 So hello everyone and you will not guess who is our guest today UCS. Yes, it's Sam Vaknin. Hello. I would love to introduce of course for everyone that doesn't know Sam. He is a visiting professor of psychology, Southern Federal University, Rostov-Ondon in Russia. Of course the author of Malignan's self-love, Narcissus Revisited and a professor of finance and psychology in CS Center for International Advanced and Professional Studies. Yes, that sounds like me. Good to see you Dr. D. It's our first time together. Yeah, actually yeah. So I would love to speak with you today about some myth that it's going on online or and not only online about NPD, because still, you know, many people think and I don't know where is this myth coming from that they can that NPD can be cured. Can it be cured or cannot be cured? It cannot be. So could you say something about that? Like why NPD can really be cured and why other people think in a different way? I think the word cured is a very big word. Certain behaviors which are antisocial behaviors, abrasive behaviors, behaviors which are socially problematic, these behaviors can definitely be modified in narcissists. The construct of narcissism, the disorder itself is very problematic to reverse. And I think that's what people mean when they say that it cannot be healed or cannot be cured. Narcissistic personality disorder is not tuberculosis. It's not something you take a pill and you change. The disorder is very much like stage 4 terminal metastatic cancer. It infects and pervades and attacks all the areas of life of the narcissist, all the functionality of the narcissist. So it's very difficult to attack all these areas simultaneously to treat them, to help the narcissist, to change himself to that extent. So a realistic treatment goal in narcissism would be to make the narcissist more acceptable to other people. More pleasant, more cooperative, less injurious, less problematic, less difficult, less ornery, less stubborn, less antisocial or even criminal. So this should be the limited treatment goals. And if these are the treatment goals, the success rate is pretty high actually. Because the pathological NPD, I mean by that clinical NPD, is like a useful survival strategy. And that's why it's also resistant and resilient and to change. And people still asking even online or they keeping asking, is it something that they can do to help their partners or other family members, they still believe that they can help them. Let's go back a bit and discuss the very concept of therapy. The concept of psychotherapy is new. It's a very new concept. It's no older than 120 years old. We didn't have psychotherapy before. We didn't have what Freud called talk therapy. We treated people with medication. We treated people with exorcism. We treated people, I mean there were various methods of treating people who were essentially mentally ill. But no one thought about talking to them. So the concept is new and we are still experimenting. It's very, very new. We're still experimenting with various methods and so on and so forth. The idea of talk therapy is that it is possible to penetrate the mind of another person via the bridge of language. Until more or less, Bloiler and Freud, there was the belief that the mind of another person is accessible only by God. Only God can access the mind of another person. Another human being cannot. And it was largely perceived that the mind is a fortress. The imagery was that the mind is like a fortress, a city, a city with fortifications and you cannot access. Psychotherapy came up with five vectors, five vectors of attack, five vectors of entering this fortified city. Via behavior, via cognition, via emotion, via the environment and via the past, via transference. These are the five vectors that we have. With some patients we try to modify their behaviors. With some patients we try to modify the cognitions. With some patients we try to reframe emotions or induce new emotions. With other patients we change the environment or tell them to change the environment. And with some patients we play the role of a parent, a father or a mother in transference-based therapy. This is one thing to remember. The second thing to remember is there are two types of therapy, not one. There is transformational therapy. It's a therapy that changes the patient. And there is restorative therapy. It's a therapy that restores the patient. It brings the patient back to the same position from before the illness or before the disorder. So now if we take all this, what I just said, and we apply it to the narcissist. Can we access the mind of the narcissist by changing his behavior? The answer is actually yes, we can change the behaviors of narcissists. Can we change the cognitions of narcissists? Very limited success, very unlikely. Can we change the emotions of narcissists? Here the answer is clearly no, because narcissists have access only to negative emotions, negative affectivity. They don't have access to positive emotions, so it's useless. Can we change the environment of the narcissist? Not for long. The narcissist recreates his environment, the pathological narcissistic space all the time. And finally, can we induce transference in the narcissist? Yes, we can. I do it in cold therapy. There is a therapy, there is transference focused therapy of Kernberg and so on. And we can induce transference in a narcissistic patient, but then unfortunately, the narcissist has repetition compulsion. He is going to repeat the same conflict and the same bed outcome that he had with his original parent. Additionally, the narcissist does not want to be transformed. He does not want to change. He wants to be restored, so he doesn't want transformational therapy. He wants restorative therapy. He comes to the therapist and he says, I used to be amazing, I used to be great, I used to achieve many accomplishments, I used to be powerful, and I want to be the same again. Please restore me to how I was before. He doesn't come to the therapist and says, listen, you know, I destroyed my life, I hurt everyone, I want it to be different from now on. He just comes and says, you know, I used to be efficacious, I used to be efficient, and now I'm no more efficient and I want to be as efficient as I used to be. If you put all these together, what I've just said, we're in big trouble because the only way to somehow induce change in the narcissist is via altering behaviors. That's an extremely limited arsenal in typical therapy. We use cognitions, emotions, behavior, environment, you know, transference sometimes. We cannot with the narcissist use 90% of our weapons as therapists. We don't have 90% of our weapons. And the second thing is the narcissist is resistant to change. He just wants to be the same, more of the same. As a partner of the narcissist, you're faced with the same issues. You're faced with the same issues and the only way to induce change in your partner is to condition him, to create an environment of reinforcements, negative reinforcements or punishment, sanctions, positive reinforcement, if he behaves in certain ways, operant conditioning, et cetera, et cetera, and then hope that the narcissist will modify his behaviors in order to secure more positive reinforcements. That's essentially the only thing you can do when you can modify only behaviors. If you expect the narcissist to suddenly fall in love with you or to suddenly be thinking as normal people think or to suddenly, I don't know, it's useless. It's not going to happen. Even when we try to induce development, because there are some developmental therapies, we're trying to induce development in the narcissist. It's also pretty hopeless. I can go later into why all these things are not working, but they're not working. So the approach is transactional. You behave this way. I'm going to give you positive reinforcement. I'm going to give you sex. I'm going to give you money. I'm going to give you love. I'm going to give you intimacy and support. You don't behave this way. I'm going to take away everything. I'm going to take away the cookies. I'm not going to give you cookies. Now, it sounds a little like dealing with a small child. And that's exactly what it is. You need to, as a partner, you need to work with the narcissist as you would with a small child. That's what you do with a small child. So, yeah, we can work with behavior modification with NPD, but we cannot expect permanent alteration. Because, like you said, it's just impossible. And the reason that they're coming for the therapy, they just want to still have this kind of supply that they have before. So, yeah, so how the therapy can even help NPD? Like, the therapy is supposed to help them, and what can we do as a therapist? There are two, basically, two approaches. Two approaches. I mentioned that all the other vectors, cognitive vector, emotions, environment, developmental vector, behavioral vector, transference vector, all these with exceptional behavior don't work with narcissists. There are good reasons why they don't work. I don't know if you want to go into it, but if you do, I can later talk about it. There are good reasons why each and every one of them doesn't work with the narcissist. So, we are left as a therapist with a single weapon, and you have basically two possible approaches. The first approach is to use the narcissist's grandiosity to tell him, listen, this is the treatment goal, and because you are so amazing and so unique and so perfect and so omniscient and so omnipotent and so godlike, definitely you can accomplish this treatment goal. I mean, to challenge him, to challenge his grandiosity and say, let's see if you can accomplish this treatment goal. The narcissist is a child. Don't forget always, always the partner and the therapist must remember that the narcissist is a child. One of the biggest mistakes in the therapy of narcissists is that the therapist treats the narcissist as an adult. When the narcissist presents in therapy, the therapist tries to interact with the narcissist as if the narcissist is an adult. So, the therapist tries to make an alliance with the narcissist. He tries to negotiate with the narcissist. He tries to determine treatment goals with the narcissist. He tries to analyze the situation with the narcissist and it's absolutely the wrong approach because the narcissist is not an adult. He is emotionally at least a child. And so, the treatment should be the same treatment we give children, child psychology treatment. And so, one of the things we do with the children is modeling. We show them behavior and they imitate because they're children. Narcissists do that, actually. If they regard you as a role model or authority figure and they accept your authority or accept you as a role model, they will imitate you and then you can model the behavior. The second approach which you also do with children is to challenge the narcissist. It's grandiosity, what I mentioned before. Surely you can do this, no? Surely you can do this because you're great. And narcissists fall for this trap and then they accomplish the treatment goals just to show you that they are perfect and they're exactly like a child would do. And so, these are the two ways open to us with narcissists and the approach of conditioning and reinforcement is very critical throughout this phase of the treatment. First of all, you should provide a narcissist with a constant stream of narcissistic supply. When he modifies his behavior, when his behavior changes, in accordance with the treatment goals, then you should provide him with explicit narcissistic supply. You should praise him, you should tell him how great he is. You should tell him you never had a client who moved that fast and that decisively. You should tell him that his intellect is amazing. You should tell him that, yeah, he got it right the first time and it's the first time ever anyone got it right the first time and so on and so forth. You should lavish praise on him. This narcissistic supply is addictive and it will make him want to please you more and more. Now, everything I'm saying is bed therapy with people who are not narcissists. You should never do any of these things with people who are not narcissists but regrettably with narcissists you must do this if you want to accomplish anything whatsoever, even the smallest thing. And then, you know, the treatment goals are accomplished. The problem is, is it going to be long term or shorter? In many narcissists, the changing behavior is environmental and so when the environment changes or the other constraints or they meet a new partner they go back, they go back to the beginning. It's very frustrating. It's a little like borderline. Borderlines are the same. The patient keeps, it's Sisyphus. It's pushing the stone up, stone goes down, pushing it up, it goes down. So there's no permanence of results in narcissists in borderline. Okay, but still, the therapeutic process for narcissists is still frightening for them. Even if they decided, you know, it's still. Why is that? On multiple levels. First of all, he has to accept that you are an authority figure. He has to admit that you know more than he does. It is utterly unacceptable to the narcissists. The narcissist is omniscient, all-knowing, equivalent of God. It cannot be that you know anything more than he does in any field whatsoever. So he needs to overcome this as an authority figure. Second thing, you create expectations, therapy creates expectations and he feels that he needs to fulfill these expectations to support his self-perception, inflated, fantastic self-perception. So you are an engine of expectations and at the same time your potential source of frustration as a therapist. Because if the expectations are not met, the narcissist is frustrated and this creates aggression. That's the dollar-dollar hypothesis from 1939. Frustration creates aggression. Narcissists very often become aggressive in therapy and the reason is that they feel that they hadn't met your expectations of them and that they feel that you know more than they do and refuse to accept that they know more than you do. So if you are a kind of therapist who has an ego problem, the narcissist will challenge your knowledge and then you will say, no, I know more than you do and the narcissist says, no, I know more than you do and it will become an ego clash. Another issue is the narcissist comes to you from a position of weakness. He comes to you because something is wrong, because there is some defect, because there needs to be some change. So he comes to you from a position of inferiority. He is not used to that. He is not used to admitting that he needs help. Narcissists regard empathy and help as threats. If you empathize with the narcissist, he regards this as a form of aggression because if you empathize with him, you are saying, I am like you. When you show the narcissist empathy, you're actually telling the narcissist, we have something in common. We have the same human experience. I am like you, but the narcissist immediately responds, you're not like me, no one is like me. So empathy is a threat. And if you offer help to the narcissist, which is therapy, if you offer help, you're actually saying you need help. You're helpless. On your own, you cannot solve this. These are all narcissistic injuries. The whole process of therapy consists of an endless stream of narcissistic injuries. All the time. And this creates narcissistic rage. We draw avoidance, passive aggression, if it is a covert narcissist. In other words, negative results all the time. All the time negative results. If you are the wrong kind of therapist, as I said, with ego issues and so on, this will create absolutely overt conflict, which could escalate to aggression. I would like to stop here and maybe elaborate more about this attitude towards therapy. Because from my experience, they insist absolutely that they are special and they don't want to be treated like in a humble frame. They don't want to adapt because of this. They don't like, so they don't want to. So sometimes when they are speaking, from my experience, when I'm working with them, it's like that I cannot teach them anything, nothing new. Or yeah, we should be equal. They insist that maybe we can be colleagues or something like that. Or maybe we are like, good friends, good friends. Or that, how do I think I am that, I dare to ask them all these questions, like who am I? So yeah, they try this, especially on the beginning, all the time show. Power play. Yeah, power play and also mind game, I would say. They try this all the time. They may also try to corrupt you. To corrupt the therapeutic setting. Or they will offer you to do business. Or they will buy you a very expensive gift. It's of course contamination of the therapeutic process. Or they will involve you in personal issues that have nothing to do with the therapy. Try to convert you to a friend. Or they will try to convert you to save your fixer role. So they will try to make you save someone or fix someone. Or they are both a line girlfriend. So they will try to take you outside the therapeutic ethical perimeter and to render you unethical, to corrupt you. That's also. But more generally, when the narcissist comes to therapy, he is faced with two choices. And he has two alternatives and he has to choose. Either he idealizes you in a process called co-idealization. I will explain it in a minute. Or he idealizes himself and he has to devalue you. So the first option is that he idealizes you. He tells you wow, you are the most amazing therapist I ever came across. Or your credentials, your education and so on are unique. Or you are very special one way or another. Or you know he will idealize it. By idealizing you, he's idealizing himself. One of the diagnostic criteria in the DSM-4 and actually five as well is that the narcissist insists to be treated by special people. It's a diagnostic criteria. It's how we diagnose NPD. When the narcissist goes to a hospital, he wants to be treated by the chief doctor. No other doctor, only the chief of the department, etc. So he needs to idealize you. He needs to make you special. Because if you are special, then he is special. He is treated by special people. This is option one, but he has another alternative. By making himself special and devaluing you. So he will tell you that treating him is a privilege. Your privilege. You are lucky that you have him as a patient because he is very special. Because his case is unique. Because he can teach you new things that you are not even aware of. Because he can present you to other clients. Because you are lucky to have him in your life. You are lucky that he entered your clinic. And you should be very grateful for this. And yeah, you are inferior, but he can help you. He can bring you to his level. And so this is process of making himself special and devaluing you. Most narcissists actually cycle. They start by idealizing you and then they devalu you and idealize you. It's a process of co-idealization. He idealizes you. Then because you are special, he is special. So he idealizes himself. But then once he idealized himself, he doesn't need you anymore. Because now he is ideal. So now that he is idealized, he can dump you. Devalu and discard. The same dynamic that happens in intimate romantic relationships of narcissists happens in therapy. Same. In his mind, there is no difference between you as a therapist and you as a potential source of supply. Or you as a potential intimate partner. Indeed, many narcissists try to cross the boundary into intimacy, into sex, into relationship with the, if you are, you know, of relevant sex, opposite sex. So many of them try to do this. And because borderlines are grandiose also, grandiosity is a criterion of borderline. Borderlines also try to do this. They are very inappropriate in therapeutic setting. They try to make you an intimate partner in some way. And this is because the same dynamic in therapy happens in relationships. All other kinds of relationships including intimate. So the narcissists can see the difference having you as a therapist and having you as a lover. He doesn't understand why you would put this boundary. What's the problem here? You are having a co-idealization process. So why not have sex or why not love each other? He doesn't understand this. He has no concept of boundaries. Of course, this is also a childlike thing. Children have no boundaries and they act very inappropriately in a variety of settings and the co-idealization is not complete. So these are the unique problems of therapy with narcissists. I totally agree. They do all these things that you mentioned about absolutely, especially in the beginning. Yeah, it's totally. But what if we will pass this through with some of clients? What if you overcome this? What if you will be on this stage? If you succeed to show the narcissists his value in the therapy, in the sense that modifying his behaviors renders him more self-efficacious. If he modifies his behaviors, then he gets better outcomes. Narcissists are very goal, exactly like psychopaths. Goal oriented, although their goal is supply. Psychopaths have many goals. Narcissists has one goal, supply. If you show him in other words that modifying his behaviors can guarantee better or regular supply in the long term, then he will settle down. Then the power play, the conflict, all this will abate, will disappear. But at that point, he will change the way he sees you. Remember that I said that when he enters the therapy, he sees you as a threat because he feels inferior. He feels needy. He feels that you are superior in some way. So he sees you as a threat. In order to idealize himself. Once he is idealized, he devalues you. So all this then. At some point, he may say, wow, Daria is helping me in some way. In a sense that using some of her ideas and techniques I can obtain supply more efficiently, more efficaciously. So now he will transform you into a service provider. Not into a therapist. But like his personal assistant or his personal advisor. Or the woman to go to if there are issues with obtaining supply. So you become like the electricity company or the internet. You become a service provider. Now this creates yet another set of problematic dynamics. Because he sees you as a service provider, he thinks he is buying you. By paying you for the therapy, he owns you. He owns you. You are his service provider. To certain types of service. Now he insists. So he can become very demanding. Very aggressive. If he feels that he is not getting value for his money. And we will keep reminding you all the time. That he is paying you. That he expects you to perform. So it all becomes very transactional. The third phase of therapy with narcissists is a narcissist converts the therapy into a transactional space. Where he pays for your skills and knowledge and so on. But by paying you he owns you. And by owning you, he is superior to you. He is your boss. It's no longer an issue that you have something to give him which he doesn't possess. Now he possesses you and your knowledge. He owns you so from that moment he doesn't feel inferior anymore. Remember a very critical thing here which is very difficult for people to understand. Even professionals. You don't exist. You don't exist. That Kernberg was the first to describe this process in great detail. Kernberg even created a therapy called transference focused therapy that is based on what I am about to say. So you don't exist. The minute the narcissist sees you the first presentation in the clinic on your office the minute he sees you he snapshots you. He takes a snapshot interject. He puts it in his head and it becomes an internal object. From that moment the therapy takes place in his internal space not out there not with you but with a presentation in his mind. So in the third phase where he had converted you into a service provider where he had converted the whole process into a transaction he owns you in the sense that you are an internal object you're part of his mind. So all your knowledge all your skills all your talents all your education because you are in you are part of his mind you're an internal object. So everything that you can offer is not external it's coming from the inside it's a very sick situation it's coming from the inside he doesn't feel that you know more than him because you are part of him you're an extension whatever you know is his knowledge not your knowledge whatever skills you have not your skills then whatever you are doing is his doing not your doing so because you are an internal object he can overcome the narcissistic injury actually converting you an internal object is his way of overcoming the narcissistic injury he makes you an extension he makes you an internal object so that moment you are no longer an external threat you're part of him he can be even very proud of you because you are part of him he can even go around and say I have a great therapist you should go to her she's amazing and so on but he's not saying this because he sees you as a great therapist but he says it because he owns you he's proud of his ownership you know what I mean it's very very crazy and they're doing this like you can see it that yeah this is one of the way they're working like that absolutely but during my clinical experience many people ask me do a narcissist has emotions and I think it's not a good question because everyone has emotions but probably they don't understand or what they cannot see it's like narcissists they can only emulate emotions they emotions are only reactive not proactive and people are confused with this they don't understand what they first of all the modern perception of emotions it's a form of cognition emotions of subspecies of cognitions so these are thought processes essentially experience differently and that's why we call them emotions but they're essentially thought processes and the narcissist and narcissism is a fantasy defense so narcissism by definition is a cognitive distortion it's a cognitive distortion it's not a deficit but it's a distortion when the narcissist sees the world he rewrites reality he doesn't see reality as it is he has impaired reality testing and he needs this to support his grandiosity if I believe that I'm godlike reality will deny me reality will tell me you're not godlike you're zero, you're nobody so I need to falsify reality I need to ignore reality and this is called cognitive distortion Freud was the first to describe at length a series of cognitive distortions known as psychological defense mechanisms and one of the psychological defense mechanisms is fantasy when fantasy defense mechanism takes over the personality takes over the person we call it narcissism so narcissism by definition is cognitive distortion consequently narcissists have emotional distortions because emotions are cognitions so they have emotional distortions and they have emotional distortions in two ways first of all they have access only to negative affectivity they have access only to negative emotions such as envy rage etc so this they have direct access exactly like other people like normal healthy human beings but they don't have access to positive emotions the access to positive emotions is denied because very early on positive emotions like love were associated with pain and with hurt this denies himself access to positive emotions because if he experiences them he will decompensate and he will become essentially a borderline he will be dysregulated, overwhelmed Grotstein who was a famous psychoanalyst suggested that borderlines are children who try to create narcissism and had failed and so consequently the borderline is in touch with her positive emotions and whenever the borderline is in touch with her positive emotions she is dysregulated, she falls apart she is terrified she has abandonment anxiety she has engulfment anxiety in other words the borderline experiences are positive emotions but in a very bad way and many borderlines envy narcissists they say I wish I were a narcissist then I would not feel all these emotions the narcissist on the other hand is a child who had succeeded child who had succeeded to destroy his true self and to deny himself access to positive emotions it's like the child says I'm not going to love mommy because whenever I love mommy she hurts me so I'm not going to love mommy anymore and of course it becomes a habit so he doesn't know how to love you are right that narcissists emulate emotions 25 years ago I suggested something I called it emotional resonance tables the narcissist collects information he says this person is crying and she tells me that she said ah ok so when people are said they are crying so he makes like a big table of behavior and reported effect so what people report they are feeling and how they behave and then he uses this table to imitate and emulate empathy and emotions and they are very good at it narcissists they can easily deceive you and convince you that they are actually very empathic and very emotional and so on to the point that many many therapists and diagnosticians misdiagnose narcissism as for example borderline or misdiagnose narcissism as bipolar it's very easy for narcissists to deceive even clinicians by imitating empathy and emotions very expertly but it's an imitation it's not real so why should NPD commit to the therapy if it's only limited you know remission the same way you go to the gym is to exercise his muscles as I said at the very beginning narcissists don't come to therapy for transformational purpose they come to therapy for restorative purpose so they come to therapy either because their efficacy had declined the routines they are using to obtain supply are not working anymore for some reason the environment change people don't like them anymore friends abandon them their intimate partners you know broke up with them something bad happened they lost all their money they went bankrupt they are in jail in prison something went wrong the old tactics the old strategies of the narcissists to obtain supply are no longer working so he needs to go to an expert and ask how can I regain myself how can I become again alpha male predator that's restorative the second thing is they believe that if they come to you you can teach them new techniques to obtain supply they will use you again as a service provider and they will try to learn from you how to obtain supply now in the narcissists world everything is about supply the only reason you give therapy is because it gives you supply in his mind you are giving therapy you have chosen this profession because it makes you feel superior because it gives you supply so he says ok let me go to a therapist see how she gets supply and I will do the same I'll copy her I'll imitate her they say to themselves medical doctors and therapists these two professions they are about obtaining supply they are not about healing people therapists don't care about people medical doctors don't care about people they care about being admired they care about being respected they care about being adored so they are narcissists in his mind you are a narcissist so he would try to learn new tricks from you very simple and he would hope that you can fix him it's like a broken machine you can fix him but he wants to be the same machine he doesn't want to be another machine he comes to you as a dishwasher he doesn't want to exit as a refrigerator he wants to be a better dishwasher or a fixed dishwasher as a minimum this is the huge difference between narcissists and all other patients all other types of patients including borderline they want you to change them they want transformation they want a different life a better life narcissists doesn't want you to change him he thinks he is supreme he thinks he is perfection it reminds me of the joke not a joke actually historical fact there is a Jewish language called Yiddish it was a Jewish language used in Poland Russia and so on so it was a small Jewish country that they should begin to learn the literature of other countries so there was this small Jewish publisher in a shtetl shtetl was a small town in Poland so there was this small Jewish publisher tiny Jewish publisher working from a room in a shtetl which is a tiny town village actually and he decided to translate Shakespeare finally for the Jews to read Shakespeare so he worked very hard and this is what the cover page says William Shakespeare plays translated and improved translated and improved translated and improved translated and improved translated and improved so this is the narcissist he wants to come to you to remain William Shakespeare but maybe improved a little more Shakespeare more narcissists to have another life or a new life or a better life to make other people more happy to keep his intimate partner it's none of this he comes to you because he failed to obtain supply and he wants you to fix this simple and you are nothing but an internal object, you're an extension a service provider it's very demeaning, very humiliating for the therapist and it's very difficult dynamic with narcissists and with borderlines that's why many many many therapists refuse to take class to be patients absolutely refuse I'm working with them but yes for me sometimes of course it's difficult but most you know work with BPD done with NPD but so yeah is there anything that they can do for themselves narcissists before they decided to go for the therapy the best thing a narcissist can do for himself is to self-destruct completely the only window of opportunity which is not long three to six months the only window of opportunity to induce some real behavior modification and even I would say some psychodynamic change in the narcissist is when the narcissist has utterly destroyed everything imaginable in his world in my case as everyone knows I'm diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice so it's pretty sure and there was nothing happening in my life I was repeating the same cycles repetition compulsion it's called I was repeating the same cycles over and over and over again until at age 35 my wife abandoned me for another man I lost all the money I had I had group of companies with 8000 employees and 40 million dollars turnover I lost all of it the state took it as a punishment for criminal offenses I went to prison my reputation was destroyed because this is a big public affair so it was modification clinically it was modification it is then then a window of opportunity opened for me and I'm glad to say that I was sufficiently wise to take advantage of this window of opportunity and this is when I wrote Malignov self love this was and ever since then I am not healed and I'm not cured and I would still be diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder without a doubt but I'm a productive pro-social communal narcissists I don't hurt people I help people I even heal people and I contribute and that's why in 1997 I described the concept of I also coined the phrase pro-social narcissists or communal narcissists so you can go to a narcissist and say listen why don't you obtain supply by being good to people why don't you obtain supply by healing people by working in socially acceptable ways socially sublimated ways and many many narcissists why don't you become superior by being morally superior now many narcissists would do this many narcissists would strike this deal they would become famous by being charity oriented they would become superior by being morally superior they would become known for being a good husband or a good father so they would derive supply in ways which are socially sublimated and helpful to them and to others it's not true that all narcissists are menace to society horrible people who destroy everything actually there is a convincing case that the majority of creative people are narcissistic or narcissists they create the music that you listen to they create the books that you read and they had created the social institutions that are working in your favor narcissism is a force either for evil or for good and it's easy to convince a narcissist to be a force for good if you promise him supply in return so he would do good things because it gets him supply I think Mother Teresa was a narcissist for example for example and yet she's Mother Teresa I think what's the name of this Swedish girl the environmental activist Greta I strongly think she's a narcissist strongly but she's definitely prosocial she's communal I strongly I feel she's a narcissist absolutely I can give you thousands of names of narcissists and all of them had transformed art, culture, society history some of them for the worse like Hitler and Stalin and Napoleon but many of them for the better so narcissism is energy how you channel it and what you do with it and how you transform it is very much up to the people around the narcissists unfortunately there is this stigma and people make it easier for narcissists to be evil to be destructive because of expectations now we know from expectation theory and psychology if you expect something from someone they will fulfill the expectation we have studies for example where teachers discriminated against some students in a class these students had the worst grades not because they were more stupid than the other students but because they were fulfilling the expectations of the teacher society expects narcissists to be evil and bad and destructive so narcissists are evil and bad and destructive had society created an incentive system where narcissists as the children that they are get supply only in socially acceptable ways socially beneficial ways we would have benefited enormously humanity would have benefited enormously from this now wasted energy so by saying that do you mean that they can use this grandiosity for all this energy of course you can tell me listen you can come to me and listen and say you are scum you are rotten, you are bad, you are evil I am going to avoid you, I am going to talk to you so ultimately I will become a criminal or you can come to me and say listen you are highly creative, you are amazing why don't you write a poem why don't you publish a book and that's exactly what I am going to do I am going to fulfill your expectation for better or for worse but grandiosity is an enormous compulsive energy enormous and maybe the main renewable energy only thing is the narcissists is a child a child it's wrong to treat the narcissists it's wrong to expect the narcissists to have a family a functioning family it's wrong to expect the narcissists to fulfill social obligations on a regular basis it's wrong to expect the narcissists to have nuance perception of nuances because narcissists split narcissists have a splitting defense so they see only good versus evil bad versus white versus black so they can't perceive nuances and subtleties dichotomous thinking so if you begin to accept that narcissists are children between the ages of 2 and 9 depending on the narcissists then we can manage narcissism for the better to help society and to help other people as long as we treat narcissists as adults we say what kind of adult are you I mean you are horrible then the narcissists becomes we know the children conform to expectations always and that's what the narcissists do is there anything that you would like to add as a part of the matter I think as you know I came up with cold therapy I think if we want if we for some reason as a society insist on healing narcissists or at least making narcissists more manageable then unfortunately we have to subject narcissists to extreme trauma there is no other way to dismantle the fortifications to dismantle the defenses this is a morally dubious issue cold therapy might well be unethical therapy even though it is focused only on narcissists and even though the results are great there are 72 people treated by now the results are nothing short of amazing their lives are changed forever massively they are happy, they are social they are they made peace with everyone in their lives the results are amazing but the process involves inflicting devastating trauma on another person and that is ethically dubious do I think there is any alternative no, there is no alternative because I don't regard narcissism as a personality disorder I regard narcissism as a post-traumatic condition these are trauma defenses and the only way because these defenses are so rigid the only way we have is to use artillery missiles, we can't unfortunately talk our way through this it's been 150 years enough 100 years actually enough, we know other therapies are not working to the point of healing or curing so we need to take a different approach the narcissists who went through cold therapy are very happy that they did and maybe this should be the test but this is one approach one approach is to traumatize them, break them apart and put them back together more socially acceptable way but there is a much more benign approach which I described earlier simply accept narcissism accept it and use it for the better use this energy to accept that they are children accept that they will never grow up accept that they need to see themselves in a certain light and this creates compulsion and harness this energy use this energy to create isanc was a very famous psychologist isanc suggested that creativity is a form of psychoticism he linked creativity with mild form of mental illness I think this is precisely what we should do with narcissism we should reframe it not as a personality disorder but as a form of creativity narcissists are very creative in finding supply when they try to find supply they compose symphonies they write books they are the greatest lovers even in sex they are very creative their effort determined effort to obtain supply is mediated via creativity and if we reconsider narcissism as a form of creativity reframe it I think everyone would benefit and if the intimate partners of narcissists stop placing on the narcissist demands which are typical of adults except that the narcissist is a child who will never grow up the intimate partner will have an easier life the conflict between the intimate partner and the narcissist is because the intimate partner demands that the narcissist perform as an adult she says you are grown up, I expect you to act the way an adult acts I expect you to be grown up I expect you to fulfill your obligations your chores and your responsibility I expect you to keep your promises I expect you to not gaslight me I expect you to perceive reality properly, I expect you to have emotions these expectations are setting the narcissist up for failure narcissism is a child and cannot fulfill any of these things I do agree with you and for me it's really nice to observe where I can see my clients where for example with NPD when they are using their grandiosity for good things this is the best thing that I can observe it is said that some relatively large group of people are owing to childhood abuse in various ways got stuck in childhood and can never ever grow up this will never happen narcissists will never grow up it's sad but children are not only evil children are delightful the narcissist can be delightful the narcissist can be charming because it's a child and you can see the child in the narcissist you can see the child in every and any narcissist even me you can see the child there and so telling the narcissist I'm going to ignore the child in you and I demand that you grow up I demand that you be in a doubt is actually at the root of most of the conflicts between narcissists and other people all the narcissist wants you to do is to provide him with supply this is the deal you have with the narcissist I will treat you as a child and I will give you supply now do I recommend to be the intimate partner of a narcissist of course not I don't recommend this but if you are, if you made this decision then act properly then accept that he is a child give him supply be his mother, that's it that's the only way to interact with the narcissist, that's not me that's Sander in 1989 he suggested the only way to be with narcissist is in a shared fantasy so if you decide to be with the narcissist it's like you buy a ticket for a train you wouldn't expect to fly on an airplane your ticket is for a train so when you end up with the narcissist you wouldn't expect him to be adult you wouldn't expect him to be grown up you wouldn't expect him to be responsible and this and that, no he is a narcissist that's it, he is a child and you have to be a mother it's not good for you, break up, walk away find a healthy relationship ok so it was professor Sam Vakin, Sam thank you so much for your time and thank you everyone for your time and see you in next video I hope you all noticed how I stole her water and never gave it back to her apopo narcissist yeah so have a nice day and see you soon see you soon