Video summary
The video begins with a humorous introduction by the host, Sam Vaknin, who briefly mentions his upcoming speaking engagements in Russia, Greece, and North Macedonia before addressing a specific question from a viewer named Minnie. Minnie asks why a narcissist suddenly shifts from contempt to obsession after she undergoes a profound personal transformation. Vaknin explains that this reaction is not triggered by any minor change but requires a deep, identity-altering shift that makes the victim appear as a completely new person in the eyes of the narcissist. Because narcissists suffer from severe identity diffusion and lack a continuous sense of self, they perceive this sudden change in another as a mirror reflecting their own disjointed nature. Consequently, the narcissist forgets the past entirely, erasing previous conflicts or breakups, and immediately re-idealizes the transformed individual as a potential source of narcissistic supply or a new partner for a shared fantasy.
However, this transformation also serves as a significant narcissistic injury because it demonstrates the victim's autonomy and independence, directly challenging the narcissist's belief that they are indispensable to the other person's life. By changing without the narcissist's involvement, the victim signals that they do not need the abuser to survive or make decisions, which threatens the narcissist's fragile internal balance and sense of control. To resolve the cognitive dissonance caused by this threat, the narcissist typically adopts one of two solutions: an internal solution where they delusionally believe they orchestrated the change themselves to bring the victim back into their orbit, or an external solution involving a turn toward darkness. In this darker scenario, the narcissist attempts to annihilate the victim to eliminate the reminder of their own impotence and to reduce feelings of abandonment anxiety by deanimating the person who proved unreliable.
Ultimately, the video concludes that when a narcissist reacts with obsession or hostility after a transformation, it is because the victim has disrupted the narcissist's internal world of fragmented objects and delusions. The narcissist cannot accept the reality that the victim has evolved independently, so they must either co-opt this new version of the person into their own fantasy system or destroy them to prevent such autonomy from happening again. This dynamic highlights the terrifying nature of narcissistic relationships, where any genuine growth or change in the partner is met with either a desperate attempt to control and re-idealize or with a calculated effort to dehumanize and eliminate the source of frustration. The host emphasizes that sending the message "I don't need you" is the most dangerous thing one can do for a narcissist, often triggering their worst impulses to ensure such independence never occurs again.
Read the full video transcript
Minnie
found herself the inadvertent star
of a truly deranged and comic horror
fiction series.
So, now she is more famous than I am.
>> [laughter]
>> She is my [clears throat] new trophy
partner.
I have re-idealized Minnie and I let her
serve me coffee with her unusual and
natural dark smile.
>> [snorts]
>> Okay, Shoshana.
It's been a busy week and I'm faced with
a few busy months ahead.
First of all, on Sunday, I gave two
lectures in the Cygnus
conference in Russia. I've uploaded the
first one to the channel today. Second
one is coming.
Then, in September, I have a lecture
in a conference organized by the African
Insight Foundation.
And then, in October, I'm headed to
Greece.
Three lectures
in the Eurotas 26 conference. Busy,
busy, busy. Above all, and most
importantly, in November
in Ohrid, O H R I D, Ohrid,
in North Macedonia, one of the most
beautiful cities in the world, a free
three and a half day seminar.
We have 160 seats, 180 bookings
confirmed.
I know that there will be cancellations,
so please hurry up.
Write to me and I'll reserve a seat for
you.
Okay? Write to me at
samvaknin@gmail.com.
I received an interesting question.
Professor, that's me. My name is Sam
Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self
Love, Narcissism Revisited, and yes,
a professor of psychology.
So, the question was, "Professor, why
does a narcissist switch from contempt
to obsession
after someone undergoes a
transformation?
This happened to me."
My interlocutor says, asks, "Was their
initial assessment of me simply wrong,
or is something else driving this
pivot?"
Well,
first of all,
not any transformation would do the the
the trick.
You need a really really profound, deep
transformation, transformation that
renders you a completely new person,
a change of identity, if you wish.
[clears throat]
And this kind of transformation
uh renders you a new person also in the
eyes of the narcissist.
The narcissist begins to see you
as a stranger,
a potential target,
a participant in a new shared fantasy, a
source of narcissistic supply,
a maternal figure, in short, an eligible
an eligible prey.
And there is this there is this
transition.
Once the narcissist perceives you
as a new person,
all is forgotten.
The past is gone, erased, deleted, never
happened.
And you are eligible to participate in a
new shared fantasy.
The narcissist is capable of doing this,
ignoring your common past,
ignoring maybe hardships and problems
you've had,
uh ignoring possibly an acrimonious
breakup or termination of the
relationship. Narcissist is capable of
doing all this because the narcissist
himself is discontinuous.
The narcissist is disjointed.
We know that narcissists are
dissociated. They have extreme memory
gaps, similar to borderline.
And so, the narcissist experiences what
is known as identity diffusion or
identity disturbance.
To put it in To put it in colloquial
terms, in English, in plain English, the
narcissist is never the same person from
one day to the next.
It's There's always a process of
reinvention
and acquisition of identity on the fly
and extremely reactivity to input and
feedback from other people and from the
environment. The narcissist is
a amalgam or assemblage or hive mind or
a theater troop,
a group of people. It's not [snorts] a
single identity. It's a And And this is
why very early on, about 30 years ago,
I suggested that perhaps narcissism is
best conceptualized or reconceptualized
as a dissociative form of dissociative
identity disorder, what used to be
called multiple personality disorder. Be
that as it may,
the identity diffusion
that the narcissist experiences,
the incapacity to maintain a sense of
continuity
owing to the fact that the narcissist
does not possess a constellated
integrated self,
that the the narcissist internal
landscape is kaleidoscopic and
fragmented,
that there is no thread old holding
everything together.
And so, because of that,
the narcissist is
predisposed to recognize and to react to
your your transformation.
Transformation is a form of break. It's
a form of discontinuity. When the
narcissist sees this in you,
it resonates.
There's an echo.
It's like finding a soulmate or or a
twin, you know.
The The narcissist goes through life
shapeshifting.
And And all the time
changing and transmuting and
transubstantiating and transforming
himself or herself.
When they come across you,
and you have changed dramatically, the
narcissist recognizes this, reacts to
this very powerfully, and wants to
reacquire you, re-idealize you, restart
the share a shared fantasy with you, a
new one.
Everything is, as I said, forgotten,
deleted, erased, eradicated, never
happened. There's no past. Narcissists
have no past.
Narcissists have no They don't have a
future. They have a fantasy of the
future, and they have a fantasy of the
past.
But they don't have a real past or a
real future. You can't have that
when your memory is dysfunctional.
When your memory is not working, there's
no identity.
And so your transformation
triggers the narcissist
because it also reflects to the
narcissist their own transformation.
Their own
quicksilver shapeshifting nature,
desultory and itinerant, here today,
gone tomorrow, on the fly, on the go,
recreating oneself as a kind of
transformer.
But your transformation is also a form
of narcissistic injury.
By transforming yourself without the
involvement of the narcissist,
you have displayed personal autonomy,
agency,
independence.
You have humiliated the narcissist.
It challenges the narcissist centrality
in your life.
The narcissist believes that he that he
is uh indispensable to you. That you
can't really affect any change, make any
decision,
adopt any choice without him or her.
By transforming yourself so dramatically
and so profoundly, you're broadcasting
to the narcissist, you're no longer
needed.
Or in the words of the greatest
narcissist of all, you're fired.
The narcissist takes this badly.
It's a narcissistic injury. It
undermines It also undermines the
internal object that represents you in
the narcissist's mind.
So, it is a challenge not only to the
narcissist's perception of you as an
extension,
controllable extension, but also it's
also a challenge to the precarious
balance, inner balance, of the
narcissist's mind, which is comprised
100% of internal objects that interact
with each other in a kind of paracosm,
surrealistic paracosm. Here you come
and you challenge, you undermine, you
destroy
one of these internal objects, thereby
proving that all these internal objects
are delusional.
The narcissist cannot accept this.
And he resolves this dissonance by
trying to annex you,
convert you into a compliant internal
object, render you an extension of
himself, safely ensconced in a new
shared fantasy.
This is the internal solution.
The narcissist says,
"Her transformation
is actually a part and parcel
of a larger move towards a new shared
fantasy.
I made it happen.
I induced it in her.
He even develops delusion delusions that
you have changed just in order to
reacquire him to reenter his life or or
her life.
This is the benign solution, benign
development.
But there is also what is known as an
external solution.
It is a turn to darkness.
It is an attempt to annihilate you
as a source of frustration
and as a reminder
of the narcissist impotence and lack of
control over you. It is
an anxiolytic move. The idea is to
reduce separation insecurity abandonment
anxiety.
The narcissist needs to deanimate you,
to take away your life force
because you have proven to be
unreliable so to speak.
By transforming yourself without the
narcissist presence or contribution
you have signaled to the narcissist you
have mess messaged the narcissist that
you don't need him or her.
That you can survive well without.
And this is
the worst most threatening message you
can send any narcissist.
And so one solution is to pretend that
everything that's happening
is puppet mastered by the narcissist.
And the other solution is simply to
destroy you.
Remove you. Annihilate you.
Reduce you. Disintegrate you. Do simply
simply make sure
that this
will never happen again.
And that this will be
the last transformation
you ever have.