Narcissist FEARS YOUR LOVE, Intimacy: Perfectionism, Envy, Hate

good morning students good morning students the narcissist hates your guts he hates your guts virulently he hates your guts viscerally he hates your guts with all his heart the more he thinks he loves you the more he is dependent on you the more he hates you this condition is known as ambivalence and one of the major protections against ambivalence is perfectionism the topic of today's lecture you ask why why can't he simply love me the way i love him well i'm here to help you with that i'm here to take you by the hand and lead you through the maze the labyrinth dark empty long abandoned vacated by its sole occupant and i'm going to lead you to the secret door at the very end are you sure you want me to open it you ask how does it feel to be inside the mind of the narcissist well just look around you just look around you the world is a horror show a narcissistic horror show what you see is what you get inside the narcissist's mind gaslighting confabulation extreme uncertainty approach avoidance false hopes dashed deterioration and degeneration extreme aggression lack of communication these are all hallmarks of narcissism you live right now you inhabit you reside inside the narcissist mind reach large this is your world from now on welcome to my world and today as promised we are going to discuss perfectionism and how it is intimately linked to the narcissist hatred of you and what forces him what causes him to inexorably relentlessly irresistibly gravitate towards these utterly dysfunctional solutions that deny him happiness contentment a life lived why does the narcissist reject his life so vehemently why does he make you a part of his non-life only to reject you as an insignificant other all these enigmas will be answered i give you my word the lecture is divided into two parts general and then at the end a review of some literature very briefly perfectionism has several elements number one grandiose infallibility the perfectionist believes or claims to believe that he is infallible he cannot make mistakes he doesn't commit errors his judgment is supreme and not so this is an element of grandiosity of course this grandiosity is everything is with a narcissist it's compensatory what does it compensate for it compensates for a fear no fear is not the right word dread not dread is not the right word terror it compensates for a terror of failure the narcissist to fail is to be annihilated to not be loved to not be seen and therefore to not exist because remember the narcissist existence sense of existence being crucially depends on being seen this narcissist is an internal monologue that says if you fail if you are less than perfect nobody will love you that's a message of course that the narcissist had received from his mother from his father from peers maybe role models teachers this is a message analysis had internalized and it had become the beacon that guides the lighthouse that lures his entire life do not dare to fail for if you fail you'll pay the ultimate price poof you will evaporate so the narcissist considers himself perfect it's part of his grandiosity the word perfection or perfect appears in the diagnostic and statistical manual criteria for narcissistic personality disorder and perfectionism leads to avoidant behaviors if you are afraid of failure you will be afraid to attempt anything you will be afraid to try you will be afraid to give it your best because maybe it will end in failure and your own self-extermination so you'd better not you avoid you avoid everything you avoid assignments and tasks in the workplace you avoid investing in an intimate relationship committing yourself to love to a family you avoid simply life avoiding life guarantees that you will never fail one hell of a strategy wouldn't you agree so grandiose infallibility reflects a compensatory mechanism for fear or failure which drives a narcissist to procrastinate to procrastinate to delay to avoid to not be it's another strategy of absence of course perfectionism also goes hand in hand with passive aggressive sadism because if i'm perfect you are imperfect if i keep telling you i'm a genius the implied message is you are not geniuses you are stupid by comparison to me if i tell you i'm perfect that means you are imperfect every such statement is an insult a slight an act of aggression but it's passive aggressive it's covert perfectionism is actually a covert strategy and finally amazingly perfectionism has to do with people pleasing remember the narcissist underlying message i can be loved only conditionally i can be loved only if i perform i can be loved only if and when i'm perfect i can never be loved as i am i can never be accepted with my flaws blemishes imperfections picadillos etc etc i need to be perfect i need to be godlike god is loved people love god here's an example for you so i can i must be a god and this is the false self the false self is of course godlike its attributes include perfection now we'll discuss literature about perfectionism a bit later but it's not critical for the presentation in in this lecture i would just like you to regard the latter part of the lecture as a reading assignment okay where does all these myths come from why does the narcissist adhere to perfection is the gold standard well we have to go a long way back you remember from previous lectures that narcissists can idealize only internal objects they can never idealize an external object because if they idealize an external object they have competition and narcissists don't like competition it injures them narcissistically it motivates them it drives them to narcissistic range so one way of eliminating the competition is saying this person who is more perfect than i am more accomplished more beautiful more handsome more everything is actually not a separate entity this so-called person it's an illusion he's actually a part of me he's an extension of me he's inside me his perfection is my perfection his his beauty is my beauty his accomplishments are my accomplishments so by internalizing external objects the narcissist eliminates competition and he can idealize only internal objects remember the process of snapshotting the minute the narcissist sees someone who he considers to be a potential source of supply he snapshots that person because if someone is a potential source of supply it means that he has something narcissistic supply that the narcissist needs desires is without that other person has an advantage over the narcissist sources of narcissistic supply are superior to the narcissist because they have something the narcissist wants this cannot be the state of affairs it's ego destroying the narcissist cannot tolerate being in need of something being inferior to someone so what he does he snapshots the potential source of supply internalizes the snapshot and keeps it in a library of internal objects within the landscape of his demented mind so the narcissist grandiosity requires that he idealizes only himself and internalizes the external objects so when he internalizes the external objects it makes it makes this he renders these objects a part of himself his extensions from that moment on even when he idealizes right from that moment on even when he idealizes external objects he's actually idealizing himself and this process is called co-idealization there's no idealization of the intimate partner which is not essentially an idealization of the narcissist himself so now we have idealized internal objects and these internal objects must be perfect you cannot idealize an object that is not perfect if you if the object has flaws deficiencies deformities inadequacies lacks something you it can be perfect it can be idealized process of idealization is fantastic it's a fantasy defense so the narcissist needs to be a perfectionist in order to idealize himself actually via the internalized external objects this is your role in his life your role in the nazis life is an intimate partner friend a business associate an audience anyone who crosses his path your role is to help him idealize himself by allowing him to internalize you and idealize you as a perfect object so the narcissist regards every person every external object as a promise and a threat if the external object is amenable to being internalized if she agrees to collaborate in the emerging shared fantasy if she responds well to love bombing and grooming which i remind you is not only in intimate relationships the narcissist love bombs his friends love bombs his business associates so if these people react positively to the narcissist's advances and attempts to internalize them to snapshot them they are sources of supply the narcissist is in love with them infatuated with them but if they don't they're enemies remember that the nazis has a splitting defense mechanism everyone is friend or foe everyone is good all good or all bad everyone is all friendly or all hostile there's no middle ground so either you are a source of supply immersed in the narcissist engulfed by the narcissist merged with a narcissist fuse with the narcissist become an internal object deny your own self-autonomy agency and ability to act independently well in which case you are the narcissist's best friend or if you don't you're his worst enemy so the narcissist would tend to have the secondary delusions regarding the vast majority of humanity he believes that other people out of envy spite malice or self-interested anterior motives conspire to render the internal objects less than perfect he regards this as a form of aggression he thinks that people are trying to expose the imperfections of his perfect internal objects which he regards as passive aggression anyhow back to the topic how do you how do i idealize i mean most external objects most external objects except of course my internet partners most external objects are not perfect they are not perfect how do you render them perfect you photoshop them you take a snapshot and you photoshop the snapshot the narcissist has photoshop in his head and he photoshops he retouches the photographs the snapshots and he keeps them in the library but here's the problem the minute you say i'm perfect because my internal objects are perfect and everyone in my life is an internal object so they are perfect that's a tall order that's very hard it's very hard to defend these claims these statements against encroaching reality reality defies such a claim reality challenges the assumption that you are perfect or your internal logics are perfect perfection is unreal it's fantastic reality disagrees with you vehemently constantly you have to defend all the titles to be defensive and protective perfectionism sets up the narcissist for constant failure it is a self-defeating strategy it is ego destonic but then why adopt it why evolution psychological evolution allowed the narcissist to settle on such a solution if the solution is self-defeating if it creates constant anxiety because it generates constant dissonance if it takes away the narcissist energy because he needs to defend his grandiosity and his perfection is delusions why choose such a bizarre solution i mean after all i can come up with 10 other solutions which will be devoid of these deficiencies and and wrong features bad features it sounds like a badly designed app or software why does the narcissist settle on this solution because it's intended to prevent something even worse it's intended to prevent self-destructive suicidal envy it protects the narcissist's life and now we have to delve a lot deeper take a deep breath put on your snorkels and let's scuba dive into the inner darkest recesses of the nazis's fault lines at the bottom of the ocean where earthquakes happen and tsunamis conspire the narcissist has no core identity see my previous lecture the narcissist experiences as his internal objects as ego alien now this is a very very profound sentence why because i said it no because it's unique to to cluster b personality so actually it's unique to people with personality disorders normal healthy people have a very good relationship have very good relationships with their internal objects their internal objects are not ego discrepant they are not they don't feel estranged from their internal world they don't feel that they had been body snatched or invaded or that their bizarre life forms parasitic life forms roaming their minds they don't have this feeling normal healthy people the narcissist does the narcissist feels estranged from separated from divided from his internal objects and not only that they are ego alien in other words when the narcissist asks himself is this internal object me he doesn't feel that it's him he feels that it's an adversary potentially an enemy many introjects many of the nazis's introjects hate the narcissist they are sadistic they want the narcissist dead they want to punish the narcissist same with baudelaire of course so many of these introductions are not friendly and so the narcissist can't feel an affinity with his introduction he can't strike an alliance with his introjects with his internal objects so he's a bit wary he's removed he's cautious there's hyper vigilance which is directed not only outward but inward actually the narcissist hyper vigilance is a projection of his internal hypervigilance remember he doesn't interact with external objects when he's hyper vigilant with you is because he's hyper vigilant with your representation inside his mind it's ego alien the narcissist is like a hive an ant colony a beehive a coalition an alliance he's not unitary he's fragmented his internal environment is regulated exclusively with negative emotions and effects if you were to enter the narcissist mine you would be flooded with just let me increase the font you can hardly see what's going on here if you were to to enter the narcissist mind an experience i strongly recommend against you would you would uh be flooded with with shame with guilt with envy with anger with hatred this is a analysis in a landscape the narcissist doesn't only hate himself but he's also angry at himself he's ashamed of himself and bizarrely he envies himself which i'm about to explain to understand how come the narcissist envies himself which is intimately connected with the narcissist perfectionist and the narcissist hatred of you so to understand this whole extremely counterintuitive process we need to go back to the inevitable melanic line melanie cline may not have been dropped drop dead gorgeous but her mind was so melanie klein suggested that when the baby is born the baby is frustrated by the mother he sometimes gets what he wants and sometimes she's absent or refuses to give him what he wants so what the baby does he has two mothers he has a bad mother and a good mother melanie cline called it pornographically the bad breasts and the good breasts i can only imagine so the baby divides the mother into a bad object and a good object and according to melanie klein the baby regards himself internalizes the good object and externalizes projects the bed object onto the mother so there's a mother who is all bad and the baby who is all good and this is called the schizoid paranoid solution and then the baby grows up well some babies grow up some of them become professors of psychology so the baby grows up and suddenly he realizes that mother is not all bad mother has good sides and that he is not all good he has bad sides he's sometimes naughty and he begins to notice the existence of other people who are telling him which are who are telling him the same so he develops a depressive position the depressive physician is actually an act of healthy maturation healthy personal growth because the baby learns to integrate totally bad objects with totally good objects and when he puts them together he gets a nuanced shades of grey view of humanity he understands that people are sometimes good sometimes bad partly good partly bad and he learns to accept of course this depresses him a lot because he would he would have liked to maintain that he's all good who doesn't but you know it's part of growing up loss is an integral part of life we grow up via losses loss is the engine that drives personal growth and maturation and this is a loss he loses the all good object so this is the depressive position and then the third stage is when he internalizes the bed object right and he merges it with the all good object remember the baby at the very beginning was all good so now he internalizes the bad object and he merges it in a process called reparation we will not go into the reasons why reparation happens and so that's not the point of this lecture so he merges them and then he has an integrated single ego which has bad aspects good aspects etcetera okay this is klein now tuvaknin who is drop dead gorgeous vaknin disagrees with melanie cline wagner believes that what happens is exactly the opposite and you i mean it's up to you to choose melanie klein or somebody so wagner believes that what happens is the baby does split the mother into good and bad obviously i agree with melanie klein that the baby baby is frustrated by the mother sometimes she's absent sometimes she doesn't give him what he wants never mind how much he cries and he's very angry he's frustrated and he becomes aggressive according to donald in 1939 frustration aggression hypothesis so baby wants something breast milk whatever mommy doesn't give it baby becomes angry and makes mommy uh regards the situation is all bad so now what happens is there is all bad and all good and he has to make a choice client says that the baby internalizes the good object and externalizes projects the bad object makes money all bad i think exactly the opposite i think the baby internalizes the bed object and considers mummy as all good exactly the opposite of melanic like why why do i disagree with melanie klein i mean after all we are both jews why would one jew disagree with the other well there's a good reason i think the baby cannot afford to think about mother as a totally bad object it is very frightening it is very threatening remember that the baby's life existence crucially depends on mommy mommy gives him food mommy provides him with shelter and above all mommy sees him her gaze defines him he emerges as an individual via mommy's attention if mommy were to go away to disappear somehow to absent herself for example if the baby is all bad and she doesn't love him anymore the baby will die literally die so the baby cannot afford to think about mother as an all bed object because that's a terrifying way to consider someone who's who's who makes your life possible so i think it's exactly the opposite the baby internalizes the bad object the baby says i'm bad mommy is on good i'm bad so now i can feel safe i can feel secure i can feel content my life is not threatened because mommy is all bad she will never harm me she will never abandon me she will never discard me because she's all good exactly opposite to climb the baby becomes all bad mommy becomes on good and i agree with kline that the next stage is when the baby integrates the baby realizes sorry that mommy who is all good has her bad sides and he who is all bad he has his good side and so he goes through the depressive position the first position is paranoid schizoid position and then he goes through the depressive position and then what happens he internalizes the good object he internalizes the good object at his mother and he becomes one he he gets he generates a single integrated ego from these aspects now something goes seriously wrong with a narcissist when something goes wrong in this process of schizoid paranoid position depressive position ego integration reparation when something goes wrong we get analysis what what goes wrong what happens what happens is in stage three instead of reparation when the nurses when the narcissistic child the child who is about to become a narcissist when he's supposed to integrate the good objects in the bed object into a single ego he fails he can't integrate and so he tries very hard he tries very hard and some of these babies become borderline personality disorder disordered and in borderline personality disorder this attempt to integrate the bed and the good continues throughout through decades usually until 40s or 50s so borderline personality disordered patients are stuck at the reparation phase they can't perform or complete the integration that's why borderlines switch so fast between borderline and secondary psychopathy because they can't integrate suddenly your or bad suddenly you're all good they can't get it get their act together they can't regard you as partly bad and probably good you're either all good or either all bad the narcissist as opposed to the borderline the narcissist what happens when the reparation fails he goes back to stage one do you remember the old records you know vinyl records when the when the needle got stuck so the same track would play again and again and again and again that's the narcissist the narcissist goes through stage one okay he internalizes the the bad object he externalizes he projects the good object to mummy he then realizes that mommy is partly bad partly good he's partly partly good okay the next stage is to integrate these insights and create a single ego he fails he fails he gets stuck so he says okay let's try again so he goes back to stage one again mommy is all good and he's all bad again he tries to integrate again if and he's stuck in stage one in effect he loops he loops through stages one and two i'm not the first to to suggest this actually shockingly i'm not the first the first was another non-jew junk young was closest when he described pathological narcissism as a failure of narcissistic investment in introversion it's another way of saying what i've just said so the narcissist gets is stuck at a shockingly young age you could safely describe the vast majority of nazis as stuck between ages six months and two years the first phase of formative years before separation and individuation their basic primitive mind is stuck there you have layers of skills and and learning and you know sunglasses even become handsome professors of psychology and teach narcissism but when push comes to shove when you dig deep dig deep down when you drill when you get to the core in the essence of the narcissist whoever is whatever position he occupies you get a maximum maximum two-year-old child as far as certain issues with other issues the analysis can be nine years old six years old but when it comes to the core the narcissist is about two years old in the best case there are many narcissists who are stuck at six months old it's a shockingly disorganized structure of personality and again that's not my observation it's the observation of otto koenberg into all this mess into all this mess negative emotionality intrudes you can't survive in such a chaotic environment without beginning to feel seriously bad about what's happening to you and without beginning to resent yourself for your constant failure for being stuck in the loop and one of the most critical negative emotions is envy envy is the hallmark of narcissism it's the prime source of what is known as narcissistic rage the schizoid itself fragmented weak primitive remember the schizoid paranoid phase stage one in melanic lines stage one in my case as well this schizo itself is intimately connected with narcissism through envy the dominant effect is envy narcissists prefer to destroy themselves and to deny themselves rather than to endure someone else's happiness wholeness and triumph the narcissist for example would fail his exams in order to frustrate the teacher that he adores and because he adores the envy the narcissist would abort his therapy in order to not give the therapist a reason to feel gratified or be proud of his accomplishments by self-defeating and self-destructing narcissists deny the worth of other people they deny other people um happiness contentment gratitude pride if the narcissist fails in therapy his therapist must be inept the narcissist is happy if the narcissist destroys himself by consuming drugs his parents are blameworthy and should feel guilty and should feel bad one cannot exaggerate the importance of envy as a motivating power in the narcissist life and the psychodynamic connection is obvious envy is a rage reaction to something to what it's a rage reaction to not controlling to not owning possessing having or engulfing the good desired object remember the narcissist can get through stage three he cannot integrate the good object inside his emerging single ego that's why he doesn't have an ego so he can never own or possess the good object he is forced like caesars he is forced in a sicifian effort to go back to stage one and start all over again and again and again it's like groundhog day i don't know how many of you have watched the movies where the protagonist of the movie the main character in the movie has to relive the same day over and over again and there's no resolution inside that's the narcissist so he cannot have the desired object and he's envious because he wants to have the desired object because if he if he were to internalize the desired object he would be the the desired object if the narcissist internalizes a good object he becomes a good object and if he fails to internalize a good object what remains yes the bad object and the narcissist is envious of the good object nonsenses defend themselves against this assiduous corroding sensation that they can't get it they can't assimilate they can't digest they can't engulf the content mesh they can merge and fuse with a good object it's a horrible feeling and this sensation and so they pretend that they do control they do possess and they do encounter the good object they lie to whom to themselves they generate a delusional fantastic space a confabulation where they did succeed they did succeed to complete stage three it's like someone who would fail in in college and would lie to his parents and tell them that he had succeeded marvelously with flying colors this these are the narcissists grandiose fantasies of omniscience and omnipotence these omniscience and omnipotence and everything else perfect love brilliance they all emanate from a good object god-like object god is good but in doing so by doing this by lying by confabulating above all to himself the narcissist must deny the existence of anything good outside himself you for example because think about it for a minute if there is something good outside himself then perhaps he did not succeed he perhaps he did not because he had failed to integrate with a good object it destabilizes the narcissist whenever he comes across someone with a good object it challenges him it destabilizes the whole confabulation it undermines the whole edifice the precarious house of cards constructed on the quicksand of lies so he denies the existence of anything good any good object outside himself he defends himself against raging or consuming envy by solipsistically claiming to be the only good object in the world i want you to understand this really understand this because this is so out of normal human experience the narcissist claims beliefs had convinced himself had self-deluded that he and only is the single only good object in the world there is no other and this is an object that cannot be had by anyone he cannot let anyone else possess this object only the narcissist can possess the single most precious treasure the only good object in the world himself so this is the source of autoeroticism that's why the narcissist directs his life force freud called it libido onto himself because he's the only good object in the world only the narcissist is allowed to possess himself his good object this only good object this soul good object this exclusive good object can be head can be owned only by the narcissist this is why the narcissist is infatuated including sexually infatuated with himself it's an object that no one else can have except the narcissist and so because this good object is owned exclusively by the narcissist and no one else has any access to this good object the narcissist threatening annihilating envy is ameliorate the narcissist becomes immune to his own self-destruct to his own destructive envy let me try to recap this if there is a single good object somewhere out there in the world and the narcissist had internalized this object and became this object then only the narcissist has access to this object only the narcissist possesses this object only the narcissist owns this orchid and so the narcissist doesn't need to envy this object and because this object is the narcissist the narcissist becomes immune it's like his vaccinator against this possibly self-directed envy the narcissist tells talks to his envy and says envy henry don't direct yourself at me because i am i am the good object it's okay you don't need to be envious of the good object in order to refrain from being owned by anyone else because this is crucial the good object cannot be owned by anyone else and that's why the narcissist is ambivalent and approach avoidant because when the narcissist finds you as a potential intimate partner source of supply he believes that he loves you he believes he's in love with you but that's very threatening because if he's in love with you and if you love him back you will gain access to the good object the access to the good object has to be exclusive and only the narcissist can have the key intimacy means duplicating the key and giving you the duplicate intimacy means giving the password to the vault to the safe intimacy mean allowing you access transformative access to the narcissist's inner core of seething lava formations of negative emotions you can kill the narcissist inadvertently with your love you are different the narcissist cannot allow you to own the good object to to tap the good object to touch the good object because if the narcissist lets you do this this is envy will erupt the moment you have access to the good object the moment you touch the good object the analysis is core the moment you interact with a good object the good object is no longer the narcissist only it's also yours and if the good object is also yours the narcissist will envy you because you have access to a good object his envy will erupt but who is the good object it's the narcissist so the minute the masters is grants you access to the good object he will envy you and the good object because the good object is no longer 100 his and because the good object is the narcissist he will destroy himself very often you see this when the narcissist believes that he fell in love when the narcissist develops any modicum of intimacy when the narcissist becomes dependent on an intimate partner he becomes enormously self-destructive he begins to abuse substances he sabotages and undermines his work he he destroys everything around him including his family and his marriage and his love and everything it's an orgy of self-destruction why because the minute he shares his good object with you his envy erupts he envies the good object he envies you and he envies a good object because a good object has access to you which he does not have so he wants both of you destroyed he wants both of you gun he wants to destroy you he hates your guts for having provoked all this for having initiated this process that he cannot control and he hates the good object because the good object has access to you the good object can experience your love your intimacy your empathy everything you have to give your compassion and he hates the good object for this he envies the good objects he wants a good object destroyed but who is the good object the narcissist that's the source of self-destructiveness in intimate relationships with narcissists the analysis reduces everyone to non-entities it's a narcissistic solution because the narcissist doesn't exist because he is an absence yes the howling winds in the empty corridors in my metaphor the hall of mirrors he reduces you to non-existence many people describe the experience of living with the narcissist interacting with the narcissist and loving the narcissist as a process of becoming non-existent they feel that their their existence is being wiped and erased and deleted they feel that they're disappearing getting annihilated gradually incrementally because it's a narcissist reduces everyone to non-entities why because if you are an entity if you exist if you're independent if you're autonomous if you have agency if you're self-efficacious if you're goal-oriented you can and will gain access to the good object because the narcissist believes that he loves you he will be forced to give you grant you this access and he knows what's going to happen the minute he grants you this access he will begin to envy you for gaining this access and he will begin to envy the good object because a good object now is non-exclusive and has access to you which the narcissist doesn't have so he will want to destroy you and he will want to destroy the good object the good object is himself he's terrified you're pushing him to suicide well mental suicide at least mortification so the narcissist says well actually she doesn't exist he reduces you to non-entity he erases you like wipers on a windshield you know you are like so many raindrops and he's wiping you away and he's internalizing you he's internalizing your internal objects and merges you with a good object he's internalizing you he's idealizing you you're all good but you're part of the good object you no longer exist independently you no longer threaten him by provoking his envy and so gradually is avoiding all meaningful contact with you he he degenerates into this schizoid solution and i encourage you to watch the three videos i've made about the schizoid narcissist the suppression of envy this envy is so threatening envy is more threatened threatening than anger in the narcissist's psychology envy and shame masterson described the dynamics of shame in narcissistic personalities lydia angelowska did some work on this as well and klein and others kernberg described the process of envy and its role the suppression of envy is at the core of the narcissist being if the narcissist fails to convince his self himself that he is the only good object in the universe he is bound to to be exposed to his own murderous envy if there are others out there who are good objects they are better than him he envies these objects he lashes out these objects ferociously uncontrollably madly hatefully spitefully he tries to eliminate these objects he needs to be the only one the only good object otherwise his envy will self self-consume he will self-consume with envy if someone tries to get emotionally intimate with the narcissist you for example she threatens the grandiose belief that no one but the narcissist can possess the good object that is the narcissist himself when you say to the narcissist i love you his mind his sick mind interprets it as i'm about to possess you i'm about to gain access to your innermost treasure to your solely owned good objects i'm about to become a shareholder in your sole proprietorship company i'm going to share with you everything you own everything you have and above all everything you are it's a threat it's a hostile takeover only the narcissist can own himself only the narcissist can have access to himself only the narcissist can possess himself because he is the only good object in the world this is the only way to avoid sieving envy and certain self-annihilation perhaps it is clear now why narcissists react as raving madmen to anything however small however minute however remote anything that seems to threaten their grandiose fantasies because their grandiose fantasies are the only protective barriers between themselves and their lethal lethal all-consuming envy perfectionism is a defense against envy because of course if you are the only good object in the universe and you're also perfect there's no reason to envy the good object good object is you and there's no reason to doubt that it is you because the good object is perfect and of course you are perfect that's your grandiosity you become god in effect and remember god is all-inclusive god is inside everyone and everyone is inside god it's a mutually mutual ownership arrangement merger and acquisition arrangement i don't know what's with these business metaphors in today's lectures my past as financial advisor so you're godlike you're the only good object and you include everyone inside you and so it's a perfect solution perfect solution perfectionism uh literature assignments i will give you four articles from four periods in the history of psychology and how each period regarded perfectionism so the first article is from april 1965 i was 4 years old can you imagine how ancient i am so it was published in volume 6 of comprehensive psychiatry april 1965 it's titled perfectionism amazingly and it was authored by hollander mark hollander i will read to you a segment a part from the so perfectionism says hollander was defined as demanding of oneself or of others a higher quality of performance than is required by the situation the judgment as to what constitutes a higher quality of performance than is required was made by the patient and would be in concordance with the opinion of most psychiatrists perfectionism says hollande most commonly develops in an in an insecure child who needs approval acceptance and affection from parents who are difficult to please the child assumes that if he performs perfectly he will receive the sakura e6 later perfectionism represents an effort also to combat self-belittlement perfectionism was differentiated from compulsiveness the former perfectionism being a means of obtaining interpersonal supplies and of seeking a better self-image and the latter compulsiveness being a mechanism for fending off unacceptable feelings and impulses although admixtures of perfectionism and compulsiveness occur it is essential in clinical practice to deal with each trait separately fast forward to 1990 and to the article the dimensions of perfectionism authored by frost martin leihart and rosenblatt it was published in cognitive therapy and research volume 14 1990 they say perfectionism is a major diagnostic criterion for one dsm-3 diagnosis and it has been hypothesized to play a major role in a wide variety of psychopathologies yet there is no precise definition of and there is a positive research on this construct the major dimension of this measure was excessive concern over making mistakes five other dimensions were identified including high personal standards the perception of high parental expectations the perception of high parental criticism the doubting of the quality of one's actions and a preference for order and organization jordan peterson perfectionism and certain of its sub-scales were correlated with a wide variety of psychopathological symptoms there was also an association between perfectionism and procrastination several sub-scales of multi-dimensional perfectionism scale mps personal standards and organization were associated with positive achievements striving and work habits the mps was highly correlated with one of the existing measures of perfectionism two other existing measures were also were only moderately correlated with the mps and with each other future studies of perfectionism should take into account the multi-dimensional nature of the construct fast forward to 2002 don't you just love this time travel 2002 an article titled perfectionism theory research and treatment published by the american psychological association and authored by fletch f l e tt hewitt and others it's actually a book published by the american psychiatrist psychological association and these are the editors flat and hewitt and they write role of social motivational emotional and cognitive factors in perfectionism is important the next part of the book focuses primarily on the important association between perfectionism and life stress and how the two combine to produce adjustment difficulties and then there's an article um i think 2004 is perfectionism good bad or both examining models of the perfectionism construct it was authored by biling b-i-e-l-i-n-g and israeli and mccanthany the country so they write perfectionism has been conceptualized as a personality variable that underlies a variety of psychological difficulties recently however theorists and researchers have begun to distinguish between two distinct types of perfectionism one is maladaptive form that results in emotional distress and a second form that is relatively benign perhaps even adaptive maladaptive evaluative concerns maladapi maladaptive perfectionism was more strongly associated with depression anxiety stress and test-taking anxiety overall this study supports the validity of a distinction between two types of perfectionism and points to the importance of this dual duality for measurement and research on perfectionism and finally 2019 an article titled perfectionism and the five factor model of personality a meta-analytic review was authored by smith sherry and vidovis and they say over 25 years of research suggests an important link between perfectionism and personality traits included in the five factor model ffm however inconsistent findings underpowered studies and a plethora of perfectionism scales have obscured understanding of how perfectionism fits within the ffm we addressed these limitations by conducting the first meta-analytic review of the relationships between perfectionism dimensions and ffm traits meta-analysis with random effects revealed perfectionistic concerns socially prescribed perfectionism concern over mistakes doubts about actions discrepancy these were characterized by neuroticism low agreeableness and law extroversion perfectionistic strivings self-oriented perfectionism personal standards and high standards were characterized by conscientiousness additionally several gender age and the perfectionism subscales subscale we used findings complement theory suggesting that perfectionism has neurotic and non-neurotic dimensions results also underscore that the maladaptiveness of of perfectionistic strivings hinges on instrumentation so this is your reading assignment perfectionism is intended to counter envy envy is balanced by subsuming and assimilating the good object your attempt to love the narcissist to be intimate with the narcissist to work with the narcissist to befriend the narcissist is perceived as a challenge to grandiosity even i would say presumptuous of you because you claim to have an equal status to the narcissist and therefore you demand to share the analysis good object only the narcissist is the good object there's a single good object in the whole universe that's analysis and only the narcissist should have access to this good object if you gain access the analysis is going to envy you it's going to envy you it's going to hate you it's going to destroy you isn't this a great summary of a relationship with the narcissist have fun

Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin

Views: 124,951

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Keywords: narcissism, personality, narcissistic, narcissistic personality disorder, NPD, psychopaths, antisocial, psychopathology, therapy, relationships, abuse, spousal abuse, domestic violence, psychotherapy, personality disorders, cluster B, DSM, self, ego, object relations, psychodynamics, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, schizoid, borderline, psychology, psychiatry, pathology, inverted, compensatory, shared fantasy, mortification, psychopath, somatic, cerebral, paranoid, mother, envy

Id: -QhwGSTHPOU

Length: 57min 32sec (3452 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 25 2021