Okay, Christmas survivors, guys and guyates, dudes and dudettes, shoshanim and shoshanets, and of course, every baby seal out there.
My name as some of you may know is Sam Vaknin. That's Vaknin. Not wankin, not waknin, not waknin, waknin, Vaknin, V-A-K-N-I-N, and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism, a Revisited. I'm also a professor of psychology in the Outreach Program of the SIAS consortium of universities, CIAPS, Centre for International Advanced Professional Studies. Wow, what a mouthful. I hate these lawyers. They oblige me to say this in the opening of every video.
And today we are going to discuss what the bad object does to you.
Why is it that you think that you do not deserve happiness? Why do you believe that you do deserve punishment? Why are you being self-punitive? And why, why or why do you consider yourself so unlovable, even by yourself?
Okay, let's delve right in.
But before I do, I released a video during Christmas. It's titled, "Watch How Borderline Sees You, The Intimate Partner." It is part of a series. There is a how the narcissist sees you. There is the how the borderline sees you. And the third one would be how the codependent sees you.
So rush or write in and watch how the narcissist sees you and then watch how the borderline sees you and await the completion of this much heralded serious contender against Game of Thrones.
We have a lot of anger when our parents botch the job of parenting. When we have parents who are dead parents, to borrow the phrase from Andrei Green. Dead parents are not physically dead. They might as well be. They are absent, detached, indifferent, neglectful, depressed, selfish, pedestalizing, idolizing, parentifying, spoiling, breaching the child's boundaries, treating the child as an extension, instrumentalizing the child, etc, etc, etc.
This is the catalog of parental failure.
And when we have such parents, they install and instill in each one of us a harsh inner critic.
The children of such parents who are never good enough, harbor inside thema voice which is so self-critical, so self-loathing, so self-hating that it undermines their lives forever, throughout the lifespan.
Now, Sigmund Freud called it the sadistic superego. Others call it the harsh inner critic.
And so it's an introject. It is the voice of mother or the voice of father still resonating in your head, masquerading, camouflaged, pretending to be your own authentic voice. And of course it's not.
Now Freud said that the superego is a part of the ego. And the ego's main role is to interface with reality, to inform you what would be the consequences of your actions and to moderate and control your drives and urges, such as the id.
This is a very antiquated language. Almost no one uses it anymore, but it's a useful model. It's kind of a simulation.
So the superego is part of the ego. And when the superego is harsh, sadistic, hates you, loathes you, wants has your worst interests in mind, when the superego is actually an enemy, because it is part of the ego, it impairs your reality testing.
Remember, the ego's main function is reality testing. If the ego is compromised by a contaminated, corrupt superego, then the ego is unable to function properly and your reality testing is impaired.
This condition is called a bad object.
The concept of bad object harks back to Melanie Klein, who by the way was not a psychologist. It harks back to Melanie Klein and her elaboration on the theory of identification, introjection.
At some point in our lives, we adopt the voices of significant others, such as parental figures, teachers, even peers. These voices become internal objects.
If these voices tell you that you're ugly, stupid, inadequate, unworthy, unlovable, a perennial failure, etc. If this is the message, these are the messages emanating from these internal voices, then in amalgamation, we call these voices a bad object.
Two of the most pernicious and dangerous messages emanating from the bad object are number one, you are unlovable. Number two, you do not deserve happiness.
Of course, these are counterfactual messages. They're wrong. They're simply wrong. They're wrong because the superego or the harsh inner critic or whatever you want to call it, this bad object wants to falsify reality, wants to put you down, wants to set you up for failure, hates you.
So this voice needs to reframe reality in a way that will bring about negative outcomes. It needs to impair your agency, it needs to destroy your self-efficacy.
The only way to do this is to cause you to force you to coerce you to see reality in a way which it is not.
It's a dreamlike state. It's nightmarish.
Consider, for example, the statement, you're not lovable.
Really? There's no such thing. Every human being is lovable. There are 8 billion people on the planet, 6 billion of which are above the age of 16. So the number of permutations with 6 billion adults exceeds probably the number of atoms in the known universe.
So of course, there is always someone out there who would find you lovable. Statistically speaking, it is impossible to not be loved by someone at some point, at some stage.
You can be as obnoxious as I am, as contemptuous as I am, as ugly as I am, as irritable and disgusting and frankly evil as I am, and you would still find someone to love you. You're always lovable.
I have seen serial killers and pedophiles in prison who had throngs of adoring, phoning visitors, family members. They were loved. Everyone is loved.
The statement, you are not lovable, is utterly nonsensical.
The second statement, the second voice, the second message, because these are automatic negative thoughts. The second message emanating from the cluster of self-negating introjects known as bad object. The second message is, you don't deserve happiness.
Well, I have a surprise for you. No one does. Happiness is not a dessert. It's not something you deserve.
Happiness has to be merited. Happiness has to be earned. Happiness is always the outcome of hard work. It never just falls off the sky like mana from heaven. There's no such thing as the law of attraction. It's all magical thinking nonsense.
Anyone who tells you that you deserve happiness and you're going to get it willy-nilly, never mind what you do, is lying to you and laughing all the way to the bank with your hard-earned money.
Happiness is a process. It's not an event. It's not an occurrence. It's not a point in time. Happiness is a state of being coupled with a state of mind.
Happiness is the derivative, the outcome, the result of being in harmony and in integrity with your environment.
You have to choose cleverly who you surround yourself with. Fake friends, for example. You have to be very alert as to the changing circumstances in the environment. You have to know yourself well, self-awareness, and you have to love yourself.
Then you have to work very hard. And then maybe you will end up being contented and in the most extreme cases happy.
No one deserves happiness. It is nonsense to say that you're somehow singled out for unhappiness.
The bad object uses your introjects, activates them, to generate automatic negative thoughts which belong to one of five groups.
They are self-sabotaging, self-undermining negative thoughts, including the thought, "I'm ugly. I'm a failure. I'm stupid. I will never succeed."
Self-sabotaging, self-undermining thoughts. Self-defeating thoughts.
You push away your loved ones. You push your women to other men. You push your business partners to somehow betray you. Projective identification. You force your environment to defeat you, to destroy you. You force people around you to collude and collaborate with your own self-hatred and self-loathing. You procrastinate. You're a perfectionist. You never get anything done. These are forms of self-defeating behaviors.
And then there are self-harmful behaviors, extreme self-harmful behaviors such as suicidal attempts, self-mutilation, and pernicious, subtle, hard to discern self-harmful behaviors. Going against your best interests. Making sure that people know how evil you are, how unreliable and how bad you are. Spreading rumors about yourself. Bad rumors. These are all forms of self-harm.
Then there is self-trashing, including most prominently sexual self-trashing. Rendering is yourself an object, a sexual object for example, to be used by other people and then discarded.
And finally there are self-destructive behaviors. Behaviors which make sure that you end up in prison, denied of your freedom and your property and your loved ones. For example, there's a self-destructive behavior. And there are many others. Drug abuse, substance abuse, alcoholism, etc.
One could easily say that having a relationship with a borderline, with someone with a borderline personality disorder is kind of self-harmful, self-defeating and self-destructive all in one.
Some people reject happiness. They embrace misery because this is what the bad object compels them to do.
And they belong to one of three groups.
Number one, Masochists. The masochists have been taught from an early age to hate herself and to consider herself unworthy of love and worthless as a person. And yes, amusing herself, it could easily be himself.
Consequently, the masochist is prone to self-destructive, punishing and self-defeating behaviors.
Though capable of pleasure, the masochist is not hedonistic. Though he is possessed of social skills, the masochist avoids or undermines pleasurable experiences and the love and affection of others. He does not admit to enjoying himself.
He seeks suffering and pain compulsively. He wants to hurt himself in relationships, in situations. He engineers his own agony, his own pain. He rejects help and he resents those who offer it.
This is the kind of person who would push his girlfriend or wife to sleep with another man, who would push his children to do drugs, who would push his business partner to cheat on him. And then revel, celebrate the pain, celebrate the hurt, revel in it, wallowing, immersed in this oceanic feeling of I'm a victim, I deserve what I get, I am hateful, I'm unlovable. You see, everyone is abandoning me.
Of course, in many cases, there are alloplastic defenses involved. We'll discuss it a bit later in the video.
The masochist actively renders futile attempts to assist or to ameliorate or to mitigate or to solve her problems and predicaments.
And these self-punitive, self-penalizing behaviors are also cathartic, this catharsis, self-purging, so to speak. They intend to relieve the masochist of overwhelming pent-up anxiety. It's like, let the other shoe drop already. I know bad things are going to happen. I'm going to preemptively make them happen because it restores my sense of control.
The masochist's conduct is equally aimed at avoiding intimacy and its benefits, companionship, support, and of course, love.
Masochistic personality disorder made its last appearance in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Edition 3, text revision. Someone removed it from the Fourth Edition and from the text revision of the Fourth Edition.
And some scholars, notably Theodore Millon, bemoan and regret and lament this removal. They regard the elimination of masochistic personality disorder as a mistake and they have lobbied for its reinstatement in future editions of the DSM.
And this is masochism.
But masochism is only one explanation ofthe DSM.
And this is Masochism.
But Masochism is only one explanation of what's happening.
The masochist has been taught from an early age to hate herself and consider herself unworthy of love and worthless as a person.
Consequently, he or she, they're prone, as I said, to this kind of self-destructive, punishing and self-defeating behaviors.
And so, masochists tend to choose people and circumstances that inevitably and predictably lead to failure, disillusionment, disappointment, betrayal and mistreatment.
Conversely, they tend to avoid relationships, interactions and circumstances that are likely to result in success or gratification or being loved. They reject, disdain or even suspect people who consistently treat them well.
They push people to abuse them one way or another. They push their intimate partners to cheat on them.
Masochists find caring, loving persons, sexually unattractive.
And the masochist typically adopts unrealistic goals and so guarantees underachievement.
Masochists routinely fail at mundane tasks, even when these are crucial to their own advancement in personal objectives and even when they regularly carry out similar assignments on behalf of others.
The DSM gives this example, helps fellow students write papers but is unable to write his or her own paper.
When a masochist fails at these attempts at self-sabotage, at self-destruction, the masochist reacts with rage, depression, anxiety and guilt.
It's like a mirror human, an inverted human.
Where other people react with rage, depression, anxiety and guilt to failure, the masochist reacts with the same range of emotions, negative affectivity, to success, to love.
The masochist is likely to compensate for these for undesired accomplishments and happiness by having suddenly an accident or engaging in behaviors that produce abandonment, betrayal, cheating, frustration, hurt, illness or physical pain.
Freud called some of these behaviors parapraxis.
Some masochists make harmful self-sacrifices uncalled for by the situation and unwanted by the intended beneficiaries or recipients.
The projective identification defense mechanism is frequently at play.
The masochist deliberately provokes, solicits, incites, angry, disparaging, rejecting and betrayal responses from others in order to fill, familiar territory, humiliated, defeated, devastated, hurt and morally superior.
So this is the first type of people who reject happiness and solicit misery, the first type of victims of the bad object.
And then there's a second group, the eternal victims.
Victimhood can become an identity, I refer to the recent studies by Gabay et al, victimhood can become an identity and it can become an organizing principle which kind of makes sense of the world and dows the world in reality with meaning and predictability.
I'm a victim, I know the ropes, I know what's going to happen. I understand people around me because they're all abusers.
Surviving abuse is an accomplishment that victims are proud of, emotionally invested in and loathe to relinquish.
Foundation of a fragile, insecure and labile self-esteem.
Some victims regard themselves as damsels in distress or sleeping beauties. They wait for their princesses awaiting rescue by a knight in shining armor in a fabulous mythical, morally righteous or grandiose narrative.
These are the people who are looking for saviors in a fantastic space, in a fantasy.
So this is the second group of victims of the bad object, the eternal victims.
And the third group is the comfort zone addicts because comfort zone is an addiction.
Being a victim can become a profession of sorts. The abused know the ropes, as I said, the unspoken rules and the codes of conduct and they are adept at foreseeing forthcoming maltreatment.
They have evolved coping strategies and manipulative techniques in order to adapt to and survive in the toxic environment. They feel threatened in non-abusive situations and environments and with nice people.
And so there is another us.
So these people, as far as these people go, abuse is a comfort zone.
Their bad object keeps telling them, you're not lovable, you don't deserve happiness, but at least you can construct, you can carve out a familiar ecosystem, a niche where you would feel safe just by predicting the behavior of others who are going to abuse you.
I call them the comfort zone addicts.
Narcissists and of course, borderlines are very self-disruptive.
There's an aspect of the narcissist behavior which makes him oblivious to cues information and events in the immediate environment.
Narcissist is single-minded. He has a solipsistic focus on extracting narcissistic supply from existing and potential sources.
So he is gullible. He is prone to narcissistic injury and mortification. His hypervigilance is not realistic. It's paranoid. It's persecutory.
Let's talk about masochism in narcissism.
The true self, shall we call it the inner child? The true self of some narcissist is actually masochistic. It seeks to recreate the maternal abuse and rejection in the narcissist adult relationships and even the paternal abuse and rejection.
On the face of it, the narcissist reenacts the unresolved conflict with his primary objects, mother and father. He reenacts it. He recreates it with a misplaced hope of obtaining a different outcome.
It's kind of, if I play it against Sam, I'm going to resolve it painlessly and favorably and finally be able to be loved and accepted unconditionally.
We discussed all this in previous videos about the shared fantasy. When the narcissist tries to render his intimate partners, mother figures, maternal figures, and he replays with them or reenacts with them the conflict with the original mother.
The hope is that they can provide you with unconditional love and he tests his intimate partner by abusing them.
But in reality, the masochistic narcissist chooses broken, damaged, dysregulated women. And these women are guaranteed to cause him life-threatening agony as they dump him cruelly and sadistically, usually in favor of other men.
These women deem, and I'm saying women and again, the pronouns are interchangeable, the genders are interchangeable.
Okay. I'm giving you as an example, a male narcissist, the heterosexual male narcissist.
So in the life of this masochistic heterosexual narcissist, his intimate partners become instruments of torture. They become the tools for his own self-punishment, self-punitive extensions of him.
The women in his life deem anything and anyone preferable to the narcissist injurious and ostentatious absence, abuse, and rejection.
It is not that these women don't want to be with the narcissist. On the contrary, they cannot stand not being with the narcissist any longer. So they flee, they render themselves incompatible and unsuitable and even more damaged than they are.
Let me explain this.
The masochistic narcissist chooses women who react very badly to rejection, abandonment, and humiliation. Yes, mostly women who are co-dependence and borderline.
Now that's not a job requirement. Narcissists team up with anyone who will provide them with supply.
But masochistic narcissists usually select such women, borderlines and co-dependence, if they are male.
Masochistic narcissistic women who choose men or like them.
And these women, these intimate partners react badly to rejection, humiliation, abandonment.
And so the narcissist inflicts on them egregious abuse. And sometimes, upsends himself, becomes indifferent, apathetic, not there.
These women can't tolerate the absence. They can't tolerate the neglect. They can't take rejection. They perceive everything as abandonment.
So they flee. They love the narcissist. They want to be with the narcissist and only with the narcissist.
But it is so hurtful. It is such a norm of pain that they literally latch on to the first available man, whoever he may be, as an exit strategy, as a way out.
But this is typically mostly of masochistic narcissists.
The masochistic and self-destructive narcissist uses the twin defense mechanisms of a projective identification and introjective identification. I have a video dedicated to this. Just type the keywords, introjective identification.
And he uses these defense mechanisms to coerce, to compel his intimate partner to abandon him, dramatically, exactly as his mother had done.
Painful love is the comfort zone of the masochistic narcissist and the only kind of attachment and bonding that he recognizes and resonates with.
So the intimate partner ends up betraying the narcissist, cheats on him or discards him or usually both.
Painful part is now out of the way. The demons of the past, exercised, mother's egregious maltreatment is validated and legitimized. All women are like mother. All women treat me the same.
And then the masochistic narcissist faced with mortification or narcissistic injury transforms the situation, reframes it in one of two ways.
She is as bad as my mother. That's why she cheated on me. That's why she hurt me.
Or I am the monster. I am the bad and lovable object. I deserve to be punished the way I've just been punished. And I made it all happen. I am in control.
So the classical narcissist would resort to the first defense. It's called alloplastic defense. If he's cheated on, he would blame the cheater. He would say she is bad. She's all bad. I'm all good. It's an infantile splitting defense.
The masochistic narcissist would say, she's all good. I'm all bad because he has an overwhelming, overpowering bad object.
Ironically, as the curtains descend on the end play on the drama, the narcissist is available to settle into a long-term relationship with the very woman who had wronged him and pained him so.
Only to find out in most cases that she is long gone, unnerved and freaked out by the creepy nature of the narcissist, nauseatingly sick mind games and asphyxiating power plays.
The narcissist is not only a sick puppy, but he's a rabid stray dog. With a miasmic mixture of emotional blackmail and intermittent reinforcement, the narcissist holds his intimate partner's hostage in a claustrophobic bluebird dungeon cave shackled to the boss-like hell of his writhing psyche. Few women or few men, depending on the gender of the narcissist, few intimate partners are willing to risk a second vampiric bite.
And finally, I want to elaborate a bit on emotional investment, cathexis and emotional reversal in narcissism, because they have a lot to do with a bad object and with masochism.
The narcissist converts negative emotions, negative affects such as envy and anger, into enjoyable experiences actually by cathecting them with a conviction of his own superiority.
In other words, the narcissist gets used and attached to his negative emotions. He renders them pleasurably habit forming.
Within this comfort zone of negativity, the narcissist actually enjoys being envious of others, suffering pain, owing to betrayal, etc.
And of course, I'm talking about the masochistic narcissist.
Yes, the narcissist with a bad object, the masochistic narcissist derives masochistic solace from being the butt of injustice and betrayal, being discriminated against, being an underachiever. All these are good reasons to be envious of others and to maintain the high moral drop.
The masochistic narcissist inner dialogue goes something like this.
I'm superior to everyone, but this is exactly why I'm left behind. Society rewards mediocrity. People fear true genius and integrity such as mine.
And this martyr complex is especially pronounced in conditions of deficient narcissistic supply engineered actually by the masochistic narcissist himself.
It's a never ending cycle of validating the bad object, suffering the consequences of this validation and this enhances the automatic negative thoughts spewed out by the introjects embedded in the construct of the bad object.
There's no end, no end to this misery and no escape from this infinite loop.
The narcissist's black hole is all-consuming and as opposed to black holes in physics, never lets anything out, not even the radiation of what is left of his soul.