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Post by Roshan on Mar 27, 2020 16:42:22 GMT -5
So here he is, in the global lockdown. Still Sam Vaknin. Still wrote Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism Revisited.
Still a grifter, still an original. Still warned about the technology exacerbating narcissism, and here we are, all stuck in the same room. Take it or leave it.
Power in presence is his ultimate value.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 27, 2020 17:22:53 GMT -5
Oh how I would love to be a fly on the wall of Shmuel Vaknin's mind and know how aware he is of how much shit he talks.
But wait.
Is that what he's after after all.
For dumb people to follow and smart people to wonder.
This man makes me reflexively turn question marks into periods.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 8:08:20 GMT -5
So:
--In 2014 Sam Vaknin claims to possess the definitive information cache on narcissistic personality disorder, which started with his own original conceptualization and terminology, because there was 'literally nothing' on the topic in the 90s when he began to exploring it. He also claims that his conceptualization and terminology is now standard within the professional academic canon.
--The 'literally nothing' available included two books he mentions. One is the early Seventies book by Kohut, who coined the term 'narcissistic personality disorder', which Vaknin doesn't mention. Vaknin dismisses Kohut for his arcane (i.e. academic ) style, claiming no one understood it except hopefully Kohut--thus absolving Vaknin from crediting Kohut for any ideas. He also dismisses the neo-Reichian psychiatrist Lowen's 1984 book as too pop psych.
--So Vaknin proceeded on his own. He did NOT read academic and professional psychiatric literature, since there was 'literally' nothing else. He simply ignores the existence of such a body of literature and yet he is confident that he has now revolutionized it.
--His use of dates is intriguing. The first date he uses is 1980, when he says NPD first became a DSM diagnosis. He does so to give evidence (proof) credibility for his claim that there was 'literally nothing' available on NPD, and by extension to lay a foundation where it will be plausible to claim that he is now the worldwide expert and inventor of important terms and concepts of academic/professional canon. (There was 'literally nothing' because it all happened so fast, it's all still happening so fast).
The second time he uses a date is soon after and it's 1974. He uses this date instead of Kohut's name (which he throws in at the end of a mini-diatribe disparaging his book, and it may be the wrong date wait ). And he uses it right after he's used Lowen's name without a date for his book (which would be 1984). The next date he uses is 1997, to demonstate how vast a number his 20,000 'members' was on the Internet. But he never used dates, or his own age, or any clues about time in answering the opening question about how he got diagnosed by telling about three times he 'hit bottom'. I need to think about this.
So he's the revolutionizer of the professional and academic canon he eschewed, disparages, refused and ignores, and we should believe this because it all happened so fast (just decades after all).
Can someone help me put this into a framework that has some kind of meaning for what we're doing beyond the very obvious Te/Se grandiose inflation, which requires Ti/Si diminishment and falsifying? This is just depressing.
(Thank you, Roshan. That helped. "The more Te/Se grandiose inflation there is, the more Ti/Si diminishment and falsifying there will be" must be a 'rule of thumb'. It must also be extendable somehow to the other absolute value first and third slots and their accompanying ignored and polr fourth and seventh functions. I feel better now, Roshan.).
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 8:38:40 GMT -5
There's more. I didn't mention in the summary of the opening of the video that Vaknin not only dismissed Kohut as too arcane and Lowen as too accessible, but ALSO M. Scott Peck and others like him as too woo woo. (Peck himself was actually a psychiatrist but what he wrote was in the realm of spiritual self-help books). I should mention it because Vaknin's awareness of Peck and others LIKE him shows that Vaknin knew perfectly well in the Nineties that a VAST array of self-help literature bandying about the concept of narcissism existed. So where did it come from and why? Of course there was plenty more written, both arcane and accessible, that wasn't pop psych or woo woo. He just didn't find it at the time. Sounds like he didn't bother to while TELLING himself he couldn't, because since he's studied physics and finance, he REALLY should have been able to do that math. Vaknin uses a lot of big words but really, the alternate reality he's asking us to believe is infantile. DSM diagnoses like NPD just 'pop up' a few years after a book's written that's too arcane leading to some books that are too 'pop psych'. The space between the official 'popping up' and the 'popularization' is completely empty. Literally. It needs a Sam Vaknin to redeem it. There is more. I wanted to check on the date of Kohut's book on narcissism because Vaknin said '74 and wiki said '71 (which wouldn't be a big deal except I'm intrigued by his selective, strategic use of dates and by extension his concept of time). In looking this up, this came up: www.amazon.com/Individuation-Narcissism-psychology-Routledge-Editions/dp/1138185663This is a Routledge Mental Health Classic Editions 2017 reprint of a book by Mario Jacoby called "Individuation and Narcissism in Jung and Kohut" that was first published in 1985. In German. So it doesn't even matter whether Vaknin was in Eastern Europe. Normally I would probably be having a discussion like this in a pm back and forth and then put the fruits of it into a post so sorry if this is a bit tedious. But if nothing else it probably does serve to illustrate what Si role and Ti demonstrative are and aren't. And what BUTCHERING of Si is, and how the Ti that needs to be ignored WILL be, in a TeNi who may be Ni subtype but is obsessed with Se, with personal power.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 8:55:29 GMT -5
One thing I'm wondering is how is Sam Vaknin Ne demonstrative? His building idea sandcastles based on circumscribing the beach seems similar to Ne ignoring. I suppose this could be attributed to his being creative subtype of TeNi, so in ways more like an Ni dom than a Te dom. The issue is the protracted expediency of what he ignored and how he angled it; what he seems to have never ignored are options and possibilities to plow through, to succeed, to grab the early virtual world with as many tentacles as possible to promote himself, 'literally' reshaping it in ways not trivial in his own image. Still, how is he Ne demonstrative? Is it because he's constantly held himself and his videos and groups up as the carrot by which if you race for it you will free yourself from your narcissistic tormenters? Also, energetically he seems at first glance easily Fe polr but clearly he's not. If he were he could not have pulled all this off. Does seem more like he must be a 'creepy Fe role' that vincent has said you will find in gamma quadra.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 9:17:32 GMT -5
There's another interesting thing about Sam that I noticed, starting with him saying about the Kohut and Lowen books that 'there have been only two books". I suspected he meant there were only two books in the 90's, not that there STILL were only two, in 2014, the year of the video--which would really have been a whopper.
I suspected this because as a former advanced ESL teacher I'm very well aware that Russians and other Slavs make mistakes with the perfect tenses a lot and have great difficulty learning them, because they don't have them. And neither does Hebrew, though I've never had any Israeli students, and I know Vaknin's a Russian Israeli who lives in Macedonia. So I figured that's what he was probably doing and I checked.
He does make mistakes with the perfect tenses; he does make them a lot. What's so interesting is that they seem to be the only mistakes he makes. What the perfect tenses express is a certain subtlety to the understanding of time. It's not easy but it's not that complicated either--not for someone who's studied math and physics and philosophy. Alll it requires for such a person to master the perfect tenses is the desire to sit down and do it.
He didn't do it because he doesn't really care about time.
I'm going to go back and look at the mistakes he makes again.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 9:20:47 GMT -5
In fact it isn't accurate to say that Vaknin doesn't care about time. He does. He cares very deeply about maintaining the right to ignore, distort, pervert and trample the archive, the record of how things happened in time--which turns out to be tantamount to 'recorded time'--in order to proclaim himself overlord of a canon and to 'wield authority'. vincent has many times brought up that Ne has to do with 'authorship' and 'authority' and I've never understood this. This would be a good time to clarify. How is Shmuel Vaknin Ne demonstrative, vincent ?
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Post by vincent on Mar 28, 2020 13:14:11 GMT -5
Where Ni try to "collapse", Ne seek to expand and broaden.
It push against the established paradigms, traditions and canons (Si). It seeks to "breaktrough" and "break grounds", to lay down a new frame, or reframe an old one.
As an extraverted function, it has an interpersonal and transactional aspect, and the currency here is the novelty of ideas.
In absolue value slots, it's a conscious process and a power move.
High Ne users find their power in being the authors of new ideas, and asserts the authority/authorship that comes with it.
In demonstrative position, it's not only aboslute value, it's also shadow. And it lead to the kind of things Vaknin is doing here : bogus claims about "coining" things, being the first to this or that. Distortion of Si canons to forcefully and fraudulenty claim pioneering status in a field. Pretense of scientific breakthrough. Ignoring, denying and reframing the history of his field to create of space for himself in the intellectual world and the market of ideas, only to serve his Se agenda.
Significantly enough, he isn't exactly claiming to have fathered a brand new theory. Which would be Ti.
He is insisting he coined an expression. Ultimately, it's all (and only) about words.
In his case, the shadow agenda of being the smartest brain in the room (even if the room is as big as the internet and as big as History) is betrayed by the creepy gamma Fe role, making him feel obligated to tediously define every single three syllabic words.
He is and will always be the author. He invents words. You are, by default, a beginner. You need a dictionnary.
to be continued
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Post by vincent on Mar 28, 2020 13:40:27 GMT -5
Also, the infantile aspect of it. The puerility of the whole thing, is Ne-ish in itself. it's a roleplaying game. A Puer Aeternus game.
Maybe that's why Ne 6th often feel less demonstrative or weaponized that other demonstrative functions. They hit you with their sledgehammer like any other demonstators but at the same time, they ALSO tells you it's just a game.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 13:49:43 GMT -5
Also, the infantile aspect of it. The puerility of the whole thing, is Ne-ish in itself. it's a roleplaying game. A Puer Aeternus game. Maybe that's why Ne 6th often feel less demonstrative or weaponized that other demonstrative functions. They hit you with their sledgehammer like any other demonstators but at the same time, they ALSO tells you it's just a game. hmmm...it's just a game but it's a POWER game, especially with goal being Se, so it's a serious game. Hoping to get some sense of how aware he is of just how much he's bullshitting, like with that precious five and a half minutes of 'history' the Matrix kindly handed to me.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 13:59:55 GMT -5
Significantly enough, he isn't exactly claiming to have fathered a brand new theory. Which would be Ti.
He is insisting he coined an expression. Ultimately, it's all (and only) about words.
No, he's doing far more than insisting he coined an expression. I believe you are thinking of his claim I mentioned early on that he coined the term 'narcissistic supplies', which dates back to Fenichel in the 30's. As things have panned out, in another video he did NOT claim this term. But what I am talking about here is a LOT more sweeping and goes FAR beyond coining 'an expression' or many expressions. I went to great lengths to tediously show this. He claims there was 'literally' no information so he made the observations and came to the concepts and then the terminology. He claims HE has realized, based on his 'humungous' data base, that narcissism is a societal phenomenon with societal roots and consequences. That's pure Christopher Lasch. It goes back to 1979. That book was a best seller. He is claiming that HE figured out narcissists are common in certain professions. He takes credit for this. How is this only about words?
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Post by vincent on Mar 28, 2020 15:26:54 GMT -5
Oh ok. Sorry.
I haven't watched the last video you posted yet. I will, but youtube takes forever to load right now.
I understand he is claiming a lot more than that.
As i understand it, he pretends narcissism was a terra incognita before he discovered and explored it. Demonstration of pioneer status. First to put the flag on newflound land
Of course, it's not true. But in his mind, it's probably "virtually true", so to speak.
And that's Ne perspectivistic magic : it makes everything virtual, everything possible, and every lie "kinda true".
Depending on how you look at it and how you word it. Put new words on something, rewrite the history and the datas, ignore the logic, and suddenly it's new, and it's yours. Rephrasing is reframing is rebranding.
But my point is this : the rebranded product he is selling us is all about informations, datas, ideas and terms.
It's not really about concepts, systems, theories, mechanisms.
The Si he claims his fraudulent (that's the Si polr part), but Ti itself is ignored.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 16:27:42 GMT -5
Oh ok. Sorry.
I haven't watched the last video you posted yet. I will, but youtube takes forever to load right now. That's not in the videos I posted. It just turned out that I noticed that somewhere else he didn't credit himself for inventing this term. My point was that it's not about just terminology, it's about the big kahuna, the kit and caboodle, the whole nine yards.
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 16:41:31 GMT -5
I understand he is claiming a lot more than that.
As i understand it, he pretends narcissism was a terra incognita before he discovered and explored it. Demonstration of pioneer status. First to put the flag on newflound land
Of course, it's not true. But in his mind, it's probably "virtually true", so to speak.
And that's Ne perspectivistic magic : it makes everything virtual, everything possible, and every lie "kinda true".
Depending on how you look at it and how you word it. Put new words on something, rewrite the history and the datas, ignore the logic, and suddenly it's new, and it's yours. Rephrasing is reframing is rebranding.
But my point is this : the rebranded product he is selling us is all about informations, datas, ideas and terms.
It's not really about concepts, systems, theories, mechanisms.
The Si he claims his fraudulent (that's the Si polr part), but Ti itself is ignored.
So now there's a specific difference between 'ideas' and 'concepts'? And because he's concerned with ideas, not concepts, it's all about words ultimately? Which was your claim that I disagreed with. And data is words too? "Put new words on something, rewrite the history and the datas, ignore the logic, and suddenly it's new, and it's yours." Sometimes he puts new words on, sometimes he doesn't. And he doesn't particularly ignore the logic. Sometimes his logic's better. Is this that you're saying "Ti"? It seems like when you say what he does is all about words, you're being all about words yourself. "Concepts, systems, theories, mechanisms"--this really distinguishes Ti from Te?
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Post by Roshan on Mar 28, 2020 16:59:24 GMT -5
You're saying Te has to do with the naming of things and Ti doesn't, right?
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