 Hi, Sam, this is really great to have this discussion with you, but before we begin, let me introduce you to my subscribers just in case they haven't heard about you, which I think is hard to believe because you're almost everywhere when it comes to the topic of narcissism. But Sam Vaknen, Dr. Sam Vaknen has a very and deep career in many, many related and unrelated psychological endeavors, but what he's known most for is his groundbreaking work on narcissism. He's written two bestselling books and he'll tell you a little bit about them, but I'm so pleased to be in this discussion with him. And before we begin it, let me turn it over to Sam and let's hear what he has to say about this discussion. Rose, thank you for having me. It's been a long time with you, for us to talk about these subjects. You asked ubiquitous as I am, so I guess my subscribers have heard of you. It's not a guess, actually. I know you're my subscribers. But still to recap, you're a seasoned and long-standing therapist with a great experience in the fields of addiction and co-dependence, which might be the same thing, actually, coming to think of it. And you have made the contributions, which I've been following for a few years now. You've made contributions to creating and generating a model of co-dependence, which is both descriptive and prescriptive, in other words, it yields prescriptions for treatment and for self-healing and so on and so forth. So you've made a contribution to co-dependence that is quite sizable and that in conjunction with your understanding of narcissism, I think could lead to some breakthroughs in understanding the connection between narcissism, addiction and co-dependence, and there are subtle connections and in treating the victims of narcissists, or shall we say, the survivors of narcissistic abuse. Well, thank you, Sam. That's very generous, but I do appreciate it anyways. For our listeners and viewers, it was interesting before we put the record button on, Sam and I were discussing how this video would go. And one of the things that I said to him that I'd like to share with you is an aspect about his work, and he is a person that I admire greatly. In fact, he is the only person that I know of who is a bona fide, legitimate sufferer from a personality disorder, namely narcissistic personality disorder, that actually has consciousness about it and the ability to control aspects of the disorder in order to interact well effectively and prosocially with other people. My experience with those with narcissistic personality disorder is they can't get past themselves. And I'm curious, Sam, if you don't mind, how did you do that? How did you manage to come up with an inner sense of control over the unique and predictable symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder? I simply, in the early stages of psychoanalysis, in the beginning of the 20th century, they came up with something called the conversion symptom. Oh, yeah. Conversion decodal. That was Freud's work, right? Yeah, that was Freud's work. And the idea was that there were somatic bodily manifestations of mental problems. So similarly, I kind of converted my neediness for narcissistic supply, my addiction to narcissistic supply. I converted it into socially acceptable channels. I still seek narcissistic supply, and it's still a compulsion, it is still not under my control. I still don't control this need for tension, adulation, admiration, and failing that for being feared and hated. I still have all this, but I channel it in socially acceptable ways and I leverage these needs, this energy, this pent-up, enormous energy. I leverage it to help victims of abuse, survivors of abuse, to describe the narcissistic disorder in great detail, to expose the hidden nooks and crannies of what it means to be a narcissist, and to perhaps allow, provide closure by proxy to victims when they interact with me. In a way, Sam, we have a lot of similarities about how we've managed our own psychological challenges. I was once very codependent, and it wasn't until I got myself in codependency recovery, worked through all the underlying issues that created the codependency, which I might talk about later in this video, but I certainly talk about it in my other videos. I was able to triumph over the trauma and the addictive elements of the trauma that was responsible for my codependency, but what I noticed then, according to my continuum of self, is that I moved from this deeply affected, struggling person that always needed to help others in order to get validation, the healthier that I became, the more balanced I became, the more I was connected to my own needs, the more healthy that I became, the more I've been focusing on my needs, doing things for myself, and I've noticed that I've developed what I consider my shadow side is a narcissistic predilection that goes in counter to codependency. So as much as I've worked, and this is my connection with you, Sam, as much as I worked on my codependency, I now am working on my overcompensation of being too self-centered, entitled, or whatever would be considered mild and somewhat moderate narcissism. It seems that both you and I were able to understand that our disorders were impediments in our lives, and we were able to do the psychological, personal work in order to get a handle on it. Would that be a fair summary of what you've said? Yes, I have three comments. About 20 years ago, I proposed that children react to abusive or dysfunctional home environments, either by becoming either narcissists or codependents. Some of them don't become anything. Some of them simply go on through life, being totally normal and so on. But the more vulnerable, the more fragile, the more amenable, perhaps genetically, become either codependence or narcissists. So in my view, codependence and narcissism are linked at the root. They are twin reactions to the very same environment. Disfunctional, abusive, objectifying, dishumanizing environment. That's point number one. Point number two, I have noticed in my decades of interacting with victims and survivors, I noticed that in most post-traumatic situations and conditions, in the wake of abuse, as people recover, seek closure, reevaluate and reframe their lives and so on and so forth. I noticed that there is an emergence of what I would call narcissistic defenses. But these defenses, this propensity to put more emphasis on yourself, on your needs, on your well-being, sometimes at the expense of others, these defenses very rarely, if ever, coalesce into a full-fledged narcissistic personality, narcissistic style, let alone narcissistic disorder. These narcissistic defenses come to the fore as healing progressions, healing from abuse, progressions, and then they are transient and then they vanish. And so I think, to summarize, I think that narcissistic personality disorder, narcissists, are actually codependence. In my view, and it has been my view for a long time now, narcissists have a very, narcissism is a variant of what you might call dependent personality disorder. Narcissists depend on other people. They depend on other people for narcissistic supply. They regulate their sense of self-worth, they regulate their inner landscape, they regulate their precarious balance of their extremely fragile personality by resorting to feedback from the outside, by interacting with other people, and in the absence of this feedback, in the absence of this supply, and in the absence of these people, they fall apart. They crumble, and so their narcissists are codependent. I could not be more in favor and more support that codependency and narcissism is born out of childhood trauma. In fact, the very first time that I figured this out was about 20 years ago, when I read Alice Miller's book, The Drama, the Gift of Child, during which in my own therapy, I was trying to figure out what was up with my choices with all of these dysfunctional and unhealthy women. In a sense, it was the beginning of my human magnet syndrome theory. And what I learned from Alice Miller in my own therapy was that our adaptation to a traumatic environment vis-a-vis the relationship a child has with a narcissistic parent, attachment trauma, that is ground zero for the eventual emergence of either codependency or pathological narcissism. So we both agree on the idea that these disorders, mainly narcissistic personality disorder or what I call pathological narcissism, is a result from the child, the child's natural needs to be loved just for who he or she is. When a child's environment is devoid of love, safety, they experience trauma. So if we think of that child having a narcissistic parent and the narcissistic parent only able to love someone, a child that makes them feel good, the child has two trajectories. Is the child capable because of her innate ability to figure out how to meet the narcissistic needs of the parent? And Alice Miller talks about this. If the child can somehow adapt to the narcissist and figure out a way to be that trophy child, that gift child, that human doing, that child learns that he or she will get conditional love and that child will grow up with a form of attachment trauma where they only, where they learn that if they can control their environment, they will get love and attention. Now, the other trajectory, the other side of attachment trauma is if the child for all sorts of reasons, whether it's personality reasons, environmental reasons, or the parent's narcissism reasons, that child is unable to figure out to meet those narcissistic needs. That child is cast away, that child is then seen and treated as a, as a narcissistic and ongoing narcissistic injury. That child's experience early on is that the world is not safe, that there is no way that he or she will get the love that all humans need. And that is the trajectory for the pathological narcissists, narcissism disorders. Well, yes, that's a, that's a classical way of, of a classical way of regarding the developmental trajectory of co-dependence and narcissism. Sure. It's very psychodynamic. And, and, and most of my work come from, whether it's conscious or unconscious, some of the great scholars out there who have taught me. So, yes, I'm glad that you said that, that I didn't invent this, that this comes from the great masters of psychological, psychological theory and attachment, attachment theory. It's based on various solid foundations. These issues have been researched for decades. All these things are not something we have just invented both of us, invented on the fly, it's, it's well, well grounded. These are well grounded observations with, with very precise clinical application, while I think both of us, you know, in many ways, it's all, we know we are standing on the, on the shoulders of giants. And that's important to emphasize because there is a body of literature and masses and masses of research and studies into both these disorders, codependency and narcissism. And it's, it's important to know that what we are saying has to wait not only of our own personal experiences and our own interaction with victims and so on and so forth, but also these dozens of scholars who have dedicated their life, life and have come up with observations and studies and analysis and research. But there's a lot of people out there that are writing about narcissism. In fact, the term narcissism is almost becoming like codependence. The term codependency became in the 1980s. Everyone wants to talk about it. Everyone wants to give their own spin. But 75% of what I read about narcissism are from nonclinical people who are just offering up their own opinion without a lot of citations or background, clinical or psychological background. And what I hear you say, in which I really appreciate, is that what we both do is we try to teach others who are own our own battles with our respective disorders. Mine is recovering codependent and yours with someone who is narcissistic precise order is we wrote a book from our own experience and made it and anchored it in clinical, psychological research and data. Precisely. And I'll give you your commission where we give one example. Sure. Of recent developments which, you know, consider actually with your permission to examples. Wait, wait, wait, first, first time. No permission. Don't don't remember I'm a recovering codependent. You're going to make me feel guilty. That's great. OK. OK, you have my from from here on, you have my permission about everything. And remember, I can remember, but remember, I can edit this. All right, all right. OK, go ahead. Yeah, there's I told you. So, yeah, so go ahead, Sam. OK, so, for instance, about a month ago, a study had been published about it was the FNRI functional functional imaging of various brain areas, blood flow into the various areas indicates which which parts of the brain become active under certain stimuli, certain circumstances and certain situations. So the study discovered that all types, all top types of narcissists, convert narcissists, classic narcissists, what I call somatic and cerebral narcissists. I mean, there were a few hundred narcissists study, right? The study, the study uncovered a very interesting phenomenon. They were all very needy. They all reacted with neediness. Now, I have suggested that long ago, I suggested that all narcissists, regardless of classification, are in need of narcissistic supply, and therefore they are needed by definition. OK, so the study has been published and so on. So what's the implications? Why is it a very important study, a very crucial study? Because there's been an ongoing raging debate over the last 40 years, whether narcissists are actually very self-confident, self-assured people who are just externalizing their innate field of grandiosity or whether actually most, if not all, narcissists are very fragile. They are inferior and they are trying to compensate for this inferiority by pretending to be what they are not, omniscient, all-knowing, all-powerful, brilliant and perfect. So there's been this debate and Mellon, for instance, Theodore Mellon, one of the great, great-grandfathers of the field of personality disorders. So Theodore Mellon insisted that all narcissists are compensatory. In other words, deep inside, there is this knowing feeling of lack in adequacy, loneliness, fear of life and the hostility of the world, etc., etc. And that the narcissist is just compensating for it by pretending to be Superman. And now this neurological study supports Mellon's contention, and all narcissists are actually compensatory. I would like to give one last example to round up this segment. Sure. A while back about six years ago, that's more, I suggested that narcissists are actually possessed of empathy. They do have empathy. And that was in stark contrast to one of the criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which is the Bible of the profession. Other criteria was for diagnosing narcissistic personality disorders had been a lack of empathy, a complete lack of empathy, like there's no empathy. And I suggested that it may not be true. I said that empathy has several components. There is an instinctual component. There is an emotional component, cognitive component, etc., etc. And I suggested that narcissists have a truncated version of empathy, which are called, called empathy, called the opposite of hot or warm. And there it, there it remained. To my utter delight, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual 5, not because of me, it has nothing to do with me, of course, but still, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual edition, the fifth edition, which was published in June 2013. The DSM-5. The DSM-5, yes. It was published less than two years ago, two years ago, actually. So they, and I quote it, I quote from it, the narcissist finds it difficult to identify with emotions and needs of others. But listen well, he's very attuned to their reactions when they are relevant to himself. Exactly. And that... It's essentially all of them, but you can't do that without empathy. If you are devoid of empathy completely, it means you don't resonate with other people. You know what, you don't know what it means. You don't know the first thing about what it means to be human. And we cannot define narcissistic personality disorder as someone lacking empathy, because the only personality disorder that I think that actually has that as a diagnostic criterion is the antisocial personality disorder or the psychopath. See, and so what I've noticed is that a narcissist and a codependent, the Human Magnet Syndrome, they can't fall in love if there is no connection, no need to want to love one another. Because narcissists are capable of being in relationships, they want to love people and they want to be loved, there has to be an element of empathy. And I use your term called empathy, and in fact, I like that. So it's empathy that is real, but it's self-serving. When there is a narcissistic injury or the narcissist's need to fulfill his narcissistic needs or challenge, that empathy is put on hold and it becomes a complete, it's all about me moment. And that is so, so I'm wondering if you, what your thoughts about, since we agreed, and I'm glad, I'm really glad that you said this because I've always been saying that narcissists love people, they're able to participate in relationships as long as their needs are met. But so do you believe that within a narcissistic injury, empathy is absent? Yes, I believe that narcissists have the unique capacity to suspend empathy. To sort of turn it off and on. One with normal people, whatever that means by the way, the question of normalcy, what is normal? People that have problems that manage them, that's my definition. Yeah, well, it's good as any, it makes me an excellent definition. But, OK, so people who are not narcissists, let's put it this way. People who are not narcissists, empathy is kind of a background noise. It's something that they can't turn on and off. It's utterly, probably unconscious. It provokes emotional correlates and emotional reactions, which are automatic, other directed, directed at the outside of other people, and which allow them to put themselves in other people's shoes and to reach a modicum of understanding as to what may be happening in other people's minds. We call this in philosophy, I'm a philosopher by training. We call this in philosophy the intersubjectivity agreement. So there is an intersubjective agreement between two minds or two brains. Mind you, no one has access to someone else's mind. That would be ludicrous, even to suggest it. But we can reach a kind of agreement as to what may be happening. And that's empathy. Now with narcissists, they're able to turn it on and off exactly as you said, they're able to suspend it. The only point where I may differ with you and it's going to differ from time to time. It's a conversation alive and the truth is flowing. Plus you would disappoint me if we didn't disagree. What fun would that be? But what fun would that be? Might as well shoot the video by yourself. Exactly. The only point I think where we disagree is perhaps there I have a bit of an advantage over you because I'm a narcissist. I'm laughing because I've never met someone who was so fluent and comfortable explaining that there are narcissists. It's actually goes against every experience I have with narcissists. So I promise I won't laugh again, but go ahead. Thank you. At least I think I'll take it as a compliment. It is. I really mean it as one. Please continue. So what I'm saying is I have access to my inner landscape, my inner world, which is denied to people who are not full-fledged narcissists normally. So one of the ideas I had when I heard you talk is you say narcissists can choose to be empathetic or not. I would challenge that. I think that evolved narcissists such as yourself can and you are the exception to the rule. I think most narcissists are victims of their own narcissism and are not conscious of when when their their intimacy, their connection, their love and their empathy gets a short-circuited. So I suggest that there is a smaller population of evolved narcissists such as yourself than actually have the capability to turn it on or off. The other thought I had as you were talking, I was thinking about evolution and I was thinking about that we evolved in order to propagate our species and to populate the world, et cetera, et cetera. And there is an evolutionary purpose of anger. Anger creates physiological reactions within our body that create neurological reactions that prepare us to protect ourselves. And I'm not an anthropologist nor can I speak in any great certainty of my theory, but I believe that it is human to get angry and when we are angry, our thought processes are constricted and we become more self-centered. So I'm suggesting that the very action, the very instinctual action being angry creates a narcissistic like process. Now if you can accept that, now let's talk about someone who has a narcissistic injury and who has NPD. So then that anger is manifestly worse. Let's say it's triple, it's quadrupled. I believe that it's very difficult as a, and I quote, a normal person to be empathetic when they're angry. But I think it's virtually impossible and I haven't seen it for someone with NPD to have any empathy when they're angry. So I think that we share a very similar conclusion about it, but are explaining it from different point of views. What are your thoughts about my explanation? As to point number one, absolutely. The vast majority of narcissists are not self-aware and they are not in control of their psychological processes. So when I said suspend or turn on and off, I may have given the wrong impression. I did not use the pasting voice, but I should have. These are automatic under the surface. Actually, I did say that maybe it's unconscious. So these are automatic under the surface processes. I fully agree. I'm a self-aware narcissist and I don't know many who are putting my intelligence aside, but I'm a self-aware narcissist. So that gives me a lot of leverage, a lot of power over my mental processes and some a modicum of control. But that's rare, very. The, as to the second point, I've actually written a very involved long article about about anger, which makes the very same point that anger involved the suspension of empathy. Now, I postulate that narcissism narcissism is actually a permanent condition of rage. I postulate that the child who later becomes a narcissistic adult is full to the brim with unfulfilled, unrequited, diffuse, all-consuming, all-pervasive rage. Right. That this is the condition of narcissism and that this rage manifests in a variety of ways. Anger also, exactly as you pointed out, makes us self-centered. Right. Anger leads to narcissism, exactly as you said. And when anger is permanent, narcissism is permanent. So the only point where we where we disagree, luckily, because it's the first point in this whole conversation, you know, so the only point where we disagree is about love, whether the narcissist is capable of love or loving. But I didn't I didn't say they can't. So be careful. So go ahead. All right. Sorry. No, no, I actually believe and I've written about this. I know that they can love because a human magnet syndrome would not work. I know because I fell in love with many narcissists and they weren't faking. They weren't sociopaths. It's love based upon the projective fantasy that they're going to get their needs met that they never did. And it's got to be all about them. The only advantage I have here is that I have access to my inner landscape, to my inner mental processes as a narcissist. So that gives me a bit of an advantage, at least in articulation. Absolutely. So so it is it is true that. Narcissists experience what they would label love. That means if you ask a narcissist straightforward, you know, are you in love? Do you love? Many narcissists would answer yes, I love my wife, my girlfriend and so on. So they use the label love. They mean it as well. I know they mean it. Sorry, I said yes, absolutely. They imbue it. They imbue it. They imbue this word with the emotional content, with an emotional content that they believe is love. However, having suggested myself, and by the way, hundreds of other narcissists over over 20 years, having subjected myself and others into very rigorous analysis. I can say that what narcissists call love. Has very little to do with what normal people, if you wish, non-narcissists would call love with a functional, mature emotion that we call love. What narcissists call love is a combination of. Secure, a secure source of narcissistic supply, right, safety of the source, attachment to the source, deep attachment, dependency, as I said at the beginning. Absolutely. So this dependence plus attachment, plus safety of narcissistic supply, plus stability, plus, plus, plus, other emotions, other emotional needs which are satisfied, put together as a package deal, narcissists call love. And very much as called dependence, call love. Emotions which are not necessarily love, as you will know, but much better than me. But let me jump in. What you're saying resonates for me because in my continuum of self-theory, I talk about the state of equilibrium where the codependent and the narcissist are balanced and in that relationship, they experience love, albeit dysfunctional. And I warn my codependents, and I call it my surgeon general warning. There's a YouTube video on it, that if you get healthier, the narcissist will panic and will do anything that he or she can do to get you back in your codependent, codependent, back to your codependency. But what, and because the narcissist experiences it as abandonment and the potential loss of, as you expressed, and I agree, love. So what I've noticed, and it predictably, that when my codependents finally get to the point of solid recovery, the relationship often falls apart because many, if not most, people with narcissistic personality disorder, or for that matter, the other pathological narcissists are unable to get healthier because they don't know they have a problem. Therefore, there's nothing to work on. So what I've seen is at the point of divorce or the point of termination of the relationship is the narcissist goes into a state of panic and they say to the codependent, I love you, I love you so much, I'll change. These people are not sociopaths, they're not psychopaths, they're not lying. In that moment of panic and their loss of the codependent, they are experiencing losing someone they love. Now they're not able to recognize it's narcissistic, it's a narcissistic point of view, but that panic that says, I will do anything, I will change, I believe that over 85% of the narcissists that promise I will change really mean it because they love that person because that has always been their experience with love. But sadly, unfortunately, because of the disorder, they can't ever follow through with their promises because of the limitations of narcissistic personality disorder. So it seems like we're saying the same thing, but we're using our own research scientific and our own point of view. Yes, yes, I couldn't have said it better, I fully agree. And it's a brilliant point that narcissists coerce the partner back into a state of co-dependence because only when the partner is in a state of co-dependence, the narcissist feels safe enough to think or to believe that he loves, to identify it as a state of love. So what we're understanding is there is a human nature, a very human aspect of love that the narcissists have and when their narcissistic needs are met, they love the person according to their understanding, their world view of what love is. My wife keeps asking me, do you love me? I tell her, I love you the only way I know how, you know? That's me, that's my love. So it may not be your love or someone else's love or the general definition of love, but to the best of my ability, that's my love and I do love you. And according to my theory, without knowing anything about you personally, is that your wife loves you because her relationship template, which was formed in her own childhood, was formed. The relationship template that is a result of her own experiences with her own parents, set her on a trajectory to feel comfortable and feel loved and loving for narcissists. As I- To say 100%, that's absolutely and 100% correct. And I would say, and by the way, this is not her, you, me, but and you and your relationship template was formed because of your own experience of trauma that you fit naturally. Almost like, you know, and I talk about this repeatedly, like two dancers, the leader and the follower. Hey, Sam, let's kind of wrap this discussion up because I expect we're gonna have many more lively discussions and debates in the future, but let's both take some time to kind of like, summarize our experience with this interview and then kind of bid our viewers a goodbye. My summary would be that codependency and narcissism are flip sides of the same very sad and tragic coin. And that your work, I think, can put things right by allowing the narcissists to recognize the codependent in him and allowing the codependent to realize the unhealthy or the narcissistic elements in the relationship. So that's how I see it. I don't know if I interpreted you correctly, but having read your book and watched some of your videos, I think that's a major contribution. It's funny, originally I disagreed with that and maybe that was my own defensiveness. And I'm working on that. But if I look at codependency as I have been, is not a disorder in itself, but a symptom of attachment trauma. And we both have spoken about that both the codependent and the narcissist both experienced attachment trauma and we both agree the defense, the early defense structure or defense mechanisms that help them survive this traumatic environment ultimately set up the relationship template that created their respective disorders. Then we agree completely. The codependent and the narcissist are the same with regards to being subjected to an attachment trauma or trauma and they are one of the same where, and I'm not even sure if we disagree. We just are running out of time to talk about this is that what makes them different is that the narcissist is so much more deeply damaged that their psychological processes require them to shut down and think only about their own needs and the codependence because they were able to get some love, albeit conditional love, weren't as damaged as much. So yes, I think we're on the same page where we say they are the same with regards to the trauma that they carry. They just- Exactly. That's the coin. That's the set coin that I mentioned. Each side of the same set, tragic coin, that's the coin. Exactly. The attachment trauma. And I finally agree with you because I've been wanting to tell you I just agree with you. So this is- You're free. You're free. You're running like a mission. You remember. Hey, let's take a second to tell our folks that you and I are, and I've never been more excited about a training but we're giving a- Sam and I are giving a training on November 28th, Saturday in London. Sam, do you recall the title of the training? The title is the two phases of dysfunctional love, understanding narcissism and codependency. And not only are we both going to give trainings in our respective fields, but I understood from you that we're going to have a panel discussion. Yes. The way that it's set up is we're going to speak on our respective areas of expertise. You'll talk more about narcissism and I'll talk more about codependency and then for two and a half hours. And then we're going to have in total an hour and a half panel discussion in which we both share our point of views and answer questions. So if anyone is interested in attending this training, go to the website, advancedclinicaltrainers.com. And I say goodbye to all of you. And Sam, I can't thank you enough for participating in this discussion and in the training. After pleasure. Thank you, Ross. And I hope next time we can discuss covert narcissism. It's a whole topic.