Dissociation (Amnesia) & Confabulation in Narcissism (Intl. Conf. Clinical Counseling Psychology)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2019-02-25

Video presentation to the 4th International Conference of Clinical and Counseling Psychology, Tokyo, August 2019

https://clinical-psychology.psychiatryconferences.com/organizing-committee.php

By the unfortunate phrase "narcissists and psychopaths" I meant to say: people diagnosed with comorbid narcissism and psychopathy (malignant narcissists). Psychopaths do not dissociate and do not confabulate as clinical features.

Narcissists and psychopaths dissociate (erase memories) a lot (are amnesiac) because their contact with the world and with others is via a fictitious construct: the False Self. Narcissists never experience reality directly but through a distorting lens darkly. They get rid of any information that challenges their grandiose self-perception and the narrative they had constructed to explicate, excuse, and legitimize their antisocial, self-centred, and exploitative behaviors, choices, and idiosyncrasies.

In an attempt to compensate for the yawning gaps in memory, narcissists and psychopaths confabulate: they invent plausible "plug ins" and scenarios of how things might, could, or should have plausibly occurred. To outsiders, these fictional stopgaps appear as lies. But the narcissist fervently believes in their reality: he may not actually remember what had happened - but surely it could not have happened any other way!

These tenuous concocted fillers are subject to frequent revision as the narcissist's inner world and external circumstances evolve. This is why narcissists and psychopaths often contradict themselves. Tomorrow's confabulation often negates yesterday's. The narcissist and psychopath do not remember their previous tales because they are not invested with the emotions and cognitions that are integral parts of real memories.