How Narcissist/Psychopath Sees YOU (his Victim) & Why Borderlines Adore Them

Prof. Sam Vaknin・2 minutes read

Individuals with narcissistic, psychopathic, and borderline personality traits exhibit distinct patterns in how they idealize, discard, and manage emotions. Understanding the behaviors and thought processes of these individuals requires scholarly study and careful observation of their cognitive deficits and emotional access. Additionally, partners of those with borderline personality disorder face significant challenges in communication and coping due to the disorder's complexity and the shifting self-states exhibited by individuals.

Insights

  • Narcissists and psychopaths have distinct thought processes when idealizing, discarding, and navigating emotions, requiring scholarly study to comprehend their behaviors.
  • Borderline personality disorder encompasses traits from various disorders, leading to diverse manifestations and challenging dynamics for intimate partners due to cycles of grandiosity, impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation.

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  • What distinguishes narcissists and psychopaths?

    Narcissists focus on idealizing partners for self-flattery, while psychopaths manipulate and subjugate through idealization.

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Summary

00:00

Understanding Narcissists and Psychopaths: Insights Revealed

  • Narcissists, psychopaths, and borderlines have distinct thought processes when idealizing, discarding, and vacillating between emotions.
  • Self-proclaimed narcissists attempt to articulate their inner experiences, while victims and professionals seek to understand the minds of narcissists and psychopaths.
  • The absence of empathy and emotional access renders narcissists and psychopaths less human, requiring scholarly study to comprehend their behaviors.
  • The speaker's insights are based on extensive research, including studies, academic papers, and personal experience with diagnosed narcissists and psychopaths.
  • A critical distinction must be made between narcissists and psychopaths, with the former being more common in the population.
  • Narcissists lack the ability to differentiate between fantasy and reality, engaging with inner objects and confusing emotions due to cognitive deficits.
  • Narcissists experience emotions through a cognitive filter, mislabeling feelings and comparing them to an internal database of expected reactions.
  • The shared fantasy of a narcissist involves imperfect mirroring, while a psychopath's shared fantasy includes perfect mirroring, leading to a sense of identity with the psychopath.
  • Narcissists and psychopaths engage in love bombing, but psychopaths tend to groom and stalk their targets even after the shared fantasy ends.
  • While narcissists may become stalkers within an active shared fantasy, psychopaths are goal-oriented and may stalk persistently regardless of the relationship status.

20:31

"Psychopaths mirror, narcissists idealize for manipulation"

  • The psychopath mirrors you perfectly, while the narcissist creates a hall of mirrors reflecting you idealistically.
  • The narcissist emphasizes being identical to you, not just idealizing you, claiming you share the same traits.
  • Psychopaths convey a message of being one entity with two heads, merging with you, appealing to codependence and borderline personalities.
  • Psychopaths delve into every aspect of your personality, including strengths, weaknesses, fears, and dreams, claiming to be exactly like you.
  • Unlike narcissists who idealize partners for self-flattery, psychopaths focus on manipulating and subjugating you through idealization.
  • Co-idealization, crucial for narcissists, doesn't occur with psychopaths who are self-sufficient in their grandiosity.
  • Narcissists maintain both a physical and shared fantasy space for idealization, while psychopaths only create a physical space for manipulation.
  • Psychopaths, devoid of emotions, simulate human emotions to manipulate and deceive, presenting a perfect facade.
  • Two types of psychopaths exist: mischievous ones who toy with and discard you, and goal-oriented ones who manipulate for personal gain.
  • Borderline personality disorder combines traits from various personality disorders, including grandiosity, impulsivity, and emotional dysregulation.

39:25

Complexity of Borderline Personality Disorder in Relationships

  • Borderline personality disorder is highly diverse, with endless variations due to each individual's unique combination of traits, characteristics, and behaviors from various disorders.
  • Intimate partners of individuals with borderline personality disorder face significant challenges in coping, living with, anticipating, managing, and communicating with them due to the disorder's complexity.
  • Borderline individuals commonly share a few traits, but the disorder is marked by cycles and transitions, especially in response to problems, frustrations, rejections, real or imagined abuse, and humiliation.
  • Frustration does not typically lead borderlines to aggression; instead, they may cycle between becoming narcissistic and then a secondary psychopath, displaying grandiosity, impaired reality testing, and a lack of impulse control.
  • Borderline personality disorder is often likened to dissociative identity disorder, with individuals exhibiting distinct self-states that can shift rapidly in response to frustration, rejection, or abuse, leading to behaviors characteristic of narcissism and psychopathy.
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