Narcissist-Borderline (40:07): Take My Shadow, Give Me Love

look it up today i have a real treat for you i'm going to read to you several of the best comments posted on my videos on my youtube channel and then i'm going to react to these comments and then they're going to ask questions about my reactions and then i'm going to comment on your questions and then you're gonna react to the comments that i reacted to your questions i lost i lost the threat i hope you didn't so before we get that allow me to present myself for those of you who don't know who the hell am i my name is sam vaknin minus a lot of hair and i have been am and forever will be the author of malignant self-love narcissism revisited first edition 1999 when the dinosaurs roamed the earth and there wasn't a narcissist in sight i also offered many many dozens of other books and i'm a professor of psychology in many many many many universities having dispensed with this self-promotion we can now get to the point i want to read to you a truly heartbreaking comment by one of the viewers if i had a heart it would have been broken since you do yours will be broken because it's really really a sad testimony to how it feels to be with the narcissist you remember red's confession or wrath's testimony where he described the narcissist point of view now i'm going to give you the intimate partner or the insignificant others point of view and it corresponds very closely to what i've been telling you so here goes i'm keeping her anonymous just in case she said this is all so interesting so horrific a lot of these wait a minute let me enlarge the font a bit because at my age i hardly see the computer let alone the script so this is also interesting and so horrific a lot of these things are elements i've somehow sensed but i could not but could not pinpoint or put into words i have been dating a child he did not begin this way a man who i first thought would somehow be the man of my dreams is now revealed to be an almost feminine child worse than peter pan i'm finding that i'm dating a little girl he came off initially as very masculine and very confident a few months later i was doing all the driving i was buying him dinner i was planning dates along with other things that men in my previous relationships would have naturally done without being us i'm still trying to figure out why it is so difficult to extract myself from this relationship i know it isn't good for me it isn't fulfilling it is draining actually at this point i've lost any type of sexual attraction to him and he had become asexual it is strange but i seem to have developed a somewhat maternal feelings towards him i feel pity for him i worry about his well-being i worry that he drinks too much and that he doesn't eat well but this relationship is never going to be whole the doctor is right doctor is me doctor is right no woman wants to be turned into her partner's mother but in some strange way it can feel good at times it can feel like a form of love i know it is not a healthy relationship but it is still a relationship i feel somewhat protective of him in some way but at the same time i feel so unhappy so frustrated that he will never be a grown-up i have watched these videos many times to try to understand and help me verbalize all the things in this relationship that i've intuitively known since very early on these videos have become my therapy much more helpful than seeing a counselor i had a need to know what i was dealing with and why and these videos answer all my questions and more anyone who is struggling explore these videos and you may find answers it might not help you escape the relationship but it might give you some insight into your partner and into yourself and the dynamics involved in these seemingly addictive relationships heartbreaking heartbreaking but typical totally typical that's what i've been hearing from narcissists in my database and from their spouses girlfriends intimate partners life partners they're all selling just saying the same one question which keeps arising and really it's a bit of a conundrum people say sex is not age dependent there's no such thing as age appropriate sex sex is a drive it's a biological thing even babies masturbate even babies have sex psychosexuality starts in the womb so how come the narcissist gives up his sexuality as a cerebral or in other settings how can the narcissists give up on biology how can the narcissist give up on body okay the analysis mind is seriously in need of tweaking and tinkering and so on but what about his body doesn't his body have a life of its own the thing is that narcissists the vast majority of nazis if not all of them i would even go on a limb and say that all narcissists are either autoerotic that's the vast majority or a tiny minority a sliver are actually sex is an irresistible primordial largely largely reflexive it's a reflex it's an autonomous language and like every other tongue like every other language it can be used to express many things you can use sex to say anything you can use sex to say i pity you or you can use sex to say i want to make you feel good or happy or you can use sex to say well that's my that's my goodbye or you could make sex uh you can use sex for for any for any reason whatsoever it's a language it's a vocabulary and you can and most people use sex to say i love you or as a minimum i like you and i desire you within our growing intimacy that's a healthy kind of sex adult mature reciprocal and this is another type of sex i want to render you an extension of myself and that way i can make love to my own extended being so i want to make you part of me so that i can make love to myself this is what we call autoeroticism and i will go in in in depth into it in a few minutes in response to a comment by a psychoanalyst so this is auto eroticism and there's a third possibility i want to humiliate you i want to hurt you and that's sexual sadism the sexual sadist is actually asexual the cerebral narcissist is his sex drive is so repressed that he's technically asexual as well they can go celibate they can abstain from sex from sex for years at a time i've had a stretch of 15 years without sex at the prime of my life and at that time i looked really good i was rich i was famous i had it going you know i could have had anyone i could have had anyone literally and i for 15 years i went without sex so cerebrals and and sadis can go without sex why can't they go without sex because they don't have a sex drive the psychosexuality of the sadistic narcissist and you can conceptualize the cerebral narcissist as a sadistic narcissist because he uses he uses sex to punish he withdraws his sex sex withdrawal is a form of abuse to deny your partner sex is to punish your partner it's a punitive measure it's an aggression aggressive measure to transformation of aggression so you could safely say that cerebral narcissists have a sadistic element in their psychosexuality so sadistic people who are sexual sadies let alone narcissistic sexual cities they don't have a sex drive they're asexual that's why they can go without sex for for ages for eternity the psychosexuality of the sexual sadis is more like the psychosexuality of the rapist you know that rape is not about sex rape is about power the power matrix the power asymmetry between the rapist and his victim it's a power play it's a power play not a language not a mode of communication and it's easy to prove when the sexual sadis intimate partner ostensible intimate partner when she tries to revert to conventional sex when she says listen i don't like it anymore i don't like these games i don't like these role plays because they're very they hurt me they cause me pain they humiliate me i feel i feel degraded and debased i i don't like it it doesn't turn me on let's try to have conventional sex the ministry says this the sadistic the sexual cities becomes hypo sexual not hyper but hypo his sex drive diminishes dramatically he doesn't have arousal he cannot be aroused sexually and he has numerous bouts of erectile dysfunction ed you try this you date a sexual sadist you play along you comply with all these crazy fantasies and wishes you become a plaything an object he does to you anything he wants he humiliates you we degrade you he does to your disgusting thing things he forces you to do disgusting things and then at some point you say after a few months listen i've had enough let's try to have some normal sex shall we and he he would lose it literally he would not be up to the task and to regain his erstwhile drive and prowess sexual status transition from sexual sadism to exhibitionism and voyeurism just to make something clear before i go before i go on sexual sadies do engage in conventional sex missionary position or some other positions conventional sex they do engage in it it's not that it's totally absent from their repertory but when they do have conventional sex it's masturbatory they use they use the woman the in the partner's body to masturbate so it's totally self-centered erotic egotistic and and mechanical and has nothing to do with the weather part the partner is just there is a sex doll inflatable sex doll or animated dildo if it's a woman so sexual mercedes uses conventional sex in lieu of masturbation if he is confronted with a demand to give up on his sadism and to engage only in conventional sex he transitions to exhibitionism and voyeurism at that stage he would for example masturbate he constantly masturbate only masturbate in his partner's presence turned on aroused by her gaze that's exhibitionism or he would initiate threesomes in group sex because he wants vicariously to enjoy the proceedings he wants to watch his intimate partner having sex with others that's voyeurism or he would watch his sexual partner gratify yourself it's another form of worries so the thing with most narcissists by the way including soma technologies they don't have a sex drive because they're not adults they're children they don't have a sex drive the somatic narcissist uses women's bodies to obtain supply and to masturbate with cerebral narcissism doesn't do even this and the sexual sadist uses women bodies to inflict hurt and pain and humiliation he degrades the woman he spoils despoils the woman okay i hope i made this clear narcissists have no sex drive end of story they imitate sex they use sexual acts to obtain to cater to to satisfy psychological needs and only psychological needs okay dr cavier young christ i hope i pronounced it correctly dr m carrier young left two fascinating comments which i would like to read to you the first one was this thank you professor wagner it's a pleasure for me to listen to your videos especially as a fellow psychologist your expertise is thoroughly wide-ranging and you are able to synthesize highly complex theory and research from freud to kernberg to bromberg's surf states and you do it in a way that is highly engaging and convincing thank you so she continues forgive me please for a lengthy comment that i hope you will accept is an expression of enthusiasm an admiration from a colleague this video in particular was of interest to me as i have a strong interest in the presentation of narcissistic traits in homosexuals i have followed much much of your material on homosexual narcissists for several years and i agree with your assertion that homosexual relationships are often highly narcissistic and autoerotic affairs consider a patient of mine who freely admitted with no self-censoring i would love to sleep with myself because i would know exactly what i wanted and i would make myself feel amazing that patient also disclosed incest fantasies especially around two male twins masturbating to his own reflection and described speaking to his love interest as like speaking with a mirror it was shocking to me even after years of reading freud to see such overt declarations of self-directed libido libido is the life force which includes the sex drive in the video you mentioned the homosexual narcissist introjecting a female love interest so that he can successfully mate with himself my question to you do you agree the same need for a feminine introject is true in homosexual relationships for instance in jungian terms through projecting the anima onto a male partner and then taking that as an introject into fantasy i'll read the question again because it's complex brilliant by the way and complex my question to you is this do you agree that there is the same need for a feminine introject in homosexual relationships for instance in jungian terms by projecting the anima the female part onto a male partner and then taking that as an introject into fantasy or might it function without the need for such a feminine interject in the homosexual case in that case what is the psychic outlaw layout my instinctive is that the presentation of highly narcissistic hetero and homosexual patients differs slightly but can diff but can differ only to your expertise on the topic given that very few clinicians or theories are willing these days to discuss these topics scientifically i responded to her briefly i would like to expand a bit first let me read my response thank you for your kind kind words regrettably there are no studies to answer your questions i speculate that exactly as you suggest there is some kind of projection of the feminine into the partner onto the partner and then later introjection at the same time the other partner is similarly projecting the masculine and then introjecting it homoerotic homosexuality is best described as a projective introjective symbiotic swap of anima and animus now this is for psychoanalysts and clinicians and for you who are laymen and lay women and are not into this lingo um jargon let me explain what i just said i just said is when when two people meet the autoerotic side the autoerotic partner the partner who is actually in love with himself the partner who is infatuated sexually with himself the partner who finds himself arousing that partner would take the part that does not correspond to his sex so if he's a male he would take the female part if he's a female she would take the male part so the autoerotic partner the partner who is drawn sexually irresistibly to himself or to herself she will take the sex incongruent part if she's a female male if he's a male female will take that part of him over and project it onto his or her partner let's simplify it let's talk about a male and a man and a woman okay but of course it applies equally to woman and men when the man is autoerotic it applies and when the woman is auto erotic it applies just change the gender pronouns so when the man is auto erotic autoerotic but heterosexual and he has a female partner what he does he takes his female side because everyone has a male and a female side he takes his female side which is usually repressed suppressed he takes the female side and he projects it onto his female partner and then he takes it back from her so he is not interacting with her femininity he is interacting with his femininity projected onto her he wants to have sex with himself not with her in order to have sex with his self he needs to have sex with his male part and with his female part because they are one and the same but that's not legitimate because if he has sex with his male part that's homosexuality and he is homophobic so he can't be a homosexual he can't admit to it he's heterosexual so what he does he projects his feminine side onto his partner then he takes it back from her and now he feels that he has he's having sex with a feminine side that he had taken back from his feminine partner he deceives himself this process of projection and introduction projection and introjection is to convince the narcissist that he's even having sex with a female with a feminine aspect not with his male side but it legitimizes his autoeroticism which is 100 percent homosexual i hope you follow this the narcissist needs his female partner as an excuse he needs her as a foil deep inside he is autoerotic he's attracted only to himself so he is homosexual by definition because he is attracted to himself and he is the same sex as himself he is attracted to a man that man happens to be him but it's still a man now he needs to legitimize this he needs to say i'm not gay not attracted to a man but they're talking about so he finds a woman and then he finds a woman but he cannot have sex with a woman because he's not attracted to her he's attracted to himself so he takes a part of himself that is feminine he projects it on the woman that he takes it back and now he can have sex safely with himself because he can lie to himself and to his partner that he is having sex with a female of course his partner is not aware of all this he is not aware of all this it's a totally unconscious process but his partner feels something something alright and an off off note something off-key something wrong a wrong note she feels it she feels that when he's making love ostensibly to her he's too focused on himself on his body on his performance on his past only on his on on himself on his two is too insulated he's in a bubble it's like sleeping with someone through a bubble through the walls of a bubble through a glass darkly through a partition you never when you have sex with the narcissist you never feel that you are really there fully he is really there fully but not with you you never feel his gaze because we all derive our sense of existence from the gaze of other people if we are not seen by anyone we would feel that we are disappearing that we are transparent we need other people to acknowledge our existence by seeing us we need to see in their eyes that we exist when you are with a narcissist in bed having sex it's like you're not there it's like you don't exist gradually you don't exist he is fully there but for for himself every intimate partner of analysis would tell you this don't misunderstand the sex can be great pyrotechnic supreme maestro performance technically mechanically the mechanics of the sex could be supreme could be unprecedented this would be the best sex in your life but mechanical there's no soul in the sex with the narcissist there's a lot of emphasis on the user's manual and which buttons to push when but there's no soul there because he doesn't really have sex with you you are an absence he is an absence and now he makes you an absence by expropriating and appropriating what is yours your femininity but he does this by giving you access to his femininity and then merging the two of you together i hope i got it i mean i hope you understand i this i don't think i can get it simpler than this another comment by by dr m m cavier young quest i don't know why i assume that it's a woman bizarre could be a man anyhow doctor m cavier young christ he she he she i prefer to think of her as a she much more pleasant so she writes about another video precisely excellently expressed cptsd [Music] complex trauma and bpd borderline personality disorder cpdsd and bpd and even despite the hype npd narcissistic personality disorder these cannot be distinguished psychodynamically ideologically or otherwise i fully agree dissociation is a healthy coping mechanism as long as it does not create an irreconcilable divide between self-states as professor vaknin states states pathological dissociation post-traumatic in nature creates an overarching eye which is unable to integrate the split true self and false self i would further suggest that the true self and false self are clusters of self states brilliant suggestion from this perspective gaslighting is hardly a plot by a narcissist but instead it's merely a behavioral phenomenon of pathological dissociation the false self cannot remember what other cells did professor vacline has discussed such memory issues in detail on his channel so do check his videos thank goodness thank goodness for this evidence-based expert discussion amidst the chorus of misleading self-victimizing psychobabble on youtube and thank you again doctor so i've been i've been asked about the narcissist convert borderline and so on and so forth a possibility to maintain long-term relationships why do they fail to maintain long-term relationships and i will answer this briefly because i did i did broach this subject for hours in other videos but in a nutshell both the covert covert borderline and the overt or classic baudelaire they're both all borderlines are gregarious they're sociable they crave social interactions they also crave long-lasting intimate meaningful relationships the narcissist misinterprets and reframes his need for various types of narcissistic supply as a desire for long-term relationships so while the borderline all types of borderline really need really seek really try to have true intimate meaningful long-term relationship the narcissist does not what the narcissist does he tries to acquire to captivate to capture long-term sources of narcissistic supply and he calls this hostage situation he calls it long-term relationship but it is true that all three covert borderline classic borderline and narcissists all three fail in their quest to maintain long-term relationships why is that for different reasons the overt classic borderline is hampered by her abandonment anxiety the constant buzz of be of constant fear constant anxiety constant anticipation of abandonment and humiliation and rejection and pain and hurt they push her to act out she decompensates she disintegrates she's all over the place she becomes discombobulated and she acts out when she acts out she destroys herself and she destroys any intimacy and trust that she may have garnered with her wounded partner the covert borderline fails owing to his grandiosity and paranoia how can you maintain intimacy if you consider yourself vastly superior to your partner and also suspect to suspect her of misbehavior in a variety of ways including misplaced romantic jealousy so he undermines his own relationships the narcissist loses his partners because he coerces his partners into participating in his shirt fantasy and he wants them to renounce reality and everyone else he wants them to reject life itself as he had rejected it and they rebel they rebelled they don't want to they don't want to die they don't want to become a mummy ancient egyptian mummy in his museum they don't want that they don't want to to lie dormant on the cobwebs you know so they betray him they won't walk out on you so why doesn't he change many asked me they ask me by the way you're intelligent you're this you're handsome why don't you change well why don't narcissists change there are several reasons because there are several reasons it's impossible to change their lack of wish to change it's impossible to alter and modify their resistance to change their ossified ossified and fossilized precarious internal balance they refuse to change because there are too many good reasons to not change first of all there's defiance defiance reactance rebelliousness non-conformity no one will tell me what to do i'm god i'm omnipotent i'm omniscient i'm handsome no one will tell me what to do number two grandiosity it's my way or the highway f off factor grandiosity number three it's too late to change at my age i just have to be the way i am and i'm not talking about 60. narcissists say this when they're 16. it's too late i'm the way i am number four i like hawaiian there's ego synthony nazis describe themselves as carefree resilient powerful brave playful non-committal adventurous childlike true to myself etc etc if you ask a narcissist to describe himself out of 100 words maybe if you're lucky there will be two negative ones and even these negative ones depending on the context are not necessarily negative so narcissists regard have a very positive view of themselves you want positive psychology talk to a narcissist they've been exercising positive psychology long before any psychologist number five the narcissist feels liberated when he is not in a relationship when he ends a relationship it's painful could be even mortifying but it's also a relief it's liberating the nazis feels unshackled with an infinite horizon of unlimited options possibilities opportunities and potentials he's unbridled he is let loose it's a good feeling try it try divorce okay number six the narcissist preempts anticipated failures he says to himself i'm gonna fail anyhow i'm gonna fail anyhow i'm gonna lose her anyhow she's gonna dump me she's gonna cheat on me she's gonna betray me anyhow it's for sure it's guaranteed it's not the borderline's anticipated abandonment the borderline anticipates abandonment with huge anxiety she absolutely falls apart when she anticipates or spots or misinterprets behaviors as abundant the narcissist when he thinks about abandonment it's a fatalistic kind of thing you know that's life that's the world people abandon each other people are animals it's a jungle out there the world is hostile people are cynical they stab you in the back of the first opportunity to steal your money yeah yeah even my spouse so like the narcissist takes it in his stride and assumes with absolute certainty that whatever he's doing right now whoever he's with right now is gonna end badly so if it's anyhow gonna end badly why try by preempting anticipated failure the narcissist regains ostensible control the narcissist can say i don't have a thriving business because i didn't really try you know i didn't dedicate myself to it or he can say she dumped me because i abused her i abused her that means i initiated all it's an internal regaining the internal locus of control it's conversion from external modification to internal modification it's failing in charge so narcissists precipitate abandonment precipitate make sure there's a breakup push the partners away because anyone's gonna so let the other shoe drop now i don't have time number seven most narcissists are indolent bored slackers here i said it politically incorrect a tiny sliver of a minority make it to the top and we can discuss this some other time what's the difference between productive high functioning narcissists and a slacker narcissist but most of them are slackers they hoard they mummify people they hoard devices they hold books they hold videos they hold women and then they mummify them they freeze them they they don't they don't want to invest they don't want to commit they don't don't want to work hard the path of least resistance is the only path and all the rest is resistance they can't be bothered to make use of even what they have even what they own even people who love them they can't be bothered they don't maintain anything so everything falls to pieces there is rot and corruption and depreciation and amortization of everything they've ever managed to accumulate or to create these objects fall apart women flee so there is a there is there is a tendency in the narcissist to terminate long-term relationship because it sits well with his self-image and with his the way he sees the his future and caters to many many um many many of his needs now i keep comparing the narcissist and his life to conveyances the conveyance metaphors i said that nazis are like a car or like a boat like a train or like a bus hop on hop off bus you know the narcissist has his route he is traveling you can hop on hop on and hop off he doesn't even notice buy a ticket you're in find a wagon stay there for as long as you want get off whenever you want lust is couldn't care less he's a train he's a boss his life is a movie anyhow you're on the set you're in the set you're an extra hand you're uh you know you're not you're never the star he's the star you're co-starring at best and that's a movie it's not real so no harm down you know see you and i i regret to say that this narcissistic approach to life has now permanently permeated and pervaded all the last two generations this is the million millennials and and the z generation decision they have this attitude you know conveyance of attitude i'm a car i'm a train i'm my own car i'm my own trainer i'm a director of my own movie and all the others are symbols metaphors free writers sojourners you know they are not they're not meaningful sex is not meaningful relationships are not me nothing is meaningful what's so meaningful in a bus route nothing is meaningful in the bus route the more stops the better the merrier people come people come up people go down that's how people relate to their lives today epidemic is not making it better and there is a question this raises of course the question of object constancy the analysis narcissist we keep talking about external object constancy this analysis is never sure that people in his life will stay in his life it started with his mother who was a dead mother was never there for him emotionally unavailable or instrumentalizing or objectified or parentified or you know or was depressive or was absent physically absent or was narcissistic so he was exposed the first object in his life first person in his life was not constant whatever else you see so he had developed an insecure attachment style coupled with object in constancy but we keep talking about external object consciously but wait a minute by far more important is internal object constancy we have a self constellated self the lucky ones you know we feel this as a bit separate from us that's why we're able to engage in intro inspection to look inside ourselves as though we were the object objects of our the object of our gaze we look at us we observe ourselves as though we were a separate object and there is object constancy do you feel that yourself is a constant reliable safe base to be trusted object or don't you narcissist borderlines they don't feel that inside themselves there is an object that is constant that they can trust that will always be there that it will provide them with safety at the very least by being consistent that will endow their life their lives with meaning that will organize the world in reality in ways which would be comprehensible and manipulable in the good sense that will enhance their self-efficacy they don't have such an object which is otherwise known as self so they don't they don't have external object constancy and they don't have internal object constancy and similarly they have two phenomena phenomena ego incongruency and ego discrepancy ego incongruency is when the internal object is in conflict parts of the internal law because internal object is not in integrated there is a lot of chaos we call this disorganized personality there's a lot of chaos there constructs are fighting with each other introjects are shouting over each other there's a bloody mess it's mayhem it's pandemonium inside the borderline and inside the narcissist and very often the needs of one construct one part of the self are diametrically opposed to the needs of the other for example one part could be introverted and one part would be extrovert so it creates ego incongruency when there is input and the con constructs can get their act together can't operate in a cohesive coherent manner outcome-oriented manner self-efficacious manner with an agency we have severe problems within the within the ego that's why i keep saying masses don't have any the incongruency and discrepancy are so gigantic they don't have an ego actually there is attempted ego at best and similarly there's ego discrepancies when external input from the outside external input uh conflicts dramatically with certain functions of the of the of the self and certain needs of the self for example when grandiosity is challenged so all these processes are happening and as a result there is no core there is no stable state there are self states multiple many and they are in flux when you talk to a healthy person you can safely assume that eighty percent ninety percent of this person will remain in one year's time you can't make this assumption about the narcissist in one hour's time and with the borderline in ten minutes time the narcissist and the borderline are not solid objects they are fluids they're in flux i'll give you the best metaphor glass glass is not solid glass is a liquid i don't know if you know that glass is a liquid that is flowing glacially very very very minutely and microscopically so you don't notice it but glass is liquid it's a form of fluid it's the same with the narcissist from the outside the narcissists in the borderline look like you and me or you and you they look you know normal healthy about functioning somehow they have their act together but actually it's glass it's brittle it's fragile it's vulnerable it's not resistant to external shocks and it's in constant flux so there are numerous self-states that kaleidoscopically indizingly repla replace each other you never enter the same narcissist twice the famous heraclitus saying you never enter the same river try twice you never enter the same borderline twice and they they what they're trying to do desperately is to use the partner to legitimize the shadow part they have very pronounced shadow parts parts of themselves that they had repressed complexes uh that they had replaced repressed suppressed deny and they want the partner to legitimize these parts for them they want to experience this part of themselves the shadow part and in the case of the male narcissist part of the shadow part and the integral part of the shadow part is the feminine aspect so they want to project the shadow part on the partner and they want the partner to allow them to experience the shadow part through him vicariously or through her so the the partner's role the intimate partner's role is to allow the narcissist and the borderline to experience themselves by legitimizing their shadow part i'm using jungian parlance but you can use any any other metaphor it's a metaphor of course yeah and when the partner is healthy he can contain the shadow part that was given to him handed over to him projected onto him he can contain it because he has boundaries and he doesn't allow himself to be influenced but what happens when the partner is equally sick when you have a narcissist on a borderline they trade the shadow parts constantly they constantly try to force their shadow parts on each other and it's a war it's a war because they don't have boundaries and they constantly trespass they constantly invade and they constantly mirror each other in the bad sense of the world the narcissist suddenly becomes a borderline for a minute because he had absorbed the shock wave of his borderline partner's shadow part and the borderline becomes grandiose and narcissistic because she had absconded with the projected grandiosity of her narcissistic partner they become each other's mirrors but you know put two mirrors and have a look what happens if you put two mirrors facing each other have a look what happens infinite regression you never get any word the depth is infinite it's a corridor of mirrors and that is what i call the hall of mirrors and there is in these people the borderlines analysis there is a background process of mourning and grieving they are grieving a dead object probably the dead mother but not necessarily and they are grieving this dead object because they have early on introjected this object they are actually grieving themselves and when they give the shadow apart to the partner they feel whole but only by subsuming the partner when they give the shadow part to the partner the shadow part is legitimized and the borderline of the narcissist can experience it finally safely but to do that they must assimilate the partner because he has the shadow part to become one whole they must merge and fuse with the partner because he's holding an important part so imagine that i'm a borderline and you're my partner i take my shadow part and i give it to you that moment i have to digest you i have to merge with you i have to fuse with you because half of me is with you you have half of me you own half of me you control half of me and to experience myself in my totality we have to become one and this is the famous process of merger and fusion which is also common among codependents and then when we become one wholeness is restored wholeness is restored a safe base is established we call it a holding environment safe base is established and this is done in therapy as well it's precisely what we do in therapy with transference counters transference we play with this actually we we allow the patient to give us as therapists to give us the shadow part we hold the shadow part for the patient and we let the patient experience the shadow part from the safety of our base as therapies it's the same process and then the patient feels whole and the morning stops the dead object is revived and resuscitated and yes if there are religious overtones to what i'm saying it's because religion is the earliest form of psychotherapy of course and here i acknowledge jordan peterson's recent contributions he he went he went deep into this netherlands between religion and therapy so this is this is the the the kind of process that happens in borderline narcissistic mixed couples also to some extent codependent narcissistic mixed couples and so on and and so forth now one last thing of course in the shared fantasy the shell fantasy by the way is intended to facilitate exactly this the swap the swap of shadow parts the swap of autoerotic libidinal gender roles the swap simply the swab but because the swap is so extensive and massive and intensive and repetitive the two parties become one through merger infusion they swapped so many parts there they become indistinguishable at that point they lose reality testing fantasy by definition is poor reality testing yeah but the fantasy in this case involves disappearing as an individual and reappearing as an organism with two heads as a merged fused togetherness and this damages reality testing this reality intrudes reality challenges undermines sabotages you don't want reality you want to live in this safe holding warm accepting unconditional love it's okay to be you environment so there is a problem with with reality testing some narcissists definitely psychopaths in many borderlines who react to this through the loss of reality testing with alarm they get very frightened and they try to restore the reality testing with something called hyper reflection or hyper realism they actually withdraw from the partner and merge with reality they extend themselves and swallow reality they say okay i have to merge i have to fuse but merging and fusing only with my intimate partner denies me the benefits of reality access to reality acting upon reality securing favorable outcomes from reality it damages my self-efficacy my agency my individuality i don't want that so they withdraw but they must merge infuse merger infusion is the fundamental dynamic in in these disorders because they are disorders of the self and when you don't have your own self you need another person's self or some other self you need to have a self by proxy vicariously through someone or through something so when they lose the partner because they're terrified that they're losing themselves they adopt reality instead and this is hyper reflection it's when the the self the dysfunctional self expands to include reality and it creates something called which i call hyper realism it's these people become paranoid cynical conspiracist exact opposite not trusting fearful anxious and you have these two poles you have the codependence and borderlines who merge with the intimate partner lose themselves vanish as individuals and reappear through the agency of the intimate partner and you have those who reject the intimate part torture the intimate partner to push him away he don't want the intimate partner because they if they are afraid of enmeshment and in government and in many borderlines there is this pendulum dynamic they're afraid of enmeshment and engulfment they want merger fusion they want to be enmeshed they want to be engulfed when they do they're terrified again they're the withdrawal so approach avoidance repetition compulsion on the one hand there's the intimate partner on the other hand there's the world and the borderline swings between the world rejecting the intimate partner and the intimate partner while rejecting the world and this swinging motion is the repetition compulsion approach avoidance repetition compulsion as far as the intimate partner is concerned he experiences it as lability modal ability and dysregulated emotions that's how we describe it from the outside from the inside it's simply fear the borderline and the narcissist live in constant terror terror of disappearing on the one hand especially with an intimate partner and terror of having to manage the universe having to be god if they if they flee from the public if they avoid the pop and escape the parlor they have to embrace the world and because the world is dangerous hostile you have to manage the world so you have to become god and this is between zero and hero between not being and being everything between being between vanishing and becoming god this these are the per the outside parameters of the existence of people with disorders of the self such as borderline and narcissism i hope you had fun i know i did it's time for another sip of water ah wunderbar my kinder

Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin

Views: 64,276

Keywords: Borderline, codependent, narcissist, intimacy, fantasy, shadow, love, vicarious, legitimize, self, ego, feminine, homosexual, introjects, sex, personality, projection, mother, attraction, partner, spouse, relationship

Id: ucu5XOUPw7c

Length: 56min 58sec (3418 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 08 2020