 My name is Sam Vaknin, I'm the author of this book, Among Others, Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism, Revisited. I've written several books about the topic and this was my first one published 20 years ago, 18 to be precise, 18 years ago, Malignan Self-Love, Narcissism, Revisited. So I'm kind of the granddaddy of the field, so to speak. Malignan Self-Love started as a series of correspondences with mainly victims of narcissistic abuse but also with some narcissists and therapists working with narcissists who found themselves utterly befuddled and bemused by the condition. And so this correspondence was going on for two years and then I discovered patterns in the correspondence. I discovered that there were frequently asked questions. So I collected these questions together and I opened a website in 1997 and then people put pressure and asked for the website to be published as a book. These were the olden times and people still prefer to read physical books. So there was the first edition of Malignan Self-Love published in Prague in 1999. And it was an amalgamation and a collection of the concerns, hopes, fears of people who lived with narcissists, worked with narcissists and suffered the inevitable abuse at the hands of narcissists. My book is a user's manual for the narcissist. When one buys a new computer, one usually refers to the user's manual or the computer is rendered unusable. It's the same with the narcissist. When one gets married to a narcissist, when one starts to work with a narcissist, when one is employed by a narcissist, when one's clergyman is a narcissist, when one's in law enforcement, in the courts, in show business, in politics, etc. Narcissism is an all pervasive phenomenon which permeates literally every major profession and every major field of life. So there's narcissism in the family, narcissism in the workplace, narcissism in religion, narcissism in politics, etc. So this is a user's manual simply. It describes, it dissects and then describes the narcissist's psyche. What makes him tick? Which psychodynamic processes take place? How they interact with each other? How do they fit upon each other? The narcissist's unusual, peculiar, idiosyncratic and very baffling reactions, including for example narcissistic rage or devaluation or idealization, these are things so outside the sphere of common experiences that one might as well be interacting or working with or living with an alien, an extraterrestrial being or a form of artificial intelligence. In the absence of such a manual it is impossible to decipher, decrypt the narcissist. It's impossible to predict the narcissist's next moves. It's impossible to shield oneself emotionally from the hurt and pain and agony that narcissists inflict on people. So my book is simply a shield. It's kind of like in Star Wars. It's a shield because narcissists keep pelting people with all forms of maltreatment and so on. This book is your protective wall, your firewall against the narcissist. Every human being has healthy narcissism. Healthy narcissism is a phase, usually in early childhood and then there's a second phase in adolescence, where one usually forms one's identity and then acquires a modicum of self-esteem and self-confidence, which if realistic constitute a sense of self-worth. So one becomes aware of one's limitations, one's realistic talents and skills, one's abilities and disabilities, one's failings and one's advantages. And this put together, this is the edifice of healthy narcissism. Obviously in the absence of healthy narcissism, people develop other forms of pathologies, for example dependence or codependence. So healthy narcissism is critical. It is when healthy narcissism spins out of control, when it acquires a malignant form, when it remains pure, or even infantile, when it is commingled with primitive defence mechanisms, when it impacts one's ability to assess reality properly, in other words what we call a failed reality test, when it generates and fosters and engenders cognitive distortions and cognitive biases and cognitive failures, when it leads to the suppression of emotions and inaccessibility of emotions, when it gives rise to extremely negative and destructive and then self-destructive emotions such as pathological envy and hatred. When all these are put together, then we have pathological narcissism. Pathological narcissism is not an extreme or radical form of healthy narcissism. It is an absolutely different clinical entity. It is so different to healthy narcissism that one would do well to think of it as an entirely different psychodynamic phenomenon. And this is why we need books like Malignant Self-Love and others which describe this phenomenon because it's really, really, as I said, so outside common human experience. I was literally the first to start with the field but there's still, of course, a enormous amount of work to be done and I think knowledge of pathological narcissism, narcissism in general, healthy narcissism and the various manifestations and phases of narcissism is still in its infancy and additionally there is very strong resistance to studying narcissism. There is resistance among mental health professionals, many of whom are narcissists. There is resistance in the media and show business where narcissism prevails. There is resistance among politicians, many of whom again are narcissists and therefore there is a problem with budgets, research budgets and so on which are determined ultimately by politicians and so on and so forth. Narcissists hold many positions of power. Narcissists hold the levers of power and they hold the purse strings. So it's an uphill battle to study narcissism against well-established constituencies of narcissists in extremely well-positioned nexus. Yes, Mr. Trump is an example of a narcissist who made it. The more successful narcissists are, the more they become role models. I mean why wouldn't you want to be Donald Trump? He has the girl, he has the jet, he has the presidency, he has property, he has the billions, he has media exposure. Give me one good reason not to be Donald Trump. Indeed, last year the National Academy of Sciences of Science in the United States in its magazine, The New Scientist, published a cover story calling upon parents to teach their children to be narcissists. I'm kidding you not, because narcissism is an adaptation. As civilization, especially western civilization, becomes more and more narcissistic, as narcissistic values, behaviors and traits are rewarded, the incentive not to be a narcissist declines and the incentive to be a narcissist increases. So modern society incentivizes people to be narcissists. Narcissism is a clinical entity, so one can have narcissistic behaviors and display narcissistic traits and not be a narcissist. But as more and more people behave narcissistically, as they lack empathy, as they become more ruthless and ambitious, as they trample upon others, as they engage in ostentatious consumption, as they emphasize materialistic values over spiritual ones, and so on and so forth. As this phenomena proliferates and take over modern discourse and modern society, then obviously more and more people, especially among the young, will tend to regard narcissism as a legitimate form of conduct, and actually as a currency, a social currency, and a great adaptation. And the horrifying thing is, they would be right to think so. There have been quite a few studies recently by the likes of Twange, Campbell and others that have demonstrated that narcissism is increasing among college students and so on. Although now Twange and Campbell are reversing their position. I wonder why, but it seems that narcissism is increasing. And not only increasing, but as I said, being legitimized. For example, we recently have studies of so-called high functioning narcissists. We have studies of productive narcissists. So narcissism is being, pathological narcissism is being attached to very positive adjectives, high functioning, productive contributing narcissists and so on. So are we about to be taken over by narcissists? I think yes. I think we will end up being led by narcissists, dictated to by narcissists. The benton will be narcissistic. Materialistic values are already prevalent, where they never existed before. Russia is an example. And empathy is, I think, not only on the decline, but it's becoming an extinct commodity. Because it's not working. Empathy is not working. Empathy consumes energy, consumes resources. To be empathic, one needs to invest. One needs to reallocate scarce resources. And what does one get for that? Knife in the back in the best case. So empathy loses its appeal as an adaptive strategy. It's all about survival, all about adaptation, all about the next generation. And in the world as harsh and merciless as ours has become, empathy is a very bad strategy. And narcissism is fast becoming an excellent strategy. I think we are putting the cart before the proverbial horse. I think technology reflects prevailing mores and social developments. I think narcissism was on the rise and technology only catered to this need. People wanted selfies, so they got selfies. It's not that technology made them take selfies, but they wanted a technology which would enable them to take selfies, which would empower them, which would allow them to publish texts inane and less inane, which would let them broadcast or narrowcast, which would buttress their ego and so on. So I think technology is one step behind, actually. I don't think it creates this social phenomenon. I think it reflects them. And then, of course, enhances them to good effect, good commercial and profitable effect. But who are the people who created the technology? Have a look, have a specific look at, for example, Stephen Jones. I mean a prime, probably sociopathic, narcissist. So narcissists use technology to enhance or amplify the narcissism, which in turn allows them to create additional technologies to amplify the narcissism and so on and so forth. So it's a feedback loop. Technology is not an instrument that, in my view at least, it's not an instrument that alters the fundamentals of society, but it's an instrument that kind of cements these fundamentals and renders them socially acceptable, renders them widespread. And I think social media has done exactly this. I was formally diagnosed twice, once in the 80s and once in the 90s by two psychologists, diagnosticians. So I'm pretty certain that I have it. I was never officially diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, which is the closest approximation to psychopathy that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual has. Though I did participate in a documentary about me and my brain that implied that I might have psychopathy. Still, I have been diagnosed officially with narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissistic personality disorder, the prevailing thinking, the thinking right now is that it's the outcome of environment rather than, I mean, nurture rather than nature. It is supposed to be the outcome of abuse in early childhood. There are many forms of abuse. Abuse is any situation where the child's emergent boundaries, where the child's emergent identity, when they are threatened by the parents or other caregivers or even role models or in extreme cases peers. So when we say that boundaries and emergent identity are threatened, that enlarges the scope of abuse much more than most people think. So if you ask people on the street what is abuse, they would say, well, physical abuse, sexual abuse. And that is all true. Because physical abuse, beating, sexual abuse do threaten the boundaries of the child and hamper the child's ability to create a coherent functioning identity. That's all very true. But also spoiling the child, pampering the child, placing the child on a pedestal, treating the child as an extension of the parent, forcing the child to fulfill the parent's frustrated ambitions and frustrated wishes. All these, idolizing the child, all these also constitute a breach of boundaries. They also constitute an interference, gross interference in the child's forming identity. So they are also forms of abuse actually. So narcissistic personality disorder could be the outcome of classical abuse, as I mentioned, physical, sexual, verbal, psychological, emotional. But it can also be the outcome of what is never considered to be a form of abuse, such as idolizing, pampering, spoiling, and so on, which are actually forms of abuse. In my case, I have been subjected to 16 years of life-threatening physical abuse, psychological, in addition to psychological and verbal abuse on a regular basis, hundreds of times a day. And in very critical formative years, between the ages of more or less 4 and 20, it culminated at the age of 16, but it was 16 years of unmitigated, uninterrupted, extreme life-threatening abuse. And so this led, I believe, to the formation of a defense, and this defense is what we call the false self. The false self is the child's sanctuary and refuge on the one hand, and on the other hand it's the child's God. Pathological narcissism is a form of private religion, where the child sacrifices his true self to, on the altar, and to a God, and that God, or that divinity, is the false self. The false self is everything that the child is not. The child is helpless. The false self is omnipotent. The child cannot predict the future and doesn't know many things. The false self is infallible and omniscient. The child is hurting and in pain, owing to the consistent abuse. The false self is emotionless, invulnerable, impermeable, impenetrable. So the false self is everything the child is not. And therefore, if you put all these attributes together, the false self is God, in effect. And pathological narcissism, as I said, is a private religion. Because it is a private religion, it is so hard, so difficult to eradicate. It calls upon techniques borrowed from cults, debriefing former members of cults. Because pathological narcissism is a one-member cult. And what the narcissist tries to do is impose his private religion upon other people around him. So when you live with a narcissist in a family, when you work with a narcissist and so on, narcissist tries to convert you to his religion. He tries to convince you that his false self is not false at all. That he is indeed brilliant and perfect and omniscient and omnipotent. And that you should worship that false self, that grandiose and inflated false self, as he does. The narcissist needs people around him to tell him that his false self is not false but true, and that his fantasies are not fantasies but realities. Because otherwise he will disintegrate. If one realizes that one has been living a lie, one disintegrates. So the narcissist becomes very compulsive and if not catered to, very aggressive in pursuing what I call narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is this fuel that the false self consumes. This deluge or avalanche of attention, admiration, adulation, applause, affirmation, or in the absence of these being hated and being feared, but being noticed one way or the other. All this is needed to sustain the narcissist's house of cards. This impossible narrative, this piece of fiction, this concoction and confabulation, that is actually the narcissist. Don't forget that the narcissist dies at the age of five or six. There is this frozen true self, a baby or a child or a toddler crying at the corner in enormous pain, unable to reach out, isolated and essentially out of growth, never growing. There is this core, but this core is tiny and around this core there is an enormous void. So there is no one there. The narcissist does not exist in any sense of this world. There's no one there. It's a giant void and instead of having an internal mental, emotional skeleton, the narcissist has an exoskeleton. He has an external skeleton. That external skeleton, that scaffolding is the false self. If it were to be removed, because there's only a void left, the narcissist will vanish. The narcissist perceives any attack, any challenge to his grandiosity, any attack on his fantasies, any intrusion by reality, any countervailing statement, any disagreement, any criticism. He perceives them as life-threatening. That's why the disproportionate reactions of narcissists. That's why you have narcissistic rage. That's why you have an enormous aggression, culminating in violence very often. Because a narcissist is fighting for his life, even with the most mild type of comment or is fighting for his life. Because if there's a crack, even the tiniest crack, it will spread. And once it spreads, the whole edifice will crumble and narcissists cannot afford it. That's why narcissists are hyper-vigilant. Hyper-vigilance means that they scan their environment all the time. Am I being challenged? Am I being insulted? Am I being humiliated? Humiliated? Am I being ignored? This constant scanning, which I describe as cold empathy. It is a form of empathy because they need to evaluate other people, read them correctly, predict their behavior and so on. But it lacks any emotional resonance or component. You see, it all coalesces. Every psychodynamic aspect and process in the narcissist is geared towards supporting this utterly implausible, improbable and very often comic creation, the false self. Narcissists are concerned. Narcissists are optimizing devices. They are concerned with one thing and one thing only, and that is narcissistic supply. They are out looking for attention, admiration, adulation, etc., etc., as I've mentioned. They need this narcissistic supply to support the foundations of the false self, and so that's the only thing that concerns them. They might very well be described as drug addicts, and their drug is narcissistic supply. Someone who is addicted to heroin is not concerned with anything else, not with morality, not with ethics, not with his work, not with his family. Nothing matters or concerns him. He is preoccupied with obtaining the next dose, and so is the narcissist. So narcissism and narcissists are about narcissistic supply. Now, if you can provide the narcissist with narcissistic supply, the narcissist will attach to you, will form attachments. And this attachment goes through a cycle, and the cycle starts with something called idealization. So when the narcissist spots another person who can provide him with a, who can become a stable, reliable, predictable source of narcissistic supply, the narcissist starts to idealize that person. He starts to attribute to that person. Personal traits and even a personal history, which have very little to do with a person. The narcissist needs to idealize the person for two reasons. One, if the supply comes with an ideal figure, it is a much higher quality supply. So a compliment that comes from a stupid person is less valuable than a compliment that comes from a genius. So narcissists would tend to think of his sources as geniuses, because then the compliments they give him are more worthwhile, they're more high quality. And the second reason to idealize is that when the narcissist idealizes, he takes a snapshot, a snapshot of that person, and then he internalizes this snapshot. And he interacts with this snapshot, not with the real person. From that moment on, there is an internalized object with which the narcissist works, talks to, fights with and so on and so forth. And that object has very little in common with the trigger, with the real person, who then is relegated to the position of an echo or a trigger. So narcissists need to idealize. They idealize you as a source of supply, and then as long as you continue to provide supply, you will be idealized. The minute you cease to be a source of supply by, for example, disagreeing with the narcissist or criticizing him, or even giving him advice, which implies that he is not all knowing, or obstructing him in any way, or resisting him, the minute you stop being an ideal source of supply, the narcissist will devalue you, and will think of you exactly the opposite, the opposite he had thought of you during the idealization phase. So if during the idealization phase you were a genius, during the devaluation phase you were an idiot. If during the idealization phase he thought of you as very handsome, or during the devaluation phase he will think of you as repulsive, repugnant and ugly and so on. And he will not see any contradiction between the statements he has made during the idealization phase and the statements he is making during the devaluation phase. And so this is the typical cycle, and the concern and the focus and the urge and the addiction and the drive and everything, everything focuses on narcissistic supply. Therefore, it is a myth, and it's completely wrong to believe that narcissists target specific personalities or specific types of people. They don't. They target anyone who can give them supply, period. The people who can give them supply could be educated or not educated, rich or poor, strong or weak, codependent or utterly autonomous and independent. The only relevant question is, can I derive or extract supply from that person? Therefore, narcissists do not love, in any sense of the word. They get attached to sources of supply. The same way that hostages get attached to kidnappers and drug addicts get attached to pushers. They get attached to the source of pleasure, to the source of endorphins, to the source of this feeling of wholeness and contentedness and grandiosity and fantasy. And as long as you provide this drug, they are attached to you, and they are even I would say dependent on you as a source. And the minute you don't provide the supply, they stop. So there's no love there, in any sense of the word. Only 1% of the general population is believed to be malignant narcissists, and only 5% of the population of patients, inpatients and outpatients are diagnosed with narcissistic personalities. Pathological narcissism is a very rare reaction. It's not a common reaction to abuse. Indeed, in the same family you could have 5 children and only one of them would become narcissists, although all 5 were exposed to the same kind of maltreatment and abuse and debasement and so on. So this gives ground to believe that perhaps there is some genetic template or genetic predisposition or propensity to develop narcissism. Otherwise it would be difficult to explain why all children exposed to the same environment and treatment do not develop narcissism. Moreover, children essentially have 3 choices when exposed to abuse. They can remain normal by isolating themselves completely from the parent and by creating a kind of firewall behind which they continue to evolve and develop healthily. For example, by finding alternative figures in their lives, which could provide them with empathy, love, caring. So you will hear very often such children say, well, my real mother was my grandmother as they found an alternative figure. So this is one strategy. Second strategy is to become narcissistic. So the child reacts by developing the false self. The false self protects and defends the child by fending off pain and by rendering the child godlike. So that's another strategy. And the third strategy is essentially what is known as the Stockholm syndrome or trauma bonding, where the child becomes an extension of the parent, satisfies the parent, caters to the parent's needs, sometimes acts as the parent's parent and so on and so forth and becomes dependent on the parent for a variety of functions, mental and emotional functions. And these people become codependence much later. But the distinction is a bit blurred because narcissists are also codependent. For example, narcissists heavily depend on the sources of supply. And when they are abandoned by these sources, they break down. So they have severe abandonment anxiety, exactly like codependence. Codependence also have abandonment anxiety. And to some extent they are narcissistic. They use their own weakness and their own neediness and their own clinginess to manipulate. They emotionally blackmail and so on. So these are narcissistic behaviors. So the line between codependent and narcissists is a bit fuzzy, although clearly they are distinct clinical entities and they can never be confused. Still both have elements of the other. And I think the reason is that the environment was the same. The environment that creates these three types of solution is the same. There is a common misconception about narcissists. They tend to be demonized and they tend to be thought of as evil. Narcissists are not evil. You can't be evil if you don't care about people. You can't be evil if you don't perceive people as full-fledged three-dimensional entities. But you perceive them as cardboard cutouts or as internal objects. You can't really be evil. Evil implies intent. Evil implies premeditation. Evil implies that you care about the responses of your victims. These responses gratify you or like in sadism. Sadists are evil because the pain of the victims gratifies them, gives them pleasure. But narcissists are none of the above. Narcists don't care. They are utterly indifferent. They are more akin to viruses or predators, natural predators. They abuse because they don't seek, they don't derive pleasure from abusing other people. They don't derive any satisfaction or gratification from the reactions of their victims. They don't pursue evil or malevolent strategies because they lead somewhere, because they lead to any emotionally. They simply do what they do. It so happens that what they do is very painful to people around them. It so happens that what they do can damage people around them, compromise their interests, affect their health, ruin their psychological well-being. I mean, it so happens. But it so happens. It's a by-product. Perhaps this is the most horrifying thing about narcissists because you see psychopaths, for example. You can understand psychopaths because every one of us is a mini-psychopath. You can understand psychopaths. They want money. They want sex. They want power. Only they want it so badly that they will literally kill for it. So okay, psychopaths are exaggerated versions of ourselves. We have something in common with psychopaths. We all want money. We all want sex. We all want power. We can understand them. We think that their methods are reprehensible and socially unacceptable. But we still understand them. But how can you understand a narcissist? No one has anything in common with a narcissist because narcissists would do the same as a psychopath. They would kill, abuse, extort, threaten and everything. But they would do it utterly off-handedly, utterly indifferently. Utterly like you are not there. Like you don't exist at all. Like you are a speck of dust that has to be brushed off. And I think this is far more terrifying than the most terrifying psychopath. Because I can understand the most terrifying psychopath. He comes here. He says, I want your money or I'll kill you. I understand that. It's human. Psychopaths are human. Exaggerated humans. Narcissists are not human. They are not human. The lack of empathy is so deep that their inability to perceive other people as people is so extreme that, as I keep saying, they are different species. They are predators in the true sense of the word because they consume other people, devour them, reduce them to riding shells off like absent-mindedly. As some kind of effluence, some kind of by-product of an industrial process. And that is utterly terrifying, in my view. The strategy I recommended 20 years ago was no-contact. No-contact means that if you can at all, then you should immediately sever all relationships, all interactions with Narcissists and just walk away. If it is at all possible. Obviously if you have children with Narcissists, for example. Or if you are dependent on Narcissists for your livelihood and there is no alternative. Obviously you have to be in touch with Narcissists. So no-contact is often misinterpreted and people say, well, I can't go no-contact because I have children with him. That's not the meaning of no-contact. No-contact means that you minimize contact and you render all contact impersonal. You refuse and reject all personal aspects, dimensions and hues of any type of interaction with the Narcissists. So if you have to talk to the Narcissists, you do so via a lawyer or an accountant. If you receive gifts, you return them unopened. If he calls you and begins to talk about your personal life, you turn him down. So it's taking the personal out of the interaction, rendering the interaction or the interface utterly neutral and objective. That's the meaning of no-contact. And of course, in extreme cases, if you can move physically away and never ever see the Narcissist again or talk to him, that's the ideal. And people tell me, okay, but I can't do this with my mother. Why? Why can't you do this with your mother? I can't do this with my adult son. Yes, he's a Narcissist. He abuses me. My mother abuses me. My sister abuses me. But they're family. I can't do that. Why? These strategies apply to all Narcissists, regardless of their biological position in your life or genetic position. But people have these misconceptions that some Narcissists are privileged just by virtue of being a mother or a sister or a husband or a child. No Narcissist is privileged. If the person is really a Narcissist, and that's also an open question, because currently everyone diagnoses everyone as a Narcissist. But if a person really is a Narcissist, the only way is to walk away. If you want to manipulate a Narcissist, the only way is to either withhold or provide Narcissistic supply. It's very simple. Narcissists are cowards, usually, so they can be frightened away. But again, these strategies are not to be in touch and to depersonalize all interactions. If you insist on being in touch and remaining on personal terms with a Narcissist, then your only viable strategy is via the manipulation of Narcissistic supply. It's the only viable strategy. There are other strategies. For example, there's a strategy called collusion. Collusion is to collaborate with a Narcissist in attacking a third party. So kind of diverting the Narcissist's wrath and rage and everything towards the third party, which you can both together attack or hold in contempt or disdain. Then there is a strategy of being submissive, simply saying yes to everything, giving praise, providing Narcissistic supply on a regular basis, like compliments. That's also another strategy, but ultimately it boils down to withholding or providing Narcissistic supply. No contact is the best approach for the victim. It's the way to win the back. Of course, the majority of Narcissists actually do come back. This is a process called hoovering or reacquisition. It's like the Italian mafia, Italian mob. Once in, you're never out. So once you're in a Narcissist's life, once you are on his index, Rolodex card, you're never out. You're always subject to attempts to reacquire you as a source of supply. You need to be truly no contact, go no contact for a long period of time, or be seriously aggressive for the Narcissist to walk away. Otherwise, he will keep attempting to reintroduce you into his life as a source of supply. He will keep probing, he'll keep testing, and literally no end to this. There's no expiry date or statute of limitation. Narcissists have only the cognitive component. In other words, they can think about other people, analyze them, and immediately spot their vulnerabilities, the chinks in the armor, penetration points, and then they leverage this new gain knowledge in order to kind of penetrate the target, take over, brainwash, convert into a source of supply. And this is what I call cold empathy. Emotional empathy cannot be learned. It's acquired pretty early on, so it cannot be learned. However, Narcissists have something that I call emotional resonance tables. These are gigantic databases and truly gigantic databases. Narcissists accumulate, I mean, they observe and accumulate every human behavior, every human reaction, every utterance, every statement, every twitch of the eye, every tear, and then what they do, they correlate. And they come up with this huge set of heuristic principles. It says, if a person cries, then most people who cry say they are said. So if a person cries, he is said. And if I want to imitate said, I should cry. It's a set of heuristic sentences. I believe the same thing is done in artificial intelligence. And then what they do, they imitate the behaviors very convincingly, and therefore they deceive people very frequently and make them believe that actually behind the facade of invulnerability and impunity and so on, there is actually a soft core kind of a weeping child that just needs hugging, just needs love in order to flourish again and grow and take over this malevolent, malicious adult, which is of course very, very untrue. It's just that Narcissists are the masters of imitation. They are thespian masterpieces, and they have this enormous database and they emulate and they copy and they imitate. This is one of the most striking examples of mimetic behavior in nature, in my view. Narcissists are paranoid, but again, they're paranoia centers around the question, will I continue to receive supply exclusively from the source? So they could be, for example, romantically jealous and possessive, but not for the reasons that most people are. They're romantically jealous and possessive because their so-called intimate partner is a good source of supply, so they'll be very protective of such a source. They could, for example, love their children, but of course they don't love and they don't regard the children as children, but they regard them as sources of supply. They could be very attached to possessions, such as a flashy car or a beautiful computer, but not for the reasons that most people are, functional reasons, but because these are status symbols, signals to signals at large, grandiosity markers, so to speak. So everything the narcissist does resembles very closely what other people do, but the motivation and the psychological background is utterly alien. If the victim no longer serves as a source of supply, they will not feel anything, a relief actually. They go through cold turkey, they go through withdrawal symptoms and they sometimes disintegrate during the withdrawal symptoms because, like any drug, there are psychological aspects. The psychological addiction is much stronger than physical addiction. So they're psychologically dependent upon an addicted to their sources of supply. Once these are withdrawn, they go through cold turkey until they find the next dose and the next provided, the next potion. Narcissists in an off-handed, absent-minded way, totally indifferently, psychopaths are goal oriented and when they want a goal, when they are aiming at a goal and they cannot reach it or achieve it, they would, of course, abuse people on the way. Deep connection, I don't know what is deep connection. Narcissists are utterly dependent upon an addicted to sources of supply. That's a very deep connection in my view. In terms of the instruments that the female narcissists would choose would be different to the instruments of the male narcissists. And even that distinction is becoming less and less relevant in today's world. But in the past, female narcissists tended to focus more on the home front, family. And so they would tend to drive supply from the offspring more than from their employees, for example. Men are more, where? More focused on money, power. So just the sources of narcissistic supply, sources of gratification were different between men and women, but not the psychology behind it. Many of them are charming and intelligent. Intelligence is a tool intended to deploy to obtain narcissistic supply. Intelligence is also something that allows the narcissists to hold everything together. It is via intelligence that the narcissist creates the piece of fiction that is the false self. The false self requires a lot of creativity, a lot of maneuverability, a lot of initiative, a lot of entrepreneurial skills, a lot of cunning. So maintaining the false self requires a lot of emotional and mental resources. I think only truly intelligent people can maintain the false self in the long run. Less intelligent narcissists usually become somatic narcissists. And the distinction I was the first to make, but now is common, is between cerebral and somatic. Cerebral narcissists derive narcissistic supply from the exploits and the adventures of their brain. So by putting on show their intellect, their intelligence, their intellectual accomplishments and so on, they derive supply from that. The less endowed intellectually narcissists would tend to use their body. So they would bodybuild or they would have sexual conquest or they would, you know, and that's the way they get supply. But all of them require a modicum of intelligence because it's very hard work to be a narcissist. Very, very hard work. It's like constantly producing a movie. Absolutely. You need to put all the actors together. You need to allocate resources, scarce resources. You need to make sure that everyone suspends judgment and enters the shared psychosis, enters the belief. It's all about the narcissist life is a big movie. And when you ask narcissists how do they experience their lives? They say that they feel like as though they are actors in a movie. They feel one step removed. They feel very much like members of an audience or at the maximum actors on the stage. So this metaphor of cinema, theatre is very apt and describes the inner experience, the colouring of the narcissist in a landscape. And so it's a lot of work. Every narcissist is a major movie studio. Major movie studio. That cannot be done without some intelligence. And similarly charming charm. You need charm. You need charm to convolve people to be your supply sources. You need charm to conquer women if you're a somatic narcissist. You need charm. So it's a tool. But it's all fake. Because when you're really charming, you're charming alone in the bathroom as well. But narcissists are not. They deploy charm. It's not part of them. It's a tool. If for example being miserable would do the trick, they would be miserable. And indeed you can find countries and societies where victim stunts, being miserable, being downtrodden, being proletarian is the name of the game. That's what gets your narcissistic supply. Suddenly all narcissists are downtrodden and victims and none of them is charming. Because that's what they, narcissists would do and be what it takes. They have something called alloplastic defenses. Alloplastic defenses is the tendency to blame the world and its denizens for any misfortune, wrong decision, failure, etc. Here is the irony. Alloplastic defenses go together with something called external locus of control. We differentiate, we distinguish between external and internal locus of control. External locus of control simply means that you believe that your life is ruled from the outside, determined from the outside. And ironically and paradoxically, narcissists actually believe that their lives are determined from the outside. That is why they tend to blame the outside all the time. Because if you believe that you are the master of your own fate and destiny, you will not be able to blame anyone for anything. So they have to believe that they are flotsam and jetsam on giant waves that are... And this also creates an inner conflict in the narcissists because narcissists want to believe also that he is God, or at least Godlike, that he is omnipotent, all powerful. He controls everything and everyone is a control freak. But he cannot carry to the logical conclusion, because if he does, he won't be able to blame anyone for anything. So he stalks someone in the middle and says, well, yes, I am all powerful, but actually I am helpless. Because other people determine my fate and ruin my projects and discriminate against me. So there is this constant fight inside the narcissists. Am I all powerful or am I totally helpless? And this is called external locus of control. Narcissists have this because the reality is that they are indeed controlled from the outside. The false self is alien to the narcissists. It's a piece of fiction. And it's suddenly as though characters in a movie took over the movie. And I think there was the purple rose of Cairo by Woody Allen. There was a movie like that where the characters sprang alive and took over the movie. It's the same with the narcissists. He invented this false self as a form of protection. And then this monster took over, ate him alive, consumed him, and there's nothing left. And the only thing left is the false self. So the narcissist feeling that he is controlled from the outside is absolutely reflective of the truth and of reality. He is. People who know nothing about the subject have cast themselves as experts. And they have YouTube channels and they've never heard of any of these disorders until they realize there's a lot of money in the business. So then they became overnight experts and self-imputed experts. And this creates an enormous confusion. Borderline personality disorder is a distinct clinical entity. It's one of the cluster B dramatic personality disorders. Cluster B comprises four disorders, narcissistic, antisocial, borderline and histrionic. Antisocial personality disorder bears close resemblance to psychopathy but is not the same as psychopathy. It is a kind of a mild form of psychopathy. Psychopathy is a construct that went out of favor about 20 years ago but is still being championed by certain professionals such as Robert Hare. And today is not used in serious literature because psychopathy acquired a lot of media hype and overtones which render it useless as a clinical entity. So today we use antisocial personality disorder as a clinical entity. Psychopathy though still has its adherence. I mentioned Robert Hare but not only Babyac, many others. Still has its adherence and these people claim that psychopathy is distinct from antisocial personality disorder because a psychopath is a predator, extreme predator and while the antisocial person is merely someone who does not accept social mores and social conventions and behaves in ways which are socially unacceptable and damaging to other people. The psychopath in contrast would tend to prey upon people and would tend to be destructive, violent, criminalized and so on. I think this distinction is the same, we have a similar distinction in narcissism where we make a difference between narcissists and malignant narcissists. So the narcissist would be someone who has narcissistic traits and behaviors like sympathies, exploitative and vies and so on. Malignant narcissists would be a narcissist who is also utterly destructive to his environment ruthless, callous, disempathic and dangerous. So I think antisocial and psychopathic is the same like narcissists and malignant narcissists. Same kind of distinction. Antisocial path is an utterly unprofessional term. It is used by the media and by some scholars who don't know better. It simply implies that people with antisocial personality disorder would tend to act against society against laws, conventions, covenants, mores and so on. Another society, holding it in contempt and disregard and disdain, would tend to disparage people who do follow society's edicts and so on. So that's a social path. But that's more of a media creation, it's not a diagnosis. The narcissists, as I said, children react to abuse by adopting a series of strategies. One of them is to become co-dependent, one of them is to remain healthy and so on. And the narcissists reacts, narcissistic child reacts by becoming the abuser. In other words, the narcissistic child says, better to be an abuser than a victim. So I'm choosing to be an abuser. The co-dependent says, if I'm a nice enough victim, I will not be abused. And the healthy child says, the hell with all these abusers, I'm going to find alternative caregivers. But the narcissist identifies with his abusive parents or whoever they are. The narcissist actually worships them, admires them and tries to emulate them throughout his life. So the first warning signs are the same things that have been done to the narcissist as a child. He does to others when he grows up. So one of the first signs is the disrespect for boundaries, any kind of boundary. Your time, your decisions, your wishes, your priorities, your preferences, your hopes, your fears. These are all boundaries of course, they define you, they are an integral part of your identity. The narcissist has no respect for any of these. He will try to impose his agenda, his priorities, his fears, his wishes, his hopes. He will try to eliminate you as a separate individual. He will try to subsume you, to consume you, to digest you and then to spew you out probably. And this feeling that you are being taken over, that you are being reduced, that you are beginning to vanish gradually. This is the first serious warning sign. The second warning sign is narcissists abhor emotions because they are very afraid of emotions. Narcissist emotions are largely negative and very, very self-destructive. So narcissists adopt a strategy of denying access to all emotions, positive and negative, so that way they can survive somehow. There's a volcano there, but it's very deep, it's like Pompeii. But narcissists regard emotions in other people as a form of weakness. They hold such people emotional people or people who display emotions or people who confess to emotions. They regard them with contempt and disdain. And they would tend to abuse weak people, disadvantaged people, disabled people, Donald Trump and so on. They would tend to regard any form of weakness as calling for exploitation, for mistreatment. So that's the second sign. So if you go out with a narcissist, for example, he would most likely abuse the taxi driver, the waiter, anyone who is beneath him or below him, or anyone who would not be able to fully react to his abuse. He would do it as a matter of course. Narcissists also don't relate to the person opposite them. Very, very soon after any conversation or interaction starts, it's clear that the narcissist no longer is talking to you, but to some kind of image that he had formed of you. It's a very eerie feeling. It's like the narcissist is talking to someone behind your back. And this someone behind your back is acquiring your existence. It's becoming more and more real why you are becoming less and less real in interacting with the narcissist. And that's really a very unique experience. Another thing is, narcissists tend to create unease in people. People feel uneasy, ill at ease. They feel something's wrong. They feel that the pieces don't fit together. And this is what I call the uncanny valley. In 1970, there was a roboticist, a Japanese roboticist, Masahiro Mogi. And Mogi said that people react much worse to robots who are fully human, to machines, androids who are fully human. The more human they are, the closer they imitate a human being, the more people react with fear and discomfort, which is counter-intuitive. You would have thought that the more human the robot, the easier it would be. But actually it's been proven that people react. So it's the same with narcissists. Narcissists are a kind of human-like robot, kind of android robot. And because it's a very good imitation, I mean it's a superb imitation, people react extremely. I mean their discomfort is extreme. And the problem is they can't put the finger on anything. They just say, you know, I don't know what came over me. I felt overwhelmed. I felt repelled. I felt frightened. So there's another side for you. Narcissists have a very typical body posture, which is the body posture of a visionary, or a member of some kind of self-selected, self-imputed elite, or he stands aloof and observes. He's above all, above the madding crowd, he's above all this. So there's a very typical body posture with the chin tilted up and the eyes gazing afar and so on and so forth. Narcissists would seek to be the center of attention and if they fail, they become grumpy and even aggressive and violent. So that's another test. If you see someone and he tries to butt in or crash the party or whatever, he tries to become the center of attention, then fails for some reason and then becomes aggressive or violent, insulting, humiliating, shouting, cursing, or whatever, then that's a Narciss. Actually, contrary to common opinion, it's extremely easy to spot a Narciss, even on a first date. The problem is that people are so lonely and they seek to alleviate this intolerable condition of being alone. People don't like their own company and so they would settle in compromise for anything. Everyone spots a Narciss, but many people deny that they have spotted one because they would, they prefer even a Narciss to being alone and that's a sad commentary on current day society and so on because up to let's say 50 or 60 years ago, people were never really alone. You had extended families, you had support networks, you had friends, but today people are atomized. Societies are economic. Everything fell apart. All social institutions from the family to the community, everything fell apart. People are so alone that this opened the gates to predators like Narciss. People sacrifice literally their well-being and sometimes their lives because they can't tolerate the alternative of yet another solipsistic evening with, you know, TV dinner. I think love is often mistaken and thought of as an emotion. I don't think love is an emotion at all. I think love is the label slapped upon in the enormous complex of processes, interactions, the most important of which foster personal growth in the partner. So when we take apart love, we find that the two partners, usually two, involved in love, one, do not breach each other's boundaries. In other words, respect each other as autonomous entities. And two, engender growth in the partner, even at the risk of losing the partner because growth sometimes can take partners apart. I think these are the two key measures. I don't think it's a single emotion. I think it's a compound phenomenon involving numerous emotions, by the way, because, for example, it's very well known, it's been substantiated many, many times. And recently there was a book published about this topic. Love is a very close relative of hate and hatred exists in massive doses in every so-called love relationship. So I think love incorporates hate, incorporates productive envy, incorporates fostering growth, incorporates insecurity. I think it's mislabeled as a single emotion. That's why I think everyone fails to give a definition. I think we will be much better observing the effects of love, the impact of love, rather than trying to decipher it or reduce it to a single one-liner. I cry very often. I cry very often, but people, of course, tend to confuse sentimentality and emotions. Sentimentality is a partly culturally determined reaction to triggers. Triggers could be visual, textual, whatever. And it doesn't often reflect any inner state, but it reflects commiseration, which is again a societal reactive pattern. Hitler was crying in movies. I mean, it proves nothing. I cry, there is no emotional correlate behind the crying. It's reflexive almost.