 In recent traditions of Sherlock Holmes on television, he describes himself as a high-functioning sociopath. Well, maybe he is, but he is definitely not a psychologist. Because Sherlock Holmes, if anything, is a schizoid narcissist, exactly like Hercules Poirot, Agatha Christie's Poirot. It raises an interesting question, which is not the topic of this video. Why many fiction detectives are schizoid, they avoid social contact, they are sexless, both Holmes and Poirot, do not engage in sex and other dirty things? And why all of them are megalomaniacal, very narcissistic grandiose? It's interesting because grandiosity is a cognitive deficit. It impairs reality testing. It makes you a bad detective, not a good one. Intelligence compensates to some extent for grandiosity, but grandiosity is much stronger. It's a substantial ego defense, and so it clouds your view of reality. How can Holmes or Poirot do good detective work when they can't see reality face-to-face? When they are separated from reality by a firewall, a cognitive bias is quite the only. Both Sherlock Holmes and Poirot are faintly sadistic. You can see this usually towards the end of the story or the novel when they confront the hapless criminals they had just captured. And then they engage in a ritual of torturing these misfits to the point of near suicide, and they delight in it. This glee, they gloat and they push all the buttons and thrust fingers into all the gaping wounds in the criminals' makeup. So both of them are faintly sadistic, but they cloak their sadism. They don't appear to be sadistic, because they disguise their sadism as moral uprightness. Their sadism is pro-social. The sadism works, is leveraged at the service of apprehending antisocial characters, psychopaths usually. Which leads to the next question. If Sherlock Holmes and Poirot are schizoid, narcissists, probably sadists, what sets them apart from other schizoids, narcissists and sadists? It seems that if you work in the best interests of society, if you conform to society's expectations and morals and values, it's okay to be a narcissist. Even a sadist, some people deserve to be tortured, is the message. But if you reserve your schizoid, antisocial, histrionic, narcissistic features, traits and behaviors to other settings, for example interpersonal relationships or the workplace, this is antisocial, this is not pro-social, this is not communal. Negative energy, negative personality types are okay if they serve society well. Take them out of context, remove them from society's grip and judgment and they become wholly negative. So it's okay to kill someone as long as you're a soldier, it's okay to torture someone sadistically as long as you're a detective and it's okay to avoid society, company and sex because you're intelligent and you're helping victims and the justice system. So it seems that personality disorders are what we call culture-bound diagnosis. In other words, they critically depend on the specific culture, on a specific society, in a specific period in history. Now that's not a clinical entity. Tuberculosis, COVID-19, cancer and diabetes, they don't depend on which period in history you live in. They don't depend on the expectations and values and edicts and mores and strictures and rules of society, the society you're part of. They don't depend on your culture, they don't depend on your personal history, mental history. So it seems that these diagnosis are not the equivalent of diseases in medicine. Indeed, there's a growing group of scholars, ever since the late 90s I would say, a great group of scholars who suggest that so-called personality disorders are actually post-traumatic dissociated self-states. Whenever a person, especially in early childhood, undergoes extreme abuse and trauma, he splits apart. The child breaks apart and creates several selves. One of these selves can be the false self, in which case the child becomes a narcissist. Another self could be a psychopathic self, and we will discuss the psychopathic self extensively. But they're all self-states. Personality disorders are intended, they are mechanisms, they are devices, fictional devices, intended to paper over discontinuities in the personality. So a traumatized person, a person who had been traumatized in childhood, a person who had been abused in childhood, whose boundaries have been repeatedly breached, a person who has been parentified, a person who has been isolated from the friction, from friction with reality, which fosters growth, personal growth and development. This kind of person is going to be discontinuous. He's going to have several fragments of self without any glue holding them together, without any bridges. And these fragments of self, they are going to either compete, in which case we have dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder. Or sometimes these fragments allocate functions and roles to themselves. So there is one fragment which does this and that. And another fragment has a different function. And another fragment has a different role. And another fragment comes out under specific circumstances. And another fragment deals with people. And another fragment avoids people, etc., etc. So there's a division of labor between the fragments of the self, the post-traumatic self. There's a division of labor or a state of civil war. These are the two possible states after trauma. Now, psychopathy is a self state. It's one such fragment of a self that had not constellated. Jung calls the process of coalescing, of coming together, of creating an integrated self. He calls this process constellating or constellation. When the self is not constellated, usually because of trauma, or because of abuse, or because of some other disruption, life circumstances, for example, severe illness in childhood. So when the self is not constellated, it remains fractured and fragmented. It's like a bomb or a grenade or a mortar exploded inside the self. And now you see bits and pieces of the self all over the place. And psychopathy is one of these fragments, one of these fragments of self. It is a protective ego resource in several other disorders. What do I mean by that? When a post-traumatic person, a person who had been exposed to trauma and abuse in early childhood, when a post-traumatic person experiences stress, extreme stress, that taxes all his capacities, that puts him to a test, a stress that threatens his integrity, a threat as stressed that is about to push him to the brink and over the edge. When a post-traumatic person is faced with such stress, sometimes he calls forth, he hails, he asks this psychopathic fragment to come out and to protect him. Psychopathic fragment is there to protect the fragile, vulnerable, broken, damaged individual from further damage, from completely losing it, from disintegrating, in other words, from psychosis. Psychopathy is a protective ego resource and its main role is to avoid psychosis or psychotic disorder. You can see this in, for example, borderline personality disorder. I have a video, The Borderline Woman as a Secondary Psychopath. I recommend that you watch it. This is the current state of knowledge. We are increasingly reconceiving of borderline as a constellation, as a galaxy of self-states, one of which is a secondary psychopath. The secondary psychopath is distinct from a primary psychopath, has access to empathy and to emotions. A primary psychopath has no empathy and has no emotions, at least not positive emotions. The borderline, when in a state of secondary psychopathy, still has access, still maintains access to her empathy and to her emotions, but she is a psychopath. She is defiant, contumacious, defies authority, has no impulse control, is reckless, doesn't care about the consequences of her actions on herself and on others, is impulsive. So, when the borderline is confronted with extreme stress, she becomes a secondary psychopath. She evokes, she provokes, she brings to the surface her psychopathic fragment. Same with narcissism, same with the narcissist, same with histrionic person, same with a paranoid person, etc. A bit later, we will discuss the specific role of the psychopath fragment, the psychopath self-state in the various personality disorders. But before we go there, I would like to read to you an excerpt from an excellent article by Philip Bromberg. Philip Bromberg wrote an article titled, multiple self-states, the relational mind and dissociation, a psychoanalytic perspective. And I would like to read to you a brief segment which sort of summarizes everything I've said until now. He says, I propose that personality disorder might usefully be defined as a characterological outcome of the inordinate use of dissociation in the schematization of self-other mental representation and that independent of type, narcissistic, schizoid, borderline, paranoid, it reflects a mental structure organized in part as a proactive protection against the potential repetition of early trauma. Thus, the distinctive personality traits of each type of personality disorder are embodied within a mental structure that allows each trait to be always on call for the trauma that is seen as forthcoming and inevitable. All personality disorders therefore entail egocintonic dissociation. Each type of personality disorder is a dynamically on alert configuration of dissociated states of consciousness that regulates psychological survival in terms of its own concretized blend of characteristics. Within each type of personality disorder certain self-states hold the traumatic experience and the traumatic effect. So there are self-states where the trauma resides. They are like sealed containers, you know like nuclear waste, they are like sealed containers, lead containers and the trauma and the emotions and the effect that went with the trauma originally, they are sealed in these dissociated containers. But these dissociated containers are self-states. They are almost complete personalities because they have cognitions, they have emotions and they have the memory and they have the experience all of them in the same container. They are sliced off, they are separated but they are self-states. So one group of self-states maintains the memory of the trauma and the emotions attendant upon the trauma. And what about the other self-states? Well, he says certain self-states hold the traumatic experience and the traumatic effect. Other self-states hold the particular ego resources that one proved effective in dealing with the original trauma and two ensured that the pain will never recur, never happen again. And then he gives a list of such self-states. Hypervigilance, acquiescence, paranoid suspiciousness, manipulativeness, deceptiveness, seductiveness, psychopathy, intimidation, guilt induction, self-sufficiency, insularity, withdrawal into fantasy, pseudo maturity, conformity, amnesia, depersonalization, out-of-body experiences, trans-states, compulsivity, substance abuse, etc. Psychopathy is a self-state that is at the service of the ego or other fragments of the self in a post-traumatized person. The person experiences trauma, the first thing they do, especially in early childhood, they take the trauma and they seal it off. And then they develop a series of selves, multiple, in order to cope both with the trauma inside and with potential trauma in the future. Now, what happens when people who had been exposed to trauma, people who suffer from PTSD, people who suffer from complex trauma, CPTSD, or just people who had been traumatized? What happens to these people? When they are re-exposed to intolerable stress, when they are about to be re-traumatized? If they don't have any defenses, if they don't have a personality disorder, if they don't have a psychopathic fragment, a narcissistic fragment, a schizoid fragment, if they don't have self-states, which we call, in my view also, erroneously, personality disorders, if this kind of person doesn't have dissociated self-states, which he can call upon to isolate him from the impending, looming trauma, which he can call upon to protect him, to firewall him, to reframe what's happening as not trauma. If he doesn't have these resources, this kind of person undergoes decompensation. Decompensation means that all the defenses, the psychological defense mechanisms, are disabled, inactivated, and that includes any modicum of grandiosity, any fantasy, splitting, projection, anything and everything, simply stops. The person finds himself suddenly defenseless, the defenses crumble. Let's repeat the sequence. You have been traumatized as a child. You took the trauma, you sealed it together with the memories and the emotions. But then there are two developmental paths. Either you develop a series of self-states which are at your disposal in case of future trauma, and this is what we call personality disorders, or you don't develop these self-states. You remain actually relatively healthy. You don't have a personality disorder. But what you do have, what you do have, is extreme vulnerability to future trauma and retraumatization, because self-states, personality disorders are protections against future trauma, and you don't have these protections. Should you be exposed to future trauma, future stress, rejection, humiliation, abandonment, divorce, death in the family, whatever, should you be exposed to something which you would find intolerable and unbearable, you are very likely to decompensate. And decompensation means that all your other defenses, healthy, normal, common defenses are disabled. This could lead you inexorably to extreme behaviors known as acting out or even to suicide. Now, depending on the severity of the trauma, usually, luckily for everyone involved, when the trauma is severe enough in childhood, most people, the overwhelming vast majority of early childhood trauma victims develop personality disorders. They develop these protective self-states. So they can develop any kind of protective self-state. They can develop an narcissistic self-state, a psychopathic self-state, but most victims of early childhood trauma and abuse develop multiple self-states. And these self-states wait to be activated, wait to be called upon. They are at the disposal of the individual just in case, and their main role is isolation, protection, mitigation, anxiety reduction, restoring inner equilibrium and homeostasis and calm, restoring functionality. But what do they protect from? I mentioned stress, I mentioned future trauma, but that's very general. What do I mean by that? Well, take, for example, someone with a narcissistic self-state, a narcissistic fragment of the fractured self. So this kind of person had been exposed to early childhood abuse. Her self did not coalesce, did not constantly, did not integrate, so she doesn't have a self actually. And instead she has a grandiose narcissistic fragment and let's say a psychopathic fragment. And whenever she comes across stressful situations, rejection, humiliation, abandonment and so on, she calls forth, she evokes, she wakes up the relevant fragment, narcissistic or psychopathic. And so in the case of narcissism, such self-state will come to the surface and take over. In the case of narcissistic injury, and of course in the case of mortification. Now because a person who had been traumatized once, you know once bitten twice shy, a person who had been traumatized once anticipates trauma, misinterprets very often, many things as traumatic, projects trauma, reframes reality as traumatic, trauma becomes an organizing principle, an explanatory principle. Trauma makes sense of his life, of himself and of the world, so he's likely to see trauma everywhere, and this is called hypervigilance. Narcissists are prone to narcissistic injuries and in very extreme cases they undergo a process called mortification, which is the mother of all decompensations. In the case of mortification, not only the psychological defense mechanisms are disabled and inactivated, but all the self-fragments, for example the false self, are disabled as well. So a narcissist would be very hypervigilant not to reach this state, and whenever he gets in contact with his trauma traces, with the inner container, the sealed container with the previous trauma, whenever his buttons are pushed, whenever he anticipates something injurious, something wounding, something painful, some hurt, some risk, this kind of narcissists would tend to become psychopathic, it would bring forth the psychopathic fragment. And this is what we call malignant narcissists or psychopathic narcissists, we'll come to it a bit later. Why? Why does a narcissist do this? Because the trauma, the original trauma of the narcissist had been so extensive, so massive, so all-pervasive, so cellular in a way, a trauma that permeates his every ventricle, his every cell, his every neuron in his brain. The narcissist is his trauma, that he has to repress everything connected to the trauma, for example he has to repress all his positive emotions, the trauma was caused in early childhood because he had loved someone and the love was not reciprocated, so he has to suppress love, he has to suppress compassion, empathy, all other positive emotions. And what happens when there is a risk of future trauma, when he's confronted with yet another trauma, all these defenses crumble and he gets in touch with his emotions including extreme shame and humiliation. And when he gets in touch with his emotions, the narcissist becomes borderline. Remember the sequence, not mine, Grotstein. Grotstein, the great scholar, suggested that people with borderline personality disorder are actually people who had tried to become narcissists and failed. He said that borderlines are failed narcissists. So when the narcissist fails, when he is confronted with yet another trauma and then all his narcissistic defenses vanish, he is no longer a narcissist. What is he then, a borderline, because he has access to his emotions, not to his empathy, not to his empathy because he puts forth immediately the psychopath fragment. So the sequence in the case of the narcissist is narcissistic injury, narcissistic wound, mortification. He evokes the psychopath to protect him. Psychopath has no emotions, no vulnerabilities, no fragility. Psychopath is kind of godlike in the sense that he is impervious to the environment. Psychopath needs no one. Psychopath is a bit of a schizoid as well. So this is a mixed schizoid psychopathic paranoid defense. But at the same time, because the narcissistic defenses, grandiose defenses crumble, the narcissist does get in touch with his emotions and he becomes borderline. And of course it leads us to the realization that borderline is a form of secondary psychopathy. This is what happens to the narcissist. When he is confronted with narcissistic injury or mortification, he becomes a secondary psychopath. In other words, he becomes a psychopath with emotions. Secondary psychopath with emotions is the new definition of borderline. You see how everything gets interconnected. Similarly, when the paranoid confronts a threat, real threat, in most cases imaginary threat. Remember that paranoia is a form of narcissism because the paranoid puts himself at the center of conspiracies and makes himself important. So the narcissist reacts to injuries, narcissists react to mortification. The paranoid reacts to threats, real threats or imaginary threats. And he reacts to threats with paranoid ideation. He has ideas that he is the subject of some major plot of the CIA is after him. The FBI is monitoring his email. So this is paranoid ideation and he begins to develop persecutory delusions. He forms specific attachments with persecutory objects. So he has a long affair with the FBI. They've been chasing him for 20 years. He's a long affair with his wife who is stealing his money and hacking his phone. This is the paranoid. He reacts to threat exactly as the narcissist would react to injury and exactly like the narcissist. He uses the psychopathic fragment because his personality is fragmented. Paranoid personality disorder is a personality disorder. It's a self state. It's an ego resource. Remember paranoid personality disorder is intended to defend against trauma to protect from trauma. The narcissist protects himself from trauma by claiming to be above it, by claiming to be godlike. The paranoid protects from trauma by taking hypervigilance to its extreme via paranoid suspiciousness. So he's like, they're never going to catch me. I'm on my toes. I'm on alert. My eyes are wide open. I'm going to see them coming. That's the paranoid. But when he confronts something, some circumstances, some bit of news, some information, some data, some people, some places, some context, which he then interprets as threatening and menacing. In other words, when he experiences personal failure, the paranoid main mission in life is to avoid threats. And if he finally finds himself in a threatening situation, means he had failed. Similar with the narcissist. The narcissist's main goal in life is to feel fantastically grandiose. And when he's narcissistically injured, when he's mortified, he feels ashamed and humiliated because he had failed. Failure is the key. So when the paranoid feels that he had failed, when he finds himself in a situation that threatens him when he's terrorized and afraid, he uses the psychopathic fragment and he becomes primary psychopath. So borderline and narcissists become secondary psychopaths. Covert narcissists becomes primary psychopath. Paranoid becomes primary psychopath. When I say becomes primary psychopath, I don't mean the shape shift. I mean the self-state of psychopath takes over. It's exactly like in dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality disorder. There are various personalities within the individual and they take over this process called switching. The individual switches from one personality to another. Only in people with personality disorders, these so-called personalities are actually self-states because they communicate. They also communicate. I mean they know of each other and there's good communication between all these self-fragments. The self-state that reacts to stressful situations with the narcissist would be a secondary psychopath, with the borderline would be a secondary psychopath, with the paranoid would be a primary psychopath. Any stressful situation, real trauma, perceived trauma, real threat, imaginary threat. What about the borderline? The borderline equally becomes a secondary psychopath. In other words, she uses the self-state of the secondary psychopath. The narcissist is stressed by injury and modification. The paranoid is stressed by conspiracy and threats. The borderline is stressed by rejection, abandonment. So the borderline anticipates rejection and abandonment, misinterprets many behaviors as signs of impending or looming rejection and abandonment. It's terrified of rejection and abandonment. And when she does face rejection and abandonment in her mind or in reality, she has to protect herself. Because if she doesn't, she will decompensate and she will act out in very dangerous ways. In the case of borderlines, she will commit suicide. 11% of borderlines end up committing suicide. At the very least, she will self-mutilate. So she doesn't want this. So most borderlines, when they're confronted with stressful situations, rejection, humiliation, abandonment, what they do, they become psychopaths. Secondary psychopaths, they still have emotions. They are still capable of feeling guilt and remorse, especially after the fact. They still have empathy. But for a brief period of time, they suspend themselves and they bring to the surface the psychopathic self-fragment. And this psychopathic self-fragment takes over and protects the borderline. How? By misbehaving. So she can become violent or aggressive. She can become promiscuous. She can become reckless. She can abuse substances. She goes wild. This is the psychopath in her. Same with the histrionic. The histrionic reacts badly to rejection, to both, actually. The histrionic reacts badly to rejection and abandonment. And the histrionic reacts badly to narcissistic injury and modification. Similarly, histrionic is going to use a primary psychopath. So paranoid and histrionic use a primary psychopath self-state. Narcissists on borderline use a secondary psychopath self-state. When the protective self, this self-fragment that protects you, protects the person with personality disorder. So the person, let me remind you of the segments, might confuse someone. Someone has personality disorder. As a result of trauma in early childhood, in most cases. So this kind of person is afraid of future trauma. And when this kind of person is stressed, he immediately tends to interpret it as forthcoming, looming trauma. So he trots out, he takes out from cold storage, from the pod. He reawakens a psychopathic fragment of the self, a psychopathic self-state, secondary or primary. To protect the individual with a personality disorder against the forthcoming inexorable trauma. When this protective psychopathic self is overactive or the only self-state or resource available. We get hybrid types. We call this comorbidity. So if you have a narcissist or a borderline who is constantly exposed to stress, to injury, to modification, to abandonment, to rejection, to humiliation, to shame, to guilt. Constantly, constantly, constantly. They would tend to use, to make use of the secondary psychopath self-state much more often. It would become a habit and a dimension of personality and identity. Similarly, some people have only one fragment. For example, the narcissist has the false self. And it is the false self in the case of the narcissist that functions as the psychopathic protector. So some people have only one fragment, one self-state, and so they get used to it. They merge with it, they fuse with it, it becomes symbiotic, becomes a single entity. And so this leads to comorbidity. One very famous comorbidity is what is known as malignant narcissist. Malignant narcissist today, psychopathic narcissist, was first suggested by Eric Fromm in 1968, I think. And then expounded on by Herbert Rosenfeld, a great psychoanalyst, and popularized and become part of the mainstream by Otto Kennberg. Never made it to the DSM-5 or 4, but still it's a very highly accepted and recognized construct. A malignant narcissist is an antisocial narcissist. It's a psychopathic narcissist, Ronin Stamm called it a psychopathic narcissist. It's actually a narcissist whose main defense against injury, humiliation, shame, guilt and modification is a psychopathic self-state. It's a narcissist who becomes psychopath whenever he's stressed, whenever he's injured, whenever he's attacked or criticized, whenever he's shamed or humiliated, he suddenly becomes a secondary psychopath. And this is what people keep asking me, how is it possible for someone to be both a narcissist and a psychopath? There are many contradictions there. For example, a narcissist needs other people. He's pro-social. A narcissist needs people because he needs narcissistic supply. He depends crucially on people to regulate his internal environment, his sense of self-worth, even his identity. The narcissist relies on people heavily. The narcissist is also his family life, social life. I mean, narcissists are pro-social. The psychopath couldn't care less. He doesn't need anyone. He doesn't want anyone. He's, in many respects, schizoid. He uses people. He abuses people. He leverages people. He regards people as instruments and tools. He's goal-oriented. But he doesn't need people. Definitely he doesn't need narcissistic supply. So how can these types coexist? They don't coexist. The narcissist is a narcissist until he's traumatized. He's a narcissist until he's injured. He's a narcissist until he suffers modification. He's a narcissist until he's shamed and humiliated. At that point, the narcissist vanishes and is replaced with the psychopathic fragment of the false self. Psychopathic aspect or dimension of the false self. And from that moment on, he's a full-fledged secondary psychopath. So it's important to understand. This is like multiple personality disorder in the sense that there is switching. By the way, anyone, anyone who had ever lived with or worked with someone with a personality disorder will immediately confirm what I'm saying. It's like the person with a personality disorder has multiple personalities. And they come to the surface pretty predictably in reaction to highly defined sets of circumstances. It's like this personality has this job and this personality fragment. This self-state should cope with these problems and this self-state should cope with these problems. They're like an ensemble, like a big theater production with various actors. And the actors have roles. And so at a given time, the narcissist is a narcissist. He needs supply. He socializes with people. He elicits supply. He enters the shared fantasy with an intimate partner, et cetera, et cetera. He's pro-social. And at other times, when he's injured and so on, he becomes a secondary psychopath. There's no trace of the narcissist. Same with the borderline. The typical borderline is warm, empathic, loving. I mean, it's a wonderful experience to love a borderline. I've had my share. It's absolutely an exhilarating fantasy-like experience. It's out of this world. It's a movie. But then when she switches and becomes a psychopath, there's no trace left of the borderline. She vanishes literally. And there's nothing there. So these hybrids, these comorbidities are not comorbidities in the sense that they operate all the time together. They are not coterminous. They're not at the same time. They're not simultaneous. But they're sequential. They follow each other. They switch. They alternate. And that's how they can coexist and co-survive. Now, I want to read to you from Theodore Millen's book, Personality Disorders in Modern Life, co-authored with Roger Davis. I want to read to you descriptions of the psychopathic self-state, the psychopathic fragment of the self in the narcissist, the histrionic, and the borderline. Let's start with the histrionic. And Theodore Millen calls this psychopathic comorbidity, histrionic psychopathic comorbidity. He calls it the disingenuous histrionic. Disingenuous or histrionic, antisocial features, underhanded, double-dealing, scheming, contriving, plotting, crafty, force-hearted, egocentric, insincere, deceitful, calculating, and guileful. So, let's read the segment that describes the disingenuous histrionic. Remember, that's a histrionic who uses a psychopathic self-state as a protective ego resource. The disingenuous subtype of the histrionic synthesizes histrionic and antisocial features. A somewhat different picture is created depending on the relative influence of histrionic and antisocial traits. In the beginning they make a good first impression. They seem sociable and sincere, exhibiting such spontaneity and charm that others quickly lower their defenses. The combination of histrionic and antisocial features, however, makes the disingenuous subtype more manipulative than the basic histrionic pattern, and for ends, other than simple attention and approval. For some, their histrionic traits serve simply as a convenient method of making contacts and opening doors. But these overlay and temporarily conceal characteristics fundamental to the antisocial, including a willingness to violate social conventions, break promises, and shatter loyalties, behavior responsibly, and sometimes erupt with anger and physical confrontation. For some, the antisocial influence stops here, with traits attributable to simple delinquency. Others, however, are the disingenuous histrionics. Combine histrionic and more psychopathic characteristics. These individuals synergize the histrionic's more adaptive social skills, charm, and ability to rig the motives and desires of others, with a scheming, deceitful, evil calculated evil. Obviously, this variant is more egocentric, more willingly insincere, and probably more conscious of their manipulations than is the basic histrionic pattern. They often seem to enjoy conflict, gaining a degree of gratification or amusement from the excitement and tension thereby produced. Because antisocials usually see kindness as weakness, their friendly histrionic traits sometimes make them afraid that others will come to view them in exactly the same way, as weak. If they sense that this is true, they may avenge this wrong impression by becoming particularly predatory. Now, what about the psychopathic narcissist, the malignant narcissistic comobility, when the narcissist uses a psychopathic self-status, psychopathic self-pragment for protective purposes? Milan calls this type of narcissist the malignant narcissist or psychopathic narcissist, he calls it the unprincipled narcissist. The unprincipled narcissist, antisocial features, deficient conscience, unscrupulous, amoral, disloyal, fraudulent, deceptive, arrogant, exploitive, a con man and charlatan dominating, contemptuous, vindictive. Stop looking at me, will you? Okay, let me read the excerpt with regards to the unprincipled narcissist, here it is, unprincipled narcissist. Unprincipled narcissists combine the self-confidence of the narcissist with the recurrent criminal behaviour of the antisocial. Many are successful in society, keeping just within the boundaries of the law. Others inhabit drug rehabilitation programmes, centres for youth offenders, jails and prisons. Still others are opportunists, con men and charlatans who exploit others for personal gain, and most are vindictive and contemptuous of their victims. Whereas many narcissists have normal superego development, unprincipled narcissists are skilled in the ways of social influence but have few internalised moral prohibitions. Instead, these kind of narcissists are best characterised as unscrupulous, amoral and deceptive. More than merely disloyal and exploitive, these narcissists show a fraudulent indifference to the welfare of others, a willingness to risk harm and fearlessness in the face of threats and punitive action. Vengeful gratification is often obtained by humiliating and dominating others. Joy is obtained by gaining the trust of others and then outwitting and swindling them. Their attitude, the attitude of the unprincipled narcissist, is that those who can be taken advantage of deserve it. Completely focused on their own self-interest, undisciplined or unprincipled narcissists are indifferent to the truth. If confronted, they are likely to display an attitude of justified innocence, denying their behaviour through a veneer of politeness and civility. If obviously guilty, they are likely to display an attitude of nonchalance or cool strength as if the victim were to blame for not having caught on sooner. Achievement deficits and social irresponsibilities are justified by expansive fantasies and frank lies. Those with more antisocial tendencies may put up a tough, arrogant and fearless front, arcing out their malicious tendencies and producing frequent family difficulties and occasional legal entanglements. Relationships survive only as long as the narcissist has something to gain. So strong is their basic self-centeredness and desire to exploit others that people may be dropped from their lives with complete indifference to the anguish they might experience or how their lives will be affected by the discard. In many ways, the unprincipled narcissist is similar to the disingenuous histrionic. The unprincipled narcissist preys on the weak and the vulnerable, enjoying their dismay and anger. In contrast, the disingenuous histrionic seeks to hold the respect and affection of those they dismiss in the pursuit of love and admiration. What about the borderline? When the borderline uses a psychopathic self-state, protective or defensive self-state, how does it look? In this case the borderline, Milan calls this kind of borderline the impulsive borderline, histrionic or antisocial features. Capricious, superficial, flighty, destructible, frenetic and seductive. Fearing loss becomes agitated and then gloomy and irritable, potentially suicidal. Let's read more about the impulsive borderline. The impulsive borderline is mixed with a histrionic or antisocial pattern, unless constantly receiving attention. Such individuals become increasingly seductive, impulsive, capricious and irresponsible. Though most borderlines are famous for dysregulation of negative emotions, subjects with histrionic traits become even more behaviorally hyperactive and cognitively scattered, exhibiting a dysregulation of positive effects as well that includes frenetic, gaity, frantic, gregariousness and irrational and superficial excitement. At times they lose all sense of propriety and judgment. Individuals with a stronger antisocial history become even more impulsive and thoughtless, both failing to plan ahead or heed the consequences of their actions as they struggle to free themselves from social constraints. At the borderline level, the strategies of the basic histrionic and antisocial patterns are simply much less successful than before. As such, they are likely to experience many disappointments, to go for extended periods of time without the security they crave and to succumb to hopelessness and depression. The impulsive borderline is especially likely to have experienced the chaotic family, he quotes Leinehen in 1993, or to have experienced a soap opera environment, Benjamin in 1996. And this encourages drama, a desire for a stimulus variety and an intolerance of boredom. Many will have felt a sense of security and attachment only when their parents acknowledged some exhibitionistic performance and when their misbehavior was intense enough to stand out against the background noise of chaos and discord. Many were exposed to exhibitionistic parental models and learned to depend on sex role, stereotypy compliments, physical attractiveness for histrionics and manliness for antisocials. These compliments are the basis for their self-esteem. In general, they are especially sensitive to external sources of reward. They move impulsively and capriciously from one engaging item to the next. Thus, oriented to the external world, they fail to develop a solid self-identity and they might anchor them during periods of stress. They lack identity, which is like an anchor, keeps them stable. As a consequence, impulsive borderlines are always on unsure footing, constantly on edge, never quite sure who will provide the attention and stimulation they desperately require. Periods of brooding, dejection and hopelessness alternate with stimulated euphoria as they shift from acknowledging to denying their condition. OK, next lecture. We are going to enter much more contentious territory. We're going to discuss the history of personality disorders. What brought us to the current state of knowledge and is it knowledge at all? To which extent are we looking at personality disorders in the right way? What is the concept of personality? Is it a valid construct? And if it is a valid construct, is the idea of personality disorder terrible? This is the entire personality is disordered, which is implied by the phrase. Then what's left? Who is left? What's the connection between identity and personality disorders? How do memories affect all this? We will trace the development of personality disorders, the very concept, from its beginning. And I hope and believe that we will cast serious doubt on it. I think, as quite a few other scholars do, I think personality disorders should be struck off the book and replaced with post-traumatic dissociative states. Or, alternatively, there should be a single diagnosis of personality disorder with various dissociative self-state emphasis. This approach probably is going to be reflected in the next edition of the International Classification of Diseases, edition 11. And already in the DSM-5 we have a dimensional approach to certain personality disorders, including narcissistic personality disorder. I encourage you to read the alternate models in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, edition 5. But we are very far from an integrity framework, which will give us real visceral gut understanding of what it feels like to be personality disorders. Some people attribute everything to shame. Other people attribute everything to envy, climb. Other people attribute everything to trauma and dissociation, vacuuming among others. Maybe we should put all of this together. Maybe shame is a reaction to trauma. And because it's so unbearable, it's dissociated. Maybe we're just looking at the elephant. We are three blind, wise men. At the end, one of us is touching the tail, one of us is holding the leg, one of us is extending the trunk. And we have three different disparate descriptions of the same animal. But it's still the same animal. Perhaps we should reconceive our personality disorders. Not as a clinical entity, but as a process. A process of evading and escaping and avoiding and protecting from future trauma. An obsession with trauma. A compulsion connected to trauma and its avoidance. This, I think, is the closest we can get to understanding from the inside, the inner experience of the personality disordered individual. It is a state of terror, of horror. It's a clear belief and conviction that the world is about to get him. That he is about to suffer again, excruciating, indescribable suffer. In personality disorders, the various ways we choose to protect against this renewed experience, unwelcome experience, late, not lamented experience. And it connects intimately with dissociation because dissociation is how we keep everything separated and apart in the deep freezer until we need it. Had these fragments, had these processes been conscious, people with personality disorders would evolve from it in Switzerland. Not only borderline. And so, all these personality fragments, self-fragments and self-states and dissociated states and ego resources and whatever you want to call them, they're in cold storage. They're awaiting. They're in the inventory. They're deactivated. But they're there. They're there at the disposal of the personality disordered individual. Personality disorder is a narrative that bridges and papers over the fact that the self is not continuous. Parts are missing. The fact that there's no glue holding anything together. The fact that it's a fragmented galaxy with stars that can't communicate because they're speeding away faster than light. The fact that it's a black hole. This intolerable realization, personality disorders, main and possibly only wrong, is to create a piece of fiction, a storyline, a narrative, a movie script, to convince the personality disorder person that he is a person when actually, by any definition of the word, he is not. Not even close.