 Okay, Shoshanim, welcome back to the Sam Vaknin Horror Show. And today we are going to discuss the Humpty Dumpty Narcissist. The Narcissist is broken. We all agree on that. But today I'm going to show you a mechanism, the mechanism that led to the disintegration, the fracturing, the fragmentation of the Narcissist. It's an intricate mechanism. Why is it important for you to know? Why should you get acquainted with these intricacies and the inner corks and nuts of the Narcissist machinery? Because you're an integral part of it. The minute you teamed up with the Narcissist, the minute you became his intimate partner, his colleague, his neighbour even, the minute you've interacted with the Narcissist, you have been body-snatched, you have been appropriated in a next. And whether you like it or not, and whether voluntarily or involuntarily, you're in the game, so better know the rules. My name is, and I'm the author of, you see, you completed the sentences in your head. When I said, my name is an inner voice in your head, said Saint Vakni. And when I continued inexorably and said, I am the author of, that same voice whispered in your ear malignant self-love, narcissism revisited, whispered or thundered, depending. Anyhow, this inner voice that had completed the sentences in your head, that's an introject that is my voice inside your head. The more you're exposed to my videos or anyone's videos, anyone's public persona, the more that person becomes an introject, a voice inside your head. We're going to discuss internal objects, external objects, and how everyone often gets confused, most of all the Narcissist. Now the Narcissist draws you into his vortex, into his whirlpool, into this tornado that swirls inside his head. Okay, a few administrative things. I just uploaded a video, it's a compilation of my videos on nothingness. I have made four or five videos about nothingness, the principle of nothingness, which is an antidote to narcissism, in my view at least. These five videos are available on my other video channel, Vaknin Musings, and this compilation is courtesy of the inevitable, inimitable, fawning and yawning Dorcas Williams. I'm going to keep up this compilation for 24 hours, and I'm going to switch it to the playlist, and I remind you again, many videos you're looking for are not available on the general video's page, but you can find them in the various playlists. If you scroll across the page, you will find multiple links to my playlists. I think there are nine of them, maybe ten, I don't remember. Just go to the playlists, the relevant playlists. Playlists are organized alphamatic, they're organized by themes. Select a theme, go to the playlist, you're very likely to find a video you have been missing and pining for. And apropos pining for, have you seen the recent Richard Granon take on hope? He, as he graciously makes clear in the pinned comment under his video, he was inspired by two giants of human intellect, Nietzsche and Vaknin, and by another guy who made some, who made some reference to Buddhism. So in my videos on nothingness, a recurrent and important theme is that hope is a poison. Hope sets you up for failure, for disappointment. Hope generates expectations, most of which are unrealistic, and when they are inevitably frustrated, when they inevitably don't come true, what you have is heartbreak. So hope is bad for you. Hope is the most toxic invention of the human mind, and it's pretty recent by the way. Abandon all hope, ye who are about to enter. So Nietzsche said, a bit before me, we are both nutcases, but he was much more insane than I am, he ended up in an asylum. And before he ended up in an asylum, he wrote a few minor seminal works, and he said that hope is a very bad thing. Rush to Richard Graham's YouTube channel and watch his take on hope. It's poetic, it's profound, and it's amazing, and there he makes a distinction between types of hope. He prefers a typology of hope, and he says that some kinds of hope are actually very positive and constructive and others are not. I beg to disagree, that's not the point. The point is you should be exposed to multiplicity of recent voices. And Graham's is one voice I value. Okay, another thing, I have two Instagram channels. Facebook disabled my access to one of them, so it's archive only. My active channel, Instagram channel, my active Instagram account is narcissism with acne, one word, narcissism with acne. So go there, join. I post daily, sometimes two or three times a day. The most recent studies, updates, advice, tips, musings, hallucinations, illusions. I act out deliciously. I disintegrate in full view. Don't you miss it? I mean, just go there. And I propose disintegrating in full view. I read simultaneously usually something between 10 and 15 books. I'm kidding you know. I read at the same time about 15, on a good day, 15 books. Yesterday I opened a book about Christina, the queen of Sweden. And Christina invited Descartes, René Descartes, René. René Descartes, the famous philosopher, invited him to her court in the 17th century. He died there, by the way, because she exposed him to freezing temperatures. Very wildly and histrionic woman, if you ask me, not one of my favorites. Anyhow, there was a sentence in that book which really threw me off. Gave me a bad mood for like six hours. The sentence was, at 60, Descartes was already an old man. At 60, an old man? I'm 60. I mean, I'll be 60 in April. I'm 60. So immediately I got discombobulated. At 60, Descartes was already an old man. I'm 60. Does it mean that I'm an old man? Or does it mean that I'm René Descartes? I'm not sure. If you have the answer, let me know. Today I'm supposed to receive my letter of reappointment as professor of psychology in Southern Federal University in Wastov-on-Don. And I am on Tetherhooks. I can't wait. I will let you know. I'll keep you posted when the letter is received. But it should be today or tomorrow. I uploaded corrected, do you remember the images that I mentioned? The images with the relationship cycle, the relationship map with narcissists, white, purple and blue. So there were typos in these images. And Hayley Martin graciously fixed the typos. And now I've uploaded the corrected images. Now, one of you sent me a comment. It's not belfry. It's belfry because I said, you know, I use the word belfry. Ach kinder. Belfry is German. And as some of you know from my previous videos, I find German by far the most hilarious language imaginable. I'm sure it was concocted by a committee of psychos. And in German it was belfry. And belfry was also how it was pronounced in Middle English. So why do we say belfry? Americans blame it always on the Americans. And in 99% of the cases, you would be right. Americans distorted the pronunciation of belfry and made it belfry. The Americans are indolent and they like everything to be smooth and easy, not to work too hard. So now it's belfry and the British had adopted it, mainly after the Second World War. But the original was belfry. And the German is definitely belfry. And I was mocking the German. The colonies had corrupted the United Kingdom. Okay, next. People ask me the relationship cycle, you know, grooming, love-bombing, shared psychosis, all this. Is this cycle or is this map applicable only to intimate and romantic relationships or to other things? To everything. This is a map of how narcissists interact with everyone. Intimate partners, colleagues, business partners, neighbors. I mean, you name it. This is the structure, the base structure, the foundational template of the narcissist's way of interacting with other human beings. Consider, for example, the famous case of Michael Eisner of Hollywood fame. He was the head of Disney, the company. And so analyze the way he had interacted with his second in command. And especially with Michael Ovidz, who followed Katzenberg. With Michael Ovidz, you can see this relationship map or relationship flow or relationship structure in action. First, Eisner love-bombed him, groomed him. There were like numerous focus, promises, enticements, inducements, seduction, flirtation, business dinners, business lunches, business breakfasts and brunches and trips and junkets and you name it. Eisner was all over Ovidz. He was all over Ovidz because he wanted Ovidz to abandon a creative talent agency he was in and to work with him in Disney. He even promised him to be equals, that they would be equals. Of course, it was analysis his promise. So when Michael Ovidz had moved finally to Disney, he had entered Eisner's shared fantasy. By that time, Disney had become Eisner's extended, inflated, big banked shared fantasy. And Ovidz stepped right into the shared fantasy and Eisner started to test him. He isolated him, humiliated him, he mutilated him, he insulted him. He sent spies to monitor him and to supervise him. I mean, he made his life a living hell. It was all a test. Testing is a critical part of the shared fantasy. Abuse in the shared fantasy is essentially meant to test and to recreate early childhood conflicts. So he was testing Ovidz. And Ovidz in his eyes failed because 99% of people failed the narcissist shared fantasy testing phase. The narcissistic abuse type one, as I call it. And then once Ovidz failed, Ovidz was primed to move to the discard phase. He was primed to be discarded. And Ovidz made the mistake of posing conditions in terms so he entered the bargaining phase. And then Eisner fired him. He gave him a huge severance package and he fired him. You see, the classical grooming, love-bombing, shared fantasy, bargaining, bye-bye, don't ever show your face again. Okay, and that's in business. Eisner and Ovidz were in Disney cooperation. It's business. Okay, next thing before we get to the main topic of today's thing, catastrophizing. People ask me, why do women or borderlines, why do borderlines act out? Why do they decompensate and suddenly disintegrate when they are rejected or when they perceive impending, imminent, humiliation, rejection and abandonment? I mentioned many reasons in my previous videos and I encourage you to search the channel before you ask questions or else exposed to my rudeness. So, one of the things I did not mention in previous videos, and it's a dark mark on my otherwise perfect record, is catastrophizing. The borderline tells herself, once she had been humiliated, abandoned, rejected or once she misinterprets certain behaviors, reframes them as abandonment, humiliation and rejection or when she anticipates abandonment, humiliation and rejection, there's a dialogue, there's a negative automatic thought, there's an introject probably, there's a voice that tells her, no one will ever want you again. You see, even he is rejecting you, no one will ever want you. She immediately needs to restore, she needs to prove to herself, otherwise she needs to prove that she is desirable, that she does have power over men, that she can seduce them or make them do what she wants. She needs to regulate her sense of self-worth and restore her self-esteem and self-confidence and she self-medicates usually with men, but not only with men. Borderline reckless behaviors are, you know, across a whole spectrum. Shopaholeism is another example, pathological gambling, reckless driving, drug abuse, substance abuse. I mean, they're all attempts to reassert control and restore a sense of self-esteem because rejection and humiliation is perceived by borderlines as total, as a critique, as they perceive humiliation and rejection as pretending, constant, everlasting humiliation and rejection. They catastrophize and to reverse and counter the catastrophizing, they simply go and self-medicate with another person. So, if the borderline had been rejected by men, she would seek a man to restore. If she had been fired from a job, she would be desperate looking for another job. She would try to self-medicate same with same. Okay, let's get to the topic of today's video and that is the Humpty Dumpty Narcissist. Let's start with some basic concepts. Splitting. First of all, splitting is confused. It's one of the most confused topics in psychology. It's a bloody mess. Even scholars which I hold in extremely high regard, like Bromberg or Stern, even these scholars often confuse splitting with repression or even worse, splitting with dissociation. These are not the same things. Now, there are two types of splitting, which makes it even worse, makes the confusion even worse and makes conflating splitting with other issues more palatable, however wrong. So, there are two types of splitting. There is ego splitting and there is object splitting. Ego splitting is when the ego or the self, constellated self, whatever you want to call it, this core, this core which is you, this core which includes your identity, your roles, your memories, this reservoir, container, repositories of your quiddity, of your essence. Let's call it ego for discussion's sake. So, when the ego fractures, fragments and splits, one part remains conscious and the other becomes unconscious. That's the split of part and that was described by Freud in 1940. Klein added to it and said that when the ego splits, one part is whole, entirely good and the other one is entirely bad. Bear this in mind as we continue a bit later. Now, object splitting. Object, remember in psychology, aptly, appropriately, we call people objects. So, primary object is mummy. The primary object is mother or the caregiver, usually mother. That's the primary object. Objects are people. So, object splitting means simply splitting other people. Object splitting involves mechanisms like denial and projection and so on and so forth. It's what is known as a schizoid defense. What does it mean, object splitting? It's when parts of the self, parts of our self, part of the self and some internal objects we have are disowned. We can't accept them. We can't tolerate them. We are ashamed of them. They make us feel guilty. We don't want these parts. So, what we do, we take these parts and we throw them out. We project them, right? But we have to project them on a human being. We can't project them on a chair. If you project them on a chair, you're psychotic. So, normal people, people who do this, object splitting, they use other people. And this is the classic projection. We attribute to other people parts of ourselves actually that we're ashamed of or we feel guilty about or we don't want to acknowledge you to accept. Object splitting, therefore, is a kind of schizoid defense. It's like these parts are not mine. I am self-contained. I am self-sufficient. I don't need anyone. I don't need anyone because they are bad. They are evil. They are stupid. They are histrionic. They are oversexed. They are disgusting. They are hypocritical. They are men. See where I'm going with this? It's a splitting because others are all bad and so you are all good. But if you're all good, why would you be with people who are all bad? So, it leads to a schizoid posture, a schizoid position. We'll come to it a bit later. I remember that Klein modified Freud and suggested that when the eagle splits, there's a bad part and a good part, and Bjorn and Kernberg continued her work. But the one who really revolutionized her work and forced her to revise it and to modify it was, of course, a British guy. No, not Granon this time. Fairburn. Fairburn, who lived a bit before Granon, suggested that there is a schizoid core in everyone. And this schizoid core is based on splitting. And it usually reflects or is mobilized or is created by childhood frustration. When we are frustrated as children, we withdraw. The first thing we do, we project, you know, and then we withdraw and we develop a schizoid posture. We become self-contained, self-sufficient. He suggested that when the frustration is seriously bad, when, for example, the child is abused, traumatized, neglected, parentified, instrumentalized, objectified, these are bad types of abuse, let alone classic abuse, like physical abuse, sexual abuse. When the child is exposed to these traumatic experiences, the eagle, said Fairburn, splits into three. There's a central eagle, the eye. This central eagle is preoccupied with introspection, self-observation, consciousness. The second part is the libidinal eagle. That's the eagle with the force of life. That's the eagle that later develops a sex drive. But not only sex drive. When the sex drive is sublimated, we have creativity. That's the eagle that goes forth, goes out, is out-facing. And that's the eagle that leads us to create life, to create love, to create art, to create everything. Science, you name it. That's the libidinal eagle. But in really, really impacted children, children who've been traumatized and abused, there is a third part. That third part is the anti-libidinal eagle. That's an internal saboteur. It's an internal enemy. It's not the inner critique. It's an internal enemy. It attacks the libidinal eagle. It's the force of death. And we call it the antonym of libido. We call it testudo or motido in psychoanalysis. Each of these three parts of the eagle is paired with internal objects. Each one of them has its own cult, its own following of internal objects. And these internal objects are like voices. And they encourage this particular eagle to fulfill its functions. So there's a group of voices that tell you you're bad, you're unworthy, you are loathsome, you're disgusting, you're ugly, you're stupid. These voices collaborate, these interjects, collaborate with the anti-libidinal eagle. And there's another group that say you're delightful, you're beautiful, you're creative, you're productive. And these collaborate with the libidinal eagle. And there's a group of voices that are self-referential. These are voices that talk about you. And they say listen, you did this because of that. That was your motivation. Maybe you did this because you were sad. They constantly do this constant Habab, monologue, dialogue inside between the internal objects and the eagle parts. Okay. At an early stage of childhood, the child does not make a distinction between himself and mother. Cannot make a distinction. The brain is not insufficiently developed. Pregnancy continues for almost two years outside the womb, because our brain needs to develop and our head needs to inflate. And had pregnancy been completed in the womb, we would have never been able to exit. The opening is somewhat tight if we're lucky. So, children continue the brain development outside. And because the brain is highly underdeveloped when the child is born, the child is unable to tell that there is a reality that is distinct and different and outside and external to himself. The child is in a state of inflation. He subsumes the environment. He and the environment are one. It's a state of unitary. It's a state of union. It's a state of nirvana, if you wish. It's a state of vanishing and nothingness. It's a state of being one with everything and everyone and of course above all with mother. So he cannot make a distinction. But mother is not always forthcoming. Sometimes she's absent. Sometimes she's sick and tired. Sometimes she doesn't want to feed the baby. He wants to eat, she doesn't want to feed. In other words, mommy from first minute sometimes is frustrating. Sometimes doesn't cater instantaneously to the needs and wishes and demands of the petulant spoiled brat that is the baby. He wants it now and if not, he will cry for six days and nights. But mommy is unrelenting. Sometimes she succumbs and fulfills the needs and gratifies the baby and sometimes not. So gradually the baby begins to realize that there are two mommies. There's a good mommy and a bad mommy. Or as Klein called it, deliciously and pornographically, there's the loved good breast and the bad hated breast. What an image. Anyhow, let me recover. Anyhow, the baby begins to separate mommy into two mommies. But that's of course an intolerable, very threatening, very fine, horror movie stuff thing. How can mommy be two people or two entities? It's really, really terrifying. So what the baby does, the baby says it's actually not two entities. It's one. Mommy is all good. All the good things is mommy. Gratification, mommy. Satisfaction, mommy, warmth, acceptance, food, tasting, texture of the skin, everything. I love mommy. It's all mommy. Mommy is 100 million billion, zillion percent good and only good. What about the frustrating aspects? What about when mommy is not so good? When she's absent, when she refuses to feed me, it must be me. I am bad. I'm unworthy. It's something in me, says the baby. I'm bad. I'm all bad. Mommy is all good. Luckily for everyone, that's a transitional phase. It's transitional phase for all healthy and normal people. They get rid of this splitting. This is splitting. They get rid of this splitting a bit later. So you remember that? Mommy split, baby all bad, mommy all good. Gradually as the baby grows, cerebral, neuronal pathways are formed. The baby begins to realize the existence of other entities. He develops concepts of internal and external. He realizes the limitations of his will. He gets rid of magical thinking. He understands that if he wishes something, it doesn't always come true. That reality is its own rules, not subject to his thinking and wishes and will. So he matures. He matures and he begins to develop a realistic assessment of the universe. He switches from the pleasure principle to the reality principle. At that stage, he merges the bad and good aspects of mommy. And he becomes with a nuanced version, a more subtle and much more realistic version of mommy. And by the way, daddy and other figures, he is capable to see gray, not only black and white, good and bad against me, but he's able to merge these aspects and come up with something that allows him to function better and to feel a lot less frustrated. He reduces his anxiety, his ego-distony, his discomfort, his unhappiness, his rage, his aggression. He reduces all these, negative emotionality by simply accepting that the world is much more complex than it used to be a year ago when I was born. That is normal, healthy development. But narcissists and borderlines get stuck. They are incapable to transition. Now, no one explained convincingly. Why? Why some babies remain stuck? Yeah, okay. There is trauma. There is abuse. Get it. But why do they remain stuck? Why don't they develop a reality testing? Why don't they introduce themselves into reality? Well, here's the issue. When the baby splits mommy into bad and good, good breast, bad breast, good mommy, bad mommy, it's because mommy has good aspects. And it's easy to do. When someone has good sides and bad sides, even today as adults, you can make this distinction. You can say, well, he's an asshole, but he's a great scholar. Me. So you can make this distinction, or you can say, wow, he's seriously repulsive as a man. But his mind, his intellect is amazing. Again, me. But what to do when the person you're faced with has no mitigating circumstances, no attenuating and ameliorating aspects. Nothing good about him, only bad. If the mother is dead, and Ray Greene's concept of a dead mother, the mother is emotionally absent, narcissistic, selfish, depressive, parentifies the child, instrumentalizes the child, uses and abuses the child, does not allow the child to separate, individuate, breaches the child's boundaries, objectifies the child, et cetera, et cetera. This kind of mother stunts the growth of the child, arrests the development of the child. It's a bad mother. And there is nothing good about her. How do you split? How do you split an object that is all bad with not a single aspect of good, doesn't even fit the baby? How do you do that? You don't. Children who become later narcissists and borderlines could not split their mothers, because the mothers were all bad. There was nothing there to split. And yet, the mechanism of splitting was there, you know, raring to go, eager to act. The mechanism was activated, turned on, enabled, and was looking for a target. And there were only two targets, mommy and me. Now, I couldn't split mommy, so I split myself. Splitting has been inverted. Instead of externalized, it became internalized. You can't split an old bad mother, because she's all bad. You can't break her into good and bad. There's no good. So you split yourself. You split yourself into true self and false self. The true self is all bad. It's unworthy. It's helpless. It's hopeless. It's stupid. It's inefficacious. You know, one the true self. It's weak. It's vulnerable. Now you understand why narcissists hate weak people. It's projection. They hate the weak part in themselves, so they're projected on, they say, you're weak. I'm not weak, you're weak. I'm strong. I'm a strong man. I overcome even COVID-19. Right. I have orangery. So, the true self is everything the narcissist doesn't want to be. And the false self is everything the narcissistic child wants to be. The false self is God. That's the invention of private religion. Initially, in early Christianity, in Judaism, of course, in Islam, there was the assumption that men is all bad. There was the fall from grace when men was expelled, had been expelled from the Garden of Eden. Men, men's desires and drives were all malevolent, corrupt. It was through God's grace that men redeemed and absorbed himself by obeying God, by adhering to the Son of God, by interaction with God. God was the redeeming principle because men was hopelessly, hopelessly beyond all. So, the child does the same. The child cannot split mommy, so he splits himself. And there's a God-like element, the false self, and a corrupt, hopeless, doomed, expelled from Garden of Eden, true self. And it is the false self who is going to save, it's a savior, Salvatore, like Jesus. The false self is going to save the child, is going to redeem the child, is going to absorb the child, is going to uplift the child into the Kingdom of Heaven. Okay? Now, Corbuth suggested a vertical split. He said that in narcissists especially, they are contradictory self-states. Today we know that the same exists in borderline, and even more so. Borderlines have more demarcated and pronounced self-states, to the point that borderline is very reminiscent of dissociative identity disorder, multiple personality disorder. But okay. Corbuth in 1971 suggested that they are contradictory self-states. And he gave an example of grandiosity and despair. He said these self-states exist simultaneously and healthy narcissistic needs are frustrated by caretakers like mommy and later daddy. When the caretakers of the child do not allow the child to gratify legitimate narcissistic needs, the child is desperate. He represses this despair and to compensate for it, he creates grandiosities. He says, okay, I don't need you mommy, I don't need you daddy. I have my own imaginary friend and he's got like, he's stronger than you or powerful than you. He knows more than you. He's omniscient. He's brilliant. He's perfect. He's beautiful. He's accomplished. So the false self is compensatory. And when children are frustrated and traumatized and abused by caretakers, caregivers, parents, they react this way by creating vertical splits, co-existent contradictory self-states. Okay, you follow me until now? It's not an easy topic. Let's talk about introjects. Introjects are part of the fantasy defense. Introjects are fantastic. They're not real. When you're faced with a parent, with a role model, even with a peer group, which you admire and want to belong to, you internalize these voices. But you know that they're not real. You know that these people are not inside you. So it's a fantasy. You fantasize that their voices are still in your head. Your mommy is long dead. Your mother is long dead, but her voice is in your head. Do you really believe her voice is in your head? Do you really believe she's talking to you? If you do, you need medication. You're psychotic. Most people don't. And yet they conduct dialogues with the dead mother in times of stress and anxiety. So it's a fantasy. It's a fantasy. And these fantasies are not just pieces of fiction. The interject of mommy represents a real person with a real history, real mentality, real character and temperament and personality, memories. So it's a very, very super complex fantasy grounded largely in reality. And this fantasy has a life of its own. It has its own motivations, its own intentions. It has a life of its own. It's important to understand. Interjects continue inside the mind to have independent dynamics which are independent of the person. That's the process of snapshotting. When the narcissist meets, comes across someone who can serve as a narcissistic supply, as a source of supply, or when he comes across someone who can become an intimate partner, the narcissist takes a snapshot. He creates an introject. Now this introject has a life of its own. The narcissist continues to drag only with introject, ignoring the real object out there. And the more the introject diverges from the real object, the more pissed off the narcissist is. And that's the main reason for discard. This is what leads to discard when the divergence is too much. When the snapshot no longer resembles even remotely the real-life person, real-life people go through changes. They evolve, they grow, they develop new interests and new friendships. And yet the snapshot is stable. The snapshot is firm, never changes. And it creates a divergence. Okay, all the introjects are like this. But the narcissist does not regard the introject as a fantasy, but as a reality. So remember, everyone is introjects. Everyone interacts with introjects. Everyone talks to introjects. Everyone argues with introjects. Everyone is angry at introjects. For instance, the girlfriend who dumped you in favor of another man. You're very angry at her. You have her introject and you're fighting with her years later in an attempt to obtain closure. I mean, it's normal. But you know that the voice is fantastic, it's not real. The narcissist doesn't. The narcissist confuses introjects with reality. As his introjects interact, develop, I mean, are dynamic, he thinks it's real. He actually thinks that his introjects are much more real than you. His introject of you is much more real to the narcissist than you are. You don't have real existence in his mind because you're not in his mind. What's in his mind has supremacy over reality. It's supreme to reality. This is the real reality, his mind. And so in normal people, the introjects interact with the ego because the ego is the reality principle. The ego tells you, hey listen, call it. That's a fantasy. Or don't do this. If you do this, you'll be punished. It's the ego that keeps giving you reality testing. Keep telling you, listen, wake up. I mean, consider this is reality. Take reality into account. It's the function of the ego. And some introjects interact with the ego so much that they become a part of the ego. And they are known as ego nuclei. Here's the problem. Narcissists have no ego. They don't have a functional ego, at least. They don't have an ego. The narcissist outsources ego functions. He has no reality testing. He needs you to tell him what is reality. He has no access to reality because he has no ego. He doesn't have an ego to tell him, don't do this. Do this. This is real. This is fake. This is real. This is fantasy. He doesn't have this voice. So he needs you to tell him. And he's compulsive about it. He needs it every minute. Can you survive in reality without reality testing for one minute? Of course you can't. Now you understand the narcissist's compulsion, coercion, insistence, persistence. He needs you every minute. He outsources ego functions. He has a hive mind. He incorporates other people in order to form clunky, on-the-fly, just-in-time, improvised ego states. One ego after another. And because each ego created this way, depends on another, on a separate group of people. Ego number one will not be the same like ego number seven. Ego number one will depend on three people, one, two, and three. And ego number seven will also depend on three people, 14, 15, and 16. Of course the input from one, two, and three will not be the same like the input from 14, 15, and 16. So the ego seven will not be like ego one. That's why the narcissist is dissociative and dysfunctional and discontinuous. Because his ego states, his successive ego states, sometimes very often actually, have little to do with each other. That's why he's shocked when he's confronted with the consequences of his actions. He doesn't feel he did anything. Definitely he doesn't feel he did anything wrong. That's why he confabulates all the time. He's trying to bridge the gaps between ego one and two, and three, and four, and seven. He's trying to create some continuity. Confabulates, and many people perceive this as gaslighting, which is actually a psychopathic behavior, not a narcissistic one. The narcissist does not exist. It's an emptiness. It's a void. He exists by aggregate, by assemblage. And now the ego idea, what you want to be when you grow up, that's an interject. The superego, including punishing superego, inner critic, sadistic superego, that's an interject. You see the critical role of interjects. And if you have interjects that cannot talk to the ego because you have no ego, you have no core. There's no core. They also cannot communicate with them among themselves. These interjects communicate with each other via the ego. The ego is like a switchboard. If you don't have an ego, they can't talk to each other. So the narcissist experiences. Some inner objects is good and real. These are egocintonic objects. And when he idealizes you, he converts you into an egocintonic interject and also into a real one. Your interjects, your interject becomes the only reality and it's a good one. It's egocintonic when he devalues you or when he has interjects that he is not comfortable with. They are ego alien. They are egodistonic. At any given time, the narcissist has both these groups. Ego-syntonic, good, real objects. And ego alien, egodistonic, disturbing, discomforting and ultimately projected interjects, internal objects. And this creates a process called ego congruent, incongruence. Ego incongruence, despite it's very misleading because there's no ego. But ego incongruence in principle means that some things, some events, some occurrences, some people, some places, some memories will create such extreme discomfort that actually they will divorce the narcissist from himself. They will create a process called estrangement. This is very, very common in borderlines. That's why borderlines act out. That's why they go crazy. That's why they behave in ways which are at once abrupt and unpredictable and shocking. And on the other hand, very self-damaging, self-trashing itself. What they do, borderlines especially, narcissists also, but borderlines especially, they externalize interjects. Because of ego congruence, ego incongruence, I'm sorry, because of ego incongruence, the internal level of angst, anxiety and discomfort is such the inability to tolerate, the intolerance of ego-dystonic objects, alien interjects becomes richer, such a level, such a burden that the borderline of the narcissists just take these internal objects and they throw them out. They don't even project them. They don't attribute them to other people. They just throw them out. And it's like explosion. You know, these are externalizing interjects. And because these objects are alien, discomforting, disturbing, frightening, menacing, destabilizing, dysregulating, black, horrible interjects, when they are externalized, the borderline of the narcissists feel one step removed. They feel that they're outside observing what's happening. They feel like they're on autopilot. During the acting out, when interjects, uncomfortable interjects, bad interjects, hated interjects, rejected interjects are externalized, it's like taking a part of yourself and throwing it out. And of course that minute you cease to exist because you're not you anymore. Part of you is gone. It's like being amputated. You're not you anymore. And you're not you anymore and you're still observing the process of becoming not you. You're observing this process of partial vanishing. It's like your upper part had evaporated, like spontaneous combustion. If you saw photos of spontaneous combustion, only part of the body is burnt. The rest is intact. Same process. This is spontaneous combustion of a part of you that you hate, that you want to reject at any cost, at the cost of acting out. And this creates estrangement. That's the clinical term. But it also creates dissociation. You don't want to remember that. You repress it. You deny it. You forget it. You become depersonalized. It's like you're not there. As I said, you're not a pilot. You're just watching. You're an observer. Or you become totally derealized. The whole thing feels nightmarish, surrealistic, not real. So dissociation, amnesia, amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, all these phenomena, dissociative phenomena have to do with externalizing alien, egosyntonic, incongruent objects, externalizing them. How do you expel something? Aggression. These externalized objects come with a huge dose of aggression. And it feels like these introjects somehow projectiles like guided missiles. Like they have their own mind. Like they act. They are the ones who are acting and operating. The agency is transferred from the individual to these introjects. They feel autonomous. They feel independent. And the person, the borderline person, or the narcissist, they sit back and say, what on earth is happening to me? What is happening here? And who is me? It looks like you're actually not in control, not in the driver's seat. Something, someone took over you. And that's, I think this is the source of the many metaphors of possession, demon possession and so on. Of course, narcissists use and borderlines use two important mechanisms. Projective identification and introjective identification. In projective identification, the narcissist places himself inside an object. Remember, object is a person. Another person in psychology. The narcissist places himself inside an object. Now, why would he do that? Why would he export his being? Export his essence? Export himself? Why would he teleport? Teleportation. Because it gives him an illusion of control over the object. If there is an object that the borderline or the narcissist is afraid to lose, there is abandonment anxiety. There's object inconstancy. This is intolerable. It enhances anxiety to levels that can no longer be countenance, can no longer be coped with. And in order to cope, the narcissist identifies himself with the object. He says, the object is me. I am the object. Its mechanism also used by co-dependence, merger and fusion. Projective identification is when the person finds himself inside another person and gives the narcissist an illusion of control, a denial of helplessness and impotence. And the narcissist and borderline gain vicarious satisfaction from the activities of the object. So, covert and inverted narcissists use projective identification endlessly, relentlessly, callously, automatically, consciously, compulsively, all the time, all the time. Of course, projective identification has very strong passive-aggressive elements. The second mechanism is introjective, introjective identification. It's identified with an introject. You remember, some introjects are good perceived, as good as real. The narcissist confuses internal and external objects. So, the internal object, your representation in the narcissist's mind is more real than you. And it's good in the idealization phase. In that phase, the narcissist identifies with you, identifies with the object. When I say identify, it's not that he has sympathy for you, or he has empathy for you. He is you. It involves processes such as assimilation, incorporation, don't ask. It's simply confusing his non-existent self and ego with your very much existent self and ego. He identifies with the introject with a fantastic representation of you inside himself. And he imagines you. Imagines you as being inside himself. Being a part of himself. Being an extension of himself, an organ. So, these are the two mechanisms. Either the narcissist teleports himself, exports himself into you and becomes one with you. That's the codependence trend in narcissism. Many narcissists do that. Or, he brings you into himself. He assimilates you, digests you. And identifies with your representation in his mind, with your introjects, and imagines that he is one with the introject. Or the introject is part of him. Here's the crux. The narcissist could not split his mother. She was all bad. She had no good or positive aspects. She was not a good enough mother. Helen Deutsch coined the phrase false self which Donald Winnicott later popularized. And so, maternal splitting is a crucial phase in avoiding the need to develop a false self. Why does a narcissist develop a false self? Because he needs to split something. He can't split mommy, so he splits himself. So there's false self and true self. And that's a temporary measure that keeps him alive. It's a positive adaptation. And then he meets you. He comes across you. And you're perfect. You're his intimate partner. He wants to complete the process of maternal splitting with you. That's why he has to convert you into a mother. He needs to finish the unfinished business, the unresolved conflict of the inability to split his original mother. He needs to split you. We call this repetition compulsion. He needs to split you. Now, he couldn't split his mother. She had no good aspects. So what he does in your case, he idealizes you so that you have only good aspects. You're all good. That allows him to regress to very early childhood. You remember the baby? What the baby does? The baby splits mommy. Mommy is all good. The baby is all bad. Marces goes back to that period, believe it or not. I don't know, six months old. One year old. He goes back to that period and he forces you to become his mommy so that he can proceed with the unfinished business of splitting. Render you all good. Render himself all bad. At that stage, you become all good. He becomes all bad. Now, that is not a tolerable state. Even the narcissist can tolerate it. So he begins to test you. Co-idealization the process where he idealizes you and through this process, idealizes himself. Introduction, the process where he internalizes you and incorporates you. These are the ways in which he annexes appropriates your goodness. So when the narcissist meets an intimate partner immediately it triggers the early unfinished, unconcluded maternal splitting. He then must convert you into a mother to complete the splitting. Splitting has several phases. Phase one, he makes you all good. He makes himself all bad into with his original mother. His original mother was all bad. He could not idealize her but he idealizes you. He makes you all good which makes him all bad. That is intolerable. He moves to phase two. In phase two, he uses your goodness. Your alleged, imputed goodness. Your idealized, non-realistic goodness. Because remember, he's interacting not with you. He's interacting with your idealized introject in his mind. So he then uses your goodness to idealize himself. He says to himself, if I'm with such a good, perfect, brilliant, amazing, beautiful, talented, intelligent, super, incredible woman, it must mean that I'm the same. I'm also amazing, super incredible, talented is that. She would never have been with me. She would have never loved me. She would have never stayed with me. Had I not been equally perfect, equally brilliant, equally handsome, equally everything. So he idealizes you and then the process of idealizing you is uncomfortable because the more he idealizes you, the more he devalues himself. This is completing the classic maternal splitting which he couldn't do when he was young. But it's a temporary state because it's very uncomfortable. So what he does, he co-idealizes. He says she's ideal, that means I'm ideal. And then he introjects you, internalizes you, incorporates you. He metaphorically swallows you. He digests you because you know the imprimative people, they eat the liver in the heart of warriors. They had a war and then they're prisoners of war and they eat the heart and the liver of the prisoners of war because this way they believe they can digest or absorb the courage and the bravery of the enemy combatants. Combatants. And the enemy combatants their traits and properties reside in body organs. The nazis is the same with you. He internalizes you, he incorporates you because this way he can absorb your goodness and become good. Stage one, you are all good, he is all bad. Stage two, co-idealization. If you are all good means he is all good. To prove this to himself, stage three, he internalizes you, he incorporates you, he swallows you, he digests you, he makes you disappear, absorbs your goodness thereby becoming an entirely good object. He now becomes all good. So in this process which is an intricate dance, two steps forward, one step back and so on he needs to test you. He needs to make sure that you are all good. This is post-traumatic hypervigilance. Maybe you're like his mother. Maybe you're all bad. Maybe you're just pretending to love him. So he needs to test you all the time. He tests you by abusing you. This is narcissistic abuse type one. He abuses you to test you. He pushes you to the limit. He creates elaborate situations to trip you up, sets you up for failure. I want you to understand that very often this masquerades is benevolence, is love. So someone who gives 100% of himself to you is setting you up for failure because you cannot give back 100%. Someone who is too good to be true is setting you up for failure. You cannot be that good ever. He sets the bar so high that you will never make it. It's an example of testing. He puts you in situations where you will end up drunk with another man. That's testing. He constantly criticizes you and challenges you. That's testing. He wants to see, are you truly a good object? Because his mommy deceived him. He thought his mommy loved him. He thought his mommy accepted him. He thought her love was unconditional. He was wrong. And consequently, for the rest of his life, decades, he could not complete the testing process and could not grab. Now you are his last chance, his second chance, his last chance. It is through you that he will experience parenting and mothering. Proper, good enough mothering. And to accomplish this he needs to split you and then needs to interject you, to absorb you, to incorporate you. You need to become one. He needs to become one with a good object. But it's very terrifying because becoming one with an object is disappearing. He needs to sacrifice himself. He's used only to sacrifice himself. He sacrificed himself to the false self. So he wants to sacrifice himself to you. But he wants to make sure that you're worthy of the sacrifice. That you're truly good. So he has to test you. When you fail his test he reverses, the whole thing reverses. He splits you again. But now you're all bad. You're all bad. And he avoids code evaluation because look, if you're all bad and you're still together means he's an idiot. Means his judgment is poor. Means he's not omniscient. If you're all bad it challenges the grandiosity of his false self. So he needs to discard you. The minute you fail his test and they are very, very surreptitious, stealth, subtle occult tests. You don't even know that you are being tested. You don't understand what are his expectations. What does he want? So very likely you're going to fail. The likelihood of failure is enormous. You fail. He devalues you. He devalues you. He has to discard you because if he devalues you and you stick around you're challenging his grandiosity and his false self. And that is absolutely intolerable. Okay. I hope you got the picture. I want to make um I want to finish by as usual mentioning literature and this time a classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. You know we are so brainwashed by messages propagated promulgated via the education system mass media experts authorities that we don't it's extremely rare that we stop to think actually critically think for example we all believe that Dr. Jekyll was the victim of Mr. Hyde. To remind you Dr. Jekyll was a very venerable, well-respected renowned doctor in the story by Stevenson and he invented a potion a concoction a kind of medicine that he would swallow and when he swallowed this medicine he became Mr. Hyde not Dr. Jekyll anymore but Mr. Hyde Mr. Hyde was a psychopath sadistic killer horrible man, rapist, I mean you name it you name it he did it, horrible person Dr. Jekyll lover of humanity medical doctor saviour of bodies and souls swallows the medicine or potion becomes Mr. Hyde, exact opposite a psychopath if ever there was one so everyone says poor Dr. Jekyll he clearly is Mr. Hyde's victim because he had to pay the price of course once the potion wore off he reverted to being Dr. Jekyll and he had to pay the price for the misdeeds and misconduct in criminal activities of Mr. Hyde so everyone says Jekyll is Hyde's victim I'm saying exactly the opposite Mr. Hyde is Dr. Jekyll's victim because the control was with Dr. Jekyll Dr. Jekyll could have decided to not drink the potion Hyde had no control over it it was Dr. Jekyll who always invariably made the decision to manifest actualize he realized the poor Mr. Hyde Mr. Hyde couldn't help it he was a psychopath, there's nothing he could do about it Dr. Jekyll could help it and he made choices and he victimized Hyde Dr. Jekyll says in the book I knew before I left the hospital that I was not straight that despite all that was available there nobody was sharp enough to pick up my secret and I didn't want anyone to learn my secret that sounds pretty psychopathic to me LAMP in 1996 analyzed this argument and the complexity of the argument and he asked a question could it be that the individual perpetrator is not blame-worthy could it be that Mr. Hyde is actually not to be blamed because you know his actions he was Dr. Jekyll's alter ego his actions were not his own they were fully controlled by Dr. Jekyll Dr. Jekyll took a drug that required premeditation planning preparation of the potion took a long time it was a conscious act and he took the drug and he transformed him into Mr. Hyde Mr. Hyde was an addict in a way and he was created by Dr. Jekyll's need to continue his experiment he was an experimental creature Hyde was a villain he committed heinous horrible acts there's no disputing this but who is the moral responsibility Dr. Jekyll recognized knew about Hyde he knew about Mr. Hyde he knew that Mr. Hyde is hiding inside himself he could not refer to Hyde as I because Hyde was an ego alien ego dystonic so he disowned Hyde he rejected Hyde he hated Hyde he was referring to him in 3rd he used to call him Hyde as though it's not himself but it was a part of himself and to have continued the experiment inflicting untold damages over hundreds of people strikes me how to put it gently is extremely psychopathic perhaps after Rome there was not much difference between the unscrupulous relentless, ruthless callous, disempathic Dr. Jekyll and his mirror image Hyde perhaps Hyde was Dr. Jekyll's dark side but definitely a part of him an integral part of him a perfect reflection of him Dr. Jekyll was Mr. Hyde in Hyde that's all as Dr. Jekyll himself states in the book I know I'm he I know I'm he but he is Hyde yeah very convincing there was a guy called Dr. Hans Prince Horn he he wrote interesting works in art history and psychiatry he sort of conflated art history and psychiatry and he wrote a book he studied the art of the mentally ill art created by the mentally ill um Bill Nyeid Geistus Krenken it's called was published in um 1923 he studied the psychology of expression he came up with a fascinating list of six fundamental impulses regarding self-expression he believed that people create art in order to make contact with other people that art is an interface a communication interface between people like the ancient modernies you know the fifth impulse of six um he attributed to psychopaths is the tendency to imitate or copy and he said this undeniable pleasure involved in this achievement McGregor analyzes it in 1989 and it's very interesting that he believes that psychopathy consists of imitation or copying because when we act out what is to imitate to copy is to not be ourselves when you imitate you are not yourself when someone makes an impersonation of me with meaning he is not being himself for that in that moment so imitation, copying is denying yourself that's really the crux of psychopathy is remember what I said earlier externalizing interjects he Menninger wrote in 1963 the aggressive instincts lack discrimination lack judgment lack perspective lack everything but power and a destructive goal Ted Bundy the serial killer you know he was interviewed by Stephen Michaud and Hugh Ainsworth in 1999 or at least they published the interviews in 1999 and they tried to talk to him about the murders but he wouldn't he talked about everything under the sun politics, history, art he was by the way a genius as far as I remember 160 IQ but he wouldn't talk about the murders and so the interviewers were at an impasse they were like a dead end and didn't know what to do and suddenly it occurred to them they said to him, Ted would you would you like to talk about the murders in the third person because use he don't say I killed her say he killed her and Bundy agreed immediately to this arrangement and opened up and discussed the murders in full detail using he third gender pronoun everything he said was clearly about himself but it was presented in the third person depersonalization narcissists anyone everyone who has come across a narcissist or many psychopaths and many borderlines they talk about themselves in the third person they don't say I did it, they say Vaknin did it or Vaknin is the victim of coaches self-styled experts or Trump is hated Trump would say about himself, Trump is hated third person okay I will take this opportunity to answer a question of yours in a single sentence and I'll dedicate a whole video to this contempt contempt is a driving emotion sentiment in narcissism and psychopathy contempt crucial element of grandiosity and there's contempt for weakness perceived inferiority inadequacy emotions, vulnerabilities neediness, clinging attachment and bonding empathy and altruism how many 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 6, 7, 8, 9 9 or 10 types of contempt and I will analyze this in my next video you have my full contempt and I wish you full recovery from this video if you made it to the end YouTube provides me with an amazing statistic half of all viewers sign off after the rant and the jokes they are utterly uninterested in the topic so how can I give you my respect contempt contempt it is stay tuned for the next episode