How Magical Narcissist Observes Himself/Herself (Metacognition)

This day will go down in the annals of mankind in the history books. I'm responding to a second comment within less than one hour. [laughter] You can't say it's not a historical event. I, Sam Vaknin, professor of psychology, author of malignant self-love, narcissism revisited, and the star of several productions, am here to respond to the query of a humble YouTuber. Isn't it magnanimous of me? [laughter] I think so. And what is a query all about? Please help me clarify. If the narcissist interacts with me only [clears throat] via a shared fantasy, if I agree to be his personal assistant or housekeeper, is that service only in our minds? Is it real? Of course, it's real. Narcissists confuse internal and external objects. Narcissists conflate fantasy and reality. But narcissists are pretty functional. Some of them can even become presidents. The thing is the narcissist has magical thinking. Magical thinking is a primitive process or a primitive construct in early childhood. Narcissists never grow out of early childhood. They never become more mature than a 2-year-old or a three-year-old. And so they remain stuck with a monopoly of defense mechanisms such as splitting or projection and with magical thinking. Magical thinking is simply the conviction innate unconscious conviction that internal processes thinking, wishing, imagining have an impact on the outside world. that reality is shaped by what's happening in our minds. This is magical thinking and narcissists are prone to it. So what the narcissist does he or she unconsciously believe belie believes that the internal object can act in and on reality. Now that's very confusing. Let me explain. The narcissist's mind is populated with internal objects that reflect or represent external objects. The narcissist cannot tell which is which. The narcissist does not perceive the separateness and externality of objects. He immediately snapshots them, introjects them, and then continues to interact only with the internal objects. The narcissist operates on the internal objects. The narcissist interacts with the internal objects. The narcissist motivates the internal objects. The narcissist sends them on errands. The narcissist makes them do things. It's a it's all happening inside the narcissist's demented mind. And this experience of internal objects is conflated and confused with reality. This is the narcissist's only reality. So when the narcissist imagines that an internal object could or should do something, when the narcissist wishes for an internal object to act in a certain way, the narcissist immediately believes that this is this is reality. In other words, the narcissist manipulates the internal objects to act in reality and to act on reality. When the external object, you take action, takes action. At that point, the narcissist tries to match you with the internal object. The narcissist believes that it is the internal object that has caused the change in the external environment, not you. You don't exist. Only your representation, your avatar exists, not you. It is the avatar, the introject, the internal object, the representation that act upon the environment that change it, that modify it, that cause transformations and and elicit processes and and obtain outcomes. So it is via the mediation of the internal object that the narcissist interacts with reality. Of course, if you as an external object have a life of your own, if you act independently, if you make decisions and choices, if you have your own friends and social circle and family, if you travel, if you have a job, etc. This creates a lot of friction between you as an external object and the internal object that represents you in the narcissist's mind. The more independent you are, the more difficult it is for the narcissist to attribute your actions, decisions and choices to the internal object. It creates it challenges the internal objects. It undermines the precarious balance of this house of card which is the introjected or introjective space. That's why narcissists penalize you, punish you when you are independent. It's a punitive environment with many incentives to suspend yourself, to become submissive, to fully correspond to the expectations and exigencies of the internal object. In short, the narcissist forces you to become increasingly a simulacum or a simulation of an internal object. The narcissist forces you to shed your externality, independence, separateness, personal autonomy, and agency. [clears throat] And this coercive process is liinal and subliminal. It's ambient and sometimes explicit. It's not exactly violence. There's no externalized aggression except rarely, but there are communicated expectations. uh disappointment um and a lot of emotional incentives to conform. To answer your question now in view of everything that I've just said, if you are the narcissist's personal assistant or housekeeper or lover or service provider, at that point you will have become an internal logger. When you do something at home, when you housekeep or when you cater to the narcissist's needs in some way, you provide services, you drive the narcissist somewhere. The narcissist's unconscious belief is that it is the internal object that had affected the environment, that had impacted the environment in a magical way. The narcissist world is infused with magic. So the narcissist communicates with the internal objects object unconsciously informs the internal object of his or her wishes and demands expectations. The internal object then transmits these onto the environment modifying it trans transmuting it transubstantiating it and transforming it in every way conceivable. The narcissist acts in and on reality exclusively via an internal process which is a great definition of psychosis. Okay. Another question tangentially related to this one that many people ask me. They say you know you say that the narcissist is empty. How does the narcissist know that he's empty? How do you know that you are empty? Who is or what is it that has this knowledge that of emptiness? The narcissist narcissists engage in self-reporting. They're able to provide a lot of information about their internal world, their hopes, their dreams, their fantasies, their wishes, their fears. They are they're eloquent. They are they can communicate internal processes that resemble emotions and cognitions very convincingly. But who is it or what is it that somehow secures this knowledge? If the narcissist has no self, if the narcissist has no ego, if there's nothing there, it's a vast absence. It's a howling void. It's what fasting called the black hole. Then which figment, what element, which construct is doing the observing, is doing the self-awareness, is doing the self-reporting. I mean, after all, pay attention to the phrase self reporting. Selfawareness. There must be a self there. Well, there is and there isn't. We must distinguish between what is known as the observing self and the cognitive emotional self or you can you could use use another phraseiology. The process the process self is the self that is engaged in the management of cognitions and emotions their amalgamation interpretation communication to other parts of the personality. And this is the con the process self. And then you have a meta self or metacognitive self or observing self. These are two separate selves. Now one of the main objections to this model of consciousness is that it leads to infinite regression. The observing self is observing the process self. Who is observing the observing self? and who is observing the observer of the observing self etc etc at infinitum that need not be the case this infinite regression appears to be appealing intuitively but it's not needed in other words the separation of the observing self from the real process oriented self does not lead to infinite regression we are simply talking about functional spheres or functional spaces. The observing self is a kind of pure awareness. It's a detached detached witness. It's not another thinking object. It's not a locus of some kind of processes or dynamics or it's more or less like a telescope or a microscope or a camera. Think of it as a camera. So, we have this camera function. When you put a camera in action, you can walk away. The camera will continue to work. The camera is the observer. It has no self. There's nobody there. There's no ego. It's a function. So, the camera continues to shoot roll after roll after roll after roll or fulfill the SD card even in your presence, in your absence. Your absence does not disable the camera. Similarly, in narcissism, the narcissist's absence fundamental essential quidity absence absence that is existential cellular [snorts] presence masquerading as absence. This absence does does not disable the camera does not disable the observer self. In the theory of metacognition in psychology, we distinguish between the witness, the observing self as a stable part of consciousness that notices and records thoughts, feelings and so on and exerts no judgment of any kind. It's just a recording facility. It's [snorts] like a tape recorder. So there's the witness. And then there is metacognition. It's the brain's ability to think about thinking, stepping back, kind of audience, self audiencing, kind of being your own audience, watching the play of your life unfold and unfurl. And then there is the loop. William James described it as the I observing the me, the knower observing the known. The loop of self-reflection. And in many spiritual and philosophical schools and perspectives, we have a similar division. In eastern philosophies, for example, in Buddhism, uh they believe that there is this illusion of the watcher. If you search for the entity observing the mind, you only find another mind or another thought. So Buddhism is basically against this idea of metacognition and cognition, observer and observed, knower and known. The philosopher Jirro Krishna Moti noted that the division between the watcher and the watched observer and observed is an illusion. The observer is just another con constructed image. It's not real. It's a figment. It's a byproduct if you wish. It's another thought. It's another cognitive process. Pure awareness is a major conundrum in the study and theory of consciousness. There is no fixed who. The observer self, the knower self, the camera is not a who. It's it's not a it's not a p a person. There's no personhood there. And in in this sense the the phrase observer self is very misleading because self the idea of self the concept of self is a sense of continuity across changing environment and changing relationships. Whereas the observer self does not maintain this sense of continuity. It is very discrete and it's very episodic. It's exactly like a camera triggered by a flesh of light. So there's no fixed entity or self or who that is doing the watching. The observer self is a very very misleading phrase. I would just use the word the observer. There's just the open unattached act of awareness itself. Think of it like the interaction between the sky and clouds. Is the sky comprised of the clouds? Are the clouds part of the sky? If we take away the clouds, will the sky remain? Yes, of course it will. The sky is observing the clouds. Possibly the clouds are observing the sky as well. Metacognition may be a two-way street. But at this stage, let's confine ourselves to the sky metaphor. Sky is observing the clouds. The clouds come and go. The clouds are dynamic. The camera, the sky is permanent. The observing self, pure awareness, consciousness, witness, uh, call it as you wish. It's simply an an entity or a program, a code that observes the conceptual self, the process self, what most psychologists call the self. The thinking self generates thoughts, emotions, memories. This conceptual process, thinking emoting self is what you call myself, your self, the self. But there's always another layer. If you stop to think of it, you will immediately realize that you're observing yourself all the time. And it can't be that the self is observing itself. There must be another entity, another structure, another construct. There's a silent unchanging space that notices experiences happening. And so in psychology and cognitive science, especially in acceptance and commitment therapy act, the mind is divided into the thinking self and the observing self. There's a as I mentioned the issue of metacognition. It's a scientific term for thinking about thinking. There's a biological feedback loop where the brain monitors its own cognitive processes and that has been proven in laboratories. I mentioned the sky metaphor like observing the self like a blue sky where thoughts and feelings are like changing weather or floating clouds or whatever. The sky contains the clouds. Sky contains the weather. But they the sky is not the clouds and the sky is not the weather. Think of the observing self as a canvas. Canvas upon which any painting is possible. And this is what you do throughout your life. You paint yourself on this canvas. I'm giving you all this for you to understand that it is entirely possible to not have a self to be comprised of emptiness and yet be perfectly able to observe this emptiness describe it gauge it evaluate it capture it somehow in internal family systems IFS developed by Dr. Richard Schwarz. This framework identifies the core self as the seat of consciousness characterized by what they call the eight C's including curiosity, calm, clarity, compassion and so on. Back to eastern philosophy and meditation. Eastern eastern sages throughout the centuries and the millennia were very very concerned very very deeply into the question of the self, the question of what's real and what's not. The question of the interaction or the relationship or the correspondence between the self and reality. They took this inquiry much deeper than western philosophy. And one of the questions they asked is who is watching when you quiet the mind when you numb the mind or reduce the chatter via meditation for example who is watching this who is aware that you're meditating when you're meditating in advita vanta in ancient Indian philosophy they said that there is a true identity they call it atman pure consciousness the mind creates a false reflection of the atman. So there's the atman that's your true identity which I think Winnot would have called the true self and then the mind creates this false reflection that is called jva the reflected self or the public facing self or something like that which I think when would have called the false self or the as Deutsch Helen Deutsch would have called the as if personality. Now we mistakenly uh self-styled mystics and gurus like toler and others mistakenly call it the ego. It's wrong phrase completely but okay you get the picture. There's the atman and the ja and the ja mistakenly believes itself to be the one doing the observing [clears throat] when actually it's the atman. Truth is observing false falsity. True self is observing the false self in this structure in this construct and but the false self is convinced that it is the only real one that there is no other self except itself that it is the one doing the observing internally and externally that it is creating and recreating the observer and the observed reality. In Buddhism, there's a con concept of anata. Anata means nonself or not self. If you look closely at the observer, you will find no permanent little person, no wizard of Oz inside your head. There's nobody there. Instead, there is only a stream of momentary awareness, stream of consciousness. The observer and the observed are ultimately not separate. And I mentioned Judu um Krishna Morti who famously claimed that the observer is the observed. He argued that the entity inside you who the entity that judges, that labels, that tries to control your thoughts is actually just another cognitive process, another thought, a mental image created by past conditioning, environment, personal history, etc. True observation happens only when this judging observer steps out of the way internally. Only when we disable this particular cognitive process. In this way Krishna Morti Krishna Morti was among the first to suggest a practical way of coping therapeutically with pathological narcissism. But that's a topic for another video.