame that is all-conquering, that imbues the narcissist with a sense of profound, all-permeating grief.
To defend against this, to not deteriorate into suicidal ideation and worse, the narcissist engages in fantasy.
Indeed, fantasy is the kind of defense that is common in both borderline personality disorder or borderline personality organization and in narcissism, in pathological narcissism.
But whereas in borderline personality disorder, the fantasy involves a real life human being, an intimate partner, a special friend.
In the case of the narcissist, the fantasy does not involve a single element from reality. It is utterly divorced from reality.
So what are the functions of the fantasy in the narcissistic pathology of the self?
Many and multifarious, which is why narcissists are addicted to fantasy, incapable of relating to other people, to the world at large, and even more importantly to themselves, except through fantasy.
Fantasy intercedes, fantasy intermediates, fantasy ameliorates and mitigates.
Fantasy is anxiolytic. Fantasy makes sense of the world, imbues it with meaning, explains it. It's hermeneutic.
Fantasy, therefore, fulfills all the roles that Freud had associated with his construct of the ego.
You could say that fantasy is the externalization and then re-internalization of ego functions.
The narcissist goes out to the world, harvests attention, adulation, admiration, harvests narcissistic supply, brings the narcissistic supply back to the cave, processes the narcissistic supply internally, and then immures and immerses himself in fantasy.
Again, these brief forays into reality are like hunting, it's a form of hunting, a form of foraging, a form of scavenging.
The narcissist brings back food, fuel, in order to sustain, somehow, the fantasy.
In other words, the narcissist is a slave to the fantasy. The fantasy is in charge, not the narcissist.
The false self, of course, is a fantasy writ large. The false self has nothing to do with reality. It is an utterly distorted counterfactual perception of the self or perception of what should have been a self, which is grandiose, fantastic, inflated, elaborated, but not realistic.
The narcissist as a child has eliminated himself and replaced himself with a fantasy, a paracosm, an alternate reality, a universe far away. And in that universe, there is a godlight divinity deity entity which had subsumed and consumed the narcissist as a child and left nothing behind henceforth the narcissist is a, and the fantasy is the narcissist.
But the fantasy, of course, has roles.
What are these roles?
Number one, time machine.
The fantasy allows the narcissist to travel back in time, into periods and events which he finds gratifying.
When I say he, it's she, she is he, half of all narcissists are women.
So the narcissist travels back in time through his fantasy and he travels back to periods, eras, moments, events, occurrences, people, locations, and memories that somehow sustain his grandiose self-perception and self-image somehow help the cognitive distortion appear not distorted and attuned to reality.
In other words, the narcissist lies to himself, but by rearranging history, rewriting history, reframing his personal biography, so as to justify and buttress and confirm and uphold his view of himself as Godlike.
To do that the narcissist needs this vehicle of fantasy to revisit his past.
Remember that the narcissist is dissociative, highly dissociative, has enormous memory gaps.
It is true fantasy that the narcissist re-experiences himself, relives his life.
But this time, the correct version, the appropriate one, the one that renders the narcissist, just a victim, moral, superior, grandiose, genius, perfect, brilliant and so on.
So that's the first role of the fantasy is a vehicle to revisit areas and realms in the narcissist history and existence that otherwise are inaccessible.
Number two, the fantasy provides a secure base.
When the narcissist is immersed in the fantasy, when he is in the throes of the fantasy, he is oblivious to reality, he's not aware of his surrounding, his environment, other people, expectations, behaviors, wishes, demand. He's totally not there. He's no longer with us when he's in the fantasy.
At that point, he feels very safe. He feels secure. The world appears to be stable, predictable and determinate.
Fantasy, therefore, is a maternal substitute. The fantasy is the womb.
When the narcissist enters the fantasy, he goes back to the womb. He reverts to the period of gestation before he was born.
And in that womb, in that maternal reification, the narcissist feels utterly secure, safe, no danger, no risk, no predicament, no menace, no threats. Secure base, a maternal figure in a way.
Number three, the fantasy provides the narcissist with compensatory traits.
Remember that pathological narcissism is a compensation for some deficiency.
The narcissist internally has a bad object. A coalition of voices and introjects that informed the narcissist that is inadequate, unworthy, a loser, stupid, ugly, good for nothing, and so on so forth.
To counter these voices, to silence them, the narcissist comes up with a concoction, a scenario, a script, a piece of fiction, a story, a movie, in which the narcissist is perfect, in which the narcissist is divine, in which the narcissist is a genius.
Everything the voices say is negated and contrasted with the fantasy.
The fantasy is a way to silence the voices. The fantasy comes up with compensations.
If the voices tell the narcissist that he's stupid, the fantasy would come up with a compensation, a compensatory voice, that would inform the narcissist that is actually a once-in-a-lifetime genius.
If the fantasy tells the narcissist that is unattractive, then the narcissist would develop a compensatory voice, informing him convincingly that he is irresistible and he would become a somatic narcissist, and so on and so forth.
The fantasy counterweighs, countermands, and cancels the voices inside the narcissists that attempt to take the narcissists down, to depress the narcissists, to negate, criticize, and vitiate the narcissists, to attack the narcissists.
And so the fantasy in this particular sense is a defense, a compensatory defense.
Fantasy tells the narcissist, don't listen to these inner voices. They are wrong. Here's the correct information.
You're godlike. You're perfect. You're one of a kind. You are Sui generis. There's never been anyone like you. There never be again anyone like you.
This of course is intimately connected with counterfactual wish fulfillment.
It is a narcissist's wish to silence these inner voices by accomplishing things.
But these accomplishments do not need to be real. They do not need to be embedded in reality. These accomplishments could be fantastic, imagined. It could be a daydream, counterfactual, not based on facts, unrealistic, wish fulfillment, impulse gratification.
So the fantasy fulfills the role of wish fulfillment and the gratification of impulses, which is exactly what Melanie Klein had suggested based on the earlier work of Sigmund Freud.
And in this sense, the fantasy is defensive.
The narcissist knows that actually deep inside the narcissist knows unconsciously, that he is incapable of accomplishing things, that something is wrong with him, that even if he were to accomplish things, it would be temporary, that he is self-destructive, that he can't cope well with other people, etc, etc.
Narcissus is aware of his own, not aware, but narcissists is somehow aware and not aware. There's an unconscious awareness, if you wish, what Bollas called the unthought known, or the unknown thought.
So the narcissist counters this realization that collapse is imminent and inevitable by imagining a world where it isn't.
So in the narcissist's fantasy, he is accomplished. He has achieved many things. In the narcissist's fantasy, he is educated. He is on the way to riches. He is well known. He is a pioneer. He is a genius in the narcissist's fantasy.
It's a defensive mechanism that is essentially delusional.
Fantasy in this case devolves into a delusional disorder.
The narcissist chooses delusion over reality because reality is painful and hurtful. Experience of collapse is intolerable and mortification, of course, is life-threatening.
Next, fantasy allows the narcissist to experience positive emotions safely.
You remember that narcissists are incapable of positive emotions. They cannot experience, for example, love.
And the reason is that in the narcissist's early history as a child, love has been intimately connected with rejection and abandonment and pain and abuse and trauma.
The narcissists has learned early on as a child to construct an internal working model of relationships where every positive cathexis, every positive emotional investment, every positive commitment and every positive emotion ends disastrously. They end with a catastrophe. They end in pain and hurt and devastation.
So the narcissist avoids positive emotions. It's a defense against positive emotion.
However, in his fantasy, the narcissist can and does experience positive emotions.
In other words, while the narcissist is incapable of loving another person, the narcissist is capable of fantasizing about loving another person.
While the narcissist is incapable of experiencing true joy, cheer and pleasure, in his fantasy, he is capable of experiencing pleasure, for example. It's a pleasurable experience.
But whereas in reality, experiencing positive emotions is perceived to be as threatening, as ominous, as something best avoided, as risky, and as dangerous, experiencing the very same emotions, or at least imagining the experience of these emotionsin the fantasy, it's perceived by the narcissist as totally safe.
The fantasy is a simulacrum. It's a simulation machine that allows the narcissists to vicariously, through the fantasy, through the intermediation of a fantasy, experience emotions that otherwise he would be very terrified or very afraid of.
He experiences emotions in his dreams, if you wish.
In this dream scape, in this paracosm, in this alternative universe, the narcissist is no longer the narcissist. His personal history is gone, he lives in the present, and now it is safe to love someone, example, or at the very least to imagine the experience of loving someone.
And imagination is the cornerstone of fantasy, I remind you.
Fantasy, the fantasies, allow the narcissist to perceive himself as perfect, all rounded. This perfection is crucial. It's an elemental force, atavistic and primordial in the narcissists' self-perception and self-image.
This perfection is what grants a narcissist a special status, superiority, and allows the narcissist to feel justifiably entitled.
The need to feel perfect, flawless, the need to always succeed and never fail, always be right, and never be wrong, etc. All these, the need to always succeed and never fail, always be right and never be wrong, etc. All these need to be perfect underlies the narcissistic pathology.
Take that away and what you have is a borderline.
And so fantasy allows the narcissist to indulge in the delusion or the illusion that he is perfect and that his future is perfect because he is perfect. Perfect beings have a perfect future.
And so now, since the future is perfect and since the narcissist himself is perfect, within his fantasy, everything is safe, everything is resolved. There are no risks. Everything is stable.
And the narcissist can transcend his internal turmoil and chaos and pain and shame and grief, exit this black hole space, this darkness that is all pervasive, all permeating, all consuming, this darkness through which he floats, adrift, unable to find his center of gravity, his core identity, encountering haphazardly images and voices and faces from a past that is only imagined because it cannot be recalled. There's no memory.
And so to exit this eternal twilight zone, the only way out is fantasy.
Because the twilight zone, the realm of darkness, this penumbral kingdom of the black hole, is actually the narcissist only reality.