 My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm an honorary member of the Hell's Angels. Oops, wrong video. My name is Sam Vaknin, and I'm the author of Malignance of Love, Narcissism Revisited, and you know the rest, visiting professor currently on the faculty of CIAPS. Today, we are going to ask the question why people disbelieve victims and survivors of abuse. When you try to communicate your experiences, why do people invalidate you? Some people say you're exaggerating, others say you're crazy, and quite a few say that you're both. Why is that? The experience of having been with the narcissist, of having shared the fantasy, of having teamed up in a couple, in a friendship, in a workplace, with a psychopath. These experiences are, after all, human experiences. Where's the barrier? Why is it so difficult to accept the veracity and the proportionateness, proportionality of the victims' accounts? Why do we tend to dismiss the victims, to ignore their testimonies, to play down what had taken place? The narcissist and the psychopath offer you a tundra, a wasteland of missed opportunities, pain, abuse, coercion, and worse. And yet, when you have emerged, all wounded, and bleeding, and scarred, there's no one there to hold your hand. Simply because people reject and deny the possibility of any of this ever having taken place. But why is that? This is the topic of today's video, and as usual, I'm going to introduce you to a few theories in psychology and to some new concepts, or at least concepts new to you, I assume. Let's start with the psychopath. You know, in Auschwitz, there were SS people, SS guards, SS commanders, SS bureaucrats, and of course, SS doctors. These people spend the day killing other people, cremating their remains, breaking apart families, torturing inhumanly. And then, come evening, it was a 9 to 5 job, come evening, they would go back to their families, to their beloved dogs, to their cherished, and sometimes worshipped children, to their wives. And these people were good fathers. They shed a tear when a dog died. They embraced the children and helped them grow. They played the piano. They were sentimental. They were romantic. They knew how to do intimacy well, and none of this, none of this was make-belief. This is the crucial fact. These people were not acting the husband. They were not pretending to be a good father. They were great husbands. And good fathers. And pet owners. And generally, generally, pillars of the community have helpful members in their societies, altruistic and charitable, and giving and kind and caring, and all in all, agreeable and nice. How could they have reconciled what they've been doing throughout the day, and sometimes at night, when there were transfers of people from all over Europe? How did they reconcile what they've been doing during the day, and this other existence is a normal, empathic, compassionate, and affectionate human being? How did they put the two parts together? Where was the seam line? Where was the boundary? Where was the border? And how did they succeed to cross this border in such a facile, facile manner, so easily, almost imperceptibly? So this process is known as compartmentalization. I've been asked once if psychopaths are capable of positive emotions. Can they love? Yes? The answer is yes, actually. Psychopaths are capable of loving. Loving deeply. They are capable of acting as good people, and they compartmentalize their psychopathy, the psychopathic side. It's as if there is a partition which reaches all the way to the stars, which divides them to two people, two persons. It's not multiple personality disorder because there's no dissociation involved, not even minimal. The psychopath in this case is aware of both his parallel lives. He's aware, fully conscious of what he is doing when he is in the concentration camp of the examination camp and what he is doing at home in the evening with his kids. There's awareness there. There's self-consciousness. And so the explanation cannot be dissociation. The explanation cannot be dissociative identity disorder. Multiple personality, no. That's not the case here. What's at work is a defense mechanism known as compartmentalization in conjunction with the first cousin of this defense mechanism known as isolation. We'll discuss it a bit later. But before we come to these defense mechanisms it's important to understand that the narcissist and the psychopath divide the world into an in-group and an out-group. They show one face to the out-group. It's a mask. It's a persona. It's play-acting. It's thespian. This mask and persona usually are prosocial, communal, altruistic, charitable, kind, nice, loving, caring, saving, rescuing, healing, and fixing face. That's the public facing. Public facing facade. Public facing shell of the narcopath, the narcissist and the psychopath. And then there's the in-group. The in-group is the narcissist and psychopath's nearest, if not dearest. A wife, children, close friends, neighbors, colleagues, that's the in-group. The narcissist with the in-group, the narcissist is actually real, is exactly what it is. That's not the true self. I've heard self-styled experts saying that the narcissist shows his true self with his intimate nearest and dearest. That's not true at all. The true self is deactivated, disabled, ossified, dead for all intents and purposes. Psychodynamically dead. That's not the true self. It's the false self. The narcissist shows Grant's access to his false self when he is with his family, when he is with his friends. Then he allows the false self to show. He exhibits the false self. He doesn't firewall it. He doesn't defend it. He doesn't falsify it. He doesn't reframe it. He's not defensive. With the out-group, I don't know, the workplace, church, the authorities, then he acts. That's a mask. That's a persona. That's not who the narcopath is. So there's an in-group and out-group. And this makes it very difficult for victims and survivors of the narcopath to be credible, to be believed because people who have known the narcissist, people who have interacted with the narcissist, they deny the victim's experience. They invalidate. The survivors claims they say, what's wrong with you? The narcopath is a nice guy. He's so helpful. He never harmed me on the very contrary. He lend a helping hand whenever needed. He was caring. He was kind. He was nice. So the out-group the experience of the out-group is diametrically opposed to the experience of the in-group and the members of the in-group therefore are never believed by the members of the out-group. This involves, of course, Machiavellianism. One element in the dark triad personalities. Machiavellianism is a form of manipulativeness. The need to manipulate other people. The belief that the only way to secure beneficial outcomes from the environment is by controlling and manipulating and deceiving and playing with the minds and the power of other people. So it's a power play. And so within the power play it's a topsy-turvy world. It's a humpty-dumpty world. For example, falling in love is perceived by the psychopath and the narcissist as defeat. Defeat. Because catching emotions renders you weak and vulnerable. And then because they cannot admit that they are weak and vulnerable they blame the survivor. They cast the survivor as a manipulative abuser. You made me fall in love with you. You manipulated me into emotions. I am the victim. You are the abuser. Says the narcissist. The narcissist perceives emotions as weaknesses and anyone who induces emotions in the narcissist. Anyone who causes the narcissist to experience emotions is an abuser and renders the narcissist a victim. That is the core belief that underlies narcissistic modification. So that's an example of the upside-down world of the narcissist and the psychopath and why it's extremely difficult to explain to people to somehow communicate to them what's going on. The narcissist will be furious at you precisely because he had fallen for you. The narcissist will resent you and become aggressive and even violent if you offer advice and help and support because offering advice implies that he is not all-knowing, he is not omniscient. Offering support implies that he is not all-powerful so that is considered offering help and support and advice are considered to be attacks. They are considered to be aggressive acts intended to humiliate and shame the narcissist and the psychopath. They would react very badly to this. So it's all a mirror image of the world. The world is among normal healthy people offering advice is commendable. Offering support and help are nice acts kind acts but with the narcissist here, you see, Helz Angels are on the way but with the narcissist and psychopath everything is exactly the opposite. For example the only time the narcissist and psychopath would become honest with you, the only time they would communicate to you what's going on inside themselves is when they are ready to discard you when they are ready to move on or when they are planning to destroy you somehow to harm you or damage you then they don't care anymore to put up the facade so they allow themselves to be totally honest about who they are what they want their emotions, their cognitions and everything. The only time you gain real access to the internal world of the narcissist and psychopath is when something is a food something not good so what I'm trying to tell you is you are disbelieved because the narcissist and the psychopath show one face which is public facing, one face to the outside and one face inside there's an in-group and out-group and the behavior of the narcissist and psychopaths are very different with the out-group totally opposed to their behaviors with the in-group second thing in the distorted sick minds of narcissists and psychopaths everything is reversed everything is reversed so when you try to communicate it to normal healthy people they just can't grasp it when you tell a normal healthy person I offered my narcissist advice and he became very aggressive no one would understand this it's not possible to communicate this it's so sick, so outside the purview and remit of a typical experience of a human being and narcissists and psychopaths also engage in decoy behaviors they behave in ways that attract attention elsewhere distract like sleight of hand of a magician so while you are focused on one thing the real events are taking place elsewhere and you end up miscommunicating what has happened and so so this is the general background why you're disbelieved but how does a narcissist and how does a psychopath manage this how do they pull this through how do they succeed in this in maintaining this parallel double life two concurrent personalities which have nothing, which are mutually exclusive have nothing in common how do they succeed to do this without dissociation and without ego-distony without discomfort without a sense of dissonance without a feeling that something is wrong something is alright something is not as it should be narcissists and psychopaths are not dissonant mostly they're ego-syntonic as long as things go well, of course they become highly dissonant and ego-distonic and depressive when things go bad but as long as things go well they're okay with themselves they don't feel that anything's wrong but how can you how can you murder 20,000 people during the day and then play with your kids and make love to your wife and not feel that anything's the matter not feel that something is not as it should be how is this accomplished even more consider for example comorbidities someone who is both a narcissist and a borderline borderline is the exact opposite of narcissism in narcissism there's no empathy and the narcissist has no access to his positive emotions in borderline there is empathy, although diminished and there is too much access to positive emotions positive emotions overwhelm and swamp the borderline she becomes dysregulated so how can someone have narcissism and borderline a very common comorbidity again the answer is compartmentalization and isolation similarly malignant narcissism malignant narcissism involves psychopathy sadism and narcissism but narcissism and psychopathy the narcissist relies on other people for the regulation of his sense of self-worth so the narcissist exactly at the borderline is dependent upon other people, upon external regulation the psychopath on the other hand couldn't care less about narcissistic supply it doesn't give a hoot about other people he's a lone wolf in many cases so how could someone be both a psychopath and a narcissist how can we put together these comorbidities again the answer is compartmentalization ok, it's time to explain to you it's time to discuss compartmentalization and isolation and bear in mind all these questions that I've raised about comorbidities about psychopathic behavior followed by loving behavior all these discrepancies all these splits in the same individual bear this in mind when I discuss the defense mechanisms known as compartmentalization and isolation these are defense mechanisms and they are at the heart they enable the engine behind multiple very very very relevant to cluster B or generally to personality disorder so for example compartmentalization and isolation as defense mechanisms they are the foundation of dissociation of splitting even when you concentrate on something when you focus on something or your attention is riveted by something actually you are compartmentalizing similarly, cognitive dissonance is often resolved via compartmentalization and isolation I mentioned comorbidities and self-states I encourage you to watch my video on IPAM the Intra-psychic activation model self-states also involve compartmentalization and isolation because many self-states are mutually exclusive think for example about coping with death you know that you are going to die all of you are going to die I have breaking news for you recent discovery I am going to die also everyone is going to die but we forget about death we put it aside we lock it in a box behind a partition behind a wall with no window we continue with life we proceed with our affairs and petty squabbles and arguments and plans and goals as if there is no tomorrow as if we are never going to die that is an example of compartmentalization similarly addictions like walkaholism situation is bad at home there is strife there is acrimony there is dysfunction in your marriage with your children with your wife, with your husband and so you immerse yourself in your work you overwork keeping busy working thereby forgetting about home and its problems that is a form of compartmentalization and so you play it like role play but in compartmentalization you usually play two roles one role is grounded in reality and one role is surrealistic one role is dreamlike is not also experienced as fully real and the other role is real is internal responsive to changes in the internal environment and one role is external responsive to changes or mutations in the outside environment so these are characteristics of compartmentalization and isolation but what are these defense mechanisms we have just seen how important, how crucial they are they allow us to survive in effect even victims of abuse and survivors of abuse compartmentalize they say they experience the abuse they're damaged, they're broken they're harmed, they're hurt they're in pain and yet they continue to love the abuser they sometimes continue to idealize the abuser that's an example of compartmentalization okay compartmentalization is a defense mechanism in which thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict or to be incompatible are isolated from each other in separate and apparently impermeable psychic compartments in the mind in classical psychoanalytic tradition compartmentalization emerges in response to fragmentation of the ego ideally should be able to tolerate ambiguity and ambivalence so when we witness extreme compartmentalization we can be pretty sure this underlying mental illness or severe mental health problem that's why narcissists and psychopaths compartmentalize all the time that's why they are capable of leading two lives, six lives, nine lives and it's very reminiscent of multiple personality but it's not because they are fully aware of what's happening isolation, I'm reading you definitions from the American Psychological Association dictionary isolation in psychoanalytic theory a defense mechanism that relies on keeping unwelcome thoughts and feelings from forming associative links with other thoughts and feelings with the result that the unwelcome thoughts and feelings are rarely activated so isolation is when you have a thought when you have a feeling that it's very uncomfortable very dissonant you don't want to have this feeling you don't want to have this thought so what you do you isolate them and you do not link them to any other thought or feeling and so they remain deactivated this is isolation and compartmentalization as you can see they are close cousins I'm going to mention something regarding psychoanalysis I'm going to come back to it a bit later isolation is a defense mechanism the subject isolates a thought a cognition, an emotion an event and prevents it from becoming a part of the continuum of significant experience so it's like in isolation we slice off uncomfortable facts uncomfortable thoughts uncomfortable emotions we do not integrate them into our experience of course this creates discontinuities and that's why compartmentalization and isolation are the defense mechanisms that put together yield dissociation lead to dissociation Freud wrote in 1926 when something unpleasant has happened to the subject or when he has done something which has a significance for his neurosis the subject interpolates an interval during which nothing further must happen during which he must perceive nothing and do nothing the experience is not forgotten but instead it is deprived of its effect its dissociative connections their associative connections are suppressed or interrupted so that it remains as though isolated and is not reproduced in the ordinary process of thought isolation very frequently occurs in obsession especially in obsessional neurosis I have video dedicated to it and it's very reminiscent of repression hysteria it's connected to splitting connected to dissociation but make no mistake about it compartmentalization and isolation are much more foundational dissociation and splitting are defense mechanisms that are derivative that are secondary for example the baby is unable to accept the fact to be frustrating that mother could be a bad object baby wants to eat wants to suckle baby wants attention baby is wet baby is hungry and yet mother is not paying attention to baby or does not immediately gratify baby doesn't cater to baby's needs immediately so that infuriates baby the frustration and so but he cannot accept that mother is a source or could be a source of frustration in other words that she is bad so what baby does he compartmentalizes the experience of hunger and the isolates it he puts it aside in order to preserve the all good mother only later when this becomes impossible because there have been too many instances of frustration or because of frustration they become very deep only then baby is unable to continue to isolate and compartmentalize and instead what baby does he splits he uses compartmentalization and isolation combines them and then he doesn't split he doesn't isolate the event he doesn't isolate the feelings he has he doesn't isolate his many cognitions he doesn't isolate the experiences he isolates himself from mother and mother from himself he becomes all bad mother becomes all good so for the first time he is unable to integrate mother and so there's splitting of course leads later on to separation, individuation and so on and so forth you can see the crucial importance of compartmentalization and isolation as defense mechanisms once the baby has split the unitary entity that mother used to be baby begins to realize mother's externality the fact that mother is separate that he is not mother is not him in other words the baby then begins to understand that there's an external world out there which leads baby to separate individuate and to object relations but initially the baby just compartmentalizes and isolates puts aside everything that bothers him up to a point okay similarly I mentioned that compartmentalization and isolation are at the core of dissociation when you act in an isolated moment in a way that logically defies your own moral code or when you're engaged in a duty or a chore that is extremely unpleasant but I mean like disregulated or when you have an urge and desire that you reject that are either socially unacceptable cannot be sublimated or somehow contradict yourself image or self-perception or when you want something very much but there's no way you could get it in all these cases you would tend to compartmentalize you would tend to put these things aside somehow isolate them put them in a room and lock the door and throw the key box them in and this is but if the situation the unpleasant situation the egodistonic situation the dissonant situation the uncomfortable situation the threatening situation if they continue if they become more intense then at some point the only solution would be to dissociate them to cut them off to forget about them and then to repress the information so dissociation and repression another solution of course is to pretend that you're not there depersonalization that this is not really happening derealization these are all dissociative defenses and dissociation is founded on compartmentalization and isolation taken to extreme taken to extreme the irony is that splitting and dissociation and projection same with projection and all these mechanisms especially infantile primitive defense mechanism they're all founded on compartmentalization and isolation there are extensions or exaggerations or magnifications or amplifications of compartmentalization and isolation on the one hand and on the other hand they negate compartmentalization and isolation they take over they replace the substitute for compartmentalization and isolation so there's a lot of conflict involved in the transition from compartmentalization and isolation to dissociation to splitting to projection there's a lot of conflict involved in this because when you compartmentalize or isolate you don't lose your memory you don't and because you have continuous memory you have a sense of self-hood a sense of personhood a sense of core uninterrupted continuous core identity not disjointed but joined together in short you have a sense of yourself of becoming of being when you compartmentalize and isolate at no point do you feel estranged from yourself alien not you but when you begin to split when you transition from compartmentalization and isolation to splitting to dissociation to projection this creates inner conflict dissonance very often cognitive dissonance and to avoid cognitive dissonance the mental comfort and anxiety caused by having conflicting values conflicting cognitions conflicting emotions to avoid cognitive dissonance again you need to resort to compartmentalization and isolation so it's a very ironic or if you wish a form of ironic rebound it's a very ironic circle you start with compartmentalization and isolation when you're overwhelmed overwhelmed too much discomfort too much fear too much straight frustration too much when you're overwhelmed you transition from compartmentalization and isolation you discard them you transition to more extreme forms of dissociation splitting and projection but this creates dissonance because you know that what you're doing is not ok not true not fair not fact based not evidence based deep inside you know this so then to resort to dissonance you resort yet again to compartmentalization and isolation so it's a cycle it's a cycle whenever you're confronted with abuse with trauma with fear with threat etc etc you start off compartmentalizing the information that is uncomfortable or challenging could be your cognitions, your emotions your experience, events in your environment other people as well you start off by compartmentalizing by isolating the effects by not allowing disinformation to acquire an emotional power to be empowered emotionally so this is isolation compartmentalization and then when this fails you transition to primitive defenses and then they create cognitive dissonance and you go back to compartmentalization isolation and the cycle starts all over again this would explain the vicissitudes the changes in apparent personality of the psychopath and the narcissist because at some stages in some phases some periods they're engaged in splitting and projection and projective identification and dissociation and all other defenses and then owing to internal dissonance they resort to compartmentalization and isolation and they appear to be a lot a lot more normal they appear to be not themselves until the frustration accumulates again or the fear or the hatred of the envy negative affectivity, anger, rage accumulates threatens to dysregulate them and then they engage again in defenses, in classical defenses so narcissists and psychopaths fluctuate between compartmentalization isolation and primitive defenses psychoanalysis in psychoanalysis they consider that isolation separates thoughts from feelings whereas compartmentalization separates cognitions from each other if they're not compatible so compartmentalization is a cognitive distortion and isolation is an affective defense divorcing feelings and emotions from thoughts, from events from experiences so as not to get dysregulated and overwhelmed it is interesting that compartmentalization is a cognitive distortion because those of you who have been abused by listening to my videos know or recall I hope that grandiosity is a cognitive distortion indeed grandiosity is actually a form of compartmentalization because it compartmentalizes reality it rejects reality it incarcerates reality it prisons reality in a box or in a cell and throws the key grandiosity denies reality but does not repress it so grandiosity is a cognitive mechanism a way to choose between reality and fantasy cognitively something known as paracosm the choice is cognitive and it involves compartmentalization in the sense that the two bodies of information the body of information related to reality as it really is and the body of information relating to reality as the narcissist wants it to be fantasy so these two bodies are not allowed to get in touch with each other there is a firewall, there is a partition and this is compartmentalization and we call this process grandiosity so this compartmentalization is cognitive distortion now compartmentalization and to some extent isolation but mainly compartmentalization they are linked to another defense known as intellectualization or rationalization some of you may be acquainted with it's justifying using pseudo-rational arguments to justify one's conduct, one's choices, one's decision even when they actually cannot be justified and of course this requires compartmentalization again a rejection of reality a rejection of accepted morality a rejection of societal expectations a rejection of sexual scripts, a rejection isolation, compartmentalization of out there and in here this distinction between internal and external internally what I did was justified by the fantasy that I exist in and this is rationalization it involves a cognitive distortion sometimes grandiosity as a cognitive distortion and everything that other people have to say the common sense the accepted mores, the laws that all these is rejected so it's connected to rationalization there's a rare phenomenon known as neurotic typing some neurotics in the classical in the classical theory of neurosis some neurotic divide everything classify everything into mutually exclusive airtight categories this is known as neurotic typing it's a defense it's a defense against discrepancies, against conflicts against dissonance against disagreement between cognitions, between emotions the neurotic is very fragile very brittle very broken and so the defense is by breaking everything into cells and boxes and classifications and so on this is known as neurotic typing now just to be clear neurosis is no longer an accepted or valid clinical diagnosis nowadays regrettably and so everything I'm telling you right now has to do with schools of thought in psychology that are no longer considered valid and that are highly disputed and debatable Otto Kemberg by the way suggested that the main role of the therapist is to undo compartmentalization he called it bridging intervention so you have to open these cells you have to open these rooms you have to destroy these walls and you have to connect contradictory compartmentalized components of the patient's mind you have to somehow bring together these contradictory emotions these conflicting cognitions bring them together fearlessly and allow the patient to integrate them to create a cohesive coherent unitary mind of course this implies that compartmentalization and isolation create vulnerabilities indeed the narcissist and psychopath psychopath the the quintessence and epitome and ratification of compartmentalization and isolation they use these mechanisms like hundreds of times a day unknowingly of course but this renders them very vulnerable the narcissist is actually extremely fragile pathological narcissism is a compensatory mechanism compensatory strategy for survival the psychopath on the other hand pretends that all other people are instruments and that goal or rotation would protect him from the onerous risks and dangers of the environment and of course it's an illusion the psychopath is self-deluding and so does the narcissist these are very damaged people and compartmentalization the principal positive could be negative is never integrated within the psychopath and the narcissist they need to constantly compartmentalize constantly for example the narcissist is constantly exposed to challenges to his grandiosity reality challenges the narcissist's grandiosity and of course reality pushes back against the psychopath in his relentless ruthless and callous pursuit of goals forces him to become more and more self-destructive and reckless so this inability to integrate emotions and cognitions to create something that feels like like me a self a unitary core an identity this failure is detrimental deleterious is very dangerous these vulnerabilities may be hidden but they undermine any possibility of self-esteem that's why narcissists require constant feedback from the environment known as narcissistic supply in order to regulate the sense of self-worth because how can you construct your self-worth if you don't have a self you need a self self-esteem, self-worth self-confidence there's a self there you know and if you don't have a self because everything is broken to shards and small pieces and everything is kaleidoscopic and everything is separated from everything in compartments and everything is isolated you don't have a self you cannot have self-esteem you cannot have self-organization personality becomes chaotic and totally disorganized and whenever you're treated as a narcissist or a psychopath with a negative self-aspect of some kind this causes a total collapse total disintegration the brittleness and fragility are enormous because there's no integration because there's no core because there's no nucleus and this is true also in traumatized people people with post-traumatic stress disorder CPTSD, complex trauma they also tend to compartmentalize positive from negative self-aspects because people with CPTSD or PTSD they can't they're not strong enough to cope with self-criticism with aspects of themselves which are less than perfect negative thoughts, negative emotions they're not strong enough to do this they instantly compartmentalize and isolate this put them aside ignore them aware of them somehow dimly but they don't allow the negative aspects or the negative dimensions to be active so in PTSD and CPTSD we have a clinical picture which is very reminiscent of narcissism and psychopathy actually makes it very difficult the differential diagnosis is very blurred very fuzzy when you're traumatized and if you're healthy a healthy person who's been traumatized and even if you're not healthy for example borderline personality disorder you're likely to respond with auto-plastic defenses you're likely to blame yourself you're likely to ask yourself what have I done wrong how am I guilty, what could I have done differently and so on these auto-plastic defenses they trigger in you the bed-object they trigger in you the voices that keep telling you how unworthy you are how unlovable you are how bad, how stupid, how ugly and so on in the wake of trauma these voices can be overwhelming push you even to suicide so a major defense against these the bed-object post-traumatically is compartmentalization and isolation if you ignore the negative aspects of yourself if you ignore your mistakes if you ignore your proclivities if you ignore your negative self-aspects you can nurture your positive self-concept you can keep it safe through the use of compartmentalization this is especially by the way especially true in sexual trauma I promise to give you a review of early psychoanalytic literature and so isolation in psychoanalytic literature is a defense mechanism which is characteristic as I said of obsessional neurosis the links of a thought, idea impression of feeling with other thoughts or behaviors are broken they're broken by means of pauses or rituals or magical formulas or other obsessive-compulsive devices or by means of mild dissociation Freud wrote in the neuropsychosis of defense he conceived of defense in hysteria as well as in phobias and obsessions as a form of isolation he said defense against the incompatible idea is affected by separating this idea from its effect the idea itself remains unconsciousness even though it is now weakened and isolated because it has no emotional correlate no emotional power there was a famous case of Freud known as the rat man in this case Freud wrote about isolation he didn't name it isolation at that stage but he wrote about it he wrote in this case that in contradistinction to hysteria where there is amnesia and the amnesia is truth of successful repression he said in obsessional neurosis and I'm quoting the infantile preconditions of the neurosis may be overtaken by amnesia though this is often an incomplete one the trauma instead of being forgotten is deprived of its affective cateches deprived of emotions so that what remains in consciousness is nothing but it's ideational content which is perfectly colorless and is judged to be unimportant what he says actually is that when a traumatic event or memory or experience when a cognition or emotion that you reject a thought that you find reprehensible when you conflict or confront with your own values and self-perception and self-image any of these things happen you could very often compartmentalize it how do you do that you don't invest in it emotionally it becomes a bit of information like the sun is shining or today is the 24th of December it becomes a bit of information and without emotions because it has it's not associated with emotions this is the isolation isolation from emotions because it's not associated with emotions it has no dynamic power it cannot operate inside it cannot create for example an upreaction in therapy Freud linked isolation as a defense mechanism to other defense mechanisms including by the way another defense mechanism which I would discuss in the future called undoing ok Freud proposed that when an unpleasantness has occurred or some act of significance to the neurosis has been performed the person I'm quoting interpolates an interval during which nothing further must happen during which he must perceive nothing and do nothing this is reminiscent of the freeze reaction but pay attention compartmentalization and isolation are not repression isolation accomplishes defense without amnesia repression involves amnesia repression is dissociative isolation is not as Freud wrote the experience is not forgotten is not forgotten but instead deprived of its effect of the emotions and its associative connections are suppressed or interrupted so that it remains as though isolated and is not reproduced in the ordinary process of thought kind of mini or repression light without the cost of amnesia isolating said Freud is involved in the normal exercise of for example concentration fending off what is unimportant or irrelevant to a specific concern so Freud believed that compartmentalization and isolation are daily occurrences daily defenses his daughter Anna Freud in 1946 suggested that severing links between associations also isolates ideas from effects from emotions of defense used in obsessional neurosis gives rise to the what she called effective blanching of much of experience that means recalling the experience maybe even in details but without any emotional reaction and she said there is an inordinate emphasis on behavior that has magical significance in severe cases she is actually referring to obsession compulsion rituals fend off catastrophizing fend off anticipated horrible scenarios of catastrophe in 1959 two years before I was born and I don't believe it's a coincidence Isla proposed that isolation has two forms one in which both the separated ideas remain in consciousness the other form is where an idea remains in consciousness only as long as it's not associated with an emotion only as long as it's effective charge is not in consciousness and so there's been a lot of work done on isolation and compartmentalization whether it's whether it's it applies to ideas to actions to events emotions and so on and so forth Ferdichel in 1945 cited instances of the usage of isolation to refer to the separation of the sensual and tender components of sexuality from the more animalistic aspects and to the splitting of good and bad selves and good and bad objects which is how I use it in my work in my work on self-states isolation and compartmentalization are the first lines of defense against getting in touch with a bad object the bad object contains a reservoir of childhood early childhood shame which is life-threatening the narcissist spends his entire existence to his last breath trying to not get in touch to avoid contact with this reservoir of shame in the bad object and one of the more common mechanisms that the narcissist uses in order to not experience this shame and not dysregulate its compartmentalization and isolation and what happens with modification is that all the defenses are disabled there's a process known as compensation all the defenses are disabled including compartmentalization and isolation and the narcissist then gets in touch unwillingly and involuntarily gets in touch with a shame infused shame immersed bad object inside him which drives him to dysregulate like a borderline and entertain suicidal ideas I'll summarize by describing the seven types of isolation in the literature the first original was Ziegler Freud as usual in 1926 he used the term isolation as a defense which after a painful event has taken place interpolates an interval during which nothing must happen you remember the meaning is also Freud he used the expression or used the word isolation for the capacity to keep irrelevant details away from the mind while concentrating on a task I mentioned this as well Otto Fenichel in 1939 and later in 1945 used the term isolation for the tendency of the part of some patients to carry on the whole analysis in a peculiar non conjunction with the rest of their lives it's as if the analysis, the therapy has nothing to do with life it's a fantasy it's a paracosa so some patients when they come or some clients when they come to therapy they compartmentalize and isolate the therapy Fenichel also used the term to describe the occasional del linkage disconnect between affectionate and sensual currents of love seen in early polyphyxated neurotics nevermind the fifth meaning of isolation and compartmentalization is the tendency to keep libidinal and aggressive feelings apart you remember that libido is the force of life it includes eros which is the force of sex aggression later admitted and accepted and acknowledged aggression has to do with death it's a death force it's fanatic it's destrudo against libido or mortido against libido so Fenichel suggested that we use isolation and compartmentalization to keep the force of life separate from the force of death so for example to keep sex separate from aggression this is a very useful thing to do and anafroid in 1946 introduced the term isolation of affect emphasizing that severing the links between an ID and its effective accompaniment also constitutes a form of isolation I'll discuss it a bit more later and finally Kurt Eisler 1959 I mentioned used the term for this purpose but also for the egos keeping two related and conscious ideas apart since putting them together would cause anxiety and suffering now most of these seven usagens today are no longer perceived as valid or accurate today we use the term isolation compartmentalization even in psychoanalytic literature in the sense that anafroid suggested isolation of affect it's a particular subtype of the mechanism called isolation this unconsciously operative maneuver it consists of the ego separating and disturbing or painful event or ID from the feelings that accompany painful events and ideas as a result the individual is left only with an intellectual awareness of the event with no apparent threatening emotions emotions that threaten stability inner stability so aggressive thoughts for example stabbing someone with a knife which I'm sure by now most of you would like to do to me or erotic impulses the wish to have sex with someone which I'm sure most of you don't have with me these might appear in consciousness as meaningless feeling less thoughts so it neutralizes the emotional charge of certain cognitions which could be socially unacceptable or even criminal or dangerous anxiety and guilt consequent upon such desires are held in abeyance isolation of effect is frequently seen in obsessional personalities finally I would like to mention a very very obscure concept from psychoanalysis known as doublet or doublet in typical American mispronunciation doublet is a designation for the doubling of an object by means of which for the unconscious a second object requires the meaning of the first object so two objects with the same meaning instead of one two objects are there and they're both imbued with identical meaning so in personal relations for example in dreams and creative writing this leads to a distortion of the perception of reality and then there's a need to isolate there's a need to isolate one of the two and so doublet is intimately connected with isolation experiences and characteristics are distributed between two objects when their appearance in one person would reveal if the two were in one person if you became aware the two objects represent actually the same thing have the same meaning this would reveal your wishes and your repetition compulsions which you would find very uncomfortable very dissonant anxiety producing so by imbuing two objects with the same meaning you can actually lie to yourself you can deceive yourself into believing that there is no forbidden wish here and there's no repetition compulsions and the other case is when the contrariness of your urges and wishes when they are really really out of the pail beyond the pail totally unacceptable then you can't unify these urges and strivings and wishes in a single object and you split them and when you split them between two objects they become acceptable suddenly so this also involves a form of isolation and compartmentalization but I will discuss doublette separately in a separate video because narcissists and psychopaths do it a lot they displace they attribute the same meaning to two objects and this way they don't feel that they are doing anything wrong they don't feel that they are repeating their actions as if there is no process of learning no lessons from one's experience they split the dividing of the meaning of the misattribution of the same meaning to two objects create the illusion that it's a new situation so there is no repetition and also creates the illusion that the wish or the urge or the drive are socially acceptable they are not to be suppressed or repressed by the ego they are okay and they this is a mechanism that narcissists and psychopaths do it's very disorienting because they behave with two people or two workplaces or two friends in a way in an identical way when they are actually not identical this creates a lot of confusion I will discuss it separately in a separate video wake up those of you who fell asleep which is I'm sure the vast majority of the audience okay it's time to say Merry Christmas and ho ho ho and everything else and see you after Christmas because I as you can see am also celebrating it's a Jewish holiday for those of you who haven't known because Jesus was a Jew through and through here's something to contemplate Merry Christmas