 So hello everyone, today we have a special guest and I would love to introduce him first is Professor Sam Wagner, the author of the pioneering work of Narcissist Abuse Malignan Self-Love Narcissism Revisited. He is also a professor of finance and psychology in CIA's Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies. Hello Professor. Thank you for having me. Hello Dari. Hello. Today I would love to speak with you about inverted narcissists. I think it's really interesting topic and not so popular on especially a Polish YouTube site. So I would love to ask you some question about that. Yeah sure go ahead. Yeah okay so my first question will be do we know developmental routes for of inverted narcissists? Do we know any? Inverted narcissism is a form of covert narcissism. It's just a covert narcissist who derives her narcissistic supply from an overt narcissist. She teams up with an overt narcissist and she busks in his glory. It's a little like the moon and the sun. She doesn't have a light of her own and her light is the reflected light of the sun. The sun is the overt narcissist and she is the inverted narcissist but it's a type of covert narcissist who can be only with an overt grandiose narcissist. She cannot have any other type of intimate partner. I'm saying this effectively to answer your question because the same developmental path that leads to the formation of narcissism leads to the formation of inverted narcissists. It's just a form of narcissism. So we would be talking about parents especially mother who are unavailable to the child in a variety of ways. An absent mother, depressive mother, selfish mother, narcissistic mother, etc. Or parents, especially mother who breach the boundaries of the child, don't allow the child to separate and to develop boundaries. So this could be a mother who instrumentalizes her child, uses the child to realize her wishes, dreams and fantasies. A mother who parentifies the child, uses the child as a parent figure. A mother who engages in emotional ambient incest with the child. A mother who treats the child as an intimate partner, for example, etc. All these developmental pathways lead to classical narcissism but they also lead to covert narcissists. And a sub-sub-sub type of covert narcissists is the inverted narcissists. Okay, why only the identical types of NPD and inverted narcissists can survive in a long-term relationship? Why is it like that? Actually, it's not the only case. Any opposite types of narcissism can survive together. So for example, a somatic narcissist can survive very well with a cerebral narcissism. An inverted narcissist can survive very well with an overt narcissism. A covert can survive well with an overt. Any two opposing types of narcissism can and do very often form long-term relationships which are very stable as opposed to the mythology online. Borderline personality disorder, for example, resembles very much covert narcissism in many respects and this is why narcissists often team up with borderlines. And while the relationship itself is fiery and stormy and tumultuous and crazy-making, it's still very long-term and inherently stable. So the drama is stable in a way. The excitement, the crazy-making, they are predictable. They are features of their relationship but the relationship itself is functional for both parties. It is possible to cater to the pathology of your intimate partner and by doing so creating a long-term bond and attachment with that partner. Enabling, for example, is an example of such behavior where you enable the partner's dysfunctional behaviors and you create a form of dependency and so it's a long-term stable relationship. The inverted narcissist fails to satisfy her basic pathological needs. She cannot obtain supply. She's shy. She's fragile. She's vulnerable. She is not self-efficacious. Her false self is very primitive. The grandiosity is often challenged and so on. So she gives up. She's avoidant. She simply gives up on life, on reality, and on other people. And she finds an overt narcissist and overt narcissist is very efficient at obtaining supply and she tells him, I will be yours. I will be submissive. I will be subservient. Anything you want in whatever field I will always be here for you and never abandon you. I will act as your maternal figure. I will do anything you ask me to. But you bring home, not money, you bring home narcissistic supply and you bring home supply for both of us because I can't get my share. And so the overt narcissist goes out to the world and becomes, for example, famous or a celebrity. And then the inverted narcissist feels that she is married to a famous guy and that's her supply. Her supply is vicarious by proxy. Yeah. So can we say that, for example, we have the same criteria for NPD and inverted narcissists, but it manifests differently. This is also the case. Not totally. I will read to you the, first of all, the diagnosis of inverted narcissists is something that I came up with in the 90s. At that time, I saw two lacunas, two missing areas, missing diagnostic areas. One was what I called inverted narcissists. And the other one was covert borderline. Covert borderline is a cross between borderline and narcissist, but on a permanent basis. It's like a permanent comorbidity. And it was missing. The covert borderline thing is solely missing because we see many borderlines who behave very much like narcissists or even psychopaths and we don't have a proper diagnosis for them. And so I suggested covert borderline. Similarly, I saw covert narcissists who team up all the time with other narcissists. They are parasitic on other narcissists. And I said, there's a diagnosis missing here or subdiagnosis. So I created a set of diagnostic criteria. And here are the diagnostic criteria for inverted narcissists. Possesses a rigid sense of lack of self-worth. So in the classic narcissist, the sense of self-worth fluctuates, goes up and down. And the classic narcissist uses narcissistic supply to regulate the sense of self-worth. In the inverted narcissist, there is no sense of self-worth. Zero self-esteem, zero self-confidence. The inverted narcissist is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, and beauty, or of an ideal love. So she's identical, psychodynamically, she's identical to the narcissist. They both share the same fantasies. The fantasy defense is the same. Criterion number three, she believes that she's absolutely not unique and not special, worthless, and not worthy of merger with a fantasized ideal. She believes that no one at all could understand her because she's innately unworthy of being understood. The inverted narcissist becomes very agitated the more one tries to understand her because that also offends against her righteous sense of being properly excluded from the human race. So you can see it's the mirror image of the narcissist. Yes, I can see. She demands anonymity in the sense of seeking to remain excluded at all costs and in the background. She is intensely irritated and uncomfortable with any attention being paid to her. And in this sense, she has a schizoid core. She's very much a schizoid. She feels that she is undeserving and she is not entitled. She doesn't have entitlement. She is extinguishingly selfless, sacrificial, even anxious in her interpersonal relationships. She's a people pleaser to the extreme. She avoids the assistance of other people at all costs. She can only interact with other people when she can be seen to be giving supportive, altruistic, charitable and expending an unusual effort to assist, to be useful and helpful. She lacks empathy exactly like the narcissist. She is intensely attuned to other people's needs, but only insofar as it relates to her own need to perform the required self-sacrifice, which in turn is necessary in order for the inverted narcissist to obtain her narcissistic supply from the primary narcissist. I will explain this. The inverted narcissist needs to sacrifice herself to her narcissistic partner. You know, when the narcissist, when the classic narcissist becomes a narcissist in childhood, the classic narcissist sacrifices his true self to the false self. The classic narcissist destroys his true self in order to become the false self. The same with the inverted narcissist. She destroys herself. She sacrifices herself like human sacrifice to become one with her God, which is her narcissistic intimate partner. So she needs to disappear. She needs to vanish in order to reappear inside the intimate partner. It's a form of merger and fusion. Later, if you wish, I will compare it to borderline because it's a very borderline picture. The next criterion is envy. The inverted narcissist envies other people. She cannot conceive of being envied and she becomes extremely agitated and uncomfortable. If even brought into a situation where comparison might occur, she loathes competition. She hates competition. She avoids competition at all costs. If there is any chance of actually winning the competition or being singled out for any accomplishment. And finally, she displays extreme shyness, lack of any real relational connections. She is publicly self-effacing in the extreme, is internally highly moralistic and critical of other people. She's a perfectionist. She engages in lengthy ritualistic behaviors, obsessive compulsive, which can never be perfectly performed, not necessarily to the full extent exhibited in obsessive compulsive personality disorder. She has notions of being individual. She has notions that being individualistic is bad. Being individualistic is a nothing to her. Now, there are scholars who suggested that there is a form of narcissism which is founded on masochism. And it's called the anti-narcissist. Anti-narcissist, masochistic subtype. I have a video dedicated to it. The inverted narcissist combines masochism, borderline features and codependent features. She combines them in a way which eliminates her, which destroys her, which makes her disappear and vanish, so that she can become one with the intimate partner. And when she becomes one with the intimate partner, she can directly enjoy his narcissistic supply and gratify her own need for supply. So she is a lot like a parasite. She enters the body, like a parasite enters the body and eats your food, intestinal parasite enters your body and eats your food. That's what the inverted narcissist does. She merges with the narcissist, enters his mind and benefits from anything that happens to him. Any narcissistic supply. Okay. So could you elaborate more about what you mentioned already about inverted and borderline? Yes. Thank you. All three types, the borderline, the codependent and the inverted, which is a subtype of covert narcissism, a masochistic, self-denying subtype of covert narcissists, also known as masochistic anti-narcissism. By the way, Ellen Rappaport calls it narcissists codependent. I was the first to suggest this diagnosis, but other scholars took it and they changed the names of built on it and so on. And one of the most widespread tests for covert narcissism is actually based on my work on inverted narcissism. And luckily they mentioned it. They give me credit, which is so borderline, codependent and the inverted type of covert narcissism, they all have a few things in common. The most important is the outsourcing of internal functions to an intimate partner, handing over important internal processes into to an intimate partner. The borderline comes to the intimate partner and she says, I want you to regulate my emotions. I want you to stabilize my moods by being there all the time for me, by not abandoning me. I want you to create in me peace of mind, inner peace, object constancy. I want you to become a part of my mind. I want you to become what we call in psychology an external re-regulator. And so the borderline gradually disappears. More and more of her internal functions performed in healthy people internally, more and more of them are given to the intimate partner. He becomes an extension of her and she gradually vanishes, which is why borderlines react with panic. When they become intimate with someone, they react with panic. It's known as engulfment anxiety. And that's why borderlines approach an intimate partner and then avoid the intimate partner, approach avoidance, repetition, compulsion, because they really give the intimate partner full mastery and control over their brains, over their mind. This is the borderline. The codependent approaches the intimate partner and says, I want you to cater to all my needs. I want you to take care of all my needs. In a way, I want to become a total infant. I want to become one month old. I want you to feed me and to hold me and to love me and I want you to do everything for me. I'm going to cling to you and I'm going to show you my neediness and I'm going to blackmail you emotionally by telling you what will happen to me if you don't fulfill my needs, the bad things that will happen to me. This is the codependent strategy. The borderline is focused on emotions, emotional regulation, the codependent is focused on needs fulfillment. The inverted narcissist approaches the intimate partner and similar to the borderline and similar to the codependent, she makes a deal, she strikes a deal with the intimate partner. She says, I want you to take care of my need for narcissistic supply. Without narcissistic supply, I will die. I will fall apart because I'm a narcissist, but I'm a dysfunctional type of narcissist. I'm not a very self-efficacious type of narcissist. I don't know how to get supply. I fail to get supply. I'm too shy and too introverted and too fragile and too depressed. I can't get supply. I want you to procure supply for me. You get me the supply. Now, supply in narcissism is the same like emotional regulation in borderline. Same function. It stabilizes the narcissist. It stabilizes, for example, the sense of self-worth. It has a stabilizing and regulatory function. The supply in narcissism is regulatory. The emotions in borderlines, borderline needs to be regulated. So the partners of borderlines, codependence and inverted narcissists regulate the internal environment of these pathological types. That's where the commonality is. That's where they have a lot of income. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. It's showing a lot. Another question that I have for you. Can an inverted narcissist become a classic narcissist? Is there any terms that it can happen? If yes, when? No one knows. No one knows because I invented the diagnosis. It's still being studied. I invented it not longer. Like 25 years ago, it's nothing in terms of such a case. No one knows yet. I can speculate. I can speculate. A covert narcissist can definitely become an overt narcissist. An overt narcissist can definitely become a covert narcissist. There is no type constancy. I have a theory about how this happens. It's the collapse modification theory. When the overt narcissist collapses, he cannot obtain supply and then undergoes modification, he becomes covert and vice versa. Similarly, cerebral transitions to somatic. Somatic transitions tries to transition to cerebral if he has the brain, etc. So there is no type constancy in narcissism, which is very confusing to people, to diagnosticians, to victims, to therapists, to psychologists, because the narcissist is a kaleidoscope. It's shape-shifting. And very little that you know about the narcissist today is going to be valid tomorrow, depending on a state of collapse. I think the only exception is the inverted narcissist. Because inverted narcissists is not a whole type. It's a subtype. It's a sub-sub-subtype. So I don't think inverted narcissists could ever become overt. However, inverted narcissists can become more covert. They can become, they're shy, they're fragile, they're vulnerable, but they can become more self-centered, more defensive, more hostile, more paranoid. They can become a lot more grandiose. They can even develop entitlement. They can become exploitative. They can become less aware of their limitations and shortcomings. They can develop a sense of guilt. They can get in touch with their own shame, and so on and so forth. So while they would still avoid recognition, competition, they would never seek supply actively. They would still have an imposter syndrome. They would have pseudo-humility. In other words, they would have false modesty. They would be ostentatiously modest. They would still be pro-social, communal, altruistic, charitable, compulsive givers. This is typical of inverted narcissists and many covert narcissists. They would be moralistic and moralizing, self-righteous and so on. All this, but they would never cross the threshold into actively seeking supply. I believe this is the only case where there is type constancy. So when they are engulfed and merged with a classic narcissist, can they be heard by NPD as, for example, healthy personality? No. In inverted narcissists, they are never heard by the overt narcissists. They are masochistic. They are masochistic subtypes, and they're very, very similar to the masochistic anti-narcissist, which I think I have the only video online on this, so I recommend to watch it. But it's in the literature and it's being studied. Because they are masochistic, they are perfect fit for the overt narcissists because narcissistic abuse is narcissistic supply to the inverted narcissists. That's the irony. The overt narcissists misbehavior, humiliation, rejection, pain, abuse is to the inverted narcissists a form of supply because it confirms to her the only type of attachment and bonding that she is capable of, masochistic, sadistic. And it is a form of supply because it is attention. It is attention after all. If someone abuses you, it's giving you attention. It's making you the focus of attention, the center of attention. Because when he's abusing you, he's not doing anything else with anyone else. So you are at the center. So inverted narcissists perceive abuse as narcissistic supply. If the grandiose narcissist seeks supply outside, it's great because the inverted narcissists gets part of it. She gets her commission. If the grandiose narcissist abuses the inverted narcissists, it is great because it's attention. It's a win-win. There's no lose in this situation. She is absolutely the perfect fit. And in this sense, they have a symbiotic relationship. Exactly like a parasite and it's a symbiotic relationship in the sense that she gives to the narcissist and she gets from the narcissist and the match is perfect. Absolutely perfect. Yeah. Okay. So yeah, it's clearly showing how they can be in a long-term relationship. So yeah, totally. So I have one more question for today about inverted narcissists. What is the difference between inverted narcissists and the echoism? Because this is the question that people are really asking about that, especially when I'm mentioning about your theory and they asking. And I think you are a right person to ask you for that, about that. Echoism was first described rigorously in 2005, but before 2005, there were many conversations online about the possible echo personality disorder or what have you. Echoism is much closer to codependency than to inverted narcissists. The echo to the narcissist is focused on gratifying essentially her needs. She is not focused on self annihilation or self destruction. She is not masochistic. She is not centered on obtaining supply. That's a main distinguishing feature. The inverted narcissist is 100% about obtaining supply in any form, including abuse. The echo is much more focused on her own personal internal dynamics and how the narcissist can amplify these dynamics or cater to these dynamics and so on and so forth. So it's a much wider area of interaction with the narcissist. And so she is much closer to borderline, much closer to codependent. And indeed, I never thought there was any need for echoism. I think there is a match between narcissists and specific types of pathologies in intimate partners. And this match is typical in borderline. It's typical in codependent. And I saw no need to add another layer, which totally doesn't add to our understanding or doesn't make us better equipped clinically to deal with the situation. So it's very nice as a game game, wordplay or something, but I didn't see any utility in it. But at any rate, even if we do adopt the construct of echoism, and there are some voices online and offline that are studying this, actually in November, I'm going to have a conversation with someone whose main work is focused around centered around echoism. But still, even if we accept this construct, it has very little to do with inverted narcissists. Inverted narcissist is a narcissist who had decided to eliminate herself in order to become someone else, that someone else being a source of supply. So where the classic narcissist interacts with sources of supply, he even internalizes sources of supply, he creates internal representations of sources of supply, introjects. The inverted narcissist wants to become the source of supply. She and that source of supply is only another narcissist. So she chooses another narcissist, and then she wants to disappear and become that narcissist. The classic narcissist, if I'm getting supply from you, I don't want to become you. I definitely don't want to disappear. I want you to communicate to me that I exist I want to see myself through your admiring gaze. And so by looking into your adoring and admiring eyes, I feel alive. I feel also separate. It allows me to experience separation and individuation allows me to become. That's the classic narcissist. The inverted narcissist. If you are a narcissist, she would look at you and she would say, wow, it would be so wonderful to die and become this narcissist. I want to become this narcissist. I don't want to be me. I don't want to be at all. I want to be this narcissist because he has supply or she has supply all the time. And I want supply all the time. So it's a suicidal mindset in a way, mental suicide. It's a it's a merger and fusion to the point of vanishing. It's not even going back to the womb because going back to the womb, which is the work of fairbearing and country. Going back to the womb is not about disappearing. It's about transitioning to another state. The inverter doesn't want to transition to any state. She doesn't want to have any state. She wants to become her source of supply. And this is unique. There's nothing like it. Okay. I understand. And thank you so much for that. I don't have any more questions. I don't have any more answers. So we are perfectly perfect. So thank you so much, professor, for your time. It's a priceless end. And talk to you. Yeah. Thank you.