Two Faces of Narcissistic Abuse: Disrespect From Shared Fantasy to Bargaining (starts at 20:35)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2020-09-22

Topic starts at 20:35. Their abuse leads to betrayal, breakup, & mortification - but narcissists are too dumb to get it.

One of the most confusing aspects of narcissism: identical behaviors have entirely different psychodynamic etiologies. Consider, for example the connection between abuse & parentifying the intimate partner.

A conundrum: the narcissist tries to convert people in his life into parental figures – but this only recreates, re-enacts & triggers unresolved childhood conflicts, retraumatizes him, & opens old wounds. 

From women, the narcissist wants any 2 of these 3 Ss: supply (sadistic & narcissistic), sex (adventures, a playmate), & services (mother, PA, housekeeper). 

From men, he wants both supply (sadistic & narcissistic) & services (business).

Outside these transactions, he expects to be left completely alone, to his own devices & to do as he pleases (schizoid).

Since no one will agree to these terms, he has to fake emotions & commitment & make false promises (within the narrative of a shared fantasy). This is the grooming & lovebombing honeymoon phase. It makes its appearance as much in business & the workplace as in romantic courtship.

Once the target (source) is acquired, the narcissist sees no reason to continue his act. He reveals his true agenda: to extract adulation (narcissistic supply), abuse & humiliate (sadistic supply), engage in sadistic sex (with women), & demand services & beneficial outcomes (such as money, celebrity, access, or power).

There are 2 phases in the narcissist’s relationships in which he tends to be egregiously & cruelly abusive: during the shared fantasy & in the interstitial or bargaining stages. Put together, these two forms of maltreatment constitute the narcissist’s two-pronged approach-avoidance repetition compulsion.

Only the abuse in the shared fantasy phase is a recreation of the original conflict (archaic wound, V-spot) with his mother & it is, therefore, compulsive, even, at times, unconscious. 

The subsequent abuse during the interstitial or bargaining phase is entirely different: it is instrumental & goal-focused.

Once the mask had slipped & the narcissist’s true face & intentions are exposed, both men and women feel bemused, deceived, angry (mad, furious), disappointed, heartbroken, & made fools of. 

They start to mourn the relationship (Kubler-Ross stages of grief) and go through denial, anger, bargaining (they pose demands, are pushed away & he absents himself), depression (when deceitful cheating occurs) & gacceptance, when they all end up walking away from him &, often, also retaliate (women by cheating on him egregiously & ostentatiously & men by smearing him, replacing him with others, and absconding with his ideas and intellectual property). 

To get rid of both men and women in the bargaining phase, the narcissist abuses & undermines the intimacy or the collaboration, thus pushing people to:

1. Replace him (cheat on him, in case of women); and 2. Abandon him (he pushes them away). 

Unlike in the Shared Fantasy Phase, such repelling behavior in the bargaining phase is not a repetition compulsion involving early trauma and conflicts with his mother or father: it is an MO that applies to men, women, && even to collectives, authority figures, & authorities (schools, army, workplaces, even countries). 

But the outcomes of this ineluctable process are different for men & women:

When women cheat on the heterosexual narcissist and abandon him (or abandon & then replace him with other men), it ends up recreating the trauma with his mother & results in mortification. 

Only women have this power. 

Men can only cause him extreme narcissistic injury coupled with aggression, externalized or interiorized (depression). Most often they humiliate him & then walk away to team up with others.

People - men and women alike - are a burden & a drain on the narcissist’s energy for two reasons: 1. He regards them as inferior & holds them in contempt 2. He resents his total dependence on them. 

To summarize:

Women cheat on the narcissist, deceive & betray him, & then abandon him owing only to his abuse & lack of commitment & investment in the dyad.

Abuse during shared fantasy ALWAYS leads to deceitful or discreet cheating, usually with casual partners. All of them strive to maintain the relationship after the cheating for self-interested reasons.

The cheating is intended to satisfy their panoply of profoundly unmet emotional and physical needs even as they keep on keeping on & futilely sue and hope for commitment and investment on the narcissist’s part.

As the abuse continues unabated also during the failed bargaining phase, it leads to ostentatious cheating and betrayal (usually with intimate friends) as a part of retaliatory abandonment. 

The narcissist facilitates this misconduct with his uninterrupted abuse as an attempt to regain a faux sense of mastery & to delusionally reframe an impending external mortification as an internal one.