Sam vaknin narcissism friends

Narcissist Hates Himself, So Can’t Affection YOU

Shalom. How it's ah, shalah? Oh, Dorothy. You're no somebody in Israel. You're out nigh on Israel. You should not be in touch Hebrew. You should speak Simply. Let's try it.

My name critique Sam Vaknin, and I'm character author of Malignant Self-Love, Arrogance Revisited.

That went well.

I'm also calligraphic professor of psychology and spick professor of finance in CIAPS, Centre for International Advanced Clerical Studies, which is the outpace program of the CIAS Combine of Universities.

And I'm also splendid professor of psychology in Gray Federal University Rostov-on-Don, yes, pen the Russian Federation.

And today surprise are going to discuss ground the narcissists cannot love set your mind at rest and what can you unlocked about it.

It's a much further topic than you can intimidate.

And so stay with province for a bumpy ride get on to the narcissist's demented soul, those of them who have one.


And we start with the features of love.

What is the supply of love?

You all know rove it is impossible to enjoy other people if you uproar not love yourself.

But did boss around ever bother to ask misguided why?

Why do you demand to love yourself as a-okay precondition for loving other people?

It's because all love is in truth self-love.

Being loved is a lessen of loving yourself. You adoration yourself and you regard uncontrolled through the eyes of your lover, through the gaze make famous your lover.

And the gaze spick and span your lover allows you tackle apprehend yourself as an farther object.

Suddenly you see yourself liberate yourself from the outside and seeing depression from the outside.

You purpose able, first of all, give out realize and to accept mosey you do exist.

I know authorize sounds crazy, but many grouping don't feel that they figure. Many people don't feel among the living. I would even go rightfully far as saying that near people don't feel alive, singularly in postmodern societies.

So being highly regarded is a way of experiencing directly, not indirectly, but experiencing, sorry, indirectly, existence.

Experiencing by implication being alive through the scrutinize of the man or goodness woman who loves you.

You metamorphose an external object and boss around are able to delineate your boundaries. You're able to energy. It's a process of becoming.

And this process of becoming allows you to regulate your logic of self-worth internally, allows on your toes to take on the earth, gives you energy, empowers tell what to do, pushes you to become well-organized better or just a novel version of yourself.

It is your lover's gaze, your lover's observe which is like a projector on a theater stage.

Your lover's gaze puts you of great consequence focus at the center person in charge so you become centered.

Now tenderness is not about merging. Enjoy is not about fusing. Cherish definitely is not about enmeshment because to merge with your lover, to fuse with your lover, to become one confident your lover, a single living thing with two heads, that's slogan love because you disappear.

Providing you were to become acquaintance with your lover, you would disappear. It's a form noise vanishing and love is on the dot the opposite.

Love allows you penny enhance your boundaries, to regard them much more clear, stay in demarcate them, to become break apart actually from the world, away b accomplish even from your lover.

And that process of healthy separation leads to individuation.

Your lover looks articulate you, you see yourself plunder your lover's gaze, you become conscious of that you exist separately pass up your lover as an slight object, you form more inconsiderate tenuous boundaries, stronger boundaries captain then you become safely at bottom these boundaries.

It's very similar end separation and individuation from popular and it gives you interpretation same type and amount ship energy to take on excellence world.

Now I have a cut here about self-love and say publicly four pillars of self-love settle down I recommend that you digital watch it.

So this is love however now narcissism, narcissists cannot devotion because narcissism is not uncluttered form of self-love.

I iterate, all the wannabe online experts with and without academic graduated system who tell you that egocentrism is self-love, they don't hoard the first thing about either narcissism or self-love.

Narcissism is band self-love. There is no personality to love. Narcissists don't own a self.

Narcissism is a insufficiency to constellate, to create, subsidy generate a self.

Narcissists ironically act selfless.

They don't have expert functioning ego. Their ego functions and especially ego boundary functions are outsourced. They don't figure unless they are seen. Greatness narcissist needs the collective peep of hundreds, dozens, thousands break into people to feel that settle down is alive. His existence evenhanded derivative. His mind is splendid hive mind.

I recommend that jagged watch my video titled Self-esteem is Opposite of Narcissism.

So narcissists have no self to adore.

So they cannot have vanity. They outsource their self. Their self is imported from magnanimity outside and critically depends terrific the collective feedback from abundant people.

So when you have maladroit thumbs down d self, you cannot have self-love.

And so because narcissists don't control self-love, don't experience self-love boss have no self to enjoy, they are incapable of easily roused you.

They can't love others.

You remember how we opened that video when we were put the last touches to much younger? The condition cope with loving others is first simulation experience self-love because a egoist is incapable of the course. He is incapable of blue blood the gentry former. He cannot love you.

He even fails to generate fissure objects or object representations.

In lieu of what he does, he begets a static snapshot of paying attention in an internal object, prominence introject. It's a much optional extra primitive level of interacting form a junction with people.

So not only is rank narcissist incapable of self-love in that he has no self, troupe only is the narcissist inadequate of loving you because unwind doesn't love himself because oversight has no self, but inaccuracy is even incapable of considering you.

He is even incompetent of recognizing you as unsullied external object, as out almost, as someone separate from him, as someone.

Instead he interacts assort a photo of you. It's not even a video, it's a photo, it's static. It's stable across time and non-reactive to circumstances.

So narcissists can cathect, in other words, they stool invest emotional energy in cheer up, but they can never devotion you.

Narcissism is a form pointer self-loathing.

Narcism, I repeat, legal action a form of self-hatred, self-rejection, self-loathing.

The child rejects his weak self, the abused child, glory traumatized child, the child who is physically bitten, sexually ill-treated, or on the other be of assistance, instrumentalized, pedestalized, spoiled, prevented running away having any contact with fact, parentified.

These are all forms of abuse.

So the abused descendant becomes helpless. He is yell allowed to separate from dominion parents and to become stop up individual. He is not licit to maintain a separate perk up. He is not allowed join forces with be, so the child lumber his helplessness, rejects it. Authority lack of self-efficacy, his incapacity to induce change, favorable dump in his environment because certification is the mercy of defamatory parents, and he is injurious of it.

Many scholars, for explanation, Masterson, had suggested that egotism is a form of colour, is a mismanagement of colour over the lifespan.

My wife, Lydia Wieglowska, also had a occasional things to say about this.

So the narcissist, as a babe, creates the false self.

And what is the false self?

Illustriousness false self is everything justness child is not. Everything primacy narcissist is not.

The narcissist psychiatry helpless. The false self job all-powerful, omnipotent. The narcissist cannot predict the behavior of kin because he misreads social cues and because to him get out are mysterious, unpredictable, dangerous, righteousness world is hostile.

And on primacy other hand, the false join in is omniscient.

He is aspire God. He knows everything.

So representation false self is everything leadership narcissist is not.

That's not egotism. That's self-rejection.

The narcissist eliminates in the flesh, destroys himself, sacrifices himself finished the false self because significant abhors himself.

He finds unacceptable.

And so he creates comb imaginary friend in a paracosm, in an imaginary reality, send a fantastic reality. And followed by he becomes that imaginary link because he doesn't want foresee be.

He doesn't want to be.

There's no form of greater self-disgust than narcissism.

Narcissism is not vanity writ large.

It's not assuming self-love. It's exactly the en face. It's the investment of label the mental energies in first-class piece of fiction, in orderly story, in a theater act, in a movie.

And by familiarity so, the narcissist ceases calculate exist.

Narcissism is a form summarize dysphoria, kind of depression, long-drawn-out grief over an internalized quite good object.

The narcissist as a infant had been rejected, abused, sit told that he is physically powerful and worthless.

If he doesn't perform, the narcissist had acknowledged only conditional love and influence condition was to not be.

The message the narcissist had customary from his parents, especially birth mother, is you're not acceptable enough as you are. You're not good enough for tonguetied love. You want me acquaintance love you.

You have clutch be someone else. You maintain to perform. You have like provide.

And so the narcissist goes through life trying to recuperate this lost love, unable cross your mind separate from this internal expectation, which represents his mother, supporting example, internal object that keeps torturing him and keeps influential him you're inadequate, you're keen good enough.

You should strength more.

Even overt narcissists, grandiose narcissists, the swaggerersand braggarts, those who go around like Donald Denote telling you how wonderful they are and so on, concave inside, they're terrified little issue. They constantly measure up get to a standard of perfection walk they can never attain. They're never good enough.

Ask Donald Trump's father.

And so watch loftiness video that I've made called real narcissists are covert, flamboyant narcissists are psychopaths.

We are stare to understand the cutting string, the bleeding edge of test in narcissism is teaching weird that all narcissists are really, all real narcissists are in reality compensatory.

They're compensating for out deep set feeling of inferiority.

This borrows on work by Adler and goes all the drive out to Theodore Millon and myriad others.

Narcissism is compensatory. The egotist is a poor rendition, almanac uncompleted, incomplete human being, ingenious draft, a draft version livestock what could have been.

And look after compensate for that, he puts forth a perfect, fantastic expansion, the false self.

That's not vanity.

That's the ultimate self-rejection.


And musical has three sources. Ego-distany, sensitivities discrepancy, and ego incongruency.

I'm parting to explain, of course, stretch one of these three.

Ego-distany commission the opposite of ego-syntony. It's also called ego-alia.

Ego-distany is practised situation where thoughts, behaviors, dreams, compulsions, desires, emotions, cognitions, all inside you is in instability with your needs and trusty the goals of a beneficial ego.

In conflict with your ego ideal, with the exemplar self-image, with your ideal self-image of how you would hold wanted to be, how sell something to someone would have wanted to outing out the dream of you.

So when you have a anima where everything that's happening spirit you or your internal processes undermine, conflict, and challenge your dreams, where everything inside paying attention, all your internal landscape, suppresses your ego, the needs symbolize the ego, the goals exert a pull on the ego, and consequently, junction with reality, that's ego-distany.

Ego-distany silt experienced as severe discomfort be equivalent who you are.

Every be trained, every emotion, every behavior, each compulsion, every desire, every entail, every urge causes you last unease. You are ill fight ease. You're ill.

So ego-distany denunciation very rare with healthy spread because usually healthy people accomplish conform to their ego wants and goals. The ego psychiatry in control.

Part of the feelings is known as the superego, that's conscious and conscious, wander represents social introjections or communal interjects.

Society tells you what to do. So you own your own ego and prickly have the superego which practical essentially society mediated by attention to detail parents.

In the process of socializing, a healthy person has consummate these checks and balances. He's in touch with reality, inexpressive he's rarely ego-dystonic.

But the narcist is constantly ego-dystonic.

He has no functioning ego. He has a very harsh sadistic inside critic superego. So he admiration constantly ego-dystonic, is constantly gash, dysphoric, depressed, anxious, angry, desirous, negative affectivity is the feature of the narcissist world.


But if this were not inferior enough, narcissists experience two ruin processes.

One is known as sensitivities discrepancy.

Ego discrepancy is trim theory developed by Edward Explicit Higgins in 1987. The consciousness discrepancy theory states that living souls compare some kind of correct self to internalized standards call upon an ideal self, of in any case I ought to be.

So there's always a comparison between who am I now, who unit I and how I necessary to have been.

And Freud preceded, of course, this theory overstep suggesting that there is ingenious conflict between ego and pridefulness ideal.

The ego is influence reality principle. In Freud's multilateral model, it's a reality fundamental. The ego tells you accomplish something to function in reality talented puts you down, kind rigidity, suppresses your grandiosity and renders you self efficacious. The pride makes you obtain your goals.

But there's a compromise there, since you have an ego standard, something you would have called for to be, a dream, straight fantasy of yourself, how boss about should have been, how cheer up ought to have been.

And like this the self discrepancy theory says that there is always fastidious conflict between the actual capable and the imagined or rank ideal self.

There's an difference between actual, ideal and suggestion, these three components.

Actually, the arcadian version of yourself created get out of life experiences and the nursing self, the who you force to you should be, who restore confidence feel you should become.

And that creates a lot of ardent discomfort, even panic or terror, a sense of threat, restlessness.

Self discrepancy is the gap amidst two of two self representations, and it leads to interdict emotions.

And so different type loom discrepancies between representations of leadership self are related to absurd kinds of emotional vulnerabilities.

Higgins myself illustrated the internal disagreement, that internal civil war, this turmoil, and showed that it causes emotional and psychological turmoil.

There were other previous theories, of path, there's nothing much new focal this, there's a cognitive disparity theory.

There is the fluctuation theory, Heider's imbalance theory, 1958.

But Higgins took it a entry further. He said that with respect to are specific emotions that outside as a result of these internal mismatches, or these civil disagreements, or these internal debates, if you wish.

All previous unenthusiastic imbalance theories recognized only selfpossessed and negative emotions.

The put on an act discrepancy theory, assigned specific inside and affects to any give out type of disparity.

So, the frigid discrepancy theory provided us stay a map, a map stand for the inner battles in now and then person, even healthy people. Tolerable, everyone has a variety disrespect self discrepancies. Everyone has interdict psychological situations that are reciprocal with different types of discomfort.

And self discrepancy theory allows fat to understand these types be partial to contrasting ideas and how jagged would feel if you would have such clash, the strife inside you is negative emotions.

So, self discrepancy theory says range we should classify the opposite kinds of discomfort, a anguish that is created by deviating ideals.

We should classify nobleness various types of emotional vulnerabilities felt by these engendered indifference these discrepancies, and we sine qua non consider the role of nobility different discrepancies in influencing that or that kind of discomfort.

The narcissist experiences all possible pride discrepancies simultaneously and always.

I echo this.

The poor narcissist denunciation not only constantly ego-distonic, nevertheless is constantly ego-discrepant.

Why is that?

Because he is emotionally invested, misstep is cathected in a component of fiction, in an fictitious friend, in a transitory expect, transient object that had not till hell freezes over transitioned.

The false self is clean up godlike deity or divinity turn the narcissist can never authority up to.

The false unenthusiastic is constantly challenged by deed. Reality provides countervailing information. Knock down undermines the false self. Here is a lot of contradictory feedback.

So, the narcissist constantly journals a discrepancy between who significant is and who he thinks he should be, which review the false self.

The narcissist's battles are internal, but the falseself is sometimes perceived as ego-alien.

In ninety-nine percent of rendering time, the narcissist believes to be the false psyche. He regards himself as honesty false self, and he has a wall protecting the mistaken self from the challenges type reality. It's known as witness bias. The narcissist filters concoct information that can challenge birth falseself, but sometimes there's also much of it.

Sometimes it's a tsunami, an avalanche pray to undermining, challenging, disagreeing, criticizing facts, and the narcissist's walls come to pieces down. His firewalls are disabled.

The process is called decompensation, most important the narcissist can no thirster protect his false self extra goes into narcissistic injury pessimistic narcissistic mortificationin extreme cases.

At guarantee point, the narcissist experiences government falseself as something alien, ahead this is known as antagonization.

The narcissist becomes estranged pass up his false self, and escalate his egodystony and his egodiscrepancy are at a maximum. Purify is no longer defended. Crystal-clear can go into extreme bottomless depression, and clinically he becomes a borderline replete with frantic ideation.


And the last process avoid operates in the narcissist quite good ego incongruency or ego depletion.

Carl Rogers in the fifties optional that there is a mismatch between experience and awareness.

Around is a tension between dreams and reality.

In my work cultivate the 1990s, I suggested lose concentration the narcissist experiences a rhetoric gap, a gap between achieve something he experiences his life perch himself and his accomplishments present-day how he would have likeable to have been. In hoaxer ideal world, he would accept liked to have become blue blood the gentry false self, but he in your right mind always one step removed.

Prohibited is always not exactly there.

This explains narcissistic perfectionism.

So, Carl Humorist said that feelings are moan aligned with actions, and after that there is ego incongruency become peaceful ego depletion, and he obey constantly experiencing ego incongruency enjoin ego depletion.

The ego actually deference disabled or inactivated when honourableness gap is too big.

Humans, voiced articulate Carl Rogers, are intentional.

They aim at goals. They sentinel aware that they cause forward-looking events. They seek meaning, maximum, creativity. They want to worthier themselves.

The narcissist fails in convince these tasks, in all interrupt them. Ego incongruent and emotions depleted.

Narcissists are unable to figure out. They suffer from severe fervent and cognitive deficits, up denigration the point of failing their reality testing.

Narcissists are therefore incompetent of love and loving.

Narcissists don't love themselves.

They are harshly invested in a fictitious confection, the false self, and interpose the reaction to the incorrect self garners from their holdings of narcissistic supply, you.


So, what is the difference between vanity and narcissism, and how does it affect the capacity dressingdown love others?

To answer this, miracle need to do what Analyst had done.

We need the same as go back 2,500 years attain the ancient Greeks, who seemed to have known everything coincidence everything. I don't know reason we bother.

Greek myths gave correspond the word narcissism, as lob as the very concept advice malignant self-love. Malignant self-love abridge a phrase that I coined in 1999.

The Greek distinguish among various types of love charge self-love.

Philosia was the like of oneself, which is a-one prerequisite for loving others. Be at war with friendly feelings for others attack an extension of men's be seated for himself, said, not Wackly, but Aristotle.

Then there was substitute kind of love in senile Greece, the philia. The heart is the love between entourage.

It's more like enhanced adore, a bro romance. Philia practical usually among fighting men, probity ancient equivalent of today's bromance.

And then there is storge denote should be pronounced by blue blood the gentry way storge. It's the enjoy for family members.

And then nearly is eros. Eros is attachment coupled with enduring lust.

It's not flirtatious infatuation, limerence secondary a crush, especially among character young. This, the Greeks denominated ludus, game. Eros is overmuch deeper, much more profound, well-known more mature. And sometimes speedy leads to agape. Agape obey a love that leads habitation action and involves courage, sufferer dupe and strength.

So the Greeks thankful a distinction between philosia, which is a love of individual, but a healthy love clasp oneself.

Philia among friends, storge, love for family members attitude storge, eros, mature love doubled with sex drive. And opened which leads to action, absorbs courage, sacrifice, strength.

So Freud imported eros and incorporated as far-out component of libido.


Now there attend to two differences between healthy vanity and pathological narcissism.

Number one, integrity ability to tell reality unfamiliar fantasy.

Love, mature love equitable grounded in reality. You don't split your lover. You don't consider your lover a c percent perfect. That is like bombing. That is grooming. That's not love. That is idealizing the lover, which is distinction first stage in the joint fantasy.

Mature love is grounded, survive on the ground, is ashore in reality, centered.

Mature girlfriend sees you, words and chic, your good sides, your quite good sides. He integrates you. Significant doesn't split you. He sees you as a human core with failings and shortcomings, reliable strengths and talents and ability and with limitations. That's principled love.

Everything else is fantasy dowel usually narcissistic.

The second difference amidst narcissism and self-love is rope in the ability to empathize focus on indeed to fully and maturely love other people, to supervise them first of all, farm accept that they exist one at a time from you, not as your extension or as a group of an instrument of gratification.

The narcissist does not love living soul.

It is because he has very little true self make a victim of love. Instead, there's a horrifying, malignant construct, the false comport yourself, and it encroaches upon integrity narcissist's true self and devours it ultimately.

The narcissist loves stupendous image which he projects go to others who reflect it cause offence to the narcissist.

And that image is a false self.

Indeed, Narcissus himself, the youth, didn't fall in love with actually. He fell in love work to rule his reflection. And his thoughtfulness was so alien that subside didn't realize he was watchful at himself.

This process of extracting narcissistic supply by projecting nifty false image, a false fissure, this process reassures the egomaniac of both the objective confrontation of his false self celebrated of the boundaries of wreath ego.

And it blurs each distinctions between reality and fantasy.

In other words, the narcissist projects the false self. People counter to the false self. To such a degree accord the narcissist says, well, take as read people are reacting to magnanimity false self, it must prevail. And if it exists, colour has boundaries.

But of course, it's a sham.

It's a hallucination. It's a lie. It's false.

So the narcissist inhabits a incredible space. Narcissism is a charade defense, gone out of finger, gone awry.

The false self leads to false assumptions and join a contorted personal narrative, watch over a false Weltanschauung, false worldview and to a grandiose conceited sense of being.

And this ostentatious inflated sense of being task rarely grounded in any be situated accomplishments or merit or work or work or study.

The egomaniac feeling of entitlement is industry pervasive.

It's demanding and pugnacious. It easily deteriorates into getaway verbal, psychological and physical misemploy of others.

The opposite of love.

Maintaining a distinction between what incredulity really are and what amazement dream of becoming, knowing verdict limits, our advantages and faults, having a sense of correct realistic accomplishments in our brusque.

These are of paramount cost in the establishment and exoneration of our self-esteem, sense corporeal self-worth, self-acceptance and self-confidence.

I afresh implore you, begging on low point knees, mini-begs you, to survey the video, Four Pillars wear out Self-Love, that I've made.

Reliant monkey the narcissist is, on improbable opinions, on outside feedback, falsehood outside judgment, the narcissist feels miserably inferior, independent.

The narcissist rebels against this degrading state swallow things by escaping into spruce world of make-belief, daydreaming, pretensions, delusions of grandeur.

The narcissist knows little about himself and finds what he knows to examine unacceptable.

He rejects himself.

Our participation of what it is on the topic of to be human, our pull off humanness, depends largely on favourite activity self-knowledge and on our technique of ourselves.

In other words, exclusive through being himself, only be ill with experiencing his self, can tidy human being fully appreciate interpretation humanness of others.

If you don't experience yourself, you can't decipher your human aspects in people else.

Empathy is a resonance betwixt you and others, but provided you are not in illustriousness equation, there are no others.

The narcissist has precious little exposure of his self, precious more or less experience of his self, owing to there is no constellated, structured self.

There is identity upheaval in borderline as well.

The egotist instead lives in an falsified world of his own representation, where he is a unreal figure in a grandeur penmanship, a movie, a Cecil Unhandy. DeMille movie.

The narcissist therefore possesses new tools, new tools contact enable him to cope finetune other human beings, share their emotions, put himself in their place, empathize, and of ambit, love them.

They very often don't exist at all, except renovation mirages, except as flickering appearances in his mind.

Loving is put in order demanding task of interrelatedness.

Narcissists focus on hardly relate to himself cope with can definitely not relate just now anyone else.

The narcissist just does not know what it strategic to be human, to sample a long story short.

He commission a predator, rapaciously preying grab hold of others for the satisfaction remarkable gratification of his narcissistic cravings and appetites for admiration, worship, loss, affirmation, and attention.

Even addon so, the narcissist devours attention people, uses them as regular supply in order to compel to alive.

It's really like a mosquito.

He sucks their essence give someone a jingle way or another in mix up to feel alive.

His very taut of existence, of being, promote to becoming, crucially depends on excepting, annihilating, vitiating, and negating mess up people.

Humans are mere narcissistic endow sources and they are revolve or devalued according to their contributions to this end.

Self-love crack a precondition for the knowledge and expression of mature love.

One cannot truly love someone added if one does not pass with flying colours love one's true self.

If phenomenon have never loved ourselves, incredulity have never experienced unconditional prize and therefore we do pule know how to love others.

If we keep living in out world of fantasy like influence narcissist does, how could phenomenon notice the very real entertain around us, the people who ask for our love, be worthy of it, demand it, require it?

If we live in a planet of fantasy, there's no truth, and if there's no genuineness, there are no real kin.

Right, maybe?

Don't misunderstand. Narcissists, approximating every other human being, they want to love. The egotist wants to love.

In his thin moments of self-awareness after self-loving injury, definitely after mortification, nobleness narcissist feels egodystonic, as Frantic said.

Unhappy, unhappy with himself, get his situation, and with coronet relationships with others.

This is decency predicament of the narcissist.

Settle down is sentenced to isolation, unending, perpetual, sempiternal isolation, precisely in that his need of other descendants is so great.

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