Families, Narcissists, Psychopaths: You Ask, I Answer (Clip: Narcissism Summaries Channel)

Duration: 13:10 1705 transcript words EN summary

Video summary

The video addresses the complex psychological impact of sudden insights into narcissistic family dynamics and how modern therapy approaches memory differently than in the past. While a suppressed memory resurfacing can be destabilizing, causing anxiety or depression, it is not necessarily "retraumatizing" if managed correctly within a therapeutic setting. Historically, therapists often asked patients to recount traumatic details immediately after an event, but this practice was found to entrench trauma and make recovery harder; today's approach avoids forcing the emergence of unstructured memories that could overwhelm an individual. The speaker emphasizes that memory is a double-edged sword: it is essential for healing and forming identity, yet because memories are constructed rather than simply retrieved like books from a library, they can be fragile and potentially harmful if mishandled or fabricated to please others. When discussing the distinction between narcissists and psychopaths, the speaker analyzes specific traits such as grandiosity, goal orientation, and fearlessness. Although both groups share grandiose tendencies, true primary psychopathy is characterized by a distinct goal-oriented drive for power, money, sex, and access that goes beyond merely seeking "narcissistic supply." The transcript clarifies that while all narcissists revolve around obtaining admiration and validation from others, individuals who are defiant, sexually deviant, and relentlessly pursue external benefits without regard for social norms fit the profile of a primary psychopath rather than a malignant narcissist. This distinction is further supported by psychological testing models like PCL-R, which differentiate between primary psychopaths (Factor One) and secondary ones (Factor Two), noting that secondary types may retain some capacity for emotion or empathy, unlike their primary counterparts who are more rigidly manipulative. The video also explores the paradoxical behavior of narcissists toward their children, explaining why they often deny emotional closeness to young kids while forcing intimacy on older adolescents. This dynamic stems from how a narcissist perceives relationships: small children are seen as obedient objects that naturally provide admiration and supply without resistance, whereas older children develop critical thinking and defiance, which threatens the parent's ego. To maintain their source of supply, narcissists may fake affection toward teenagers through Machiavellian manipulation to keep them compliant; if these older children refuse to play this role or criticize the parent, they are instantly split into "enemies" rather than loved ones. Ultimately, the speaker concludes that what appears as closeness in a narcissistic family is merely an imitation of love and empathy designed solely for utility, revealing that the core definition of narcissism involves a false self where everything, including relationships with children, is fabricated to serve specific psychological needs.

Read the full video transcript

So, let's have a look at what you guys have to say. Okay. Can sudden insight into identity, thoughts, and narcissistic family dynamics be destabilizing or retraumatizing and how is that treated? I'm not quite sure what is meant by sudden insight. If you mean um a recall, a sudden memory, the emergence of a memory that has been suppressed or repressed for a very long time, then yes, it could be destabilizing. I'm not sure about retraumatizing. It's a bit of a strong word, but it could be it could cause upset. It could cause even to some extent anxiety and depression. In therapy, in psychotherapy, within treatment, we try to control the emergence of such memories and to structure the process so that the individual is not overwhelmed. We have also changed our attitude when it comes to the treatment of trauma. Initially, up until recently, we used to debrief people. We used to ask people, tell us about your trauma. tell us what has happened. Try to remember as many details as you can. And we discovered that this is a very bad idea. It entrenches the trauma and makes it much more difficult to treat and to eradicate. So today we're not doing this. Generally speaking, the role of role of memory in treatment and the role of memory in normal day-to-day life is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, without memory, you cannot heal and recover and move on. Process what has happened to you, integrate it somehow and go on with your life. Memory is the glue that holds you together. Memory is the fund the fundament the foundation of identity. But on the other hand, if memories and insights, because insight is is a refined kind of memory. Insight is a memory that goes together with interpretation and with some emotions. So it's what we call a scheme, schema therapy, right? There's a scheme, beliefs, values, memories, emotions and so on. So without memories, you cannot have insights. But if you um come across memory, if you raise memories, if memories emerge in a way that is not structured, unexpected, then it can overwhelm you. It's not always a good idea. And during the 60s and 70s, we had the phenomenon phenomenon of false memories. uh people were told to remember things and then just to gratify the therapist they came up with what they felt to have been memories but they were actually not memories they were fiction so people came up with all kinds of stories of sexual abuse in childhood and I don't know what which were patently untrue and some people ended up in prison so memory is a very delicate thing we know for example that memories are constructed on the fly. There's no such thing as retrieval. Memories are not like book books in a library that you go to the shelf and you take out the book, but you create the book as you go along and you you never create the same book twice. You never create the same memory twice. So yes, it's memories are like explosives. They should be handled very cautiously, very carefully. But when they handled properly, they can do a lot of good. And if they are not handled properly, they can do a lot of harm. Dear Professor Sam, a narcissist who is goal oriented, strives for money and other benefits through relationships, brags that he is fearless and deviant, doesn't want to conform to the social system, is this a psychopathic narcissist? It's difficult to tell. And the reason it's difficult to tell is that the vast majority of primary psychopaths, the more well-known type of psychopath, the vast majority of primary psychopath have grandiosity. Exactly like the narcissist, they have the trait, they have the cognitive distortion of grandiosity. In other words, narcissists are grandiose, psychopaths are grandio, and border lines are grandiose. So if we were to look only at grandiosity then we would not be able to tell the difference between these three. In other words, the differential diagnosis, the ability to diagnose someone appropriately cannot be constructed solely on grandio behavior and everything you mention here is grandiose behavior. Goal orientation is typical of psychopaths. Only psychopaths are goal oriented. Narcissists are goal oriented but the only goal they have is to obtain narcissistic supply. The psychopath is goal oriented in [clears throat] the sense that the psychopath wants money, sex, access, contact and above all power. So the minute you say goal oriented, it's a strong indicator of a psychopath, not a narcissist. But then the rest strives for money and other benefits is also psychopathic. And then the rest is indication some indication of grandiosity. So that's very difficult to tell. However, generally speaking, from the little that you have written, this is a psychopath, not a narcissist and not a malignant narcissist. It's a psychopath. All types of narcissists, including the malignant narcissist, also known as the psychopathic narcissist, their main and only goal in life, the axis around which everything revolves, their orientation, their dreams and fantasies and wishes, everything is around narcissistic supply. And what you have described here, someone who likes money, someone who's goal oriented, he's defiant, he's fearless, defiant, and he's a bit sexually deviant. That is a classical picture of what we call a primary psychopath. Now, I take this opportunity to digress as is my habit, of course, and mention to you that there are two types of psychopaths. There is the primary psychopath, which we all know, and there is the secondary psychopath. Why do we call them primary and secondary? Because there is a test called the PCLR. It's a test invented or created by Dr. Robert Hair. And in this test, we have factor one and factor two. And the psychopath which conforms to the profile in factor one is known as factor one psychopath or primary psychopath. And the psychopath that conforms to facto 2 [clears throat] is the secondary psychopath. And what's the difference between them? The secondary psychopath is impulsive, is capable of emotions and is capable of empathy even. And today many scholars are trying to conflate and suggest that borderline personality disorder is actually secondary psychopathy especially in women. But I will not do go into all this. Why are narcissists unwilling to give to give their small children the closeness and bonding they naturally need but force closeness on their older children who no longer need closeness to their parents? Narcissists if it is indeed a narcissist and I want to mention take this occasion to mention that very few of us are qualified to diagnose people. So when you say my husband is a narcissist, my wife is a narcissist, the likelihood of this being true is very low. Actually, according to the diagnostic and statistical manual text revision, the latest edition, edition 5 published in 2022, the number of people with narcissistic personality disorder is 1.7% of the general population. So your chances of coming across someone who is truly a narcissist is 1 in 60. Your chances of having consecutive relationships, intimate relationships, work relationships, friendships with one narcissist after the other are extremely minimal, extremely small. It's very unlikely actually. Okay, let's assume that someone is diagnosed or is diagnosible with narcissistic personality disorder. And the question is why um they don't provide younger children with closeness and they provide older ones with closeness. They don't. Narcissists don't do closeness. They don't do intimacy. They don't do meaningful relationships. They don't do any of this. They don't do love. They don't do solicitude. They don't do compassion. They don't do affection. They don't any of this. Narcissists do narcissistic supply. Small children are perceived as instruments of gratification. They're instrumentalized. Small children adulate the narcissist, admire the narcissist, obey the narcissist. So small children are treated as objects. They're objectified. Whereas older children, for example, in early adolescence or middle adolescence, older children have a mind of their own. They are less obedient. They are more defiant. They are more they have critical thinking. They are more they criticize the narcissist. They disagree with the narcissist. They observe the narcissist closely. And so the narcissist feels that whereas the small children, the younger children can be taken for granted as sources of narcissistic supply, the older children need to be managed in order to convert the older children into nar sources of narcissistic supply. The narcissist imitates intimacy and closeness and love and empathy and compassion and so on. This imitation is makavelian. It's manipulative. Its sole intention is to make sure that the older children continue to provide the narcissist with narcissistic supply. If they refuse to do so, the narcissist regards them as enemies. If the older children refuse to provide the narcissist with narcissistic supply to admire, to adulate, the narcissist then immediately converts them into what we call in psychology pers, enemies. And the narcissist then becomes abrasive, antisocial, violent, aggressive, and exceedingly abusive towards these older children. which demonstrates to you conclusively that what you call closeness is just an imitation mimicry is not real. It's fake. Narcissists are fake. The definition of narcissism is fakery. False self. Everything is false. Everything is faked. Everything is imitated. There's nobody there. And there's nothing real. especially not intimacy. As far as a narcissist is concerned, his children are no different to any other person. They don't have a privileged status. His children, they are or are not sources of narcissistic supply. Either or, or you're with me or you're against me. This is this kind of thinking is known as splitting. The narcissist divides everyone. His children, his co-workers, his spouses, his, you name it, everyone. His neighbors, everyone. Divides everyone into you're with me or you are against me. You are source of supply. You will not provide me with supply. And if you don't provide me with supply, says the narcissist, then you hate me. You hate me. I hate you. And I'm going to punish you. As simple as that. And that applies to his children as well.