 record and okay I'm nervous. Are you recording as well? Should I? Or not? Yeah, I will record. Yeah, I will record button. Are you recording? Yes, I'm recording. You're recording. It says there's a small button on the left, the small button that says recording. Yeah, it is recording in my left corner. In your left corner, okay. Well, hopefully one recording will survive. Sometimes Zoom is not very reliable when it comes to recording. That's why I personally use Webex. Okay, so welcome then everyone and today we've got a special guest. Some of you may know him, some of you may not. That's why I would like to introduce him. Sam Batman, his narcissist psychopath and abuse YouTube channel has more than 32.1 million views and 145,000 subscribers. So subscribers, oh my god, sorry, subscribers. Congratulations, it's incredible. Sam is visiting Professor of Psychology in Southern Federal University of Poland and Russia. He's also Professor of Finance and Psychology in Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies, Founder, Healthcare Committee, Ministry of Health, Republic of Macedonia. Also, Sam is the author of Malignan Self-Love Narcissist Revisited. And if I remember, you wrote like more than 3,000 more books, I think, if I remember. More like 60, but I'm still young. I'm really happy to have you here today. Today we'll be talking about Narcissist Personality Disorder and Defendant Personality Disorder, and especially about dynamic between these two personalities. And so yeah, one more time. Welcome Sam and thank you. Thank you very much. So my question, maybe it's like we can start from your point of view about Narcissist Personality Disorder and Defendant Personality Disorder, like in a perspective that it's two sides of the same coin. If you could say how you see this perspective and maybe even referring to childhood. Well, I wouldn't say two sides of the same coin, but I would say that both of them are solutions that the child chooses when the child is confronted with a dysfunctional family, with abuse, with trauma, with what Andre Green called the dead mother, a mother who is selfish, depressed, emotionally unavailable, a mother who makes the child parentify her, a mother who instrumentalizes the child, uses the child to realize her dreams and wishes, a mother, of course, or parents who abuse the child, classically, physically, verbally, psychologically and so on. I'm saying mother because in the critical years which are zero to probably four, then what we call the formative years, it is the mother that has 90% of the influence. It is the mother that dictates the developmental trajectory of the child. The father comes much later. The father comes in as a socialization agent, as a representative of society. The father also contributes very greatly to gender differentiation. The father also teaches the child skills, survival skills, social skills. The father is a very important figure. I'm not underestimating the father's contribution or the father's ability to damage the psychology of the child, but that comes much later. Much, much earlier it's the mother and almost exclusively the mother. When the mother is dysfunctional, the child has several options and two of these options are narcissism or codependency or what we call dependent personality and so on. The child can emulate the abuser, can internalize the abuser, can imitate the abuser. The child can make a kind of internal, mostly unconscious decision that it's better to be the abuser than the victim. Then the child tries to become an abuser and succeeds, then becomes a narcissist. The alternative is, of course, for the child to merge with a frustrating object, to fuse with the mother, to become one with the mother, to merge or to fuse and in this sense to assimilate the mother, to assimilate the bed object and thereby to neutralize, to render the bed object innocuous, not frightening, not threatening, because if the bed object is part of you, then it gives you the illusion of control and it did dependent personality disorder or codependency is a disorder of control. It's the use of various behavioral tactics such as clinging, such as neediness in order to control the partner. Now, in both cases, in narcissism and in codependency, the person, the patient, the client, whatever you want to call it, the person with the disorder needs the intimate partner, not only physically, but needs the intimate partner psychologically. The intimate partner fulfills ego functions, fulfills internal functions. The narcissist uses the intimate partner to regulate his sense of self-worth, uses the intimate partner to gain access to reality, to gain what we call reality testing, uses the intimate partner for a variety of functions that are usually internal functions, usually functions that are not dependent on other people. The narcissist depends on other people and more specifically on his intimate partner. Similarly, the codependent. The codependent needs her intimate partner so as to regulate her internal environment. In both these cases and of course in borderline, there is a dysregulated, chaotic, chaotic environment, an environment that is labile, up and down, environment that's unpredictable. The situation with borderline is so bad that in the last 15 years, we are reconceiving of borderline. We're beginning to consider borderline personality disorder as a form of multiple personality, as a form of dissociative identity disorder because in borderline personality disorder, we have self-states, several states of self, which are very, very distinct from one another. Similarly, in narcissism, we have at least two self-states. We have the true self and the false self. These are distinct. They have nothing in common whatsoever. They're actually kind of enemies. They're hostile to each other. So we have at least two, I wouldn't say personalities, but self-states, distinguishable self-states. And so we see that this entire family of disorders, formerly known as cluster B personality disorders or erratic or dramatic personality disorders, we are beginning to see the day of common etiology, common causation, common developmental pathway or trajectory. First of all, all these disorders are post-traumatic conditions. We can reconceive of all these disorders not as personality disorders, but as forms of complex trauma. So we can reconceive of these disorders as forms of CPTSD. Indeed, in recent studies, we are discovering that victims of CPTSD, for example, victims of narcissistic abuse, victims of domestic violence, victims of emotional abuse, victims of these types of abuse, they are psychodynamically indistinguishable from people with borderline personality disorder. CPTSD and borderline personality disorders are literally indistinguishable. So we are beginning to rethink these disorders as combination post trauma and dissociation. So there was a trauma. It created a post-traumatic condition. This condition was so severe, the child couldn't cope with it. So the child broke two pieces. The child was shattered, like a ming vase, shattered two pieces. Each piece... There was a personality fragmentation. There was no personality at age four or even at age nine, there is still no what Jung calls constellated self. But there were the rudiments of self and they broke two pieces. And these pieces are what we call the self states. In other words, to summarize, I regard all these personality disorders as forms of dissociative post-traumatic multiple personality disorders. I think we need to reconceive of them that way. And then we can become a lot more efficient in administering therapy. Yes, I think CPTSD, which you said especially when you compared borderline and CPTSD, I think it's a lot of mistakes, especially from psychology. That they, for example, give someone, they acknowledge that the person has the borderline. And to be honest, it's not true because it's just, it's CPTSD, right? So I completely agree with what you said. If I may add one thing? It is this attempt to reconceive of these personality disorders and to connect them to trauma and to connect them to dissociation. This attempt is part of a much bigger war, much bigger battle. In the 19th century, when the modern discipline of psychology had been established, because psychology has been around for 4,000 years, but the modern discipline, let's say the German discipline, because psychology started this experimental science in laboratory went and others. So when psychology started in Germany, in Austria, later in the United States, it was heavily influenced by the ethos of individualism. At that time was the beginning of the capitalist phase of individualism. Free enterprise, private enterprise, profits, the individual as a risk taker, people immigrated, there was huge immigration. So when you immigrate, you are an individual. You break apart from your community, you break apart from your country, from your language, you become total atom individual. So there was an ethos, there was a kind of spirit, ambience, atmosphere of individualism. And of course, modern psychology started as the science of the individual. What has happened since the 60s? We are beginning to reconceive of modern psychology, not as the science of the individual, but as the science of interpersonal relationships. You see Freud, for example, Freud wrote about individuals. It's very difficult to find in Freud's writing anything about relationships. Freud's trilateral model is 99% about the individual and 1% about society. Society is kind of abstract. Afterthought is not really there. Same with Jung, of course. Although Jung tried to compromise somehow by introducing the collective unconscious. But the collective unconscious is so bizarre, so non-scientific, so not open to study and experimentation. It might as well be occult. So until the 60s, because Jung died in the 60s, yes, until the 60s, it was all about the individual. And then we started to shift. We started to realize that individual is an obstruction and not a useful obstruction. Not obstruction, but obstruction. Something that makes it very difficult for us to understand how humans function. Today we have emphasis on relationships, interaction, groups, dynamics, and so on. The new disorders, because narcissistic personality disorder first appeared in 1980. It's a very new disorder. The first time NPD was mentioned was in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Edition 3, 1980. That's new. In terms of history, it's new. Borderline, the first serious attempt to study borderline was in the 70s. And the most serious attempt was with Otto Kahnberg in 1975. That's also new. I was already a teenager at the time. I was alive. Okay, I'm a dinosaur, but you know. So these are new disorders. And if you look at these disorders, they are social disorders. Narcissistic personality disorder is not an individual's disorder, but it's a disorder of how individual relates to other people. The criteria are interrelational, interpersonal, one of the main criteria of narcissistic personality disorder is a lack of empathy. Empathy. There's no empathy without other people. Another criteria that the narcissist is exploitative. There's no exploitation without other people. Another criteria is the narcissist is envious. There's no envy without other people. Same with the borderline. If you look at the diagnostic criteria in the diagnostic and statistical manual, and especially so in the fifth edition, 2013, just published, you will see that these are not disorders of the self. They are not disorders of the individual. They are disorders of how the individual functions within networks of other people, within communities, within families, within romantic relationships, so intimacy is a crucial determinant. Empathy, envy, negative emotionality, reactance, in other words, defiance, lack of impulse control in relation to other people, exploitation, harming and hurting other people. All these are critical facets of these disorders. Now, Freud was the first to describe narcissism, but he didn't describe it as we understand it today. He described it as a reaction of the individual as a baby. His work in 1914 was about baby narcissism. He called it primary narcissism. That's not the narcissism we're talking about today. Not the same. Yes, I agree. He was writing about the stage that everyone is going to. It's like, let's say, good narcissists. Today we are talking about completely different things. Like you said, about dynamics between personalities. But if we are talking about dynamics, then I would like to stop here and ask you about because we've got a lot of experts, especially on YouTube, that they're showing this dynamics between narcissists and co-dependents as a magnet. I can't agree with this point of view because then I'm asking myself, okay, if it's magnet, where is the responsibility? What do you think about that? How do you see it? There is not a single expert on YouTube. All the real experts in narcissism and co-dependency are not on YouTube. You cannot find them on YouTube. The leading experts on narcissism today are John Twenge, Keith Campbell, even Kernberg was alive. Theodore Millen, when he was alive, there was YouTube already and so on. Similarly, the leading experts of co-dependency are Lina Hand and others. These names, the real experts, you will not find them on YouTube. The people who find on YouTube are not experts. They have published nothing in the field. They don't teach these subjects in their own universities if they are in any university at all. I would use the word experts very judiciously. I have yet to come across a single expert online, one expert. Let's put this aside. Now, I think the source of the confusion is this. The narcissist is indiscriminate. The narcissist is promiscuous in the sense that the narcissist doesn't care who you are, what you are, what is your identity, what are your traits, what are your qualities, what are your preferences, your dreams and wishes, because for the narcissist you don't exist. So the narcissist doesn't care if you are co-dependent at all. He doesn't care if you have empathy or don't have empathy. He doesn't care if you're a psychopath. He doesn't care if you're another narcissist. He doesn't care about anything whatsoever. He doesn't care even to a large extent how you look. He doesn't care. He cares about one thing only. He's one track-minded, he's totally goal-oriented and that's why we think that there is a lot of overlap between psychopathy and narcissism because both are goal-oriented. So the narcissist's goal is narcissistic supply and that's the only thing, the only thing that attracts you to, attracts him to you or repels him from you. He gauges. He has something that I called empathy. He scans you, he scans like a scanner. He says, this girl, this woman, this man, this object, this object, this car, this smartphone, this laptop, they can give me narcissistic supply. From that moment the narcissist begins to invest emotionally in that woman, in that man and in that object. Catexis, emotional investment in narcissism is indiscriminate and promiscuous in the sense that there are no standards, there are no criteria and there are no preferences. That's the narcissistic side. On the other side, it is true that certain psychological profiles would tend to gravitate to narcissists, would tend to be more attracted to narcissists. They include codependence, borderlines. Other people, for example, bipolar in the manic phase, would be attracted to narcissists. Depressives, depressives, people with depressive illnesses. So there are whole groups of people with mental problems, with mental issues, who would be inexorably, powerfully, irresistibly attracted to the narcissists. That part is true, but it is not reciprocal because I read online a lot of nonsense by these so-called experts and most of what they say regrettably is nonsense, but a lot of nonsense that it is the narcissists who prefers women who are codependent or empathic. No, that is not true. It is true that they end up together. Now, the first one, real scholar, who does not have a YouTube channel, of course, because she is a real scholar, she is also a very good personal friend of mine. The first one to describe the attraction between borderlines and narcissists was a woman called Joanne Lachkar and Joanne Lachkar wrote the seminal book about this attraction and about this type of couple. Narcissist borderline couple, that is the title of the book, Narcissistic borderline couple. She was the first to describe it in the 80s, 10 years before I started my work. I started my work in 1995. I am a pioneer and I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse. I invented this phrase, but she preceded me by at least 10 years. And she described the dynamic between narcissists and borderlines, narcissists and later codependents and so on. And what she had described is that the two parties fulfill functions, psychological functions for each other, but the truth of the matter is that the narcissist is absolutely goal-oriented and he is focused on supply, he is a junkie, a junkie, an addict, drug addict. He doesn't care how you look if you can give him the drug. He doesn't care if you're a nice person, if you can give him the heroin. He wants to inject, he wants his drug. He doesn't care if you're nice, empathic, borderline, codependent, 96 years old, tall, short, blonde, he doesn't care about any of this. The junkie cares about one thing. Do you have my fix? Do you have my heroin? If you do, I'm going to love you. I'm going to adore you. I'm going to do whatever it takes to get the heroin out of you. We must think of narcissism as an addiction. It's an addiction. So is borderline. So is codependence. The narcissist is addicted to supply. Borderline is addicted to regulation. She uses the intimate partner to regulate and when she fears abandonment, when she anticipates abandonment, she dysregulates. She falls apart. And the codependent is dependent on this codependent. She's dependent by definition. These are addicts. And like all addicts, they are indiscriminate. So what you said, and I have a question about that, you said that a narcissist is scanning, he's like a scanner, right? And you call this called empathy. Yes. What exactly is he looking for them? If he's not feel anything from us, right? What is he looking for? What is the supply then for narcissists? Yeah. Empathy has three components. There is reflexive empathy. That is the empathy that the baby shows to mommy. When mommy smiles, the baby smiles. Reflexive empathy develops probably already in the womb. As babies react within the womb to mommy's moods, mommy's movements and so on. This is reflexive. Animals have it as well. Then there is cognitive empathy. Develops a bit later. And it's the ability to think, to see someone and then to think about that someone's condition, but you don't have any emotional reaction. One of the reasons you don't have any emotional reactions as a child when you have cognitive empathy is you don't have enough life experience. To develop full empathy, you need to have life experience. You need to have experience the same condition like the other person. If I see that you are sad and I've never been sad because I'm two years old, it's difficult for me to have emotional empathy with you because I see that you're sad. And I can even say mommy is sad because I learned that when people cry, they are sad. It's called sad. So I can say mommy is sad, but I don't feel that mommy is sad because I'm two years old and I've never been sad. I didn't have the opportunity to be sad. So this is cognitive empathy. Much later, we have emotional empathy and morality is the hyper structure. So we have based on empathy, we have morality, what not to do to other people. The narcissist because the narcissist, narcissism is arrested development. The narcissist stops his development as a child. He remains a child forever. So because he remains a child forever, he's stuck in the cognitive phase. He has a reflexive and cognitive, but no emotional. And when he goes through life without access to his emotions, so he never develops emotional resonance because he has no access to his positive emotions. He has no access to his positive emotions because he also has strong negative emotions. And he's afraid that if he allows himself to emote, if he allows himself to feel, it will be very painful. So to avoid pain, to avoid hurt, the narcissist prefers not to feel anything, not to have any emotions, good, at least good, not to have emotions. So because he doesn't have emotions, he cannot identify you with you. He cannot empathize with you emotionally. He can just understand in his cognition, in his mind, in his thinking what is happening to you. He has seen such situations before. So if he sees that you are crying, he goes into his database like a computer and he says, oh, I have seen 36 other people crying and they told me that they are sad. So probably she said, but it has no resonance. It's like a computer would say this. But if you are sad, I can take advantage of you. If you're sad, if you're broken, if you're damaged, if you're afraid, if you're happy, if you're on any state of mind, any of your emotions, I can leverage, I can use to take advantage of you. If you're very, very sad and broken, I can get you drunk and then get you to bed and have sex with you. If you are very happy and because of that, you are not very careful, I can take your money. Everything presents an opportunity to take advantage of you somehow. And of course, the narcissist doesn't want your money. He doesn't even want your sex. He wants narcissistic supply. But the psychopath wants your money, wants your sex, wants access, wants many things, wants your property, wants many things from you. So both types, narcissists and psychopaths, they scan you, they see your weak points, your weak points, your vulnerabilities, your chinks, entry points, intrusion points, they're like a hostile army. The army is probing the walls, the walls of the castle, where they can break through in the siege. That's called empathy. Okay. Thank you so much for this. It explains a lot. But also, how then the relationship with narcissists affects co-dependent, especially co-dependent person, when she's with narcissists. Similar to the narcissist, the co-dependent doesn't really see the other person. Both of them have something that I coined the term core idealization. Both of them idealize each other. Now, the narcissist needs to idealize his intimate partner, because if his intimate partner is ideal, then he is ideal. If she is the most beautiful, intelligent, amazing woman on earth, and she had chosen him, that means that he is the most amazing intelligent man on earth. By idealizing her, he's actually idealizing himself as her partner. So this is process of co-idealization. The co-dependent and the borderline need to idealize the narcissists in order to reduce anxiety. For them, idealization is an anxiety-reducing mechanism. It's anxiolytic. So the borderline is terrified of abandonment, abandonment, loss, separation. And she anticipates and she also mislables and misinterprets many behaviors as rejection or as humiliation or as abandonment when they are not. So she is on a constant state of alert. She is constantly stressed, anticipating the worst. We call this process catastrophizing. So the borderline catastrophizes all the time to reduce the, and catastrophizing creates anxiety, intolerable anxiety. Now, with a borderline, this anxiety creates mood swings, ups and downs. It's called lability. It also, this anxiety also, this regulates her emotions, because if she changes her emotions, she can control her anxiety. This is the way we solve dissonance. For example, if I'm very afraid that you will abandon me, one way to solve this is to say, I don't really love you. I don't care if you abandon me. Suddenly, I switch from love to hate, because if I hate you, you cannot hurt me. But if I love you, you can hurt me. So emotional dysregulation and moodlability, they are the derivatives of an underlying anxiety disorder. And of course, borderline is very comorbid with anxiety disorders and depression. It's well known. It's in many studies. Same with codependence. So these people, they're mostly women. These people, they anticipate the worst. They catastrophize. They misread reality. They have impaired reality testing. Everything to them is impending doom, abandonment, remuneration, rejection, disaster, breakup, loss, separation, horrible. So to reduce this level, they idealize the losses. They say, oh, he loves me a lot. He will never leave me. Or he's like my father, daddy, daddy issues, figure, father figure, father will never harm his daughter. Will never hurt his daughter. So he's my father. He loves me unconditionally. Never mind what I do. He will never desert me. He will never abandon me. So she also is not interacting with the real person, but with the idea, with the idealized narcissists. And so we have in this kind of relationships, two interactions, which have nothing in common. The codependent interacts with an idealized version of the narcissist that has nothing to do with the narcissist. And the narcissist interacts with an idealized version of the codependent that has nothing to do with the codependent. And I call this situation shared fantasy. That's the shared fantasy. Have you heard about prox syndrome? They have you heard about prox syndrome? Prox. Which syndrome? I can't hear. Can you spell it? Prox. Prox. Like animal. F-R-O-G. Sorry? F-R-O-G. Prox syndrome. Yes. Yes. It's the... Yeah. When codependent, she was hoping that when she kissed the frog, it will turn into a print and it didn't and she turned into a frog. Yeah. There's also another variant of this that you can cook a frog increased by one degree and the frog doesn't realize until it's cooked. The thing is that given the right circumstances, these relationships are very long lived. And this is what we call the trauma bonding. The trauma bonding, the essence of the trauma bonding is the emotional investment in a shared fantasy. And this shared fantasy is very powerful and almost impossible to break because the parties are not invested in each other, but they're invested in two things. They're invested in a figment of their imagination, what we call an internal object. The codependent has an internal object of the narcissist. She's interacting with the internal object, not with the narcissist. And the narcissist has what I call a snapshot. It's an internal object of the codependent and he's interacting with that. Consequently, when the parties interact with these idealized images, simultaneously they are idealizing themselves. But that's a very crucial insight. It's very important to understand. In a shared fantasy, the two parties, let's say narcissist and borderline, narcissist and codependent, in a shared fantasy, the two parties are in love with themselves, not with each other. Let me try to explain this. I see you. I think that you can be my intimate partner as a narcissist, let's say. I'm a narcissist and I think you can be my intimate partner. I idealize you. I take a snapshot of you. I take a photo. I internalize this photo. It becomes an internal object. I idealize the internal object. And from that moment, I'm not interacting with you anymore. I'm interacting exclusively with internal object, which is an idealized internal object. Because this internal object is idealized, it allows me to idealize myself. In other words, it allows me to fall in love with myself. This is super, super crucial insight because both the narcissist and the codependent can don't have self-love. They don't love themselves. They hate themselves. They love themselves. There's no self-love in narcissism and codependency. The only way narcissists can experience self-love is by falling in love with an internal object, which is a part of him. So I'm using you to love myself and you are using me as a codependent to love yourself. This is the core. This is the addictive nature of trauma bonding. Trauma bonding allows both parties to finally, for the first time in life, love themselves. Allows for self-love, true self-love. This is intoxicating. It's like a drug. It's very difficult to break. Now, the mechanism that underlies trauma bonding is called intermittent reinforcement. Intermittent reinforcement is when I give you feedback, which is not stable, which is unpredictable, which is hot and cold, black and white, love and hate. I keep the environment such that you are constantly on your toes. You don't know what to expect. You are not, why is, how is this part of idealization? How is this part of self-love? It's a power play. It's a power play. When I fall in love with myself as a narcissist, I fall in love with myself and myself is grandiose. It's omnipotent. It's all powerful. It's Godlike. I need to prove it all the time using the internal object because I'm in love with the internal object. The internal object is part of me. I'm in love with the internal object. I'm in love with myself. But I need, if I'm in love with myself, I need to prove to myself that myself is real. And this self is grandiose. Godlike, powerful. I need to show my power. And the only way for me to show my power is to touch you, to keep you on your toes. I need to be the only source of certainty in your life, the only source of power. I need to be the electricity utility without when you die. So this intermittent reinforcement is actually a grandiosity enhancing behavior on the part of the narcissist. Why does the borderline accept it? She accepts it because I would say the adrenaline or dopamine rush. After each bad period, there's a good period. And it is the bad period that makes the good period look so good. We make the mistake, we think, that if we have a stable relationship where someone loves you 100% of the time, no interruptions, that's the strongest love possible. That's the strongest intimacy possible, not true. The strongest love possible, the strongest intimacy possible is after a period where you did not have intimacy and where you did not have love. It is the contrast that creates the potency and the power of the emotions that follows. If you didn't have love many years and then you fall in love, believe me, it's a hundred times more intense than if you had love all the time. If you didn't have intimacy and then you finally have intimacy, even with a pet, with a cat, with a dog, it's very intense. It's very strong. And intermittent reinforcement does exactly this. It creates highs, like a drug-induced highs. It creates highs by creating love. The narcissist gives you a love so that you feel the high much more intensely. He is getting a sense of power by tormenting you and torturing you and keeping you on your toes and being the only source of certainty in your life. So this gives him a sense of Godlike power, allows him to continue to emotionally invest in his grandiose self. And you also want it. You also want it because you are addicted to intense emotionality. You are addicted to intense emotions. And it is not true that intermittent reinforcement is that unpredictable. It's not. I would give you the rule of intermittent reinforcement. After each bad period, there's a good period. And after each good period, there's a bad period. It's totally predictable in a way. And you keep waiting. It's like being hungry and eating, being hungry and eating. You keep waiting for this. You're addicted. I agree. You said that it's almost impossible to break it, this dynamics between narcissists and co-dependent. And I totally agree with you. I was in this kind of relationship 10 years, almost. And it is like addiction. I completely agree with it. But how can you see this, like when you can break it from your point of view? These type of relationships, which are essentially trauma bonded and based on intermittent reinforcement and based on falling in love with yourself within the relationship via the agency of your intimate partner. I call it the Hall of Mirrors. The narcissist invites you to his Hall of Mirrors. When you enter the Hall of Mirrors, what do you see? You don't see the narcissist. You see yourself. When the narcissist love bombs you, when the narcissist grooms you, he lures you, he seduces you to come into his carnival attraction, into his Hall of Mirrors. You step gingerly, carefully. You step into the Hall of Mirrors. The minute you stepped in, you're doomed. You're finished. You're hostage. Why? Because when you step into the Hall of Mirrors, you see your idealized self. You see yourself in the mirror. It is a distorting mirror. It's not a real mirror. It's a mirror that shows you in an unrealistic light, makes you look super beautiful, amazing, intelligent, sensitive, empathic, incredible, unique, unprecedented. You fall in love with this. You fall in love with this. And you fall in love, in essence, with the idealized image of yourself. But still it is self-love. First time in your life, it's self-love. So to break this is very difficult because it's like asking you not to love yourself anymore. It's very difficult. And it happens usually in two cases. When the narcissist had enough of you, he begins to have difficulties to idealize you. So after some time, there is accumulation of information, accumulation of incidents, of events, of behaviors, you know, that this accumulation becomes too much. And the narcissist can ignore two items of information, 10 items of information. But after 10 years, there's a thousand items of information. For example, if I think you're very intelligent, and then you say something stupid, I can ignore it. I can continue to idealize you. But to ignore it, I must invest energy. I must repress the information that you're stupid. I must deny it. I must reframe it. I must ignore it. It takes a lot of, and it's called confirmation bias, takes a lot of effort. Okay. So one case, okay. Two cases. The next day, you also say something stupid. Then after 10 years, there are a thousand incidents where you said something seriously stupid. That makes it very difficult for me to consider you as intelligent. It's impossible to idealize it. After some time, the narcissist gives up the idealization, begins to see you as you truly are. And that he doesn't want, because as you truly are, reflects on him. It makes it difficult for him to idealize himself and to be in love with himself. Also, it makes it difficult for him to maintain his grandiosity. So he switches. He switches from idealization to devaluation. And in the devaluation phase, he's intended to help him to get rid of you. That's one way of getting out of the relationship. You may have convinced yourself that you walked out, but I have a secret and a surprise for you and for your listeners. If the narcissist doesn't want you to walk out, you will never ever walk out. It's very simple. You can think that you are the one who packed your things and left. You can think that you're the strong one, that you woke up, that you made a decision, that you are there. The narcissist wanted you to do this. He manipulated you to think that you are the initiating partner. He's good in this. Psychopaths, definitely. So this is one way. Second way is when you went through a trauma, a life crisis, something that woke you up and changed you in a way that rendered you more healthy. That this could be in therapy. This could be life crisis. This could be a good friend, a good friend with great influence on you. There are many pathways. We know, for example, that borderline personality disorder. Close to 50% of people diagnosed with borderline personality disorder lose the disorder completely after age 45 spontaneously. The spontaneous healing of borderline personality disorder after age 45 in half borderline. We know, for example, that dialectic behavior therapy, DBT, is very efficient with borderline. So if you go to DBT, you can get rid of borderline. Similarly, we know that the prognosis for co-dependence who are in therapy or co-dependence who develop a social safety, social network, social support network. The prognosis is excellent, which is precisely the reason why the narcissist isolates you, does not allow you to have family and friends. Narcissist knows this. So life helps you and at some stage you have changed. But you must understand this. The minute you have changed, you can no longer be idealized. If you become assertive, independent, autonomous, strong, decisive, the narcissist doesn't want you. It's not that because of that you are able to walk out. It's because the minute you become like that, the narcissist pushes you away. He doesn't want you. It's impossible to idealize you this way. You push back. He doesn't like that. He doesn't like resistance, criticism, disagreement. He doesn't want you as a living thing. The narcissist wants to mummify you. With your permission I'll try to explain why. Why the narcissist wants you dead, mentally dead. You remember that the narcissist, when the first time he meets you, he takes a snapshot, a photo, literally a photo. He internalizes it. He also internalizes your voice. So now he has an internal object and an introject, your voice. So you are made of an internal object and an introject. Together it's you. From that moment, he interacts with his internal objects. It is crucial for him to interact with these objects to allow him to idealize himself. In other words, it's an integral part of his grandiosity. He cannot afford to interact with you, really, outside because he cannot control you. He needs to control you to feel grandiose. And you cannot control a living human being. You cannot control an external object, but you can control an internal object. It's a background. Now, if I see you, let's say I'm a narcissist, you're codependent. I see you. I say, wow, she has two advantages. One, she's blonde. Second, she can give me narcissistic supply. Okay, great. I will ignore the blonde part, but you can give me supply. So she can be my intimate partner. I will love bomb her. I will groom her. I will make her mine. This process is called acquisition. I will acquire you. But that second, I take a snapshot of you. I internalize it. And from that moment, I interact with a snapshot, not with you. Why is this a problem? Because you are a living thing. You develop. You grow. You change. You make new friends. You have a new job. You buy new books. You watch new movies. These movies make you think these thoughts change you. You are not the snapshot. You have a life of your own. You're animated. Gradually, the differences between you and the snapshot become bigger and bigger. You diverge from the snapshot. As you diverge from the snapshot, it makes it more and more and more difficult to idealize you. More and more difficult to idealize me based on idealizing you. More and more difficult to maintain my grandiosity. You are challenging my grandiosity by separating from the snapshot. So the more independent you are, the more autonomous you are, the more assertive you are, the faster you divorce the snapshot. And the less useful you are to me. I can state with absolute certainty that it is the narcissist who gets rid of the codependent. The narcissist who gets rid of the borderline. Many narcissists, instinctively, automatically, or cleverly make their partner think that she had initiated the breakup, that she was the one who walked away. And later the narcissist tries to hoover these partners, usually for short-term supply gaps. And so because he tries to hoover them, it convinces them even more that they are the ones who walked away. But if the narcissist doesn't want you to walk away, you will not walk away. It's blueberry. You are in this cave. The narcissist is a mastermind in creating such total addiction, even the most basic primitive narcissist, by the way. It's animalistic. It's instinctual, reflexive. It's not even, especially intelligent narcissists, but even not intelligent. They create such addiction that trust you mean by yourself, you need the narcissists to push you away. And the more you change, the better your chances are that they will push you away. Mm-hmm. Okay, thank you so much for this one. It's a really important thing. And also, I have a lot of questions from people. They ask him, is the narcissist aware that he's a narcissist or she is a narcissist? And what exactly he or she is doing? A lot of people are asking about that. And also, they are asking, how can they help narcissists? So, what do you think about that? As usual, there's a lot of nonsense online, a lot of myths. And one of the most common myths is that narcissists are not self-aware. The truth is that all narcissists are fully self-aware. They fully know who they are. They know definitely what they're doing. And so, the reason people think they're not self-aware is because the narcissist disagrees with them on how to interpret his disorder and his actions. So, when the narcissist is being obnoxious, arrogant, hurtful, sadistic, aggressive, disagreeable, etc., etc., you would say, this is horrible. This is unacceptable behavior socially and individually. This is this. Narciss wouldn't say that. Narciss would say that he's being efficient. Narciss is glorify and glamorize their disorder. Narciss is fully believe that what you consider a disorder is not a disorder. It's the next step in human evolution. It is what makes them superior to you. You are too stupid. Hello again. Hello. We're still recording. You're recording. Are you still recording? Yes. I stopped, I think. But, yes, I'm still recording right now because I saw the narcissist fully realizes that he's special, that he's unusual, that he's idiosyncratic, or that he's eccentric. And he also realizes that many people disagree with the way he is, don't like the way he is, rejecting his own. But in his mind, people are stupid, inferior. They can't grasp. Narcissism is an evolutionary positive adaptation that it endows the narcissist with advantages. Narcissists will often tell you, had I not been a narcissist, I would not have been so accomplished. I would not have been so creative. I would not have reached the top of my company or the top of politics or the, you know, I would have not been a famous surgeon. Narcissists also find many behaviors amusing. It's a psychopathic side of nasty. They find them amusing where you don't find them amusing at all. So if they humiliate someone, for them, their sense of humor is very, very aggressive, humiliating, blunt honesty, being too honest, insultingly. So I mean, so the answer to your question is yes. Narcissists are fully aware. They know what they're doing. And I can prove it to you very easily. When the narcissist goes to jail, to prison, it doesn't behave the same. If the narcissists were to behave as a narcissist in prison, he wouldn't last one night. The next morning, they would take him out in a body bag. He knows it. Suddenly, in prison, he becomes a pussycat. He's the most loving empathic caring person. He pays attention. He is sensitive to other people's needs. He doesn't behave aggressively. He doesn't insult an attack. He is a totally changed man overnight. Because in prison, the price for being a narcissist is your life. So yes, these behaviors are totally conscious, because had they not been conscious, he would not have been able to change them. And they are totally deliberate. The narcissist is proud of what you consider disorder. He's proud of it. Can you help a narcissist? No, not really. It's the shortest answer you're going to get in this show. Not really. Therapy is, some kinds of therapies are effective in modifying some antisocial and abrasive behaviors of narcissists. But it's impossible to touch the core. Narcissism is not like cancer. It's not that you have the patient and you have the cancer. Narcissism is the patient. Narcissism is the narcissist. It's not that the narcissist has narcissism. Narcissism has the narcissist. If you take away the narcissism, there will be no one there. No one left. Narcissism is not a disorder of existence, not a disorder of presence. Narcissism is a disorder of absence. There's no one there. It's a huge emptiness. It's a trap, open and dark trap. So you can't cure. It's meaningless to ask if you can cure narcissism, because there's the assumption. When you cure something in medicine, when you cure something, there's the assumption that after you remove the disease, what is left is the patient. But in narcissism, if you remove the disease, nothing will be left. Thank you so much. And I have one more question, last one, but not this one. So have you got any advice to someone who just, let's say, finish a relationship with narcissists? Let's say that it happened. Any advice after the relationship is over? Yes, after. What's now? What's after? Yes, my main advice would be to try to understand what is wrong with you, why you ended up in a relationship with a narcissist. It implies severe problems with boundaries, personal boundaries. It implies internal dynamics, which are not good dynamics, they're as pathological as the narcissist dynamics, inability to regulate emotions, inability to control moods, liberal moods, maybe problems of impulsivity and recklessness, maybe defiance, maybe misperception of reality, impaired reality testing, maybe emotional blackmail and manipulation, manipulativeness, to be needy, to be needy, to be clinging is to blackmail, to manipulate. These are not positive things. Maybe a belief that you are incomplete without someone else, not necessarily a narcissist, but generally a belief that you are incomplete, so a feeling of lack of wholeness, lack of completeness, the feeling that you are not sufficient, insufficient for yourself. These are all pathologies, maybe shame, extreme shame, maybe extreme guilt. There's something there, no healthy person ends with a narcissist, forget that particular myth. There is a myth online that the narcissist are such amazing actors that they deceived you and you found yourself suddenly discovering the truth. Narcissists are very bad actors. You can see and spot a narcissist within less than five seconds. The way he carries his body, the way he talks, the way he treats taxi drivers and waiters, I mean there are so many signs. The way he doesn't respect your boundaries, he decides where to go to eat on a first date. On a first date, he decides where to go to eat, he orders the wine, he takes your purse, he tells you what to do, what not to do. And I have something. When it's overt, narcissist, it's easier. When it's covered, it's more difficult, but I agree that you can feel after like 10 seconds, who is standing next to you. The covert narcissist, both overt and covert, the grandiose. And it is impossible not to notice grandiose. So the overt narcissist is grandiose about himself. The covert narcissist would be grandiose about other people. So a typical sentence of overt, classic narcissist. I'm at the top of my profession. I'm making $2 million a year. That's overt narcissist. The covert narcissist will say, I'm very good friends with the overt narcissist who is making $2 million a year. He will redirect the grandiosity, but it will still be grandiosity. It's not true. It's myth. It's a lie. Victims generally, survivors and victims generally have a problem admitting that they had contributed to whatever had happened to them. They want to participate in a morality play of angels and demons, where they are, of course, the angels. This is grandiosity. This is grandiosity to say that you are impeccable, that you are perfect in anything, even if perfect victim, claim to perfection is grandiosity. These empaths, so-called empaths, and I don't know what, these are people who are in all probability covert narcissists. They are aggrandizing their victimhood. They are transforming their victimhood into something to be proud of. They are converting victimhood into an identity. They are leveraging victimhood to have power over other people. You don't have to believe me. Try to argue with an empath. See the reaction. The reaction is identical to the reaction of a narcissist. If you try to argue or disagree or criticize an empath, so-called, they are sometimes worse than us. They're vicious. So victimhood is the most common disguise of the covert narcissists. And even classic and overt narcissists, they also sometimes claim that they are victims. So real victims, because they are real victims, of course. Being in a relationship with the narcissist is a battle zone. It's a war. You're a casualty. I'm not denying this. I'm the first who said it. I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse. I'm the father. You're talking to father. I'm the father of the film. You don't need to teach me that narcissists are abusive, that they cause people damage. I told people that narcissists are abusive and they call damage. They cause damage. You know this because of me. Even if you don't know me, never heard of me. You know all this and you're discussing all this because I came first in 1995. So I don't feel any problem saying what I'm saying. There are real victims out there. Most of them are not online making a display and an exhibition of their suffering. But there are real victims. The thing is that they need to seriously think what went wrong, not with the narcissists and not with the relationship but with themselves. It's a time for soul searching. It's a time, it's an opportunity to get to know yourself much better. Now no one guarantees it will not happen again. But still, it's an opportunity. It's maybe for the first time in your life you can really love yourself by getting to know yourself and to throw that away and to say there's nothing I need to know about myself. I know myself. I'm empathic. I'm good-hearted. I'm wonderful. I'm sympathetic. I'm helping people. You see how many people love me? I don't need to. It's him. He's a demon. He's a possession. He's a devil. I mean this is religiosity and morality play that are not helping the narcissists. Now if you go online, 99% of self-styled coaches and self-styled experts, that's precisely what they're doing. They're telling you you're perfect. You're blameless. You are guiltless. Things have been done to you. You're magnet. You couldn't help it. Magnets cannot help it. You are, you know, and now having told you all this, give me your money. These are con artists, narcissistic con artists and victims want to hear this. They gravitate to such videos because they want to hear that they are perfect. Is this not narcissism? It's what the narcissist wants to be told that he's perfect. That he's blameless. Narcissists exactly like victims believe that the world envies them, conspires against them. They believe that they are victims. They're paranoid. They believe they are victims of external forces. Narcissists will be the first to tell you. I am as clever as Albert Einstein. Why I'm not famous like Einstein? Not my fault. My boss, my wife, society, the government, the universe, they conspire against me. They envy me. They destroy me. Both victims and narcissists have an external locus of control. The victim's external locus of control is the narcissist. The victim says everything bad that happened to me was the narcissist's fault. My life was not in my control. He controlled my life 100%. So go to him. Don't talk to me. And the narcissist says everything that happens to me, everything bad that happens to me is not my fault. It's happening to me from outside. Don't talk to me. Talk to the government, to the CIA, to my boss, to my wife. I'm innocent. Both of them make the claim of innocence. Nothing is worse. Nothing is, nothing is the end. There's no bigger enemy of healing than to claim that you're innocent. No one is innocent. There are no saints here. I completely agree, especially with this dynamic and a lot of, like we talked on the beginning that lots of people are speaking about black and white, like an angel and devil. And it's not about that because when I was in a relationship even with a narcissist, I wasn't angel at all. It's like about dynamic. And that's what I'm trying to show on my channel, also on YouTube. That's why I'm so grateful for your time, for your knowledge and your wisdom. Thank you so much, Sam. Thank you. I would add one sentence based on what you said. I'll try to keep it very brief. When you think about something in black and white, demon and angel, I am perfect is, this is called splitting. It's an infantile defense mechanism. Splitting is pathological. It's sick. It's infantile. It's aggressive. And it is characteristic, characteristic of narcissists and psychopaths. If you are displaying splitting, it is extremely strong indication that you are a narcissist. We are not aware of any other mental health disorder. And we are definitely not aware of any healthy person showing splitting, using splitting. It's unique to narcissists and psychopaths. You split the narcissists. You say, it's all bad. I'm all good. It's all black. I'm all white. I have a surprise for you. In all probability, you are narcissists. Completely agree because it's not about black and white. It's not about that. And it never was. So it was Dr. Sam Bachmann. Thank you so much. And I'm Daria Rikosta, clinical psychologist and therapist. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. I stop recording.