 It seems that I'm recording. Hello. Okay, great. I'm recording. Yes, hello. So nice to see you both. It's so surreal because I always watch the YouTube videos. And now I'm in the interview. Well, I'm happy that you're watching the videos. And thank you for translating our book to Mongolian. That's unexpected and welcome. Thank you. Yes. Well, this is the first time I'm interviewing the author of the books I translated. So I'll try to do my best, but I'm a little nervous, to be honest. Then don't consider this. Don't consider this an interview. Consider it a talk. We're talking. We're discussing. Right. So I'd like to introduce both of you to the people who listen to this talk. So Professor Sam Vaknin is the author of Malik Ninself Love, Narcissism Revisited Book. And Lydia, I need to announce you. Lydia Rangelowska is the publisher and editor of also Narcissism Revisited, Malik Ninself Love, Narcissism Revisited Book. Okay. I have a surprise. I've just received a copy. Oh, Mongolian copy. That's so beautiful. Wow. Yes. Wow. This is volume one. Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. I think Mongolian we use Cyrillic, same as Russia and some other countries. And we have traditional letters, but we don't use it yet. There's a public writing. Wonderful. Wonderful to see this. Thank you. I like that you enlarge. I like that you enlarge Narcissus, how he sees himself, the, the photo on the cover. Yes. Yes, that one. Yes. Wonderful. It looks wonderful. Thank you. Thank you. Yes, thanks. Okay. Right. So, um, I was thinking how to have to start this conversation. But then I thought, okay, maybe we can start with you, Sam, and your story, because you are the person who wrote this many years ago. And it actually starts with your own story. Right. Yes. I was diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice. And it had a very negative effect on my life. Actually destroyed my life. So I came to regard it as an enemy. It's an enemy within. It's true. It's not an identifiable enemy without, but it's within. And that makes it an even more dangerous enemy than usual. So I started to study narcissism. When I completed my studies in 1995, I wrote Malignant self-love as a manuscript. And just to be clear, at that time, no one has heard of narcissism. No one was talking about narcissism. This was a totally dead topic. The last book to have to have been published was in 1974 by a guy called Alexander Lohan. And no one, no one paid any attention to it was not considered to be a major problem or an issue, something to be studied or of any interest. Or it was considered to be a Freudian relic, a relic of Zygmunt Freud. And today is bad, bad taste to study Zygmunt Freud. He was not a scientist. And therefore you should not study him. It's wrong to study him. Psychology today is pretending to be a science, which it is not and can never be. Because of this pretension, we have lost many treasures of psychology. We have lost well over 100 years of psychology that are now not being taught in universities and frowned upon and so on. Anyhow, so I studied narcissism. And in 1997, Lydia has opened for me a website. And on that website I uploaded the manuscript of Malignant Self-Love, first edition of Malignant Self-Love. We made it free, free of charge. People could just read whatever they wanted. And this was the first mention of narcissism online. We maintained the first website on narcissism up until 2004. The second website was opened in 2004. We owned and moderated the first six support groups for narcissistic abuse. I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse. I coined most of the language in use today because there was no language. There was no way for victims or for narcissists to describe the experience, the inner experience of being a narcissist and the experience of the victim or the survivor together with a narcissist. So there was a need to invent a whole new language. And this is how this global movement of narcissism and narcissistic abuse started. Actually, it started in Skopje in North Macedonia from a single computer with a website. And then unbelievably well over 250,000 people wrote back informing us that the material has touched their lives, transformed their lives, made it possible for them to make sense and understand what was happening to them. Now you should realize that 1997 was the very beginning of the internet. Almost no one was on the internet. So 250,000 people then is like a few million people today. It's not. So we realized that there would be a need for more structured help. And the first thing we've done is to publish the book in 1999 was the first edition of the book. I did not want to publish the book. I did not want to continue with narcissism. There are other pursuits. And Lydia literally fished out of the garbage can the manuscript of money. She saved the book. Otherwise there would have been a book. And I'm not quite sure there would have been a global movement of narcissistic abuse. So it's all thanks to Lydia, not to me because it's because I was also touched by a book. It explained it explained a lot about we were talking while he was writing the chapters that I published one by one on the internet. He was translating from his notebook what he was going through. And I was uploading them. Yeah, it was tough because I didn't know anything about the internet about HTML language. I had to learn it. But the will to explain it to share it was from this distance. Great idea. So I was interested. I had my own story. He had his own life before we met. I had my life that was really not in a very good nine years of the decade in the beginning of the 90s. I was facing the co-ops of the environmental insecurity, not safety, troubles with people that they behaved in a very bizarre way. So I had some personal losses of very close people. They turned out to be turned to be like nine in one year. That was too much. And there was different dynamic that I shared as I was receiving the material from Sam. I identified. So many others did also identify with with themselves in certain situations. They seek help. And that is how we continue. And that was something that that gave and continued the will to to proceed with the publishing to make the book. And it should have been for the people who wanted to understand that it's not all about that. So we encourage, as I see it, as a personal growth to everyone. Adaptive tools were given to them to self-love themselves in a more positive manner, not in a selfish manner. Sorry. Now this is the 10th edition, right? The book is the 10th edition. It came to Mongolia and then now it's it's going to spread through Mongolia because this is the word I also listened just few years ago. And everyone starts to talk about narcissism and I didn't understand what it was. I didn't understand. I was actually very close to a person who was probably he has a he had narcissistic personality disorder, but for sure narcissistic. And then I start to understand I start to search and I found you on YouTube and I start to listen. And then I was dreaming about translating and then finally it's here and I didn't think they have many books actually in Mongolian about narcissism. I think it's going to be one of the first books on narcissism in Mongolian language. So I think that would you say that in Mongolian society there's a problem of narcissism. Would you say it's a more or less narcissistic society because there are societies in the world. Well, what I think, I think you mentioned about this is a disease of capitalism and Mongolia is Mongolia still is an American culture but a city grows and people stay more in the city civilized. I think we are becoming more narcissistic. I see it everywhere. Now I can kind of spot people. I can kind of spot it. So I think this is going to be very, very helpful. But again, because we don't have a lot of resources people really don't understand what is narcissistic personality disorder and what is narcissism. So if you can explain to people about the greatest obstacle to coping with narcissism, managing narcissism and then healing from narcissistic abuse, the greatest obstacle. Is the absence of language, the inaccessible language inability to express yourself. Words shape consciousness. The minute you have a word. The world makes sense. Words are meaning in the absence of words. Everything that's happening to you is meaning less. And if it's meaningless, then you are not able to design any efficacious strategies, techniques and ways to cope with your environment. That's why we play so much emphasis on literature on science on these are actually language tools. None of these disciplines of human endeavor actually touch or describe reality. They describe our language. So the first very important thing is education. Educating people as to what is narcissism. What's the difference between gradations of narcissism because there's healthy narcissism. There's narcissistic style. And then there's narcissistic disorder. They're not the same. Not everyone who is a bit selfish and a bit disempathic doesn't have empathy and a bit insensitive. Not everyone like that is a narcissist. These are narcissistic traits. We call them narcissistic style in clinical literature, but they it's not the same as narcissistic disorder. And it's definitely not the same as narcissistic personality disorder, which is a type of cancer of the soul. So education and the dissemination of language. And that's why what you're doing is very, very important. If we give people the tools to communicate their internal experience and establish communities or around this experience and then support each other in the on the road to healing and recover. Narcissism is a healthy thing. Everyone is a narcissist at age two, between ages two and four, and everyone is a narcissist between ages 12 and 18. And if they are not narcissists in these two age groups, then something is very wrong with them. They grow up to be people pleases. They grow up to be co-dependence. And so narcissism is healthy in adolescence and even more healthy in childhood. And we, all of us have healthy narcissism. It is the foundation of self-confidence, self-esteem, a sense of self-worth, and even your ability to position yourself comparably to other people within society. But pathological narcissism is something completely different. Pathological narcissism is infantile. It's the inability to perceive other people as separate from you because you, as a child, were unable to separate from your mother. You did not complete the separation individuation phase. You did not become an individual. So what narcissists do, they convert other people into internal objects. They internalize other people. And then they continue to interact with these internal objects, not with people out there, but with the representations of these people in their minds. And if you don't recognize that someone is not you, if you don't recognize that someone is separate to you, if you think everyone is your extension, if you think that everyone is inside your mind, then there's no place for empathy. Empathy is only with outside entities. There's no place for understanding, compassion, affection, attention. There's no place for taking care of catering to other people's needs and hopes and dreams and expectations. Other people become instruments. They're instrumentalized. And if they don't conform to the internal object in your mind as a narcissist, then the narcissist becomes aggressive and punitive. The narcissist punishes people for not conforming, for deviating, for diverging from the internal object. So narcissism involves what we call externalized aggression. It's in the same family like psychopathy, cluster B, personality disorders. Many narcissists are actually on the verge of psychopathy and they are known as psychopathic narcissists or malignant narcissists. And there is a lot of comorbidity. Comorbidity means that we diagnose two conditions in the same person. So comorbidity is very common between psychopathy and narcissism and between borderline personality disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. The narcissist is unable to maintain relationships. He has very problematic attachment style. He is incapable of intimacy because he has learned as a child to associate intimacy and love with pain and hurt and rejection. All narcissists have been traumatized and abused as children. Now, there are many ways to abuse a child. You can abuse a child physically. You can beat the child up. You can abuse a child sexually, of course, and so on. But you can also abuse a child. If you don't allow the child to separate from you as a parent, if you don't allow the child to establish boundaries, if you don't allow the child to come across reality, reality provides feedback, reality modifies, reality induces growth and development. So if you isolate the child, if you pamper the child, if you smother the child, if you spoil the child, if you pedestalize the child, if you idolize the child, all these are forms of abuse because the parent then uses the child as some kind of instrument, for example, to realize the parent's unfulfilled dreams. Or when the parent forces the child to become a parent, this is known as parentifying, and then the child is the parent's parent. That's also abuse. So parenting is a fine-tuning enterprise. You need to get it right 100% because if you get any element wrong, that is traumatic and abusive because the child is defenseless. The child doesn't have a self, doesn't have any protection. It's a very delicate creature. It's very strange because I used to ask this question, so do narcissistic personality disorder born or actually they become? So according to the book he wrote, they actually become narcissistic, narcissistic, they start to have narcissistic personality disorder because of abuses. But then as you mentioned just right now, abuse can be different forms, and I can see just as an example around here, when I see some people, they send their children very expensive schools and every, like all day they send them to different courses, like they have to be perfect children, as you mentioned, wonder kind in a way. But at the same time, do they really care about them emotionally? So that's the fear I have, and then in the future I guess they're going to be many more narcissists or what do you think? Well, I will let Lidia answer that, but I would just make a comment before she does. Narcissistic personality disorder and pathological narcissism more generally, yes, they are the outcomes of improper upbringing, wrong parenting, not good enough parenting, abuse and trauma in a variety of ways, not letting the child become his or her own person, not allowing personhood to emerge in many ways. But there are studies that indicate that some children have a propensity, a disposition to develop narcissism. Because we have, for example, studies with twins, twins who are raised by the same parents and so on, one of them becomes a narcissist, the other doesn't. So these are strong indications that there is some genetic or hereditary component, and that the abuse and the trauma trigger these genes to express. And then the person becomes, acquires narcissistic personalities, but it is equally true to say that if you are not abused and if you're not traumatized, even if you have the genes, multiple genes, that predispose you to become a narcissist, you will not become a narcissist. So the parental contribution is super critical. Lidia can talk about society and the increasing narcissism in society and culture. This is visually the 90s, what I witnessed, and when I saw the different cultures influencing my environment, I was born in socialist countries, and suddenly after that Yugoslavia dismantled. Capitalism was introduced, as you said before earlier, the influences that, and it was like imposed on us to behave like business people, only business mattered. So where the human elements were lost, the people became more workaholics, they were spending more time to be with other people, discussing business only. Not interested really in the other affairs with their wives, children, that helped, did not stop between us. I didn't like that. I didn't like that, I found myself alone. And when I was asked to meet Sam, it was like, okay, you know what, finally you will have, he is clever, you can talk to him about you. You see how delusional she is? It was him. It's not that I was not acquainted with narcissism as a term, because we had some lessons in philosophy classes, and we were learning about many authors. So I knew about narcissism, but I didn't know about the dynamics. And when nineties happened, when I started to actually ask myself, what was the motive for other people to behave in certain ways? I had to connect it with the misfortune of those times. I mean, from very good people, they were suddenly overnight transformed in something they were not. As I knew them for 20 years, 30, 40, and so on. I am talking about my generation, younger, and much older than me. So the only connecting thing was the response to the environment. It's those who were pretty sure about steady, safe, about their family, about their partners, children, about their coworkers, they were very stable. They were very rational. They were making one good decisions for them for the closest one for the society as well. Because I saw it also happening in the politicians that were changing all the time. So the empathy vanished, selfishness, materialism, and the children of those generations of parents that belong to that generation. So I can see now these are the children that they were kids at the time, right? I mean, babies, 4-mative years. I see them more narcissistic. I can compare because I lived with some children. I had friends who had children then, and I know what happened after 23 years, after 30 years, I know what happened with them. So I can make the difference between children that were born in unstable families, insecure, usually because their parents were not giving them proper care. They were not supporting them and they didn't teach them how to learn from the science, from other people that are living in their environment. In the 90s, my generation already got their universities and they were looking to go abroad. And they went 70% of my generation in my school only went abroad. They thought there will be the businessmen and whatever the capitalism introduced. But this year in June, I met some of them and they were disappointed. They said, going there was like a black hole. It was not me and they returned. Okay, so they couldn't actually be allowed themselves to belong to some capitalistic society and they were pretty angry as they described it. They were pretty angry that they lost the human element of not only being alone, but not having anyone that will support them. That will have the same opinion and will be more helpful by being, and then this world pop up to be, they are not merciful people there. So mercy contains many elements, I mean psychodynamically, to someone to become a good person. That good person doing good to others, first to themselves, then to others, to the environment and this is how we all should expand. Yeah, so just to finish, so being selfish, being suppressing emotions by only to not be ashamed that you did not reach someone else's expectations is abuse. That is my term. I will provide now a bit of a historic context and a bit of a more sweeping overview. Lydia provides the person I'm touched, which unfortunately I cannot, but whenever there is uncertainty, there is anxiety. Whenever there is no way to reduce anxiety efficiently, there is fear. This anxiety is a very uncomfortable inner feeling. And there is a sense of diffuse threat that you cannot pinpoint. That's why we call it anxiety. And people trying to reduce anxiety in every way possible, and then if they fail consistently because the environment produces anxiety, induces anxiety all the time, then what they do, they withdraw. They withdraw from reality. They withdraw from the environment. And they withdraw using essentially two mechanisms, addiction and narcissism. Addiction and narcissism are two escapist mechanisms, mechanisms of avoiding shining reality and developing a fantasy defense or using leveraging fantasy. Capitalism doesn't care. Capitalism is about maximizing profits. If there is profit to be made in manufacturing and consumption, then capitalism would emphasize manufacturing and consumption would encourage you to consume, would build factories, consume more, will build factories. This process is known as interpolation. Interpolation is a concept introduced by Louis Althusser. It's how society tells you how to behave. So capitalism follows, follows you. Everyone says capitalism is to blame, capitalism is you. And then if there is profit to be made in addiction and there is profit to be made in spectacle, in appearances, capitalism will follow you there, of course. And this is precisely what has happened. The capitalism of the last two, three decades is a capitalism of addictions, including addictive consumerism and a capitalism of spectacle, display, theater. So we see social media for example. This is a form of spectacle. The underlying motivation is an escape from reality. Reality has become unbearable and it has become unbearable for two reasons. Not only one. It is objectively unbearable. It contains a lot of uncertainty, a lot of change, technological and otherwise. Gender roles are being redefined. The concept of family has been essentially destroyed. Institutions are falling apart. You can't trust anyone. Everyone is corrupt. So objectively the environment is unbearable, intolerable. But there is a second reason. We tried everything. We tried Nazism. We tried communism. We tried capitalism. We tried, you name it, we tried it. We cannot come up anymore with new ideas. There are no new ideologies or new ideas left. We know that the solution, that the situation is unsolvable. There is no solution. It's the first time in human history. Because in the 30s you could lie to yourself and you could say the solution is communism. Or the solution is fascism. Or the solution is fascism. Or the solution is capitalism. Or liberalism. Or democracy. You could lie to yourself. There was a lot of self-deception. Ideology is a virtual reality. It distorts your thinking and makes you conform to a vision of the future that keeps you alive. In short, there's no hope. I think for the first time in human history, there's no hope. But I mean no hope, period. So if you put the two together, that the environment changes all the time, is in flux all the time, and therefore it's very threatening, you have to adapt constantly. Literally every day you have to adapt. On the one hand. And on the other hand, you have no good reason to adapt. What for? There's no hope. You try to invest all this effort in staying alive. No good reason to stay alive. So you escape. You escape into drugs and into alcohol and into movies and into social media and into virtual and artificial reality and into you escape. Constantly escape. And of course capitalism provides you with the means to escape. That's all. It's a follower. Capitalism never initiates social movements or it's a follower. It goes where the money is. And where is the money where you are? It follows you like a shade, like a shadow. And this is the world we live in. It's a shadow world. It's a world where the shadow rules. Is there a way out? The real answer? No. There is no way out. Because the problems have to do with human nature. Not with anything that humans have constructed. Not with society. Not with ideologies. Not with means of production. Not with Marxism and not with capitalism. This is all nonsense. This is all transitory. Capitalism will be forgotten a thousand years. The same way Rome has been forgotten a thousand years after it fell. That's not the issue. We are discovering and we started with Freud. We are discovering that the problem is us. We have seen the enemy and it is us. Not anything we have produced but it's us. Something is wrong with us. Right. And so we are going to continue to generate incomplete detrimental destructive solutions. We are so destructive. But we can be more aware. So my hope, I had a hope. I have always had hope. It's not connected to people. It's a hope that we, it's embedded in us. Each one of us. We have our characters. We have good people. Not all of them are Marxists. Okay. So if we just find out the good in us. Okay. It's easy to get drunk, to use drugs, to prostitute and whatever. Okay. You have to survive. But to let also the good aspects in us to prevail. We all have gifts for something. If we cannot, if we are, if we can't find it now during the school, actually during the school years. You just want everyone discovers what some talent. Why not to go ahead with it? Why the teacher is jealous and this is these excuses, right? Why the narcissistic teacher is envious and will not give a chance to the talented person to the talented kid. To, because such thing existed. They always existed. But now knowing more about narcissism, you know, people get more, they're becoming more aware of their own qualities. And the, the, the thing that we all need is to just succeed, to succeed, not in making money by stealing someone else's ideas, for example. But to make money of your own work, of your own expression, of your own potential, when you realize that you're good in something, you're good in, in publishing, right? And you're doing good thing. You are happy. You are personally happy with yourself. You are, other people will see it, you know, they will, they will be encouraged just by, by looking at you as an example of your own success. Success is not to make a million dollars. Success is to do what you are good at. So this is my hope, but it's personal. It's personal and it's also narcissistic. It is, but it's healthy narcissism. But Lydia is saying, actually, the solution is with individuals. Right. This is a narcissistic thing to say. Narcissism, what is narcissism? And I did say that there is healthy narcissism. What is narcissism? Narcissism is when you give up on the world. When you say, I am the solution. I am the world. I should affect my destiny, my happiness. I, all the gifts and all the solutions are inside myself. Now this is not Lydia. This is Martin Luther in the 16th century. The big revolution of Protestantism was not the negation of Catholicism or the Vatican or the Pope. There was not a big revolution because there have been similar movements before. The big revolution was when Martin Luther said, the seat of the divine is in the individual. We don't need priests. We don't need churches. We don't need any of these apparatus or mechanism or institutions. Each human is divine. The seat of the divine is in the individual. And it is the individual's role to make a better world by following God's commandments and so on and so forth. And God will bless you as an individual. If you work hard, for example. This is known as the Protestant work ethic. If you work hard, God will choose you and bless you. And the very fact that you are rich proves that you are chosen by God, that you've been blessed by God. Protestantism is the prototypical individualism. In the 16th century, we transitioned from collectivism to individualism. Even the concept of copyright, you had to pay me to publish the book. Why? This is a new practice. It's less than 200 years old. Until the 18th century, there was no such thing as author. You published a book, everyone was copying it and distributing it and so on. They didn't have any obligation, even more, to identify the author. There was no individual. There's no individual. The concept of copyright and author is the individual. So, we have transitioned to individualism in the 16th century and we never looked back. And it only got worse and worse and worse. Collectivism suppressed the individual. But this is a misunderstanding, misapprehension. Collectivism, religion, for example, did not need to suppress the individual because there was no concept of individual. You defined yourself through your affiliation with a group. You did not exist alone. You were embedded in a family, in a community, in a clan, in a tribe, and ultimately in a nation. Ask any Japanese. So, collectivism, because today, proponents of individualism, the prophets of individualism, they say, actually, collectivism was bad because it did not allow the individual to express it himself. There was no need for the individual to express himself. There was no concept of self. The word self in psychology was first used at the beginning of the 20th century. That's very recent. There was no perception of self. In the 17th century, there was a book written about depression. 17th century. That's 400 years ago. A book written about depression. By Burton. The author's name was Burton. It's a book of well over 800 pages. You can't find the word self in the book. There's also something. I, me, mine, self, they're not in the book. It's new. It's totally new. I have so many questions now. I'm thinking, coming up with questions and losing it. I guess some people are listening to it right now and maybe, because I'm going to put subtitles and probably some people are thinking, but what is actually narcissism? What narcissistic personality disorder do to other people? What is the damages? What are the damages? And what are the characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder? I know you wrote about the nine characteristics, but if you have five of them, you could diagnose not yourself, but you could be diagnosed as this narcissistic personality disorder. But I also heard that it is changing now. And this book needs to be advised. That's what I heard also from you from the, from the videos. So what are the characteristics and what actually, what kind of damage they actually do to other people? Also for Lydia, I think I'm very curious about your dynamics, because you've been together for such a long time. And I've been with a narcissistic person and it was very, very difficult. And after just breaking up, I realized what, okay, I was there. I'm glad now I'm not there. I will cover the academic part and Lydia, Lydia will tell you how difficult it is to, and how long suffering she is with me. I'm a narcissist. I can't suffer. Academically speaking from the disciplines point of view. Narcissism is when you treat other people as objects. I think that's the best definition of narcissism, pathological narcissism. When you treat other people as objects, objects of gratification, instruments to obtain goals, et cetera, et cetera. When you can't empathize with other people in the sense that you don't see them as human, they are things. You think if I don't, you make, you make them things. Now this requires several behavioral traits. For example, exploitativeness, the tendency to exploit people, a lack of empathy. I mentioned inability to access positive emotions. Narcissists are capable only of negative emotions such as envy or rage, anger, or, you know, and so on and so forth. So we have nine, nine such criteria described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is a book used in the United States mainly for insurance purposes. And if you, if you meet five of these nine, then you can be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder. Of course, if you stop to think of it for a minute, you will see how nonsensical it is. Because if you meet criteria one, two, three, four, five, you are a narcissist. And if you meet criteria five, six, seven, eight, nine, you are a narcissist. But these two narcissists have nothing in common. One to five and five to nine, they're not the same people. And yet they are diagnosed with the same disorder. So this led to the development of an alternative model of narcissism, which will be the diagnostic landscape in the next edition and the sixth edition of the DSM. It is already incorporated in the ICD. ICD is International Classification of Diseases. It's a book published by the World Health Organization. And it codifies all the diseases of humanity, bodily and mental. And so it's much more advanced than the DSM. Also, it's much less influenced by money. Insurance companies and pharmaceutical industries have a huge effect on the DSM, not a good one. So in the profession, we take the ICD much more seriously than the DSM, although the DSM because of America's power, media power, the DSM is much more well known. Now, the alternative model is what we call a dimensional model. It says that narcissism is a spectrum. It's a dimension and that you could have varieties of narcissism, which are less pernicious, less problematic, more problematic, and so on and so forth. Narcissists maintain their identity or sense of identity and sense of self-worth by deriving input from other people. This is known as narcissistic supply. They are incapable of intimacy because they are not capable of perceiving other people as separate from them with their own needs and hopes and dreams and wishes and so on and so forth. They have problems with empathy. They have problems with aggression. They have problems with depression. And there are two types of narcissists. There is overt or grandiose narcissists. It's a narcissist whose self-perception and self-image is fantastic, inflated, unrealistic, not based on any real-life accomplishments. That's the overt grandiose narcissist. And we have another type known as covert or vulnerable or shy or fragile narcissists. That's a narcissist. Sorry? The victim's victim mentality, right? Yes. That kind of narcissist fails to obtain supply. It's a constant failure to obtain supply. It's known as collapse. So it's a form of collapsed narcissism. And consequently, he develops victim mentality. He becomes very passive aggressive. He's very cunning and scheming and manipulative. He's as disempathic, lacking in empathy as the overt or grandiose narcissist. But he often has something called pseudo-humility. He pretends to be humble, helpful, healer, saviour, rescuer. These are very dangerous types because they fake and imitate empathy. They pretend to love other people, to support them. And they actually then inflict damage. When they get close to you, when they feign intimacy, which is not there, then they inflict damage. The grandiose overt narcissist is a bit stupid. It's a kind of Donald Trump narcissist. In your face. That's who I am. I'm perfect. I'm amazing. I'm brilliant. I'm this. I'm that. And you're stupid. And you're a loser. I'm a winner. So the covert narcissist, you don't see him coming. He's like a snake in the grass. Yeah. What? I really don't like this. Most of the people are like that because they are unified. They, they, they didn't define themselves. If, uh, why, why to be sneaky? What is wrong with you that you and with the other? What, uh, what is, uh, what are you ashamed of? Like you left dreams and someone else is just in a, lives in a fantasy. It has like very easy life. Now, what was that go lucky thing? Happy go lucky. Happy go lucky. Fake it till you make it. You know, these are the Americanism. Okay. So people in people's nature is to envy because we all have to compare with the other and to know more about ourselves. It's, uh, what, uh, narcissists need is narcissistic supply. The others input. We also need others input. Right. We need to know. We exchange opinions. We communicate. We come up with some idea. We are, we realize that idea. Same does the narcissist. But, uh, uh, what is the difference that I will, I will make it for, for, to bend, uh, most of us, not only I to benefit, but many other people to benefit all the involved. Not so the narcissists. Narcists, they, they see everyone as a, as an object. It's their function to supply him with ideas. Uh, someone else's function to give him money. Someone else's money to invest in his business and nothing with no responsibility to get, uh, something in, in return. At least even thank you. They don't say it. They just withdraw. They vanish. And when, of course, uh, other people will also vanish. They gave part of them, uh, something, you know, was, uh, uh, produced or, and, and, uh, there were some, uh, money, you know, for everyone, but the narcissists took them all for himself. And he doesn't know what to do. These people with ideas with money, with they, they live and the narcissist fails. He will lose all the money. He doesn't know. He doesn't have the brains. How to use it. It is part of self-destruction. What I call it, uh, the, the dark side. We all have the dark side. Uh, you call it shadow. I discovered later, but, uh, the point in all these narcissists, narcissism thing is, uh, that, uh, narcissists think and they are actually convinced that they matter only. It's weird. We do. We do. Um, okay. We do. Okay. Uh, uh, so to, since he said this, you asked before, how can we are together? When she says this, that only he matters. I learned from my parents. Uh, I had an abusive mother. I'm not going to talk about it. She, uh, she was asking, you must do this. Have to do this. It's for family. It's for, for all of us to be more happy. Okay. So give me what do you want me to do? I will make it just to, to see your smile on the face to be satisfied and that, but then leave me alone. This is my narcissistic, uh, pattern that I learned. So, but with that, in time, I build boundaries. Uh, she was not fair for something. She was, uh, like a snake, right? Trying, you know, from the other door, but you will do also this and you will do also this, but, uh, I rejected her for many things. I withdraw. I was not talking to her for years, even though I was the manager. I was angry at her, but I did not abandon her. I did not, uh, I did not, uh, I was there for still keeping her, uh, uh, pleased because she did have some positive, uh, things. Uh, she had some, uh, good intentions. Not to me, of course, I will give, uh, I will supply her, but what she gets, she will give to others. So I sustained her image of a good mother, but she knew very well that she was not good to me. However, she heard it and, and that's it about her. That's the same dynamic that I learned from her that I am having with Sam. Okay. You are, you are the captain. You know the best. Okay. What, what is that that you want? I agree with it. I will please you, I will do it, but I will also enjoy that you will not, you just reject me, abandon me or, or whatever dismiss me, but I will insist that I will stay here. I will help you, but also you will help me when you have to. So it's, uh, it's, uh, uh, like a blackmail also. I'm not happy with that, but, but there is a relationship that it's fair transaction. Yeah. It's, uh, but transactional for good for both of us. Okay. That is because of my upbringing. I was good to everyone until today. I'm good with everyone. That is my, but when they cross the line, when I see the, the hint of not being fair and there is nothing I ask for favor, right? And there is nothing in return. That person is, you know, I can trust that person anymore. I can't rely on that person anymore. And that's it. What bones us is that he is honest, even brutal That is, that is the real bondage. It's not the trauma bond that I had from the trauma bond that I had. I learned something, but with him, I, I, uh, in, I implement the older knowledge that I had in the past, not only from home, but with many other people. So it's a good feeling to live with yourself knowing, being aware that, uh, snakes, that people provoke you for different reasons. And you should be smart to know where to engage and where whom to help. Is it for both of you? Is it for mutually beneficial? Yes. Is it mutually beneficial? So I think that malignant self love is that product of me and them. It's our only child, but we don't know. Yeah. So there are two types of, um, you said, uh, cerebral narcissists and somatic narcissists, cerebral, cerebral narcissists are very smart. I know such people here as well. And sometimes I think it's really pity sometimes because they're amazing. They really have a lot of knowledge, speak so many languages, but, um, they sometimes really act like a child, vulnerable child. And it is very hard to be with a child as an adult. So I guess that's, does it apply to also somatic narcissists? Yeah. Well, this, that's a long question. I will try to break it up. And then I would like to talk a bit about envy, shame and dissociation. This is a critical features of narcissists. When, when the child is exposed to trauma and abuse, the child has two options. He can merge with the abuser. This is a process known as identification, introjection, incorporation. So he can merge with the abuser. He can become one with the abuser. And this kind of child grows up to be a narcissist. The other option is to cater to the needs of the abuser, to please the abuser. This kind of child becomes dependent or a people please. When he grows, when he grows up, the child who becomes a narcissist, he, as I said, emerges of fuses with the abuser, but he's still suffering pain. He's still being punished. He's still being ignored or being violated. He needs to isolate himself from these impacts. And yet at the same time, he needs to be an abuser. So he constructs a God-like imaginary friend, a God-like imaginary friend known as the false self. And he creates the equivalent of a private religion. The false self is God-like. It's all knowing. It's all powerful. And it protects the child. It defends the child against the abuse of parental figures or caregivers. So when the child is beaten up or sexually molested or instrumentalized or parentified or whatever, it's not happening to the child. It's happening to the false self. This is a decoy mechanism. Decoy, like it's happening not to me. It's not happening to me. I'm not here. I'm not here. I'm not here as known as dissociation. It's happening to him, to this, to the false self. And then the child, because this is a God, the false self is a God. The child sacrifices himself to this God. This is human sacrifice, like in primitive religions. He sacrifices himself. He sacrifices his true self to this God. And by sacrificing himself to this God, he becomes one with his God. He becomes one from that moment on. All that's left is the false self, this imaginary friend, this piece of fiction. It's a story. It's a narrative. It's not real. The child itself vanishes forever. He can never be recovered. He's dead, zombified, if you wish. Now, the false self is Godlike. So it needs to be superior. It needs to be perfect. So the child asks itself, what am I good at? What am I good at? If I take my assets, my advantages, and leverage and develop them, invest in them, then I'm going to be perfect. Then I'm going to be superior. If I'm intelligent, and I study a lot, and I learn a lot, then I'm going to be superior to other people. I'm going to be almost perfect, perfect actually. I'm going to be a walking, talking, and psychopedia. So this is the cerebral narcissist. Other children are told they look good. Girls get attracted to them when they are teenagers, or boys get attracted to them when they are teenagers, and so on and so forth. And so they say, my asset, my advantage is my looks, my body. That's how I'm going to become superior. That's how I'm going to become perfect. So I'm going to exercise a lot. I'm going to lift weights. I'm going to body build. I'm going to have sexual conquests. I'm going to have sex all the time. It would confirm to me that I'm perfect, that I'm superior, that I'm irresistible. Yes? So the child makes a decision very early on, between ages four and six, makes a decision. These are my assets, and that's the way, that's the only way I can become superior and perfect. And they become cerebral or somatic, but there is no time constancy. When the cerebral fails, collapses for some reason. He becomes somatic. Oh, wow. And when the somatic fails for some reason, for example, he cannot get sexual partner for some reason, or he had an accident. He's disabled. So when the somatic fails, he tries to become cerebral, which is very funny. They look like clowns. He tries to become cerebral. Then he suddenly believes that he's a genius, he's a philosopher, he's a psychologist, he's, I don't know what. And you see these clumps of muscles online, who suddenly become public intellectuals. Because they have failed the somatics. And so you see all these bodybuilders and all these, you know, and they are online, and they pretend to be big intellectuals but they don't have the capacity. So it's very clownish. So this is to answer your question about somatic and cerebral. There's a dominant type and a recessive type, latent type. And when the dominant type fails, the other type takes over. And then flip-flop. It's a flip-flop situation. Separately from all this, I think it would be good to discuss envy, shame, and dissociation. There are three critical forces in last season. When the child is abused and traumatized, the child feels helpless and very ashamed of itself. When you fail to defend yourself, when you fail to stand up to yourself, when you're bullied all the time, you feel ashamed, don't you? It's a very shaming reaction. Failing generally. And this is the failure. You're failing to protect yourself. Your body, your mind, your soul, everything. It's a massive failure. There's another failure here. You're failing to become who you could have been. You're failing to realize your potential. You get stuck. You get stagnated. You remain a child forever. And yes, you're right. The average mental age is about two. Wow. So you're an adult. You watch adults around you. And you can't reach their level. It challenges your sense of perfection. It undermines your grandiosity and discreates a lot of shame and vulnerability and fragility. So shame is a critical function. And narcissism is compensatory. It compensates for the shame. If you feel inside that you're weak, you will pretend to be strong. If you feel that you're stupid, stupid, you will pretend to be a genius like me. So whatever you feel that you're ugly, you will go on a sexual conquest to prove to yourself that you're not ugly. Narcissism is totally compensatory. Now we know there was a big debate for 40 years. Now we come to accept this 100% compensatory, even in grandiose nostrils. So this is shame. So just to say, as the things in the environment change and people are becoming anxious, they're afraid of the future, they come with very bizarre ideas. What to do, who they are. So, you know, this is that stage. And then you compare with the others. You find out that something is wrong with you. So you also, your narcissistic defenses pop up. So it's a loop, you know, one goes into the other. Yeah, and this is known as relative positioning. I've come to it in a minute. The second thing is envy. Obviously, if you feel inferior, inferiority complex, you feel incomplete, you feel inadequate, you feel imperfect, you envy other people. You envy other people for their accomplishments, for their looks, for their wives and girlfriends or boyfriends, for their property, whatever. Envy is actually a diagnostic criteria in narcissism. It's one of the nine diagnostic criteria. Envy motivates not only covert narcissists, but also grandiose nostrils. And it is the twin of shame. This is an intolerable situation. How can you survive with constant shame and constant envy and the need to disguise them, camouflage them with behaviors and traits that are not fully yours? You know that you're acting. It's a lot of acting here. So how can you survive this situation? You forget. You simply delete. A lot of forgetting. And this is, this amnesia is known as dissociation. This is an enormous memory gaps. And because they have huge memory gaps, every situation that caused them shame, every situation where they were envious, every time they were criticized, every time someone disagreed with them, every time they thought they were being insulted, this is known as hyper vigilance, every, so every two minutes, they have to dissociate. They end up not remembering, this remembering 80% of their life. That's why they need someone next to them. Yes. That is my role. To rely. Not to rely. You might. To remember all the details of their lives. Yes. So that is exhausting. And not many women can tolerate that. It's a burden. It's a burden. This is part of something known as external regulation. Like the borderline, the narcissist hands over internal processes to his intimate partner. He expects her to act as his memory, as his narcissistic supply, as his, so she is, she becomes integrated in his mind as an external supplier. Exactly like internet service provider. So there's a history and there's a hard drive. Yes. Like external hybrid. It's an example. I, I, on one, there was a seminar in London. I said, I'm his external hard disk. So this is, this is dissociation. And that makes the situation even more unbearable. Because to justify, to explain to people the memory gaps, the narcissist creates confabulations. Confabulations are not lies. Confabulation. Well, they appear to be lies. They're not lies. Confabulations are stories that make sense. The narcissist, the narcissist says, I forgot the last five minutes. What could have happened? What is likely to have happened? What most probably has happened? What, what plausibly had happened? And then he creates a story and it becomes reality for him. He bridges the memory gaps. He bridges the memory gaps with many stories that he comes to believe our reality, even when they are contradicted by evidence. Just to sustain the false image. Continuity. Yes. And that we, I call it reframing. So there was a situation that didn't fit you, or you forgot that it happened. You remember some snippets, faults. And then you make your own story. Not, I mean you, like a narcissist. And they, well, but this happened. Wait a, so there, you can't, you can't change the mind of a narcissist. He, he believes that. So this, I saw how desperate they are to be them. To stabilize, to stabilize themselves identity that they are, that they are having control because they know, and they are aware very much so of their dark side. They call it these, these dark trials. The, the urges that they cannot control. And it's easy for them to flip. So the narcissist, I, they are so predictable when they flip. And when, and if they put you in the story, be sure to expect, to be blamed, to be accused, and even to be taken to court. They, they are so convinced in their narrative. It's unbelievable. Sorry to. No, no. When, when your life is 80% confabulation and 20% reality, then you live in a story. And this story is known as fantasy. It's a fantasy defense. But if you inhabit an alternative universe, it's known clinically as paracosin. If you inhabit a paracosin, an alternative universe which is comprised of 80% invention, invented thing and 20% reality, then your partner must join your universe. Because if your partner is 80% reality and you are 80% fantasy, you will not survive as a couple. There will be a lot of friction, a lot of debates, a lot of anger, a lot of, you're lying, you're not like, no, I'm not like this. I'm like, so your partner must make the choice to join the fantasy. And this is known as a shared fantasy. There is a process called chorus. If snapshotting, I will not go into all this, but she joins the fantasy in effect. Even if she thinks she had not joined the fantasy, even if she thinks she's embedded in reality, if she survives with the narcissist, she has joined his fantasy. Yeah. Period. So she has to lose herself as well. Yes. Part. Part. The part of reality testing. If she has to give up on her independent view of reality on the independent gauge of reality. Now, victims mistake this. They say it's gaslight. It's not gaslight. Gaslighting is intentional, goal oriented. Consequently, it is psychopathic. When the psychopath gaslights you, he knows what is reality and he knows that he's lying. He knows that he's manipulating. The narcissist believes his fantasy. He is the fantasy. He doesn't know that he's lying to you. He firmly believes that it's all true and real. When he promises you to marry you, the second time you meet, to marry you and have children with you, he is not future fakie. He is not lying to you in order to get you to bed to have sex with you. That's the psychopath. The narcissist really believes that you will get married and have children with you. Because he's in the fantasy. And he doesn't remember. So the next day, he may tell you, let's try it out for a few years and see how it goes. But yesterday you offered me marriage. And he doesn't remember. So he would confabulate. He would say you must have imagined it. You were drinking a lot. And then you produce a recording. You produce a recording on your smartphone where he says, I'm going to marry you and we are going to have three children. And you are debating the names of the children. And he would still deny it. He would say you took it out of context. That's true. I think there's an understanding among a lot of people, especially here because we don't have a lot of resources. I talk to a few people and then they say, oh, nurses, they are the people who deeply fall in love with themselves. They're the people who only love themselves. And this is, I think this is very wrong, according to your book. Actually, those are the people who have no idea how to love themselves. Therefore, they didn't know how to love others, right? It's even much worse. They don't have a son. They can't call themselves because they are selfless ironically. And most of the people who are saying that, they are reverting to more obvious type of nurses. I mean, the somatic one, because they want to be beautiful. Even there, there's nothing. I mean, most of these are referring to somatic. Narcissism is early childhood failure to develop self structures, including the ego. Narcissists don't have an ego. Yeah. They have super. They don't have an ego because they have a false self. So narcissism is about the failure to develop a self. There is no self love because narcissism is a huge reservoir of shame. Narcissism is a reaction to shame. There's self rejection, self-loathing, self-hatred, self-destructiveness. Narcissism is the exact opposite of self-love. The exact opposite of shame. And why they need someone to love them? It's actually that they are choosing empathic partners in life because they really love themselves. They care about themselves. They are a normal person. And the jealousy and envy that they can't do it to themselves. They just take it as it is from the other. They consume the other. They consume, they see what the other does, how he is taking care of himself, herself in this. They copy it. So when you have an example of someone who loves yourself, every time you want, you miss it. Whenever a narcissist will feel self-destructive, self-hatred, they go to that source and they are joyful again, wonderful again, accepted, they belong. So they compensate with the other emotions because they don't have, they can't relate to positive emotions. So many women will say that the narcissist drained them. Emotionally, they became dead. They died. And they call them vampires. They suck the life out of them. So these are just how people express such dynamic. And to answer your question. And this is actually where, why? What is the real reason of envious narcissists? Because they know they can't do it. Because they don't have emotions. That is how come they have. I will destroy the other just not to irritate me, to remind me that I am emotionless. And to answer your question, the narcissist cannot love anyone. And you also can never love a narcissist. I will explain the second part. And then I will talk about the first part. This would be a big surprise to many victims. When I say you can never love a narcissist. It's a big surprise, but I will explain why. First of all, the narcissist is not real. There's nobody there. It's an absence pretending to be a presence. The narcissist does not exist. It's a void. It's a black hole. You can never love something. And if you love what you think is the narcissist, what you are in love with is an idealized image of an intimate partner that you created in your own mind. It's not the narcissist. You fell in love with a fake hero, a fiction character. That's the first reason. There's an even bigger reason to seduce you and lure you and captivate you and get you addicted. What the narcissist does, he puts a mirror to you. A mirror. And in the mirror, you see your idealized self. In the mirror, you are perfect. You're amazingly intelligent. You're irresistible. You're drop dead gorgeous. You're unique. You are incredible. You're unprecedented in the mirror. What do you fall in love with? You fall in love with your idealized image in the narcissist's mirror. You fall in love with yourself through the narcissist gaze. The narcissist provokes in you your own narcissism. You develop a narcissistic love for yourself. That's why it's addictive. The narcissist has a monopoly on this mirror. He is the only one with this mirror. So you think he's the only one with this mirror. If it takes it away from you, suddenly you have to face the fact that you are not perfect, that you have shortcomings and failings and, you know, and who wants to face this after having experienced perfection. It's a drug. It's a drug. Actually, that's your validation. Yes. How you see yourself in his eyes is your narcissistic supply. Yes. Because we all doubt that we're never good enough. How we look, how we perform. That's why we're all narcissists. Yeah, narcissistic. That is the health in our system because it motivates us to change our mind and so on, so forth, to regulate emotions. But of course, if you were raised in a dysfunctional family where you did not receive a lot of love, you were criticized all the time. So you develop what we call a bed object. You feel that you are unworthy, inadequate, ugly, stupid, because your mother told you so, for example. This kind of person is much more vulnerable, much more susceptible to the whole of mirror effect. Yes. This kind of person, when she sees herself in the mirror, she is suddenly not ugly, not stupid, not unworthy, not inadequate, superior, amazing. She cannot resist this. That's why borderlines, for example, are very attracted to narcissists. That's a mechanism of bias. That's the trauma going to be. By the way, half of all narcissists are women. So when I say he is a she and so on. Today, they equal themselves. It's not 70 men, but now they're. So there's, I have some question came up. So this mirroring, so when you spend a lot of time with the narcissistic person, I forgot the word, the term, but contagious narcissists, you become a part of it. And actually you become kind of a narcissistic, or you become the fully narcissistic, or you become a kind of narcissist, but not really. How does it work? However, you accepted by that, you accepted the shared fantasy. Yes. That's the thing. That's true. People who are exposed to narcissists suffer trauma. Yeah, this is not an acute trauma. The trauma known as PTSD. It's not. It's another type of trauma known as complex trauma. CPTS. Now. People with CPTSD and all everyone was exposed to narcissists, intimate partner, friend, family, neighbor, priest, doctor, medical doctor, everyone exposed to narcissists. Even by the way, sometimes within a few minutes, suffers trauma. It could be mini, mini, mini trauma. Then he would just feel uncomfortable after meeting the narcissists. You would feel disgusted. You would feel uncomfortable. You would feel ill at ease. You're the one to watch yourself. You will feel like you're dirty. Something bad happened here. I met some entity. It's not human. I don't know why. You feel bad. And we call this ego distance. So even a short exposure to narcissists causes trauma. And of course, very long exposure causes massive complex trauma. Now, complex trauma involves elements, psychological elements, psychopathological elements from borderline personality disorder. So it involves emotional dysregulation. Your emotions are so strong that they overwhelm you. You're incapable of managing your emotions. They come, they come suddenly. They take over you. You freeze. This is known as startle response. So your emotions are stronger than you. This is known as emotional dysregulation. This element is borrowed from borderline. You become narcissistic in the sense that your empathy goes down. Your ability to empathize goes down. You become very defensive, arrogant, more arrogant. Your self-perception and self-image become a lot less realistic, more inflated, more grandiose. These are all narcissistic defenses. You become dissociative. You begin to forget things a lot. Deny. Or deny things, but also forget. Simply forget. So this is dissociative. What is forgetting things? Because this is really resonating with me, in a way. You have to forget things. It's a narcissistic defense. The narcissist renders you, converts you into a cluster B basket. You become partly borderline, partly narcissistic, and partly psychopath. So you will become vengeful, for example. You become vindictive. You become violent, or at least externally aggressive. You will, you will become defiant. You will become contrumacious, rejecting authority. All these are features of complex trauma. To the point that many scholars, including the woman who coined, we invented, we discovered complex trauma to determine many scholars, myself included, we propose to consider all cluster B personality disorders as post traumatic conditions with emotional dysregulation. Not as personality disorder. So the victims then, depending on the exposure, depending on the type of narcissists, covert narcissists have much worse effect than overt, because they create confusion, disorientation. So depending on many factors, the effects can last a few months, but it's common for the effects to last many years. Five years, six years. Okay, that's a good news. And another thing is, just with your permission, another thing very important, the narcissist implants in your head, puts in your head a voice. This process is known as introjection. You interject the narcissist. There is a voice in your head that represents the narcissist. There's an internal object, which is the representation of the narcissist in your mind. And the narcissist uses something called entraining. Entraining is simply verbal abuse that keeps repeating itself over and over until you're essentially brainwashed. Yeah. And then there is this voice of the narcissist. And even when he's dead, physically dead, or gone, you're broke out. You never say, you're not contact. You got married, remarried, and we have six children. His voice is inside your head. And the problem is this. The narcissist's voice inside your head, the narcissist is your enemy. Remember, because you broke up with him. You are now the enemy. You are a secretary of him. He wants you dead. He wants you finished. He wants you imprisoned. He wants you whatever. So the narcissist's voice inside your head is an enemy voice. And it collaborates with all the other enemy voices in your head. It creates a coalition. So if your mother was an enemy, for example, the narcissist's voice would collaborate with your mother's voice. And they would create a coalition, interjecting into objective coalition. And these voices will attack you together. So when you hear the narcissist's voice in your mind, at the same time, you will hear your mother telling you, he is right. He is right about you. So if the narcissist tells you, for example, you're so naive, you're such a people pleaser, you're so stupid. Suddenly there will be a second voice, which is essentially your mother's voice. Who will tell you, you see, I told you the same. You see, I'm right? This is the power of the narcissist. So in effect, we all have interjects. And we remember from our childhood, because we had to respond to mama's needs, to what the mother will say. Don't go there. Don't do this. Don't behave like this. Don't cross the street without whatever. All the people, all the people you met in your life. Significantly. Importantly. All the people you met and you learned something from them that helped you to create your identity. They are your interjects for life, even though they are dead. This is who you really are. So you are defined by other people in your developing years and people that you met when you were experiencing mostly trauma. Mostly trauma because that is hard to overcome. So if you don't know how to self-care when you're in pain, what you should do, in which narrative actually would sustain your identity, your character that you chose before, you will not feel a victim to that extent. You will be more defined as a person. So when the narcissist will come in your environment, you have to meet. And you have sense for you. Already you develop sense of who you are. Then it would, when you will meet the narcissist, charming, whatever, or overt, you will ask yourself, what's wrong? These are the red flags. What women are talking. But when you will meet a psychopath, you don't have to exchange your words. If your senses are in balance, tuned with your emotions, with your reasoning, with your personality. When you will meet a psychopath, you want to run. You don't need to say a word. You will feel fear. You will be afraid. And that's why Sam said you sweat and you want to take a shower after that, like you are dirty. Many people experience that. And what I'm saying to my clients, I'm a counselor for CPTSD, is to go back to their own senses. Senses. And to try to experience many more other things. And to reconnect them, to reframe them, with the introjet, the experiences that they had before. So they will, you know, like negate the positive experiences today will negate the back introjects from before. So in this way, we call it, I call it reframing. It's a pretty good new start. And many, because you said that you feel some resonance, that's why I'm giving you this. Many people should just be, from time to time, remind themselves, okay, you are living with a narcissistic husband. You know, it is expected from him. I know now everyone, what Sam said in the beginning, they have a definition, a language, right? They can define. And they will know with whom they are dealing and how to protect themselves. We all have that power, because the life in us pushes us to just survive. And you will survive a narcissist, as simple as that. No need to complicate things, no need to go, you know, to make a lot of drama, because this border is borderline job, not the normal persons or victims. No victim says that he's suffering. He is saying, he said to you, my long, or he introduces me like long suffering wife. I don't see it as I'm suffering. I'm learning from it. I'm thankful because I discover my dark side. I know what I'm made of. So who gets the best part of the cake? Let's share it. And again, it's a question of calculus. So mathematical question. If the vast majority of introverts inside your head are negative, the narcissist would have a much easier job of taking over you. And you will have a much more difficult job of getting rid of his voice in your mind, because he would have many more allies inside your mind. But if you're upbringing and childhood and later life, majority of the voices inside your head are loving and caring and supportive and helpful, then the narcissist would have a much more difficult job to take over you. You will probably get rid of a narcissist much earlier. And the narcissist's voice inside your mind will be silenced by the others, especially by your authentic voice. Every human being has a single voice, which is that person. Not mother, not father, not family, not friends. That person's voice is known as the authentic voice. So it depends. Narcissists who target damaged and broken women do it for a purpose. They're much easier to convert. Right, of course. Much easier to convert and much easier to over. Even after there's a breakup, you know, it's much easier to reacquire them, to get them back. Because the voice is there. The Trojan horse is inside the mind. It's there, it's working. Okay, I have also, okay, I'll ask you three questions. Because before I forget. So the second grade supply or first grade supply and who really becomes first grade and who becomes second grade, first of all. And second, I read a lot on your book and listen that narcissism never heals, which is quite sad. But then now you said this contagious narcissist people can hear lots of years or a few months, which is a good news. And the third question is, what is the difference, really difference between psychopathic person and narcissists? I think there's a difference between empathy because I recall you talked about cold empathy, narcissistic people have some sort of empathy called cold empathy, but psychopaths have no empathy at all. Is this true? No, I'll start with the last question. Both narcissists and psychopaths have cold empathy. Both narcissists and psychopaths have cold empathy. The difference between narcissists and psychopaths is that psychopaths are goal oriented and the goal could be sex, money, power, access, luxury life, whatever. The narcissist is not goal oriented. His only goal is narcissistic supply. So the narcissist is a junkie. The psychopath is an operative, functional entity that maximizes or optimizes outcomes. The narcissist is a junkie and he's after supply. So therefore the psychopath is not dependent on other people. He is ironically not pro-social and communal as the narcissist. The narcissist depends on other people for narcissistic supply. So he must work with other people. He must please other people. He must somehow interact with other people. He suffers. He is integrated with other people. He hates other people. He holds other people in contempt because he's God-like and superior. But unfortunately he's dependent on other people for narcissistic supply. The psychopath is not. The psychopath very often is a loner, a lone wolf. He doesn't care about other people because there's nothing they can give him except for example money. So he doesn't care what they think about him. He doesn't even supply either. Plus many of the features of narcissism do not exist in psychopathy. Online there are many self-styled experts. It's a catastrophic phenomenon. They are spreading misinformation left, right and center. It's a disaster. And some of these experts have academic degrees. Some of them are even psychologists, but they are not experts on narcissism. So some of these so-called experts are saying that all psychopaths are narcissists. That is rank nonsense. Only a small percentage of psychopaths are also narcissists. The overwhelming majority of psychopaths are not. They are grandiose, but they are not narcissists. So no dependency on other people. And the psychological composition or landscape of narcissism is not the same like psychopaths. For example, psychopaths don't have dissociation. Don't engage in fantasies. Do not have the same kind of shared fantasy like the narcissists. The differences are huge. I would even say that psychopathy should not be a mental health issue. Should not be defined as a clinical entity. A psychopath is simply someone who refuses to play by the rules. Refuses to play by the rules and doesn't care about other people. But he recognizes, for example, that other people are external to him. Not like the narcissists. He is firmly embedded in reality. Psychopathy is very grounded in reality. Narcissist is not. Psychopaths wouldn't care less what you think about him. Narcissists would fall apart if you don't give him supply. These are critical differences. So I don't think psychopathy is wrongly defined as a mental health issue. It's a social problem. Not a mental health problem. And so this is what regards to your first question. In my early work, I suggested that not all supplies the same. Depends who is the source of narcissistic supply. If I get a compliment from Albert Einstein, it's not the same if I get a compliment from my neighbor, obviously. If Einstein says you're a genius or my neighbor says I'm a genius, it's not the same. It doesn't have the same impact. It doesn't last as long. So I suggested that there are grades of narcissism. I also suggested that there is fake supply. Fake supply is when you pretend to give me supply, but I realized that you are trying to play me, to gain me, to deceive me, to manipulate me. You're giving me supply to manipulate. This is fake supply. There is no grade supply that comes from idiots and I don't know what. It means nothing to me. On the contrary, it may even insult me. So there's negative supply. Negative supply is something that looks like supply. Sounds like supply, but actually causes me narcissistic injury. So there's a whole theory of supply. It's very detailed. I forgot what was the second question, which proves that I'm not a genius. Do they heal? So they never heal? Oh, healing. True. The victims of narcissistic abuse do not become narcissists. Everyone has narcissistic defenses. Every human being alive and many human beings dead have narcissistic defenses. So the narcissist triggers your narcissistic defenses. The narcissist also provokes psychopathic behaviors. And the narcissist distracts you emotionally. So you look a lot like a borderline, but it doesn't mean to become a borderline or to become a narcissist or to become a psychopath. CPTSD is transitory. And that's the difference between CPTSD and borderline personality disorder. That's why it is nonsense. Again, self-styled experts online are saying CPTSD is borderline. No, it's not. Borderline is lifelong. It ameliorates. It's mitigated in the patient's 40s. When the patient is 40, 45, borderline goes down. It's lifelong. It starts at age 12. CPTSD is always transient. It lasts a few months, a few years in extreme cases, and then it disappears. It reverses completely. It's very good news. Yeah, it is. Prognosis is very good. So will narcissists ever heal? No. Narcissism is not a new fashion. You can take off your clothes. Narcissistic personality disorder is the personality. This is who the narcissist is. That's the essence of the narcissist. If you take away the narcissistic personality disorder, nothing is left behind. There's also nothing to work with a patient that is outside the disorder. That's why the DSM says that narcissistic personality disorder is all pervasive. It permeates everything, every emotion, every cognition, every effect, every field of functioning, every area of life, every behavior, every trait, every reaction, every everything is affected and defined by pathological narcissism. There's no way to take it away because then there would be no patient left. So no, narcissism cannot be healed. What can be done is to modify some abrasive and antisocial behaviors of the narcissist, to teach the narcissist, to be more socially acceptable, to sublimate, to convert some things into socially acceptable behaviors and so on and so forth. Even then, it's very short-term effect. You work with the narcissist for three years and you are very happy and you become a narcissist yourself. I healed that narcissist. He now knows how to behave in society. He's not insulting people, he's not exploiting people, he's not manipulating people, he's not abusing people. Wonderful. In essence, he's no longer a narcissist. I modified all these behaviors and if you're lucky, this lasts for six months or until the narcissist is stressed or until he thinks that you've insulted him. It's nonsense. It's simply nonsense. There's no way to change a narcissist and victims would do well to stop with malignant optimism and what Shadow the Angel is, a narcissist on Instagram, calls pathological home. They would do well to get rid of this. It's a take it or leave it. Take it or leave it. That's the narcissist forever. You want to take it? Take it with your eyes open, build your defenses, enhance your positive interjects, put up a firewall and survive next to the narcissist, benefiting from his good sides because, for example, some narcissists are intelligent and can teach you a few things. Some are fun. But don't tell yourself, I'm going to transform the narcissist with my love. I'm going to heal. I'm going to heal his inner child and his wounds. This is grandiose. This is grandiose to think that you could have any impact on the narcissist where tens of thousands of scholars and therapists have failed to think that you would be the one. This is grandiose. You can change it. The last question, because I set my time and I can see I have 10 minutes left. I feel like we can talk more on this subject. Maybe if you agree, maybe we could talk another time. Possibly, yes. Thank you. How do we prevent our children to become narcissists in the future? That's a little bit. Okay. I had my own problems. I wanted to resolve. I went into child psychology much deeper. And there was a summit of resilience. What was important not to be more resilient, resilient to narcissists, resilient to psychopaths, resilient is simple. To learn children should be encouraged to learn at all times. Their parents should be aware. What are their expectations of the child and not to enforce them, impose them in effect, when I face parents, I tell them, look, you are both narcissistic. We all are. But if I will know what is your narcissistic trait, I will tell you how not to express it to your child. Awareness of narcissism by both parents, defining the traits and influences on their children. So they will protect the child of pain, of emotional pain and to let the child, to encourage the child to experience more and more things by explaining at the same time what is going on there. So if this is a cup, this is a cup made of this, the smallest detail, just for the child to get first the orientation of the environment. So to recognize the objects, to recognize the environment, so they can have their self of being capable of sustaining themselves, to be more, to be aware, just get to teach the child to self-care, to be more aware of the environment. What was the boundaries? So just a second, this is the first stage between two, four, five years. The boundaries they will, what he mentioned, when the child after two years will start to be exposed to other, to their fears, they are going into the world, they will have to socialize. So the parents should enforce, I mean, should make it, you know, more pleasurable social gaining to allow their friends with their children to come to them, they will go to them, you know, to meet, to have some times together to be more happy, to make why interesting things. As I witnessed and as I see, they take their mobiles, they put cartoons, now you see it. Children should be engaged in the conversation, never mind if it is tough or not, if they will not understand and if they will ask the parent to explain, yes, the parent to be, to explain it, not to spare the child of being hurt. Because this is the way how the child will experience what is hurt, will learn what is hurt. Then the mother should tell the child this is how you will protect whenever you will see that someone a child with a stone in the hand. You don't stand, you don't ask what is his attention. You will just put yourself out of the way, of his way. You understand, these are the things that the mother, mother, because the child has most confidence in the mother, the child knows that the mother will never abandon her, him. Then when the child trusts the mother first, actually trusts anyone who cares. But the mother should also make that distinction to make that distinction. Not to show the child that he cannot the child should not trust the guy with the stone in the head. You understand? To show the differences. Mother's role, father's role to teach the child in the formative years to get a sense to develop the senses from the environment when the child will enter the second phase when we'll start to socialize, we'll be ready to enable to make the difference what is good, what is right. The child will be more have more trust, confidence the self-esteem will be good enough. And also in this age when they are socializing it's very narcissistic treat, but if they are not narcissistic they will not see what they are made of that they are very competitive. So the mother should the parents should regulate the competitiveness. That doesn't mean if the guy has some toy that they should buy to their children they should say but he likes it. Why would you like to have that? So there are ways of doing that, but for a child not to become narcissistic later is to teach him how to care of himself or herself with the emotionally to enable the child to connect with others because narcissists don't connect with anyone because that is also part of the environment not only the object but also the people. And how to be fair in effect? Yes the child should be provoked. They see when with in social media there are fights and so on but for yourself I will teach you how to fight you know it's not like okay you should not fight the parents should teach the child how to preserve what they think of them that was validated by the parents and the others until then so it's ever changing Parenting is complicated though by social media the online environment social media are constructed around narcissistic traits social media encourage shame by comparing yourself to others social media encourage envy of course with likes and so on and so forth social media encourage grandiosity so there is a problem with exposure to the online world which complicates parenting even good parenting it almost I would say impossible suicides among young people have increased by 48% in the last decade 48% these are the children of the transitional generation this number is nothing compared to the following numbers depression is increased by 300% anxiety is increased by 500% among young people what's happening to the world I think we have relegated the role of parenting to technology companies starting with television long before internet long before internet mothers used to put children in front of television that's true the TV raises the children now the computer raises the children well okay so we have only two minutes because I set the timing I think it ends so so thank you so much I also have a lot of new information just talking to you aside from the books and I really would like to talk to both of you again let me know if you have time you can also arrange you can also arrange if you wish you can arrange a public podcast so you can invite people to a place where you can project it on a screen yeah I could give a lecture for example something like that and they could ask questions the audience can ask questions so it's done in many countries you can just put many people in a hall a lecture hall and a screen and project the image on a screen so today that's the adventure we're here and thank you so much and then let's talk again and the opening of the book is on 13 next Wednesday and I'll send you guys next week I'll go to the place thank you very much thank you thank you bye for now