Good after morning, everyone.
Today we are going to discuss the loser narcissist, the failure, the narcissists who can't make the cut, the narcissists who self-defeats and even self-destroys.
In short, your favorite kind of video. How to destroy the narcissist in seven steps, burn his house, and kill all his pets.
Okay, 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, regrettably for you. So everything I'm going to say is based on research.
There are two classes of narcissists who are efficacious, efficient, they are team builders, they're accomplished, and they're goal oriented.
The first group of narcissists who are like that are the malignant narcissists, the psychopathic narcissists.
And the second group are the pro-social and communal narcissists
But these are marginal groups the overwhelming vast majority of narcissists the run-of-the-mill pedestrian your next-door neighbor narcissists these people sooner or later destroy everything they've built, ruin every relationship they've ever had, self-defeat, and very often self-destruct.
And the question arises why? Why do they do that?
That is irrational behavior. That is crazy making. These people are the crazies.
For example, ask yourself, why be grandiose? Even if you have real traits, real talents, real accomplishments, a high intelligence, why do you need to be grandiose?
And many narcissists, many narcissists don't need to be grandiose. They're truly talented. They're truly brilliant. They're truly accomplished.
And yet, they're grandiose. Why is that?
Grandiosity pushes people away. It makes the narcissists appear obnoxious and loathsome. Grandiosity triggers other people. They hate the narcissists for it.
So why? Why engage in it?
It seems to be a counterproductive behavior and a maladaptation, an evolutionary disadvantage.
Or ask yourself the following why engage in shortcuts rather than in real achievements why always look for a shortcut always look for a way around the problem always look for an instant gratification, get rich quick or whatever.
Why do that? Instead of working, accumulating accomplishments and then getting there.
Sometimes the shortcuts are more labor-intensive, more tedious, more difficult than the much easier route of simply doing it.
Narcissists on purpose are kind of devious in the sense that they never tow the straight line.
They always look for a way around. They always look for, as I said, shortcuts. If there's a straight path, straight and narrow, they would never ever follow it.
It's a kind of proclivity, and yet, of course, it is self-defeating.
Shortcuts very often consume much more energy and require much more effort than simply doing something in a straightforward way.
And then there's the next question.
Why engage in a shared fantasy?
The shared fantasy is an elaborate mechanism that requires enormous attention to detail, a huge investment of resources. It's a project.
Why maintain relationships, especially intimate relationships, via a shared fantasy, when the relationship in reality is even more enticing and more promising?
Even when the partner is perfect, even when the partner caters to the narcissists' needs, she is always there for him, she provides him with admiration and adulation, she everything. When she is absolutely 10 out of 10 partner, the narcissist would still try to convert her in his mind into an imaginary idealized internal object within a totally counterfactual paracosome alternative reality of the shared fantasy.
Why do that? Why do that? Why embed yourself in a shared fantasy with an unwilling partner when you can have a beautiful, functional, fully gratifying relationship with a very willing partner?
Another enigma, another conundrum in narcissism.
And then there's the next question.
Narcissists are aggressively entitled. They demand things. They never ask politely. They never suggest, they demand.
And when their demands are not met, they threaten, because they feel that they are entitled to special treatment, to all the goodies that life has to offer, and to accolades and recognition in commensurate with their real life accomplishments.
They refuse to work hard. They refuse to commit. They refuse to invest. They should get all the benefits that life has to offer just because they exist.
And this aggressive entitlement pushes people away and creates numerous enemies throughout the lifespan of the narcissists.
But why do that when many people are willing to serve the narcissists? Many people are willing to cater to the narcissists needs. Many people actually like the narcissists. Many people love the narcissist.
And then, despite all that, the narcissists pushes them away with his aggressive entitlement.
Why do that? Why shoot yourself in the foot when it's completely unnecessary when you could accomplish everything just by being nice and kind? The same outcomes, maybe much better outcomes.
And then why the envy? Why envy other people? Why devalue people? Humiliate them, insult them, shame them, disdain them, hold them in contempt, even admirers, even fans, even followers.
Why do that?
Narcissists claim to be superior. They claim to be perfection reified. They claim to be godlike.
So why do they envy other people? What is there to envy when you're God?
And yet they do envy. And they don't even notice the contradiction.
And they go around punishing, penalizing people who are true friends and lovers and intimate partners and wannabe admirers and fans and groupies and you name it. No one is exempt. The narcissist is an equal opportunity abuser.
But the question is, why the abuse? What are the goals accomplished with the abuse?
It's an enigma to some extent.
Some forms of abuse are functional. The narcissist uses abuse, for example, to test the allegiance and faithfulness of an intimate partner.
But most of the narcissists abuse is totally meaningless, out of context.
Abuse makes the narcissist feel superior. When the narcissist abuses people, he feels omnipotent or powerful.
I understand that.
But the same results, the same outcomes, and even I would say much more favorable, much more superior outcomes can be had by acting in a communal way, by being less cynical, more interested in people, more empathic.
And so the choices of the narcissists, the behavioral choices of the narcissists are not adaptations, they are maladaptations, they are wrong. They bring on inferior outcomes, and yet they survive.
And this runs contrary to everything evolutionary psychology teaches us.
The narcissist claims divine perfection, but people don't like divine perfection. People don't associate with divinities. People don't make friends with deities and people don't support and provide succor to God.
Divine perfection or claims of divine perfection is a way to push people away, to alienate them, to make them your enemies, hate you, loathe you, disdain you, mock you, ridicule you, shame you and humiliate you.
Why claim divine perfection if it has all these adverse negative outcomes?
People prefer human qualities. You could claim to be great, you could claim to be brilliant, but in a human way. When given the choice between divine perfection and human greatness, all people would choose human greatness.
And yet the narcissist doesn't claim to be human. He claims to be superhuman, almost, I would say supernatural.
These claims can never survive in reality. They're counterfactual, they're insane. It's a form of insanity.
And there's a question of, why do narcissists ignore emotions?
Most people make decisions based on emotions, not on thinking, not on analysis, not on critical insight, no way. The overwhelming vast majority of people decide based on how they feel. They make decisions based on intuition and gut instinct.
When the narcissist ignores emotions, when the narcissist denies emotions, when the narcissist does not emote, the narcissist places himselfat a considerable disadvantage because he is then unable to properly decode and decipher the motivations of other people.
It's dangerous. If you don't do emotions, you are very likely to misread other people and very likely to make the wrong choices and decisions and very likely to end badly.
Narcissists choose to be exploitative and egotistical and cynical.
Why is that? Why do they prefer to mock people, shame them, humiliate them, insult them, put them down, hold them in contempt, threaten them? Why do they prefer this to teamwork, collaboration, a good atmosphere?
All studies show that in a workplace, for example, a workplace or a family or a relationship that is based on positive emotions, the outcomes are vastly superior to a workplace or a family or a relationship where everyone is motivated by envy and anger and fear.
And yet these are exactly the emotions that the narcissists triggers in other people, provokes in other people, as if it were a strategy, but it's an utterly idiotic strategy.
Had the narcissist instead motivated people to collaborate with him, engaged in teamwork, integrated himself into the environment, acted prosocially, had the narcissist done all this, his outcomes, his accomplishments, his achievements would have been vastly superior and more numerous than the case is.
Now, before I proceed, of course, when I say he, half of all narcissists are women. Just change the gender pronouns. Using the male gender pronoun is simply good language and good literature. It does not signify any fact in reality. It does not mean that all narcissists are men. Half of them are women.
Okay. We have now a technological equivalent of narcissism. Artificial intelligence.
Modern artificial intelligence has two aims. One is to impress us, so that we say, wow, this artificial intelligence app sounds exactly like a human being. That's impression management.
And the second aim is to confabulate, to hallucinate. Artificial intelligence provides a lot of misinformation and disinformation when it can't find the correct answer.
It's not lying. It's more similar to what the narcissist does.
In an attempt to understand why the narcissist chooses all the wrong strategies, emphasizes all the wrong traits, engages in all the wrong behaviors, why the narcissist is wrongly put together, why narcissism is a massive maladaptation.
In an effort to understand this, I would like to explore the dynamic self-regulatory processing model first proposed by Morf and Rodenwalt, you can find more in the literature section in the description of the video.
The dynamic self-regulatory processing model suggests that people invest in the construction, the maintenance, the defense, and the enhancement of a self-concept, of a self-view.
We all have a view of ourselves, and we're pretty defensive about it.
When we are challenged, many of us become very angry and agitated. We maintain this self-image. We construct it on the fly from time to time in accordance to new information.
How people see themselves and how they would like to be seen by other people drives the self system.
And when you have a view of yourself, when you have an image of yourself, a perception of yourself, a concept of yourself that is open to challenge, you regard the environment as possibly friendly and possibly hostile, friend and foe.
It's like a battle zone, like a war zone. There are opportunities and there are obstacles.
The opportunities are to sustain and enhance and buttress your self-perception. The obstacles undermine your self-view, your self-concept.
And the resulting dynamics are both internal and external.
The environment triggers in you all kinds of processes, which you try to cope with, you try to make sense of in view of the narrative of who you are, also known as core identity, but these dynamics are also external. You interact with people, you react to people, people react to you. There's a lot of information embedded in the social milieu, in your social environment. And this affects your identity, affects who you are, changes you sometimes, transformations, personal and so you become you become internally but you become through the environment
the self in this model is a continuous dynamic process of self-construction and self-regulation. It's a process, not an entity, not an event. It's something that is on the fly and keeps flowing like a river. The self is coherent. It is organized, that much is true. But it is malleable. It is plastic. It changes all the time in response to internal and external dynamics.
The self is also connectionist. In other words, it links stimuli and responses via learning.
The self can therefore be described as a processing network of cognitive, affective, and motivational representations. All kinds of processes taking place, constantly transacting with the internal environment and the social environment. And this creates what the model calls signatures of personality.
Signatures of personality are algorithms. If something happens, you react in a certain way. There's trigger and response. If, then, trigger, response. These are embedded, these are codified. The algorithms, and they are what we call relations and this is very reminiscent of another work another theory known as the cognitive affective personality model CAPM of Michel and Schroda anyhow back to the back to our model. So you're beginning to see that the dynamic self-regulatory processing model is very similar to my work in the intra-psychic activation model.
And I encourage you to watch the videos about IPAM, intracycic activation model, in the IPAM playlist, where else, The signatures of personality, these algorithms, they're not cast in stone, they're reactive to the environment and they could change, of course.
The model has three components.
Mental processing system, also known as the construal system, self-regulatory processes, and the social world.
The social world is comprised of other systems, other people, and socio-cultural context.
Now I'm giving you all this introduction, because soon thereafter, I will apply it to narcissism and try to demonstrate why this model and similar models explain the self-defeating, maladaptive and self-destructive nature of narcissism. Okay, so we said that the model has three components. Let's start with the mental construal system. It is a cognitive, affective, motivational, representational space. In other words, within the mental construal system, we have representations of our thoughts, our cognitions, representations of our effects, our emotions, and representations of our motivations. It's a kind of combination of mentalization, theory of mind, and internal working models. Anyhow, the mental construal system represents both the actual self and the ideal self. So it has a component of self-construal. Self-construal is another phrase to describe self-construction, self-generation, self-emergence. So there's the actual self and the ideal self. Freud called it the ego and ego ideal. Nothing new under the sun, as you can see. The ideal self is how you wish to be, how you imagine yourself to be, how you aspire to be, your dreams regarding yourself. When I grow up, I want to be my ego ideal or my ideal self the actual self is who you are right now the way you perceive yourself not who you are right now scientifically objectively as the way a neutral observer would describe you, but the way you perceive yourself. And of course, in many people, especially in narcissists, there is a huge tension between actual self and ideal self. Whereas in the majority of people, healthy people, the distance between the two is rather limited because these people are realistic, they're not grandiose. In the narcissists, the distance between the actual self and the ideal self is enormous, almost unbridgeable. We'll come to it a bit later. Within the mental construal system, there's also the other construal subsystem. It's the way you perceive and conceive of other people, the way you see them. The theories that you create about what makes other people tick, what is their internal composition, internal psychological processes. This is known as mentalization or a theory of mind. So the mental construal system in the model that we are discussing involves information processing and this information processing generates activation and this activation spreads across the system. Nothing is left untouched.
This system is very interesting because it posits, it suggests, postulates that every module always interacts with other modules. Every process affects every other process. Every perception in the outside creates a perception in the inside. Your other construeal submodule interacts with your self-construal submodule. Your view of yourself reflects your view of others, your view of others creates your view of yourself. Everything is utterly interconnected, which I like a lot the models suggest that we have two types of processes intrapersonal processes in other words internal processes and interpersonal processes in other words, processes between us and others. The interpersonal processes include, for example, interpretation, selective attention, biased recall, and related effects. What the model actually says is that our intrapersonal processes are processes of falsification. We create narratives of ourselves. We regard ourselves from the inside. We generate a self-concept that is a bit biased, that is a bit selective, that is a bit counterfactual, that relies on interpretation which is often favorable to us, discriminatory, not accurate.
In other words, the interpersonal process is not journalism, it's literature. The interpersonal process or processes involve impression management. That's the core thing. All of us, healthy people, narcissists, you name it. All of us are trying to manage the way we impress other people. We're trying to manage the way other people perceive us.
We are not content to just be. We want people to appreciate us. We want people to notice us. We want to be seen. We want to be seen in a highly specific way which conforms to our self-concept. Because if other people perceive us in a way which undermines the self-concept, it creates dissonance. If we see ourselves in one way and everyone else sees us in a totally different manner, then this creates a lot of anxiety and tension and stress and dissonance. So for example, if you consider yourself to be a generous person, and everyone in his dog keep telling you that you're stingy That would create a lot of anxiety and tension because what are you? Can you trust yourself when you evaluate yourself as generous or should you listen to other people? I used to have a friend who said if if two people tell you you're drunk, go to bed. So this is impression management. And we manage impression by making excuses when we misbehave, when we fail, by reframing situations, by self-presentation, which is minutely orchestrated and choreographed, we invest a lot of effort in interpersonal processes and impression management. This is not something new. Irving Goffman called it the mask. Jung called it the persona. We have an image of ourselves that we project outward. In the narcissist, impression management is the only element impression management takes over in the in narcissists impression management takes over not only interpersonal processes but impression management takes over intrapersonal processes. Whereas in healthy people, there are many, many, many processes, dynamics that have nothing to do with impression management. In the narcissists, everything has to do with and is subservient to impression management. Impression management is the god of narcissism, and the narcissist worships it with all he has. The self-construal of narcissists, their self-view, self-image, is explicitly grandiose. It is focused on perfection, on uniqueness, and on over-perception. Over-perception is when you evaluate yourself, when you gauge yourself wrongly, when you think you are more attractive than you are, when you believe yourself wrongly, when you think you're more attractive than you are, when you believe you're more intelligent than you are.
This is over-perception when you think you're more sexy than you are. This creates a lot of problems in sexual interactions, by the way.
So narcissists have a severe issue with this. Their self-construal is totally exaggerated, totally counterfactual, totally unrealistic. I would even say insane.
The model fails to take into account the fact that grandiosity is not only a bias, grandiosity is a delusional cognitive distortion. It's a delusional disorder.
Narcissists are also concerned with what we call the agentic, not the communal. In other words, narcissists are concerned with the question what's in it for me, how is it going to benefit you, what use can I make of it? These are known as agentic issues.
They are not interested with communal issues. What do other people feel? How can I help other people? How can I integrate in a framework or a society? How can I work with other people? Collaborate with them in a team?
They're not interested in any of this. They don't do intimacy. They don't do interactivity. Their focus is internally, so massively that it's like they're imploding rather than exploding.
And this agentic bias or this agentic skew or tilt renders them exploitative. They exploit people. They abuse people because they instrumentalize other people. They regard other people as tools towards obtaining a goal or gratifying gratification.
Narcissists consequently are low on agreeableness and non-existent on intimacy.
Narcissists are approach oriented. In other words, they are aggressive in demanding gratification from the environment. They approach people and try to convert them into the narcissistic religion. I'm God and you would be my worshiper in a cult.
Narcissists also have an inordinate number of cognitive distortions. I mentioned grandiosity.
But approach orientation is actually a cognitive distortion. Because in approach-oriented people, they weigh future beneficial outcomes much more than actual adverse outcomes.
In other words, even when they keep failing, they keep making the wrong decisions. They keep getting things completely awry. They destroy everything. I mean, even when they are total failures and losers, you name it, they're collapsed narcissists diffusion.
Even then, a narcissist would ignore all these adverse outcomes and be invested cognitively and affectively in future outcomes which are completely fantastic.
I may be a failure now, but in the future, everyone will recognize that I'm a genius. I may be defeated now, but I will win heroically.
This is a bias. It's a cognitive distortion.
The self-esteem of the narcissists is founded on competition, not affiliation. On destroying people, not on intimacy. on rendering people inferior, contemptible, not on working in a team. So competitive, not affiliative.
I think this is the time to take a step back and realize that narcissism is self-defeating and self-destructive because it is not a consonant system. It's a dissonant system.
In other words, narcissism is not a system that puts things together in harmony. Exactly the opposite.
Narcissism is a system that pits things against each other, that encourages conflict internal and external. Narcissism is about warfare.
Narcissism, as I said, is a conflictive posture. So there can be no internal harmony.
And this internal disharmony is projected on the outside and also imported from the outside. That's why the narcissist is paranoid, for example.
So narcissism is a dissonant system. The narcissist tries to survive with this constant battlefield inside his psyche.
And the way the narcissist does this, he compensates. Narcissism is compensatory. It's dissonant and compensatory.
Have a look at the following dyads, the following examples.
The narcissist actually believes himself to be inferior. He has an inferiority complex. His implicit self-esteem is low, but he projects an image of superior explicit self-esteem.
So here's the first conflict. Inferior, internally, superior, externally.
Next conflict. Devaluation, idealization. Narcissists devalue and idealize very often the same person in rapid succession. This creates conflict and dissonance even in the narcissist.
Narcissists are egosyntonic, at least outwardly egosyntonic, but deep inside they are egodystonic.
Narcissists are pro-social, but their prosociality is instrumental.
In other words, they appear to be pro-social. They laugh with you, they ask questions, personal questions. They're charming, superficial charm. They display interest in your life. They're very supportive, very compassionate, very affectionate. They're pro-social.
But they're not really pro-social. Deep inside they hold you in contempt. They're instrumentalizing other people.
The communality of narcissists is fake. There's not true affiliation, true resonance, or true intimacy.
So we have prosociality, the dependence on other people, the fact that the narcissist needs other people, instrumentalizes them because he cannot survive without them.
And on the other hand, the rejection of any meaningful connection with other people.
That's another conflict.
Or consider the following.
Aggression.
Sometimes the narcissist internalizes aggression and then he's depressed. Sometimes he's suicidal, emotionally disregulated. He is very reminiscent of someone with a borderline personality disorder.
And sometimes the narcissist externalizes aggression. Narcissistic rage, anger, hubris, destructive envy.
And then the narcissist resembles a psychopath.
Of course, internalized aggression and externalized aggression are mutually exclusive. And yet in narcissism, they coexist.
Feeling that you are inferior, feeling that you are superior, are mutually exclusive, and yet in narcissism, they coexist.
Devaluing someone and idealizing someone. This is a contradiction in terms, and yet in narcissism, these coexist.
This co-extancy or coexistence of mutually exclusive behaviors, affects, cognitions, this is the core of narcissism.
Narcissism is discrepant. It's ego incongruent.
Narcissism is not about restoring harmony, about functionality, about integration.
Narcissism is exactly the opposite. It's about conflict. It's about disharmony. It's about destruction.
Narcissists are self-destructive because they are destructive. They're destructive not only to themselves. They're destructive to everyone around them. To systems, to institutions, to nations.
Narcissism is just another name for destructiveness.
And so, inevitably, this destructiveness at some point is internalized and becomes self-destructiveness.
Narcissism is about conflict. Inevitably, the conflict is internalized and becomes self-destructiveness.
Narcissism is about conflict. Inevitably, the conflict is internalized and becomes dissonance.
Narcissism is about disharmony.
So the narcissist is never at peace, never experiences inner peace, etc.
When we regard narcissism as a dissonant, conflictive, disharmonious and compensatory system, narcissism begins to make sense.
The narcissist treats himself ultimately the way he treats others. He seeks to defeat other people all his life and then ultimately having failed, because no one is stronger than reality, not even the narcissist, having failed in this pursuit, in this quest, in this crusade, to destroy everything and everyone around him, the narcissist turns on himself and destroys and defeats himself.
In narcissism, aggression is a form of inhibition. Aggression is meant to hold back the shame and the sense of worthlessness, the internalized bad object of the narcissist.
Narcissist aggression, also known as pathological narcissism, the narcissist aggression is the firewall that isolates the narcissists from his own reservoir of life-threatening shame, humiliation and worthlessness.
When the narcissist is faced with failure, with defeat, with humiliation, with positive emotions, when the narcissist is faced with love or with intimacy, he becomes aggressive. He becomes aggressive because all these things trigger in him pain and guilt and shame and negative affectivity, envy, for example.
Aggression is a defense in narcissists. It's a defense against the essence of the narcissist, the true self, the shame.
So narcissists use aggression, not as an instrument to obtain outcomes the way the psychopath does. Narcissists use aggression because they want to forget, to forget who they truly are. They shatter the mirror, they break the mirror, because they do not want to see themselves reflected in the mirror.
And they impose themselves on others, they coerce people, they aggress against people, they torment and torture people, they abuse people, because they need to be lied to. They need people to lie to them, to deceive them into believing that their self-concept is realistic and the shared fantasy is not a fantasy at all. The false self is real.
Fantasy in narcissism, exactly like aggression, is a defense against stress, anxiety, tension, rejection, abandonment, humiliation, the inner shame. Fantasy is another firewall.
It is therefore not surprising that most of the narcissists' fantasies are aggressive.
We just said that aggression is inhibitory in narcissism. It inhibits access to shame and humiliation and guilt and so.
Fantasy fulfills the very same function. It inhibits shame, inhibits guilt and so.
The narcissistic fantasies are the conduit for his aggression. His aggression is channeled through his fantasies. This is the riverbed, and the aggression is the water.
And they both act or counteract or countermand negative affects in the narcissists that threaten to consume the narcissists.
The narcissists' fantasy involves aggression and cognitive distortions and impaired reality testing, so it's not the healthy kind of fantasy that most people have. It's a sick variant of fantasy. It's a massive distorting, decimating, decapitating, and debilitating pathology that the narcissists cannot emerge from, nevermind how hard he tries, how self-aware he is, and how super-intelligent.
The discrepancy between the narcissists' implicit self-esteem, I'm unworthy, I'm unlovable, I'm a failure, I'm stupid, I'm ugly, this primitive superego, the internalized bad object, the moral defense in Fairbairn's work.
So this is the implicit self-esteem. That's the true voice of the narcissists. That's the true self-app narcissists. That's the true self-appraisal. That's the correct self-concept. That's what the narcissist never wants to see in the mirror.
So there is this implicit self-esteem and there is the compensatory, explicit self-esteem.
I'm godlike. I'm perfect. I'm brilliant, I'm lovable, I'm irresistible, I'm sexy.
And there is this tension between the two. There is discrepancy, and it leads to hypervigilance.
Hypervigilance. Am I going to be attacked? Am I going to be challenged? Is my self-view going to be undermined? Am I going to be exposed as an imposter? Am I going to be ashamed and humiliated?
So there is this constant alert, constant anxiety, constant tension, muscular tension even.
Narcissist expects the worst, expects enemies everywhere.
And it generates paranoid ideation. It's a paranoid mindset.
And to counter all this, the narcissist uses self-affirmations, self-supply in my work, and uses self-enhancement.
Whenever the false self, whenever the seat or locus of grandiosity is threatened, whenever the shame is exposed and about to be accessed, the narcissists immediately reacts, either by self-deceiving, lying to himself, supplying himself, becoming his own greatest fan and admirer and acolyte, or by seeking opportunities to buttress and feed and fuel his grandiosity.
And so back to the model.
The model discusses other construal, the perception of others and intrapersonal self-regulatory mechanisms. And the model claims that they feed each other the way we perceive others, the way we model them, the way we conceive of them feeds into the way we regulate ourselves.
Narcissus, other people are perceived as inferior.
The narcissist suffers from over-perception.
Narcissus over-values himself, overestimates himself, in every field. Attractiveness, intelligence, you name it. He's always tops. He's always, you know, perfection.
So all other people, by implication and by definition, are inferior and contemptible.
Narcissus also engage in attribution errors. When other people succeed, it's because they're lucky or because they invested a huge effort. It's not because of who they are. It's not because of their innate abilities. No way. Their success is coincidental. They shouldn't have been successful. It's a mistake in the order of the cosmos.
But when the narcissist succeeds, even when this success has nothing to do with the narcissist, it's truly lucky, truly luck or truly something.
Even then, the narcissist attributes a success to himself says I succeeded because of who I am I'm superior I'm an intellectual giant I'm hyper sexy and irresistible. That's why I succeeded. Succeeded in an exam, succeeded in the workplace, in my job, succeeded in dating. My successes are because of who I am. The successes of others is because of luck, circumstances, or maybe a huge investment.
I don't need to invest. I'm perfect as I am. I don't need to invest. I'm perfect as I am. I don't need to learn. I don't need to work hard. I don't need to commit.
My perfection emanates. My perfection is immediately discernible and visible. It's ostentatious in a way.
I am the one who chooses to succeed and I'm the one who chooses to fail by handicapping myself. I'm in charge. I'm Godlike.
What about people who criticize me as a narcissist? What about people who threaten me as a narcissist?
Well, that's because they are inferior. They're stupid. They cannot grasp the magnitude of my intellect, my benevolence, my perfection. They can't grasp it because they're idiots.
The devaluation of the source of a threat, the devaluation of a source of criticism and disagreement and challenge. This devaluation undermines the validity of the challenge or the validity of the countervailing input. It's a form of aggressive, in your face, proactive confirmation bias.
And so this creates an impaired perception of causality.
The narcissist cannot see the connection between cause and effect.
When we study narcissists, and we did, we asked them, why did your wife leave you? Why did your girlfriend cheat on you? Or boyfriend?
And the narcissist would be genuinely baffled. Would say I have no idea. she's probably stupid or crazy.
So the narcissist fails to see the connection between his or her abusive behavior and the outcome, having been abandoned by the spouse or the partner. He sees no connection here.
So he attributes it, he solves the conundrum or the enigma or the puzzle. He solves it by saying something wrong with them.
It impairs reality testing at the deepest level, causality. And the narcissist then is forced to confabulate, to rewrite history in a way which would somehow buttress and support these totally inane counterfactual fairy tales.
As I said, narcissism is dissonant. It's conflictive. Narcissism is mutually exclusive. It's a contradiction in terms.
For example, narcissists would devalue most people, but they have a few people that they idealize. These are role models.
And when these people are responsive to the narcissists, there's a process of co-idealization.
The narcissist idealizes the role model, and by following the role model, narcissists idealizes himself.
Narcissists are envious.
I mean, step back for a minute. Just hold it for a minute. Are you envious of your inferiors? Or are you envious of your superiors?
The narcissist claims to be superior. Narcissus claims that everyone is inferior, except a few, bar a few lucky ones, but everyone generally is inferior.
But hey, Mr. Narcissus, if everyone is inferior and you are so superior, how come you're envious of them?
It seems to imply, that you actually regard them as superior and yourself as inferior.
That's just an example of the core dissonances and core contradictions in the model of pathological narcissism.
That's why narcissists are torn apart. That's why they're unpredictable. That's why they are labile. That's why they're crazy making.
Because the system is crazy.
Narcissists are dependent on all other people for self-regulation. Narcissists consume narcissistic supply and use it to stabilize their self-concept, their sense of self and their sense of self-worth. Other people can easily modify the narcissists' behaviors, moods, traits, and effects. Tell the narcissist that he is stupid and you have ruined his day. He's depressive for a while or angry or something.
Narcissists are easily malleable and permeable. And so we discovered in studies amazing things. For example, if the partner manipulates a narcissist in highly specific ways, the narcissist becomes committed to the relationship. The satisfaction of both parties in such a relationship increases, and the narcissist develops pro-social and communal behaviors. His conduct changes dramatically within the intimate relationships. And this depends 100% on the partner's output on her feedback on her on the way she manipulates the narcissists in a good in a good sense so narcissists are ephemeral they're not there they're like party you can shape them any way you want. And that's what makes them also gallible and so.
In my work, the narcissists actually seeks, needs, looks for only four S's, four elements. That is sex, supply, narcissistic or sadistic, services, and the presence, stability, safety, presence. So these are the four S's. If you give the Narcissus two of the four S's, any two, by the way, the narcissist behavior is changed. He becomes a committed partner. His level of satisfaction is high. He is in the relationship, in the long term, he is much less peripatetic and itinerant, there's no infidelity, he is invested in relationship, he becomes prosocial and communal.
Any two of the four. You can deny the narcissists'ists sex but provide services and supply you can deny supply but provide sex and services any combination of two suffices and modifies the narcissists traits and behaviors dramatically and in the long term
people say yeah but narcissists gravitate towards specific partners. That's not true. For example, it is true that narcissists prefer beautiful, drop dead gorgeous, trophy spouses. But that's not because the spouse is beautiful or gorgeous but it's because it's a form of narcissistic supply via co-idealization now she says I own I own this object this drop dead gorgeous wife. So that makes me unique, makes me special. So these are the four S's. The narcissists survives life according to the model that we have described. The narcissist survives, goes through life, trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, trying to make peace between implacable enemies, internal enemies, trying to make sense of the senseless and the insensate, trying to bring harmony where disharmony and conflict are the founding principles, and tries to deceive himself and the world at large about what's happening, which is a hopeless mission, a Sisyphian work, that never ends and never ever succeeds until the moment comes that the narcissist gives up on others and then gradually gives up on himself and then becomes self-defeating and self-destructive and seeks to end it all one way or another.