Are You Narcissist’s MOTHER or TOY? (Read description!)

ludic means playful and playful means the author of malignant self-love narcissism Revisited a former visiting professor of psychology and a current member of the faculty of siops okay nope don't look it up it is summer I'm in a good lenient mood I'm going to look it up for you to team in Hebrew means strawberries and to tot presumably means female strawberries yummy who said that Hebrew is a dead language not fun I think it's a great language okay today we are going to discuss the games the narcissist plays with you you is the narcissist's favorite toy The ludic Narcissist the playful narcissist as usual it goes much deeper than appearances Oscar Wilde wrote yet each man kills the thing he loves by each let this be heard some do it with a bitter look some with a flattering word the coward does it with a case the braveman with a sword um there's a movie it's widely considered the best movie ever ever made it's called Citizen Kane and Citizen Kane as a child had a sled the sled was manufactured by a company called Rosebud never mind watch the film I'm not gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna provide you with a spoiler there was a story but it was way more than a toy it defined him destroyed the sled was connected to a pivotal event in his life his abandonment actually so it came to symbolize the totality of his biography and as he was dying on his Deathbed he said Rosebud and this is how the movie starts it's an amazing amazing film and it deals with the relationship between the narcissist and his toys initially inanimate toys real objects and then animate toys objects in the psychological sense because in Psychology object is a person a human being which tells you a lot about psychology so when we say for example object relations we mean relations or interpersonal relationships with people objects of people so narcissist transitions from real hard inanimate dead inert objects to this to the more fun kind to the more entertaining kind known as human beings and yes you're the narcissist The Narcissist regards life is a playground or a toy store and two caveats one everything I'm about to say applies to Psychopaths as well number two I'm gonna use gender pronouns which are masculine you can say he him his it applies equally unfortunately in today's world lies equally to women to females so with these caveats in mind we proceed the narcissist is derealized on a constant basis materialization is one of the mechanisms of dissociation it's when we feel that everything that's happening to us the environment things and people which surround us they're not real we feel that it's all like a Dreamscape or a nightmare or a memory so their realization is a form of dissociation The Narcissist constantly derealizes processes never experiences the external world as real The Narcissist feels embedded in some kind of a movie character in a theater play maybe even an animated cartoon character he doesn't fully trust himself to have an ontology in other words he doesn't feel that he has a presence existential presence the narcissist is all about absence and so as far as the narcissist is concerned you're not real that's why narcissists never interact with external objects they immediately internalize them they immediately create an internal object which represent you in their minds and they continue to interact with this internal object not with you because you are out there you belong to reality you belong to the world you belong to the universe and these are alien Concepts and alien experiences to The Narcissist you could say that the narcissist is estranged from the world and so everything is a playground or a toy store people are toys professions are toys hobbies are toys locations are toys everything is a toy everything is a play thing everything can be imbued with enthusiasm and excitement and everything can be affected emotionally invested in and then devalued decaffected discarded and the narcissist moves on to the next story if you want to understand the narcissist relationship with you and with other people think a two-year-old playing with his toys what does a two-year-old does with these toys the terrible twos he breaks his toys he explores these toys by taking them apart a child this age wants to see what makes his toys tick what are the inner mechanisms that kind of animate them the toys what's what's the dynamism or dynamics of the toy the children are very destructive with toys also children go through an up and down a labile attachment to the toy they start with extreme enthusiasm and excitement and thrill and then gradually they get habituated they develop a habit the toy becomes a fixture and loses its Allure and the child loses interest in the toy and moves on usually discarding the toy under the bed or something out of sight out of mind that's exactly what the narcissist does with not only with object in his life objects in his life not only with his jobs not only with these professions not only with locations where he resides not only with his family members not only with his friends but we also with these intimate partners it's exactly a two-year-old playing with his toys now in healthy people exactly like music toys generate attachment they come to symbolize a specific period in life people would look back on their toys with nostalgia a twinge um you can pull at the Heartstrings toys are good things they're affected forever toys actually are the first attachment objects we come to it in a minute they're known as transitional objects and so toys are critical for the development of secure and healthy attachment as critical as mother actually and here the narcissist is again an outlier The Narcissist doesn't get attached to his toys including human toys the narcissist fails to connect his toys to emotionally invest in the toys on a prolonged basis it's not quite clear why not even to me it's not exactly why is it about abandonment anxiety or separation insecurity is it because most narcissists are also anti-social and so they they have the trades and characteristics of psychopaths psychopaths are novelty Seekers thrilled Seekers risk Seekers so psychopaths are unable to attach on a regular basis because then they develop boredom which is a form of internalized aggression maybe that is the issue narcissists are somewhat anti-social and of course psychopaths are anti-social but in healthy people in most people toys are what we know what what are known as transitional Comfort objects the second half of this video I will elaborate of on Donald winicot's theory of comfort objects but suffice it to say that Comfort objects are the bridge between mother and others the bridge between mother and other Soul initially the child is merged with Mother fused with her the child can't tell the difference between mother and himself there's no boundary There's no distinction between mummy and the baby because Mommy brings the world to the baby she is the intermediary without mommy the baby has no access to the world and so mommy becomes the world and there is a phase that used to be called symbiotic phase where mother and the baby are one and then gradually the baby baby grows up mother frustrates the baby she's not always there she's not always available not always amenable to the baby's demands the baby learns that Mommy is external to it is not actually a part baby realizes money is not a part of me and I'm not a part of mommy mommy is out there she's capable of frustrating me she could be a bad object and so the baby begins to detach from Mommy which is a healthy process known as separation he begins to detach from money but detaching for money is horrifying it's traumatic because the baby has nothing except mommy the whole world is Mommy so how how to detach from mother without losing the totality of your Universe well you adopt a blanket a security blanket or a teddy bear or a truck a toy truck toys and objects such as blankets they serve as mother substitutes they're always there they're controlled and owned by the child and the child considers them as part of itself even though the child realizes this blanket is not mother this toy is not mother so it must be external to me and this is the way the transitional Comfort objects bridge the gap between mother and other the child develops attachment and begins to interact in increasingly more mature ways with the objects in his life he realizes for the first time the difference between himself and the rest of the world he develops healthy boundaries externality internality the hyper-reflexive instincts early on because the child is almost psychotic in the first two years of life the child confuses himself in the world he thinks I am the world the world is me so Comfort objects teach him teach the child that there is something out there that is not the child gradually the child extends this newfound knowledge and applies it to other people other people become objects of the child's curiosity the child's emotions child's love their child's attachment bonding social urges and so on other people become the Comfort objects so the child discuss the teddy bear and finds a cute girl in class and later he gets married with this cute girl and they have their own cute girls as far as I remember it's been a long time so this is the process toys are critical psychologically critical because they allow the child to separate from Mommy and yet to feel safe to feel safe and that's why it's called the security blanket in many ways it's to fills the Comfort objects make the child feel safe allow the child to explore the world and then to retreat back to the Comfort object if mother is not there mother is absent in short the Comfort objects provide the first form of object constancy because here the narcissist again and the psychopath again has a major problem remember the narcissist never separates from Mommy separation individuation in narcissism is disrupted so the narcissist never transitions to object relations yes The Narcissist never transitions to object relations that's why the narcissist cannot perceive you as an object out there with which to have a relationship or with whom to have a relationship they are not out there narcissist is never separated from money is never exited the symbiotic phase and because it hasn't he is unable to develop the kind of healthy relationship did the overwhelming vast majority of humanity develops with toys narcissist is unable to derive comfort from his transitional objects he doesn't use objects to replace Mommy and as a launch pad to explore the world narcissists are incapable of attaching to anything animate or inanimate because they don't recognize the externality of the world because they never separate from mother and never become individuals who consequently narcissists are stuck at H2 they are trying to break you apart to see to learn how you tick and then of course to abuse it they are trying to they get tired of you bored they want to discard you the way a child discards an old toy and welcomes a new one you're a toy but you are never a transitional object you're never a comfort object because you are never out there you're a toy the same way um a child of two interacts with toys as far as a child of two is concerned his toys or her toys are an integral integral part of her their extensions of herself she doesn't regard or he doesn't regard they don't regard with age two they don't regard toys as external they have no concept of external yet they haven't separated from Mommy yet so Toys are Us toys below toys are the children these children perceive toys as another another hand another arm another leg you know another organ in the narcissist is the same he treats you as if you were an extremity a part of his body definitely a part of his mind because you've been internalized as an object and so how can the narcissists remain attached to you if he doesn't see you is external if you don't serve any function in terms of comfort or transition to object relations if you are not perceived even as an object and another person if your separateness is not recognized so you're a toy okay if you're a toy and the narcissist is incapable of uh getting attached to you because you know he needs to move on to the next story but if you're a toy and the narcissist never transitions to object relations why don't why doesn't the narcissist emotionally invest in you I tried to explain what I must the narcissist is stuck at age two he hasn't separated from Mommy so she's still there she's always there until he dies it's a lifelong thing it's a lifespan pathology okay but she's she's there and the narcissist begins as a child in early childhood The Narcissist begins to experiment with separation oh this is his toys as a child and then he gets stuck he is unable to convert the toys into transitional objects he's unable to replace money with the toys and then replace the toys with other people he's unable to transition to object relations why doesn't the narcissist get stuck on the toy in the toy phase why doesn't the narcissist get attached to his or her toys it's it's clear that the narcissist cannot develop adult mature relationships with other people narcissist has no object relations we get it it's understandable that the narcissists hasn't separated from his mother we get it but narcissists do play with toys they play with toys at age two they play with toys at age 20 and they play with toys at age 60. they play with toys why don't they get attached to these toys the way they are attached to mother why why do they separate from these toys these toys are not Comfort objects they are not transitional objects they don't allow the narcissist they don't expose The Narcissist to the outside world so why doesn't the narcissist simply merge with these toys fuse with these toys becomes one with these toys and remember when I say toys it means also the narcissist intimate Partners why does the narcissist devalue and discard his toys including his intimate partlets because they want to separate an individuate narcissists do want to transition from narcissistic relation relations to object relations the narcissist is unhappy unhappy with himself he is egoistonic he's in a state of grief because he won't be allowed to move on it's been denied his freedom his freedom to separate and to individuate it's a child in grief and this child wants to push mommy away and to become an individual and the way to do this of course is to go through toys through transitional Comfort objects and then to mature and ripen and have relationships with real objects external objects also known as people so narcissists have an urge they have a drive they have a wish they have a hope for separation individuation this is why they cannot get attached to their toys the wish the drive the urge to push everything away to separate to become an individual to break apart to go away is much stronger than the wish to attach or to bond or to love The Narcissist overriding need is separation and then individuation not attachment and then love attachment and love are adult things touchment and love are mature things separation individuation is an infantile thing it's a baby's thing it's a toddler's thing don't forget the narcissist is a baby it's a toddler it's an infant so of course the narcissist emphasis is on separation individuation and because this is the key Motif this is the key Drive in the narcissistic psychopathology the narcissist is incapable unable and unwilling to attach to anyone or anything because attachment means stagnation attachment means inability to separate attachment means merger infusion and losing your identity in your individuality attachment is the opposite of separation and love is the opposite of individuation in the narcissist mental universe so narcissists regardless toys but as opposed to healthy people as opposed to normal people the fact that you're a toy pushes them away from you the fact that you can be can become a comfort transitional object forces them to separate from you to push your way to get rid of you because you threatened them with your attachment Your Love is a menace these emotions that you can provoke in the narcissist are detrimental and deleterious to him he needs to move on an attachment and love keep him grounded keep him tethered keep him bonded and bounded he wants to break free and here you are with your love and attachment pulling you pulling him back you're like gravity not allowing him to soar above the clouds into his individuality newly discover individuality so even though clinically speaking The Narcissist intimate partner fulfills the role of a transitional object the bridge between mother and other still she suffers the fate of the of the narcissist's mother exactly as the narcissist tries to separate from his mother to individually he tries to separate from his intimate partner into individually this is the intimate partner is a maternal substitute she is perceived as a mother substitute or he is perceived as a mother substitute the Dual Mothership concept and so The Narcissist intimate partner partners are defective deficient transitional objects because the narcissist immediately converts them to Mother substitutes and the whole the whole thing the whole separation individuation conundrum is reenacted the narcissist the narcissists need to separate causes evaluation discard I discussed it in other videos but how does an assist experience it he devalues and he discards by emphasizing variety novelty thrill risk soul the anti-social element in the narcissist is the one that converts you into a persecutory object an enemy forces the narcissist to devalue you and separate from you as a reenactment of his original conflict with his mother and at the same time imbues the whole sordid process imbues it with positive effects so when the narcissist gets rid of you it is thrilled when he finds a substitute for you the next intimate partner in the in the new shirt fantasy he is he is happy he's excited there's novelty there there's some risk in this variety so what the narcissist does he Towers he Towers the process of the value evaluation in this car with a brush off exploration curiosity novelty thrill and so forth these motivate him to move on to the next intimate partner and start the cycle all over again so let me summarize this and then go to the work of winning code all children transition from an attachment to Mother bonding with mother fusing and merging with mother in a symbiotic phase not being able to tell the difference between themselves and mother all children transition from this to an interim phase with transitional objects like a teddy bear or a blanket the transitional object teaches the child that there is something external and also teaches the child rudimentary lessons in attachment and bonding child gets attached and bonded to it to its to its toys and then later on the child is able to apply the same lessons to another person to an object in the psychological sense child is able to develop object relations child loves another person the way he loved used to love his teddy bear and he recognizes the externality of another person the way he accepted that the teddy bear is not part of him but outside him okay this is a healthy normal tribe in a healthy normal trajectory of personal growth and development not solve the narcissist the narcissist is unable to decouple from mother to separate from her and to move on to transitional Comfort object as a stage toward object relations marsis does not complete this course he stays stuck with mommy there's no separation and no individuals consequently any relationship The Narcissist has with another person is effectively a relationship with his mother and a desperate attempt to render the other person a transitional object when this inevitably fails The Narcissist attempts separation via devaluation and discard and he convinces himself that such measures like devaluing the other discarding abusing the intimate partner ruining the relationship breaking up he convinces himself that this is great fun it's wonderful it's novelty it's thrilling and this is the psychopathic aspect of the narcissist Donald Woods winikot who was a pediatrician but many many Giants of psychology have never studied psychology he was a pediatrician later he became a psychologist so Donald Woods winning code introduced the concept of transitional objects and transitional experience and he said it's an inevitable part of the developmental sequence when it got meant that there is an intermediate developmental phase between psychic reality totally internalized no interface with the world between this kind of reality which is let's say up to age 18 months and external reality this is the transitional space and within the transitional space there is there are transitional objects when the child begins to separate me from not me when the child evolves from complete dependence to relative or budding Independence the child begins to use objects external objects inanimate objects transitional objects the child initially sees himself as mother he doesn't he can't tell the difference between himself and mother so as far as he's concerned he is also a mother the child is also a mother the mother is the world she brings the world to the child and this gives the child the illusion that um the child's thoughts can affect the world this is known as magical thinking the child says to himself I am mother mother is the world so I am the world so anything I wish I can make happen I can create the objects of my desire simply by wishing them into existence and this is a sense of subjective omnipotence but unfortunately or maybe fortunately subjective of omnipotence clashes with objective reality objective reality is the fact that even very young children are aware of the environment they pretty early on begin to develop doubts about the theory that they are the world they realize that there is some separateness from the desired objects because money for example keeps frustrating them and if they are mother how can they frustrate themselves they realize something is wrong with Theory so the subjective omnipotence experience makes the child feel that he can wish something desire something becomes reality and then there's a huge gratification and so the when the child is confronted with objective reality he tries to apply the same Paradigm to objective reality child says okay maybe there's something out there that is not me but I can still wish it to exist or I can wish it to not exist magical thinking persists later into life the child does come to realize that mother is a separate entity but this is perceived as a loss as a trauma and there is a sudden overwhelming sense of dependency it's new ironically when the child is most dependent the child doesn't feel dependent because the child believes that he is mummy and he can wish mommy into existence but when the child grows up a bit and becomes more independent objectively the child feels more dependent subjectively and there's a gap between how the child feels in reality and it creates a difficult period or frustration and anxiety mother is not always available to bring the world to the baby and this realization is exceedingly hurtful and painful and menacing frightening illness and the child is consumed by it for a while he doesn't know how to square the circle half of it half of his brain is still there and with the belief that his mother and mother is the world and that he is omnipotent the other half is becoming open to the realization that all this is not true the child develops a Fantasy Defense um a fantasy of wishing objects into existence or um that the objects out there are actually out there to comfort the child or to satisfy the child me child needs and cater to his Dynamics the child begins to imbue reality itself with enchantment with magic and this is where transitional objects come in the transitional object is the first position which is not me it's a not me position it belongs to the child but it's not the child so again a blanket a teddy bear but transitional objects were originally defined in a way that for example words or music can be transitional objects anyhow much more common is to have real life objects as transitional objects so the transitional object is a mother it's a mother substitute it represents all the components and functions of mothering by owning the transitional object the child owns or reacquires mother closest the distance between himself and Mom and Mommy he the child used to be mummy child and mother were one and then mother broke off and there was this Schism this division of the world it's terrifying and traumatic and then the child found a teddy bear and teddy bear became mother and the child owns the teddy bear so he owns mother and so again this reduces the child's anxiety because the child again becomes omnipotent he owns mother he can create whatever he needs he can wish into existence any object of desire as embodied in the emblem of the transitional object there's a fantasized bond with a mother through the transitional object and yet the relationship with the transitional object allows the child to actually separate from money he is no longer dependent on money because he has a teddy bear it's important the transitional object is critical as a defense against the anxiety of separation children calm down with a transitional objects they slip more easily they've been studies in Brazil other places at the latest stage the child no longer needs the transitional object of course it makes a distinction between me and not me inside and outside and so on and so forth and there's no more no more use of magical thinking instead and Fantasy Defense is much reduced instead the child uses symbols for example language in in other objects and so on so forth will not go into all this the transitional object has an objective component and a subjective component it occupies a real space and it occupies a mental space and so it is a perfect Bridge into adult life the child gradually relinquishes the mental space in favor of the real space he the child literally walks on the bridge of the transitional object into his life and his reality if separation is obstructed and disrupted the child never is never able to develop a proper relationship with a transitional object and never enters reality and so this kind of child is an adult who tried desperately to rein up replay this fixation this disrupted phase he would convert his intimate partner into a mother and then he would try to separate from her as a mother and make her into shape her into a transitional object and of course this is impossible because she is a mother in his mind and then he would need to devalue her and discard her and move on to the next mother to the next intimate partner sometimes in a shared fantasy the narcissist is able to devalue and discard his intimate partner and introduce into the share fantasy a third party not in order to triangulate but in order to use the third party as a transitional object as a teddy bear so you would see a situation where the narcissist is in embedded in a shared fantasy with an intimate partner that functions as a mother and he has a lover or a mistress or a playmate who serves is a teddy bear or a blanket a safety object a calming object a transitional object and the narcissist's hopes to be able to transition through the third party into object relations and then apply them to the partner but of course this is impossible as you can't use a transitional object to convert your mother into something else you can only move away from mother transitional objects are catalysts they speed up the process of separation from mother and render is safe and secure you can't use a transitional object in order to regain attachment and bonding with your intimate partner and this time not as a model The Narcissist converts the intimate partner into a mother and there's no going back from this definitely not via transitional objects this is the picture you know the narcissist mother and then sometimes you're the narcissist toy transitional object and of course these two roles are incompatible you can't be a mother and a transitional object because a transitional object's function is to push the child away from mother to help the child separate from up so because these are contradictory mutually inclusive roles the narcissist is unable to reconcile them ultimately he gives up on you and then there's the valuation discard and I describe it in other um other videos now there's a I I created two new playlists one is about the shared fantasy and the Dual Mothership in another playlist about healing and recovering from narcissistic abuse so they are available on this channel I hope you had fun to team into thought and see you next time if I succeed to separate from you um you've been one hell of a transitional object until now thank you for listening foreign

Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin

Views: 21,736

Keywords: child, mother, shared fantasy, transitional object, comfort object, winnicott, separation, individuation, world, external, internal, intimate partner, object relations, narcissist, psychopath, teddy bear, blanket, safety

Id: 5F1Psu0__U0

Length: 42min 47sec (2567 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 13 2023