Transcription
Today, I have the honor of talking to Professor Sam Vachnan. He's a professor of clinical psychology, presently at CEOs, the Commonwealth Institute of Advanced and Professional Studies. He's a former visiting professor of psychology at Southern Federal University in Rosamdan, Russia. I don't know if I pronounced that correctly. He's the author of *Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited*, and he's one of the world's leading experts on personality disorders. His work has shaped the way we understand disorders like narcissism, narcissistic abuse, and the devastating impact these dynamics can have on relationships. In my opinion, he's one of the most brilliant minds of our generation. Professor, it's an honor to have you this morning.
Thank you for having me and thank you for the kind words. I almost recognize myself, but just almost.
Wonderful. Well, today I wanted to talk about borderline personality disorder, especially as it relates to women. What does a woman with true borderline personality actually look like? And actually, what is borderline personality disorder?
Perhaps before we start, uh, with your excellent question, I think it would behoove us to have a look at the real statistics. Fewer than 2% um in the general population have narcissistic personality disorder. The accurate figure is 1.7%. That is a figure that has been adopted by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Committee in 2013. The prevalence may have gone up a bit. So now we're talking about 2%. But that's, that's the ballpark figure. And it's a similar number when it comes to borderline personality disorder. This would mean that fewer than 0.9% of the general population have narcissistic personality disorder as women. In other words, fewer than 0.9% of the general population, in terms of females, in terms of women, would have narcissism, and another 0.9% would have borderline. One percent. One of every 50, that's 50. One of every 50 women might have narcissistic or borderline personality disorder. The other 49 are likely to be um, out of the range of these disorders. So this is to set the record straight when it comes to incidence and prevalence of these personality disorders.
Now, what is borderline personality disorder? It is one of the most severe mental illnesses we know of. Um, the father of the field, Otto Kemberg, has suggested that borderline personality disorder was just the flip side of the coin of narcissistic personality disorder, that they were essentially defenses against each other. He said that pathological narcissism was a defense against borderline personality organization. And so they were, they were close, close kin. They were like first cousins. And that both of them, said Karen Kemberg, were on the verge, on the edge of psychosis. Psychosis, or psychotic disorders, being the most extreme forms of mental illnesses we are, um, aware of, and they include, among others, schizophrenia. So this is a serious illness.
Now, it has seven distinguishing clinical features which are common to all people with borderline personality disorder, males and females. And about half of all people with borderline personality disorder are men. Actually, it used to be a female disorder, but that was the outcome of gender bias and underreporting by men. U men were not, though it's not more predominant in women. No, it's not. Okay, that's a big myth then. Huh? That's a myth that dates back to the 1980s. If you were to read the third edition, fourth edition, and text revision of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, they still claim that about 75% of people with borderline personality disorder are women, but they date back, they date back to the year 2000. It's this is antiquated misinformation. Okay.
By the way, only 20% of humanity use the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. 80% of humanity use another book, another diagnostic manual, known as the International Classification of Diseases. And in the ICD, there is no such thing as narcissistic personality disorder. It doesn't exist. And actually, there's no such thing as borderline personality disorder. There is a generalized disorder of emotional dysregulation, or emotional instability, or emotional lability, but there's no borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. The DSM is two to three decades behind current research, behind the times. And yet, it is leveraged by red pillars and self-styled experts and YouTube gurus. And it is leveraged by them, and they brandish it as some kind of bible of the profession, and it is not. No one in the profession, when I mean profession, I mean academia, basically, no one in academia regards the DSM as an authoritative text.
So, borderline personality disorder, however, does seem to exist as a clinical entity. Whether it is utterly distinguishable from narcissistic personality disorder, histrionic personality disorder, and even psychopathy is open to debate. Recently, we are beginning to believe that borderline personality disorder may be a form of secondary psychopathy in women. That's the evolving trend currently in the study of borderline personality disorder.
But in women specifically? Or in women specifically? Okay. Yes. Yes, you know, specifically. Whereas in men, it's likely to be a variant of narcissism or pathological narcissism. In short, borderline may be a kind of hybrid disorder, manifesting more as narcissism in men and more as psychopathy, or secondary psychopathy, more precisely, in women. But that's, that's the cutting edge. That's the bleeding edge. It's not yet the mainstream. It's not yet the orthodoxy.
Now, there are seven clinical features which are common to men and women alike in borderline personality disorder, starting with the most prominent and dominant, without which you cannot diagnose borderline personality disorder, and that is what we call affective instability. It is colloquially known as emotional volatility or emotional dysregulation. It's when emotions, both positive and negative, overwhelm the individual, disable the individual, render the individual dysfunctional. The individual drowns in the emotions and is unable to somehow shut them off, or shunt them, or redirect them, or channel them, or reframe them, or sublimate them, or do whatever we do to emotions. The emotions are raw. They, they flood the individual. It's like flooding the zone, if you wish. So, this is known as affective instability.
The second clinical feature is what we call mood reactivity. Used to be known as mood lability. Mood lability is ups and downs, cycling between depression and mania. And this is why many clinicians misdiagnose borderline personality disorder as bipolar disorder, which is a mood disorder. Let it be clear, bipolar disorder is not borderline personality disorder, no matter who says that, who says that. So, we have many clinicians and even scholars who make this mistake, conflate the two when they're not. However, it is true that in borderline personality disorder, there is cycling between depressive and pseudomanic euphoric cycles. These, however, are much faster than in bipolar. In bipolar, they take days, weeks, months. In borderline personality disorder, they take minutes or hours.
The third, um, the third clinical feature is the intensity of interpersonal relationships. The drama, the, the amazing alacrity, the speed with which commitment is affirmed, and the inability to keep the relationship going on an even keel is underlying, again, underlying instability. By the way, if I had to choose a single word to typify, characterize borderline personality disorder, it would be instability. It's a disorder of instability in everything: in emotions, in moods, in relationships, and simply instability. So, the intensity is huge. The drama is overpowering in these relationships, and this is known as relational disorder. So, it involves a relational disorder.
Why is that? Because the borderline engages in what we call infantile defense mechanisms. Defense mechanisms which are much more typical of toddlers and infants. Adults don't have these defenses. They don't use them. Borderlines do. One of these defense mechanisms is, is known as splitting. Splitting is dichotomous thinking. When you see everything and everyone in terms of black and white, all good or all bad, totally right, totally wrong, infallible and always erroneous or mistaken, when you divide the world into two opposing camps. And so, this dichotomous thinking leads the borderline to a cycling in relationships. So, the borderline starts by idealizing, for example, her intimate partner, colleagues at work, neighbors, friends. She starts by, or he starts by idealizing, and then because of the splitting, there is the inevitable devaluation. The idealization is such that it's like setting you up for failure. When the borderline idealizes you, her expectations are so unrealistic, counterfactual, delusional, and sky-high that you're very likely to fail her, disappoint her, and she's very likely to become disenchanted with you, which leads her to the devaluation phase. And this is the outcome of splitting. But there are other defense mechanisms that work, such as projection, projective identification, and so on. I will not go into it right now.
Sure. Twin anxieties is the next. You have to bear with me because it's a very complex disorder. Sure. Sure. Sure. Um, the next clinical feature, and now I'm, I'm to remind you, I'm discussing the clinical features which are synonymous, without which you cannot diagnose borderline personality disorder. The next clinical feature is anxiety. There are even attempts to cast borderline personality disorder as a kind of anxiety disorder. There are similar attempts to describe psychopathy as a kind of anxiety disorder. But in the case of borderlines, there are twin anxieties. There are two anxieties, and they are mutually exclusive. They're contradictory. There is what we, what colloquially is known as abandonment anxiety. The correct clinical term is separation insecurity. There is the fear of being abandoned, rejected, ignored, dumped, let go of. So, there's this anxiety. And there is the opposite anxiety of being engulfed, being consumed, being suffocated as a result of intimacy. So, the borderline pendulates. She's like a pendulum. She pendulates. She oscillates between a terror of losing, for example, her intimate partner. She becomes clinging and needy and demanding. And then when the intimate partner reciprocates, when the intimate partner expresses love, becomes intimate, supportive, loving, caring, compassionate, attentive, the borderline experiences suffocation. She feels that she's being shackled and incarcerated and imprisoned. She wants to run away. She can't tolerate intimacy. It is killing her. So, this is known as approach-avoidance repetition compulsion. The borderline approaches because she craves intimacy and love. So she approaches, and at the beginning, she's a dream. She's a sexual dream. She is, she is love personified and rarified. She is subservient and submissive and caters to your needs and always there for you and so on. And then when you reciprocate, when you make the mistake of reciprocating, she runs away. She runs away. She externalizes aggression. She acts out. We can discuss it a bit later.
Were you just, were you just describing what's known as love bombing?
No. Love bombing is, love bombing is a phase in the narcissist's shared fantasy. It's unique to narcissists. Oh, so nothing to do with borderline. Nothing to do with borderline. The borderline does not love bomb. The borderline, the borderline truly is committed to the relationship, truly loves. She's capable of love, which a narcissist is not. Okay. Truly wishes to make you happy, to cater to your needs. Um, the inception of the relationship with the borderline is a dream come true. And it characterizes healthy relationships as well. It is only a bit later that the twin anxieties kick in. The borderline is constantly terrified that you're going to reject her, abandon her, let her go, dump her. And this is because she lacks something known as object constancy. She doesn't regard you as a constant in her life. You're ephemeral. You're like, because you're a dream come true, you have, you possess a dreamlike quality. You can dissipate at any minute. You're ephemeral. So, there's anxiety about this. And on the other hand, whenever you try to show her love, whenever you try to be present, whenever you try to afford to provide her with solace and advice, and whenever you try to act as a good partner, she perceives this as engulfment, as enmeshment, as an attempt to take over, a hostile takeover, as kind of merger, infusion, which would render her a disappearing act, would make her vanish. So, she runs away, terrified.
Well, I'm glad I cleared that up because a lot of these fake experts, when they talk about borderline personality disorder, they use the term love bombing. Watch out for the love bombing. Love bombing this, you know, love bombing that. And so, but that's not a term that has any relevance to borderline personality. It's, it is the first phase in the narcissist's attempt to establish a relationship with you. So, the narcissist would love bomb you. The, the clinical term is the narcissist would idealize you, okay? Would idealize you, and then the narcissist would grant you access to this idealized image, making you fall in love with your, with your idealized self. And this would, you would become addicted to this. You become addicted to your exposure to your own perfection. In other words, the narcissist triggers in you narcissistic defenses. You become grandiose in effect. You want to see yourself via the narcissist's gaze as this perfect entity. Okay, that's not the case with borderline. Borderline, from the get-go, has a realistic, uh, initially, a realistic view of the relationship, though she does idealize it.
So, but the idealization, from what I'm getting from you, see, because what these red pillars say is there's all these borderline women, and they have this inauthentic, they don't use the word idealization, but they describe where they, you know, basically they describe basically something like idealization, but with the idea that it's all malevolent. It's all to try to get you to commit to them so that they can then destroy your life. From what I'm hearing from you, it, it sounds like it is authentic. It's just a little, it's more delusional. Is that?
And the narcissist, the narcissist is authentic as well. It's delusional. There's no malice in narcissism and in borderline. None. Okay. There is a tendency nowadays to relate to everything, politics, psychology, you name it. There's a tendency to relate to everything as if it were some kind of morality play. Good versus evil, demons versus angels, you know, narcissist versus empaths, whatever the hell that may be. I have, I want to ask you about that, too. Yeah. Narcissist versus. So, there's this all good and fighting the all bad. And of course, this is a narcissistic defense mechanism. Ironically, these people, when they cast the borderline as an all-evil, all-bad, all-wicked person, what they're doing is they're splitting the borderline. Remember, splitting is a defense mechanism where you see other people as all bad or all good. It's a defense mechanism. But it is, in adults, it usually is a powerful indicator, strong diagnostic indicator of pathological narcissism. So, ironically, these people are likely narcissists. These red pillars, these empaths, all these people are actually narcissists, and they, and they are splitting other people. So, when you see someone online saying, "I'm a poor victim of the narcissist. I'm an empath. Look what the narcissist did to me," you can bet your last penny in the bank that this person has, at the very least, narcissistic style, and in all probability, covert narcissism. Narcissistic style being not quite diagnostic. Okay, it's subclinical, in the sense that the traits and the behavioral manifestations or expression of these traits do not amount or, uh, cannot satisfy the diagnostic criteria. So, it's almost narcissist, but not exactly subclinical. So, you have many of these people walking around and claiming to be victims and demonizing borderlines, narcissists, not realizing that that's precisely what narcissists do. Yeah. Narcissists split other people. When the narcissist idealizes you, for example, you're all good. You can do no wrong. You're perfect. And when the narcissist devalues you, you are the rarification and embodiment and personification of evil. You can do no right. You're wicked. That's exactly what narcissists do.
Borderlines and narcissists are not malevolent. They are not malicious. They harm people. Let it be clear. They cause serious harm. They hurt people. They damage people. They break people. That, that much is true. But they do this because they're mentally ill. They're delusional. They are compulsive. They're impulsive. They can't help it. They are who they are. So, so it's not intentional, per se.
Sorry. It. The abuse when you're with a borderline partner or narcissistic partner is not intentional, per se. No, there is no intentionality in narcissism and in borderline. But it, but it is, it is fair to say it's inevitable? It's inevitable. Yes. But it's not intentional. People are confusing, especially online, people are confusing psychopaths with narcissists and borderlines. In psychopathy, any abuse meted out is goal-oriented and definitely premeditated and intentional. That's a psychopath. And sometimes a malignant narcissist, which is a combination of psychopathy, narcissism, and sadism. But classic narcissists, both overt and covert, and borderlines, including borderlines who are comorbid with narcissists, in other words, a borderline who is also a narcissist. These people do what they do. They hurt you. They break you. They damage you. They torment you. They torture you. And they, they, they do all these things. I'm not denying it. But they do all these things because they cannot help themselves. And they are not aware of the difference between reality and fantasy. They're utterly immersed in fantasy. As far as they're concerned, this is the only reality. They're sick. They're mentally ill. Okay. That's, that's important to know.
All right. So, the two things I've learned, well, I've learned a lot from you, but number one, borderline personality disorder is not common amongst women. It's not every other woman. And they're not malevolent. That's the second thing. How about the red pill narrative that, uh, they try to cast men as helpless victims of crazy borderline women? Um, is it accurate to say that some men are drawn, are actually drawn to true borderline women? And, and if that's the case, what is the profile, if you could give me, of the type of man that would be drawn to someone like that?
A narcissist. A narcissist would be inexorably drawn to a borderline. So maybe these red pill stories about borderline girlfriends is true because they all seem to have them. And in all likelihood, these people are narcissists.
Narcissist. Why? Why is that though? Why are narcissists drawn to borderlines?
Well, there are actually two major reasons and like 200 minor reasons. I'll focus on the two major reasons. The borderline deifies her intimate partner. What the borderline does, it outsources her internal psychological processes to her intimate partner. In other words, she lets her intimate partner control her. She lets the intimate partner regulate her emotions, stabilize her moods. She allows the intimate partner to become the interface with reality. So, she suspends her own reality testing. She allows the intimate partner to establish a cult. She is the member of the cult, and the narcissist is the cult leader. And so, this caters to the narcissist's vanity, to the narcissist's grandiosity. And the borderline is a perfect partner and participant in the narcissist's shared fantasy. She, she elevates the narcissist. She, she hands herself over to the narcissist, and the narcissist has this role of healer, fixer, savior, rescuer, guru, teacher, leader. This is an irresistible proposition. During the idealization phase, the borderline caters to all the pathological needs of the narcissist. On the other hand, the narcissist provides the borderline with exactly what she needs, or what she believes she needs. Pathologically, this is a pathological belief, but still, she's looking for a rock. She's looking for someone who is supremely self-confident. Someone who would isolate her from bruising and harsh reality. Someone who would protect her and defend her and, and, uh, idealize her and idolize her and save her and rescue her and so on. And the narcissist plays all this to perfection in the initial phase of the fantasy, the love bombing phase. So, this is a process known as co-idealization. They both idealize each other, and only they can idealize each other. That means the narcissist can be idealized by a non-borderline. Of course, there could be a non-borderline who would idealize a narcissist, but this would disappear very fast. The narcissist, the, if the narcissist partner, when the narcissist partner is a non-borderline, she's this kind of partner is grounded in reality and is able to discern and observe the narcissist's shortcomings and failures and so on. She, in other words, her ability to idealize the narcissist is compromised by reality. I'm talking about a non-borderline partner. The non-borderline partner's ability to maintain the narcissist's delusions, to buttress his grandiosity, to cater to his fantasy, her ability is compromised by the fact that she is still well-grounded in reality. While the borderline is not grounded in reality, she is immersed in her own fantasy. And the borderline's fantasy is to find a godlike, rocklike, supremely confident, perfect being, which a narcissist is more than happy to provide. So, people who are attracted to borderlines inexorably are usually narcissists. That's reason number one, the mutual compatibility. In other words, in terms of pathologies, their pathologies resonate. My, uh, late lamented friend, Joan Lachkar, who was the first to describe narcissistic-borderline couples in the early 80s, believe it or not, when no one had heard of these things, Joan used to tell me, "The archaic wounds of the borderline and the narcissist resonate. They solve each other's archaic childhood wounds." And this leads me to the next reason why narcissists are likely to be attracted to borderlines. The etiology, the causation of narcissistic personality disorder, the history, the personal history that leads to narcissistic personality disorder, the personal, the autobiography that leads to the emergence in borderlines of borderline personality disorder has a lot in common. Both, both narcissists and borderlines grow up in households which are very, very similar. Households where there is some kind of dysfunction. The dysfunction could be negative omission, dysfunction of omission, for example, neglect, abandonment, uh, emotional absence. So, it could be this, or it could be a problem of commission. So, it could be overprotectiveness, spoiling, isolating the child, not allowing the child to separate from the parent, emotional blackmail, emotional incest, and so on. Be that as it may, borderlines and narcissists come from the same household, same type of household. In other words, they belong to the same clan, the same family. They instantly recognize each other. They are both wounded, traumatized, abused children. They, they, they share so much, they have so much in common as far as background, as far as etiology, that they are drawn instantly to each other. Borderlines typically say, "I have never been this understood in my life. I felt so understood, so accepted." And the narcissist says, "I have never had someone like you. I've never had someone who realized what I need and gave it to me." So, they fit together because in both pathologies, we have what is known as the empty, schizoid core. Emptiness. Now, emptiness is not just a hyperbole or some kind of exaggeration. It's actually a diagnostic criterion. One of the diagnostic criteria of borderline personality disorder is emptiness. Internal emptiness. In both the narcissist and the borderline, there's nobody at home. Nobody home. B b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b b lines and narcissists are absences masquerading as presences. They don't really exist except through the gaze of the other. They, they relegate critical psychological functions to the outside because there's nothing inside to carry these functions out. There's no executive. There's just a huge void, a black hole in both of them. So, they need each other. The narcissist regulates the borderline. The borderline regulates the narcissist in many ways. And their fantasy is ironclad because it caters to deep-set critical needs and functions of the psyche. So, in a way, you could say that the borderline provides the narcissist with some kind of therapy. It's a therapeutic experience. Even when the borderline retraumatizes the narcissist, and she does very often, it has a therapeutic effect. It is known as narcissistic mortification. What the borderline does, she disables all the defenses of the narcissist, a process known as decompensation. And then the narcissist, defenseless, actually becomes a borderline and is able to get in touch with his long-lost emotions, is able to see himself as he truly is, loses the fantasy, loses the delusion. So, it's a highly therapeutic outcome. Unfortunately, the narcissist is ill-equipped to deal with this newfound knowledge about himself, with this newfangled self-awareness. So, it leads to borderline outcomes such as suicidal ideation and, you know, emotional dysregulation and so on. But there is an element of therapy here. Similarly, borderlines report that when they are in relationships with narcissists, they come alive. They feel safe. They say that the world is, technically, no longer black and white. They see the world in technicolor. They are energized. They're excited in a good way. Initially, the borderline is good for the narcissist. The narcissist is good for the borderline. They're good for each other. It is only later that the anxiety, the engulfment anxiety of the borderline kicks in, and she abandons the narcissist. She runs away. She acts out. She may hurt and harm the narcissist in some way. She externalizes aggression. Anger is a key feature in borderline personality disorder. Inappropriate anger and uncontrolled anger. So, but it's a later stage. It's a secondary stage. And because the initial experience is so addictive and so rewarding, they keep coming back to each other. They keep reestablishing the relationship time and again. And it's very difficult for them to, to really part ways and break up. So, when, when you have someone saying, "I've all my life been attracted to borderlines, and they kept, they kept harming me. They can." This kind of person is most likely a narcissist.
Actually, that's very interesting. Um, I've heard some of these self-styled experts make claims such as, uh, you know, borderline women have excessive empathy and they're hypersexual, and that's why men tend to be attracted to them. Is that an accurate characterization, or is there some truth to that? Or what I mean? They are obviously, there's something about borderline women that even psychologically healthy men can be drawn to because I've heard you say that before. Could you explain that part of it though? What is it about borderline women that makes easy to generalize? Easy to generalize when it comes to narcissists, why narcissists are attracted to borderlines. It's easy, easy to generalize because we have all the pathological maps and we know exactly when, when it, when you mention, when you talk about the, the healthy cohort of the healthy population, the heterogeneity is huge. Narcissists, narcissists are a homogeneous group, while healthy people are heterogeneous. It's very difficult to generalize. Sure. I'll try to give you a few pointers. First of all, to dispel a myth. Uh, we used to think that people with borderline personality disorder were hyperempathic. Uh, the truth is exactly the opposite, and it is reflected today in the fifth edition text revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, published in 2022. They're less empathic. They're less empathic. Okay, that's pretty shocking to hear. Yeah. Whereas narcissists are disempathic, similar to psychopaths. Actually, narcissists and psychopaths possess, possess something which I dubbed, I was the first to describe 35 years ago. Um, I dubbed it called empathy. It's a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy, but without affective, without emotional empathy. So, a psychopath or a narcissist would scan you and would say, "Oh, this guy is very depressed. He's very sad." He would be able to decode you. He'd be able to decipher you. And this requires cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy. For example, reading your body language. So, they're very good at that. Narcissists and psychopaths, in this sense, are much more empathic than healthy people. They have called empathy like an X-ray machine, which shows, which allows them to penetrate your defenses, to map your vulnerabilities, to realize your weaknesses on the fly, instantaneously. But they, once, for example, the psychopath has decided that you are depressed, the next question is, "How can I leverage this to steal this guy's money?" Or the narcissist would say, "How can I have sex with this crying woman? She's crying. She's sad. That's great. She's vulnerable. How can I have sex with her?" So, the, there's no emotional reactivity. There's no emotional component there. It's missing. So, the narcissist and psychopath have no affective empathy. Has no emotional empathy. Whereas the borderline does have emotional empathy. And in this sense, the borderline has a, the full-fledged monopoly of types of empathies. However, they're all reduced in intensity. So, she has like all types of empathy, but much less than healthy people. That's the current state of knowledge. Exactly the opposite of what self-styled experts online are spewing, the nonsense they are spewing online. So, it's not the empathy. Narcissists, for example, don't care about empathy. They wouldn't identify empathy if it fell on their heads, on their heads. They don't know empathy. So, they don't, it's again, some kind of online myth, online nonsense and misinformation that narcissists are attracted to empathic people. Narcissists are attracted to super strong personalities. These are self-aggrandizing claims by people who pose as victims, but they're actually narcissists. So, these people go online and they say, "I have been the victim of a narcissist because I'm so unique, because I'm so amazing, because I'm so special, because I'm so angelic, because I'm so perfect." And they don't realize that when they, when they make these claims, they are acting the way narcissists do. They aggrandize themselves. It's grandiosity, you know. So, the truth is that narcissists are not attracted to empathy. So, and we now know that borderlines lack empathy. Had empathy been a critical feature, narcissists would not have been attracted to borderlines. So, the fact that they are attracted to borderlines is proof positive that borderlines do not possess the kind of empathy we thought we used to think that they possess. However, where did, why did we, why was it usually thought that they, why was the opposite usually thought? Where did, where's that myth rooted in? If you, people, people confused ostentatious emotionality with empathy. The, the dramatic displays of emotions were conflated and confused with empathy. We have had the same situation in histrionic personality disorder. Personality disorder, everyone and his dog claimed that histrionic women are hypersexual. They are, they're intersex. They are flirtatious. They're seductive. They tempt you. They drag you to the bedroom, and they pseudo-rape you there. They are like, histrionic personality disorder is about sex. Why is that? Because histrionic women and men, they are hyper-emotional. They, they are emotionally expressive. So, they externalize emotions and they conflate emotions with sexuality. So, they act as if they are obsessed with sex. The truth is that histrionic women, especially, are frigid. They're hyposexual. They're completely uninterested in sex. They find sex repulsive. So, sometimes we confuse emotional expressivity, or emotional reactivity, or emotional dysregulation, or emotional manifestations, or ostentation in emotions. We confuse these with real underlying psychological dynamics and traits. And that is a huge mistake. That's a, a big mistake. It's more or less like confusing, in medicine, like confusing a symptom with a diagnosis. So, a diagnosis requires drilling down, and only when you drill down, you begin to decode and decipher the various interlacing and interlocking mechanisms and processes in the body that lead, ultimately, to the emergence of this specific symptom. Same with borderline. So, the borderline actually lacks empathy. Today, we know, and it is enshrined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. But it has other things which some people find appealing. I mentioned the drama. Some people are attracted to drama. They seek excitement and thrills and risks. The borderline is very frequently self-harming, suicidal. She has suicidal ideation. She's reckless. She acts out. She's unpredictable. And so, some people find her very exciting, very thrilling. And it's like being, you know, in a movie. These people compensate for boredom in their own lives, for the humdrum, pedestrian existence, with a colorfulness and the drama of the borderline. She's like a spice, if you will, a spice. The borderline is impulsive and transitions from extreme tenderness, ostentatious kindness, and so on, to the equivalent of psychopathy, externalized aggression, cruelty, very terrifying. This process is known as switching. That is, that is especially true when the borderline is subject to stress, tension, and one of the two anxieties that I've mentioned, the abandonment anxiety and the engulfment anxiety. Then the borderline transitions and switches. It is a terrifying sight to behold, very reminiscent of what used to be called multiple personality disorder. And indeed, there are many scholars, preeminent scholars, who believe that we should subsume narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder under post-traumatic dissociation, post-traumatic dissociative disorder. It's like these are post-traumatic reactions which essentially are constructed around some form of dissociation. And in borderline, we call it identity diffusion or identity disturbance. The borderline has no stable identity. She transmogrifies and shapeshifts from one day to the next. Her values, her beliefs, her conduct, her traits, her physical appearance change from one day to the next. It's like a kaleidoscope. And this again, some people find very appealing. However, it is founded on dissociation. It is founded on the borderline's inability to maintain continuity. Continuity of identity. Continuity of memories. She has memory gaps. Continuous behavioral continuity. Doxastic continuity. Continuity of beliefs. And axiological continuity. Continuity of values. Her values change. Some people find it super attractive. They are, it's like, you know, being with multiple women at the same time. And the physical appearance can change so dramatically that it is really like being with multiple women at the same time. It's addictive. These people also tend to have a rescuer-savior complex, a healer-fixer complex. They need to save people. They need to rescue them. They need to fix them and heal them and change them and modify them and make their lives better. They need, they are givers. They are people pleasers. They are, they are so, they are altruistic, pathologically altruistic, if you wish. And the borderline, exactly like the codependent, is constantly needy. She's clinging. She's demanding. She has expectations. She's not abashed about expressing these expectations, communicating them. And some people need to be needed. As my wife says, they need to be needed. And so, no one needs you more than the borderline. If you're the kind of person who needs to be needed, a medical doctor, for example, then you know, a borderline is a perfect match because she's the eternal patient, and she keeps informing you that you're having a benevolent, benign effect on her, that you are fixing her, you are healing her, you are saving her, you are rescuing her. This is known as the Karpman drama triangle. It is an element of the drama. And so, you feel, when you're with the borderline, you feel that you've been catapulted into Hollywood. It's a two-man Hollywood. It's like you're on a set, a movie set of some kind. It doesn't feel real most of the time. It feels that you're participating in some kind of script, the access to which is denied you. And at the same time, it's clear that you are the star of the movie, that the borderline is there just to direct you or facilitate you or somehow introduce you into the narrative. You're a captive of the narrative, but you like it because it's an aggrandizing narrative. It's an exciting narrative. It's a thrilling narrative. It's a narrative you don't want to exit. It's addictive. It's very addictive.
What's the alternative? Life? What's the alternative? Reality. Reality. Yeah.
What's interesting is you describe some of these things. I'm thinking to myself, what's what's ironic is in a lot of these red pill communities, they tell men, you know, you should only go after women that are interested in you. Like one common phrase is that have burning desire for you. But oftentimes the way they describe it is kind of with some of the traits that you're describing where women are obsessed with you, tracking your location on their phones constantly, even um going into fits of rage for no reason and accusing you of cheating for no reason, and even engaging in, I think what you're describing is, you know, psychotic behaviors where they threaten suicide. These are like heavily romanticized um traits online. I don't know if you, if you've noticed that. Um, so it just got me thinking that actually that that makes sense that many of these um red pill influencers in fact are narcissists because I guess they are attracted to that in a way. Is that fair to say?
It's fair to say I think um narcissist or narcissistic at the very least narcissistic style. However, I must say that especially in the wake of the pandemic, but maybe even before that, life or reality has become unbearable, intolerable, threatening, unpredictable. The indeterminacy and the uncertainty on the one hand, and the boredom and the rot, the inability to extricate yourself from something that increasingly is perceived as a simulation, pre-programmed and predetermined. This sense of growing helplessness and hopelessness now begins to characterize healthy people as well. And that is why the incidence of depression has skyrocketed, and the incidence of anxiety disorders skyrocketed in certain populations, up to three to five times more than 14 years ago. No, I'm sorry, 17 years ago. So, we have longitudinal studies and we know that today, in some age groups, depression is five times more common than it was 17 years ago. Anxiety is three times more common. Why is that? Because of reality. And what is the escape from reality? Fantasy. And who are the masterminds of fantasy? Narcissists and borderlines. They've been doing fantasy since age zero. Like they've been training. They are the, you know, they're the chess masters of fantasy. So, we begin to elevate narcissists and borderlines. We begin to let them lead us and teach us and enlighten us, and because they know fantasy better than anyone else. And what's, and the alternative is being gradually discarded and held in contempt, which is reality. Reality has failed. Reality. Reality is not real. Reality is an organizing principle. Reality is a consensus. Reality is a hermeneutic principle. It's an explanatory principle. There's no such thing as reality. Have you ever eaten reality? Have you ever captured reality in a lab? Have you ever spoken to reality? Reality is an agreement between 8.3 billion people on how to see the world. Now, we have a variety of ways to see the world. We have religion, we have science, but it's still a language. It's still an organizing principle. It's still an abstract. So, yes, it is possible to discard reality and survive. Contrary to the positivist philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries, absolutely, you can discard reality and survive. Actually, the vast majority of humanity's existence, we inhabited fantasies rather than reality. What is religion? Not a fantasy? It's a shared fantasy. We survived the Middle Ages, haven't we? Where there was no reality, only a fantasy as an organizing principle. There was no science, except, except in the Muslim, Muslim countries, but like, you know, in Europe and so, there was no science, no nothing. There was a fantasy, and it worked well for us. It, we survived it, and we're here. So, I think we've had an interlude of, let's say, 400 years since the Enlightenment. We've had an interlude since, let's say, the 17th century, an interlude of reality, an attempt to use a different language, the language of reality. And we failed. We failed. That's the truth. We failed politically because we tried every ism in the book. We tried fascism and socialism and liberalism and Nazism and every ism. None of them worked. Not one of them worked. They all degenerated. Some of them degenerated into Auschwitz, and some of them degenerated into gulag movements, but they all degenerated. They're not working. So, politically, we failed. We failed scientifically because science gave us many things, smartphones and penicillin, but it also gave us atomic bombs, and it also gave us a virus that probably escaped from a lab. I'm, I believe that single conspiracy theory. So, you know, science also failed us, big time. And who, who, what's left? Who to trust? All the languages of reality have failed, and now we are going back to the languages of fantasy. We're going back to religion. There's a religious revival. We are going back to the occult. We are going back to, you know, movies and entertainment, which is a form of fantasy. We're elevating fantasy into politics. So, we have actors such as Schwarzenegger and Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump and Zelensky. They become presidents. And so, Bollywood now is in charge. It's all fantasy. And who are, who are the masterminds of fantasy? I repeat again, borderlines and narcissists. We need borderlines and narcissists to lead us in the land of fantasy. And we need public intellectuals such as myself, let's say, to lead us in the land of reality. But I am an expert. Uh, I am a, a scientist. I'm a physicist, by the way. I'm a scientist. I'm an intellectual, and I'm no longer, my services are no longer needed. There is, because when you transition from reality to fantasy, no longer needed or no longer valued. No longer valued and no longer needed. I don't have, I can't help you much in the land of fantasy because I refuse to give up on reality. I refuse to become religious. For example, to my dying day, I will consider religion a form of delusional disorder. Of course, they believe in nonsensical entities such as God and so on.
So, can I ask you this, and I hope this isn't a diversion, but being in an intimate relationship with a woman who has borderline personality disorder, is that a form of giving up on reality as well?
Both narcissists and borderlines have a false self, and both of them have a fantasy defense. The fantasies differ. The narcissist's fantasy is about self-aggrandizement, about buttressing and sustaining the grandiosity. So, the self-concept, which is inflated and fantastic, defending against vulnerabilities and shame. It's a protective, defensive fantasy. The borderline's fantasy is, "I'm going to outsource my mind. I'm going to give someone access to my mind and control over my mind so that I don't have to feel borderline anymore, because it sucks to be a borderline when I'm a borderline all by myself, all alone. I want to die. I want to kill someone. I'm hysterical. I'm dramatic. I'm aggressive. I don't, I don't want that. I don't. But if there's someone in my life who is self-confident, self-assured, reality-tested, and is a rock, I can trust him forever and ever. I can let go of my identity as a borderline. I can relax. I can come down." So, these are the fantasies. And yes, if you accept the terms and conditions of the borderline, if you sign on the dotted line, if you enter her fantasy, if you agree to play the role of a stable presence who caters to all her needs, stabilizes her moods, regulates her emotions, tells her what's real and what's not, and so on. If you play this role, of course, you're, you're a figment of that fantasy. You're a participant in it, and you are no longer able to be in touch with reality, because if you were in touch with reality, you would abandon the borderline instantly, because being with the borderline is self-harming. Okay.
See, and that actually leads me to two things I've heard you say before. One of them was being with a borderline requires high-effort coping, and staying with a borderline eventually can make you develop narcissistic traits. Am I accurately representing what you said? And if I am, could you explain how does that happen? For example, how does someone who's relatively psychologically healthy, or at least definitely not a narcissist, how do they become one by being in a relationship long-term with a, with an untreated borderline? How, how does that happen?
You're touching upon the, the hot wire of psychology. Are we born who we are, or are we made into who we are? Nature versus nurture. If we are born who we are, then no experience, including a relationship with the borderline, can change us fundamentally. However, if we are the sum of our reactions to the environment, the sum total of the reactions to the environment, then change the environment, and it changes who we are. So, it stands to reason, we are born with some templates, for example, a language template. It's a tensorism that some things are encoded in our genes and so on and so forth. No question that our brain, the structure and functionality of our brain, especially as it emerges in the first 21 years of life, all these are boundary conditions. They are constraints. You cannot exit these constraints. You cannot design a new system. You're not godlike. Obviously, you're constricted and limited in what you could become. However, within this space, within this predefined boundary space, which is essentially neurobiological and hereditary space, within this, the variance is so enormous, the number of combinations is literally infinite. So, it's, I think the right way to look at it is that we're essentially reactive creatures, and that when environments change, we do change, and sometimes rarely, but sometimes in fundamental ways. Now, when you're exposed to exigencies and difficulties and vicissitudes and challenges, you react, and you usually react by modifying something. You could modify your behavior in order to obtain favorable outcomes, secure favorable outcomes. And this process is known as self-efficacy. You can modify your cognitions. You can, for example, deny the challenge. There's no challenge. The environment is great. I don't see any problem. So, you can lie to yourself. These are known as psychological defense mechanisms. You can modify your emotions, how you feel about the situation. You can say, "I actually, I like it." This is known as dissonance, cognitive dissonance, for example. So, there are many ways we change. I'm not saying that the only way to change is to become a narcissist. Yeah. You could, instead of becoming a narcissist, you could become a people pleaser, submissive, or you could become, um, pseudopsychotic, totally divorced from reality. I mean, there are many ways to react. One of the ways that you are likely to react to the presence of a borderline in your life is by defending yourself because you're being attacked. You're being attacked.
Not in the malevolent sense, but you are being appropriated. You're being consumed. You're being subsumed. You are being forced to deny your identity. This process is known as estrangement. You're becoming a stranger to yourself. You find yourself doing things, thinking things, emoting in ways which are unprecedented as far as you're concerned, have never happened to you before. You don't recognize yourself anymore. You're changing. The change is terrifying.
And so most people react to this by establishing boundaries and protections of all kinds. One of the most important set of protections are known as narcissistic defenses. We have narcissistic defenses. And so one way to resist the borderline's inexorable influence on you which you're increasingly likely to perceive as insidious and pernicious. So one of the ways to resist this is to, for example, push her away, mistreat her, abuse her, undermine the intimacy, sabotage the relationship unconsciously. Become aggressive, externalize aggression. All these are narcissistic behaviors and traits. Increasingly, you become more and more narcissistic, less empathic, more exploitative. You have difficulty to empathize with her, with the borderline in your life. So your empathy is reduced. We know, for example, that people who've been traumatized have reduced empathy, suffer reduced empathy. People with chronic illnesses have reduced empathy.
So, but the good news is that these are usually transient effects that once out of the immediate remit of the borderline, not exposed to the borderline, within a few months or in very extreme cases, a few years, you revert to who you used to be, plus the new knowledge, the new learning. But mostly you become you again. The defenses crumble, are no longer necessary. And so luckily, these impacts are transient. Of course, I'm not talking about situations where the borderline becomes super aggressive, externally aggressive, essentially becomes psychopathic, a very well-known comorbidity, by the way. I'm not talking about situations where the borderline emotionally blackmails you or extorts you by, for example, attempting to commit suicide repeatedly, a very common behavior. This could leave a scar. This could leave a scar and could affect your functioning and your cognitive processes for the rest of your life. For example, if she does succeed to commit suicide, you may feel guilty. You may feel to blame. You would develop what we call autoplastic defenses. You would blame yourself. And this is a lifelong thing. This would be with you for the rest of your life and would impact your behaviors dramatically. So that's an extreme example.
Aggression could similarly be, or she could, for example, act out in ways which would hurt you to the quick so profoundly that you would not be able to recover. For example, many borderlines would cheat on you. They would use infidelity, ostentatious infidelity. They would make sure you find out about it. They would expose you to what they're doing, you know. And this is known as acting out. The borderline, when she feels that you have wronged her, or when she feels that you're about to wrong her, that is known as anticipatory anxiety. She acts out. She loses it and she acts out. And the aim is to either modify your behavior or to punish you. And the punishment could be very severe. Some people, men especially, don't recover when their partner becomes super promiscuous and has sex with, is a gang bang with seven guys. You know, this is an event that there's no coming back from, as far as some people are concerned.
So, when you're with a borderline, in all likelihood, you will not suffer lifelong consequences, but you are taking the risk of, you're playing with fire, definitely. And this, I've heard you describe that eventually it just becomes very difficult. [Music] You describe in terms of objects, external objects. So the borderline as an external object becomes so painful that in order to stay with her, you create an internal object which has no. And that's what you interact with. Do I have that correct? And it's one solution. How does that work? One solution is what we call introjection. Introjection is when you create an internal object, something in your mind that represents the other person. The other person is too painful to be with or to interact with. So to withdraw inwardly. But that is already an extreme pathology. It's first of all, a very crucial aspect of narcissism. So clinically, you become a narcissist. And if taken to extreme, it's what is known as hyper-reflexivity, essentially rendering you psychotic. So, yeah, in very extreme cases, this is what you might end up doing. And you will continue to interact with a representation of that person in your mind that is less painful, less hurtful, more predictable, more controllable, and so on, in order to allay or defer what's happening in reality. But that means that you have withdrawn from reality. You're no longer with us. That's so it never ends. Whatever the case may be, it never ever ends well. So, relationships with borderlines are no, there's no real way to win long term. Don't. It's a lose-lose proposition because the borderline ends up being hurt as well. She, she's hurt to the point of suicidal ideation or suicidal attempts. She's really hurt. So, both parties end up being hurt.
But the process, exactly when in narcissism we have the shared fantasy, it has seven stages. They are pre-ordained. It's like predestination in Calvinism. There's nothing you can do about it. Nothing the narcissist can do about it. It's a de ex machina. It's a machinery that's put in motion to play and is inexorable and has to complete the cycle and restart and so on. It's the same with the borderline. There's a machinery put in motion and you're both consumed by it. You're both digested by it and torn apart to shreds. Shredded by these machineries. That's what I'm trying to say. There's nobody there. Clinically speaking, there is in borderline and narcissism, there has been a disruption in the formation of the self at a very early stage. Consequently, these people don't have a self. They don't have this organizing capacity. They don't have this inner core, this kernel, this operating system, if you wish. They don't have this. And so they have to consume you in order to compensate for this lack. And it never works because the machinery is in the background taking over. And so there is this primitive deity or divinity which is the shared fantasy narcissism, the false self in narcissism, and borderline, the borderline's fantasy. These monads, these divinities, these ancient primitive cruel deities, you are human sacrifice to them. Everyone ends up being sacrificed.
Okay. So one thing I can understand how, you know, you have a borderline partner. She acts out. She cheats. She gambles. Spends a lot of money. I mean, obviously, I could see how that could be highly traumatic. But just in the day-to-day being with them, one thing I've heard you say, they lie very frequently. They're pathological liars. So, and that's a little confusing to me. Um, I guess it's a little confusing. Why, why do they, why are they pathological liars, number one? And then how being with someone who lies all the time, obviously, is annoying because you can never trust what they say. But then somehow I've heard also that, you know, that can distort your own sense of reality too, or impact your own reality testing. So, is what I just said accurate? And how, how does that really work? Or how does that happen?
Well, everyone lies. Like, you ask me how are you? I'm great. I'm not great, but okay. Everyone lies. We're not talking about these kinds of lies. We're not talking about white lies. We're talking about lies, Machiavellian lies, lies that are manipulative and goal-oriented. Psychopaths lie this way. They construct an alternative reality by promulgating a lie, and they use the lie to obtain something from you, manipulate you, modify your behavior. That's psychopaths. Narcissists do not do this. Narcissists confabulate. There's a huge difference between confabulation and lying. They believe it. In other words, they believe the lies. They believe the fantasy. They cannot tell the difference between reality and fantasy. They don't future fake. When they make you a promise, they have every intention of keeping it. They never do, but that's not their fault. It's the fantasy's fault. They are caught in the fantasy even more than you are.
The borderline does lie intentionally. But she lies intentionally because she's terrified. She's terrified of losing you. She's terrified of abandonment and rejection and humiliation. Exactly like the narcissist. She's centered around avoiding shame and avoiding the experience of shame. So her lies are manipulative. Her lies are goal-oriented. But whereas the psychopath's goal is power, money, sex, access, contacts, you name it. The borderline's goal is the maintenance of the fantasy with you. She just wants you to be there. She doesn't want you to walk away. So she would lie about this. And the borderline is very childish in this sense, very infantile, because she usually would expose her own lies. Whereas the psychopath would continue to lie, never mind what evidence to the contrary you present, even in court. The narcissist would continue to lie, not because he's lying, but because he believes his own lies and he thinks your evidence is tainted or fabricated. The borderline would continue to lie up to a point, and then she would expose her own lies. She would either confess or she would undermine, sabotage, self-defeat and make you find out that she was lying, introduce you to the lie indirectly. She would leave a smartphone lying around with messages to her lover so that you find it. She would self-undermine.
So again, you see, we have a symptom, exactly like temperature, fever. We have a symptom. The symptom is lying. But you see the disparity. This is disconnectedness between the types of lies. And it's wrong to conflate all these, which is that's a great deal of nuance there, for sure, because none of those three things are technically the same at all. So, um, how about just the impact on the partner, um, in terms of just constant lies? Sometimes borderlines, it seems they lie, I mean, I know they have a reason, but it almost seems like silly, some of their, some of their lies. What's the effect of being with a partner who just lies constantly? When you lose, you're being gaslit. You.
Okay, so that's actually what I was getting to. Gaslighting. That's another common phrase used by self-styled experts. I've heard you say narcissists do not gaslight. Well, what is gaslighting? And do borderlines gaslight their partners? Borderline gaslight. Yeah. Gaslighting is a premeditated, intentional, and planned attempt to make you doubt your own perception of reality and your own judgment by presenting to you a plausible alternative reality which conflicts dramatically with the way you perceive reality. So there are cumulative elements in gaslighting. And the absence of any one of these elements renders the action not gaslighting, even if it looks like gaslighting. If you, for example, are a narcissist or a psychotic person and you're unable to tell the difference between reality and fantasy, there's no way you can gaslight. The gaslighter, the person who initiates the gaslighting, knows the difference between reality and fantasy and superimposes the fantasy on you. Tries to convince you that the fantasy is the reality, but they never lose sight of reality. They know what they're doing.
Now, borderlines do that. Yes, they construct an alternative reality and then they try to convince you that you're the one who's crazy. For example, a borderline would cheat on you. Then she would come back home, and you would say, "I found messages on your phone with the designation and you know the place, the date, and the actions involved." And she would accuse you of being paranoid. She would say, "You're you're overly jealous. You're controlling. You're paranoid." So that's an attempt to construct an alternative reality where your alleged mental illness is the cause for these accusations, and not the real reality, the facts, factual reality. And therefore, borderlines do gaslight. They know exactly what they're doing. They also lie, which makes them makes this disorder much closer to psychopathy. Again, the difference between a psychopath and a borderline is that psychopaths are interested in what you and I are interested. They want money.