The Three Voices: Histrionic, Psychopathic, Borderline
Borderline personality disorder is often comorbid with other personality disorders, such as histrionic, narcissistic, and antisocial. Women are predominantly diagnosed with these comorbidities, and borderline personality disorder is a post-traumatic state that is triggered by neglect, abandonment, and abuse. When comorbid with histrionic personality disorder, women seek comfort, acceptance, validation, sex, and intimacy from other men, but conflicting inner voices arise. The histrionic voice says men will make them feel better, the psychopathic voice says don’t feel guilty about cheating, and the borderline voice says their sexuality is bad, mad, and dangerous. When faced with the prospect of sex, borderline patients panic because of negative thoughts, and if they cross the line and have full-fledged sex
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.
Register! May 12-14 VIENNA SEMINAR: Finally a THERAPY THAT WORKS with Narcissists!
Professor Sam Vaknin has developed a new treatment modality called “cold therapy” to treat people with personality disorders, particularly narcissistic and antisocial personality disorders. The therapy is based on the observation that these disorders are the outcome of dysfunctional attachment and problems with early childhood attachment. Cold therapy seeks to recreate the environment conducive to the replication of original childhood traumas to allow the client to resolve early childhood conflicts and cope with early childhood pain. The first-ever certification seminar for cold therapy will be held in Vienna for three days, and participants will receive certificates and a founding share in the Institute of Cold Therapy.
Narcissists and Codependents: Same Problems, Different Solutions
Codependence and narcissism are pathological reactions to childhood abuse and trauma. The codependent has a realistic assessment of herself but a fantastic view of others, while the narcissist has a fantastic view of himself but a penetrating view of others. The codependent seeks validation to restore a sense of reality, while the narcissist seeks narcissistic supply to enhance his grandiosity. Inverted narcissists are a subtype of covert narcissists who team up with classic narcissists to obtain vicarious supply. The overwhelming majority of narcissists have codependent traits and are dependent on other people for their sense of self-worth, self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-image.
Self-destruction as Narcissistic Supply: Narcissist’s Self-denial and Self-defeat
Narcissists frustrate others to satisfy their masochistic tendencies and sadistic urges. By withholding love, sex, and intimacy, they torment those around them while obstructing their own gratification. Self-denial, self-destruction, and self-defeat buttress the narcissist’s sense of superiority and uniqueness, as they prove to themselves that they are the strongest and can overcome powerful desires and emotions. These behaviors and choices engender narcissistic supply, as they demonstrate the narcissist’s independence from society, nature, and even themselves.
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.
Narcissist’s Projection, Projective Identification and Victim’s Introjective Identification
In this video, Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the concept of projective identification in narcissism. He explains that the narcissist’s false self is grandiose and to maintain this self-image, the narcissist must ignore or deny certain emotions, thoughts, traits, impulses, behaviors, and qualities that contradict this self-perception. The narcissist then projects these onto other people, attributing positive or negative traits to them. Projective identification involves forcing the target of the projection to conform to the contents of the projection, forcing someone to actually become someone else, forcing someone to behave in ways prescribed by the narcissist. The narcissist uses projection and projective identification to manipulate inner objects, to force inner constructs, inner representations, inner avatars to behave in certain ways.
Narcissist: You All Exist Only in My Mind (Hive or Swarm False Self and Ego Functions)
Narcissists have a dysfunctional true self, which is introverted and comatose. The ego, which performs certain functions in healthy people, is dormant in narcissists. Narcissists need feedback from the outside world to perform basic ego functions, which is what is called narcissistic supply. The false self is a collage of reflections, a patchwork of outsourced information, and is a kind of hive self.