Narcissism Evolving: 3 Disturbing Trends
Women have become as narcissistic as men, if not more so, as gender roles shift and women try to emulate men. Narcissists are becoming more dangerous, leveraging their cold empathy more sinisterly and becoming more malignantly grandiose and even criminalized. People, even narcissists, no longer have role models and everyone claims superiority, leading to pathological envy and a society where no one can be better than anyone else. This narcissism is going to kill and destroy us as a species.
Fear of Intimacy, Cheating, and Preemptive Abandonment
People who fear intimacy will choose partners who are also afraid of intimacy, and they will both make sure there is no intimacy in the relationship. Abusive relationships are mutually exclusive to intimacy, and people with fear of intimacy choose abusers as their partners because being abused is their comfort zone. Narcissists are terrified of losing their source of secondary narcissistic supply, usually their spouse or intimate partner, and they push their intimate partner away to allay their anxiety over the impending and ineluctable loss of the relationship.
Narcissism as Addiction (ICABS 2019: International Conference on Addiction and Behavioral Science)
Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the idea of recasting narcissistic disorders of the self as addictions. He explains that pathological narcissism is a form of addiction to narcissistic supply, which is the narcissist’s drug of choice. The pursuit of narcissistic supply is frenetic and compulsive, and when it is missing, the narcissist resorts to abnormal narcissistic supply by behaving recklessly, succumbing to substance abuse, or living dangerously. Narcissists faced with a chronic state of deficient narcissistic supply become criminals, race drivers, gamblers, soldiers, policemen, investigative journalists, or develop phobias, fear, and anxiety.
The Intimate Partner as a Persecutory Object: Love is a Battlefield
The persecutory object is a tormenting, devaluing, and sadistic inner voice that informs patients with certain personality disorders that they are bad, worthless, weak, immoral, and generally a disappointment. Patients project this voice onto their intimate partners, who become the outer embodiment of the internal construct. This defense mechanism is known as projective identification. The patient tries to force the partner to behave in ways that support their view of them as a persecutory object. The patient then rebels against their externalized persecutory object, punishing their partner in myriad ways, leading to a sick dynamic that is unfortunately very common.
Bullies: Intermittent Reinforcement and Sex Withholding
Intermittent reinforcement is a tool used by bullies, which is rarely conscious and often unintentional. Most bullies are not self-aware and deny that they are bullies, instead claiming to be victims. Withholding sex is a strategy used by bullies, who often make excuses for their behaviour and refuse to acknowledge the problem. The bully rejects their partner, humiliates them, and isolates them to render them incapable of finding an alternative.
Histrionic Woman’s Guide to Men
Histrionic women respond differently to two types of men. The first type is men who openly desire the histrionic woman, but after a brief affair, they begin to bore her. The second type is men who are visibly attracted to the histrionic, but are very avoidant emotionally, or even absent emotionally. Histrionic women abhor intimacy and love, but they need mind games. With these men, there is always some game going on.
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.
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.
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.