Narcissist Not Thinking Straight: Cognitive Disorders (Distortion, Bias, Deficit) (Conference)
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2024-01-29

Video presentation in the 2nd European Congress of Neurology and Neuropsychiatry, London, February 2024

Cognition is the awareness of language, the conscious part, the overt text. As such it evokes awareness of the thinking self, an identity. 

When the thinking self is absent or in the case of identity disturbance, awareness of the language is orphaned and leads to attribution errors (fantasy, idealization, grandiosity, etc.)

Cognition is language and so precedes consciousness and experience and shapes them.

When cognition more self-efficacious than action the result is fantasy over reality.

“Self-efficacy” in this context is both internal (example: anxiolysis) and external (favorable outcomes in the environment). 

Even when reality testing is intact, cognition is shaped and framed to maintain equilibrium and homeostasis. 

Gradually, cognition expands to incorporate other minds in an IWM and ToM via introjection. If the Other is perceived as unsafe, this phase (Othering) fails and solipsism ensues. 

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