Why Narcissists Can’t Think Straight (Constructs, Introjects, Memories, Defenses)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2022-11-29

Constructs, introjects, memories, defenses.

Construct: stable method of organizing raw internal data in a meaningful form, organizing and making sense of the world, allows to make predictions and structure experience.

Like museum (structure) organizes chronologically or thematically emotions, cognitions, memories, identity, experiences to render the world reasonable. 

It shapes and mediates experience.

Also hermeneutic-exegetic mechanism for interpreting new data to conform to the construct.

Examples of constructs: ego, pathological narcissism (via grandiosity)

Multiple constructs active, but not mutually exclusive (contradictory) ones (e.g. Persona or Mask, social façade). Principle of non-contradiction.

Incompatible constructs compete for resources in binary narcissism, schizophrenia, or psychotic disorders: confusion regarding constructs that have to do with external and internal worlds or environments.

Introjects are voices of meaningful others (parents, teachers, peers, media, society, thought leaders, gurus). 

Making peace reconciling with these recurrent voices to avoid dissonance. Attribution error: introjects are my voice.

Some introjects are positive, others negative.

Introjects always interfere with daily functioning, they are always on (standby). Example: cluster or community of introjects known as conscience. 

Speech of introjects is automatic thoughts. 

Constructs use external input (mainly from people) and introjects, soldiers of the constructs.

Constructs activate introjects in response to environmental cues and data. 

Experience of reality is mediated through constructs which choose and activate introjects which produce automatic thoughts.

Experience interacts with introjects via constructs. 

Constructs rearrange experience (reframe) to make sense of it. Need to communicate the new info via selectively activating introjects. 

Constructs modify reality via behavior and select and reframe memories (see further)

SEQUENCE

External raw data, experience
Construct triggered
Activates introjects and their output (automatic thoughts)
Modifies behavior to affect reality
Reframes and selects for memories

Eg, covert narcissism construct

You cannot obtain supply directly, collapse, failure, inferiority, dysregulated self-worth and self-esteem. Birthed by your collapse.

Covert narcissism makes sense of the world by informing you that you are a failure, hated, discriminated against (passive-aggressive). 

Main message: lack of self-efficacy, don’t try – you will fail, will never extract positive outcomes from the environment 

Urges and drives (id)

Info sent to construct. Construct anticipates failure and pain. Must be prevented by making sense of the world. 

Reaches out to introjects, activates them to prevent success (which would threaten the construct founded on failure)

Construct wants to survive and drives you to behave in ways which will uphold the construct, not challenge it

Introjects use automatic thoughts (output) to shape behavior to ensure failure in order to affirm the construct

Construct organizes output from introjects according to identity (ego congruency: output must conform to reality and to self-identity as ego=reality testing plus memories) and inhibits certain behaviors

Automatic thoughts which conflict with reality or with memories are not effective, dissonant, provoke suspicion of manipulation (estrangement), feel weird, and lead to rejection of construct

Construct structures behavior to falsify reality: make you behave in a way that will alter reality, example: make you fail, keep you in state of collapse (if covert narcissism is the construct) because success is a threat, and render it compatible with the automatic thoughts (self-defeating, self-sabotaging, self-undermining, even self-destructive behaviors).

Construct falsifies memories to conform to the automatic thoughts in 3 ways: 1. Dissociation of incongruent memories 2. Changes emotional content of the memory by reframing and attribution (for example, of motivations to people) 3. Selectivity (accessing only memories that conform to the construct and repressing all others).

Paints memories retroactively with elements that were not necessarily there: memory+, reinterprets memories and experiences, leveraging cognitions and emotions

Wrong data (ill informed) about reality and about memories.

Construct interprets and filters external experience and internal experience, including memories, cognitions and emotions

Construct exerts absolute power over the way you experience yourself, your life, and the world. Tells you what to remember, how to remember, how to make sense of what you remember, how to change your behaviors to affect reality in a way that will support the construct.

Ultimately, construct isolates from reality and protects against it. Manipulates reality to render it palatable, for example via defense mechanisms to modify perception of reality to allow you to survive it.