Narcissist Pays Heavy Price for Discarding You (Devaluation) (Clip: Skopje Seminar, May 2025)

Overview

The speaker (Skopje Seminar, May 2025) explains the narcissistic relationship cycle focusing on idealization, devaluation, and a third phase the speaker introduced: discard. The talk explores how narcissists manage dissonance between internal representations (introjects/internal objects) and external reality, and how discarding an internal object leads to severe separation insecurity and a temporary collapse into borderline-like states.

Key Concepts

• Internal object (introject): The internalized mental representation of another person (often mother) that narcissists rely on more than external reality.
• External object: The actual person in the narcissist’s life.
• Shared fantasy: A dynamic where the narcissist molds the external object to fit an internal ideal, producing consonance and anxiety relief.
• Dissonance: Psychological conflict that arises when the internal object and external reality fail to match.
• Devaluation: The phase where the narcissist denigrates the external object to realign external reality with a changed internal object.
• Discard (separation): The phase introduced by the speaker where the narcissist separates from the internal and then external object.
• Separation insecurity (abandonment anxiety): Clinical term for extreme distress when the narcissist perceives loss of the internalized mother.
• Object inconstancy vs. introject constancy: Narcissists distrust the permanence of others (object inconstancy) but maintain stable internal representations (introject constancy). Borderline personality organization shows the opposite pattern.

The Cycle Explained

1. Idealization (love-bombing): The narcissist idealizes the external object, attempting to shape them to match the internal ideal. This creates a shared fantasy where external and internal realities align, reducing anxiety.
2. Devaluation: When the external object fails to meet the internal ideal, the narcissist devalues them. This is an attempt to coerce the external object to conform to the altered internal object.
3. Discard (separation): After devaluation the narcissist discards the internal object (an internalized mother figure) and then increasingly discards the external object to remove dissonance. The speaker emphasizes that discard is an internal process first and then becomes external.

Psychological Consequences

• Abandonment Anxiety: Discarding the internalized mother produces intense separation insecurity. The narcissist experiences panic and loss akin to a child suddenly without a mother.
• Self-Traumatization: The discard is described as self-traumatizing—like “killing” one’s mother—because the narcissist destroys a crucial internal support.
• Collapse into Borderline-Like State: Once introject constancy is lost, the narcissist exhibits introject inconstancy and emotional dysregulation similar to borderline personality organization.

Narcissist’s Motivations and Defensive Moves

• Preservation of grandiose self-concept: Narcissists cannot admit being wrong; admitting error would threaten their belief in perfect perfection.
• Efforts to restore consonance: Devaluation and discard are defensive strategies aimed at eliminating dissonance between internal and external reality.
• Re-idealization and cyclical return: After experiencing panic and inconstancy post-discard, the narcissist may attempt to re-idealize the external object and restart the shared fantasy, since the fantasy provides anxiolytic relief.

Clinical Distinctions

• Narcissistic organization: Trusts stable introjects, distrusts external object permanence; cycles through idealization, devaluation, discard, and possible re-idealization.
• Borderline organization: Lacks stable internal representations (introject inconstancy), goes into panic when others aren’t physically present.

Behavioral Manifestations

• Love-bombing and excessive idealization during early relationship phases.
• Abrupt devaluation: labeling the formerly ideal partner as evil, incompetent, or destructive.
• Withdrawal and emotional/physical absence prior to discard (internal discard phase): withdrawal, affairs, moving out.
• Final physical discard to align external reality with internal discard, causing intense dysregulation.

Clinical and Practical Implications

• Understanding the discard as a self-inflicted trauma helps explain sudden regression in narcissists and why they may quickly attempt to re-idealize former partners.
• Recognizing the temporary shift toward borderline-like functioning explains why discarded partners might witness dramatic oscillations in behavior and attempts at reconciliation.
• Therapeutic focus: Addressing introject constancy, separation anxiety, and the shared fantasy dynamic may be central in treatment and in helping patients understand the cyclical nature of narcissistic relationships.

Tone and Emphasis

• The speaker uses vivid metaphors (e.g., a child lost in a shopping mall, assassinating one’s mother) to convey the intensity of separation insecurity and the self-traumatizing nature of discard.
• Repeated emphasis that all these moves (idealization, devaluation, discard) are primarily defenses against internal dissonance rather than responses to the actual external person.

Conclusions

• The narcissistic cycle is driven by the need to maintain internal consonance.
• Discarding the internalized object precipitates severe separation insecurity and temporary borderline-like instability, which pushes the narcissist to attempt re-idealization and resume the shared fantasy.
• The speaker’s addition of “discard” to the canonical idealization–devaluation cycle highlights the internal first nature of separation and clarifies the clinical consequences for both narcissist and partner.