 I know you miss me. It's easy. Just say it. Just say it. Come out and say it. Vaknin, we miss you. My name, my name is Sam Vaknin and I'm the only author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisitors. I'm also your favorite professor in any subject whatsoever. This happens to be psychology. Today we're going to discuss two tangential subjects. One is modification and how modification contributes to the regulation of moods in the narcissist and to the transition from one type of narcissist to another. I've dealt with these topics at length in previous videos, but today I would like to clarify it a bit. The second topic on today's relatively short video is hoovering, a contribution to the dynamic of hoovering. I coined the word hoovering together with many other words like ghosting, flying monkeys, somatic narcissists, cerebral narcissists and so on and so forth. I coined it to describe a process whereby the narcissist tries to revive the shared fantasy but to revive a specific shared fantasy by re-acquiring, by teaming up again with a re-idealized, a process of re-idealization, a re-idealized erstwhile, previous intimate partner. Hoovering never happens if the intimate partner multiplies the narcissist, but anything short of modification and you are up for hoovering. Today I would like to make a minor contribution to this topic as well, but before we go there I would like to add to your reading list, the assignment for this semester, these are books that you have to read as you know, you have to submit reports and so on and I'm about to add a book which I would place at the top of the list. So this is really a cynical one, this is something you have to do. It's an amazing book and even giants like Theodor Millen rely on this book extensively as an authoritative source and it is, it's very short, it's in terms of textbooks, it's less than 300 pages long, but it's a bombshell. It includes everything known about personality disorders. I strongly recommend it to any student, especially since you are post-graduates, this is a way to keep up to speed, keep yourself updated. So Len Sperry, S-P-E-R-R-Y is the author, the book is the Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5 Personality Disorders, Assessment, Case Conceptualization and Treatment. This is the third edition published in 2016. One of the major advantages of this book is that it keeps making a distinction between a personality style and a personality disorder. Many people have the same personality style as someone with a personality disorder, for example. Many people are grandiose, they are narcissistic, they are entitled, they lack empathy, etc. etc. Yet they don't measure up to the level of a diagnosis. They have a personality style and he has these amazing tables comparing the style to the disorder. Milan had adopted this contraption and had incorporated it in his seminal book, Personality Disorders in Modern Life, which I keep quoting from in my videos. So Len Sperry, Handbook of Diagnosis and Treatment of Diagnostic 5 Personality Disorders, a must. Let us now go to the topics of the video starting with the with modification. To remind you, narcissistic modification is an extreme form of decompensation. Let's regress a bit. Each and every human being, each and every human being, healthy and unhealthy, has something called narcissistic defense mechanisms. Narcissistic defense mechanisms are strategies, ways of reframing and reinterpreting reality so that it doesn't inflict grave damage on one's soul or psyche. So sometimes reality is too harsh, injuring, injurious, wounding, painful, hurtful, and cannot be countenance, cannot be accepted as it is. Psychological defense mechanisms kick in and they essentially falsify reality. They falsify reality by beautifying it, by changing it, by recasting it, by looking at it from another angle, by pretending, by denying, by repressing, by splitting reality to all good and all bad and identifying with the good. There are numerous ways of rewriting history and absenting yourself from unmitigated friction with reality. So as to ameliorate anxiety, regulate your internal environment including your moods and your emotions and allow you to survive simply. So defense mechanisms are crucial for survival. In the absence of defense mechanisms, people disintegrate, they fall apart, they become psychotic. Borderlines, for example, have extremely primitive defense mechanisms. So they don't cope very well with reality. It's like they have no skin and they are in direct touch with reality, not mediated through elaborate defense mechanisms. Similarly, narcissists resort usually to primitive defenses, such as splitting or grandiosity. And narcissists similarly are constantly injured and wounded by reality, narcissistic injury. And so narcissistic modification is when all the psychological defense mechanisms at the disposal of the narcissist crumble. All of them are disabled. All of them are inactivated at the same moment. And when I say moment, I mean moment. One could argue that normal people, healthy people, also can undergo narcissistic modification because in each and every one of us, there's healthy narcissism. Here, I disagree vehemently with Otto Kahnberg. Otto Kahnberg claimed there's no such thing as healthy narcissism. I completely beg to disagree. And on my corner are 99% of the scholars of narcissism. We all believe that there is healthy, healthy narcissism. Well, since there is healthy narcissism, and healthy narcissism underlies one sense of self esteem, regulates one's sense of self worth, gives one self confidence. Since there is healthy narcissism, we should have something, we should have a narcissistic modification, also in the case of healthy people. But healthy people have numerous defense mechanisms, primitive, less primitive, highly evolved, socially embedded and contextualized defense mechanisms. So healthy people emerge from modification almost instantly by drawing on ego resources and outside resources which the narcissists doesn't have, because it doesn't have a functioning ego. Narcissism has only primitive defense mechanisms, primitive, childlike, infantile, and these are his only protections against a hostile, harsh jungle out there. And when these defenses fall apart, he falls apart. This process of falling apart is called decompensation. Defense mechanisms compensate for the unsavory, unpalatable, unacceptable aspects of reality. And when they disappear, when they are no longer available to the narcissist, there is a process of decompensation, inability to compensate. Reality invades, like a tsunami, like a tidal wave, invades the narcissist emptiness in effect, fills him up with tremendous pain and hurt, unleashes his buried, repressed and denied negative emotionality from his early childhood. And he is, he becomes effectively a borderline. His emotions are dysregulated, his moods become labile. He becomes to all intents and purposes, psychodynamically, a borderline, modification pushes the narcissist to become a borderline. It is a result, what is modification happens when the narcissist is exposed to a deeply traumatizing, deeply challenging, deeply humiliating event. And so the narcissist copes with modification. And with such events, in one of two ways, he can render the modification external, he can convert it to external modification. What does it mean? External modification is when the narcissist casts himself, presents himself, believes that he is a helpless victim. He adopts the victim's stance. He pretends, he doesn't pretend he believes, he's fully convinced that he had been victimized by malicious envious or mentally ill people. And so he transfers, he transfers the shame and the humiliation and the guilt sometimes, and the responsibility and the locus of control to evil outsiders. And this preserves his self image as a good person, a morally upright person who did nothing, who had done nothing wrong, who did not deserve such treatment. But if you, if your fate and life and mental health and well being and welfare and ability to function, if they're controlled, if all these are controlled from the outside, it's very frightening. It's threatening about and it pushes you to depression. When the narcissist chooses the external to externalize the modification, he becomes clinically depressed. We are beginning to see glimmers of what I'm about to tell you. Modification seems to regulate moods and effects. It is a regulator. Now, borderlines and to a large extent, narcissists, but not only histrionics, schizoids, paranoid, they have a problem with emotional dysregulation. Modification forces them to make a choice in terms of mood mobility, for example. It forces them to choose depression. It's like what we call in quantum mechanics, the collapse of the wave function. There are many possibilities, happiness, depression, is that, and a modification pushes them to make a final choice and to adopt depression, the depressive stance. And so, by the way, in psychoanalytic terms, this is a regressive phase. It's regressing to the paranoid schizoid phase of melanocline, but we'll leave it aside for a minute. Function number one of modification, reducing mood mobility by settling on a specific mood, by a collapse of the wave function of moods in quantum mechanic terms. This is function number one, but there is also emotional dysregulation, enhanced emotional dysregulation after modification. There's, the narcissistic is a wash with negative emotionality. Had he been aboard the line, he would have been pushed to suicide. Indeed, many, many think that narcissistic modification is life-threatening. I wouldn't go that far, but some scholars do, especially in the 1950s. So, one option is to choose external modification. Then there's a second option to choose internal modification. Internal modification is what the narcissist says. It's my fault. I made it happen. My, for example, my abuse pushed her to misbehave this way. My, my lack of agreeableness, my disagreeableness forced people to humiliate me. So, he accepts his contributions to the modifying event. And he also accepts his ensuing responsibility. If he, if he actually engineered the event, if he led inexorably to the event, if he pushed everyone present to humiliate him, to torture him, to mock him, to, to, you know, impinge on his interests, whatever. If he pushed people to misbehave, then he's responsible for it. It's an acceptance of responsibility and contribution. And of course, by reframing the event this way, the narcissist restores his sense of mastery, his sense of control over the situation. I made it happen. His sense of control of others. I pushed them. They were my pawns. They didn't, it's, it's like Jesus says in the New Testament, forgive them father for they know not what they are doing. So, they didn't know what they were doing. I pushed them. And, and this position is very comforting. As the narcissist says, well, I'm in control of such situations. I can prevent them from happening. But this pushes him to be hyper-vigilant, to be paranoid, to develop referential ideation, to develop a secretary delusions. Because if, if he's in control and if he can push people and, and so on and so forth, he needs to be on his toes to prevent this from, from happening again. He needs to be on his toes in both cases. If people are evil and malicious, he needs to be on his toes. He needs to be on his guard. People are going to, how to get him. They're about to hurt him. They're about to torture him and torment him and taunt him and humiliate him and mock him. And worse, he needs, he needs to be careful. So this, this creates hyper-vigilance, paranoid ideation, the secretary delusions, referential ideation, etc. But there is the same response when there is internal modification. Because in internal modification it is the narcissist who make, make it happen, makes it happen. So he sort of brings it upon himself. And in this case, the hyper-vigilance is self-directed. The paranoid and referential ideation is self-directed. The per-secretary delusions are self-delusions. So we have two solutions. External modification with outward-directed paranoia, and internal modification with inward, inward-directed paranoia. One could call it hyper-vigilance and auto-vigilance, if you wish. That's a very interesting statement, because we have disorders with auto-plastic defenses. These disorders used to be called neurosis. It seems that we no longer use this term, more or less, but neurosis at the time, there were disorders of auto-vigilance when the patient took responsibility for everything bad and wrong that had happened in her life, and consequently was very afraid of herself as her worst enemy. I've seen the enemy in its eye. And so it seems that modification, first of all, regulates mood, makes you, pushes you, pushes the narcissist towards depression if he chooses internal modification, and pushes the narcissist towards neurosis if he chooses internal modification. And in both cases the mediating vector, the mediating resource, is paranoia. So modification, modification engenders paranoia, creates, provokes paranoia. But then the only question left is the paranoia directed outward, in which case there's depression, or is it directed inward, in which case there's neurosis. Now it sounds to you like da, like so what, but it's a big deal, trust me. I'll tell you in a minute why, after I get some liquid courage. Is there anything better than red wine? Yes, more red wine. Okay, why is it a big deal? It's a big deal, because in the past all the greatest minds of psychology made a distinction between psychosis and neurosis. There were the neuroses multiple, and there were the psychosis multiple. And it seems that modification can create a bridge between neurosis and psychosis. It can create a bridge between internal objects interpreted as external objects in external modification. And external objects interpreted as internal objects, in case of internal modification. Remember, when external objects are interpreted as, when external objects are interpreted as internal, that's narcissism. When internal objects are interpreted as external, that's psychosis. And modification allows you both, depending which type you choose. It's like there's a menu. When you're modified, as a narcissist, you have a menu. Or the metredi comes to the table and says, Monsieur, you can choose one of two. Today we have the plat du jour. Today we have an offer, external modification. And we give you the option of depression. And the other dish is internal modification. We give you the option of neurosis. In the first case, essentially, essentially you react, you have narcissistic defenses. Narcissistic ancient primitive structures are activated. Melanic line would have appreciated this. And in the second case, neurotic structures are activated. And in both cases, in both cases, there's a god awful almighty confusion between internal objects and external objects. It seems that the mechanism that causes us to confuse internal and external objects is not actually trauma, but is the reaction to events which is modification. We may have to reconsider whether narcissism, borderline etc etc are post traumatic events or post modification events. And you can say, what's the difference? Trauma creates modification. Not really. First of all, most traumas don't create modification. But trauma is exclusively, usually, exclusively the outcome, the outcome of reaction to events that is not mediated via an interpretative framework. In other words, trauma is direct. You experience something and there's trauma. There is no middle stage where you analyze. Think about it, reframe it, put it in context. You don't have time to activate any defense mechanism. There's an event, an immediate trauma. It's so direct, I mean the traumatic response is so immediate, that there is good reason to suggest that trauma is simply a dysfunction of reality testing. Not actually, not actually a real wound or real injury or real, but simply misapprehending reality and misapprehending reality in a way that is very threatening, of course. So you could say that trauma is subspecies of paranoia. Paranoia is the same. It's triggered immediately without mediation. So trauma is when you confront a potentially mortifying event and you immediately react by developing a full-fledged monopoly of cognitions and emotions which are integrated cohesively into a narrative which we later call trauma. That's trauma. Modification is not the same. You can have modification five days later, five months later, even years later. Modification first undergoes a phase of cognitive analysis. The emotions are not on the surface. There's no access to most of these emotions because they're very threatening. There is, in other words, trauma first happens, then is dissociated. So the sequence in trauma is event, trauma, dissociation. The sequence in modification is event, dissociation, mortification. It's a very, very important distinction. Very crucial distinction because in the case of trauma it is already cognitively and emotionally processed reaction to the event. It's a choice, in other words. In the case of modification, I'm sorry. In the case of modification, I repeat, I'm sorry, I misled you. In the case of modification it's cognitively and emotionally processed reaction to the event. So modification is a choice. Trauma is not a choice. Trauma is very similar to what Freud called upreaction. Trauma is a totally automated process. It's not a choice. It's, I would say, a constitutional propensity, constitutional defect. I don't know what else, what other words to use. It's like the person is trauma ready. It's like high definition ready television. It's trauma ready. And this is his mode of reacting to reality. This is the language he uses to process reality and to try to act within reality self-efficaciously. Modification is not like trauma because modification requires a phase of analyzing what had happened and then allowing yourself to experience the reactive emotions, the emotions in reaction to what had happened. This processing involved and only then you can feel modified. But this processing is unconscious, is dissociated. Summary, trauma is event and then trauma. So trauma is totally automatic reaction to event. If you have the tendency to process reality via trauma. So reality, trauma, forgetting about it, dissociation. Opposite, reality, dissociating the reality, forgetting about it. Background, unconscious processing, cognitive and emotional and then modification. Very crucial observation. And then according to the choice you make because you process everything cognitively and emotionally then you make a choice. Do I prefer an external trauma or do I prefer an external modification or do I prefer internal modification? If you choose external modification you end up depressed. Depression. You regulate your mood. You prefer to regulate your mood than to regulate your cognition or your emotion. You think your mood is the main threat. So you choose external modification and you end up choosing making a choice of depression. You regulate your mood. Badly, it's a bad choice but it's better than up and down. The other option is internal modification where you actually regulate your emotions and your cognitions in ways which are neurotic. Autoplastic for example. You blame yourself. Okay, we said in earlier videos that collapse and modification regulate moods but they also regulate something much more important. Switching between self- states. Now what is called diagnosis in the diagnostic and statistical manual? What is called personality disorders? That's very antiquated notion. This notion is like at least 50 years old if not 60. We don't think about these things this way anymore. It's very good for insurance purposes. It's very good for pharmaceutical companies and you know medical doctors and hospitals but scholars in the field we don't think about it this way. We think in terms of post-traumatic conditions, dissociation, self-states. We don't think in terms of personality disorder. This is very old thinking. So personality disorders are self-states and because they are self-states and because disordered people have many self-states you can easily switch from one so-called diagnosis to another so-called diagnosis. You can easily switch from one personality disorder to another personality disorder. You can switch from one self-state to another self-state. For example borderlines under stress, anticipating rejection and humiliation and abandonment, borderline switch from one self-state, the borderline self-state to another self-state, the secondary psychopath self-state. That's an example. Similarly narcissists switch from the narcissistic grandiose self-state to the paranoid self-state. We all switch, I mean mentally ill people, mentally disordered people, switch between self-states. What is the trigger? What decides if there is switching or not? Modification and collapse. Modification and collapse, they are the triggers and the bridges. They cause the covert narcissists to become overt, the overt to become covert, the somatic to become cerebral, the cerebral to become somatic, the inverted to become overt, the borderline to become psychopath, the psychopath to become narcissists, the narcissists to become borderline. All these things happen daily, all the time, to all people with so-called personality disorder. Any therapist will confirm this and any spouse, any intimate partner of a person, of someone with personality disorder will confirm this. Narcissists often are obsessive-compulsive, obsessive-compulsive or grandiose, grandiose people or paranoid. Everyone will tell you that making these artificial distinctions between personality disorder is nothing short of counterfactual. It's psychology's fantasy, it's not true. It's simply not true. And in the ICD-11 they are thinking of putting everything under one diagnosis, personality disorder, which is something I've been advocating since 1995. But what I've added in the last four years is the mechanical psychodynamic explanation why people shift between these so-called diagnoses because they are modified. And when they are modified, they are faced with a choice. They have to process the events, they analyze them cognitively, they experience them emotionally, and all of this happens in the unconscious and then they make a choice. It could be a mood-affective choice. I choose depression or it could be a neurotic choice, choice of neurosis. I accept responsibility and so on. But in both cases they transition to another diagnosis, another type. The covert goes through modification. And if he becomes, for example, neurotic, if he chooses neurosis, he becomes instantly overt. Because what is neurosis is to say I was in control. I did everything. It all happened because of me. That's a grandiose statement. Covert narcissists who make grandiose statements openly, they are not covert anymore. They're open, they're overt. So through such processing of the modification, the covert becomes overt. And that's only one example. Similarly, the borderline. If the borderline chooses internal modification. For example, she anticipates abandonment and she has been humiliated. She's been rejected, openly rejected by someone. Borderlines cannot digest and cannot assimilate rejection, abandonment and humiliation. So when this happens to them, they are modified. The minute they are modified, they begin to process the modification. The processing time in borderline is very very brief. It's days, hours, sometimes minutes. And so they process the modification cognitively. They process the modification emotionally. It all happens in the background, in the unconscious. The borderline just feels ill it is. The uncomfortable. Because egodistony is growing. As the processing continues, egodistony is growing. And so at some point, the modification becomes conscious. Yes, the processing is finished and you become conscious. And then the borderline has to make a choice. Do I want to be depressed? Or do I want to be neurotic? If she chooses neurosis, she transitions to secondary psychopath. Because what is neurosis? What is the internal modification solution? It's to say I'm in control. I am the master. I'm going to decide how things are going to happen. That's defiance. That's lack of impulse control. That's recklessness. These are all features of the psychopath. So she becomes psychopathic because she had chosen the internal modification thing. But what happens if she chooses the external modification? And she becomes depressed when we have a combination of borderline with depressive aspects. And of course, what is a borderline with depressive aspects? It's a covert narcissist. It's a covert narcissist because her grandiosity is preserved. But her depression pushes her into a schizoid position, into the background, away from people. And if you put all this together, you get a covert. But not any covert, covert narcissist. Similarly, I can show you how applying these simple principles gives you any diagnosis. Any diagnosis within the personality disorder space. Schizoid. I mean paranoid. You name it. Here's a game for you. Sit at home. Write down these principles. Principle. Modification. Unconscious processing. And then you can choose depression or neurosis. In depression, you're not in control. In depression, you're controlled from the outside. In neurosis, you control. Okay? Simple principles. Take them. Use them. Use them. Apply them to personality disorders. And see the amazing results. You easily transition from narcissists to schizoid, from schizoid to borderline. From borderline to power. Immediately you see they're all facets of one single clinical entity. It's so obvious. Okay. I want to talk, to say a word or two, about hoovering and I will let you go having hoovered you into this video. When you dump the narcissists, when you abandon, when you break up with the narcissist, and even when the narcissist discards you, even when he discards you. Discarding you, when the narcissist discards you, that's internal modification. The narcissist has failed. Otherwise, why would they have to discard you? For example, if he discards you and he devalues you, he has to admit that he had made a mistake when he had idealized you. If I say to myself, she's stupid and ugly, I have to get rid of her, I also instantly have to ask myself, then how come did you consider her beautiful and intelligent only two years ago? Were you wrong then or are you wrong now? Are you capable of being wrong? The discard phase is a challenge to grandiosity. Because to devalue your intimate partner and then to discard her, you must admit that you had made a mistake when you had idealized her. So there's a mortification there. And exactly this mortification pushes the narcissists to hoover. Because even the discard, and of course when you break up with the narcissist or you dump people, you cheat on him, all these events are modifying events and it's a challenge to the narcissist grandiosity. He needs to resolve the mortification and he resolves the mortification by converting it into either external or internal. In a minute we'll connect it to hoovering. The narcissist when he discards you, devalues and discards you, or when you devalue and discard the narcissist, because you remember this process of idealization is mutual. The narcissist idealizes you, you idealize the narcissist. It's co-idealization, co-idealization. Devaluation is the same, co-devaluation. You devalue the narcissist, the narcissist devalues you, whichever the case may be, it's modifying. If you are the one who had dumped the narcissist, it's definitely modifying. If he is the one who had discarded you, he has to admit that he had made a mistake when he had idealized you. That's modifying. It's a challenge to grandiosity. So he can then choose. Once mortification sets in, he must choose between external and internal. He can say, well, good riddance. She's a slut, she's stupid, she's ugly, she's fat, she's old, she's whatever. So external mortification involves overt devaluation. Blaming the other, she's evil, she's malicious, she conspired against me, she stabbed me in the back, she betrayed me. External mortification is transferring the locus of control to you. But this creates narcissistic injury. It's a horrible narcissistic injury, because it means that the narcissist is handing the locus of control to you. You are in control. You had implemented your evil scheme, and he was your raw material. The narcissist was a victim. Being a victim and being a god, you know, doesn't sit well together. God is not a victim. God's son was a victim, but God is not a victim. So it's a problem for the narcissist to maintain both simultaneously. You know, it creates what we call cognitive dissonance. On the one hand, the narcissist believes himself to be God, and on the other hand, he is the victim of a woman he had just devalued. So he is not only a victim, he's a victim of an inferior person. Motify. If he chooses internal notification, it's even worse. Because he says, you know, I pushed her away, I made her cheat on me, I abused her, I mistreated her, I rejected her, and humiliated her and abandoned her long before she did. I'm still in control. I made this happen. Okay, if you're still in control and you made this happen, you made what happened. You made what happened. You destroyed your relationship. You proved yourself an idiot for having idealized the wrong person. What did you make happen? So in both cases, there's a challenge of grandiosity and the only way to restore the grandiosity is to Hoover you. Hoovering is about restoring grandiosity. End of story. There's no other motive to Hoovering. People keep asking me, why does he Hoover me? He has, you know, another source of supply. He's married. He's Hoovering you not because not only when he doesn't have other sources of supply, that's functional Hoovering. And that's not okay. He's Hoovering you not usually. He's trying to Hoover you mainly to restore his grandiosity. Very, very few occasions it has to do with practical functional utilitarian thinking like, I don't have a source of supply. I'll go back to Amanda or I don't have I don't have a shared fantasy. Let's try to reestablish a shared fantasy and I will re-idealize Amanda so that she can fit into the new shared fantasy. It's hard work to Hoover to re-idealize. It's counterfactual. You have to fight yourself. You have to and again you have to admit that you're wrong because you had devalued Amanda only two weeks ago. Why are you Hoovering her now? I mean, two weeks ago she was an idiot. Stupid, ugly. What happened in these two weeks? I mean, that's the fastest diet on earth if... So there's a lot of it. There are many internal contradictions in Hoovering. It's a very fraught and problematic process for the narcissist. So he hoovers you to restore his grandiosity and the aim even sometimes unconscious aim is to Hoover you and then when he succeeds to immediately dump you vindictively. A lot of Hoovering is concerned with revenge with punishment. Hoovering is intended to reaffirm the narcissist's grandiosity. I'm irresistible. I'm amazing and the one and only I'm unique. She can't find a substitute for me. So this is reaffirmation of grandiosity, rebuilding it. The second reason is to punish you for your transgression. Transgressions for not fitting in into the shared fantasy, for not fulfilling your maternal maternal role, for failing as a mother, for not being his admirer and fan. I'm thinking admirer and fan for not catering to his sexual kinkiness and sadism, for letting him down and and disappointing him by not agreeing to participate in his adventures as a playmate. There are numerous reasons why you had let why you had kind of let him down and in these are transgressions, especially if you cheated on him or stole his money or something. If you really did something, not okay, if you had misbehaved. So he needs to punish you for your transgressions. Motive number one, restore grandiosity. Motive number two, punish her. It's a penal punitive measure. And reason number three is to teach you to behave yourself in the future, to condition you. Hoovering is a form of operant conditioning. It's a form of intermittent reinforcement. I discard you, I Hoover you. I discard you, I Hoover you. Hot and cold, warm and freezing, loving, hating. It's intermittent reinforcement and it creates trauma bonding. Hoovering is a long term, non-contemporous, non-contaminous. That means it's a long-term form of intermittent reinforcement where the reinforcement, the opposite reinforcement comes a bit later. It's divorced in time because most intermittent reinforcement is immediate. I hate you now, I love you in two hours. This is, I hate you now, I love you in two years. So it's very, very long intermittent reinforcement, but it is. And it creates trauma bonding. It teaches you to behave yourself in the future. It's exactly like house-breaking a pet. You house-break your dog, you house-break your cat, don't pee on the carpet and don't pee on Sam, etc. So, he's domesticating you. He's conditioning you and molding you, Pygmalion-Galatea style to be his perfect snapshot. He is reverting you to the snapshot so that you can fulfill your role in a shared fantasy. These are the functions of hovering and it's intimately connected to the modification that he had experienced when his grandiosity had been challenged in the disintegration of the shared fantasy. When in the phase that the shared fantasy disintegrates, whichever solution he chooses, internal modification or external modification, his grandiosity is severely tested. If he chooses external modification, you control the situation. You had the upper hand. You, in your evil mind, wicked schemes and so on, you destroyed him. He had been the victim, but that means that he's helpless. He's not omnipotent. He's not Godlike. That's modification. If he chooses internal modification, he stupidly destroyed the shared fantasy. He misjudged you when he had idealized you. It reflects badly on him. It also leads to modification. It also leads to modification. And modification forces him. Forces him to compensate by hovering. And hovering is a compensatory grandiosity restructuring or grandiosity reconstruction measure which at the same time molds you, changes you, conditions you and transforms you to become such a partner in a future shared fantasy which will not force who will not force the shared fantasy again into bankruptcy. Be the right partner. The ground noise, fan, admirer, sexual sex slave, mother. Got it kiddos? Okay. Until next time.