 We all know them. They are the life of the party. They hug everyone in sight. They gush over the smallest trifles. They are coiffured and manicured and every cured. They dressed provocatively. They maintain eye contact longer than is socially appropriate and they signal an ooze sexuality. These are the histrionics. Today's topic, an introduction to histrionic personality disorder drawing on the latest bleeding edge research. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignan Self-Love, narcissism revisited and I'm a former visiting professor of psychology. Let's delve right into the histrionic something many men would like to do. Let me reassure you. Most people, and I'm saying people because in theory men can be diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder. But most patients with histrionic personality disorder are, that's a fact, still women. And this immediately raises the question is this a real clinical entity? Is this a mental health disorder? Or is it a culture-bound syndrome which reflects the values of a patriarchal and misogynistic society? You see a man who behaves like a histrionic woman is bound to be admired as a macho or a stud. At worst, he may be labeled a womanizer, but he's going to escape. He's going to escape unscathed. He's very unlikely to be diagnosed with histrionic personality disorder. Similar traits, identical behaviors. One is a histrionic slot and the other is a non-histrionic stud. And the only difference is, of course, genitalia. Still, I personally do believe that there is such a thing as a histrionic personality organization of histrionic personality structure. I just think that it is the confluence of some elements of psychopathy, some elements of borderline, and many, many elements of narcissism. Histrionics resemble narcissism. Both types seek attention compulsively. Both of them are markedly dysphoric and uncomfortable when they are not the life of the party, when they are not the center of attention, when not everything revolves around them. They feel bad, they feel down, and they feel compelled to regain the high ground in the limelight. In the limelight, they have to be the life of the party. They have to be the center of attention, or else if they fail in achieving this pivotal role, they act out, they create hysterical scenes, they confabulate anything to draw attention. Yes, attention is the key to understanding the histrionic. Like the somatic narcissism, the histrionic is preoccupied with physical appearance, sexual conquest, her health, her body. The typical histrionic spends huge dollops of money and spends inordinate amounts of time on grooming and titivating and plastic surgeries and worse. Histrionics fish for compliments and are upset when they are confronted with criticism or with proof that they are not as young, they're not as glamorous, they're not as attractive, they're not as alluring, and they're not as beautiful as they consider themselves to be. Unlike narcissists though, histrionics are genuine, much more genuine. They are not really fake as they are commonly perceived or misperceived. They're genuinely enthusiastic, they're really open, they're emotional, they're warm, they're empathic, they're empathic up to the point of actually being modellan and sentimental. Luck remotes. They are dramatic and people conflate and confuse the histrionic drama with the borderline drama. The borderline drama is much more manipulative and reactive than the histrionics drama. Histrionics drama reflects her inability to actually experience emotions except by expressing them, except by converting them into a spectacle. The borderline is overwhelmed by internal tsunamis of emotions. She drowns in her emotions and this is called emotional dysregulation. The histrionic actually does not experience emotions unless she play acts the emotions, unless she acts the emotions out. It is by visual, by externalizing the emotions. It is by converting the emotions into a theater play or a spectacle. It is by imbuing her emotions with drama that the histrionic actually comes to experience them. Histrionics also strive to fit in, mingle, blend and become a part of groups, collectives and social institutions. The histrionic woman doesn't like sex at all. That's the irony. Histrionics are actually terrified, histrionic women are actually terrified of men. What they do is they convert in their own minds, they convert the men's inevitable aggression into sexual attraction. It's as if the histrionic woman is saying to herself, I have two options here. I can get raped and beaten up badly or I can collude in having sex with these men. Let me transform, let me sublimate, let me convert his aggression into sexual, sexual, into a sexual drive or a sexual impulse. So the histrionic woman has sex with men as a way to secure their goodwill, as a way to prevent aggression, as a way to forestall violence. Histrionics in reality are actually frigid. They like the power that their sexuality gives them over men. So they like to use sexuality to manipulate men, to control men and so on and so forth. So they are teasers, they like to tease. But when the man is hers, mission accomplished, when she had won, conquered, mustered and subjugated the men, the histrionic loses all interest in the men. She begins to pay sexual attention to other men. But afraid of the men's reactions, should she just dump them, tease them and dump them? Afraid of the men's reactions, she often ends up having unwanted sex. The histrionic reframes her extinguished flame, her discarded lover and the now dead relationship or infatuation. Instead of a much desired paramour, he is now just a good friend, a sadistic enemy, or a much needed inter, an interlude. When in the throes of chasing a man, when she is busy signalling unbridled, uncontrolled sexuality, when she bathes the men, drowns the men in sexual signalling, the histrionic misjudges the men's reactions, she believes that the man is falling in love with her. She develops a fantasy which is not shared, but resembles very much the narcissist shared fantasy. In her mind, the man is infatuated and there's a level of intimacy which pervades and permeates the budding relationship. When none of this is true, the histrionic's relationships take place almost entirely in her mind, she's utterly delusional. There's no intimacy in the majority of cases, just sexual voraciousness and the wish to reciprocate the histrionic signals. Histrionics sexualize everyone and they sexualize everything and they sexualize each and every situation. They constantly act fluiditious, provocative and seductive, even when such behavior is not warranted by circumstances or, worse still, is proscribed and is considered highly inappropriate socially speaking. So a histrionic would be hypersexualized in a professional setting, in an occupational setting, even in a funeral and such conduct is ill-received. People feel ill it is around the histrionic. She, many of them consider histrionics to be fake and pretentious. When this is not the case as I've said, people usually find the unabashed directness undisguised hunger for approval inappropriate physical contact. They find all this annoying or even outright repulsive and consequently histrionics are sometimes subject to social censure, ostracism, they're shunned and avoided. The histrionic leverages a libidinous access and overt emotionality in order to gain attention. She craves attention, she's not attention junkie. The histrionics intensity, the histrionics unpredictability, the histrionics clinging neediness, constant demanding, the histrionics persistence, they're all very exhausting. The histrionics nearest and dearest are often embarrassed by her unbridled display of emotions. She hugs casual acquaintances, uncontrollable sobbing in public or having temper tantrums. The histrionics behaviour is so off-colour that she is typically accused of faking it, as I said. I wrote the entry on histrionic personality disorder in the open site in Cyclopedia and this is what I had to say. As the histrionic depletes one source of supply after another, she glides from one relationship to the next, experiencing a range of shallow feelings and commitments in the process. This shallowness is reflected in the histrionic speech, which is impressionistic, disjointed in general. Concerned only with the latest conquest, the histrionic uses her physical appearance and attire as a kind of conscience bait. She bates people. It is ironic that histrionics often mistake the depth, durability and intimacy of their relationships, and they are devastated by their inevitable premature termination. Histrionics are the quintessential drama queens. They are theatrical. Their emotions are exaggerated to the point of caricature. Their gestures are sweeping, disproportional and inappropriate. The histrionic is easily suggestible. She responds instantly and fully to the slightest change in circumstances and to the most meaningless communication or behaviour of others. Histrionics are very gullible. They adopt your opinions as theirs. Histrionics are early adopters and closely adhere to the latest fads and fashions. Now, Theodore Millen suggested that there are six types of histrionics. The appeasing histrionics is dependent, compulsive, so she seeks to placate, mend, patch up, smooth over troubles. She has a knack for settling differences, moderating tempers by yielding, compromising, conceding. She sacrifices herself for commendation. Fruitlessly placates the unplacatable. This is the appeasing type. The vivacious type of histrionic has narcissistic features. She is vigorous, charming, bubbly, brisk, spirited, flippant, impulsive. She seeks momentary cheerfulness and playful adventures. She is animated, energetic and embellished. The tempestuous histrionic has negativistic features. She is impulsive. She is out of control. She is moody, complains, sulks. She has precipitous emotion, stormy, impassioned, easily wrought up, periodically inflamed and turbulent. Then there is the disingenuous histrionic. She has antisocial features. She is underhanded, double-dealing, skinning, conniving, contriving, plotting, crafty, false-hearted, egocentric, insincere, deceitful, calculating and guileful. In short, the perfect mate. Then you have the theatrical histrionic, variant of the pure histrionic. Affected, mannered, put on, postures of striking, eye-catching, graphic, markets, her self-appearance, synthesized, stagey, simulates desirable, dramatic poses. And finally there is the infantile histrionic, which has borderline, who has borderline features. She is labile, high-strung, volatile emotions, childlike hysteria and nascent pouting, demanding, overwrought, fastens and clutches to another, is overtly and overly attached, hangs on, stays fused to and clinging to a perceived or misperceived, actually intimate partner. So this is the introduction to histrionic personality disorder and I strongly recommend that you watch this video to its very long end because I'm going to study phenomena connected to histrionic personality disorder. For example, the hunger for attention, interactions with men when the histrionic is a woman and other phenomena which have to do with introjection, the voices inside the histrionic, these are issues which are rarely tackled on YouTube and even in scholarly literature. So bear with me, you don't have to gulp the entire video in one go, it's divided in parts, but it's an overall picture of histrionic personality disorder, the likes of which I couldn't find online. Stay tuned and enjoy the ride. I'm a traditionalist, so let us begin with a tradition. My name is Sam Baknin and I'm the author of Malignancy of Love, Narcissism Revisited, as though you didn't know. Today, I will be discussing attention wars. Attention wars come in both genders, both women and men can be attention wars, but the literature, scholarly literature indicates the majority of attention wars, women with histrionic and borderline personality disorders, the majority of these people are women. So I'm going to use the feminine gender pronouns throughout this text, but bear in mind, bear in mind, there are men who are, who are attention wars. Everything I say applies to these men as well, not to make the text cumbersome, I will limit myself to women. Some women, single and married, use male attention to regulate their sense of self-worth. When their self-confidence and self-esteem is at a low ebb, when they feel a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence, these so-called attention wars become flirtatious, seductive, they coctees, and they trade sex for even the most inconsequential signs of attention from a man. It could be a chat, it could be a compliment, it could be small gifts, flowers, a bouquet, or a meal at a restaurant, it's good enough. Even if the attention they get is vulgar and demeaning, even if they are, for example, groped in public or fondled in public, or if they are the targets of lewd, loud, explicit, so-called compliments, these women would still prefer it to being ignored. These women say bad or wrong kind of attention is far better than no attention at all. Male attention serves a few important psychodynamic functions with these women, and remember, it applies to men as well. First of all, the attention that these women get from men reassures the woman of her irresistibility and attractiveness. A woman who is rejected, neglected, abandoned, humiliated and ignored by their intimate partner, this kind of woman feels compelled to restore her badly eroded self-image, so what she does, she conducts a poem among other men. She offers her body in exchange for an erectile affirmation, a vote of fluids that she is still irresistibly desirable. Another function is reasserting control and power over men via her sex. Such a woman as wages her anxiety, ameliorates her anxiety, reduces it, because she assumes that men are misogynistic and hostile and aggressive, she's afraid of men. She actually, in the background, hates men, but above all she's terrified of them, she's afraid of them. So what she does, she tames men with her body and that makes her feel safe and reduces her anxiety. And then of course some women are adrenaline junkies, illicit affairs, cheating, deception, risky and reckless behaviors or situations are all perceived by such a woman as thrilling, breathless adventures which alleviate the tedium of daily life. This kind of woman is compulsively deceptive, she engages in compulsive cheating, she is a dictator actually. Many of these women sexualize frustration, they act out. Their impulse control is impaired, we will talk about it a bit later, they use addictive sex and compulsive habitual cheating to avenge themselves, it's a form of revenge. And then there's the issue of unsacred hunger for intimacy and semblance of emotion. Such hunger is overpowering, a woman who lacks intimacy in her primary relationship, a woman who doesn't get sex, doesn't get love, doesn't get warmth, doesn't get protection. Such a woman will sometimes provide access to her body in return for even the feigned and fake versions of what she creates. And finally, some women break all boundaries in a feast of unbridled promiscuity. And this is a form of masochistic self-punishment, self-annihilation. It's an affirmation of the woman's deeply ingrained intradicts. Her inner critic, the voices, the superego, had constantly judged her and criticized her and demeaned her and humiliated her. So to affirm these voices, to agree with them in order to reduce the inner conflict and the anxiety, to create a kind of truce or ceasefire with these voices, what she does, she becomes a whore, she becomes a bed-object, she becomes unworthy of anything better than being pumped and dumped by multiple men. And this way, she kind of makes peace with her inner tribunal, tribunal, inner court, which tells her mercilessly that she is a worthless bed-object prostitute. I call some of these phenomena, I call them mishausen by narcissists. These women sometimes seek interactions and relationships with narcissists in order to be victimized by the narcissist and in this way secure attention, commiseration, sympathy, and resources from mental health professionals, other victims and survivors online, the community or society, and of course, friends and family. Mishausen by narcissists is akin to the two other mishausen syndromes. They are known as fictitious disorders and all these are observed mostly among women. In the classic mishausen syndrome, the patient feigns physical illnesses or actually hurts herself, damages her body in order to attract the attention and compassion of medical staff. In mishausen by proxy, the patient causes other people, usually her own children, to become gravely ill, for example by poisoning. And this is in order to become the center of attention, pity, and admiration of doctors, nurses, and spectators. Many self-sired so-called empaths are actually codependent and evils. There is a difference between the compassionate or empathic and between enabling. So when these women seek the attention of men, they usually would gravitate towards narcissists because this achieves a double goal. First of all, it regulates self-esteem and self-confidence as we have discussed. And the second goal is it renders the woman a victim and therefore worthy of compassion, attention, mercy, pity, and so on and so forth. So it's like a two-for-one. And many of these women self-style declare themselves to be empaths but actually they're not. What they are, they are codependent and evils. And there is a difference between being compassionate and empathic, as I said. Compassion means that you hold a realistic view of your partner, but you refuse to participate in his shared circuses, in his paranoia, mind games, power plays. Enabling on the other hand means that you aid and abet your significant other. Together with him, you descend into his madness, his personal haters, his mental palkatory, and his fantasies and ideation. Compassion is about providing your counterpart with external boundaries, checks and balances, control, and a realistic feedback. Enabling involves fusing and merging with the other, erasing all the boundaries, helping to fend off her full reality by becoming delusional jointly. And you see, this is exactly what happens with attention whores. They seek attention from men, but they seek it in a way that enables the men. They become enablers. Together with the men, they create a shared circuses where the woman is irresistibly desirable, and the men provide her with erzats, fake intimacy, love, and sex. And together, they create this bubble, this utter fantasy, this movie, which has nothing to do with reality. No wonder most of these so-called relationships end up in heartbreak, shame, and guilt. Most attention whores are impulsive. Impulsive people act first and consider their options later. Impaired, deficient, lacking, or absent impulse control serves important psychological needs in the attention board. In some mental health pathologies, cluster B, dramatic personality disorders, mood disorders, and other mental health disorders, unfulfilled or suppressed urges, drives, and impulses give rise to extreme anxiety and stress. Instantly catering to these pressing wishes is the only way to alleviate and ameliorate this inexorably mounting inner volcanic pressure. So the patient feels her needs as something that is kind of magma, kind of lava, that fulfills her and drives her into intense and extreme anxiety, bordering, I would say, on a kind of micro psychotic episode. And so to alleviate this, to get rid of this anxiety and this increasingly disabling stress, what she does, she acts out. She just acts on it. So if she is, if she has a need to have a man in order to affirm her declining self-esteem, I mean, that she would act on it because as long as she doesn't activate, she feels less and less and less and less and less comfortable. She feels she is about to lose control. She feels she is about to disintegrate. And to a large extent, it's true that way. She is the compensating. Following impulsive acts, cheating, spending, shopping, promising, traveling, being cheating, whatever, following these impulsive acts, there is an overwhelming sense of guilt and shame. And this is followed by purging and penitent behaviors, like acting extra nice to the cheated spouse, forced vomiting in case of bulimia, or working hard to make up for the profligacy. And these actions, these penitent actions, acts of penitence, they lead to a restoration of inner peace and homeostasis, kind of balance. They are cathartic. They create catharsis, a feeling of having attained a state of clean slate, like everything now is snow white and pure. You can start anew. It's a new phase, a new stage. I mean, you can put everything behind you. What happened there stays there, at least until the next transgression. But the feeling of catharsis is an almost religious experience. Impulsivity has another critical function, though, the regulation of labile, self-esteem, fluctuating self-confidence, and one's sense of self-worth via the restoration of grandiosity. In this sense, impulsivity is an aspect or symptom of narcissism. The cheating spouse, for example, he affirms his irresistibility. The shopaholic affirms her omnipotence and perfection, because he has all the money she needs. The kleptomania affirms, confirms her invincibility, her lack, her cosmic lack, the universes with her, she's getting away with it. So the forbidden, risky, and illicit nature of most impulsive acts and behaviors only adds to this mystical aura of uniqueness. This magical elevation to a godlike status of invincibility feels like a euphoric high, and it is, therefore, addictive. This adrenaline rush, ebb and, I mean, waning and waxing of adrenaline. This is addictive. All impulsive behaviors are addictive. Recidivism is guaranteed. No agreement, no rule, no vow can prevent these behaviors from recurring. It's almost hopeless. Even in therapy, we find it very difficult to kind of restore control over impulsive behavior. In dialectical behavioral therapy, this is one of the main aspects, because borderline women with borderline personality disorder lack impulse control. But the success is usually limited, and the recurrences in recidivism are very common. Don't lose hope. As these women grow older, most of the signs and symptoms of borderline and histrionic personality disorder recede. Unfortunately, only to be replaced with dysthymia, background depression. No free meal in mental health, it seems. My name is Sam Baklin, and I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited. Women with histrionic personality disorder respond differently to two types of men. The first type, these are men who openly desire the histrionic woman. They are infatuated with her. Or even, in some instances, actually and truly love her. The histrionic sees herself through their eyes, and she likes what she sees. Their gaze defines her, provides her with a sense of identity, where there is only diffuse identity, and enhances her self-confidence and self-esteem. She falls in love with herself through them. But after a brief affair, or a few encounters with this type of men, they begin to bore the histrionic woman, the irritator, and she begins to devalue them. Because there is no thrill, no chase, no conquest, hunt, or competition involved in the totally predictable relationship. The histrionic woman should limit her contact with such men to a passive role. She should accept their admiration, attention, and infatuation, but not take it any further because the relationship is doomed. This way she will not create enemies among these men, and will be able to dedicate her scarce mental resources to the second type of men, which is absolutely her only kind. What is this second type of men? These are men who are visibly attracted to the histrionic, and even desire her sexually, but are very avoidant emotionally, or even absent emotionally. This is the only type of men with whom the histrionic woman can have a long relationship. However dysfunctional and painful, the interaction may be. Histrionic women abhor intimacy and love. Actually, they are not very sexual either. Studies have shown that histrionic women have low sexual drive, low sexual desire, and they are not very good at sex. So they don't need sex, they don't need love, they don't need intimacy. What do they need? They need mind games. With these men, there is always some game going on. Constant hunting, the adrenaline field ups and downs, competing with other women, conquest and loss, etc. When the histrionic woman is in a relationship with such an emotionally unavailable man, she should mirror him, she should approach him and avoid him. Be his, and not his, provoke his jealousy, vanish and reappear, promise and with hope, give and torture. This kind of conduct will render these men dependent on the histrionic and gratify their sense of control, of being the winner, of having it all. My name is Sam Vaknen and I am the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisit. Borderline personality disorder is often diagnosed together with co-morbid with other personality disorders, most commonly histrionic, narcissistic and antisocial or psychopathic. All these four personality disorders form together the cluster B. So cluster B personality disorders often coexist in the same diagnosed patient. The majority of persons diagnosed with these comorbidities of personality disorders are actually women. Women are predominantly the main segment of the histrionic personality disorder population and of the borderline personality disorder population. Borderline personality disorder is a post-traumatic state. It is repeatedly triggered in later life by neglect, abandonment, withholding of sex and intimacy, verbal and psychological abuse, and by life's circumstances, dangers and chaos. When borderline personality disorder is co-morbid with histrionic personality disorder, such women react by seeking comfort, acceptance, validation, sex and intimacy from other men. But the co-morbidity creates conflicting inner voices in the woman. There are three voices to consider, histrionic voice, the antisocial voice or psychopathic voice, and the borderline voice. The histrionic voice in such co-morbid women says, men will make you feel better. Men will help you restore your self-esteem. The psychopathic or antisocial voice in such a woman says, don't feel guilty about cheating. Don't feel guilty or bad about being a whore. It is fun. You deserve sex. It is not your fault. No one gets hurt if you keep it a secret. Go for it. The borderline voice says, your sexuality is bad, mad and dangerous. Don't take it too far or it will end calamity. When such a woman with co-morbid histrionic and borderline personality disorder, when such a woman experiences a narcissistic crisis or a narcissistic injury, when such a woman is hurt, humiliated or frustrated, when her femininity is doubted or challenged, her histrionic side forces her to reach out to men in order to make her feel better and to ameliorate her frustration. Such women fling with men. They use men to self-medicate. Men become a kind of anti-exiety drug. These women restore their self-esteem and self-confidence. They regulate their lebi sense of self-worth by having sex or engaging in sexual acts with other men, with men. These women contact men with the intention of having intimacy in sex with them. When this happens, the antisocial or psychopathic voice of the woman legitimizes her histrionic behavior. It says, as I said, don't feel guilty about chicken. Don't feel guilty about being a whore. There's nothing wrong with it. It's fun. You deserve sex. It's not your fault. No one gets hurt if you keep it a secret and so on and so forth. Go for it. But at that point, the borderline voice interjects. The woman's borderline aspect feels stressed and panicked by the sheer prospect of imminent sex. When she is faced, when the woman is faced with a men's expectation to have sex with her, and when this woman is also faced with her own sexual desire, she freaks out. Sex is perceived as traumatic. These women perceive sex to be associated with pain and hurt, kind of punishment. The following negative thoughts, negative automatic thoughts prevail in these women's minds. Sex is dirty. Men are evil, dangerous, one-track minded. They want only sex, and then they will discard you. Sex inevitably results in pain and hurt. You should feel guilty about cheating. You should feel ashamed for being so whorish, etc., etc. These sentences, negative automatic sentences, play again and again in the woman's mind, as her histrionic side pushes her to engage in sex with strangers and her psychopathic side legitimizes this behavior. So there's a conflict, an inner conflict comprised of two or three conflicting and competing voices. When faced with the prospect of sex, borderline patients panic because of these negative thoughts. The panic sometimes leads to depersonalization. The woman splits from herself. She enters a kind of paralyzing trance. She goes autopilot. She lapses into a dreamlike or nightmare-like state. If such a woman crosses the line and has false logistics, she experiences dissociation. She forgets certain sexual acts that conflict with her values and boundaries, especially so if she finds them enjoyable. To be a narcissist is a full-time job. The narcissist needs to secure narcissistic supply on an ongoing basis, exactly like a junkie has to secure his next fix. Without narcissistic supply, the narcissist crumbles. It's a full-time job, it's energy depleting, and many narcissists do not have the skills, talents, or qualifications to obtain supply. They are the collapsed narcissists. And today I would like to discuss the collapsed narcissists and a new concept I have come up with, the collapsed histrionic. My name is Sandak Nin, and I'm the author of Balign and Self-Love, Narcissism Revism. Pathological narcissism is thought to be the result of a prolonged period of severe abuse by primary caregivers, or by peers, or authority figures. In this sense, pathological narcissism is a reaction to trauma. It's a post-traumatic condition. Narcissism is a form of post-traumatic stress disorder that got ossified and fixated and mutated into a personality disorder. All narcissists are traumatized. All narcissists suffer from a variety of post-traumatic syndromes, such as abandonment anxiety, reckless behaviors, and other anxiety disorders, mood disorders, somatophone disorders, or the image problems, and so on. But the presenting signs of narcissism rarely indicate post-trauma. This is because pathological narcissism is an efficient coping defense mechanism. It's adaptive. The narcissist presents to the world a facade of invincibility, equanimity, superiority, skinfulness, cool-headedness, invulnerability, nonchalance, and in short, indifference. This front that the narcissist presents to the world is penetrated in times of great crisis that threaten the narcissist's ability to obtain narcissistic supply. It is also breached and collapses when narcissistic supply is sparse, fake, or low-grade, negative, or static. And then the narcissist becomes a collapsed narcissist. Many self-styled experts online use the term failed narcissist, but it's a failed term. It's a mistake. Failed narcissist is a term that was invented by Gorstein, a scholar, to describe one of the phases in the development of borderline personalities. The correct term is collapsed narcissist. The collapsed narcissist is very much like the collapsed histrionic. The collapsed histrionic is usually a woman with body image, somatophone issues, and a low sense of self-worth. Yet, she still needs men, and she uses men to regulate her flagging self-esteem and deficient self-confidence. This creates a permanent dissonance and anticipatory anxiety as such a woman expects fully to be rejected and humiliated by men. Low self-esteem often leads to an impaired reality test. The collapsed histrionic misreads environmental, social, and sexual cues. She often ends up being mocked, shunned, abused, or sexually assaulted by men. She compensates for her insecurities with brazen defiance and grandiosity, as well as with substance abuse, alcoholism, all of which compound her ability to properly gauge reality. The collapsed histrionic's feelings of inferiority and inadequacy lead the collapsed histrionic to social withdrawal and to reclusiveness. She rarely dates men, and when she does, she aggresses against, pushes away, and abuses alpha males, winners, accomplishment, even when they are genuinely interested in her. She engages in pre-emptive abandonment, she dumps them before they dump her. Instead, the collapsed histrionic picks up safe beta males, weak, ugly losers, who are very unlikely to painfully reject. Both histrionics and narcissists require a form of narcissistic supply, and when the narcissistic supply is deficient when it's missing, they resort to several adaptive solutions. The first solution is the delusional narrative solution. The narcissists of histrionic construct a narrative in which he figures as the hero, brilliant, perfect, irresistibly handsome, or beautiful, destined for great things, entitled, powerful, wealthy, the center of attention, etc. The bigger the strain of this delusion will charade, the greater the gap between fantasy and reality, the grandiosity gap, the more the delusion coalesces and solidifies. Finally, if the delusion is sufficiently protracted in time, it replaces reality, and the histrionic and the collapsed histrionic and narcissists reality test deteriorates considerably. He or she withdraws and the bridges may become schizotypical, cathetonic, or schizoid. Another solution is the antisocial solution. The narcissists of histrionic renounce reality. To the narcissists of histrionic's mind, those who pucillanimously fail to recognize his unbound talents, his innate superiority, his overarching brilliance, his benevolent nature, her stunning beauty, entitlement, cosmically important mission, affection, etc., etc., anyone who fails to recognize the real foundations of the narcissists of histrionic's grandiosity, they don't deserve consideration. The narcissist's natural affinity with the criminal, the lack of empathy and compassion, efficient social skills, disregard for social laws, and morals, they are also common to the histrionic. Both narcissists and histrionics have a psychopathic overlay. Actually, many scholars claim that histrionic personality disorder is the female variant of psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder. In all these complex, all these antisocial, defined, brewed, erupts, and blossoms, the rejected narcissists, the rejected histrionic becomes a full-fledged antisocial, sociopath or psychopath. He or she ignores the wishes and needs of others, breaks the law, violates all rights naturally legal, holds people in contempt of disdain, derives into Christ society and its codes, punishes the ignorant ingrates, and transgresses on the emotions and rights of even loved ones. That, to his or her mind, these people drove him over to this state. They are guilty. They are responsible for her or his acts. By acting criminally and by jeopardizing their safety, lives, and property, the narcissists, the collapsed narcissists of the collapsed histrionic, exact vengeance, reciprocates, restores balance and justice. It's a power play within a power matrix. A variant of this pattern of conduct is a passive-aggressive solution. Passive aggressiveness wears a multitude of guises, procrastination, malingering, perfectionism, forgetfulness, neglect, truancy, intentional inefficiency, stubbornness, and outright sabotage. This repeated and advertent misconduct has far-reaching effects. Consider the negativists in the workplace. He or she invests time and efforts in obstructing their own chores and in undermining relationships. But these self-destructive and self-defeating behaviors wreak havoc throughout the workshop or the office, same in romantic relationships. Despite the obstructive role of their play, passive-aggressives feel unappreciated, bored, cheated, and misunderstood. Left out, they chronically complain why calm and criticize. They blame their failures and defeats on others, posing as martyrs and victims of a corrupt inefficient and heartless system or corrupt inefficient and heartless people. In other words, they have alloplastic defenses and an external locus of control. Passive aggressive sulk and give the silent treatment in reaction to real or imaginary slides. They suffer from ideas of reference, referential ideation. They believe that they are the butt of the original contempt and condemnation. They are mildly paranoid. The world is out to get them, which explains their personal misfortune, or they are being purposefully left out and cut out. In the words of the diagnostic and statistical manual, they may be silent, irritable, impatient, argumentative, cynical, skeptical, and contrary. Rageful and spiteful, they are also hostile, explosive, they lack impulse control, and they are sometimes reckless. The next solution to deficient narcissistic supply, the next solution commonly adopted by collapsed narcissists and histrionics, is the paranoid schizoid solution. When narcissism fails as a defense mechanism, the narcissist develops paranoid narratives, self-directed confabulations, which place him at the center of others allegedly maligning tension, attention and intention. The narcissist becomes his own audience and self-sufficient as his own sometimes exclusive source of narcissistic supply. The narcissist develops persecutory delusions. He perceives slides and insults when none were intended. Now, collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics are hyper-vigilant. The narcissist or histrionic becomes subject to referential ideation. People are gossiping about her, mocking him, trying into his affairs, cracking her emails, etc., etc. The narcissists and histrionic become convinced that he or she is the center malign and malintentioned attention. People are conspiring to humiliate her, punish him, abscond with his property, delude her, impoverish him, confine her physically or intellectually, censor him, impose on her time, force him to action or to inaction, frighten her, coerce him, surround and besiege her, change his mind, part with her values, victimize or even murder her, ignore her, cut her out, leave her aside, etc., etc. Some narcissists withdraw completely from the world, populated with such menacious, anomalous objects. They are really projections of internal objects and processes for secretary-objects. These collapsed narcissists and histrionics avoid all social contact except the most necessary. They refrain from meeting people, from falling in love, from having sex, from encouraging intimacy, from talking to others, or even from correspondingly. In short, they become schizorids, not out of social shyness or social anxiety, but out of what they feel to be their choice. This evil, hopeless world does not deserve me, goes the inner refrain, and I shall waste none of my time and resources on it. The next solution is the paranoid, aggressive or explosive solution. Other narcissists who develop the secretary delusions, histrionics with the same, resort to an aggressive stance, a more violent resolution of their internal conflict. They become verbally, psychologically, situationally, and very rarely physically abusive. They insult, castigate, chastise, berate, demean and derive their nearest and dearest, often well-wishers, often loved ones. These narcissists and histrionics explode in unprovoked displays of indignation, righteousness, spite, condemnation and blame. There is the exegetic bedlam. They interpret everything, even the most innocuous, inadvertent and innocent comments, as designed to provoke and humiliate them. They so fear, revulsion, hate and malignant envy. They flame against the windmills of reality, apathetic, for law and side, for sure, but often they cause real and lasting damage. They hurt people, and sometimes they hurt themselves. The next solution is the masochistic avoidance solution. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics are angered, is angered by the lack of narcissistic supply or attention or admiration or being desired. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics direct some of his or her fury inwards, punishing himself or herself for his or her failure. This masochistic behavior has the added benefit of forcing the narcissists or histrionics closest to assume the roles of dismayed spectators or persecutors, and thus either way to pay him the attention that he creates. So he forces people around him to observe what's happening and to pity him or pity her, or to persecute him or her. Self-administered punishment often manifests as self-handicapping masochism, the narcissistic or histrionic cobalt. By undermining his work, his relationship, and his efforts, the increasingly fragile narcissists and histrionics avoids additional criticism and center, negative supply. Self-inflicted failure is the narcissist of the histrionics doing, and thus proves that he or she is the master of his or her own fate. Masochistic narcissists keep finding themselves in self-defeating circumstances, which render success impossible, and an objective assessment of their performance improbable to quote Millen, Theodore Millen. They act carelessly, withdraw in mid-effort, are constantly fatigued, bored or disaffected, and thus passive-aggressively sabotage their lives. Their suffering is defiled, and by deciding to abort, they reassert their omnipotence. The narcissists, the collapsed narcissists and histrionics, pronounce the public misery, self-pity, are compensatory. Again, Theodore Millen says, they are intended to reinforce his or her self-esteem against overwhelming convictions of worthlessness. The collapsed narcissists and histrionics tribulations and anguish render him or her, in his or her eyes, unique, saintly, virtuous, righteous, resilient and significant. They are, in other words, self-generated narcissistic supply. Thus, paradoxically, the worse the anguish and unhappiness of the collapsed narcissists or the collapsed histrionics, the more relieved and elated such a narcissist or histrionic feels. It feels good to feel bad. In extremis, when all these default behaviors and solutions fail, or when only negative, fake, low-grade, and static narcissistic supplies to be had, the collapsed narcissists or histrionics falls apart in a process of disintegration known as decompensation. It's the inability to maintain psychological defenses in the face of overwhelming and mounting stress. And this is accompanied by the next stage, which is acting out. It's when an inner conflict, most often frustration, translates into aggression. It involves acting with little or no insight or reflection. And in order to attract attention and disrupt other people's cozy lives, the dynamic forces which render the narcissists and the histrionic paralyzed and fake, his or her vulnerabilities, weaknesses and fears, these are strongly exposed as his or her defenses crumble and become dysfunction. The narcissists or histrionics' extreme dependence on his or her social milieu for the regulation of his or her sense of self-worth is painfully and pitifully evident as he or she is reduced to begging and cajoling or to threatening. At such times, the collapsed narcissists or the collapse histrionic acts self-destructively and antisocial. The mask of superior equanimity is pierced by displays of impotent rage, self-loathing, self-pity, passive aggressiveness, and cross-attempts at manipulation of friends, family, loved ones and colleagues. The narcissists or collapsed narcissists or collapsed histrionics' ostensible benevolence and caring evaporate suddenly and shockingly the mask falls evenly, erupts and emanates or maliciousness. The narcissists and collapsed histrionics seek to destroy the source of frustration, to punish it, to punish loved ones, to ruin other people's lives, to cause enormous emotional havoc and anguish and pain. The collapsed narcissists and collapsed histrionics feel caged and threatened and they react with as any animal would do by striking back at their perceived tormentors, at their hitherto nearest and nearest. There is no sight, no sight on God's given earth, more unsettling than this transition from caring, empathic, loving, tender person. The acting, from acting to acting out, the vicious, cornered, malicious animal that strikes out at anyone and everyone around her and causes the maximum possible damage, pain and blood, both figurative and literal. My name is Sandaki. 22 years ago I have written a book about psychopathic narcissists. I even coined most of the language in use today, including narcissistic abuse. Yet when I come across a psychopathic narcissist, even I am shaken to my foundations. There is something utterly reptilian or alien about these people. Psychopathic narcissists and histrionic and borderline women, they are driven by primitive urges, unrequited needs, raw negative impulses like rage and vindictiveness and psychological defense mechanisms run amok and awry. It is not so much a lack of empathy as it is a kind of one-track mindedness that renders these people robotic or zombie-like. You cannot contract, make a contract, make an agreement with a psychopathic narcissist or with a histrionic borderline woman. They recognize no rules. They have no deep emotions. They get attached to absolutely no one, not even to their own children. They play mind games with everyone. They lie incessantly and usually unnecessarily. They will not hesitate to hurt you fatally if it gratifies the triflest of their wishes. These people, psychopathic narcissists and borderline histrionic women are not sadists. They're not out to inflict pain on you. You are merely a kind of collateral damage. They do what they do absent-mindedly. They don't care. You're not there. Where a human being should have been, there is a vast deep space of emptiness. Avoid with howling primordial winds. It is chilling. These defective renditions of humans have no real spouses. They know no children. They maintain no friendships. They keep no families. There's no continuity. It's like a series of disjointed snapshots with nothing much to connect them. These people plow through their lives and through the lives of their so-called nearest and dearest, like unstoppable unconscionable racking bones. They swing apathetically between compulsions and obsessions. They have an ever more deeming awareness of the stirrings that pass for their consciousness. It's like these people are raw material, unfold yet to become human. Some elements are there, many are missing. I think that is what frightens people. That's what puts most people. Here it is. This is the uncanny valley. Psychopathic narcissists and borderline histrionic women appear fully formed and fully human. Many of them are charming. Many of them are irresistible. But when you get a bit closer, on a second look, on a second meeting, on a second exchange of correspondence, when you bond or attach to them, you discover that they are the wind. Like Dali's famous painting, Galatea, they are an assemblage of molecules, ever colliding, never restful, never can be grasped, never comprehensible. Very painful. Again, despite having written this book in malignancy of love and having been exposed for 22 years to thousands of such people, with every new encounter, I am dumbfounded and sometimes even downright frightened.