 here we go as you heard well good afternoon sam and good time and it's a sunday afternoon so i i really appreciate it um thank you for having me you know as i mentioned i've been working on a book for the last three years and there's so much of you in the book your you know i've obviously read your um sounds like an obituary your malignant uh self-love narcissism revisited you have to mirror you and say the way you say um but i've also watched you know so many of your seminars and so you're in my head a lot so my apologies i've got to this that's okay well we'll let you off this time but the author the author that i've been working but suggested that i do an interview with you and i thought that would really be a really good idea and you know what i didn't do in the other ones was ask you about what you've been doing i mean you're a pioneer in this field you've been doing it a long time you've written books you you know you've had a youtube channel for a long time you've also you know write about the right about the role in chronons in timeless symmetry which of course i helped you with um so maybe you can tell us about yourself sam well i'm a professor of psychology author of the books i don't think we should focus on me let's focus on my work it's i think hopefully more interesting i mean sort of in terms of all the you know for the lot i think you started doing this 1994 95 so i mean i was the first i was the first to to own a website on narcissism in 1995 and i've been alone for nine years the second website opened in 2004 i also ran the first six support groups for victims of narcissistic abuse narcissistic abuse is a phrase that i coined in 1995 and at that time i also coined the entire language that is in use today or 90 99 percent of it that is in use today so people don't even realize that i i coined flying monkeys and you know this kind this kind of things yes um cerebral narcissists somatic narcissists narcissistic abusers etc etc and then i borrowed terms from the early psychoanalytic schools of of uh thought in psychology so for example i borrowed the term narcissistic supply and i redefined it in the way that it is used today um originally in the 1930s narcissistic supply had meant the relationship between essentially selfish unavailable parents and their children um but i redefined it completely and the way it is used today is any form of external input which a narcissist uses to regulate his internal environment his cognitions his emotions his moods etc so that's that's the common so i i i did i also took i i borrowed many many terms i borrowed for example the true self and false self from donald winnico winnico's work and again i redefined them to apply specifically to narcissism because in winnico's work they don't necessarily apply to narcissism actually they apply to developmental psychology i borrowed the cycle of of the narcissists so that's idealization evaluation and i added to it two phases discard and replacement etc etc so i had i had to single-handedly come up with a whole discipline because there was nobody there and there was no language to communicate these highly idiosyncratic experiences highly highly personal it it's a little like a mystical experience how do you communicate a mystical experience it's like how do you communicate yes how do you communicate an experience of narcissistic abuse in the absence of a language i'm a language so there was simply no language and and then when the when when i came up with the language which took about two years suddenly people had a way of of sharing their experiences and actually sharing their experiences first and foremost with themselves in other words becoming aware and so they became aware and then they they formed like-minded groups and they discussed these issues in these groups etc etc and for nine years i was doing all this alone and then in 2004 people discovered there's money in it and the avalanche started as simple as that and then youtube came i had the first youtube channel on narcissism i still have and and many others entered the field i i'm not quite sure that it's been a beneficial process because the word had been the word narcissism had been debased and and bandied around in all the wrong ways it became a majority or a curse word and many many people who had entered the field are totally on quantification or distributing misinformation and disinformation yeah yeah and many of them even with academic degrees even with advanced academic degrees and even with advanced academic degrees in psychology i'm not experts in narcissism psychology is a giant field you need you know and they are not they simply are not so there's a commercial there's a commercial corruption of of the whole thing which had reached monumental monumental proportions there are tens of millions of members of support groups for narcissistic abuse and what i'm hearing online is is blood blood curdling absolutely spine chilling the i would say that for every one correct bit of information precise bit something that relies on studies and research and for every one there's about 99 that are wrong and some of them are dead wrong wow some of them are dead wrong like exactly the opposite of what but there is demonization of narcissists so you need to demonize them yeah and you have this stupid list you have this stupid list like 10 things you need you need to know about this and 10 things you need to know about that and you have of course all kinds of wild wild outgrowth and a movement of essentially covert narcissists who call themselves empaths and super empaths yes there are definitely narcissistic people they're grandiose so like everything else like everything else the internet had not been good ultimately if i have to look book and i'm the oldest i'm the oldest guy in the block i invented the block if i if i if i look back no it's not beneficial it's not i i think all in all it had there was more damage than them in my view the vast majority of people get stuck in the victimhood phase they they adopt a victimhood as a form of identity and they can't progress they can't break out i yeah yeah yeah sen what is your your own fascination with with the subject because you obviously find it so fascinating it it's so interesting to you what is your interest let's start with the fact that i've been diagnosed with narcissistic personalities or that twice but i've progressed a lot more since then in my perception of narcissism i think narcissism is an organized principle of modern civilization and also an explanatory hermeneutic principle a principle that allows us to make sense of life and the environment and so on i think narcissism is a form of religion actually um a missionary religion i think narcissists are trying to convert non-nazis to their religion and very successfully so i think i think narcissism is embedded now inextricably in social institutions and structures in in careers in dating in in relationships intimate relationships so it had come it had come to be modern civilization so it's now much much wider field much wider field so you know we analyze politicians we ask are they narcissists when we see when we see all kinds i am hard pressed to come across a movie or a book which doesn't include the word narcissism or narcissists hard press i'm serious i watch movies i read books and there's always at the end or in the middle or the beginning somewhere there's the word narcissism narcissism and so so people make sense of the world through this there's been a serious television series called in treatment it's about the therapist not the series i know i know it well yes yeah it's a wonderful series and it's three seasons it's three seasons yes now it may come as a shock to you even though you had watched it it may come as a shock to you in the entire series there's no mention of depression no mention of borderline personality disorder no mention of any clinical label except one narcissistic personality disorder and it appears in the series eight times npd is mentioned eight times in in treatment to the exclusion of all other labels i mean you witness depression you witness patients with borderline personality disorder but no clinical label is used except npd and that's eight times that tells you this is a whole button topic in academia it brings me to my next point i emailed um one of the top universities in south africa the head of psychology and i said who specializes in narcissistic personality disorder and narcissistic abuse no one and you know the same i the the person that i was involved with who was a a covert somatic narcissist often accused me of being a narcissist and in those days i thought well okay maybe she's trying to say i'm a little bit grandiose or self-centered i didn't know what the word meant and i think if we look at for example the concept of alcoholics anonymous it's been around since 1935 everybody knows if you have a drinking problem that's the place to go but here is a different story it's only come to the fore in the last 20 30 years so what this means is and i this is my own experience and with many people that i've spoken to is there's nowhere to go and that when the the victim and i use the word victim uh in inverted commas because i know what you're saying about becoming a victim i i get it um is further traumatized by the therapist who often misdiagnose the narcissists and the narcissists probably has manipulated the therapist too so that was also my experience so you know the the when you say has your you feel maybe your work hasn't been beneficial but to me it has been and you are forever in my head i can't get you out of my head so it's been very beneficial to me and that's that's why i as i said i wanted to do this because i thought having it straight from you i've you quoted quite a lot of times in the book but i think that if we go back to the basics and we say um there is a difference between a nice narcissistic traits narcissistic style narcissistic personality disorder the disorder is on a spectrum most benign form of narcissism to malignant narcissism and antipsychopathy so maybe you can tell us about the difference between the traits the style and the disorder itself first of all we are in a period of transition there are powerful voices in akadem and outside akadem which dispute the very existence of narcissism as a clinical entity or a clinical construct indeed the book that defines mental health for for the rest of the world with the exception of north america it's known as icd edition 11 11th edition of icd which is international classification of diseases so the icd for example had eliminated this diagnosis it actually eliminated all personality disorders and had come instead with a single personality disorder with different emphasis which had been which had which is what i had been advocating since 1997 absolutely i i agree i i don't think that should be different i think people switch and oscillate between a variety of what today's are considered to be separate diagnosis and i think narcissists as well gravitate and oscillate and vacillate between of being an overt narcissists and then suddenly they become covert and then doesn't go back to being overt and they're somatic one day one day and cerebral the next there's no type constancy it's not a constancy because narcissists collapse they fail so if you're cerebral and you fail for example you fail to impress people with your intellectual prowess and and pyrotechnic intelligence you fail you become somatic because you need supply and you don't care where you get it so you become somatic and you use sex and whatever is left of your body to try to obtain supply it's the same with overt and covert is if you fail as an overt if no one pays attention to you or they ridicule you when you try to then you become covert you become a seething passive aggressive envious creature so we already know that there's no type constancy and we're beginning to think that we have completely misconstrued the whole field we believe increasingly believe today that what we used to call overt narcissists the in-your-face daring do Donald Trump type narcissists is actually a psychopath we are beginning to to think that it's actually a psychopath we definitely are increasingly we increasingly consider borderline personality disorder to be a form of psychopathy so it all seems to kind of gravitate towards a mega concept of psychopathy covert narcissists on the other hand are compensatory so we we begin to think that narcissism is a compensatory style at the core of the narcissist there is insecurity if a sense of inferiority a perception of inadequacy feeling as a bit unworthy object and so to to cover up for this to compensate for this and develop grandiose fantasies and whether you can accomplish these fantasies or not is immaterial because you inhabit these fantasies you live within the fantasy you had renounced reality even when you're overt narcissists renounce reality Otto Kernberg was the first to suggest in 1975 that narcissism and borderline are actually forms of psychosis and so narcissists in many ways are psychotic absolutely they confuse external reality with internal reality in many ways and so they they live in in fantasy land the only thing the only thing the only problem there is that as opposed to psych to psychotics they try to bring you into the fantasy they are coercive psychotics are not coercive psychotics just confuse internal with the external but the narcissists narcissists insist that you confirm and affirm that his fantasy is not a fantasy that is a reality if he considers himself to be a genius he wants you to tell him that he's a genius and this is called narcissistic supply and when the narcissist is frustrated he definitely becomes aggressive and if he's overt he switches to psychopathy so he becomes antisocial and so we're beginning to see a melding of all this now there are powerful voices such as Judith Berman and less powerful voices such as St. Vakny who suggests that all these disorders are actually post-traumatic conditions there are forms there are forms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder these these had been used to be mutilated abused children and they adopted a series of strategies to cope with the abuse and the trauma in early childhood and one of these strategies is known as narcissism so narcissism can be easily reconceived as a stunted frozen child who is in a post-traumatic state and then if this is the case it's good news because we know how to treat trauma very effectively but we don't know how to treat personality disorders at all we fail repeatedly and consistently with most of them if not all of them but we do know to treat trauma so if we just change the way we look at narcissism maybe there's hope maybe there's healing my work on cold therapy is a harbinger but I don't believe I'm the last one and so it's very difficult when you talk about victims first of all I as you know I make a distinction between having been victimized and being a victim being a victim is an identity being a victim is identity politics having been victimized is a fact and so when we talk about victims it becomes very very fraught and problematic because if you perceive narcissists as people who are in a post-traumatic condition then they are victims it's just of that abuse yeah so it's just one type of victim victimizing another type of victim it changes the whole mental picture it's it's like hurt people hurt people you know but same here here's the thing when I left this person I didn't know who and what she was I had 20 years of psychotherapy behind me luckily and I'd studied psychology I'm not a professor like you but I'd I'd study so I watched I got all most of the psychodynamics I saw the victim mentality I saw the COVID aggression the lack of responsibility the thinking that was so odd to me I thought there was brain damage I honestly thought there was some because it didn't make any sense so I left the person and then I figured out then it led me to you know to narcissism but what I realized was that and it made me very uncomfortable in the beginning I shared so much with her I realized we come from the same place which supports what you are saying so much of our stuff was the same that made me think am I a narcissist is this possible so it's like being coming from the same place flip sides of the of the same coin I went one way and the other person went in a different trajectory and her mother and aunt a narcissist and a grandmother's a narcissist so there's the genetic component and then there's the the environmental the environment part as well so and I think getting to the victim thing that that's certainly I when I came out of it I was very broken I couldn't remember things I couldn't sleep you know all of those you've heard this a lot I'm sure from but but then I realized that that I was in control of what I was going to do to keep away from the person and I can still hear you saying no contact if they if you if they send you gifts return them unopened if they come to your door call the police I can hear you saying that so I really implemented that and I shut the person down but so I took back control and what I often hear from people is the narcissist hypnotized me and I was powerless and I thought that's that's not right because each of us has the power to say no to whatever it is and that often it was kind of almost like that yeah that there was nothing that the victim could do and I found that to be a problem whereas I felt well I I can I can take back my power and the empath thing that you mentioned and this I got from you years ago but if I demonize narcissists and I say they're all good all bad and I'm all good it's completely I'm the same yeah exactly exactly and I realized that in my relationship with this person was I all good Sam was I of course I wasn't but I have to take responsibility for so that's what I that's what I see is that the power is handed over to the to the narcissistic abuser and the person is helpless and that is the victim dynamic that you are referring to and also the addiction the fellowship of it's called SLAA sex and liabilities anonymous was formed I think in about 40 years ago since Augustine fellowship and that's when people came to realize that there is something was made aware of that 20 years ago so I knew that it wasn't just the first the the somatic narcissist addicting me I also have that addiction so it was taking two again not just the other person I think we can go to the meta level and see the dynamic between the narcissist and his typical victim because they are atypical victims but the typical it's a Faustian deal the narcissist the narcissist offers you a chance to experience maternal unconditional love and that is the love bombing and grooming phase and so there the narcissist says your idealizes you says you're perfect you're amazing you're the most intelligent thing the best thing that ever happened to me I've never come across someone like you you're changing me you're changing me you're omnipotent you're so he talks to you as a mother would as a mother would to her child mothers idealize their children otherwise they wouldn't be able to suffer them children are insufferable unless you idealize them you know mother's nature endowed mothers with the ability to overlook to overlook the the nuisance the children are and to idealize them the narcissist does the same to you he idealizes you by idealizing you by idealizing you the narcissist idealizes himself so it's core idealization but you experience it as unconditional maternal love which that's the elixir of life that's the holy grail that's what we all seek in all our relationships the mother bond with the child sorry to interrupt the mother bond with the child it's a second chance it's a second chance because the vast majority of us grow up with mothers who are less than less than perfect not good enough mothers mothers who are absent who are selfish who are tired or angry or we all have this this baggage of not good enough mothering and here's the last analysis comes and says i'm going to give you a childhood back and this time it's going to work this time it's going to be perfect and now now i'm going to be your mother and i'm going to love you unconditionally and going to idealize you and moreover i'm going to give you grant you access to your own idealized image in my eyes through my gaze so you can see yourself idealized through the narcissist's gaze that's extremely addictive because it's the first time you experience unadulterated self-love narcissist the narcissist's gift to you is the ability to self-love but an idea of false self the narcissist creates for you an impromptu false self a small false self and tells you you can fall in love with this false self of yours i'm granting you access to this false self of yours and you can finally self-love safely in my ambit because i'm your mother i love you unconditionally and then what happens once he got you addicted he withdraws he simply withdraws he insists then that you do the same for him he wants you to to serve as a mother figure and by the way this is regardless of gender it's a it's a he wants you then to mother him but then of course if you mother him and he mothers you a concept which i call dual mothership and if he gives you access to this whole of mirrors where you see multiple reflections of your idealized selves and you fall in love with these reflections you get addicted to them then he has infinite power over you he has infinite he can withdraw yourself love by by denying you access to this whole of mirrors by blocking this idealizing and he can become a bad mother he can withdraw his maternal unconditional love and acceptance which will be excruciatingly painful so he strikes a deal with you you're going to suspend yourself you're going to kill yourself mentally you're going to die and on this condition that you agree to die mentally he will guarantee you access to all these goodies and and the vast majority of people accept the deal they die and they become an internal object they become what we call in psychology an introject they are the narcissist takes a snapshot of you photoshop's the snapshot that's the process of idealization and then proceeds to interact with the snapshot why because the snapshot is safe the snapshot will never abandon the narcissist will never challenge disagree criticize whatever that in other words the snapshot provides total control but you your part of the deal is to never deviate from the snapshot but how can you never deviate from the snapshot if you cease to exist to never deviate to never deviate from a static representation of you you must become static you must die in effect so when you when you begin to show signs of independence autonomy agency self-efficacy when you make decisions when you have new friends when you travel when you study you are threatening this natural and you are breaching the contract with the narcissist because you gradually diverge from this natural and so the narcissist regards you as an as a threat to the internal balance in his mind you become a threat you become a secretary object in short you become an enemy hence hence the devaluation and discard phase yeah this is this is the relationship with the narcissist in a nutshell now one more comment and i'll let you go i tend to hold the limelight of course what's fascinating that's not a problem sam it's fascinating thing you mentioned hypnosis of being hypnotized people reporting this actually yeah yeah actually they have a point ironically or paradoxically they do have a part there is there's been recent discoveries in neuroscience about a phenomenon called entraining this is a phenomenon studied over the last 15 years or 20 but had come to the forefront in the last 10 years and we discovered for example that using music we can create in your brain a replica of my brain so when two people when two people play the same music their brains become utterly synchronized even i say utterly synchronized the eegs are indistinguishable you can't tell whose brain is it they become one brain now the narcissist is used to this because of narcissistic supply what the narcissist does he takes your input his input her input and he creates his mind he recreates his mind on the fly he uses this constant input to recreate his mind and i call it the hive mind the swarm mind yeah it's a kaleidoscope it's a it's a it's a collage so the narcissist is used to the environment having a determining effect on his mind his mind is formed and shaped by the environment on the fly so he's used to that so what he does he entrains you he actually replicates his mind in yours literally literally he synchronizes the brain waves through entrainment but then the question is how does he do it you don't not all not all couples play music together so how does he succeed to do that well there is a form of music that the narcissist uses to accomplish this it's called verbal abuse verbal abuse has all the characteristics of music it has repetitive refrains it has cadence it has cadence it has tempo it has rhythm it has harmony it has melody verbal abuse is music it's exactly like rap rap people it's music it's a musical style i can actually take a verbal abuse session put it online and people will think it's music so he uses verbal abuse to entrain you to create in your mind literally and physically physiologically a replica of the brain waves in his mind in this sense it's very close to dissociative suggestive states such as hypnosis now the reason i agree with you that it doesn't it doesn't justify victim passivity is that entrain entraining entraining takes place only during the abusive session once the session is over you are de-entrained you're no longer entrained so then you regain you regain self-control autonomy you can make decisions but during these intermittently enforcement bullying sessions you are actually passive and without almost any control and in this sense you're hypnotized during this period yeah so sam if we go back to um the difference between narcissistic trait style and and what's currently called the disorder so the first to suggest the first to suggest that there's a difference was a guy called Lin Sperry and he suggested that there should be a distinction between people who have narcissistic style also known as assholes and people who have narcissistic personality disorder hmm then millen Theodore millen came into the scene adopted Lin Sperry's work he cites Lin Sperry in his seminal book personality disorder in modern life and so he adopted his work and he added another layer the narcissistic personality so now we have three layers we have style personality and disorder and the difference difference between them is quantitative literally but the quantity to the point that it becomes quality so for example traits would be exaggerated lack of empathy would be more extreme behaviors would be escalated exploitation would be emphasized envy would be much stronger in in the disorder antisocial behaviors are almost exclusive to the disorder etc so it's a it's a matter of quantity it's an exaggerated it's these exaggerated forms of each other the disorder though when you cross into the disorder you're beginning to have several psychological and psychodynamic features which are absent from the style and from the personality for example you are no longer able to relate to other people as external what you tend to do is a narcissist with a disorder you tend to internalize other people you tend to create internal objects represent which represent these people and then you regard other people as figments of your mind as an extension which explains a lot of the abuse and a lot of the because you it's if he abuses if I abuse you as a narcissist it's self-inflicted because you're not there you're in my mind you're an internal object so I subject you to all the dynamics in my mind because you are part of my mind for example my mother taught me to not have boundaries I abuse means when the parent parental figures of caregivers breach the child's boundaries don't allow the child to separate okay so I am used to not having boundaries but because you're part of my mind I have no problem to breach your boundaries I do to you that which was done to me because you are me you are me that is something victims can contract their heads around certainly and that's one example of of a psychodynamic feature or psychological feature which clearly distinguishes the disorder from all I would say that perhaps the second thing with your permission perhaps the second thing is where a lack of empathy crosses into sadism antisocial behavior the tendency to abuse in a way which is negating and vitiating of the victim and that's why I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse to distinguish it from other types of abuse other types of abuse leverage some dimensions of your existence financial abuse legal abuse verbal abuse sexual abuse psychological abuse you name it all of them leverage some aspect of you sexual abuse leverages usually your genitalia you know so it's a limited type of abuse narcissistic abuse is all pervasive ubiquitous and above all the main goal and the only goal of narcissistic abuse is for you to cease to exist because your separateness constitutes a threat and narcissists are not equipped to deal with separateness they were never allowed to separate so this is where this is where a lack of empathy into disorder becomes extreme I mean I think that the word narcissistic narcissism it's used very freely today and I think I got this from you as well that at a lessons for example is a naturally narcissistic phase where the child is individuating becomes God and saying to my it's saying to parents off you go I'm becoming my own person so this is healthy without some modicum of narcissism we're not going to survive yeah but I think I mean I've always thought of it the way I see it is it's exactly what you're saying that really what distinguishes the disorder from traits of style is that lack of emotional empathy there is cognitive as you've called a cold empathy and interpersonal exploitation and and if we you've not you know we've spoken about narcissistic abuse but so we have really four phases which are not linear so we have idealization as you said discord sorry the evaluation discord and then the hoover so do you want to take us through through those those phases sir seeing as you can say it's so much better than I can hoovering is another thing in terms of that point by the way was that yours as well I was wondering people people don't realize it's another term I think before I go there you see the language breaks down even for someone like you who is well versed in narcissism the language breaks down because you use the term exploitation narcissists never exploit I can't exploit you you don't exist you're part of me who am I exploiting from right so from I'm taking what's mine I'm taking what's mine I mean right from my perspective yeah not from narcissists I get that I didn't see that a few years ago but now I do it breaks it breaks the mind I mean it's my mind it's the mind can't function anymore because it's so alien narcissists are so alien in the way they perceive others or don't perceive others they call problem by the way narcissists have no what we call object relations the narcissist is stuck in a phase of development called self-relation but he doesn't progress to object relation object relation simply means relating to others and as a joke it's very telling that in psychology the word objects means people just for your information so right object relations means relations with people yeah yeah yes so psychology is very very narcissistic film because if I regard it's funny it's funny you should say that I was just thinking about yeah okay so coming back to your question when the rich you asked when we were both a lot younger about idealization and so on and so forth as I said there's no it's not I've modified the concept of ideal idealization and now it should be called core idealization because the narcissist by idealizing idealizes himself if you are the most intelligent person on earth and I'm with you it says something about me if you're if if someone is the most beautiful woman on earth and she chooses me or she is with me it says something about me so there's no there's no separate idealization it's always core idealization and actually the main reason for idealization is the narcissist part the narcissist wants to aggrandize and idealize himself and the only way to do this is to aggrandize and idealize everyone around him that's why he does that that's the first motivation second motivation when I idealize it's irresistible to you because as I said it's a form of maternal unconditional love and so but also who doesn't want to be thought of as super intelligent amazingly beautiful and so it's irresistible it's addictive so the one of the second main function of core idealization is to get the victim or the praying or the target or the potential intimate partner addicted so it creates addiction idealization lasts for as long as you don't diverge or deviate from the snapshot from the introject there's in the process of idealization the narcissist creates an image of you which is photoshopped that's idealization and then as long as you don't deviate or diverge from this image everything is okay and you will continue to be idealized as long as we behave as long as you're dead let's let's call a spade a spade as long as you're dead right right because if I tell you let's eat in this restaurant and you say no let's eat in that restaurant you had diverged from this natural you had disagreed with me it also implies some form of criticism your choice of restaurant is wrong it also implies that you know something implies that you know something that I don't know so you're challenging my omniscience all right it's if you tell me listen let me help you it's I don't interpret it as an indication or expression of love I interpret it as an attempt to humiliate to imply that I'm not omnipotent that I need you that you have something I don't have so even the most innocuous comments most loving or will be perceived as challenging or undermining the snapshot you can't do anything right whatever you do will be perceived as an attempt to unsettle the precarious balance of the narcissist in a universe and therefore will render you a persecutory object an enemy in other words in other words devaluation is inevitable the as long as you show signs of life it's inevitable victims should stop asking themselves what did I do wrong what could I have done differently should I have done this should I have done that should I not have said this should I you would have been devalued period if you if you eat and drink and breathe it's sufficient for the narcissist to to switch to the devaluation mode the only way for you to have avoided devaluation is to have rendered yourself an ancient Egyptian mummy about as lively and as attractive to the common yeah yes the the narcissist also suffers from extreme separation insecurity also known colloquially as abandonment anxiety so the moment you show a sign of independence and autonomy any the slightest a new friend going out for coffee you doing something without the narcissist or without his permission anything using the smartphone I mean and because when you are with your smartphone you have a private enclave a private world it's very threatening anything you do would provoke devaluation now why did the narcissist need to devalue you because you have source of threat and because you approve positive that his judgment had been wrong I mean he if he needs to devalue you then he judged you wrongly didn't he so he needs to eliminate you and he eliminates you by by claiming that you had changed there's new information you can change somehow or he found out new things about you or you went crazy or you became insufferable or something there's been a transformation in you that does not vitiate does not negate his initial judgment you had changed not the narcissist that's the first thing and the second thing is now that you have changed he can create a negative interject of you he can create the opposite of the snapshot he can create a subtle that is ugly that is stupid that is and then this justifies discarding you and that's the last phase he needs to discard you because your very existence is a threat and this is what people fail to understand narcissistic abuse is not about something you do or something you don't do or choices or decisions or lifestyle yeah narcissistic abuse is about getting rid of your existence killing you in effect if possible physically but usually mentally killing you then the discard following the discard you actually there's another phase which is replacement the narcissist tries to find an alternative to you and go through the whole process again the narcissist creates something called shared fantasy shared fantasy was first described by sangha in 1989 not by vaknet and the shared fantasy is a is a fantastic space where the narcissist can maintain his grandiosity and where he can exert full control over you and negate your agency so that's a shared fantasy shared fantasy also includes fantastic elements like dreams aspirations a brilliant rosy future it could be children could be family it could be money it could be whatever but so that's a shared fantasy he drags you into the shared fantasy and the replacement is simply finding another partner for the shared fantasy if he fails at the replacement phase then he switches to phase four for b and for b would be hovering the hovering is a last resort actually people think that narcissists will were habitually they try to avoid it as much as they can it's a last resort it's indicative of the narcissist's failure to find a replacement for you but there is one case where the narcissist will never ever hover you and that's if you had modified the narcissist in 1957 a group of scholars described a phenomenon in the study of narcissism known as narcissistic modification narcissistic modification is when someone an intimate partner or shames you and humiliates you in public in front of people you care for people whose opinions you value so if I were to create a situation where you are for example sitting with your colleagues or with your peers and then I were to shame you and humiliate you horribly in front of all of them I will have modified you and then narcissists never hover after modification modification is a fascinating process because what happens is the false self and all the defenses break down they're inactivated and the narcissist is faced with his own internal void known as the empty schizoid core the narcissist is faced with a black hole at his at his own center and that's of course a harrowing traumatizing experience so he will never come near you again you have the capacity to traumatize is that the same as narcissistic decompensation sand decompensation is an element in the compensation yes the compensation is a clinical term for for when defense mechanisms psychological defense mechanisms are disabled are disabled so then they're no longer able to filter and reframe reality in a way which will conform to the narcissistic self image so his self image is assaulted and assailed by numerous countervailing data from reality and he can't stand that and his false self borderlines by the way goes through the compensation as well the disabling of these defenses creates a very interesting phenomenon and that's that's the crux of my work nowadays and and it's becoming it's becoming widely accepted in academe I just gave lectures in McGill University about this and I'm going to give lectures in Cambridge and so I suggested that actually we should consider all personality disorders as an assemblage of self states so people with personality disorders don't even don't have a single self they have multiple self states and then what happens is under stress under duress under humiliation rejection abandonment etc etc or when challenged and undermined for example by your independent behavior people with personality disorders switch between self states so for example the borderline borderline if she perceives rejection and abandonment which is her greatest fear if she perceives them then she decompensates her defense mechanism switch off and she switches from one self state the borderline self state to a psychopathic self state she becomes a psychopath more precisely a secondary cycle yeah so the self states argument of the self states model is a fascinating model in effect because first of all it allows us to unify all personality disorders we just say okay there is a limited set set of self states and these apply to borderline these apply to narcissism and also it means that when the narcissist switches to another self state he can easily become covert or a borderline or he can become a psychopath or a psychopath can become a narcissist or he can become a borderline I mean it opens up the field it allows for all these transitions that have been observed in therapy and in clinical settings but were not accounted for by the dsm and other categorical texts so it's much more fluid you know getting back to the hubus and the last time I spoke I'd never received a hoover before and I got one I think a year and a half after I left the relationship and it was the most bizarre disturbing experience and I think it's really important for for people to hear is that as the person just arrived at my house I firstly was very nervous and secondly I felt as if there were walls of steel around me and I kept having to remind myself of who and what was in front of me and all the charm was switched on you know and right at the end I saw a reptilian intelligence there a sly intelligence and I thought of a black member striking a mouse or a king cobra striking a mouse which is very primal and the snake doesn't do it because there's anything wrong with the snake that is the design of the snake there's no empathy for that poor mouse that's going to suffer and that's what I felt right at the end it was it was this sly intelligence and she knew exactly what she was doing that was the other thing that horrified me and you know when when people experience the hoover it's very hard to resist from from my perspective because I love the person and because it looked it was a fantastic show but I hadn't experienced it the last time we spoke and now I have and all I can say is it was difficult to resist but I'm very glad that I did I did not allow myself to be drawn back in and I think that's very important that people can be you know and also I was thinking that when I left the person I joined a group for narcissistic abuse survivors and the person that I started speaking to he had to plan his exit over a year he planned it because he was married they shared money etc I didn't do that I could just leave this person I just packed up and I left I didn't know who she was I just left but but he had to plan it and you've said this before many times Sam it's very hard to leave yeah very hard to leave hovering involves two two mechanisms one is triggering the very presence of the of the narcissist triggers you you had been traumatized by the narcissist on the one hand so he triggers a trauma but it also triggers the good memories it's not only the bad memories yeah it's a triggering of the entire monopoly of memories and emotions that involved in the relationship and by the way that is common for healthy relationships I mean if you were to divorce it's definitely healthy person and she would you would she would see her again you will be triggered you will be but in the case of the narcissist in the case of narcissists the triggering disables you because it also triggers the trauma so you have a post-traumatic response you know freeze freeze fight fight fly form all these it's panoply post-traumatic responses this is the triggering and the second thing the two ring does it entices you it entices you because you see what happens typically with typical victims of narcissists what happens is a process called merger infusion merger infusion when you either willingly surrender your boundaries or you never had boundaries to start with you are codependent for example yeah and so you merge you become one organism with a narcissist you become a single unit a cerebrous with two heads you know and so when the narcissist abandons you abandon the narcissist it's the equivalent of an amputation and you have a phantom limb left behind it's like I would amputate your leg but you would still feel your leg yeah you'd still feel the narcissist there there's a phantom narcissist left behind because you were one you were a single entity and leaving the narcissist made you huff and you will always be huff without her she will always be there as a phantom she will be there more clinically as a nitrogen she is in your mind she's in your head she talks to you even if you don't realize it even if you are not aware she is there she had penetrated she had mind snatched you and then body snatched you and she had merged with you it's like the alien movies when the alien enters a body you know and then from the outside it looks like san vaknin but actually it's an alien from you know so so hovering hovering seems to be like a this kind of trivial trivial pursuit if you wish you know someone an ex tries to pick you up no way it's an exceedingly complex psychodynamic or psychological process exceedingly it involves multiple disciplines in psychology it's it's one of the most understudied and amazing phenomena in psychology and you as a codependent or you as someone with poor boundaries or you as a boundary person who has surrendered your boundaries or you who had struck the foustian deal yeah give me a second chance and in return i will kill myself for a while or suspend myself for a while if you had done any of this and you had because you had a relationship with an if you had done any of this you would be solely tempted and here's another reason it's much easier to be dead than to be alive it's anxiety reducing we all live in a state of anxiety and anxiety is provoked by life but when you suspend your existence when you're no longer alive there is a sense of calm i know it sounds bizarre because victims are always traumatized that they're anxious and they're depressed on the one hand but on the other hand handing control to the narcissist has has merits in in terms of being feeling safe feeling in a way that you're in good hands so this is this is the dynamic that works with dictators dictators like Adolf Hitler you know his message was let me manage everything don't worry you have no responsibility and no accountability i become the external locus of control and that leads us to a concept that leads us to the concept of external locus of control in a relationship with the narcissist your life is controlled from the outside you have an external locus and so you are never to blame you're never guilty you're never responsible never accountable as long as you play the game with the narcissist as long as you conform i remember all those feelings sam exactly what you're describing there was a great sense of safety and peace in being with the person i i i get you complicated you know maybe another concept sam another concept to inject here would be the comfort zone people who end up with narcissists usually default to a comfort zone and this comfort zone reflects something in childhood so maybe they were not allowed to separate in childhood and to become individuals the parent emotionally blackmailed them or there was emotional ambient incest or i don't know what and they couldn't separate an individual so here's an opportunity to again not separate so this is a comfort zone maybe they've been abused the children and so they gravitate to the narcissist because because she is an abuser i mean that's the job qualification she's an abuser and so you need to recreate the comfort zone of having been abused now what is a comfort zone comfort zone is not positive or negative actually most comfort zones are negative comfort zone is simply a way of existence where you feel that you know the rules you know the ropes everything is predictable and you can control the process that's a comfort zone now we have studied to show that women who had been abused battled beaten up in childhood by for example their fathers tend overwhelmingly to select abusers as fathers because they know how to cope with an abuser they know how to predict his reactions it's familiar you know sam i in the book in my book i describe being with somebody who did not does not exist all that existed was a mask that that danced and gleamed with portrayals of authenticity kindness and personality and i got that from you because you said that there is actually nobody there and so when i when i think about her now i think i shared so many special moments we traveled to a lot of countries and so on but there was nothing from her side and i think that's a difficulty for for for us as i call myself a survivor of narcissistic abuse and you actually said this in one of your lectures in London i think with Richard you said the most difficult thing for you to understand is that none of you are special to us that's what you said i remember most difficult thing yeah that that in her mind i i'm i'm just a different make of toaster or a different make of car or a different make of cell phone that there's nothing special about me at all too you're interchangeable yes interchangeable units that those were the terms that you used um and i think also saying that in the beginning and we did touch on this a little bit earlier is that i would say if i was this person i wouldn't have behaved in that way and then i realized that was a fatal error i had to look at it from the perspective of the narcissists and you were talking about the breakdown of language earlier but of Hitler thought that what he was doing was right so that's his perspective in my perspective you shouldn't go and kill people like that but that's his perspective i've just busy reading a book about jones town about jim jones and listening to how he killed the worst people from his perspective he was saying was that okay was that okay it was same yeah so i think if we if we look at it from if i look at it from my perspective it doesn't make any sense but if i look at it from the perspective the narcissist it makes complete sense who's right and who's wrong maybe it isn't the question of that it's a question of what's okay for me and what's not okay for me as as as each person yeah it is definitely wrong to convert the discourse on narcissism to a morality play good versus evil yes good versus evil right versus wrong yes it's very wrong and it's it leads leads people astray because they become angels and the narcissist is a devil and you know it becomes highly religious and do you think i'm an angels yeah do you think i'm an angel sent i look like an angel of course you're not an angel no one is no one is exactly and it's not about being the devil remember the simple principle the narcissist knows no better he wants to do to you what had been done to him because he considers himself because he considers himself superior he wants to elevate you to his level i'm doing your favor to be in my company to share my life with me to make love to me it's enormous privilege because i'm a unique being i'm a superior i'm a light being you know a superior creature and i want to do to you what had been done to me because that way you will become me and by yeah and i'm elevating you to my level when i'm making you me when i'm making you a clone of me a replica i'm doing your favor and once in a lifetime favor now what had been done to me first of all i was not about to separate some i will not allow you to separate i will not allow you to make this horrible mistake of becoming an individual second thing i was hollowed out i was hollowed out i was rendered into an void an emptiness it's called the empty schizoid core in clinical terms i became an emptiness but i don't consider this a disadvantage i consider this the next step in the evolutionary ladder this is what renders me superior and so i want to empty you i want to follow you out also because i want to bring you i want to bring you to the tribe i want you to share my superiority i love you like this is love isn't it love is about elevating the partner allowing the partner to grow and to develop so this is self development this is self growth what i'm doing to you so i'm empty you should be empty i have no boundaries you should have no boundaries i've been i've been abused i will abuse you because abuse had been proven to be a methodology which had led to superiority i call it i will call it probably tough love or something you know so this is what people denuncises intentions and that's the irony the narcissist first of all is selfless he has no self literally has no self that's why he needs input from the outside he has no functioning self that's one thing and the second thing is the narcissist is well intentioned not evil that's the psychopath the psychopath is evil the narcissist is well intentioned he believes he believes that together you can become this amazing single unit that is by definition far more advanced than the rest of humanity but unfortunately you are not at this step of evolution he needs to bring you up to him right that's that's a good summary of relationships with the narcissist they try to educate you edify you improve you change you transform you help you i mean they try all the time to make you who you are not to take away your identity because it sucks your identity better to adopt a narcissist you know it's easy for me to to get all of this now sam but not in the beginning of my journey so in the beginning i hated the person and i hated what i'd become a shell of my former self and only you know a long time many years later can i discuss it like this with you because there's distance from it now but the people i sort of speak to so many people about it some of my clients i mean my travel agent planned her own suicide an old friend of mine goes into a clinic for depression once a year because her husband is a narcissist so from our side it's it's so inconceivable in the beginning i think well because i have emotional empathy that everyone else is going to have it i didn't realize that some people just don't have it so it's very difficult for us to understand and achieve distance to say i understand how the narcissist works but it really destroys us it's it's so dangerous for us i mean an ex-corporate of mine from 30 years ago was married to a psychopath and she said to me recently that she had planned you froze the Charles i don't know if you can hear me sam you there yes i can hear you now you froze you said a friend of mine had planned and then you finished yeah so uh she was married to a psychopath who i think maybe about 10 years and then she was so unhappy that she had asked somebody to kill her take a hit out on her so what i mean you you know this better than i do sam the damage that that that it does so there's the only reason i can speak about it now with a sense of humor and and more distant you know what what would you say to people who you're in a relationship with the narcissist what would your advice be sam don't be right honestly all the rest is bullshit yeah there's a lot of bullshit on that do this do that i invented most of these bullshit by the way i came up with mirroring and with the you name it i came up with with seven of eight techniques the only technique i did not come up with is gray rock so gray rock is not my invention but all the rest what you hear about i mean i invented and yet i'm telling you they're all bullshit the only viable uh solution save your life get away no contact and no contact means no contact no text no social media stalking no no gifts no third party introductions no flying monkey none no contact no attempts because the brain the brain plays tricks on you it would come up with a million reasons why yes to be in contact only once for a few minutes it's just once for a few minutes and there's excellent reason for it there's an excellent reason and one of the main of course alibi is having common children or common property or it's my mother how could i give up on her or it's my child it's my son how can i give up on him you know these are all excuses and i don't have money i don't have money it's an excuse you don't have money it's an excuse you have common children it's an excuse it's your mother it's an excuse they're all excuses now of course some departures are much more complex than others but departure is it must be one way or another you have common children let your attorneys communicate it has to pick them up don't be there ask your cousin to be there there is visitation make them supervise or ask someone to be there i mean find a solution no contact he wants to talk to you he cannot talk to you you have a lawyer or you have a neighbor i don't know or you have a good friend it's your mother walk away she is your enemy she threatens your life walk away why do people why do people not consider narcissists as life-threatening they are it's not that narcissists are life-threatening because of their practices narcissists are life-threatening because it's you or them if you're alive the narcissist life is threatened at least mental life yeah if he is alive he needs you to be dead he will offer you a lot for this i mean it's a bargain it's a bargain death he will offer you a lot to stop to exist but he needs you to stop to exist it's you or him you or her the final invoice and i think i got this from you too sam the final invoice is for our life that's you that's in my book too the final invoice from the narcissist is for our life you know um i mean my own no contact has been in place ever since i discovered who and what she was completely blocked never looked for her on facebook i speak to nobody who you know just completely no contact and that's the because sam apart from the risk of of of getting back together again i would like to believe i'm strong enough now um it's also like um as an alcoholic having one drink it's not okay it's the same principle and the other thing sam if i talk to my abuser i'm giving the signal to myself that what the person did is okay and it's not okay it's the same as if i come to your house and you open the door you please you see me and i start punching you what are you going to do hit me back close the door that's what you should do right so the message is if i talk if i'm in contact with my abuser i'm saying to me it's not okay and and you know the other thing sam when i when i left the person i thought i got the better of her but i didn't i got the better of myself that's what i did i beat myself because that's that was the war which is which is what you've been speaking about is that that battle to leave you know what i mean the the difficulty in leaving so sam is there anything any other advice i mean just before you answer you know again i'm not saying it probably for the third time but people that i know whether they're clients friends etc the majority of them do not leave i know i did and i know that this friend of mine he left the one the one who planned this exit over a year is that in your experience too that most people don't leave they not only do not leave but they re victimize they they keep selecting mates which are replicas of the of the of the narcissists right right so we have like serial serial victim victimhood or serial my third husband where is as narcissistic as my second husband who was even worse than my first husband and why you why do you keep choosing these people you know but it's conditioning we know childhood conditioning and so on yes there was one more piece of advice yes the narcissist is a wily wily animal enemy he picks up on your body language he picks up on your facial micro expressions yeah he picks up on words you say but much more importantly he picks up on words that you do not say anything can and will be used against you in due time confidences you shared emotions witnessed facial expressions hunched a hunched shoulder a twitching leg a tick anything and everything is cataloged observed cataloged for future use and future abuse that's the main reason for no contact because every minute you spend with the narcissist is providing is equivalent of providing the narcissist with ammunition for a future battle you are giving ammunition to your enemy and he is going to use it don't kid yourself it's like the United States equipped the Mujahideen at the time it came back to to bite them in the ass at 9 11 9 11 yeah yeah you are giving weapons to your enemy and trust me and I happen to be a narcissist had I decided to victimize you had you been in my crosshairs in this session alone I have enough ammunition to ruin your for good for good and I mean for good to render you utterly discombobulating psychotic in a mental world for the rest of your life and that's in 45 minutes now I happen to be a super intelligent narcissist this is the most dangerous kind and also psychopathic narcissist but even a run-of-the-mill pedestrian narcissist would do a job 50 percent as good as mine that's also exceedingly dangerous and I'd like to add to that Sam that the person that I was with was not right yeah but boy boy was she good at what she did yeah exactly I with with with with my background in psychology and being in therapy I I I thought I was losing my mind most tigers I thought I was losing I heard that most tigers score score very low on IQ test I heard so but you wouldn't take the risk would you with a tiger narcissist narcissist optimized optimized predatory systems there are each word counts here optimize predatory predatory systems they're not a human being they're a hive mind they're a collage of hundreds of minds it's it's like a colony narcissist the narcissist is like a colony it's like a killer bee colony you know and you're feeding it with information things you say things you don't say body language this is that you're feeding it with information and it's coming at you make no mistake it's coming at you and it's going to devour you and leave nothing behind you and it has nothing to do with intelligence it's it has to do with reflexes and instincts it's primordial it's primeval it's primitive it's not on the level of nichy and and Schopenhauer and Hegel you know it's tooth and claw it's nail it's nail and claw and tooth it's red in nail and to include it's it's nature it's a predator it's it's interesting Sam because I've watched a lot of documentaries on black numbers and the black number is obviously extremely venomous but it is also highly unpredictable it's a very skittish defensive snake so when I watch snake handlers swim with king pobras which are also very deadly they're fine but when you watch a snake handler dealing with a black mamba they sweat because they know that this attack can come out of nowhere now that's not the fault of the black mamba that is the design and if we look at Maslow's hierarchical theory of needs that's right down at the bottom that snake that black mamba is not self actualizing that's what it's designed to do and I see that the same way with with the nicest is that it's a primal it's a very primal level and for the black mamba the only thing to do comes into your no contact is to keep away from them yeah keep away from it because they're dangerous I'll give you one concluding line yes narcissists are predators who feed on other people's autonomy other people's separatists hold on for a second I open the door I'm sorry no problem yeah no problem so narcissists are are narcissists suck other people's autonomy other people's separateness I think that's the main feeding mechanism of narcissists they they are kind of supernatural being if you wish animals that go around and when they see that you're autonomous and separate they suck it out of you and narcissists are very good at creating crowds and mobs and masses throughout history the great leaders of of mobs and crowds or collocracies yes ruled by mob mob rule where narcissists of course Adolf Hitler comes to mind and much less malevolent and pernicious Donald Trump these are narcissists what they do is they suck the autonomy and separateness of people and render them into a mass indistinguishable mass that's what the narcissist does to you it renders you protoplasmic it takes you back to the beginning of life in effect and you're fighting for your life that's what it felt like sir so basically what you're saying is when I said what's your advice if you're involved with one get away my only get away don't bother with all these techniques these techniques are just ways for you to stay you're trying to convince yourself to stay well there's a way to manage it it's manageable don't worry oh great rock yeah sure I can manage this is nonsense you can't fight the narcissists narcissists is a superior apex predator there's no way you can you can survive this who doesn't care about what he or she has to do to win doesn't care predators don't care last time I spoke to a COVID-19 virus he didn't seem to care it didn't have too much compassion did it it didn't have compassion and also it was not highly intelligent as far as I could see but it's it's efficacious it kills six million people you know like another virus with a moustache exactly exactly I really want to you know thank you again for your time on a Sunday afternoon and just to acknowledge I know I've said this in emails but I'm gonna say it again that and when you when the book is is finally out you will obviously get mail the copy and I'm afraid you're gonna find yourself all over it so thank you for all all of your your narcissists went went dream thank you well precisely thank you thank you Charles always good to see yeah likewise cheers for now Sam don't be a stranger thank you bye all right bye good afternoon Sam hi hi Charles how are you fine thanks send yourself I'm okay more or less yeah these are strange days strange days busy more busy than ever actually so I'm in the organizing committee of well over 19 international conferences we have to move all of them online and editor in 50 something academic magazines editor in chief wow of five academic journals wow and you can you can imagine the influx and everyone's regular psychology of coffee this is the results so I'm I'm utterly snowed under well because it's foreign so and that's why when I coordinate something I put aside everything absolutely it's quite a shambles if it doesn't happen absolutely it has a ripple effect and it makes me even more grateful for for giving a summer no no don't worry at all I I do I did want to I do indeed want to talk to you it's just that it created the a trade reaction that's going to cost me a few hours of sleep but don't worry about it thank you you know firstly before and I I've written so many questions down as a result of our talk last week are we are we all know are we being recorded yes I'm using an application called call note and the reason that I do that is because it gives a very nice quality recording so it's I'm looking at now and it's definitely recording all right but when you when you send me the file kindly make sure that it's mp3 and not for example m4 m4a yes because they have all kinds of so I can process only mp3 and m4 got it yeah fantastic fantastic so Sam I've got a million questions for you yeah so let's start so you know Sam the I hope I don't die in the middle I mean the bottom part absolutely absolutely Sam okay can we start off by it's a it's a question that I get asked a lot the difference between having narcissistic traits and full-blown clinical narcissistic personality disorder the first to the first to have made such distinctions was one of the granddaddies of the field of personality disorders Theodore Millan and together with another chap called Davis his student they had they had offered a seminar work called personality disorders in daily life it is there that Millan made a distinction between personality disorders personality style personality personality and he suggested that we are all placed on a spectrum today his his approach is widely accepted and the diagnostic and statistical manual edition five published in 2013 the latest incorporates his thinking it's dimensional it it it describes spectra and so we are all on a spectrum and what Millan had suggested is that everyone to this or that extent is a narcissist some people are grandiose some people are obnoxious like me for example some people are but but we all some people lack empathy some people are exploitative some people are envious some people have a conf combination of some of these traits and so and so forth and he suggested that some people have a personality a narcissistic personality and that would simply mean that they have the proclivities and predilections and inclinations to react in highly specific ways in in certain circumstances and they would tend to be a bit grandiose they would tend to be insensitive to other people's needs emotions priorities and wishes they would tend to be a bit self-centered and some that's the personality and then there's a personality style personality style narcissistic personality style is is simply all this amplified so these people would actively actually engage in in narcissistic behaviors and actively translate the narcissistic traits into behaviors that are supposed to secure favorable outcomes from the human environment and then there's the disorder and the disorder is not only quantitative quantitatively different to the style it's not the style amplified but it's qualitatively different it's a break it's chismatic it's like it's like a break from the style it's because the disorder is actually dysfunctional it doesn't it doesn't guarantee favorable outcomes the person with a narcissistic style actually gets his way he gets his way he leverages institutions he collaborates with other people to obtain goals um he has accomplishments he's a pillar of society he's you know the the personality style is actually a positive adaptation it allows you to function better in society and with other people the disorder as the name implies is dysfunctional it guarantees negative outcomes it is self-destructive it alienates people it's a it repels them it it makes you a hate figure it so it's the disorder is all these the traits and behaviors taken to such an extreme and to the exclusion of all other traits and behaviors so that the outcomes are actually negative to the narcissistic self now the the element the last point I want to make is this issue of exclusion the person with narcissistic personality or the person with narcissistic style which is one step above personality these people have elements of narcissism which are pretty pronounced discernible and you know immediately detectable but they also have other traits and behaviors which are not narcissistic and they don't exclude these traits and behaviors they let them express so they are not all the time narcissistic they are narcissistic in reaction to something or under certain circumstances or in certain contexts or when they want to achieve something but they are not all the time narcissistic so for example if they are in some situations disempathic they don't show empathy in other situations they would be empathic if in some situations they in some situations they are exploitative in others they would be actually collaborative they would work well well in teams I think an example of this would be President Trump Donald Trump is a grandiose narcissist but he that he I kept saying he doesn't have narcissistic personality disorder he has a narcissistic style so that other qualities in him which are non-narcissistic actually manifest for example his ability to work in teams or to leverage social institutions to his benefit or to in some rare cases display empathy and so so the narcissist the person with with a disorder cannot do this his narcissism takes over it's like a malignancy that's why I call it malignance of love it colonizes the narcissism colonizes every dimension of the personality and the diagnostic and statistical manual says that the narcissism in this case is all pervasive it's it's like a cancerous cell that takes over and so nothing is exempt and nothing remains alive under this this overgrowth it's like the narcissists has been body snapped by his own disorder yes what would you say that the most important traits would be would they be a lack of emotional empathy and interpersonal exploitation well it really depends on the type of narcissists we have quite a proliferation of typologies and by now narcissism has been dissected into numerous subtypes yes the we come across usually one or two varieties of narcissists we rarely come across the others so we come across typically the grandiose narcissists and we come across the covert narcissists it's rare to come to come across other types and within the covert and the grandiose narcissists there's another subdivision which I suggested at the time and that is between somatic and cerebral now all these four uh all these four are united in in certain things but the covert is fundamentally substantially different to the overt to the classical and if you want we can dedicate um sometime to the covert narcissists in a separate question if if you something you're in the drudgery absolutely there was a couple of other things that I wanted to ask you before we get this same um the I didn't but I didn't answer your question I don't I just delineated the tip of it that's true so all of them all of them are I think united by a lack of empathy I think that's by far the most important feature and it's common also to uh psychopaths but not to borderline to some extent histrionics but not really so lack of empathy is characteristic of psychopaths and narcissists exploitativeness not necessary but I would say grandiosity and not even grandiosity but severe cognitive deficits impaired reality testing now the reality testing can be impaired via grandiosity wrong perception of the self and the limitations of the self or the abilities of the self that's one type of cognitive deficit but narcissists have many other types of cognitive deficits so in some narcissists grandiosity will be emphasized in others other types of deficits but I would say a misperception of reality one way or another so narcissists in this sense exactly as Kernberg suggested in 1975 narcissists and borderlines in this sense are on the on the verge of psychosis they are they're actually almost psychotic in in the sense that they lose touch with reality very often very frequently now imagine how dangerous it is when the narcissist becomes a leader of a nation or you know a CEO in a joint company and so I would say that this actually these two some narcissists are exploitative other narcissists are envious pathologically envious some narcissists and so maybe a third element that I would add that is common to all narcissists is the need for narcissistic supply the narcissistic supply is attention in all its forms both positive adulation admiration and negative being feared for example attention in all its kind is narcissistic now narcissists needs narcissistic supply to regulate his internal internal environment the narcissistic supply restores a sense of reality because other people tell him what is real and what is not about him and also cater to his grandiosity or other cognitive deficits the reason I'm hesitating a bit is that because covert narcissists process narcissistic supply very differently to classical narcissists covert narcissists psychodynamically so different to classical narcissists that it's debatable in which sense are they narcissists at all and one of the main differences is in how they relate to grandiosity how they obtain the supply and what they do with the supply when they get it the narcissist uses narcissistic supply to regulate his internal environment the covert narcissist uses narcissistic supply to fight off her sense of inferiority the narcissist the classic narcissist feels superior at all times and just uses supply to buttress to prove his superiority to substantiate the covert narcissists feels inferior at all times and she uses supply to eliminate temporarily this sense of inferiority sam the you know when we look at narcissistic abuse um there's always abuse guaranteed when one is involved with a narcissist and specifically intimately why is this so why are we guaranteed to to get abuse I think I think one of the major problems we have is that we are hell bent on using human vocabulary to describe people to describe carbon based entities which are arguably not entirely human or only partly human you see abuse most abuses are not narcissists and they're not psychopaths and don't even have mental health problems most abuse abuse in these cases has to do with with a power play a power matrix it's about power it's the same like rape rape is not about sex it's about power and so but these are essentially normal post I mean healthy people and they just they need to assert control over their their environment and to assert control they they do it through abuse it's a dysfunctional way of a certain a certain control and establishing certainty among healthy people a tiny minority of abuses are actually narcissists and cyclists so let's be clear all narcissists and psychopaths are abusive but very few abusers are narcissists and psychopaths now narcissists and psychopaths abuse not not for the same reason that the overwhelming vast majority of abuses abuse narcissists and psychopaths abuse is a form of internal regulation what I'm trying to say is that the abuse victim is irrelevant yeah it's it's not an interaction it's an intra-action the narcissist especially needs to regulate his internal environment for example to support his grandiosity and so to accomplish this he needs to abuse someone because when he abuses someone for example he feels superior he feels omnipotent he feels omniscient if he abuses her by mocking her knowledge or lack of knowledge ignorance so he feels it restores his grandiosity in other words the abuses instrumental in regulating the inner landscape of narcissists and the abuse victim is incidental that is why it's so easy for narcissists to replace to substitute the abuse victim they discard the abuse victim on a I mean they pivot on a dime they discard one abuse victim and half an hour later they're with another and the intimate partners of narcissists they feel interchangeable they feel commodity commodified they feel they feel that they could be replaced by anyone and they they can they feel not special the narcissist takes away the the partner's feeling of specialness of being an individual because narcissists use others other people as commodities he consumes them and they are all the same to him they are they are all identical to him because he is actually interacting not with the outside but with the inside similarly the psychopath the psychopath abuses because he is goal-oriented so psychopathic abuse has to do with accomplishing sex money power but these are these are internal goals that the psychopath needs money power and sex and so on to regulate his internal environment it's his form of narcissistic supply if you wish and people just happen to be there so if you need to steal money from an old lady you do and if it's stupid enough to give you your money the same fault it's yeah you said in one of your seminars that actually narcissists take a mental snapshot of their partners or the person they're interacting with and then sort of interject it and deal with that snapshot as opposed to the reality of the person yes that's very true snapshotting the thing is the thing is that at that moment there is a divergence of treatment the divergence of interrelations when the narcissist meets someone a person and he reaches the conclusion that that person could become a source of narcissistic supply even for example by way of becoming an intimate partner or by way of becoming a business partner but can be by way of becoming an adulator fan you know student whatever when the narcissist reaches the conclusion that someone can become a source of supply he takes a snapshot of that person he stores the snapshot in his mind it's like an avatar it's an interject he stores this photo in his mind and from that moment all the positive emotions that the narcissist possesses are invested in the snapshot not in the real person yeah and the reason is very simple the snapshot will never abandon the narcissist snapshot will never hurt the narcissist the snapshot will never cheat the on the narcissist betray the narcissist the snapshot will not cause the narcissist pain challenge the narcissist undermine the narcissist etc snapshot is is safe wow so it is in the snapshot that the narcissist invests his his positive emotions and what's left negative emotions and he reserves the negative emotions for the real person so there is a kind of dichotomy there's a split there's a break the minute the snapshot in takes place there's there are two streams of emotions all negative emotions are externalized and in this sense the narcissist becomes a bit psychopathic and all in all positive emotions are internalized interjected and directed at the snapshot this is why narcissists are always in a state of shock because real life people real real people in their lives deviate and diverge from the snapshot the snapshot is permanent and stable never changes but real real people in real life they grow they change they change their minds they I mean things happen and the narcissist cannot countenance the contrast between the static snapshot and the dynamic real life partner for example Sam at what stage does narcissistic personality disorder first show up or become evident in somebody when can one see it look we have a serious problem with us with the diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder because there are at least two phases in life in early life where narcissism of the disordered kind the delusional fantastic grandiose narcissism is actually very healthy and a very welcome phenomenon that is in the formative years up until the age of four more or less even six and during adolescence adolescence for example are technically narcissists right yeah and they are and it's a very good thing that they are because their narcissism allows them to objectify the parent rebel against the parent defy the parent psychopathically and in in this way separate from the parent define boundaries define boundaries and become an individual so the adolescence pathological narcissism and it is is actually very instrumental in rendering the adolescent separate individual and therefore is a healthy process exactly the same thing happens with a baby with a child with a toddler in the formative years zero to six the child needs to become the center of the world the child needs narcissistic supply the child lacks empathy the child is very self centered and so and the reason for this is that the child needs to separate from the mother needs to begin to put boundaries between itself and the mother usually and these boundaries cannot emerge unless the nurse unless the child becomes a narcissist so this is why we never diagnose narcissistic personality disorder before age 18 or 21 depending on the country yeah yeah so it's kind of it's kind of teenage and and after teenage yeah yeah yeah not before 18 it's meaningless to diagnose it before 18 because then it is actually healthy it should be encouraged yes so we touched last week on the aspect of choice of the narcissist and you said to me narcissists know exactly what they're doing so it's quite difficult for me to sort of imagine that where I'm I'm doing something that's harmful to somebody else and I'm making that choice to do it and I know I'm doing it so can you explain that sort of dynamic from from the narcissistic perspective that they they making the choice and they know that it's and not a good one but they continue to do it well your very brief question contains numerous very arguable aspect first of all you are using the word someone else you know we're doing you're doing the narcissist does something bad to someone else right but this assumes that the narcissist perceives the separate existence of other people and he then perceives them as people now neither neither of these two statements is correct my first mistake yes I get it not a mistake it's simply that you are you are human and you the language breaks down when we try to cope with narcissism and psychopathy language itself breaks down and that's the reason I had to invent so many new terms and even even that language breaks down because how can you talk about someone who has no internal world where there's only a void where there's no empathy where everything is a reflection I mean it's so alien such an alien experience and I've just made two youtube videos about this comparing narcissism and psychopaths to aliens proper alien from other planets and so narcissists do not recognize the separateness of other people because their own separateness has been sabotaged as children undermine they were not able to separate from their parents as children and individually and therefore they are incapable of noticing or accepting the separateness of other people even more so because they were not allowed to individuate they were not allowed to become individuals and develop boundaries they do not perceive other people as people they perceive them as functions they perceive them as extensions they perceive them as snapshots but never as people so when they do something which is harmful in your terms they are not doing it to anyone there's nobody there exactly as there's nobody home inside the narcissists there's nobody out there as well it's a the narcissistic existence is an existence of negation it's it's not being even even the german philosophers like heidegger didn't go that far the narcissist is a non-being not a being not an entity is a non-entity there's nothing inside him and nobody outside him so he cannot harm anyone by definition number two you're assuming that narcissists divide their actions into harmful ones and potentially beneficial benefactory ones that's that's not true narcissists weigh their options and their actions in with a single criteria does it bring does it engender and foster narcissistic supply or not if it foster supply do it if it doesn't don't do it in this sense narcissists are binary robots robots with an extremely simple programming which essentially recognizes only two outcomes in the world yes supply more supply and and that's analysis now if this has effect on other people that's where the psychopathic element of narcissism comes in if this is an effect on other people too bad for them they chose to be where they are they chose to collaborate they chose to acquiesce they chose to accept they chose to obey they chose i mean but not it doesn't feel responsible for other people's choices it's a little like asking a virus aren't you ashamed that you are killing 80 year olds in caring in care homes yeah i get it i get it um that leads me to the next question um narcissists that i have known when i look back and i look into look at photographs of the eyes sam the eyes there there is a tetanus in the eyes there is a a an incongruence between the expression on the face and in the eyes the eyes are empty does that uh does that make sense i believe that you you believe that there's no there's no research and support this my eyes are very lively and people very often comment on how you know how lively you know so i don't i don't think one can i think people i think people want to demonize in their desperate attempt to understand these non entities there is no non-human non-entities people are clutching at straws and they try to translate their tropes their their ways of perceiving the world and try to somehow project them on narcissists so i i don't hold such questions in high regard let's put it gently sam there was something else that you said recently again in one of your seminars about the the stupidity of narcissistic behavior that that it looks like on the outside that it makes no sense what narcissists do and you said that narcissists i think it was a one of your seminars is richard granan where you said that narcissists are actually they're stupid could you maybe elaborate on that or the behavior rather not intellectually but the behavior well if you're divorced from reality you're bound to make stupid choices narcissists are not only divorced from reality they don't understand people there's nothing in common with people they don't have empathy don't have emotions so they don't they are like autists they're like autistic people they they don't read social cues properly sexual cues other cues they they can't manage properly in society they can't achieve favorable outcomes they can't motivate other people to so they are failures in this sense functional failures because they don't have they don't have anything in common with the main agents of change and action which are human beings but above all i think their grandiosity and other cognitive deficits fails them for example consider grandiosity grandiosity means that you know everything you omnipotent and that you're capable of everything omnipotent and so if you are like that if you are if you're godlike no one for example can cheat you no one can deceive you no one can take anything that's yours and that's of course utter nonsense because psychopaths eat narcissists for breakfast narcissists consequently because of their grandiosity are very gullible because they assume in advance that they can that no con artists can do a number of them they are the easiest prey and so they are buffoonish very often they are they also their pomposity their you know verbosity the remnants of buffoonish so they are derided they're mocked because they are obnoxious they provoke all kinds of retail retaliatory measures by everyone around them so they are they're pitiful actually they're pathetic and and yet they believe themselves to be superior they believe themselves to be um you know the life of the party the most amazing trend and phenomenal and phenomenal around and it is this discrepancy between what they really are and what they really are is the their clowns their pathetic pitiable broken clowns and everyone sees through them they're highly transparent and they're highly manipulable all you have to do to manipulate analysis is flatter them and the more unrealistic the flattery the further you will get them yes yes and so they are they're childlike they're absolutely childlike and they're gullible and they're naive and they're stupid and they are everything you know and they are so incapable of discerning how vulnerable they are sam something else you said that i found really really interesting and i never thought of before and that is that identity involves memory and what you were saying again in one of your seminars that narcissists have no emotional connection to their memories and therefore we'll forget things very quickly like studying cramming for an exam and forgetting it a couple of weeks later i find that very very interesting sam could you elaborate on that there are two problems with memory with narcissists first of all there's no emotional correlate we know from memory studies that memories are actually shamas they are they are amalgams they're amalgams of cognitions thoughts emotions and circumstances so information about the environment where the memory had happened the context of the memory in the absence of any of these three elements if you're missing the thoughts if you're missing the emotions or if you're missing the actual data where the where the memory happened um no memory forms and this is precisely why for example when we over drink and we're in a alcoholic blackout no memory is a phone no memory is a phone because the alcohol prevents the formation of of contextual memory so you don't remember where you are what you're doing and so emotions are there cognitions are there but not the contents and uh Alzheimer in Alzheimer emotions are frequently there context is there but no cognition no thinking so also memories don't form whenever any of the three and in the case of the narcissists usually all three are missing all three i want you to understand how bad this is wow narcissists is totally discontinuous it's like the narcissist is reinvented every minute of the day totally out of whole clothe and so the narcissist doesn't have cognitions because he is dissociative narcissists suffer from dissociation memory lapses memory gaps most time and they don't remember what they have thought honestly they're not lying they simply don't remember so there's a lack of cognition don't there's no emotions no access to emotions goes without saying and very often they forget the context because they are so focused on obtaining supply that they don't pay attention to their environment a narcissist could go through a whole vacation in the most gorgeous great island and all he would remember is how a beautiful girl smiled with him but he wouldn't he would not remember the beaches or the sound of it you know so context contextual contextual data is is missing and consequently narcissists are utterly incapable of forming long-term memories even worse i would say than dimension and so what narcissists do instead they confabulate they speculate as what would i have have remembered had i been capable of remembering what would have made sense what would have been probable what would have been plausible and so they confabulate they bridge these gaps they cover up for the time lapses and they pretend to remember and then they get emotionally invested or invested at least in what they're saying the confabulation and it becomes reality for them so they are unable to distinguish the confabulations from reality because anyhow the reality testing is screwed up and so they end up living in a twilight zone not quite certain what they had invented and what was really happened and you can't imagine how destabilizing this feeling is but sam that must be terrifying i mean you forget one's entire life i mean i've had blackouts and i couldn't remember anything and that scared me but i mean this is that you forget and also forgets his entire life if you had alcoholic blackouts and you're not experienced this is the permanent state of the nausea that's the permanent state of the nausea now you know that in an alcoholic blackout you maintain full executive functions you can make decisions you talk you walk you drive a car you i mean that's why people from the outside can't tell that you have you're having a blackout and it's the same with the narcissist he walks he talks but he's in the state of blackout but his state is permanent now what do you do after you wake up from a blackout you say to yourself what on earth has happened what has happened the last thing i remember is this so probably this is what did happen you speculate or you call a friend or you call a friend you call others yeah and this is not cystic supply now now you now you understand what is not cystic supply now cystic supply is a desperate attempt to cover for the blackout by asking people please tell me about myself because i don't remember anything am i really a genius i think i am i have this vague recollection that i am but i'm not quite sure maybe i invented it a minute ago i don't know if it's a memory or if it's a piece of fiction that i've just conjured up you know so the confabulation sorry sam is a is a panic response it's a it's a panic response yes i think and that that narcissism could be conceived as an anxiety disorder or a a depressing disorder involving panic constant panic attack like being in a constant state of panic attack and of course narcissists don't experience this they don't feel it but they are should be they should behave this way you should see a narcissist for example if his grandiose it takes challenge he's not reacting like you have insulted him he's reacting like he's about to die sam are there particular qualities or traits that narcissists look for in their intimate partners are there definitions or grades of of supplier yeah supply like everything that's like like drugs exactly drugs there's high quality drugs diluted drugs mixed drugs the tank the drugs and so so there's high high quality supply low quality supply fake supply narcissists sometimes discerns when people are faking the supply and so and so forth now a low low quality high quality supply reflects the high quality of the source so if someone in the street would tell me i'm a genius it's not the same uh if the if norm chomsky calls me up and tells me i'm a genius it's the same sentence you're a genius but of course chomsky has priorities his supply is high quality high grade um so internet partner is someone who is idealized and that's precisely the reason by the way that the narcissist idealizes his partner he idealizes his partner because he needs to convert her into a high quality source so the narcissist constructs an ideal image of his partner which has very little to do with his real life partner by the way right and this i this ideal image is perfect it's a reflection of the narcissist's own false sense she she is perfect she's brilliant she's amazing she's unique she's special she's this she's that she's super sexy she's and and then by idealizing her he had converted her into a high source high level source high quality source and everything that emanates from her all the supply that comes from her is a high quality supply now how can the narcissist succeed how does he succeed to idealize it's very easy i gave you the key earlier the narcissist idealizes the snapshot not the real person all the narcissist interactions are with the snapshot he idealizes the snapshot interacts with the snapshot he obtains object constancy by keeping the snapshot constant he doesn't have abandonment anxiety because snapshots don't tend to abandon their own in less than a year and and and so snapshotting is a super critical fact function in narcissism and this is the mistake of the narcissist's intimate partners and why they are heartbroken and devastated at some point they discover that it's not been about them at all they haven't been there they've been an excuse a kind of a trigger and the not it becomes clear to them that the narcissist has been interacting with some ideal idealized image idealized figure that has nothing or little to do with them and then it makes it completely it makes it very easy for him to discard them and replace them within minutes because he has never been interacting with them sam another question hello sam you still there yeah another another question before we get on to the different types of narcissists is the the formation or the lack of formation of empathy in the narcissist in the in the formative years could you explain how that happens or how that doesn't happen i'm talking about emotional empathy well i wish i had the answer we know that there are three types of empathy and they build on each other they build upon each other there's reflexive empathy that's the kind when baby smiles at mother because my mother smiles at baby that's reflexive like a reflection and then there is cognitive empathy cognitive empathy is i see my i see someone crying as a child i see someone crying and i note the fact that she's crying but nothing happens i just know the fact and that there's emotional empathy gradually the child builds a theory of the world in a theory of mind and incorporates himself or herself into this theory a process called introspection in other words the child constructs a self by contradistinction to the world and then there is interaction with the self and the ability to put to to manipulate the self and for example to take the self and put it in someone else's shoes and these are the foundations of empathy narcissists develop have reflexive empathy that that comes with biology they have and they develop cognitive empathy and so the combination of reflexive and cognitive is what i call what i dubbed called empathy this is a never graduate to the third phase they they never develop emotional empathy the reason i think they don't develop emotional empathy is because the narcissist is terrified of his emotions within the narcissist there is a reservoir of enormous pain and hurt of not being seen of being negated of being manipulated manipulated of being abused of being vicious being invaded this is a huge pains especially if they're inflicted on the child by a godlike unconditionally loved figure like a mother and so there's this huge pain inside now i think we discussed this last time i'm not sure but it's not possible to tap or into only one sort of emotion you can't tell yourself i'm going to ignore my negative emotions i'm going to tap only into my positive emotions if you tap into your emotions everything comes up everything comes up love is bittersweet we all know this so if you if you allow yourself to love then all the pain and the hurt will will surface as well and the narcissist will be overwhelmed and die commit suicide or something so narcissists are so terrified of their emotions they bottle them up they they relegate them like the barometric protection agency they relegate this toxic waste into underground reservoirs they seal them with lead and they you know they make sure they never ever have access to to these emotions anymore unfortunately in this process of sealing off the toxic emotions they are forced also to seal off all emotions it's not that the narcissists don't have emotions narcissists actually are overwhelmed by their emotions their emotions are much stronger than other people's it's just they don't have access to their emotions as opposed to the borderline the borderline failed to do this failed to isolate her emotions so they keep overwhelming her and the result 10 percent of borderlines commit suicide so the narcissist is whether succeeds where the borderline failed had failed he had isolated and and buried his emotions irrevocably but and consequently of course is unable to develop emotional empathy so it comes with the territory that's a price of narcissistic space lack of empathy lack of love lack of positive emotions lack of positivity in life generally that's why narcissism can be easily considered as a depressive state depressive disorder and general feeling of hostility aggression defiance and so on which pushed the narcissists throughout life to the psychopathic poem i think the psychopathy i mean many narcissists end up being psychopaths i mean there are psychopaths who are born as psychopaths psychopathy is largely a brain disorder and so there are psychopaths who are born as psychopaths but i think narcissists expose repeatedly to the slings slings and arrows of fate to borrow from someone else uh ultimately end up being psychopaths anti-social and and so because it's it's simply too much and the lack of emotional empathy also happens the reality so they keep blundering they can be so they're like blind people in a dark space with no candle like a wrecking ball in a way well yes and as conscious as self-aware as a wrecking ball sam another thing that i've wondered about often is the narcissists will often especially as they get older they will have a whole trail of of wrecked marriages or you know love affairs and partners etc what effect does that have on the narcissists the sort of accumulated damage and carnage if you like and to this to this cycle it becomes a psychopath these slings and arrows of fate the wasteland that his life had become the post-apocalyptic dystopian landscape that his life inevitably becomes there's not a single narcissist who doesn't end up this way even if he's i don't know president of united states when he looks around or when he looks inside himself it's this utterly desert like wasteland with not a hint of life left and uh because he's incapable of experiencing emotions or he has no access to his emotions emotions are the main tools we use to process loss that's the main tool i mean if you lack emotions or access to emotions you are unable to process loss so the narcissist life ends up being a huge container of losses cumulative losses and the the dominant feeling the dominant emotional you are you say i'm lacking words even it's to this because it's not an emotion it's a presence it's like a demonic presence if you wish so at the end of the narcissist life there is this presence which is as tangible as anything presence of loss it's like everything coalesced and combined into what this giant loss reminds me of a neutron star or a black hole you know everything imploded and crumbled into this single point of loss but it is so omnipotent so powerful that it sucks the narcissist and every light every shred of life every shred of hope it's a hopeless in the in the most profound sense hopeless existence sure sam um okay so um now if we can have a look at the the covert versus either overt or what you say grandiose uh the cerebral versus the somatic we could look at the characteristics and yeah well um there's a lot of misinformation about covert narcissists propagated by numerous self-styled experts and so on so forth or clearly have never bothered to read the the literature covert narcissism had been first was first defined in 1989 by two scholars actor and cooper and they have created a by now classic table which describes the differences between what they called at the time arrogant or overt narcissists today we call it classic narcissism and what they called at the time the shy or covert narcissists another name for this today would be the fragile or vulnerable narcissism and so this table is still the authority and the only authority and if you want i can simply read it to you it's a bit a bit long but i think it's it's worth every minute absolutely because that would that would be the the first uh there would be among the few among the few um uh youtube videos to to to to provide accurate information about covert narcissists absolutely so they they they distinguish six domains self-concepts interpersonal relationships social adaptation ethics standards and ideas love and sexuality and cognitive style and what they had done they in 1989 mind you they made a list of these six domains in the covert narcissists versus the overt narcissists i'm simply going to read it to you nothing can compete with the accuracy and clarity of this table and i i'm just repeating again that the vast majority of videos online uh contradict this table and uh these videos are utterly wrong generally there's a phenomenon that everyone in his dog becomes an expert after after having read three three wrong articles yes yes and it's a it's a malignant what i call malignant egalitarianism everyone is an expert today because everyone is smart for and can click the right or the wrong buttons of course there's a problem of telling apart what is reliable information quality information from from trash that's a problem of discoverability but i have yet well i have come across two videos which describe covert narcissists improperly all the others and we're talking about hundreds and thousands are not are not accurate wrong actually disastrously wrong sometimes and one and i i've had and i have had a personal experience with this i in twenty five years ago i created the diagnostic category inverted narcissists i i invented it i i came up with it it's mine and i was the first to describe inverted narcissists in a very very lengthy paper most of the pages long and so to this very day i'm getting numerous messages from people who are telling me that i have no idea what is inverted narcissism that i'm very wrong about inverted narcissism that i should see that link or that link to learn about inverted narcissism not to make such mistakes in future and so on so forth it's um and i i invented the diagnosis they are writing to the person who invented the diagnosis to tell him that he has no idea what the diagnosis is no this situation there is really bad and i'm warning against it there's the ratio of trash the ratio of noise to signal is 99 to 1 and i'm being exceedingly optimistic i will read the the table and that's the only authoritative source it's not mine so i'm not touting my own it's it's actar and cooper 1989 self-concept the arrogant or overt narcissists has grandiosity preoccupation with fantasies of outstanding success undue sense of uniqueness failings of entitlement seeming self-sufficiency in contrast the covert narcissists has an inferiority complex morose self-doubt marked propensity toward feeling ashamed fragility relentless search for glory and power marked sensitivity to criticism and realistic setbacks when it comes to interpersonal relationships the overt narcissist has numerous but shallow relationships intense need for tribute from others scorn for others often masked by pseudo humility i called it false modesty in my work lack of empathy inability to genuinely participate in group activities valuing of children over spouse in family life the covert narcissist has an inability to genuinely depend on others and trust them chronic envy of others talent of other people's talents possessions and capacity for deep object relations deep love a lack of regard for generational boundaries so that's the kind of person who would insult old people and disrespect them this regard for others other people's time refusal to to respond silent treatment this communication social adaptation the overt narcissist is socially charming often successful presents consistent hard work than done mainly to seek admiration pseudo sublimation intense ambition preoccupation with appearances the covert narcissist has nagging aimlessness shallow vocational commitment dilettant attitude multiple but superficial interests chronic boredom aesthetic taste often ill-informed and imitative as far as ethics standards and ideas ideas i'm sorry the overt narcissist is correct has caricature modesty pretended contempt for money in real life idiosync idiosyncratically and unevenly moral apparent enthusiasm for social political affairs that's the classic narcissism the covert narcissist has readiness is ready to shift her values to gain favor pathological line materialistic lifestyle delinquent tendencies inordinate ethnic and moral relativism irreverence towards authority and in this sense the covert narcissist is actually psychopathic but not the overt narcissist it's an example of such a mistake online because online people say that the classic narcissist is psychopathic but the covert narcissist is not it's the covert narcissist that is psychopathic love and sexuality i'm continuing to read from the table love and sexuality the overt narcissist marital instability cold and greedy seductiveness extra marital affairs and promiscuity and inhibited sexual life the covert narcissism inability to remain in love impaired capacity for viewing the romantic partner as a separate individual with his or her own interests rights and values inability to genuinely comprehend the insist taboo occasional sexual perversions paraphernalia cognitive style the classic narcissists impressively knowledgeable decisive and opinionated often strikingly articulate egocentric perception of reality love of language fondness of shortcuts to acquisition of knowledge the covert narcissists knowledge often limited to trivia headline intelligence forgetful of details especially names impaired in the capacity for learning new skills tendency to change meanings of reality when faced with a threat to self-esteem language and speaking used for regulating his his or her self-esteem this and only this is the authoritative description of overt and covert narcissists wow anything that contradicts anything that stands in contradiction to this is wrong end of story never mind who says it including people with phd's therapies psychologists and so degrees don't guarantee knowledge many degrees come with ignorance academic degrees so be careful go to the source it's available online not such a big deal actar aka tar and cooper 1989 covert narcissism sam would you yeah i mean that's a sort of a five-eyed discussion on its own all of that but the one thing i wanted to ask you uh it's very interesting um would you say that covert narcissists are more dangerous because they're hidden you can't see it covert narcissists are what our our confluence a combination of passive aggressive and psychopathic so yes i would say that covert narcissists are far more dangerous because you don't see them coming and when they do come they act as psychopaths so we'll be we today are reconceptualizing borderline personality disorder we are reconceptualizing it as psychopathy today the bleeding edge literature discusses borderline personality disorder as secondary psychopathy in women women's secondary psychopathy similarly covert narcissism i think i think can be easily conceptualized or re-conceptualized as the confluence of narcissism frustrated narcissism collapsed narcissism with psychopathy secondary psychopathy not not primary secondary psychopathy and passive aggressiveness negativistic personality disorder and yes it's a bad combination far worse than the overt one it doesn't sound classical narcissists is easily detectable yes he cannot hide he cannot hide his grandiosities for positive for positive he is ridiculous his buffoonage is i mean you can literally tell i mean look for example at donald trump yes you it doesn't take a genius or a deglossition to realize something wrong with this guy his need for praise his hyper vigilance for against insults he sees insults everywhere something's wrong with this guy something's wrong with this cognitive processing and it's so clear however look at barack obama barack obama who is as narcissistic if not much more than donald trump stealth under the radar socially sublimates his narcissism converts it into socially acceptable modes of behavior but equally narcissistic messianicals so luckily both individuals didn't leverage the narcissism and they they took the narcissism and they channeled it in socially acceptable ways via social institutions but if you have someone like adolf hitler you know that's always the case so covert narcissism is a very very dangerous thing luckily as opposed to what most online videos say and so on covert narcissists rarely conspire and manipulate and i mean they are they are rarely busy promoting some agenda they are too shy and broken and vulnerable and fragile that they feel inferior they are too perfectionist so many many things are holding them back they're in the background they're in the background and they rarely act however when they do act they act as psychopaths do they are manipulative they're impulsive they are defiant they are disempathetic and and so and they are passive aggressive most of the time what they do is they undermine you the sabotage you they they block you they obstruct you they you know and they they constantly feel that they are discriminated against that they are subject to injustice that they're being mistreated that the talents are not recognized and and so they they constantly stew and simmer and and see if in resentment and fury and suppressed fury and rage and so and i would say that in terms of collectives we have reached a condition in the world which is similar to the 1930s where the vast majority of collectives in the world nation states and so fed essentially um like like covert narcissists the Germans in 19 in the 1930s gave rise to Nazism and Adolf Hitler precisely because they were in a covert Nazi state of mind and today Trumpism or the phenomenon of of Trump is founded on the covert narcissism of large swathes of the american population these are people who think they deserve better they got the the short end of the stink but when you if you were to investigate why do you think you deserve better what are what are what are your merits what are your talents what are your skills what's your education what do you think you deserve better well the the fact is they don't deserve better so when you divorce when you dispose from reality the test is are you divorced from reality if you are really a genius and you're being mistreated or if you are really educated and you don't get a job that's a justified grievance it's a justified grievance the grievances embedded in embedded in the american constitution are justified these were realistic grievances but if your grievances are founded on an impaired reality testing on a wrong self perception because you don't perceive reality you have a cognitive deficit that's sickness that's a pathology and yes pathologists can be pathologized this way absolutely and what and then they give rise to inverted narcissism because the relationship between the base of donald trump the voters of donald trump and donald trump is exactly like the relationship between an inverted narcissism and a classic narcissism because what the inverted narcissists does she uses the glory she bucks in the glory in the reflected glory of her classic narcissism these these bikers and blue collar workers and uneducated masses and so on all over the united states they bask in the glory of donald trump it's like his life reflects on them and i'm mentioning donald trump is an example but you have the same in the philippines and the same in brazil and the same in angary and the same everywhere there's a rise of class class of overt overt grandiose narcissists erdogan in turkey put in in russia duterte bolsonaro i mean you name it netanyahu i mean you have a class of narcissists and psychopaths who took over the world literally why because the underlying populace is a covert narcissists and their only way to obtain narcissistic supply is via the fuel via the leader we have reverted to the fuel coincide all over the world that's fascinating absolutely um sam would you say that the the covert narcissists that there is a a splitting between self-hentered and grandiosity is there sort of a shift between those two all the time inside the covert narcissists has a very negative self that's the difference of the the main difference between the covert narcissists and the overt narcissists the covert narcissists has a very negative subject a self image that is essentially depressing i'm no good i'm a zero on a failure i can get nowhere i can learn nothing i cannot study i cannot attain degrees i cannot find a job i cannot date a girl i cannot so in a dialogue constant in a ticker tape um in inside the covert narcissists is i cannot do i cannot be i cannot accomplish the in a dialogue of the overt narcissists is exactly the opposite i can do anything i want i cannot accomplish anything if i set my mind to it coaches like tony robins and jordan and people like jordan piterson they are catering to this internal narcissistic dialogue if you there's a giant inside you they tell you you had you just need to wake it up you know if you just put your mind to it there's nothing you cannot do the law of attraction the secrets you know these are all super narcissistic messages and but they cater only to overt or classic narcissists the covert narcissists would reject such messages for example covert narcissists feels very very ill at ease very bad when she receives narcissistic supply directly if you were to go to a covert narcissist and tell her you know what you're extremely talented she would be very very disconfident she would try to avoid you from that moment on but if you go to a classic narcissist and you tell her you're very very talented you become her favorite her favorite you know you may even end up having a one night stay it's it's all it takes so so the differences are um are critical if the difference between covert and overt narcissists are so fundamental and foundational that it's debatable whether the the word narcissism fits here i would i would use a word that millen used which i find much more appropriate he called these types compensatory types these are types who try to compensate for what abler called an innate inferiority complex and the way they're doing this is by creating grandiose fantasies which they are trying to realize via third parties i mentioned i think last time we spoke for our doctor in germany in the 90th century if you were a woman with zero education but you were married to a doctor everyone in the city called you foul doctor that's a perfect example of covert inverted narcissism because by herself she would have never attempted to become a doctor she would not have trusted herself to complete a degree and so on but by getting married to a to a real doctor by reflection she became a doctor and that satisfies her grandiose fantasy so um the covert narcissists landscape in a landscape is a landscape of doubt a landscape of shame a lake where a landscape of shyness a landscape of avoidance it's a it's a landscape of of recalcitrance and withdrawal from the world while the the the narcissists the classic narcissists is impelled impelled and compelled to approach the world in order to extract from the world by force if necessary narcissistic supply and same the cerebral versus versus somatic the narcissists tries to obtain supply the first question is of course what are the assets that are at my disposal which i can leverage to obtain supply so if you're an idiot with muscles you will use your muscles if you are intellectually endowed then you would use your intellect and so there are two types of narcissists the brawn and the brain there are those narcissists who use sex bodybuilding appearance looks attire they they cultivate the nurture the external appearance and they use it to obtain supply and because the only thing you can obtain with external appearance is sex there's no other thing you can really obtain with it in today's environment at least that's their supply sex so they use their external appearance to obtain casual sex partners the more the better then this is the supply and they are the somatic narcissists soma in greek yeah ancient greek means body the cerebral narcissists narcissists who are intellectually endowed to some extent of a to a very large extent and they use their intellect for precisely the same reason they they're intellectually pyrotechnic fireworks you know intellectual fireworks and that get that that garner supply for example i'm giving you an interview that's supply so their intellect they display their intellect their exhibitionistic both types are exhibition exhibitionistic they display their intellect they they bring into the into the table their brain their mind amazing mind kaleidoscopic colorful stunning synoptic mind and this this gets them supply now one thing that that people i think are very confused about there is no type constancy cerebral can become somatic and does become somatic whenever the cerebral loses a source of supply or when the cerebral is is faced or confronts a willing partner he becomes somatic want to die no problem whatsoever so if a guru or a top level intellectual were to meet a very very beautiful student who would offer him sex trust me he would become somatic that very same somatic and cerebral are modes of obtaining supply and narcissists are not picky not choosing whatever works but for the intellectual narcissists for the for the intelligent narcissists that's all what works is usually the intellect so while there's no type constancy there's type dominance recessive and dominant so the the intellectual the cerebral narcissists would emphasize this now usually cerebral narcissists don't look so good i mean they're not you know so it's difficult for them to obtain willing partners willing sexual partners and so on so they end up in most cases being celibate and they focus on their intellect because their intellect guarantees a stream of a stream of narcissistic supply and the interrupted stream so why waste the time on on try to obtain sex when failure is almost guaranteed similarly the somatic narcissists doesn't bother to develop his intellectual faculties if he has any because his muscles do the do the job pretty well it's a default state we all tend to gravitate towards what we do best and and what the intellectual does best is to talk what the cerebral does what the somatic does best is to display his body and then use it in sex so they both end up doing almost exclusively this but there is type fluidic narcissists all narcissists are both if they can manage it would the cerebral be less review the body as a as an irritation because it's the brain that is focused on that it's it's it's it's an irritation yeah not only an irritation but the source of negative narcissistic supply a hindrance i mean it's not it's it's not pleasant to be rejected by women all the time you're you're a genius you know that you're unique you know that you're this but while woman takes one look at you and goes the other way and she usually goes the other way with the somatic narcissists who is not five percent your intellect and so the body body becomes a source of frustration yeah and we have a hypothesis by dollard in 1939 dollar discovered that frustration is invariably converted to aggression so narcissists cerebral narcissists are very aggressive towards their bodies because their bodies are sources of frustration they neglect their bodies they they punish their bodies they tend to ignore their bodies they're very neglected their health is failing and so and they don't exercise they overeat because their bodies constantly frustrate them now with the with the somatic sam if there is a a lot less intelligence there then that somatic narcissists can't be cerebral because there isn't the intelligence there to support it so that would be uh that's sort of difficult to do that where's the cerebral how lucky how lucky we are that we have eight billion people because even the somatic can find women who are much more stupid than is and can be impressed by his infinite intelligence right and sam the the covert female somatic narcissists can you give us the the characteristics of of them and how they how they see their partners how they work with their intimate partners the vast majority of covert narcissists are women right so it's a bit it's a bit redundant to ask about covert female most most covert narcissists are women and most border exactly as most border lines are women the male covert narcissists is extremely rare because male are testosterone laden laden and they are they are usually extroverted extroverted they go out there they get things done and they're hundreds you know so vast majority of of classic narcissists are a male about 75 percent we think a male and vast majority of covert narcissists probably also 75 no one made a study but probably um a female and so the question is redundant I mean there's nothing to it because what I just described regarding covert narcissists is about female narcissists and in terms of the uh you said in another seminar that the the covert somatic narcissists you need to course use the partner as almost a dead object I think you said something like that the narcissists not the covert narcissists the covert narcissists would tend to be would tend to be largely asexual actually because the covert narcissist has a deep set inferiority complex she also usually has body dysmorphic disorders she she misperceives her body as too fat too ugly too old do something so she would generally avoid sex she would be either um a teaser and in this case she would have comorbid histrionic personality disorder but even if she is histrionic she would still avoid sex she would be what used to be called fridging she would she would engage in sex only when she is disinhibited so many of these women would drink on purpose in order to engage in sex they would abuse substances they would drink alcohol or smoke weed or something in order to engage in sex because otherwise they can't to give them the freedom they need to to give them to disinhibit them part of their inhibitions part of the reason they don't have sex in a normal state is that their covert narcissism inhibits them the the the feeling that they are imperfect that they're inadequate that they are repulsive that they are inhibiting them of course and so they to overcome this they drink and so then they are disinhibited they have a grandiose view of themselves there's something called alcohol myopia it's um when you drink you become grandiose and you you think you can do anything you you perceive your own attractiveness and the attractiveness of people around you very roguely it's known as beer beer goggles and so it changes things and allows the covert narcissists to have sex but normally she would be sexless or asexual it is the narcissist who regards sex as a form of competition so it's the narcissist for example who would ask who would monitor how many times his partner climax orgasm and would monitor other performance parameters or even inquire openly was they good was they good was it was as good as last time was it as good as your last boyfriend it's a scorecard he keeps a scorecard of it's a whole one big quiz quiz show or something so narcissists are competitive and ambitious and grandiose in sex in sex as well and they use the partner's body to masturbate with on and in there's no real interrelatedness or intercollectiveness but the partner is perceived as an animated dildo if the woman if it's a woman or animated sex dog with taste and smells the periphery and so they they must debate where the partner's body it's very autoerotic in other words the eroticism and this was observed first observed by Freud the eroticism of the narcissists the libido the sex drive is directed at the self not at others because object relations the ability to perceive others is interrupted in early childhood the narcissist sex drive never is never externalized it's internalized and so the narcissist needs the regards himself as the erotic object it's very common for narcissists in during the sexual act to actually look at themselves in the mirror right or or stop in the middle of the sex drive stop and have a look at their own bodies yes good afternoon thank you for calling and thank you for your for your time on this interview Sam I really appreciate it my pleasure shall we not talk about coronavirus Sam it's entirely up to you Sam I you know you're a a real pioneer in this field you've been involved in it in the last 25 years I think and you've coined a lot of the terms that we all use today narcissistic supply different types of narcissists etc that's quite accurate although narcissistic supply was not coined by me it was it's a coinage from 1938 what I did is I took quite a few terms and phrases used in other branches of psychology yes and I've adopted them to to describe narcissism and narcissistic abuse but you're right that I've coined the overwhelming vast majority of the rest of the language including narcissistic abuse ghosting hovering I mean you know like monkeys narcissistic slaves and so yeah yeah so Sam I mean I'm familiar with your material I've watched your seminars and your your broadcasts over and over and I think your insight is remarkable so I just want to say that Sam you in some of your recent seminars you you highlight the fact that when you're dealing with a narcissist that there's nobody there you keep saying that that it's an illusion could you elaborate on that yes I could shockingly do tell me though are we being recorded you sure of that yes we are yes yes we are great okay well the narcissist is a product of childhood trauma and abuse of course there are two developmental pathways to narcissism one is when the child is elevated put in a pedestal or conflated with a pedestal and is pampered and spoiled and isolated from the environment and so and so forth and therefore the parent assumes the role of a boundary it is the parent that isolates the child from reality which is a very good definition of a boundary as because the parent assumes a role of a boundary the child is not allowed cannot technically separate from the parent an individual it cannot become an individual and so when the when the child cannot become an individual he or she most often he doesn't simply it does not become an individual it does not become there's not becoming in this developmental pathway the other developmental pathway to narcissism both of them lead to narcissism the other developmental pathway is via classical forms of abuse sexual abuse physical abuse psychological and verbal abuse and so on and so forth and these also constitute of course a breaching of boundaries a breaching of emergent boundaries the child in both cases is unable to form an individual separate an entity separate from the rest of the world now in this sense and only in this highly restricted sense narcissists are actually codependence because it's the same dynamic with a codependent the codependence seeks to merge or fuse with a significant other yes the narcissist similarly has no existence in the absence of merging and fusing with outside voices the narcissist has no self actually has no self and no ego that's the irony narcissists are often called or computed with egotists they don't have an ego that's precisely the problem and because they don't have an ego in other words they don't have the regulatory agency that instructs a human being as to what is acceptable and not acceptable and what are the consequences of his actions in the world narcissists don't have this so what they have to do they have to outsource these functions they apply they supplicate they beg they coerce they cajole others to give them the kind of input and feedback which will allow them to form an opinion of themselves and of the world around them and in this sense the narcissist mind is a hive mind it's a collage it's a kaleidoscope it's a an amalgamation of thousands of inputs and feedbacks on a minute second by second basis and then there is no integration of these voices it's another problem because there is no there is no controlling self there's no controlling executive as we call it in psychology right there's no integration of these voices so they compete within the narcissist there's a constant state of dissonance which explains why the narcissist is so compulsive and so obsessive and so demanding and so unaware of other people's existence as three-dimensional beings he is so preoccupied in trying to create to generate an identity core by by kind of reconciling all these voices that he has no time for empathy or for any other outward or object related functions this is very similar to the situation in borderline personalities borderline personality disorder we have something called identity diffusion right it's when the the borderline person with borderline does not have an identity core she shifts i'm saying she because most borderlines are with her she shifts and and changes everything values opinions preferences wishes needs loved ones hated ones mechanisms such as splitting um render some people idealized in the next day or the next minute the value so there's no stability no continuity no constancy both in the inner landscape of the narcissist and in the inner landscape of borderline and of course no wonder that many borderlines are grandiose because and with this i will finish this extremely long answer because grandiosity is a way it's a it's a narrative it's a coalescing narrative it's a narrative that allows the narcissist and the borderline to interpret the world to organize the world so it's an organizing principle in this sense grandiosity is a cognitive deficit it it impacts the narcissist ability and borderline's ability to perceive reality properly it's a filter kind of and it's a model of the world it's what we call a theory of mind or a theory of the world it's a model it's a model of the world which is highly unrealistic it creates an impaired reality testing but but the narcissist needs this narrative he needs this script this unifying script because otherwise it will be it will be a hormone it's otherwise it's terrorizing because if you don't have this unifying principle if you don't have this narrative strand the world does not make sense it's meaningless it's confusing when you look at a narcissist and they seem to be a person there seems to be something there that's if you know what i'm saying but what you're saying is that there isn't a real there is no sense of identity that it's changing all the time i think that's what you're saying yes i'm saying that the narcissist is a classic shape shifter and and one of the reasons narcissists believe themselves to be the next step in the evolutionary ladder yes is because truly truly they are easily comparable to artificial intelligence to extraterrestrials to shape shifters and so on the narcissist puts on a great simulation of a human being in 1970 there was a roboticist japanese roboticist of course masahiro mori and morris mori coined the the phrase uncanny valley he suggested that as robots become more more human-like as they become more more humanoid people will feel less and less comfortable with them will feel will feel more discomfort when confronted with them yes there's a narcissist exactly this it's a humanoid a humanoid robot it's a simulation it's a it's computer simulation externalized or projected holographed or whatever and it's it's done to perfection almost to perfection there's something missing there's a kind of off-key note somewhere in the background and people feel that and they feel very uncomfortable within the presence of narcissists but they cannot say why and the reason is that as cernberg noted in 1975 he preceded me by some years cernberg cernberg suggested that at the core of narcissists and borderlines there's an emptiness avoid deep space i evolved this concept a bit and i i'm suggesting the concept of a hall of mirrors i think the narcissist is a kind of hall of mirrors which would explain the narcissist's ability to get intimate partners addicted to him the narcissist in inexorable and an amazingly potent amazingly powerful hold over intimate partners in other words it's a good explanation for for the reasons for trauma bonding with the narcissist and the hall of mirrors simply states that when you're trying to interact with the narcissist the narcissist puts up a carnival sort of hall of mirrors and then what you are what you're interacting with actually is an idealized image of yourself yeah so the narcissist idealizes you and then invites you inside invites you into his hall of mirrors and the narcissist extends this invitation by exposing for a minute he's in he's in a he's true he's true self the wounded child inside yeah no no woman can resist this no man no man too and many men and many a man yes if there are nothing so it's a call it's a it's a primordial call we all of us men and women you know we we tend to be very protective of children especially wounded tortured and traumatized children we we tend to you know afford we tend to afford sacro we tend to love them we tend to shield them so this is precisely the sequence the narcissist exposes his inner tormented tortured traumatized crying child the intimate partner gets hooked and then the narcissist withdraws this child and instead presents puts forward a ball of mirrors at that stage the intimate partner falls in love with her reflection yeah but not with her true reflection obviously with her idealized reflection and for many of the intimate partners of narcissists this is the first time in their lives that they experience self love yeah many many of these intimate partners are actually traumatized co-dependence yeah or borderline borderline women or otherwise damaged broken and wounded people and so for for the majority of the lives of these potential intimate partners they didn't expect they didn't have a chance to experience self love actually many of them are self-loathing so destructive yeah and so the narcissist for the first time allows them to fall in love with their own reflection in other words with themselves yeah now look at the irony what the narcissist does to his intimate partners is actually to convert them into narcissists because they fall in love with their own idealized reflection which is precisely which is a very good definition of the narcissistic psychodynamic the narcissist falls in love with his own idealized grandiose reflection and he does this to his intimate partners he idealizes them and then he lets them fall in love with their idealized image he infects he's contagious he's a narcissism is a pandemic hmm and the virus is the narcissist in this sense and he's contagious and he exactly like the virus viruses use the cellular mechanisms yeah to replicate i need a narcissist narcissists are doing the same they invade your mind and they use it to replicate they replicate by converting you into a narcissist and it's more wonder that there are so many comparisons online between narcissists and vampires these vampires do the same exactly they infect you by biting your neck you know so you see that's the reason for the fascination with narcissism because it taps into so many archetypes in both ancient archetypes and future futuristic archetypes science fiction archetypes and it it's it combines it's a bridge between past and future it's narcissism is a hell of a lot more than a mental healthy sort of it's a metaphor for our times it's it captures perfectly our civilization sam have you seen an exception where a narcissistic personality disorder is formed or there's with psychopathy where there has not been abuse in childhood in whatever form have you ever seen an exception to that no just to just to clarify most people make the mistake of believing that my work is autobiographical that i'm describing myself sure nothing could be further from the truth i'm the father of the feed i i was the first to discuss narcissism online in 1995 yeah and for well over 10 years i've been the only the only one the my website has been the only website and my support groups for victims of narcissistic abuse have been the only support groups so during this period and much into this very day i have amassed a database of 1736 as of yesterday people diagnosed officially with narcissistic personality disorder i then and they volunteered of course yes so i then administered to them a test of 687 questions known as the mmpi too it's a personality test that cannot be faked because it has protections in big protections fake uh wrong questions misleading questions all kinds of things like that so you can easily find out when the person is lying and so i've administered to all of them this test and i have a database which is by far the largest in the world for you to understand the biggest the biggest studies ever conducted on narcissists by twinge and camber these studies included 30 people 30 my database has 1700 people so my work is based on that and therefore therefore i can provide authoritative answers about literally any dimension of narcissism and my answers are much more authoritative than anyone else's and so i can tell you with authority there is not a single case that i've come across of a narcissist don't confuse don't confuse this with a psychopath of a narcissist that is not the out the set outcome um of of childhood abuse it's different for psychopaths psychopathy in all likelihood is actually a brain disorder we have overwhelming evidence that the physiology and the neuroscience of psychopaths is i'm saying we because i teach neuroscience and psychiatry i'm a professor neuroscience and psychiatry so i allow myself to use we so we have we have overwhelming evidence that the physiology and neuroscience of psychopath is substantially different to that of normal people so substantially different that you know you might as well say they're different species for example they don't sweat when they are when they are exposed to certain stimuli their skin conductance electrical charge in the skin remains absolutely the same regardless of circumstances um they do not have a fear reaction they are fearless not because they are courageous they simply don't have a fear yeah the activity in their amygdala the the part of the brain that regulates emotions and so on is so massively different that you might as well as i said be looking at another species so it does seem that psychopathy true psychopathy by the way because we need to differentiate true psychopathy from antisocial personalities right but it seems that a true psychopath is simply an accident of nature which is exactly what the father of the field of psychopathy clickly clickly an encartment suggested in the 1940s clickly in his famous masterpiece the mask of sanity which by the way which by the way is available for download freely online so in the mask of sanity clickly was the first to suggest that psychopathy is so alien that it must be a brain disorder and he was right he didn't say it's a brain disorder he said it's a biological biological problem and he was right sandy the other thing i wanted to and you've mentioned this in some of your recent seminars is the aspect of the of addiction with co-dependence and with narcissists i think and i'll be interested in what you have to say that co-dependence and narcissists are cut from the same cloth we just take different trajectories but what's interesting to me is that a lot of narcissists have addictions that proves that narcissists have feelings because addiction is all about changing how we feel about ourselves and the co-dependence have addictions too and what i think is is really not uh i mean for example the condition of love addiction which only came to the fore i think about 40 years ago the first 12 step group was formed for love addiction i think a lot of co-dependence don't understand the addictive dynamic between uh between the co-dependent and the narcissists so i'll be interested to hear what you think well first of all one of the functions of addiction is mood regulation that's true and no one has ever claimed to the best of no one serious has ever claimed to the best of my knowledge that narcissists don't have moods they're actually very moody and in the diagnostic and statistical manual edition five the latest edition published in 2013 um narcissism now officially includes a mood dimension so they they describe dysphoria depression as an integral part of lust so which i've been suggesting for well over 30 years i i 25 years i i absolutely think that narcissism could be amply described as a depressive disorder if you wish to do so mm-hmm so there is a mood an issue of mood dysregulation which is of course very common in mood lability is very common for example in borderlands and so that's one thing second thing it's not true that narcissists don't have emotions yeah there's no there's no such thing as a human being without emotions even psychopathic emotions the the thing is that narcissists repress their emotions they have no access to their emotions and the reason is very simple there's a lot of pain there there's a lot of hurt and they are afraid that if they touch upon their emotions they will disintegrate and become suicidal which most of them do for example in certain settings in therapy so borderlines don't have this defense mechanism there was a guy um one of one of the researchers of borderline suggested that borderline personality disorder is a failed attempt at narcissism and this is this is the source of the phrase failed narcissists people people confuse failed narcissists and collapsed narcissists a failed nurse failed narcissism is a phase in the development of borderline personality disorder a collapsed narcissist is a narcissist who failed at obtaining narcissistic supply so there's a big difference between the two at any rate the narcissist succeeds when the borderlines with borderline fails the narcissist succeeds to firewall his emotions he succeeds to isolate his emotions so that he has no further access to them and the borderline fails in doing this and because the borderline fails in doing this the borderline experiences raw powerful overwhelming emotions all the time and that's why 10% of borderlines commit suicide successfully i mean the emotions in a borderline like are like permanent tsunami they are constantly drowning in their emotions and this is precisely what the narcissist is terrified of that's why the narcissist walls off his emotions but even though the narcissist keeps his emotions obey the negative emotions are allowed to surface because they have a survival value so narcissists for example can and do get very angry that's narcissistic rage narcissists are envious and so on these are emotions obviously and to regulate these emotions as well as the mood narcissists have a high common dual diagnosis in other ways narcissists very often abuse substances for example reckless reckless driving pathological gambling shopaholic and of course walkaholic walkaholic is very prevalent among narcissists but narcissism is an addiction by definition it's an addiction to narcissistic supply and therefore the very question of whether narcissists have addictions is wrongly phrased narcissists are addicts their narcissism is their addiction this is it's an addictive personality disorder it's the ultimate in addiction yes it's the ultimate addiction because their addiction regulates their being their existence regulates their identity regulates who they are not only what they feel which is the normal addict the normal addict the alcoholic the drug abuser they regulate how they feel the narcissist uses his addictions including substance abuse and so on to regulate who he is not how he feels but who he is his identity the same goes for the for the codependent the codependent is an addict of course he is addicted to a significant other yeah the codependent is a private case of a narcissist in this sense the narcissist is dependent on hundreds of others on thousands of others on millions of others if he's a politician the the codependent is addicted to one person but it's only a matter of degree and quantity qualitatively these are both addictions that regulate internal the internal dynamics and the inner landscape of the person now the emphasis is different the narcissist's emphasis is cognitive the narcissistic supply is a cognitive supply and and the narcissist uses a form of empathy which i dubbed cold empathy which is essentially cognitive empathy as opposed as opposed to emotional empathy as opposed to full fledged empathy which is reflexive cognitive and emotional right um the narcissist uses cold empathy to scan people around him to isolate to find to ascertain who could be a source of supply and then to extract supply so the supply in this case is totally cognitive the codependent supply is emotional not cognitive and it is true that the codependents and narcissists have identical developmental trajectories they are exposed to the same triggers and stimuli in childhood they're exposed to abuse in both developmental pathways that aforementioned and they make different choices the narcissist chooses to emulate to become his abuser and the codependent chooses to merge with the abuser because the codependent believes unconsciously that merging and fusing with the abuser would allow her to control the abuse obviously if you are one with the abuser whatever is happening to you is under your control because you have the one abusing yourself from that point on and and the narcissist becomes an abuser counter abuses and in this sense narcissists are what we call counter dependence so actually we have two forces at play co-dependence and counter dependence one of the manifestations of which is narcissism and another manifestation is psychopathy so whether you become the abuser and abuser or whether you become the abuser these are the two choices you face as a child now luckily the vast majority of children the overwhelming vast majority just to be clear um survive abuse and throughout their lives they they're totally normal and healthy people it's a tiny minority a very tiny minority who adopt um unconsciously who adopt the the less healthy trajectories of narcissism and co-dependence sam are you saying that narcissism is a choice well to some extent it is obviously when you're a child it's typically narcissism evolves between the ages of four and nine obviously at this at this age you are you are not autonomous enough even objectively you're not autonomous enough to to make choices of any kind but there is one realm in which you are king even though you are four year old even though it's a four even as a four year old there's one realm which is which is totally under your control and that is your internal internal your mind yeah no one can touch your mind when you talk to torture victims victims who've been tortured in in various dictatorial authoritarian regimes they keep telling you they they touched my body they destroyed my body but they couldn't touch my free thinking my mind yes as is the same with them with the narcissist as a child the narcissist body is tortured there's there are attempts to invade his mind via psychological abuse and verbal abuse but the child's refuge sanctuary city only refuge and only shelter is within himself so the child withdraws withdraws in inwards and establishes a citadel a fortress uh impregnable and impermeable to to the outside and in order to cope with the with the demands of reality and in order to interact with other people his abusers included he creates an imaginary friend and that imaginary friend is everything the child is not the child is helpless this imaginary friend is omnipotent the child cannot predict the future because adults around him are narcissistic or unpredictable or crazy making or so the imaginary friend is omniscient knows that the child is is told consistently that he is a bad unworthy object or that he is deserving of love only conditionally the imaginary friend is perfection is a perfect being and of course immediately it springs to mind that the imaginary friend is god it's is omnipotent omniscient perfect that's god it's a good description of god spinosa would have agreed so it's a good description of god and in this sense what the child creates at age four is a religion the child comes up with a private religion where there isn't a god a godlike figure a divinity and the child worships this divinity he allows this divinity to intercede on his behalf with the outside world and with his abusers and it's a decoy all the pain all the hurt the the false self the name of this imaginary friend is a false self all the pain and the hurt reside with the false sense the false self firewalls the child the child is one step removed from all the vagaries of life from all the the torture that is entombed that is inflicted upon and so the it has a decoy function but this is this is actually also the function for example of the church it's an intermediary between us and god so it's a private religion and there's one worshiper that's a child and there's one divinity that's the false self this imaginary friend and of course like in every religion there's also human sacrifice and the human sacrifice here is the true self the child strikes a faustian deal with the false self the false self is very demonic is very devil like satanic in a way so the child strikes a faustian deal with this entity with this divine entity the child says listen i will sacrifice myself to you but you protect me you not only protect me you make me great you make me overwhelmingly great you make me infinitely great and that's these are the root causes of grandiosity so this is the deal that the this is the faustian deal the the the narcissist has to has to live with for the rest of his life because that's for that he strikes this deal with his form but it's still absolutely valid when he's 40 a deal with the devil same you said it's almost demonic well the false self is is a kind of i said it's a faustian deal you can't strike a faustian deal with with god yeah so it's the it's a faustian deal the child sacrifices his true self in other words a child sacrifices himself he sacrifices his soul to this false self this divine entity and that would mean that this divine entity is devilish it's like the devil in you know in the middle middle ages or in gasses world yeah and sam the um the i know you're doing work with uh with cold therapy i think where you're treating uh people um as narcissists as children not as adults you said that's one of the problems with traditional therapy with narcissists which makes a lot of sense but how come before your work there has not been a cure for narcissists per se i have no idea honestly seriously i mean i am shocked that no one realized that narcissism no one had realized that narcissists are actually children everyone that meets throughout the literature that narcissism is a case of arrested development yeah everyone says long before me that narcissism is a dysfunctional form of attachment which is attachment is formed in childhood not later so everyone admits um from the earliest thinking about narcissism starting with Freud in 1914-15 you know it's the earliest thinking on nasa hornai cohood i mean everyone says that narcissism is a childhood affliction and yet no one not a single theorist theoretician not a single therapist or practitioner ever thought about the simple idea that if narcissism is a case of arrested development and there is a trapped child inside we need to use child psychology yeah yeah and i i'm pretty shocked by this uh by this omission it's and i think it's telling i think it's telling because you know for very very long time child abuse was a taboo topic like you couldn't really talk about sexual sexual abuse child abuse Freud was castigated and penalized in effect for for daring to talk about the role of children and child abuse in the family in the middle class family and well until the 70s the the topic of child abuse was was taboo and then when we did finally grudgingly begrudgingly started to tackle the topic of of child abuse within a men's castle you know within within the home unit the household unit uh we did it in a very appraised and circumspect manner we we didn't really attack the problem head on and and to this very day it's a so i think that's the first reason the second reason i think um we are terrified to admit that appearances are not substance our entire society is based on signaling on signals when we see an adult we would we would feel very unsafe i mean if if i were to tell you that some adults are not adults you would feel very unsafe because you wouldn't know how to trust people who who you can trust and with what we are utterly based on signaling there is a policy there is a cognitive cognitive deficit called bias called base rate base rate deficit or base rate type uh bias we discovered in studies including very recent studies by dana reilly and others we discovered that people believe in face value 95 percent of all statements immediately uncritically without checking anything without talking to anyone immediately accept 95 percent of everything they're talking however outlandish and this is well documented it's called the base rate you can look it up and so people need to trust them to believe if we undermine the foundation of trust if we undermine the value of signaling we are undermining actually our social contract and our ability to operate in teams and cooperatives we undermine the the foundations of the success of our species so i'm actually doing exactly this by claiming that some adults are not what they seem i'm actually saying signaling sucks you cannot trust people it's perceptive it's subversive it's a subversive message because it says you can't trust what you see you are seeing an adult but it's not an adult it's the same like saying listen some people are inherently evil and malicious but you can't identify them i'm not giving you any tool to discern who is evil and malicious i'm just telling you some people are evil and malicious imagine the impact is going to heaven and we are facing this with the pandemic with covid 19 because we are being told there's something in the air that's going to kill you but we are not given tools to identify this something look at the impact this did this had look it destroyed our civilization literally so saying some people are malicious and evil some people are children but there is no way to tell who these people are is exactly like saying there's a virus in the area it's going to kill you but there's no way to tell where it is i you know saying personally um i didn't know the person i was with was a was a female covet somatic narcissist but my instinct told me to get away and that's what i did um but what i and you talk about this a lot in your seminars as well the people that i in my experience i see so few people co-dependence leaving narcissists and so few and you've said yourself and i'm going to quote you it's a big big problem what are your thoughts on that sand everything is a choice and choices reflect needs and the co-dependence remains when the narcissist she remains because the narcissist came to us to very profound needs that she has and because no one else can do it better he's the best he's the best provider he's the best practice provider and she realizes this she had tried so-called normals or neurotypical people before she had tried a psychopaths teacher and she settles on the narcissist because he does the work best the problem is that her needs are pathologized so it is wrong to focus on separating the codependent from the narcissist it's it's much better much more profitable much more appropriate to tackle the pathology the fact that her needs are pathological yeah and to try to to somehow tackle these needs um by the way this is something we do very successfully for example borderline personality disorder which is a form of codependency in the way borderline personality disorder we have an exceedingly successful therapy possibly the second most successful after cpt and that's dialectical behavior therapy dbt dbt is very successful with borderlines within one year 50 percent of borderlines lose their disorder so what is more profitable to try to separate the borderline from her much needed uh narcissists or to try to get rid of her borderline personality disorder so that she no longer needs him right right i think the emphasis is wrong because today we are focusing on on teaching um teaching intimate partners of narcissists either how to cope with them one way or another survival strategies manipulative strategies and so on or to go knock or to go no contact in other in other words how to separate from them i invented all these strategies by one the only one i did not invent was gray rock which is a wonderful strategy by the way and my only regret i should have come up with it but i did but i invented all the rest i invented mirroring i invented no contact i invented all these techniques and yet i'm saying that it is this is the wrong focus the focus should not be on the narcissist the narcissist is a symptom akin to to fever akin to temperature yes it's a fever the narcissist the fact that you have a narcissist in your life says that something is wrong with you not as a not as a value judgment not that something is wrong with you morally yeah but it means it means there's some dynamics in you some psychological dynamics in you are problematic and you need a problematic person to cater to them it's it's almost like the the the focus that i see with people who are still in narcissistic relationships the focus is all on the narcissist and i admit the same thing happened to me but now what i do is i focus on the work that i need to do on myself and i and i own that i think that's very very important because you've also said numerous times stop demonizing the the the narcissist you've said that on a number of occasions yes because uh people are converting this into a morality play you know good versus evil the devil versus god i don't know what i mean it's it's totally out of control this whole thing it's a it's a it's a defective problematic human being that you're living with and you need to work on yourself so that you don't need this person anymore in your life it's kind of like alcoholism sam that alcoholism is the tip of the iceberg at what what lies beneath that alcohol isn't really the problem it's the same sort of thing yes exactly and and i actually suggest in the new work that i'm doing i branched out i'm not dealing with other personality disorders with addiction so so i came up with a new theory of addiction which is making the rounds right now and in my new theory of addiction addiction is actually the natural state it's actually a healthy natural state it's just when addiction combines with mental health disorders that it gets out of control and hampers functioning and habits but i asked the very the very simple question which again to my utter shock no one has ever asked if addiction is an abnormal state if it's a pathological state why 42 percent of of our brain is dedicated to addiction 42 percent of all the structures and surfaces of our brain are uh dedicated to fostering to creating addiction and then to processing the outcomes of addiction why would our brain be built this way if addiction was the wrong thing for us it's the same like saying 10 percent of our brain is dedicated to thinking but thinking is pathological nature nature never nature is parsimonious never invents structures that are not necessary addiction has has multiple very crucial and very beneficial functions function functions and but when it combines with mental health disorders it becomes alcoholism or substance abuse or blood addiction or sex addiction or internet addiction we get addicted to the most unbelievable things addiction is a mode of relating relating to the world yeah to anything in the world it's not true that there is something inherent in alcohol that makes you addicted no this whole theory that alcohol is a brain disorder is here unmitigated nonsense alcohol has obviously effects on the brain but it also has an effect effects on the liver would you say it's a liver disorder of course not it's alcohol is alcoholism the use of alcohol for addiction is is simply um an environmental choice by the way when we cure the alcoholism the person gets addicted to sex when you cure the sex addiction the same person gets addicted to pornography it's cross addiction absolutely yeah yes it's it's addiction is a state of being not a particular choice of the addictive substance or circumstance or people over it what do you say sam to uh i mean you you you came up with a no contact i personally did that uh and it was quite difficult because uh i think if if a person then doesn't understand hogering for example that you think that the narcissist is coming back because he or she loves you and of course that's not the case so my choice was at the time to say absolutely no contact um what is your what are your thoughts there sam in terms of breaking off or getting free from the narcissistic relationship the other strategies the seven i invented the one i hadn't invented all of them are far inferior and honestly counterproductive far inferior to no contact no contact is the only viable healthy strategy here's how to convince yourself to go no contact if you understand and realize that the narcissist is not a malevolent vicious entity not a demon but a child simply a child yeah it will be far easier for you to go no contact because your expectations of a relationship are adult expectations even as a co-dependent your expectations are adult expectations even the co-dependent for example expects empathy and compassion and affection and comfort so you have adult expectations but if you realize that the target of your expectations is a child you would let go you would let go now some people say when i propose this this way of thinking some people say it's even more difficult to let go of a child than to let go of another well that depends if you have us if your state of mind is such that your maternal paternal instincts are misdirected to that extent you have to work on it then something is missing in your life right right for example real children maybe if you have such a need to parent it's either because you were forced to parent as a child you were parentified or because you want to parent right now as an adult and you didn't come around to it don't marry a child make one it's interesting sam because i had that experience with the narcissist i saw i saw a child there i did not see an adult i get that completely i saw that sam there was something else that you said as well in one of your again your recent interviews where you were describing narcissistic compensation as being absolutely terrifying for the narcissist i think you even made reference to one of salvatore deli's paintings could you sort of because in other words that the it's difficult for co-dependence to understand but the whole principle of that the narcissist is only interested in narcissistic supply so the narcissist doesn't see us as people they have batteries to be thrown away or toasters or computers so it's only for narcissistic supply and then when they do not have that supply that decompensation maybe you could elaborate there yeah sure well it's not necessarily that the narcissist doesn't see other people as people he says them as service providers as you would see for example in electrician you know he says them as service providers they are supposed to provide narcissistic supply the narcissistic supply is needed for the simple fact that in the absence of narcissistic supply the narcissist is blind deaf and dumb narcissists has no reality testing he has no access to reality and he has no ability to self assess to evaluate himself he needs people to tend him constantly this is who you are this is how you are these are your boundaries this is where you're what you're good at the end so on so forth and this is reality and you should not do this or you should do this he needs this constant input this input this kind of inputs are generated from the inside in healthy people by what Freud called the ego the narcissist doesn't have this so he needs this constant input from the outside not only to patrice is inflated fantastic grandiosity but simply to survive to realize what is what who is who what can and cannot be done and what would be the consequences harmful or other of his actions he needs people because he's blind he needs a guiding a guide dog and people are his are his guide dog now in the absence of narcissistic supply the narcissist is groping in the dark in a room full of razor blades so if there's a room it's full with knives and razor razor blades and he is groping in absolute pitch darkness in this room can you imagine how terrifying this is gradually all these defense mechanisms shut down they shut down because defense mechanisms rely crucially on inputs from from the environment what defense mechanisms do they process input from the environment they reframe it so that it's not ego's dystonic in other words they take inputs from the environment they change it a bit so that you feel comfortable with it and this is what the main role of defense mechanisms all of them by the way but when the narcissist because the narcissist has no access to information from the environment all these defense mechanisms shut down stop working at that point he is in direct contact with the razor blades in the knife and he is constantly cut cut again again some some of these are paper cuts some of them are very deep life-threatening cuts and this is the process of decompensation and so at some point the narcissist bolts out of this metaphoric room and that's what we call acting out the narcissist bolts out of the room by either either resorting to reckless self-endangering self-destructive acts it's kind of if I if I annihilate myself I will not be cut anymore or by destroying the room which is much more frequently what the what narcissists do so they destroy the marriages their businesses their nations if they are politicians Adolf Hitler I mean so either of these two because if you take someone like Adolf Hitler his main problem in the last two years of his room was narcissistic supply he was not as revered and as admired as before he was beginning to fail and so ultimately he gave direct instructions to his ministry minister of industry Albert Speer to destroy Germany to to simply to destroy all railways all hospitals all cities in Germany yeah to destroy this room to destroy this metaphorical room which keeps hurting him and and so on so this is this is the process the process is unimaginable to someone who is not a narcissist it feels a lot like let's say amputation by millimeter like you are being amputated millimeter by millimeter sliced like salami millimeter by millimeter and having to watch this happen and none of this can be put back together there's a feeling a feeling of doom because you the narcissist convinced when this when this is happening that the process is irreversible which is wrong by the way the minute it gets supplied everything is put is put back together this is the glue supply is the glue that holds everything together but when when it is happening it's it's harrowing and and absolutely terror I mean it's as a horrible it's a nightmare that you cannot wake up from it the same process happens with borderline personality disorder when they are rejected or abandoned when when people with borderline personality disorder are actually rejected or abandoned or they anticipate rejection and abandon they go through an identical process the process is so identical that I think abandonment and rejection is the equivalent of deficient narcissistic supply hmm so I think actually in the borderlines psychodynamic and borderline psychological landscape relationships with other people with with their so-called significant other is narcissistic supply I think that's why borderlines keep failing in their relationships because it's not a real relationship it's a narcissistic supply in the form of a human being and in this sense of course borderlines are codependence Sam the if we use the the somatic narcissist as an example if one looked at it from the outside we would say for example he or she is promiscuous but it's not about the sex is it it's about narcissistic supply yes sex is a mode of communication you can you can use sex to communicate a power matrix or power ratios so many people use sex to overpower other people and to establish a hierarchy for example in prison in prison sex is used among men to establish a hierarchy even if these men are utterly heterosexual you know rapes rape is not about sex there's not a single sexual element in rape it's all about power sexual assault is a combination of of power and and liberty freedom unbridled freedom so sex is simply a language it's a language and that's why we are perfectly capable of having sex with emotions sex without emotions and sometimes switch between the two or the same the same day so if sex is a is sex is a language we need to ask ourselves what is the somatic narcissist trying to say with sex well to him sex not the sex itself but two elements in the sex constitute narcissistic supply first of all the chase and the conquest and the second thing is the performance so somatic narcissists ironically would be very concerned with how much pleasure they are giving their partner so they would for example ask the partner how many orgasms she has had how many times she has orgasm and they keep like a ledger and they would so they are it's very ironic by the way somatic narcissists are focused on pyrotechnics the pyrotechnics of sex and in many ways sex with them is highly mechanical but but they are concerned with the effects the sex has on their partners because this is the only objective measure of success so the somatic narcissist sex is about performance and success in both in both fields conquest and actual intervals do they somatic narcissists enjoy sex then no exactly like histrionic women we have numerous studies that show that histrionic women histrionic women are the women who are up who are overly seductive overly flirtatious hyper sex hyper sex in some cases not in all cases but hyper sex in some cases they're the kind of women who steal other women's husbands you know this kind of thing so we have numerous studies that show that histrionic women are actually what used to be called frigid women they are women who absolutely abhorrent detestants they are not interested in sex at all and yet they dedicate an inordinate amount of time to their appearance to seduction to flirtation to teasing and to ultimate intervals and so both the somatic narcissist and the histrionic woman women they're both not interested in sex it has not to do with sex nor do they enjoy sex at all for example a somatic narcissist would never enjoy sex in an intimate relationship and a somatic narcissist would have erectile dysfunction or premature ejaculation with a woman who would show interest in him a woman who would who would initiate a sex because he needs to conquer it's a power element he needs he needs a success in the performance and the power so if a woman were to come to a somatic narcissist and pick him up initiate um come on to him he is very likely to perform very poorly if at all Sam do narcissists know what what they're doing and in other words before you answer you you said something again recently that really interested me you spoke about the difference between awareness and insight so an awareness for me can be i know that i'm doing something but the insight means i'm able to travel inside and say what is this thing in me so that was an interesting point that you made so do they know when they're doing these things whether they're cerebral somatics do they know what they're doing of course they know what they're doing very few of them are retards they they know what they're doing of course the distinction between awareness of self awareness more precisely and uh an insight is not mine it's Freud's Freud said that it's not enough to know what you're doing if you want to affect change you need an emotional reaction to what you're doing right for example if you if you're doing something and then you feel that it's wrong your conscience your super ego in in Freud's sense you know it's wrong then you're not likely to do it again so it affected change the emotion attached to your action affected change and that's that's the insight right insight also has to do with understanding yourself who you are your identity your inner processes and so now narcissists are fully aware of what they're doing they are fully aware of the distinction between right and wrong that's the reason narcissism is not accepted with exception of one case narcissism has never been accepted as a mitigating defense in in case of crimes so it's not a not guilty by reason of insanity defense because narcissists know full well what's the difference between right and wrong they know what that's what they are doing is wrong they just don't care they're not empathic so they don't they don't grasp intuitively or otherwise not even cognitively the effect that the actions have on others and and they're proud they're proud of the disorder they consider the disorder they think that disorder makes them unique they think that the the narcissism is a next step in the evolutionary ladder and so they are the superior race they are they're you know all others are like it's like they are the chroma neons and all other people on the other side so they're very proud of it now i can prove to you that narcissism is a choice or more precisely narcissistic traits and behaviors are actually choices cognitive choices i can prove it easily if you go to jail and you're a narcissist your behavior will change dramatically right for example no narcissist in his right mind would be grandiose in jail because he won't survive alone so when you see when you see narcissists in prison their behavior is conformist socially acceptable empathic compassionate understanding etc etc etc they need to coexist and survive with very very dangerous people so suddenly they're not narcissists anymore the fear instilled by prison renders narcissists suddenly totally normal how come if there is a constitutional problem for instance if you have tuberculosis you're unlikely to lose it if you travel to another country you're if you have tuberculosis you have to understand if it's a clinical entity in other words if it's a disease you're not likely to lose it in prison or in the army or in the hospital and so on but it's a fact that when narcissists change environment for example they're in the army or they're in prison they especially in prison because the army is a more regulated kind of food but in prison definitely narcissists lose their narcissism locks talking about no trace of it is left because of the external threat it shows me it's a learned acquired behavior that is totally under the control and choice of the narcissist let's use the example of alcoholism where alcoholics get sober they stay sober for a long time and they do that solely because they don't want to feel the way they did when they were drinking it's a horrible life so they made the choice to get sober so surely the the life the inner landscape the life of the narcissist must be full of terror and shame and so my question is why would at least one of them or two of them say I don't want to be like this anymore I want to change I'm not sure where you get your statistics from narcissism is a positive adaptation in other words it helps the narcissist to obtain favorable outcomes in the world we live in a narcissistic civilization it pays to be a narcissist actually new scientist which is a very respected academic magazine of science had a cover story in july 2016 parents teach your children to be narcissists so narcissism is becoming the bottom narcissists in the white house undoubtedly many narcissists are you know political leaders in many countries narcissists are in show business in law enforcement in the media I mean you name it yeah narcissism is a positive adaptation very few narcissists are goody stomachs so very few of them feel shame as you have said and if they do feel shame likely they're not narcissists but borderlines um so very few narcissists have an incentive to change for example imagine that by some quark of fate I was invited to be the psychotherapist of Donald Trump what on earth what on earth could I say to Donald Trump don't be a narcissist why he's president of the United States he's about the billionaire he's a reality TV star why not to be a narcissist right it's it's a strategy that works for him he has no incentive to not be a narcissist and the more we I mean our current civilization with its social media with its uh with its incentive structure rewards with its exposure which I mean it narcissism is built into our technology our very technologies narcissists beginning to infiltrate our language narcissists is everywhere narcissists is an organizing principle of modern spectacle civilization in 1968 there was a guy called Gidebo Gidebo wrote a book a stunning fascinating but very difficult to read book um society of the spectacle and he said that emphasis will be put on on spectacles on on appearances on on games you know famous for being famous yeah and it's a prescient prediction another famous book in 1974 Christopher Latch wrote the book the culture of narcissism every I mean people saw it coming even much much before that a hundred years ago there was a guy called Emil Ducal in Vienna sociology and and he wrote a book about suicide and another book about what he called anubis and he predicted the rise of narcissism and of course Ziegman Freud himself wrote an essay 1914-15 linking narcissism to some societal phenomena it's we all saw it coming today we would be doing young people at this service if we disabled the narcissism but then sam it it begs the question in a landscape I mean are narcissists happy are they content are they of course fast majority of them are very happy give me one reason why well when they don't have narcissistic supply when when they don't have narcissistic supply when they hit rock bottom they come to me for cold therapy of course but this is a tiny negligible invisible minority the overwhelming majority are very adept at manipulating and leveraging and using other people institutions subverting protocols and rules and laws especially the ones who are crossovers from narcissism to psychopathy psychopathic narcissists so what what Kerrberg used to call malignant narcissism and so narcissists have very little incentive or reason to feel bad ashamed deprived and so the subgroup of narcissists passive aggressive narcissism they they feel you know there is another group called covert narcissists and covert narcissists are simply in effect collapse narcissists these are narcissists who cannot obtain supply because their personality structure is such they are shy vulnerable fragile avoidance in a way yes so these subgroups which are very small subgroups they but they're not but you know what they're not really narcissists the covert narcissists is a kind of a cross between passive aggressive and narcissists inverted narcissists which is clinical diagnosis are invented inverted narcissists across between codependent narcissists these are the hybrids and they are very tiny minority the overwhelming vast majority of overt narcissists classical narcissists are utterly happy with their lives and the more time passes and the more our civilization changes the more happy they are because they are truly far better adapted to the world of instagram and the world of donald trump and you know what into the world of covet 19 than all the rest of the healthy but so-called healthy normal population is and the covert narcissists you say they are not a real no complete narcissist i didn't quite understand that the current narcissists is a cross between passive aggressive personality disorder negativistic negativistic personality disorder and a narcissist yes it's a full-fledged narcissist but because it's a it's a collapsed narcissist the narcissist which who cannot obtain supply owing to his personality structure right then he resorts to passive aggressive measures of obtaining supply via third parties or by sabotaging and undermining people and so we have for example on a societal level we have a whole community of such people they are called insults involuntary elements these are men who fail to obtain dates and obviously fail to have sex and so they blame this on themselves they are passive aggressive but they blame themselves they say that they are ugly they are misfits and so but they are also furious at women for not giving them sex so you have there you have a kind of a petri dish of covert narcissists narcissists who fail in obtaining supply they are somatic narcissists they failed in obtaining supply and so they exercise passive aggression to cope with this why are covert narcissists somatic same no these are somatic covert narcissists somatic cover oh i see yes yes i understand they're not cerebral you can be somatic covert narcissists cerebral covert narcissists yeah and then just a last question because i see we we over an hour but you've mentioned about reclassifying narcissism as a dissociative disorder rather than a personality disorder same could you elaborate on that actually that's half the equation i suggested that narcissism is actually multi-personality disorder as well but a post traumatic condition obviously when we have a trauma and there are changes in personality we immediately classify them as post traumatic changes so these would be post traumatic conditions but the post trauma in this case yielded extreme dissociation and we have a precedent for that in the 60s we had something called multiple personality disorder it was a diagnosis multiple personality disorder which today is called dissociative identity disorder it's when a person is exposed to extreme usually sexual abuse that person fractures and generates a whole group of personalities and these are called altars alternative personalities and they congregate around the central personality called the host and i'm suggesting that narcissism is exactly a private case of multiple personality i think what happened the narcissist as a child had been exposed to so much trauma and abuse that he couldn't take it anymore so what happened his personality as a child broke in half there were two halves one half one half was projected outside and that's the false self and one half remained inside and that is true self so every narcissist by definition has two personalities everyone agrees with that it's not me and everyone is saying this but what i don't understand if everyone is saying this why not say that narcissism is a case of multiple personality i mean by definition he has two personalities not one so i think if we begin to look at narcissism from three angles one it's a childhood psychology problem two it's a post traumatic disorder three it's a case of multiple personality we this is a very hopeful message why we don't know how to treat narcissistic personality disorder but we have perfect tools with a huge success rate in dealing with childhood disorders trauma related disorders and multiple personalities so we have tools to cope with this we know how to treat these disorders so if we just shift the way we look at narcissism if we put all these tools together we get cold therapy which is exactly what you gosh sam well it's this has really been um absolutely fascinating and informative uh and i thank you really really thank you for your for your time sam thank you for everything and uh i hope you have a good afternoon further you too thank you sam thank you thank you okay bye bye