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Tag: Sam Vaknin

Narcissist’s Opium: How Narcissists Use Fantasies to RULE

The speaker argued that pathological narcissism functions like a distributed, secular religion built on shared fantasies that organize and explain social life, with leaders imposing narratives to convert and control followers. Examples include race and meritocracy, which serve to entrench elites by offering false hope, fostering grandiosity and entitlement, and preventing solidarity among those at the bottom. Modern technologies and consumerist narratives amplify these effects by atomizing people, gaslighting reality, and preserving hierarchical power and social immobility for the benefit of a few. Narcissist’s Opium: How Narcissists Use Fantasies to RULE

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01.12.2025

Narcissist’s MELTDOWN: Becomes Raging Borderline, Psychopath (Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

The speaker explained that narcissists, when stressed, can shift into borderline and then psychopathic states due to low frustration tolerance, with aggression aimed at eliminating perceived internal sources of frustration. Narcissists interact with internalized objects rather than external reality, making them prone to coercion, dehumanization, and potentially escalating violence if the target refuses to submit. Under duress they may pass through a covert phase appearing normal before becoming coldly psychopathic, characterized by fantasy-driven impaired reality testing and dangerous, premeditated behavior. Narcissist’s MELTDOWN: Becomes Raging Borderline, Psychopath (Narcissism Summaries YouTube Channel)

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01.12.2025

Opposites No Longer Attract: How Narcissism Corrupts Mate Selection

Narcissism has shifted mate selection from complementary opposites to similarity: modern long-term couples overwhelmingly mirror each other across beliefs, behaviors and traits, seeking validation and narcissistic supply rather than complementary strengths. Large-scale studies (including a meta-analysis and UK Biobank data) found ~97% similarity across hundreds of traits—political, religious, educational, behavioral and personality factors—suggesting people pair with like-minded partners for long-term commitment. This trend undermines the evolutionary benefits of diversity, reduces relationships to autoerotic mirroring, and reflects broader increases in individualism, attention-seeking and avoidance of challenge. Opposites No Longer Attract: How Narcissism Corrupts Mate Selection

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01.12.2025

Borderline: Narcissist’s Mirror (and Avoidant Personality Disorder)

Sam Vaknin argues that borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mirror image of narcissistic personality disorder (NPD): whereas narcissists defend against the threat of others’ presence by internalizing and “snapshotting” them, borderlines defend against absence by merging and outsourcing psychological functions to others. Although BPD and NPD can appear behaviorally similar—withdrawal, devaluation, cycles of idealization and discard, and comorbidity with avoidant and other personality disorders—their underlying dynamics differ (narcissists seek separation from external objects into internal introjects; borderlines fear abandonment and engulfment, leading to approach-avoidance repetition compulsion). Vaknin also distinguishes avoidant personality disorder as a related but narrower condition characterized mainly by chronic avoidance driven by rejection sensitivity and low self-worth, and illustrates these differences with clinical examples. Borderline: Narcissist’s Mirror (and Avoidant Personality Disorder)

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28.11.2025

How You BEHAVE is NOT Who you ARE (Identity, Memory, Self)

Sam Vaknin argues that core identity (the self) is distinct from behaviors: identity is an immutable, continuous narrative formed early in life, while behaviors, choices, and roles can change across time. He discusses clinical, legal, and philosophical implications, including dissociative identity disorder, concluding that even when behavior changes dramatically the underlying self remains the same and bears responsibility. Memory and introspection are mechanisms for accessing the self, but their absence (e.g., in DID or amnesia) complicates judgments about identity and responsibility. How You BEHAVE is NOT Who you ARE (Identity, Memory, Self)

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28.11.2025

Unconditional Love in Adult Relationships (Family Insourcing and Outsourcing)

Professor argues that ‘unconditional love’ means accepting a person’s core identity, not tolerating all behaviors, and distinguishes loving someone as they are from trying to change or control them. He traces modern misunderstandings to Romanticism’s idealization of partners and the outsourcing/insourcing shifts that hollowed family functions while turning the home into an entertainment hub, producing transactional expectations that conflict with healthy love. Conclusion: mature adult love accepts the partner’s essence unconditionally while maintaining boundaries, discipline, and consequences for repeated transgressions. Unconditional Love in Adult Relationships (Family Insourcing and Outsourcing)

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28.11.2025

Baited, Ejected: YOU in Narcissist’s Shared Fantasy (CLIP, University of Applied Sciences, Poland)

The speaker explained Sander’s concept of the “shared fantasy”—a mutual, addictive narrative created by narcissists and their partners that becomes a competing reality and relates to historical notions like mass psychogenic illness. The talk detailed how narcissists recruit and bind targets through stages—spotting/auditioning, exposure of a childlike self, resonance, idealization and love-bombing (the “hall of mirrors” and “dual mothership”)—using “cold empathy” to map vulnerabilities. This cycle predictably reverses into devaluation, discard, and hoovering as the narcissist reenacts early separation–individuation trauma, driven by an impersonal psychological “machine.” Baited, Ejected: YOU in Narcissist’s Shared Fantasy (CLIP, University of Applied Sciences, Poland)

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28.11.2025

Dead Parents Clone Narcissists (and Codependents and Borderlines)

Sam Vaknin presented a theory of three trauma types—self-inflicted, reality-inflicted (growth-promoting), and parental (most damaging)—arguing mothers play a decisive role in shaping lifelong psychological development. He described childhood stages (birth as primary rejection, separation-individuation) and contrasted three narrative responses to the self/world split: psychotic (fusion/identity diffusion), narcissistic (deflationary world, inflated self), and a healthy “nothingness” narrative based on clear boundaries and a calibrated self. Vaknin linked cultural trends (materialism, technology, social media) to the rise of dead-object civilizations and a societal shift toward narcissistic narratives, warning this undermines empathy and long-term collective well-being. Dead Parents Clone Narcissists (and Codependents and Borderlines)

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24.11.2025

Abuse Victims MUST Watch This! (with Psychotherapist Renzo Santa María)

Professor Sam Vaknin argued that narcissistic abuse causes distinct, reversible trauma by imposing the abuser’s deficits on victims—eroding identity, agency, reality testing, and inducing internalized ‘introject’ voices that perpetuate suffering. He recommended initial self-work (identifying and silencing alien internal voices, rebuilding an authentic internal friend, body-focused interventions, and delaying therapy until the narcissistic voice is weakened), strict no-contact as the primary protection, and targeted therapies (IFS, schema, CBT, EMDR) for longer-term recovery. Vaknin cautioned against two common recovery mistakes—maintaining contact in the hope the narcissist will restore what was taken, and adopting a lifelong victim identity—and advocated building trauma resilience and proactive, preventive strategies. Abuse Victims MUST Watch This! (with Psychotherapist Renzo Santa María)

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24.11.2025

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