 The 14th century Persian poet Hafiz wrote The earth would die if the Sun stopped kissing her the Sun bestows its endowments and its gifts on Earth and its inhabitants free of charge No strings attached No conditions The Sun loves the earth unconditionally or so it could seem The narcissist and the psychopath are definitely unlike the Sun and When they kiss you it is not the kiss of life but very often the kiss of death definitely emotional death Today we are going to discuss Why do narcissists and psychopaths Psychopaths feel the need to be takers and users Why can't they act? reciprocally Why can't they maintain relatively healthy relationships of give and take? Why do they regard everyone around them as a source of something source of supply source of sex Source of power source of access source of contacts source of money Why? What is the psychology behind this extremely peculiar and in the long-term self-defeating? view of the world and everyone in it Unlike the Sun Psychopaths and narcissists are not gonna survive for another four or five billion years Thank God But in the short time allotted to them on this planet They cause havoc and mayhem and pain and hurt and worse And all this can be traced To their inability to give and their compulsion to take Which is a topic of today's video To my Arab listeners Salamu alaikum To my Jewish Israeli listeners Shalom to my Balkan denizens Bravo And to all the rest of this wide beautiful pale blue dot I bid Okay For those of you who are wondering who is this not job On the screen. My name is Sam Baknin. I'm the author of malignant self-love Narcissism revisited. I'm a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of see ups and Let's delve writing Both narcissists and psychopaths are users their takers their exploiters This is because of the environment they grew up in They are imitating and emulating their mothers or their fathers parental figures caregivers primary objects in clinical terms They grew up in an environment where Mother and father were takers and users and abusers and exploiters mother and father especially mother instrumentalized the child parentified the child imposed on the child tasks Forced the child to realize the unfulfilled dreams and expectations and fantasies a child has been objectified dehumanized Growing up in such a family unit Narcissists and psychopaths have learned a very important lesson Give minimally and give conditionally When emotional exchange is excluded What is left? Narcissists have no access to positive emotions only to negative ones Psychopaths arguably have no emotions at all judging by functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of psychopaths So these two groups of people narcissists and psychopaths Cannot offer positive emotions and cannot involve positive emotions in their discourse and intercourse sexual and otherwise with other people and When you can't trade emotions when you can't reciprocate love prefer affection When you can't be you can't be compassionate because you lack empathy What have you left to give? material the material services functions Goods and of course if you give these things you expect to receive them So narcissists and psychopaths reduce all their interaction interpersonal relationships into a transactional plateau Where it's a give-and-take But it's a win-lose situation Narcissists and psychopaths seek to optimize Return on investment or to maximize it actually return on investment by Minimizing their investment and maximizing their returns. They're very business oriented in a way But there is a much deeper psychological reason for this Narcissists and psychopaths perceive the very act of taking the very act of possessing Appropriating expropriating taking over The very act of owning they perceive these as Love substitutes Signs of love signals of love Surely if they possess someone They are being loved Surely if they if they receive and if someone else gives that someone else loves them Surely if they end up with a lot of money a lot of power a lot of sex a lot of anything This is a sign of The love that God has for them of the love that the universe has for them It's a sign of cosmic justice Narcissists and psychopaths exactly like the Puritans of the 16th and 17th centuries Narcissists and psychopaths Believe they have been They have been educated this way. It's been inculcated in them that taking is Receiving love the act of taking is a way to evidence love Substantiated and prove it beyond doubt And so when other people refuse to give to the narcissist or to the psychopath Because of the asymmetry between giving and taking when other people refuse to be exploited Refuse to be used The narcissist and psychopaths Psychopaths regard this as a withholding of love as passive aggressive passive aggression as intentional frustration and This provokes in them aggression This is the core of what we call entitlement The narcissist and psychopaths believe That they're worthy of love they should be loved they deserve love The world owes them love other people owe them love and the only way to show this love is to give them To give them material goods to give them services to give them attention to give them admiration and adulation To give them functionality to give them sex to give them money to give them power to give and to give and to give Because that way and that's the only way They feel loved And like everybody else God's green earth They deserve to be loved if you Refuse to give them if you refuse to be taken advantage of if you refuse to split your property with them Or better still give them your property if you refuse to bequeath your inheritance if you refuse to Share with them everything you have Then you are evil You're malevolent you're malicious you you refuse them love You don't love them And you are doing it on purpose because you want to hurt them passive aggressive and So they lash out at you become aggressive and They believe that they can do anything to you justifiably being loved taking Also, buttresses the narcissist and psychopaths sense of grandiosity Theosity is a cognitive distortion Grandiosity is a way to falsify reality To cause you to believe that you are perfect brilliant Unipotent or powerful initiate or knowing Godlike and So when you take from people When you use people when people are at your back and call When they are helpless before you when they are submissive When they collude and collaborate in the in your acts of exploitation, this means that you have been chosen This means that you're omnipotent This means that you're omniscient and again This is reminiscent of the protestant work ethic in protestantism making money Being successful, especially as a businessman was considered to be proof of God's love for you and So the successful ones felt chosen by God That is the way the narcissist and the psychopath see the world if they end up on top if they end up triumphant and Victorious if they end up with everything you have if they take over your life if they steal everything from Your loved ones to your money to your work to your ideas to everything you possess. I Mean if they denude you Of the totality of your accomplishments, they plagiarized they steal if they do all this They at the same time feel ironically loved Loved by the world They feel that justice is being restored. It's a morality play. They're all good You're all bad for having refused to be exploited and They feel chosen Perfect Nipotent and omniscient The narcissists and psychopaths have what I call the extraction mindset they're like They're like miners, you know they see the world as Extractive or mining opportunities. They can mine for money here. They can mine for power here They can mine for access here. They can mine for a luxury life here, and they can mine for your love there It's all about Extracting from you Anything and everything that you can give So a narcissist or a psychopath wouldn't say I'm attracted to her because of who she is They would say I can obtain sex from her in other words You don't matter What you can give matters You are a non entity However, the benefits that could emanate from you Services the sex you name it These are important So when the narcissists and psychopath look at you They don't see you They don't see you as a personality They don't see you as a potential intimate partner. They don't see you see you as a love opportunity They see you as a giver They see you as the sum total of Everything you can give them everything they can take from you Every way they can use you and exploit you. That's how they see you and this is what I call the extract extraction mindset With the extractive mindset What how can I mine this person for her love for her sex for her money for her contact For her access for how can I mine this man for his friendship for his contacts for his for his money For his power for how can I mine They keep digging into people metaphorically In order to extract everything people can give They wouldn't say We love each other They would say I can leverage her love to secure my goals There's no question of love here. There's a question of what love can do for you and What love can do to you? So the the effects and the impacts matter not the substance If you fall in love with the narcissist, this is gonna gratify the narcissist no end He's gonna be very happy about this, but not because you're in love with him Not even because he's being truly loved But because this gives him power over you To take from you everything you have and everything you may have in the future To enslave you to subjugate you to render you an extension of himself and then to play with your mind To the point that you become Mindless and unthinking obedient device Instrument, so this is a process of instrumentalization dehumanize dehumanization and Objectification so narcissists would never or a psychopath would never say we can be friends or we are friends He's gonna say he can introduce me to the right kind of people He can arrange for They can arrange for things you can arrange for things for me. He can Cut red tape for me. He can give me money. He can you know The emphasis is on what the narcissist and psychopath can extract from you not on who you are Not on how you feel about them Not the emphasis is not on your love not your commitment not on your friendship all this matter Nothing don't matter. They're irrelevant. They're not important What is crucial is can these assets emotional assets be converted into tangible material outcomes taking and using Create a power asymmetry They restore control to the narcissists and psychopaths and this way They mitigate and assuage the narcissists and psychopaths underlying anxieties So taking is anxiolytic Exploiting other people using other people Absconding with everything they have is a way to reduce anxiety When you own everything you control everything why would you need to be anxious? This is the narcissist and psychopaths way to cope with the world that it is perceived as selfish hostile dangerous The only way to somehow survive in such a world is to subjugate it to your will To make it to make it an unthinking accomplice and collude her in your fantasy to render the world an extension of yourself and a Playground in which he can accomplish your goals by taking the toys from all the other kids The classic mechanisms of catechesis and decafaxis Emotionally investment and withdrawing emotional investment. These classic mechanisms are at play in the process of Taking abusing and exploiting others When you are of any use to the narcissist or the psychopath Even as a partner is even as a partner in a shared fantasy Well When you're of any use whatsoever They are they can become charming They're into you They're solicitous attentive affectionate Compassionate helpful to go to be true The narcissist even idealizes Psychopath doesn't but the narcissist even idealizes you and comes to believe his own Alleged emotions towards you. He mislabels of course internal processes which have nothing to do with love as love He develops a Kind of attachment which compensates for the original insecure attachment taking exploiting abusing people These all fulfill a role in the narcissist and the psychopath's attachment styles Insecure attachment styles lead to anxiety And as I said the anxiety can be ameliorated only via extreme control and so The first phase always involves catechesis The narcissist and psychopath all over you And You find them irresistible for reasons that I enumerate In my videos on the shared fantasy by the way, there's a playlist on the shared fantasy on this channel So the phase of catechesis Courses the narcissist to believe in his own fantasy Courses you to believe in the narcissist fantasy Courses you to believe in your own idealized image. You see yourself through the narcissist gaze. That's the whole of mirror's effect And courses both of you To collaborate in a dense macabre In an elaborate tango Where you give and he takes and you give more and he takes more And you give even further and he takes even further the exploitation Becomes habituated Then even an ethos of the relationship the The axis of exploitation the asymmetry of giving and taking And consequently of power and control become enshrined In the cult like percepts and ideology of the couple That's the way it should be It's a right thing to do I should be giving he should be taking because for example He is far superior to me Or because i'm afraid to lose him Because i'm a people pleaser and a codependent The narcissist pushes your buttons and leverages your vulnerabilities to induct you To introduce you Into a fantasy Where he Is a recipient by right He has a right to receive Because he's god God receives our prayers in in previous times Times of your god received sacrifices god is always the recipient Is always the recipient and we need to convince ourselves very We need to invest a lot of effort in convincing ourselves that he also gives He definitely receives all the time our offerings Narcissist is this kind of god Because he is so vastly superior So amazingly endowed Such a genius or something he deserves he's entitled and you buy into this you buy into this personal mythology And this is the catexes stage Psychopath does the same the only difference is that he doesn't believe in the fantasy will come to it in a minute and then When you have nothing left to offer When you have been impoverished and denuded Of any asset that you've ever had You've introduced the narcissist to everyone you gave him all your money You had as much sex with him as he as he wanted And it became boring You know when you have nothing left to give you're not as young anymore and so on They become cold They become detached They become temperatureous Dismissive and impatient Why? Because then you start to take When you have nothing left to give Any hint of attention that you receive Is a burden on the narcissist and psychopath Now they have nothing to take from you, but they still have to give you And they don't like this They resent this and the narcissist even devalues you You become a taker And a user And an exploiter In the narcissist's mind. They have no memory Narcissists and psychopaths are discontinuous. They're dissociative They have no memory. You don't have credit with the narcissist and psychopath for your past performance You know you may have given the narcissist all your money But then when you ask him back for 10 dollars He's going to frown He's going to sulk And he's going to tell you that you're exploiting you You have given the psychopath all your love And then you you're sick for a while and you need him to you know Attend you attend to you he's going to resent this He's going to accuse you of taking advantage of you Because there's no credit There's no credit because there's no memory and no continuity in no core identity There's nobody there There's nobody there to recall How kind you have been how giving you have been How forthcoming and outgoing you have been And how much you loved the narcissist and the psychopath to the point of self-sacrifice This means nothing because it's soon forgotten Narcissists and psychopaths Reside in the present they inhabit the present They have no past and they have no future That's why narcissists and psychopaths act crazily and dangerously Because they don't anticipate the consequences of their misconduct Bad choices wrong decisions They don't have a future and they don't have a past And so who are you? Who are you? Suddenly materializing Like ectoplasm in this room asking me for anything. What what right do you have to ask the narcissist for anything? What gave you what why do you think the psychopath is an obligation to cater to your needs? What You've done this for them in the past the past is past What can you do for them now? Nothing go away Stop bothering the narcissist and psychopath. You're a stalker. You're crazy. You're insane And so Both the narcissist and the psychopath Use the shared fantasy Borderlines do too shared fantasy is a cluster B feature Shared fantasy is a narrative That includes you And assigns a role to you. It's kind of a role play thing And it leads to control mind control And behavioral control, but there's an important difference The narcissist is delusional He believes that the fantasy is real And it coerces you to accept its reality and it punishes you if you don't this is what I call coercive Snapshotting the psychopath Designs a fantasy for you But he knows it's a fantasy is He has intact Reality testing He's just using the fantasy To manipulate you is being scheming He's being manipulative He knows that you crave for a fantasy. So he offers one to you Whereas the narcissist deceives himself as well as you The psychopath is at all times fully aware of what's happening And he's simply exploiting you to the hilt period No conscience there The narcissist shared fantasy by the way Can revolve around giving The narcissists harvest narcissistic supply by giving Or by making himself available accessible or even pray even the victim The narcissist's locus of grandiosity can be focused on pro-social communal altruistic and charitable acts The narcissist Can love you back By whatever the narcissist does He does it ostentatiously Visibly Conspicuously And he expects in return narcissistic supply So the narcissist giving is conditional It's not real giving And it's minimal The minimum needed to garner supply And because the narcissist engages in intermittent reinforcement Hot and cold I love you. I hate you come here. Go come here. Go either go away Even the slightest giving The most basic sign of kindness Are considered a big deal By the long-suffering intimate partner The psychopath is incapable of even this Psychopaths never give period Because they have no need for narcissistic supply They never reciprocate They have no emotions No empathy No conscience They don't need you They don't need your praise They don't need your approbation and approval They don't need anything from you Except what they want from you So they create a shared fantasy As a means to an end As a manipulative device and environment But even within the shared fantasy They never ever give They never make themselves available Or accessible and definitely They never agree to play the role of the victim They couldn't care less About what other people have to say They want to end up with the money With the sex, with the power, with the access With the luxury life, with the contacts With something As what they want Having attained their goal Your gun, your history, your nobody Your nuisance and an annoyance You've served your purpose Go away The narcissist is not the same The narcissist has more commitment and investment In the relationship Via the mechanism of the shared fantasy But even the narcissist Insists on taking Even when he is giving Even the narcissist giving is a form of taking Because it's conditioned And it's revocable If the narcissist does not receive narcissistic supply He's giving stops Seizes Suddenly he's not available He's not accessible He's not loving He is not open to collaboration He is not giving, etc, etc Both the narcissist and the psychopath Use you Exploit you Take from you Infinitely, indefinitely As much as they can Until you are depleted And exhausted And withered And shriveled And have nothing more to give And then they walk away Then they walk away The differences the psychopath walks away Period The narcissist gives you a second chance To adulate and admire him As the great altruistic charitable giver If you blow this second chance up If you blow this second chance Is gone as swiftly As cruelling And as determinedly As his psychopath brother