Why Do We Stay in Abusive Relationships? The Sunk Cost Fallacy or Bias
The sunk-cost bias or sunk-cost fallacy or the concord fallacy is the tendency to remain in bad relationships, even if they are abusive, sexless, loveless, or doomed. This bias is motivated by malignant optimism, an over-estimation of the probabilities of positive outcomes if we just keep going or keep doing something differently. It is a particularly pernicious brand of loss aversion, the proclivity to avoid waste. The rational thing to do is to cut your losses and abandon the dysfunctional relationship, but surprisingly few people do so in time, resulting in wrecked marriages, hateful exes, bruised children, and crumbling enterprises.
The Mentally Ill Form Couples
Mentally ill individuals often form couples or dyads, which can lead to fused relationships and trauma bonding. Coping strategies include active denial, enabling, and avoidance. Avoidance can lead to extreme estrangement and cruel disengagement, causing the mentally ill partner to act out in provocative or reckless ways. In extreme cases, the significant other can become a superego replacement, leading to major depressive attitudes, psychotic disorders, and even suicide.
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.
Sadistic Women-lover, Sadistic Women-hater
Narcissists either love or hate women, but both types end up torturing them. The sadistic women lover, or philogenist, is drawn to women but is terrified by his own obsession with them. He adopts avoidant behaviors to restore his sense of control and superiority over women. The sadistic women-hater, or misogynist, holds women in contempt and seeks to punish them. He fears women and punishes them for bringing forth his own shortcomings. The narcissist regards women as mirrors of his own deficiencies and hates them.
Fear of Intimacy Rationalized
People who fear intimacy have a phobia of exposing their vulnerabilities and committing to a long-term relationship. This fear is rooted in a deep distrust of the world and other people. They tend to devalue their intimate partner and imagine negative scenarios for the future. Fear of intimacy is a form of diffuse anxiety that causes people to withdraw and avoid intimate relationships. It is a cycle that can never be broken or interrupted, leading to a never-ending chase that never culminates in a happy ending.
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.