 Someone asked me. I've been talking to myself. Is that a bad sign? And I said no way I've been talking to myself for years via YouTube Very few people watch my videos and I think it has to do with my $10 words and my echoing mic both Visible signs of my overwhelming contempt according to some of you So here's another video no one is going to watch about Roller theory is your personality is your identity and is God forbid your narcissism are these merely roles that you play or are they reflective and emanate from your essence Essentialism versus Representationalism or phenomenology if you wish you see ten dollar words and the movie and the video hasn't started yet. I Am incorrigible Incorrigible another ten dollar word. Let's delve Writing my name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignan self-love narcissism Revisited. I am also former professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of see ups. Roll theory has two dimensions individual and social Roll theory is a conceptual explanation of social behavior, but via or reduced to individuals The actions of individuals are defined by the role that they occupy in various social settings For example in relationships So if you are a father if you're a husband if you are a member of a group or a cult If you're a leader an employee a boss, these are all roles These roles are assigned to you by society via scripts And by following the script the script you actually adopt the role Jean-Paul Sartre called it bad faith. He said that these roles Distance you from your authentic self from who you really are So Sartre believed that role play is one way of betraying your true essence your true quiddity Roll theory suggests that role play or playing roles is actually a very good thing it says that the roles that individuals establish and follow and adhere to and Create exchanges between individuals aka Relationships there's an interdependence That emerges from playing role and this in the interdependence is at the core of Social coordination and self-efficacy. So what is a social role? What is a role? It's a set of attitudes traits characteristic behaviors Expected of an individual in a particular setting or environment opposition or Position not opposition or position. So the individual performs functions and and an act speech acts and actions only Within a social context in this sense role theory is relational It's not individual Individualistic, it's not like for example Freud or Jung Who discussed the individual as an atomized unit? Jung spoke of the constellated self as if it as if it emanates out of thin air Crystallizes out of thin air Lacan on the other hand plays huge emphasis on relationships as the nexus of Forming personalities and identities same with object relations schools. So Role theory firmly belongs in the relational school of Psychology the social context defines specific particular functioning and Together they create a role So being a spouse for example is a role which is comprised of a set of predetermined socially acceptable sublimated actions and Is valid only within a social context known as marriage Okay, get it now. It's not as easy as that Because people can get seriously confused and disturbed and diffused when it comes to roles Momentarily in this solipsistic video, I'm going to discuss identity and can discuss Social functioning. We're gonna venture far afield Leveraging role theory to understand diverse phenomenon including narcissism, but first we need the basic tools We need the terminology we need to get acquainted with the rudimentary concepts of role theory so role confusion role confusion is a state of uncertainty About a given social role a role in a group a role in a context a role with other people a Relationship a romantic relationship or a marriage is a role which is determined partly by your partner within a relationship So but it can be very confusing for example gender roles nowadays a very confused because behaviors that used to be Exclusively attributed to may to men or women male or female today are In flux today, you could have females who act as men and Males act as women and so this great gender role confusion later on we will discuss identity confusion which To some extent is coterminous with role confusion, but at this stage slowly slowly Patience does it follow your leader The pipe piper that is some vacuum and listen to the stages of Role theory so role confusion. There is something called role deprivation It's when you're denied the Ability to act in a role That sits well with your psychology or status or Education or so when you are unfairly Denied or deprived of social roles That is role deprivation One of the effects of role deprivation is role confusion on the one hand and status incongru in congruence status incongruence is a mismatch between various status dimensions for example your socio-economic level your income and Other parameters of your autobiography or personality for example your level of education Imagine that you hold a PhD a coveted PhD in I don't know engineering or computer computer sciences and yet You can't make ends meet and you can't find a job that is status incongruence and would create in you role confusion when there is a perceived mismatch between your characteristics and Your role in particular contexts this reverses traditional assumptions about correlations Between certain elements of your life So for example, there is the assumption that the more highly educated you are the Hire your income and should this not work in real life. You would be very confused You you'd also be frustrated and aggressive and angry Similarly, if your boss is much younger than you that would also create create dissonance and so on and so forth. So This also leads to a perception of injustice discrimination victimhood so we are beginning to see the emergence of many of the modern-day phenomena as roles in modern support modern societies Have been subjected to heavy attack for example the role of masculinity and As roles have become much more fluid for example gender and even to some extent sexuality and has as traditional roles have withered and gun with a wind and New ones did not replace them For example, what's your role in a date as a man? There are no sexual scripts to help you with this so as As there is be as there has been a concerted attempt to undermine roles this led to extreme role deprivation status incongruence frustration and passive aggression sense of overwhelming victimhood narcissists especially a prone to misperceived status incongruence Narcissists are grandiose. They are entitled They believe that they deserve much more than they actually do They they have no accomplishments to talk of usually in the vast majority of cases and yet they believe they should be the boss They should be lorded and celebrated as geniuses, etc. Etc. And when this doesn't happen they experience status incongruence This is especially true with covert narcissists Okay but how do we How do we decide Which is the right role for us? In rigid conservative patriarchal traditionally societies Roles are externalized. They are dictated to You learn roles You become acquainted with your roles via the process of socialization and a culture the processes of socialization and a Culturation Your parents don't tell you how you should behave and what your role is the first born in families all over the Arab world For example first-borns have a special status and special responsibility their substitute fathers. That's a role in more flexible societies Where everything is in flux everything is Negotiable everything is the outcome of consensus and compromise in this kind of societies the Assignment of roles is Autonomous and agentic in other words people assume roles they take on roles and They swap roles they change roles as if they were changing clothes, you know or socks So the assumed role is a behavior pattern Adopted by a person in the belief that such behavior is expected For a particular position status environment or circumstances set of circumstances So the element of expectation here is very crucial and it is communicated to the individual via Socialization society communicates expectations the difference between rigid conservative societies and liberal progressive societies is it in the former There's no debate You're assigned the role and you assume it period in the latter you can challenge often do you can challenge The expectations of society of your family of your mother of your father of the neighbors of your colleagues You name it. There's always a process of Adversarial challenging it's as if in more in postmodern industrialized westernized societies The whole thing is a huge courtroom drama Where there are adversaries and then there's a verdict only the judge is you Okay, so taking on a role is a method for dealing with uncertainty about how to behave In a way, it's a kind of script so and In the process is known as role reenactment. I will discuss As an example What is known as the sick role? The sick role is a behavior expected of a person who is physically ill mentally ill injured or traumatized. Yes, even mental illness is a role in role theory Expectations social other expectations familiar environmental expectations expectations Come from the outside and they generate expectations inside so in the case of the sick role there are exogenous expectations and Indogenous reaction to exogenous expectations and this endogenous reaction reaction from the inside Generates its own set of expectations and the totality of the expectations space or expectations universe is Overwhelming and compels the sick individual to behave in highly specific ways in role theory sickness involves a role role play especially mental illness the community society at large and the individual Collude and collaborate in settling on a role of mentally ill The person then knows how to behave There's a script a script of a narcissist a script of a psychopath and the person follows these expectations he Descript or the role also informs the individual how other people are gonna react It renders life more certain and predictable if I as analysis is do a The reaction is gonna be B And if I do see the reaction is gonna be D. So the world becomes a safe Stable place within which I can enact my role without undue adverse consequences It is when you exit your role that you are penalized when you behave in ways which are unacceptable and Define your role and of course societal expectations then you're punished You're punished mostly in order to force you to revert to role But in a gracious extreme cases you're punished in a way that there's no return In her pioneering discussion U.S. sociologist Talcott Talcott Parsons and he's I'm sorry firing discussion. So Talcott Parsons wrote that as early as 1951 That people in a sick role are expected for example to cooperate with caregivers To ones to get well But they are also exempted from Normal obligations and this gives rise to fictitious disorders. I will go into it in another video The narcissist's role is to actually negate all this The narcissist is an anti-sick role In effect the narcissist does not collaborate with anyone because he's superior and he needs no training or learning and There's nothing. There's no improvement because he is perfect and he Does not want to get well because he is already maximally well Narcissism is an interesting case of Anti-sick role which is in itself a sick role Okay role enactment There is a sub theory in role theory known as role enactment theory and An interesting application of role enactment theory is hypnosis role enactment enactment theory claims that hypnosis for example is a social Phenomenon the hypnotized individual unconsciously Takes on the socially constructed role of a hypnotic subject And he behaves according to expectations This was suggested in the 1950s by Theodor Sarbin as a our BIN and Then this gave rise the study of hypnosis gave rise to a much larger theory the role of enactment in social behavior and role enactment theory and I've just applied role enactment theory to narcissism as as you have heard now we all According to Bandura and others we all Model behavior in other words we serve as models to other people and we imitate or emulate the behavior of meaningful significant others so the child Imitate and emulate emulates his parents behavior, and this is known as modeling and hence The famous phrase role model role model is a person or a group a group Serving as an example or an exemplar for the goals attitudes or behavior or of an individual the individual identifies with this person or group six to imitate the person or group So this is the vector. This is the channel through which roles Flow to the individual via role models which serve as a pipeline if you wish now In modern in post-modern societies we come across a problem known as role overload role overload is situation that arises from the assumption of multiple roles When you ask to perform dozens sometimes hundreds of roles and All of it at the same time and this is known as quantitative overload or When you are asked to perform roles Which are beyond your knowledge or your skills or your abilities qualitative overload narcissists defend against qualitative overload By simply denying that anything is beyond their ability They are omnipotent No role is outside their capacity or remit this way they avoid overload What is role role play therefore we have defined what is a role assumed role role model and then what? Let's assume that you've accepted the role You've gone through a process of socialization Socialization like alteration this that you grew up and you accepted your role as I don't know husband the father An employee whatever it is whatever it may be you have accepted the role. What is role play? Actually role play is a term borrowed from psychotherapy It is used in human relations training A Role play is when the participants are asked to play out Social roles They're given a sheet of paper very similar to a movie script and The sheet of paper describes a role and they're supposed to enact the role. It's a part of what is known as psychodrama But it's widely used now in in corporate settings in clinical settings and so on so forth Playing roles has been proven to change attitudes and relationships For example in in family or couple therapy Rehearsing different ways of coping with stresses and conflicts by playing a role Becomes habituated and a part of you The played role teaches you things forces you to learn and to evolve and to transform There's even something known as role reversal and I have a whole video dedicated to it It's a technique in therapy and in education Where individuals exchange roles with other individuals? So this for example the therapist Exchanges roles with a patient Therapist then pretends to be the patient and the patient is listening Witnessing and the very act of Looking at himself in the mirror in the therapeutic mirror through the therapist induces Change induces a dynamic of transformation. So role reversal allows the individual to experience alternative cognitive styles problem-solving feelings behavioral approaches role reversal is very powerful and has been used even with sexual offenders and and and Mass mass killers. I mean mass shooters and serial killers and so In psychodrama the protagonist exchanges roles with the auxiliary with an auxiliary ego In acting out a significant interpersonal situation. So it's a bit more limited but in management programs Management development programs and so on so forth that they are open total exchanges of roles between for example boss and employee or supervisor and employee Okay, so roll reversal Involves something a dynamic known as role shift in this dynamic is very very crucial in the shared fantasy of the narcissist Role shift happens usually but not always in a two-person Relationship, so it's dyadic. It's in a couple and it is the adoption by one partner of the characteristics or behavior of another partner The narcissist coerces his intimate partner into a role shift She becomes him. He expects her to become an extension of himself. He subsumes her he consumes her He converts her into an internal object Identifiable only with him So she becomes him. It's not merger infusion like codependency It's predatory consumption It's like a hostile takeover merger and acquisition if you want to borrow similes from from business and it involves coerced role reversal role-taking is The benign form of role shift and role reversal in the shared fantasy in role-taking is Role-taking involves Looking at a situation from the viewpoint of another person putting yourself in another person's shoes For the purpose of understanding his or her thoughts or actions or fears or needs or emotions or cognitions or whatever So when you put yourself in someone else's shoes, you are role-taking role-taking skills are crucial in developing social cognition and empathy and In empathy role-taking is known as perspective taking Looking at a situation from a viewpoint that is different from your viewpoint You have a unique viewpoint point of view like in pornographic movies point of view. So you have a unique POV Perspective taking asks you to adopt someone else's POV to see the world through someone else's eyes If only momentarily adopting the perspective of another person or the perspective of another social role So this is a role-play exercise and It enhances empathy the narcissist is not asking you To take his perspective To play to take on his role. No, he's not asking you this He's asking you to become him He's asking you to adopt his role as the exclusive all-devouring role The minute you become the narcissist your gun narcissist expects you to Eliminate yourself to vanish to repress who you are Narcissist regresses you to infancy where you did not exist in the full sense of the word now The victim in a shared fantasy the narcissist's so-called intimate partner reacts to this coercion To take on to adopt To reverse the rules to become the narcissist she reacts to this coercion With something known as role ambiguity Roll ambiguity and is there when there are indefinite expectations about the behaviors to be performed by individuals Occupy particular positions within a group social setting circumstances or environment. So when you're not sure What what is expected of you? The victim in a shared fantasy and I'm using the word victim judicis the victim in a shared fantasy is utterly disoriented The need to transition from her role to his role from her role to the narcissist role Completely Disorient her dislocates her confuses her She is this co-populated to use a $10 worth This role ambiguity She knows that the narcissist expects her to become submissive to the point of vanishing To never defy him never argue with him never criticize him always agree with him adopt this point of view Work for his interests and so she knows of this But his expectations are never verbalized Unambiguously the narcissist maintains ambiguity uncertainty indeterminacy and Intermittent reinforcement as tools of control He keeps you on your toes walking on a floating above eggshells lest you break one. So It's a narcissistic technique So your neighbor never able to say okay That's what he wants. These are his expectations. That's the role I have to play from now. No You're kept all the time all the time Very very confused It's a role ambiguity is Caused by a lack of clarity regarding the role itself or lack of consensus regarding the behaviors associated with the role or The individual role takers uncertainty with the grad with regards to the types of behaviors expected all three are Integral elements of the shared fantasy No consensus because you can't negotiate with the Nazis. You can compromise No clear script as to what is expected of you and No understanding no deep understanding of the narcissist So even when you try to emulate and imitate him you keep getting it wrong He becomes angry the rage is narcissistically finally begins to devalue and discard you because you have failed to become him optimally This is role conflict There's a state of tension or distress caused by inconsistent or discordant expectations associated with with your social or group role You don't know what you're doing wrong. You don't know when when you are doing right You don't know anything. You are extremely distressed and this anxiety Drives down your performance even further Everything is inconsistent. Everything is dissonant and discordant. You are utterly utterly disoriented And the narcissist provides the kind of reality testing that makes you Drives you into insanity even further. It's not gaslighting. It's confabulation The psychopath does exactly the same as a corn artist But he does it purposefully Intentionally and that is gaslighting The Nazis is simply confabulates. He wants you to become a figment of his fantasy. He wants you to become unreal He has expectations from you to fulfill your role as a maternal mother to help him to separate and individuate and And and to behave in a way that will justify his devaluation. This is insane the narcissist Demands as far as your role are insane The psychopaths demands are goal oriented. You can do business with the psychopath. However Disadvantageously you can't do business with the narcissist. He's nuts. He's simply nuts The role the role that the narcissist demands of you is Inconsistent with other roles so he expects you for example to be his mother and his child This is known as intra-role conflict. You can fulfill the two roles successfully similarly He creates an inter-role conflict When you occupy more than one role of behaviors Of behaviors and they are incompatible There is an inter-inter-role conflict, but also an inter-role conflict So your role is defined in a way that you can never fulfill it Satisfactorily you can never satisfy the Nazis because his demands are conflictive and Contradictory and he demands of you several roles which don't sit well with each other contradict each other negate each other inter-intra-role conflict the conflict within your role owing to crazy unarticulated Expectations and the inter-role conflict between your various roles for example his mother and child Okay, so you can't get it right. This is what I'm trying to say in so many words The role differentiation within the shared fantasy is damaged It's disrupted isn't incomplete in groups and other systems There's role differentiation There are many roles as Your member of many groups your member of your family of your church of your nation state of your football club So there are various roles in all these in all these affiliations And so these roles are differentiated from each other There's a gradual increase in the number of roles and decrease in the scope of the roles in their applicability and This and each role becomes more specialized so You learn the roles and Then you differentiate them from each other Gender differentiation is an example leadership roles is another example in narcissism in the shared fantasy The narcissist does not allow you to differentiate the roles For example, you're not allowed to treat the narcissist as a mother And then you would be only a mother. No You're also supposed to be the narcissist child He's your mother as well. That's a dual mother. She so this creates An inability To differentiate the roles if you're both a mother and a child. What are you? Who are you? You're not differentiated you are a hodgepodge you're a mixture of child and parent And that's where the narcissist wants you to be in undifferentiated territory This creates what is known as role diffusion Role diffusion is a state of confusion About the social about your social role It typically occurs in adolescence And so the narcissist drives you back regresses you to early stages of life where you were not sure about the roles Your roles kept changing all the time and you couldn't capture Any single role and define it properly and perfectly. This is role diffusion Role diffusion is at the core of identity diffusion and identity disturbance in effect The narcissist dysregulates you By refusing refusing to let you have certainty Regarding your roles He undermines your identity And as you change roles your identity changes and that's a great definition of borderline personality disorder. So He pushes you To dysregulate a territory suddenly you can't recognize yourself. You begin to behave in very bizarre ways You go crazy temper tantrums You know you lose control of your own your own emotions. You have mood mood ability ups and downs depression. This is that You are out of work And this has to do with identity confusion Eriksson Suggested eight stages of psychosocial development Identity confusion is the fifth It's an identity crisis Again, it typically occurs during adolescence And at this stage the individual experiences what ericsson called psychosocial Moratorium a very ominous term. It's a period of time That permits you to experiment with different roles different social roles Now the narcissist gets you stuck In permanent psychosocial moratorium You're constantly experimenting in order to gratify the narcissist and avoid his rather Punishment and rage This is also known as intermittent reinforcement. So I'm now connecting behaviorism with role theory The moratorium the permanent psychosocial moratorium is also known Also known as intermittent reinforcement in behaviorist theory So And this leads to an identity crisis because your experimentation leads nowhere The narcissist is never happy with the outcomes never signals to you yet. That's the right role Keep at it, baby. You've got it right this time. No, you're always wrong You always criticize you always put down humiliated and shamed It's a narcissist is in a standardized version of your harsh inner critic Actually, it takes over your harsh inner critic via the process of entraining. So He becomes your sadistic super ego to borrow from Freud. So At that stage, you don't know what to do anymore You're confused. You keep experimenting because you're terrified of the of the outcomes if you don't But you keep failing. Narcissus keeps you in a permanent state of failure It sets you up for failure as a victim in the shared fantasy You're in a state of identity confusion You try on different roles You identify with different expectations of the narcissist with different groups If it makes him happy But you fail to to form a cohesive positive identity that allows you To cope with the shared fantasy and to contribute to it because shared fantasy becomes your world It's your society your life is constricted the narcissist isolates you from friends and family and in the world It creates for you a universe solipsistic Totally isolated aka shared fantasy and you operate within it, but you keep failing You keep failing you have no cohesive positive identity. He doesn't allow you to form an identity You identify with the group with subgroups in the group You try to to to generate a negative identity by saying this is who who I'm not But you remain utterly confused utterly confused and this is identity diffusion now There's something called identity status model It's an expansion of ericsson's fifth stage of identity versus identity confusion Yeah The model the identity status model Suggests that there are four possible identity statuses that an individual might assume particularly during adolescence, but Because you have been regressed also in the shared fantasy each of these possible identity Statuses is characterized by a different level of exploration and commitment to any specific identity So development moves towards identity achievement status And this is characterized by evidence of identity exploration and commitment This identity achievement status is related to a stable sense of self self-worth and self-esteem and healthy psychological functioning Narcissist never lets you get there Never it threatens him your self-esteem threatening your stability threatening Your ability to separate from him your separateness Is cannot even be perceived by him because narcissists don't do separateness They've never been exposed to separateness. They've never separated from mommy in the separation individuation phase So separateness is automatically misperceived by them as abandonment And they misattributed to hatred or envy or they mislabeled The other three identity statuses are moratorium status, which I've described Which is evidence of identity exploration, but lack of commitment to any single role For closure status that is a commitment to an identity Usually set by role models like adults Influential peers, influences, teachers and so on. So for closure status It's a commitment to an identity given to you By someone but failure to explore different options because before this commitment is made And as I said, this is typical of traditionalist conservative societies This is where the narcissist wants you to be He wants you to commit to a diffuse ill-defined nebulous identity To forsake and forswear and renounce all other options But he doesn't give you any certainty He doesn't give you specs, specifications He wants you to remain within the shared fantasy as a cloud And the last status is the diffusion status It's a lack of both identity exploration and commitment And this is where you end up in a shared fantasy You end up giving up on exploring roles and identities and what-have-you You say I'm gonna I'm gonna roll with the blows. I'm gonna flow With the flux. You know, I'm gonna just play it by ear Whatever happens happens This condition has been first described in 1966 by the Canadian psychologist James Martian M-a-r-c-i-a-s-i-a-s So identity diffusion is where you end up in the shared fantasy And it is essentially a borderline personality organization feature It's a lack of stability A lack of focus in the view of the self or any elements of your identity As I said, it's common in borderline personality disorder It's known there as identity disturbance In Ericsson, Erick Ericsson's ego psychology Identity diffusion was a possible outcome of the fifth stage Identity versus identity confusion The individual emerges from a disrupted fifth stage With an uncertain sense of identity And confusion about his or her wishes, attitudes, goals, and so on and so forth If it sounds familiar, it's because this is a perfect description The state of mind of the victim of narcissistic abuse Narcissist abuses not only you He abuses social mechanisms He abuses expectations He abuses mores and norms Take for example, role expectations Role expectations are the traits, attitudes, and behaviors Which are considered appropriate In a particular position Or in a group or in a setting or in a circumstance or environment Social setting So it's a list It's specifications of attitudes and behaviors That are appropriate, simply So these expectations are communicated to other people And communicated from other people There's an exchange there And you absorb these communications And you sometimes unconsciously adapt yourself To conform to these expectations And this is something the narcissist abuses He keeps broadcasting to you Expectations that are non-normative, chaotic, disruptive, threatening, negating And how can you adopt to this? How can you adopt to this? The role expectations are somehow corrupted by the narcissist Which makes it exceedingly difficult for you To play it right, to do the right thing The narcissist wants you in this condition In order to devalue you and discard you and accomplish separation and individuation The role set in the shared fantasy Is goal-oriented The goal is to destroy the set The role set is the group of people and their associated roles Who are related to and interact meaningfully with you So the role set in your case is the narcissist So the narcissist communicates to you the attitudes and behaviors appropriate to the role He is supposed to communicate to you the role expectations He is your role set And yet the aim of the shared fantasy is to destroy the set So the role expectations communicated to you are self-defeating Self-destructive Self-trashing Dangerous And in many, many respects abusive Anti-social even So within the shared fantasy you are much more hostage than a willing intimate participant The narcissist coerces you into the shared fantasy And then communicates to you in a way that sets you up for failure And undermines explosively the fantasy itself The set He serves as your role set but sabotages you There's something known as the pygmalian effect It's a consequence or reaction in which the expectations of someone superior to you Engender behavior from followers or fans or subordinates Which is consistent with these expectations So the leader or the supervisor or the boss or your narcissist With your mother and he's also superior to you because he's much more intelligent He's a genius, he's perfect, he's got life Yeah, so he broadcasts through your expectations You're supposed to conform behaviorally Supposed to behave in a way that will uphold these expectations It's a form of self-fulfilling prophecy So it's in good relationships This creates something known as upward pygmalian effect In bed relationships, I'm sorry It creates something known as upward pygmalian effect And this is exactly what's happening in the shared fantasy The expectations of followers or victims or subordinates Your expectations lead to behaviors in the narcissist That is consistent with your expectations The behaviors of the narcissist do not reflect his or her true abilities or personality traits But how he is perceived by you Now let me explain this very important dynamic Both the pygmalian effect, the upward pygmalian effect Are at play in the shared fantasy In the pygmalian effect, the narcissist broadcasts to you Role expectations acting as your role set But he broadcasts to you expectations which are corrupt, misleading, sabotaging, undermining He sets you off for failure and destroys the shared fantasy But there's also the reverse process You're also broadcasting to the narcissist expectations And the narcissist does adapt himself to these expectations It is most visible during the love bombing phase But it goes, it proceeds, it continues throughout the life of the shared fantasy Narcissist shapeshifts, molds himself to fit you like glove in hand He leaves you no personal space He's all over you He penetrates you Not only physically if you're romantically involved, but also mentally It is the upward pygmalian effect He becomes, you become a reflection of him, an extension of him But he also becomes a reflection, an extension of you That's the whole of mirror effect You see yourself through his gaze You fall in love with yourself through his gaze Now you know the clinical term Upward pygmalian effect And it's all a self-fulfilling prophecy It's a set of beliefs, set of expectations By the narcissist of you And by you of the narcissist You are exchanging expectations and beliefs about each other And this helps to bring about fulfillment Your expectations create reality They generate the fantasy which you inhabit together So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy There is an expectancy effect The effect that your expectations have The effects that your expectations have on the narcissist And the effects that the narcissist's expectations have on you Your behavior changes This is the interpersonal expectancy effect Your behavior is changed And this alters reality It reshapes, redefines, re-delineates Creates boundaries around the shared fantasy But at the same time Your expectations of yourself With regards to the narcissist and the shared fantasy Affect you So his expectations of you Change you And your expectations of you Change you And this is known as the intrapersonal expectancy effect You know what the narcissist expects of you Or you think you know what the narcissist expects of you And this shapes your behavior You wish to please, you wish to conform At the same time, you develop expectations of yourself To conform to the narcissist's expectations To conform to the narcissist's expectations You want to become submissive or caring or motherly or whatever This is the intrapersonal effect So these two effects combined Make you who you are within the shared fantasy The narcissist similarly is exposed to these two effects And they make him who he is in the shared fantasy And together you generate reality Your reality Which is actually divorced from everyone else's reality Your reality of the shared fantasy This is a very famous situation It's known as the Rosenfeld of the experimenter effect It's when you conduct an experiment Your expectations shape the students who are being experimented upon And the students' expectations of themselves To please you, to satisfy you, to gratify you is an experimenter Shape them as well And so the experiment is corrupted or contaminated by these Exchanges of expectations Same with the shared fantasy Same exactly with the shared fantasy They are a demand characteristics These accused You're broadcasting to each other You're signaling all the time within the shared fantasy The victim and the narcissist And these cues influence Bias, both of you The narcissist and you Sometimes the narcissist suggests a certain outcome Or a certain desirable or desired response And you conform You change your behaviors You even convince yourself That you desire the same outcome The same response These cues distort both of you And ultimately reshape again and again Remold again and again the shared fantasy These are roles The roles that you play They create behavioral confirmation Behavioral confirmation is the process by which the actions Of one person You, for example, the victim Come to reinforce the expectations of another person The narcissist and vice versa Your social interaction within the shared fantasy Within the diet Within the couple Shape each one of you separately And the shared fantasy And the shared fantasy affects both of you And you affect each other And your expectations of yourself Within the shared fantasy affect you as well It's a mishmash It's a huge convoluted network of expectations Reactant behaviors Affects a tendon upon the behaviors Feedback loops and so on and so forth Behavioral confirmation processes are used to explain How expectations and beliefs Including, for example, stereotypes Come to affect reality The theory, this behavior confirmation concept Was developed by Mark Snyder Who is, again, Canadian A Canadian psychologist Or at least started his career in Canada Jordan Peterson, anyone? Something is happening in Canada God knows what Within the shared fantasy You're both subjected to a special kind of bias Known as confirmation bias You tend to gather evidence and information That confirms pre-existing expectations Communicated expectations You emphasize or you pursue Supporting evidence You dismiss You devalue You fail to seek contradictory evidence Gradually becomes an echo chamber A thought silo Within which you tend to reinforce each other all the time The shared fantasy becomes one resonant hive mind Mind melded with a D Both your minds become one You become each other's internal objects And you inhabit an internal space You are less and less connected to the outside world Physically as well It begins to resemble what used to be called A shared psychotic disorder Now, one last thing As a victim It's very likely that you've been victimized before You've learned the role of victim Early on Before you've entered the shared fantasy You would not have entered the shared fantasy Had you not been conditioned behaviorally to be a victim You have been taught to be a victim You are a professional victim Whether you like it or not And this relies This insight comes from exemplar theory Exemplar theory in role theory is the hypothesis That categorization depends on specific remembered instances of the category In short, you would behave in a way that emulates or imitates Either another victim that you have seen Your mother or something Or yourself in an earlier role as a victim You need an example Known clinically as exemplar You need an example to emulate or imitate Exemplar theory has been applied to Many many questions in psychology Attention, skill acquisitions, social decision making And so on and so forth Prejudice We don't rely on obstructions Concepts don't do anything to us That's why case studies are very important That's why people who make videos with real life cases and examples They get many more views than people like me Who like to dwell on ideas, abstract ideas and concepts Without a single example Examples are much more powerful than any principle This what's happening to you is a victim When you enter the shared fantasy The examples of victimhood in your past Play inside your mind Interact with the narcissist's expectations That you should behave as a victim And you adopt the role as a victim This is what role play has to say About the narcissist's shared fantasy And about questions of personality and identity in general I hope those of you who have survived Found it of interest And I will see you with the next torture session