 I think it's time to start. Is it working? No. Hello? Good evening. Good evening. I would like to introduce a very special guest tonight, and that's Sam Vaknin. And Sam is very famous, and I googled many things and listened. When I heard he would be our guest, maybe the most famous book is Mattesistic Element, and 50 other different books and many other things. So Sam started this long time ago, and he coined the term Mattesistic Abuse, which is now very much in use the last 10 years maybe, and it's more and more, it becomes like some fashion. And he's a long-term member of the Faculty of Commonwealth Institute for Advanced Professional Studies in Cambridge, U.K., Toronto, Canada, and Lagos, Nigeria, and former visiting professor of psychology in Southern Federal University, Rostov-on-Don, in Russia. The author has already told 50 books about psychology, international affairs, business, economics, philosophy, and short fiction. So this team tonight is Mattesistic Abuse Detox, deprogramming yourself after the Nazi's shared fantasy. I'm very much interested about that, and I'm glad you are here with us. Thank you. So around 50 minutes is lecture, and after that will be round after break, short break, 50 minutes for questions and answers. I think it might be longer. Okay, and please, your mobiles put on silent. So this was a lecture. Do you have any questions? Okay, ladies and ladies, and ladies, and gentlemen. Yes, don't get angry, I remember. And gentlemen, of course. Thank you for your help. Today I'm going to take you on a tour into a world which is utterly alien, like visiting an alien planet. But everything I'm going to say, I'm going to substantiate it. I'm going to refer to studies, scholars. So as I speak, you can note down the references and study more or go deeper into what I'm saying. Still I'm warning you that what I'm saying is going to sound completely hallucinatory. I tried not to take LSD today, so I'm more grounded than yesterday. But it will sound very, very strange. Before I start, and after all hallucinations, I would like to thank the organizers of this lecture, which is Iwina and Tihana. Tihana and Iwina. And I, in the best narcissistic fashion, gave them a very short notice, very short pre-advice, and still they managed to bring all of you together. I would also like to thank the survivor, my wife, Lidia Rogelowska, long suffering and still here. I don't know what she says about her and me. She's still here. She's also actually an expert on narcissistic abuse. She was the first person I educated 27 years ago. And since then, she has made her own contributions to the field of narcissistic abuse. So sometimes the student is more than the master, exceeds the master, yes? Which is the best situation, actually. Thank you. Okay. A child is born, a child is born and immediately assailed and assaulted by snails and sounds and distractions and stimuli from the environment. Yet the child is not equipped, at least initially, to cope with this avalanche of information. Even as adults, and that's a fact that you can check online, even as adults, here, hello. Yeah, here. Even as adults, we process about 5% of environmental information. 95% is relegated to what is colloquially known as the unconscious. It's the wrong term, but still. Imagine we, as adults, can cope only with 5% of the information. Imagine a baby, a newborn, on the first day, on the second day, on the third day. And yet, within fewer than four days, the baby is able to tell that his mother is in the room. He is able to react to her smile. This is known as reflexive empathy. There are three types of empathy. Reflexive, cognitive, and emotional. Reflexive empathy is when the baby reacts with a smile to the mother's smile. This is medically impossible, as any doctor here would tell you, myself, people, this is medically impossible because the baby's eyesight is not sufficient at this stage to discern the mother's smile. And yet, the baby does react to it. It's one of the biggest mysteries of medicine, of developmental biology. We have no idea how the baby realizes the mother is smiling. Of course, the baby reacts to tactile input to touch. The baby reacts to smell, mother's smell. The baby can tell, probably, differences in gray, like shade and light, and so on. So, by the fourth day, the baby is aware that money is in the room. And an intricate dance begins between the newborn and mother. If the mother gets it wrong, we end up with a narcissist. If the mother gets it right, we end up with a politician. So, you'll have to tolerate my sense of humor. My apologies in advance. It's something Jewish, I assume. The first instinct of the baby is to be seen. The baby is programmed from birth, actually within the womb, to attract the mother's attention. The baby needs to be seen in order to survive. So, being seen, being noticed by other people, is not hubris, is not narcissism, is not grandiosity, it's a survival, it's a survival strategy. We need to be seen, and if you don't believe me, go to any social media. We need to be seen. It starts at age four days. The baby cries, for example, is accused, crying is a cure for mother, to attract her. But then the need to be seen has a secondary, a second function that is not often discussed. So, the first function is survival. A baby that is not seen is a dead baby. I'm sorry to say. Because mother will not feed such a baby, mother will not take care of such a baby. So, baby needs to be seen in order to survive. But that's the second function. That the baby is able to tell the existence of only one object. And that is mother. I never said that the baby is able to tell that he or she exists. The baby is not aware, of course, that he or she exists. He's aware only of the existence of mother. So, how come, how do we develop the sense of self, selfhood? How do we become individual? How can we tell at what stage can we tell that there is we as opposed to the rest of the world? This depends on mother. Mother's gaze, the baby becomes through the eyes of the mother. When the baby sees itself reflected in the eyes of the mother, the baby experiences trauma, a shock, a schism. The world is broken because the minute the baby sees itself through the mother's eyes the baby realizes I am not mother. I am not mother. There's mother and there is something which is reflected in mother's eyes and is not mother. So suddenly the world is binary. Because the world starts as a monolith or monopole, it becomes binary and gradually the baby around age six months the baby begins to understand that this reflection is himself. Because when mother moves her eyes the baby is not reflected. Exactly, this happens exactly in experiments with monkeys. When we put monkeys in front of a mirror they gradually begin to identify themselves in the reflection in the mirror and of course the person, the scholar psychoanalyst who analyzed this phenomenon to the maximum is Jacques Lacan the French Jacques Lacan, who by the way looks like my identical twin. You don't have to believe me, go on. He looks as if we were identical twins and his main topic was narcissism. I was born and he died. I'm not sure there's a connection between the two events but it's a distinct possibility if you believe in reincarnation. So the mother's gaze gives the baby the first taste of separateness self-hood being not mommy. Now of course you understand that until age six months mother is the world the baby is unable to distinguish mother from the rest of the world. So mother is the universe. So the break is not only with mother the break is with the whole world. This is a major trauma which is neglected a lot in the literature. This is something again neglected in literature. When you perceive yourself as not someone else a trauma there's a trauma there that is triggered I will discuss it a bit later I call this process othering the ability to perceive others. Okay. What happens so let's summarize this part mother's gaze defines the separateness of the child and allows the child to begin the process of developing a self. Language issue. Freud called it ego cohort called it self I mean I'm talking about the same thing this core identity which defines to yourself who you are this misperception that you are continuous that there is continuity of course it's total nonsense there is no continuity but you like we all deceive ourselves to believe that we are continuous. This continuity is the self. Mother's gaze is critical what happens when the mother is absent depressive absent physically, absent emotionally depressive selfish narcissistic or what happens when the mother uses the baby as an instrument is to mentalize the baby what happens if the mother uses the child a little later as substitute spouse or substitute parent processes known as identification and parentification what happens when the mother prevents the child from having contact with reality by for example idolizing the child pedestalizing the child telling the child that he can do no wrong not allowing the child to interact with peers and so on in all these situations the mother's gaze is either defective deficient or absent altogether. Now there was a psychoanalyst by the name of Andre Green and Andre Green called this type of mothers dead mothers an unfortunate choice but think of it as a metaphor these mothers are as good as dead mother and Andre Green and so these mothers are unable to provide a defining gaze now when you say I am myself what are you saying you are saying two sentences not one you are saying I am myself I am not you this is of course a great definition the formation of boundaries starts there if the mother's gaze is absent there will be no sense of self-hood and no boundaries between internal and external there will be confusion between internal and external and I will come to it in a minute but before I come to this and there is a crucial part of narcissism before I come to this how does the baby react dead metaphorically but also dead physically now when I say mother I want to explain this is not about genitaita mother is a function it could be a father who is acting in a maternal capacity it could be a grandmother that's quite often actually anyone who acts in maternal capacity is known clinically as primary caregiver anyone who is a primary object primary caregiver is the mother so I am not talking specifically about someone with a vagina just to be clear what happens how does the baby react to the absence of the mother you realize of course that at some stage there would be a kind of negative effect the baby is programmed to seek the mother's gaze you remember that as I said the baby is programmed to be seen biologically programmed to be seen that's why babies cry it's biologically and then when there is no response there is equivalent probably of some kind of panic but there is also the internalization of the message what's the message I don't exist I don't exist as the child grows older he this sentence of self negation I don't exist becomes what we know as shame this is the core of the shame that is the engine and fuel of pathological narcissism and other disorders but not only pathological narcissism okay so the child experiences this negative affectivity this negative affect I don't exist and of course it's terrifying to not exist because it's the exact equivalent of not being seen as if you don't exist you are transparent you are not seen and there is a panic about your needs will I get food will I get milk will I get roof over my head of course the child doesn't know anything about real estate except Jewish children the child the child doesn't know anything about real by the way I have a great anti-semitic okay child doesn't know I don't do cool it the child doesn't know anything about real estate so the child sits in his court at age six months my mother doesn't notice me probably I'll be evicted pay the mortgage it's all I'm saying but on the instinctual level there is panic of course the equivalent of anxiety and doubt there's the shame and so the baby has to engage in a behavior or a defense mechanism just primitive defense mechanism infantile known as splitting splitting was first described by Melanie Klein who by the way was auto-psychologist seven out of the ten major psychologists in history were not psychologists I drink to that Winnicott was a pediatrician Freud was a neurologist etc now splitting the child has to cope with this situation splitting is a normal part of development totally normal but in the case of the dead mother when the gaze is absent the splitting becomes malignant becomes pathological so the child initially splits the frustrating mother the mother is frustrating yes, she doesn't notice the child she doesn't see the child there's no games there's no reflection there's no feedback from the mother so the mother is a frustrating object and the child splits the mother splits the mother into good mother at this stage this is a healthy healthy progression all children do this good mother, bad mother and Melanie Klein who was pornographically inclined called it the good breast and the bad breast so there's a mother there's a split mother but a bad mother is a very threatening object she will starve you she will neglect you you will die it's terrifying to have a bad mother bad mother, good mother so what the child does he internalizes the bad mother what happens is the child splits itself as the child splits the mother to defend against the anxiety of an external bad object bad mother the child splits itself as well as a bad child and a good child up to here this is healthy progression the mother the good mother it's known as good enough mother that's a term coined by Donald Winigold the good enough mother manages this situation she provides a child with equal measures of gratification satisfying the child's needs and expectations and she frustrates the child the role of a good mother is to push the child away that's the main function of a good mother contrary to what you see on television and so forth and self-help books and other such months the good mother pushes the child away we'll come to it in a minute this is known as separation individuation but the initial phase of pushing the child away is to provide the child with a reality testing to teach the child that in reality sometimes you get what you want and sometimes you don't get what you want ask my wife so the child learns to integrate the child splits and then he learns to integrate the child becomes partly bad partly good everything is partly bad everything is now in gray not black and white but gray splitting scissors at this stage splitting spots but if the mother is absent there is no dose of reality and the child remains stuck in the split mode where there's a bad mother, good mother, bad child good child and he has to make a choice and the only choice he can make but this is the pathological process what I'm talking about the only choice you can make is mother is all good, I'm all bad the alternative is terrifying if mother is all bad I'm all dead you know so mother must be all good and I'm all bad at this stage we have something called bad object a bad object is a constellation of voices in adulthood constellation of voices known as introjects these voices inform the person the child, the adolescent, the adult the bad object informs the person you are unworthy you're bad, you're not lovable you are stupid you're ugly, you are some vakny you know so these are negative bad object provides negative messaging for life but the bad object ironically is actually created by the child the child internalizes there's a process with four stages first stage is internalization then identification then introjection then incorporation if you want to read about it online I will not go into it right now the child goes through these four phases it generates a bad object in order to keep mother Madonna all good so that the child doesn't feel threatened and anxious with a bad mother but this of course has lifelong implications it's a disaster it's an absolute disaster and it is at the core of narcissism we'll come to it now at this stage in healthy development when the child integrates the bad mother with a good mother and gets a great mother sometimes good, sometimes bad you know the child is ready to separate from the mother because the reason the child was merged with the mother the reason the child was fused with the mother the reason the child was in what mother Margaret Mahler called the symbiotic state with the mother is because mother was all good if you have an all good partner it's difficult to divorce so the child cannot divorce the mother as long as she is totally good but the minute she becomes human human the minute the child develops what we call reality testing reality testing is one of the ego functions so the minute the child develops reality testing the child is ready to say goodbye because mother frustrates the child pushes him away he's not always there he wants her, she goes away he wants to eat, she doesn't give him food etc so he says the hell with it I'm going to find another mommy and this leads to a situation no wife no wife is a narcissist narcissists will come to it narcissists convert intimate partners into maternal figures that's sick that is pathological the child we are talking now for you to understand the child is about 18 months between 18 months and 36 months this process is known as separation individuation it was first described by Margaret Mahler although she built on the work by Melanie Klein so at this stage the child is ready to separate initially what the child does he is looking for another mother because he still has memory of the totally good object so initially he is looking for another mother but very fast the child comes across reality he is frustrated, he gets wounded peers teachers he finally gives up on this fantasy and he compromises with reality we have perfect ego functions, we have reality testing a healthy person is born and that is age 36 months now the separation individuation is multiple substages differentiation of a posh more I will not go into all this now this is not a seminar, unfortunately that's a lecture ok but the child is able to separate individually if the child doesn't have another's gaze she remains all because the child becomes all bad so he cannot separate he cannot separate she is all good there is no need to separate no incentive, no motivation to separate or separate why give up on an all good object what are you hoping to find another all good object you are familiar with mother you get along and I know many people who are 40 years old who are still in this stage and of course their girlfriends are all bad so in the case of an absent, a dead mother separation individuation fails because there is no internal incentive to to do it and the child remains stuck in pre-separation individuation now in classic theory it is called pre-edible phase forget all this this is like previous century nonsense but generally speaking it's true that this kind of child remains merged symbiotically fused with a mother not necessarily physically you could be 3,000 miles away but mentally he is fused with her she is here she is in other words introjected ok and there is called catexes in the introject there is an emotional investment in the introject so there is a catexted object of the mother and a lot of emotional investment ok another thing which is much less well known everything I just described to you you can find no lines but another thing which is much less known is something called narcissistic elation narcissistic elation was first described by Grunberger Bella Grunberger who was of course a Jew 99% of the time he was a Jew he was a psychoanalyst and he described narcissistic elation he said it's the oceanic feeling of being one with mother in a nutshell so this is called narcissistic elation now when there is no mother because narcissistic elation requires apartment you need a mother to feel good about mother but when there is no mother she is absent, she is a dead mother the energy of the narcissistic elation becomes self directed rather than directed at a mother that doesn't exist the child redirects this energy in psychology there are two major principles conservation of energy conservation of energy so energy never gets lost it is transformed transmuted in a million ways but never gets lost and the second principle is compensation when something goes wrong there is another process that compensates for it as we should see pathological narcissism is a 100% compensatory process compensation so the child compensates by redirecting the energy remember energy cannot disappear redirecting the energy at itself the child becomes he is, when I say he is her, ok? I am not going to say he is her ok? the child becomes his own object so Freud said that the child develops narcissistic libido rather than object libido rather than object love so the child redirects the elation and merges or fuses or develops symbiosis with himself now this is completely here but this is exactly what happens and we know for example that this happens, we know that there is no object libido in such cases because of something, because of many indications and one of them is known as auto-evotism auto-evotism is when you are sexually attracted to your own body when you are your own sex object when you are your own love object in classical terms when the eros part of the libido is directed at itself so auto-evotism has been observed and absolutely documented in laboratories that reject Freud laboratories that reject all these, anything before 1980 still documented auto-evotism so we know that there is a redirection of energy at the self that has a sexual component but also a kind of mother component in other words emotional investment so it's sexual and emotional because of this because the energy which should have been given to mother as a gift the gift of being one with mother the gift of of what we call secure base mother is a secure base safe environment instead of this we get a child who is essentially abandoned neglected terrified and then the child lies to itself deceives itself and says it's okay, I'm here I don't need mother, I'm here I'm my own secure base I'm my own sex object I'm my own love object I can love myself and that's efficient I don't need to love anyone else and this kind of child fails in two functions it fails to develop what we call internal working model it fails to develop a model of the world and how he operates in the world and how other people operate in the world why? because his energy goes inward it does not go outwards it does not at this stage at least he has no access to the outside world and he fails to develop this model which is super critical model for functioning later in life another task another function that he fails is called mentalization the ability to deceive or speculate about how other people's minds work what makes other people think ok? so he fails to develop this because he is not in touch with other people he is in touch only with himself in other words there is no friction with reality and when there is no friction with reality there is no growth and no development end of story the child in other words remains stuck at what age? 2 to 3 years this kind of person remains stuck the latest at age 3 years more typically 2 years how long? until he dies so you see people 63 years old and there are still 2 years old in emotional terms there could be prime ministers there could be professors of psychology there could be and there are still 2 years of emotional history do not confuse executive functions emotions or effects and with cognitions that people tend to make total confusion you could have a thriving career but still be very childish in front of in many ways and then something a cataclysm then a cataclysm happens anyone wants to live, please feel free honestly I will not be offended I will cry a little in the toilet a little no seriously no no I offer this door to sit here no no you can live anyone wants to live can live no seriously no and now something cataclysm happens you remember that this kind of child cannot separate from mother consequently cannot become an individual at all cannot become an individual and therefore cannot develop any of the hypothesized structures of the psyche now never mind what name you give this you can call it ego no one captured an ego in a laboratory and spoke to it these are all metaphors but I was surprised for you I have a PhD in physics and most of physics similarly built on metaphors quark no one captured a quark this is all dark matter dark energy as ether so don't feel inferior because you are using metaphors that don't have the equivalent in a laboratory this is nonsense it's the same in physics so this kind of child does not develop an ego in Freud's terms or doesn't develop a self in Cohen's terms in other words this kind of child fails to develop a core identity the feeling of continuity and the feeling of not being other people now this is crucial there are two aspects to core identity there are two aspects I am the same person that I was yesterday even if I gained like me 15 kilos I am still the same person that I was yesterday that's the delusion of continuity it's a delusion I'm coming back in December we can dedicate a lecture to this it's a delusion but it's a very powerful delusion a very useful delusion especially legally so there's this delusion and the second function is to say there's me and I am not you I'm not others these are the two functions of the set when you don't have a self when the self fails to constitute or be integrated and you don't have an ego the main function of the ego is contact with reality the ego has many functions by the way not only this but the main one is contact with reality assessing reality properly providing feedback and preventing all kinds of misbehaviors that could have adverse horrible consequences that's the ego's role so when you don't have an ego you have no contact with reality you misjudge reality dramatically and catastrophically when you don't have a self you don't realize that other people are not you and you are not other people can you digest this as far as analysis is concerned for example because analysis don't have an ego and don't have a self I'm describing the etiology of narcissism for those of you who do not understand this is how narcissism unfold the narcissism regards everyone as part of a colony a hive like bees or ants or NPCs in video games there's no there's no me and them there's no external and internal I will come to it a bit later this is so difficult to conceptualize but you must if you wish to understand the narcissism because he doesn't have the instruments that allow him to perceive reality appropriately he has what we call impaired reality testing and he doesn't have the self and ego which would tell him this is you and all others are not you this is very crucial in narcissism he has something which I call othering failure he cannot perceive the separateness and externality of other people not only he doesn't perceive that they are separate from him he doesn't perceive that they are outside he believes he experiences other people as if they are inside his mind it's totally crazy he projects other people he experiences them as internal objects because he cannot perceive separateness and externality he cannot do other things okay and so this failure of telling external apart from internal leads to a cascade of other failures for example one of the main ways one of the main ways that we become social creatures we know how to function in society we have sexual spirits, social spirits and so on so forth mores, norms and so on one of the main ways is known as socialization there is a process of socialization now there are socialization agents mother and father mainly father by the way they are social creatures but there is another process equally important so there is socialization and another one the other one is known as modeling it was first suggested by Bandura in social learning theory modeling but marcesis as a child cannot model because to model to adopt a model to emulate father to imitate mother this process was first described in depth by Edith Jacobson so to do this to accomplish this you need to recognize that mother and father are external imitation is a form of internalization of an external object and if you're incapable of accepting that other people are outside you you cannot model there's a modeling failure this is catastrophic consequences in the life of the marcesis because his clueless is very reminiscent to an autistic person it's very reminiscent of autism spectrum disorder in this sense so there's a modeling failure and finally because there is no external internal and non-modeling and all this and all that is left behind is huge emptiness the marcesis is an absence pretending to be a presence the marcesis is emptiness pretending to be existence the marcesis is a black hole pretending to be a star there's nothing there I want you to understand that there's basically nothing there there are no internal psychodynamics in marcesis it's all coming from the outside it's all important regulation of sense of self-worth reality testing you name it it comes from the outside inside nothing happens this is also typical of borderline personality disorder but in borderline personality disorder there are mitigating factors people with borderline personality disorder have more empathy more empathy than marcesis people with borderline personality disorder are capable of experiencing emotions they are actually overwhelmed by emotions a process known as dis-regulation so they are far apart from marcesis not the same but both of them in both these disorders we have this internal emptiness how do we know that there's a black hole you cannot see a black hole it swallows the light we know that there is a black hole by the behavior of the objects around the black hole there's a black hole as a gravitational field and objects around the black hole behave in strange ways they emit x-rays they behave in strange ways so then we know there's a black hole same with the marcesis the marcesis dis-regulates everyone around you the marcesis ricks havoc and chaos wherever he goes and it is by observing other people's reactions actually that we can safely diagnose marcesis because if you're trying to diagnose marcesis via tests interviews that's marcesis there's no one to talk to so I think it's a major mistake to try to treat marcesis with adult psychology or adult psychotherapy they're not adults you need to use child psychology and child psychotherapies combined with trauma therapies so today we're making big mistakes when we are trying to, for example strike a therapeutic alliance with the marcesis it's ridiculous so do your own at some point you will throw a temper tantrum and leave there in the clinic tell you to f off that's what you're doing so the marcesis is this black hole it's this emptiness and we call it the clinical term empty schizoid core and you can read about the empty schizoid core in auto-calibates work Jeffrey Seinfeld's work they are the two major ones an auto-calibate just released a few months ago just released a book called emptiness and hate where he describes the empty schizoid core with the latest findings so it was published I think in August so there is this walking talking simulation of a human being built on as a shell built on an emptiness emptiness that is active emptiness emptiness that is soliciting emptiness that draws you in emptiness that manipulates you and how to communicate this you are listening to me and some of you are doing this probably because you are falling asleep but how to how to a late one but but how to how to communicate this can you really understand what I am saying what does it mean to be an emptiness none of you except analysis is a model none of you have experienced this none of you you have experienced some kind of presence internal presence and of course external presence because you have been affirmed your received feedback that you exist but still you need internal component how can you not be how can your existence consist and subsist of not be that is something that is extremely difficult and then you need to resort to philosophers like Heidegger and Sartre existentialist you need to go much much deeper to understand this concept of not being because even the greatest thinkers they were talking ultimately about the authentic self the authentic self they said yeah this is fake, this is empty, this is this but if you dig deep you will find the authentic self there is nothing to find nothing to find, never mind how deep you dig and there is nothing to dig as well at the time that the person should have become at the time where the child should have acquired person-wounded the child failed there was no self, no ego and no contact with reality and no distinction between external and internal finally I want to make a comment about the unconscious Freud was a bit of a plagiarist some of you may know of ten major concepts in Freud's work about eight were taken from others sometimes with credit, sometimes not one of them is the unconscious it's not Freud's invention it was a plagiarist but there is a big debate in psychology about the unconscious the Freudian approach and later his daughter and many others this school says that the unconscious is the seat of repressed wishes wives and urges I'm simplifying of course but generally speaking it's the seat of repression and there's another school and then other school says that the unconscious is the internalization of other people is the sum total of interactions with other people it's the relational unconscious I mentioned Lacan regards the unconscious as relational but there are others there is Zach Sullivan who was the father of interpersonal psychology so the unconscious is the sum total of interactions with other people but imagine what it says about the narcissist the narcissist is incapable of interactions with other people because the narcissist is incapable of perceiving the existence of other people there's no externality and no separateness according to Lacan the narcissist is possibly the only creature without an unconscious the only creature which is totally conscious what you see is what you get a mirror reflection this deep, nanometer deep is not that because according to Sullivan also there are no interpersonal relationships which create the unconscious Lacan said that it's created through the language I don't want to mislead you it's other people speak to the individual and the language is internalized what they say is internalized and the language shapes the unconscious never mind all that when you don't recognize the existence of other people according to many major scholars you cannot have an unconscious we have here a human being allegedly so in this kind of human being for example wishes would be totally conscious and because this kind of human being doesn't have an ego there would be no control on the wishes the wishes would be uncontrollable they cannot be repressed because it's not unconscious and they cannot be controlled because it's not ego there's nothing there to inhibit the narcissist as an example similarly if the narcissist has a drive some kind of drive let's take an example a sex drive this is a beautiful woman if he's a man or a heterosexual man and he wants to have sex that's a drive in a healthy person there is a whole process of repression and this I'm not going into it the healthy person can even sublimate the drive he can convert it to socially acceptable in other ways and so he cannot he cannot repress the urge and he cannot reframe the urge or transform it he cannot sublimate it he cannot do anything there's no ego no self, no external, no internal no unconscious, no nothing nothing and here we're beginning perhaps to realize and this is something controversial that I've been saying for more than 30 years and got me a lot of flak criticism it's I see the narcissist is not human I'm sorry but if you don't have empathy and you don't have unconscious and you don't have emotions and you don't have the ability to distinguish other people as external and you don't have separation what do you have it's a drive machine it's Freud's ideal drive machine like Freud at the beginning early Freud he later regretted it but early Freud said that we are all machines devices driven by drives you know and we need to find these drives control them and so on this is Freud's drive machine so yeah, of course biologically it's human it has a heart, it has kidneys, liver some of them have brains no, that's not what defines a human being as we will discover in 200 years we will have androids with all these organs and they will not be human beings that's how it defines human beings they are sentient many of them are intelligent but so is artificial intelligence I have serious doubts whether we are talking about human beings I think it is possible to frustrate or thwart or distort the developmental pathway in early childhood so as to produce I don't know a mutant, I don't know how to explain not a human being something that is so divorced from what makes a human being so alien that maybe we should not use this term anymore, at least got me a lot of criticism, hatred ok, now let's talk a little about some of the mechanisms in action let's talk a bit about the mechanisms in action in narcissism these are general mechanisms and then the cherry on the cake, I kept it to the end in order to keep you here, this is called a postage situation and we Israelis have a lot of experience the first part has to do with interpersonal relationships especially romantic it's a tune, don't go away but until then you have to suffer because Jordan Peterson says that suffering is very important in life and so did Buddha they didn't look the same I'm going to describe now what is known as psychodynamics of pathological narcissism and its expressions so it's like an overview of the typical narcissism and then later the third part is relations first of all as you all know some of you know there's a book called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual it is in the text revision of the fifth edition published I think two years ago and within this book which is essentially written by the insurance industry the pharmaceutical industry in the light state I'm sorry to say within this book narcissistic personality disorder is one of four disorders which together are known as cluster B cluster B is also known as dramatic erratic cluster and so the cluster B includes narcissistic anti-social not psychopath common mistake anti-social personality disorder histrionic personality disorder the problem with there are numerous problems with cluster B numerous problems with the DSM but the numerous problems with specifically with cluster B first of all the comorbidity is enormous in other words it's very common to diagnose one or two or three in the same patient so typically for example you have borderline and narcissism you have narcissism and psychopathism this is a very powerful indication that something is wrong that the clinical entities are not well defined that's the first problem there's another problem called the polythetic problem I'm not going to it this is not a lesson on DSM so there are serious problems with this decentralization of the and it's all a bit like this it's like a list of criteria the second major problem or the third polythetic problem it's also a major problem with it the third major problem is that the list of diagnostic criteria is mostly behavioural not etiological not dynamic psychodynamic but behavioural if you behave in certain ways you're diagnosed which I think is a major disaster I mean methodological disaster because take for example the psychopath someone with antisocial personality they don't like rules and laws they're aggressive they're a bit criminalized they are so how does that make them mentally ill they're defined they're defined, they hate society, they hate authority so do I by the way I don't see any hint of methodical disaster I see problems with social norms social mores, compatibility conformity, adaptation conical everyone I don't see any mental illness so there's a huge problem in the very foundations of the disease be that as it may narcissistic personality disorder which is the extreme form of pathological narcissism is in cluster D now within narcissistic personality disorder we have a subtype it's about 3% of narcissists when I say narcissists from now on people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder not A-horns not jerks not your current partner but people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder or X-part within this group about 3% are a very seriously bad combination of narcissists, psychopath and sadists this small group are known as malignant narcissists they were first described by Cunber malignant narcissists it was the old name today we call them psychopathic narcissists so we have Roni Stam if you want to read Cunber now malignant narcissists are simply narcissists who use psychopathic not that malignant narcissists are narcissists that use psychopathic behaviors to obtain the only outcome the narcissists is interested in attention so most narcissists behave pro-socially they conform to society they work within society think Donald Trump but malignant narcissists adopt psychopathic behaviors they criminalize, they are defined they are cruel, they are brazen they are careless, they are ruthless and they use this psychopathic leverage to obtain narcissistic psychology to obtain attention the goal is always attention for reasons that I will explain soon but the methods different now as you begin to see pathological narcissism is a post-traumatic disorder, the child is traumatized child can be traumatized in a variety of ways but not being seen is a great way to be traumatized so this is a post-traumatic condition it involves like all traumatic conditions it involves defense mechanisms such as dissociation so dissociation is very common in borderline personality disorder actually it's one of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder and dissociation is equally common among narcissists there's a lot of dissociation going on memory gaps and what the narcissist does he bridges the memory gaps he tries to explain to himself and to others what might have happened what probably happened what plausibly happened what must have happened and this is called confabulation confabulation is common among psychotic patients also and we're beginning to see that there are many many many commonalities between pathological narcissism and psychosis this was not regrettably I'm not the first to say this the first to say this was auto-carnival borderline borderline means on the border between neurosis and psychosis that's why it's borderline and in Schoenberg's work borderline is narcissism it doesn't make the distinction it's the same one group one family I agree for whatever its work narcissism has many elements of psychosis I'll give you one example I told you that the narcissist cannot tell the difference between external and internal so when the narcissist looks at you you become an internal object it doesn't see you as external it does not perceive your separateness now this is of course psychotic in psychosis there is confusion of internal objects as external the psychotic has a voice it thinks the voice is coming through there yes? so internal object is misidentified an introvert is misidentified as external in narcissism an external object is misidentified as internal so narcissism is the mirror image of psychosis the left hand and right hand of psychosis in effect and like in psychosis there's trauma there's dissociation there's another thing called hyperreflexivity hyperreflexivity is expanding outwards to include the world so digesting the world so stimulating the world so to speak I will go into this there are self states in cluster B situations there are self states if you want to read more about self states the guy who came up with the idea is called Philip Bromberg Philip Bromberg and I built on his work I adopted his work to pathological narcissism if you go on my channel YouTube channel there are videos about self states pseudo identities ego states sub personalities and so on so they all have self states self states is simply when you switch from one type of identity to another and of course if you don't have an identity then you have only self states and in both borderline and narcissism there is something called identity disturbance or identity diffusion not stable identity because it's empty if it's empty you can pour wine you can pour milk you can pour water it's empty so one day you're milk one day you're wine, one day you're water one day the borderline believes that being cheating the partner being engaging in infidelities horrible and the next day she does it and one day the narcissist believes that he's going to be a great writer and the next day he's a businessman there's no constancy of goals, beliefs values and so on because there's no identity similarly there is no constancy of external objects because there's no perception of external objects so they don't have object constancy the narcissist doesn't have object constancy and the borderline doesn't have introject constancy so much to say and I apologize if I'm giving you only the headline but I'm giving you keywords that you can later search until you get very very old and then you can hand it over to your next generation which would please me know it next a critical a critical dynamic in otological narcissism is known as narcissistic supply narcissistic supply is a fancy name that I borrowed from early 1937 psychoanalytic literature and I really find it for narcissism today's use is my work actually so narcissistic supply is a fancy word for attention attention could be positive and negative if the narcissist is feared if people fear the narcissist that's narcissistic supply if people think that the narcissist is the worst criminal ever a demonic maniac that's narcissistic supply of course if they admire the narcissist adulate the narcissist listen to the narcissist lecture about class to be that's also narcissistic supply okay so narcissistic supply is crucial another concept because I've been using this concept so it's like giving you a dictionary another concept is external regulation we regulate healthy people we regulate the internal environment by themselves you regulate your own emotions you regulate your moods and above all you regulate your sense of self-worth sense of self-worth is simply knowing who you are your advantages and disadvantages shortcomings, limitations, skills, talents as this comprises self-esteem of confidence in a package known as self-worth as usual the narcissist regulates everything emotions, cognitions sense of self-worth from the outside everything is coming from the outside so you can affect the narcissist mood by telling him you're not a genius you're an idiot so that would affect the narcissist try it on me it would affect the narcissist mood you have the capacity to dysregulate to render the moods of the narcissist lay by you have the capacity to dysregulate the narcissist emotions to some extent negative emotions like envy anger the famous narcissistic rage so this is called external regulation now in borderline external regulation is total the borderline hands over her regulatory functions usually to an intimate partner or to a special friend and then that person regulates the internal world of the borderline she outsources her mind which explains why she panics when the borderline develops intimacy it means that her mind she is out of her mind her mind belongs to someone else and that creates a most panic someone has engulfment anxiety and so the borderline approaches you and avoids you approaches you and avoids you which is known as approach avoidance repetition compulsion and so there's a famous saying I hate you don't leave me the same about borderline so external regulation is critical in narcissistic and borderline disorders next is self-supply when the narcissist fails to obtain supply from people he gives it to himself if no one says he's a genius he tells himself you're a genius and that usually is enough because as you remember there's only the narcissism it's total solipsism even you are just figments in the narcissist mind you're just NPCs you're just representations, avatars snatchers, I call them snatchers clinical term, introjates you're just so self-supply would make sense because only the narcissistic exists whether he uses this internal object or that internal object is not relevant any internal object to do okay so self-supply another concept is narcissistic collapse it's when the narcissist fails to obtain narcissistic supply on a regular basis so that causes collapse not failed narcissism you will find online many people say failed narcissism no that's a mistake collapse narcissism there is failed narcissism but it's something completely different so concept of collapse and when the narcissist collapses he switches between types from overt to covert so there's switching taking order same happens with borderline when the borderline is faced with a collapse for example when she anticipates abandonment or experiences rejection or humiliation and so on she switches clinically she becomes a secondary psychopath so this is very important and finally I will discuss objects good objects in narcissism and then we will go to the romantic relationships and so on and so forth put on music, incense lighting okay but if I may suggest when I finish this section tell me if I because for me you're internal object so if I may suggest why don't we take like 5 minutes break I can continue forever because I love this maybe now maybe now no no no let me finish this section let me finish this section probably none of you will return with my favorite audience self supply yes finally okay so the last thing in this section the last thing in this section is objects you remember that when we were all much younger we discussed the concept of bed object which is a constellation of voices or correlation of voices that inform you that you are somehow negative self-legate you that you are bad or whatever there's another type of object is known as the good object the good object is balanced is grounded in reality good object is not you're all perfect sometimes you're good sometimes you're bad so the good object is the result of proper integration of the splitting when the mother is put back together it's partly good partly bad that's a kind of good object so good object and there is idealized object idealized object is when you believe or when the voices tell you that you are totally perfect that you're amazing that you are godlike this usually comes from parental figures parental figures that idolize the child idolize the child place the child on a pedestal tell the child that he can do no wrong in his perfection and everyone else is wrong the teachers are wrong the peers are wrong so these messages accumulate accrue and they create an idealized object and narcissists have one of two objects they never have a good object as narcissists are not grounded in reality they don't have a reality testing in tough reality testing so they cannot have a good object but what they do have many of them have a bad object and many of them have an idealized object a godlike object the narcissists who have a bad object compensate for this bad object because these voices are intolerable imagine that you have someone who keeps criticizing you telling you that you are wrong and so on in short imagine your marriage so you know it's unbearable it's intolerable so the narcissist compensates for this and he compensates for this by pretending to be everything opposite to the bad object everything the bad object tells him he is saying the opposite so the bad object tells him I don't know you are stupid this is not a genius this is a compensatory mechanism and this is known as the false the false self is a term developed, not invented but developed by many people so the false self is actually a kind of compensation for the bad object or the idealized object if the narcissist has an idealized object then there is no compensation the narcissist believes that he is a godlike there is no need for compensation typically overt grandiose narcissism if the narcissist is a bad object and compensates for it by pretending to be going like lying to and so deceiving in certain others that is then we get typically not always a covert narcissism vulnerable, fragile, shy narcissism these are all the neighbors so these are two types of narcissism and their etiology is very different because the bad object narcissists was raised by parents who were critical, who were harsh or disciplinary and the idealized object narcissists was raised by parents who spoiled him pampered him, worshiped him admired him told him he could do no wrong and he is better and so on and so forth so this is the sort of clinical background and when some of you come back, those of you who are brave enough and or might then we will discuss what happens to the narcissists the poor narcissists in romantic relationships as an example of interpersonal relationships, everything I would say in the third section about relationships, interpersonal relationships apply to all interpersonal relationships the narcissist interacts with his best friend with his boss with his colleagues with his intimate partner with his children, identically it's the same mechanism but I'm going to give as an example an intimate romantic relationship because first of all that's the most common experience second most common is being a child of a narcissist and also it guarantees that most of you will stay here it's a miracle that wishful thinking wishful thinking yes, wishful thinking, exactly magical thinking