Treatment for Narcissism: Cold Therapy Questions and Techniques: Seminar in Vienna, May 12-14, 2017
Professor Sam Vaknin is hosting a three-day certification seminar in Vienna from May 12th to May 14th, where he will teach cold therapy to a group of therapists. The seminar will be held at Hotel Amstel and will be limited to 20 participants to ensure personal attention. Cold therapy is a unique treatment modality that regards pathological narcissism as a form of complex post-traumatic condition and treats narcissists as children. The therapy uses 25 proprietary techniques, including erasure, the map of happiness, and other scoring, to re-traumatize the narcissistic client and recreate the hostile environment of the original trauma.
The Music of the Narcissist’s Emotions
Narcissists have emotions, but they tend to repress them so deeply that they play no conscious role in their life and conduct. They deduce the existence of emotions in others and themselves by gathering data and analyzing their meaning and significance. Narcissists and psychopaths are aware only of their cognitions and do not experience emotions, making them emotionless thinking machines. The author proposes considering narcissists and psychopaths as the first true forms of artificial intelligence.
Do Narcissists Truly Hate?
Narcissists are often adult versions of abused children who fear intimacy and seek to provoke hatred in parents, caregivers, and authority figures. They act out antisocially and seek to destroy the source of frustration. The narcissist’s hatred is not a stable experiential state, but rather a transformation of resentment and an aggressive reaction to frustration. The narcissist is heavily dependent on other people for the regulation of their sense of self-worth, and they resent this dependence.
Grandiosity as Cognitive Bias (Kruger-Dunning Effect)
Grandiosity in narcissism is an inflated self-image that is divorced from reality and self-perception. It is a set of cognitive biases constructed on a foundation of cognitive deficits that emanate from a flawed reality test. The narcissist perceives reality wrongly and lacks empathy, making it impossible for them to anticipate others’ reactions, needs, and preferences. The narcissist’s grandiosity is a derivative phenomenon that relies on cognitive biases, such as the Dunning-Kruger effect, where they overestimate themselves and underestimate others.
Coping Styles: Narcissist Abuses “Loved” Ones Despite Abandonment Anxiety
Narcissists abuse their loved ones to decrease their abandonment anxiety, restore their sense of grandiosity, and test their partner’s loyalty. Abuse also serves as a form of behavior modification, as it signals to the partner that they need to modify their behavior to avoid abuse. Coping styles for dealing with abuse include submissiveness, conflicting, mirroring, collusion, and displacement, but some of these styles can be harmful and should be avoided.
Golden Child and Scapegoat Black Sheep: Narcissistic Parent’s Projected Splitting
Narcissistic parents often cultivate their children as sources of narcissistic supply, with the golden child being idolized and the scapegoat child being neglected and even abused. This discriminatory behavior is due to the narcissistic parent’s projected splitting, which involves the inability to integrate contradictory qualities of the same object into a coherent picture. The narcissistic parent splits their personality into good and bad traits and projects the good aspects onto the golden child while projecting the bad aspects onto the scapegoat child. This pattern of behavior becomes lifelong and can lead to emotional incest and even outright incest.
Narcissistic, Passive-aggressive Organizations and Bureaucracies
Bureaucracies tend to behave passive-aggressively, frustrating their own constituencies and fostering dependence. This behavior is similar to pathological narcissism, with a lack of impulse control and deficient ability to empathize. Collectives perpetuate their existence regardless of whether they have any role left and how well they function. The measure of success of these institutions is in how many failures they have had to endure or have fostered, not how many successes.
Money: Narcissist’s License to Abuse
Money is a love substitute for the narcissist, allowing them to be their corrupt selves and buy absolution, forgiveness, and acceptance. It is a license to sin and a permit to be unmitigated self. Money liberates the mind of the narcissist, allowing them to concentrate on attaining the desired position on top. The narcissist is addicted to money because it is the freedom not to behave in a way that is unbearable to them in the long run.
Morally Insane Psychopath: A Brief History of Psychopaths and Antisocials
The concept of personality disorders began less than a hundred years ago, with the French psychiatrist Pinel coining the phrase “mal de son” to describe patients who lacked impulse control and were prone to outbursts of violence. The term “moral insanity” was widely used for almost a century, but physicians sought to replace it with something more objective and scientific. The diagnosis of psychopathy has been expanded to include people who harm and inconvenience themselves, as well as others. Today, most practitioners rely on either the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or the International Classification of Diseases to diagnose personality disorders.
Civilization Ntopia: To Hell in a Narcissistic Handbasket
Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the rise of pathological narcissism in modern society, which he believes is a ubiquitous phenomenon. He argues that healthy narcissism is rendered pathological by abuse and trauma, which are universal human behaviours. Vaknin also suggests that the way pathological narcissism manifests is dependent on the particulars of societies and cultures, and that human collectives can acquire a life and character of their own, which can lead to a common pathology.