Why Are Narcissists The Way They Are? (Los Angeles Film School Documentary Graduate Project)

I would like to know where should we draw the line between narcissistic traits which many people have and actually the actual narcissistic personality disorder. >> Well, all people have the traits of narcissism. Um there because all people have what is called healthy narcissism. Healthy narcissism is the foundation of a sense of self-worth, self-confidence, self-esteem, the ability to regulate emotionally, the ability to interact with other people. So healthy narcissism is healthy and is very very useful very necessary when when a person's upbringing family context experiences are such in early childhood are such that the healthy foundation or the healthy template of narcissism is distorted or becomes malignant. We end up with pathological narcissism which Freud at the time called secondary narcissism. And pathological narcissism and healthy narcissism have actually nothing in common. And that is where the big confusion starts. Pathological narcissism is not an exaggeration of healthy narcissism. It's not a caricature of healthy narcissism. It's not healthy narcissism writ large. Pathological narcissism is a kind of mutation of narcissism that renders it completely different to healthy narcissism because it involves severe disruptions to internal processes and internal constructs. Whereas in healthy narcissism and in narcissistic style, which I think is what you're talking about, most of the psychological processes and constructs are intact, fully functional. That's not the case in pathological narcissism. One example or two, someone with pathological narcissism is unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality. Whereas that's not the case with someone who is merely being obnoxious or an a-hole or a jerk, someone who is not so empathic, someone who is abrasive and a bit antisocial, someone who is exploitative. And this kind of person would have a personality style but would still be perfectly able to tell the difference between reality and and fantasy, whereas the pathological narcissist would not be able to. The second type of the second example of a profound a profound abuse, a profound difference between the two is that healthy normal people including people with a narcissistic style, narcissistic personality style. They are able to tell the difference between internal objects and external objects. they're able to tell the difference between people out there and the representations of these people in their own mind. So every human being um when they when we come across another person we create a representation of that person in our minds. What happens with the pathological narcissist? The pathological narcissist believes in the reality and veracity of the internal object at the expense of the external one. The pathological narcissist would confuse and conflate the external with the internal very similar to someone with a psychotic disorder. And these are only two two differences. The we can therefore say that pathological narcissism it's unfortunate that we're using the word narcissism in the context of pathological narcissism because it gives the impression that it's some kind of a cancerous variant or malignancy of what is otherwise healthy. The same way in the body you have normal healthy cells and then they sometimes mutate and become precancerous and cancerous. That is not the case. That is not the case. What happens in pathological nar in the in the development of pathological narcissism is that the individual is unable to develop a self. Ironically, narcissists are selfless. They are not egotist because they don't have an ego. There is a massive disruption, an irreversible disruption in the formation, constellation, integration and functionality of a sense of self. One of the most important functions of of a sense of self is continuity. the the feeling that you are continuous that it's you regardless of changing circumstances and changing um environments and people entering and exiting your life. Regardless of all this, it's always you. You lose weight, you gain weight, you study, so you become wiser. Uh you've had an accident, some organs were amputated throughout this whole process. You're always you. And what gives you this feeling of continuity and jointedness is the self. Narcissists don't have this. They're highly dissociative. And when they were children, they were not allowed to separate from parental figures and to become individuals. There was a failure of separation and individuation. They were also unable to perceive other people as external because they were not allowed to develop boundaries. A main function of the self is to create boundaries. The ability to say that's me and that's not me. This is where I end and the world begins. So when you don't have a self, you don't have boundaries. And because you don't have boundaries, you cannot tell the difference between external and internal in here and out there. Again, it's very reminiscent of psychosis. So, it's not a minor thing. It's not like someone who is an a-hole, you know, degree degree nine rather than a-hole degree three. That's that's not the issue at all. These are profoundly mentally ill. Narcissists are profoundly mentally ill people. Some scholars believe that pathological narcissism is indeed a form of psychosis or pseudocychosis and therefore perhaps as severe as schizophrenia. It's it's a really bad mental illness. >> Thank you. What does what do you think social media gets most wrong about narcissist and narcissist abuse? >> The there's no way to give a short answer. About 90% of the information online is wrong. >> By the way, that is that applies also to medical information to information online is wrong. vast majority of the time it's it's highly recommended to not rely on anything that emanates from online to rely only on books, textbooks, scholarly articles and so on. So there's no short answer because I would say everything everything is wrong. There's confusion between psychopaths and narcissists. There is a mis a deep misunderstanding of narcissistic abuse and the dynamics behind it. I coined the phrase narcissistic abuse. I was the first to describe it in the ' 90s. So, I'm in a privileged position. I can talk with authority about this particular phrase. And what's going on nowadays is a victimhood movement which demonizes narcissists and is heavily engaged in conspiracies. It's a conspiracy theory. The information you're getting online is a conspiracy theory involving narcissist, demons, and angels. You are the angel. The narcissist is a demon. Of course, it's a splitting defense. Ironically, narcissist split. So, I would say it's a narcissistic a narcissistic reaction. And so, the field online is corrupted beyond redemption. I don't believe there's any going back and any fixing. And it's such a mess that if you were to access information online, you're doing so at your peril. But you see, people don't go online to obtain information. Absolutely not. They go online because they want to they want to cast themselves. They want to perceive themselves as innocent, angelic, flawless, blemishless, and blameless victims who have fallen prey to diabolical entities that somehow consume other human beings. And there is this morality play. The victims are all good and have contributed nothing to their predicament whereas a narcissist is all bad and he is the mastermind and puppet master of everything that has happened. So people go online to feel good about themselves not to obtain information and they they feel good about themselves in a variety of ways and I would say the main the core feature is victimhood. what Gabby and others call the tendency for interpersonal victimhood. It's a personality structure where victimhood becomes an identity, a determinant of a sense of self-worth and self-concept. And victimhood also allows allows you to leverage your victimhood to obtain benefits to impose obligations on other people. To self-impute rights to yourself. The irony is that all narcissists, covert and overt, especially covert, believe that they are victims. So many of the so-called victims online are actually narcissists. That applies in a broad brush stroke. That applies to the empaths movement. The empaths movement. The empaths self-styled empaths. I have no idea what this means. It's not a clinical term. They are in my opinion having observed their forums and their interactions for many years. They are almost without the exception covert narcissist. So we have a contamination of the legitimate space for grievances and and victim victimhood stories. We have a contamination of this space with narcissists who have invaded the space. Now that's not unique to the narcissistic abuse online space. Narcissists and psychopaths have taken over victimhood movements. Um, and that has been documented in multiple studies in Israel, in British Columbia, in Taiwan, in many other locations. So, there's a there's a hostile takeover of legitimate grievances and and need for help and suck. There's a takeover of this space by narcissists and psychopaths. It's really bad out there. Is dark and black and hopeless. And if you are if you feel that you have been victimized by a narcissist, fell victim to a narcissist, my best advice is to avoid the online space to the best of your ability and to rely on classical psychotherapy on literature. There are portals and there are websites which include only scholarly literature and to rely only on that. Absolutely. To avoid everyone online, myself included. >> Well, luckily I have luckily I have an offline presence. I published I published dozens of peer-reviewed articles. I've written 60 books. So, but the online space is not the right not the right not the right venue to seek help. >> Very misleading. >> It's not only misleading. There is a vested commercial interest to keep you in a state of victimhood. The longer you're entrenched in your victimhood, the more money these people make off you laughing all the way to the bank. These are charlatans, corn artists and vile pseudo criminals. And I'm talking also about people with the title doctor or doctor of psychology. Also these people, they have been perverted and corrupted by money. Many of them if not all of them have no credentials in the field whatsoever. They have never published a single paper on narcissistic personality disorder. They have never presented anything in any conference. They have never written any academic text or textbook. They have never studied or conducted studies of narcissists. And yet they declare themselves experts on narcissism. It's unfortunate. Does the narcissist recognize that they are hurting their partner while it is happening? >> It's a very multi-layered question. Let's start with the fact that narcissists are perfectly aware of what they're doing. They're perfectly aware of their actions. They are also usually perfectly cognizant of the outcomes of their actions, of the consequences. We know that because narcissists, people diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder, change their behavior in total institutions. We know that narcissists, for example, don't act the same way when they are in prison or in the army or in a hospital. They change. All the abrasive, exploitative, disempathic, aggressive behaviors vanish overnight. They are not arrogant anymore. They are not grandios. They don't humiliate or shame anyone. Suddenly there are good people, nice people, pleasant people. That means that narcissists can change. It means they are in full control of their behaviors. It means they know exactly what they're doing. It means they can switch it on and off. And it means that they can anticipate adverse consequences if they misbehave in specific environments. So in prison, if you behave the way a narcissist, a typical narcissist does, your life expectancy is impacted, shall we say. >> It's dangerous to behave this way in prison. So that's the first layer, perfect awareness of actions and consequences. However, narcissists are not aware of motivations and attitudes. They are aware of what they are doing. They are not aware of why they are doing it. So there's no awareness of internal psychonamics, no awareness of motivation, no awareness of attitude, no awareness of beliefs and values. No, all this is missing. There's a vacuum where this should have been because there's no self. The self is the organizing principle. We have what we call identity diffusion or identity disturbance. There's an instability in identity. And so a narcissist would act in a way that would hurt and harm other people. He would realize, he would know what he's doing. He would realize that there are possible consequences to his actions, some of them adverse, but he would have no idea why he's doing it. In a desperate attempt to explain to himself or to herself, half of all narcissists are women. In a desperate attempt to explain to themselves why why am I why am I behaving this way? The narcissist asks in a desperate attempt this kind of narcissist would come up with what we call confabulations. The narcissist would create a selfjustifying narrative that would render the narcissist a pro-social dogooder essentially a good person. So if the narcissist for example hurts you by abusing you verbally or the narcissist realizes that he's abusing you verbally. He realizes that this may have consequences. But then he says to himself and to you, I'm doing this to help you. I'm doing this because I love you. I'm doing this because I want to wake you up. I'm doing this to educate you. This is tough love. I'm not abusing you. There's no other way to get to you. You're so naive. You're so gullible. You're in danger. And I'm saving you. I'm your rescuer. So that's an example. If a narcissist behaves immorally or amorally in any context, they would always come up with a storyline or a narrative that would render the action taken socially approbated, socially acceptable and even commendable, even you know worthy of praise and so on. And narcissists are very ostentatious in parading, exhibiting these narratives. They use them to elicit feedback from the environment. But so you see, it's not as simple as saying, "Yeah, they know what they're doing." Or, "No, they don't know what they're doing." Or it's much more complex than this. The narcissist is selfdeceiving. One major one major error in collective thinking online is to attribute to the narcissist malicious deliberation, malign intent as if the narcissist is some kind of evil entity. That is that is a psychopath. That's not a narcissist. Narcissists are selfdeceiving. They're delusional. They really believe what they're saying. They believe their fantasies. They can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality. When the narcissist says to you, "I did it because I love you. I hurt you. I damaged you. I broke you. I tortured you. I verbally abused you. I did all this because I love you." It's not that he is trying to gaslight you, manipulate you. He truly believes it. And this makes pathological narcissism considerably more dangerous than psychopathy. The psychopath is goal oriented. Once a psychopath has secured the goal, the psychopath moves on. The psychopath is grounded in reality. You can always tell the difference between reality and fantasy. Psychopath knows exactly what he's doing and why he's doing it. Whereas the narcissist is truly deluded, truly truly hallucinating. If you tr it's no longer with us. He's not he has no he has what we call impaired reality testing. is no access to reality and this is very very dangerous and so it's a it's a twilight zone between perfect awareness even I would say heightened sharp awareness including awareness of other people what I call cold empathy called like empathy that's a combination of reflexive and cognitive empathy so narcissists are actually very aware they have heightened awareness ess on the one hand and on the other hand delusionality, fantasy and a total lack of interface functioning and interface with reality. And this bizarre combination is what confuses people including self-styled experts online because they keep saying, "No, he knows what he's doing. No, he doesn't know what he's doing. No, he's aware. No, he's not aware." It's all true at the same time. He is aware and not aware. She knows what she's doing and she doesn't. It's true at the same time. All all of it. Thank you for that really good answer. So just adding on that how much is conscious and strategic and how much comes from automatic psychological defenses >> in pathological narcissism almost everything absolutely everything comes from automatic autonomous processes. The narcissist is captured or caught in the inexurable mach machinery that is a substitute for his self. There is a fantastic space within which there is a deity, a divine entity that's a false self. And the false self and the and the fantasy defense collude and take over the narcissist subsume the narcissist. The narcissist becomes the fantasy and the false self. Narcissists do many things and many of them are harmful and dangerous to others. But they are as much a victim of their own machinations as as the actual victims. They narcissists cannot truly help it. They're driven. It's compulsive. It's a compulsive disorder. You add to that the fact that narcissists are highly immature, developmentally immature. A typical narcissist is 2 years old, 3 years old emotionally speaking. And you have a picture of someone who doesn't have the tools to cope with reality, to exit the fantasy, and to harness it somehow, to control it somehow. someone who is an internal a victim of of his or her own internal processes and constructs such as the false self. So the answer here is that narcissists are automatons. They are robots. They are devices, machinery. They're set in motion. They're set in motion by childhood adversity of one kind or another. And then it's a perpetual mole that never stops and keeps repeating itself. What Freud called repetition compulsion keeps repeating itself at infinitum until the narcissist dies. Can the narcissist change his or her behaviors? Yes, I said that the narcissist can change behaviors. But even when the narcissist changes behaviors, he would change behaviors within a new fantasy. So he would simply impose another fantasy which yields different behaviors. It's always through fantasy. It's always through the false self. It's always through a glass darkly. It's always mediated. It's always unreal. It's always a dreamscape. It's a little like lucy dreaming but without the control. And so this is the narcissist. I think the confusion online is because of psychopathy. The psychopath, it's the psychopath who is deliberate, premeditated, intentional, goal orientated and goal focused. It's the psychopath who has a plan and executes it relentlessly, callously, mercilessly. These these all apply to the psychopath. The narcissist is delusional. He doesn't know what he's doing. He's mentally ill. He's totally crazy. It's a nut job. Whereas the psychopath is an exaggerated version of ourselves. Exaggerated version of a healthy person. Everyone wants sex. Everyone wants money. Everyone wants power. Only the psychopath wants it more and would do anything to get it. That's the difference. So psychopaths are exaggerated healthy people whereas narcissists are not healthy and have nothing in common with healthy people. and they're driven and they're compelled and they act in ways which are completely incomprehensible to them and they retreat into delusions and fantasies and they selfdeceive. They cheat, they they lie to themselves and then they believe the lies. This is called confabulation. It's it's a different terrain. It's a different mental landscape completely nothing almost in common with psychopathy and yet the two are conflated online and that's the outcome. The outcome is that people are completely confused and say yeah narcissists are evil they do it intentionally they they enjoy other people's pain and they're confusing say this and psychopaths and narcissist it's a mess. Can someone with narcissistic personality disorder meaningful change? And if so, what would genuine change actually look like rather than temporary behavioral improvement? It is possible to modify certain behaviors of the narcissist in the medium term, short to medium-term and subject to maintenance or subject to additional reinforcements, these behavior modifications can last longer. So we can definitely clinicians I'm not a clinician but clinicians can definitely reduce amilarate abrasive behaviors antisocial behaviors criminal behaviors hurtful hurtful behaviors socially unacceptable behaviors. They can teach the narcissist to sublimate to convert drives and urges into socially acceptable activities. They can teach the narcissist that acting in certain ways doesn't pay, that it's dysfunctional, that it's it's much better to act another way to obtain goals. They can teach the narcissist to not hurt and harm people because if he does, he's going to lose the shared fantasy. It's possible to negotiate with this child with this two to to three year old child if you as a clinician accept the fact that it's a child not an adult. The greatest mistake in most treatment modalities is that we I mean clinicians regard the narcissist as an adult. And the second greatest mistake they're trying to negotiate with the narcissist. They're trying to they're trying to reach some kind of alliance, therapeutic alliance or some kind of contract or agreement with the narcissist. And these are mistakes that lead nowhere. There there are techniques that one as a clinician can borrow from child psychology which would be very efficacious and very useful in the treatment of narcissism. and uh a clinician that is trained and qualified and has experience can induce long-term change in someone with NPD. However, it is not possible to cure or heal narcissistic personality disorder in the sense that the disrupted internal psychonamics and the missing or dysfunctional constructs can never be recovered, reconstituted, reinstated, rebuilt. You can never teach the narcissist empathy. You can never resurrect the true self. You can never educate the narcissist about the difference between fantasy and reality. Render the narcissist more reality attuned, improved the narcissist reality testing. None of this works. None of this works. You can never teach a narcissist the difference between external and internal objects. You can never evolve in the narcissist though. Somehow bring the narcissist into a stage where there is self-t talk. A kind of self-t talk that is inhibitory, that is pro-social. You can't do that. You can never teach a narcissist to ignore other people as sources of narcissistic supply to not be addicted to attention. Cannot do this. These are the fundamental issues. In short, even the most potent highly developed treatment modalities can accomplish merely cosmetological cosmetological outcomes in narcissism. But it's good enough because it makes the narcissist easier to live with, easier to coexist with. After all, the orientation in these cases should be on society, not on the narcissist. Narcissist is a lost case. It's a hopeless case. Not as hopeless as a psychopath, but pretty hopeless. So rather than focus on on the narcissist, one should focus on the people around the narcissist, people who are impacted by the narcissist adversely and educate the narcissist or mold or shape the narcissist to not hurt people. I think this should be the main treatment goal, not to heal the narcissist, but to make to defang the narcissist, to remove the narcissist's poison, to kind of prevent the narcissist from harming other people. >> That sounds so intense. makes me feel bad for people that are narcissists because uh nobody chooses what they are sick or like their personality disorders and all that stuff. I'm sure if they could, they would choose otherwise. When you use the term narcissistic supply, what exactly is a narcissist obtaining from another person? >> We widely consider that pathological narcissism is a compensatory process. In other words, something in the narcissist's childhood went bad, went all right. Something something led the child at the time to retreat and to defend oneself. So we believe based on 150 years of literature, we believe that in the personal histories of all narcissists, there has been this a dysfunctional childhood, dysfunctional familial setting, adverse childhood experiences, abuse of some kind, trauma of some kind. Now immediately people would say that's not true. My narcissist had a wonderful childhood. his mother loved him and adored him and so on so forth. Abuse and trauma or abuse is any situation where the child is not allowed to develop boundaries a constellated integrated self to separate from the parent and to become an individual. So if there's a mother who is smothering and pampering and spoiling the child that's abuse. If there is a parent there are parents who are overprotective of the child and isolate the child from reality and from peers that's abuse. If there are there's a mother who keeps telling the child you're always right you can do no wrong. Everyone else is wrong. Everyone else is guilty. You never ever do anything wrong. That's abuse. If there's a mother who parentifies the child, treats the child as a substitute spouse or substitute father or substitute mother, parentification, that's abuse. If there's a mother who pushes the child or a father who pushes the child to realize their own unfulfilled dreams and wishes, the mother wanted to be an actress. The father wanted to be a medical doctor. They failed and they pushed the child to become an actor or a medical doctor. Instrumentalization, that's abuse. There are million ways to abuse and only one way to raise the child properly. It's easy to get it wrong. And so in such an environment, the child defends itself, protects itself somehow. And because it's a child, it's a 2-year-old. The main tool the child has is fantasy. So the child creates a fantasy. And within the fantasy, there's an imaginary friend. And this imaginary friend is everything the child is not. This imaginary friend is all powerful because the child is helpless. This imaginary friend is omnisient, knows everything because the child cannot guess the next moves of the adults. in the environment. This um this um false self, this godlike creature is a perfect being. Whereas the child believes itself to be unworthy, unlovable, imperfect. So it's a it's a compensation. It's compensatory. But when you construct your whole life on a fantasy, there is somewhere in the back of your mind a suspicion. Even if your fantasy is elaborate and exquisite and amazingly detailed and you know there's always a small voice that says to you, "That's not real. That's a fantasy. What's wrong with you?" And so you need other people to tell you that it's not a fantasy. You need the confirmation and affirmation of other people that your false self, your grandio self-concept, your inflated fantastic self-image, your impossible life story, your all this totally Disneyland f Disney fantasy that you've constructed. Do you need people to tell you you're actually you're not fantasizing? You're not dreaming. It's all true. You get it right. That's reality. You think that you're a genius. That's not a fantasy. You're really a genius. You know, you need people to tell you that. And you need people to tell you that all the time because at the end of the day, you go home, you're alone. And when you're alone, this small voice comes alive, wakes up. And again this voice says okay a 100 people told you that your fantasy is not your fantasy a fantasy that your false self is not false that you're truly a genius but are you sure is 100 big enough a sample? Don't you need a thousand? Don't you need a 100 thousand? Don't you need a million? Don't you need all the denisens of the earth to be sure? To be absolutely sure. And so it's it's a compulsion. The narcissist keeps approaching people and soliciting feedback. The aim of the feedback is to sustain the inflated, fantastic, grandio, unrealistic, counterfactual self-concept. And this feedback, there's never enough of it. The narcissist needs more and more and more and all the time. And this is a a compulsion. And this feedback is known as narcissistic supply. Narcissistic supply is not merely attention. It's the right kind of attention. It's attention that sustains and butresses and proves beyond any doubt the veracity, validity, and authenticity of the self-concept, the narcissist self-concept, which is a piece of fiction, which is which is nonsense. because it's so nonsensical, because it's so outlandish, because it's so fictional, the narcissist needs an infinite amount of people to tell him that it's not, that it is real, that it is true, that it is believable and so on. So this this is the source of the compulsion. Now one thing that people self experts fail to realize is that the attention doesn't have to be positive. There is something called locus of grandiosity. Locus of grandiosity is the way the narcissist inflates the self-concept. The way the narcissist imbusses the self-concept with uniqueness. So, you could be unique because you're a genius, but you could also be unique because you're a victim. You could be unique because you are the richest man on earth, but you could also be unique because you have had the biggest bankruptcy in human history. You could be unique because you are Mother Teresa and you're a dogooder and you're a saint. But you could also be unique because you're an evil vile monster the likes of which has never existed before. The predator, the apex predator of all predators. That's also uniqueness. Narcissistic supply therefore is not only positive could be definitely negative. If the narcissist perceives himself as unique by virtue of being evil monster, then he would seek narcissistic supply which would confirm to him that he is an evil monster and he would regard it as wonderful. And of course vice versa. If the narcissist believes himself to be a saint, a savior, a rescuer, a fixer, a wounded healer, the nar this kind of narcissist would seek input from people who would tell him, "Yes, you are a healer. You fixed my life, you saved me, etc." So it's very important to understand this. The narrative could be absolutely negative or absolutely positive. What matters is I'm unique. I'm suic one of a kind. Never before, unprecedented, never after. This is this is the story of the narcissist. Could be either way. >> What happens internally when that when that supply suddenly disappears? >> Depends. If the supply disappears, fluctuates and disappears for very short periods of time, then narcissist is well equipped to stabilize the flow of narcissistic supply by self supply. So when there is a short-term deficiency or interruption in the flow of narcissistic supply, the narcissist would supply himself or herself. He would recall moments of glory. He would tell himself that this particular accomplishment is amazing. He would become he would become his own audience. And I call it self audiencing. This is a short-term stop gap. It's not a long-term solution. If the disruption continues beyond a certain point, then we have a state of deficient narcissistic supply. Initially, the narcissist will go into depression. would develop avoidant and schizoid behaviors would avoid people in reality and if this continues beyond that he would go into a state known as narcissistic collapse. Narcissistic collapse is the inability to maintain the cohesion and functionality of the internal structures such as the false self, internal constructs such as the false self that allow the narcissist to somehow survive and cope. So then the the defenses Naris have many infantile uh defenses primitive defenses such as splitting projection projective identification intellectualization. This is very common in narcissism. When there isn't enough supply the defenses shut down tuck tuck tuck like you see in the movies >> and this process is known as decompensation. As a defenses shut down, the narcissist becomes defenseless. It's like he has no skin. There's no skin and there's direct contact with reality. At that point, the narcissist develops borderline like features. He becomes emotionally disregulated. He develops suicidal ideiation because his defenses don't work. His false self is disabled. And for the first time he is in touch direct touch with the with reality and with the shame inside himself or other negative effects such as anger or envy. You see the pathological narcissism as a compensatory process or compensatory mechanism is has two functions. to shield the narcissist from the internal reality, the emptiness, the shame, the anger or rage, the envy to shield the narcissist, to isolate, to firewall the narcissist from the internal reality which is highly toxic, corrosive and lifethreatening. That's function number one. And function number two to obtain narcissistic supply to somehow uphold the truthfulness of the self-concept. These are the two functions. When there is no narcissistic supply, the false self is disabled and the defenses are down and then the narcissist is gets in touch with his own internal reality and this pushes the narcissist to become essentially a kind of border light. And that's that's called narcissistic collapse. >> Can someone with pathological narcissism genuinely love a romantic partner or is the relationship fundamentally experienced differently? >> A narcissist would tell you that they do love. They mislabel many internal processes and very often they mislabel some internal processes is love. So they told I do love I actually love more than healthy people. I love more intensely. I love more colorfully. I love more or pervasively. I love my love is amazing. It's technical. It's unique. It's spectacular you know. So narcissist would insist that the way they love is far more far more profound, far deeper and far more intense than the way healthy people love. But of course narcissists are completely incapable of positive emotions. They have no access to positive emotions because they've learned early on that positive emotions end in pain. They've learned to associate to link positive emotions like love with pain. the first person they've loved, mother or later father. This first person disappointed them, let them down, abused them, traumatized them, constrained them, stunted them, stunted their development, did not allow them to separate. And it so they've had a very bad experience with love. So they've learned to never love again. That's the solution. Solution is to never love again. But they do experience the shared fantasy. The shared fantasy is intoxicating. They they experience something called narcissistic elation. It's like a little like going back to the womb. It's a sense of safety. It's what Freud called oceanic feeling. It's within the fantasy. Anything is possible. The fantasy is brilliantly lit, is multicolored, it's uh it's throbbing, it's alive, it's it's all consuming and it's it's it allows for merger. It allows you allows an artist to merge with another person. So the and of course it's immediately evident that the shed fantasy is a recreation or reenactment of childhood. So the narcissist within the shed fantasy regresses to again to early childhood and attempts to reenact childhood within the shed fantasy perceiving the partner as a surrogate mother maternal figure and developing the same attachments and bonding that is typical with with a mother figure not with a romantic partner. It's much more complicated than this. I'm not going to all of the all of it, but essentially therefore what the narcissist experiences in the shared fantasy and misidentifies as love is a sense of all encompassing existential safety and infinite potential. like now I've gone the narcissist says to himself now I've gone back to zero to the womb I can restart my life from zero and now everything pos everything is possible and so it's an amazing feeling it's amazing feeling that you could become and be anything you want finally and at the same time you're protected by a powerful maternal figure you're embedded in her womb you're completely safe Nothing bad will ever happen to you now. And you are loved unconditionally. Her love is unconditional. So this is the experience within the shed fantasy. And the narcissist desperately attempts to label this experience. And so he says, "I I'm in love. I love her or him. Why can someone be idealized so intensely and later become devalued by the same person? What changes in the narcissist's perspective of them? >> So this has to do with the shirt fantasy. I told you that the shirt fantasy is a recreation or reenactment of childhood with a maternal figure. But the idea is to get it right this time. The first time around, the narcissist as a child was not allowed to separate from the maternal figure and to become an individual. This time with a new mother, the narcissist has every intention to get it right. He has every intention, unconscious intention to separate from this new mother and to become an individual. So this is the whole shared fantasy and every single relationship of the narcissist is about this a compulsive repetitive neverending attempt to find a mother, love her as a child would feel safe enough with her to separate from her. She's a secure base. Separate from her and become an individual. That's the whole thing. But why would you separate from an ideal, idealic, unconditionally loving, embracing matrix mother womb womb, uterine mother? Why why would you why would you separate? Why would you want to separate from this? Isn't this Isn't this the perfect uh fantasy? Isn't this Shouldn't you just remain like this forever? So the only way to separate from such a maternal figure is to devalue her. There is a strong drive unconscious drive to reenact childhood by separating and individuating from the new mother from the maternal. And the only way to accomplish this is to devalue her. You idealize her. The narcissist idealizes her initially as a mother, as a maternal figure. But then he needs to get rid of her. He needs to separate. How would he separate from her? And more importantly, why on earth would he separate from her? Because she's bad? Because she's done something wrong. Because she is deficient? Because she's unworthy? Because she's stupid or ugly or unlovable? Or betrayed him? There's a betrayal fantasy. So at some point driven inexurably by the forces of the machinery of the fantasy, machinery that is beyond the control of the narcissist, the narcissist has to devalue the maternal mother in order to separate from her and attempt individuation, attempt to become an individual. It never works. But that is the reason for idealization and devaluation cycles in pathological narcissism. It's not the same in borderline personality disorder. By the way, >> people with borderline personality disorder also idealize and devalue, but for completely different reasons. >> And finally, why does a narcissist sometimes return after rejecting or abandoning someone? Does returning necessarily mean they miss that person? >> No. Narcissist as I told you narcissists are incapable of perceiving the externality and separateness of other people or interacting with external objects. They live entirely inside their heads and they interact exclusively with representations of people in their mind. This technically this is known as introjects. So they inter they avatars avatars of other people. So they interact with these avatars not with other people. So narcissist cannot miss you. If you were a romantic partner with narcissist he would never miss you. If you are a good friend with the narcissist he would never miss you. But he would miss the experience of the internal object that represented you in his mind. He has had a relationship with the internal object that initially felt wonderful. Oceanic feeling the warm I told you as I told you it felt wonderful and he wants to experience this again. So to do that he needs to re idealize you. He's actually re idealizing the internal object, but he needs you to be there as an excuse to re idealize the internal object that represents you in his mind. It's not about missing you. It's about missing the experience of the shared fantasy in the idealization stage. When you're gone, when the narcissist discards you, or when you have left the narcissist, broke up with the narcissist, terminated a relationship with the narcissist, when you're gone, the internal object that represented you in the narcissist's mind remains. It's still there. You're gone, but the object is there. And because the internal object has been devalued before, you have been discarded. Yes, the process is devaluation, discard. So you have been devalued. The internal object has been devalued and then you went away somehow. So now inside the nar's mind, there is a devalued bed object which is which creates dissonance. It's this bad object can be threatening. For example, the narcissist may develop persecuto delusions. Narcissist may say this is an enemy and so he would attribute to you hostile intentions and malign malign conspiracies. Yeah. And so this internal object that represents you in his mind your memory your trace if you wish they constantly nag at the narcissist. They constantly disturb the narcissist. They they destabilize the narcissist. They disrupt the equilibrium and they keep talking to the narcissist. They keep all these internal objects. They have they have uh they they talk they communicate. There's a voice voices. So he needs to silence this voice. He needs to reconvert the internal bed per secondary hostile dangerous object. Reconvert it. Realize it. Make it good again. We call it we say in German vidmahu make it good again. And so the only way to do that is to reacquire you. And this is called hoovering. To hoover you, reacquire you as an external object which then gives him the right of the excuse to reel the internal object. The dissonance abates and is resolved. And again the structure is harmonic. The internal structure, the mind is harmonic and consonant. That's the reason they're doing this. >> Well, those were all my questions. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much. You're so nice for answering all those questions and for your time and everything. >> Thank you and I wish you success with your project. >> Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Yes, my friend. >> Let me let me keep me keep me updated on the progress. >> Okay, I will. Thank you. >> Okay. If you need anything further later on, follow up or whatever, I'm available. >> Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. >> Take care. >> Have a beautiful day. Bye.