Video summary
The video explores how narcissistic parents divide their children into distinct roles, primarily creating a "golden child" and a "scapegoat," a process driven by psychological defense mechanisms known as projection and splitting. The narrator explains that narcissists view people in black-and-white terms, seeing them as either entirely good or entirely bad. They project their own desirable traits onto one child, elevating them to an idealized status where they must idolize the parent and serve as a source of narcissistic supply. Conversely, the parent projects their unacceptable flaws, shame, and negative emotions onto another child, casting them as the family's scapegoat. This discriminatory treatment is not random but stems from the parent's inability to integrate contradictory qualities within themselves or others, resulting in a rigid hierarchy where one child is cherished while the other is neglected, ridiculed, and blamed for the family's problems.
This dynamic creates a toxic environment often described as "family mobbing," where the dysfunctional family unit operates like a cult with a strict power structure that demands conformity and silence. The video distinguishes between two types of this dysfunction: insidious, which involves subtle emotional abuse and gaslighting that makes outsiders doubt the victim's reality, and overt, which includes visible physical or verbal abuse. In both scenarios, the family maintains a facade of harmony or even feigned hostility to protect its image from the outside world. Any attempt by a member, particularly the scapegoat, to speak honestly about problems or express negative emotions is viewed as a betrayal that threatens the family's fragile equilibrium. Consequently, the entire family gang up against the dissenting individual to deflect attention from real issues and preserve the illusion of perfection.
The consequences of living in such an environment are severe and long-lasting, leading to significant mental health challenges for the scapegoat who is systematically rendered invisible through neglect, isolation, and denial of resources. The video highlights that these families enforce a "repression ethos," where discussing trauma, emotions, or justice is forbidden, forcing members to dissociate and internalize abuse. This upbringing often results in insecure attachment styles, a fear of intimacy, and an inability to form healthy relationships later in life. Tragically, the scapegoat frequently recreates these hostile family dynamics in their own future relationships, either by becoming a victim again or by adopting similar controlling behaviors. The narrator concludes that emerging from a family founded on hate, envy, and rejection causes lifelong damage, leaving individuals with deep emotional wounds that are difficult to heal without recognizing the patterns of abuse they experienced.
Read the full video transcript
My name is Sanvakin. I'm the author of
Malignant Self Love Narcissism Rising.
As his children grow older, narcissist
begins to see their potential to be
edifying, reliable, and satisfactory
sources of narcissistic supply.
His attitude then is completely
transformed.
The former threats to his grandiosity,
to the attention that he is getting,
have now become promising potentials for
narcissistic supply. So he cultivates
those whom he trusts to be most
rewarding.
Often the narcissist inculcates in them
a competitive team spirit, a xenophobic
weedness, a cultish and defensive or
even paranoid stance against the rest of
the world, sometimes against the other
parents.
The narcissist may single out one of his
children and encourage the golden or
sunshine child to idolize him, to adore
him, to be owed by her, to admire his or
her deeds and capabilities, to learn to
blindly trust and obey the narcissist.
In short, to surrender to the
narcissist's charisma, and to become
submerged in his f
The remains of the litter, the chosen
one's brothers and sisters, are ignored,
neglected, left to fend off for
themselves, or worse, relegated to the
role of much maligned, ridiculed,
thwarted, stunted, and hated scapegoats.
What is the source of such
discriminatory conduct?
Why doesn't the narcissist give the same
treatment to all these children in the
hopes of cultivating even more sources
of supply?
Well, it has to do with the narcissistic
parents projected splitting.
Projected splitting is a confluence of
two psychological defense mechanisms.
Projection and splitting
one by one. Splitting is a primitive
defense mechanism. It involves the
inability to integrate contradictory
qualities, behaviors, and attributes of
the same object into a coherent picture
of the object.
The narcissist regards people around him
as either all bad or all good,
irredeemably black or lustrously white,
implacable foes or undying friends.
either or splitting the bad side split
from the good side.
Splitting results in cycles of
idealization followed by devaluation of
the same person.
But splitting can also be applied to
one's self.
Patients with personality disorders
often idealize themselves fantastically
and grandiosely and then on a dime
harshly devalue, hate and even harm and
mutilate themselves when they fail or
when they otherwise frustrated.
So this is splitting. What about
projection? Projection is another
psychological defense mechanism. We all
have an image of how we should be. Freud
called it the ego ideal. But sometimes
we experience emotions and drives or
have or we have personal qualities which
don't sit well with this idealized
construct.
They are not compatible with the way we
see ourselves.
Projection is when we attribute to
others these unacceptable, discomforting
and illfitting feelings and traits that
we possess. So what's unacceptable in us
we attribute to others. This way we
disown these discordant features and
secure the right to criticize and
chastise others for having or displaying
them.
Back to the narcissist. [snorts]
The narcissistic parent splits her
personality into good and bad traits.
Good and bad qualities. good and bad
dimensions. And then what she does, she
projects his or her good aspects.
The ones she finds to be acceptable,
egoonic,
the one she finds to be desirable. These
good aspects, traits or qualities, she
projects them onto the golden child.
The golden child then comes to embody
and raify everything that's right and
proper in the narcissistic parents
personality. He becomes an extension of
the narcissistic parents grandiosity.
In contra distinction, the traits and
qualities of himself or herself that the
narcissistic parent finds to be bad,
unacceptable,
rejected or shameinducing.
These qualities and traits are projected
onto and attributed to the scapegoat
child, the black sheep of the family,
the rejector and the outcast who is then
rendered a constant reminder of the
parents shortcomings.
This kind of child becomes a challenge
to the parents fantastic
self-perception. And therefore, in other
words, this child is a permanent
narcissistic injury provoking negative
emotions such as rage, the need to
humiliate,
envy.
It is at this stage that the risk of
child abuse from emotional incest with a
golden child and up to and including
outright incest is heightened.
It is at this stage that the different
treatment metered out to the children of
the narcissist becomes a pattern, a
lifelong pattern,
cast in stone,
golden child, the scapegoat forever.
What happens when your family
which are supposed to be the sanctuary,
the refuge,
a protection from the world, from harsh
reality, from abrasive events and
threatening developments? What happens
when your own family is the enemy,
is the battle zone?
What happens when your family threatens
your mental health? and sometimes your
very survival.
What happens when you feel alien and
estranged
and in the wrong place when you are with
your family members in your household at
home supposedly
where you should feel most comfortable,
most accepted,
most loved, most cared for,
where people should empathize with you.
Listen to your problems. help you solve
them
and in at any rate afford you suck
and so what happens when you have
nowhere to turn
because the enemy is within
my name is Sam Baknin I'm the author of
malignant self of love narcissism
revisited the first book ever on
narcissistic abuse I am also a professor
of clinical psychology and today we're
going going to discuss family mobbing.
When your family is the mob that is
pursuing you within an inch of your
life.
I start by announcing a playlist.
Uh later today there's going to be a a
new playlist on my YouTube channel,
playlist of family dynamics. You can
find this video and many other previous
videos about family dynamics in the
playlist.
Before we proceed with this the topic of
this video which I know would be of
great interest to many of you. Many of
you come from the background of
dysfunctional families. You found
yourself within dysfunctional
relationships because you recreated the
initial original dynamics within your
family of origin.
But before we go there, there are two
types of family mobbing.
Insidious and overt.
The insidious type is hidden. It's
occult.
It's obscure.
It's subtle. It's difficult to convince
outsiders that something bad is
happening within the family unit.
The overt type is visible. There is
physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal
abuse, psychological abuse, or perhaps
the other end of the spectrum. There's
parentifying, instrumentalizing,
smothering and spoiling,
overprotectiveness.
But in any case, these are visible,
ostensible, not to say ostentatious
signs of family dysfunction.
The insidious kind is much more
ownorous, much [snorts] more difficult
because it does not allow you to
communicate to the outside.
No one would believe you. All the signs
are that something is wrong with you.
You're being paranoid. You're being
hostile. Maybe it's just a rebellious
phase in your own personal development
as a teenager. Who knows? The family
looks perfect. There is love. There is
harmony. There is caring and compassion
and affectionatess. There is
attentiveness. Everyone is there for
each other except for you. So something
is wrong with you. The family is
perfect. The imperfection is all yours.
We know that narcissistic families,
families who incorporate
narcissists, the narcissist could be
parental figures, a narcissistic mother,
narcissistic father. The narcissist
could be siblings,
your sister, your brother. So
narcissistic families present a facade,
a facade of harmony. Narcissistic
families are much more concerned with
appearances.
rather than substance. And this facade
of harmony is known in clinical terms as
pseudo mutuality,
fake mutuality, fake love, fake concern,
fake support, fake sakur. The emphasis
is on the word fake as you have gathered
by now.
And there are families which are equally
narcissistic or infested by narcissists
which present a facade of disharmony.
There's a lot of constant bickering,
arguments, fights, debates and even
physical violence. This is known as
pseudo hostility. In both cases, the
pseudo mutual family and the
pseudohostile family, the members of the
dysfunctional family are not allowed to
separate and individuate. They're
subjected to a power asymmetry in
cultlike settings.
Some members of the family have all the
power. Some members of the family are
totally dependent and disempowered.
And the whole family functions as a
cult. We against they there's the
external world, the outside world is
hostile. It's a jungle. These are
enemies and everything should remain
within the family. All the processes are
internalized. Nothing is ever
externalized. Not even aggression.
Aggression within the family is simply
redirected at one of its members, also
known as the scapegoat.
The family homeostasis,
the balance, the precarious balance that
keeps the family together, the glue that
holds the members of the family within
the same unit
is threatened by honesty.
When one of the members is honest, one
of the members of the family is honest,
the king is naked. This threatens the
balance of this kind of family. The
family demands compliance. The family
demands submission. The family demands
conformity. The family demands, in other
words, silence.
And any disscent, any criticism, any
disagreement, any suggestion
undermines the family's unspoken
homeostasis and equilibrium.
Such utterances,
such an attitude of dissent, of
disagreement threatens the family's very
core and balance. And the family reacts
as a unit against the dissenting
individual, against the rebel, against
the culprit, against the criminal that
is threatening to destroy the family. It
all revolves around honesty.
Such families, and these are of course
dysfunctional families, despise and
detest and hate honesty. The greatest
threat is honesty
because these families are constructed
around a denial of their own problems.
The problem should never be discussed.
No one should acknowledge the very
existence of any problem. The family is
perfect. If there are any apparent
problems, they are exactly that apparent
and they will go away. They're
temporary.
And there probably these problems
probably have been imported from the
outside. The outside world has caused
this problem the because the family in
itself as an isolated unit is perfect.
It's the outside world that is
destabilizing the family. So the member
of the family that challenges the
consensus of the family. The member of
the family that exposes the lies that
underly the mythology of the family. The
member of the family that criticizes,
that disagrees, that points a finger.
This member of the family is a traitor,
is a traitor. This member of the family
is collaborating with the outside world
against the family. This member of the
family
borrows into the family's foundations,
undermines the family and seeks to
destroy the family. And so the whole
family gangs up on this individual.
It's a form of gangstalking.
It's known as family mobbing.
There is a collusion in bullying.
This individual is bullied. Usually it's
a single individual, the scapegoat. This
individual is bullied and the reason for
bullying is to deflect attention from
real problems.
These families of course are
dysfunctional. These families are
dangerous. These families are pseudo
mutual. It's a fake. It's a facade.
These families are in other words not
families.
whatever they are, they're not families
in any meaningful sense. And yet
the pretention to be a family is the
most important thing. And anyone who
challenges it, anyone who undermines it,
anyone who doubts it should be
penalized. These kind of families are
highly punitive
because they escape, they avoid, they
evade real problems and they deflect
attention from these problems onto the
scapegoat.
Members of the family ally
with the powerful against the powerless
and helpless. So the if there's a member
of the family could be a father could be
a mother could be a sibling member of
the family who is naturally psychopathic
naturally bullies naturally antagonistic
naturally intimidating
naturally
u narcissistic. This kind of person is
going to create alliances and coalitions
within the family
because people gravitate towards power.
Bullying is perceived as power. It's a
misperception. Of course, bullying is a
strong indication of fear, panic, and
weakness. But it is mispersceived
frequently as a kind of power. And so
members of the family gravitate towards
the powerful
the powerful sibling, the powerful
parent
and they collude with this individual to
bully others within the family.
The scapegoat role, the role of the
scapegoat within the family
is integrally
integrally a part of the cult like
settings. These families operate exactly
the way cults do. There is brainwashing,
there is coercion, there are threats and
intimidation,
there is guilt tripping, there is
shaming. Rebecca Mandeville calls it the
family scapegoating abuse or FSA.
Behaviors common in these families
involve bullying, harassment, control,
coercion, intimidation, including
atmospheric,
atmospheric and ambient intimidation,
unspoken, not spelled out, and yet very
present. gaslighting.
The reality, the perception of reality,
the gauging of reality of the scapegoat
is challenged. The scapegoat is made to
believe that something is wrong with
them. They're misperceiving reality.
They're misreading it somehow. And
there's a lot of defamation and smears.
For example, members of the nuclear
family would defame and slander and liel
the scapegoat to members of the extended
family, aunts, uncles, grandfathers,
grandmothers.
Within such families, there are
monopolies of truth. In other words,
truth is undebatable.
Truth is decided
by a select group or an individual
within the hostile family
and only that individual has a monopoly
of the truth. Whatever this individual
says must be so. There's no arguing,
there's no challenging, there's no
debating, there's no discourse, there's
no communication. A single individual
dictates what is true and what is not,
what is right and just and what is wrong
and unjust.
This individual is the bully and the
bully in such families maintains the
monopoly on truth. When the bully in
such a family presents a version of
events,
it is accepted immediately. And when the
scapegoat challenges this version, the
scapegoat is penalized.
There is slander, there is gossip, as
Machavelian control instruments. There
is shaming, there is guilt tripping.
It's all about manipulative Machavelian
control. Control is crucial in such
families. Exactly. Because these
families are fragmented. They're
fractured. They're weak. They're
dysfunctional.
They're about to die.
And so control is crucial because it
maintains the facade and the appearance
of a cohesive functional family. There's
a need to control everything. There's a
need to control information. There's a
need to control emotions. There's a need
to control behaviors. There's a need to
control the hierarchy. Who is on top?
who is at the bottom. There's a need to
control the roles. Each one has a role.
The scapegoat has the role of the
scapegoat. The golden child has the role
of a golden child. The mother plays the
mother. She is not a mother. The father
acts the father. It's all a theater
production. It's all fake.
There's no family there. There is the
pretention to a family.
There is a movie of a family, but
there's no family and no family
dynamics. Family dynamics have been
replaced with a power play and mind
games.
One of the main instruments the family
uses against the scapegoat is
invisibility.
Render rendering the scapegoat
invisible.
ignoring the scapegoat in a systematic
way, neglecting the scapegoat as a
policy, betraying the scapegoat, and
then claiming that it's not true. There
has been no betrayal. This is known as
betrayal blindness. rejecting the
scapegoat ostracism
socially, emotionally and otherwise
not providing the scapegoat with any
share of the resources of the family. So
the golden child gets everything, the
scapegoat gets nothing.
And so it is as if the scapegoat is not
alive. It's a denial of the very
existence and visibility of the
scapegoat. It's a pretension that this
scapegoat is no longer with the family.
The core issue in in such families is
what I call the repression ethos.
The repression ethos is you should never
discuss some things. You should never
discuss the family's dynamics. You
should never discuss the family's power
structure. You should never discuss
justice in such a family. You should
never discuss your emotions. Emotions
are delegitimized. I call it
delegitimized effect. No emotions,
please. We are not a family. Everything
is repressed. You cannot and you are not
allowed to express your experience of
trauma and abuse.
You're not allowed to allowed to
verbalize the breach of trust that has
affected you so profoundly, the negative
emotions. You're not allowed to suggest
that you are subjected to a profound
betrayal by someone you depend on or
love in any crucial way. And this
denial, this repression
lead to dissociation
and to a host of long-term mental health
disorders
and attachment problems, an insecure
attachment style, a fear of intimacy,
a rejection of love, and the inability
to maintain properly functioning
relationships.
The scapegoat recreates the original
hostile family of origin in all future
relationships. One way or another,
approach avoidance maybe
uh rejection of the partner, suspecting
the partner in a paranoid way. There are
many many manifestations of the damage
done to members of families which are
essentially hateful families founded on
negative emotions such as anger, envy.
So we have negative effect families and
positive effect families. Their family
is founded on love and their family is
founded on hate and envy and rejection
and anger.
And if you came out of a family that had
nothing to offer you but negative
effects, negative emotions, that had
nothing, there's no way to relate to you
but except by rejecting you and casting
you as a bad guy,
then the damage regrettably is for life.