Cold Therapy: Treat Narcissism and Depression (30th World Psychiatrists and Psychologists Meet)
Cold Therapy is a new treatment modality for narcissistic personality disorder developed by Professor Sam Vaknin. It treats pathological narcissism as a post-traumatic condition and uses techniques borrowed from child psychology and trauma therapy. Cold Therapy aims to re-traumatize the patient in a controlled environment, allowing them to emerge as a healthier adult with firm boundaries and a stable sense of self-worth. The treatment consists of 25 proprietary techniques, including erasure, hypervigilant referencing, grandiosity reframing, and happiness mapping.
Narcissist, His Body, Other Bodies (35th Psychosomatic Medicine Conference 2018 Video Presentation)
Professor Sam Vaknin discusses the relationship between narcissists and their bodies, focusing on somatic narcissists who derive attention using their body and sexuality. Somatic narcissists often misjudge their bodies and dedicate significant time and effort to reshaping and improving them. The cerebral narcissist, on the other hand, devalues their body and focuses on their intellect. Vaknin also explores how narcissists react to their own illnesses and accidents, as well as the illnesses and disabilities of their children.
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.
“Sexual Perversion”? No Such Thing in Psychology
There is no such thing as sexual perversion, as long as the sexual behavior is consensual between consenting adults and does not harm anyone, including oneself. Psychologists and psychiatrists consider such behavior to be healthy and normal. Even pedophilia and coprophagia are not considered perversions, but rather paraphilias, which are unusual sex practices. Perversion is a societal and cultural value judgment that is dependent on the period.
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.
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.
Shame, Guilt, Codependents, Narcissists, and Normal Folks
Shame motivates normal people and those suffering from cluster B personality disorders, but it motivates them differently. Shame constitutes a threat to normal people’s true self, and it constitutes a threat to the false self of narcissism. There are two varieties of shame when we talk about narcissists in effect. There is narcissistic shame, which is the narcissist’s experience of the grandiosity gap and its affective correlate. The greater the conflict between grandiosity and reality, the bigger the gap and the greater the narcissist’s feelings of shame and guilt.
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.
DSM V Alternative Model for Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD)
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) is the bible of the psychiatric and psychological profession. The DSM-5 provides diagnostic criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder, but these criteria are deeply flawed and do not reflect the knowledge accumulated over the last 14 years. The DSM-5 attempts to remedy these shortcomings by proposing an alternative model of narcissism, which is more advanced than the DSM-4 but still falls short in certain areas. Overall, the DSM-5 is light years more advanced than the DSM-4 in subsuming and synthesizing current knowledge about narcissists, but there is still a long way to go.
System Re-victimizes, Pathologizes Victim, Sides with Offender, Abuser
The system, including academic institutions, law enforcement agencies, and the courts, often fails to take victims of abuse seriously and instead pathologizes and diminishes them. This is due to a lack of education and awareness about abuse and domestic violence. Abusers are often possessive, jealous, dependent, and narcissistic, while victims may blame themselves or have a history of abuse. Mental health professionals may also be biased towards the abuser and pathologize the victim, making it difficult for victims to receive proper help. Victims may need to stage a well-calibrated performance to convince therapists that they are victims and not be re-victimized by the system.