Transcription
A small percentage of overt and covert narcissists are sadists. Instead of narcissistic supply, they seek sadistic supply. And here's the problem. There is no winning strategy with a sadist. Whereas the typical narcissist, overt or even covert, is amenable to certain manipulations, certain covert behaviors, certain messaging, certain signaling, certain, um, strategies, nothing whatsoever works with a sadistic narcissist. And I will explain in this video why.
I will also dwell on another type of narcissist, the paranoid narcissist. And why the paranoid narcissist is always invariably, ineluctably, and so on and so forth, a loser. Sadist is a winner. The paranoid is a loser. And today we will try to make sense as to why this is. The more you attempt to cope with the sadist, the more you attempt to manipulate the sadist, the more you try to punish the sadist, the more you counterattack, the more you you try to expose the sadist, the worse off you are. There is no winning strategy because whatever you do with a sadistic narcissist constitutes sadistic supply and a proposed sadistic supply.
I welcome you to another video of Sam Vaknin, probably your masochist if you're watching. My name is Sam Vaknin. I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love, Narcissism Revisited, and a professor of psychology. Unfortunately for my students, okay, sadistic supply.
Sadistic supply is exactly the same as narcissistic supply. It has the same psychodynamic functions. Sadistic supply is used to regulate the narcissist's sense of self-worth, to stabilize it, and to preserve, buttress, uphold, and protect a self-concept which is inflated, fantastic, counterfactual, divorced from reality. The sadistic narcissist, exactly like the overt narcissist and the covert narcissist, is preoccupied with the cognitive distortion of grandiosity. And exactly like the other types, the sadistic narcissist is immersed in a shared fantasy.
But sadistic supply is about hurting other people, not harming them. There's a big confusion online between the two. The sadistic narcissist is not interested in harming people, in damaging them, in destroying them, in breaking them. That's not the sadistic narcissist. That's actually the covert narcissist. The sadistic narcissist is not sufficiently interested in other people to have this agenda of "I'm going to destroy them." The sadistic narcissist is preoccupied with pain. It is an artist of pain. The nar—the sadistic narcissist observes the agony, the rising agony of his or her victim and derives a sense of omnipotence from it. The sadistic narcissist's perception is divine, godlike, all-powerful, uh, and all-pervasive. This sense, this self-concept emanates from the victim's tribulations, pain, hurt, and general disintegration, which is a side effect, not a goal of the sadist.
So, whereas the covert narcissist would typically try to sabotage you, to defeat you, to harm you, whereas the overt narcissist would try to take over you, to coerce you, to co-opt you into a shared fantasy. The sadistic narcissist's sole interest is in observing the transformations and liquidity of pain. Pain is the medium in which the sadist works. It's the equivalent of paint for a painter. And so human beings are perceived by the sadistic narcissist as kind of raw material with embedded potential for pain, for agony, uh, for anguish. It's, um, like Michelangelo said at the time, whenever he whenever he comes across a marble block, he sees the sculpture entrapped within the block. It's the same with the sadistic narcissist. When he comes across someone—it needn't be an intimate partner or someone particularly close. Sadists, of course, don't do intimacy, or I would qualify this: the only form of intimacy the sadist experiences is the infliction of pain. It is when the victim's vulnerabilities, frailties, shortcomings, attack vectors, chinks in the armor—when these are leveraged in order to immerse and immure the victim in an ecosystem of pain. It is then that the sadist experiences intimacy with the victim. Intimacy via pain. And this is sadistic supply. "I hurt you, therefore I am omnipotent. I hurt you, therefore I'm divine. I inflict pain on you, therefore I'm godlike. I have proven to myself that my self-concept is valid and my shared fantasy is no fantasy."
Now, one thing that many self-styled experts and people don't realize is that many sadists appear to be pro-social. Sadists, for example, tend to weaponize the truth. They know that frequently the truth is uncomfortable. They know that the truth could be humiliating and shameful. They know that the truth can be disillusioning and disenchanting. They know that the truth can be rejected as a kind of threat, could be threatening, sometimes life-threatening. So they regard the truth as a major, prime, unadulterated instrument of pain. They weaponize the truth. And as they appear as these sadists appear truthful, they acquire the aura of, for example, a guru or an intellectual. They, they are pro-social. They would tell you, "I'm telling you the truth for your own good. This is a form of tough love. I have an obligation to expose things and to reveal them to you. Um, I am actually therapeutic. My, my truthtelling is therapeutic. I'm helping you and so on." So, so these are the justifications of the sadistic truthteller. So not all sadists are died-in-the-wool serial killers or, you know, the vast majority of sadists go under the radar. They're subtle and they leverage socially commendable behaviors, sublimated behaviors, in order to cause discomfort, humiliation, shame, hurt, and exquisite, excruciating pain to their victims. The truth is one major instrument.
Okay. How can you cope? What can you do? The shocking answer is nothing. Whereas there are many proven strategies with overt narcissists and a few strategies that work with covert narcissists, there's none with a sadistic narcissist. Any attack on the sadistic narcissist is a gratifying proof that you're in pain, that you care. If you lash out at the sadistic narcissist, that's exactly the kind of reaction he wants you to have. What can you say about the ostentatious, proud sadist that the sadist hasn't already said? Sadists are very proud of their sadism. They flaunt it. They exhibit it. They're exhibitionists. There's no way to threaten them, to blackmail them, to frighten them, because it's all out in the open usually. And not only is it in the open, but it constitutes an integral part of their brand, of their self-concept. They define themselves as villain—villains. Even the pro-social ones are proud of their abrasiveness, of their relentless attack on other people. They would try to cast it as something which is commendable and something that society doesn't frown upon, but they actually do display, do externalize aggression. So any attack on the sadist just gratifies the sadist. Any attempt to humiliate the sadist, to expose the sadist, to shame the sadist, to damage the sadist's reputation, to undermine the sadist, to threaten the sadist. This is exactly what the narcissist sadist wants you to do. Often sadistic narcissists trigger you and provoke you to behave this way. They bring on these attacks. They bring on your attempts to cope. They, they kind of encourage you and egg you on. They, they, they cajol you into this role of a victim that's fighting back. Um, because when you fight back, when you attempt to harm or to hurt the sadist, to expose the sadist, to punish the sadist, this is the only proof the sadist needs that he got to you, that he penetrated your defenses, that you are now his, that you are, that he's living rent-free in your mind, that your pain and hurt are such that you can't control your behavior anymore, that you're driven to behave antisocially. This is exactly the kind of sadistic supply that sustains the sadistic narcissist, that maintains the sadistic narcissist's, uh, totally deranged self-concept. Equating love with intimacy, pain with love, and love with intimacy. Pain is love. Pain is intimacy. "I love my victims through the pain that I inflict on them. I, I share an intimacy with them when they gradually dwindle and shrivel and writhe." So the more, the more you attempt to take down the sadist, the more elated he, he is. He luxuriates in your, in your ostentatious, conspicuous pain and hurt and anger. Anger is a form of reaction that indicates vulnerability, that indicates pain, that indicates hurt. So when you're angry at the sadistic narcissist, he revels in it. He cherishes and relishes it. He encourages it. He fosters it. He feeds the fire because that's the only proof he has that his methods are working, that he is efficacious, that he got to you.
Whatever you say to the sadist can and will be used as proof of the fact that the sadist has has a hold on you. Whatever you say to the sadist is sadistic supply. You tell the sadist you're not, you're not dating material. You tell the sadist you're evil. You tell the, you're ugly, you're a loser. And the sadist sits back and smirks because what other proof does he need that he's in charge, that you are a puppet? There is an afterglow of these assessments, these negative assessments. There's, there's a kind of postcoital relaxation and elation.
It is crucial to understand the inverted psychodynamics of the sadist. For example, the sadist would rather reject the sexual advances of someone than get laid. The sa—sadist would rather inflict shame and pain and humiliation on a drop-dead gorgeous potential sexual partner who is very much into the sadist. The sadist would reject her or him just in order to to bask in the in the humiliation and the rejection and the shame and the rage that it triggers. So a sadist would sacrifice some things in order to obtain narcissistic supply. Sadists would rather reject a sexual partner than get laid because rejection causes frustration. Frustration causes rage and shame and humiliation and anger. These are the, this is the raw materials. These are the, these are the stocking trade of the sadist. So what is perceived by other people as self-sacrifice or as self-defeat or a self-destructiveness is not actually, in the case of the sadist narcissism, is just a different set of priorities. The sadistic narcissist finds pain, the pain of others, the hurt, humiliation, shame of others. He finds these intoxicating, far better than any sex could be, far better than riches and power and money and you name it. The sadist would rather inflict pain on other people, frustrate them and humiliate them than get laid or be loved or even be admired. Your hurt is the sadist's sadistic supply. And this is something people can't wrap their heads around.
You see, what drives the overt narcissist and what drives the covert narcissist is the quest, the compulsive quest for narcissistic supply. And yet the sadistic narcissist, with knowingly, willingly, deliberately, and voluntarily, sacrifice narcissistic supply, destroy sources of narcissistic supply, give up on narcissistic supply, if and when these actions yield sadistic supply. In other words, the sadistic narcissist much prefers sadistic supply to narcissistic supply because sadistic supply is perceived by the sadistic narcissist as much more emotionally potent, is much more rewarding, is much more safe. Uh, the sadistic narcissist is ensconced in other people's pain, cocooned in their agony and anguish, in a way thrives on it, feeds on it. And so what can you do to a sadistic narcissist? Whatever you do, whatever you do, however negative, however threatening, however, however humiliating, however shaming, however criticizing or critical, however—whatever you do is just proof that the sadistic narcissist is in charge of your mind, has the capacity to trigger you, has the ability to cause you pain and or at least anger or rage, and therefore is in charge and is in control of you. It is exactly sadistic supply. Your attempts to level the playing field, to act punitively, to inflict punishment, to restore justice, to expose the sadistic narcissist to the world, to ruin his alleged reputation. All these are counterproductive. They—the sadistic narcissist perceives all these as rewards, as gifts, as prizes. He couldn't be happier. This is the inverted psychodynamic of the sadist.
And I gave the example of sex because this defies belief. A sadist would go—a sadistic narcissist would go through life sexless just because he cherishes the moments of rejecting a sexual partner, humiliating her, causing her pain, shaming her. He, he, he accumulates these moments. He arranges them in mental albums. He revisits them. He revels in them. They arouse. There's an arousal here. Pain is arousing. Sex is less arousing. It is arousing, but much less arousing. So the preference is for pain. Other people's pain, of course.
Like psychopathy, sadism is often subclinical, often subtle. It's not a question of spectrum. It's a question of clinical or subclinical. So many people have sadistic tendencies or sadistic behaviors or, but they're not sadists. The sadistic narcissist is a sadist. So whereas subclinical sadism may be common to some extent, subtle sadism is definitely common. Uh, the clinical variant, which was at the time espoused by Theodore Millon and others. This clinical variant is absolutely an integral part of the, uh, of malignant narcissism. The malignant narcissist is narcissistic, sadistic, and psychopathic. Clinically speaking, diagnosably. It's not the case with the Dark Tetrad personality. In Dark Tetrad personality, we have sadism as well, but it is subclinical. So when I, when I'm dedicating this video to the sadistic narcissist, it's a real sadist. It's not the subclinical type. It's not the personality style. It's not some behaviors. It's not, you know, being abrasive or obnoxious or. It's someone who, who is, whose nourishment is your hurt. Someone who subsists of your pain. Someone who feeds off your agony. Someone who flourishes and thrives in your anguish. And a tiny, tiny fraction of these people are physical. So physical sadism is very rare. And sexual sadism is actually not the kind of sadism I'm talking about. Sexual sadism is a sexual preference, not or sexual orientation. There's a debate, but it's definitely not the kind of sadism I'm talking about. I'm talking about people, as Karen Horney has observed, people whose main form of sadism is verbal. They derive sadistic supply by humili—from humiliating and shaming other people, causing them discomfort, discombobulating them, disorienting them. So yes, gaslighting is a major instrument in malignant narcissism because malignant narcissist, as I said, is also a psychopath. So, and truthtelling, the pro-social variant.
So what can you do with someone like that? There are two strategies basically that people adopt, and both of them are wrong, and both of them yield, uh, counterproductive results. Both of them. The results of both these strategies, the outcomes are that the sadistic narcissist is is happy, and the attempted coping leads to frustration and anger, even more anger. So the two strategies that are commonly suggested online and intuitively, uh, are adopted. The two strategies are shunning the sadistic narcissist or exposing, unmasking the sadistic narcissist to the world, ruining the sadistic narcissist's reputation, punishing him.
Maybe shunning the sadistic narcissist involves something we call in psychology, affective heuristic. Affective heuristic is, if someone makes me feel uncomfortable, if someone makes me feel bad, uncanny valley reaction, if you wish, I will avoid that person. Of course, this has a cost. For example, these people could be helpful. They could give you great advice. They are knowledgeable. They—ignoring the benefits of their company, ignoring their beneficial messaging or content or knowledge or erudition or wisdom or whatever. Dumping the baby with the bathwater, with a bathtub, with a, with a bathroom. It's a strategy that is actually self-defeating and self-destructive. If you delete the message, if you shun the message, if you ignore the message owing to the personality of the messenger, who is damaged? You are. If the messenger brings you an important message that you should hear, that you should listen to, a message that could transform your life, a message that could be of help to you, and you refuse to listen to this message because the messenger is a sadist. Who are you punishing? Yourself. So shunning the messenger is a form of self-punishment, self-defeat, which is exactly what the sadist wants you to do. When the messenger is malevolently sadistic, rejecting the messenger's contributions to your life is a form of masochistic self-inflicted injury which constitutes the very sadistic supply the sadist seeks. So when you're avoiding this, the sadistic narcissist, you're actually constricting your life and punishing yourself. You're avoiding beneficial outcomes in your life. You're reducing your efficacy, which is what the sadist, what the sadistic narcissist wants, because this is a form of sadistic supply. If the narcissist, if a sadistic narcissist pushes you to limit your life, to ignore certain messages, to, to cower in place, shelter in place, that's a form of sadistic supply.
Okay. What about the other strategy? I'm going to expose the sadistic narcissist. I'm going to tell the whole world what an evil, depraved, uh, person he is. I'm going to punish him one way or another. I'm going to ruin his reputation. It's, it's not going to work. All this only serves to enhance the sadistic narcissist's self-concept as the supreme apex superior villain. You see, the sadistic narcissist is proud of his or her sadism and narcissism. Sadistic narcissist is affected in his disorder, emotionally invested in her misbehaviors. The sadistic narcissist brags about being a sadist or being a narcissist. Even when the sadistic narcissist clothes, camouflages, disguises the sadism as a form of social messaging or form of social activism or a form of truthtelling, a pro-social form. Even then, the sadistic narcissist is is very, very invested in and proud of the aggression, the aggressive way this is done. There's nothing you can do to the sadistic narcissist as far as reputation goes because a sadistic narcissist's reputation is that of an aggressor or that of a villain. And exposing the sadistic narcissist only serves to enhance this, this brand. It's a brand, and you're serving to enhance the brand. So shunning the sadistic narcissist is self-defeating and self-punitive. Exposing the sadistic narcissist is a contribution to the sadistic narcissist's elevated fantastic self-concept, a contribution, enhancement, and buttressing of the sadistic narcissist's public-facing brand facade, persona, mask. You're not doing anything by exposing the sadistic narcissist but prove to the world that everything he has been saying about himself is true, that he is a truth teller, and that is his brand. You augment and enhance the sadistic narcissist's self-concept and public concept, public image as a villain. What kind of villain? The supreme villain, the superior villain, the amazing villain, the mad genius or the, the genius villain, the super villain. So that's not a, an effective coping strategy at all. That's actually a collusion with a sadistic narcissist. It's as if the sadistic narcissist paid you money or hired you to kind of augment and enhance his brand.
The only effective coping strategy with a sadistic narcissist, if you continue to engage with him or her, is to pretend that you love the pain, that you seek the hurt, that you flourish and thrive and luxuriate and revel in the agony and anguish that he inflicts on you. Make no mistake about it. Uh, it's a risky strategy, but when you pretend that you're enjoying the situation, that you are grateful to the sadistic narcissist for what he's doing to you, this creates sadistic injury. It may even lead to a collapse of the sadistic narcissist. The state of collapse, the sadist or the sadistic narcissist becomes a self-destructive, self-sabotaging masochist.
So here's the sequence. The sadistic narcissist targets you, renders, regards you as prey or victim or source of sadistic supply. The sadistic narcissist imposes on you a shared fantasy or cajols you into one, tempts you, seduces you into a shared fantasy, baits you in a variety of ways. And then the sadistic narcissist proceeds to hurt you, uh, to cause you pain, to humiliate you, to shame you, to degrade you. And by doing this, the sadistic narcissist hopes to trigger you into a counter-reaction. Sadistic narcissist hopes to provoke you into flailing about, thrashing about, into displays, ostentatious displays of intolerable, unbearable agony. If instead of this, you appear to be happy and grateful and to flourish and thrive in this environment, the more, the more he hurts you, the more smiling you are. The more he inflicts pain on you, you ask for more. This disorients the sadistic narcissist, destabilizes him. He doesn't know what to do. Because when you're happy in this kind of environment, when you flourish under these conditions, that is the opposite of sadistic supply, that is a failure and defeat. And the sadistic narcissist collapses. And when the sadistic narcissist collapses, he becomes a masochist. He begins to hurt himself. The pain becomes self-directed, self-trashing, self-harming, self-destruction, and self-defeat follow. The sadistic narcissist derives masochistic supply in in the phase of narcissistic collapse or sadistic collapse because there's no other alternative. The sadistic narcissist, uh, can appreciate only pain. The sadistic narcissist's only currency, only coinage of the realm, is pain. Sadistic narcissist's only way to relate to the world and to others is pain. The sadistic narcissist trades pain, uses pain to construct narrative. Pain is all. Pain is the only palette and the only color and the only brush. This painter of human agony has this sadistic narcissist doesn't know how to do anything else except pain. And when inflicting pain on other people doesn't work, the sadistic narcissist turns inwards and inflicts pain on his, uh, on himself or herself.
I mentioned the paranoid. Uh, the other day I, I watched a trailer where a kind of faded and bloated wannabe investigative journalist, in all probability a collapsed narcissist, was dramatizing a completely run-of-the-mill pedestrian interview, claiming in dramatic poses that she's at risk and in danger. She's putting herself in danger. "I know I'm the next target." I mean, what an idiot. Anyhow, that's a typical paranoid narcissist. The paranoid narcissist is a loser. Most paranoid narcissists are collapsed narcissists. They have, they failed to obtain narcissistic supply in any other way. So, they retreated to a delusion of their own importance. Paranoia is about self-importance. Paranoia involves an inflated, fantastic self-concept. The paranoid says, "I am sufficiently important or sufficiently threatening or sufficiently powerful or sufficiently something to engender to foster to to encourage people to conspire against me. The CIA is after me, or some group of people are after me, or I'm the center of attention and the focus of their malign intent." Paranoia, therefore, is absolutely a form of narcissism. And the paranoid narcissist is someone who has tried a variety of other strategies to obtain supply and failed miserably. In the case of this wannabe investigative journalist, she had a podcast that no one was watching.
So the paranoid narcissist teams up with people who encourage the paranoid ideation, courage, the paranoid delusion, or the, and creates a shared paranoid fantasy with them. A typical associate of the paranoid narcissist is a covert savior narcissist. A narcissist who pretends to be, or a narcissist who is pro-social, a narcissist who claims to be helpful and empathic and loving and caring and compassionate and a savior and rescuer. This kind of usually psychopathic pro-social narcissist, who, whose grandiosity, the locus of his grandiosity is that he's fixing and healing, fixing and healing, and saving and rescuing people. This kind of person teams up typically with the paranoid narcissist, and they together create a shared paranoid fantasy, replete with imaginary enemies and dangers. And it's kind of an Indiana Jones shared fantasy. And both the paranoid and the savior in this paranoid shared fantasy are pro-social narcissism. They complement each other, and they complement each other, they complete each other, both functionally and psychodynamically. The paranoid presents herself as a morally superior person or a guardian of morality, ethics, and the law, or a victim in a morality play. And she is in need of protection and in need of saving and in need of guarding. And and here comes the savior, and he's providing these functions. Um, sometimes the paranoid narcissist, uh, displays defiance and consummatiousness, rejection of authority because she, she claims to be victimized by the authorities. Or and so this would be definitely a type of paranoid narcissist who is also psychopathic. There's an interface with psychopathy here.
Whereas the sadistic narcissist is untouchable, impermeable, unpunishable. The sadistic narcissist is simply the ultimate apex predator mutation because the, because his value system, his preferences, his psychological dynamics are so inverted that no normal or healthy or even unhealthy human being can penetrate the mind of a sadistic narcissist in any effective way. And so whereas a sadistic narcissist is the ultimate, uh, machine of war, uh, the paranoid is the exact opposite. It's a collapsed loser who is doing her best to, uh, garner attention, narcissistic supply, and the only way she can do it is by pretending that she's sufficiently important or interesting to be targeted by someone. And this makes renders her very vulnerable, very amenable to psychopathic pro-social narcissists who pretend to be saviors, rescuers, healers, fixers, uh, gurus, teachers, and generally guardians of morality and, and so on. And they, of course, victimize and prey upon the paranoid, the paranoid narcissist. Paranoia renders people very gullible. And these are the two types of narcissists which are much neglected in literature and online. And I wanted to make a small, not so small, contribution to the subject.