(00:01) [Music] I’m Dr Kelly Brogan you may know me as a New York Times bestselling author of a book with an exploding pill on the cover Renegade psychiatrist pul dancer or honorary member of the disinformation Dozen what can I say I’m a born provocator I’ve spent most of my recent life exposing deceptions connecting dots and discovering the secret places my her victim is still waiting to be liberated and now I feel called to help you reclaim all of your parts your health your sexuality your power and your expression so that you can finally truly
(00:43) own yourself I want to ignite in you that inner knowing and the pulsing Vitality that lives beneath your disempowerment disconnection and resentment so that you can audaciously courageously and playfully alchemize your struggle into the specific pleasure of Who You Are this is Reclamation radio hi and welcome back to Reclamation radio I am Dr Kelly brogen and I am here today in conversation with Professor Sam beckan on the subject of narcissism and his body of work which has spanned over decades in an effort to
(01:27) raise awareness around what has now become such a colloquial term that in you know social media and in the Zeitgeist of relationship navigation everyone seems to be able to diagnose the the pathology of narcissism have an opinion on it feel victimized by it and I want to offer before we dive in um a bit of a caveat because as I mentioned you know before we started recording I’ve spent the better part of the past 15 years challenging uh the concept mental illness psychiatric diagnosis through my published literature through
(02:04) my clinical experience and I do acknowledge that if Psychiatry is um good at something and if psychiatrists are skilled in a particular way it is around pattern recognition and you know so-called cluster B personality disorders um are patterns and represent patterns I think you would agree that impact many of our lives and relationship um experiences so I would love to explore what you have um divined you know from your experience and your research um and I also want to frame that your perspective from my best
(02:49) understanding of it does align with my ethos on personal responsibility because there is um a very powerful field of victim Consciousness around this concept of narcissism you know all you have to do is speak to 10 women and you’ll find 10 stories of their you know experiences of narcissistic abuse and I think that it’s become a cover for a lot of um victim stories victim energy and disempowerment uh I would say especially for for women and a lot of what I’ve understood you um have to share I’d love to get into is that this is a dance a
(03:27) dance of of two um you know matched individuals often in relationship and I want to talk about the role that you see um you know this this mother projection I would call it mother woundology um because that’s very much in line with a lot of what I’ve been exploring so thank you for being here Sam I appreciate it thank you for having me and let’s just start with the basics because there is such uh this you know sort of socialized understanding of what narcissism is and everybody has their own opinion uh how would you
(04:03) define it like what actually is this entity and I know you you would say probably it has many different shades and um sort of fragments within it how would you define what you believe and have studied narcissism to be I think we tend to confuse the um the clinical entity pathological narcissism with narcissism as an organizing principle of postmodern society and civilization as an explanatory principle not dissimilar to religion whereby we make sense of our lives and we imbue our lives with meaning and Direction and purpose using
(04:47) the percepts and tenets of narcissism so narcissism serves to organize mod life that includes politics Show Business inter gender relationships I mean you name it narcism is simply explains it all it’s and it is distinct and should be distinct from the clinical entity it is because we conflate and confuse the two that we have this pandemic and the pandemic is not a pandemic of narcissism but a pandemic of misattributing narcissism mislabeling narcism misperceiving narcism and the tsunami or of misinformation disinformation utter
(05:34) nonsense in ridiculous tropes that afflict us because we conflate and confus it so first of all um many people have what is known as narcissistic style that’s lens Perry’s phrase not mine it’s someone who is an a-hole or a jerk many people have this men and women women increasingly more so because women are becoming more and more masculine stereotypically masculine that has nothing to do with pathological narcissism and definitely not nothing to do with narcissistic personality disorder the truth is that only a tiny
(06:20) percentage of the population suffer from narcissistic personality disorder anywhere between 1 and 2% of the general population 5 to 6% of the clinical population suffer from narcisstic Personality [Music] Disorder so that’s problem number one problem number two we are using an outdated text which should have been trashed something like three decades ago and that’s a diagnostic and statistical manual in its latest iteration which is text revision of the fifth edition it’s as trashy as before nothing has changed the only thing was um a wink a
(07:00) wink at state-of-the-art knowledge by introducing what the DSM committee called the alternative models of personality disorders so now we have a now we have two definitions of narcissism one is one is the old a copy pasted job the nine criteria in the DSM 4 which migrated mysteriously into the dsm5 text revision 25 years later or 30 years later actually and we have the alternative model of narcissistic personality disorder at the very end of the book among the appendages appendices and it’s a much better encapsulation of what narcissism
(07:43) is because it’s dimensional let me try to shed a different light on narcissism if I were if I were asked to define narcissism I could choose the DSM 4 path and describe behaviors most of them antisocial behaviors one way or another lack of empathy exploitativeness destructive envy and so on so forth so negative effectivity and so so this is a descriptive way a phenomenological way which is very primitive because these behaviors are common in many many other mental illnesses alleged mental disorders what have you and this creates a phenomenon
(08:26) known as comorbidity and another phen pH on less known which is known as poly polythetic polythetic problem never mind that what it means simply is that when you stick to behaviors when you make a list of behaviors and diagnose people because they are behaving in a certain way you’re bound to misdiagnose many people and you’re going to you’re bound to slap multiple labels on the same person which is bad practice it’s absolutely bad practice so today there’s another text it’s the 11th edition of the international classification of diseases
(09:05) the icd1 it’s published by the World Health Organization but don’t hold it against it and it’s actually an excellent text because it does reflect Cutting Edge thinking about personality disorders for example in the icd1 there there is no narcissistic personality disorder actually there’s no personality disorder of any kind there’s a single diagnosis of Personality Disorder with multiple facets multiple manifestations and dimension so you are diagnosed with a personality disorder with a narcissistic overlay you you’re more
(09:45) prone to be a narcissist than anything else or with an antisocial outlay with a borderline or emotionally disregulated outlay the thing is this anyone who’s ever worked with walking talking human beings knows that people are sometimes narcissists and then the week after they’re borderlines and then if they get really pissed off at you they become Psychopaths and then etc etc these diagnosis are utterly artificial people are not ponds they Rivers they flow everything is in flux these are simply different facets
(10:24) of different shimmering shimmering facade that disguises a core problem and the core problem is probably social not clinical not mental an inability to function within Society in ways which society deems acceptable sublimated so when you when you disobey the rules when you hate Authority when you’re contumacious when you’re defiant when you’re reckless they call you a psychopath when you think that you’re better off or better than others when you you feel Superior and Hy and you’re entitled to exploit other people and so
(11:07) and so forth they call you narcissist but these have nothing to do with any mental reality these have to do these are modes of functioning these are personality Styles these are ways that we interact with fellow beings so there’s a serious philosophical problem here serious Phil opical problem with the exception of borderline personality disorder among cluster B I would very much hesitate to consider um psychopathy a mental illness or antisocial personality dis and I I think that narcissistic personality disorder is a post-traumatic
(11:52) condition and I think that even borderline is a strong element of complex trauma which expresses itself via emotional disregulation and a host of other phenomena we are lost we are lost because we insist to pigeonhole people and we insist on the pretention that psychology is a science it’s not it’s a pseudo science it’s a form of literature the greatest psychologist were probably dooi and nii you know musil so and Freud who was literary genius much more than a rigorous scientist so I would define narcissism coming back to SEC securly coming back
(12:40) to your question I would define narcissism as someone narcissist as someone who is unable to perceive other people as external and separate so he he what he does this kind of person I’m saying he but it’s a she I mean 50% a will what an narcissist does uh they convert other people what is known as external objects they convert other people into internal objects they create avatars they create representations of other people in their mind I call this process snapshotting clinically it’s known as introjection so
(13:19) they create representations of other people in their minds and then they continue to interact with these representation that’s a major Hallmark of narcissism and the second major Hallmark of narcissism narciss pathological narcissism is a disruption in the process of forming functioning self so ironically narcissists are selfless they don’t have a self they don’t have what Freud used to call an ego they’re not egoist because they don’t have an ego because they don’t have a functional constellated integrated self and because they don’t have an ego
(13:59) they ego is our way of interacting with reality the ego is the mediator between us and reality because they don’t have this they have impaired reality testing they Mis perceive reality they live in fantasy they use other people to regulate their internal landscape so they use other people to regulate their sense of self-worth for example this is known as external regulation it’s also common in borderline so these are the two core features I don’t think it’s very important that they’re exploitative I don’t even think it’s very important
(14:34) that they lack empathy honestly that’s not the core issue really the core issue is they cannot perceive you as separate and external and so you have no rights and you you have no you you they don’t allow you to be be independent or agentic or autonomous and because you don’t exist your independent existence threatens them they feel threatened by you and similarly at the same time they need you in order in order to feel good or even more so in order to feel that they exist that’s it that’s in effect I remember when I was on the
(15:17) floors uh in the hospital we would be encouraged to deride you know people who were diagnosed with cluster B uh personality disorders and we would say you know it’s just another you don’t leave me patient right because of that energy you’re describing that says it’s like pushing and pulling so you’re depicting this this sort of um this this pattern of defenses that develop from a traumatic you know uh response where individuals become like infrastructural support for the so-called narcissists uh self-concept right so where do you think what is what
(15:59) is like a typical pattern of childhood experiences maybe particularly with with the mother that could give rise to this if this is a socialized um you know experience for these individuals narcissism is a very early reaction pathological n it’s a very early reaction and so unfortunately it’s the mother not the father the father assumes a very important role in development much later in life usually after age three is old I mean from age three onwards and the father’s role is limited generally to socialization the father conveys you
(16:40) know how you should behave social scripts skills the skill acquisition is the father is helpful with this and so on so father is much more instrumental father is the equivalent of a teacher actually the mother is the one who shapes the internal world of the child and Contra to the self-help scam industry and its claims this internal world is almost uh cast in stone once you have transitioned Beyond a certain age some things can never be changed they can never even be mitigated orated it’s done that’s it that’s who
(17:27) you are it’s quite bleak it is but it happens to be factual for example attachment Styles which form very early on according to Balby and others and according to Modern attachment styles are literally immutable there are many claims online that attachment Styles can change and so on these These are claims by self-enriching self-interested self- sty experts but the truth is that the vast majority of attachment styles a lifelong similarly this empathy lack of ability to experience emotional empathy because everyone has empathy narcissists
(18:09) and Psychopaths have empathy they have a special kind of empathy which I I labeled called empathy It’s a combination of cognitive and reflexive empathy so they do have empathy if if they were devoid of empathy they wouldn’t wouldn’t have been able to to exploit and abuse people to interact with people in any meaningful way even negatively you need to have empathy so but the inability to experience emotional empathy is lifelong casting Stone utterly unchangeable period anyone who claims otherwise a con artist so the damage the potent the
(18:50) damage inflicted by um bad mothers or what what Andre green calls Dead Mothers metaphorically dead mother mothers mothers who are emotionally absent who are depressive who are selfish and narcissistic who are insecure mothers who instrumentalize the child mothers who parentifying is regrettably uh a lifespan damage it goes well into adulthood and you canot you cannot get rid of of it and so I think there are three developmental trajectories to narcissism one is if you are ignor as a child if you are ignored abandoned and rejected
(19:38) frustrated on a regular basis that’s one trajectory the other one if on the very contrary you’re idolized pedestalize spoiled pampered in other words if you’re not allowed to separate from the parent and confront reality if the parent isolates you and firewalls and keeps telling you that you can do no wrong and all your you’re perfect and you’re Godlike and so on that’s another trajectory because it denies the child the ability to grow up and to separate from the parent we we grow up only via losses and failures these are the sole
(20:16) engine of engines of growth we learn nothing from success we learn a lot from loss and failure and when the child is smothered and pampered and spoiled the parent does not allow the child to experience loss and failure so that’s a form of abuse so that’s a second trajectory and the third trajectory is known as in behaviorism as intermittent reinforcement it’s when the mother is sometimes hot and sometimes cold sometimes loving and sometimes hateful sometimes rejecting and sometimes embracing approach avoidance repetition
(20:52) compulsion unpredictable indeterminate in and therefore not a secure base that also Al generates narcissism narcissism is a defense it’s an attempt to do two things um transform oneself into a Godlike Untouchable Invincible invulnerable figure because a child experiences so much pain so much frustration he so terrified and intimidated by the capriciousness and arbitrariness of the adults in his or her life that at some point the child gives up on on itself the child says as I am right now I’m not going to survive I need to
(21:36) become someone else Pronto and the child becomes someone else he becomes a false self the child creates a Godlike figure a Divinity and becomes this Divinity merges and fuses with a Divinity in a symbiotic kind of relationship so this is the first element of the defense and the second element of the defense the child creates a fantasy and migrates migrates from reality to the fantasy reality in the case of such children is unbearable and intolerable and life-threatening very often life-threatening so they need to avoid
(22:16) and withdraw and they create a paracosm which is a kind of elaborate virtual reality and then they transition into this virtual reality and in order order to not feel the arrows and slings of mother they become Godlike now unfortunately this defense survives into adultery Freud was the first to observe this he said the primary narcissism becomes secondary NY and it survives into adulthood and then as an adult you prefer fantasy to reality and you defend yourself against the pain and loss of reality by pretending that
(23:00) you’re God simply you’re a Divinity and if your Divinity is challenged you externalize aggression you become violent verbally or physically or whatever this is in in a in a nutshell this is naris It’s a child and one of the major mistakes we make in therapy is that we try to treat narcissist as if they were adults we try to strike Therapeutic Alliance with the narcissist negotiate with the narcissist treatment goals in a treatment plan that’s utterly ridiculous a typical narcissist is anywhere between two and four years old
(23:41) we need to treat narcissism using tools from child psychology and of course trauma therapies the child is heavily traumatized the way that this adaptation to early stressors manifests in adulthood seems to have different nuances and you’ve talked about different types is it important to know about these sort of subtle patterns within the category of narcissism or do they all stem from such a similar place that the behaviors are are all really related we used to think that there are two types of nisses we to think that
(24:24) they are overt grandio nisses and covert vulnerable [Music] fragile we no longer believe this definitely not in in in the practitioners Community there’s a gap there’s an abys between the practitioners community and aadim academ is liest behind the practitioners Community actually but even in aadim more Progressive voices begin to understand that all nisses are both overt and covert that the choice of style whether to be overt or covert depends crucially on the on narcissistic on the availability and regularity of
(25:06) narcissistic Supply so when the narcissist experiences something called collapse when the narcissist becomes less self-efficacious or less efficacious in obtaining Supply when he fails to obtain Supply but on a regular basis then most narcissist become covert for a while become covert they build up sources of narcissistic Supply and they become overt again so there’s no type constancy we also have somatic versus cerebral narcissist it’s something I was the first to describe somatic narcissist derive narcissistic Supply using their
(25:43) bodies their sexuality their musculature their their attire satorial choices their you know their looks while cerebral narcissists use their intellect or leverage their intellect intelligence incisiveness to obtain Supply and again does not type constancy a cerebral narcissist who fails to obtain Supply who under goes a phase of collapse would become somatic somatic narcissist would attempt to become cerebral which is a pretty pathetic site but but it does happen so there not that constancy I think at the core of all this is the following
(26:25) equation narcissists have learned as children that they can elicit positive emotions from the environment especially love only when they perform so everything is founded on performance narcissists are thespian they’re actors but not in the sense that they’re deceiving people in the sense that they believe they have to act all the time in order to obtain Supply and the false self is a kind of a mega mega theater production a Broadway you know production and so because they believe that everything depends on performance
(27:00) the minute they for some reason don’t perform well or don’t perform according to expectations their own expectation they’re perfectionist so perfectionistic so when they don’t perform well they collapse they simply fall apart it’s a process known in in some schools of psychology as decompensation the defenses shut down and they fall apart they disintegrate and then the only solution is to not is to become not you again it’s a typical feature of narcissism narcissism is founded on performance and if you fail to perform the solution is
(27:39) to give up on yourself to deny yourself and to become someone else the child becomes the false cell the cerebral becomes somatic the somatic becomes cerebral the covert becomes overt the overt becomes covert we call this identity disturbance exactly exactly like in borderline personality disorder there is no core identity NIS is there’s nothing there it’s what used to be called in the 90s an empty schizoid core there’s a void there’s a black hole where a human being or person should have been and so this shape-shifting
(28:19) kaleidoscopic metamorphosis they’re they’re compensatory they are intended to compensate for deep set sense of inferiority and fragility and vulnerability and this this is an automatic process this is a lifelong automatic process that is a major determinant of naris defines narcissism narcissism is absence masquerading as presence narcissism is about the art of not being that’s narcissism and it is people can’t wrap their heads around they just can’t they’re trying to explain narcissism in terms of objects other people as objects objects
(29:12) physical objects as objects I don’t know goals so they attribute to narcissis malice and premeditation and that’s not the case there’s simply nobody there as kernberg had observed about borderlines there’s emptiness there and yet there is the need to feel that you belong to the human species that you’re normal somehow there compulsive normaly does the the wish to appear to function to to to fit to fit into a peer group if you wish and this constant failure because you cannot convert absence into presence you cannot it’s doomed to failure naris
(29:56) sets himself up for failure all the time it’s a process of grief it’s what we call today prolonged grief disorder The Narcissist Grieves the true self Grieves the child Grieves the Lost potential The Narcissist Grieves what he could have become and never will and so narcissists are heavily invested in becoming in being in existing in which as far as other people are concerned it’s it’s a background thing I mean you don’t sit around saying okay now I have to exist or you know but Nar is do actually narcissist do sit
(30:39) around and say no one is noticing me I’m not being seen existential right like existential matter I’m not being seen so I don’t exist I need to be noticed otherwise I would not exist one of the many Shadow elements of you know psych ological path pathology and psychiatric diagnosis that I have contended with is the way that these Frameworks are used to other right and to Foster projection of our own disavowed uh Shadow elements onto those sick people onto those disordered people I’m not like that right and in your
(31:17) description just now I was really reflecting on how many of my patients would say the same phrase to me as they emancipated from medications and you know nooses at least identifying with that rubric they would say I finally feel like myself and there’s an element of what you’re describing even with you know what is referred to as like impostor syndrome right there’s an element that I think is quite relatable this idea that we have been inculturated to perform in order to secure attention and approval and a sense of safety and that when that
(31:55) fails we kind of like you know skitter off into to another uh sense of self identity you know behavioral pattern and so there are elements of what you’re describing that that feel um common enough and it also seems like what you’re saying is that the relational consequences in certain individuals that you you would describe as narcissists are different um than those of us who might otherwise you know have General insecurity or a sense of a diffus core you know so I’d love to dive into this because your depiction of the relational
(32:35) patterns especially romantic uh I think is is one of the most clear you know that that is out there and as much as you described that there isn’t an opportunity you know uh for a maturation or an integration or a so-called healing there is an effort it sounds like in romantic relationship to individuate right and to um experience what was not experienced maturationally if you’re saying that these individuals are walking around you know like two to four year olds um so I wonder if you could take us through you
(33:14) know sort of the phases what I’ve heard you describe as the phases of you know the the kinds of and and I know you don’t always use the the term codependent right but colloquially that’s what a lot of people talk about the narcissist and the codependent I don’t I don’t mind using okay um so so a classical you know sort of romantic diad how that looks what is what is the um subconscious perhaps intention on the part of you know this this individual who’s in this pattern of of narcissism what happens what are the stages and how
(33:47) does it end up typically the reason you identify with so many elements of narcissism is because it’s primordial it’s primordial the baby needs to be seen babies who are not seen are also usually dead B babies end up as dead babies the survival depends on being noticed and seen yeah there are newborns have embedded cues intended to elicit and solicit the mother’s attention um because by far the most important thing as far as survival goes is being seen by the way into adulthood there there are studies that have
(34:33) demonstrated conclusively that if you’re socially shunned you pay a very high price in terms of health physical health and and so on so forth so it starts from there it’s a baby thing don’t forget also that narcissism at least in some schools of thought narcissism is a healthy phase in development in early development it’s known as primary narcissism and this is something that’s been agreed on by adversaries such as Freud and Yung for example they both agreed that nism is a crucial phase in in development early childhood
(35:12) development and so on so forth and regardless of whether you believe in in the Jon or lingo of of narcissism or whether you think narcissism is a science I don’t I still think narcissism does capture um sorry Psych ol does capture truths some truths you know and I I still believe that language is an important role in in evoking provoking insight and and so on so I place a lot of emphasis on language and I I believe that when I say for example that there is such a thing as narcissism I’m I’m not just it’s not self-referential I believe there is
(35:56) something like um and so both the need to be seen which is relational you are seen by others and narcissism they’re both real and they’re both Early Childhood phenomena and therefore primordial they’re atavistic and you can’t get rid of them and they’re lifelong that’s why you identifi with so many features of narcissism um what is something goes all right in this proc when you as a baby need to be seen you still don’t make a distinction between yourself and the world so this used to be known as a symbiotic phase you you still don’t have this
(36:41) awareness I am I am baby and then there’s the rest of the world it’s it’s all one big mish mash know it’s it’s all a huge mess you know so you actually observing yourself when you need to be seen and then you are seen you don’t perceive it you don’t say to yourself it’s mommy who is watching me it’s Mommy who is seeing me you say to yourself it’s me I am seeing me I am watching me and that’s how primary narcissism evolves and develops and at some stage a good mother pushes the child away pushes him away pushes the child
(37:17) away allows the child to separate from her and to become an individual and acquire personhood a mother who doesn’t let this process unfur and unfold creates narcissis potentially not in all cases because the child then is unable to extricate itself and see itself from the outside which is a precondition for the formation of a cell so here you are you have children two to four years old in adult bodies and they are still stuck in a in a stage where they don’t feel being seen from the outside they they don’t feel they don’t
(38:00) experience the existence of other people they’ve never separated and so they don’t know how to separate and they don’t recognize the separateness of other people so they are still in this symbiotic kind of uh womb and and yet there is this innate drive to separate an individual so what they do they pick up an intimate partner and they convert the intimate partner into a mother figure maternal function and then they reenact the whole process of Separation individuation with this maternal figure so the shared fantasy this is
(38:42) called shared fantasy it’s not my term it’s it was first described by sander in 1989 so the shared fantasy is not about being together it’s about separating shed fantasy leads its goal its culmination is separation and then becoming an individual people think that the shared fantasy is about being together forever merging fusing becoming one no it’s exactly the opposite the shed fantasy is about becoming two the narcissist is always in a condition of being one with everyone he’s always merged and fused he wants to become two not one he wants
(39:24) finally to separate and this is the role of the fantasy but you need to capture someone to collaborate to collude in the fantasy you need to somehow so how to do that you have to lure them you have to lure them some so the nist off comes to you and offers you a fantasy first of all the narcissist identifies whether you can provide the four what I call the four s’s the four s’s are sex Supply sadistic or narcissistic um safety constant presence object constancy constant presence and uh Services if you can provide two of
(40:04) the of the four two of the four s’s you’re in okay you qualify and then the narcissist needs to capture you to Captivate you to kind of and so narcissist offers you a deal the deal has two stages two phases the first phase is known colloquially as love bombing during the first phase The Narcissist idealizes you and then he grants you access to your idealized image through his gaze through his gaze and so you fall in love with your own idealized image I call it the Hall of mirror effect you fall in love with your own you you don’t fall in love with
(40:51) the narcissist you fall in love with the with the way the Nar sees you you fall in love with the with the way the IST loves you it’s so intense it’s so focused on you you are so idealized you are hyper intelligent you can do no wrong you’re perfect you’re Dro dead gorgeous it’s a wonderful feeling it’s flattering it’s in other words narcissistic Supply it triggers in you your own narcissism and because it triggers in you your own narcissism it also regresses you you become more infantile and more dependent on the
(41:33) narcissist so this is the first ingredient in the deal the second ingredient in the deal The Narcissist exposes to you his childlike aspects he allows you to see him as a child and this triggers in you maternal maternal instincts or reflexes even if you’re men even if you’re men men also like babies yeah not only women so you fall in love with a child which the narcissist is one could even say that to some extent The Narcissist grants you access to his catatonic aifi true self and this provokes in you not only a
(42:20) maternal instinct or reflex but also a protective reflex you you want to cuddle this child you want H this you want to revive this child resuscitate it it’s a bit religious it’s a bit like you know Jesus with the resurrection they’re I I I claim generally that narcism is a form of private religion anyhow what’s an example Sam of how that would be induced that yeah that that caretaking response on the part of the not initially initially it’s exactly the opposite initially the narcissist comes to you and acts as a maternal figure right
(42:57) right initially the narcissist offers you to be your mother he’s going to idealize you he’s going to love you unconditionally he’s going to regard you as perfect he going to give you access to this view of yourself and thereby you become addicted that’s initially and then once you’re hooked the Nar says okay it takes you for granted now he says okay now I need you to act as my mother and the narcissist exposes to you his childlike featur for example he’s learned helplessness he’s learned helpless his dependency on you his
(43:35) neediness in short the codependent aspects of narcissism which are very often ignored and then you’re double hooked the narcissist becomes both your mother and your child and you become both mother and child to the narcissist and I call this the Dual Mothership it’s a dual Mothership structure and things proceed so now you idealize each other there’s a process of Co idealization you idealize each other you are each other’s mother and each other’s child the bonding is tremendous there’s nothing like it in a normal healthy
(44:21) relationship nothing as intense and as profound as the bonding in a Shir fantasy do you think this is colloquially referred to as trauma bonding do you think there’s any utility in that phrase trauma bonding is actually a self-harming reaction to this it’s a self harming reaction but yes it’s an element because this provokes self Haring later but it’s an element yes trauma bonding is an ele I it’s an addiction actually but it’s very intense and very profound because it touches it touches everything that is core you know
(44:55) it touches your narcissism touches your childhood it touches your maternal instincts it touches your protective Instinct it it triggers everything in you and you’re you’re you’re doomed you’re hooked now that you’re each other’s mothers The Narcissist can proceed he doesn’t do so consciously it’s not premeditated it’s not evil it’s not Wicked This is psychopath people confuse Psychopaths with narcism now the narcissist proceeds because now you are his mother all the old child uh templates are reined they come alive the narcist has had a single
(45:36) experience of interacting with a mother so now he takes this experience and applies it to you now you’re his mother and he goes through the motions of being your child in a desperate attempt to separate from you because that’s what children do with mothers separate from you and become an individual but in this particular case it’s a problem because you’ve been idealized how do you separate from an ideal object that is irrational but there’s another problem here it’s a challenge to grandiosity because if I need to
(46:14) separate from you and you are an ideal object it means I’ve been wrong about you somehow I Mis judge you somehow otherwise why would I why would I want to get rid of you something’s wrong so so the narcissist needs therefore to convert you from an ideal object to a persecutory object to an enemy and having done that he can devalue you and discard you and that’s the only way to separate from you you cannot remain an idealized object you must become something lesser some a devalued version of yourself to allow the
(46:54) narcissist to separate from you and that’s the end of the shed fantasy more or less in in a natural it’s much more complex than this but in a natural that’s the end of the shed fantasy narciss is separates from you by discarding you and devaluing you and discarding you he remains stuck with a persecutory object of you in his mind and this leads much later to a compulsion to regain you somehow to re idealize you and this is known as hovery but that’s these are the basic mechanism and so the intimate partner typically is
(47:32) the one to end these relationships I think right where where you’ve seen that they induced to become almost the abuser to facilitate the rupture of the relationship and I’ve heard you say that mourning that mourning that end uh of the shared fantasy is in its own way remaining in the shared fantasy to see so can you speak a little bit to how the Dumont of this kind of relationship and how it it typically um because the shared fantasy is such a profound profound the word is profound it’s a it’s a replay of Early Childhood
(48:14) processes Dynamics and mechanisms it’s it’s utterly you know so because it’s so profound and so on the grief is equally profound and it’s it’s multiple grief in the wake of the shared fantasy whether you you were the one to dump the narcissist or vice versa the wake of the Shar fantasy you’re mourning your child which is a narcissist uh you’re mourning yourself of course you’ve been hurt you’re in pain so you’re mourning yourself you’re mning the child you’re mourning the fantasy there a fantasy is narrative with future aspects or future
(49:00) elements you know we’re can to have a family we have three children this and that so you’re mourning this vision of the future which uh for a very long time energized you and gave meaning to your life and organized it and you know suddenly you you find yourself in outer space deep chaos lacking Direction and purpose and so so you’re mourning this you’re mourning what what the relationship could have become taking into account your investment and so on so forth and and the good aspects of the narcissis that many things of narcissis
(49:39) that you do like so you’re mourning this potential this lost potential but I think above all the the the fact that you’re mourning a Lost Child combined with the fact that you’re mourning a lost you mourning yourself uh this is absent in other breakups in other breakups you usually mourn the the vision that you’ve had together which may have been fantastic on Long usually it’s realistic but may have been fantastic and you mourning what could have been and that’s bad enough broken heart syndrome is real that’s bad enough now imagine adding to
(50:23) that mourning a child that you love with all your heart the maternal experience and so on and then mourning a lost identity your your identity is what the narcissist does is a process known as entraining The Narcissist actually invades your mind infiltrates your mind and installs there an app think of yourself as a smartphone installs an app and the app is the narcissist voice the inject of the narcissist and this app remains with you after the physical separation this voice remains in your head you keep talking to
(51:01) the narcissist and worse worse still the narcissis keeps talking to you this dialogue continues long after the breakup and so there is this to contend with it is um this form of grief is potentially self- negating and self annihilating could have seriously bad outcomes it involves almost automatically complex trauma emotional disregulation and it provokes in many in many victims it provokes narcissistic and Psychopathic behaviors um you change you feel that you’ve changed you feel that you’re no longer the same and would never ever be
(51:48) the same which is not true the prognosis is actually very good especially with professional health but in the meantime you have the feeling that you are damaged for good or at the very least that you have changed forever and it’s terrifying in a way because you are estranged there’s a process called estrangement You’re estranged you’re you’re alienated you you don’t feel good with yourself you don’t feel that you know yourself that you’re comfortable with yourself you’re ego distonic you you you know it’s a horrible
(52:23) feeling you are not even sure who is is doing the morning who is who is the one who is grieving is it really you or is it the N is compelling you to grieve for him is you feel a total externalized locus of control you feel that it all emanates from the outside you feel like a puppet puppet on a stream you feel there’s a puppet master regardless of his physical presence or absence is’s still there and so you can never be sure what part is you and which part is him and which part is the fantasy which may be still unfurling or unfolding in
(53:10) your head it’s a total disorientation and I would compare it um as far as experience goes subjective experience I think I can compare it only to psychosis it’s uh because in psychosis we have something called hyper reflexivity it’s kind of expansion of the of the self to include the world and here I think it’s the same the victim’s self so to speak it’s these are all metaphors yes no one has ever captured self in the laboratory but the victim self sense of self expands to include the narcissist and to include the
(53:50) fantasy and when the narcissist is gone the the the result is psychotic because the reality element is G and what is left is the perception and the perception is definitely counterfactual unrealistic that’s a great definition of psychosis so what I’m trying to say is this in the wake of a relationship involving a narcissist and narcissistic abuse I don’t think you can overcome this by yourself I think you need help and another thing is you need to separate from the narcissist because You’ have been regressed to infancy you’re an
(54:37) infant and so you need now you need now to separate from the maternal figure which is a narcissis and to individual it’s like back to back to to square one it’s like starting from scratch it’s like learning to walk again after a horrible accident and it takes years it’s it’s the aftermath is is horrible takes years but the prognostic is good and I’ve heard you say that you feel it’s a an opportunity to learn self-love to learn self- Reclamation and to really uh develop self- rational intimacy that may not have otherwise
(55:20) been available absent the you know abusive experience uh in the Romantic relationship so that there is this opportunity that is conferred by the challenges of that kind of dynamic should you have the right kind of support and you know will interest wherewithal um Readiness that is you know unique it sounds like there is a lot of Hope why is that not the case for you know the identified narcissist why is there not in your opinion this um hope for rede Redemption courtesy of the individuation opportunity that was created in the Romantic
(56:03) experience do you think because the narcissist has nothing to go back to yeah you have existed prior to the narcissist you have institutional memory of your selfhood you you you have experienced how it feels to be you you have memory of how it how you conducted yourself when you were you and the support you get is simply to kind of regression regress you back to who you were before the so there’s somewhere to go back to it’s like refugees War refugees you know the country is still there the war will end one day and you
(56:42) can go back the narcissist has nowhere to go back to and nothing to go back to to use the metaphors of true self and false self The Narcissist trajectory of personal development as a child is has been disrupted consequently The Narcissist never formed a sense of selfhood and identity and some stable core so the The Narcissist can separate from the mother or from the maternal figure but can never individuate the problem is not the separation NIS separates dozens of times in a lifetime they can never individuate because to
(57:23) individuate you need a relation with yourself individuation is essentially defined is an environmentally defined process so you individuate by internalizing the Gaze of others you other people see you because they see you you realize that you are being seen that there is a you that is being seen so and this is a crucial facet so other people see you this creates a b boundary and within the boundary you emerge you become this is Lan by the way so uh but the narcist doesn’t have any element of this process not a single one
(58:10) he cannot relate to other people as separate or external so their gaze is meaningless it’s in internal gaze it’s so and he doesn’t have a self nothing can emerge he is he doesn’t do object relations so he has no relationships he has no relational experience NES don’t have they sistic and so the naris is doomed to remain stuck in in this emptiness in this uh black hole and to desperately attempt time and again to separate an individual to separate an individual and accumulate a library of idealized and then devalued introjects snapshots of
(58:57) his intimate partners and friends and so just to be clear the shed fantasy is applicable to all Rel all the narcissist relationships not only intimate not only romantic The Narcissist does exactly the same thing with a good friend or with a boss or with a role model or with the teacher you know it’s the same it’s all shared fantasy and you see even your question include what’s the implication or the underlying assumption that there is somebody there why can’t he there’s no he language breaks in the face of nacism Simply
(59:40) breaks this we have so few of us have had the experience of not being perhaps with the exception of some gurus in India or something you know and ironically this is considered to be something to Aspire to in certain mystical and religious Traditions nothingness the not being well narcissists are there already and it sucks so may you may wish to reconsider some mystical teachings yeah is it the case that you have identified with this kind of a label personally and if that’s true how has that informed your you know perspective that isn’t a
(1:00:27) maturational road there isn’t an evolution there isn’t um a dimension of self-insight that can develop I’ve been diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder twice it’s pretty safe to assume that I am a narcist however I spent um the last 30 years um studying the topic and uh working with well over 2,000 people with an NPD with narcissistic personality disorder and all these people had to prove to me that they’re not comorbid so these are people who had who have only narcissistic personality disorder they
(1:01:09) don’t have borderlines orti social or whatever so I these are the pure unadulterated cases of of narcissism diagnosed by diagnostician and so I work with all over well over 2,000 of these 2,200 by now and so I think everything I’m saying is not based on personal experience actually I’m I’m an adulterated type because I I have narcissistic personality disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder so it would be bad practice as far as I’m concerned to look to to introspect and derive [Music] any no everything I’m saying is based on
(1:01:49) uh essentially research I I’m not aware of any study which comprises uh 2,000 n I think it’s the biggest database in the world as far as I know so I feel pretty confident in saying what I’m saying now I’ve used I’m also eclectic I’m I’m accused of trying to revive psycho analysis what object relations that is expressly untrue I use tools wherever they come handy so I use in family system I use transactional analysis I use psycho analysis I use object relation sces I use you know I I don’t see I think it’s idiotic to prescribe and to say
(1:02:38) psychoanalysis no you should never ever mention psychoanalysis they there’s absolutely nothing to learn from Psych which is what they teach in Harvard and this kind of school you know if you dare to mention psychoanalysis you’re done you’re dead it’s tic simply idiotic and it all has to do with a pretension to science Like We Are Scientists we don’t do psychoanalysis we do Laboratories we do white codes we do statistics we don’t do we don’t do psycho analysis there’s a minor problem with psychology the raw material the raw material is
(1:03:18) mutable unstable you can never replicate an experiment in Psychology period the replic crisis in Psychology is not incidental and not the outcome of bad practice it’s the raw material stupid you simply cannot replicate experiments with the same person let alone with you know because the experiment changes the person so but I think we can generalize we can observe we can describe we can capture in the equivalent of literature many insights about human existence and because we do have a lot in common I think human
(1:04:05) beings have a lot in common and we can try to somehow nail down this commonality and the key is language not statistics many many psychologists think that if they do statistics they are scientists I have a PhD in physics that is science psychology is not I can compare I’m an active physicist physics is science psychology is not but physics cannot capture the commonality of pain and love and grief and The Emptiness inside a narcissist or a borderline language can and so we need to reconceive of psychology is literature
(1:04:56) I think then we would be much more useful to our patients and our colleagues and and the community at lot yeah I I couldn’t agree more so I wonder in in closing Sam if there are any red flags that you think are worth paying attention to learning in terms of the dynamic relationships that you know individuals might engage with those um expressing a narciss I IC pattern not because I believe in you know victims per se uh but because I believe that it could generate even more self-awareness when we recognize we’re a
(1:05:39) match for this kind of experience um and I think so much of what you’ve articulated today has it I know that it will serve uh in this self-awareness and self-discovery process for those who have otherwise ident identified as victims of narcissistic abuse and I like to say that suffering ends where meaning begins so if you can find meaning in these experiences um you’re necessarily learning more about yourself so what might be do you think some you know Cosmopolitan magazine red flags you know like 10 red flags for this kind of
(1:06:16) dynamic and looking out for it you’ve described some including the nature of the love bombing in the beginning that is to be distinguished from just run of thee Mill falling in love um what else might you suggest before I I go cosmop on you um um victimhood identity victimhood is a form of narcissism right I’ve heard you say that that is not Sak these are Studies by gabai and others um in Israel studies in British Colombia there’s a growing body of studies that shows that victim would can be used as a manipulative
(1:06:59) tool it’s a form of entitlement and it’s it involves covert narcissism at the very least form of virtual signal signaling and so okay that aside because I have many videos dedicated to this just ask yourself who is the narcist narcissists subsist in fantasy they reject reality so in your initial interactions with the narcissist is he down to earth is he grounded or is he a dreamer is he a fantasizer is it that’s a warning sign narcissists Have No Object constancy they fear abandonment and separation so is he being
(1:07:44) controlling does he micromanaging and I’m not talking about two years into the relationship I’m talking about the first date the first date does he take the PE from you and locks your door does he uh does he drive the car does he decide which restaurant you go to does he interrogate you after you’ve after you’ve powdered your nose does he does he select the food and so on so forth control signals of of control next narcissist idealize the narcist idealizes you but at the same time he holds everyone else in contempt if you see a discrepancy
(1:08:27) between the way the narcissist is treating you and the narcissist is treating other people on a first date he shouts at the waiter he humiliates the cab driver or the Uber driver you know but he treats you as a queen or as a princess it’s a serious warning sign this is known as splitting it’s a serious warning sign um the alacrity the speed is unusual a narcissist would offer you cohabitation on first date if he’s slow a family of the second date and you would have three children by the third the speed is outlandish and
(1:09:09) indicative of a pathology because he needs to secure he he it’s compulsive you feel the compulsion it’s not desperation it’s compulsion it’s utterly you know so there’s a lot of energy too much energy next next are the speech patterns does he talk about himself incessantly and shuts you down whenever you try to speak or it’s one variant and the other variant does he keep utterly silent and kind of sponges information off you as if he were constructing some criminal file some po it’s as if this were some kind of police
(1:09:53) interrogation so either two valuable and two ver verbos or totally silent these are two warning signs the typical conversation is 50/50 these are warning signs next how intense is he he’s interested in you it’s normal on a date but does he go too deep too soon does he try to somehow fulfill a role like a guru a teacher a father uh an insightful genius um all this on the first date now why do I keep saying all this on the first dat because people lie to themselves and they say the narcissist is a great actor and so he pulled the wall over my
(1:10:42) eyes he deceived me it took me months to to realize who he truly is the mask fell only after two years that’s utter nonsense all the warning signs and rers are there within the first five minutes it even has a name this is called the UNC uncanny valley reaction in 1970 there was a roboticist a Japanese of course how else the robotis his name was Masahiro Mori Masahiro Mori described a very interesting phenomenon the more a robot resembles a human being the more Android a robot is the less comfortable people feel in the
(1:11:29) robot’s presence and this is known as uncanny valley reaction uncanny was a phrase coined by Freud actually so when you are with a narcissist you have an uncanny value reaction because a narcissis is exactly this it’s a programmed robot which is very Android it’s a great simulation of a human being but there’s something of key there’s something of note there’s something or R there’s something wrong it’s not put put together to Perfection and you react with an uncan Val reaction but you suppress the reaction you deny it
(1:12:07) because I don’t know you’re lonely and finally you’re dating after two years and you know you want it to be a success or because you doubt yourself you have what what we call autoplastic defenses you failed with so many guys it’s probably my fault you know I’m too I’m too something I’m too critical I’m to this I’m to that this is wrong pay attention to your intuition and gut instinct they’re right 90% of the time when it comes to other people by the way the rate of I mean intuition is right only 50% of the time
(1:12:43) generally speaking but when it comes to people it’s right 90% of the time believe trust yourself if you feel that something’s wrong if you feel something is off key if you feel that this guy or this girl they’re like a simulation they’re put together well they resemble people human beings you know but there’s something wrong there um just go away run cut it cut it out and just walk away you have to trust yourself you have all the information you need within minutes imagine how much information is exchange once you have
(1:13:20) had a conversation or once you’ve been able to observe the behavior of the person the way he interacts with other people unexpected situations stresses something goes goes wrong something goes right is he too elate and grandio when something goes right attribute takes the credit attributes it to himself or is he rageful is he frustrated Vis visibly and volubly when something goes wrong does he take it out on other people does he constantly blame other people when he talks about his job is he does he complain of being discriminated against
(1:13:58) overlooked you know and so on pay attention simply you all the information you need is on the first date anything that happens afterwards is your choice and decisions you’re an adult and you should pay the price for your choices and decisions the consequences of your actions are yours and yours only no one else is to blame and if you do blame others and if you split the narcissist is demonic and you’re an angel you have become a narcissist right because that’s what narcissist do right so profound thank you so much for this
(1:14:44) handed hour and so um such a like a clear framework for us to work with not only again just the point that you just made for for understanding patterns of human behavior that we see all over whether that’s you know clinically or socioculturally um but also as you know a call and invitation to take personal responsibility for our relational experiences as we might otherwise identify as victims and engage in the the the self-same uh psychology it’s it’s very that’s the major that’s the mirroring main takeway is this yeah and
(1:15:23) and you’ve you’ve depicted that with tremendous Clarity so thank you and I’d love for yeah for you to share any resources or um support that you offer to to people who are finding themselves in this in this realm I have a YouTube channel now in in the description part of each and every video there’s literature a literature section so you may wish to proceed on your own U the they well over 1,400 videos they’re divided into playlists so each playlist is thematic and that’s the most I could do to help you to navigate your way around this
(1:16:00) resource it’s a I think a a big resource I I would I would abely 1,000 hours of video so I don’t think there’s much more I can say that I haven’t said already that’s perfect well I appreciate you so much thank you for for being in this conversation with me thank you for being with me take care byebye [Music] [Music] you
