Transcription
When I pioneered the field of narcissistic abuse in the 1980s, I also coined the phrase. All I had at my disposal were studies by scholars who preceded me. And these studies pertained mostly to borderline personality disorder. These scholars described a cycle, a relational disorder, intense relationships involving idealization and then devaluation. And that’s where it ended. Nothing preceded the idealization. Apparently, it came out of nowhere, and nothing followed the devaluation. It was the end-all and be-all.
I took this basic idea of idealization-devaluation, and I developed it considerably. And today I want to describe to you the full cycle from beginning to end, only two elements of which involve idealization and devaluation. My name is Saknin. I’m the author of *Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited*, the first book ever on narcissistic abuse. I’m also a professor of psychology. As I said, idealization-devaluation, this kind of approach-avoidance repetition compulsion, this magical thinking followed by equally magical thinking—one deifies and idolizes the partner, and the other one demonizes the partner.
This cycle of idealization-devaluation has been described in literature for decades, but it was limited mostly to borderline personality disorder. No one has attributed it to narcissists. When I came on the scene in the late 80s and early 90s, I noticed similarities between the behaviors of narcissists and borderlines. Both these pathological patients, both of them engaged in idealization and devaluation. Both of them established a fantasy. The contents of the fantasy were different. The narcissist had a self-aggrandizing, self-inflating, self-concept-butressing fantasy. The borderline had a fantasy of safety, being accepted, being understood by an ideal partner. So the fantasies were different, but the tools that have led to the fantasy, the stages, the phases were identical.
I noticed both borderlines and narcissists idealize other people on initial encounter. When a narcissist believes that he can obtain narcissistic supply from someone—sex, services, safety, uh, the four S’s—the narcissist would tend to idealize this potential partner, potential friend, and go on to lovebomb this person, not necessarily in intimate or romantic relationships. It’s in all interpersonal interactions. Similarly, the borderline would do the same with a potential intimate partner, with a special person or a special friend. She would do the same. She would first idealize and then, ineluctably, inexorably, both these types, the narcissist and the borderline, devalue.
Idealization-devaluation, therefore, seem to me to be a core clinical feature of Cluster B personality disorders, with emphasis on narcissistic personality disorder and borderline personality disorder. But I asked myself what brings on the idealization and what happens after the devaluation, and this is where I added a few stages. The famous discard—my work. I added this phase to the cycle, but I’ve added many other phases—hoovering, for example, is also my contribution. And today I would like to provide you with an overview of how I redefine the relational cycle of narcissists and, by extension, borderlines. Pathological narcissism is a nauseating repetition compulsion. It’s an inexorable machinery set in motion whenever the narcissist comes across another person who could be of use in some way—emotional, financial, legal—as long as the other person is willing or potentially willing to participate in the narcissist’s shared fantasy. This sets in motion the machinery that I’ve mentioned. And this machinery repeats its stages one after the other. These stages are utterly predictable. They follow one another in a sequence that is predetermined. Actually, it reflects early childhood dynamics and conflicts. But it is what Freud called a repetition compulsion. Sander described it as a shared fantasy. And I’ve appropriated this concept from Sander and applied it to narcissism and narcissistic abuse.
And here are the stages of the cycle in my work. Number one, spotting. Spotting is when the narcissist scans the room. When the narcissist enters a pathological narcissistic space, which is a physical space like a church or a pub or a classroom or a family, he enters this space and he scans everyone in this space using his cold empathy. And when I say “he,” half of all narcissists are women. So he scans the room and he picks up potentials, potential targets, potential participants in the shared fantasy, potential intimate partner, potential so-called friends, insignificant others. This is the spotting phase.
The spotting phase is followed by the auditioning phase. In the auditioning phase, the narcissist auditions his potential victims or potential targets. He puts them through a series of basic tests. Are they willing to participate? Are they vulnerable? Are they truculent and opinionated? Not good. And so on so forth. So he goes through the auditioning process and then decides whether the potential can become actual, whether the person has passed the audition with flying colors, and the narcissist is therefore able to transition to the next phase.
The next phase is by now well known. It’s the lovebombing phase. The lovebombing phase involves idealization, the creation in the narcissist’s mind of an internal object that represents the external object, the other person. And this is a process I call snapshotting. The narcissist takes a snapshot of the other person and photoshops it, idealizes it. And then the narcissist communicates this idealized version to the external object, to the other person. And this is the lovebombing phase. In the lovebombing phase, the narcissist acquaints the potential participant in the shared fantasy. Acquaints her with her idealized image in the narcissist’s mind. She sees herself through the narcissist’s gaze as this perfect, drop-dead gorgeous, hyper-intelligent, unprecedented, amazing, and fascinating creature or being. It is irresistible. This hall of mirrors is addictive. The idealization allows the narcissist to begin to regard the potential partner, the potential friend, the potential participant in the shared fantasy—allows the narcissist to begin to regard these potentials as loving maternal figures. Whereas analysts lovebomb and idealize and then convert the partner into a maternal figure, psychopaths groom. Grooming is a psychopathic activity. The psychopath prepares, converts the other person into a mark, a target, a victim. Grooming is goal-oriented. The purpose of lovebombing and idealizing is to convert the partner into a kind of perfect mother. A mother who loves unconditionally, never mind what. A mother who’s always there, affords object constancy. A mother who is embracing and warm and accepting. A mother who caters to all the narcissist’s psychological needs.
Following this lovebombing and idealization stage, the narcissist has acquired the target. Exactly. Like some kind of advanced weaponry, the narcissist acquires the target. And now the narcissist is convinced, having auditioned the partner, having lovebombed her, having idealized her, having converted her in his mind into a perfect maternal figure who loves unconditionally, the narcissist now needs to test this hypothesis. Is the partner really a loving maternal figure? And is this love conditioned on some kind of performance or the delivery of goods, or is this love unconditional? Enter narcissistic abuse.
At this stage, the narcissist tests the partner by abusing her. He pushes the envelope. He exaggerates. His misconduct is egregious. He torments the partner, tortures her, causes her pain. It’s not sadism. There’s no joy in that. It’s a test. Will she stick around despite everything? How far can he go without losing her? It is another kind of audition. In effect, the audition of pain and torture, the infernal submission, infernal subjugation of the partner to a series of shattering and devastating tests and examinations. Having passed these exams, when the partner sticks around, does not abandon the narcissist, does not reject the narcissist, does not criticize or castigate the narcissist, at that point the partner has proven her worth as a loving mother. A mother who is capable of embracing the narcissist unconditionally.
This test over, the narcissist is ready for the next phase. And again, remember the shared fantasy is an objective, oblivious machinery. It is set in motion, triggered into motion at some point. And once it is set in motion, it cannot be stopped. There’s no way to stop it. There’s nothing you could have done to have stopped it. So the next stage in this algorithm is devaluation. The narcissist first devalues the internal object that represents you in his mind. He devalues the snapshot. He devalues the idealized image or the idealized avatar that stands in for you in his mind. Remember the narcissist interacts only with internal objects, not with external ones. So the first stage of devaluation is a transformation or transmogrification of the internal object from an ideal, unconditionally loving, perfect being into a demonic, persecutory, um, hostile internal object. This process is the internal devaluation. Having converted you in his mind into an enemy, an implacable foe, the narcissist now needs to get rid of you. He needs to devalue you. This time it’s an external object. In order to match the external object to the internal object, the narcissist first idealizes you and then matches you to the ideal. And when you fail to match the idealized image, inevitably the narcissist then devalues you and again attempts to match you as an external object with the internal object that represents you in his mind. And it does this by devaluing you externally. So devaluation has two phases, two stages: internal, which is hidden from you, it’s subtle, it’s invisible to you. And once the internal devaluation is complete and the internal object, the introject that represents you in the narcissist’s mind is all demonic and evil and wicked and malevolent and persecutory, with enmity and hostility, only at that stage would the narcissist push you, using a process known as projective identification, would push you to match this devalued internal object, would push you to become his enemy. In effect, whether you do become his enemy or not, for example, whether you cheat on him or not, whether you abuse him or not, at some point the narcissist discards you. He needs to discard you because harboring an internal object which is an enemy is very threatening, creates enormous dissonance and anxiety. To get rid of this anxiety, to ameliorate it, the narcissist needs to get rid of you physically. But remember that throughout the shared fantasy, you are a maternal figure. You’re a mother. The narcissist idealizes you as a mother. The narcissist tests you as a mother. The narcissist then devalues you as one devalues a mother. And the narcissist discards you as a child discards his or her mother in early childhood, a process known as separation-individuation. It is all a reenactment of the early childhood dynamics of a child and his mother.
Having discarded you, the narcissist rushes to replace you. And the narcissist does not necessarily replace you with some kind of superior version because the narcissist is unaware of the external object. The narcissist would idealize anyone basically. Anyone who passes the audition successfully, anyone who is ready and available to be idealized and lovebombed would do the job, would do the trick. So the narcissist does not apply any standards. There are no selective criteria. There’s no mate selection. Everything takes place within the narcissist’s mind, within the fantasy. It’s a fantastic space. It’s not real. It’s counterfactual. So the narcissist just picks up a random someone, randomly tests, auditions her, lovebombs her, idealizes her, and the cycle starts all over again. The narcissist needs to be embedded in a shared fantasy every minute of every hour of every day. When the narcissist is not within a shared fantasy, when the narcissist is outside the shared fantasy, there’s an enormous risk of narcissistic mortification. Narcissistic mortification is when the narcissist gets in touch with his buried shame and other negative effects, other negative emotions. At that stage, a narcissist might become suicidal. It’s a very dangerous phase, and the only antidote to narcissistic mortification is a shared fantasy. So the narcissist compulsively is looking for the next partner and to establish the next shared fantasy. It’s a process of creating a shared fantasy, destroying the shared fantasy, creating a new shared fantasy, destroying the next shared fantasy. What Freud called a repetition compulsion.
So the next phase after the discard is the replacement. Narcissist spots, auditions, lovebombs, idealizes, tests, and then internally devalues, externally devalues, and discards. And once he has discarded the next victim, he moves on to the third and the fourth and the 40th and the 400th replacement. In some cases, not in all cases, the narcissist would try to hoover you into a new shared fantasy. He would redefine you. He would see you in a new light. He would lovebomb you. There’s no need for spotting and for auditioning. You’ve passed this stage earlier. So now he goes directly into the lovebombing phase, idealizing you, luring you in, baiting you. There are numerous ways to bait you, one of the most dominant of which is to again trigger your maternal instincts. It’s the dual mothership where you become the narcissist’s mother. The narcissist becomes your mother, provides you with what appears to be unconditional acceptance and love. The lovebombing phase.
So hoovering is the outcome of dissonance. It’s when the narcissist, having expelled you from his garden of Eden, could not quell, could not put down, could not turn off or switch off the internal object in his mind that represents you. Usually after the discard phase, the narcissist disables, deactivates, buries the snapshot, the introject, the internal object, the avatar that used to represent you in his mind, and it’s there, dormant. But in some cases, the narcissist is unable to do this. I explain in other videos why. I advise you to search the shared fantasy playlist on my channel. But sometimes a narcissist fails to deactivate or disable or defang or switch off the internal object that used to be you in his mind. And then this creates a dissonance. The internal object that represents you in his mind is—you remember—persecutory, hostile. There’s a lot of enmity, aggression. It’s very threatening. So this creates a huge dissonance. The only way to get rid of the anxiety that this dissonance arouses is to re-idealize the internal object, and the only way to do this is to re-idealize you within a new shared fantasy. Hence hoovering.
So this is the complete cycle: spotting, auditioning, lovebombing, idealizing as a perfect maternal figure, testing with narcissistic abuse, devaluing the internal object that represents you in the narcissist’s mind, devaluing the external object which is you, discarding you, replacing you, and on some occasions re-idealizing you and hoovering you, reintroducing you into a new shared fantasy in order to mitigate the adverse and pernicious impacts of the persecutory object in the narcissist’s mind. The persecutory object which is still dynamically active and cannot be put down. Now you know what it’s all about. It’s a very complex cycle. And remember, it’s automatic. It’s inexorable. It’s out of the narcissist’s control. It’s mostly unconscious. And there’s nothing you or the narcissist could do or could have done about it. Forgive yourself.