 Yes, I am recording. Yes, we got it and you may wish to record it on your end so that we have a backup. It's up to you Let me try that too. Hang on a second Blast is on so I can actually see what I'm doing. Yeah, I got it. We're recording. We're good. So we are both recording We are thank you so much. We're on the record Professor I am in the process of my name is Sam Sam. Thank you, Sam. I'm in the process of writing a book myself I'm also been a psychotherapist for around 10 years, but I'm no academic like you And clearly there has been so much begun to be written about this condition and the broader form of Dark triad and narcissism, etc. My personal view is that you are the most deeply researched and poignant in this space and there's a lot of cranks on tiktok and various other places that I'm sure Trying to be helpful, but I certainly haven't found them that helpful in my own study So I wanted to come to you as a real source as I'm beginning to write to make sure that I get it right because I'm concerned that In some ways proliferating what's wrong is not a great thing. I've got about 13 14 questions. If that's okay I wanted to start really with the broadest question, which is there appears to be a huge rise in Either the number of people that are being diagnosed or suspected of narcissism, but certainly it's being written about I know you've talked about between 5 and 7 percent of the population I'm just wondering in your view. Is there an increase in people That are adopting or having these issues or is it more our understanding is increasing or a mixture of the two? Well, first of all, the the figures are a bit different. Um, it's 1% in the general population people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder That's 1% in the general population 5 to 7 percent in the clinical population That's quite when you say clinical Sam. What do you mean people who who are in inpatient clinics outpatient clinics in therapy on a regular basis Have been having been diagnosed with other mental health issues and so on so forth Bear in mind that narcissistic personality disorder is very often Comorbid with other mental health issues So we find narcissism with borderline personality disorder With mood disorders with bipolar disorder Etc. Etc. So the people with pure pure bred narcissists Narcissists who have only this diagnosis narcissistic personality disorder are almost nowhere to be found Because at the very minimum, they would be abusing substances, for example, or they would be suffering from depression Or they would have episodes of emotional dysregulation and so on so forth And this of course reflects very badly on the diagnostic and statistical manual Because such levels of comorbidity imply that the clinical entities the diagnosis within this book Are somehow erroneous They are delimited delimited wrongly the differential diagnosis are not clear enough. They're fuzzy So now we have a new approach When I say we I'm into profession. I'm not a therapist. I'm I'm teaching clinical psychology. So now we have a new approach And that new approach says there's a single personality disorder with various manifestations throughout the lifespan And in reaction to stressors and life circumstances and changing environments So you would have a personality disorder and under under certain circumstances You would become emotionally dysregulated because you have been narcissistically injured or mortified And then you would qualify to be to be diagnosed as a borderline Yes, and then you would be anticipating abandonment and rejection and betrayal And you would act in a very cruel ruthless and callous manner You would be reckless and defined And conchumacious hateful of authority that would make you a psychopath So everyone goes through every conceivable personality disorder Once they have been diagnosed with a personality disordered personality organization Yes in the vast majority of people luckily for us This construct which is a bit of an artificial construct the personality Seems to be to have a core And seems to be stable across the lifespan And seems to be predictable And to some extent Rigid in a good way boundary boundary with boundaries. That's in the vast majority of healthy people But in people with personality disorder none of this applies Everything is chaotic and disorganized And so they're trying to compensate for for this by imposing external rigidity Yes, everything inside is mayhem and tumult And the deluge So they they're compensating for this by acting very rigidly And very robotically and very algorithmically That's their way of somehow maintaining control over the void And the insanity raging inside and seething inside themselves Yes But understand Yeah What's interesting for me is that whenever there's a diagnosis of borderline that I observe There's a lot of sympathy and empathy towards that individual knowing how what a difficult life they are leading I notice the opposite of those that get diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder That there's often an immediate dislike towards that individual as if they have a choice Versus the borderline. Would you say that's true and and why that might be? First, I think I owe you an answer the first your first question And the answer is that we Bendy about we mislabel people as narcissists We simply call them narcissists when they are essentially jerks or a-holes Or we had a fight was we had a selfish or we had a fight with them We divorced them or something they instantly become narcissists Yeah There hasn't been a rise in The corresponding rise in the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder in clinical settings With one exception and this exception are people under age 25 People under age 25 the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder and similar disorders Did increase I would even say increased dramatically And this is this has been attributed by scholars like twenge and Campbell and others This has been attributed to the exposure to social media and more generally more broadly to screens The divorce from reality inhabiting a fantasy world That is the essence of pathological narcissism pathological narcissism is not about being nasty to people or being mean to people Pathological narcissism is a withdrawal Into a defense fantasy When reality becomes burdensome or even intolerable And this is the true self false self idealized self at play large, right? Yes. Well, the true self is Has been sacrificed usually in the narcissistic pathology has been sacrificed very early on Between the ages of three and or maybe even two between the ages of two and six Yeah, and in its place What took its place was a divinity a deity So this is a form of primitive religion Yes, it's it's the way a child would conceive would conceive god Yes, so a child a child creates a false self, which is essentially a godhead And then the child the child sacrifices his true self to this godhead, which is human sacrifice And then the child continues to worship this deity throughout throughout his life having become an adult Yeah So narcissism is a much more onerous condition than borderline personality disorder Much more difficult Yeah, in my view, narcissists and here I beg to differ With otto kelber In my view, narcissists are much closer to psychosis than borderlines In borderline psychosis is limited in time Then it's usually in the form of reactive micro episodes Yeah, psychosis in borderline involves dissociation Onesia depersonalization derealization here. These are difficult things. Of course they are But throughout the borderline's life psychosis is real It's pretty rare. Yeah while the narcissist is in a constant psychotic state The narcissist cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy at all Yes, and the narcissist converts every meaningful external object every meaningful person Into an internal object with which the narcissist continues to interact Narcissists are no longer with us No So narcissism is much a much worse condition than borderline much more difficult to endure Much more much more painful and so on and so forth. Yeah, good to understand. Okay Um, my next question again is blunt and you'll give me a yes or no. I suspect I'm curious around the connection within diagnosis or even suspicion around covert narcissism And the avoidant personality type Is there a correlation between the two? I've observed that maybe there is in my in my limited clinical experience And I've just wondered what you think about that I Think there's a question of cart and horse I think being avoidant might lead to the development of covert narcissism as a compensatory mechanism Yes similar for example to autism spectrum disorder I was going to ask you about that too. Yes There's similarities of lack of empathy and things that can present in all of them. Yeah, but the the autistic Child is usually rejected by parental figures by peers by siblings This rejection is very difficult to endure And so the autistic child is very likely to develop pronounced narcissistic defenses And in extreme cases become a narcissist I think similarly people with anxiety disorders or depressive disorders might become narcissists Similar, I think people with avoidant personality disorder or social phobia or social anxiety might become narcissistic to cut a long story short Narcissism is a way to compensate for shortcomings behavioral dysfunctions and similar mental health problems Therefore a narcissism is much more universal than we think Yes, although we must distinguish between pathological narcissism and what lens sparrigos narcissistic style Yes, many many people who have narcissistic style. We we estimate 10 to the to 15 percent of a population They have narcissistic style. Narcissistic style simply means diminished empathy tendency to exploit other people Lack of awareness and sensitivity lack of lack of ability to Put yourself in other people's shoes. That's not exactly empathy It's a lack of ability to imagine other people or to other to regard them as other Etc. Etc. So this is narcissistic style and we all From time to time degenerate or deteriorate or devolve into a narcissistic style That is not the narcissistic pathology because someone with a narcissistic style Is able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality And does interact with external objects Yes, and it feels that those uh that work or deal with narcissists Whenever they challenge that fantasy in any form that is when often they really feel The annihilation or the attempt of annihilation from that individual It feels that anyone tampering with Something they truly believe or has to be true for them. That often feels the time when they most feel the heat of that Would that be fair? The most recent development in the field is the realization that The only true narcissist is someone who's who's very fragile Yeah, and has a disrupted Disintegrated self Therefore has no ego actually narcissists ironically are selfless Yes So this kind of person Is tittering on the brink of self extinction Everything is precariously balanced. This kind of person cannot afford any challenge Any undermining of the elaborate construction that he had he had labored for decades to create Yes, any challenge to this would be perceived as an act of hostility and enmity Yeah And so you become the enemy you become something called the secretary object you become the enemy Yeah, and you know A la guerre com la guerre it's a war Yeah, and then I saw your post on that just the other day. Yeah completely Slashes out losses first of all devalues by devaluing you he renders your input insignificant Yes, and then he attempts to eliminate you to eliminate the source of frustration This has been first discovered in 1939 by dollars dollar describe what he called the aggression The frustration aggression hypothesis He says that frustration creates inevitably inexorably creates aggression And so you frustrate the narcissists by even hinting That his perception of others of the world and of himself Is somehow either incomplete or fundamentally flawed yes understood the the conversations around psychopathy and I was forget sociopathy. Is that the right word it feels is that a is that a spectrum? Do people tip from one to the other do they work up and down those because often again You feel sometimes there's some of sadistic behaviors and it starts to edged into Different levels of behavior Again, what's your view on that do people can people work up and down them? Do they promote themselves up and down? Do they get worse with age? What's your view or they very distinct conditions? Well, this may come as a shock to you and to the viewers there. There is no such thing as psychopathy or sociopathy These are not recognized diagnosis or clinical entities The diagnostic and statistical manual committee Has rejected four separate times over 30 years The possible diagnosis of psychopathy Having having weighed all the evidence For a total a grand total of 25 years So these are not the the online In a bit offline We have many terms That appear to be clinical, but actually are not and are not supported by any of the evidence or studies Yeah, among these terms we have empaths And on sensical self-aggrandizing label We have emotional flashbacks Total nonsense The flashback is revividness flashback is when you and you you have an experience That is indistinguishable in your mind from reality Um And so on there's a whole vocabulary of nonsensical clinical labels and Pseudo clinical labels. Yes. Yes, which are not not accepted in academia in the literature Sociopathy has infiltrated the literature to some extent and so did psychopathy Because I think they do describe real phenomena However, the dsm committee has been right to reject them as clinical entities because psychopaths and sociopaths are not mentally ill Psychopathy and sociopathy are lifestyles There are choices to resist society its edicts social mores conventions norms rules They are a choice to act by defiance to adopt defiance as a main mode of communication In short, they represent a personality type Rather than a mental health pathology Do to understand that difference given the dcm and the ic 10 etc. I understand so okay That's really helpful to know and interesting as you say that there's a choice rather than it's a mental illness That has some lack of control to some degree To some extent even overt grandiose narcissism is a choice Yes, and this is why today the cutting edge or the bleeding edge of the profession We suggest that overt grandiose narcissists are actually psychopaths And the only true type of narcissist is what used to be called the covert narcissists Or the compensatory narcissist in theodore millensworth Yes, this is the only real narcissist with a fragile inner inner environment vulnerable very Very hyper vigilant And so on so forth and this kind of narcissists compensates with overt grandiose statements and so on so forth The overt narcissists the narcissists who feels good with himself the narcissists who feels comfortable With his own self-imputed superiority And so this kind of narcissists may well be a psychopath And I can prove easily the diesel choices Because when the narcissist ends up in prison All these narcissistic behaviors vanish If there's no audience Not only a question of audience being if you were if you were to act narcissistically in prison This would have an impact on your longevity and life expectancy Yeah, it's a dangerous environment The victims are not so malleable and not so submissive Yes, so if you were to try to exercise your superiority and hotness and exploitativeness And lack of empathy in prison you wouldn't survive for long And so when narcissists enter prison Most of their behaviors vanish Only I would say they become Indistinguishable from healthy people normal people So it's clearly a behavioral choice or at least a behavioral choice is involved Yes, this is not the case with covert narcissists Covert narcissists regardless of the environment Are always seething with resentment and envy They're always passive aggressive And so on so forth Understood and and so the belief for you is that for a covert narcissist, for example They have an early life experience. You don't believe there's any genetic and no one's born with this Well, we have no proof that it is there is a genetic component Not do we have any any series study That connects pathological narcissism to any type of brain abnormality. However It definitely stands to reason That there is a predisposing genetic element in narcissism and the reason is simple 10 10 children are exposed to the same parenting style With the same parents Only one of them becomes a narcissist. Why? If narcissism were An ineluctable response to parental abuse and trauma We would have expected all of them to become narcissists and yet only one does And so that's that's not the true statistic. The true statistic is it only one of a hundred does Yep, okay So there's good reason to believe that there is a genetic predisposition Yes, understood. Thank you And trauma bonding the term first of all, how do you feel about it? I think there is a case Again, it's not a clean a recognized clinical entity. You can't find it in the icd or dsm or in a lot of literature So it's a bit of a hype But I think there is a case to be made that intermittent reinforcement Breeds dependency on the source of the reinforcement Yes So if you are being treated by someone In a way that is capricious arbitrary unpredictable hot and cold Love you hate you You would become dependent on that person for your own Internal regulation regulation of emotions of your moods And so and this I think would constitute a form of attachment or a form of bonding But the element we neglect in trauma bonding Is the fact that it is a form of self-harming self-harming The victim mutilates mutilates herself Via via the trauma bond Yes The victim keeps coming back for more more pain More torture more more degradation more humiliation And this is a form of self-harming we know for example there there is that there is an addictive element or dependency element between the borderline and her Self-cutting her cutting behaviors Yes Sexual self-trashing from miscreants behaviors. Yeah, so There is an addiction here and I would say that trauma bonding is a misleading term It would have been much more appropriate to use the term trauma addiction Yes, I agree. And what I think is interesting given the number of people I've worked with around this is There are no groups. There are no there is no na or a a or coder And I think often I see people Searching around for a group that they can go to because of this form of addiction Should there be 12 steps? Should there be whatever comes with it? And I wonder if there's still something like that that might need to be created I'm curious we need to recognize it as an addiction Yes, the problem is that we and when I say we I mean scholars academics the public at large everyone We have difficulty understanding That a relationship could be a form of addiction exactly like alcohol Yes, exactly like coke exactly like heroin A relationship could become Indistinguishably addictive exactly like any form of substance abuse Yes, we haven't come we were not there yet. That's why we use the terms you use terms like trauma bonding or idealization We we try to make sense of the of the insensible. We try to make sense of the incredible and we And I think after the isolation doesn't it because friends and family who don't understand why you don't just leave him or her But actually they don't understand there's something deeper going on But also what was already going on for that person for them to even meet with and stay with that narcissist in the first place And then where's the self responsibility in that? So I'm curious about that People have talked about the neuro wiring the effect of I don't like the word victim survivor. Let's say um But it is a victim I suppose That does it does it change permanently their own wiring in their mind if they spend long times in these No, okay There is no trauma that changes the brain wiring permanently. The brain is neuro plastic And even traumas in early childhood can be reversed Not fully then for example in post traumatic stress disorder The neuro plasticity allows for 70 percent of the brain's wiring to be reversed Yeah, so it's not it's not total. There are traces left trauma traces left and You're likely for example to experience flashbacks because some some parts of the brain remain untouched But there is no such thing as trauma that changes your your brain forever. And that's it That's good news resolved. Okay. Um shared fantasy I've heard you talking about this a little bit more and obviously it's in your book as well Just wanted to make sure that's fully understood. Um sam. So this is around both parties Having a projected view of what this might be and both playing into it and trying to make it real No, it's far more complex than this The concept of shared fantasy has first been described by sander in 1989. I can't take the credit The shared fantasy is an agreement Struck between usually the narcissist, but also the borderline in most cases But usually the narcissist and his potential intimate partner or source of supply Now the shared fantasy involves a conversion of the partner into a dual role A maternal figure and a child So the narcissist converts the partner into a mother's substitute And at the same same time acts as a mother's substitute and this is this is my dual mothership principle Yeah And then the narcissist allows the partner to experience herself in an idealized form Which is extremely addictive. She sees herself She perceives herself through the narcissist gaze And in the narcissist gaze, she's perfect. She's flawless She's supreme She's drop dead gorgeous. She's hyper intelligent and so and this is This of course is irresistible So he becomes a pusher of this drug. He becomes becomes her exclusive source Of idealized self-perception And she experiences an extreme form of self infatuation through him And when he does this the narcissist is acting as a mother He's providing unconditional love For a mother to survive The infancy of her children She must idealize Raising children sucks big time It's a whole really horrible thing So she must divorce from reality for a while. She must idealize the children the babies Yeah, this is what the narcissist does to his partner. He regresses her to her infancy And then he idealizes her the way a mother does And she has the capacity For a second childhood In which she's perceived and loved as a perfect being An irresistible proposition Her role is to act as the narcissist's mother But that is to her to her detriment because the narcissist wants to reenact His conflicts with his original mother through her So he imports all his baggage into the shared fantasy And she pays the price For the abuse and trauma that the narcissist has suffered as a child Because now she is his new mother And all mothers all mothers should be punished for what his mother did to him And so this is why the evaluation and discard Are elements built in features of the shared fantasy It they don't happen because The couple falls out or whatever The fantasies main goal only goal Is to devalue and discard the partner The way the narcissist wish he had done to his original mother actual mother Yeah, a process known as separation individuation Which is essentially a healthy process is healthy. I know when I studied our our chemical process in my own training The separation side of it was very important in order to become an adult's true self, right? So The narcissist's mother did not allow him to separate and individuate he remained and meshed with her He is in a symbiotic symbiotic state Yes, so his only way is to find another mother and separate from her Yes, but why would he separate from this other mother from this new mother? Why would he do that because she's bad She's evil. She's imperfect. So he has to devalue He has to devalue her in order to separate from her That's really helpful and will help me in my work as well. So thank you for that That the next thing is is actually involving a meshment sam and this is quite a sensitive question and probably an unpopular question um, I've had some experiences of single parents who uh are displaying Very strong narcissistic traits who appear to then mesh with their eldest child in some form as a replacement almost for the absent parent and for their narcissistic wishes, I suppose to To be Installed in that child and the child to not really understand that they've been fully meshed in with the parents So they almost become part of a couple if you like Do we see that? Is that a trait? Is that a possibility? Have I spotted something here that could be happening? Yes, this is called parentification. Yes parentification or A worried high I have coined adultification Is when you force the child to act as an adult would And then as an adult When you coerce the child into the role of a substitute spouse And then the child becomes your confidant You confide in the child you share with the child all your Tribulations and vicissitudes and ups and downs and so on the child becomes the receptacle Of your negative affectivity the child becomes a receptacle of shame The receptacle of guilt the child is there to comfort you So the child begins to perceive itself As responsible for the well-being of the parent The child it's a child's fault if the parent is depressed or unhappy or child must have been doing something wrong And so there's a lot of guilt involved in this and a perception of inadequacy Which lasts for life Parentified children always feel That they've done something wrong. They could have acted better. They could have made Different choices. They could have and they feel the responsibility They're responsible for everyone's happiness Everyone's well-being I see lots of perfectionism in there, which obviously leads off into high anxiety for that child as well Because here's the thing a child can never Is can never act Satisfactorily is an adult A child is not an adult the child does not have adult skills does not have adult in adult adult's experience and so on So the parent is setting the child up for failure The child will inevitably fail In this role assigned to it by the parent Parentification is about rendering the child a loser and a failure on a constant basis Yeah, so the child then aspires to perfection because only perfect people don't fail Yes, and perfectionism becomes and of course many of these children compensate By becoming narcissists if they cannot be perfect in reality They can be perfect in fantasy Yes And then the parent acquires the the status of an imaginary friend within a paracosm Yes, the child becomes a godlike figure That a god a god that can guarantee the parent's happiness well-being contentment and success and everything As a god as a perfect being On the other hand The parent has to reciprocate By becoming the child's soul social circle An imaginary friend Yeah, I've seen this and then it becomes then it becomes enmeshment And it's a really sick situation the best depiction of this is in the movie cycle pitchcocks Alfred Hitchcock's cycle That's the best depiction of this kind of relationship Okay, one step further and into the darkness Sam Also emotional incest that couldn't come from that too Again, is that something that's written about accepted? Again, I've seen some situations where there has been erotic transference and other things between child and parent Further down the road in relationships like this I think it was Freud who first Enlightened us to the fact or reminded us of the fact that A mother is a woman And a son If a son is a man in the making a man in the making Similarly, of course, a daughter is a is a woman in the making Sexual tension within families is Inevitable. It's always there. It's under the surface. It's held back via Taboos then of course legal ramifications should you act on your impulses, but the impulses are always there In a single in an environment where there are not checks and balances. For example, there's no balance. There's no gender balance In an environment where for example the single mother is a mother, but there's no men There's no male And the only male is the son Yeah, in such an environment this this lack of set checks and balances would lead inevitably To erotic tension and if the people involved are either too young or unboundary They don't have boundaries. This could lead to actual incest Yeah incest is More likely I would say although there's no statistics There are no statistics because because of political correctness Science is very has been very compromised by political correctness So they're not being able to test for things because you are not I mean if you submit if you submit a research proposal Saying, you know, I want to check whether incest is much more common among single parent families You'll lose your tenure and job As simple as that. Yeah I want to check if there is a discrepancy in IQ between black people and white people Forget about it. Yeah, it's a legitimate research proposition But it's off limits And so I think but this is pure speculation that emotional incest and actual incest is much more common in single parent families Then in nuclear classic nuclear families, let alone so Emotional incest is the ambient unspoken message Yeah that The parentification and adultification of the child Include should include or does include the assumption of spousal roles Yes Which inevitably lead to intimacy At first non-sexual intimacy But all non-sexual intimacy leads to sexual intimacy I mentioned All I mentioned even prison Yes in prison evidently It leads to sexual intimacy Okay I think sexuality is simply the body's way of transmitting and communicating intimacy Yes Yeah Emotional intimacy because you could have physical intimacy in other forms but emotional intimacy Yes, okay understood Um regards the partners of these people Sam, what do you see as the most common? Wound if you like that they have carried coming in other other certain things Within self-worth identification whatever that seem to be quite common in people that fall for these narcissists and or indeed stay with them We must make a very important distinction here Narcissists don't have a favorite favorite type The nonsense online that narcissists prefer empathic people or kind people or nice people This is nonsense because narcissists are incapable of spotting empathy If it were to fall on their head, they wouldn't spot it They they they are not so and they don't like nice people and kind people. They regard them as weak Weak. Yes. So this is complete nonsense. The narcissist wants four things from you sex services Supply narcissistic supply and safety That's it And he doesn't want all four at once two out of four would do If you provide two out of these four things Regardless of your age height height education Empathy kindness personal traits be none of this much It's like an internet service provider. You don't really care who is behind your internet You know Okay, so this is the narcissism However, it is true. It is true Certain people would tend to gravitate Towards narcissists. Yes, the fantasies that the narcissist offers and so yeah, and I think these people not to be To elaborate about it. These people are number one masochists People who regard pain as desirable Yeah, number two people with Self-love deficiency or lack of self-love and they experience vicarious self-love through the narcissist gaze Number three people who have had conflicted relationships with their Especially mother but not only mother or father parental figure and try to reenact The parental environment with the narcissists narcissists are great at being daddies At being you know because they project authority and confidence And trust and so they're very misleading Narcissism is false advertising. So There is this issue the fourth issue people who prefer fantasy to reality So people would gravitate to the last offering of fantasy The fifth type of a person who would gravitate to the narcissist Is someone who is himself or herself narcissistic grandiose And so they would they would garner narcissistic supply vicariously by proxy through the narcissists Co-dependence would be attracted to narcissists Because narcissists are easily controlled from the bottom Co-dependency is a control disorder It's about controlling it's about securing your needs emotional and otherwise By feigning or faking helplessness and neediness on a permanent basis Yeah, so it's a form of emotional blackmail Yeah Narcissists are easily emotionally blackmail or manipulators. Narcissists are very gullible as long as you offer them narcissistic supply Yes, they're junkies Narcissists are junkies. Yes. So these are the six types, I think Okay, that helps me 80% of but let it be clear one more sentence. Let it be clear many many Healthy balanced people Are attracted to narcissists It's not true that healthy balanced people who are boundaryed And who are strong and who are resilient would never be attracted to narcissists. That's rank nonsense. It's not true Good to hear. Got two more questions, Sam. So I know I've kept you a long time already. No, no, don't worry about Thank you critically. It appears that those that have survived escaped Got over whatever narcissistic relationships Often find it hard to be believed that some of the stories they tell or the incidents they went through or the The stuff that they stayed for and again, I get your point about you know, masochism and whatever I just Notice that people feel that friends family and certainly the friends or family of the narcissist very rarely believe the deaths of things that happened And I'd imagine that sort of double denial must be incredibly painful for them Um, is there anything in that space that would be helpful to those recovering from these kinds of relationships this sense of needing to be believed Which I guess is just another form of validation need Which is why they might have been in a relationship in the first place But this sense of certainly with covert narcissists Many people that know the individual just simply not believing that they did the things that they did Because it's not believable They don't believe because it's not believable. It involves extreme irrationality and fantasy People believe anything about reality. You tell them you're a rage You wouldn't you know people would believe it because it's real. It's within the spectrum of human experience Yes, narcissism Is a fantasy and in a fantasy like in a dream Anything can happen. Would you believe a dream? Dreams are unbelievable Yeah, and so my advice is to not try to communicate your experience to others Who have not been through the same experience? Yes limit yourself initially to people who have endured the same Which is why I think we need this group to be formed so that people can genuinely speak to each other There are groups online. Unfortunately. They've been infiltrated by narcissists and psychopaths who have taken over These are victimhood groups have become victim identity politics identity Which is very bad and it perpetuates the victimhood for life. It's extremely bad. It's pathological But in theory You know initially It would be good to talk to people of your kind people who have endured what you have endured And this is why for example in dialectical behavior therapy We there's a group of borderline people with borderline So the the treatment involves individual therapy and group therapy and in the group therapy You talk to people who are like you Yes, same same people who have So a holocaust victim Would Would be would feel validated and would heal much faster if you were to talk to another holocaust Yes, because the holocaust has been a surrealistic Dreamscape Nightmarish escape which defies belief Yes, holocaust is being denied It's unbelievable Now the last narcissistic abuse I was the first to describe narcissistic abuse 1995 and the reason I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse was to distinguish it from all other forms of abuse Yeah, narcissistic abuse Is about annihilating you Denying you your agency your independence your personal autonomy and your identity In a within a hallucinatory landscape Yes It's it's absolutely as if you were given some kind of drug Yeah, and so Even your recollection of what had happened and so on so forth Is bound to be impacted the disbelief is partly justified because many victims do Um find it difficult to recollect, you know objectively Yeah So talk to your own kind talk to therapists who are trained in this not all therapists are Dr. Therapists who are trained in this? and then detox treat the whole thing as um So a kind of substance abuse your substance was the narcissist Yes, you need to detox the narcissist implants in your mind through a process called entraining The narcissist implants in your mind projects voice voice or voices That keep controlling you and manipulating you long after he's gone physically Yeah, you need to you need to cleanse your mind and you need to detox And that's a long process Yes, and actually your post the other day sound that was talking about you know, there is no loss because they were never there in the first place I think sometimes that blunt Truth is incredibly helpful for people that are recovering as well. I think two sentences could be of great help None of it has had anything to do with you Yeah, the shared fantasy is an automatic process automated process Which is inexorable And disregards the identity of the intimate partner involved So Never mind what you did what you could have done what you would have done what never mind any of this You would have been devalued and discarded period because that's the aim of the shared fantasy Number one number two You never meant anything to the narcissist The narcissist snapshot that you created an internal object in his mind that corresponded to you and corresponded to you very tenuously and very oppositely Yeah, so none of it was about you You've been rejected and devalued and discarded not because of who you are of what you've done But because of the shared fantasies end game Yeah, and so It it's not about you don't take it personally It's been an impersonal experience And I think this is what's very difficult for victims to accept Yeah, they have never been there No and yet it's so helpful to have that level of clarity as tough as it might be to hear So I found that incredibly useful last question The community of people whether we're therapists whether they're we're clinical psychologists whether we're Victims whether they're friends and family. What would you like the community of humans to be doing to help in this space? What do we need to do better to better understand it to better move forward from it We must Get rid of political correctness, especially in this space some people Who look very much like humans are not They lack The basic modules of humanity They have no empathy. They have no access to positive emotions only negative ones They are predatory Either either instinctively and reflexively like the narcissist or in a premeditated manner like the psychopath Whatever they may be human they are not They are perhaps Form of artificial intelligence the first aliens on earth. I don't know choose your favorite conspiracy theory except their lack of humanity Yes victims and survivors of narcissistic abuse have been exposed To an interaction that simulated a human a relationship with a human being and yet did not involve any other human being It is a very lonely experience And if we insist that the narcissist and the psychopaths are flawed human beings We are invalidating the victims and the survivors They have gone through something Which is beyond human experience because they did not involve other humans I understand and I guess that's the difficulty with the covert narcissism because they present Incredibly like a normal human being to many other people. Is that because they've learned how to do it wrote in some form sam? Covert narcissism is an adaptation to permanent failure to what is known as narcissistic collapse The inability to secure narcissistic supply on your own So it's an adaptation and it is a form of mimicry Very similar to mimicry in nature Where a predator of it tends to be prey and prey presents to be predator and so just in order to survive And so it's very atavistic. It's it's very primitive Primitive reaction And the covert narcissists projects outwardly Simulated a simulacrum of a human being Yeah, and so you begin to interact with this simulacrum. He draws you into the shared fantasy And then to your horror You begin to realize that you are trapped in a nightmare and there's nobody else there Yes, nobody else say on your own. You're all alone. Yeah, the isolation is excruciating. Yes With the overt or covert narcissists you usually with your word narcissists the grandiose narcissists usually see it coming Yes, grandiose narcissists are swagger. It's and they are, you know They're a bit a bit on the stupid side. So you you see it coming. Yeah The covert is a much more Much more dangerous proposition. Yeah, I agree a little stealth the psychopath even more so The psychopath can can Simulate human behavior human empathy emotions everything for years or decades if necessary Yeah And then in the pursuit in the pursuit of of Gold Yeah, and the gold could be anything the gold could be totally crazy. The gold could be normal like sales money access power But the gold could be completely insane. For example, the number of dead bodies. I will accumulate in my refrigerate You know, yeah And and it's impossible to with covert narcissists There are telltale signs This for example covert narcissists are extremely controlling They are the alacrity the speed with which they they induce intimacy Is very crazy like they would offer it to they were offered to marry you on the first date and three children with you on the second And move in with you on the third this kind of thing the alacrity the speed is crazy Yeah, they are telltale signs Hey, but there's none with a side with a with a consummate psycho None yes Okay What I said it was last question is made me think about something else, Sam There seems to be quite a sadistic element sometimes that comes through So individuals laughing at victims crying or ridiculing them when they may have done something to really torment them Is this something in the sadistic nature here that we need to understand with narcissists There's a lot of confusion between psychopaths and narcissists. For example, narcissists do not gasoline Narcissists truly believe their own lives on fabulations fantasies promises So they never feel to fake When they make the promise they believe it. Yes, believe they are about to realize it And so but psychopaths gaslight Psychopaths on purpose make you doubt your own judgment of reality and of yourself, which is gaslight So similarly there's a there's confusion between Psychopaths and narcissists the vast majority of Sadistic people would be psychopaths not narcissists. Sadism is very rare in narcissism You must understand that The narcissist is heavily dependent on other people For the provision of narcissistic supply. Yes. So the vast majority of narcissists are pro-social They are communal They are collaborative They work with other people to to to obtain supply simply The psychopath on the other hand Truly objectifies people to humanizes them uses them and then discards them To get treat gets rid of them sometimes by killing them and so on and yes Psychopaths would find find weakness And vulnerability very funny This is their favorite type of humor And they are likely to mock you and ridicule you if you show any Any frailty or any susceptibility or any The narcissist much Much is much less likely to act this way although narcissists share with the psychopath They're disdain and contempt For humanity and especially the weaknesses Weaknesses a weakness for example such as love Love is a weakness So yes, they share this with the psychopath. They're not going to show this because yes, I'm going to externalize this Yeah Okay, so sam in my book to finish What do you want to make sure I include and what would you like me to absolutely avoid? Your book is about covert narcissism. I understand. It is. Yes Well I think There is a covert side to any and all personality disorders So I think there's a covert borderline of a psychopath narcissists and so on so forth I would if I were you to do of course, but I would seek the common denominators of all the covert conditions covert states Why do people become covert? and Their motivation dictates their modus operandi their method of operations and so This would lead to to behavioral prescriptions How to counter these behaviors how to survive these behaviors and so on so forth The covert narcissist is demonized online Or reduced to a caricature Yes, but this this is This would be a mistake This would be a mistake covert narcissism has first been described by akhtar and cooper the late cooper In 1989 And if you have a look at their the table they've published in that article You will realize What an incredibly complex phenomenon covert narcissism is even I would say More more way more complex than grandiose narcissism. Yeah And then you I I believe you would end up asking yourself But wait a minute. This could apply easily to a borderline this covert condition could apply to a borderline group like you so Maybe To generalize the covert condition Because people come across a narcissist and he's a covert narcissist. Okay But then one day they abandon him or He goes bankrupt Or he he's incarcerated. So he's he's subjected to intense stress Yeah, at that point the vast majority of the borderlines Begin to emotionally dysregulate To decompensate they lose their defenses and blacked out. So they become indistinguishable from borderlines Yes And so I came up with a new diagnosis a suggested diagnosis covert covert borderline Describe a variant of a borderline which is which is covert and I think I gave a lecture in McGill University where I I proposed a general principle Of psychopathology a general principle of mental illness that There is a personality disorder Then there is a collapse And then there is a covert state the covert state is a reaction to the collapse in the personality disorder And then there is recovery and then there's going back to them. So It would be misleading to tell people That there is type constancy Okay, you start with a covert narcissist and then one day he becomes overt And then or or he becomes borderline Okay, and you're shocked because you were led to expect some things and then yeah So it's not a fixed state necessarily. There's no type constancy that today we know this Today, this is the orthodoxy Yeah, I've been saying it for 30 years But today this is the accepted wisdom that there is no type constancy. It definitely not in narcissism People people vacillate people oscillate between overt grandiose and covert. Yeah, so This could be your contribution to To introduce type inconstancy into the conversation Yeah, and then to deal with the issue of covert states Generally, yes Not just in narcissism. Yeah, okay Okay, and the thing that you most hate seeing sam that people write that you feel Irritates you angers you because you feel it's incorrect or pop psychology Regrettably About 90 percent of everything said online is wrong Yeah, and it is Perpetuated and propagated and promulgated even by people with academic degrees What irritates me most is is people don't check credentials. There's someone with a phd And it's a phd in psychology so what? A phd in psychology doesn't imply an expertise in narcissism Did he or she publish anything in the field? Did he or she study narcissists? Did he or she does she have a practice clinical practice with narcissists? I mean And so people just blindly follow A victim of narcissists is suddenly an expert on narcissism Someone with a phd in psychology is utterly unrelated to Plus the personalities or that is an expert or so this Fake corn artist charlatan expertise is what irritates me most Yes Okay, I'll make sure I'm not one of those sam otherwise. I'm going to be in your dark gaze. Yes. Thank you ever so much Thank you so much. It's incredibly helpful as I continue to write and to finish this but uh Again, I'll keep following and keep watching the things you're putting out because it's incredibly helpful sam So thank you. Thank you for your kind words and I wish you success with the book Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Cheers sam. Bye. Bye